A Meeting of the minds.

Still Part IV

"Come on. I know he's a serious nut-bar, but I don't think beheading is the way to go here." Bruce wasn't sure he should be here with these people if he was the voice of reason.

I wanna know why Loki let us take him? He's not leading an army from here." Steve looked to Thor for an answer.

"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats. You could smell crazy on him." Faith totally agreed with Bruce's description.

"See! That's what I'm saying." She gave Bruce a huge smile. 'Hmm. Now if there was only someway you could combine that sense of humor with that body. I'd tame that hulking beast of destruction anytime.'

"Have a care of how you speak, Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days." Natasha reported the information as a matter of fact, without putting any emotion behind her statement.

Thor backed off a bit with his building anger, "He's adopted." He weakly explained.

"Let me guess you were the popular one where you come from, and he was the tag along. Asgard's a warrior culture and judging from the looks of him, he was more into the bookish side of thing. Got teased a lot I'm betting. Jocks are a cruel breed where ever they're from." Xander guessed.

"Thor's hold of his temper slipped. "Speak plainly, if you have an accusation to make do so openly? Do not couch your words with hidden meaning Knight of the Black Sword." Thor faced Xander Hammer in hand.

Xander met the challenge with the black sword. "I'm saying that 'Jocks' will be 'Jocks' no matter where they are, and while you personally may not be responsible for what he did, you and this Asgard of yours are responsible for how he turned out. I'm not defending him, or his actions, but you had a say in how he turned out, and how he turned out sure ain't pretty."

"Xander please stop this. What's gotten into you?" Xander gave Dawn a pointed look and she got the message. "Now's not the time. Thor please calm down. No one's accusing you of anything. Xander's still dealing with your brother trying to empty out his soul and taking over his body. Is soul sucking a bad thing where you're from?" Dawn calmed the two hot heads down before they came to blows.

"Iridium... What do they need the iridium for?" Bruce tried to steer the conversation in another direction in an effort to ease the building tension in the room. Once again he regreted coming on board. When he was the voice of reason is this raging storm of testosterone driven environment the world was in need of a serious dose of therapy.

The doors slid open and agent Coulson along with Stark came into the room. "It's a stabilizing agent." Tony turned to Phil and continued their conversation. Tony was trying to get Coulson to loosen the tie a bit. If there was a guy in more serious need of loosening up, he had yet to meet him. "It's just for the weekend. I'll fly you there, we'll have lunch."

Phil gave no indication that he would be taking up the invitation any time soon and left Stark to continue with his explanation.

"...means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at SHIELD." He tapped Thor on the biceps as he went by Thor was not amused, "No hard feelings 'Pointbreak', you've got a mean swing." Oblivious to Thor's reaction, or he just didn't care, Tony continued with his explanation, "...also means that the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants..." Tony looked around the room and saw that most of the gathered agents busy at their stations, except for that one guy playing the video game. His attention was diverted by a pair of screens place a few feet apart. He covered one eye while looking at one and the turned to the other screen. "...How does Fury even see these?" he pointed at the widely spaced display panels.

"He turns." Commander Hill was so not impressed by this playboy pretending to be an expert at everything.

"Sounds exhausting..." he studied the equipment curiously, "...the rest of the raw materials agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he needs is a power source..." while everyone was dazzled with his look at me act and not what I'm doing he continued with the distraction while he carefully placed a few toys of his own design to drain every piece of data SHIELD has been hiding from him. "...something with the right energy density... something to kick start if you will."

"When did you become an expert on thermo-nuclear astrophysics?" Hills asked snidely.

"Last night."

She still wasn't impressed she told herself despite her interest. While Tony and Bruce got into a scientific discussion trying to guess what Loki was doing, Xander retraced Stark steps. He spotted the extra add-ons without letting anyone notice what he was doing. While the brains were talking he saw Bobbi angling towards the Black Widow, he made his way towards them, but he let Bobbi have her say.

"When were you going to tell me about Clint?"

"Its need to know...and you don't have the proper clearance." Natasha wasn't trying to be nasty, but she wasn't about to divulge SHIELD secrets to anyone with Fury giving the okay first. "...here comes the Director now. I'm certain he'll answer all your questions." she turned to point to Fury to hide her smirk. Even she couldn't pull that one off with a straight face. She walked away. She didn't feel like dealing with Morse and her insecurity issues. She had a partner to rescue.

The meeting quickly broke apart after a few minutes, Stark with Banner, Faith caught up to the Widow and Xander took Dawn and Bobbi with him to pin Fury down and some background on what they were dealing with. That and to make a few calls.

'Damn. Why did this have to happen during Apocalypse season.'

Fury blew them off and went off to go spy on an orphanage or something somewhere and Xander placed his calls.

End Part IV

Research and other Activities.

Finally Part V

As the future avengers broke up Xander finally had the opportunity he'd been waiting for. He saw Stark drag Bruce off to some lab and Steve Rogers went down a different corridor.

He signaled Bobbi to follow Captain America discreetly. And sent Faith after Tony Stark, to keep an eye out, and if what Bruce said was correct, to keep the Hulk from making an appearance they could ill afford at this time.

All these commands were transmitted via a type of slayer silent battle code developed by Xander himself. He discovered it by accident while in Africa. He found that he could better communicate with the new slayers when he stopped trying to use the translation books Andrew loaded him up with every time he went to the Dark Continent.

This code was something that worked for only the core Scoobies and slayers. No other watcher was able to fully grasp it. A simpler version had to be developed for when watchers that weren't in Sunnydale at the time of the casting of Willow's empowerment spell, had to work with the slayers in the field on mainly combat heavy missions.

Xander had insisted that all team members, both watchers and slayers go through a version of the Special Forces training programs, to keep the new council up to date with the rapidly changing nature of modern combat they frequently had to go up against. When you gave a Slayer body armor and modern weapons, she became a truly frightening creature of precision destruction. On her own or in teams trained for these new missions.

The new code when employed by a Scooby, like Xander or Dawn along with a Slayer team, it can be nearly undetectable. The only one to notice that something was odd in the meeting was the Black Widow, but that was to be expected. A super soldier as old as the Widow didn't live as long as she did with development a truly frightening set of survival skills.

All it took for a message to be transmitted with this new code were body language facial expressions, which most new watcher could learn, and an under lying connection between the Slayers and the core Scooby members themselves.

Therefore during the meeting Xander was able to give his team their assignments, without a single word being said. That unfortunately had set off the Black Widows paranoia senses. She knew that 'THEY' were out to get her. She just didn't know what the hell they were saying and it was driving her to distraction.

"Hey Nat. Wanna come with..." Faith asked the Natasha to tag along with the guys.

Natasha had no choice but to do that, if she was going to keep an eye on their two of their most important assets.

As the ladies strolled along Xander couldn't hep but look at two of the most beautiful and deadly views known to mankind.

Dawn slugged him, and it hurt. Over the years she had stronger and faster, almost a mini slayer in her own right. But it was her other skills that earned her the right to be on Xander's team.

Xander sighed, "I deserved that, didn't I. Don't hold back, tell me?"

"Dawn slugged him again and walked away. Xander hung his head in shame as he followed along like a whipped puppy.

Phil Coulson snorted. He wasn't buying the act. He stayed as far as he could from them, to give the impression of privacy, but he tagged along to keep them out of trouble. He knew trouble and Xander Harris spelled trouble with a capital 'T'.

SHIELD Gamma Lab

Faith walked in, Followed by Natasha. The boys were in the middle of one of their tiresome discussions. "Hi boys. Miss me?" she gave them her best come hither smile.

Surprisingly enough Bruce was the first one to react. He went to Faith and took a deep breath. "Oh God."

"You like?" Faith teased.

"Oh yeah.""

"Hey. What about me?" Tony was feeling left out. He turned to the other drop dead gorgeous creature in the room and stopped in his tracks. He was absolutely certain from the look the Widow gave him that if he took another step he was a dead man.

To be continued.