"What the actual freaking hell are you talking about?" asked Loki.

He and Dr Strange were in the library of the New York Sanctum, the former standing looking confused and being pestered by Stephen's magic cloak, the latter teleporting around the room frantically searching for things. Something major had happened, something that could potentially – in fact, probably – set the whole world on fire (metaphorically and literally).

"I know, I know it's crazy, and you're probably busy and everything, but it's all true. It really did happen," Stephen replied, checking different spells and whatnot that would be useful for the present catastrophe.

"Well I gathered that. But I don't understand what you mean by "Hell on Earth." Do you mean someone cosplaying the devil with a plastic pitchfork set Vegas on fire or something?" Loki asked, which made Strange turn around for enough time to give him an exasperated look.

To be fair to Loki though, Stephen hadn't really explained it properly. All he'd said since he'd contacted him was "There's Hell on Earth in Las Vegas and we need to help the Avengers ASAP."

Strange sighed and stopped what he was doing. "No, there's no plastic pitchforks involved. I almost wish there were. What's happened is, when the Avengers and the wizards from Kamar-Taj fought off the aliens that invaded Vegas, somehow the aliens combined with the wizards' magic made the entire city vanish. The Avengers eventually brought them down, but the city was still gone. They contacted me, and with a very powerful shared spell, we bought the city back from... well, hell. And something else came with it."

A flash of realisation crossed with nervousness came across Loki's face as he realised what had happened. "So why are you back here? And when did this happen? And why did you contact me?"

"Well, good news, it only happened about 5 minutes ago. I came back here to have a quick research of how to prevent my soul being stolen and to contact you. And everyone else is... busy." That wasn't a lie, as such. Loki was just the best person he could think of for the situation, and the others he'd previously collaborated with were currently... busy.

Loki could evidently sense his hesitation as he gave him his raised eyebrow look. "Well, you know how much I love Las Vegas, Strange. We're not in another dimension this time, right?" Stephen shook his head. To be fair, the last time they'd met, they had been travelling through different dimensions a lot. "So, what's the plan?"

"Er..." Stephen said, desperately trying to think of one and drumming his fingers on the table. There wasn't a plan. "Improvisation," he admitted, truthfully.

To his surprise, Loki nodded. "My favourite kind. Come on then. Let's go blast Mephisto back to where he came from."