Oddly enough, even after that show, a sentient artifact that I'd been using as a bargaining chip against Heaven and Hell had thought at the time that I was a good influence on Leo/Loki. The Light of Life, the artifact, had decided he should stick around with me for those four years it would take me to recover my shape-shifting abilities. As it was more powerful than Leo and I combined, it didn't ask us for permission either. It neutered him-on the god part at least. The rest of him, I assumed, was in working condition. Although as I had to exercise, it would've been nice for Leo to have suffered a slight bit more. We'd see how many funny quips about my weight he'd make while buying Internet steroids and Viagra.

Not that my humiliation stopped there. My mama had laughed herself sick when I told her anyone or anything thought I was a good influence. Then again, Leo had been a very bad boy in his day. He had once wanted to end the world-Ragnarok, the Norse end of days-and that had just been for kicks and a way to waste a boring afternoon. But that had been when he was Loki, a long time and a lot of raging darkness ago. He was different now. So many say they want to change; he was one of the few I'd seen do it. He was one of the few with a will stronger than the shadows that had filled him up, shadows that were there still but leashed. Is it nobler to be born good or to be born on the farthest end of the bloody spectrum and have chosen to be good? When I looked at Leo, it was an easy question to answer.

Ancient artifact or not, he would've stayed with me, to help if worse came to worst. He was that way. I would've done it for him if the situation were reversed. Friends… You didn't take them for granted. But that didn't mean I had to listen to his jokes about my ass. That was the great thing about being a shape-shifter. Calories? Fat grams? Whatever. Turn them into extra hair or an extra inch in height or shed them as pounds of water. Or in the other direction, if you wanted to be a two-hundred-pound coyote with the voice of an avalanche, take the extra you needed from the dirt, rock, or the moisture-soaked air around you.