Intertwine

31 - Special Trickster Nose

ALINA

The house was empty. We walked in, guns out, ready to fire but there was nobody there. Loki was the first to spot the pictures though. He took one off the wall, a photo of Roara in her garden and looked at it. 

"I'd known they knew where she lived, but this?" Loki nodded to the pictures, "This is..."

"This is insane." Tony took a photo off the wall as well and looked at it.

Thor almost smiled as he gazed at a photo of Roara. "I remember this day." He said in a low voice. "She'd had a good day that day."

Loki snapped his attention away from the photo in his hands. "What do you mean that day?"

Tony put his photo on the side table next to the door. "So they were long-term stalking her through the centuries. What else is new?" 

We walked down the hallway. Thor and I Steve went into the living room. Loki and I continued down the hall, with Tony going upstairs.

"It's blocked off." I muttered. "There should be more corridors, it's a big house." I pushed open the kitchen door. 

It took both of us a minute to take in the scene we were looking at. The two cups of cold tea, the seats facing each other that were pushed back from the table, and the gun on the side counter. I could see the used bullets on the floor, four of them all in the same place. 

"Can you sense anything?" Loki asked me. "Any blood?"

I closed my eyes and looked around. No blood. There was sweat on the gun handle, saline on the floor, saliva on the rims of the cups. I turned around slowly. I opened my eyes. 

"No signs of a physical altercation. Whatever those bullets hit was... well it was pretty bulletproof. More than bulletproof I'd say." I bent down and picked one up, passing it to Loki. "That's not just a normal impact. That's the way bullets look after hitting something like Cap's shield."

The bullet clinked as Loki placed it on the table to examine the tea. He took a sniff.

"This one was hers." He told me. 

"How the hell do you know that?" I asked. "Can you like sense her presence?"

He gave me a look which told me that was definitely not the case before explaining, "Her lipstick is on the inside of the rim." 

"Oh."

He sniffed the cup again. "But..." He reached for the other one and sniffed it as well. I crossed my arms.

"Do you have like heightened Asgardian smell senses?"

He gave me another cold and annoyed look."No. Just the nose of a trickster." He opened the teapot and sniffed ad Tony came in.

"What the hell is he doing?" Tony stood beside me and whispered as we watched the strange ritual Loki was performing, going through every object on the table and sniffing it.

"He's using his special trickster nose." I informed Tony sarcastically. "It's a very clever technique used only by the most highly advanced tricksters."

Tony raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms."Oh yeah, what level is he, because I too am a high level trickster."

"I believe he is level egotistical God."

"Well I'm playboy billionaire. He'll get to learn how to evade the US tax system in the next module."

Loki looked up at us, the sugar bowl in his hands, and said, "Could you two perhaps shut up? You are so very annoying."