[ video | un: trickster ]

[dothelokimotion]

[ The feed opens up to Loki, dressed in a white shirt and black tie and slacks. He seems to be in a facility somewhere in Riverview, one that might not be familiar to most. He taps a pencil on a clipboard, his bid to look professional. Even his hair is combed back, a few strands tied together with a silver clasp. ]

Greetings. I work at the Gramarye Research Facility for Magic and I was hoping to get some examples of magic taken place in Riverview. Any will do, even ones where your own magic has clashed with the rules of this reality. If you could make it short and precise, I would be most . . . grateful.

Comments

[ex_clobbers559]

Well, not everybody would share that, would they? Whether it made sense or not.

( A beat. It's still so painful to pretend like she has no idea how stuff works. )

Every seen Stargate? Like that. Interplanetary transportation.

[dothelokimotion]

That is their decision, not mine.

No. What is a Stargate? Why would there be a gate simply for transportation? That seems oddly primitive.

[ex_clobbers559]

Mm, if creating a wormhole to travel wherever you want can be called primitive, I'd disagree. And want to see that more advanced tech, btw.

The one in the movie used hieroglyphics depicting various constellations as coordinates. Locking in the right ones opened a wormhole to a desert planet.

Something tells me that destination probably wasn't the only possible one. Anyway! That sort of thing would be handy for sending people back to their proper wolrds. Whether they'd be in the proper dimension or era, though—

( She breaks off, having nerded out way too much for one sitting. )

[dothelokimotion]

It is for me. Wormholes are notoriously unstable and often need a power source. And why hieroglyphics?

[ex_clobbers559]

Wait! So then how do your people get around? I'm entirely curious now. To connect the portals to an alien who the Ancient Egyptians called their sun god.

What the film proposed was that what humans knew to be "gods" were really aliens who had come, given them knowledge for a while, been worshipped by them--and then left. There's a whole series about that on the History channel, too.

( Which though she won't admit it, is far more possible than humans might ever dream. )

[dothelokimotion]

There are weak spots between every plane of reality. You need to have the energy to tap into them to move from one plane of existence to the next. Larger leaps require at least one focus point - a place where the energy is channeled to other points to move you to any location you require.

[ Ah. Ye olde Alien Theory. Loki is very familiar with it. ]

It was a simpler time.

[ex_clobbers559]

Those leaps almost sound like they're done without an object to channel the energy at the opposite point. Is it magic that does it, or something like harnessing a star or the core of a planet?

( Because if kinetic energy in terms of speed won't do the trick, the source has to be larger and different in nature. )

I wouldn't know. I wasn't around. ( She pauses and asks innocently: ) Were you?

[dothelokimotion]

Magic is a type of energy. I'm not sure what other substitutes are there, but certainly they exist.

[ That attempt was transparent. ]

I'm well versed in history.

[ex_clobbers559]

Figuratively I know that, but I've never interacted with or seen magic in action before to tell for sure. Being human, and all. Most definitely, they do.

But anything's better than harnessing the core of a world for anything.

( Consequences of that tend to be dire.

Huh. She totally doesn't buy his reply, given what he's talked about so far. She's well-versed enough in human history to know magic is merely superstition to them. And aside from metahumans, they're incapable of hopping dimensions without the aid of technology.

What's his story? )

Interesting.

[dothelokimotion]

Harnessing cores leads to instability and the ultimate dissolution of a world. I think that would be anyone's last resort.

[ Not that Loki would shed a tear if Riverview were to collapse with all its denizens, but with so many heroes watching . . . it's not viable. ]

Knowing history? Perhaps. It is a dry subject and people have very fixed views on them.

[ex_clobbers559]

I'm hoping mankind never gets to that point. We're better than that.

( Her own people were blind. greedy and arrogant when it came to that. And when they'd been confronted with the result of it, they'd continued to be blind. )

( Is it? I mean it's full of bias, because there's three sides to every story. It's written as the writer sees it, not as it is. )

( Which to her, as a reporter, is equally fascinating and abhorrent. )

[dothelokimotion]

No one is better than anything unless they choose to be. There is no breaking point. The point is well within, a living, breathing thing.

[ His distaste for humanity has ebbed. It wasn't particularly strong to begin with, born out of frustration and Thor's newfound love. Loki is a jealous, envious creature and he knows this better than he knows what lies under his skin. He hates humanity because it's easy. Asgard is harder to hate because the hate ties knots over his heart, but his words are no less true. ]