Who's Been Messing Up Everything? Loki and Sylvie are Determined to Find Out.

Chapter 10

Loki's in the midst of preparing for the talent show when Sylvie and Beatrice finally come back. He beams at the sight. Great, now they're all together! Maybe they can run the number once before they have to leave. He's been feeling a lot better about this show since he found out that everybody else sucks. It means they can suck, too, and nobody is going to think any less of them. Who cares if their routine is hot garbage when all the other routines are just as bad?

But Sylvie's all business, and, if the sheer determination on his face is any indication, this is about something far bigger than the talent show. His suspicions are confirmed when she grabs his arm and drags him out of the room, completely ignoring poor Mobius's attempt to say "Hello."

"Will you let go of me?" Loki asks, exasperated. "You know you could just ask me to come with you."

Sylvie ignores that, though once they're alone in the privacy of her bedroom, the door closed behind him, she does finally drop his arm.

"What?" Loki asks. "What is it?"

"It's Dottie."

Loki stares at her blankly. "What's Dottie?"

"This!" Sylvie gestures emphatically to their surroundings. "All of this! Dottie's the one behind all of it!"

Loki furrows his brows. "How do you know that?"

"Something happened," Sylvie says. "Something weird."

"Yes, well, that's kind of the new normal, isn't it?" Loki remarks. If things stopped being weird, that would be weird.

"No, something really weird," Sylvie says. "Somebody tried to talk to us — somebody on the outside."

"On the outside?" Loki repeats. "You mean outside of Westview? Out of the wobble wall?"

"That's what it sounded like," she says. "They told Dottie to stop." She beams at the thought. "Loki, she can put a stop to this. We can make her stop it."

Loki's brows shoot up. "Wait, back up. Someone from the outside was talking to you?" He scoffs. "So somebody knows about this! Somebody must be trying to stop it from the outside!" He grabs Sylvie by the shoulders, practically bouncing up and down in excitement. "It has to be the Avengers," he says. Who else would it be? The Avengers, Fury with SHIELD, somebody. Somebody he knows is trying to get them out of here. That is a huge relief.

Sylvie stares at him blankly. "The who?"

"The Avengers!" Loki says again. "The world's most powerful heroes; the best of the best." He never thought he'd say that without an ounce of sarcasm in his voice, but right now, he's really glad they're here. "Once upon a time, that meant Thor, too. He could be outside this town right now!"

Sylvie's eyes go wide. "Thor?"

Loki nods emphatically. "He went back to Asgard a decade ago, but he came to Midgard to find me once. He could do it again."

A smile creeps up on her face. "You think Thor's out there?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if he was," Loki says. And if it's not Thor, it's Thor's teammates, and, despite their rough history, he'd like to think they won't try to kill him or his friends for that reason alone. They'd wait for Thor to come back and take them home.

... Wherever home is now that Asgard's gone.

He hadn't thought about that.

"Then we need to finish this!" Sylvie says eagerly. "We need to kill Dottie and—"

"I'm sorry, we need to what?"

Sylvie's excitement fades at the question. "We need to kill Dottie. So we can stop this."