The next morning, Loki waited until James had left the apartment. Then, a few minutes later, she quickly shifted forms, that strange sensation of her body stretching and changing to meet her needs flowing through her veins. With that, she took off into the sky in the form of a jet-black raven and made for the port she had located earlier in the week. The flight was short, but the feeling of freedom that came with having wings, even for just a little while, was just as potent as ever. Loki landed in the shadow of several shipping containers and quickly changed into the male form she had used to complete the recruitment. With everything in place to put her plan into action, she casually strolled for the military vessel a short distance down the pier.

It was surprisingly easy to get aboard. All she had to do was show a couple pieces of paper, easily enough glamoured, and she was allowed to enter. With that out of the way, she settled in for what she hoped would be an uneventful voyage. And, as it turned out, it was thankfully a rather boring voyage. She spotted James once or twice, but only from a distance. There were several hundred human males on this ship; finding a single person when you did not know their schedule or usual haunts was incredibly difficult.

About a week later, they arrived in a place known as France. Loki found herself wishing she had spent more time studying Midgardian geography, but it seemed that the humans in charge of this operation had logicistics well in hand. She followed the instructions and kept her eyes and ears peeled for any useful information.

Being in the human military was...unpleasant, to say the least. They were usually cold and often covered in mud. The food would keep them going, but it was not at all tasty. And there was the constant risk of injury and death, of course. Life was singularly uncomplicated: go where you're told, do what you're told, don't ask questions. Loki quickly found herself chafing against the control, but she tamped it down for the sake of the mission.

A few weeks into the mission, she found James near a campfire during a slight reprieve from the fighting. "Hello." She smiled at him as she sat down. "Haven't seen you around before. You new?"

"Ah, no, I've been here. Odds are if you can see me I'm not doing my job." He patted the sniper rifle sitting beside him.

"Ah, that makes sense. Mind if I sit here?"

"Not at all." He scooted over on the log to make room for her. "What do you do?"

"Little bit of everything, really." Loki shrugged. "A lot of kitchen duty, too. Can't really seem to learn how to keep my mouth shut."

James chuckled. "Yeah, you seem like the type to mouth off."

"Is it that obvious?"

"Extremely."

Loki laughed. "Perhaps you are more observant than most?"

He pretended to think for a moment. "No, you're definitely just that obviously trouble."

"Hm, should I go then? Spare you from sharing in my fate?"

James smiled. "Nah, I like trouble. Bucky Barnes, pleased to meet you." He offered her his hand to shake.

"Loki Holmes. My parents were extremely eccentric when it came to names." She took his hand. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance." Again, she added silently.

They spent the rest of the evening chatting like old friends about everything but the war that raged around them. After that night, the two were pretty much inseparable. James joined her on kitchen duty more often than not, and Loki liked to tease him about his near prophetic words that first night. And every time, he'd shrug it off and reassert that it didn't bother him in the slightest, with that lopsided grin that made her heart do flips.

Late one night, Loki was awakened to the sound of gunfire far too close for comfort. She summoned her rifle from the space between worlds, fully loaded, and dashed out into the night. Flickers of muzzle fire pockmarked the night. Humans were screaming and running in confusion. Then, suddenly, a blue glow lit up the night, and a soldier no more than three feet from Loki crumbled into ash. She froze. That light...it had almost looked like...it couldn't be. This was very very bad. "Bucky!" she dashed into the night, firing at the enemy with disturbing precision. She could see easily in the Midgardian night, but it was clear the humans could not. Bullets whizzed past her from every direction, and several cut burning paths of pain across her limbs. "BUCKY!"

When the smoke cleared and the sun rose, little was left of the camp. So many were gone. Loki never found her Bucky. When had she started thinking of him as hers? She wasn't sure. It didn't seem like it would matter now. If he wasn't dead yet, he most likely soon would be. She sat, staring at the ground, a numbness spreading through her body. That blue energy last night had almost looked like tesseract energy, but that was impossible; it was safely hidden away...on Midgard.

Loki cursed.

If an Infinity Stone was in play, this just became a whole new kind of threat.

The next day, there was a show designed to lift everyone's spirits, and the main event was the so-called Captain America. He was an idiot, Loki decided, and so was whomever sent him here, especially now. And it went about as well as she expected it to. The boys made jokes and threw a few pieces of stale bread. In the midst of the chaos, she snuck away. There was a rumor that some of the soldiers taken in the raid were still alive, held in a Hydra fortress ten miles south. The science bunker was not far; if she could get her hands on some of that tech she might be able to pull off a rescue without revealing what she was. She made it as far as the labs before anyone noticed her.

"What do you think you're doing?" Howard Stark stepped forward as she hefted an experimental gun off its stand.

"I'm getting our soldiers back. Don't try to stop me."

"Not with that, you're not. None of this stuff is ready for field deployment; you'll just blow yourself up, and that won't do anyone any good."

"Then what do you suggest, genius?" Loki whirled to face him. "Give up?"

"You can't save them." The Midgardian scientist shrugged. "No point losing your life too."

"I see. In that case, I'll be on my way, because I'm going to save them with or without your help." She slammed the door behind her as she left.

A quick walk cloaked in shadows got her well beyond the confines of the camp. Screw Odin's rules; she wasn't about to leave those men to die. A single thought had her soaring into the sky as a jet-black raven. An omen of death to come.

It was dark when Loki reached the edge of the Hydra encampment. She studied it for a few minutes, searching for a stealthy way in.

There really wasn't one.

Oh well.

In less time than a blink, Loki reverted herself to her true form. A flick of the wrist summoned her Asgardian armor, including her horned helmet. One by one, she pulled her weapons from the space between worlds and fastened them in their proper places. Oh, she had missed these blades. If she was going to start breaking the rules, she was going to do it with style.

The Hydra agents on the front line never even knew what hit them.