(Pat Doyle: Rikers Island)

I shouldn't have trusted the imprisonment of Doc Ock to standard police. Oh, it was SHIELD that had arrested her, but it seemed that SHEILD wasn't the type to hold such a public criminal themselves. If she had been a monster, or even I hadn't managed to save the few people that were in danger, Ock would've been in a cell so far down that she'd burn.

But that wasn't what had happened, instead a disarmed and seemingly helpless woman was put into holding and then escaped with the help of her advanced technology literally dropping from the sky.

I had been strangely allowed to examine the cell that she had escaped from, but I think that was a thing that SHIELD set up for me. No doubt wanting me to like their organization, and it was working decently well.

They've given me enough rope so far, I just hoped that I wouldn't end up hanging myself with it, especially with how I wasn't able to glean anything at all from the cell, other than the blast marks from her new arms landing being the same as the blast marks I had found on the roof of her apartment not too long ago.

So I should've seen this coming.

It wouldn't do much good to go looking for her by eye or by just searching the area. Ock was smart enough that I doubt anyone could find her all that fast, no I was more likely to catch her by tracking resources needed to rebuild her projects.

It wasn't like she would be using many legal channels anymore but I knew just the right man to get me some feelers out on the black markets. I don't think even criminals would be dumb enough to knowingly help a woman that could end the world with her experiments.

Something that my next article would be sure to mention.

I wasn't super concerned given that SHIELD would be looking for her, and they'd be much better at tracking someone like her.

As I left after my fruitless investigation of the crime scene I tensed up with the sense that I was being watched. I darted my eyes around the area, flashing through the whole invisible spectrum, well about three spectrums but it's cooler to say whole.

But it did let me see that cameras were watching my every move, from street cams to the cams that were littered around the prison, due the small size of the cameras

From what I knew, it could be anyone that was watching me. Ross? He could want revenge, SHIELD? Could want to know more about me before approaching me once more? AIM? HYDRA?

I mean the last two could just be me being paranoid. From what my research told, AIM seemed to be legit and HYDRA dead but I wasn't putting past them to have survived in some new form, a Neo-Hydra. While AIM seeming legit meant shit all given Ross's actual somehow legit military career.

My thoughts on all this were broken when my phone suddenly rang, the tone of [i]banana phone[/i] telling me it was Louise that was calling me.

"Yo," I answered, deciding to continue walking down the street while answering. I didn't really have anything else to do for the day, so it wasn't like I was in a rush… but I was peckish for a snack so I decided to walk and talk. "What can I do for you, Lou."

Said young woman let out a sigh;

"First… don't call me Lou," she replied, her tone more exasperated than mad. An unusual mode for my friend but I suppose that we all undergo those sometimes. "Second, I've got great news!" Louise squealed… before her voice shifted to something less… energetic. "And some oh news!"

I let the air fill with awkward silence before scrunching my nose up.

"Tell me the good news, first," I told her, "I could use some."

"I've gotten a great job offer from Stark Industries!"

"That's amazing!" I said while walking up to a food vendor, a hotdog guy, and buying two dogs with everything on it. One amazing thing about being super-powered, I seem to have lost my aversion to the smell of ketchup and have begun to like most condiments. That combined with the Super Stomach, meant I wasn't too worried about whatever I ate anymore.

"Bad news is… they know that it was me that snuck in, knocked out one of their guards, and stole their data."

I had been holding the phone between my ear and shoulder at this point, a hotdog in each hand while I took a large bite out of one. But at this news, I nearly dropped my phone, it was only my super speed that allowed me to catch the thing, eat a single dog, and go get the phone back to my ear before she would've even noticed I had done so.

"Shit, that's bad."

"Yeah," Louise replied, doing a sort of half sigh, half groan that I had only heard from cartoon characters before now. "But… they're not looking to press charges, Stark will even give me a job... if you agree to meet with Mr. Stark."

The second she said that… I came to a rather obvious conclusion. It was an easy thing to do, given the reputation of the man, in this universe, and in my own. Iron Man was a tech hero, tech was his business like having bullshit powers were Superman's.

"You know he's probably already hacked this call… right?"

Before she could even respond to my statement, a man's voice came out of my phone, overtaking her's.

"Wow, you caught on quickly, Blue."

(Louise: Moments Earliers)

Louise sat waiting in a hallway, dressed in a suit, with pants since she wasn't interested in wearing a skirt or even working in an environment that required her to wear one. It just wasn't an outfit that she was comfortable wearing.

She arrived just moments ago for an interview, the job being offered as a simple assistant role for the offices in this building. This wasn't some great lab for Stark Industries, but instead, it was one of the offices that were set for legal documents, patents, contracts, and the like were created and signed in this building.

That and it also housed the social media teams that Stark tended… to ignore.

Louise was here for an assistant role, for the social media team. It had good pay, good hours, and even a nice forward path for a future career, or at least that was what was Louise told. Whether that was true or not was yet to be seen.

Louise had been waiting here for the past ten minutes, not too long when it comes to the Job Interview process, but it was more than a little bit odd when to put together with how there wasn't anyone else in the queue to be interviewed… sent a bad vibe down her spine.

She heard the sounds of footsteps bouncing off the floor before Louise actually caught sight of someone that she hadn't thought she'd be meeting today. He wore a suit, one of the most expensive-looking suits that she'd ever seen, his hair only slightly messy while his facial hair was neatly trimmed.

This was Tony Stark, and from his strut to his smirk, Louise knew that the rich bastard was up to something.

"Well, well, well," Stark started, his eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. "If it's not the young girl that broke into one of my offices the other day," Louise jolted up from her seat, her heart beating a mile a minute as Stark continued walking past her, waving her to follow him along to the open office.

"You know, if it wasn't for just how meaningless that info was, I'd have you hauled into a cell for a few weeks," he sat down behind a desk, an open balcony behind showcasing a beautiful city skyline, as he said this, his left arm now pointing towards a chair in front his desk. It was then that he took out his phone, its hollow-tech screen far more advanced than anything that Louise had seen in her life before now. "But I gotta admit, I'm impressed at the whole setup, but I've watched the news, so I know that your boyfriend is an odd guy… to say the least."

Stark pressed a section of his phone, a display popping out of the desk and revealing a series of pictures that compared Blueman and Doyle, as well as the scenes of Blonsky attempting to attack him.

"You… know that it's not a secret anymore right?"

Stark looked up, his expression that of raw annoyance.

"I'm not blackmailing him or anything, I could arrest you and have him by the balls," he revealed slowly taking out a contract and sliding across the desk to her. "No, what I am doing is bribing you, you get him to meet with me and I'll give you the job. I think that a quick thinker like yourself could be useful given the situations that I seem to find myself in."

Louise looked down at the contract, her eyes peering over the paper with the sort of fine detail attention that many her age weren't capable of. As far as she could see, there wasn't anything unusual about the contact.

"I have to ask him if he's up to it," she said, when the former Stark Industries CEO nodded, she moved from her chair with her own phone in hand. It didn't take long for her to stand in a corner of the room and start a conversation with her powerful friend.

Her part in this ended when Pat said;

"You know he's probably already hacked this call… right?"

Louise turned around, her eyes now glaring at Stark, who only responded with a wink and another press of his phone's touch screen, causing the call to change over to him.

"Wow, you caught on quickly, Blue," Stark spoke, something that only caused Louise to glare even harder at the man. It was at this moment that two things happened, the first a redhead woman, wearing a suit much like Louise's but far finer, entered the room. The younger woman instantly recognized her as Pepper Potts, the current CEO of Stark Industries.

Stark took one look at the older redhead, his grin became strained as she spotted Louise, giving her the side-eye as she passed by.

"Wait just one second," He exclaimed, turning his attention to Pepper. "Hey, honey… what brings you here?"

"Oh, imagine my surprise when I find out that you're holding a personal interview for a new assistant, not something that you wanted to do a few days ago," Pepper walked around the desk, her heels somehow causing Stark to flinch with every step. "A young redhead assistant at that… do you just have a type, Tony?"

There was nothing but silence.

It was at this moment that Louise couldn't help but an audible gag in the corner. Something that seemed to bring Miss Potts no small amount of enjoyment if her face was anything to go by, while Stark appeared to be sucking a grape from his.

"Well that answers that question," Pepper spoke, her tone sounding just slightly snide as she sat on Stark's desk.

"Pepper, I'm just doing Fury a-"

"You mean the Director of SHIELD, that Fury?" Louise spoke, her head snapping up. While she hadn't met the man, Pat was more than willing to tell her all about his encounter with the mysterious head of one of the most powerful organizations in the world.

SHIELD didn't like to make too many waves, but they had their fingers in so many pies that their reach and power were truly without question.

"I wasn't aware that old cue ball had met with ya, kid?"

Once more, Louise found herself being interrupted but this time it wasn't by a door opening. It was instead the sound of a loud crash, ringing out behind Stark, causing both him and Pepper to spot the very event that Louise could see normally from her vantage point.

Pat stood on shaky feet like he was having trouble regaining his footing after having flown here as fast as he could. Louise wasn't sure how the Irishman had found where she was so quickly but she guessed that he may have called her Pops.

That would be a fun talk once she got home.

Pat flashed them all a grin as he walked forward, entering the office with the same kind of swagger that one would expect from a movie star. There was a casual arrogance to him that came from knowing that he was basically invincible.

"Sorry, I ruined a moment between you two," Her friend spoke, his accent causing Pepper to visibly raise a brow before Louise caught her mouthing [i]oh, that's what's going on[/i] to herself. "But I don't like to be put on hold, you asked to speak to me, Mister Stark?"

Even before Stark stood to full height, Louise could tell that Pat towered over the man by a good five to six inches. This was one of the few times that his height was really showcased since Stark was a small man, even smaller than his CEO.

"That's fine, you worked real well at breaking up a little misunderstanding," Stark grinned, looking Pat up and down like a piece of meat… that he was going to study for science. "And boy do you open up a number of scientific possibilities just knowing that you flew here."

"Aren't you small for an Iron Man?"

(Pat Doyle)

"Really? A New Hope reference?" Stark raised a brow cheekily at me, grinning at me with a smile that was closer to what I would've expected from a hyena from the Lion King than from a person. "With some weak sauce like that, I don't think someone that's two steps away from being part of the Blueman group should be throwing any stones."

I blinked, before looking down, realizing that I was wearing a blue shirt with a pair of blue jeans. Now that he mentions I probably should stop dressing as a Power Ranger, as in color-coded clothes. If nothing else, just for the variety's sake.

"Hey, ain't nobody is making fun of the hotrod red ranger suit you run around in," I shrugged, leaning my back onto a wall behind Lousie, causing her to turn slightly on her chair so she could keep both me and Tony insight.

"Ranger suit?" he held back a snort. "Don't think spandex looks good on me, it makes my ass look fat. You, on the other hand, look like a regular color-coded Blue Power Ranger."

"Why, thank y-"

"What's happening right now?" Louise intruded, her expression the definition of confused, while the other redhead in the room just rolled her eyes. It seemed that Pepper expected this sort of thing. "Wasn't this going to be a serious meeting, why are you two trading insults?"

"This is just how they compare egos."

Miss Potts' rather… suggestive comment was something that I let pass if only so I could actually focus on more important things than that. Like what Stark wanted with me, or what Fury wanted the man to do.

"So… let's leave the smack talk alone for now," I said while hoping that he'd take me up on it. I was not good at trading verbal blows, so trying my hand against Stark wouldn't end with me on top. "What's this favor that you're doing for Fury?"

Now, this brought a smile to Stark's face, he even sat back down and started to lean back on his seat with his feet up on the desk. It was at this moment, that I think I understood what the senators felt like in Iron Man 2.

"Well, see the cyclops is an old softy, I know it surprised me too," he winked, chuckling as he did. "And he felt bad about how you're going to lose your job because of him sending you Ross's way, so-"

"Wait, what?" The duel voice of myself and Louise sprung out, it didn't even take me a second to realize why.

"The article, the first one I wrote," I sighed, rubbing my forehead, I noticed that Stark nodded slowly while Louise's expression was still as confused as before. "It was actually about me, but that's not good optics."

"Especially given the way that you put yourself on a pedestal," Stark added with a smug grin. "Nice job there, I'd done the same in your shoes."

Oh, that hit me right in the throat, I hadn't even been thinking about that when I wrote the damn , writing about yourself, as I had done, with admitting that I was even a little bit involved. That was a violation of journalistic ethics. When this got out, it wouldn't look good on me,

Oh, sure no one so far could prove that I was Lugh, but that wouldn't last for long. There was only so long before someone figured out the man that matched every description of Lugh, shared many of the same powers, and even sounded like him… was Lugh.

It was only common sense.

I doubted Ellison would fire me over this, as it wasn't I hadn't done anything illegal just unethical and the guy's way too soft-hearted to fire me for this, given what he'd assume my background was. But I mightn't ever write a story for the paper again, it wouldn't be good optics and I would've proved to be untrustworthy.

I might be made an office assistant, which wouldn't be an awful job… just not to my personal taste. It wouldn't let me get away with keeping my ear on the ground for those juicy threads I was looking for.

"Since how you've broken the whole [i]sacred creed of Journalists[/i] is out now," Stark continued on, with air quotes and all. This finally allowed Louise to grasp what he was talking about. At least I think she did? I didn't really have much time to explain it at the moment. "Fury was feeling bad about the whole thing, and hinted to me that it meant to be a good idea to have my own super-powered investigator on hand to look into things."

"So you invited my friend here, offered her a job, all so you could offer me a job?"

"That's about right, what do you say?"

I mean, it sounded like a good enough job offer, much better than my future prospects with the Bulletin. The biggest issue was working for someone like Tony Stark, a man that was famous, multiversal known at that, for being an ego-driven, alcoholic that's heart was in the right place.

But from what I've read about this version of Stark… he wasn't an alcoholic? So… ya?

"So what do you want?" I asked, shaking me head free of those thoughts.

"What man wouldn't want a super-powered man hanging around them?" Stark's eyes twinkled. "Especially given the trouble I've had recently."

I suppose that it would make sense given the attempts that Russian made on his life, and the Hammer Drones… and the attempts on his life before Vanko. But I still don't trust his word on this, there was something… distruthful about it.

"What's in it for me?" I responded, staring at his arc reactor with the large variety of visionary powers I had my command. At first, I hoped that it would give me an understanding of how it was made since he had made one in a cave using some scraps. While I recognized a lot of the materials it was made from, or I could at least narrow down a few possibilities from some research I had been doing. There was one element that is used to power the reactor, no could I make sense of how the thing was constructed overall.

"Money," Stark responded, loudly breaking me from my thoughts about his Arc Reactor. "Good working hours, traveling to exotic locations."

"It sounds lovely," I drawled, licking my lips as I walked over to Louise, finally taking a seat. "But there's gotta be a lot more in it for me. I'm-"

Stark put up his hands, stopping me from speaking without a verbal command. I could tell both, why this man had been in command of a company like this even with Stain around in the same management circles, and why this man could walk into a senate hearing and out without giving them a single thing.

Within a single second Stark waved his right arm in the air, turning around a gaudy holographic display, showcasing… my own PC's desktop.

"You've hacked my desktop," I stated, before deciding to place a single finger on the desk before me. I pushed down, the part that was under my finger crumbled into dust within a moment. Something that Stark didn't take any heed of, though Potts stood up in fright. "So… what? You want a medal?"

I wasn't even going to ask how he managed to do this to a computer that I had never connected to the internet for this very reason. I could only presume that he had gotten someone to plug in the ethernet cable so he could do this.

"So, you think that you can find weird stuff while working in just New York?" He quirked an eyebrow. "Now, I'm not going to ask what you're looking for, I couldn't even tell from what files were on the computer alone, but I will say, you're better off with the web I can cast… then the one the Bulletin could."

That statement gave something away to me, something put a grin on my face.

"You're not sure what I did will be a problem are you?" I snorted. "You're just preempting the chance that I could so you can have an easy sell."

That seemed to catch the two redheads off guard, even if Stark only smiled in response. I could tell that I had surprised him as well, something that brought me some small pleasure. He'd been the one dictating things since I got here.

But now, I could tell that there was more than just an altruistic desire coming from him. Stark wanted something from me, something more than having me in his employ. Working for him would give me plenty of things, but it could also put me under his control.

But I wonder how much his ego can take?

"How about this," I said, leaning forward with what one may call a smug smile. "If you can find Octavius, I'll be your personal investigator… but if I find her first, you make me a suit."

Stark's stare became laser while Potts and Louise seemed to briefly gasp before regaining their composure rapidly. I waited for a few moments, letting Stark have time to think the offer over.

"My mind versus your powers," The man hummed, stroking his chin. "That could work, that could work," he repeated, tapping away at his gross holographic keyboard. "Well, be prepared to lose Blue Boy. Because fantastic powers may be your Homefield, but brains are mine."

"Oh," I grinned standing up from my chair. "Don't think that it's just my powers you have to worry about," I started to walk back towards the balcony, preparing to launch myself into the air and resume my search for the nefarious scientist… when Louise once more spoke up;

"I'm still getting the job… right?"

I turned around to see Potts giving Stark a glare when the former CEO shrugged, causing her to break out into a sigh. It was only after giving her notepad a once over that the current CEO of Stark Industries spoke;

"Come with me, I'll find you a place to work."

(Jim O'Reilly)

Jim jumped up out of his bed, the alarm blaring into his ears. Today was the last day off since he had taken on that entire crew in the pub and slaughtered them. The award was much more than he had ever dreamed off, but then again. Why wouldn't it be, he had just crippled the Kitchen Irish in a way that they wouldn't be able to recover form for years.

And given his straight-laced reputation with them, they'd never look for him as the hitman, even if someone recalled him entering the pub.

But the money alone didn't seem to give him any relief.

Whenever he closed his eyes for longer than a second he could see the dull dead faces of his old mates, O'Leary's face, gasping for a final breath, his face burning off as the fires of cremation came over his body. But Jim pushed the visions back, because he was here for something more now, something beyond mere bonds of brotherhood that he had once developed with the crooks of his past.

He was working for the future of this city.

"Honey!" his wife yelled out, her voice cutting through his bleak thoughts, saving him from being swallowed whole by the guilt that had been spreading through his soul these past few days. "Mr. Wesley is on the phone for you!"

There wasn't a second wasted, Jim launched himself from his bed, practically leaping down some of his stairs. It wasn't without notice by his wife, who couldn't help but roll her eyes as he hurried to place the phone at his ear.

"Yes, sir?"

"Ah good," Wesley proclaimed. "I hope I'm not catching you at a bad time. I would hate to reward your dedication by annoying you while you enjoyed some well-rewarded family time."

"No, sir," O'Reilly couldn't help but shake his head, even as he understood that the other man wouldn't have been able to tell that he had done so. "I was just having a lazy day to myself."

"Good, good, I'll get right into it. We need you in today, we've discovered a few issues that need addressing."

"What sort of issues?"

"That kid of yours, we've noticed that she's been hanging out with the super-powered lawyer."

He didn't speak for a moment, not able to find his breath in the haze of adrenaline that rushed through his body at that very moment.

"... I'll come in right away, sir."

Jim could tell that it was going to be a long day ahead of him.

(Tony Stark-Sometime later)

He didn't take any heed of Pepper as she strutted back into the office, instead, his focus was deadlocked onto the computer screen he had ahead of him. While earlier he had been using a holographic keyboard as the control, Tony had replaced it moments ago with the real thing, needing the sense of tactility such an item granted him to really get going.

"Tony, are you still at this?"

Pepper was slightly confused when she had left him in this room a few hours ago the man had been confident that he would find the rogue Doctor within minutes. But here he was, hours later and still not any closer to finding his former employee.

"Well, I'm not wrong to be wrong about things, but in this case. Octavius really has covered her tracks."

Pepper walked around the desk, coming over so she was standing behind Tony with her head coming in close to his ear. While there was plenty of information on a screen that she couldn't make heads or tails of, such as the schematics of a prototype of the Doctor's famous tentacles, among other things, the maps of the city with lines drawn over them were much more in her wheelhouse.

But the lines appeared to end in the middle of nowhere, on random rooftops with large scribbles drawn over them.

"She's blacked out all available security cameras in a four-block radius, something that will cause more than a few problems for the people living there, but the main thing is I've been forced to use satellites to track the marks that her tentacles leave on the ground. Something that ends in several different locations."

"And that's all you could find? No bank details? No warehouses under an alias?"

Tony nodded, closing his eyes and leaning back into his chair with a heavy sigh.

"Are you really going to make him a suit?" Pepper couldn't help but bring up the topic now that they were alone once more. It brought the former CEO back to the real world and he gave her a grin that contained the usual sort of confidence swagger that the man was known for.

"It doesn't matter, I get what I want either way,"

Pepper didn't even have to ask her boyfriend to clarify there as he stood up and reached over to a nearby cabinet, taking two glasses and pouring out a drink before he gave her a wink.

"See, Fury asked me to do an assessment on the guy, he's already got the whole psych/how well does in the group evaluation that I went under," Tony explained in-between sips, licking his lips and taking in breaths. "He wants me to figure what his limits are, without directly asking… because… "

"Because... ?"

Tony shrugged and gave an airy chuckle.

"He didn't say, but Fury helped me and I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt… just this once."

With that said, Stark went back to walk, pulling up another holographic display while Pepper's eyes went over to the clocks on the wall, wondering how long it would take Tony before he was too tired to go on. After ten minutes, she reached into a desk drawer, pulling out a laptop and walking over to a lounge couch over in the corner of the room.

If he was going to spend the whole day and night working, she might as well do the same.

(Pat Doyle)

Louise was talking about the oddness of her father's working hours while we were having lunch. I was still off official working hours, given the sheer scope of my last story it was decided that I deserved it, but Ellison wanted me to come in after lunch.

I chewed on a sandwich, the ham, and cheese as familiar as it was tasty. It turned out that flight opened up a whole new avenue for produce that I hadn't access to before. So a quick flight to Ireland and I was able to get myself some real Irish cheese and ham.

The ham didn't taste any different, but the cheddar was my favorite brand.

"I mean, he's off odd hours in the night, there's never a real schedule," she continued to explain what was bothering her today. "And not to mention the super suspicious talks he has with his boss. It's so obviously coded but I can't tell if it's just he doesn't want mom to worry or if he's actually doing illegal shit."

"Security can be dangerous," I half-heartedly agreed. "So I can see why you'd think that could be it."

There wasn't a lot I could say to my friend, I didn't know her father well enough to comment, nor did I think it was my place to throw out some theories about what he could be doing. I had only known them for the last few months. It wouldn't be right of me to just assume things passed what Jim had been doing.

Not after he left the criminal life behind.

Louise simply sighed, lowering her head into her hands while picking at her salad every once in a while. It seemed the situation had gotten down in the dumps, but perhaps she only needed her mind taken off things.

"How did the job go after I left?"

I didn't even bother to look at her at this second and I could tell that Louise was rolling her eyes.

"I'm making coffee and crafting office notes," her moan made me laugh. "It's just sooooo boring. I thought that working for a tech company would involve more… like tech?"

This time my laugh was loud and booming, her expression told me that this would be a mistake but I was invincible, not much she could do without taking it too far.

"Well, it is an office job, if you wanted to work with the tech you were better off applying for that."

"Thanks mom," Louise said sarcastically. "What about you, had any luck finding the roofie-loving doctor?"

"If I had you'd be the first to know," I said, mumbling through a few more bites of my sandwich, it turns out that even just flying above the city and x-raying the fuck out of it, hopefully, that wasn't literal, didn't let me find the madwoman all that quickly. "I think she's left the city, I'll need to start researching areas that would suit her needs."

"The needs of a woman that can make a portal between universes out of household goods?"

I stopped chewing, swallowed before I decided to give her that point.

"Good point, I'll just need to fly faster, cover more ground and all that."

"Have you figured out how to get around being hacked?" She asked me suddenly, briefly catching me off guard before a grin stretched over my face.

"Yup, just took out the wireless card from my laptop and I'll work from there."

Louise didn't seem to like that solution, but she didn't make it verbally known. Instead, she relied on giving a stare that few could give to a man that could tank bunker shells. Eventually, her stare was broken by a loud buzzer coming from her handbag.

"I'll see ya later, I've got to head back into work now."

With her gone, I made my own way towards the Bulletin.

It was as I walked into the Bulletin office with an odd sense of weight to my footsteps, I could feel the stares of my co-workers as I made my way further in. While there were some proud smiles before, now they were a mix of suspicion… and terror.

It wasn't something that I liked.

Still, I simply ignored it for now, since any action I could've done right now might've only led to worse things. It wasn't long before I stepped into Ellison's office, my hand in my pocket while a laptop sat in a bag by my side.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" I asked. I was actually pretty tired, having spent the last day and a half searching the city for signs of Ock. It was the first time that I'd actually become tired since I got to this world, it was oddly nice, if not inconvenient at the moment.

"Yes, please take a seat," At his prompting, I picked up a chair without thinking about what I was doing. Ellison gave me an unamused stare till I realized what he had been asking of me… and so I put the chair down and sat. "I was wondering if you were cooking up any other news that could get us into trouble?"

I blinked a few times.

"Sorry?" I couldn't help but respond.

"I've just had to fight off a few government agencies asking me where the hell you got your sources, that I needed to give them over to them," Ellison took in a deep breath. "So I was wondering if I should prepare for another angry call."

I scoffed.

"I wouldn't worry about that, I've been spending my spare tracking Doc Ock," I rolled my shoulders and leaned back in the chair. "Also got an offer from Stark for a job, not ready yet to take that up-"

"Wait, Stark's trying to poach you?" Ellison's expression was a mix between a frown and a grin as if he couldn't tell if he wanted to be happy for me, or mad at Stark. "I hope you said… no?"

"Not in so many words," I cringed, kind of feeling bad about the whole thing. It was obvious that Ellison didn't even think to punish me for breaking ethics, which mightn't be a good thing. "I've sorta made a bet with him that I would find Doc Ock before he could."

Ellison gave me a sharp look before slamming his hand down on his desk.

"Then what are you doing? Go get out there and find the woman before she takes out the entire state! Show that millionaire what a real investigative reporter can do!"

With a large grin spreading across my face I stood up, walked over to the fire exit, while the eyes of the office were on me, there was a large window that allowed someone to peer into Ellison's office and flew off into the sky.

(Somewhere near the Canadian Border)

He was sitting down on a park bench, a paper on his lap that had the second page of his dreams. General "Thunderbolt" Ross' true nature had been revealed to the world, which had brought a large smile to his face, and reading about all the details that he had disclosed being aired unfiltered.

That told Bruce that he had made the right decision.

Even if the guy hadn't been entirely truthful about himself.

"Are you reading that again?" Betty's voice brought his head out of the pages and back to the real world. The real world that had General Ross's dreams splattered against the pavement.

"Only one more time, I just want to get that last piece of satisfaction," Bruce explained, much to her semi-amused annoyance. "Then I'll be off again, the life of a fugitive."

Bruce Banner couldn't help the sigh that escaped his lips, his eyes dropping to the ground. While Ross seemed to be getting what he deserved finally, that didn't mean Bruce could afford to stick around in one place, even though the cure appeared to have worked, there were too many people that would be after his mind to recreate the Hulk. So he was going to be running once more.

A soft hand enveloped his own, causing him to look back to Betty, whose soft smile brought a warmth to his heart.

"This time, we're doing this together."

"Together."

Author's Note: Quick second update of the day, for those that didn't notice. Check the last chapter, the interlude.