Chapter Text
“So, what, are you a mutant or something?”
Loki peered closely at the set of documents that were arranged on a table in an underground bunker in Northern Russia. Carrying out a world invasion was a job that required a lot of paperwork, apparently. In hindsight, the agents that he had chosen in that badly-lit science facility in New Mexico were not exactly the stern-faced secret agent men he had heard about in the legends of Midgard. There was the Swedish astrophysicist Erik Selvig, a man fast leaving middle age. There was the archetypical post-retirement spy brought back for one last job, Bob Barnes, a CIA agent with greying hair and a crumpled cream jacket. And there was Clinton Barton , the erstwhile Hawkeye, who was the individual persistently asking Loki inane questions.
“With the X-gene and everything ? Puberty bringing zits and fire out of your eyes?”
Erik Selvig had taken to the Mind Stone with all of the fanaticism of a cult member and none of the personal charm. Loki could see him now, spouting some nonsense about his mind opening up. The Mind Stone affected everyone in different ways, and apparently the revelation that there was so much beyond the realm of science had damaged him greatly. Selvig had delegated himself to opening a wormhole from Earth to Sanctuary.
“No, don’t tell me- it’s radiation. Outer space radiation. Or gamma rays, atom bombs and everything.”
To Loki’s surprise, a decent amount of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents he’d brainwashed had been drafted in from other spy agencies. There were spies from MI6, MI7 , MI9 , CI5 , the IMF , Section R , CURE , CONTROL , and two different factions of the U.N. called UNIT and UNCLE . It was a regular alphabet soup of a crew. He was particularly impressed by Agent Ecks , a black-clothed spy who went by only an initial. The secret agent had explained that it saved time signing papers.
“Is it the armour? That helmet sends out an electromagnetic pulse that looks like green light, maybe?”
One consultant for S.H.I.E.L.D., Robert Langdon , was a self-proclaimed ‘symbologist’ brought in to comment on the historical/mythical side of the Tesseract. Apparently, the object had been found by lots of different cultures throughout human history, showing up in different mythologies. Langdon had, in a burst of frenetic exposition to Loki, been able to link the Tesseract with the Stone of Giramphiel , the Silmarillion , a house built by Quintus Teal in the forties , and the Weirdstone of Brisingamen , even though the latter was still in Loki’s rooms in Asgard. Privately, the Norse god did not believe that ‘symbologist’ was a real profession.
“My money’s on a scientific experiment gone wrong, really. Come on, boss, I bet you were injected with some form of serum, weren’t you?”
Clint Barton was a fascinating subject, and Loki had enjoyed peeling through his various aliases like the layers of an onion. He had fulfilled every schoolboy’s dream by running away to join the circus at the age of six; ten years at Les Cirque des Reves had provided him with a keen eye, a steady hand and an unusual aptitude at the trapeze, although the latter did not serve him very well in his life as a secret agent. After a while, Barton had entered the world of espionage, working for the Department of Defence’s black ops squad under the name Aaron Cross, and directing field operations for the IMF as William Brandt, before being snapped up by SHIELD. Spying did not normally allow much time for romance, regardless of what the films tell you, so Loki was surprised to glean that the archer had a wife, Laura Weir, and several children.
“I’ve got it. You’re one of an advanced alien race that everyone thought were Gods, right? Yeah, I feel ya, I read Erich von Däniken in college too.”
Loki turned around violently, losing the edge of his temper. A plate on a nearby table smashed telekinetically into the wall.
“ No, Agent Barton, I am not a mutant,” Loki snarled. “I am not an alien with superior technology, or a time traveller from the future, or someone who was bitten by a radioactive spider. Nor am I a scientist who was bombarded by cosmic rays, or a stuntman who sold his soul to the devil. I am a God, Agent Barton, the Norse God of Mischief and Chaos, so I suggest you spend some time to consider how the existence of deities affects your view of yourself and your place in the world, before shutting up and doing what I say.”
Clint Barton looked surly for a moment, before muttering a quiet “I was just asking….” and slouching into a corner. Loki was quietly furious that the Mind Stone didn’t induce the blank-eyed obedience he had been expecting. He could certainly do without all this talking back. Still, he had a job to do. He had no room for these distractions.
His plan was a complex one, but like all best plans the kernel of it was simple. Thanos was approaching with his Chitauri army, but Loki could dictate where and how this army could arrive. Therefore, if he bottlenecked the invasion, forcing it through a narrow portal above the most defended Midgard citadel, he could slow the incoming force to a crawl, allowing him to deal with each soldier or ship individually rather than the entire might of the army at once. All he then had to do was muster the might of Midgard, mobilising their own interdimensional army and take the fight to them. This was while he had to resist the invasive scrutiny of Kl’rt, the Other, who would ruthlessly interrogate the holes in whatever plan he had, and prevent any direct rebellion of Thanos. His mind was already burning with a migraine in attempting to shield his inner thoughts from the alien. As long as the weapons capability of Midgard was capable of driving off Thanos, he would be able to escape with two of the Infinity Stones, allowing him to retreat and regroup in the safety of Asgard.
In this, however, he had made one small but fatal mistake.
“So, Agent Barton,” began Loki, tapping on a device that he had been reliably informed was a ‘StarkPhone’. “What defences does the Earth have against alien invasion?”
There was a pregnant pause, nine months of it.
"Aliens are real?" asked Robert Langdon
Loki groaned, nursing away a migraine. "Fine. Show of hands. How many of you knew about the existence of extraterrestrial life?"
Ecks, Selvig and Barton raised their hands.
" Before my brother's ill-conceived weekend jaunt?"
Selvig and Barton lowered their hands.
Agent Ecks, who had hitherto been rather silent, spoke up. “I represent a covert agency known as the Men in Black who keep the knowledge of aliens suppressed from the general public. It’s our role to quietly integrate any alien refugees into society so that they don’t cause widespread alarm.”
The whole story soon came out. The only defence against alien invasion, it seems, was a secretive society that mopped up any solitary aliens that entered the atmosphere. It had a small sister organisation in Cardiff named Torchwood; both were purely defensive, having no military capabilities whatsoever. If Loki was going to muster up a defence against Thanos’ forces with what meagre armies Midgard possessed, he was going to have to look elsewhere.
Aliens had been to Earth, yes, but it was the scant refugees of cosmic wars, shipwrecked in rural American corn fields like an intergalactic Ellis Island. There was the Kree-Skrull War of the 1990s, which had seen a brief skirmish within the planet’s orbit, and a few odd incidents of crop circles and little green men in the 1950s. But Earth had not been visited enough to create a solid defence force, just people like Agent Ecks who policed the scant few Martian or Selenite immigrants. A New York filled with illegal aliens.
The upside of this was that Earth- Midgard- was a culture that had only built weapons for terrestrial threats. An invasion? A true galactic siege, such as the type fought by Asgard in the golden age of Bor? Midgard was a mere babe swaddled in its nursing cloth.
“Norns,” said Loki. “We’re doomed.”
Barton, meanwhile, was an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., the organisation that seemed to be Loki’s best bet of something approaching planetary defence. They were a spy organisation, but one that preferred the showier elements of the spotlight than the shadowy dealings in the dark. From Barton’s recounting, the average mission ended in explosions and mayhem, rather than the cloak and dagger methods Loki personally preferred. The man they called Hawkeye went into deep anecdotal detail about how he and a Russian agent was able to track arms trafficker Richard Roper to Budapest and blow up the building he was staying in, providing the story with little encouragement from anyone around him. The whole thing seemed faintly tiresome to the God of Mischief.
S.H.I.E.L.D., however, seemed to be his best bet. It defined itself as the Earth’s line of defence, and whispers and reached Barton- and even Agent Ecks, who was only tangentially related to the organisation- that a program to assemble exceptional individuals was in its opening stages. Barton himself was a member of this initiative, although Loki was somewhat concerned about how someone wielding as archaic a weapon as a bow (that had been superseded by guns centuries ago) could do against an alien invasion. Romanoff, the Russian agent whose mission in Budapest Barton waxed lyrical about, was also shortlisted. Banner and Rogers were, apparently, both victims of varying level of radioactive scientific experimentation, with one turning into a Midgard approximation of a berserker rage and the other having a great deal of strength and some form of immortality, if his survival for seventy years under the ice was anything to go by. The last member, and someone whose personality was apparently abrasive enough that he was almost refused membership, was Stark, who had engineered a piece of semi-sentient armour. All in all, it was a motley crew, and not the great defensive force Loki had hoped for when he brought the battle to this backwater planet in the outer spiral arm of the Milky Way.
To make matters worse, however, Loki had been later approached by Bob McGraw , a British S.H.I.E.L.D. spy who introduced himself as “Bob, Agent of Hydra”, who claimed that the organisation had been infiltrated by a Nazi organisation that had been believed to be terminated some seventy years before. Bob was very blase about working for an evil organisation, saying that the pay was good and that it “came with a good dental plan”. He had been going to join up as one of the supervillain Calendar Man’s goons, but apparently you could declare being a Hydra employee on your tax returns. Loki decided that he didn’t have the time nor the inclination to fix their little Nazi infestation, but it did mean that he couldn’t leave the formation of a superhero team in their hands.
Loki’s plans had rested on the assumption that Midgard’s heroic defences would be in the hands of heroic, good people. Hydra was a wild card. He needed Earth to wipe out Thanos’ armies; apparently, Hydra had a propensity to try to ally with villainous causes. No, if his plan had any chance of working, he was going to have to get his hands dirty.
He was going to have to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. himself.
In some respects, Nick Fury and the God of Mischief were creatures of the same instinct. Both were cold figures, manipulators who had positions of authority that balked at authority being forced on them. They were the spiders in the webs, the whispers in the ears of enemy soldiers. They also enjoyed theatrical demonstrations in front of a crowd to the tactics typically used by their professions. Some people might argue that a covert spy organisation had little use for a massive flying helicarrier. Nick Fury had little use for such people. They lacked imagination. He looked up from his computer as Agent Phil Coulson walked in, eyepatch deeply interfering with his depth perception.
“Coulson,” barked Fury. “Come in and close the door.”
The Agent did so, his normally bright face marked with lines of worry. He had two folders under his arm, one with the phrase ‘Avengers Initiative’ emblazoned in dark-blue ink on it, and the other only with the name ‘Loki’ on it. One folder, Fury couldn’t help but notice, was significantly larger than the other. Coulson placed the thinner of the two onto his desk.
The ‘Loki’ file consisted of the scant pictures that they had been able to scrounge from the Dark Energy Facility in Nevada, an incident report of the events with Thor in New Mexico, and several pages of speculation from some of S.H.I.E.L.D’s agents. Fury paged through this dispassionately.
“Summarise this for me, Coulson,” ordered Fury.
“We don’t know if the one claiming to be Loki is the same one from the Norse Myths,” said Coulson. “We’re working under the assumption that he’s claiming the name as some form of intimidation factor. We’ve cross-referenced with the Air Force operations team SG-1, who say that an alien from the planet Orilla called himself Loki, which might have been a match had it not been for their vastly different appearances.”
“And the rest of it?”
“An overview of any entity calling themselves Loki or a variant of such over the past fifty years, sir.”
Fury had to grudgingly admit that Coulson’s work had been quick and comprehensive. The timeline began in 1975, with a child who encountered an entity called Luke in England; nothing more was noted until 1994, a mask allegedly cursed by Loki caused a bank clerk to go mad. Going into the twenty-first century, the sightings picked up. In 1999, a detective agency in Japan was founded by an individual naming himself after the Norse God; in 2001, a certain “Low Key Lyesmith” was sighted in America, while his name was attached to strange manifestations in a Ohio college campus in 2007. Only last year, a man called Bran Gardiner had infiltrated a coven of witches on Long Island claiming to be the Norse God of Mischief.
Fury sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “So, in other words, we don’t have anything except guesswork and ancient myths?”
“No, sir,” said Coulson.
Fury grunted and gestured at the other folder. “Who do we have in the Avengers Initiative?”he asked. Coulson handed him the file, and he started to flick through it.
“Half of them are loose cannons,” said Coulson, “but they’re the best we can get since Barton’s compromised.”
At the top was the obvious choice of SHIELD agent Natasha Romanoff, the Russian spy who had defected from the KGB half a decade ago. Strictly speaking, she had no super powers exactly, but as a former member (or survivor) of the Soviet Red Room she could run faster, go further, and fight harder than most people Coulson knew. She was the daughter of SMERSH agent Tatiana Romanova , who had defected to MI6 during the fifties. There was a family who knew which way the political wind was blowing, and who weren’t afraid to change allegiances to stay on the right side of history.
Next was Bruce Banner, a scientist who had been in an horrific accident involving gamma radiation that manifested itself as uncontrollable expansion of his muscles, and accompanying green colouration. The resulting manifestation had been called ‘the Hulk’ by the local newspapers. Banner would only transform into this beast when he became angry; it therefore baffled Fury that he would choose the Indian port city of Calcutta, where the areas of economic poverty would drive anybody to rage. On paper, Fury needed Banner for his ability to track gamma radiation. In actuality, this was only an excuse. Scientists were ten a penny, but not everybody had the muscle power to wreck downtown Harlem.
The file was below this was World War Two propaganda figure and living legend Steve Rogers, alias Captain America. In this folder, Coulson had abandoned his usual professional writing in favour of gushing about obscure trivia. One page was devoted to a review of his complete set of Captain America trading cards.
At the bottom was someone who was only tentatively suggested. In neat typewritten font were the words ‘Iron Man Yes, Tony Stark Not Recommended’. Fury had met Stark several times, and the two had clashed severely. The truth was, Stark had intimidating amounts of political power, making him a figure that probably rivalled the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. himself. If Stark went rogue, they would have precious little power to stop him. Iron Man was dangerous in a fight, but it was Tony Stark who was the true threat.
“There is an alternative,” said Coulson. “A candidate I did not put on file. I know you don’t like a paper trail.”
“You mean…?”
“I think we need extra firepower, sir,” said Coulson. He nodded at the desk drawer, which Fury opened to reveal a now obsolete pager that he had received many years ago. Nick Fury sighed, and gave a light chuckle, memories flooding back.
“I suppose it’s time. You know, Coulson, Captain Danvers gave me this in trust. For when we ever needed assistance, when we were truly in danger, she would come. Heaven knows there have been times in the past seventeen years where I’ve been tempted. Christ, I’ve been tempted. But she has her job and I have mine, and nothing has ever crossed Earth that has needed her presence. Not until now.”
He took a moment to examine the pager, turning the outdated technology over in his hands.
“It was in respect for her that we named the Avengers Initiative what we did. For her sacrifice- and it was a sacrifice, throwing away a life on Earth to protect a refugee race.”
Coulson smiled. “I know, sir. I was there.”
“Of course you were,” said Fury. He seemed lost in memories, but he shook himself and the ruthless spymaster was back. “Still, we need all the help we can get. And I’m sure that no upstart Asgardian prince can match Captain Marvel at her full strength.”
With an air of ceremony, Fury activated the pager. There were a few solitary analogue beeps, and then a message flashed on the screen.
‘OUT OF BATTERY’
Both Fury and Coulson froze, looking at the item with blank incomprehension and mounting anger. With a voice that trembled with suppressed rage, Nick Fury turned to his associate.
“How long will it take to charge a 1995 pager battery, Coulson?”
The Agent had already taken his phone out and was tapping away at it. After a moment he resurfaced. “They’re no longer commercially available, sir. I can order one in, but it will take--” more taps ensued-- “--up to three weeks.”
There was another moment of silence. Then, at a volume that could be heard throughout the helicarrier, a single word:
“MOTHERFUCKER!”
Back in the ill-equipped joint laboratory and abandoned warehouse that Loki had made his base, the God of Chaos and his assembled brainwashed compatriots were mulling over the minutiae of his plan.
“Now, Barton, I want you to hack into the terminal and infect him with the virus that Ecks has devised. That should temporarily short out the power.”
“Can I shoot the virus in with an arrow?” asked Barton, turning pleading eyes to Loki.
“What? No,” said Loki. “That’s not how viruses are transmitted.”
“ Please?” asked Barton. “Arrows are kind of my thing. I have a special one here perfect for this situation.”
Loki decided discretion was the better half of valour. “Fine, if you must,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “With that, I will be able to escape, and reconvene with you at the agreed meeting place.”
There was a chorus of assenting nods.
“Good,” Loki continued. “Now, Ecks and Langdon. Will you be able to access Stark’s tower?”
“The MiB have tools that should be able to short out Stark’s AI for a short time,” said Ecks, explaining what his skill set was.
“I’m good at running and expositing art history,” said Langdon, glad to be involved.
Ecks rolled his eyes. “With the AI removed, we should be able to disguise ourselves as Stark Industry employees and enter the building. With that, we can help Selvig set up the machine that generates the portal.”
Erik Selvig gave a wide grin, eyes glazed with madness. Again, Loki somewhat regretted the damage the Mind Stone had on the scientist. “I have completed my work on the Tesseract, and can now succeed in opening the gateway between worlds. It’s beautiful, sir. There are so many colours, and the stars!-- Oh, the stars!”
The madness of Erik Selvig was perhaps due to the sad necessity of giving two contradictory instructions to the man; one an instruction that the Other would see, if he tried to investigate, and the second a small codicil hidden inside it. Using the Mind Stone was simultaneously easier and harder than Loki’s typical methods of persuading people. It was the equivalent of the difference between using a hammer and a tweezer. It was relatively straightforward to bash Selvig’s thoughts into shape, turning him into a raving maniac that was devoted to one simple cause. It was considerably harder to loosen the Mind Stone’s hold on his brain long enough to nudge it into contemplating light rebellion. Be careful how you structure this, he whispered into Selvig’s mind. Put in a failsafe. Make sure that you can stop the portal. Hopefully, the nascent heroes could follow the trail of breadcrumbs he had placed if things went wrong, if they were not able to retaliate properly. Wheels within wheels. It was always best to weave a get-out clause into any spell, a means to break the curse being essential in high-level enchantment.
“Now,” said Loki. “What precisely do you need to complete this portal?”
Selvig contemplated for a second. “Iridium,” he said, eventually. “Iridium is the only substance that can crack open the tesseract.”
“Very well,” said Loki. “We shall pursue that goal after we are finished here. And a theft will draw the attention of S.H.I.E.L.D, which will be advantageous for our other plans. Dismissed.”
The group dispersed, bustling off like worker ants. Loki perched on his seat, remaining behind for a few scant moments of peace. If only he had the time to think….
THERE SHOULD BE NO TIME TO THINK, came a voice, telepathically transmitted from light years away. ARE YOU DOING WHAT I COMMAND, LOKI, OR ARE YOU DISOBEYING ME? THERE WILL BE A RECKONING IF YOU DO NOT DO YOUR DUTY.
As Loki was sitting there, sceptre clutched in hand, his heart dropped as the world melted around him, disappearing into hazy smoke, and the inky blackness of the Sanctuary came into being. The Mind Stone went both ways, it seemed. His head began to ache with a terrible migraine as his thoughts were shifted and distorted against his will. Sometimes he wondered if he was always in that hideous wasteland of asteroids and spacedust, and his escape onto Midgard was nothing more than a fevered dream.
“Kl’rt,” acknowledged Loki, as the deformed Skrull materialised before him. His face was guarded between a sparse metal mask, and the God momentarily wondered if all that was keeping him together was strips of iron. “Or do you prefer ‘the Other’?”
“You jeer and lash out like the child-prince you are,” rasped the alien. “You know that I go by the name ‘the Other’. It is a title, bestowed upon me by Lord Thanos itself. In your tongue, I am better known as ‘ That-Which-Is-Not-Of-This-Realm’.”
It was true that the syllables of Kl’rt had a lot more depth and nuance that his title portrayed. The All-Speak was effective, but it did result in small issues in translation.
“Very well, Other,” replied Loki. “May I ask why you have deigned to interrupt my work? Our Lord Thanos grows weary when the tasks are not complete, and I wonder what his reaction would be to your disruption to this goal.”
“You challenge me,” said the Other, “but it is you who are the true traitor in Thanos’ forces, the true worm at his side.”
He sent a wave of psychic pain at Loki, causing the Norse God to collapse into a heap of moaning agony.
“The Chitauri chitter and grow restless,” continued the Other. “They hunger for the blood of their enemy, as do I.”
“They shall have it. Glorious battle shall emerge, the like never before seen,” said Loki, getting to his feet. He was speaking the truth, but he did not specify which side of the war he would be fighting for.
“The War shall come. But what of your other task? What of that face of the infinity stone, the Tesseract?”
Loki allowed himself a smirk. “Never fear. I shall bring you your trinket.” He was interrupted by the Other’s animalistic snarl.
“If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us, there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he can't find you,” the Other rasped . His six-fingered hand, the result of countless unpleasant hours of surgery, rested on Loki’s shoulder. “You think you know pain? He will make you long for something as sweet as pain.”
With that, the Other and the strange astral projection of the Sanctuary dissipated from his vision, and Loki was left tired and shaken back in Midgard. He breathed out harshly, his head dizzy and throbbing with a biting pain.
He checked the clock on the wall. Apparently, half an hour had passed.
Loki did what he often did after a dreadful case of astral projection, and buried himself in plotting and planning. It was necessary that he seize iridium from the gala in Stuttgart, and conclude by overseeing S.H.I.E.L.D. 's battle plans by getting captured by them.
There was a time for subtlety in every plan. Mostly, back in Asgard, Loki or occasionally Magnir would be the ones sneaking around and stealing precious artefacts while Thor and the Warriors Three would cause a riot in the nearest mead hall. It was refreshing to be the dumb muscle for a change. He was doing this for three reasons: first, because he was the hardiest of the little coterie he had brainwashed; second, because he was the only one who could carry off a Saville Row suit, as Barton’s own dress sense defaulted to 1980s disco neon; and third, because he had to get captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents for his plan to work.
Loki had realised, to his chagrin, that he needed to be as close to the nascent Avengers as possible in order to actually get them working. They seemed broadly incapable by themselves. Stark had brains, true, but Rogers was stuck seventy years in the past. Of all of the group, the only one who could give much of a fight to the Chitauri was Banner’s inner self, who had the intelligence of a Yorkshire terrier. As such, it was up to Loki to micromanage the formation of the team.
They had chosen the German city of Stuttgart to get the Iridium, as opposed to the stockpiles in Morphopolis or Kôr because it would incite the good Captain Rogers into action. Langdon, who was skilled at connecting disparate cultural elements, told Loki that as Rogers, from his perspective, had been fighting less than a month before, the presence of his old German enemy would be like a red rag to a bull. Loki entered the party, making sure to angle his face so that the security camera hiding in the shrubbery caught his best side.
The gala at Stuttgart was, as Loki understood, to celebrate a museum opening that commemorated the work of Heinrich Schafer, the keynote speaker. It was his eyes that would open the electronic lock that provided access to the all-important iridium.
He made his way through the crowd, looking around at the tittering socialites. He intercepted a waiter, grabbing two champagne glasses and draining one. Normally, he would approach this situation subtly, drawing Schafer into a corner in the guise of a beautiful man (or woman, depending on taste). In this scenario, he needed to be noticed. He needed to draw the Avengers, to get a glimpse of their capabilities.
“So what do you think of Schafer’s work in the field of inorganic chemistry?” asked Sattler , a blandly attractive blonde sidling up to him.
“Gods are real, aliens exist, and your realm was colonised by ice giants several thousand years ago,” said Loki flatly. He pressed a champagne glass into her stunned hand. “Would you hold this? I have somewhere to be.”
He waited until the violins started playing before swaggering out, suit crisp and scarf perfectly matched. It was theatrical to the point of foolish to throw Schafer onto a decorative altar, yanking his head back and scanning his eye with the strange technology Ecks had provided. But this distraction was the actual essence of the plan. An invasion taken in the shadows would succeed before anyone could notice it happening; he must drag Thanos’ plans and expose them to the sun, where they would wither and fail. The whole dramatic episode- the interruption of a gala, the reconstruction of the image of a dictator in a German city- was all bait to tempt Captain America and his band of heroes. He must test their mettle in the field of battle, and hope that they could withstand the oncoming invasion.
The battle between the God of Mischief and the Star-Spangled Man was more of a spar than a fully-formed fight. Loki was keen to test the man, probing his defences and observing his attacks. He attempted to over-extend his arm in a swing of his staff, realising with disappointment that Rogers missed the clear gap in his defence, preferring instead to retreat. The Captain lacked the ruthless fighting instinct that marked the best warriors, it seemed.
It was as Loki was fighting the good Captain, beating him aside with long swings of the sceptre, almost balletic in his combat, that he realised that Midgard’s defences were not enough. Captain America was stronger than most Midgardians, it was true, but his movements had an edge of sluggishness about them, his reflexes dulled from the years stuck in the ice. If Loki cast out his senses, he can vaguely foretell the slowed, frozen parts of his blood. Loki had given him several openings in the fight, but he was a brawler, relying on his shield overmuch as a form of offense as well as defence. His style was defensive, relying on redirecting his enemy’s attacks. Against an army of Chitauri soldiers? The Captain would be quickly overwhelmed.
Loki’s musings- and his bouts with the Captain- was interrupted by the arrival of Stark, who called him ‘Reindeer Games’ in some vapid reference to Midgardian media and forced him into a S.H.I.E.L.D. distributed quinjet. He was grateful for his ensuing capture, however; it was fully according to his plan, but it also gave him an opportunity to realise something that had been building for several hours now. As they were, the Avengers would not be strong enough to resist against Thanos, much less return the fight to him. This was bad. This was potentially a disaster.
There was only one remaining gambit that Loki could do.
He did what so many helpless Midgardians had done over the centuries.
He clasped his hands together and prayed.
He allowed the cloak of seidr he had clasped around himself to dissipate, the one that had shielded him from so long from Heimdall’s vision. Suddenly, he was visible throughout the Nine Realms, his magical imprint shining out into the shadows of space. He looked to the skies, and sent the religious message he had up towards the Gods in the heavens.
Hello, Heimdall, came the message. Long time no see. Did you miss me?
Even at such a distance he could picture the Watcher’s mixed confusion and alarm as he received word from the presumed-dead prince. It tasted delicious.
Tell the All-Father that this realm is going to be invaded. Tell him I am coming with armies of up to a thousand fold, set to rain down terror and fear. Tell him to send reinforcements to it, in accordance with the ancient treaty of Bor.
And then, quieter:
Tell him to send Thor.