xp_logs | Fenrisulfr

On the borrowed Frost Enterprises jet, Cain and Jubilee have a moment over fried chicken. Jubilee is a paragon of generosity.

Cain shifted his shoulders again, trying to hunch down to where his head wasn't brushing the plastic-and-fiberglass ceiling. Of course, that meant craning his neck to where his shoulders were jammed crosswise in the cabin of the small plane. God help them if they had a midair emergency. The way he was blocked into the rear of the aircraft, he was going down with the ship if it crashed. Not that it mattered much, being the invulnerable Juggernaut, but even still, Cain Marko wasn't exactly looking forward to another fall to earth without a parachute.

The continual noise of crunching and chewing by his left him distracted him and he looked down at Jubilee, who sat cross-legged on her seat with a bucket of fried chicken in her lap, noshing down like a famine victim. With a grunt, Cain held a hand out. "Hey, chicken. Gimme."

"Uhah, Mr avatar of chaos and destruction, tis mah chicken." Jubilee replied, holding the bucket as far away from him as she could get while still chewing on a leg.

"You little brat," Cain grumbled, shifting in the back of the plane again. "There's got to be twenty pounds of chicken there. That could feed half of a Chinese village, come on. Gimme a wing."

"Or just enough to feed a starving Jubilee." she said, guarding the bucket lest he try anything sneaky. "Don't you have your own food?"

"Starving my entire ass," Cain complained. "And shit, I get a call from Wanda asking 'hey, come do the whole beat up creepy Asgardian cultist thing' and you all won't even pitch in for in-flight snacks. I gotta have a talk with Remy about how much he's paying your lazy asses."

"I gotta say, that's a lot of ass." Jubilee noted, glancing down with a wicked grin. She looked down at her bucket thoughtfully. "What ya got ta trade? I mean, I couldn't just _give_ you a wing. S'like, supply and demand."

"I'm sorry, weren't you just a hostage tied up to a big thermal gonzonation thing last week?" Cain asked. "Who was on that team to rescue your skinny ass?" He pointed both thumbs to himself. "This guy. Show some damn respect and gimme some chicken."

"Actually, I think it was Forge who technically saved me. You know Forge, right? Skinny guy, really big brain, but completely crap social skills? How he ever managed to tag a Princess, I'll never know." Jubilee noted, biting into a chicken wing with relish, eyes twinkling in mischief. "Besides, I show respect. I like, totally didn't tell you that you really don't need to be eatin' any more chicken after that ass comment you made. See? Respect like whoa, man."

"Hmph. Fine," Cain mumbled, wrapping his arms around his knees. "Keep your damn chicken. See if I help pull your ass out of the fire again."

Jubilee glanced sideways at him again, a grin twisting up the corners of her mouth as she took a leg piece out of the bucket and flicked it deftly at him. "Don't say I never gave ya nothin'."

And a bit later, Cain and Shiro discuss what they might come up against, and just why they needed to bring Cain along.

The Atlantic Ocean glittered under the sun thousands of feet below. Shiro's head rested against the window, looking out. It felt odd to be going on a rescue mission without his uniform, not to mention not under Storm's or Cyclops' orders, and he fidgeted in his seat. He'd ignored the whiny argument he'd heard go on behind him and pointedly did not pay attention to anyone else in the jet. If anyone didn't know him, they might think he was sulking.

Behind Shiro, crammed into the back of the plane, shoulders hunched, Cain grumbled as he noisily finished the chicken leg he'd cajoled out of Jubilee - who had promptly taken her bucket and moved out of reach. Cain made a mental note to drop a big rock on the little brat if the opportunity presented itself.

Noticing Shiro's uncomfortableness, Cain flicked the chicken bone off his thumb, bouncing it off his teammate's shoulder. "Bend your ear for a moment?" he asked jovially.

Shiro looked up when the bone hit his shirt, then turned and wiped off his sleeve. "What?" he asked shortly, though his lips barely quirked upward at the ludicrous sight of the largest man on the planet cramped into the smallest space possible.

"You've dealt with this whole Ass Guardian magic shit before, right?" Cain asked, subconsciously rubbing his leg where Skurge's axe had given him a relatively shallow wound the past week - but when one had gone nearly half a century of being considered completely invulnerable, the experience had shaken him a bit. "How nasty do these folks tend to get?"

"It depends. The idiots who confronted me were less competent than Wildchild" - oh, how he hated using that name - "But the gods themselves and those to whom they loan power . . ." Shiro shrugged. "You fought Skurge the Executioner yourself. You tell me." By all accounts this was completely independent of Baron Zemo's supposed "Masters," but Shiro wasn't too sure himself.

"Gods, schmods," Cain rolled his eyes. While he wasn't the world's most devout churchgoer, he still wasn't holding any belief that the folks like Cyttorak and Skurge and this Enchantress bimbo were 'gods'. "The guy was tough, and had an axe that just about cut me and St. Croix to shreds. You think we're going up against more stuff like that?"

"If there is any justice in the universe, then Ramsey and the others just unfortunately fell prey a pack of robe-wearing chloroform-wielding maniacs," Shiro postulated, hoping against hope that he'd built up enough good karma to make it so. "But the gods of Asgard can come to this plane, and if they have a vendetta against us to settle, then they may be there as well."

"Oh good," Cain exclaimed sarcastically. "Because I ain't punched a god in days."

"Far be it from them to bar you from filling your quota," Shiro replied, his tone a near match for Cain's. "Maybe we will be lucky and Thor will come to pound you with his hammer."

The leader of the Lokian cultists tests his theory on Doug, and the cavalry arrives just in the nick of time.

Just before dawn, there was a loud pounding on the door to the shed that Doug had been locked into, and the click of the padlock being unlocked. "Stand up, put your hands on your head, and don't move." came a loud voice through the door. "Or, we kill the red head."

Not that Doug believed they had anything in mind -but- killing all three of them, but it would behoove him to play along for now, give Wanda time to round up a rescue group. He'd already made sure to conceal his jury-rigged transmitter by burying it after he'd used it, so he quickly got to his feet and put his hands on his head as he had been instructed.

There was a long wait between when Doug stood up and the door finally opened, and Bjarne stood there, now dressed in darker robes, with a only pair of pants underneath. "Good morning!" He said, almost jovially. "I thought about what you said last night, about blood transference." He smiled broadly, teeth very white against the dark brown of his beard and gestured behind him. "You know the language, and your idea about blood make sense, but you could be lying. How do I know you aren't lying?"

Doug thought about playing mind games, but it was obvious from Bjarne's bonhomie that he already had a plan in place, one Doug wasn't going to be able to direct him away from. "I have no idea, but I'm sure you're going to tell me," he replied sarcastically, just to see if Bjarne was actually fool enough to start monologuing.

Bjarne held up the dagger from the previous night, now cleaned and freshly sharpened. "We are going to test it. Of course, I won't kill you if it works. You've made yourself too valuable to me. If you aren't lying, of course. If you have been to Asgard, you know too much for me to just waste you as a blood sacrifice." At least not right away. Besides, he had two perfectly good young women locked up in another shed and he was pretty sure that this blond man would do a lot to keep them safe.

The funny part of it was that Bjarne wasn't lying. Left unsaid was the part where he could kill Doug when he'd outlived his usefulness, but for the time being, he -was- too useful to the cult leader. But there wasn't much Doug could do about it. He'd been neatly put into a corner. Right now, all he could really do is hope Wanda got there in time with backup. Stall in subtle ways. He bowed his head, the picture of resignation.

"Shirt off." Bjarne ordered. "I don't want you fumbling around with it outside. Or throwing it at me, or using it to trap my dagger." With a laugh, he added. "I watch movies, of course. Changing the world for the better does not eliminate all of my free time." He waited, tapping his foot against the ground.

Damn. There went another idea, just as quickly as it had spawned. Doug slowly peeled his shirt off, leaving himself bare to the waist before following Bjarne out. The summer sun was warm on his skin, but considering how far north they were, there was a slight coolness in the breeze that blew through the clearing. He could see the rest of the cult gathered in their best 'get dressed up for the human sacrifice' robes, and a meticulously etched ritual circle. This wasn't going to be fun.

Using the dagger to gesture, Bjarne indicated a stone table. "Sit. I'm -not- going to kill you, I just want to test your theory." He looked at Doug, and the faint scar over his heart. "Heart's blood. You and the blonde are lovers? I thought it was the red-head." He stepped in and clapped Doug on the back once, and grinned broadly. "It's too bad you don't have the stomach for killing, I could grow to like you. But the fates have other plans, I fear." He shrugged once. "Are you going to cooperate and let me test this, or do I have to have you restrained again?"

Doug weighed the benefits of keeping his arms free to fight people off, versus the amount of time they'd waste restraining him if he struggled. In the end, keeping himself free won out, and he walked to the table. The more meek and accepting he seemed, the more off guard they would be when the time for action came. ~Hurry up, Wanda...~

Once Doug was seated, Bjarne took two folded cloths from his robe pockets, and put them on the table, and then walked over to the edge of the circle, bending and placing a stone rune, completing the circle and the pattern of runes on the ground. He returned to the table, and put a hand on Doug's shoulder. "Once the ritual has begun, feel free to stop the bleeding." He held the knife to Doug's chest, waiting until the chanting from the cultists had reached a crescendo and then made a single fast slice, re-opening the scar.

Quickly, he did the same to his hand, and then pressed the bleeding wound to the cut on Doug's chest, and began chanting.

"How neighborly of you," Doug replied just before hissing in pain at the cut. Once Bjarne had pressed his own wound to Doug's, he snatched up one of the cloths, wrapping it around his chest. The wound still oozed around the makeshift bandage, but it did stop most of the bleeding. Then, despite himself, he watched, intrigued, as the ritual moved on. He knew he had some small spark of magical talent from speaking with Dr. Strange after the Asgard adventures, but he was curious as to whether or not it would be enough to actually fuel anything.

Just inside the circle of runes, a small glowing spot appeared in the air, barely the size of a mote of dust. And then it grew, and grew, doubling itself and then stretching out so that it's glow lit up Bjarne's face.

The fact that it was no bigger then a man's fist did little to undermine the head cultist's obvious joy. "It worked!" He shouted, interrupting the chant. After a few moments, the tiny glowing portal winked itself out of existence. "It worked! We will be successful!" He clapped Doug on the back again, smiling broadly and then turned towards the cultists outside the circle. "Go bring the two girls! In a few minutes, my friends, we will rain chaos and destruction down on Midgard and bring about Ragnarok!"

A glint in the western sky slowly resolved itself into a Gulfstream business jet with the Frost Enterprises logo on its tail. Doug snickered. When Bjarne turned to look questioningly at him, Doug smirked. "Avatars of chaos and destruction?" He leaned in, enjoying the anticipation. "I have those on -speed dial-."