Marvel: Emotion Farming System

Chapter 62: Bonus Chapter: Pluto

This is a bonus for 5k stones.

Next one will be at 7.5k stones.

Ciao.

...

Loki brought the cup to his mouth but found it empty. He looked at the middle-aged man behind the counter and raised the cup.

"Another." Good thing he remembered that Midgardians didn’t smash the cup at the last moment and placed it on the table awkwardly.

On the pages, Gesicht followed the clue and arrived before BRAU 1589, a robot that had murdered a human eight years ago.

’How do you go against what you were not to do?’ Loki blinked, trying to understand this problem.

But no matter how he approached it, there was no clear answer for it. And it seemed like the humans who had made BRAU 1589 couldn’t understand that either.

And it kept asking to exchange memory chips with Gesicht; did it have something to show? Loki’s mind went back to Robby’s wife and how she caught the thing humans had missed from the memory chip.

Maybe there was a similar explanation in his chip that the humans had missed, and BRAU thought another robot might understand it?

"Take it." Loki clicked his tongue.

Too bad that Gesicht didn’t take the offer.

But at least he learned more about the horns. It seemed that human mythologies depicted the gods of death with horns. Even in Asgard, the ruler of Hel was depicted with horns in legends, but no one had actually met it.

When they were little, Thor went on a search for the supposed ruler of death, dragging Loki and others along while calling it an adventure. But they had found nothing as well.

’So that is where Pluto comes from, the Roman mythos.’ Loki read further and learned that the murder of Mont Blanc wasn’t random.

Seven names. Seven targets. The most advanced robots created by science. Gesicht being one of them.

’But what about Lanke then? And isn’t Gesicht’s wife also in danger since she is very much identical to him?’ It just seemed like the personal stakes had risen to an all-time high.

And when Loki turned the page and read the next Chapter, a wide smile appeared on his lips.

It was the old man with his glasses and the man with the weird mask.

"Only took about 100 pages..." Loki groaned while taking a sip of his cold drink.

Truthfully, he had already been absorbed by the story as he followed Gesicht, but there was no way he would admit to that.

In the next few pages, he learned that the old man was blind and a music composer. And the man with the weird mask was a robot named North No. 2, who had come to take care of the blind man as a butler.

Another thing was that this old man had some prejudice against machines when it came to music. He would often let out snide comments about North No. 2, who showed no reaction to the discriminatory tone or harsh words.

The old man called North No. 2 bland, even when he sincerely praised the music, pouring out the tea he had been given.

A grating feeling rose in Loki’s chest. It wasn’t the best feeling, and in truth he wanted to stop reading. But the mystery about why a former army robot liked music was a touch too strong to ignore.

’I’ve already read till here, might as well go the full stretch.’ He sighed, not focusing on the old man’s lines for obvious reasons.

He only looked at North No. 2 that was drawn to the piano, even with the old man’s constant demeaning words.

"Fake violins, Fake Trumpets, Fake orchestras. High tech equipment can masquerade as the real thing, but they’re just a bunch of machines..."

At this point it wasn’t about the instruments; it was a way of denying North No. 2. After all, he too was a machine made in the image of a human.

’Does this old man really believe that the machines can never change from what they were made to be?’ Loki wanted to consider it for a bit longer, but since it was this old man who said it, he decided to move on.

And then the moment came. North No. 2 wanted to learn how to play the piano. The machine built for the battlefield, a weapon of mass destruction, didn’t want to enter war ever again.

Because of that, no matter what the old man said, he didn’t leave. No matter how much he shouted, he didn’t stop playing the few notes he had heard the old man humming in his sleep. And no matter what tantrums this old man threw, North No. 2 stood still.

In the end, even the old man opened up about his nightmare.

’Abandoned as a kid, huh?’ Loki hovered over that page for a few minutes before moving on. Now he understood why he didn’t like this guy, Paul Duncan.

It explained a little about Paul Duncan, his childhood, and his obsession with music. And in the end, even he admitted that this robot he had been trying to push away wasn’t just a simple machine.

This thing he called a machine also had a love for music; it also had nightmares just like him, a human.

’Did he get to North at last?’ Loki followed the wordless panels of the old man becoming angrier after North No. 2 left.

Had North’s love for music really died that easily?

The answer arrived soon. North No. 2 hadn’t left completely; he only went to Bohemia to investigate the reason for Paul’s nightmare.

’So, his mother didn’t abandon him; she had to hide the truth because he had already made his decision to hate her.’ A deep frown settled on Loki’s brow.

He hadn’t liked this old man from the start. The sarcastic tone. The know-it-all attitude. And that annoying sureness that what he knew was the only truth.

It had been rubbing him the wrong way. In a very wrong way

There was this uncanny similarity between Paul’s mother and Odin.

Did the Allfather also hide the truth about his origin for a reason? Was there a clue somewhere? Did he see something?

It was possible. And it was also possible that he was allowing himself to be swayed because of a story written by a mortal through their rose-tinted gaze because he wanted to believe there was a reason.

But the only thing he knew was North No. 2 was more human than any mortal he had seen in this book till now. And his love for music was real.

If there was a reason behind why he liked music, Loki wanted to know. And even if he didn’t have a reason, it would be all the same.

’As advanced as he is, North should be a target as well.’ Loki hoped that wasn’t the case, but things seldom went the way one wished for.

But even as North No. 2 burst into a ball of flames, he fell from the sky doing what he liked. Singing until the end.

Loki looked at the page for a few hours as a single question kept echoing in his mind.

He wasn’t thinking about what Allfather wanted from him.

’What do I want?’ That’s all he could muster.

Since childhood, he had been raised to compete for the throne of Asgard against his brother. So much so that he believed it was what he wanted.

But was the throne really that important to him? Or was it the approval of Allfather? Since when did he start to believe that taking the throne was the only way to get acknowledged?

Maybe because the man who raised him had made it seem like the most important thing. Maybe he just wanted the throne for himself. Maybe he wanted to prove that he was as much of Odinson as Thor was.

’This is ridiculous...’ By the time Loki stood up, the sun had set.

Even if his skin looked normal to others, it appeared too blue to him. It had been since that day he had made Thor run straight into the realm of Frost Giants.

What were his father’s intentions behind hiding this? He really wanted to know. But the man had gone into Odinsleep before he could answer that.

But it felt like a new weight had been added to his already heavy shoulders. He planned to make Thor believe that he had no hopes of returning and take the Throne for himself, but he couldn’t do that either.

Even now that he was in the palace, all he did was read the book a dozen times; he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t do it.

Was he, Loki, changing because of a book?

His mind kept pulling him back to North No. 2. The machine built for war, but somehow came to love music.

"Hmm, change, huh. Maybe there is someone who can answer that for me." Loki slipped out of the bed and exited the palace without notifying anyone.

Hiding away from Heimdall, he arrived in Midgard. Once again, he followed the traces left by Thor and watched him from afar.

This brother of his was the embodiment of act first, think later. He always fell for Loki’s tricks and always did what he believed in. So much so that he argued against Odin himself after single-handedly starting a one-sided war against the Frost Giants.

Sure, Loki had some part in it, but the wind could only supplement the fire. The dry wood itself was the one fault for catching fire.

Thor would no doubt try to return. He was probably still trying to lift Mjolnir so he could get his powers back and claim the throne.

’If I play the cards just right, I might be able to see what lies beneath that reluctant acceptance.’ That’s what Loki had thought before he found Thor.

...

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