"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,"
Audelia Motter let her eyes trail over the screens before her, the sight of the God of Mischief staring the camera directly in the face. The piercing look in his eyes sent a shiver down the woman's spine as she adjusted herself in the doorway where she was currently leaning.
Removing him from her mind for just a split second, Deli produced her phone from her back pocket, clicking the home button as she smiled down her her home screen. Little Aurora, smiling and laughing as Tony held her in his arms, a smile lighting up his own face as he looked down at her. It was a sight she never wanted to forget.
"He really grows on you, doesn't he?"
Deli looked over at Bruce Banner, laughing lightly as she reached out her hand to him.
"He definitely does. It's good to meet you, Doctor Banner,"
"You as well, Ms. Motter,"
"Loki's gonna drag this out," Steve cut in, sending them a look as he went into full soldier mode, sitting rigid at the meeting table. "So, Thor, what's his play?"
"He has an army called the Chitauri," the god explained to the group sitting around the table. "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.""
"An army? From outer space?" Steve questioned, taking a look around the group. His eyes landed on Audelia as she shrugged.
"It's not the weirdest thing you'll hear for sure," her eyes trailed back to the guard before them. "So that means he's building another portal, that's the big plan. Would explain what he needs Erik Selvig for."
"Selvig?"
"He's an astrophysicist," Bruce explained to the god who shook his head.
"He's a close friend,"
"Loki's got him under some sort of spell," Natasha chimed in for the first time, her eyes trailing down to the table at her next words. "Along with one of her own."
Natasha wasn't a very open person, but Deli liked to think that she had gotten under her skin a little and become her friend. She hadn't personally met Agent Barton, yet, but she knew how much he meant to Natasha, even if she didn't know the full story. If the roles were reversed and it was Deli losing Tony...she was sure she'd feel even worse.
"I wanna know why Loki let us take him. He's not leading an army from here,"
"Steve's got a point," Audelia chimed in as she looked around the room. "It was too easy. Loki let us waltz right in and barely put up a fight when Tony and I got to Germany. We didn't capture him, he let us take him. He's got a bigger plan and we need to figure out what that is."
"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on him," Bruce let out a small chuckle as Thor took a step toward the table.
"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 mentioned, staring at the god.
"...he's adopted,"
"Iridium," Bruce mumbled under his breath, looking around the room. "What did they need the Iridium for?"
"It's a stabilizing agent,"
The room turned at the sound of Tony Stark's voice as he entered, alongside Phil Coulson. Deli shot the agent a smile before catching Tony's eye as he sent her a wink, motioning for her to follow along with him toward the from podiums of the room.
"Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at SHIELD," Tony, with Deli on his heels, walked past Thor and patted him on the chest. "No hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing. Also, Iridium, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants it to."
Tony stopped in front of the hologram boards that Director Fury used to command the SHIELD agents. Deli stepped past him, his fingers reaching out to brush her hand as he slipped a small, circular disc into her hand. She knew it well, as she had created it. It would allow JARVIS to enter into the SHIELD systems and decode all of their secrets.
Tony and Deli might like Fury, but it didn't mean they fully trusted him. SHIELD was built on secrets. Fury had declined to even tell Audelia that her mother had helped Howard Stark and Peggy Carter found SHIELD until after the birth of Aurora. To say she lost a bit of trust in him then would be the understatement of the world.
"Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the top sails..." Tony trailed off, looking around the room at the agent before pointing to one in the corner. "That man is playing GALAGA! Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did."
"Ms. Motter," the woman turned at the sound of Agent Maria Hill's voice, turning to raise an eyebrow at her. "Since Mr. Stark is too busy having fun, would you like to explain instead?"
"Oh no, I'm not well versed on...all of that," Audelia commanded the attention of the room as her hands expertly moved behind her and out of sight, placing the device on the boards, missing the smirk on Tony's lips at her action. "Tony is the one with all the knowledge about...all this that's going on. I'm just the tech designer, not the chemist or whatever."
"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," Tony finished off his explanation as Maria Hill raised an eyebrow at him.
"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?"
"Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?"
"Tried to, but he's quite annoying when he's trying to become a genius overnight," Tony dug his elbow into Deli's side for the comment.
"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve chimed in, his annoyance clearly written on his face.
"He's got to heat the cube to a hundredand twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier," Bruce explained as Tony stalked toward him.
Audelia let out a sigh, walking away from Tony and Bruce as she took a seat on the table next to Steve, leaning slightly toward him to whisper.
"You're probably not going to understand anything they're about to talk about, so just ignore it,"
"That's reassuring," Steve muttered as 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...think I liked Deli's introduction more..."
"Don't worry, everyone always does-"
"Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube," the room turned to face Director Fury as he stalked into the room, his lips down turned into what looked like a permanent frown. "I was hoping you might join him."
"Let's start with that stick of his," Steve told the group. "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,"
"Monkeys?" Thor questioned, confusion laced in his eyes. "I do not understand-"
"I do!" the room turned to look at the excited Steve Rogers as he shrunk back in his seat, Tony giving off the biggest eye roll in history. "I understood that reference."
Audelia shook her head with a grin, hopping off the table as she walked toward Tony and Bruce, grabbing hold of her best friend and tugging him out of the room and motioning for Banner to follow.
"Let's get you to the lab before you actually murder Captain America,"
"Come on, he's not that great. Only thing the Star Spangled Man with a Plan has going for him is that nice, round a-"
"Anthony Stark, don't finish that sentence please,"
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Okay this chapter was less trash then the last one thank god