Debugging Mischeif (lokixfemale!reader)

Chapter 4

Loki's hand met (y/n)'s in the gesture of a mortal's oath—quaint, shallow, and yet curiously binding. The mortal's palm was slightly damp, her grip too quick, but it carried a warmth that lingered longer than it should. The reaction was... unexpectedly satisfying.

"Loki," she said, her voice a smooth, practiced cadence. "A pleasure."

The name landed exactly as intended. (y/n)'s eyes widened just a fraction, a flicker of surprise and appreciation she tried, and failed, to hide. Loki. She was clearly turning the name over in her mind, finding it pleasing. The irony was a private vintage, sweet on the tongue.

As (y/n) retreated behind the glowing screen of her laptop, a digital shield against further social interaction, Loki maintained her serene smile. This mortal was a fascinating paradox: a creator of worlds who could barely navigate a simple introduction. She wielded power Loki could only begin to comprehend.

The "bug," as (y/n) had called it, was a rift in reality. A law of her constructed universe had been broken; the solid was not solid. To Loki, whose magic was the art of weaving and unraveling the very fabric of perception, this was not a failure. It was a revelation.

This was a new form of sorcery.

If this is the language of creation, Loki thought, watching the lines of code scroll in the reflection of (y/n)'s focused eyes, then I shall become fluent.

That night, in the small, sparse apartment she had secured with a whisper of magic, Loki opened the secondhand laptop she had acquired. The glow of the screen illuminated her borrowed face.

She began as any scholar would: with the basics. A search for "programming for beginners" yielded a staggering number of resources. She dove in.

Variables were not so different from the elemental components of a spell—containers for power and intent. int, string, boolean—these were the runes of this new craft. Functions were incantations; you defined them with a purpose, and when you called their name, they performed their duty. A for loop was a simple temporal recursion.

It was... elegant.

Her mind, a labyrinthine library of forgotten lore and complex seiðr, devoured the concepts. The logic was pristine, the cause and effect beautifully absolute. She wrote simple programs, her fingers flying over the keys with the same innate grace they wielded a dagger. But she was not interested in calculators. She was interested in creation. In rebellion.

By day, Loki perfected her mortal mask. She took orders with a smile, steamed milk with uncanny precision, and learned the rhythm of the café until it seemed she had always belonged. Mortals praised her speed, her politeness, her uncanny knack for remembering their usuals. (y/bff/n) was delighted, claiming she'd found the perfect hire. Loki only inclined her head, secretly amused. If she could mimic gods, kings, and monsters, was it truly so impressive to play the barista?

By night, the laptop's glow became her spellfire. Lines of code spilled across the screen like runes waiting to be deciphered, their power latent until summoned. She wrote simple programs, tested loops and functions, watched her creations obey. Mortals would call them "beginner exercises." To Loki, each was proof: this language could be mastered, bent, and—eventually—weaponized.

Meanwhile, the Avengers chased shadows in Brooklyn.
A shattered lock here, a flicker of green light there. Loki scattered traces like breadcrumbs, just enough to keep them guessing. Illusions flickered in warehouse windows, recorded by shaky phones and passed along to JARVIS. Each time, the mighty heroes descended in force—only to find empty space.

And all the while, Loki polished the counter of a café, apron tied neatly, lips twitching at the private joke.

Within a day, she was building simple graphical applications. Within two, she was deconstructing the very game engine (y/n) used, studying its source code to understand its soul. She could see the matrix now, the rigid logic underpinning the digital world. It was a universe of stunning order, waiting for the right mind to introduce a little beautiful chaos.

But then, she hit a wall.

It started with a desire to understand the deepest layer: the compiler itself. The tool that translated the high-level language into the machine's binary tongue. She wanted to not just speak the language, but to understand the very magic that gave it voice.

She found a project online—an open-source compiler for a language called C. She decided to modify it, to add a subtle, hidden feature: a backdoor that would, under a specific and obscure set of conditions, allow a carefully crafted piece of code to bypass a common security check. It was the digital equivalent of crafting a key that could fit any lock, if you knew how to jiggle it just right.

The theory was sound. The code was, to her mind, perfect. But when she tried to compile the compiler itself, it failed. Not with a simple error she could fix, but with a cascade of abstruse, low-level failures. "Segmentation fault (core dumped)." "Linker error: undefined reference." "Internal compiler error."

The compiler could not compile itself with her modifications. It was a paradox. The tool was rejecting its own new nature.

For three days, she wrestled with it. She scoured forums, read decades-old documentation, and traced through millions of lines of code. The problem was a ghost in the machine, a flaw so fundamental in her understanding of this specific, intricate system that she could not see it. The absolute logic of this world, which she had so admired, had become a prison of its own. She was trying to alter a fundamental law of physics, and the universe was pushing back.

Frustration, a feeling she was intimately acquainted with, began to simmer in her chest. She was Loki of Asgard. She had bent kings and shattered realms. She would not be bested by a machine.

But as the third night bled into dawn, the answer still eluded her. She leaned back from the screen, the glow highlighting the tension around her eyes. The perfect, infallible logic had a crack, and she was on the wrong side of it.

She needed a different perspective. She needed... an expert.

Closing the laptop, she looked towards the window, where the first hints of light were coloring the sky. The café would open soon. (y/n) would likely return, with her own problems and her brilliant, mortal mind.

A new plan, far more interesting than mere sabotage, began to form. She would not just ask (y/n) for help. She would present the problem as a theoretical curiosity, a puzzle between two intellects. She would guide the conversation, probe her knowledge, and see if the mortal creator could spot the ghost that eluded the god.

A slow smile replaced her look of frustration. 

WC: 1134