Are You Still Doing Finance?

"How much longer until the Tesseract is fully activated and the wormhole opens?"

Loki stared directly at the blue cube resting amid the complex equipment not far away.

At this moment, he had returned to the secret base Hawkeye had established in the United States, making final preparations for the coming full-scale invasion.

Since Hawkeye had once been a senior S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, he understood the thinking patterns and tactical strategies of Nick Fury and the organization's other higher-ups extremely well. He had easily evaded their searches and pursuit.

Not only that, the deadshot Sharpshooter had secretly contacted many of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s enemies.

By promising to pay them with the Ceramite-powered armor and energy weapons taken from the Chitauri after the fact, he had obtained a great deal of valuable intelligence. He then made targeted deployments, allowing the alien army he had brought to avoid strong points and strike weak ones, causing the greatest possible chaos.

In truth, if not for Hawkeye, such an outstanding "traitor" commander, the Chitauri, with their rigid and inflexible combat style, would never have thought to split up for guerrilla warfare and sabotage raids, constantly maneuvering to draw out their opponents before launching unexpected counterattacks to eliminate their living forces.

They would only have clashed head-on with Earth's defenders in major cities, then been wiped out by a sudden nuclear missile.

It was precisely because of this that S.H.I.E.L.D. could not concentrate all its power on dealing with Loki. It had to devote much of its attention to coordinating various forces and helping smaller countries with little military power fend off the alien invasion.

Even the Helicarrier and the first Avengers had no choice but to race around the world putting out fires.

General Ross had even deployed the Astartes, who were still in training, into the