maskormenacelogs | (no subject)

WHO: LOKI and OPEN
WHERE: Various locations. (Maurtia Falls, Heropa.)
WHEN: The evening of June 9th.
WHAT: Loki's been ported back. Terrible things happened, and now he's sulking everywhere.
WARNINGS: Spoilers, and Loki. Mostly Loki.

1 | sulking, Heropa

A wave of relief washes over him when he re-arrives. He knows this place.

While freedom brings its own comforts, the fresh memories of shackles carries weight, and the breath that he had unaware that he had been holding comes out in a sigh. It happened in what seemed like hours ago, but the memory itself was at distance as the others returned. Fresh, but like he had been watching himself. A story yet to be written in this universe—a universe, for the most part, entirely free of a Loki. There are small comforts that come along with that, especially after the shock and dissonance of his departure.

Loki goes over the events in his mind again, looking for holes or untruths that he hadn’t seen during his confrontation with himself. He curses when he finds none.

There’s an overhang that keeps him dry from the rain. He thinks about it—picking up and moving, leaving the government housing (he wondered if they realized he was missing, there was still that thing with Danger he needed to follow up on), leaving Norman Osborn (though they were currently mutually benefitting off one another, Loki doubted that Norman even knew that he was gone) with one less cosmetics salesman, and taking off to start something new. The urge to run was strong.

He slips a hand in his pocket, searching for his phone. When he doesn’t find it, his face contorts and a small ugh comes from his throat.

“High and dry, I’d say.”

At least he was still joking.

2 | sulking in the club, Maurtia Falls

It was a bar that he hadn’t been to before. He thought about heading to one of the more (or less) popular imPort run bars, but he vouched for keeping himself off the grid before he decided just how much of what he was going to cast away. What better way to stay off the grid than in a deafening, blinding, drunken club full of young hipsters in an eclectic array of loud clothing that was more like a parade of the retro-funk that he couldn’t place. (That, somehow, was also comforting.)

There was enough circling in his mind to keep it off of the music (Noh-Varr would complain later, he was sure). His phone was still missing, which mean that he was still cursed and blessed with still being missing.

It was a good time to figure out a next move.

3 | closed to David

Retracing his steps to find his phone had been difficult. Luckily with a little sorcery and some help from a nice gentleman in electronics, he’s able to track and pinpoint the location of his phone in no time.

The only problem is that it’s with David. Ugh, David.

With a few choice teleportation spells, he finds his way back to the Heropa government housing and off to find David. Unlike every other mission that he underwent ever, this one is more than a little easy and more than a little annoying. Of course David would be the one to find his phone; he finds himself both cursed and lucky in the ways that he wouldn’t like to admit.

Instead of using the front door, he raps his knuckles on David’s windowpane. If this was any less annoying and any more comical, he’d choose a few lines from a Wes Anderson movie to set the mood.

“Knock, knock,” he mumbles. “I refuse to end this with a punchline.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sometime after that was all he needed to know. (It would turn the word games with Eddie into something that was a little more fun and a little less pressing, as much as he hated to take the challenge out of it. Which meant that he could get more information out of their little game than he first thought. Ah, invigorating! Things kept for another day.)

"Having to invite him somewhere for the deets would be all too demanding on the patience." He tries hard not to roll his eyes, but he does. "I'm amazed you're allowed as much as you have without bleeding from the ears from hearing him talk about himself." He waves a hand dismissively in the air.

"Ugh." Spidey slumps back in his chair, fingers pressed to what would be the bridge of his nose. "You think he's bad here -- last universe he wrote a book."

Loki pauses in his drinking to lean forward, folding his hands, as if what he's about to say is super top secret. He lowers his voice carefully.

"I know, I stole the copy he had from his desk."

Can he look satisfied about that? He's going to.

"He signed it."

"He kept a signed copy of his own book? Wow. So many jokes I could make about that, but do I really need to?"

He waves the question away, moving on to the ones that aren't rhetorical. "So what did you think? And what were you doing poking your nose in Norman's business, anyway? I know you have the whole shared color scheme going on, but if you're looking to revamp your look already, you should take style pointers elsewhere. It's too bad She-Hulk's not here, she could hook you up."

Despite the wisecrack, Spidey's intent on Loki's answer. It's... concerning that two of his universe's Big Bads are socializing -- even if one of them isn't quite so Big or possibly as Bad as he used to be.

"She doesn't wear green attire, you know."

Loki folds his arms on the table and gives him a little bit of a dubious look. Of course, he had socialized with Norman long before this, and it had inevitably led to disaster. Now he had a good idea of how much Norman possibly remembered of his involvement. (Not that anyone ever knew what it was for.)

"Someone thought that it would be an ironic joke if they made him my boss man. I work for him, well ..." Loki waves his fingers absently. "As much as I work for people, anyway. He owns a cosmetics company, I'm a cosmetics salesman. You can put two and two together.

"I took his mug, too."

"Wait, what? You work with him--" Spidey lurches forward, then forces himself to lean back. It's probably too late to pretend he's not screamingly interested, but he'll give it the college try.

"Who trusts a supervillain who gave himself powers with a chemical formula a cosmetics company, anyway? If this government is so intent on looking after us, you'd think they could do better background checks."

"For him," Loki corrects, amid Spider-Man's almost comical shock.

"Who trusts a supervillain with a chemical formula and a cosmetics company and another former supervillain at his heels, hm?" Loki looks a bit intrigued at the thought. He had burned his paperwork, but that doesn't mean that the government didn't take it into consideration. There are many things that it could mean, all ranging from sadistic irony to something of more catalytic proportions. "Maybe it was more intentional then you give it credit."

"Yeah, I remember the paintball game as well as you do," he agrees. He goes almost still for a moment, tapping a closed fist against his chin as he stares off into the middle distance. Then he leans forward yet again, sweeping the donut crumbs aside as he does so.

"Captain Holiday and Lieutenant Ananke -- what do you think of them?"

Game won.

"Me?" there's a brow lift, and the question itself catches him a little off-guard. What does he think, indeed. "There are a few things to understand about pawns—" he looks over the ridge of the paper cup "—and one of them has to do with how self-aware those pawns are."

Loki shakes his cup when he realizes that his coffee's almost gone and commences on looking childishly put-out.

"I think they have their moral quandaries about us versus their own assigned duties."

It was good, it meant it could be exploited, if necessary.

"But internally the information may be more compartmentalized for safety against that self-awareness, if you get my drift. Ah, there's no better way to delegate information than to pointedly not give it."

"There's no reason to think they're being told everything, and plenty for them to be kept in the dark," Spider-Man agrees. His mask crinkles between the lenses as his gaze is caught by the mostly-bare table and he registers what he just did. Point to Loki, perhaps, but only if he acknowledges it.

Moving on. "If they're pawns and we're pawns, the question is whether or not we're on the same side of the board."

Points to Loki for now.

"No, either they're not being told, or they simply don't know, and the race isn't about the why but that we're here at all. We're anomalies." He crosses his legs at the knee and leans back in his seat, looking over when he catches a few people staring at them look away suddenly. "We're all pawns then, perhaps less the side and ... more the players."

He's talking about Lachesis. The Porter.

It was a bit like pushing over a domino, and it wasn't anything that Loki wasn't used to, but he didn't want to be bound by fate. If it meant chasing after this to keep himself from becoming a single-dimensional villain in the future, to keep his future open, he'd do it.