Surreptitious Entry

Chapter Three: Enlistment

Loki felt a sudden pressure on his right arm – Garnet pushing away from him. A few other people started to look at him with strange expressions. He'd let his hair revert to its (sort of) natural black. He made a small motion with his right hand and the glasses disappeared from his face; Garnet made some odd little sound along with a gasp and fell off the arm of the couch.

Emily finally turned his way; her eyes widened. She'd seen him before up close, in person. Dressed rather differently, but still, she of everyone else here knew exactly who she was looking at, even if she couldn't yet quite believe it. "Martin…?"

"That's not my real name," he said, standing, his clothing morphing into more familiar Asgardian dark leather and burnished golden metal and hints of green. "Forgive me for injuring you when we first met, Emily. I know it must be difficult for you to believe, but at the time I assumed you were with SHIELD, and you meant to attack me."

The room was dead silent, all eyes fixed on him, but Loki ignored the rest of them and kept his focus on Emily.

"I…uh…no, that's what I thought, actually. I mean…you…you fixed my injuries," she said, far less eloquently than how she'd spoken earlier.

"What I had time for. It was the least I could do. As you can see, I received your message, and it intrigued me. You have managed to impress me, you and this group," he said, now sweeping his eyes around the room, where he saw stupefaction, disbelief, delight, amazement, fear. They should be glad he'd left out the helmet. He let the rest of the armor fade away, back to the black slacks, boots, and Kaisers Orchestra T-shirt. He sat down again, and saw out of the corner of his eye Tanner, Claudia, and Jackie, to his left, scooting as far away from him as they could on the overly crowded couch.

"And…," Emily began, then visibly swallowed, and when she continued, much of her poise had returned, as though she were not at all concerned that Martin Rendahl was really him, "what do you think of our plan to go after SHIELD?"

"I think I find myself in harmony with it."

"But you understand that we don't espouse violence. We want to expose them, not to physically fight them, or get anyone hurt. And we definitely don't want a repeat of what happened in New York."

"Let me assure you – all of you," he said, looking in particular at the two who hadn't voted for contacting him, "that I no longer have any designs on your realm whatsoever. It's a long story, but I was…going through something of a difficult time then. And I did not respect your people. I didn't know your people. That has changed. And while our preferred methods may not always coincide, I am willing to abide by your preferred methods in order to pursue SHIELD and see them removed from any position of power or influence. There is much that you still don't know about them and their World Security Council. You have presented me with a unique opportunity to go after them in this new way. And I've missed having an army," he said with a smirk he couldn't fully hold back.

"Just hold on there. I didn't sign up for anybody's army," Akari said, to various nods and murmurs of agreement. "I don't take orders."

"And I don't intend to try to give them," Loki said quickly. "I want an army beside me. Not behind me. Everything you've said, I agree with. Your people's best interests are not served by SHIELD. Do you know how my first army was defeated? An army I did not choose, but was chosen for me, by the way, by one I had little choice but to cooperate with." He paused, glanced around the room. If anyone had any ideas, they weren't willing to voice them now that they knew who he really was. "The one known as Iron Man flew a nuclear weapon through the portal over New York into the depths of space, and it destroyed virtually all of the Chitauri, along with the support systems that enabled them to survive in your realm. Do you know how the Iron Man obtained such a weapon in the first place?" Curious and disturbed glances were exchanged among Emily's guests; there'd been reports of a missile being flown into the portal, but the word "nuclear" had only been raised in wild conjecture. "SHIELD directed an airplane to drop that nuclear missile on Lower Manhattan. Two, actually," he continued over the group's reactions. "One was stopped before taking off, by a faction of SHIELD which was not entirely in agreement with the decision to irradiate New York City and the surrounding areas. The Iron Man rerouted the second."

"Why should we believe you?" Veronica asked. "In mythology, you liked stirring up trouble, and you weren't exactly the most honest person around."

"Not too far from the truth, Veronica," he said. "And at some point, I shall be happy to discuss your mythology with you, now that I can speak more openly. I suppose I have no means to convince you that I speak the truth, though. I have had two months to investigate you, to make sure that our meeting," he said, nodding to Emily, "was not simply a ploy by SHIELD to entrap me. You have had only a few minutes to speak with the real me. I am placing an immense degree of trust in you by revealing myself. I have no way of knowing for certain that SHIELD hasn't infiltrated this group. So I must ask for the same from you."

"Can you get Thor to join our side?" Jackie asked.

Loki laughed. Of all the most ridiculous, utterly insane things to suggest. "No. Thor trusts authority figures," - though perhaps not as blindly as he used to - "and he recognizes SHIELD's leaders as authority figures here on Midgard. And more importantly, he does not trust me," he said, his smile turning bitter. "Not anymore." Perhaps someday, some childish little voice inside him said. Of course, he would have to do something to earn that trust first...

"Take time to consider my offer to work with you, if you need it. I merely ask that you continue to refer to me in all communications as Martin Rendahl, or as "SHIELD Is Evil," for my protection and yours. Then, if you decide to move forward, I place only one condition on working alongside you."

"What's that?" Emily asked.

"That we take no action for the next four months."

"Why not?" she asked with narrowed eyes.

"My sister-in-law is due to give birth by then, and I gave my word that I would not cause any more trouble during her pregnancy."

Loki sat back with a hint of satisfaction in his smile, watching as his revelations clicked with the group's members, some more quickly than others – Thor was his brother (well, Thor always insisted he was, anyway), and Jane was pregnant. They hadn't made the news public on Midgard yet. If he played this right, he thought, it could go very, very well for him in the end.

The questions started coming, and Loki answered them, almost entirely truthfully. In no time at all, the group had relaxed around him, Michael wasn't glancing at the door, Tanner wasn't trying to lean away from him, Garnet was back perched on the arm of the sofa, though she restrained herself from further groping. Loki carefully surveyed his audience as he spoke; he seemed to be gaining their trust.

He realized then what all of this had been leading to. He was tired, literally, of what his life had been since Odin's reluctant confession years ago. He wanted something else. What, exactly, he couldn't say. There was no going back to what it had been before, that much he knew. But surely there were more possibilities than what his life had been before and what it was now.

I will play this right, he thought.

And who knows what will happen next?

/

That's all she wrote, folks! I hope it gave you a few smiles along the way. You can imagine what you like; I picture a happy ending - Loki plans and schemes with his conspiracy theory buddies, maybe falling for Emily for real along the way or maybe just carrying a little flame for her, making sure nothing they do physically harms anyone, bringing down SHIELD, and giving the utmost respect and consideration to Jane, and ultimately winning back Thor's trust and restoring that relationship and having one heck of time being the best uncle to ever live.

A clue you might have noticed in Ch. 1 was that Loki went straight for the hidden key - he knew exactly where it was (because Emily had told him).

If anyone has some visual artistic ability and could make me an image I could use for this story it would be much appreciated. I'd hoped for a "Welcome" sign with the flowers as in Ch. 1, but couldn't find a freely-available one online, and sadly lack the talent to make one. What you see for the story currently was the best I could do!

I had a terrible time deciding on what "genre" to choose. I went with "suspense" because it's not clear what Loki's up to in Ch. 1, and "angst" because, well, Loki's in it. "Comedy" frankly never occurred to me. If anyone has suggestions for more appropriate genres I'll definitely consider them. I hesitate over "comedy" though, because that's not evident in Ch. 1, and I prefer to keep the mystery of where the story is headed.

Finally, background, if you're interested: I had a dream, poorly remembered, that included Loki going to sleep in some woman's bed, kind of mysterious but with the clear sense he wasn't supposed to be there. Then I sort of woke up, then kind of drifted back into sleep, then came the image of someone coming to the door (in the dream it was the resident knocking on her own door for some nonsensical dream-reason, so I had to adjust that part!) and you find out that Loki was in fact not up to rather creepy "mischief" but was in fact known to the resident and permitted to be there. That was pretty much it, from the dream. Loki-obsessed as I am, this is actually the only time he showed up in a dream.