A/N: Review responses are in my forums like normal. As for this chapter-despite his eventual fall from grace, I was a great fan of Whedon's BtVS and especially Firefly. And he did a solid enough job on the first Avengers movie. But I also can't help but look at some parts of the movie with a changed perspective. And there was no doubt that Whedon sexualized Natasha far more in the first movie than his successors. Now, within the comic that made sense. She was supposed to be an alluring spy, but Whedon was the only director who really pushed that part of her in the movies that I can think of. So keep that metaknowledge in your head as the following scene plays out.

Or, why put an awkward, sexually repressed nerd into a small, enclosed pace with a hot girl in a tight, cherry-red top if not to manipulate someone? Either the audience, the nerd in question, or both?


Chapter Eight: Beauty and the Beast

Bruce tried not to stare.

Across from him, Natasha Romanov sat calmly reading something on a smartphone. The shirt she wore under a black leather jacket was very tight. It was a bright, cherry red that should have clashed with her hair. It didn't.

Think of the money. They were paying him a very, very generous consultation fee. Given how badly he was wanted by the military and law enforcement, SHIELD didn't even have to do that much. As much as he didn't want to be there, he needed the cash.

He forced his eyes back down to his old, beat-up sneakers and mentally went through all the basic physics equations his Physics I professor at Culver insisted he memorize. Even two decades later, he could go through the various equations of motion in his head.

"We're almost there, Doc," Natasha said.

Her voice drew his eyes back up and he saw the slight smirk on her lips, and the echo of fear in her eyes, and how very, very tight her red shirt was stretched across her chest, and managed to say, "Great".

He then lowered his head back down to his nervously clasped hands and picked up right where he left off. He'd made it to the formula of rotational dynamics when he felt the oddly smooth but impossibly fast jet begin to descend.

Natasha told him they were going to the Shield mobile command station. The implication in his head was a big truck with a radar dish. What he saw through the window of the open cockpit, though, was anything but.

"You guys have a freaking aircraft carrier? What next, Blofeld and his cat?"

"No. Director Fury is allergic to cats. Believe it or not, we do have a Blofeld, first name Eugene. He's one of our radar technicians."

She had to be joking, but he didn't want to risk looking at her to see. In his poorly fitted suit jacket, pants and shirt, he looked like the type of man mothers would call the police on if he got too close to their kids. He was also self-aware enough to recognize that his own nervous ticks made others nervous. Even when they didn't know about the Big Guy sitting just under the surface, he could turn calm people into a bundle of nerves just by being himself.

So, he struggled to not look at the ridiculously attractive woman who seemed to be flirting with him even after pulling a gun on him in terror back in India.

What the hell am I doing here?

The quinjet stopped its forward speed and lowered in a vertical descent. He'd been fascinated by the variable thrust fans in the wings of the craft. They looked much more efficient than other VTOL fixed-wing craft he'd seen. He forced himself to begin calculating the thrust necessary to lift a craft that size as Natasha stood and popped her back, in the process thrusting her chest out a little.

She's doing that on purpose, Bruce thought to himself as his eyes once more betrayed him. Purposely flirting. They know the Big Guy's never hurt women or children. Not...intentionally, anyway. Maybe they're hoping for a Beauty and the Beast scenario? Otherwise why send her to collect me?

"Are you coming, Doctor Banner? Captain Rogers will be landing any moment."

He didn't exert any more mental energy to deciphering her mind-games. From what he'd seen, she was better at it than him. He was never very good at manipulating people, even before he turned into a monster. Still, he was there. He had nowhere else to go. So he stood and followed Natasha Romanov out of the quinjet.

It really was an aircraft carrier. He could feel a subtle but very real rocking under his feet as the huge ship churned through the waters of the Atlantic. "Where did SHIELD get the money for this?" Bruce said. "The Gerald Ford cost thirteen billion dollars!"

"SHIELD receives funding from patents and good investments," she said. "Plus appropriations from the member nations of the World Security Council."

Everything about the ship fed into Bruce's worst nightmare. He was surrounded by a machine of war, even if Romanov tried to convince him SHIELD's business was peace. Given the soldiers running in cadence and fighter jets on the deck, it was very hard to take her protestations seriously.

At the end of the ramp, another quinjet soared down from the sky. It shifted its nose up and used those remarkable wing fans to halt its descent until it touched down gently from a near vertical landing.

"Looks like Captain Rogers is here," Natasha said.

The other quinjet disgorged its two occupants. The first looked like an accountant, or perhaps a vacuum salesman. Were vacuum salesmen still a thing?

The second man looked like he walked right off the cover of GQ. Even the casual leather bomber jacket gave him an air of casual awesome, like the jocks that used to stuff Bruce in the garbage cans back when he was in highschool.

He walked right up to Bruce and extended his hand like a practiced politician. "Dr. Banner. A pleasure to meet you. Word is you can find the cube."

"Is that the only word you've heard about me?" Bruce asked.

"It's the only word I care about," Rogers said.

He spoke with such open honesty and sincerity Bruce found himself fighting down an urge to say, 'Awe shucks!'

He controlled himself, if just barely, as Rogers shook Natasha's hand with the same political suaveness he showed to Bruce. It was then that Bruce realized what Rogers reminded him of. A performer.

"Must be strange for you," Bruce said, searching for something safe to talk about besides the inadequacy he felt being between the two physically perfect specimens of humanity.

Rogers looked at a group of jogging cadets. "Actually, this is pretty familiar."

"Gentleman," Natasha said as the accountant left them on the deck. "We might want to head inside. It's going to get hard to breathe pretty soon."

Bruce stared at her, then at the sudden increase in activity on the deck as the crew began locking down the various jets on the deck. The enter deck shook as a loud, mechanical roar echoed the length of the ship.

"Is this a submarine?" Rogers asked.

Now wasn't that a horrific thought? "Really?" Bruce wanted to shout. Instead, he bit back on the surge of nerves and stuck his shaking hands in his pockets. "They want to put me in a submerged, pressurized container?"

Rogers was walking to the edge of the deck, leaving Bruce to either hang back with Natasha's tight red shirt or follow.

When Bruce reached the edge of the deck, standing beside Rogers, he saw massive, impossible rotors lifting out of the water. They rose level to the deck and picked up speed with a numbing roar. The whole craft shuddered and then began lifting out of the water. Bruce's stomach plummeted and he fought back an urge to jump off the side to the ocean below. The Big Guy could get him back to the coast in minutes. It would have to be better than this.

"Oh, this is much worse," he muttered.

"They certainly don't make them like they used to," Steve said. Even he staggered as the force of the massive ship's ascent forced him to adjust his stance. They both turned to Romanov, who shrugged. "Door's this way."

They quickly started across the deck as the wind picked up and the deck shifted unexpectedly just from the lift. They reached the door, which proved to be a navy-like airlock. Once they got out of the wind, the only disconcerting thing was walking down a long corridor while feeling his stomach flip as the carrier continued to lift up into the air. He wanted to ask just what the point of the ship was. Why pour that much money into a flying aircraft carrier? Why not just use aircraft? It wasn't like SHIELD didn't have bases and outposts all over the world.

Like with most things, he kept it to himself. Ahead, Rogers and Natalie talked about trading cards. They emerged onto a ridiculously large command deck that appeared to hang down from the lower portion of the carrier, which meant it was under water when the craft landed. The view from the spherical window at the front of the room showed an endless expanse of ocean.

The sheer number of uniforms brought Bruce to the edge of a panic attack. He tried desperately to find a corner to stand in out of sight, but there were armed guards everywhere!

Suddenly a bald black pirate with an eye patch and a fetish for leather stood in front of him. SHIELD Director Fury held out his hand. "Dr. Banner, thank you for coming."

Hesitantly, Bruce took the hand. "Thanks for asking nicely. So, um, how long am I staying?"

"Once we have our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the clear."

Whether it was meant to be reassuring or not, Bruce took it as encouragement to be fast. He took off his poorly fitted jacket and rolled up his sleeves. "Where are...what the hell is that?"

Rogers was already watching the wall of monitors set just below the platform they stood on. Banner drifted over as well to get a better look.

The accountant stood in the sunken area, and like Rogers stood with his arms crossed as they watched the impossible footage.

The scene was taken from a high definition security camera inside what looked like a subterranean garage. A black-clad figure soared into view between two fast-moving cars and slammed down on them with a pair of beautifully formed, black and silver-feathered wings.

The wings cut through the engine blocks and set the cars spinning in a forward flip. Somehow, the figure caught the two cars by their roll bars, leaning back and slamming her wings into the ground to stop what had to be incredible momentum and inertia. Doing so shook the occupants out, after which she tossed the quarter-ton vehicles aside like toys.

That's Hulk-level strength.

The figure turned to look at another vehicle that her attack had sent spinning into a column, and in so doing allowed the camera to capture her face. It was a woman, very young in the face, wearing an elaborate black headdress and the most Goth-like costume he'd seen outside of a bad teen sci-fi movie. The girl flapped her wings as if they were real and she was a bird, and then shot into flight out of the security camera's range.

"She calls herself Black Swan," Fury said. "She arrived with Loki, another alien, and helped him abduct about a dozen of my people as well as the Tesseract."

"What is she?" Rogers asked.

"She's bullet-proof," Fury said. "Strong. Fast. She can fly and has laser guns on her wrists. And she talks like a New England Depeche Mode groupie."

"That's an interesting way to describe an alien," Rogers noted.

"I'm still getting over the fact you know who Depeche Mode is," Natasha said.

Fury ignored the comment. Below, the accountant touched a key to show another scene, this one in a room filled with ethereal, flickering blue plasma.

"I am Black Swan." The voice sounded young, and nervous. "And I bring you glorious news! My father, Thanos, has seen fit to gift this world to Loki of Asgard. This should bring you relief and happiness."

"And why is that?"Fury's voice was distinctive, even if he was not caught in the security footage.

"Because if Thanos wished this world for himself, I would be tasked with destroying your militaries and slaughtering half your population. But since it was gifted to Loki, I don't have to kill you all. Just surrender, accept his rule, and the majority of your people can live on in peace."

"Portsmouth," Rogers said. "Close to Maine. She really does sound like a New Englander, doesn't she?"

Bruce shook his head. "This girl just talked about genocide and alien monsters, and you're worried about her accent?"

"Dr. Banner, why would an alien speak English with a Northeastern American accent?" Natasha asked. "We're trying to understand the enemy."

"Okay, point. But what about this Thanos character? And Loki? The god of mischief? Didn't he turn into a mare and get pregnant and have a horse as one of his children?"

Rogers, Natasha, the accountant and Fury all turned and stared. "What? I'm the only one who took a mythology class in college?"

Fury moved on. "The other reason we're studying her more closely is that Loki killed fourteen of my people, aside from those he abducted."

"So?"

"Swan there killed none. She told me point blank that she didn't want to kill anyone. Hell, she blew my chopper out of the sky and then caught it and put it down gently enough all I got was this."

Fury held up his left hand to reveal the compact cast over his wrist. "If they're coming to conquer the world, why isn't she as blood-thirsty as her partner? So, we're trying to figure her out. What are they doing with the tesseract?"

"Right. The Tesseract. Where are you with that?"

Fury finally gave a name to the accountant. "Coulson?"

The SHIELD agent motioned toward the monitors. "We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cellphones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us."

Natasha shook her head. "That's still not gonna find them in time."

"I don't know, that girl's gonna stand out," Steve noted.

"Hasn't helped so far," Coulson said. "We've had to expand our search radius based on travel times, but they've gone completely off grid."

Grateful for something to think about aside from all the uniforms around them, Bruce took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. "That thing puts out gamma radiation, right? Then we have to narrow the field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?"

Fury didn't even blink. "How many are there?"

Right. Super rich international spy agency. "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 based on cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places. Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

Fury nodded, then turned to Natasha. "Agent Romanoff, would you show to his laboratory, please?"

She stepped between the two men. "You're gonna love it, Doc. We got all the toys."

Bruce followed her out of the command deck, relieved to be away from the heavy concentration of young, pretty people in uniforms. He kept expecting to see a bald villain with a cat cackling.

What am I doing here?

~~Titanomachy~~

~~Titanomachy~~

What am I doing here?

Swan stood in a corner of a crowded warehouse where she watched Loki's minions swarm about like hive insects. It was she who was supposed to speak with Thanos' will, but because of the scepter, it was Loki who held total control over his minions.

"So, you catch the Cal State game last night?"

"Yeah, total blowout. I knew Hutcherson would fold when he faced a real challenge."

Perhaps not total control. Loki's power with the scepter was not like that of the Chitauri queen over the war drones. If Loki left, his minions would continue to work. It was not their will he suborned, though she thought so at first. Nor was it like the conditioning chip Thanos fitted her with, which hurt her for thinking anything that wasn't loyal.

No, Loki's control was much more subtle. Loki had no need to punish his minions into being loyal because the scepter guaranteed that loyalty. When he walked through their midst, they viewed him like a god. And when they showed him that awe, he spoke to them with the entitled beneficence of a god in kind. So long as they did as he wished, he treated them well.

They did as he wished many times over. The turned military man-a short peacock with preternatural archery skills-led them to this warehouse, where Loki quickly claimed the loyalty of those that owned it. The warehouse belonged to a group that called itself AIM, but much of the equipment they had stored within it seemed to have SHIELD logos on them.

The result was an army of over a hundred workers gathered in a matter of hours who, under Dr. Eric Selvig's direction, who were quickly assembling both a harness and a lens to receive and focus the energy of the Tesseract to create a targeted portal. The mechanics and underlying mathematics were not that different from what she knew of the Neural Teleportation network most other species used for space travel. If they needed equipment that they did not possess, one of the turned minions left the warehouse to fetch it.

The astonishing thing was that Selvig just seemed to know what to do. Loki didn't have to tell him.

"She's shown me so much," Selvig said about the Tesseract.

With nothing to really do, Swan wandered about the warehouse in her infiltration holosuit and looked like a typical human girl lost in the frenzy. Every so often she would drift back to where Selvig oversaw the assembly, but she was not needed for the work.

She considered joining some of the minions on a food or supply run, but they never discussed where or when they were going, and different groups went at different times. Not even Loki truly participated. He sat in a loading bay watching the minions with a distant, lost expression as his chaotic thoughts raged.

The one anomaly that she eventually spotted was the little SHIELD peacock-Barton. While Selvig directed minions to build the device, Barton stood in his own little corner between crates of supplies swiping through a hand-held computer. Each swipe was an overwrought, dramatic statement as if he were a conducting a Kronan symphony.

Eventually, for lack of anything better to do, she drifted over to see what he was planning. "What are you searching for?"

"Iridium," Barton said absently. He didn't even look up. "We're going to need it."

"He's right!" Selvig called from within the plastic-partitioned 'clean room' where he worked. "We are, but it's very hard to get a hold of."

"Especially if SHIELD knows we need it," Barton added.

SHIELD. She'd heard much of SHIELD, and saw their logo all around them in the warehouse. She wasn't entirely sure what SHIELD was, only that this Barton was formerly a part of it. "Why would this SHIELD know we need it?"

"I'm with SHIELD, and I know."

She waited for him to follow that line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, but he didn't. It became obvious that his loyalty had been subverted, but he didn't seem to be able to grasp that he wasn't working with SHIELD any more.

"There's a large amount on deposit at Schäfer Sicherheitsdienst in Stuttgart, Germany," Barton continued.

"How far is that from here?"

"Sixteen hour round trip by quinjet."

Loki drifted closer, having overheard. She ignored him.

"That is a long time for our purposes, Agent Barton. Is this Stuttgart the only location in the world that has Iridium on deposit?"

"All the US locations with it on deposit are monitored by SHIELD," Barton said, as if that precluded any possibility of going there.

"Show me closer locations, Barton."

He glanced to Loki. The Asgardian smirked at the little display of who actually controlled the minions. "Show my colleague, Agent Barton."

With a nod, the little man did just that. It took Swan a moment to decipher the unfamiliar locations, but when she did she shook her head. "Dr. Selvig, how much Iridium will we need?"

"At least three hundred grams," he noted without looking up from his work.

With a sigh, Swan took the hand-held computer from Barton and pointed to the site just two hours away. "Was there something wrong with this Sandia National Laboratory? They have over five hundred grams."

"It's a Federally funded lab," Barton said. "It's monitored by SHIELD and four other agencies. SHIELD will know we're coming."

"I can get us there in two hours," she said to Loki. "The scepter controls the loyalty, but can't bridge the cognition break that results. SHIELD will not know we're coming. It would be foolish to spend sixteen hours to go to a location for this material when it is available far closer."

Barton didn't seem willing to argue his point. Loki studied Swan intently. "Midgard is not without its defenders, and if my brother comes and interferes, our opportunity will be lost. Our best option is to divide them from within."

"From within…." She blinked at the insidious grin. "You mean to let yourself be captured? Why?"

"My brother adores this world, my dear. Thor wields Mjolnir, and with it the power of Asgard. But he is also stupid, and vain. I will set him and the native defenders against each other, and they will be so busy fighting each other none will remain to stop us." He held up the scepter. "But I can only do that if this is in their hands. So, wherever we go, I must be there. I will shed my concealing magic so that Heimdall can see me, and Thor will come. And you must let them capture me."

It took all her effort to keep her face blank. Thor. The elder Prince of Asgard could be the path to getting to the queen. "You're sure he'll come?"

"Even if he didn't love this world, he would come for me alone. The only reason he hasn't yet is that I've concealed myself. Once I'm captured by the native defenders, it will be simplicity to set them against each other."

"And when that's done, I'll get him out," Barton said.

She looked from one man to the other with a sinking feeling in her stomach. Just like everything else around her, plans were being made without her knowing. Even if she didn't have her own plans, she should have at least known what was planned.

"No, I don't believe that will work," she said with deliberate pronunciation. "Instead, I believe that Agent Barton here will be better used in guarding Dr. Selvig and his staff in preparing the portal. If you want to be captured, Loki, so be it. I'll take you to this Sandia Lab where you can distract them until the heroes come, while I fetch the Iridium. And when it is time, I'll fetch you from their grasp."

Loki raised one brow and smirked. "You're very confident in your abilities, my dear," Loki said. "And yet, I watched your battle with the Kree traitor, Vers. You're not unbeatable."

She hated how very effective his goading was. But at the same time, she had to acknowledge he could use his words as deadly weapons. He likely could split the world's defenders apart without lifting a finger. "I don't need to beat them, Loki, I just need to rip you from their grasp. And after, when we have the iridium, what next?"

"Why, we go to New York!" Selvig raised his arms joyfully at the idea. "Tony Stark has an energy reactor there that should provide more than enough power to jump-start the reaction."


A/N: Next chapter, the fit finally hits the shan.