NEW YORK, 2357 HOURS

"Now I know I'm too drunk."

"I saw it too, Tony."

"Does that mean I'm not drunk enough?"

Pepper Potts sighed and put down her own wine glass and slipped off the barstool with an almost embarrassed look on her face, as if wondering how she got stuck in this situation and resenting it.

"Where are you going, Pep?"

"To investigate," Pepper replied, "strange blue light followed by a massive thump on the balcony. It sounds familiar, doesn't it?"

It only took a few moments for him to completely sober up after the thirty seconds it took him to understand what she had said. He too pried himself off the barstool and both of them went out onto the balcony together.

Tony only saw it when he nearly tripped over it, a crumpled form of a man, bleeding, face down, "People falling randomly out of the sky?" he asked himself, "smacks of Asgard."

"Is he dead?" Pepper knelt by the body. She reached to check for a pulse, but then she remembered that if an alien looked human, it did not mean that the first aid procedures that she had taken the time to learn would be useful at all.

Tony crouched beside her, putting his glass down on some of the tiles that weren't broken into more pieces than Rain Man could count, "There's only one way to find out," he licked his finger.

"Tony . . ." she trailed off her speech into a sigh, "you are so childish."

He only grinned and moved his finger close to the man's ear.

"Do you value that finger?"

"He's alive," Pepper sighed.

"He shouldn't be," Tony narrowed his eyes.

"Do something useful, Anthony," Loki bit at him, "Help me up."

"What are you doing here?"

"I was looking for a drink."

NEW YORK, WELL PAST MIDNIGHT

"It's not very strong," Loki said simply as he sipped his whiskey.

"What are you on about? It's premium grade booze," Tony argued.

"Premium grade my foot!"

"Your foot's premium grade?"

"I wouldn't let my horse drink this rubbish," Loki argued, "I bet this is only aged in the double digits."

"Is that a problem, Princess?"

"You're picking it a little young," Loki shot back, "I won't drink anything less than five hundred years old, and on my planet, that is cheap. Twenty years? It may as well be bath-barrel gin."

"What can I do to please you, then?"

"Get me five hundred year old mead on tap," Loki said simply.

"Are you kidding? Even if it existed, I could never afford it!"

Pepper sighed, they had gone on like this for hours, and she didn't see an end in sight, and so she went downstairs with a bottle of fine Coniac and decided to watch TV, alone.