----- May 4th, 2012 3:51 AM - North Atlantic Ocean ----- 

== Third Person POV ==

Loki is escorted then locked in a cylindrical glass cage. Fury walks around the  outside of the cell and over to a control panel.

"In case it's unclear, you try to escape- you so much as scratch that glass," Fury pushes a button and the floor beneath the cell drops away to nothing, "Thirty thousand feet straight down in a steel trap. You get how that works?"

He pushes the button again and closes the floor. 

He gestures first to Loki, "Ant," then gestures to panel "Boot."

Loki lets out a forced chuckle, "It's an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me."

"Built for things a lot stronger than you."

"Oh I've heard," Loki turns to a camera to his left, "A mindless beast, makes play he's still a man. And a literal child you know little about. How desperate are you, that you call on such lost creatures to defend you?"

"How desperate am I?," Fury moves toward the cage slowly, "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. It burns you to have come so close, to have the Tesseract, to have power- unlimited power, and for what?," Loki smiles and faces a camera to his left, "A warm light for all mankind to share? And then to be reminded what real power is."

Fury smiles back, "Well, let me know if 'real power' wants a magazine or something."

Fury walks away and exits the room, leaving Loki in silence. 

__________

Bruce, Steve, Natasha, Thor, and Y/N were sitting around a table. Steve turns off a screen to Loki's cell. Y/N was just reading a binder in his new suit.

"He really grows on you doesn't he?," Bruce says rhetorically.

"Loki's gonna drag this out," Steve says and asks, "So, Thor, what's his play?"

Thor tells them as he turns, "He has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard nor any world known. He means to lead the against your people. They will win him the Earth, in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."

"An army.. from outer space?"

"So, he's building another portal. That's what he needs Erik Selvig for," Bruce says.

"Selvig?" asks Thor.

"He's an astrophysicist."

"He's a friend."

"Loki has them under some kind of spell. Along with one of ours," Natasha tells him.

"I wanna know why Loki let us take him. He's not leading an army from here," Steve adds.

"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you can smell crazy on him," Bruce says.

"Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason but he is of Asgard, and he is my brother," Thor tells him, and his eyes dart toward Y/N for a second when he says 'brother'.

"He killed eighty people in two days," mentions Natasha.

Thor stands for a moment before awkwardly adding, "..He's adopted."

"I think it's about the mechanics. Iridium, what do they need the Iridium for?," Bruce asks everyone.

As soon as Bruce asks, Tony walks in the room with Coulson and adds, "It's a stabilizing agent," he turns Coulson and quietly tells him, "I'm saying, take a weekend. I'll fly you to Portland. Keep love alive."

Coulson peels off from Tony, who is heading over towards Thor.

Tony continues, "Means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at SHIELD," As he walks by Thor, he tells him, "No hard feelings point break, you got a mean swing."

Thor gives Tony a look as he walks to the control panels.

"Also, means the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants," When Tony reaches behind the controls he says, "Ah, raise the mizzen mast, ship the topsails," He points to a man in the corner and announces, "That man is playing Galaga! Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did."

Standing now at the command area of the ship, Tony covers one eye, "How does Fury even see these?"

"He turns," Agent Hill tells him from his right.

"Sounds exhausting!"

He begins messing with the screens, sticking something to the underside of a desk, "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 of high energy density. Something to.. kick start the Cube."

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?," Agent Hill asks.

" Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the extraction theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?"

Steve ignores the question and asks, "Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?"

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

"Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the Quantum Tunneling effect," Y/N mentions without looking up from the binder.

"Well, if he could do that he could achieve heavy-ion fusion at any reactor on the planet."

"Finally. People who speak English," Tony announces.

"Is that what just happened?," Steve mumbles

Tony and Bruce shake hands, "It's good to meet you, Doctor Banner. Your work on anti-electronic collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you.. lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

"...Thanks."

Fury enters the room, "Doctor Banner is only here to track the Cube. I was hoping you might join him."

"I'd start with that stick of his. It may be magical but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon," Steve tells them.

"I don't know about that, but it is powered by the Cube. And I like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys," Fury adds.

Thor looks confused, "Monkeys? I do not understand."

"I do!," Steve shouts, "I...I understood that reference."

The entire room goes instantly silent, staring at Steve. Y/N finally looks up from his binder and eventually breaks the silence with a snort of laughter he tried to hold.

Tony turns to Bruce, "Shall we play, Doctor?"

"This way, sir." 

The two men exit the room and head for the lab. Thor, Fury, Coulson and Natasha continued talking.

Steve spoke up from next to Y/N, "How'd you understand what those two were saying?"

Y/N looks up from his binder and over at Steve, "I learn more and more as they speak. Even faster than normal since the serum."

He looks back down at his binder for a second before looking back up, "Oh and because of this."

Y/N shows Steve his binder. In it was all of Selvig's notes, Which he had been reading for the past half hour.

Y/N smiles before standing and leaving the room as well.

Off in the corner of the room, a SHIELD Agent looks back at the group. He turn back to the screen he's supposed to be working on and starts playing Galaga once more.

__________

Loki was slowly pacing in the cell. After a few seconds, He comes to a stop and a grin forms on his face. 

"There's not many people that can sneak up on me," He says without turning.

"I doubt I'm who you were expecting."

The grin on Loki's face immediately disappears. Quite a few emotions flash on his face briefly. Ranging from horror and to what could be mistaken as admiration.

He turns around to see Y/N, who was leaning against the rail in front of the entrance to the cage. He was looking out in the distance rather than at Loki.

Y/N eventually turns his head toward him, "So why are you here?"

"Did Thor not say?"

"He's told us why. But I'd rather hear it from you," He tells him.

A few moments of silence go by until Loki starts smirking, "..How about a story? Asgard is many things, including the home to many great poets and authors."

"Sure, why not?," Y/N replies, completely aware of the ploy Loki attempts to enact.

Loki's smirk grows wider, "In the realm of Asgard past, a child was born who soon fell fast. A child born of all nine realms, of power so great Allfather expels. Cast upon the realm of mortals, he orders a watcher to watch the abnormal. But soon one day our hope will come, Our God of Hope with warm welcome. Our hopes and prayers will ne'er falter, Our God of Hope whom we call Baldur."

The God of Mischief wishes to play games unaware that Y/N already knows who he is. 

Y/N tries his best to contain his laughter as he tells Loki, "Tell me more about this child."

"They say his eyes burn hotter than the flames of Muspelheim, With breath colder than the frost in Jotunheim. He is the God of Hope, Light, and the Summer Sun..," Loki looks at him as he barely holds in a laugh, causing him to finally realize, "..But you already know, don't you?"

Y/N finally lets out a laugh, "Of course, I know already."

Loki starts to look frustrated, "Yet you had me continue?"

"It was funny and I wanted to know how much you knew," he replies with a grin.

"I know everything. What I told you was merely what they tell the children of Asgard. But they don't tell them everything."

The grin that he had vanished when Loki says that, so he asks, "And what don't they tell them?"

Y/N half expected a wide grin on Loki's face but he doesn't even have a smirk. Loki walks closer to the glass and looks up at the camera for a split second before looking back to him.

"In many stories you're called the God of Hope as that is both true and for the Children. But in many others, you are always called The Lonely God..."

"I'm not alone. I have the Avengers and the people of Earth," He tells Loki.

"Being alone and lonely are very different," the two of them stand silent for a moment before Loki glances up at the camera once more and stepping so Y/N blocks him from view. 

Once out of view Loki continues to speak at a volume the camera hopefully doesn't pick up, "Unlike others, I still remember the stories and poems the people would dedicate to you. And the things they said you could do.. Why not join me?"

Y/N looks at him confused, "You want me to join you? Why?"

"Revenge. Odin cast you from Asgard when you were an infant. He ripped your right to rule a kingdom and forced you to live.. here with mortals, hoping you'd never figure out what you were."

It was hard to tell if Loki was just messing with him, being the God of Mischief and all. 

"... I don't care about revenge. And I don't want a throne. Earth is my home now."

"And they've found you amusing, the people of this realm. But the one thing they love more than a hero, is to see a hero fail, fall, die trying... In spite of everything you've done for them, eventually they will hate you. Why bother?"

Y/N doesn't reply. The two gods stand there once more in silence. Eventually Y/N had enough and goes to leave.

But before he leaves, Loki says one last thing, "Think about my offer."

Y/N makes his way back to the bridge. When he enters the room, everyone still there was quiet and staring at him.

"So it is true?"

Thor was the one who finally spoke up. His eyes were slightly widened as he stares in semi-disbelief.

"If you were watching us over the camera, it seems you already know the answer to that."

"If they knew you from stories when they were kids, does that make you older than them?," Steve asks him.

Natasha decides to ask both Thor and Y/N, "Hold on, How old are you again?"

"I have lived for over 1000 years," Thor says first.

"Well I've lived for 12 years. But from what I've been told, I was born in 2040 BC, so 4052."

The two of them were speechless after that. But Thor still had questions.

"Why did you not speak of this earlier?," Thor asks.

Y/N tilts his head, "Oh I don't know. Maybe because it'd be weird and a bit difficult to slip 'Hey, Thor. It's me, Your long lost brother' into a conversation. But I take it you know as much about me as Loki?"

Thor nods, "Father tried his best to stop the tales of Baldur Odinson from spreading. Even I eventually started thinking they were just that.. stories. But here you are."

"Here I am and here I'll stay," Y/N says nodding as he starts to walk away.

"But Asgard is your home. I am sure after a few millennia our father will welcome you back," Thor tries to tell his technically older brother.

Y/N doesn't bother to stop but before he leaves the room for the lab, he says, "Odin lost the right to be my father four thousand years ago."

__________

Banner and Stark are working on tracking the Cube. Y/N was once again just sitting, reading his binder. Well, more specifically sitting.. on the ceiling.

Banner is scanning the scepter with a device, "The Gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process."

Stark works on a screen, "If we bypass their mainframe and direct route to the Homer cluster we can clock this at around six hundred teraflops."

"Six hundred forty," Y/N tells them from up top.

Bruce chuckles, "All I packed was a toothbrush."

"You know, you two should come by Stark Tower some time. Top ten floors all R and D. You'd love it, it's a candy land."

"No thanks. Already been there."

"Thanks but...last time I was in New York I kind of broke...Harlem," Bruce admits.

"Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension, no surprises," Tony tells him before he shocks him in the side.

"Ow!"

"Hey!," yells Steve as he enters.

"Nothing?," Tony says to Bruce.

Steve approaches them, "Are you nuts?"

"Jury's out! You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?"

"Is everything a joke to you?"

"Funny things are. Like that," Tony tells Steve as he points at Y/N on the ceiling.

Steve looks upward finally noticing him.

Y/N looks down at him or is it up and says in a clearly fake Scottish accent, "Oh, Hello There."

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny. No offense, Doc."

"No it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things."

"You're tip-toeing, big man. You need to strut," Tony tells Bruce.

"And you need to focus on the problem, Mister Stark," says Steve.

"You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us in? Why now, why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables," Tony says as he picks up a small bag.

"You think Fury's hiding something?"

"He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets," He gestures to Banner, "It's bugging him too, isn't it?"

"Uh, ah, I just wanna finish my work here and-" Bruce stop midsentence.

"Doctor?"

Bruce looks between the other three people in the room, "..A warm light for all mankind, Loki's jab at Fury about the Cube."

"I heard it."

"Well, I think that was meant for you," Bruce motions toward Tony, who offers him a blueberry, "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news."

"The Stark Tower? That big ugly, "Stark gives Steve a look, "-building in New York Y/N took the grey guy down in?"

Tony looks up at Y/N on the ceiling, "Speaking of, How did you even get inside?"

"I.. walked in? Then I took the elevator," Y/N says as he drops down.

"My private elevator?"

Y/N puts his binder down on the table, "It wasn't very private if all I had to do was push a button."

"It's powered by an arc reactor, a self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for, what, a year?," Bruce continues.

As they continue, Y/N makes his way over to a screen. He starts messing around with it as they talk. 

"It's just the prototype," Tony mentions before saying to Steve, "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now, that's what he's getting at."

"So, why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? What are they even doing in the energy business in the first place?"

"I should probably look into that as soon as my decryption program finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files," Tony adds as he walks around the table toward Steve.

"I'm sorry did you say?"

"JARVIS has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours I'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide. Blueberry?"

Y/N continues messing on the screen when he says, "JARVIS seems to be going a little slow, I'm sure I can fix that."

Y/N was modifying the decryption program as they spoke. Tony moves around Steve toward Y/N and offers a blueberry. 

He takes it.

"Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around," Steve says to Tony.

"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence?," says Tony.

And Y/N finishes, "Historically, not awesome."

"I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war and if we don't stay focused he'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them."

"Following's not really my style," Tony tells him as he tosses a blueberry in his mouth.

"And you're all about style, aren't you?"

"Out of the people in this room, which one is 'A' wearing a spangly outfit and 'B' not of use?," Tony ask rhetorically.

"Guys, quit it. There's no need to start a 'civil war' over something like this," Y/N tells them.

Steve stares at Tony before walking away and saying, "Just find the Cube."

"That's the guy my dad never shut up about? Wondering if they should've kept him on ice," Tony says.

"Woah, Woah. He wasn't the only one stuck in that ice."

"Guy's not wrong about Loki, he does have the jump on us," Bruce says.

"What he's got is an ACME dynamite kit. It's gonna blow up in his face, and I'm gonna be there when it does."

"I'll read all about it," Bruce tells them as they all work on three separate screens.

"Or you'll be suiting up with the rest of us," Y/N says.

"Now, you see I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, like a nerve, it's a nightmare."

"You know, I've got a cluster shrapnel, trying every second to crawl its way into my heart. This stops it," Tony taps the arc reactor in his chest, "this little circle of light. It's part of me now, not just armor. It's a terrible privilege."

As Tony walks to the other side of the screen, Bruce says, "But you can control it."

"Because I learned how."

"It's different."

Tony wipes clean the screen between them that Banner was working on.

"Hey, I read all about your accident. That much Gamma exposure should've killed you."

"So you're saying that the Hulk- the Other Guy- saved my life? That's nice. That's nice sentiment. Saved it for- what?"

"I guess we'll find out," Tony tells him as he walks back to the screen he was working on.

"You may not enjoy that."

"And you just might."

The three of them continue working for a few seconds. Tony occasionally looks at Y/N. More specifically his suit.

Eventually he asks, "When'd you get the new suit? Last I checked, you still wore the old thin cloth one from the war."

Y/N glances up from his screen, "Oh, I made it.. Well partially. I put together the materials and actually made it but a friend designed it. I put it together yesterday. Actually, like two hours before I dropped in the forest with you guys."

"What's it made of? Polyethylene? Carbon Fiber?," Tony asks as he looks over the cape.

"Oh, god no. Those wouldn't be durable enough to withstand extreme speeds through the air. And I'd rather something that can go longer than a couple years before getting ripped."

"Right, Right. And remind me, you move how fast?"

"Well, I've never really tested my limits but on an off day.. roughly Mach 13.4," Y/N tells him.

"10,281 miles per hour? On an off day?," Bruce asks as he snaps his head toward him.

"And I thought to myself, 'what's the one thing that could potentially move at those high velocities and absorb and redirect energy?' Caps Shield," he explains.

"You made your suit out of Vibranium?," Tony asks.

"Well, not all of it. The cape is only 10% Vibranium weaved."

"Where'd you find that much?," Tony asks him.

Y/N stands silent for a moment with a blank look, "Uh.. Africa?"

That's partially true. 

In actuality, he stole it. He found a gigantic Vibranium deposit under the surface of Africa, specifically Wakanda. He tried to just walk in, but some of the people kept redirecting him back out.

Eventually he saw why when he finally looked past the village with his X-Ray Vision. There was a hologram set there to hide a technologically advanced city.

So he walked a few miles away.. and dug. More like he jumped up and flew directly into the ground, creating a hole. And he dug towards the vibranium.

He managed to get there and cut a chunk of it out with his heat vision. But the people above realized someone was down there, and guards were sent down. 

Before they got to him he flew back through the hole and up into the air, still holding a chunk of vibranium. As he flew away, he looked back. 

And he saw the Black Panther standing there as he flew away.

Tony pulls Y/N out of his flashback, "Wait, so when Blondey hit you with his little hammer that flash of light was the energy being redirected?"

"If that energy was redirected, that would've sent the three of you flying and leveled the forest for a few feet with him at the center," Bruce adds.

Y/N points at Bruce quickly while smirking, "He's right."

"Then why didn't it happen?"

"I've modeled this suit in a very specific way. I made these infinitesimal holes along the entire thing slanted in one direction."

"You're saying you..," Tony is smiling as he currently is, and rarely ever is, speechless.

Y/N grins as both Tony and Bruce catch on. Bruce quietly impressed and Y/N and Tony grinning like madmen.

"I made it so it redirects inward rather than out."

Y/N presses on the screen in front of him as 'Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin' - Journey' starts playing. 

Y/N sings along as both him and Tony vibe to the song. Bruce just nodding along.

And they got to work.

____________________

A/N: If anyone wonders about the living Asgardian Royal family ages, based off the MCU wiki it's the following:

Odin Borson- 5,492 Born 3480 BC

Baldur Odinson- 4,052 Born 2040 BC

Hela Odinsdottir- 2,691 Born 679 BC

Thor Odinson- 1,048 Born 964 AD

Loki Laufeyson- 1,047 Born 965 AD

And for anyone wondering why I went with Baldur for Superman.. Well both Baldur and Superman are known for a connection with The Sun, light, purity, etc. Both have pretty much impenetrable skin. And both can have that taken away with something green.. Kryptonite and Mistletoe.