Even with a broken suit Ironman flew off to New York, all the way to his new building, a beacon of energy. The giant letters of his last name could be seen far and wide, but hidden from view was Selvig, up on the rooftop, ready to activate the device he created with the Tesseract.

Ironman watched as he hung in the air, Jarvis in his ear.

"Shut it down, Dr. Selvig." Ironman ordered.

"It's too late!" Selvig turned to Ironman, his eyes glowing a cloudy blue, but he was too far for Ironman to see. "She can't stop now. She wants to show us something!" and he believed it with all his controlled heart, "A new universe."

Tony wasn't so onboard with the plan, and Selvig's stubbornness annoyed him.

"Okay," he said, irritated, just as he fired at the barrier around the device. The missiles launched, but the Tesseract deflected the impact, sending the energy outwards, knocking Selvig out and Ironman back.

"The barrier is pure energy. It's unbreachable." Jarvis announced as Tony regained from the spinout.

"Yeah, I got that."

From his new position in the sky, Tony could see Loki watching the show from the terrace of the tower, smiling victoriously as he awaited Tony's landing.

"Plan B," Tony told Jarvis as he made for the terrace.

"Sir, Mark Seven is not ready for deployment."

"Then skip the spinning rims, we're on the clock."

Tony landed on the platform, the rings dismantling the suit around him, and he walked into the penthouse, watching Loki carefully as the god walked in as well.

Inside the tower, Loki stalked forward as Tony casually made his way to the bar.

"Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity."

"Uh- actually, that's your daughter. No, I'm planning to threaten you."

Loki smirked, finding the statement of a threat amusing.

"You should have left your armor on for that."

"Yeah, it's seen a bit of mileage and you've got the uh- blue stick of destiny. Would you like a drink?" For a man always ready to die, a casual conversation with an alien warlord was just another day in life.

"Stalling me won't change anything." Loki said as he looked expectantly at the sky.

"No, no, no- threatening. No drink? You sure? I'm having one."

"The Chitauri are coming, nothing will change that. What have I to fear?"

"The Avengers. It's what we call ourselves, sort of like a team. 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes' type of thing."

What a joke they are! "Yes, I've met them."

"Yeah, takes us a while to get any traction, I'll give you that one. But, let's do a head count here. Your brother, the Demi-God; a super soldier, a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend;" the rambling allowed him a great distraction to sneakily put on his bracelets, "a man with breath-taking anger management issues; a couple of master assassins, and you, big fella, you've managed to piss off every single one of them.

Loki smiled as if Tony's words were commendations "That was the plan."

With the bracelets securely on, Tony got the extra boost of encouragement and walked to the center of the penthouse to join Loki.

"Not a great plan. When they come, and they will, they'll come for you."

"I have an army."

"We have a Hulk."

"Oh, I thought the beast had wandered off."

"Yeah- you're missing the point. There's no throne, there is no version of this, where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes and maybe it's too much for us, but it's all on you. 'Cause if we can't protect the earth, you can be damned well sure we'll avenge it."

An epic monologue like that deserved a good drink.

Loki wasn't so impressed with the speech and marched over to Tony, pointing his scepter.

"How will your friends have time for me, when they're so busy fighting you?" A show of the scepter's powers would have been great... had it worked. Instead, it simply clinked against the human's chest.

He tried it again. "This usually works."

"Well, performance issues. You know? And you know what else, you're not very kind."

"Did you just come to that conclusion?" Loki scoffed.

"No, I mean. We harbored your daughter, for what like, 15-16 years. And this is your way to say thank you?"

Loki snapped and grabbed Tony by the throat, throwing him across the room.

"JARVIS, anytime now." Tony wheezed as he helped himself up.

Loki stalked over and picked Tony roughly up, his eyes glowing cloudy blue with what Tony could only credit as anger.

"You will all fall before me." He growled as he pinned Tony against the window.

"JARVIS. Deploy." Tony weakly said as Loki threw Stark crashing through the window, plummeting toward the ground.

"Deploy!" Tony begged as he fell through the air, his prayers heard.

Behind Loki, the Mark Seven suit dislodged and went rocketing past and out after Stark. The suit caught up to him not a minute too soon and, locking on to the bracelets, attached to him, unfolding to a full suit.

Tony smiled like an overjoyed 8 year old and managed to stop his fall moments before he hit the ground, and flew back up to Loki at the window.

"You're welcome," Ironman said to his earlier conversation and fired a repulser blast at Loki, knocking him down.

Meanwhile, Selvig's device powered up and shot a stream of blue energy at the sky, creating a portal where the Chitauri army waited. With the gateway open, the hoards of aliens began their invasion of Earth as a shocked Ironman looked on.

"Right. Army!" he said to himself and blasted on up, taking on the incoming army.

As New York lay in disarray, Loki happily walked out on the terrace as his Asgardian armor materialized around him, looking out over the chaos below. Humans scrambled to safety as Chitauri vehicles flew around him. His moment of gloat was interrupted when his brother superhero landed on a platform below.

"Loki, turn off the Tesseract or I'll destroy it!" Thor growled, his cape flowing majestically behind him.

"You can't. There is no stopping it. There is only... the war!

"So be it."

Loki leapt at Thor and the two began to fight, scepter against hammer, magic against muscle. The tower suffered heavy casualties, sending the adorning letters crashing to the havoc below.

As civilians ran away in fright and police squads arrived, a quinjet flew overhead, joining Ironman.

"Stark, we're on your three, heading north east." Nat's voice told him over the comms.

"What, did you stop for drive-thru? Swing through Park, I'm gonna lay 'em out for you."

Ironman flew out in front of them, leading Chitauri behind him, lining them up for the quinjet to shoot down. With Tony busy with bogies, the quinjet flew up closer to the portal, seeing the god brothers making a mess of Stark tower.

"Nat..." Clint began.

"I see 'em."

Mid fight, Loki spotted the jet hovering by, and threw Thor off before sending a blast at the plane's wing, setting it on fire.

It did not sit well with his brother.

Inside the quinjet, Natasha and Barton held on for dear lives as behind them Cap flailed around, a loosening grip on the roof. Nat opened the ramp and they jumped out on the bridge below as the plane crashed into the water behind them.

Cap ran up on an overturned vehicle, looking yearningly up at the portal.

"We gotta get back up there. Hawkeye, find me a ..."

Cap's orders were cut short by a roar and they looked up, freezing as a giant armored Leviathan flew through the portal carrying more warriors.

"Stark, are you seeing this?"

"Seeing. Still working on believing..." Ironman managed as he flew alongside the warship.

A roar rang out and Kiera snapped awake, disoriented. She quickly began looking for anyone familiar, only to find Agent Coulson.

"Wh-where's everybody?!"

"They would be out fighting an alien invasion."

"An alien wha?! Oh dad! I need to go. I need to be there! I'm the only one he'll listen to."

"I get that, but look around you. You're in a med bay. You're in no shape to..."

He wasn't able to say anything more with an alien fist clamped around his throat. He let out a small smile as in front of him stood Kiera, her eyes glazed over and a flaming white green aura around her.

"I'm done sleeping. Let's go join the party." Her voice emanated in an eerie echo and she let go of him, storming past him through the doors.

Her aura had receded by the time she made out of the med bay, none the wiser. But Coulson had seen it all before, and was happy to follow her.

Kiera snuck on into a quinjet, alerting the pilot sitting in already.

The man got up to escort her off the plane...

"Hey! You're not authorized to be he-"

...but Cap's little sister had other plans.

Kiera grabbed the man's shoulder and tossed him to the ramp, landing at Coulson's feet. Phil kept the agent from treating her like a hostile, and the two men watched as Kiera's impatience glowed around her.

"Let's go!"

Coulson clapped the other agent on the shoulder and nodded towards Kiera with a smirk.

"I'm with her."