A/N: For anyone who knows me already, this fic is in Avengers movieverse, so it's in a different universe than "Stark Realizations", i.e. no redeemed Loki. Instead we have a Loki who escaped Asgard post-Avengers and is trying to avoid Thanos (and being recaptured) while still trying to get back at the Avengers.

Also, the sorry truth is that I have no clue where this story is going (or if I'm going to continue it for certain), so if you want to see more of this or if you have any suggestions, please let me know!

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Loki smirks as he watches the carnage unfolding below. It's pathetic really, the two master assassins have their hands full trying to evacuate panicking civilians who are so pitifully terrified, they are almost entirely without reason – or a decent survival instinct – and the rest of the Avengers have their chances of defeating his latest creation reduced to near nothing when they split up into two teams, having taken the bait and fallen for the illusion he has created of another one of these creatures coming up from below-ground.

It's even more amusing really – though even the smile that appears on his lips is bitter and twisted and somehow deeply unsatisfying – that none of them realize that the creature feeds on energy, and each time Thor strikes it with lightning, it becomes a little stronger….. till eventually it will become strong enough to even crush the Hulk.

Loki fidgets with disappointment as he watches the fight raging below and twirls his new scepter – one of his own making – idly in his hands. It's too bad that he needs to lay low from Thanos, or he'd be down there wreaking havoc with his own hands, and it's even more irritating that the Man of Iron and the anachronistic Captain are in the group that split off to handle the nonexistent second creature, because had the former continued to fire his energy-based weapons at the creature, it would have probably already been strong enough to repay the Hulk in like measure for what it did to him last time they met.

He feels a flicker of real amusement when he notices that the two Avengers not preoccupied with an ever-growing beast and panicked civilians seem to be arguing. That much is clear from their body-language, even though he cannot hear the conversation from this distance, and he cannot help but smile slightly as somehow a figure covered completely in red-and-gold armor manages to still give off an entirely human air of frustration and defiance all rolled into one, if only because Loki cannot help but wonder why the big muscular blondes always get to be the leaders in every world.

Rage overtakes amusement when he suddenly realizes that at least one member of that misfit team of oddities realizes that his illusion is just that, and he's tempted to take a shot at Iron Man who has suddenly blasted into the air to return to the real fight – the only real fight, but it's a largely irrelevant notion, because the Captain beats him to it with a yelled verbal attack:

"You'll never be a real part of this team as long as you're so irresponsible!"

It cannot damage the metal armor that surrounds the other man, but Loki knows that words can cut deeper than any weapon, and dismissing both his momentary anger and something that feels oddly like a flicker of sympathy which has no right to exist in him, Loki simply contents himself with watching.

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