It had taken quite a long time to find him. Of course when he fled, he'd changed his name. After that televised fiasco, everyone hated him, so changing his name and fleeing the country was the first intelligent thing the great ape had ever done.

Somehow, America wasn't a surprising location to find him. Political scandals happened every day in America. Thor would fit right in. But what was surprising was that he hadn't resumed his life of running for offices he wasn't suited for. He'd taken to healing the sick. When Loki read that, he rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. How could the man with views so radical, one appearance on Ísland í dag almost started three separate wars with three separate countries have now turned his sights on making the world a better place?

He had to be in it for the money. American doctors did make a criminal amount of money.

Loki had spied on him from afar for almost two years before the temptation grew too great. He made arrangements to have his things all packed and sent after him if his plans all managed to fall into place. Loki wasn't sure what their father would do if he found out about this little adventure, and he wasn't too keen on letting that happen, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. Probably right around the time the movers showed up to empty his apartment out.

He sat in the terminal in some dreary American city on the border with Canada. There were large bay windows looking out at the runways, but Loki couldn't see much through the positively biblical downpour happening outside. Several seats away from him, a group of Americans were nattering excitedly about the fish market they'd been to. Only Americans would be excited about a fish market, Loki thought.

The layover was three hours, and in that time two other flights had taken off from the gate. Loki hadn't even realised how nervous he'd become until the Americans turned their attention to him.

"Wow, do you know magic?" one of them asked.

Loki realised he'd been absently flourishing an ace in his fingers while he stared out the windows. He looked down at the crisp, green-backed Bicycle card and frowned at it, silently blaming it for attracting the Americans' attention.

"Can you show me a magic trick?" the blonde woman asked.

Loki was not in the mood to put on an impromptu show. Never work for free; that was the very first rule of show business. In an effort to get out of doing exactly that, he put on his confused foreigner face and shook his head.

"I sorry. No… I no… No enska… English?" he stammered out, over-doing it to the point of comedy, but the joke was lost on the American.

She covered her mouth and had the decency to at least look embarrassed.

"Oh, god, I'm sorry," she said, holding up her hand and backing off again.

As soon as she was gone, Loki slid the card back into his pocket. He was almost sad he didn't have his flash paper on him, or he'd have just made the card explode into a burst of flame and sulphur. Unsurprisingly, the ignition mechanism was considered a deadly weapon, and had to be left in his checked luggage. What was he going to do with it? Vanish the entire aeroplane out of thin air?

Actually, that could be a rather good one. He pulled his small notebook from his pocket and started scribbling down a few rough ideas as a man with an expensive haircut and a blue uniform stepped up to the kiosk by the gate. For a moment, Loki dared to hope he could finally be on his way. And then flight 373 to San Diego was now ready for boarding, and Loki wondered if he'd ever get to leave. He'd only been there a few hours, and already Seattle was his least favourite place ever.