Havoc and Retribution

Accelerate, Fate Awaits

Hel watches Athronei's Darkness begin its consumption of Yggdrasil.

Her head aches, memories of Sigyn from her own past mixing with the strange new force that is Jaycee Strong released. She feels... tired, so, so tired, an insufficient word for the accumulation of millennia of sleepless nights. She should feel victory at having unleashed true chaos across the Nine Realms, but all she can see in her mind's eye is Sigyn's face in those last moments on Midgard.

She always thought she was killing her weaker twin, but after the path Jaycee has blazed through their synapses in recent days, she wonders if perhaps killing Sigyn was more a metaphor than she knew. Try to kill the weakness within by destroying the hated without. Jaycee's shock at Athronei's revelation somehow made the Sigyndottir stronger, not weaker.

Some oblique part of Hel, maybe a remnant of Sigyn inside her flesh, wonders at that.

However, the majority of Hel that is the goddess of death and chaos is reveling in the thunderstorm of Darkness that is rotting leaves from Yggdrasil one by one.

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"Soooooo, do we even attempt to make a plan given the exquisite number of variables and unknowns involved in this equation?" Tony asks,

Verdandi is back to staring out at the stars, although she is not really seeing them in the same way mortal eyes do. Tony spares her a glance, hiding away the thought that perhaps this pensiveness would have been Jaycee's grown-up face. He turns to the Avengers, Vanir and assorted Alfheim survivors. "Given that we don't have the firepower to stop Hel, can't reach Jay and have no idea where Loki is, not to mention an incorporeal Norn is eating the Tree of Life, I'm thinking in going blind with guns blazing is the only solution given what we don't know. Which is the same as what we know. So?" he scratches his head. "Unless someone else has miraculously gained 200 IQ points in the last 5 minutes or whatever passes for minutes around here?"

"Nice nutshelling," Thor whispers to Tony, holding out a hand for a fist bump. Natasha represses an eyeroll.

"Feasible," Barton mutters. "But not practical. Not if we all want to make it out in one piece. I'm sure Hel would love to have us in pieces and would readily oblige." He shudders at that grim thought, imaging bony hands doing some serious rending.

"You said only a Norn could re-corporate Athronei?" Natasha asks Verdandi slowly. The Norn of Life turns towards her with questioning eyes. "Do you think if you could return Athronei to her human... human-looking form-," even Natasha is stumbling over the terminology to use with these celestial beings, "-that the three of you together could stop Hel?"

Verdandi doesn't dismiss the idea out of hand, which Clint thinks is encouraging given that Verdandi's temper seems to be a volatile as Jaycee's. The Norn cups her chin in the fingers of one hand, her expression thoughtful. "You think perhaps the trickster could succeed in finding Sigyn's soul?"

Natasha nods. "I don't want to be on Loki's team, but if anyone can find out what happened to her...,"

"I agree," Clint says. "I don't like the little shit but when it comes to Jaycee, I know where he stands."

"And where is that?" Steve asks, his tone soft but belligerent. "Behind her with a knife?"

"Oh get over it," Tony says, pushing past Steve to stand at Clint's side in a rare show of solidarity. "Romanoff and Barton are right, I'd wager he already found Sigyn somewhere on Earth and is planning on making some kind of grand entrance. That's how he operates, right?"

Frigga nods. "He does have a flair for the dramatic, my son."

Natasha turns back to Verdandi. "If Loki could find a way to get close enough to Hel to reunite the piece of Sigyn's soul, would that reawaken your sister?"