Ok, from this point on I'll be slowing down on the releases, to a more normal schedule (Though the other two stories are of first priority till Have Chrome Will Travel is done, somewhere in the spring).
As usual I own nothing, And I hope you enjoy!
READ! ENNJOY! REVIREW! Because that is the only form of payment any author here expects.
Chapter 6
Steve pushed himself up from the floor shaking his head. His shield had taken the brunt of the blow but it had done little to offset the impact as he passed through the glass divider or the now wrecked leather couch.
'How in the world had this happened?' he wondered as he gathered his feet under him and began to stand, his hand digging in his pocket as he rose. Pulling out a small box, he flipped it open and slipped the small device it contained into his ear.
"Tony! Try to move her this way! Fleming will check on Harry!" he yelled over the now active radio.
The whine/thump of repulsor fire rang through the hallway as he spoke. "Alright, I'm coming your way!" An almost deafening roar erupted from the same direction.
Jumping up Steve ran to the edge of the wall, arriving just as the crimson and gold armored form of Iron Man flashed past, pausing for a count of one and swinging his shield arm forward. A 'woof' of air exploded from the green skinned woman as the edge of Captain Americas shield edge dug deeply into her solar plexus, doubling her over. He immediately followed up the strike with what he hoped would be a knockout blow, a heavy elbow to the base of her skull.
The woman crashed into the floor, arms splayed out. Steve's eye widened, it was like hitting a hunk of steel! Other than knocking her off balance his blow didn't seem to affect her in the least!
A growl erupted from the woman's throat as she pushed off the floor, swinging wildly toward her attacker, only to find that the shield wielding man had already dodged away.
Tony groaned inwardly as he watched the woman's emerald hand sink into the wall crushing the newly repaired concrete for the second time in the last week. "What is it? "Does everybody hate this room?" he asked no one in particular, as he brought his repulsors to bear again.
As the blast connected with the She-Hulk's back, causing her to bellow with rage, Steve rammed his shield forward into the back of the woman's knees, so she toppled over onto her back. "Tony, this isn't helping! We just keep making her mad!"
"I'm open to ideas!" Iron Man replied, as he lined up another shot hoping to keep the girl off balance.
A flood of light and sound swirled around him. Then suddenly, with a snap, the world came back into focus, the worried face of Dr. Fleming above him. "Harry! Can you hear me?" Without waiting for an acknowledgment she continued. "We need to get you out of here! They're fighting in the tower!" she said quickly as she began rummaging through one of the drawers.
Harry's mind was racing, trying to make sense of what was happening… the pain… it was gone! His hand sprang toward his forehead, but was pulled away quickly when he touched something wet. The hand came away covered with blood.
The Doctor placed a bandage over the bleeding. "This will do for now, I'll do something more for you once we are out of here! Come on!" she said pulling him up from the bed.
"Her- Hermione? Is she ok? Did you get her out already?" He looked back toward the other room as he spoke.
Her hesitation set him in motion, running toward her room only to find the wall missing, as well as his best friend and her bed. "Where is she?" he asked the Doctor, who had slid to a stop next to him.
The blast from Iron Man's repulsor obliterated the couch the woman had just used to smash Cap across the room. "Oh, come on! I just had all of this furniture moved in here!" he said, flying up toward the ceiling and back a few feet, gaining a little more distance, while being blinded by debris.
The woman made a sudden leap landing almost under him and with a quick motion, grabbed a nearby lamp slamming it up hard under his flaming boot jets. His left jet flared, suddenly igniting at full power, flipping him over in a near instant mid-air cartwheel, then crashing him to the ground.
Tony's world lit up in a flare of red lights as his heads-up display began showing the damage done by the blow, and a proximity alert as the green goliath approached him again. Now she was swinging a twisted length of metal that at one time had been a lamp, much like a golf club, impacting the bottom of his other boot with enough force to scoot him across the floor and into a heap next to the recovering Captain. "I guess she really hates fire! Cap I'm grounded! Jarvis is working on repairs to my boot jet and rerouting power to my suit's leg servos but..."
Steve nodded. "I'll buy you as much time as I can!" He leaped to his feet, preparing to square off with the woman again.
A yell of, "Hermione!" came from the smashed entryway. "STOP!"
Steve glanced in that direction to see Harry standing in the center of the smashed opening. By the time he looked back the green goliath was already in motion toward him, clearing almost half the room in a single quick leap. "Harry! Lookout!"
Harry tensed but didn't move as the monstrous woman closed on him, watching in amazement as the green amazon shrank into the form of his bushy headed best friend, who collided into him and wrapped her arms tightly around him in her patented Hermione-hug. Then collapsed boneless in his arms, murmuring "Harry… you're safe…" tears streaming down her dust covered cheeks.
Moments later she was fast asleep.
By the time the two Avengers had the two teens settled back in Harry's room Jarvis had alerted them, as well as the doctor, of the arrival of Nick Fury's Quinjet. They found him making drinks in the newly demolished reception room.
"Hell, Stark, I thought you would have this place cleaned up already!" the dark skinned man said as he placed another tumbler full of scotch on the bar.
Stark grabbed the drink and downed it quickly. "I had a disagreement with my new decorator… she thought I said modern dump, she was hard to talk on the phone in the middle of a fight."
The one eyed man smirked, as he put a drink in front of Steve. "Cap, Doc… So, what's the story?" he asked as he nodded to each in turn.
Cap sighed, ignoring the drink. "It's your show Doctor." Steve then headed toward the only undamaged screen in the room, picking up a couple of tossed barstools along the way.
Once he was in front of the screen the doctor asked, "Which one do you want to deal with first? Harry or Hermione?"
Fury looked confused for a moment, "I thought this was about Harry and the abnormalities in his blood?"
She nodded "True… but that is not our primary concern at the moment… and truthfully less troubling than the one Hermione is presenting."
Tony chuckled. "She's my new decorator," he said waving his hand toward the room.
Fury's single eye widened. "She did this?"
Cap picked up the story from that point. "Something must have happened up here, when Loki attacked, she…"
Tony just couldn't help himself, he wanted to see the big bad spy's reaction. "She now has a big green problem herself." He pointed at the screen, now showing his helmet camera view of the battle, then the fist shaped hole smashed in the wall.
"WHAT?" the man cried as he sprang to his feet. "How?" He looked at the doctor then back at Tony.
"I don't have a clue…" Tony said with a shrug. "Bruce is down in the lab right now looking all of her lab work over. The first thing he did was scan for Gama exposure, her first samples don't show any, but the ones following finding her here, after the battle, do." Tony sagged a little. "Unfortunately several of the systems are still damaged around the tower, power surges from the tesseract kept knocking all but my most protected systems out for short periods…It will take some time to check all the sub memory compartmentalization and compile it all, and to do that will take some time, I can't even start some of it till the structure of the building is confirmed by the city engineers."
Fury shook his head, "Great, a hormonal, teenaged Hulk!"
"She-Hulk" Tony said quietly. "We've been calling her She-Hulk…. Harry's sitting with her now… she calmed down and turned back when she saw him."
"Fabulous, and how is her boyfriend taking this?" the one eyed man asked.
The doctor chuckled, "You mean other than denying she's his girlfriend? Pretty well, he said with his life he has learned to expect weird things to happen."
Fury quirked his brow up at that statement, but decided other things were a priority. "I want to know the minute Banner has finished his analysis, she will need his help to figure out how to control the other self if this is permanent." He then withdrew a small tablet from inside his coat. "As for Harry, I was going to look at your data first but I think time is of the essence if he is the only thing keeping her calm."
The doctor looked over the information she had been handed, "I recognize a couple of these compounds… this one… and this one… I don't see the other one however."
Fury looked at the two she indicated, and nodded. "You said there is a third?" he asked.
She turned to the screen. "Whatever it is it looks to be an organic compound…. But other than that we are at a loss."
Fury sighed, "Alright, what I am about to show you is classified, need to know, even the World Council of S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't have access to this information, Stark your father was part of this so he may have something hidden away on it, but I doubt it… He respected Doctor Erskine too much, and as for Rodgers…" He looked at the blond man. "He felt he owed it to you to make sure the process that created you was never misused."
Tony smacked his head. "The Super Soldier Formula!" His eyes then snapped to the other analysis, dots falling into place. "Then that must be the Russian one, the one from the Red Room… The Infinity Formula!"
Fury's eye grew dark, as did his features, "I'm not going to ask how you know about that Stark, just remember that all this information is CLASSIFIED!" he growled. "That goes for you as well Fleming! There are a number of people that would hunt that boy down for those formulas, never mind that one or both of them seem to now be active!"
Tony chuckled. "Magic… His magic acted like Vita-rays… only slower, since he didn't have the nutrient injections… that was why he was eating like he was. Congratulations Cap! You and Nat are the proud papa and mamma of a six foot, one hundred fifty pound boy!"
Steve's eyes widened, though Fury spoke first. "Magic? How do…" Tony could almost see the pieces fall together inside the man's brain. "You said the boy's name was Harry… and the girl… Her name was Hermione?... Did either one of them give you a last name?"
Steve nodded. "Yeah, Harry did… not long before Hermione went on her little rampage. Potter, His name is Harry Potter."
Hermione mumbled softly, as her eyes began to flutter. only to fully open as a wide yawn subsided. "Welcome back." said a quiet voice from next to her.
A smile bloomed across her face as she turned her head, expecting the owner of the voice to be lying in the next bed. Only for confusion to replace the smile moments later as she looked at her now much different friend. "Harry?" she asked.
"Yeah… A couple of things happened since we last talked," he said, as he stood letting her get a good look at him.
His smile was the same lopsided grin she was used to, but gone was the untamable hair. Now it lay in a neat part to the right, no more long bangs covering what was now just the faintest white line of the scar that had been given to him as a baby. His eyes were just as expressive as she remembered, but the heavy plastic rim of his glasses no longer framed them and flecks of amber seemed to dance in his emerald irises. Not to mention his additional height or the muscle.
Those changes, and the lack of apparent injury remaining made her reach for the obvious question. "How… How long?"
He reached toward her and stroked her hair reassuringly. "Not very long… two days, since you were hurt again… so four total…. Then you were awake about an hour and a half ago… but Bruce said you may not remember that.."
Her eyes widened in surprise, "TWO DAYS? How? Did a healer find you? What caused these changes? Did the American Ministry? How…? What?"
"Shhhhhh… Easy… You need to relax…" he said somewhat nervously. "Just take it easy and I'll tell you as much as I know…. But you need to rest for now, the doctors have given you something that will let you sleep."
She nodded and laid her head back on the pillow, and took a deep breath. If she couldn't trust Harry then who could she trust?
