A/N: This chapter was inspired by a conversation I've been having with Evenmoor after her comments about Ch. 6. Thanks for your help!
Skye's eyes widened as she watched her 'boss' take off after Fallon. "I had no idea he could *move* that fast," she commented.
"I'm willing to bet he didn't either," Ryan agreed with a chuckle.
Skye turned to face Ryan. "You know what's going on with him, don't you?"
"I'm going to let him tell you when he's ready," Ryan replied. "You have plenty to worry about without focusing on your boss."
Skye's face fell as her attention refocused on why she was there in the first place. "Right. So what's first on the agenda, 'teach'?"
Lanie interrupted their conversation. "First you're going to come with me to the clinic. I want to have another doctor draw some blood and take a closer look at your DNA."
"Really?" asked Ryan. "Who's on call today? Grumpy?"
Skye snickered at the nickname. "Grumpy?"
"Everyone uses nicknames, pseudonyms and code names down here," Ryan explained. "We'll come up with yours as we go."
"Grumpy's on a consult for the ME's office," Lanie told Ryan. "Yoda's in today. I figured he's be a good second opinion."
"Yoda, huh?" Ryan mused. A smile crept into the corners of his mouth. "That could be an interesting conversation..."
Skye was starting to wonder why it was such a big deal for her to talk to this 'Yoda'. "So who is this guy?"
Lanie didn't answer her. "C'mon," she nudged Skye, "let's go."
Skye followed Lanie down a hallways and through enough corridors to feel totally lost before walking through a door into what looked like a cross between a pediatrician's waiting room and a drug company's research facility. A middle-aged gentleman was sitting at one of the lab tables, working diligently on something in what looked to be a very battered notebook. "Yoda!" Lanie called out. "You busy?"
The middle-aged man took off his wire-rimmed glasses and tried to rub the fatigue out of his eyes. "Nah, just updating some research notes. What do you got?"
"New patient," Lanie replied. "This is Skye."
'Yoda' stuck his hand out. "Skye, hello," he greeted Skye in a voice that was a poor quality impersonation of the Star Wars character. "Yoda I am. How you help may I?"
"That is *terrible*," Skye replied, laughing as she shook Yoda's hand. "But it's nice to meet you."
"I need a *full* blood workup and DNA profile done on our new friend here," Lanie instructed Yoda.
Yoda nodded, his voice returning to a gentle 'normal'. "Okay. Should take me about twenty minutes."
Skye frowned, confused by the timeframe. "I thought DNA typing took a lot longer than that."
"I'll be back when that typing's ready," Lanie announced, excusing herself.
Yoda nodded to acknowledge Lanie as she left before turning his attention back to Skye. "Two weeks is only the timeframe if you have a giant backlog."
"And you don't have Tony Stark's money to get the latest equipment," agreed Skye.
"That doesn't hurt," agreed Yoda. He started to pull together the equipment to draw blood from Skye's arm. "So what's your story?"
"My story?" repeated Skye.
Yoda nodded as he rolled up the sleeve of Skye's shirt. "There are two types of people who come through here: people who watched something happen that they didn't understand and people who did something they didn't understand." He stuck the needle in Skye's arm, but the girl seemed so entranced by the sound of his voice that Skye didn't even flinch. "Now...the Yīzhì brought you in here and asked for bloodwork, so I'm guessing it's not the former?"
Skye shook her head. She blushed as she rolled her sleeve back down. "Apparently I have the power to 'bend people's minds to my will'."
Yoda let out a low whistle as he started the centrifuge. "That's a dangerous power..."
Skye's face fell again. "Yeah, tell me about it," she agreed.
"How do *you* feel about it?" asked Yoda.
Skye leaned back in the chair and sighed. "I don't really know. I mean, there's a part of me that's thrilled to be able to do something so amazing, and yet..."
"You understand how much your ability could possibly to do hurt the people around you."
Skye nodded. "When I was a little girl, the village I was living in was attacked by some bad guys who were looking to kidnap me and control this 'power'. The *entire* village died to protect me."
Yoda could feel the crushing emotions radiating off Skye in waves. "You feel guilty that those people died."
"They died in my place, and many of them against their will," Skye countered. "How could I *not* feel guilty about that?"
"You were a terrified little girl who didn't know what she was doing," Yoda argued. "You were just trying to survive."
Skye jumped up and started to pace. "And what about now?!" she exclaimed. "I'm going to have to watch every thought that goes through my head, and when I'm talking to someone..." Her voice trailed off as she hesitated, not wanting to admit what she was thinking. "When I'm talking to someone, how can I know that they're saying what they're really thinking or just what I want to hear?"
Yoda's smile radiated warmth. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."
Skye slumped back down in her chair in a defeated grumble. "Yeah, easy for you to say."
"Easy for me to say..." Yoda muttered under his breath. As he put the components of Skye's blood into the analyzer, Yoda sighed, seemingly coming to a decision as he worked. "What if I told you that I believe *any* 'power' can be used for good as long as a good person is the one controlling it?"
The absolute conviction in Yoda's voice got Skye's attention. "You sound like you know something about this."
"I do," Yoda agreed. He pulled a second chair over so that he was sitting directly across from Skye. "When I was young and stupid, I started doing research for the military. They've been trying to create a super soldier since World War II, and I thought I had the idea that would finally crack the code."
Skye found a spark of familiarity in Yoda's story. "Go on."
Yoda continued as he rolled up his sleeves. "Well, being young and stupid, instead of finding the right research subjects to test my process on, I tested it on myself."
"What happened?" asked Skye, suspecting that she already knew the answer. Yoda positioned himself so that his right forearm was in an open space between himself and Skye. Skye watched in horror as the arm turned a very familar shade of green and started to grow. She tried to cover the arm with her hands, but the rock-hard muscles she felt underneath her touch were the last straw. Skye jumped up from her seat, sending the chair crashing to the floor as she backed away from 'Yoda' in shock. "You..." she finally stammered, "you're...you're the..."
'Yoda' rolled his sleeves back down over his forearms and casually buttoned the cuffs. "Skye, I'm not normally supposed to do this down here, but I think you and I need to be 'properly' introduced." He crossed the room and offered his hand to Skye in greeting. "Doctor Bruce Banner. Nice to meet you."
Skye hesistated for a long moment before shaking Bruce's hand. "I...I know who you are, Doctor Banner..." she stammered. As the shock slowly wore off, though, Skye started to recognize the differences between the man standing in front of her and the rumors from the Internet that she was so familiar with. "You're much more...in control than I thought you would be," she told him.
Bruce smiled. "That's kind of deliberate, to be honest," he admitted. "I like leaving the Hulk's legends where they are. Makes it easier for me to live a normal life now. People just assume that I couldn't possibly be 'that guy'."
"How..."
Bruce anticipated the question and answered it before Skye could finish asking. "Master Mùshī." When Skye stared at him in blank confusion, Bruce clarified, "I guess you know him as Agent Ryan."
"He helped you get the Hulk under control?" asked Skye.
Bruce nodded. "I was terrified of what had happened to me. What I could do, what I thought I would become...my personality split. All of the rage, almost all of the power went into..."
"Him?" asked Skye.
Bruce nodded again. "He was so uncontrolled because all my emotions were on *that* side of the wall. And as much as I could try to live without emotion, I couldn't. That's no way to *live*. I traveled the world, desperate to find any way to control my thoughts and emotions in the hopes of getting rid of the Hulk once and for all. But when I started to feel any degree of strong emotion, he came out."
"How did Agent Ry..."
"Master Mùshī," Bruce corrected.
Skye blushed. "Sorry. How did Master Mùshī help you?"
"You know about the gene, right?" asked Bruce. Skye nodded. "The theory is that the experiment flipped me, but because of where my head was at, it went all wrong. Master Mùshī knocked down the wall and helped me get into the headspace I should have been in all along."
"And now you can control...it?" asked Skye.
"Completely. Even developed the ability I was born to have."
The admission surprised Skye. "Something totally new? On top of what the Hulk can do?" Bruce nodded. "What is it?" asked Skye.
Bruce let out a quiet chuckle, knowing the irony of what he was about to admit. "Empathy. I can sense everything that you're feeling...up to the point of feeling it myself if I chose to."
"Really?" Skye asked, suprised. "You ran away from strong emotions for all those years..."
"And now I can feel not only my own emotions, but those of anybody around me," Bruce agreed with a smile. "So *now* do you understand why I feel the way I do about people with powers like yours?"
Skye let out the breath she didn't know she was holding before she nodded. "So you think I can learn to control this? Do something good with it?"
Bruce gently squeezed Skye's hand in a show of support. "Skye, I promise you. If I can do it, you can do it."
