After hearing Heimdall's explanation, Loki was stunned for a moment.
He tilted his head slightly, brows furrowed, and racked his brain trying to imagine what sort of Celestial's son could earn such an assessment from Heimdall.
A good while later, he nodded as sudden understanding dawned—he got it!
Surely this son of Ego had to be just like Thor, that son of Odin—another muscle-headed, brainless brute!
After all, in Loki's mind, someone like Thor was already the absolute bottom of the barrel as far as gods' sons went.
…
Seeing Loki nod, Heimdall gave him a solemn nod in return.
"Good. Let's move."
As he spoke, he took up Bultsteel and used the Bifrost to send himself and Loki just outside the space pirates' temporary command ship.
He didn't have the kind of power Heisenberg or Hela possessed. In fact, right now his divine strength was even inferior to Loki's, since Loki was carrying both the Tesseract and the Casket of Ancient Winters.
Without the Bifrost's full support, teleporting just two people was already giving him a faint throb in the temples.
So once they landed, he patted Loki on the arm.
"Any pirates still prowling out here have guts—wipe them out. You take care of it.
As for that Celestial's son, he's heading toward Earth. After we've dealt with the pirates, we'll go find him."
"As you command, our Gatekeeper, sir!"
Loki nodded, casually produced the Casket of Ancient Winters, and rode a stream of frigid air straight to the viewport of the ship beneath their feet.
Inside the ship, the pirates were so terrified by Loki's sudden appearance that they began shrieking outright. But before they could even beg for mercy, merciless frost froze them into blocks of ice that would never thaw.
At that same moment, panicked voices crackled across the pirates' ad-hoc comm channel.
"It's gone south—damn it, I told you we should've jumped straight to Earth!
The Asgardians are here, the captain's ship is finished!!!"
"To hell with this, run! I already grabbed wreckage worth six thousand units, as long as I sell it when I get back, I'll still come out ahead—aaaaaah!!!"
Listening to those blood-curdling screams, Quill, who was barreling toward Earth, jolted violently!
He hurriedly opened his comm channel and stealthily hacked into the systems of his temporary teammates' ships.
Instantly, the hacked surveillance feed showed him endless frost—and the pervasive chill practically froze his eyeballs right through the video feed!
"Fuckfuckfuck!!!"
Quill killed the feed and bolted straight for Earth without looking back. With his clever wits, there was no way he'd do something as stupid as jumping out of the system to escape!
He was an Earthling, after all. If he just stashed his ship on Earth and blended into the human population, who would ever guess he was a space pirate…
Pfft, no, no, no!!!
Who would ever guess he was an alien mercenary?
That's what Quill thought, and that's exactly what he did. After accelerating nonstop, within minutes he'd parked his ship near his old hometown in Colorado.
Then he stepped out of the cloaked vessel, Walkman in his pocket, headphones over his ears, and swaggered into the crowd with unbridled confidence.
This was his first time back on Earth, and Quill was beside himself with excitement. He practically danced his way down the street like a disco king.
As he walked, he shot wink after wink at every girl who caught his eye.
And so it was that, not long afterward, when Loki and Heimdall finally caught up to him…
Quill was handcuffed in the police station on charges of public indecency, with two officers struggling to keep straight faces as they interrogated him!
The radiance of the Bifrost made the interrogating officers and Quill all freeze in shock. The three of them stared at the light, and the cops immediately drew their sidearms!
Quill wanted to draw too, but his hands were cuffed to the table.
Since he really couldn't reach his gun, a normal person might have just sat there and resigned themselves to fate.
But not Quill!
Whatever was in his hands, his instinct was to raise it like a weapon and point it at the two figures emerging from the Bifrost!
So when Heimdall and Loki touched down, they were greeted by the two cops' guns, and…
Quill's Walkman, raised threateningly toward them.
In that instant, Loki turned to Heimdall with a completely baffled look.
He pointed at Quill and, with an exaggerated eye-roll, asked,
"Are you sure about him?!"
"Uh, yes!"
Heimdall rolled his eyes in exasperation too.
The two of them stared at each other in silence—a silence that lasted more than three full seconds.
Until Heimdall sighed, stepped in front of Loki, and addressed the two officers and the reinforcements who were just arriving.
"I am Heimdall, Gatekeeper of Asgard. This is Loki of Asgard. We are here under orders to take the alien Peter Quill into custody!"
At these words, the two cops immediately lowered their weapons.
Honestly, the moment they saw how Heimdall and Loki had arrived, they'd already started drafting their last wills in their heads.
Meanwhile, scenes from countless alien movies spun and leapt through their minds.
That was, until they heard Heimdall's explanation!
"Ha! Goddamn, I really thought I was dead for sure!!!
Turns out you're good buddies from Asgard—sit down, sit down, let me go make you some coffee!"
With that, the two cops, who'd seen the news over the past dozen-plus days about Asgardians coming to Earth to throw banquets, scrambled to bolt out of the interrogation room.
They even dragged away the colleagues who were coming to back them up, leaving the calamity named Quill and the interrogation room entirely behind.
They weren't CIA, let alone S.H.I.E.L.D. As ordinary beat cops, they had no intention of clinging to every mysterious incident the way the movies did.
And so, Quill swallowed hard in front of Heimdall and Loki.
Then he glanced left and right and gently raised the Walkman in his hands toward the two of them.
"What if I told you this is a full-power Dyson sphere energy conversion system, connected to a high-level energy source capable of destroying the Nine Realms—would you believe me?"
"Pffft!!!"
Loki couldn't hold it in and burst out laughing.
Probably realizing that even he didn't believe his own claim, Quill hastily pulled the Walkman back and tried again.
"Just a joke, that's all! This is a legendary Walkman, a music-playing device unique to Earth.
I'm Peter Quill, one hundred percent Earthling. You can test my DNA if you don't believe me—I'm not some damn space pirate like you said!!!"
"Heh!"
Listening to Quill's protests, Heimdall gave a faint smile.
"Before you claim you're not a space pirate, how about you first drop that mouthful of a pirate accent?"
"I have an accent?!" Quill froze. "This is pure American English, and you're calling it a pirate accent? That's slander! That's slander, man!!!"
As soon as Quill finished, Loki gave Heimdall a pointed look and laughed.
"This guy really does tell a good joke, ha!"
Loki was laughing so hard he couldn't help but slap his thigh. And while laughing, he said,
"If you're this good at telling stories, then come to Asgard and write scripts for me, Son of the Celestial!"
Saying this, Loki nudged Heimdall with his elbow.
Heimdall nodded, and once again activated the Bifrost.
Moments later, Quill, his face a mixture of bewilderment and shock, found himself standing at the entrance to the royal palace of Asgard!
The instant he landed, Quill immediately started shouting his explanation!
"You've got the wrong guy, you've definitely got the wrong guy—he actually called me Son of the Celestial!!
I'm just an ordinary Earthling! Can Asgard really just snatch Earthlings whenever it wants?! I demand to be extradit—!"
Before he could finish, Quill yelped like a startled dog and dove behind Heimdall, screeching!
Not far from him, the ground was trembling with heavy thumps. A dragon over a hundred and thirty meters long was charging straight at him!
"Holy shit, a dragon!!!"
As Quill howled, he stretched out his still-cuffed hands and awkwardly fumbled for the weapon strapped to his outer thigh.
As a kid who'd grown up among the Ravagers, even as much of a coward as he was, Quill still had the guts to fire on a dragon.
But just as he got his energy blaster out, another rainbow-hued radiance crashed down beside the dragon!
A wave of overwhelmingly fierce heat instantly swept across the palace grounds, making more than three thousand serving women look up from their work in astonishment!
In the span of mere seconds, even those delicate Asgardian ladies were drenched in sweat!
At the same time, a chill aura slowly emanated from Loki—that blissfully cool sensation made Quill, whose clothes had caught fire, immediately lunge toward Loki.
Loki, his face dark with exasperation, looked behind him—and there was Quill, pressed firmly against his ass!!!
And Quill's expression was one of unadulterated comfort. An incredibly self-indulgent sound escaped his lips.
"Haaah~ that hits the spot!"
Invisibly, lines of utter blackness spread across Loki's forehead. He pursed his lips, ground his teeth, and with a swift kick, sent Quill sprawling to the side.
Meanwhile, the Bifrost fully faded, and Heisenberg appeared before everyone.
Glancing down at the flagstones cracking beneath his feet, then at the air around him that was practically on the verge of igniting,
Heisenberg furrowed his brow and retracted the aura of his armor.
Earlier in Nidavellir, the dwarves had never felt the heat, so he hadn't thought to restrain the armor's temperature.
Once the heat dissipated, Heisenberg willed the helmet to recede from his head, revealing his face.
Heimdall and Loki immediately bowed in salute.
Looking at the two bowing figures beside him, and then at Heisenberg, clad in that gothic dark battle armor,
Peter Quill, who had just picked himself up off the ground, swallowed hard.
He shoved his blaster back onto his thigh and, with a fawning grin, shouted at Heisenberg:
"Peter Quill of Earth pays his respects to His Majesty Odin!!!"
The moment the words left his mouth, Heimdall and Loki whipped their heads around, faces filled with pure admiration for Quill.
Even Loki's expression was one of someone desperately holding back laughter.
Seeing this, Quill instantly realized he'd messed up.
So he thought for a moment, ground his teeth in frustration, and with a plop, dropped to his knees.
As he knelt, he muttered under his breath without stopping:
"This ain't my first time kneeling, but ever since I came of age, no captain's ever beaten me to my knees!
If I didn't know you were the legendary, supremely mighty god, the eternal king of the Nine Realms, the cosmos-shaking conqueror His Majesty Odin, I would never, ever kneel!
Your Majesty, I confess, I come clean—I really am from outer space, but I'm not one of those space pirates, I'm a mercenary!
And I'm a homegrown son of the Nine Realms, an Earthling, Your Majesty!!!
Also, I never imagined Your Majesty would be so handsome and youthful—you're my idol forever!"
At this point, Quill gave a sheepish laugh and lifted his cuffed hands toward Heisenberg.
"So, idol Your Majesty, how about letting this old hometown boy go?!"
Listening to Quill's string of brainless babble, Heisenberg shot Heimdall a surprised look.
He'd only gone off to forge a suit of armor—how on earth had they managed to drag this damn clown all the way to Asgard?
Who was this guy?!
This was the legendary true protagonist of the Avengers!
The most notorious, genuine Father-Troubler of the Avengers movie universe!
This Avenger, with achievements far surpassing Loki's, had indisputably earned the title of the world's number one Father-Troubler!
After all, Loki had merely killed his biological father and imprisoned his adoptive father.
But this Chief Father-Troubler before him…
He'd not only killed his biological father and gotten his adoptive father killed in the process,
but had also taken part in killing his father-in-law…
/-\
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