Chapter 170: Loki, God of Stories, and Ethan's Chronic Case of Firepower Anxiety
Ethan woke up frowning.
He sat on the edge of the bed and stayed there for a moment, running the dream back through his head the way you try to hold water in your hands.
Was that Loki? The God of Stories?
In the dream, he'd been standing in a void.
Not darkness — something closer to formlessness. A thick mist that didn't obscure so much as exist instead of anything, and as he walked deeper into it the mist began to resolve into structure. Branches. Enormous ones, spreading in every direction, filling the space with the dense complexity of a forest that had been growing since before anything else existed.
And suspended between the branches: bubbles. Universes. Each one complete and self-contained, cycling through catastrophes and miracles at their own pace — some brilliant with stars, some swallowed by darkness, all of them connected to the vast trunk of the tree that ran through everything like a spine.
He'd walked toward it.
At the end of the walk, at the end of everything, there was a throne.
Gold. And on it, a lean figure — composed, quiet, power held carefully inward. Green branches wrapped around him like the tree had grown to include him, or he had grown to become part of the tree. It was impossible to tell which came first.
Ethan had taken a step toward him.
And woken up.
The last thing in his head, sitting there like it had been placed: We'll be meeting soon, Ethan.
He was very awake now.
He sat with it.
That was the World Tree. The Yggdrasil. The multiverse itself, visualized as a single enormous organism. And the figure on the throne was Loki — not the trickster, not the god of mischief, but the version that came after all of that. The one who had taken the seat at the end of time and held the branches together by sheer will, because the alternative was everything collapsing into nothing.
He understood, from the films he'd carried over from his previous life, exactly what that meant. Loki had become the God of Stories. He sat at the nexus of all timelines and held them open. The moment he left the throne, the multiverse started unraveling.
It was the most powerful position imaginable and also a prison with no walls and no end.
Why is he contacting me?
The thoughts came fast.
The timeline chaos — the fact that the TVA hadn't stepped in, that adjacent universes were in crisis, that the Ancient One had been sending Ethan on repair missions — all of it pointed toward Loki's influence holding things together. But if Loki was reaching out, that meant something was coming that even the God of Stories couldn't solve from the throne.
Kang. That was the obvious answer. Kang the Conqueror, or the Council of Kangs, or whatever form the threat had taken. The main universe's heroes had apparently not handled it — which tracked, from what Ethan remembered of the post-Endgame trajectory. If things had gotten bad enough that Loki was recruiting outside the throne room...
The main universe heroes. What are they doing? He thought about it and felt a specific, uncharitable exasperation. Avengers, reassemble, figure it out. I have a neighborhood to run.
He was aware that this was unfair. He was also aware that he was going to end up involved regardless of fairness.
Loki could be running a scheme, he reminded himself. Before the throne, before the transformation, Loki had been the god of mischief. Old habits. This could be manipulation dressed as a warning.
He tried to think of who could stand against the God of Stories if it came to that. The Living Tribunal. The Eternals — the real ones, not the MCU version. Death, theoretically, which led him to Wade and the situation with Thanos, which led him to a chain of consequences that ended with the universe being at risk from an entirely different direction, which was not helpful.
Dark Wanda, a part of his mind offered. Dark Strange.
He shut that thought down immediately.
The fact that corruption multiplied power by an order of magnitude was one of the more irritating structural features of the world he'd landed in, and he was not going to solve problems by destroying the people he'd spent the last several months building a life with.
He shook his head at the ceiling.
"You turn evil, you get ten times stronger," he muttered. "You come back from it, you keep maybe thirty percent. The math is horrible."
He sat up. Stood. Walked to the sink and washed his hands — a habit he'd never quite traced to its source, something about preparing for things.
This is a future problem, he decided. I'll deal with it when Loki actually shows up. Maybe he doesn't need me for what I'm thinking. Maybe it's something smaller.
He didn't quite believe that. But it was early, he had Strange to deliver to the Ancient One, and the Earth-42 portal was opening at dawn.
One thing at a time.
"System. Friend Point balance."
「Current balance: 900+ Friend Points. Convert to Family Points?」
Ethan blinked.
He hadn't expected that. The evening had been productive, but nine hundred points was a meaningful number. The battle, the interview, the dinner — apparently a lot of people had been paying attention.
He'd added one Family member: Magneto. But the breadth of the net — the X-Men, the Brotherhood, the city residents, the heroes who'd been watching the broadcast — had produced a flood of lower-tier connections that added up.
"Convert to seven Family Points. Keep the rest — I want to expand the Homestead."
「Conversion complete. Current Family Points: 7. Remaining Friend Points: [balance].」
"Ten-pull."
He closed his eyes.
「Congratulations, Host! BUILD Driver acquired!」
「Congratulations, Host! Fullbottle: Rabbit Form acquired!」
「Congratulations, Host! Fullbottle: Tank Form acquired!」
「Better Luck Next Time!」
「Congratulations, Host! Bird-Bird Fruit: Vulture Model acquired!」
「Better Luck Next Time!」
「Congratulations, Host! Hidan Growth Template acquired!」
「Congratulations, Host! Enel Growth Template acquired!」
「Congratulations, Host! Kyōka Suigetsu Zanpakutō acquired!」
Ethan opened his eyes and looked at the list.
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