Harmonic Vengeance

Rainbow Dash had allowed Loki to taunt her for ages, mocking her, telling her she'd never make it home. Every minute he pushed her farther was a minute the rest of the team had to make it to New York. But finally, she snapped. Enough was enough.

She moved out from behind the bar, nearly snarling. "All right, listen, pal. If you know who I am, then you should know I'm the embodiment of loyalty."

Loki examined his fingernails casually. "It might have been mentioned, yes."

"Then you should know that no matter what, even if I'm stuck here my entire life, even if I start to make friends and a life here, I will never stop trying to get back. I will never, ever stop fighting tooth and nail for my friends, and for my home. You got that?"

She was practically on top of him now, but he only smiled smugly. "Oh, I very much doubt that."

She opened her mouth to retort when a flicker of gold caught her eye in the edge of her vision. The scepter!

By the time she'd realized what was happening, it was too late to do anything. Time seemed to be moving slowly, as the scepter drifted towards her at an agonizingly slow pace, but it was still happening quickly at the same time and she couldn't do anything and-

Clink.

The reactor. Tony had gotten so used to it that Rainbow, with his memories, hadn't thought about it once the whole time she'd been him.

Clink. Clink.

Loki scowled. Wow. First show of emotion I've seen out of the guy. Probably not a good thing, though.

She shrugged. "Product malfunctions, huh? It's a normal part of the business world, don't sweat it." A small part of her noted how much she sounded like Tony. She was getting better about that.

But in her anger, she'd underestimated him. His human appearance made her forget that he was one of a race of strong and nearly immortal aliens. Now, as she was lifted with ease off the ground, she realized her mistake in goading him. "Uh, Jarvis? Could you deploy the new suit? And hurry?"

Then Loki threw her out the window.

"JARVIIIIIS!"

She heard the loud WHOOSH of the suit flying through the air and the metallic whirs as it scanned her armband, but the ground was getting closer. Hurry hurry hurry...

It hurried. The familiar clicks of the suit wrapping itself around her rang out, sounding loud in her ears. As she spread her hands to catch herself, just feet above the ground, she mentally thanked Celestia that Tony had seriously upped the speed that the new suit came onto him.

Loki stepped out onto the landing platform. Her fists clenched, ready to fight-

-and a bolt of lightning flickered across the sky as a figure in a red cape slammed into him, knocking him to the floor.

Her face broke out in a huge grin of relief. He's not dead after all! And if that's the case... maybe Banner's not dead either? She only allowed the hope to fill her for a moment, however. No use setting up for disappointment. And now that Thor was handling her job of distracting Loki, she could take a few minutes, see how the evacuation was going, check on the tesseract again. It almost sounded relaxing, after that mess on Tony's tower.

She streaked into the air, gaining altitude until she was near the level of the top of the tower. The entire city was spread out under her--and she didn't like what she was seeing. "Jarvis? This evacuation isn't going to work. We'll need to..." She thought for a moment. "We need to get the people closest to the tower out first. I think they'll have to go on foot, this traffic won't clear up any time soon. If we hurry, we might get several blocks. Then we'll just have to try to contain whatever the heck happens here to as much space as that gives us. Send the message to, I don't know, the police? Who's in charge of evacuations here, anyway?"

"Technically, the mayor, but the police are overseeing the evacuation and are more likely to be able to change it on such short notice. Message sent."

She nodded and turned towards the tesseract, but before she could move, Jarvis sounded in her ear again. "You aren't Tony, are you?"

Uh-oh. The suit had anti-theft devices that would kill her easily if she made the wrong move. "What do you mean?" she asked, trying to stay calm.

"Your behavior's been a little odd all day. Then, when you were talking with Loki, he called you 'Rainbow Dash', and both of you referred to this not being your home. You said 'heck' instead of anything stronger. And you asked 'who's in charge of evacuations here', as if it was somewhere other than where you're from. Yet you knew where to find the wristband, you look like Tony, and even your genetic makeup is identical to his. In fact, your fingerprints are the same, and even identical twins have different fingerprints. So, what's going on?"

Excuses and explanations flashed through her mind, each less plausible than the last. She swallowed hard. "Um, kind of Tony. Kind of not."

"Explain."

How could a voice belonging to a literal robot send such chills down her spine? "I'm not completely sure what happened. I have Tony's memories, but I'm not Tony. My name, like Loki said, is Rainbow Dash, and somehow I'm in Tony's head, and he's probably in mine, which is almost certainly working out extremely poorly and I'd very much like to get back home and switched back, but this world is in a bit of a crisis and even though it's not my home I feel like I should do something, so can we focus on saving the world and work out the details later?"

There was a long pause. Finally Jarvis asked, "Did you breathe at all during that sentence?"

"Nope. Does this mean we're good?"

"For now. I hope you can fight as well as Tony can."

"Me too."

Rarity sighed with relief as New York came into sight. Piloting the Quinjet was certainly a thrill, and she had all Natasha's flying knowledge, but it would be a relief to get her feet on solid ground again.

A beam of brilliant blue light shot from the roof of Stark Towers, illuminating the sky. "Looks like we're out of time," she murmured. This was about to get tricky.

"We've got a perimeter for a few blocks," Tony called through her comms. "I'm not sure exactly how far, but we've got to keep these guys away from civilians."

Black dots poured from the portal opening in the sky. As she grew closer, two smaller red dots came into view, taking down many of the black things. Closer still, and they began to resolve into strange shapes, somewhat like motorcycles. She took a deep breath, summoned all Natasha's knowledge and skill, and started gunning them down with the gun on the bottom of the jet. It didn't last for long, though; purple blasts ripped through the hull and wings, and the plane faltered. She managed to bring it to a decent landing, but there was significant turbulence, and it skidded on the ground, making a terrible shrieking noise.

She, Clint, and Steve spilled from the plane, all feeling relieved to be back on the ground. Tony and Thor were spiraling around the stream of motorcycle-things, driving them towards the ground to meet the others. Clint seemed to be borderline panicking. Rarity couldn't blame him; he and Natasha had both seen many things, but whatever was pouring from the portal was weirder than most. Still, he got a good vantage point on a roof and started shooting, felling plenty of motorcycle-things. Steve and Rarity didn't have to wait long to get a look at the things themselves; they were being funneled towards them at a mildly alarming rate. As they swooped down, Rarity finally got a look at what they were fighting and desperately wished for her fainting couch.

Aliens.

There are ALIENS in the CITY and it's MY JOB to deal with them because I'm Natasha and WHAT IN EQUESTRIA AM I GOING TO DO?

And then the battle was joined.