"What was going on?"
The sharp demand rang out. Clutching the Mind Scepter, Loki shouted himself hoarse, utterly stripped of the calm, aristocratic poise he had shown before. He looked more like a shrew than a nobleman.
An hour earlier, with Hydra and Hawkeye Barton working together, Loki had been successfully rescued from the Sky Carrier. They had also thrown S.H.I.E.L.D. into massive chaos. Hulk and Thor had come to blows, nearly blasting the already unstable vessel to pieces.
Later, one had leaped from the ship and vanished without a trace, while the other had been thrown into the circular cell that had held Loki, sent plummeting freely from nine thousand meters in the air. Nick Fury was surely having a headache over how to clean up the mess.
The world's strongest team of Superheroes had voluntarily collapsed and fallen apart in no time at all.
That was precisely what Loki had wanted. By causing trouble and keeping S.H.I.E.L.D. too occupied to look after itself, he could free up his hands to activate the Tesseract and welcome the vast Chitauri army.
But when Loki regained his freedom and prepared to carry out the final step of his plan, Hawkeye Barton—whose mind he had controlled and turned into a loyal dog—told him that the Tesseract had vanished together with Dr. Selvig.
The news struck like a bolt from the blue, leaving Loki utterly dumbfounded.
"Useless trash! My grand plan..."
The Asgardian Prince was so furious that he could barely speak. He had carefully orchestrated the whole performance: seize the Tesseract, willingly walk into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s trap and become its prisoner, toy with and divide the Avengers. All that remained was to open a portal spanning the stars, and he would receive flowers and applause as he was crowned the sole ruler of