Chapter 45

A sharp ringing inside his skull snapped Harry awake. With a yawn, he blocked it out. "Want me awake particularly bad this morning, Loki?"

'It's not me.'

"Oh." Harry frowned. "Are we being attacked by a telepath?"

Before Loki could speak, he was interrupted by the ringing of a phone, about twenty-six times less loud than that in his head. Harry rolled around on his bed, grabbing around for it with no success. He summoned it and heard it bump against the bottom of the bed, before flying around the side and into his waiting hand.

"Hello, this is Dark Lord Harry. Can I ask who's speaking?"

"My Lord!" the voice on the other side cried. "The worldwide ward just activated in Greenwich—in London!"

"I know where Greenwich is, minion!" He hadn't. "Send me the address. I should probably get there as soon as possible."

The minion was silent for a moment. "Uh, there appears to be a problem."

"Is it your attitude? Because you're not sounding very optimistic right now.

"N-no, sir," he said. "The actual surge of alien energy appears to have happened… eight hours ago."

"Are you implying there was some kind of mistake in my warding?" There probably was, to be honest, whether by Harry's own hand or sabotage by the polar bears.

"No, it appears to have been a janitorial error."

Harry blinked. "What?"

"One of the janitors appears to have knocked the Tesseract out of place whilst cleaning."

"Did I not… secure it down?"

"He had to lift it up to clean under it. Accumulation of dust could've led to all kinds of problems."

"Like 8-hour delays in knowing of potential alien invasions?"

"Um, yes."

Harry sighed. While having an army of mind-controlled minions was useful, they weren't very good at following instructions—or rather, they were too good at following instructions. If you told them to clean everything, they cleaned everything, including the underside of incredibly powerful alien artefacts being used to power alien-detection wards.

"If I ask you to stop doing retarded things, can you follow that command?"

"I'm not sure, my lord."

"Can you try?"

There was a moment's hesitation. "Um, yes."

"Good minion," Harry said. "Pass the message on to all of your mind-controlled friends—especially the janitor who might've doomed the Earth. Now, I'm going to save the world."

A few minutes later, Harry arrived in Greenwich. To his surprise, it wasn't very green at all. The Vikings had probably named it Greenwich to confuse invaders, he thought. There was probably a very grassy place elsewhere called Stonewich, or Concretewich, or Mysterious-Appearance-Of-Alien-Energywich. Tracing down said alien energy led him to a decrepit warehouse that might've passed for one of his secret bases, if not for the lack of retarded minions milling about. Instead, there appeared to be a redheaded woman here, currently in the middle of a faceoff with some armed Muggle police officers.

Harry strolled up behind them, whistling merrily. "She's a redhead."

A police officer spun on him, his gun up. "What?"

"She's a redhead—not a ginger. I don't think you can arrest this one under the anti-ginger legislation that Dumbledore passed to finally defeat those dastardly unmanipulatable Weasleys."

Confusion flashed across the officer's face. "Step away, sir!"

"Rude." Harry strolled past him and backhanded him a few metres away when he tried to stop him. "Well, well, well, guvnor, what appears to be the issue here, then?"

The policemen all focused their guns on him now, yelling a barrage of things that he couldn't bring himself to bother listening to. One of them fired a taser at him and it bounced straight off. Harry flicked his hand and extended the wires, then set them winding about a group of five officers. They screamed and spasmed as it turned on, and the other officers opened fire.

Bullets peppered Harry and he stood there as they bounced off, tapping at an imaginary watch on his wrist. "Drop your guns," he said, when the thundering gunfire stopped, "or I'm going to eat all of you."

They appeared to be too busy reloading to listen to him, so Harry summoned all of their guns into a ball, then transfigured it into a single really, really big gun and aimed at the one who he judged to be their leader—he had the biggest hat.

"Run away, please."

They exchanged a few glances then legged it in various directions.

"You're welcome," Harry said, turning on where the woman had stood. She was gone. "Oh." He frowned, and set off following the energy signature once more.

He found the redhead cowering behind a car, her hands over her head. She looked quite human, for being an alien and all, and was dressed in normal clothes—not at all like the supergalactic space princess Harry had been hoping for.

"Hello," he said. "Do you come in peace?"

She looked up at him, confusion in her eyes.

"Me, Harry!" He pointed a finger at himself. "Me king of Earth." He feigned putting a crown on his head. "Do you"—he pointed at her—"come in peace?" He started to make finger guns and swords, but was interrupted as she spoke.

"Why are you speaking to me like that?" she asked, in an American accent.

Harry frowned. "Well, now I feel terribly racist. Your English is very good for an alien."

"I'm an American!"

He squinted. "An American human?"

"Yes!"

"Oh, sorry." He glanced around. "You just feel like an alien energy, you see. Are you sure you're not an alien with a very convincing disguise?"

She still looked very confused. "My name is Jane Foster. I came here to investigate an energy spike—and there were some weird gravity fluctuations. And—and I was teleported to another place. I know it sounds insane—but there was this black red thing and it rushed into me."

Harry hummed. "So you're like, half alien?"

"What?"

Harry reached out a hand to touch her head and a wave of blackness exploded outwards, catching him and flinging him backwards. He bounced eight and a half times against the concrete and slammed into a wall.

"Wow," he said, standing up. "That tastes like alien alright."

Loki appeared beside him as he strode back to Jane, confusion on his face. "Not Asgardian, certainly. It almost feels like the Mind Stone, or the Tesseract."

"Wow, another one in the series. Gotta catch em all!" Harry grinned. "We just need to figure out how to get it out."

"What?" Jane was confused again. She seemed to be that way annoyingly often.

"First rule of wizardry is don't ask questions," Harry said.

"Wizardry?"

"Second rule of wizardry, don't try and get around rule one by just saying words in a questioning tone. Rule three is that if you break the rules I'm legally obliged to execute you."

Jane was finally lost for words. Harry liked her better like this.

"That thing inside is probably going to kill you or something," Harry said. "Too much power in a mortal shell. Or drive you insane—not that I speak from personal experience, or anything. Hitting your head on things just accelerates the process."

"H-how do I stop it?"

"I'll excuse that question, because the thing in you will probably stop me from executing you. If you come with me, I can help you. I have magic powers."

She looked sceptical, so Harry turned the car she was beside into a bear. Then she looked distressed all of a sudden—perhaps understandable with all its enraged roaring—so he turned it into a giant teddy bear. Her distress reached a peak as the giant teddy tried to cuddle her, so Harry turned it to ash.

"Let me give you the old Hogwarts talk: magic exists and some people do it. You're not one of them, so—fortunately for you—you can't go to Hogwarts."

"W-what?"

Harry sighed. Again with the questions. Sirens drew closer and a helicopter floated off somewhere to the north. "Basically, come with me if you want to live and not be experimented on by those SHIELDy types."

"You know SHIELD?"

"I own SHIELD," he said proudly. He paused. "Wait, don't tell anyone that. Especially SHIELD."

Jane was looking lost again, as was her default state.

Sirens blared ever closer.

Harry sighed. "Alright, the police are coming nearer and nearer and you don't want to be here when they get here." He reached out a hand, and Jane hesitantly took it.

The twist of apparation caught them both and they appeared outside of Harry's secret Tesseract base.

He flicked the doors open and dragged Jane in with him, into a throng of arguing minions. "What the hell is going on?"

A man in a white lab coat stepped forward nervously. "I'm doing as you instructed, my lord—instructing the janitors to be less retarded. We're debating what retarded means."

Harry blinked twice. "Well, as long as you're not screwing everything up. Carry on, I guess."

They descended back into arguing as Harry marched Jane onwards, into the Tesseract room. "Now," he said, "do you feel especially drawn to that glowy cube?"

She shook her head.

"What about this glowy stone?" he asked, pulling the Mind Stone from a pocket.

She shook her head and he pressed the stone to his wand, then aimed it at her. "Imperio."

The drastically overpowered spell should have captured even the most powerful wizard in its magic—but Jane just blinked. The stone in her didn't react though; perhaps the stones cancelled each other out. How dull.

Harry strolled over the Tesseract and plucked it out of the ward array. He pressed it together with the Mind Stone and his wand and tried the spell again. This time, Jane's face went black under the double penetration of the stones.

"Two is more than one," Harry said. "Who would have thought?"

He roamed through her mind and slammed down on the dark presence there with the spell. "I command you to leave," he said—and it did. The black liquid oozed from every hole in her face and led across the distance between them, straight for him.

Bringing around the Tesseract, Harry slapped it straight away into a wall. "Bad stone!" he barked. "Bad!"

He waved his wand at it and his magic slipped right over it. It slithered towards him again, and he pulled ice into existence all around it, freezing it in the centre. He could feel it still trying to escape, so he poured the Tesseract's power into his spell as well and blue sheen pulsed through the ice. Finally, the black liquid inside froze in place, though it still had a subtle shimmer to it.

"Now that's how it's done," Harry said, turning to Jane only to see her sprawled out on the floor. He frowned. "Can I get a minion in here, please? To take care of the woman?"

He looked back to the stone in the ice that wasn't a stone. "Which one do you think that it is?"

Loki shimmered into existence. "Well, we have mind and space. And it's certainly not the time or soul. So reality or power."

"Excellent." Harry scratched his head. "Now that I have three of six, I suppose that I'm a demiGod instead of a demigod."

"You know, if these together are meant to make you omnipotent, then I feel as though you are not utilising the ones you have anywhere near to their full potential."

"What am I meant to do with them? Drain the sea or something? I'm already overpowered enough to do everything I want and turn it into a comedy whilst doing so. Maybe I should give them to someone else so that I have someone cool to fight."

"I'd say that doesn't sound like a good idea, but I know that would make you want to do it more."

Harry hummed. "You know, maybe in the future, I get all of the stones and become omnipotent and I've actually been using them over the course of my whole life to give myself really, really good luck and create a general sense of humour." He shrugged. "Oh well, guess I'll never know until I get all the stones, and trying to track them down sounds like a whole lot of effort."

Loki shrugged. "Maybe someone will bring the others to you in the process of trying to steal the others from you."

"No," Harry said. "Don't say that—it sounds like foreshadowing."

A/N: Sorry for long delay, I was doing 7 words a day challenge.