A/N: Wow! I can't believe the response I got on the first chapter. It's not, you know, super substantial, but it's way more than I expected. Any who, Gwen is being introduced soon. :D She's something else, let me tell you. Thank you to those who reviewed. It helps a lot in the writing process. On to the story!


Chapter Two

Rocky Relationships


Natasha Romanoff landed on the dusty red earth gracefully, looking semi deadly and wind blown. She straightened up, and looked at the vast expanse of land all around her. No, this was not going to be easy. Every direction looked nearly identical. She guessed the nearest civilized area was long out of walking distance. She peered into the sky and watched as Dr. Banner landed a few yards away from her. Unfortunately, Bruce didn't have the grace that the agent did, and he hit the ground with a sputter and a cough. He unclipped the hook holding the parachute and back pack to his body and kneeled on the ground.

"You'd think," He sounded slightly out of breath, "that after saving an entire city from giant worms and being thrown out of a giant air carrier that I would be able to sky dive a little bit better."

Natasha smiled and glanced at the care package that landed with a thud not three feet away. She unclipped her own harness and popped the lid off of the package.

"Well, at least we're not going into this blind," She said as she pulled a seismograph out of the heavy industrial crate. The package also included a spare female S.H.I.E.L.D uniform, some crackers, two jugs of water, and a collapsible shovel. The Black Widow shoved most of the items into her backpack, and then threw the shovel at the still recovering doctor.

"Guess who's going to be doing the digging?" She asked.

Bruce sighed, and took his share of the crackers and one of the water jugs. All in a day's work, he supposed.

Nearly three hours had passed, and the seismograph still showed no sign of any oddities on the Australian surface. Bruce was getting frustrated. He pulled another cracker from the side pocket on his cargo shorts and nibbled a little on the edge. Natasha wasn't adding anything to assist the mission either. She just stared ahead and tried to make out any differences among the rocks and the wallaroos.

"Aren't there supposed to be hundreds of deadly snakes roaming around out here?" She asked out loud.

Bruce glanced at their surroundings before responding, "Maybe they're all hidden under rocks or something." Now that Natasha had mentioned it, he hadn't seen a lot of wildlife since they landed. Then, he noticed a small lizard scurrying across their path.

"Let's go over that way a bit," He said. He pointed in the opposite direction that the reptile had come from. Weren't animals known for evacuating an area right before a disaster- like an earthquake or a hurricane? It wasn't much, but at least now they had some sort of a lead.

"Hey, where are all of my wallaroos?" Natasha asked. Bruce could practically hear the gears turning in her head. The Black Widow may be intimidating and sarcastic, but she was also incredibly intelligent.

"You think she's over this way, don't you?" She inquired.

The doctor nodded. "In nature, animals tend to flee sights right before a disaster. Maybe they consider her a threat. Fury did say the locals believed they picked up a small earthquake," he explained, and he wrung his hands together nervously, "I don't know if I want to be right or wrong about this."

The red head nodded. It made sense, she reasoned. Maybe they were finally on to something.

It was another hour and a half before they finally came across something peculiar.

"Um, Bruce?" Natasha pointed to the ground in front of them, "Do you notice anything strange going on here?

The doctor stopped beside her and stared intently at the ground. Something was… weird. He just couldn't place his finger on it. He leaned down and placed his hand on the ground. There weren't any vibrations or weird pulses. He just couldn't seem to figure-

Zzzzip!

Bruce's pen, which he had pulled out of his pack and clipped to his shirt pocket, zoomed away from his body.

"Woah!" He backed up a few feel and looked around. His pen wasn't on the ground anywhere nearby.

"Bruce, look."

Bruce looked in her direction and noticed she was pointing to the zipper on her chest. Bruce's cheeks tinted a little pink, but he was more focused on what the zipper what doing. It was pointed straight in the direction his pen had flown off to.

It clicked. "What was one of the girl's powers in the video?"

Natasha squinted at him for a moment before her expression cleared and she answered, "Gravity field."

Bruce grinned and nodded. He could feel it, now that he was paying attention. All of the loose articles of clothing –shoe strings, shirts, zippers- were clinging just slightly in the direction they were walking. Looks like things were finally speeding up.

Of course, he didn't realize that "speeding up" meant really "speeding up."

They walked about 200 yards when they began to notice their feet slipping.

"Ah, Bruce? Is this normal?" The assassin had begun sliding along the ground, and before long she noticed what was wrong about their surroundings. The dirt, the rocks, the brush- all of it had left a path from where it had been dragged towards the source of the field.

Bruce gave a start and before he knew it, he had fallen on the ground. "No," he said, "But I guess it's faster than walking." Natasha, not wanting to lose her dignity, sat on the ground of her own accord and attempted to keep straight as she drew her weapon.

Soon, it became clear that the field wasn't growing much stronger than when they had started to be pulled in. It wasn't like being pulled toward a magnet. The strength was completely consistent as the two Avengers warily approached their target.

"Ugh," Natasha grunted, "I'm going to have to bleach these pants."

Bruce laughed before he ran over a patch of gravel.

Quickly, the two realized that it wasn't a patch.

Damn.

Bruce tried to stand up, but it was like the time he had attempted to learn skateboarding when he was a teen. He couldn't seem to find any amount of balance and he just fell right back down into the position he was in. His arms had multiple cuts and bruises on them, and he could only imagine what his backside looked like.

Natasha shouted over the sound of their bodies being beaten to a pulp by the earth. "Guess we know where all the rocks went!"

"I- ouch!" Large rock. That hurt. His back pack bumped the back of his head. Back pack?

"Back pack! Use your pack to sit on!" He shouted. Duh, Banner. Where are all those brains God gave you? Or- Odin. Whatever.

Natasha rolled her eyes. How could they not have thought of this before? The packs were literally ten pounds. She maneuvered the bag off of her shoulders and sat on it like a knee board. Bruce was having a little bit of trouble, so she scooted over (with some difficulty) and helped him get situated.

"Thanks," He breathed. He could feel the jug of water sloshing around underneath him. He hoped it wouldn't break. The Black Widow simple nodded and squinted into the horizon.

After fifteen minutes of agonizing waiting, they finally stopped- sort of.

"Woah!" Bruce exclaimed for the second time. They began to move in an elliptical sort of formation. They were flung one way, then the opposite way, then the opposite way again until- nothing. The pull stopped.

"What the-" Natasha began. Then the earth beneath them cracked, and they were flown twenty feet in either direction.

Bruce's head hurt. It really hurt. His legs hurt. His eyes hurt. And most importantly, his heart rate was up. This was not good. Bruce tried to breathe normally, but it was hard. The Other Guy was starting to creep towards his skin. He could almost hear him roaring. Bruce grabbed his sides and focused on something, anything, to keep from sifting. The mission. The little girl. He had to find her.

The edge was lessening. He could feel his heart rate drop. The anger and desire to attack whatever had thrown him was dissipating. Bullet dodged.

Then a shadow fell over him. First he thought it was Natasha, but then he smelled something he thought was rain... and burning rock. He smelled wood and grass and flowers. But this was Australia, so of course he must be losing his mind. Then he opened his eyes.

Gwen Nicholson stood above him. She was still wearing the tattered hospital gown she had escaped in, but it barely reached the top of her thighs. He also noticed it was much tighter and had dinosaurs printed on it.

Her dirty blonde hair was longer and matted with dirt, and her skin was slightly darker (probably from dirt), but it was no doubt Gwen Nicholson staring down at him. But she was no eleven year old girl. This Gwen had to be in her twenties- which makes sense, seeing as she escaped almost twenty years ago. Bruce just kind of expected her to be frozen in time or something. That was a stupid mistake. She didn't look to be almost thirty, though.

"Who are you?" She spoke very deliberately, with a slight Australian accent. He supposed she had picked it up from her years under the Aussie surface. Her hand was outstretched toward him, in a "stop" gesture. Bruce knew she was pointing a weapon at him.

He heard Natasha groan from almost sixty feet away. Gwen's head snapped in her direction, and Bruce spoke quickly to regain her attention.

"My name-" She snapped her head back at him as he spoke, "My name is Bruce Banner." He slowly started to rise and she pointed her other hand at his chest. He stopped abruptly. "No! No, I'm a friend. We're friendly. Look, I don't even have any weapons," He proceeded to straighten up very slowly and turn in a circle. The girl began to lower her hands. He noticed as he stood that she was much smaller than she should have been. She couldn't have been taller than five feet.

"Who sent you here?" She demanded. He saw fire glint in her eyes and he knew he was in trouble. Natasha still wasn't up and he wasn't sure how to explain that he was taking Gwen back to the very place she had escaped from.

"Before I answer that, do you know what year it is?" The scientist questioned.

Gwen looked unsure. She pressed her lips together for a second before shrugging her shoulders and asking, "2011?"

Bruce smiled and answered, "It's 2013, but at least you aren't too far behind."

"I check in every now and then." Her posture relaxed. Bruce knew the peace wouldn't last long.

He looked at her in the eye before glancing over her shoulder to see Natasha stirring from the ground.

"How much do you know about S.H.I.E.L.D?"

And suddenly he was on his back again. Well, at least he knew what to expect.


Well, this one was kind of short, but I promise the next one will be extra long to make up for it. ;D I just made it to a good transition sooner than I needed to. Leave a review if you feel like it!