2: It Takes Style to Become Public Enemy Number One

There was a press conference at 7am the next morning. Tony Stark had hardly slept, but he hardly ever slept anymore. He drank copious amounts of (Irish) coffee, just to get himself going, make it tolerable, and went out there, standing before the almost rabid journalists clamouring with questions.

For once, Tony read the prepared statement, as it was written. This explained in some detail the pack of lies that he was putting out: Thor and Loki would only be in New York during the day, they would go home at night, Thor had full control over Loki and there was no chance that Loki could escape.

There was a chance, of course. And Tony thought that it was probably a pretty big chance, no matter what Thor said. The last time Loki had been in captivity, the reason had been that it was part of his plan all along, and Tony had a worrying feeling that this too was somehow part of Loki's plan, despite his protestations about it. Everything always seemed to be part of Loki's plan.

At the end of the statement, the room swelled and swirled with noise, as the journalists fought to ask him questions. "Mr Stark will not be taking questions!" cried one of his public relations executives, trying to usher him off the stage. But he could hear several questions being put forward that he could answer, and would probably go some way to alleviate fear and anger.

Tony Stark called for silence, and gradually the noise died down. He gestured to a woman in the front row, whose question he had almost already heard, inviting her to speak.

"Yes, Mr Stark," the reporter spoke, her voice shaking badly from barely contained rage, "can you give me one good reason why this war criminal should not be arrested to stand trial for war crimes?"

A hubbub of noise went up in the room, and Tony had to wait for it to subside before he could answer. "I can do better than that," he answered. I can give you three good reasons."

Another rise in the volume, another wait for its reduction. "Number one, no jail will hold him. We're dealing with a creature who can transmute matter and generate energy from thin air. To put him in jail would be beyond pointless.

"Number two, if he was found guilty, which he obviously would be, what would we do with him? A life in jail, even if we could build one to put him in, would cost billions of dollars. I don't know how long these people live, but it's thousands of years. They were around at the time of the Vikings, so they'll be around a thousand years from now. And we couldn't kill him. The UN, the International Criminal Court, whatever it's called, can't hand down a death sentence – and, I mean, it is, literally, impossible for us to do." Probably.

"Number three, to conclude, he can only be dealt with by his own people. Separating him from them achieves nothing, and would only lead to his escape, and then, god knows what. I think we can all agree that that can't be allowed."

The room fell into noise again, the crowd of journalists shouting out questions. Tony was there for longer than he wanted to be, answering them all in as much detail as possible, but of course keeping from them that the Norse gods were already on Earth and currently residing in Stark Tower. He was relieved to get away from them and head back to the top of the tower to rejoin Thor and Loki.


On the agenda for the day was a major office block in the centre of the city. One of those – things – the enormous alien living ships – had flipped over and landed flat across the top of it during the battle. And it was dead, of course, so the practical problems of its decomposition, were, well, as substantial as they were disgusting. It had taken most of a month to be cleared away, and Tony thought to himself that Loki and his magic could have come in useful then. Still, better late than never.

Tony looked sceptically at the brothers as they prepared to leave. "I don't think you should dress like that," he said to Loki. Loki apparently did not consider this worthy of a verbal response, raising one eyebrow, very slightly. Tony explained, "You're dressed almost exactly as you were when you were razing this city to the ground. People will find it scary. Wear something else."

"You cannot order me what to wear," Loki shot back. He was looking a little healthier than he had been the day before, and seemed to have plenty of energy available for being snarky and annoying.

Tony sighed. "Fine, it's not an order, reindeer games. But I recommend it in the strongest possible terms."

Loki rolled his eyes, and with a glow of golden light, transformed his clothing into a suit like that which he had worn in Stuttgart: a black one, cut perfectly to fit his body, over a white shirt, a black waistcoat and a black tie. Over this he wore a long black coat, coming down to his knees, and around his neck he had a scarf: interlinking black and grey patches with the occasional patch of green. "Better," Tony nodded, raising his eyebrows. He had never seen Loki in person like this before, and had to admit that there was a rakish charm about him. "See, it's not so bad."

Loki nodded. "Indeed. I do like Midgardian clothing; there's so little to it." He looked directly at Tony in his jeans and t-shirt, "I could tear yours right off you."

In the stunned silence that followed, Thor widened his eyes and slowly turned to look, aghast, at his brother.

Tony laughed and replied, "Loki, please, only when we're alone," earning a crooked smile from the god. Tony added, curiously, "What happened to your other clothes?"

Loki resentfully offered an explanation. "I do not have other clothes. I have a finite amount of matter from which my clothes are made, and I can alter the appearance of it however I please."

Tony was sceptical. "And, what, you're telling me you can do that with you mind, with magic?"

Loki knitted his brows. "Well, yes."

Tony shook his head. "Sorry, I don't believe in magic. We'll save the discussion of how you really do it for another time." Loki tipped his head to the side slightly, apparently mystified by Tony's reaction.

Tony donned his Iron Man suit and they went out onto the balcony, where Tony pointed out to Thor where they were going. The destination was secret to everyone other than them and SHIELD, who by this point would have secured the building and would be expecting them.

Tony lowered the face mask of his suit, and Thor held Loki against him as he began to swing his hammer, which Loki appeared decidedly annoyed about. Tony took off, still taking some pleasure in the fact that he could fly (that just never got old), and they arrived at building in less than a minute.

Landing with thuds on the roof, they were immediately met by SHIELD agents, led by Agent Hill. She gave them a quick briefing about what they would be doing, not that Tony liked getting bossed around, but hey, they were probably short on time here, and he wasn't an ass. Well, not usually.

There were no cranes around, since the alien ship had been taken, but there were still portions of the twisted metal frame of the building and tons of rubble which needed to be taken down to street level and then taken away. Just no one to pay for it to be done. SHIELD even had an open top truck waiting. Whatever Tony thought about them most of the time, he had to admit, these people had their shit together.

The three of them; Tony, Thor and Loki, each took up girder from the steel frame of the building to move it away. To Tony's surprise, Loki was easily able to pick up the girder, which weighed several tons, despite his slight frame. When he looked over at Iron Man, Tony gestured to the girder he was holding. "Nice. But mine's bigger than yours."

Loki grinned. "Let's not go there."

Tony was relieved that he was wearing his face mask, so his former adversary would not see the smile that remark had brought to his face, and they got on with the work of clearing rubble as quickly as possible.

Loki was photographed, much to his chagrin, while he was being helpful. There were a couple of people there from Stark Industries public relations, trying to construct a narrative in which Loki's presence was beneficial to New York. People would go crazy over these pictures, though not all for the same reason.

There were plenty of people on the internet sharing pictures and video clips, mainly grainy video footage from Stuttgart, going on about how gorgeous they thought Loki was, how much they liked his voice, how they would let him subjugate them, they would kneel before him – if you know what I mean. That would only get worse, after today. Tony needed to try and prevent Loki finding out about that stuff; it would make his ego even bigger than Tony's own. And there was not space in Stark Tower for two egos of that scale.

For the most part though, reaction to Loki was overwhelmingly negative. Thanks to the internet an angry mob of people soon congregated around the building, as if they could hound Loki out, or trap him, apparently forgetting that the three of them could fly.

Police and SHIELD agents struggled to hold them back from the building, and ground floor windows were smashed by people trying to get in; a mob out for blood. Tony felt exasperated for the most part: didn't people realise that there would be nothing they could possibly do to Loki, even if they did get him? But these were not rational actions, these were actions of fear.

Tony's eye was caught by a couple of black ravens perched nearby when the three of them were assembled by Agent Hill, but he was quickly distracted as they were given the message that it was time to leave. They departed to another area on the other side of the city where they worked to repair damaged power lines, with success, but within a few hours, they ran into the same trouble there, and had to make a tactical retreat to Stark Tower.

It had got dark by this point, which made it a little easier to stage the departure of Thor and Loki back to Asgard.

Tony had a terrible headache by the time all of this was done and he got out of his Iron Man suit and back into his apartment, Thor and Loki following. "Stay," he said, really only talking to Thor.

Thor smiled and made himself at home, leading Loki about the place by the arm while Tony made himself a drink. "You two want anything?" He called over.

"Ale!" Thor replied.

Loki smiled a little. "Whatever you're having," he said amiably.

Tony smiled to himself as he poured a couple of glasses of scotch, reminded of the time when the Avengers had cornered Loki in this very apartment after the Hulk had smashed him. Loki had lost everything – the Tesseract, the fight for Earth, and all he had said was, "If it's all the same to you, I'll have that drink now." Tony hadn't quite been able to keep the smile from his face then, either. Loki even knew how lose with style.

The Asgardians took their drinks, and Thor glanced round the otherwise empty apartment. "Tony," he asked slowly, "what happened to our friends?"

"The Avengers?" Tony tried to ignore Loki's sneer at their mention as Thor nodded. "Well..." Tony took a deep breath. "Bruce has gone to ground," he said wistfully. "We couldn't have done it without him, but people are still pretty scared of him – not of him, but the other guy, the Hulk. Steve Rogers went on kind of a road trip. He's got some unfinished business, going to look up people he knew during the war, the ones that are still alive, anyway. Natasha, your guess is as good as mine. Barton's still around, working for SHIELD. But he's pretty busy too."

Thor nodded and smiled. "Well, now you have us as your allies."

"Us?" Tony repeated questioningly, glancing at Loki. Loki smiled with obviously sarcastic friendliness. Tony laughed and led them over to sit down, being careful not to turn his back on Loki at any point. He flicked on the TV news, which ran with Panic on the streets of NYC. He shrugged. "So, I'd say that went pretty well."

The news featured some high ranking official or other, giving her opinion on Iron Man and the Asgardians. "...A press release from Stark Industries claims that the aliens go all the way home each night, but how can we possibly know that? How can we trust Stark, how could we trust any one individual, with this amount of power? To whom is he accountable? What checks and balances are there? We're talking about an impulsive alcoholic playboy here; he's not elected, he's not, he's not– I'm sorry, I thought this was America. We have due process here. Loki committed crimes on American soil, and every second he is here again we have a legal right – a legal duty to arrest him! Why should he be above the law? Why should Stark be above the Police? Why–"

"Mute." Tony Stark took a gulp of his drink, and watched the official continue talking silently. Her eyes flicked around nervously, she was clearly agitated. People were terrified of Loki. They were terrified of everything that had happened in the past few months – supervillains, superheroes – it was all kind of insane.

Loki took a sip of his drink calmly. "I could go on trial."

"Brother, do not talk nonsense," Thor said.

"I am serious," Loki went on. "Let them put me on trial, if that will satisfy them."

"Sure," Tony interjected, seeing straight through Loki's apparent humility. "So you get to sit in a nice comfortable jail cell in Holland care of the United Nations, instead of whatever crazy crap they do in Asgard, instead of fixing up New York. You'd be there for years, because that's how war crimes trials always are. Most people die before they get sentenced, though that wouldn't be true of you. It would cost millions. And then what? Knowing you, they would sentence you to life in prison, and you'd just laugh and walk straight the fuck out of there."

Loki smiled. "That was the plan."

"I like the punchline, but it's a slow build up for modern audiences. Don't quit your day job."

Loki laughed a little. "I live thousands of years, Stark, spending a few of them on executing one joke seems as fine a way to spend them as any."

Tony laughed in spite of himself. Meanwhile, Thor was looking between them as if they were both insane. He spoke to Loki briefly, and convinced him to retire to his room without Thor having to order him. Once he was there, of course, Thor ordered him to stay in there, and closed the door.

He narrowed his eyes at Tony. "You and my brother, you share a certain sense of humour."

Tony shrugged. "He's pretty sharp."

Thor shifted uncomfortably. "You may be surprised by how charming Loki can be, when it suits him. He is known as silver tongue for his ability to talk people into doing things that they would not otherwise do."

"Hey," Tony grinned, "no need to worry about me on that. I'm more than a match for Loki."

"I hope so, my friend."