When the interdimensional portal of sparkly blue fire opened that night, Nick Fury had been prepared for anything. Giant alien scorpions? No problem. Klingon warbirds? That's cute. Marvin the Martian and Buzz Lightyear doing a tango? Bring it on.

But what he had not prepared for was the pale, twitchy motherfucker in front of him. The little tweaker's eyes were darting around in his head so fast that it was starting to make him dizzy, and he had a 'I just snorted my twelfth line of blow and I think I can fly' grin that would look right at home on a mental patient.

And just great. Twitchy was armed.

"Sir," he called out, slowly enough for their new friend to clearly understand. "Please. Put down. The spear."

Twitchy looked down at his hand, as if just realizing that yes, there was a sharp, glowing instrument of death clutched in it. Imagine that.

Then he started shooting people. Well, fuck. An intergalactic tweaker with a laser-spear. Things were really not looking up.

Nick was hopeful when his men started shooting back, but the bullets just ricocheted off Twitchy's body and the poor sucker with the gun got harpooned in the face. He knew the two men now taking aim might as well have been pointing nail guns at their coffins, and before he could say anything, Twitchy had flung some nasty-looking throwing knives into their stomachs.

It was all over in a matter of seconds. A stabbing here, an explosion there, pepper in a few kicks and knives, and you have a full-on massacre. 'Bravo, Twitchy,' Nick thought with a frown. 'Now you gonna die.'

Twitchy's eyes were still spinning like roulette balls, and he was half-surprised the motherfucker's heart hadn't popped. Oh well, if he ever got out of this, he would dedicate a whole five minutes of his time to wondering what exactly this guy was on, and how curb-stomping an entire special ops team didn't kill him. But for now, the Tesseract needed him.

Then Twitchy said something. He hadn't heard exactly what it was, but when he looked up, some weird blue light was traveling up the spear blade and into Barton. Yeah, Twitchy just bought himself a one-way ticket to the Magical Land of Asskickings.

Luckily, Twitchy seemed a bit preoccupied with poking people in the chest with his glowy mind-controlling laser-spear to notice Nick slip the Tesseract into a briefcase and slip out the back door. Or, so he thought. "Please don't." Nick was mildly surprised. Twitchy's voice was calm, even, and not at all what he thought a tweaker of this caliber would sound like. "I still need that."

"Oh no you don't," Nick replied. "What you need is an intervention and a straight jacket. Didn't your parents ever tell you to just say no to drugs?"

Twitchy looked honestly confused. "Drugs?"

"Yeah, drugs." Nick inched closer to the door. "Don't try to deny it. The only time I've seen anyone as tweaked out as you was when I checked one of my men into a rehab clinic. It was a good clinic, though. Nice people who can help you. Maybe we can go check it out togeth—"

"What's this?" Twitchy clearly hadn't been paying the slightest bit of attention, and started across the room to grab an abandoned coffee mug. "It's empty."

Nick resisted the urge to roll his eye. "Hey, Twitchy!" he shouted. "I'm talking to you!"

"My name isn't 'Twitchy'. It's Loki."

Dr. Selvig seemed to know this name. "Loki," he exclaimed. "Brother of Thor!"

Twitchy… or Loki, whatever, clearly did not like this name, but then went full ADHD and seemed to suddenly lose interest in what anyone was saying. "Is that coffee?" he asked, pointing at the mug in Dr. Selvig's hand.

"What?" Selvig stuttered. "I… Yes. Yes it is. But what does that have to—"

He was cut off by the Blue Stick of Hypnosis.

"Share."

Selvig passed him the mug without any questions, and Loki immediately chugged the whole cup. Nick rubbed his eye with the palm of his hand. Someone had to be playing a trick on him. His birthday was coming up soon, and this did seem like just the kind of prank the heads of the department would pull.

Loki licked his lips as he dropped the now-empty mug onto the floor. His eyes seemed brighter now, and he moved with renewed vigor. "This is exactly what I came here for," he murmured.

"What, for coffee?" Nick said in disbelief. "There is a motherfucking Starbucks five miles down the goddamn road from here! There are hundreds of gas stations with more coffee than you could ever drink!"

"That is exactly my point," Loki said, tweaker smile back on full display. "Yours is the only realm that has this wonderful creation. Never has such a drink been crafted in Asgard."

"Well, if coffee's what you want, I'm sure we could set up a trade agreement of sorts with your people." Nick offered.

"No, that's too much trouble. I find killing you all to be so much easier."

Barton's gun discharged, and Nick went down.

Son of a bitch.