Keeping the Helicarrier in the air hadn't been a problem, even holding it for around an hour wasn't much of a problem. The problem came afterward.
I stumbled onto the deck of the Helicarrier, letting the winds from the altitude cool my body. It felt like I was burning alive, after having been put into one of those medieval torture machines that stretched a person by their arms and legs for a few minutes. Not so much pain, as just exhaustion.
It was like suddenly something had shifted in the air, something about the world had changed and I was grasping at straws to figure what it was. I started to recall things… things that I had never experienced before.
That lie about learning about the Chitauri and Asgard in school?
I could remember that now, the images of the futuristic classrooms filled with children that should've been far too young to learn more than basic shapes and colors.
Was I daydreaming? Was I so exhausted that I was mixing up fantasy with reality?
Maybe it was simply a sudden sense of clarity? Reminding me of a time that I was reading comics on these things while I should've been working on classwork back in school? That makes a bit more sense.
It didn't take me long to arrive… somewhere? I wasn't really able to take note of where I had gone into the Helicarrier. I was a bit too confused about reality at the moment. It reminded me of that time period I suffered from insomnia, the world was given this muddy, floaty quality to it.
Fury's arm steadied me so that I could stand straight, his lone eye showcasing a mild case of concern for me.
"You alright?"
I slapped my cheeks lightly. Which meant lightly for me, for Fury it would've been a loud bang ringing in his ear. Then I swallowed whatever was in my mouth, the mild metallic taste was only minorly worrying to my sensibilities.
Of course, the jumbled mess of my mind was something that worried me, but there was no time for concern for mental well-being.
I had to save the world, then fix my head.
That was my list of priorities and I was sticking to it.
"Of course, just woozy," Replying to his question finally, while putting my hand on one of the railings the carrier had along the walls. "I'm going to need some materials.'' After giving him a list of things that I needed to get, much to the man's chagrin, My mind started to race about the possibilities that Ock teaming up with Loki meant I needed to narrow down now. "This is going to be tough."
Given the Asgardian's advance knowledge of how space/time works, at least Loki did according to Thor, it was unlikely that he'd let the woman tear the universe in two, at least this time I knew I wouldn't need to worry about that. So the Rogue Norse God was probably was using the Doctor to speed up the creation of a portal to bring his army of Chitauri to Earth while he kept our attention on him by being caught earlier.
Then to make sure that we wouldn't be able to stop Loki from leaving the Helicarrier, Doc set up a new distraction for us at the Point Center. That should mean the portal, or rather the device to stabilize it, was nearing completion.
We needed to figure out where he was going to land his army.
Banner, Stark, and Ross had said that it requires a lot of power to stabilize the portal, the Tesseract's own ability to create power were out of the question, not sure why, but I guess it's something to do with being used to create the portal that something else needed to stabilize it.
And we'd already ruled out a few dozen Nuclear plants in the world that left alternate sources of power. My muddy mind didn't give me any direct answer, there were a few places that I could think of off the top of my head that could work.
Given that the portal would have a limited size even at the largest conceivable size, that meant he wouldn't be able to bring his army. He'd want it on Earth with as little notice as possible, so far away from large population centers, and it would need large plains, open fields. Little way of advanced infrastructure to allow rapid deployment of their own, the Chaturi's advanced tech should allow them to set up a home base within a few short hours.
Once they arrived, nothing but a bunch of people like me or Thor would be able to get through those sorts of defenses.
My thoughts were interrupted by the rather starling number of black spots that started to obscure my vision. It reminded me of that sensation when you stand up too quickly after spending more than an hour laying down or suffering from low blood pressure.
The world was a swimming mess of colors and even smells while I decided to finally sit down at the table in the back of the command room. Not sure when I got there, but that was immaterial at the moment, instead I focused on the folders that the SHIELD Agents had started to hand over to me.
My eyes regained focus in a burst of concentration that I didn't know I had left in me.
"Let's get to work."
(Avengers: Helicarrier-Ten Minutes ago)
It took an hour for the remaining Avengers to walk into the command room with a mix of rather stunned expressions on their faces. Steve, most of all, was in a slight daze as they crowded around the table set up in the back of the room. Not before Rogers handed Fury a twenty dollar note as they passed the man.
Doyle was simply there waiting for them while rifling through papers and swiping a small tablet, trying to sort through as much information as possible. There was an odd amount of disheveled-ness to the man that hadn't been there before, his hair was an unruly mess as if someone had tried to create an anime hairstyle in real life while the SHIELD jumpsuit appeared stretched, hanging loosely off his frame.
Otherwise, he appeared to be in perfect health.
"Guys," He mumbled, a sandwich half-eaten as he covered his mouth to block the sight from the other Avengers. "What took you all so long?"
"My friend, I've underestimated the power of your race," Thor spoke, his red cape billowing as he sat down. "Never before have I heard of such a feat outside of father's tales."
"Neat, I'll be sure to be smug later," Doyle replied, his eyes only briefly listing up to glance at the blond before returning to the task at hand. He suddenly stopped, rubbing at his eyes with his knuckles. "Hey, get me a jug of coffee, black, and yes a Jug of coffee!"
"What's all this about?" Rodgers asked, walking around as his eyes searched the papers, and glanced at the tablet. "Maps? Einstein-Rosen Bridge Theory? Thought you had already read the notes?"
"That's the entire paper," The Reporter responded, taking a jug of coffee from the SHIELD agent that had hurried back with it. The young man drank it straight down, the heat of the steaming beverage seemed to have little effect on him. Once done, his hands pointed towards other papers littered around. "And they're papers explaining the theories and scientific facts that went into the theory. Ross was taken, and Banner is missing in action, kind of Hulk'd to fight Loki got-"
"We know all that," Romanoff interrupted the man's rapid explanation with a tone that was neither cold nor warm. "We were briefed on the way here."
Patrick Doyle brightened up as if this was the best news that he had all day. It was an oddly expressive motion for the man, who while having the most expressive face that Romanoff had seen in the last few years, lacked the same sort of body.
Typically, it was hard to find any unconscious responses from Doyle. It was like someone had trained him for years to control any errant motions. It was odd, but not completely unusual for a non-powered person.
Something that hyper-kids were usually taught.
"Good," The reporter replied, his hand tapping against the table. A measure to keep moving, Romanoff noted. "And I've got better news, we won't need that program because I've found where they've set up shop."
Stark rolled his eyes, grinning as he walked forward and picked a folder, almost looking at random if it hadn't been for everyone seeing the man's eyes stare at for a lingering second as he got close to the table.
"Yeah, it's gotta be Stark Tower," he replied slyly grinning at the younger man, causing Doyle to freeze.
He glanced down to the arrangement of papers held out before him, his eyes seemingly still but there was jitter to his body that told anyone with the sense to realize that he was just looking around really fast.
"...Not… the Arctic?" he asked slowly.
"Nope, Jarvis just broke through the firewalls that Ock trapped in him, so I only just found this out myself," he explained, holding up his hands in front of him as if that would ward off any questions. "They're held up in the tower, even Morse's tied up."
At this… Doyle collapsed onto the table, much to the shock of everyone in the room. Stark was the first to get to the man, his fingers held up against the man's neck.
"He's got a pulse, it's beating a bit fast," As the man spoke, he leaned the unconscious reporter back in his chair, lifting the lids of his eyes up so that he could peek at them, a penlight being handed to him by a SHIELD Agent. "Seems to have some brain activity-"
"Stark, he's an alien," Romanoff took over, grabbing the pen. "Shining a light into his eyes to see if the pupils contract isn't indicative of brain activity in some animals like dogs and cats, never mind a man with the ability to see through walls."
She snapped her fingers against his ears, watching for minute twitches in Doyle's face. Four snaps produced a nose twitch and a flitter of the reporter's eyes, telling them that there appeared to be some level of reactive body functions.
"Okay, I want some agents to transport him to the med-"
"Medbay was one of the places hit," Fury interrupted the redhead while shaking his head. "And most of the backup space that could've been used for emergencies are taken up by injured bodies already."
"Well," She glanced at the way that the man on the hair jittered a bit, but it appeared to be from attempting to move while processing little to no energy. "It seems he's just too exhausted, needs to rest. Should be fine just laying here… I guess, maybe put him on the table?"
"Great, our strongest member is napping while the world's about to get invaded by an alien army," Stark moaned, glancing through the many notes on the task. "And we don't even have the Hulk to help out."
It was then Stark's eye caught some notes that Doyle had written by hand.
The first few things that were written down were about the Chitauri, detailing what kind of weapons they used, and showcasing some kind of large space-whale thing. Tony really hoped that this was a joke.
Why would a race develop space-whales? It just wasn't logical.
Something that was clearly not a joke was the notes on the Scepter and the Tesseract.
It was scrawled in what Stark could only call chicken scratch, meaning most of it wasn't legible. But he could make out the drawing in the center of it all. It was a large ring that had arrows around it, dictating movement. Large letters were underneath; OCK's work.
The Billionaire turned the page around, finding more handwritten notes. This time it was simply summations of Foster's notes, with neat analogs being made to simpler concepts. It was obvious from the clean handwriting that Doyle had written this side first.
Underneath that was a drawing of the portal that Loki used to get here, wIth red text beneath; LOKI-NO-RING.
"He's trying to make sense of the technology that goes into making and stabilizing the portal," Stark spoke, peering at Rodgers while nodding his head towards the sleeping Doyle. "There's a lot of dumbing down here, even some learning rhymes to recall."
"I thought he said that he understood Selvig's notes? Why all this?" Rodgers asked, his eyes catching notes on the Chitauri.
"It's one thing to understand the theory in a limited way,"
His handpicked up a paper of the maximum weight that certain parts of Earth's various Ice Sheets had. Looking for the perfect spot for Loki to drop his army down in. Even had reasons behind why Loki would choose such a spot. "Looking at this, it makes less and less sense that New York would be the spot."
"Regardless, you all need to get a move on," Fury interceded with a glare. "Freeing himself means that Loki is ready to make his move. I can't send anyone with you, Doyle's out of it, Coulson's certainly not capable given the injuries that Barton gave him during the assault. It's up to you."
"If we can strike now before the army arrives in full force," Thor started, striding forward with a swish of his cape. "We can take out Loki, this Doc Ock person, and close the portal before it's too late."
"That's good," Stark supplied, his face lit up in a grin as he placed the folders back down. "Because I've got a plan."
Fury's single eye glanced down to another handwritten note, one that said;
"Sunlight, I need solar power for emergencies."
It seemed that Stark wasn't the only one with a plan, the Director noted.
(Stark Tower; Now)
Loki was only half a meter from Morse when a sudden rush of movement caught his attention, Murdock leaping across the room in a dazzling display of acrobatics and attempting to jam the taser into the side of the Norse God's neck.
With practiced ease, Loki's scepter twirled around, diverting the blow before it could land. The blind vigilante attempted to get around the God's guard, only to find his next blow to be equally blocked when his opponent simply turned his wrist, catching the tongs of the taser in the blade of the scepter and shattering it as if it was a wooden bat put against a diamond wall.
Leaving the man open wasn't enough, Morse came running in to save her rescuer with a pair of escrima sticks that had been taken from her equipment earlier. Loki was taken briefly off guard as the woman started to pick holes in his defenses, he'd underestimated just how skilled humans could get within the short time they had to live, allowing a moment's opening to appear in his guard.
Even the toughest blow though from an Ant meant little to one of Loki's durability.
Seeing his boss's attention divided by two in a fight, Barton snapped back an arrow against his bow, only to find the third assailant against their occupation of the Stark Tower had thrown a chair at him.
Not one to be taken off guard by a civilian, Hawkeye quickly rolled under the object, while turning his position to fire off the trick arrow at her. Instantly the redhead was wrapped up in a bundle of ropes and dropped onto her back by the force of the blow.
"Sorry kid," Barton grinned. "You've got a few years before you can tangle with the big boys yet."
The mind-controlled SHIELD Agent turned back to the fight between the god and mortals, drawing back another arrow when the Boss yelled out, stopping him from joining the fight.
"Have Selvig open the portal!" Loki barely raised his voice as he near-effortlessly handled the two fighting him as if they were children. "I'll handle these two."
The scepter twirled around in the air, slapping both Morse's sticks and the broken taser of the Murdock with an elegance that came from years of dedicated training. It was like watching a dancer run circles around two highly skilled children. Amusing in a sad way.
As the two soon found out, it wasn't just an uphill fight, it was an up mountain fight. After all, Loki wasn't just faster and stronger than the two, he had centuries more experience in fighting in general than they could ever have. Every move was countered, deflected, or just 'no sold' as if they were wrestlers playing as the jobbers for the heel.
The longer the fight went on, the more apparent it became that they hadn't a chance of defeating the Norse God. Loki was only playing around with the duo, he could've killed them at any moment. It meant the would-be world conqueror was stalling for time.
The losing battle was broken by the rather sudden shift in the air.
"Is… that Highway to Hell?" Matt asked flipping back from a swipe of Loki's Scepter, his clothes only just ripping as the blade nearly cut through. "Why is that playing?"
The battle completely stopped at the sounds of a loud kabang rang out as the infamous Iron Man landed out on the balcony, machines rising out of the ground to remove his battered armor as he started to walk towards them.
In a single maneuver, the Norse God snapped the blunt end of his Scepter against the two's heads in a display that caused them to drop to the ground with a dull thud.
"Stark," Loki smugly said as he started to walk over to the man, walking over the still struggling against her restraints Louise. "You've arrived on time, I was starting to think that none of you 'Avengers' would get here on time."
"Reindeer Games! You've certainly redecorated the place," Stark responded, his eyes glancing to the dead body of Doctor Octavius. "I don't like it."
"Cute," The Norse God replied, the two walked towards the bar that Stark had stocked up at all times. The man even poured a drink for himself. "But I hardly think that you've come all this way just to comment on my decorating skills. Not when my plan is so close to coming through."
"You don't appear to be too concerned that we're about to come down on you."
"A pack of uncoordinated mortals and my berserker brother," Loki scoffed. "Barton's and Octavius's efforts were more than enough for me to know all about the problems that Kryptonian is currently facing. Must be younger than I thought, overstained himself."
For a single moment, Stark stalled, realizing Loki might know a lot more about Doyle's species than the man himself. But he didn't let the realization distract him, he continued to keep out of direct reach of the Scepter.
"Well, Doyle's never needed more than a minute to anywhere, he'll be around to punt you to the sun soon," The Billionaire shrugged, not feeling the pressure that other man had wanted, instead taking a small sip of his drink. "I don't think you've thought about what you're about to do, who you're about to piss off."
"Please, my army will be here within seconds, who do I have to fear?"
"The Avengers, that's what we call ourselves; we're sort of like a team," Stark walked forward with a passion in his us that hadn't been there before it turned back into a more coy expression. "You know, 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes'."
"Oh, please, I've met them."
"Yeah, you've run circles around us for a while," Stark admitted walking around the bar as he continued to stall for time. Soon the rest of the team would be in position. "I'll give you that, But let's do a headcount here: your brother the demi-god; a super soldier, a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend; a man with breath-taking anger management issues whose girlfriend you've kidnapped, great plan there; a master assassin; a man with so many powers that people that make Chuck Norris lists aren't willing to start one for him… and YOU, big fella, you've managed to piss off every single one of them."
"I have an army," Loki grinned for a single moment when a loud screech suddenly rang out in the air. As he suddenly gained a paler skin color as face transformed into something akin to fear. Loki rapidly turned but before he could even speak out, the Norse God suddenly found himself defenestrated, smashing through one of Stark's windows with all the force of a rocket.
The Scepter was instantly grabbed in mid-air, not even touching the floor before the ironclad grip of a claw managed to grab hold of it.
Stark couldn't help flinching as Doctor Octavius's bloody face greeted his vision. It seemed that while the bullet had hit her, it had gotten stuck only slightly between the opening of the visor and the actual protective part of the helmet.
The resulting blood from that had a effect similar to what a wrestler would call blading, where they would cut a small wound into their forehead. This would cause a lot more bleeding than the wound was actually worth.
"No, Loki you've not," Octavius gloated, as Stark started to run out to the balcony. "And where do you think you're going, Mr. Stark."
Stark glanced up to the sky, noting the green discoloration that overtook the regular bright blue sky, while he continued to run towards the end of the balcony. He was really annoyed that he hadn't worked on that self-deploying suit as much as he wanted to, it was still very slow in calculating his position.
"Holy shit," he stopped dead at the sight above him, the portal revealing the massive structure that was about to move through it. It didn't match what little information that Doyle had given them.
Instead, it was a large head that was slowly pushing through the portal at a pace close to that of a snail. On its forehead, three circles arranged in a triangle formation and connected through a series of lines from one to another.
"And people say that I've got a ego."
Author's Note: Hello, my beautiful people, it's proman from the internet here and... three cookies if you catch that reference. Now there's been a lot dropped in this chapter on your heads.
And I'd understand if you're confused, but I have been dropping some hints. And there's been ton of oddities about the universe that everyone's just shrugged and accepted without comment. ANd so has Pat to be honest.
So that probably didn't help.
Some of that will be revealed soon, and you'll grasp what had gone down. Also, just be spoiled about the ending to Secret Origins Death Metal? Whatever it was called. It was a tie into the event.
I liked what I heard at least. But we'll see if I actually like the comic.