AN: So here is the next chapter of the story, I hope you all like it and leave a review. The support so far for this story has been really good, I hope it continues.

Disclaimer: I do not own Tokyo Ghoul or the Avengers.

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(Last Time)

"Oh my sweet Kaneki, I can almost feel your hunger, the Hulk, he wasn't satisfying was he. That's because he enhanced everything about you, including your metabolism. Even now you've almost digested the few bites of flesh you got, and when you do, well who knows you might start digesting yourself. You need to eat Kaneki, you need to rip and tear into Thor, after all, isn't that what comrades are for?" Rize whispered, moving around Kaneki and over to the wary looking Thor, even as Kaneki's heart began to thunder faster, a roaring sound filling his ears and his vision beginning to blur.

"I'm hungry!" Kaneki roared in fury, his voice barely intelligible, all sense of reason gone, as he threw himself towards Thor, ignoring the blonde 'gods' shout of surprise, as he stepped back and swung his hammer around. The mass of metal colliding with Kaneki's head with a thunderous crashing sound.

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Chapter 6

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(On the Helicarrier)

It was the sound of rhythmic beeping that woke Kaneki up. His dull grey eyes snapping open and his breath exploding out of him in a rush. With bright light burned his retinas the moment he opened his eyes, blurring his vision for a moment as he looked around, his heart thundering in his chest and his breathes coming out in ragged gasps.

He was in a small, very clinical looking room, one which had reinforced metal walls on all four sides, like a prison, though there was a sheet of thick glass along one of the walls, with this acting as a window that looked out into another dull grey room adjacent to the one he was in at the moment.

Groaning slightly, and trying to force the beeping sound out of the nearby machine out of his pounding head, Kaneki sat up, his head throbbing slightly as he took more a bit time to inspect his surroundings.

He was in some kind of hospital room, he could tell that much from the heart monitor attached to him and beeping away next to his bed, and from what looked like a bag of blood on his other side, tubes running from the bag and into Kaneki's body as he lay on a small, metal framed cot in the centre of the room.

"Wha…?" Kaneki rasped out a few moments later, his head still aching slightly as he sat up properly now.

He didn't know where he was, or what was happening. The last thing he did in fact remember was fighting Banner, only it wasn't the nervous, meek Banner as he knew him, but instead his murderous, rage fuelled alter ego, the Hulk.

That was the last thing he remembered, the rest was all just blurred flashes of intense rage and hunger, and excruciating pain.

Thinking logically Kaneki assumed that he had lost his fight with the Hulk, the fact he was bedridden proved that much. Still he was also alive, and that had to count for something.

Taking solace in that fact, Kaneki made to get out of bed, his stomach grumbling lightly as he did so, though surprisingly not in hunger.

Only for him to find that it was impossible for him to get out of bed.

Looking down he soon worked out why.

He had been bound to the bed, thick, padded, chained metal restrains were bound around his ankles and wrists, binding him to the bed. With the placement of the chains making it so he could sit up, and move his arms and legs around a little, but not leave the bed.

Kaneki's face hardened as he took all this in. This had Fury written all over it.

"Fury." Kaneki spoke up, his still slightly raspy voice soft, but firm.

"I see you're finally awake." The dark skinned Director's voice replied, the man in question making himself known as he stepped into view safely behind the thick, glass window.

Kaneki didn't reply to that, instead he just sent Fury a cold look, before he then rattled the chains around binding his hands, and unamused look on his face. His question, though not verbalised, still quite obvious to SHIELD's.

"I have to say Kaneki, you made quite the impression in your fight with the Hulk, quite the impression indeed. It appears you have been holding back on your abilities, more in fact than even I had thought you were..." Fury continued, completely unperturbed by the way Kaneki's grey eyes coldly bored into him, his lip curling up revealing his strong, pearly white teeth.

"Your regenerative abilities for one. They are truly exceptional, perhaps the greatest I have ever seen, and I know some pretty exceptional people. I mean, you might be interested to know when they brought you in, your skull had been completely shattered and your brain damaged. The doctors thought you were a dead man. Or at least they did until your brain and skull fully reformed and regenerated in under a minute." Fury forged on, his arms held carefully behind his back as he continued to watch Kaneki curiously.

"Thor." Kaneki stated, a memory flashing into his head of the blonde Asgardian hitting him in the head with his massive hammer, Mjolnir. The memory was pretty blurred, and interspersed with feelings of intense anger and hunger, but having his head caved in did stand out a bit.

"Yes, it appears that after your fight with the Hulk, and probably due to your consumption of the Hulk's radioactive flesh, you lost all semblance of control you might once have had. I've seen the camera footage, you attacked and Thor defended himself, it's as simple as that." Fury nodded, his single visible eye boring into Kaneki, looking at him like a scientist would a particularly interesting specimen.

"Ok." Kaneki nodded, that made some sense. He remembered the burning feeling of the Hulk's flesh and the way it energised him and pushed his strength and abilities far beyond the norm. On top of that he remembered the way it seemingly enhanced his metabolism too. In fact by the time Thor had arrived he had been practically ravenous and completely out of control due to both his hunger and adrenaline.

"You didn't hurt or kill anyone directly, just in case you wanted to know." Fury continue on as if Kaneki hadn't spoken, his tone still blunt. "Other than Banner of course, but that could be attributed to extenuating circumstances. As for Thor, from what I saw on the cameras he seemed more amused than anything, and was able to put you down before you caused him much trouble. Not that it matters at the moment, as like Banner he's missing in action. Not because of you though, no, Loki tricked him into going into his prison cell not long after Thor had knocked Banner off of the Helicarrier and knocked you out, and then dropped him to the ground from over ten thousand feet."

Kaneki nodded at that, not too concerned about Banner, or Thor really either, as both of them could obviously look after themselves and were probably still alive from the way Fury was talking. Instead he focused on the first part of what Fury had said. "Directly?"

"Yes," Fury nodded unconcernedly. "There was collateral damage from your attempts to subdue Banner. At least a dozen god Agents were badly injured and three have already died. Those were mostly due to the Hulk though, so no direct blame is being attributed to you. Besides, those are just a few among the many casualties that came from the recent attack on the ship."

"An attack on the ship?" Kaneki asked, tilting his head to the side now, was that what had happened, he was still a little fuzzy on what had happened, what with things having been so sudden, and moving so quickly.

"Yes, it appears Loki was far more cunning than we had thought. Some subordinates of his, and the compromised Agent Barton, attacked the Helicarrier. They disabled one of the engines and invaded the bridge. And like I said before, during the commotion Loki escaped his cell and trapped his brother in it instead, though only after killing Phil Coulson." Fury paused as he said that, his gaze fixed on the stoic expression on Kaneki's face, as if he were looking for a sign of something.

Whether or not he saw what he wanted, Kaneki wasn't sure, either way it didn't deter him from continuing. "One good thing that came from this shit show though was that Agent Barton was turned back to our side, whatever mind control Loki was using to control him was broken, which is good news for us at the elast."

"Ok," Kaneki nodded, not really knowing who Barton was save for a vague memory of flipping through his profile and meeting him for all of a few minutes. He was some sort of archer or something. Phil Coulson though Kaneki did know, but not well enough to really feel any emotion, positive or negative, about his death. Not surprising considering he had only known the taciturn man for little more than a couple of days. "So why am I here?"

"For one so you can recover from your injuries in a secure location, at least until you return to consciousness and we can make sure you've regained control." Fury replied easily, before his tone intensified. "But also because we're doing some test on you. The abilities you showed, some believe they come from some kind of unique mutation, others though think they might be extra-terrestrial origin. Which basically means no one has a fucking clue what you are! And what that tells me, is that you are an unknown, and I don't like unknowns!"

Kaneki tilted his head to the side again as he heard that. "How long have I been in here?"

"Three hours, twenty three minutes, and as of this moment thirteen seconds." Fury replied immediately, not even glancing at a watch or a phone as he instead continued to keep his one visible eye on Kaneki. "You might be glad to know though, that in that time we have had you linked up to a special cocktail I had had made just for you before all this went down. It should have gone a long way to dealing with your hunger."

Kaneki cocked a brow at that, before he turned and looked at the blood bag.

"It's basically a human smoothie, ground up flesh, organs, blood and bone, everything a growing cannibal needs to get through the day." Fury continued in answer to Kaneki's look, his tone holding no judgement, as it instead held a kind of wry amusement to it. "Don't ask where we got the ingredients, it's classified."

Kaneki sent him a bland look at that. So that was what he was up to, feeding him aside, Fury wanted to know more about his physiology. That was troublesome but not unexpected considering what he knew about the man. That being said he was slightly bemused by the current theories on him, that he was either an alien like Thor, or a mutant. That being said, he genuinely didn't know the origins of Ghouls, so either of them could potentially be possible.

"And now I have woken and shown myself of sound mind I can leave?" Kaneki asked, not expecting the answer he wanted, but asking all the same.

Fury sent him a hard look as he heard that, clearly weighing him up. "The rest of the Avengers will soon be going after Loki once his location is found, and with Banner and Thor missing in action I wouldn't want to deprive them of another member of the team. Especially since they are in need of a powerhouse to round off the team's line up, and considering the way you went toe to toe with the Hulk and survived. Well, I can at least say you fit the bill."

"So I am free to go?" Kaneki asked again, wanting clarification now.

"For now yes, if you are ready you can suit up and join the rest when they head out." Fury replied slowly, clearing weighing up his words as he said them. The man no doubt thinking about what they already had on Kaneki, probably blood and tissue samples, among who knows what else, and whether that would be enough when compared to Kaneki himself.

Kaneki nodded at that, reading between the lines he assumed the situation was probably pretty grim. After all Fury despite his demeanour was clearly leery of him, but not apparently enough to keep him contained, not when Kaneki could be weaponised to use against the enemy.

A few moments later Fury must have pressed some button in the other room, as the restrains around Kaneki's wrists and ankles suddenly opened, the metal shackles sliding off of hem as Kaneki absentmindedly rubbed them. With the red marks around his wrists and ankles rapidly fading.

"You know where your locker is, another suit is waiting in there for you. The rest of the team will be setting off at any moment." Fury said, his gaze locked on Kaneki as he unsteadily got to this feet, his legs stumbling slightly as he moved for the door, which slid open automatically as he did so, his legs regaining strength and stability with every step.

"You think this is a good idea?" Maria Hill asked abruptly as she walked up so she was standing next to Fury, tearing her eyes away from the thin, white haired man as he headed out of the room, with her instead looking sideways at her boss.

"No, but with Banner gone and in the wind, Thor missing, and the Tesseract still in Loki's hands, they are going to need Kaneki. He went toe to toe with the Hulk and survived, and wounded Loki already. He will be indispensable." Fury said bluntly, not looking to his subordinate, as he instead opened up a holographic screen from the console in front of him. Flicking through the information the SHIELD doctor's had already obtained from the blood and tissue extracts they had taken.

With SHIELD being very well funded, and its science state of the art, the organisations researchers, scientists and doctors had been able to get a lot of information form the samples already. Not that the information provided many answers to his questions, instead it did the opposite, and made it so there more unanswered questions about Kaneki than before.

Kaneki it appeared was an anomaly, plain and simple. He was shown to have distinctly human DNA strands, though they also looked to be mutated, but not in the manner of usual mutants. Instead they were not able to find a specific genetically reason for his altered DNA and genes.

That being said they had found a match for some of the more obvious changes. For one they had managed to pick out some similarities between some of the strands of Kaneki's DNA and the DNA they had taken from Loki after his incarceration. More worryingly though, was the fact that his cells also appeared to be suffused with gamma radiation as well as Asgardian DNA, with this likely being from his consumption of the Hulk's flesh, which again, like with Loki, had seemingly caused his already unstable DNA to fluctuate and mutate even more than before.

What this would mean for him in the long term, well that was a complete unknown.

Personally though, Fury could only hope that they weren't looking at another Hulk, as that really would be the worst case scenario. After all what could be worse than a cannibalistic Hulk like creature that apparently could take on traits from whatever he ate?

Fury almost let out a dry chuckle at that thought, after all it reminded him of the old adage he'd heard in his youth, that 'you are what you eat', only with Kaneki that appeared more literal than figurative.

Honestly speaking they had no idea what Kaneki was, the best they had come up with was that he some kind of parasitic, genetically altered human being, an extra-terrestrial experiment gone wrong perhaps.

Truthfully what they had on him at the moment wasn't enough, nowhere near enough. Especially for someone as paranoid as Fury knew he was.

Except currently there were extenuating circumstances, Loki was walking around with a potential weapon of mass/ if not worldwide destruction, and with an allied horde of these Chitauri that Thor had spoken of just waiting to invade the earth.

That being said Fury wans't just letting him walk free without taking measures. He had safeguards in place after all, more particularly he had taken advantage of Kaneki's regenerative abilities and had had a tracker inserted into his skull, one which could be activated to send an electric shock through his brain if needs be.

Not that he would be telling Kaneki about it.

"He's unstable sir, honestly speaking I think until we know more about him he should be kept quarantined and as far away from the general public as possible." Maria Hill spoke up again.

Fury looked sideways at her as he heard that. "And normally I would agree. But for the moment, for the good of the world, he is needed."

Maria opened her mouth to retort to that, or at least she did until she saw the harsh expression on Fury's face. "Yes sir, I will notify the other Avengers that he will be joining them. Should I tell them what we've discovered about him too?"

"No, they do not need to know any more than I've already told them." Fury replied after a few moments. He had already given them a doctored account of what happened, brushing on Kaneki's abilities, but not going into too much depth, either on his possible psychological issues, or on what they had found from an examination of his DNA. "They know as much as they need too. See to it that they are ready to leave at any moment, Loki will be making his move soon. I can feel it!"

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(A little while later)

Pulling on a pretty much identical black suit to the one he had had before, only without the customisation like the hood and outlining. Kaneki zipped it up to his chin, flexing his arms and legs after he did so, after which he grabbed a black mask he had also found in the locker, one which would completely cover his lower face from the nose down. With it also having the useful property of filtering the air he would be breathing, which in turn would protect him from poisonous gases, not that that was much of a problem for a Ghoul.

Eyeing up the rest of the equipment in his locker, Kaneki decided not to take any of it this time. Now that his abilities had been seen he really had no need to hide them, and so would not need any of the guns or knives in the locker. Especially since his hands and Kagune were deadlier than any normal human weapon.

Rolling his neck, Kaneki was just about to slam the door to his locker shut, before he froze. His grey eyes narrowing as he brought his hand up to his head, mussing up his white hair as he did so. His head was still throbbing, and the throbbing feeling wasn't fading. Having had a centipede stuck in their before, due to his torture at Jason's hands, Kaneki was pretty sensitive to these kind of things.

Licking his lips nervously, Kaneki's fingers twitched nervously as he opened the door to the locker more fully and looked in the mirror on the inside of the door.

Ignoring as he how his grey eyes now had odd green flecks in the irises, with him instead beginning to examine his head, pawing around with it as he tried to work out exactly where the throbbing feeling was coming from and whether there was any visible sign of what it was.

After a few moments of this, he found it. It was coming from the back of his skull, just above where his spine connected to his head.

Narrowing his eyes even further in thought, Kaneki traced his fingers over the spot on the back of his head. There was something in his head at that spot, he wasn't sure what, but he knew there was something there. He could feel it.

His eyes still narrowed, Kaneki dropped his hands to his side and slammed the door shut. Just as he knew there was something in his head, so too did he know the likely culprit. Nick Fury, the Director of SHIELD, it had to be him. Similarly he knew that the very same man was likely watching him even now, on the many hidden cameras the spymaster probably had dotted around the ship.

Twitching his fingers, Kaneki licked his lips again before he made his decision and, headed out of the room. After which he began to make his way to the meeting room, where Maria had told him the other Avengers were currently waiting for Loki to resurface. Most of them apparently brooding over the recent attack on the ship, and the fall out that had come from it.

Walking through the ship, despite wearing the standard SHIELD uniform now, Kaneki quickly noticed that the other Agents were all skirting around him, or eyeing him cautiously as he passed. All of them swiftly and silently moving out of his way as he walked slowly down the corridors. Clearly they had heard of what had gone off between him and the Hulk, even if it was an abridged version.

Narrowing his eyes at that, Kaneki ignored them and continued on down the hallways until he arrived at the conference room Maria Hill had directed him to.

With the room in question being occupied already, as both Tony and Steve sat at the table with glum looks on their faces. Whilst Natasha was standing off to one side, talking quietly to a blonde man, one who Kaneki recognised as being Clint Barton, aka 'Hawkeye'.

"Well look who it is, still alive then?" Tony was the first to speak up, a wane smile on his face as Kaneki entered the room, the others all looking up as he did so.

"Kaneki, I glad to see you're okay. We heard you tried to hold off Banner by yourself when he turned into the Hulk." Steve spoke up next, a look of grudging respect on his face as he sat straighter and looked over at Kaneki, his previous discomfort with Ken's cannibalistic tendencies set aside for the time being. "That was brave of you, putting your life on the line for others."

Kaneki cocked his eyebrow at that, before he looked to the calm looking Romanov in the corner, who like Barton hadn't spoken yet, with both of them instead just giving Kaneki wary, analysing looks. "You make it sound like I had a choice…"

Steve frowned as he heard that, before he sat up and looked between the stoic Kaneki and the inscrutable Romanov as the two of them locked eyes, emerald green boring into Kaneki's now green flecked grey eyes.

"Well this is awkward…" Tony chipped in next, his smile growing slightly as he looked almost eagerly between the red head and the cannibal. "It sounds like someone threw you under the bus Ken, or rather the Hulk I suppose in this case?"

"I made a snap decision based on the facts. The Hulk was too strong and fast for me to deal with. Kaneki meanwhile is both stronger and faster, and from what I know of his abilities was more capable of surviving the Hulk, and keeping him busy until help could arrive, than I was. By the looks of it my decision was the correct one." Natasha spoke up, her tone not holding a hint of remorse.

"Oh, now that right there, that's just cold!" Tony said, his smile widening even further. "And your rebuttal Kaneki!"

"She made her decision, and she stands by it." Said Kaneki after a couple of moments of thought, neither his voice nor face holding any condemnation, or giving away any of his internal irritation. "That's just her nature."

Natasha flinched almost imperceptibly at his words.

"Wait what, that's it! She uses you and leaves you to be the Hulk's chew toy and you just shrug it off! Where's the fun in that!?" Tony complained, looking around as Barton sent Natasha a slight frown.

Natasha didn't reply to Stark's comments, instead she maintained her eye contact with Kaneki. Whilst Steve just looked on in shock.

"You abandoned your comrade?! You just used him as a distraction knowing that he would likely die!" Steve asked shocked, finally getting Natasha's attention as she tore her gaze from the still stoic Kaneki, as she instead looked into Captain America's naive, baby blue eyes.

"I made a difficult decision based on the facts available to me. I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand." Natasha retorted coolly, before she looked over at Tony. "And I wouldn't be so quick to 'shit stir' Stark, not when you hardly acquitted yourself brilliantly."

Tony frowned as he heard that, and opened his mouth to retort. With Steve also frowning as he turned to the attractive red head, none to happy with her comments about him either.

Before anybody could say anything else though they were all distracted by the door to the room opening again, with Director Fury and Maria Hill entering the room, both of them looking grim.

"Fury!" Said Steve, standing up as the dark skinned man came to a stop and looked around at the five other people in the room.

"You're all still arguing and bickering like children." Fury spoke up immediately, looking around at the five people present. "The enemy just walks into our base, frees our prisoner and kills our people, and you're all just sitting around arguing and feeling sorry for yourselves!"

Steve scowled at that, but lowered his head slightly and looked away from Fury. Tony meanwhile opened his mouth to make a quip or a comment, only to close it moments later when Fury's furious gaze flickered over to him. Barton and Natasha meanwhile just looked on, both of them sharing a look but saying nothing more.

As for Kaneki he just watched on with disinterest, the cynical part of his mind pondering just what Fury was planning now.

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket when he was stabbed. It looks like he never did get you to sign them," Nick Fury continued on, tossing the Captain America trading cards Phil Coulson had been obsessed with onto the table.

All of them looked down at the still blood stained cards, with Steve picking one up glumly and looking at it. A slight sigh leaving his lips, as he sent the card a forlorn look before he looked back up at Fury.

'Emotional manipulation, classy…' Kaneki thought dryly as he looked around the room and the back at Fury. From what he knew of the man he found himself unsurprised that he would sink this low.

"We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, the location of the Cube, Banner, Thor… I have got nothing for you. I lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming," Nick Fury continued, his tone seemingly sincere as the others all listened on. After which he took a deep breath and spoke again, his tone getting louder this time. "Yes, SHIELD was going to use the Tesseract to build an arsenal of weapons. However, I never put all my chips on that, because I was playing something even riskier."

The five of them shared some glances at that, before focusing back on Fury as he walked around the table.

"There was an idea. A simple idea I had, Stark already knows this, called the Avengers Initiative. The plan was to bring together a group of remarkable people and see if they could become something extraordinary. To see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them to, and fight the battles we never could. Phil Coulson still believed in that idea. In heroes." Fury said fiercely, once again looking around and meeting everyone's gaze, even Kaneki as he cocked an eyebrow and tilted his head.

Did Fury include Kaneki in that, or Banner, both of them were monsters after all, how could a monster ever be a hero?

A moments silence followed Fury's speech, before Stark suddenly got up and walked away, swiftly leaving the room without a word.

"Yeah well, it's an old fashion notion," Fury said as he watched Stark leave, with Rogers getting up and quickly following after him. Leaving it so it was just Kaneki, Natasha, Barton, Fury and Hill in the room. But only for a moment, before Fury and Hill left, leaving only three.

A silence followed after their exit, with Kaneki looking over to Natasha, who for just a moment looked like she was about to say something, only to then fall silent. Barton meanwhile made a move.

"It's Ken Kaneki isn't it?" Barton stated more than asked, walking forwards his hand outstretched.

Looking down at the hand, Kaneki paused for a moment before he reached out and took it, in a quick but firm handshake. "Yes."

"We've met before, though I suppose we didn't really speak." Barton pressed on, stepping back after the two of them broke their handshake.

"Yes, I remember. You didn't look too… comfortable, with my… habits." Kaneki eventually replied, his gaze switching back over to the silent, but still present Romanov. The woman still hadn't apologised for lumbering him with the Hulk, nor did he think she would, not from what he had seen of her so far anyway.

"Ha, well can you blame me. It's not exactly a normal, or well… pleasant thing. Still I hope we can make a fresh start." Barton said, shifting with discomfort but not breaking eye contact.

"Why not." Kaneki nodded after a moment.

"Great, well it'll be good to work with you, especially now I'm no longer being mind controlled…" Barton laughed weakly, obviously trying to wave away recent happenings with humour. Though from the way the skin around his eyes tightened, his heart thundered in his chest and hands twitched, Kaneki could see he wasn't as fine as he was pretending.

"Kaneki." Natasha finally spoke up, talking into the slightly more content silence that followed Barton's words.

Kaneki turned to look at her.

Before she could speak though, conversation was once again interrupted by someone barging into the room. Only this time it was Captain America, and he had something important to say. Something that all those present needed to act on immediately.

"Loki's in New York, he's about to make his move. Everyone get ready, we need to go now!"

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AN: So what did you all think? I hope you enjoyed it. It was a bit tricky to write, especially writing Nick Furys part.

Thanks for reading, hope you favourite, follow or review.

Catch you all later.

Greed720.