"I almost had super powers! I could have joined the Avengers!" Happy complained from his hospital bed. He wasn't unconscious on a ventilator, but they were keeping him for observation at a SHIELD medical facility. He'd only just woken up that morning, after being sedated for a week while Tony developed a cure for Extremis.

"And maybe exploded," Harry explained, calmly, from where he'd come to visit the man before he headed back to Vanaheim.

"Doctors say I probably wouldn't have done that. Danger area was the first twenty-four hours, they told me."

"Like the guy who blew up and put you in the coma in the first place? He had Extremis for more than a day."

"I figure he was a junkie or something. Wouldn't have seen me huffing silver mystery vials," the former boxer insisted.

"Even if it had worked perfectly, it turns you into a sociopath. Through brain damage."

"What, really? Fine. I think I should have still gotten the choice. I could have been a villain, at least!"

Harry just sighed and leaned back in the chair. Pepper had warned him that Happy would probably complain to him. He'd complained to everyone so far. He was bored and sad to have missed the holidays. "You wouldn't have lasted long. Most of the other soldiers went out really fast against us."

"But I know your secrets. I'd be more effective," the burly man contended. He waited a minute and said, "Okay. But the next time there are actual super powers that don't make you evil, it's my turn! I do feel great, at least. You know my shoulder was never quite right after that Monaco thing?"

"When you drove the car into a wall to hit Vanko?"

"Right, that. And now it's better. See?" He rolled his arm around his right shoulder in a way that Harry couldn't prove he hadn't been able to do a week and a half earlier. "Are they at least giving this out to people? The powers then the cure, just enough to fix people?"

Harry frowned, thinking about Natasha arguing with Hansen back in that hotel room. He shook his head, "Nobody can trust that someone wouldn't keep it to make more Extremis soldiers if it went out to hospitals. And we don't know if some people might blow up really fast. Tony kept all the samples we could find and wiped the instructions."

"Nobody else can just make it again?"

"The lady that invented it went missing." SHIELD hadn't really wanted to admit that, but they'd had to when Tony insisted on talking to Hansen. "So we may wind up with more Extremis out in the world anyway if someone bad got her… Nat thinks that they may have quietly killed her or put her in a black site because she was too dangerous. She's pissed."

Happy thought about it for a minute then admitted, "Well that's scary."

"We'll handle it when we have to. I told you things were getting weird."

"I'll come up with some super soldier protocols for Stark security when I get back to the office."

"I think Tony's going to use it at least, before he destroys the rest of the samples. Extremis, I mean. Try to fix his heart." Harry had convinced the billionaire it was worth it. He was pretty sure he'd convinced Natasha, too, under the guise of being the guinea pig. Tony was trying to get some world class surgeons involved, so it wasn't going to happen before Harry was back at school.

"Hey, that's good," Happy agreed. "Oh! I saw on the news that Arcane saved me and you. And maybe I'm confused but…"

"Trick editing," Harry interrupted. "All the footage from the fight at Killian's house came from the cameras that Tony and I have in our suits. It was Nat's idea that we use that to help protect my secret identity. I changed clothes between takes. You were unconscious, so it was easy for JARVIS to cut you in."

"Huh. Smart. I still don't like her."

"Are you upset about her flipping you in the ring that time?"

"She didn't tell me she was a super spy! I'd have used different moves if I'd known she was a super spy!" the former boxer argued. "Anyway, I missed all of Christmas. Tell me what happened?"

"A lot actually, though Christmas itself was…" Harry tailed off and then glanced around. They were in an infirmary room in a SHIELD base, and it had only been about half a year since he was last at a SHIELD facility. He did his spell to detect bugs and found three. "You want to talk about this somewhere else?"

"You kidding? I've been here a week." Not that he'd been conscious for most of it. "I'd love to see anywhere else."

"I'm not blowing up your bugs, but I could have. I'll bring Happy back later," the only 15-year-old with a sling ring informed whoever was listening, then spun open a portal. He and Happy stepped through once the older man had grabbed his things.

One of the bugs was totally benign. It was only listening for calls for help or sounds of danger, and immediately deleting anything that didn't throw such an alert. Every room in the SHIELD infirmary had one of those.

The second was Agent 13's. She didn't have time to actively monitor it, but Sharon Carter checked the recording later and updated her personal notes with a few more details about Harry Potts, including that he could detect recording devices somehow.

The third was a live feed to Jasper Sitwell. He cursed as he learned the same fact about Potts' ability to tell he was being surveilled, and dutifully recorded it for his superiors. He'd at least confirmed that Tony Stark had collected the rest of the Extremis samples and research. With Coulson agreeing to destroy the material the teen had turned over to SHIELD (half a syringe full of the substance), and Dr. Hansen disappearing from custody, Hydra had really needed a win. He posted a secure voice message to Strucker, "Subject seven-sixteen confirmed that Subject one-nineteen has all samples of Extremis. Seven-sixteen has the ability to detect surveillance." Nobody in the organization was going to be too happy about that. The mental side-effects of sociopathy were barely a concern for Hydra, just the risk of making their best agents explode. But they had several contingency plans. The things they could have done with their own Extremis soldiers…

Meanwhile, Harry and Happy were walking out of a sparking hole in the world into the latter's office at the Stark Campus. "I need to add portals to the list," the head of security grumbled. "How many people can do that?"

Harry let the portal close then did the bug search again, finding only the Stark security camera facing the door. It wasn't even wired for sound; Tony had been too busy to get JARVIS installed, yet. The only way to be overheard was his own phone, which he went ahead and powered off, just in case. "More than you want to know. But I think if we set up teleportation wards on the building, we might get more people showing up wondering why. Witches and such."

"Like, girls in black lipstick might think the building was a cool place to do a love spell?" Happy asked, slightly distracted as he slid with a grunt of appreciation into his lumbar-supportive chair and started checking his email. Whatever Extremis had done for his shoulder, it didn't seem to be able to fix genuine age deterioration on the spine.

"No. Like centuries-old scary ladies who've made deals with entities pretty close to the Devil might think there was something here they could steal to get more powerful."

That got the adult's attention, making him glance up from his couple-dozen missed meeting notifications. "Remember when Tony fighting Obie while both of them were in power armor was the weirdest thing in the whole world? That was only a few years ago."

"It was the weirdest thing that people knew about. There are like a dozen different groups that probably would have loved to have gotten to Tony and told him to keep his armor a secret before he was on Al Jazeera blowing up tanks."

"Right. Well, there's nothing here too important. What did I miss at Christmas?"

"You were pretty much there," Harry explained, finally settling down into one of the guest chairs across the desk. "Aunt Pepper made me grab Tony from tearing apart Killian's mansion for secrets long enough to come make sure you were okay. We opened presents. You seemed to come up from sedation for a little while. Sang White Christmas."

"I… thought I'd hallucinated that."

"No. You were really bad. But it made Aunt Pepper cry. She decided it meant you were going to be okay. So Tony doubled down on figuring out a cure. I guess I could have spent the week with her. We went to Dean's house on Boxing Day. But…"

One of his several surrogate fathers looked at the teen and shrewdly observed, "But you heard from the girl?"

"Yeah…"

Hedwig found him when he and Pepper had driven by the Malibu house to check on the repairs. It was slow going over the holidays, but she was willing to pay generously for people to work around Christmas. By the afternoon of the 26th, the place was still wrecked, but no longer in any danger of falling into the ocean. Scaffolding bloomed along the cliffs like some kind of industrial winter flower. The foreman had given the Pottses hard hats and an escort to get clothes and keepsakes from their bedrooms. When they were walking back to the car, Harry had spotted his snowy white owl sitting in a sycamore on the lawn.

"Missed you at Christmas, girl," he apologized, checking that none of the construction crew was watching before handing her the owl treats he'd been keeping in his bag of holding.

The messenger bird gratefully bolted the handful down, precisely avoiding her master's fingers in the process, then presented her leg where a message was attached.

"Thanks!" he said, retrieving and then reading the letter from Fleur. His eyes widened. "I… uh… I'm not sure where you should hang out for the rest of the holiday, girl. Hold on." The dark-haired teen scampered over to the car, not aware of how keyed up he'd suddenly become. "Uh. Aunt Pepper?"

Pepper Potts had a million things whirling through her mind after the latest crisis. She barely saw her nephew these days to learn his tells. But that kind of movement when clutching a letter was something he didn't realize that she'd come to recognize. "Do you think she can come to New York? I don't think we can host anyone here at the moment."

"She? What? How? Uh… she can't come here. But I can visit her at her house?"

His aunt's eyes narrowed. Her nephew was too anxious, even for a first date at the girl's house. "And do what?"

"Maybefightsomemarauders," the Boy-Who-Gave-His-Aunt-Gray-Hairs muttered.

"What?"

"Maybe fight some marauders?" he repeated, with more enunciation, each word falling like a leaden admission. "Asgard is finally showing up on Alfheim soon. And they've probably got it. But she said her dad said I could come and…"

"...and if you help Thor fight a bunch of maniacs her father might like you better?"

Visions of the Elrond look-alike eating his words from the year prior filling his mind, Harry allowed, "Yeah?"

"You're bringing your armor. And you're telling me everything you're going to do to keep you and Fleur safe," Pepper declared, having already skipped several plans to ground her ward for the rest of the holidays. "Let's talk about it in the car. If I like your plan, then I'll drop you near the door to the Market."

He wasn't sure how he'd done it, but he'd managed to wow her. By sunset of the 26th in LA, he was stepping through the Goblin Market into Alfheim.

It was not winter in Alfheim, at least at the exit closest to Fleur's house. Castle, really. Harry stepped into the riot of blossoms on trees that had never been seen on Earth and considered that he was probably only going to spend a few hours of his winter break anywhere it was below freezing. Was it spring near her family estates, or did Alfheim just have flowering throughout the year? Hermione would know. Regardless, it was pleasantly warm, the sun that beat down was a little too large and a little off-color, and the landscape was extremely majestic. He'd walked out of a building wall that was situated atop a massive cliff, from which he could see hundreds of mountains, waterfalls pouring into valleys and producing the hydropower that Fleur had told him was a major source of electricity on her planet.

He was vaguely aware that the planet had flatlands, but why would the ruling class live at sea level?

"Um, hey. I'm looking for Fleur Delacour. Or Maréchal?" he asked the first blindingly-beautiful elf that passed him in the morning light.

Regarding the dark-haired, glasses-wearing human in red-and-gold leather armor, the golden-haired man explained, "I don't understand most of your language, young one. You are looking for the flower of the court and the marshal?"

"Sorry, I don't think my translator was ready for French," Harry, admitted, embarrassed at probably spewing a nonsense of English at the passerby. "Yes. I'm looking for the home of the local Seelie?" He was pretty sure he'd picked the right exit from the Goblin Market.

"Yes. I understand you now. The Marshal and his family live there."

The elf was pointing even further uphill, where the storybook village surrounded a palace that was going to feature pretty heavily in Harry's D&D planning. Somehow he was willing to bet that it wasn't nearly as illusory as the Alfheim lodgings at the tournament the previous year. It was huge. "Thank you very much," he told the bystander, then started for the dwelling.

He realized he probably could have just looked for a castle and went there. Did his not-girlfriend really live in a palace that might have similar square footage to Stark Tower? Was it weird that he was intimidated even though he arguably lived in Stark Tower?

A human in brightly-colored armor drew looks from the populace. Gawking himself, Harry felt like he was in one of the many fantasy RPGs that didn't bother to make any NPC models that weren't very attractive, or like he was in a Hollywood production of a medieval village. Even the meanest of elf had enough illusory magic to improve themselves cosmetically. It was like walking through a historical area of Paris during fashion week. The least attractive member of the peasantry would have still been a 9 in LA. But Harry was too nervous to be self-conscious about being the ugliest person for miles.

He was nervous because Fleur hadn't been totally clear in her letter whether her parents knew he was coming.

It didn't take that long to get to the guardhouse at the gates to the castle. The town was very walkable. "Hi. Uh, I'm Harry. The Flower of the Court invited me?"

The supermodel guard looked at the teen in front of him with an appraising eye and then picked up a device that was almost certainly a radio. Had they evolved the tech differently, or just stolen it from Earth and changed the aesthetic? "Gatehouse One. I have a young man here. Black hair. Glasses. Lightning-bolt scar. Red-and-gold armor. Says his name is Harry and he's expected."

"Send him in," the radio squawked back, after several worrying seconds.

"Thanks," he nodded at the guard as the gates parted enough for him to pass through.

Did it make sense to have a hundred-yard driveway in a fantasy society? To be fair, Harry was pretty sure that Alfheim had technology higher than that of Vanaheim and different than Asgard. He hadn't seen any automobiles in the town, but maybe some people had them? Even having lived in it for the past five years, it was hard to truly expectations-set in the Nine Realms. Maybe he should have taken the cultural studies class. But it was a little weird walking unaccompanied up a drive at what could have been a take on Versailles if it had been a functional castle into the modern era.

The topiaries of fantastic beasts bordering the brickwork driveway were well-sculpted.

"'arry!" Fleur called out, skipping out from one of the castle doors into the courtyard. Even in her silvery battle mail (especially in it, if he was being honest) she was one of the hottest people he'd ever seen. It had been a few months since they'd last been together, and it had been in the darkened halls of Asgard. It was easy to forget how radiant she was. Her armor and white-golden hair shining in the mountain sunlight of her homeworld, she was like something out of a particularly tasteful Frank Frazetta or Boris Vallejo painting: all smooth curves, saturated colors, and specular highlights. "I'm so glad you could make it!"

As she glomped him in a surprisingly-forward hug, he believed it. Their empathic connection had gotten powerful enough that it was working even through two sets of magical armor, or maybe just due to the sudden proximity of their faces, cerulean eyes gazing deep into viridian ones. She wasn't just glad that he'd made it, she was thrilled, and had missed him the months apart. All he could do was grin stupidly and assume that she was getting the same from him. She mirrored his dumb smile, though it looked beautiful on her.

The moment was spoiled by the sound of someone else opening the door she'd exited, and Fleur quickly pulled away, putting her arms demurely behind her back and standing to something like attention, but not moving too far from Harry. An elven man that he didn't recognize had exited. Wearing something like a wild mullet not too dissimilar from Jareth in Labyrinth, and pulling it off just as well, the blond man's elven armor was crafted to resemble leaves, and enameled in a variety of greens that likely served as forest camouflage. He toted an elegantly-sculpted longbow that likely had a tremendous draw weight. "Ah, Flower. This is the Boy-Who-Lived?"

"Yes, God's Burden," Fleur said, and Harry finally realized they were both still speaking the Alfheim variant of French, his implant translating and adding the consonants Fleur usually dropped in English. Somewhere in the back of his head, he realized that the man's name was actually Faradei, but he was getting the translation just as he was hearing her name as "Flower." She finished, "He came at my request to help with the marauders."

"Excellent," her battle teacher nodded, and had nocked an arrow and loosed it at Harry's chest before he'd finished the final syllable of the word.

Eyes widening, Harry had already been moving as soon as the man's hand went for his quiver, and managed to narrowly dodge the arrow, letting it skate past his left shoulder and into the turf of the courtyard as he formed an energy whip with his right hand. Possibly never having seen Midgardian magic before, Faradei didn't manage to move his bow out of the way before it was wrapped in orange light and Harry was yanking it out of his hands. The wizard was already planning out his next step, not sure whether the archer would switch to a knife or use magic.

But the elf merely gave a grim smile and stood back at ease, nodding. "I see the Flower has not oversold your competence. I will allow you to join our unit. We leave to join the Aesir soon. My bow?"

Bemusedly, Harry tossed the weapon back to him and he motioned for them to follow back into the castle. "This guy and Moody would love each other," Harry whispered to Fleur.

She laughed, recovering from her own annoyed surprise that her mentor had attacked her not-boyfriend so brazenly, and agreed, "I fear for the Nine Realms should they meet. He's started demanding 'constant vigilance' ever since I said it to him sarcastically during one of our training sessions."

Harry didn't have much time to take in the palace, simply noting that it featured the same decoration he'd seen in the Beauxbatons dwelling during the tournament: a decadent, multicolored, gravity-defying style that was only available to a race of illusionists. Fluted columns, webs of crystal, and winding spirals of luminous glass traced throughout the furnishings. The sign of wealth and taste was not having the extravagance, but making it impossibly intricate and yet still aesthetically unified.

They passed quickly into a large internal courtyard, clearly set up for martial training but currently so packed with elven warriors that any melee would be chaotic in the extreme. There wasn't enough square footage for every fighter to have their D&D-mandated five-by-five area of control. Fleur's father, dressed much like armored Elrond from the Lord of the Rings prologue, clearly flicked his eyes with slight disapproval between his daughter and Harry as they exited. But all he said was, "Be welcome in the House of War, Scion of the Potters. I regret that we cannot offer you refreshment, as you have arrived just in time to depart with us." Was there a jab in there about him being late? Should he use the Gandalf line about wizards and tardiness? "I understand you have the Midgardian skill with portals?"

He'd never really thought about how much of an advantage sling rings were even among other magical worlds. The Vanir could only use them due to the close kinship with the humans of Earth. Harry hoped he was up to the stress of holding a portal long enough for a whole echelon of armored knights with their kit. At least they weren't cavalry, expecting him to bring a bunch of horses. "If you can show me where I'm going," he said.

"Of course," Maréchal agreed, gesturing at the war table he'd been showing to his senior officers as they'd walked in. As Harry walked over, he realized that the elven skill at illusion was a huge advantage for this kind of thing, as their miniatures-scale map of the terrain was even better than Tony's holograms. A highly-realistic bird's eye view of the terrain showed where they were atop a mountain pass and where they were trying to go, at the base of the mountain. "They got close," he murmured, seeing the indicators of enemy troop positions and realizing some of them were within only about 30 miles of the stronghold.

"Indeed. Asgard assures us that they left us this long because other realms had direr need." It was clear that the man thought that if they'd left them even a few days longer, he might have been overrun.

"Right. Can I zoom in?" Harry tried spreading his fingers over the destination like he would on a map on his phone, to a few chuckles of confusion at the seemingly-magic gesture, before a senior aide demonstrated the actual gesture the elves used. That got a good enough close up of the dug-in camp where they were going that Harry could visualize it. He took a few seconds to work out the direction from where he was standing and then spun open a portal that, if he was honest, was slightly bigger than was strictly necessary.

Maybe he needed to impress Fleur's family just a little.

Fortunately, even in a brand new landscape, a portal trip of a couple-dozen miles wasn't much of a challenge after all the experience he'd had skipping between New York and LA. Confirming that the clearing looked correct, and their allies were on the other side waiting, the knights wasted no time forming up and proceeding through with haste. Harry was only going a little crosseyed with the effort of holding a portal for the time it took all of them to make it through, but was very glad to step after the last elf and let the hole in space zip closed behind him.

"Harry!" Thor's booming voice welcomed him. "Excellent! You've saved us a use of Bifrost to bring more elves." Emerging from a grand tent, the young god looked about the same as he had when Harry had seen him last in Asgard, but seemed much happier. Harry guessed it had to do with being back in his element, on campaign with his friends.

"Happy to help," the young wizard grinned, accepting Thor's armclasp and rolling with the force as the man's left hand clapped him heavily on the back. "We were sorry you couldn't make it last week. Exploding super soldiers. Their boss could breathe fire."

"Hah! You must tell me all about it, and we will tell you of the campaigns on Nornheim and Ria. We still wait for another contingent of einherjar in the morning, and scouts to confirm where the enemy is hiding, so now, we feast! Loki! Harry is here. And the elves."

"I am aware," the dark-haired prince sneered, leaning with affected nonchalance against one of the magnificent silver-barked trees that grew amidst the war camp and coming into view as they moved around Thor's tent. He had changed up his own armor to a set that wasn't quite as recognizable as what he'd worn when attacking New York: basic blacks with subtle dark greens. He looked much better than he had at his Asgardian trial, and Harry got the sense that only some of that was an illusion. "Fleur Delacour and Harry Potts. Finally, someone to talk to with more between their ears than muscles."

Despite phrasing it as a dig at Thor, his statement rang very true to Harry's empathy. "Glad you're up and about. You look well."

Fleur, however, had tensed a little at being greeted so familiarly by the god of mischief. "I'd forgotten that he was…"

"I shan't offer to take on Cedric's face to make our greeting easier," Loki said, probably glad that she'd never known the real Cedric to be sad at his death. But then he remembered what had happened between them the last time he'd worn the dead Hufflepuff's face. "I… er… I am sorry for…"

"For stealing my free will and forcing me to try to kill 'arry?"

Seeing the real harm he'd wrought in her anguish, his attempt at a disarming smile turned into a death's grimace as he said, "I never would have let you go through with it. And I wasn't in my right mind either?"

"Legally, I must accept that," she said, the confusion rolling off of her as she tried to align the knowledge that he had also been a victim with the violation he had wrought upon her mind and not even considered apologizing for in the time since. "I think I wish to speak with the Lady Sif, if she is amenable. My lord Thor, could I trouble you for an introduction?"

As she and his golden-haired brother walked off, Loki said to Harry, "It seems there are still many to whom I must make amends."

"That's like step eight of twelve, at least?" the Boy-Who-Lived offered, very familiar with the program for all the times Pepper had recommended it to Tony. "And there's some admitting-to-god stuff in there that you probably had a really easy time with. If you mean it, she'll come around."

"Did she?" Happy interrupted the story. He'd found some chips in his desk and had been happily snacking away for most of the tale.

"At least part of the way," Harry told him, thinking about it. "We were all pretty close together for five days. I don't think I should have him in the wedding party or anything, but they could at least be in the same command tent without her freaking out."

"Wedding party, huh? Things must have gone well."

"Exaggeration for effect?" Harry blushed a little, getting that Happy wasn't buying it. "I mean… we did have most of a week with her family's gods kind of treating me like their kid brother, and the vibe really shifted after the last day…"

Unlike the electricity-free planet of Vanaheim, Alfheim didn't have an insurmountable defense against technology from across the universe. What they had was illusion. The beautiful multicolored nebula that stretched across the night sky made it hard to find the planet at all, a deeply-worked set of illusions across the atmosphere disguised it as uninhabitable, and then localized illusions hid anything that invaders might want to take, be it strongholds or natural resources. But with a sufficient ground force and enough motivation, the marauders on Alfheim could start taking territory.

And, unlike on Vanaheim, they could bring their spaceships and ray guns.

It was fortunate that Thor and Harry had recent experience fighting such a horde, and Loki had up-to-date intelligence on how their leaders decided on their tactics. But it was asymmetrical warfare at its most lopsided. A loose consortium of aliens being guided by a few disaffected locals were straight out of classic sci-fi. But many of the elves had similar battle forms to Fleur that allowed them to grow wings and fly, their illusions and understanding of the terrain were a huge advantage, and even an armored gunship was just a fat target for Thor.

Nonetheless, their inevitable roll through the reinforced camps of the enemy now that they had an Aesir vanguard was a five-day slog. And with every battle they won, many of the survivors fled to regroup. By the end of December of Earth (for all that it was a lovely Spring day in Alfheim), they'd found the final redoubt they needed to crack. The aliens had dug deep into a mountain in what the elves recognized as an ancient mine, placed many emplacements of weapons, and managed to ward it against teleportation and astral projection. Something about the composition of the mountain and the magical wards even prevented Bifrost from transporting them inside.

"I don't have time for a siege," Harry complained, after returning from another astral scout around the exterior of the wards where he'd found no easy way to sneak in. "School starts back up in a few days."

"I, also, would end this quickly," Thor agreed. "Other worlds also feel the threat of marauders. But I will not leave such a fortress unconquered to spread once again."

"One entrance, unknown number of foes, but if we could get a few people inside to cause chaos…" Loki offered. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Thor lit up, "I love Delivering Prisoners!"

"Sadly," the dark-haired prince added, "the last time we used that gambit, I could carry and hide that oversized chunk of rock you so prefer. They would certainly notice you carrying such a weapon."

Maréchal, who had come by his position honestly due to his strategic acumen, frowned. "Besides Lord Thor, I would not gamble on any small group of pretend prisoners having the strength to disable the defenses from within."

Fleur glanced Harry's way, empathically recognizing that he was hesitating to speak. "'arry has an idea."

Everyone's eyes on him, he admitted, "Seems like the kind of thing that the Hulk would be great at. But I don't know where he is right now."

Thor grinned broadly again as Loki groaned, and the crown prince shouted, "Heimdall! Please send us Bruce of the Banners as soon as you can without causing an incident on Midgard."

It turned out that Asgard's gatekeeper could do that very quickly. Only a minute later, the clouds swirled to herald the beam of Bifrost. Standing very perplexed and slightly-greenish amidst the knotwork burn pattern left by the transporter on the nearby grass was Bruce Banner. He'd been in the middle of hitchhiking across some low-population area, snatched off the side of a desolate highway.

"Rem– er, Bruce!" Harry yelled and waved to both get his attention and calm him down before he got any greener at the sudden alien abduction. "Sorry we couldn't call ahead first, but we need your help!"

Staring around at the dozens of impossibly beautiful elven warriors and the goddess Sif herself, Bruce chuckled to hide his annoyance and offered, "I'm guessing you need the big guy to punch somebody?"

"He's going to love it," Harry promised, leading him over to explain the plan.

"Was there still a mountain standing?" Happy asked.

"Mostly," Harry grinned. "It went off exactly like we planned. Loki disguised himself as one of the aliens, brought Bruce in as a prisoner, and I went in with them, invisible. Er. Don't tell Aunt Pepper about that?"

"That you went into an alien dungeon with the guy that tried to take over the world seven months ago and a giant green rage monster?"

"Yeah. She's weird about that kind of thing. Anyway, I stayed out of harm's way! While Hulk was smashing I just sneaked around finding the wardstones that were keeping me from making a portal, then let the rest of the army in to clean up."

Happy was a little unconvinced. "You really stopped a whole alien invasion in a week?"

"I think there were stragglers and stuff. But we got most of their spaceships and main camps. The elves can take care of whoever's left. And hopefully anyone that still has a working spaceship will go home and tell their friends Asgard is back and they can't just try to grab anything they want on the protected worlds anymore."

"So you just got back from that? Missed New Years? I missed New Years. I was unconscious and stuck in that room you just rescued me from."

"Uh… no, we got done just in time for New Year's. Tony had a little thing for the Stark racing team over at the Avengers Tower. They let me and my friends come since there were enough chaperones, and Hermione wanted to see Viktor."

"So just you, Thomas, and Granger?"

"And Seamus and the Patils…"

"And?" Happy could tell the teen couldn't wait to spill.

"Fleur's father may have asked what I wanted for my aid on Alfheim. Elves don't like having a debt just hanging out there. And I may have suggested that his daughter's company for a New Year's celebration would be enough payment."

"Smooth. I take it that worked out?"

Harry sighed and admitted, "Yeah. I don't even think Maréchal was that mad about it. Thor had been working on him all week. Plus, Fleur was glad to get to see Viktor and everyone again."

"I bet she was. Totally just friends getting back together for a party. Where there's a bunch of European motorheads that aren't really paying that much attention to alcohol. And where you're supposed to kiss at midnight."

"I wouldn't know anything about that," Harry lied, baldly, the obviousness of the fib plain on his face.

"Good night?"

"Great night."

"Going to be able to go back to the long distance thing?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"No," Harry sighed. "But we'll figure it out. We're still not technically dating!"

"Sure you're not."

"Elves have whole ceremonies for that kind of thing. I'd know if we were officially dating. It would probably come on a gilded piece of parchment."

Happy just rolled his eyes. "Well just know that I want a gilded piece of parchment for my wedding invitation. If Loki's not in the wedding party, maybe I've got a shot."

"Um, how many groomsmen is too many?" Harry asked, suddenly counting up all his male friends. "That's forever away, anyway. Even if anything like that was going to happen. Which it isn't. We're not technically dating!"

"But the kiss was good."

"So good. I mean… what kiss? Anyway! I have to get back to Vanaheim. I'm planning to meet back with my Vanir friends and check on Mr. Weasley in the hospital before the train. Do you want to go back to your room at SHIELD?"

"Nah. I have like a hundred more emails to check up on. And I'm not going to explode. Thanks for letting me out, and catching me up on your week. It's not quite getting to keep my superpowers."

"Maybe the next time. See you!"

Harry didn't actually go straight back to Vanaheim. Between packing up, saying goodbye to Tony and Pepper, and doing some final debriefs with SHIELD about the events around Killian and Extremis, it was January 3rd on Earth before he could make his way back through the Goblin Market to get to the hospital in Diagonalt. Tom the barman was getting used to seeing him pass through: he'd had to come back after Alfheim, even though Thor had offered to let him use Bifrost, because he wasn't sure what that would do to whatever world the Market considered him "anchored" to.

Loki had laughed and promised to tell him about some of the better night roads off of Vanaheim that would keep him from being so reliant on whatever tricks the goblins had used to allow everyone to pass between realms.

Sirius, basically fully healed after his run-in with the giant lizard man, met Harry at the Market exit and guided him through the bonfire to Diagonalt. "Sorry you can't stay for more than a few hours, pup," he said as they were walking up to the hospital near the city center.

"Yeah. I need another vacation for my vacation. I barely have time to tell you about Alfheim."

"Word did get back here about that. Most important question: did you mention your old dogfather to the Lady Sif?"

Harry smirked, "No. But Nat might have mentioned you in passing. Should I tell her you've moved on to Aesir nobility?"

"Oh! I don't want to hear about Alfheim. I want to hear everything about what you were doing when Natasha mentioned me."

"Maybe after we've made sure Mr. Weasley is okay. Oh, hey, Nev. Lady Longbottom. You here to check on Mr. Weasley, too?" He'd noticed Neville and his grandmother in the hospital anteroom. With that hat, you couldn't miss the old matriarch.

"Uh, I guess we could do that," Neville hedged. "But we're here to see someone else." Harry didn't need his supernatural empathy to tell that his friend didn't feel comfortable talking about it.

"Neville Longbottom," Augusta snapped, "there's nothing to be ashamed of. Tell Harry why we're here."

"I think I worked it out, ma'am," Harry told her. He knew that his friend's parents had been tortured into insanity in the war, he just hadn't worked out that meant they were confined to a hospital until just then. And while he considered Neville one of his best friends, he got the vibe he'd be imposing to offer to go see them.

Sirius had not gotten that vibe. "Frank and Alice are here? I thought you'd keep them at the estate."

The old woman explained, "We tried for a time, but the healers recommended they'd have an easier time here, where they could receive constant support. And sometimes they'd be upset by familiar things at home that they couldn't operate the way they had once."

"Have you, uh," Harry asked, against his better judgment, "tried anything but magical healing? Thor mentioned that they have some Asgardian technology in their houses of healing. And Earth is developing new science all the time. Just last week, even, though it was experimental and dangerous. I don't want to get your hopes up or anything."

Augusta regarded Harry shrewdly, realizing that the Boy-Who-Lived likely had resources even she did not. She could tell that Neville was excited about the prospect, enough to bypass her own distaste at asking for favors from the Aesir or risking inexplicable Midgardian technology. "We can consider it," she allowed. "Perhaps over the summer, we can examine our options. Come, now, Neville. Visiting hours have begun. We'll check in on the Weasleys after."

"Yeah, see you there, Nev," Harry agreed, then walked off with Sirius to join his other friends.

The woman on Earth most likely to come up with some kind of miracle cure for the Longbottoms was, at that moment, waking up in a shipping container, bare except for a cot and some supplies, dimly lit by a battery-powered lamp. It wasn't the SHIELD cell that Maya Hansen had gone to sleep in, an unknown number of days earlier. She felt long-term sedation wearing off, and took a moment to realize that a man's shadow lurked at the other end of the metal-walled room.

"Too dangerous to leave alive, or am I going to be forced to make more Extremis?" she guessed.

"Option C," the man's voice chided, his tones tinged with a bit of the American South. "The first two are what would have happened if I left you where you were. Too many people in SHIELD can't be trusted. Think of me as your way out of the hole you'd dug yourself into. I can cut you loose, if you're going to keep your head down. Or you can help me and do science for the good guys for once."

He stepped into the dim glow of the lamp enough to make out his bald head, goatee, and badly-damaged left eye.

"You see, I'm putting together a little bit of an initiative…"


We are not off of hiatus just yet. At this point, it may not be until I get a bunch of wordcount in the buffer during November before I go back to regular posting. But we'll see how October goes, as far as maybe starting back up a little early.

No, this one is just a little bit of a present in the hopes that you'll all check out my backerkit for Shadow City Mysteries, the tabletop RPG. We're about to go into the final weekend and are fully funded, but would love to hit more stretch goals. If you're on the fence, there's a free 56-page quickstart that I did most of the writing for, and it's full of really awesome art. Even if you miss the deadline, I think it just turns into a preorder situation after the campaign ends. You can also wishlist the video game on Steam, which also helps us out!