Chapter Three

"Nice...to meet you, Mr...Stark." Bruce cringed inwardly as the name sounded out. Holy hell.

"Tony." The man flashed Bruce a quick smile as he took off his sunglasses, giving what Bruce caught as a small wink.

"Bruce." He wasn't sure whether or not the man would even shake his hand, but held it out hesitantly anyway.

"Well, I'm testing out the new equipment, so I'll see you in a while." Tony took his hand, thank God, and shook it once, firmly, before letting go.

"Hold on, Stark." Director Fury called out before Tony could turn around and leave the room. "You and Dr. Banner would be teaching together this year. You might want to go over some notes with him." The word notes was pronounced with extra dryness.

"Right. Uhh...Notes. We had to make notes? I figured we'd just teach from the syllabus."

"Stark, this is an elite team of students being led for studies. This is the first large vacuum chamber in continental United States, I don't think we have a syllabus for that yet." Fury sighed. "You know what? Why don't you take Dr. Banner to the vacuum. Show him around. Familiarize with the surroundings, whatever it is you do."

Tony let out a grunt, shoving his left hand in his pocket as he reached out to open the door. He walked out without bothering to hold the door.

"So, India." Tony lead the way to the chamber. "Why India?"

"Um." Bruce was caught off-guard. "In-India? It was...it was quiet, I guess. I didn't like the, you know, scandal back here. I figured I could use some alone time. Allows me to focus on experiments and such, you know?"

"Six years of alone time? Geez, you really didn't get enough time-outs as a kid, huh?" Tony remarked, typing a six-pinned code into the keypad at the entrance of the vacuum chamber.

Bruce didn't know which stance to take, so he figured defensive was the safest. "So you've read into my background."

"Your file was on Fury's desk." Tony waved it off. "Skimmed through it."

Bruce kept his mouth shut. There were things he could say, but he didn't want the partnership to start on the wrong foot. Actually, it already did, when they bumped into each other in the coffee shop earlier.

"So, um, the password thing-" Bruce gestured to the keypad lock on the metal doors, and Tony interrupted him.

"One-one-six-five-oh-two. I'll probably be here, though. I doubt you'll really need it." Tony made a point of getting his words out fast. "Bet they don't get vacuums in India."

"Nope. I barely had a satellite. Or neighbors, in fact." Bruce wasn't sure what point Tony was trying to get across.

"Well, we've got a large one. You know, the NASA-styled kind. Vacuum chambers, I mean. Thermal vacuum chamber. Back there, we got vacuum labs. Smaller vacuums. For the smaller stuff. You know, molecules. Ions. That kind." Tony rambled on, but briefly paused in the middle, turning behind to look at Bruce. "You learned this shit in school, right?"

Bruce looked at the other man incredulously. "I'm...pretty sure?" Because what the fuck, that's basic chemistry?

"Well yeah, just checking." Tony hummed as he turned back around and made his way down the metal doorway. There was a last door, and Tony pressed the handle down and pushed the door open, revealing the large chamber in front of them.

"My last few 'teaching partners' didn't exactly know what they were doing. I'm hoping you're at least a bit better than that." Tony said, but Bruce caught none of it. He marvelled at the wonder in front of him, the concrete cylinder block that stood majestically before them.

"Yep, I know. Pretty cool, huh?" Tony walked down the balcony-pathway that went around the vacuum, and Bruce couldn't help but stare in awe as his feet followed.

"That's...that's…" He struggled to find a suitable word for it. "This is all underground?"

"Yep. All ninety feet of it." Tony offered, reaching another door. "And here is the Chemistry department."

"What do you do with that kind of sized-chamber?" Bruce's mind was still on the vacuum.

"God knows. S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't know what to do with all their fundings." Tony types in another set of passcodes. "Close your mouth, will you?"

Bruce hadn't realized he was staring with his mouth open, but he shut his jaws together promptly.

"NASA uses theirs for spaceship testing, but I guarantee you we don't have spaceships here. I don't know why it's so big, but they suggested we can do molecular testing in these too. Space to move around, stuff like that. More Physics oriented. You know, seeing particle movements with no resistance force."

"That's ridiculous. We already know what would happen without resistance force."

"You don't know. All you know is a theory, Bob."

"Bruce."

"Bruce." Tony corrected himself quickly. "All you know is a theory, theorized by thousands of scientists who study other scientists' works and more or less agree with each other. The chamber is built to put that theory into practice. And anyway, there are lots you can do with moving particles. But anyway, I'm hoping our focus could be on Chemistry. Here's the lab." The metal door buzzed open and Bruce followed Tony in in a daze.

On the other side of the door was the biggest vacuum lab Bruce has ever seen, ever been lucky enough to witness.

"This is...amazing," said Bruce, still marvelling.

"Not the most vivid adjective ever, but on point, it is amazing." Something that resembled a smirk formed by the tip of Tony's lip. "This is where all the smaller stuff happens. Electromagnetism research...Obviously this is still a partial vacuum, but it's as close to a perfect vacuum as we can get. These vacuums are improving day by day, though. We're getting closer and closer to a perfect vacuum, by fractions of fractions everyday. It's not a whole lot, but considering how close we are, it's plenty. I've worked all summer with the engineering team. I'm the best they've got. It's kind of like making your own apparatus. I guess. Sort of. You do any chemical engineering?"

It didn't register in Bruce's mind that Tony was asking a question until an awkward moment later. "Uh...no. I'm more of the...physicist kind."

"Ahh. Physics. I guess we can work with Physics. Quantum theories...eh, I'll sacrifice my molecular movement time for that." Tony waved the subject off with his hand, and Bruce felt his eyelid twitch. "Anyway," Tony continued, "that's basically it. I'm going to go work with the engineering team now for a bit. You can hang around here, or whatever."

Bruce opened his mouth, questions already tumbling from the tip of his tongue, but Tony flashed him a smirk, and threw his right palm up into a wave.

"Bye-bye." The stubbled face turned away, and the smaller man turned a corner and disappeared.

Bruce let out a sigh as he started back toward the vacuum labs. He was going to have the entire quantum theory attempted before lunchtime.