Howdy! Wolfsaint here! So this is my first Avengers fic and it's kind of a collaboration with my good friend that goes to school with me. Her character is Katy, and mine is Karlie, two mutant girls attending a small university in south Louisiana that gets attacked by a most beloved escaped convict who happens to be on the run from…well, if I told you that I'd have to kill you. Besides, you'll find out soon enough if you keep reading. :) Along the way, the girls will discover friendship, love, purpose and power they never knew they had. And who knows? They might even save the day once or twice while they're at it. Don't worry, it's not nearly as touchy feely as all that. Their story is full of pain, anguish, passion, silliness, excitement and yes, there will be drunk science.

I hope you guys have as much fun reading this as I am writing it! Please don't forget to leave feedback. I THRIVE on feedback. :) And now, without further ado, I present for your entertainment:

For King and Country.

XoXoX

Karlie

"Kat, pass me the calculator, would ya?" I said, breaking the almost oppressive silence in the room.

"Sure, Fee," was the reply from the other of the two beds in our tiny dorm. I could see her out of the corner of my eye. Though she didn't move a muscle, the graphing calculator on her bedside table landed in my outstretched hand a moment later.

"Thanks," I muttered back to her, already punching numbers. "And don't call me Fee."

"Then don't call me Kat," she shot back coolly. "You're the zoo animal in this duo, not me."

"Cats don't live in the zoo," I mumbled, glancing up at her long enough to see her smirk at my lame retort. She won. As usual. Katy always wins these little arguments. She lets her head rule her actions, while my heart often gets the better of me. For what must be the bazillionth time in my twenty one years I had to take a moment to marvel at how two polar opposite souls could have ended up closer than sisters.

Katy is small, reaching only about five feet and a couple of inches. She's twig thin even though she eats like she'll never see food again, and her hair is waist length, pin straight and so blonde it's almost white. Her pale skin makes the vivid blue of her eyes stand out in her delicate face. She is unassuming and subtle, and anyone seeing her for the first time would automatically assume that she wasn't a threat, wasn't dangerous. They would be wrong.

And then there's me. I stand at about five eleven and 'twig thin' are the last two words any sane person would use to describe my physique. My skin is a deep olive and though my hair too is waist length, it's a dark auburn brown that I've been told catches fire in the sunlight. My features are sharper, sturdier on my heart shaped face with its strong jaw, high cheekbones and full lips. My eyes are dark green and often too expressive while Katy's are like ice, still and cold. I am danger of a different sort. My very presence is imposing and most people instinctively stay clear of me the way they might be wary of a tiger on a leash, just waiting for that flimsy thread to break and release the beast.

And it isn't just our appearances that set us apart. I often wonder if it was our mutations that defined who we are or perhaps the other way around.

"What are you staring at?" Katy's smooth, even voice jolted me out of my musings. She fixed me with those icy spheres and arched one nearly invisible brow high in both a question and a statement. And the statement was, 'I still think you're nuts'.

I shook my head a bit to bring it back to the present. "You, you frosty siren," I purred, batting my eyelashes at her. She shook her head at me and chuckled, sticking her nose back in her book. That girl could read if the world was on fire.

I glanced over at the clock. 9:30. Time to go.

"Come on, girl," I said, stuffing my things in my book bag and slinging it over my shoulder. "School time."

"Again?" she moaned, looking up at me with pleading eyes. "But we just went to school yesterday." She stuck her bottom lip out and pouted.

"Yes, Ms Genius. Again. I realize that this isn't the most challenging of intellectual environments for you, but it is necessary to go to class in order for us to maintain appearances." None of this was anything she didn't already know. In fact, Katy was the one who had insisted that the two of us enroll at this small university in the first place. She knew it was necessary and even though she was mostly joking, there was a part of her that resented being stuck here with imbeciles in a place that wasn't really any better than a high school. "I wish we could go somewhere big and smart and exciting for you, Katy," I told her, putting my hand on her shoulder. She peered up at me with a small smile on her face.

"I know why we can't, Karlie. You don't have to apologize for it every ten seconds. Besides," she said softly, shutting her book and standing as tall as she could manage with her diminutive stature. "I was totally kidding anyway. Let's go kick some ass."

"Well, you can kick some. I'll read all about it and cheer you on from the sidelines." She grinned at me, I grinned at her and took off down the hallway.

We trekked across the quiet little campus in a companionable silence until we reached the fountain in the quad. Trees lined the walkways that were littered with fallen pine needles. They dappled the golden sunlight, and it flashed in our eyes at odd intervals. The fountain stood tall and straight in the center of the open space that was the quad, the Eternal Flame flickering strongly at its peak.

"How many today?" I asked quietly. I could smell a few of them, but I needed her to confirm my numbers.

She glanced around covertly with all the sly cunning of a fox who knows it's being watched. A slender hand came up as if to tuck a stray hair away and brushed her temple. "Four."

"Hm," I frowned, impressed. "I only had three."

"One's got some sort of cloaking device. The signal from it is the only way I found him," she whispered. "And of course all the cameras are trained on us."

"Of course." They were always trained on us. It had become a sort of game we played in the morning. I called it 'spot the spy'. Every day the number varied by one or two, and I would scent them out and then get Katy to tell me if I was right or wrong. I was usually right. This cloaking device must be a new development and it made me nervous. If I couldn't scent them, they could ambush me. The fact that they hadn't in the ten years they'd been tailing us didn't make me feel any better.

We didn't know who they were, but we did know why they were watching us. We were dangerous. Well, ok, I was dangerous. Katy was dangerous by association.

I kept waiting for them to make a move, but they never did. They just watched and waited. Waited for me to blow up again. But that couldn't be it because I'd had multiple incidents in the time they'd been there and still they didn't come after us. The uncertainty of it all was what made me the most apprehensive and I was constantly on edge. And that is never a good place for me to be.

Today, as usual, they did nothing and we continued on our way to class, unbothered. Katy and I have all of the same classes together thanks to her truly phenomenal ability to hack things which really made life for me a bit easier. I was always calmer with Katy around. And boy did I need her to keep me calm in our first class.

It was taught by a man named Paul Leslie who never ceased to piss me off about something. He was a staunch liberal and while he was on the far left end of the spectrum, I was as far to the right as they came. This wouldn't have bothered me were it not for the fact that he continually put down and degraded everyone who didn't believe the same things he did, particularly conservatives like me. My palms were laced with small scars from hours of digging my claws into them in an effort to keep them from Leslie's face.

We sat in the back; I propped my feet up on the desk and Katy set up her laptop, always careful to do it the normal way. It annoyed her to no end that we had to keep who we were a secret. She would have loved to wow the class with her ability to flick the device on without even looking at it.

Leslie walked in and immediately began droning on and on about the Civil War in Louisiana and blah, blah, blah and something about some dude and more blah, blah, blah. I realize that as a history major I should probably have listened better, but when it came to Leslie I just couldn't bring myself to tune in and be subjected to the insults both implied and obvious. Besides, Katy took good enough notes for both of us.

Time passed incredibly slowly during this first class, but I had a vague sense that we were somewhere near the middle when I heard it.

Well, maybe heard isn't the right word. It was so far away that it was more like I felt the resonance of it deep in my inner ear and my bones. Instantly I had my feet on the floor and my back was rigid with alertness. My ears strained to pick up another of the sounds, because there's never just one bomb. The sound I'd caught was blast-an explosion somewhere deep in the building and it chilled me to the bone. Who would bomb such a tiny, insignificant school?! But the bigger question was, how were we going to get all these people to safety?

Katy noticed my sudden change in posture and saw the spark in my eyes. "What is it?" she whispered so low that only I could hear it.

"Don't know yet, shhh."

That was when another explosion rocked the building, and this time I wasn't the only one who heard it. Everyone in the room froze for about three and half seconds before all hell broke loose. People leapt to their feet and screamed in terror, knocking over desks and shoving one another away in their panicked haste to flee. Though it wasn't a good idea to have them all freaking out at once, there wasn't really any other option but to get them away from the blasts as soon as possible.

"Take the stairs!" I shouted, though in the din I wasn't sure anyone could hear me. My sensitive animal ears rang with the sudden assaulting chaos. "Get away from the building!" This time I added a grizzly bear's deep roar to my words and several people glanced my way in shock before scrambling over each other and out the door. Leslie was the last to leave, ambling after the students and yelling hoarse things that made no sense at all.

And then Katy and I were alone, the room silent save the cries of chaos throughout the building that were steadily growing fainter as the people evacuated. Katy's white laptop had disappeared, and she had a gun in her hands that hadn't been there a few moments ago. Electric blue circuits laced its surface, pulsing with a dangerous beauty that mimicked the fire in her eyes.

"Where's it coming from?" she asked coolly.

I stilled, cocking my head and waiting for the next blast. A few moments later it came, shaking the floor beneath our feet. And I had a lock on it. "Directly below us. Two stories. Go." Katy and I both raced for the door. When I crossed the threshold I leapt into the air, arms out, and felt my muscles ripple and a coat of glossy black fur slide over me as I made the instantaneous shift from human to panther.

My heart pounded with adrenaline and excitement and the beast raged inside, overjoyed to be let out of her cage. We tore down the hallway at top speed and I had to wait at the stairwell doors for Katy to come and open them. I bounded down the stairs in no time at all and had to wait at the door again for Katy to catch up. She held the door for me and I cautiously padded out into the hall, casting out with my nose and my ears for any sign of the culprit. My mouth hung open as I tasted the air, scanning the familiar scents of education for anomalies. I let out a hiss of surprise at what I found.

The scent was cold, painfully so and so full of anger that tasted of cinnamon that it seemed that was the essence of it. It had to be some type of being, but the scent was unlike anything I'd ever come across before. An alien perhaps, or some freak experiment gone wrong? Those seemed to be the only two options for superhuman beings these days.

I crept forward on silent paws, praying that whatever was in here wouldn't decide to let off another blast while we were on the floor before we could figure out what it was. The scent became almost unbearable as I approached the next door and I glanced back at Katy who nodded, gun held at the ready. With her support, I rounded the corner.

In the room stood a man, or what looked like a man. The beast was growing nervous at the foreign nature of this creature. She didn't know how to handle it or how powerful it was and that made her jumpy. I kept my head low and bared my fangs in a snarl, my tail twitching in agitation. He stood with his back to us, all the desks in the room flung helter-skelter against the walls. He held in his hand a long golden staff with a glowing green…thing on the end that made the hair on the back of my neck prickle. I sensed and smelled power coming from whatever that green thing was and I didn't like it one bit.

Then he turned to face us and Katy went rigid beside me. The motion was slow, controlled and graceful like a serpent coiled and ready to strike. Its beauty didn't lessen the danger I could see in the planes of his body. He had 'predator' written all over him. The beast purred. This was something she could deal with.

He was dressed strangely in a sort of black leather suit with gold and green metal accents in a strange, otherworldly design. His hair was long and black and flipped out at the ends. Green eyes stood out on a pale, fine featured face that was beautiful if a bit haggard. Though I didn't think I'd ever seen him before in my life, I had the strangest feeling that he was familiar somehow. I looked to Katy to see if maybe she recognized him, but she had gone rigid, the strangest, most indecipherable look twisting her features. I flicked her once with my tail, transmitting through the contact, Katy, snap out of it. We need to find out what he wants.

She shook herself and lifted the gun, aiming it at his chest. "Who are you?" she demanded of him.

His posture tightened and the corners of his mouth dipped in a slight frown. "You do not know?" he asked in a velvet voice, genuinely puzzled as if the whole world should have known who he was.

"Nope. Sorry," Katy quipped, not sounding sorry at all.

The man (or whatever) frowned for real this time and said, "I am Loki, of Asgard," as if this was common knowledge. Katy cocked an eyebrow and regarded him warily.

"And what does, Loki of Asgard want?" Katy asked, sounding detached which was a far cry from what her scent was telling me. For some reason, her adrenaline had spiked as soon as he turned, and was that…arousal?

"Oh, I'm just having a bit of fun," he purred with a naughty smirk. "Didn't you hear about Manhattan? I had loads of fun there."

And that's when it hit me. Loki. Manhattan. The Avengers. The alien army that had tried to take over the planet. This was the idiot the government was still cleaning up after five months later.

Katy realized it about the same time I did. "So you're the douchebag who wrecked my vacation plans," she observed mildly. "And I'd just saved up enough for my own pair of Louboutins."

His brow furrowed in confusion for only a moment before he raised his staff, pointing the glowing end at Katy's chest.

OxOxO

Katy

Karlie surged forward, going for his throat at the same time that I let loose with the IED. Blue blasts of pure energy exploded from the end of it and all made direct hits…on a magical green force field that materialized around him. Karlie either didn't see or couldn't slow down in time, and she hit the force field at full strength. Her body smacked into it with a hideous crunchy sizzling sound and was thrown toward the window as if by a giant Major League pitcher. The glass shattered around her and she disappeared. Well there went my backup.

I turned a deadly glare on the man who called himself Loki. "Magic, huh?" I sneered. "Cool shit. Wanna see my trick?"

I reached out with that unnameable part of me that is the seat of my power and used it to grab onto the electromagnetic signals emitted by the IED and twist, causing the device to morph in my hand. In a matter of nanoseconds it had changed from a single, long barreled gun into twin spears, the ends crackling menacingly.

He studied my weapons with interest and perhaps a flicker of apprehension for a moment before his eyes met mine, his mouth open in a small oval and his brows scrunched together as he tried to puzzle me out. I fought to ignore the funny things happening in my chest when those emerald eyes connected with mine.

Instead, I used his momentary hesitation to make my move.

I lunged forward, thrusting out with my spears. The tips sparked with blue electricity when they met the green force field that protected him. Glowing matter sprayed out from the connection point and the room filled with a popping, zapping sound when the two forces collided. After a brief contest of wills the wall popped like an electrical bubble. And Loki was defenseless.

Well, ok, not really.

With his shield gone, he went on the attack, swinging the staff around in a wide arc with a speed almost too fast to follow. I had just enough time to raise my spears in an X in front of my face before the thing made contact, throwing up blue and green sparks and sending a jolt through my arms all the way down to my toes. He grinned at me through our crossed devices, low and menacing, and for a moment he bore a striking resemblance to Karlie just before she went wolf.

"My, my," he said. "What have we here? You're a special sort, aren't you?" he purred like he would like to put me under a microscope and find out just how special. Over my dead body.

"Oh, I'll show you special, sweetheart," I sneered at him, twisting with my will again. In half a moment, I had a staff of my own, white with blue circuits, and I reeled back and jabbed it at his middle. He parried, sidestepping and swung his own staff at my head.

Now, I'm not trained in any sort of combat. I'm a technopath. My power revolves around technology, science and things better suited to a desk than a war zone. Need a top secret government agency hacked? I got you. Need an engineer with the ability to manipulate technology through the signals it emits? I'm your gal. Need to beat a magical prince from a far away land into a bloody pulp? You might need to call Karlie for that one.

As it was, I was able to get a lock on the signal coming from his glowing green stick. Though the signature wasn't one I'd ever come into contact with, it was easy enough to translate and calibrate my own device to match it. In a matter of seconds, I had the IED online and active. He swung, my device swung up to block. He pulled back, the IED jabbed forward, pinpointing his weaknesses. All I had to do was hold it.

After a few back and forth blows, I managed to clip him on the side of the head and he blanched, staring at me in shock.

"You're not the only one around here who knows how to operate a stick, buddy," I snapped with a half-smile.

His shock turned to amusement. "So it seems," he sneered.

I tweaked with the IED's directive, setting it for offense, and immediately it leapt forward in my hands, battering him with a flurry of blows that he only just managed to deflect.

"Oh," he said. "That actually felt like you meant it, my dear." He smirked, a wicked gleam in his eye.

He spun away, swiping a wide circle with his staff and I was on the defensive again.

"Hm," I made a face like I was considering something. "That didn't. How strange? Am I the only one who came to play?"

He snarled then, and let loose with a furious attack so fast and strong that even the IED had difficulty keeping up. He hit my staff like a raging bull, every time sending a shockwave through my body and shaking my bones. With every contact, I cried out with the effort it took to just stay alive. He landed several blows on my arms and legs, the spots beginning to sting like the dickens immediately after. In no time at all I was panting and hurting and rapidly losing strength. I'm not a fighter. I'm just not built for this kind of thing. Where the hell was Karlie?!

I tweaked the device again, kicking up its speed even though it was already at a critical level. Loki was toying with me. If I didn't do something soon he was going to get bored and decide to end it. I was terrified, but I didn't show it. I kept my face carefully controlled in a mask of vague amusement.

"I could do this all day, ya know," I quipped; trying to sound fresh and strong, but my breathlessness gave me away.

He smirked at me. "I'm not so sure about that." And before I could even blink, he knocked me backward into the wall and pressed his glowing green staff into my neck. The IED dangled at my side, and I froze, the cold metal of his staff biting into the skin of my neck. He held the bar across my throat, pressing down on my windpipe and cutting off my air. I choked and gasped, my fingers clawing at the wall behind me, and I knew that this was only a taste of his true power. He could snap my neck with that staff, right here and now and there was not a thing I could do about it. In that moment, I was positive I was going to die.

I was panting and gasping for air, my face tightening as he regarded me once again with interest. He looked at me like a child might look at a shiny new toy, like he couldn't wait to take me out of the box and play with me.

This might sound cliché or silly or any number of things, but I swear that it happened.

He met my gaze, and the universe resonated.

An invisible fault line in my chest clicked together in an earthquake that shook my soul to core and reverberated through my psyche. My vision was overwhelmed with green and gold, and the amused façade fell. My eyes were wide as I drank him in. He was inches away, and even though he looked positively exhausted, he was possibly the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

The smirk fell off of his face and he studied me in an entirely different way. It was still interest, but a different sort of interest. It was the interest of something he didn't understand, but desperately wanted to. He looked at me like he might look at an equal for the first time since he'd turned around.

At the risk of sounding like a cheesy romantic comedy; Loki and I had a moment that I can only describe as love at first sight. Though I didn't realize that until much later. All I knew then was that something had happened, something had changed. From then on, there was never a moment when he wasn't on my mind, at least subconsciously. God, that sounds ridiculous.

He gazed at me, into me, through me with those shards of emeralds in the middle of his face, and I did the same to him. We searched each other, trying to make sense of the earth-shattering…thing that had just happened between us. I didn't understand it, and I could see in his face that he didn't either, all the while the Earth seemed to rumble under my feet.

The strength seemed to leak out of him and he relaxed, letting up on my throat and I could breathe again. I sucked in a huge, shaky breath (sounding like a vacuum cleaner) without moving a muscle. I don't think I could have moved even if I'd wanted to, transfixed as I was by the man who'd just tried to kill me.

The moment seemed to pass by in a millisecond and span years at the same time. We could have stayed that way for hours, I think, just staring into each other's eyes like there was no tomorrow and like he hadn't just partially demolished a university building. I probably would have too, just not moved until the end of time.

But then he got blindsided by a grizzly bear.

One second he was there, the next he was swept away by a huge brown blur that let out a mighty roar as she hit him. It rattled my eardrums, and for a moment I was too stunned to move. A second later I unfroze and turned to stare at them, my mouth still hanging open in shock. She had him pinned to the ground with those wicked long and wicked sharp daggers for claws at his throat and her teeth bared (HA!) in a truly terrifying snarl. He looked pretty much like I felt. Too utterly and truly shocked to fight back. Not to mention that his staff and helmet had bounced to opposite sides of the room.

It took me all of half a second to recover my wits and remember that this man/god/whatever was an intergalactic criminal with too much innocent blood on his hands to quantify. My twin spears reshaped themselves into four white shackles, pinning his arms and legs to the floor. He tore his gaze away from the monster that was also pinning him to the floor (with great difficulty, I might add) and looked at me again in wonder. That look made me warm all the way to the tips of my toes. How embarrassing.

That was also the moment our resident spies decided to join the party.

Karlie heard them before I did, or smelled them or whatever. Suddenly she raised her head and relaxed her mouth to gaze at the door. Her nose twitched and a moment later she was a wolf standing to my right and a little ahead of me, her body at an angle so that her shoulders and head were between me and the door. Loki was tied down pretty tight. He wouldn't be going anywhere until I wanted him to.

Karlie's hackles raised and she lowered her head, training her beast-silver eyes on the door and growling in what I like to call her 'nightmare voice'. Seriously, that thing would give Schwarzenegger bad dreams.

And then I heard them too and wished that my weapon weren't bolting the bad guy to the floor. Lots of booted feet were quickly approaching from the left. We didn't even have time to move before an army of black uniformed men in body armor with machine guns and face-concealing helmets swarmed into the room and surrounded us.

Karlie tried to watch them all at once. She can't stand having people behind her she doesn't know. It's part of the whole 'beast' thing. She never gives you her back unless she trusts you with her life. Now, all of a sudden she was faced with the dilemma of having too many people at her front and sides to watch her back, and her bushy silver tail lashed back and forth in anxiety.

She bumped into me in her frantic circling, and I grabbed onto the fur on her shoulders to keep her next to me. She snarled and snapped and growled at the men like the wild animal she was, and my fingers were the only things keeping her from destroying them. Through the physical contact she could communicate telepathically, and I'll not be repeating anything her animal brain was transmitting to me at that point in time. She was shaking with rage and terror, and I feared for the lives of the men in the room. They had no idea what she was capable of.

I thought they were there for Loki, the intergalactic criminal with tons and tons of innocent blood on his hands. That one. Never, in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what happened next, and that's the only reason I know that this is what actually happened.

They trained their guns on us.

Me and Karlie. The ones who had just subdued said intergalactic murderer! Nobody even looked at him!

"Freeze!" commanded the man in black directly in front of me.

"Oh, no thanks, I was actually thinking about tap dancing for you!" I snapped back before I could stop myself. All around me I heard hands tensing up around triggers. Karlie growled.

"I'd be careful about sarcasm if I were you," said a voice from the door. The voice sent chills up and down my spine, and its owner didn't help that much.

He was huge. Tall and thick, he was dressed in all black with a long leather trench coat over some serious gear. His skin was dark oiled mahogany and he had no hair except for a rather interesting beard. He strode into the room with his hands behind his back, and he looked down his nose at us like we were insects. He had an eye-patch that fit over a socket that looked like some sort of animal had gotten a hold of him, but that wasn't the intimidating thing about him. The really scary part was his remaining eye.

It was so cold, calculating and dead. Now, I've been told I have an arctic stare. I hold my emotions in and don't usually let them reach my face, so my gaze is normally quite frigid. But this guy. This guy was absolute zero. Nothing could survive his stare.

Nothing but Karlie, of course.

His gaze was so cold it burned, and I was forced to look away and focus on his shoulder. But not her. She met his glacier eyes with her own solar flares blazing with all the power of the stars. I knew that look. It was the dominance stare.

In the wild eye contact is very important, especially to wolves. Meeting the gaze of a higher ranking wolf is seen as a challenge, and the animals usually have an instinctual meter that tells them when they should look away to avoid a potentially fatal confrontation with a more powerful pack member. She's explained it to me before that humans have the same sort of meter, it's just more difficult to recognize and easier to ignore.

But I recognized it now, and there was no way in hell that any normal person could ignore the fact that this man was Alpha. Something in you screamed that a staring contest with him meant death, so you looked away. Well, normal people looked away.

Karlie locked her silver eyes on his dark ones and growled low in her throat. Moments that were really no longer than a heartbeat seemed to stretch on for hours as they duked it out in a silent, invisible battle of wills. I could almost see the tension crackling in the air between them. She grew steadily more and more rigid under my fingers until she was shaking. Whether it was because she was priming to strike or holding herself back, I couldn't decide.

And then he looked away.

I cocked an eyebrow in amazement. I don't even think he knew that he'd just conceded a dominance contest to the wolf who suddenly relaxed against me and huffed with satisfaction. Looks like he wasn't Alpha after all. This might have made me feel a bit better about our prospects were it not for the fact that humans play much more devious games than animals do. He may not be her Alpha, but he was still Alpha of a very large group of burly individuals with big guns. No way we were coming out of this on top.

"They might take you seriously," he continued smoothly as if nothing had happened with an almost amiable quality that terrified me because I knew it was a lie.

"Who are you?" I demanded, lifting my chin at him. Even though I wasn't in a position to be demanding anything.

He fixed me with that dead eye and said, "You don't need to know that just yet. What you do need to know is," He stepped forward until I could smell the leather on him, and Karlie pressed back against me so hard I nearly fell over.

"You're coming with us."