21. A GREEN TROLL IS A HAPPY TROLL.

Alarms blared and smoke billowed through the now dimly lit area. Harry could hear some pained moaning coming from outside the cell and drunkenly made his way towards it.

The two guards outside the door lay on the floor. One, obviously dead, his head crushed by heavy debris, while the other was conscious but heavily injured, blood seeping from his damaged uniform.

"Hey! You'll be ok. We'll get you out of this," Harry whispered encouragingly as he knelt down next to the man, vanishing part of his uniform.

"No … you have to stop the attack."

Harry ignored the man's feeble protests.

"This'll only take a second, Mr. Thomas. I just want to stop you from bleeding out. Now be quiet; healing's not my strong suit, and I need to focus."

Harry waved his wand over the man's wounds, causing them to slowly close.

"I spent seven years sharing a dorm in school with a Thomas. Dean Thomas was a solid enough bloke, good at art but a bit of a slob, or maybe it was just that Neville and I were more conscious of the mess the other three made."

Harry rambled on, trying to distract the guard from the pain since he had no pain relief potions on hand.

"And we're done. At least as much as I can do. I wouldn't move about; not sure how much internal damage you have."

"Right! Now get going. Fury's going to need his big guns," the man ordered.

"First, what happened, and what's going on? I can't go out there blind."

"There was a call about a dozen bogies coming in fast towards our position; we went into full alert when the Helicarrier shook from several explosions."

Harry turned around, just now remembering why he was there, to find Barton gone from his cell, a small hole in the wall apparently his means of escape.

"Let Fury know Barton is loose, but I was able to get some information. I'm going to track him down before he does more damage to the ship."

Not waiting for confirmation, Harry rushed to the cell and made his way into the hole.

Crawling deeper through the labyrinthine ventilation or maintenance shafts, Harry considered transforming into his raven form to alleviate the claustrophobia setting in when he finally emerged into some sort of engineering area.

Harry was interrupted in his search for signs of Barton by an inhuman roar, the rapidly approaching sound of crashing glass, protesting metal, and heavy repetitive thumping.

Turning to the fast-approaching sound, Harry saw a wild-eyed Agent Romanov expertly parkouring through the cluttered area. The reason for her panic was the green, nearly twelve-foot-tall, troll-like mass of muscles running after her, tearing everything in its path like it was all made of cardboard.

Harry turned and began to run with the spy, but his own parkour skills and general physical fitness were not on par with the super spy. Only by using short apparition jumps was he able to keep pace.

"Keep running," Harry ordered the red-headed spy before turning back just in time to see a massive green fist barreling toward his face.

Harry spun to the side and apparated next to Romanov. The creature blinked in confusion where Harry had stood just moments earlier.

Harry could see workers trying to evacuate the area, helping some of their coworkers move from under collapsed pieces of equipment.

"Go find Barton; Loki's troll isn't the first I handle," Harry offered.

"That's not a troll; that's Banner."

The troll or rather Banner, roared in anger, grabbed a large chunk of machinery, and launched it at them.

Harry flicked his wand and transformed the object, mid-flight, into a massive amount of steel marbles.

The marbles hit Harry hard, and when he turned to see if Black Widow was okay, he found she had already left.

"What do you mean, that's Banner!?" Harry cried out in frustration.

Doctor Banner took a few threatening steps but lost his footing on the steel marbles. Not enough for him to fall but to slow his progress.

"FINITE INCANTATEM!"

Harry gathered as much power as he could and cast the general-purpose magic canceling spell, hoping it would revert whatever magic Loki had used on the soft-spoken scientist, but the spell had no visible effect.

Banner returned Harry's shout with a primal roar of his own. The force of the scream forced the wizard to take a step back.

Harry flung a pair of bludgeoning spells at Banner, causing the creature to stumble back a half-step. Before Harry could recover, the green juggernaut charged forward, his right fist punching forward.

Harry barely managed to throw himself to the side.

Banner's fist hit a heavy piece of machinery, ripping it from the floor and sending it careening into the wall five feet away, where it embedded itself.

"LEVICORPUS!"

Harry cast the spell from his prone position, causing Banner to flip up and hang in the air as if caught in an ankle noose trap.

Banner roared in fury while Harry breathed a sigh of relief.

"Never thought I'd be glad for Snape taunting me with those Pensieve memories," Harry whispered as he scrambled to stand from a prone position.

But that relief was short-lived as the trashing green giant suddenly grabbed hold of a large piece of machinery and some support struts and pulled, his massive muscles bunching from the exertion.

The ground shook as the spell holding Banner snapped, and the troll-like scientist's efforts sent him crashing face-first into the ground.

Banner was obviously a melee combatant, while wizards favored distance, but the room was far too cramped for Harry to work with. So Harry twirled his wand and, with a push of power, cast the space expansion charm around himself.

The charm had never been designed for such a hasty and casual use, and Harry could feel the very fabric of reality protest the alteration. With a groan of protesting metal and several pieces of equipment experiencing a sudden catastrophic failure, the area warped and rippled before tripling in size, giving Harry a bit more breathing room and moving his green opponent further away by several precious feet.

Banner raised himself from the ground, glancing around the expanded room. Confusion briefly replaced the rage that had been there moments earlier.

"Dr. Banner, not sure if you can understand me..." Harry began, hoping to talk the now slightly less violent man down. But at the mention of his name, Banner's rage seemed to rekindle, and his roar reverberated deafeningly around the expanded room.

Harry shot a stunner, but it simply splashed harmlessly off Banner's hide. The scientist leapt the distance between them, landing a punch that barely missed Harry and left a massive dent in the metal floor.

Reacting quickly, Harry apparated away and transfigured a pipe into a large, hollow, animated metal serpent, directing it towards the enraged man. However, Banner simply grabbed the snake and ripped it in half effortlessly.

Before Banner could throw the two pieces away, Harry transfigured them into manacles and connected them with thick chains to the floor. This delayed Banner for a few precious moments, and Harry continued with this tactic.

Chains sprang up from several points about the room, latching onto Banner and anchoring themselves to the walls, floor, and ceiling. The tactic seemed to work as Banner struggled under the constraints of a dozen massive steel chains.

Taking a moment to regroup, Harry noticed that the expanded room was empty except for a group of men trying to lift a heavy beam off one of their coworkers. Harry cast a weightlessness charm on the beam and turned his attention back to Banner just in time to see him rip the chains in his arms from the wall, taking large sections of the wall with them.

Harry flung standard spells at Banner. The man shrugged off the stunning spell, and the ropes from the incarcerous spell were weaker than the chains Harry had transfigured. The petrification spell had some effect but lasted only a few seconds.

Banner, even angrier, grabbed several of the chains and began whipping them about, using them as a weapon.

Harry transfigured the mass of chains into a solid metal snake, directing it to coil itself around Banner and constrict. While Banner struggled with the snake, hitting and denting it with his one free massive hand, Harry worked on the floor, causing it to flow up Banner's body, encasing his lower body in a metal skin.

Hope began to well up in Harry as he appeared to gain the upper hand against his hulking opponent when he suddenly felt a sensation like an elastic snapping.

With all the damage done to the room by Banner and Harry's own warping of the floor, the already straining space expansion enchantment had finally snapped.

Banner apparently felt that something had gone horribly wrong as he stopped his struggles and looked about curiously.

The walls and floor began to warp randomly, and shelving and support beams twisted into impossible shapes as Harry's corrupted spell fought to hold back the universe trying to right itself.

The conflicting forces resulted in a warped and distorted space, with jagged spears of metal forming out of the environment.

Banner bunched his legs and leapt upwards, his arms shielding his head as he ripped through the warping ceiling.

Harry followed through the doctor with an Ascendare spell, avoiding the jagged metal spearing through the deformed room as it haphazardly recovered its dimensions, into a warehouse-type area.

Banner was grunting and slamming his fists against the metal floor in a primal rage, reminding Harry of a gorilla he had seen in a nature show on Privet Drive. Harry took advantage of the distraction and transformed a large shipping container into a vaguely humanoid metal statue and then animated it, sending it charging at his opponent.

The metal construct slammed heavily into Banner, knocking him back a step before being beaten into a malformed lump as Banner vented his rage against the poorly animated golem-like creature.

"Right, I obviously can't outfight you, and you'll rip this ship apart if I let you loose. Let's try something mental."

Harry flicked his wand and cast an overpowered cheering charm, hoping a happy or euphoric troll would be easier to deal with than an enraged one.

The spell took effect as Harry's animation spell buckled under Banner's unrelenting blows.

Banner looked about as if confused for a moment, a large grin slowly forming on his face, quickly replaced by a deep, primal laugh.

Banner fell back on his back and began laughing uproariously.

Harry watched in amazement as slowly, Banner reverted from a massive green muscle-bound troll and back to a skinny scientist.

"What?" Harry whispered in disbelief.

"What... hahahaha … the hell… was that?" The man asked between fits of laughter.

"WHAT?"

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