ChaosTheVoid
Beyond the Outer Gates
The Anti-Life, Slayer of All that Breathes.
Last edited:
The Valkyrior (MCU Thor/Worm)
- Thread starter Heather Sinclair
- Start date
sonicfan315
He of the Frakencomps and Frankentops
- Location
- Hicksville Illinois
They forgot Galactus on that list.The Anti-Life, Slayer of All that Breathes.
Wait, Thanos was a clone? I could have sworn the Watcher popped up immediately in the aftermath of that fight specifically to confirm it wasn't a clone.The Anti-Life, Slayer of All that Breathes.
Chart is a bit wrong, I mean she is clearly not 14 in the pic.
sonicfan315
He of the Frakencomps and Frankentops
- Location
- Hicksville Illinois
She's a college student now actually. It's quite amusing to watch.
Suipe
VERISIMILITUDE
- Location
- Latveria
She probably was 14 when she debuted.
Silver W. King
King of Adventures
- Location
- The Nasuverse
Is damn hot.
edmantgoog
init high just high
he did
- Location
- Leeds
Look again, its underneath that box in small print, above where it says she the time she beat Wolverine was a spar.
Also is there a squirrel girl!taylor fic? To the excel sheet.
What? I think you may want to reread my post because you aren't making sense.
chibipoe
May I tell you of the glory that is Catradora?
- Location
- Astoria, Oregon
@Heather Sinclair
Just want to say that I enjoy this and I hope the lastfewmany pages don't put you off from going forward.
In all seriousness though... we have 5 story posts in 34 pages. The last story post was on page 24. That's 10 pages and much of that is arguing and bickering that largely has nothing to do with the story. Relocate to appropriate places, please? Squirrel Girl has zero to do with this. Norse mythology too, because Norse Mythology does not map to the Marvel Universe in any meaningful manner besides having the same names.
Just want to say that I enjoy this and I hope the last
In all seriousness though... we have 5 story posts in 34 pages. The last story post was on page 24. That's 10 pages and much of that is arguing and bickering that largely has nothing to do with the story. Relocate to appropriate places, please? Squirrel Girl has zero to do with this. Norse mythology too, because Norse Mythology does not map to the Marvel Universe in any meaningful manner besides having the same names.
SHIELD 2.1
Heather Sinclair
Verified Force User
2.1
April 26, 2011, Puente Antiguo, New Mexico (north of Roswell)
The rock hard sand beneath my boots was covered in an intricate set of runes that were far beyond what I had learned in Loki's primer, and they were literally burned into the ground. Being on one knee, trying desperately not to lose my breakfast, I had a good minute or two to study them. The ride wasn't smooth at all. It made me wonder exactly how the Asgardians traveled like this all the time, entering into battle seconds after arriving. I suppose having a hardier constitution than a mere mortal had something to do with it. Or perhaps the whole "holding your breath to make the ride easier" was a load of crap. Yeah, I could see Heimdall as a troll. The guy had to be bored out of his mind perving on the entire Nine Realms, with nothing else to do.
After swallowing hard for the fourth time I called my spear and used it to help me stand.
"Well that sucked."
A few seconds later and it seemed as if my body was finally adjusting well enough to dispel the spear and have a look around. It wasn't exactly flatland or rolling dunes like one would expect of the desert, unlike what I'd seen on TV and in the movies. There was that though, and rocky protrusions, not to mention various wildlife. Bugs were aplenty, though most of them would be useless to me at the moment. Unless my estimates were wrong, I had a seven hundred mile trip ahead of me and it was the middle of the night here in an amazingly chilly New Mexico.
I thought the desert was supposed to be hot!
Activating my wings, I shot up into the night sky and closed off my helmet soon after. I wouldn't be going high enough to have a problem with breathing, but going that fast would wreak hell on my complexion. I wasn't so far distanced from my early teen years to where I didn't have to worry about acne. No thanks.
Once I got high enough I looked around and realized I'd probably outdid myself this time. There was a faint aurora being caused by whatever powered my wings. Easing off a little I dropped a few hundred feet and that seemed to do the trick, making me all but invisible unless someone was specifically looking in my direction. Then off I went.
The Hulk, one of the two parahumans Heimdall mentioned to me, was currently south of the border, somewhere in Central America. I wasn't familiar enough with the geography in the area to pin it down more than that, but as long as he stayed put, what he was doing didn't concern me too much.
Iron Man, on the other hand, made his home mostly in California. That was a little too close for comfort considering I was heading to southern Nevada in the Mojave Desert.
Heimdall only watched them long enough to ascertain where they were spending most of their time and not much detail past that. So, it wasn't like I knew if they were part of a team or if they went with more of an independent route. Since they were so far apart I was going with the latter until proved wrong.
While I had a general area I needed to search, it was a big desert. It would have been nice if this high tech armor came with a nice, "You are here. Your destination is there," sign.
The location was remote, so I had that going for me. Contrary to what some people might think, the United States isn't overpopulated in terms of lack of space. They watch movies about living in New York City and think that everything is just as crowded, that people live in tiny no-bedroom apartments and survive on nothing but cup of noodles while they go about their lives. There are some people like that, don't get me wrong.
Thing is, once you get off the East Coast and head west, you can literally walk all day long in places and never see a single person. There are vast areas of empty space, mountains that rarely see any traffic at all, and vast valleys that medium sized cities could thrive within.
This is the only thing that made my destination somewhat easy to find once I was high enough to really look around. It's the lights that give it away, that and the giant white helipad with a black eagle taking up most of the middle.
Below me, out in the middle of nowhere, stood a sprawling building, with only one road, leading to and from Highway 93, east of Mount Tipton. I wouldn't even really call it a road for the most part, but it was well traveled. Two black SUVs were humming along at a good clip while I watched at my vantage point hundreds of yards away.
This was one of those expansive flat areas, well once the mountain was taken out of the equation. The building itself was about three or four stories tall, around two hundred yards wide, and had the air of a secret government facility all over the place: armed guards, random patrols, ten foot tall chain-link fence with razor wire on the top, and from the looks of the yellow lightning bolt signs hanging from the links, I had to say it was electrified as well.
There was no way I would be able to just swoop in, take a look around and swoop back out. This was going to take some time.
~O~
April 28, 2011 Las Vegas, Nevada
Illegal drugs along with the people that sell them are a thing. I'd almost forgotten how much I enjoyed terrifying the latter, and how willing they were to give up everything they took in over a night when presented with one of my bug clones.
After a few takedowns I moved on to the local Wal-Mart and dispelled my armor so I could buy something that wouldn't stand out too much in a crowd, well, that and a few supplies. Granted, my costume wasn't much better, however, it was better to look like someone going to a party instead of an armored goon looking to conquer the local department store. The few looks I received were understanding for the most part. Apparently, Las Vegas was loaded with enough weird looking people for me to appear as one of the locals.
Getting a hotel room was easier than I thought, especially on the edge of town in one of the more low rent areas. Slipping a hundred dollar tip on top of renting it out for the week was enough to get the teen at the counter to look the other way when I couldn't produce a valid ID. I guess it helped that the place was only a third occupied.
My take from the dealers amounted to a little less than a thousand dollars. I'd have to make a few more hits if I was going to be staying for any length of time. Hopefully, I'd be done and gone by then.
Odin's visions didn't give me much to go on in terms of specifics: check out the facility in Nevada and find out how the low-tech mortals of Midgard could come to interact with the realm of Asgard… and stop it.
Simple. At least, one would think.
With the way governments work, all I'd have to do was make it more expensive to continue with a project than the end result would warrant. Bugs were good for this type of work. If I could figure out what was going on in the building, I'd swarm it and break it with my bugs. They'd have to replace or repair the problem, and then I'd break it again, ad infinitum. Eventually, they'd quit or move it to another location where I'd screw with them again until they gave up.
It was a no-brainer plan and wouldn't even take up much of my time once implemented. Though there would be a lot of sitting around and waiting involved. That's why I had a nice large stack of magazines at my disposal.
~O~
April 30, 2011 Mojave Desert, Nevada
Day four was turning out to be annoying. From my research of the area, it rained on average around four days out of an entire year. Guess what day it was?
I defaulted to my valkyrie armor for the trek up the mountainside this time. It was sealed tight against the elements, thankfully. My swarm was taking point ahead of me, as usual, giving me a visual layout of the surrounding area, but they were severely hampered by the downpour. When I landed, I was in the midst of deciding to call it a day, because I couldn't see much more than fifty yards ahead of me. Everything turned into a gray fog of rain and vapor rising off the heated ground, and I had no idea how long it was supposed to last.
"Excuse me," a male voice said from the side.
I jerked and spun on him only to find he was well out of my reach and backed up by four others holding rather large weapons trained on me. They were all guys, all in the six-foot range in height, and all of them were wearing rain ponchos to protect them from the elements. The lead guy, who I assumed was the one that caught me off-guard, held out a billfold with a gold badge secured inside.
"I'm Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD." He flipped it closed and tucked it away. "You're on restricted land, and while I have to say I like the armor, I have to wonder why exactly you have been watching our facility for the last four days?"
I could get away easily. My armor and the costume underneath was more than proof against their bullets. My wings would take less than a second to activate and blast me well away from their range soon thereafter. However, they were aware of me already. I probably wouldn't get another chance to observe them, and I definitely wouldn't get a chance to see what was going on inside that building.
"Would you believe I'm from another world and I'm here to stop an interplanetary war from erupting?" I said rather bluntly.
He looked as if he was going to say something and then stopped. "I was going to say I've heard stranger things, but I think you've just made the top of the list."
I just smiled as well as I could under the circumstances.
"Why don't you stand there for a few minutes," he replied. "I'll be right back."
He turned away and then stopped and looked back. "You wouldn't by any chance know about a bright blue beam of light that appeared in the sky above Puente Antiguo a few nights ago and left behind a fancy design a lot like what's on your armor, would you?"
Raising a hand slightly I said, "Guilty."
"Good to know. I'll be right back."
The other four guys didn't seem much for chatting, so I stood there in the torrential downpour and waited for Phil to make a call. I couldn't even muster up enough bugs to listen in on his side of the conversation before they were washed away in the rain.
When he finally returned he gestured down the other side of the mountain we were on, toward the facility. "My boss would like to have a few words with you, if you don't mind."
Walking, yeah. No. While I wasn't a klutz by far, I was sure I'd fall on my ass a dozen times or more before we made it to the bottom and across the mud-filled landscape.
"No car?" I asked.
He smiled knowingly. "We didn't want to spook you until we had a chance to talk."
I nodded. "Right. I have a faster way to get there, not to mention much safer."
He cocked his head slightly with a confused look on his face. "You don't… have a spaceship up there do you?"
"No." With a thought, my wing constructs popped out and I stepped in and wrapped an arm around Phil's waist. "Hold on."
Agent Coulson's eyes widened. "What? Wait!"
We didn't wait. I shot up into the sky, but kept it low enough not to really freak him out. Ten seconds later we were touching down on the front steps of the facility where I finally got the chance to read what was written on the sign outside.
Yeah, most of that was more than a little suspicious. What the heck was Dark Energy? Additionally, if there was a Western Division, that meant there was more than one out there, and I didn't have a clue as to the location of any of the others.
Phil appeared slightly rattled, but held it together rather admirably as he adjusted his poncho. "Did you miss the part where I said 'wait'?"
I shrugged. "Most people get panicked when the thought of flying under someone else's power comes up; this way it's done and over with. Besides, I don't know if you realized it or not, but it's raining really hard."
He cleared his throat and noted that the guards had made an appearance. With a wave of his hand they stood down, but kept me under close watch. I tried not to let it get to me. Once we were inside the front doors Phil unbuttoned the poncho and handed it off while someone passed on a couple of towels, which I was thankful for. While my armor shed the water quickly enough, my hair outside of my helmet was drenched.
"So, your name?" Phil asked as he patted his hands with the towel.
Being who I was, I'd already thought about this part. I didn't need any more villainous monikers attached to me on a brand new Earth. However, I did want to keep the nature of my true powers under wraps, at least until my mission was finished, or until it became impractical. Already wearing my Asgardian armor was rather fortuitous.
"Valkyrie."
He paused for a moment; I suppose to think over the ramifications of the name. "That's a very specific designation, and considering the style of your armor, not to mention the wings… were they real, by the way?"
"Energy construct."
"Ah. Anyway… I'm guessing there's a Norse theme involved?"
"Sort of." I glanced at the guards. "Do you want to do this here?"
"I'm tempted, but we have a more secure area."
Of course they did. Phil gestured to the right and I followed along while I was checking out the area with the bugs that were already indoors. It was a lot bigger on the inside and not in a Doctor Who kind of way. There had to be a number of underground floors beneath the building and one really big one at the very bottom, by the feedback I was getting more than a hundred feet down. Needless to say we didn't go very far and there wasn't an elevator in sight. I'd say Agent Coulson was very cautious about what he was allowing me to see. After all, this was a research facility from the public's point of view.
It was a small conference room. Dark colored wooden table, six generic chairs, and nothing overly comfortable. The widescreen on the wall was dark, along with the single laptop at one end of the table.
Roaches and spiders in the wall told me there was something up there that wasn't in the general area of the lights or the outlets. I guessed they were security cameras by the configuration.
When the door was closed, he turned to me and gestured to a chair on the other side of the table.
"We were talking about your Norse theme," he prompted.
"Asgardian actually."
By this time I think he was well enough indoctrinated to expect pretty much anything coming out of my mouth.
"I see… the pantheon, I presume? You're saying you're a god?"
Apparently, he thought he was dealing with a crazy person with high tech gizmos or something.
"No, not me. Though some of the people I work for might think so."
He nodded and folded his arms across his chest. "Let's talk about them."
With a shrug I didn't see anything really wrong with that, since he already knew something was up. If I was going to spend the rest of my life on this Earth, I'd rather not make overly powerful enemies in less than a week of my first day on the ground. Friends and allies; I could definitely do with some of those.
"They're really long-lived, like thousands of years long, and they have severely advanced technology. That's where the whole mythology came from. They used to hang out on Earth from time to time and the Norse people looked at them as gods, thought they used magic, and so on."
"Ah, any sufficiently advanced technology…." He left the rest hanging. "Makes sense. So, just for argument's sake, we're talking Odin…?"
"Thor, Loki, Sif, Brunnhilda, Heimdall," I continued. "All of them."
"And you take the souls of the heroic dead to… where was it again?"
"Valhalla. Yes, but not technically. They haven't done that for about a thousand years. We're more mission specialists now."
"Which brings us to your visit."
I leaned back on my chair and narrowed my eyes at him. While his belief wasn't exactly important to my mission, I did need to stall long enough to search the place with my bugs. At this point I really didn't know if he was buying any of this. So I pulled my serving platter out of my pocket dimension.
Phil blinked as I set it down on the table, clearly unsettled at my casual display. "Where did…?"
"It's part of my power, and it's a good way not to go hungry in a strange place. Fruit?" I offered.
Plucking a yellow apple off the top, I bit into it and chewed as he looked back and forth from the tray to me.
"Asgardian fruit?"
I nodded. "The apples taste like apples here, a little sweeter. The red things taste like passion fruit just not as messy. The green and purple ones are veggies. They're kind of bland, but nutritious. Go on. They're perfectly okay to eat."
Maybe he just didn't want to look like he was cautious of Asgardians bearing fruit, but he did take one of the small red ones.
"Safe for humans?" he asked.
"I'm human," I clarified. "I'm not Asgardian, so, yeah."
Phil sniffed it and then took a small bite. "Hmm."
The platter disappeared a second later.
"Where does it go?"
"Brunnhilda calls it the Heavenly Realm."
"Brunnhilda."
"She's the head valkyrie; my boss."
He nodded and took another bite. "It's good."
I took another bite and eventually swallowed. "Anyway. Odin had a vision."
"He does this a lot? I thought he rode around on a six-legged horse."
I shrugged. "Never saw it. He tends to sit on his throne and look constipated for the most part, but he's also a straight-shooter from what I can tell. We don't really interact much, but Brunnhilda vouches for him."
"Your boss."
"Right."
Once Phil finished with the fruit, he grabbed a tissue and wiped off his fingers. "So, interplanetary war?"
April 26, 2011, Puente Antiguo, New Mexico (north of Roswell)
The rock hard sand beneath my boots was covered in an intricate set of runes that were far beyond what I had learned in Loki's primer, and they were literally burned into the ground. Being on one knee, trying desperately not to lose my breakfast, I had a good minute or two to study them. The ride wasn't smooth at all. It made me wonder exactly how the Asgardians traveled like this all the time, entering into battle seconds after arriving. I suppose having a hardier constitution than a mere mortal had something to do with it. Or perhaps the whole "holding your breath to make the ride easier" was a load of crap. Yeah, I could see Heimdall as a troll. The guy had to be bored out of his mind perving on the entire Nine Realms, with nothing else to do.
After swallowing hard for the fourth time I called my spear and used it to help me stand.
"Well that sucked."
A few seconds later and it seemed as if my body was finally adjusting well enough to dispel the spear and have a look around. It wasn't exactly flatland or rolling dunes like one would expect of the desert, unlike what I'd seen on TV and in the movies. There was that though, and rocky protrusions, not to mention various wildlife. Bugs were aplenty, though most of them would be useless to me at the moment. Unless my estimates were wrong, I had a seven hundred mile trip ahead of me and it was the middle of the night here in an amazingly chilly New Mexico.
I thought the desert was supposed to be hot!
Activating my wings, I shot up into the night sky and closed off my helmet soon after. I wouldn't be going high enough to have a problem with breathing, but going that fast would wreak hell on my complexion. I wasn't so far distanced from my early teen years to where I didn't have to worry about acne. No thanks.
Once I got high enough I looked around and realized I'd probably outdid myself this time. There was a faint aurora being caused by whatever powered my wings. Easing off a little I dropped a few hundred feet and that seemed to do the trick, making me all but invisible unless someone was specifically looking in my direction. Then off I went.
The Hulk, one of the two parahumans Heimdall mentioned to me, was currently south of the border, somewhere in Central America. I wasn't familiar enough with the geography in the area to pin it down more than that, but as long as he stayed put, what he was doing didn't concern me too much.
Iron Man, on the other hand, made his home mostly in California. That was a little too close for comfort considering I was heading to southern Nevada in the Mojave Desert.
Heimdall only watched them long enough to ascertain where they were spending most of their time and not much detail past that. So, it wasn't like I knew if they were part of a team or if they went with more of an independent route. Since they were so far apart I was going with the latter until proved wrong.
While I had a general area I needed to search, it was a big desert. It would have been nice if this high tech armor came with a nice, "You are here. Your destination is there," sign.
The location was remote, so I had that going for me. Contrary to what some people might think, the United States isn't overpopulated in terms of lack of space. They watch movies about living in New York City and think that everything is just as crowded, that people live in tiny no-bedroom apartments and survive on nothing but cup of noodles while they go about their lives. There are some people like that, don't get me wrong.
Thing is, once you get off the East Coast and head west, you can literally walk all day long in places and never see a single person. There are vast areas of empty space, mountains that rarely see any traffic at all, and vast valleys that medium sized cities could thrive within.
This is the only thing that made my destination somewhat easy to find once I was high enough to really look around. It's the lights that give it away, that and the giant white helipad with a black eagle taking up most of the middle.
Below me, out in the middle of nowhere, stood a sprawling building, with only one road, leading to and from Highway 93, east of Mount Tipton. I wouldn't even really call it a road for the most part, but it was well traveled. Two black SUVs were humming along at a good clip while I watched at my vantage point hundreds of yards away.
This was one of those expansive flat areas, well once the mountain was taken out of the equation. The building itself was about three or four stories tall, around two hundred yards wide, and had the air of a secret government facility all over the place: armed guards, random patrols, ten foot tall chain-link fence with razor wire on the top, and from the looks of the yellow lightning bolt signs hanging from the links, I had to say it was electrified as well.
There was no way I would be able to just swoop in, take a look around and swoop back out. This was going to take some time.
~O~
April 28, 2011 Las Vegas, Nevada
Illegal drugs along with the people that sell them are a thing. I'd almost forgotten how much I enjoyed terrifying the latter, and how willing they were to give up everything they took in over a night when presented with one of my bug clones.
After a few takedowns I moved on to the local Wal-Mart and dispelled my armor so I could buy something that wouldn't stand out too much in a crowd, well, that and a few supplies. Granted, my costume wasn't much better, however, it was better to look like someone going to a party instead of an armored goon looking to conquer the local department store. The few looks I received were understanding for the most part. Apparently, Las Vegas was loaded with enough weird looking people for me to appear as one of the locals.
Getting a hotel room was easier than I thought, especially on the edge of town in one of the more low rent areas. Slipping a hundred dollar tip on top of renting it out for the week was enough to get the teen at the counter to look the other way when I couldn't produce a valid ID. I guess it helped that the place was only a third occupied.
My take from the dealers amounted to a little less than a thousand dollars. I'd have to make a few more hits if I was going to be staying for any length of time. Hopefully, I'd be done and gone by then.
Odin's visions didn't give me much to go on in terms of specifics: check out the facility in Nevada and find out how the low-tech mortals of Midgard could come to interact with the realm of Asgard… and stop it.
Simple. At least, one would think.
With the way governments work, all I'd have to do was make it more expensive to continue with a project than the end result would warrant. Bugs were good for this type of work. If I could figure out what was going on in the building, I'd swarm it and break it with my bugs. They'd have to replace or repair the problem, and then I'd break it again, ad infinitum. Eventually, they'd quit or move it to another location where I'd screw with them again until they gave up.
It was a no-brainer plan and wouldn't even take up much of my time once implemented. Though there would be a lot of sitting around and waiting involved. That's why I had a nice large stack of magazines at my disposal.
~O~
April 30, 2011 Mojave Desert, Nevada
Day four was turning out to be annoying. From my research of the area, it rained on average around four days out of an entire year. Guess what day it was?
I defaulted to my valkyrie armor for the trek up the mountainside this time. It was sealed tight against the elements, thankfully. My swarm was taking point ahead of me, as usual, giving me a visual layout of the surrounding area, but they were severely hampered by the downpour. When I landed, I was in the midst of deciding to call it a day, because I couldn't see much more than fifty yards ahead of me. Everything turned into a gray fog of rain and vapor rising off the heated ground, and I had no idea how long it was supposed to last.
"Excuse me," a male voice said from the side.
I jerked and spun on him only to find he was well out of my reach and backed up by four others holding rather large weapons trained on me. They were all guys, all in the six-foot range in height, and all of them were wearing rain ponchos to protect them from the elements. The lead guy, who I assumed was the one that caught me off-guard, held out a billfold with a gold badge secured inside.
"I'm Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD." He flipped it closed and tucked it away. "You're on restricted land, and while I have to say I like the armor, I have to wonder why exactly you have been watching our facility for the last four days?"
I could get away easily. My armor and the costume underneath was more than proof against their bullets. My wings would take less than a second to activate and blast me well away from their range soon thereafter. However, they were aware of me already. I probably wouldn't get another chance to observe them, and I definitely wouldn't get a chance to see what was going on inside that building.
"Would you believe I'm from another world and I'm here to stop an interplanetary war from erupting?" I said rather bluntly.
He looked as if he was going to say something and then stopped. "I was going to say I've heard stranger things, but I think you've just made the top of the list."
I just smiled as well as I could under the circumstances.
"Why don't you stand there for a few minutes," he replied. "I'll be right back."
He turned away and then stopped and looked back. "You wouldn't by any chance know about a bright blue beam of light that appeared in the sky above Puente Antiguo a few nights ago and left behind a fancy design a lot like what's on your armor, would you?"
Raising a hand slightly I said, "Guilty."
"Good to know. I'll be right back."
The other four guys didn't seem much for chatting, so I stood there in the torrential downpour and waited for Phil to make a call. I couldn't even muster up enough bugs to listen in on his side of the conversation before they were washed away in the rain.
When he finally returned he gestured down the other side of the mountain we were on, toward the facility. "My boss would like to have a few words with you, if you don't mind."
Walking, yeah. No. While I wasn't a klutz by far, I was sure I'd fall on my ass a dozen times or more before we made it to the bottom and across the mud-filled landscape.
"No car?" I asked.
He smiled knowingly. "We didn't want to spook you until we had a chance to talk."
I nodded. "Right. I have a faster way to get there, not to mention much safer."
He cocked his head slightly with a confused look on his face. "You don't… have a spaceship up there do you?"
"No." With a thought, my wing constructs popped out and I stepped in and wrapped an arm around Phil's waist. "Hold on."
Agent Coulson's eyes widened. "What? Wait!"
We didn't wait. I shot up into the sky, but kept it low enough not to really freak him out. Ten seconds later we were touching down on the front steps of the facility where I finally got the chance to read what was written on the sign outside.
Joint Dark Energy Mission
Western Division
Western Division
Project Pegasus
NASA Space Radiation Facility
S.H.I.E.L.D. Accelerator Testing Ground
NASA Space Radiation Facility
S.H.I.E.L.D. Accelerator Testing Ground
Yeah, most of that was more than a little suspicious. What the heck was Dark Energy? Additionally, if there was a Western Division, that meant there was more than one out there, and I didn't have a clue as to the location of any of the others.
Phil appeared slightly rattled, but held it together rather admirably as he adjusted his poncho. "Did you miss the part where I said 'wait'?"
I shrugged. "Most people get panicked when the thought of flying under someone else's power comes up; this way it's done and over with. Besides, I don't know if you realized it or not, but it's raining really hard."
He cleared his throat and noted that the guards had made an appearance. With a wave of his hand they stood down, but kept me under close watch. I tried not to let it get to me. Once we were inside the front doors Phil unbuttoned the poncho and handed it off while someone passed on a couple of towels, which I was thankful for. While my armor shed the water quickly enough, my hair outside of my helmet was drenched.
"So, your name?" Phil asked as he patted his hands with the towel.
Being who I was, I'd already thought about this part. I didn't need any more villainous monikers attached to me on a brand new Earth. However, I did want to keep the nature of my true powers under wraps, at least until my mission was finished, or until it became impractical. Already wearing my Asgardian armor was rather fortuitous.
"Valkyrie."
He paused for a moment; I suppose to think over the ramifications of the name. "That's a very specific designation, and considering the style of your armor, not to mention the wings… were they real, by the way?"
"Energy construct."
"Ah. Anyway… I'm guessing there's a Norse theme involved?"
"Sort of." I glanced at the guards. "Do you want to do this here?"
"I'm tempted, but we have a more secure area."
Of course they did. Phil gestured to the right and I followed along while I was checking out the area with the bugs that were already indoors. It was a lot bigger on the inside and not in a Doctor Who kind of way. There had to be a number of underground floors beneath the building and one really big one at the very bottom, by the feedback I was getting more than a hundred feet down. Needless to say we didn't go very far and there wasn't an elevator in sight. I'd say Agent Coulson was very cautious about what he was allowing me to see. After all, this was a research facility from the public's point of view.
It was a small conference room. Dark colored wooden table, six generic chairs, and nothing overly comfortable. The widescreen on the wall was dark, along with the single laptop at one end of the table.
Roaches and spiders in the wall told me there was something up there that wasn't in the general area of the lights or the outlets. I guessed they were security cameras by the configuration.
When the door was closed, he turned to me and gestured to a chair on the other side of the table.
"We were talking about your Norse theme," he prompted.
"Asgardian actually."
By this time I think he was well enough indoctrinated to expect pretty much anything coming out of my mouth.
"I see… the pantheon, I presume? You're saying you're a god?"
Apparently, he thought he was dealing with a crazy person with high tech gizmos or something.
"No, not me. Though some of the people I work for might think so."
He nodded and folded his arms across his chest. "Let's talk about them."
With a shrug I didn't see anything really wrong with that, since he already knew something was up. If I was going to spend the rest of my life on this Earth, I'd rather not make overly powerful enemies in less than a week of my first day on the ground. Friends and allies; I could definitely do with some of those.
"They're really long-lived, like thousands of years long, and they have severely advanced technology. That's where the whole mythology came from. They used to hang out on Earth from time to time and the Norse people looked at them as gods, thought they used magic, and so on."
"Ah, any sufficiently advanced technology…." He left the rest hanging. "Makes sense. So, just for argument's sake, we're talking Odin…?"
"Thor, Loki, Sif, Brunnhilda, Heimdall," I continued. "All of them."
"And you take the souls of the heroic dead to… where was it again?"
"Valhalla. Yes, but not technically. They haven't done that for about a thousand years. We're more mission specialists now."
"Which brings us to your visit."
I leaned back on my chair and narrowed my eyes at him. While his belief wasn't exactly important to my mission, I did need to stall long enough to search the place with my bugs. At this point I really didn't know if he was buying any of this. So I pulled my serving platter out of my pocket dimension.
Phil blinked as I set it down on the table, clearly unsettled at my casual display. "Where did…?"
"It's part of my power, and it's a good way not to go hungry in a strange place. Fruit?" I offered.
Plucking a yellow apple off the top, I bit into it and chewed as he looked back and forth from the tray to me.
"Asgardian fruit?"
I nodded. "The apples taste like apples here, a little sweeter. The red things taste like passion fruit just not as messy. The green and purple ones are veggies. They're kind of bland, but nutritious. Go on. They're perfectly okay to eat."
Maybe he just didn't want to look like he was cautious of Asgardians bearing fruit, but he did take one of the small red ones.
"Safe for humans?" he asked.
"I'm human," I clarified. "I'm not Asgardian, so, yeah."
Phil sniffed it and then took a small bite. "Hmm."
The platter disappeared a second later.
"Where does it go?"
"Brunnhilda calls it the Heavenly Realm."
"Brunnhilda."
"She's the head valkyrie; my boss."
He nodded and took another bite. "It's good."
I took another bite and eventually swallowed. "Anyway. Odin had a vision."
"He does this a lot? I thought he rode around on a six-legged horse."
I shrugged. "Never saw it. He tends to sit on his throne and look constipated for the most part, but he's also a straight-shooter from what I can tell. We don't really interact much, but Brunnhilda vouches for him."
"Your boss."
"Right."
Once Phil finished with the fruit, he grabbed a tissue and wiped off his fingers. "So, interplanetary war?"
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Heather Sinclair
Verified Force User
I'm not bothered by it as long as it stays reasonably topical (MCU, Marvel comics, etc.) and not argumentative and insulting. Since the onset of the OP Alerts most people can ignore what they don't want to read and wait for a sufficiently long-worded post from me, if they want.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
To say nothing about them being polite when confronting her.
Faint, not feint.
You have basically nailed Phil's character. I'm impressed. There are subtleties that can get overlooked and you didn't. He seems deadpan, but it covers the fact that he really does care. Also, perceptive and smart.
I'm liking where this is going.
- Location
- Crackship Space!
Heimdal - *SPITTAKE*
Odin - Heimdal! What is it?
Heimdal - Nothing my lord... *Snickers*
Lordamnesia
What are we doing again?
Nono, everyone seems to miss one of the key parts to this chapter. Phil ate a golden apple. Shenanigans from that will have long reaching consequences!
Xomniac
Clockwork Purveyor of Prose and Originality
Nah, he just ate a red one.
They're playing it SMART!
Both sides being cool and not overreacting! As has been pointed out, Taylor and Colson both trying the Jaw jaw rather than war war.
The problem will be when Nick (and his bosses) say 'we've heard what you have to say and _no_, we're not going to stop on the say-so of some extraterrestrial 'gods'!'
But at least they'll have tried... and Phil and Taylor at least may have built up a bit of mutual respect.
Thanks! This was a nice thing to wake up to!
Both sides being cool and not overreacting! As has been pointed out, Taylor and Colson both trying the Jaw jaw rather than war war.
The problem will be when Nick (and his bosses) say 'we've heard what you have to say and _no_, we're not going to stop on the say-so of some extraterrestrial 'gods'!'
But at least they'll have tried... and Phil and Taylor at least may have built up a bit of mutual respect.
Thanks! This was a nice thing to wake up to!
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