Tony thought long and hard about who he would enlist to assist him in his goal of defeating the children and Loki in their own game. He had already gotten the pink out of his hair through some miraculous act of science. He sat in his favourite chair, staring out the window with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist.

"Heard you got yourself a make-over, Stark."

Tony jumped, and turned sharply to see an oddity standing in the doorway.

"Agent Hill," Tony said by way of greeting. Agent Hill nodded stern in greeting.

"You'll get more of that," she went on; "Juliet and Periwinkle are easily bored."

"You know them?" inquired Tony. "No. I've never even met them."

"Then what-"

"Nice place you've got here, Stark. I wouldn't take you for a guy who paints the TARDIS on random doors in each hall."

"The what?"

"The TAR-" Tony held up a hand and shook his head, signalling Agent Hill to stop talking. It was obvious who was behind the trick, but he didn't really care at the moment. He just wanted Hill gone.

"Why are you here, Agent?" Agent Hill smiled ever so slightly.

"Just checking up on the kids," she said.

"Checking up? You're kidding, right?"

"Of course not. We need to be sure Periwinkle is getting proper medical care, what with her condition being so severe." Tony's heart stopped beating for a second.

"Condition? What condition?" Hill's smile faded slowly.

"I'll take that as a 'no'. Good day, Stark." With this, she turned and made her exit.

"Hey!" Tony yelled after her retreating back, "What condition?" But she didn't answer. She just waved to Tony as she entered the elevator. Tony knew he could easily stop and detain her until he got answers, but he knew he'd have to deal with Fury afterwards. He couldn't concentrate, anyway. His head was still repeating what Hill had said, as if trying to burn the sentence into his memory.

"…What condition?"

Loki pushed open the door to Jules and Peri's room with enough force to break a dam, breathing hard and looking as if he were ready to launch the attack on New York all over again. He raised his arm high and started screaming at Peri in some odd dialect- most likely Norse of some sort. Peri looked up from her newest book calmly and lifted an eyebrow at the sight of Loki and his rage fit.

"Can I help you?" Peri asked, becoming slightly worried that Loki was about to decapitate her. He sucked in a breath, his eyes aflame with suppressed animosity, and threw a smallish black object at her. Peri quickly covered her face with her book, and when the object made contact she realized it wasn't anything terribly threatening. It was a book, a paperback book that didn't even reach three hundred pages. She lowered the book she was reading and looked at the one Loki had thrown at her. "Oh… So you finished Looking for Alaska."

"HOW DARE YOU! HOW COULD YOU BE SO CRUEL?! I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS, PERIWINKLE MARIE! DOES THAT MEAN NOTHING TO YOU?" Loki went on like this for a while, four minutes and eight seconds, to be precise. Peri merely sat on her bed and giggled silently. Finally, he took a deep breath, and stopped screaming.

"I take it you liked this book."

"I may have enjoyed a bit."

"Oh, Loki, why do you have to be so outstandingly stubborn?"

"Would you like me any other way?" He crossed to Jules' bed and flopped down on it, propping his feet up on her pillow.

"I suppose I wouldn't," Peri turned to face him, marking her place in her new book and placing it on the nightstand. "I don't think Jules will appreciate your feet on the place she rests her head each night."

"I haven't been able to find my armour recently," he said, completely ignoring Peri's comment, "I'm beginning to suspect a certain ginger."

"Which ginger? Our ginger, or the grown-up ginger?"

"Our ginger, of course." It was highly possible that their ginger (Jules) was indeed responsible. She had been hinting that she wanted to see Loki in Midgardian clothes for a few days, and today he was wearing a V-neck shirt and jeans that hadn't been featured in his wardrobe previously. "In either case, it's bothersome. These Midgardian rags are unfitting of my station."

Peri rolled her eyes and returned her attention to her book.

While Loki and Peri questioned Jules' clothing choice for the demigod, Jules herself was on her way to Loki's room to plant more clothes. She was deluded into thinking she could successfully change his entire lifestyle via wardrobe. The door was cracked halfway open when she reached it, and despite her fifteen years of experience with traps and how to avoid them, she found herself walking right into one.

The filthy, chalky eraser Tony had placed there earlier for Loki fell on her head in a cloud of white powder. Her gorgeous, blood red hair now appeared to be a putrid shade of pink. She stood stock-still for a moment, not quite sure how to respond to the fact she couldn't breathe without inhaling the dust-like particles. She blinked, determined to hold her breath until she reached fresh air, and turned around slowly. Unfortunately there was a colossal mass of muscle in her way, and while she didn't fall like Peri would have, she did get her breath knocked out of her. She regained her oxygen, along with the chalk powder. She coughed violently and the muscle wall patted her on the back in a vain attempt to help.

Damn, that hurts almost as much as the time I got knocked into the edge of a revolving door, Jules thought. She held up her hand to gesture the muscle to stop.

"Thanks, Thor, but I don't need your help," she punctuated this statement with another cough. Thor looked at her worriedly, obviously not believing her.

"Are you quite sure, Lady Juliet?" He reached for her face, holding it gently as he tilted it to look into her eyes. "I do not think you are well."

Jules, feeling more than a little violated, pushed his hand away roughly.

"One: it's Jules. Two: yeah, I'm sure. Three: don't touch me. Have a nice day." She moved to leave, but he was rather hard to move around in the small hallway as he took up about three fourths of the space.

"The powder is in your hair," he stated slowly.

"I am fully aware of that, Thor, and if you'd like to help me you can get out of my way so I can get back to my room!" Jules snapped. Thor sidestepped, allowing her just enough room to move. She made no further acknowledgements of him, and went straight back to Loki and Peri.

"What the heck happened to you?" said Peri as Jules walked into their bedroom. "You looked like a snowman peed on your head."

"Peri!" Loki turned to her sharply, shocked by her vulgarity, "to say such a thing is hardly befitting of a young lady!"

"Oh shut up, Loki, and don't deny you think I'm right."

"I'll have the two of you know; I was manhandled by Horse Boy's big brother in the hall."

"One time!" Loki growled.

"Would you like me to kill him, dear?" Peri asked calmly.

"A maiming would be nice, but he doesn't deserve death. It wasn't too serious of an attack. But anyway, the powder wasn't him. I think it was Tony." She recanted the tale to her comrades.

Peri nodded and Loki sat up straighter. They both anticipated imminent retaliation.

"The thing is," Peri started, "Tony is delirious and immature, but he wouldn't think of such a juvenile prank. Say what you want about him, but he does have style."

"You're literally only saying that because you idolize him," Loki interrupted.

"The next time you cut me off I'll throw a book at you. See how you like it."

"Idiot."

"Moron."

"Okay, you two need to stop because we have a problem here. Who could possibly have thought of something so stupid that would be willing to-" suddenly the answer became clear to Jules as she reached the middle of her sentence. "No," she whispered.

"What? Who is it-" Peri realized from the look on Jules' face, "no…"

Jules and Peri stared at each other in horror, hoping against hope they were wrong. Loki looked back and forth between the two of them, becoming more and more frustrated at not understanding. Finally, he burst.

"When the two of you are ready, could you please be so kind as to fill me in? That's not to say I don't enjoy the suspense, but you see, I have an appointment at about four," Loki said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Jules turned to Loki and Peri sadly hung her head.

"Clint. He's literally the only person who would deal with pranks other than Tony. Everyone else is too mature."

"He has become one of the Sith," Peri whined. Jules and Loki ignored her as the reference was not understood.

"Do you know what this means?" Jules said excitedly.

"Oh yes," Loki smirked, "we're going to be having quite a bit of fun, aren't we?"

"Hell to the yes," Jules flipped her hair and smiled brightly. "After all, all is fair in love and war."

Obviously, I don't own any of the characters in this story except for Peri and Jules... Well… Okay, I only own Peri. I don't own anything I make a reference to in any chapter. Also I started writing this before I saw Thor 2 so this story DOES NOT follow the Thor 2 timeline AT ALL. But hey, moving on. I'm not a professional writer, but I'd very much like to be a novelist one day. If you could kindly give me some tips and pointers on how to improve, I'd be much obliged. Have a great day, and thank you for taking the time out of your life to read my manuscript!