Disclaimer: I don't own Thor.
Cue the Evil Twin
IV
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Loki raised his arms to the sky and took in a deep breath. To the blue cloudless sky, so crisp and clear, he said, "Magnificent. Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?" A tank passed over his head and his blond locks– Thor's, raised in a golden halo.
"Thor! Look out! He's about to throw another!" Jane screeched over the intercom of the shielded building. As soon as they had arrived, Loki had been ushered out on to the roof.
Yes, the bright green giant was about to toss another. The chaos was wondrous to behold. Loki admired Banner's style, the panicked shouts were a symphony to his ears, but the man lacked finesse.
Small fires burned intensely near partially collapsed military bunkers. Burst pipes shot fountains of water into the sky. Sirens and alarms blared, from black smoking buildings to smashed cars. Flocks of white coated earthlings moved behind those wearing armor. Large vehicles shot a spattering a shrapnel at the green form– who just shrugged it all off.
A second tank came hurtling at him, and Loki ducked down just in time. The armored vehicle smacked into a pristine glass tower, taking off the top three levels.
"You can't take him out unless you get on the offensive." Agent Coulson's irked voice rang out above the destructive chaos.
"Yes, of course," Loki muttered under his breath trying to compile some sort of plan to defeat this monster without blowing his cover. He needed to get this battle going where he wouldn't be seen. Loki would need to use magic on this guy.
"He shall fall beneath the might of Mjolnir!" Loki shouted in Thor's voice with an empty hand raised and pointed at his supposed enemy.
The loud speaker crackled.
"…Where is it then?" Coulson asked as Loki continued to pose. The monster of a man down below swatted a few careening missiles off course exploding a wall and showering concrete over the compound.
Loki's eyes bugged out a little before he subsided into a cool calmness and flourished his hand once more, a glowing hammer illusion materializing.
"Here come I, foul beast!" Loki shouted as he jumped from the ledge overlooking the scene of the fight and down into the chaos below.
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Okay. This is not very fun. A head to head fight? I don't think so, Loki thought. He hunkered behind a slab of outer wall resting on the destroyed road.
This was not a battle he would be able to fight as Thor, no; this monster seemed quite powerful compared to the normal earthen fare.
Perhaps this wasn't the waste bin of the universes after all.
The jolly green giant roared and continued to annihilate a building that had wronged it. Gamma radiation must have fried its brain.
The plan was easy as far as Loki was concerned. He needed to lure it into an area alone. And well, the brunette that was obviously the green one's friend had given him an easy out. It was the game he was already playing with Jane after all. Loki grimaced at the thought of it gender swapping once more; the last time he had pulled that card out, the stories had spun out of control.
Distract one stallion and give its enhanced foal as a gift to the All-Father pegged him as the mother in of Sleipnir in every story; damnation on Harr for spreading that.
He wasn't interested in work animals that way, thank you very much.
The chunk of pavement he was crouched behind rumbled and moved skyward. The 'Hulk', as Coulson called him, stood with the giant piece of concrete hefted over his head, powdered dust and small rocks dropped to the ground. Loki, still in Thor's form, stared at the viridian monster.
"..Hello."
The Hulk roared.
Loki rolled backward, just missing the wall slam down on his body. He dodged to the left and behind the hulked out Banner.
"Hulk….Smash!" Banner shouted angrily, slamming his large green fists into the ground. Cracks in the road sprung up from the epicenter.
Beneath Loki's feet, the pavement buckled before splitting, sparking wires ripped apart revealing an underground corridor.
"These people are like furry rodents, tunnels everywhere," Loki muttered to himself as a large smirk graced his features. Perfect.
Loki looked up at the green behemoth heading his way. "Let's try that one more time, big guy!"
He released a charged explosive casting just as the fake Mjolnir impacted the cracked ground. Dust filled the air as the earth consumed them both, depositing them in an underground facility. Sparks falling from the cables above lit flammable materials near the edge creating a perfect smoke screen from those looking down from above. The burning fabrics enshrouded the room in black smoke; water sprinkled down from the ceiling.
For the first time in what felt like a long while, Loki released the form of his brother, body shrinking to his shorter, lanky stature. The green flowery shirt was much too large; Loki grimaced at its length, but there was no reason to alter it now.
The floor rumbled nearby as rubble shifted before exploding outward revealing the Hulk.
An angry one.
"Now now. You're threatening my freedom off this dust ball," Loki said flicking pebbles off the edge of his shirt sleeve. "So, I'm going to have to take you out. Pity. I'm sure we could be great allies."
The Hulk charged at him with a hearty bellow. A gigantic emerald fist plowed into Loki's body.
Then through it.
"Well. Perhaps minion would be a better word for you," Loki said from behind his current attacker. The Hulk turned about and jumped onto Loki, who vanished.
Another illusion.
"Hm... even that might be too much." Loki said hanging from the ceiling.
"Behold!" Loki shouted, pointing over the shoulder of the incoming Hulk. Without looking away from his prize the Hulk jumped upward at him before Loki could move. Banner's thick fingers wrapped around his throat.
Danger! Danger!
"Okay…not how I wanted to do this… but you can't seem to play by… the script," Loki wheezed as he grabbed at the larger arm to keep his weight up and off his neck.
The Hulk lifted Loki up to his face and roared.
Gross. Loki squinted as flecks of spittle hit his nose and cheeks. Now or never, he thought, his form rippling into a new one.
Loki's hair grew longer and lightened to an auburn shade; his face became softer and less angular. Eyes changed to a pale blue as his lips morphed to a wine shade. As approximate as he could get to Betty Ross' face and figure with only a brief meeting.
"…B..Betty?"
So the beast could talk after all.
Loki gasped in as much air as possible when his neck thinned while franticly holding on.
"Hmph, Betty," the mutated form of Banner rumbled, gripping him about the waist and lowering him to the rocky floor.
Loki looked straight up into the monstrous face from his position on the ground, and realized that the Hulk was extremely large. Larger than he thought at least – Ross didn't seem much shorter than the average human.
Banner leaned down and crouched on his knees, staring unblinkingly into the face of Betty Ross. A nerve spasmed underneath Loki's right eye and he took a step back.
Noisy blades whirled overhead, a helicopter if he remembered correctly. They rode in one from the airport to S.H.E.I.L.D's base. He was running out of time.
"How do I get you to calm down faster?" Loki mused. He looked down at himself and wrinkled his nose. The shirt ended near his knees, not form fitting at all.
"Betty."
"Yes, yes. That's me," Loki said idly waving a hand at the pacified creature. Shards of light cut through the smoke, the fires were going out. Time to wrap this up.
"Now I– Ack!" Loki shouted in surprise when Banner pulled him to the large green torso.
"Um, I don't quite like this." Loki laughed uneasily from his position against the green man. The pounding heartbeat of the Hulk seemed to be slowing; every burst of energy running though Loki's body shouted 'Nothing good can come from this! Escape!'.
Loki looked up when he noticed the arms getting closer to his body. The face was coming down closer as well, the Hulk's eyes closed.
Loki panicked and broke from the enclosed arms and the Hulk, who was not so green anymore– or nearly as massive, grunted as he collapsed face first into the floor. A boring and safe human once more.
Loki sighed in relief; he wasn't too sure how that last part was going to play out… and he'd rather not think about it.
"Betty?" The half naked dirty human asked from the mud and debris he had landed in. Banner, what Loki assumed was Banner's normal body, looked up at him blearily.
Loki still looked like Ross. He smiled sweetly and walked over to the downed man. Banner struggled to turn over; when he succeeded, he grinned upward at the person he believed to be Betty Ross.
Loki looked down at the grungy man, and the smile on his face warped into a smirk. Loki's leg shot out and he kicked Banner in the head just hard enough to knock him out.
Loki laughed out loud when Banner didn't move.
"I win!" He gloated as his body grew in stature and Loki became himself again.
The smoke screen obscuring his fight against Banner faded to little more than a grey shroud. Jane was calling down from above and beams of light searched for the two combatants.
"Just in time," Loki said as he resumed Thor's form.
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"I just don't understand it, Jane! The van! It's missing! Everything gone. All our research, gone!" Erik Selvig shouted later that evening when the power was restored to the main compound.
"Vans don't just get up and walk away. I'm sure the police will find it." Jane stirred the cream in her coffee mug before taking a sip. The four of them had been granted a general living wing for their stay at S.H.I.E.L.D's headquarters. She and Erik had taken command of the coffee pot after the fiasco with Banner demolishing the place had been solved.
It was funny in a way. Thor didn't seem all that enthused when the poor scientist had come by to apologize. There seemed to be a minimum distance Thor required between the two of them. She shrugged.
Whatever.
"The last time we had data stolen you went on a rampage. What's changed?" He asked looking through a cabinet. Erik's nose wrinkled in distaste when he discovered a jar of peanuts. Unsurprising– Erik had a peanut allergy that made him rather ill if he ingested any.
Not finding anything useful, he slouched down at the table; his full attention on her, as if waiting with baited breath for a screaming fit.
The corners of Jane's lips twitched upward. "I have copies hidden away in a safety deposit box."
Erik leaned back and sighed in relief. "One thing in our favor." He grimaced. "We'll still have to build everything from scratch though…"
"Uh huh," Jane said as she fiddled with the few pictures taken of the earlier battle scene. She felt slightly guilty, in her wish that Thor had kept the battle where they all could see. When he had fallen through the pavement she had been worried for his safety as well.
"Jane? Are you even listening to me?"
"Uh huh." She grabbed a picture and held it up to the light. "This picture looks distorted, why are there ripples on his face?" Jane mumbled to herself.
"What?"
"Look, right there!" Jane placed the picture on the table and tapped the right side of the Thunder God's face.
The picture itself showed an enraged Thor partially obscured by smoke standing in front of Banner's Hulk transformation. The smoke covered most of Thor's body. The security cam that had taken it had been pulverized by rock. Nothing else was recoverable from it.
"That is odd. His skin looks paler– and his eye looks off. Different shape. The quality of this picture is pretty bad. If this was the camera Banner tossed, no wonder."
"Everything else in this picture looks fine. It's just his face that is… odd."
"Jane. Faulty equipment easily explains it. He looked fine in the picture Darcy took of him."
The storm in Jane's face cleared. "He did, didn't he?" Her chair squeaked across the white linoleum. "Erik, you wouldn't happen to have a camera would you?"
He looked up from the paper frowning in confusion. "Yes. In my bag. Why?"
"I need to borrow it."
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It was an entertaining thing, Loki found, watching the humans clean up after the mess one of their own kind had caused. Clusters of people with armored vehicles moved piles of rubble. Like colonial bug groups they worked together as a unit, and Loki was sure they'd have this place cleaned up relatively fast for the primitiveness of their technology. It would probably be done in less than a century.
The window in the room he had chosen as his own had a great view of the destruction. In fact he made sure to choose the one with the best view, his needs came first after all.
A knock rattled against his door, and Jane poked her head in before he could answer it. Loki would remember to lock it next time. It would do to have someone waltz in if he decided to be himself for a while. And it annoyed him when people invaded his privacy.
He stayed on the bed staring out the window as she came inside and sat down on a rocker in the corner.
"What do you need?" He asked eyes still glued to the darkening evening.
"You only came out for food earlier. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Is everything okay?"
"My battle wounds have healed. I shall not bleed out on the spot." Loki smirked at her before turning back to the window.
"That's good. I wouldn't know how to help. I switched my major early in college. I was almost a nurse," she said before joining him on the bed. Loki's mouth twitched down slightly and he inched over. His eyes were drawn back to the crew rebuilding; like a delicious cut of meat, Loki would always remember the tank from earlier shatter the glass tower. What a fond memory.
"What do you see when you look out there?" Jane asked.
"The scene of a glorious battle. Carnage and triumph."
Her eyebrows rose at his answer. "Really?"
"Yes. The water shooting from that pipe yonder formed a wonderful cascade." Loki said, Thor's eyes glittering in interest.
"A wonderful cascade? Thor, that jet of water was strong enough to kill someone."
"Perhaps." He glanced at her through his periphery, as he wracked his mind for a better answer. Ah! "When the sun hit it a certain way it formed a rainbow." Loki smiled and nodded.
"…Sure. But it was still very dangerous."
"Yes, there is danger in chaos. But there is also beauty… once in a while." Loki answered running a hand through his currently blond hair.
"There's a saying here on earth. 'Every flower has its thorns.' Sometimes it applies to people as well."
Loki mentally flinched at that thought; he could list a few goddesses that could easily fit.
"Thor?" Jane asked fiddling with a piece of handheld earth technology.
"Hm?"
"You seem different… like a whole new person."
An interesting understatement. Apparently, he needed to try harder.
"My love for you has changed me." Loki reached for her empty hand and ceased the bothersome fiddling.
"Hold still." She raised the device to her face, surprising him.
"Jane wha– " The gadget in her hand, like so many others at the mall, flashed brightly at him. Loki's vision filled with spots.
Thor: 2
Loki: 2
If it did go Thor/Jane, I'd probably go Loki/Sif. I have plans for Darcy– that probably won't seem very original when I get there. Oh well. It should be funny at least.
Hm, I know I've taken a bit a free rage with the mythology, i.e. Sleipnir, but I really can't quite seen movieverse Loki preggers with a horse. I might spin a few others differently as well, so heads up if that happens?
Next chapter might be more earth happenings or possibly a Thor-centric one with Asgard. I haven't chosen yet.
R/R please. If you catch any mistakes let me know so I can fix'em.