Something To Marvel At :||: Steve Rogers

2.3 'Hey, I Offered You Some!'

Bruce Banner (aka. The Hulk) played by Mark Ruffalo

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I sat perched on top of Tony's workstation in the lab, while Banner scanned Loki's sceptre. "The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's report of the Tesseract, but it's going to take weeks to process."

Tony and I glanced at each other. Ugh, that won't do. "If we bypass their mainframe and direct route to the Homer cluster we can clock this at around 600 teraflops." Tony tapped away on his screen and I didn't miss the small device he planted underneath the desk before making his way over to Banner. "You should come by Stark Tower sometime, top ten floors all R&D. You'd love it, it's Candy Land."

"Thanks," Banner said hesitantly. "Just the last time I was in New York I kinda broke Harlem."

"I promise a stress-free environment, no tension, no surprises." Tony waved his hands around innocently before jabbing Banner with an electrocuting rod.

"Ow!"

Tony leaned in, looking closely for any hints of green. "Nothing? You really have got a lid on it, haven't you?"

"Hey!" Steve walked in, still in uniform. "Are you nuts?"

"What's your secret?" Tony continued to pester Banner. "Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? A huge bag of weed?"

"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve asked bewildered. "Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny, your sister is right here in this room. No offence, doc."

"It's alright," Banner assured, still busily working away. "I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things."

"You're tip-toeing, big man, you need to strut." Tony grinned, tossing the rod onto a nearby tray of tools.

"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr Stark." I could already tell the two weren't going to get along which made me purse my lips.

"And you think I'm not?" My brother scoffed walking towards Steve who stood a few feet in front of me. "Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."

"You think Fury's hiding something?" Tony looked past him to me, causing Cap to turn around. "What?"

"There's been activity within S.H.I.E.L.D., something about a new, secret task that was held at the utmost priority upon the evacuation of headquarters when the portal collapsed. Besides, what was Selvig doing down there with the Cube in the first place? You have unlimited energy in your hands and we're not going to use it?"

"But hang on," Banner cleared his throat. "Stark is the only name in clean energy at the moment, right? So why didn't he bring you two into the Tesseract project?"

"Are we talking about the Stark Tower, that big, ugly–" Steve cut himself off as Tony raised an eyebrow at him. "Building in New York?"

I jumped off the table and came to stand beside him. "Hey, someone's emerged from his hole underground enough to watch the news!" He tried not to roll his eyes but his lips twitched into a smile.

"It's powered by an arc reactor, a self-sustaining energy source." Banner redirected the conversation. "That building will run itself for what, a year?"

"So it's not about energy." Tony surmised. "Once my decryption programme finishes breaking into all of S.H.I.E.L.D.s secure files, we'll see every dirty secret S.H.I.E.L.D.s being trying to hide."

"I'm sorry, did you say–?"

"Jarvis has been running it ever since Tony arrived," I looked Steve straight in the eye and could tell he wasn't happy about betraying the trust of the organisation he was working for.