<div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/d/d9/LokiLookSquare.jpg)</div><hr/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Name: </strong> Loki<br/>  <strong>Title: </strong>God of Mischief<br/>  <strong>Affiliation: </strong>Undecided<br/>  <strong>Location: </strong>Cairo, overlooking the pyramids of Giza<br/>  <strong>Tags: </strong>Open<br/></span></span><hr/><br/><br/>The city of a thousand minarets lay battered and broken, shrouded by a black cloud composed of newly risen smoke and a century of pollution. In many ways Loki was thankful for its obscuring presence; this wretched corner of Midgard was hot enough without the eye of the sun blazing down upon him as well.<br/><br/>Yet something important had brought him here, not long before the devastating attack of earth's latest conqueror. Odin may have robbed him of his ability to see and sense magic but Loki's memories remained. Memories of what the tesseract had revealed when he held it. Faint as they were, he knew his best chance at recovering his rightful powers lay somewhere in or near this sprawling city. His search had barely begun when unfamiliar armies appeared and the massacre of the humans began.<br/><br/>Not that there was anything wrong with thinning the herd, but that part of the invader's plan remained a puzzle to Loki. Many humans were gathered into warehouses and most were destroyed. At the same time, little by little, the army's numbers swelled. But these soldiers were not strictly human; they had enhanced abilities that could be quite challenging. He tested himself against them when he found small patrols alone in the labyrinthine streets. Few of them seemed formally trained but each one was uniquely skilled and deadly enough to provide a challenge. His curiosity was roused.<br/><br/><div class="floatright">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/e/ec/CairoHaze.jpg)</div>He knew that the remaining free humans, huddled like rats in the darkest corners of Cairo, had watched him kill their enemies. He watched them at other times: fighting their own battles, rarely winning, sometimes escaping. Whatever they thought of him, they didn't object when he drew near in the night to listen to the clandestine radio broadcasts that delivered fragments of news from the other fallen cities of world.<br/><br/>It seemed that Cairo had fared well compared to other locales. Her minarets were shattered but the vast majority of her structures remained standing. Highways were clogged with abandoned vehicles but the invaders worked to clear them, making way for tanker trucks and transports that bore the foreign army's mark. The river ports lay untouched and open to commandeered vessels. Enemy airships has claimed the landing fields. It seemed, then, that this city was particularly useful to Midgard's new ruler as a strategic point of distribution for earthly resources. And perhaps there was something more located here... something the Trickster himself had come to investigate.<br/><br/>Loki's cloak rippled and flared with the shapes of a thousand dark feathers. Where he had crouched in the dim morning light, a golden eagle suddenly took to the cloudy skies. The bird wheeled to the south, soaring over the massive pyramids of stone that were cradled within Cairo's embrace. Here the conqueror's soldiers were especially busy clearing debris, erecting barriers, and assembling mysterious technological constructs; obviously preparing for an event of some import. A new arrival?<br/>