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“What in the Nine Realms is that?”
“Some manner of skirt, I think.”
She lifted the thing up to her waist, then to Loki’s. “I think it looks better on you.”
“Everything looks better on me.”
She rolled her eyes and handed it off to him. He draped the garment over his arm, hanger and all, and craned his neck, more interested in the next item. Sylvie reached over and retrieved a pair of white socks, collared at the top by three stripes of warm pink, purple and blue. “I’ll wear these.”
“I still don’t understand these colors,” Loki confessed, pinching the skirt’s blue stripes between his fingers.
“The pink represents the attraction to the same sex, and the blue—”
“No, I know what all that means,” said Loki, plucking a horrendous rainbow tank top off the rack and raising his brows at it. He draped it over the rack, not bothering to return it to its proper place. “I mean to say that this is all very strange, representing the people you love with colors. Whom you love is such a… matter-of-fact… thing.”
“To these mortals it’s different.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, now examining a black shirt with a burst of color at its center. “It mattered to certain people in a bad way, and now the pendulum swings to the other side.”
“I suppose I understand that. But do these clothes have to be so atrocious? I mean, I could do better than this.”
Sylvie turned around to face him expectantly. A bright ring of green pulsed across his body, leaving behind a color-swapped version of his typical Asgardian attire. Rather than deep green, the cape sparkled a vibrant rose. Where the gold would be, there was now metallic blue, except for his wrists which shone purple. “Actually, a bit gaudy. Still, I rather like this.”
“You like it because it’s gaudy.”
“I can be lowkey.” He straightened his sleeves. “I mean as opposed to highkey. I wasn’t just saying my name.” There was another pulse of green and then he was wearing a black three-piece suit. Across the lapel blossomed rows of pink, purple and blue flowers. “Subtlety, Target, have you heard of it?”
“Are you going to put on the actual clothes or not?”
“No.” He tossed the skirt to the ground. The hanger clattered. “No I don’t think I will.”
Sylvie made a sound like she was releasing her very soul with the force of her sigh. “Must you act like an actual child all the time?”
“I’m the god of mischief,” he said matter-of-factly. “And you as well. Come on, start acting like it!” Another pulse of green and he was wearing the get-up of a TVA minuteman, with the pride colors emblazoned across the chestpiece, helmet and shoulderpads.
“What do you think I was doing when I was splintering the Sacred Timeline? Which, by the way, you interrupted.” She tossed the socks atop the discarded skirt where they crumpled in a heap. “The difference between you and I is not Mischief. The difference is that I operate beyond the scope of simple schoolyard pranks.”
“Um, being from a separate timeline and all, I wouldn’t expect you to know this, but I invaded Midgard with a Chitauri army at my disposal after garnering the favor of a mad titan. I would hardly call that a schoolyard prank.”
“When held up against a scheme to fracture Time as we know it?” She smiled bitterly. “Sure it isn’t.”
“Alright, let’s not get into who the superior Loki is again, when we all know the answer to that one.”
“Mhm.”
“It’s me.”
“Precisely, and that’s why you must reassure yourself at every turn.”
“I’m just making sure you know.”
“Mhm.”
“Because you keep saying ‘mhm’ in a way that makes me think you don’t know that.”
“Do you have any more garments in that magical wardrobe of yours, or are we done here?”
“We are not done here, because you have not tried on a single thing.”
“What would you have me wear? That?” She made a face at the heap on the floor. “The selection here is pitiful.”
“Not to worry.” A light passed over her, morphing her own clothes into a colorful variant (wordplay fully intended) of her usual green and gold. “There. How’s that?”
“It’s a little too loud.” She fixed him with a pointed look.
“True, you don’t have the disposition for grandeur. This, then?” There materialized a form-fitting black dress with pink, blue and purple stripes running the width of it.
“You’re quite the designer, aren’t you? Is this what you spent all your time honing, instead of learning how to properly scheme?”
“Oh, you are too kind. But no. I simply have an eye for it.” Her outfit changed once more, this time into the ugly jumpsuit of a TVA inmate. “Oh. I think you pull that look off rather better than I do.”
She scowled. “I can and will dropkick you into the nearest apocalypse.”
“No thanks, but perhaps you should take a vacation there. You seem rather wound up.”
“I wonder why that might possibly be the case.” She strode past him, towards the exit. “Let’s just get out of here. I think if I need to look at one more piece of rainbow vomit I will start bleeding from the eyes.”
Loki returned their outfits each to their original states. “Seriously though, have they not heard of subtlety?” He stepped to follow her, though his shoe caught and slipped on the fabric of the discarded skirt. He grasped at a clothing rack to steady himself but instead took it down with him, landing on the floor hard in a heap of rainbows. He struggled to his knees and glared at Sylvie. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
She stepped back towards him and offered a hand. “Come on, god of mischief. We don’t have all the time in the realms.”