Words in bold=POV shift
Words in italics=El or Loki interjecting in the other's narrative
Words in underline=standard emphasis
Brackets=Loki responding to El when she interrupts his narrative
I looked around as we stepped off the aircraft and onto the balcony of Stark Tower, Loki ahead of me and the two guards behind me. "Well, at least you found a nice place to hole up." I said slowly. "What's the thing on the roof?"
"A portal." Loki said simply as we entered the actual penthouse. "Soon it will open and unleash my army upon this pathetic world and then…" He turned and looked at me with a smirk. "I will rule."
"If it's so pathetic, why do you want it?" I asked, walking around and taking a look at everything. It was Tony Stark's penthouse, damn straight I was checking everything out.
"Under my rule Earth will become a stronger place, a glorious place." I looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
"So you're violently taking over the planet for altruistic reasons. Yeah, I believe that." I snorted before turning and plopping down on the couch. I crossed my legs up underneath me and pulled out my book, flipping to the pentagram diagram. Like I said, I was under no illusions. Taking down two, unsuspecting, not technically hostile, men was very different from taking on the freaking God of magic. I wasn't protecting my siblings in this case, and thus most of my bravado was gone. Suddenly something clicked in my brain, and I stared at the diagram as it suddenly made a lot more sense. I was so engrossed in the diagram that it took me a second to realize that Mr. Stark had arrived and walking towards the bar. He nodded at me as he selected a drink.
"Hey kid. Make yourself comfortable."
"Already on it." I assured him. He smirked as Loki turned and walked to look out the window at Manhattan.
"The Chitauri are coming. Nothing will change that." He said, his voice a strange mix of anger and gloating before turning back to look at Mr. Stark. "What have I to fear?"
"The Avengers." Mr. Stark looked up as he poured a drink, and, recognizing me and Loki's confused look, clarified. "It's what we call ourselves. It's sort of like a team. Earth's mightiest heroes type thing." Loki chuckled.
"Yes. I've met them." He said smugly. Mr. Stark smirked.
"Yeah, it takes us a while to get any traction, I'll give you that one. But let's do a head count here. Your brother, the demigod." I winced at that. Strictly speaking, Thor wasn't a demigod. I'd read Percy Jackson, I knew that a demigod was the child of a god and a mortal. I was going to have find a way to get Mr. Stark copies of the Percy Jackson series. "And you, big fella, you've managed to piss off every single one of them."
"That was the plan." Loki said, and I resisted the urge to groan. My soulmate was an arrogant, homicidal maniac. I mean, I'd already sort of known that, but this was just hammering the point in even more, and it wasn't good.
"Not a great plan." Mr. Stark said, echoing my thoughts exactly. "When they come, and they will, they'll come for you."
"I have an army."
"We have a Hulk." I laughed.
"Can't argue with that. Point Mr. Stark." I said, because I just couldn't help myself. Loki glared at me over his shoulder.
"Be quiet." He snapped.
"Here's what you don't get." Mr. Stark said, glaring at Loki. "Even if your army comes, even if it's too much for us, it's still all on you. Because if we can't protect the Earth you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it." Loki stalked towards him, staff starting to glow.
"How will your friends have time for me, when they're so busy fighting you?" He hissed, tapping the staff against Mr. Stark's chest. There was a loud 'ding' as the staff hit the arc reactor and did absolutely nothing. Loki frowned and tried again, with the same non result. "This usually works." He muttered. Mr. Stark nodded understandingly.
"Well, performance issues," He winced. "Not uncommon. One out of five…" Loki lunged forward and grabbed him by the throat as I started laughing again.
"A Viagra joke? Dude, Loki, you're totally losing this conversation."
"I said, be quiet!" Loki snapped, throwing Mr. Stark across the room as he did so.
"JARVIS, any time now." Mr. Stark muttered as he started to pick himself up. Loki got to him first, lifting him by the neck once more.
"You will all fall before me." Loki hissed.
"Deploy!" Mr. Stark yelled right before Loki threw him out the window. A split second later, something large and red flew right past Loki and me, crashing through the window and flying down. Five seconds later, Iron Man was in front of the window. "And there's one other person you pissed off." He said angrily. "His name was Phil." Mr. Stark blasted Loki before my stupid soulmate could attack him.
It's a good thing I agree with you that I stupid and insane at this point in time, otherwise all these insults could be considered emotional abuse.
But you do agree with me, so shut up. Anyway, there was a loud rumbling, Mr. Stark looked up, then flew away. "What was that?" I demanded, frowning. Loki smirked as he picked himself up.
"The Chitauri have arrived." He headed for the balcony, and I watched in shock and horror as small craft flew by, firing lasers into the city below before turning back to the book. If I was right, this diagram was the best chance I had of helping. I vaguely noticed that outside Loki was fighting Thor, and that he'd made himself look like an extra from Caligula again, but I was a bit preoccupied, and I couldn't exactly hear what they were saying anyway, so I didn't really pay attention. I frowned and stood up, walking over to the bar while consulting my books.
"May I ask what you're looking for miss?" A somewhat stuffy voice asked. I jumped and looked around, before remembering a thing on the internet I read about Mr. Stark having an AI running most of his buildings and stuff.
"I think I can close the portal, at least temporarily, but I need paint, and five candles." There was a pause.
"There is paint on the fifteenth floor, in the third storage closet." JARVIS said, opening the elevator doors. And there are an assortment of scented candles in Miss Potts' room. Will those be suitable?" I looked at the book as I got inside the elevator.
"They should work fine, so long as they have wicks." I said after a second.
Five minutes later
I looked at the pentagram I'd made on the gravel, with the machine that was making the portal in its center. (I wasn't sure why Mr. Stark had decided to cover the roof of his building in gravel, but whatever) nodded, and settled down into the circle at the northwestern point in the lotus position, putting my hands in the two smaller circles in the perimeter of my circle, careful not to touch the painted parts. I still had a good amount of paint, but time was of the essence here. "Star of the ancients, protector of the innocent, guardian of the helpless, guide of the lost, accept this my offering. Take my energy and shield these people. Stop this destruction." My hands glowed purple and magic surged into the pentagram, creating a dome around the portal machine. It cut off the beam flowing from it, closing the portal. A few more things flew through it, but only the small fry. I grinned in triumph for a moment. And then the energy drain hit me.
I bit back a scream. All magic comes with a price. Normally that's just a drain from the magical core, the source of all the magic in a person's body, and it replenishes at a fairly steady rate. (Most people don't have a core, and as such are unaffected by ambient magic and magical draining artifacts, though the tradeoff was that they couldn't cast spells.) This spell though, wasn't just taking my magic. It was taking my life force, slowly aging me. Whatever was powering the portal device was really powerful, because it was taking a lot of life to keep it contained. After what seemed like forever, but Natasha assures me was only five minutes, there was the noise of someone rolling across the gravel. I looked up as a beautiful redheaded woman in a catsuit walked up to me. "Ma'am, are you doing alright?" I smirked.
"Peachy." I bit out. "Did you know, when I started this I was eighteen? Judging from my hands I must be eighty by now."
"More like seventy." She said, assessing the situation. "You're the one keeping the portal shut then?"
"No, it was the Penguins of Madagascar." I bit out. I was in far too much pain to be polite. "I'm just sitting here for fun." She gave me a concerned look.
"How much longer can you last?" She asked. In response I gasped, a shudder wracking my body.
"Five minutes?" I guessed after I'd regained my composure.
"Any way to lengthen that time?" I paused, trying to picture the page of the book relating to this spell in my book. I nodded at the bucket of paint.
"If you could paint a line and a perfect circle big enough to fit one of those Chitauri things without smudging the paint from each of the other points, then throw a still living one in each of them, I could drain their life force instead of mine. It would rejuvenate me and extend the time the shield works. And no, I don't know by how much because I don't know how long these things would live before dying of old age." Natasha nodded and touched her earpiece.
"Did you hear that Stark?" I assume he did, because a minute later two badly mangled but still breathing Chitauri crashed into the roof. Natasha got to work painting the circles and lines. Just as she'd finished, two more Chitauri in equally bad condition landed, this time courtesy of Thor. To my surprise, Natasha was able to easily pick up the Chitauri and set them down in the middle of the circles. It took me a second to recalibrate the spell, but then there was a surge of energy and I was able to breathe easy again. I let out a sigh of relief as the pain receded.
"Sorry for, you know, being a bitch." I said, looking apologetically at Natasha. "I was in severe pain, but still..."
"I've heard worse." Natasha said dismissively, shrugging. Suddenly, there was a roar, followed by the shattering of glass and the building shook.
"What was that?" I demanded, looking around.
"Stark and Thor have been playing interference to keep Loki from getting here and reopening the portal." Natasha reported as an older man who'd been lying unconscious near the edge of the roof slowly sat up, looking around in confusion. "One of those worm things attacked them, and Loki broke away. Clint shot him out of the sky, and he landed on the tower balcony. Apparently that noise was Hulk tackling him through a window." I chuckled.
"Nice."
"The Scepter." Natasha and I looked over at the older man, who was now peering over the ledge of the roof.
"Doctor." Natasha said, taking a step towards him.
"Loki's Scepter." He said, ignoring her. "The energy. The Tesseract can't fight…You can't protect against yourself."
"It's not your fault, you didn't know what you were doing." Natasha assured him, crouching down next to him. I raised an eyebrow. That…was an odd response from my perspective. Yeah The Doctor had explained that with a Shatner degree of disjointedness, but the intent of his speech was fairly obvious. He stared at her for a long moment.
"Well actually I think I did. I built in a safety to cut the power source." Natasha paused for a moment, processing this.
"Loki's Scepter." She said after a second.
"It may be able to close the portal." The Doctor confirmed, before turning his head and looking down at the balcony below. "And I'm looking right at it."
Five minutes later
I looked up as Natasha walked over, Loki's staff in her hands. "You're going to have to drop the shield." She said, looking down at me. I nodded, took a deep breath, and let go, drawing what remained of the Chitauri's life force into me. It turned out these things could live for an impressively long time. I paused as memories rushed through my head, what remained of the Chitauri's brains filling me with knowledge. Just as Natasha was about to stab the Tesseract I shot my hand out, grabbing her wrist.
"Don't." I said quickly. "I've got a better plan." Natasha stared down at me.
"What are you talking about?" She demanded.
"The Chitauri are a hive mind, controlled by a mother ship on the other side of that portal. Destroy the mother ship and we destroy the Chitauri. If we just destroy the portal though, you've got to take out a whole army of the things still, and there's really just the 6 of you doing any real damage."
"And how do we destroy the mother ship?" Natasha was still impatient, but she sounded more willing to listen at the moment. All things considered, the impatience was understandable.
"…How fast can SHIELD get a nuke over here?" She stared at me, then hit her earpiece for a second time.
"Fury?" Natasha asked. There was a pause. "Three minutes, got it. Everyone clear on the plan?" There was another long pause. "That's a good question. How do we get it to hit the mother ship?" She asked, looking at me. I held out my hand and the book flew to me.
"Glad that worked." I muttered softly. I'd really just been inspired by watching Thor do it with his hammer, and wanted to try it myself. I opened it, hoping for another miracle. I turned the page with the pentagram on it to reveal that the words of the next page had settled into a coherent spell. Specifically a guidance spell designed to perfectly aim projectiles.
…That is a remarkably specific spell. It seems somewhat superfluous.
The book is from the Middle Ages, alright? I'm sure it was a lot more useful back then. Anyway, I got up and walked over to the ledge, reading the book. There was minute of waiting and me just reading the book, making sure that I wouldn't stumble over the words. "Alright, Stark's on his way." I nodded, and as soon as he entered my field of vision started reading, focusing on the image of the mother ship from the Chitauri memories.
"Spirts of the wind, patrons of war, guides of the desperate, accept this my offering. Make this missile fly true." I thrust my hand out, sending purple energy to coat the nuke as Mr. Stark flew by. Right as he neared the portal Iron Man let go, sending the nuke through the portal. The second it closed Natasha stabbed the Tesseract with the Scepter, closing the portal. There was a pause, then she gave me a smile.
"It worked." I sighed in relief and sat down. Whatever the hell the Tesseract was, it had a lot of power. Even while draining the life out of four Chitauri, suppressing its energy had taken a lot out of me. Add that to the drain of the targeting spell and I needed to take a nap. I was so tired I didn't even think to freak out about how high up we were, and how close to the edge I was. Natasha walked over and put a hand on my shoulder as Iron Man landed on the balcony, having carried a guy with a bow up, followed closely by Thor, who was carrying Captain Rogers.
"It's not quitting time quite yet." She said. I looked up at her in confusion.
"Uh, the Chitauri are dead. So unless they had a human army helping them, I think I can take a nap."
"Loki's not dead." I blinked.
"I fail to see what that has to do with me. Because I really doubt I can pin him down with magic, if that's what you're hoping." She rolled her eyes and pulled me to my feet.
"C'mon kid." I sighed again, this time in dejection, and followed. As we got onto the balcony, Mr. Stark nodded at me.
"Nice job kid." He said with a smile, then did a double take.
"What?" I asked warily. He looked at me, blinking.
"Weren't you a brunette a few minutes ago?" I stared at him.
"What?" Mr. Stark looked at Natasha.
"Really? You didn't tell her?"
"We were in the middle of an alien invasion, her hair color was not my first priority." Natasha sighed. I looked at them, then grabbed some of my hair and held it in front of my face. While it was as thick as ever, and still felt and looked healthy, it was very, very silver. I groaned and let it fall down.
"Great. So my soulmate is a homicidal maniac with ego issues, New York got invaded and a lot of people probably died, and now I have old woman hair." Yes, those were rather petty issues, but I was eighteen, I was allowed to be a little self-centered.
She said from the lofty age of twenty-four
Shut up. Thor gave me a startled look. "You are my brother's soulmate?" I shrugged uncomfortably.
"That's what the words on my ankle say." Thor patted me on the shoulder, and while it was a little forceful it wasn't so hard I was knocked on my ass.
"It is strange." He said slowly. "Not so long ago I would have been happy for you. Now though…" He shook his head. "Come, let us deal with my errant brother." I hung back as the others headed inside.
"C'mon, we don't have all day." Mr. Stark said, waving me over.
"Uh…I'm not sure I should…" He rolled his eyes.
"Kid, you closed the portal seven minutes into the invasion, keeping about a thousand of those Chitauri things out of the city and saving who knows how many lives." He said. "I think you've earned the right to glare at Loki." I couldn't really argue with that, so I followed him inside. I was still more than a little uncomfortable.
You shouldn't have been. You were the third most intimidating person in the room.
You know that when they say never insult your girlfriend, that doesn't mean you can't admit that she's not as intimidating as a superhero, right? That's not really an insult and ow! Stop flicking me! How was that insulting myself?
Do I need to get Steve in here to lecture you about how you are in fact a good, brave person again?
No! Hell no, it's bad enough I'm going to have to write that down later and relive it. My point was that I wasn't exactly a hero at the time. Ow!
What do you call saving thousands of lives?
…I need to start wearing a helmet around you. I wonder if Tony would make me one.
I think he would probably build a robot to help me.
…Probably. Now then, back to the story. Loki slowly picked himself up so that he was sitting on the steps, looking at us. I was glaring at him, book in hand, just in case. In case of what I wasn't sure, but whatever. "If it's all the same to you, I think I'll have that drink now." He said slowly. Hulk growled, unamused, but I looked over at the bar. It looked fairly intact. I'd never really drunk before, never saw the point in risking getting arrested just for a few hours of being stupid followed by a hangover. But now? Now I really needed one.
"Mind if I have a drink Mr. Stark?" I asked as the man with the bow handcuffed Loki and Captain Rogers contacted the Helicarrier. Mr. Stark winced.
"Never call me that again and you can have a whole bottle." I blinked.
"Then what do I call you?"
"Tony's fine." He said dismissively.
"…Alright then." I said slowly, and somewhat uncomfortably. I headed over towards the bar when Natasha stopped me.
"No." She said flatly.
"I…what do you mean no?" I demanded indignantly.
"C'mon Romanoff, we can all use a drink." Mr…Tony said, rolling his eyes and heading for the bar himself.
"Stark, she's eighteen." Natasha said flatly. Tony paused and looked at me, then at the bottle of rum he was holding.
"Sorry kid, I'm not getting arrested just so you can get drunk."
"I hate you right now." I said, glaring at Natasha, who shrugged.
Fifteen minutes later
We sat in silence around a table in an impressively intact restaurant, all things considered. I mean, yeah, there was rubble strewn about, but the walls were large hole free, as was the roof, and they were capable of making us food, so they weren't doing too badly. As for the choice of food? Eh, it was fine. Frankly, how could we not go after finding out about a food called shawarma? That name is just begging people to try it!
I still cannot believe that I was beaten by a group of people whose reaction to saving the world was to argue over underage drinking and then go try a new food (in full combat gear for four of you I might add) solely based on you being amused by the name.
Aw, you know you love our insanity.
Author's Notes
What'd you guys think? I wanted El to be involved in the plot, and this was the best way I could think of to do that, but, as always, I'm scared of falling into the OC becomes a Mary Sue trap. Was this a good way for her to save the day in your opinion?
Thanks for reading! Please review!