Chapter 101: Chapter 099 Army
Chapter 099
After finding out where Loki was, Tony easily found Eric Selvig on top of the highest point of the Stark Tower with a strange device that screamed bad news, connected to the Tesseract.
He tried to make Eric stop the device but it was futile. Even if he was a great scientist, he was still under Loki's mind control and he had no choice but to knock him out unconscious.
The only way to close the device was to either stop the energy around it or destroy the device but both the methods were impossible.
The device was already self-sustaining and when Tony tried to blast it off, his attack was bounced back due to a barrier covering it.
[The barrier is pure energy. It's unbreachable.]
That was what Jarvis told him and having no choice, Tony decided to change tactics. Loki was looking at him in amusement from the top floor of the Stark Tower and his new suit wasn't yet ready.
That's why Tony decided to have a one on one talk with him.
Removing his armour, he walked up to Loki. The god of mischief was more amused every passing second by his antics and said.
"Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity."
"Actually, I'm planning to threaten you." Tony said, walking over to the bar.
"You should have left your armour on for that"
"Yeah. It's seen a bit of mileage, and you've got the glow stick of destiny." He joked, then took out a glass of exquisite wine and asked. "Would you like a drink?"
"Stalling me won't change anything." Loki chuckled, already having seen such tactics a thousand times in his life. After all, he had already dealt with many dangerous people in the universe.
"No, no. Threatening. No drink? Are you sure? I'm having one."
Tony said and poured himself a drink. Even though this was a part of his plan, he really did want a drink after such a day.
Bad thing was that it was still not over. Maybe he would go to a nice restaurant after it is all finished? He thought to himself.
"The Chitauri are coming. Nothing will change that. What do I have to fear?"
Loki took a glance outside at the sky where the Chitauri would appear from and then at Tony.
"The Avengers." He replied, finally getting a hang of the name. "That's what we call ourselves. We're sort of like a team. 'Earth's mightiest heroes' - type thing."
"Yes, I've met them."
"Yeah. It takes us a while to get any traction, I'll give you that one. But let's do a head count, here."
Tony said, taking a sip from his glass and putting out his fingers. One by one, he began counting down the members of the Avengers.
"Your brother, the demigod" Loki winced at his brother's mention and Tony secretly enjoyed his reaction. "A super soldier, a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend. A man with breathtaking anger-management issues, a couple of master assassins, then there's the scary kid with the wolf, and you, big fella, you've managed to piss off every single one of them."
"That was the plan." Loki laughed, not a trace of fear on his face.
"Not a great plan. When they come, and they will, they'll come for you."
"I have an army."
Loki declared and Tony walked up to him.
"We have a Hulk."
"I thought the beast had wandered off."
"You're missing the point. There is no throne. There is no version of this where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes and maybe it's too much for us, but it's all on you." He said and for once, Loki felt some kind of fear but he didn't show it on his face. "Because if we can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it."
Although Loki could see the conviction behind his words, it was not like he was without any plans. He was the type to have a backup plan for every backup plan.
He smiled at Tony and suddenly touched his heart with the tip of his scepter.
"How will your friends have time for me when they are so busy fighting you?"
He said, expecting Tony's eyes to become soulless, but strangely, nothing happened. He motioned the scepter once again but the arc reactor in Tony's chest was easily able to block off the scepter.
"This usually works."
Loki muttered and Tony tried to make a joke.
"Well, performance issues, it's not uncommon. One out of five…"
Suddenly, Loki grabbed his throat in anger as Tony grunted. He threw him down on the floor.
"Jarvis, anytime now." He muttered, urging Jarvis to prepare for the Mark 7 suit deployment.
He tried to stand up but Loki again grabbed him.
"You will all fall before me."
He muttered in wild rage and threw him, this time with more force behind it.
Tony crashed into the glass wall and started falling down. He frantically shouted as the wind brushed past his face.
"Deploy! Deploy!"
At that moment, a rocket container came out from behind Loki and hit him while flying towards Tony. Just in time, it reached him and spreaded itself around his body, seconds before Tony touched the ground.
With his repulsor, he was able to fly back to the top of the Tower where Loki was standing.
Looking at him, he said.
"And there's one other person you pissed off. His name was Phil."
With that, he blasted Loki on the wall but at that moment, the device on top of Stark Tower suddenly started spinning. Using the cube's energy, it shot out a beam into the sky which created a portal.
From it, aliens suddenly started coming in. On the ground, some people saw it and started screaming.
The sight of weird aliens coming in through a portal was horrifying.
"Right, Army!"
Tony said, looking up at the portal.
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
-- Power
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