kore_logs | when banner comes marching home again... OPEN

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when banner comes marching home again... OPEN

Who: EVERYONE INTERESTED INCLUDING YOU **If you want, we can handwave that Steve contacted everyone about it over the network but I don't want to spam the comm.**
What: RESCUE PARTY
When: After whenever Lydia posted to the network that Bruce disappeared, Steve asked her to tell everyone interested in finding him to meet up at the fountain.Where: Fountain!

Steve's at the fountain, checking his wristwatch in case anyone calls, making ocassional rounds because he's anxiously waiting to leave. He's carrying his shield, which looks rather out of place with his civvies.

He was at home, so he brought a couple bike helmets and some small weapons for people to carry into the woods, just in case.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sharon bites her lip as Tony takes off, but Steve's orders stop her from chasing after him right away. Instead, she stands there, studying Steve's features. For a moment, just a moment, he had sounded like her Steve, but she knows that isn't possible. Still, she can't help but try to find some semblance of her Steve in his face. And that's just the problem, isn't it? He looks the same.

She barely refrains herself from rolling her eyes when Loki attempts his pleasantries. As if she would ever trust those. As if she would ever trust him. She had never dealt with Loki directly before back home, but she's determined not to fall for any of his tricks. Or at least, to fall for as few of them as possible.

She lets him breeze past and checks to make sure she has time to catch up before turning to Phil. "I suggest keeping Barton in the lighthouse to keep an eye on the captain. If there are problems, keep me in the loop." But he doesn't have to tell her immediately; Coulson can handle himself under pressure.

Without looking at Steve again - if something goes wrong in the woods, she doesn't want her lover's face to be the last thing she sees, particularly since it isn't even her Steve - she jogs to catch up with the others. As she passes Loki, she merely nods her head. "Loki."

She doesn't slow until she's caught up to Tony. "We're sparring when we get back so I can gauge where you are without the suit." She manages a weak grin. "If you're really good, as good as I hope you are, I'll even find a way to make up the ass-kicking to you. Or are you afraid of the possibility of a girl handing you your ass, Mr. Stark?"

He’s not trying to get away from anyone as much as he is trying to get the search underway, so when he hears the sounds of approaching footsteps, he doesn’t duck away or try to lose them. He just keeps walking until they catch up to him.

It’s not that surprising to hear Sharon’s voice. Of course it would be her. Steve had assigned them to the same group, and someone with some amount of skill obviously needed to babysit his useless ass. The bitterness is childish and stupid, but he can’t quite shake it. He hasn’t been weak and ordinary for years; it’s like trying to put on shed skin three sizes much too small.

“I made peace with getting my ass kicked by girls when I met Romanoff.” He shrugs, glancing at her out of the corner of his eyes. “We can spare if you want. I don’t have any objections.”

Were Loki privy to Tony's thoughts he might add that his ass, though otherwise somewhat remarkable, is so thoroughly useless that it requires two babysitters, one of them a deity -- but under the circumstances he's reduced to having to be a pain (in the ass or otherwise) via other methods.

"One does rather wonder why it is that Rogers insisted I go along with you, Agent... Sharon, whoever you are, if the only language you're willing to spout in my direction is going to be so..." He sucks in a breath, thoughtful, searching. "Monomorphemic."

A politely disapproving frown tugs at the corners of his mouth. "I believe courtesy dictates that if I am going to be assisting you, you do your level best to provide me with all the instruction and encouragement I'll require to do so. In return, I furnish favours. Simple, and if you were to have acted accordingly you might already know that I'm quite capable of getting us all where we're going much more quickly than this."

A sigh. "If only someone were willing to tell me where that is."

Her grin for Tony fades as Loki falls in with them, and she bites the inside of her cheek to keep from filling the pause with her last name. She has to be careful around him.

More importantly, she has to be smart. She doesn't reach out to stop Tony, instead hoping he'll follow her lead and stop as well. She schools her face into something more passive, almost pleasant, and turns to Loki. "You're right, Loki. I'm sorry for being rude. The people missing are friends of mine."

She looks over her shoulder toward the woods. "The three of us have to check the woods. Last time I sent a man in, he didn't get far before he was attacked by creatures he described as 'metal bears.'" Even though Anna had said none of them were within her reach, and she was an angel, perhaps... just perhaps, with Loki, they could make it. "I don't think we have a chance of finding the others unless we can get past the defenses of the people keeping us here. How far could you take us into the woods?

As for instruction and encouragement, Sharon isn't going to say anything. Though she has to admit, his overly polite routine is mildly amusing. Amusing like a King Cobra that dances before it kills.

And now they’re going to stop and debate some more. Clenching his teeth, Tony stops, takes a deep breath that does nothing to calm his irritation, and turns to look at them. He doesn’t know why Steve sent Loki with them either. The suspicion that it’s because he can do double duty as two people, as powerful as he is, and pick up Tony’s slack only serves to make him more annoyed.

“Bruce is gone. Vanished without a trace yesterday.” There’s subtlety and there’s Tony Stark, and right now, he doesn’t have the patience to play games. Loki’s right. He’ll be more helpful if he knows what’s going on. “I’d like to find him.”

He doesn’t know if there are cameras out here, or whether their movements and conversations are being tracked by the wristbands they wear. What’s safe to say and what isn’t, he doesn’t know. Lately, there’s a lot of things he doesn’t know, and as a genius, that doesn’t sit well.

“Is there anything you’d be willing to do to help us?” It’s his only nod toward subtlety, the careful choosing of his words to make it seem to their invisible audience – if they have one - as though he has no idea what Loki can and can’t do.

"I can take you to the boundaries of their bindings on me; no further. And I can keep you safe... perhaps." Perhaps. Well, finding out will be interesting. If not, well, he can extract the lot of them quickly enough, should he choose to do so.

"Don't fret, járnsíða. I owe the good doctor a debt, and debts I cannot stand. Messy things." Járnsíða. Iron-sides. Obvious on the surface, but also a joke. Defensive. Prickly. Rigid.

Brittle.

"You may always trust me to do what is best for me," he says sincerely, an utter lie but one that's easy to believe, and convenient under the circumstances.

And so he sketches a bow, plays the scapegrace, and offers both his hands, palms up, to his companions.

"I'll take you as far as I can." If they trust him. It's simply enough done -- just a tug, just a nauseating jaunt through the spaces between things, spaces where nothing is anything, directionality and spatial reasoning have no meaning at all, and out the other end in the blink of an eye. But only within the area that is clear to him. Part of the way, but nowhere near all of it. Whatever they've done to fog his senses restricts him also to this place.

Sharon studies his hand, her mind speeding along. She isn't as impulsive as Natasha; she hasn't received any sort of serum like Natasha or Steve, nor is she a supergenius like Stark or Reed. She can't afford to be impulsive. She has to think this through.

But Natasha is on the other side of that barrier, Banner and the other Natasha with her, possibly even the Doctor and Dr. Jones. And it's possible that Sharon isn't as cautious as she ought to be. She knows it will be dangerous no matter what they do, and she knows their choices are better with Loki than without him. It doesn't hurt that he'll be able to take him farther than Logan likely got.

She puts her hand in Loki's and lifts her eyes to his. "Thank you, Loki." Her eyes slide to Tony. She doesn't care about danger to herself, but she's can't lie; she's concerned about Tony.

But Tony is a supergenius. He isn't the ideal person to have her back physically, not without his Iron Man armor, but he isn't useless, either. She'll watch him.

"And I suppose I don't have to point out that it's in your best interests to remove us from the woods if things things get to dangerous and you aren't as capable at fighting as I hope."

Loki’s insulting him. He knows that with all the surety of a man who’s spent more than twenty years dealing with the backbiting, double-edged words of the press. Tony’s eyes narrow, but he smiles sharply instead of frowns. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

He isn’t sure he buys that what’s best for me line either. The debacle with the Chitauri and the Tesseract didn’t really seem to be what was best for Loki, considering how that all played out. And Tony’s too much of a hedonistic, self-destructive mess to believe that anyone ever truly does what’s best for them.

“We keep holding hands like this, I’m going to start thinking we’re going steady,” he quips irreverently, taking Loki’s hand without much in the way of hesitation. He’s in this to find Bruce, not to worry about his own safety. And judging from what he’s seen of SHIELD in general and the way Sharon carries herself, he doesn’t think he’s got much to worry about with regards to her ability to take care of herself, either.

"Are we not? You wound me, Mr. Stark, truly you do," Loki responds, curling uncomfortably icy fingers around both of their hands.

"If either of you feel a need to vomit do try not to do it on me," he adds, and then the fabric of everything opens and swallows them up. To say that the jaunt is disorienting is beyond an understatement. Disorientation requires that orientation be a meaningful concept, which, in this place between things, it is not. Things like directionality, inside and out, these things don't seem to exist, not as they did before this jump through spacetime.

Mercifully, though, it is exceptionally brief. Small favours.

When the world does come back it's earthy, scented with rich, living soil and the slow death of plant matter. Trees, damp bark and cold earth. Forest.

He hasn't taken them very far. He can't have taken them very far, but perhaps the jump will have been sufficiently disorienting to anyone watching to give them some small advantage. The element of surprise, perhaps. Perhaps.

Loki drops their hands, slips his own uncomfortably, unearthly-cold fingers from theirs -- a relief, no doubt.

Sharon falls back, catching herself against a tree and holding on tightly. She can see that things are standing still, though she wishes the world itself would quit bobbing like that. It takes her several seconds and a couple deep breaths to get herself (and her stomach) under control.

She straightens and quietly studies their surroundings, her hands going to both her knife and her gun. In the end, she only draws the knife.

She looks over to Tony, and if she thinks he isn't capable of handling any of this, it isn't showing. Yet.

"Thank you, Loki." See? Manners. Sharon has some degree of familiarity with them, even if she doesn't think to use them most of the time. "How far are we from the village?" She takes a moment to look around, peering into the brush for any signs of cameras. Maybe, if they're lucky, they can get material for Tony to work with.

If they get a miracle, maybe they can even find a way out.

Of course, that rustle of leaves over to her right tells her they'll soon have company and might not get that miracle.

She turns back to the others and nods in the direction Loki is facing. She hopes he left himself facing the barrier; surely he wouldn't trick them so early on. "Move. Fast and quiet."

A civilian and a demigod. Crap.

He doesn't get sick. Even before the Iron Man suit, Tony'd been putting his body through hell. After the suit, when he became capable of flying at supersonic speeds, any residual traces of motion sickness that might have been grimly hanging on were shaken loose. But more than that, more than an iron stomach - no pun intended - or a desensitization to motion, is the fact that Tony lives for thrills. He's an adrenalin junkie of the highest order, and teleportation is a thrill unlike any he's ever had before. In light of that, the side-effects are summarily ignored.

Momentarily shaken out of his funk by the novelty of the whole thing, Tony turns to Loki as soon as the world reshapes itself back together again. "Sweetheart," he says, grinning widely, just a little high on the experience. "If we can do that again, consider me willing to tend to those wounds later."

Flirting is second nature to him, an automatic response to damn near everything that happens to him. He'd flirt with Death itself if the reaper ever came to claim him, simply because it wouldn't occur to him not to do it. But the levity only lasts for a moment, the rustle of leaves and Sharon's warning snapping him out of it and sobering him up in quick succession.

"Right. Time to go." Reaching out to tug Sharon into moving - civilian or not, Tony doesn't run away and leave others behind - he gestures them both to get going. He'll bring up the rear.

Sharon's reaction is the more common of the two -- and the fact that she has it makes Stark's all the more amusing. "Jæja, elskan min, given an offer like that, how could I possibly refuse?"

Sharon's thanks are entertaining too, and receive an exaggeratedly polite inclination of the head.

The rustling of the leaves, though? Well, that's just exciting. The furious, blind rampage on which he'd gone upon his release from that horrid little cell hadn't been terribly satisfying. A bit of a scrap would be just the thing to dispel his disappointment.

Perhaps it's inevitable. Perhaps. Hopefully.

Regardless, it's high time to put the armour on, conjure it up as he walks. And with no staff to conjure up with it, maybe, maybe it's time to take the mask off, too. The latter will wait, all the same. Loki still isn't entirely comfortable in his own skin.

Never has Sharon regretted learning so few languages more. What disturbs her more, however, is how Tony and Loki seem to be flirting. She's accustomed to people doing so in stressful situations - God knew Sharon had seen it enough - but... between Tony and Loki?

As much as she wants to talk to Tony about his standards, this really isn't the time. It doesn't help that he had reached out for her, like she didn't know what to do or couldn't take care of it on her own. "Tony. You're in the middle." Her tone leaves no room for argument, but she's sure that won't stop him. As she moves past, she takes a breath. "Please trust my assessment on this. We're strongest with you in the middle right now."

She can't very well say that it's because an attack from behind might injure the person in the back, and she doesn't mind if it happens to be Loki, after all. Demigods likely heal more quickly than Tony would.

She looks at Tony a moment longer and moves to the front. The pace she sets is quick, but she doesn't get far before something large lands in her way. It looks like the mechanical bears Logan had told her about, only it's shaped like... the Hulk? Only where the head should be there are no eyes, no mouth, no features of any kind. She falls back, her position defensive, and when two more land around them, surrounding them, she curses under her breath.

She jumps up, scrambling onto one of the metal Hulks and perching on its shoulder. She doesn't find the weak spot she was hoping for. "Tony! You know machines. Weak spots!"

And please let her and Loki be able to take care of this without any of the three of them getting hurt.

Tony isn't a linguist or a linguaphile by any stretch of the imagination, but he's fluent in a number of languages, he's been all over the world, and he has an eidetic memory. He isn't fluent in Icelandic. He's not even entirely certain that that's what Loki's actually speaking. But it sounds enough like it that he thinks Loki will understand what little of it he can remember overhearing the last time he was at a conference in Reykjavík. "Þú getur ekki."

Maybe he mangles the pronunciation. Maybe he isn't using the words correctly. Hell, maybe he isn't even using the right words. The point, and he has one, is that he isn't as predictable as so many people think.

His good humor fades when Sharon reminds him of his place in the party, but other than accept it, there’s nothing he can do. He won’t needlessly endanger anyone by being a brat. And even that fit of pique disappears when they’re surrounded by what are obviously meant to be robotic versions of the Hulk. That draws him up short and he knows, deep down in his bones he knows that this has something to do with Bruce’s disappearance.

“Joints.” It’s cold and flat and far too calm for a man surrounded by gigantic metal bringers of death ought to be. But he’s not scared. He’s furious. “Machines are weakest at their joints. Hit them hard, open up them up so we can get at their circuitry, take them out from there. Anything more specific than that, I’m going to need to get my hands on one.”

The drop in temperature is sudden. This is no creeping chill, this is laughter turned icy and a grin turned cold, skin turned colder still. The joints. Foul up the joints.

Well. What better tool than ice?

Loki's sclerae redden, darker and darker as he steps forward. Scarifications raise themselves on the backs of his hands, tracing lines which disappear under his vambrace. With the helmet, that's all that Tony likely sees of Loki's skin as he moves forward: just the deep blue of that hand.

Sharon sees more, perhaps. Sees the ice gathering around his clenched fist, forming a vicious point. Sees his smile.

This is good. This is a thrill, a rush. It'll be soon, the exertion, the reveling in his own body. The bunching and release of dense, deceptively strong muscles. Being a god, yes, and he is. By name, at least, he is, and now he means to prove it.

As soon as there's an opening, as soon as he can, it will begin, and even if he should fail, what a joy it will be to do something.

"Stark," he says, the word tense, anticipatory. And he... defers to expertise. Shares the experience. Shares utility. "Direct me."

Staring could get her killed. She knows that. And the threat wouldn't merely come from Loki; if Sharon loses her focus with the robot Hulks, she could kiss her ass good-bye. But as she back-flips off the robot and lands, she can't resist watching a little more than is wise. She's never seen Loki like this, and certainly not up close. It's more than a little terrifying, but it's also... she refuses to believe it's thrilling, but it's certainly useful. She barely moves in time to block a blow from the robot, and her breath fogs. She clenches her fists and ducks again, grateful once again that SHIELD had insulated her suit.

She kicks at one of the robot's knees, but even with her boot, she feels it enough for it to ache. It's too large to try to flip, so she ends up merely putting herself between it and Tony again.

"Same here, Stark. You're the brains, and we need ideas."

It isn’t immediately obvious to Tony why it’s getting so cold. Thor never explained to him about the frost giants. There’d only been one remark, that Loki had been adopted, and even that he’d heard about secondhand. What makes the connection between the cold and Loki, Tony will likely never know. Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe it’s the fact that the cold is so sudden and only one of their number can use magic. Whatever it is, it dawns on him, and he glances over in time to see that blue hand before Loki steps beyond him.

Blue. A woman on the network mentioned the blue godling in connection to Loki, but he hadn’t thought she’d meant it literally. He wants to see the rest of him, see if that color extends to the rest of him, but there are more immediate concerns and he can’t give in to curiosity.

The way they put themselves in front of him reminds him of Afghanistan all over again. This time, he resolves not to let anyone die on his behalf.

“Go for the knees. Legs. Elbows and arms. Bring them down. Whatever destroys their mobility. If they can’t move, they can’t reach us.” It kills him to hide behind them like this. "Immobilize one long enough for me to power it down."

That he can do. There isn't a machine in the universe he can't figure out in a few minutes time.

Knees. Get it down and its range is limited; true of any enemy, machine or no. In them Loki can sense a power, whatever it is that powers them, but it's obscure, fogged. Predicting its motions based upon that won't be possible. That makes them dangerous. Organic creatures they are not; they won't, he doubts, give themselves away.

That really only makes the whole thing more interesting, though he remembers, remembers quite clearly, the last time he encountered something of this general shape. This is easier. This doesn't frighten him. Those blank and featureless faces hold no malice for him in particular.

And so there's no hesitation when he slides in close, lets a palm splay against a metal chest and starts the ice spreading with one hand while the other with its encasing blade of ice strikes at the side of the knee.

With a beast of metal, no blade, however sharp, is likely to be of any use, and this isn't much better -- but that much is to be anticipated. What it is is brittle. The ice shatters in a violent spray, lessening the direct impact against Loki's knuckles. Still, it is jarring. He can still feel the bones of his hand grind against one another with the incredible force of the impact.

Another strike, a third; no time to remake the protective coating, and then away, back out of range of those metal fists. Loki's knuckles come away split and bleeding a sluggish, oddly viscous, dark red, which itself freezes over as the ice begins to reform itself around his fist.

Three. Three of them. Dancing like this, in and out, taking care, he thinks he can handle two, if nothing else keep them busy enough to distract them from pummelling the less resilient members of the group. The third he leaves to Sharon, lets it slip to the back of his mind while everything narrows down to this, just the fight. Just the slow, slow pounding of his own heart, the taste of his own blood and the sharp blossom of pain when one of the machines does manage to land a blow, knocking him back.

It's alright. A calculated loss. As long as his stamina lasts, Loki can wear them down, spread ice slowly, by increments, over their surfaces, creeping towards the joints. First, if he can, he'll get them still. Then they can worry about getting them open.

"Stark." Sharon ducks under one of the robots' arms, and it isn't lost on her that Loki seems to have left this one to her. Part of her is grateful that he had taken two robots for himself and the other to her, leaving Tony to direct; another part is wondering what else is on the way while they're busy fighting off these three. She just hopes Loki can deal with his two a little longer.

"I'm going to need more help than just joints, Tony." She twists the robot's arm, kicking at its elbow. It takes several kicks just to make a dent, and then the robot brings its arm forward and throws her toward Tony. She twists to avoid him, but she knows she won't miss him completely.

With nothing to do and no means of truly joining the fight in any useful capacity, Tony can do nothing but watch. He watches Loki take on two of the metal creatures, seeing in his fight with them the speed and power he hadn’t been in a position to witness in Manhattan. It’s up to him, he knows, not to be a distraction, to stay out of his way and let him do what it is that he’s doing.

But he sees one of the robots land a hit against him. He watches it knock him back. It’s instinctive to start forward in case he needs help. How does a mortal, fragile human help an alien so powerful that he’d once been called a god? Tony doesn’t know. He wishes that he did. Yet those few steps forward are quickly arrested, because there isn’t anything Tony can do. Not yet.

And he watches Sharon take on the remaining robot as though she’s strong enough to force it down with muscle alone. He wonders what it would be like to be able to move that fast, to be that agile without any sort of augmentation.

“How about electricity? Can you generate that? Because that would help.” It’s snapped out more harshly than he intends, but if he just had the suit, if he had one gauntlet, one repulsor, he could be useful. When the machine throws her, he sees his chance to do something other than stand there and moves to intercept her path, bracing for impact to catch her so that, when she hits him, she’ll be able to easily find her balance.

Electricity. Yes, that could-- could it? But the method...

Loki ducks below a metal fist and gives a rough and desperate shove, teeth bared and jaw clenched, trying to gain just enough leverage to send one machine toppling back into the other – but no good. No good, and so with a noise of irritation he slips between them and waits. Waits, just a few moments, just until he feels the force of the blows coming towards him and then he blinks out of existence to the tune of metal impacting metal.

Not far. Not very far at all, just to Stark's side. You can rewire a machine, but you can rewire a body too, if you know how. Make it more... conductive.

“I apologise,” he says quickly, breathlessly, and then his hand is clasped on Tony's shoulder. It's going to hurt, inevitably will, both the magic and Loki's touch, a touch which, were it not for the fact that his hand rests against Tony's shirt for only the space of a few seconds, would be cold enough to burn.

This is a gamble. Expending so much of his energy like this in one go, this is risky. This could put him out of commission for days if it goes wrong, at very least. But it's a careful gamble, as they go. Of the three of them, Stark knows most about machines, about where to direct the assault. And so Loki gives him direct control, pours so much of himself into him that there's little enough left. Just enough to keep him standing, to keep him strong enough and quick enough to distract the machines for a little while longer.

Control of the magic he's granted Tony should be instinctual, natural, but it won't last and it can't be used wantonly. Most of all it's dangerous, perfectly capable of harming any of them. That much Loki attempts to impart with it, along with a sense of urgency, before he's away again, that painful touch withdrawn and his attention focused back on the machines.

His focus had entirely been on trying to locate any clue of who or what might have had the capability of taking Banner without him transforming was not good news in his opinion. Instead of meeting up with the Cap he had started his own search. He knew how to sneak around without a troop of people moving around him. It was half the reason why he didn't think so highly of being part of the Avengers. It was a directive and one he was sure he was going to be a part of at one point in his life. But from where the others had come from (and remembered) to where he had come from and remembered. He was only aware of being an agent of SHIELD that was brainwashed for half of the Avengers first their first get-together.

But he supposed that was all a thing of the past now. Clint could say he was just going through for a quick little jog through the forest, but it wasn't that. He'd already ran into one of the clunking bots that he had done what he could with what he had. Bola arrows to drop the bot followed by an acid arrow for good measure. Clint really didn't wait around to see if it was still functioning. Something about robot versus man that sort of made him cringe a little. Finding the others was not exactly a job fit for a master tracker. All he really had to do was follow the sounds as he slid into a stop, releasing an arrow as quickly as he had come to a stop.

The bola arrow exploded, wrapping around the bots legs to at least keep it immobile. "If you're gonna do somethin', I suggest you do it." And quit wasting time, not that he was aware of anything the others might have been planning. For all he knew, Stark had reprogrammed the robot already to be their serving boy.

Sharon steadies herself against Tony and uses him almost as a pole, twisting around and using the ensuing force to launch herself back into the fray. Don't think about robot reinforcements coming. Just keep fighting. Don't give the order to retreat until you know it's hopeless.

And since she doesn't know for sure that it is hopeless, she keeps fighting. She misses the exchange between Loki and Tony, only noticing that the robot she's fighting is twisting its body parts around. It hadn't been doing that previously, and she wonders - hopes - that it means that whoever is toying with them considers them more of a threat now. If their captors can consider them a threat, there's a reason.

The robot's legs are suddenly immobilized by an arrow, and as soon as Sharon sees the arrow, she knows to whom it belongs. She jumps into the air and kicks the robot back, forcing it to stumble and fall to the ground. She surveys the other two robots for a moment. She's panting, and several hairs have come loose from her ponytail, but even though she's tired, she's careful not to show it. She has to let their captors think she has plenty of stamina left.

She glances at Loki. "One left for each of us. Tony. Try and take apart that robot on the ground. Do it fast. No way to tell how much time we have left. Barton, get upstairs. Tell me- us when we have company coming. Anyone else with you?"

And with that, she tosses her knife to Tony and then tackles the robot closest to her, grunting at the pain in her shoulder but also not caring. Top priority right now is to keep Tony safe while he figures out what the hell they're dealing with.

They’re in trouble. It doesn’t take a genius to realize it. Sharon’s only human; well-trained and much better at combat than he is, but human. He’s a rich businessman with only half-hearted boxing lessons under his belt. Loki is their only hope, and even he looks like he’s having problems. They’re in trouble and Tony doesn’t know how to get them out of it. He’s not the tactician, Steve is, and Steve isn’t here.

Sharon’s heading back into the fray. A robot goes down unexpectedly, which makes sense a moment later when he hears Barton’s voice. But it’s still not enough. They need—

His thoughts are interrupted by Loki’s sudden appearance at his side and whatever he’s just said to him is lost on Tony as he turns and gets a good look at him. Now he understands the blue comment. But he’s not just blue, there are patterns on his skin and his eyes are so red. Tony’s never seen anything like it. It’s remarkable, and he’s just about to tell him that when the pain registers. It’s like reaching into a live current, like every nerve ending in his body is catching fire and burning him up from the inside. It’s like reacting into the heart of an arc reactor and watching everything dissolve into white light. It’s too much. Far, far too much. And it’s exhilarating.

It’s like being back in that forest, standing at the center of Thor’s lightning strike and seeing his energy gauge maxing out at 400%. He can feel it in his chest, like his heart – both of them – is going to explode. Absently, he catches the knife Sharon tosses him, and in his mind’s eye, like the HUD of the suit is suddenly once more in front of his eyes, he sees the future play out in front of him. Lines of energy, mapped by channels of electrons and positive ions, fill the air around them, just like the threads of a spider’s web. Pluck one and all the others are affected.

“Everybody get back!”

He doesn’t wait to see if Sharon’s out of the way. If any of them are. He has to do this, and he has to do it now, before they’re all killed, before the fire inside him burns him up. So he runs, like he told Sharon he could, to the nearest robot and jams the knife into a seam between the plates of its arm. It’s forming the conduit that’s important, not the damage he can’t do with such a paltry weapon.

And through the hilt of the knife, he channels the energy coursing through his veins, falling back on his years spent piloting the suit, treating it like a repulsor blast. All of that power into one current that radiates through the metal of the machine, splintering out into the air in arcs of lightning from one robot to the other. Fry the circuits, knock them offline. For a moment, for good, it doesn’t matter. What matters is getting them down.

Loki is away. There isn't much more he can do now anyway, not like this. Not much but brace himself against a tree, ice patterning out on the bark where his hand is pressed against it, and breathe. Allow the muscles in his legs to be weak, just for a few seconds, before he has to be anything but again.

Such is the price of godhood – in name or in fact makes no difference; the expectations are still the same. The cost is still the same. One owes, and one never stops owing.

The least he can do is ensure that nobody sees – nobody but Barton, and Barton has already seen him weak. Not merely defeated, but sick, pliable, vulnerable. Loki doesn't trust him to keep his silence for long, but it won't matter in the long run. Now it does.

And so he pushes himself up. Away. And so he stands in the comfortable chill, and looks over what they've wrought. It's work well done, but it could've been less costly. Next time, perhaps, it will be.

“Cleverly done,” Loki says, mild, carefully forcing as much breathlessness out of his voice as he can. His face is a mask of perfect innocence, bright and smiling. “It seems Mr. Stark has been holding out on us.”

Why not imply? Why not tease? They've won, won at least enough time to leave, if that's what they're going to do.

"Though I feel we've little time to interrogate him on the matter," he adds with a regretful sigh. "Best we be away, before more come, no?"

when banner comes marching home again... OPEN

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