The Seventh Avenger by ElrondsScribe

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Chapter 5: Thor and His Mighty Hammer

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All rights belong to Marvel Studios and the Tolkien Estate.

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The mighty Thor, for of course it was he, strode up into the Quinjet and sent Iron Man flying backward with a single blow of his great hammer. Glorfindel plunged in front of Loki, but this proved to be a mistake, for Thor easily knocked the sword out of the Elf's hand and tossed him against the side wall. Then, before anyone could react, he had seized Loki by the throat and with a twirl of his hammer gone rocketing out of the open door.

"And now there's that guy," grumbled Tony, climbing to his feet.

"Another Asgardian?" asked Romanoff.

"Thor, actually," grunted Glorfindel, sitting up rather painfully (he had recognized him from the SHIELD file).

"Think he's a friendly?" asked Steve.

Tony was stalking toward the still-open door. "Doesn't matter," he said. "If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract's lost."

"Wait, Stark!" shouted Glorfindel. "We need a plan of attack!"

Already on the ramp, Iron Man turned his head halfway. "I have a plan - attack," he said grimly, and with a roar of repulsor rays he was gone.

Steve began strapping on a parachute at once.

"Captain, I think you'll want to sit this one out," said Glorfindel, who had just pulled himself up and picked up the sword.

"Don't see how I can do that," said the Captain, tightening the buckles on his parachute pack.

"He's got a point," called Romanoff. "These guys come from legend - they're basically gods."

"There's only one God, ma'am," said Steve stoutly, picking up his shield. "And I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that." And he dived out of the opening.

Glorfindel gave a huff of frustration - ridiculous Men, you'll both get yourselves killed - and strapped on his own parachute, losing no time in jumping after the Captain.

He nearly crashed into the treetops of a rather dense forest off the side of a mountain, and had to release the parachute and tangle himself up in the boughs of a particularly convenient ash. It took him some time to get out of the pack and climb down the tree (that is, climb part of the way down and jump the last few feet). As soon as he was on the ground he heard the sound of crashing trees, irregular claps of thunder, and the loud blasts of Iron Man's repulsor rays.

Apparently the newcomer Thor was not exactly a friendly.

Heavy boots came thumping over the ground toward Glorfindel, and in a few moments Captain America jogged into view. "Not waiting for me, are you?" he asked as he ran up.

"Hardly," said Glorfindel dryly, wincing as a streak of lightning seemed to strike straight downward and was followed by an especially loud thunderclap. "What exactly do you propose we do?" Somehow it seemed only natural to look to Rogers for orders.

"Try and see if we can stop the fight, and what that guy with the hammer wants," said Steve. "C'mon!" And he set off in the direction of all the ruckus, Glorfindel following close behind.

What they found when they arrived in a clearing that looked as if it had recently been very much smaller made Glorfindel sigh and Steve snort. Iron Man and the red-cloaked Thor were attempting to pound the daylights out of each other (and failing) near the foot of the mountain. High up on a shelf in the mountainside sat Loki, watching the entire fiasco with an amused smirk.

Idiots! thought Glorfindel. You'd think he was waiting for them to duke it out and then re-capture him.

Or perhaps that's exactly what he's doing.

But Steve had already leapt atop a standing fragment of a (recently, to all appearances) fallen tree. "Hey!" he barked, sending his shield at the pair like a discus thrower. "That's enough!"

Both Stark and Thor stopped and glared balefully at the Captain (though in fairness the mask of the Iron Man helmet always seemed to scowl forbiddingly).

Steve jumped down off the tree-trunk. "Now," he began, addressing Thor. "I don't know what you plan on doing here -"

"I've come to put an end to Loki's schemes!" barked Thor. His voice was deep and gruff and powerful, and somehow like him.

"Then prove it," said the Captain sternly. "Put that hammer down."

"Uh, yeah, no!" said Tony in alarm. "Bad call! He loves his -"

Thwack! The great hammer sent Iron Man flying backward like a ball thrown by a child. "You want me to put the hammer down?!" roared Thor, and he leapt toward Steve with the weapon in question raised high above his head.

Glorfindel, who had for the last few moments been sharply eyeing Loki, turned in alarm and was about to leap toward Steve, but the Captain settled into a half crouch and held up his shield. The hammer of Thor struck the Vibranium with an impact that flattened everything around it, a metallic clang ringing through the heads of any within hearing distance. Glorfindel's ears were momentarily deafened, and he swayed.

When he recovered a little, he looked up to see that all the trees in about a ten-yard radius of the Captain had been flattened. Thor appeared to have been knocked back a few yards; he was only just climbing to his feet, followed in short order by by Tony and Steve.

"I hope we're done here?" asked Glorfindel, panting a little.

Thor looked from one to the other of them, assessing them in silence. Up on the mountainside, Loki sat and watched.

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Very early morning May 4, 2012

"In case it's unclear," the voice of Nick Fury echoed over the speakers while on a screen in front of Glorfindel played an image of the Man standing before the solid glass-and-titanium chamber into which Loki had just stepped. "You try to escape - you so much as scratch that glass -" he stepped up onto a platform and pushed a button on a screen, and Loki stepped to the edge of his cell to look out and down.

"- thirty thousand feet straight down in a steel trap," said Fury. "You get how that works?" He pointed at the Asgardian. "Ant." He pointed at the control panel. "Boot."

Loki laughed, possibly in appreciation of some earlier joke, and stepped back into the middle of the cell. "It's an impressive cage," he said quite truly, spreading his hands. "Not built, I think, for me."

"Built for something a lot stronger than you," said Fury.

Glorfindel, seated with Dr. Banner (and Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff with Thor standing nearby) around the table in the central command chamber of the Helicarrier, did not look at the Man in question.

"Oh, I've heard," Loki's smile was now directed at a security camera, making it seem as if he was looking directly at the viewers. "The mindless beast makes play he's still a man." He looked back at Fury, openly taunting him now. "How desperate are you, that you call on such lost creatures to defend you?"

Fury stepped down off the platform and stalked toward the cage. "How desperate am I?" he asked, his voice low and deadly as Glorfindel had never yet heard it. "You threaten my world with war, you steal a force you can't hope to control, you talk about peace, and you kill 'cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."

"Ooh!" Loki mocked. "It burns you to have come so close! To have the Tesseract, to have power - unlimited power! And for what?" He smirked up at the camera again. "A warm light for all mankind to share?" He looked at Fury again, eyes glinting. "And then to be reminded what real power is."

Fury's lips curled into a smile that did not touch his eyes. "Well," he said, turning to walk away. "Let me know if 'real power' wants a magazine or something."

The feeds to the detention level of the Helicarrier cut, and Banner stirred. "He really grows on you, doesn't he?"

"Loki's gonna drag this out," said the Captain briskly. "So, Thor, what's his play?"

Thor, who Glorfindel thought was in silent mourning, roused himself and spoke. "He has an army called the Chitauri," he said flatly. "They are not of Asgard nor 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," said Steve. "From outer space." It was not a question.

"So he's building another portal," Bruce took off his glasses. "That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."

"Selvig?" asked Thor sharply.

"He's an astrophysicist," said Bruce.

"He's a friend," Thor corrected, and he looked worried.

How does a prince from another planet know a random Earth astrophysicist?

"Loki has him under some spell," said Romanoff tonelessly. "Along with one of ours."

(Maria Hill stepped up onto the level where the table was, watching in silence.)

"I wonder why he let us take him," said Glorfindel, speaking for the first time and causing Thor to look at him with some interest. "He seems perfectly at ease in that death trap of a cell."

But Bruce shook his head. "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."

Thor turned on him. "Have a care how you speak," he said sternly. "Loki may be beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days," said Romanoff in the same toneless voice.

Thor seemed to back down. "He's adopted," he muttered.

"Oh, poor thing, I was too," said Glorfindel unsympathetically. Thor eyed him again, and Bruce arched his eyebrows.

"You mentioned Dr. Selvig?" Glorfindel steered the conversation back on track.

"Right, I'm thinking it's about the mechanics," said Bruce. "Iridium - what do they need the iridium for?"

"Stabilizing agent," said a voice, and Tony Stark strode into the room accompanied by Agent Coulson, to whom he said, "I'm just saying - just pick a weekend, I'll fly you to Portland. Keep the love alive." Coulson nodded and vanished in another direction, and Tony addressed Bruce again as he came up to the table. "Means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at SHIELD. No hard feelings, Point Break," to Thor as he passed the Asgardian and smacked his arm. "You've got a mean swing."

Point Break? Clearly I'm not as up on my popular culture references as I thought.

Tony continued past the table up onto Fury's platform, ignoring Thor's slightly gobsmacked look. "Also," he went on. "It means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants." He was now in the middle of the platform. "Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the top sails," he said, presumably addressing the crew, who stared at him in annoyance.

"That man is playing Galaga!" Tony suddenly pointed at the screen of a hapless young agent. "Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did."

You mean you noticed. The boy's probably bored out of his mind.

Tony put a hand over one eye and seemed to be trying to look at all the four wide screens at once. "How does Fury even see these?" he asked, pointing.

"He turns," said Maria, who had been silent up to that point.

For hours on end, without a chair?!

"Sounds exhausting," said Tony, turning back to the screens and scrolling and tapping. "The rest of the materials Agent Barton can get his hands on fairly easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source - high energy density." It was at this point that Glorfindel saw Tony's hand slide briefly over the surface under one of the screens. "Something to kick-start the Cube," he finished, turning back to face the table.

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" demanded Maria.

"Last night," Tony shot back, and Maria's mouth tightened.

"The packet," said Tony. "Selvig's notes, the extraction theory papers." He spread his hands in exasperation as he stepped off the platform. "Am I the only one who did the reading?"

"It may have escaped your attention that we're not all MIT graduates," grumbled Glorfindel. Summa cum laude, no less.

"Don't be sore," said Tony. "It really doesn't go with your eyes."

Steve had clearly had enough. "Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" he asked.

"He'd have to heat the Cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier," said Bruce reflectively.

"Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunnelling effect," said Tony, approaching the table again.

"Well!" huffed Bruce. "If he could do that, he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet."

"Finally!" Tony exulted, holding out his hand toward Bruce. "Someone who speaks English!"

"Is that what just happened?" asked Steve in dazed annoyance as Tony walked up to Bruce and shook his hand.

"It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner," said Tony sincerely. "Your 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."

Steve clapped his hand over his resisted the urge to do the same. "Tactless much?" he muttered.

The unfortunate Bruce blinked and looked away. "Thanks."

"Dr. Banner is only here to track the Cube," said Fury as he entered the chamber, presumably addressing Tony. "I was hoping you might join him."

"Let's start with that stick of his," suggested Steve. "It may be magical, but it works a lot like a HYDRA weapon."

"I don't know about that," said Fury, and Glorfindel had a notion that Steve's choice of words affected him a bit oddly. "But it is powered by the Cube. And I want to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

"Monkeys?" Thor's brow furrowed in confusion. "I do not understand -"

"I do!" Steve grinned, looking quite proud of himself. "I understood that reference."

Tony rolled his eyes. Glorfindel gave the Captain a smile that he hoped said "please don't embarrass yourself" as plainly as possible. He immediately regretted this as Steve's face fell.

"Shall we play, Doc?" asked Tony, turning back to Bruce.

"Let's play some," agreed Bruce, and the two vanished in the direction of the lab.