High Five

"All right, listen up." Steve stepped out in front of us, turning to face us as he pointed to where each of us would be stationed. "Until we can close that portal, our priority is containment. Barton, I want you on that roof. Eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Stark, you got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or you turn it to ash."

"Wanna give me a lift?"

"Right." Tony slipped his arms under Clint's. "Better clench up, Legolas."

Once they were in the air, Steve continued handing out assignments. "Thor, you got to try and bottleneck that portal. Slow them down. You got the lightning, light the bastards up. Alice-"

"I have an idea," I interrupted, holding my hand up.

Steve sighed, tilting his head. "Your ideas usually end with you getting hurt."

I shrugged, already walking backwards. "This is a good one! Besides, somebody has to keep Loki busy while you figure out how to close the portal."

"That doesn't sound like-"

"Let me know when you have a solution!" I called over my shoulder as I jogged towards Stark Tower. Steve wasn't wrong, really. I did end up getting myself into a lot of trouble with my hastily thought up plans, but they also usually worked! Besides, I really wanted to smack Loki upside the head for blasting me out of the sky earlier.

On my way to the Tower, I ran across a news crew trying to film the destruction. I groaned at their idiocy before running towards them. "Hey, uh-uh." I pushed the camera away from the woman speaking into a microphone. "You need to get inside. It isn't safe out here."

"Who are you?" the woman asked, completely ignoring my warning while the cameraman turned his camera to face me.

"In case you haven't noticed, there's an alien invasion happening right now. This isn't a stunt, or a movie. This is real, which means it's not safe for you. Inside." I gripped her shoulders and started pushing her towards the nearest building, the cameraman following after us.

"You didn't answer-"

"Alice," I cut her off, pulling the door open and pushing her inside. "Nice to meet you. Don't come back out until somebody comes to get you." I turned to the man filming and gestured for him to follow her inside. "You too, Skippy. I don't have time to personally escort all of you inside. I'm a little busy at the moment." Once they were inside, I pointed sternly at the floor. "Stay."

After closing the door and making sure the surrounding area was empty, I returned to my earlier task of hurrying to Stark Tower. It was only a few blocks away, and thanks to Thor, Tony and Clint taking care of the Chitauri in the sky I was able to make it to the Tower relatively easily.

Surprisingly, the front doors to the Tower were unlocked, allowing me to simply walk straight into an abandoned lobby. "Must be my lucky day," I mumbled to myself as I walked up to the elevator doors, stepping inside and looking to the buttons. Apparently I needed a key code to get anywhere above the tenth floor. I tapped my comm to make sure it was still working. "Tony, I need to get to the top floor of your Tower."

"That is probably the worst place you could be right now. The code is 05078669737."

I scrambled to hit the numbers as he called them out. "Jeez, think your password's long enough? I'd add another 10 numbers just to be safe."

"Don't sass me, Criss Angel."

"You know, I resent that." After typing in the excessively long code, I hit the button to close the elevator doors and waited to reach the floor Loki was on. "I happen to be a very talented, actual magician, and I would appreciate being acknowledged as such."

"Is this really the time for this conversation?" Natasha cut in.

"Probably not," I admitted as I walked into the admittedly impressive living area and saw Loki coming in from the balcony. "Perfect timing!" I called out, clapping my hands together with a large smile. "Just the man I was looking for."

Loki stopped at the sound of my voice and narrowed his eyes at me. "How many times must I tell you lot that I'm not going to stop this war simply because you ask me to?"

"Oh, I'm not going to ask you to stop it." I strolled further into the room, slipping my handy deck of cards out of my pocket and dumping them into my hands while making sure to keep Loki in my line of sight. "The bigger, badder kids will take care of your little pets. I just came up here to show you that you're not as special as you think you are."

"Am I not?" He chuckled, locking his hands behind his back. Cocky bastard.

"Nope." I dropped the small box on the floor, fanning the cards between my hands in front of myself with a casual stance. "See, I do magic too. All these little mind games you've been pulling on people? I'll admit, they're good. But I bet I can do even better." I pulled out a random card before tossing the rest of the deck over my shoulder, the cards fluttering silently to the carpeted floor behind me. "Totally normal card, right?"

"I don't know what you think-"

"Right!" I answered for him, cutting off his question and flipping the card back and forth between my fingers. "Just the Three of Diamonds, nothing special about it." Just as it passed under my pinky, I held my hands out in front of me to show that the card had disappeared. Loki looked thoroughly unimpressed, but I offered a bow anyway. "Tada! Fascinating stuff. Want to see something even cooler?"

"I think I've seen enough," Loki refused, dropping his hands back down by his sides. By his shift in stance I knew that he was about to go on the offensive, but I wasn't quite done yet.

"But you haven't even seen the best part yet!" I argued, sidestepping when he came closer to me. He turned to glare at me and I snapped my fingers, the card reappearing in my hand. "But wait, what's this?" I stared at the card with exaggerated confusion before gasping and pointing it back in his direction. "Oh, my! It's a different card! The Seven of Spades."

"I've had just about enough of your ridicule," Loki growled.

"Ridicule?" I covered my heart with an astonished gasp. "Why, I would never! How dare you accuse me of such a thing? You don't have to get all puffy just because you're jealous of my-"

That was clearly the breaking point for Loki, because in the next second he lunged for my throat. If he still had his staff, I was sure I would be dead by now. I dropped the card to grip his wrists as he latched onto my shirt, shoving me backwards. "It's time for you to stop talking," he commanded in a low voice.

While he continued to push me back I released one of his wrists to reach inside his coat and pull my hand back, now formed into a fist. He switched his critical gaze down to my hand for only a second before I opened it and blew a puff of air, glitter billowing out of it and smothering him. Loki let go of my shirt to step backwards and away from the attack while I hurried in the opposite direction. "Sorry, I don't take kindly to people who shoot me out of the sky!"

Before Loki could get any angrier with me, the windows leading to the balcony shattered as the Hulk broke through it with a deafening roar. Loki swatted the remaining glitter away from his face before looking back and forth between the two of us while shouting, "Enough! You are, all of you, beneath me! I am a god you dull creatures, and I will not be bullied by-"

I jumped in surprise when the Hulk walked forward and picked Loki up by the leg to slam him repeatedly against the ground, causing to big dents before he finally left him in a crater of rubble next to the stairs leading up to the bar. While Loki was left whimpering in pain, the Hulk huffed, "Puny god."

When he turned to look at me, I smiled and offered a small wave. "Hey there, Big Guy. Not gonna lie, that was kind of awesome. Do you know what a high five is?" He just huffed again, clenching his hands into fists before opening them again. "No? Can I show you?"

I walked forward, holding one hand up with my palm facing him. He stared intensely at it while I used my other hand to point towards my palm. "It's easy. Here, put your palm on mine. Like this," I demonstrated how a high five worked with myself before returning my hand to its original position.

The Hulk looked down at his own hand before mimicking my movement of holding it outwards, and I took the last step to bring our hands together, mine just barely covering the center of his oversized palm. I watched with an amused grin as he stared at our touching hands, chuckling quietly. "See? Like I said. Easy."

All it took was a small twitch of my fingers for him to pull his hand back as he grunted. "We'll work on it," I offered.

"I can close it!" I turned to look out one of the few unbroken windows to see Natasha holding Loki's staff against the barrier protecting the Tesseract. "Can anybody copy? I can shut the portal down."

"Do it!" Steve yelled.

"No, wait."

"Stark, these things are still coming."

"I got a nuke coming in, it's gonna blow in less than a minute. And I know just where to put it."

I glanced at the Hulk with worry etched into my features before I ran towards the balcony, crunching over the shattered glass as I ran out onto the cement. I could just barely see the dot of red on the horizon coming in closer. "Stark, you know that's a one-way trip."

Green filled the left side of my vision and I knew that the Hulk had followed me out to the balcony, but I kept my eyes trained on Tony as he flew closer to the Tower. I wanted to offer my help, but I didn't know what I could say or do to change anything. I stammered wordlessly, shaking my head. This couldn't be real.

Tony barely managed to push the nuke upwards, scraping slightly against the side of the building before he was flying directly upwards towards the portal. When he disappeared inside of the blue rim, I took another useless step forward to try and see inside the portal. A moment later the sound of an explosion broke free of the portal, followed by a sigh over the comms.

"Close it."

I turned to my right to watch Natasha push the scepter further into the machine until a blue blast shot up to the portal, immediately causing it to begin shrinking. At the very last second before it closed, that same red dot came dropping out of the sky that sent a rush of relief through me. That is, until I realized that he wasn't slowing down.

The Hulk let out a low growl before digging his feet deeper into the cement and launching himself into the sky. I ran to the very edge of the balcony as I watched the Hulk snatch Tony out of midair before slamming into a building and dropping out of my sight. I was immediately back on my comms, demanding to know what was happening.

"What's going on down there? Is he okay?"

I was answered by the bellowing roar of the Hulk, followed by a gasp of air. "What the hell? What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me."

While Steve told Tony that we won, I sighed with relief and ran my shaking hands over my face, all of the day's pent up adrenaline finally running out. The entire situation was hard to believe, even though I had just lived it. One day I was a simple street magician, and the next I was mixed up in a battle of worlds with gods from other planets and aliens invading Manhattan. My life is a goddamned movie plot.

I didn't tune back in to the others until Thor said, "We're not finished yet."

"I've got Loki handled up here," I informed them, walking back to where the Hulk had left him in the floor. "He's kind of… stuck in the floor. And covered in glitter. It's a fun story."

"We'll meet you up there," Steve replied.

"And then shawarma after."