Chapter Text
Tony had just begun to overcome the inertia of the giant turbine when he heard some concerning grunts and impacts over the coms. "Cap, you gonna be ready?" He really didn't fancy trying to get out of the engine without someone watching the restart, but the Helicarrier was already listing badly, and he had to get it done as soon as possible. "Rogers?"
More fight sounds, some background yelling, then just as the turbine was starting to make a racket, a whistling sound and static, followed by a ridiculously welcome voice. "I've got the panel Stark," Commander Rumlow said before a muffled yell of, "Non-lethal tactics, Rogers, they're mind controlled! Sorry, I'm here, what and when?"
The blades were picking up speed now, and the subsequent noise rising, so Tony took a chance and hoped it wouldn't end with an extended stay at the SGA. He focused on Rumlow's voice and the brief moments of empathic spillover he'd experienced and opened a connection.
After years of drawing blueprints in his head when he was bored, it was easy to visualize a perfect image of the control panel with the correct lever moving. Worryingly easy to send the image with "On my mark," spoken and thought. Only a little harder to focus it on his peak empathic 'frequency' that he knew he shared with the Commander and hope it wouldn't distract Rogers from his fight.
The image in his mind filled in with one strong hand on the lever and another holding a pistol ready to the side, and he felt the Sentinel's (his Sentinel's) calm alertness like an eye in the storm of fighting, screeching metal and flashing HUD warnings. "Ready."
"Mark!"
As soon as he had eyes on the completely unauthorized structure at the top of his tower and the distinctly force field like readings around it, Tony made the call that would piss Fury off.
"Sentinel/Guide Association emergency line, what is the nature of your distress?"
"This is Tony Stark, ranking empath of Stark Industries and Iron Man. I'm requesting an emergency Coordination in New York City for an imminent Class Four disaster." The images he was sending back to SHIELD would hopefully have Rumlow making a similar call, in case his reputation from assisting in natural disasters wasn't enough.
"Do you wish to lead the Coordination?"
He saw the unwelcome guest in his penthouse and what he was holding. "No, I'll be shielding against a potential empathic threat. Just begin evacuation and below ground sheltering starting in Manhattan, get more details from the Senior Sentinel of SHIELD if he's not already on the line."
He cut the call and landed in front of the disassembly rig. "Keep focusing on speeding out the Mark VII, Jay, but then knock out the dents and see if you can get this one up remotely."
"I will do my utmost Sir, but the Mark VII will not be able to deploy for at least ten minutes, perhaps you could delay your conversation?"
"Sorry, Buddy, but I don't think I'm gonna get another chance." Loki's actions and what little empathic aura he had been able to pick up were just too much of a puzzle to not try one more shot at communication.
At least that was what he thought until the would be god turned and focused on him. Despite his shielding, despite even his incredibly low receptive abilities, the pure sadistic malice that Loki projected almost staggered him. Or was it the Scepter itself? On the helicarrier, it had only given off low level annoyance, easily ignored once they identified it as an outside effect. This was something else entirely.
Tony talked mostly on autopilot, remembering to offer a drink so that he could get the homing bracelets but otherwise spinning dramatic nonsense as he desperately tried to understand what he was feeling without being overwhelmed by it. He might have quoted Les Miserables and was possibly partway through Bill Pullman's speech in Independence Day when Loki cut him off.
"I think whatever forces your pathetic planet has gathered will be too busy fighting you." The Scepter tapped against his chest with a small tink on the arc reactor, and Tony thought he could almost see the assault surging from the glowing gem towards him.
…and then rebounding, not from his shields but some other effect he couldn't sense, only observe the results of. He distantly heard Loki comment, "That usually works," but was more interested in the fact that both the gem's glow and the malice beating on his shields had temporarily stopped, as if the failure had forced everything to reboot.
"Now would be good, JARVIS!" And with glorious timing, the Mark VII zipped up out of the penthouse elevator shaft and hurtled towards them. Tony held his arms up then pulled them down sharply, causing the suit to clip Loki in the head before arcing around back to him. He used the distraction to yank the staff from hands already slightly lax with confusion and hurled it like a javelin out the doors onto the balcony.
"You impudent ant!" But Loki's anger was back to his post Stuttgart levels and the shove he gave before heading out to retrieve his weapon only knocked Tony into the now open suit.
"Fire ant, maybe." He smashed out one of his own windows to come onto the balcony from the side. "With range." Two quick repulsor shots knocked the Scepter over the edge, and he blasted Loki back before diving after it.
The battle was a tide of incoming chaos, held in check by surprisingly well coordinated layers of organization. On the ground, Captain America and several SHIELD sentinels had linked smoothly into the empathic network that the New York SGA had established, and were picking off any Chitauri nearing ground level as they protected civilians and emergency workers from debris.
Above them, Thor, Hulk and Iron Man took down the flying leviathans and swatted the Chitauri on their sky sleds, with cover fire from SHIELD agents, police snipers and at least one frighteningly well armed civilian. An aerial perimeter was being held by three quinjets, two Air Force planes that probably weren't officially authorized and a slightly translucent WWI era biplane that Tony refused to think about right then. (The spectral anti-aircraft fire that took out anything that slipped the perimeter heading towards Brooklyn was also a solid "no.")
On top of Stark Tower, Loki's minions had been contained and several SHIELD guides were working to bring Dr Selvig to a state where he could tell them how to get past the force field. Commander Rumlow was up there as well, using the perspective to lead the Coordination and guarding the Glowstick of Destiny.
Loki had not made an appearance in the battle, and with the very small amount of his attention not taken up by fighting, tracking the trajectories of large debris to warn the ground based fighters and trying to be part of the Coordination without falling into Rumlow's soul or some other romance novel dreck, Tony wondered how voluntary the alien prince's part in all this really was. He also spared a tiny bit of his mind to wonder just how long the queue on the other side of this portal was.
"Selvig says there's a fail safe switch and that Loki's scepter should be able to bypass the force field and activate it. We're rigging a way to use it without touching it now." The Commander's voice over the coms was like a light at the end of the tunnel.
"Stark!" Which made Fury's desperate call about the WSC's nuke the oncoming train.