Once Strange had hit him, the three of them (the cloak being counted as a separate being) ventured inside, cautiously, and Loki telekinesis-ed the doors back into place so no one had any reason to suspect two wanted criminals and a floating cloak had just snook in.

It was odd no one was in here. It was like the entrance hall, or what Midgardians called receptions, but it was empty. Yeah, everywhere they'd been so far was empty, but this seemed weird.

Loki debated talking to Danvers. Maybe she'd subtly be able to give them an answer, but he wasn't about to push his luck. Besides, they definitely hadn't yet set off an alarm, because Captain Marvel would've alerted them.

Still, it was suspicious.

He and Strange seemed to reach a silent agreement not to speak to each other unless they needed to, and, to be fair, they both knew what they were doing. So instead they just decided to get straight to it before Danvers's meeting was over.

Strange led the way to the first door, getting ready to push it open, making eye contact with Loki first. When he nodded, they both braced themselves for what might be through it, Loki ready to release some of this energy he got from the adrenaline, but there wasn't anyone there at all.

Disappointing. He'd been hoping for a fight.

Strange sighed. "That's a relief. I was hoping to avoid a fight."

Loki gave him a look, then continued onwards. "Just do your job," he told him, looking at their new surroundings. It was entirely the opposite to what he'd been expecting, because as they were going down into the ground, Loki had expected the corridor to be dark and small, probably with guards every other couple of metres. He'd obviously underestimated the high priestess's interior design skills, because while the corridor wasn't brightly lit, the walls were made of fake gold (he could tell if it was real or not because he grew up on Asgard) and the ceiling was so tall he'd have to fly up to touch it. And he was not flying. That was really not his strong point.

Strange was doing his job anyway, disabling all the communication boxes that were positioned every now and then along the wall, and the motion sensors and other stuff he thought could give them away. Neither Loki nor the cloak had chance to do their jobs yet, and Loki could sense the cloak was feeling the same rush of adrenaline and anticipation as he was. Loki didn't know how he knew that, because silent magic cloak language was one of the only languages he couldn't speak.

Once Strange was satisfied, he caught up with Loki and the cloak who were already further up the corridor. "Hey, do you think this is real gold?" he asked, sounding like he doubted it.

"No, it's definitely fake," Loki whispered back.

"How can you tell?" asked Strange.

"Please, I grew up on Asgard." He stopped. "Oh, yeah, you've never been to Asgard, have you?"

Strange shook his head, but didn't say any more on the subject, because they didn't want to risk being heard, despite talking so quietly one could barely hear the other.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour, they reached the end of the corridor. They creeped close to the left wall, and Loki peered around the corner so slightly any guards down this corridor wouldn't be able to see him. There weren't any, so they continued down this corridor, in the annoyingly slow pace they went down the first one. Loki was so bored and was tempted to slide down the banister of the also quiet staircases, but he couldn't because Strange still had to do his job as they went down, and they didn't want to get separated.

It probably didn't even take that long, but to Loki, who was currently running on pure adrenaline, it was mind-numbingly slow. Even the cloak was bored. It wasn't Strange's fault of course, and he was clearly going as quickly as possible (and there was a hell of a lot of security stuff to sort out) but that didn't stop Loki wanting to kick the fake gold walls to get the energy out of him.

After what was probably about five or ten minutes but felt like five or ten hours, they found the last staircase, sneaking down in the annoyingly slow fashion again, then when they'd finished, cautiously peered around the corner, and hallelujah, there were some guards. And there were strangely quite a lot, particularly in contrast to the rest of the building. At least six or seven of them, though all of them looked exactly the same.

Great. There was going to be a fight!

"Finally," Loki said under his breath.

Suddenly he became aware someone was looking over his head down the corridor. Then he had the uncomfortable feeling it might not be the cloak.

"I don't get it," Strange said, nearly inaudibly. "Why are they gold?"

"Does it matter? I'm naturally blue," Loki said, maybe even a little defensively. Then he realised he'd just admitted his Jotun heritage to himself, something he'd been trying to supress since he'd first found out.

At least Strange seemed to feel stupid about himself enough at this that he didn't comment.

Loki straightened up from his position and looked at Strange. "Ready?" Both Strange and the cloak nodded in synchronisation. "Good. Let's go kick some ass."

And then he walked down the corridor like he had every right to be there.

It wasn't like he had anything to fear, because he trusted Strange and the cloak would play their parts to perfection, and even if they didn't, he could just take over.

All the golden guards stopped what they were doing and pointed their weapons at him. (Hey, golden guards was a cool nickname. Or maybe not.) Loki didn't say anything, he just kept walking, because they hadn't told him not to.

"Halt!" one of them then instructed, so Loki stopped obediently in his tracks. "Who are you?" she asked.

Loki tilted his head to one side. He was already wanted, so why not have a bit of fun? "Wow, that was an aggressive question," was his only remark.

"Who are you?" the golden lady repeated, no less aggressively.

Loki just shrugged. "A famous murderer. Nice to meet you all. Tell the high priestess hello from me!"

This had the desired effect. The guards were all so baffled they lowered their weapons slightly and exchanged glances. They weren't great guards, but Loki was having the time of his life here.

One of them gathered enough of her dignity back to say, "Alright, mister, tell us your name or we really will say hello to the high priestess."

Loki tilted his head to the other side. "Oh, that's what you wanted me to do? I thought you wanted me to tell you who I was, not my name. Those are two completely different things."

To say they were created to be intelligent, these guards weren't, because Loki could see them trying to work out his logic. He could even hear Strange thinking what on earth is he doing? somewhere behind him.

"Anyway," Loki said, clapping his hands once and looking apologetic, though he certainly wasn't, "it was nice meeting you, golden guards, but I really need to be on my way. There's a super secret galaxy-ending project I want a closer look at."

The guards just continued to look completely confused. Maybe they weren't used to honest murderers sneaking in to their planet then talking in such a casual manner. Well, he wasn't going to go straight into fighting, was he? That would be predictable. And he was anything but predictable.

Since they hadn't told him otherwise, Loki decided to test his luck and kept walking straight towards them as though he meant for them to move aside. He was within 2 metres of them before they realised and put up their swords again. Loki only stopped because if not he'd have a sharp pointy stick through his chest. And he'd already had experience of that.

Loki sighed and tried to look as bored and impatient as possible. "What now?"

"We're arresting you for trespassing and failure to answer a question," one of the guys said in the most authoritative voice he could. "Come quietly without a fight and your sentence won't be as long as it could be."

This time, Loki didn't cooperate with the order. He just stared at him. "Fight?" he asked with a smile. "Great, I can't wait!"

The guard just got to, "Wait, that's not what I-" before Loki punched him in the face.

Sometimes you didn't need magic.

The other six guards swiped their swords at him, but Loki was too quick for them and rolled out of the way. First task: disarm the guards. Only then could he beat them up.

Well, it was a good thing he was wearing blade-proof gloves, because for some reason, when one of the guards swung her sword, he instinctively caught the blade to stop it from hitting him, and the momentum the guard had created had her lose grip on the weapon and fall over. Huh, he'd never tried that way of disarming people before.

Since sword-fighting wasn't Loki's strong point, when the next two guards tried to hit him with their swords, he dropped the one he was still holding by the blade and took both his knives out his belt and managed to catch the smaller blades on to the swords and sent both those guards off balance. It was satisfying, watching everyone fall over.

The four guards who he'd already knocked down were still trying to recover their dignity, but there were still three others he had to keep busy. These three all came at him at the same time, and it was incredibly challenging to counter-attack three swordfights with two comparably small daggers, no matter how skilled at it he might be. Then again, Loki liked a challenge, and he was definitely enjoying this.

Out of the corner of his eye, Loki saw Strange disabling all the communication units, and was thankful none of the guards had noticed in case they decided Strange was an easier target and went for him instead.

As soon as he saw some of the other guards get up to try retrieve their weapons, he decided that he really couldn't take on seven swords at the same time, and it wasn't like he could just create another one of himself this time, and he'd never asked the cloak how well it could swordfight. So the next time one of the guards' blades met his knife blade, he pushed back as hard as he could, combining his telekinesis as well to make sure they all slid a good fifty metres down the corridor.

Then he confused the heck out of everyone in the vicinity by turning invisible.

If he wasn't so insistent to himself that he didn't make a sound whilst invisible, Loki would've started laughing at the looks on the guards' faces. It almost felt mean to, as Strange said, "go all Asgardian jujitsu" on them. Well, almost.

Once he'd collected all the weapons off the guards, burying them up to the hilt in the fake-gold walls (proof they weren't real) he turned visible again to make this a fair fight. Only then did he proceed to literally beat the consciousness out of them.

First guard he basically judo-flipped. After dodging a punch from another guard, he grabbed his still-extended arm and flipped him over and the guy landed hard on the ground. The next two actually had an idea how to fight, and he was enjoying doing a bit of Tae-Kwando sparring with them, before he got bored and just kicked one of them in the face and the other in the stomach. They went straight down, unconscious, after that.

The three he'd sent sliding down the corridor were just about getting up, but after seeing how he'd dealt with their colleagues and not breaking a sweat, they didn't seem anxious to try going one on one with him anymore. Well.

"Come on, guys," Loki said, holding his arms out to the sides. "You not coming for a fight?"

One of them actually answered. "Not without a weapon," he said.

"Oh, hang on a sec," Loki said, and unclipped one of his guns from his belt. He threw it to the guard, who, looking completely bewildered, caught it. "Use mine."

Once the guard had got over his confusion, he started shooting, but Loki managed to dodge all of the blasts pretty easily, and before any of the three had figured out what he was doing, he was within punching distance and gave the guy a perfect uppercut to the chin. The sound of his head hitting the very solid and hard floor was incredibly satisfying, but probably not to him. He was knocked out cold.

Loki turned around to face the other two, but they'd backed off down the corridor away from him. The two he'd flipped over were getting to their feet now too. Thankfully, all of them were still ignoring Strange, who was literally about five metres behind them. The cloak was where it had always been – hiding out of sight near the ceiling. It was one smart piece of fabric.

"Come on, then," Loki said, and somehow that worked. A couple of the guards actually ran over, ready to fight, and Loki was thankful to have some people who were willing to attack him so that he could practise beating people up. He loved these guys!

Hm, maybe he could try a new move he'd wanted to try for a while. He wasn't too sure how well he'd be able to pull it off because it was a hard move (and one he was pretty sure hadn't been invented).

When they were a metre away, Loki decided to try it, but he only needed one guard first, so he stopped one in her tracks briefly with telekinesis, then did a backflip. At 270 degrees though, he made sure his boot made contact with the guard so hard it literally knocked him out.

That was epic.

When he landed on the floor again and straightened up, he released the guard he was holding back with telekinesis and found out she knew karate. Huh, you learn something new every day.

They must have been fighting for at least half a minute (which put her at the top of the list of guards that gave him the most challenge) before Loki managed to land a punch that knocked her out the second she hit the ground. Even wearing gloves, that hurt slightly. He was impressed.

Loki turned around to see where the other guards were. One was fumbling with something in their pocket, and it looked like some kind of communication device. As soon as he'd taken this in, Strange's cloak flew in to do its job, using magic cloak tactics to disarm someone of a communication device. The guard yelped in surprise, but Loki couldn't blame her exactly, because no one he knew (except Strange and him) was used to magic red blankets with minds of their own, and certainly not ones that came out of nowhere and attacked you.

And then the cloak, finishing its mission, decided to help Loki out and attack the guard with a hug.

Trusting the cloak and its deadly hugs to take care of that guard, Loki turned his attention to the last guard, who was over by the swords he'd buried into the what-was-likely-to-be gold-painted wood, trying to pull one out and failing miserably.

"You need any help with that?" asked Loki kindly, walking over.

The guard was so focused on his task, he didn't even notice who was speaking. "No, I've nearly got it out."

Loki raised an eyebrow. "No you haven't," he said. The sword was showing about 3 inches of blade, in contrast to originally having 0 inches of blade showing.

It was like... what was that Midgardian movie called? The sword in the stone?

"I don't need help," the guard insisted. "Hang on, I'll be with you in a minute."

"Dude, I insist, you need help." In more ways than one, but he didn't say it. "Really, it's no trouble."

"No, don't help, really, it's too much to ask," he insisted again.

Loki didn't listen. As easily as though he were picking the sword off the floor, he took two swords out of the wall and handed one to the guard. Only at that point did the guard look at him, and notice who it was. His face was hilarious.

Loki tried to look as helpful as possible and held out the sword for the guard. "Come on, friendly swordfight. Why not?"

The guy took the sword, and immediately they started fighting a really not-so friendly swordfight. It was never Loki's thing on Asgard, neither had it really been Thor's thing, but he'd learned some useful moves when they were still being tutored in their youth, and really a sword was a scaled up version of a knife, so it wasn't too hard.

After half a minute or so, Loki tried the disarming manoeuvre and to his surprise, it worked, so before the guard could react, he knocked him out.

That was fun.

He turned around and saw the other guard was about half a second away from stabbing him.

Loki didn't have time to process what was happening before the guard suddenly tensed up and fell the ground at his feet, sparking with electricity, literally two centimetres away from delivering a stab wound.

Loki only processed these events after they happened, then realised someone had electrocuted the guard lady and in doing so, saved, well, maybe not his life, but at least saved him from a very painful injury.

When he looked up, Strange was standing by the other wall of the corridor, facing him, his arm still outstretched, pointing straight towards him. And he was holding Loki's gun. For a second, Loki was convinced Strange was about to shoot him, but then he realised he'd just shot the guard who'd just been about to stab him.

Strange dropped his arm down to the side and said, "Wow... that was, um..." Loki waited for him to find a word. It took a while. "Intense," he decided on. He looked at Loki. "Are you OK? She didn't get you, right?"

"No," Loki assured him. Strange relaxed a bit at this. "Though to be fair it wouldn't have killed me anyway."

Strange rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure. Well, maybe I didn't save your life but thanks to me you aren't in agony and bleeding to death, so can I at least take some credit for what I just did?"

Loki smiled slightly. Strange was really improving at the whole sarcasm thing. "Thank you Strange," he said. "Thank you from sparing me from agony. It's all you could ask a friend to do."

Strange smiled slightly at this. He stepped over the unconscious guards to meet him. "Not going to lie here, Loki, you really know how to put on a show."

Loki looked around them. It had probably only lasted about two minutes or so, which was pretty good, even for him. "Well, we're all about physical fitness on Asgard. These lot didn't stand a chance. Anyway, did you see the backflip kick?"

Strange nodded. "That was epic."

"Damn right it was," Loki agreed. "This was probably the most fun thing I've done all year."

Strange laughed. "I was so confused when you just struck up conversation with them. I was pretty convinced you were drunk or something."

Loki hit him not quite hard enough to hurt. "That's not fair, because I'm not sober either. Besides, I'm already wanted dead, what worse punishment can they give me?"

"I guess that's true," Strange shrugged. He looked around at all the unconscious people. "What are we going to do with the golden dudes here then?"

Loki debated this for a moment. He didn't want to be caught once they regained consciousness again. Then he looked at the swords still stuck in the walls. He had an idea.

One by one, he dragged the guards up to the wall and sat them leaning against it. Then, being careful not to catch anyone's skin, he used each of the swords to pin them to the wall by their clothes. Now, even if they did regain consciousness, they wouldn't be able to chase after them.

"Strange, you don't happen to have a pen, right?" Loki asked, to which Strange shook his head. Instead, Loki took out one of his knives and spent about two minutes carving a message into the wall:

Hi space jerks! Your security system really needs work. Make it a challenge next time, will you? – Loki and Strange

Maybe it took up valuable time, but did he care?

Strange couldn't stop himself smirking even as he said, "So mature, Loki. Really grown up."

"Shut up," Loki said. He noticed one of the guards was still holding his gun, so he retrieved it and put it and his knife back in his belt. "Let's just get this thing over and done with."

"Agreed," Strange said. He took his phone out his pocket and took a picture of the guards and the message. Loki noticed he seemed to be taking a lot of photos while he'd been here. "Wong will never believe there's golden people who live in space!"

Loki shook his head. This guy was weird. "OK, lead the way, Doctor Weirdo," he said.