A/N: And another chapter here. This one has some definite edits to Lauren's dialogue, as I felt like the whole "reveal" of what Loki was trying to do was sort of..."duh", given what he says to Nick Fury.
Disclaimer: I do not own Marvel, Disney, Fox, Glee, or any of these people or ideas.
(The helicarrier flies through the clouds. Inside, Lauren walks down the halls, escorted by a troop of armed guards. The bass thumps in, followed by the drums. And then Lauren sings.)
Lauren: Here come old flat top
He come groovin' up slowly
He got joo joo eyeballs
He one holy rollers
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker, he just do what he please
(She walks past a window - the lab, where Sam is working. He looks up as the guard walks past. Lauren smiles through the window at him. Sam turns back and rubs his temples.)
Sam: He wear no shoeshine
He got toe jam football
He got monkey finger
He shoot Coca Cola
(Cut to a cylindrical glass cage. The door closes, locking Lauren inside. Will walks in and over to a control panel nearby.)
Will: He say I know you, you know me
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free
Come together, right now
Over me
(Lauren just turns and looks at him, smirking.)
Will: In case it's unclear, you try to escape - you so much as scratch that glass-
(Will pushes a button and the floor beneath the cell opens up to nothing, the wind screams.)
Will: Thirty thousand feet straight down in a steel trap. You get how that works?
(He pushes a button and closes the floor. He gestures first to Lauren.)
Will: Ant. (gestures to panel) Boot.
Lauren: It's an impressive cage. Built just for me?
Will: Built for something even stronger.
Lauren: Oh, I see. (turns to a camera)...
(Cut to a conference table near the bridge. On the glass table a monitor is up - Lauren is on it, Brittany is watching it. We see Quinn observing intently too.)
Lauren (on the video): ...How desperate are you, that you would...come up with such a thing?
(Cut back to the cage. Will moves toward the cage slowly.)
Will: How desperate am I? You threaten my world with war, you steal a force you can't hope to control, you talk about peace, and you kill 'cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did.
Lauren: (mocking) Ooh. It burns you to have come so close, to have the Tesseract, to have power- unlimited power, and for what? (smiles and faces the camera)
(We see that Emma is watching Lauren on a screen on the main bridge.)
Lauren (on the video): A warm light for all mankind to share?
(Lauren faces Will again.)
Lauren: And then to be reminded what real power is.
Will (smiling): Well, let me know if 'real power' wants a magazine or something.
(Will turns and exits.)
Will: He roller coaster
He got early warning
He got muddy water
He one Mojo filter
He say one and one and one is three
Got to be good looking cause he's so hard to see
Come together, right now
Over me
(Cut back to the conference table. The monitor on Finn's side of the table turns off. Finn, in the suit with no cowl, looks up.)
Sam: (chuckling) She really grows on you, doesn't she?
Finn: Lauren's gonna drag this out. So, Quinn, what's her play?
Quinn: She has an army called the Adrenali. They're not of Asgard nor any world known. She means to lead them against your people. They will win her the Earth, in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract.
Finn: (disbelieving) An army, from outer space?
Sam: So, she's building another portal. That's what she needs Mercedes Jones for.
Quinn: Mercedes?
Sam: (looking guilty) She's just an astrophysicist...
Quinn: She's a friend.
Brittany: Lauren has them under some kind of spell- along with one of ours.
Finn: I wanna know why Lauren let us take her. She's not leading an army from here.
Sam: I don't think we should all be focusing on Lauren. That girl's brain is a bag full of cats, you can smell crazy on her.
Quinn: (threatening) Have care how you speak. Lauren is beyond reason but she is of Asgard, and she is my sister.
Brittany: But...she killed eighty people in two days.
Quinn: ...She's adopted.
Sam: I think it's about the mechanics. Iridium, what do they need the Iridium for? If I could just remember-
Artie (from offscreen): It's a stabilizing agent!
(Artie and Kurt come walking in.)
Artie: (to Kurt, quietly) I'm saying, take a weekend; I'll fly you to Lima. Keep love alive. (With a nod, Kurt peels off from Artie, who is heading over to Quinn.) Means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at TITANS headquarters. (to Quinn, hands up) No hard feelings, Amazon, you got a mean swing. (Quinn gives Artie a look as he walks to the control panels.) Also, means the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Lauren wants.
(Reaching the bridge, Artie speaks to the TITANS personnel as if he was the commander)
Artie: Ah, raise the mizzen mast, ship the topsails. (The personnel look at him strangely. He points into the crowd) That girl is playing Starcraft! Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did.
(Artie pauses. Now he covers one eye and looks around, speaking to Emma nearby)
Artie: How does Will even see these?
Emma: (with attitude) He turns!
Artie: Sounds exhausting!
(He begins messing with the screens.)
Artie: The rest of the raw materials, Santana can get her hands on pretty easily. Only major component she still needs is a power source of high energy density. (He reaches under one of the screens and places a button-sized device there) Something to kick start the cube.
Emma: (disbelieving) When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?
Artie: (walking to the table) Last night. (as they look at him, also disbelieving) The packet, Mercedes' notes, the extraction theory papers...am I the only one who did the reading?
Finn: Does Lauren need any particular kind of power source?
Sam: I think...(trying to remember) she'd have to heat the Cube to a hundred and twenty million kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier.
Artie: Unless Mercedes has figured out how to stabilize the Quantum Tunneling effect.
Sam: Well, if she could do that she'd really just need a nuclear reactor.
Artie: Finally. Someone who speaks English.
Finn: (to the others) Is that what just happened?
(Artie and Sam shake hands.)
Artie: It's good to meet you, Sam. Your work on this stuff actually contributed quite a bit to the scientific community. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster.
Sam: ...(embarrassed) Thanks.
(Will enters.)
Will: Sam is only here to track the Cube. I was hoping you might join him.
Finn: I'd start with that stick of hers. It may be magical but it works an awful lot like a CARMEL weapon.
Will: I don't know about that, but it is powered by the Cube. And I'd like to know how Lauren used it to turn two of the sharpest women I know into her personal flying monkeys.
Quinn: (confused) Monkeys? I do not understand-
Finn: I do!
(The entire room goes instantly silent, staring at Finn.)
Finn: (pleased) I...I understood that reference.
(Everyone stays silent. Finally-)
Artie: Shall we play, Sam?
Sam: This way, dude.
(The two men walk off. We look over to see a female TITANS worker, with auburn hair and a mouth full of shiny teeth. She turns back and resumes playing Starcraft again.)
(In the lab, Sam and Artie are working on tracking the Cube. "Where'd You Go" is playing from a computer. Sam is scanning the scepter with a device.)
Sam: The Gamma readings are definitely consistent with Mercedes' reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take a while to process.
Artie: (working on a screen, chuckling a bit) You know, you should come by Abrams Tower some time. Lots of science-y stuff, plus there's a great nightlife in New York.
Sam: Thanks but...last time I was in New York I kind of broke...Harlem.
Artie: Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension, no surprises.
(He zaps Sam in the side with a piece of equipment.)
Sam: Ow!
Finn (entering): Hey! Are you nuts?
Artie: Jury's out! (to Sam) You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?
Sam: Well-
Finn: (angry) Is everything a joke to you?
Artie: Funny things are.
Finn: Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny. No offense, Sam.
Sam: No, it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things.
Artie: You're tip-toeing, big man. You need to strut.
Finn: And you need to focus on the problem, Mister Abrams.
Artie: You think I'm not? (getting serious) Why did Will call us in? Why now, why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables.
Finn: You think Will's hiding something?
Artie: He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets. (He gestures to Sam.) It's bugging him too, isn't it?
Sam: Uh, ah, I just wanna finish my work here and-
Finn: Sam?
Sam: (after a pause) "A warm light for all mankind," Lauren's jab at Will about the Cube.
Finn: I heard it.
Sam: (to Artie) Well, I think that was aimed at you. Even if Santana didn't tell Lauren about the tower, it was still all over the news.
Finn: The Abrams Tower? That big ugly-
(Artie gives him a look.)
Finn: -building in New York?
Sam: It's powered by an arc reactor, self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for, what, a year?
Artie: It's just the prototype. (to Finn) I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now, that's what he's getting at.
Sam: So, why didn't TITANS bring him in on the Tesseract project? What are they even doing in the energy business in the first place?
Artie: I should probably look into that...as soon as my decryption program finishes breaking into all of TITANS' secure files.
Finn: I'm sorry, did you say-
Artie: RORY has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours I'll know every dirty secret TITANS has ever tried to hide.
Finn: Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around.
Artie: An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome.
Finn: I think Lauren's trying to wind us up. This is a woman who means to start a war and if we don't stay focused, she'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them.
Artie: Following's not really my style.
Finn: And you're all about style, aren't you?
Artie: Out of the people in this room, which one is A: wearing a spangly outfit and B: not of use?
Sam: (almost quietly) Finn, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?
Finn: (after a pause) Just find the Cube.
(Finn exits the lab, pauses and turns, walking off in another direction. The other two resume their work.)
Artie: That's the guy my dad never shut up about? Wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice.
Sam: Guy's not wrong about Lauren, she does have the jump on us.
Artie: What she's got is an ACME dynamite kit. It's gonna blow up in her face, and I'm gonna be there when it does.
Sam: (smiling, fiddling with a computer) And I'll read all about it.
Artie: Mmhmm, or, you'll be suiting up with the rest of us.
Sam: Now, you see I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, like a nerve, it's a nightmare.
Artie: You know, my legs didn't even work. I built something to make my body work again. This runs it- (he taps the arc reactor) -this little circle of light. It's part of me now, not just armor. It's a terrible privilege.
Sam: But you control it.
Artie: Because I learned how.
Sam: It's different.
(Artie wipes clean the screen between them that Sam was working on.)
Artie: Hey, I read all about your accident. That much Gamma exposure should've killed you.
Sam: So you're saying that the Hulk - (realizing his slip) the Other Guy...saved my life? That's nice. That's nice sentiment. Saved it for- what?
Artie: (shrugging) I guess we'll find out.
Sam: You may not enjoy that.
Artie: And you just might.
(We zoom out on the two men bonding.)
(Cut to elsewhere in the ship. After several seconds, the entrance to a storage room is forced open. Finn walks in, looking around for something.
We cut a truck driving along. It drives into a tunnel. Inside the truck, Mercedes places the iridium into a device by the Tesseract. As it begins to glow, she smiles.)
A/N: Gleevengers Playlist:
Come Together by The Beatles, sung by Lauren, Sam, and Will
Where'd You Go by Fort Minor (background)
Yup, a little more Artie-specific backstory. Love that.