"You have caused a lot of problems," Fury said, taking Loki out of Thor's hand as they stood on the top deck of the SHIELD airship. The local wizards had shrunken him down to the size of a thimble and the prison they contained him was now a round, smooth disc the size of Thor's splayed hand. The shrinking woman, Andromeda, had argued that Loki should be killed, but Thor would not allow that. For all his sins, Loki was a captive and his brother.

"You won't be able to hold me forever!" Loki cried, his voice oddly unmuffled by his size. Thor had to admit that the wizards of the PRIDE were valuable allies. They were fearsome, but perhaps too bloody minded. The man that Loki had seized from them was far too willing to meddle in matters far beyond his station. Perhaps he would see the error of his ways once they had stripped this mind control of him. Earth was not ready to face the universe and it was reckless to reach out and touch it.

"I have been reliably informed," Fury said, holding the case in his hand and giving it a little shake. Thor had been told this effect would be largely disoriented, because Jotun royalty was seldom injured by short falls. "That I can hold you in this cage and at this size forever." More specifically, the local wizards had said that if Loki were to somehow escape, he wouldn't be able to breathe. It was a shockingly effective prison effect.

"The Starbreacher will find me and free me," Loki said confidently.

"But he won't. He's run off with the swag. Killed dozens of my people, left four super soldiers screaming in pain from poison gas." The Hulk and the widowed woman were both missing, disappeared from the staff room. They could only hope that Hulk had landed somewhere with the widowed woman and not on top of her. "Took the staff, hacked my database. Didn't rescue you."

"Impossible! The staff subjugates him to my will!" He sure made a lot of noise for being so small.

"He's not lying brother," Thor said. There might have been some thoughtfully neglected truths, but it was all true. "It seems your masters have played you for a fool. I swear by Father's spear, the words he has spoken to you are true."

Loki appeared to pace around the disk, not that Thor was at an ideal angle to observe it, though he craned his neck to try. The moment stretched out and began to become troublesome on Thor's conscience, but a glare from Fury stopped him from saying anything. They just waited until Loki was finished pacing.

"He'll need to open a portal. My master, as you call him, will want a display in a major city at the core of the reigning empire. The United States, obviously, especially given the Starbreacher's pathetic patriotism. You people love your flags." Here, Loki paused for the taunt.

"We do have a certain sentimental attachment," Fury said, scowling. Thor did not know if it was sincere or not. This Fury was a spymaster and Thor had always worked his deeds by daylight. He was Loki's sort.

"At any rate," Loki continued, satisfied, "My 'master' is coming for the Tesseract. If he comes himself, it'll cost you so much more than my conquest. Really, it was a beneficent deed. I should get a medal."

"Thanos," Thor said, "will destroy half the universe if he gets the Infinity Stones."

"Brother! Squeeze a thought from that big melon of yours for once. No one has seen any of them for centuries. Now this Tesseract is the one he was looking for? Convenient, to say the least. Even if it is, there are five more. What are the odds that he finds them?"

"Trent believed your staff held one of the stones."

"Now that's just ridiculous. Why would my 'master' risk it?"

"Enough!" Fury interjected. "What's Trent's next play?"

"I hardly know - It depends on myriad things. But likely, if he has my master on his side, he'll tear open the sky over some imperial city and drop an army the likes of which this world has never seen."

"Gonna need more than that if you want favorable treatment."

"Look, the Staff gives people a new cause - That's why the archer was so helpful. It makes the world clear - That's really all I know. I haven't spoken to the man."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Brother, how could you be so foolish?"

"I was lost! In the dark! And you never came! No one ever comes. And they came."

—

The idea of breaking Loki out at this point was completely ridiculous, even if I wanted to. Only a braindead stump of a man would fail to secure him against everything, isolate him from my potential location, and never, ever yield him, even if I started using a death laser. The Tesseract hadn't managed to open a new portal after the heist anyway. That meant that if I wanted to free my master, I needed to conquer the planet and demand him as tribute.

The loss of the Hand Mercenaries had been part of the plan - People can be bribed to do many things, but there was no reason to think the Hand would be any less opposed to the destruction of half the human race than any other people. Selvig and I were clearing out the last of our local crew - Loki had been averse to using the staff and I didn't fully understand it.

Barton was more of a problem. And the PRIDE had sided with my enemies, the fools. They should've realized that I would find a way to punish them for their insolence. They should not have listened to my uninformed theorization. The insult of calling my new insight mind control… It galled me. And I still didn't know how Tina's stupid staff worked.

"That's the last of them," Selvig said, wiping his hands on the shirt of the man he had just killed. "We going to be able to move this by ourselves?"

"Don't have to move it, it can move itself."

"That Vibranium design you used was really something."

"Thank you, Dr. Selvig. You have a beautiful mind," I said and I meant it. The inspiration that had worn through me, shaped me and made me, now asked still more of me. "I have an experiment that should help you become even stronger," I said confidently. I wasn't confident. But the inspiration knew that I needed real muscle if I was going to beat Thor or the Hulk.

Selvig grinned, "Of course! Happy to help."

—

Natasha woke up screaming.

"Good, you're awake," Banner said, sitting next to her, knelt over in clearly borrowed clothes.

Natasha's body was so full of pain that she felt like someone had replaced her veins with barbed wire. Every inch hurt. "Not- not good!" Natasha shouted, thrashing and tearing a wound on her abdomen open.

"Natasha, Natasha you need to calm down. You can't thrash like that, you've got a lot of injuries other than the poison. I know it hurts."

Natasha felt the barbed wire under her skin and threaded her breathes like she had been taught. It was a technique she'd learned for resisting torture. It wasn't super-helpful, but she could do it.

Banner knelt down next to her injury and started explaining with stitches. "The other guy bailed us both out - The whole way out, best as I can tell. No big crash, so I sent off a signal. Fury got in touch."

"Where are we?" Natasha asked.

"Some people found me out by the road, saw how banged up you were. I told them you got injured fighting Barton. Everybody's been doing everything they can since. We're in this little town, but half the town has been by to offer to help, refused money. Lent me the clothes. They've been nice."

"Why?" The question needed a lot more precision. Why did they believe he'd been fighting Barton? Why were they helping? Why hadn't he taken her to a hospital? There were a lot of whys here, if only Natasha could've made them come out of her mouth.

"Natasha, these people know that the world is under deadly threat," Bruce said, standing up after he finished the suture. "They're desperate to do anything they can. So am I, to be honest. Which is why I have to apologize. I'm gonna have to leave you like this. The other guy is plenty able to shrug off that poison, but Fury said he's expecting Trent to move quickly."

"I can…" Natasha began, but it was a stupid lie. Sentimentality, attachment. An instrument that was broken shouldn't act like that. She stopped herself. "Good. Other guy's not so bad."

Bruce smiled as he stood up. "He saved you."

Natasha grinned, "You too."

Bruce didn't respond to that.