Chapter 38
Harry idly tapped the side of his glass, watching as the liquid instantly froze, and then became solid again with the next tap. Vodka froze at a significantly lower temperature than human blood, so it was good practise—not that he particularly needed any practise with this kind of magic. With each year's passing, he became better at killing things.
Now, he was quite confident that he would be able to beat Thor. That said, he wasn't exactly expecting to ever need to beat Thor. As far as he could tell, his revenge on Thor for causing Loki's "death" has worked. Mjolnir lay at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, coated in a dozen anti-summoning spells and fifty tons of depleted uranium; it had been there for over six months.
So far, no one had come looking for it, as far as Harry was aware, but six months wasn't exactly a long time to Asgardians. For all he and Loki knew, they might've been on Earth right now or coming soon. He might've been able to place Bifrost-detecting wards over New Mexico, but the world was a considerably larger area to cover.
'Do you honestly think this'll work?' Harry asked.
'Maybe. SHIELD found us twice before. They should be able to do it again if we expose ourselves enough.'
'Perhaps. I still think it comes at too great a price.' He sighed at his reflection. 'I mean I have to be blond.'
'I'm sure that's horrible for you. But perhaps being blond part of the time for a few weeks is a worthy sacrifice if it means that we are made aware of threats before they attack us.'
'You know me, Loki; any sacrifice is too much for me—unless, you know, it's other people sacrificing stuff for me, like their lives, or blood or animals or babies. Makes me feel more godlike.'
'Well, you won't feel very godlike if you get killed by an Asgardian or a random alien.'
'Don't tell me what I will and won't feel.'
Harry withdrew from his thoughts as the chair next to him was drawn back and someone sat in it. He glanced up and down the bar, seeing that plenty of the seats were free. Only a few people were in the room, sitting off in isolated tables and looking as though they were trying too hard to look normal.
He smiled and looked to the person sitting next to him. Much to his disappointment, it wasn't Agent Coulson. Rather, it was a suspiciously attractive red-haired woman—and that wasn't to say that he hadn't seen better dozens of times before; it was just that women attractive as this one didn't tend to hang around in seedy bars in Rome at four in the morning unless they were prostitutes.
This woman probably wasn't a prostitute—not one poor enough to be working in such a shady place, at least—judging by her perfectly white teeth and perfect skin and the multitude of weapons she was probably carrying. She practically screamed SHIELD agent.
'Or maybe you're being paranoid,' said Loki. 'Again.'
'That wasn't my fault—the ice cream vendor was suspicious-looking.'
Harry grinned at the woman. "So, you come here often?"
She smiled back at him. "I—" she began in Italian.
"Don't worry," Harry interrupted. "I'm not hitting on you. If I was, I'd be using one of my pick-up lines. I'd probably be saying something like, 'Hey, babe, is your dad in prison? Because if I was your dad, I'd be in prison.'"
The woman blinked.
Harry frowned. "Do you not understand or something? I was implicating that if I had the opportunity, I would have molested you in your adolescence or childhood, even if I was directly related—"
"I understood."
"Okay. Did you understand the implication that I'd also molest you now, as well? That's not a rape threat, by the way—I save those until they've rejected me twice."
From the way that the woman was yet to run away screaming, Harry guessed that she might be a SHIELD agent. Or was into this kind of stuff. Or was a prostitute who really wanted to get paid.
'I can hear a faint voice,' said Loki. 'She's wearing an earpiece.'
'Maybe she's talking to her pimp.'
'Turn away for a moment and find out.'
Naturally as possible and still gripping his glass, Harry glanced at the other men sitting in the room, catching sight of a few earpieces. He somehow doubted that they were all prostitutes.
'I felt her put something in your drink.'
Harry smiled inwardly. It seemed as though even SHIELD agents weren't trained to accommodate for superhuman senses—not super-hearing or super-touching
"Anyway," he said to the woman, "what's your name?"
She smiled at him. "Natalia. And yours?"
Harry thought for a moment. "Muhammad Lee."
'That doesn't sound fake. At all.'
'I'm pretty sure they're the most common names in the world. Well, it's either Lee or Wang as the most common surname, but Muhammad Wang would just sound silly.'
"I know what you're thinking," Harry said. "Why is a white guy who speaks perfect Italian called Muhammad Wang? I mean, 'why is a white guy who speaks perfect Italian called Muhammad Lee?' Well, the answer is that I was conceived during a foursome including my mother, a white guy, an Arab, and a Chinese guy, and since I came out white, my mother felt the need to include the others, too, but didn't know their names, so guessed."
Harry smiled, picked up his drugged drink and gulped it all down. He felt anti-apparation wards appear as someone activated a wardstone. 'What's in the drink?'
Loki was silent for a moment. 'A powerful sedative. It would take a normal person down in about ten seconds. It won't affect you, but I will help you simulate its effects so we are captured successfully.'
Natalia still wasn't looking very scared. She was definitely a SHIELD agent. Or a weirdo. "That's…interesting."
"I am very interesting—eccentric, too. It distracts people and makes them underestimate me."
Harry surged forward before the woman could react, grabbed her by the hair, and smashed her face against the bar. In the same move, he flung his glass across the room with deadly accuracy, shattering it against another agent's head.
He ducked as someone attempted to tackle him, letting them crash against the bar before picking them up by their shirt and throwing them into another attacker. He grabbed a beer bottle by its neck and dashed forward again, smashing it on a man's forehead. He went to stab him in the gut with it but stopped—he didn't want SHIELD to be too angry at him.
Instead, he dropped the bottle and faked a stagger—even if he was a "metahuman," the drug should've been affecting him by now. Two taser barbs caught him in the back and he tensed as a wave of electricity pulsed through him. Neither he nor Loki did anything to counter it, so he collapsed stiffly to the ground.
After a few moments, he closed his eyes and let himself go limp. Combat boots pounded against the floor and his arms were pulled up behind his back before being clamped in a pair of handcuffs that would've taken him about half a second to escape from.
It took seven and a half minutes for Harry to grow bored of pretending to be unconscious whilst idly listening to the American-accented English around him. He resisted the urge to break out of his cuffs and massacre everyone in a blizzard of icy power, and instead drifted off into his own thoughts and let Loki keep an eye on things.
A few hours later, after a car ride and a helicopter ride, Loki nudged Harry back into consciousness.
'We are at a high altitude,' Loki said. 'I am not sure what we are in, though. It does not feel like a plane, but there is very minor movement that would not be found if we were in a high-up or tall building.'
Harry probed around for wards. The anti-apparition wardstone was nearby. There were no others—nothing would be able to stop him from using the Portkey embedded in his left forearm. These people most definitely didn't know he was a wizard.
After making sure that his illusions were still intact, Harry opened his eyes. He was sitting in a metal chair, and handcuffed to a table, in a room with all of its walls made up of black hexagons.
And in front of him was the reason that Loki had awoken him: a man in a black suit, Agent of SHIELD, Phil Coulson.
"Hello again, Mr Coulson. This time, I feel obliged to tell you that I'm going to escape in"—Harry glanced at his watch and then remembered he didn't own one and they would've confiscated it anyway—"two minutes and thirty-three seconds."
Coulson raised an eyebrow. "Are you?"
Harry shrugged. "Probably not. It just seemed like a cool thing to say."
"Of course. And I feel obliged to tell you, that should you attempt to harm me—"
"I will be torn to shreds by a pack of bald eagles?"
Coulson paused. "What?"
"Oh, sorry, I meant a convocation of eagles. All of these bird plurals confuse me."
"That's not what I was asking about."
"Well, the bit about them tearing me to shreds was hyperbole. They'll probably only maim me."
"You don't seem to be very worried about being captured."
Harry grinned. "That's because I'm not worried. You see, me saying that I was called Muhammad Lee was actually me concealing my real identity, who is more than capable of escaping SHIELD."
"And what is your real identity?"
"Muhammad Ali."
Coulson was silent.
Harry sighed. "Fine, I'm not really Muhammad Ali. I'm actually the reincarnation—"
"Anyway, getting back on topic. You were discovered by SHIELD because you were—"
"Yes, yes, I know. Using my cool powers to kill gangsters in Rome who didn't think I was cool enough to join their gangs. And because of said cool powers, you want to recruit me to the Avenger's Initiative."
Coulson seemed to be actively avoiding looking surprised.
"Oh, don't be so shocked," Harry said. "You didn't think that I randomly began to kill random gangsters again in the same place a few years after you almost caught me? Even I know that's stupid, and I've gotten brain damage so many times that I've gotten brain damage so that I don't remember whether or not I've gotten brain damage before."
Coulson glanced at the roof where Harry didn't doubt there was a security camera.
He turned around and waved at it. "Anyway, I wanted to get caught, so that I could become a semi-member of the Avenger's Initiative. I know it is meant to combat extra-terrestrial and super-supernatural threats, and I don't want those killing me either. So I want to make a deal that whenever aliens turn up—especially those Asgardian wankers—you call me. If the threat is big enough, I'll reveal my true power."
He let broken handcuffs fall off and wandlessly conjured a piece of paper and a pen, and then scrawled down a phone number. Tracking it wouldn't work—he had managed to create a small portal, so to speak, so the phone actually connected to a random radio tower in the middle of rural New Zealand, no matter where it was. And if they happened to damage said radio tower…well, they would get to "test" his homemade explosives.
He glanced at his wrist. "Well, look at the time. I've been awake for two minutes and thirty-three seconds—around that, anyway. I best be going. Addio, Coulson. Sherbet lemons."
Before Coulson had any time to ask what Harry was talking about, his Portkey activated and he was gone.
A/N: Sorry about not uploading for over a month. I was already lost on what to do next, and then I smashed my laptop screen which kinda demotivated me even more so I couldn't be bothered to write. The screen is still smashed; I'm typing on a TV HDMI-corded into the laptop, which is kinda awkward. Nonetheless, I plan to stick to my schedule once again. No promises, though.
