Tony watched with mounting horror as the emerald dagger neared the Captain’s chest. He saw Loki’s victorious smile, but he was just too far away to do anything to stop it.

Then, a sharp shot rang out across the deck.

This one was much closer. It came from ground level. It was clean and perfectly aimed.

The emerald dagger shattered violently in Loki’s hand. The explosive backlash of the detonation threw the god three feet sideways. He caught himself on one knee, snarling at the sudden interruption.

Natasha Romanoff walked slowly out from behind the burning wreckage of one of the jets. A second Phase Two rifle, shorter and lighter than Fury’s prototype, rested comfortably on her shoulder.

"Hi, Loki," she said, her voice deadpan and cool.

"You."

"Me."

She had successfully dealt with Barton, secured him tightly in restraints, grabbed a Phase Two rifle from the nearest secure armory, and come straight up to the flight deck.

Natasha fired again without a single word of warning. Loki twisted rapidly, caught the blue blast on a hasty barrier of dark magic, and the barrier actually cracked. A hairline fracture spidered across its glowing surface before he dispersed the energy into the wind.

"Those weapons are something," Tony said, finding his footing. "JARVIS, remind me to get one of those fake tesseracts from Arthur after all this is over. I think some cosmic repulsors would look exceptionally good on my next suit."

"Noted, Sir."

Loki rose. He no longer looked composed. His cape was half-gone, his intricate braid was unraveling, and his teeth were bared.

"Enough," he hissed. "Enough of this nonsense."

He threw both arms out wide.

The metal deck beneath him cracked in a wide, perfect circle. Solid green light erupted from the deep fissures, rising rapidly in a thick column around his body. The column widened exponentially. The wind on the runway picked up into a howling gale. The ambient temperature dropped to freezing in seconds.

"He is doing it again," Tony warned, raising his gauntlets.

"Doing what?" Natasha asked, already reloading her rifle.

"A big spell."

"Get clear!" Steve yelled, finally pulling himself free from the cratered deck.

They did not get clear in time.

The column of green light expanded outward in a slow, inescapable pulse. Where it touched, the air itself seemed to solidify. Tony’s thrusters stuttered and died. Steve, trying to push himself up out of the dented deck, found his arms locking in place mid-motion. Hulk’s next roar came out as a low, strangled rumble, his jaw frozen half-open.

Loki stepped out of the column and smiled.

"I do tire," he said softly, walking among the frozen heroes, "of constant interruptions."

He raised his hand to finish them.

A third shot rang out.

This one came from high above. A Quinjet that had not been there ten seconds ago banked incredibly hard over the Helicarrier’s port side. Its rear ramp was wide open. Agent Maria Hill was braced firmly in the opening, a Phase Two carbine shouldered tight, her dark hair whipping violently in the slipstream.

Her first precise round hit the column of green light dead center.

Her second round hit Loki.

The field collapsed with a sound like a snapped violin string. Tony fell out of the air, catching himself just two feet above the deck. Steve gasped for breath, rolled, and came up defensively on his shield. Hulk took one huge, gasping breath and let out the deafening roar that had been locked in his throat for the last six seconds. The sheer volume of it rattled the upper catwalks.

The Quinjet strafed the deck. Maria’s covering fire was precise and highly disciplined. She was not foolishly trying to kill Loki, she was trying to keep him constantly moving, completely denying him the absolute stillness any serious spell required. The rear ramp stayed wide open the entire time.

A figure leapt out of the moving aircraft.

Phil Coulson hit the deck in a three-point landing that would have broken an ordinary man’s legs. He came up with a long, bulky, metallic weapon on his shoulder that Tony had never seen before, and pointed it directly at the god.

"Hey."

Loki turned around, annoyed.

Coulson fired.

The weapon did not shoot a bullet. It shot a column - a thick, sustained beam of Tesseract-blue energy the diameter of a dinner plate - and it caught Loki square in the chest and blew him backward across the entire length of the runway. Loki slammed into the base of the command tower with a sound like a bell being hit with a bus. A ragged hole smoked in the front of his cuirass.

Coulson lowered the weapon. The barrel was venting heavy steam.

"This is the strongest weapon in our arsenal," he said, speaking to nobody in particular. "Powerful. Am I right?"

"Agent "Coulson," Tony said, flipping his faceplate up. "For the very first time in the years since we know each other, I am actually glad to see you."

"Thank you, Mr. Stark."

Hulk roared again. Steve was already moving forward. Natasha had her second rifle trained dead on the smoking dent in the command tower. Fury had also recovered and limped over to gather with them, his own rifle raised.

Loki slowly peeled himself off the command tower wall.

He was not smiling anymore.

He was bleeding from the chest, from the mouth, from a split above his eye. A ragged hole smoked in the front of his cuirass. One of his golden horns had cracked. He took one step forward, and his knee buckled. He took a second step and had to catch himself against the torn steel wall.

Steve fell into position on Fury’s left. Tony on his right. Natasha took the flank. Maria’s Quinjet held position overhead, carbine trained. Coulson stood with the Destroyer weapon still hot on his shoulder. Hulk took up the center, his chest heaving, one massive fist wrapped around the wreckage of a torn bulkhead he intended to use as a club.

Six against one.

Loki looked at them all, his breathing shallow.

"Your little plan has completely failed, Loki," Fury’s voice echoed across the torn runway. "You tried to fracture this team. Put them against each other. It did not work. It is over."

Loki straightened, his breathing ragged but defiant.

He wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his wrist. Slowly, terribly, the smile returned.

"Over, Director?" Loki said softly. "We have not even begun."

He raised his hand.

Fury tensed, tightening his grip on his rifle.

But Loki did not cast a spell. He did not chant. He simply opened his palm, turned it toward the distant wreckage of the command center rising above them, and pulled.

Tony heard the sound a half-second before he saw it. A shriek of tearing metal, far above their heads, from inside the shattered command center. Something was tearing through the wreckage. Something was coming down through the decks.

The Scepter tore free of a collapsed console three levels up, punched a hole through two floors of steel, and flew straight into Loki’s open hand.

He closed his fingers around it.

The blue stone at the tip of the Scepter flared to life. The cosmic light caught on Loki’s bloody face, making him look truly demonic.

"You are nothing but ants," Loki declared, his voice amplified to a booming resonance by the Stone. "And I am tired of playing with you."

"Down!" Fury roared.

Loki slammed the butt of the Scepter into the deck.

A wave of compressive force exploded outward from the impact point, a dome of distorted air that hit all six of them at once and drove them to their knees like they had been body-slammed by gravity itself. Tony’s suit screamed. His HUD washed out in static. He felt the Mark X’s joints groaning against the pressure, every servomotor burning out just to keep his chest off the floor.

Steve was down. Natasha was pinned. Fury was flattened halfway to the deck, his teeth bared as he strained to reach his sidearm. Coulson was on one knee, his weapon collapsed beside him, its housing cracked clean through by the sheer weight of the air. Maria’s Quinjet was listing badly, one engine flaming out as it banked hard to try and escape the gravity well.

Even Hulk was forced to both knees, roaring against the invisible weight.

It was not a push. It was an absolute, indifferent, crushing weight, and it was getting heavier.

Tony strained to look up through the flickering HUD. He could see Loki at the center of the devastation, arms spread, the Scepter blazing with terrifying power. The god was preparing to vaporize the entire ship.

They needed help. They needed Arthur. They needed the wizard to appear the way he always did, calm and irritating and carrying a cup of tea, and simply fix this the way he fixed everything.

"Alright, Arthur," Tony said through gritted teeth, forcing the words out against the crushing force. "This is the part where you come in. Big dramatic entrance. Cape billowing. Mysterious smile. You live for this stuff." He gasped for air. "Any second now."

A sharp crack of displaced air, like a whip breaking the sound barrier, split the runway.

Tony’s heart surged. "Arthur!"

The pressure wave stopped instantly. The crushing weight vanished.

Something had blocked it. A brilliant, shimmering barrier of silver light was planted directly between Loki and the Avengers, holding back the full output of Loki’s gravity spell with effortless ease.

Tony looked at the figure standing in the center of the room, keeping the barrier alive with one raised hand.

It was not Arthur.

A six-foot-tall being with silver skin and blazing eyes stood before them. Pure silver light poured off her skin. Magical power radiated from her in waves that made the air physically hum.

Tony blinked inside his helmet. He recognized the newcomer. He recognized that form. He had seen her fight in Harlem years ago.

"Winky?"

Winky was here to ensure nothing happened to her Master’s friends.