Astoria stands on the top of a leviathan, her hands held close together as she pushes her blue magical energy into a ball, behind her, Loki uses his daggers to fight off chitauri. He is keeping them off her back whilst she concentrates on taking down the goliath beneath them. She throws her hands down, the ball of energy penetrating the leviathan and travelling through it. Little explosions follow its path. Astoria manifests her sword as the leviathan shifts, flying upwards to escape its pain. Astoria slams her sword into its spine and then slides down the leviathan, dealing damage as she goes.
"Weeeeeee" Loki spins when he hears her coming straight at him. She knocks his legs out from under him and they both go tumbling from the leviathan as it crashes. Rolling across the street, tangled together until they come to a stop. He groans a little and lifts his head to find her smirking at him. It is rather suggestive. Her look. The way he's pressed against her. "Hiya, handsome, buy a girl a drink first..." She teases, he gives her a look and pushes himself off of her, she chuckles a little and turns to rest on her knees. She lets out a breath and shakes her head. Loki takes her arm and pulls her up to her feet. The two of them share a look. Natasha and Steve appear through a cloud of smoke from the burning leviathan.
"I think this wave is lasting a little long" Natasha complains as lightning takes out a row of chitauri and Thor lands behind Loki.
"Then it is time we put an end to it" Thor agrees as he walks towards his brother.
............
There is a chitauri team guarding the sceptre. It was probably a mistake to leave it in the tower, but Loki wanted nothing to do with it. His mind is clear now, he is intelligent enough to understand and see what it was doing to him. He's no longer blinded by the effects or bound to it. Bound to his master. He's done with that. He looks at Astoria at his side as she spins her sword, standing ready for a fight. It's her. She did this to him. She freed him from chains he didn't know he was tied down by. Loki spins his daggers in his hands and then points them at the chitauri.
"We can take them" He states, she smirks and snorts.
"Obviously" She agrees, his lips twitch into a smile. "What are we waiting for?" She then charges into the fight. Loki moves around the edge of the fight, taking out the stragglers whilst moving towards the sceptre. Loki grabs the sceptre from the bar and then throws it to Astoria who snatches it from the air, stick fights with a chitauri soldier before teleporting away.
...........
Loki makes it to the balcony just in time to see another Leviathan heading for the portal. They need to do it now before the city is overwhelmed. He glances down at the street where the heroes are seeing the same as him. Steve nods a little when he looks at Loki. They both know it needs to happen and it needs to happen right now.
"Do it!"
"No, wait!" Tony argues.
"Stark, these things are still coming, the portal needs to be closed"
"I got a nuke coming in, it's gonna blow in less than a minute. And I know just where to put it." Tony explains.
...........
Tony has caught up with an incoming missile, turning her goes at it from behind. The missile speeds on. Tony grabs it from behind, gripping it tightly. With a mighty effort, he wrenches the rocket off its course. Steering it from behind, he accelerates quickly, flying straight up into the sky, towards the portal.
"Stark, you know that's a one-way trip?" Steve asks him, but Tony doesn't vocalise an answer. He is aware.
"Save the rest for return, J," Tony tells Jarvis.
"Sir. Shall I call Miss Potts?"
"You might as well" Tony answers, his helmet is filled with the sound of the call ringing, but there is no answer. He shakes his head, turning to focus on the task at hand. He climbs higher and higher over the city, gaining speed as he closes in on the portal. Then he suddenly flings himself through it. His communications die. The suit begins to see. Tony looks on in horror as he looks on for what is waiting for him, what was waiting for them. An armada. The black sky is filled with what must be ninety ships in a vague cluster. Most of them hang still in the air. Some move swimmingly about. Tony lets go of the missile. It whistles off into the blackness as Tony falls back down the portal's opening. The missile reaches the main ship and then hits its mark. The ship implodes causing the entire armada to burst into a supernova.
.........
Loki turns as a chitauri sneaks up on him but suddenly it keels over and begins to shake, along with every chitauri on the street, in the air. The leviathans begin to fall. Dead.
.........
On the street, Steve, Thor, and Natasha stare up at the portal waiting to see if Tony makes it out.
........
On the roof, Astoria holds the sceptre, waiting for her signal, her eyes on the sky too, watching the spectacular display of explosions. She oohs and ahhs as they go.
.........
Thor and Steve see the supernova coming towards them. Thor looks up at the tower to Loki who sensing his brother's gaze turns to look down at him, the two of them sharing a look. Thor nods.
"Whenever you are ready, Magic-Girl!" Loki shouts and then looks up. Astoria pokes her head over the rooftop and smirks at him. They share a look and she nods, leaning back and moving to the machine with the tesseract. Selvig sits against the wall unconscious, she didn't hit him, just knocked him out telepathically. He'll sleep it off. She shifts the sceptre in her hand and then presses it against the energy shield around the device. The power builds up around the tesseract and the sceptre. Astoria struggles to push back against it.
"Come on!" She growls and pushes harder, her own magic pulsing against the energy coming off the tesseract, trying to find an opening to slide the sceptre through. There. The sceptre hits the device's fail-safe. The tesseract turns off its energy beam and the portal quickly closes, but the tesseract's energy just builds around it, weaving through Astoria's magic, she frowns and cocks her head. It throws out the energy directly towards Astoria who lets out an annoyed breath. The energy knocks her unconscious and throws her over the edge of the roof for good measure, sending her careening towards the road 1130 feet below. Loki looks up hearing the commotion. Loki's eyes widen, he is quick to move, and he grabs her wrist as she falls past him, almost sliding from the balcony to stop her. He goes over the edge and reaches back for the ledge. Suddenly, Thor is there, he snaps his fingers around Loki's wrist, the two brothers share a look. The familiarity of this scene is not lost on either of them. They've been here before, and Loki fell into the abyss that led him down a very dark path. That led him to this invasion.
"I have you, brother" Thor assures him and then pulls Loki back up onto the balcony before he helps with pulling Astoria up and onto the balcony. "Is she dead?"
"No" Loki checks on her but she's out cold but not dead. "No, she's just unconscious" He brushes her hair back from her face and lets out a breath. Thor raises an eyebrow watching his brother being soft with this girl.
YOU ARE READING
(1) Alis Propriis Volat (Loki)
Fanfiction- I am bringing this back after the replacement kind of fizzled out. (Book One - Ljubičica Čarobnica) Being a Hargreeves is difficult. All that trauma and unresolved childhood issues tear them apart from the inside. But now, Astoria has a second ch...
