Loki slowly paced around the Harrod's Bank office while Ada shifted uncomfortably in her plush leather chair. The office was appointed to the standard that one would expect of the world's leading luxury company: minimalist, but with every well-placed piece of décor oozing opulence. It was almost a parody of the palace in Asgard.

"They certainly are taking their time," Loki drawled. "When I was last in Midgard, you humans would kill each other for a single gold piece. And now these bankers waste our precious time deciding if they want a bag full of them? This will be an interesting report indeed."

Ada sighed. "I told you, it's because I'm exchanging them for money. They want to make sure they're not counterfeit-"

"But they are money," Loki interrupted, exasperated. He lifted his enchanted sunglasses up to pinch the bridge of his nose in annoyance.

"Loki, you can't spend ancient alien gold coins at the grocery store," Ada said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "We have paper money now, and coins made of cheaper metals. And credit cards and debit cards, which you can use in place of cash."

"You would rather have worthless scraps of paper and metal than gold now? Astonishing." Loki lowered his sunglasses, though they did nothing to hide the disdain on his face.

Both of their heads whipped up when the office door opened again. A pudgy, short bearded man in a suit waddled into the office and sat behind the desk, trailed all the way by a lanky blond clerk. The bearded man set one of Ada's gold coins on a black mat on the desk, placing his meaty elbows behind it and arranging his sausage-like fingers into a steeple in front of his face. "And how many of these did you say you inherited, madam?" he asked smoothly.

Ada glanced at Loki before answering. "Um… about a thousand?" she said without much certainty. "But I have fifty of them with me today."

"Hm," the chubby man said. He clearly had his poker face on. "And you told my associate that your father, a history buff, had them minted into these faux-Viking designs?"

Ada nodded in confirmation. She was fairly certain she would be breaking some cultural heritage law by selling the coins as actual Viking gold, so she had embellished the truth. They looked brand new anyway; after sitting untouched in Asgard's treasury for centuries, they didn't show much wear.

"Hm," the chubby man repeated, turning the gold coin over on the mat. "Well, your father invested wisely. If all of your coins were struck from the same ingot, you've got fifty 24-carat coins here."

Ada's throat tightened. Fifty pure gold Viking coins… this isn't suspicious at all, she thought.

"Our specialist would have to test all one thousand of them to be certain of their quality, of course," the man went on, ignoring a loud and pointed throat-clearing from Loki on the other side of the room. He slid open a drawer and pulled out a calculator that was probably worth more than all the contents of Ada's apartment, punching in numbers as he continued. "Factoring in the time the testing would take, as well as our commission and taxes, Harrod's would be prepared to offer you the following figure for your collection." He turned the calculator to face Ada.

Ada could feel her eyes widening to the size of dinner plates, though she could do nothing to stop them. She gripped the arms of her chair for dear life. "Th-that's… a lot of zeroes…" she laughed weakly.

"Pending the testing, of course," the man said, peering at her over his folded hands. Although his skinny assistant also seemed a bit shocked by the number, he kept his face blank but professional. Ada hoped that Loki was appreciating the man's masterful composure from afar; she wondered what a conversation between the two would be like.

"Are you pleased with our offer, madam?" the man prompted, bringing her back to reality. "If you are, I have some paperwork for you."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ada splurged on a cab ride home, feeling invigorated by her soon-to-be wealth. It was much quicker than the Tube, and she had looked forward to pointing out landmarks to Loki, though he seemed too preoccupied to enjoy a tour.

Loki took Ada's arm on the short walk to her apartment building's front door, still looking thoughtful.

"Still befuddled about the money-versus-gold thing?" she asked as they began to climb the first flight of stairs. "I'm not an expert on… monetary value? The gold standard? I'm not even sure what would answer your question!" she chuckled. "We can do some research when we get upstairs. I'll hit Google, see what I can find."

"Goo… gle," Loki repeated, a look of confusion crossing his face. It was quickly replaced with a smirk. "No, I am confident that I will be able to understand your monetary system without much trouble, as soon as I find out the root of your transition from valuing things of actual worth to prizing paper over gold. But that banker… I believe he has some Asgardian blood," Loki said, rubbing his chin absent-mindedly. "I could hardly see his magic, but there were vestiges of it about him, in the same way that it was around you when we first met."

"Not Bragi again?" Ada asked, hiking an eyebrow. "Was the banker my 5th cousin three times removed or something?"

"No, not Bragi…" Loki said quietly, shaking his head. "The magic is familiar, but I can't quite place it…"

Ada shrugged and dug through her purse to retrieve her keys. "Do all Asgardian descendants have magic that you can see, or can you only see it when they're descended from someone particularly magical?" she asked, unlocking her door.

Loki chuckled. "Yes, all Midgardian offspring of wayward Asgardians carry traces of magic with them. Even the descendants of the most lowly Einherjar are surrounded by magic, if they are not too many generations removed from their Asgardian heritage." He slipped his sunglasses off as he stepped through the door behind Ada. "There were actually several such individuals on the… tyoob this morning." He pronounced the word uncertainly. "I have a feeling that Odin will find this observation quite interesting, given that there has been a ban on fraternization with Midgardians for the past eight centuries."

Ada laughed, closing the door and leaning back against it. She felt mischievous after such a productive morning. "Fraternization, eh? I guess we're breaking the law then?" She caught Loki's eyes and grinned.

Loki immediately picked up on her mood and advanced on her slowly, a predatory smile parting his lips. He placed his hand on the door above her head and leaned down, his face so close to hers that she could feel his skin's natural coolness. "My dear," he purred, "isn't that part of the fun?"

Loki caught Ada's lips with his own, slipping his other hand up her neck to cradle her cheek. Ada smiled into the kiss and unzipped her coat, tossing it into a corner before wrapping her arms around Loki's torso.

A knock on the door behind them caused their teeth to crash together, and they quickly separated with a groan.

"What in the Nine Realms does someone want now?" Loki growled, touching his upper lip gently. "Have you no privacy here?"

Ada made a low grumble and looked through the peep hole. At the sight of Katya's mass of red hair, she sighed heavily. "It's the girl I met earlier at the station, she wants some work of mine," she whispered. "Just… just stand behind the door until I get her to go away." She shooed him in the right direction, though he looked less than amused at having to conceal himself.

She snatched a loose stack of papers off the top of a pile of books, flipping through them quickly as she opened the door a crack. "Katya, hi!" Ada said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. She stuck the papers through the crack in the door. "I'm kinda busy right now, but I think this is the part that you'll be interested in-"

"Oh no, I'm sorry to bother you!" Katya said, although her words directly contradicted her actions—she pushed the door open firmly and took several steps inside, much to Ada's shock and concern. "I just wanted to see if you still had that book from the library too-" She drew a sharp breath as her eyes came to rest on the open casket of gold, which Ada quickly kicked shut.

"Can we talk about it tomorrow? We could meet for coffee or something," Ada said through gritted teeth, willing Katya to back out the front door rather than turn around to see Loki's poorly concealed figure.

"Really Ada, your Russian has gotten so good!" Katya laughed. "Yes, that would be great!"

Ada twisted her mouth into some approximation of a smile. She stepped towards Katya, hoping that her proximity would encourage her to step back out the door. "Okay, I'll text you later!" she said stiffly.

Of course, Katya turned around to leave, rather than take a step back. Ada's heart dropped as she saw her jump in surprise at Loki's dark, glowering figure. "Ah, ha ha, sorry, that's my… boyfriend…" she said quietly. "Like I said, we're kind of busy-"

Katya kicked the door shut in a fluid motion, almost more quickly than Ada's eyes could follow. She dropped her purse and whipped off her mittens, exposing a pair of fingerless black gloves. She flicked her thumbs against her palms and the gloves sparked to life, currents of electricity surging through them.

Before Ada even had a chance to question this, Katya lunged at Loki, catching him completely off guard. She leapt and wrapped her legs around his middle, slamming him into the wall, and dug her hands into the crook of his neck. As his body became limp from electrocution, Katya untangled herself from him with the grace of a gymnast, landing to face Ada.

"Loki!" Ada screamed, rushing towards Loki's limp body. "Katya, god, what are you doing?!"

"Sorry Ada," she said, her voice devoid of emotion. "But harbouring this creature was a mistake."

In a flash, Katya was behind Ada, holding her in a headlock and restraining her hands behind her back. Ada gasped and struggled against her, feeling something metallic clamp around her wrists. Her legs were kicked out from under her and she fell to the ground.

Katya stepped over her and knelt beside the still paralyzed Loki, gathering his wrists into cuffs as well. Ada rose to her knees, watching her colleague in horror. "Katya, why did you…? How did you know…?" she stammered.

Loki coughed and lifted his head weakly, his eyes following Katya as she stood. "I think you'll find, Aðalrun," he wheezed, "that your Katya is not who she claims to be."

"Apparently!" Ada responded under her breath, watching Katya's every move closely. "What do you want here, Katya?" she asked more loudly. "You can have the gold if you want, just take it and let us go!"

Katya let out a single, harsh laugh, and scratched her nose with an index finger. "Not the worst bargain I've been offered, but no. I have a job to do."

She drew a gossamer thread, no thicker than a spider's web, from the tip of her nose, and pulled it roughly away from her face. Her features seemed to melt grotesquely outwards to follow the thread, before shimmering and decomposing to a series of roughly rendered pixels as the face fell away from her head.

"Natasha Romanov," Loki puffed, with as much of a chuckle as he could muster. "The mewling —"

The insult never escaped his mouth, as Natasha kicked him squarely across the jaw. "All responders, I can confirm we have a Code Green, I repeat, Code Green," she barked, momentarily pressing two fingers to her ear. "Strange, advise when you're in position!"

Ada recognised the spy from the coverage of the attack on New York, despite the fact that many of the newscasts placed more focus on her male counterparts. Struggling against her cuffs, she cried out, "Please don't hurt him! He's here on a mission from Asgard, and he doesn't even have his magic right now!"

Natasha's eyes glazed over as she turned to face her fully. Ada panted and was still for a moment, slowly coming to the realization that she must've affected her with her verbal magic. She spoke her next words calmly. "Please call them off."

Natasha began to slowly raise her hand back to her ear piece when her blank face contorted into a grimace. Her wits returned, and she pressed the communicator of her own will, advancing on Ada as she did. "There are two of them, my source has turned accomplice," she said, hauling Ada up roughly by the front of her shirt. Lifting off of her communicator, she held Ada's face inches from her own. "You stay out of my head, Paulsen," she growled, "Or I'll blow yours off."

Ada didn't have a chance to respond before Natasha flung her to the ground. She landed awkwardly on her bound hands and yelped in pain.

Loki, slowly regaining control over his body, struggled to push himself up off the ground. "Leave her be, Miss Romanoff. She has nothing to do with me," he said, a great deal of effort going into making his still-hoarse voice sound calm and silky smooth.

Natasha gave another harsh laugh before fishing some sort of metallic device from her pocket. It vaguely resembled a diving respirator. She kicked Loki across the face, causing him to flop onto his back, and, kneeling again, she planted the device over his mouth. "You keep that silver tongue to yourself, you son of a bitch," she said darkly as the device whirred and clicked, extending a band around the back of his head.

Loki glared daggers at her, a low growling sound coming from behind his muzzle. She tore herself away from admiring her work to press her communicator again, nodding slightly. "Roger," she said, standing. "Sling 'em, Strange."

Ada had just gotten back up to her knees, only to be confronted with a wheel of sparks that engulfed Loki and Natasha, before surrounding her as well.