Fish Lips 2 (Loki x Reader) (Soulmate AU)

Chapter 19

"The rage monster returns!" Tony cheers, walking into his lab. A chuckle escapes me as I shake my head. Bruce sighs and drops a couple drops of a liquid into a beaker full of...lake water?

"Hello to you t—"Bruce begins and picks his head up, "(y/n)! Your back!"

I walk over to him to give him a hug. Bruce wraps an arm around my shoulder and I see him point the pipette towards Loki, who was quietly standing near the entrance while Tony was swiping through files.

"I'm going to be honest, I didn't think he'd agree to come back," Bruce mumbles and gives Loki a nod of acknowledgement. I pull away and look up to him.

"You knew?" I question. Guess I can cross 'Hulk Mode' off my list of worries...

I watch Bruce take another pipette and take some of the water and drop it on a slide underneath a microscope.

"Mhm...Tony uh kept me updated," Bruce answers, his focus on his experiment. My head snaps to a wide eyed Tony who was staring at a hologram of a missile core. His eyes dart to me but then go back to the core when he sees me staring back.

"You told him and didn't tell me about it!?" I ask, throwing my hands up.

"How could he? We were in a world that he isn't able to access," Loki answers for him. Tony turns to Loki and points at him.

"Reindeer games I'm giving you a bottle of my favorite wine for that save," he says, ignoring my presence.

"You could've said it when we came back," I reply. Tony sits down on a chair and opens a drawer filled with....salted peanuts. He throws a bag to Loki and one to Bruce, who lets it hit him and fall to the ground.

"Yeah let me just say how I told the man that turns green and angry about your adventure in front of the 3 people that almost killed Loki's ass," Tony explains, popping a peanut into his mouth. I think about how that would go down and shudder; I guess it was alright then.

"What are you working on?" Loki asks Bruce, walking closer to the lab table.

"I'm trying to find a solution to the eutrophication problem that's been getting larger and larger lately," He explains, straightening to pull up a hologram of a 3D model lake. I give him a confused look and he chuckles, realizing I wasn't knowledgeable on the topic.

" Eutrophication basically causes an excess of nutrients in the water. Algae love this and grow more and more; but when they die off they mass produce carbon dioxide.

Carbon is already a major problem on Earth and adding more to the problem is foolish. Ah anyways, when carbon increases in the water the ph of the water decreases and the water becomes acidic."

The 3D model shows a green blob growing and then eventually sinking; I'm guessing it was the algae. Bruce swipes the model off and brings up pictures of coral reefs, but these weren't vibrant like the ones in Nemo, these were dead.

"In the ocean, coral reefs depend on a ph level that's between 8.4 and 7.7; if it goes lower than that they basically start dying which causes the life that rely on the coral reefs to also fade away.

It's like the domino effect... but really bad. If the coral reefs die then it becomes a dead zone which is inhabitable, then the life there dies, then the marine animals that depend on those forms of life also die, and at the end we rely on ocean animals like fish for food. If they run out that'll cause exploitation of land animals; and when they run out...we run out."

"This is why I'm an agent... not a scientist" I mumble, looking at the dead zones.

"We're killing Nemos. How is Marlin going to find Nemo if he's dead?!" Tony huffs in anger. I ignore him and look at Loki who was also studying the pictures. His scanning eyes meet mine and his lips twitch up into a small smile. I return it and look at Bruce.