Chapter Text
After negotiating everything but her soul with Birdbrain for a ten-minute window, Maggie took a minute to take in what resources she had with her and how she was going to extract an addled beefcake with only two brain cells to rub together from a SHIELD base loaded for bear. Looking down at her custom Italian leather knee-high boots, designer jeans, and the sweater she had taken six months to carefully crochet (because she wanted something that fitted her broad shoulders, long arms, and overly adequate assets), she realized that she was not at all prepared for this.
"Miss," JARVIS interrupted her internal monologue of pessimism, "perhaps a retrieval of the bag Ms. Romonoff gifted you would be beneficial."
"What bag, JARVIS? Nat didn't give me a bag...?"
"The black leather with red piping that has your shoes in it, Miss. It has a secret compartment built into it." Of course it did, Maggie thought with a huff as she glared at the amused Jane before she slid down the rise of the hill and marched back towards the car.
"I should have known that being friends with a SHIELD agent would be beneficial and troublesome," she muttered under her breath as she pulled out the custom, armored catsuit and held it up for inspection. "Ugh, it's so fucking cold," she muttered as she stripped to her underwear and bra, pulled the obnoxiously skin-tight suit on, zipped up the front zipper before tying up her steel-toed hiking boots, and twisting her long braid up and securing with a special stiletto/hair spike (another gift from Nat). At this point, Jane had crept down the hill and inspected Maggie's battle-ready outfit with a surprised but leary look.
"You look like you're ready to go fight some vampires or something," the scientist stated in fascinated awe as Maggie started slipping weapons into the built-in sheaths and holsters, carefully checking the chargers on the repulsor pistols (it would be bad for everyone if she ended up in jail for murder) before holstering one on each leg, another in her right boot, and charge packs around her waist. She was probably about twenty to thirty pounds heavier with all the armor and weapons she was wearing.
"Miss? Agent Birdbrain is calling you."
"Put him on speaker, JARVIS," Maggie muttered distractedly as she threw the bag back into the car and put the suppression earplugs in each ear, which connected immediately to JARVIS.
"I'm ready when you are, Mags," Barton sing-songed jovially over the sound of the wind. He had gotten back into his crow's nest and was ready to make Agent's life more difficult since he had pulled Barton back early from his family vacation to babysit the anomaly in New Mexico and was a bit sore about it.
"Cool," Maggie replied as she closed the car door and did a few stretches to get used to the weight of the weapons and the feel of the suit. "I'm going to have J sync us up so I can leave my phone somewhere safe."
"Sounds good!"
They went through the checks, quickly deciding that they were clear to go. Maggie paused and turned towards Jane, "If it all goes to hell, go back to town and have JARVIS call Pepper and then Tony. Pepper first, JARVIS, I do not want my overprotective brother to come crashing down in New Mexico to exacerbate the whole situation." She did not want the calvary descending on New Mexico before Tony had the new element built, installed, tested, and cleared with Doctor Strange. All she needed was a sick Tony collapsing from lack of self-care.
"Of course, Miss, I would never!"
"You would..." Maggie replied knowingly before gripping Jane's shoulders. "This is extracting Thor only; I'm not getting any of your equipment or research, understood?"
"Yes," Jane replied woefully, looking down at her feet. "I just wanted more answers..."
Maggie hugged her, careful not to squeeze too hard and bruise the scientist on her armor and weapons. "I know, but sometimes it's better to wait and see instead of rushing to solve everything immediately." They pulled apart, and Jane nodded and carefully wiped the tears from the corner of her eyes before smiling wetly at Maggie.
"Good luck."
"Thanks, I'm going to need it. Ready, boys?"
"Yes, Miss."
"Ready, Raven!"
"Really, Hawkeye? What would our Spider say?"
"I would tell her she didn't move fast enough to give you your code name."
"Ugh..."
Birdbrain started the distraction by shooting the pins out of the scaffolding on the far side of the site, bringing down a section of the enclosure furthest from where the hammer was located and where Thor was being held, pulling most of the agents towards that area. Maggie carefully took down the three agents that remained in her path, fortunately, located too far apart for them to see each other. JARVIS had disabled a few key lights and looped the cameras in her path as she crept from shadow to shadow, following JARVIS's instructions and using Thor's previous path as a coverup for her tracks.
This takes me past the hammer, J, Maggie signed to the nearest camera, flicking her palms out in a universal frustrated gesture as she waited for a reply from her brother's bot-son.
"I know, Miss, but it's the shortest path to your target," JARVIS replied succinctly, encouraging her to move faster since they were on a time crunch, and it was only a matter of time before Agent realized something was happening. The man was highly intelligent and observant and could take down Nat on a good day. Plus, Maggie wasn't in the mood to test how well she had improved her hand-to-hand training in the last few months...
"Get ready, Raven. Cheese has moved out of the interrogation room and towards our distraction. You have less than three minutes before he comes your way."
Maggie pulled out her repulser gun, the stock reading her biosignature, activating it, and she crawled through the ripped plastic sheeting that had enclosed the area around the hammer. She checked the area for agents and slid under the walkway, just a few short feet from the hammer. As she moved towards the stairs and the space under the walkway and tubes towards the room where Thor was being held, she paused and felt something tug at her center, near her heart. Gasping, she clutched her solar plexus as she gritted her teeth in an attempt to ignore the pain and ache that had manifested.
"Raven! Report!" Clint's breathless voice demanded as she gasped for breath, JARVIS's equally worried voice overlapping with the archers.
"I'm—" she gasped as she turned towards the hammer. The runes were glowing gold and pulsing as they called to her. The wind picked up and whipped the plastic off the outside of the containment area. It spun harder and faster, picking up speed as the clouds above gathered and lightning ripped across the sky in verdant green light. The sharp crack of a close lightning strike rattled the metal tubes of the scaffolding as she attempted to focus on pulling away from the call.
"Altansarnai Katsu..." the wind screamed as it picked up to frightening speeds, and lightning ripped across the sky before striking straight down, hitting the tip of the metal scaffolding, causing the electricity to pulse, flicker, and then spectacularly fail. The whoomph of the air blowing outwards from around the hammer slid around her as if an invisible pointed shield had been placed in front of her, cutting the dust and debris to either side of her rigid form as she leaned towards the hammer, the pull dragging her will to move closer.
"I-"
"Miss-!"
"Maggie-!"
A few feet seemed like a mile, and the wind whipped around her, somehow leaving her in the eye of the storm. Plastic, dust, and gravel drowned out the screaming of JARVIS and Clint in her coms as she moved slowly and painfully towards the glowing artifact that whispered of home, of knowing, of her true self.
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One final step, her feet shoulder-width apart, the handle even with her solar plexus and the pull of something... she took one deep breath, reached out, grasped the handle, and pulled.
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Pain.
Excruciating pain.
Liquid fire up and down her bones, twisting around her flesh and melting her skin... Numbness in her fingers... her toes... heat. so much heat... hothothothothotterhottterhottertoohottoohot! She screamed as lighting ran through her veins, activating long dormant powers and re-writing her DNA as the Entity awakened and her powers were unleashed.
"It's about time you got around to coming back," a young voice stated petulantly, the click of China on China a reprimand before a mature voice scoffed.
"Time... pah," an elder replied, "there is no right nor wrong; there is only what is."
"Only because you appear to be the oldest does not mean you are the wisest," the mature voice answered, and the young voice agreed.
"Hello?" The Midgardian known as Margaret Stark asked the voices in the black, her voice echoing, "Where am I?"
"The place between..."
"...the time before..."
"... the black after the light." The voices replied as one.
The light flared, and the Asgardian known as Sigyn Njǫrðrdottir found herself seated at a tea table reminiscent of the one she had often shared with Frigga, the tea set of similar make of something from Kamar-Taj, but the silverly liquid that filled the cups was not tea. Three female beings sat across from her with her face... one was elderly at the edge of passing on from the living, the second was just a bit older than her current state, and the last was younger, just at the cusp of when things had all gone to Helheim in a bloody handbasket.
"You honor me," Altansarnai Katsu, Crown Princess of Vanaheim, stated with conviction as she bowed from her chair to The Norns, the three beings responsible for shaping the lives of all beings in the Universe and nourishing Yggdrasil with the water from Urðarbrunnr to prevent the collapse of the cosmos before the start of Ragnarök and the manifestation of the One Below All.
"You are us, and we are you," they replied as one before sipping the water from Urðarbrunnr. The three were in perfect sync, mirrors of Margaret/Sigyn/Altansarnai at three key parts of her life cycle. "And you must go back. The Entity is awakened, and you must do your duty."
"What duty?" She asked frantically as she cycled through a twisted mass of memories from all three of her lives, attempting to separate one memory from another while scrambling to block herself from a fourth... overwhelmed she crushed her cup, the silver liquid puddling in the remaining curve of the base of the cup. The Infinity Stones twinkled up at her from the shard before rising from the liquid and circling in front of her.
"Preventing the end of all things," they replied before she was pushed back by an unseen force, tumbling into the blackness below.
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Maggie Katsu Sigyn blinked against the glare of a glowing Mjölnir clutched in her right hand while she attempted to bring everything back under her control. Her heavy breaths clouded the air with steam as she brought her surging powers back under control while she knelt in the quickly drying mud surrounding the rock the stupid hammer had fused with when it impacted.
She had no idea how long she had taken to carefully bring herself back into herself, lowering her internal temperature to something within a believable humanoid degree and winding her magicks back under her skin, but when she finally took a moment to take in her physical appearance, she was angry to find that she was no longer wearing what she had donned before touching the stupid mystical hammer much less her familiar Asgardian armor or even her hated Vanir ceremonial plating... instead, she was wearing a female version of Thor's armor.
"You have to be shitting me," she spat in Midgardian English before reaching up to see what was wrapped around her head and framing her eyes with her free hand. Instead of the curved helm from Asgard she usually wore for court functions or the massive disk she wore on Vannahem, her fingers caught on the winged helm that Thor usually wore. Her fingers skimmed down, dragging along her hair, snagging on warrior braids threaded with beads and bones, the auburn of her hair contrasting with the blood red of the short cape tucked into the pauldrons. With a growl, she brought Mjölnir up to her face and glared at it.
"What the fuck, Mjölnir? You know perfectly well that we've had this discussion before... give me back my armor," She hissed under her breath to the blocky thing, unaware that her light and fire show had brought all the agents to the yard/open area. "If you don't release me from your hold, I shall be forced to take you to Eitri and have him melt you down to slag. Don't think that I won't!" She growled with an angry shake, the sizzle of the magicks in the hammer stinging her fingers and forcing her to take a better grip as the click of a gun being cocked brought her attention up to the agents that surrounded her.
"Why does doing favors for Thor always end up with me wearing hateful red armor?" She asked rhetorically as she grimaced at the agents before standing, unbalanced by the unwieldy Mjölnir. "You know that I'm better with a sword and shield," she hissed at the stupid thing stuck to her hand, hoping that it would shift to a more usable weapon or release her from its thrall so she could use her own weapons. After a second, she gave up on the thing, giving into her wishes, heaved a huge sigh, and decided that the paperweight would have to do if she was going to get Thor and leave this place before Agent Cheese figured out who she was.
"Fine, let's deal with these guys and then fetch the god of impetus so we can get the fuck out of here," she muttered in Vanir under her breath at the stubborn hammer, "but could you at least get me out of the red? You know how much trauma that brings back." There was a reason that she had done everything in her power not to wear her mother's colors, but the stupid mystical sledgehammer didn't give a flying whit for her feelings, and the red remained, and Mjölnir didn't even flicker. "Melted down. First fucking thing..." Sigyn threatened before she huffed a defeated sigh, rolled her eyes, summoned a fireball in one hand, and raised Mjölnir to counterbalance. "Incapacitate only... no death... we like these guys... maybe..."
She took a stronger stance and rolled her shoulders.
"Ok, boys, let's bring it!"