TheOtherOdinson: The W4 are riding to the rescue, in Coulson's car, and they don't know how to drive - omg, I love it! Please tell me Volstagg is driving. I picture Volstagg driving with Fandral in the backseat yelling "helpful" instructions.

Wherein one calvary arrives and another departs. (Drama/Suspense. PG-13.)

"You leave for a millennium and look at the state of the place," says Volstagg, turning the circular reins (such as they are) of the mechanical beast which they ride. Dust sprays up in a gritty cloud as he does, and everyone slides to the left with a chorus of yelps. "But I'm getting better at this, don't you think?"

Fandral — who believes he knows everything, just because he's the one who drives the boats back home — makes a scoffing noise for which Volstagg will cuff him soundly once their rescue mission has been completed. "Use the pedal on the right," he insists. "You do know your right from your left, do you not?"

Volstagg briefly imagines the retribution he will wreak when the opportunity presents itself. Fandral's pretty face will attract fewer lovers for at least a week afterwards. "The right pedal only angers the beast."

"If it is angry," offers Sif, "perhaps it will move faster."

"It might also move faster if you stop thinking of it as a beast," adds Fandral. "Preferring horses is no excuse for obsolete thinking."

"Horses are an effective method of transport and have been for ten thousand years."

"You're growing old, Volstagg."

"The All-Father uses a horse."

"And that should make me think you young?"

"Would you rather drive?"

"Yes!"

Just to quiet him, Volstagg stamps his foot against the right pedal with all his strength, which will of course do nothing—

—to have them jerk forward across the desert sand with a roar from within the belly of the beast. Volstagg (who is not alarmed, he is not) mashes frantically at the buttons on the control panel before them.

A voice fills the air. "If you like piña colatas, and getting caught in the rain, if you're not into yoga…"

Hogun is the only one who isn't screaming obscenities at Volstagg. He merely states: "We should head towards the fires, not away from them."

Ah. Right.

Agent Coulson is yelling into a cell phone, Jane Foster is concussed and having trouble standing, there's a great big multicolored tornado laser thing blasting into the dirt fifty feet away, and progressively-strengthening vibrations are shaking the desert floor.

Darcy's ability to keep cool in stressful situations is getting a little tested right now. "Jane?"

"Mmm. Did you bring my diagnostic sheets?"

"No. I didn't. Come on, stick with me here."

Her boss/supervisor/whatever shakes her head; the blood from her temple is smeared across her cheek. "Shhh, Darcy. I'm observing."

Oh, for the love of God. "Seriously, get it together!" Would it help to slap her? That always works in the movies. "I don't know how the hell any of this works. What do we do?"

"Hmm?"

"How do we stop it?" Jane just blinks at her, and Darcy thinks she might snap. "C'mon, Jane! You're the physicist! Your bridge-thing is blasting the ground apart! Do something post-graduate-level smart!"

Another pulse of power comes shooting into the earth, and this tremor knocks both Darcy and Coulson off their feet. Even that doesn't dislodge his grip on his cell, and Darcy can hear words like Anomaly and Stark and Base Team.

"The bridge isn't supposed to stay still," shouts Jane over the increasingly loud rumbles. It's like standing next to a waterfall and a landslide all at once. "It should be moving along natural stellar rotations — our planet isn't built to—" Jane still seems pretty scrambled, but at least she's making science-sense. (Darcy thinks.) "I mean, the ion focus lasting for more than fractions of a second could be enough to disintegrate the entire planet—"

"Disintegrate? As in the earth?"

"I don't know! There must have been something wrong with my math! It's an inter-dimensional bridge that doesn't obey universal laws of astrophysics!"

A series of hairline cracks starts to form in a circle around the laser-rainbow-thing.

Darcy's starting to wish she'd called her mom this morning. "Okay," she says, "it's… it's a bridge, right? So why don't we just cross? Isn't there a guy up there? The Gatekeeper? We can tell him to turn it off!"

For a second, Jane looks at her like she's crazy. "It doesn't turn on and off," she retorts, and Darcy's heard this argument about five thousand times.

"Fine! To move it, then! I don't care! Can't that work?"

Jane spits out a mouthful of sand as another wind blasts them, spraying rocks and dirt and grit. "I don't know how to cross!" she shouts. "If I did it wrong we could wind up anywhere! We need Loki and Thor!"

"Well, we don't have them!"

"What? Where are they? Aren't they coming?"

Darcy just stares at Jane — and at the bruise on the side of her head.

Oh, shit.

"Jane," she says, struggling to at least stay seated through another quake and not get knocked flat on her ass, "Thor and Loki aren't here, and I… I don't think they're…" She's not going to think about it, she's not going to say it, she can't say it, it's Thor who is the best friend she's ever had, and it's Loki too, and their crazy friends are on their way and they'll be fine, of course they'll be fine, but there were so many screams as Coulson drove them out of town…

So she doesn't say it. But she doesn't have to.

A second later Darcy's fighting both the wind and Jane herself, who's scrabbling to get back to her feet. "No!" she cries, fighting tooth and nail. "He can't! He promised!"

"Jane, get a grip!"

"He promised! We have to do something!"

"That's what I've been telling you!" Darcy shoves Jane forcibly in the direction of the bridge. "Unless you have a better idea!"

She can tell by the look on Jane's face that she doesn't.

And as they both start staggering against the wind towards the giant space tornado, which will probably definitely send them to die out in the middle of the universe somewhere, Darcy reflects that it kind of was worth the six college credits.

"All right, JARVIS, auxiliary conduit test on Mach Six in three, two—"

"Tony? Agent Coulson's on the phone."

"I'm sick."

"He says it's urgent."

"I have ebola."

"I can hear explosions."

"And appendicitis. I have an ebolic appendix."

Pepper just looks at him.

Tony rolls his eyes, which Pepper can't see behind the face plate but knows he's doing anyway. "Fine," he says with the injured sigh of the endlessly altruistic, "patch in the line."

Once the mechanical beast gets going, it proves rather difficult to bring it to a stop again.

As the windowed building with the large metal star adorning the roof comes closer and closer, Sif looks more and more nervous. "Volstagg, you lunatic—"

"I know exactly what I'm doing," replies Volstagg. "Do you not see the enemy archer atop the fortress? We will bring him down before he realizes we have arrived, and then we shall speed to Thor and Loki's defense against the grounded warriors."

"By crashing the mechanical beast?"

"Consider it a battering ram. Get ready to jump."

"I find this a highly questionable method by which to enter a battlefield!" Fandral kicks the back door open and looks down at the ground speeding by beneath their feet. "Not to mention inelegant!"

Hogun simply opens his door and waits.

Sif glares at the approaching glass walls. "This had better work," she grumbles, pushing her own door open and gripping her staff tight.

Privately, Volstagg hopes so, too. "On three."

The fortress looms up before them.

Clint can't see a thing inside the diner where the brothers ran, but so far the only body that's been tossed out the giant hole in the side of the building was that of an agent's, so it's probably not going so bad.

At least for them. Even with sparring and prudent usage, he's about out of arrows.

Clint hates being out of arrows.

Especially when not everyone who needs to be shot is dead yet.

On the plus side, he doesn't have long to reflect on this crappy state of affairs — because he notices the roar of an engine just behind him, and a bunch of people yelling "For Asgard!"—

—just as the roof falls out from under him.

Kinda distracts from the arrows thing.