strangetrip | [GP] Check-in Day

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[GP] Check-in Day

The wheel of the year turned and turned and Curnen found herself at an anniversary of sorts that she flatly didn't want to be remembering but got stuck on a loop of anyway.

This time there was no taking the hell off into the wilderness, though. Nor were there endless, circular recitations of "The Queen of Argyll." Rather than be poisoned by the memory of someone she still hated like everloving fuck, she focused on remembering the friend she'd lost. And besides this being Kash's song, she figured it was never a bad time around here for "John Barleycorn." Perched on the roof with her guitar, she sang of John Barleycorn's dying and rising again, subtle magic weaving into her voice to lead anyone lost in their little bubble world this way.

There was three men come out of the west their fortunes for to try,
And these three men made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn must die,
They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in, threw clods upon his head,
And these three men made a solemn oath John Barleycorn was dead.

It was Kash's song, in her mind, but you talked to half the people around here and it wasn't a bad fit for them, either. From her vantage point, she watched the road.

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Peter has never heard of the Einherjar before. He stores that name and information away for later. He might have asked about them had Greek gods and demigods had not been brought up. It was hard not to be distracted by that.

"So you have Greek gods and Norse ones?" he asks. He's not sure he can imagine more gods on Earth than they had already. "Whoa."

Peter attempts to refocus. "So how did you become a valkyrie?"

"I have never met the Greek gods, but a friend of mine has a cousin who's mother is Athena."

Sam didn't think it was stranger than anything else in the world at this point. She was, quite frankly, surprised that the Norse gods and the Greek gods could share space together. The gods she had met were anything by humble.

She debated on how to answer his question.

"When I was fourteen, I saved some people from a frost giant. Odin appeared and asked and I agreed."

"So you're a superhero too?"

It sounds like it. Valkyrie, too, was something of a superhero if the tales he'd heard about her were true. It didn't seem too far off that an entire legion of them could be their own superhero team -- not much unlike the Avengers.

"I'm not sure I'd call myself that."

She smiled politely, but she felt like she wasn't good enough to be a "superhero."

"Back home, people can't really see through what we call glamour. Basically, their brains can't really handle what they're seeing so they see normal where I might see a frost giant. Most of the time, everyone is oblivious to what's going on around them. My friend fought a fire giant on a bridge in public and everyone ten minutes later called it a freak storm."

"That's really cool!" he says. "It's gotta come in handy when you're trying to keep your identity a secret." Costumes could only do so much and as far as Peter knows, he's the only masked superhero in his timeline.

"You said most of the time. What happens during that not-most of the time?"

"Sometimes they go crazy or they see what's really there and think they're crazy. Usually it means they're either a demigod or touched in some way by them."

She glanced down at her axe hanging by her side. There were Norse ruins all over the handle and blades.

"I'm assuming you can see my axe. If this place is as strange as it sounds, everyone here must already accepted strange as common occurrence otherwise your brains would have melted by now."

Peter peers at the weapon. He knows enough from Loki's antics to know that those are Norse runes, but not enough to know what any of them actually mean.

"Yeah, things are -- you know, they're pretty crazy," he says. "Back home, there weren't really people who had powers or anything. There were a few, but nothing like here. Now it's weird if you don't have some sort of special power or ability."

"Are there any people here who don't?"

It sounded to Sam that it might be a pattern worth investigating if everyone here was special in some way.

"Does that mean you have something special about you?"

"Me?" Peter gestures to himself. "Yeah, I was bitten by a spider and now I have spider powers."

He's not exactly sure how weird that sounds to Samirah, but if she comes from a place where gods give people powers, it's probably not terribly weird.

Hopefully she doesn't hate spiders.

"You got bit by a spider and now have spider powers."

Samirah looked Peter up and down, but she knew well enough appearances were deceiving. She wondered what powers a spider might have.

"So then, are you a superhero in your world?"

"Yeah, I'm Spider-Man." Maybe he didnt win points for originality, but at least he was direct. You knew what to expect.

"I've been doing it for like... two, two and a half years now?"

"Sounds like we are in vaguely similar boats."

She would trust he had skill if he was at it for over two years. She knew she didn't necessarily look like much on first glance either and it worked in her favor often.

"Is there a need for many superheroes here? Or is there some other way people occupy their time? Mr. O'Neill said people have tried to find a way out, but haven't discovered it yet."

"There was an attack by these weird undead creatures back in the summer," he says, trying to remember exactly when. "June or July. They were undead, like in Lord of the Rings. Other than that, it's been pretty peaceful. SOmetimes portals to other worlds open up, but I don't think that's happened since last June or May." Peter has to keep straining to remember. Everything feels like it happened such a long time ago.

"The undead are no joke... but I'm glad to hear it was taken care of."

The portals had her attention for a little longer. She wondered if there was a way to use that sort of opening to find her way back to one of the Nine Realms. Sam went silent and thought and then she sighed.

"I really hope it's true that time isn't the same here... "

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if time is moving at the same pace, then I'm away from my friends right now while we're trying to do something very important. Plus my grandparents will worry and so will Amir and.... it would just be really inconvenient for everyone."

She did not know if she could explain a long absence if it were days on end.

"Tony and Ned are both from the same timeline as I am and further along, but as far as they know, I was never even missing back home," he says. Peter attempts to offer Samirah an encouraging smile. "I think we'll be okay."

At least he hopes so.

She smiled. She appreciated Peter's words and would hold onto them. Sam had to have faith things happened for a reason. She would trust this was some big plan from Allah and go with it for now.

"Thank you... I'm glad people here are friendly. I'm also glad this hotel looks to be fairly normal, if not really colorful."

"Weird stuff happens sometimes, but it's not bad," Peter concedes. "Did Mr. O'Neill tell you about the boundaries at all?"

"A little. He mentioned that people have tried to escape too.... I have to admit I plan to try as well, even if it's not going to work."

She had to try for herself in order to feel like she had done everything, she thought. She looked at Peter.

"I'm assuming someone else here can fly and has tried to go straight up, right?"

"Yeah, I know Tony and Thor tried," he says, the name Tony feeling weird and unnatural. He'd moved across three different names for Tony in the over half-year Tony had been here, and though Tony came to him far more naturally than it had in the past, when he moved onto Tony's latest title, Tony reverted to being one those names that didn't feel quite right in his mouth when he said it. "I know Thor tried teleporting, too, using the, uh -- using the Bifrost."

"I coincidentally just came from there. We were speaking to Heimdall for some help... It's troubling it can't be used here, but that probably means we're really isolated wherever we are."

She did not like feeling so confined. However, Sam was thankful she still had powers. If they were taken away again, she would be very unhappy.

"You wouldn't happen to know where Thor is staying here, would you?"

"Yeah, he's staying in room 174. It's called Krazy Dazy, so it has these pink flowers on it. If you go out that way--" Peter gestures. "--and out the door, then up the stairs, you should see it on your left."

Samirah took mental note of the directions and then nodded when she decided she knew where to go if she wanted to seek Thor out.

"Hopefully your version is a little more... polite, than mine."

"Well, he's not really impolite," Peter says. Peter would probably rate him at average levels of politeness, at least from their timeline. Who knew whether or not that'd register as polite in Samirah's world. "What's your Thor like?"

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