CHAPTER ONE
0016 hours
SHIELD Secure Outpost
Alaska
He couldn't figure out for the life of him why the man still exercised. His body was so fit, it was ridiculous. Agent Peterson watched as the man known as the Abomination finished his three hundred push ups. Blonsky's shirtless chest was drenched in sweat, so Peterson tossed him a towel through the one-way wall. A nifty little invention, thought up by the boys at the Toy Box. Anything could pass into the room created by the invisible wall, but nothing could come out except for non-living things such as clothing, food trays and the like. Agent Pollack was the genious behind it, and it had been tested out on the monster himself, the Hulk. Luckily, Doctor Banner had allowed himself to be the test subject. Nothing could break out of the one-way wall.
Blonsky tossed the towel back out, at Peterson, who caught and tossed it in the laundry chute in one swift motion. Blonsky chuckled at the sight, no doubt thinking about how he could top the seasoned agent. Go ahead and try, Peterson thought, I've been knocked on my ass by the Hulk, too, I can take you. Peterson smiled, then folded his arms across his chest. He ran his mind through Blonsky's usual training session. Sit ups would be next, and after that, pull ups. Peterson yawned and sat back down at the desk.
"Can I ask you something, Agent Peterson?" Blonsky said, his British accent cutting through the silence that usually permeated the room. "Doesn't it get boring, just sitting down here and watching me?"
Peterson propped his feet up on his desk. "I was kicked out of active field duty after your boyfriend, Banner, knocked me around a bar. Way I see it: watchin' you is as good as being back in the field."
Blonsky chuckled again. "And why is that, Agent Peterson?"
"You've got the same stuff in you as Captain America, right?"
"Yes, as matter of fact, I do."
"That's why. You're as strong as Cap, and you went toe-to-toe with the Hulk. I've gotta stay on my toes if I ever have to stop you from escaping."
Blonsky narrowed his eyes. "And what makes you think you can take me, Agent Peterson?"
Now it was Peterson's turn to chuckle. Soon, he was joined by Blonsky, and then the chuckling turned into full-blown laughter.
0052 hours
Blonsky sat in a corner of his invisible cell and watched as Agent Peterson slept. He never paced his cell, not once. It was a rather large cell, for some reason. Certainly, they were just waiting for him to transform into his more powerful form so that they could test the strength of their magic walls, but he gave them no such pleasure.
He whistled one of the Russian drinking songs his father had taught him when he was a child, growing up in London. "Always remember something about the homeland, Emil," his father would say. Though he wouldn't set foot on his birth soil until he was twenty-five, he always remained the prideful Russian, through his appearance as your standard Brit.
A noise caught his attention. Sadly, thanks to his enhanced hearing, he was never certain if the sounds were one room away or four, but he could always tell their direction. This one was coming from the east, and it was getting closer. Blonsky stood up and walked toward the sound, coming to the edge of the cell. The door burst open, surprising Agent Peterson until a bullet hit him in the skull.
"You're gonna have a harder time doing that to me, even if this fancy wall allowed bullets to pass through it," Blonsky said, staring at the assailant. It was a woman, dressed entirely in black. She wore a mask that covered her head entirely, though it appeared that a hole on the back allowed her ponytail to poke through. She had a pair of black and yellow boomerangs attatched to her belt. "Who the hell do you think you are?"
Her cold, blue eyes stared at him, and then she placed a device on the outside of the one-way wall. She pressed a button, and the wall itself simply dissolved. She picked up a shirt from the clothing stack and tossed it to him. "Put that on. It's rather cold outside." She spoke with an Australian accent, thus explaining the boomerangs. "We're leaving in five minutes."
"What is this?"
He imagined she was smiling under that mask. "We require your unique services, Captain Blonsky."
"You want the monster, don't you?"
"Sooner rather than later."
Blonsky himself smiled. "You'll have it," he said, his voice already deepening.
The process was still painful, the change. It didn't take long for his body to tripple in size, to change shade into that pale green-yellow color. He felt his bones crack and grow. In less than two minutes, he stood eight feet tall, his head hitting the ceiling.
The Abomination asked, "Now, when do we get started?"
She replied, "Now."
0110 hours
SHIELD HQ
Colorado
Nick Fury watched as the Abomination and the woman made their way through the facility's halls toward the ground level. He sighed. He knew it was a bad idea, keeping Blonsky alive. Unfortunately, the World Security Council wanted him, and gamma monsters were a pain in the ass to kill. The worst one was, luckily, under a tiny bit of what Fury foolishly called control, but Blonsky was a problem all his own.
He turned to Agent Sitwell and asked, "We have anything remotely close that these folks haven't killed yet?"
Sitwell hit a few buttons on his console, then spun his chair around and said, "Well, you're not gonna like it."
0115 hours
Above the Arctic Circle
The armor was working well. Tony Stark had been meaning to test out the extreme weather suit in actual extreme weather, but aside from the occasional hurricane, the Malibu coast didn't suffer much extreme weather. Thankfully, the Arctic Circle provided ample cold weather for the suit's first test. He was cruising comfortably at an interior temperature of sixty-seven degrees.
The Arctic Circle, however, was nothing particularly nice to look at. Ice and water as far as the eye could see, for the most part. He thought he could see Greenland, but nobody liked looking at Greenland. Might not even have been Greenland. Geography wasn't his strong suit, technology was. Now he was wondering if he was anywhere near Greenland.
A call came through on his personal line. "Hello, you've reached the onboard phone of Mister Tony Stark," he said, imitating an answering machine, "you may have trouble reaching me thanks to some hefty overcast in the area. Please call again some other time when I can choose to ignore you."
"Funny, Stark," Nick Fury said, "I need to ask you for a favor, and I need the answer quick."
"Well, then you should have asked Agent Romanoff to ask me. I'm always a little too quick when it comes to women."
"I need you to head for Alaska. There's a SHIELD facility there currently under assault by an unknown enemy force."
"Unknown, hmm. I thought you knew everything, Fury."
"Just get there."
"All right, but if this is super powered bad guy stuff, I'm getting a raise in my SHIELD consultant job." Sadly, Fury hung up before he responded to Tony's quip. "He's no fun some times." He hit the throttle and sped off to the Great Aloha State of Alaska, or at least that's what his sarcastic mind called it.
0118 hours
SHIELD HQ
Colorado
Fury sighed again. He looked over at Sitwell. "Next time something we don't like breaks out of one of our facilities, we call somebody else. They can sit around and wait for Captain America to kick their ass, he doesn't ask for a raise."
0122 hours
SHIELD Secure Outpost
Alaska
The plane waiting for them on the tarmac was a C-5 Galaxy. Abomination smiled. They clearly knew who it was they were picking up. The woman, who's name he still didn't know, was almost walking up the ramp when something flew past her and punched her in the face as it did. Abomination steeled himself for what it was that was attacking them, and was caught completely off guard by the normal-sized human in the red and gold armor in front of him.
"What the hell do you think you are?" he asked the man.
"Oh, y'know, people call me lots of things. Iron Man, Suit Dude, the ladies generally just scream out 'Tony' before climaxing, but that's besides the point. Um... I guess Iron Man would probably work in this situation. What exactly do you think you are, the wannabe Hulk?" Iron Man held up his hand and fired a ray of some sort at the Abomination, knocking him back a few feet, but he remained standing.
"Tony Stark, that's who you are. The billionaire with the high tech tuxedo." He ran at Stark, throwing a punch of his own, which knocked the rich man back several feet onto the ramp of the plane, as well as on his back. "I'm no imitation, I'm the replacement. The Hulk is yesterday's news, I'm the Abomination!"
Stark sat up a little, then a micro missile launcher appeared from his shoulder. He launched a missile at the Abomination, which hit him square in the chest, but still opened no wounds. It simply tickled. "Abomination, eh? Y'know, somebody needs to tell me where you folks think up these stupid names." Stark stood and a beam of focused energy erupted from his chest, hitting the Abomination in the face. It knocked him down, but he still wasn't badly injured. "Hulk, Abomination, Mandarin... Was there a Crappy Names Convention a couple years ago that I missed? I thought Iron Monger and Iron Patriot were gonna be the worst things I ever had to hear."
Abomination burst into a run, again, but this time he tackled Stark, breaking through the plane's ramp and Stark's armor. The chest piece was cracked wide open. This is going to be good, Abomination thought.
0128 hours
This is gonna be bad, Tony thought. The absurdly named Abomination had cracked the chest plate, pretty much ruining his chances of using the unibeam again, at least until he repaired the suit. The Abomination stood up and slammed his fists down, but Tony kicked in the boot jets and sped away, toward the front of the plane. He stood and fired a repulsor beam at the monster, but the Abomination shook it off. "Is that all you've got? A couple of fancy light beams? You used to make some nice guns, Stark, where's all that stuff?"
Tony raised his left arm, readying a missile. "Oh, y'know, just an image make over, but I bet you know a lot about that." He fired the missile which the Abomination caught, and threw right back at him. "Oh, shit!" He jumped out of the way just in time for the explosion to destroy the plane's front landing gear, dropping down on top of him. He was pinned underneath the nose of the plane.
The Abomination walked up to him and placed his foot on Tony's chest. "I'd kill you now, but I think I'll keep you alive for the eventual round two. It's Yanks like you that just get fun to stomp on," he punctuated the word stomp with an actual stomp. Tony felt like his heart was going to burst. "You're no Hulk, Stark. You can't even begin to think you can beat me." Suddenly, the Abomination began to shrink, until he was simply a human being once more, with his bare foot on the chest piece. "Seeing as you broke our ride, it looks like we'll have to borrow one of SHIELD's."
"I didn't do that," Tony coughed out, "you did."
"With your missile. You broke it, you bought it, my friend." He walked over to the woman dressed entirely in black, who had gotten back up at some point during the greatly one-sided fight. Together, they hopped in the helicopter sitting on the landing pad and off they flew.
Tony just barely lifted the front of the plane enough to crawl out from under it, then dialed Fury. "Hey, Fury, you're big monster's out of the bag."
"Blonsky got away? How?"
"Oh, y'know, Hulk-like strength, impenetrable skin, the works. Looks like somebody owes me an explanation, and a ton of stuff to fix up my latest suit. Why would anybody want this guy anyway, Fury?"
"Any number of things, like the Super Soldier Serum coursing through his blood."
Tony stood up, and then the chest plate fell off, exposing him to the Alaskan cold. "Shit."