Hero Saves Loki

After prying Loki out of the steps where he had been smashed into, tying him up, and loading him onto the plane, everyone immediately began the return trip.

Not long after that, Nick Fury, having received the news, immediately contacted them. "Did he say anything?"

"No." Natasha replied from the cockpit. "In fact, he looks a little dazed right now, sir."

How could he not be dazed? He had been on the verge of defeating Captain America and reaching the peak of his posturing career since coming to Earth. Then some guy suddenly appeared and used some move—whether it was Crow Sits on a Plane or Tiger Eats Pudding—to slam him straight into the steps.

He had wanted to be captured in the first place, but in his mind, they were supposed to fight for three hundred rounds before he was narrowly defeated and captured with honor. Instead, he had been tied up under such humiliating circumstances, so he still had not recovered from the shock.

"Bring him back. Time is of the essence." Nick Fury did not care about any of that. As long as they had captured him, that was enough.

"Hiss… Why does it sound so chaotic over there? Is something going on?" Near the end, Nick Fury asked uncertainly.

"Nothing’s going on, sir." Natasha frowned.

The plane really was in chaos right now, and the source of it was Tony Stark.

"You broke-ass bastard!…" Tony was unusually worked up. He had taken off his helmet and thrown it aside. Though Captain America was holding him tightly from behind, he still thrust out his waist and kicked wildly forward with one leg. "You son of a bitch! I’m gonna kick you to death!"

There was no need to guess that he was shouting at Evenson. He had prepared such a grand entrance, even arranged his own BGM, and then… heh. He felt even more embarrassed than Loki.

But who was Evenson? The founding father of Earth’s Sorcerers, the first man to elevate the Black Scythe Council. How could he possibly care about a child throwing a tantrum?

With the air of a detached master, calm as the breeze and clouds, he craned his neck, planted his hands on his hips, and pointed at Tony. "Come on, then! Come on! I’ve got divine protection! Believe it or not, I’ll put you down again in seconds!"

"Damn it!" Tony’s eyes reddened at those deliberately provocative words. His hair practically looked ready to turn Super Saiyan as he struggled even harder. "Captain, let go of me! I’m gonna beat the shit out of him!"

"Little Tony!" Just as Captain America was about to lose his grip on Tony, a voice suddenly rang out. It was a gentle female voice.

Yet the moment Tony heard it, his entire body stiffened. His expression turned extremely tense, and a bead of cold sweat even rolled down his forehead.

He slowly turned around and saw Peggy Carter standing there in sunglasses, smiling at him. "Gah…" At first, Tony merely found her face familiar, but once he finally remembered who she was, he nearly sucked in a sharp breath. The muscles in his left cheek even twitched almost imperceptibly.

"Come sit down." Carter called to Tony warmly. When she found him still standing there in a daze, she said in the same tone, "Listen to your Aunt."

Tony felt a chill run through his entire body. He hurriedly sat down in a few quick steps. Only then did he finally recall the terror Aunt Peggy had brought him in those long-buried memories.

Tony’s father, Howard, had always acted lofty at home, but rarely managed him, while his mother spoiled him excessively.

Generally speaking, a child raised like that could easily go astray. Yet Tony had not taken the wrong path and had instead achieved what he had today, and Peggy Carter had played a major role in that.

Carter and Howard were not only colleagues, but also very close friends. She had even saved his life several times, so she often visited Howard’s home and sometimes stayed there for a while. Naturally, that meant she had plenty of contact with the teenage Tony Stark.

But as his Aunt, she was neither as cold as Howard was as a father nor as overly indulgent as his mother.

Normally, she cared deeply about Tony, but whenever Tony made a mistake, she criticized him very harshly.

Still, no matter how close they were, Carter was ultimately an outsider. So when a teenager—especially a rebellious brat in puberty—was criticized by an outsider, he would naturally think, My parents never bothered to discipline me, so who are you to do it?!

But one day, Tony buried that thought forever. He had personally seen his lofty father, so badass he could practically take off from the ground yet unable to swim, get kicked into a river by Aunt Peggy for making an inappropriate joke. As for Uncle Jarvis the butler, she had thrown him over her shoulder four times on the spot.

Afterward, the two men who had suffered greatly unanimously decided to apologize to her.

From then on, the very clever Tony knew that he could ignore his father and brush off his mother, but he absolutely had to listen to Aunt Peggy. Otherwise, he might trigger an unlimited mixed martial arts match between friends.

"Tony, your father…" After Tony sat down, Carter studied him carefully and suddenly looked a little sorrowful. She could not help wanting to say something, but her Demon Hunter’s sharp senses detected a gaze suddenly turning toward her, so she changed her words. "You look so much like your father."

"I guess so." Tony nodded awkwardly. Honestly, it was not easy to see this Playboy acting like this. "Say… are you really Aunt Peggy? You look so young and beautiful."

"You know how to talk, just like your father." Carter smiled, then said, "I owe my restored youth entirely to someone." She glanced at Evenson, signaling Tony to stop making trouble with him for her sake.

But she had seriously overestimated Tony’s integrity. Upon hearing that Evenson had restored Carter’s youth, he immediately sat beside Evenson. He no longer had that life-or-death attitude from before and draped an arm over the man’s shoulder. "Friend, interested in being my health consultant again? Mm, it’s not that I think I’m old. I just feel like I clearly don’t have the energy I had at twenty, and that seriously hinders my scientific research."

Scientific research? More like middle-school biology. Evenson silently removed Tony’s hand from his shoulder. "Friend? I don’t consider someone secretly developing a device specifically designed to counter my power a friend."

"You have to understand, a scientist’s curiosity is limitless." Tony immediately understood what this was about. "Your power is something I’ve never seen before. If I didn’t study it, curiosity would keep me awake at night."

"Study it?" Evenson narrowed his eyes. "But I heard that device was made specifically to deal with me. What was it called again?"

"Anti-Sorcerer Bracelets, boss," Sarah suddenly said. She now considered Tony a romantic rival, so naturally she would make things difficult for him whenever she could.

"There’s absolutely no such thing." Tony flatly denied it. "I’ll demand an explanation from Nick Fury about that."

"Forget it. My power is not something you can understand. Trying to develop a way to imitate it through science alone is almost impossible," Evenson said.

"Your power really is formidable." Tony curled his lip. "After you ambushed me, I was almost unconscious. Jarvis should have taken over the armor immediately, but according to his assessment, even if I hit that moose at my speed back then, I wouldn’t have been injured. And that was indeed the case."

"But your spell…" Tony shook his head. "I’d never heard Jarvis issue a warning like that before. It detected that every vital organ in my body had practically gone on strike in an instant. Even my heartbeat was extremely faint. I was truly hanging by a thread, so it gave up taking control of the armor and diverted all energy and computational memory toward removing the effects of your spell."

"Looks like it had some effect." Evenson nodded. "I thought you would pass out completely rather than remain half-conscious."

"Mm…" Tony said awkwardly, "I didn’t pass out because Jarvis injected me with three shots of adrenaline."

"That could be a direction for research. You could try increasing the dosage until it completely removes my spell’s effects," Evenson said quite seriously.

"I calculated it…" Tony said with difficulty. "To completely offset the effect of your spell on me, I’d need an entire gallon of adrenaline. That would kill me before the spell wore off."

"So what do you say?" Tony suddenly dragged the topic back again. "Think about it—if I were ten years younger, how many people I could make… Ah, no, how many people I could benefit."

Evenson thought, With your filthy thoughts, there’s no way I’m agreeing. I’m still abstaining over here. "Unfortunately, Ms. Carter was able to regain her youth because she already had the talent to learn sorcery. You do not."

"What exactly is that talent?" Tony still refused to give up. "Maybe I could use some scientific method, like targeted gene therapy, to give people that talent."

"Tony." Evenson said very sincerely, "I firmly believe your scientific methods can alter a person’s body, but can you alter their soul?"

Soul? Heh. Talk to me after I see a ghost.

Crack, crack.

"Where did this lightning come from?" Lightning had actually appeared outside the plane, leaving Natasha deeply puzzled, because they were flying above the clouds.

"Thor?!" Sif finally could not remain calm. The man she secretly loved had arrived.

Boom. The plane shook, and they could clearly feel something land on top of it.

Natasha had no choice but to lower the plane’s altitude and open the hatch, preparing to welcome the guest.

Not long after the hatch opened, Thor’s burly figure appeared there. Without a word, he knocked Tony—who had been about to inspect the situation—over with one hammer strike.

Then he grabbed Loki, swung his hammer, and flew off. What a fine display of Hero saves Loki.

"They’re all like this." Tony climbed up from the floor, so angry his lungs were about to burst. This was completely unreasonable. Were they all just picking on him today? Without another word, he shot out after them.

Captain America was obviously a step too slow, but he still put on a parachute and jumped out. Yet not long after leaving the plane, he spotted a figure beside him.

"Don’t think about leaving me behind this time." Carter was actually right beside him, but she was not wearing a parachute, making Captain America’s heart tremble.

But what difference was there between a Demon Hunter who fell to death and a salted fish? Huge demon wings appeared behind Carter’s back. With a powerful flap, she descended even faster than Captain America, and did not forget to wave at him along the way. "Bye-bye…"

"They all disappeared in the blink of an eye." Evenson had only just leisurely risen from his seat and walked to the hatch. Looking at Sif, who seemed somewhat lost, he said, "That’s too much, isn’t it? Forget about me, but they even ignored you. They didn’t even say goodbye."

"Thor… is very focused in battle." Even though she had been ignored, Sif still defended Thor.

Or maybe his brain simply did not have enough capacity to process that many things. Whatever. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder; let her have it. Still, there was something that needed to be dealt with right now.

Standing at the hatch and looking out into the deep night, Evenson took a step forward and reached out… pressing the red button beside him, and the plane hatch slowly closed. "Damn it, none of you know how to close the door behind you. I’m freezing to death."

"Aren’t you going down?" Natasha turned around and shouted.

"I can’t fly, and I can’t parachute. How am I supposed to get down?" Evenson said innocently. Then he glanced at Sif, who had also stayed behind. "Can you?"

"No." Sif shook her head. If she could, she would have gone down already.