Disclaimer: Goes without saying but I do not own Bruce Banner nor the Hulk nor any other Marvel character herein included. They're the properties of the original creators as dictated by official documents, whom you can find out more about in Wikipedia or something. Stan Lee, Marvel Comics, etc.

Tuan aka The Abysmal as well as the plot related to them, the monsters and the military, are original by me, but they're still set in the Marvel Universe so I still hold no rights to them.

Rating: T for a bit of violence. I censor profanity like they would in a comic, if I ever use it.

(This story happens in the same timeline/universe as Spider-Man: Repulse, but it's self contained.)

PART 1: MORE THAN A WEAPON

"Kids! Why are we letting brats be Avengers, again?"

"He's almost thirty, Tony," Bruce pointed out, but the most creative engineer in the world didn't really want to hear it. He never wanted to hear it.

"Biologically, maybe. His team's about to go on a mission, but instead, he just goes off after some new mutant? Doesn't he know that never ends well? Million dollars says he ends up getting a beating by some of the X-Men."

Bruce knew there was no point in replying. No one in that room even had enough money to take that bet, and that was just one of many things that rubbed him the wrong way. He had been giving his life a lot of thought lately, and the fact he should be every bit as rich as Tony Stark was one of the things nagging at him.

"So I take it we leave without him," said the intercom, not really posing any question.

"You gotta talk to him, Steve," Tony said, "this is a whole new level of enterprise we're trying for, here. A whole new level!"

"Me?" the voice asked. "Talk to spider-man?

Tony lifted his hands, gesturing around with impatience. "Yes. Bruce's got a point, I baby him too much. You're the team leader, so you make him understand he's part of the damn team. You know what we're trying to do, having our members going rogue is the last thing we need."

There was no sigh nor the least bit of pause. Captain America was apt at giving the impression he had no doubts, and part of that was his lack of hesitation. Even during a talk.

"I'm going to focus on the job for now, Tony. We'll see what happens after we're back. Cap out."

Tony sighed and turned the call off with simple parting words: "Good luck."

The other Avengers in the room seemed to have the same considerations that he did, regarding Tony and Peter. Bruce observed them, thoughtfully considering what their lives were like.

Vision had never wanted for anything. He was a walking computer turning into a man, year by painful year. Pinocchio without all the parts that made for a whimsical fairy tale, and all the parts that linked him to one of the Avenger's greatest villains. He was pretty much using the same OS. Married temporarily to a woman that went crazy and nearly destroyed the whole world a few times over, and eventually caused the near extinction of mutants, which in turn caused a great deal of strife and conflict between the world's superpowers. Political and otherwise.

A lot of close calls for the world to experience because of one robotic creation. Bruce wasn't even sure who was responsible for Vision and Ultron, with all the times that history had changed, and all the realities he had experienced. Was he even living in his original earth?

Did it matter? He had never seen a single place in all the multiverse where Bruce Banner mattered at all.

That was especially true in the places where he wasn't the Hulk.

The rest of the team, at least, was an assembly of problem-free powerhouses. Blue Marvel, Power Man, Cannonball, and Gravity. Each with a life worth living, each with an identity in the world, a name other people knew them for. Primarily knew them as.

They were nothing like him.

"Alright, gentleman. I've assembled this team to deal with the most world endangering threats. We'll be the least active of the teams formed under the new One Planet initiative, but in turn, none of us can say no once we get the call. That's what we signed up for."

"So how did we already get the call?" Blue Marvel asked, with a testy temper. "I only agreed to do this because those were the rules. How is something going to end the world and I don't know about it?"

"When is something not going to end the world?" Bruce asked, a bit upset. His mind was going to places he didn't like again. All around that table were people with accomplished lives. They had families, love, jobs, and history. Careers.

Bruce's resume ended on the day the gamma bomb exploded. How many years since he had reliably learned to control the Hulk? What had he accomplished since then?

"I know what you mean, but if we can help it, we'd like to keep the rate of last-minute world-saving ditch-effort hail-mary now-or-never moments to…well, zero." Tony smirked, a bit arrogant, as ever. "We want to try and stop the world ending plans while they're still in the preparation phase. Crack those eggs before they hatch."

"Nice," Cannonball said, holding his arms crossed. "I hear that. Get ahead of them, right?"

"I mean, hasn't that always been the ideal thing to do? Or have we been ignoring these plans on purpose so that we can look cooler?"

Bruce glanced over at Gravity, the youngest in the room by far, though that wasn't saying much. He was about Spider-man's age, for sure. He seemed level-headed.

"We'll have our chance to 'look cool,'" Tony said, "but let's leave that to the other teams. Let's skip the small talk, shall we?"

Tony was wearing his armor, but the helmet was off as was customary when they were outside of a battle. He waved his hands and holograms moved about, manifesting a bunch of screens which each had a different feed. It was all about an organization called "K.I.A".

"So when a momma A.I.M and a papa Hydra decide they love each other very much, and hate everything else that much more, they form whatever K.I.A. is supposed to stand for."

"We dunno what the letters mean?" Power Man scoffed, smirking at Blue Marvel. "Promising." Blue Marvel scowled back, perplexed that the stranger would act like his buddy, but the reaction went ignored.

"Bruce, I am detecting some troubling synaptic data coming from you. Are you alright?"

Everyone looked at Vision, and then at him. Bruce realized he had been glaring at the holograms while actually thinking about his worth to others and his place in the universe. He was beyond uninterested in whatever danger this new group of people posed. After having gone through so much, and with the team clearly being miles more powerful than anything an army could contend with, he was mostly bored.

Yet, he turned to look at Vision with some protest. "You're scanning my brain activity?"

"It is, I mean, it's mainly a safety precaution, Bruce."

He frowned, saddened by the distrust. "I'm pretty sure we're fine, Vision. Hulk isn't anything to be afraid of, he's more than proved he's as much of a hero as a man can be."

Bruce glanced over at Tony, and he was smiling, giving a bit of an encouraging nod.

That was supposed to be encouraging. The Hulk was as much of a hero as anybody else. A member of the Avengers.

Not Bruce Banner.

"K.I.A. have been stock piling nukes over the past two or three years. We have official permission from the U.N security council to…"

Betty was gone. Her father was no longer after him - nobody was - and yet Bruce lived the life of a briefcase. No different than any of those nukes they were worried about. That was him. His skills were useless. His intellect irrelevant. His life non-existent.

He scanned the room. Nobody saw Bruce there, they only saw the Hulk in his scabbard. Bruce's only value was as a trigger.

"I need a life," he whispered, massaging his face with both hands.

"What was that, Bruce?" Tony asked.

Bruce looked at them, only really feeling any camaraderie with Tony, and even that was a bit debatable. His temper flared - that was how much he didn't want the confrontation - but Bruce was very practiced with it. Vision still shifted in his seat, though.

"Yes, I'm upset, Vision," Bruce said, not angry, just tired. "Humans get upset, that doesn't make me a monster."

"I said no such thing," he said, with his ever-inquisitive tone of voice. Vision was perpetually analyzing interactions to improve his capacity for empathy.

"Why are you upset, Bruce?"

Bruce shrugged, uncomfortable. Then he raised his hands and just said it. "I want a lab."

They all looked at him oddly.

"What?"

"I want a lab. I think…I can do more for people than punch whatever mama A.I.M and papa Hydra came up with."

Tony was a bit flabbergasted. He looked around, gesturing to indicate that they were in the middle of something, about to start a new mission that was far more important than whatever he was on about. Despite what people think, though, Tony Stark knew how to deal with people.

"Maybe let's table that for after this mission, hm?"

Expectedly, he turned his face around to continue the briefing. Bruce clicked his tongue, knowing what would happen. People really forgot how smart he was, it was frankly the thing that mostly got on his nerves.

"That's fine," Bruce said, standing up. "Call me whenever you're back, and we'll talk."

"What?"

Bruce just walked out of the meeting room. One of his would be team members was laughing, but he felt that it wasn't at him. Just the situation was really silly. He knew that, but for the life of him, it was either now or never.

That wasn't strictly true. A lot of those moments had crept up along his years as Hulk, it was more like now or next time, only next time might not come.

No, that was the day. He wanted a life. Bruce wanted to exist properly, as a man living in his country, with other people.

Bruce Banner wanted to be more than the bomb that nearly killed him.

Part End: Thank you for reading, please consider leaving a review if you have the time.

Can Bruce Banner be more than a bomb? Does anyone else even want him to? Find out next part when we feature the Black Widow and She-Hulk.