Unleashed {Marvel} ||3||

7. "Welcome to the Team, Cynder."

Faces, they surrounded me. Places, one slice of a setting belonged per one person.

I stood in the center. It was like I was in the middle of a pie, or a clock. Each wedge held a different person, with a different backdrop behind them. I looked at each wedge curiously. Some had more than one person to a wedge, others only had one.

"Tell me." I sidestepped away, seeing a fairly-dressed man beside me. Alexander Pierce. Head of HYDRA. "What do you see?"

"What is this?" I asked.

"Tell me what you see." He gestured to the wedges around us.

I looked around closely. There was a couple, a dark-haired man, with a redheaded woman on his arm. The woman offered me a kind smile, the man had something glowing blue through the fabric of his shirt. The backdrop looked to be an interior of a room, with a large window in the far distance.

On that wedge's right was a lone man who bore a white lab coat over his shirt, and he had himself stationed behind a laboratory table. He was experimenting on something, as though I wasn't looking into the wedge he was stuck in.

In the next wedge, there was a breathtaking view of a city. The sunlight made the city look like molten gold. The couple was dressed in different attire than the others. Asgardian attire. These were my parents. My mother, with her platinum-blonde hair, her purple dress that covered her feet. And my father, the man with dark, curly hair, who bore Asgardian armor. They looked happy, and they were looking right at me. Practically beckoning me to come home.

"Those are my parents," I murmured, gesturing to the city of Asgard. "And, uh...that's...Bruce Banner, in that laboratory over there."

I focused on another wedge. It contained two people, two spies, both who were engaging in a rather aggressive training session. The woman's hair was a fiery red, and she took cover behind a crate. The man opposite her was moving in on her, a bow loaded and ready to make her surrender.

"That's Tasha and Clint." I cleared my throat.

Another wedge looked oddly familiar, but some things I couldn't put my finger on. But I knew the man who belonged in that wedge. Captain Steve Rogers. He offered me a warm smile, and I could hear a song playing in the background. He had his hand out for me, asking for me to join him, probably to dance.

The last wedge I saw, I knew who was there. He was inside the interior of the palace of King Odin, garbed in the famous green Asgardian attire. He bore no helmet upon his head, but he looked as charming as ever. Those green eyes were alluring, almost begging me to pull away and run into his arms.

"Loki," I whispered, feeling tears gather in my eyes. I looked at Alexander Pierce in confusion. "What's going on?"

"These people have wronged you, Cynder."

"No, they haven't."

"Yes, they have." He gestured to each wedge, each holding people from my past and my present. "Countless times, they've turned against you."

I took a step back from Pierce. "You're wrong."

"Actually, he's not, firefly." From the wedge that was the interior of Stark Tower, Tony Stark and Pepper Potts left their wedge. Almost all at once, the others did as well. The music from Steve's wedge disappeared. They were forming a circle, closing in around me.

"What reason would you have had to wrong me?" I asked the circle.

"You ruined us, it was only fair that we returned the favor," Loki purred. Now, he bore a scepter, a scepter that I remembered all too well.