Loki jumped at the sound of a rusty engine backfiring somewhere down the corridor. His own heartbeat grew to fortissimo, his breathing ragged. He took a deep breath and reasserted himself, though his fear still creeped at the back of his mind and at the edges of his vision like a predator he knew was there but couldn't shake. He felt so...hunted. He knew that in all likelihood, it wasn't he who had to search for Kinners-undoubtedly his fear stench would lead the beast right to him. No matter how silent he was, how potent his invisibility charms were, there was no way he could fool that monster. Not this time.
Which is truly what scared him. All his life, he'd faced enemies far greater than this, both in number and in power. But in a way they had been easier, because he could always duck out of existence for a moment and get his bearings. In this game of cat-and-mouse, or wolf-and-prey, rather, the tables were turned. The wolf could find him with or without clever tricks, and he had to rely on only his own intuition to discover her before she discovered him. An intuition he didn't wholeheartedly trust. In fact, she was probably stalking him right now. She might as well be breathing down his neck, her breath warm and carrying a slight odor of peppermint, left over from her ridiculous strike on smoking that was more a cry for attention than something with lasting affect...
Oh, wait.
Loki froze in terror, not daring to turn around. The hairs on the back of his neck stirred with the air disturbance. In a Jurassic Park-esque moment, he felt that if he moved the wolf would pounce upon him. Of course, it was about to do that anyway, so it's good that Loki acted when he did.
He sprang forward, hearing the lethal jaws snap on empty air a hair's breadth away from his nape. He whirled around to face the beast, but it had vanished in the dark. Not even the benevolence of moonlight could penetrate this deep into the inner workings of the Helicarrier. His eyes had nothing to work with. He could hear a rumbling growl, but the acoustics down here reverberated the accursed sound so that he couldn't pinpoint its true source. His options were limited, but a flash of ingenuity saved his life once more.
Setting his hand out in front of him, he summoned the one thing that could banish the dark-and his fear thereof.
A globe of light blossomed in his palm, rays the warmth of daylight flooding the hall gloriously. The wolf was illuminated before him in pristine quality, even as it shied away from the sudden brightness. Loki's moment of calm was short-lived, however. After all, just because he could see it didn't mean he was out of its claws yet.
It lashed out at him blindly, very nearly gutting him. He had to fight every instinct to turn and run, knowing that it would be upon him in moments if he chose to do so. It mumbled to itself in an almost Kinners-like way, blinking to adjust its eyes to the bright. Momentarily, it was stunned into a lack of violence. He decided to act on it while it lasted.
"I know you're in there," he muttered, half to himself. The wolf snarled in reply as if arguing. "You think you're invincible, you big bad wolf, you, but you said so yourself: I am not a god. And you are not a beast...at least, not a mindless one."
The wolf watched him warily with almost intelligent eyes, a suspicious growl rising in her throat. She began to back away, her four paws making no sound save for the tiny click of claws on steel. In the back of his head he thanked his lucky stars that it hadn't thought to interrupt him with a bite to the throat. Perhaps it could be reasoned with. He stretched a hand out towards it, praying that it didn't notice how that hand trembled, meanwhile holding the light-giving hand closer to him as if it were a shield.
"Is there…," he had to gulp to wet his throat against his nerves. He forced himself to speak slowly, calmly-if she couldn't smell his fear, she would certainly hear it in his voice if he permitted it. "...a way to change you back? An Achilles' Heel, of sorts? Anything I can work with to take you down? Or, at least, to not die by...by your claws?" Asgard above, he had no idea she could be so terrifying. He then realized that, if anyone, Bruce and Tony had been given such information during their scientific conferences. Perhaps he should have stayed with the others rather than following his own pride. He mentally cursed himself for, for once in his life, being as foolish as his bullhead brother. The main reason that usually Thor did that and he didn't, however, was that Thor had the muscles to save his own skin. Loki couldn't say that for himself. He wished that Banner or Stark were here, to use their powers of intelligentia to find a weakness behind those lethal fangs. Or at least provide another target for the wolf.
His wish was granted.
A full–throated roar rang through the Helicarrier's underbelly. Loki practically jumped out of his skin, his heartbeat surging in raw fright. The wolf's pupils narrowed to mere pinpricks in the space of an instant, its nostrils flaring. It sensed that it had let its guard down, and as the nearest living being Loki would surely be the first to pay for that.
It pounced on him and his light went out, holding him to the ground with a grip like death and claws like iron. But instead of ripping his lifeblood out of him, it held itself low to the ground, sniffing the air cautiously. The way it stood over him seemed almost...protective somehow. But why would it act so, when moments ago it had been on the brink of annihilating him (and possibly devouring)?
He shuddered. Best not to think about being eaten when it's still very likely that you will be.
The wolf suddenly was gone, slinking away into the shadows with an alien calm. He scrambled to his feet, dreading the next thing he would see. If that horrid noise wasn't the wolf, than it was the Hulk. The last time he'd tangled with that green beast, it hadn't been pleasant.
Speaking of which.
The green beast stood a good sprint away, locking him in its sights.
It gave another bellow, stomping towards Loki with all the delicate grace of a charging elephant. He was frozen in place with terror, something that had never happened before. He hadn't the faintest clue what to do with his buzzing adrenaline. The wolf did.
Out of nowhere, it tackled the Hulk around the neck, digging into his flesh with its claws and sinking into his jugular with its jaws. The Hulk protested as loudly as it could as their momentum swung them into the wall, the noise of both the roar and the impact nearly shattering Loki's eardrums. He thrashed to throw it off of him, but it held on with a skill that surpassed that of a brute beast, as if this were some demented piggy-back ride. When the Hulk had the sense to reach behind himself to grab it, he was rewarded with a slash across the palm. Finally, voicing his frustration with deafening volume, he body-slammed itself into the ground.
The wolf was two steps ahead of him, having the sense to pounce off of his back before it got itself crushed. It growled, pacing back to give itself some room. The Hulk got to his feet, purple-tinted blood oozing from numerous wounds. Loki threw up an illusion instinctively, noting with a tinge of confusion that the wolf had put itself between him and the Hulk. What used to be Bruce Banner glared right through the wolf into Loki's heart, so it seemed, the radiation that fueled the mad mutant seeping into the very air. It stomped furiously and gave a deliberate battle cry, the sheer force of the sound giving Loki a deathly chill.
"BAD DOG!"
Evidently, Loki was more of a scaredy-cat.
Overwhelmed by the raw power clashing before his eyes, he turned and ran.
Even though she had barely flinched at the Hulk's assorted vocalizations, Kinners's ears pricked at the whoosh of air Loki had displaced. She whirled, staring after him with a frantic sense in her eyes. One could almost hear a pining whimper more befitting to a lonely dog as she leaped after him. But mid-stride, her tail was seized by the Hulk, and with a vehement snarl of her own she almost snapped his hand clean off. He dropped the tail and stumbled back, and she pounced. Fangs bared, eyes livid, Loki forgotten.
Bellows of rage and yowls of pain chased him down the hall, urging him on as surely as if the wolf were on his heels. But he knew that if Kinners had been chasing him, he would have been down already. Yet run he did. That was all he could do. On and on, until he thought his lungs would explode. But the terror kept him going.
But why did he feel...guilty, almost?
He barely registered Captain America in the millisecond when he turned a corner and saw him jogging towards him. He didn't really notice anything until they plowed into each other.
Loki was dimly aware of colliding with something, the sensation of reality causing the mindless adrenaline to ebb slightly. When he fell and felt the impact of the ground against his back, he really came back, with a wince and no indifferent swear. Rubbing the back of his head, he grudgingly took the hand that Steve offered him.
"&%$, Reindeer Games, you were running like hell was on your heels," he observed. Loki gave him a flat-browed glare, never scanty with his sarcasm even with desperate lungs.
"Number One," he began, a stormcloud brewing behind his forehead. "it was hell." Rogers noted with his own pang of fear the spark of recalled terror in Loki's emerald eyes. This so-called god wasn't kidding. From the distant look on his face, he was still reeling from whatever it was he'd just seen. What had he seen? Night like this, he would believe anything.
"And number two?" prompted the agent, cocking his eyebrow under his slightly mussed hairdo. Loki snapped back to reality with one of his finer-quality sarcastic drawls.
"Don't call me that." he growled. With a bitter hand planted on Captain America's chest, he brushed past, nursing his own fear with every step.