A few hours later she felt him arrive. It was like a bomb had gone off in her psyche. She thanked the heavens that she wasn't alone when it happened. Loki was there. She was still checking out the files she's collected from SHIELD's database about the Tesseract when the weight of the world suddenly came collapsing down onto the center of her brain. An iron weight crash-landed into her gut and the pupils of her eyes dilated, shrinking back into their sockets as her brain was shell-shocked from the blunt force of his psychic energy. Diana's heart was screaming against the cage of her ribs and begged to be freed while the God of Mischief was being escorted in chains down into the belly of the Helicarrier through several tons of metal. She barely controlled her trembling breaths and desperately clenched her shaking hands into fists to try and steady them. In all her years as an Agent, no, in all of her life, she'd never felt anything like this.
"You okay, Diana?" She turned her head to look at Bruce, her panic blazing like wildfire in her stormy gray eyes. "But you need to remain calm;" she reminded herself, exhaling slowly and silently slipping on her mask of indifference and only nodded casually. The look that he gave her eerily resembled one of pity, and it sparked a familiar anger inside of her that began to burn right through her fear. Loki's footsteps were echoing in her ears, stepping closer and closer to the room that held her and Banner together. And as the seconds dragged by, he was getting even closer now, dangerously close. His aura was very forceful, almost even burdensome, and from the considerable distance, Diana worried about the threat he posed with his power. This guy was definitely a force to be reckoned with, and she already knew what he was capable of doing to get what he wanted. But she wasn't going to let that bastard get away with it today, she'd be damned if she didn't make sure of it.
"Bruce…" Diana wasn't sure if she called his name out loud, thought it, or psychically ordered his attention to the window looking out into the metallic hallway from their lab, but with the way he swiped his glasses off his face and rubbed them with his thumb under the table, she knew he was just as anxious as she was at the intimidating sight. Diana felt every nerve-ending in her body was being scorched by his energy, her teeth slowly grinded against her jaw as the two of them finally made eye contact; a molten silver against a vicious, vivid green. Loki was adorned in leather and iron armor, gloriously black and green clad, with a wicked countenance in the long, elegant strides of his legs as he towered over the guards. When he regarded them with his nod, the god's mischievous little smirk only aggravated Diana further as he held her gaze without waver, as if there was nothing separating him from tearing this entire facility apart with his bare hands if he really wanted to.
With her nails digging into the soft center of her palms, Diana felt the grimace burrowing into her brow dig deeper into her skin as she focused her energy into the center of Loki's forehead; her perception slipping as smoothly as a snake into his devious little brain. After the long years of practice, it wouldn't take long before she'd be able to expose his entire plot down to the wire and have it presented into a nice little PowerPoint for all of the Avengers to see. It would be over so fast for Loki that Diana almost felt sorry for him. Almost, but not quite. With her gaze steeled firmly on him, Loki trailed his emerald eyes from her to Bruce from across the lengthy window, pettily eyeing them like the inferior beings they were as he was escorted by a small militia of SHIELD Agents towards his holding cell. Poor guy would probably manage to forget her face by the time he got there, and it would make Diana's victory so much sweeter. The Great and Powerful Loki brought down by the fearsome nameless, faceless SHIELD Agent that didn't even have a nametag. She was on pins-and-needles just thinking about it; she couldn't wait to see the look on his cute little face when she handed his ass to him on a platter. "Wait, I think he's cute now? Eyes on the prize, Crypt, geez!"
Diana wasn't even going to remotely address the tiny part of her that had felt the urge to admire Loki's audacity-filled face, fine featured and handsome as it may have been, because that would have just been fundamentally wrong on sooooo many levels. What was it with every villain she encountered with being hot? It was like they paid them extra for having a six-pack or something. But when all things were said and done, Diana knew this guy was very bad news, and made the mental decision to only concentrate on how much she loathed him instead of allowing her eyes to linger at the back of the God of Mischief's raven colored head as he disappeared down the hallway, the marches of his guards finally receding into the background. Diana's nostrils flared slightly as she exhaled in relief, glad to know that now she was at least in the presence of a killing machine with a conscience instead of a narcissistic Norse God with daddy issues. From behind, she heard Bruce let out a sigh as well, all too glad that the source of all their stress was out of their sight for the time being.
She was still standing at Tony's lab station, with her arms folded across her chest as she went over what had just happened in her head. She felt like something was amiss, like when she thought she felt her phone vibrate but it never actually did. Something wasn't clicking where it should have. When she thought about it, it was Loki: the way he looked at her. There was something intuitive she had seen in Loki's eyes that seriously bothering her. When she had tried to get a reading from his mind, something just wasn't panning out the way it was supposed to. The little panorama of his memories flashed too cinematically, it was taking her too far back into his past instead of focusing on what he was planning for the future. All she had seen were brief scenes of him and Thor as children, along with bits and pieces of their life back in Asgard. Her skin was already crawling with the gross, raw impact of the knowledge she had absorbed from him and now he was throwing her a damn psychic curveball. It was almost as if he had done it purposely….
"Oh Hell no," She cursed under her breath as the realization started to sink in. She had no idea how in the hell he was able to do what he did, but somehow he was able to get the drop on her whenever she tried sneaking around in his thoughts. Loki knew she had been trying to read his mind; somehow he had been able to detect her trying to weed out whatever secrets he was trying to spring on them and now he was throwing whatever random memory he happened to have to veer her off course. She wasn't seeing what she was supposed to be seeing; she was witnessing something treacherous in his mind, some kind of sick game that he had already thought of in case someone like her tried to sneak out any information from him. And it was seriously pissing Diana off. One way of another, she was going to find out what exactly it was he was hiding from them. Diana's anger surged and she suddenly slammed her knuckles onto Tony's work bench and stormed out of the lab without a word. She was going to be damned if she let Loki get the better of her at her own game.