Heyo all you readers! Today the 9th and 10th graders at my school are taking the PSATs so I don't have to come in until after 4th period! So I figured, hey, why not update Avenger'd for all my followers and the rest of the community and brighten up their days! :D
This chapter is set up a little bit differently as it is set in 3rd Person POV from the Avengers in the events of Chapter Twelve and a little bit further~! You guys are in for a bit of a surprise! Hahahaha!
Those of you who still continue to read but are unable to review, I feel ya. Please take your time with whatever you gotta do and come and review when you get your chances. I appreciate it either way, cuz I know you guys are still loving the story, right?
Review Replies from Chapter Twelve:
Concrete63- haha yeahp! Suspense is my middle name! :D ...well actually it isn't, but I LOVE it. Writing it, I mean. Reading it I get just as riled up as anyone else! Thanks for reviewing!
koryandrs- I'm glad you think it's interesting! and I'm also glad you like the way I write the Avengers! I try my best haha! Thanks for continuing to review!
Liberty Bell(guest)- MWAHAHAA! :D SUSPENSE! Seriously tho, you should've seen me write Return of the Nightmare dear lord I had so much fun with all the suspense. Well this question might not fit~ teehee! I agree we need to rack in more questions! I hope this chapter will bring in more questions since there's a lot of intense stuff! MWAHAHAHA! XD and don't worry about it, I know you'll always be reading even if you're late! Thanks for continuing to review, friend!
Liberty Bell's Question, for Loki: If Tori didn't, like,"Rain on Your Parade" during the almost-invasion, would you, oh, i don't know, actually BE FREAKING NICE TO HER?! Or would you still mess with her (because you can)? I understand that if it weren't for her ruining the invasion, she wouldn't even be there, but let's just say she was *magically* there with the Avengers somehow. Would you be kind?
Loki: tch, mortal, you ask too many frivolous questions! But I will answer nonetheless *since I am forced to* (shoots a glare at me) Nice? You mean have sentiment? Towards that human girl? Well, if she hadn't entered this world, she'd be like any other human, just a pawn to be used. There is no sentiment about that. But if she were just with those lost creatures somehow on her own? I still might use her for leverage against my brother and those fools. However...I am interested in miss Tori Matthews to say the least, since she is from another world like Earth...but seems to have experienced similar exclusion as me... (he shakes his head and growls) But that is not the priority as of now! -Vengeance is-
Disclaimer!
I do not own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or its characters! The only thing I own is "myself", Tori Matthews, and this plot bunny!
Avenger'd
Chapter Thirteen
Tony wrung his hands nervously as he led the party of Tori and the Avengers to his lab. In truth, he had no idea whether the system he had set up would work or not. He had put it together while the maestro was still in that Loki-fied coma, and the genius's emotions had been in rage-mode in layman's terms. He glanced over to Natasha and as discreetly as possible pulled her over while walking.
"I need you to do me a favor," he whispered in a low voice, unaware, or uncaring, that Steve and Tori were in audible range. The Black Widow gave him a cool but accepting look. "I need you to protect Pepper. I haven't calculated the possibilities and if something blows up I don't want her to be there."
Natasha nodded in understanding. Tony didn't relay his personal feelings much, but from her undercover experience she knew how much Pepper meant to him.
"Just…have her look over JARVIS's security feeds for surveillance above deck," the billionaire suggested as they continued walking.
As promised, Natasha watched over Pepper under pretense of helping surveillance, while the men went down into the lab with Tori. Bruce hooked up Tori to the scanner, which everyone agreed looked like a modified blood-pressure-checker, and then he and Tony and Steve stood a few feet away at the control panel, trying to look encouraging. Cap almost grimaced, however, watching Thor become solemn staring out the window to the city.
The god seemed distracted and increasingly concerned, which didn't settle well with the soldier. Clint patted Tori on the shoulder as gently as he could muster, as dark thoughts swirled through his mind. He could barely stand it, that demon of a god took away his freedom and then almost killed an innocent girl!
"Now," Tony explained to Tori, firing up the systems, silently praying, "This will send a special kind of energy beam cooked up by Brucie here that will scan up your arm and analyze the rays and frequencies that little tattoo of yours is giving off."
Tori gave a slow, almost detached nod and Hawkeye whispered words of consoling as a final attempt of easing all of their minds. Shakily, Bruce looked to Tony, and then gave a thumbs-up to the teen, who replied with a thumbs-up from her left hand. The three men watched the holographic reconstruction of the inside of the machine as the beam neared Tori's palm.
Closer…
Closer…
And then suddenly!
A noise indescribable to human ears erupted from the machine and was humming at a high frequency as the beam concentrated itself on the girl's palm. The sound surprised them, and knocked them back a little. Unbeknownst to the others, Clint's face went ghostly pale. Bruce and Tony stared wide-eyed at the codes popping up on every corner of the screen, and Steve gaped at them.
"What is that?" he asked in a whispered tone. Bruce answered after about a minute of his eyes listlessly scanning the tablet screen in Tony's hands.
"These are the frequencies that the beam is picking up from the mark on Tori's hand! I've never seen anything quite like these, except in…"
"The Tesseract," Thor boomed quietly, making his way over to the others. Bruce nodded.
"The gamma signature was just as complex but many times weaker than this signal, since the Tesseract was so far away. But…if I could just search the globe for this signature, it should find the Cube or Loki's staff, and judging from the way he retreated, it's not likely he's separating himself from it anytime soon."
Tony laughed in triumph and Bruce reciprocated as both geniuses were proud of their work. It was then that Steve noticed the pallid archer, whose face was blank with an unspeakable maelstrom of emotions.
"Barton? What's wrong?" he asked with concern. He walked over next to the archer and looked at his point of view. Steve, too, paled, but his face became that of intense heart-crushing. "Dear God…" he whispered, his face the epitome of grimaces. The other three, now afraid, joined their comrades and each cursed in rage.
For their unwitting maestro had become frozen in some sort of paralysis, shock etched into her features. And her eyes were that sickly electric blue. It was as if the girl had become catatonic, mouth barely twitching as if in some silent conversation. Thor growled in anger.
"We must free her from this!" he bellowed, aiming Mjolnir at the machine before the others could react.
Before the sacred hammer could smash the mechanism, however, a shockwave surrounding the device countered the power and knocked Thor's arm backward, dragging the God of Thunder along with it. The burly blonde Æsir stared with incredulity at Tori's figure, then at the machine.
"What sorcery is this?" he scowled. "That not even my hammer can break through?" Tony glowered at the now-invisible barrier then patted Thor's arm.
"Don't take it too hard, Point Break. Loki probably knew you were gonna try and thunder hammer the maestro to freedom," the billionaire reassured with a dark vehemence lacing his words. Clint finally managed to breathe.
"Banner, Stark, what the hell is happening to her?" he inquired with extreme concern. Dr. Banner took the tablet out of Tony's hands that were threatening to crush it and looked at the still-active program that displayed a holographic image of the inside of the machine.
"It seems that the interaction between the frequencies caused a break in the stasis," Banner tried to explain; his dark eyes squinted at the screen. "Some buildup of this magic energy let loose and now Tori's stuck in paralysis. Something is going on that we can't see and Loki's behind it, and unless it ends or we pull her out of it, she's going to stay like this."
Clint growled furiously, Thor cursed in an unknown dialect, Steve clenched his fists tightly, lips drawn together in a thin line, and Bruce took the time to breathe, but hesitantly, almost wanting the Other Guy to go loose and beat the trickster god to a bleeding pulp.
In frustration, the genius billionaire grabbed Tori's free hand and, all of a sudden, he felt a spark on his skin and in front of his eyes was a blurred vision of a black cat, and a video screen. He heard a strikingly familiar voice say fragmented phrases:
"Your dearest friends….betrayed your trust…went on with their lives…you were the Black Plague…they were newly cured…I have found your world…your nightmare is a reality…"
He was shocked out of the sounds by the same phenomena, and then his mind went blank. Tori's face which was previously frozen in expression was now marked with trails of saline liquid, coloring her cheeks a fiery red. Tony, with a wild fear and fury in his brown eyes, shook his surrogate little sister with all that he could.
"Tori! Snap out of it kid! Come on!" he yelled frantically at her dazed and frozen expression. He kept throttling her and it took arms and shouts from Steve, Bruce, and Clint to stop him. He clutched his hands on her shoulders tightly and tensed his shoulders in anguish.
All of a sudden, Tori's eyes began to blink! And each time they did so, the preternatural electric blue irises were replaced with the girl's normal warm hazel, and the shock melted away into a pensive look. She seemed preoccupied by something and didn't seem to notice the tears staining her face, or everyone standing around her.
Tony remained quiet about what he had seen and heard, but was relieved and happy all the same when the teen was released from the magic. The Avengers took a collective sigh and stepped back from their friend and she began to look around dazedly as if she were confused about her whereabouts.
"Tori," Clint said softly, causing her to direct her attention towards him. "Are you okay?"
Tori blinked slowly and grew uncertain, evident in her face. But, to everyone's surprise, she just shrugged and smiled at the archer.
"Yeah, I'm not dead or in a coma or anything," she replied light-heartedly. "Everything's working all right. It's you guys I'm worried about!"
This comment also surprised the team.
"What do you mean Lady Tori? Why are you worried for us?" Thor asked, crossing his arms. She gave a crooked smile as if it were common knowledge.
"Well, you guys were frozen in time, I'd think that would be pretty taxing, don't you?" she quipped in a casual manner. No one answered and in the silence Tori's face fell. "You guys…were…frozen," she repeated, more softly. Solemnly, each of the heroes portrayed on their faces that it wasn't true, unable to say the words. Tori bit her lip nervously. "But it wasn't a dream," she whispered, looking down at her feet. "When you turned the machine on, the beam hit my hand and then everything froze…" The teen looked again at the Avengers. "I don't…understand."
Bruce shut the machine off, and silently Thor removed Tori's right arm from the device. She paled when she turned her arm to see her palm. The circle on her hand was glowing bright blue, and after a few seconds, the light faded to nothing. Her eyes widened in realization and she looked to the others and their faces confirmed the suspicion.
The teen lowered her head and clenched her teeth. "I'm sorry." Steve put his hand on her shoulder.
"Don't be," he replied simply and softly.
"Yeah, maestro," Tony chimed, a façade of jubilance placed on his face that wasn't quite as fake as he stood over the control panel for the machine, a grin forming. "Thanks to you, we now know the slimy cave where that son of a bitch Loki is hiding."
DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNN!
LOKI IS REVEALED!
HAHAHAHAHA!
Well then *flickers lights menacingly*
REVIEW if you can, and feel free to ask me or any of my muses any questions that your little hearts desire! Thank you muchly~
~DarkMousyRulezAll, signing out!