Next morning I could finally get up out of bed-something that I anticipated, for once. Weird, I know. I wandered the halls for a moment, mentally recalling my steps in my head the way I would familiarize myself with a new map in a shooter game or something. I ceased my exploring when I bumped into my office, however, so that I wouldn't have to try and find it again if I kept going.
When I poked my head through the door, Bruce Banner smiled and waved. So. Much. Awesome.
"Hey," he greeted. I pulled my shoulders up bashfully, walking inside and gracefully swerving around Tony as he carried a hissing vial of somethinrather to another table with a pair of tongs. "you're that new kid that plugged up the beaker. I'm Bruce."
"Hi," I responded, though the word came out almost as a squeak. Every minute I spent with these walking wonders was a minute I made a mental note to pinch myself. "I'm Kinners. Exotic, flavorful, downright weird-I get that. No biggie."
"I think it's a pretty name," stated Bruce, with a tinge of defensiveness. I blinked at him.
"Oh," I said finally. "you're talking about the name, 'Kinners.' No, I was referring to myself. You don't still think that's pretty, do you?"
Bruce laughed, which just served to turn my face the shade of a tomato. But the sound had a certain husky-yet-sad hollowness to it, something that reminded me of Loki's voice in a weird way.
"Bit of a smart-$# , and a dumb-$# , too, but I guess she's fine," observed Tony nonchalantly as he brisked past. I gave him a narrow-eyed glare, but I knew he didn't mean it, so I didn't really mind; public school does that kind of desensitizing to you. "But a word of warning, kid-if you turn out to be a klutz, you're out. Klutzes cause problems. Big ones. Capiche?"
"Capiche," I replied lazily, rolling my eyes. Being a teenager, you can't say that I don't have attitude. I just don't express it at every possible waking moment like some people do. "So. ...what do I do?"
"Tell us what you know, basically," called Tony from across the room, shattering the vial in a sink along the wall and sending its remains down the garbage disposal with enough water to drown a whale. "about anything S.H.I.E.L.D. knows nothing about. That's what 'consultant' means. 'Supernatural' means 'previously supposed to be fictitious,' and you can guess what that means."
"Werewolves, vampires, the whole shebang?" I inquired, cocking an eyebrow as if the 'whole shebang' were about as long and complex as the entire storyline of Doctor Who. Tony sighed and glared into his eyebrows, obviously a nonbeliever. Bruce was a little more open-minded, shrugging mildly.
"If it exists, we want to hear about it," he clarified neutrally. I scowled a little, as if that really didn't help. Which was true, in a sense-what will they believe, and what will they eventually discover to be false? In other words, what's pushing it, and what isn't?
"It's still a lot," I lamented, frowning at the tabletop. I read somewhere that you can actually discover a liar if they go to pains to make eye contact, so I just figured that to lie well you have to underact. "and judging by the look on Tony's face, there's no way in Helheim you're going to believe me. But I'll do what I can; you can take a horse to water, but you can't make 'im drink."
"Makes sense," mused Tony to himself. Obviously he wasn't happy with this particular batch of sense, but Bruce was indifferent, pulling up a fancy holo-touch-screen that made my hand-me-down Macbook look like a twig and a rock held together with a daisy chain.
"If you speak into here, it'll record your voice," he informed, pulling up what looked like a text document and a blinking type-bar-thing. I still don't know what that thing at the end of your words is called. "We'll also get a translation typed down as you talk, as a precaution. If a virus that attacks text files eats the translation, we still have the audio, and vice versa."
"Although any hacker worth his gigs will have a virus that attacks both, if at all," muttered Tony to himself.
"Shut up, Tony," commanded Bruce. Despite his undeniable genius-millionaire-playboy-philanthropist swag, I found myself liking Tony less and less. If you need a comparison of how bad it was, I was mentally filing him into the same category as a middle-school male.
"So, how does this-wow, that's cool!" I interjected with a grin, watching my words made manifest on the screen as the audio receptor spiked like a cardiograph. "Take that, Siri! Has Bill Gates seen this? I think he'd have a fit. Well, no, if anyone, Steve Jobs. But he's kinda dead, so-"
"Just talk, already," snapped Tony irritably. I snorted a little, pouting.
"Fine," I grumbled. I took a deep breath, managed to prevent myself from having a breakdown, and spoke. Word of warning-this next bit is basically 50% of the chapter and 100% dialogue.
"Okay," I began deliberately, squinting slightly as if struggling to recall. "For starters, I can tell you lots about werewolves. I am one. Number One: they are nothing like the nonsense from Twilight. They only shift on a full moon, and unless you've seen them go wolf, there's no way of telling if someone's a werewolf that I know of. Half of the old Dark Ages nonsense you hear is superstitious hogwash. From what I know, they originated in Europe and maybe even spread a little into Russia, and from there they went to the new world with everyone else and started biting more people. And yes, that's the only way to become a werewolf-getting bitten and living. Not killing a wolf and wearing its skin, not jumping over a tree and chanting latin gibberish, not signing a pact with a wolf-god or the devil. Again, lots of hogwash."
"If werewolves exist, why don't we know about it?" asked Bruce with a tinge of skepticism. I couldn't blame him, though-any scientist worth his salt would have to get a decent explanation before supporting a theory. After all, who would simply accept String Theory for the heck of it? Not a true scientist. They don't run on faith.
"There's a lot of reasons," I explained with a tinge of sadness, shrugging offhandedly. "After the industrial revolution, people started getting smarter about how to defend themselves-or even go a little further, if you catch my drift. It got harder and harder for werewolves to spread their numbers, and at the same time weapons with the capacity to kill werewolves became more common to the public. The ones that did survive were the ones that could really rip the hide off of you, so when those ones attacked people, there weren't as many survivors to carry on the werewolf virus...thing. I have no clue if it's actually a virus or what. By the time I was bitten, werewolves were almost extinct. I could be one of the last by now."
"Well, when were you bitten?" pressed Bruce. I picked a date off the top of my head, one that wouldn't make me look super old but not as young as I looked, either.
"1996," I replied. "October or September, I think, one of the two. It was so long ago, I can't remember very well. I know, I know, I look super young and I act the part too, but I'm not. I can't be. I was pretty young when I was bitten-only about six or something. My parents did what they could to conceal the truth, keeping me inside on full moons, etc., but I found out five years later when I almost went wolf at a summer camp."
"But that doesn't make any sense," pointed out Tony, jabbing an accusatory finger at me. "Why did you age normally until then, but supposedly you've looked like this for a decade? That doesn't add up."
"It wasn't becoming a werewolf that affected my aging process," I corrected, my tone degenerating into a sciencey drawl. "It does for some people, depending on what strain of wolf they are or even how their genetic makeup reacts with the transformative process. To this day I don't know why I appeared to freeze in time for ten years. I seem to remember okay...until I get into details."
I tensed up a little, because I was running out of material and I had to come up with more fast or it would be obvious that I was lying. But in hindsight, it could also be interpreted as fear for my own false situation. If that was the case, I could very well have bought myself some time, but I also could have warranted a more thorough search into my past that could uncover the truth. Oh, well-on with the show.
"What about this transformative process you've told us about?" inquired Tony, appearing to believe me...for now. Good. I kept talking, proceeding to tell them all I 'knew' about werewolves. But eventually it degenerated into small talk and playful chatter, and we were swapping stories like old friends. I felt integrated, like I had known these guys all my life and they were my closest friends. But at the same time, I remembered the friends I'd had before I knew them, and I felt a lonely pang in my heart. Nobody could really replace them, no matter how awesome. And I really missed them more than I'd realized.
Turns out, I wasn't the only lonely soul on board.