With Loki stunned, Mirio gave the Asgardian his strongest punch across the face…

Loki was lifted from his feet and shot against a wall…

Natasha rolled and grabbed Loki's Sceptre from the ground, pointing it in Loki's general direction, charging for a bit before sending a blast of energy…

Mirio dashed out of the way as the beam of energy impacted Loki in the chest…

---BOOM---

But the power of the scepter was beyond what Natasha could handle, and she was tossed into the air by a pulse of energy expelled from the scepter…

Mirio dashed forward, using the wall as leverage to leap into the air, catching and cradling Natasha into his arms, taking the brunt of the impact with the ground when they landed…

Of course, Natasha didn't need the help, but she did appreciate the fact that Mirio saved her a couple bruises…

Mirio and Natasha rolled on the ground, dispersing the momentum of their fall…

Using this time, Loki recovered and hopped to his feet, expecting another attack from Natasha and Mirio but when he glanced in their direction, they were both gone…

Natasha and Mirio didn't care to continue the fight… their mission was to get to Stark Tower and Stark Tower was less than a half-mile away…

How close are we?

Steve's voice echoed over the coms, wanting a status update…

"We're here!" Natasha replied, grabbing Mirio by the arm as she took aim at a Chitauri Whale circling around Stark Tower like a Guard Dog…

Natasha's wrist shot a retractable cable that attached itself to the tail-end of the Chitauri Whale and the device pulled both her and Mirio into the air…

Mirio enjoyed their abrupt rising, noting how much faster it was than the elevator…

Still, just as Mirio and Natasha were about to be high enough to set foot on the balcony of Stark's Tower, The Hulk leaped from a nearby building and crashed into the Chitauri Whale…

With incredible power that left Mirio appalled, the Hulk yanked the entire Chitauri Whale out of the air…

Natasha quickly released her hold on the retractable cable, acutely aware they wouldn't make it to the balcony like that…

They would have to settle for a lower floor, but Mirio had other ideas…

Using the instant they were frozen in the air before their fall, Mirio pushed himself upwards using Natasha's body as a foothold and barely managed to cling to the balcony's edge…

On instinct, Natasha grabbed onto Mirio's legs, already adapting to the situation…

"Ugh… Hurry…" Mirio urged, hoping Natasha would climb, using his body as a foothold, and she did…

Natasha quickly used Mirio to climb onto the balcony, and then she used her strength to pull him up as well…

However, just as Mirio was about to make it onto the balcony, he slipped and Natasha quickly leveraged the balcony to force him up, but this caused them to roll…

Mirio hugged Natasha as they rolled to the center of the balcony, but the roll left them in a very awkward situation…

When they stopped rolling, Natasha found herself straddling Mirio in the cowgirl position…

"This is awkward…" Mirio scratched the back of his head "It was only yesterday that I wanted to ask Christine to marry me…"

"Did she say no?" Natasha questioned, quirking her brows…

Mirio sighed "She didn't have to… she just got a new boyfriend…"

"Well…" Natasha shrugged, patting Mirio's chest twice "She is missing out…"

Mirio was confused "How do you know?"

Natasha's eyes drifted to where her legs wrapped around Mirio's waist "Trust me… I know…" She replied with a wink, and quickly stood on her feet, pulling Mirio up as well…

------------------

STEVE RODGERS (CAPTAIN AMERICA)

Fighting on the ground for thirty minutes without rest had forced Steve into a defensive battle…

He was being pushed back by the Chitauri one step at a time…

Still, he held strong and destroyed the Chitauri as they came…

Using his enhanced senses, Steve could hear the Chitauri forcing people inside a building…

He dashed atop cars and with a grand leap, he soared twenty feet into the air, crashing through the window of a nearby building…

The first thing he noticed was the three Chitauri Elites aiming their weapons at the crowd gathered below…

Steve chucked his shield at the furthest enemy, while he slid across the floor and literally kicked the feet off the second Chitauri Elite…

The Third Chitauri Elite activated a bomb, but didn't have the opportunity to toss it…

Steve's shield returned, and he jammed it into the chest of the Third Chitauri Elite, but the bomb had already been activated…

Steve quickly covered the bomb with his shield…

There was the muffle of an explosion and Steve was tossed through the window, finding comfort in the fact that a roadside tent broke his landing instead of the ground…

And, of course, like always, Steve's shield landed next to him…

A couple seconds of unconsciousness passed, and Steve was back on his feet, shield in hand, staring at all the destruction still happening around…

Even as the Avengers fought and took down thousands of Chitauri, there were plenty more hiding behind the veil of the portal in the skies…

It was time for someone to make the difficult decision... and Steve knew the responsibility ultimately fell to him…

"Things are getting bad down here…" Steve sighed and slumped his shoulders "Kid, this may not be your fight, but we need you to put an end to this…"

---------------------

Mirio and Natasha were walking through Tony's loft atop Stark Tower, making their way to the stairs…

Mirio heard Steve's transmission and knew it was time to close the portal…

"My teacher once told me that meddling where you don't technically have to is the essence of being a hero…" Mirio replied, and everyone on the coms' channel shared a moment of silence…

For an instant… a brief instant… Mirio was even more heroic than Steve…

Good Luck – Transmissions of encouragement from everyone came immediately after Mirio's statement…

---------------------

NICHOLAS J. FURY (HELICARRIER MEETING ROOM)

Fury stood and argued with the Board that Governed SHIELD for upwards of thirty minutes with no success…

"You were given an order, Director…"

"Given it's a stupid ass order, I have chosen to ignore it!" Fury's reply was decisive, not caring for the opinions of his superiors…

"We cannot contain this Alien threat…"

"I would like to know that my team has failed before I bomb the island of Manhattan!" Fury replied, flicking off the holograms before someone else could say something stupid…

---------------------

Mirio and Natasha attempted to dash up the stairs to get to the device, but like the pain in the ass he was, Loki came crashing through the window at the last minute…

Loki immediately expelled green magical energy that tossed Mirio and Natasha into Stark's counter… and if it was made by Stark, it was sturdy as fuck!

Instead of stopping to conserve energy, Loki expelled his magical energy consistently, forcing Mirio and Natasha to remain against the counter…

Of course, Loki was doing this because he realized Mirio could not permeate through Magic…

"I have learned my lesson…" Loki bragged, slowly making his way towards the pinned Mirio and Natasha "I learned not to give you mortals a chance to retaliate…"

"Afraid to fight us on an equal level?" Natasha provoked, hoping to elicit a slipup from the prideful God of Mischief…

Loki waved his hands and knives appeared "I am already above you… there is no need to prove it…"

"Are you sure you're not afraid?" Mirio tried to provoke Loki as well, but The God of Mischief seemed above all nonsense…

"Your might is feeble compared to mine…" Loki stated as if a decree by the Heavens…

"We are weaker than you…" Natasha chimed, a gentle smile on her face "But he isn't…"

"Who?" Loki questioned, but the moment he turned around to glance through the windows, it was too late…

Hulk leaped through the window and landed next to Loki…

Grabbing the God of Mischief by his feet, Hulk slammed Loki back and forth into the ground five times…

Each time causing the entire upper levels of Stark Tower to shake…

With a final smack that buried Loki in Stark's marble floor, Hulk walked onto the balcony like he didn't even break a sweat…

"PUNY GOD!" The Green Monstrosity snorted in disdain…

Mirio and Natasha ignored Loki and headed up the stairs…

Halfway up the stairs, Mirio and Natasha heard the painful whining of The God of Mischief…

"Is he even alive?" Mirio questioned, grimacing at the thought of what happened to Loki earlier…

The God of Mischief deserved it, but Hulk was just too frightening…

Natasha shrugged in response "I heard Asgardians are tough…"

A couple of seconds later, Mirio and Natasha arrived on the roof and they could immediately feel the change in the atmospheric pressure…

It was like everything became electrified the moment they stepped on the roof… they could literally feel the energy saturating the air…

Natasha stepped ahead to investigate the device, but Mirio toppled over and coughed a couple mouthfuls of blood…

The tingle in his spine was pulsing like a heartbeat, and each pulse brought with it the sense of acute heart failure…

"You okay?" Natasha asked, rushing to Mirio's side…

"I think he needs help more than I do…" Mirio pointed at Professor Selvig who was passed out at the side…

Natasha walked over to Professor Selvig, waking the man after confirming he was no longer brainwashed by Loki…

"Loki's Sceptre…" Professor Selvig groaned the moment he woke up…

"What?"

"Loki's scepter can disrupt the portal…" Professor Selvig explained…

Mirio stood in front of the tesseract and ran his hand over the protective shield of energy covering it…

"Loki didn't have his scepter when he attacked us downstairs…" Natasha noted, turning to Mirio for confirmation…

"I don't know who the old man is… but…" Mirio frowned and pondered a bit "If he was brainwashed by Loki, then Loki probably knows what he knows and hid the scepter just in case…"

"Loki works with illusions…"

"So?"

Natasha shrugged "Maybe now that he is unconscious, the illusions fade and his scepter was in his hands the entire time?"

Mirio shrugged, knowing it was not likely but not stopping Natasha from grasping at the only straws they were offered…

Natasha carried Professor Selvig down the stairs in search of Loki's scepter…

With Natasha gone, Mirio staggered a bit on his feet…

Just being near the tesseract was preventing him from permeating so there was no way he could permeate through the barrier protecting the device without pushing his quirk to its limits…

"Heewwww…." Mirio took a deep breath and planted his legs into the ground, waiting for the signal he knew would come at any moment…