Disclaimer - All the usual Yada Yada Yada. I don't own any rights to any characters in this fic save for my OCs. Don't sue me.
Anywho, without further ado - read on.
Earth-6161 [May 2012]
Helicarrier
–Tony Stark—
He stood, hunched over his workstation, as he awaited the reports, either from Thor's medical being done while being in transit to the Helicarrier, or the search reports that should be coming in soon. The blast had reset everything, with Bruce's algorithm restarting from scratch.
The man was a savant when it came to Gamma Radiation but behavioral neural algorithms were his forte and thus, his algorithm very clearly beat Bruce's out of the water. So far, it has already scanned 20% of the planet's landmass and should be done with the rest in about an hour or so.
Hopefully, Loki would not create some portal somewhere before they tracked him down. It was all but assured in his mind that Loki was going to lose. It was only a matter of time before they tracked him down and with Weber on their side, Loki stood no chance.
And yet, something rankled at him. Something that made him feel uneasy about Weber. The way she looked completely at ease with herself after knowing that her inactions led to dozens of people being either severely injured or outright crippled/
She talked about not letting a single soul die as if she was doing them a favour. He had to find out just where she came from. Someone of that calibre should not have been an unknown. From what little he had seen, she was someone who should have been killed off by the many old people in power who wished to retain it for longer periods of time.
Weber alone was more than capable, at least if his calculations were correct, capable of destroying any coastal city on the planet while they were stuck finding her since she was also capable of turning herself into water with no discernible difference in the water content.
Also, that water was also capable of turning metallic multi ton rotors at high even speeds that their attached engines began running once again. That was not normal behavior for water and even as she did that, right in front of him, his sensors were unable to tell him anything that was wrong with the water, as if water capable of ripping apart metal was normal.
Jarvis was working overtime with all his production facilities working overtime to make more and more parts along with the three suits already in transit. If nothing went wrong, they should be here by the time the algorithm was done scouring the planet for the Tesseract. Banner was still out in the wind and with most of their long range sensors busy looking for the Tesseract, he was unable to spare any extra resource to find Bruce, except telling Jarvis to keep an eye out for any reports around the globe, with a large 1000 mile radius where he might have crashed when he was pushed out of the Helicarrier.
He felt kind of useful as he gulped down yet another shot of coffee. People at SHIELD had pretty shitty coffee but he supposed that having a flying fortress must be something worth the sacrifice. He tried to ignore the continuously dropping in medical reports about the people injured.
More importantly, Romanoff, she was the one who was injured the most, having lost way too much blood and being in a medically induced coma, with no wake up date so far. That stung him surprisingly more than he thought it would.
That was the part he was most angry about. After all, Romanoff is a known face, someone he had interacted with for months before he knew the truth about her. The other agents were just faceless people for him and while he was disturbed that Weber, someone who was supposedly part of a hero team, could not be arsed to save people from dying, it was not as extreme as he felt when he learned that Romanoff could have been spared the quite possibly fatal injuries.
He sighed and opened the workspace once more, determined to make himself useful, and locating Loki before Weber could, might make him feel better about himself, especially after that embarrassing outburst outside on the deck of the ship.
That was…
He shook his head as he focused back on his work. This was no time to dwell on emotions he thought he had lost long ago.
_____xx____
–Clint "Hawkeye" Barton [Mr. I-bring-a-bow-to-a-laser-fight]--
He walked, armed and ready, with Director Fury into a conference room. On his way here, he had to hide the winces when he saw the wariness and in some cases, outright hatred on the agents' faces when they saw him. He had a hunch that had it not been for a ship wide announcement about his brainwashing being done, he might have been lynched.
That might have happened still had he not been with Director Fury who made sure to glare at the standing still agents who were openly gawking at him.
"So, where are we on Loki?" He asked the Director as they sat across each other on the giant conference table.
"We will have a location on him once he has the Tesseract in his hand. Weber will be the one who will inform us about him. She is actively tracking Loki right now." He raised an eyebrow as he asked the one question that had been burning him, even when he was still an obedient drone under Loki's control.
He leaned forward, and asked, "Who is she?"
Fury sighed, "That is complicated. What you need to know is she is an absolutely powerful person capable of taking down Loki before he has any time to blink. Treat her as an enhanced on par if not more powerful than the Hulk and Thor."
He had to blink at the piece of information. That was…surprising.
"Really, even the Hulk?"
"Yes, she is far more dangerous than someone who can just punch harder. If she so wished, she could practically kill every single person on this boat in an instant."
His eyes widened at that, "Her Water control? You believe she can just kill people because of the blood in our bodies?"
"I know she can do that because when the Captain first met her, she induced a heart attack in him just by looking. I believe she can do so much worse if given the reason, so I would like you to treat her as a live bomb, which she technically is."
"I see. I will keep that in mind."
The Director then slumped back in his chair, sighing, "Now, to the more difficult matter."
Fury leveled his one eye on him, "Romanoff is severely injured."
"What?" He almost stood up at that. "Then why are we here? Where is Nat?"
"She is being treated by the best doctors we have on hand and once the boat is docked, she will get the best SHIELD has, you have my word on that."
"....Loki did it?" He asked with no small amount of anger in his voice.
Fury nodded. "Yes."
"I see."
He was about to ask once more the location for Loki when the Director paused and took out his phone. He paused immediately at whatever was on the phone.
Before the Director could get a word in, he stiffened and almost drew his bow when a swirling vortex of water appeared out of nowhere, coming from the small crevices in the wall and ceiling of the room, turning into a small puddle of water floating right above them.
"Fury, I have found Loki. Tell your team to track my location. I can't pinpoint his location, just the general direction. He is about 3000 miles in the West."
He shared a look with the Director before both of them scrambled out of the conference room.
"Hill! Get me the list of every city West of us that is about 3000 miles away."
"Go! Get everything you need and rendezvous at Bay 19, I'll have Stark and Captain there now."
He nodded and scrambled back to his quarters. He had quite a lot of arrows that he would love to shove inside Loki's insides. He wondered if Loki was just as bullet and explosion proof on the inside as he was outside.
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