ten_fwd | Thunder rolls

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Thunder rolls

Thor was standing stock still. He had felt the shift, the disconnection. It was like being hurled through the rainbow bridge, backward, powerless. His teeth were clenched and his arms bunched, his hands fists, and Mjolnir in one hand as if to ward off the bad old memories that rushed to his mind. But his eyes opened to see the place he was in and he knew this was not like the nightmares about being cast down and no longer being himself. He felt the reassuring heft of Mjolnir in his hand and the rush of power in his body and mind, and knew he was still himself. But where was he? And how had he gotten there?

Thor held out a hand casually, and a man in a uniform bumped into it, turned to angrily say something, and stopped, then looked up, and up, at Thor, staring. "Excuse me, good sir. Where am I? Is this Midgard?"

He hoped it was, because if it was not, he knew he was in very deep trouble. The next minute, fear faded and a grin fell into his face. Trouble could be fun, right?

Right.

The man stammered, shook his head, and fled before something odder and above his paygrade. Thor sighed but shrugged. Time to find some answers.

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She was still cautious as she eyed him, but answered his question anyway. "My name is Sinthia," she says, turning her hand and sending the marbles shifting, forming into a pyramid, tightly stacked and though the glass bits are all perfect spheres none move.

"I don't think you've dreamed of me."

"Well met, then Sinthia." Thor noted the movements and the absolute perfection of formation and one part of his mind started questioning that even as he gazed at her. One who knew his name was someone he should know.

Her words startled him, then he smiled. "Are you of my world then?"

She shook her head, sending her hair swinging around her cheeks and across her forehead. "No, I'm from Earth. Midgard," she says after a second. "But I know the stories about you. My father thinks you're a god."

She isn't sure, honestly and deep-down, if she believes that--or rather if she believes the definition of that word. That he's from somewhere else and most likely powerful she can't doubt, but she doesn't know if he's everything else.

"Many do. In some worlds, I am a god, and in others, I'm an alien, and in yet another, I'm just a man who dreamed of those two worlds." His smile was warm as he nodded. "Either way, I am Thor Odinson, sometimes actor, strange man, and definitely not from anywhere remotely like this." He waved a hand around them.

"Can you tell me of this place? And how I got here?" That was first. Unless she was in need. His eyes skimmed over her, looking for distress or wounding.

"You're on the starship the USS Enterprise," she says, a little bit taken aback at meeting Thor, someone she's only ever read about. "Q likely brought you here. He does for all of us that didn't intend to be here."

She pauses for a moment, wanting to say something and not knowing how. "Is it true no one else can lift your hammer?" she blurts, and then bites her lip as if regretting it.

Thor sighed. "A being I have never heard of, with such power? This is not the best of situations to be in then." He rubbed his chin, glancing around, then back at her.

"What sort of starship is this Enterprise, and what sort of people man her? Are they allies, or enemies?" Battle seemed a likely thing as he took a firmer grip on his hammer.

"It is, mostly. My father placed upon it an enchantment that only one who was worthy by his standards can lift it."

Sinthia's face closes off and develops a frown as he says that, because she too has those powers, just not from so far away as Q; at least, the teleportation parts. "It's a Galaxy-class starship under the auspices of Starfleet, which is the exploration and defense arm of the United Federation of Planets. They say it's not military, but it sees like it."

She nods and considers the concept of the hammer being enchanted. "What are his standards?"

Thor saw her reaction and he spoke softly. "What is wrong?" Trying to figure out what had happened, he realized he must have said something.

"I am sorry if I offended you somehow, Sinthia."

The rest of the information and conversation became less important to him right now.

"He's not the only one with powers," she says quietly. In all the time she's been on this ship she's gotten used to the idea that people really don't like it when things appear human and aren't--like her.

"They're not all bad just because you don't know them." And suddenly the odd motion with the marbles makes much more sense.

"No, he is not, but---ahhh." Thor shook his head. "Forgive me. I was not clear. I did not mean to imply that anyone with powers was not trustworthy, merely that a being who would and could bring beings across universes and dimensions without their say so was a troubling thing to me."

He nodded. "Such a thing reminded me quite simply of my brother, who has a similar carelessness about other people and their selves." he spoke passionately, not wanting to be misunderstood.

"That said, I obviously misspoke, and I ask you to forgive me, milady. If you will."

She looks down at her little glass pyramid as she holds it tight together so that the balls clink together, nestling as close as possible. The pressure doesn't let up, though, and when he asks her to forgive him--of all things to say--her brows furrow and one marble shatters with a telltale cracking sound.

It doesn't explode, luckily, and she's unhurt, but confused. "If you're a god you wouldn't need me to forgive you for anything. Would you?"

Thor smiled softly, and nodded. "Need, no. But I am also a man, fair one, and I can make mistakes. And I own them, for to do otherwise lacks honor entire. If I make a mistake, then I do this.' And he went to one knee before her. "I apologize for my error. Please forgive me, milady."

When he knelt Sinthia--obviously unaccustomed to this--backed up in her chair, eyes wide and blinking at him.

"...Okay," she murmured. She'd literally never had anyone apologize to her before for something like this.

A warm smile spread across his face and he rose, slowly. "Thank you."

Then he held out his hand to her. "Then let us start again. They call me Thor, the Odinson, and I am that, but more and less as well. Will you join me for a drink, and answer a question or two about this new realm I find myself in?"

Well this is by far the oddest situation Sinthia has ever found herself in. She eyes his hand, and his face, and nods. "Okay. I might not be able to answer everything, but okay."

"My thanks!" He ordered drinks of water for clarity from the bar, then settled opposite her. After sipping, he smiled.

"Where then are we, exactly? And who rules this place? The people here seem some to be Midgardians, but not all. Do you know whence they came?"

He stopped at the three questions, to give her time to answer.

"The year is 2366, and most of them are humanoid, but they're from all over the galaxy. There are aliens," she says simply, quietly. "The captain of the Enterprise is Jean-Luc Picard, and he's in Starfleet, as are the crew, but there are more people like you and me who aren't."

Thor listened, his eyes wide as he took in her words. "Time travel, and space travel, and dimension travel, all in one. This is intriguing." He nodded, smiling. Aliens he could handle. After all, by Earth standards, he was, sort of, one.

"What is this Starfleet? Whose Empire does it serve?" For from what he remembered, fleets usually served an Empire, even if that empire turned out to be a democracy like the United States of America was.

"So many of us have been stranded here. It is good of this man and his crew to take us in and help us in this time."

"I don't know," she says honestly. "Everyone says the United Federation of Planets, but they won't say which plants, or which one is in charge of the others." It's quite confusing, honestly.

"He doesn't really have another option. We'd die if he made us leave the ship. Space is a vacuum," Sinthia murmurs. "There's nothing to breathe."

"Hmmm. Perhaps I should investigate further. IO do not like politics, but I would rather know whom we owe our survival to." Thor did not like not knowing things. At least... things that would be useful to know. Like this. "And that is true, yes." He laughed at her words, but not at her, the warmth and mirth in his eyes entirely friendly.

"Perhaps someday we will find a way home."

"Not unless you can travel through time as easily as you do over distance," she says, shaking her head and sending her hair swinging wildly around her cheeks.

"We're in the future for almost everybody here."

"Not here, I fear. that power is denied me, with the force of the Odinforce, as well. Here, I have far less." He did not mind not having that power, for it was life-changing, mind-changing, and he liked himself better without them.

"There are other ways, perhaps. We must just find them, and their keys." He believed in doorways, for in his worlds, there was always a way.

"I don't think there's a doorway here to get back to where we came from," she says. "I've tried a lot of them." Not that people necessarily know that, given her method of walking through doors without them actually opening.

"You still have Mjölnir."

Thor nodded. "There is usually a way, even if the door itself is a failure." He rubbed his hands, thinking.

Her words about his hammer brought one hand down to touch it, and raise it easily."Aye, I do, and a constant welcome it is, too. It reminds me of home, even when home does not feel as home as it did, once."

He chuckled.

Sinthia spent a long moment looking from him to the hammer, and back, eyes flicking over each with a strange little calculating look as her fingers curled.

"...May I touch it?" She doesn't want to try picking it up, not even telekinetically.

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