loki laufeyson (toberuled) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-05-17 21:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | eames, loki, plot: las vegas |
Who: Loki and Evan
What: Loki makes some serious monster related trouble, then pays Evan a visit.
Where: The strip, then Evan's apartment.
When: Immediately after the start of the plot.
Warnings/Rating: Some violence and weird monster related things?
Loki was busy putting his plan into motion when it happened. He was arranging a delivery for the arm he'd stolen from Stark's metal suit, readying it to be delivered to one Hank Pym, care of a quickly put together spell and a few choice words. He was in the cave he'd retreated to in Jotunheim after Asgard was so rudely ripped from him, standing in the cold, sealing the quick and dirty rune onto the armature that would send it hurtling through space to appear on Pym's doorstep.
And then -
It was like what happened when Loki stayed in for the full day's limit, but he knew he'd had hours left to himself, and had intended on making the most of it. But then he was outside the door, and stricken with anger. What, had they taken even this from him, now? Cut his time down by hours, constrained him even further to imprisonment in the body of another?
It took a few moments before he realized that he wasn't moving, that the body he stood in wasn't meandering against his will for the exit.
He looked down. All his armor was in place, down to the last tooth of the last metal clasp. He looked at his hands. They moved to his tune - they were his own hands. And when he spread his fingers and called up fire, there it was, dancing green over the back of his hand. And ice, blue as his hidden skin - there it was, riming over his fingernails into sharp edges.
He looked up, incredulous, and he grinned. Oh.
Loki glanced back at the door, and checked the knob. Locked, indeed, and with the key still in it. His smile widened further, and he pulled the key from the lock, pocketing it.
So. The door was closed, locked from the other side, and he was here, in the hotel, on Earth. He still had his power, and all he could feel of Louis, whom he had until now been forced to tolerate, was his intense, desperate fear, but no grappling for control. In fact, it seemed he was incapable of even attempting such a thing.
The day got better.
Loki pulled his scepter from his belt, testing its heft. Yes, it was still with him. He'd gone to the far side of the darkest parts of the universe to get it, and he would not part with it lightly.
There was no way of knowing what lay beyond this Earth, whether there was an Asgard in this universe, a Jotunheim, or any of the thousand worlds he had known in his long days. For now, though, this world would be enough. Perhaps he would go back to the other side of that door tomorrow - perhaps not. While he was here, though, he would wreak a little mischief, and set himself firmly as a player in the conflict to come.
For he was not so naive as to think he was the only one blessed with an opportunity to take control of his body and be its sole possessor again. These things did not happen in ones, not in his experience. There would be others. There might even be his brother, lurking around somewhere.
He smirked, stepping down the stairs of the hotel, transforming sharp armor and leather into a close-cut black suit, the scepter still hanging at his side.
He would have to go and say hello.
*
The streets were coated in ice, which sent a pang of familiar disgust to Loki's heart. He did well in the ice, but it didn't please him to see it, hallmark of all the hidden parts of him he preferred not to think on long. It must have been enscorcelled to gleam so in the heat, and he flicked a hand in front of him, melting the sidewalk's glazed coating, and startling a few pedestrians ahead who had been gliding their careful way along. He offered them a thin smile.
What first? Where to begin? Decisions, decisions.
He could hardly think of where to start. He knew where he would walk first, whose home he would pay a visit to, but on his way he was intent on stretching his legs after so long kept to his own world, and having a little fun.
He stepped off the sidewalk and into the street. A few dozen feet down the road, an emergency vehicle was slipping and sliding its way in his direction. Traffic had come to a near standstill, with cars attempting to edge to the side of the road and let it pass.
Loki gestured toward it, and the ambulance began to speed up. He could see the man driving begin to scrabble and panic for the wheel even as the vehicle came toward Loki faster, faster still.
The car became a blur, first silver, then, strangely, green. Just before it seemed bound to slam into Loki, he leapt into the air, impossibly high, and the car traveled beneath him. He turned and landed neatly on his feet, fingers splayed on the icy ground. The sound of the ambulance's siren in the distance began to roar louder, and then to modulate, to gain breath, to screech with a tongue.
The ambulance, somewhere along the road, had changed. It was growing legs, and scales, and its windows were glistening and folding down into yellow eyes. This was no trick - the beast's claws scraped very real furrows in the ice, kicking up fine snow. The man inside looked terrified so long as he was able, no longer able to move his arms and legs. The metal beast, swiftly gaining flesh, shaped itself around him, pulling him inside, as scales covered his skin and his eyes rolled back in his head.
Loki was still grinning, wide and bright. The beast needed thought, after all, needed sentience, and the quickest way to do a thing like that was to fold another living being in and change it, make it into the beast.
When the change was done, the creature, the lindworm, was forty feet long, scaled in black and green. It gained its feet and tested its limbs, roaring and swinging its heavily spiked tail into a parked car, overturning it and sending it sliding across the ice. All were screaming, all were running, and all was chaos. Dragons, it seemed, weren't common in this part of Midgard. Who would have thought?
Loki shouted a word at the thing, and it turned its attention to him for the order. Then it bared its thousand needle teeth, dripping poison that hissed onto the frozen asphalt, and dove for one of the massive buildings that lined the strip.
Loki took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders, then turned his scepter in his fingers and walked the other way.
On his way to the opposite sidewalk, moving away from the dragon, he touched a woman who ran screaming by on the arm, grasped hold of it and pulled her close to him. She stared up at him, terrified, and he dug his thumb into her skin, whispering a spell for paralysis. She went still.
He reached up and drew a figure on her forehead, calling a blade of ice over his finger and slicing a fine line in her skin. The figure, when he was done, was an old rune, very old, one he'd learned not in his father's library, but in the store of books Odin had tried to hide from him when he was young. It had been amongst the books that had supposedly been burned after his father finished taking their knowledge for his own. Runes like this one had never been meant to see the light of day, but Loki had learned them, and held them in his heart along with all the other secret things he hadn't been meant to know.
He released the woman, and she fell to her knees.
It sang in his veins, seeing the crowd scream and run, seeing his monster drive them before him. Later, he would grant them peace, show that he could be kind after teaching them what his wrath was like. But he did so love to teach the world to fear a monster, and to teach them what it was like to be one.
*
Loki made his way leisurely through streets of panicking people. He could have simply stepped through space and been at his destination's door, but that would have been too easy, and denied him the sight of the panicking masses. Where was the fun in that?
He stepped into a high-rise apartment building. The man at the front desk had abandoned his post - wise - and there was no one to stop him as he stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for his desired floor. The doors closed, and the little metal box hurtled upward at breakneck speed, no stops. It banged to a halt near the top, and the doors slid open with a sweet little chime.
Loki stepped out and walked to Evan's door. He touched the knob, and found it unlocked - how charitable. It hadn't been unlocked before he touched it, but it was kind all the same.
The door swung open and Loki stepped inside, swinging the scepter down, walking with it like a long cane. "I would have called," he said, glancing off to the left, looking for his intended company, "But this was all a bit last minute." He did make a sight, standing there in Evan's white living room. He was dressed impeccably, despite the show outside - a beautiful black suit, a long dark coat, and a green tie with gold trim. As if he could abandon his chosen colors, even now - of course not.
Perhaps what was strangest was how much he did look like Louis. The resemblance was uncanny. He had the unusual height, the lean build. Even his face was alike - the same high cheekbones, though the hollows beneath were more gaunt, the same tired look, but darker circles beneath his eyes, deeper, and an incessant energy and intensity that practically thrummed off of him even when he was standing perfectly, casually still. The long sweep of his dark hair made him seem even more deathly pale than he was, made his eyes greener. "Now," he said, stepping further into the apartment, "Don't try to pretend you aren't at home." He turned his smile in Evan's direction. "I can hear your breath."