Chapter Text
The situation was far beyond what Fury was prepared for. Whoever had come through the portal had killed six trained SHIELD agents with ease, and the sickly blue glow of his spear against Agent Barton's chest suggested the much more sinister possibility of magic.
Fury crouched by the Tesseract, its carrying case open at his feet, but he couldn't draw his eyes away from the glazed black of Agent Barton's eyes as they faded to a glowing blue, the same color as the gem at the tip of the stranger's spear. Agent Barton tucked his outstretched gun back into its holder, a move against all SHIELD training, and definitely not one he would have made of his own volition. It appeared to be textbook signs of mind control, and Fury forced himself to turn back to the Tesseract.
The only person he knew who was even remotely equipped to handle mind control was Carol Danvers, and she was several light-years away, at a minimum. He had to grab the Tesseract before the stranger could claim it for himself, and get out of here.
Fury rested the tips of his gloved fingers on the shiny blue surface, yanking the Tesseract out of its bundle of wires—
And the room bathed itself in the same blue glow. It flooded every corner as the Tesseract flared hot in his hand, forcing him to drop it. As before, the blue lights curled towards the ceiling into a bubbling ball of power, rising like smoke from six bodies deposited on the floor.
Nightwing picked himself up from the floor with a groan, settling into his defensive stance as he glanced around his new surroundings. He'd been having a perfectly lovely, perfectly normal night with his siblings fooling around in Gotham's largely unexplored (and likely enchanted) cave system, so naturally something had to come fuck it up.
That something being the glowing blue light that had slammed him to the ground in a room that looked like it belonged in a spy movie.
Red Hood pulled himself to his feet next to him, guns already out. It only took a few glances for them to settle into defensive stance #15, which meant Nightwing and Hood took the front point, tucking Robin behind them while Spoiler and Red Robin took the sides. Black Bat was gifted the back, mostly so she could slip into the shadows and act as their invisible hand.
They'd been teleported to a large, dark hall. The floor and walls were likely steel, and several rows of desks sat at the far end of the room, all empty. A runway of sorts led to a holding stand, with a man in typical spy black and a pirate eyepatch crouched next to it, holding a glowing blue cube that was probably the source of all of Dick's problems.
The pirate — Dick was going to call him that until he found out his actual name — quickly deposited the cube in some sort of carrying case, and Dick flicked his hand towards Black Bat, and she slunk off into the shadows. If that cube was actually what had brought them here, then they did not want to let it out of their sight.
"Well," drawled one of the other figures in the room, "Isn't this curious? It seems the stone has a mind of its own." Dick moved his attention to him. He wore some sort of leather and metal armor, done in some style that Dick didn't recognize. It looked like a superhero's costume, if superheroes were into pretentious cloaks and staffs with glowing blue stones that set off his instincts. The man himself had deep bags under his eyes, which were — rather creepily — the exact same shade as his staff.
There were several other men around him: a man with guns down his legs (definitely a government agent), another man in a suit (still government), and a man in a lab coat (scientist, oh joy). All of them stood back and watched, so they were unlikely to be the main players here.
"Where are we?" Nightwing asked carefully, both to gauge their responses and for the actual information itself. "Who are you?" He filed carefully into his mind that the staff guy had implied the stone had brought them here of its own will, rather than a summoning — irritating, summonings were usually easy to reverse.
The pirate grabbed the handle of the case, standing up. He moved a step closer to the exit, which appeared to be behind Dick. He didn't say anything though, merely watching them calculatingly, so Nightwing returned his gaze to the staff guy, knowing Robin would keep his eyes on the secondary threat.
"I am Loki of Asgard," the staff guy purred. It was a rather concerning tone, if Dick was being honest — smug in a rather ugly way. It very much sounded like Lex Luthor in a good mood, and classified him quickly under threat. Not to mention that Dick recognized that name and place, and while experience with Wonder Woman and Donna had taught him mythology often had its falsehoods, most stories carried a general grain of truth. And Loki was not a benevolent character. "As for where you have been brought, this is Midgard. Who are you?"
"Midgard is Earth," Red Robin muttered softly into the comms, carefully touching his ear in order to turn up the sensitivity on his microphone. They'd all been trained to speak quietly enough that the rest of the room wouldn't hear it, but the microphones usually needed a little adjusting. "And unless the Norse gods suddenly exist, we've probably dimension hopped. I have my gauntlet running basic scanning."
Nightwing twitched, a moment Red Robin would recognize as a nod of understanding.
"Loki? Brother of Thor?" the doctor asked. He sounded almost familiar with Thor, given his immediate reaction.
"Loki is Odin's brother in mythology," Jason muttered, and Nightwing added it into his tally of the doctor likely knowing an insider. That would explain why he's in this room at least, if Dick could ever get a better sense of where here was.
Loki turned sharply toward the doctor, a snarl set suddenly into his features. It darkened the affability he'd directed at the Bats just a moment earlier, and Red Robin's hand pressed quickly into Nightwing's back, a small sign he'd seen the same warning.
"I'm Nightwing," Dick offered, carefully directing both Loki and the pirate's attention back towards them before the tension in the room grew to violence. "This is Red Hood, Red Robin, Spoiler, and Robin." He carefully failed to introduce Black Bat, as she had now crept halfway around the room and none of them had noticed her yet. "We're from Gotham, on Earth 4172," he continued. The pirate frowned, but no one else in the room recognized the designation code or their names, which meant wherever they'd landed had likely never dealt with multiversal travel before.
"I am Agent Fury of SHIELD, of the United States of America," the pirate informed them, confirming Nightwing's guess about this being a government base. That would also make Loki the likely intruder, probably using the cube to bring himself here? To Loki, Fury added, "And we have no quarrel with your people."
Loki scoffed dismissively. "An ant has no quarrel with a boot."
Welp, Dick was like 80% sure he knew what was going on now. Loki's motivations were rather unknown, but either Loki or the entire race had decided Earth was their new fun playground, especially if this world didn't have a Justice League or Justice League-equivalent to protect it.
Fury titled his head, clearly prying Loki for information. "Are you planning to step on us?" Dick was happy to play along. Any information was important: just because Fury was government didn't make him trustworthy — rather the opposite in Dick's humble experience.
"I come with glad tidings," Loki began softly, spreading his arms magnanimously. "Of a world made free." Okay, yep, Dick could swear he'd heard those exact words before. Jesus Christ, someone start getting villains some classes in creativity already! This was the whole 'the world will be free when I rule it' shtick again.
"Free from what?" Fury pressed, clearly not as familiar with the archetype, even if he clearly also recognized where this was going.
"Freedom. Freedom is life's greatest lie." Loki touched his scepter to the doctor's chest, and blue magic rolled through him. The doctor's back automatically straightened as his eyes started to glow blue, exactly like the other two agents and Loki's own. "Once you accept that, in your heart, you will know peace."
Jason's guns shifted, moving from where they'd been dropped down at his sides to directly at Loki, a low growl already creeping through his vocal modulator. Out of everyone in the family, Jay hated mind control most, not that Dick could blame him after the Lazarus Pit.
"Wait." Dick pressed his shoulder into Jason's. "We don't know what else he can do with that."
Loki hardly seemed to notice, smiling smugly at the doctor, before turning towards them to offer a benign smile that oozed Lex Luthor's slimy charisma. "Join me," he offered, sweeping an arm out. "Together we could bring harmony to this planet. I'm sure you will understand, if the Tesseract itself has chosen you as special."
Dick filed the special bit away. It was the second time Loki had said something along those veins, so he was clearly under the influence that some powerful object had chosen them, likely, if he was anything like Lex Luthor, as his god-given helpers.
"What's the Tesseract?" Jason growled, his firing finger twitching at the recruitment speech all of them had heard a hundred and fifty times. Seriously, even Deathstroke had better arguments than Loki's at this point.
Loki smiled thinly. "Why, the Tesseract did, of course." He gestured to the case Agent Fury held. "If you would be so kind as to show our guests their method of transportation."
Fury did not. He took another careful step back, towards Nightwing and away from the edge of the room. Dick signalled Black Bat to circle towards Loki for a quick takedown if necessary — Fury couldn't leave the room without passing by them and Spoiler had already begun edging into his path.
Dick took a couple steps forward, Jason at ready next to him as always, leaving Tim and Damian to protect each other asTim glanced up at the glowing ball of very dangerous looking power above them. It was definitely the remnants of whatever had brought them here, and Dick wanted nothing to do with it, no siree.
"I can't say we're really comfortable with the idea of mind control," Nigthwing said carefully. He didn't want to immediately alienate Loki and start a fight while they were still completely unaware of his capabilities, but Dick couldn’t see a path out of this that didn't lead to them getting out of here without going into a fight blind. Trying to talk Loki down it was, then. "Why is this a goal you want to pursue?"
Loki scoffed, tossing his hair over his shoulder. He was rather unimpressed with the answer; his body language changed from open to holier-than-thou. "I should have known better than to expect a Midgardian to understand my aims. You will regret making an enemy of me." Wow, not a response to Dick's question. What an asshole.
Nightwing shrugged, absolutely unconcerned. Been there, done that. "I've heard that one before, I hate to break it to you. I haven't regretted it yet, either."
Loki's face was set into a scowl. It was a rather funny mixture of embarrassment and affronted fury, and Dick was very proud of himself.
"They're all the same," Red Robin mumbled under his breath, and Dick could hear Damian's exhausted sigh from here.
"Sir," one of the agents with blue eyes began. "Fury is stalling. This place is about to blow. He means to bury us." Mind controlled, then, as well, if the eyes didn't already give it away. Cass moved closer to him, and Dick agreed with her assessment that he would be the fastest to take down.
"Like the pharaohs of old," Fury replied dryly, still stalling. Dick shrugged. It wasn't the worst plan he'd ever heard. Villains loved to monologue, and Loki seemed to be the only current threat. The building collapsing would certainly contain him. (Hopefully.)
"He's right," the scientist added. "The portal is collapsing in on itself. We've got maybe two minutes before this goes critical." Two minutes was far less time than Dick had hoped for — it wasn't nearly enough time for them to attack Loki, let alone subdue him, and still get out of here safely.
"Well then," Loki said, and Nightwing leapt forward, escrima extended. Jason fired a shot directly at the less-interesting agent as Black Bat leapt at the one who had spoken earlier, knocking his gun out of his hand as he aimed at Fury.
Loki whirled towards Nightwing, hands extended, and a blue blast erupted from the sceptre. It sent him and Fury reeling backwards, nearly tumbling into one another. Spoiler and Hood's curses echoed through the comms as everyone behind him was flung into the walls.
The case containing the stone landed several feet away, and Loki strolled forward to pick it up as the rest of them struggled slowly to their feet. Red Robin and Robin were nowhere in sight, wisely having disappeared in the commotion, and the scientist and the more-interesting agent (Cass had disappeared again, good for her) limped to stand on either side of Loki as he strolled unimpeded to the door.
Nightwing rolled to his feet, winded but seemingly uninjured, but reached a hand for Fury instead of immediately leaping after Loki. Black Bat would have the best chance for a surprise attack and they still needed to get out of here. Fury was, unfortunately, currently their only ally from this world. Batman would be disappointed in them.
"We need to get out of here," Dick told Fury flatly. "Do you have a way out?"
Fury nodded, gripping Nightwing's hand as he rose to his feet. He seemed to have taken the blast worse than Dick had, given the way he curled around his ribs. He raised his walkie-talkie to his lips. "Hill. Do you copy? Barton's compromised."
The room began to spin, the blue of the portal almost glitching downwards and Dick stumbled against it, forcing himself towards the exit with Fury by his side. Jason and Spoiler quickly moved to flank them. Dick filed away both the names of Fury's contact and the mind-controlled agent. "They have the Tesseract! Shut them down!"
"We've run into help," Red Robin reported through the comms with a crackle. "Ran into a female agent, but Loki commandeered a car. Beginning chase now."
"We will deal with the alien," Dami reported cooly, sounding rather unsure despite his confident words.
"Your safety is first priority," Dick reminded both of them (as though those words meant anything to anyone in this family).
Fury looked at him, head tilted as they ran through the rooms, and Dick explained. "Red Robin and Robin are in pursuit of Loki, likely with your ally." He had no idea what Black Bat was up to, but that was Cassandra. She was either with them or stalking Loki and he wouldn't find out until much, much later.
Fury gave a sharp, decisive nod, sprinting upwards through the base. "I have a helicopter above; we can use that to follow Loki."
Dick nodded without hesitation, though he could hear Jason's quiet grumble about working with Feds.
Spoiler whooped as they rounded a corner and the helipad came into sight, and Dick suppressed a small grin. High-speed escapes were fun, if nerve wracking, and this was admittedly a bit closer to usual than Dick tried to cut things — though he was sure wherever Tim was, he felt right at home.
The helicopter lifted into the air. It clearly wasn't meant to carry four people, and Agent Fury kept his hand on his gun as the helicopter rose up. Beneath them, the government base began to crumble into a blue mist.
Jason whistled his appreciation, and Dick shook his head, tapping his earpiece. "Everyone okay?"
"We lost Loki," Tim reported glumly. "Car chase failed. We're buried under the rock, but okay. BB is with us too."
"Had fun," Black Bat reported, and Dick wasn't quite sure what she'd done and less sure he wanted to know.
The helicopter tilited, and Dick narrowed his eyes as a car sped along the road underneath them. He grabbed a birdarang from his pocket, slinging it at the vehicle's tires while Fury and the agents inside the car began shooting. Jason joined the fray, but the car seemed to have military level armor. Spoiler had apparently taken over the controls of the helicopter and begun piloting it. Dick grinned as one of his birdarangs scored a long scratch along one of the tires.
Loki raised his staff, eyes gleaming a violent blue, and another blast came directly at them, hitting the end of the helicopter despite Steph's best intentions. Fury launched himself out of it and Dick followed with the ease of someone who'd done this too many times, landing in a smooth roll on the ground. He considered launching himself wholesale at the vehicle, but this wasn't his world. The dramatics could wait.
The helicopter crashed nearby, and Nightwing ran his hands across Spoiler and Hood's shoulders, a quiet reassurance to himself that they'd all made it out alive.
"I'm okay," Hood muttered quietly, pressing his shoulder into Dick's. Dick let out a relieved breath even as he ran his hands over Spoiler's armor once more.
"Let me go," she hissed, so he pulled her closer, draping his arms across her chest as he turned to Fury.
Dick's mind had been running mostly on adrenaline and safety up until this point, but now that they're out and everyone's okay (even if Tim and Dami and Cass are stuck under the rubble and god does he not want to think about that) he needed to think up a plan. Fast.
Because why did they have to be thrown into a separate dimension that couldn't even be bothered to have a Justice League? Dick wanted to have fun with his siblings, not deal with interdimensional politics and convince some unknown government agency to trust them.
(And, honestly, Dick still only had the barest of grasps on the situation — like what was the deal with Asgard? Was Loki acting as an independent agent or were they at war with the entire plane? Was Asgard a plane or a place on Earth or another planet or what?)
"You must be Agent Fury, though I don't recognize your agency, SHIELD." Dick said slowly, the lenses of his mask narrowing purposefully. Steph stilled under his hug, shifting her weight subtly into a more defensive stance as Jason took point behind Dick. Unless either of them noticed something immediate, Dick would play the initial negotiator with Fury and Tim with whoever of Fury's people they'd joined.
"Yes," Fury responded. "You are Nightwing from Gotham. Such a place does not exist on this Earth."
Dick immediately grimaced, and he could feel Hood's pout. Any place without their beloved shithole was a sad one indeed. "I believe we're from an alternate Earth; it wouldn't be my first dimensional trip. Loki seemed to imply that the Tesseract — as he called the blue stone — summoned us here, though I am not familiar with it or its properties."
It's not phrased as a question, but Dick had been careful to extend the olive branch in such a way that Fury could choose how he wished to offer them help. They were both at a crossroads, because Nightwing knew nothing about what SHIELD did, but also had no other way to slip seamlessly into civilization, especially not with the chance that the Tesseract would be their only route home. SHIELD had no way to trust them but likely would want their expertise with dimensional travel, and, depending on the state of the world, help with capturing Loki.
Fury shifted his weight from one leg to the other, clearly trying to divine some meaning from Nightwing's body language. "To be frank," he began, "I have very little reason to trust any of you, and you of myself and SHIELD. However, SHIELD deals with homeland security and extraterrestrial threats. We can offer you our information on the Tesseract if you help us with capturing Loki."
Dick was careful to keep his expression neutral instead of twisting into the rather smug grin he felt like giving. "We cannot guarantee anything but we would be happy to help. Supervillains are our area of expertise."
Fury frowned. "Is this normal to you?"
Dick did grin then, and Spoiler muffled a choked laugh into his arm, even if he was already slotting this into his understanding of the world — superheroes weren't the norm (yet). Fury had said extraterrestrial, so they knew aliens existed, but: "Is this not normal to you?"