Who: Loki and Leo Valdez (and Festus) What: Leo runs into Loki When: Oct 10 Where: Park Rating: low
Leo was having a pretty okay day today. It was slowly getting easier every day to wake up without Jason or Nico around to bother in some capacity. It helped that he had friends here and that Festus was here too. It was a little piece of home. Of course he’d prefer if he could just have his friends back, but that was out of his control.
Today he was hanging out with Festus at the park. The celestial bronze dragon and Leo were playing fetch with a very large version of a frisbee. There were definitely people staring at them as he’d throw the larger-than-trash-big-lid sized Frisbee and then Festus would bound after it. On one such run, Festus got a little more excited than usual. Instead of catching the disc in his mouth and running back to Leo, Festus tried to send the Frisbee back to Leo. It was clear over Leo’s head.
“Head’s up!” He turned and waved at the person it was heading toward.
--
The park was one of Loki's favorite places in this Midgardian settlement. He could almost pretend that he was back on Asgard--though he knew that Asgard had been destroyed in Ragnarok (a level 7 apocalypse)--with the sound of the fountain in the background, the birds chirping, the smell of flowers in the air. It was a nice place. A place where he could go sit and think. Especially when he had so many things to think about.
Only, today when he arrived, the park wasn't the peaceful and tranquil place that he'd been anticipating. He could see in the distance, a giant, mechanical monster chasing... a toy? And then the monster threw the toy toward a young Midgardian, who didn't catch it. It came sailing straight toward Loki.
Loki didn't need the warning. He simply reached up and snatched the toy out of the air. The plastic felt far too smooth under his fingers. He raised an eyebrow and held it up as he approached the young person.
"Your... monster's aim could be improved."
--
Leo came jogging towards the guy and slowed down as he got closer, rubbing the back of his neck as he did. “Yeah, sorry. Festus got a little carried away. He does that when he gets excited.” As if to demonstrate it, the dragon bounded up a little and then dropped his chest and raised his rear like a dog who was ready to play. It made Leo laugh before he waved at Festus. “How about we take five, k?” Festus opened his mouth and made some whirling noises that maybe sounded agreeable before he lay down and curled up on himself.
Leo looked back at the guy. “Good catch though. You have good reflexes.”
--
Festus. The monster's name was Festus. Loki supposed that was as good a name as any for a monster of that size. The God watched as the mechanical creature maneuvered its body around with great grace and skill, and Loki raised an eyebrow. All right, so it was fairly entertaining. But the shape of the beast's head reminded him a little too much of Alioth. He tore his eyes away once it was curled up and still, and looked to its owner.
"I do," Loki responded, regarding his reflexes. They were, after all, super-human. He offered the toy to the young Midgardian. "It comes with the territory, I suppose. I am Loki of Asgard."
--
He blinked. Leo didn’t look surprised in the sense that it was unfathomable that he was a god or he was Loki or anything like that. It was more that the guy did not scream ‘Norse god’. He didn’t have a beard or was wearing a horned helmet. He shouldn’t have been that surprised considering the Greek gods didn’t always look Greek either. “Oh hey! I knew someone here a while back who was your daughter. Don’t suppose you know her? Samirah?” Leo tried to remember her last name, but failed. “I’m Leo. My dad’s not Norse, but still a god. Do you know Hephaestus?” Did the other gods know of each other? They had to, right? Or maybe they didn’t which is why they didn’t have epic battles against each other. Leo was pretty sure that much ego couldn’t last in the same space.
--
Ah yes. Loki definitely didn’t scream Norse god. Not like his brother or his father. There was good reason for that, but Loki definitely didn’t want to get into that right now. As he passed over the toy to the young man, his eyes were still on the mechanical monster. Dragon? The mechanical Dragon. Festus.
“What?” He asked, his head suddenly snapping to the boy. “...I have sired no child,” that I know of. “Samirah? No.” He shook his head. “That is not possible.” He folded his arms across his chest--a defensive move he was almost ashamed of. He would have to do some research into this. Surely this Samirah was mentioned on that Network.
“Unfortunately not. Hephaestus, you say?” That made this young man not of Midgard, but one of the other nine realms. Possibly. It bumped him up a couple of notches in Loki’s mind.
“Tell me more about your monster.” It seemed like it might be useful.
--
With the fact that people came from all the different realities, Loki not remembering a demigod was super possible. Leo was sure that Annabelle would have some sort of percentage, but she wasn’t here. No one else from back home was, actually. “It happens sometimes.” He meant about being unsure. “But yeah, Hephaestus. He’s the Greek god of fire and building things.” Technically there was more, but Leo liked to do the Cliff Note version. “In my world there’s a lot of demigods.” He shrugged as if to imply it was pretty normal.
“Festus? Oh, he’s not a monster. Well, I guess he could look like one, but monsters generally try to eat me and I’m happy to say Festus does not do that.” Thank the gods. “He’s a dragon made of Celestial Bronze. He was kind of running rampant in the demigod camp back home and I found him and figured out the disc that was essentially his mind was damaged so I fixed it. He’s unfortunately blown up a few times since then, but rebuilding him is fun.”
--
Loki nodded. He didn't like not knowing about things, and the things this young man--demigod?--brought up? It was disturbing. Loki didn't like it. It had nothing to do with Leo himself, and everything to do with the idea that Loki didn't know things.
Fire and building things? That explained the mechanical beast. Dragon. Thing. Loki turned to glance at it, then brought his eyes back to Leo. "Is your world this world? Are the demigods here?"
That would be good information to have.
"A Celestial Bronze Dragon? I see. Do you think you could create other creatures out of bronze?"
--
“Uh -” That was a good question to ask, the whole ‘is this your world’ thing. “I don’t think so. I mean, Earth? Yeah, but probably not this one unless all the monsters who liked to eat demigods are stuck outside the Dome.” That would be something. They had the camp, obviously, but even that sometimes failed. No, he was pretty sure this was another Earth.
“But as for bronze, yeah! I make things out of most metals, actually. I run the local forge here.” Leo technically wasn’t sure if it was the ‘local’ forge, but he did run the forge. “I make a lot of things, but swords and weapons are some of my specialties.” Should he be talking to Loki, a Norse god, about weapons? Probably not, but he had anyway.
--
Loki raised an eyebrow at the idea of monsters who eat demigods. Midgard had some really interesting notions of what gods and demigods were. Of course, being of Asgard (and Jötunheimr) Loki knew a little bit about gods. But the Midgardians--especially those more recently?--seemed painfully misinformed.
"Nor is it mine. At least, this is not the Midgard I remember." There must have been a drastic nexus event which sent the whole place down a branch off the Sacred Timeline.
"Is that a fact?" Loki's interest was perked at the mention of swords and weapons. He gave a flick of each wrist, and his own blades appeared as if from thin air. He offered them up for the other to inspect.
"I have been meaning to upgrade. What say you to the quality of these weapons?"
---
Well, this was a first. Sure, he made a completely new musical instrument for Apollo, but no god ever asked for his opinion… probably because they had his dad to ask which was kind of fair when Leo thought about it.
He took the knives, but he handled them with experience. “These are pretty cool, but I’m guessing the poofing is more your magic than theirs.” Something he said with complete normalcy. Leo then looked back up from the knives. “They’re good. Are they Norse? They kind of remind me of Greek ones.” Leo rattled off a few things about the knives.
“I guess it depends on what you want? My friend Jason was here for a while and he could summon lightning so I made him a sword that could store and release lightning.” He wasn’t here anymore, unfortunately, though Leo pushed that thought from his mind. “I was thinking of trying my hand at throwing knives where if you like, miss the target, they sort of act like a boomerang?” Sometimes Leo thought of strange things, but it couldn’t be helped.
--
Loki nodded, watching Leo with the knives in his hands. One of them was from the child version of himself at the Void at the end of time. That one was Asgardian steel. The other was a facsimile, though it was a very, very good one. It might be obvious to Leo the difference between them.
“One is.” Loki nodded, motioning toward the dagger he got from the child Loki. “The other is … well, I wanted a matched pair, and most of the people I encounter wouldn’t know the difference.”
He paused. “Boomerang throwing knives, you say?” …that sounded perfect, actually. Like Mjölnir. Not only would it be the perfect weapon for him, but it would remind him of his brother. Something that he wanted.
“What sort of payment would you like in exchange for these boomerang knives?”
---
Hazel’s voice rang loudly in his head. His first reaction was to say no charge because he wanted an excuse to work on something like that, but Hazel’s voice reminded him that he needed money to eat and pay rent and everything else. Right.
“Well, money, usually? But I’ll also trade in stuff too if you’d like.” Okay, so he was still bad at this. He held out the knives to give back to Loki. “How about I make them and you pay what you think they’re worth when you see them?”
--
Well, that seemed appropriate. Loki could come by Midgardian money, no problem. On the other hand, it almost didn’t seem fair: Loki wouldn’t have to do much work at all to acquire the funds that he would then hand over to Leo in exchange for the young demigod’s hard work. But Loki wasn’t about to complain about this.
“It sounds like you have yourself a deal, young son of Hephaestus.” Loki reached forward to take his knives back, and with gentle flicks of his wrists, they disappeared again. “You can contact me on the network when they are created.”
--
Leo almost wanted to pull something big from his magic tool belt since the whole disappearing knives was a really cool trick to do and his powers didn’t work that way, but he managed not to do that. He did wish he could do that, though.
He nodded and already had a smile on his face for being addressed with the title Loki had given him. It felt nice. “Cool! You won’t be disappointed.” He hoped not, anyway. “And if you are, I can always tweak them.” That was half the challenge anyway.
--
Loki actually chuckled at that. He wouldn’t be disappointed, hmm? No pressure there. He was looking forward to seeing what the young Demigod came up with.
“I look forward to seeing them,” Loki responded. And, actually, he was. Very much. It’d been quite some time since he’d had weapons designed specifically for him.
“Good luck,” he added, then turned to head away. He’d had enough social interactions for one day. Loki had work to do.