Between the mind control and the simple nature of what he was, the directive to protect Loki and keep him from harm wasn't something Danny could shake off. It honestly wasn't something he wanted to shake off. Not when it was such a wonderful tool for him to use.
The key was being obnoxious and pedantic about what 'protect' and 'situations in which I will be harmed' meant.
Not in the 'I'm going to smother and nag you' way, but in the 'being closer to the guy mind controlling and possibly mentally torturing you is definitely harmful' way.
See, thing is, SHIELD had brought Danny on to consult because of his expertise with portals. He knew what it took to make them. He also knew how much it sucked to die because of a malfunctioning one, so there was a balance he had to keep, but still. There were a vast number of barely detectable alterations to a portal design that would keep it from working at all. The name of the game was sabotage.
Not that he was the only one playing that game.
The construction of the iridium cylinder was laughable. It was irregularly shaped and full of holes. They were making the whole thing from scratch, so it wasn't like they needed to make it a certain size or shape or anything like that. It was just. Bad on purpose.
Then there was the actual formation method, which was to shoot an unprotected beam a hundred or so feet until the terminus. No casing. No parabolic focus – although that probably would have been difficult with only the Tesseract itself as a source. No bounce-back. No sizing options. Just the Tesseract, the inducer, and the hope that catching bugs in the portal beam wouldn't screw it up too much. Not to mention atmospheric disturbances…
It was like the goal was to make the worst technically functional portal possible.
Well, no. Danny's goal was to make it actually dysfunctional, but he had to follow Loki's commands while doing that, so…
Speaking of Loki, although he was leaving most of the work to Dr. Selvig (aka the saboteur-in-chief), Danny got the impression that he had a greater understanding of portal physics than he let on. Loki was being very hands-off, though, and he was being compelled to make the portal in the first place.
Add this all to the new plan being one that sounded good on paper but was almost certainly guaranteed to be a disaster of epic proportions, because none of the people who came up with it actually wanted it to succeed…
Anyway, it was all a mess.
"We have a problem," said Dr. Selvig.
Excellent.
Danny looked over to Loki, only to see that, rather than obscurely pleased, he looked rather ill. Actually, come to think of it, none of them looked well. Side effect of not sleeping.
… Had Danny seen Loki sleeping? Or had he just been meditating slash getting-mentally-tortured-by-whoever-was-on-the-other-end-of-this?
He had to get a better name for that guy. Chitauri's boss? Nah. Didn't seem to fit. Chief Jerk? Freakshow Mark 2?
Could Danny get Loki out of this by making him sleep or knocking him out? It didn't seem impossible, and he could justify it with the whole 'sleep is necessary for your health' thing. He put the thought to the side to focus on Dr. Selvig.
"We don't have enough power. Our energy supply is too weak."
"Not enough power?" snapped Loki. "The Tesseract is nothing but power!"
Somehow, Danny got the impression that he already knew this. That there was glee behind his anger, that there was joy for another crushed plan.
"I know," said Dr. Selvig, "I know. But it's like a nut. You have to crack it open to get at the meat."
"Where can we find the power we need?"
"Some nuclear plants. Stark Tower," said Dr. Selvig, and, oh.
That was why Loki wanted to stage his invasion there in the original plan, before he'd been convinced otherwise. It was a necessity thing. Something he needed to do to please his master.
New York was still a bad, bad idea, though. Like – considering that they wanted the whole invasion thing to fail, centering it right on top of an 'enemy' fortress was a plus, yeah, so was luring the 'heroes' in quickly, and the people with their fingers on the nuclear buttons would probably not want to nuke NYC if at all possible, but…
So many people would die. New York was dense and not at all prepared for an invasion of that kind or degree.
In fact, there was only one place that was prepared to deal with an invasion through an interdimensional portal.
Everything that made Danny himself rebelled at the thought. Amity Park was his, his haunt, his responsibility, his home, his to protect, his to defend. He would not, could not lead an invasion there, mind control or not. Not even for the sake of the rest of the Earth.
"What's wrong with you?" asked Loki with a raised eyebrow.
"I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't slept for…" He trailed off. "Days? Anyway, I know some people who might be able to help with the power problem."
.
"Creepy spy guy downstairs. What should we do?"
"Uh," said Sam. If this had been her house, she'd go downstairs and tell Tucker to run for the hills with the staff. But it was his house, and the guy was looking for him… Probably. Mrs. Foley hadn't called them down yet.
Because she thought they were out. Right.
"Out the window," she said.
Tucker pulled up the sash and yanked out the screen—Then backtracked for his go bag. Sam shimmied out the window onto the ledge, then started lowering herself to the ground. Tucker followed soon after, replacing the screen and closing the window behind him, keeping the staff tucked between his chin and his chest. He reached the ground at almost the same time as Sam.
"Your place?"
"They might go there, too. We should—"
"Hello, kids."
The man in front of them looked more like someone's dad than a spy, but… He also looked a lot like a spy. Like a dad spy. But not necessarily a dad of spies. Just a dad that was also a spy. Though he could be a dad of spies, too, she supposed.
This was off track.
"I don't suppose you'd be willing to talk?"
Sam was experienced. But she was used to fighting ghosts. She didn't really know how to spot hidden weapons.
Still. She was sure this guy had them.
Whether or not the organization as a whole was willing to use weapons on kids was a question already answered. They'd shot at Danny. They worked with the GIW.
And possibly literal Nazis.
This guy was an unknown, but she sure wasn't giving him the benefit of the doubt, dad face or not. They'd have to treat him as if he would shoot.
The question was if Tucker would be able to do anything about it first.
The man raised his hands. "Just a talk. It looks like you know your friend is in trouble, and—"
Sand billowed past Sam, ruffling her clothes and then—
Screaming.
"Oh my gosh! You guys can't just teleport into my car while I'm driving, that's such a hazard!" shouted Jazz as she tried to correct her course on the road. "Where did all this sand come from?" A phone started ringing, and Jazz started yelling, "Answer, answer!" instead.
"Hey, Jazz," said Danny. "Is this a bad time?"
.
"Well," said Coulson in the tone of someone who was habitually forced to roll with insanity. "That happened." He turned to the junior agents that were temporarily assigned to him. "I think that was Samantha Manson with him. Take a sample of the sand and—"
"DID YOU JUST VAPORIZE MY BABY? GHOST! GHOST!"
He sighed. He'd been interrupted so many—
A green laser shot past his head, and he dove for cover.
"Foley has a weapon, sir!"
"I see that," he said. "Any ideas on how we can convince her we didn't vaporize her son?"
This was going to delay his plan to talk to Valerie Gray.
