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VALOR
xiii. THUNDERSTRUCK

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   RILEY HATED TONY STARK.

   Well, that wasn't true. Actually, it was far from it. In reality, Riley just despised him when she was trying to be serious, especially while working. She wasn't sure what having a best friend entailed, never mind one that's several decades older than you, but Riley was pretty sure Tony Stark had somehow become her's.

   Unfortunately, that meant Riley would never be able to concentrate while on the clock because he wouldn't stop yapping in her ear.

   "Admit it."

   "No."

   "My taste in music is superior."

   Riley O'Dair kept her eyes trained in front of her as she quietly contended, "You picked the worst song to have a dramatic entrance to."

   Tony shrugged, still wearing his clunky suit. The big group huddled around in the Quinjet. Natasha Romanoff, Riley O'Dair, Steve Rogers, Roman, Tony Stark, and Loki were all squished together in the aircraft. It sure was a sight.

   "Yeah?" challenged Tony. "Well, you're the worst best friend." This caused Riley to snap her head toward him. "Seriously, you befriended the dude that crash-landed into my baby?"

   Honestly, Tony was only trying to annoy Riley because it was so satisfying. He found entertainment in how serious the child was in contrast to his oftentimes immature nature. Personally, Tony thought Riley took her job way too seriously.

   He remembered how stressed Riley had been the evening before she and Natasha flew out to Calcutta to retrieve Dr. Banner. To help her feel better, Tony forced her to have a dance party with him. It was the first time they'd done it, but somehow, they both knew that wouldn't be the last time.

   Riley rolled her eyes. "Be glad it was just your dumb tower and not an actual baby, not that God would actually give you one," she retorted. "You had it fixed overnight anyway. I don't see what the big deal is."

   Steve Rogers glanced between the bickering duo, trying to understand their friendship. He still couldn't quite understand his new colleagues. They were nothing like the soldiers from his time. Back then, the soldiers were respectful, mature, brave. But these guys? The Avengers weren't anything close to true heroes.

   Steve could figure out Roman fairly quickly based on the few comments he had made and the permanent grimace on his otherworldly features—brooding, outspoken, aggressive, and unpredictable. He was dangerous. Steve knew he'd have to keep his eye out for him. He was an alien, after all.

   When it came to Riley, though, Steve was unsure. Behind the scenes, Steve had seen her as a bright and clever child. But when Riley was on the field, she became a cold, ruthless machine whose only priority was completing her mission.

   The idea of it all sent shivers down Steve's spine. Would he have to watch out for her, too? Oh, what was he thinking? Of course, he would! Riley was just a child!

   Clearing his throat, Steve decided to interrupt Tony and Riley's little conversation. "I don't like it," he said, mostly to Tony. He didn't expect Riley to actually know much anyway. This was an adult conversation.

   Tony glimpsed back at Steve with a mischievous glint in his eyes. "What, Rock of Ages giving up so easily?" he queried. Riley could tell Tony already disliked Captain America — probably because of how highly Howard Stark spoke of him.

   "I don't remember it being that easy," argued Steve.

   Riley shrugged. "There were four of us on the field, plus Romanoff was in the air," she pointed out."

   Steve glanced back at Loki, who had been silent since his capture. He shook his head. "This guy packs a wallop," he tried to debate. He didn't understand how they could take Loki down so easily.

   "Still, you are pretty spry for an older fellow," Tony commented. "What's your thing, Pilates?" When Steve looked confused, he continued, "It's like calisthenics. You might've missed a couple of things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle."

   Riley refrained from snorting while Steve clenched his jaw. It was clear he already wasn't Iron Man's biggest fan. "Fury didn't tell me he was calling you in," he stated.

   "Yeah, there's a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you."

   Riley flinched when a flash of lightning decorated the night sky. Thunder followed seconds later. The Quinjet shook as the rumbles echoed. Riley squeezed her eyes shut. Boom... boom...

   Riley didn't hate the rain, nor did she fear it. She merely despised the thunder. The loud strikes reminded her of explosions, which reminded her of her earlier childhood.

   "Where's this rain coming from?" wondered a very confused Natasha. She hadn't seen anything regarding a storm in recent weather reports. She turned to look at Riley, knowing how the girl felt about thunder.

   Steve peered back at Loki, quickly noticing the fear on his face. "What's the matter? Are you scared of a little lightning?" he asked.

   Riley and the others turned their attention to Loki. He hesitated before replying, "I'm not overly fond of what follows."

   Confusion struck the heroes. How could someone so monstrous, so vile, so remorseless be afraid of something as harmless as thunder? This was the most humanity Loki had displayed thus far, which got Riley thinking. Could it be possible that they had maybe judged Loki too quickly? Riley had always been one to give others the benefit of the doubt, always believing in the good of people. Maybe there was more to Loki they didn't know about.

   Meanwhile, Roman just rolled his eyes. He wondered if these humans always read everything at face value. If Loki feared the thunder and he was a God, then wasn't it obvious? There was only one thing that could be the cause of this sudden onset storm. It was the God of Thunder—one of the many celestial beings Roman grew up learning about.

   The Quinjet trembled vigorously as a blinding light struck the roof. It sounded like something had landed on the aircraft. Tony didn't bother to wait another second. He equipped his helmet once more and opened up the ramp in the back. He marched forward, only to be stopped by a strange man landing on the ramp.

   Wordlessly, the blond man stomped forward and shot lightning at Tony. Then, he grabbed Loki by the throat before flying out into the rain. Riley blinked twice, unsure of what she had just seen. Moreover, was that guy carrying a hammer? Wait, a hammer?

   "And now there's that guy," grumbled Tony.

   From the front, Natasha called, "Another Asgardian?"

   Riley stepped forward to say, "I think that was—", only to be interrupted by Steve querying, "Think the guy's a friendly?"

   Riley instantly grew annoyed. She sensed that Steve wasn't going to take her seriously, just like the others. Riley looked back at Roman, dumbfounded by what had happened. Roman merely shrugged, completely unbothered by the fact that Loki had been taken. As far as he was concerned, his work helping the Earthlings was done.

   "Doesn't matter," curtly said Tony. "If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract's lost." He approached the open ramp, prepared to chase after who Riley had reason to believe was Thor Odinson, King of Asgard.

   "Stark!" barked Steve. "We need a plan of attack!"

   "I have a plan," retorted Tony. "Attack."

   With that, Tony leaped out of the Quinjet and flew into the night, a trail of light and smoke following behind. Steve merely sighed and grabbed a nearby parachute to follow him.

   "I'd sit this one out, Cap!" urged Natasha from the front. She had to project her voice due to the back ramp being opened. The wind and engine roared in their ears. "These guys come from legends! They're basically Gods!"

   Roman snorted. "Basically," he mocked.

   "She's right, Rogers!" matched Riley.

   "There's only one God, ma'am," disregarded Steve, "and I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that." Without another word, Captain America leaped out of the jet to retrieve Iron Man and Thor.

   Riley rolled her eyes as the ramp closed behind her. "Men are absolute idiots," she declared. She folded her arms across her chest and glanced back at Roman, who had been sitting in silence, minding his own business. "You're not gonna join them?"

   "Why should I?" Roman replied. "I don't have a death wish."

   Riley smirked at the comment. "Finally, someone who isn't an idiot," she praised.

   Natasha just shook her head as she piloted the aircraft. "Please," she taunted. "If I hadn't closed the ramp, you would've followed them."

   Riley hummed to herself. "Maybe," she admitted before sitting down beside Roman where Loki once resided, "but if my guess is right, then I think I'm okay not fighting against the fucking God of Thunder and his dumbass hammer."

○ ○ ○

   The Avengers soon returned to the Helicarrier a few hours later, this time with Thor and Loki in their party. Riley wasn't sure what went down after the trio of idiot men jumped out of the Quinjet, but she figured it didn't matter. All that mattered to her was that S.H.I.E.L.D. had Loki in their possession, and this war would be over once and for all.

   Plus, now that everyone was concerned with Loki and getting answers out of him, Riley was hoping she'd be able to skip out on her lecture about going against orders and sneaking Roman out of confinement. Riley didn't usually break the rules like that, but desperate times call for desperate measures, right? Besides, Roman helped capture Loki. Didn't that make the alien trustworthy? She thought so.

   The so-called Avengers gathered around a table and watched as Director Fury confronted Loki through several monitors. Riley leaned her head on her arm, half-asleep from her eventful day. She listened to the conversation with her eyes shut.

   Once Fury finished his brief interrogation, Dr. Bruce Banner darkly humored, "He really grows on you, doesn't he?"

   Riley snorted and lifted her head up. "Like a brain tumor, maybe."

   Steve Rogers sat up in his seat, still dressed in his suit. "Loki's gonna drag this out," he stated. He glanced up at Thor, who hadn't said much since his fight with Steve and Tony. "So, Thor, what's his play?"

   Riley lazily dragged her gaze to Thor, now resting her chin in the palm of her hand. "He has an army called the Chitauri," Thor revealed. "They're not of Asgard, nor any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."

   Riley's eyebrow twitched upward as Steve inquired, "An army... from outer space?" The man out of time was not expecting the world's problems to look like this in the future.

   "So he's building another portal," Bruce realized. "That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."

   The name piqued Thor's attention. "Selvig?" he repeated.

   Bruce nodded. "He's an astrophysicist."

   "He's a friend," Thor countered, his tone temporarily softened.

   Natasha leaned forward inquisitively. "Loki has him under some kind of spell," she elaborated, "along with one of ours."

   "I wanna know why Loki let us take him," Steve cut in. "He's not exactly leading an army from here."

   "That's a good point," admitted Riley. Steve's attention toward her as she sat up, slowly awakening. "He's gotta have an ulterior motive, right? That sounds like a basic villain plan, right?"

   Bruce waved his hand dismissively. "I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats," he insisted. "You can smell the crazy on him."

   Thor frowned. "Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard," he defended. "And he is my brother."

   "He killed 80 people in two days."

   "...He's adopted."

   Riley found herself subtly smiling in amusement. She made eye-contact with Roman, who also looked amused based off of the look in his eyes.

   "Well, I think it's about the mechanics," declared Bruce. "Iridium... What do they need the iridium for?"

   The entire fiasco at the museum in Germany was to retrieve a form of iridium. Though Loki had been captured, those supporting him hadn't. They escaped without their leader, taking iridium in his place. Riley began to rack her brain, pleased to hear something in her line of expertise.

   "It's corrosive, dense," listed Riley. "From what I can remember it's a—"

   "—stabilizing agent," Tony Stark finished in sync with the 11-year-old. He went strutting into the room, making his presence known as always. He turned to Phil Coulson to finish up their conversation before continuing. "It means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D."

   He glimpsed back at Thor and patted his bulky arm. "No hard feelings, Point Break," Tony added. "You've got a mean swing."

   "Right," Riley agreed. "It also means the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants or needs to. He could transport an entire army through it if he wanted to."

   The group watched as Tony stood in Fury's console. "Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the topsails," said Tony before pointing at a random agent in the sea of workers. "That man is playing Galaga! Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did." Then, he placed a hand over his eye with a perplexed expression. He looked around at the varying monitors. "How does Fury do this?"

   Maria Hill answered, "He turns."

   Riley watched Tony observantly. He sure was drawing a lot of attention to himself. If Riley didn't know any better, she was pretty sure he was trying to distract them from something. Well, it was either that or Tony was just being an idiot as always. She decided to go with the latter.

   "Sounds exhausting," declared Tony. He looked around at the monitors, placing a button-sized chip under one of them without anyone noticing. "The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. The only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kickstart the cube."

   Hill eyed Tony skeptically. "When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?"

   "Last night," nonchalantly revealed Tony. "The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers." He looked around at everyone in disappointment. "Am I the only one who did the reading? C'mon, Tink, even you?"

   "No, I know a little bit about it, but I hate physics," Riley revealed. "Plus, it's funny seeing you look stupid while being smart. It's really contradicting."

   Steve, personally, was tired of the constant side-tracking. "Does Loki need any particular power source?"

   Bruce Banner paced alongside the table thoughtfully. "He'd have to heat the cube to 120 million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier."

   "Unless Selvig figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect," mentioned Tony.

   "Well, if he could do that, he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet."

   "Finally, someone who speaks English!" cheered Tony.

   Steve grew up loving science, but he had no idea what they were talking about. "Is that what just happened?" he wondered as Tony and Banner shook hands. A newfound, mutual respect for one another blossomed right before their eyes.

   "It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled," Tony complimented the scientist. "And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

   Riley cringed. She questioned if Tony Stark had a conscious or if he was just born without one.

   Director Fury went walking in just seconds after Tony's words, announcing, "Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube. I was hoping you might join him."

   "I would start that stick of his," Steve suggested. "It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon."

   Fury nodded. "I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

   Thor's face contorted, baffled. "Monkeys?" he echoed. "I do not understand."

   "I do!" proudly chirped Steve. All eyes fell on him as he cleared his throat, becoming quieter. "I understood that reference." Tony rolled his eyes.

   Riley felt her heart stop beating momentarily as Fury turned to face the 11-year-old. She squeezed her eyes shut, turning herself invisible. It was time for her regularly scheduled lecture.

   "You disobeyed orders, O'Dair," Fury stated.

   Riley was quick to defend herself. "Technically, I didn't," she calmly argued while turning visible again. "You said to determine if Roman was a hostile force or not, and I decided he wasn't."

   "Right," Fury agreed, "but then you pulled him out of confinement, which you weren't authorized to do."

   "Well..." lingered Riley in an attempt to save herself, "I also wasn't not authorized to do that. Plus, you were the one who said he was my responsibility, you know. It's not my fault I brought him along with me"

   Fury was about to go on, but he was interrupted by Roman speaking up, "I think it's safe to say that I'm not hostile. If I was, you'd all be dead by now."

   Fury's eyebrows raised, his eye widening. "Is that a threat?"

   "Think of it more like a, how you humans say, you're welcome," he snarkily replied. He stood from his chair, proceeding to walk around the table. "It took me some time, but I've decided to help you all in your so-called war. From the looks of it, you need help from someone who's experienced."

   Riley leaned forward, growing more and more curious. "Experienced?" she repeated. "You've fought the Chitauri?"

   Roman hesitated. "It's complicated," he muttered through gritted teeth. "I come from a planet called Asteria."

   Thor nodded. The name was familiar to him. "I know of this planet. It's not too far from Asgard," he recalled. "Asteria is the home to the Stellites—star fragments. I watched the star go out of the sky just a few eves ago."

   "Right," confirmed Roman. "To make a long story short, my planet was recently invaded by a Titan of some sort. I didn't catch his name, only that he was in search of something called a Power Stone. When our king explained that we didn't know what that was, he unleashed his army upon my people. We tried to fight back, but it was futile. As far as I'm aware, I was the only survivor because I fled at the right time."

   The room became silent from Roman's story. So Riley was right—he certainly had been traumatized by something before arriving on Earth. She just hadn't been expecting something so intense.

   Everyone's reactions were exactly what Riley had anticipated. The agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the newly formed Avengers believed Roman was a coward for running away.

   "So much for fortune favoring the brave," muttered Steve Rogers.

   "I did what I could to survive," Roman snapped. "It was a fatal battle. No one survived for a reason. I had a right to be terrified."

   Riley shook her head, upset by everyone's reactions. "It's okay, Roman. I get scared, too," she assured him. "Anyone who says they aren't scared are a bunch of liars. I wouldn't trust them! But you can trust me! I'm always scared shitless!"

   Roman eyed the 11-year-old. He hadn't been expecting that response. Hadn't she been groomed by these people? Why wasn't she reacting like them? If the roles were switched... he wouldn't have been supportive. "...Thanks, kid," he dryly replied.

   "Well, regardless of that, I don't want a soldier I can't depend on," Fury stated.

   "Have you fought these Chitauri before?" Natasha cut in. She was only interested in hearing about how they could win. She didn't care for the dramatics.

   "The Chitauri weren't the ones who invaded my planet. The Chitauri are weak. The children on my planet train in combat with them," he admitted. He paused. "But they may be of significant difficulty to combat for you humans."

   Steve looked annoyed. "So you don't know how to help us, then?"

   "What I'm trying to say is that the creatures that came to my planet were much worse than the Chitauri. These infiltrations aren't a coincidence. They're connected somehow. If my theory's right, that means the creatures that destroyed Asteria will come here next," Roman clarified.

   Fury stepped forward. "Can I trust that you can lead us to victory, Roman?"

   Roman paused. "From what I've seen so far, you'll need my guidance. But first," he answered, "let me make myself clear. I don't like you. I tolerate you. And I want my revenge. That's the only reason why I'm helping you out. If I have to choose between you earthworms and my life, I'm choosing my life."

   Bruce shrugged. "Great speech," he mentioned.

   Tony nodded. He didn't seem to care that much at that moment. "Well, now that that's taken care of..." He turned to Bruce, "Shall we play, doctor?" With a nod, Bruce and Tony exited the room.

   Riley just beamed at the alien, happy that a new addition had been made to the Avengers. She didn't care if nearly everyone seemed to dislike each other. They were a team created to save the world, not to make friends.

   Besides, the last thing Riley needed was to get attached to a bunch of people who would inevitably leave her. Though annoying, everyone's hostility toward one another was going to be worth it in the end. Riley just wanted to save the world and prove herself to everyone. That's it.

   If only Riley would have known that the people standing around her in the upcoming battle would soon be like family to her, then maybe she would've made a greater effort to enjoy her time with them. But until then, she was fine with popping a few pills to rid herself of the headache everyone's bickering gave her.