A/N: Chap 8 review responses in my forums as normal. And now, finally, Swann meets the Avengers. Naturally, it doesn't go the way anyone wants.


Chapter Nine: The Lion's Den

She cradled Loki under his arms and let her nullgrav field negate his weight. The powerful thruster pack Maw built for her propelled them low over the sparse, arid land a few hundred feet below.

He clutched his scepter in his hands and blinked repeatedly against the wind that buffeted them. Swan's headpiece provided a partial power field that kept the worst of the wind from her face. She didn't mention it to Loki, though. He deserved the occasional bug splattered on his cheeks.

"Is the whole world this arid?" She yelled the question over the wind of their passage.

"No, there are other parts that are more aesthetically pleasing," he shouted back to her. "But they're far from here."

In the distance, mountains rose dramatically from the desert floor. They were remarkably green with trees, making them stand out from the rest of the desert landscape. According to the map she memorized, they were fast approaching the mortal city of Albuquerque.

Their plan, as far as Loki knew, was for Swan to drop Loki off in the main administrative building where he would subvert one or two mortals for her to take with her to find the Iridium, and then in general make a nuisance of himself until someone important actually showed up.

"When do you think your brother will appear?"

"Oh, usually when it's least convenient," Loki said.

Below, a river ran through the desert, causing the banks to bloom with homes and buildings in the narrow belt of green that flanked its path. She began to follow it until they came to the outskirts of the modest city. Loki pointed with his scepter, but she didn't need the direction. She'd memorized all of the maps and diagrams Barton showed her, and took them both toward the main administrative building of the laboratory.

For a brief moment, she considered bursting in. Instead, she flew them to the parking lot of the main L-shaped, three-story building. Loki sputtered as she put him down, and then activated her holosuit. He stared at her with one quirked brow. "Really?"

"Cause your mayhem after you fetch me someone who knows where the iridium is," she said. "In the meantime, use your magic."

She watched as he shimmered into an illusion of a native man in a formal coat, white shirt and slacks. It was a common enough fashion she'd seen in during her research on humanoid worlds. His scepter suddenly became a walking cane, though the head of it still gleaned with the power stone within it.

Her own holosuit made her armor into a simple black dress, though it hid her markings and disguised the faint luminescence of her eyes. "Shall we?" He asked. He held his arm out to her. Hesitantly, she took it and they began walking across the driveway.

It was not as hot as she thought it might be, though she suspected that was a result of the season. Ahead, the morning sun peeked over the mountain ridge and glinted off the building windows.

The building had an open atrium filled with sunlight and trees. Swan liked it, despite her mission there. It had a bright openness that even the vast chambers of the Sanctuary II couldn't claim. Vast space still felt claustrophobic when cast in shadow and darkness.

They walked to a receptionist desk, and as they did so Swan quickly scanned the security checkpoints. Two armed guards stood near each of the two doors that led from the central atrium. The doors, though glass, were opaque to prevent anyone from seeing within.

The two receptionists were a young male with sculpted cheeks and chin, and a young female who made Swan think of Nebula, if she had not been torn apart and rebuilt as a hateful cyborg. The woman smiled brightly at Loki.

"Good morning, and welcome to Sandia National Laboratories. How can we help you today?"

"Hello, dear," Loki said smoothly. "I was hoping to speak to someone about the iridium supply you have on site. I believe your facility may be at risk of a robbery."

The smile vanished. "If you'll wait right there I can have…"

Loki touched her chest with his cane. The man started to stand when Swan reached over the desk and took his hand in an iron grip. "Please sit," she said.

Straining with pain from her grip, he sank back down until Loki subsumed his loyalty as well. The two guards nearest quickly approached; both had their hands on their sidearms. "Miss Lopez, is there an issue?"

"Oh, no, George," the woman, Lopez, said. "These people are with SHIELD. They said someone's trying to steal the Iridium! You know that stuff is selling for almost a thousand a gram, now."

"SHIELD, huh?" George did not sound particularly convinced. "May I see your ID, sir, ma'am?"

"Of course," Loki said. He touched the man on the chest with his illusioned scepter.

The other guard, realizing something was definitely wrong, pulled his weapon. "On the floor, now!"

George pulled his side arm and shot his partner in the chest. The noise of the shot reverberated through the atrium and sent bystanders rushing away screaming.

"Very good, George," Loki said. "Can you please escort my friend here to the Iridium?"

"Materials are secured in a time-locked safe," George said. "Only the director has authority to access materials."

"Just get me to the safe, and I'll do the rest," Swan said.

Just like Barton, George looked to Loki for permission. "Please do as she says, George."

"Very good. This way, Ma'am."

She followed George to the far door, while the two guards from the other side of the atrium charged Loki with their guns drawn. Loki shimmered away his disguise and made short work of them before using his scepter to begin making a mess.

Alarms went off through the building as George led her into the secured hall he previously guarded. Researchers and civilians rushed about in concern, not screaming but moving urgently as the sound of gunfire and explosions echoed down the hall and made the walls shake.

"How old are you, George?"

"Forty-eight, ma'am," the heavy-set man said. He had a broad, deeply lined face with skin the color of clay.

"Do you have a family?"

"Yes, ma'am. My wife and I have four kids. My youngest is ten."

"After you show me to the iridium, George, I want you to go home to your family. Don't go back to Loki, he'll simply get you killed."

Because Loki had told George to do as she asked, he nodded and accepted her order as if it were Loki himself saying it. The two of them continued down the hall, up a flight of steps, and then back the way they came. They were halfway there when a man in a lab coat and four more armed guards came running behind them.

"Tso! Officer Tso! Who is that woman? What are you doing?"

George turned to see the men approaching. "I'm taking her to the materials storage room, Dr. Skrivet. She needs the Iridium."

The aforementioned Dr. Skrivet skid to a halt. "George, what are you talking about?"

Swan shrugged. "You'll have to forgive him, Dr. Skrivet. He's under the mental influence of an alien."

The four guards behind Skrivet pulled their weapons. George, being loyal to his new master, did the same. Just like he did with his partner, George was about to pull the trigger. This time, though, she knew he would not survive the encounter.

She stopped him by gently placing her hand on his weapon and lowering it. "George, you told me you had four children. Loki's control over you will only last a few days. It would be tragic if they lost their father over nothing. Please put your weapon down and sit against the wall."

George did exactly what he was told.

Skrivet frowned intently as the men behind him flanked her. "Who are you?"

"I'm one of the aliens, I'm afraid." She touched her hidden vambrace, and watched the man's eyes bulge in concern as her holosuit shimmered away to reveal her armor and wings. She lashed out with those wings, slicing at the gun hands of the guards. One got a shot off that bounced harmlessly off her armor before she kicked him several meters down the hall.

The other tried to hit her with a stick, but she caught his arm and tossed him several meters opposite the first. She caught Dr. Skrivet as he tried to run and lifted him easily off the floor by his shirt.

"If you help me get the iridium, I'll leave and no one else will be hurt," she told him.

He grasped at her hand while fighting for breath. "Who are you?"

"A fallen angel," she said whimsically. She carried him down the evacuated hall. Below, and just outside, she heard and saw more explosions as Loki enthusiastically drew the onsite security to his position.

They reached an area that was secured by multiple empty checkpoints. She put the good doctor down and stared intently at him. "I'm not going to help you!" he declared.

Swan pointed her vambrace and fired at a fraction of her power at the heaviest, most secure of the nearby doors.

The secured metal door blew back and away from its frame, revealing a small square room with one now unconscious, bleeding guard inside. She fired a second time, removing the second door to reveal rows and rows of storage cabinets.

Dragging the stunned Skrivet after her, she began looking at the previously labeled cabinets. "You have such odd names for your elements," she said softly. "It is simply known as E77 for its atomic number by most other civilizations. Perhaps your odd naming is a consequence of living in a vacuum."

"You're...really from outer space?"

"Very few sentient beings are from outer space," she said lightly. "Most recently I was living on the shattered remnant of a planet destroyed when its sun went nova a few centuries ago. Before that...I don't actually know. I don't remember my childhood. Oh, there we are."

She ripped the door from the storage cube and stared with satisfaction at the white, reflective clumps of metal within. "That should be enough, I would think," she said.

The building shook from the sound of an explosion outside louder than the rest. She wondered if the heroes had arrived, or if that was just the local military. With her prize in hand, it didn't matter.

"I know this has been upsetting, Dr. Skrivet. I hope you won't be too harsh with George. I promise stronger minds have fallen prey to Loki's scepter. I'd recommend you stay here and wait until your local heroes have things contained. Farewell."

He didn't say a word as she walked back out of the room and into the small room behind. She knelt down next to the guard she hurt when she blasted the door open. He was already cooling to the touch as blood pooled under him from a piece of shrapnel that pierced his chest.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I didn't know you were there."

Saddened by the death, she stood and quickly walked out.

Only to step into a gleam white light. It hit like a Kree particle blast, carrying enough kinetic force to knock her off her unprepared feet. She tumbled down the hall toward the end of the building, but quickly came back to her feet with her vambrace ready.

The figure she faced appeared humanoid, but metallic. A red and gold armor suit stood with a palm up and a silver-white circle within it. An energy emitter of some kind, she surmised.

"Put your hands on your head and get on your knees," the armor said in a human male's voice.

In answer, Swan fired her vambrace behind her at full power.

The wall vaporized, as did the wall behind that. Beyond the second wall and the shattered meeting room between them, she saw distant hills and houses. She activated her thruster pack at full power and threw herself backwards. She unfolded her wings and spun around as she burst into open air. Banking sharply, she saw a large hovering vessel of some kind over the front of the building. Below, Loki was fighting a mortal in a strange body suit who used a shield as his only weapon.

Odd.

The armored figure flew behind her. She felt a blast of his weapon strike her armor weave skirt to almost no effect. She flipped onto her back, riding nullgrave and thrust, and fired her vambrace at two percent.

The armored human deftly swerved from the shot. She fired again, and again he avoided it. In a second, she surmised that he was reacting to her perceived aim. So, she moved her arm like she was aiming to his left, but directed her aiming reticle slightly to his right. When she fired, he moved directly into her blast, which hit him face first and sent him flailing toward the ground.

Free from her pursuer, she turned back and accelerated to full power. Her headpiece activated her windscreen again as she accelerated and this time gained altitude.

She wasn't even at a thousand meters when a series of small, painful explosions rippled up and down her body. The force of the explosions caused her to tumble in the air; she fell several meters before she was able to right her flight. She spun, looking for what attacked her, and caught a brief glimpse of a red-gold fist a moment before it struck her face.

The force of the blow was just enough to destabilize her flight and sent her flailing toward the ground. She started to recover herself when another ripple of explosions splashed across her armor. An energy blast struck a second later, then another round of explosions, until abruptly she crashed into a mound of metal and glass that flattened with a shattering sound at her landing.

The armored figure landed nearby with a roar of his thrusters. More embarrassed than hurt, Swan rolled out of the crumpled vehicle and then kicked it toward the armored man. He flew over it, which meant for a brief second he lost sight of her.

In that second, she pulled her neutronium sword and launched herself into the air. Rather than strike him with the micron-thick blade, she turned it to the flat side and negated all of her nullgrav at once so the full momentum and inertia struck the armored human across his chest.

The man flew backward with an amplified grunt and a spray of shattered material. He crashed into a ground car so hard it crumpled around him like so much lace. At a glance, she could see his armor was badly damaged just from the way the bright power source in the chest flickered.

She sheathed her blade, secured the iridium, and began her flight back to California.

Just minutes later she'd climbed to two thousand meters over the desert. From the corner of her eye she spotted a streak of colors. She turned her head and concentrated, but all she saw was the afterglow of something that shot through the atmosphere so fast it created a streak of prismatic dimensional energy.

Her stomach plummeted as she realized what that meant. Thor had arrived. And his timing really was as inconvenient as Loki said.

All of her partially formed plans-all her hopes and fears-came crashing down on her when she realized that this was the moment she had to decide. For all her attempts not to kill, she'd failed at least once. The natives would want her punished. But she'd not done harm to Thor or Asgard. In fact, she could claim to have aided him in saving Loki.

Would he listen to her? Did he know she was a murderer?

The dread of what might happen if she tried and failed was nearly as powerful as the certainty of what would happen if she didn't.

Augullux the Brave would not have hesitated. Neither, she believed, would Vers. If Swan truly wanted to escape her father's grasp, she could do no less. That didn't mean she had to be an idiot about it, though.

She spun around and started flying back, but as she did so she activated the stealth mode of her holosuit. Rather than change her appearance, it obscured her entirely in a refractive field.

Though her heart beat rapidly in her chest from the adrenaline of the danger she was putting herself in, at the same time it felt as if a heavy, damning weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She fought back an urge to laugh as maniacally as Loki himself might.

If Thanos ever caught her, he would kill her slowly. Or worse, tear out her mind and replace it with a cybernetic unit he could control. Even Nebula would be able to claim more free will than Swan, if this did not work.

She returned to the lab minutes later, but the odd hovering airship was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she saw a small army of swarming soldiers and people in black suits not so dissimilar to what Loki himself wore in his disguise. Where was Loki himself?

The sinking feeling returned as she realized she'd lost her prey. Where was Thor? How could she find him?

She looked up, searching desperately for some sign, when she saw it.

A cloud parted. She froze, hanging in the air held on thrust and nullgrav alone, and watched as a small wisp of cloud that drifted idly by overhead split apart and quickly dissipated, as if struck by a large object. It was much higher than she normally flew, but her thruster could have easily taken her into space.

She poured power into it now, stretching out one hand to help slice the air as she shot straight up. It wasn't until she surpassed nearly twelve kilometers that she saw it. Hovering in the sky like a massive, bloated barge was an airship. It was invisible from below, but from above she clearly saw landing strips for smaller aircraft, as well as weapons emplacements. Already it was drawing further away heading east.

She flew after, and in so doing got a better taste of the craft's speed.

It moved much faster than she would have thought possible for its size, given the technology of the mortals. Eventually, though, her own speed overcame it and she alit on one of the runways. She lowered down her nullgrav just to provide some leverage against the fierce wind that blew across its deck from its passage.

Even so, it continued to climb until it rose well above any possible clouds. She leaned forward, using the increased weight of her armor to keep her footing as she walked forward toward the superstructure that rose up beside the landing strip.

Below, on another landing strip at an angle to the one she stood on, she saw the odd airship from Sandia being rolled into a hanger below the deck she stood on. She saw no sign of Loki, the mortals, nor Thor. It made her think, though, that they were aboard.

Rushing forward, she returned her nullgrav to full and spread her wings to quiet her fall. The wind was sheltered somewhat in that part of the airship, but even so it propelled her backward into the hangar itself.

Pulling her wings back tight, she landed lightly past a pressured wall of air that helped keep the wind at bay. All around, she was inundated in the sounds of humans working and the chemical smells of primitive machines. Cloaked in a refraction field, she made her way down the long room. She saw several bays where aircraft were undergoing maintenance.

The operation was impressive, especially for a primitive species that was barely capable of spaceflight. But at the same time, it just felt...silly. Ostentatious, even. The air vehicle was ridiculously vulnerable to attack. Her vambraces alone would have taken it out of the air in two shots, since it obviously didn't have any type of null gravity generators or inertial dampening systems. She could feel in her stomach every time the vast craft hit a pocket of air turbulence.

None of which told her where the Odinson was.

"Wow, she did a number on you."

"Yeah, our little goth angel packed a wallop, as Cap would say."

She spun around, looking for the voices. The conversation drew her further into the hangar, moving into a bay that hadn't been visible from just inside the opening. Within that bay, two humans stood looking over the very same gold and red armor that irritated her so much before.

Neither of the humans looked particularly intimidating. The first wore the default standard dress of males on Midgard-slacks, jacket and a length of cloth around his neck. The second wore what looked like a type of under armor. Interestingly, the round light from the armor's chest was embedded in the human, not the armor.

"Is it repairable?" the normal human asked.

"We're close enough to Malibu I have a new suit flying in," the under-armor man said. "I'm telling you, Coulson. That sword of hers hit with a lot more energy than just muscle. It felt like I was hit by some super-dense material. It would have broken my spine from the front if not for the suit."

The two men started walking toward a distant door. Realizing this was her only chance, she followed. "So, God of Thunder, huh? Cap really talked him down?"

"What can I say?" The man in the suit with neck cloth shrugged. "Captain Rogers has a way about him that makes him hard to resist. I think it helped that Loki didn't have the Tesseract on him. Thor knows he has to work with us now to have any chance of finding it."

It was the clearest indication she could hope for. The Odinson was not only aboard, but was cooperating despite Loki's plan.

They emerged in a crowded hall which forced Swan to be extra careful to keep her invisible wings out of people's way. Just ahead, the two humans continued talking casually like old friends.

They moved through a maze of wide but low-ceiling passages. There were several parts that had glass walls looking into other areas of the ship, until abruptly they emerged into what could only be a command deck. She paused just inside, before stepping quickly to one side to avoid being run into, and took stock.

The deck had two elevations-a lower elevation where dozens of humans manned various control stations, and an upper elevation that had a command platform and a conference space. Ahead, a dome of glass looked out over the arid, never-ending desert below.

Standing at the table, arms crossed, she saw one of the most beautiful specimens of humanoids she had ever encountered. From his shoulder-length hair to his perfectly trimmed beard, Thor Odinson looked like a god. His Asgardian armor left his arms bare, the same as hers did, but his arms were as thick as her legs.

He looked up when the two men she followed entered, and actually smiled in greeting. "Son of Coul! It is good to see you well!"

"You too, Thor," this Son of Coul said, as if speaking to any mere mortal. "Thank you so much for offering to assist."

"Your Captain Rogers there made a good argument. It is better we work together to foil my brother's mischief. And this would be the metal man who fought the Butcher, is it not?"

Swan froze. She barely heard what the metal man said in answer; instead, her stomach plummeted with dismay. For Thor to call her Butcher meant that he, like Loki, knew of the blood on her hands.

"Tony Stark," the metal man said. He offered his hand, and as a demonstration of his character, Thor accepted it with a genuine smile. "So, the Butcher? You know her?"

"We on Asgard heard of a winged girl-child who led an army of Chitauri and slaughtered Ahl-Agulla, a peaceful but powerful world." The Odinson looked profoundly disturbed at the thought of her. "By her hand, a hundred million perished, leaving only the very old or the very young to survive. It is further proof that Loki has allied himself with the Chitauri."

It wasn't a hundred million! A moment after Swan had the thought, she dismissed it. It wasn't as if sixty million was better. And in truth, if there had been a hundred million Agulla to begin with, he would be right.

"That's odd, because she went out of her way not to kill me."

It was the one-eyed man from their arrival, Swan noted. He looked unscathed from his encounter from her, save for a hardened cast around his hand, presumably to set a broken bone. "She also speaks English like a native of Earth."

"To be fair, so does Thor." That speaker was the one who fought Loki-wearing a strange red, white and blue body suit with a star on the chest.

"Nay, it's not your tongue I speak, but Allspeak. Your minds understand because I will it so, as I understand your words. It is an Asgardian trait. Perhaps the Butcher speaks similar."

The mortals stared a moment, all of them, before the darker-skinned man shrugged. "Maybe you're right. What's important is that we don't know where the Tesseract is, or why they needed iridium."

"Stabilizing agent," Stark said. "The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube."

Star spangled man leaned back in his seat. "Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?"

The final male there-a remarkably unremarkable man, twirled a pair of eye lenses in his hand. "He's got to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier."

Stark snapped his finger and pointed to the unremarkable man. "Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect."

Which was exactly what Selvig had done, Swan thought.

"Well, if he could do that he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet."

Stark approached the homely looking man. "Finally, someone who speaks English!" Stark shook the man's hand. "It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

What?

The one-eyed man shook his head. "Look, Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube. I was hoping you might join him."

As they continued to speak, Swan drifted closer to Thor. He watched the exchange with a touch of humor in his eyes. He likely possessed more knowledge than anyone in the room, but he said nothing as the mortal wisemen spoke.

A consensus was reached, and Stark left with Banner at his side, speaking rapidly about ways to locate the tesseract. Only the one-eyed man, Son of Coul, the Star-Spangled Man and Thor remained on the elevated command deck. The problem as she saw it were the dozens of other mortals that surrounded them. This was, she knew, the heart of the vessel. If she were to shed her cloaking here, they would panic.

Thor might not even give her a chance to speak, if he'd already determined she was an enemy.

She would have to wait until he wasn't surrounded by the mortals.

She turned back the way she came and decided to look for where they had Loki stored. Though he wasn't as strong as she was, Loki remained Asgardian, which meant whatever cell they had him stored in would have to be strong.

With no idea where to go, she began to explore the ship. The side halls were not as crowded as the main passages, which allowed her easy access without having to dance around the mortals. In one hall, she heard the faint hit of a name. Someone said 'Loki'.

She followed the sound until she reached a door near the end of the hall. It had a simple knob without any security control. She turned it and pulled it open.

Tony Stark stood on the other side, clad in a new armored suit, and in that split second of surprise shot a compressed stream of some type of gas right in her face. She stepped backward, only to find something in her path that tripped her backward. She flared her wings unconsciously and sent someone flying with a cry. But even as she hit the ground a powerful electrical current struck her exposed forearm.

She cried out more from surprise than pain, and got another face full of the slightly sweet, irritating gas. It did not stop. Her head began to spin and her vision darkened until, abruptly, she saw a brilliant flash of red-gold light, and then all was dark.


A/N: One of my goals in any crossover is to try and respect both sides. More importantly, they have her right where she wants them.