Can't Be Ignored, 3/6. R.
Title: Can't Be Ignored
Series: #12 in Ready For The Siege
(#1 - Look Over Your Shoulder, #2 - Armed Up To The Teeth, #3 - Misery Inspires, #4 - Broken Underneath, #5 - Change Is Coming Soon, #6 - Lick Your Wounds, #7 - Bitter Sparks, #8 - Father's Will, #9 - To Feel Safe Again, #10 - Hit Your Prime, #11 - Open Your Eyes)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: R
Pairing: Loki/Natasha
Disclaimer: Not mine! Some comic backstory is incorporated into characterizations, but this is still primarily movieverse.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-movie. Read the other stories before this one, because it does refer back to events in them. Additional warning for misogyny (internalized and society-driven) and references to torture.
Title and series title from "The Royal We" by Silversun Pickups
Special thanks to phoenixrising06/
romanovasledger for plotting and characterization discussion. :)
Summary: Rather than wait for a full scale attack to reach Asgard, they decide to make the first strike themselves.
Prior chapter:
One - Fall From Grace
Two - What The Dead Know
Three - Portals
Tony Stark was proud of his masterpiece, a floating robot probe that was largely based off of the technology used by Asgardian children in their balls. It had an interior propulsion system that had fascinated him and Jane; she was enamored of its shifting gravitational properties, which altered its shape and allowed it to float and move at various speeds and heights. Tony had enjoyed playing with the robotics of the probe, using the tools and materials that were available on Asgard. They didn't have vibranium, which would have made him ridiculously giddy to work with, but various alloys of differing density and strength. He was already making adjustments to his Iron Man suit, making diagrams and notations to himself, especially after Thor had assured him that interdimensional trade was one of the goals of a stable Einstein-Rosen Bridge once Jane and Bruce got her formulae tweaked properly.
As much as it irked him to have the palace historian tell him that his technology and interfaces were antiquated and not the state of the art tech he had assumed they were, Tony did listen to her suggestions for upgrades. Ketilve never once made herself sound superior just because she held this knowledge and he didn't. If anything, she reminded him of one of his first really good teachers at MIT, enthusiastically lighting the spark of interest for robotics and engineering in the first place. The wireless tech allowing the probe to communicate with his receiver was beyond bleeding edge by Earth standards, making him feel almost giddy. Upgrades like this would make Extremis and other such nanobots look awkward. JARVIS would be damn near invincible if Tony could wire up the entire Avengers Tower with this tech.
Bruce insisted on building several probes, in case Chitauri destroyed the first one. Jane insisted on several different sensor arrays that Tony personally thought were unnecessary, but had installed anyway. Her goals were slightly different than his, after all. She wanted raw data to analyze and extract information from. Tony just wanted the hovering probe to see if Chitauri were present or not.
Loki had been a pale wreck when he had handed out amulets of protection, a beleaguered ghost of himself that reminded Tony of SHIELD footage when he stole the Tesseract and corrupted Selvig and Clint. His skin had a sickly, feverish cast to it, his hair was stringy, and there were deep shadows like bruises beneath his eyes. Fatigue dogged his every step, and his eyes darted everywhere. He looked like a combat veteran in the throes of a flashback, to be perfectly honest, and Tony wondered about all the things that he and Natasha had never said about what had happened before he had arrived on Earth nearly four years ago. If she knew, Natasha would never tell him. She was the sort whose secrets had secrets, and Tony wasn't exactly one of her best friends. Still, Tony was clever and could read between the lines. When Amora tortured him with the acidic venom, Loki had implied it wasn't the first time he had been tortured. It never would have happened on Asgard, no matter what Odin thought of him.
Which meant it happened after he fell from the Bifrost, before Thanos and the Other sent him to Earth. It really didn't matter whether it was Thanos and the Other, someone before them, or all of the above. Drifting through the vacuum of space was probably enough to drive anyone crazy, and Loki hadn't been wrapped too tightly to start with. Plus the movement through space and time and magic or whatever else Yggdrasil was supposed to be made of... Any of that could have turned Loki into an even crazier version of himself without explicit torture.
He didn't want to empathize in any way with Loki. Tony had a reputation to keep as a selfish, irritating bastard, even if he was philanthropic. Not to mention that Loki was a sociopath in every sense of the word. Even Tony had scruples. Loki was chaos incarnate.
Leading them all to the basement of an abandoned estate, Loki continued to look like a jittery addict in need of his next fix. Then again, the threat of discovery and death probably made him all twitchy and hypervigilant that way. Natasha, Clint and Steve also constantly scanned rooms for exits and hiding places, but were far more subtle about it.
"Okay, Horns," Tony began, seeing no point in coddling Loki. "Open it up and let's get this show on the road."
To Tony's surprise, Loki didn't even scoff at him or demand some kind of royal respect. He simply nodded at the group of them, then began his casting. It was underwhelming to look at, a few flicks of his fingers and a twist of his wrist.
The portal shimmered, rather like a skin of water over ice. The little robotic probe went through it without any difficulty, telemetry sending back continual signals.
On the other side of the portal was a dark, barren place with craggy hills and cliffs. The entire landscape was swathed in darkness, clouds covering the sky and blotting out any light sources. There was a clearing in the midst of all the hills, as if the probe was in what once had been a lake bed that had since boiled off. The atmosphere was comparable to that of Earth or Asgard, with an oxygen content of about 23%, mostly inert gases and most surprisingly, a distinct lack of water vapor. Perhaps the "water boiled off" theory wasn't entirely inaccurate, but what could possibly be generating the oxygen?
"Over there," Jane said, pointing something on her monitor.
Oops. Tony had been thinking out loud again, though this was helpful. Sending the probe in the direction Jane indicated, there was a generator of some kind, a machine that was breaking down the rock formations in one cliff. It generated the oxygen and also reduced the stone to elements that fell into neat little piles.
"That looks like it's ready to be harvested."
"There are seven other portals," Loki said at the same time Bruce spoke. There was a pinched look on his face, something probably akin to fear. Loki afraid of something?
The more Tony thought about it, the more he wanted to know what it was. And the more he thought that it was probably going to be something spectacular and spectacularly bad at the same time. But that was what the probe was for, after all. He, Bruce and Jane had built five of them total, and it didn't take much to get the other four up and running to explore the other portals that Loki pointed out.
"Where do you think this is, Horns?" Tony asked Loki.
It wasn't enough of a distraction for the trickster. That pinched look was still on his face, and his eyes still darted everywhere. "I would think an asteroid of some kind. The Chitauri tend to use them as refueling bases."
Tony filed that away to figure out later. He'd want an analysis of that generator Jane found, as well as what materials were piled up neatly beneath it. He was taking it upon himself to be a clean energy source rather than a warmonger, so any information could be useful. He hadn't really gotten a good look at the Chitauri in space before sending the nuke their way, and his nightmares were still littered with glittering stars and the rush of air as he fell, hurtling through empty space toward certain death.
"How many of them are there?" Volstagg asked, frowning at Tony's display of the empty possible-asteroid that the probe was transmitting back. Tony ignored the way that Volstagg, Fandral and Thor seemed to side-eye Loki, as if he was ready to explode. Or they should start running to the palace guards to order an execution.
"There will be as many Chitauri as they need," Loki murmured. "They are able to mature quickly in the right conditions, and are seen as expendable. All they know is war."
All eyes were on Loki, and his jaw tightened as he fixed his eyes on the view screen in Tony's hands. "That is what I had been promised."
"We could always go through," Tony found himself saying, and couldn't decide if he wanted to kick his own ass or pat himself on the back. "There's oxygen enough, no bad guys destroying the probe. That gives us one more portal to explore."
"Best to take care," Loki warned them. "They left those portals open for a purpose."
"Then you'd better leave yours open, too," Tony replied easily before anyone else could. "If it goes south quick, we need an exit strategy."
"I can put in anchors, so that there is not constant attention required," Loki began slowly. He lifted his eyes from the view screen and looked at Natasha, whose expression remained impassive. Tony couldn't read the look in her eyes, but thought it was something like concern. Pepper got that look in her eyes a lot when he spent too many days in the workshop. It still felt wrong and unnatural to worry about Loki, but he had thought about the entire fucked up situation and talked it over with Pepper for perspective before arriving in Asgard. Spies' worlds were never black and white, just endless shades of gray, compromising principles for the sake of a greater good. As a spy, Natasha would willingly take on a psychopath if it would keep the Earth safe from harm. Her idea of balance would consider that an acceptable risk. Still, some part of Tony would rather just punch Loki in the face and be done with it.
Volstagg kept a tight grip on his weapon and leveled a hearty glare at Loki. "Such a creature would take advantage of leaving us stranded on an asteroid with limited resources." Anger twisted his features, and Tony almost thought he was going to swing the battleaxe at Loki's head, severing it himself.
"We have need of his knowledge and skill against this foe," Thor intoned heavily, raising his head to stare down Volstagg. When he would have said something, Thor shook his head sharply to stop him. "Hold, friend. This is not the time to fight amongst ourselves."
"What do you get out of this?" Fandral asked, voice cool and calm. His gaze was assessing as he looked over Loki. Tony thought that Loki didn't look particularly ready to harm anyone in the room; he'd seen SHIELD footage of the Battle of New York when he had burst through JARVIS' sensors to get to Natasha, and this was a completely different version of Loki. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but there was something just a little bit off about the trickster.
He had a beaten, defeated look about him. And honestly, that was more disturbing to Tony than the maniacal, sickly grin from SHIELD surveillance. That reminded him of how Loki looked after Amora had him chained and tortured, how he looked when trying to cut himself apart because he thought he was a monster.
Loki was crazy, but he was also broken in places, and the Asgardians couldn't see it. Natasha did, of that Tony was certain. But if the Asgardians didn't see how broken Loki was beneath the crazy megalomania, that meant he could snap and unleash whatever he might have up his sleeve. Tony was sure it wouldn't be pretty.
The smile Loki pasted onto his face was like the smile he had when he first arrived on Earth via the Tesseract. "Thanos can't have Asgard or her riches. The vaults must remain sealed."
Sif's eyes were sharp when she contemplated Loki, and for a terrifying moment Tony thought that Pepper had to be related to her in some way. "Do you bargain for its contents?"
His laughter was sharp and bitter. "But Sif, did you not know? I am a portion of its contents as well. Dear Odin sought all kinds of treasures. Why content himself with mere trinkets and baubles, when he could hold entire lifetimes in his hands?"
Volstagg pointed in Loki's direction with his battleaxe, jaw set. "You speak treason."
"I've already been declared a dead man," Loki replied, leveling his stare in Volstagg's direction. "What's another charge?"
"Shall we call the guards?" Fandral asked, voice cool and even.
"Nay," Thor intoned, staring down his friends with a stern expression. Tony would have to correct his impression that Thor was like a humanoid equivalent of a golden retriever puppy. He had some teeth when pressed.
The axe was still pointed at Loki, Volstagg glaring at the trickster with hate in his eyes. "You betray us, you die."
"Step in line," Loki replied evenly. Tony recognized the expression on his face. He would be defiant to the end, even if he knew it was a losing battle it was the only way to maintain some kind of dignity when he felt as though he had lost everything.
Tony had seen that expression in the mirror plenty of times before Afghanistan, and it unnerved him that he had anything in common with Loki.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, he told himself, ruthlessly squelching down any sympathy he might be feeling toward Loki. Thanos is the bigger issue here. The Chitauri have to be put down. I did it once, I can do it again.
"Okay," Jane called out from where she was huddled with Bruce over a tablet, "now that you're done measuring who's bigger, can we get back to the task at hand?"
If she wasn't so obviously wrapped up in Thor and he wasn't so thoroughly involved with Pepper, Tony could have kissed her. Jane dealt with bullshit like this on a regular basis, and she clearly was through listening to that kind of talk. Good for her. He grinned and clapped his hands as if the entire tense interlude had been a particularly good show. "All right. Portal. Not the game, of course, but these things we're planning to walk through and commit serious genocidal atrocities in the name of peace." He ignored Thor's sigh and the scowls of Volstagg and Sif. Fandral seemed to be waiting for what else he had to say. "What do you think, Dr. Foster?"
"You and Bruce came up with algorhythms to track magic and Loki in particular on Earth. There are the faint gamma traces from the Tesseract and the scepter, which are entirely different even if they look like they overlap in places." Pointing to the portal still open in front of them all, Jane flashed them a confident smile. "Meaning, I think I can be the one to stay here and keep this portal open just by maintaining the feedback loops. He can do his anchor thing, and after that, I can be the one keeping the way home open."
Fandral was the first one to recover after that pronouncement. He bowed deeply in her direction, the corners of his lips quirking into a smile. "Lady Dr. Foster, you truly are a credit to your people and a genuine friend of Asgard."
Jane preened a bit, and her smile widened into an excited grin when she looked over at Thor. "I'll be right here, making sure it all goes according to plan."
"Excellent news, Jane," Thor boomed, pleased relief evident. "We will scout ahead, then return with as large a force as necessary."
That seemed to quiet the other Asgardians' misgivings. Once Loki did his anchoring magic, Volstagg prodded him with the axe to enter the portal first. He went through as gracefully as he could, then Volstagg went through the portal. Thor, Sif and Fandral went through next. Tony snapped the faceplate of his armor down, then went through. Steve didn't bother with a helmet prior to walking through the portal, and Bruce heaved a long suffering sigh. Clint and Natasha were last through, and Tony looked back to see how Jane was faring. Almost as if she knew he wanted a little reassurance, she grinned and flashed him a thumbs up sign as she held onto the tablet with her other hand. A simple touch command had the remaining probes zooming through the portal to meet them.
The asteroid had slightly less gravity than Asgard did, so each step brought the warriors farther and faster than they expected. The probes zoomed ahead into different portals, sending back signals that Tony's suit then relayed through the portal behind them for Jane to interpret. When he looked back through it, she was happily tapping away on the tablet and scribbling in one of her two notebooks. He could see the generator in the distance, and flew to it in order to try to analyze its structure and purpose. The rest of the team fanned out and tried to look for any hidden pockets of Chitauri, but the entire asteroid seemed to be deserted.
Each probe sent back data, and Tony recalled two of them to enter the other portals and scan for any information. "Hey, I think I have a pattern!" Jane called out triumphantly after a while. "I'm cross referencing what the probes are getting with Ketilve's library, and I think I know where all those portals actually lead to. C'mon back!"
Though there was no real need to, Loki left the anchors for portal back to Asgard open. The barren asteroid on the other side of the portal almost looked like a hyperrealistic painting as a result, and Tony stood staring at it just to be sure no Chitauri would spring out suddenly and attack them all.
Okay, he might have had more than a few nightmares of just that scenario. Complete with panic attacks, but only Pepper really needed to know about those.
"The portals open to seven different planets that are called companion realms in Ketilve's archives," Jane began. "They were companions to some of the lower realms, and in the archives held a lot of natural resources that the primary realm didn't. So Muspelheim's companion realm would have water, forests, that kind of thing. They're small, not considered a part of the realm and generally didn't figure into the stories about each realm."
The Asgardians all nodded in agreement. "Companions are small. They allow each realm a measure of independence from the other realms, though there could be communication or trade if they agreed to it," Thor told the others.
"Well, here's the thing," Jane said, looking at everyone in the room. "The archive data is thousands of years old. Ketilve admitted that no one really bothers to fact check or update them on a regular basis. She adds or changes things as she discovers them, or information is brought to Asgard and made public."
"Realms don't change, Lady Jane," Fandral told her helpfully. "There really is no need to continually update the palace archives."
"Except that it means Ketilve's data is potentially thousands of years out of date," Jane pointed out. She lifted up the tablet. "These companion realms look like they've been harvested for some time. Longer than this asteroid here, even."
"Harvested?" Clint asked, frowning.
"Exactly. As in, the forests are gone, razed to the ground. Lake beds dried up. No animals present on any of the worlds. Generators like that one left behind to maintain an atmosphere and to leave behind natural resources that can be used as fuel or trade."
Stunned silence greeted Jane's announcement. "But..." Fandral began faintly. "They are populated. Companion worlds are not empty shells."
"They are now," Jane told him firmly. "So it looks like the Chitauri have no home world, only several planets that they inhabit that used to belong to others." She looked at the others, a mix of compassion and regret in her expression. "No one's there. Not on any of those seven worlds. The Chitauri must have annihilated the local population to take their resources. The Chitauri aren't even there anymore, but it looks like a refueling base next to each portal."
"So they kill everyone, take what they want, then move on to the next world that Thanos directs them to," Clint summarized, looking at Natasha and Steve with something like dread in his eyes. It was undoubtedly what the Chitauri had planned for every other realm on Yggdrasil.
"Jesus Christ," Tony sighed, shaking his head. "That's like a bad scifi movie in action. I don't have to apologize to all the people I called a hack, do I?"
Bruce sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "We need to do something."
"It looks like the generators have alarms and other kinds of relay systems," Tony said helpfully. "So we could always draw the Chitauri to one of those worlds and start kicking their asses."
"I think that's the best plan we have so far," Steve sighed, looking at the Asgardians. "If they haven't got a single world to defend, at least we can spread out their resources and try to cut them down a little at a time."
Thor nodded and looked at his fellow Asgardians. "Now we take the fight to them."
***
Loki was invisible when a relatively large scouting party of trained warriors went with an Asgardian or Avenger into each of the seven worlds that the portals opened out to. Jane agreed to continue monitoring the portal that was in Engmarr's basement; though he could have possibly opened a new one in a more comfortable part of the estate, the others all agreed with him that it would be a waste of time. If the Chitauri were able to follow the warriors back to asteroid, they wanted ample warning to retreat and destroy the anchors for the portal. Loki could always open a new portal later if they needed it.
He followed Natasha and Clint, feeling like a ghost. He hadn't felt it this intensely when following Natasha on her missions on Earth, perhaps because he knew that she sensed his presence and still reacted to it on occasion. Here, she was no longer able to.
Natasha carefully sabotaged the generator as Tony Stark had directed, Hawkeye on the alert for when the Chitauri would arrive. The Asgardian warriors were all on alert, not knowing how many of the Chitauri they would have to fight or how intense it would be.
They didn't have to wait long.
A portal looking rather like the large one fueled by the Tesseract over New York City opened up over the planet's sky. A Leviathan emerged, its six pairs of flippers guiding it through the atmosphere and down for a graceful landing. Before that, oval sections of its armor opened up and a Chitauri warrior jumped down from the Leviathan, a tether cord slowing descent just enough that they didn't hit the ground with a bone-shattering impact. They noticed Clint, Natasha and the Asgardian warriors immediately, removing weapons from their attached locations on their armor and starting to charge.
"Close that portal and go to the others," Natasha told Loki in staccato Russian. "Cut them off as fast as you can."
"I can't leave you-"
"Just do it!" she barked, charging forward into the fray with the Asgardian warriors. She had his twin swords, at least, and Clint had his quiver full of arrows and his bow. There was no way he would have enough to battle an entire Leviathan corps of Chitauri foot soldiers, so Loki surreptitiously cast a spell on the quiver to replenish its ammunition before moving to close the portal on this planet. It wasn't fast enough; dozens of chariots arrived, single or double riders anchored to them to provide aerial support for the foot soldiers. This portal was large and easy to take apart, but that didn't cut the communication lines to the mother ship. The Chitauri foot soldiers and chariot riders continued to fight as Loki slipped sideways and between to the other planets.
It was the same situation on the other six planets, and closing the portals didn't cut the neural link as it had on Earth years ago.
"Goddamn upgrades!" Tony Stark growled when he realized that. The repulsor blasts hurt the foot soldiers but didn't disable them for long. Loki could see that he quickly started funneling the foot soldiers toward the warriors on the ground to battle, and the Hulk was jumping up to knock the chariots out of the sky. Asgardian warriors moved to slay the Chitauri foot soldiers, though they were outnumbered three to one.
On his planet, Steve was using his shield to knock down Chitauri foot soldiers and hit the chariots from below, destabilizing their flight patterns. Still, there was only so much a shield bash could do against the Chitauri, and most didn't stay down until Asgardian warriors cut them down. There was a look of intense concentration on Steve's face, and he barked out orders to the Asgardians with military precision and enough presence that they followed all of his orders without question.
Sif led the fray on her planet, cutting down more Chitauri warriors than were able to hit her or her shield. Occasionally she or one of the Asgardian warriors took a Chitauri spear to hurl at the chariots overhead, but otherwise the greatest detriment to their battle was the hail of energy blasts coming from above. Before slipping sideways again, Loki created an ice storm over the chariots. The icicles were lethal needles that hit the Chitauri and damaged the chariots, sending them crashing. Because of the magical nature of the icicles, however, they melted to mere water when approaching Sif or the Asgardians. Stray icicles impaled foot soldiers, helping to reduce some of the bloodbath for the warriors.
Thor simply called a lot of lightning and threw Mjolnir around on his planet, though his warrior complement took heavy damage from the foot soldiers. He bellowed commands when Chitauri foot soldiers looked as though they wanted to make a break for the generator. It was silly; of course Thor hadn't followed Stark's directions and simply took Mjolnir to the generator and demolished the entire thing. He didn't seem to need the same amount of help that Sif did, so Loki continued slipping sideways to the planets where Volstagg and Fandral had led the charge. They had similar difficulties as Sif, as the chariots wreaked considerable havoc over the ground forces. It didn't even seem to matter if the foot soldiers were hit alongside Asgardian warriors when shots went wide. The foot soldiers kept fighting, kept advancing. Loki generated the ice storms on both worlds, which he hoped would even the odds. Volstagg seemed to twitch in irritation when the storm hit, but Fandral kept right on fighting as if the ice or rain meant nothing.
Loki cycled back to the world where Natasha and Clint were fighting. Though all of the portals admitting more Chitauri were closed, he could feel the push of another trying to open. Covered in the bluish-black blood as well as her own red blood, Natasha was still continuing to fight with swords and her usual acrobatic style. "The portals are all closed, but there are heavy losses on both sides," he told her. He wanted to layer healing spells on her, even if the amulet she was wearing should have done that. Which meant that the blood hadn't been from a Chitauri blade or energy blast, but friendly accidents or an overhead explosion.
"We need to finish this and get going," Natasha said, her voice coming in short pants. "You'll have to coordinate, get us out as soon as possible."
The only one that some of them would trust would be Jane, collating information and observing everything from her safe perch. She had no reason to trust him, either, but she was likely going to be the best solution to coordinating battles on seven fronts.
Loki quickly returned to Engmarr's basement and dropped his invisibility glamour. "There were more Chitauri than expected," he told her without preamble. "I don't believe the others would trust that coming from me, though it is indeed true."
Jane frowned at him, brows furrowed. "I saw massive energy spikes on the sensor arrays," she began, though Loki tuned out much of the discussion regarding the data she had been monitoring via probes and sensors on the Iron Man suit of armor. "Will they be able to defeat the Chitauri?" she asked finally.
He hesitated slightly. "The ones you know will likely survive, if injured. But many of the other warriors have already fallen."
Lips pressed together unhappily for a moment, she looked from Loki's expression to the tablet she had been taking notes from. "Can you help them out?"
"I generated ice storms on three of the seven worlds."
"Not what I meant. I mean, help them out of those worlds?"
"It would be cowardice to abandon battle prior to its completion. I doubt they would accept such a thing," Loki told her plainly. The mortals might not mind, but the Asgardians certainly would.
If anything, that made Jane look even more displeased. "Stupid macho Asgardian bullshit," she muttered, shaking her head. Tapping out a sequence on the tablet, she waited for an alert to flash on the screen before shouting "Regroup as fast as possible! Back to the asteroid if you have to!"
"What will that do?" Loki asked, eyebrow raised in curiosity.
"They won't leave the battle? Then they should move to someplace they can have more allies."
Loki nodded and looked at her a little more intently. Perhaps he had dismissed her too soon, if there was such a strong will within her. It was likely what had drawn Thor's interest. "It will likely take more than mere brawn to overwhelm Chitauri forces."
Jane leveled a steady glance at him, as if expecting him to come up with a clever ploy. "Then you better start making plans for that, shouldn't you?"
Though Loki was willing to cast illusion and storm spells on the asteroid to help slaughter the last of the Chitauri forces, he had no concrete plan that was able to use everyone's skills. It was disheartening that the Chitauri were stronger than they used to be, and that too many Asgardian warriors had fallen. Truth be told, Loki was far more concerned about Natasha's injuries, and the ones that his amulets haven't been able to prevent. He remained silent and invisible as all of the survivors left Engmarr's estate and returned to the safety of the palace to mull over the gravity of the battles fought. Loki only dropped his invisibility spell once Clint closed and locked the door, as he was the last to enter the meeting room.
"This is fucking ridiculous," Clint said, nearly slinging his bow across the room in frustration. It was the same feeling that all of the others had, though he was the first to voice it.
Natasha scrubbed at her face tiredly, ignoring the blood and dirt she was spreading over her face and into her hair. "We need to plan ahead-"
"For what?" Clint snapped. "Annihilation? That's what they want-"
"Asgardians will not bow before this threat," Thor said, shaking his head. "We may have lost many a warrior, but we have more here. Now we know what we face-"
"At what cost?" Volstagg jumped in. "Or is it cost to our people alone? Do we call in other allies to aid us in the fight against the Chitauri?"
"To look weak?" Sif scoffed.
"It is no weakness if we simply state that we are giving them the opportunity for glory," Fandral said, collapsing into a chair.
"Other realms would believe no such thing," Sif said, shaking her head. "Not when our people have shed blood for their peace."
"So it is up to us and Midgard," Thor said, shutting down any potential argument. "They have formidable weapons, and we were able to stop a Chitauri army with only the seven of us against their foot soldiers, chariots and Leviathans. Though we have been injured, we all still are capable of battle. Many of our foes died. We are still victorious."
"For how long?" Clint snapped. "It didn't happen today, but eventually I'm going to be out of trick arrows. They spawn more of those gray-skinned bastards, and they're all connected. Closing the portal didn't work, so the network isn't based on some kind of weird intergalactic mother ship like before. We don't know where their neural network is even housed, so we can't shut 'em down that way."
"Not to mention we don't have a nuke." Tony shrugged when everyone stared at him. "What? I doubt we could ask Eyepatch for one. He'll have a stroke."
Bruce looked exhausted, and turned to Tony. "Between your sensors and the probes floating around, Jane probably has a lot of data to analyze. We might be able to find a likely target for the neural hub. We can probably create an explosive big enough to knock it out."
"Or use magic," Natasha said quietly.
There was a collective hush among all of the people in the study. "That is a very dangerous endeavor," Loki said finally. His eyes didn't settle on one particular place, and he held himself stiffly against the wall, farthest from the door. He didn't feel safe, even if it was it was locked and there were promises made to keep his current status a secret.
"Dangerous for whom?" Fandral asked, eyebrow lofted in query.
Loki saw it as a challenge to his skill and knowledge, so he couldn't help but bristle at Fandral's tone. "For all of us. There are different offensive spells that can be used, but most of them will affect a rather large area. So depending on the nature of the spell I cast and the placement of Asgardian troops..."
"Collateral damage," Natasha remarked, voice carefully neutral.
"Our warriors expect to fight a foe in honest combat," Volstagg said, shaking his head.
"Such things are never useful unless it benefits you directly, is it?" Loki snarled, eyes flashing dangerously. "If magic is so intolerable, you should not have reaped rewards from trickery you all have asked me to perform. You would not wear that protective amulet now."
Volstagg's hands twitched as if he was tempted to yank it from around his neck. He didn't however; the sheer violence of the battle meant that every advantage in staying safe and alive could make the difference long term in the war against the Chitauri and Thanos' other allies.
"Hold," Sif said, exhaustion in her tone of voice. "Please," she added when Volstagg looked ready to say something cutting to Loki.
"This is exactly what they want," Steve said suddenly. He had collapsed into a chair as well, and his entire posture was one of exhaustion. Still, determination burned in his eyes. "They want us beaten and defeated. I'm sure they'd love it if we fought among ourselves. It saves them the trouble of cutting us all down."
"They were not as easily defeated as promised," Fandral commented, eyeing Loki.
"They're all networked together. They probably learned a lot after the Battle of New York. We did, so why can't they?" Steve reasoned.
"If only there was a way to figure out how the neural network actually worked," Bruce said with a sigh. "Then we'd figure out how to block it."
"Right. Because we can really figure out alien wifi," Clint snarked.
"Guys?" Jane called out from her perch in the corner of the room. She had the tablet in front of her and looked as though she had spent the entire argument time finalizing calculations of some sort. "It's not really wifi, but that's a good concept to start with."
"What? You're serious?" Clint asked, eyebrows raised. "Look, it's only in movies where alien tech and ours jive that well."
"It's not exactly that, but it functions the same way wifi would with computers." Jane paused, obviously trying to come up with an easy way to explain the concept. "It's a specific frequency that allows all of them to communicate, kind of like networked computers more than a hive mind. Each one functions separately, doing its own thing. But the collective has so much more processing power, and that's what makes them able to coordinate on a massive scale. It takes a lot of energy to do that, and once you cut the connection suddenly, it causes a big feedback loop that is something like a short circuit."
"That's what happened in New York."
"Right. I don't have any data to compare this to," she agreed, indicating the tablet, "but that's the theory I'm working with at the moment."
"Sounds like it's a workable theory," Bruce commented, rubbing at his face tiredly. "After all, magic has a distinct algorhythm, and there subtle differences in the harmonics of different casters. So why wouldn't there be something to track the Chitauri?"
"But if you can track them..." Clint began.
"Then we can find the source of the frequency," Jane finished with a grin. "So that will solve your problem of the neural link."
Tony rubbed his hands together in anticipation despite his exhaustion. "All right, then. So we craft ourselves some sensors and start tracking down those Chitauri bastards." He grinned at the others in the room. "Time to have them on the run for a change."
***
***
To Chapter Four - Ready For Battle
Series: #12 in Ready For The Siege
(#1 - Look Over Your Shoulder, #2 - Armed Up To The Teeth, #3 - Misery Inspires, #4 - Broken Underneath, #5 - Change Is Coming Soon, #6 - Lick Your Wounds, #7 - Bitter Sparks, #8 - Father's Will, #9 - To Feel Safe Again, #10 - Hit Your Prime, #11 - Open Your Eyes)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: R
Pairing: Loki/Natasha
Disclaimer: Not mine! Some comic backstory is incorporated into characterizations, but this is still primarily movieverse.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-movie. Read the other stories before this one, because it does refer back to events in them. Additional warning for misogyny (internalized and society-driven) and references to torture.
Title and series title from "The Royal We" by Silversun Pickups
Special thanks to phoenixrising06/
romanovasledger for plotting and characterization discussion. :)
Summary: Rather than wait for a full scale attack to reach Asgard, they decide to make the first strike themselves.
Prior chapter:
One - Fall From Grace
Two - What The Dead Know
Three - Portals
Tony Stark was proud of his masterpiece, a floating robot probe that was largely based off of the technology used by Asgardian children in their balls. It had an interior propulsion system that had fascinated him and Jane; she was enamored of its shifting gravitational properties, which altered its shape and allowed it to float and move at various speeds and heights. Tony had enjoyed playing with the robotics of the probe, using the tools and materials that were available on Asgard. They didn't have vibranium, which would have made him ridiculously giddy to work with, but various alloys of differing density and strength. He was already making adjustments to his Iron Man suit, making diagrams and notations to himself, especially after Thor had assured him that interdimensional trade was one of the goals of a stable Einstein-Rosen Bridge once Jane and Bruce got her formulae tweaked properly.
As much as it irked him to have the palace historian tell him that his technology and interfaces were antiquated and not the state of the art tech he had assumed they were, Tony did listen to her suggestions for upgrades. Ketilve never once made herself sound superior just because she held this knowledge and he didn't. If anything, she reminded him of one of his first really good teachers at MIT, enthusiastically lighting the spark of interest for robotics and engineering in the first place. The wireless tech allowing the probe to communicate with his receiver was beyond bleeding edge by Earth standards, making him feel almost giddy. Upgrades like this would make Extremis and other such nanobots look awkward. JARVIS would be damn near invincible if Tony could wire up the entire Avengers Tower with this tech.
Bruce insisted on building several probes, in case Chitauri destroyed the first one. Jane insisted on several different sensor arrays that Tony personally thought were unnecessary, but had installed anyway. Her goals were slightly different than his, after all. She wanted raw data to analyze and extract information from. Tony just wanted the hovering probe to see if Chitauri were present or not.
Loki had been a pale wreck when he had handed out amulets of protection, a beleaguered ghost of himself that reminded Tony of SHIELD footage when he stole the Tesseract and corrupted Selvig and Clint. His skin had a sickly, feverish cast to it, his hair was stringy, and there were deep shadows like bruises beneath his eyes. Fatigue dogged his every step, and his eyes darted everywhere. He looked like a combat veteran in the throes of a flashback, to be perfectly honest, and Tony wondered about all the things that he and Natasha had never said about what had happened before he had arrived on Earth nearly four years ago. If she knew, Natasha would never tell him. She was the sort whose secrets had secrets, and Tony wasn't exactly one of her best friends. Still, Tony was clever and could read between the lines. When Amora tortured him with the acidic venom, Loki had implied it wasn't the first time he had been tortured. It never would have happened on Asgard, no matter what Odin thought of him.
Which meant it happened after he fell from the Bifrost, before Thanos and the Other sent him to Earth. It really didn't matter whether it was Thanos and the Other, someone before them, or all of the above. Drifting through the vacuum of space was probably enough to drive anyone crazy, and Loki hadn't been wrapped too tightly to start with. Plus the movement through space and time and magic or whatever else Yggdrasil was supposed to be made of... Any of that could have turned Loki into an even crazier version of himself without explicit torture.
He didn't want to empathize in any way with Loki. Tony had a reputation to keep as a selfish, irritating bastard, even if he was philanthropic. Not to mention that Loki was a sociopath in every sense of the word. Even Tony had scruples. Loki was chaos incarnate.
Leading them all to the basement of an abandoned estate, Loki continued to look like a jittery addict in need of his next fix. Then again, the threat of discovery and death probably made him all twitchy and hypervigilant that way. Natasha, Clint and Steve also constantly scanned rooms for exits and hiding places, but were far more subtle about it.
"Okay, Horns," Tony began, seeing no point in coddling Loki. "Open it up and let's get this show on the road."
To Tony's surprise, Loki didn't even scoff at him or demand some kind of royal respect. He simply nodded at the group of them, then began his casting. It was underwhelming to look at, a few flicks of his fingers and a twist of his wrist.
The portal shimmered, rather like a skin of water over ice. The little robotic probe went through it without any difficulty, telemetry sending back continual signals.
On the other side of the portal was a dark, barren place with craggy hills and cliffs. The entire landscape was swathed in darkness, clouds covering the sky and blotting out any light sources. There was a clearing in the midst of all the hills, as if the probe was in what once had been a lake bed that had since boiled off. The atmosphere was comparable to that of Earth or Asgard, with an oxygen content of about 23%, mostly inert gases and most surprisingly, a distinct lack of water vapor. Perhaps the "water boiled off" theory wasn't entirely inaccurate, but what could possibly be generating the oxygen?
"Over there," Jane said, pointing something on her monitor.
Oops. Tony had been thinking out loud again, though this was helpful. Sending the probe in the direction Jane indicated, there was a generator of some kind, a machine that was breaking down the rock formations in one cliff. It generated the oxygen and also reduced the stone to elements that fell into neat little piles.
"That looks like it's ready to be harvested."
"There are seven other portals," Loki said at the same time Bruce spoke. There was a pinched look on his face, something probably akin to fear. Loki afraid of something?
The more Tony thought about it, the more he wanted to know what it was. And the more he thought that it was probably going to be something spectacular and spectacularly bad at the same time. But that was what the probe was for, after all. He, Bruce and Jane had built five of them total, and it didn't take much to get the other four up and running to explore the other portals that Loki pointed out.
"Where do you think this is, Horns?" Tony asked Loki.
It wasn't enough of a distraction for the trickster. That pinched look was still on his face, and his eyes still darted everywhere. "I would think an asteroid of some kind. The Chitauri tend to use them as refueling bases."
Tony filed that away to figure out later. He'd want an analysis of that generator Jane found, as well as what materials were piled up neatly beneath it. He was taking it upon himself to be a clean energy source rather than a warmonger, so any information could be useful. He hadn't really gotten a good look at the Chitauri in space before sending the nuke their way, and his nightmares were still littered with glittering stars and the rush of air as he fell, hurtling through empty space toward certain death.
"How many of them are there?" Volstagg asked, frowning at Tony's display of the empty possible-asteroid that the probe was transmitting back. Tony ignored the way that Volstagg, Fandral and Thor seemed to side-eye Loki, as if he was ready to explode. Or they should start running to the palace guards to order an execution.
"There will be as many Chitauri as they need," Loki murmured. "They are able to mature quickly in the right conditions, and are seen as expendable. All they know is war."
All eyes were on Loki, and his jaw tightened as he fixed his eyes on the view screen in Tony's hands. "That is what I had been promised."
"We could always go through," Tony found himself saying, and couldn't decide if he wanted to kick his own ass or pat himself on the back. "There's oxygen enough, no bad guys destroying the probe. That gives us one more portal to explore."
"Best to take care," Loki warned them. "They left those portals open for a purpose."
"Then you'd better leave yours open, too," Tony replied easily before anyone else could. "If it goes south quick, we need an exit strategy."
"I can put in anchors, so that there is not constant attention required," Loki began slowly. He lifted his eyes from the view screen and looked at Natasha, whose expression remained impassive. Tony couldn't read the look in her eyes, but thought it was something like concern. Pepper got that look in her eyes a lot when he spent too many days in the workshop. It still felt wrong and unnatural to worry about Loki, but he had thought about the entire fucked up situation and talked it over with Pepper for perspective before arriving in Asgard. Spies' worlds were never black and white, just endless shades of gray, compromising principles for the sake of a greater good. As a spy, Natasha would willingly take on a psychopath if it would keep the Earth safe from harm. Her idea of balance would consider that an acceptable risk. Still, some part of Tony would rather just punch Loki in the face and be done with it.
Volstagg kept a tight grip on his weapon and leveled a hearty glare at Loki. "Such a creature would take advantage of leaving us stranded on an asteroid with limited resources." Anger twisted his features, and Tony almost thought he was going to swing the battleaxe at Loki's head, severing it himself.
"We have need of his knowledge and skill against this foe," Thor intoned heavily, raising his head to stare down Volstagg. When he would have said something, Thor shook his head sharply to stop him. "Hold, friend. This is not the time to fight amongst ourselves."
"What do you get out of this?" Fandral asked, voice cool and calm. His gaze was assessing as he looked over Loki. Tony thought that Loki didn't look particularly ready to harm anyone in the room; he'd seen SHIELD footage of the Battle of New York when he had burst through JARVIS' sensors to get to Natasha, and this was a completely different version of Loki. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but there was something just a little bit off about the trickster.
He had a beaten, defeated look about him. And honestly, that was more disturbing to Tony than the maniacal, sickly grin from SHIELD surveillance. That reminded him of how Loki looked after Amora had him chained and tortured, how he looked when trying to cut himself apart because he thought he was a monster.
Loki was crazy, but he was also broken in places, and the Asgardians couldn't see it. Natasha did, of that Tony was certain. But if the Asgardians didn't see how broken Loki was beneath the crazy megalomania, that meant he could snap and unleash whatever he might have up his sleeve. Tony was sure it wouldn't be pretty.
The smile Loki pasted onto his face was like the smile he had when he first arrived on Earth via the Tesseract. "Thanos can't have Asgard or her riches. The vaults must remain sealed."
Sif's eyes were sharp when she contemplated Loki, and for a terrifying moment Tony thought that Pepper had to be related to her in some way. "Do you bargain for its contents?"
His laughter was sharp and bitter. "But Sif, did you not know? I am a portion of its contents as well. Dear Odin sought all kinds of treasures. Why content himself with mere trinkets and baubles, when he could hold entire lifetimes in his hands?"
Volstagg pointed in Loki's direction with his battleaxe, jaw set. "You speak treason."
"I've already been declared a dead man," Loki replied, leveling his stare in Volstagg's direction. "What's another charge?"
"Shall we call the guards?" Fandral asked, voice cool and even.
"Nay," Thor intoned, staring down his friends with a stern expression. Tony would have to correct his impression that Thor was like a humanoid equivalent of a golden retriever puppy. He had some teeth when pressed.
The axe was still pointed at Loki, Volstagg glaring at the trickster with hate in his eyes. "You betray us, you die."
"Step in line," Loki replied evenly. Tony recognized the expression on his face. He would be defiant to the end, even if he knew it was a losing battle it was the only way to maintain some kind of dignity when he felt as though he had lost everything.
Tony had seen that expression in the mirror plenty of times before Afghanistan, and it unnerved him that he had anything in common with Loki.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, he told himself, ruthlessly squelching down any sympathy he might be feeling toward Loki. Thanos is the bigger issue here. The Chitauri have to be put down. I did it once, I can do it again.
"Okay," Jane called out from where she was huddled with Bruce over a tablet, "now that you're done measuring who's bigger, can we get back to the task at hand?"
If she wasn't so obviously wrapped up in Thor and he wasn't so thoroughly involved with Pepper, Tony could have kissed her. Jane dealt with bullshit like this on a regular basis, and she clearly was through listening to that kind of talk. Good for her. He grinned and clapped his hands as if the entire tense interlude had been a particularly good show. "All right. Portal. Not the game, of course, but these things we're planning to walk through and commit serious genocidal atrocities in the name of peace." He ignored Thor's sigh and the scowls of Volstagg and Sif. Fandral seemed to be waiting for what else he had to say. "What do you think, Dr. Foster?"
"You and Bruce came up with algorhythms to track magic and Loki in particular on Earth. There are the faint gamma traces from the Tesseract and the scepter, which are entirely different even if they look like they overlap in places." Pointing to the portal still open in front of them all, Jane flashed them a confident smile. "Meaning, I think I can be the one to stay here and keep this portal open just by maintaining the feedback loops. He can do his anchor thing, and after that, I can be the one keeping the way home open."
Fandral was the first one to recover after that pronouncement. He bowed deeply in her direction, the corners of his lips quirking into a smile. "Lady Dr. Foster, you truly are a credit to your people and a genuine friend of Asgard."
Jane preened a bit, and her smile widened into an excited grin when she looked over at Thor. "I'll be right here, making sure it all goes according to plan."
"Excellent news, Jane," Thor boomed, pleased relief evident. "We will scout ahead, then return with as large a force as necessary."
That seemed to quiet the other Asgardians' misgivings. Once Loki did his anchoring magic, Volstagg prodded him with the axe to enter the portal first. He went through as gracefully as he could, then Volstagg went through the portal. Thor, Sif and Fandral went through next. Tony snapped the faceplate of his armor down, then went through. Steve didn't bother with a helmet prior to walking through the portal, and Bruce heaved a long suffering sigh. Clint and Natasha were last through, and Tony looked back to see how Jane was faring. Almost as if she knew he wanted a little reassurance, she grinned and flashed him a thumbs up sign as she held onto the tablet with her other hand. A simple touch command had the remaining probes zooming through the portal to meet them.
The asteroid had slightly less gravity than Asgard did, so each step brought the warriors farther and faster than they expected. The probes zoomed ahead into different portals, sending back signals that Tony's suit then relayed through the portal behind them for Jane to interpret. When he looked back through it, she was happily tapping away on the tablet and scribbling in one of her two notebooks. He could see the generator in the distance, and flew to it in order to try to analyze its structure and purpose. The rest of the team fanned out and tried to look for any hidden pockets of Chitauri, but the entire asteroid seemed to be deserted.
Each probe sent back data, and Tony recalled two of them to enter the other portals and scan for any information. "Hey, I think I have a pattern!" Jane called out triumphantly after a while. "I'm cross referencing what the probes are getting with Ketilve's library, and I think I know where all those portals actually lead to. C'mon back!"
Though there was no real need to, Loki left the anchors for portal back to Asgard open. The barren asteroid on the other side of the portal almost looked like a hyperrealistic painting as a result, and Tony stood staring at it just to be sure no Chitauri would spring out suddenly and attack them all.
Okay, he might have had more than a few nightmares of just that scenario. Complete with panic attacks, but only Pepper really needed to know about those.
"The portals open to seven different planets that are called companion realms in Ketilve's archives," Jane began. "They were companions to some of the lower realms, and in the archives held a lot of natural resources that the primary realm didn't. So Muspelheim's companion realm would have water, forests, that kind of thing. They're small, not considered a part of the realm and generally didn't figure into the stories about each realm."
The Asgardians all nodded in agreement. "Companions are small. They allow each realm a measure of independence from the other realms, though there could be communication or trade if they agreed to it," Thor told the others.
"Well, here's the thing," Jane said, looking at everyone in the room. "The archive data is thousands of years old. Ketilve admitted that no one really bothers to fact check or update them on a regular basis. She adds or changes things as she discovers them, or information is brought to Asgard and made public."
"Realms don't change, Lady Jane," Fandral told her helpfully. "There really is no need to continually update the palace archives."
"Except that it means Ketilve's data is potentially thousands of years out of date," Jane pointed out. She lifted up the tablet. "These companion realms look like they've been harvested for some time. Longer than this asteroid here, even."
"Harvested?" Clint asked, frowning.
"Exactly. As in, the forests are gone, razed to the ground. Lake beds dried up. No animals present on any of the worlds. Generators like that one left behind to maintain an atmosphere and to leave behind natural resources that can be used as fuel or trade."
Stunned silence greeted Jane's announcement. "But..." Fandral began faintly. "They are populated. Companion worlds are not empty shells."
"They are now," Jane told him firmly. "So it looks like the Chitauri have no home world, only several planets that they inhabit that used to belong to others." She looked at the others, a mix of compassion and regret in her expression. "No one's there. Not on any of those seven worlds. The Chitauri must have annihilated the local population to take their resources. The Chitauri aren't even there anymore, but it looks like a refueling base next to each portal."
"So they kill everyone, take what they want, then move on to the next world that Thanos directs them to," Clint summarized, looking at Natasha and Steve with something like dread in his eyes. It was undoubtedly what the Chitauri had planned for every other realm on Yggdrasil.
"Jesus Christ," Tony sighed, shaking his head. "That's like a bad scifi movie in action. I don't have to apologize to all the people I called a hack, do I?"
Bruce sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "We need to do something."
"It looks like the generators have alarms and other kinds of relay systems," Tony said helpfully. "So we could always draw the Chitauri to one of those worlds and start kicking their asses."
"I think that's the best plan we have so far," Steve sighed, looking at the Asgardians. "If they haven't got a single world to defend, at least we can spread out their resources and try to cut them down a little at a time."
Thor nodded and looked at his fellow Asgardians. "Now we take the fight to them."
***
Loki was invisible when a relatively large scouting party of trained warriors went with an Asgardian or Avenger into each of the seven worlds that the portals opened out to. Jane agreed to continue monitoring the portal that was in Engmarr's basement; though he could have possibly opened a new one in a more comfortable part of the estate, the others all agreed with him that it would be a waste of time. If the Chitauri were able to follow the warriors back to asteroid, they wanted ample warning to retreat and destroy the anchors for the portal. Loki could always open a new portal later if they needed it.
He followed Natasha and Clint, feeling like a ghost. He hadn't felt it this intensely when following Natasha on her missions on Earth, perhaps because he knew that she sensed his presence and still reacted to it on occasion. Here, she was no longer able to.
Natasha carefully sabotaged the generator as Tony Stark had directed, Hawkeye on the alert for when the Chitauri would arrive. The Asgardian warriors were all on alert, not knowing how many of the Chitauri they would have to fight or how intense it would be.
They didn't have to wait long.
A portal looking rather like the large one fueled by the Tesseract over New York City opened up over the planet's sky. A Leviathan emerged, its six pairs of flippers guiding it through the atmosphere and down for a graceful landing. Before that, oval sections of its armor opened up and a Chitauri warrior jumped down from the Leviathan, a tether cord slowing descent just enough that they didn't hit the ground with a bone-shattering impact. They noticed Clint, Natasha and the Asgardian warriors immediately, removing weapons from their attached locations on their armor and starting to charge.
"Close that portal and go to the others," Natasha told Loki in staccato Russian. "Cut them off as fast as you can."
"I can't leave you-"
"Just do it!" she barked, charging forward into the fray with the Asgardian warriors. She had his twin swords, at least, and Clint had his quiver full of arrows and his bow. There was no way he would have enough to battle an entire Leviathan corps of Chitauri foot soldiers, so Loki surreptitiously cast a spell on the quiver to replenish its ammunition before moving to close the portal on this planet. It wasn't fast enough; dozens of chariots arrived, single or double riders anchored to them to provide aerial support for the foot soldiers. This portal was large and easy to take apart, but that didn't cut the communication lines to the mother ship. The Chitauri foot soldiers and chariot riders continued to fight as Loki slipped sideways and between to the other planets.
It was the same situation on the other six planets, and closing the portals didn't cut the neural link as it had on Earth years ago.
"Goddamn upgrades!" Tony Stark growled when he realized that. The repulsor blasts hurt the foot soldiers but didn't disable them for long. Loki could see that he quickly started funneling the foot soldiers toward the warriors on the ground to battle, and the Hulk was jumping up to knock the chariots out of the sky. Asgardian warriors moved to slay the Chitauri foot soldiers, though they were outnumbered three to one.
On his planet, Steve was using his shield to knock down Chitauri foot soldiers and hit the chariots from below, destabilizing their flight patterns. Still, there was only so much a shield bash could do against the Chitauri, and most didn't stay down until Asgardian warriors cut them down. There was a look of intense concentration on Steve's face, and he barked out orders to the Asgardians with military precision and enough presence that they followed all of his orders without question.
Sif led the fray on her planet, cutting down more Chitauri warriors than were able to hit her or her shield. Occasionally she or one of the Asgardian warriors took a Chitauri spear to hurl at the chariots overhead, but otherwise the greatest detriment to their battle was the hail of energy blasts coming from above. Before slipping sideways again, Loki created an ice storm over the chariots. The icicles were lethal needles that hit the Chitauri and damaged the chariots, sending them crashing. Because of the magical nature of the icicles, however, they melted to mere water when approaching Sif or the Asgardians. Stray icicles impaled foot soldiers, helping to reduce some of the bloodbath for the warriors.
Thor simply called a lot of lightning and threw Mjolnir around on his planet, though his warrior complement took heavy damage from the foot soldiers. He bellowed commands when Chitauri foot soldiers looked as though they wanted to make a break for the generator. It was silly; of course Thor hadn't followed Stark's directions and simply took Mjolnir to the generator and demolished the entire thing. He didn't seem to need the same amount of help that Sif did, so Loki continued slipping sideways to the planets where Volstagg and Fandral had led the charge. They had similar difficulties as Sif, as the chariots wreaked considerable havoc over the ground forces. It didn't even seem to matter if the foot soldiers were hit alongside Asgardian warriors when shots went wide. The foot soldiers kept fighting, kept advancing. Loki generated the ice storms on both worlds, which he hoped would even the odds. Volstagg seemed to twitch in irritation when the storm hit, but Fandral kept right on fighting as if the ice or rain meant nothing.
Loki cycled back to the world where Natasha and Clint were fighting. Though all of the portals admitting more Chitauri were closed, he could feel the push of another trying to open. Covered in the bluish-black blood as well as her own red blood, Natasha was still continuing to fight with swords and her usual acrobatic style. "The portals are all closed, but there are heavy losses on both sides," he told her. He wanted to layer healing spells on her, even if the amulet she was wearing should have done that. Which meant that the blood hadn't been from a Chitauri blade or energy blast, but friendly accidents or an overhead explosion.
"We need to finish this and get going," Natasha said, her voice coming in short pants. "You'll have to coordinate, get us out as soon as possible."
The only one that some of them would trust would be Jane, collating information and observing everything from her safe perch. She had no reason to trust him, either, but she was likely going to be the best solution to coordinating battles on seven fronts.
Loki quickly returned to Engmarr's basement and dropped his invisibility glamour. "There were more Chitauri than expected," he told her without preamble. "I don't believe the others would trust that coming from me, though it is indeed true."
Jane frowned at him, brows furrowed. "I saw massive energy spikes on the sensor arrays," she began, though Loki tuned out much of the discussion regarding the data she had been monitoring via probes and sensors on the Iron Man suit of armor. "Will they be able to defeat the Chitauri?" she asked finally.
He hesitated slightly. "The ones you know will likely survive, if injured. But many of the other warriors have already fallen."
Lips pressed together unhappily for a moment, she looked from Loki's expression to the tablet she had been taking notes from. "Can you help them out?"
"I generated ice storms on three of the seven worlds."
"Not what I meant. I mean, help them out of those worlds?"
"It would be cowardice to abandon battle prior to its completion. I doubt they would accept such a thing," Loki told her plainly. The mortals might not mind, but the Asgardians certainly would.
If anything, that made Jane look even more displeased. "Stupid macho Asgardian bullshit," she muttered, shaking her head. Tapping out a sequence on the tablet, she waited for an alert to flash on the screen before shouting "Regroup as fast as possible! Back to the asteroid if you have to!"
"What will that do?" Loki asked, eyebrow raised in curiosity.
"They won't leave the battle? Then they should move to someplace they can have more allies."
Loki nodded and looked at her a little more intently. Perhaps he had dismissed her too soon, if there was such a strong will within her. It was likely what had drawn Thor's interest. "It will likely take more than mere brawn to overwhelm Chitauri forces."
Jane leveled a steady glance at him, as if expecting him to come up with a clever ploy. "Then you better start making plans for that, shouldn't you?"
Though Loki was willing to cast illusion and storm spells on the asteroid to help slaughter the last of the Chitauri forces, he had no concrete plan that was able to use everyone's skills. It was disheartening that the Chitauri were stronger than they used to be, and that too many Asgardian warriors had fallen. Truth be told, Loki was far more concerned about Natasha's injuries, and the ones that his amulets haven't been able to prevent. He remained silent and invisible as all of the survivors left Engmarr's estate and returned to the safety of the palace to mull over the gravity of the battles fought. Loki only dropped his invisibility spell once Clint closed and locked the door, as he was the last to enter the meeting room.
"This is fucking ridiculous," Clint said, nearly slinging his bow across the room in frustration. It was the same feeling that all of the others had, though he was the first to voice it.
Natasha scrubbed at her face tiredly, ignoring the blood and dirt she was spreading over her face and into her hair. "We need to plan ahead-"
"For what?" Clint snapped. "Annihilation? That's what they want-"
"Asgardians will not bow before this threat," Thor said, shaking his head. "We may have lost many a warrior, but we have more here. Now we know what we face-"
"At what cost?" Volstagg jumped in. "Or is it cost to our people alone? Do we call in other allies to aid us in the fight against the Chitauri?"
"To look weak?" Sif scoffed.
"It is no weakness if we simply state that we are giving them the opportunity for glory," Fandral said, collapsing into a chair.
"Other realms would believe no such thing," Sif said, shaking her head. "Not when our people have shed blood for their peace."
"So it is up to us and Midgard," Thor said, shutting down any potential argument. "They have formidable weapons, and we were able to stop a Chitauri army with only the seven of us against their foot soldiers, chariots and Leviathans. Though we have been injured, we all still are capable of battle. Many of our foes died. We are still victorious."
"For how long?" Clint snapped. "It didn't happen today, but eventually I'm going to be out of trick arrows. They spawn more of those gray-skinned bastards, and they're all connected. Closing the portal didn't work, so the network isn't based on some kind of weird intergalactic mother ship like before. We don't know where their neural network is even housed, so we can't shut 'em down that way."
"Not to mention we don't have a nuke." Tony shrugged when everyone stared at him. "What? I doubt we could ask Eyepatch for one. He'll have a stroke."
Bruce looked exhausted, and turned to Tony. "Between your sensors and the probes floating around, Jane probably has a lot of data to analyze. We might be able to find a likely target for the neural hub. We can probably create an explosive big enough to knock it out."
"Or use magic," Natasha said quietly.
There was a collective hush among all of the people in the study. "That is a very dangerous endeavor," Loki said finally. His eyes didn't settle on one particular place, and he held himself stiffly against the wall, farthest from the door. He didn't feel safe, even if it was it was locked and there were promises made to keep his current status a secret.
"Dangerous for whom?" Fandral asked, eyebrow lofted in query.
Loki saw it as a challenge to his skill and knowledge, so he couldn't help but bristle at Fandral's tone. "For all of us. There are different offensive spells that can be used, but most of them will affect a rather large area. So depending on the nature of the spell I cast and the placement of Asgardian troops..."
"Collateral damage," Natasha remarked, voice carefully neutral.
"Our warriors expect to fight a foe in honest combat," Volstagg said, shaking his head.
"Such things are never useful unless it benefits you directly, is it?" Loki snarled, eyes flashing dangerously. "If magic is so intolerable, you should not have reaped rewards from trickery you all have asked me to perform. You would not wear that protective amulet now."
Volstagg's hands twitched as if he was tempted to yank it from around his neck. He didn't however; the sheer violence of the battle meant that every advantage in staying safe and alive could make the difference long term in the war against the Chitauri and Thanos' other allies.
"Hold," Sif said, exhaustion in her tone of voice. "Please," she added when Volstagg looked ready to say something cutting to Loki.
"This is exactly what they want," Steve said suddenly. He had collapsed into a chair as well, and his entire posture was one of exhaustion. Still, determination burned in his eyes. "They want us beaten and defeated. I'm sure they'd love it if we fought among ourselves. It saves them the trouble of cutting us all down."
"They were not as easily defeated as promised," Fandral commented, eyeing Loki.
"They're all networked together. They probably learned a lot after the Battle of New York. We did, so why can't they?" Steve reasoned.
"If only there was a way to figure out how the neural network actually worked," Bruce said with a sigh. "Then we'd figure out how to block it."
"Right. Because we can really figure out alien wifi," Clint snarked.
"Guys?" Jane called out from her perch in the corner of the room. She had the tablet in front of her and looked as though she had spent the entire argument time finalizing calculations of some sort. "It's not really wifi, but that's a good concept to start with."
"What? You're serious?" Clint asked, eyebrows raised. "Look, it's only in movies where alien tech and ours jive that well."
"It's not exactly that, but it functions the same way wifi would with computers." Jane paused, obviously trying to come up with an easy way to explain the concept. "It's a specific frequency that allows all of them to communicate, kind of like networked computers more than a hive mind. Each one functions separately, doing its own thing. But the collective has so much more processing power, and that's what makes them able to coordinate on a massive scale. It takes a lot of energy to do that, and once you cut the connection suddenly, it causes a big feedback loop that is something like a short circuit."
"That's what happened in New York."
"Right. I don't have any data to compare this to," she agreed, indicating the tablet, "but that's the theory I'm working with at the moment."
"Sounds like it's a workable theory," Bruce commented, rubbing at his face tiredly. "After all, magic has a distinct algorhythm, and there subtle differences in the harmonics of different casters. So why wouldn't there be something to track the Chitauri?"
"But if you can track them..." Clint began.
"Then we can find the source of the frequency," Jane finished with a grin. "So that will solve your problem of the neural link."
Tony rubbed his hands together in anticipation despite his exhaustion. "All right, then. So we craft ourselves some sensors and start tracking down those Chitauri bastards." He grinned at the others in the room. "Time to have them on the run for a change."
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To Chapter Four - Ready For Battle