Title: Dealing with astrophysicists gives Nick Fury a headache
Series: Thor, Avengers
Characters: Nick Fury, Jane Foster, mentions of Erik Selvig, Loki, Thor and Bruce Banner
Genre: Gen
Rating: G
Wordcount: 851
Dedication: for Omnicat
Author's Notes: prompted after reading a piece of meta on why Jane Foster should've been included in the Avengers, and Omnicat's added commentary/suggestions about how even a video conference would be enough.
Nick Fury likes his private office on the Helicarrier. He's got a comfortable chair and an excellent view. It would almost be nice to sit down and get to work if a homicidal alien hadn't blown up a research base above him and threatened to enslave the human race or if said homicidal alien's brother's girlfriend wasn't angry at him over Skype.
"All I'm saying is I could help a lot more if I were there. I could build detectors and program algorithms much faster rather than trying to manage a team virtually from the middle-of-nowhere, Norway."
Fury refrains from sighing at her. Tromsø is larger than Puente Antiguo, about the same size as Willowdale and on one of the main shipping routes, hardly in line with her exaggerations.
Instead of arguing, he levels his gaze at her.
"I've told you, we've got an expert here who can match your skills in engineering and programming. What we need, what I need, is for you to keep safe; especially given your connection to Selvig," he points out as Jane Foster tenses to start arguing again, purposefully leaving out the other reason Erik's abductor might have in her. Knowing that someone connected to Asgard is involved in this incident would only prompt Jane Foster to jump on the next flight back and, as director of the agency tasked with dealing with this threat, he does not want that to occur and cause even more problems and complications.
"But we also need your work on detecting anomalies caused by Einstein-Rosen bridges. Particularly predicting where they might occur," Fury continues and Jane's anger settles down a little now he's presented her with a problem to solve.
"The data you've given me from Sandusky does seem to indicate the device you're dealing with does generate an Einstein-Rosen bridge, albeit one that could've only been generated from the other end, as nothing Erik was doing would be likely to trigger such an event," she pauses for a moment and there's the sound of shuffling paper as Doctor Foster looks down for something before she holds up a finger to tell him to wait and leans off-screen for a moment. Fury takes the moment to pinch the bridge of his nose – it was like was Barton said then, the Tesseract was like a doorway that could be opened from both sides – before she comes back into frame.
"However," Jane Foster continues, flipping through the folder of paper she retrieved, "your device does generate a bridge using higher wavelengths than the photons I've been focusing on. It's closer to gamma radiation than the radiation I usually work with. I don't know how Erik was working with it, since this is beyond his speciality as well." There's a look of resignation as she admits that to him, but Fury simply nods in acknowledgement of the information he's been given.
"Thank you. Is there any way you can help with detecting or preventing the bridge formation?"
She looks at him flatly over her papers before closing the folder and setting it down very deliberately.
"I'm more concerned with creating bridges, not stopping them from forming. I've found your agency is actually quite good at that," she says, disdain dripping from her voice.
"But concerning your other question, not really. I can give you general schematics, but it's going to have to be fine tuned by experts. I hope you can find one," Doctor Foster gives him a dubious look, "gamma radiation is dangerous to work with and not many go into the field once they learn that."
"We'll find one," he assures her and sends the details of the server to transfer her plans to. Jane Foster's lips thin for a moment at the notification and Fury thinks she's about to end the call, unable to help further and still angry at SHIELD's decision to move her, but instead she doesn't.
"I'm not sure how easy it will be, but–" Foster offers hesitatingly, "Erik had a friend, Bruce Banner, at Culver who specialised in Gamma radiation. He disappeared a couple of years back, but he replied to Erik's email to him after Thor left. I've got a copy if that will help you find him..." she trails off, still obviously eager to help in any way she can.
"I appreciate your enthusiasm in helping us Doctor Foster, but SHIELD is an intelligence agency, we've got slightly more up to date sources than a year-old email. Your offer is appreciated though. Transfer your plans over and I will endeavour to have updates sent to you. Time permitting," Fury adds as Doctor Foster is thanking him for that promise, and closes the conversation before she can pounce on that platitude.
He's hoping this situation will either be resolved quickly or, he knocks on wood because they need all the luck they can get, they'll be too busy fighting Loki to conceivably send a status update to Norway.
Settling back in his chair, he takes a moment before tapping Hill on comms.
"We're dealing with gamma radiation. Send in Romanoff to extract Doctor Banner."