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As Tony headed up into the arena, he tried to steady his breath. He knew that it would be possible to get through this, so long as he was smart, so long as he was careful.
Ha. If he’d known how to be careful, then he never would have been in this mess in the first place, would he?
He’d been in The Grid for what had to be at least a few days, though there was no way to tell other than the exhaustion that sat deep in his bones, the perpetually dark sky giving no indication as to the passage of time. Was it even a sky? Who knew, and who cared? Tony certainly didn’t.
There had been so much more to worry about, in that strange place. Tony had always considered himself a master of technology, but he had not been prepared for what he had stumbled into. There was no way to prepare for that.
After all, Tony hadn’t even believed that Howard’s talk about The Grid had been anything more than the rambles of a drunkard before Fury had directed Tony to his father’s old office. He’d read some of Howard’s notes, but… it wasn’t enough.
Upon entering The Grid, he’d managed to avoid the hostile programs for long enough to get his hands on an identity disc with help from an oddly free-thinking program named Thor, and he’d learned to keep his head down. Asking strange questions would make him stick out like a sore thumb, and to be different in a world of programs was just asking to be erased.
Tony hadn’t thought there would be anything worse than that, but… well, turns out that he was wrong.
His time in The Grid thus far had not been entirely unproductive, though it was hard not to see it that way. He hadn’t found a trace of his father, but he had learned well enough how to defend himself, and he’d learned how this strange place worked. He knew that he was going to need to fit in before he risked asking any questions, and he had been doing okay– but then Tony had run out of luck.
He’d run afoul of a few nasties with bright orange circuitry, and hadn’t been able to explain himself with the robotic ease that was expected. They’d assumed he was faulty, had grabbed him, and announced in cold monotone that he would be taken to The Games.
He hadn’t heard of The Games before, but it wasn’t difficult to make the leap and work out what they were. In fact, standing in that elevator and hearing the roar of the crowd, Tony almost wondered whether the programs in here had been reading YA fiction.
The elevator levelled out at what felt to Tony like a glass tank, his half not quite meeting the other so that there was a large gap in the middle, falling several hundred feet to the ground. Standing on the other side was a grim looking program, his glowing blue circuitry pulsing brightly as he pulled his identity disc from his back.
Tony took his own white disc in hand, and holding it lightly, his thumb running over the cool material.
“May the odds be ever in my favour,” he muttered.
Then, without any obvious cue to start, his opponent threw his disc directly at Tony, and the fight began.
Tony avoided it easily, and then again on the second throw– and again, his opponent obviously growing frustrated, his throws growing more forcefully direct and less carefully planned rebounds. He could hear the crowd booing, and although there was no way to tell whether it was his tactics they were complaining about since there was more than one fight happening at a time, it did seem likely.
Whatever. The others could fight with pretty footwork if they wanted, but Tony was going to win.
His opponent snarled and jumped in the air, pirouetting as he threw his disc again. And, come on, the ponce was entirely unnecessary. Tony dodged again, rolled his eyes, and threw his disc so that it would purposefully skim just past his opponent’s right arm.
The identity discs were easy to fight with– even when he had been out on the streets, he had been able to use simple geometry to aim his ricochets, and it was even easier in such an enclosed space. His opponent dodged the initial throw by jumping to the left– thus putting him right into the path of the ricochet.
Tony felt a little guilty as the guy disintegrated back into lines of code. He didn’t know what death meant for a program, but he’d heard the word ‘erased’… and he’d dealt with enough blue screens of death and lost enough projects to know that most of the time, erased meant gone forever. But it wasn’t like he had a choice, here.
He stumbled for a second as his half of the fighting box… thing began to move in the air, aligning with another. Once again, it seemed that the only cue to begin was when the platforms aligned, for his opponent – another program with blue circuitry, no doubt taken from the street just as Tony had been – misjudged his throw and lost his identity disc through the gap between their platforms. Tony had no idea what that meant for the poor guy, because from what he understood, the discs contained the program’s memory storage, which made it a strange weapon choice in Tony’s humble opinion– but then, he supposed it didn’t matter. The program disintegrated a moment later, Tony’s disc slicing straight through his throat.
“Sorry, buddy,” Tony said, catching his weapon on the rebound. “You or me.”
Tony wasn’t… entirely sure what it would mean if he were erased, and to be honest, he wasn’t all that keen on finding out.
The next opponent was harder to beat, his orange circuitry looking odd after the bright blue Tony had grown accustomed to. He’d learned that orange meant dangerous right from the start of this whole venture, and the moment he saw the colour he had prepared himself for a bumpy ride.
He still won, though. For god’s sake, didn’t any of these guys realise that spinning quickly in the one spot with your arms outstretched only made you easier to hit? Honestly, it was like fighting a horde of badly coded NCPs.
The next time Tony felt the ground shift below his feet, it seemed a little different. There wasn’t as much movement around him as there had been before, and he realised that most of the fighters had been eliminated.
There was only Tony and one other guy left.
That meant that this program was going to be the best out of the others, the most skilled at this disc fighting thing. Tony could hear the crowd chanting his name, the word Mage, Mage echoing around the arena like a prayer. It was clear he had won these before, that he was a favourite— but still, Tony was expecting him to be just a program, just like all the others.
But this one looked… different. For starters his circuitry was a bright green, nothing like any of the other colours Tony had seen. He’d noticed some teal kind of turquoise before, but this did not even come close. It put Tony a little on edge– and that wasn’t even the strangest thing about him. Rather than the uniform skin-tight suit, this Mage was wearing a coat that fell just past his knees, and his helmet curved up at the front into two sharp points that looked as if they were meant to be stylised horns.
Tony pushed down his unease. It was still just another program. Another NPC.
When their platforms aligned, Tony braced himself to dodge, expecting that his new opponent would do just as all the others had and launch his green identity disc into Tony’s side of their glass box. He had not expected that Mage would wait, watching Tony just as calculatingly as Tony was watching him.
Huh. It was the first time a program hadn’t started the very second they were permitted to do so, as if a switch had been flipped. Mage seemed to be waiting for Tony to make the first move.
Okay, so that was a little strange, but Tony could work with that. He could still survive. Because sure, perhaps this guy was the boss battle to the others’ NCPs, but if this experience had taught Tony anything, it was that the programs in The Grid were predictable. Tony just had to learn this one’s pattern, and then he was golden.
Just so long as he kept his head, so long as he kept thinking outside of the box, he would be able to stay ahead of any computer program built on code.
Mage wanted him to make the first move, huh? Well then, Tony could damn well make a first move.
Tony knew that the others had all thrown their discs at the start, so rather than playing to the script, he decided to do something different, something which hopefully a program would not think to expect.
He ran straight forward, threw himself directly toward his opponent, leaping over the gap between their platforms. It was reckless, it certainly wasn’t careful, but it wasn’t expected either. He saw blue eyes widen as he flew through the air, swinging his disc down in an arc which would cleave Mage in two—
But then rather than dodging as any of the other programs would have done, Mage fell to one knee and ducked his head, and Tony went sailing right over him and crashing to the ground.
Tony didn’t quite manage to scramble to his feet before he heard his opponent coming at him, and he was just able to get his own disc up in time to block the incoming blow. It hit hard, sending vibrations all the way up Tony’s arm– and goddamn, were all programs this strong, or was this just another difference that didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense? He didn’t think he’d be able to take many more hits like that.
Mage didn’t waste any time– his disc slid off Tony’s and then moved toward his waist in a lethal slash that Tony only just managed to avoid by leaning back to the ground. He swiped out at Mage’s ankles, expecting that the program would dance backward– but instead he leapt into the air, the tails of his coat flying. He landed to the side just as Tony managed to spring back to his feet, and then they glared at each other once again.
Right.
Expect the unexpected.
That was something that Tony could do.
Unfortunately, though, the fight soon proved far more brutal than a battle of minds, as the previous bouts had mostly been.
This time, it was Mage who made the first move, charging forward before making a quick change in direction and darting to the left. What followed was a fight unlike any of the others Tony had experienced in The Grid, even back out on the streets. He was quickly coming to the realisation that he was out of his league– Mage fought like some kind of demon, slashing and swiping and never letting go of his disc, never leaving himself vulnerable. Tony could feel sweat dripping down his brow, moistening his palms, making it harder and harder to keep a grip on his own disc. He couldn’t keep up and it was only a matter of time before he made a mistake, before he—
Mage stopped Tony’s swing at his side not with his weapon, but in the risky move of grabbing Tony’s wrist and holding it in place. Then he swung down with his own disc, that bright green rim arching straight toward Tony’s face—
Acting entirely on instinct Tony threw up his other arm to catch the disc in his hand, and it slammed into his palm with the sound of a blade hitting flesh.
Tony let out a cry as it sliced through his skin—
And Mage’s blue eyes widened, his lips parting in shock.
Then, through the haze of pain, Tony realised– if he had been a program, that should have erased him, would have sent him dissolving back down to code. But Tony wasn’t erased– instead, there was a trickle of warm blood spilling down his palm and dripping to the ground, leaving a splatter of ruby where there should have been only midnight blue dust.
Tony’s hand fucking hurt, but the blood, it seemed, was enough of a distraction.
Mage was confused for now, but Tony was sure it would not last long, so he didn’t wait a moment before pressing the advantage. He knocked Mage’s disc aside and shoved at his chest, pushing hard. It caught Mage unawares and he stumbled backward– and Tony followed, shoving once more, his hand leaving smears of blood over green circuitry as he gave a third and final thrust—
The Mage fell hard into the wall, the back of his skull cracking against the glass.
The sound was accompanied by a distorted static hiss, and then green circuitry sputtered, the glow suddenly flickering to white.
Tony blinked, caught a little off guard.
Was it a glitch, or—
Or what?
Tony had never seen a program’s circuitry change colour before, he didn’t know what that meant.
The crowd was suddenly eerily quiet, and it felt like the calm before a storm.
Before Tony could even begin to work it all out, Mage’s eyelids flickered, his– his green eyes, because apparently eyes can change colour too, catching along the white circuitry of Tony’s own suit.
“Thor?” Mage whispered, his voice low and– not at all the kind of voice Tony normally heard from a program. It sounded normal even, a nice voice, not close to the tinny robotic tune Tony had heard from all the others—
Well, all except for Thor, Tony realised. Thor had been one of the first programs Tony had actually spoken with, so he hadn’t noticed the oddity at the time, but looking back…
Tony shook the thought from his mind. It was a puzzle to solve later– for now, he was still in the middle of a fight for his life. For all he knew, this could very well be a trick.
“Nope,” Tony said, deciding that for now, playing along might at least allow him to find his footing, to test the water. “My name is Tony. And hey, I’ve met Thor, and I know I look nothing like him—”
“Oh,” Mage said. “My apologies. I am… a little…” Mage’s eyes unfocused again, and his gaze fell down to the ground.
“Confused?” Tony asked. “Yeah, me too. Now, are you going to try and– hey, what the hell—”
Mage had grabbed Tony’s wrist without warning, yanking it up to stare at Tony’s palm in horror. “You are a user,” he whispered. “And now…” he glanced around at the arena, then back to Tony, his green eyes blazing. “Now they know it.”
“Oh,” Tony said, glancing down to his bleeding hand as well. “Oh, shit—”
“Do not worry,” Mage said. “I can help you—”
“And I’m meant to trust you on that?” Tony asked. “You? You were just trying to kill me—”
Tony was cut off as alarms began to blare, as the blue light around their platform began to glow red and the loudspeaker called out that they were in violation of the rules.
“My circuitry was poisoned, you saw that,” Mage told him. “Thanos corrupted me, twisted me into a virus. He wanted to experiment to see if he could turn an ISO into a weapon, forced me to turn on my own kind before he put me in these Games.”
“Who the hell is Thanos?” Tony whined. “Look, I’m not even here to– I only wanted to find my dad, okay? I’m not meant to be here.”
“No one is meant to be here,” Mage muttered. “Thanos has corrupted The Grid. It isn’t supposed to… wait a moment.” He narrowed his eyes. “What is your name?”
“Tony,” Tony replied. “I said that already—”
“Your last name,” Mage interrupted.
Tony’s eyes widened– he had never met a program with more than one name, so if this one knew about the way that surnames worked… well, maybe he had talked to another user before. And… well. Tony knew of one other person who had made his way into The Grid, and that gave him just the right surge of hope that was needed to fuel his confidence.
“Stark,” Tony said. “I’m Tony Stark.”
Mage’s eyes brightened at that, and his lips curved into a smirk. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Tony Stark, though the circumstance is not the best,” he said. “I am Loki.”
“Loki,” Tony echoed, feeling the way the syllables rolled off his tongue. It was a nicer name than Mage, he thought. He wondered why it had been changed– and every explanation he came up with in the following split second only gave more credence to Loki’s story.
“Come with me, Tony Stark,” Loki said. “I can bring you to your father. And maybe with his help, and my brother’s, we might be able to bring down Thanos.”
When Loki held out his hand, it no longer felt like a difficult decision– and Tony accepted it without hesitation, curling his fingers around Loki’s and holding on tight.
He still felt like he didn’t entirely understand what was going on, like he had managed to fall into a world that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. He had thought, before he had been caught, that he had begun to make sense of it, only to learn today that he had not even scratched the surface.
But maybe, in Loki, he had found an ally who could help him do what he had come all this way to achieve, who could help him get through this so he could go back home.
And when Loki tore them through the very fabric of The Grid itself, using a power that should have been impossible to rip them away from that dangerous arena, Tony could only hope that he had made the right choice.