Chapter 11
Thunder rumbles, and the rain on the windshield creates a loud white noise throughout the small ship. The Quinjet flies through the stormy sky, on its way back to the Helicarrier, driven by Natasha. Lee, Steve, and Tony are in the back, keeping watch over Loki. Fury speaks into Natasha’s comm.
“Said anything?”
“Not a word.”
Fury makes a frustrated sound. “Just get him here. We're low on time.”
With Loki tied up and cuffed to his seat, Lee, Tony and Steve watch from a distance, whispering. Lee notes something different about Loki, that he’d originally assumed. Loki didn’t look menacing anymore, without his armor and scepter. He looked sickly, exhausted. Loki stayed quiet, ignoring the three. Waiting. Lee kept his thoughts to himself, but something felt off. He didn’t seem stable, but not in a ‘psychopath’ kind of way. His eyes held a look that Lee had seen before, in Hydra agents, in kidnapped, traumatized innocents. Loki didn’t look like he was a villain, but rather, a victim. Lee decided not to say anything until he knew more, knowing that it could easily be a front. Steve made a disapproving noise in the back of his throat.
“I don't like it.” Tony turned to Steve.
“What? Rock of Ages giving up so easily?” Steve shook his head.
“I don't remember it being ever that easy. This guy packs a wallop.” Lee silently agreed, the off feeling getting stronger now that Steve confirmed it.
Tony looked Steve up and down, again, like he did in the apartment. “Still, you are pretty spry, for an older fellow. What's your thing? Pilates?”
Steve was thrown off, and he faced Tony head on this time. “What?” Lee mentally prepared himself. Here we fucking go, really Tony?
Tony continued. “It's like calisthenics. You might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle.”
Steve looks at Tony, feeling a wave of malice coming from Tony. He considered a thought. “Fury didn't tell me he was calling you in.”
Tony scoffed. “Yeah, there's a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you.” Lee glared at Tony, and mentally tried to tell him to knock it off. Tony smiled back, defiant and playful, getting the message clearly. “And Lee, for that matter.” Steve turned to Lee, confusion on his face, and Lee shook his head, dismissing Tony's comment. Loki watched the exchange between the three, and stayed quiet.
Thunder rumbles, too loud for comfort, and lightning nearly strikes the jet, making it shake violently. Lee grabs onto Steve on instinct, while Steve grabs the wall, then they both notice Lee clinging to Steve and look embarrassed. Tony watches the moment quietly, while gripping a handrail attached to the floor and the ceiling. Loki tries to keep himself upright, gripping his seatbelt with his cuffed hands. Natasha tries to keep the jet steady.
“Where's this coming from?” She wonders out loud, and thunder rumbles again. Loki stares out the window, and begins to look nervous.
Steve notices Loki's expression. “What's the matter? Scared of a little lightning?” Lee frowned, and watched Loki, who was beginning to look afraid.
“I'm not overly fond of what follows,” he replied, voice full of… not fear, but rather fearful anticipation, Lee noted. Lee took that as a warning, and engaged his armor, just in case. Steve noticed his actions, and followed suit, tensing in preparation.
Thunder cracks, right at the jet, and lightning flashes right in front of the windows, and a crunching sound rings through the air as the ramp of the jet is forced open, by a huge figure.
Nobody has any time to react before a huge man in a red cape and armor grab Loki and rip him out of his binds in his seat, and leaping out of the Quinjet.
Tony looks dumbfounded at the gaping hole in the Quinjet. “Now there's that guy.”
Natasha grimaced. “Another Asgardian?”
Steve turned to Lee and Tony. “Think the guy's a friendly?”
Tony shook his head. “Doesn't matter. If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract's lost.”
Tony turns and gets ready to jump off the jet to chase after Loki and his… kidnapper? Steve tries to stop him, hand on Tony's shoulder.
“Stark, we need a plan of attack!”
“I have a plan. Attack.” Tony springs into action and follows them out, repulsors bursting into flight. Steve and Lee move to the front with Natasha, where they watch the man with Loki, Tony trailing a bit behind. Steve moves back into the back, grabbing a parachute pack. Lee follows him and grabs one as well, but Steve tries to stop Lee as well.
“It's gonna get ugly, Lee, I don't know what's waiting for us with those three.” Lee glared and smacked Steve upside the head, and Steve winced, not expecting that.
“Idiot. As if I'd let you go down there alone,” he scoffed, and resumed strapping into the parachute pack. “Besides,” he continued, “it's not like we haven't done this before, and I saved your ass then too.”
Steve doesn't reply, instead choosing that time to jump out. Lee rolls his eyes and waits a couple seconds before following him, into the storm.
°°°
Lee and Steve land near the wreckage of Tony and the other guy's fight, trees fallen and ground torn up. They climbed the wreckage until they got to the peak, where below them Tony and the other guy were fighting viciously, Tony blasting energy pulses and Thor throwing what looked to be a giant hammer. Steve interrupted their fight, throwing his shield at them. It ricocheted off both their chests, and they stopped and turned to face Steve.
“That's enough!” He jumped down to their level, Lee in tow. “Now, I don't know who you are or what you plan on doing here.”
The other guy boomed his answer. “I am Thor, of Asgard, and I've come here to put an end to Loki's schemes!”
Steve tried to reason. “Then prove it! Put the hammer down.” Lee saw Tony's expression, and immediately crouched into a defensive position in front of Steve, gloves already glowing at the ready.
“Steve-”
Tony frantically tried to stop him. “Um, yeah, no! Bad call! He loves his hammer!”
Thor swung and hit Tony in the face with the hammer, sending him flying. He turned back to Steve, and Lee tensed, settling harder into defensive position. His whole body radiated waves of angry defense.
“You want me to put the hammer down?”
Thor leaps high into the air, raising his hammer above his head, and Steve raises the shield, crouching down behind it, Lee leaping to meet with Thor's body midair. Lee's gloves shot pulses of energy, electrical energy crackling through the atmosphere, and Thor’s hammer impacted hard against Steve's vibranium shield, causing a shockwave to ripple through the air, blasting everything in its path. Lee opened his eyes to find himself about a hundred feet away, along with Steve and Thor lying on the ground adjacent to each other at the impact site. Steve got up, and Tony finally joined them. Thor got up from his spot on the ground, and watched Lee jog up to the group.
Steve looked around the group. “Are we done here?”
Lee calls for Natasha back in the Quinjet.
°°°
Lee and the group gather on the bridge, watching a set of monitors showing Loki being interrogated by Fury. Steve paces the room, listening to the conversation and analyzing the situation. Thor listens as well, but stands at a large round table, looking distraught. The screen goes black, and Lee meets Loki’s eyes as he looks into one of the surveillance cameras, a menacing smile on his face. He was back to the cool villain, rather than the pained victim Lee had noticed before.
Bruce breaks the silence. “He really grows on you, doesn't he?”
Steve looks up, still pacing, and walks over to Thor. “Loki's gonna drag this out. So, Thor, what's his play?”
Thor snaps out of his quiet trance, and turns to Steve. “He has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract.”
Steve looked incredulous. “An army? From outer space?” He asked, disbelieving.
Bruce ignored him. “So he's building another portal. That's what he needs Erik Selvig for.”
Thor turned back to Bruce, shock on his features. “Selvig?”
Bruce misread his question. “He's an astrophysicist.”
Thor looked devastated, his shoulders sinking. “He's a friend.”
Natasha put a hand on his shoulder in comfort. “Loki has him under some kind of spell, along with one of ours.” Lee glanced at Natasha, and found a similar look of distraught that Thor had held earlier. Steve began pacing again, thinking.
“I wanna know why Loki let us take him. He's not leading an army from here.” Lee started to feel trapped in the room, with Steve pacing like a caged panther, and Thor seeming to make himself somehow look smaller and smaller as he closed in on himself in sorrow. Lee decided to try to remedy that with Steve, and he snagged Steve’s shoulder as he paced past Lee. Steve stopped and faced Lee, and Lee held onto his arm for a moment, quiet expression calming Steve. Steve relaxed a bit, and stood next to Lee at the table again. Steve gave Lee a warm look and a small smile, and Lee gave him a sweeter smile, then turned back to the group, feeling better now that Steve wasn’t so keyed up. Natasha met Lee’s eyes, questioning, and Lee shook his head slightly. Can’t talk about this right now.
Bruce tapped a pen against his lip in thought. “I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on him.” Lee frowned, thinking about the victim he saw before, again. Thor straightened his posture, turning to Bruce.
“Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he's my brother,” he snapped, and the room immediately tensed up a notch.
“He killed eighty people in two days,” Natasha pointed out, and Thor immediately looked embarrassed.
“...He's adopted.”
Bruce continued to ignore everyone, thinking out loud, “Iridium, what did they need the Iridium for?”
“It's a stabilizing agent.” Tony walked in, Coulson in tow. He turned to Thor, nonchalant, “No hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing.” He turned back to the rest of the group. “Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants.” Tony looked around the room, watching the crew, and then staring at the monitors spread out at Fury’s station. He closed one eye, then covered it with his hand, and looked around, struggling to see everything at once. “How does Fury do this?”
Agent Hill answers, standing a few feet away at her own station. “He turns.”
Tony looks around the monitors some more, before turning off a monitor to the right of him, and Lee smiled. Ever the improving mechanic. Tony turned back to the group. “Well, that sounds exhausting. The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube.”
Agent Hill finally turned to Tony, looking snarky. “When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?”
Tony began to wander about the space, poking at different monitors and keyboards. “Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?” Lee rolled his eyes, and Tony caught it, grinning. He winked, and Steve chose to ignore it.
“Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?”
Bruce pointed into the air with his pen. “He's got to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier.” Lee stood there and didn’t understand a word that was said, but pretended to understand anyways.
Tony caught the thread and continued it. “Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect.” Now Steve looked confused, and Natasha tried to hide a smug smile.
“Well, if he could do that he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet,” Bruce said, turning towards Tony, smiling.
Tony feigned exasperation. “Finally, someone who speaks English.”
“Is that what just happened?” Steve comments, and Lee elbows him. Steve gives Lee a small smile, and Lee sticks his tongue out at him, earning a quiet chuckle from Steve.
Tony and Bruce shake hands, Tony’s smile lilting into flirty territory, and Lee watched Bruce return the smile, with a warmer, respectful one.
Tony kept the smile going. “It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. You're work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster.” Bruce blushed, then looked down, embarrassed.
“Thanks.”
Fury walks in at that moment, trailed by two other agents. “Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube. I was hoping you might join him.”
“Let's start with that stick of his. It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon,” Steve suggested. Fury gave Lee a look, and half-dismissed the idea. Lee, behind Steve, shook his head at Fury, then gave him a pointed look.
Fury ignored Lee. “I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys.”
Tony turned back to Bruce, playful. “Shall we play, doctor?”
Bruce regarded his mischievous look and nodded, smiling again. “Let's play some.”
Steve and Lee walked into the lab just as Tony poked Bruce with a miniature electrical prod, shocking him mildly. Lee winced, but settled into a seat at one of the tables.
“OW!” Tony scrutinizes Bruce closely.
“Nothing?” Steve’s temper flared up then, hot and burning.
“Are you nuts?” Tony ignored him. Lee sighed, and leaned onto the table, watching. He we fuckin’ go again.
“You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?” The last bit earned a laugh from Bruce, and he shook his head.
“Is everything a joke to you?” Steve snapped.
“Funny things are.”
Steve glared at Tony. “Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny.” He turned to Bruce briefly, apologetic. “No offense, doctor.”
Bruce shrugged it off. “No, it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things.”
Lee sighed again, louder. “Guys, focus on the issue.”
Tony turned to Lee this time. “You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables.”
Steve thought a moment. “You think Fury's hiding something?”
Tony looked like it was obvious. “He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets.”
“Doctor? What do you think?” Steve asked Bruce. Bruce stayed quiet, thinking.
“Earlier… Loki's jab at Fury about the cube.”
Steve nodded. “I heard it.”
Bruce pointed to Tony. “Well, I think that was meant for you.”
“The Stark Tower? In New York?” Lee piped up.
Bruce nodded, and moved to explain. “It's powered by Stark Reactors, a self-sustaining energy source.” He turned to Tony this time. “That building will run itself for what, a year?”
“That's just the prototype. I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now,” Tony bragged, and Lee rolled his eyes.
Bruce took his bragging in stride. “So, why didn't SHIELD bring you in on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?”
Tony shrugged. “I should probably look into that once my decryption programmer finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files.”
Steve took a mental double-take. “I'm sorry, did you say...?” Lee tried to act nonchalant, but he started to feel nervous.
“Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide.” Fuck. Lee swallowed hard, but none of the other men noticed.
It was Steve’s turn to look snarky. “Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?”
“An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not possible.”
Bruce turned to Steve. “Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?”
Steve’s anger broke, and he shook his head. He gave Lee a look, and Lee nodded. Steve left the lab, headed who knows where.
Lee immediately turned on Tony. Tony held his hands up in mock surrender, and turned back to the monitors. Bruce gave Lee a sympathetic look, and Lee sighed again. “Well, let me know if you find anything you think I don’t know.”
“You got it, Agent.” Lee left the lab too, going to look for Steve.