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….
"A child?" Here Frigga also noticed the involuntary witnesses, after which she shifted her gaze from the girl to me, and then to the two women. "Loki…"
In that short "Loki" were intertwined with so many indescribable maternal intonations that I immediately understood. In her imagination, I had sharply fallen to the Dark Side of the Force and was now generally Enemy Number One.
Not because I'm a villain, scoundrel, and bastard, but because I didn't introduce her to my woman, didn't invite her to the wedding, and generally, scary to say, hid her granddaughter from her.
In short, my tailbone screamed aloud that I had about a second and a half to live, and then the supreme Goddess and Queen of Asgard would punish me in a way no Odin had ever dreamed of in a nightmare.
"You misunderstood!" I felt more than ever that I really wanted to live. "It is a child, but it is not my child! I simply saved her from a laboratory where inhumane experiments were being conducted on her, and now I'm taking her to a safe place. Mother, look me in the eyes. Do you hear? I didn't make her! I found her. By accident!"
"By accident?" twitching her head slightly, the goddess returned to the real world.
"Here in Midgard, there is currently an undercover war between ordinary humans and mutants, where the former are trying to find a way to destroy or subjugate the latter. It so happened that I'm already involved in all this, and the idea of a planetary war doesn't appeal to me at all. For this reason, I decided to visit a couple of the most odious enterprises, so to speak, with an inspection. A-and… yes," I shook my head as if reluctantly.
"I wasn't too gentle in delivering my assessments. It was from the last blood-soaked laboratory that I took this girl. By the way, this is her mother," I pointed to Sarah.
"Very… nice to meet you," helping herself with habit, the scientist squeezed out.
"Oh, of course," Odin's wife finally recovered completely and smiled amiably. "It is a pleasure for me too to meet my son's friends. Call me Frigga."
"Sarah Kinney…" nodding politely, the woman introduced herself. Then she cast a short glance at X-23, who was observing everything imperturbably, and caught herself: "My daughter's name is Laura."
In response, Frigga also nodded and looked at the girl, but she remained in her repertoire and provided the guest with nothing but a meeting gaze of brown eyes. Not attaching much importance to this, the Queen of Asgard turned to Yuriko.
"My name is Yuriko Oyama. Lord Loki saved me from slavery," the Asian woman introduced herself briefly.
"Oh," the Queen of Asgard turned to me, examining me with a new look.
And somehow I didn't like this look. When someone else's mother looks at you with such pride and pleasant surprise, it's uncomfortable.
"Right," I decide to quickly close up shop before they start looking for traces of a halo on me or, worse, shaming me with stories beloved by all mothers from the series "how he used the potty in childhood," "I am very glad you all met, this is wonderful, but I need time to think. Bye, Mom."
"Loki," the woman pulled herself together, switching her attention completely back to me, "I understand that you want to usher me out, and I have no doubt you can close yourself off from me if you wish," she continued with a sigh and sadness.
"But understand, this is truly important. The future of all Nine Realms depends on you now, and you know yourself that by refusing me, you will endanger this world too. Midgard lived in peace and inviolability under Asgard's protection, but if Asgard has no King, no one will protect it."
"More accurately, no one will think it is protected," I answered irritably, not so much objecting as… venting emotions.
"The difference is vanishingly small, my son," Frigga nodded understandingly.
"Fine… Okay!" my right hand lay on my face, massaging the skin with effort. "I'm coming now… But I promise nothing!" I immediately warn the woman in a tone that brooks no objections.
"I await you at home, son," the goddess smiled, and her illusion dissolved, leaving me alone with three women burning with curiosity.
"Why won't my family leave me alone even when I fled to another world?!" I rub my face, barely restraining myself from much more unprintable expressions that would reveal my state much deeper.
But then I shifted my gaze to the frozen women and realized that my troubles had only begun.
No, Yuriko was diligently pretending to be a valiant Samurai and generally an "automaton attached to a gun," but I could almost physically feel the curiosity radiating from her.
Sarah was interested too, and Laura… Laura looked at me with her calm and serene gaze, exactly the same as when "extorting" another fairy tale.
"Eh, I suppose I need to explain the situation…"
"No, what are you saying, you are absolutely not obligated to report to us…" Miss Kinney declared, continuing to sparkle with a curious gaze.
My assistant nodded sternly, yes-yes, continuing to exude curiosity, and the small combat hamster didn't bother with such things at all and continued to pressure and extort a "fairy tale" with her gaze.
"Yeah, sure," I sighed, resigning myself to the inevitable, "I'll try in a nutshell. So, you heard the whole conversation, of course, but I'll start from the beginning and in order. As is known to everyone present here, according to legends, I am considered the son of Odin, King of Asgard. And as a prince, I tried to match up, studied there, developed, but my moron brother was appointed heir and future king," I raised a hand, interrupting Sarah who seemed to try to say something.
"No, this isn't envy or anger. In his case, it's more of a diagnosis. You saw him, he seriously wanted to find a puppy in a pet store to ride it! And this is a guy who has seen spaceships and regularly flies in cars with anti-gravity drive!"
"Anyway, periodically Odin needs to fall into a kind of coma in which he rejuvenates and gathers strength; this state is called the Odinsleep, and for its duration, the throne of Asgard must pass to the heir…"
"… You know, so control of the entire interstellar empire of Aesir and Vanir isn't lost. And everything would be fine, but shortly before Thor's coronation, I learned that I am indeed a prince. A prince of the Frost Giants, Asgard's most dangerous enemies. That war is already thousands of years old, and both sides of the conflict have accumulated a considerable bloody score against each other."
"To say I was slightly surprised and upset by such news is to vastly understate the picture. But, as a sensible… hmm, sentient being, I didn't fly off the handle, rush to make a scene with Odin, or run to lead the Jotuns…"
"… No, I decided to calm down a bit, clear my head, and think about life, with which I descended to Midgard, that is, to Earth. Even specifically left a note so they wouldn't twitch and look for me!"
"And here I got sucked into a vacation, got a job as a teacher at a school for gifted children, saved the world a little, met a couple of beauties," I couldn't resist and winked at Yuriko, who was still stoically portraying a samurai.
"In short, I was restoring peace of mind and gathering my thoughts."
"And at that moment my moron brother burst into my room, saw the empty space and the note on the table. Unfortunately, his brain capabilities were enough to learn to read, and my 'farewell letter'… well, he familiarized himself with it. After which, instead of going to have a showdown with Odin, asking mother, or generally spitting on it and finally noticing that a certain cute goddess has been chasing him for four hundred years and it wouldn't hurt to pay the girl some attention…"
"… Instead of all this and a thousand and one other ways to do something if not useful, then at least harmless, he came up with nothing smarter than taking his hammer, his friends, even bigger morons, and invading the domain of the Jotuns, demanding to 'return his brother,' casually killing and maiming subjects of a foreign state peacefully going about their business."
….
If you want to read ahead by 20+ chapters from here you can visit my Patre-on.
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