Hi all!

Here's a chapter, hope you like it!

Love, Sierra :) 

Chapter Forty-Six: Keajaiban

~Nobody's POV~

The Avengers minus Bruce Banner and plus Max and Peter Parker listen intently as Steve outlines their form of attack. 

"Okay," says Steve as the plane zooms over the Indian Ocean. They're on the tail end of the first day of flight, and everyone has fatigue written all over their faces. Steve brushes his away. "We've narrowed the possible location of the Mantra. It's inside a cave, called by the townsfolk, the Cave of Keajaiban, and it's haunted. The cave is deep, almost seventy feet underground. The locals bury their most esteemed dead there. And it's a maze of rocks, stalagmites, and snakes."

"Snakes?" asks Barton, confused.

"Snakes. The place is crawling with them." Steve leans his arm against the top of the railing of the plane. "According to local lore, there's a giant one that's supposedly the Raja Ular, or King of Snakes."

"Reticulated python, no doubt," says Natasha, who is on the computer, having pulled up snakes of Indonesia. 

Steve shrugs. "He claims the lives of about six humans a year."

Natasha stares, as does half of the gathered party. 

"How big are we talking?" asks Tony.

"Your guess is as good as mine." 

There's some silence, during which the only noise is Natasha typing furiously on her keyboard, and the hum of the engine. 

Tony breaks it by clapping his hands together. "Okay. We've got a haunted ghost cave in Indonesia, a king snake, and only a few days to save the earth. We'd better get started."

*

~Nobody's POV~

As it turns out, Jack is the first one to feel better. Well enough, anyway, for Bruce to push him in a wheelchair into Thea's room the next morning. Even though the sun is nearly high in the sky, Thea and Kyle are still sleeping, one of Kyle's hands off the bed, and Thea still curled up against him. 

Bruce is about to turn around when Thea's green eyes open and she stirs. This prompts Kyle to wake up, blinking drowsily. 

Yawning, Kyle says, "What's going on?"

"Thought the two might want to finally see each other," says Bruce, nodding towards Thea, who is staring at Jack as if she hasn't previously known of his existence. 

Kyle groans, throwing his head back against the pillow, but only successfully knocking it against the headboard. He feels Thea's forehead, "Looks like your fever's gone, missy."

"Mm," says Thea, not paying the slightest bit of attention to the young man.

"Fine then," Kyle says, rubbing his head as he sleepily climbs off of the bed. "Let the two lovebirds reunite," he adds between yawns. "And I'm gonna get food."

"There's some in the back cabinet," offers Bruce, angling Jack's chair to get closer to Thea. He glances at the two. "Come to think of it, I'll join you."

The door closes softly behind him. 

"Long time no see," grins Jack.

Thea's stare is fixated. Then she exclaims, "I can't believe you."

"Sorry, have to crack a joke every once in a while." 

There's an awkward silence, and then Thea says, very quietly, as if she doesn't actually want to say it, "I thought... I thought for sure..."

"I was dead? It takes more than a bloody, mad bloke to knife me for me to die, you should know that." Although his tone is light, his eyes are troubled. 

Thea's hand snakes down off the bed, and finds Jack's. She breathes in contentedly as she realizes that Jack, is in fact tangible, and is, in fact, real. 

"Look at us, the two invalids," says Jack, leaning against the chair but still holding Thea's hand. "Never would'a guessed it, huh?"

"Nah," Thea whispers. "Not us."

And then, before either of them know it, Thea is crying and Jack is trying his best not to too, and failing miserably.

*

They arrive at the cave in the dead of the night. As Tony flies around the exterior, JARVIS informs him that it is only 12 PM in New York City.

"Thanks," mutters Tony. The time travel is getting to him, but he finds himself pretty well adjusted as his days and nights are flipped. 

"Going in." Steve's voice is crackling through Tony's speakers. Tony knows that Steve, Natasha,  and Clint are heading down into the belly of the cave first. He and Thor will take the last entrance time, after Max and Peter. 

"Watch your footing," Natasha says, "It's swampy down here."

Tony flies around to the mouth of the cave. It's shaped like a giant fortune cookie, it's wide "entrance" fooling the eye; only through a series of small holes can you actually enter the cave. 

Meanwhile, Natasha is following Steve into one such entrance, her feet sinking into the soft ground. It smells putrid down here, like too much wet grass and exotic animals. She hears movement above her and angles her flashlight up just in time to see several giant fruit bats flapping towards the cave's entrance, where they are probably just about to begin their nocturnal hunt. 

"Okay, Max," says Natasha as she, Clint, and Steve enter a wider, chamber-like room of the cave. "C'mon through."

The first sign that supernatural presence has been here is the glowing face of the rocks. Natasha originally brushes them aside as exotic algae life, but then, upon closer inspection, sees that it is, in fact, the glowing blue of Imeldi blood.

She frowns. "Steve, you might want to check this out" 

"Imeldi?" he asks, tracing his fingers along the cool liquid. 

"Yes. They either beat us to it, or they're making a pretty distinguishable house of this cave."

Steve stands, and says to Clint, "Keep your arrows ready." He speaks over Max, who is just telling Thor and Tony to enter the cave. 

Natasha's flashlight finds two crypts against the left wall, adorned with dying flowers. There are Indonesian characters etched into the stone coffins and bearing symbols of the gods. She starts- the flashlight swings- as she comes across a coiled snake, a little longer than two feet, between the coffins. It stirs in the light, its forked tongue tasting the air.

Taking a deep breath, Natasha follows Steve along a path, which slants downwards. At one point, it becomes so steep, Natasha has to hold onto the slimy wall as she descends, her feet sliding along the embankment. 

They hit solid ground after a few minutes of sliding. Natasha swings the flashlight around; they are at what appears to be a dead end, a gloriously decorated wall- filled with the coffins of the dead. 

Steve is about to signal that they turn around (although how they will get back up that steep slope will take some consideration) when Natasha stops him. "Look." 

She's pointing at a small, narrow archway at the very right-hand corner of the room. 

*

Loki stalks around the perimeter of the building, towards his destination; the left hand shack. Slipping in silently, he finds what he's looking for: the dead body of the man who knifed Jack, shot by Kyle. 

Speaking in a voice little more than a whisper, he waves his hands over the body. In an instant, it becomes an exact copy of Thea. In a few more movements under Loki's magic, the body stirs, and the body becomes a puppet.

*

By the time Natasha, Clint, and Steve have cleared the vegetation and rocks from the doorway, they have been joined by the other four. 

"Well this isn't good," says Tony as Natasha's flashlight flickers over a body. It's that of a middle aged man, and his neck is bent at an awkward angle; clearly, he's dead. 

Clint kneels next to the man. "A snake didn't kill him. A python would've suffocated him, and even a venomous snake wouldn't have snapped his neck like this."

"What do you propose?" asks Thor.

Natasha is also crouched next to the fallen man. "Look."

She's pointing to the neck of the man, which she has just bared from underneath his matted black hair. There are two small holes there, exactly the place where a forked tongue could have pierced the flesh. 

Natasha leans back against her heels, looking into the face of the dead man as a flurry of conversation snakes around her, each man having a different theory on how the man died. 

Natasha frowns as she spots the handle of a knife clutched in the man's hands. When she flips it over, she stares. "Guys." she says, standing. "I think we might have to consider who this 'King Snake' actually is." 

Tony curses when he sees what Natasha is holding in her hands. The knife is stained with the blue blood of an Imeldi. 

*

~Thea's POV~

"Don't scream."

Those are the words that pierce me. Jack and I look up quickly (Jack's nose is bright red, as are his eyes.). 

I stare.

There's an exact body-double of me standing slack-eyed beside...Loki? 

"You're supposed to be dead!" I exclaim. That's the only thing I can say. My body has begun to tremble. 

"Don't look so pleased to see me," he says coolly. His eyes dart over to Jack. "So sorry, boy." With a twist of his wrist, Jack has collapsed, falling out of his chair and onto the floor; his head hits the base of the bead with a sinister thump. 

I open my mouth to scream, but Loki is there in an instant, covering my mouth. He pulls my weak body to my feet and says, very close to my ear, "We can either do this the easy way or the hard way."

I pull against him as hard as I can, pulling towards Jack.

"Your little friend isn't dead. He's asleep, and when he wakes, the only thing he will remember is that you slipped into a coma after the two of you were reunited."

I now know what the body double is for. Sure enough, Loki drags me away from the bed, and the slack-jawed version of me moves zombie like onto the bed before closing her eyes and lying still. 

I'm breathing hard now, and I kick Loki's shin, which buckles, but he keeps his grip on me. "Stop this, Thea." 

As his hand is still at my mouth, I lunge forward, but Loki is much, much stronger than me right now. His arm wraps around my torso, and then pushes one of my hands out. As if in slow motion, I see Loki's dagger flashing, and he pierces the tip of my finger. I whimper as he forces the drops of blood into a small test tube that is lying on the dresser next to my bed. 

Loki, still holding tightly to me, disintegrates the lower part of the window, making a wide open doorway into the daylight. 

He pulls me out and before I know it, my world has gone black. 

oooooo.... :) :) :) 

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It's my one year anniversary on wattpad today!! I can honestly say that when I opened an account a year ago, I had no idea something like this would happen! Thanks for everything! :) 

Have a fantastic day!

~Sierra