Sutton shoved through throngs of people in various states of costumed dress and otherwise as she made her way out of the conference center and onto the street. It was hard to see over the crowd, and people's hats and headdresses and weird, bulky weaponry didn't help her already low vantage point.

"Chase!" She called again.

There was no sign of her friend and she let out a frustrated huff. According to the clock on her phone, the time before the next ferry was dwindling quickly and she really didn't want to be stuck in Seattle as twilight set in and the dusky light crept through the alleyways to darken the sidewalks. The thought alone set her teeth on edge.

Adjusting her blazer, Sutton pushed her way through the crowd with her eyes set. Besides wearing a Loki t-shirt that declared "I Do What I Want", she at least didn't stand out as part of the comic con goers, and people paid her less mind than the others decked out in homemade mecha suits or pony ears. She hoped it made her less of a target.

Half the reason she agreed to come was because Chase promised not to ditch her and leave her to fend for herself in Seattle.

"I'm going to kill him," she muttered to herself.

Despite the setback of him disappearing, he at least had his phone still with him, and Sutton was able to hound him for a few vague answers to his whereabouts. Unfortunately, the answers she got only confirmed her worst case suspicions. Misspelled words, missing chunks of information, way too many emojis.

Chase was drunk.

He'd promised not to do that either.

For one brief moment Sutton considered leaving him, a grown man, to find his own way home. But she dismissed the thought near instantly with a heaving sigh. It wouldn't be right. And she wouldn't be able to sleep anyway worrying about what he'd done to himself overnight.

With drinking in mind, Sutton scanned the street to find the nearest bar. There was one a block down that quite a few costumed folk were heading into and she made a beeline for it while praying Chase was there so she could grab him and bolt.

Inside the bar was loud with excited conversations and some sort of video game music blasting through the speakers. Whoever the owner was, they were taking advantage of the convention crowd and serving limited time themed drinks and snacks. Sutton ignored the menu and scanned over at least two Poison Ivys as she searched. Her luck, it seemed, had pulled through for this moment.

Chase wasn't too difficult to identify when he was dressed up as a zombified Batman. Sutton didn't understand the appeal herself. Zombies weren't exactly her area of interest, and she preferred superheroes alive, but it was his idea and he thought it was funny, so more power to him.

She marched purposefully through the bar, careful not to bump into the other patrons, and stopped in front of him with a glare.

"Chase."

He turned to face her, his Batman mask skewed enough for some of his shaggy brown hair to slip out and rub against his face paint.

"Sutton," he said back.

She raised one brow and crossed her arms. He followed the moment with a drunken head tilt and she could see the cogs turning as he tried to think.

"Oops," he finally said. "I did an oopsie, huh?"

The urge to strangle him did not diminish.

"Yeah," she said flatly. "You did. You better be able to walk, because, I swear, if we miss this next ferry I am going to pin a twenty to you and wish you the best of luck."

"Wait! No!"

He stood in a hurry, nearly knocking the table back in his rush, and Sutton was relieved to find he could stand.

"I'm s'posed to protec- you." He slurred. "Y'gotta. Y'gotta- I gotta walk you back."

Sutton pinched the bridge of her nose and adjusted her purse. They really didn't have time for this if they were going to make that ferry.

"Yeah, you were." She agreed just to get him to move faster. "And if you want to keep at least one of your promises, you better hurry up and follow me."

Whether it was the lingering memory of his sober promises or the sternness of her voice, Chase actually did as she said. She was able to keep him moving at a respectable pace as she rushed them downhill several blocks towards the water. By the time they'd reached the terminal, the ferry was doing it's last, last minute call and she was eternally grateful to her past self for buying their return tickets beforehand. They rushed to join more con-attendees who also had the same idea about getting home before midnight hours.

Both of them slid through the turnstiles behind a couple Ninja Turtles, Chase with a bit less grace than she did, and Sutton felt some of her stress lift as she sat in a booth by a window. Chase flopped down across from her and pulled off his mask without fanfare. His gaze was growing emptier and Sutton scowled.

"You really have a problem you know. What if I hadn't found you? What would you have done then?"

Chase gave her an overdramatic grimace as he shrugged his shoulders. Sutton waited, but that seemed to be the only answer he was going to give her, and she gave a derisive snort before turning away to look out the window once more.

Whatever.

The important thing was that they'd made the ferry and Chase lived right down the road from the terminal so she could immediately drop him off on her way home.

When the ferry docked half an hour later, Chase had deteriorated to near impossible to handle levels and Sutton grunted as she struggled to get him through the parking lot.

"You weren't even missing for that long," she snapped. "What did you do? Shots?"

"I'm Batman."

"Oh, shut up."

By the time she'd shoved him in the passenger seat of her ancient CR-V, her mood was moving rapidly towards frazzled and fed up, which were never great places for her to be. She hurried to beat any ferry traffic and pulled out onto the road as the sky grew dark.

"Have your house key ready? Chase? C'mon, Chase. Focus for five seconds."

He patted limply at his pants pockets, a slurred song spilling from his lips that Sutton couldn't quite identify and didn't have the patience to anyway. When he failed to pull out a key, Sutton nudged him with her elbow to try and get him back on track.

"Your key, Chase. We're almost at your house; look."

Chase flapped around more frantically and Sutton was relieved to hear the jangle of keys when she pulled into his driveway. She snagged the keys out of his grip after putting the car in park and moved around to the passenger side to help get him out. He sagged against her hold and Sutton grunted again as he squashed her small frame.

"D'ya think I can- I can grapel that? I think I can-"

Sutton glared as he pointed up towards the gutter along his roof.

"Don't you dare get any stupid ideas when you're only twenty feet from your couch, or I swear-"

A blue light flashed from the street, cutting her off, and Sutton almost lost her tentative hold on Chase as a chill ran through her and he attempted to twist around to look.

"Firew 'rks! Yes!"

Sutton turned to look, but she didn't see fireworks. There was a group of people a bit down the road. From what she could see in the dark, some of them looked oddly dressed with some glowing bits, and she brushed them off as some of the comic con attendees who'd also gotten off the ferry.

With one last grunt and sheer force of will, Sutton managed to open his front door and make sure he landed on his couch before she tossed his keys on his coffee table and shut the door behind her.

Good deed: done for the week.

Sutton let out a sigh, resituated her blazer, and tried to smooth back her wild curls as she jumped into her car. The group on the road was still loitering there, sending unease through her. It was dark and she was alone, but it was fine. She'd be fine. She was in her car and they were on foot, so really she had the upper hand in the situation.

The self reassurance didn't totally work as she noted the impressive heights a couple of the men sported. All of them were standing in the direction she needed to go home in and she hoped they'd move without her having to use her horn at this hour. She locked her doors, wincing at the obvious sound, and inched her car forward. None of them made a move to get out of her way and she felt her frustration bubble back up.

In the wake of her headlights, she could at least tell the group were indeed dressed up as the Avengers. Or at least most of them. She was actually impressed with how the costumes looked even from a distance, and had it been earlier, or she in a better mood, she might've stopped to compliment them on their work. But as it was, it was dark and she was tired and ready to start over with a fresh day.

She rolled down her window a few inches and leaned to call out.

"Hey! Can you guys get out of the way? I'd like to get home tonight."

The entire group turned to face her, but they didn't seem too intent on moving.

"Ma'am," one man spoke up, "you really need to leave the area. It's not safe-"

"Yeah, yeah. You've got big, bad Loki to battle. But listen, take it somewhere else? You can't play in the middle of the street."

Her phone tinged and she looked down, distracted for a moment. A different voice from the group let out a disbelieving,

"Excuse me?"

It was a text from her mom, asking her if she'd made it home safely yet. Sutton typed out a quick affirmative reply and sent it before she looked back up. The glowing from one of the costumes was closer now and shone rather brightly in a cool blue. The entire group walked closer and with a better view, her stomach fluttered again.

"You guys, uh, seriously did a good job of being doppelgangers. It's almost… disconcerting."

One member of the group, one of the tall ones, was dressed up like Loki and he watched her intently with a gleam in his eye that made her want to lock her doors all over again.

"Listen, kid, I don't know what the hell is going on here, but there's a dangerous, intergalactic criminal here and you need to leave this to the professionals."

The man berating her was dressed like Iron Man, and his face plate flipped up when he rounded her side of the vehicle. Sutton jolted in her seat. Not only did the suit move but it was pretty hard not to recognize the face of the Robert Downey Jr.

Her brain frizzled and her tongue felt stuck.

It wasn't Robert Downey Jr., of course. There was no way he was hanging out in a sketchy neighborhood by the pier.

"Are you drunk?" Slipped passed her lips before she could think. The man who wasn't RDJ smirked briefly.

"Surprisingly, not today."

Sutton had had just about enough foolishness for the day. She gripped her steering wheel and prepared to muster up the nerve to tell them to beat it for good. To call them out on their bluff or game, or whatever it was they were trying to pull. Her mind spun as she came up with the sassiest way to call them fanatics or crazy or overcommitted, but all the words died in her throat. They died because she heard a reverberating grunt, and a shadow moved from out of the darkness where her headlights hadn't touched.

It stepped out onto the road and a tingling sensation ran down her face as she grew cold.

"Holy crap."

"Yeah," said the Iron Man one.

"HOLY CRAP."

It was The Hulk. He moved closer towards the hood of her car, and Sutton unlocked the car and threw open her door to stumble out and scurry back and away.

It wasn't like some man painted green or some freaky animatronic puppet contraption, but the Hulk. His muscles flexed beneath his skin and his grimace exposed large teeth and pale gums. He glanced in her direction only a moment, and she could feel his growl as he went back to keeping his eyes on Loki. Loki.

If her brain was frizzling before, it short-circuited now. Absolutely sparked and smoked to a concerning degree.

"You- you guys are the Avengers! How the- am I drunk?"

"Ma'am," said Captain freaking America. "I'm going to have to ask you to calm down."

"Well isn't that a grand idea!"

This was what she would classify as a Level Ten Freak Out. She always knew she'd been saving it for something good, and there probably wouldn't be a better time to cash out.

Despite her panicking thoughts, or perhaps because she was frantically looking for any evidence this was all a hoax, she did notice the two SHIELD agents share a look.

"How do you know about the Avengers?"

That was Hawkeye. Clint Barton. And his fingers twitched over his bow as he stared at her.

"Huh, good point," said Tony Stark. "I thought we were all part of Fury's top secret boyband. Well, plus one chick."

Black Widow shot him a glare.

"Where are we, mortal?"

Sutton peeked around her hood to see Thor frowning down at her, a confused crease between his brows. Loki stood right behind him and he was still staring directly at her, so she quickly looked away.

Not Tom Hiddleston? NOT Tom Hiddleston.

The group seemed to be in consensus on the question and expected an answer. Sutton swallowed and shifted where she stood.

"Um, this is Bremerton. Washington. The state, not D.C."

There were blank stares and murmured confusion. Looks were exchanged and all heads turned towards Loki in a communal glare. Loki held up his non-cuffed hands. Sutton's hand inched towards her car door, but their attention was redirected back to her too quickly for her to try and bolt.

"That still doesn't explain how you know about a secret government program. Or why you seem to be wearing Earth's current top villain on your shirt."

The comment from Black Widow didn't help her lose the team's interest and Sutton dropped her hand.

Leave it to the girl to point out her fashion choices.

She winced and attempted to close her blazer over the tee in question. If Loki hadn't been paying attention to her before, he had laser focus now. Sutton decided she didn't like that very much.

"Look," she started as she edged ever closer to her driver's side door. "This is hard to explain. I mean, it's crazy. I feel crazy. Maybe I'm going insane or something and I'm definitely going to have to talk to a therapist about this later. But your best course of action would be to have Loki teleport you back home. The sooner the better, actually."

"Right. Like we're going to trust him with our wellbeing." Spat Hawkeye. "Wait. How do you know his name?"

"She's wearing him on her shirt, Clint," Black Widow pointed out yet again. "How'd she get a shirt so fast?"

Sutton shriveled into herself even further.

"Even if you begged for my help, I could do no such thing." Loki spoke up. "Nor would I. The power of the Tesseract has faded from my grasp, thanks to your stupidity."

It wasn't exactly clear who he was directing that blame at, but Thor rolled his eyes all the same.

"Brother, now is not the time."

"I am not your brother."

"Can we dial down the angst here for a second?"

Tony seemed to have decided the fight had died down at this point, and Sutton watched in awe as his suit folded itself down into a box.

"I didn't know that model did that," she muttered to herself.

Tony quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Kid, can we hurry this conversation along so we can get out of here. Spill. I have things to do. Like Pepper."

Sutton's face instantly heated and she scowled. She swore she saw Captain America do the same.

"Short version," she asked.

"Preferably."

She took a deep breath and straightened her blazer. Brushed off some imaginary lint and pushed back some stray curls. She sighed. She wished she had more ways to stall.

"Well, here, you don't really… exist."

"Come again?"

Tony leaned back on his left leg and crossed his arms. Sutton huffed.

"Look! I don't know if this is some very elaborate and convincing," she glanced at Hulk, "prank or what. But you are- you're comic book characters. Actors, icons, whatever! I don't know what's going on, but these sorts of things don't happen to me, and I feel like I'm going a little crazy, ok?"

Captain America, Steve Rogers, actually walked over and placed a hand on her shoulder and she could only freeze and stare at him in wonder. The blue eyes, the square jaw, the waves of heroic competence rolling off him.

"We're sorry, miss…."

"Sutton."

"Miss Sutton, if this has put pressure on you. But you have to understand where we're coming from too."

"Of course."

She saw Tony roll his eyes in her peripheral vision and her lips puckered. The team was either looking at her like she was crazy or mind controlled or stupid. She felt the last of her nerves spike.

"You want proof? Ok. Fine."

This was the part in a movie when someone might have rolled their shoulders and cracked their knuckles before their impressive display, but she refrained. She pointed to each member of the group in turn instead.

"Pepper saved your first arc reactor and it saved your life, you're good at art and had a date, you tried to kill yourself and failed, something happened in Budapest, you were hit by a car twice, and you're a frost-"

At the expression Loki sent her way, she froze.

"Uh, I mean. You're good at lying."

The group went quiet. Sutton wrung her hands and reached back for the car's door handle.

"Yep." Tony piped up. "She definitely knows too much."

"I don't want any trouble," Sutton snapped. She waved her hands in front of her and just avoided whacking Cap. "I'm not- I'm just trying to get home, ok?"

"I can't connect with SHIELD," the Widow confirmed.

The mood shifted even further into grim concern. Tony tapped at a watch on his wrist and looked troubled.

"I'm disconnected from my main servers. I should be able to connect anywhere in the world."

Sutton snapped the fingers on both hands and wondered if they'd try to stop her from peeling away while she tried to convince herself that this had all been a stress induced fever dream.

"See. I was telling the truth. You're welcome and good luck-"

"No, no, no, no. You're not going anywhere," said Tony.

The Hulk grunted again, interrupting Tony, and he sat down heavily with a sort of petulant look. It sent vibrations from the road into her feet and Sutton checked "insanely advanced hologram" off her list of desperate explanations.

Whether it was adrenaline and anger wearing off, or their conversation boring Hulk, Sutton didn't know. But his green skin started to fade and stretch and shrink. And he shrank and shrank until he was no longer a hulking mass, but a man. Until he was back to Bruce Banner sitting in the middle of the road and holding up a torn pair of jeans to protect his modesty.

He blinked as he adjusted to the light of her headlights.

"I missed something," he stated simply.

And that display, if nothing else had, confirmed to Sutton that she wasn't on an elaborate set of Punk'd. Because no feat of make up or practical work could fake what she'd just watched with her own eyes. In person. She couldn't even try to explain it away to herself. The truth had backed her into a corner and was making rude faces at her.

She should have just hid in Chase's house until they'd left. At least he only snored.

"This isn't a fix it tonight sort of issue, is it? Why is it even night?" Hawkeye bemoaned from the back of the group.

Sutton had to agree with him. She felt like bemoaning too. How did one just… put back fictional characters from wherever it was they came from? At the moment, she didn't have nearly the brain power to even ponder it. As it was, she felt shocked stupid and this confrontation had delayed her from getting the sleep she'd originally been chasing.

"Doesn't seem like it," Cap agreed. But his voice was quiet and without some of the performance it'd had before.

"Really, what's going on," asked Bruce.

"Perhaps the lady Sutton could provide a place of rest until the morning," Thor said with a hopeful lilt.

Sutton grimaced. Whatever insane event was going on, she didn't exactly want to leap into it. Did she like The Avengers? Yes! She liked the movies. Movies that she could invest in and enjoy and then put back on the shelf when the DVD stopped playing.

Before she could respond or even think to politely decline, Tony marched around the car, opened the passenger side door, and tossed his suit inside.

"That sounds like a great idea, Point Break."

"Oh, uh, well, actually-"

Tony looked challengingly at her, that same brow arched high.

"Or we could detain you for accessing top secret information."

Sutton threw her hands down at her sides.

"It's not top secret! I told you!"

But her arguments amounted to nothing. The entire crew, Loki unfortunately included, squeezed themselves into her car against all odds, and Sutton had no choice but to climb back into the driver's seat and finally continue down the road.

This wasn't how her evening was supposed to go. She had a feeling the morning wouldn't be much better.