roxbury crossing [gwen/loki]
[Since Loki could not, in fact, fly (unless he shifted to a shape which could) he had taken up his post on the ground, Captain's orders be damned. Thor had gone to the trouble of crashing a ship at his feet, leaving Loki to mop up the survivors while he struck off to continue dropping the larger vessels out of the sky. Many of the aliens could be expected to survive the landing, since they were of hardier stock than a human crew.
The vessel looked a little like an upturned insect. Doors swung open like wounds in its abdomen, and then the passengers began climbing out.
Loki trailed his fingers along the edge of the vessel, and watched a line of frost skitter up and over the lip of one open doorway. The pirate who had been lifting himself up looked down to see his hand frozen to the metal, swiftly blackening and going numb. It let out a yelp as the frost traveled over its body, making it stiffen, its skin crinkling unpleasantly. It shook while trying to drag in air, and coughed, and blood spattered from its mouth in a slushy froth. Then, with a sharp crack, it solidified.
The frozen alien blocked the door, and smoke billowed out around it as fire began to catch in the belly of the ship. The dead creature's comrades began hacking it to pieces to try to get by. Meanwhile, the other two doors swung open with a thunderous slam, and pirates began sliding out by twos.
As the closest target, and the only one with a bright gold helmet, the creatures quite naturally turned their attention to Loki. liEfAthER clicked one from behind an impressive set of mandibles. Loki offered a brief, apologetic, incline of his head.] So kind of a pirate to call me by my given name.
[The scarab-like alien was as tall as a man, and its mouth parts came together with a sound like knives sliding against each other. It moved across the ground with unpleasant speed, and dove to slice off one of Loki's legs with its mandible.
Instead, it slid through the image of Loki which shimmered and disappeared. From just behind it, Loki planted a knife squarely in the center of its back, where such races kept the core of their nervous system. The bug squealed and began to flail, chittering, rolling toward the ground in a last, futile effort to get the knife out with legs that could not reach.
The second alien, a more humanoid being with a slit for a mouth, began firing from a rather large gun as soon as its partner hit the ground, roaring with rage. Loki moved past the shots as smoothly and quickly as water past stones, tossing a few well-placed knives in the gunner's neck as another Marauder grabbed at the back of his collar and yanked.
Ah, the clear and present danger! The aliens bristling with weaponry pouring from the damaged ship, and the running, screaming populace, the technicolor substance leaking from the downed vessel, the whisper of ancient voices from the ship's computer, the dying processes of a sophisticated AI murmuring from the open doorway! The knife driving into the palm of an invader, and the second that sliced around its neck, drenching the ground in blue blood! Ah, home again. He was grinning from ear to ear. If he had to be set free from prison on any day, he could only be thankful that it had been this one.]