Jotun

"Shouldn't you girls be home playing with dolls instead of fighting with alien invaders?"

He was flying around us, the jets from his boots making enough noise to be an irritant to my enhanced hearing. I wondered if I could get resistance to deafness if I spent enough time around loud noises.

Maybe I should start going to rock concerts.

Vista bristled beneath me. I was holding her up with telekinesis as I flew and she was doing an impression of the Thinker statue. If I let her fall, she was fully capable of reducing the distance to the ground to nothing.

I'd inventoried Captain Rogers and the Russian Spy lady.

Thor had thrown his hammer and it was pulling him along, despite the fact that my tinker ability and my common sense both told me that was bullshit. Physics just didn't work like that.

"I've been doing this for two years," Vista said indignantly. "How long have you?"

"Four years," Tony Stark said. "I have to admit that I respect your costume more than hers. Is that trashcan chic?"

"She gets a lot of blood on her costumes," Vista said. "And she hasn't figured out how to make a costume where the blood will slide off, despite saying she's a tinker."

"It's not one of my specialties!" I protested.

I had designs for spacesuits and bomb squad outfits, but I couldn't do Armani. I'd never been able to sew, and while it would be inconsequential to learn, it would also be stupid to put that much work into something that was just going to get burned or exploded or disintegrated off me.

"Besides," I said. "I go through too many suits to wear my nice ones into battle."

"I wear my best suit into battle," Tony said.

"You can just wipe the blood off that, easy peasy," I said.

"You seem obsessed with blood. It's a little disturbing." He said, doing another loop around us. He was doing it because he knew that it annoyed me.

"You've got no idea," Vista said.

I was probably at least fast as he was, but I didn't want Vista to get whiplash, or to throw up because of too many G's of acceleration or whatever.

How did he manage to deal with acceleration and whiplash inside that suit of his?

"This isn't my first alien invasion. The first one I had to stop practically by myself. When we get done with this, how would you like a look at genuine alien technology?"

"It looks like we're going to have our hands full for a while," he said. He gestured down at the fallen giant space worms and the fallen space cycles.

"Different alien technology," I said. "We're from a different universe, and I recently saved a second universe from different aliens. The aliens are going to have reinforcements that are bigger and stronger in twenty years, and it'd be nice to have a second opinion."

"Different universe?" he asked. "Like a different timeline?"

He believed us. We were both too practiced at what we did to be completely new, and he kept an eye on his world's capes, if only so that he could modify his armor to take them into account. People like us would have made waves.

That was especially true because we were kids, and he didn't think kids had anything like the ability to defer gratification.

I could totally defer gratification! I was waiting to go after the Fallen so that I could collect on this Loki guy.

"I've been to some that looked like they were pretty similar to here, and some that were pretty different," I said.

We were approaching the tower much slower than we otherwise could; the green giant was following us pretty well by jumping from building to building, although the damage he was doing at the same time seemed like a liability issue to me.

It was probably pretty expensive to fix things in New York, at least if it was anything like home.

"I'd be interested in seeing some of those worlds," he said.

"I'll have to heal you before you go," I said. "I'm trying to prevent any more interdimensional disease transfer."

"Any more?" he asked.

"There were some incidents," I said defensively. "That totally weren't my fault."

"Zombies," Vista muttered. "It was bad."

"I told them to destroy the samples, but they didn't listen," I said sharply. "That was clearly not a virus they should have been messing with."

She nodded reluctantly.

"I've got some heart issues," he began.

"I can pull the arc reactor out of your chest, and I can heal you without having to put you under anesthesia," I said.

"How did you know…"

"Powers," I said. "I've got like a ton of them."

"Huh," he said. "I've got to build all mine."

"You've got the two best powers," I said. "Genius and money. With those, you can literally change the world."

We were rapidly approaching the tower.

"The guy with the arrows and the scientist are up top," I said. "Loki looks to have them down. Vista?"

She nodded, and a moment later she was at the top of the tower.

I blinked and I was beside her, and a moment later so was the Captain and the spy.

Thor and Iron Man were close behind.

"Brother!" Thor called out. "Stop this madness!"

"Why should I?" Loki asked. "These people are beneath us. Why shouldn't they be ruled by the gods?"

"Because some of us are stronger than you are?" I asked.

"Who is this?" he asked. "You've decided to start fighting me with children?"

Thor threw his hammer, but it passed through the illusion Loki had already set up. He had a staff with a stone in it, and he was hiding invisibly to the side.

I blinked beside him and I inventoried the staff. The stone did not come along with it, and it began falling through the air.

We both lunged for it, and our hands met over the stone. I realized suddenly that the stone in the scepter was attached to the glowing cube farther up the tower, and I tried to blink away with it as I felt Loki willing the stone to take us elsewhere.

The world twisted around us both, and we were both enveloped in darkness. It took my eyes a moment to adjust, and then I saw that we were in a very dark cave. There was ice everywhere.

-1 HP

+1% COLD RESISTANCE.

Grabbing the stone, I punched Loki in the face.

He grimaced.

"Take us back!" I said.

We were further out in space than I had ever been. Even at a million miles a jump, it would take me two months to get even a light year- and that was if I didn't sleep at all. It would take me a great deal longer otherwise.

All that assumed that I could even find my way back.

"I can't," he said.

He tried to grab for the stone again, using his illusions to make himself seem to be two feet to the left. I ignored him, and I punched him. He grabbed my hand, and we discovered that we were equally matched in terms of strength.

We struggled for a moment, then I blinked five feet away from him. Apparently, I could teleport the stone, I just couldn't inventory it.

"That stone was required to use the tesseract," he said. "The tesseract is back home. We clearly can't go back."

"We're in another galaxy?" I asked, flabbergasted from what I saw in his mind. Even with leveling up, there was no way I'd be able to teleport back again in time to save any of the Earths. The closest galaxy was 25,000 light years. The next one was 70,000 light years away. Without leveling up, the nearest galaxy would take me more than four thousand years of doing nothing but constant blinking.

"You must have a way back!" I said.

"You grabbed the stone!" he said. "I don't know where in the Nine Realms we ended up. It's dark in here."

-1HP!

+1% COLD RESISTANCE.

He didn't seem to notice the cold, and so I chose not to mention it either. It wasn't like I couldn't produce as much fire as I wanted, and gaining cold resistance wasn't a bad trade off for having to deal with his being a jerk.

I could read his mind, and I knew for a fact that he was a jerk.

"Well, it's probably not Midgard," I said. "And it's probably not Asgard, unless you have a crapton of totally dark caves."

He frowned, looking around.

"This cave is partially made of ice," he said. He frowned.

"Jotunheim?" I asked.

My mother had been an English professor, and I'd grown up learning about Beowulf, the Greek and Norse and Celtic Gods. I'd never thought it would be particularly useful, but it had given us time together, and I'd always appreciated that.

He looked at me, surprised.

"I thought humans had forgotten the old ways."

"My mother was a scholar," I said. "And she didn't want me to be ignorant."

He smirked.

He didn't have a very high opinion of mortals. Apparently, the Asgardians lived to be five thousand years old.

"You know, I could live twenty thousand years if nobody kills me," I said.

"And how old are you?"

"Fifteen."

"I doubt you'll make it another month," he said.

"I'm good enough to kill you," I said.

"And then who'll get you home?"

I grunted.

The cave we were in had the entrance covered in Ice.

"You want to get out of here?" I asked.

I gestured, and a jet of flame burst from my hand. It began to melt the ice.

Loki recoiled.

Wasn't he supposed to be half ice giant or something? I couldn't quite remember. My mythology knowledge was mostly from my childhood.

"You'll bring the cave down on us!" he said.

"Oh," I said. "You're kind of fragile, aren't you?"

I inventoried him before he could react, and using my eyes I blinked outside.

-1 HP

+1% COLD RESISTANCE.

Releasing him from my inventory, I stared at the endless plain around us. It looked like we were in the Arctic somewhere. There was ice and snow and the sky was dark.

Loki stared at me; apparently, he wasn't used to being teleported against his will.

Looking around, he sighed.

"It's going to be tough finding a way out of this place," he said.

"You could call out to Heimdall," I said.

I could see in his mind that this was an option that he didn't want to take. After all, he was a wanted criminal back home.

"Mortals are forbidden in Asgard," he said.

"I'm more immortal than you," I responded. "You'll be dead in a few thousand years and I'll still be here."

I didn't know that for sure. After all, what if my power was drawing from some non-replenishable source of energy?

I'd just have to make the best of it while I could.

His form shifted into that of a ten-foot-tall, blue skinned version of himself.

"I don't suppose you can disguise yourself," he said.

Using illusions, I shifted to the same form as him.

He stared at me in surprise, and I enjoyed his consternation.

"It only works on one person at a time," I said, switching back.

-1 HP

+1% COLD RESISTANCE.

I suddenly felt better.

Apparently even at 10% I was now able to resist this level of cold. Space hadn't bothered me this much; however, space tended to be a great insulator. Overheating was more of an issue, and my fire resistance was really high.

"Well," I said. "We won't get anywhere standing around here."

I grabbed his arm and I yanked upward. We were in the air and he gasped.

"You're an idiot like my brother," he said. He grimaced, as though I was pulling his arm out, but I wasn't fooled. Despite the fact that I was holding him by one arm, he wasn't really in pain.

"Which way?" I asked.

"How should I know?" he said. "There are no landmarks."

"Aren't you half-frost giant or something?" I asked.

"I am not!" he said. "Where did you hear something so ridiculous?"

"I just hear rumors," I said. "I also heard that your mother was a goat."

He yanked at my hand, scowling.

"Well, or maybe a donkey, since you're such an ass," I said.

"Take that back," he said, his voice gone cold.

Apparently, his mother was the one person in all Asgard that he really cared about.

"I'm sure your mother was a very nice person," I said. "Which is why it's such a surprise that you turned out so poorly."

"What about your mother?" he asked slyly. "Or your father?"

"Both dead," I said. "I've killed thousands to avenge my father, and I'm working on ways to resurrect him."

I drained some of the water from his body, and he looked startled.

"The last invaders who invaded one of my Earths died by the millions before I was finished with them."

I used illusion to send him images of the Harvesters and the information I'd gotten from their queen.

He looked intrigued.

"I should have used them instead of the Chitauri," he said.

"Yeah," I said. "That was stupid. What was your plan, kill seven billion humans one at a time?"

I caught a flash of a thought in his head.

"Who's Thanos?"

"You can read minds?" he asked, horrified.

"Don't spread it around," I said. "Or I will cut your brain out of your head, keep it in a jar, and try to put a computer in your brain to run your body."

"That's oddly specific," he said.

"Well, I can manage a brain transplant," I said. "But the computer thing will be the real challenge."

We were moving over the featureless plain at a thousand miles an hour.

"Keep an eye out," I said.

In this darkness, it was hard to make out anything, but I was listening to my telepathy, hoping to hear a blip as we passed someone.

Suddenly I was hearing a lot of blips.

There was a camp below us.

There weren't any fires, of course, and they didn't seem to bother with tents. They were content simply to lie wherever they found a piece of ground.

"Maybe they'll know how to get off this rock," I said.

"That's not a good idea," Loki said.

"It'll be fine," I said. "Hey, do you speak Jotun?"

He nodded reluctantly.

I could read his thoughts because he spoke allspeak, a language that self-translated into all other languages. To a Frenchman he sounded French, to an American, he sounded English.

So, I routed the thoughts I was hearing through Loki's mind, and then I listened as his mind translated those thoughts.

The leader's area was in the center of camp. He'd created a throne of ice, and he was receiving supplicants and judging disputes.

Normally they lived in longhouses made of ice, but they were gathering an army to attack Asgard.

They weren't thinking about how they planned to get there, but they were planning to go there soon.

Loki heard these thoughts, and he was already planning to figure out a way to use this to his advantage; maybe get a pardon in return for stopping an invasion.

I landed in front of the King, dropping Loki as I did.

"Hey!" I said.

The king also spoke Allspeak as did several of his elite guards.

I really hoped Asgard had skillbooks on Allspeak; even a child's primer would be incredibly useful.

The guards around him snapped to attention, and they stood to their full ten feet in height. It was tall, but it wasn't exactly as tall as I was expecting. Maybe they'd shrunk in the wash.

"I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque, and I'm hoping to get back to Midguard. Anybody know how to get out of here?"

The King knew.

As soon as I had the information I wanted, I said, "So you guys are going to attack Asgard. What are your plans for Midgard?"

As some of the elite translated, I heard a nasty laugh from the crowd. I could read images from them. It seemed that they thought that without the Asgardians to protect it, Midguard would be easy pickings.

"Right," I said. "Does anyone here not agree with attacking Midguard?"

I listened, but I couldn't hear a single dissenting thought in range. Presumably those who had objected had been killed or had remained at home.

Well, my conscience was clear.

Several of the Elite grabbed at me even as the King gestured to Loki.

"My son!" he called out. "Welcome home."

I blinked to Loki, grabbed him by the arm, and then I flew straight up in the air.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"Kill them all," I said, "And then I'm going to climb the world tree."

"There's got to be fifty thousand of them," he said.

His mind was still reeling that the King had called him son.

"Phantom Weapon, Fire control!" I called out.

Dropping Loki, I grabbed him telekinetically. He was heavier than he should have been, but I was still able to hold him.

In the air beside me, a bomb made out of golden glowing light formed.

I let it drop, and a moment later there was fire everywhere. I used my ability to control fire to keep the flames below us, with everything in an eight-mile radius on fire around us, reaching out to the horizon.

As I listened to the screams of the army below us, I purposefully made the flames form into a version of my face laughing up at us.

Loki was staring up at me silently, and I grinned at him.

"You think this will get Heimdall's attention?" I asked.

Hopefully I'd be able to acquire a few powers before I got yanked to Asgard.