Chapter 4

After fifteen minutes, Fury finally collected himself and asked about details concerning the Hydra agents I've dealt with and if I found any more.

I might end up giving him a stroke soon. Telling him about having taken orders for assassination from people who showed themselves just like those five he had been talking to earlier almost broke him, and he looked about ready to shoot someone.

Fury became deathly serious when he asked if I was sure,

"There were multiple times I was given my orders by people who communicated in the same way. No names, no faces. I only knew the center male's voice as "Leader" and the rest as "The Council."

Before he could ask more questions, he received a message through his ear communication from Agent Hill. He growled and got up,

"We'll continue this conversation later. We've got a situation with the team sent to capture Loki and the cube. Keep this to yourself for now. You and I are the only ones who know about this."

Hastily moving to the bridge, Agent Hill explains the situation to Fury.

Natasha had radioed in that after Captain America, herself, along with Tony Stark having showed up, captured Loki in Stuttgart, Germany, after a short altercation. 

They had been flying back with Loki and his scepter when a third party intercepted the quinjet; they argued with Stark before throwing him into the side of the jet and abducting Loki.

Hill brought up a live video feed from the quinjet showing Stark in his Iron Man suit and a muscular blonde man wearing a cape and wielding a hammer that shot out lightning, fighting and demolishing a large section of forest. Interestingly, Loki is shown just watching the fight without trying to make his escape.

Stark was putting up a good fight but still getting his ass handed to him.

Checking where they were by their GPS location, I turned to Fury,

"I'll go lend Stark a hand. Keep an eye on Loki. He looks far too comfortable just sitting there watching after being "captured," I say to him before flooding my body with power and displacing myself out of the bridge and toward their location.

Rapidly traveling miles within every second, I get to Stark in under a minute, just in time to see Captain use his red and blue shield with a large white star to get both men's attention. Ricocheting it off Blondie's hammer, diverting its path away from smashing Stark in the chest, then bouncing off Stark's face plate and returning to his hands. Both men turn to him.

"HEY! That's enough!" Captain barks out. "Now, I don't know what you plan on doing here.."

"I've come here to put an end to Loki's schemes!" The blonde answers.

"Then prove it, put that hammer down..." 

"Uh yeah, NO. Bad call, he loves his ham-" Stark doesn't get to finish as he is backhanded by Blondie's hammer to the chest.

"You want me to put the hammer DOWN?!" he charges with a jump into the air at Rogers, bringing his hammer high over his head.

Rogers ducks low and brings his shield up to guard against the incoming hammer blow... but it never arrives.

Mid jump, I halt all momentum the blonde has, locking him into place,

"I have to agree with Rogers here; in part, this has gone on long enough. Did any of you think to secure Loki so he couldn't run off before you decided to have this dick-measuring contest of yours?" I scold them.

Rogers lowers his shield and stares at the blonde frozen mid-air. Said blonde is not a happy camper. Trying his best to move, his hammer starts sparking with lightning bolts.

Stark, getting up with a grunt and a pained moan, flips up his face plate,

"Neat trick you got there, Criss Angel. Could have used that earlier."

Ignoring Stark's sass for a moment, I look toward the blonde,

"If you promise to cease fighting, I'll let you go," I say to him, getting his attention.

He glares at me for a few moments before nodding his head.

Now that is dealt with, I turn my focus on Loki. He's still sitting on the cliff edge, looking down at us. But that perpetual smirk of his has been replaced by a scowl as he stares at me.

Natasha brings the quinjet down and lands in the clearing their fight created for all of us to load up and head back to the carrier. 

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I can only shake my head. The blonde introduced himself as THE Thor Odinson, the Norse god of thunder, and has come to take his brother, Loki, back to Asgard to face justice for his crimes.

The entire way back, Loki had remained quiet and pouty. He had put up no fight as he was led to an advanced prison cell on the lower levels of the carrier.

Fury had personally seen him sealed inside and bantered with Loki as the Captain, Natasha, Bruce, Thor, and I watched through a screen projected through a large table at the back of the bridge.

Bruce seemed more agitated after having seen the cell through the screen. I learned why soon after Stark walked into the room with Agent Coulson.

Stark started playing around with the display screens where Fury usually stood when commanding the bridge. After having fun, he explained why Loki had stolen the Iridium from Stuttgart.

Some complicated science about breaching the cube's barrier or something later,

"If that were true, he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any nuclear reactor on the planet," Bruce says

"Finally. Someone who speaks English." Stark says.

"Is that what just happened?" Rogers questions, causing me to snort in amusement,

"Don't worry, Captain, you're not the only one lost there."

Shaking Bruce's hand, Stark goes on,

"Doctor Banner, your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled... I'm also a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

So that's what it is. All that rage inside him. A real-life Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. I remember seeing news reports worldwide about a green monster sporadically decimating cities and towns a few years back.

"... Thanks," is all Bruce says awkwardly.

Fury walks in,

"Doctor Banner is only here to find the cube; I was hoping you might join him, Stark."

Rogers chimes in,

"I'd start with that stick of his. It might be magical, but it works an awful lot like a Hydra weapon."

This catches my attention. If Hydra does have something like that, I need to look into what it is. Nothing I've seen from Hydra was anything "magical," but there could be other secret weapons stored away somewhere.

Fury barely glances at me as he speaks again,

"I don't know about that, but I would like to find out how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

Learning that mind control was involved as well only cemented the fact I need to be able to deal with that scepter if only to break the power it has on others. I know from personal experience what it feels like to have your will forcibly supplanted by another's.

Our little "meeting" breaks up with Stark and Banner heading to their lab to begin studying the scepter and tracking the cube. 

Fury stops me as I'm about to leave, heading for their lab myself, letting me know we will talk in-depth after this whole situation is over and done with.

___________________________

Heading down the corridor, I'm trying to puzzle out why Loki is acting so comfortable here, almost like it's a game to him. As I turn the corner toward the elevators down to Banner's lab, I'm brought up short by Natasha, leaning against the wall in front of the elevator in her skin-tight catsuit.

She was waiting for me, it seems. When she saw me, she pushed off the wall and watched me as I headed toward the elevator.

"Did you need something from me?" I ask her, taking in her side profile as we enter the elevator.

Out of all the emotions I've had to work through and control over these four years, lust and anger seem to keep popping up far more than the rest.

"I wanted to speak to you about your healing ability again. After witnessing you stop Thor with little effort, I remembered our conversation... can you return something lost? Something taken out of the body?"

In the short time I've known Natasha, I've never seen her this... vulnerable. Her arms crossed just under her breasts in a self-soothing gesture, her stance rigid, her eyes almost burrowing into me, looking for any hint of mistruth.

Staring right back into her eyes, not looking away, I try to assuage her,

"Yes, I've done so before. What you need to understand about my ability is that it's not "healing" per se,"

Her face takes a colder look as her eyes squint at me,

"It's not healing cell by cell in the body, creating something new. But changing the very state of the body. If your hand were broken, I wouldn't mend the bones back together. I would make the bones so they never broke in the first place. Something that was removed would be there as if it wasn't,"

The shock on her face told me she had underestimated what I could do and wasn't holding out much hope, but I started to see it grow rapidly in her eyes.

As she was about to ask me something further, the elevator stopped, and the doors opened to the floor for Banner's lab. 

She quickly composed herself and nodded,

"I'm going to see if Loki will let slip any information on what he is after here... I want to ask you to try and help me after this is over. It's important to me,"

"I'd be happy to, Romanoff," I agreed.

"Natasha, you can call me Natasha," she smiled back. 

Wow, that's a smile I want to see more often.

Before I could respond from my daze, the doors shut as it went further into the ship.