Interlude: Truths Revealed
"I want our best interrogators on this." I growled into the communicator, pacing the command deck as holographic readouts flickered around me. "You are in charge, Barton. I want to know what the fuck that agent was thinking when he attacked our data dump against my explicit orders."
"Of course, Director Fury." Barton replied without hesitation. Calm. Professional. Exactly what I needed right now.
The channel cut, leaving only the low hum of the helicarrier's engines and the quiet murmur of technicians pretending very hard not to listen. I stopped pacing and rubbed at the bridge of my nose, trying to force my thoughts into something resembling order.
This was a clusterfuck of historic proportions.
An honest-to-God alien invasion in New York City would have been bad enough on its own. Entire city blocks leveled, civilians dead, footage already spreading across every screen on the planet. I could already see the hearings coming, the accusations, the political shitstorm that would hit SHIELD from every direction.
But of course it didn't stop there.
Because on top of all that, an unknown enhanced individual—one powerful enough to shut down the invasion outright—had appeared out of nowhere, claimed to be a devil, and closed the portal before the World Security Council could panic and nuke Manhattan off the map. That alone set off every alarm in my head.
Then came the rest.
He fooled Stark's AI. Jarvis. That particular nightmare was going straight to the top of my priority list. If someone could bypass Tony's tech that cleanly, it meant every system we trusted was suddenly suspect.
He helped Loki escape.
That was the part that really cemented my suspicions. I'd been ready to believe he was some independent variable, some wildcard with his own agenda. But helping Loki vanish into thin air? That smelled like an ally. A contingency. Someone she'd arranged in advance in case things went sideways.
And then there was the Scepter.
And the goddamn Tesseract.
Him walking away with both artifacts—artifacts we thought we understood—pushed this situation from dangerous to catastrophic. Especially after what Natasha brought back from that interview.
Because after scouring every database we had, burning favors, pulling files so classified half my staff didn't know they existed, we came up with exactly one lead on this unknown entity.
A piece of paper.
A literal, physical scrap of paper he handed Natasha after casually revealing information he had no business knowing.
The World Security Council wanted him captured immediately and the artifacts recovered. As if that was a reasonable request. As if we hadn't just watched him teleport at will and display enough raw power that anyone short of maybe Thor would just be marching to their deaths.
Idiots.
Natasha, to her credit, had suggested something smarter. A conversation. He'd shown interest in making her an offer—whatever the hell that meant—and she wanted to use the opportunity to squeeze him for everything he knew.
I'd allowed it, if only because brute force was clearly off the table.
And what an illuminating fucking interview it turned out to be.
I wanted—desperately—to dismiss the whole thing as an elaborate con. Cosmic smoke and mirrors layered on top of a flashy rescue to distract us while he made off with half our classified toys. I'd seen plenty of enhanced lunatics spin convincing fairy tales before.
But Thor ruined that hope.
Not intentionally. He didn't even sound certain. That was the problem.
He confirmed that some of what the man said existed as legends even among the Asgardians. Old myths. Fragmentary stories. Things half-remembered and rarely spoken of. And the fact that our resident god of thunder—an alien prince who had lived for over a thousand years—didn't know the full truth was terrifying in its own right.
If beings like Thor only knew the cliff notes, then whatever sat above them on the cosmic food chain was far outside our weight class.
The offer itself was equal parts enlightening and alarming. He didn't posture. Didn't threaten. He spoke calmly, clinically, as if he were discussing logistics instead of rewriting humanity's place in the universe. He laid out his people's capabilities with the confidence of someone who had never needed to lie about strength.
My tech teams have been tearing through the transcripts ever since, cross-referencing every claim, every implication. If even half of it holds up, we don't just have a new problem—we have a category-five existential crisis on our hands.
Immortality alone was enough to tempt anyone with a pulse. Soldiers. Politicians. Scientists. Hell, even I might have listened a little longer than I should have. But immortality also meant time. Time to plan. Time to refine. Time to infiltrate.
Millennia of it.
And that was the part that kept needling at me.
If devils were real—and it still felt absurd to even think that sentence, let alone believe it—then they didn't just have power. They had experience. Thousands of years to build networks, perfect manipulation, embed themselves into civilizations as they rose and fell.
And given how every story ever told about devils emphasized lies, contracts, and subtlety, I'd eat my eyepatch if they didn't already have spies and agents buried deep in every major power structure on Earth. Governments. Corporations. Maybe even SHIELD itself.
Hearing about their raw power stripped away what little comfort I had left. Their weakest outperforming a super soldier wasn't just a scary statistic—it was a reality check. Their strongest being effectively untouchable meant deterrence was a fantasy.
If they ever decided to come for us openly, there would be no heroic last stand. No clever countermeasure. Just annihilation.
And the way he talked about it—about erasing countries, about punching a hole clean through the planet—so casually, like a man discussing the weather, drove the point home harder than any threat ever could.
This wasn't bluster.
This was scale.
Which is why, despite how much it went against every instinct I had, despite how much it pissed me off to gamble with assets I couldn't control, I gave Natasha the green light.
I told her to accept the offer.
Because if even a fraction of that power could be aligned with us—managed, observed, leveraged—then it changed the board entirely. And if that meant letting Natasha manipulate our so-called data dump, let him think he had freer access than he really did, then so be it.
In this new game, refusing to play wasn't an option.
Of course, that was only half the problem. Because when it rains, it fucking pours.
The Tesseract and the Scepter had already been nightmares before any of this came to light. Dangerous, poorly understood artifacts that we barely kept contained even when we thought we understood the rules they operated under. One of them had powered Red Skull's weapons program—technology so far ahead of its time that its echoes still showed up in our labs seventy years later. The other had turned some of the most disciplined, loyal men I had ever served with into glassy-eyed puppets with nothing more than a touch and a whisper.
Those alone should have been enough to keep me up at night.
Then he went and shattered my entire understanding of the universe and humanity's place in it like it was nothing.
God‑fragments.
Six stones. Not metaphors, not poetic exaggeration—literal remnants of a primordial being that was creation itself. Unlimited power, broken into concepts so fundamental that human language barely scratched the surface. Space. Time. Power. Mind. Soul. Reality. Not tools. Not weapons. Principles of existence, wrapped in pretty little containers and passed around like trophies.
And we had one.
We were using it.
We were plugging the Tesseract into reactors, into weapons platforms, into experimental drives, treating it like an exotic battery because it glowed blue and responded well to wires and equations. We congratulated ourselves for being clever, for reverse‑engineering alien tech, never stopping to ask whether the thing we were studying even belonged to the same category of reality as the instruments we were using to measure it.
SHIELD. HYDRA. Loki. Different flags, same hubris.
We were all playing with fire, and the only reason the planet was still intact was blind, cosmic luck. The devil said the Space Stone had absolute authority over space itself. Not movement. Not travel. Space. Distance. Position. Location as a concept.
How close did we come to disaster?
How many times did some overworked scientist crank the power a little higher, chasing better yields, without realizing they were one calibration error away from folding half the planet inside out? How close did we get to accidentally teleporting the Earth into interstellar void because someone wanted faster weapons output? How many safeguards failed silently because the rules we thought applied simply… didn't?
And worse—how close did we come to destroying more than just the planet?
The universe?
The thought sat heavy in my chest, cold and suffocating. We hadn't been reckless because we were evil. We had been reckless because we were ignorant. And ignorance, when paired with power on that scale, was indistinguishable from malice.
We didn't just mishandle the Tesseract.
We were lucky it hadn't decided to remind us what it really was.
I really didn't know what to do about them.
The World Security Council wanted the artifacts back, plain and simple. Orders came down clean and cold: recover the Tesseract, recover the Scepter, use whatever means were necessary. On paper, it was the obvious call. SHIELD lost custody of two strategic assets, and leadership wanted control reestablished as fast as possible.
But for the first time in a long while, following orders felt like the wrong move.
The devil had been right about at least one thing, and I hated that fact more than anything else he'd said. We weren't ready to play at that level. Not technologically, not politically, not psychologically. Hell, maybe humanity wasn't ever meant to handle forces that fundamental. We barely managed nuclear weapons without threatening ourselves into extinction every other decade. Giving us god‑fragments felt less like progress and more like a cosmic joke.
At the same time, letting an uncontrollable unknown walk away with that kind of power made my skin crawl. I didn't trust him—not fully. No sane person would. He talked calmly, offered deals, even showed restraint, but power like that warped intentions whether someone meant it to or not. Good intentions didn't stop disasters; they just made them harder to predict.
I needed influence. Leverage. Some way to make sure he didn't decide tomorrow that Earth was an acceptable casualty in some larger plan. And right now, Natasha was the only thread I had tying him back to something resembling accountability. I could only hope she'd be able to give me more than just information—some way to keep a hand on the steering wheel before this went completely off the rails.
Then there was the other revelation. The one that kept gnawing at the back of my mind.
Another Infinity Stone had been sitting on Earth for centuries.
Guarded by the Sorcerer Supreme—whoever the hell that was—and SHIELD hadn't known a damn thing about it. No leaks. No anomalous energy signatures. No whispers in intelligence circles. Just… nothing. If the devil was right—and Thor's half‑remembered legends suggested he was—then someone had been successfully hiding a piece of God for longer than the United States had existed.
That scared me more than the invasion.
If those stones were even half as powerful as he claimed, then I didn't want any of them near Earth. Not one. Certainly not three. The planet already sat at the crossroads of too many unknowns, too many cosmic eyes turning our way. We didn't need to paint a bigger target on ourselves.
Pierce had his people quietly looking into the Time Stone, digging through every archive, every classified myth, every unexplained disappearance that smelled even remotely supernatural. I authorized it, but I wasn't optimistic. If someone had managed to keep that thing hidden for centuries—through empires, wars, satellites, and surveillance states—then they weren't amateurs.
And if they didn't want to be found, we weren't going to find them.
"Sir, they are waiting for you," an agent said, standing just far enough away to pretend this was a routine update and not a meeting that could decide the direction of the entire planet.
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose for just a moment before nodding. "Yeah. Let's get this over with."
The walk through the helicarrier felt longer than usual. Bulkheads still bore the scars of the battle—scorched panels hastily replaced, exposed wiring hidden behind temporary plating, the faint smell of burnt ozone lingering in the recycled air. Damage control teams moved with quiet efficiency, but the carrier felt wounded, like a battleship that had survived by luck as much as design. It was flying, technically operational, but everyone aboard knew how close we'd come to losing it.
The meeting room doors slid open with a soft hiss.
Stark stood off to one side, half-leaning against a console, eyes locked onto a looping projection of Loki's disappearance. He rewound it again, slowed it down, enhanced it, running Jarvis through every diagnostic he could think of. His jaw was set in that way that meant he'd found a problem he didn't like—and problems Tony Stark didn't like tended to become obsessions.
"Whatever he used to blind Jarvis," Stark muttered without looking up, "it's not tech. Or if it is, it's tech that laughs at everything I know."
That alone was a nightmare. I already had orders drafted to have every second of available footage combed through again, frame by frame, by every analyst and algorithm we had. If there was even the smallest tell, I wanted it found.
Banner was conspicuously absent. Stark hadn't volunteered his location, and I hadn't pushed. Right now, the Hulk was a problem I could afford to postpone. There were bigger fires burning.
Thor paced like a caged storm, heavy boots thudding against the deck with every turn. His movements were restrained, but the tension radiating off him was unmistakable. He was worried—about Loki, about what had been taken, about forces even Asgard barely understood. Despite everything his sister had done, despite the invasion, the deaths, the chaos, he still cared. That made him predictable, but it also made him dangerous if things went wrong.
I really didn't need an angry god on top of everything else.
Rogers and Natasha were seated at the table. Rogers sat straight-backed, hands folded, eyes sharp and attentive. He looked like a man trying to reconcile modern horrors with an old sense of duty, and I could practically hear the questions forming behind his calm expression.
Natasha, on the other hand, looked relaxed—too relaxed. Legs crossed, posture casual, face unreadable. The kind of calm that came from already knowing more than she was letting on. When I stepped inside, both of them turned their attention to me at the same time.
"So, Batboy?" Stark said at last, breaking the silence like he always did—loudly, irreverently, and with just enough humor to keep everyone from dwelling too long on the implications.
"He introduced himself as Millicas Gremory," Rogers replied calmly. "I thought it was a strange name, but…" He trailed off, clearly aware that strange barely covered anything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
Right. He was still adjusting to the fact that the world now included aliens, gods, and—apparently—devils with aristocratic naming conventions.
"He has Loki," Thor said, stopping his pacing to face us fully. The worry in his voice was unmistakable, stripped of bluster and bravado. This wasn't the thunder god speaking. This was a brother.
"He didn't strike me as someone who would harm her," Natasha said smoothly, her tone even but confident. "I believe him when he said he only wanted to recruit her."
Thor's jaw tightened. "The All-Father would not stand for it. Loki is to be taken back to Asgard to answer for her crimes."
"No idea why he'd even want your crazy sister," Stark cut in, arms crossed. "She didn't exactly scream 'team player.' If anything, she has a long and storied history of stabbing people in the back."
Thor shot him a glare sharp enough to cut steel, but Stark didn't even notice.
"Maybe he plans to use the Scepter—the Mind Stone—to ensure loyalty," Rogers said thoughtfully. "He said he wouldn't, but I'm not sure how much weight a devil's word carries."
That earned a few nods. Whatever else Millicas Gremory was, he'd admitted outright that he was dangerous—and that alone meant caution.
"Then why don't we summon him?" Stark said, spreading his hands. "You still have his flyer—terrible communication system, by the way. Seriously, does hell not have phones?—and he did show up before."
Natasha didn't answer right away. Instead, she looked at me, her expression carefully neutral. A question without words.
I held her gaze for a moment, weighing our options. We had nothing concrete on him—no background, no origin point, no known weaknesses. Whatever trail he'd left behind was either intentionally erased or never existed to begin with. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. If he was serious about recruiting, then Loki wasn't the only person on his list—and I already had analysts scrambling to figure out who else might qualify.
Waiting too long meant losing initiative.
I gave a small nod.
"Do it," I said.
Natasha reached into her pocket, fingers brushing against the folded piece of paper. Whatever happened next, we were about to invite a being with god-fragment artifacts and reality-shaking power directly into the heart of our command structure.
And I had a very bad feeling that once we did, there was no putting that genie back in the bottle.
Just like before, an engraved circle of light bloomed across the floor—clean lines, alien geometry, symbols that didn't correspond to any language we knew. It hummed faintly, vibrating through the soles of my boots, and I noted with grim satisfaction that half the room tensed on instinct. Another anomaly, another thing I already had a small army of analysts tearing apart frame by frame, desperate to understand even a fragment of how it worked.
With a flash of light and a soft rush of displaced air, he appeared.
Seeing him in person for the first time, I immediately understood why my instincts had been screaming since Natasha's interview. There was something wrong about him—not overtly monstrous, not visibly inhuman, but subtly unsettling. His features were just a little too perfect, as if sculpted rather than born. Symmetry without flaw. Posture without tension. The kind of presence that didn't demand attention so much as claim it.
Maybe that was what a devil looked like when it wasn't trying to scare you.
And my instincts—honed by decades of war, politics, and betrayal—kept whispering the same thing over and over.
Danger.
He wasn't alone.
Loki stood at his side, no longer bound or restrained, her posture relaxed to the point of arrogance. Her eyes swept the room with practiced ease, cataloging exits, threats, and opportunities in the span of a heartbeat. When her gaze landed on Thor, it lingered—just long enough for something raw and complicated to flicker across her face—before sliding back to the devil beside her.
"Are you sure I can't change your mind?" she asked, stepping closer to him, her movements fluid and deliberate. There was no mistaking the intent behind them; every shift of her hips, every tilt of her head was calculated seduction. "I was raised to be a Queen."
A few people in the room stiffened. Stark looked between them with open fascination, Thor with barely restrained fury.
The devil just rolled his eyes.
"As if you aren't already planning how to manipulate me into letting you make all the decisions," he said, laughing lightly, like they were old acquaintances rather than enemies hours ago. "Besides, that mouth of yours is more trouble than it's worth."
Loki's smile sharpened, her confidence entirely unshaken.
"I'm sure you could find a better use for it," she purred.
Thor took a step forward, lightning crackling faintly around him.
And right then, I knew two things for certain.
First: this meeting was going to be a nightmare.
Second: whatever this devil was, he wasn't intimidated by gods, spies, or world-ending artifacts—and that scared me more than anything else he'd said.
He released her at last, loosening his grip as if she weighed nothing at all, and took a single step back. The smile on his face was amused rather than strained, like someone who had just indulged a minor distraction.
"Thor, take your sister back before I change my mind," he said lightly.
Loki scoffed, smoothing her hair as she straightened. "You are no fun," she pouted, though there was a glint of something sharp behind her eyes.
"Sister," Thor said, his voice low, raw in a way I had never heard from him before. He took a step toward her, massive hands curling into fists. "Why?"
She laughed, short and bitter. "Why what?" she snapped. "Why did I attack Earth? Why did I throw myself off the Bifrost!?"
"Everything!" he demanded. "Any of it! Why!?"
The words came spilling out of her, venomous and unrestrained.
"Because you were going to marry me off to some nobody!" she hissed. "Because you were a fool! Because I deserved the throne more than you, and you only got it because of what you have between your legs!"
The room went dead silent.
Even Stark stopped talking.
I watched Thor as if he had been struck, the accusation hitting harder than any blow. His mouth opened, then closed again, thunder fading around him as the weight of it settled in.
"Right," the devil muttered to himself, rubbing his chin. "You are Norse." He glanced between the siblings. "You wouldn't accept a female ruler."
Devils, I noted, spoke about things like that far too casually.
"Devils do?" Natasha asked smoothly, seizing the opening, her tone neutral but her eyes sharp as she dug for anything useful to report back.
"Yes," he replied without hesitation. "We value power more than gender. It isn't unusual for the Lady of the house to run everything." He shrugged. "Besides, our numbers are too low to dismiss half the population over tradition."
He paused, then added, almost conversationally, "One of our four leaders—Serafall Leviathan—is a woman. And nobody with any sense of self-preservation looks down on her because of it."
That earned him Stark's full attention.
Then he turned back to Loki, his expression shifting, losing some of its teasing edge.
"I don't know your situation," he said calmly, "or what Odin had planned for you. But you're more than smart enough that you could have been the power behind the throne."
Loki froze.
For just a moment, the mask cracked—not rage, not arrogance, but something dangerously close to regret.
"I couldn't," Loki said, her voice trembling with a mix of anger and anguish. "As the sister of the king, I was to be married off to a Vanir nobleman to renew the alliance." She spat the words like venom, glaring daggers at Thor. "All while this reckless fool ruled Asgard."
Thor's face twisted in disbelief and fury. "So you betrayed your home!?" he bellowed. "You tried to have your father assassinated!? You tried to have me killed!?"
"They betrayed me first!" she shouted, her voice rising, echoing off the metallic walls. "Don't pretend like you don't know! I am a Frost Giant! They would have seen me as one of the monsters they hate! Everything I did, every choice I made—it was survival!"
"The family drama is great and all…" Stark interjected, raising his hands in a half-apologetic, half-exasperated gesture. "But you attacked a city full of innocents. Actions have consequences." His tone was sharp, cutting through the tension like a scalpel, earning a sharp glare from Thor that could have split steel.
"Take it easy on her," the devil said, voice calm but authoritative, and the room turned as one toward him. His gaze was steady, unnervingly so. "She wasn't entirely in control of herself."
"What do you mean?" Rogers asked cautiously, leaning forward, his concern plain.
"The Mind Stone can influence those near it," he explained, eyes sweeping the room as if addressing each of them in turn. "As I'm sure you all experienced firsthand. It amplified her worst traits, magnified every flaw, every shadow of anger or resentment she held. She was not acting solely of her own volition."
"Even still—" Rogers began, but the devil cut him off with a dismissive wave.
"She was also tortured," he continued, voice low, almost conspiratorial, "by one of the most cruel beings in the galaxy, until she agreed to do what his master wanted. Do not mistake her actions for her true character."
Thor's massive chest heaved, the thunderous energy around him flickering with his emotion. "Sister?" he said slowly, the horror and rage mixing in his voice like molten metal. "What does he speak of?"
Loki's eyes flicked toward the devil, her usual composure fractured by the mention. She opened her mouth, hesitated, and then spoke, voice quieter but laced with venom and despair. "A master… who showed no mercy. Who made me into a weapon before I even knew what it meant to wield power."
The room grew heavier. Stark's jaw tightened, Rogers clenched his fists, and even Natasha's eyes narrowed, weighing every word for the truths buried beneath the dramatic confession.
The devil's calm tone cut through the silence again. "Do not judge her too harshly. Context matters. You see only the surface of events, but beneath them lies manipulation beyond comprehension. It is no simple betrayal, Thor."
Thor's fists curled, the air around him humming with restrained thunder, but Loki's gaze remained fierce, challenging, yet tinged with vulnerability that only deepened the tension in the room.
"Who?" Thor demanded, his voice a low growl, filled with the power of storm and thunder.
"Someone who will kill you if you try to fight him," the devil replied, his tone calm, almost casual. "Someone I will handle when I'm ready."
Thor's golden eyes narrowed, and he took a step forward, the floor beneath his boots vibrating ever so slightly. "Tell me," he ordered, each word ringing with the weight of command. He towered over the devil in every sense, a living mountain of muscle and fury, his presence demanding obedience—or fear.
The contrast between the redhead of average build, unassuming in height and stature, and the hulking Asgardian was stark. Every person in the room tensed. A quiet, collective intake of breath filled the air, as if waiting for a spark to ignite into a storm.
"No," the devil said firmly, his posture steady and unyielding, shoulders squared, chest out, ready to meet Thor if it came to a confrontation. There was no hesitation, no fear, only a calm that unnerved even the most battle-hardened onlookers.
"Alright, that is enough!" Rogers interjected sharply, stepping forward. His voice cut through the mounting tension like a blade. "We don't have to fight each other."
Thor held the devil in his gaze for a few more long seconds, each second a battle of wills, before he finally backed off, his massive form looming protectively beside his sister. His stance was both vigilant and unmistakably protective, a silent warning to anyone who might think to push further.
"Right," the devil muttered, letting a subtle exhale escape him, almost a smirk. He turned to Natasha, his posture shifting slightly—relaxed but never letting Thor leave his line of sight. "I returned Loki, as promised. Did you decide to take my offer?"
Natasha didn't hesitate. "I did," she said, her tone firm, confident, and measured. "On one condition."
"I'm listening," the devil replied, his eyes sharp but curious, his stance easing just a fraction as he gauged her request.
"I want you to join SHIELD," she stated clearly, her posture matching her words—assertive, unflinching.
"No," he said immediately, cutting her off, a faint smile playing on his lips. Then he paused, tilting his head slightly as if weighing the situation. "I will be around for at least a few years," he continued. "I would be willing to consider taking contracts from SHIELD from time to time… as long as you understand that I will refuse any orders I don't like."
"That is acceptable," she said smoothly, having already discussed the possibilities with me. Her eyes flicked momentarily toward the devil, a silent signal that negotiations had been carefully considered beforehand. "How does this work?"
The devil raised the same Queen chess piece he had used in the interrogation room. It looked unassuming, almost mundane, yet there was an aura about it—a subtle, intangible hum of power that seemed to resonate with the very air around it. I could feel it, a pulse of energy threading through the room, brushing against my senses in a way that made my skin tingle.
"I press this against your chest," he said, his voice calm, almost ceremonial. "The rest happens automatically."
He stepped forward, and Natasha rose to meet him, her expression a mixture of curiosity, determination, and the faintest trace of apprehension. The room seemed to hold its breath as she extended herself toward him, the faint glow from the piece casting shadows across her face.
The moment he pressed it against her chest, the Queen piece pulsed, bathing her in a soft, blue-white light. It seared through her suit, through her flesh, and then vanished entirely into her body. Natasha gasped sharply, a shiver running down her spine as the sensation of power washed over her.
Her posture shifted subtly, muscles flexing as if responding to some unspoken command. Then, slowly, two elegant, bat-like wings unfurled from her back, the skin stretching taut and strong between the spines, glinting faintly under the room's lights. She flexed them experimentally, letting them spread wide as her gaze roamed the room with renewed intensity.
"I feel…" she began, her voice steady but awe-tinged. "Powerful."
The devil laughed softly, a low, knowing sound, watching her with a mixture of amusement and approval. "Congratulations, Natasha," he said, his smile widening. "You are a devil." Like ReplyReport Reactions:Stephen, Kssj, frostbart and 791 others
Chapter 3 – Welcome to Devil School
"The first thing you need to know about being a devil is that we are, intrinsically, creatures of desire." I said.
The words settled into the air with a weight I knew she would feel more than understand, not yet. Desire wasn't just lust or ambition—it was gravity, instinct, the quiet pull that shaped everything we were and everything we did.
SHIELD had generously allowed us to use one of their empty rooms for training—bare concrete walls, reinforced floor, discreet cameras tucked into corners that pretended not to exist—and definitely not because they were trying to gather information on my capabilities. I could practically feel the observation through the walls, analysts and handlers hanging on every word, every fluctuation of power, every change in Natasha's vitals.
I ignored them.
This wasn't for them.
This was for her.
Natasha stood a few meters away, wings folded tight against her back, posture relaxed but alert in the way only a lifelong operative could manage. She looked the same at a glance, but the difference was unmistakable if you knew what to look for. There was a presence to her now, a subtle pressure in the room that bent attention toward her without effort. The beginning of something dangerous.
I decided to teach Natasha the basics of her new existence.
I did consider the possibility of them creating some sort of countermeasure against me. It would have been foolish not to. SHIELD always planned for contingencies. But between my powers as a devil, Soul Talent further boosting my already prodigious growth, and the two Infinity Stones I had in my back pocket, they couldn't really do anything against me even if they tried. Not in any way that mattered.
Their only real leverage was Natasha, and with the binding at work, if push came to shove, she would be more mine than she would be theirs.
That wasn't a threat. It was simply how the system worked.
Besides, I already had a plan to make myself even stronger, and without spending a single credit at that. Power begets power, and I had more avenues open to me than they could possibly imagine.
"Your appearance will slowly shift to however you prefer to look, even without actively using magic to shape shift," I continued, pacing slowly as I spoke, letting the lesson sink in. "Devils are shaped by self-image as much as by desire. What you believe yourself to be matters."
Natasha glanced down at her hands, flexing her fingers as if expecting to see something different there.
"Though," I added, "unless you want to be ugly, you will end up with some level of supernatural allure just by being a devil."
She looked back up at me, one eyebrow rising, eyes sharp with dry amusement.
"Is that why you look so…" She gestured vaguely in my direction, searching for the word.
I chuckled, unable to help myself.
"In part," I admitted. "Though that is mostly the result of my entire family also being supernaturally attractive."
There was a faint smile on her lips now, but I could see the gears turning behind her eyes. She was already cataloging the implications—how it could be used, how it could be weaponized, how it could be controlled.
Good.
If she was going to be a devil, she needed to understand that desire wasn't just something others felt toward her.
It was something she would learn to wield.
"You will also find that your desires will be amplified. Especially those relating to the seven deadly sins," I said. "While traditional interpretations can apply, you aren't limited by them."
I paused deliberately, giving her time to absorb that. This was usually the point where new devils either fixated on the wrong thing or underestimated just how broad the concept really was.
I gestured toward her.
"You could end up with a lust for knowledge, or wrath manifesting as petty pranks, or sloth as procrastination," I explained. "It doesn't have to be dramatic or destructive. Desire is expression, not compulsion. I doubt it will be a problem for someone with your level of self-control, but it is something you need to stay aware of."
Natasha leaned back slightly, arms crossing as she considered that. She wasn't alarmed—just thoughtful, already framing it as another variable to manage.
"You mentioned that devils often have harems," she said. "Is that why?"
"Partially," I agreed without hesitation. "But it's mostly because devils are attracted to power, in any form it may come."
I let that sit for a moment before continuing.
"While relationships between devils can be born from genuine love—my own parents, for example—they are just as often business partnerships with sex included," I said. "Political alliances. Power consolidation. Mutual growth."
"Practical," she said, nodding once.
"Very," I replied.
I resumed pacing, slow and unhurried.
"You will find that while devils aren't completely alien to humans, a lot of intrinsic assumptions humans make simply don't apply to devils," I said. "Harems, for example. Humans tend to picture them as a group of women centered around one man. In devil society, that's just one configuration. Devil ladies will often have harems of their own."
She tilted her head slightly.
"Devils support homosexual relationships?" she asked. "I would have assumed not, considering your fertility issues."
"That's a complicated question," I admitted. "Devils aren't opposed to homosexual sex at all. But all devils are generally expected to at least try to have children at some point."
I glanced at her to make sure she was following.
"We don't see sex the same way humans do," I continued. "Cheating isn't really a concept among devils. Desire isn't exclusive by default. And pregnancies are rare enough that when they do happen, the circumstances matter far less than the result."
"Every devil is valuable," she said quietly, more statement than question.
"Exactly," I nodded. "Lineage matters, but survival matters more. It can get complicated when it comes to who belongs to what house, but in modern devil society, at worst a bastard would be sent to live independently with meager resources."
I paused, then added dryly:
"Meager by devil standards, that is. They would still be considered quite wealthy by human ones."
Natasha absorbed that in silence, eyes distant for a moment.
"But we are getting sidetracked," I said, clapping my hands once to refocus us. "Back to your training. I am going to teach you how to fly."
I gestured toward her wings as they rested folded against her back, the leathery membranes still faintly shimmering with residual magic.
"Your wings, like the rest of your body, are magical," I continued. "I already showed you how you can retract them, but flying isn't just about beating them like a bird." I shook my head. "You aren't really using your wings to fly. You are using your demonic power."
To demonstrate, I let my own wings manifest. They unfurled smoothly, but instead of flapping, I simply rose off the ground, hovering in place. The air didn't stir. There was no visible force—just controlled defiance of gravity.
"Like everything else about being a devil, it is about desire," I said calmly. "To fly, you just have to want to."
I had barely finished speaking when Natasha lifted off the floor.
At first it was awkward—her body tilting slightly, wings twitching on instinct more than necessity—but she adapted quickly. Within seconds she stabilized, posture straightening as confidence replaced hesitation. Without prompting, she began circling the room, making wide, careful laps, clearly focused on memorizing the sensation rather than showing off.
"Good," I said, watching closely. "Practice with them whenever you can. Once you're comfortable enough that you don't have to think about staying airborne, we can get started on aerial combat—and how to fight in three dimensions."
She nodded midair, then descended smoothly, touching down before retracting her wings. I caught the small smile tugging at her lips, subtle but unmistakable, and chose to ignore it.
"For hand-to-hand combat, I'm not your best teacher," I continued. "And once you get used to your new upper limits, you shouldn't have any trouble controlling your strength anyway." I shifted topics without pause. "So instead, I'm going to teach you about magic."
"Teleporting around like you do would be useful," she said, already thinking ahead.
I laughed softly.
"How about you learn to walk before you start running," I replied. "First, I'm going to teach you the very first spell taught to devil children."
I raised my hand, focusing just enough intent to shape the energy. A small flame bloomed above my palm—no bigger than a candle's flame, steady and obedient, its light casting warm reflections across the walls.
"Everything starts here," I said. "Control. Intent. Desire made manifest."
The flame responded to my will, swelling from a candle's flicker into a small bonfire. Its color shifted from orange to an eerie blue, then to a deep violet before the fire abruptly crystallized, freezing solid in midair like sculpted glass. A heartbeat later it shattered into glittering motes and vanished entirely.
"Devil magic is about imagination," I said, lowering my hand. "In theory, there is no effect you can't achieve with it."
Natasha tilted her head slightly. "And in practice?"
"In practice, certain effects will always be out of reach," I replied. I formed a dense, crackling sphere of pure annihilation in my palm, the air around it warping subtly as if reality itself wanted to pull away. "My Power of Destruction, for example, is something I can only use because I was born with the ability."
I dismissed the sphere before it could make SHIELD's sensors nervous.
"Every pureblood devil clan has their own inherent ability," I continued. "The Bael—my grandmother's clan—possess the Power of Destruction. The Phenex are known for their Immortality. The Agares can manipulate time to a limited extent. And that's only scratching the surface."
I gestured toward her.
"As a reincarnated devil, you don't have one," I said evenly. "But that isn't a disadvantage. It just means you aren't expected to build your entire combat style around a single innate power."
She nodded slowly, absorbing it rather than reacting emotionally. That alone told me a lot.
"Now," I said, shifting gears, "to cast spells, you need three things."
I held up three fingers.
"Visualization. Power. Control."
I closed my eyes, deliberately slowing my breathing, letting the spell structure form naturally rather than forcing it.
"First," I said, voice calm and measured, "you visualize the flame in your mind's eye. Watch it burn. Hear the crackle. Feel the heat it gives off against your skin."
When I opened my eyes again, Natasha had already closed hers. Her brow furrowed slightly, jaw set, posture rigid with concentration. She wasn't pretending—she was seeing it.
"Second," I continued, "you will your demonic power to make your desire into reality. You don't push it. You don't beg it. You expect it to obey."
She inhaled slowly.
When she opened her eyes, a small flame hovered above her palm. It wavered for a moment, then stabilized, its light reflecting faintly in her pupils. She stared at it, fascination cutting through her usual composure, and I noted with approval that she didn't lose focus.
"Finally," I said, "you will it forward. Enforce your will upon the world."
Her arm snapped out almost reflexively.
The flame launched itself across the room, crossing the distance in an instant before splashing harmlessly against my chest and dispersing into sparks.
"I did it," she said, breathless, a grin breaking through despite the sheen of sweat on her brow.
"You did," I agreed, nodding once. "And that was your first attempt."
I stepped closer, lowering my voice slightly.
"The more you practice, the more instinctive it will become. Eventually, your demonic power will respond to a single thought—no visualization, no conscious effort. Just intent."
I glanced at her hand, where faint heat still lingered.
"And when that happens," I added, "magic stops being something you do… and starts being something you are."
I paused, letting the weight of the moment settle between us. The air still carried the faint scent of ozone and burnt wax from her first spell, and Natasha's posture had shifted—subtly, but unmistakably—from student to something more alert. More invested.
"Now," I said quietly, "how to get stronger."
Her focus sharpened immediately. Somewhere deep in the helicarrier's guts, I was certain Fury was watching every microexpression, every fluctuation in the room's sensors.
"A devil's body is a reflection of their demonic power," I continued. "You will get stronger over time. Most devils are content to let that happen passively, letting centuries do the work for them. They live long enough that patience feels like efficiency."
I lifted a finger.
"But if you ever want to speed that process up, this is how."
"Physical training will help," I said. "Your strength, speed, and durability will never stop increasing as long as you keep pushing yourself. There is no hard ceiling. No point where your body simply refuses to adapt."
I met her eyes.
"But remember this—you are a creature of desire now. Your training will only be as effective as you want it to be. If you want to get stronger, you will. If you train out of obligation, habit, or discipline alone, you'll plateau. You can't force yourself forward anymore. Desire is the engine."
She absorbed that without comment, which told me she understood exactly how dangerous and useful that could be.
I raised a second finger.
"But the real measure of a devil's strength isn't muscle," I said. "It's demonic power reserves. The more demonic power you possess, the stronger and faster you become—even if you never throw a punch."
I pointed at her, not accusing, but deliberate.
"I will teach you how to increase your demonic power," I said. "But you need to understand something first. The process isn't safe. Not if you're careless."
"I will be," she said immediately, nodding once.
"Good," I replied. "Because your demonic power works like a muscle. You have to use it to make it grow—both in total capacity and in how efficiently you can draw on it."
I conjured another flame, letting it rise slowly above my head. It expanded, fed by a steady outpouring of power, until it became a roiling fireball the size of a car. The temperature in the room spiked, alarms somewhere far away undoubtedly lighting up.
"The more power you expend," I said evenly, "the more you gain when you recover. That growth is permanent."
I let the fireball hover for a moment longer before dispersing it into nothing.
"But if you use too much," I continued, "your body will pay for it. You'll feel weak. Drained. Sick. Recovery will take longer, and you'll be vulnerable while it happens."
I studied her expression to make sure she was taking it seriously.
"You can't run out accidentally," I said. "Your body has natural limiters. Unless you are consciously aware that you're about to exhaust yourself—and deliberately push past that point—it will stop you."
I paused, locking eyes with her.
"That's a good thing," I said quietly. "Because completely running out of demonic power doesn't knock you unconscious."
I let the silence stretch.
"It kills you."
She watched me carefully, nodding slowly, her expression thoughtful rather than overwhelmed. That, more than anything else, reassured me. Panic would have been dangerous. Curiosity and caution I could work with.
"You will have more wiggle room than most," I said. "The evil pieces each grant inherent bonuses."
I raised a hand, ticking them off as I spoke.
"Rooks are more durable. Knights are faster. Bishops have greater demonic power reserves."
I gestured toward her, letting the implication settle.
"As my Queen, you get all of those benefits," I said. "Strength, speed, resilience, and a deeper well of power to draw from. Keep that in mind when I recruit others. You'll be setting the standard."
"I will," she said simply, already filing it away.
"There's another thing," I added, clapping my hands once to shift gears. "You can form contracts with others."
Her attention sharpened again.
"You grant their wishes," I explained, "and in return they give up a small amount of their life energy. Not enough to harm them—usually it just leaves them tired for a day. The gains are minimal compared to a full reincarnation, but over time they add up."
I shrugged.
"It's not something most devils rely on heavily, but it's a useful tool to remember. Especially if you ever need power quickly and don't want permanent entanglements."
Then I clapped again, louder this time, signaling the end of the lesson.
"Alright," I said. "That covers the basics of how to be a devil."
Her posture visibly loosened, some of the tension finally bleeding out of her shoulders.
"So," she asked, "now what?"
"Now you keep practicing," I replied. "Flying, magic, power control. Build habits while everything is still new. And I go give Thor and Loki a lift back to Asgard, like I promised."
Thor had asked for the Tesseract back. I'd refused, flatly. We'd compromised instead—I'd return them home, nothing more.
Odin might try to take the cube once I was there. I couldn't beat him outright, not alone, and even with the Stones it would be a gamble I had no interest in taking. I had no intention of lingering long enough to give him the opportunity.
Besides, if things went sideways, I could always reveal Hela's existence and leave during the inevitable chaos.
"Are you two ready?" I asked.
Thor and Loki stood on opposite sides of Loki's cell—though calling it a cell was generous. It was more like a break room with reinforced doors, transparent panels, and a rotating cast of armed agents pretending they weren't staring at her every second. Neither of them looked particularly pleased to see me.
Loki leaned against the wall with forced nonchalance, arms crossed, chin lifted in practiced defiance. Thor stood rigid near the door, massive arms folded, jaw tight, every line of his posture screaming restrained anger. The space between them felt wider than the room itself.
Loki had refused to answer any further questions after I had—not so subtly—mentioned her time under Ebony Maw's tender mercies. The effect had been immediate. The smugness vanished, replaced by a flash of something raw and ugly before she'd slammed the door shut and gone silent. Thor hadn't taken it well. I'd felt the spike of killing intent from him clear across the helicarrier. But to his credit, he hadn't pressed her. Not here. Not like this.
I suspected he would check with Heimdall once they returned to Asgard. It was the obvious move. But I doubted anything would come of it. If Asgard's all-seeing watcher hadn't seen Loki's fate after she fell from the Bifrost, I doubted he would be able to see Thanos and his children now. Whatever protections or obscurations the Mad Titan used, they had been sufficient to hide entire campaigns of conquest from gods.
That worked to my benefit.
I would need Thanos alive long enough to get the Soul Stone.
I didn't exactly have any spare loved ones I could sacrifice for it—and even if I did, I wouldn't. Not for power. Not for anything. The Stone demanded something real, something freely given, and I was fairly certain it wouldn't manifest if I simply brainwashed someone into throwing themselves off a cliff for me. The universe had a cruel sense of irony like that.
Which meant someone else would have to do it willingly.
I felt a little bad about that, if I was being honest. Gamora didn't deserve what was coming. But I didn't have many better options, and the calculus of survival at this level was brutally simple.
Of course, that also meant taking the arguably most dangerous Infinity Stone from someone who wouldn't hesitate to use it to kill me—especially if he knew I already had others. A being like Thanos wouldn't negotiate. He'd strike first, last, and always.
Which was why I'd decided to leave the Soul Stone for last.
Some prizes were only safe to claim when you were already strong enough to walk away afterward.
I didn't know the exact location of the Reality Stone.
I knew the broad strokes. I knew it manifested as the Aether during the Convergence, that it had been hidden somewhere within the Nine Realms, and that Asgard had eventually taken custody of it. But "somewhere in the Nine Realms" was a very large search area, and beyond that it could be anywhere—sealed in a vault, embedded in a world, or hidden behind layers of magic that even the Space Stone wouldn't casually peel away.
It was frustrating.
If the Stones didn't have that irritating resistance to one another's effects, I could have simply used the Space Stone to yank the others to me and be done with it. But no—cosmic safeguards, divine irony, whatever you wanted to call it. The universe didn't hand out infinity-level power without making you work for it.
Still, the Convergence would happen in just over a year.
I could wait.
The Time Stone, on the other hand, was a much bigger problem.
While my Defenses meant it couldn't see me—couldn't peer into my future or track my movements the way it otherwise might—it could still affect me. Time manipulation didn't need line of sight, and that made Kamar-Taj one of the few places in this universe that genuinely worried me.
Until I could afford both levels of Paradox Defense, I wasn't about to storm the Sorcerer Supreme's home and risk being trapped in a time loop for all eternity. Immortality didn't mean much if you were stuck reliving the same ten seconds forever.
Even if I tried to be clever—used the Mind Stone to compel the Ancient One to hand it over—I wouldn't be surprised if she had countermeasures in place specifically to prevent that kind of interference. Someone who guarded a god-fragment for centuries didn't do so by being careless.
My best option was patience.
Keep my head down. Stay off the sorcerers' radar. Let history play out until Stephen Strange took over, and then take the Time Stone before he became skilled enough to defend it properly. He'd be powerful, yes—but not yet experienced, not yet the kind of monster the Ancient One was when it came to layered contingencies.
Of course, that would mean dealing with Dormammu's cultists on his behalf.
I grimaced internally at the thought.
I would very much prefer not to face down a cosmic entity if I could help it, even if—with a few Stones in hand—I should theoretically be able to beat Dormammu outright. "Should" did a lot of heavy lifting there, and I wasn't eager to test it earlier than necessary.
That left the Power Stone.
And thankfully for me, it was the simplest of the lot.
Mostly undefended. Sitting in an ancient underwater temple on Morag, waiting for the first idiot reckless enough to grab it. If Peter Quill could waltz in, dance his way through the ruins, and walk out alive, then I shouldn't have any issues whatsoever.
I did briefly wonder how I was going to get there.
Devil teleportation was good—very good—but it wasn't "cross interstellar distances to a planet you've never personally visited" good. Not without anchors, coordinates, or some kind of astral reference.
Then I remembered what I was holding.
The Space Stone didn't care about distance. Or coordinates. Or even, strictly speaking, logic.
With my memories of the movie as a reference point, instinct alone should be enough to bridge the gap. Space, after all, was just another concept to be bent.
"We are." Thor spoke, his voice firm despite the tension in his shoulders. "Take us back to Asgard."
Loki shot me one final look.
It wasn't defiance this time, or mockery, or even her usual sharp-edged amusement. It was pleading—quiet, controlled, and all the more unsettling for how rare it was. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. The look alone carried the weight of someone who knew exactly what they were losing.
As much as I'd grown to like her over the past few days, she just wasn't a good fit for my peerage.
If circumstances had been different—if I hadn't recruited Natasha—she might have made a viable Queen. Even then, it would have required a great deal of work. Loki was brilliant, powerful, and endlessly adaptable, but she was also volatile, prideful, and far too accustomed to being the smartest person in the room. I didn't need someone constantly testing the limits of my authority or reshaping every situation into a game of manipulation.
And even at her best, she would have been more trouble than she was worth.
I called the Tesseract from my inventory, letting it materialize in my hand with its familiar weight and cold, impossible geometry. I waited a heartbeat longer than necessary, half-expecting alarms to blare or armed agents to storm in, guns raised and orders already ignored. SHIELD—or more likely HYDRA—had to be screaming internally at the thought of the cube leaving their reach.
Nothing happened.
No doors burst open. No last-ditch attempt to seize it.
Either Fury had ironclad control over the situation, or he knew better than to provoke me when I was already halfway out the door.
I focused, channeling my intent into the Tesseract the same way I shaped my spells—not with force, but with certainty. Space responded instantly.
A glowing blue tear split the air in front of us, the fabric of reality folding back on itself like a curtain being drawn aside. Beyond it lay unfamiliar stars and the faint, unmistakable sense of somewhere else—somewhere ancient, powerful, and very much not Earth.
"After you," I said, gesturing toward the portal.
Thor placed a hand on his sister's shoulder.
It wasn't forceful. It wasn't even commanding. Just a steady, grounding touch, guiding rather than pushing her forward. The revelation of what Loki had endured—of the torture, the coercion, the way her worst impulses had been sharpened and exploited—had changed something in him. His anger was still there, buried deep, but it was tempered now by guilt and a fierce, protective instinct.
He was gentler with her than I'd ever seen him.
As they stepped toward the portal, I found myself wondering—if Loki had asked him outright, if she had begged him to intervene—would Thor have broken whatever treaty her marriage was meant to secure? Would he have defied Odin, defied Asgard itself, just to keep her from being bartered away?
Maybe.
Then again, if she was anything like the Loki I knew from the movies, it wouldn't have mattered.
Being the king's sister would never have been enough for her. Power behind the throne would have chafed just as much as a political marriage. She wanted recognition. Validation. Authority that was hers, not borrowed or granted out of obligation.
She wouldn't have settled for anything less than the crown.
And Asgard, for all its grandeur, was never going to give it to her.
They stepped through the portal, and for a brief, dangerous moment I considered simply closing it behind them.
It would have been clean. Efficient. I would have fulfilled my promise—returned Thor and Loki to Asgard—without ever giving Odin the opportunity to test his authority against mine or try to take the cube by force. One thought, one flicker of intent, and the gateway would have sealed as if it had never existed.
But I didn't.
And I knew, even as I hesitated, that it was reckless.
I wanted to see Asgard.
It was one of those places that had lived in my head for years, a myth made real, a destination I had always wanted to visit before I joined the Company. A place of gods and legends, of impossible architecture and ancient power. I might never get another chance like this, and the temptation was stronger than my better judgment.
So I followed them through the portal, letting it snap shut behind me with a soft, final ripple in the air.
We emerged above the Rainbow Bridge.
For a heartbeat, I simply took it in.
The bridge stretched out beneath us in a vast arc of iridescent light, colors shifting and flowing like liquid glass under our feet. It was pristine—unscarred, unmarred—and my confusion lasted only a second before memory caught up with me. This Loki hadn't fought Thor here. She hadn't forced his hand. She hadn't driven him to destroy the bridge in a desperate attempt to stop an invasion.
She had jumped.
Not as an act of defiance meant to burn everything down, but as an escape. A fall born of despair rather than spite.
The golden city rose in the distance, towers and spires gleaming beneath an alien sky, sunlight catching on polished metal and white stone until the whole of Asgard looked like a jewel set against the void. It was beautiful in a way that felt deliberate, like a statement as much as a home.
We weren't alone.
Heimdall stood off to the side, massive sword planted firmly against the bridge, his posture relaxed but alert. His blind eyes were fixed on me, and I felt the weight of his gaze like pressure against my skin. He must have seen Thor and Loki returning long before we arrived, and yet his attention lingered on me, sharp and assessing.
At the center of it all stood Odin.
The All-Father was exactly as imposing as I expected. His armor walked the line between ceremony and war, ornate but functional, every piece heavy with history. Gungnir rested in his grip, and even without him doing anything overt, it radiated power—ancient, disciplined, and utterly unapologetic.
The air felt tense, like the moment before a storm breaks.
Then Frigga shattered it.
She ran.
Past the guards, past Odin himself, heedless of protocol or dignity, her composure breaking as she crossed the distance and threw her arms around Loki. Her grip was desperate, almost frantic, as if she believed that if she let go for even a second her daughter would vanish again.
"My daughter," Frigga cried, her voice breaking as she held onto Loki like an anchor. "You are alive."
Loki froze.
For all her sharp wit and practiced arrogance, she looked utterly stunned, arms hanging awkwardly at her sides, unsure how to respond. This wasn't something she had prepared for. This wasn't accusation or judgment or disappointment.
"Mother?" she said, the word slipping out almost hesitantly, like she wasn't sure she was allowed to say it.
"I'm sorry," Frigga sobbed, tears streaking freely down her face. "I should have looked for you. I shouldn't have given up. I should have—"
Her voice failed her, the rest lost to broken breaths as she held Loki tighter.
And I stood there, awkward and very aware of my place—or lack thereof—watching the reunion of a mother who had mourned her child and a daughter who didn't know how to process being loved so openly.
Loki had always worn masks. Pride, cruelty, ambition, sarcasm. But here, in Frigga's arms, stripped of all of that, she looked smaller. Lost. Like someone who had spent so long believing she was unwanted that she didn't know what to do when faced with proof to the contrary.
For all the power gathered on that bridge, for all the gods and weapons and ancient magic, that moment—raw and painfully human—was the most overwhelming thing there.Last edited: Dec 26, 2025 Like ReplyReport Reactions:Stephen, Kssj, frostbart and 816 others