Loki led the way behind the haggard, red eyed Bella Rodriguez. She held a large battle axe in her mechanical right hand and a shield in the other, both of which she had stolen from one of the guards that she had incapacitated during their prison break. Her fake flesh was ragged and torn allowing the machinery underneath, a light carbon and titanium skeleton of an arm driven by simple hydraulics and equipped with vast weaponry could clearly be seen. She looked determined, and in fact she was. She was going to save her little girl or die trying, and at the moment, she did not care who she took down with her.
The place was guarded like Fort Knox, and it was the Asgardian version of Fort Knox, filled with ancient weapons from across the Nine Realms, and it also served as Odin's own personal impounding yard for the personal effects of criminals, namely Loki. A lot of stuff that he held in his 'Dimensional Pocket', a device of his own creation for storing large amounts of useful and interesting things he could not allow to fall into enemy hands, had ended up here, in the Weapons Vault.
Soon after the drama of the Earth year of 2011, Odin, in his infinite wisdom, decided that it was tactical disaster to allow the Vault to be guarded by a machine, because the programming was often faulty. The programming of sentient organisms was often faulty, too, but they could easily be controlled by money, or by an iron fist. But there is one slight problem with live security, they can often be duped.
"You like her," Thor noted as they hid behind opposite pylons in the hall as a group of two guards passed by them. Bella, who was a little in front, seemed to be fighting down the urge to beat the crap out of somebody, probably Loki for getting her into this situation. If Loki got too close to her, he was liable to be beaten to death.
He stared longingly at her for a moment before shaking whatever he was thinking out of his head, "After all I have been through, do you think that I can ever really like anyone?" he snapped, "for example, I have known you all my life, yet I no longer like you."
"That's not what I meant, and you know it," Thor bit back, dodging the barbs in the second part of his sentence, "she is very beautiful and would make a wonderful wife. You like her, you admire her. She is your opposite. Fire and ice. And besides, how would you react like that when she kissed you?"
"I was not expecting it, Thor," Loki arched an eyebrow, "and even if I did 'like' her, what makes you think that she would feel the same about me?"
Thor picked up the subtitles in his tone, "please, Loki, I know you, and I also know her. I know that she would do anything to protect her own. And besides, were you not the one that told me to always be prepared?"
"I did say that, didn't I?" he smirked slightly, "I don't like her."
Thor smiled at Loki's tone, "you're lying."
"Enough chat," Bella narrowed her eyes. They were here, "get in there, grab the Smurf Cube and let's blow this joint," she ordered, "I'll keep you covered."
Loki was the first down the stairs, followed closely by Thor, "what about the guards?" Thor questioned him.
"One thing at a time, Brother," Loki said quickly.
Thor beamed at him, "did you just say-?"
"Save your surprise and adulation for later, Thor," Loki hissed, "we have work to do."
It was well known that Loki had a rather dramatic flair, and he had always had it. Odin had told him flatly when he was a child that it all came from his mother's side of the family. But no matter how dramatic and thespian he liked to be, he had also always been, what was in human terms, a sneak. His talent for magic and charms made it so much easier to sneak around unnoticed. He had often used charms of invisibility to steal food from the castle kitchens, not because he had to, of course, but rather because it was fun.
He had cast a charm of invisibility over both himself and his brother, and they snuck in as Bella covered the exit from just inside the Vault. When Loki looked back over at her, she impatiently gave him the signal to move up.
He hid behind the pylon where Mjölnir was lovingly placed, and he looked around the stone, being careful not to be spotted. Thor knelt beside an opposite pylon that held a very strange double bladed sword, a hilt with a circular hand guard and a blade either side.
Loki pointed at Thor and held up his hand, his fingers all curled, the military signal for ten, and also commonly used on Asgard. The message was clear, ten guards. Thor shrugged in retaliation. Loki made a gesture with his hands meaning 'I don't know' and they both leaned around their respective pylons.
Ten guards; all armed to the teeth with knives, swords and axes. They were too heavily armed and armored to face them head on the way that was intended, so Loki narrowed his eyes and came up with a new plan. He needed a distraction.
He pointed at Thor again as he began to sneak from his hiding place, "heel," he whispered to his brother. He grabbed the strange sword from the other pylon and brought it back down with him as he knelt beside his brother.
"What now, Loki?" Thor whispered back to him as they perched in the shadow of the pylon.
He smiled, "we have to change the game," he pulled something from his pocket, a strange looking grenade, "I lifted this out of the bag before we got captured."
"What is it?"
"The humans call it a Flash grenade, and it is enough to stun those guards for a short time," Loki explained, "I'm saving the 'big guns', as you say, for the larger battle."
"I thought you called the humans stupid."
"They are stupid in the fact that they are always trying to kill each other, but brilliant in their methods," he smiled as he pulled the pin from the top, "look away and cover your ears."
The grenade exploding sent the whole place crashing down on them, and while the guards were down and the Casket of a Thousand Winters was theirs for the taking, the other guards descended on the Vault, and Bella was having a hard time holding them off with her primitive battle axe.
She had never been a foot soldier, instead specializing mostly in electronics, which was where the bomb disposal came in, and she had a flair for the role of a sniper, and while she had advanced self-defense training in more styles than you could point a fencing sword at, it still didn't prepare her for this.
The axe was wrenched from her grasp, so she hit the man, using her metal right arm and grabbed his round shield, and tossed it Captain America style at another man, "c'mon Snowman!"
Suddenly everything around her froze, including all the guards. Loki stood there in the doorway in his blue Jotun form, Thor behind him, looking shocked and in awe.
"Who are you calling Snowman?" he bit at her, "meat bag."
"Eat me, Brainy Smurf," she bit back, "c'mon kids, we don't have all day."
"They . . ." Thor glanced at the guards as he passed by. Bella sorted through the assorted weapons along with the assorted bodies and she grabbed a bow and full quiver of arrows.
"Put them in a bath of warm water for half an hour and they'll thaw right out."