Chapter 15

As Tony flies to his building, he catches sight of the two working on the Tesseract on the roof of his tower. Quickly flying within range he uses his repulsors to fire an energy blast trying to stop them.

A barrier blocked his attack but the resulting energy clash knocked Erik Selvig out and threw Ebony Maw back launching him off the roof.

"Sir, the barrier is made of pure energy. It is unbreachable." Jarvis informed him.

"Yeah I got that." Tony responded as he looked down seeing Loki grinning at him.

"Plan B" Tony says as he sees the damage his current suit had thru his HUD.

"Sir the Mark 7 isn't ready for deployment." Jarvis responded

"Then skip the spinning rims, we're on the clock." Tony commanded as he landed on his pad he had installed to remove his armor as he slowly made his way into his penthouse. His eyes remain on Loki the whole way, as his armor was slowly being removed and stored away to be repaired.

Loki too walked inside the penthouse from where he was standing, curious what Iron Man was doing since he removed his armor.

"Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity." Loki comments first as he sees Tony walking to the bar after he entered the room.

"Uh actually I'm planning to threaten you." Tony replied in a sarcastic tone.

"You should've left your armor on for that." Loki retorted back.

"Yeah, it's seen a bit of mileage and you've got the, uh...glow stick of destiny? Would you like a drink?" Tony asked as he walked behind the bar as he slipped on a bracelet he had near the bar.

"Stalling me won't change anything..." Loki tried to reply but Tony quickly cut him off.

"No no no threatening. No drink? You sure? I'm having one." Tony responded and asked as he shook a bottle of liquor showing it to Loki.

Getting irritated by Tony, Loki turned around and walked to the floor to ceiling window and looked out to the city.

"The Chitauri are coming, nothing will change that. What have I too fear?" Loki questions as he turns to look back at Tony.

"The Avengers. That's what we call ourselves, sort of like a team. Earth's mightiest heroes type thing." Tony answered as he poured himself a drink.

"Yes, I've met them." Loki snidely said back with a smirk.

"Yeah, it takes us a while to get any traction. I'll give you that one, but let's do a head count here.

Your brother the demigod. A super solder, living legend who kinda lives up to the legend. A man with breathtaking anger management issues. A couple of super soldier assassins, and you big fella have managed to piss off every single one of them." Tony answered back as he checked the status of the Mark 7 from his bracelet then took his drink.

"That was the plan." Loki replied back but before he could continue further Tony cut him off again.

"Not a great plan. When they come, and they will, they'll come for you." Tony said as he had poured another drink and walked toward Loki.

"I have an army." Loki fired back, irritated Tony kept cutting him off.

"We have a Hulk." Tony responded just a quick.

"Oh, I thought the beast had wandered off." Loki tried to get under Tony's skin by acting more smug.

"Yeah you're missing the point, there's no throne. There is no version of this where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes and maybe it's too much for us but it's all on you because if we can't protect the Earth, you can be damn sure we'll avenge it." Tony explained then finished his drink as Loki walked closer to him.

"How will your friends have time for me, when they are so busy fighting you?" Loki asked as he was tired of Tony stalling him. Raising the scepter to Tony's chest, a humming sound began to emit from the scepter.

When he touched the scepter to Tony's chest a loud clink was heard from it hitting the small arc reactor. Seeing nothing happen Loki tries again.

"This usually works" Loki confusedly commented.

"Well performance issues, you know it's not uncommon. One out of five..." Tony made a quick jab at Loki but was cut off mid sentence by Loki grabbing him by the throat and throwing him towards the window.

"Jarvis, any time now." Tony quietly said to his AI hoping his suit was ready. Before he could fully get up Loki grabbed his throat again

"You will all bow before me." Loki was angered by the whole situation and was losing his temper.

"Deploy." Tony called out but nothing happened. Loki then threw Tony out the window from the top story.

Just as Loki turned around from watching Tony fall, he was hit by the Mark 7 deploying as it rushed to Tony.

The suit flew to Tony and attached itself to him allowing him to fly back up to Loki as he was getting up off the ground from being knocked over by the armor. Hovering outside the window Tony commented,

"And there's one more person you pissed off, his name is Phil." Tony then shot his repulsor hitting Loki throwing him backwards and back onto the ground.

Just as Tony was going to attack again a beam of energy launched upward from the Tesseract. A dark portal appeared showing what looked to be empty space. But once the portal widened and light from the sun shown thru Tony could see a massive army just waiting on the other side. Then a bunch of small aerial vehicles started to pour out from the portal.

"Right. Army." Launching himself up towards the portal Tony activated all weapons systems and began to open fire on the incoming army, launching missiles and repulsor blasts destroying a few of the invader vehicles.

Shortly after, the rest of the Avengers along with the X-Men began to pour in and help Tony fight them off. Captain America called out orders to each person, they were trying to get civilians out of the combat zone.

Then just as the team watched as a few giant behemoths exited stunning everyone at the site of massive armored alien creatures flying in the air, another portal opened. Rather than face down like the one enemies were coming from it was facing the Chitauri portal.

The X-Men and Avengers both looked at the second portal with trepidation, everyone thought it was more Chitauri.

But what came out shocked them even more, even many of the Chitauri stopped attacking to look up.

A massive super-carrier exited the portal, crashed into one of the behemoths killing it instantly and hovered mid air for but a moment. Before anyone could register what was going on, they saw a bunch of movement on the ship hull then it opened fire. Energy beams and high tech missiles launched destroying the behemoths and groups of invaders easily.

Tony was shocked at what he was seeing, this was well above the helicarrier of SHIELD. Using his suits HUD to zoom in he just saw a lightning bolt and INF-101 labeled on the side.

"Jarvis look up what you can on that ship. It looks like it could be one of ours....maybe." Tony said as he tried to think of any projects the ship could be from.

"Sir there is no record of any ship with that symbol or code. I only received one hit on the symbol from records from 12 years ago. An incident involving the lab explosion from a facility in New York." Jarvis answered pulling up the files of Billy when he got his hands on the Sentry serum.

"Tony, is that one of yours?" Natasha and a few others asked over comms.

"That would be nice, but unfortunately that is above my tech." Tony said despondently, he hasn't seen much tech he didn't understand but even the missiles fired by the ship were like nothing he had seen before.

As Tony flew closer he witnessed a kid walk out onto the deck on top of the ship. Just as he was getting closer he heard a shout from the boy.

"SHAZAM"

Suddenly a bolt of lightning struck the boy shocking Tony, he was shocked because now the boy was no longer there. In his place a fully grown man in a black suit with a lightning bolt on his chest, matching the symbol on the side of the ship stood there.

Then he floated up into the air and began attacking the Chitauri as he and the ship continued toward the portal the Chitauri were pouring out of.

Seeing him fire off bolts of lightning, Tony looked to where Thor and Storm were who were also watching the scene unfold.

Flying over to them both Tony asked,

"Soooo.... Got a kid we should know about either of you? Cause it looks like he's related to one of you."

"Is he going to do what it looks like he's going to do?" Storm couldn't help but voice out her question.

"Aye, it looks like he's going to fly into the portal." Thor answered back as he began to spin his hammer to fly to the portal to help. He may not know who the man was but he could see he was fighting the same enemies, and he was fighting the way Thor loved to fight. Head on.

Tony watched as Thor and Storm flew to the portal as the man entered the portal while the ship aimed itself at the portal.

Just as Fury came over Tony's comms to ask what they were seeing, the ships front panel opened and a large missile launched.

When Tony saw the missile he broke out into a cold sweat, all he noticed on the side was HAVOK-V and although he didn't know what kind of missile it was his HUD was showing it had a nuclear signature.

Seconds after there was a flash, for a brief moment there was no blackness from the portal. It was brighter than the sun.

The ship then opened a portal of its own and disappeared, out of the Chitauri portal came a smoking body falling out of the portal.

As everyone watched they heard Black Widow over the comms.

"I can close it. All the ground forces dropped suddenly. Closing the portal now, not sure what happened but all the invaders are down. I repeat the portal is closing and invaders are down."

Tony seeing the man still falling, ignored Fury and the others and dashed to try to catch him before he hit the ground. However he had been delayed by that explosion, he knew that wasn't a typical nuke and was surprised by the power. He could tell that wasn't a nuclear fusion bomb like what the world had, this was a nuclear fission bomb. Something they had been attempting to create for years. So his delayed reaction didn't allow him to reach in time.

Billy ended up crashing into a building, the explosion was more than he thought it was so he didn't make it far enough and was hit by the concussion waves caused by the nuke.

It was specifically designed for space detonations unlike most HAVOK missiles which are for excavation purposes.

"While we handle Loki, I think someone should go get our new friend, we can take him to go get some victory shawarma, I don't know what it is but I wanna try it." Tony commented, then they headed to Stark Tower while Wolverine and Storm made their way to the building that Billy fell into.

"Fury, he showed back up." Logan called over the comms to Fury as he sniffed the air.