Thank you: to the mass loveliness of Sabaceanbabe, Dorothy101 and Doccy for the beta!
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me!

"Director Fury, the council has made a decision."

"I recognize the council has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid ass decision, I've elected to ignore it."

"Director, you're closer than any of our subs, you scramble that jet-"

"That is the island of Manhattan, Councilman. Until I'm certain my team can't hold it, I will not order a nuclear strike against a civilian population."

"If we don't hold them in the air, we lose everything."

"I send that bird out-"

"We already have."

"Pierce?"

"We are not unanimous and if we're talking about nuking American soil, we sure as hell better be. You have one hour, Nick. Make it count."

"Understood."

-o-

Steve crouched behind the burned out cars that marked the edge of the safe zone. He let his head hang, catching his breath while he waited on his next fireteam to get ready. A glance told him they were still waiting on gear.

Chitauri gliders and chariots swooped back and forth in the darkness above. Only a few thousand now, about half what their number had been when the portal closed. Trouble was, only a few thousand Chitauri left was still a few thousand Chitauri left, and on a moonless night with heavy cloud cover and the power grid down, the defending forces weren't making any big dents.

Some large-scale night-fighting equipment had made its way in; Stark Industries was emptying its mothballed armory and even Hammer Industries had raided its frozen assets.

Heavy guns peppered the sky; tracer rounds streamed like fireworks. They weren't much more than an easily avoided distraction for the Chitauri gliders, but occasionally one lit up like a match flaring and spiraled into the side of a skyscraper.

Their efforts to keep the damage within two or three blocks of Stark Tower hadn't ended up much more than a pious hope, but they'd managed to contain most of the destruction to Manhattan.

With a little help: there were crazy accounts coming out from the bridges and tunnels about spider webs and glowing hands, and some floating guy with a cape.

Almost twelve hours in, Manhattan had been evacuated. The early casualty reports were high, sickeningly high, but they could have been much worse.

"It's like London," Steve said quietly, when he heard the familiar sound of the Iron Man armor whirring up beside him. "Like London was," he amended, when Stark stopped at his side.

The idea that New York, any part of America, might have to fight a ground war on its own turf had been a big fear back then. Or 'a couple months ago' as Steve called it in the privacy of his own mind, and definitely nowhere near any of SHIELD's roaming pack of headshrinkers.

"They sent up barrage balloons to make things interesting for low-flying aircraft." He looked at Stark. "Guess we can't play it that way?"

The suit's faceplate was up and Stark stared straight ahead, unblinking and completely oblivious to the question. "I have a theory," he said instead.

Steve considered the sudden gleam in Stark's otherwise exhausted gaze with some trepidation. "Do I want to hear your theory?"

"Yeah, you do." Stark blinked rapidly then grinned widely. Maybe a little too widely. "First, because the alternative is wallowing in flashbacks – barrage balloons? Really?" He shook his head, but the grin lost its manic edge. "Actually, no, if we had time to manufacture, that's a great idea, but. Where was I?"

"Second," Steve said helpfully.

"Second! If I'm right, which I am, we can put these guys down a hell of a lot quicker than going block to block."

Twenty feet away, the four marines double-checked their weapons and packs. They were the sixth team Steve would be taking out; none of the others had made it back without at least one casualty headed straight for the field hospital. "Go on."

"It's pretty clear these things are working on some kind of hive mind."

Steve remembered the coordination of the attacks, the synchronicity. Then he remembered the outright panic he'd seen in the body language of the alien - monster? Drone? Soldier, he decided. The panic of the alien soldier who'd scrambled to retrieve the bomb. "Some kind," he agreed. "But not full control."

"Where there's a hive, there's a queen. Somewhere up there," Stark pointed, "there's an alien space queen eating royal jello."

"A command center," Steve translated. "Sending a signal."

"So we block that signal. Best-case scenario, the drones fall over, we're done. Frankly, we're not that lucky, so we'll just go ahead and aim for not playing Space Invaders anymore."

"I don't know what that is," Steve said, mostly out of habit. "How?"

"I voted to open the portal back up and send a tasteful basket of nukes, compliments Uncle Sam. The council vetoed. I guess they were okay with turning Manhattan to radioactive goo, but nuking horrors from space would be impolite.

"So, Plan B: an old-fashioned squelching party."

Steve took a moment to process the relevant information from Stark's rambling diatribe. "And you can do that?"

"Sure. Me. Banner. Hey, who cares? Nobel prizes for everyone."

"Banner's…" Steve considered a few words, settled on a diplomatic, "back?"

"Yeah, Romanoff lured jolly green in with canned corn and pants. They're helping distribute the goods – eh, let's go with 'mediocres' - from Hammer. Rhodey's flying around looking disturbingly patriotic. Fury's still benched, so he's passing the time assuring world leaders that ET isn't hiding in their basement.

"Barton's sitting on a rooftop with a pile of arrows and really a lot of issues," Stark went on before Steve could ask. "And I'm pretty sure the God of Thunder's started a room-to-room search of New York, which should only take him… eh, a decade or so."

So Loki had escaped. "Goddamnit."

Stark snickered tiredly under his breath. "Don't let your fan boys hear that potty mouth. You know how … how."

They fell into awkward silence.

Steve cleared his throat after a few seconds and pitched for a lighter tone. "Find Banner, go save the day."

Stark stood, mustered a salute that wasn't quite as mocking as it could have been and headed back towards the hastily constructed canvas command surrounding Stark Tower.

Steve stood and turned to the unit waiting on his orders. "Lopez, Donnelly, Jacobs and Rashidi, right?"

They straightened with something like excitement; he more or less managed to turn a wince into a smile. "Let's move out."

-o-

The Chitauri had stopped their assault on the Helicarrier hours ago, maximizing the damage to the city as their numbers were whittled away. Large swathes of Manhattan were dark, but fire constantly bloomed and faded, and the Hudson glinted as it caught the lights of the explosions.

"We should be down there," Maria said, not bothering to hide her frustration. She'd been helplessly watching the video feeds for ten hours because of some egos in DC. 'Frustrated' barely scraped the surface of her feelings on the matter.

"We're exactly where we should be," Fury said, mildly in comparison. "Where we have been ordered to hold. The council believes their ground troops are more than capable of restoring order."

She looked at him, speechless.

"However," he went on, the hard lines of expression and the thunderously angry crease between his eyebrows at definite odds with his tone, "I seem to recall medical told you to stand down until they cleared you for active duty."

"My primary care physician is on the ground. I believe she's near Rogers' position."

"Then you have your orders, Agent."

"Thank you, sir." Maria straightened. "And for your commitment to the health and wellbeing of the agents under your command."

She hadn't gone more than a few steps before, "Hill."

"Sir?"

"We still haven't heard anything from 59th."

Where Adams and his teams had been assigned just after the portal opened. As far as reports had indicated, no Chitauri had made it over the river, but it was worrying there had been no communication. "Doctor Pak likes to travel," she said. "It will probably take some time to find her."

-o-

About twenty minutes after the portal opened, the 59th Street Bridge had sprouted serious looking people in serious looking uniforms, carrying really serious looking weapons. They'd given Peter pause as he'd swung up Queens' side; someone expected the fight to hit Roosevelt Island. Go further, maybe.

That was considerate, he thought through a sudden swell of panic. Usually he had way more of a commute to fight evil.

Call Aunt May, not call Aunt May. Call Aunt May, not… call MJ.

He flipped his cell. No service; the decision had been made for him. They'd be watching the news, he told himself. MJ and Gwen would have themselves and his aunt out of the house, city, state and possibly country before anything even thought of coming their way.

Crouched on a fire escape he watched as, directed by the heavily armed government sprouts, pedestrians crammed into the cover of the apartments and shops that lined the waterfront. Everything looked under control and he figured he could still make it over – he'd crossed the bridge under fire before.

So many more times than he was comfortable with.

In, like, the last month alone.

From behind the cover of the Manhattan-side buildings, a multi-pitched droning rose above the sound of distant explosions, became a jumble of slick-edged whines. The din sent a shiver down his spine that had nothing to do with spider-sense, which had been sending a shiver down his everything since breakfast.

The cacophony peaked to become a dense wave of gliders, which swooped over and between the buildings, then crashed towards the bridge. Windows shattered and concrete tore from the ground; below him, people screamed.

Fifty feet from the bridge, the flying what-the-fudges were met with a wall of bullets and, wait, were those laser canons? Okay, he was forced to admit through a haze of terror - that was pretty cool.

Massive holes were punched into the onslaught, gliders spun out of the sky and crashed in flames. Peter relaxed a degree: the sprouts were in for a fight, but it looked like they had it covered.

He gathered himself to leap for the bridge and then froze, excitement and relief turning to horror as the first crowds of running, screaming people swarmed out of the burning Manhattan-side buildings, towards the bridge.

The what-the-fudges were already regrouping and reinforcing, and the sprouts couldn't fire back without hitting the civilians they were trying to protect. Offense turned quickly to defense, and packed as tight as they were, that really wasn't working for them.

Peter sprang from the side of the apartment block and shot a web high on the first tower. His swing took him well along the bridge, to land on top of a truck whose driver had already fled.

Closer, he could see that the bad guys were, yeah, there was no other way to say it – the bad guys were mutant cyber-lizards. No, wait, mutant cyber-lizards on gliders, because 'flying' was absolutely the adjective you wanted to hear next to 'mutant cyber-lizard' and, swear to God, if this was Oscorp again, he was going in there with a flamethrower and a smile.

"Focus, Spidey," he muttered. "Focus."

At the far end of the bridge the lizards had broken through the sprouts and were firing into the escaping crowd: fish in a barrel.

But within the crowd people were falling under each other's feet as they either tried to cross a bridge covered with abandoned vehicles or squeeze down the pedestrian route, all while terrified and under fire: bottleneck.

Some uniforms – a few cars worth of cops, a truck's worth of firemen - were linking arms and trying to channel the flow, but they were only so many and only so strong, and even as Peter watched an entire section almost fell.

Two problems, one Spider-man. No problem. Nooooo problem.

"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can," he sing-songed under his breath as he swung the length of the bridge, firing a few strands of webbing to pick up the slack in the man-made barrier as he passed.

Okay. Flying things and webs: two great tastes…

He swung back and forth, weaving web after industrial-strength web to create what cover he could. Now and then he shot a line directly across the bridge at roughly – say - flying mutant cyber-lizard chest height; other nasties were kind enough to fly into his webbing themselves.

It was pretty inevitable he'd be noticed, although he could have done without the confused few seconds where the flying cyber-lizards and the sprouts and a couple cops were firing at him.

"'Scuse me, coming through, superhero on deck – hey!" He glared down at a sprout with an MP40, who at least looked faintly apologetic about their near miss before they ran towards their next target.

Cover as complete as he could make it without actually cocooning the bridge, Peter turned his attention to the bottleneck situation. Several trucks were blocking the lanes, a couple of buses - a few pileups. A fire truck, but he decided to let that one slide, given the whole 'living barrier' thing its crew had been trying to pull off.

The cars went over the side of the bridge easily. They were light enough he could use them as improvised projectiles, and did a couple times, before the cyber-lizards got wise to the risks of catching a Buick with their face.

Something in his back spasmed as, shoulder to front bumper, he pushed an empty tour bus to the side of the bridge. He'd leave it there to give a little more protection, he told himself, and certainly not because getting it over the side would be a pain in the ass.

He made a quick pass to check his webbing was holding, the uniforms were on their feet and the crowds were moving, and then dropped onto the cabin roof of an enormous long hauler. How the sprouts were doing on the far side, he had no idea, but he could still hear the rattle of their automatics.

"How did you even get on here?" he asked the truck, once he'd caught his breath. It didn't answer – rude – and moving it out of the way was going to be a bad, bad word, but it was the last major obstacle, and crowds trying to make it over the bridge hadn't shown any sign of slowing down.

"Spider-man! Spidey!"

It was a cop, waving at him from the hood of a sedan.

Which was really only slightly better than flying mutant cyber-lizards, given how many times New York's finest had taken a shot at him. In the last five minutes, even. Peter looked down at the bright red and blue of his suit, then up at the thick of webbing. "You've got the wrong guy," he shouted back.

The cop, with a bloody scrape on her chin, half the buttons in her shirt missing and an expression that suggested she was done with literally everything, ignored him. "They're shooting out the struts, it's gonna go down. You gotta stop anyone else getting on."

Spider-senses flared and, on cue, the bridge shuddered. Instinctively, Peter leapt to the side of the closest tower; the truck began to skid towards the side of the bridge.

"We're sending boats," the cop yelled above the whining metal. "You just gotta keep them things busy until we get there."

"That's all, huh?" Peter didn't wait for a reply as the bridge shuddered again. He leapt up into the girders of the towers, swinging as fast as he could for the Manhattan side. His spider-sense was a buzz saw that had him twist and flip around energy beams, bound from metal to glider to web and back again as he fought his way upstream.

And they said video games didn't teach you anything.

A glance at the Manhattan side told him that the sprouts were still in the game – they were probably the only reason he'd had the time to cover the bridge. It also told him it wasn't just the waterfront crowds who were trying to make it across to Queens; people were streaming from within the city itself.

They were not going to be his biggest fans.

So nothing new there.

Before he could think about the consequences if the cop had been wrong, he webbed the entrance to the bridge and promptly added the projectiles of angry civilians to his list of things to avoid.

"The bridge is going down," he shouted as loudly as he could, but couldn't make himself heard above the outraged crowd. JJJ was going to have a field day with this. He tried again. "Boats are coming!"

Spider-sense sent a sharp warning and he ducked, but couldn't avoid being clipped by a crashing glider. The breath left his lungs in a rush as the force slammed him down to the ground.

The ground, a boot to the mid-section immediately reminded him, was a place he did not want to be.

"Why are you helping them?" a woman screamed in his face as he scrambled back to his feet. Ow. Ow-ow-ow. He pressed a hand to his ribs. The kick hadn't cracked them – the glider did that – but it kinda hadn't helped, and that made him less than charitable as he yelled back, nose an inch from hers. "Bridge falling. Boats coming."

The woman reared away and then processed his words; he saw the light of understanding hit, but would never know if she would have believed him: proof was abruptly delivered as the bridge gave an ear splitting creak and began, piece by deafening piece, to slide into the river.

The bridge fell in clouds of dust, waves of water and chunks of concrete that Peter web-balled out of the air before they hit. And noise. Deafening noise.

Even the mutant cyber-lizards paused.

Peter had no idea how many people had still been on it, but not these ones, he told himself around the vise squeezing his chest. Not these ones. A quick estimate told him there were maybe five-hundred people left. A lot of them looked pretty old - some of them were in hospital gowns. People holding kids who were young enough that 'infant' was probably a better word: the ones who hadn't been able to make a quick escape.

Maybe one day he'd get to rescue heavily armed, well-trained people with no loved ones or dependents and firm beliefs in reincarnation.

Speaking of. He looked back to the sprouts' last position. Some had cleared the destruction, he saw. Not many, but some.

He took advantage of the momentary lull to swing out of the mob and up to the broken edge of the base tower. "Bridge fell. Boats coming," he yelled one more time.

The spell broke; the crowd made a break for the water as the mutant cyber-lizards re-formed for their next attack.

Peter jumped away from the side of the remaining tower and landed in a crouch between the civilians and the mutant cyber-lizards.

They were looking at him the way he usually associated with rabid newspaper magnates and deranged cephalopods. Or MJ, that time.

"Give up! I've got you surrounded!"

-o-

Maria looked up at what was left of the 59th Street Bridge: the shards of metal and concrete breaking out of the water, the rubble on the bank. She could make out the shapes of a few capsized boats, bobbing in dark water.

A defensive position had been set up in a diner; the windows were long gone, but the walls were largely intact. She made a fast head count of the agents she could see inside. Some sat around the tables, some lay on the counters. Some lay tightly packed against the walls; they'd earned their star on the Academy wall.

There was no perimeter guard, but that could be excused: the Chitauri were concentrating their forces inside Manhattan now.

Adams, ragged and pale, limped out of the diner. "We lost communications," he greeted her. "And a lot of our people. Berger took the ones who could walk into the city to try and contact command."

"Agent Berger hasn't checked in." Adam's expression flickered and Maria had no particular words of assurance to give him – none that a career operative would believe. "I'll find Berger and her team," she compromised. "And send down a pick-up for the rest of you."

She took another look around; this time she concentrated on details for the after-battle report that Fury would be waiting for. Chitauri littered the torn up ground, piled here and there, but mostly left where they'd fallen.

Or not fallen – several were somehow stuck on the sides of buildings.

There were far fewer civilian bodies than she'd feared: eighteen laid in a neat row, arms respectfully crossed and, yes, eyes carefully closed. SHIELD left such things for the cleanup crews. She raised an eyebrow askance.

Adams nodded towards the remains of the bridge. "I told him the authorities would take care of it," he said, when she followed his gaze. "Maybe he didn't like looking at them?"

Maria frowned, confused, until her eyes adjusted to shadow on shadow, and she saw a shape that didn't belong to the outline of the wreckage.

She couldn't make sense of it until she realized it was person, knees drawn up to their nose and arms wrapped tight around them. Perfectly normal, if whoever it was weren't roughly fifteen feet up a completely smooth and entirely vertical support.

The webbing had been almost invisible in the darkness, but now she was looking, she could see strands hanging from practically every surface.

Spider-man.

The agents had a perimeter guard after all.

He hadn't been active long, as far as she could remember from a sparsely detailed report that had crossed her desk a few months ago. Suspected to possess above average strength and agility, he stuck to walls and mostly restricted himself to taking out muggers and the occasional bank robber: nothing that would ping SHIELD's radar.

"Hey," she said quietly to the shape. "I'm Agent Hill. You okay?"

Spider-man's head lifted, the eyes of the mask fixed on her. "Peachy," he said.

She hadn't heard his voice before. It was hoarse, but definitely no older than late teens and, she thought, probably younger.

"I was going to head into the city," he went on after a beat. "But Adams is such a good host I figured I'd hang out until you guys showed up."

Translation: he didn't want to leave the wounded unprotected - another tick in the good guy column.

His red and blue suit hid the blood well, but it was torn and webbing didn't make a great sewing kit: she could see long gashes and dark burns. Mentioning them was probably not the way to go, he'd take it as criticism, not concern. Nor would it be a good plan to ask about the bodies. Giving them a little dignity was probably the only way he could ease the guilt - however unearned - of failing to save them.

She was becoming intimately familiar with the type.

"Actually," she said instead, "we'd like you to head down to Williamsburg."

His head tilted, but the kid said nothing.

"It's mostly over in central Manhattan," she lied. "But we don't have the manpower to take out the stragglers on the outskirts – we're spread pretty thin. We really need you there."

The blankness of the mask's eyes was disconcerting, and he was silent for so long that hairs began to rise on the back of her neck. She tensed and felt Adams, beside her, do the same.

Spider-man laughed, quietly sardonic. "Wow."

Maria blinked. "What?"

"I mean, I know everyone says you can't trust the government, but. Wow. Lying right to my mask. Got anything to say about JFK?"

Okay, she'd tried. "Fine, smartass. You show up in the middle of a fight and half the people on the ground won't know whether to shoot the Chitauri or you. We don't need that kind of distraction."

"Chitauri?" The prickliness in the kid's voice disappeared, replaced with curiosity. "The flying mutant cyber-lizards?"

"Flying mutant cyber-lizards from space," she corrected, and didn't miss his grudging huff of a laugh. She softened her tone. "You did a hell of a job. You saved a lot of lives. Now go home, we can take it from here."

It occurred to her that he might not be able to go home at the same moment as he glanced back at the expanse of river. She opened her mouth to suggest – what, she didn't know - but he leapt into the darkness. A blink and he was gone.

She tapped the communicator in her ear. "Queensboro Bridge is down. Civilian casualties are minimal. Pick up needed for the wounded. The Chitauri did not, repeat, did not, cross out of Manhattan at this point.

"Personal note: we need to update the file on Spider-man. Apparently, he hasn't been applying himself."

-o-

It was dawn before Maria and her team made it to Stark Tower, following in the footsteps of Berger's team, the remains of which had arrived only a half hour before. Their search for comms had been delayed by pitched battles almost block-by-block. Eight had set out and three had made it in. Berger hadn't been amongst them.

She spoke shortly to the remaining three as she passed, assuring them Adams position had been evacuated, and then entered the lobby, which was pulling double duty as command center and field hospital.

Doctor Pak was nowhere to be seen and, now Maria thought about it, it was possible Michelle had mentioned a holiday in Australia. Her bad.

Stark, Banner, Rogers and Rhodes were clustered around a nest of laptops and cable, a weld-patched satellite dish in the center like the world's ugliest bird. Beyond them, leaning against the somehow intact reception desk, Natasha and Barton stood with their heads bowed, talking quietly. At the edge of the medical station, Thor stood protectively next to a rumpled-looking older man, who was slumped in a plastic chair. Selvig, she realized.

None of them looked like they'd slept in the last 72 hours, which was probably because, like her, they hadn't. Twelve hours since the portal opened, she realized. Eleven since closed. Ten since the bridge fell. Nine since-

"Agent Hill," Rogers greeted her, mustering a tired smile. "Fury planning to join us?"

She fell into parade rest, long past resisting. "We've been ordered to maintain a position outside the main theatre of operations. I'm here looking for my doctor and in no official capacity."

Stark kept connecting the laptops. "Fury's in the naughty corner. The World Council's still pissed they didn't get to drop a nuke on Manhattan."

"How-" She looked at Stark. "Get out of our communications."

"What communications? Half your network's down – which I'll do something about when I've finished saving the city." He paused and looked up, expression quizzical. "Wait, I'm sorry, did the shadowy intelligence agency just ask me not to spy on them? That's so adorable I might actually do it."

He resumed work before she could respond and she bit back her reply, instead making her way to Thor. "No trace of Loki?"

"None," he said grimly. "I have doubts that my brother remains within this realm. His magics are strong, even without the aid of the scepter, but I don't believe he could have hidden for so long. He is …"

"Not subtle," Maria finished for him.

Thor nodded with a smile that landed somewhere between rueful and pained. "Nor patient. I think he's returned to the space between realms of Yggdrasill. The World Tree," he added, as if that would clarify.

Maria stayed on point; Norse mythology wasn't her strongest subject. "What will you do now?"

"Take the Tesseract to my father."

While she doubted Fury would raise any objection, the World Council probably would. Given the iron in Thor's tone, Maria suspected they would be disappointed. "And then?"

"Return, if this world will have me." He looked away. "I would help rebuild what my brother has destroyed."

"It's not my call, but thank you." She looked down to the glaze-eyed man sitting next to him. There were no outward signs of injury, beyond a few scrapes and bruises. "Doctor Selvig-"

"Yes, I am most pleased to say."

"You'll understand that we must ask you to stay until you can be debriefed."

"Interrogated-"

"Debriefed. As Agent Barton will be," she added as Barton joined them.

"Oh, good," Barton said. "I'd hate to think the Agency I've been loyal to for years would give me the benefit of the doubt."

She grinned toothily. "I wouldn't give you the benefit of the doubt if you told me grass was green, Clint."

"That's only because you know me, Maria."

There was a loud popping sound from the nest, closely followed by the smell of burning and then the hiss of a fire extinguisher as Rhodes put out the fire with the kind of practiced efficiency that Maria imagined most people who were close to Tony Stark would develop.

"That should –" Tony glanced at Banner, who nodded with a frown. "Yeah, that definitely should have worked."

Rhodes cupped his hand around his ear, but the theatrics weren't necessary – the gliders outside were still clearly audible. "Pretty sure that didn't work."

"Maybe it will just take a little time," Rogers suggested. "The signals being relayed can't be instantaneous from that far away, right?"

"I'm impressed." Stark smirked and pulled the burnt-out laptops from the heap, throwing them behind him. "I'd ask if you're reading physics one-oh-one in your downtime, except I know you-"

"I can read," Steve said, without any particular rancor.

"Have no downtime," Tony finished smoothly. "But, no. The space where the portal was … the scepter closed the door, but it opened a window. Nothing physical can come through, but queen bee's commands would make it fine. We should have seen an immediate effect when we scrambled them."

Maria looked between them. "What does that mean?"

Stark and Banner exchanged a glance; Stark shook his head. "We go wide-band."

"Stark!" Maria raised a hand to stop him, but he twisted past her, aiming for a rat's nest of parts that had probably been hastily pulled from across half the building's research labs.

"It's going to take a lot of power," Banner warned as he followed him.

"If only someone had invented some kind of massive, clean, energy source." Tony glanced around as he tugged at an enormous cable. "Oh, wait, we're standing in it."

"You'll cripple the tower," Banner persisted. "If this doesn't work and we're overrun, what kind of damage could they do with what they find here? How many lives will be on our hands?"

Stark froze, only his eyes moving as he calculated the risk. His mouth thinned and he shook his head. "I know what the arc reactor can do better than anyone alive," he said, voice low and intent. "I promise you, it can do this."

A heartbeat. Two. Banner nodded and stepped back.

Stark turned to the watching Thor, then pointed at the floor directly in front of the reception desk. "It's hammer time. But not too hard - we're aiming for a power box about five feet down, not the bedrock."

Thor studied the area Stark indicated. He looked up, looked down. Hefted the weight of the hammer thoughtfully and then swung. The floor tiles and the concrete under them shattered under the blow, splintering outwards like the shards of a broken mirror.

The concussive shock staggered everyone, but Rogers threw it off first, to start clearing the chunks of concrete out with his bare hands. "I guess if godhood doesn't work out, you've got a future in infrastructure."

Thor nodded modestly and stood back as Stark dragged the cable to the hole. "Okay," Stark breathed. "Here's where we find out if I'm as good as I think I am."

He forced the end of the cable into place; it seated with a dull click. A hum rose from the reconnected satellite dish. Through the soles of her boots, Maria could feel the floor begin to vibrate.

And, more importantly, she could hear the most deafening and most welcome sound in the world: Chitauri gliders falling out of the sky. She ran to the door to confirm, but ragged cheering was already coming from the troops on the perimeter.

The first Chitauri she saw was unmoving, lying half out of its overturned and burning chariot. The one beyond it didn't twitch, even when she took the still dully glowing staff weapon from its unresisting claws.

She left the troops to their burgeoning celebration and jogged back to the lobby. "It worked," she said, when she'd caught Stark's attention. "Now, catch us up on what worked."

"We tried to close the window, but it turns out that the queen bee wasn't using it. So we've created an umbrella instead, but that doesn't mean the rain isn't still out there. Or the honey." He looked at Banner, then to Rogers. "Should have gone with honey, right? "

Maria frowned, trying to work her way through Stark's jumble of metaphors. She was almost certain he wasn't even doing it on purpose this time.

"Banner and I will -"

"Take a shower," she said. "Eat. Sleep. Barton, Romanoff, you're with me." She turned. "And if you'd be kind enough to join us tomorrow, Doctors Selvig and Banner?"

"I will accompany Erik," Thor interjected as Banner nodded.

"Of course. Captain Rogers?"

"I'll make a run around the perimeter, then catch the next bird going your way."

"Yeah, if you think I'm running back to Fury for my orders, you really haven't been paying attention," Stark said when she turned his way again.

"Whatever you feel is the best use of your time, Mr. Stark," Maria agreed, injecting as much saccharine into her tone as possible. "As a consultant, you're in no way obligated to take part in any further action and I'm sure Doctor Banner will be able to make a full report."

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing, Hill," Stark grumbled, caught neatly between amusement and belligerence.

That was the thing with reverse psychology, though: recognizing it didn't always help. Maria smiled and widened her eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Mr. Stark."

Stark growled and stalked towards the stairs, muttering something. "So I should tell Director Fury you'll be there?" she called after him.

Feedback is always lovely - thank you!

Also? That thing with the door to door search of New York City taking a decade? XKCD's What If wins everything: 110/