Stuttgart, Germany. A building of white stone, crammed with simpering mortals gathered to view some artifact of an ancient society completely unattached to their own. They postured and preened. They longed to be seen, admired, sought after.
It made the evening all the more delicious that these mortals were no more noble in their play than he. And significantly less far-sighted.
He would rule them.
Sometimes, he forgot that all that was only the ploy.
But it little mattered here what it was he remembered and what he forgot. Better to be uncertain. Better to hide what it was he truly sought.
What is your mind, when it's not your mind?
The Hawk was nearly in place.
The music of their stringed instruments floated over the noise of the gathering like a palpable thing. The quarry would be readying itself for the speech it meant to give. It would have some type of guard. Which would prove only the beginning of the night's entertainment.
There it was.
The Hawk was in position. All that was wanting was before him. Down below, in the inner court where the masses gathered and the quarry had only just begun its discourse.
The next move would appear to be his.
Past the murals decorating the walls he went down the long, twisted staircase.
The Guard caught his movement, "Entschuldigen Sie–"
He caught the scepter in his hand and brought the stone against the soft place at the side of the man's head and made in one swoop for his charge. Taking him by the collar, Loki dragged him a few paces and forced him forward to the artifact.
An altar.
He'd laughed when the Hawk had told him that.
He drove his arm down, sending the blithering man around and about onto his back. With a choked grunt, its protestations strangled.
The flare of satisfaction was delicious as it rose to his head and Loki swallowed it back into his throat.
The people woke from their shock. They shook off the first numbness of it, stammering backwards.
He drew the device from inside his coat and pressed the trigger at the end of it.
The signal travelled from one half of the mechanism to the other, the one that Barton held. The end of it opened, answering the Hawk's response.
Perfect.
The man under Loki's hand twitched, coming out of the daze.
He'd wish he hadn't. The device whirred as Loki brought his hand down, shoving the thing deep into the man's eye socket. The image would travel between halves to Barton where it would unlock what he needed opened.
The body spasmed under Loki's hand.
Horror rose, palpable in the air as the people remembered themselves. A scream flew free and the first few cognizant ones caught up their robes and stumbled for the exit. Then the others, the masses, woke. They trampled one another as they fled. Stampeding like cattle who'd caught scent of a predator.
And he was a predator worth fleeing.
Not some powerless thing to be bent. To be broken.
To have this effect. To be moving, taking action.
The rush was sweet. It licked up the back of his throat. It burned like fire about the trunk of a tree. And he would have laughed. His fingers itched to tear and grind and force their will to his.
He would rule them.
He pushed at the Gem and armor like that he'd worn in another life materialized about him. Gold and black and predatory.
He moved out of the building and into the night beyond with the deliberate slowness of a thing that knows its prey caught beyond hope.
They couldn't flee him.
And besides the grandiose spectacle he cut to draw the belated eyes of all the world, the competition would need the time he bought to catch him up.
He took in the lay of the city, the scrambling of the frantic people.
A little world. A little people.
As masses will when in flight, they travelled together in one pack. They hadn't gotten far enough yet from the source of their terror that they thought to splinter off on their own.
Movement to his left. One of their vehicles was charging him.
You dare.
He hit it with a blast from the spear. The vehicle sailed through the air and went skidding along the length of the road behind him, sparks darting out from under its crumpled hood.
The power of the thing he accessed flowed through him and burned in his veins. It was dangerous, but it was good.
This second quarry was caught.
He threw an image of himself before them and they recoiled.
"Kneel before me."
Crying out they stumbled for footing and he cast two more of his simulacra, raising them at the left hand and the right of the mob.
"I said," he drew himself up before them. Smashed the butt of the spear into the ground and light shot between the simulacra of the stones. The mortals screamed in terror for their lives and Loki shouted, "Kneel!"
Terror-stricken, they no more sought escape. The people knelt.
And Loki wanted to laugh. He spread his arms to all of them. They shook with fear.
If this fear of him spread, then there was hope they would take action.
"Is this not simpler?" he waded in amongst them, "Is this not your natural state?" there was no sound amongst them besides his own voice.
"It's the unspoken truth," he continued, "of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power,"
"So I'm no more than another stolen relic, to be locked up here until you have use of me?"
"For identity,"
He pushed it away. This was a bigger game than ever he'd known.
He looked them all over. "You were made to be ruled," he promised, "In the end," he purred, "you will always kneel."
Bare paces away, one of them moved.
Then the mortal got to his feet.
He stood.
An old, old man.
Surely this could not be the opposition.
Loki all-but gaped at him.
You have Stark and his machines, Banner and his monster, and you send one old man?
The old man raised his chin very levelly. "Not to men like you."
And Loki realized that this man was standing on his own. For his own. A volunteer.
Admirable, but stupid. And infinitely more dangerous.
"There are no men like me." Giving a shake of his head, Loki swallowed a laugh, at himself. At the absurdity of it.
An impenetrable sadness washed off the man. Like a memory of what Midgard used to be. A breath of the futility before them.
"There are always men like you," he said.
The people were waking, shifting, turning about to see who could have had the nerve to stand up to this terror. His courage flickered in the depths of several eyes.
If one man could stand…
This could not be tolerated. Loki had promised blood and he'd promised conquest. Rebellion could not be born. Not now, not yet.
"Look to your elder, people," Loki levelled the spear.
It might be that one death would force SH.I.E.L.D.'s mysterious hand.
"Let him be an example."
The Gem sent off a blast and all in the same moment there was a flash and he'd crashed to his knees. Pain shuddered through every part of him. Deflection. He'd been hit by his own attack which meant – The stone was cold under his hands as he pushed himself up. Pain shivered through his midsection.
"You know," a man from Midgard's legends stood before him. A shield was held loosely on one arm. The smoke from the blast curled off of its edges and shone thin and vaporous in the streetlamps. Barton had spoken briefly of this one. "The last time I was in Germany, and saw a man standing above everybody else," the legend came forward, calm and exposed. A fool. An actor. "We ended up disagreeing."
Loki wanted to laugh, "The soldier," he said. As though they had no better to send.
His knees ached.
Pressing the butt of the spear into the ground he forced himself to his feet, "The man out of time."
"I'm not the one who's out of time."
A flying vehicle swooped down, behind the man, lowering guns from a hatch at its bottom. A woman's voice emanated from a speaker attached to the thing, "Loki, drop the weapon and stand down."
Well, it'd make a better show.
He shot at the vehicle and it jerked out of his way.
The soldier flung his shield and its rotating side smashed harmlessly against Loki's chest, jumping back to the hand of it master.
Like Mjolnir.
The people were flying in all directions, screaming, but their use was past. He let the simulacra vanish.
The soldier's fist connected with his jaw and he brought the shaft of the spear up. The man blocked the blow and Loki slid under it, flung the man backward so that the costumed jape was sent skidding on his back across the pavements. The mortal used the momentum to his advantage, however, and rolled panting to his feet. He wound back, completely exposing his chest and Loki swatted the shield out of the air, off of its flight path.
He'd trained against Thor enough times.
The shield clattered to the ground.
Loki swung the bladed end of the spear and the man ducked backward beneath it, dodging and ducking till Loki finally got him across the back and the man sprawled on his face.
Loki stalked over, rested the butt of the spear on his head as he struggled up.
"Kneel."
The man took a short, sharp breath.
"Not today," he said. He shoved the spear away and leapt into the air – all in one movement – spinning so that his knee shot out and up and caught Loki against his chin. He reeled, then got the man by the jaw and flung him across the bared ground.
The world wavered under his feet.
It hadn't been nearly long enough for his injuries to heal themselves. He was sloppy. The blood pounded behind his eyes. But the Chitauri wouldn't know that. Thanos wouldn't see it. This man had no notion of it.
Aggressive tactics, alien to their own. That was all they need know.
He approached the fallen hero.
The carrier had recovered from his attack and hovered nearby. They hesitated for fear of harming their champion.
There was a strange crackling from the speakers, then a coughing roar. Loki recognized it as a type of Midgardian music. That was unlike…
A spark shooting out from behind a tower caught his eye and all in the instant that it connected, the spark had become a man, weapon raised and fired. Loki's spine smashed against the stair and drove out his breath.
Pain radiated to his extremities, but that was nothing.
He pressed himself gingerly upright on the stair as he surveyed this new attacker.
Stark.
Two heroes, and a carrier with its weaponry aimed for his now exposed chest.
"Make your move, Reindeer Games."
He supposed it was enough.
The weaponized hero lowered his arms. "Good move."
It was enough.