The rotting skeleton looking people, chitauri or whatever, were everywhere. The never ending stream of them that flew through the portal were running amok in New York, but to Darcy's huge relief they didn't seem to be in Stark tower, where she currently was.

Jane had started to cooperate with Tony-Iron man-Stark on the Bifrost project and was working with him in her brand new lab in Stark tower, and where Jane went her sarcastic sidekick followed. And now Darcy was even getting paid, it was still for the normal assistant thingies, but now she was also performing minor hacking jobs for Tony... And occasionally SHEILD if Tony was interested. And her mother said that hours in front of her computer would never pay off, ha!

But currently she was running for her life, wishing for the hundredth time that she had taken up cardio, her legs and lungs were burning and judging by Tony's quick description by phone of where she was supposed to go she had a bit left to run.

There was no monster inside the tower, true, but they were trying to get in. And while the staff was evacuating, Darcy and Jane stayed behind to get the shields up and running. But they hadn't counted on their systems being shut down by and outside force, so while Jane, despite her limited computer knowledge, tried to block them from getting all access, Darcy was going to go to the circuit room and get the shields up manually. The stupid room just had to be really high up in the tower, probably so that Tony could access them all in cases like this, only he needed to fly around in his suit and beat up aliens.

Her phone buzzed and she pulled it up without stopping. "Jane!"

"Darcy, are you close to the circuit room?"

"I'm getting there" she panted as she skidded around a corner and then sprinted down the corridor "I'm almost at Tony's floor now. Any luck with the blocking?"

"It doesn't look like they are getting any closer into the systems, but I still have no access to Jarvis" Darcy gave her a few quick advice on what to do and then continued to run, she didn't stop until she ran into the circuit room door.

"Blue button, blue button" she repeated what Tony had said would turn on the shields as she picked up her card and turned to swipe it over the scanner. Only to realize that the scanner was smashed and the door was slightly open. "Fuck" she pulled the door open and saw the smashed monitors and equipment. She started to call Jane as she looked for a blue button, please let the one button she needed be intact, please please please...

"Jane the room is smashed, the blue button too" typical. Darcy pulled her fingers through her hair then shrieked in fright. She could hear Jane on the other end asking her what was wrong, but Darcy was too occupied staring at the prone form of a man in black clothing laying on the floor. But that was not the creepy part, his eyes were wide open and glowing in a light blue color. He didn't seem to react to her being in the room so she walked a little closer.

"Darcy answer me!"

"There's a guy on the floor, his eyes are freaky blue and I don't think he knows I'm here" Jane was quiet for a moment.

"Loki must have used him to destroy the circuits. He must need the shields down so they don't interfere with the tesseract energy"

"He's here?" Darcy suddenly felt like panicking. She had seen what he had done in New Mexico, and that was only with one robot helper. Now he had thousands of skeleton buddies to help him, and humans as well apparently.

"Tony sent a message, Loki is on the roof and the avengers are working on getting there to shut down the tesseract. There's just too many chitauri in the way."

Darcy paused briefly before asking "would shutting it down bring down Loki?"

"It's very likely that the portal would close, based on what we know of the tesseract. So yes in a way"

Darcy took a deep breath. She was by no means someone who could be called brave, she was the quirky assistant/hacker with a nack for sarcasm and an obsession with TV series. Not a super spy or a super soldier with the power to save the world. She hoped she was enough though.

"Then let's go" Darcy ran to the elevator and pressed the button to make it go up to Tony's floor, it was the only way to get there.

"Darcy what are you talking about?" Jane asked as the elevator opened. Darcy stepped in and punched in the code for it to access Tony's place.

"I'm gonna shut the blue sparkly thing off and make the aliens go away" she said with as much conviction she could muster. She felt the elevator move upwards and she started to feel butterflies in her stomach.

"What! Darcy you can't, he will kill you! Darcy please-" the connection suddenly broke and Darcy removed her phone from her ear and put it in her pocket. She tried to ignore the desire to run, it was true what Jane said. Loki would probably try, and succeed, to kill her if he saw what she was doing.

Her heart pounded as the elevator doors slid open and she stared out into the surprisingly calm living room of Tony Stark's apartment. No Loki lounging around in one of the sofas watching his aliens destroy buildings, laughing evilly as they did, like a classic cartoon villain.

She walked out of the elevator slowly and moved into the room, walking close to the wall to avoid being seen, if it worked she didn't know. She was next to the bar when a figure appeared on the elaborate balcony outside. She dove behind the bar and tried to keep her heart from pounding out of her chest. Loki was on the balcony, there was no way it could be anyone else.

Darcy took five deep breaths and then peered over the top of the counter. Loki was very pale, he looked manic, his glowing blue eyes stared out at the destruction before him, but he still didn't seem satisfied with what he saw. He was very tall, Darcy noted, not quite as tall as Thor and not as muscular but he was still huge.

The tall God was suddenly knocked down by something even bigger and they collided into mass of green and red. Thor.

The two men rose to glare at each other and then started to have a conversation that Darcy couldn't hear. The conversation soon turned into fighting and Darcy looked on in horror as she realized Thor had some serious competition in his brother. One of shield's small planes approached the balcony and Darcy stared wide eyed as Loki shot a giant hole through the wing of the plane and it went down. Through it all the brothers kept on fighting and it looked terribly emotional on both parts. Thor seemed to get ahold on Loki and Darcy straightened herself a little to take the chance to run to the tesseract, it wasn't on the balcony so it had to be on the roof so she only needed to get back to the elevator. Or in worst case climb the outside of the building. Her planning was interrupted by Thor's scream and she stared at him to see if he was hurt. He was looking at Loki with such anger and hurt that Darcy hurt for him, and she winced as Thor bellowed out in pain again and she was pretty sure she gasped when he pulled out a dagger from his side and threw it on the ground.

Loki suddenly disappeared of the edge of the balcony and onto one of the weird flying devices the aliens used. She stood up and started to run out towards Thor when he started to swing his hammer really quickly and then flew away with it in the direction Loki had disappeared to.

She paused to look out over New York and felt indescribably sad by how it looked. Buildings were destroyed, people were screaming, people were dead... She looked at the buildings and realized with horror that people had been inside them as they fell, tears formed in her eyes and she turned cold as she imagined what they must have felt as everything crumbled around them.

A hover thing flew past her close enough that her hair flew across her face and covered her eyes and she threw herself on the ground, after sweeping her hair from her face she stared after the hover as it flew away with three gross chitauri crawling on top of it.

She then snapped out of her shock and started to run to the other end of the balcony where a ladder led up to the tesseract platform on the roof. It was surprisingly warm outside. The shining sun obviously didn't feel like being more ominous when the earth was being attacked.

After climbing the ladder and focusing very hard on not falling or thinking about how insanely high up she was, she came to a full stop in front of the tesseract panel and just stared at the person standing on the opposite side of the big metal construction. "Erik?"

Erik Selvig lookd up from his work with the panel and stared at her, sure the Swedish scientist had always had blue eyes as the stereotype dictated but now they were glowing, in the same creepy way as Loki's eyes had glowed.

"Darcy, my dear, are you here to assist?" He asked with a small smile. It was his special smile, the kind of smile that reminded Darcy of how fathers looked at their kids, pride and happiness. But now when it was together with his sickly pale skin and glowing blue eyes it made her uncomfortable and very sad.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever you need" she said and then looked up at the energy crackling along the machine from the tesseract in its center. "Is it keeping the portal open?"

"Yes, soon it will always be open" he looked up to gaze almost longingly at the black hole in the sky where a big whale robot looking thing just went through with a terrible roar that shook through her body. Darcy turned her gaze to Erik who still looked up. She picked up what felt like a remote of some sort from the platform and clutched it hard in her hand.

"Erik, I'm sorry" before he could react she was behind him and knocked the remote on the back of his head. He fell back against her and she carefully laid him down, or as carefully as her unprepared arms were capable of. So she pretty much dropped him, but gently.

She got up and then looked at the monitors and buttons on the panels around the tesseract... There wasn't a button that shouted 'stop world destruction' so she was lost. She picked up her phone and dialed Jane's number but was only met with a constant beeping that signaled the lack of connection.

"Fuck!" She sighed and ran her fingers though her hair in frustration and then jumped back in surprise as a force field erupted from the tesseract and covered the whole platform around it. "Well that's not good" she muttered.

"What do you think you are doing mortal?" Someone said menacingly from the other side of the tesseract and she shrieked in surprise and flinched back from the tesseract. Her eyes widened and she felt paralyzed by fear when she saw who it was.

Dressed in gold, green and black with the scepter in his hand he was too distinctive to confuse with anyone else. The air suddenly seemed to still, the sound of battle disappeared, it was just them.

Darcy, in her panic, nearly missed the way his glowing blue eyes widened, and the impossibly blue dulled to a greener nuance instead. But the greatest change was how the rage on his face disappeared and gave way to complete shock and awe instead.

"You..."

Hope you enjoy the story, I have written several chapters already. Please review and let me know what you think, I have disabled messaging but if you have questions write them in the comments and I will write an answer in the next chapter notes.

Thank you.