(Not Marvel's) Infinity War

By: B. L. Tetcher

Ch.1

Space near Asgard's last known location

"Do you really think it's a good idea to bring me back to Earth?" Loki asked his brother pointedly.

"Probably not, to be honest," the Brobdingnagian brother admitted from beside him. "Oh, but I wouldn't worry brother," he added. "I feel like everything's going to work out."

"You really are an optimist aren't you, brother?" Loki replied with a slight grin. His brother's firm belief that 'it would all work out' never ceased to amaze him. Other than that, going to Earth was no big deal. He'd simply have to disguise himself . . . in perpetuity. No issue there. After all, it wouldn't be the first time. Perhaps this time he'd just make himself look like his brother. There could be some fun in that.

"Um, hey guys," Korg, the high pitched, passive aggressive rock monster they'd apparently adopted said, coming up from behind them. "There's a ship -actually quite a large ship- approaching. A guy -he calls himself Cranos, or Lanos, or something- anyway this guy wants to talk to you. Says you have something of his?"

"Oh no," Loki muttered putting two and two together from that mishmash of sentences.

"What did you do," Thor demanded, turning to his brother.

"In retrospect, it might have been wiser to let Hela rule Asgard," Loki replied with a cocked head.

"What did you do," Thor repeated putting 'slightly' more emphasis on every word.

"It's not so much something I did recently as past sins come back to roost," Loki failed to explain. "It's kind of funny that we were just discussing my exploits on Earth actually,"

"LOKI!" Thor yelled grabbing his brother by the lapels, as the massive ship came into view of the port behind him. Or what they could see of it. It was clearly a thousand feet away and still it filled the window.

"I believe the name Pebbles was looking for was Thanos," Loki said.

"Yeah, that's it," Korg (aka Pebbles) replied amiably. "Do you know him then?"

"I may have . . . leased one of his armies to try and conquer a certain planet on our heading," Loki explained evenly as Thor's blood started boiling.

"Oh, so that's not good is it?" the mound of minerals asked. Thor responded by glaring at the somewhat slow Cronan. "Um, you know what," he said getting the hint "this seems like kind of a family moment; maybe one of those brotherly bonding opportunities. I think I'll just go see about . . . being somewhere else, shall I?" Korg added as he pivoted back the way he'd come.

Thor returned his attention to his brother. "What. Does. He. Want?" he demanded turning the pressure on his brother's lapels up a crank.

"Well, I was supposed to deliver the tesseract to him," Loki pointed out.

"The tesseract was in the vault," Thor replied.

"Well, it was," Loki replied sheepishly.

"You just had to take it, didn't you?" Thor demanded before thrusting the thinner Asgardian into the wall in disgust. "You just couldn't leave it be. Why should I be surprised?" he asked mostly himself as he started stalking away. "Just once couldn't you have not had to balance your good deeds?"

"What was I supposed to do?" Loki demanded, hurrying to keep up.

"You could have left it to be destroyed with Asgard," Thor replied as if speaking to a small child.

"You can't destroy an infinity stone brother," Loki countered, bringing the bigger man up short.

"Right," he said, as if he should have thought of that. "Why didn't Thanos come for it sooner?"

"Come now, you know he didn't stand a chance against father on Asgard," Loki replied.

"Father hasn't been on Asgard for nearly a year," Thor grated.

"Yes, but Thanos didn't know that," Loki pointed out. "But now that Asgard is gone . . ."

"Yes, I know," Thor said. "Get everyone out of the main chamber," He added raising his voice to be heard over the general hum of conversation. This of course only increased the ambient noise level.

"I'll take care of it, majesty" their new Valkyrie friend said over the hubbub. "Leave your things," she said turning to the crowd. "Take the nearest exit now!"

"They've docked with us," Loki reported, increasing the thinning of the crowd.

"Yes, thank you for that," Thor replied sarcastically as he picked up the pace.

"You're welcome," Loki said calmly as they joined the contingent set in a semicircle around the airlock. It had taken quite a bit of damage in their last misadventure, but the containment fields seemed to be holding. It was cycling anyways. Besides Korg, there was the one-time gate keeper of Asgard Hiemdall (who was currently on the hunt for a new job), Brunnhilde the retired Valkyrie, Meik the Gladiatorial larval insect, the Hulk, and the two brothers.

"Do you think they'll ask permission to board," Korg asked from where he'd been monitoring the lock's progress.

"I wouldn't count on it," Loki replied almost sounding nervous. Beside him Thor's face had hardened almost into granite.

"I wish I had my hammer," he said for possibly the thousandth time in two days, as the compression cycle finished and the door began to open as if of its own accord.

"Again with this hammer," Korg replied. "Is it really that magnificent?" he asked Loki.

"You know what," Loki replied ignoring the Cronan. "I wish you had your hammer too."

"Ah, must be then," Korg replied almost to himself as the door finished retracting into the ceiling, revealing a ten-foot-tall purple gorilla in golden armor. Surrounding him were an assortment of smaller cybernetically enhanced members of every race they'd ever encountered. "I'll take care of this," Korg said, stepping forward. "Hello Thanos," he started, talking to the nearest of the cybernetic individuals. "My name's Korg. I'm made of rock as you can see, but don't let that intimidated you. I'm-" he said, getting almost through his traditional welcome speech before being interrupted by the purple gorilla.

"BE QUIET!" Thanos thundered as he pushed through the crowd, raised one massive fist, and pounded Korg into a shower of rocks. Both brothers winced as they saw their new (if somewhat annoying) friend crushed. Meik immediately charged forward to avenge his friend, but an outstretched hand from Thor stopped him.

In truth a large part of Thor demanded that he leap into action to avenge the Cronan. But this was Thanos, and the entirety of his people were on this ship. A quick survey of his allies showed that they would back him if he surrendered to that impulse, which was all the more reason not to in his mind.

"What do you want Thanos?" he said finally.

"The same as you Son of Odin," the purple titan sneered "what's owed me." He said that last glaring menacingly at Loki, who had to resist the temptation to step behind his brother. He succeeded, mostly because he knew Thor would never let him live it down. Never.

Thor looked a question at his brother who merely shrugged without quite making eye contact. Thor's eye slid past his brother to the passaged his people had retreated through. The tesseract was of immense power. He couldn't just give it up. But if he didn't it was certain that more of his people would die. Those people had been through enough strife for a decade. They didn't deserve this.

Besides, Thanos was already the most powerful being in the known universe, now that Odin had passed on. How much worse could it get if he had the tesseract as well?

"Alright," the god of thunder said looking back to the titan. "Let our people go and I'll give you the tesseract," he said, hating himself for it. There was more here than he knew. He hadn't even known the tesseract was an infinity stone until now. How much more was he missing?

"Oh, I think you can do better than that," Thanos replied staring pointedly at Loki.

"You're not taking my brother," Thor stated firmly.

"Yes, I am," Thanos replied just as certainly, without ever taking his eyes off of the trickster. "He has much to answer for."

"I hardly think I can be blamed for the quality of your army," Loki said pointedly, trying for suave. Somehow, he came up short.

A situation not improved when Thanos took two steps towards the brothers, forcing them to look further up at him. They both swallowed in unison.

"You're not taking my brother," Thor replied, slightly less firmly.

"Big words from a man who let his big sister break his toy hammer," Thanos replied. Thor's jaw clenched involuntarily at the reminder. "It's too bad about Hela," he continued. "I always liked her."

"You would," Loki replied. "She wasn't exactly stable."

"A viewpoint you will soon become intimately acquainted with," Thanos replied menacingly. Thor spent his time more productively, searching in vain for some way out of this mess.

"He'll destroy this ship and all aboard if we resist," Heimdall stated from his other side.

"He'll probably destroy the ship anyway," Loki corrected. This prompted a smile from the purple titan.

"You wouldn't be saying that to encourage resistance, would you?" the gold pupiled seer replied without taking his eyes off of the intruders.

"And while we're on the subject of failings," Loki replied "how is it that you didn't see this behemoth coming. There's no way his ship could have caught us if we'd known to run for it."

Heimdall glared at Loki before turning back to the threat at hand. "He seems to have some way to shroud himself from my vision," the big man admitted finally.

"Enough," Thor yelled at the both of them. The fact that they could squabble in the vicinity of such danger was both endearing and infuriating.

"I agree," Thanos replied stepping forward. He backhanded Thor with one massive fist, sending the Asgardian flying across the bay into a bulkhead, and reached for Loki with his other massive fist.

Up until that moment the Hulk hadn't been sure what to do. This intruder seemed like a monster. But Thor had just recently forbade him from killing one. So, he'd simply watched as they talked. It wasn't like he was good for talking anyways. But he knew what to do when the purple thing sent his friend flying; he jumped to it with a will.

Taking this as a cue, the rest of the . . . people, in the airlock advanced. Loki, Heimdall, Brunnhilde, and Meik. They held their own against the wave of cyborgs but there were just too few of them. Meik was the first to fall, crushed by a massive metal foot.

Before Thanos could grab the more diminutive prince he was hit by a howling mass of green rage that sent him fumbling across the deck himself. A slight not to be left unavenged, he turned back the way he'd come and glared at the advancing green beast. It did not deter it.

Meanwhile Thor had managed to extricate himself from what could have at one time been called a bulkhead and launched himself at the remaining lackeys.

"We can't beat Thanos," Loki greeted him as he rejoined their ranks.

"I don't know about that," Thor said glancing to where the two titans were trading blows, and causing serious damage to the ship. "It seems as though Hulk is doing just fine."

"You are aware that we need this ship," Loki replied pointedly as the green monster ripped a stanchion out of the wall and hitting his larger opponent with it. "At the rate he's going the ship will lose before either of them," he added as he retrieved his dagger from his opponent's abdomen just in time to dodge a wild swing from contestant number 5. Or was it 6 at this point?

Thor jammed his fist in the eye of one of Thanos's minions as he considered his reply. He'd wanted to hit the bastard with a lighting blast, but nothing seemed to be happening when he tried. He felt . . . drained.

As he opened his mouth to reply the titan yelled "Petulant child!" holding one opened hand in the charging Hulk's direction. The green brute's progress halted suddenly as an invisible wall of force interposed itself between them.

The Hulk had an answer for that; as it happened it was his answer for everything . . . smash. As he beat against the force, and the ground, and the bulkheads they could see that Thanos's concentration was waning.

But the titan had his own answer for such predicaments. So, just as the Hulk managed to smash through his mental barrier Thanos reached out and flicked him between the eyes with his middle finger, with such force that the green monster did a backflip before landing on his face, unconscious.

"Find the tesseract," Thanos bellowed, stepping over the now shrinking form of his momentary adversary. "I'll deal with these two." The remaining of his host immediately disengaged (some to the detriment of their lives) themselves from the battle with Thor's line and headed for the sealed bulkheads leading further into the ship.

"Keep them away from our people," Thor commanded Brunnhilde and Heimdall. Loki couldn't help but flash a smirk at Thor's optimism. "This isn't the time for that," the blond Asgardian replied.

"Hit him with a lighting blast," Loki suggested for the second time that day, pointing at the oncoming form.

"I've been trying," Thor replied exasperatedly. "It's not working."

"Poor little god of hammers," Thanos smirked as he closed the distance. Then he reached down impossibly fast and grabbed Thor by the torso in one giant maw of a hand. Upon seeing this Loki . . . disappeared.

"Probably should have just let Hela have her throne, eh?" he added, bringing the god right up to his face.

"Blow yourself out the nearest black hole, you monstrous bully," Thor snapped angrily. "You're nothing but a spoiled brat in a gorilla's body," he added, so angrily that minor arcs appeared in his hair.

"Hmmm," Thanos said peering closer at him. "Right color energy, but I'm afraid you're not what I'm looking for." Then he tossed him over his shoulder at about sixty miles an hour. "I know the god of lies will have what I need though," he added, focusing on nothing in particular. Then his massive hand darted for an open area and yanked Loki out of his cloaking field. "You didn't really think your pathetic illusions would work on me, did you?" he asked the adopted Asgardian.

"It was worth a shot," Loki admitted, adding that disarming grin of his.

In response Thanos moved him closer to his face, close enough to smell his breath (which smelled incongruously of spice) and said "Give me the tesseract" in a voice somehow more menacing than Loki would have believed possible.

"Alright," he said. "I'll bring you to it."

"Yes, you will," Thanos agreed, a grin spreading across his face, just as the beam the Hulk had used on him earlier intersected with his head and sent him flying into the one as yet undamaged bulkhead. Fortunately, the shock forced him to drop Loki.

"You know he's right," Loki said as Thor helped him up. "We never should have killed Hela. Well, we never should have destroyed Asgard, anyway."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Thor asked, turning to where Thanos was emerging from the hole his body had made in the bulkhead.

"You never did pay attention in school," Loki chided him.

"Yes, I did," Thor replied, swinging the beam at Thanos as he stepped on the deck. It connected with a terrific crunch sending him sprawling down the cavernous room. "When I could stay awake, anyways," he added.

"See that's exactly my point," Loki said, continuing the old argument.

"Loki!" Thor yelled as Thanos got back to his feet.

"Fine, the point is we can't beat him right now."

"And what do you propose we do?"

"Give him the tesseract."

"As soon as he has it, he'll kill all of us," Thor replied as Thanos advanced once again.

"Not necessarily brother," Loki replied cryptically. Thor spared a quick glance at his brother, his brow furrowing as he realized what he was suggesting.

"No, you are not," he said, stopping to swing his new favorite club at Thanos's head again. It didn't have the balance he was used to, and while weighty it lacked the force of Mjolnir. But it seemed to be doing the job.

Until now he thought as Thanos caught the end, arresting its movement. He then gripped the middle with his other hand and pivoted the bar, and suddenly it was their turn to be tossed down the monstrous room. They tumbled over each other and the various wreckage from the early stages of the fight before finally coming to rest at the end.

"Do you have a better option?" Loki asked as they extricated themselves from the junk that had once been part of the hall.

"No, but you are not surrendering yourself to him," Thor commanded.

"Brother," Loki replied softly as Thanos began swaggering towards them "you're the king now. You don't have the right to throw these people's, our people's, lives away for me."

Thor shook his head. "We'll find another wa-" he said before abruptly stopping. To be fair, it is hard to speak when a dagger has been jammed in one's gut.

"You know, that never gets old," Loki said with a grin. Thor shook his head in dismay, but inside he was grinning too. It was a weird brotherhood, but it worked for them. "Get them out of here," he added. "And ask father about your lightning." Before Thor could respond he disappeared once again. At the same moment one of the hatches to the upper deck opened.

"GET HIM!" he heard Thanos shout, quickening his pace. Again, all of Thanos's minions reacted to the new orders automatically, like automatons. Thor looked around for something, anything, that he could use as a weapon. His eyes fell on jagged piece of metal in a shape resembling a cross between a long sword and a machete a heartbeat before his hands, and he flowed towards the opened door to intercept them.

Loki ran faster than he'd ever thought he could, careening down turns and corridors often as not. He had to get to the Commodore and get away before Thanos or his demented children could reach him or he'd end up joining their ranks. If he could make it, he should be safe. The Commodore was supposed to be the fastest ship in the galaxy. It was certainly fast enough to outrun Thanos's lumbering display of overcompensation.

Unfortunately, the Commodore hadn't had any airlocks, and the larger ship hadn't had a bay to fit it. So, they'd simply lashed it to the hull with magnetic grapples. That posed a slight problem to boarding while underway. Had he known they'd be fighting Thanos he might have suggested some other arrangement, like staying on Asgard.

But such ruminations were put on hold as he realized that his were not the only footfalls he was hearing. Clearly, he'd overestimated his brother's ability to block a door. Either that or he'd underestimated the speed with which Thanos's minions could run. And judging from the metal on metal noises they were making, he really wasn't sure which it was.

He slowed his pace as he spied the maintenance lock, half acting out of breath, and tried to judge how fast they were closing. This was going to require precise timing.

Just as they were about to catch him, the lock opened itself to space. The two goons found themselves helped along, right through the image of Loki they'd been chasing. The real Loki appeared by the console, waving as they were launched into space.

Loki manifested an energy barrier around himself and exited the same way before safety systems could reclose the lock. He managed to snag one of the rung shaped handholds on the exterior of the hatch. Above him, one of the goons floated harmlessly.

The other one was a bit more adroit, having managed to catch a rung on the opposite side of the hatch. It had once been a Centaurian, but that was much metal and limbs ago. Now it was more attachment than flesh, which meant the vacuum environment was probably only irritating it. Joy. And it was directly between Loki and the Commodore. He had to do something quickly. His bubble didn't exactly contain copious amounts of air, and his lungs had been burning from the run before he'd opened the hatch.

Before he could think of anything the remaining cyborg lunged at him. Using his handhold as leverage, Loki kicked out at it, hoping to send it after its brother, or sister, or thing. Instead it kicked back, leaving them both back where they'd started.

Holding his breath in prayer Loki lunged towards it at an angle leading away from the ship. He was counting solely on its blind obedience to Thanos's order to catch him, and probably low intellect. If it didn't take the bait, he wasn't sure what he'd do. At the rate he was going he had very little time left.

Loki had just begun to revise his estimate of its intellect upwards when it launched itself straight at him. Score one for mindless obedience. As it intersected him it grasped . . . nothing. Loki released the illusion from where he was still holding on to the ship and pushed himself towards the Commodore, lungs burning like they'd been split by Serta's sword.

He barely made it inside the golden vessel and hit the pressurize button before collapsing to his hands and knees.

Meanwhile Thor's lungs were burning for a slightly different, though not unrelated, reason, as he was straining with all his considerable might to keep Thanos's gigantic hand from crushing him. He was holding Thanos's ring finger in one fist and his thumb in another, trying to keep them from closing on him. It was not going well. But, before he failed completely, he managed to sidestep the closing hand entirely.

Banner had woken up shortly after Loki's departure. He'd taken one look at the ongoing battle and thrown himself at the purple titan hammering at his friend. And been backhanded into a wall for his trouble.

But, even after the strike, the Hulk had failed to make a reappearance. He couldn't tell if Thanos had actually accomplished the unthinkable and killed Banner, or accomplished the even greater unthinkable and frightened the big green rage monster. It seemed inconceivable, but if he hadn't done one or the other, then where was the Hulk? And how much longer could he hold out on his own?

The rest of that thought was chopped off as Thanos wrapped one of his meaty hands around Thor's upper torso and slammed him into the ground. Thor tried again to reach for the lightning he'd found so effective during the last moments of Asgard. Okay so it hadn't been a hundred percent effective. Odin how he wished he had his hammer.

"As stimulating as this is," Thanos said with an evil grin "it doesn't seem like your putting forth your best effort, Thor son of Odin. Probably shouldn't have destroyed the source of your power then." Thor gave him an uncomprehending look at that. "You didn't really think that the source of your family's power rested in its people, did you?" he sneered in response. "Even your father was never that bold."

"You know nothing of my father," Thor grunted, struggling futilely against the massive titan.

"I know more about him than you, you naïve little child," Thanos said with a nasty grin.

"Go to Hel!" came the reply.

"After you, Son of Odin," he replied as he lifted Thor off of the ground. "Be sure to give my mistress my regards," he added as his arm reached full extension above the ground. His movement down was halted as a motion caught his eye. In unison executioner and victim turned to see the Commodore streaking away from the ship through one of the viewports.

A moment later a vision of Loki appeared between the duo and that port.

"Well if it isn't the visage of the other son of Odin," Thanos replied calmly. "Come to watch your brother die?" he asked as he started his downward stroke.

"I have the Tesseract," Loke replied quickly. "If you hurt any of my people, I will launch it into the Nosher Singularity. You'll never complete the Infinity Gauntlet." Thor grinned smugly at Thanos. The Nosher was a medium sized black hole near Asgard. Even Thanos would be unable to retrieve something lost within its perimeter. "Return to your vessel with your servants and I'll give it to you."

"No, Loki-" Thor started before Thanos's grip tightened, silencing him.

"Am I supposed to believe you won't rid yourself of it once I've set your people free?" Thanos replied menacingly.

"No, of course not," Loki replied, with that innocent grin of his. "But at least this way you have a chance." He looked meaningfully at his brother, still in the titan's grip. "Clock's ticking Thanos."

"We're leaving," Thanos bellowed, causing his minions to pour out of the hatches and back into his ship. They were quickly followed by Brunnhilde, Heimdall, and several other armed Asgardians. "Do not think you've changed your fate Odinson," Thanos grated, holding Thor inches from his face. "Your time will come soon enough." With that he backhand threw Thor into a bulkhead as he turned back to his ship.

Most of his minions made it out before the door to Thanos's ship shut. Air immediately began gusting out of the widening gap between the two ships, sucking the three slower minions out into space. The outer door closed automatically as the sensors detected the dropping air pressure, almost crushing the one of them. Then the inner door closed, locking him in. Until Brunnhilde opened the inner door once again. She had a way with grudges.

Thor might have instructed her on the usefulness of interrogation, but he was busy staring out the window he'd last seen his brother departing. "I never thought I'd say this, but he was right," Heimdall stated, stepping up to his side. "You cannot risk these people to save him."

"What would you have me do?" Thor replied bitterly.

"Honor his choice . . . and perhaps, his sacrifice," Heimdall replied bluntly.

It took many precious moments, but in the end, Thor sighed in agreement. "Make for Earth, best possible speed," he said loudly, forcibly turning himself from the viewport to where Brunnhilde was checking on Banner. Despite all that had happened he couldn't help but wonder what it was about Banner that drew all the really hot chicks.