Chapter Fifteen: Trading Cards and (More) Fanboying

(A/N: No, I will not be doing Loki's little interlude/temper tantrum with the Other. We continue to follow our main characters, Spidey/Peter and Hiro, just in other people's POV's sometimes 'cause I think it's fun. – Lucky)

When they got close enough to see S.H.I.E.L.D.'s floating fortress, Peter was duly impressed with the hunk of metal and technology and said so. "Nice place ya got here, Agent Coulson."

To his left, Captain Rogers nodded silently, and when he snuck a peek out of the corner of his eye, he had a rather hilarious look of bother bewilderment and awe. Though, he supposed, he would be the same had he been in a coma for the last seventy-odd years, based on the file he had finally gotten to read.

The profiles on the "Avengers" team had contained the bare minimum with no personal details: picture, videos, and a short explanation. He himself wasn't even in there, thankfully Fury had respected his wishes to remain off the group of world-savers. Not that he wouldn't help now that there was a real, world-threatening danger – and there really was with this Loki dude and the Tesseract – but he'd rather not have a larger target on his back or put the team in harm's way with him to blame. Perhaps that was selfish of him, but he didn't want any more death on his hands.

Spider-man wandered back to his duffel and tucked in the last book he had been reading, a collection of papers on gamma radiation by Bruce Banner that he had checked out before the other ones on thermonuclear astrophysics. Those two were interesting reads, though he still liked to stick more to engineering and technology-based sciences, he was still pretty good at the others, if he did say so himself. All the same, he couldn't believe he was about to meet one of the very best scientists of his time and shoved the tomes inside with no little excitement. He was rather giddy.

Captain Rogers went about gathering his own things and they followed the pilot, who broke off to go take care of his plane, and Agent Coulson out onto the ship's deck. He led them out into the bright daylight and across the runway to where a red-haired lady stood waiting. She was in a leather jacket over a red shirt and a gun lay in a thigh holster above her jeggings. Despite her stunning looks and casual clothing – other than the pistol – she had a dangerous air and Spidey did not want to find out why the reason for that was. Especially if it was shown with him as the guinea pig.

"Agent Romanoff," the male spy began introductions, "Captain Rogers and Spider-man. I'm sure you can tell the two apart."

"Ma'am," the blonde nodded with all the 40s manners expected.

"Hey-o!" Spider-man gave a little wave and smiled, suspecting she could tell through his mask.

"Hi," she greeted shortly. The short-haired lady turned to Agent Coulson. "They need you on the bridge; they're starting the face-trace."

"See you there." And with that, he left them alone with Agent Romanoff, who he didn't know what to say to, to be honest. He just wanted to avoid pissing her off.

Thankfully, she took the initiative to start a conversation with Captain Rogers herself. "It was quite the buzz round here, finding you in the ice. Thought Coulson was going to swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?"

"Trading cards?"

"They're vintage. He's very proud." Spidey had his free hand fisted up by his mouth to avoid laughing, his other occupied holding his bag, by now as they were escorted further along the Helicarrier. Across the way, a short, skinnier man with curly hair confusedly dodged busy agents and pilots and overall looking very out of place in a brownish suit jacket and purple button-down. The dark-haired man kept bumping into people as he took it all in and eventually made his way over to them.

"Doctor Banner," Captain Rogers recognized.

The doctor looked up at him nervously after flickering his eyes over at Agent Romanoff. "Oh, yeah, hi. They told me you'd be coming."

"Word is you can find the cube."

"Is that the only word on me?" Dr. Banner inquired curiously.

"Only word I care about," the other assured.

The costumed brunet decided then was a good time to insert himself into their discussion. "Hello! I'm Spider-man!"

"I, uh, can see that," Dr. Banner agreed, evidently amused. "I think I was still around in, you know, civilization, when you started out." His eyes widened, not that the older man could tell with his masking, and he mouthed "wow" to himself.

"Can I just say how amazing it is to meet you? I mean, you're the leading expert on gamma radiation and your papers are just brilliant, I have the book in my bag, I've read it a few times now, I would ask you to sign it, but this copy's from the library…" Spidey trailed off, noticing the shocked expression on his face and the other two staring at him. "Sorry… oh good lord I sounded like Agent Coulson but with less stuttering… I'm sorry." With his middle finger and thumb touching opposite temples, he covered his face effectively in embarrassment.

"It's fine," the object of his acute interest replied. "It's not that often I find someone who is interested in my research and not the… Other Guy." That perked the superhero right up, even if Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff were both trying not to laugh, though the former was much more pronounced while the latter only betrayed a glimmer of humor in her eyes.

"Oh, okay," Spider-man shrugged bashfully as he shifted his bag on his shoulder with both hands.

Dr. Banner gave a tiny grin and turned back to the blonde, even though their exchanges were short and halting, it was better than trying to converse with Ms. Romanoff. "So, must be strange for you, all of this."

"Well, this is actually kind of familiar," he smiled softly.

"Gentlemen, you might want to step inside in a minute," the female agent put in. "It's going to get a little hard to breathe."

"You're calling me a gentleman?" the colorful boy questioned quizzically.

"I was talking to the other two."

"Ah, that makes much more sense." In the background, an intercom crackled to life, shouting to the ship something about flight and securing the deck.

"Is this a submarine?" he heard Rogers ask to no one in particular behind him. The two men were at the side, peering over the edge rather than heeding Agent Romanoff's warning. Honestly, Peter would be right over there with them – or one better, hanging off the side just for kicks – but he didn't really want to drop his bag and loose all his stuff. And, he told himself, as scary as the redhead was, he didn't want to leave her by herself.

"Really, they want me in a submerged, pressurized metal container?" Dr. Banner wondered aloud and he almost snorted. No, where would the planes go? There was none of the technology or machinery for that type of transport up here too. Spider-man wasn't sure what was happening, but even he wasn't expecting the one, two… four rotors he saw rise out of the ocean. "Oh no, this is much worse." This time he did snort, letting their guide lead them deeper into the bowels of the ship as it rose into the air and peeping behind to wistfully survey the empty area. He wished he could ride it up farther, to see what it looked like, if it was like his perch with the gargoyles sometimes. As they got closer and farther in, he heard a woman's voice giving authoritative instructions.

"All engines operating," the lady gave out, her dark hair in a ponytail and in the standard S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform now that Spidey could see her in the command center. "S.H.I.E.L.D. emergency protocol one nine three point six in effect."

"Good. Let's vanish." That couldn't be anyone other than Fury. And there he was, in the middle of all the computers, standing like he was born to be there in the same all-black outfit he had been in the last time he saw him.

"Engage retro-reflection panels," the woman ordered one more time.

"Reflection panels engaged," a random agent said from their computer. Looking around, Spider-man caught at least a dozen things happening all at once, from a face-trace on their extensive servers to the very brave soul risking the director's fury – ha – by playing a pixelated Galaga game.

Fury twisted sharply to face the group of newcomers. "Gentlemen. Spider-man."

"Hey, Director Angry," the boy retorted from the back of the group, waving a hand over the men's heads. Captain Rogers walked up and gave the director a ten-dollar bill.

"Doctor, thank you for coming," he ignored the brunet.

"Thanks for asking nicely," Dr. Banner responded sarcastically. "So, um, how long am I staying?"

"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the wind." The hoodie-wearing teen didn't miss the, maybe, unintentional pun. In the wind. Flying ship. Huh, spies did have a sense of humor.

"Well, where are you with that?" he asserted now that he was in his element, Spidey tuning in discreetly from where he was being essentially forgotten.

"We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet." When did Agent Coulson get there? Romanoff shifted away now that she wasn't needed, Captain Roger's main purpose being standing there seeming perplexed by all the modern-day machines. "Cell phones… laptops, if it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us." He was suddenly glad he'd had to sell his phone and laptop for food money a while back.

Agent Romanoff rejoined their back-and-forth. "It's still not going to find them in time."

"You have to narrow your field," Banner explained intelligently. "How many spectrometers do you have access to?"

"How many are there?" the director asked rather arrogantly.

"Call every lab you know. Tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm. We can rule out a few places. Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

"Start with basic cluster recognition," the spider blushed when all the eyes of the chattering group turned to him. "What? I know some stuff."

"Agent Romanoff," Director Fury addressed, "would you show Doctor Banner and Spider-man to their laboratory, please?"

"Wait, I'm going with him?" Spidey said, astonished.

"That's what you're here for, right? To help?"

"Yeah, but why the heck do you need me in the lab, you have one of the most brilliant minds on the planet, and I'm sure I saw Tony Stark on the team roster files!"

Dr. Banner injected himself into the baffled teenager's protests. "I'm sure you could help. It's always good to have another brain to pick." The boy opened his mouth, closed it, and resorted to just nodded meekly when he wasn't sure how to react to the compliment.

"You're going to love it, doc," their fiery-haired agent-in-charge told him. "You boys got all the toys."

"Really?" he asked curiously. "Do you have the com-meter sixty-four?"

"I'm not sure – "

"Oh, that's fine."

Spider-man decided to take pity on the beautiful spy, who somehow looked out of her league next to the knowledgeable doctor. "It's this handy-dandy little thing…"

Didja miss me?! Doesn't matter! I'm back!

So, Spider-man is apparently not a gentleman by anyone's standards, including his own. Next time, Tony! And Loki! And Thor… there's a lot of new characters next chapter.

Lucky

To Dylan-A-Friend: XD. But yay for plot! And that second review was pure gold. Sorry for the lack of Tony-Peter snark, but hopefully when Tony does come in, it won't disappoint!

To Vladimir Mithrander: Yeah, if Tony was offered a ride he'd probably just snark at them and fly off in his armor. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten the chance to watch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or any other of the Marvel TV shows, but I really want to! I need to! I had a great time at DCON (someone did get caught making purple and some boys got caught sneaking out to get pizza as they were going back to their rooms), but I was SO FLARKING EXHAUSTED when I got back. I didn't get to go to bed until 1-2 in the morning each night and was just DEAD on Sunday (which, of course, was when I was trying to do my homework).

To twilightserius: I'm so evil! (even though I die inside after every sad chapter) ;P

To Silvermane1: Yay! My sense of humor isn't absolutely disastrous!

To MattKennedy: Thank you! I do believe that fun stuff is next chapter…