The Last Shifter (a Loki romance)

Chapter 105

The others slowly drifted into the kitchen throughout the course of the next couple hours. Apparently, they had been all around the country the past couple days raiding HYDRA bases, but had turned up with nothing.

Not everyone had said hi when they came in, Romanoff and Barton had only nodded at me as a sign of acknowledgement and respect. Bruce was polite and Stark was crass, and Thor was last to arrive. When the elevator dinged this time, I didn't turn around to see who it was, but he seemed to spot me right away.

"Arista." I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath before I twisted to face him. It was odd seeing him in mortal clothes with Mjolnir in hand.

"Hello, Thor."

"How are you?"

"As good as possible given the situation."

"Loki's dead, so what?" Stark's mouth as half-full, "Good riddance." I bit my lip and focused my eyes on a spot on the floor. True, his words were false, but they still hurt. Thor growled and Steve placed a hand on my shoulder.

"Stark, did I not warn you to mind your words around my sister?"

"Uhh, yeah, but that doesn't mean I can't state facts." Thunder rumbled loudly far ahead and I ground my jaw as hard as I could to keep from snapping back.

"Tony, Thor, stop." Steve cut in, "Save it for the real enemies."

"Where are you on locating the scepter?" Steve sighed.

"It's essentially a shell game. We know HYDRA has it, but we don't know where."

"And we don't know where all their facilities are either." Romanoff piped up, "So just because we've raided all the bases we know of in the US doesn't mean it's not in some secret base somewhere."

"I'm not sure we should be indiscriminately going from base to base because that'll take too long. We need to figure out who would be qualified and able to produce results with it, we can't assume HYDRA is just guarding it. If I know them, and I do, they're trying to figure out a way to make weapons with it."

"Just like they did with the Tesseract."

"Precisely."

"But we can't stop hitting bases, it'll make it look like we've given up and HYDRA as a whole must be defeated."

"I know, but preferably before they destroy the world with the scepter. So let's split up the work. Stark, Steve, and Thor will keep hitting bases while the rest of us go through records."

"With all due respect," Barton cut in, "You're in no position to be giving orders and you're powerful enough to be going on missions on your own." Thor began to start to say something, but I cut him off.

"I don't want the public to know I'm back just yet, according to Steve, the media frenzy is only now beginning to settle and I'm sure the government would leap at the chance to arrest me or capture me and extract information. You have all been doing just fine on your own, I'm here to help in whatever ways I can."

"Without risking your own hide. And you still shouldn't be giving orders." Thor tried to speak up again, but this time Steve beat him to it.

"Actually, Arista has every right to be giving orders. Fury made us a private organization under a few conditions, yes?" Barton nodded, "Well one of those conditions was that Arista could return whenever she pleased and take up a leadership position with me."

"You sure that's a good idea? You two weren't exactly amicable before the battle."

"We resolved our differences. It'll be just like old times."