Together We're an Ocean
PenPatronus
Chapter 11
The Weeping Shapeshifter

Clint Barton tried and failed to lift the trap door for a third time. Steve stood in the shed's doorway with his arms folded and a smirk on his face. "You're wasting your energy."

A dry laugh erupted from Clint's throat. "What energy? Did that rabbit leg fill you up?"

Steve tossed Barton his crutches and hopped forward. Cautiously, he eased his fingers between the floorboards. Rusty hinges protested, but a moment later the door landed on the floor with a bang and a hot cloud of dust. Beetles scurried up the uneven, lopsided stone steps and spiders retreated down them. Steve heard but didn't see a hissing snake slither down the tunnel. Rogers motioned for Clint to hand him the gas lamp and then he limped down the stairs. "Tunnel goes southwest!" he reported.

Clint crouched on the floor and peered as far as he could into the hole. "Smell that? Moonshiners used this."

Steve nodded. "Bet someone dug this out back in the 20's during Prohibition. Can't see where the tunnel ends. We might end up in Ohio."

"At least Ohio has Wi-Fi." Clint straightened up and pointed his thumb towards the shed door. "Hop back out, Captain. Looks like we have a Plan D."

Steve grunted as he climbed. "How about we call it Plan T? T for 'tunnel'."

"After Plan R, 'run for your life,' and Plan S for 'suicide'?"

Steve chuckled once at the dark joke. "'R' for 'rabbit attack.' 'S' is use 'Stark as human shield' or—"

"S for 'seduce'?" Clint used his wooden ski crutches to get to the door first and hold it open for the hopping Steve. Morning sunlight greeted them. "I've seen Nat use that technique a hundred times but, unfortunately, I don't have a corset."

Steve Rogers was a moment away from asking what a corset was when both men heard a crack and hit the ground.

Kentucky heat cooked John Bloom's ginger hair. Sweat fogged his scope and trickled down over the 'x'-shaped scar on his cheek. He jumped when a curious robin flew by. "Dammit!" he cursed.

"Keep your shit together!" Delancey hissed from behind a tree on his right.

"We already lost the neuroscientists! Strucker will kill us if we mess this up, too!" said Jackson.

"Oh, you're dead anyway," Bloom assured him. "Our entire alien army got vaporized under your watch. You're lucky Strucker even let you join my team for the cleanup."

"Excuse me, but who came up with this 'storm the castle' idea?"

"Delancey."

"Delancey and I! And who came up with the idea to search the woods at night with a stealth drone?"

"Doll."

Jackson spat a wad of saliva on the dirt. "Me! Doll wanted to go grid by grid in a hang glider like it's 1993!"

Bloom shrugged. "That SHIELD patrol last night was surveying the area in wingsuits."

"Jackson, relax, you'll get your kudos," Delancey said. "Strucker knows we're doing our part. What you can do now is shut it so Bloom can concentrate!"

A third voice said, "Boys, boys, boys. Sneaking up on them is child's play. The real test of this mission is whether the trap will work and that, thankfully, is all on Strucker."

Jackson looked back over his shoulder at a tall, slim woman in her 50's whose hair sported an even brighter shade of red than Bloom's. "Hey, baby Doll, wanna put some dime on Bloom's shot?"

Doll rolled her eyes. "As if you're good for it. You still owe Clint Barton twenty bucks from a Poker game. Surprised Romanoff didn't tear your head off when she had the chance."

"Should I pay him back before or after I shoot him?"

Bloom finished wiping the moisture off his sniper rifle and returned to the scope. "Get in line, Jackson. I've got dibs on Hawkeye."

Jackson punched the tree he crouched behind. "So, we can call dibs now, huh? Fine! Rogers is mine."

"No way, man!" Delancey punched his partner in the arm. His elbow bumped against Bloom's back and the HYDRA agent almost dropped his rifle.

"Son of a bitch!" Bloom turned on his knees and punched them both on the nametags stitched into their camouflaged uniforms. "Back the hell up, will you? You know what? Go join Vizquel at my 3:00. And shut up before the targets hear you!"

Doll crawled forward on her knees after Jackson and Delancey left, grumbling through the brush. "Target sighted?" she whispered.

Bloom blinked through the scope. "South side of the cabin. Second window from the right. Male. Six feet tall."

Doll flipped her hair back over her shoulder and raised a walkie-talkie. "Alpha team is ready," she reported.

"Stand by," replied a female voice. "Northeast window. Male. Unclear if an adult—target is sitting down."

Every HYDRA agent flinched when Baron Wolfgang von Strucker spoke through the coms. "Polite reminder that we're no longer associated with SHIELD or its inefficient rules!" Strucker spat with his accented voice. "We're at war. We have neither the time nor the luxury to hesitate! Begin the assault!"

"Beta is go."

"Charlie is go."

"Delta is go."

"On my mark," Bloom whispered. "Three… Two… One…"

Bloom and three other snipers pulled their triggers. Glass splashed. Screams echoed. Bloom grinned when his target took a bullet through the ear. The squad raced forward—literally raced in a spur-of-the-moment competition to see who would kick down the door first. Doll won. She followed her Beretta right into the middle of the cabin and turned in a circle to make sure that every eye in the room was on her. "Good morning, boys!" she cooed. "We're your nightmare. Not your worst nightmare, but definitely in the top five. Kindly raise your hands above your heads and shut up!"

A red fleur-de-lis hung over a wide, unused chimney. Fluttering in the sudden breeze, a long cloth banner that hung from one corner of the cabin to another read 'Boy Scouts of America.' There were no other decorations except for a plaque, and a frayed maroon rug that took up most of the one-room, classroom-sized structure. And, in the northeast corner of the room, splashed with their scoutmasters' blood and huddled under a table piled with popsicle sticks, glue guns, string, toothpicks, and six different types of candy bars were a dozen 12-year-old boys wearing forest-green uniforms.

"Really? With the crying?" Bloom made a tut-tut noise with his tongue. "When I was in Scouts we behaved like men! I don't give a damn if you just saw your scoutmaster kick it—quit that noise!"

The few boy scouts who weren't crying immediately started to sob.

"Ugh!" Jackson shouted. He unsheathed a second Glock and aimed at the kids. "Zip it, shrimps!"

"So rude," a new voice purred from the door. Sporting a perfectly pressed uniform and a single monocle clamped in front of his eye, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker strolled into the room with his gloved fingers intertwined behind his back. "These are children, gentlemen! Precious children! Behold the future!" Strucker plopped a hand on top of a chubby blond boy's head and drummed his fingers. "These lads are special. Chosen! Thanks to them we will soon be free of that Beast and, without their guard dog, the Avengers are no match for HYDRA!"

Bloom, Doll, Jackson, and Delancey cheered along with the ten other agents piled into the scouts' cabin.

"Bring in the tech and get to work!" Strucker ordered. "We have a Hulk to catch."

Bruce was unsurprised to find Tony awake and scribbling. "How are you feeling today?" he asked with a forced nonchalant-ness to his voice. "You look slightly less like a corpse."

Tony shrugged. He didn't look up from the paper. "Corpses don't have headaches. I envy corpses."

Banner narrowed his eyes. "Dark, man."

Tony didn't recognize the plate of meat Bruce handed him. "Grilled venison?"

"Rabbit." Bruce sat down on the mattress beside him. With his legs and arms crossed and the cabin wall against his back, it was the most comfortable spot in the room. "Had to be one hundred yards away when Barton threw that knife."

Stark sniffed the food. "A hundred? No way."

Banner pointed at his own eyes. "Saw it. Vouching for it. Incredible…" Bruce looked around the mattress, then the whole room. "Where, uh, where's the radio?"

"Steve's giving it a proper burial."

"No luck?"

"It caught on fire." Tony took a bite. Both men waited to see if his stomach would let him keep the meat down. "Take a look at that." Tony slid over a sheet of paper after he successfully swallowed his lunch.

"Another sketch?" Bruce wished, not for the first time that day, that he had his glasses.

Stark chomped on a bigger slice. "A little project I have in mind. Thought maybe we could, you know, work on it together."

A raised eyebrow. "Together, huh? Is this your version of an apology?"

"Maybe." Tony tongued the food into his left cheek so that he could speak clearly. "I once apologized to Pepper by giving her strawberries."

Bruce chuckled. "She's allergic to strawberries."

"I didn't know!" Tony protested. "Or rather I did but, uh, didn't. Never mind."

"This isn't your first head injury, is it?" Banner squinted at the paper. "Looks like just another suit."

"After we build another program." The inventor's eyes shined for the first time in days. "A program like JARVIS, but better. Better, and independent. Independent and able to protect the world when we're, for example, stuck in the woods."

"Independent?" Bruce reached for the plate and picked up a bite for himself. "You're talking about artificial intelligence."

"Obviously." Using a short, dull pencil, Tony flipped over another page and pointed at it. "What do you think?"

Banner read Stark's scribbles. "Ultra…on?"

"Ultron. Badass name, right?"

Bruce gestured at the next sheet. "And what's a Vibramag?"

"A gauntlet. For Cap." Tony pointed at his left forearm. "Magnet that only attracts Vibranium. If Steve loses his shield he just has to turn the magnet on and—whoosh—it'll return to him, Mjolnir-style."

A soft smile passed from Bruce to Tony. "So, this crisis of ours is, what, a little inventing retreat for you?"

Stark scratched his greasy hair. "Something's got to distract me from this headache."

The pair finished the rest of the rabbit. Tony showed Bruce more blueprints: a new Quinjet with JARVIS installed, retroreflective panels for an Iron Man suit, a fire extinguisher installed inside an arrow, a 'Stark'marine, a device that scans for brain activity in addition to heat signatures, etc. Only an hour went by before Tony started blinking more and pinching his own skin to stay awake. His energy faded faster than either of them preferred. Even as Bruce gently pushed him flat onto the mattress, Tony kept on talking about how sure he was that an extra knife could fit in the hammer's handle without compromising balance.

Bruce nodded along, barely listening, focused only on making sure Tony was comfortable before he passed out. He knelt on one knee, double-checked all the Band-Aids and bandages and then said, softly, "Tony, I'm leaving."

"Because of the absence of deodorant?" Tony crinkled his nose. "None of us have showered but honestly, man, you stink worse than I do."

Banner didn't feel like laughing. "It's been days, Tony. We're in trouble. One of us has to just pick a direction and start walking."

"I can walk," said Tony.

"Not in a straight line."

Tony snorted. He didn't argue. "Take the shotgun with you."

"You need it here."

"Barton can defend us against rabbits." Tony rubbed his tired eyes with his fists. "Yeah, well, chop chop! Hurry up already before I die."

Bruce winced. "Not funny." He stood, then gently placed his hand on Tony's head. "See you soon."

"Don't you dare come back without morphine and muffins," Tony said sleepily.

Clint and Steve stood waiting on the front lawn. Cap looked Banner up and down and asked, "Did you tell him?"

Bruce shook his head. "Told him I'm going for help. That's all."

"Uh, Banner," said Clint, "no shoes?"

"Only one pair of boots in that cabin and you're going to make sure they go on Tony." Banner wiggled his bare feet. "Does it even matter? Am I going to be in human form for long?" Steve and Clint looked for an answer in the other's eyes. "Don't try to deny what you heard, Barton. There's more than one reason why they call you the 'Hawk.'"

"I thought I heard a gunshot, but it could've been a falling rock or a bear stepping on a stick." Clint sighed. "I've been wrong before."

"No," Bruce chuckled, "you haven't."

"Bruce, there's a good chance they're friendlies," Steve insisted. "Campers, hikers, hunters—civilians! Sending you to intercept them is just a precaution."

Bruce snorted. "I'm may not be 'trained,' guys, but I'm not stupid. If you really thought the person who fired that gun was likely to help us, you would've sent up a flare right away."

Silence. Half a minute passed before Clint interrupted the quiet to say, "Good luck, man."

Bruce nodded. "If you hear Hulk roar… Just run. We'll hold them off as long as we can," he said. "Look after Tony."

Without another word, Banner walked between his two teammates and disappeared into the woods.

Bruce Banner's mother told the story of the weeping shapeshifter when he was nine or ten. She insisted that it wasn't meant to scare him but to encourage his skepticism, a necessary trait for any scientist. But, it was the fear that followed him into adulthood. The fear of hearing a crying child outside his window, down a dark alley, or at his front door. The fear of trying to help the weeping baby only to witness it shapeshift into a goblin as soon as he was in range of its fangs. That image sat in the forefront of Bruce's mind now as he approached another cabin. A cabin with drapes covering every window and a wide open front door. A cabin inhabited by at least one kid—a kid begging for help between sobs.

Bruce peeked at the open door from behind a chestnut oak. "WWSRD?" he whispered to himself. "What would Steve Rogers do?"

"Is anybody there?" the kid's voice called. "Hello! Hello? If anyone can hear me—help!"

Bruce concluded that Steve would dash in without hesitating (except for a very brief superhero pose in the doorframe to evaluate the threat). Bruce also concluded that he was no Steve Rogers.

Bruce cupped his palms around his mouth and called, "Hello? I hear you—can you hear me?"

A brief pause, and then the voice responded. "Mister, I need help! I need help, sir, I'm in the cabin!"

Banner took a cautious step out from behind the tree. "What's going on? What happened?"

A longer pause. "My friend said some guy robbed a bank, hid the money in here, then never came back for it! He said to climb up the chimney but I fell—I fell and, and hurt my leg!" Pause number three. "I broke my leg!"

Ten more steps. Bruce could see into the building, but not past shadows. "What's your name, kid?"

"Danny! Daniel Christopher Smith-Coblentz. I play basketball! My mom's a pastor! I got an A- on my last spelling quiz!"

Bruce stayed crouched, ready to bolt as he approached. "Danny, is there anyone else in there with you?"

"No! I swear, no!"

"I'm coming in!" Bruce called. "Danny, I need you to sit perfectly still. Don't make any sudden moves, kid, ok? I don't want to hurt you. I won't hurt you, but I need you to stay still."

"Ok, mister!" the child replied. The tears left his voice but the fear remained. "Hurry!"

Banner stepped over the threshold. Hulk hovered beneath his skin, ready to burst out Jack-in-the-Box style.

Only part of Bruce was surprised when three things happened simultaneously: overhead lights burst on, the door shut behind him, and hands shoved him forward. Two more pairs of hands caught him, led him to the left a few feet, then disappeared as suddenly as they arrived. Bruce squinted at the bright lights. Silhouettes of figures came into view. "Danny?" he called. "Danny, are you here?"

Hiccup-sobs on his left. "I'm sorry, Mr. Banner, but they made me do it. They made me do it!"

"It's all right, kid," Bruce soothed. To the other dark shapes he said, "If you know who I am, then you know what I am. Believe me when I say you wouldn't like me when I'm—" Bruce's eyes adjusted. The scene around him became clear. "…angry," Bruce said meekly. "Oh, man…"

A confident voice with an accent he couldn't place spoke from his right. "Look down, Doctor. Look down at your feet." Bruce obeyed. His bare feet stood in the center of a circle drawn on the wood with spray-paint. The circle was half the circumference of Steve's shield. Bruce saw 12 more circles spaced around him like numbers on a clock face. Those circles were three times bigger and, sitting or lying down in their centers were a dozen trembling, crying, terribly terrified little Boy Scouts bound by rope, gagged with thick cloth, and handcuffed tight. He spotted Danny by his nametag. The kid looked slim with long eyes and thick glasses. A smirking red-headed woman stood behind him with a gun.

Bruce Banner summoned all of his courage and glared at the woman. "When I unleash him, the Hulk will smash that gun out of your hand before you can even think about pulling the trigger."

The woman's smirk widened. "Wouldn't do that if I were you," she purred. She seemed about to speak some more but, then, a tall man in a pressed uniform walked past her. She dropped her gaze, then busied herself gagging Danny. The man stopped in front of Banner. The tips of his shoes stood motionless inches from the spray-paint. His head was balding and his jaw looked like it was made of steel. "Do you know who I am, Dr. Bruce Banner?" Bruce shook his head. "Good. You should not. The elders among HYDRA's ranks have worked hard to remain anonymous, even to those associated with SHIELD. My name is Strucker and I'll be your doom for the day."

Red speckled the unlit fireplace. Bruce smelled the rust of blood. "If you know who I am," he repeated, "then you know what I am. Let these innocent children go and maybe I'll rip off your arms instead of your heads."

"I take your threat very seriously, doctor," said Strucker. Bruce didn't like the smug smile on his face. I am well aware that you could level us all within seconds. I'm also aware that no cage can contain you. At least, not for long." He nodded down at the circle. "No cage… Except mine."

Banner raised both eyebrows. "You call this a cage? Didn't know HYDRA had a sense of humor. Now, for the last time," Bruce growled, "let these kids go, or none of you will leave here with beating hearts."

Strucker laughed. It was more than a belly laugh, it was a chortle. Looking at a tall, built African American man standing in the opposite corner, he said, "This is my favorite part, Delancey. I've been waiting ages to give this speech but now, wow, now I realize I should've practiced it in the mirror."

Green eyes glowed. Bruce squeezed his hands into tight fists. "Final warning. Hulk isn't just a monster. He knows the difference between an innocent kid and a bad guy. And he's faster than you can imagine."

The chortle crescendoed into a guffaw. "You're in the best cage imaginable, Dr. Banner. I'm sorry but I really do deserve a pat on the back for this!" Strucker cracked his fingers and intertwined them on top of his bald head. "That circle you're standing on? That circle you're spouting threats from? Would you like to know what happens if you step one single toe outside it, or if one of these younglings exit theirs?"

A sensation like running water sent goosebumps down Bruce's spine. He wished Tony was there…

"BOOM!" Strucker yelled the sound effect so loudly that everyone in the room started. The baron twirled in a clockwise circle and shouted "Boom!" when his pointed finger passed a child. "When you stepped on that circle you completed a circuit, Dr. Banner. And if you step off it? If one ounce of your weight shifts? That circuit will beak and the piles of dynamite under these hostages will instantly explode! And, I hope you're good with kids because you'll have to convince them to stay still, too! You can stand there—stand there for hours, Bruce, until some miracle happens, or you collapse from exhaustion, or the Hulk grows impatient and murders everyone here."

Bruce tried to maintain his Poker face. He tried. He really did. But he couldn't stop the blood draining from his face. He couldn't keep his teeth from grinding or his skin from sweating. His mother warned him—warned him about many things. She warned him that the innocent could be hiding a monster. Bruce pondered the possibility that he was in a different version of his mother's story. In this universe he was the shapeshifter, and the shapeshifter wanted to protect the innocent but, ironically, changing into the fanged goblin would destroy the weeping child instead.

The HYDRA agents filed out. Strucker left last because he paused to jab Bruce one last time. "We know where your friends are," he whispered. "By this time tomorrow, Tony Stark's broken neck will be under my boot."

Strucker turned out the lights when he left. Somehow, the sudden darkness made the situation ten times worse.

"Come on, Banner," Bruce coached himself. "You can do this. You can handle this. Just… Just stall!" Bruce clapped his hands together. "Kids, I'm sorry this happened to you, but I'm an Avenger. An Avenger! We didn't let New York City die, and we won't let you down, either. My team will rescue us before you know it." Bruce nodded, knowing perfectly well that his audience couldn't see him. "In the meantime, um, do you kids know how to play Twenty Questions?"

To Be Continued