log: marvel - loki/spooky Who: Loki and Spooky What: Bros solemnly swearing they are up to no good. Where: Marvel - A dirty bar in New York. When: Recently Warnings/Rating: None.
One simply did not leave a deity of mischief to his own devices.
Loki had broad plans and deeply devious intentions, but plans took time to hatch. In the meantime, he had devised a number of ways to amuse himself.
Today, however, was devoted to a skill he had let fall fallow during his absence from scheming. First he had been an idiot child - then he had been a prisoner. Now that he was free again, it was time to polish old tricks and put them to use. If he intended to employ them in the service of his grander plans, he had to be sure they still worked the way they should. He had always loved study, and practicing a new technique. Taking an old one from the box reminded him a little of how it had felt to learn it in the first place. Ah, the pleasure of discovery, and the glee that came with success.
Admittedly, he chose a simple powderkeg to set the fuse on, but it was just too good to resist. A street preacher had gathered a good-sized crowd on a streetcorner near Times Square. He was holding a small, ratty effigy of a blue devil, and decrying the mutant menace to anyone who would listen.
Humans were so very problematic about difference within their own flock. They were not unlike the races they once idolized as gods, in that way. A small, lithe girl hovered at the edge of the crowd, honey blonde hair cropped to her shoulders. There was nothing to give her away - she watched the preacher with naked interest and rapt concern.
Loki liked to pick a different shell to wear on the street each day. He sometimes conjured them from his own imagination, and sometimes mimicked those he saw, whatever suited his whims. He left this particular guise standing at the edge of the crowd, then moved outside it, shrouding himself in the environment around him, effectively invisible to even one who had a good eye for such things.
He stepped up beside the preacher. He was neatly dressed in Midgardian clothes; a lightweight, pin straight black suit that complimented that sharp raven's wing of hair. No on could see him as he whispered to the preacher, and no one could say why the preacher then singled out a man at the front of the crowd. Loki had marked him as soon as he saw him - spotted the small blue scales not quite hidden by the sunglasses he wore.
The preacher jabbed his finger at the man with renewed fervor, and Loki passed through the crowd, whispering as he went. Whispers were a funny thing. Passed on from an unseen voice, murmured straight into the brain, they had a way of insinuating themselves into the thoughts of weaker beings, amplifying urges that were already there. Why should they suffer a mutant in their midst, when so many had died at the hands of freaks in the past few months? How could they stand to risk letting such a creature go?
It took all of a minute before murmuring broke into shouting, and more onlookers swarmed to see what was going on as the crowd descended on the mutant in the middle. Then the man started fighting back, arcing out with clawed, reptilian hands, and the real fun began.
Loki stepped back, as did the blonde at the edge of the crowd, moving to a safe distance. He had done the mutant a favor. The man would not die, he would fight his way out and go into hiding, knowing better than to think he could mingle with those who did not understand him and would never want to. It was a kindness, really.
He watched his work with a critical eye and a spreading smile.