Midgardian Misadventures: Thor's Journal

Back to Thor.

A cheap, unlined, brown notepad that Brenna bought from the 7-Beleven filled with Norse writing and doodles.

## S6 - Character Generation

I’ve been in Midgard for less than a month, and wow have things started to happen. I met this girl who wielded Mjolnir for a bit after uh...some stuff happened at PowerUp, fought some draugr in the sewers (which seems to be a problem here a lot), got challenged to duels to the death twice (although the second one was from a frost giant who turned out to be pretty nice after he realized I wasn’t the original Thor). And I joined a thing called Big Team!

It started the first time that the Green Knight challenged me to a duel. Some Big Team members intervened (which Grandma wasn’t happy about -- it wasn’t a fair fight and Mjolnir went into bracelet mode in protest). But I didn’t agree to the duel in the first place which I think should have made it not a real duel from the beginning!

Anyway, that’s where I met Arcana, Reboot, and Faust. They’re very nice! I can’t wait to meet the rest of the team. They were the ones around when the Green Knight challenged me again and then kidnapped people into the sewers, and somehow got Draugr there? It was very strange. But Avalonians tend to be strange, at least from what I’ve heard.
One of the people kidnapped was Faust’s friend, Toni, and he’s amazing. We arm wrestled at PowerUp while the others showered off all the sewer gunk and washed their clothes.

Oh! Speaking of Avalonians, Gwendolyn du Lac lives here. I wonder if I’ll run into her. It was nice to meet her that one time she was in Asgard. I don’t know if she’ll remember me, or if she does, it’ll be as “Thor’s kid who wouldn’t shut up about that time I punched her dad when I was eight.”

I don’t know what it is, but I feel freer here than I ever did at home. Maybe it’s the power that Mjolnir gives me, or maybe it’s just not being around everyone? Like, I love everyone, and I know they love me, but maybe their protectiveness was a little more restrictive than I’d realized…

I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything! But maybe coming to Halcyon will be better for me than I ever would have thought…

I just wish I hadn’t needed to get this hammer and hurt Elli to get here…

## S6E9 - HONOR Thy Neighbor

Today, Loki pretended to be Boon and trapped me, Echo, Sabine, Jason, and Ophanim in Niflheim (not how I usually see Dad’s homeland), and Odin found me out. So did Heimdall. Loki was trying to restart the war with Avalon. And Odin doesn’t think it’s a big deal. I really think he needs to reassess what a big deal is.

I also dropped Mjolnir in poison water by accident. Grandma hasn’t stopped yelling at me for being careless and not being able to summon the hammer back yet since we got back to Midgard.

But a big thing now is that Odin expects me to come home and start actually being Thor. I’ve always known that running away to Midgard and avoiding my responsibilities (as much as I didn’t want them to begin with) was only temporary. But I really like it here. I’ve made some really good friends (including Sabine, who is very cool, she saved us from a wave of poison by turning it to stone). So I’ll stay for as long as I can get away with.

I do miss home...Dad and Hildr and Kori and Esben...but I can’t face them, and everyone else. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I don’t know what being Thor is supposed to be like, but I don’t think I’m it.

## S6E12 - Wrong Way Bettor

Psyrin (Julien), Serendipity (Jenny), Taxon and I were recruited by AEGIS Department of ODD to recover an Asgardian drinking horn today. The agents said it had been stolen, but I don’t know if that was true. It turns out that the Consortium, some magic organization, took it up to space. Which means that I GOT TO FLY A SPACESHIP IT WAS SO COOL. I flew it to the Watchtower. There was a person guarding a door we needed to get past, and I told the others that according to the movies I watched with Greta, all we needed was a clipboard and we could talk our way in. Taxon tried this and it didn’t work. I’m not sure why. It always works in the movies.
But it was fine because Serendipity’s friend Olive Quan was there. They work for the Consortium and were studying the drinking horn. I looked at it and it was, in fact, the Utgard drinking horn. And then some villains and my sister broke in to try and steal it. Julien stopped their leader from getting away with the horn. Julien is a little strange, but I like him. Elli tried to hit me with an ax but hit the wall of the space station instead. I tried to use magic to plug the hole, and I did! But I also made a new one. Olive Quan and Jenny stopped that one.
Snake Eyes was the leader. He is smug and too full of himself. I don’t like him. He also abandoned all of his companions. More reason to dislike him. (Elli was just with him to try and get the drinking horn back to Asgard.)
Elli and I told the Consortium that we were taking the drinking horn back to Asgard, and we talked. She’s still really angry, but she knows I didn’t do it on purpose and isn’t angry with me exactly. And she wants me to act like I deserve the mantle. I really don’t think I do, is the thing. Why Mjolnir picked me and not her makes no sense. It’s the only thing Grandma won’t talk my ear off about. Can it be talking my ear off if she’s talking inside my head? I’m not sure.
I do feel a little better after talking to Elli, though. Not about being Thor, just about what happened. Like I still feel bad about what happened, especially because it happened in the way that it did, but I feel like Elli’s and my relationship has healed a little. I don’t know that it can ever be the same as it was, but at least maybe it isn’t completely ruined.

## S6E38 - Approxi-Mate Cause

*Today I pretended to be a prison guard, a villain, and Thor.*

*Because that’s all I’m doing. Pretending. Not even an alien who has only heard rumors about Thor believed that I’m all there is. I don’t measure up.*

Brenna leaned back against the headboard of her bed, staring at the ceiling through a black eye. A mostly melted ziplock bag of ice was slowly leaking onto her bedspread, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She wanted to write more about the mission, but wasn’t sure what else to put. Instead, she mentally went through a list of people to ask for help putting makeup over it. She thought Greta might know, but both Greta and Beatrice would probably freak out if she showed up like this, even though it was for a mission. Well, kinda. Boon didn’t need makeup. Jenny was a robot, so probably didn’t get bruises. Julien was in space with Gala. Mel didn’t seem the type to cover up any injuries. Heimdall would probably ask questions and Brenna didn’t feel like explaining herself. Gala would know, but Brenna wasn’t ready to apologize for getting Gala to leave. Plus, Gala wouldn’t stop at teaching Brenna how to cover up a bruise. Brenna did feel bad. She would have loved to go get space ice cream with her sister and Julien.

“This wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been posturing about being so great,” Brenna grumbled. “Then Frenzy would have just left it alone, but noooo she had to go and pretend to be good at fighting and be undefeated so they’d want to fight her and I had to agree to fight them instead. This is all your fault,” she said to the bracelet. “I think they get stronger whenever they get hit. We didn’t stand a chance doing it your way.”

Brenna could feel the hammer trying to establish a connection, and sighed as she let it. Letting Grandma yell at her for being disrespectful to her elders couldn’t make her feel any worse than she already did.

To her surprise, the voice that came through the hammer wasn’t her Grandma’s. It was a masculine voice, deep and resonant. “You just need more training! You’ve only been Thor for a few months. In a few more, hitting them will be more than enough!”

“You don’t have a body anymore, you can’t understand how much this hurts.”

“I don’t think it’s your body that’s hurt, little one.”

That might be a little true, but Brenna didn’t feel like giving any ground. Maybe he didn’t mean to be, but this Thor was condescending. “I have a black eye.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Don’t you ever think that maybe not everything can be defeated by hitting it?”

“Pssh, don’t be silly. It’s always worked for us! If hitting it doesn’t work, you just need to hit it differently! Or harder! That’s always a good option. You should find our old belt. That’ll boost your strength! Should be enough to beat one alien.”

Brenna sighed. There was really no point in arguing with anyone in the hammer. She was right, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that a Thor was supposed to think.

There was a gentle knock on the door. “Brenna? I brought you new ice. Let me take a look at it?”

Brenna looked guiltily at the water spot on her bed and tilted the bag of melted ice so it stopped leaking. “Yeah, come on in.”

Calder opened the door and came to sit on Brenna’s bed next to her. After a careful examination of her face, they nodded. “That’s going to look awful for the next few weeks or so.”

“Do you...um...do you know how I could cover it up?”

They thought for a moment. “You could get some magical healing. Boon -- the Frithr -- would probably do that for you if you ask, and that way you don’t have to go back to Asgard for it. Or we could run to the 7-Beleven and try to figure out how Midgardian makeup works.”

“Have you ever used Midgardian makeup?”

“Nope,” they grinned and gently ruffled Brenna’s hair, “But I’d do it for my favorite little demi-sister.”

Brenna scrunched up her nose as much as she could without the bruise hurting and batted their hand away. “Stooooop.” When Calder’s hand was safely away from her hair, she sighed. “I saw Gala today.”

“Oh? Why was she in town?”

“Elli is sick, so HONOR sent Gala with a vehicle to pick us up from the AEGIS prison where we were letting this group of villains break out this other villain, but it was actually a different villain in disguise.”

Calder nodded like this made sense to them. “Does she still have that strange space Midgardian vehicle?”

Brenna snorted. “Yes! It’s so flashy. And the trunk pops up into a whole wardrobe! It came in handy because we had to dress up as villains in order to sneak into the villain group’s base, but really, it seems excessive?”

Calder chuckled. “Flashy and excessive. Sounds like Gala. I’m surprised she left you alone. Where did she go?”

Grimacing slightly, Brenna sighed. “She took Psyrin to get space ice cream. I uh, okay, so she also went inside the villain base disguised as a villain with us, and was boasting about her prowess and stuff, and the villain who the other villains busted out is actually this alien called Frenzy, and they need to fight someone really powerful in front of a crowd in order to complete a redemption ritual or something so they can go home. I met them a few weeks ago and they challenged me but I didn’t agree. They were about to start fighting Gala -- she was totally oblivious to the trouble she was causing of course -- and I told them that I’d fight them so that they wouldn’t attack Gala. So I had to get her out of there so she wouldn’t get hurt, and you know she would have tried to interfere. In her well-meaning way. But still, it would have ruined the agreement. So she got upset with me because I wouldn’t leave with her. And then I fought the alien, lost badly, and they said it wasn’t good enough of a fight to really count, so they’ll wait for a rematch in Molecyon.”

Calder listened attentively. “Are you sure that’s the only reason you didn’t want to hang around with her? She didn’t bring up anything you didn’t want to talk about? She’s very good at that.”

“Ugh, yeah, okay, she brought up Beatrice and Greta, but like, you know. She’s like that. And I’m NOT dating either of them so…” Brenna shrugged.

“Do you *want* to be dating either of them?” Calder asked.

Brenna squinted at her sibling for a moment, trying to figure out if they were asking a genuine question or just teasing her. She didn’t sense any teasing so she shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe? It’s not a no. It’s just,” Brenna gestured in front of herself incomprehensibly, “feelings.”

Calder nodded and patted her knee. “I understand. Put the new ice on your face, and I’ll make something for supper. And you should contact Gala to explain. Maybe she’ll come and teach you how to do makeup.”

Brenna started to look horrified at the thought, but the expression hurt to make so she settled for just shaking her head. “Absolutely not. I’ve avoided that for seventeen years, I’m not about to volunteer. She’d try to get me to wear lipstick and eye makeup, not just how to cover up a bruise.”

Calder shook their head, amused. “Suit yourself. But you should still talk to her.”

Brenna mumbled something noncommittal as Calder got up to leave, and closed her journal.