Map of cities and territories can be found through the link in chapter one of this story on Ao3 because FFnet fucking sucks.

Sweat dripped down Tony's brow, pooling around the rim of his goggles. He ignored it and slammed the hammer down again. Ringing metal echoed through the smithy, followed closely by the hiss of burning coals. Once the gold-titanium alloy shifted back to a searing yellow-white, Tony pulled it from the flames and beat it against the anvil.

He repeated the process a dozen times, hammering and pulling the metal into shape. Only when the flat sheet had been sculpted into a vambrace did he stop, allowing the glow to simmer down to a dull red. His tools were set aside, and he wiggled his goggles to the top of his head to get a closer look at his creation. Heat radiated against his face as he inspected the divots and latches, and then he pulled back with a grin.

"Ha! I told you I could do it, Bruce!" He spun around to face his friend, who was in the middle of greasing a golden gear. "And to think you doubted my abilities."

Bruce raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. "If I remember right, the word I had used was 'shouldn't'. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's a good idea."

"Bah, semantics," Tony said, whirling back towards his project. The metal had reverted to its natural silver, and he lifted it with thick gloves. "Besides, anything I do is a good idea."

He bounced across the smithy and shoved the gauntlet under Bruce's nose, blocking him from his work. The man sighed. "Tony, you are being ridiculous. Have you not slept in a while? Is that what this is?"

"You're as bad as Pepper," Tony grumbled. "I've slept within the past twenty-four hours. Now look."

When Bruce finally relented and observed the vambrace, Tony felt like a child showing off a hideous charcoal drawing. Except, of course, what he had made was spectacular.

A few seconds passed without Bruce praising his genius, so Tony nudged the man's shoulder. "What do you think? I mean, I know it isn't perfect, and I've yet to decorate it. It's also a bit heavy, but I don't think that'll be a problem. There's always spells to get around that, and I-"

"Tony," Bruce interrupted. "What did I say about rambling?"

"Not to," Tony dutifully answered, but a second later, he took a deep breath and gushed, "But come on, don't you know how cool this is? Imagine when it's finished!"

"That's if it works, which frankly..." Bruce switched his focus from the vambrace to the other armor pieces strewn across Tony's desk and floor space. "I don't think it will. At least, I hope it doesn't. You're reckless enough as it is."

"You're just saying that because you're jealous I'll get to fly without a dragon," Tony said, pulling his creation away. If Bruce didn't appreciate it, he didn't get to look at it.

As Tony hid the vambrace behind his half-eaten lunch, Bruce rolled his eyes. "If you're done, I'm letting some air in here. It's sweltering."

He unbarred the thick metal shutters behind his desk, startling a pigeon that had been resting on the other side. It squawked and flew off, and in its place swept in cold winter air. Tony copied Bruce and opened the other two windows before grabbing a bucket of water and splashing it on the coals. The furnace sputtered, gushing smoke through the hole in the ceiling.

The empty bucket was soon refilled with water from the pipes, and Tony soaked an old washcloth in it. Then he set to wiping the sweat and soot from his bare chest, relishing the sudden chill just as much as he did finally being free of grime.

He had just dunked his head in the bucket to rise his hair when there was a commotion outside. With a frown, he pressed the water from his hair and went to the window. People were rushing through the streets in a dither, and a strike of fear went through Tony as he thought that Midgard was under attack. But then he realized that they weren't fleeing; they were running towards the city gates, where a large enough congregation had gathered that Tony could see it from his workshop.

"What is it?" Bruce asked.

"I don't know." Tony leaned farther out the window, but he was upwind from the gathering and couldn't make out any words. Then a young man ran past the window and Tony shouted, "Hey, what's going on?"

The boy stumbled and skidded to a stop, turning to him in surprise. "Haven't you heard? The Dragon Corp has returned, and people are saying they lost!"

Down the road, the shouting had grown louder as glinting beasts swooped down from the sky, heralding a caravan of returning soldiers. Drawn by the spectacle, the young man continued running, leaving Tony to frown after him.

There was shuffling from behind him, and he turned to see Bruce shrugging on his coat. "You're going down there?" Tony asked, slipping down from the window.

"Yeah." The man tightened fabric straps and adjusted his glasses. "Something is wrong. There shouldn't be this much fanfare, even if they did lose." He stopped at the door. "Are you coming?"

After a moment's hesitation, Tony nodded and grabbed his coat. He followed Bruce out of the smithy as he buttoned it, and then they hurried towards the gates. It was as if everyone in the city was on the streets, and they were still blocks away from the action when the congregation became too thick to walk through. Tony scowled at the shoulders and heads blocking his view before deciding that he wasn't going to wait where the only news he had was the concerned nattering of the two old women who lived next door.

Squaring his shoulders, he shoved into the crowd, and angry shouting followed in his wake. Bruce rushed to follow him, though he was too polite to ram his way through.

"Sorry. I need to get through here. Excuse me, I need to catch up with my friend." He accidentally bumped into an crotchety old man.

"Watch where you're going!"

"Sorry, sir. I will." Bruce ducked his head, trying to be less obtrusive, but he still had to force his way to Tony's side. Thankfully for him, Tony had run out of room to maneuver and was anxiously waiting at the corner of the main street.

"This is crazy," Bruce said, huddling into his coat to avoid knocking elbows with the woman next to him. "What do you think happened?"

"I don't know. Maybe they-"

His words were drowned out by angry shouts from farther down the road. "Get out of the way! Hurry up! Get out of the way!"

Unable to see what was happening, Tony stepped onto a flowerpot, smothering a peony under his boots. A woman with fiery red hair, a scorched uniform, and a Corp insignia on her shoulder was marching up the street, and the gathered civilians struggled to clear the path. They backed into alleyways and against the walls, though the woman's ire did not keep them from straining their necks to see the caravan that followed her.

There were two other dragon riders on her heels, and nestled between them was a wooden cart. It clattered across the cobblestones as they raced through the city, and despite their efforts to hold it steady, it shook and jostled. Tony squinted his eyes against the evening sun, trying to discern what they were so frantic about.

Then the cart passed by him, and he stared in shock at the body laid out on the wood. Red-stained bandages obscured their figure, and the visible swathes of flesh were either charred brown or ghostly white. Matted black hair stood out starkly against a slack and empty face, and were it not for the blood that dribbled from the man's mouth with each gasping breath, Tony would have thought him dead.

Seconds later, the group had passed, continuing their mad rush to the apothecary. The onlooking crowd was stunned into silence, and once the first cart had vanished around the corner, they turned as one to the other soldiers that were coming into view. They also walked alongside carts that bore covered bodies, but they had no need to rush; the riders inside had long since died.

As the death march proceeded, worried whispers arose.

"What in the world happened to them? Have the Chitauri grown stronger?"

"Did you see? Those weren't just any dragon riders—that was the First Corp."

"How are we supposed to win the war now?"

Growing tired of listening to frightened speculations, Tony hopped down from the flowerpot and caught Bruce's eye. He jerked his chin in the direction of the fort, and the other nodded. They wound through the crowd, and eventually they were spat out on the other side of Midgard.

However, the fort was just as busy as the city proper; foot soldiers and dragon riders were bustling back and forth, carrying news and supplies throughout the grounds. But though they dutifully carried out their orders, they did so in a daze. Their expressions were shell-shocked and forlorn.

Gut twisting in apprehension, Tony scanned the mayhem for someone who would be willing to give him answers. It didn't take long for him to find who he needed, and he stalked across the brittle grass as he called, "Rhodey!"

Rhodey broke off his conversation with the man he was talking to, an angry fellow with an eye-patch, and turned to face Tony. When he saw who had called for him, his troubled expression was momentarily lightened by a smile. "Tony, you're just the man I need!"

When Tony reached him, Rhodey pulled him into a hug and patted his back. Then he breathed in, wrinkled his nose, and drew back. "Ugh, you reek. When was the last time you showered?"

"I've been in the smithy all day," Tony said. "You try doing that and coming out smelling like roses."

Rhodey grinned at him, but then the man he'd been talking to shifted impatiently. Schooling his expression, Rhodey turned away from Tony and said, "Send more troops along the border and request reinforcements from Vanaheim. If there's a counterattack, we need to be ready. We can't afford to lose more dragon riders."

"We can't afford to lose more soldiers, either," the man replied, his gaze moving to the weary ranks of soldiers. But then a large shadow fell across the fort, and they looked up to see a gleaming dragon pass overhead. Its metal and canvas wings beat hard against the air, buffeting the people below, and its rider leaned forwards in the saddle. Within the beast's chest, a purple light flared, and the next wing beat rocketed the dragon forwards.

Once the dragon had become nothing more than a dark speck in the sky, circling protectively over the city, they turned away and the man sighed. "I'll see what I can do," he conceded, and at Rhodey's nod, he spun on his heel and strolled towards the headquarters.

"That's Brigadier General Fury," Rhodey said when he noticed Tony's curious staring. "He's normally stationed at Albesaa, but in light of recent events, we're sending him to Stuttgart."

"Recent events?" Bruce asked. "Do you mean what happened with the First Corp?"

When Rhodey didn't answer immediately, Tony added to the pressure. "You said you need me for something. I'm going to guess it has something to do with why the entire military has gone to shit."

Realizing that he wasn't going to get away with being tight-lipped, Rhodey said, "We've been sustaining heavy losses for months now. This last one with the First Corp... It's going to crush morale. We need something to bolster their spirits and prove that the war isn't lost."

"And I'm somehow involved in that?" Tony asked. "Because I'm not really the bolstering type."

"No, but you're good at fixing things." When neither Tony nor Bruce showed comprehension at his words, Rhodey stepped back and gestured for them to follow. "I'll show you what I'm talking about."

Intrigued, Tony let him lead them through the compound. They stopped at the hangar, which was designed to accommodate over a dozen dragons. However, only four were inside, and the others were lying in wagons. Though perhaps 'lying' was the wrong word; the dragons before him were nothing more than twisted mounds of metal, their usual gleam blackened and splattered with crimson.

A group of trainees were in the middle of tugging a tarp off of one of the machines, and one of them slipped, accidentally falling into the dragon. With a groan, metal broke away, and a golden head rolled from the wagon into the dirt. The half of it that was visible was crushed inwards, and eyes that had once glowed with magic were now empty.

"Watch what you're doing, cadet!" a woman ordered, and when the boy began apologizing profusely, nearly stepping on a wing that trailed across the ground, she groaned. "This is the cream of the crop? They're nothing more than children."

"If I remember correctly, you weren't much better when you first joined the Corp," Rhodey said, and the woman turned to them in surprise.

"Lieutenant General Rhodes. I didn't see you standing there." She peered at Bruce and Tony. "Who are they?"

"Tony Stark, genius extraordinaire," Tony answered before Rhodey could. "And this shy fellow here is my assistant, Bruce Banner."

"I'm not your assistant," Bruce muttered, but he reached out to shake the woman's hand.

"Second Lieutenant Hill," she introduced, and then she offered Tony her hand. "Mr. Stark. I've heard a lot about you. We could use your expertise."

"Everyone could use my expertise." Tony said with a cocky grin. However, that grin became forced when he looked over her shoulder at the three slayed dragons. "I'm not really in the scrap business, though. I prefer more of a challenge."

"Then it's a good thing we don't need you for those. You're here for that." She pointed at a wagon that had been separated from the rest, though the dragon inside was no less mangled. Its left wing had been blasted off, its front legs were mutilated, and its chest had been gouged to the point that the rigging was sliding out.

And yet, despite how severely it was damaged, the dragon was still functional. It twitched as the maintenance crew poked at it, and when it turned its head—causing the gears in its neck to screech and grind—its eyes glowed faint green.

Tony raised an eyebrow. "You want me to fix that?"

Hill matched his expression. "Are you saying you can't? From what I've heard, you were the best in the business until you stopped taking contracts."

"Oh, I can do it alright, but I don't think it'd do anyone any good."

As he spoke, the magic in the dragon's eyes abruptly dimmed until he could barely see wisps of green inside the bristling skull. Those who noticed froze and stared and the dying light in dread. They didn't dare breathe, as if doing so would extinguish it once and for all.

But then the magic rekindled, though it lacked the vibrancy it once had. It made Tony think back to the half-dead man he had seen, hanging onto his life by a thread, and he knew then what body had once sat upon the ruined beast before him. After all, a dragon didn't die until its rider did.

Once a minute had passed and the light remained, Rhodey found his voice. "They'll pull through. They have every time before."

"Whose dragon is it?" Bruce asked, his eyes darting to the dragon and away again.

Hill answered with her fists clenched. "General Loki's."

Though Tony hadn't had a face to attach to the name until today, Hill's words made his blood run cold. He would've had to live under a rock to not know who Loki was. And yet he hoped to whatever deity might be out there—not the self-proclaimed gods of Asgard—that he had the name wrong. "Loki? As in the best dragon rider we've ever seen Loki? The Hero of Galisteo? That one?"

Hill's defeated expression was answer enough.

"I thought we were winning," Tony said. "Winning doesn't end with the general and half of the First Corp dead."

"Loki's not dead yet," Rhodey said forcefully. "It takes more than that to kill an Aesir."

Given the way the dragon's magic kept fading, Tony thought that 'yet' was an apt way to put it. He had seen the general; wounds like that had killed would-be gods before. What the Corp needed to focus on was promoting a new leader, not fixing a dragon that was doomed to be scrapped.

Tony opened his mouth to say as much, but Bruce spoke before he did. "The First Corp were sent to handle a skirmish near Odessa, weren't they? I thought the Chitauri didn't have weapons there that could destroy a dragon."

Hill looked towards Rhodey, and Rhodey looked to make sure no one was listening. Then he quietly admitted, "We leaked information that they were going to Odessa because we suspect that there's a spy reporting our plans to the Chitauri. Their actual mission was to assault the portal in Thanatos."

"Thanatos?" Tony echoed in disbelief. "That's not a mission. That's a suicide run!"

His shout had attracted attention, and Hill glared at him. "Are you trying to compromise military secrets?"

"It's not much of a secret now that the Chitauri nearly killed them, now is it?" Tony asked, but he obligingly lowered his voice. "The enemy already knows your plans. The only ones left to lie to are us civilians."

Hill, who had yet to master a blank mask, darted her eyes away, and Tony realized that he had hit the nail on the head.

"Huh, you are trying to lie to us. Why? You don't want anyone to know how much Loki screwed up?"

"I'm telling you this because I know you won't cooperate otherwise," Rhodey said. "But if the news gets out that we not only attacked Thanatos but lost three dragon riders in the process, people are going to panic. They'll lose faith that we can actually win this war. That's why we need you to fix the general's dragon. It'll give them something to rally around."

"You mean it'll distract them from the fact that you're lying to them," Tony said, but then he shrugged. "Fine. If that's what you want, I'll fix the damn dragon. But I'm charging a fortune for it, and I expect to be paid even when Loki dies and it becomes nothing more than a scrapheap."