Loki escorts his newest servant through the corridors of SHIELD's flying fortress to the ships that will take them to wherever Selvig has taken the Tesseract and his finished machine. The man follows behind him quickly and silently, their footfalls matching time with one another. He is like a caged shadow. Loki approves.

At one point one of the numerous minor agents that are roaming around the vessel in chaos and panic comes across them, registers just who it is she has come to face, and makes to draw her weapon. Before she can even pull it clear of the sheath at her side Agent Coulson is upon her, striking with deceptive economy of motion. He snaps her neck with a quick jerk of his hands and sets her limp body carefully to the ground. Then he returns to his place at Loki's shoulder as though nothing has happened.

(Yes! Let them cut a swath of the dead, hunt these mewling little prey-things through the corridors of this steel trap!)

"It appears you are at least as ruthless as your lover, Agent," Loki says, even more pleased.

"I aim to be efficient my lord."

"My lord," Loki repeats, smiling. While he has never objected to Barton's more affectionate terms of respect, it is pleasant to be given the title he deserves. It is appropriate to his changed circumstances in any case. Though the facts of his blood remain the same, he has no realm to let him be called prince, majesty or king. "Continue to call me that, and I think we shall get on very well."

Coulson inclines his head in a gesture of respect. "As you wish my lord."

They continue on to their waiting transportation without further incident. The mercenaries that remain alive are already there, having returned as soon as they completed their assigned tasks. Loki ducks his head to enter the rear of the craft and indicates for them to take off.

"Shouldn't we wait for Barton?" one of them asks hesitantly.

"He won't be returning with us," Loki replies, settling onto one of the benches. Agent Coulson sits next to him; the only free seat. The pilot shrugs and begins their takeoff. Loki watches the Helicarrier as the door slowly closes. It seems they have managed to repair the engine that his archer damaged. Indeed they should count themselves lucky, considering what Loki could have done to them. They escaped with but a few dead and only minor injuries to their great flying craft.

"To comfort that part of you that my seid cannot reach," he says quietly to the mortal next to him, "your lover remains alive and well. My control over him has been broken, which I admit was not entirely my plan, but it matters not. I have you, so I am assured he will come back to me."

"May I speak honestly to you, my lord?" his newly acquired servant asks.

"Always," Loki replies. "If it is criticism you offer, I know my seid prevents you from acting in any way against my interest, hence it must be of some value."

"Your plan, what I know of it... it isn't going to succeed."

Loki cocks his head to one side, intrigued. Of course he already knows this – it is the general idea – but he is curious as to how the mortal came by that conclusion. "Why do you say so? Your Midgardian heroes are scattered. Where is my disadvantage?" he asks.

"I've watched the footage of you in Germany. I saw you in the cage. You lack conviction." There's an honest concern to his words, and Loki finds yet more satisfaction in knowing he has claimed a servant with insight. He has seen what it appears most others of his kind have not.

"That is because I was lying," he says, speaking softly, conspiratorially. "As I have told your shield-brother, none of this is about me winning. By now Clint Barton will have revealed the location of the Tesseract and the portal to your commander and to the Avengers, and they will crush the Chitauri for me." He smiles. "Once he knew, your lover became most helpful. The attack on your place of power; that was his plan we used. By which I mean the genuine him. No seid, no spell. He has seen the advantages of helping me remove this boot from the back of my neck." He spits these last words with real venom, though he quickly calms himself. "I hope you might do the same."

He does not need to dip deep into the weaving of his seid to feel the roiling mess of divided emotion that wells up in the mortal at his words. He takes a certain pleasure in it. A small and petty cruelty, perhaps, but probably necessary. There will be plenty of time for him to make up for it later.

(Share the pain around. How dare others be gifted with ignorance of the hurt of betrayal.)

Very soon, the Chitauri will be vanquished, the blame naught but their own and Loki free of their power and obligation. The Tesseract will be his. Everything is proceeding according to plan.

Selvig is waiting for him in the truck, parked across the street from the tall tower with the Iron Man's name blazoned across the top of it. Loki smirks. A worthy choice of site indeed. It has the required height, and it will prick the pride of that most prideful man.

"Is the machine ready?" he enquires.

"Yes," Selvig replies, glancing over at Agent Coulson briefly before dismissing his presence as irrelevant. A delightfully focused mortal, this one. "But there's a problem. We can't get into the tower. Stark has one of the best security systems in the world."

"I suppose you were relying on me to get past that," Loki says, perhaps a little exasperated. Well, it's true enough that he's capable of it, but it cuts into their time window, and the Tesseract must have reached the energy-independent stage of the process by the time the Avengers get here. He's well aware that it's too late for Clint to try and delay them at this point.

"Very well," he says, raising the sceptre. It remains a more efficient use of his seid to channel it through the weapon, though given any choice he would rather destroy the foul tool. It is a hateful reminder of the Chitauri's presence, always watching. Even now their psychic echo clings to it, albeit faintly. "I shall deliver you to the top of the tower. Be swift once you are there. Time grows short."

(Soon. Oh so soon he will have his revenge.)

A glamour is the most convenient way of evading the watcher's eyes. It's as true of this mortal science-seid construct as it is of Heimdall. He weaves the spell over the three of them and over the machine, which he realises, is large enough to be impractical for Midgardian methods of transport. Even if Loki hadn't been needed to get past the tower's guardian, he almost certainly would have been needed to move the damn thing up there. It seems the delay was necessary either way, though it is still irksome.

Wrapping the device in a bubble of power allows Loki to unmoor it from the rest of the universe's fabric, suspending the usual interwoven rules of weight and mass. It lifts delicately into the air, and bobs along behind them as Selvig opens the doors of the vehicle and leads the way across the road. The streets are empty and lifeless. That may be a sign that Clint's plan is working; that the multitudes of mortals who normally swarm the city like ants have been removed from the equation. If so, Loki is pleased, for it will make his servant pleased.

With the glamour performing its function, they pass into the building without incident. At first it appears the 'elevator' – a simple vertically moving box – will be too small to allow the machine passage, but it is not too draining for Loki to bend these rules too. Space can be very elastic even without unmooring from warp and weft. Such is the nature of that-which-is-woven.

In the short minute that they ascend, Loki cannot keep himself from sending his seid questing out in investigation, searching for the creature that monitors this place through a web of cameras and sensors. Stark's construct, whom Barton had spoken of. It is short work to find it, an intangible presence or awareness that exists – at least in this place – inside a whirring heart of machinery, sending its feelers out across both the entire tower and out through the signals pulsing through Midgard's earth and sky to other locations within the realm.

A curious creation. Perhaps through sentimentality, Stark has given his construct personality and self-knowledge, neither of which are necessary for the fulfilment of its tasks. Or more likely, due to simple loneliness. Though Loki is not so overconfident as to make sweeping judgements on a man's personality through others' words and a few minutes of observation he nevertheless would mark Stark as a man with few bosom companions. Much like Loki himself in that regard. They have a number of similarities, it seems.

Perhaps when all this is over, Loki might make him an offer. Renounce Thor and his warrior ways that have no real place or respect for a man practising the arts of seid or science, no matter which they are called, and instead learn from him. (Just as unnatural as he, no matter Thor's current grudging diplomacy.) There is potential there, he is sure of it. He has a sturdy background in Midgard's own meagre understandings of the field, and even if it requires a little of Loki's own seid to permit his mortal biology to manipulate magic, Stark is fully capable of learning.

An intriguing thought, at any rate. Loki has never taken an apprentice before, but even if he has his own concerns that focus little on this planet, he would not mind the idea of allowing them a little power, of showing them steps to ascend as is their intended goal. Potential weaponry in payment for the Tesseract, when he takes it. Not to mention it would disquiet Odin All-father.

And if his teachings only serve to allow his monstrous nature to infect others, what of it? Monsters beget monsters. He will be true to the truth of himself, since he can get nothing from Asgard either way.

But he should not allow himself to be distracted by thoughts of the future. His current plan has not yet come to pass.

(When they are dead, all of them who have hurt you, dead and broken after many tortures, many agonies. Not until then, after fire and frost and darkness.)

Loki allows Selvig to direct him to the best spot to set down the machine once they reach the roof. It is a clear day, and the view stretches for miles around, a great shining city abutting the sea much as Asgard abuts the wastes of space. A river coils like a gleaming silver serpent below. This may not be the highest tower visible, but it is certainly amongst the tallest.

"All that's needed now is for it to be activated," Selvig says, setting up his workstation nearby and beginning to connect a variety of cabling. "The machine will run the program by itself once the energy shield is prepared."

"Excellent," Loki replies. "Watch over it until enough of the Chitauri have been destroyed. If one of the Avengers reaches here before then, delay them for as long as possible." He hesitates for a moment, but Selvig has served him well... "It is not necessary for you to give your life to do such. I do not ask that of you. Merely do what you can."

He leaves the scientist to his work and makes his way down to the floor that houses Stark's personal dwellings. There is a platform that should give him a good view of the proceedings until the battle begins.

"As for you," he says, addressing Agent Coulson. "It would be best if you took the vehicle below and left the area. I will be able to track you by the feel of my seid -weaving, and if you are to remain as a bargaining chip, I will need you safe."

"Yes my lord." The mortal nods respectfully to him and turns to leave. Loki takes up his position out on the balcony, keeping his eyes upon the skies.

Momentarily he follows the link that still sits anchored in the back of Barton's mind, casting out his awareness so that he can look out through his archer's own eyes, see what he sees.

Boss? Clint asks. Loki can feel the shock of the sudden intrusion ripple through him.

Be calm, he replies. I merely wished to see how you were proceeding.

Stark has gone on ahead – he can go faster than the jet, Barton replies. 'Tasha, Rogers and I are all here. We're maybe a half-hour out. No sign of Banner or Thor as of yet.

Indeed, Loki can see the enhanced mortal he fought briefly seated opposite Barton. The woman who bested him in their little war of words would appear to be flying the craft once more. Luckily for her, words are reputedly not her only weapons; else it might easily go badly for her once the army arrives. As it is, he's wary of underestimating her again. She has Barton's respect, which says a lot.

I can only hope you are enough, he tells his soldier. If I have to betray my true allegiance to stop the Chitauri from taking the Tesseract I will, but I do not like my chances of outrunning their leader's wrath. I have not studied the Tesseract in anywhere near enough depth to use it effectively against that one. He believes that will be a work of decades, as the Midgardians measure time. Not so long for one such as him, but far too long a time to run and not be caught.

Don't worry. We can do this. He can feel the warmth of Clint's confidence enveloping him. It is not in Loki's nature to be optimistic, but he finds he wants to try. He has come too far now for failure.

Tony Stark would be the first to admit he has a pretty big ego. That's why he's so well equipped at recognising it in others, namely the horned Ren-fair reject that is Thor's baby brother. Or not-brother, since; adopted. He hasn't exactly gotten the whole story of whatever the hell went down between them that led to this whole world-domination mess, since Thor hadn't been too keen on telling it, plus he figured he was missing a fair bit of cultural context. But he understood the basics. Feels unloved, daddy issues, blah blah blah, it's not exactly original. Hell, Tony himself has a few of the same issues. But he never turned into a super-villain.

Okay, from certain points of view it might have been a near thing, especially if you counted all those years in the weapons business, but a couple of points in common does not automatic sympathy make. The long and short of it is that someone is threatening his planet, the one he personally lives on and so has a pretty large stake in, and he's not about to sit down and let that happen.

However, he's got a bit of time to think the situation over while he's rocketing towards Stark Tower in the really-too-battered-to-be-safe Mark VI suit. There are a few things that don't sit entirely right. For one, from myths and Thor's tales, Loki is meant to be this super-dangerous sorcerer and super-intelligent trickster. So where are the tricks? Letting himself get captured? Way too obvious. Letting his own mind-control spell be cancelled out by a simple blow to the head? Kind of a major weakness. Way more likely he lifted it himself, sent this Agent Barton guy in with false intelligence to lead them straight into a trap.

At least, that's what he would think if not for the aforementioned ego thing making the location fit. According to JARVIS, no-one has entered Stark Tower yet, but with alien god-magic in play there's always the possibility that the security systems have been fooled somehow. He has managed to get JARVIS to pull up the gamma search Bruce had been working on before he'd Hulked out, and the results from that back Barton up. The shiny cube of death is in New York.

So where's the twist?

Unfortunately, even his own brilliant brain hasn't managed to come up with an answer to that question by the time he reaches Manhattan air space. Whatever the trick turns out to be, they are going to be walking into it blind. Good thing Tony is excellent at improvisation.

As he rockets over the Hudson River, one of the boot repulsors gives out for a sudden nervous moment. After the battering it's taken over the past few days, Tony is not surprised it's close to breaking point. First fighting Thor, then getting knocked around by the Helicarrier rotor. He's in no condition to take on an army, which is why they really need to shut Loki and Selvig down before they get the portal open.

If not... well, there's always the Mark VII.

"JARVIS, report."

"Sir, they seem to have bypassed security somehow," JARVIS says apologetically. "The Tesseract machine is on the roof. I turned off the arc reactor as soon as I became aware of the drain on its energy, but I'm afraid the device may already be self sustaining."

"Fuck." Tony can see it now, big and shiny and already cycling into position. He comes in to hover above the rooftop. There's a man standing with his back to him, facing a laptop set up on a stand. It's gotta be Selvig.

"Shut it down Doctor Selvig," he orders, making sure the suit's speakers project his voice loud enough to be heard over the wind and the noise of his own repulsors.

"It's too late," the man shouts back, turning to look up at him. He's grinning, wide-eyed and wild-looking. Kinda manic, if Tony is any judge, the sort that usually comes from chemicals of one kind or other. He ought to know. "You can't stop it now. She wants to show us something."

Oh yeah. Definitely high, even if it's only on Loki's weird-ass magic brainwashing. When you start anthropomorphising your machines, that's when you know you've got a problem. Tony's not being a hypocrite here; he's well aware of his own personal fucked-upness and he'd like to think he owns it. It's a matter of self-awareness, and Selvig doesn't seem to have any.

"A new universe," Selvig tells him, and Tony's had about enough of this.

"Okay," he says, charging up his repulsors. Time to take this machine down. (Don't worry, he's done the science, he knows this isn't going to set off some kind of horrific apocalyptic meltdown or chain reaction, he's not stupid.)

Unfortunately it's a bit too late for the 'blast it to hell' approach. The energy shield surrounding the Tesseract absorbs his blasts and bounces them back out even stronger, sending him tumbling ass over tits through the air until he can get control again. He's not sure what happened to Selvig.

"The barrier is pure energy," JARVIS says, deciding to chip in at last. Pity he couldn't have mentioned it a bit sooner. "It's unbreachable."

"Yeah, I got that," he says. He looks down, and sees he's being watched. Loki is standing on the platform of the floor below, gazing up at him. He's smirking. "Plan B."

"Sir," JARVIS protests, "the Mark VII is not ready for deployment!"

"Then skip the spinning rims," Tony says, exasperated. "We're on the clock." That machine is going to rip open a portal at literally any moment, and it's looking less and less likely that he's going to be able to stop it. Agent Romanov, Capsicle and archer dude are still at least a quarter hour out. Right. He can totally do this.

He lands, and the mechanical arms start disassembling the suit. He's got them sufficiently programmed now that they can work around a pretty significant amount of battle-damage without accidentally ripping off one of his limbs along with a piece of plating, which is handy in situations like this. Loki quickly picks up his intention, and mirrors him, heading towards the door on the opposite side.

"Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity," the psychopathic, adopted, demi-god says, once they're both in the same room. He's still smirking, supremely confident. Tony might not be feeling much like either, but he reckons he can do a pretty good mockery of both.

"Uh, actually I'm planning to threaten you," he says. It's... kind of semi-true. It could be called threatening. It could also be called bluffing.

"You should have left your armour on for that," Loki says, gesturing with his staff. God, that thing makes Tony nervous. Still, banter. They're bantering. He can do banter till the cows come home, empty talk is kind of his thing.

"Yeah," he replies, heading down the staircase towards the bar, where he last left the prototype bracelets for the Mark VII. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Tinkering while drunk, surprising how often that produces usable results, considering. "It's seen a bit of mileage and you've got the uh... glowstick of destiny."

Loki looks down at it, and that's an interesting expression. Tony has seen enough empty smiles to know what they look like, mostly in the mirror or in pap shots. Loki's hiding something. He's wearing a good mask, which makes sense for a Trickster and a God of Lies, but Tony knows a little bit about masks himself.

"Want a drink?" he asks, surprising himself at how sincere he is, though it's a good excuse as well.

"Stalling me won't change anything."

"No, no, no; threatening." Unless part of Loki's Liesmith shtick is the actual ability to tell when someone is lying. That's not outside the realms of possibility. But then Natasha probably wouldn't have been able to get him to spill about Banner, so he reckons he's safe. "No drink, you sure? I'm having one." Yeah, he really, really needs one. This whole situation will look so much better through the bottom of a glass of whiskey. Nice and... amber coloured. Wine would make it rose coloured, like rose-coloured glasses, but he's not really a massive fan of the grape and... this whole metaphor is kind of getting away from him.

Loki has turned away from him at some point while his back was turned. He's standing by the window now, staring out at the New York skyline. "The Chitauri are coming," he says, and there's something nearly desperate about it. He doesn't sound nearly so confident now. "Nothing will change that." He turns again, abruptly. "What have I to fear?"

Why does Tony get the impression Loki is trying to tell him something here? This is just the kind of thing Barton ought to have told them if he actually wasn't mind-controlled any more. Y'know, details of Loki's particular psychosis. Motivations besides having a shitty family life and being adopted. Something so that people who use words as weapons (see Romanov, Natasha) rather than armour (see Stark, Tony) could get at him where he's actually vulnerable and shut him down, 'cos judging by the reported result of the Thor vs Hulk fight (stalemate) hitting him a bunch of times isn't going to cut it.

"The Avengers," he replies, answers the question to give himself more time to think. He doesn't need his brain to run his mouth. He starts to pour his drink. "It's what we call ourselves. Sorta like a team. Earth's mightiest heroes, type thing." Mmm, scotch.

"Yes," Loki says. "I've met them." He seems to be enjoying himself again now that they've... switched topics? Is that what they've done? Would have thought it'd be all one big topic but apparently not.

"Takes us a while to get any traction, I'll give you that one," he says. "But let's do a headcount here. Your brother, the demigod." And damn, does that get a reaction. Loki turns his head away like he's just been slapped in the face. His hand clenches around the staff of doom several times. It's like... it's like a more raw version of his internal reaction every time someone compares him to Howard. That's the only comparison he can think of, and it's not a comfortable one.

Seriously, he's becoming ever surer that there are some really significant parts of the story that Thor left out when he was telling it.

"The super-soldier," he continues, taking the opportunity the distraction gives him to reach for the cuffs and feeling a little guilty about it. "The living legend who kinda lives up to the legend." Not mentioning his way too painful and horribly accurate remarks on Tony's admittedly shitty worth as a person. "A man with breathtaking anger management issues." That at least gets a smile, hurt hidden again. Tony isn't going to analyse how much better that apparently makes him feel. "A couple of master assassins, and you, big fella, you've managed to piss off every single one of them."

"That was the plan," Loki says. Which, kind of a stupid plan. It would have been a hell of a lot easier to take off with the cube to somewhere way out of SHIELD's jurisdiction, Asia somewhere, or South America, find a convenient little power station to hook the portal device up to. That's what Tony would have done. (No, he doesn't spend way too much time thinking about villainous stuff like that, shut up.) Hence why he's still waiting on the other shoe dropping.

"Not a great plan," he says, going for honesty. "When they come, and they will," – it's his ass on the line here so they'd damn well better – "they'll come for you."

'And I can take them' says Loki's expression. Yeah, hi ego. Guess that's just what happens when you're a thousand year old alien who was worshiped as a god by nations of humans for decades. "I have an army," he says.

"We have a Hulk," Tony counters.

"Oh, I thought the beast had wandered off," Loki says, and yeah, Tony's not about to let anyone call his new science buddy a 'beast'. He's. Not.

"You're missing the point, there is no throne, there's no version of this where you come out on top." He's angry, the words come spilling out, but it's still not enough to make him overlook the strange way Loki jiggles the sceptre in his hand at every sentence he says. He's in no mood to analyse it right now though. "Maybe your army comes and maybe it's too much for us but it's all on you. Because if we can't protect the earth you can be damn sure we'll avenge it."

For a long tense moment Loki's body language changes. They aren't having this mock-friendly back and forth anymore and Tony is almost 100% certain that he's about to get stabbed in the face, but then all of a sudden it smoothes away. Loki is back to his suave, slightly brittle self. His eyes flick to the part of the wall that's hiding the Mark VII and he... Holy shit, did Loki just wink at him?

What. The shit. Is going on?

Oh god, he's filled the suit full of booby traps hasn't he. JARVIS couldn't see him, he could have broken in there and turned it into a metal prison, could have set it to blow him up, could have put the internal arc reactor on a feedback look that would fry his central nervous system, could have...

"If you want to avenge anything, Tony Stark," Loki says. "You'd better be wearing something a little less fragile." His eyes flick over Tony dismissively.

"You're that arrogant?" he asks, through the fear, through the sickening sense of violation. "You're going to give me a chance to suit up and fight you rather than squashing me like the bug you keep comparing us to? Doesn't seem very smart to me."

Loki smiles. "Were we in Asgard it would be called simple honour. Whereas you can see it as foolishness. Believe me, little seidmenn, Thor has no respect for your mortal 'tactics' other than 'hit it with a hammer'. But in answer, yes. I do not think you can defeat the Chitauri either way, and I am sure they would laugh at your arrogance in assuming otherwise."

He says these last words with a strange kind of intensity. Tony is clearly still missing... whatever it is. Apparently being threatened with alien invasion isn't too great for his critical thinking, who knew? He takes a small step in the direction of the Mark VII suit, just testing. Loki does nothing, just watching him passively.

Okay never mind, JARVIS can run some diagnostics on the suit once he's in it. Loki has a point, he's not going to survive very long if he doesn't have some kind of protection, and right now he has no idea how to shut down Selvig's machine. He simply can't let himself think about tricks and traps, reverse psychology because he doesn't really have much of a choice here. There's a large chance of death either way, and if he's going to go out he would rather be in the suit than without it.

"Uh, JARVIS, I guess you can deploy."

It takes a slightly embarrassing wait, but after a few seconds that feel a lot longer when there's an alien super-villain watching you mockingly, the Mark VII springs out of its docking station. Tony holds his arms out so the laser guidance system can target in on his wrists, and then the armour is assembling itself around him. He's a little gratified to see that Loki looks rather surprised at the spectacle.

"Impressed?" he asks.

Loki does nothing but smile in return. He points out the window with his staff. "You should go now and prepare," he says. "The portal will be open soon. When next we meet, I will probably be trying to kill you. Don't take it personally."

"Oh, sure," Tony replies, feeling a great deal better now he won't die when poked with sharp objects, and since he hasn't exploded yet. "I get how it is; I'm just in your way, trying to stop you taking over the world. You like me as a person, but baby, we just wouldn't work out."

He takes a certain amount of pleasure in the confused and slightly offended look on Loki's face before he's jetting out through the bank of windows. Fuck the glass; he won't fit through the doors. Not like he can't pay for it.

"JARVIS, patch me through to Cap and the others," he says. They're about to have an army to fight.