Catching Up and Getting Caught
Strange’s rotund assistant led Loki to the library, instructing him to wait while Strange consulted with his fellow magicians on the veracity of his claims. Loki nodded, using the time probe and passively study the magic that these Midgardian practitioners had put in place around the building. Many of their castings drew on and maintained themselves through extra-dimensional energy, which, Loki had to admit was a clever workaround to the limitations on the level of power that these sorcerers could normally call upon without its help. It had been centuries since Loki had interacted with any Midgardian practitioner and looking around him, he could easily say that they had come a long way.
Some of their workings were downright fascinating considering the source of their origin. Loki would have been unsurprised to see such spells in effect someplace in Alfheim though to find them here on Midgard… I wonder if someone from Alfheim disregarded Odin’s ban and decided to approach the Midgardians while hidden from sight. The similarities in their spell formation were too unlikely to be coincidental, though Loki could ponder on the implications of that later. Right now, he had a cover to keep.
“Thanos can be here any day,” Loki insisted in Banner’s voice, when the assistant started moving towards the exit, “we need to get the Avengers.”
“A lot has happened during the time you’ve been away, Doctor Banner,” Wong said, keeping his tone gentle. “Getting the Avengers might be a little harder than you think.”
“What? Why? Are they away on a mission?” Loki enjoyed watching him struggle to come up with appropriate responses that would not risk triggering the Hulk. The man had been trying his best to get who he believed to be Banner, used to the idea that the Avengers were no longer shield brothers without having to outright say it.
“You could say that,” Wong answered cautiously.
“All of them? Really?” he injected a hint of surprise in Banner’s response.
The man fumbled for an answer, glancing towards the library door uncertainly. “I guess Stark might still be in New York?”
“Tony’s here? Oh thank God. We should go see him then,” Loki said, pushing past him towards the main door. “He can call the others and let them know I’m back.”
“There won’t be a need for that,” Strange said, throwing the doors wide open as he marched inside. As much as Loki disliked the secondrate, he could admit that the sorcerer had a flair for making dramatic entrances. Nothing on the same level as Loki, but he could appreciate a good entrance when it was made, though he had to wonder if Strange had placed an eavesdropping spell on the library. His entrance had been timed so perfectly.
“Have you found the rest of the Avengers?” Loki remembered not to sound too demanding as he pitched his tone to sound desperate.
“Bruce?” Tony Stark whispered as he stepped out from behind the secondrate, his face a mask of disbelief, and was that a hint of relief? The inventor seemed to have aged decades within the span of a few years since Loki had seen him last. Grey hair was prominent at his temples and stress lines all over his face. “When Bleaker Street Magician showed up at the park, I wasn’t sure I believed him but… you’re here. He said you were in space?”
“I know. Crazy, right?” Loki added just a touch of hysteria and disbelief to sell it.
“Crazy doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Stark muttered, though he smiled at Loki and the years disappeared from the inventor's face. “I’m glad to see that you’re back. How did you end up in space in the first place? I can’t say I designed the quinjet for interstellar travel and I’d be really impressed if your answer turns out to be that the Hulk repurposed it. Or did you repurpose it? What was it? FTL? Hyperdrive?”
“Actually, I’m not really sure how I ended up on Sakaar,” Loki said. It took barely a thought to mimic Banner's countless recountings of his adventures on Sakaar for the Asgardian refugees. Loki added a helpless shrug before continuing. “I was the Hulk for most of it and my memory is really fuzzy on some of the stuff that happened even before I turned so, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Oh? How is Big Green anyway? I heard you guys had an encounter with Final Boss up there.”
“The Hulk is… upset. He doesn’t like being beaten and well… Thanos kicked his butt.”
“So that’s his name, huh? Thanos. You know, I saw this coming six years ago,” there was vindictiveness in Stark’s voice and in him Loki saw a kindred soul. “I saw it but no one believed me. They claimed it was all in my head. That I was obsessing over nothing. But I was right all along!”
Loki nodded, making sure to add a touch of repentance to his posture as he spoke. “I know, and I’m sorry for the part I played in all of that but we need to call the others. You have some way to get them here, right? We need to figure out how we’re going to counter him.”
“No can do. Sorry but the Avengers broke up,” Stark answered, crossing his arms as he looked away.
“Broke up? What? Like the Beatles?” In his mind, Loki thanked Hawkeye for catching him up on various aspects of Midgardian pop culture. He'd tried staying abreast of the culture and developments on various realms over the centuries but sometimes he fell behind.
Stark gave him a sharp glance before shaking his head and looking away. "Not that we were a music band but I suppose that analogy could work here, yeah."
"Do you have any way to get in touch with them? More importantly, do you think they might listen to you?"
Stark shifted uneasily, making an aborted motion towards his pocket before dropping his hand. "No, I don't have any way to contact them. And honestly? I don't think any of them would listen to me even if I did. They'll probably think I'm trying to trick them or some shit. We don't need them, anyway."
"...What happened?"
"Stark, be very careful about what you say," the secondrate decided to interject and Loki bristled.
"I'm not going to Hulk out in the middle of your precious, whatever this place is."
"Yeah, have a bit more trust in Brucie Bear and Big Green," Stark said as he came over and clapped Loki on the back. "We had a difference of opinion on oversight after the fall of SHIELD. I said we needed accountability, Rogers disagreed. We had a mega showdown in an airport, Nat decided she liked Rogers more and stabbed our side in the metaphorical back. Then Rogers decided his popsicle friend was more important and almost literally stabbed me in the back. Or should I say almost smashed my chest in with his shield. I guess he could argue that I deserved it for choosing to work with Thaddeus Ross but to that I'll say 'ever heard of keep your friends close and enemies closer?' By the way, Ross, total dickhead. No wonder you Hulk out every time you two meet. Two minutes into our first meeting, I wanted to punch him in the face too, which is a new record by the way. Have I told you how glad I am to see you?"
With that, Stark closed the distance between them and Loki found himself enveloped in an unexpected hug. He stiffened at the contact and had to force himself to relax before Stark began to suspect that something was amiss. "I'm glad to be back, as well." Loki settled on in the end. He carefully extricated himself from the embrace and decided a change in topic was needed. “So, uh, remember how Loki wanted to get Tesseract a few years back?”
“Let me guess, Thanos sent him?”
“Thanos sent him,” Loki nodded, wondering if he ought to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding that incident. He weighed the pros and cons of letting that information slip though Stark took the decision out of his hands when he spoke up.
“Huh... To be honest with you, judging on what Thor had told us of his brother, I wouldn’t have pegged Reindeer Games to be the lackey type.”
“Funny you should mention that,” Loki said, adding a touch of hesitation to Banner’s tone as he did. “Turns out, Loki wasn’t a hundred percent in his mind during that time.”
Stark quirked a skeptical brow. “You’re telling me, this Thanos guy mind-controlled Loki and then gave said mind-controlling device to the guy he’d just turned into his personal flying monkey?”
“No, it was more subtle then that. It influenced his thoughts, altered his memories and made him more susceptible to his negative emotions. Something that Loki wouldn’t have noticed right away or tried to look too closely at, at the time.”
“And you know this because?” Strange piped in, arms crossed. Loki resisted the urge to scowl and settled for giving the man a flat stare.
“I ran into Loki and Thor on Sakaar. Parts of the truth came out during our time together.”
“Hang on, back up a little, Loki is alive?” Stark gaped. “Thor said he’d died during the whole convergence fiasco!”
Loki remembered waking up alone in the ashen fields of Svartalfheim, alone with a sluggishly healing chest wound, coughing up blood that had filled his punctured lung and suppressed the instinctive shudder that came with. He’d thought for sure he would have died and yet, the death had rejected him just as it had when he had fallen off the Bifrost.
“You okay there, Bruce?” Stark’s cautious tone pulled Loki away from the abyss before his thoughts could wind up in a downward spiral.
“I don’t know how Loki survived. I don't think even Loki knows how he survived but Thor didn’t know the truth until a few weeks ago,” Loki shrugged, moving the conversation to safer waters. “Anyway, that’s not important. Remember the Tesseract and that stone in Loki’s scepter? There are four more of those and Thanos wants all six. He’s known as the Mad Titan and his ultimate goal is to wipe out half of all life in the universe. And he needs those stones to achieve his goal.”
“They’re called the Infinity Stones,” Wong said, conjuring an illusion of the stones, “and they each control an essential aspect of the universe. Space, Reality, Power, Soul, Mind, and Time.”
“Right now, Thanos has the most dangerous stone of the set in his possession, the Power Stone,” Loki told them, a pang of regret for the destruction wrought on the Nova Empire in his chest. Though the Mad Titan touted his wish to only eradicate half of the population of every planet that he visited, there were times when Thanos felt the need to wipe out the species entirely. Xandar would have been obliterated, if only to make an example of what became of those that tried to resist the Mad Titan. “Loki has the Tesseract but Thanos is aware that the Mind Stone is here on earth. There were rumors that another one might also be here but we didn’t have the time to locate where it might be or which one.”
Strange’s jaw tightened at his words and Loki suppressed the urge to smirk. The gaudy artifact hanging around the secondrate’s neck was good at shielding the Time Stone’s presence but Loki had caught onto the thread of Alfheim-like magic cast around the eye and inferred its purpose.
“So, if Thanos needs all six, why don’t we just find this other stone and stick it in the garbage disposal?” Stark suggested.
“Who know what might happen to all of existence if you tried to destroy one of the stones,” Strange said. “Besides, I doubt there is a garbage disposal powerful enough to destroy an aspect of the universe.”
“I’m sure we could try anyway,” Stark shot back.
“And if it unravels all of existence?” Strange demanded, taking a step towards the inventor.
Stark drew himself up to glare at the sorcerer. “I guess we’ll have accomplished our mission to keep Thanos from succeeding.”
“By doing his job for him.”
“Before we try to destroy these stones, we still need to find them,” Loki as Banner said, stepping between the two posturing heroes. “Unless you have some way of tracking them down?”
“There are a few artifacts that may be capable of such a feat,” Strange admitted as he turned away, “though we already know where the Time Stone is. As for the Vision, Stark must be keeping track of his latest super-bot.”
“Yeah… That might be a problem. Vision turned off his transponder two weeks ago. He’s currently offline.”
“So you lost him,” Strange said, his flat tone carrying the weight of his disappointment which, oddly enough, reminded Loki of Odin.
“I didn’t lose him.” Stark bristled. “He’s evolving. Learning. Growing into his own person. I can’t keep mother-henning him all the time.”
“You can when he’s in possession of one of the infinity stones," Strange shot back.
“So you want me to what? Chip him like a pet?”
That was when a woman's scream pierced the air. Arguments forgotten, the four exchanged looks of alarm before shooting towards the library’s exit as one. Sensing the need for urgency, the Sanctum conjured a door that led right to the entrance hall. Loki fell back, letting the others take the lead as he took a moment to take stock of the situation. Midgardians ran down the streets in panic, clearly running away from something he couldn’t see from inside the sanctum though judging by a few of them pointing at the sky, he could make a fair guess. Sure enough, when he did step outside, he could see a Q-ship kicking up dust and debris as it descended towards the city. The dust made it hard to see very far though it appeared as though the Black Order intended to land the ship right in the middle of the city. After all, the Black Order would hardly care for property damage on the planets they conquered in their ‘father’s’ name. Not when they intended to wipe out half the population to honor the Mad Titan’s obsession with death.
They made their way through the throngs of panicked humans running about, the ‘heroes’ redirecting them towards safety, not that many of them needed to be told to run in the direction opposite to the giant flying ring of doom above their heads. As they drew nearer to the Q-ship’s intended landing site, it was near impossible to see due to the debris until Strange summoned a clearing spell with a flourish of his hands. He sent it racing at the ship, calming the raging winds around them. In the meantime, Stark pulled a pair of glasses and used them to inquire about any stragglers from his digital assistant. The woman rattled of a few street names where humans were still trapped in their vehicles and Wong offered to go rescue them. No sooner had the magician’s portal vanished that a transporter beam from the ship deposit two of Thanos’s children in the street before them.
Cull Obsidian shouldered his chain hammer as he straightened though it was the sight of Ebony Maw, spreading out his hands that sent Loki's heartbeat stuttering.
Impossible… My curse should have finished him off. It was an effort on Loki's part not to let his panic show at the sight of the sadistic creature. Because nothing should have been able to survive that curse and yet, here stood Ebony Maw in all his wrinkled glory. And if Maw had the power to survive that curse, could Loki really take him on? What if... What if Maw got the better of him and--
There will be no barren moon where you can hide...
Wait... Did the Other know about Saraab? Did the Black Order? If they knew then Loki couldn't go back there. He would have to find another safe house. Or keep running for the rest of his life.
"Hear me and rejoice," Maw's announcement broke Loki's train of thought, "you are about to die at the hands of the children of Thanos. Be thankful that your meaningless lives will soon be—”
“Nope, sorry, Earth is closed today. That means you’ve got to beam up and go home, E.T.”
The barest hint of annoyance flashed across Maw's face at Stark's interruption, though when he spoke, he addressed Strange. “Stonekeeper, does this chattering animal speak for you?”
Loki’s earlier suspicion that the secondrate magician was in possession of the Time Stone.
“Certainly not, I speak for myself,” Strange marched ahead and summoned glowing mandalas around his wrists. “You are trespassing in this city and on this planet.” Wong returned from his task of assisting civilians to assist his… master? What exactly was the relation between the knockoff and the fat one? Was he an apprentice? A serf? Whatever he may have been, Wong came to stand at the secondrate's side, mandalas at the ready as he took up a fighting stance.
Loki bit back a scoff.
Midgardians… could be so melodramatic at times. Loki appreciated a good display of showmanship but really, their spells were so inefficient when it came to energy requirements. Loki could list seven ways off the top of his head that could have accomplished what these sorcerers wanted, without expending even half as much or needing to tap into extra-dimensional sources for power. The mandalas certainly looked impressive but these Midgardian mages lacked the finesse employed by their Alfheim counterparts. Those golden sparks flying around everywhere wasted so much energy. If Loki had an inclination to feel generous towards the mortal sorcerers, he might have allowed some room for the fact that the mortals lacked any inherent magic and therefore their spellcasting could not be as elegant as the Ljosalfar. Since Loki was not in fact feeling said inclination to be generous, he merely rolled his eyes at the display.
The heroes clearly had the situation handled. At least as far as keeping the enemy distracted was concerned. Maw attention was focused on Strange so Loki used the opportunity to investigate Maw’s survival. Masking his magic, Loki sent out invisible tendrils and opened his senses to see if whatever it was that Maw had done, carried its own signature.
“He’s telling you to get lost, Squidward,” Stark seemed utterly unafraid that Maw could impale him on a street sign without so much as a flick of a finger. Did the man even know about Maw’s telepathy? But then Loki recalled how Stark had dared to stand before him, unprotected in his own tower and offered Loki a drink instead of running like any sane person might have done. It truly was a pity they hadn’t met under differing circumstances.
Standing in perfect repose, Maw ordered Cull to retrieve the stone. The latter smashed his chain hammer in the ground, dragging it through the asphalt as he advanced on them. Seeing the lumbering giant heading their way, Stark finally seemed to remember Loki’s presence. “Hey Brucie, you want a piece of the action?”
Loki could see two paths before him. He could either play along with Stark and shapeshift into the Hulk, using his magic to augment his strength and invulnerability to mimic the green brute or…
“No, not really,” he sighed and watched as Stark’s face fell, “then again, when do I ever get what I want.” He made a great show of trying to force the transformation, letting the green creep along his exposed skin at a snail’s pace.
“Anytime now, buddy.” Stark shifted on his feet uneasily as Obsidian lumbered closer. “Don’t embarrass me in front of the wizards.”
“I’m trying,” Loki as Banner said through grit teeth. “Hulk and I are trying to work through some things.”
“Can you two work on those any faster? Rock Monster is almost here. We need the big guy to hold him off.”
“I'm trying, okay? The Hulk got his ass handed to him by Thanos and now he doesn't want to come out." To emphasize his point, Loki partially transformed his face into the beast's and growled a “No!” before turning back into Banner. Gasping for breath, Loki turned to Stark and let his shoulders slump in defeat. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay buddy, you tried." Stark patted him consolingly on the shoulder before turning to Wong. "Could you get him to safety, please?"
The man nodded, not even giving Loki the chance to offer a token protest before whisking him away from the fight via portal. Loki tried not to frown at the assistant who was doing what he thought constituted as protecting a non-combatant. Then again, Loki couldn't have helped them out without giving himself away. And he still needed to figure out how in Hel's name Maw was still alive before he could even consider revealing himself. He needed to know the risk before he took that chance.
Loki sent an astral projection to where Stark and the secondrate were making a stand against two of Thanos's strongest lieutenants. He’d expected to see the two on the defensive though much to his surprise and grudging respect, Stark was holding his own against Obsidian surprisingly well. Strange on the other hand… Loki smirked, standing back to enjoy the arrogant mortal receive his comeuppance as Maw’s telepathy got the best of him. Though Loki knew that he ought to be worried when Maw bound Strange to mortar and demanded the Time Stone, he only felt a vindictive pleasure to see the mortal being put in his place. Loki had neither forgotten nor forgiven the secondrate for what he had done when Thor had dragged him to Midgard in search for Odin. Falling endlessly through space had brought back memories of the void. Memories that Loki had worked so hard to push away and Strange had dragged everything back to the fore. For that alone, Loki would let the mortal suffer.
When Strange refused to relinquish his hold on the Time Stone, Maw tightened the binds till Loki could hear the snapping of bone and that was when Strange choked out a warning about a deadman’s spell. Loki frowned. Who in the nine realms had taught that particular spell to these mortal magicians? Not that it wasn't turning out to be useful, preventing Maw from claiming the Time Stone and letting Loki enjoy Strange’s torment but really, just who— it had to be one of the Ljsoalfar. They were the only ones who so easily disregarded the consequences of sharing their knowledge so freely. Nevermind that Loki had taken advantage of that particular trait of their on more than one occasion over the centuries.
Loki, as Banner, narrowly avoided getting crushed under a midgardian vehicle as it flew through a portal, along with a hefty chunk of Cull Obsidian's arm. Moments later, Stark's spiderchild was swinging through the area playing tug of war with a thoroughly bound Strange. And it was as Maw struggled to hold on to Strange with his telepathy that Loki finally noticed it. Slivers of an ethereal purple crept along the burn scars on Maw's flesh, setting him alight from within as Maw called on more and more of his power to keep the spiderchild from slipping away with Strange. Understanding dawned as Loki realized the truth. Maw hadn't defeated the death curse after all. It was only due to Thanos's interference and the support of the Power Stone that the accursed telepath was still alive.
But now that Loki knew what to look for, he could see the knot of threads, purple and the eldritch grey in color that were everywhere under Maw's skin, trapping the green of Loki's elegant spellchain. It was a crude solution and as any sorcerer worth their magic would know, all it took to unravel those knots was a single tug. Loki only needed to identify the spot from where to pull underneath the mess of crude, knotty spellwork. Thanos may have the Power Stone and some rudimentary knowledge of seidr but it quite clear just why the Mad Titan seemed to favor technology over magic. Loki would have laughed out loud if he could have. Thanos's approach to magic was the same as Thor's. If nothing worked, they would rather overwhelm it with brute force. Loki wondered for a moment if Thor would be indignant over that comparison before he shrugged it off. What that oaf thought of the matter wasn't as important as dealing with Maw.
Loki turned his focus back to Maw and saw that he was almost at the transporter beam, Strange in tow with the spiderchild hanging on like a particularly resilient puppy. It was almost adorable how the child refused to let go, even when the beam started pulling the three up to the Q-ship. Stark flew by Loki in haste, speeding towards the ship as it started ascending. Maw and Strange had disappeared inside and the spiderchild was clinging to the outside of the hull. Stark put on an extra burst of speed to reach the ship before it got out of his range and that was when Loki decided it was time to lose his minder and join the other heroes up on that ship.
As fun as it had been, watching Strange getting beat up by Maw, Loki had no intention of letting the Black Order or Thanos get their hands on the Time Stone. A deadman's spell, Strange might have put on it, but there was a reason why Ebony Maw was considered Thanos's top general. There was no other sadist in the universe that could reach his levels and though the mortal sorcerer was stubborn, there was only so long that he could hold out against the torture. After all, resistance only made Maw enjoy the process of breaking his victims that much more. Loki could testify to that based on personal experience.
Deciding that it was time to lose his minder, Loki cast out an illusion of Banner, sending it running towards the streets, followed by a subtle misdirection spell at Wong. Loki himself slipped into the treecover and brought out the Tesseract to create a portal leading directly inside the Q-ship. He had a score to settle with that wrinkled pest.