#all I know is multiply layer set to 25% and purple

[a-kit-that-is-not-a-kat]

He's just vibing :)

The background was not done by me!

I used the Fantasy Night background on Ibis Paint X

[imjustthemechanic]

The French Mistake

Part 1/? - A Visitor Part 2/? - The Kulturhistorisk Museum Heist Part 3/? - Cutscene Part 4/? - The Marvel Cinematic Universe Part 5/? - Breathless Part 6/? - Escape at Last Part 7/? - Fox in Socks Part 8/? - Things Go Wrong Part 9/? - Downey and Out Part 10/? - Road Trip Part 11/? - Temptation Part 12/? - An Awful Reunion Part 13/? - Unreality Intrudes Part 14/? - A Call for Help Part 15/? - Loki’s Guests Part 16/? - Stan Lee Cameo Part 17/? - Reassessment Part 18/? - Midnight Invasion Part 19/? - Elevator Fight Part 20/? - Courage Part 21/? - Unwelcome Back Part 22/? - Darkest Hour Part 23/? - They Are Here Part 24/? - The Jet Propulsion Laboratory Part 25/? - Word of God Part 26/? - Avengers Assembled Part 27/? - The Houston Underground Part 28/? - Houston has a Problem Part 29/? - Onward and Upward Part 30/? - The Chi’Tauri Queen Part 31/? - Through the Wormhole Part 32/? - Prisoners

They’re not out of the frying pan yet...

If the Chi’Tauri had wanted to kill them, that would have been the time – but it seemed like they didn’t.  Instead, they confiscated their weapons, and then one of the soldiers scooped Steve up as if to carry him over the threshold, and slid back down the tunnel out of the cockpit.  They weren’t being killed.  They were being captured.

Thanos wanted Loki.  Maybe he’d decided he wanted the others, too, or maybe it was the giant queen, wanting revenge for the murder of her smaller sister.  Either way, it meant they weren’t going to die quite yet, and that was an opportunity.  All they needed was a plan.

Steve tried to come up with one, but his body and brain were both on the verge of giving out.  All he really wanted to do was go to sleep.  That was the most frustrating thing of all, was that he had the will to fight, but not the means… Steve had spent his entire childhood wanting to fight for something and not being able to.  After finally gaining the ability to make himself heard, the last thing he wanted was something keeping him down again.

That was a perfectly normal thought process for Steve Rogers, but at this particular moment, something about it was a revelation. Was that really all there was to it? Somebody had once said that people had two reasons for doing things, a good reason and a real reason.  There were all kinds of good reasons why Steve didn’t like the idea of the Sokovia Accords, but could that be the root of it all?  That Steve felt now that he could fight, he had to?  To do otherwise would have been a betrayal of that skinny kid from Brooklyn who didn’t know how to back down from bullies twice his size.

If Steve had known any psychologists, that probably would have been something to discuss with them.  Right now, however, was hardly the time for self-examination. They still needed that plan… but what kind of plan?  When Stark had flown through a wormhole towards a Chi’Tauri armada, he’d been carrying a nuke on his shoulders.  All Steve had was a body that wasn’t even technically his.

What would Stark do if he’d found himself in this situation without a nuke?  He probably had some way to detonate his suit… but that didn’t help Steve, either.

They left the Leviathan, as Steve had expected, through its open mouth, into a broad hallway that stretched out in both directions as far as the eye could see.  There had to be a hundred craft docked up and down the space-facing side of it, their toothy jaws gaping open as if they were crocodiles just waiting for some unwary fish to swim inside.  On the wall next to each was a tall, narrow panel lit up with symbols and images that perhaps represented some kind of status report.  Most were pink, but Steve noticed that the one for the Leviathan they’d come in on was blue.  Did that indicate damage to the ship, or the fact that it had the wormhole on board, or something else entirely?

The soldiers carried their prisoners a few hundred yards up the hallway, then got in an elevator.  Steve was starting to hate elevators.

“If we are to be your prisoners,” Thor said, “might we know where you are taking us?”

There was no reply.

The elevator rose past rings of sickly pale purple lights.  Steve counted nine of these, before one of the soldiers reached out and pulled a handle, bringing them to a halt.  The doors opened in layers, like a beetle unfurling its wings, and their captors carried them out into a wide, low room with rows of glass tubes set into the walls down either side.  All of these were filled with thin gray fog, and some had a Chi’Tauri – or another, distressingly less-humanoid – shape visible inside them.  This was the brig.

The soldier carrying Loki was just ahead of the one carrying Steve, and rather than holding him bridal-style it had slung the demigod over its shoulder like a sack of potatoes.  Loki raised his head a bit and caught Steve’s eye, and Steve saw him wink.

“Fools!” a voice boomed out.  “Did you really think your primitive prison could hold Loki of Asgard?”

The Chi’Tauri soldiers stopped and turned towards the sound – and there, impossibly, was Loki.  He was dressed in full Asgardian regalia, gleaming with gold from the tips of his boots to the top of his horned helmet, striding confidently towards them with his sceptre in his hand.  Behind him, one of the tubes was standing open, the mist spilling out of it across the floor like dry ice fog.

“You forget!” this apparition declared.  “In this universe I wield power over the elements!  I will teach you not to forget my power again!”

That was right – they were back in their own world now!  Had Loki already switched back, or was this just Tom Hiddleston putting on a show? Steve looked at the other Loki for an answer, but his head was hanging down now.

One of the Chi’Tauri raised its plasma rifle and fired at the new Loki, but the figure vanished.  A moment later, two of them reappeared on the other side of the group, and laughed.

“Thanos only wishes he were a god!” the two said, in perfect unison.  Their voices echoed around the giant room, doubling up over and over until they were difficult to understand.  “Now he shall see a true god at work!”

Again, one tried shooting.  Again, the image of Loki vanished, and two more appeared elsewhere. The Chi’Tauri clustered together, worried now.

More fog welled up out of the open tube, and began to fill the room, coming up as high as the aliens’ knees.  The Lokis held up their arms.

“To me, my Avengers!” they said.

Three shapes emerge from the fog.  One was Thor, in armor and cape, Mjolnir in his hand, his long blond hair flowing behind him in an unseen breeze.  One was Natasha in her Black Widow suit, her batons at the ready with electricity crackling on their tips.  The third was Steve himself, clean-shaved and dressed as Captain America with his shield on his arm.  All three of them had their eyes glowing blue, the same colour as the gem in Loki’s sceptre, the same way Barton’s eyes had glowed while under the god’s power.

That was when Steve realized – it was all an illusion.  The only magic Loki was doing was manipulating light into shapes that weren’t there.

It was enough to fool the Chi’Tauri, though. The images of Loki raised their sceptres and brought them down on the floor with a reverberating thud that was all out of proportion to the actual size of the weapon, and the phantom Avengers vanished, to re-appear in among the Chi’Tauri.  The Natasha spun her batons in a gesture the real one would have considered needlessly showy.  The Thor raised his hammer, and lightning fizzled over his skin.  The Steve prepared to throw his shield.

The aliens put down their prisoners, all four of whom sensibly flattened themselves against the floor and covered their heads, and the firefight began.  Bolts of plasma and even a few projectiles flew as the phantom Avengers vanished and reappeared, delivered a blow and then flickered away, over and over.  Not a single shot hit its intended target. Instead, the Chi’Tauri realized too late that they were shooting at illusions, and illusions placed to make them fire on each other.  As Lokis multiplied and the other images flashed in and out, the aliens fell one by one until Steve and the others were surrounded by the wounded and dead.

Loki’s maniacal laughter echoed as the phantoms winked out, until only a single figure remained – and then it, too, dissolved into silence.

The first to speak was Thor.  “Fine work, Brother,” he said, as he got to his feet. “Fine work!”

Loki – the real Loki, still in Tom Hiddleston’s body – was lying on his back, his chest heaving as if he could barely breathe.  “You can give me my well-earned thanks later,” he panted.  “Now, free our alternates!”

Thor looked across the room at the open tube – it was closed now, with fog and a visible figure inside it.  “Of course,” Thor said, and grabbed one of the staff weapons dropped by the dying Chi’Tauri.  He dragged this over to the tube, and shop out the control panel beside it.

Natasha went to join him, but Steve was no longer sure he had the strength to walk, so instead he went to check on Loki. Whatever the god had just done, it had left him on the brink of exhaustion.  He was not only panting but soaked in sweat, with his face so pale it was almost gray.  Between that and his staring, bloodshot eyes, if he hadn’t been visibly breathing Steve wouldn’t have been sure he was even alive.

“Loki?” he asked.

“This body…” Loki panted.  “Not accustomed… too much energy…”

“We’ll get you out of here,” Steve promised.  He had no idea how they were going to do that now that they had two people who couldn’t walk, never mind that they would have to take the actors with them and heaven knew what condition they were in.  Steve was going to do it, though.  Loki had now saved all their lives once, and Steve’s personally a second time.  For the moment at least, Steve could forgive him for trying to take over the world.

“You better,” said Loki.

Something hissed and gave off an electrical smell, and Steve looked up to see that Thor had gotten one of the tubes open.  Out spilled a man in a long black coat, with dark hair sticking to his face and neck – it was Loki as they’d last seen him in their own world, standing in front of the rune stone disguised in Midgardian clothes.  He fell on the floor in a boneless heap, and Thor rolled him over and gave him a shake.

“Wake up, Tom Hiddleston!” he ordered.

The big room had excellent acoustics, probably on purpose – a prison was not a place where you wanted people keeping secrets – so Steve could hear quite clearly when a weak voice asked, “Chris?”

“Nay, I am Thor!” was the pleased reply.  “My brother and I have come to help you!”  He propped Hiddleston up against the base of the prison tube.  “I shall free the others, and come back for you,” he promised.

Only seconds later, Natasha got a second tube over, and freed Scarlett Johansson.  Whatever kind of stasis the Chi’Tauri kept their prisoners in, it couldn’t be a nice experience, because she too immediately slumped to the floor, coughing and gasping.  Nat patted her back a couple of times and took her pulse at the wrist, then went on to the next tube.

Thor next freed Chris Hemsworth, who staggered out sputtering and gasping but apparently in better shape than the others. He was wearing the sweatshirt and jeans they’d last seen Thor in, although somehow he managed to look much more like a normal person in them than Thor possibly could.  He didn’t fall over, but he did have to lean on his own knees a minute catching his breath, before he looked up at his rescuer.  There was a moment of silence and then Hemsworth said, in a distinctly Australian accent, “oh shit.”

“No need for obscenity, Hemsworth,” Thor assured him.  “You are safe.”

Hemsworth pointed at him.  “Are you…?”

“Indeed!” said Thor.  “And delighted to meet he who was thought worthy to represent me on film!”

Then Natasha opened the last of the four tubes. Out stumbled a tall man with a short beard and his hair dyed brown, dressed in a Brooklyn Dodgers t-shirt and a pair of jeans with a hole in one knee.  Nat grabbed his arm, and Thor helped her guide him over to the others.

“We must hurry,” Thor said.  “Collect yourselves, for the Chi’Tauri will be upon us at any moment.”

“Oh, my god, I wasn’t dreaming,” said Scarlett. She was sitting up now, looking around like a caged animal.  Then her eyes found Natasha, and she stared.

“You’re still not dreaming,” Nat told her calmly. “We’ll explain when we’re not in mortal peril.

“I think I can figure it out,” Scarlett said warily.  “I’m just not sure I believe it.”

Although they’d come out of stasis in a bad way, the four actors seemed to recover quickly – but then, they were in bodies with physical enhancements and powers that Steve, Thor, Nat, and Loki currently lacked.  Soon all of them were on their feet – except for Hiddleston, who was curled up and shivering as if feverish.  Hemsworth and Evans got him to his feet, but he just hung limply between them.

“Loki,” said Steve, touching the god’s shoulder. “Wake up.  We need you to do some more magic, get us back to the Leviathan.” That was all he could think of for how to get out of here again.  There were many reasons why it was not a good plan, but it was all they had.

There was no response.  Using Asgardian magic had simply been too much for Hiddleston’s body – Loki was out cold.