If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks...

[coldsong]

It's customary to have a Wake after the subject thereof dies. Even Loki knows that. But this is a special occasion. Ego-death is coming to his alternate, and the idea of letting him go off to perish alone, uncertain he will even be mourned, is too dark a proposition even for a flawed and callous person to contemplate.

That, and this Loki has been in a melancholy mood since speaking to the spirit of Frigga. He anticipates a dark choice of his own, sooner or later, and where the fates will send him after that, he can't know. Maybe oblivion, although even at that rate there may be worse places.

What's important right now is that no one dies unremembered. And honestly, any excuse for mischief a party. The first text rolls out to Harley, an innocent enough invitation to join them for milkshakes. Cricket is next, because it occurs to him that Cricket has plenty of liquor, which is good for a reckless celebration.

Things snowball from there.

As long as they don't destroy too much property, they'll call the night a success.

Comments

[rekindledtitan]

"Knowing me? Probably because they're faster. At least the Venusian ones are. You've seen the original kind, though? On Earth?" She's a little hopeful, curious gaze following the ascending flame. His boast she doesn't take too seriously, although the little Ghost, perhaps, will file away those words about evil spirits for later. As he does everything else.

Affirmations of life, though. How could she not fervently approve? "Oh, I'm all for that." Ghost floats a little closer to her, whispering, and she adds, "Just, you know, watch where you're slinging the fire magic."

[coldsong]

"Venusian dragonflies," he repeats, beaming skyward. "I have never heard of such a thing, but now I'm glad I have. Yes, I've seen the kind they grow on Midgard. On Earth, rather. Same thing. They were tremendous once, I've heard, in the dawn of the planet's history."

Before his time. He's less than two-thousand years old, after all. "They are usually blue or glossy green, on Earth. Half the length of my hand at the largest."

There's another explosion of light in the sky high above, and he pauses to watch it with open satisfaction before turning to look at her better. "Of course. I assume no one wants a facefull of sparks, even in the Nexus."

He's not going to try to break anything, although unfortunately, chances are even if he does accidentally burn something down he won't be that sorry. In the meantime, he holds out a hand and casts a delicate little illusory dragonfly over his palm--a common green darner. It probably looks more like a hologram than magic, just now. He's not exerting himself.

[rekindledtitan]

"Hah! Knew they were real. I get people back home trying to convince me they're a myth." She sounds as pleased by that as by the magical pyrotechnics - pyrokinetics? - above. "I figured, people on Venus named theirs after something... oh!"

The Exo's gaze snaps back around, following the flicker of green in his hand, and her glowing eyes flare brighter with appreciation. Every time she speaks the inside of her mouth flashes the same shade. "Now that's a good trick! So that's what the real thing looks like, huh? The drawings don't look so delicate."

Maybe it's because she'd never dare touch one in reality, but Blaze reaches out to poke the illusion as lightly as her armored fingers allow. (There's a faint memory, very distant, of doing the same thing to teaching holos once upon a time.) Which brings Ghost slipping silently out to take a closer look, both from curiosity and the hard-earned lesson that he really needs to watch what his Guardian pokes at.

She's never worried about getting a facefull of sparks, that's for sure.

[coldsong]

"That seems an odd thing for people to assume they're mythological. They're not even that bizarre as far as insects go. Centipedes and mantids are far stranger." Loki...sort of likes bugs. At least on an aesthetic level. He doesn't want to live with them, especially.

"I excel at good tricks," he says, verbally preening, and holds out the hand cupped under the illusion gamely. Where her touch passes through it, it shimmers green-gold and dissolves, only to reform a second later.

Loki tends not to throw sparks except when he really means to, but it's hard to maintain an image while he's drunk and the airspace where it lies is being prodded. "It would be charming if they could breathe fire," he muses. "But the real thing does not. At least the Earth ones don't."

[rekindledtitan]

"That's kinda how I looked at it. But we've lost a lot, on our Earth. I guess it's hard to parse through the fragments for what's real and what isn't, when you haven't seen it for yourself. People leave behind stories and records of all kinds of things that aren't real. Animals, people- continents, even."

Okay, poking isn't helpful, but she does think it's a cool trick. Useful, she'd say. These small moments of wonder are part of what makes the Nexus so dear to her. Plus, people here have some fun ideas. "Tiny little bugs puffing fire? That'd be cute."

"At my size, I don't think I agree," Ghost is obliged to point out, but she just chuckles.

"The Venusian kind are much bigger." She holds her hands up to demonstrate, about half a foot apart. "Eight legs - they're not real insects, of course. Guess you'd call it convergent evolution. No fire-breathing either. I'm not sure even real dragons breathe fire, come to think of it."

[coldsong]

"Lost...insects?" It takes him a moment to catch up. "Oh. My apologies. Was there some sort of apocalypse or mass extinction? That sounds traumatic."

Under normal circumstances, he can make an expression of sympathy sound like an insult, but he's trying to be polite right now, and he's also too drunk to be snide. He looks genuinely concerned.

He blinks at Ghost and smiles. "What if they just breathed little puffs of bioluminescent gas that dissipated without burning anything?"

"And that depends on the dragon!" he tells Blaze. "Fáfnir breathed out venomous gases. Not fire, per se, but it certainly would have burned to come in contact with it."

[rekindledtitan]

Oh. Traumatic. There's a moment where she tilts her head slightly, as if trying to catch a faint sound (as if anything faint can be heard over the noisy celebrations around them). Whatever it was slips away from her, though: she inclines her head in somber acknowledgment instead.

"It was, I think. Full story's kinda long; the short version is we were attacked by something that knocked us all the way into a Dark Age. Came inside a nanometer of rendering humanity extinct. It's been more than a thousand years, though. We're fighting our way back."

The last is meant as reassurance: this is a grim turn of conversation, and while grim subjects don't bother her, this is a party and he looks so concerned. If he looks too worried she'll be compelled to pat his shoulder. She's a tactile kind of Exo.

"That would be pretty, actually," Ghost admits, now the specter of being chased by incendiary odonates is removed. He backs up a little as he looks up at Loki, the points of his shell turning a little clockwise, a little counter.

"Depends who's getting breathed on," Blaze laughs. "Sigurd would've had an easier time if he'd been a robot. Unless we're talking corrosive venom - that stuff's awful. Doesn't matter how good your gear is, it'll find a way through." Ugh. She gives an exaggerated shudder.

[coldsong]

"Something? Or someone?" Even as drunk as he is, Loki can't help but cringe inwardly. He's not a bleeding heart for Midgard, particularly not versions of it outside his own universe, but what happens to humanity is a pretty good barometer, in his experience, for what happens to the rest of the universe.

And there is Thanos. He never forgets that possibility, which is more of an inevitability as far as he can tell.

They're getting a peculiar first impression of this Loki, then. First throwing around magic gleefully and now looking deeply worried about the state of their universe.

He's pleased they get the reference right away, and he smiles at Blaze again. "There's always something, though, isn't there? Paper covers rock, scissors cut paper, rock breaks scissors, and so on into infinity. Everyone has a weakness, and a strength, and sometimes a battle comes down to whether the hero can dodge the dragon's venom for long enough to get a blow in, rather than how well he is trained in the art of swordplay."

[rekindledtitan]

Theirs is not a case to challenge his theory. After all, in their universe humanity is just the latest in a horrifically long line of civilizations. This one simply didn't fight alone. Her glowing eyes narrow a little, not in anger but in contemplation.

"Heh. Good question. Sure wasn't a natural disaster. Our true enemy has a will, but I don't know if it's a person the way we think of it. No-one alive knows what it really is. It has armies, worshipers: we've fought those. It has immense power, and we've felt that. But there's little we know for sure about the Darkness itself."

At this stage there's going to be some shock if and when they realize who they're talking to. Blaze leans heavily on first impressions, and she rather likes this guy. He's got a sense of fun, he asks smart questions, he's mindful of signs of trouble in other universes. Trying to reconcile that with a name she knows mainly from Steve Rogers' stories (and admittedly some popular legends back home) is a guarantee of cognitive dissonance, to put it mildly.

She is pretty sure he's an Asgardian though, since Thor's around and she's never met anyone else here who casually references the old tales. Absent a specific name, that buys him some extra goodwill. "Tell me about it. Some battles you're just finding out who's going to get unlucky first. But it helps if you get team-mates with a complementary skillset. Or at least a lot of second chances!"