Something is wrong. Loki can feel it the moment he sets foot in this crumbling Manhattan neighborhood. The ground seems to sway beneath him and he grabs for the nearest wall, trying not to stagger. It is—the air feels heavy in his lungs, his body slow to obey him, and when he reaches for magic it slithers out of his grasp.
He should not even be here, Loki thinks (dizzily, slowly, because even thinking is a struggle), he is certain the jet was meant to leave him at a rooftop safe zone instead of down here on the street, but there is a door only a few paces away and he knows he can recover there, out of sight from all the thugs he is meant to battle. He will figure out what is happening and it will be fine.
He takes a step and stumbles, badly, rough brick scraping his hand as he lurches into the wall. For a moment he just clings to it, furious and disgusted (not afraid, never afraid) that merely remaining upright is such a struggle. He plants his staff on the pavement and manages another step.
And then, of course, a nearby group of thugs takes notice of him.
There's a bit of pointless shouting, first, fuzzy and indistinct to his ears but unimportant regardless, and then the voices are drowned out by a hail of gunfire. For a moment, instinctively, Loki is not concerned. The mortals' primitive projectile weapons, at worst, have only inconvenienced him before. And indeed, the first jolts of impact are only that, the bullets failing to penetrate his armor. But there are many thugs with many guns, and he cannot move to destroy them or even defend himself, and his armor is not good enough to protect him from more than one or two volleys.
The first shock of pain hits like a punch to the gut. He jerks in surprise, even that small movement delayed and slow, and tries again to draw on his magic, to swing up his staff, and again nothing will obey him. More bullets strike, scattered stinging pains that would only be a nuisance singly but he cannot react, only staggers back from the force of dozens of gunshots at once, the world going gray as his strength bleeds out. His legs buckle, and he ends up on one knee, one hand still holding his staff in a deathgrip, the other pressed flat to the grimy pavement. He struggles to rise and fails.
Loki suspects that, if pressed, he could think of more embarrassing ways to die, but at the moment nothing is coming to mind.
Except he doesn't die: the thugs, apparently (and, it must be said, correctly) considering him incapacitated, lose interest almost immediately and depart for more lively opponents. Loki is left in the street to gasp ineffectively for breath and stew in his humiliating defeat.
He can call SHIELD for an extraction, he supposes, now that he has a moment. They can retrieve him like some wayward child, and give him medical assistance he should not need, and he can attempt to ignore the inevitable smirks, and he wants very much not to do any of that.
Even as he thinks it, he realizes he is already too late: he can hear approaching footsteps, either a thug returning to finish him off or some hero eager to mock him. It hardly matters which, as far as his reaction is concerned, because all he can do to brace himself is to curl his fingers a little more tightly around his scepter.
But there's no blow, no laughter, just a young woman's voice saying "Hey, are you okay?" and the accompanying sound of…skittering, like tiny claws on the pavement. A small, furry creature with a bushy tail scampers into his field of vision and stops next to his hand, staring up at him. Loki stares back, then looks past it to see several more of the little animals, all clustered around a pair of human feet in furry boots. He has another moment of blank incomprehension before the pieces come together, far more slowly than they should: of course, this must be Squirrel Girl, also known as…at the moment he cannot seem to remember her other name. With a great effort, he manages to raise his head enough to see more than her feet, and yes, she has a tail too.
He looks up further, and her face swims into view—open, friendly, concerned. (The little creatures around her, he realizes after a moment, are all wearing more or less the same expression. It is either eerie or hilarious, and in his current state he is entirely unable to decide which.) From sheer force of habit if nothing else, it is on the tip of his tongue to ask if she has come to gloat, so it is probably just as well that he lacks the breath to speak.
"Let's get you back on your feet," Squirrel Girl says, and produces a standard SHIELD medkit, with which she does…something, crouching next to him where he cannot easily see her. He can't really tell what she does with the medkit, but after a moment his breathing eases and strength begins to flow back into his limbs.
She offers him a hand up, which he pretends not to notice, instead using his scepter to brace himself as he carefully stands up. He's considerably taller than she is, like this, but rather than seeming intimidated (and she probably wouldn't be, if half the stories he's heard are true), she asks sympathetically, "New here, huh?"
Loki brushes at his coat. "I hardly see how that's relevant. I am fully capable of defeating a handful of mortals with guns. There was—something in the air, perhaps…"
"Server lag!" Deadpool hollers as he runs past. "It's the one boss fight nobody can win!"
Squirrel Girl stares after him, eyebrows drawn together (her squirrels, lacking human eyebrows, somehow bear expressions of equal consternation). "Right," she says after a moment. "Well, take care of yourself, okay?" She smiles brightly at him and hurries off.
"…thank you," Loki says, when he thinks she is out of earshot.
One of the squirrels turns and waves at him.
What really happened: it wasn't server lag, and it wasn't even my ISP being garbage like I originally thought; it was actually my dying wireless card crapping the bed, first putting me in the wrong part of the level where I got shot and couldn't react, and then disconnecting completely when I tried to accept Squirrel Girl's revive. But, you know, it makes a slightly more interesting story this way.