Once on the Helecarrier, I greeted Natasha and read the briefing. I felt a twinge in my chest as I read who had taken the tesseract and Clint. I schooled my features so Natasha wouldn't notice anything wrong, but I knew I didn't manage to fool the Black Widow completely, judging by the strange look she gave me.

I glanced up as one of the oddly shaped planes landed, letting Coulson and one Steve Rodgers, otherwise known as Captain America, out of it.

I gave my touch pad to one of the passing Agents under orders to put it in my room, placed my sunglasses on, and walked with Natasha to the plane, the tails of my coat flapping quietly in the sea wind.

"Agent Romanoff, Agent Blackthorn, Captain Rodgers," I glanced over at Coulson and noticed the suppressed excitement in his eyes.

"Ma'am."

I nodded while Natasha said "Hi." She turned to Coulson "They need you on the bridge. They're starting the face-trace."

"See you there," Coulson walked off stiffly.

Natasha started walking and the Captain and I followed behind quietly "It was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice. I thought Coulson was going to swoon."

I snorted and nodded; even though I wasn't there I had heard a lot about it from Natasha and Clint, who would come visit me in the forest when they weren't on missions.

"Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?" Natasha continued, giving me a look over through the corner of her eye.

"Trading cards?" the Captain asked with a look that said he was trying to suppress laughter.

"They're vintage. He's very proud." Natasha replied with a small smile.

I looked up in the direction we were going to see Dr. Bruce Banner looking around with a slightly overwhelmed expression.

"Doctor Banner," Cap called to the nervous man.

He walked quickly up to us and shook Cap's hand "Oh. Yeah. Hi. They told me you were coming."

"Word is you can find the cube."

Banner looked around "Is that the only word on me?"

"Only word I care about," Cap responded.

Banner kept on looking around but looked back at Cap a lot "It must be strange for you, all this."

I glanced around at the soldiers around us preforming their duties. I found it oddly comforting to be back, a sense of familiarity that all earthly war-programs shared. I guessed that Cap felt the same way.

"Well, this is actually kind of familiar," Cap rumbled.

I stepped closer to the two men and looked up at Cap as he looked slightly down at me, since I was only a little shorter then him "Don't worry, Cap, I just spent six years in a wildlife preserve. I'm not used to being back."

His eyebrows went up and he looked like he was about to ask me something but Natasha interrupted "Gentlemen, you might want to step inside in a minute. Its gonna get a little hard to breath."

That's when the preparation alarms started going off. I smiled as the two men got very bewildered expressions.

"Is this a submarine?" Cap asked.

Natasha and I glanced at each other with small smiles.

"Really? They want me in a submerged, pressurized, metal container?" Banner asked sarcastically.

The two men walked to the edge and saw the turbines rising out of the water, already moving.

"No, no, this is much worse," Banner said.

We rose in the air quickly and my excitement grew. I dropped my trench coat, ran straight to the edge and jumped off, earning gasps from the Captain and Banner. I free fell down towards the water below us and, at the last moment, allowed my wings to unfurl and I pulled up sharply. I flew over the water, letting my hand run through it so a spray shot up behind me, then I swooped pack up to land on the rapidly climbing Helecarrier. I smirked at the two men, the rush helping quell some of my lingering internal struggle. My wings folded onto my back and I picked my trench coat up from the ground then placed it back on. I took off my sunglasses and placed them in the jacket pocket before following Natasha inside. A split second later the men followed.

Natasha and I led them to the Bridge, where Director Fury was waiting. It was loud in there, with many agents working away at their desks, searching for Loki and the people he hypnotized. Cap looked slightly excited by this new thing he had never seen before and Banner was a jittery as ever, giving all the Agents looks of apprehension. I just leaned against the conference table and watched.

A moment later, we were level and Fury instructed for the reflection panels to be activated.

Nick Fury, wearing a trench coat a lot like mine, turned around to face us "Gentlemen. Agent."

Cap walked up to Fury's side, handed him a bill, cast a glance over his shoulder at me, and walked down to Fury's station. I saw Hill looking at him and smirked, knowing that she was appreciating what was, among humans, a remarkably attractive man.

"Doctor," Fury said, going to shake hands with Banner. "Thank you for coming."

Banner took his hand and shook it with an odd look on his face "Thanks for asking nicely. So, um, how long am I staying?"

"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the wind."

"Where are you with that?"

Fury pointed to Coulson, who just appeared "We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cell phones, laptops... If its connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us."

"That's still not gonna find them in time." Natasha stated, crouching by the screen displaying Clint's info.

"You're going to have to narrow your field," Banner said to Fury. "How many spectrometers do you have access to?"

"How many are there?" Fury asked without really asking.

"Call every lab you know." Banner took off his jacket, all business. "Tell them to put the spectrometers of the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm, basic cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places. Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

"Agent Romanoff," Fury called, catching Natasha's attention. "Could you show Dr. Banner to his laboratory, please?"

Natasha swept by Banner, leading him out the door "You're gonna love it, Doc. We've got all the toys."

Fury walked to me, leaning against the table beside me and looked at me through the corner of his good eye.

"This is personal for her, you know," I said, watching them leave.

He nodded and crossed his arms stiffly "What do you think of the team?"

I sighed and turned to look at him "They are all off their game and it could be dangerous. Natasha's is consumed by her anger over Clint. Banner is too nervous that he'll hurt someone and that fear could easily turn to anger. Captain is out of his element by far and that is throwing his entire emotional scale out of whack. Stark is too narcissistic even for me and still hasn't shown up despite numerous calls and one social visit by myself and Coulson." He nodded and signaled for me to continue "The team is questionable at best. There needs to be one completely stable person, none of them are at the moment and we both know it isn't me, I have my own set of problems."

He nodded, frowned, and walked away. I took that as my dismissal and walked out to head to the room I was assigned.

I placed my bag on the bed with a thump and unzipped it. I pulled out a cat suit very similar to Natasha's except it was metallic, a deep black unlike her grey, in was a tighter fit and made of a more flexible material, didn't have the SHIELD symbol, didn't have the wrist things or the tight collar, just one that stuck out like a vampiric design, had a sword sheath instead of gun holders attached to an actual belt designed to hang on my waist, and instead of having the hour glass symbol on the cloth belt around the stomach (which I didn't have) it had a dark grey dragon wing shape on the top of my right thigh. There were double slits down the back for my wings and it resonated with an aura of magic I had painstakingly put on it over time.

I quickly slid the suit on with the belt and the heeled boots, and then walked back to the Bridge. By the time I got there Cap was already back and talking to Coulson. I flipped over the table and sat down on it, getting funny looks from a lot of the agents.

Suddenly one of the computer's went off and the agent sitting at it turned around "We got a hit. A 67% match. Wait. Cross match 79%."

Coulson walked up to the agent and I hopped over the handrail to join up behind him.

"Location?" I asked before Coulson could.

"Stuttgart, Germany. 28 Konigstrasse. He's not exactly hiding."

"Captain, Blackthorn, you're up."

We nodded and headed out. Part way down the hall I looked over at the Captain and saw he was blushing and trying not to look at me. I chuckled and ran off to the lab.

When I got there all I had to do was look at Natasha and we were running to the oddly shaped plane. We met the Captain there and were off to Germany at a speed that would make fighter jet pilots jealous. We got there in two hours, and I flew off the plane, looking for a strategic place to land.

I landed behind Loki, uh, the Loki closest to the museum, on a ledge several floors up in clear sight of any humans looking in that Loki's direction, which was most of them. Looking at Loki caused that same pain to well up in my chest but I quickly pushed it down, knowing that it would be of no use here.

I watched as an old man stood up and looked to the Loki I had dubbed Real Loki. The old man said in a voice raspy with age and unused to English "Not to men like you."

Loki chuckled "There are no men like me."

"There are always men like you."

I jumped off the ledge and swooped to just above the man, nearby the quiet SHIELD plane. Now I could see the smirk on Loki's face.

"Look to your elder, people," he said, moving his scepter to point the blade at the old man. "Let him be an example."

Hearing the whirring of the scepter I dropped straight down so I was behind the old man and closed my wings around him, protecting him from the ray that shot out of the scepter but it never hit me.