The blinding blue light faded. A stunned silence settled over the plaza.
The old man slowly opened his eyes. He was still alive. He did not understand why, until his gaze fell on the round, star-spangled shield that had appeared between him and his death.
Loki pushed himself up from the bottom of the stone steps. His shoulder burned where his own reflected energy had struck him. He brushed the dust from his armour with the practised ease of a man who had been embarrassed in front of audiences for a thousand years and had long since stopped letting it show.
His green eyes settled on the soldier standing between him and the old man.
"The soldier," Loki said. His smile returned, slower now, and much sharper at the edges. "My servant told me about you. The man out of time."
Steve tightened his grip on the shield.
"I'm not the one who's out of time."
Before Loki could answer, a deafening roar filled the plaza.
A black Quinjet dropped out of the night sky like a diving hunting bird. It came down over the rooftops with its heavy cannons already rotating into firing position. Its powerful engines beat the air into a hard, grit-filled wind that scattered debris across the cobblestones and pressed the crowd's hair flat against their heads. The forward guns tracked in one smooth motion and locked dead onto Loki's chest.
Natasha Romanoff's voice rolled out of the Quinjet's loudspeaker. It was amplified and absolutely calm.
"Drop the weapon and stand down."
The arrival of the jet finally broke the spell of fear that had been holding the crowd in place. Hundreds of people scrambled to their feet and ran. They flooded into the side streets and narrow alleyways, sobbing, shoving, desperate to put distance between themselves and whatever was happening at the centre of the square.
Steve planted himself firmly between the fleeing civilians and the Asgardian. His shield was raised and his bright blue eyes were fixed strictly on Loki.
Loki ignored the fleeing crowd. He looked up at the hovering aircraft for exactly one second. Then he raised the scepter.
"No," he said simply.
The blue gem at the scepter's tip blazed.
Three bolts of cosmic energy erupted from the weapon in rapid succession, screaming upward toward the Quinjet.
What happened next took less than two seconds.
The Quinjet dropped.
It fell out of the sky like a stone, nose-diving toward the cobblestones with its engines cutting out completely. The first two bolts of cosmic energy passed through empty air where the jet had been a heartbeat before. The third clipped the top of the left wing and sent up a bright shower of sparks.
Then the engines kicked back to life at maximum burn.
The Quinjet pulled up out of its dive so hard that the metal airframe groaned audibly across the entire plaza. It skimmed across the rooftops at a height no sensible pilot would have ever attempted, banked hard around a church spire with its left wingtip no more than a meter from the stonework, and came roaring back across the square at a completely different angle.
Loki fired again. Two more bolts aimed exactly where the jet should have been.
The jet was not there.
Natasha had already dropped the nose again. She cut the left engine entirely to halve her turning radius and pivoted the whole aircraft around its own center of mass. It was a maneuver that physics textbooks described as impossible and Russian flight instructors described as the fastest way to kill a trainee.
The deadly bolts missed by meters.
Steve, watching from the ground, had time to think that whoever was flying that jet was either completely insane or the absolute best pilot he had ever seen in his life.
Loki's smile faltered. He had expected the jet to burn like a matchstick.
"Somebody knows how to fly," he murmured. "Well. This becomes more interesting."
—
A sharp static crackle sounded in Steve's right ear. When Natasha spoke again, her voice came through his secure earpiece. For the first time all night, it was not calm.
It was not panicked either. It was the voice of a professional who had just asked her aircraft to do something completely unreasonable and was still coming down from the intense adrenaline. Her breathing was slightly quick.
"Captain. Tell me you see now why this was not the mission."
"I see it, Agent Romanoff."
"We were sent to find Barton quietly and get him out. Not to throw you into a public square to fight a god."
"I know."
"Then talk to me, Captain. Why are you still down there."
"I could not watch them die."
A heavy breath sounded on the line. She was forcing her pulse back down.
"Copy that." Her voice hardened into steel. "But the Director's exact words were to stay away from Loki. We are no match for the Asgardian sorcerer alone. The Director did not build the Avengers to hand us over to a mind-control stick."
Steve said nothing for a moment.
He heard the order. He understood the tactical reason behind it. Natasha was not wrong. This was a fight he was not guaranteed to win, against an opponent he was strictly not supposed to engage. Every rule of the operation said to pull back and wait for heavy backup.
But Steve could not just watch and not act while innocent people died in front of him.
"Protect yourself, Captain," Natasha said in his ear. "Do not let that thing touch you. We cannot afford to lose you today."
"Understood."
Then, as if he had not heard a single word of her warning, Steve charged.
—
He closed the distance in three long strides, leading with the shield, driving it forward with enough force to cave in a brick wall.
Loki sidestepped the charge with the fluid, lazy grace of someone who had been fighting wars for longer than most of Earth's civilisations had existed. The soldier's attack was nothing to him. A stone rolling downhill.
The scepter swept low, aiming to cut Steve's legs out from under him.
Steve saw it coming. He jumped the sweep, twisted his body mid-air, and brought the heavy edge of the shield down in a vicious overhead arc aimed straight at Loki's skull.
Loki caught it on the shaft of the scepter.
The impact rang across the plaza like a struck bell.
They locked together in the lamplight. Steve pushed down with every ounce of his serum-enhanced strength. Loki held him back with one arm, not even breathing hard. Their faces were inches apart.
"Strong," Loki said. He sounded almost complimentary. "For a Midgardian."
He pushed.
Steve slid backward across the smooth stone, his boots carving shallow furrows into the cobblestones. Loki followed instantly, flowing forward as if the ground were made for his convenience. A scepter thrust. Steve deflected. A sweeping strike to the hip. Steve caught it on the shield. A sudden concussive blast of green magical force that erupted from the scepter's tip and caught Steve squarely in the chest.
The blast lifted him off his feet and sent him skidding ten metres across the plaza.
Steve rolled with the impact. He came out of the roll on one knee, found his balance, and threw the shield in a single unbroken motion.
It was a perfect throw. Fast. Flat. Aimed directly at Loki's head.
Loki deflected it with a lazy flick of his wrist. A shimmer of green energy knocked the vibranium disc completely off course, and it spun wildly into a wrought-iron lamppost with a loud, hollow clang.
Loki did not wait. He pressed forward with a speed Steve's enhanced reflexes could barely track. The scepter came down in a lethal overhead strike.
Steve dove sideways. He rolled over the hard stone, came up swinging, and drove his fist into Loki's ribs with everything he had.
It felt like punching the side of a bank vault.
Loki did not even flinch. He looked down at Steve's fist, still pressed against his side, and then looked back up with an expression of mild professional interest. Then he backhanded Steve across the face.
Steve's head snapped sideways with a sickening crack. He tasted hot blood in his mouth and hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of his lungs.
"You are brave, soldier." Loki began to circle the fallen Captain, the scepter held loosely at his side, walking with the unhurried arrogance of a predator deciding which bite to take first. "Brave, and entirely outmatched. Your little enhancement makes you stronger than the rest of your fragile kind."
He stopped above Steve and looked down at him.
"But you are still fighting a god."