Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The situation was far beyond what Fury was prepared for.   Whoever had come through the portal had killed six trained SHIELD agents with ease, and the sickly blue glow of his spear against Agent Barton's chest suggested the much more sinister possibility of magic.

Fury crouched by the Tesseract, its carrying case open at his feet, but he couldn't draw his eyes away from the glazed black of Agent Barton's eyes as they faded to a glowing blue, the same color as the gem at the tip of the stranger's spear.  Agent Barton tucked his outstretched gun back into its holder, a move against all SHIELD training, and definitely not one he would have made of his own volition.  It appeared to be textbook signs of mind control, and Fury forced himself to turn back to the Tesseract.

The only person he knew who was even remotely equipped to handle mind control was Carol Danvers, and she was several light-years away, at a minimum.  He had to grab the Tesseract before the stranger could claim it for himself, and get out of here.

Fury rested the tips of his gloved fingers on the shiny blue surface, yanking the Tesseract out of its bundle of wires—

And the room bathed itself in the same blue glow.  It flooded every corner as the Tesseract flared hot in his hand, forcing him to drop it.  As before, the blue lights curled towards the ceiling into a bubbling ball of power, rising like smoke from six bodies deposited on the floor.

Nightwing picked himself up from the floor with a groan, settling into his defensive stance as he glanced around his new surroundings.  He'd been having a perfectly lovely, perfectly normal night with his siblings fooling around in Gotham's largely unexplored (and likely enchanted) cave system, so naturally something had to come fuck it up.

That something being the glowing blue light that had slammed him to the ground in a room that looked like it belonged in a spy movie.

Red Hood pulled himself to his feet next to him, guns already out.  It only took a few glances for them to settle into defensive stance #15, which meant Nightwing and Hood took the front point, tucking Robin behind them while Spoiler and Red Robin took the sides.  Black Bat was gifted the back, mostly so she could slip into the shadows and act as their invisible hand.

They'd been teleported to a large, dark hall.  The floor and walls were likely steel, and several rows of desks sat at the far end of the room, all empty.  A runway of sorts led to a holding stand, with a man in typical spy black and a pirate eyepatch crouched next to it, holding a glowing blue cube that was probably the source of all of Dick's problems.  

The pirate — Dick was going to call him that until he found out his actual name — quickly deposited the cube in some sort of carrying case, and Dick flicked his hand towards Black Bat, and she slunk off into the shadows.  If that cube was actually what had brought them here, then they did not want to let it out of their sight.

"Well," drawled one of the other figures in the room, "Isn't this curious?  It seems the stone has a mind of its own."  Dick moved his attention to him.  He wore some sort of leather and metal armor, done in some style that Dick didn't recognize.  It looked like a superhero's costume, if superheroes were into pretentious cloaks and staffs with glowing blue stones that set off his instincts. The man himself had deep bags under his eyes, which were — rather creepily — the exact same shade as his staff.

There were several other men around him: a man with guns down his legs (definitely a government agent), another man in a suit (still government), and a man in a lab coat (scientist, oh joy).  All of them stood back and watched, so they were unlikely to be the main players here.

"Where are we?" Nightwing asked carefully, both to gauge their responses and for the actual information itself.  "Who are you?" He filed carefully into his mind that the staff guy had implied the stone had brought them here of its own will, rather than a summoning — irritating, summonings were usually easy to reverse.

The pirate grabbed the handle of the case, standing up.  He moved a step closer to the exit, which appeared to be behind Dick.  He didn't say anything though, merely watching them calculatingly, so Nightwing returned his gaze to the staff guy, knowing Robin would keep his eyes on the secondary threat.

"I am Loki of Asgard," the staff guy purred.  It was a rather concerning tone, if Dick was being honest — smug in a rather ugly way.  It very much sounded like Lex Luthor in a good mood, and classified him quickly under threat. Not to mention that Dick recognized that name and place, and while experience with Wonder Woman and Donna had taught him mythology often had its falsehoods, most stories carried a general grain of truth.  And Loki was not a benevolent character.   "As for where you have been brought, this is Midgard.  Who are you?"

"Midgard is Earth," Red Robin muttered softly into the comms, carefully touching his ear in order to turn up the sensitivity on his microphone.  They'd all been trained to speak quietly enough that the rest of the room wouldn't hear it, but the microphones usually needed a little adjusting.  "And unless the Norse gods suddenly exist, we've probably dimension hopped.  I have my gauntlet running basic scanning."

Nightwing twitched, a moment Red Robin would recognize as a nod of understanding.

"Loki? Brother of Thor?" the doctor asked.  He sounded almost familiar with Thor, given his immediate reaction.

"Loki is Odin's brother in mythology," Jason muttered, and Nightwing added it into his tally of the doctor likely knowing an insider.  That would explain why he's in this room at least, if Dick could ever get a better sense of where here was.

 Loki turned sharply toward the doctor, a snarl set suddenly into his features.  It darkened the affability he'd directed at the Bats just a moment earlier, and Red Robin's hand pressed quickly into Nightwing's back, a small sign he'd seen the same warning.

"I'm Nightwing," Dick offered, carefully directing both Loki and the pirate's attention back towards them before the tension in the room grew to violence. "This is Red Hood, Red Robin, Spoiler, and Robin."  He carefully failed to introduce Black Bat, as she had now crept halfway around the room and none of them had noticed her yet.  "We're from Gotham, on Earth 4172," he continued.  The pirate frowned, but no one else in the room recognized the designation code or their names, which meant wherever they'd landed had likely never dealt with multiversal travel before.

"I am Agent Fury of SHIELD, of the United States of America," the pirate informed them, confirming Nightwing's guess about this being a government base.  That would also make Loki the likely intruder, probably using the cube to bring himself here?  To Loki, Fury added, "And we have no quarrel with your people."

Loki scoffed dismissively. "An ant has no quarrel with a boot."

Welp, Dick was like 80% sure he knew what was going on now.  Loki's motivations were rather unknown, but either Loki or the entire race had decided Earth was their new fun playground, especially if this world didn't have a Justice League or Justice League-equivalent to protect it.

Fury titled his head, clearly prying Loki for information. "Are you planning to step on us?"  Dick was happy to play along. Any information was important: just because Fury was government didn't make him trustworthy — rather the opposite in Dick's humble experience.

"I come with glad tidings," Loki began softly, spreading his arms magnanimously. "Of a world made free."  Okay, yep, Dick could swear he'd heard those exact words before.  Jesus Christ, someone start getting villains some classes in creativity already!  This was the whole 'the world will be free when I rule it' shtick again.  

"Free from what?" Fury pressed, clearly not as familiar with the archetype, even if he clearly also recognized where this was going.  

"Freedom.  Freedom is life's greatest lie." Loki touched his scepter to the doctor's chest, and blue magic rolled through him.  The doctor's back automatically straightened as his eyes started to glow blue, exactly like the other two agents and Loki's own.  "Once you accept that, in your heart, you will know peace."

Jason's guns shifted, moving from where they'd been dropped down at his sides to directly at Loki, a low growl already creeping through his vocal modulator.  Out of everyone in the family, Jay hated mind control most, not that Dick could blame him after the Lazarus Pit.

"Wait." Dick pressed his shoulder into Jason's.  "We don't know what else he can do with that."

Loki hardly seemed to notice, smiling smugly at the doctor, before turning towards them to offer a benign smile that oozed Lex Luthor's slimy charisma. "Join me," he offered, sweeping an arm out.  "Together we could bring harmony to this planet. I'm sure you will understand, if the Tesseract itself has chosen you as special."

Dick filed the special bit away.  It was the second time Loki had said something along those veins, so he was clearly under the influence that some powerful object had chosen them, likely, if he was anything like Lex Luthor, as his god-given helpers.

"What's the Tesseract?" Jason growled, his firing finger twitching at the recruitment speech all of them had heard a hundred and fifty times.  Seriously, even Deathstroke had better arguments than Loki's at this point.  

Loki smiled thinly.  "Why, the Tesseract did, of course." He gestured to the case Agent Fury held.  "If you would be so kind as to show our guests their method of transportation."

Fury did not.  He took another careful step back, towards Nightwing and away from the edge of the room.  Dick signalled Black Bat to circle towards Loki for a quick takedown if necessary — Fury couldn't leave the room without passing by them and Spoiler had already begun edging into his path.

Dick took a couple steps forward, Jason at ready next to him as always, leaving Tim and Damian to protect each other asTim glanced up at the glowing ball of very dangerous looking power above them.  It was definitely the remnants of whatever had brought them here, and Dick wanted nothing to do with it, no siree.

"I can't say we're really comfortable with the idea of mind control," Nigthwing said carefully.  He didn't want to immediately alienate Loki and start a fight while they were still completely unaware of his capabilities, but Dick couldn’t see a path out of this that didn't lead to them getting out of here without going into a fight blind.  Trying to talk Loki down it was, then. "Why is this a goal you want to pursue?"

Loki scoffed, tossing his hair over his shoulder. He was rather unimpressed with the answer; his body language changed from open to holier-than-thou. "I should have known better than to expect a Midgardian to understand my aims.  You will regret making an enemy of me." Wow, not a response to Dick's question.  What an asshole.

Nightwing shrugged, absolutely unconcerned.  Been there, done that.  "I've heard that one before, I hate to break it to you.  I haven't regretted it yet, either."

Loki's face was set into a scowl. It was a rather funny mixture of embarrassment and affronted fury, and Dick was very proud of himself.  

"They're all the same," Red Robin mumbled under his breath, and Dick could hear Damian's exhausted sigh from here.

"Sir," one of the agents with blue eyes began. "Fury is stalling.  This place is about to blow.  He means to bury us."  Mind controlled, then, as well, if the eyes didn't already give it away.  Cass moved closer to him, and Dick agreed with her assessment that he would be the fastest to take down.

"Like the pharaohs of old," Fury replied dryly, still stalling.  Dick shrugged. It wasn't the worst plan he'd ever heard.  Villains loved to monologue, and Loki seemed to be the only current threat.  The building collapsing would certainly contain him. (Hopefully.)

"He's right," the scientist added.  "The portal is collapsing in on itself.  We've got maybe two minutes before this goes critical."  Two minutes was far less time than Dick had hoped for — it wasn't nearly enough time for them to attack Loki, let alone subdue him, and still get out of here safely.  

"Well then," Loki said, and Nightwing leapt forward, escrima extended.  Jason fired a shot directly at the less-interesting agent as Black Bat leapt at the one who had spoken earlier, knocking his gun out of his hand as he aimed at Fury.  

Loki whirled towards Nightwing, hands extended, and a blue blast erupted from the sceptre.  It sent him and Fury reeling backwards, nearly tumbling into one another.  Spoiler and Hood's curses echoed through the comms as everyone behind him was flung into the walls.

 The case containing the stone landed several feet away, and Loki strolled forward to pick it up as the rest of them struggled slowly to their feet. Red Robin and Robin were nowhere in sight, wisely having disappeared in the commotion, and the scientist and the more-interesting agent (Cass had disappeared again, good for her) limped to stand on either side of Loki as he strolled unimpeded to the door.

Nightwing rolled to his feet, winded but seemingly uninjured, but reached a hand for Fury instead of immediately leaping after Loki.  Black Bat would have the best chance for a surprise attack and they still needed to get out of here.  Fury was, unfortunately, currently their only ally from this world.  Batman would be disappointed in them.

"We need to get out of here," Dick told Fury flatly. "Do you have a way out?"

Fury nodded, gripping Nightwing's hand as he rose to his feet.  He seemed to have taken the blast worse than Dick had, given the way he curled around his ribs.  He raised his walkie-talkie to his lips.  "Hill.  Do you copy? Barton's compromised."  

The room began to spin, the blue of the portal almost glitching downwards and Dick stumbled against it, forcing himself towards the exit with Fury by his side.  Jason and Spoiler quickly moved to flank them.  Dick filed away both the names of Fury's contact and the mind-controlled agent.  "They have the Tesseract! Shut them down!"

"We've run into help," Red Robin reported through the comms with a crackle.  "Ran into a female agent, but Loki commandeered a car.  Beginning chase now."

"We will deal with the alien," Dami reported cooly, sounding rather unsure despite his confident words.

"Your safety is first priority," Dick reminded both of them (as though those words meant anything to anyone in this family).

Fury looked at him, head tilted as they ran through the rooms, and Dick explained. "Red Robin and Robin are in pursuit of Loki, likely with your ally."  He had no idea what Black Bat was up to, but that was Cassandra.  She was either with them or stalking Loki and he wouldn't find out until much, much later.

Fury gave a sharp, decisive nod, sprinting upwards through the base.  "I have a helicopter above; we can use that to follow Loki."

Dick nodded without hesitation, though he could hear Jason's quiet grumble about working with Feds.

Spoiler whooped as they rounded a corner and the helipad came into sight, and Dick suppressed a small grin.  High-speed escapes were fun, if nerve wracking, and this was admittedly a bit closer to usual than Dick tried to cut things — though he was sure wherever Tim was, he felt right at home.

The helicopter lifted into the air.  It clearly wasn't meant to carry four people, and Agent Fury kept his hand on his gun as the helicopter rose up.  Beneath them, the government base began to crumble into a blue mist.

Jason whistled his appreciation, and Dick shook his head, tapping his earpiece.  "Everyone okay?"

"We lost Loki," Tim reported glumly. "Car chase failed.  We're buried under the rock, but okay.  BB is with us too."

"Had fun," Black Bat reported, and Dick wasn't quite sure what she'd done and less sure he wanted to know.

The helicopter tilited, and Dick narrowed his eyes as a car sped along the road underneath them.  He grabbed a birdarang from his pocket, slinging it at the vehicle's tires while Fury and the agents inside the car began shooting.  Jason joined the fray, but the car seemed to have military level armor.  Spoiler had apparently taken over the controls of the helicopter and begun piloting it.  Dick grinned as one of his birdarangs scored a long scratch along one of the tires.

Loki raised his staff, eyes gleaming a violent blue, and another blast came directly at them, hitting the end of the helicopter despite Steph's best intentions.  Fury launched himself out of it and Dick followed with the ease of someone who'd done this too many times, landing in a smooth roll on the ground.  He considered launching himself wholesale at the vehicle, but this wasn't his world.  The dramatics could wait.

The helicopter crashed nearby, and Nightwing ran his hands across Spoiler and Hood's shoulders, a quiet reassurance to himself that they'd all made it out alive.  

"I'm okay," Hood muttered quietly, pressing his shoulder into Dick's.  Dick let out a relieved breath even as he ran his hands over Spoiler's armor once more.

"Let me go," she hissed, so he pulled her closer, draping his arms across her chest as he turned to Fury.

Dick's mind had been running mostly on adrenaline and safety up until this point, but now that they're out and everyone's okay (even if Tim and Dami and Cass are stuck under the rubble and god does he not want to think about that) he needed to think up a plan.  Fast.  

Because why did they have to be thrown into a separate dimension that couldn't even be bothered to have a Justice League?  Dick wanted to have fun with his siblings, not deal with interdimensional politics and convince some unknown government agency to trust them.  

(And, honestly, Dick still only had the barest of grasps on the situation — like what was the deal with Asgard?  Was Loki acting as an independent agent or were they at war with the entire plane? Was Asgard a plane or a place on Earth or another planet or what?)

"You must be Agent Fury, though I don't recognize your agency, SHIELD." Dick said slowly, the lenses of his mask narrowing purposefully.  Steph stilled under his hug, shifting her weight subtly into a more defensive stance as Jason took point behind Dick.  Unless either of them noticed something immediate, Dick would play the initial negotiator with Fury and Tim with whoever of Fury's people they'd joined. 

"Yes," Fury responded.  "You are Nightwing from Gotham.  Such a place does not exist on this Earth."

Dick immediately grimaced, and he could feel Hood's pout.  Any place without their beloved shithole was a sad one indeed.  "I believe we're from an alternate Earth; it wouldn't be my first dimensional trip.  Loki seemed to imply that the Tesseract — as he called the blue stone — summoned us here, though I am not familiar with it or its properties."

It's not phrased as a question, but Dick had been careful to extend the olive branch in such a way that Fury could choose how he wished to offer them help.  They were both at a crossroads, because Nightwing knew nothing about what SHIELD did, but also had no other way to slip seamlessly into civilization, especially not with the chance that the Tesseract would be their only route home.  SHIELD had no way to trust them but likely would want their expertise with dimensional travel, and, depending on the state of the world, help with capturing Loki.

Fury shifted his weight from one leg to the other, clearly trying to divine some meaning from Nightwing's body language.  "To be frank," he began, "I have very little reason to trust any of you, and you of myself and SHIELD.  However, SHIELD deals with homeland security and extraterrestrial threats. We can offer you our information on the Tesseract if you help us with capturing Loki."

Dick was careful to keep his expression neutral instead of twisting into the rather smug grin he felt like giving.  "We cannot guarantee anything but we would be happy to help.  Supervillains are our area of expertise."

Fury frowned.  "Is this normal to you?"

Dick did grin then, and Spoiler muffled a choked laugh into his arm, even if he was already slotting this into his understanding of the world — superheroes weren't the norm (yet).  Fury had said extraterrestrial, so they knew aliens existed, but:  "Is this not normal to you?"

Chapter Text

SHIELD had something going their way, at least — the helicopter was rather cool, if sort of clunky in Dick's experience.  Non-teleportation options would only work for so long before it started to take people too long to get to emergencies.  

Nightwing pulled Robin into him, still grateful all of his siblings were okay.  He'd reunited with them on the helicarrier, where Maria Hill — Fury's second — had brought them after what had apparently been a rather boring car chase.  Fury had offered them medical attention and changes of clothes, but all of them — to no one's surprise but Fury's — had refused both, and also refused to take off their dominos/helmet/cowl.  

Their paranoia had come from Batman, after all.  Just because they were in a different dimension didn't mean it couldn't risk their identities, especially if this ended up establishing long-term communication between their dimensions.  It wasn't that often they stumbled into worlds so different from theirs there wasn't even a Justice League, after all. 

"Okay," Tim began in League Arabic, his fingers clacking away on the standard issue laptop Fury had lent them when he'd offered them half an hour to themselves while they put together the rest of the team to capture Loki.  He'd dropped off a flash drive as well, supposedly with information on whoever they were supposed to work with and the Tesseract, but Dick had no doubt that they'd been given the absolute minimum.  The fact that they were shut into a room with cameras on their flying ship just proved that.  "Looks like there's a bunch of pretty big differences between our worlds.  There's a bunch of missing cities, and— a few missing countries as well.  They don't have Jump City, Metropolis, Gotham, Keystone, and Central.  Qurac appears to be missing as well, and there's probably more countries I just don't care about."

Dick snorted, both at Tim's statement and at the face Damian had made at Tim's flawless League dialect.  They'd debated for a bit silently about which language to use, but they'd decided they refused to let SHIELD track whatever plans they made.  The earlier they started using another language the more it looked like the new language was their first language, and given the number of large scale differences between their worlds, chances seemed decent for the LoA either not existing or being drastically different.  He was pretty sure he remembered Kyle telling him that the mundane in worlds tended to stay the same while the supernatural was what constantly changed.

Besides, the only other language they all spoke was Mandarin and ASL (that was on Black Bat, but Dick was just still pleased she'd decided she wanted to learn another language at all).

"Do any of our alternative selves exist?" Hood asked, his Alley accent still somehow creeping into the Arabic.  

Tim typed noisily.  "Give me a second, I'm flooding the search with a bunch of famous people before I google B so we don't tip SHIELD off." More typing. "Okay, nope, none of us exist.  No Lex Luthor either.  I'd go ahead and think that the differences between our worlds are big enough it's safe to assume none of the major players crossover, except possibly alien organizations like the Green Lanterns."

Spoiler grinned. "Are there any replacements?"

Tim snorted. "Only inferior ones.  I'm seeing a Captain America, who fought some Nazi branch during World War Two — oooh, that's our first supervillain, name Red Skull, died during the War.  Captain America apparently crashed a plane loaded with bombs into the Arctic — apparently he was found frozen in the ice a year ago, unaged and alive." 

"Lame," Jason muttered.  "Should've died and crawled out of the ice."

Dick sighed.  "BB?"

Cass, ever the angel, whacked Jason over the head.

"Thank you."

"Hey," Jason protested.  "I can make jokes about my own death if I want."

Not when they hurt Dick the way they did, bringing him to the days when Jason's death had shattered him together and he'd been forced to stitch himself back together, alone and grieving, desperate for the younger brother he'd never quite managed to connect to.

Tim coughed. "Anyway, as I was saying, there's a few conspiracy theories floating around about stuff from the 70s and 80s, but I get the feeling most of that is probably something classified, if anything."  

Dick reigned back his snarky comment at Tim's pointed interjection, forcing himself to focus on the task at hand.  There was a part of him that still hoped Bruce would pop up any minute with an interdimensional teleporter, but given how far they probably were away in the multiverse and the Tesseract's interference, things weren't looking very good.

"Most recently, there's been Tony Stark — Iron Man.  Uh, owner of Stark Industries, which until a few years ago did weapons contracts for the government.  Both the Iron Man suit, which appears to be some sort of high-tech armor, and the pivot away from weaponry seemed to have been a result of him getting kidnapped by terrorists in Afghanistan.  In the press conference after he came back, he stated that he hated that his weapons had made their way to the black market, and Iron Man has been seen blowing up black market caches of SI weapons.  SI has pivoted to clean energy and household electronics."

Dick cocked his head.  "Have they become this universe's equivalent of WE?" He wasn't all that surprised by Stark's pivot, as sudden as the media likely called it.  Everyone in this family was more than familiar with traumatic experiences that dramatically changed their worldview — just look at Bruce.

Tim nodded, clicking through a few more websites.  "Seems like it.  Stark just created a new building in New York that's supposed to be self-sustaining for a year."

The girls' and Damian's faces had glazed over at the tech talk, as interested as Damian tried to pretend to be, but Tim's face had done the opposite, eyes alight as his fingers skimmed the keyboard.

"Getting some ideas there, Red?" Dick teased, leaning over to ruffle his hair.  If there was anything good that came from inter-dimensional crossings, it was usually new innovations.

Tim grinned. "I'm hoping that Iron Man is one of the teammates on this device."

Dick snorted.  It would be like watching Tim and Babs when they got going about some cybersecurity thing.  None of their family were slouches, but those two sometimes disappeared into their own world.

"Should we not be concerned about this so-called terrorist group in Afghanistan?" Robin was frowning, arms crossed over his chest.  "Has it occurred to none of you that we could be dealing with an alternate League of Assassins?"

Tim's mouth thinned, and Jason crossed his arms.  Damian's theory, as unfortunate as it was for them, held a good point.  They'd have to rethink their choice of language if there was any evidence for it.  There were many different groups that would kidnap a wealthy billionaire, especially one that made weapons for the U.S., but for the first Iron Man suit to be made at the same time? Suspicious.

"That's a good point, Robin," Dick sighed.  "I don't think we could do anything about it right now, but we'll keep an eye out.  Thanks for bringing it up."

Damian wouldn't let himself do something 'as weak' as blushing, but Dick had learned over the years that the way he straightened his shoulders was a sign he was pleased with his own contribution.

"Okay, there's only one more 'modern' phenomena I'm seeing reports of, and then we're going to move to the drive SHIELD gave us to see if there's anything interesting on there since I'm not seeing any more huge deviations from our world.  U.S. and UN policy still runs along the same lines, et cetera."

"Hit us, baby bird."

"So, uh— this set of reports is vaguer than the rest, we can probably thank government tampering—"

"Yay!" Steph cheered sarcastically, as Jason sighed, rubbing his fingers over his forehead.

"Fucking GCPD."

Dick didn't disagree with either sentiment, not between the amount of covered-up things the Titans ended up having to deal with and just the general corruptness of Gotham and Blüdhaven cops, though it wasn't like the NYPD had been much better while the Titans had worked with them (unwillingly).

"ANYWAYS," Tim continued loudly, overriding both Steph and Jason.  "This one would be a giant green creature that apparently destroyed Harlem.  I've got a few blurry photos, but that's about it."

Dick hated to say he was pretty sure he'd heard that exact sentence before from Roy about some alien blob that had been the Titans' enemy of the week.

".... Is that it?" Steph asked, and she sounded rather disappointed as whatever pictures she saw over Tim's shoulder.

"Wow," they really do have no superheroes," Jason snorted.  "No wonder a fucking government agency is willing to make a deal with veritable strangers."

"Language," Dick chorused in conjunction with Steph and Tim, just to see Jason's glare.

Cass shrugged her shoulders, draped across Spoiler's back (who was draped across Tim).  Jason was the only one leaning to the side, and Dick debated whether Damian would tolerate it if he dragged both of them over to cuddle Jason.  Probably not. "They're young," she offered.

Dick blinked.  He wouldn't have put it that way, but, yeah.  It reminded him of the days when he and Batman were still urban legends and Superman had barely emerged out of the woodwork.  Similar to how the Justice League had first united to deal with an incident none of them could handle separately, Loki was probably this world's inciting incident.

"SHIELD mentioned putting together a team to stop Loki," Dick said, turning to Tim.  "Can you pull up SHIELD's file on them?"

"Are you thinking they might become this world's JL?" Jason asked, tone thoughtful.

Dick nodded, watching Tim carefully as he plugged in the USB and scrolled through the information.  It only took a few seconds before Steph started giggling behind him, and Tim turned away from the laptop to hide his laugh.  

"What?"

"Fury—" Tim snickered again, trying and failing to gain control of his breathing.  "Fury named them the— the—"

"Cease your meaningless laughter and get on with it, Red Robin.  You are wasting our limited time."  Damian crossed his arms as he glared at Tim, but that barely even counted as hostile for Dami; there wasn't even an insult for Tim's character!

"They're called the Avengers," Steph wheezed.

Jason frowned. "What's wrong with that? It's a better name than the Justice League ."

That was promptly the moment Dick lost it, clinging onto Dami as he processed the sheer dramaticness of the U.S. government naming its team of superheroes the Avengers . What were they supposed to avenge? SHIELD's pride after one of its bases was blown up by an alien?

It sounded like something Batman would approve of.

Damian scowled under him, attempting and failing to pry Dick off of him as he pulled himself together.

"Well, go on, Red," Jason huffed.  "Anything else interesting on SHIELD's drive?"

"Uhhhh…." It took Tim longer to scroll through the information this time.  It would be a lot easier if they had any of their own tech, but all of them had been wary of connecting their wrist gauntlets to SHIELD's system and letting them see the extent of their technology — it was bad enough they already knew about the comms.  "A few details on Stark — apparently the terrorist group was called the Ten Rings.  It doesn't strike me as an alias for the League.  Robin?"

Damian startled a little in Dick's arms, surprised to be called on, but Dick bit down a smile.  He loved it when his brothers got along, even if that meant they decided to become scary chaotic demons (such as in their in-progress takedown of the League.  He was so proud of them.)

"No," Damian said.  "It is not a title I am familiar with, and the imagery holds no resemblance to what I am familiar with."

Jason couldn't quite hide his relieved sigh, and Dick felt similarly.  "It might be this world's counterpart, then."  There were both positives and negatives to that.  He definitely didn't want to deal with Ra's al Ghul, but it also meant they would have less information and insight.

"Let's see," Tim mumbled. "There's more, apparently classified details on Iron Man and Captain America's exploits, but y'all can probably look over those on your own time.  Important notes are that Captain America is apparently a supersoldier, created by a serum in the 40s. He's got the basic enhancements, but it's closer to, say, Venom or the Lazarus Pit than whatever Deathstroke got."

"No side effects?" Dick asked, all too familiar with the occasional angry green glint to Jason's eyes and the way Venom usage affected a person.  That and the fact that the U.S. government called this man a superhero wasn't any sort of ringing endorsement, especially since he'd fought in a war for them.

Tim frowned. "Just that it apparently enhanced his current personality.  The file notes that the Red Skull he fought during World War Two had an earlier version of the serum, and it's what caused him to, uh, go insane."

Yeah, okay, that was better than Dick had been expecting.  Most of the time, strength enhancements had serious consequences.  Well, unless you were named Deathstroke and already inclined to murder people for a living, and even then he'd mentioned off-hand the amount of pain the serum had caused him.

"Is the formula still around?" Jason asked, starting with the most worrying question.  That could cause a lot of damage in the wrong hands.

Tim shook his head, and all of them loosed another relieved sigh.  "Nope, the creator got murdered, the formula was lost.  There's been a number of attempts to recreate it, none successful."

Dick made a funny face at Cass as he waited for Tim to keep skimming the sheet.  There were a number of plans slowly starting to form in the back of his mind, but it was important that they got as much information as possible before they started to make plans. 

Cass stuck out her tongue at him, giggling, and Dick retaliated by giving Damian bunny ears.  They tended to be extra effective on anyone with a domino mask, and Dick was rewarded by Steph crouching behind Tim's chair to hide her laugh from Damian.  

"Ooooh!" Tim said, and Dick dragged his gaze away from Cass's pouty face to their information gatherer.  "The green creature is called the Hulk; he's apparently the result of a failed attempt to recreate the super soldier serum.  It's a Jekyll and Hyde situation — Bruce Banner, the scientist, turns into the Hulk when he gets angry."

"Is it a personality split or a second entity in Banner's head?" Dick asked, genuinely curious.  He'd met some of both types over the years.

"Uh, file doesn't say," Tim responded.

"I doubt they know the difference," Jason sighed.  "I don't think this world's familiar with those situations.  Also, baby bird, where'd you learn that literary reference from?  I wasn't sure you knew how to read books."

"Fuck off, Hood."

"Language," Jason mocked.

"No, probably not," Dick agreed with Jason's original statement, raising his voice to avoid the incoming hissy fight.  "Anything else, baby bird?"

Tim kept scrolling. "Uh, information on the Tesseract, apparently it's been around since World War Two.  I'm sensing a lot of redacted stuff in this file, but it should give me enough of a basis to work on later." Dick nodded.  He'd ask if it became important, but Timmy was likely to be the best with technomagic mumble-jumble, and he'd be the best to work on it if the rest of them were needed elsewhere.

"And — oh, okay, this is the good stuff.  Apparently SHIELD's had another run in with Asgard, about a year ago.  According to their notes, they received reports of a strange magnetic storm in Arizona and an unmovable hammer appearing out of nowhere.  To make a long story short, they found out that Thor of Asgard had been, uh, temporarily banished to Earth and lost his powers.  He regained them and use of the hammer, Mjloiner, in a fight against the Destroyer, some Asgardian robot.  He returned to Asgard with his friends, question mark on who they are.  SHIELD reports a mixture of negative and neutral interactions, given that Thor was classified as hostile for a little bit."

"The government," Jason muttered irritatedly.  God only knew how many interplanetary conflicts Earth would have been involved with without the JL.

"Thor appeared to have made friends with the group of researchers who picked him up though," Tim continued.  "One of whom was apparently the doctor Loki put under mind control.  They classify Thor as unlikely to be a hostile and thus smaller chances for Loki to represent all of Asgard."

"Do you agree with that assessment?" Dick asked, resisting the urge to reach up and pinch his nose.  For as many problems as he had with the JL, they rarely managed to mess up that badly.  

"Without additional information, sure," Tim cracked his knuckles, eyeing the computer like a piece of fresh meat.  "I'd like to hack SHIELD and get a feel for how much they left out, but I'd have to get around the monitoring on this computer first, and they might notice that since they're likely watching it actively."

Dick ruffled Damian's hair, hopping up to sit on the table.  Damian made a disgruntled noise, eyeing Dick like he'd just done something particularly disgraceful.

"Must you be such a heathen, Baba?"

Dick just grinned.

Jason, too, finally settled into a seat, shoulders slightly relaxed now that they've got enough information to make a plan.  "So, Red wants to hack SHIELD. No surprises.  What else?"

"Do you think we're going to get to meet the rest of these people?" Steph asked, leaning forwards to rest more of her weight on Tim.  "SHIELD's files say they're recruiting Dr. Banner to track the Cube."

Dick frowned.  "Yeah, Fury mentioned something about that.  I think he said they'd send someone to retrieve us whenever SHIELD had news or he'd gathered the rest of the team to attack Loki."

Cass tilted her head. "Lots of trust," she observed.  Dick squinted his eyes as Cass wrapped her arms around Steph, essentially piggybacking on her.  This, of course, meant both of their weight was on Tim, who seemed entirely nonplussed.  

"Their preparation is clearly subpar to our world's," Damian scoffed.

Dick shrugged.  Dami wasn't wrong. "Yeah, I don't think they expected us to get around their monitoring with an unrecognizable language."

"Losers," Tim and Steph scoffed in unison.  Steph raised a hand for a high-five, waving it into Tim's face.  Tim caught it without breaking the rhythm of his typing.  

"Besides," Jason added, "I think Fury wasn't sure what to do with us, so he just stuck us under guard until they figured it out."

Which was fair, sort of.  The first few times their JL had received interdimensional travelers had been more complicated before they'd adopted the system of codes established by the Prime Justice League, and they'd been lucky enough for it to be alternate versions of themself showing up, because that made establishing the truth a lot easier.  

SHIELD had them show up immediately after a hostile invader with no precedent.  It was only their costumes and an example or two of their tech that had even convinced Fury completely. 

Dick sighed.  "I'm sure he'll have figured it out by the time someone comes to get us.  Whatever we choose to do, we're gonna have to be subtle about it."

"Is our intention to remain here and subdue the alien?" Damian asked.  Dick's baby looked a little upset, arms crossed over his chest.  He was pouting.  "I thought our first priority would have been to establish contact with Father."

Ah, of course.  This was Dami's first multiversal trip, wasn't it.  

Tim looked up from his computer.  "I have no idea where we are in the multiverse, and the usual tech I carry isn't working.  I've got a theory that whatever the Tesseract did to bring us here is messing with B's communication device."

"Don't worry, Robin," Dick reached out to ruffle Damian's hair.  "Of course our first priority is to get home safely, but I think we'll probably need the Tesseract for that."

Jason rolled his eyes. "Oh, please.  Don't act like your hero morals aren't also pushing you to help out this new Avengers team.  You're excited this universe is different enough from ours that you can interfere."

Dick smirked.  He wasn't going to deny that he was enjoying the idea of a fight with Loki a little bit.  Mind control was always one of the things that irritated him, and if he liked the Avengers enough there were a bunch of hard lessons he'd watched B learn in the early days of the Justice League.  Starting with the fact that if they wanted to deal with international incidents they should work out a deal with the UN early.  

Cass grinned too.  It was a feral thing that all the Batkids shared.  Dick always wondered whether he'd taught it to them or whether it was just a thing Gotham brought out in all of them.  "I will beat Loki.  He will not see me coming."

Dick grinned.  He'd love to see that happen.  Cass was terrifying, in the best way possible.  "Okay, is that the strategy, then?  Focus on retrieving the Tesseract and giving Red Robin the time to get us home.  In the meantime, help SHIELD subdue Loki and set up a superhero team?"

Cass and Steph shrugged.  Tim nodded.  Damian's nod was stiff.  

"Sure," drawled Jason.  "That's the strategy.  What's the plan?"

"I hack," Tim said, still not looking up from his laptop.

Dick frowned.  "We should all meet these Avengers; especially if Stark and Banner are going to be called in for technological help."

Tim sighed heavily.  "Fiiiiine."

"If a mission is called to go fight Loki, I'd like to be on it," Jason said quickly.  

Steph pouted.  "Booooo, let the rest of us have some fun."

"It's okay, Spoiley, you can stay with me!" Tim's grin was slightly maniacal, probably because he knew what kind of death he was condemning her too. 

"Noooooo," Steph flailed dramatically, dislodging Cass from her back as she pulled away from Tim.  "Black Bat, my darling dearest, please save me."

Cass smirked. "I'm also going."

Steph gasped. "Betrayal!"

All things considered, this wasn't going as bad as Dick thought it would.  His siblings were getting along, they had a new enemy to torment beat, and they'd probably be able to help out this dimension.  Sure, it wasn't exploring whatever shady shit was in Gotham's caves, but it was damn near close enough.  

The sounds of bickering filled Dick's ears as everyone tried to stake their claim on beating up Loki, though Jason and Cass would definitely be the two to go.  Dick just let them go on, its not like they have much to do.

Damian scoffed loudly.  "I fail to understand why you insist on claiming your spot to kidnap Loki.  A magician of his caliber would hardly be found by SHIELD's primitive technology."

"Unless he wanted to be found," Jason argued.  "We don't know what his motives are, besides to take over Earth.  I'm sure he's got some scheme he's using his mind-controlled minions for."

Steph sighed. "And it's going to be suitably melodramatic and make all of us want to cry, yes, I'm sure."

There was a knock on the door.  

Effortlessly, the whole room fell silent. 

"Yes?" Dick called out in English, faintly accented after he'd spent a few hours speaking a different language.

The door creaked open to a woman Dick didn't recognize yet. She wore some sort of catsuit that looked like it belonged more on Selina than a government agent, but who was Dick to judge preferred costuming? "I'm Agent Romanoff," she said.  "Director Fury's instructed me to bring you to meet the rest of the team."

Chapter Text

Natasha didn't quite know what to make of the strangers.  They all walked with confidence despite their clearly unfamiliar surroundings, and their footsteps were somehow quieter than hers.  They'd clearly had an incredible amount of training, even the youngest, who couldn't have been older than thirteen.  Natasha carefully tabled that thought for later— that whatever dimension they had come from trained child soldiers.

"Have your accommodations been acceptable?" she asked politely.  Their gadgets alone had suggested that their dimension was much more advanced technologically, and Fury had reported their leader, Nightwing, calling their encounter with Loki 'normal'.  She hoped the helicarrier would impress them as much as it had Banner and Rogers.

"More than, given the circumstances," Nightwing said.  "I'm sure we'd all rather be at home right now, but SHIELD has been incredibly kind despite the whole dimension traveling thing." 

He had a rather charming grin, but despite his friendliness he hadn't yet tried to flirt or leer at her, not that Natasha would have turned him down.  Sex was always very good for relations and information gathering.  It was interesting though, that all of them seemed to immediately respect her.  Then again, their two female members walked with the same aura of danger as the rest of them.  

"I'm glad to hear that," Natasha said. "Hopefully we will be able to find and secure Loki quickly and return you back to your dimension."

Nightwing nodded. "Hopefully indeed.  Has there been any luck with tracking him so far?"

He's clever.  They're both prying for information, but he's deflecting her questions with minimal effort.  

"None so far," she said, allowing her lips to quirk slightly.  "Our foremost expert in gamma radiation has just arrived to begin searching for the Tesseract as well; I believe there was a reading on him, Dr. Bruce Banner?"

Red Hood coughed, glancing away and down at the floor.  His body was shaking like he'd found something about her statement funny, but he didn't say anything.  Perhaps it was the name? 

"Yes," Nightwing confirmed, not sparing his teammate a glance.  It was a very quick way to deem Red Hood's contribution unnecessary— was he aware of whatever was funny?  "Our technology expert, Red Robin, is very excited to meet both him and Dr. Tony Stark.  He has significant experience with magical artifacts."

Natasha noted his name in her mind, as well as the fact that they'd chosen to refer to Stark by his doctorate despite their internet history showing that they'd found his exploits.  "Iron Man has other responsibilities, but we're hoping he can make it as soon as possible," she said politely. Coulson had confirmed that he'd agreed to help, but that in no way guaranteed that Stark would arrive in any sort of a timely manner.  "Dr. Banner and Captain America just arrived; we're hoping you will be able to work with them when we locate Loki."

Nightwing nodded.  "Of course! I suspect we'll want to leave a few people here, but Black Bat and Red Hood are willing to assist in the physical takedown of Loki."

Another interesting delegation.  It seemed Nightwing was neither their best at tech nor willing to fight Loki himself despite being the leader, unless Nightwing had some other motivation for sending them, specifically.

Natasha noded, carefully hiding all of her calculations behind a blank smile.  "Wonderful." Natasha glanced back at Black Bat again.  As interesting as each of the dimension travelers was, Black Bat moved with more grace than even Natahsa had, like she'd been born a fighter, not just trained at a very young age.  There was an intentionality down to almost every muscle placement, which spoke to an almost frightening amount of training.  

Nightwing was perhaps the most powerful in terms of charisma, but Natasha would put her money on Black Bat being the most dangerous of all of them physically.  No wonder she was chosen to help takedown Loki.  

Natasha placed her hand on the doorknob, turning to glance at the group behind her.  They'd all tensed ever so slightly, as expertly hidden as it was behind their calm facades.  "We're here," she said, and pushed the door open, leading to a small conference room.  Fury had originally hoped to just let the Avengers mingle around the command room, but with the addition of the dimensional travelers he'd decided to lead them to a small meeting room instead.  

Dr. Banner and Steve Rogers were both sitting around the table; Dr. Banner already had a SHIELD-issued laptop in front of him while Rogers seemed to be glancing around the room in continued interest.  Clearly, he still hadn't quite gotten over the shock of the helicarrier rising, though that hadn't seemed to affect any of their guests.  

Both looked up as she entered.  "Cap, Dr. Banner," Natasha introduced.  "These are our dimensional guests— Nightwing, Red Hood, Black Bat, Red Robin, Spoiler, and Robin."

"Hi," Nightwing said, stepping forward.  He was too far away to shake hands, but his body posture indicated that's what he wanted to do.  "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"And to you as well," Captain America said, standing up and walking half-way around the table in order to shake hands.  They were both obviously looking each other over.  "I have to say, multi dimensions are a new thing for me."

Nightwing grinned wryly.  "I wish I could say the same. Alas, the fight never ends." 

"Are you Dr. Banner?" Red Robin spoke with a blunter tone than Nightwing, looking directly at Dr. Banner.

Dr. Banner nodded warily.

Red Robin grinned.  It was a tad too wide, canines showing almost as if they were fangs.  To be honest, it unnerved the hell out of Natasha.  Red Robin bounced over to Dr. Banner.  "I'm our tech and science expert.  I've heard you're the one to talk to about tracking the cube and getting us back home?"

A glint of curiosity appeared in Dr. Banner's eye.  The lure of fresh, more experienced minds had been one of the things Natasha had used to draw Dr. Banner to the helicarrier, after all.  

"Yes," Dr. Banner said, tilting his laptop so Red Robin could see it.  "I'm currently setting up a cluster tracking algorithm for gamma radiation in order to try to rule out places it can't be. "

Red Robin dropped into a seat next to him.  "Do you have the spectrum for the Tesseract?  I can help you refine it and check to see if the Tesseract is trackable in any other part of the spectrum.  If it's a magical object, they tend to do weird things to technology, which should be trackable."

That's Natasha's cue to tune out of their conversation.  It's not worth it to pay attention to science talk she won't understand when SHIELD cameras will keep it all on their servers for future knowledge.  

"Indeed," Captain America chuckled in response to Nightwing's comment about the fight never ending.  "I went into the ice during World War Two and was pulled out just in time for aliens."

Nightwing offered him a sympathetic smile, slinging his arm around Robin.  "How have you found the modern world?  I can only imagine that the world has changed a lot while you were asleep."

Rogers's face closed off. "It's very different," he said tightly.  "But I find myself missing the people I knew more than anything else."

"The loss never goes away," Nightwing agreed, reaching over to tap Red Hood on the shoulder.  

All of the travelers were very casual with touch around each other, none more so than Nightwing.  They acted almost more like a family than teammates, given the weird pile Black Bat and Spoiler had been doing on top of Red Robin in the meeting room.  It was just a shame that not all languages apparently crossed over between worlds, since even their auto-detection system hadn't recognized anything beyond the Arabic influences in whatever they'd been speaking.

Red Hood scoffed. "I'm back now, aren't I?" 

That was a rather concerning statement.  

Rogers seemed to agree, given the panic in his gaze when it shifted to Red Hood.  "Did you die?" 

Hood nodded grimly.  "Crawled out of my own grave six months later and everything," he said in the most nonchalant way possible, though given Nightwing's faint flinch he was the only member of the family to feel so calm about literally crawling out of his grave.  What kind of world did they live in, where such a thing was even possible?

"You—" Rogers began, seemingly at a loss for words.

Hood tilted his head at him.  "I was comatose for a while after, and when I regained my memories I was met with a world and a family who'd moved on.  I'd imagine the 1940s to now is a much more jarring jump, but I can't imagine the world feels very friendly to you at the moment."

That's a shockingly graceful way of describing the situation Steve Rogers found himself in.  

Hood offered him a small smile.  "It took me a long time to find peace with my family — if you want, we could talk after this whole Loki situation is over?"

Rogers nodded. "That sounds wonderful, thank you.  I can't let go of the war I died for."

Hood laughed. "Isn't that an understatement?"

The door flew open.

Natasha drew two daggers immediately, tensed even though the helicarrier was supposed to be safe.  

"Hey, everyone," Tony Stark greeted flippantly, pulling his shades down long enough to wink at Natasha.  "Sorry I'm late, I had to finish the assigned readings first."

Behind Stark, Agent Hill flashed Natasha a silent apology as she dropped her knives back into their holsters.  To Natasha's surprise, she hadn't been the only one to pull a weapon— Hood's gun was half out of its holster; Nightwing, Black Bat, and Spoiler had automatically taken defensive positions; Robin had drawn a goddamn katana; and Red Robin had taken a position in front of Banner with a bo-staff he'd grabbed from nowhere.

They each took in Stark with an analytical gaze before collapsing their weapons, posture returning to relaxed like nothing had happened,

"Wow, what a warm welcome," Stark joked to no one's amusement.  "I feel honored to— what is a kid doing here?!?!?" Both Banner and Roger's gazes immediately snapped to Robin, as if finally computing the pint-sized human.

"Ttt. I am Robin," the child said, managing somehow to both look down his nose at Stark and sound incredibly condescending.  "I am far more qualified than you to be here, I assure you."

Stark gaped at the kid.  "Okay, no," he said.  "I'm not doing this.  We can't seriously be letting the eight year old fight."

"Eleven," Robin said flatly.  His hand inched towards the katana he'd just taken a very advanced stance with moments earlier.  

"You must be Dr. Stark," Nightwing said, quickly placing himself between Tony and the apparently rather stabby child.  "I can assure you Robin is here by choice and is more than competent enough."

Stark frowned.  "That's not my problem! That's one full little child soldier—"

Robin pulled the katana back out, attempting to dodge Nightwing in his attempt to get at Stark.  Nightwing caught him by the waist, placing a hand on Robin's katana and lowering the blade in a move that looked well practiced.

"I can assure you," Nightwing said, his smile also slightly too wide and razor sharp, "That no one here is forced to fight.  All of us started young because we wanted to, and we help each other because it's safer to train than to let a teenager go out alone at night to fight criminals.  Regardless, you are not from our dimension or even city and are not familiar with its quirks, so I do ask you please drop the subject."

"No, hold on," Banner said, voice heavy.  "Stark is right.  Even if children want to fight, it's the adults' job to protect them—"

Red Robin snorted. "Sorry," he said.  "It's just, I saved the universe multiple times by the age of sixteen, and I started at thirteen.  In multiple of those cases, if it hadn't been for me and my team, the world would have been gone.  Caput.  I would have been dead, along with, you know, every other living organism in our universe.  It's literally no safer for me not to fight."

Stark and Banner's frowns got heavier, but Natasha got the sense that the travelers would not concede this argument, given that Nightwing had said all of them had started young.  Natasha didn't know any of their history, and while Robin moved far too much like an assassin for her to be comfortable, the way Nightwing treated Robin convinced her, at the very least, that he was raising Robin as a person first and a soldier second.  

"I'm glad you managed to get here on time, Mr. Stark," Natasha said, pulling herself off the wall to saunter a little closer.  Nightwing had convinced Robin with simple touches to tuck the katana back in its sheath, and Robin's body language said that he felt no threat around Nightwing even after making a mistake.  "This is Nightwing, Red Hood, Spoiler, Black Bat, Red Robin, and, as you already met, Robin.  You may already know Dr. Banner and Captain Rogers."

Stark did a second survey of the room, slower, noting the new faces.  "It’s good to meet you, Doctor Banner," he said,  changing tactics and reaching out his hand to Banner, who took it warily.  "Your work on anti-electronic collisions is unparalleled. And I’m a huge fan of the way you- lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

"Thanks," Banner said cautiously, and Red Robin peered up at both of them.  "I'm only here to track the Cube, though. Red Robin and I have been working on a basic cluster algorithm; I was just about to pull up the current spectrum on the Tesseract if you'd like to take a look."

Stark shrugged. "You must be the tech genius then," he said to Red Robin, holding out a hand.  "What kind of tools has SHIELD burdened you with?"

Red Robin's voice was very dry as he responded.  "A standard issue laptop and whatever Dr. Banner's using."

Stark snorted.  "Well that simply won't do." In a move Stark had clearly pre-planned, he pulled a laptop out of his bag and slid it across the container. "Consider it a gift towards us working together on science!" He grinned. "Unlike SHIELD's junk, it doesn't even have bugs."

Red Robin grinned, that just a touch too large smile again, and cracked his knuckles. "Much obliged," he said cheerfully.  

"Tony," Natasha said in warning, but she's already lost all three of them.

"Now let's see this spectrum," Stark said. 

All three of them peer around the laptop.

"That's weird," Tony commented, but Red Robin paled.  

"I think I recognize that." Red Robin said flatly.  "Hey, 'Wing, can you come over here for a second?  This looks just like Gotham's ambient radiation."

Nightwing lifted a hand apologetically to Rogers, tucked Robin into Spoiler's grip, and ducked around the edge of the table to join the cluster.  "Huh, it does.  I wonder if that's why the Tesseract pulled us in."  Once again, he's entirely too nonchalant about the situation.

"Does it not concern you that your city has the same radiation signature as a glowing blue cube?" Stark asked, genuinely curious.

Red Robin snorted.  "Gotham's cursed to hell and semi-sentient besides, so not really.  With the amount of toxins in the water, I'm not surprised.  But this might make it easier to track the thing, I already have some systems set up designed to track Gotham stuff."

Everything about that statement was concerning, but the travelers just moved on, like they routinely dealt with weirder.  It certainly explained why they'd been so calm about this whole situation, even if Natasha never wanted to visit their dimension.

"Where did you learn to fight?"

Natasha almost jumped.  Not quite, but almost.  She'd never been snuck up on like that, ever, and yet Black Bat had managed it, standing just close enough for them to be in conversation but far enough away that she was out of striking rage.  "I was trained young," she said flatly.  "Were you?"

Black Bat nodded. "You move like us," she observed, gesturing at Robin and herself.  That did not bode well for whoever had trained Robin, though guessing by the fact Black Bat had only indicated the two of them, they weren't currently in a situation that didn't train people like the KGB did.

Natasha gave her a razor sharp smile.  No matter how familiar this woman's circumstances might be, Natasha did not appreciate people poking into her life.  "The best assassins are trained young."

Black Bat tilted her head. "No," she said after several long seconds of thinking.  She said the word carefully, as if English wasn't her first choice of communication.  Maybe she was more fluent in another language? She didn't have an accent though, and Natasha hadn't seen her speak much in the language they were using earlier.  "The best assassins want to be assassins." The quirk of her lips suggested she meant that statement to apply to both herself and Natasha.

Natasha had never quite thought about it that way before.  She prided herself on her skills and the work she did for SHIELD, even as she ignored that she was both SHIELD's best covert agent and had been the KGB's best Black Widow.  To consider that she was not the best assassin simply because she did not want to be, that she deserved another title was, well— Natasha knew she had red in her ledger.  It wasn't just as simple as wanting to be different, was it?

"I suppose," Natasha said, examining Black Bat more carefully and coming back with nothing more than 'dangerous.'  Natasha had been the best assassin in the world, but whoever this woman was had her hopelessly outmatched.  "Is that why you chose to become a superhero?" The word almost stuck in her throat, given that the concept of superheroes actually existing was still new to Natasha, but she had no better words for the masked heroes in front of her.

Black Bat continued to study her.  Natasha felt like she was being studied inside out.  "No," she said finally. "I wanted to help people.  To no longer be a weapon.  But that's why you chose."

Natasha felt that sentiment in her bones.  "I'm not a superhero," she protested, suddenly on the wrong foot and not quite sure how she got there.  

"You're here," Black Bat pointed out. 

Two simple words and yet Natasha had no idea what to do with them.  She hadn't been this unsure what to do since Clint had held an arrow at her neck and recruited her to SHIELD.  "It's my job," she said, but she didn't quite believe the words herself and Black Bat clearly didn't either.  "Loki has someone I care about and I want him back."

Black Bat tilted her head.  Her body posture changed, and only then did Natasha realize that it had been continuously shifting this entire conversation, like Black Bat was trying to talk to someone with just her body.  "You still help others," she said simply, pressing the point.

Natasha raised her eyebrow, decidedly unnerved by the way Black Bat moved and yet unable to look away.  It was so graceful.  "Why are you so concerned?"

Black Bat smiled.  "I ran away when I was eight," and somehow what that implied about her training was worse than Natasha had initially pictured.  Did their universe have a Red Room?  "I chose who I want to be.  You have not."  She smiled, and turned to leave.  Clearly, she'd said what she wanted to say, and Natasha just gaped. 

She let Black Bat walk off, and pulled herself together in a few simple strokes.  Just who were these people?  One had died, two were child soldiers (if not more), their city of choice was apparently cursed, and Loki was a normal occurrence.

Black Bat returned to Spoiler and Robin like nothing had happened, draping herself over Spoiler's back and listening to Robin talk about something.  She didn't say anything to them, only furthering Natasha's assumption about her lack of comfort with English.

Red Hood and Rogers were still talking— Natasha listened in long enough to determine it was about community efforts in 1920s New York.  Apparently Gotham had some sort of crime problem in addition to the curse?  

Nightwing had graduated to using the laptop Stark had provided — Natasha was not pleased they were able to get around SHIELD's monitoring, especially because they had no idea what the strangers might do with internet access, but neither Stark nor Banner seemed concerned, since they were still crowded around the other laptop with Red Robin.  

Natasha's earpiece crackled.  "We've got a hit on Loki, sending an agent now," Fury said sharply.  "Go with Captain America and Iron Man.  If one of the travelers wishes to go, ask them to spectate for publicity reasons."

Natasha did not verbally respond, unwilling to give the communication away to the rest of the room, and instead waited.  As stated earlier, Black Bat and Red Hood intended to go with her, which was fine with Natasha.  Black Bat was an enigma she'd like to pick apart, and despite his gruff exterior Red Hood seemed to be pleasant enough company.  

The knock came a few minutes later.  

Thankfully, no one startled this time, though everyone glanced at the door as Agent Hill opened it.  

"Loki has been spotted," Hill said crisply.  "Captain, Stark, you're up."

Captain America nodded decisively.  

Stark grinned, leaning back in the chair.  "Awww, I knew you cared about me."

"We're going too," Hood said with no hesitation, gesturing between himself and Black Bat.

Agent Hill didn't try to protest— they needed all the help they could get, and everyone knew it. "We ask that you only interfere if necessary, in that case."

Hood shrugged his acceptance.  "As long as no civilians get hurt."

That was a surprisingly reasonable line in the sand, and it also drew a pretty clear picture to Natasha of what their priorities were.  No civilian casualties even at risk of angering the government entity that had the best chance of getting them home.

Agent Hill nodded.  "Agent Romanoff, would you lead them to the quinjet?"

Natasha nodded.  "Follow me."

"Would you be able to show us where the lab is?" Red Robin asked, gesturing to himself, Dr. Banner, and the other remaining travelers.  "I think we've done as much as we possibly can here."

Hill nodded.  "You can come with me then."

Chapter Text

The lab was much nicer than the conference room they'd been in before, and it gave Dick a better angle to hide the rather aggressive hacking he's using Stark's laptop for.  Red Robin and Dr. Banner were off in the corner, touching these half-holographic screens and rambling on about gamma rays and magical tracking.  Dick was paying more attention to their ramblings than he probably should be, but Stark's tech is incredibly good for the time and SHIELD's security has absolutely nothing on Oracle.

Hence, Dick was more so having fun with it while he watched Red Robin and Banner talk circles around each other.  They had strayed to nuclear chemistry, trying to figure out how or why the Tesseract acts as a renewable power source, and Dick was enjoying watching Banner's eyebrows climb as Red Robin delved into increasingly complicated theories.  

His Robin was perched on his knee, watching Dick's coding with sharp eyes.  Technology had not been one of the things Ra's had taught Dami, so it had fallen to Nightwing, and later, Red Robin and Oracle, to catch the younger boy up on cybersecurity and online detective work.  

"What are we expecting to find?" Dami muttered quietly in the League dialect.  There were still no doubt cameras on them, and with Banner in the room it would more obviously be obfuscation for them to avoid speaking English.  Hence, the quiet whispers long since mastered by every Bat.

"Why they have the Tesseract," Dick mumbled back.  "And also to get a better grasp on the political scene, especially around our new teammates."

Damian nodded intently, eyes fixed on the computer. "You expect they've lied to us then?"

"Yes," Dick said dryly.  If there's one thing growing up in Gotham and having to deal with politicians as the leader of the Titans had taught him, it's that there's always a hidden agenda that's going to screw you over. 

This appeared to be rather unsurprising to Damian, but he had been in Gotham long enough now to start getting a feel for that, even if most of the family tries to keep the darkest parts of Gotham away from him. 

"So," Steph said, spinning around in a rolling chair.  She'd been peering over Tim's shoulder for the most part, acting as his rubber duck.  "Have you figured out which part of the multiverse we're in yet, Red?"

Tim didn't look up from the computer he was using.  "Yeah, a whole new part.  We're so far out we don't fall in any of the categories the Justice League has.  So, point of difference is at least a hundred years ago, probably several thousand based on the Asgardians."

Dr. Banner set his laptop down, peering over it at Tim.  "You've had experience with the multiverse before?"

Steph snorted.  "Every other magical enemy  has some sort of portal or time travel, so, yes."

"How does that work? Is it closed loop or infinitely branching or—"

Tim groaned.  "It depends on the transportation type.  If you're tossed into an alternate universe, it's infinitely branching.  If you go back in time in your own timeline, it changes your future.  I've run into alternate future versions of myself.  Do not recommend."

Banner just stared at him.  "How does that work?  Has someone changed the future?"

The whole room sighed as one.  "Yes," Tim groaned.  "I don't want to think about it.  Changing the future is bad; we love the butterfly effect here."

Dr. Banner frowned.  "Aren't you worried about this universe's stability then?"

Steph shrugged.  "Changing your future would require us to know it.  We don't, so it's all fine."

"Ah."

Dick refocused on his computer.  He'd made it through SHIELD's walls fairly easy, but piecing through their files for useful information was much more frustrating given his lack of context.  He searched for Tesseract information first, carefully taking mental notes on its discovery and subsequent role in World War Two.  The notes SHIELD had handed them on Captain America had only briefly mentioned HYDRA, and their files on their use of the Tesseract, human experimentation, and hopes to take over the world were… concerning.  Especially because a quick search confirmed a number of their scientists were recruited for Operation Paperclip.

Something to look into later. 

Dick copied SHIELD's research on the cube as an energy source.  He wanted to send it to his wristband and he was fairly certain it was possible, but that would open their technology to potential vulnerabilities and give his current activities away.  Better to save the folders to the side for Tim to look through later.

What really concerned Dick was Phase 2, and the emphasis on new weaponry using an alien artifact they don't understand in the slightest.  He hated even more that it was noted as being a way to handle unusual people or events. (and hey! That alien thing in the 80s was certainly confirmed.)  Dick couldn't blame SHIELD for wanting to protect themselves, but it didn't fit quite right.  

"So," Steph said, still spinning around in the chair as Dr. Banner broke off from Tim to work at a computer.  "Is turning into the Hulk fun or annoying?"

Dr. Banner shot her a rather frustrated look.  "I don't like losing control, no."

Steph tilted her head at him.  "So the Hulk's a separate person then?"

Dr. Banner's hands fell away from the laptop.  "What do you mean?"

"Well, you said you don't have control over the shift, so is it more of a personality split or like, an entirely separate person?  I've seen people with both so I was just curious, I didn't mean to be rude or anything."

Dr. Banner sat down, hands flexing on the counter.  "I've never heard anyone refer to it that way before."

Oh.

Right, young world.  Made sense.

Tim bent his laptop, looking over it briefly.  "Are you aware of what happens while you're in Hulk form?"

"Yes," Dr. Banner confirmed, looking between the two of them.  "Do you know what's happened to me?"

Tim returned to his laptop.  "We can compare it to things we've seen, but every case is usually unique.  It's possible the Hulk is an alter you're co-conscious with, but it's also possible for the Hulk to be a separate entity you share a body with.  Have you tried to communicate with him?"

"Why would I try to communicate with him?"

"Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but every time SHIELD's files mentioned the Hulk coming out it was in a scenario where you were in danger or otherwise extremely stressed.  Either the Hulk is a part of you evolved to handle those scenarios, or it's a separate person who's just never known anything but violence."

Dr. Banner stared at them.  "So you want me to talk to him?"

Tim typed furiously at his computer, but Steph shrugged.  "If he's a separate entity in your head, it's usually possible, yeah.  Back in our world we have a few mind-readers who could take a look."

Dr. Banner swallowed. His fingers tapped against his keyboard a few times.  

Steph studied him for a second, and smiled.  "We could talk about this after all of this is over?  Even if we can't help you, it might help to have someone to talk it out with?"

"Yeah, sure." Dr. Banner cleared his throat awkwardly, and ducked back behind his computer.  Steph let him be as Tim fired a stream of questions at her and then answered them himself.  Something about counter-tracing the Tesseract's signal to find their Gotham?

SHIELD's notes on Asgard were rather worthless, in Dick's opinion.  The picture they painted of Thor was frankly rather brash and arrogant, and SHIELD had reacted with fear rather than treating him as an ally to learn things from.  Sure, they were probably right to classify Thor as a potential ally due to his protection against the metal robot and his attachment to Jane Foster, but Asgard as a whole?

"What ridiculousness," Damian scoffed. "Father would never treat an unknown in such a crude way."

No, the Justice League tended to handle aliens with more grace.  Most of the time, anyway.  Having multiple Green Lanterns as part time members helped significantly.  

"Should Asgard respond to Loki, any encounters will have to be treated as if we have no information," Dick sighed.  "I don't trust SHIELD's recounting to be impartial."

Damian clicked his tongue.  Dick was inclined to agree.  Incompetent governments were apparently a thing everywhere.  The real question was whether SHIELD was corrupt or not.  All government agencies had some mixture, but they could be like the GCPD before or after the Commish cleaned it up.  

And the farther Dick looked into SHIELD, the more something was just… slightly off.  Files with missing details.  Their STRIKE team was riddled with them.  Items disappearing, plans taking place without any sort of prior approval.  Not to mention the scientists recruited from HYDRA, who seemed to have been released into the U.S. with very little oversight and a lot of funding.  

There's continuous links to things that didn't exist, missions that didn't line up with SHIELD's stated objectives or even with the current leadership of the time.  If anything… Dick didn't think SHIELD, the organization, was compromised.  He thought something was using SHIELD's resources for his own gain.  Dick cracked his knuckles, and set about hacking the lives of his number one set of suspects — SHIELD's STRIKE team.  

Cassandra watched.

She and Red Hood had been allowed on this mission merely as backup, after all.  Besides, it would not do for either of them to show their hand so early if it could be avoided.  So she merely observed as Agent Romanoff slotted herself into the driver's seat, where she could listen without appearing to eavesdrop, and the Captain engaged Hood in conversation.

Their camaraderie earlier when talking about their experience in the uglier parts of town had melted into battle awkwardness.  The Captain clearly wished to make a plan of attack, but Iron Man was currently unreachable, having chosen to fly to Germany under his own power.

The Captain's posture was tense despite Hood's attempts to walk him through what they knew of Loki's strengths and weaknesses, friendly lines from earlier having frozen into rigid anger as the plans were discussed.  A problem to keep an eye on.  

Cass was more interested in Agent Romanoff, but the woman stayed focused on their flight forward, ever the professional.  Not a superhero, what a joke.  Just because her trainers were closer in morality to David Cain or the League didn't mean she didn't deserve to be recognized for her new life.  Even if Cass would like a few words with whoever had molded her so thoroughly.

Anyways, Cass was bored.  Jason was bored too, and neither of them hid it particularly well.  The trip was not short, and chopsticks with their fingers quickly turned into a full game of ninja, much to Cass's amusement and the horror of the Captain.  This wasn't stakeout waiting, where patience was part of the game.  This was just boring.  

The fight was slightly less boring.  Loki's words were nothing she and Jason hadn't heard before, ruler this, ruler that.  Both the Captain and Iron Man expressed a flare for dramatics, as any good superhero did.  Cass did particularly appreciate the way Captain America dropped from the sky.  

She also appreciated her first look into Loki's fighting style.  He was well practiced with the fighting style, but overt aggression didn't look natural on him.  There was something ever so slightly off beyond the airs he was putting on.  

It was interesting, too, that he scoffed at the Agent Romanoff's threat and the Quinjet's weaponry and yet capitulated so easily to Iron Man's blasters, which had likely left him with minor burns but nothing serious.  Also, he hid the burns.  His posture was supposed to be submissive, and yet it screamed a lie.  

In conclusion, Loki was letting himself be captured.  He had the physical skills to take down Captain America in a fighting style that wasn't his forte, the durability to take a hit from Iron Man's repulsors, and magic, which SHIELD had somehow forgotten about.  

Hood turned to look at her, his body tilting just so.  He thought it was a terrible performance too.

That wasn't what was confusing Cass though.  She'd definitely gotten herself captured on a few occasions to explode things from the inside, and she enjoyed the way that skyrocketed Bruce's heartbeat.  What was confusing was the way he held his body, like he was in constant pain.  He was unsure, lying with his body to portray arrogance when he was scared.  

Loki was terrified, and it wasn't of them.

He's compliant enough, though, so he's trapped into the Quinjet and they're headed back.  

"I don't like it," Rogers said tightly.  He was uncertain-worried, eyes darting to Loki and back.

"What? Rock of Ages giving up so easily?"

Cass giggled, and Hood snorted.  Degrading nicknames were a family tradition at this point, and Stark's were top tier.  

"I don’t remember it being that easy. This guy packs a wallop."  Cass raised an eyebrow.  The Captain was very much correct.  If a battle with a serious enemy was easy, chances were something was wrong.  

"He's clearly pretending," Red Hood snorted, standing up to stretch.  Neither of them had gotten to fight, which was disappointing.  It was okay though.  Cass was sure she'd get to put Loki into the gravel at some point.  

Stark and Rogers both turned to face him, Stark faux-casual and Rogers stiff.  

"You know what his plan is?" Rogers asked.

Hood shrugged. "Blow us up from the inside? No specifics but there's only, like, so many things you can do while in a cell."

Rogers nodded in understanding, but Stark continued to frown.  "What could he do, anyway?"

Hood shrugged.  "Tracker?  Magic?  I don't think SHIELD has magic users or suppressors, so, literal teleportation?"

Rogers paled.  Cass wasn't sure if it was the magic or the new technology.  She'd make someone else probe him later.  Hood?

"Magic isn't real," Stark scoffed immediately. "It's just science we don't yet understand."

Cass and Jason both sighed at the same time in the same intonation.  

"Not that argument," Jason groaned.  "Please, spare me.  Who cares as long as it works?"

Stark and Loki gave Hood equally affronted stares, and Cass reached out to pat his shoulder. "I thought you wanted to go for death number two."

Hood tilted his helmet at the ground, and sat back down in resignation.  "If I have to hear that argument again I just might."  It's a threat and a joke wrapped into one, but Stark and Loki were both clearly stuck on the "second death" from the outright shock on Stark's case and Loki's curious peering.

It's the most innocent expression Cass had seen on Loki so far, and it looked much more… settled.  Natural.  Like it's not some sort of forced mask, but his actual feeling.  For a few seconds, Loki's fear slipped away.

"Hold on, your second death???" 

Hood shrugged. "What, never been blown up before?"

Cass, in fact, had been blown up, though it hadn't killed her, so she nodded.  The Captain, too, nodded, which Cass slotted into his war history.  Neither Stark nor Loki seemed to be comforted by this statement.  Their problem.  

"No?" said Stark, genuinely confused.  "Did your heart stop or something?"

Cassandra could see Hood visibly debate answering that or not.  On one hand, Hood loved joking about his death.  On the other hand, the death thing was both personal and also not something Hood enjoyed revealing to people.  

"Nah, crawled outta my own grave six months later."

Cass supposed she should've accounted for the fact that there were less consequences in different universes.

The shock was very worth it.  Loki startled, and then something funny flashed across his face. Something that looked specifically like empathy.  Loki didn't just understand… his body acted like he had gone through a similar experience.  

Stark did a full double take; that was genuine horror.  No sympathy, just shock.  Wariness.  

Shock flashed across the Captain's face, but his shoulders deliberately settled.  "I suppose that would be similar to waking up in the ice."

This pleased Hood.  

Stark stared at all of them.  "You're both looking pretty spry for dead people. What's your thing then? Pilates?"

"Parkour," Hood deadpanned.

"What's that?" Rogers frowned.

Stark turned to face Rogers, clearly more comfortable responding to him.  "It’s like calisthenics. You might have missed a couple of things. Y’know, doing time as a Cap-sicle."

Cass and Hood sighed in tandem again.  No puns would ever be good enough to make up for the monstrosities Dick routinely tortured them with.  

"I mean," Hood drawled slowly as Roger's frame tensed.  "I prefer zombie, myself."

That's enough to unsettle Stark again.  He's rolling with the punches remarkably well, but the continued death jokes clearly unsettle him.  He'll get used to it soon.  He did find them funny.

Rogers opened his mouth to respond, but thunder crackled despite the rather clear night, lighting up the front of the Quinjet.  

"Where's this come from?" Agent Romanoff frowned.  Weather magic, probably, if the plane's instruments hadn't picked it up.  

Loki startled, leaning forward.  Despite how still he'd been earlier, his eyes darted around the Quinjet, the forced calm melting away.

"What’s the matter? Scared of a little lightning?" 

Loki frowned.  Based on his earlier pattern, Cass expected him to continue observing silently instead of giving them any ammunition.  "I'm not overly fond of what follows."

Thor.

Thunder followed, so it had to be, and Cass remembered that this Thor was Loki's brother, so they'd be close.  Friend or foe?  

Something crashed on top of the Quinjet.  Cass leapt to her feet.  There was no roof or shadows here for her to hide in, but she pressed against the wall anyway.  She carried a few weapons on her, as any Bat did, but none of them would be useful without knowing their enemies capabilities.  

Hood had two guns out and pointed at the ground, and both the Captain and Iron Man reached for their own weapons.  Iron Man reached for the controls for the bay door.

"What are you doing?" Captain yelled, frustrated.  Cass agreed with Stark, though.  Too likely that their guest will do something to send them spiraling out of the air.  Better to face him head on, where the only thing hurt was them.  

A figure dropped to the entry ramp.  Blond hair.  Hammer.  Armor.  His body posture was angry and aimed specifically at Loki.  Iron Man stormed forward to intercept, and the Captain ducked down for his cowl and armor, nowhere near ready for battle.  

Cass made eye contact with Hood.  I'll intercept , his body posture said, so Cass pulled back, positioning herself to protect the Captain as Iron Man was launched backwards through the jet from a simple punch.  He was a civilian.  Who had decided not to give him combat training?

Hood's guns were back in his holsters as he stepped forward to manually intercept Thor.  "What do you want?" Jason growled.   He dodged Thor's next blow easily, drawing a taser into his hand and slamming it into Thor's armor.  

It had no effect save to enrage Thor, who yelled, raising his hammer.  Lightning crackled, and Natasha hissed as the jet shook.  Hood stumbled back as the lightning leapt at him, raising his hands to protect the helmet.  Thor stormed forward, grabbing Loki by the neck. Loki flinched, ever so slightly, and then the two of them were gone.

"Hood?" Cass asked immediately, but Hood stood, shaking his head. 

"Minorly burned," he reported.  "Bless Wing's escrima."

"Another Asgardian?" Agent Romanoff asked

"That guy's friendly," the Captain reported, raising to his feet with his shield.

Cass nodded.  "He was only after Loki."  And so angry, too.  Maybe worried as well? Cass wasn't quite sure.

Iron Man rose to his feet, walking towards the edge of the ramp. 

"Stark, we need a plan of attack!"

Iron Man paused dramatically. "I have a plan: attack!"

He leapt out the back of the Quinjet.  Cass grinned at Hood.  It's dark and they're coming from the sky.  Prime Bat conditions.  

"I'll follow Stark, you contain Loki," Hood ordered out loud for Roger's benefit.  Cass cracked her knuckles and leapt out of the Quinjet.  Finally, she would get her battle.  Hood had taken the last one because his armor had better protection against lightning and he fared better against complete unknowns.  But Cass would love to deck Loki. And get a chance to figure out exactly what was going on with him. 

Chapter Text

Jason wasn't salty Cass got to fight the god.  He wasn't!  He just…. really wanted to blow something up.  But nooooo, Jason couldn't ever have fun because he needed to stop fighting and make sure Stark and Thor could get along.

Boooring.  

Jason grappled down into the forest after Iron Man and Thor.  They helpfully carved a path of destruction, though that did nothing to soothe the violence in his heart.  

"—Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?" 

Jason immediately turned to hide his laugh.  All he could hear was Edna's "No capes!" which he and Dick quoted at Bruce, Tim, and Damian everytime their cape got them into trouble.  Seriously, with the amount Tim and Superboy went flying, Tim's cape was a hazard.

Thor's gaze flickered to him.  "This is beyond you, Metal Man.  Loki will face Asgardian justice."

So Loki wasn't working with Asgard.  

"He gives up the cube, he's all yours." Iron Man's helmet flicked down, and Jason stepped forward.  He had a good sense for brewing fights, mostly because he enjoyed instigating them, but his job was to stop this one.  Boo hoo.  Should've tried to fight Cass (and lose to her) for the honor of duking it out with Loki.

"As Loki is a threat to Earth, it's our job to ensure he does not harm this planet," Jason said.  Seriously, wasn't he a businessman? Did he know literally anything about diplomacy?  "We'd be happy to work with you to secure Loki."

Jason's word choice was deliberate.  It was the exact opposite of diction he'd use in Crime Alley; honeyed and less violent word-choice.  Thor seemed to be prone to ah, impulsive angry decisions, such as stealing Loki rather than working with his captors, so hopefully the words would help to soothe tensions without Thor reading into them.

Thor's hammer dropped, and Jason breathed out a sigh.  No fight then.

"Just stay out of my way," Stark hissed.  "Tourist."

Nevermind.

Thor's hands curled into fists, and he whipped around, hammer straight into the center of Iron Man's chest.  Trees snapped around them, and Jason resisted the urge to pinch his nose through his helmet.  God, this was worse than working with a sleep deprived Batman.

Stark stayed on the ground for several seconds, and Jason waited, arms crossed.  Stark had sorta deserved that, so if he'd just accept fair play now— nevermind, repulsor blast.

Jason whipped out two guns, loading them quickly, and fired a shot, one at Iron Man and one at Thor as the two of them crashed together in a lightning storm.  

The bullet slammed right into Iron Man's repulsor, knocking out some electronics and hopefully disabling it.  He staggered, helmet whipping towards Hood.

The bullet Jason shot at Thor skimmed by his arm.  It cut a thin line of blood and punched a hole through his cloak.  Thor clamped a hand on the wound.  He turned to Jason with a mixture of fury and fear written across his face.  

"It's a special type of bullet designed to hit semi-invulnerable beings from my dimension," Jason informed Thor gleefully.  God, he loved that set of ammo; he and Roy had developed it together and everytime Jason pulled it out he ruined someone's day.  "Now should we act like adults and have a conversation verbally?"

Thor's face darkened, and he turned to face Jason.  Jason really, really wanted this fight, but he also wasn't quite sure if he wanted to show off that much yet.  Each skill they held in reserve would pay off in dividends of surprise later. "Who are you to challenge me? I do not recognize you, Red Demon, nor what dimension you are from."

Jason snorted.  Hah! Take that, he was the demon.  "I'm Red Hood, from Earth 181, but the Tesseract pulled me here and I'm pretty sure I'm so far away that our numbering system doesn't apply."

To Loki, that information would probably send them into some sort of wordplay parlay that Jason would rather Dick deal with.  To Thor?  He just frowned.

"Why don't we all put our weapons down?"  Captain America stepped in before Thor could decide whether he wanted revenge for the bullet or not,  jumping from the top of a log, using the impact of his landing to make a statement.  A true bat move, that one.  

"Yeah, bad call." Stark opened his mouth again and Jason wanted to bang his head against a wall.  The Bats were masters of quips, but, like, there's a time and place! Don't antagonize your tentative ally! "He loves that hammer—"

Thor attacked again, slamming it into Iron Man.  "You want me to put the hammer down?" He roared, jumping directly at Captain America.  Jason stepped back behind a tree, prepared to climb it, as Thor's hammer collided directly with Steve's shield.  A bright blue burst exploded from the collision, knocking several trees in the surrounding area over.

Jason was lucky he'd stepped back, and he stepped out from behind his cover, uninjured, as Iron Man crawled to his feet and Thor and Captain America caught their breath.

"Are we done here?"

Jason grinned. "Sure, that was an awesome explosion though."  

Everyone turned to look at him. 

"What?  I get tired of throwing Molotov cocktails every now and then."

Iron Man stared at Steve and Thor.  "You think they could duplicate it.  For science, of course."

The Captain's sigh sounded just like Bruce's.  It was music to Jason's soul.  He did feel much better after some violence.

Cass landed only a few seconds after Iron Man, a thin fabric drifting behind her like bat wings to slow her descent.  Red Hood followed Iron Man and Thor — probably to de-escalate the situation, though knowing him it'll just turn into a full out brawl.  Oh well.  Cass got to fight Loki.

Loki spun to face her as she dropped.  Cass had considered masking her descent, but she wanted to see how Loki reacted to her threat before she attacked.  "Did they send you to apprehend me?" He smiled coldly.  "I see you're taking orders from SHIELD now."

Cass smirked back at him, all pointy teeth and shadows.  If he wanted to be some sort of alien terror, she could play a monster from the shadows just fine.  "I sent myself," she told him, rather unbothered.  

"So believe you can beat me.  Well, given the arrogance Thor seems to find charming in you mortals, I'm not really—"

Cass slipped forward, one hand reaching for the chain between his hands to twist and pull while the other punched directly at the nerves in his neck.  Loki dodged both, but his movements were slow — almost sluggish.  He had no scepter, and he hadn't yet made any move to unbind his hands, although Cass was sure he had the ability to do so.

She could have immediately gone for the killing blow, backflipping off the rocky outcrop, but Cass slid around him instead.  Violence had always been her language of choice, and Loki had plenty of secrets for her to unlock.  Preferably without having to listen to him monologue.  

Loki didn't move to kick her, even though that would be the tactical move, given the bindings.  Instead, he jabbed awkwardly at her.  It's just a bad decision, and it's on purpose.  He thought he was playing with her.  Cassandra laughed, and pressed closer to him, removing his ability to kick.

He attempted to step back, but the movement was almost — jerky.  Like he was unused to it.  It wasn't his first instinct or first choice move, and yet he did it anyway.  Cass yanked the chain between his hands, slamming him to the rocky outcropping, his hands  pinned awkwardly to the side.  She moved her other hand to his neck, a silent threat.

What a useless fight.  She didn't know him well enough to pick up on anything more than his current set of feelings, and it wasn't even a good fight.  He wanted her to capture him, just how he'd let Iron Man threaten him into a surrender.  What a waste of a fight, Cass wanted to trash him under fair circumstances.  

Still, it was worth the shock on Lokii's face that a mere mortal could take him down so easily and certainly sooner than he'd been planning.  That shock quickly transitioned to some sort of leer, his eyes quickly flicking to the centimeters of space between them.  "Is your thing similar to the Widow's? Seduction?"  

He's trying to sound interested, but it failed so miserably Cass couldn't help but laugh.  Not only was his body literally pulling away from hers at every point possible like he's afraid of touch, but all he'd been doing was throwing out barbs and trying to get one to stick.  Sucked to be him, her own brothers were more annoying.

"Why do you lie so much?" Cassandra asked instead.  My thing is body language, she didn't say, because knowledge was power and his little flinch gave a lot away.  

"Just because your petty society can't handle the truth doesn't mean I'm lying," Loki hissed.  He was genuinely hurt, somewhere under the pretentious fake anger.  

"You lie to yourself too," Cass responded simply.  He could proselytize all he wanted about mortals and whatever, but it was how he moved that gave him away.

Loki laughed, tipping his head back to cackle.  It was supposed to be fighting, but all it screamed to Cass was broken.  He thought there was something ironically true about his words, and it wrecked him.  

"I am the God of Lies, child," he snarled.  Cass had yet to be impressed.  

"Why do you attack us?"

Loki bared his teeth at her.  She still had him in a pin, so, really what was the point of the posturing again?  "Were you not listening earlier?  I am a gift to the people of Earth, a benign leader who comes to control your savage masses."

Cass blinked at him, and matched his snarl.  "You lie."

Loki stiffened, and for a second, Cassandra saw truth in his body language — fear.  It was of her, but only because of the immediate situation.  He was afraid of someone, something else.  Was he lying to protect that thing, or was he forced?

Just as Cass thought she might get something useful out of him, Loki's eyes flared blue.  Not substantially, but enough, and his body posture flickered, moving back to jerky-aggressive.  Cass wished desperately that she knew anything about him before this.  

"See? As I said, you simply cannot handle the truth."

Cass let him deflect.  The sounds of the fight behind her had died, so she released her pin, keeping a hold of the chain around his hands.  He did not move to attack her. (Boring.) 

"You move like you're pretending," she told him.  "Like your aggression is not real.  You do not fight out of arrogance, but out of fear."

That fear was back, just for a second.  He was impressed, and for the first time, Cass saw respect in his eyes.  And something else, something Cass rarely saw in a villain.  Hope. 

She waited for Loki to respond, hopeful that she would finally figure out his mystery, but  Iron Man landed next to them first, Thor plowing to a stop a few seconds later.  Hood and the Captain had hitched rides on one of them each, and Hood's swagger told Cass he was more than satisfied with whatever violence he'd caused.  

Loki immediately stiffened, posture sliding back into that same angry and arrogant mixture.  Cass cursed the gods that she'd lost her chance to analyze him alone.

"Have a fun time with the Bat, Reindeer Games?" Stark snarked.  Cass figured he'd meant that to refer to the Bat in Black Bat, but that's Bruce's title and she couldn't help but giggle.  Hood did too, turning his helmet away to snort.  

"I am Black Bat," Cass told Stark.  "You haven't met the Bat.  Dad didn't come with us."

Cass could practically feel Hood judging her for calling Bruce 'Dad' so easily and without using it to manipulate him, but she narrowed her eyes at Loki, who definitely had something flash across his face at the mention of a father.

"Ah! A family of warriors, then!" Thor cheered, reaching over to clap Cass on the shoulder.  It's almost a blow, but Cass didn't flinch.  

Neither the Captain nor Iron Man looked incredibly surprised by the realization that they were all a family, even if neither of them looked particularly happy about it.  No doubt thought that Bruce was using them.  Their problem.  

Thor grinned at her and turned to Loki, narrowing his eyes.  "I hope you were decent to the Lady, brother."

Loki was not happy with that statement.  Neither was Cass, if she was being honest.  Was it sexist for him to refer to her as a "Lady" instead of a warrior or something similar?  Could be cultural, could be not.

Cass narrowed her eyes at him.  "I didn't need him to be."  

Iron Man snickered.  "Looks like everything's been a loss for him so far.  Boo hoo."

Thor shrugged.  "My brother is many things, but a great warrior he is not."

That had not been Cass's impression of Loki, that was for sure.  There was very much an underlying grace to his movements that spoke of a deeper training, and by acting weak he allowed the Avengers to underestimate him, not to mention that he had some sort of plan revolving around being captured.  They hadn't even seen his magic yet.

Loki practically growled at Thor, and Cass made that note in her file on him.  Hostility against Thor and likely Asgard as a whole.  Seems particularly aimed at the word "brother".  Cassandra did not think she would particularly enjoy being around Thor and his big words and movements, but she had plenty of siblings to deploy for information.  

Hood tilted his head a little bit at that; he'd seemingly picked up on the family drama too (well, to be fair, that was certainly something he'd know about, Mr. Bruce isn't my father.  Wait, that was all of them.)

"Well, whatever Loki is, I'd feel better if we got him back into containment," Captain said.  "Shall we head to the Quinjet?"

"Is that the name of your flying transportation?" Ugh, were they going to have to introduce Thor to every part of human society? Hadn't he already been on Earth? Hadn't he learned anything then?

"Yep."

Dick stared at the tabs and tabs of information he'd pulled up.  Strike team data.  SHIELD's missing files.  Points and points of information and orders hidden within SHIELD's data.  Orders from Senator Pierce and a whole shadow organization hidden within SHIELD.  HYDRA still existed, and no one had any idea.

Chapter Text

SHIELD agents swarmed them the moment the Quinjet landed.  Agent Romanoff stepped away, and Jason reluctantly followed her lead.  The Quinjet had been crowded, to say the least, with him, Cass, both Asgardians, Iron Man, Cap, and Agent Romanoff.  Loki had returned to silently glowering in the corner while Thor alternated between trying to be buddies with them and insulting Loki.  

Cass had practically slunk behind Jason and spent the whole time observing Loki.  She'd carried the same attitude Jason felt about Thor — not super pleased.  There was a pretty big difference between being upset with your sibling's actions and being cruel to them, and Thor enjoyed hovering right in the middle.

The helicarrier was much friendlier territory than the inside of the Quinjet, so Jason easily looked to Natasha for instructions.

"This way," Natasha said smoothly.  She beckoned them along a different route than they'd taken before, splitting off early from Loki and his new guards.  This time, she directed them to a table on the edge of SHIELD's main support center.  Either SHIELD suddenly trusted them more, now, or there was some other reason that they were using this room.

A few minutes later, Dick and the others entered.  Tim was hanging back with Dr. Banner, talking in a low voice.  Dick had an uncharacteristically grim look on his face as he stepped through, even though Steph and Damian both seemed perfectly fine.  Uh oh.  

Jason moved away from Steve and Tony to lean on Dick's back.  His helmet was unfortunately preventing him from leaning down and propping his chin on Dick's shoulder, but Jason wasn't willing to risk taking it off.  "Everything okay?" he muttered quietly.

Dick leaned his head into Jason's helmet.  It wasn't a head shake or nod, so there was some sort of problem, but it wasn't immediately important.  Probably whatever shady shit SHIELD was up to, since that wouldn't be their problem until they'd found the Tesseract but it would most definitely be a issue until they could get home.  "You?" 

Jason thought for a second.  Someone with more social skills than him or Cass was going to have to stomach being around Thor long enough to get a feel for his knowledge of Loki's skills and what was driving him to conquer Earth.  And Cass certainly saw something in Loki's body language that intrigued her.  Jason just wished they'd had time to talk about what.

Jason gave a slight nod.  This was fine.  Par for the course, even.  

"Thank you for coming," Director Fury began, stepping out into the room.  He looked like he hadn't changed since meeting them in the underground base, fully committed to the secret agent spy aesthetic with that long black coat.  Jason couldn't tell who would be more jealous, Cass, Tim, or Bruce. "Stark, Rogers, Banner, uh—"

He looked towards them.  

Jason couldn't see Dick's face, but he just knew that dramatic bastard was giving a true Gotham grin, the one that tended to creep outsiders out with how wide it was.  "You can call us The Bats," he suggested.  Which, gross, Jason was barely a Bat on a good day, but then again, this probably counted as a good day since he wasn't trying to murder anyone.

Fury gave them a flat stare.  He was apparently unconcerned with both the dramatics and the title.  "Bats—"

"So what's the story with that?" Stark asked.  "'Cause apparently your dad is named Batman—"

"He's not my dad!" Steph protested.

The table turned to look at her.  Even through the dominos, it was clear they were all raising an eyebrow.  Even Jason raised his in solidarity.

"Yeah, yeah, you're the not-child," Tim waved his hand.  "You and O.  But to answer your question, Dr. Stark, Batman was the first crime fighter and our various dad-figure/brother/mentor.  It's complicated.  He's like, the oldest of us all, but none of us listen to him unless we want to."

Dr. Stark crossed his arms.  "And he didn't make any of you fight?"

Dick cackled, and Jason shuddered slightly.  He'd gotten a few impressions of what 'Wing's teenage years had been like through his fights with B, and Jason honestly didn't need to know more.  He enjoyed being the problem child of the family, thank you. 

"Oh trust me," Dick said. "He tried to stop me from sneaking out.  The only person that ended badly for was him."

Damian startled a little bit.  Jason wondered if this was the first time he'd truly seen the streaks of Dick's unholy anger issues.   He'd always done his best to tame it down around his brother-child.

Dick apparently looked scary enough to mollify Stark, and Jason thought he saw Steve grin.

"The U.S. army couldn't stop me."

Jason choked down on his laugh.  Right.  The continual re-enlistment attempts because Steve believed it was his duty to do his part and die in the war.  Then the sneaking off tour to rescue his best friend after they refused to allow him to actually fight in the war.  

Fury cleared his throat.  "As I was saying, we are grateful that all of you are willing to help.  Our next goal is to gain information from Loki on his plans and find the Tesseract.  Banner, how are you and Red Robin progressing?"

Banner coughed.  "We have most of the tracking algorithm set up."  He doesn't offer any more information, and Jason assumed Tim could do most things asleep, so they'd probably also done some work on how the Tesseract worked and how to get the Bats home.   Apparently everyone here was a little bit suspicious of SHIELD.

Fury nodded.  "Very well." He checked his wristwatch.  "I intend to talk to Loki.  Agent Hill will show you the broadcast."

He looked around the room to see if anyone would protest, and, when no one did, swept out.  His coat almost looked like a cape.  Damn.  

Agent Hill stepped forward, nodding to the group of them.  "If you want to sit, Director Fury intends to interrogate Loki shortly."

Damian sat, and Tim followed Banner, so Jason slid onto the arm of Damian's chair.  Dick joined him on the other side, bracketing their baby. (Damian would, of course, flay them if he found out about that.) Cass and Steph also took a chair, squished together.  Jason just enjoyed the way Hill blinked at them but both Steve and Tony seemed less surprised after watching Jason and Cass share casual touch the entire trip back in the helicarrier.  

The monitor on the table crackled to life, showing a feed of an unusual cell.  It's a cylindrical cage with clear walls, clearly intended for short term holding only.  There's a wide gap between it and the surrounding room, with only a single catwalk reaching the door. Loki's escorted into it before the cell is closed, and Director Fury stood at what was clearly the control panel. (Why wasn't that thing, in, like, a different room?)

"In case it’s unclear, you try to escape- you so much as scratch that glass—" Fury pressed a button on that panel, and the floor before Loki's cage opened up into a vertex of air.  "Thirty thousand feet straight down in a steel trap. You get how that works?"

 Jason raised his eyebrows.  That would be irritating as hell to escape, even for most of the cast around this table.  Not, of course, someone who had magic, given they still had no idea what Loki could do with it besides making duplicates of himself. Could he not, like, teleport out? 

Fury closed the floor.

"It’s an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me." Loki smiled coldly.  Cass tutted disapprovingly even as Dick shifted ever so slightly to gesture to Banner.

Oh.  Of course SHIELD was the kind of organization to build cages to hold metahumans.  It was always a fine line between needing the security, given just how much damage a  meta or even a regular Rogue could cause and the high chance of the government just sticking people they were afraid of in there.  God knew the many specialized cells in Arkham and the few in the Batcave always gave Jason the creeps.  

"Built for something a lot stronger than you," Fury countered.  That was almost definitely true, except, if Jason needed to repeat it again, Loki had magic.

"Oh I’ve heard," Loki agreed, turning straight to face the cameras.  Cass tutted again, sounding as displeased as Damian.  Was this Loki's playbook then? Trying to poke at their weaknesses?  It was a good strategy.  Jason was almost interested to see what Loki would have on them.  

Agent Romanoff looked directly at Banner, who merely smirked.  Interesting. 

"—A mindless beast that makes play he’s still a man. How desperate are you, that you call on such lost creatures to defend you and trust those not even from your dimension?"

Okay, that didn't even count as a poke towards the Bats.  Jason was disappointed.  

Fury scoffed. "How desperate am I? You threaten my world with war, you steal a force you can’t hope to control, you talk about peace and you kill ’cause it’s fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."

Holy drama, Batman, (oh, god, Dick's speech patterns were infecting him again, god, get them gone)  that was a speech worthy of Bruce's ass.  Damn, Fury and Batman were really the same type of paranoid bastards to wear a long black trench coat and have their greatest strength be preparation time, weren't they? 

"Ooh. It burns you to have come so close, to have the Tesseract, to have power— unlimited power, and for what? A warm light for all mankind to share?" Agent Hill studied Loki as he turned and smiled creepily at them again.  "And then to be reminded what real power is."

Ooookay, so that was another shot.  Man, Loki's playbook was apparently just to throw out barbs and see what hit, huh? Also, real power, what bullshit.  Jason's family was the scariest people he knew and none of them were Superman.  

Even so, Dick shifted again, head dipping.  Okay, so there was some truth to the first part of that statement then, not surprising.  Government agencies and power were a thing that went hand in hand.  If SHIELD hadn't been trying to use the Tesseract to create weapons Jason would be disappointed.  He didn't have enough context though to know about the second part.  Possibly a jab at the weapons?  Or at someone else at the table?

"Well, let me know if ’real power’ wants a magazine or something." Oooh, and the sarcasm to match.  Fury really was only a universe away from being a bat, huh?  

The monitor turned off.  No one at the table looked particularly happy. 

"He really grows on you, doesn't he?"

Jason snorted.  Banner had meant that sarcastically, but Jason did honestly enjoy Loki's bantering, as boring as his speech lines were.  Sarcastic villains were more fun to play with than the really boring ones. (The boring ones were usually easier, but Jason hoped that didn't apply to Loki.)

Steve propped his arms on the table. "Loki's gonna drag this out.  Thor, what's his play?"

Jason tilted his head.  He was pretty sure he and Cass had a rudimentary idea of Loki's plan, but other input would be helpful.  

"He has an army called the Chitauri. They’re not of Asgard nor any world known. He means to lead against your people. They will win him the Earth, in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."

Jason didn't bother to hide his double take, even if the surprise on the rest of the Bats' faces was more subtle.  That was…. way less entertaining than Jason had thought.  He'd assumed that Loki intended to use his presence on the helicarrier to slowly and methodically take control of SHIELD in order to reach global governments.  Or, something along the lines of having a stick that lets you control people and only a secretive government agency on his tail.  

Aliens were just boring.  Jason had expected more from someone called the "Gods of Lies."  Was that yet another thing the myths were wrong about? 

"An army from outer space?" Steve clarified.

"So, he’s building another portal. That’s what he needs Erik Selvig for." Banner said with a sigh. Jason wanted to boo.  What a waste of a magical energy device!  Why hadn't Loki just brought the army through in the first place?  Had he not expected them to find out about the aliens?

(Still, boring as hell.  Also, what did he expect to do with that army? Even if he managed to take a few countries out of sheer surprise, surely the rest would fight back.  Especially if he could only attack one city due to needing the Tesseract for the portal.)

"Selvig?" Thor asked.

"He's an astrophysicist."

Right, he'd been one of the lab coat men that Loki had controlled.

"He's a friend." 

Tim nodded to Thor's words, so Jason assumed that had been in the files somewhere and probably. Eh, if it was important Tim could deal with it.

"Loki has them under some kind of spell— along with one of ours." Natasha clarified to Thor.

"I wanna know why Loki let us take him. He’s not leading an army from here." Steve crossed his arms. 

Jason huffed, trading a quick touch with Dick before interjecting.  "That's what I want to know too.  I had assumed his plan relied on sabotage, but if he's using the aliens — does he think taking out the helicarrier is a quick way to deal with all of us?"

Steve frowned.  "Perhaps.  He must believe that Earth's defense relies on us, then."

Right, because this world didn't have a Justice League.  It might actually depend on them, depending on how sturdy the aliens are.  (Though Jason seriously doubts it.  That would have to be one large army to defeat all of the Earth's militaries and avoid the nukes that would eventually start flying.)

"I don’t think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy’s brain is a bag full of cats, you can smell crazy on him," Banner said.

Thor crossed his arms. "Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason but he is of Asgard, and he is my brother."

That's… the nicest thing Thor's said about Loki so far.  Although, admittedly, it did sound like something Dick would say about him.  Jason already would've punched them in the face. 

"He killed eighty people in two days," Natasha responded dryly.

 Jason's impressed.  Given there's been no world ending events yet, that's not actually a super easy feat.  Like, sure, if you blow up a building you can beat that pretty easily, but Loki hadn't blown anything up except an already evacuating SHIELD building. Yet.

"He’s adopted?" Thor tried.

Jason bit down on his teeth so hard he saw stars.  How dare he reduce whatever their brotherly relationship was to a fucking adoption? Blood didn't matter!  Family was who you chose, not who you were given.  Thor didn't get to take that away because there wasn't any shared blood.

"He's not crazy," Cass said fiercely.  Jason had been inclined to agree up until the reveal of the aliens. "He… lies.  He's hiding why he's really here."

The table paused.

"You sure?" Banner asked doubtfully.

Cass nodded.  Jason was suddenly interested again.  If he didn't believe he was superior to humans, then why was he here?  What did he stand to gain by attempting to conquer Earth, especially if it meant he had to give away the Tesseract?

"Revenge," Thor said.  "My brother's rage has followed me here once before. It's not just power he craves, it's vengeance on me."

Well… look, Jason couldn't help but think of Bruce.  Jason had come back for revenge as the Red Hood, and it had taken several long months, a lot of arguing, and a few bullets for him to even be able to share a case with a Bat without something blowing up.  Trying to take over an entire planet was a little extreme, but Jason had successfully taken over Gotham's drug trade, so who was he to comment?

It was certainly a more reasonable motive than the whole "I'm the boot you're the ant" narrative.  It didn't make it okay, but, perhaps, sympathetic.  Jason hadn't been in the right for the ways he'd hurt Tim and Bruce, even if he maintained the Joker's murder was totally worth it. 

"Why does he want vengeance?" Dick asked.  His hand brushed Jason. It was probably some sort of subtle don't blame yourself.  Jason appreciated the touch, if not the comfort.  Dickolas, always trying to be there emotionally.  Ugh.

"My brother has always been jealous of my status as crown prince.  I believe he wishes to usurp the throne of Midgard, if he cannot have Asgard for himself."

Jason titled his head slightly to look at Cass.  She flicked a subtle hand sign at him.  Thor believed what he was saying then.  Didn't mean it was the truth, because a situation was rarely as simple as jealousy.  

"I don't think it's about his motivation, I think it’s about the mechanics," Banner said. "Not Loki's motives. It's the Iridium. What do they need the Iridium for?"

"It's a stabilizing agent," Tony responded immediately, stepping around the edge of the table and towards the main part of the room.  He answered seconds before Tim (who had built actual portals but also appeared to be microsleeping.)

"It prevents the portal from collapsing in on itself," Tim sighed.  "Prevents both a repeat of our appearance and, y'know, the entire building blowing up."

"Also, means the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants." Tony stepped into Fury's control station.  He and Tim grinned at each other.

"Ah, raise the mizzen mast, ship the topsails." Several of the agents turned to give Tony glares, but Jason bit down on his laughter.  Government agents in a giant flying helicopter boat deserved to be mocked, in his opinion. "That man is playing Galaga! Thought we wouldn’t notice, but we did."

Tony looked down at Fury's control computers.  What was the point of this act? He'd been happier to talk about science, so was it a distraction?  To reinforce the persona in the same way Brucie did? 

"How does Fury even see these?"

Hill scoffed. "He turns!"

There.

Tony's hand slipped just for a second, intentionally pressing against the side of the electronics.  It could've been an accident, sure, but his arm was ridged.  And it explained why he'd walk away from the table.  Besides, Tony had already shown an absolute lack of care for SHIELD when he'd given them a private laptop.  Hacking them really wasn't that much of a step further.

"Sounds exhausting." Mission accomplished, Tony wandered back towards the table, hands in his pockets.  Tim was still grinning, and Dick looked rather relieved.  Uh oh, what had he found in SHIELD's files? "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— kick start the Cube."

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" 

Jason frowned.  From SHIELD's own credentials, Tony Stark was a certifiable genius who'd invented his own element and the entirety of the Iron Man suit.  Was it really that much of a surprise he had background or had brushed up on the subject?

"Last night. The packet, Selvig’s notes, the extraction theory papers— am I the only one who did the reading?" He looked around in surprise.

Tim snorted. "It's not that hard."

Tony threw his hands up in the air. "Exactly!"

"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve made a valiant attempt to get them back on track.

"He’d have to heat the Cube to a hundred and twenty million kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier," Tony responded.  That clearly meant nothing to Steve, but Jason thought he understood the basics.

"Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the Quantum Tunneling effect," Banner added.

"Or he has alien technology," Tim said.  Both Tony and Banner turned to him.  "What?  Loki clearly already created some sort of portal through the Tesseract to get here, so he's already got some sort of magic or technology that allows him to at least initiate portals."

Tony squinted. "Have you seen something like that before?"

Tim shrugged. "Half our plan to get home relies on someone coming to find us, so, yes.  I've been launched through portal guns before.  Not pleasant, I can say that for sure."

"Huh."

The three of them stared at each other for a second while the rest of the room spectated.

"Was that even English?" Steve muttered. Jason grinned.  He'd gotten the basics!  Something, something, get the electrons to go near each other.  

"I am glad you seem to have a grasp on physics." Fury reentered the room without a piece of leather out of place.  "I was hoping you'd join Dr. Banner and Red Robin in tracking the cube." 

"I’d start with that stick of his. It may be magical but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon," Steve suggested.  Right, because HYDRA had made weapons using the Tesseract.  Exactly what kind of mind-control stick did Loki have?  Was it merely an energy storage, or was there something more specific to it?  The Tesseract seemed to specialize in portals, after all.

"I don’t know about that, but it is powered by the Cube," Fury responded.

Dick grimaced.  Uh oh.  Was powered by the cube or HYDRA the problem? "And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

"Monkeys? I do not understand—" Thor frowned.

"I do!" Steve just looked so pleased to understand part of the conversation, but the room went silent.  Jason remembered missing two fucking years and still having like, three Disney movies and four different books in ongoing series he'd been reading to catch up on. "I… I understood that reference."

Poor Steve.

Tony smirked. "So, shall we play, Doctor, Birdie?" 

Jason burst out into laughter, nearly toppling into Dick, who'd gone boneless.  

"Birdy," Jason wheezed out.  "That's amazing." It was a basic nickname for all of them, but hearing it in this context?  Priceless.

Tim glared at all of them. "Well, any of you could help if you wanted to.  I'm not the only one of us who has hopped universes before." He shoved his chair away, stumbling to his feet.

Jason met Dick's eyes again.  They needed to talk and make another plan of attack, clearly, but there was no time and no way to communicate without SHIELD's prying eyes.  Someone needed to pry details from Thor and it sure as hell wasn't going to be Jason.  He'd scream.

"I'll come with," Dick offered, tucking Damian next to him.  Damian hissed.  So, another two people who wouldn't talk to Thor.  Fair, Dick would probably also scream and Damian… was a little prickly. 

Cass was already out if the way she'd moved towards Natasha was any indication.  They probably wanted to interrogate Loki? 

Jason flicked his hands at the only remaining member of the group.  Want to talk to Thor? Want background on Asgard and Loki.

Steph looked at him, and back at Thor, and grinned. He's big puppy.  Will be fun.

Jason smirked, and thought about his options.  He leaned towards Steve.  "Do you want to go see what they're doing in the lab?" He asked.

Steve nodded. "I want to know how close we are to finding that Cube."

Well, no information had been exchanged, but that did sorta count as a plan, and at least the four of them headed to the lab could exchange information.

Chapter Text

"As you can see," Dr. Banner said, "Gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's notes.  We've bypassed the mainframe to direct route the Homer cluster and shortened the data process, but it's still going to take some time to run.  We're also working on a program to compare the Tesseract's spectra to Red's notes on his home city's spectra as well as multiversal signatures.  There's a number of noted similarities but no conclusive evidence so far."

"I'm scanning the mind control stick now," Tim added, spinning around the room on an office chair.  He's probably supposed to be working on the code, but he didn't really feel the need to improve it further, so he was taking a temporary spinny break.  "I want to know if it's a derivative of the Tesseract or a separate object."

"So, bypassing the mainframe is going to allow you to clock this at, what? Six hundred teraflops?" Dr. Stark asked.  He peered at the semi-translucent screen Dr. Banner was poking around.

"All I packed was a toothbrush," Dr. Banner mourned. 

Tim snickered.  "At least you got to pack."

"So, what's the deal with that?" Dr. Stark swung towards Tim, pointing a mouse at him.  "You lot just… teleported here?"

"Yeah," Dick didn't poke his head up from the corner where he was doing something on Stark's laptop.  Tim wasn't quite sure what he was hacking, but he and Damian had some sort of conversation going in hand signals so it probably wasn't information Tim would like.

"My best guess right now is it has something to do with how Gotham's signature is similar to the Tesseract," Tim explained.  He didn't like the similarity all it — something had to be causing it, and that just spelt problems.  Dr. Stark's head pivoted between the two of them with raised eyebrows.  "And that the instability of Loki's original portal is what caused our appearance."

"So with the iridium, the portal should be stable," Banner noted.  "We're trying to figure out if it's possible to recalibrate the portal to get them home, but we'll probably need to see Loki's set-up first."

"Magical artifacts are all fun and games until you know nothing about them," Tim grumbled.  Dick hummed in agreement from across the room, already hunched over the Stark laptop again.  Damian scoffed, so Tim flipped a finger at the demon brat.  Excuse him, caution was the correct way to go with unknown objects.  Well, that or fuck around and find out.  It's never truly caused him harm in the past. (Yet.)

Dr. Stark giggled a bit.  "You know, you two should come by Stark Tower some time after this whole thing is done. Top ten floors all R&D. You’ll love it, it’s a candy land."

Tim was so, so dearly tempted to respond that he had his own floors of Fortune 500 labs and a whole company waiting for him at home, but they'd agreed on abundance of caution back when they'd only introduced themselves using their hero names. Tim wasn't going to mess that up now, so he shot Tony a smile instead.  "Any help getting home is appreciated."

"Are you really so incompetent you need help?" Damian snarked in League Arabic. 

"I'm pragmatic," Tim shot back. He's always down for a fight. "And I'm smart enough to know that getting home faster is more important than my ego."

"Boys, boys, you're both beautiful," Dick soothed in English, not glancing away from the computer.  "Please don't break something in the lab."

"I wouldn't!" Tim and Damian exclaimed.  They'd perfected their innocent response so that it was in the same tone at the same time.  It startled both Dr.Banner and Dr. Stark.

"Yeah, definitely siblings," Dr. Stark said.  Tim ignored him, with plenty of practice.  The first time Cassie had heard his and Damian's routine she'd laughed so hard she'd almost missed Damian's stab attempt.

"Thanks for your offer," Dr. Banner said when Dr. Stark glanced at him for an answer.  "but...last time I was in New York I kind of broke...Harlem."

Man, if the Hulk's short rampage was what this world considered breaking a city, they were in for a nasty shock.  Firefly enjoyed torching whole blocks of Gotham, and Ivy just occasionally… ate streets and turned them into more park.

"Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension, no surprises." Dr. Stark zapped Dr. Banner with a small piece of metal. Dr. Banner merely sighed.  Tim grinned.   More proof for his theory that the Hulk was just another person inside Banner's body.  If something like that zapper triggered the Hulk,  a lot more things would be broken right now.

"Hey!" Captain Rogers stormed into the lab, Jason trailing on his heels with his hands shoved into his pockets.  Tim figured they'd probably entered in time to see Dr. Stark's later stunt.

"Nothing?" Dr. Stark asked, peering at Dr. Banner's face intently.  

"Are you nuts?" Steve demanded.  Jason smirked at Tim, and Tim grinned back.  Man, Steve would not enjoy Titan's Tower.  Or any of the Bats' places.  Tim had learned to patch drywall just to get the knife marks out.

"Jury's out!" Dr. Stark said.  Turning back to Dr. Banner, he added, "You really have got a lid on it, haven’t you? What’s your secret? Mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?"

"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve demanded, looking genuinely worried.

"Funny things are," Dr. Stark shot right back.

Tim glanced at Jason and decided to jump in before the argument could play out, as funny as it was.  Rule number one of having allies was to try not to let them antagonize each other because they were scared of personal connection.  

"It'd probably take a lot more to set Dr. Banner off," Tim said.  He keeps his voice flat.  "Minor surprises like that gotta happen a lot." He glanced at Dr. Banner, a smile flitting around his lips.  "Have you ever Hulked out because you stubbed your toe?"

Dr. Banner snorted, but both Tim and Dr. Stark's casualness seemed to settle him a little bit.  "No, and I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn’t handle pointy things."

"You’re tip-toeing, big man. You need to strut," Dr. Stark said, shrugging.  That's… surprisingly sound advice, actually.  Being afraid of whatever power you have only leads to chaos when it inevitably gets out.  Best to figure out how to control it instead.  

"You need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark," Captain Rogers said.  He crossed his arms across his chest, staring down at Dr. Stark. Ugh, that was such a Batman line from Mr. Good Heart.  All, ‘you can't have fun, we need to focus on the mission.’ Like hell they couldn’t, Red Robin and his team had a better success rate than the Justice League and they routinely pulled off incredibly reckless stunts. 

Dr. Stark turned to face Rogers.  His body was held loosely, but he wasn't really hiding the tension underneath.  Just masking it.  It was almost as good as the Brucie act, and certainly served the same purpose.  "You think I’m not? Why did Fury call us in? Why now, why not before? What isn’t he telling us? I can’t do the equation unless I have all the variables." 

"You think Fury's hiding something?" Rogers asked.  He's not disbelieving, though.  Concerned, maybe, was a better word.  Hmmm.  It'd been in the reading that he'd been a World War Two soldier who probably woke up and discovered both the Holocaust and the nuclear bomb existed.  Also, hadn't he been cast as a propaganda boy instead of being allowed to fight in the war and he'd had to literally disobey orders?

"Oh, he's definitely hiding something," Dick yelled from his computer.  "I mean, we're outsiders, so obviously, but why treat all of you that way?  His initiative thing where he's trying to bring you lot together won't work if he doesn't, y'know, bring you in."

Banner hummed.  "I think that's what Loki's jab at Fury about the Cube was for— 'A warm light for all mankind.'"

Ooh, good, were they going to get the assumed context for that quote? Tim had ideas, but he hadn't had enough time to read up on the socio-political context for this world yet.  

"I heard it," Rogers said.

"Well, I think that was meant for you," Dr. Banner gestured to Dr. Stark.

"Blueberry?" Dr. Stark asked.  He held out a packet.  Tim snickered, and Jason's helmet let out mechanized laughs.  

Dr. Banner continued unphased.  "Even if Barton didn’t tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news."

"The tower?" Jason asked.  Right, he hadn't seen the briefing yet.

"It’s powered by an arc reactor, it’s a self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for, what, a year?" Dr. Banner explained.

"It’s just the prototype. I’m kind of the only name in clean energy right now, that’s what he’s getting at." Dr. Stark looked proud of himself, as he should be.  Tim hadn't been quite focused on the renewable energies section of W.E., but he knew they'd been making a lot of effort in conjunction with Ivy.  He'd have to see if he could get Dr. Stark some of the information.

Dr. Banner continued.  "So, why didn’t SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? What are they even doing in the energy business in the first place?"

"Weapons," Dick called from across the room.  Everyone turned to look at him, Dr. Stark with a smirk and Rogers with a worried scowl.  "If it's a government agency, it's usually weapons.  After all, isn't that what you said Hydra used them for?"

"Yes," Rogers acknowledged with a deepening frown.  "Fury indicated to me that SHIELD did not serve that role, though."  He didn't look convinced.  

Dr. Stark smirked.  "I should probably look into that as soon as my decryption program finishes breaking into all of SHIELD’s secure files."

Rogers' eyes widened.  "I’m sorry did you say—"

"JARVIS has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours I’ll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide. Blueberry?

Rogers reached over to take one.  His features settled.  "Oh, I didn't realize that was how it was done.  Back in my day, you had to physically find the information you wanted in the Captain's orders, and then break whatever cipher was on it." Oh, yeah, Rogers had had to deal with the Enigma Cipher, huh? 

Dr. Stark grinned. "It's indeed that easy," he confirmed.  

Rogers looked at him.  "And SHIELD just lets this weakness be known?"

"Their security's probably fine by this world's standards," Tim said mildly.  He'd watched Dick hack it fairly quickly from the other end of the room, so this worlds' standards were probably lower than theirs.  Then again, in their world, they had Oracle and Prophet, cyber security and hacking experts, respectively.   (Tim was still sad Barbara had vetoed his wonderful suggestion of Parrot and replaced it with Prophet to match her name.)

"But not by your world's standards?" Stark asked with a grin.

"I'd have to look at it to know," Tim, who had only looked at the tracking and multiversal algorithms so far, responded.  "But based on our level of tech compared to yours, probably."

Rogers hummed.  "Are we sure Loki's not trying to wind us up with these comments?  This is a man who means to start a war and if we don’t stay focused he’ll succeed."

"Oh, he's definitely just throwing things out to see what sticks," Jason said.  "Black Bat and I both noticed that. Easiest way to deal with it for now is to notice all of that and table it for immediately after he's dealt with." 

Oooh, Loki's one of those villains too? And what're the chances he only insults things he's insecure about?  There's no way Loki's that cliche, right?

Rogers crossed his arms with a frown.  "So what's his play here then?  Wait for us to tear ourselves apart so he can strike?"

Jason, Tim, Dick, and Damian all exchanged frowns.  "Currently unknown," Tim reported.  "Our best guess is distraction and inside explosion.  We know for sure he used his appearance in Germany to keep us away from Barton retrieving the Iridium, but there's likely more at play."

Roger's frown deepened, but he took a seat by the door.  "I don't like this waiting around.  It feels like we're playing into his hand."

Dick's typing grew louder for several seconds, and then he looked up.  "Okay, so I have news."

Jason turned towards him.  "Yeah, I've been dying to know what you're doing." He snorted, like the pun's funny.  Tim rolled his eyes.  

"I hacked the cameras in here for a second and looped footage.  We only have like a minute, but Dr. Banner, Dr. Stark, Captain Rogers, you were correct about SHIELD.  After the fall of World War Two, they took in Hydra scientists during Operation Paperclip.  HYDRA still exists, partially within SHIELD."

Steve jumped to his feet.  "SHIELD is HYDRA?"  

"Damn, how'd you get that so fast?" Dr. Stark grumbled, but he'd paled significantly.  "And where? I've looked through SHIELD's stuff before."

"It's under a second layer of encryption, partially different servers," Dick said with a sigh.  "Not all of SHIELD is HYDRA.  Fury's clean, so is Romanoff, and so are most of the people captured by Loki and Hill.  After we deal with Loki and get somewhere safer, I'll give you guys what we have and decide what to do next.  I only bring this up now because we need to make sure the scepter and Tesseract don't fall into SHIELD's hands."

Dr. Stark narrowed his eyes.  "You're gonna help us with this?" 

Tim snorted.  "Okay, first of all, it wouldn't be our first rodeo with worldwide terrorist organizations.  Secondly, we're still stuck here and we'd be bored without it." Pish-posh but Tim was really hoping that taking down HYDRA would be a fun little exercise.  They'd only been around for about a hundred years, not over a thousand after all.  Couldn't be that hard.

Rogers hummed. "We can probably send the Tesseract back with Thor.  It's supposedly Asgardian, after all." He carefully sat back down, and angled himself back in the chair.  "As for the scepter—"

"I'll take it," Dr. Stark said.  "You can keep an eye on me to make sure I'm only using it for moral bullshit, or whatever.  It's gotta disappear somehow."

Dr. Banner frowned.  "Government agencies," he muttered.

Jason shrugged.  "Hey, more things for us to blow up."

No one looked concerned about that statement, which meant they were in good company.  Knowing any one of the Bats, their general mojo would be to take the staff for themselves, but interfering with other worlds and all that.  They were already causing enough changes, no need to steal powerful items as well.  

"Alright, remember it’s a later problem," Dick said with a grin.  "Now, I'm putting the audio and cameras back."

"Sure," Dr. Stark drawled, and Tim and Jason both nodded their consent.

"Three, two, one—"

"Hey, Dr. Stark," Tim said. He waved at Dr. Stark, as if he was interrupting the man's focus on his computer rather than acting before anyone else could blow their cover.  "Can you come look at this piece of code?"

Rogers shifted around in his seat.

"Maybe you should take a walk around the helicarrier," Jason suggested.  Tim admired his ability to tamp down on his inner theater nerd and choose a normal sounding line.  "I'm gonna stay here and annoy my brothers, but it might help your energy."

"Maybe," Rogers stood up again.  "I can go check a few things out." It's phrased normally, but Tim would easily guess he's about to go search the Helicarrier for weapons.  Good for him, to be honest.

"I will come with you," Damian slid out from next to Dick, stepping next to Captain Rogers.  "I also wish to stretch my legs, and you will serve as a suitable escort."

Rogers outright jumped, and even Dr. Stark and Dr. Banner startled.

"Where the hell did you come from, kid?" Dr. Stark demanded.

Damian shot him Batman's disappointed face.  "I have been here the whole time in plain sight.  Is your situational awareness that laughable?"

"You were so quiet though!" Dr. Stark protested.

"It is called listening. Seeing as my comrades contributed adequately to the conversation, I found I had nothing to add." Damian sauntered to the door of the lab.  "You may want to try it sometime."

Tim snickered.  Oh, Dami's sass was so much more fun to deal with when it wasn't directed at him.  "It's a Bat-thing," was Tim's helpful input, since he'd accidentally hyperfocused on a report and done that to his team a few times before they got used to it.  It's just what happened when you trained to become stealthy to the point where it was instinct.

"Ouch, kid." Dr. Stark said.  He narrowed his eyes at Damian but didn't say anything.  Hmmm, maybe this interaction had at least acclimated him to Damian being able to kick-ass even though he's still a pre-teen.  Thank god Tim had turned eighteen and was officially an adult now.

Rogers hummed.  "Sure, you can come with me.  Can I get you to teach me how to do that stealthy trick?"

Damian scoffed.  "It is not a trick.  It is practice.  I will do it for you."

Tim muffled his giggles and turned back to the multiversal calculations he and Dr. Stark were fussing over. "So about that line right there—"