Thor rushed over with lightning speed, stood by the door, blocking Loki's attempt to push it open.
Loki stood outside the door, showing Thor a sweet smile while he forcefully tried to pull the door open, saying, "Dear brother, how have you been recently? I miss you a bit."
Thor, exerting all his strength to steady the door, gritted his teeth and asked, "What trouble have you caused now?!"
"You're breaking my heart!" Loki covered his face with one hand, making a visibly saddened face, then said, "Can't I come over to chat without causing trouble? You know in a few days it'll be Christmas, a time for families to come together…"
"Who have you deceived this time? How much money did you swindle? When will they find you out?" Thor swiftly questioned.
Loki pursed his lips, looking into Thor's eyes with sadness and said, "Brother, am I just a trickster in your eyes?"
"Yes." Thor responded without hesitation. Loki's eyes reddened, but Thor remained unmoved. He held onto the door frame with one hand, preventing Loki from opening the door, and with the other hand, counted on his fingers, saying:
"In the past few weeks, I've had to answer more than 60 calls every day. All of them complaints about your rule-breaking sales, contract fraud, and unabashed money scams!"
Thor's hand started to shake slightly, he pointed a finger at Loki's forehead and said, "Do you have any idea how much effort I had to put in, to make sure every one of those calls got redirected to me instead?!"
He gritted his teeth and continued, "Do you have any idea what would happen if any of these calls reached our Father and Queen of All Gods? You would've been beaten to the point of being bedridden! Let alone if Sif found out, you'd not be able to show your face for hundreds of years!"
Loki stretched out an arm, placed it over his head onto the door frame and said, "Thank you so much, my dear Imperial Brother, the mighty King of Asgard. So, would you mind adding a small, inconspicuous, harmless, internal call of the Nine Realms to my daily 60+ calls?"
Thor stared at him, looking at his smile, and asked, "Who did you deceive again??? An internal call of the Nine Realms, oh my goodness, it can't be from..."
Thor looked back at several people who were peeking at them, then said, "There are too many spectators, let's talk about this back in Asgard…"
Loki purposely smirked, those ends of his lips curling upwards as he stared at him. Thor had a bad feeling about this and it was true, the phone on his table did begin to ring in no time.
Thor's grip on the door did not loosen even once, he gestured at Peter who proceeds to pick up the ringing phone, tossing it at Thor. Thor caught the phone, pressed the answer button, hearing Stephen Strange's voice from the other side.
"Hello, King Thor Odinson. This is Stephen Strange from the Sanctum of the Nine Realms. I would like to discuss with you... about your brother Loki's theft of the Time Gem..."
Thor immediately widened his eyes looking at Loki, who had a green gemstone in his hand, grinning brilliantly.
"Wait, Stephen!" Thor firmly held on to the door frame, then said, "Didn't you take any safety measures before lending the gemstone to Loki? I thought the reason you lent it to him was because you were confident that it wouldn't be stolen!"
"Despite me taking precautions, they were useless. Your brother is rightfully the number one magician in the Nine Realms, he is indeed an extraordinary god," was Strange's fluent reply. "So, as for the financial loss that your brother has caused the Sanctum, how do you see it?"
"Wait! Stephen! Can we negotiate on the term 'theft'? Uh, Loki is the Prince of Asgard, and the Sanctum is contacted by all forces in the Nine Realms, if this matter gets out, the reputation of Asgard would be..."
On the other side of the call, Strange cleared his throat, then said, "I have a second interpretation here, it's called 'leasing'. Just that the rent clause in the contract might be a bit stringent…"
"We will compensate," Thor gritted his teeth, decisively saying, "As long as you don't mention Loki's name, you can decide the amount!"
After hanging up, Loki shrugged as he tried to explain, "It was a trap, we fell for it."
Loki looked at the Eye of Agomoto he held, saying, "Indeed, when Stephen lent it to me, I swapped it. However, after several time travels, it has run out of power."
"I can't use it right now, but I still have to pay the rent. I really didn't expect Stephen to be so vile and despicable, just like Shiller!"
"Why did you steal it in the first place?!!!" Thor raised his voice to Loki, "If you hadn't swapped it, none of this would've happened, right?!"
He loosened his grip on the door out of frustration and turned back to go in. Loki remained outside, chuckling mischievously, pulling open the sliding glass door hoping to step inside, failing to notice the small black object quickly heading towards him from the distant sky.
"Bang!!!!!!!"
Stark, looking at the gauntlet returning to his hand and Loki who was hit in the back of his head by a component of the flying gauntlet, now flat on the ground, shook his head saying, "This is a classic example of an item the auto-retrieval system couldn't recognize - such a weak god."