Our Kind of Scoundrel

After making sure Angy is awake and okay, Misty makes her way to the back of the submarine to find where her father’s gotten to. Sure, Angy took immediate priority, because she was actually unconscious and Loki is an adult god who can probably take care of himself (recent events notwithstanding). She swings around the edge of a seat to perch next to him.

“So,” She says, grinning. “Good rescue?”

“It is definitely up there in my favorite rescues,” replies Loki as he holds a hand over the hole in his chest. “Next time, we should give the escapees *weapons*!” He snaps his fingers and manifests a small shiv. “Oh, looks like the heart is taking!”

Misty resists the impulse to try to peek around Loki’s fingers, because the oft-ignored common sense in the back of her brain tells her it will probably look gross, and not in a cool way.

“I’ll make the note for next time,” she says instead, although she doesn’t really have access to a lot of weapons. Or, if the base *does* have them, GAIA would probably not like Misty taking them for jailbreak reasons.

Unless it was a *very* good and important jailbreak. She redirects her thought to the issue at hand. Or heart, rather.

“Does it hurt, putting your heart back?” She asks, curious. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that’s easy, and while there are some stories about people taking their hearts *out,* there are fewer about putting them back in.

“Very much,” Loki says cheerfully. “Though it’s something I know I can recover from… like a bruise for a mortal!” The shiv transforms into a small dental probe and he taps at the back of his mouth. “It’sh noh sometin-” He pulls the probe out of his mouth. “It’s not something a godling like you should put yourself through.”

He tosses the probe behind him and it vanishes. “I- I appreciate the help from you and yours, Mistilteinn.” This gratitude seems unnatural to him, almost uncomfortable. But there is a shimmer in his eye and a vulnerability in his smile that assures it is genuine.

“I wasn’t planning on going around and handing my heart to people, don’t worry,” Misty assures him, and uses the light words and adjusting her cowboy hat to hide the way she wants to wince at his admission that it *does* hurt. Sure, it’s his own fault, but…well, she can’t really fault him for being an idiot at a casino, if that’s how he wants to have fun.

At his genuine thanks, MIsty’s smile softens and turns shy--half a year on Big Team hasn't been enough to get her used to people thanking her. “Hey, what’s family for?” She says, shrugging a shoulder, and moves on quickly. “And it was fun, getting to do a casino heist with everyone. Seems like everyone had a good time with it, too--even Angy, before whoever that lady was made her pass out.” The thought makes Misty scowl again, touching the crossbow at her wrist. “But she’s okay again now, and we even got a really big TV out of the deal.”

“Then it sounds like my bet paid off!” His wide smile screams ‘no harm, no foul’. Then it fades into a more thoughtful expression. “Sorry to hear about Angy…” Loki leans in close and places a parental hand on Misty’s shoulder. “I know how much she means to you…”

“I mean, *you* weren’t the one who was a sore loser and knocked her out,” Misty points out, although she does lean into the hand--that didn’t mean it was *nice* to see Angy knocked out in front of her. “She’s pretty great, isn’t she? She was actually the one who figured out where you were, because even though I couldn’t call you she could track where the magic was *trying* to go. All Violet and I had to do was get there, then. And she beat both that lady and the guy in the cowboy hat at blackjack.” It’s pretty clear that Misty could continue bragging about Angy for a *while,* and she’s reining herself in.

“And…yeah. She’s my best friend. I haven’t really had one of those before. It’s…really nice.” Which is a huge understatement, but the bundle of feelings Misty has around Angy feel indescribable, so she doesn’t bother. “I hope I get to see whenever she gets those *stupid* shackles off and gets to actually be herself, you know? I bet she’d be *magnificent.”*

Loki smiles. To think that just a few months ago, Misty’s heart had been guided by her feelings about the rokkr. He slides his hand down her arm and clasps her hands in his. “Friends like that are hard to come by, especially for beings like us. I’m beyond grateful you are filled to the brim in this way.”

After a moment, he removes Misty’s hat and ruffles her hair. “Once Angy becomes her *magnificent* dragon self, I’ll hold a celebratory feast in honor of your friendship.”

Misty smiles at the thought. “You’ll probably have to prepare a *lot* of food between the two of us, but that sounds like it would be great. I’ll look forward to it.” The conversation lapses into silence for a bit, Misty looking out the windows at the various mines Violet was avoiding, and remembers the other question she had.

“Oh--did you know that Yamato lady was running that place? The one who was friends with dad,” she clarifies, on the off chance there’s more than one woman named Yamato with a katana running around Halcyon. “Any idea what that’s about?”

Loki, in this moment of silence, had taken the time to adjust this outfit. A plunging neckline allowed for the hole in his chest to breathe, accelerating its closure. He had just finished when Misty’s questions were posed to him.

“Ah, yes, I knew Yamato was there. Though I didn’t think of her as the ‘on-the ground’ type. Back when Josh knew her, she was very behind-the-scenes. Even I would have called her conniving - disrespectfully, of course.”

Loki taps his chin in thought. “I saw my chance to mess with some powerful people and I went for it. But I’d imagine the goal for the event was just to schmooze, create connections for whatever scheme Yamato and her associates had brewing.

“Thankfully, Josh isn’t in with those kinds of scoundrels anymore. Just our kind.” A smirk and a wink to Misty follow. “I’m not surprised he hasn’t told you about any of that, he likes to leave the past in the past… And he acts like it’ll kill him if someone worries about him!”

Misty is hanging off his words, eyes wide. “He never talked about *anything* like this! I dunno, he always just acts like he’s boring, or says that it’s all in the past, but like, she’s still visiting him in the hospital, and now *this--*” she breaks off, throwing her hands up into the air. “I mean, this isn’t his fault, but she’s still supervillaining around Halcyon--or running a casino, I guess, which is like being a supervillain but less cool. So I totally get wanting to mess with them, I’m glad I got to rob that place,” she notes, as a digression. “But *still.* Do *you* know how he ended up friends with her?”

Sure, she had told her dad that she wasn’t going to go looking for information on Yamato, but in her defense she didn’t and then Yamato showed up running a casino that might be working with Bullseye, and Handler had been pretending to work for Bullseye, and that’s a tenuous connection but it’s enough to mean this is being *careful* and *gathering information about a threat,* not *being nosy.*

“I could tell you plenty of stories about how Josh was up to no good! Do you think I would have fallen for a *boring* man?” A mischievous twinkle enters Loki’s eyes. “Though I don’t think you’re old enough to hear some of the *spicer* details. I’m not in the business of corrupting the youth… anymore. Besides…” Loki stretches his arms and legs out, his divine physique extending his limbs far beyond the capacity of a mortal. Anyone would be forgiven if they thought he had turned into a large cat.

“They’re ultimately not my stories to tell. Best to hear it from the horse’s mouth. And if turning Josh into a horse helps him fess up, you let me know.”

Misty pouts, but the concept of her dad as a horse is funny enough that she breaks it to laugh.

“I know he’s not *boring,”* she stresses. “He just *acts* like he *was* boring. And it’s not like I’m a little kid anymore.” She crosses her arms. “But yeah, I’ll ask him about it. *And* I’ll tell him that you threatened to turn him into a horse if he didn’t answer,” she adds, and grins.