Chapter 16: Super Secret Boy Band!

May 2nd,2012:

Coulson and I drive to Stark Tower to meet with Tony Stark. Once we reach the Tower, we see it suddenly light up like a Christmas tree.

"That's cool. I've got to get me one of those." I say, seeing Stark land on the top of the Tower in his Iron Man suit. Coulson just smiles and takes out his phone. It's a really advanced phone, probably something they designed for themselves. He calls Tony Stark, which obviously Stark ignores, repeatedly.

"God, he's going to give me a headache." He calls again and uses some sort of feature on his cell phone that I couldn't see to hack into Stark's Network. He goes to the Elevator, which opens up for us and enter it. Stark's engineering is out of this world and Coulson's still hacking it, using his cellphone. Damn! Coulson turns on the elevator and we start to go up.

Soon I see Stark's face on Coulson's phone. Phil says, "Stark, we need to talk."

Tony smirks at us and says, "You've reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark, please leave a message."

I snort at him which Phil completely ignores and says, "This is urgent."

"Then leave it urgently." Stark says and shuts the phone off. That moment the elevator door opens up on Stark's penthouse suite. I smirk and wave at Tony and Pepper while Coulson keeps his creepy smile on his face.

"Security breach!" Tony yells out, then turns to Pepper and says, "That's on you."

Coulson moves forward and addresses Stark, "Mr Stark."

Pepper looks at Coulson and smiles widely, and says, "Phil! Come in! I'm sorry, I don't recognise you?"

Tony mumbles out, "Phil? Uh, his first name is Agent."

I offer my hand to Pepper and completely ignore Tony and say, "I'm Harry Osborn, Ms Potts. I'm here in an advisory role to Mr Coulson."

Pepper shakes my hand, smiles at me and welcomes me in, "Well come on in. We're celebrating."

Tony interrupts her saying, "Which is why he can't stay."

Phil turns to Tony and gives him a file, which contains a tablet with all the info and says, "We need you to look this over. As soon as possible."

Tony looks at the file like its cancer and mumbles out, "I don't like.. being handed things."

Pepper smiles at Tony's normal behaviour and interjects, "That's alright. Because I love to be handed things. So let's trade."

Pepper gives me and Coulson a glass of Champagne each and takes the file from Coulson to give to Tony, and takes Tony's Champagne glass and drinks from it. Tony takes the file from Pepper, at which I raise an eyebrow.

"Thank you." Pepper says to Coulson.

"Official consulting hours are between eight and five every other Thursday." Stark says, but still starts opening the file.

Coulson speaks up, "This isn't a consultation."

Pepper looks up from her musing and says, "Is this about the Avengers? Which.. I know nothing about."

I smirk at her and shake my head at that awful slip.

Tony says without even looking up, "The Avengers initiative was scrapped, I thought. And I didn't even qualify."

Pepper looks at Tony, "I didn't know that either."

"Yeah, apparently I'm volatile, self obsessed and don't play well with others." Tony speaks up.

"That I did know." Pepper smiles softly at Tony while saying this. I snort at him. Ignoring his small glare, I continue drinking my champagne, slowly. I don't like this either. Maybe alcohol is just not it for me?

Phil's voice interrupts my musing about alcohol, "This isn't about personality profiles anymore."

Stark connects the tablet to his system and calls over Pepper, "Ms Potts, got a minute?"

Pepper walks over to Tony and speaks softly to him for a few seconds, after which Tony expands his hands and all the files appear in a hologram around the two of them. It shows files on Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Spider-Man and Black-Spider. Huh. They got my fight with Abomination, as well as Destroyer. It also shows the Tesseract.

Pepper and Tony have a whispered conversation, after which Pepper says something in Tony's ears, Tony gasps, I smirk and Phil looks away in embarrassment, or maybe pretends to be embarrassed. He's a spy.

Pepper then escorts us out, after which we take the car to the Quinjet. There I see another agent talking with someone tall. Oh. My. God! That's Captain America! He's taller than the movies showed us. About 6'2". He's wearing a jacket and a simple shirt and trousers. He's probably not used to modern clothing yet.

I look at Coulson, and he's bouncing on his feet. I smirk and say, "So, Phil's got a crush."

Coulson glares at me, "I do not have a crush! He's just my idol." He hisses and then mumbles out.

"Meh.. Crush." I smirk and sprint ahead to meet with the captain.

"Mr Rogers. Nice to meet you." I say when he turns to look at me and offer him my hand.

Steve accepts my hand and shakes it, he looks confused, probably because I wasn't in the files, or at least my face wasn't.

"I'm sorry, but I don't recognise you." He looks sorry, so I smile softly at him.

"No worries, Captain. I haven't introduced myself yet. I'm Harry Osborn. I'm here on a consulting role." Steve looks at me in disbelief, so I continue, "I'm studying for my Masters in Computer Engineering and have already worked with SHIELD before, so they called me in. Never know what might be needed." I shrug at him, non-verbally saying, 'What can you do?' .

"Nice to meet you Mr Osborn." Steve says and smiles at me.

I smile back at him and say, "Please, call me Harry. You've met Agent Coulson?" I introduce him and watch the entertainment that is Coulson stammering.

Steve says, "You can call me Steve then." And turns to Coulson to say hello.

We enter the jet and I think over. These few days will be tough. I'll have to be careful not to directly confront Loki. If I go to his side, I don't know what'll happen. Loki could destroy the Universe with my knowledge.

I don't pay attention to Steve reading up the files about all other heroes. I'll have to bring in some other people too. Jessica and Matt are fixed. Luke might listen to me but I'll have to convince him. I'll have to save Frank Castle's family to convince him to join me. But he's not someone who'll listen to orders after the fiasco that'll happen in his career. I know that his superior gave conflicting orders and caused a fallout, but I don't know what or when. I just know a name, Billy Russo.

I get cut off from my musing by the Pilot's voice saying, "We're about 40 minutes out from the base, sir."

Coulson gets up from his seat and approaches Steve, before he can say anything, Steve speaks up, "So this Banner was trying to replicate the serum that was used on me?"

I speak up, once again interrupting Coulson and say, "A lot of people were. You were our world's first superhero. My father was one of them, he nearly succeeded too." I grimace at the memory and let Coulson continue.

"Banner thought Gamma radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine's original formula." The hulk in the tablet takes that moment to tear a jeep in half and roars out loud.

Steve grimaces seeing that and says, "Didn't really go his way, did it?"

Coulson says, "Not so much. But when he's not that thing though, he's like a Stephen Hawking." Trying to impress Steve. Steve looks confused so he continues, "He's like a smart person. I gotta say, it's an honour to officially meet you."

Steve smiles at Coulson, so Phil continues, "I sort of met you. I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping."

I snort at that, and mumble out, "Not creepy at all, Phil." Steve looks down in embarrassment and closes the file. He gets up and Phil follows him and stands by his side, while Steve looks out the window.

Phil says, "I mean, I was... I was present while you were unconscious from the ice. You know, it's really, it's just a... just a huge honour to have you on board."

Steve whispers, "Well, I hope I'm the man for the job."

Coulson looks horrified, and almost shoutd, "Oh, you are. Absolutely. Uh... we've made some modifications to the uniform. I had a little design input."

Steve looks at Coulson confused, and says, "The uniform? Aren't the stars and stripes a little... old fashioned?"

Phil looks serious again and says, "With everything that's happening, the things that are about to come to light, people might just need a little old fashioned." Steve takes in Coulson's sentiment and then turns to me.

"You said your father almost succeeded in replicating the serum that made me? How'd it go?" he asks.

I close my eyes and remove his dead body from in front of my eyes and open them again. I look a little serious and say, "He made a serum. Took it himself, got crazy and killed a bunch of people. Spider-Man and the Black-Spider killed him though. So don't worry about that."

Steve looks horrified now, he babbles out while scrunching his eyes at me in what I assume to be pity, "I'm really sorry. I didn't know."

I wave off his apology and get up to stand next to him, "No worries. He was not a good father. And I don't hate Spider-Man for his death. I'm thankful that someone did it before he could kill more people." I glance at Coulson indirectly telling him not to tell Steve I'm Black-Spider yet.

Steve nods but doesn't say anything. Soon we reach the Helicarrier. The Quinjet lands down the massive battleship known as the Helicarrier. It has two runways. One with direct access to a hangar at the rear is aligned along the spine of the vessel. Me, Agent Coulson and Steve walk down the ramp, meeting up with Natasha Romanoff.

Phil greets her and introduces us, he says, "Agent Romanoff. Harry Osborn. Captain Rogers."

Steve greets her, saying "Ma'am?" while I just nod at her.

Natasha glances at me and Steve once, says, "Hi." And turns to Coulson, she says, "They need you on the bridge. Face time."

Phil turns to Steve, says, "See you there." And then walks away leaving us with Natasha, walking towards the railing of the ship.

Natasha speaks up after a while of silence, "There was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice. I thought Coulson was gonna swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?"

Steve gets horrified as well as amused and asks, "Trading cards?"

Natasha nods, "They're vintage, he's very proud."

Without realizing we get near where Banner is, Banner doesn't notice us walking towards him, as he is nervous as hell. He moves around as people keep walking in his way.

Steve calls out, "Dr. Banner," walks up to Banner and shakes his hands.

Banner looks startled but answers, "Oh, yeah. Hi. They told me you'd be coming."

I greet him, "Dr Banner. I'm Harry Osborn. Huge fan of your work. Most of it goes over my head, but what I understand, I love."

Banner shakes my hand and says, "Hello." He looks confused by my age and my presence here.

Steve speaks up, before Bruce can say anything, "Word is you can find the cube."

Banner looks amused at Steve and asks, "Is that the only word on me?"

Steve doesn't miss a beat and speaks up clearly, "Only word I care about."

Bruce nods and takes in the sentiment. After a few seconds he speaks up, "Must be strange for you, all of this."

Steve looks around, smiles softly and says, "Well, this is actually kind of familiar."

Natasha interrupts our conversation and says, "Gentlemen, you may wanna step inside in a minute. It's gonna get a little hard to breath." Suddenly the Helicarrier starts shaking as it prepares to fly.

Steve asks, "Is this is a submarine?" I snort but follow them closer to the railing.

Banner is amused too, but for a different reason, he asks, "Really? They wanted me in a submerged pressurized metal container?" They both move closer to the edge of the helicarrier where four huge fans mounted on the sides starts to lift into the air bringing the Helicarrier in flight. Steve watches in awe as Banner smiles.

He shouts, so we could all hear, "OH, NO. THIS IS MUCH WORSE."

We soon follow Natasha to the bridge of the doors part and we enter the bridge of the ship. A flurry of activity as dozens of agents sit in front of their viewscreens. Agent Hill shouts her instructions and turns to Nick Fury, who is at the command chair.

She says, "We're at level, sir."

Nick nods at her and says, "Good. Let's vanish."

Me, Steve and Banner walk through the glorious, gleaming bridge, Banner and I taking a position at the science console.

Fury turns to us and greets us, "Gentlemen." Steve gives Fury 10 bucks, referring to some earlier bet. Fury walks over Banner and extends his hand. Banner, reluctantly shakes it.

Fury says, "Doctor, thank you for coming."

Banner, still a bit shaky, asks, "Thanks for asking nicely. So, uh... how long am I staying?"

Fury says, "Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the clear."

Banner goes into work mode and asks, "Where are you with that?" Fury turns to Agent Coulson to explain, while Natasha eyes an image of Clint Barton on a computer screen.

Coulson explains, "We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cellphones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us."

Natasha mumbles out with some emotions in her voice, "That's still not gonna find them in time."

I shake my head and say, "You have to narrow the field. Just looking at video will not find it. How many spectrometers do you have access to?" Banner looks at me a bit surprised but nods dumbly.

Fury interjects, asking, "How many are there?"

I interrupt, and say, "I could get upto 25 spectrometers in total too. So add that. I'll meanwhile make the call." I message Bernard asking him to bring up all the spectrometers in all our labs. Just like last time, except on a global scale.

Banner speaks up, as they say, it's his show, "Call every lab you know, tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm based on cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places. Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

Fury turns to Natasha and says, "Agent Romanoff, would you show to his laboratory, please." Natasha nods and walks off, leading Banner down the hall.

The last voice we hear is, "You're gonna love it, Doc. We got all the toys." Before she goes out of earshot.

I nod at Fury in greeting and ask, "Hey, where's Spider-Man? Wasn't he going to come here?"

Fury raises his eyebrow at me and says, "Spiderman had some work. So he said he'll meet us later. I kept an Agent with him so he can get here whenever."

I snort and nod at that, and start studying up on Gamma radiation. There were a lot of things in the package given to us. There were also Selvig's notes on file, so I had some help. Selvig being a professor had a habit of dumbing down his work so Students could understand better, which helps me a lot.

As we are waiting to locate Loki using satellite facial recognition, Coulson and Steve stand side by side, talking, while me and Fury watch the free show in amusement.

Coulson says, "I mean, if it's not too much trouble."

Steve looks uncomfortable, but still nods, "No, no. It's fine."

Phil says in an excided voice, "It's a vintage set. It took me a couple of years to collect them all. Near mint, slight foxing around the edges, but..."

Agent Sitwell takes that moment to interrupt their talk, shouting, "We got a hit. 67% match. Wait, cross match, 79%"

We all grow alert, Coulson asks Sitwell, "Location?"

Sitwell looks confused but answers, "Stuttgart, Germany. 28, Konigstrasse. He's not exactly hiding."

Fury turns to Steve and says, "Captain, you're up." Steve nods and leaves the room. Fury then turns to me and says, "Osborn, go with him. You'll be the backup. Interfere only if necessary." I nod at him and go get my stuff. I only bring a med scanner and a 2 vials of the Mind control antidote with me, just in case.

Me and Steve enter the Quinjet with Natasha as our pilot. Steve looks at me confused but I just smile mysteriously at him. Peter's still not here, what kind of work is he doing?

We reach Germany in 2 hours, which is a testament to the speed of the Quinjet. Captain America is suited up. He opens up the ramp and jumps down without a parachute.

I look bewildered, and turn to Natasha, who aims the guns of the Quinjet on Loki. Loki and Steve have a conversation after Loki gets up from the blow he suffered, but I don't hear it. Natasha gives me a pair of Comms, turns the loudspeakers on and says, "Loki. Drop down the weapon and stand down."

Loki, of course does not listen. He sends a blue blast of plasma at us from the Sceptre he's holding, which Natasha dodges, just in time. Cap throws his shield at Loki, which hits him and returns to the good captain. They begin to duke it out. Captain is stronger than a human, a lot stronger, but Loki is an Asgardian Jotun, with 1000 years of experience. Loki flings Cap to the ground. Cap then throws his shield at Loki, again, but Loki swats it way. Cap, using all the moves of a soldier, tries, but is knocked down by Loki. Standing over him, Loki points the scepter's tip on his helmet.

Loki orders, "Kneel!"

Cap gets a determined face and gritts out, "Not today!" he flips and knocks Loki back with a kick. Loki grabs Cap and throws him away.

Natasha tries aiming the machine gun at Loki but can't get a clear shot. She says, "This guy's all over the place!"

Suddenly, AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill" overdrives the Quinjet's speakers. Tony stark's voice enters our ears through our Comms and says, "Agent Romanoff. Did you miss me?" I snort at that and just shake my head. Thankfully I didn't have to show my cards yet, but Barton still knows about me, so he probably told Loki about it.

Both Cap and Loki look up at the sky. Tony flies over in his Iron Man suit and blasts Loki right back to the ground using his repulsors. Iron Man touches down in the superhero landing. He stands up and pulls out every piece of weaponry the suit has and points them at Loki.

Tony, in a taunting voice, says, "Make your move, Reindeer Games." Loki puts up his hands and surrenders, though both him and I know it's only temporary. His armour materializes away.

Iron man nods and says, "Good move."

Steve joins Tony near Loki and nods at him, "Mr. Stark."

Tony returns the greeting, "Captain."

Soon the two heroes along with one fake prisoner in handcuffs enter the Quinjet and we take off. The sky was dark with clouds, loud thunder rumbling and lightning flashing in every direction. I stay with Natasha in front of the jet, to avoid meeting Loki. It's not time yet.

I can see Fury's photo on the screen indicating Natasha is talking with him. I don't pay much attention to that talk but look outside. The thunderstorm is getting closer to us.

I hear Steve speak behind me, "I don't like it."

Tony asks him, "What? Rock of Ages giving up so easily?"

Steve ignores that comments but still says, "I don't remember it being ever that easy. This guy packs a wallop."

Tony changes the flow of the conversation by saying, "Still, you are pretty spry, for an older fellow. What's your thing? Pilates?"

Steve gets confused, and asks, "What?"

Tony patiently explains, "It's like calisthenics. You might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle." Steve looks at Tony, finally meeting his ego match. I snort at the Capsicle comment.

Steve ignores me and looks at Tony, he says, "Fury didn't tell me he was calling you in."

Tony whispers, but we still hear it, "Yeah, there's a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you." Thunder and lightning nearly hit the jet, making it shake violently.

Natasha asks bewildered, "Where's this coming from?" Thunder rumbles overhead. Loki stares out the window intently.

Steve tauntingly asks, "What's the matter? Scared of a little lightning?"

Loki looks at Steve and answers, "I'm not overly fond of what follows."

I dramatically widen my eyes and look at Loki, and ask, "He's coming here? Now?" Loki just smirks at me. So I turn to Natasha, "Open the ramp, now! Before he fucking tears it open." I mumble out and go near the ramp to greet Thor once he enters.

Thor sees the open ramp, enters and just pushes me aside, does the same with Tony, and takes Loki and leaves through the open ramp. I groan loudly, in annoyance. Goddamnit Thor! I wanted to avoid this!

I hear Tony say, "I have a plan, attack!" and leave the Jet and I turn to Steve. He takes a parachute this time and prepares to jump out of the flying plane.

Natasha puts the plane on Auto pilot and comes back to persuade Cap to not go. She says, "I'd sit this one out Cap."

Steve turns to Natasha and says, "I don't see how I can."

Natasha tries one last time, "These guys come from legends. They're basically gods!"

Steve turns to the ramp and says, "There's only one God ma'am. And I'm pretty sure, He doesn't dress like that." Saying that Steve jumps out of the plane. I look at Natasha now staring at me with a raised eyebrow.

"Shut up!" I grumble out. Natasha continues looking at me.

"You said those things to fire him up, didn't you? You knew he would jump down, but you wanted to boost his ego. Pretty smart actually." I say and finally stand up. I take out a coin and look at it. "Heads, I'll jump down, tails, I'll stay here." I say out loud.

I flip the coin and it falls in my hands. I open my hands and peek at the coin. Fuck! It's heads. I groan and look at Natasha still staring at me.

"Well. Let's fight a God, shall we?" I smirk at her and run towards the ramp and jump off of it. I didn't need parachute. But just as a precaution, I take out the Berserker's staff, which makes me a little stronger and resilient.

I cover myself in my Venom suit and control my direction using a thin filmy layer between my arms and abdomen. Within a minute I'm crashing on the ground in between Tony and Thor, who have by now half destroyed a few trees.

Both Thor and Tony turn to look at me, both perceiving me to be the enemy. I had absorbed the Staff by then, so I didn't worry about that. Thor recognizes me first and bellows out, "Venom!"

I wave at Thor and give a salute to the now visible Captain. I turn to Tony and say, "I got this. Go secure Loki." I don't wait for Tony to say anything and turn to Thor.

I say, "Hey big guy. Sorry for ruining your fun," I point towards where Tony went, "but we need to cut this short. Loki has hidden the Tesseract somewhere and we need to go somewhere to help in recovery. You coming with us?"

Thor doesn't say anything at first and I get on my guard. But he just nods and gets out of his fighting stance. I nod at Captain America and turn to go to the Jet which has by now landed in a clearing nearby. Meanwhile Tony picks Loki up and brings him to the Quinjet.

Tony looks at me confused but then he takes off his mask and exclaims, "You're the guy that helped me fight Stane!" I sigh, well this went on long enough. I will the Venom suit back into my body and smile at their shocked faces.

Steve breaks the silence first, "You're Harry. You're Black-Spider? But-but-but you're so young?"

"Harry Osborn is a superhero? You know I pegged you for a supervillain." Tony speaks up.

Thor just claps me on my shoulder and says, "Verily! You're a mighty young warrior, Venom."

I snort my head at all three. I turn to Tony and say, "Firstly, fuck you. Secondly I helped you defeat Stane when I was 16, so think on that." I turn to Steve next and say, "It was needed of me Cap. I had to do something." I look at him meaningfully to remind him of the story I told earlier. When he nods in understanding, I turn to Thor and say, "You can call me Harry, Thor. That's my name when I'm not wearing the mask. You may tell Lady Sif when you return. Harry Osborn is my full name, but my friends call me Harry."

Loki just looks at me like a puzzle, which creeps me out. The rest of the ride pass in silence other than Tony repeatedly asking me how I made my suit appear and disappear on me and where it's hidden. I finally snap and say, "You're a scientist. Go figure it out yourself. After this whole fiasco is over."

Soon we reach the Helicarrier and a few agents take Loki in chains to his new room. I see Banner working on the Sceptre and join him. I bring out my Med-Scanner as well as the regular scanner and get to work. Within 5 minutes my work on the scanner is done and I ignore everything to study the Sceptre's readings.

Like the hammer, the Sceptre has a sort of heartbeat to it. It emits a low Gamma radiation which resonates with the readings they had on the Tesseract. So this is why the Sceptre could shut down the Tesseract's portal. But is it true for all the infinity stones, or just these two?

I get distracted by Banner's voice, saying, "He really grows on you, doesn't he?"

I snort and say, "Yeah. Like a fungus." Bruce smiles at me and I smile back in reassurance.

Steve speaks up next, "Loki's gonna drag this out. So, Thor, what's his play?"

Thor comes to from his musings and says, "He has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard, or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."

Steve looks incredulously at Thor and asks, "An army? From outer space?"

I snort and interject, "Um Cap. You're asking this to a literal alien. From outer space." Steve blushes and mumbles out an apology.

Banner nods and thinks out loud, "So he's building another portal. That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."

Thor gets startled out of his musings, again, and asks, "Selvig?"

Banner answers, without knowing any connection, "He's an astrophysicist."

Thor corrects him, "He's a friend."

Natasha explains to a confused Thor, "Loki has him under some kind of spell, along with one of ours."

Steve asks the most important question, "I wanna know why Loki let us take him. He's not leading an army from here."

I answer him, "That's easy. He wants to be here. Why? No idea."

Everyone goes silent at the implications. If he's here because he wants to be, then he either has something to do on the Helicarrier, or he wants something from the Helicarrier.

Banner breaks the silence and says, "I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on him."

Thor gets angry at Banner and grits out, "Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he's my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days." Natasha deadpans.

Thor's shoulders go lose and he whispers, "He's adopted."

Banner, still in thinking mode asks out loud, "Iridium, what did they need the Iridium for?"

Suddenly the doors behind me open up and Tony enters with Coulson, he says, "It's a stabilizing agent." He then turns towards Coulson and says, "I'll fly you there. Keep the love alive." Then turns back to us and explains, "Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at SHIELD."

Tony walks close to Thor and taps his upper arm, "No hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing. Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants."

He approaches Fury's station and starts giving out orders, "Raise the mid-mast, ship the top sails. That man is playing GALAGA! Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did." He then closes one eye and tries looking at both the screens, "How does Fury do this?"

Agent Hill answers for Fury, dryly, "He turns." Tony looks around the monitors and places a button size hacking implant under Fury's desk, without anyone but me noticing, and I only notice it because I was specifically looking for it. That reminds me, I discreetly throw my own hacking implement at the console. Siri knows what she has to do. While this is going on, everyone in the room looks at Tony like he's a clown.

Tony rolls his eyes and moves away from the console, he says, "Well, that sounds exhausting. The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube."

Agent Hill asks him, "When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?"

Tony says, "Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?"

I raise my hand, still bored and say, "Just finished with them actually." Tony gets excited to find me on the table and is about to say something, when Steve speaks up,

He asks, "Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?"

Banner thinks and answers, "He's got to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier."

I interrupt, "But what about the quantum tunnelling effect? He'll have to find a way to stabilise it first."

Tony continues, "Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunnelling effect."

Banner gets a horrified look on his face and says, "Well, if he could do that he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet."

Tony smirks at him and raises his hands in the air, "Finally, someone who speaks English."

Steve turns to the rest of us, "Is that what just happened?"

I take pity on Steve and speak up, "We're saying that Selvig could theoretically open a stable portal anywhere on the planet where there's a reactor. And there are a lot of reactors on Earth."

Cap gets horrified along with the rest of the non-geniuses in the room. Seriously, it was not that hard to understand, even an 8th grader could understand the gist of it.

Tony and Banner shake hands. A glimmer in their eyes shines as the mutual respect for each other shows.

Tony says, "It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm also a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

Banner looks down in embarrassment, "Thanks."

Nick Fury walks in at that moment and speaks up, louder than anyone else there, "Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube. I was hoping you might join him."

Steve drops in his two cents, "Let's start with that stick of his. It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon."

"Yeah, they emit the same energy signature in pulses, like they're alive. Similar to what Thor's hammer does with EMF pulses actually." I interject.

Everyone gets horrified at the possibility that the two objects are alive, Fury shakes it off and says, "I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

Thor gets confused at that, "Monkeys? I do not understand." He asks.

Steve gets excited and raises his hand, "I do! I understood that reference." Tony rolls his eyes, while Cap looks proud of himself. I pat on Caps shoulders in support.

Tony turns to Bruce and asks, "Shall we play, doctor?"

Bruce smiles at him and leads him to the lab, "Let's play some." I follow them, simply because I have nothing else to do, and watching two geniuses work together will be enlightening. I may be a genius, but my field was different than theirs. I mainly focus on Computer sciences and some chemistry. Though I do dabble in genetics and physics, it's nothing close to what these two do.

We reach the lab in a few minutes at most. I take a look at the tracking algorithm they wrote and improve a few things on it to run separately from theirs. Tony raises his eyebrows at me, asking 'What are you doing?'

"Patterns and programming is my jam. I found a few changes I could make in your algorithm, that might improve it and ran it separately. I don't want to mess up your work, so I didn't change the current program." I shrug, Tony looks at me like a puzzle, and Banner starts working on the Sceptre again.

"How did you even find out that this thing has a pulse?" Banner asks me once he fails to detect the pulse.

I show him my med scanner and ask him to scan with it. "That's a medical scanner Oscorp developed a while ago, but scrapped. Fucking selfish assholes. I found the plans, built it, modified it and now I have a 3D hologram of my internal body whenever I want it. When I scanned Thor's hammer with it, as a curiosity, last year, I found that it emits a small EMF pulse like a heartbeat. When I scanned the staff earlier today, I found the same with it."

Tony interjects, "So you're a superhero? Good to know I'm not the only rich Superhero in New York. So what's your secret? The suit makes you stronger?"

I smirk at him and say, "I already told Steve this. I'm the same as he is, only stronger. Radioactive spider bit me. The suit, I designed myself, along with a friend. Now Stark, don't mistake my generosity with information as a proof that I don't care about my identity. I'd like to keep this a secret for as long as possible, but since we're gonna be working together, I don't want secrets to get in the way of us fighting together."

Tony nods dumbly, mumbling his theories about my suit and continues working. I ask suddenly, "So how long till we're in the system?" Tony gets startled about getting caught, Banner just sighs loudly.

"Caught that, have you? For me about 2 hours. You?" Tony asks me.

I check in with Siri and find that she'll have hacked it in about 100 minutes. "100 minutes. Siri is currently trying not to get detected by the system so it's taking a bit of time." I answer smugly. I finally found that I'm better at hacking than Tony Stark. Sue me.

Tony looks stupefied. Banner snorts in amusement and says, "If you're done with the pissing contest?"

Tony shakes his head and turns to the monitors in front of him, Banner continues with examining the Sceptre with my scanner, and I just sit there and look pretty.

Banner takes a look at the readings and speaks up, "The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process."

Tony returns, "If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops."

Banner smiles at him, "All I packed was a tooth brush." To which I snort.

Tony smiles at Banner, "You know, you should come by Stark Towers sometime. Top ten floors, all R . You'd love it, it's candy land."

Banner smiles at him, but shakes his head and says, "Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke...Harlem."

I interrupt, "Hey! I was there, remember? You saved Harlem. Blonsky destroyed it, and the Army soldiers used their guns and rockets to cause more destruction. If it wasn't for you, Blonsky and the Army would have gone on to destroy the whole of New York."

Tony smirks, "Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension. No surprises."

Suddenly, Tony pokes Banner with a miniature electrical prod device. Banner gets shocked but controls himself. I stare at Banner in bewildered fancy. That's a hell of a control. Steve walks in on us, pissed at Tony.

"OW!" Banner yelps out. TonyTony looks at Banner closely, and so do I.

Steve shouts out, "Hey!"

Tony ignores Steve and turns to Banner, "Nothing"

Steve asks, "Are you nuts?"

Tony continues ignoring Steve and asks, "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"

Steve asks him, "Is everything a joke to you?"

Tony blurts out, "Funny things are."

Steve doesn't take shit and says, "Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny. No offense, doctor."

Banner waves it off, "No, it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things." He says.

Tony looks at Steve and says, "You're tiptoeing, big man. You need to strut."

Steve glares at Tony, "And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark."

Tony raises an eyebrow at him, "You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."

Steve asks, "You think Fury's hiding something?

Tony looks at him in disbelief, "He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets." He points to Banner and me, "It's bugging them too, isn't it?" I just nod.

BANNER stumbles with the words, "Uh...I just wanna finish my work here and..."

Steve interrupts him, "Doctor?" A beat.

" 'A warm light for all mankind', Loki's jab at Fury about the cube." Banner speaks up, remembering Loki's speach.

Steve nods, and says, "I heard it."

Banner points at Tony and Me, "Well, I think that was meant for you two. Even if Barton didn't post that all over the news."

Steve asks, thinking a bit, "The Stark Tower? That big ugly.." Tony gives him a look and I snort, "...building in New York?"

Banner continues, "It's powered by Stark Reactors, self- sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for what, a year?"

Tony replies smugly, "That's just the prototype. I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now."

I interrupt, "Hey! I've got a miniature sun in my basement. We're the only names in clean energy." I give Tony a look.

Banner continues explaining, "So, why didn't SHIELD bring them in on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?"

"Yeah, I don't think they're in this for the energy." I say and shake my head when Steve looks at me questioningly.

Tony mumbles, "I should probably look into that once my decryption program finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files."

Steve gets taken aback, "I'm sorry, did you say...?"

Tony explains, "Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide. Blueberry?" he asks the last part holding out a bag in front of Steve and me. I take one.

Steve glares at him, "Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?"

Tony raises an eyebrow and asks, "An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not possible."

I calmly speak up, "Steve, we know hacking is wrong. But what they're doing is suspicious, I don't want something like Hydra to happen to the world again. SHIELD is currently heading down that path. I once hacked into SHIELD when I was 15 you know, found a government agency no one knew about, wanted to know more. The next thing I know how they were assassinating a few people. They even sent out a hit on a 17 year old child soldier, because she killed a few of their allies. A 17 year old girl. That doesn't build confidence."

Steve thinks on it, but being the stubborn man he is, says, "I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war, and if don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them."

Tony waves his hand and says, "Following is not really my style."

Steve smiles at Tony and asks, "And you're all about style, aren't you?"

Tony looks like that hit a nerve, and says, "Of the people in this room, which one is; A. wearing a spangly outfit, and B. not of use?"

I interrupt before this can escalate some more and say, "We're not soldiers, Steve. The world hasn't been at war for 70 years. They brought all of us three in as consultants."

Banner continues the tirade, "Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?" Steve takes in the possibility, but as an obedient soldier, shakes it off.

He says, "Just find the cube." Steve walks out of the lab. Still torn apart by the possibility, he walks away. I walk out the room with him to have a talk with Thor.

Damn! I'll have to show Thor the staff now, so that he doesn't get angry at me during the fight. Well, let's find him first. God damnit Peter. Get here soon!