There were only two of them in the room, Stark and Rogers. The doctors, Banner and Ross, had escaped the lab to take a break. The two of them had worked on finding the Tesseract for longer than Stark had. Meanwhile, Doyle and Romanoff were currently discussing Loki's relevant history with Thor. The two thinking that they could create something called a character profile? Roger's wasn't sure what the point of it was, it seemed to be a diversion when they should've focused on the Tesseract.
Not giving the mad man the attention he wanted.
The American War Hero stewed in rage, quietly sitting in the corner of the room. He'd moved away from the Tesseract-based weapons when Fury revealed all the dirty details on them. It wasn't the fact that they existed that bothered him, at least in theory. It was the mass production of weapons that seemed unneeded in the world.
It was an escalation of power that other nations, that other organizations would feel the need to meet soon enough. This would become a disaster in a number of ways, it could have foreign powers haste the experimentation process, leading to cut corners, to safety measures being removed. And trying to make weapons that can match Tesseract ones?
Would take a lot of power, mistakes with that sorta thing could end up on a Nuclear level.
It didn't sit right with Rogers, nor did the outright lie told to him about it. It was one thing to keep it from the general public, he'd been part of a similar project in terms of secrecy, but it was another thing to tell the soldier fighting to get the Tesseract back a lie on what they were going to use it for.
When a man is willing to give their life to a mission, to a goal. Steve Rogers thought that they should be told why, Fury taught otherwise. It was a chafe, a chink in the way SHIELD operated to Rogers. If you couldn't trust your men with your secrets, you shouldn't trust them with your lives.
"Still sulking Ice Cube?" Stark called from his spot, he was still sorting through the Gamma readings they were receiving from around the world, searching for abnormalities that would reveal the Tesseract's location to them.
Rogers ignored him, there wasn't anything gained from engaging the odd pettiness that Howard's son seemed desperate to lob on to him. It was hard not to be disappointed that this was the man to inherit the Stark Legacy. At least in terms of personality. Tony Stark was more than smart enough from what Rogers had seen of the man to be worthy.
He was just an asshole.
"Come on," Stark tutted, a noise made from walking over to the Captain with his hands in his pockets. "You didn't really think that they wouldn't get their hands on it and not turn it into weapons? That's basically the bread and butter of SHIELD, secrets, death, and spying."
It was spoken with this gloating tone, the kind of timbre that you'd expect from someone that was shoving their lottery win into the faces of their worst acquaintances.
"I'm not sure what you want from me here?" Rogers finally spoke up. He kept his voice low, he'd done enough yelling to do him two weeks. "I've been up and about for a few weeks. Do you want to be more like Fury or something?"
This finally got rid of Stark's rather sharp grin, replacing it with an expression that was more tense than joyful.
"I don't want anything from you," he replied, his eyes hard with a type of energy that reminded Rogers' of a mirror, and the younger, sickly man that used to stare back at him. "I'm just not sure it was smart to bring you out of retirement, old man.," It was a deflection, one that Rogers' let the other man have. He could tell that whatever issue Stark had was personal, but the blonde had enough on his plate without adding Stark's shit. "World's changed; a whole new ball game and you don't know the rules."
Rogers smiled, his perfect smile seemed to infuriate the other man further. But that felt fine at the moment to Steve, he wanted to annoy him.
"Well, at least I play by the rules," He let his shoulders roll into a shrug that appeared more nonchalant than the man felt. "You think rules exist to be broken."
The Super Soldier was talking about the flagrant disregard for the national security laws that Stark broke. Hacking into SHIELD's files could end up revealing a lot of sensitive operations if the information got to the wrong people and that was without even including a lot of the international files that SHIED had on hand.
This could get a lot of people hurt, a lot of innocent people that weren't involved in making Tesseract weapons.
"Get a grip," Stark frowned, his arms exploding up into a wide wave. "Everyone is breaking the rules, SHIELD's broken the rules, Loki's breaking the rules. Even Doyle breaks the rules. It's the game now, I'm just playing along."
"So… " The blonde chuckled after trailing off or a moment. "You're saying that if they jump off a bridge you'd follow."
"Well, I can fly."
"Right, listen here," Rogers stood closer, the comment somehow causing the man to be so worked up that the Captain grabbed Stark by his collar, picking him up by it as if he was a small child rather than a fully grown adult. "I don't kno-"
"-am I interrupting?" Came Ross's voice, the tension in the room dispensing instantly. When the woman came in, her clothes dirty from a full two days of wear, Rogers took a hop back from Stark, shame spreading across his face.
But it was Stark that kept Roger's attention though, something had changed in the other man's expression. It had gone from one of the triumphs to one of horror as if he'd achieved some enlightenment that had made the rest of his life he'd spent worthless. He bit his lip as he turned back to the display cycling it back to the images of their bodies. There was a representation, one that wasn't meant to be taken literally, of the amount of minute Gamma radiation going into their bodies.
It was two times the amount that had been there the last time he'd looked, but also it was decreasing as well.
"Shit," Stark growled, his keen mind having internalized the information and had come to a conclusion. "Papa Smurf was right, the scepter's been messing with our heads," he revealed, walking back towards the item with a har glare pointing right at it. "I mean what were we even fighting about? Both of us disagreed with SHIELD making weapons out of shit like this. But we were so worked up by little differences here that we were about to throw down."
Rogers leaned back onto an empty counter, his hands grasping at his face. He could feel the tension just start to ooze away, he'd been angry, but not enough to justify beating Stark's face in.
The tension was replaced with a deep pit in Roger's stomach, something that the man recognized was shame. He was better than that, magic Space Scepter or not.
He'd not get caught like that again.
Before Rogers, or even Ross, could verbally respond to the confirmation of Doyle's Scepter theory. A loud whine erupted from the speakers on top of the room's ceiling, Stark's face lit back up into a smile, though less bright than any Roger's had seen from him before.
"We've got one!" Stark yelled up, trying to bring cheer to the room. When Ross giggled slightly, Rogers felt like he missed a reference.
(Doyle)
We were in the Quinjet before long, deciding to go in as a group would be better than to let any one of us run into the area and step into a trap. I was in a standard SHIELD jumpsuit, not too dissimilar to the one that Black Widow and Morse wore, except theirs were darker and bright respectively, while mine was a deep dark blue.
Patrick Doyle, Agent of SHIELD.
It had a certain ring to it, but I wasn't interested in working full time for any sort of government agency, so I wasn't going to offer up my resume to Fury any time soon. Just wasn't my jam.
"Indian Point in Buchanan?" I scratched my chin, something was off about this location. But I wasn't sure what was getting me to mistrust it so much, it seemed like I was just getting a vibe that something was up. "The Nuclear facility?"
"That's the one," Stark replied to me, frowning at the Satellite Image of the site in question. "Seems to be a perfect location to bring the troops in to me. Far enough from any major large military base, the defenses nearby would be overwhelmed within a few moments if enough of the army gets in fast, they can overwhelm what few defenses are there. It's not too far from people as well, could take over the state if they're good enough."
"And the Chitari can come in numbers so large that Earth doesn't stand much of a chance if they were to create a foothold."
Thor added, his arms crossed and his eyes glaring downward at the floor of the jet. He'd been sulking ever since I teamed up with Widow to dive deep into his and Loki's history. The Norse God didn't seem to understand why we were analyzing Loki's priors so much and was slightly agitated by the whole process.
But he gave us everything he could recall.
Loki's backlog of crimes prior to the events of New Mexico was sparse on lethality. Mostly pranks, dying people's hair odd colors, giving them new rainbow skin colors. One of the trickster's favorite pranks was to turn objects into snakes, sometimes it would the stools people were sitting on, sometimes he'd turn their drinks into snakes just as it reached their lips.
But it was the snakes were never venomous. Making all of his worst deeds, harmless if not annoying pranks till Thor's coronation.
So Loki's world domination phase was a new thing entirely, which was good for us. Meant he was inexperienced in the role, liable to make mistakes. Though, it did leave us with no real MO for an operation other than he likes snakes. Something Thor told us he also shared. The rest of the conversation was mostly about his personality. But that didn't get us anything new, much to my disappointment. We confirmed that the guy was a massive prima donna, felt that he never got enough attention compared to Thor.
Which given what I've seen from Thor… probably true.
Guy had a way of draining attention from a room, even when his brother was planning world domination. All anyone of us thinks of Loki is that he's Thor's brother, or what'll Thor do about him.
Not just how do we stop him but how do we help Thor, or does Thor help us, stop him.
"So… me and Thor go in first," I sat down, glancing up to Widow who was piloting the jet. "Followed by Cap, after we settle the area then Stark."
"There's only one entrance and you'll need to use it," Widow explained, yelling back to the four of us. "With all the sensitive equipment in there, we don't want you bursting through walls and damaging any of the equipment, dealing with a nuclear meltdown is not on SHIELD's itinerary."
"Very well," Thor was the only one of us to verbally speak up, the rest of us simply nodded. "But I warn you, this may not be a place where our standard Midgardian traps lay. My brother may have given his minions traps of his own design to set up."
"How dangerous can they be?" Stark questioned. Not in a mocking manner that you'd think he'd be using, but in that stern serious method that you'd used when asking how much will the TNT blow up when it goes off.
"Loki's traps could end with you as a small creature, like a mouse," he explained, shrugging while Mjölnir swung from his hip. "And then summon a cat of sorts, it doesn't end well."
"I thought you said that before New Mexico that Loki hadn't killed anyone?" I interceded with a confused glance sent his way.
"No, I said that he had not murdered anyone," Thor corrected me, raising a finger up to his chin as he did. A slight smug smile as if he had gotten something over me. "Don't consider my brother anything but one of the finest warriors that Asgard's ever produced. He's felled many an opponent."
"Well, they must have been shit then," I replied smoothly. "I'm still here."
"We all have our off days."
It was a quiet, near threat like a statement. Which was odd for me to recognize, I usually wouldn't be able to recognize when people make those sorts of threats. The only time that I'd notice a threat was if it was completely blatant. Not that kind of tone alone implied threat that Thor was giving me here.
But it made me angry now, it made me angrier than I can ever recall being. My hands became tightened fists, said fists started to shake uncontrollably while I could feel my teeth started to grind. The only thing that stopped the palms of my hands from bleeding or my teeth from turning to dust was that even I couldn't seem to hurt myself.
I should've taken it as a sign that like Stark and Rogers earlier, the Scepter was working some mojo on me, even as far away from the Helicarrier as we were currently, it had me raging over nothing I would normally be raging over.
I'd stood a few steps closer to Thor, my height similar to Thor, he was actually a inch or so bigger than me, didn't really help when I tried to tower over the man. Instead of looking intimidating at all, I just got the two of us tense as we started to glare at each other, sparks starting to erupt from Thor's side while my vision slightly tinted red.
"Gentlemen!" Stark stepped forward, his metal glove shoving me back a bit. I was vaguely aware that Rogers was doing the same thing to Thor, while Widow seemed to be leaning back in her seat, trying to get into a better position to listen in on us. "You're both pretty, how about we keep on track and not get distracted by the color of each other's eyes."
"R-right," It was like a bucket of water had been dropped on to the raging flames of my hatred as I stuttered out a sentence, an action that I hadn't done in a number of years. Not since I was in my early teens at least. "Sorry about that… I'll keep a tighter leash on that from now on."
The sheer emotion that I had been feeling had overwhelmed me. Like I was a raft, going down a violent river, not in control of the guy actually trying to steer the thing. Hopefully, I'd steer better from here on out.
Didn't need to metaphorically crash.
"It's been getting to us all," Stark told me, quietly as if he was ashamed of himself. Something to watch on, if anger could be amplified, guilt and shame were just another emotion that could be used to get rid of us. "Just keep in mind that it's Loki and an invasion that we're trying to stop and not each other."
It wouldn't be long till we were at the Nuclear Power Plant, the very first such place that I'd ever been to in my life. Maybe after I stop this invasion I'll go and get a tour? Do they even offer those?
It didn't really matter I suppose, I was about to get something better than a tour. I was about to assault a Nuclear reactor. I did not play enough Red Alert to be prepared for this.