Loki Laufeyson - Sif and Laufey

"Wow, this was only written like three months ago and already I feel like cringing while reading it. Not that dislike any of these scenes in particular, but the writing is a bit sloppy. I'll polish it up whenever I finally get around to posting this story properly." -Casey

They were nearly a mile from the palace grounds now, but there was ice covering the streets even here. Sif wobbled with the effort of running over it, but Loki slid as if there wasn’t anything more natural in the world. He spun around to face Sif, who banged into a wall with the sudden stop.

“The gates are completely incased in ice!” the prince cried. “How are we supposed to enter unseen?”

Sif steadied herself did her best to cover up her frustration as she replied, “You’re the one that’s always sneaking out of the palace! Think of something!”

Loki turned back to the great mountain of ice looming before them and watched as the sun glimmered off it like crystal. He drew his hand in front of his face to shield his eyes from the sun and then his palm began to glow with a faint light. He then knelt down and put his hand to the slippery streets. The ice beneath him dissipated into nothing more than a cool mist.

“Follow me!” he commanded as he darted across the streets again with Sif stumbling after him.

Loki brought them to a waterway at the edge of the palace into which the falls on either side of the front gate emptied. He placed his hands on the frozen and it too dissolved into mist. Sif coughed upon breathing in the cold air and decided to step back and stand watch for any giants.

“So, you feel like sharing your devious plan?” she asked. “You’re not planning on melting your way all the way to the front gate, are you?”

“This watercourse leads right up to an exhaust vent overlooking the reliquary,” Loki informed her. “The Jotuns most likely attacked the palace to retrieve the Casket of Eternal Winters from there.”

“Then that should be the last place we try to enter!” Sif protested.

“No, it’s perfect,” Loki assured her. “It will be the first place they showed up and thus the last place to find them now.”

Another scream echoed in the distance and Sif held her sword at the ready. “Just be quick about it, your highness,” she sighed. “My sword has never been tested against a Jotun.”

***

Loki was hardly listening to the stable girl anymore. He was focused entirely on melting a long narrow tunnel through the ice and up to the vent. He was halfway through now. Another moment and they’d be able to climb inside.

A loud growl sounded from above them. A frost giant was running down the side of the palace of ice, leaving large cracks in the ice like footprints in the snow. Loki lost his concentration as the giant bared down on them, a huge dagger of ice in its hands. Sif spun around with her sword and caught the beast in the calf, tripping him. The giant fell to one knee, but quickly swiped the girl aside with a single blow.

Loki watched in horror as she was flung through the air and then smashed through an ice covered wall.

“Sif!” he called, but he didn’t have time to wait for an answer. The frost giant grabbed a hold of him and hoisted him up like a rag doll.

“Hello, Prince Loki,” the monster breathed, his red eyes narrowing as a twisted smile came over his face.

Loki held his hand to the sky and in a flash of green light a small dagger appeared in it. He thrust the blade into the giant’s wrist, causing it to drop him down the hole he’d been making.

Loki had to crouch down to fit, but he ran as fast as he could down the tunnel of ice. The giant could be seen through the frost above him like a rippling shadow. The monster’s fist came crashing through the thick ceiling of ice, just behind Loki. He ran on as the beast crashed through it yet again and again, each time just a bit closer. Then the creature’s fist smashed through the tunnel before him, blocking his path.

Loki was seized by his arm, a cold chill tingling up his arm. He was drawn halfway out of the tunnel, staring up into the giant’s red eyes, when Sif leap forward and stabbed her sword through the monster’s neck.

“Go, Loki!” she called as the boy dropped back down under the ice. He hurried down the tunnel again, having to melt handholds in the walls as the passageway slopped up towards the palace.

Loki finally made it through the vent into the grand dome that housed the reliquary. It was even colder in here than it had been outside, but he hardly took notice of it as he dropped down onto the pathway that lead to the treasure chamber.

As he had suspected, there were signs of a struggle. There were three dead guards lying beside fallen relics and broken stone. The Casket was gone as well, for it no longer stood atop its pedestal. Loki quickly ascended the stairs that lead up into the palace.

His home was hardly recognizable. There were pillars of frost perturbing from the floor to the ceiling and shimmering walls where there shouldn’t have been any. Loki cloaked himself in shadows, making it nearly impossible for anyone to lay their eyes upon him, and he proceeded up towards the throne room. As he stalked the halls, he ran across many giants that were roaming the halls. They tore through walls and smashed apart furniture almost as if they were looking for something.

Loki soon found himself in the grand hall with his father’s throne just beyond two great golden doors that had been smashed inwards.

The wall of ice in the doorway was so think that Loki couldn’t see through to the other side. He waved his hand over it and it began to evaporate into a thick cloud of mist. A figure appeared through the ice and haze, causing Loki to halt abruptly in his advancement. The figure stood impossibly tall, pacing the throne room slowly with loud echoing footsteps. Loki stepped back into the fog, obscuring his view of the creature and hopefully its view of him.

“This does not concern you, Odinson,” echoed the giant’s deep gravelly voice. “I come to reclaim what is mine.”

“You dare to attack my father?!” cut in the roaring voice of a young boy. “Release him or I shall kill you where you stand!”

“Thor…” Loki whispered under his breath. He scanned the sketchy view of the throne room through the ice and could just make out the small figure of his brother not ten feet from the frost giant.

Loki pressed his hand against the wall of ice again and then withdraws it timidly. He bit his bottom lip and ran his hands anxiously through his hair.

“And so it has come to this,” the giant grumbled. “Odinson for Laufyson.”

With a loud hissing sound a beam of light shot from the giant’s hands towards Thor. He must have had mijonir with him, for he rolled aside and then flung something at the giant, knocking him off balance. Loki pressed his forehead against the glass, trying desperately to see what was happening through the frost.

Another beam shot from the Jotun’s hands and then a bolt of lightning lit up the room. The small boy charged forward, but was then knocked aside by a simple swat of the frost giant’s hand. Loki felt the wall between them buckle as his brother was slammed against the other side of it. The giant came to stand over the boy and to form a long knife of ice in his hand.

Loki dug his hands into the wall, cracking it at his finger tips, and then he punched through it, sending shattering piece of ice towards the frost giant with his magic. The mighty Jotun was knocked to the ground and the Casket fell from his hands.

Loki hardly took time to regard the giant and instead went right to his brother’s side. Thor was lying on the ground, mijonir at his side, frost matted on his eyebrows and in his hair.

“Thor!” Loki cried, kneeling down to take his brother in his arms and shake him. “Brother, wake up!”

He was still breathing, but Loki could feel the slightest trickle of blood on the back of the boy’s head.

“Loki…” hissed a voice from the rubble. The giant climbed up out of the ice and took up the Casket again, smiling with satisfaction. “So it is true that you have grown strong in your time on Asgard. I suppose it is fortunate that you did not perish in the ruins of Jutonhiem.”

Loki’s gaze went beyond the giant to the all-father, standing before his throne, scepter in hand, but frozen solid. “Father!” Loki called, getting to his feet and staring up at the Juton between them apprehensively. “This is an act of war!” Loki announced, his words brave, but his eyes wet with tears. “All Jutons shall suffer for this unprovoked attack!”

“It is war,” the giant agreed. “And I’m afraid that you shall be the first of the Jutons to suffer, Prince Loki. The truth can be a painful thing.”

The giant began to step forward, letting the Casket hang loosely in one hand.

“Stay back!” Loki commanded, standing his ground as he conjured a short dagger in his hand. The giant didn’t attack though, he simply lashed out and seized Loki by his entire forearm, squeezing until he dropped his dagger with a cry of pain.

“I am Laufey,” the giant drawled. “King of Jutonhiem and conqueror of many realms.”

Loki stared up at the monster in disgust before the giant shoved Loki’s own hand into his face. To the boy’s astonishment, his hand had become the same strange shade of blue as Laufey’s. Not only that, but there were strange markings on the back of his hand, much like the ones running across the King’s face.

“Loki?” moaned Thor from beside him. Loki glanced back at his brother, who was staring, not at his hand, but directly into his face as if he hardly recognized him. Loki put his other hand to his face and he could now feel the same marks across it and he realized that his other hand was blue as well.

“And you, Loki,” Laufey continued at last. “You are my son, stolen from me nearly four hundred years ago; Loki Laufeyson, Prince of Jutonhiem.”

Characters (C) Marvel Studios/Marvel Comics

Story (C) SuperheroGeek13

Teen Titans - Phobia in Daydream

"Oops, it's been months since I updated this poor blog! Time to post a dozen things at once!

First off, I've written a lot more for that "Daydream" fanfic I have for Teen Titans. I might have to make this a much longer story than I had originally intended. As much fun as Raven's POV is, I really want to include Robin's side of the story as well.

Here's the opening that actually goes before the last post chronologically. Introducing the villain that had a cameo in the series, one appearance in the comic, and now an important role in this fanfic; Phobia!" -Casey

The sun was just starting to set over the city as the Titans battled atop the roof of a skyscraper, casting the whole scene in a dim twilight. “Remember! None of this is real!” Robin called as he grappled with one of Slade’s robots. The android got him into a chokehold and attempted to throw him off the skyscraper. He responded by kicking off the concrete barrier of the building and knocking them both into the gravel roof.

“Oh, fear is very real, Titan,” Phobia chuckled from the middle of the rooftop, her long cape flowing around her. “And the deepest terrors of your mind are mine to unleash!”

The robot had Robin pinned to the ground as it started beeping to warn of an imminent explosion. The robot was knocked aside by a blast from Cyborg’s sonic cannon, freeing Robin from its grasp just before it exploded. The blast knocked the boy right into the robot that his friend had been fighting. It wasn’t another one of Slade’s robots, but a golden robot of the same design as Cyborg with the symbol for the Hive Academy on its chest. Real or not, slamming into the robot had been painful and Robin was disoriented for a moment. The golden robot brought its fist into the air above Robin’s head, but Cyborg quickly came up behind it and dragged it backwards.

“Leave ‘im alone!” Cyborg grunted as he tried his best to hold his opponent back.

Robin got back to his feet and stabbed a birdarang into the robot. Cyborg released his grip and he and Robin leaped aside just before the robot exploded.

As the smoke cleared, Starfire flew right passed Robin with Blackfire hot on her tail. The sisters flew back up into the sky, firing star bolts at each other in attempts to knock each other out of the sky. Robin pulled an explosive disc from his utility belt as he kept his eyes on the girls. Before he could even arm it, the device was wrenched out of his hand as his arm was pinned against his back.

“You and I both know that I don’t need to be real to finish you,” Slade whispered into his ear.

“Raven! You need to cut through the illusions!” Robin called out, even though he couldn’t see the girl.

The telepath was behind Robin on the other side of the roof, her cloak torn with long claw marks. She was standing in the shadow of a large hairy green beast with its claws and fangs bared.

“Beast Boy, you have to snap out of it,” she said in a calming manner. “You haven’t lost control. It’s just a nightmare!”

The beast growled angrily in response and then charged at the girl. She put her hands up, engulfed in her telekinetic energy, and put up a shield to defend herself. The barrier protected her from the attack, but Raven winced against the onslaught. When she opened her eyes again, they were glowing red and there were four of them shining from beneath her hood. Her concentration broke, as did her shield, and Beast Boy knocked her over the edge of the roof.

The Titan tumbled head over heels before catching a hold of a flagpole. She clung to it desperately, her four glowing red eyes wide with fear. “No! It isn’t real! It isn’t real!” she told herself as she closed her eyes against their own red glow.

“As long as you retain even a fraction of my power, the Earth will never be safe,” Trigon’s voice echoed in her mind.

“Cut through the illusions,” Raven said shakily as her grip on the flagpole weakened. “Phobia can’t scare me.”

Raven unleashed her powers, transforming herself into a large black raven with two glowing white eyes. The bird flew back up over the rooftop so that she loomed over Phobia and the rest of the Teen Titans. Starfire was flying up towards the image in the grips of her evil sister, but as soon as they passed through the black energy Blackfire disappeared as if destroyed by the raven.

Phobia watched in horror as the creature wrapped its wings around the building and her illusions of Slade, Brother Blood, and the Beast began to fade like mist. “No! Fear is ripe in your heart!” she bellowed. “You do not have the power to resist!”

A birdarang zipped through the shadows and knocked Phobia in the back of the head. The woman stumbled to her knees in a daze as the Titans surrounded her. Raven resumed her human form and glided down onto the rooftop to join her teammates.

“Your courage will not save you, Titans,” Phobia muttered. “Your fears rule you in more ways than you could ever imagine.”

Phobia disappeared in a swirl of green mist and an explosive device appeared in her place. The device was counting down from 30 seconds.

“You think that’s an illusion?!” Beast Boy asked as he quickly backed away from the device.

“Titans! Scatter!” Robin commanded, causing them all to run off the roof of the building. The roof shattered into a rain of debris in every direction. Starfire rushed to grab Robin out of the air and out of the path of the falling stone. Cyborg blasted the boulders into dust all around him before Beast Boy grabbed him out of the sky, but it wasn’t enough to save a mother and a daughter on the sidewalk below. A large section of the roof came barreling down towards them, its shadow veiling their terrified faces.

Raven reached out with her telekinesis, wrapping the debris in blackness, but only slowing it down by a small fraction. She couldn’t stop it. She swiped her hand across the air and the mother and daughter below were suddenly yanked out from beneath the rock just before it hit the sidewalk.

The rest of the Titans made their way to the streets and Raven gently dropped the mother and daughter to safety. The little girl immediately jumped into her mother’s arms and her mother hugged her close while she kissed her on top of her head.

“Oh, thank you!” the mother said to the Teen Titans, her eyes settling on Raven. “Thank you for saving my angel.”

Raven nodded in reply with a small smile for the little girl who timidly waved at her. As the mother turned and began to walk away, Raven frowned. Robin began ordering his team to look for any trace of the villain that had escaped, but Raven paid little attention as she watched the family disappear around the corner.

Teen Titans (C) DC Comics, Warner Brothers, and Cartoon Network

Story (C) SuperheroGeek13

Teen Titans - Daydream

"I absolutely refuse to give up on my Teen Titans stories! Especially the ones with my fan characters. I have other superhero stories that could easily use my characters, but I can't rip them from their universe of origin. They belong with the Teen Titans and I still love that series even after all these years.

Switching to prose yet again here. I still don't think this works as well as the script format, but I'm not giving up yet!

Oh, and I just realized that the window thing might actually be inaccurate, but I shall fact check that before this goes to DeviantArt." -Casey

Raven squinted against the sunlight that was pouring into her room as she woke up. She pulled the covers up over her face and sighed in annoyance. How had she forgotten to close the window like that? She didn’t even have a window in her room.

She sat up, throwing the blanket aside, and looked around the room in surprise. She wasn’t in her room back at Titans Tower. She was in an unfamiliar room that was decorated with rock posters and purple carpeting.

“Robin?” she called as she leapt out of bed. That’s when she noticed the long black nightdress she was wearing. What was going on?

“Starfire?” she called as she made her way to the only door and opened it cautiously. She walked down the hallway, past pictures of complete strangers, until it opened to a living room that looked as perfect as a picture from a magazine. There was a clanking noise from around the corner, but Raven didn’t sense anyone nearby. She slowly rounded the corner.

The woman in the kitchen turned to face her, her long purple hair falling over her lacy white blouse. She smiled wholesomely, which looked almost unnatural with her long face and narrow eyes. “Good morning, Raven,” she greeted happily.

“Arella?” the girl said breathlessly, staring in amazement at her mother.

“Who on Earth is Arella?” she asked as she turned back to the eggs she had been scrambling.

“You…you are,” Raven said hesitantly.

“Last I checked, my name was Angela,” the woman replied. “But I really prefer ‘Mom’ from my daughter.”

“You’re alive,” she muttered as she wrapped her arms around the woman, her eyes welling up with tears.

“Raven? What’s the matter?” she asked as she put aside her cooking to hug the girl back.

“I thought you had perished with Azarath,” Raven explained.

“What are you talking about?” she insisted.

“I…I…You don’t remember?”

You’re not looking too well, sunshine,” her mother observed as she put her hand to her forehead. “Maybe you should stay home from school today.”

“Sunshine?” Raven asked skeptically with a raised eyebrow.

Arella (or Angela) smiled halfhearted at the teenager and shook her head. “There she is,” she joked, as if that settled the matter. “Now go get dressed. You’ll miss the bus if you don’t hurry.”

Raven stood in the kitchen and opened her mouth to say something, but she was at a loss for words. Angela scooped the scrambled eggs onto a couple of plates and placed them on the dining table. “Aren’t you hungry?” she asked as she went to the refrigerator for some orange juice.

The last thing Raven wanted to do was sit down to a bizarre breakfast when nothing was making sense. She backed away towards the living room. “I’m going to go get dressed,” she excused herself. She rushed back to what she could only assume was supposed to be her bedroom and shut the door.

She cleared her mind as she strode to the center of the room and assumed her meditation position. She noticed for the first time that the gemstone on her forehead was missing, but she didn’t let it bother her. “Azarath, Metrion, Zinthose,” she began to chant, focusing on locating the other Titans. “Azarath, Metrion, Zinthose.” There was no sign of her friends or anything else for that matter. She couldn’t even sense Angela in the other room. Her telepathy wasn’t working and she wasn’t even levitating. Her powers weren’t working.

She jumped up and started digging through the vanity for her communicator or even her cloak. She didn’t have any luck and she was beginning to panic. She thought back to the last sane thing she could remember. They had fought off a few smalltime crooks, no one capable of causing this kind of delusion. After that they had gone back to the tower. Robin and Cyborg played video games while Beast Boy wrestled for one of the controllers. Starfire and their new recruit had been cooking dinner and realizing their mutual love for snails. The new recruit…Duplicate. Could he have something to do with this?

“Raven, do you need me to give you a ride to school?” her mother called.

“No!” she called back. “I’ll be fine.”

She shook her head with the effort of concentrating on what had happened the day before, but the last thing she could remember was falling asleep like she always did. Nothing out of the ordinary came to mind.

“Are you sure? The bus will be here any minute,” Angela called again.

Raven looked down at the rumpled clothes in the vanity and spotted what looked like a school uniform. She grabbed it and called back, “I’m almost ready!”

She had to get out of the house. She needed to figure out what was going on and her mother being alive in the kitchen making eggs was a distraction.

Raven had no idea where she was supposed to go as she walked the crowded halls of the school. She’d tried to sneak away three times already, but bus drivers and teachers had deterred her at every turn.

Robin! Cyborg! she screamed telepathically. Anybody! Beast Boy!

The other Titans had to be out of range, but perhaps she was going about this the wrong way. She hadn’t been able to sense any of the people around her, like her mother or fellow students, but maybe she could search for another presence. She opened up her mind and tried to reach out beyond the students around her to find someone else, anyone else.

“Mayday!” a voice called out suddenly.

Raven looked up just in time to see a giant stack of books before she slammed into them and the boy that had been carrying them. Books and papers scattered across the hall, nearly tripping a couple of inattentive teenagers. Raven reached out as she attempted to retrieve them telekinetically, but that power didn’t seem to be working either. Instead, the boy she had knocked over took her outstretched hand and helped her to her feet.

“Sorry about that,” he apologized. “I don’t move very fast when I’m doing five things at once.”

“Its fine,” Raven replied, noting that the pain meant that she wasn’t dreaming.

The boy began clearing up the books along with a couple of folders and putting them away in his locker selectively. Raven felt a twinge of guilt and began to help gather up the papers by hand.

“Stressing over the science exam today?” he asked.

“Something like that,” she replied, still distracted by her lack of powers.

She handed the papers to the boy and he took with a grateful smile, his load of books much lighter now. “Well, while I’m here, you need an escort to class?” he asked. “I can clear the path so you don’t have worry about any other overloaded bookworms.”

“How do you know which class I’m looking for?” she asked.

“Well, we have shared English for the whole semester,” he sighed. “I’m usually in the back hiding behind my hipster glasses.” With that, he pulled a pair of thick rimmed black glasses out from his pant pockets and placed them on his face while moving his eyebrows up and down comically.

“Your glasses don’t have any lenses,” she pointed out in annoyance.

“Yeah, but glasses are like the only thing that they don’t have a dress code against,” he complained as he started walking down the hallway. “You coming?”

Raven took a good look at the boy standing before her. His long blond hair stood up fairly high before it flopped down in his bright colored eyes and he smiled with his teeth far too much. He was nearly as obnoxious as Beast Boy. However, sitting quietly in a classroom might give her the space to think things out, at least until she could sneak away at lunch. Reluctantly she followed after him.

“My name’s Remy, by the way,” he announced as they walked.

“I’m Raven,” she replied, holding onto that thought. She was Raven, a real hero, and no amount of this ridiculous reality was going to convince her that the Teen Titans didn’t exist.

As they approached the classroom where English class was to be held, the door exploded outwards and slammed into the lockers on the far wall, barely missing one of the other students. As smoke poured through the remains of the entryway, a tall thin figure stepped out of the room and into the hall with a confident strut. As the smoke began to clear, the figure stopped and spun its cane around in the air before leaning against it in a showy manner.

“Well, hello, hello, hello, my duckies” the man greeted as he finally became visible through the smoke. “Care to help me out with a little discipline problem?”

Mad Mod, Raven thought as glared at the man. I should have known that he was behind this.

Teen Titans (C) Warner Brothers and Cartoon Network

REM and Story (C) SuperheroGeek13 

Which came first, the character or the plot?

There comes a point in every story that I’ve ever attempted to write where I start to complain about the personalities that I gave my characters. Mostly because my main characters tend to be very introverted, very content with life, and quite unmotivated to get involved in things that aren’t their business, which is not exactly a recipe for high adventure and heroics, is it?

Thus begins my rants about how I practically have to drag my characters back to the plot (i.e. the chain of events that they’re going to be a part of whether they like it or not). One has to strike a balance though, because you run the risk of turning your story into a side-scrolling video game where your characters are led straight through the adventure without much say in the matter.
On the other hand, if you let your characters run free in a huge over-world type of place, they might spend the entire adventure fishing, collecting rupees, and betting on dog races while the princess just sits in a dungeon waiting to be rescued. (Please pardon the video game derived examples.)
So how is one to find a balance between these characters and plots? Are there rules about giving each 50% or giving one more than the other? Am I doomed because I came up with my characters before a plot or vice versa? These are all questions in which I get very wrapped up.

The sad truth; if your characters aren’t doing anything AT ALL for your plot then maybe you shouldn’t have put them in your story in the first place.
Seriously, if you were out to write a story about daring feats and courageous adventures, you should have written a daring and courageous hero. If you didn’t want a reluctantly taken hardship that’ll require a lot growth by its end, you shouldn’t have made up a reluctant hero.
Basically, this is when I need to step back from the characters and the plot and look at the story as a whole. What is it about? Where is it going? Why are you even telling it?
Shouldn't people be able to say that your characters and plot mesh up well? If the story is meant to be funny, there are things that you can set up for that. A Funny Man and a Straight Man can lead to great hijinks. Or maybe even a couple of crazy kids with one very sane girl. The plot will only get nutty from there.

 "Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through. That is all Plot ever should be. It is human desire let run, running, and reaching a goal. It cannot be mechanical. It can only be dynamic. So, stand aside, forget targets, let the characters, your fingers, body, blood, and heart do." -Ray Bradbury

How would you categorize this story if you had to do so? Do the different elements of the story match up with you definition? If not, then it might be time to take another look at your setup or maybe your definition.
You want heroics? Make your characters heroic! You want forward momentum? Move events along! And when in doubt, just see where the people and events in your story go when you’re not complaining about where they’re going.
In conclusion; characters and plots go hand in hand. Characters will make choices that move events along and events will move your characters along.
That’s my writing related rant for the day. Thanks for reading! TTYL.