T W E N T Y

20. | the capture.
every fairytale needs a
good old fashioned villain

steve.

•

SCREAMS ECHO through the square. All the German citizens are kneeling on the concrete, looking up at the man with a golden, horned helmet with horror in their eyes. We had only just made it, considering that I leaped off the plane first and Loki hasn't yet killed anyone that we know of.

Right when I arrive at the sight, Loki is pointing the end of his glowing blue scepter at an elderly man who stands in the middle of all of the kneeling Germans in the dark square. Just before he can blast the man, I sprint in front of him, and the shield reflects the blue blast Loki shoots towards us. I lower my shield to see Loki's cold blue orbs that stare holes into me. He looks like he could kill with just his eyes, not even needing the scepter.

"You know, the last time I was in Germany, I saw a man standing above everybody else," I say, stepping towards Loki confidently. "We ended up disagreeing."

Loki stands, a sneer crawling across his thin lips. "The soldier," he snarls, letting out a cold booming laugh echoing through the square. "The man out of time."

"I'm not the one who's out of time," I retort.

As if on cue, I hear planes soar above the square with their guns cocking.

"Loki, drop the weapon and stand down," Natasha Romanoff's voice demands from the PA system.

Like a childish retaliation, Loki sends a blue spark up into the sky, giving me time to rush over to him and start attacking. I don't even think as I throw punches, resulting in him outsmarting me and throwing me to the ground. I quickly stand back up to continue fighting, tossing my shield at him and ducking underneath his scepter. Unfortunately I end back on the ground, yet still not defeated. I roll over so that I'm on my hands and knees on the ground, ready to stand back up. Just before I can, however, I feel the curve of Loki's scepter on the back of my neck, keeping me down on the ground.

"Kneel," he growls lowly.

After a moment, I duck from under it and sock him in the jaw. "Not today," I breathe out. Just as I look back up, I no longer see him. Instead, I see the end of a scepter whacking me in the jaw, sending me back a few feet. I groan as I hit the ground, still prepared for whatever's coming up next.

Then something odd happens.

Music, intense music I've never heard of before, blares through the square. There are new lights in the sky now too, reminding me of a file I've seen before. Tony Stark, or Iron Man as he's called, has the glowing receptors in the palms of his suit aimed at Loki.

"Make a move, reindeer games," Stark says through another PA-sounding system. Loki's armor vanishes like magic, and he hold up his hands in defeat. "Good move," Stark nods.

So this is Howard's son.

I stand up next to him, still eyeing Loki.

"Mr. Stark," I greet.

"Cap'n," he replies.

[•]

After we get him inside the plane, Loki is put in chains and sat down in a seat all to himself. Agent Romanoff pilots the plane while Tony Stark and I stand to guard Loki. Romanoff speaks to Fury over the phone, telling him that Loki has done absolutely nothing since he's been captured. It's odd, but mostly unsettling.

"I don't like it," I mutter, facing away from Loki.

"What?" Tony asks me in a low voice. "Rock of Ages giving up so easily?"

"I don't remember it being that easily," I whisper back, recalling the few times I was thrown across the square. "This guy packs a wallop."

"Well still, you are pretty spry for an older fella," Tony remarks. He glances over at me cockily. "What'd you think, Gallade?"

"What?"

"It's like calisthenics. You might've missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a capsicle."

I bite my tongue and fight the urge to punch this kid. "Fury didn't tell me he was calling you in," I say bitterly.

"Yeah," Tony scoffs. "There's a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you."

Tony's childish antics are cut off by the bright flash of lightning filling the sky. It just seems to come out of nowhere, yet it's like a lightning shower from all of the bolts I see darting across the night sky.

"Where's this coming from?" Natasha mumbles.

I glance over at Loki. He doesn't seem to be taking the storm all too well; he's paler than usual and his eyes are widened with fear.

"What's the matter?" I ask him sourly. "Scared of a little lightning?"

"I'm not overly fond of what follows," he answers.

The hell "what follows"? What is something that Loki isn't too keen on? And what does it have to do with lightning?

I exchange a nervous glance with Tony, and he doesn't seem to know what Loki meant either. So for once I'm not the only oblivious one around here. We all seem a whole lot more confused when there's a banging on the roof, two bangs that sound like feet.

Wait.

Feet?

I look up at the ceiling and back at Tony. He's already throwing on his suit and heading out the back of the plane. I do the same, quickly putting on my cowl and following him.

"What're you doing?" I ask him loudly over the storm and churning of the rear hatch in the back of the plane opening.

Before he can respond, something pushes Tony back. It looks like a......man. There's a flail of a red cape and long blond hair behind him. The man holds something that makes a metallic sound as it knocks Tony all the way to the opposite side of the plane. In that short window of time that he's on the ground, the man snatches Loki and leaps back out of the plane.

What. The. Hell?

"And now there's that guy," Stark grumbles as he stands back up.

"Another Asgardian?" Agent Romanoff asks.

"That guy's a friendly?" I question.

"Doesn't matter," Stark replies. "If he frees Loki or kills him, we've lost the Tesseract."

"Stark, we need a plan of attack!" I shout.

"I have a plan," Stark retorts. "Attack."

Before I can stop him, he's left the plane with a trail of smoke behind him. I still decide to go after them though, finding a parachute and pulling it on.

"I'd sit this one out, Cap," Natasha says.

"I don't see how I can," I respond.

"These guys come from legend. They're basically gods."

"There's only one God, ma'am, and I'm pretty sure He doesn't dress like that." I find my shield in the plane and stare down at the rear hatch. This wouldn't be the first time I've jumped out of a plane, but it doesn't feel any different than that one time. I take a deep breath and sprint to the edge, flying through the air.

There's still thunder and lightning and dark clouds in the night sky, but it doesn't matter. I have to go after those guys.

[•]

After a little fight between the two Asgardians, Stark and I befriended the new one and we all returned Loki to SHIELD. He is now being thrown into an impenetrable glass cage where he shall rot for a little while, like being in time out for his stupid actions. He and Fury have a little talk, only achieving us listening to how much nonsense this "god" can fill our minds with. After Fury leaves him alone, Loki stares blankly into the camera in the cell, and I just turn off the screen on the table so it fades to black.

"He really grows on you, doesn't he?" Dr. Banner remarks sarcastically.

"Loki's gonna drag this out," I say. "So Thor, what's his play?"

The blond Asgardian stands a few feet away from the table with his eyes on the floor. He seems completely lost in thought. "He has an army called the Chitauri," he says lowly. "They're not of Asgard, or of any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth, in return, I suspect the Tesseract."

I blink. "An army.......from outer space."

"So he's building another portal," Bruce pipes back up. "That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."

"Selvig?" Thor asks.

"He's an astrophysicist," Bruce answers.

"He's a friend," Thor mutters.

"Loki has him under some kind of spell," Natasha says, "along with one of ours." She's referring to Agent Clint Barton, who has gone almost rogue because of what she's talking about.

"I wanna know why Loki let us take him," I say. "He's not leading an army from here."

"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats. You can smell the crazy on him," Bruce states. He's not wrong either; he kills people just for the hell of it, and that's quite psychopathic on its own.

"Have care how you speak," Thor booms defensively. "Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he's my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days," Natasha mutters.

"He's adopted."

God, just put me back in the ice right now. First, the government has caused a problem that I just solved (on my mind's clock) three weeks ago. Second, I lose everyone and everything I cared about. And now I'm stuck with these morons.

"I think it's about the mechanics," Bruce says. "Iridium. What did they need the iridium for?"

"It's a stabilizing agent."

I turn my head to see Stark and Agent Coulson entering the room.

"It means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at SHIELD," Tony continues. He passes by Thor, adding, "no hard feelings, Point Break. You got a mean swing." He pats the muscle on the Asgardian's arm, still wandering aimlessly around the room. "Also, it means that the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants."

Tony mutters things to the people below this section of the room, giving them orders. "That man is playing Galaga! He thought we wouldn't notice, but we did."

What's a Galaga? Is it a game or something because he's playing it? But it's on one of the computers I think. Oh well, I dunno.

After making more side comments about the technology in front of him, Tony continues. "The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. The only major component he still needs is a power source of high-energy density, something to kickstart the cube."

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Agent Hill asks him from her spot near the wall of the helicarrier.

"Last night," Tony says. "The packet, Selvig's notes......."

The rest of his words just turn into nonsense to me, so I eventually just cut him off so we can move back to the original point. "Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?"

"We would have to heat the cube to one hundred and twenty million kelvin just to just to break through the coulomb barrier," Bruce says.

"Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect," Tony adds.

"Well, if he could do that, he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet."

"Finally, someone who speaks English!"

Please tell me he's being sarcastic because I don't understand a word they're saying.

"Is that what just happened?" I ask, more than just confused as the two scientists formally meet.

"Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube," Nick Fury's voice echoes through the room. "I was hoping you might join him."

"Let's start with that stick of his," I say. "It might be magical, but it works an awful lot like a Hydra weapon."

"I dunno about that," Fury says, "but it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his two personal flying monkeys."

I light up for a moment.

"Monkeys?" Thor asks. "I do not underst—"

"I do!" I chime. "I-I understood that reference."

Tony Stark rolls his eyes at me, but I do not care. That's one of the only things in the last five minutes I've actually comprehended. "Shall we play, Doctor?" he asks Banner, to which he replies with, "this way, sir," as he leads Stark to his lab.

I end up following them after a few moments, walking in on Bruce wincing and looking back at Tony with a look of betrayal.

"Hey!" I call out. "Are you nuts?"

"Jury's out," Tony states. The man with the blue glowing chest asks Dr. Banner a continuous string of questions. "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?"

"Is everything a joke to you?" I ask Stark, shaking my head at him slightly.

"Funny things are." Tony gestures to me with a metal rod in his right hand, ambling around the table that has Loki's scepter on it.

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny." I instantly add, "no offense, doc."

"I-It's all right. I wouldn't've come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things," Dr. Banner replies, glancing at Tony as Howard Stark's son plays with the rod in his hands.

"You're tip-toeing, big man. You need to strut," Tony says.

"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark," I spit.

"Do you think I'm not? Why did Fury call us in? Why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."

"You think Fury's hiding something?"

"He's a spy. Captain, he the spy. His secrets have secrets." Tony shoves something in his mouth from a metallic package. He points over to Banner. "It's bugging him too, innit?"

"Uhh." Banner kind of trails off, gesturing widely with his arms to the mess on the table. "I just want to finish my work here and—"

"Doctor?" I ask.

He sighs heavily. He takes his glasses off the bridge of his nose, folding them up and staring down at the table in thought. "'A warm light for all mankind.' Loki's jab at Fury about the cube," he recalls.

"I heard it," I reply.

"Well, I think that was meant for you." Banner points at Tony, who flails his arms in surprise, almost spilling whatever's in the package everywhere. In response, Stark just sticks the package out at Banner, who looks questionably into it. Banner shrugs his shoulders, digging into the plastic package. "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the Tower, it was still all over the news."

"The Stark Tower?" I ask, a grin spreading across my face. "That big ugly—"

Stark shoots me a glare.

"—building in New York," I finish, keeping a pokerface.

"It's powered by an arc reactor, a self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for, what, a year?" Bruce glances over at Tony, anticipating his answer.

"It's just the prototype," Tony shrugs. "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now. That's what he's getting at."

"So, why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? What are they doing in the energy business in the first place?"

"I should probably look into that once my decryption program finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files."

I raise an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, did you say—"

"JARVIS has been running it since I hit the bridge," Tony says. "In a few hours, I'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide. Blueberry?"

I ignore his package of fruit being shoved in my face. "Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around."

"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome."

"I think Loki is trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed." I glance over at Dr. Banner and then back at Stark. "We have orders. We should follow them."

"Following's not really my style," Stark remarks. He shoves another blueberry into his mouth, just looking at me as he waits for me to say something back.

I just fight back a smirk. I allow a little bit of sass that has piled up in me for seventy years out. "And you're all about style, aren't you?" I hiss at Stark sarcastically.

"Of the people in this room, which one is A, wearing a spangly outfit, and B, not of use?" Tony shoots back.

"Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you," Banner pipes up. He's right. Something's not right about all this.

I glare at Stark. I fight back the urge to clock his perfectly shaved beard, but I know not to be the bully here. "Just find the cube," I spit. I stomp out of the room, the rage in me still bubbling. I feel like the rudeness and stubbornness of Howard only doubled in his kid. I turn right quickly, heading towards the door out of this section of the place.

After a bit of snooping around, I come across a locked metal door in the helicarrier. Fury obviously does have a lot of secrets that I'm going to investigate. Once I bust it down, I sneak through the room, climbing over railing and whatnot to see what his secret is. I finally find something that looks a bit interesting in the storage area of the helicarrier, and I open it up to see. There's a whole pile of ancient looking weapons, all adorned by the octopus-shape that I know all too well — Hydra.