"You idiot! He can fly!"
Well, so could Danny! Usually. When he wasn't limited to human form because he was being mind-controlled and the mind control didn't want him to go ghost because it would have to let go.
Luckily, Danny could slow down their fall, and Danny's plan didn't require distance, just breaking the man's line of sight.
He turned them both invisible, and when they crashed into the trees below, it didn't hurt much.
Loki got the idea quickly enough. Soon, there were illusions, perfect images of Danny and Loki, running through the trees below. Thor zoomed after them, and with a muffled scoff, flicked his fingers, splitting the illusion.
Danny had to admit that was pretty cool.
"Why," said Loki, voice low and angry, "did you tell him I was mind-controlled? I am not under any mind control."
Could have fooled Danny. "You told me to protect you. He seemed to care about you. If he thinks you're being controlled, he'll hesitate."
"Care about me? Maybe he cares about the brother he thought he had, but he never knew me."
.
"I've got eyes on—" Romanoff broke off. "There's more than one."
"Fenton's duplication ability?" asked Rogers, who was still dripping on the floor.
"Only if he can pass it to Loki, too."
"We'll have to split up," said Rogers. "Each of us take one."
"I've got the one in the middle," said Tony.
.
"And here come the heroes," said Loki. "Shall we see if I can get them to fight?"
.
They'd whittled down the Lokis to one, and Romanoff had finally managed to tag Fenton with a sleeper dart. Problem was, Thor didn't want to let his brother go without a fight.
A fight there was. It started out okay, at least in Tony's opinion. Neither he nor Rogers were exactly fresh and Thor was a godlike alien warrior with a magic lightning hammer, but they held their own.
Up until Thor overloaded his circuits, leaving the right side of his suit a smoking, unresponsive mess. Being that he didn't want to become Perillaus Mark 2 inside his own brazen bull, he pulled the emergency release. Not all the catches worked, and he had to kick off one of his boots before it could cripple him.
This left him a normal, undefended human in the middle of a battle between Captain America and Thor. Not his idea of a vacation.
Not that he didn't feel as if he could overcome even this challenge, but valor, discretion, etcetera, etcetera, it was time to get out of—
He was stopped by a spear tip to the chest. The arc reactor in particular. Oh, and a smiling Loki.
Not good, not good—
Loki frowned. "Why isn't it working?"
"Uh," said Tony. "Compatibility issues?" Then he remembered the two legendary figures duking it out behind him. "Help!"
Loki, annoyingly, disappeared.
.
"I thought we were trying not to get caught," hissed Danny.
"Having the smith under my command would have been a boon," shot back Loki. "The benefits outweighed the risks. Why didn't it work?"
"Might have something to do with the giant glowy thing on his chest," said Danny. Tucker would kill him for forgetting the name. "The arc reactor? Does something for his heart problems."
Loki looked like he had swallowed a lemon. "No matter. We still have the upper hand."
.
We, Loki had said.
It wasn't exactly a slip of the tongue. He was simply… surprised at the word's honesty. He didn't think he had it in him, to be honest.
No, that wasn't right. For all his lies, he was more honest about the truths of the world than anyone else.
He dismissed the thought to focus on his current… predicament.
Running through the woods like this, plan or no, was undignified. He was half tempted to tell Danny to leave him to be captured and tell Barton to go through with the previous plan. They were disgustingly far from the rendezvous.
Disgustingly, because although Loki would prefer to ignore it, he was on a time limit. His unconventionally acquired followers were not automatons. Their bodies would force them to sleep eventually, and then what would Loki do? He'd be left in a situation not unlike the one Danny outlined regarding the Chitauri.
The new plan should give him time to overcome that particular problem.
The reached the road, and Loki shot a warning blast in front of the next car to drive by, forcing it to stop.
"Sorry," said Danny as he pulled the driver out through the door, and then… Went around to the side without the wheel.
"What are you doing?"
"Getting in the passenger seat?"
"You expect me to drive?"
"You are the adult. I can't get a license in my state until I'm sixteen."
"Sixteen decades?" asked Loki. Who had come up with such a ridiculous number?
"Uh, no. Years. Sixteen years."
"As in, rotations around your sun?"
"That is how we define years, yes."
"How," said Loki, "old are you?"
"Fifteen. Do we really have to have this conversation now?"
"And what is the average lifespan of a human?"
"I don't know, man. Eighty? The oldest person I've ever met was only, like, a hundred."
Loki did not blanch. Truly. He stalked to the driver's side door and pulled it open. Operating a mortal vehicle couldn't be that hard.
.
Danny, having been raised by Jack and Maddie Fenton, did not see anything deficient in Loki's driving skills. However, it is important to note that anyone else in the same situation – save, perhaps, Jazz Fenton or Thor – certainly would have.
.
"So," said Fury. "You let them get away."
"I think," said Tony, testing out exactly how pulled the muscle in his right shoulder was, "that 'let' is a bit of a strong word, there. Why didn't those fancy ray guns work?"
"At this time, that's unclear," said Fury.
"Could it be sabotage?" asked Romanoff. "The Fentons may know more than they're letting on."
"Again, we're looking into it. What is clear is that you underestimated the enemy."
"Well, sorry for not wanting to use lethal force on a teenager. Now, if it was reindeer games—"
"I do not believe my brother is entirely in his right mind. The boy with him—"
"Even ignoring the fact that Fenton has been compromised by Loki's mental abilities," interrupted Fury, "are you trying to say that what he did in New Mexico was, what, some kind of fluke?"
"In New Mexico," said Thor, "Loki was only after me. He didn't kill anyone."
"Not for lack of trying," said Agent Coulson from where he was lurking in the back of the room. Cool. Tony had no idea how long he'd been doing that.
"I think he was trying to give us hints," said Tony. "Fenton, I mean."
"Like what?" asked Rogers.
"Said his friend was a fan of mine and that I could do better, whatever that meant. Didn't he say something about your shield, too? Something about it being loud?"
"He did," said Rogers. "But we have no idea how the victims here are being affected. It might not mean anything."
"Yeah? And how about the fact that we're all still alive? He pulled circuits out of my suit without touching anything around it. He could have yanked out the arc reactor. You know, the thing that is very publicly the only thing keeping my heart beating. Hell, he could have pulled out our hearts with that little stunt. Yeah, we got knocked over, but at the end of the day, that's all that happened."
Fury stared at Tony for a long moment. "Coulson," he said. "Get in contact with the Fentons. See if you can learn anything about Daniel's friends, and why the weapons they gave us failed."
