Starting Over - Loki (COMPLETE)

41) Clint

Loki decided to begin before Thor arrived. Thor did not need to hear what came next. Or, rather, Loki did not want him to.

"I'm going to say a lot of things in a short space of time and I don't want any questions unrelated to the task in hand."

"Noted," replied Steve.

He took a deep breath.

"When Thor destroyed the Asgardian method of transportation to other realms, the Bifrost bridge, I was left hanging on the edge. I decided to fall. I fell down for miles and miles but then I landed on a desolate planet, Titan. Titan had been utterly decimated and was being ruled by a being called Thanos. Thanos is in control of The Other and the Chitauri. I was tortured and brainwashed."

Steve and Bruce gasped. Natasha and Clint simply looked sad. Tony went white and Rhodey quickly put a comforting arm around his shoulders. Rhodey understood now what Loki had meant about surviving falls from great heights.

"Before Thanos could manipulate me for his own ends, I managed to escape, with great difficulty. I fell further and landed here on earth. In my vision, Thanos expressed an urge to take revenge on me and to show no mercy. Thanos works to destroy realms but this is a personal vendetta against me. As such, I am going to do everything in my power to ensure the safety of this world."

The only one seemingly able to focus on the task at hand, Natasha, spoke up. Whether she was doing it to divert attention away from Loki's tragic and tumultuous past, he did not know. Either way, he appreciated the gesture.

"How will Thanos get here? Does he have a giant spaceship or something?"

"He can use the Tesseract to harness enough energy to open a portal to earth," Loki replied. "This is why the Tesseract is not for mortal men. Humans have shown, so far, that they are unable to harness its energy. To track Thanos, we need to track the Tesseract's energy signals but I have this sorted."

"How?" Questioned Fury.

"I have a friend on it," Loki answered simply. "Any other questions?"

Steve spoke up.

"So if Thanos is coming to earth, what can we do to stop him? I assume he's really powerful."

"Thanos will not come in person," Loki responded. "Thanos does not get involved in insignificant massacres. Instead he will send the Chitauri, presumably commanded by The Other."

"Do we know how we can destroy the Chitauri?" Clint inquired.

"The Chitauri may be sentient," said Loki, "But they operate under a hive mind intelligence. They have a command centre. If that is destroyed, all of the Chitauri will go down."

"Nice," commented Clint.

"The Chitauri do not take their command centre with them. It is their base, if you will. Commands are sent from there and the Chitauri receive these commands wherever they happen to be. The command centre could be galaxies away. It is not as easy as you think."

"Don't worry, Lokes," said Tony, having regained his voice, "Only Birdbrain here thought it was going to be easy."