The day of the battle had arrived, and the air was tense as they waited for the arrival of Thanos' army. It was early, but many who had yet to eat were in what had become the common room for the group.

Some were still looking at him nervously, but the kids, Thor, Bruce, and the Guardians – bar Nebula, who had no need for breakfast – had formed a sort of protective circle around him subconsciously. Wanda was at a seperate table with Vision, but was close by. It certainly didn't help the tense atmosphere that Loki was in his more recognisable masculine form.

Loki picked at his breakfast, the food quality seemingly dampened by the moods of those around him. He wanted to lighten up the place somewhat.

Thinking for a moment, Loki looked to Wanda and decided that some pay back for her past prank was in order. As she picked up her mug, Loki changed the liquid inside to a coiling snake – an oldie but a goodie, as the Midgardians would say.

Wanda brought the mug near her lips and the snake peaked out and booped her on the nose. She stilled momentarily and made direct eye contact with the creature before she yelped and the cup went flying. It smashed into pieces on the hard floor and Loki was briefly glad the snake wasn't real before it vanished.

Wanda immediately looked to Loki and glared. "Dude." She said, having obviously spent too much time with Peter and Shuri.

Speaking of Peter and Shuri, those two seemed to be the only ones to see the actual prank, and were laughing, while everyone else had only looked over after the sound of smashing ceramic.

Loki smiled. "Something wrong?"

Wanda smiled back and shot a stream of red light at Loki that he didn't have time to avoid. He looked down at himself, but didn't see any noticeable difference.

Still, the three children and the guardians seemed to find it hilarious. Thor snorted from beside him and Loki turned to face his brother.

"Reminiscing my old hair, Loki?" Thor asked.

Loki scrunched up his eyebrows in confusion before he grabbed a lock of hair and brought it to his eyes.

It was blond.

He looked to Wanda. "You didn't."

"I did." She laughed. "And I've got to be the first to say: you look terrible."

Perhaps childishly, Loki stuck out his tongue at Wanda. She returned the gesture.

"I disagree." Thor said. "I didn't know you loved me so much that you would copy my hairstyle."

"Please." Loki rolled his eyes as overdramatically as possible. "I'm obviously going blond to pay tribute to Amora."

Thor laughed and Loki shifted until he was in the form of his old friend. "Oh, Thor." He said in her voice, raising a hand to his forehead and leaning against his brother's chest. "You are so beautiful and handsome and you must promise to marry me when we're older or I'll beat you up."

Sif laughed at that one, and Thor shoved Loki off him as Loki let the disguise slip, glad to see the blond hair left with it.

"Isn't that kinda... morbid?" Peter asked.

"Oh please," Loki said, "She isn't dead. Only maybe dead."

Before Thor could try and squeeze some emotions out of him, Loki looked around the room. "Shouldn't Strange be back by now?"

Strange had already collected the Defenders, some Asgardians and the Sakaaran gladiators. All of whom had already eaten and were elsewhere. Heimdall said he had to concentrate so he could see Thanos' approach.

The wizard had gone out again to round up the sorcerers of the world and Loki, having impeccable time management skills, knew he was meant to be back half an hour ago.

As if the mention of him was a summon, a fiery orange portal appeared in the middle of the room and Wong stepped through, supporting a heavily injured man on his shoulders. Strange soon followed with a woman, his cloak levitating another. Some others followed and when the portal snapped closed, there were ten new people in the room. Counting Strange and Wong, only four of them looked like they were well enough to fight.

"Thanos?" Rogers asked.

Strange shook his head. "Mordo. Something we can worry about later."

Loki's anger flared up quicker than it should've and he stood up, his chair making a terrible noise as the metal scraped across the ground. He stormed over to Strange and pushed an accusatory finger to his chest. "Did you see this? When you looked into the future did you see a lack of sorcerers and not question it? You could've saved all these people."

"I didn't think it was Mordo, I thought they died in battle." Strange replied solemnly as someone took the woman from his shoulder. "It's too late now."

"No it isn't." Loki said and looked towards the time stone around Strange's neck.

"We can't use this." Strange said and tried to move past Loki. "Not yet."

Loki caught his arm. "Yet?"

Strange's eyes widened, but he collected himself quickly. "Using the time stone is risky. If we ever use it, we need to use it at the exact right time in the exact right way."

"So tell me those exacts."

Strange said nothing. Loki knew he wasn't going to convince him and released his arm, blood still close to boiling.

Surely it would be easier to get the desired path if he just spoke of the future, or if he simply used the time stone now.

Thor approached his side, probably wanting to talk to Loki about his emotions, but before he could, they received a message from Heimdall.

"They're here."

It didn't take long for them to assemble before the forcefield around Wakanda where Thanos and his remaining Black Order waited patiently.

"Are you ready to give me the stones?" Thanos asked like they were children after a temper tantrum. His voice coming from every which way with the help of the space stone.

Nobody spoke for a long while. Eventually Iron Man flipped Thanos the metallic bird and from the the distance, Korg yelled. "Piss off, grape!"

"I guess not." Thanos said, completely unaffected. "Disappointing, but not a surprise by any means... Proxima?"

Proxima readied her spear and the blue gem in Thanos' gauntlet glowed brighter. A hole appeared in the barrier where Thanos and the Black Order stood and simultaneously, several portals opened up to let his army pour in. Proxima yelled a command and the army surged forward, more and more pouring out of the portals at every passing second.

Their own army stayed stock still. Strange and Wanda moved closer to Loki, preparing their magic. With a twist of his hands, Loki summoned the Casket of Ancient Winters.

Loki looked to Wanda, his hands already completely blue. "Are you sure you can control this? If this power gets out of hand, Midgard could be cast into an eternal winter."

Wanda nodded, looking determined. "We've got to use whatever advantage we've got."

Loki activated the casket, summoning its ancient magic to turn the battlefield in front of them into the worst winter Jotunheim could get. The cold rolled towards the army in waves.

Loki could already feel the magic draining him, but Strange was replenishing it at an equal rate. It had taken a while for Loki to admit that Midgardian sorcery was better for longevity, but when he did, Strange explained with little prompt that he summoned energy from other dimensions. There was no time to teach him how to do it, but Strange could lend him the energy in the battle.

The cold crashed into the oncoming army, instantly freezing every creature it came across.

"Go!" Loki yelled as the opposing side started to slow their attack as they realised what was happening.

Their own army struck. The fastest – Rogers, Barnes, T'Challa – got there first, rushing past the icy tombstones of Thanos' army to get to the rest. Stark and Rhodes flew above, blasting outriders with extreme accuracy as Thor jumped higher than them both to strike down tens at a time with massive lightning strikes. The Hulk let out an impressive roar as he stomped towards the army, smashing clean through the iced outriders and shaking the battlefield itself with his roars, Brunnhilde riding on his shoulders until she was close enough to jump, swinging her sword down like an executioner's axe.

The ice avoided them all thanks to the red tint of Wanda's own magic running through the Casket's, keeping their own side safe while destroying more and more of the outriders as it continued forward.

Wong and the other sorcerers kept Thanos busy by opening up portals to the mirror dimension right in front of Thanos' own portals the outriders were coming from. Every time Thanos would close one, the sorcerers would quickly open another.

Heimdall had reached the army at the same time as the Sakaaran gladiators and the few Asgardians that had decided to battle with him, cleaving straight through enemies with his sword.

Wanda directed the Casket's magic forward when the Wakandans and the rest of the their army reached the outriders. It avoided the sides and cut straight through the middle, faster now it didn't have to cover so much area. The strongest in their army ran through the opening, directly towards Thanos. When they reached him, the magic avoided Thanos as the power stone glowed and cast a purple shield around him.

In Loki's hands, the Casket felt hot. Burning hot. The opposite to how it should have felt. That was all the warning Loki got before it exploded, knocking the three of them onto their backs.

Loki groaned and propped himself up on his elbow.

Loki didn't know why Thanos didn't make an explosion powerful enough to kill them, maybe he wanted to see what Loki could do in battle before he was killed. He always did find the god so entertaining to watch suffer after all.

He turned to Wanda. As powerful as she was, she was still human. "Are you alright?"

She groaned and opened her eyes. "Yeah, just give me a moment."

Loki looked to the battle and saw some outriders slipping through and making their way towards them. "I'm not sure we have a moment."

Loki helped the girl sit up. "I might've broken my arm? Which sounds pathetic. Wanda Maximoff: left the battle because she fell backwards and hit her arm real good."

"I'm pretty sure it was an explosion, not just... gravity."

"Still." Wanda insisted, the outriders drawing nearer. "Lame and sore."

Her arm began glowing red and a second later she was moving it without a problem. "Oh," she said, slightly in awe of herself, "nice."

Loki helped her to her feet and she, Strange, and Loki took out the oncoming outriders in half a minute. Some more had slipped through, but they were far enough away that the three of them had time to talk.

"I'm going to find Peter," Loki said, "I need to keep him from trying to fight Thanos."

"Yeah, he'd definitely try that." Wanda said. "Me and Strange are going to head towards the big battle then. Don't die!"

He waved off Wanda as she flew towards the battle with Thanos, pushing from the ground with her magic. Strange sighed and mumbled a quick "Strange and I." Before he followed.

Loki looked to their destination. Everyone fighting Thanos was giving it everything they got. Everyone except...

Thunder rumbled above the battlefield as dark clouds rolled in. The clouds lit up a brilliant blue as Thor, flying with them, practically glowed as electricity sparked from him. He held his axe above his head and let himself fall, the crackling of the electricity audible even from where Loki observed halfway across the battlefield.

Thor came down on Thanos' head with the axe, and in that moment – with his eyes glowing and the air practically roaring – he was the embodiment of his title. There was no mistake that Thor was the God of Thunder.

It wasn't enough.

The axe didn't make a dent in Thanos' skull and the handle of the axe snapped in two. Oof, that was probably a painful deja-vu.

They hadn't banked on Thor's axe killing Thanos, but it would've been beautifully easy if it had.

No, they only needed the axe to leave Thanos dazed, which it had. It distracted him enough for Mantis to jump up onto the titan's shoulder, put her hands on both sides of his head and yell "Sleep!"

Thanos stilled.

The outriders, like their sister species the Chitauri, worked as a hivemind, and when Thanos stopped moving, so did they. Loki couldn't find the black order in the crowd though.

As those near Thanos tried to get the gauntlet off his half closed fist, Loki ran forward to kill as many still Chitauri as he could, keeping an eye out for Peter and Shuri.

He mindlessly working through outriders, slicing through the thick skin around the throats and piercing their hearts through cracks in their natural body armour.

He stole a glance towards Thanos. They somehow hadn't gotten the gauntlet off yet, which probably had something to do with the now glowing power stone.

The stone was glowing brighter and brighter.

Slice, slice, stab, slice.

He passed Shuri blasting down outriders and exchanged a high five with her before he continued.

Stab, stab, slice.

The power stone was glowing brighter still.

Loki still couldn't find Peter. What if he was already dead? Would he really have died so quickly?

A scream rang through the battlefield and Loki looked back at Thanos to find Mantis screaming in pain, the power stone giving off a blinding light. She was slowly flaking apart, pieces of her skin being ripped off before they were blown away into the air and eventually dissolved into nothing.

The power stone let out a pulse of energy and the people around Thanos were blasted backwards. He grabbed Mantis from his shoulders and held her slim neck in his golden fist.

The reality stone glowed red.

Mantis' screams were cut off and she froze. Her feet seemed to slowly drop away from the rest of her body, then went her legs. It wasn't until the stone's effects reached her hips that Loki realised she was turning to sand.

It happened so quickly. One moment she was there, and the next she was a pile of sand at the titan's feet. He stepped through her to get to the other Avengers.

Drax rushed forward, yelling with the rage of a thousand burning suns. Thanos obliterated him with one power stone charged punch.

Loki was too distracted to realise the fight had started again. Three outriders were practically on top of him before he drew his dagger across one of their faces to get it to recoil. He let his daggers return to his pocket dimension and in the same second summoned a spear he'd borrowed from the Wakandan army.

One outrider too close to Loki when he summoned the spear, got the pointed end to the stomach. Loki shoved the spear in further, before pulling away quickly to get the spear before the creature fell. In the same movement, he swung the other end of the spear at the other outrider's feet, knocking it to the ground before he brought the spear down on its chest.

He removed the spear, hitting an oncoming outrider with the butt of the weapon before launching forward to impale another with the spear head. He pulled the spear out and spun around before thrusting his weapon into the outrider he had knocked back.

He just barely noticed the oncoming projectile in time to avoid Proxima Midnight's own spear.

Proxima had already sent a kick toward his chest before he had time to react. He was knocked to the ground and looked up in time to see her thrusting a short blade downwards.

It never hit. Loki's sash had caught her wrist and refused to move. Loki grinned and told the sash to throw her aside, a command which it – almost happily – obeyed.

It gave Loki the time to get to his feet before Proxima could get to her's. She outstretched her hand and it took Loki a moment to figure out what she was doing. He jumped aside, but the sharp head of the spear still cut Loki's shoulder as it returned to Proxima's hand.

Proxima sheathed her blade and readied her spear as Loki let his own spear slip away and summoned his daggers.

Proxima was the first to move, sprinting towards him and holding her spear like a knight with a lance. Loki waited until she was too close to turn before slipping to the right and attempting to get close with his blades before Proxima swung the spear around quicker than he could move back, hitting him with the sides of the point. It wasn't enough for the blades to get past the tough leather of Loki's battle armour, but it still hurt like Hel.

Loki doubled over with the hit, letting out a groan of pain. Proxima followed the hit with another strike with the butt of the spear at his chest. Loki could barely move, he was in enough pain that she had time to swing the spear around so the point was pointed right at him and thrust forward.

The spear was yanked backwards out of her hands. Proxima spun around quickly, letting Loki see who he had to thank for saving his life. Thankfully, it was Peter, not Strange. Loki didn't know if he could actually thank Strange and not die on the spot.

Peter waved his red gloved hand at Loki quickly, which Loki returned half-heartedly.

Proxima growled, taking out her blade again before making a run towards Peter. Loki's sash responded almost instinctually, the two ends extending out to grab both of Proxima's wrists and holding them behind her back.

Peter aimed webbing at Proxima's head and brought it downwards, making her fall to her knees. Loki was already next to her and as she hit the ground, and quickly he thrust his dagger through the back of her throat, the point emerging from the other side, slick with blue blood.

Loki pulled his dagger from her corpse, letting her body fall, and wiped the now blue and red covered blade against his trousers so the blood wouldn't run down to his fingers.

"Gross." Peter commented. "Did you get hurt badly?"

Loki flicked his hand, urging the universe to turn himself and Peter invisible to everyone except themselves. He led the boy a little away from the battlefield towards the cover of the trees.

"So..?" Peter urged.

"Just some broken ribs and possibly a bruised kidney. She's pretty strong. I'll get my magic to hold it together and go under a healing sleep after the battle, I'll be fine." Loki said, letting his hand envelop in a green glow before he put it to his chest, wincing as the magic seeped into his skin. "Do you have any injuries?"

"Couple of bruises. I'm fine." Loki gave Peter a sceptical look. "Really!"

"Hmm," was all Loki could reply with as he moved his hand to where his kidney was. "Stick by me anyway. I don't trust that you won't run off to fight Thanos."

As the words left Loki's mouth, their attention was drawn back to the fight with Thanos as Ant-man turned gigantic.

"Woah." Peter said. "He turned giant-man!"

"That was part of the plan, yes." Loki said, far less excited.

The had a near perfect view of Thanos when 'Giant-man' brought his fist down on Thanos, slowly but filled with power.

Thanos caught his fist in his hand.

Loki noticed that Giant-man wasn't moving before he did the blue glow around him. Thanos had frozen him in place with the space stone, the power stone glowing as it assisted the Tesseract.

The reality stone glowed too and suddenly it was like Giant-man had been replaced with a shadow, completely black.

The space stone's hold lessened and the shadow moved. As it separated, Loki realised it wasn't a shadow at all, but billions of ants.

The Titan had a rather cruel sense of humour.

Loki felt Peter stiffen beside him.

"Scott!" A voice called out from somewhere on the battlefield close to Peter and Loki's location.

Loki finally found her in the crowd and recognised her as the Wasp, running at Thanos despite being told to stick to the outriders in the plan.

Her blaster fired again and again at the Titan, doing no damage whatsoever.

She didn't even reach him. A swarm of ants engulfed her completely, leaving her as a shaky black shape momentarily. As the ants separated, all the was left were bones.

The fuck kind of ants were those?

The rest of the swarm had begun doing the same to others in the crowd. Members of the Wakandan army, the Jubari tribe and the Sakaaran gladiators were all being eaten alive.

They seemed to be winning the battle, but if the ants weren't stopped, it would be over in minutes.

"Peter, stay here." Loki commanded. "If you move I might lose control of the invisibility spell on you and the ants will eat you. Got it?"

Peter nodded.

"My mind's going to be somewhere else so you'd better not pull anything stupid."

Loki concentrated on sending an illusion of himself closer to the battle with Thanos and quickly made his way to Thor, who was preparing to jump up again.

"Hey, Thor." Loki greeted. "Your hammer's fixed?"

Thor looked towards Thanos to make sure the Titan wasn't aiming an attack his way before sparing Loki a look. "The handle's self-repairing apparently. What are you doing here?"

"I need you to use some of your lightning bolts on the swarm of ants before everyone gets devoured."

"Why must I do everything?" Thor said to himself, but turned to face the swarm anyway. "Can you get them all to come my way?"

"Sure." Loki shrugged and laid a hand on Thor's shoulders.

Illusions and sounds had taken Loki a while to master, but making people smell like other things was a piece of cake. He'd often made Thor smell like horse manure to everyone bar himself and his brother in his youth.

Loki made Thor's smell replicate the scent of ant pheromones. Thor was prey to attack.

"You're good to go." Loki said as the ants all turned towards Thor.

His brother sighed. "Here goes nothing." He said, before he lept up into the air.

Loki illusion rippled as Thanos sent a blast from the power stone towards him. Loki gave him an uninterested look. "Uh, fuck off?"

Thanos' brief confusion over Loki's illusion gave Nebula time to get a hit in on Thanos. Thanos tried to fight back, but in hand to hand combat, she had him beat. The only problem was that she wasn't leaving a single mark.

Eventually, Thanos recovered enough to grab her upper arm and snap the metal in half. Nebula screamed, but Thanos did nothing except push her aside before sending a laser-like blast from the powerstone through her stomach.

Loki looked back to Thor. He was in the middle of a giant black ball of flying ants. For a brief moment, Loki was sure he had just killed off his brother before dark clouds began to gather around him and the swarm.

He sent lightning blast after lightning blast at the swarm and shaped it until the entire ball seemed to have turned blue.

Millions upon millions of ant corpses began to drop to the ground in large clumps.

Strange finally got off his ass and created a portal to catch the falling ants before the army was buried in them.

They were winning again. The number of outriders was being halved by every passing moment.

Loki joined Peter again and let their invisibility drop. "Alright, let's destroy the rest of these motherfuckers."

Peter grinned. "Hell yeah!"

The two of them rejoined the army. As a collective force they cut down outrider after outrider.

Loki saw the Defenders. Daredevil was bloody and obviously hurt, but was taking down as many outriders as Loki was, Luke Cage couldn't be hurt by anything the aliens threw at him, Jessica Jones was a terrifying force of nature, Iron Fist could use his chi to blast back 10 enemies at once, and Colleen Wing sliced through the opposition with enviable efficiency.

Korg blasted through outriders with his Sakaaran laser rifle. Meek sliced and diced. Heimdall, Sif and Valkyrie fought side by side by side, cleaving through aliens.

They were an unstoppable force. Very quickly, all that was left was Thanos.

They all tried to hit him at once. Iron Man fired his repulsors, Hulk jumped forward to punch, Thor was letting gravity pull him down toward the titan – hammer glowing with electricity. The Wakandan army surged forward. Loki readied his daggers. Thanos was done for.

Everything paused.

Everything was silent apart from the sound of Thanos clapping slowly. The space and power stones were glowing brightly from their places on the gauntlet.

"Congratulations." He said. "You're the first planet that's ever been a match for my army. That's... truly an impressive feat. If I didn't have the gauntlet, I'm sure I'd be dead by now."

He continued. "I'm sorry to tell you all that you never had a chance of beating me. I can't be hurt anymore. I let you all play this game because I respect this planet and it's lust for war and death. I wanted you all to die honourably so you could be filled with pride when you meet Lady Death. What's more honourable than beating an entire army?"

He smiled. "I'll take the time stone from whichever one of you is hiding it easily. Then I'll be unstoppable. But with the reality, soul and power stones alone? I still have the ability to do this."

Thanos snapped his fingers.

After that he allowed them all to move again, but created another purple shield around himself and just stood there, watching.

Nobody knew what to do for a moment.

A few screams began to break out from all over the battlefield. Loki still didn't know what was going on.

"Loki?" Peter said, voice high-pitched and filled with panic. His mask was pulled up, so Loki could see his quivering lips and wide, teary eyes.

"I don't- I don't feel so good."