"I can't believe it" Tony was saying, as he watched the interaction from a monitoring screen. The couple's strength under pressure had already proved to be admirable, but the Hulk showing up so suddenly was unseen. One minute, Bruce had been stressed and half reaching for the offered cloths, the next, Hulk was shouting at the person discouraging his relationship. "Nobody I've seen can switch gears that quickly, and yet the Hulk takes over to yell at someone a second after Bruce was cowering from the threat and letting his girlfriend defend him again.
The Avengers, excluding the Hulk, who was in the cell being questioned, Spiderman, who technically didn't count and was also in the Hulk proof cell, and Captain America, who was heavily medicated in a hospital bed as the Hulk proof cage was in use, were watching the interaction between the Hulk and Spiderman, who Tony had recently learned was named Peter. Even if Nick Fury was doing the interrogating, everyone, including Nick Fury himself, was more interested on seeing how Spiderman lasted against the Hulk than getting the Hulk to stop dating. If Spiderman was safe regardless of her close proximity with the Hulk, Tony didn't want to give his daughter another reason to hate him. If Hulk actually would fallow orders from Spiderman, Nick Fury, Natasha, and the rest of Shield knew that her presence was needed on the team or else Hulk might turn against them even more easily. They couldn't risk that kind of security breach, and Tony didn't want his daughter dead, so eliminating the threat wasn't very possible right now. The only reason Tony was even allowing this test was the safety feature of a tank of the same knockout gas that Captain America was just taken out with being hooked to the cage. One word, and Hulk wouldn't be awake enough to hurt anyone.
The interaction didn't get any less surreal from there. The fury and proximity of the Hulk was enough to make the father in Clint want to rescue the girl. The fact that Hulk was towering defensively over Spiderman and that anger was directed to the person 'threatening' Petra was enough to calm Tony down. Natasha just knew that if Bruce had felt half as strongly about evading capture by her, no if Hulk had been half as resistant, she wouldn't have been able to take him anywhere. Then again, seeing the fury on Petra's face at the thought of leaving, Natasha was glad that there was a wall of Hulk proof glass between her and the director, especially if the girl was a Stark in her response to such feelings. Natasha was disgusted enough by Tony's temper when she had posed as his assistant, she didn't want to be in the line of fire of another Stark. Still, the interaction between the Hulk and Petra was enough to plant ideas in Natasha…
"You just came out, Hulk" the director said calmly, a true testament to his courage. "That makes us question the safety of poor Spiderman here"
"Hulk no hurt his girlfriend!" Hulk exclaimed, and then suddenly looked to Spiderman. She quickly took it as a request for affirmation.
"Why would you accuse Hulk of such a thing?" Spiderman exclaimed. "Is this another plot to bully him? As his girlfriend, I am not going to tolerate such false accusations. If there really was a problem, you would already know about it, what with all of your ever-so-discreate camera surveillance. Have any of you actually seen Bruce do something questionable? I don't think that cruelty could have been hidden over a week of experimentation, the absolute easiest excuse for any controlling or sadistic behaviors. Any experiment gives the experimenter some basis for controlling the specimen, but Bruce never took advantage of that to trap or in any way influence other parts of my life, and as soon as I asked him to, he asked before trying anything. Why would a controlling attitude come out of nowhere? It doesn't, and I am very aware of all of the ways that people can be de-humanized in the stages of an experiment. Why are you picking on Hulk by trying to pin charges of bad conduct against him with no basis? Any experiment gives people an opportunity to ignore the specimen's comfort, multiple opportunities even. He never tried any of those! Not even on my technology, which wouldn't have felt anything! No one, not one person I tell you, would pass up the opportunity as many times as Bruce did if they genuinely wanted to hurt someone. Hulk's no doubt impressive skills in destruction do not mean that either he or Bruce would betray someone's trust by hurting them. Right?" Petra turned to Hulk, only to find Bruce sheepishly avoiding eye contact with her.
"When did Bruce even change?" Tony wondered aloud.
"During the long-winded lecture" Hawkeye replied, eyes still glued to the screen. He did deserve the name Hawkeye for a reason, after all. "Good to know that Hulk can't handle lectures filled with big words"
"Wait, when did Bruce wake up?" Natasha asked, wondering what made this transition different.
"Right a few sentences after Hulk faded" Hawkeye replied,"ssh, there talking again"
"Ummm…" Bruce was spared from having to answer the awkward question by Nick Fury's interruption.
"I don't believe that you know about Betty then" Fury said.
"Who?" Petra asked, wondering why they were talking about another girl in connection to Bruce.
"Bruce's girlfriend" Nick replied.
When Petra turned to look at Bruce, he quickly refuted the claim, "Ex-girlfriend, we aren't dating anymore, and just to clarify further, we weren't dating at the time of Hulk's appearance"
"Than how is she relevant?" Spiderman looked accusingly at Nick Fury.
"Watch this footage" He said, just as a screen popped up in from of the cage. If also replaced half of the screens of footage in the control room with the video, answering any question as to why there were so many screens to watch in there.
The video itself was upsetting. In it, Bruce started out strapped to a table. Unknown were the things that had been done beforehand. Something was lit up. Within seconds of that, the Hulk appeared. He was writing, and easily broke through the restraints by shear size alone. Within seconds of that, Hulk was lashing out at everything, computers, equipment, people. All of them were shoved away carelessly as Hulk smashed a path of escape, uncaring of damages he caused. No one that tried to stop his rampage was spared, and when he nearly broke free, he was immediately knocked out again.
"What are you trying to prove with that?" Spiderman asked, unusually serious.
"Hulk is a danger to those around him" Nick Fury said, unrelenting.
"That's just bullshit" Spiderman said, upset. Right as everyone looked incredulously at her, visible to Spiderman or otherwise, she continued in a flat tone. "What do you think that those lit up posts are?"
"A radiation chamber of some sort" Nick Fury assumed. "They vary greatly, but causing the Hulk…"
"Wrong." Spiderman said. "Just wrong. That two-pronged design, with a table beneath it couldn't block radiation if it tried. That model, I recognize as something much more sinister. Did you ever see early models of the electric chair? The patents included a version that ran DC current through the victim. It was a very low voltage, but it would leave any of its victims screaming in pain. That is a more modern, better hidden version. The table is a poor conductor, so the electrons will get to the other side via any more conductive route. In this case, the nerves of the victim are that route. The prongs are thick, but their covered in a thick coat of plastic. The light takes most of the used current and hides the necessary voltage, but connected to that table, it's an instrument of torcher. Anything that didn't respond negatively to that is either the most machoistic person in the universe, or can't actually feel pain. Those drugs hooked up to the room? They're a partial numbing agent. When on them, you can't accurately tell where pain is coming from."
"And just how would you know that young lady?" Nick Fury asked in an equally serious voice.
After a silence and shudder from the girl herself, she visibly forced herself to answer. "Do you want to see the video of what I do under that? Absolute slaughter, and I had already aced my pain tolerance tests beforehand. No one, except the equipment itself, within my reach survived" With that, she turned around to smuggle with Bruce, seeking comfort after reliving such a painful time.
