War zone

So, this is where the Yggdrasill connects to Earth," I said. Looking around, I said, "It makes sense, I guess."

"The Asgardians met the Norse for the first time near here," Loki said quietly.

The mind healers had managed to break through whatever block had been keeping him from realizing that he'd been controlled, and now he was wondering if any of his thoughts were his own.

"All nine realms are inextricably connected by the world tree," he said. "More now than usual."

"Why is that?" Vista asked brightly.

I probably should have left her with a headache; it wasn't a good idea to leave her with too rosy of a view of drinking. My Dad had done his share after Mom died, and while he'd never been violent, it had made him even more distant from me than he otherwise would have been.

"Every five thousand years there is a conjunction, when the Nexus draws all the worlds closer together that ever, to the point that you could almost step across from one to the next, despite all the physical distance between them. It's coming soon."

Well, from what I saw in his mind, it wasn't happening tomorrow, although the conjunction was gradual so the worlds had been getting closer all the time.

Maybe that was why Vista's powers had worked in space, or maybe it was because the nexus created an opening from one world to the next, connecting them.

"I don't think it'd be a good idea to meet with your old friends," I said. "I doubt the Captain or the guy in suit would consider you anything but a war criminal."

"Who hasn't tried to take over this world?" he asked lightly. "It happens all the time here…at least every twenty years, and more often recently."

"I have never tried to take over a world," I said.

"You're fifteen," he said. "Nobody's tried anything at fifteen."

"She's killed a lot of people," Vista said. She had a bag with her costume in it and she looked down at her dress sadly. "The PRT is going to confiscate this, aren't they?"

"After the last zombie plague?" I asked "You bet."

I would be happy to get my load of assorted Jotun seeds to Blasto; they were taking up a slot meant for a person.

"You were serious about that?" Loki asked.

"I've got video," Vista said. She still seemed a little giddy. Maybe it was because she was still excited about visiting the home of the Norse Gods.

"Yeah, yeah," I said. "I'm sure they'll be plenty of time to go over my greatest hits later. Let's go."

Grabbing one in each arm, I said, "Planeshift."

As the PRT headquarters formed around us, I heard Loki say, "I hope you don't have to call out your attacks like some kind of anime schoolgirl."

I turned and stared at him.

"I've been to Earth before," he said defensively. "It's important to learn about your subjects."

Apparently, his knowledge of anime was limited to Sailor Moon; he'd last been to Earth during the Nineties, before returning more recently.

PRT officers were pointing weapons at us.

"You need to get Vista into decontamination!" I said. "I don't think that she was infected, but you can't be too careful. Also M/S screening! She was affected by Mama Mathers."

"What about you?" one of the PRT officers demanded.

"I've set up a decontamination station on another earth," I said.

"You could have taken me there first," Vista said reproachfully.

"They wouldn't have believed you, and you'd have to do it twice," I said. "This way I get to drop you off safely, and the guy who keeps accusing me of van murder has to go into decontamination…again."

"I never accused you of van murder," the receptionist said tiredly.

"Oh yeah…it was random van murder. Well, enjoy your decontamination!" I said cheerfully.

Before anyone could say anything, I was gone.

I hadn't actually built my own decontamination station; I'd just stolen the van mounted one the PRT had left behind.

Appearing inside it, with Loki in tow, I touched his shoulder, and he was suddenly in a special garment designed to improve the decontamination; it had been made by Blasto.

I was in the same sort of outfit a moment later, and then I hit the button. Our clothing was next to us a moment after that, along with the one hoodie I had left.

"What is this?" he demanded.

"Ordinary humans are terribly susceptible to disease," I said. "Even though we're probably immune, it's possible that we could have some on our skin or clothes, and so it's important to keep ourselves clean."

"I keep myself clean."

"Sterile," I said.

"I'm not that either," he said, smirking.

"Well, there was that thing with the horse," I said.

"That was a very poor joke by the fattest Asgard I've ever known. Unfortunately, the mortals overheard it, and it entered the mythology," he said. He scowled.

He'd felt that the slander by Volstagg had been a deliberate attempt to ruin his reputation among the mortals. It had been just one of a number of insults he'd been given throughout his childhood and early adulthood.

"I tried to correct the record, but..."

"The more you protested, the more people thought it was true."

A look through his childhood revealed that there had been a good bit of bullying, even by his brother Thor, although with Thor it had always seemed more good natured than with the others.

He was weak for an Asgardian, and trying to compensate for that with cleverness and magic hadn't been appreciated by a warrior culture. They'd seen him as untrustworthy, and they hadn't liked him.

He was a profoundly lonely person who dealt with it by pretending he needed no one.

"Are you planning to teleport me against my will again?" he asked, glancing down at my hand on his.

"Just doing a trip down memory lane," I said.

He yanked his hand away from mine.

"I'd thank you to stay out of my head," he said.

"I need to know who I'm traveling with," I said. "Can I trust you, for example. Would you make a good ruler if I find a place that needs one?"

"A ruler of the ants?" he asked.

"Who knows?" I asked. "What else do you have to do. You might be able to do a little good in the world. It might even buy you some favor with Odin."

He scowled.

The lights flashed, and I touched out clothes. Touching him again, I switched his costume back on, and then mine.

"This is the least pleasing time I was ever undressed by anyone," he said. "Except for once with a troll wife."

"I'd rather not hear that one," I said. "I'm fifteen and I'm an American."

He glanced at me with an eyebrow raised.

"We're a lot more comfortable with our kids seeing people murdered than nude people, at least in the media."

"You consider yourself a kid?"

"Well, I kill a lot of people, but I'm not really ready to date yet," I said. "Let me just say that this is not a world you want to escape from me on."

"It's that dangerous?"

"It's that boring," I said. "It was hit by an asteroid ten years ago, and the environment was destroyed. All that's left is a few cannibals here and there, and a few people I've gathered together who aren't cannibals who I've decided are going to rebuild this world."

I inventoried him and then I inventoried us into the sky over my small compound.

He appeared beside me, held up with my telekinesis.

"How many people do you have to do this?"

"Maybe fifteen?" I said.

"You have high expectations."

He looked out at the wasteland that stretched out in all directions. "Is the whole world like this?"

"As far as I can tell."

He whistled.

"Let's meet the folks," I said.

I'd discovered that people liked it better when I flew in. It gave them a little time to come of their storage containers and get ready to greet me.

"Taylor!" I heard one of the kids shout as he ran up to me. "Who's your friend?"

"This is Loki," I said. "He's an alien."

"Like a little green man?" he asked, his eyes wide as saucers.

Loki shifted forms beside me, shrinking down to the size of the child.

"Take me to your leader," he said in a high-pitched voice.

The boy stumbled back, then he laughed as Loki switched back to his regular form.

"He's another one of those para-whatsis, right?"

"Parahumans?" I said. "Nope. He really is an alien."

"He looks human," the boy said critically.

"I look like whatever I like," Loki said. He switched forms rapidly, ending up as a goat.

"That's how rumors get started," I said, and I suppressed a laugh as he returned to his normal form hastily.

People surrounded me quickly, anxious to talk to me about the progress they had made. They'd elected the older William as their leader. He was thought to have a good head on his shoulders, even if he was a little more paranoid than everyone else.

"Blasto says that we might be ready to try plowing soon," he said. "I'm not sure we're healthy enough to do that yet, not without animals at least."

Loki was looking around the compound.

He thought this place was a dump, and compared to even Brockton Bay, it was.

He hadn't seen what it was like before, and the changes that people had made.

They'd put personal touches into their homes, going as far as to going outside to chop down some of the stick thin remnants of trees to make a variety of things.

The problem was that they still hadn't restored their fat stores, and they were all weak and lacked energy.

It wasn't like they were in the wilderness, where they could hunt animals and turn their skins into blankets and clothes, their skulls and bones into tools and their guts into waterskins.

All they had were a few tools left over by the workmen and the burned remnants of the forest outside.

They'd somehow managed to turn what little remained of the bark on the trees into rope and primitive sorts of clothing.

They'd made a fire pit near the center of town, far enough from the hydroponics tower not to bother the plants. They'd used local stones and the wood from outside as a place to sit around the fire telling stories and singing.

It helped them feel like people again and not just survivors. They'd managed to build attractive benches and a primitive looking swing for the kids, although there were only two swings made from bark rope.

I could probably deliver better just by looting an old park somewhere that was going to be demolished. I wouldn't, though, because it was obvious that they were proud of what they had accomplished.

"I'm glad you guys have gotten so much done. Anything you need?"

"More refrigeration," William said. "You've brought us a lot of canned foods and dry foods, but frozen will be nice."

"I'll build a root cellar," I said. "I've got a weight limit on how much I can carry at once, but we'll figure something out. I need to go see Blasto. How's he getting along with everybody."

"We had to tell him to stop smoking weed around the kids, but otherwise he seems all right," William said. "He's got a thing going with Vanessa. There's a lot of gossip about it."

Apparently, there was a lot of gossip about everyone. After a decade of isolation, everyone was intrigued by each other. Hopefully it wouldn't get old and lead to bloodshed.

The kids were grabbing Loki by the hand, and he looked disconcerted.

He was wondering why we were in a place this poor, and why I even bothered with these people.

Apparently, he didn't like children much; for some reason they weren't enough of a challenge to manipulate.

"Come along," I called out to him.

He pulled himself away from the children, who were just happy to see a new face, and we quickly made out way to the elevator.

It was made out of old wooden pallets, and we were being pulled up by a rope attached to a counterweight made up of a boulder.

As we were moving slowly up the side of the cliff, Loki asked the question.

"Why?" he asked. "They're so…dirty."

"A few weeks ago, all of them were on the run from cannibals," I said. "They had nothing that they couldn't carry on their backs. They'd spent ten years surviving, and while none of them were cannibals, all of them have had to kill people."

He stared at me.

"Look at them now," I said. "They still barely have anything, but they're genuinely happy. They appreciate every little thing they have, and they're making a community that works. You won't understand until you get to my homeworld how precious that is."

He didn't speak, but the doubt on his face was obvious.

"The people on my world are defeated. They've given up. They pretend to live their lives, but ultimately its hollow. They know that the end of the world is likely within their lifetimes, and that no matter what they do, none of it will matter in the long run."

Looking out over the horizon, I saw dust approaching.

"Hey," I said. "Do you want to kill some cannibals?"

"What?"

"My people don't have cars," I said. I nodded toward the dust in the distance. "Cannibals do."

"All right?"

"Well, you can just watch," I said.

I grabbed him, and a moment later we were up and over the pallet railing. I flew toward the car, and I scanned the people within with my mind.

Cannibals, definitely.

I dropped Loki off, and then I stood directly in front of the car.

They drove straight toward me, whooping and hollering.

A moment before they would have hit me, I blinked into the car next to one, and I shoved my fist through his head. I drove the car with one hand, using Squealer's driving skill even as the others unloaded their bullets into my skull.

Good; no damage to my hoodie.

I grabbed the next one, ripping his arm off even as I turned and hit the third with it in the face.

The man kept screaming, even as blood erupted from his severed arm. He probably shouldn't have been wearing a seat belt.

The others were dead.

"Who else knows about this place?" I asked.

He was going into shock, and so I healed him. His arm grew back.

"Who else knows about this place?" I asked.

He stared up at me, but didn't answer. He didn't have to.

There was a camp of fifteen cannibals ten miles to the west. Apparently, my solar cells on the mountain had been noticed, and they'd sent scouts.

They were particularly successful at finding victims, which is why they were able to field so many. They were actually three cannibal groups that had joined forces, eating their own weakest members whenever they couldn't find enough prey.

I shoved my hand through his head.

Inventorying the bodies, I stopped the car and turned it off.

I grimaced.

I'd gotten blood all over the upholstery. I couldn't clean it by inventorying either.

Well, I'd pull the seats out and give it to the community.

"Road trip!" I said brightly to Loki.

I inventoried him, and released him shortly before entering the cannibal camp.

By the time we returned, he was a little pale.

"Was all of that necessary?" he asked. "Couldn't you have just killed them?"

"More cannibals will come," I said. "I had to leave a message."

"But did you really have to…"

"They were judged," I said severely. "By their own thoughts and memories."

"Even my brother wouldn't have…"

"I'm not your brother," I said. "And these people didn't just survive by eating their own; they enjoyed it."

"You seemed to be enjoying yourself too."

"If they'd been forced into cannibalism, I'd have just transported them to the other side of the country and stolen their car. But they weren't, and I didn't. I don't really like cannibals."

He nodded after a moment.

"Well, let's take the quick route back to Blasto's lab."

Loki had a resigned look as I grabbed him again.

Blasto, as it turned out was thrilled with the Jotun seeds. I'd actually been able to steal more than just a few species, and he looked as though he was about to have a stroke as he looked them over.

"This makes so much sense!" he said. "Photosynthesis is overrated! All you have to do is…"

"I'll let you deal with it," I said. "I'll be back to look over what you come up with. I'll bring Amy."

He didn't look as though he'd even heard me, so absorbed was he in what he was doing.

"We're about to go to my Earth," I said. "It's a lot like Midgard, but more run down. We've got giant monsters that like to wreck cities and kill everybody."

"That's you, right?" he asked.

"No, that's not me," I said irritably. "I don't wreck my own cities. Only an idiot would do that! I've never even wrecked a….well, not intentionally anyway."

"And what will be doing when we get there?"

"What I do every day, Pinkie, try to kill everybody who recently tried to kill me."

"That's a lot of people, isn't it?"

"Surprisingly, more than you would expect."

The world shifted around us, to be replaced by Brockton Bay.

It looked like a war zone; fortunately, it always looked that way. However, it did look like the PRT had at least given the Fallen a bit of a fight.

"It's time to track down some zealots," I said to Loki.