A few people mentioned that James seemed a little overprotective at the end of last chapter... I guess I didn't make it clear that Loki is on the jet?
Writing MCU Loki was a fun challenge since I haven't written his MCU version in almost 5 years. I almost always write disabled Lokis, and I haven't written those Lokis very much recently either.
Harry knows the shiny metal red boots he sees going down the ramp but he doesn't know why Iron Man is walking instead of flying. Storm follows Iron Man out of the jet even though she can fly too.
Steve's red boots appear next as he walks down in his Captain America suit.
Then Harry sees black boots like Dad's, only they're worn by that hammer guy that Mr. Stark showed videos of. Thor is big with long blonde hair and a beard and a red cape. Next to him, in similar boots, is a thinner man with pale skin and dark hair.
"Is that Loki?" Harry tries to peek out more, but Dad keeps moving in front of him, blocking Harry's view.
Harry knows Loki is the bad guy, but he was imagining someone like the Joker, with an evil smile, or all those HYDRA guys with helmets and no faces. He heard Mr. Stark say Loki and Thor were really, really old but they don't look as old as Dumbledore, or even Harry's Grandpa'fessor.
Harry's reminded of himself and Dudley as Thor pushes Loki forward, a hand on his shoulder. Thor doesn't punch Loki like when Dudley played Beat Up the Bad Guy with Harry.
Thor starts shoving Loki away and Harry asks "Are you throwing him in jail?"
"He threw me into an abyss," Loki snaps.
"You let go, brother. You fell." Thor looks like he might cry, and Harry wonders if he'll throw a fit like Dudley. Steve's face gets tight, too, and he keeps looking at Dad and then looking away.
Thor keeps his eyes on Loki. "If I'd held onto you-"
Steve looks at Dad again.
Mr. Stark looks between Thor and Loki and Steve and Dad. "It's like having another set of you guys around. Except you're not a megalomaniac wannabe monarch, James."
Harry's still trying to work out the word Loki used earlier to try and figure out Mr. Stark's.
"What's abyss?" Harry asks, but before Jarvis can answer, Loki suddenly turns to Harry.
Loki's blue eyes seem to look inside Harry, like Dad's, but they don't make Harry feel safe at all. "Imagine the darkest place you can, a cupboard perhaps, and imagine it stretching out for eternity."
Harry frowns, picturing stairs getting stretched like clay. Is eternity a fancy way to say clay?
Dad actually snarls, even more fierce than Batman. "Don't talk to him." He says it to Loki, not Harry. "If you go into his head-"
Harry gives his own scowl and waves his Wii wand at Loki. "If you try to take Dad's brain, you'll get blowed up like on the telly."
"Worry not, he no longer has his scepter," Thor points his hammer to a long case that Steve is holding.
"Dibs! For science!" Mr. Stark grabs for the case like it's the best present ever, wrapped just for him.
"Careful. It looks like a HYDRA weapon." Steve says.
"Yeah, so it's not like we're ever going to hand this over to SHIELD." Mr. Stark points the case at the broken telly. "What happened, you threw the remote? I know I live dangerously- I just brought a supervillain here for crying out loud- but even I use the wrist straps."
"The bad guy blowed it up with magic."
Thor turns to Loki like it's his fault. Harry remembers how awful it felt when Dudley blamed him for things he hadn't done, just so he'd get in trouble.
Instead of looking scared, Loki grins like the Joker. "I was busy surrendering. But you..."
Loki's laugh is just as crazy as Joker's, too. "The things you could accomplish, with me molding even your mortal magic."
"You will not lay a hand on this child." Thor pulls Loki back.
"You are all children, incapable of taking care of yourselves, of making decisions." Loki sneers like Harry's Aunt used to. "You need someone to make your tough choices and show you the way. You need cloaks to conceal yourselves."
Loki stares into a corner, where Moody appears, throwing off the cloak he'd been hiding under. His wand is pointed right at Loki's chest.
"I knew not of Midgardian magic." Thor turns to Harry, but it's like he's seeing someone else instead, like Dad does sometimes. "This boy looks quite like you, brother, and he is magical. Did you sire a Midgardian child?"
Mr. Stark snorts. "Wasn't Loki the mare who birthed an eight-legged-"
"That is a mere myth." Thor booms, and dark clouds start to show up right outside the window.
"Young minds are so malleable." Loki still has that Joker grin. Dad moves almost too fast for Harry to see, hurling a knife at Loki while continuing to block Harry. Loki dodges, just as fast, and starts to laugh.
"Ah, you'll make a wonderful asset to my team of assassins. An obedient puppet to-"
Harry and Steve both start shouting. Harry waves his Wii wand, Steve jumps in front of both Harry and Dad, quicker than any turtle, and holds his shield held up to block them. Harry hears Iron Man's repulsors firing up.
Thor gives Loki a rough shake. "Still your tongue, brother, or I will use the muzzle."
Dad's hands become fists, but not like the Miis' ball hands. His metal arm whirrs angrily.
"These are the heroes you call to defend your planet? Mindless beasts, pretending to be men." Loki shoots a scary look at Dr. Banner, who looks away, then Logan and Dad, who stare back like they want to hurt him.
"Beast isn't here," Harry says, loudly and slowly, because Loki clearly doesn't know who anybody is.
Logan snarls. "You want to find out how feral I can become, bub?"
"How desperate are you, that you call upon such misfits?"
"They're mutants!" Harry says.
"For someone who surrendered, you're sure acting all high and mighty." Mr. Stark says. "Let's get you locked away."
Thor and Miss Romanoff march Loki toward the elevator.
Harry wonders if they'll just shut him in there, and not let him go up or down. Then they couldn't use the elevator either. There are so many stairs in this tower but Harry hasn't seen a single cupboard under any of them.
Thor pushes Loki into the elevator, but follows inside himself. The doors close.
"I can fly you down, Dad." Harry offers with a smile.
Dad's still staring furiously at the elevator doors where Loki, Thor and Romanoff disappeared, but he asks "Fly me down where?"
Harry points down at the city. "'Cos they're in there so we can't use it."
Not long after, Jarvis tells them that the group has left the elevator and it's ready for use.
"I don't want to be like Loki," Harry whispers to Dad.
"You're nothing like him." Dad promises. "Even if you look somewhat similar."
"But what if my bad guy makes me badder and take people's brains?" Harry glances at the elevator. "Then you'll have to lock me up too."
"You are not a criminal, Master Harry, so this will not be your fate." Jarvis says as he brings up a holographic video of Loki in a padded room. There's a window looking inside, like Mr. Stark's basement lab by the beach, only this room doesn't have robots or tables or anything. Just a big padded bench.
The grownups talk a lot about what to do with Loki, and the Tesseract. Thor shares that Loki has an army called the Chitauri, and none of the grownups to know that word, either.
"There's going to be another fight?" Harry's tired of all the fights and bad guys. He misses playing with Dad already.
Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner have already switched to talking about portals. It isn't quite as boring as when Harry had to listen to Uncle's business dinners, but Harry still doesn't understand most of what they're saying, until Thor and Storm talk about how they can both make lightning.
"I always have lightning," Harry shares, pointing at his scar.
"You must be a fine warrior, to have acquired such a scar." Thor smiles at him. Suddenly, he doesn't seem so much like Dudley.
"The baddest wizard tried to kill me, but I lived." Harry shares, before wondering if Loki's worse than the Dark Lord.
Jarvis announces another plane arriving, a SHIELD plane, and Harry wonders if it's HYDRA guys, but then he hears his Grandpa'fessor's voice in his head, reassuring him. Dad and Logan don't look ready to stab someone, so maybe they heard him too.
An angry man with a long, dark coat and an eye patch stalks down the ramp.
"Fury. Hey, we've got two dwarves now." Mr. Stark nods to the new guy and Moody. "I should really introduce you two to Happy. Some of his personality might rub off on you."
"Dwarves?" Thor asks, confused. "You people are tiny, but not dwarves."
Steve smiles slightly. "Bucky and I saw that picture. It was like magic, even better than the usual cartoons."
Steve had said there was no telly when he was a kid, and an adult. Did he lie?
Harry waves as his Grandpa'fessor rolls down the ramp in his wheelchair.
"We have Loki in custody," Miss Romanoff reports.
The angry pirate guy, Fury, tells Romanoff that he wants to know how Loki turned men into flying monkeys.
"Monkeys?" Thor seems just as confused as Harry. "I do not understand."
"I do," Steve raises a hand, smiling slightly. "I understood that reference."
Harry frowns. "He made them monkeys?"
"Not literally," Mr. Stark laughs. "It means he took their brains, and is making them do bad things."
"Did he put in monkey brains?" Harry asks. Or did their bodies turn into monkeys? They already knew he was a brain-stealer like HYDRA.
Miss Romanoff goes down to ask Loki where Barton is and how to get his brain back.
Grandpa'fessor goes too, to try and get the bad out of Loki's brain. He hasn't been able to get rid of Harry's bad guy, though.
Harry watches them on the screen. Grandpa'fessor has his eyes closed and is probably talking in his head.
"Where's Loki's scar?" Harry asks. Loki's forehead is blank, like everyone but Harry. Maybe it's on his shoulder, like Dad's, or maybe some people have their bad guys on the back of their head. "What shape is it?"
"My brother does not have a scar." Thor says.
So nobody put bad stuff in him?
"Was he always a bad guy?"
"No. As children, we were playmates, brothers." Thor takes a breath. "We fought together. Now I must fight him, but we are still brothers."
Harry never had a brother, but he'd heard his Aunt saying Dudley and Piers were like brothers. They ate snacks together, watched telly, crashed trains and pretended to be heroes. Harry had listened to their laughter, knowing the only time he'd ever get to play was when they needed a bad guy to beat up.
Sometimes they'd fight, when Dudley took Piers' snacks.
"Did you play Beat Up Bad Guys?" Harry asks. Thor definitely beats them up now, with that huge hammer. Dudley had pounded Harry with a hammer from a toy workbench, and once used the toy electric drill on Harry's scar.
"Aye, we often pretended to slay Frost Giants in our youth." Thor somehow seems both happy and very sad remembering that. He tells another story of Loki turning into a snake, and when Thor picked the snake up, Loki turned into a person again and stabbed him.
Even though Harry doesn't want to be like Loki, he kind of wants to turn into a snake. He can already talk to them, but it would be fun to be one for a little bit, but not forever.
"You believed he was good?" Fury's one eye stares at Thor like he's crazy.
"He enjoyed mischief-"
Mr. Stark interrupts with "Murderous mischief."
"Have care how you speak." Thor rumbles. He turns to watch the video of Loki. "Loki was not himself when he fell. I know not what happened to him in the void or how he acquired the scepter, but my brother has yet to return. His true nature has been hidden his whole life,"
"You mean his true nature of attempting to conquer other worlds." Fury says.
"Nay," Thor shakes his head.
"Suicidal tendencies?" Mr. Stark says more confusing words. "Yeah, I didn't forget that part."
"His appearance. Given what I know now, I am shocked he is choosing to hide behind blue eyes."
"What do you know?" Fury demands, his eye narrowing. Moody human eye does the same.
"He was born different."
"A mutant?" Harry asks. There are some bad mutants, like Magneto, but Grandpa'fessor says he's not all bad. It's confusing, how people can be good and bad at the same time even though they're opposites.
"A different race from another realm." Thor replies. "Father adjusted Loki's appearance to fit in. His eyes have been green as long as I've known him."
"His eyes were blue when he arrived." Fury scowls. "Barton's eyes turned the same blue when Loki invaded his mind."
Dark clouds form outside the window again. Thunder booms almost as loud as Thor's voice "Someone has used the scepter on Loki!"
Dad's frowning now, but Fury says "You say he got the scepter after he fell. That means he decided to destroy Puente Antiguo all on his own."
"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki," Dr. Banner says. "That guy's brain is a bag full of cats. You can smell the crazy on him."
I hope you enjoyed my attempt at MCU Loki. I read it's been made canon that he was influenced by the scepter, and I've seen posts about how his eyes were blue, but he did try to destroy a whole realm in Thor so it's not like he was always mind controlled, like Bucky.
It's finally winter break, and posting a chapter is a great way to start it off. My mid-year evaluation didn't go as well as I'd hoped :(