"You're useless, Subject!" Loki yelled after yet another of his experiments failed. Usually, Circe didn't mind the yelling, but lately, he started to direct some of his rage towards her, and she was getting tired of being yelled at for Loki's shortcomings, as well as his abuse of their resident 'guinea pig', Nervous. In Loki's view, it was always Nervous' fault when something went wrong, even if Nervous wasn't even anywhere near him, but Circe could see that Nervous was trying to do his best. Over time, as Circe lost her romantic feelings for Loki, she started to see things in Nervous that she would probably never get from Loki. She felt that she and Loki were in a loveless marriage. They hadn't even consummated their marriage, or their relationship at any point for that matter, and they had been together since they were teenagers.

As Loki finally finished his tirade and walked away, Circe started to walk towards Nervous to comfort him when she heard the honking from her carpool to go to work. Sighing, she stared at Nervous as she turned around to go off to work. She thought to herself, "I wish Loki wasn't so hard on him. He doesn't deserve that…" After Circe left for work, Loki decided to take out more of his rage against Nervous, even though he hadn't done anything. Nervous had made himself a bowl of cereal, as he wanted something to eat after one of the many serums that Loki injected him with had finally worn off. Those serums made him so sick that most of the time, he couldn't keep any food down. It explains why Nervous was so thin and frail. When Loki walked into the kitchen, he couldn't hold in his rage.

"What do you think you are doing, Subject?"

"Eating. What does it look like?"

"I didn't give you permission to eat. What if I have to conduct another experiment? I don't want you messing things up again by getting sick."

"Maybe if you didn't inject me with so many fucking chemicals at once, then you would know what they would do and I could actually keep food down!"

"HOW DARE YOU TALK TO ME LIKE THAT, SUBJECT!" Loki bellowed, as he grabbed Nervous by his hair and smacked him with enough force to knock him over.

Nervous then punched Loki in the face as he yelled, "I'm fed up with your fucking abuse, Beaker!"

This pushed Loki over the edge. In a blind fury, he kept punching Nervous, even after he had fallen to the ground unconscious. After his rage had subsided, Loki dragged Nervous downstairs to the basement and locked him in his cage, in order to keep his 'belligerent' test subject in one place while he mopped up the blood in the kitchen and the hallway. As he mopped, Loki pondered how he could punish his test subject for his insubordination.