Bruce adjusted his glasses, peering at the lake, and eventually he said, "I'm pretty sure it's a duck."
Tony gave him a hugely arched eyebrow, glancing from Bruce to the pond, or more specifically, the unusually large duck in the pond. "You sure about that? Hmm?"
"…Tony. It's a duck. Waterfowl. A bird of a generally duck-ish nature, living a duck-patterned life, indulging in a duck lifestyle that I'm sure we're quietly envious of in our more insane moments." Bruce paused, remembering how duck sexuality actually worked, and he amended, "Well, you would be envious of a duck's life style."
"Envious of the duck's ability to be straightforwardabout its lifestyle without any repercussions, maybe. Possibly. Given a certain percentage in high numbers, leaning towards yes. But! That's not exactly the point, now is it?"
"I have no idea what the point is, so…I honestly have no idea how to reply to that." Bruce shrugged and leaned back into the bench the two of them were sitting at.
Exactly where Tony had gotten the idea to spend the last two weeks in a meandering trip towards Betty's general location was beyond Bruce; seeing her again, catching up and starting things back up to the way they had supposed to be before the…accident, that was something he'd have been on board for without even pausing to consider any unpleasant catches (and given his extremely paranoid tendencies picked up during his years fleeing from General Ross while trying to find a cure for the Hulk, that he'd even be willing to entertain the thought was proof of how dear she was to him, and he smiled at it).
True, they could have been there in hours, with the jet at Tony's disposal (and Bruce fond the notion peculiar that he was close friends with someone who had a jet at his disposal); Tony, he'd found out veryquickly in the days since The Avengers had temporarily disbanded until the next big threat reared its ugly head - and it was pretty much a given that this was inevitable, given their track record so far; Whiplash, the Abomination, Loki and the Chitauri had proven only the beginning of the supercriminals crawling out of the woodwork, let alone some of the disturbing things Bruce had heard coming out of other parts of New York and some things that had been hushed up in the Cuban Missile Crisis - had his little odd piques. During his last meeting with Tony's oldest friend, Colonel James Rhodes, who seemed to have taken a real shine to calling himself 'War Machine' when he was on the job in the modified power armor he'd acquired during the business with Ivan Vanko and Hammer that Bruce had been told about, had warned him that Tony was worse than a petulant three-year-old when these daydreaming ideas weren't given serious attention to, and the best thing was to either try to steer him onto saner pastures, or failing that, go with the flow and try to stay sane as long as you could.
(Tony had, of course, been in the room at the time and sulked for hours. Inadvertently proving Rhodey's point, of course.)
Bruce suspected that Tony had his own reasons for wanting to go around enjoying himself and having a good friend for company; Tony rarely slept, and when he did… well, Bruce knew consistent nightmares when he saw someone having them. Tony refused to talk about it, so Bruce was at something of a loss to help him. He just hoped that Tony could resolve his problems before something really bad happened, like a completely psychotic supervillain rose from the vacuum that Ironmonger and the Crimson Dynamo (as Steve, who had an insistence on giving their old foes interesting names, referred to Obadiah Stane and Ivan Vanko) had left. He figured the chances of that happening weren't too high, though.
So. Obsessed with some quaint 80s-era notions of proper man-buddy bonding through adventure and roadtrips derived from too many B-movie comedy-adventures, Tony had wrangled Bruce into taking a meandering roadtrip through the country on the way to see Betty. Bruce had frankly had enough adventure during that time when the Hulk had been less of a superhero and more of a sapient natural disaster just waiting to happen (and Bruce felt a surge of indignant resentment at the thought, bubbling from deep in his sub-consciousness), but he'd found it really hard to say no to his friends, particularly the other Avengers, and especially Tony.
When he really had something stuck in his head, saying 'no' to Tony was like drop-kicking a puppy, sticking it in a well, petting a rival kitten while you forced it to watch, and then played nothing but old reruns of 50s sitcoms for the rest of its existence. It was too cruel to even think about.
Bruce sighed, resenting a little how he turned into a complete wet blanket when his friends were involved (and trying not to think about how a genuine friend was a truly bizarre concept to him now). "Tony," he eventually said. "You know I have nothing but respect for you-"
"Your constant smart remarks and interjections say otherwise," Tony said breezily. "Not complaining! Just an observation."
"And reluctant though I am to say it, this little roadtrip has been seriously interesting-"
"Like when we somehow wound up in Canada, got drunk and all those things happened? One little off-road skid, a busted tree or two, maybe a violated treaty between the countries, and before you know it we find out that Canada had its own superheroes and they're all trying to make our heads fit down our throats. Fun times! I got to punch a sasquatch!"
"-And I'm honestly getting annoyed trying to talk over you like that-"
"Like now? Or do you mean now? Or maybe this? Throw me a bone here man, trying to keep it level." Tony somehow managed it in that utterly deadpan tone that made Bruce wonder if he was genuinely joking or being perfectly serious.
"But there are two pertinent notes here. One, investigating the phenomenon when we're in the area is something for S.H.I.E.L.D. to deal with when it's not clear supercriminal activity-"
"Wait, you're saying you'd rather have the mysterious extra-national agency with vast amounts of resources, a certain amount of ruthlessness, not really having to answer to anyone, and all manner of slightly spooky bits that would extraordinarily creepy if they actually weren't staffed by non-assholes, and you, the guy who's spent a ridiculous portion of the last few years running away from the military, are saying you want to leave the whole 'dealing with possibly frightened and likely freaked out and certainly impressionable metahumans' thing to them? Gotta give you props, buddy, my personal Weird-Shit-O'Meter hadn't been fully tapped out today until right now."
"Two," Bruce continued stubbornly. "It's a duck. You stopped here to obsess over a random duck in a random pond in…wherever it is we are."
"Mmm." Tony waved a finger scoldingly. "An excellent question, spot on, I'm only a little bit annoyed that you're poking holes in my personal warm bubble of sweet denial here, but let's not forget that in the world we live in, a duck may not be just a duck."
Bruce looked at the duck; it was to all appearances a perfectly normal duck. Perhaps a bit larger than usual, and the plumage seemed more flamboyantly obvious, but then with the average human being slightly less willing to shoot a duck that looked cool, that was probably just natural selection at work. "It looks like a duck to me."
"Aha! And since when were you such an expert in avian studies?"
"Since when were you?"Bruce countered.
Tony stopped and thought about that. "…You know, I've always been meaning to ask you; where did you find the time to become an expert physicist and medical doctor when you were in college?"
"Says the man who's also a doctor of engineering and physics?" Bruce replied.
"And a little metallurgy on the side." Tony snorted. "You know, it's weird, but no one ever seems to find it odd that we have multiple degrees in vastly different fields."
"Bah," Bruce said. "You say 'scientist' and they automatically assume that science is some huge general field of technical know-how."
"Granted," Tony acknowledged. "The people assuming that consist of a guy who was frozen in the ice back when atomics was gonna be a utopian dream-come-true just because it existed, an alien-god-person who doesn't differentiate between science and," Tony spat. "Magic, and honestly I don't know what Clint and Natasha think about it, all I get from Clint is sarcastic jokes and, hah, Natasha has this crazy eyebrow thing that makes you feel like you're three." Tony raised his eyebrow as arrogantly as he could, waving a hand vaguely at it. "See? Like that, only a bit more non-verbally sarcastic and… Russian, I guess. What is with me and attracting Russian people that like making fun of me?"
"It was just two people," Bruce said. "One of them being Natasha in the first place."
"Yes, and the other one was disturbingly like an evil me, but let's not quibble."
"Do you even know what quibble means?"
"Do you?"
"I know not to randomly use words I don't know the meaning of."
"Touché."
"And what does that mean?" Bruce said.
"You know, I should ask Jarvis about that."
The duck quacked, and it sounded suspiciously to Bruce like someone was saying something like 'shut up and focus'. "I think we got a little off-track here," Bruce said, frowning at the duck. It seemed to be taking an interest in them, lending Tony's bizarre notions some weight.
"Yes. Yes, we did. And that's because… it is one of those things that we did. That and talking melodramatically for no reason. Or drawing attention to that one cool old guy who keeps ending up involved in our respective lives." Tony looked at the duck for a long, long time. The duck, instead of simply turning away like a normal animal might (staring being a gesture of aggression, for the most part), stared back.
They stared for a long, long time. Eventually, Bruce yawned and checked his watch.
The duck looked away. Tony smirked, in triumph.
"Okay, I'll admit, that's pretty unusual for a duck," Bruce admitted, his hands on his knees and trying to work some feeling into his legs; they'd been sitting down for a long time.
"Maybe it's a mutant duck," Tony suggested.
"…A mutant duck? Really."
"Sure. Humans are mutating with superpowers for no reason, why not other animals?"
"…You raise a good point. An extremely peculiar one, but good."
They looked at the duck, waiting for it to do something incriminating. It obstinately floated in place, another unusual thing for a duck to do. Tony reached into his pocket, pulling out a device that looked something like a narrow bit of plastic with various holographic interfaces projected from it; a miniaturized computer, among other things. His thumbs clicked at various icons, bringing up read-outs of subtle sonar he'd been sending out during his babble and compositing the results into a clear shape. He raised an eyebrow at what the computer was bringing up, and elbowed Bruce. Bruce looked at the device, and his mouth opened slightly in befuddlement. He closed it; the evidence was clearly that it was there, so it must be real.
Subterfuge seemed called for. "I don't think we're going to get anything out of this," Bruce said loudly. "We should probably just go on our way."
"Agreed," Tony said smoothly. "Let's be going, shall we?"
The two of them stood up, Tony smirking at the duck and Bruce with a carefully blank expression of total neutrality. They swiftly left the area, not looking back at the pond once.
They were soon out of sight, and after a few tense moments, the duck moved aside. The water bubbled, a form moving underneath, and then a water-logged mass of feathers over a somewhat anthropoid form bounced up out of the water, hurrying over to the shore and shaking himself down; his feathers fluffed up ridiculously, and revealed himself to be a small being similar to an anthropomorphic duck that looked something like a living cartoon character.
The human-like duck looked around quickly and sighed in relief. "Whew, those weird guys are gone. I was getting freaked there for a second." This weird-looking duck person, who was named Howard, gave a mock salute to the actual duck. "Thanks for covering for me, man."
"Hey," said the other duck, who actually was a mutant duck (and was named Half-Price Sales This Month for no reason other than he'd learned to read before he learned to understand context). "No worries, buddy. Cheers!" Half-Price flapped up, and flew away.
"Note to self, get a big trenchcoat," Howard muttered to himself as he started skulking away. "That'll make me nice and inconspicuous…"
He rounded around a tree, and then Tony Stark jumped out of the branches and fell on him. "Gotcha!"Tony shrieked, laughing like a lunatic.
"Gah!" Howard yelped as Tony got his arms around him and held him down. "What the hell!? How'd you even get over there?! I saw you guys going the other way!"
"To be honest, I'm not entirely clear on that myself," Bruce suggested, also hiding in the branches. He adjusted himself uncomfortably, dislodging a pair of large ravens that had been sitting there.
"Serves you right for hiding from us," Tony said. He waved his little computer thing. "This baby caught you hiding under that other duck. Who…talks, apparently. Huh. Anyway, I was right! Again. No one need applaud or throw money, just bask in being in my exalted presence. Come on, you know you want to!"
"This sucks,"Howard complained. "I'm just a guy trapped in a world I didn't make! I AM EXTREMELY CONFUSED RIGHT NOW."
"So am I," Bruce confessed. "How do you stay underwater so long, and what in the world are you?"
"Extra-dimensional visitor," Howard said simply.
"Ah," Bruce said; this wasn't a particularly hard concept to swallow, since he knew of Thor and his origins.
"So what are you doing here?"
"I don't know!"Howard squawked. "A thing happened, a weird thing, and I got sucked out from my home and in this weird place!"
"Sounds contrived, but whatever," Tony said flippantly. He let Howard go. "Welp, might as well get you introduced officially. Come on, I know a guy from S.H.I.E.L.D. who's been following us for the past few hours and doesn't think I already bugged him. We'll get you introduced to the people, maybe get you home?"
Howard frowned. Sort of, it was hard to tell with the beak. "…Why?"
Bruce hopped down. "We're superheroes. Why not?"
Howard shrugged. These guys seemed pretty nice, and it was better than hiding under things whenever people came by (which was a lot). "Sure, all right then."
The three of them walked off, surprisingly amiable about how weird this was.
In the meantime, the two ravens squawked at the retreating trio.
One of them, who was named Hugin, said, "Okay, a talking duck. It's official. The multiverse is weird."
The second raven, who was named Munin, said, "Ah, but my dear friend, we are talking ravens."
"Yeah, but ravens are ravens. We got style and class and people feeding us in London out of superstition. Ducks are…bah, they're just ducks!" Hugin groaned. He and his friend were, of course, the legendary ravens who circled the world for news and information to give Odin of the Aesir. "I do not like thinking of the look on Odin's face when we tell him that this is what Thor's friends are getting up to."
"…You mean he shall be disappointed, or that he'll laugh at it?"
"Who knows which would be worse," Hugin grumbled, and flew off. After a moment, Munin followed.