Chapter 4 – Meet The Hulk
A/n – I think I have an addiction to writing this story. I'm really enjoying myself. Two updates in one day is definitely a first
LaNaturalBreezeOf-Books: Hello again :) Of course and that is my intention. Influences in Toni's life are of course different to Tony's which in the end do make her a similar but still different person. Yay! You have been converted to the Fem!Tony team, welcome aboard :D
Harm Marie – I'm glad you are liking it.
MelodyPotterSnape – There will be plenty of anger at Fury although a lot of it will be directed at the Council instead of him in some scenes. It hits a peak level with the stunt with Coulson though.
The screen switched to show a street in India as a little girl ran through the crowd carefully avoiding those cycling by. The scene showed her face and something was visibly within her right hand as she ran although it was impossible to see what. She turned a couple of corners before reaching the house she was looking for and racing up the stone staircase within.
The people within were speaking Hindi but subtitles for it instantly sprung up below the picture. One woman noticed the little girl and exclaimed, "Who are you? Get out! There is sickness here!" As she moved forward Bruce was visible in the background washing out a jug.
"You really can't tell me that you prefer Calcutta to here now can you Bruce?" Toni said giving her friend a significant look.
"Okay fine, but I was doing good there," Bruce admitted.
"You're a doctor," the little girl insisted, "my father's not waking up! He has a fever and he's moaning but his eyes won't open."
By this point Bruce had made his way over upon hearing the girl's story and calmly interjected, "slow down."
The little girl took a deep breath before continuing, "My father…" as she said this she looked over to the patients that Bruce had been treating in this house.
Bruce crouched down so he was at eye level with the girl and asked her, "like them?" indicating his other patients in the corner of the room.
The girl simply nodded and pleaded, "Please," holding out the money she had in her hand to get Bruce to come.
"She was very good," Natasha said softly, "I should probably try and keep SHIELD away from her until she's old enough to make her own choices though. I don't want her learning too much at that age like I did."
Bruce had obviously accepted the little girl's offer as they made their way towards a secluded cabin. The little girl was running ahead with Bruce holding her back a little to let a car pass in front of them. Some sort of family were sitting on hay bales watching TV which might have been suspicious but Bruce obviously had no proof that one of them was the little girl's father. She sprinted through the house looking like she was just eager to return to her father's side but upon entering the back room she leapt from the window.
"You should've got paid up front Banner," Bruce said to himself.
"Life lesson, you should always get paid up front if at all possible," Toni said agreeing with the statement.
"And you would know that how?" Clint butted in.
"I ran a company from the age of 21. I gave it up last year to Piper and I am now 36. Hence I ran the company for nearly fifteen years, I'd say I know what I'm doing when it comes to business," Toni said dismissively.
Natasha's voice came from behind Bruce, "you know, for a man who's supposed to be avoiding stress you picked a hell of place to settle," she emerged from behind a curtain now dressed in more traditional Indian clothes.
Bruce dropped his bag informing her, "Avoiding stress isn't the secret."
"Then what is it? Yoga?" Natasha inquired.
"Friend Banner, how many times did someone ask you that over the course of these events?" Thor queried.
"A lot, everyone wanted to know," Bruce said with a smile.
Bruce ignored the comment and began commenting on his surroundings, "you brought me to the edge of the city. Smart. I assume the whole place is surrounded." He looked out of the window as he said this obviously expecting to spot one of the people out there.
"Just you and me," Natasha said discarding her shawl.
Most of the Avengers scoffed at that as they knew there was no way SHIELD would have sent in Natasha if they hadn't put more people outside just in case. Bruce was the one that SHIELD had been most reluctant to bring in after all with Toni a close second due to 'Natasha's report,' on her.
"And your actress buddy?" Bruce asked, "Is she a spy, too? They start that young?"
"I did," Natasha stated.
"I went into the family business a lot sooner than they did," Toni said matter-of-factly, "I was four."
"Shouldn't you have been doing kid's stuff at four?" Steve asked.
"Not with my father and an IQ of 189. No chance! Besides kid's stuff was always boring to me really," Toni snorted and then refused to say anything else on the subject.
"Who are you?" Bruce inquired.
"Natasha Romanoff," Natasha clarified.
Bruce looked down for a moment before asking seriously, "Are you here to kill me, Ms Romanoff? Because that's not going to work out for everyone."
"No, of course not. I'm here on behalf of SHIELD," Natasha said slowly walking towards Bruce.
"SHIELD," Bruce contemplated, "How did they find me?"
"Either they never lost you or they utilised their unfortunately endless resources I bet," Toni guessed.
"We never lost you, Doctor," Natasha confirmed, "We've kept our distance. Even helped keep some other interested parties off your scent."
"I have no doubt that Ross was one of them," Bruce said and Natasha gave him a brief nod to confirm that he had been.
"Why?" Bruce asked.
"Nick Fury seems to trust you," Natasha stated.
"Now that is a lie," Bruce laughed derisively, "if he did then he would never have set up the death trap for me. The only person I know who trusted me from the moment we met was Toni and I still don't know why."
"I'll probably have to explain that later anyway so don't worry about it now," Toni said quietly.
"But now we need you to come in," Natasha continued.
"What if I say no?" Bruce asked.
"I'll persuade you," Natasha said not attempting to hide that they would bring Bruce in at any cost.
"And what if the other guy says no?" Bruce asked hesitantly.
"You've been more than a year without an incident. I don't think you want to break that streak," Natasha said taking a step back.
"Then you should never have brought me in the first place," Bruce said quietly as he had transformed twice relatively soon after this incident although one of them had been on purpose.
"Well I don't get what I want every time," Bruce stated quietly as if not wanting to bring that up with Natasha.
"Doctor, we're facing a potential global catastrophe," Natasha said bringing out her phone and searching through it ignoring his previous comment.
Bruce let out a light chuckle before pointing out, "well, those I actively try to avoid."
"How many of them are there that you feel the need to avoid them?" Steve asked concerned.
"Not that many, most incidents are citywide and a lot of them do focus on New York although most of mine happened in California to be honest," Toni said with a shrug.
"This," Natasha said turning the phone to show an image of the Tesseract on its screen, "is the Tesseract." After taking a seat she slid the phone across the table to allow Bruce to get a better look, "it has the potential energy to wipe out the planet."
"Which should have warned us away I know," Natasha said before anyone else took the opportunity to do so.
Bruce put on his glasses and picked up the phone despite the fact that he had said he wasn't interested. "What does Fury want me to do, swallow it?" Bruce joked.
"He wants you to find it. It's been taken," Natasha told him, "it emits a gamma signature that's too weak for us to trace. There's no one that knows gamma radiation like you do. If there was that's where I'd be."
"Except Toni apparently so I still don't know why you had to bring me in," Bruce wondered.
"I meant it when I said I learn things overnight," Toni answered, "I only read up on the gamma radiation and the thermonuclear astrophysics info specific to this case the day I was recruited. My brain can pick that up quickly but not every tiny little detail that comes with years of extensive study which is your advantage there. Although it is the reason that you never see me sleep, my brain works too hard so I either have to drink myself unconscious or work until I collapse."
With no idea of how to respond to that statement the rest of the Avengers turned their attention back to the screen.
Bruce removed his glasses before asking seriously, "so Fury isn't after the monster?"
"Still not a monster Bruce," Toni muttered to her friend who didn't acknowledge that he'd heard her although she knew he had.
"Not that he's told me," Natasha replied calmly.
"And he tells you everything?" Bruce said suspiciously.
"Talk to Fury. He needs you on this," Natasha said knowing that she couldn't give him an honest 'yes' answer to that question.
"He wants me in a cage?" Bruce scoffed.
"I was close, he had the cage, he just didn't want me in it all the time," Bruce said matter-of-factly.
"No one's going to put you in a…" Natasha said reaching over to attempt to reassure Bruce.
"Stop LYING to me!" Bruce shouted slamming his hands down on the counter. Natasha's hand instantly went for the gun that she had stored under the table and drew it so it was pointing at Bruce with the safety off.
"In my defence the cage on the helicarrier wasn't my idea and I didn't approve of it," Natasha said quietly.
Bruce took a step back from the table at the sight of the gun and smirked a little as he said, "I'm sorry. That was mean. I just wanted to see what you'd do."
"Now that was a move I recognised. Annie is fond of testing people like that," Natasha said throwing a glance in Toni's direction.
"Well it works doesn't it," Toni said without a hint of remorse in her tone.
Bruce put his hands up as if to reassure Natasha that he wasn't about to change, "Why don't we do this the easy way where you don't use that and the other guy doesn't make a mess. Okay?"
When Natasha's gun didn't lower he added, "Natasha?"
At that Natasha finally lowered the gun and reached up to the comm unit in her right ear and said, "Stand down," as the soldiers outside the building moved away, "we're good here."
"'Just you and me'" Bruce referenced with a significant look.
"Knew it," the people who hadn't been there whispered.
The scene changed to show Fury in a conversation with the Council who supposedly were in charge of SHIELD. "This is out of line, Director," the second one on the right stated, "you're dealing with forces you can't control."
"You ever been in a war Councilman?" Fury asked accusingly, "In a firefight? Did you feel an overabundance of control?"
"Don't like him, have to agree with him there," Toni muttered.
"You're saying this Asgard is declaring war on our planet?" the Councilman continued.
"Asgard did not declare war, it was Loki, my people want nothing but peace," Thor cried out obviously offended by the Councilman's words.
"Not Asgard. Loki," Fury corrected.
"He can't be working alone," the female member of the Council said, "what about the other one? His brother."
"I WOULD NEVER FIGHT TO CONTROL THE PEOPLE OF MIDGARD. HOW DARE SHE SUGGEST IT?" Thor shouted.
"Thor you need to calm down," Steve placated, "this has already happened and we know that you didn't help Loki."
Thankfully this seemed to have the desired affect for while Thor was obviously still internally fuming he did settle down and didn't shout at the screen anymore much to the relief of everyone's eardrums.
"Our intelligence says Thor is not a hostile," Fury insisted, "but he's worlds away. We can't depend on him to help either. It's up to us."
"Which is why you should be focusing on Phase 2," the Councilman said, "It was designed for exactly this…"
Fury interrupted, "Phase 2 isn't ready. Our enemy is. We need a response team."
"Phase 2 should never have been an option," Steve growled.
"Hey, it's been shut down," Clint said, "Thor took away the Tesseract and it's impossible to make the weapons now."
"The Avengers Initiative was shut down," the Councilman insisted.
"This isn't about the Avengers," Fury sighed.
"We've seen the list," the Council continued, "you're running the world's greatest covert security network and you're going to leave the fate of the human race to a handful of freaks."
This made Bruce, Steve and Toni frown even more than they had been already for in a way all of them had been given the advantage of being a superhero at a price.
"I'm not leaving anything to anyone. We need a response team," Fury reiterated coldly, "These people may be isolated, unbalanced even but I believe with the right push they can be exactly what we need."
"It was one hell of a push," Steve muttered sadly and Toni nodded in agreement.
"You believe?" the female Council member questioned sceptically.
"War isn't won by sentiment, Director," the Councilman insisted.
"No, it's won by soldiers," Fury said bitingly.
"I'm still not a soldier and I refuse to be called one," Toni spat at the screen. Steve gave her a significant look remembering her comment just after Coulson's death on the same subject. Why was war such a touchy subject for her?
A/n: Finished typing this the same day as Chapter 3 went up, that's a first :) Couple of headcanon's for the original Tony that I've applied to Toni came through in the commentary this chapter as I suspected they might.