Piss Off, Ghost

[st_allionofdoom]

When the polite knock came at her door, Valkyrie was there waiting beside it to open it in short order.

"You came." She gave him a thin smile and a little cock of the head--the subject of her ire fretting about in the background, popping in and out of view. Every reverberating phrase was like chicken scratch on the inside of Valkyrie's head. It did not cut deep but it was incessant. Valkyrie rolled up the sleeves of her loose sweater and stepped to the side to allow her guest entrance to a one-ghost-woman choir of grumbling at the male presence.

"This is a friend of mine. He'll be joining us for the afternoon." Valkyrie's announcement fell on indignant, incorporeal ears but she announced it purely out of spite.

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[st_allionofdoom]

Valkyrie swiftly pulled to the side to avoid the knife--a few whisps of hair getting taken with it. More no doubt if she hadn't had her hair bound. The 'thnk!' of the knife burying itself in an unfortunate boxelder could be heard instantaneously.

She squinted at Loki's form against the tree, the stillness making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. "Stolen your breath and your fight already?" Her eyes tracked the landscape, instinct taking over reason.

[st_ratagem]

"Did I not just throw a knife?" The illusion laughed. Loki made sure to maintain the edge of breathlessness to it that would sell having just had the air knocked out of him. Valkyrie clearly knew something was off, but not what. And that was magnificent. Most people, even Thor sometimes, fell for the illusory replacement hook, line, and sinker. Loki had sent many an enemy off a cliff or arranged a convenient backstab hundreds of times via convenient duplicate, he'd tricked people into letting him out of rooms they thought he'd already escaped. Almost no one saw through it, even partially, the first time.

A little more verisimilitude was called for. Loki telekinetically pulled the knife he'd thrown out of the boxelder and sent it back to the illusion, who 'caught' it handily. (In reality, of course, Loki never released his mind's control over the blade.) "Perhaps I'm waiting for your follow-up. You throw me against a tree and then decline to press your advantage? That seems odd."

While the illusion spoke and 'held' the knife - its undeniable reality hopefully 'proving' the illusion's reality - the actual Loki moved silently around to put himself behind Valkyrie.

[st_allionofdoom]

A survey of their surroundings revealed no immediate answers. Valkyrie cast her gaze back on the figure against the tree, and set off at an unhurried stride forward towards him.

Planting her feet on either side of her opponent's, Valkyrie continued to merely observe. Her weapons remained sheathed and her muscles and posture remained neutral. Heedless of the knife within strike range, she bent over and cupped the figure's chin with her dominant hand, tilting his face up to get a decent look.

[st_ratagem]

Loki was skilled at stealth, especially when he was making an effort (and using a thread of magic) to be silent, so he fell in behind Valkyrie when she started moving towards the illusion. Her hand, of course, passed right through the illusion's face. Loki dismissed both it and his invisibility in the same instant he aimed a solid kick to Valkyrie's back, sending her face-first into the same tree he'd crashed into.

As he wasn't an idiot, he slid back a few paces and called the hovering knife back into his hand so he had both once more. "I did mention illusions, didn't I?"

[st_allionofdoom]

With a grunt, Valkyrie caught herself on the bark that Loki had gotten so intimately acquainted with shortly beforehand. Her nails scraped the grooves in the wood and she turned, scoffing in laughter.

"You did. Well done."

[st_ratagem]

Loki dismissed his knives, for the moment at least, to spread his hands and bow slightly. Acknowledging, not mocking. "Then we're tied one-one. Your serve, my lady."

[st_allionofdoom]

Valkyrie cleared a bit of loosened hair from her eyes, taking in Loki's form. It would take a few more encounters before she could spot those little tells.

"It's been awhile since anyone's called me that."

[st_ratagem]

"Do you object?" Whether that would actually mean anything depended entirely on whim. It was entirely possible she'd stay 'my lady' on and off even if she objected.

[st_allionofdoom]

"Considerate of you to ask." Though it was negligible how much he'd abide whatever her answer was. Pushing off the tree, Valkyrie dusted off the white sweater of debris as made her way back to the trail. "More flattering than 'Booze Head' or 'Trash.' 'Lady' seems a bit wasted on me."

[st_ratagem]

Apparently they were done fighting for now, then. Well enough. Loki took a moment to run a hand through his hair to dislodge any remaining pine needles, then moved to rejoin Valkyrie. "No more than 'Your Highness' is on me." After a moment, he asked as if casually, "I don't suppose either my brother or future self told you about me?"

[st_allionofdoom]

"Your many exploits?" Valkyrie shrugged, pulling her hair loose and shaking it out.

[st_ratagem]

"No." Rather than being distracted by her hair, Loki concentrated the now-minimal amount to push away Odin's enchantment and let the lined blue skin and red eyes of a frost giant show. Then he pointed at his face. "This." If she was prone to attacking frost giants on sight, better out here than actually in the Inn, or when he was concentrating on something else.

[st_allionofdoom]

Valkyrie didn't catch sight of the transformation immediately, shaking her head loose of needles and bark. She wasn't at all prepared for the sight that greeted her as her eyes focused back in on Loki.

'Jotunn.'

She shook her head slightly, shock and then disbelief. "Odin took in a frost giant." She couldn't quite believe the words that emerged from her own mouth.

[st_ratagem]

“My working theory is he engaged in a personal anti-littering program on his way out of Jotunheim.” Loki couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his tone, and didn’t really try. “Or he saw a potential future pawn in a discarded son of Laufey. Or both. I don’t know. He never felt I was worth telling.”

[st_allionofdoom]

Valkyrie scoffed. The mere mention of that man's name dredged up every ounce of her enmity. She'd managed her emotional state well enough since her arrival, but the memory of that man's betrayal could make her boil over.

"Odin and his miserable pile of secrets. Right until the end." Valkyrie fared far less well at keeping the bitter bite out of her feigned sweetness.

[st_ratagem]

“Yes.” Loki let the enchantments and his more familiar face flood back. There wasn’t much more to say. Odin’s secrets and lies had stolen how many of his potentials and futures? “I got some revenge, at least. Never enough, but apparently the man dies before I can take another swing at getting even.”

[st_allionofdoom]

Loki was a frost giant.

Valkyrie was caught up in her thoughts of what to do with that information before deciding that there was nothing to do about it at all. His race didn't change his deeds, for better or for worse. By the sounds of it, it had been a revelation to him at some point. Odin was gone, and the fallout of his sins remained for his progeny to pick up the pieces. That much remained.

No, nothing really changed today, aside from a few new bruises they'd sport.

"I heard. Dropped him off at a Midgardian retirement home." Thor mentioned it in an offhand manner and she almost thought it a joke. Another faint, scoffing laugh. It was better than he deserved. She brushed her hair to one side and glanced back up at him. It was slow, but she cracked a small smirk. "The universe is funny. Sometimes."

[st_ratagem]

“Oh, it’s better than that. I dropped him in a sub-par retirement home after jumping him in his own throne room and stripping his mind and power away. And then I stole his face, sat on the throne for three years, and let his empire go to shit.” It hadn’t been enough to smooth out his anger, nothing would be, but winning had blunted some of the worst edge.

[st_allionofdoom]

Valkyrie imagined Thor's exaspiration with those points, to put it lightly. Though she couldn't bring herself to muster the same fury or even righteous indignation. Such feelings were far above her.

"Don't turn into him for me to prove it. I'll break your other cheek on reflex." She nudged him with her elbow.

[st_ratagem]

"Tempting as that sounds, I'm not interested in being him again without a very good reason." Loki was nowhere near sure that any such 'good reason' really existed. "If I have to prove it, I'll just show you what happened."

[st_allionofdoom]

Valkyrie leaned forward as they continued their ascent up the hill, now that the little intermission of violence was through (for now.)

"You needn't prove anything. I believe you." A note of surprise listed in her voice, as if the offer to be shown wasn't even a thought that'd crossed her mind. "A sharing mood you're in, aren't you?"

[st_ratagem]

"Something like that." Loki shrugged. He was in a sharing mood, and didn't care to examine whether it was random or as a result of his current company. The dull throb of pain from her earlier blows should have meant the former, but seemed to contribute proof to the latter instead. "I enjoy the sound of my own voice, and these things are hardly secret." The Jotunn thing... almost was. He was working on that, maybe. "At present I prefer to stay on my brother's good side, though I admit I go back and forth on it occasionally." So did Thor, though the idiot would never admit it. "That being the case, it's in my best interest to get along with his allies. I judge you to be rather direct and likely to respond better to directness than secrecy. Hence, a sharing mood."

[st_allionofdoom]

'THAT was an explanation.' Valkyrie quirked an eyebrow halfway through that exposit.

"We don't count as allies?" Shrugging, Valkyrie steadied on upwards. "I suppose not. We've known each other perhaps a week." As odd as it was to start from square one with a man she'd fought, fought alongside, then was rescued out of nowhere by, she had to remind herself not to make assumptions about their relationship.

[st_ratagem]

"It wouldn't matter if we'd known each other since infancy. I've learned not to count anyone as my ally. It's more efficient." And safer, but he felt that was included in efficiency.

Loki followed her up, adding 'random hikes are a possibility' to his mental list of Valkyrie facts. "You and I, for example, are both attached to my brother. This obliges me to back you as I would him, at least some of the time. I don't assume the reverse is true at any point." After a pause to consider, he added, "Generally and historically, it isn't."

[st_allionofdoom]

"If my loyalty to His Majesty excluded attachments to all others it wouldn't be a loyalty worth having." Valkyrie tossed her head, smoothing her hair back as a wind blew from behind. Whatever shampoo she'd cleansed it with that morning leant itself to volume, if nothing else.