A/N: Hey, y'all! In procrastinating revising my novel I've written another chapter of Entropy!

"So it's decided," Steve said, waking her up.

Jaya lifted her head. "What'd we decide?"

"We're going to London," Bruce said, letting her lean into his side. "Dr. Foster is tracking several of these gravitational anomalies and they're all centering in the UK for some reason."

"We leave ASAP so let's go. You can sleep on the jet." That was the Cap voice.

Jaya stood. She packed for a week and before she knew it they were on their way to London. As soon as they were on the quinjet, she put on a Bob Ross episode over her headphones and fell back asleep.

AV-AV-AV

"Dr. Foster, good to meet you." Steve held out a hand.

Jane Foster was shorter than Jaya, her eyes alight with the intense need for knowledge. She shook Steve's hand firmly and turned to Bruce. "Dr. Banner, I'd like your opinion on these readings..."

The Avengers watched as she led Bruce away, and as one, turned to the still shorter woman standing there. "Hi, I'm Darcy, Jane's intern," she said, and smiled at them. "So they're gonna be a while. Coffee?"

"Aren't you also an astrophysicist?" Steve asked.

"Nope." She snapped her gum. "I'm a political science major, got with Jane to get my last six credits, ended up here because Jane can't remember she's actually a physical form with physical requirements like food, and sleep, and common sense. Speaking of which, Captain America, what do you think about the current political climate?"

"Uhhhh..."

Darcy laughed. "No, I'm just kidding. I follow your instagram, I know where you stand. You guys want coffee? Bagels?"

Jaya followed the older girl into the tiny kitchen to help her make the coffees.

"So, Entropy," Darcy said casually.

"Jaya."

"Jaya. You just started college, right? How's that going?"

Jaya shrugged. "Oh, you know. Classes, weird guys, random dorm collapses that we have to keep an eye out for... lots of all-nighters..."

Darcy laughed. "Nice."

"Any tips on surviving weird guys?" Jaya asked.

"Get a tazer," Darcy said brightly.

Jaya raised her eyebrows. "Are you serious?"

"Totally." Darcy grinned. "I took Thor down with a tazer, once."

"You're kidding."

"Nope."

Jaya grinned. "I bet I could build one."

"Nice."

Clint stuck his head in the kitchen. "Do we need to be worried about introducing the two of you?" he asked suspiciously as they giggled.

Darcy grinned. "It's too late, G-man. I've corrupted her."

"Oh no," he deadpanned. "Where's my coffee?"

AV-AV-AV

"Uh, guys? Isn't that Dr. Selvig?" Steve asked, pointing at the TV screen showing national news.

Jane's eyes widened. "Oh my... Erik. What? Is he doing?"

"Is he always this eccentric?" Steve asked.

"No," Jane said, "but after last year, he's been a little, um."

"Cray-cray," Darcy supplied helpfully.

"He's supposed to be helping us but he hasn't answered in a while," Jane said.

Steve looked over at Clint. "Can you retrieve him?"

Clint gave a mock salute. "Can do, Cap. Doctor, can I borrow your car?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah."

AV-AV-AV

"We've tracked some interesting readings to a warehouse," Jane said. "We need to get over there and see what's happening."

"Let's go, then."

Tony insisted on driving the van full of Avengers and scientists. "There's no way in heck I'm letting you drive, Cap," he said. "New York is bad enough."

Steve grinned angelically. "You don't like my driving?"

"You drive like it's still a wartime pursuit course," Tony grumbled. "All of you are crazy."

"Says the man who drove his own racecar and crashed it," Natasha said dryly.

"Hey, I thought I was dying," Tony protested. "Special circumstances."

"We're always in the process of not-dying," Natasha said.

"Russian fatalist," he accused.

She grinned toothily. "Death comes for us all."

Darcy glanced at Jaya. "Are they always like this?"

"Yup."

AV-AV-AV

"Well this isn't creepy at all," Jaya said, as they piled out of the van and approached the abandoned factory.

"Jaya, Bruce, Darcy, Jane, stay behind us," Steve said, pulling his shield out of his backpack.

Tony slipped a gauntlet on his hand. "Age before beauty, Cap."

Steve gestured grandly. "After you, then."

Tony gaped at him.

Natasha walked past them. "You're both pretty," she said dryly. "And I'm older than both of you."

They took up flanking positions and pointedly ignored Jaya cackling her head off.

"I'm reading heat signatures," Tony said, as they entered the building.

"Kids," Steve said, with his overpowered hearing. "They're that way."

The group of children were overjoyed to find Avengers in their midst, and cheerfully showed them the floating truck.

"Truck," Steve said. "Floating."

Bruce kicked a pebble under the truck and it also rose to ping the chassis in mid-air. "Huh. Spontaneous anti-gravity."

"This is like the dorm but in reverse," Jaya said. "That's concerning."

"That's one word for it," Tony said grimly. "Steve, JARVIS says SHIELD is getting reports of similar strange events all over the world."

Steve looked at the kids. "Thank you for helping us. You need to go home now."

The kids were eventually convinced to leave the area after getting selfies with Cap and Iron Man.

"I wanna throw something in," Darcy said, digging in her purse. She threw in a lip balm and a few moments later it fell through the ceiling. "Whoa."

Steve glanced around. "Any readings, anybody? Jaya?"

Jaya reached forward and poked at the gravity well with entropy, freezing it in time. "Darcy, throw your chapstick again?"

Darcy tossed it. "Burt's Bees, actually."

The lip balm froze in mid-air, stopped by Jaya's manipulations right in the center of the portal, and slowly began to shear forward.

"What the what is it doing?" Darcy demanded.

"I haven't mastered like, actually stopping it," Jaya said, "it's just moving forward in time very, very slowly."

"And the fact that this is some sort of spacetime portal is accelerating it to a visible degree?" Jane theorized.

Jaya let it go and the lip balm flew into the portal, and didn't come back. "...well that's weird."

Something plastic plinked onto the floor from a different spot.

"Ookay, don't like that," Natasha said warily.

"We need to get a map of these things," Tony said.

Steve nodded. "Let's spread out, try and figure out where they are and where they lead to. Jaya, you stay somewhere in the middle, in case one of us falls in, you might be able to pull it back."

Darcy half-raised a hand. "Can we test it first?"

Jaya tossed one of her earrings into the portal and pulled it back in time to her hand. "We're good."

They spread out through the factory, with periodic calls of "Got one!" echoing through the space.

Jaya dodged to the side as someone's ration bar fell through the ceiling almost directly over her. "Hey!" she called. "Watch out!"

"Tony, I think they're randomly generating locations," Bruce called across the factory.

"Yeah, we need to pull back-"

A scream ripped through the factory and Jaya bolted towards the sound.

"Jane!" Darcy shrieked, heading for the same spot, elbowing Bruce out of the way.

There was no sign of the scientist, or of the portal that had taken her.

Darcy started to freak out. "Oh man oh man oh man, this is bad, this is so bad-"

"Darcy." Steve put his hands on her shoulders. "Breathe."

Jaya moved forward, focusing on reversing entropy, to bring Jane back. Nothing happened.

"Jaya?" Tony prompted. "Anytime now."

"I don't know, I can't do it," Jaya said, grimacing as she threw her full willpower at the spot. "It's not going back."

Bruce put a gentle hand on her arm. "Hey, it's gonna be okay, don't overexert yourself. Different things have come back in different spots, we might just need some time."

Steve nodded. "Let's get out of here. No point in someone else getting sucked in. Tony, keep monitoring the building for lifesigns."

Natasha and Steve went to get the quinjet and park it in front of the factory. "We'll update SHIELD on the way," Steve said. "Someone get a hold of Clint."

Jaya helped Bruce and Tony set up all their equipment in the back of the van while Darcy called Clint.

"...what do you mean holding cell?" Darcy asked.

"He's fully out of it," Clint said, sounding tired. "I'm taking him to the hospital."

"What? We need his help! Jane is Missing!"

"And he won't be of any help if he's not able to form coherent sentences, Darcy," Clint said calmly. "I'll report as soon as I have something."

"Ugh. Fine." Darcy hung up the phone and paced in a tight circle. "If anything happens to Jane, Thor is going to smite us all, you know that right?"

Jaya just gave her a hug. "Let's go find some coffee."

"I'm not leaving."

"We'll call if anything happens," Bruce promised. He squeezed Jaya's arm. "Go on."

They went to get coffee and snacks and came back.

Steve and Natasha came back with the quinjet.

Clint called to say Erik had calmed down but the hospital wanted to admit him for paranoid delusions. "He's rambling about a convergence. I don't do Force stuff, I need some help here."

"Put him on the phone," Tony said, rolling his eyes.

AV-AV-AV

Five hours. Five very long hours before JARVIS picked up a spontaneously appearing lifesign.

Jane ran out of the building two seconds later.

"Jane!" Darcy outpaced Nataha and Steve and crashed into the scientists' small frame, hugging her tightly. "Dude, what happened?"

"What- did you guys set up a mobile base?" Jane asked, glancing at the open quinjet and the van.

"Dr. Foster you were gone for five hours," Steve said firmly. "What happened to you?"

"I don't know, I was in this place, a rock cavern, and-"

It started to rain.

Jaya moved to cover the equipment sticking out of the back of the van when she realized it wasn't falling on them. She glanced around. "Uhhhh, Bruce?"

"That's unexpected," Bruce said, turning slowly.

Thunder rumbled across the cloud-laden sky.

Jaya felt something on her skin and shivered. "You don't think..."

"Thor," Steve said, and everyone looked over.

Thor ignored them all, moving directly to Jane. "Jane," he said, emotions tumbling across his face.

She slapped him.

Tony snorted. "Nice," he murmured.

"Sorry. I just needed to make sure you were real, it's been a very strange day."

It's not like standing off to the side while a god and his scientist girlfriend were having the most awkward reunion ever was like, awkward or anything. Jaya wondered if she could politely entropify herself from existence.

Darcy interrupted the moment. "Hey!" she hollered. "Can you turn off the rain!"

Jane gave her a Look. "We're kind of having a moment, here."

"Yeah, and we as a whole are having a spacetime crisis," Darcy said. "And Hawkeye has Erik but he's gone totally mental."

"What?" Jane gave Thor an apologetic look and ran towards the other Avengers.

They followed.

"Thor," Steve said, stepping forward to shake his hand. "Good to see you again."

"You all as well, my friends," Thor said, giving them all a smile. "I'm sorry I have not been able to return before this."

"No sweat," Tony said, patting him on the shoulder.

"You need to break him out," Jane was insisting to Clint over the phone.

"You ever had an argument with a group of doctors?" Clint retorted.

Steve cleared his throat. "Jane, maybe-"

Jane startled at his voice and a wave of energy pulsed from her location and threw everyone back a few feet.

"Jane!" Thor recovered first and ran towards her. "Jane, are you all right?"

"What was that?" Steve asked, helping Bruce to his feet.

Jaya went over to Thor and a rapidly-paling Jane. "What's wrong with her?" she asked.

Thor shook his head. "I don't know."

"Let me try to reverse it?" Jaya asked.

"Try."

Jaya tried, but, "It's like the Extremis," she said, "it's fighting back." She slipped past It and tried to run a reverse. Another pulse of energy knocked her back and Jane slumped, unconscious.

Natasha caught Jaya from falling onto the asphalt. "What do we do?" she asked.

Thor shook his head. "Your human doctors are insufficient. I need to take her to Asgard."

Jaya reached out again. "Hold on, I think I can-" she managed to freeze whatever it was for just a second before it moved forward again.

"Will you come as well?" Thor asked. "We may need your help."

"Yes," Jaya said, as Tony and Bruce chorused, "NO."

Thor looked offended. "I promise no harm will come to the child," he told Bruce.

"Not a child," Jaya grumbled.

"If anything happens to her, the Other Guy will rip you in half," Bruce warned, completely calmly.

"I would let him," Thor answered honestly. "Come, stand next to me."

Jane revived a little bit. "What's goin-"

Thor lifted his hammer in the air.

There was a whoosh of light and sound and power and suddenly they were shooting past galaxies and stars and-

they stepped into a gilded dome where a giant of a man stood smiling at them gently.

Jaya stumbled forward, warily patting herself down. "Two legs, two arms, one brain," she said. "Whoa. That was awesome. Let's go again!"

"Welcome to Asgard, Lady Jaya, Lady Jane," the giant said, smile widening.

Jane blinked. "Hi."

"This is Heimdall, the Guardian of the Bifrost," Thor explained, ushering Jaya towards the door. "Excuse us, Heimdall."

"Of course, my prince."

Right. Thor was a prince. Hence the palace ahead of them.

Jaya knew she looked like an idiot, gawping at everything, but she couldn't bring herself to care. This was incredible.