Kindred Spirits

Old Friends

  My eyes were starting to burn as I stared at the screen, looking over Dr. Selvig's notes as I worked on an algorithm to locate the Tesseract's specific emission of gamma radiation.

  "Ash," I looked over to see Agent Hill at the door. "If you'll follow me to the bridge."

  I followed her silently as we came to the small meeting space Coulson had brought me to earlier. I smiled wide as my eyes found a wide back tipped with blonde hair.

  "Steven Grant Rogers," I called, sending him whipping around, his eyes widening as they found me coming towards him. He let out a light laugh, opening his arms and enveloping me in a hug.

  "What are you doing here?" He asked, smiling wide.

  "Cleaning up another mess, what else is new?" We both laughed at the joke, drawing more than a few stares.

  "This is Ash," I turned at the sound of my name, finding a shy middle aged man and Agent Romanoff looking at me with varying degrees of distrust. "She'll be helping you locate the Tesseract."

  "Dr. Banner, I love your work," I shook his hand firmly, staying mindful to maintain some distance between us. "Your dissertation on particle physics sparked some of my own studies into the field."

  "Really?" He seemed disbelieving, almost as if he thought it unworthy of the praise.

  "Of course! Oh," I turned to Nick as he watched us. "Call every lab you have and tell them to put their spectrometers on the roof, and set them to gamma radiation. I'm working on an algorithm to identify the exact level and type based off of Dr. Selvig's notes."

  He gave a nod, and I began leading Banner to the labs to help me. "Catch up later, Steve!"

...........................

  Looking up at the sound of boots marching, my eyes met with those of Loki, letting out a sigh as he disappeared around the corner.

  "Who's that?"

  "A problem," I sighed as I rubbed my temples, waving him to follow me as we made our way to the bridge.

  He sat in a chair, watching the monitor while I made my way to the red capped blonde man on the other side of the room.

  I smacked the back of his head, putting a finger in his face as he turned to yell. "I gave you one job when you and your brother left Earth, Thor!"

  "I couldn't do anything!" He pouted, crossing his arms. "Father banished him from Asgard and he fell from the walls of the Bifrost."

  I groaned, bringing my hands up and forming them into fists. "Goddammit, Odin!"

  "Thor, what's his play?" We looked over to find everyone looking at us. The monitors were black, meaning that the interrogation was over.

  "He has an army, called the Chitauri," I watched as he paced the floor away from me. "They are not of Asgard or any world known. They will win him the Earth, in return for the Tesseract."

"An army?" Steve asks dubiously, "From outer space?"

  "At least we know what he needs Selvig for," I sighed, looking at Thor as he watched me, his eyes narrowed in confusion. "Loki has him mind controlled, along with a SHIELD agent."

  "He's a friend," he muttered.

  "Yeah, in New Mexico, speaking of which, why didn't you visit?" I crossed my arms in fake annoyance.

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

  "I don't think we should focus on Loki, the guy's a brain is a bag full of cats, you can smell the crazy off him."

  "Have care how you speak," I held back Thor as he grew upset over the way we talked about Loki, "Loki may be beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and my brother."

  "He killed 80 people in two days," Natasha glared up at him.

  "He's adopted," Thor and I chimed at the same time. He gave me a questioning look that I shrugged off as Banner spoke up.

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

  "It's a stabilizing agent," another voice spoke at the same time as me, drawing my attention to the unmistakable man walking through the door with Agent Coulson. "It means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at the facility."

  Tony not so subtly checked me out as I continued talking, interrupting my next point. "It also means the portal can stay open as wide and as long as Loki wants." He spins to address the room, waving his hand, "Raise the mizzen mast, ship the topsails." The personnel all looked at him strangely until he pointed at a specific agent. "That man is playing Galaga!" A quick look revealed that the man was in fact closing out Galaga on his computer. "Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did."

  Covering an eye, he attempted to look at the monitors sitting in front of him. "How does Fury even see these?"

  "He turns," stated a clearly unimpressed Agent Hill.

  "Sounds exhausting," he turned away from the monitors, but not before sticking something to the side of them. "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 sorta kick start the cube."

  "When did you become an expert on thermonuclear astrophysics?" Maria asked.

  "Last night," I scoffed lightly. "Selvig's notes, the extraction theory papers, am I the only one that did the reading?!"

  "Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve interjected, clearly annoyed at Tony's rambling.

  "He would have to heat the cube to 120 million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier."

  "Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the Quantum Tunneling effect," I interjected, moving over to Banner.

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

  "Finally!" we looked over to find Tony gesturing to us, "People that speak English."

  "Is that what just happened?" Steve muttered. I leaned over and smacked his arm.

  "Hush, Steven, the adults are talking."

  We began to bicker back and forth before Nick called me out.

  "Ash," I looked over to see him with his hands planted firmly on his hips.

  "I'm going, damn, calm your bald headed ass down."

  I ran to catch up with Stark and Banner as he spluttered with muffled laughs and aggressive coughing coming from the personnel in the room.