Fury and Coulson's faces were a perfect, matching set of pale, professional shock.
"Thor?" Coulson repeated, the name sounding absurd and alien in the dry, desert air. "The God of Thunder? From the myths?"
Hermione just looked at the two of them, these powerful, intelligent men who ran the world's most advanced spy agency, and she had to physically resist the urge to pat them on the head. "Your myths had to come from somewhere, Agent," she said, her voice laced with the weary patience of a professor explaining gravity to a flat-earther. "The beings your ancestors called 'gods' were just a powerful, long-lived alien species. Their technology and their biology are so far beyond your own that you mistook it for divinity. It's not that complicated."
The explanation, while still worldview-shattering, was at least something their minds could process. It moved the problem from the realm of theology to the more familiar, if still terrifying, category of extraterrestrial threats.
On his secure comm line, Fury was already giving new, urgent orders. "Sir," Coulson said, his voice now a low, tense murmur. "The Director wants to know what your assessment is."
"My assessment," Hermione said, a slow, predatory grin spreading across her face as she looked at the silent, brooding hammer, "is that things are about to get very, very interesting."
She spent the next few minutes giving Fury a crash course in Cosmic Politics 101. She explained the Nine Realms, the World Tree Yggdrasil, and the precarious peace maintained by Odin's Asgard. She told him of the Frost Giants of Jotunheim, the Dark Elves of Svartalfheim, and of Midgard—Earth—the central realm upon which so many cosmic events seemed to pivot.
Fury listened in grim, heavy silence. The map of the universe he had spent his life building was being redrawn in real-time by a twelve-year-old girl.
"So you're telling me," he finally said, his voice a low growl, "that Earth is a nominal vassal state in an interstellar Norse empire, and we're currently caught in the middle of their royal family's drama?"
"Essentially," Hermione shrugged. "But don't worry too much. Odin's empire is a shadow of its former self, and Thor is just a powerless, exiled prince having a bad day. Let them sort out their own mess. It's got nothing to do with us."
"And if," Fury pressed, his voice deadly serious, "Asgard decides to make its rule more than just 'nominal'? What then?"
"Then," Hermione said, her eyes glinting with a cold, ancient light, "they will discover that Midgard has a much deeper and darker history than even Odin remembers. You have no idea what kinds of monsters and demons are sleeping on this little planet of yours." And I, she added silently, am rapidly becoming one of them.
That seemed to satisfy him. For now. After a final, brief chat with Coulson and a patronizing pat on the head for a fawning Agent Sitwell, she walked away from the brightly lit S.H.I.E.L.D. base and into the quiet, cool darkness of the desert night.
She stopped in a remote, empty corner, the only sound the gentle whisper of the wind. She turned and spoke to the empty air.
"You can come out now."
The desert remained silent.
She sighed. "I was trying to be polite," she said to the shadows. "But if you're going to force my hand…"
"Aparecium!"
A mysterious, shimmering wave of magic rippled outwards from her. It struck a patch of empty air ten feet away, and the illusion that had been concealing it was peeled back like a layer of old paint. A figure, which had been perfectly invisible a moment before, was forced slowly, reluctantly, into view.
He was tall and slender, dressed in an elegant, green-and-gold Asgardian tunic. He had a pale, handsome face, slicked-back black hair, and sharp, intelligent eyes that were now wide with a mixture of shock and profound, wounded pride.
Loki, the God of Mischief, stood revealed.
"How?" he asked, his voice a stunned whisper. "How did you see me?" He couldn't believe it. His illusion magic, the finest in all the Nine Realms, had been undone by a mortal child from this provincial backwater of a planet.
"I've known you were here since the interrogation room," Hermione said with a dismissive curl of her lip. "Your petty little tricks are an amusing novelty, but they are hardly a secret from a true magic-user."
Loki's expression turned dark, his pride stung to the core. "You insolent little mortal," he hissed. "You have just made a very powerful enemy." A wicked-looking dagger materialized in his hand, and he lunged.
Hermione just rolled her eyes. She was in no mood for this melodrama. She didn't even bother with a Shield Charm.
"Bombarda Maxima!" she intoned, her voice bored. Then, for good measure, she cast it again. And again.
Three successive, violent, and completely overwhelming explosions of pure concussive force erupted from her wand. They struck Loki in the chest, one after another, with the force of an artillery barrage. He screamed, a high-pitched, undignified sound, as he was engulfed in a cloud of fire and smoke, his elegant form thrown backward through the air like a rag doll. He landed in a heap fifty feet away, a smoking, groaning, and thoroughly humiliated mess.
He struggled to get up, his pale face blackened with soot, his fine clothes torn and smoldering.
Seeing Hermione raise her wand again, he quickly, and wisely, raised his hands in surrender. "Stop!" he yelped.
He had learned, in the space of about five very painful seconds, that this was not a fight he was going to win. He was a god, a prince of Asgard. And he had just been completely and utterly owned by a twelve-year-old Midgardian.
"You are," he said, his voice now a low, respectful purr as he gracefully shifted tactics from aggression to seduction, "far more interesting than I had anticipated, little witch." The God of Mischief was, above all else, a survivor. He recognized power, and his first instinct was always to try and co-opt it.
"So," Hermione said, lowering her wand, "what do you want?"
Loki's eyes glinted, a slow, cunning smile spreading across his bruised face. "A partnership," he said. "You are clearly a being of immense power, wasted on this pathetic realm. I, too, am destined for a throne. Help me secure my rightful place as the king of Asgard, and I will help you become the queen of Midgard. Together," he declared, his voice full of a grand, tempting vision, "we could rule all of the Nine Realms!"
He stood there, his arms open wide, expecting her to be awed, tempted, seduced by his magnificent offer.
Instead, she just stared at him. And then, she began to laugh.
It was not a small chuckle. It was a full-throated, tear-streaming, side-splitting, hysterical peal of pure, unadulterated, and deeply insulting laughter. She laughed so hard she had to lean on her knees for support, the sound echoing in the silent desert night.
Rule the Nine Realms? she thought, wiping a tear from her eye. This guy? The one who's about to get his ass so thoroughly handed to him by the Hulk that it becomes a legendary meme for the rest of eternity?
The sheer, cosmic, dramatic irony of it all was just too much.