When Paths Cross
With the Accords finally heading in a more balanced direction and others looking at Wakanda due to the various bits of information he'd legally uncovered, Tony finally had the time to truly make use of his improved health in following his Queen's other order - rebuilding his arsenal. He still had serious doubts about getting back into making weapons - more for the potential misuse than the eventual need. After all, when the literal Embodiment of Death says there's a megalomaniac threatening the balance of the entirety of creation, it's probably safe to say that yes, the big guns will be needed. He knew he was quite capable of creating ridiculously powerful explosives, energy weapons that could probably rival the Death Star (though on a smaller scale), and highly accurate targetting devices, he just wasn't sure anyone else should even know of their existence before they had actual hostile alien forces right in front of them to aim at. (And with some people, maybe not even then.)
The problem was, Tony could plan such weapons, could draw up detailed schematics, calculate the probable yield and even build prototypes, but he could not be sure they were good enough, nor was there anywhere he could test them without - you guessed it - people who shouldn't be trusted with them finding out. Not to mention the political quagmire and probable derailing of so. much. work. he'd put into convincing the world at large that not all 'super' people - Enhanced or otherwise - were bent on destroying the world.
(Having an arsenal that could do so several times over was not conducive to selling that image. Even without the side effect of rendering the planet an irradiated wasteland as the current nuclear stockpiles of assorted countries would if used to destroy the world ... several times over... god, he hated the hypocrisy of politics.)
He brought the problem of testing to Hela. If nothing else, she was a great sounding board while he talked through the issues, but more often than not she had actual suggestions or gave him permission to call upon the dead for their expertise. He'd met some really, really cool beings from different alien cultures in the course of upgrading FRIDAY. (And the chance to meet a few of his childhood idols was pretty awesome, too! Einstein! Fuller! Feynman! (no, he did not squee like a teenage girl, tyvm.))
This time, however....
Tony snarled and had a repulsor glove primed and aimed as soon as he recognized just who Hela had brought forward to introduce.
Hela laid a hand on his wrist. Though she did not exert enough pressure to force his hand down, her meaning was clear. "Enough, Anthony, peace. You emerged from an Afghan cave in a fury of destruction. New York was Loki's escape from his Afghanistan. Unlike you, Loki could not directly reach his tormentor to destroy him - and now we all face the threat. He is also my Chosen and your ally in this."
Still glaring at the so-called 'god', Tony sneered. "I blew up my captors, not random innocents going about their days."
Hela merely held his gaze dispassionately. "Only by chance. You gave no thought to whether your escape would harm any besides your captors and had it not been in a well-isolated area, you would have. As it was, your escape caused the extinction of a species of desert lizard with the removal of their last viable colony. Even had you known this would be the result, you would not have changed your plans. New York was that point for Loki and your fellow humans the lizards. Unlike you, he had to make it look like he could feasibly be defeated by the lizards rather than simply causing mass annihilation with everything he had.
"Or perhaps you targeting the Ten Rings at Gulmira would be a better example? You do not sympathize with lizards, for all that - at the scale I view creation - their deaths are equal with yours. You paid but little heed to the innocents who were caught in the crossfire at Gulmira, determined as you were to destroy the remnants of your captivity. You took some care not to target the innocents directly, but little more than that. Similarly, of the innocent lives lost to his invasion, few were directly at Loki's hands."
Tony deflated, lowering the gauntlet, unable to truly gainsay her.
"Therefore I bid you: peace. You largely share his views on the value of other lives, Anthony - considering the majority of your own species of little worth individually. You are unique among your fellows, but you were a pack of puppies facing off against an apex predator, and he made puppies appear a credible threat. I assure you that, given Loki's greater resilience and ability to heal from injuries that would kill you instantly, what he suffered at the hands of the Chitauri's masters far outstrips everything you experienced in that cave. Like you, he pretended to accept a leash in order to slip his collar. Conquest was demanded rather than Creation, but the shape of your experiences is remarkably similar."
Tony stilled, losing all his usual animation as he made the correllation. "Wait... this Thanos you mentioned previously is the same as was behind New York?"
"Yes," Loki growled, "If you will fight him for no other reason, then avenge your fallen against the actual perpetrator and protect your Realm as well."
Hela hummed. "Think, Anthony. After your escape, you wandered through the desert for miles, and survived despite having no resources nor any knowledge of the area... why?
"Rhodey. Rhodey came for me."
"And how did Rhodey know where to find you?"
"So Loki blew up New York to get attention and have someone come save him?"
"Not exactly." Loki huffed, his expression slipping into something slightly more controlled. "Midgard was the first I'd been out of the physical presence of my tormentors, though they had me well leashed. The level of destruction I caused was to get attention. If not for rescue then at least for reinforcements against the Titan's forces, with some small hope of my unwillingness being recognized... not that it did me much good. You were the only adept Warrior of Midgard, and Thor was ever an idiot; your green beast was much more helpful."
Tony inhaled sharply, a final piece of the puzzle finally snapping into place. "... a blow to the head..."
Loki shrugged and glanced away. "Indeed. For the first time in... far too long... my mind was my own and I was not in imminent danger. And then I was muzzled and chained and cast into darkness yet again. The most I can say of Asgard's dungeons is that I was given time to heal physically rather than being broken over and over, again and again."
"... Hold up, wouldn't the truth have come out in a trial? Thor told Fury that you'd be tried for your crimes on Asgard, and that's why he denied Earth jurisdiction, even though we were the ones harmed."
Loki snorted in derision. "Did he say 'tried', or 'punished'? Because I assure you that my treatment was not terribly unusual. What the All-Father decrees is what is done. A 'trial', as you call it, is a formality at best. Odin is judge and jury; there are no arguments against him. The muzzle is not always used on prisoners, but Odin could not afford to risk me revealing his lies."
Tony willfully shoved a whole tangle of conflicting thoughts and emotions aside. "That sucks. Though you've clearly managed to get out from under his thumb, and I'm now curious to hear that story."
Loki smirked. "The short of it is: I stole the throne in actuality this time and Odin is currently wandering witless. I check in occasionally to make sure his ill fortune is still holding. I do not take well to betrayal."
"I get that. Totally agree. Betrayal bad, retribution good."
Hela smiled. "I think you will get along splendidly." (They both snorted at that.) "Now, regarding the weapons you are designing..."
A few weeks later, Tony found himself on a dusty twilit planet, with cases of new prototypes to test against the mountains of this barren wasteland. Loki had assured him that it was uninhabited - courtesy of his genocidal not-grandfather, apparently, who had supposedly wiped out the aliens that had been invading London a few years ago through random portals that were part of some predictable cosmic event. Which... whatever, that sounded way more complicated than Tony wanted to deal with at the moment with his new boom-boom sticks to play with. The planet was uninhabited and there was no way the papparazzi or military could spy on him. Good enough.
Loki watched in awe as an entire mountain range crumbled to dust. And the Jericho was, according to Stark, not even the most powerful of his inventions. Merely one of the biggest. Useful for taking out a massive Mothership, but overkill for anything smaller. Like the Leviathans. (Loki would love to see its effectiveness against Sanctuary. Watching Thanos' flagship base scattered to ash in a massive fireball sounded particularly cathartic.) He had been willing to trust Hela that Stark could contribute something against Thanos, but he had not expected this.
Once they were done with the 'mass physical destruction' weapons, Loki transported them to the deep forests of Alfheim in search of bilgesnipe. The massive creatures had notoriously tough hide and were quite annoyingly resilient to injury, able to fight long after most other creatures would be incapacitated. (One reason Thor had considered them 'worthy prey' in his adventuring.) They'd be excellent targets for testing Stark's 'anti-personnel' weapons, and no one would care how many were slaughtered in the course of such testing.
...Loki would just like it on record that Stark's weapons were utterly terrifying. Anything that could slice a charging bilgesnipe in half or render it into a shower unidentifiable bloody bits deserved the utmost respect. If the mortal decided to, he could annihilate Asgard and all her Warriors with ease. The entire Universe should be relieved that the man preferred creating in the solitude of his lab over the mayhem of a battlefield. (He shuddered at the thought of the devastation that would have been unleashed had he successfully taken over the genius' mind in New York.)
Said genius was currently ignoring the carnage surrounding them and muttering to himself as he typed away at the portable device he'd brought for monitoring and collecting data on the performance of each of the weapons he'd brought. From what Loki could glean, only about half of them were deemed 'successful'. And that was even more terrifying.
Slow clapping drew their attention to Hela. "Well done, Anthony. I thought I recognized my Merchant's hand."
Tony sighed. "There's still a lot of room for improvement, and I don't know how these ... weird not-moose-things actually compare to Chitauri, much less the BBEG."
"The...what?" Loki couldn't help but ask. "And they're bilgesnipe, not moose. They don't even resemble moose."
"B.B.E.G - Big Bad Evil Guy. And I didn't say they were moose."
Hela chuckled. "Bilgesnipe are hardier than the majority of the Titan's ground forces, and the more efficient of these weapons would be effective against Thanos himself - though less immediately lethal. It is his armies you will need to defeat to bring the Titan to bay, at which point I can offer aid. Death is everywhere on a battlefield, but I must be wary of taking direct actions as balance and self-determination are important - the entire point of ridding the universe of Thanos is to salvage the balance he is disrupting, not tip the scales further awry."
Loki considered that. Knowing they could have Death's assistance against Thanos himself was heartening. As potent as Stark's weapons were, small shards of the part of him that had been broken, leashed and controlled still whimpered at the thought of facing the Mad Titan again.
Tony just nodded. "So... the Thermobarics are a go, and the ARC-based laser is a probably. I don't think I'm getting enough bang for our buck with the projectiles, though. The bullets are fine, though I think a Vibranium-Starkium alloy might be needed for armor-piercing rounds. It's the launcher. It produced 17.43% more waste heat than I'd expected, and a couple of the finer components are showing signs of potential stress failure. I'd estimate less than a dozen more shots and it'd be a very expensive cudgel. Or explode. That is also a possibility, depending on whether the bullet was leaving the chamber or blocking it when it failed. Vibranium alloys wouldn't work, though, because they do absorb energy."
"I... could get you some uru?" Loki offered hesitantly. "It's what Thor's hammer is primarily made of, tough, durable. It is extremely difficult to work with, though."
Tony thought it over. "Thor would never let me do any sort of in-depth scans or testing on it, but what little data I did get... It's worth a look. If you could get me some, Loki-dokes, I'd love to experiment." He batted his eyelashes faux-flirtatiously.
Loki glared at the grinning genius. Yes, they'd been getting along and he'd enjoyed their rambling discussions in preparation for the testing, but he really would prefer the infuriating man cease the infantile nicknames.
(He knew he wouldn't.)