CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
HE'S ADOPTED

THEY ALL SAT THERE, LOOKING at the tablets as Fury spoke to Loki, closing him inside of the giant, almost indestructible cell. "In case it isn't clear," Fury started, "You try to escape. You so much as scratch that glass". Fury presses a button which opens up the hatch underneath Loki's cell. Loki looks through the glass, down towards the hatch as much as he can. "Thirty thousand feet, straight down in a steel trap. You get how that works?" Fury closes the hatch, turning his attention towards the god. He points towards Loki, "Any." He then points towards the button, "Boot."

     Loki laughs, taking a few steps back from the glass as he continued to smile in amusement. "It's an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me."

     "Built for something a lot stronger than you." Fury answers the man.

     "Oh, I've heard." Loki smiles before he looks right into the camera that the group were all looking at. He then looks back towards Fury before saying, "The mindless beast, makes play he's still a man. How desperate are you, that you call upon such lost creatures to defend you?" They had all glanced towards Bruce before looking back down.

     "How desperate am I? You threaten my world with war. You steal a force you can't hope to control." He walks towards the cage before continuing, "You talk about peace and you kill 'cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."

     "Ooh. It burns you to come so close. To have the Tesseract, to have power, unlimited power. And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share, and then to be reminded what real power is."

     Fury smiles before he starts walking away. "Well, you let me know if Real Power wants a magazine or something." The camera cut off and Olivia sat there, staring at the now black screen with anger. All she could think about was how that man had put her best friend under control, making him shoot her and Fury. Olivia was positive she was going to have to stay away from the male, for she would in fact rip his throat out with her teeth. Literally.

     Bruce was the first to speak. "He really grows on you, doesn't he?"

     "Loki's gonna drag this out. So, Thor, what's his play?" Steve questioned, turning his attention towards the other god, the one that was actually on their side.

     "He has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract." Thor explains to the group.

     "An army?" Steve questioned, clearly confused. "From outer space?"

     "We are not in the forties anymore, Captain." Olivia says with a sad sigh.

     "So he's building another portal. That's what he needs Erik Selvig for." Bruce told them, glancing around the group.

     "Selvig?" Thor questioned.

     "He's an astrophysicist."

     "He's a friend." Thor replied.

     "Loki has him under some kind of spell, along with one of ours." Natasha spoke, glancing towards Olivia who seemed to clench her eyes at the redhead's words.

     "I wanna know why Loki let us take him. He's not leading an army from here." Steve glanced around the group, Olivia nodding her head in agreement with the man's statement.

     "I don't think we should be focusing on Loki." Bruce truthfully said. "That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on him." 

     "Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he's my brother."

     "He killed eighty people in two days." Natasha defended with a frown.

     Thor paused for a moment before saying, "He's adopted." Olivia scoffed, though her lip twitched upwards in amusement.

     "I think it's about the mechanics. Iridium, what did they need the Iridium for?"

     That's when Tony Stark walked in along with Phil. Olivia offered Phil a smile before looking towards the billionaire as he spoke. "It's a stabilizing agent." Tony told them, turning to Phil and talking to him for a quick moment before Phil walked away and Tony continued. "Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at SHIELD. No hard feelings Point Break. You've got a mean swing." He pats Thor on the arm before continuing to the area Fury usually stood in order to supervise everything. "Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants." Then of course, the man started talking to the agents, "Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the top sails. That man is playing GALAGA! Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did." Tony then covers an eye, twisting around to look at the computers surrounding him before asking, "How does Fury do this?"

     "He turns." Maria blandly tells him, earning a smirk of amusement from Olivia.

     Tony starts messing with the computers before saying, "Well, that sounds exhausting. The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube."

     "When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Maria questioned the man, her arms crossed over her chest.

     "Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?"

     "I don't read the case files, much less packets full of shit I could care less about." Olivia spoke, giving the man a sarcastic smile.

     "Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve quickly drove the conversation back towards the topic at hand.

     "He's got to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier." Bruce answered the man.

     "Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect." Tony points out, walking towards Bruce.

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

     "Finally, someone who speaks English." Tony smiles.

     "Is that what just happened?" Steve questioned, glancing towards Olivia who shrugged her shoulders, leaning back in her chair whilst Tony and Bruce shook hands.

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

     "Thanks." Bruce says, glancing down towards his shoes.

     "Really, Tony?" Olivia questioned, cocking an eyebrow at the man who just looked at her innocently, making her role her eyes.

     "Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube. I was hoping you might join him." Fury enters the room, his attention focused on the scientist and billionaire.

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

     "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." Fury answered the blonde.

     "Monkeys?" Thor questioned. "I do not understand."

     "I do!" Steve suddenly said with a wide smile, making all of them look at him. "I understood that reference."

     Olivia turned towards Natasha before saying, "He's so adorable. Can we keep him?" Natasha rolled her eyes, kicking the girl under the table, though she struggled to keep the amusement from her lips when Olivia turned away from her.

     "Shall we play doctor?" Tony asked, turning back towards Bruce.

     "Let's play some." Bruce answered before the duo walked out of the room.