Chapter 7: Enter Avengers

O.C point of view

Ow oww o o ow oww ow o ow oww ow

Where am I?

Owwo oww owwo ooww oww

Oh god, where is everyone?

'Groan' everything ached, god have I been through a blender or somethin'.

Can't even lift my head up, feels like I'm being scratched by a gazillion cats at once, every limb, every finger, every toe…everything feels too sharp it's making my eyes sting.

There's a heavy pressure on my chest, I can taste blood in my mouth.

Lifting my head, I can just make out a huddled shape under a few raggedy plain grey and some other raggedy red chequered blankets on a small cot just to the left, are they ok?

Am I even ok?

My breathing sounds weird; my chest feels heavy and tight. My left arm feels ok at least; I use the beds nearest leg to lift myself up. Ouch the pressure on the centre of my chest is worse, I hiss. Oh god this is bad, this is so bad.

I close my eyes and slowly bent my head down, and slowly opened my eyes. I released the breath I was holding. My right arm covered in black dangling flesh from open pus scratches. My legs the same but my right ankle had puffed up three times the normal size, it felt like even the lightest touch would have a direct connection to my nerve endings with dire consequences like a knife is cutting its way along the length of my body. Oh crap I don't even want to think about the rest of my body.

Even if I make it out of this, even if my cuts heal and by miracle, if I haven't got an infection already, I don't lose any limbs…my skin will still be ruined, my…god…will any of my friends even recognise me?

Would I recognise me?

The tears falling down my cheek… is actually kinda soothing, cooling the hot sting of the scratches on my face.

I'm going to need so much therapy after this…

A pained groan sound to my left jars me from the thought of losing possibly most of my limbs. Crap, I totally forgot about the person on the bed. I shuffled nearer to the bed using my left arm to lean on, now closer I shift my battered heavy body to lean on the corner of the bed's frame, than lifted my good arm over to the huddled lump, and slightly shook him/her.

The reaction was almost instantaneous, the form leapt out of bed like I had just lit a match under their butt, and I was now staring down, a black haired homeless Santa guy, with a hawk's grip around my neck. This guy's light green gaze holds me paralyzed for a few seconds, before I breathed out all the hot steam I had generated. His pale complexion and unkempt caveman hairdo suited this place, entirely cold and untouched by warmth. I couldn't help but assume I was… we were still on the ice planet but within a grey damp concrete dungeon, and I was the new roommate of crazy Santa over here about to be shanked.

But…it felt like I was in an underground Earth concrete bunker rather than an ice dungeon.

This guy was scaring me, he was pulling me closer by tugging on my neck, and I was now mere inches from his face, his teeth bared…

"Where is it?" his voice almost inaudible…

His snarl on his face looks so animalistic, so hateful it practically makes me shiver to my core and makes me wants to slink down into my own body because of my own weakness in this situation. There was no hope at all, I mean who would want to save me, and I'm just a nobody, who has practically no family or any real friends.

"WHERE…IS…IT, THE TESSERACT?" his growl jolts me back to the situation at hand.

The tesseract… wait the legless blue giant asked for the same thing, maybe it's that blue cube thing that was in the meteorite, it seemed important, the hypnotic blue glow… it was shiny, of course it would be important.

"Is it like a blue cube thingy?"

"Yesssss" ok, god, I just wanted to be sure, no need to have to be all snaky.

"It kinda fell out of the sky, then when I went up to it and touched it, um I don't know there was a white light and then I kinda blacked out" his eyes flickered over my face and I have never felt so exposed in my life. He's going to kill me, I know it. In a spy movie, the hero or friend of the hero usually gets tortured to find information after they just denied that they didn't know anything.

Pain…no pain please…

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

"You're telling the truth?" his voice… it changed from just being carnal and so hateful to…vulnerable, his voice clipped with a slight crack to it…so sad.

For a sociopath.

"Yes" his hands drop me and I make hard contact with the floor, luckily my nose cushions the blow. He just believed me like that…like he knows when a person is telling the truth or…

Lying.

"Gasp" oh god I know who he is, the crazy hobo Santa is…LOKI. It had been in the back of my head scratching at my conscious, take away the beard and some of the long hair and you've got the bat-crap crazy alien who tried to take over New York, killing at least three-thousand people, alone, and in less than a week. And I'm trapped in a small bunker with him.

Oh crap, crap, crap, crap… Is he going to probe me or something… crap, what do aliens do? I slowly roll onto my back and watch as he gracefully plops down near the open entrance to the room, his… back is bleeding slightly, he has no shirt on, only baggy brown trousers, god I hope they were made brown and haven't just been stained that way. The wound is deep, on his back with exposed tissue and muscle fibres, the whole wound was more on his upper back and on his neck. I hadn't noticed when he was just holding my neck but his left arm was sum how a stump, but he had two hands when he tried to take over New York, and the stump was now well healed over, leaving no scars or scabs.

Loki had been tortured, during the past year. I can't help but feel a slight bout of pity for the alien guy, in the pit of my stomach. Maybe Thor's race isn't as advanced as I had thought.

If Loki is here, then that means the avengers would be coming to save me and stop Loki, and his various evil plans. Ok don't panic the avengers are coming and Loki is…

Wow…

Bruce's P.O.V

The only time Bruce was really worried around the tower was when Tony ran out of his favourite whisky, Thor had eaten all the Pop tarts and starts blaming everyone else for supposedly taking them, the Cap when he misses training and gets on a short circuit with everyone for no explainable reason, Hawkeye sees a picture of Loki, and when Natasha… is all quiet, more so than usual.

But now Thor's dad had 'called' him yesterday about a serious issue, and now his mind couldn't help but picture Loki. He hadn't actually seen Thor's dad contact him but had seen him come into the Playroom in full medieval fair armour saying that he needs to return home and discuss something serious with his father should be back soon with a swift return, then ran upstairs to the roof, stargate teleport, light show disappearing act, leaving Earth's mightiest hero's dazed and confused, and a slightly annoyed tony because he now had a burnt weird pattern on his helipad and a slightly dishevelled Jane Foster, moping about the place.

Everyone was anxious; it was probably just an Asgard issue, but if not…

"Hmm, I wonder when lumber jack is going be back" Tony says as he swirls a glass of dark fluids in a whiskey glass, the ice makes a clinking sound against the silence of the highly tense room, he's wearing his favourite black suit with red shirt.

"It's only been a day, he probably didn't finish the business till late and stayed over" Natasha was in her usual pose, folded arms and uninterested demeanour but her voice was calm and logical imbued which made the room less tense and everyone a little less edgy and worried for Thor.

Steve had only been sitting on the burgundy leather sofa, resting his chin on his fist and forearm and staring into space all the time everyone from the team, minus Thor but plus Jane, had been waiting in the Rec room, but Steve looked like he was about to talk when the thunderous growl from the sky silenced him and seemed to still the entire universe as they waited for Thor

Thor took in total 3:02 minutes because Bruce found himself nervously watching the clock.

When Thor walked in with a stern expression everyone leapt to their feet, his face was only softened when Jane slightly kissed and embraced him.

Steve was the only one who had the courage to ask.

"Well?" he said it half-jokingly.

"It doesn't bode well in Asgard my friends, Loki has escaped…" everyone in the room relives everything that happened and collapses in on themselves "and something else friends… the cube is missing" Thor's voice cracks the entire way.

Everyone looks at each other knowing and seeing the same…

Tony claps his hands together…

"Well, time to get the good Bourbon"