Prologue

Disclaimer: no one of the characters belong to me, but to their respective owners, and especially Marvel™.

The void between the stars was darker than fur of a moleskin. The distant stars twinkled brightly yet coldly, small dots of clear, crystal white light amongst a sea of darkness. In places, various planets that shone more warmly with other colors supplemented them.

In other places, the stars flared up or extinguished completely or changed the color, or – did something else. The stars were alive, in a sense, just – inedible, even to Galactus, who made his living by eating planets, BTW, but this wasn't about him, not now.

Who was this about? Maybe it was about a certain ex-member of Asgardian royal family, who was busy extracting something, reminiscent of a pyramid, sometimes as glimmering as gold, and sometimes – as dark as onyx, from Mercury. No, not the element of mercury, i.e. a liquid a metal, but the planet Mercury, perhaps the smallest planet in the entire Solar System known to people, or rather – to the Midgardians. Despite the lack of atmosphere, solar radiation, and the proximity to the Sun, (a smallish star, but right now it compensated for its small size by its' nearness), the former prince of Asgard, (current status – undetermined) was apparently unbothered, as he used his magical powers to extract the aforementioned pyramid, (or whatever the doodad really was). Any agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., had they been present there, would've immediately deduced that this was an 0-8-4, but right now there were no agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in sight or in the vicinity, not even Nick Fury, and the man in question was frightfully unpredictable and mysterious in his own right…

Still, Loki of Asgard, (for this was him, let us be honest here now), was fairly certain that Nick Fury wasn't lurking behind any nearby mercurian rocks…maybe not 100% sure, but 75+% sure, which were odds that he would take, for Nick Fury was scary!.. However, that aside, he was both sure that Fury was not around and concentrated on extracting the 0-8-4 (let us call it that from now on) from the strata. It was a fairly large 0-8-4, and a heavy one – for example, no Midgardian would've been able to carry it around by themselves, and while magic made it easier for Loki to do whatever it was that the alien needed to do, it didn't made the 0-8-4 any lighter, physically speaking; in fact, the strain on Loki's magic was very immense, the alien was struggling to keep it under control and not interacting with the 0-8-4 too badly, for otherwise it would be bad – not just for Loki, but for the entire planet of Mercury, and the rest of the Solar System…

"Aha! There you are!" yelled Sif, lady of Asgard as she popped seemingly from nowhere and slammed her blade into Loki. Well, okay, she intended to stab her former friend, but her blade had bounced of his armor, so Loki remained alive and intact…but his concentration got shot to pieces; with a discharge of energy, the 0-8-4 shot beyond Loki and Sif, missing the sun by a hair's width, and vanishing in the distance, in the general direction of planet Earth instead. (At that moment in time, Mercury and Earth were opposite to each other, but that was not important).

…Loki and Sif looked at the 0-8-4 vanishing in the distance until the glow of the Sun obscured it completely, and then they turned and faced each other. Moreover, it seemed that luck was still against Sif, as Loki knocked her sword out of her grasp, almost breaking it in two in the process, and then slammed her against a nearby rock, almost breaking his former friend into pieces as well.

"You!" he snarled at Sif, angrier than he ever was, with her or otherwise. "Do you know what you have done?"

"No," Sif rasped, aware that her former friend was about to crush her throat – effortlessly, which was bad on several levels, and not just the obvious. "What?"

"You have ruined my best plan from saving the Nine Worlds from Thanos," Loki growled through clenched teeth. "Now I must recover – the doodad, or the world is doomed, not just from Thanos, but from it as well!"

He released Sif and turned around leave in high dudgeon – or tried to, because Sif had another coughing fit, in part because that Loki's grip on her neck had been too tight, and in part, because Mercury is not a healthy place to be for long for anyone, even an Asgardian. Consequently, Sif was unable to shrug off Loki's grip immediately and instead vomited in earnest.

"Oh, for All-Father's sake!" Loki snapped. He stopped her departure, came over to Sif and helped her to stand up. "This is really a bad day, you know?"

Sif just glared.

TBC