Unexpected

Flying High

For a brief period of moments I thought I was done for, that I would plummet down and get smashed like a bug on a windshield on the cement far below, but it was not so. Instead, to my luck, if it could be called luck, I had been tossed by the blast of energy over the edge above the Iron Man landing station that jutted out of the building. With a smacking sound that sounded as painful as it actually was, I hit the floor of it. All the air was knocked out of me and I struggled to even wheeze a breath. I panicked and lay there for a minute, trying to force air into my lungs, fearing that I would suffocate then and there before I finally could such in light breaths that were exhaled as gurgled cries of pain. I had survived somehow, but that didn't mean I was uninjured, quite on the contrary! I'd freaking fallen an entire story!

But I was fine enough, much to my amazement, no broken bones, a few scraping scratches but nothing more serious. Pushing myself off the ground, groaning as a dull pain in my back complained at my movement, I noticed something that was strange, and yet all too familiar. That buzzing in the back of my head, the adrenaline-sugar rush-like burst of energy that I had only felt three times before, when Loki had tried to take over my mind with the scepter, in the kitchen fridge after I had broken the light bulb, and during the experiment on the treadmill after getting shocked by the strange poles. It was clear to me what had happened. I must have absorbed some of the energy from the force field when I had touched it, but it was different this time. The actual energy had not hurt me in any of the previous three times, but it had felt like my bones were on fire when I'd touched the energy field... maybe it was just too much energy at one time and I could only absorb so much before being overloaded or something of the sort. All I knew for certain was that even though I had just faced the scariest, most painful thing in my life, I felt like I could run a marathon, climb mountains, or pick up a minivan. I felt pumped and powerful!

Trying to brush away this rush of energy I looked around the landing. It felt like such a short time ago when I had seen the two Asgardian brothers fighting in this very spot, but now they were gone, the only mark of their fight remaining there being a small, oddly shaped knife that was tipped in scarlet blood. They must have left. Bending over I picked up the small blade and stuck it into my pants pocket. It was small, but in this battle any weapon at all was accepted. I huffed a laugh at the thought. What was I going to do with the knife? What was I going to do at all? I couldn't get at the Tesseract to turn it off and get rid of the portal high above me, the force field was too strong and if I tried again and it threw me away from itself, I'd most likely not be as lucky as I had been last time. I remembered Selvig saying something about a safe guard way to turn the wretched machine off, but what was it? I racked my brains, but could come up with nothing.

Off in the distance, but still far too close to the tower for my taste I saw a strange, familiar aircraft come zooming by, smoking as it had been hit by one of the alien weapons. In a moment I recognized it to be an aircraft like the one that had come for Loki at the German gala. Was the entirety of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team here? What had Loki called them? The Avengers? Iron Man was one of them, I knew, so was Captain America apparently, and Loki had mentioned that Thor had joined them, but was the whole group here, battling the oncoming cloud of destructive Chitauri? Would even they be enough to fend off the ugly enemies? I needed to help the heroes, but what could I do? What was the key to closing the portal?

"Think! Think! Think! Think!" I muttered to myself, tapping my head and pacing quickly, unable to hold still in my energized state. "It was something of Loki's, something powerful, something that was very similar to the Tesseract... duh!" I whipped around from my pacing and stood on the landing pad's edge. The scepter! I had to get it from Loki, but how when I had no clue where he was?