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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NiTessine" data-source="post: 1484379" data-attributes="member: 475">Match 8-1: NiTessine vs. franciscaRagnarokJack Fort had left the agency a year ago. They’d been very understanding about it. No confinement to a strange island, no hitmen sent after him, not even mandatory therapy. Still, the other agency wouldn’t have been nearly as friendly about it, so Jack thought it might be best to disappear for a while. Like the next five decades. And thus it was that the man who had once been Jack Fort was now known as Björn Østersund, a fisherman in the Norwegian Lapland.The diet was monotonous, consisting mostly of cod, with a little dried cod every now and then, for a change. The weather, frankly, sucked, with the winter lasting ten months, and the weather alternating between raining hail, snow, and just plain old water. Still, nobody was trying to kill him, and everybody else in the village was human, so Jack – sorry, Björn – couldn’t complain. He was almost beginning to enjoy the simple life, spending the days out at the sea and the evenings in the town’s pub. Björn never drank too much. Paranoia dies hard, even when the Hell has frozen over. That, and Norwegian beer tasted like something that’d been drunk already.After all the trouble he’d gone to in order to stay hidden, according to Murphy’s Law it was only inevitable that someone would find him.It happened late at night, during what passed for summer within the Arctic Circle. Björn was trudging his way up the hill to his cabin on the outskirts of the village, having finished his pint of Guinness in the tavern. He was uncertain whether it was a stroke of luck or just the power of a well-known brand that made the Irish stout available in there, in the most distant corner of the civilised world, nor did he much care, as long as it was available. He may have given up his old identity, but only death would part him from Irish spirits.As soon as Björn crossed the threshold to his dwelling, he sensed something was wrong. There was no discernible reason, merely a twitch of the sixth sense that he had cultivated during his previous life. For a moment, he stood stock still in the doorway, his tall form silhouetted against the starry sky. Then, he sprang into motion, lunging low across the room and sweeping the semiautomatic pistol from its hiding place on the underside of a chair into his hand, all in one fluid motion.Björn pointed the gun into the darkness of the cabin, waving it from one shadow to another. There, movement! The Beretta swivelled to point at the figure of a man, disentangling itself from the shadows, stepping into a pool of moonlight in front of a window. The pale illumination revealed a man in his mid-fifties, with eyeglasses that were rimmed in neon blue. (1)“Hello, Jack,” the man spoke.“Will, what the hell are you doing here?” Björn demanded, the gun pointed at the man’s head.“Having a gun pointed at my head. Please, I speak a lot better when not being threatened,” the man retorted, indignation in his voice.“Right,” Björn said, lowering the pistol. “Now, tell me.”“I came to find you,” Will spoke, moving to close the door. “You quit, so you’re the only man I trust who can do what I need done. Oh, and you are in the right country to begin with.”“You said it yourself. I quit. And there’s nothing in Norway that the agency would be interested in. We’ve got cod, cold and cold cod.”“You’re absolutely right and absolutely wrong at the same time. There’s something very interesting indeed here, but the agency does not know about it.”“What?”“I’ll tell you if you agree to help me. This is not a small thing.”There was a long, expectant silence. Then Björn spoke:“Well, I’m getting tired of fish, anyway. Talk.”Willem Brock let a momentary smile pass his lips, and then began.“It’s a long story, but I guess we’ve got the time. You’ve seen the world’s largest ball of twine?”“Yeah, I drove past it once.”“Well, it’s not just an ordinary ball of twine.”“Of course not, it’s the biggest in the world.”“No, it’s not ordinary twine, either. See, I was there some months back, following a lead. There was this stumpy old woman there, waiting for me. (2) Weird clothes. She knew my name, my job, what I was seeking, even where we hid that mob boss’ body twelve years ago. And she told me her name was Urd.”Jack’s eyebrows shot up.“You think she was for real?” he asked. In the agency, he’d had more than enough brushes with the supernatural, even though they weren’t his area.“Yeah, I do. Had even a genuine accent. She was one of the Norse Fates, I’m pretty sure. And the world’s largest ball of twine is really…” he trailed off.“The Nornor’s yarn of fate,” Jack finished. “So, that’s why you’re in Norway. What else did she say, then?”Willem’s expression turned grave.“I’ve got less than a week to live. Some genetically engineered disease we never found out about, just to kill me. Vengeance by one of the mad scientists we put behind the bars, probably. The only thing keeping me alive is this.” He turned his head and tapped the blue arm of his glasses. With a start, Jack realised it went inside his head.“Recycles the oxygen in my head. One of the boys down in the lab fixed it up for me. And this, this is small compared to the big news.”“What’s that, then?”“The Ragnarok.”*  *  *When the day next dawned, they were riding a snowmobile southwards, across the snowfields. The Skand Mountains loomed in the south, their snowy caps majestic in the distance.“Why would we be able to prevent the Ragnarok?” Jack was shouting over the motor’s roar. “The Norse believed in Fate, and that’s a hard thing to overcome.”“The Norse believed in what they believed, but the real world doesn’t work that way. It sure is trying to, though,” Willem replied. “I came to you because the agency got compromised. Damon and Lyesmith were working for the other side. It’s all a giant power struggle about the end of the world, Jack. Us, the Illuminati, the KGB, even the Holy See, they’re all playing it. And this won’t be a cakewalk. We won’t need to go deep in the mountains, but the other side’s in this, too.”“Loki?”“Yeah. Some others, too, but mainly Loki.”“There! We’ve got company!” Jack pointed at a plume of snow in the horizon, directly in front of them.“That’d be the other side. How many shots you got?”“One clip armour-piercing, one clip hollowpoints.”“Ain’t gonna be enough, but they’ll have to do.”As they drew closer, their adversary came into better view.“Will, it’s a sled. With reindeer,” Jack said.“I can see it, Jack. But that’s not Santa Claus.”Indeed, it could only have been Santa Claus, if old Papa Noel had lost some 200 pounds, shaved, worn black, and carried a lance. (3)“What he thinking? This isn’t jousting,” Jack said, as the man levelled his spear and directed his animals straight at the snowmobile.“Tell him that. Got the gun?” Willem said, tensely.“Yeah,” Jack replied, pulling the 9mm pistol from his jacket and flipping off the safety.“Let him have it.”In a snowmobile going at top speed, one of the things you cannot do is aim. Nevertheless, Jack was a master marksman, and several of his shots hit the lance wielder, his black-clad form shuddering at the impact of the hollowpoint slugs. Considering a normal man’s reaction would have been to collapse in a bleeding heap, this was fairly worrying. Jack’s clip was empty, and the lance was still pointed at them. The former agent was fairly certain, though he could not clearly see, that the man on the other end of the deadly weapon was grinning as its point pierced the snowmobile’s engine. At the same moment, Jack felt himself bodily flung from the vehicle. He and Willem landed in a heap, as the snowmobile continued on, throwing somersaults in the air and coming to rest in a crumpled heap a good thirty meters from their position.“That was no ordinary spear,” Willem groaned as he lay on his back in the snow, staring at the bright blue sky.“Longinus, you think?” Jack replied, laying next to his friend.“Yeah, or Odin. More likely Longinus. Vatican is working for their side.”“Let’s kick his ass.”They rose to their feet, facing the assailant, who’d stopped his sled and was now approaching them, wielding a curved scimitar, its sharp blade glinting in the sun. At this distance, his Asian features were plain to be seen.“Well, he’s no Northman.”“Nobody said they must be, Jack. It’s a good thing I brought this,” Willem said, pulling something small and black from his jacket. He did something, and it was suddenly very long, but still quite black.“A collapsible bo. Got another?”“No.”“Have to do this by hand, then.”“Looks like it.”The battle was quite short and very brutal. Though a skilled swordsman, the Asian was outnumbered and facing equally skilled fighters. The agency didn’t skimp on training expenses. Willem was bleeding from a gash in the arm, and Jack’s protective glasses were neatly bisected, with a corresponding thin red line across his face, but neither were seriously hurt. Their foe lay dead in the snow. They buried his spear but left him there. Jack took his scimitar. After transferring their salvageable equipment from the snowmobile to the sled, they sped off. The reindeer were surprisingly easy to control, almost like machines. Willem suspected their minds had been tampered with.*  *  *The two faced no more adversaries as they travelled south. They cut the reindeer loose when they reached the foothills and could not carry on with the sled, but the animals just stood there, dumbly. They were still standing when Jack last glanced at them with his binoculars, five hours of walking and climbing later.“Now, let’s hope we don’t run into trolls. It’d be stupid to be eaten at this point,” Willem muttered, as they hoisted themselves up on a plateau. “Don’t jinx it. Besides, it looks like we’re here,” Jack replied, pointing at something in the distance. Willem raised his binoculars. There, in the valley, stood a golden statue. It was thirty feet high, at least, though the surrounding mountains made accurate estimations impossible. In one hand, it held a long horn, raised to its lips. (4)“Yes, we are here. That is Heimdall,” Willem confirmed with a smile.“So, now we have to prevent Loki from getting to Heimdall?” Jack asked.“Yes. Heimdall blowing his horn will signify the start of the final battle, and he’ll do it the second he sees Loki. Then, they are supposed to do battle, and both will perish. The tricky part is in how you find a god of subterfuge and lies who does not with to be found,” Willem said, scanning the snowy landscape.“Easy. You make yourself an annoying obstacle in his way,” a third voice answered. It was followed by a gunshot. As Willem collapsed, groaning, Jack whirled around, bringing his own gun to bear. He found himself facing a man in thick, black winter clothing, wearing the black glasses issued by every secret organisation everywhere to its operatives. He was slightly balding, and also pointing a gun at Jack.“Damon,” Jack spat out the name.“Yes. I expect he told you I’d gone to work for the bad guys. He was slightly inaccurate. See, I am the bad guy. My boss, being imprisoned under a serpent, has to work by proxy in this. And you are getting in the way of the biggest fireworks in the history. Goodbye, Jack,” the agent said, and it almost looked like his shades were blinking...Lightning-quick, Jack turned around, dropping low and slashing with his scimitar before he even saw what he was striking, while shooting at Damon without aiming. Three gunshots rang out almost simultaneously. A reflection in the sunglasses, that’s all it’d taken...To his great surprise, none of them hit him. Two pierced the breast of the now-former agent Damon, who keeled over, quite dead, a smoking gun falling from his hand. Another gun fell to the snow from the hand of the also former agent Lyesmith, shot through the breast by his associate and nearly split in twain diagonally by Jack’s scimitar. It was sharper than it looked, and it looked very sharp indeed.Almost before the bodies had fallen, Jack was kneeling next to Willem, turning his old friend around. Blood stained the snow around him, and more spilt each second.“Don’t worry... old friend,” Willem said, quietly. His glasses were caked with snow and red flecked his lips. “After... preventing Ragnarok... I can’t be going to a bad... place.”And he died, his face freezing into a smile.Jack rose, feeling strangely calm. A pistol in one hand, a scimitar in the other, he turned to look at the golden statue, down in the valley. It had lowered the trumpet, and was looking at him. Somehow, even though there must’ve been a thousand feet between them, he saw its face clearly as if he’d stood right in front of it. The wind howled between the mountains, and the clouds picked up speed, travelling impossibly fast. Heimdall’s golden lips cracked open.“Thank you.”</blockquote>

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