Loki was nothing if not prudent and cunning. Whenever he acted he always made sure that his plans had backup plans, and those backup plans had backups of their own. Even though such precautions were redundant most of the time as things usually played out exactly as he had planned without much of a hitch.

Even his arrival on Earth was meticulously planned. He had prepared for every possible scenario and had contingencies for every potential action S.H.I.E.L.D. could have possibly taken against him. Even their plan of gathering all sorts of freaks of this world to unleash upon him was taken into account. In other words, whatever this organisation did, he would always be one step ahead.

So imagine his surprise when a previously unknown organisation burst onto the scene and threw a wrench into all of his carefully designed schemes simultaneously by taking the Tesseract and making off with it.

Now he had to track it down before taking care of the S.H.I.E.L.D. which meant spending even more time he could ill afford. If he wanted to sow discord among the S.H.I.E.L.D.'s freaks on a leash he would have to do it before they had time to bond and the initial mistrust would give way to camaraderie.

It was truly quite a difficult situation to find oneself in, but Loki was sure he would be able to think of something eventually.

And this 'eventually' would have come sooner if not for the constant noise and moving of the people around him.

And so Loki tried to concentrate, sitting on the floor of a well hidden underground base that belonged to some criminal organisation.

If not for his new underling Hawkeye who had quite a range of dubious connections it would have taken him more time to set up a temporary base of operations. But with the criminals' leader under his control he had some firepower at his disposal. Not something as elite as to go up against the S.H.I.E.L.D. in a fair fight of course, but he never fought fair in the first place.

At some point Hawkeye approached Loki to give his report on their current situation.

After listening to it Loki spoke up.

"So you have no idea who could have taken the Tesseract?"

"No, S.H.I.E.L.D. has many enemies but I've never seen anyone like her or her powers."

That was concerning news. With no intel whatsoever on the mysterious enemy, they had practically no chance of getting the Tesseract anytime soon.

At that point all they could do was wait until an opportunity to do so presented itself.

Luckily for Loki, such an opportunity seemed to appear as the sounds of gunfire and screaming coming from the tunnels reached them.

Instantly everyone was on high alert. Armed personnel moved towards the entrance while the brainwashed scientists he would later use for creating the portal tried to get as far away from the coming fight as the confined space of the underground shelter allowed them.

In the meantime Loki took up his sceptre but remained behind his goons, content to observe how the fight would go before either joining in or retreating, whichever was preferable.

Hawkeye took position right beside Loki in case the latter appeared to be in any danger, even though the self proclaimed king of Asgard was no slouch when it came to bloodshed.

So, as several dozens of guns and one bow were trained on the closed doors leading to the entrance area of their underground shelter, everyone listened intently as the sounds of vicious fighting on the other side gradually died down and gunshots became few and far between.

While it could mean that their guards were successful in fending off the assailants, Loki had a feeling it was the other way around. Call it trickster's intuition but Loki could already sense another wrench flying into his yet-unfinished plans at breakneck speed.

He didn't need to wait long to be proven right as the heavy metal door flew off its hinges and smashed some poor mercenary against the wall.

And whatever had sent the door flying quickly followed it into the room and started tearing anyone in its way to shreds. From the humans' perspective it was nothing more than a black blur dashing from group of mercenaries to the next, leaving mangled bodies in its wake.

Loki however could make out the intruder's appearance and he was more annoyed than concerned with what he saw.

Curiously, the girl wreaking havoc on his little private army did not appear to be human, at least not fully. She had a long black tail and canine ears. But most importantly, she was wearing the same black bodysuit as the wench that had stolen the Tesseract.

It didn't take a genius, though Loki considered himself one, to guess that the two belonged to the same organisation. But he had no time to ruminate on it, as the girl got closer and closer to him with every second.

Luckily it appeared that she wasn't focused on him, instead intent on hacking anyone who found themselves closest to her during her savage and seemingly mindless rampage.

'Never mind wild beasts, I've seen Thor fight with more restraint than this girl!'

And yet her chaotic fighting style (if you could even call that 'fighting style') was working to her advantage. It was far more difficult to hit a moving target rather than a stationary one, even moreso if it moved as erratically as the wolf girl. Even Hawkeye was having difficulties with hitting her. Naturally, the panicking guards had no chance to land a hit whatsoever.

But Loki was not deterred. As he had learned during his childhood with Thor, the best counter to the mindless brawn would be the brain. And what a brain Loki had.

He noticed that the girl would slow down ever so slightly to tear to ribbons another unfortunate group of mercenaries. So, spotting the group closest to her, he aimed his sceptre at them. And just as he expected the intruder was in their midst momentarily to shed more blood.

Seeing the prey take the bait he shot, aiming for the centre of the group.

The explosion sent them all flying and killed whoever was not killed by the clawed hands.

As for the girl herself she slammed into the wall on the opposite side of the room, leaving a sizeable dent in it. Loki expected her to slump onto the floor and remain unmoving, considering the force of the impact was likely enough to turn all of a regular human's bones to dust.

Instead she lifted ger gaze, looked straight at him and growled before bouncing off the wall and dashing towards him on all fours.

Loki would admit that the sight was somewhat terrifying. Nevertheless he remained in place, staring straight at the wild animal bounding towards him.

As the girl finally closed the distance and leaped at him, instead of feeling soft flesh in her clawed hands, she felt solid concrete collide with her face.

Seeing the girl fly through Loki's illusion and faceplant into the wall, Hawkeye took his chance. It took him barely a second to pull his bowstring, aim and let loose the arrow.

His aim was true, which was to be expected as the distance between them was just a few meters. The arrow hit her back, right in the spine. The wolf girl let out something between a howl and a whimper.

Hawkeye expected the direct hit to the spine to paralyze her. He barely had time to be shocked when the girl leapt at him.

The archer didn't even try to block her clawed hand with his bow, having seen her tear apart men in bulletproof vests. Instead he jumped back, trying to put as much distance between them as possible. Unfortunately for him, the girl was ridiculously fast and it wasn't long before gashes started appearing all over his body.

Clinton concluded that he would last at best thirty seconds before the wild girl gutted him.

Mercifully he was saved from such a fate by an energy blast sending them both flying in opposite directions.

Hawkeye landed heavily on his back, the impact knocking the breath out of him, but he managed to keep a hold of his bow.

He didn't waste a second getting up and pulling out a fresh arrow to put between the girl's eyes while she was still disoriented.

Suddenly a hand fell on his shoulder.

"No, use the tracker."

Wordlessly following Loki's command Hawkeye put the arrow back into his quiver and with a press of a button the solid metal arrowhead was replaced by a tracking device.

The girl meanwhile got up with significant effort. It seemed that she was hit good by the blast. And instead of attacking Hawkeye and Loki head-on like the previous time it seemed that she began having doubts.

Loki did not expect her to continue the fight. If she wasn't completely mindless she would recognise that the best course of action for her would be withdrawal. She had yet to land a heavy blow on either of them, while she herself had been hit several times.

He expected her to turn tail and run so he ordered Hawkeye to put a tracking device on her so she would lead them to her organisation.

He entertained the idea of brainwashing her using the sceptre but he had no desire to get within her arms' reach. With how fast and savage she was there would be little room for trickery and Loki wasn't completely sure in his victory in this scenario.

The girl indeed seemed hesitant. There was still blind bloodlust in her eyes but every so often she glanced at the entrance.

With both sides waiting for the other to make a move a tense standoff developed.

Then the girl made her decision. She bared her teeth, growled at them and then turned around and headed for the entrance.

That was when Hawkeye let loose his arrow.

The girl, wounded, was no longer as agile and fast. The arrow hit her in the calf, making her stumble for a second but she recovered swiftly. A few seconds later she was gone.

Loki lowered his sceptre and looked around. Pretty much all of the mercenaries were dead. The beast's rampage was so thorough it appeared that it left no wounded.

He turned to Hawkeye.

"I'm going to need you to put me in contact with more of your associates. We're going to need a lot of warm bodies if we want to get the Tesseract back."

"Understood. Do we attack once we find their base?"

"No, even though our time is not limitless if everyone in their organisation is like that we'll need to be smart about it. We'll establish a surveillance and try to get some moles in."

'Or,' he thought. 'We could send the S.H.I.E.L.D after them. Once we have their base's location we could leak it and have them fight each other, before joining in and finishing off whoever's left.'

Loki allowed himself a smile, pleased with himself. What better way to defeat your enemies than have them tear each other to pieces?