<div class="floatleft">(http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g427/Nykteus/captainamericachrisevansmovie.jpg)</div><hr/><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Steve Rogers<br/><strong>Title:</strong>Captain America<br/><strong>Locale:</strong>Stark Tower, War Room<br/><strong>Time:</strong>6:45 pm, Eastern Time<br/><strong>Tags:</strong>Tony Stark, Jane Foster, Natasha Romanoff, Thor Odinson<br/><br/><hr/><br/><br/><br/>While the Captain certainly wouldn't have named himself as the most intelligent of the Avengers, that was a contest best left to Stark and Banner, the same process that had enhanced his body had overcharged his mind as well. He didn't have a wealth of scientific knowledge, but he thought quickly, broadly and deeply, and wasn't a man to waste time when there was information to be processed. It was quite a bit to work through, but he had the good sense not to let himself get bogged down in technical details, there were plenty of people better trained and better equipped for that sort of work. It was hard to ignore the glaring detail, mainly that a borderline dipsomaniac, narcissistic engineer wanted him to wear an armoured suit and hang around in Earth's orbit while waiting for the Norse god Loki to launch an attack on Earth. It sounded completely insane, but he'd learned to gently nudge those thoughts aside before they could trip him up.<br/><br/>He'd missed the Space Race, of course, but he'd done plenty of watching and reading, there was so much to catch up on, but watching a man walk on the Moon had been a high priority.<strong>"I've got every confidence in your engineering abilities, Tony, but we're going to need a lot better than prototypes and plans before we go up there. You built your suit for Earth's atmosphere. How sure are you that they'd handle combat in space?"</strong>Suicide missions were something that he accepted as part of his vocation, but suicide was a different matter entirely. Though he mightn't have been the most knowledgable man in the room on outer space travel, he knew that most of them wouldn't survive an accident in vacuum, and that the more complex a machine was, the more opportunities there were for failure. He preferred simplicity in his gear, guns, knives, and his shield were all very simple, easily maintained and handy to use. Anything more complex than that automatically invited a natural suspicion.<br/><br/>He could trust Stark to build everything, he'd known the man's father, genius ran in the bloodline. What he didn't trust was Tony's tendency towards overconfidence, not when lives hung in the balance. Not everyone had the man's extraordinary luck, and rakish wit wasn't going to save them if the suits gave out.<strong>"Thor, I know you're taking responsibility for your brother, but I think we could use some more help from Asgard. Your people might not trust us with their technology, but I can't imagine that they're completely unable or unwilling to aid us."</strong>He was ignorant, of course, of the Asgardians' plight.<br/><br/>Steve had always felt that a man had to be honourable, and deal with his enemies as decently as possible. All the same, it was hard to ignore the worrying notion that Loki might cause even more loss of life on his return, and he wasn't entirely sure that it wouldn't be better to put the rogue Aesir down if the opportunity came up. The world had moved on, America had changed, but one thing he had learned was that, sometimes, a good man had to be willing to kill an evil one to protect the innocent. He didn't hold grudges, but he remembered death tolls, watched the survivors searching for the missing and the dead. There had to be a reckoning, even for gods.<strong>"We don't know how many people might die before we stop him."</strong><br/><br/>Long before the U.S. decided to turn him into a weapon, back when Hitler was just another hardline ruler among the many in Europe, when war was still a fading memory, Steve had been a student of tactics. No matter what Uncle Sam had given him, he knew that his foresight and instincts were his own, even if the transformation had sharpened his native skills. Loki was ancient and powerful, given knowledge beyond anything on Earth, but he was also a sadist and a megalomaniac, weaknesses that could be exploited. In the depths of his own mind, he was every bit as ruthless and conniving as the Asgardian renegade, he just had a conscience and the morals he was taught to keep him from giving in to those darker urges. It was a help, though, when it came to planning. Loki had outmanouevred him once before, and, though he wasn't proud, it wasn't going to happen again.<strong>"He's going to be recruiting followers. He won't make the mistake of going toe to toe with us again, but I don't doubt he could find others on Earth, and beyond, who could give us a tough fight. Divide and conquer isn't just a tactic for Loki, it's an obsession. He's capable of murder, but he'd much rather see us on our knees than laying dead."</strong><br/><br/>The suits and Stark's space station were forgotten, he'd voiced his concerns and moved past the matter, focusing his energies on what was to come. There was plenty more reading to do, he was an ardent believer in the power of knowledge. "We need to start putting contingencies in place." Bringing a hand up, he rubbed along his jaw, plotting out possibilities and probabilities in his mind, trying to mark out the future while leaving room enough to handle the unexpected. "Thor, you'll probably still be at the top of his hit list, but he's had plenty of opportunity to get new grudges. Banner's going to definitely be a primary target, he's unstable and we know how Loki's pride handles a sound beating." Even he had his misgivings about the good doctor, he didn't blame the man, but the Hulk was frightening to say the least, and the Captain thought that a man who could create that kind of monster was even more dangerous still.<br/><br/>He paused for a moment, considering the implications of the next thought, were it to be spoken, and decided to hazard it. Every scrap of information he could find on his allies had been committed to memory, and SHIELD did not disappoint when it came to exercising the paranoid voyeurism one expected of government agencies.<strong>"Doctor Foster, I think you will be in the most danger. You are knowledgable enough to be a threat to Loki's plans, and harming you would be sufficient to leave Thor unstable and much more easy to neutralise."</strong>He had the decency to look the woman in the eye while he spoke, it might not have been the kindest thing to say, but he thought it a craven thing to leave a person ignorant of a threat that loomed up so obviously. Of course, they were all intelligent people, and it was likely that not a thing he said was remotely novel, but he'd learned that, sometimes, people didn't notice their own thoughts until someone else spoke them aloud. More than that, he needed to be sure that Thor's fraternal loyalties would jeapordise the long term goals, and nothing could turn a man against his brother quite like the threat to one he loved.<strong>"Tony, do we have anything that could impede Loki's mind games? I'm not letting him get inside our heads again."</strong>