The group of would-be photographers looked so hopeful that Steve would have had a hard time saying no to them – Natasha, however, wasn't even looking at them anymore. Something else was happening across the hall. The four people in the Chi'Tauri armor were heading for the door of Palomino Room D, and unlike the other fans they seemed in no mood to stand in line. There were unhappy cries of 'hey, don't budge!' and 'wait your turn!' as they elbowed their way to the front.
They were awfully tall people, Steve realized. He hadn't yet seen them among a crowd, and now that he did they were huge, easily approaching seven feet tall. Were those really just costumes? But how could they be real Chi'Tauri? The Avengers had chased them away and despite all Stark's doomsaying there was no sign of their return. Besides, surely Chi'Tauri ought to be just fiction in this universe. Creatures played by actors in costumes, or images animated on a computer…
Dodger was growling again.
"Watch where you're going!" snapped a pigtailed girl in red polka-dots and a domino mask. She grabbed a Chi'Tauri by the arm, and the alien responded by seizing her collar and flinging her down the hallway to land on top of half a dozen other people, who'd been coming to see what was going on. Individuals began to move away, frightened, as the four aliens – a commander and three soldiers – barged into Palomino Room D.
This was a bad situation. Even if they weren't real Chi'Tauri, something was definitely wrong here, and Steve couldn't ignore that… but when he looked first at Natasha, then at Thor, he found them both hesitating. These were immensely strong creatures from another planet, carrying technology that even Stark had trouble figuring out, while Steve and his companions were unarmed and, for the first time, only human.
The lineup broke up in confusion. People fled, or pulled out their phones to film the incident. Somebody had to do something, and the only ones here who knew what they were really u against were Steve, Natasha, and Thor.
Steve charged in and jumped on the back of the first alien he came to, wrapping his arms around its neck to try to choke it. Dodger ran after him and wove around the creature's ankles, barking and nipping. The Chi'Tauri reached back and grabbed Steve's shirt, and dragged him over its shoulder to throw him on the ground. Steve's reflexes were still slow, but he managed to catch himself on his arms, and wound his legs around one of the alien's to pull its foot out from under it. Dodger sank his teeth into the other ankle, and the Chi'Tauri solider hit the ground, knocking over a nearby potted plant and spilling bark chips across the carpet.
Steve scooped Dodger up and pushed him off to the side, then went on to the next alien. The first one was already getting up. The heroes would have to get a hold of one of their weapons – there was nothing else here that could slow them down.
Inside Room D, Loki was posing in front of a white curtain with a group of women who were all dressed in versions of his Asgardian armor, varying from one that was quite accurate, to one meant to look like an evening gown, to one that was little more than dark green bikini. He was beaming, relaxed and enjoying himself, as they draped themselves all over him. The photographer was about to press the shutter button when the Chi'Tauri banged their way inside, with Steve in hot pursuit. Loki looked up, and Steve saw the colour drain from his face.
The Chi'Tauri commander lowered a stafflike weapon, aiming its end at where Loki was standing.
Steve ran up and grabbed the staff, pushing it off-target, and the shot of purple energy it ejected left a burning hole in the ceiling instead. The women in the costumes stared up at it for a moment, then grabbed their things to flee, and the whole room descended into chaos. People were trying to hide under chairs or behind the curtains, or to make their way along the walls towards the single open door.
The Chi'Tauri commander focused its beady, silvery-yellow eyes on Steve. Steve had the staff weapon in both hands and lifted his legs to wrap them around the shaft so it would have to take his whole weight. He was hoping to either break the weapon or force the alien to drop it, but failed at both – it held, and the Chi'Tauri started shaking it, trying to make him let go. Steve kicked at its fingers, and accidentally hit the firing button. Another shot went through the wall behind the photography set.
The Palomino Room was actually one large ballroom that could be divided into eight units for smaller events, and so the 'wall' at the back of Room D was only a thin partition, padded for soundproofing. The weapons fire hit at one of the seams where the panels folded for storage, and blasted it apart. One panel fell into the room beyond, on fire, while another hung from the ceiling by one corner for a moment before coming down on top of the photography equipment. The tripod and several of the lights fell over, and one of the bulbs burst, setting the carpet on fire as well.
"Romanov!" Steve yelled, still clinging to the staff with all four limbs. "Thor! Where are you guys?"
"Here!" Natasha shouted, and ran up to spray something in one of the alien soldiers' faces. She had found a fire extinguisher. Stark and others had determined from the corpses left after the Battle of New York that the Chi'Tauri breathed oxygen – now Nat sprayed a cloud of cold carbon dioxide right in this one's face. It staggered back, choking, and Nat hit it in the chest with the canister as hard as she could, trying to destroy its biomechanics.
This seemed to do some damage, since there were sparks and the canister came away with a smear of purple-black blood on it – but the alien itself wasn't even knocked back. It looked at Nat as if it couldn't understand what she was trying to do, then reached out to try to grab her wrist. She rolled out of the way just in time, then had to get up and run as the alien fired its gun-like weapon at her. More wall panels were blown out, and folding chairs turned into half-melted wreckage. People were screaming. The ceiling sprinklers went off.
The Chi'Tauri commander wrenched Steve's legs off its staff with one hand, in a motion that felt like it all but broke his ankle, and threw him across the room. He crashed into a rack of metal chairs that had been sitting by the wall and fell to the ground in front of it. A moment later, while he was still seeing stars, several of the chairs fell on top of him. Steve tried to get up, but his body simply wouldn't obey him. All he could do was lie there feeling his head spin and bruises forming on his ribs and shoulders.
This was being normal, he reminded himself. In the parlance of the twenty-first century, it sucked.
"Vermin!" shouted a commanding voice.
Steve managed to push himself up as far as his elbows to look. In the space made by the broken partition was Thor. He was still dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, but was now also holding an impressively large two-handed battleaxe he must have gotten from one of the weapons vendors. His clothing notwithstanding, nobody would have mistaken him for anything but a god of thunder.
The Chi'Tauri turned to fire at him. He bellowed a wordless war cry and charged forward, swinging the axe. The commander raised its staff like a Japanese bo to catch the blow.
The axe broke. Its head fell at Thor's feet, leaving him standing there blinking at the handle in his hands.
Dodger was nosing falling chairs away from Steve now, licking at his face and hands and whimpering as if to ask whether his human were okay. Steve struggled up to his hands and knees, with Dodger barking encouragement.
"I'm coming, buddy. I'm coming," Steve panted.
Natasha, with blood on her lower lip and in her hair, took his arm and helped him up. "This is no good," she said. "We can't fight them like this."
"Oh, you noticed?" Steve grouched, but he staggered to his feet and let Nat help him towards the broken wall. It opened onto Room B, where the cast of Agent Carter had just been – they weren't there now, thank goodness, and whoever actually had was already gone. Steve, Natasha, and Thor climbed through the gap, and Thor began trying to prop up the fallen panel to make a barricade. Steve limped over to join him, and the strength of both together was just barely enough.
"I am beginning to have great respect for you mortals!" Thor grunted. "It must take great courage to go about your lives knowing you may be crushed at any moment!"
"Most of us try not to think about that," Steve replied. His bruised ribs felt like they caught fire as he and Thor maneuvered the panel into place. It brought back all-too-clear memories of half a dozen back-alley beatings, when he'd said something he knew full well he shouldn't have and upset somebody bigger than he. Who'd have ever thought he'd feel like that again?
No sooner did they have their barrier in place than one of the Chi'Tauri soldiers put another energy bolt in it. Steve and Thor threw themselves to the floor as the burning pieces went flying over their heads.
There was nothing to do now but run.
At least, Natasha and Thor ran – Steve could only do his best to follow them. His ankle hurt and his bruised ribs made deep breathing difficult. He hadn't been in this kind of pain in years, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to go a little harder, run a little faster. It was like being back in boot camp, he told himself. He'd survived that, he could survive this.
All three of them knew they couldn't go into the main convention hall, not when there were thousands of people in there. Instead, they turned right and headed down a long hallway. The convention attendees were leaving the building in droves now, flooding into the halls and pushing out the doors into the parking lot – or trying to get out of the way as shots from the Chi'Tauri weapons shattered windows and put holes in the walls. One bolt came so close Steve felt the head on the side of his face, and his hair stirred as it went past.
He mentally took back a number of things he'd said about Tony Stark. Right now, Steve would have loved a suit of armor.
Where had Loki gone? Had he fled with the rest of the crowd, or had he been injured or killed? How would they get back to their own universe without him?
How could the Chi'Tauri be here in the flesh? Steve, Natasha, Thor, and Loki were all inhabiting the bodies of their alternates, which had been inconvenient from the start and was only getting worse. The Chi'Tauri ought to be stuntmen in makeup, or code in a computer… was it the fact that they had no alternates that allowed them to come here in person? Or maybe they had a different way to travel between dimensions. Howard had always said that if you asked him to do the impossible he could give you three options.
The doors at the end of the hall were locked. Thor kicked one as hard as he could and it burst open, and the three of them passed through a little carpeted foyer into a much larger room. This was a casino, full of poker and blackjack tables and slot machines, but since it was only early afternoon there were very few people using them. Those who were looked up in surprise as Steve, Thor, and Natasha ran in – then jumped to their feet in terror as the Chi'Tauri followed.
Steve's eyes darted around the room, looking for something he could use as a weapon. On one wall was a case containing firefighting equipment. Nat had used an extinguisher with some small success… maybe they could use this. Steve smashed the glass panel over the hose. Like breaking the patio door at Scarlett Johansson's house, this made an alarm go off, but Steve wasn't nearly as worried about it this time.
"Here!" He tossed the end of the hose to Thor. Natasha began unwinding the rest of the spool, while Steve threw all his strength into turning on the spigot. Dodger barked at them as if urging them to hurry.
The Chi'Tauri lined up their weapons and took aim. One shot a bank of slot machines, apparently just for fun. It exploded in a shower of sparks.
Water began to flow, and Thor aimed the hose at the aliens. The spray was enough to make them stagger back, and one of them blasted a hole in the ceiling with a stray shot from its weapon. This started another fire, and the casino's sprinkler system also came on.
Steve would not have expected that Chi'Tauri would be afraid of water, but at that moment he couldn't come up with any other explanation for what happened next. The commander shouted some kind of orders, and the three soldiers stowed their weapons and hurried out of the casino, ducking to get their hulking bodies through the doors. Steve turned off the hose again, and he, Nat, and Thor followed them.
Behind the casino were two vehicles that Steve recognized as aerial scooters, like the ones the aliens had used in New York. Parked between a replica of the Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo and a Volkswagen painted to look like a giant Pikachu, nobody had taken much notice of them. The four Chi'Tauri climbed on, and flew away into the sky.
On the other side of the building, fire trucks pulled up. The parking lot was full of people who'd fled the convention centre, milling around and talking, and some of them still taking video. A few were crying. Nobody seemed to know what had happened.
"Let's get the hell out of here," Nat said.
That sounded like a good idea to Steve. Getting thrown in jail once per adventure was more than enough. "Yeah."
"Where will we go?" asked Thor.
"Don't care," Nat replied. "Anywhere."
They ended up in the Penguin Motel, which despite its impeccably-dressed mascot was a very shifty-looking place that backed onto the tracks for the city's public railway. The room had two double beds, a bathroom with yellowed linoleum that had not been replaced since at least the mid-nineties, and bars on the window. Peering through the curtains at the red and white commuter trains going by, Steve supposed that since Canada had tracks, something had to be on the wrong side of them.
They ordered a pizza and bought a first aid kit from a nearby convenience store, and sat down to patch each other up while watching the news.
The TV showed an East Asian woman in a burgundy skirt suit standing in front of the casino as fire trucks hosed it down. "The Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo ended in chaos today," she said, "when a skit put on by guests in costume got out of control and actual gunfire was exchanged. Although nobody from our channel was present, we have this footage offered us by an expo attendee."
The shot switched to shaky camera phone footage. There was Steve, trying to get the staff weapon away from the Chi'Tauri commander by hanging off it like a sloth on a branch. There was Nat, throwing a fire extinguisher at one of the soldiers. There was Thor, rushing in like a berserker only to stop short when his toy battleaxe broke. They all looked like idiots.
"Eyewitnesses insist that two of the participants in the stunt were Marvel actors Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson," the reporter went on, "currently wanted in California for assault and battery and for violating the terms of their bail. Anyone with information about their whereabouts is asked to please call the toll-free number below."
The phone number appeared on the screen, below Steve and Natasha's mug shots from the Malibu police station. Steve's picture was terrible – he looked like he hadn't slept in days and resembled a homeless man more than Captain America, or even an actor who played Captain America. Natasha's was slightly better, but it was impossible to take a bad picture of Natasha Romanov.
"Nobody recognized me," Thor pouted.
He was sitting there while Nat sewed up a cut on the back of his elbow. "That's good," she said, tying off the suture. "That means you're not getting arrested." She bit through the thread and set the needle aside. "That ought to do. Let's have a look at your ankle, Steve."
Steve had already taken his shoes off, so now he removed his sock and rolled up the leg of his jeans so Natasha could look. The ankle was definitely swollen, and there were deep scratches on the top of his foot, crusted with blood. Dodger, sensing his human was upset, laid a head in Steve's lap for scratches, while Nat opened a bottle of peroxide. She soaked a cotton ball and began dabbing with unnecessary ferocity.
Steve gritted his teeth. He knew that if he complained she would call him a baby, so he was determined to remain silent – but that just made her swab harder, until she hit a sore spot and he involuntarily twitched.
"So you're still mad at me," he observed.
"Yep," said Nat. She finished cleaning the claw marks and began feeling the bones to see if any were broken. She wasn't gentle about this, either.
"I told you I was sorry," Steve said.
"You did," she agreed. "Doesn't mean I have to stop being mad."
Steve scowled. She, of all people, had no excuse for holding a grudge about this. "If anybody's mad at anybody," he pointed out, "it should be me mad at you, because you're the one who got us arrested in California. If you hadn't just had to see your daughter, your husband wouldn't have thought you were having an affair, and I wouldn't have had to punch him!"
"Well, you should have learned from my bad example!" she snarled. "But no, you went running off to moon over Hayley Atwell! If we hadn't had to go look for you, we'd have been at the front of the lineup to catch Loki on his way in, like we planned, before the Chi'Tauri could go for him!"
"My friends," said Thor. "Maybe we can resolve this after we ask ourselves why those creatures were here at all."
Steve seized the change of subject like a lifeline. "They're after Loki," he said. "They seemed perfectly happy to stand there and let people take pictures of them until he showed up."
"Fair enough" Nat agreed – she was just as happy to talk about something besides Steve's bad decisions, and her own. "Why are they after him here, though? This isn't their universe, either." She started wrapping an ace bandage around Steve's ankle.
"We assume it is not," said Thor. "Perhaps there are Chi'Tauri here also."
"How can they be here and be fictional?" Steve asked. "Somebody just made them up for a movie, and yet they exist exactly the same in the real world?"
"Why not?" asked Thor. "There are humans in both fiction and reality."
Steve shook his head. "They must have come from our universe, but how did they do that? It can't be the same way we did." The longer he thought about it, the surer that seemed.
"There are many roads by which a traveller may pass between facets of reality," Thor said. "Loki himself was a master of several. As you say here on Earth, there is more than one way to skin a cat."
"Everybody always says that," Natasha remarked, "but nobody ever tells you the other way." Her phone began to ring, as it had several times over the course of their cross-country drive, but she ignored it. There was nobody who would call for Scarlett Johansson that Nat wanted to talk to. "The rune stone only transferred information, but the Chi'Tauri must have a way to transfer mass. Maybe the reason there were only four of them is because that's all they can do at a time." The ringing stopped as it went to voice mail.
"Is it wise to ignore your phone?" Thor asked.
"Probably wiser than answering it," said Nat.
Something buzzed in Steve's pocket, and he pulled out his own – or rather, Chris Evans' – cell phone. The screen was displaying a name. "It says Paul," he said. There was no further information, but that rang a bell in his memory regardless. "Downey mentioned a Paul, didn't he?"
"He did," said Thor. "Maybe you should answer after all."
"No, don't," said Nat. "We have enough problems, and for all we know, Downey's helping the police look for us."
Steve put the phone away. It buzzed twice more before stopping, but a few seconds later, Thor's phone started to play the Ghostbusters theme. Thor pulled it out to look.
"Paul again," he said. "If he is determined enough to try each of us in turn, it must be important." Thor put the phone to his ear. "Hello?" he said. "It is I, Chris Hemsworth, worthy to play the role of Thor!" He listened for a moment, and then he smiled. "It is the Vision!" he told the others happily, but then became serious again as he listened to what 'Paul' had to say. "He says Loki wishes to meet with us, to discuss an agreement. If we will consent to…"
"Give me the phone!" Nat ordered, and without waiting for a reaction she snatched it from Thor's hands and spoke into it, herself. "Paul? It's me! Hi! Sorry I didn't answer, I've been very busy ignoring my husband. What's up?"
Thor stared at his empty fingers. Steve had seen him and Natasha spar together – she was quick, but Thor's Asgardian reflexes were usually quicker. If Steve felt weak and slow right now, how much worst must it be for this man who'd been 'practically a god' until a couple of days ago.
A moment later, Thor managed to collect himself and explain the situation to Steve. "The Vision says that if we consent to call off Thanos' dogs, Loki will release him, along with Downey and Jennifer Connelly, unharmed. I was about to reply that we did not set the Chi'Tauri on him, for I would not deal with such creatures to save my own life, but Natasha took the phone from me before I could speak."
Nat was rapping her knuckles against the headboard of the bed as she was talking – Morse code. She was asking Paul on the phone to tell them where he was. "Uh-huh," she was saying. "Uh-huh? Yikes, that is some cray-cray right there."
Steve sprang to his feet – or at least, he tried to. He'd already forgotten his twisted ankle, and he only just managed to catch himself on the night table before he fell on his face. The adrenaline of fighting the aliens and then escaping the convention centre had allowed him to ignore the injury earlier, but running on it had probably damaged it further and putting weight on it now made it feel like it would explode. He had literally just been thinking about how they were all operating under unaccustomed restrictions, and it had still slipped his mind.
Thor got up and grabbed his arm to steady him, but Steve shook his head. "I'm fine," he said, literally lying through gritted teeth.
Thor backed off. "Tell him we did not send the Chi'Tauri," he said to Natasha.
She held up a hand. "Bob said what?" she asked.
"Tell him, please," Thor insisted. "I would not have Loki believe…"
"I am on the phone," Nat said, flapping a hand at him to make him shush. "Sorry, Paul, the Chrises are loud. Can I talk to Tom directly, or is he… oh, I guess Loki probably doesn't know how phones work. Hang on to your cell, okay, I need to talk to the boys. We'll call you back. Bye!"
Steve could have sworn he heard the Vision's voice shout, wait! Scarlett! as she disconnected.
"Where are they?" he asked.
"Hyatt Hotel downtown," Nat relied. She handed the phone back to Thor, then knelt down to tighten and pin the bandage on Steve's ankle. "There. Need a cane to walk on, old man?"
Steve heaved himself up off the bed again, more carefully this time. "Very funny," he said.
They'd left Downey's van at the train station, although this was less because they'd wanted to give it back to him and more because there would have been nowhere to park close to the convention centre. When making their escape, there'd been a moment in which they'd considered taking the Pikachu car just because it was conveniently close, but fortunately they'd come to their senses, and instead they'd 'borrowed' a dark green Ford Edge parked in the next row.
"Romanov," Steve said, holding the door so Dodger could hop in, "you find out which room they're in, and cover the windows. I'll focus on freeing the hostages, and Thor, you subdue Loki." Chris Hemsworth may have been smaller than the real Thor, but Tom Hiddleston was also a little smaller than the real Loki. Hopefully, Thor could take him. "You've got the best idea how this switching universes thing works," he added. "Is Loki going to be able to use magic?"
"I fear I cannot say," Thor said. He did up his seat belt, and Nat started the engine. "The rules of magic vary greatly between universes. In some it is of no use at all, in others so common people use it for daily tasks as you do your mobile phones."
They would have to be ready for anything. "Either way, he's not going to come quietly after all the effort he went to get here," Steve observed – which led to one more, rather perplexing, question. "Why did Loki want to come here? Assuming this was his goal, and not just somewhere he wound up at random." Loki had talked about finding a world to rule, but this didn't seem like it.
"I don't think it was his intention to come to this specific universe," Thor said. "He would not willingly lower himself to a mortal state. Though now that he's here, he seems happy enough to enjoy Mr. Hiddleston's many fans."
"But if this wasn't where he was going, then why is he still here?" asked Nat.
That was even more troubling. If Loki weren't where he'd meant to go, why didn't he leave? He might be having fun getting his picture taken with girls all over him, but that was hardly on the level of ruling a planet. What was he trying to accomplish?
Steve had hoped to reach the hotel quickly, before Loki realized that the Vision had given them the information, but between the traffic and downtown Calgary's maze of one-way streets, it took them over an hour. Finally, they found a place to park in the underground garage at the hotel, and headed into the lobby. The Hyatt Regency was about as far from the Penguin Motel as it was possible to be in terms of comfort and expense, with soft lighting and a long, carpeted lobby with ultra-modern boat-shaped light fixtures on the ceilings and huge paintings of Canadian landscapes and wildlife on the walls. The whole place smelled new and clean.
Natasha went straight to the front desk, and scooped up a 'room rates' brochure. The young man behind the desk came to offer her help, and then his eyes went wide.
"Oh, my god!" he squeaked. "Are you Scarlett Johansson?"
She laughed. "You know what? People ask me that all the time."
The boy deflated a bit. "Oh," he said. "Well, welcome to the Hyatt Regency, Miss…"
Nat ignored him. She eyed the brochure for a moment, then held it up to show Steve and Thor. "All right, take a guess," she said. "Where's Loki?"
They looked at the page, and both read the name off in unison. "Royal Suite."
"Top floor," said Nat with a nod.