Thanks to everyone who left favorites and reviews on the prologue!
Now, onto the main story itself...
"You okay, Tony?"
The question drew Tony from his deep reverie and, if he were honest, half sleep state. He had been up several days straight, desperately seeking some way to make his suit impervious to Loki's ability to take it apart at the seams. Or well, not seams, but joints. As in every single join!
Merely thinking about what had happened the last time they'd faced Thor's little brother was enough to make his heart race. If he hadn't been close enough to a traffic light in order to be able to cling to it when his suit came apart... Yeah, he really didn't want to think about that. Hence his round the clock search for a way to protect himself from it.
From magic.
And therein lay the crux of his problem. How the hell did he defend against something he could hardly bring himself to believe in, even with all the evidence Loki had provided? Freaking mages and magic.
"Tony?" Bruce repeated.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, just tired," Tony replied.
He'd have gone straight to bed, only he'd been starving after sixty hours straight of working and JARVIS had helpfully informed him the others were having breakfast and there seemed to be food to spare.
"When's the last time you slept?" Bruce asked, brow furrowed in concern.
"Sixty-nine hours ago," JARVIS replied and Tony scowled at his AI's closest sensor, while swallowing his mouthful of egg.
"Traitor," he muttered, already knowing what was coming.
"Sleep is important," Rogers began.
"So is having an intact suit in flight," Tony immediately countered, scowling when Clint snorted. "It wasn't funny, Legolas."
"In hindsight it was, it really, really was," Barton chuckled. "Every single piece!"
Tony growled as he stabbed his bacon. Yes, every single one, including those that had never been taken apart after creation, like in his fingers and his knees. Even he had forgotten quite how many there were as most were never disassembled with daily use.
"Have you made any progress?" Bruce asked.
"I have an idea, but it's never been done before," Tony replied.
Not that it had ever stopped him before, but adapting nano technology was proving surprisingly difficult and would take more time than he liked. Especially with Loki once again loose in New York and causing chaos on a near weekly basis.
"Remind me again how Reindeer Games escaped?"
Thor sighed deeply, looking up from his plateful of pop-tarts. "My brother had created an escape route in his cell, which he was able to activate after we placed him into it."
"Yeah, but how did he know which cell he'd be placed into?" Tony demanded. "Is there like a royal cell?"
"Nay."
"So?"
"My parents examined each cell after his escape, and they found the same latent seiðr in each one."
"So he rigged all of them, just in case?" Natasha asked.
"Aye."
Well, Loki definitely covered all of his bases. Tony could almost admire that about him. Though it begged one very serious question.
"When?" Tony asked.
"When what?" Thor frowned.
"When did he create this backdoor? Before he left Ásgarðr? When he was king?"
"Nay, my mother said the age of the seiðr indicates Loki did it when he was still an adolescent."
"Wait, and no one found it in all of that time?" Clint demanded. "Seriously?"
"Why would we be looking for such a thing?" Thor replied. "Only the Einherjar and the royal family have easy access to the dungeons, we had not thought such checks were necessary."
"So why did Loki feel he needed such a precaution?" Tony asked.
It was a question which had been bothering him ever since Thor had first returned from Ásgarðr to inform them that Loki had escaped almost immediately after his trial. At first he'd been distracted by the escape itself and how it had taken Rock of Ages less than a week to escape after it had taken them months to recapture him in the first place, but eventually he had circled around to it.
Why would a prince of the... Realm feel the need to create himself a magical escape route from the palace dungeons? The very palace his father ruled from and, in the future, his own brother?
Surely someone like that should never even consider, much less fear and plan for, being incarcerated in said dungeons.
So why had Loki felt it necessary? And as a teenager for crying out loud!
"'Cause he's a psychopath?" Clint growled, causing Thor to flinch.
"Aren't they normally overconfident to the point of arrogance?" Tony shot back. "So they should be less likely to do that."
"Loki always knew his tricks and mischief were frowned upon by father, thus 'twas only a matter of time before he was punished more severely," Thor stated.
"Yes, but to be sent to the dungeons? You keep saying Loki didn't used to be this mad or destructive."
"He was not."
So what the hell kind of father would throw his son into the dungeons for mere mischief?
Tony didn't want to say it aloud as he'd seen how poorly Thor took criticism of his father, but he couldn't help but think it. Glancing over at Bruce, he could see he wasn't the only one. Even Cap and Natasha seemed to be frowning. Something just wasn't adding up here. Either Thor was mistaken about what Loki had used to do on Ásgarðr, or Óðinn was quite draconian in his punishments.
Or at least his punishments for one of his sons, as Tony had heard some of the 'adventures' Thor had boasted of going on with his little band of friends and well... Tony was not entirely comfortable with all he'd heard Point Break saying they'd done on those quests. If Óðinn All-Daddy was fine with that, then how on Earth could Loki have feared being cast into the dungeons for what Thor claimed was far lower levels of chaos and destruction than what they were seeing lately?
And why had Loki gotten less so the longer he spent on Earth?
It was something Tony had been pondering for a while, but had yet to come up with a good answer for. Ever since the bastard had escaped with the Tesseract at the end of the failed invasion, Reindeer Games had seemed less obsessed with planetary invasion and control, and more with becoming the Avengers' main pain in the ass. Their first few confrontations afterwards had still been quite violent, but the longer Loki hung around on Earth without attempting another invasion, the less destructive things got. At least when seen as an overall trend as there were some rather notable exceptions.
They were still determined to capture and punish him, as evidenced by the fact they had sent Loki back to Ásgarðr with Thor when they had finally managed to capture him a good nine months after the bastard's initial escape. It simply hadn't gone quite to plan. Not only had it turned out that what they thought was the Tesseract wasn't, but Loki had waltzed right back out of Ásgarðr as if it were no more than a minor inconvenience to him.
Then it had been right back to business as usual, with Loki appearing somewhere in New York City or the surrounding area, causing chaos and destruction until they appeared, and the fight was on. Tony could practically set a watch by the regularity of it all.
Almost as if the thought had triggered it, the alarm went off.
"JARVIS?" Tony questioned.
"Loki has been spotted downtown in Central Park," JARVIS replied.
"What is he doing?" Rogers demanded, already rising from his seat.
"The reports indicate he is attacking tourists."
Of course he was. Who didn't hate tourists? It was one of the more normal things Tony could recall Loki doing. Or Thor for that matter.
"I'll get the Quinjet ready," Barton stated, already rushing from the room.
"I need to get changed," Bruce said.
"I'll meet you guys there," Tony added.
"Is your suit capable of flight right now?" Rogers questioned.
"Yeah, just so long as Loki doesn't disassemble it again. But I can stick lower to the ground."
"Do not worry, Man of Iron," Thor stated as he passed Tony. "My brother bores easily and rarely uses the same trick twice unless 'tis with me."
Was that meant to be reassuring?
Unlike with Ásgarðrian Galdr, I won't be aiming for chapters with a particular word length in this fic. Instead they will be as long or as short as they need to be. This one falls on the shorter side as I needed a bit of space to set the stage of where & when we are, as this fic is set in the alternative time-stream created by Loki in Avengers: Endgame.
I also know some people don't like the 'twas or 'tis I have Thor & Loki use, but I thought it might be helpful in this fic to help distinguish them from the others with so many characters involved in it.
Old Norse:
seiðr - witchcraft, sorcery / a type of sorcery practiced in Norse society during the Late Scandinavian Iron Age - i.e. magic