Briefing Room
Steve watched until the monitor goes black. Loki, who didn't even look, just listened, stood there, torn apart. They all just stood there in stunned silence. Finally -
"He really grows on you, doesn't he?" Banner said.
"Kuri's gonna drag this out. So, Thor, what's his play?" Steve said.
"He has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract." Thor said.
"An army? From outer space?" Steve said.
"So she's building another portal. That's what she needs Erik Selvig for." Banner said.
"Selvig?" Loki said, surprised.
"He's an astrophysicist." Banner said.
"He's a friend." Loki said. "Also her father.
"Kuri has him under some kind of spell, along with one of ours." Rei said.
"I wanna know why Kuri let us take her. He's not leading an army from here." Steve said.
"I don't think we should be focusing on Kuri. That girl's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on her." Banner said.
"Have care how you speak. Kuri is beyond reason, but she is my sister." Rei said.
"She killed eighty people in two days." Steve said.
"She's brainwashed!" Loki protested.
"Iridium, what did they need the Iridium for?" Banner asked.
"It's a stabilizing agent." Tony said, then walked with Coulson. "I'll fly you there. Keep the love alive. Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at SHIELD." Tony turned to Thor. "No hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing." He then referred to the Iridium. "Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Kuri wants." He turned to the crew. "Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the top sails. That man is playing Galaga! Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did." He covered his eye, and looked around. "How does Fury do this?"
"He turns." Hill said.
Tony looked around the monitors and placed a button size hacking implant under Fury's desk, without anyone noticing.
"Well, that sounds exhausting. The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube." Tony said.
"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Hill said.
"Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?" Tony said.
"Does Kuri need any particular kind of power source?" Steve asked.
"He's got to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier." Banner said.
"Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect." Tony said.
"Well, if he could do that he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet." Banner said.
"Finally, someone who speaks English." Tony said.
"Is that what just happened?" Steve said.
Tony and Banner shook hands. A glimmer in their eyes shone as the mutual respect for each other showed.
"It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. You're work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster." Tony said.
"Thanks." Banner looked down.
Fury walked in. "Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube. I was hoping you might join him."
"Let's start with that stick of hers. It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon." Steve said.
"I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Kuri used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into her personal flying monkeys." Fury said.
"Monkeys? I do not understand." Thor said.
"I do! I understood that reference." Steve said.
Loki rolled his eyes, while Steve looked proud of himself.
"Shall we play, doctor?" Tony said.
"Let's play some." Banner said.
As Banner and Tony walk out, the Galaga player turned ever so discreetly, watched as everyone else disperses and went back to playing.
Banner's Lab
Banner continuously scanned with a gamma ray detection scanner on the scepter for radiation.
Tony looked at his monitors, shifting and solving as many algorithms and equations.
"The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process." Banner said.
"If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops." Tony said.
"All I packed was a tooth brush." Banner said.
"You know, you should come by STARK TOWERS sometime. Top ten floors, all R&D. You'd love it, it's candy land." Tony said.
"Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke...Harlem." Banner said.
"Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension. No surprises." Tony said.
Suddenly, Tony poked Banner with a miniature electrical prod. Steve walked in on them, pissed at Tony.
"OW!" Banner said.
Tony looked at Banner closely.
"Nothing?" Tony said.
"Hey! Are you nuts?" Steve said.
"You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?" Tony said.
"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve said.
"Funny things are." Tony said.
"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny. No offense, doctor." Steve said.
"No, it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things." Banner said.
"You're tiptoeing, big man. You need to strut." Tony said.
"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark." Steve said.
"You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables." Tony said.
"You think Fury's hiding something?" Steve said.
"He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets." Tony pointed to Banner.
"It's bugging him too, isn't it?"
"Uh...I just wanna finish my work here and..." Banner said.
"Doctor?" Steve said.
"'A warm light for all mankind,' Kuri's jab at Fury about the cube." Banner said.
"I heard it." Steve said.
Banner pointed at Tony. "Well, I think that was meant for you. Even if Barton didn't post that all over the news."
"The Stark Tower? That big ugly" Steve said, and Tony gave him a look. "...building in New York?"
"It's powered by Stark Reactors, self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for what, a year?" Banner said.
"That's just the prototype. I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now." Tony said.
"So, why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?" Banner asked.
"I should probably look into that once my decryption programmer finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files." Tony said.
"I'm sorry, did you say...?" Steve said.
"Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide." Tony held out a bag of blueberries. "Blueberry?"
"Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?" Steve said.
"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not possible." Tony said.
"I think Kuri trying to wind us up. This is a woman who means to start a war, and if don't stay focused, she'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them." Steve said.
"Following is not really my style." Tony said.
Steve smiled. "And you're all about style, aren't you?"
"Of the people in this room, which one is; A. wearing a spangly outfit, and B. not of use?" Tony said.
"Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?" Banner said.
Steve took in the possibility, but as an obedient soldier, shook it off.
"Just find the cube." Steve said.
Steve walked out of the lab. Still torn apart by the possibility he walked away, towards the hull of the ship.
Back in the Lab
"That's the guy my dad never shut up about? Wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice." Tony said.
"The guy's not wrong about Kuri. She does have the jump on us." Banner said.
"What she's got is an ACME dynamite kit." Tony said. "It's gonna blow up in her face, and I'm gonna be there when it does."
"And I'll read all about it." Banner said.
"Uh-huh. Or you'll be suiting up like the rest of us." Tony said.
"Ah, see. I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare." Banner said.
"You know, I've got a cluster of shrapnel, trying every second to crawl its way into my heart." Tony pointed at the mini-arc reactor in his chest. "This stops it. This little circle of light. It's part of me now, not just armor. It's a... terrible privilege."
"But you can control it." Banner said.
"Because I learned how." Tony said.
"It's different." Banner said.
Banner tried to read the computer screen, but Tony slid the data aside with his finger so the two could see face-to-face.
"Hey, I've read all about your accident. That much gamma exposure should have killed you." Tony said.
"So you're saying that the Hulk... the other guy... saved my life?" Banner said. "That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what?"
"I guess we'll find out." Tony said.
Banner and Stark got back to work at their respective computers.
"You might not like that." Banner said.
"You just might." Tony said.
Hull Hanger, Secure Storage 10-C
Steve, with all his might, slid the heavy iron door and stealthily walked in. Secure Storage 10-C was a large warehouse, filled with metal crates stacked.
Steve looked up, seeing another level. He leapt up high and held onto the catwalk railing. Steve continued to move forward.
Van
Inside this particular van, Selvig and a few other soldiers were driving inside a long tunnel. With the CMS device inside, Selvig carefully picked up the small cylinder shape iridium with metal prongs and lightly placed it a slot within the CMS. The CMS accepted it. Selvig looked at it, devilishly smiling.
Briefing Room
"It's no accident Kuri taking Erik Selvig. I dread what she plans for him once she's done. Erik is a good man." Loki said.
"He talks about you a lot. You changed his life. You changed everything around here." Coulson said.
"They were better as they were. We pretend on Asgard that we're more advanced, but we...we come here battling like Bilchsteim." Loki said.
"Like what?" Coulson said.
"Bilchsteim? You know; huge, scaly, big antlers. You don't have those?" Loki said.
"Don't think so." Coulson said.
"They are repulsive, and they trample everything in their path." Loki said.
Loki walked over to the side of the ship and looked out the window, lamenting about what has happened and what may come.
"When I first came to earth, the pale goddess' rage followed me here and your people paid the price. And now again. There is no way Kuri became this way without influence of the pale goddess. She brings only death and war."
"War hasn't started yet." Fury said. "You think you can make Kuri tell us what the Tesseract is?"
"I do not know. Kuri's mind is far afield, it's not just power she craves, it's vengeance upon me. There's no pain that would prize her need from her." Loki said.
"A lot of guys think that, until the pain stops." Fury said.
"What are you asking me to do?" Loki asked.
"I'm asking. What are you prepared to do?" Fury said.
"Kuri is a prisoner." Loki said.
"Then why do I feel like she's the only person on this boat that wants to be here?" Fury asked.
Loki didn't answer.