Trickster or Treatster

“I think we've done all the activities we can manage for tonight. Did everyone have fun?” said Thor as everyone sat comfortably in his living room."What was your favorite part of the evening?" 

"I know what my favorite part was," said Sylvie quietly, giving Loki a sly smile. He grinned back.

"I loved everything!" said Love. "It was so much fun! I can't wait for next Halloween!"

"I, too, had a wonderful time," said Thor. "Why, if not for that blasted Trickster, the evening would be perfect."

“I didn’t think it was that bad,” Sylvie commented with a dismissive gesture.

“It wasn’t that good either,” Loki replied. 

“I thought it was funny!” Love smiled broadly, inspecting the loot of candies she had gathered that night. 

“No, no,” Thor scorned softly. “This trickster made some people angry, and we won’t celebrate such behavior in this house.”

“But that thing with the paint…” Sylvie started, ignoring Thor and instead joining Love in sifting through her candies.

“Oh yes,” Loki followed Sylvie’s idea. “Not the most steady hand, but enough to provide a fun image of-”

“So, who’s hungry?” Thor asked loudly, trying to divert the attention from the trickster’s deeds of that night. “I am, for sure, very hungry after so many fun activities!” 

“I’m hungry too,” Loki answered. “What about you, girls?” 

Sylvie and Love looked at Loki and then at Thor, the edge of their mouth smeared with chocolate they had already eaten, and now chewing on gummies.

“We’re fine with candies,” Sylvie said and Love nodded beside her.

“Girls, candies are not food…” Thor tried to convince them as he looked stunned at how fast they devoured the candies. “We need real food!”

“Candies are real food!” Sylvie yelled at him. “I survived countless apocalypses by only eating candies and drinking soda.” 

“But you’re an adult, Sylvie. Or I think you are,” Thor doubted earning a glare from Sylvie. “Love is a growing child, so she needs proper food.”

“Darling, Thor is a father now, maybe we should listen to him and get <i>you</i> proper food too,” Loki said sweetly, a big grin adorning his face. “What about that pizza you like?

That called Sylvie and Love’s attention immediately, they looked at Loki fully interested, forgetting the candies. 

“I like that!” Love exclaimed. 

“Maybe this pizza shop is still open,” said Sylvie, standing up and dusting her costume from the candy envelopes. 

“I don’t think that works as proper food either, Loki-” Thor tried, but everyone was already at the door.

“Of course it is proper food,” Loki complained, with Sylvie and Love making an offended expression next to him. “It has carbs in the dough, fat in the cheese and tons of vegetables. It’s healthy, proper food. Let’s go ladies,” he finished keeping the door opened for them. 

Thor followed the gang into town; by that time, it was almost empty. All candies had been handed out, all the activities were over, and kids and families were already at their homes or on their way to them. 

It was near the center of town, the street that led to the town hall, where they spotted a not-so-happy mob.

“I wonder what’s going on there?” Thor said. 

“Whatever it is, I bet it can wait until after we eat,” Sylvie suggested. 

“We can only be sure after we know what is the matter, let’s go get a quick look and then, I promise, we’ll go get pizza,” the group nodded at Thor, and they all followed him.

The group made their way through the crowd that clamored and shouted to be attended by the king. And as they walked through them to get to Valkyrie's office, they started to get an idea of what everyone there wanted to talk about, because of the man carrying a dog in his arms with its fur painted green, another with a vandalized garden gnome that had drawn a hideous grin with more green paint, and there was also someone claiming that his bushes had been trimmed into the shape of pumpkins and ghosts, apparently with fire because of the smell of smoke.

"Valkyrie, what's this all about?" Thor asked when he managed to get into her office.

"What do you think this is all about?" Valkyrie answered his question with another.

“If I can guess, it is about the trickster…”

"You hit the nail on the head with this one… do you know anything about this?" she asked, annoyed, fed up already, and her hands on her hips.

"I only know that he has taken the trouble to vandalize what he has found on his way tonight."

“As do I,” Valkyrie sighed wearily. It was at that moment that Korg suddenly burst into the room.

“This is almost all of them, my king!” said the pile of rocks.

"What are you talking about?" Thor intervened.

“I asked Korg to round up some suspects. He has an alibi. Everyone saw him cheering on the pumpkin competition and then he was cleaning everything and giving candy to the children,” Valkyrie explained. "But based on the complaints we've received, we've narrowed it down to a list of individuals we think may have done it."

“Wait…what do you plan to do with them?” Thor asked carefully.

"Cut off their heads!" Valkyrie yelled, raising her sword, and Thor’s eyes widened  and he gasped in shock. "It's a joke!" she said, laughing.

“Your face was hilarious, mate,” Korg said beside her.

“We're just going to ask them where they were during the night, what they did, if there's anyone who can confirm their alibi. You know, that detective stuff…” the King explained, shrugging and walking to the door. “Will you all come?”

“Of course,” Thor said, even when Loki, Sylvie and Love complained behind him, they all followed Valkyrie closely behind. 

They left the office and were immediately harassed by the inhabitants of New Asgard who impatiently pounced on them demanding justice for their vandalized belongings. But Valkyrie made her way through them, making it to another room to see the suspects.

In a row, one next to the other, they were: Axl Heimdallson, Miek, a teenage girl named Myra in a Captain Marvel costume, a little boy called Georgi in a wolf costume, Raven the witch, and…well, there was a chair that appeared to be empty, but it rattled around periodically, as though it were occupied. Loki and Sylvie exchanged a knowing look, and Sylvie spoke to Thor: 

“Oh, that’s Jyrik. He’s a draugr, and you can’t see him. We can see him, because our minds are just that strong. Don’t fret, poor Thor. Your mind may get there someday, perhaps,” she said, patting his head.

Thor strutted along the line of suspects, who fidgeted and fretted and looked shifty-eyed, each and every one of them.

Well, Thor decided, there was only one way to approach the situation: he must become Midgard’s greatest detective. He’d been watching all the classic murder mystery shows on the BBC; he knew exactly what to do. 

“Loki? Conjure me a pipe.”

Obligingly, Loki produced a heavy metal tube. “No, no,” Thor said. “One of those old-timey brown thingies with the…you know…the…” Impatiently, he Googled it on his phone and showed Loki. Loki peered at it, shrugged, and conjured him a smoking pipe. It was entirely empty, but Thor gnawed on it nonetheless.

He paced back and forth, stroking his mustache, before stopping in front of his first suspect.

“Ah, Axl.” He clicked his tongue repeatedly. “If only your father could see you here today, suspected of being the Trickster of all Tricksters.” Loki began to protest loudly behind Thor; Thor held out his hand for silence. Then he leaned down, face close to Axl’s, and narrowed his eyes very intimidatingly. “You, dear child. What were you doing all night?”

Axl folded his arms and rolled his eyes. “I was tweaking the corn maze all night long, until I started handing out maps to help people with the maze. That’s all, I swear!”

Thor scrunched up his face. “So you are…innocent?”

Axl sat up proudly. “I am.”

Thor stood up and gestured widely to Axl. “This boy is innocent!” he declared with great confidence.

There was a brief uproar around the room, as everyone began to protest, but Thor held up his hand again. “Silence, please. The Detective of Thunder is hard at work.” Next, he stopped at Miek’s chair, pointing at her with his empty pipe.

“Miek, Miek, Miek. You, I have heard tell, were suspiciously good at pumpkin carving this fine evening. How, I wonder, did you become so good at it? Was it through hard work…through showmanship…or through… TRICKS?!?! You know…because you’re the…trickster?”

Miek looked highly affronted and gave a series of indignant chirps, gesturing with her knife-hands. Korg translated: “She says she’s just that good, mate. No tricks needed.”

“Oh! Right. Well, I really thought I had something there. Ladies and gentlemen, this insectozoid is innocent!”

Sylvie snorted loudly. “Oh, for David Pumpkins’s sake, Thor , you are dreadful at this! Allow me.” She clomped loudly over to the Marvel-attired girl and shoved a Three Musketeers chocolate bar menacingly in her face. “Where were you at the time of the trickstering? No excuses!”

Myra looked completely bewildered. “Look, I didn’t even end up going trick-or-treating! I got distracted by looking at Instagram photos of all my friends’ costumes!”

“Aha!” Sylvie’s eyes sparkled. “No alibi! So you are guilty?”

“I am not!”

Sylvie turned around triumphantly. “This girl is guilty!” she declared, making a mic-drop gesture.

Now it was Valkyrie’s turn to step in. “All right, look. The two of you are simply no good at this. I’m the King. Let me handle it.” She stood in front of the three remaining suspects: Georgi the wolf-boy, Beatrix the witch, and the invisible Jyrik. “Look. I want all three of you to simply state plainly what you were doing tonight, in detail, hour by hour. I’ve got a pen, I’ve got paper, it’s gonna take a while, but we’ll get to the bottom of this. All right?” She turned back to the others. “Now this is how you do a proper investigation. Georgi, you first.”

As the three of them gave their statements (with Jyrik’s statement taking quite a bit of time, due to the fact that most of the group couldn’t see or hear him, and Thor actually rather doubted his existence), Thor became aware that Loki was stalking a wide circle around the group of suspects, his eyes narrowed in thought. Finally, he came to rest directly behind Valkyrie.

“You know, Your Highness,” he said, his voice dripping with syrupy menace, “You’re asking quite a lot of questions…and answering none of them.”

Valkyrie turned slowly around on her heel to stare at him. “Well, duh! I’m interrogating them, you dolt!”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” Loki said, nodding his head and beginning to meander away from her. “Or perhaps…” He spun back around, pointing his hoof at her. “...perhaps you are the trickster! I don’t believe your whereabouts are entirely accounted for tonight…hm? Hm???”

“Oh, bloody hell…” Valkyrie began.

“Loki, do not insult our King in this manner!” Thor cried out, aghast. “She could never be guilty of such wrongs!”

“Oh really?” Loki asked, eyes wide. “And how do you know?”

“Loki, I am the son of Odin! I know all! Nothing can get past me!”

All of a sudden, Thor’s pipe disappeared from his hand. “What…where did my…Loki, was that you? You mischievous schemer, of course it was you all along!”

“It wasn’t me!” cried Loki.

“No, it really wasn’t!” said Sylvie. “I was watching him the whole time! He did nothing!”

“Perhaps it was you, Sylvie?” inquired Valkyrie.

Georgi stood up. “It was Thor! I know it was Thor! Some of those tricks required great feats of strength! It must have been the god in our midst!”

Beatrix scrambled to her feet, too. “No, no, it was Korg!” she shouted. “He can disassemble and reassemble his body! What’s more trickstery than that!”

Jyrik’s chair flipped over, and the names of Thor’s goats appeared written in chocolate on the wall.

“What in blazes is happening?” shouted Thor as everyone began accusing each other. And then he looked around in a panic. “Love? Love? Where are you, dear? LOVE?!”

But the child was nowhere to be found. Thor disappeared into the crowd, shouting Love’s name. “LOVE!!” he called out, “come on now, this is not the right time for a game of hide-and-seek!”

However, with Thor now preoccupied, the band of suspects — now led by Axl — decided to turn the suspicion on two new people.

“Asgardians! Friends! Visitors! Look, why are we arguing and pointing fingers amongst ourselves when the suspects are right in front of us!” Axl stood at his chair and pointed a finger to Loki and Sylvie, who were frozen in shock, “Both of them are literally called the God and Goddess of Mischief!”

“Yeah!” the other suspects shouted in unison. The crowd of onlookers whispered and started to nod in agreement with Axl’s bold claim.

“This is preposterous!” Loki exclaimed, “Sylvie and I are not the Tricksters! Just because we happen to be the God and Goddess of Mischief doesn’t mean we caused all the ruckus that happened tonight!” he extended his arms out to make a point.

“I mean,” Sylvie said, “we do cause mayhem, mischief, chaos...” she trailed off.

“Sylvie, you’re not helping our case!” Loki hissed. The crowd booed at the pair, annoying Loki. “Oh, honestly! If we were the Tricksters — and to be clear we are definitely not — we would’ve done something far more grandiose.” But the crowd ignored Loki’s defense and heckled at him even more.

Suddenly, Love’s voice echoed in the room. “Wait, no! You all have it wrong! Aunt Sylvie and Uncle Loki are not the Tricksters!”

“LOVE??” Thor’s head popped up from under the table, where he was searching for the child, “WHERE ARE YOU??” he shouted with his booming voice, “PLEASE COME OUT NOW, THIS IS NOT FUNNY ANYMORE!!”

“See, even the child–” Loki started to speak, but was interrupted by someone from the crowd who shouted…

“The kid is just trying to cover for you!”

“Yeah!” another Asgardian heckler jumped in, “Stop trying to rope the kid into your parlor tricks!”

“Maybe he used his magic to make us believe that Love is actually defending them!”

“Parlor tricks??” Sylvie spoke again, now agitated with all the heckling, “Who said that? I’ll show you what a bloody parlor trick is!” She rolled up the sleeves of her unicorn costume and cracked her knuckles.

As Loki and Sylvie relentlessly argued with the crowd and the band of suspects to dismiss Axl’s claim about them being the Halloween trickster, the doors of the room dramatically opened and an Asgardian teen dressed as Mjolnir entered.

“Wait! I know who the Trickster is! I saw them with my own eyes!”

Valkyrie, who quietly sat down on a chair when the madness started, craned her neck to the direction of the speaker. “Yeah?” she sighed and stood up, “I mean, alright, might as well listen to Thor’s talking hammer. Come up to the front, kid.”

The crowd fell silent and parted to give way to the teen as he made his way to the front. Loki and Sylvie looked on to the walking hammer with amusement and curiosity, while Thor was still very much preoccupied looking for his missing child.

“Love!” he whispered, now looking at the pile of boxes by the corner of the room and trying not to draw the attention to himself, “Look I promise I’m not mad! Just show yourself to me or Uncle Loki or Aunt Sylvie or…”

“Odinson!” Valkyrie shouted and Thor stopped on his tracks. “Aren’t you curious about your hammer’s eyewitness account?” she said, trying to hold her laugh in.

Thor exhaled with exasperation. “Please, Val, I’m trying to find my—”

“Your majesty,” Thor was interrupted by the teen’s loud voice, who immediately greeted Valkyrie as soon as he reached the front.

Valkyrie nodded and motioned for the teen to continue talking. “I was going back to our house when I saw them doing one of their Halloween trickery. Gods, it almost hit me if I didn’t dodge in time…” the teen recalled, “the Trickster flew over my head and I almost peed in my costume when I saw them obliterate a car with laser shooting out from their eyes!

“Your majesty, the Trickster… is a flying Giraffe with laser eyes!” The teen ended his speech dramatically.

Some people from the crowd let out gasps, while others whispered and discussed this new information. Meanwhile, Loki and Sylvie looked at each other, stunned by the witness’ account.

“I— I’m sorry…” Loki broke his gaze from Sylvie and looked at the teen, “did you just say a flying Giraffe?”

“Yes!” the teen answered, “I swear it on the Norns it was a flying Giraffe! It also had a very menacing laugh that sounded like—”

“BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Everyone inside the room looked to the direction of the laugh and found Love laughing her heart out while perched on top of Miek’s rolling whiteboard.

“It was me! I’m the Halloween Trickster!” she exclaimed, “and I would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling… walking… hammer!” Love pouted and pointed at the teen dressed as Mjolnir.

“LOVE!!” Thor bellowed as he walked swiftly towards her, “There you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere !” He picked her up from the top of the whiteboard and hugged her as tight as he possibly could, making the child squeal in delight.

Valkyrie, Loki, Sylvie, and the band of suspects all cleared their throats at the same time, making Thor look at them with confusion. “Er… yes?”

“Thor,” Valkyrie spoke, “your kid just confessed that she’s the Halloween Trickster.”

“Uh, right…” Thor’s expression changed from being relieved to angry. Then, he freed Love from his embrace. “Love,” he said in a serious manner, “I told you no tricks tonight! Why did you do all of those things? You owe the people of New Asgard an apology.”

Love pouted even more and crossed her arms. “I just wanted to have more fun tonight cause it’s Halloween! And…” she looked away from the curious gaze of the older Asgardians, feeling embarrassed from what she was about to say next.

“I wanted to follow in Uncle Loki and Aunt Sylvie’s footsteps of becoming a good Trickster.” Love softly confessed.

"Oh Love," said Sylvie as she hugged her. "I am so proud of you."

Loki sniffed, the proud expression on his face matching Sylvie's. "One day, you will make the Trickster Supreme."

Thor looked from Loki to Sylvie to Loki again. "Oh no, absolutely not. My dear Love here, will be a hero, brave and strong." He looked pointedly at Loki and Sylvie. "Don't try to lure her into mischief."

"If you haven't noticed," Valkyrie interrupted him. "She is already deep in mischief." She bent down, poking a finger gently in Love's chest. "I will be keeping an eye on you next Halloween."

"I will return next year with better tricks," challenged Love. 

"I should start teaching you all the ways of mischief then," Loki exclaimed, clapping his hands in glee.

"Loki!" thundered Thor.

"Oh come on, brother," Loki countered. "She takes after her uncle and aunt. There's a trickster in her just like us."

Thor huffed in annoyance but Love grabbed his arms. "I want to be a trickster like Uncle Loki and Aunt Sylvie. But I also want to be a hero like you Uncle Thor. I want to be just like my family."

Thor's eyes welled up as Love fidgetted her hands, looking down. "You and all the people of New Asgard are my only family."

"You know I have always been alone," added Sylvie while grabbing Loki's hands. "But today, participating in all these activities with you all, I finally felt what having a family looked like."

Valkyrie squeezed her shoulder. "We have all lost something here. Yet we all found each other."

"It took us a Midgardian festival to understand that," chimed Axl.

"Well that's what festivals are," Thor added. "They are ways to bring people together, to celebrate and feast. And what did we learn this halloween?"

"That family is the most precious thing ever," answered Sylvie.

"We may fight, we may get angry but in the end we always have each other," said Loki.

"Because that's what families do," added Thor.

They all smiled at each other, and Thor engulfed Love, Sylvie, Valkyrie and Loki in a hug. The rest of the suspects joined in and they all hugged together.

"With this entire trickster fiasco solved, should we finally get pizza?" Sylvie questioned after a bit.

"Yes, let's go get some pizza," Thor agreed. He smiled widely. "What an excellent way to cap off another classic Thor Halloween adventure!"

"I'm sorry…a Thor Halloween adventure?" asked Loki. "It was a night of mischief and mayhem that culminated with us uncovering a trickster! If anything, this is a classic Loki Halloween adventure!"

"Ah, but I was the one who initiated the quest! And I purchased the candy! That points to it being a Thor adventure."

"There are literally two Lokis here. Clearly, it's a Loki adventure."

"No, it's a Thor adventure."

"Nope. Definitely a Loki adventure."

A tense silence descended as the brothers stared down one another. Sylvie and Love watched them with wide eyes, glancing from one to the other.

Then, Thor laughed.

"OK, brother," said Thor, putting his hand on Loki's shoulder. "I will not trifle with you over this matter. I'm not trying to steal your thunder, so to speak."

"Good, good," said Loki. 

"And besides," said Thor jovially, "we're all well aware of whose adventure this was."

"Right," said Loki. "We definitely are."

"Yes, of course."

"Exactly."

"Naturally."

And the back and forth continued all the way to the pizza place.