Aida stepped out of the now functioning elevator, once again tapping a tablet. "Hey Jarvis, how are the boys doin' outside?"

"Wonderful, Dr Agar. Mr Stark and Thor have almost completed the repair of the sign out front. They should be inside soon, miss."

"Awesome. How 'bout the inside?"

"I'll find that if you looked in front of you, you would see that Captain Rogers and Agents Barton and Romanoff have fully repaired the damages done to the interior."

Stopping, Aida looked up, finding that everything looked like it was completely back to normal. "Oh! Okay, well, that's pretty cool."

Over the past few days after the attack, the team had most of Stark towers repaired. Oddly enough rebuilding a few floors went by oddly quick whenever you had a few heroes on board. When Pepper got home the day after the invasion, she obviously tore Tony a new one which was more than amusing to watch. During various breaks Aida had spent a bulk of her time with Thor, who despite what his brutish tendencies implied was very smart. Bruce on the other hand she had barely seen. He had actually been avoiding her a little bit, Tony had told her about the whole being naked in her arms thing. On the bright side of things, Aida was starting to get passed her fangirling whenever Bruce was around. She figured she was going to have to contain herself and play cool if they were going to be in the labs together all the time.

Aida heard the elevator open behind her and looked back. Speak of the devil, here was Bruce. "Why hello there, stranger."

"Oh, um, hey." Did he always sound so nervous? Bruce played with his sleeves as he approached her. "Um, I guess since we're here I should apolo-"

"No." She cut him off mid-'apologize'. Aida shook her head, "You don't have to be sorry. We've known each other for less than a week and most of the conversations we've shared have been apologies from both parties. Enough of those. We're good." She hated it when all people did was apologize.

Bruce just looked at her, his eyebrows raised in shock though eventually look of amusement travelled to his face. He gave one of those sideways smiled and nodded slowly. "Alright then, that sounds...good?"

Aida grinned, "Perfect! Now, let's start over." Aida extended her hand toward her fellow scientist with the prettiest smile she could muster. "Hi, I'm Dr Aida Agar. Chemical and Physical Biologist, I work for Tony Stark."

Bruce nodded, a small smile on his face as he took her hand into his much larger one to shake it in greeting, "It's a pleasure to meet you Dr Agar, I'm Bruce Banner. Nuclear Physicist, I've been in Calcutta isolating myself for the past year or more."

Aida raised an eyebrow, "You don't know how long you were there?"

With a smile, Bruce shrugged, "You lose track of time."

Aida grinned, "I think we're going to have a good time working together, Dr Banner." She told him, releasing his hand and sliding her hands onto her hips.

Bruce chuckled, "One can only hope."

Aida grinned and made her way toward the bar Tony had, placing the tablet down on the counter and looking for a glass, "Now I'm going to give you a fair warning, Dr Banner," she paused, looking back over her shoulder, "I'm probably, more than likely, going to make you uncomfortable."

The older man raised an eyebrow, wandering over to the other side of the bar as the redhead got a glass only to fill it with water. "Oh really?"

Aida nodded, leaning back against the sink and looking at Bruce with a grin still plastered to her face. "Really. I'm loud, I'm opinionated, I like to have fun, and I might even get in your space. Me making a lot of bad, awesome jokes at your expense is going to happen and you will not be able to stop me."

Bruce chuckled, "Is there anything else I should be aware of?"

Aida nodded, "I'm a redhead stereotype, meaning I have a terrible temper when properly provoked. I believe that may be something we share in common."

"There's a possibility." Aida just kept her grin on her face in response.

"Nice outfit, Harvard, kicking it back to 90s grunge are we?" Ah, Tony Stark. Here to ruin the fun. How did they not hear him land outside and all of the suit come off. He was referring to Aida's chosen attire of a mint green plaid shirt with sleeves rolled up above her elbows, that hung open past the length of her cuffed jeans shorts which were just above mid-thigh length. Underneath her plaid shirt she had on a slightly loose fitting grey t-shirt that still managed to hug her in all the right places, which read 'I (heart) science' out of elements from the periodic table. She pulled it all together with a pair of purple Vans. She wasn't going for the grunge look at all. She just threw her clothes on in the morning.

"Aw, gee, thanks Tony. I was hoping you would notice." Without even thinking about it, she just got him a glass of his usual scotch and handed it to him. Tony smirked as he took the glass. Bruce watched with a slightly quirked eyebrow.

"You know me far too well."

Aida shrugged with a smirk, "You're just predictable."

"Auh!" Tony mocked a hurt expression, placing his hand over the arc reactor that kept him alive, "That hurts, Aida, right here."

"Yeah, whatever, where's Thor?"

"Outside summoning the powers of the universe, being loud, causing trouble. Y'know, the usual."

Aida rolled her eyes, "The man is a six foot four teddy bear, Stark."

"And you love him."

"Um, wrong. Very wrong. Thor's a demigod, from another realm. Not interested, not happening."

"I've seen your last boyfriend, Princess is totally your type."

"Again, incorrect. Are you trying to get knocked out?"

"Hit me with your best shot, sweetheart."

"I'm not afraid to hit an old man, Tony."

"Then why haven't you done it yet, hot shot?" The two simply stood inches apart from one another, their mused gazes never parting.

"You're wearing your glasses today. What did I tell you about you and your contacts?"

"I don't need to look prettier, I'm a boss."

"Yeah, well, hate to break it to ya sweetheart, but I am the boss."

Aida smirked, "Okay, you got me there."

It wasn't long until they heard the clicking of heels approach, "Are they at it again, Dr Banner?"

Bruce turned to looked at Tony's secretary/turned assistant/turned girlfriend, Pepper Potts. His eyebrows raised as he looked at Pepper, baffled, "They do this frequently?"

"Oh, of course." Tony answered, not breaking his showdown with Aida.

"Every day." Aida added, "It's sorta like one of those unstoppable force meets immoveable object type problems we have."

Bruce chuckled softly, "Well it would be a problem if it were actually possible, but that could never happen."

"That's because it's a paradox, Dr Banner. If an unstoppable force exists then there is no immoveable object and vice versa. Thusly these forces cannot exist in the same space." Bruce just watched her stare at Tony with an amused look on his face, "Say hello to Tony Stark the unstoppable force, and Aida Agar the immoveable object. Maybe sometimes we'll switch it up. Clearly we can't exist in the same space peacefully. Can you say 'walking paradox'?" Aida shrugged, continuing, "It's only really been explained through the philosophical realm. A philosophy is kind of just a theory that's never been physically tested, and I'm just the person to test it."

You would've thought Tony was a proud father or something by the way he looked to Bruce with a large grin on his face, "This is why I keep her around."

Aida threw her fists into the air, "I win! Suck it, Tony!"

Tony slammed his free open palm down on the table, "Son of a bitch!" Aida didn't pay attention to Tony's reaction, she was too busy doing some dance around the bar that Bruce could only assume was out of joy. Tony downed that last of his scotch.

Bruce looked to Pepper, once again confused, "What just happened?"

Pepper smiled, "Staring contest, Tony lost when he looked at you."

"How old are you?" Bruce asked, looking toward Aida, who didn't stop dancing as she answered.

"That's a good question. 27? 28, maybe." She smirked, "I lost track sometime after 25."

Bruce raised an amused eyebrow as his sideways smile came to his face. She was going to be a handful.

Later that evening, you could've found Aida sitting on the couch talking to Thor. He had been telling her tales of Asgard and what a glorious place his home had been, how he had been looking forward to returning despite having to leave Midgard.

"Do you know what they're going to do to Loki?" She asked, out of sheer curiosity.

Thor let out a heavy sigh, "I know not, Aida Agar. His punishment is to be carried out upon our arrival in Asgard tomorrow. What my father decides is appropriate for my brother is only that of his knowledge."

Aida felt kind of bad. Thor still cared about Loki and Loki seemed to care less. Thor told her how Odin, his father, took Loki in after the battle of Jotunheim, how he and Loki grew up together. Loki was adopted and he lived in Thor's shadow, she got it. But Loki didn't have to punish Thor. Thor was doing everything he could to get back in Loki's life. She had a younger brother of her own, his name was Avery and he was seven. He was her half brother, so it wasn't like he could ever find out that we was adopted, but Aida definitely took better care of him than their air headed mother did. Either way, adopted or not, Aida wouldn't have known how to handle it if her younger brother hated her and didn't give her a chance to explain or anything along those lines.

"I'm sorry, Thor."

Thor shook his head, smiling at her. He placed a strong hand on her tiny(in comparison to his hand) shoulder, "It is quite alright, you have no reason to bestow your apologies on to me." He paused, "Aida Agar, you are a woman of science, yes?"

Aida nodded, "Yeah, pretty much."

"Do you know of Jane Foster?" He asked, his eyes softened at the mention her. It made her smile. Thor was in love with this Jane Foster.

"Yeah, I know of her. She's an astrophysicist, I met her maybe once during a presentation being given by colleague but I haven't held a friendship with her or anything." Aida was being completely honest. She had met Jane during a conference with Erik Selvig, who had been long time friends with her father. Despite having never really interacted with the woman, Aida heard nothing but good things of her character. The grin that came Thor's face at the thought that he was going to be able to tell some of his Jane Foster made Aida smile. This man was such a teddy bear beneath all of the armor.

"She is among the brightest I know, in both beauty and intelligence." His jovial expression faltered, his shoulders dropped. It pains me to know she had been in harms way. Even more so knowing that I depart tomorrow, having left Midgard and not to have made contact with her. Ever since the battle with the Chitauri ended, she has been one of the only things to pass through my thoughts. I made a vow that I would come to her upon my return and I have broken said vow. I only wish for her to know that my fondness for her grows with each and every moment we are apart."

Jane Foster was one lucky girl. Aida could definitely tell why Tony constantly mocked Thor for his Shakespearean speech patterns. In all honesty it was something you could really get comfortable listening to.

Aida smiled and patted Thor's arm lightly, "I'll make sure she gets the message, Thor."

Thor smiled, "Thank you, your favor means a great deal." He looked to the hand that rest on his arm and took it into both of his large ones, turning it palm side up. Concerned, he grabbed the other hand and did the same. "Aida Agar, it appears you have strange enchantments written on the underbellies of your wrists." Aida smiled, Thor had been referring to Aida's two tattoos. She had the molecular make up of two neurotransmitters tattooed on the inside of each of her wrists. They were relatively small, maybe two and half inches in length; simple black lines and letters. Her left was GABA, the one responsible for relaxation, her right was glutamate, which could excite. Thor looked at her, some type of anger and concern in his eyes, his voice on the edge of raising, "Are you certain my brother has not harmed you?"

Oh gosh. "No, no!" Aida pulled her hands back from the god and held them up to face him, "They're tattoos. I had these put on me. They're not any form of sorcery, I swear." Thor sat back, relaxed now.

"What are these strange markings?"

"They're neurotransmitters." The god furrowed his brow, confused by his new scientist friend's words. "Um," This is going to be difficult to explain to him. "Neurotransmitters exist in your brain. Your's, mine, Tony's, even Jane's. These things interact with receptors in your brain, which help you function a certain way, which also makes you feel certain things. Seratonin, for example, is what makes you feel happy. Let's say you're with Jane. In situations such as this your brain releases seratonin and when it interacts with those receptors, you receive feelings of happiness."

Thor nodded, seeming to follow the redhead's words. He pointed to her wrists, "Are these symbols this seratonin of which you speak?"

Aida shook her head, "Nope. This is GABA," she held up her left wrist, "GABA is responsible for sedating your system, so it relaxes you. My other wrist is glutamate," she held up her right, "glutamate does the opposite, it makes your system operate faster, so it excites you."

Thor tilted his head, "Do these two forces not cause chaos with one another?" Aida smiled, shaking her head at the ever curious god of thunder.

"They create balance."

After whatever festivities and good byes occurred that evening, Aida had found her home in the labs with a bag of green grapes, her time there extending far past her hours. She had remained there, drawing up ideas and writing down notes. After her conversation with Thor earlier, she was determined to discover one of two things. One; a way to connect Earth and Asgard so that Thor could travel between the two while the Bifrost was down. This however seemed very, very impractical upon the realization that she didn't have access to anything that could have given her the type of information she needed. So she would settle for option two - a way to communicate between realms.

She heard the door to the lab open up and she looked over to find Bruce, now a little nervous. "Oh, I'm sorry..." As soon as 'I'm sorry' came out of his mouth, Aida looked at him over the top of her glasses, lifting an eyebrow. Her reaction made him smile a bit.

"I forgot?"

Aida popped a grape into her mouth, "Yeah, uh-huh."

He found his way beside her, looking at her notes and doodles. "So what's this?"

"I'm trying to maneuver a way to make a cell phone have, lets say, infinite battery life-" She stopped, thought for a minute. The molecule. When she discovered it they named it Tetranitratoxycarbon, probably because it had four sides and because of it consisted of. It was capable of storing energy, they knew that much.

"What's the problem?"

Aida shifted her glasses up to rest on the top of her head and rubbed her face. "Nothing, this shouldn't be difficult. I was just trying to figure out a way to help Thor communicate with us and Jane while in Asgard."

Bruce nodded, "So I ask again, what's the problem."

"I just don't really know what thing to do to help store the energy. There's that molecule. Everyone keeps saying that because it so closely resembles nitroglycerin that it's too thermally unstable to be used for anything very practical. I'm not going to be the reason Asgard implodes on itself."

Bruce nodded with a shrug, "Good enough reason to me." Aida laughed a bit. They to sat back and tried to figure it out together, eventually coming up with a good enough prototype that they could've at least tried. Bruce leaned back in his chair and looked at Aida.

"Why are you so determined to make sure Thor and can keep in touch with Erik Selvig's mentee?"

Aida shrugged, "It's weird. My last relationship was long distance, it's rough. It's probably terrible knowing your boyfriend is a godlike prince from another realm, never knowing when you're going to see him again. I don't know, it's kind of a girl thing."

Bruce nodded, "So you empathize with her?"

Again, she shrugged, "Pretty much."

The physicist smiled again, his eyes shifting down toward the floor, not knowing what to say.

"So tell me about yourself, Dr Bruce."

"Hm?" He looked at her, as if she had taken him out a daze, "I'm so-" he stopped himself, "Excuse me?"

"Tell me about yourself. So you're a nuclear physicist, you turn green, you were in Calcutta, that stuff I know. Tell me more, gimme hometowns, favorite movies, favorite colors. The fun stuff."

Bruce let out a small laugh and rubbed the back of his neck, "Well, uh," he started, playing with a pen and never really making eye contact with the redhead before him. "I was born in Ohio. Favorite movie? I guess it's Weird Science. Favorite color? Green, obviously." At his last statement, he looked at her smiling, causing Aida to grin.

"Was that a joke?" Aida asked, mock excitement filling her voice.

"It might have been." Bruce grinned and propped his elbow up on the arm of his swivel chair, resting his jaw against his fist. "Now it's your turn."

Aida stuck her lips and spun her chair around, "Well, I was born in California. My parents divorced when I was around 7, so I went back and forth from Pasadena with my dad and Boston with my mom, but I spent a good portion of my childhood with my dad. My dad was an archaeologist, but now he teaches Geophysics over at the California Institute of Technology. I have a little brother, he's awesome. My birthday is October 27th. My favorite color is probably yellow, green, or purple. Oh, and I LOVE Ghostbusters."

Bruce lifted his head up, "Your dad teaches at CalTech?"

Aida placed her feet firmly on the floor, stopping her slow spin to look at Bruce. "Yup, he was recently promoted to the head of the Geology and Planetary Sciences department, too."

"I received my doctorate from CalTech."

"Nice! They have a really solid program, if they had what I wanted I probably would've gone there instead of Harvard."

"You probably could've gotten Biochemistry. The two are similar ."

"Right, but with Chemical Biology you were taught how to understand the biological systems react to different chemicals and such. They're effectively the same they just have different approaches. Plus I got Physics out of the deal as well. College was basically just a review of everything I already tried to figure out on my own and told me whether I was wrong or right. I've taken graduate courses at CalTech, but seriously just the courses because I already had my PhD."

Bruce nodded, watching her. "You're pretty impressive."

"Why thank you, Dr Banner. That's a huge compliment coming from someone such as yourself." Aida smiled, "I like to try and press the limits."

"Which is wonderful, you don't find many scientists who actually go outside of the box. They consider it, they hypothesize and then they never follow through." The way he was speaking about how Aida went about things almost sounded as if he were baffled or astonished.

"I never have a hypothesis, I have ideas and find ways to make them work. I don't care what it takes, I won't stop until it does what I intend it to do."

"You're unconventional." Bruce leaned forward as he looked at her, looking her in the eyes. Aida recognized this, last time she was being looked at like that it was with a pair of bright green eyes by the creature that saved her. What was he trying to figure out?

Bruce understood why Tony employed this woman. Okay sure, she was attractive - very attractive - but she was a genius in her own respect. She was driven, confident, fearless. Much like Tony himself. Bruce remembered having that confidence, that drive. That self-assurance got him into this situation. Actually, saving a teenager did, but it was his own creation that made him the way he was now. He could've asked her why she was so bold, so fearless.

"Why didn't you run?" Was all he could manage to whisper.

Aida looked at him, her eyes softening as she tilted her head. "Is that all you've been able to think about for the past few days...?" She asked, softly and very confused.

"Normal people run away." His voice was still soft, but his response made her smile.

"I think we've both know that I'm not necessarily what most people call normal."

Bruce barely cracked a smile. He couldn't help but be both very nervous and very excited to work with Aida.

A/N: Thank you so much for everyone who reviewed and added this to their favorites and alerts! I had a lot of fun writing the first half of this chapter, towards the end I felt like it might have been rushing things with them a little bit for some reason? Either way I think I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. I'm already working on the next chapter. Hope you enjoyed this one!

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