A few days later, I was deposited via the Bifrost just outside the Raft, America's premiere supermax prison for supervillains located just offshore of New York City.

I won't say I wasn't nervous. The last time I was on earth I was a wanted criminal so appearing outside a prison was... Yeah. Part of me was a paranoid little bitch. But... It's been over a week, if he was planning to screw me over he would have done it already.

Still, I was in the best disguise I could manage, which was basically just me in a hoody and without the horns, fangs, and red eyes. Hood up, obviously.

It was a testament to how well-trained the guards were here that the teenage girl that suddenly appeared out of a burst of rainbow from the sky didn't provoke much of a response..

I was approached by a man in mostly blue armor with white and red accents, carrying an iconic shield. I couldn't help but salute.

"Are you Maria?" Captain America asked in greeting.

"Yeah," I answered. Honestly, going by my birth name still didn't feel right but I wasn't so keen on insisting on Massacre right now.

"Okay, Thor gave me the rundown when he called in the favor," The good Captain began. "Now this is pretty simple. I'm going to escort you in and we'll meet with a pair of inmates. The first one, Sinthea Schmidt, was one of the Worthy, the other is Namor, he's going to give you something that will help you later."

Apparently, The Submariner had another one of his 'fuck the surface' phases and then after he came to his sense he turned himself in for once, after a brief stint with the Avengers to help clean up a mess. I didn't have the full details. "Got it."

"After that," he continued, "well, probably best to save that."

Now I was concerned but... C'mon, it's Captain America. It's hard to not trust him.

"Uh... What exactly did Thor tell you?" I asked.

"Important details mostly. Who you were, that he'd taken you under his wing, that you've gotten into a little bit of trouble with others but nothing that couldn't be talked out, and that you had a power that could help us clean up a little bit of the aftermath of The Serpent's attack a few years ago."

"Okay, yeah, that's the gist of it," I confirmed. "Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page."

I looked at the guards, a little nervous. Thor said that the Avengers could help clean up some of the mess I'd made, but there were charges against me.

"Nerves getting to you?" Captain Rogers asked.

"A little," replied. "I'm not exactly that comfortable around law enforcement right now."

"Well you can relax," he said confidently. "Nobody's going to arrest you."

"Yeah, not with you next to me," I quipped back.

"No, I meant in general," he stated. "No charges are pending against you and no warrants out for your arrest."

I blinked. "Explain that to me."

"Well, there were three major charges against you," he said while holding up his fingers. "One, being a dangerous mutant, two, stealing something from Stark International, and three, the Jail Break. After Thor took you in he had the Avengers do some digging. Do you remember having some blood drawn just before being put into foster care?"

"Yeah, they wanted to make sure there weren't any adverse effects from the symbiote and completely missed that it was still in me," I replied, a little bit bitter.

"Yeah, the tests for that aren't very well put together," he admitted, "but what the blood tests did prove conclusively was that Maria Marshal wasn't a mutant," he said firmly. "And since the chances of an unarmed, untrained teenager breaking into a supermax prison on her own without getting caught were slim to none regardless of what her powers were, the obvious conclusion to make was that you'd been detained and imprisoned... Which, since you aren't a mutant or a citizen of Krakoa, ORCHIS had no authority to do making you entirely within your rights to attempt to flee. Meanwhile, the conditions in the prison were exposed, and it turns out they violated several international laws which cost ORCHIS a considerable amount of their 'hard-won' reputation." The Captain was practically beaming at this point. "As did the fact that Scott Summers was among the inmates when ORCHIS has been rather monofocused on capturing someone claiming to be, and who they insist is, Scott Summers despite already having him in captivity. And since ORCHIS doesn't have the authority to investigate non-mutant crimes, a certain Mr. Feilong had those charges dropped rather than let NYPD investigate."

I blinked. "What about Alchemax?"

"As far as I know you were never charged for anything related to Alchemax," he said, which surprised me. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

I glanced at the prison guards again. "...I plead the fifth."

"Fair enough," he concluded and then we were let inside.

No pat down, oddly enough, but I guess that traveling with the Sentinel of Liberty came with its perks. A guard led us to a bleak white room with a table and two chairs. That and a mirror that I was pretty sure was not, in fact, a mirror.

A few minutes later, two more, rather burly looking, guards dragged in a redheaded woman who was bound in a straight jacket of all things and rather forcefully sat her down in one of the chairs. They left us to our 'privacy' and the woman glared at me and the Captain in turns.

"Let me guess," Sinthea Shmidt said in a voice dripping with bitterness. "The image of American Imperialism found one of my father's other bastards and thinks that we deserve to meet each other?"

I suddenly felt unclean. "So," I tried to quip. "if I had a nickel for every time a homicidally psychotic supervillain claimed we looked related," I'm guessing it was the red hair, "I'd have three nickles. Which isn't a lot, but it's fucking weird that it happened thrice in less than a month."

"Language," Captain America gently chided.

"Sorry," I replied. "No, uh... Sinthea, is it? Not related to you or to the man with a repressed homosexual lust for Hitler that spawned you," I cracked my neck. "And honestly, between you and the other b—guy who said that I'd rather be related to Kassady because he might be a homicidal maniac but at least he's not a fu—fricken Nazi."

Sinthea continued to glare at me. "What do you want?"

I looked her right in the eyes. "Skadi."

"Do you think I would be here if I still had the Hammer of—"

She was cut off when, like a flash, I grabbed her by the face and pulled. The Remnants of Skadi Culsdottir's power and the enchantment of the hammer that allowed the deluded young woman to channel it came forth from her and briefly took the form of the outline of a stern woman's head, her hair pulled back into a tail and shaved around it before the magic entered me and...

Mainlining the magic of a God of Destruction and Winter Storms that had spent over a decade stewing in a born, bred, and indoctrinated Nazi? Not pleasant. But still, it'd only lasted a moment.

By itself, I could tell by instinct that I'd only gotten a fraction of the sealed Goddess's power. I'd gotten more from the Dreamstone, but there was something just slightly different about it from the juice I'd gotten from Blake, Valkrye, or Thor... And more importantly, it felt like it was only one-eighth of a puzzle.

And... Sinthea was only slightly dazed. Good. I mean, Beta Ray Bill had been fine after Blake took Stormbreaker's powers from him but after... After Blake, part of me had been afraid...

Whatever. It didn't matter now. I walked over to the 'mirror' before tapping it with my palm. "We're done with her."

About thirty seconds later the burly guards were back and one of them lifted Sinthea and started frog-marching her out of the room but the other stayed behind.

"For the record," he said once she was out of earshot, "that's not a two-way mirror, we monitor this room with a hidden camera in the other wall."

All I could say was "Oh."

He left shortly after that and I turned to the Captain. "So," I asked, "do you know why she was in a straight jacket?"

"Sinthea has been known to employ sorcery from time to time," was how his reply started. "So if I had to hazard a guess it's to keep her from casting spells."

"Makes sense."

It was another few minutes before another man was led in. He... Honestly did not look like a prisoner. The Submariner wasn't even dressed like an inmate, that was the same outfit he'd been in when he'd been with the Avengers just a bit ago.

"They seem to be treating you well," the Captain said.

"Everyone understands that this prison can only hold me because I let it," the royal Atlantean explained. "As I am here by my own will, there's no particular need for most of the more extreme measures. Also," he finished, "I think the warden is afraid of me." He made eye contact with me. "Is this the girl?"

"Yes, this is her."

"The girl can speak for herself," I pointed out while quite annoyed.

"Quite," Namor replied. "Steven, do you have the parchment?"

The Captain pulled from a pouch on his belt a roll of parchment and a pen. "Waterproof parchment and a pen with bleed proof, quick drying non-toxic ink," he said as he handed both to the King of Atlantis.

Namor began writing on the parchment in a script that I couldn't recognize.

"Steven told me what it is you are after when he made contact and arranged this meeting," he said. "When Attuma first wielded the accursed hammer, he was my enemy but, in the years since, the Warlord and I have reconciled and he is now among my greatest allies. Show him this, it will explain the situation to him. He should oblige," the imprisoned King said while handing me the parchment now rolled into a scroll.

I pocketed it and... "Okay, I have to ask: What happened to you? I remember reading about you in history class, how you tried to invade the surface once or twice back in the late 30s but then became this huge celebrated hero in the War, then disappeared off the face of the Earth in the 50s. Then after you turn up again, almost every time you're on the surface you were starting trouble, so what gives?"

Namor's face was stern. "Illness and trauma are terrible things to leave unchecked, and for all my strength I was not strong enough to accept help when I had the chance." He then looked at me really closely. "I can see it in your eyes, too. You've seen things you shouldn't have. Done things you regret. Don't make the same mistakes I did."

It was Namor who called the guards after that, and then the Captain and I were escorted back outside.

I wasn't sure where the next location was, Captain Rogers was supposed to escort me there, too. "Brace yourself," he said as we stood at the edge of the rig that the Raft had been built over. Then he started counting off on his fingers.

"Wait, what does that me—"

Something grabbed me and changed my orientation. I could feel myself moving at velocities greater than I could fully comprehend and... I was supposed to have perfect equilibrium but this was stress-testing the hell out of it.

Moments later I came to a sudden stop, the momentum dissipating instantly, and found myself in a bridal carry in the arms of Quicksilver.

He sat me down and commented "You don't look like someone who could beat Wanda" but I was too busy falling to the floor and kissing the solid ground to respond.

After a few moments, I pushed myself back up and took in my surroundings. It looked like a war room in a building that was obviously underground... Actually, I could pick up the distinctive scent of the New York Sewers in the distance. I could probably walk to my old lair from here now that I was getting my bearings.

The people in the room... Some of them I recognized. The Captain and Quicksilver, but also Rogue, Psylocke, and Deadpool. Others not so much, what looked like an excited teen girl version of Colossus, a brown-haired woman who... Strike that, I recognized her from the Hellfire club. What might have been ShadowKat if she was having an early midlife crisis and dressing like a ninja to be cool, a woman I didn't recognize at all, X-23 if she suddenly aged several decades, and...

"Ms. Marvel?" Her costume was different. X-Men colors and branding, a belt, a different mask, wrist guards, and more sensible footwear but that was definitely her.

"Yeah," she said while extending a hand to shake. "Nice to meet you."

I took her hand, but "I thought you were an Inhuman?"

"I am," she said.

"But..." I said with an awkward gesture at her costume.

"I'm also a Mutant."

"How?"

"We're still trying to figure that out," she admitted, "all we know for sure is that I was really lucky to go through terrigenesis before my X-Gene activated and that my Inhuman powers sort of cut off my Mutant ones but now they're slowly reasserting themselves."

"What do you even call that?" I felt myself asking.

"I've been going with Inhu-Mutant," she finished.

I shrugged, that was better than anything I could come up with on short notice.

"Ms. Marvel," Captain America began, "Maria is here to see the Juggernaut. Would you mind escorting her through the tunnels?"

"Yes sir!" She said with a salute before turning to me. "Come on, this way."

I lingered for a bit and glanced at Deadpool. I should probably apologize for stabbing him in the spine but how do you even broach that topic? I couldn't figure out how before it got awkward so I turned to follow Ms. Marvel.

The so-called "Morlock Tunnels" were surprisingly vast. It took a bit to walk to where people were actually living, and after a bit, Ms. Marvel turned to me "So are you, uh... Massacre?"

I dropped the disguise, shifting back into my symbiote form in all of its glory. "Yep." I'd noticed that she got quiet once we got away from the over-twenties. "Is there a problem?"

"On the one hand," she said, "you're pretty popular down here. Lots of Mutants are grateful to the girl who helped them escape that prison, Cyclops wants to make you an Honorary X-Man... But you also stalked a friend of mine home and jabbed a needle in his spine to copy his powers."

I held my hand in front of my face and small arcs of bioelectricity crackled at my fingertips. "He punched me through a window. I broke every bone in my body and almost didn't make it home that night. I think we're even."

"It doesn't work like that and you know it," the older girl said sternly.

I sighed. "Yeah, you're right. I should probably apologize but I don't think showing up at his apartment and being like 'Hey, so about the last time I showed up here' is gonna go over well."

"I can arrange a meeting," she said. "I don't get reception down here so it'll have to wait until I get back topside. Maybe call a full Champions meeting, we'll all meet up somewhere neutral and talk it out over pizza and video games once we get a lull with this ORCHIS stuff... Actually, now that I think about it I haven't actually talked with any of the Champions in person since I died."

"You died?"

"Yeah, it was during that thing with the insane mathematician and the fake Mayan God," she explained, "I don't quite remember what happened but apparently I shapeshifted into the woman he wanted to sacrifice and took a hit for her which messed up his ritual. I think that's a good way to die, honestly, but also, you know, still coming to terms with having died..."

Okay, how do I keep sleeping through this kind of shit? "I died once. The thing where Avengers Mountain came to life and started judging people," I shared. "I don't think it even judged me, I was just in the wrong place when it started smiting cities. Then suddenly I'm back as if it never happened... Real talk, how fucked up is it that we live in a world where we can talk about having died? Like Holy shit!?"

"I know, right?" She replied. "I mean... Oh. I died then, too. When everyone attacked it at once. I've died twice and I haven't even started college yet."

"Yeah like... Gods exist, demonstrably. I've been staying in Asgard lately, Thor's a total bro, but the random cruelty and the constant world-shaking crises... Kind of makes it hard to believe that there's some bigger plan. For a while I was doing the whole Ubermenche thing, you know, throw out conventional morality, do what feels right, choose your purpose but... Honestly, I don't feel great about a lot of what I did and I didn't, still don't, really have a long-term goal. I don't even know who I am anymore and why am I talking to you about this?"

"I've been told that I'm a very easy person to get along with," Ms. Marvel said with a smile. "I know some people who are better about this kind of philosophical stuff but, honestly... Where were you staying before Asgard?"

"Not far from here, honestly," I said. "I've been on my own ever since the stuff with Knull, crashing in an abandoned supervillain lair in the city. Before that I was in foster care, my family was killed when Carnage attacked the city... Which I guess is..."

"...You've been alone that long?" Ms. Marval said with a look of shock. "That... How are you still sane?"

"I'm not 100% sure that I am if we're being honest."

"Well the first order of business has got to be getting you a support network," she said firmly. "People aren't meant to be completely alone like that. We need to get you some friends or something." She paused for a moment. "Ah what the hey," she said while walking around me so that we were face to face and extended her hand again. "Kamala Khan."

I took her hand awkwardly. "Maria Marshal."

We got to the "living area" of the tunnels not long after that. I was immediately recognized by many of the people I'd helped escape the prison and swarmed by people offering thanks, handshakes, back pats, and one incredibly awkward hug.

Most anxiety-inducing ten minutes of my life.

Eventually, we got through to the other side and found where the Juggernaut had parked himself. He'd just watched all of that happen. Also, his helmet was off. I wasn't expecting the Jarhead haircut, but I wasn't surprised by it either.

"Uh, hey, Juggernaut?"

"Yeah, uh, Massacre, right?" He said upon recognizing me, "The horns are new."

"Yeah, I got a bit mixed up with something in Limbo and got powered up by the energy," I said by way of explanation, "did anyone tell you I was coming?"

"Grapevine said you'd be asking me for a favor," he said with a shrug, "But seeing as how you helped me bust outta prison I think that's fair, what do you need?"

"Okay, so a bit of backstory: I've got a grudge match against Carnage of all people coming up and to beat him I need to be a god, Thor's helping me out with that, and right now we think the best way for me to do that is to try and use a power I picked up to absorb Asgardian Magic on... Do you remember picking up a Hammer a while back and getting possessed?"

"Yeah... Are you saying that Kuurth is still in me? Because the last time he was in here Cyttorek revoked his gem."

"No," I clarified, "but some of his power might still be in you, dormant, and the enchantment on the hammer might have left some residue."

"If that's all you want then go ahead and take it," he said with certainty. "The last thing I want is that messing me up again."

I reached up and placed a hand on his head. "You might feel dazed for a little bit," I warned and then pulled. The energy took the form of his domed helmet, except sealed with six eye marks arranged in a pair of angles. Absorbing what was left of the Breaker of Stone had been more pleasant than with Skadi.

"You okay, Juggernaut?" I asked, trying not to sound too worried.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said as he shook himself out of it, "and call me Cain."

"Maria," I returned. "Okay, that's all I need. Ms. Marvel, could you give the others my regards? I'm heading out and... I'll be in touch."

Kamala nodded and I teleported out. Next stop, the Bar With No Name.

Which luckily hadn't moved to a new location since I'd been there last. At this time of day, it was mostly empty, but the Gray Gargoyle who, being honest, I didn't even notice when I used Hofund, tended to stop in for a pick me up according to Lady Sif and... There.

I ignored the Bartender shouting at me about how there was "no teleporting!" to grab the face of the stone man and draw out and absorb the four-horned visage of Mokk, Breaker of Faith.

That being easy enough, I teleported out again and landed in a vacant lot in the industrial park that I had been told had been appropriated by something called 'Punch Club.'

Speaking of which, there was She-Hulk and her enemy turned rival Titania, two very tall, very muscular women, punching the sweet hell out of each other. I tried not to stare, but couldn't quite bring myself to raise my voice for attention.

"Who the hell is this!?" Came a gruff voice from behind me a few moments later.

Turning I saw a bald, shirtless man who seemed very much like he didn't want to be here had been the one to speak, and additionally, I saw the Thing was also present along with some other people who I honestly didn't much care about.

The fighting stopped and She-Hulk came up to me. "Are you Maria?"

I craned up to look at her and said "Yeah."

"She," the green giantess began, "is the girl I told you about when I asked you to come back here, Carl. The one who is doing clean-up duty for Asgard? The one who is going to take the residue of those cursed Hammers that you, Mary, and Ben picked up a little bit ago."

"Yeah," I said nervously. "It only takes a second, worst you get is a little light-headed for a little bit, and then I'll be out of your hair." I sprouted a third arm. "I can probably do all three of you at once."

'Carl' was still a little reluctant, but it wasn't long until I'd added the residue of Skirn Breaker of Men, Greithoth Breaker of Wills, and Angrir Breaker of Souls to my gestalt of energy.

"Thank you for your time and cooperation," I said as I prepared to leave, but... "While I'm here," I began while looking at both Thing and She-Hulk, "uh, I can also take Symbiote stuff. I can sense that you have a couple of codices in you and... It's completely non-invasive at this point," I'd been practicing both magic and psionics, I didn't even need the needles at this point. "It'd take a second, the worst you'd feel is a slight tingle down your spine."

I'm not 100% sure why I was asking them. I'd sensed codices in others, Captain America, Kamala, but... For some reason, the four in the Thing and the two in She-Hulk felt really, really tempting. They felt similar but different at the same time.

"I'm gonna be honest," The Thing began, "I don't like the idea of having any of those gooey freaks in me at all, so if you can get it out quick and clean you're welcome to it."

"Yeah, I think I can agree with Ben on that," She-Hulk added. "Until just now I didn't even know that those things stayed in your system."

I held out my hands, a bit of molecular scale psychokinesis here, a bit of manipulating the magic that had built up in me there, and like that two writing masses of goo had painlessly slurped out of the two heroes and into my hands, where I crushed them and sweet holy hell what a rush!

"You all right, Kid?" The Thing asked.

"Yeah," I replied weakly. "Those just don't go down as smooth as the magic does. I'm fine." I pulled the living abyss up over my head to form a mask, eyespots but no mouth, and called out as I looked to the sky "Lady Sif!"

The prismatic light of the Bifrost engulfed me, whisking me away from New York City and depositing deep under the Atlantic Ocean, where my symbiotic form began to adapt by, among other things, lengthening and webbing my fingers and toes and sprouting a tail.

Unfortunately, the exact location I appeared in happened to be the Atlantean Palace and I was immediately surrounded by blue-skinned guardsmen holding out spears.

Very carefully, very slowly, I manipulated my Living Abyss to produce the parchment that I'd gotten from Namor and very carefully, very slowly held it out.

One of the guards took it, read it, and swam off. And that left me in the very awkward position of being held at spearpoint for what felt like an eternity.

Eventually, the guard who swam off returned with an absolute unit of a muscular Atlantean, dressed in ceremonial armor. "You are the surface-worlder who bore the message from Namor?"

I nodded.

"You wish to claim the destructive power of Nerkkod from me?"

I nodded.

"It is in your favor that I have neither the desire nor the means of accessing such power at this time. For what cause do you desire this power."

My response was to glare at him and cock my head.

"...You cannot speak underwater, can you?"

I shook my head.

"...If Namor trusts you, I see no reason to distrust you, at least not now, but be known that if this is some surface-worlder trick..." He drew his thumb across his throat and all the guards tightened their grips upon their spears.

Very slowly, very carefully, I swam up and placed my hand on his head and drew out the dormant power, which took the form of a massive bat-winged helmet, and drew the Breaker of Oceans into my body.

One of the guards got somewhat twitchy at seeing how badly Atumma was dazed, but to my immense relief, I was whisked back to Asgard by the Bifrost immediately.

"I don't think I like deep sea diving very much," I said as I exposed my face again and the aquatic adaptions reverted. I was now standing at the base of the rainbow bridge with Lady Sif and Thor.

"Maria, are you alright?" The King of Asgard asked. "You've consumed a considerable amount of darker Asgardian magic in the last few hours."

"I'm fine... Except, part of me feels like a puzzle that's missing one piece... Speaking of which...?"

"The Hulk is currently in a field in west Texas fighting a chupacabra," Lady Sif confirmed. "Are you certain you wish to confront him in this state? I cannot say for certain how he'll react to a visitor from Asgard at this time."

"Nul, Breaker of Worlds and Haver of Spookily-Coincidental Name is the last piece of the Puzzle. If Loki was right, this would be the last piece I need to become a god," I insisted. "Send me down, please."

"As you wish."

Another time into the rainbow vortex, though this time it deposited me at the scene of a battle. I arrived just in time to see the Hulk, whose hair was far longer than I typically saw it, smash the head of a vaguely apelike reptilian creature with clawed hands, hooved feet, and spines on various parts of its body.

Then he looked up at me. "Leave me alone."

Shit, he was using proper grammar. "Look, I'm just here because—"

"I said," he insisted, "leave me alone!"

"I just need to talk to you for a second and—"

Faster than even I could react to, he charged and hit me with a fist that landed like an entire convoy of fully loaded semis.

I landed in what was probably Arizona if we're being honest and had just enough time to realize that not only was this now a fight but that I'd have to bring my A-Game before the Hulk landed on my legs.

As he brought his fist down on me, I liquified and slithered out from under him before reforming behind him in my full-sized dragon form. Then I channeled Hellnir's power into my existing pyrokinesis so that the gout of flame I breathed out was far hotter than anything he'd be used to, though not soul-searingly hot.

This was, of course, not enough to hinder him, but it did tick him off enough to focus on fighting the big monster and not on the tingling sensation in his spine: Hulk had a codex, not a particularly old one mind you, and just the one, but it felt tempting just as his cousin's and the Thing's had.

As the codex slipped out of his body and into my dragon form's mouth, the Jade Giant threw one powerful punch. As I absorbed the codex, I melted back down to humanoid form and fully embraced the rush that came with it.

It was my own Hulked-Out hand that caught his punch. My other giant mitt grabbed him by the face.

"This would have taken two seconds if you'd just heard me out," I insisted as I pulled on the Asgardian magic with him.

This time two outines formed, one his head but bald, the other a hulked-out version of Thor's helmet. I absorbed both and... "When did you wield Mjolnir?"

Whatever, I pushed off of him and leaped away, switching to flight as I fully assimilated his codex and returned to my normal size.

"Lady Sif, if you've still got track of me?"

Another prismatic flash and I was back at the base of the Rainbow Bridge.

"...So I'd know if I was a god, right?" I asked. "Because I just grabbed the last enchantment and a little extra but... I'm stronger, but I don't feel any different."

"Nay," Thor replied. "I can sense that you have not yet undergone an apotheosis, nor are you any closer than you were this morning by my senses. It's perplexing."

"Oh I'm sorry, did you all think that that was it?"

I rolled my eyes as I turned to see Loki. "You look good for someone who got shot the other day?"

"Well you see once the bullets were out it was a simple matter of using magic to fix it," the God of Lies replied. "Also, Doctor Strange has done good work ever since he chopped off his hands and grew them back and... I don't think he'd be happy that I just said that. Oh well, leaving it out would have been a lie of omission."

"So why did you suggest doing that if it wasn't going to work?" I had decided that not engaging with his bullshit was probably the best way to go.

"Do you even know what a god is, little Mari-Wari? A god is literally made of magic and stories and symbols and legends. We are beings of Narrative. And tell me, would you be content with a story about a traumatized, nihilistic, introverted, probably neurodivergent teenager gluttonously consuming power source after power source until she hits critical mass and becomes a god? I mean, it could be interesting, if it was presented right, but presented by itself would it be particularly satisfying?"

"Get to the point, please," I insisted.

"Complicating the matter, of course, is that you're more symbiote than human at this point, and a symbiote-dragon at that," he continued, expositing with no care for my interruptions. "You're literally designed to steal cosmic and mystical power and add it to your own without your nature inherently changing. You'd basically have to mainline power from Knull directly to become so much as a demigod and it took Kassady thousands of codices and dozens of symbiotes to pull that off. Then there are the many different kinds of power you've taken into yourself, all conflicting... If you want to be reborn as a god, Maria, you'll need to be reborn. To add to your nature, to combine, refine, and distill your desperate magics into something that will work together and allow you to apotheosize into not just a god, but a new kind of god, the fledgling Skyfather of a new pantheon... Or I guess, Skymother in your case," he finished with a shrug.

"Skymistress," I insisted.

"What was that?"

"I'm sixteen, I'm too young to be called 'mother,' in any circumstances. So Skymistress," I explained.

"Fair enough," Loki agreed, "but before we get there, you need to be properly reborn. For that, you need your rebirth to be a satisfying story. So... It's time for you to go on a quest."

I blinked "What kind of quest."

Loki took a deep breath. "Symbiotes were created as weapons," he explained, "they provide both weapons and armor to their hosts. The one that you are merged with is an offshoot of one whose specialty is the number and variety of weapons it can create, extruded off to turn a hapless victim into a weapon for Kassady's conquest. To unlock its full potential and ensure you could master it, you sought enhancements and one of them was a derivative of a Weapon Plus project. Your first codex harvest was man-enhanced by Weapon X, whose symbiotes were all modified by others to serve as weapons and who also inherited codices from another Weapon X subject and from a man who was born to be a weapon and was infected with a bio-weapon."

Loki started counting off on his fingers. "You then got infected with a bio-weapon, stole and assimilated an armor that was equipped with some impressive weapons, broke into an asylum to harvest a codex to copy one man's internalized bio-weapon, and another man's ability to mimic the properties of vibranium weapons, stole a codex from a man so you could mimic his weaponized armor, one from a young who can make weapons out of electricity, samples from several of the symbiotes that Alchemax was trying to weaponize, the symbiote offshoot that Osborn used to turn his grandson into a weapon, and the prototype for Alchemax's super symbiote weapon, and finally improvised a convoluted plan in order to come to Asgard in order to claim a super weapon," he said with a smile, seemingly happy that he was able to count exactly to ten.

"That plan itself involved absorbing codices or biomass from people who were or were associated with weapons," he continued with his fingers now relaxed, "and when you got what you were after you also consumed the life and power of the man that had merged with it along with the rest of the Living Abyss he'd bonded with, and he himself had consumed the power of three enchanted weapons. And just today, you collected the power of more Asgardian weapons for yourself. Do you see the pattern in your narrative, Miss Marshal?"

"Look," I said while rubbing my temples, "it's been a long couple of hours, I don't have the spoons for word games."

Loki turned to Thor, "Would you care to take a guess?"

"Weapons and armor," Thor replied, "he is saying that in order to be reborn you must be reforged."

"Well, I'll go set myself on fire and have someone beat the crap out of me with a hammer then," I deadpanned.

"That's the spirit!" Loki exclaimed. "Now, it's not gonna be just any forging process. There's gotta be a ritual to it, and a pretty hefty one at that. In a village in the far north of Asgard is a distant descendant of one of my previous incarnations, a girl about your age by the name of Kelda Allsdottir. She's young, but she's very knowledgable about this sort of thing, seek out her counsel."

I was about to ask just how I was supposed to find her when the ground vanished below my feet and I found myself falling head-first toward a snowy forest clearing.