Hello my pretties! So we've hit another landmark! It's dirty 30! Wow, I can't believe we're already this far along! This had been such a fun experience for me so far! And I am just SO excited for the coming chapters. Keep sticking around, you'll love what is yet to come! With that being said, I'll throw out that same old disclaimer that I have no rights or ownership over Marvel and let you get to it! Enjoy! Xoxo-NickyLynn
After everyone had made it back to the hellicarrier, Tessa led Thor out to the main bridge. When they came out into the large open room, they found Natasha, Steve and Bruce sitting around the table off to the side, staring down at the display screens built into it. She gave Thor a quick introduction to the others before she pulled out the seat next to Natasha and dropped herself in it. Everyone's attention was focused on the screens. They watched as Loki's form was displayed through the live security footage. Fury had just given him the run down on how the cage works. If he tried anything funny, the steel cage would be dropped through the thousands of miles worth of air and to the ground very far below.
Loki didn't seem disturbed by the threat, in fact, he was laughing. "It's an impressive cage." He said, casting his hands out to the side. "Not built, I think, for me."
"It's built for something a lot stronger than you." Fury responded, only his voice heard through the feed.
"Oh, I've heard." Loki said before looking straight up at the camera watching him. "A mindless beast. Makes play he's still a man." Tessa looked up to Bruce and they locked eyes for a moment. She could tell the words affected him, but he just shook his head and looked back down at the screen in front of him. "How desperate you must be, to call on such lost creatures to defend you." Loki sneered.
"How desperate am I?" Fury's voice asked. "You threaten my world with war. You steal a force you can't hope to control. You talk about peace, and you kill because it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad you did."
"Ooh." Loki said, feigning the rant scared him. "It burns you to have come so close. To have the Tesseract. To have power….unlimited power…and for what?" he asked with a wide smile before looking up at the camera again. "A warm light for all mankind to share." he said before looking back to Fury. "Only to be reminded what real power is."
"Well, let me know if Real Power wants a magazine or anything." Came Fury's reply as he walked away. Loki turned and walked over towards the camera, smiling up to it, knowing he was being watched. The screens faded out, leaving the glass table clear again.
"He really grows on you, doesn't he?" Bruce said, with a fake sense of amusement.
"Loki's going to drag this out. So, Thor, what's his play?" Steve asked, looking over to the large man who was standing off to the side in thought.
"He has an army called the Chitauri. They are not from Asgard, nor any known world." He told them, looking over the group of people. "He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."
"An army….from outer space." Steve said, looking over at Tessa in disbelief.
"I told you things were about to get weird." She told him with a shrug, before a thought occurred to her. "You said when Schmidt picked up the Tesseract on the plane, a portal opened up, like a window to the depths of space." She said, directing the statement towards Steve, thinking back to when he had told her about what had happened before he had to bring the plane down. "That's why he needs the Tesseract. He's trying to make a portal." She said, looking around the table, assessing their thoughts.
"That's what he needs Erik Selvig for." Bruce said, putting the pieces of Loki's puzzle together.
"Selvig?" Thor asked.
"He's an astrophysicist." Bruce told him.
"He's a friend." Thor responded.
"Loki's got him under some sort of spell, along with one of our own." Natasha told Thor. She looked over at Tessa and the women shared a similar look. Tessa knew that Natasha was worried to death over Clint. Tessa had been worried, too. Tessa gave her a reassuring half smile before Steve drew her attention back to him.
"I want to know why Loki let us get him." He said. "He's not leading an army from here."
"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki." Bruce said, shaking his head. "That guy's brain is a bag full of cats. You can smell the crazy on him."
"Have care how you speak!" Thor said, taking a step towards him. "Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard and he is my brother."
"He's killed eighty people in two days." Natasha deadpanned.
"He's adopted." Thor said in amendment.
Tessa looked up at Thor at that comment. "Really?" she asked, surprised.
Thor opened his mouth to respond to her when Bruce cut him off, moving forward. "I think it's about the mechanics of it all." He said. "Iridium. What does he need the iridium for?" he asked.
"Well you could use it as-" Tessa began saying, before Tony walked into the room and cut her off.
"It's a stabilizing agent." He said, striding in with Coulson.
Tessa pointed a finger back towards him. "Yeah, that." She said, knowing that because they, too, had tried using it as a replacement for the palladium core.
"It means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D." Tony continued, walking up to the table. "No hard feelings, Point Break." Tony said, giving him a light smack on his thick arm muscles. "You've got a mean swing." He told him, moving past him and over to the main control screens. "Also, it means that the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants." he said, looking around the room at all the agents working around them. "Raise the mizzenmast. Jib the topsail." He said, shouting out the nonsensical commands to the them. "That man is playing Galaga!" he shouted, pointing towards one of the men in the back row. "Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did." Tessa rolled her eyes at his antics as Tony covered one of his eyes, looking back and forth between the different monitors. "How does fury even see all of these?" he wondered aloud.
"He turns." Hill said, her arms crossed, watching Tony in exasperation.
"Sounds exhausting." He said, moving over to one of the screens, messing with the display. "The rest of the raw ingredients, Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. The only component he still needs is a power source of high-density energy." He said moving back around. "Something to…kick start the cube." He finished, snapping his fingers in emphasis.
"Since when have you been an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Tessa asked him, surprised he had such a deep understanding of it all.
"Last night." He responded with a shrug. "The packet, Selvig's notes, the extraction theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?" he asked, tossing his hands out to the side.
"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve asked, ignoring the question.
"He'd have to heat the cube to one hundred twenty million Kelvin, just to break through the Coulumb barrier." Bruce said.
"Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect." Tony interrupted, walking over to the doctor.
"Well, if he could do that, then he could achieve heavy ion infusion at any reactor on the planet." Bruce said.
"Finally! Someone who speaks English!" Tony exclained, motioning towards Bruce, coming closer to him.
"Is that what just happened?" Steve said, looking lost and confused.
Tessa leaned forward across the table. "The iridium that was stolen from the museum….they're going to use it to stabilize the portal. With it, they don't need any special power source, just a big one, which…there are a lot of. Doesn't really narrow of field much." Tessa said, trying relay everything a bit simpler as Tony shook Bruce's hand and introduced himself.
Tessa's ears picked up Tony complimenting Bruce's ability to transform into an uncontrollable rage monster and she nearly threw something at the back of his head before Fury walked into the room. "Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube." He informed Tony. "I was hoping you might join him."
"I would start with that stick of his." Steve said. "It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon."
"I don't know about that, but it is powered by the Cube." Fury told him. "And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."
"Moneys?" Thor asked, confused. "I do not understand."
"I do!" exclaimed Steve in excitement, finally able to understand something. "I-I understand that reference." He said, looking around at everyone.
Tessa's lips pulled up in a smile at Steve's expression. "I'll take a closer look at the scepter." She said, looking back at Fury. "If it's energy is similar to the Tesseract's then I should be able to handle it without it affecting me."
"Good. Keep on eye on the two stooges over there while you're at it." Fury told her, throwing his thumb over his shoulder at Bruce and Tony.
Tessa pushed herself up from the table and moved around it. "Come on boys." She said as she brushed past the two of them. The three of them then made their way into the lab and got to work. The scepter was laid out on the tabletop, supported by brackets that kept it lifted off the surface. Tessa had her hand raised just above it, running it along the length of it. Her fingers twitched as she felt the power hum underneath her fingertips. It called to her the same way the Tesseract did many years ago. "It definitely feels similar to the Tesseract." She said, as she studied it. "But there's something different about it too. I can't explain it, really. It's like I can feel the Tesseract's power wrapped around something else entirely." She said, dropping her hand and looking up at Bruce from across the table. "What do the readings look like?" she asked him.
He had the gamma reader in his hand, holding it over the staff, much like Tessa had been doing with her hand. "The gamma readings are definitely consistent to yours and the Tesseracts." He told her, looking over at the screen that compared the two signatures. "But it's going to take weeks to process this fully."
"If we bypass their mainframe and direct route to the Homer cluster, we can clock this at about six hundred Teraflops." Tony said, hitting a few buttons on his portable equipment.
Bruce looked over at him in surprise. "And all I brought was a toothbrush." He said with a breath of amazement as Tony walked over to them.
"So, when are you coming over to see the reactor in action, Glow Worm?" Tony asked, coming to a stop beside Tessa. "Made some big changes since you were there last."
Tessa rolled her eyes at the persistent nickname. "Yeah well let's maybe finish saving the world before we schedule a play date, shall we." She told him. "How is it running, by the way? Did you work out that hitch with the relay system?" She asked, curious to know how the full-sized reactor was doing. Tony had brought her in to help construct the large replica of the power unit in his chest, but she had been so busy with S.H.I.E.L.D. that she hardly had any time to come over and help lately.
"Everything's golden." He told her. "We just brought it online before S.H.I.E.L.D. called everyone in. Stark Tower is now one hundred percent self-sustaining."
"Well, Mozel Tov." Tessa said to him, looking down at the scepter again. "I'll have to send a fruit basket."
Tony let out a chuckle as Bruce looked between the two of them. "So, uh…how do you two know each other?" he asked, pointing back and forth between Tony and Tessa.
"Oh, she's my fairy fucking godmother." Tony sai, like it was the most normal thing in the world. "Magic powers and all."
"You know, I'm honestly surprised you even remember that at all." She said, turning to look at Tony. "I mean, you were hammered." She told him.
"What can I say, you made an impression." He said with a shrug. "You know, you should come over to Stark Tower, too." He then said to Bruce. "Top ten floors…all R and D. You'll love it, it's Candyland." He told him, walking around to his side of the table.
"Uh, thanks…but last time I was in New York I kind of broke….Harlem." he said, eyes dropping down shamefully.
"Well, I promise a stress-free work environment." Tony said, taking a step closer. "No loud noises…no surprises." He said, walking behind him. He suddenly struck the small electric rod into Bruce's side giving him a small jolt. Tessa jumped up in alarm as Bruce let out a yelp.
"Anthony Stark!" Tessa yelled out, scolding him. Tony ignored as (as he usually did) and instead leaned forward to study Bruce's reaction. "Nothing?" he asked, as no green changes occured.
"Are you nuts?" Steve asked in disbelief as he strode into the room and walked up to the table, staring hard eyes over at Tony.
"Jury's out." Tony replied, not fazed by Steve's anger in the slightest.
Steve looked over at Tessa with a raised brow. She knew Tony Stark was a handful, but his personality was one that grew on you. She just shook her head at Steve as Tony commented on how in control Bruce seemed to be of himself.
"What's your secret?" Tony asked Bruce. "Mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?"
"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve asked him, having a hard time believing that someone could think instigating a reaction out of Bruce's alter ego would be funny.
"Funny things are." He responded, still unfazed.
"It's not funny Tony." Tessa told him with a shake of her head. "You can't just threaten the safety of everyone on this ship like it's a joke." She reprimanded. "No offense Bruce." She added, looking apologetically over to the kind scientist.
"No, it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy objects." Bruce told them, trying to pacify the situation as he went back to work.
"You're tiptoeing, big man." Tony said, pointing at him. "You need to strut."
"What does that even mean?" Tessa asked Tony, with a drawn in face.
"It means, you need to lighten up." Tony told her.
"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark." Steve told him, still upset.
"Do you think I'm not?" Tony asked him, looking over at him upset in his own right. "Why do you think Fury called us in now?" he asked circling a finger around the room. "Why now? Why not before?" he asked, walking back over to the table. "What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation if I don't have all the variables."
"You think Fury's hiding something?" Steve asked.
"He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets." Tony said, taking a handful of blueberries from a pouch he had picked up and popping them in his mouth. "Ask Tessa, I'm sure she feels the same." He said, motioning towards her.
Steve's eyes slid over to her. "Well?" he asked.
Tessa let out a sigh, rubbing her forehead. "I mean-there's a reason I spent decades hiding from S.H.I.E.L.D." she said, looking up at him. "I may be an agent, but it doesn't mean I trust Fury. He and Howard both kept me from knowing about the Tesseract. I guarantee that there's more they've kept from me." She reasoned.
"What about you Doc?" Tony asked Bruce. "What do you think?"
"Uh…I just want to finish my work here and…" he said moving his hands over the scepter, trying to stay out of it.
"Bruce?" Tessa asked, urging a response from him.
Bruce let out a breath of his own, pulling off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. "A warm light for all mankind." He said eventually. "Loki's jab at Fury about the Cube. I think that was meant for you." He said, pointing to Tony. "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the Tower, it was all over the news." He said as Tony offered him some of his blueberries. He took a few into his hand and popped them in his mouth.
"Stark Tower?" Steve asked. "That big, ugly…" he began, causing Tony to turn and look at him, clearly insulted. "Building in New York." He finished.
Tessa leaned towards Steve. "The reactor I've been working on with him." She said, trying to jog his memory, having told him a very condensed version of things before. "Stark Tower is now running on one hundred percent self-sustained clean energy. That building will run itself for what? A year?" she asked, looking over at Tony in question.
"Give or take." He responded. "And it's just a prototype."
"It's kind of a big deal." Bruce added.
"I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now." Tony explained pridefully. "Is what he's getting at."
"So why didn't S.H.I.E.L.D. bring him in on the Tesseract project?" Bruce asked with a shrug. "Why didn't they even bring in Tessa at least?"
"What is S.H.I.E.L.D. even doing in the energy business in the first place?" Tessa questioned. "I mean, it's not like S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever been after the profits. We operate above that; we have straight government funding. So why would the government fund a spy agency in pursuit of clean energy when they can fund a more public domain? It doesn't really add up." He concluded.
"Which is why I should look into that." Tony said, walking back around the table, moving behind Tessa and Steve. "Once my program finished breaking into all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secured files…"
"I'm sorry, did you just say-" Steve began, before Tony continued.
"J.A.R.V.I.S. has been running it since I hit the bridge." He confessed.
Tessa wasn't surprised. In fact, she had suspected that he had planted something on the bridge. However, she was just as curious about the results as Tony, so she didn't question it. "In a few hours I'll know every dirty secret S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever tried to hide." Tony said, before offering his snacks to Steve. "Blueberry?"
Steve ignored the offer and instead stared Tony down in disappointment. "And yet you wonder why they didn't want you around." He scoffed.
"An intelligence agency that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome." Tony told him.
"I think Loki's trying to wind us all up." Steve said, trying to think rationally. "This is a man who wants to start a war, and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed." He said, looking over at Tessa. "We have orders. We should follow them."
"Yeah, following's not really my style." Tony said, popping another handful of blueberries into his mouth.
"And you're all about style, aren't you?" Steve shot out at him.
"Of the people in this room, which one is, a…wearing a spangly outfit, and b…not of use?" Tony said, upset by Steve's constant disapproval.
"Steve," Tessa said, reaching over and placing her hand on his arm to gain his attention. "Tell me none of this seems a little….suspicious to you." She said, trying to reason with him rationally.
Steve stared over at Tessa for a moment, weighing her words. He looked around the room before pushing away. "Just find the Cube." He said as he walked out of the room in anger.
Tessa let out a sigh as she watched her brother storm out of the room. She turned to look at Tony who just gave her an innocent look. "Behave yourself." She told him, pointing a finger at him before getting up and following Steve out of the room.
She transported herself out into the hall, catching sight of Steve walking down the hall to her right. She jogged up to him and fell in step beside him. "Ignore Tony." She told him as she followed his quick-paced steps.
"Great guy." He said in sarcasm.
"He really is, Steve, just…sometimes he's just doesn't know how much is too much, you know." She said, feeling the need to defend him. "He is right about this though, whether you want to admit that or not."
"Yeah, well, that's what I'm on my way to find out." He responded as he continued down the hall.
"Wait, what?" she asked in surprise.
"I'm going to see if I can dig anything up for myself." He told her. "You said this is this is basically S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, right? There's got to be something hidden on board if they are keeping secrets."
"Ohh, Captain America deviating from orders?" she sassed, raising her brows up in mock surprise. "Scandalous. Someone call the press." Steve looked over to her, trying to look unamused, but she could see the ghost of a smile that wanted to pull his lip up. "Come on, I know just where to look." She told him, grabbing onto his arm and transporting them both out of the hall.