Harmonic Vengeance

Rainbow Dash glanced through the portfolio Tony had been given at the start of the mission. A figure jumped out at her, and she examined it for a moment, then ran some numbers through a calculator.

She stared at the figure, then grabbed a pencil and pad of paper and started running through the helicarrier, still punching in numbers. She had to talk to Banner about this, right away!

"He's going to do it today," Hawkeye announced softly.

"Any idea where?" Captain America asked urgently.

"N-no, he didn't tell me that--I'm sorry!"

"It's all right, no need to fret," Steve reassured.

Hawkeye mumbled something incomprehensible as Tony ran in, holding a calculator in his teeth and scribbling down numbers in a notebook. He dropped the calculator into his hand and asked, "Where's Banner? I need to talk to him!"

"Bruce FELL OUT OF THE PLANE!"

Tony turned pale. "He what? No, he- he can't've-"

"Well, he did!" Steve snapped.

Natasha spoke up. "What did you need Banner for?"

"I was looking at the energy required to activate the tesseract, and- where's Thor?"

"Thor fell out of the plane too," Steve sighed.

"What, seriously?" Tony looked seriously upset now. "Anyone else? Maybe Coulson fell out of the plane? Director Fury? Barton?"

"I'm right here, Tony."

Steve put his head in his hands. "Nobody else fell off, but Coulson got stabbed."

Tony threw up his hands and screamed. Then he took a few deep breaths. "Okay. Do we know for sure Thor and Banner are dead? If anyone's going to survive a 30,000-foot fall, it's the Hulk, and if anyone else is, it's an Asgardian like Thor, especially one that can fly, also like Thor."

"If anyone can do it, it would be one of them," Natasha said. "That doesn't mean someone, even them, definitely can."

"Thor was dropped inside a glass cage. There was no way for him to fly," Steve added.

"NOBODY IS DYING ON MY WATCH!" Tony shouted, slamming his hands on the table. Everyone flinched, especially Clint.

Natasha wisely changed the subject. "What were you saying about the tesseract? That could be valuable information for planning out next move. Agent Barton says Loki will strike today, so we need to discover where he'll be, and soon. We can try to locate the rest of the team later."

Tony sighed. "All right. Well, in order to activate the tesseract to create, Loki would require a huge amount of energy. He'd need something that produces more than twice the amount a whole city takes! Maybe if he sucked all the power from a really, really big one, like New York or Hong Kong or, I don't know, Tokyo, it could be enough, barely. But stealing all the power from a whole city would be nearly impossible! He just doesn't have the energy, and there's no way he can get to it as quickly as he has. He can't possibly be attacking today!"

"So," Natasha interjected, "he'd need something like... a giant arc reactor?"

"Exactly!" Tony gestured towards her. "And where on earth is he going to get something like- Oh. Oh shoot. Everyone suit up, we leave in five." He turned and ran out of the room again, this time shouting, "Director Fury!"

"What are you doing?" Steve called after him.

"Evacuating New York! I'm not going to let anyone get caught in the crossfire."

Natasha tilted her head. "Guess he's really serious about that 'nobody is dying on my watch' thing."

"You bet I am!" his voice called from the hallway, his footfalls rapidly diminishing.