"L-Loki?" Sigyn stuttered, shocked to find her fiancé with her mortal nemesis.

"Oh, evening there, S- your Highness! Hope you don't mind me just passing through. I believe you're blocking my seat?"

"The throne's not yours. It will never be!" Frigga declared with a puffed chest.

"Won't it? When I'm wed to the prince of Asgard?"

"You've got the wrong one." Sif motioned.

"Would you rather I have the right one, Sif?"

"You can try, bitch." Sif replied, her sword at the ready.

"See, Loki?" Lorelei sweetly turned to Loki, enticing him. "They have no respect for you. Wasting your potential while they hand their realm to a complete buffoon. Show them what you are."

Loki smirked and with a whirl of his hand, a dozen more soldiers beamed up into the room and Sif led the Valkyrie into battle again.

Lorelei proudly marched through the chaos like nothing was happening, but was met by Frigga's blade.

"Your plan is flawed, Lorelei. You will not have Asgard!"

Lorelei casually stepped back and wished a blade in her hand.

"Is it, really? Well my men are searching for his Sleepiness as we speak, and have full orders to kill on sight."

Sigyn, listening to their conversation nearby, took notice of her words and caught Loki heading towards Odin's chamber and snuck after him.

"And as far as your first born goes, whenever he does make the decision to come rescue his family, he'll be met by me."

"I'll have your neck before then!" The ever graceful queen threatened and engaged Lorelei into battle.

Being family, of course Loki knew exactly where his father was kept during his powerful naps. Hence he powerfully marched through the hall cleared of guards, and burst through the door, only to find it bare.

"He was moved," he scoffed to the floor, recognizing his tail.

"Contingency plan. Of course he was. You don't suppose we'd lay him out for anyone to kill?"

Loki chucked knowingly and turned.

"Heimdall."

"Stop it, love!" Sigyn begged, daring to come close.

"Break out of it, you are Loki, sorcerer supreme. Snap out of it! You don't think I know? You want the throne with or without Lorelei. You forget that you already have one, with me!" She came close enough to cup his cheek and Loki glowered. "You will be king of Alynia!"

Loki pushed her away and turned from her.

"And how could I be happy being king of nothing! You don't know me well, Sigyn!"

"You'd have me! Our family! You once said that mattered more to you than any crown ever could! Do you not remember any of that! Do you not remember this morning?!" Her puppy dog eyes did nothing to break the spell he was under.

"Where is Odin, Sigyn?" Loki asked stiffly, unaffected by her pleas.

"You didn't answer my question."

"Your stalling won't save him from what's to come. Where is he?!" He emphasized with green flares encircling his hands.

As much as it killed her to, Sigyn wasn't slow to put up her own defenses, but she knew, as did he, that she couldn't.

"I wouldn't if you pleaded." Sigyn said bravely.

Her courage twitched when he was instantly upon her, his grasp on her waist not at all endearing.

"I won't be the one begging." With a tug, she was glued to him, her arms pinned between their chests, which he took advantage of.

With a bubbly green substance dancing between his fingers, he tapped two to her forehead, sending the green spell shooting inside her mind to retrieve her memory.

Blood trickled down her nose and his heart burned. Even under Lorelei's spell, he was unable to hurt her. He immediately let her go, and she fell to the floor.

"You are not aware. You are not important enough to know." He correctly assumed that she did not know, and walked away from her, determined to complete his orders.

"You're still there." Sigyn whispered. "Stop, Loki. Lest you regret for eternity."

"And you're strong enough to stop me?" He turned and teased.

Sigyn rested her hands on the floor, holding her head and his attention. He drew closer, interested to see what she could do. He was caught off guard when she shot a white energy beam at him, sending him flying into a column behind. The pillar cracked on impact and Loki lay in the rubble as Sigyn proudly strode his way.

"I asked you to stop." Her hair was mystically up in the air as white smoke circled her hands.

Loki only scoffed at her show of strength and got himself standing. His cunning smile only lasted a second longer before he tossed a dagger at her from thin air. Even with her eyes glazed over, Sigyn brushed the dagger aside and shot at him again, which he dodged this time. Their quarry went on for some while and the student and teacher were proved to be evenly matched, till Loki found a cruel loophole.

Having managed to be in her personal space, Loki grabbed her arms and drew her in for a kiss, stunning her to loosen the control of her powers. With her brain unable to send orders to her hands, she wasn't aware when Loki had clasped a magic binding cuff to her hands. He pulled back and smiled cunningly into her golden eyes before roughly pushing her away.

"I seem to have the inability to kill you. Lorelei must be so disappointed in me. In any form, we can't have you in her way, off you go!"

Loki whisked his hand at her and with a cloud of green smoke, Sigyn was no longer in front of him, instead locked away in a cell where magic was of no use to her. With Sigyn dealt with, Loki fumed as he stormed back to the court where the battle still raged on.

The soldiers worked to keep Frigga away from their momentary Queen as she sat watching amusedly from the steps to the throne. Loki's reentrance from behind her only distracted her for a short second, but he had fully caught her attention when Loki waved his mother away from the fight.

"What the hell are you doing?!" She groaned, strengthening her control on him.

"They'll stay out of the way. Odin's not here." He kept walking as he spoke, not startled by Lorelei's magical appearance by his side.

"Heimdall." She cursed, realizing Odin was moved.

"You'll waste your time. We'll find Thor."

"Not with his better half we won't."

With that reminder, Loki finally stopped and turned to find the Goddess of War between the battle. When she finally came in sight, he managed to throw a spell on her eyes even with the great distance between them, and Sif fell to the floor, the clanging of her sword the last sound before the battle seized momentarily.

"You killed her?"

"And have her ghost haunt me? Please, she still fights, and it will surely take her a long minute to find herself displaced."

Lorelei cunningly smiled and wrapped around his arm as they walked out the court room. They had one step out the door and the magically drafted soldiers vanished in the wind.

*************

*Punch*

There's not enough time. I've gotta pull into the water.

*punch punch*

You wont be alone.

*undercut*

She's coding!

Oh God! This guy is still alive.

The links snapped like twigs as the bag spiraled off and landed with a heavy thud. Steve undid and rewrapped the tape around his knuckles and went for another. He had gotten it over his shoulder when he sensed her presence and let the bag slip behind him. He finally sat after a long workout session.

"Stalker by trade?" He asked the shadows as his head hung between his legs.

"Assassin, agent, mercenary...by trade." The voice replied cockily and Natasha Romanov sat beside Steve.

"Natasha Romanoff."

"Steve D- Rogers." Funny how he used to catch himself saying his real last name. By now it was the other way around.

"Can't sleep?"

"Last time I did that... went for 70 years." He pushed off the bag and stood catching his breath.

"Your... sister's not in 1950s Atlantic. Medicine's gone up since your nap."

Nat scoffed as she walked beside him and Steve smiled at her.

"What?" He shielded his eyes from the daylight as they stepped out onto the deck.

"There was... There was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice."

"I'll bet you they weren't as surprised as me." Steve said smiling a second before agent Coulson joined them.

"Nat. Captain."

Captain America nodded back.

"They need you at the bridge." He addressed Nat and off she went.

"I gotta say, it's an honor to meet you, officially. I sort of met you, I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping." Steve looked down on the guy walking next to him.

Coulson caught himself.

"I mean, I was...I was present while you were unconscious from the ice." He cleared his throat. "You know, it's really, it's just a...just a huge honor to have you on board."

"That guy belong here?" Steve nodded to the squirrelly little guy who seemed very unaware of his surrounding.

"That's Dr. Bruce Banner."

"Same guy trying to replicate the serum that was used on me?"

"A lot of people were. You were the world's first superhero. Banner thought gamma radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine's original formula."

"Didn't really go his way, did it?"

"Not so much. When he's not that thing though, guy's like a Stephen Hawking."

Steve didn't get that reference.

"He's... like a smart person. Dr. Banner!" Coulson called out to the scientist as they approached his way.

"Oh, yeah. Hi!"

The Captain and the Hulk finally meet.

"They told me you'd be coming."

"Word is you can find the cube."

"Is that the only word on me?" Banner asked, wringing his hands.

"Only word I care about." Said America's most righteous man.

"Must be strange for you, all this."

Looking around the military flight deck, Steve shook his head.

"This is actually kind of familiar. I just hope I'm the man for the job."

"Oh, you are. Absolutely." Nat pitched a vote of confidence upon her return.

"We...uh... we've made some modifications to the uniform." Coulson informed. "I had a little design input." With pride.

"The uniform? Aren't the Stars and Stripes a little...old fashioned?"

"Everything that's happening, the things that are about to come to light, people might just need a little old fashioned." Natasha Romanoff, the sentimentalist.

"We should head back inside soon. Meet you at the bridge." Coulson left ahead of them, leaving the avengers to talk.

"I thought Coulson was gonna swoon."

Steve Rodgers blushed in praise.

"Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?"

"Trading Cards?" Even Sam wasn't that big of a fan.

"They're vintage, he's very proud."

The alarms went off, warning of imminent danger.

"Gentlemen, you may wanna step inside in a minute. It's gonna get a little hard to breath."

"Is this is a submarine?" Asked the 90 year old soldier.

Banner scoffed and stared death glares at the land he was standing on.

"Really? They wanted me in a submerged pressurized metal container?"

"Who said we're going down?"

Captain and Hulk exchanged looks and walked to the edge of the airspace to have air gushed at them as the rotators pushed the ship off the water.

"Oh, no. This is much worse."

The boys looked up as the skies grew near and Natasha stood with hands on her hips like a proud mother hen.

They were going up.