Legendary

Classes

Thor had his guards transfer Kipp, that backer, and the festival organizers up to Asgard and the dungeons in the citadel as soon as possible. I'd seen them once and the cells weren't as dire as you'd expect for a dungeon; clean and well lit, with reasonable furniture and good food and nary a rack in sight. But the only privacy was in the bathroom, there weren't separate facilities for men and women, no face to face contact, and no sound entered or left the cells. They were placed in individual cells, and the only time they'd be allowed to speak to somebody was on the visits from the lawyers--four for those there for two years, two for those there for one year. I put them out of my mind once Loki said they'd been settled in. I had other things to think about. My classes, for one thing. And my feathers finally came in, the pretty dark gray I liked. It was a relief both to stop itching and to get rid of the white feathers. I'd been literally carrying reminders of Vigrior on my back for a year.

Just after finals, I was contacted by MIT for a piece they were doing for the alumni magazine on notable returnees. Tony had also been contacted and we agreed to be interviewed. I had a week free where I was waiting for my grades. I went to the lab one day and talked about the findings from the research trip with Ann. She'd brought back a couple of 55 gallon drums with seawater and plastic trash for experiments in controlled conditions and I spent another day helping her set those up. We acquired an office just down the hall that we converted to a robotics lab for Tony. The data indicated that currently, our organisms worked better in a static environment to keep them clustered around the plastic, so we had a solution that had self-propelled scoops that would corral a certain amount of trash and seawater, douse it with the organisms, and let the organisms do their work before being released back into the sea. There were a lot of variables to consider: the bacteria worked best in this application but the algae would stay together better, there were possibilities of two stage treatment, maybe three, depending on what we could get the organisms to do. Ideally, the organisms could be crafted to be sprayed over a clump of garbage by a ship, drone, or plane and that would be the extent of human action (and cost). The organisms would take it from there. There were several plastic bottle manufacturers who were waiting impatiently for results and water conservancy groups who were volunteering to run more extensive tests themselves. The four of us got together to discuss hiring some help.

I got my grades back and wasn't best pleased. Two As and two Bs. Serena got three As and one B and graduated with her bachelors. We had a party. My uncle got four As and a B. I was just going to have to work harder. Aslyn was amused by my dissatisfaction, but she'd seen this every semester for years. I was taking two classes this summer, now that I'd gotten back into the discipline of school. Serena was too, but Bucky had gotten a summer internship at the Central Park zoo. He'd be doing most of the grunt work, including a lot of poop shoveling, but such was the lot of a zookeeper. If he was lucky and there was time, they'd let him work with some of the smaller, more placid animals toward the end.

The week after we got our grades, a writer for the alumni magazine came down for the interview. There were a few of us in the city who'd consented to be interviewed, and they were going to get us in one go. Tony and I did ours together at the office. The writer met our very significant others and had a look around before asking some softball questions about how we were adjusting to being back, what we were doing now, then fewer questions than I expected about Ragnarok and the trial. "You don't seem too worried that the recording was saved from destruction," the writer said to me, and I shrugged.

"The court said that the issue could be revisited once all the plaintiffs were dead. Thor was a plaintiff, and he's got a few thousand years of life expectancy yet. So I expect that after all that time there won't be a huge demand for the footage." The writer looked enlightened, and I knew that Thor would insist on this term being honored. Tony was asked about his Iron Man emeritus gig, the writer took a few pictures of us, and that was it. Of course, it doesn't do to be too controversial when you're trying to get alumni to part with their money, so it wasn't surprising that it wasn't a hard-hitting interview. I wouldn't have participated in one of those; I'd had enough of that with the trial. One thing that my new infamy did was propel Damian and me to get on the list to get our home built faster than we'd originally planned. If people weren't looking like they expected me to flap around, cutting them down with a sword, they wanted to talk or to take a selfie with me. I rather thought that would die down over time, but it was irritating and sometimes unpleasant. Eira was an even bigger celebrity, especially with children. She was nice to everybody but it wore on her too. She's not a fame-seeking kind of pup. When Daniel got wind that we were ready to start building at a dinner we had with him, he immediately bumped us up a few places with a Wayne-owned construction company. The upside to having money to spend on luxuries was that they were in less demand and therefore easier to get, so when enough construction materials were available, we'd be ready to go. When we signed the contract with the company, we added some bonus money for early completion at all stages, so that even if there was a glitch somewhere in the process, workers could still try for bonuses. Bonuses make people happy, and happy people do their best work. And there was a lot of work to be done on our proposed home.