InsaneJournal

Who: Captain America, Iron Man, and Loki
What: Loki comes for a chunk of Tony's suit. Chaos, explosions, and banter ensue, as well as Steve gallantly catching Tony in his arms like a gentleman.
Where: Stark Tower
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Some violence.



Loki had been putting off coming back around to Stark Tower for some time - not because he feared Stark, or because provoking him concerned him, but because there simply had been no opportunity. He had been kept pent up outside the door for a week following the party in Paris, as per his agreement to placate Louis, recompense for the deaths he’d caused in Times Square. Though they usually shared little in the way of thought or feeling, Loki knew his guard had been lowered by Loki’s relatively good behavior, lately. No one had died, of late, and he had accommodated his requests, even assisted him with a pressing problem. That had, unnervingly, pierced Loki’s own feelings a touch, and his anger toward the man who had coerced Louis’ sister into marriage was not entirely born of his distaste in general for the spoiled members of the nobility, the ones who had been handed everything and saw themselves as beacons of light. He had erected a much stronger wall between them in his mind after that errant sensation of oddly familial rage was seized, and had felt nothing like it since.

After all, he had work to do, and pandering to the worries of his counterpart would never be on Loki’s list of priorities. He had a world to win.

Thus, late in the afternoon, as the sun was growing gold over the harbor, Loki stood on the edge of the balcony on which he had seen Stark land when they had last met, and strip off his armor. Loki had, of course, obscured himself from sight to the naked eye. He hardly needed a camera to spot him and alert its master to his presence. The yellowing skyline, as he glanced back at it over his shoulder, reminded him a little of Asgard’s towers - so much more mundane, sparse, and rudimentary, than they, but with a little of that same magic. The sight left bile on his tongue.

Where his staff before had always been at his side, there was now a scepter, cruelly curved and glowing blue. Where he had gotten it from remained, for the moment, a mystery. Loki’s energies and attention were bent toward the nearly seamless panels in the floor, and the simple, hard shove of kinetic magic required to prize them away. Indelicate, but he wasn’t looking to understand the rudimentary mechanics of this thing, or to understand each gear and piston. All he wanted was a piece of the suit that was nestled somewhere beneath, and he began ripping up panels, fingers clawed in the air, yanking back as the metal crunched, squeaked, and flew off its screws.

Inside the tower, Tony had just poured himself a drink, and he had started scrolling through Silver's messages for him. Before either were interrupted, Tony was informing his other half that he really needed to find himself some friends that weren't spies or criminals. The pressure-sensitive panels started screaming alarms, as if Tony couldn't hear the sounds of someone trying to tear his Tower apart. After Loki's little stunt with SHIELD the last time he'd visited Stark Tower, Tony had put the upper levels under serious renovation. The top ten floors were now entirely empty of everything but labs awaiting scientists, Tony's living quarters, and the floor he'd dedicated for Pepper's personal use. He had the previous versions of his suit, everything Mark VI and below, even the collectible bit of charred metal retrieved from the desert and Obidiah's lab, stored under the roof, encased in a whole lot of protection and alarms. He didn't let people use his tech without his express permission these days, and he hadn't liked Loki's attempt to touch it.

It was fairly demonstrative of Tony's personality that he ran toward the chaos instead of away. He got a report from Jarvis before he even broke the last door, and he was standing in the shattered glass of the balcony before a full minute had passed. "Jarvis, get me a rendering of the point of origin using the force from the falling pieces of my floor, please." Jarvis sounded sober, but he obeyed and blue outline of a man appeared in the air in the approximate place Loki was standing. "Even telekinetics tend to throw things away from where they are standing," Tony told the god, informatively.

Loki heard the breaking glass and saw Stark approach. His arrival hadn’t been unexpected - it might even prove to be convenient. If he couldn’t dig deep enough to retrieve one of the suits, then Stark could simply bring one to him. The spell that had been cloaking his presence shimmered like a heat wave and fell away. After all the words he’d exchanged back and forth with Stark, it was almost refreshing to see him again. So often, lately, he found himself standing against his brother, and the sweep of rage that filled him at the sight of Thor sometimes made it difficult to enjoy the moment. Stark entertained him in a way few others did, easy humor and self-involved bluster just barely glossing over a very antiquated, traditional kind of morality. He imagined Stark would be a difficult man to break, when the rest of the world had fallen to his rule. He relished the challenge.

“Do they?” Loki asked. And then all the panels came firing back up over the edge of the roof toward Tony, hurtling fast enough to cut a man in half, one, two, three, four.

Tony saw the razor thin sheets of metal coming for him just the time, and he hit the dirt. The panels zoomed overhead, and Tony said, almost to himself, “Should have seen that coming...” He rolled up off his feet and ran for it across the deck full pelt. He was wearing that black neoprene-like suit that he always wore under the Iron Man suits, and it revealed how much effort Tony put into keeping himself in shape. Iron Man wasn’t just metal panels and blue light, after all. The billionaire put twice as much work into it these days, and with Silver’s advice and influence he’d gotten better at the balancing battle calm. Tony slid sideways behind the reinforced bar, and then abruptly pulled himself into standing behind it. The panels had plowed their way into the back of the room, scattering sparks and bits of decorative stone. Tony glanced at them, the last one still quivering in a lethal manner. “You don’t call, you don’t write. I was beginning to think that big brother and mommy managed to ground you.”

Loki walked across the balcony and to the edge of the penthouse door, standing amidst the shattered glass and peering in at Tony from where he quipped over the top of the bar. Loki was grinning, with a manic edge brought on by battle adrenaline. That, at least, he did share with his brother: the joy of fighting a good fight. His methods, of course, were starkly different. Loki did not charge at Tony, scepter in hand. No, he stayed a respectful distance back. "You were thinking of me," Loki pointed out. "I’m sorry for my absence, but I've dropped in now to make up for lost time." He lifted the scepter and fired off a quick shot of azure energy at the bar, arm pistoning a short way back with the recoil, hitting the wall behind Tony’s head in a burst of blue flame and concussive force, meant to knock him closer. "If you'd just come over here," he said, conversational as ever, "I'll give you a few more things to miss me for."

Tony didn’t particularly like the look of that scepter. It had the sort of extravagance that he associated with weapons from Asgard, but that blue energy coming off it wasn’t a friendly blue, and Tony knew friendly blue, thank you. His chestpiece glowed in the resulting dust as he ducked and covered his head, sliding across the room against the back wall. He’d managed to find his prototype bracelets and he had an unfortunate inkling that he was probably going to find out if the prototype was ready for active battle. “Jarvis, activate the Mark security protocols, please.” It was only a mutter, nothing strong enough to attract Loki’s attention, but maybe Tony scrambling to his feet and diving for cover was a good enough hint that maybe something bad was going to happen.

Three of the lower chambers below exploded with a blast that nearly took the top off Stark Tower entirely. Tony had said before that he wasn’t a sentimentalist, and if Loki was interested in his old Iron Man models, well. They were better as bits and ash than anything useful. There were still three more versions of the suit down there, but they weren’t going to be easy to reach in all that mess. Red and gold pieces joined the general debris of stone, metal sheeting, and flooring.

Loki pulled back from the explosion, lifting his scepter to shield himself from the burst and neatly deflecting much of it with a flash of blue. The strange energy, and extension of Loki’s being through the tool, threw up a shadow like wide black wing. The concussive force slid him back toward the bar, but he kept his feet grounded - just.

Loki turned immediately and fired off another shot in Tony's general direction to keep him down in case he'd been considering popping up with a weapon. Then he began moving toward the elevator. He slammed the base of the scepter against the doors, and they wrenched open with a squeal of metal and protesting gears. He fired quick shot off the end of the scepter, this one going wide, striking at the end of the bar and sending up another small explosion, enough to keep Tony pinned. Loki glanced down - the elevator was, seemingly, miles below, and there was smoke coming up through the shaft, but it looked clear to the bottom. He flashed a quick grin in Tony's direction, and stepped backward off the edge and into the shaft. His cape billowed briefly up, then was gone. Like he was going to let a little debris keep him from getting what he came for.

Pieces of the wet bar were raining down on Tony’s head, but it was going to take more than that to bring him down. He watched Loki drop down into the shaft. “Jarvis, activate elevator security double-nine.” The Mark IV, V and VI were a level above Pepper’s office and apartment level, in one of his labs. Pepper was living down there--not at the moment, of course, because he’d recently pissed her off, but in general--and there were some serious protocols in place. This one was a bunch of lasers that criss-crossed the entire shaft, and unless you were actually inside the elevator when they went off, it made for a very unfortunate time. Meanwhile, Tony was pelting across the debris, leaping a gaping hole in his floor and sliding up onto his feet like a baseball player coming into home right on top of the open landing pad.

“Get a move on, Jarvis,” he told the computer. Pieces of the suit came out and assembled at twice normal speed. Some of the assembly was not comfortable, but Tony didn’t care. His eyes were grim. Pepper wasn’t present, and the only danger was to himself, or he might have broke down and called Rogers. As it was, he was just pissed he was going to have to rebuild, and itching to take a piece out of Loki for causing him the trouble.

Loki had expected security of some kind, so the lasers were no surprise in that regard. If Stark hadn't secured every inch of this place, he would have been offended, in a way. He wasn't prepared for them to hit, however, and one scored a cut along his cheekbone before he could conjure a brief, ethereal shield, reflecting the lasers back at an angle before they had an opportunity to slice him apart. It took another precious second to cast beneath himself and slow his fall, and his feet caught on the edge of a doorway a few stories down. He wrenched the doors open just as the lasers ate through the flimsy, half-existent protection around him. Another laser cut a gash into his leg, and he hissed as he rolled through the doors and out of its range.

The whole thing had transpired in a matter of moments, and now Loki was on one of the levels scattered with debris. He began stalking toward the rubble, pushing a beam aside with a flick of his wrist. He searched with his magic for metal amidst the concrete. When he found a the distinctive shapes of a million tiny connections of metal and silicon, and carefully carved, thin plates, he would have what he sought.

Although, he might not even need to look that hard, if the sound he was hearing was any indication. He turned his intention toward the direction of the noise, even as small, invisible feelers continued to peer through rock, seeking red metal in all the dust and stone. "Take your time," he called. "I'm nearly done anyway."

With the SP99 activated, Tony was not going to try flying through the elevator shaft. Maybe he should have planned on flying through there in the suit, but he hadn’t, and he’d get fried just as quickly as Loki did. The lab level that Loki had just torn his way into, the one with the three most recent (but one) Mark suits stored in it, was the level above Pepper. It didn’t have any windows--but Pepper’s level did. Usually the suits were on display, but with the Tower in high alert, Loki was going to have to tear his way through more solid steel that had enclosed them all in coffin-like tombs.

With some of the pistons and gears still turning to get the suit in place, Tony ran off the edge of Stark Tower, fell about twenty stories, and kicked his acceleration into gear. He crashed through the window of Pepper’s apartment, which set off even more alarms, alerting everyone from SHIELD to the local police, and then he blew a hole in the ceiling. Bits of debris went everywhere, but Tony’s aim was good, and he came up right through the support beams. He turned in mid air, stuck a palm out toward Loki, and had just enough time to say, “I hope you have good insurance,” through his speakers before firing.

Loki heard Tony before he saw him, heard the crash and the shriek of the alarms, so when he burst through the floor, he was ready to face him. He lashed out with a quick blast from the head of the scepter as Tony lifted his hand, and the energy of the one scattered that of the other, though the force still knocked him back and into the air. He turned, caught his feet atop a pile of rubble, and perched there with a faint grunt as he landed on his wounded leg, which bled black and sluggishly into his boot. "I just wanted to have a look," he said, all wounded indignation, and he fired again. He wasn't playing, anymore - he wanted that suit in pieces, and he wanted the pieces in his possession. All he had to do was fracture off an edge, after all.

And Loki was tired of interference from Tony's little electronic familiar, the obedient slave in the wires. Time to take care of that too. He twisted his fingers, drawing them up as if pulling taut a lace, and shouted something difficult to make out. A streak of red, sinuous and quick, shot after Tony, tracked him, and dove through one of the cracks in his armor to clasp tight around his lips. A muting spell, with enough power to last for an hour or so. Loki didn't have anyone to call on to his aid, did he? That was cheating.

Too late, Tony realized it might have been a good idea to call for help. Now he couldn’t call for help at all, and some of his control of the suit was severely inhibited. Fortunately, the vast majority of the suit’s features were controlled by the pointed movement of Tony’s eyes on his interface screens combined with small twitches of his fingers, as a computer user looked at a screen and clicked things. In this way he had a vast combination of movements that he could use to tell the suit to do different things; presses of his toes to zoom forward, like that on a gas pedal, and flexes of his shoulder to arm additional explosive devices.

Tony caught himself back from the shock wave that resulted from the combination of the blue scepter energy and his own arc reactor energy, accelerated back forward, and tried to speak, but found he couldn’t. He clenched his jaw, but nothing worked. Tony raised one arm and gave Loki the finger with the sleek metal glove, and then he accelerated straight at him, intending on slamming him down into Pepper’s apartment floor--or maybe through it, if he could manage it.

Loki didn't dodge, this time. Instead, he merely waited for Tony's approach, and caught hold of him when they connected. His hands were charged with cold. The ice didn't dig as deeply or as fast as it might have if he had withdrawn the Cask of Ancient Winters from the pocket of time and space where he had hidden it away, but the ice still spread quickly and thick over the outside of the suit, seizing joints and clawing deep past the circuitry for Tony's skin to wither it black, cruelly digging in its talons like a live thing. Loki was no longer laughing - all that had fallen away. He was intent, completely focused, his teeth set against each other as he charged the spell as fast as possible, blasting Tony with it even as they hit the floor.

The good news was that Tony had made a lot of modifications on his suit to deal with ice build-up and even extreme temperatures. The gold alloy developed for use on orbiting satellites had been good, but he’d perfected it with a few modifications here and there on his own over the last few versions of the suit. The bad news was that this wasn’t just extreme cold, this was colder than natural cold, and who the hell plans for cold that’s colder than anything anybody could find outside of a lab? Tony’s UI flickered in front of his eyes as he slammed Loki under him into the floor, but his shoulder hurt, as in really hurt, and he didn’t quite yet know why. Jarvis was in his ear sounding an alarm about falling temperatures and damage, but by then, Tony realized that Loki was charging something, and he reared back too late.

The resulting blast threw Iron Man off the Asgardian. The damaged suit, with Tony in it, smashed out the side of Stark Tower through the shards of Pepper’s window, and started to fall.

Steve had been feeling a little better since his chat with Dr. Banner. Nothing had changed, not outwardly, but he thought the wheels had started moving. He wasn't locked up somewhere punching a bag and feeling sorry for himself, which was something. He was planning on becoming part of something bigger again, which was also something. He didn't think it was going to be easy, but when had things ever been easy? He wouldn't know what to do if things came without a fight, and he'd learned to take punches long before any of these Avengers were born.

Which is why, on that particular day, Steve had charmed his way into The SHIELD facility and, with the help of some air ducts and some moves he hadn't tried since before he'd ended up on ice, he'd ended up with a red white a blue shield strapped to his back. There were alarms going off somewhere back there, and he was sure he looked like an idiot walking down the sidewalk in khakis and a white shirt, with what amounted to a relic on his back, but he knew better. He knew better, and he felt like he was back in the game. SHIELD could come calling if they wanted, but he'd be ready if they did. Blame it all on Bruce's speech; Steve always had been a sucker for the motivational pep talks - maybe it was the soldier in him.

What Steve wasn't expecting, however, was the crash overhead, just as he started getting close enough to pull open the front doors of Stark Tower. He was intending to talk to see Tony, but not like this. Because he was pretty sure that red and gold thing falling from the sky was the man himself. The door forgotten, Steve moved back and put himself between the impact of the iron suit and the sidewalk, and he didn't need to look up to know what would be standing at the shattered window that was raining glass on him.

"Good thing you don't weigh much," Steve quipped, already turning attention to the crowd gathered behind them. "Move away from the building," he ordered in a tone that sounded authoritative enough that no one argued. Or maybe it was the fact that Iron Man had just fallen out a window and gotten caught by a man with an American flag for a shield.

It was really getting disturbing how that feeling of total free fall was getting so familiar, the lift of Tony's stomach up into his chest, the extra burst of adrenaline that made it so much easier to think. It would have been ten times better if he had been able to issue instructions to Jarvis, but fortunately the AI seemed to have figured out that Tony was having difficulty communicating, because after two inquiries the urbane voice began issuing other options for directions. Knowing how likely it was that one limb or another might be damaged beyond repair, Tony had written additional protocols into the Iron Man suit's systems. He couldn't afford to lose control of the suit entirely just because he lost the use of a hand, for example--or lost a hand entirely.

As a result, Jarvis issued control options for acceleration and system power as Tony plummeted toward the ground, giving Tony options like "close right fist entirely to resume power in stabilizers" that Tony felt took far too long to say. Iron Man's hands flashed white and he managed to slow his fall with halfway responsive systems, but he still was understandably surprised when he didn't feel the impact of the sidewalk the way he should have. The suit was designed to protect him from impacts of all kinds, but it didn't work that well.

Iron Man rolled off Steve's arms and caught himself with a boot digging back into the pavement, and looked with almost visible surprise at the person that had caught him. And in that moment, oh God, he had so many one liners, it was killing him. The suit was smoking gently as the metal tried to return rapidly to normal temperatures, and his shoulder sparked around the deep tear through the joint. He tried to speak for like the fiftieth time, found his voice just didn't work, and finally made a sharp gesture from Steve up toward the sky. Want a lift, Captain?

Loki watched as Tony plowed through the window and plummeted down toward the ground with vague interest, and a twinge of something...unneeded. He'd consider that later. He turned back to his previous task of finding the suits in the mess Stark had made of his own building, for which he had already come up with an eloquent solution. He glanced up to the ceiling, and the whole room hummed. The ceiling, charged up like an electromagnet, pulled everything metal on the floor up through the rubble to cling to the ceiling like so many iron fillings. Loki's helmet and armor, however, remained untouched.

And there were the suits, scratched and scarred as they were from being covered by the rubble. Loki gestured toward the one closest to him, and its arm separated neatly from its socket, coming obediently to his hand, where he clasped the metal sheath by the wrist. Loki briefly unzipped the air around him, a hole that blurred the eye and seemed to lead to a flat plane of black, and also to an infinite depth of space. He dropped the arm into the pocket, and it zipped closed again. Stark would, he expected, be back any minute. His head tipped up, suddenly, as another presence came close, burning bright as a beacon. Stark would be back, and with company. Well, this would be fun.

Steve hadn’t known Tony Stark for very long, but he already knew the man’s annoying humor was a constant, even in situations where it wasn’t called for, and he figured out right away that something must be wrong with Tony’s voice for the other man to be uncharacteristically silent. Maybe it had something to do with the smoking suit, but Tony seemed to be alright, and Steve was actually glad of the silence (for once). “Sure,” was his response to the gestured offer for the ride, and it was followed up by a boyish grin. “Good to see you learned when to be quiet.” He knew that wasn’t the case, but he liked saying it anyway. It was the last smile, though, before his expression turned serious. Steve never made light of a fight; that was Tony’s strategy, not his.

The ride up was nothing special, not for a man that had been thrown out of planes during the war, and Steve walked across the ruined level of Stark Tower with care, the approach very much a soldier trying to avoid landmines. His shield was in his hand, the weight familiar, though he wished he would have gotten a chance to test it out before having to actually use it again. He wasn’t too worried, though. It had never let him down before, and it wouldn’t let him down now. He saw Loki just as the space in front of the trickster zipped closed, and his eyes narrowed. He didn’t bother with conversation. He just flung the shield, a perfect throw that intentionally ricocheted off two ruined walls - a distraction tactic, keeping Loki uncertain where to focus - before heading for the back of the intruder’s head. And Steve wasted no time charging, jumping up to reclaim the shield as he went and swinging it down at Loki’s head, even as he neared.

Loki had yet to be given an opportunity to confront the absurdly patriotic soldier he'd heard so much about, but he'd expected to come up against him sooner rather than later. The shield caught his attention as it bounced off the walls, but he knew something meant to draw his eye when he saw it, and followed where he knew the shield would eventually be rather than watching its every move. He met the jump - above average length and height for a mortal, he'd keep that in mind - with a smooth pull back, sliding back over the floor impossibly fast. "Playing catch with yourself? How pathetic." He gestured up to one of the beams attached to the ceiling. It came suddenly loose and plummeted for the floor, directly toward Steve.

Tony just ground his teeth against Loki’s spell at Steve’s baiting, bidding farewell to a great number of brilliant things he could have said about elevators and falling stars on the way back up to the top of the tower. He would have said something in the way of advice before Steve bounded off into the fray, but it was too late before he was done thinking the thought. The Captain went left and Iron Man went right, and he had time to raise a palm and blast the beam over and away into the far wall before it fell on Steve’s head. Another blast from his other hand (ow, his shoulder hurt) at Loki’s head and he kept on firing. Maybe they could drive the god off the side of the building.

“I’m not the pathetic one in this room, Loki,” was Steve’s cocksure response. He sounded very military, very disapproving, and very chastising, as if Loki was a misbehaving child that needed to be put in timeout for everyone’s sanity. He waited until he saw Tony raise a metal arm to blast the trickster one way, and then he charged himself, shield raised and ready to impact against the back of Loki’s neck. If he severed Loki’s spine, he wouldn’t cry over it, and he knew there was no way the man could avoid both threats effectively, not when running would only result in more of the same. “You’re outnumbered. Put back whatever you stuffed in that void, and we might not throw you off the building.” Whether it was true or not didn’t matter. What mattered was letting Loki know he’d been caught in the act.

Loki reacted with fear to the unavoidable blasts from Stark and the shield slamming down on the back of his neck. Oh, the horror! Oh, how would he survive this encounter? The moment of impact arrived, and he seemed ready to throw up a shield, to attempt to fend off at least one of them, perhaps both -

And then nothing was there in the spot where Loki had been standing, the blasts shearing through empty space, the shield slamming down on nothing. No, Loki was on the other side of the room instead, behind Stark, the curved end of his scepter in inch from the back of his neck. The scepter crackled with wicked energy, the stone at its center glowing bright. "Would you like to continue threatening me?" he asked, glancing over at the captain. "Please, go on. You were saying I was outnumbered?"

Loki dropped the scepter, and fired into the small of Stark's back.

Tony didn't have quite enough time to turn, but he did have enough time to think about how much he really wanted those voice controls to be telepathic. It would have been great if he had some other important thought, some ace up his sleeve to throw Steve before it all came down, but he didn't. His mind was blank, and he twisted around almost comically for the glowing eyes to squint at Loki. He started to raise a hand.

The blast sent the smoking, sparking suit across the room like a rag doll. It smashed into the division between Pepper's apartment and sitting room in an explosion of dust and blue light that consumed several seconds and the entire upper length of Stark Tower.

Steve had never met Loki in battle before, but he knew wars, and he knew you couldn’t defeat a man you couldn’t touch. He changed his strategy instantly, and instead of pursuing the man with the scepter, he dove after Tony and grabbed him around the waist, arm tight around the damaged iron of the suit. A second later, and he dove for the window, counting on a car to land on with the added weight, if Tony couldn’t get the suit to keep them airborne. Every soldier knew there was a time to retreat, a time to rework strategy and come back another day. If there was one thing Steve was sure of, it was that Loki wasn’t going anywhere, not permanently. They’d get their chance at him again, but Dr. Banner was right; it was going to have to be as a team.

Loki placed the scepter against the curve of his shoulder, watching the pair of them leap off the side of the building. What a quick retreat - he almost felt cheated. But there would, of course, be plenty of time to fight them both in future. No need to waste them both yet, when there would be opportunity to see them at his feet later, along with everyone else.

He moved toward the side of the building and summoned his transport rather than waste energy on jumping through space. Stark and Rogers were no longer a threat, after all, and he fired away from the smoking tower, triumphant and pleased with their defeat.