Trapped

Crowley didn't waste any time in his attack. He knew roughly where Moriarty was, but he would never in a million years be able to find his exact location before he arrived on the ship. He was angry; angry at Loki for not helping him, angry at the others for kidnapping Moriarty, angry at Moriarty for not having the goddamn foresight to keep a gun by his bed.

He landed on the platform on the outside the ship. Within seconds, SHIELD agent guns were trained on him. With a swipe of his arm, every agent manning a gun was thrown to the right, some of them breaking arms or collarbones as they crashed into the metal walls. Crowley smirked and walked up to a door into the main part of the Helicarrier, kicking it in with a vengeance.

He was immediately met with what could have been a demon knife to the face by Sam. Crowley's arm luckily fended of the attack. He tried flipping Sam over, but his strength held out. With a swift kick to the shins and a slightly less swift knee to the stomach, Crowley had Sam leaning forward, in quite a bit of pain. He knocked the man to the floor, snatching the demon knife up from the ground.

'Getting a bit slow there, Sam?' asked Crowley, smiling cruelly, as Sam coughed. Hm. Maybe Crowley's knee to the torso had been stronger than he thought.

He looked around. Surprisingly, the other Winchester brother wasn't following his brother around like an overprotective dog for once. He looked around. Conveniently, he'd entered through a staff entrance; there was actually an honest-to-god sign with rough directions to everywhere. He assumed "cage" was the prison that Moriarty was being held in. Admittedly not the most obvious of directions, but it was more plausible than either "cafeteria" or "flight deck".

Crowley stormed off in the direction of this supposed cage and was met with a blast from that infernal Iron Man suit. He turned to face it, fully aware that while he was capable of dodging the suit, he had no hope of fighting the man within while he was wearing it.

He waited until Tony landed and shot another fireball out of his hands before disappearing and reappearing in an adjacent corridor, about ten metres down from Tony. Crowley raced along, nearly running to find where this cage was.

He grabbed an arrow out of the air as he entered a slightly larger than average room. It had been shot directly towards his temple. The beeping noise that it made prompted him to throw it violently away, towards where the arrow came from; he heard a blast and turned to see the arrow-shooting one hanging by one hand from a metal balcony. Crowley had no doubt that the man could pull himself up and back into action very shortly, so he hurried on into the corridor.

A clear cylindrical room was visible from the corridor he was in. He could see Moriarty's form leaning carefully against the glass wall on the inside, facing away from him.

Crowley burst into the corridor around the prison cell Moriarty was held in, Sam's demon knife in hand. He walked forward with determination, opening the door to the cell.

'Crowley?' asked Moriarty, looking around at the noise, 'What are you doing…'

'Getting you out,' said Crowley, hitting a button he hoped to hell was the right one and walking into the cell.

'No, don't!' said Moriarty loudly, his hand out as if to push Crowley out of the room himself, but it was too late.

'You know, you son of a bitch,' said Dean, walking into the corridor, 'I'd have thought that would've been harder.' He pressed a button on the panel and the door slid shut behind Crowley.

Crowley smiled winningly and went to put his hand on Moriarty's shoulder.

'Oh, don't, Crowley, you're making it worse,' started Moriarty as Crowley's hand hit his shoulder.

Crowley looked at his hand in confusion when they remained exactly where they were.

'Why aren't we… oh…'

He looked upward, to where Moriarty was pointing, and saw a pale white pentagram drawn carefully on the roof. Crowley examined it for mistakes, and found that, true to form, the Winchester brothers had kept the pentagram perfect. He almost winced at the basic trap.

'Well, what do you know,' said Crowley to himself, 'Loki was right.'

Thor, Sherlock and the Doctor walked in from various entrances around the cell. Moriarty had his head in his hands, facing firmly towards the ground, shaking his head in embarrassment.

'I'll be perfectly honest, I didn't think that would work,' said the Doctor.

'However it was done, the Demon King is now trapped,' said Thor, 'we must move swiftly to secure Loki as well.'

'Loki's not coming.' said Crowley.

'What?' asked Thor. 'No, it is in his very nature to walk into this.'

'Crowley, Loki will come now, because, imbecile, YOU WEREN'T MEANT TO COME AFTER ME!'

Crowley pointed at Moriarty, a confused expression on his face. 'But, they'd have tortured you. You'd have told them everything.'

'I've been tortured before, Crowley, and I can handle it, IDIOT!'

'Oh.'

Sherlock smirked.

'Loki is going to come now,' said Sherlock, smiling, 'Moriarty knows that as well as I do; he's simply trying to throw you off the scent. '

'Mind explaining that, Mr Deductioning?' asked Dean.

Sherlock raised his eye at the wording before explaining. 'Loki has an army of frost giants, according to Thor. Crowley has an army of demons, according to you. If the frost giants are already making appearances around the globe, then of course the demons are already in place. I'm assuming they're inhabiting people in positions of significant power. Loki has no way of controlling these demons; that power rests squarely with Crowley. Dean, how do demons communicate without their standard teleportation?'

'Blood,' said Dean roughly, 'they talk through a cup of human blood.'

'Somehow I believe Moriarty has a safeguard in place to avoid being used for that particular purpose,' said Sherlock. Both he and Crowley turned to look at Moriarty.

'Oh, well done, you,' said Moriarty, 'If Loki's coming, there's nothing you can do about it, Sherlock. There's nothing any of you can do.'

The Avengers in the room turned to look at each other.

'Look, Jim,' said Dean, 'I think we can handle it, alright?'

'You won't do so well if you underestimate him,' said Crowley, 'He may be a bit of a prat, but he's a powerful prat.'

'I have trained with him since we were born,' said Thor, 'I know exactly what he is capable of, and the ways most likely to stop him.'

'He's never tried a rescue before though, has he?' asked Crowley.

Thor thought for a moment.

'The demon makes an excellent point. For once, he has allies he does not intend to dispose of.'

'If we…'

'Loki will not easily be reasoned with, Doctor,' said Thor, 'I know you wish to offer him a choice. But it is futile. If there is a way out, he will always choose power. The only way is to return him to Asgard and await his punishment there. '

The Doctor sighed.

'Just let me ask, just once, and then you do what you have to.'

Thor nodded, though it was with an air of futility.

'Wonder where Loki is, then…' said Dean.

As a matter of fact, Loki was angry.

It had been two hours since Crowley's "If I'm not back by now I'm stuck" time limit. Crowley. Stupid goddamn Crowley. Sure, the two of them didn't have the ability to spread footage of their fight live and internationally, but they sure could cause a lot of trouble without Moriarty.

They could have won the war, mocked Moriarty mercilessly for not being a part of it, released him and allowed him to have some mediocre amount of control over the Earth, all without his help. The only difference would have been the initial lack of publicity, and the offset would be wounding Moriarty's pride beyond repair.

Which, Loki reminded himself; he attended to HIMSELF when he LANDED IN TIMES SQUARE.

In anger he shot the wall in his throne room in Jotunheim with his spear. A burst of energy hit a window and the glass went smashing to the floor.

He was going to have to get Crowley out. Moriarty wasn't as necessary, but he may as well pick up the weak mortal while he was saving the idiotic demon from his own stupid behaviour.

He needed a distraction. He needed to get as many people on the outside of that flying ship as he could. Then he needed a way to sneak in and the power to destroy all those who stood in his way.

It was a shame that he couldn't just appear in the cell Crowley and Moriarty were no doubt being held in. For a start, he didn't know where it was. Secondly, Crowley had told him that he could only be trapped by a pentagram, and even Loki couldn't pull him out of that.

Besides. It was time to make a scene. It was time to show these Avengers who they were dealing with. Or, at least, that the last man they were dealing with was rather more threatening and vicious than those two idiots they'd already managed to capture.

Loki morphed into his battle gear, horned helmet and all, and vanished.

'What now?' asked John. The whole lot of them were now sitting around a table, amiably sharing drinks. They were discussing the rather successful tactics they'd used. They'd set most of it up, obviously; it would be far easier to get Crowley into the pentagram if they convinced him that they were unprepared and disoriented by his arrival.

'Now, we wait,' said Fury. There was mixed response; impatience, fear, and mild discontent. Generally, though, they couldn't wait for Loki to arrive.

The three of them trapped would make their lives a whole lot easier.

Of course, that's precisely what wasn't going to happen.

Author's note; Nope. Still getting over the surprise of having actual reviewers.

I do want Bruce to Hulk out at some point; I'm planning that.

Updates will be mildly sporadic over the next week; I'm insanely busy (But don't think I've forgotten you guys! I'll get there, I promise.)

Onthestage39, I'm going to drag the idea of this out as long as I can.

Raining Sun, I am desperately trying to figure out a way to reference Harry Potter in here without the characters making any sort of major appearance... but it may have to wait for a later fic. I'll definitely try though!

Linustoday, your writing is infinitely better than mine, I just have the advantage/disadvantage of mine being fanfiction, and yours requiring actual imagination. This means that while I may have reviews on a story on Fanfiction, you will inevitable have a category devoted to fans writing about your characters.