It was unlike any bar Stephen had ever been to.

Yeah, he'd been in jam-packed bars before. He'd been in ones where people had gone mad and thrown tables across the room before (that was a long story). Heck, he'd been in a bar that had been set on fire before.

However, he'd never been in a bar where it was jam-packed, louder than a concert, full of crazy monsters throwing not only tables but also bladed weapons at each other and bleeding multi-coloured blood everywhere, all while it being made of fire. It didn't seem like The Casino Mephisto had any rules or regulations at all. They definitely had no worry of being overheard in here.

Loki didn't seemed fazed by any of it. They went into the corner of the room where there weren't as many monsters and where they could see the whole room, just in case. They sat down, the flames of the wall providing 60 degree central heating that had them both sweating immediately. Loki made a point of putting his knife on the table where everyone could see it.

"OK, so, this place is... strange," Stephen noted, watching a bunch of monsters start a fight at the other end of the room. He turned to Loki. "You don't seem... mildly surprised."

"Yeah, I've been to a place like this before, only it wasn't on fire or on this planet," Loki confessed. "It was on Knowhere."

"It must have been somewhere," Strange said, confused.

"No, Knowhere – K-N-O-where – is a place," Loki explained. "It's in outer space, I guess you'd call it. Me and Thor were sent on a mission there and Thor naturally messed it up, so we barely escaped with our lives." He said it all so casually, not noticing how Strange's eyebrows were so high they were nearly in his hair. "If you ever go there, bring your own drinks. Seriously, you don't even want to know what was on that bar's menu."

"Thanks for the tip." Stephen was about to say something else when a doomed soul guy (one with a flaming skull head) came over to them. He had the same suit as the receptionist had and Strange assumed he must be a waiter or something.

"Would you like to order something?" he smiled. "Here at The Casino Mephisto, we have a wide variety of drinks here, including our very popular limited edition death potion, which will painfully sizzle away your insides, though we can't guarantee your torture will last longer than 5 minutes before you die. Can I interest you in a free sample?"

"Er, I'm good thanks," Strange replied, politely. Loki instinctively started playing with his dagger, just in case, and Stephen could hardly blame him.

"Well, if you change your mind, just come to the bar and place your order. I'll leave you with a menu," the waiter-guy said, placing a sheet of bright orange paper on the table. "Remember to give The Casino Mephisto a five-star review on TripAdvisor.com!"

When Stephen though he was out of earshot, he said to Loki, "We need to think of a plan and get out of here, soon."

Loki made a click sound without looking up from the menu he was looking at. "Be really useful if you had the time stone right about now."

"You know I couldn't have bought it back to this dimension," Strange argued, gesturing as he'd taken to doing when talking about the multiverse. Loki nodded absently, not looking up from the menu. "It would've seriously messed up the multiverse and I'm sure you're doing enough of that as it is."

He wasn't talking about Loki as in Loki, Loki. Last week, Scott had told them about, when the Avengers went back in time, a version of Loki from 2012 stole the Tesseract and escaped the Avengers' custody. Now that version of him was hopping around the timestream somehow and they didn't know much else about it, only that he was affecting the other dimensions.

"Yes, but I'd rather risk that and have this world safe from the devil," Loki continued, and Strange had to admit he had a point. "Yeah, also, I really don't fancy any of these."

Stephen looked at the drinks menu himself. He caught words like poison, eternal pain, agony and death multiple times and decided he didn't fancy any of them either. What was wrong with good old-fashioned tap water?

"You know what, this menu is even worse than Knowhere," Loki decided. "At least those drinks were just ridiculously alcoholic and full of animal slime rather than poisonous." He threw the paper into the wall of fire and watched it burn. "Oh, you didn't want anything did you?" he asked, noting the way Stephen was watching him.

"Oh, no, of course I didn't. I'm not in the mood for agony," he quipped, getting a small smile out of Loki. He'd noticed Loki was a lot more withdrawn and less sarcastic than usual, mostly since they'd been there. "Are you OK? You look a bit..."

"Ill?" he finished. Strange nodded. "That's because I'm in pain. Just agony. Nothing serious."

"No, seriously, tell me." Wow. That was more forceful than he'd meant it to be.

If Loki found his force rude, he didn't show it. "Well, you see, I really don't do well near fire or in heat. Small fires, I'm completely fine. But since I was born a Frost Giant, and turned into an Asgardian god later on, I have the capability to literally melt if exposed to heat for too long."

Stephen's brain was malfunctioning with the information. "How does that work? Are you a Frost Giant or god or what?"

"A god. I just have some traits from the Frost Giants," he clarified.

"Ah. That makes more sense," Strange nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the bartender eyeing them suspiciously. "Um, we should maybe order something anyway. I think we look suspicious."

Loki looked to where Stephen was looking. "Hm, yeah. I have an idea actually... just summon yourself a drink and I'll try this spell I've been trying recently." Then he made himself a small glass of beer. Stephen wasn't in the mood for anything alcoholic, since it was only about midday, whatever the darkness outside said, so just summoned some tap water.

Loki proceeded to make a subtle flicking motion towards the bartender and they looked dazed for a minute before looking away and doing other stuff they did in this profession. Loki looked satisfied and took a sip of his drink.

"What did you do?" asked Strange, intrigued.

"Confuddle-ment charm," Loki answered. "I made him think we'd ordered it from him and that's why he looked away. Also who orders water in a bar?"

Stephen couldn't think of anything to say, so said, "Confuddle-ment charm... isn't that from, like, Harry Potter or something?"

Loki looked confused. "What's Harry Potter?"

"Never mind. So um, what are we doing for this plan then?" asked Strange, taking a sip of his water, which had already gone warm. "I mean, what are our primary aims here? One, get rid of this place. Two, help the Avengers, wherever they are. Three, save the souls Mephisto stole."

"In that order?" pointed out Loki.

Strange smacked his head. "Yep. Well done Strange. You are an idiot. Maybe that should be, one, help the Avengers, two, save everyone's souls, then get rid of this place."

Loki feigned wild applause. "Well done for establishing the primary aims of our mission, Mr Doctor."

"You dare call me Mr Doctor again..." threatened Stephen.

Loki grinned. "Sorry, Mr Doctor."

Strange crossed his arms. "I'm not talking to you now."

"OK."

They sat in silence (or as near silence as you could get in a crazy bar full of monsters in a hellish casino) until Strange couldn't take it anymore.

"Right, we need to make a plan," he decided.

"Thought you weren't talking to me anymore?" smirked Loki, sipping his drink.

"If you call me Mr Doctor again I won't help you when Mephisto tries to take your soul," Stephen promised. He was pleased to see the smirk wiped off Loki's face.

"OK, fine, you got me there," Loki surrendered. He put down his drink and put his elbows on the table, resting his head on his hands. "I think you're the expert in this situation, Strange. I don't know anything about this Mephisto guy."

"Basically, you already know he's the devil and likes to steal souls. He's also red. Alongside that, he's supposed to be a master at manipulating illusions and messing with people's minds," Stephen added.

Loki made an outraged "Ptch" sound.

"From what I've heard, he's also supposed to have a giant demonic horde he keeps for torturing people and capturing and killing the living people who mess with him," Stephen added. "Or at least he did. They've probably took up jobs as security guards now."

"Wait, hang on, if he's so good at illusions and stuff, we should probably make sure each of us aren't just, you know, him being a knock-off version of me," Loki pointed out, lowering his voice slightly. "That way, if we get separated, we'll know whether it's an illusion or whatever."

"You're smart," Stephen told him. He hadn't thought of that. "In fact, let's do that now. Just for... safety."

"Sure," agreed Loki. "So, what, I ask you a question and you ask me one?"

Strange nodded.

"OK then... what kind of sunglasses did I make you last week in Vegas?"

"Aviator glasses. They didn't suit me," Stephen answered. "OK... how did you sneak into that building where we first tracked down Mordo?"

"You, Scott and Wanda were arguing about who would sneak in, then I said, "I'll be back," then turned invisible and sneaked in through the window at the front of the building," Loki answered.

"Safe to say neither of us are Mephisto's demons then," said Strange, relieved. Loki smiled slightly like he was relieved too."So now, let's plan stuff."