Avengers (Vudukudu and Jessy753)

[Jessy753]

"Not what you expected?", she asked him with an amused smile as she saw his face. This wasn't an uncommon reaction towards seeing the Carrier for the first time. "By the way welcome to the world of SHIELD. Maybe we're not as bad as you pictured us to be? At least we have some nice toys", she chuckled lightly and gave him a charming smile before she stood up from her seat, getting ready to leave the helicopter.


She listened to him as she watched him at the picture of her. "Because Fury does want you to be part of our team.", she replied and continued "Plus he knows I can deal with much more than someone with 'special talents'." She gave him a small smile but soon it vanished as the helicopter landed and she climbed out of it. She turned around to look at him "We don't send out 'secretaries' or some random agent to recruit important people. Especially for something that's called the Avengers Initiative."

 

[Vudukudu]

"Having nice toys just makes you even more dangerous to the little guys. I'll be the judge of whether or not that's a problem." Andrew replied, giving the helicarrier a suspicious glance. Probably had enough hardware to flatten cities. Maybe even countries. Nukes were probably a thing of the past to these people. He could only imagine what new terrors they had.


The helicopter banked hard to the left before settling down on the landing pad. Andrew closed the file, cradling it between his arm and his chest, then dismounted from the helicopter. A couple mechanics meandered about him, but otherwise, he was left to himself. He turned back towards Natasha, yelling over the sound of the slowing rotor. "Might need a guide. Or is that where the secretaries come in?" He called out, beckoning her on.

 

[Jessy753]

"We don't use these things against the 'little guys'.", she told him bluntly and continued "It helps us fighting against thing that are better off arranged behind closed curtains." She looked at all the weapons and planes on board before she continued "What I actually meant were the toys, which you prefer. The research and development department. I suppose you'll appreciate those machineries there."


She moved a bit closer to him as he started to yell to talk about the noises of the helicopter. "I'll show you the way to the lab. We don't have secretaries like this around here. Every person, who you will meet on this ship is an agent.", she told him louder than usual to be able to be understood above the noises. "This way.", she told him as nodding into a direction before she started to walk towards a door. Natasha opened the door and held it for him to walk through. "Do you have any more questions? Because I will leave you alone with Banner and Stark as I do need to talk with Loki for a bit. We will need more details on what's going on and that's were I come into place."

 

[Vudukudu]

"Good luck interrogating the bastard god of manipulation and deceit. Something tells me you'll need it." He said, quirking one eyebrow slightly. While he'd certainly never interacted with Loki, or any god for that matter, it seemed like it would be rather difficult to do what she was about to. "And I guess you're right. When the little guys need to be dealt with, they send you. Guess that explains why we talked instead of bombing my house. Assassins are less noticeable than craters, after all."


He'd lapsed into attacking her again. This situation, entirely new to him, had put him on the defensive, and she was the closest available target to deflect with. He hoped she understood that he wasn't too serious, though his tone had quite a bit of sting in it. Maybe an apology was in order, but it might have to wait. She certainly had some work to attend to with Loki, if this was as serious as she seemed to think.


Andrew passed through the door, into a well-lit, steely hallway. It reminded him of the inside of a battleship, though more spacious. "As for questions, I've got a million, but I think I'll find answers to a lot of them on my own. If I need you, I'll.. uh.. page you. Or whatever it is you secret agent types do." He added, looking back at her over his shoulder. "I'll find my way to the lab. Don't want to delay you any longer."

 

[Jessy753]

Natasha shook her head and continued "I don't need luck. Loki is way too biased to actually consider the fact that I might receive the needed information.", she told him while walking. "Give him what he wants and he tells you everything.", she told him with a confident smile as she already had figured out how she might manipulate the God of Mischief to actually tell her what she needed to know. Natasha just looked emotionless at him as he started to offend the organization once again. "Are you finished?", she asked him and continued "Sometimes it's better to arrest some particular guys than allowing them to bomb whole cities. Or who do you think makes your city safe from terrorists and other threats?", she countered and answered her question "Certainly not the once who stay at home and keep their bottoms on the couch, hoping no one would find them." By now, she sounded a little annoyed but managed to mask her emotion and anger behind her calm mask. The lack of sleep was slowly getting to her.


She nodded in acknowledgement. "I will drop you off at the lab door and continue to Loki from there.", she answered and took another hallway with him. "Well, I hope Stark and Banner might answer some of your scientific question.", she told him but warned him a little "Both Stark and Banner are as happy to be as you are. So, don't expect Stark to be cooperative in you joining their research. I don't know if they kind of got used to work together after Stuttgart." Suddenly she stopped in front of a door and told "Well, much fun with your toys. I need to go know."


With a curt nod, she left him standing alone and walked off to get changed into her suit once again. As soon as she was back in her room, she took her casual but yet business clothes off and changed into her fighting gear. Afterwards Natasha walked to the section, where Fury had placed Loki for her to interrogate him.

 

[Vudukudu]

"Sure. Blame me for thinking maybe super powerful weaponry and super-humans should be held responsible to a national organization, not some.. unmanageable, unrestrictable group of shadow men. I just want transparency. Names to be kept, power to be known. This all reeks of.. police state, and civil rights violations. Agree to disagree, Natasha." He stated, sending her off with a small, pleasant wave of his hand. He'd broken her little mask just long enough to catch a flicker of emotion. Maybe she was a real live human after all. Good.


Andrew stepped into the lab to find two men gesturing through holograms and muttering to themselves. Each seemed totally involved in their tasks, and he felt bad for interrupting them. He knew exactly the feeling they had, and what it felt like to have it broken. "Gentlemen." He said hesitantly, his tone wavering for a moment. It was hard to remain composed in front of these two; veritable legends in his world. But here they were.


"And who might you be?" Stark asked, glancing towards the newcomer with one eyebrow quirked.


"Andrew Kirsey. Natasha just.. hmm, negotiated for my cooperation." He replied. Banner chuckled softly in response, then nodded. "I know the feeling, Andrew."


Stark, in the few seconds it had taken Banner to speak, had already pulled up a file. "Interesting. Another scientist. I guess you'll be good company. Especially with your previous work. Mind telling me what this is?"


Stark tapped a holoscreen, then flung it across the room to Andrew. It stopped before him, displaying a weapon schematic.


"Looks like.. an energy cannon. Man-portable, looks like it's supposed to sustain fire for long periods. But no energy source we know of could fuel that for more than a few seconds. Except.. well, the Tesseract, as I understand it."

 

[Jessy753]

Natasha sighed and stood a moment in front of the door to Loki's prison. Her following task would require all her concentration and skills. Taking some deep breaths, she felt her inside calming down and the tiredness vanishing from her. She set her mind on the target she had and this time Natasha would follow her own goal not SHIELD's. She couldn't care less what Loki had in mind as it was more than obvious to her. The only thing she cared about was where Clint was and how she would get her partner back. Natasha told herself that was because she owed him so much. But it was way more selfish than what. She wanted and needed her best friend back. To her it felt like the borders between right and wrong were blurring more and more the longer he was away.


Quietly she stepped inside and watched the God of Mischief wander around in his glass cage without recognizing her. First when he slowly turned around, he started to talk: "There are not many people, who can sneak up on me." Natasha stood emotionless in front of the glass as she watched him turn around to face her: "But you'd figured I'd come" The whole conversation was a back in forth and Natasha acted like Loki had the dominance during the conversation. But in truth the God was playing right into her hands. She had managed to establish some sort of relationship between them. It seemed like Loki was going to threaten her as he suddenly hit the glass with his fist as he started "Won't touch Barton! Not until I make him kill you! Slowly, Intimately - In every way he knows that you fear and then he'll wake just long enough to see his good work. And then he screams, I'll split his skull!" Natasha took a step back, looking at Loki in horror as she turned around, seemingly both afraid and intimidated by what she just heard. She talked between sobs: "You monster!" Loki started laughing at that and seemed amused "Oh, no. You brought the monster."


With that being said, Natasha knew his plan and stood upright like nothing had happened and his intimidation had no impact on her. She turned around with an arched eyebrow as she stated "So Banner. That's your play?" Loki looked at her in confusion as she obviously had found out what he had planned "What..?". He watched her walk to the exit as she talked via headphones to the bridge what was going to happen and to send Thor. In case someone needed to take care of Banner. Once again she turned to Loki and nodded slightly as she spoke "Thank you. For your cooperation"

 

[Vudukudu]

Andrew, Banner, and Stark stood in a loose triangle, spread around the room. Andrew had taken a minute or two to grow accustomed to the technology, then dove in. Stark had broken into SHIELD systems and rooted around far enough to find this particular treasure trove of information. SHIELD had been designing weaponry based on the Tesseract; missiles to destroy planets, weapons to reduce opponents to mere atoms. Natasha had just begun to convince him that this was all worth it, that SHIELD wasn't some unstoppable spy tyrant. But she'd been hiding this all along.


A screen whirled across the room in a lazy arc, from Stark to Andrew. This one depicted a missile, although somewhat smaller than the others. Stark and Banner were conversing rapidly, a mixture of anger and disgust that Banner was clearly struggling to contain. Andrew, fortunately, was not working with a real computer. The room, which had begun to smell faintly of ozone already, was only functioning because of the holographic screens. If they had been real, the damage would have been beyond serious.


"This is.. we have to do something about this, right? Wipe the database. The whole thing. The weapons, plans, files on me and you and everyone else." Andrew muttered, though Stark was quick to counter.


"That'd take too long, kid. And they've definitely got hard copies somewhere if I know anything about top secret projects."


"The scepter, then. We can't let them have it. Natasha told me it's been used for mind control, and who knows what else its capable of. It has to be destroyed."

 

[Jessy753]

Natasha walked out of the room and headed straight for the laboratory because of Banner. She doubted that it would be easy to separate Banner from the rest of the team as he most likely had developed some kind of friendship with at least Stark and perhaps Kirsey. That depended on how much time had gone by since she started to talk to Loki. Sleep deprivation and the constant worry for Clint was slowly getting to her but to most people she seemed as relaxed as ever.


After entering the lab, the first thing that she noticed was the atmosphere in the room. It was charged with anger and not the normal workflow energy. Her eyes caught the hologram of a weapon. Natasha had had no clue for what exactly they had used the Tesseract as Clint had never told her about and for doing her job she had never needed that bit of information.


It took her a moment before she opened her mouth and focussed her attention on Banner. "Dr. Banner? I need to ask you to join me.", she told her as her voice was full of authority. At the same moment, Rogers entered the room, holding the same gun, which Stark had found through his virus. "What's this?", he demanded to know looking at everyone in the room.

 

[Vudukudu]

Andrew cut in quickly, barely even acknowledging Natasha's entrance with a mere glance before returning his attention to Rogers.. "High discharge energy weaponry. Interesting, but highly volatile and dangerous. I would know. I assisted a team that developed similar cooling systems. One bolt from that toy would turn you or me into a boiling puddle."


"And watch it, Nat-- Widow. Banner, Stark, and myself aren't exactly excited to see you in light of this.. recent revelation. Weapons? That's what SHIELD wanted? Not, I don't know, clean, free energy for the world? Figures that all you folks wanted to do was insure you maintained power. I'm seriously starting to doubt if I agreed to fight for the right side." He continued, finally turning to face her.

 

[Jessy753]

Natasha looked calm at the weapon and seemed like she had known all of this from the beginning. Just a lightly arched eyebrow was actually telling that all of this was new to her. But she knew better than act just as surprised the other people in the room were. Knowing every agency, they of course had wanted a not so noble plan than clean and free energy. That would of course be a nice side effect and some of her assumptions since reading the files were actually slowly beginning to be true. But no one would believe her, if she said that she hadn't known of any of this.


As soon as Andrew talked to her, she turned to him. "Have you really thought that any secret agency has only in mind to give mankind an energy resource, which won't run out and is clean from polluting the environment? If they want so, they would've gotten Stark on board as he already has the solution in his chest. Have you really been that naïve to think that SHIELD wouldn't develop weapons? After all Stark here should be able tell you a whole story about people who want weapons and machineries.", she replied casually before turning back to Banner: "I really need to advise you to follow me, Dr. Banner" But instead of walking over to her he declined: "No, I want to know about this."


Meanwhile Fury had joined everyone in the lab and listened to the conversation before joining in. "We need to be ready for people like him.", he replied pointing at Thor and continued "New Mexico has shown that there are more things in this universe that we are not capable of handling on ourselves. We need to be ready if those other species try to invade us!"

 

[Vudukudu]

"It's not naivete, you insane bi--" Andrew started, then abruptly cut himself off at Fury's appearance. "It's about trust. And you've managed to lose all that you had gained." He sighed and shook his head a little, letting the authoritative newcomer speak. More justifications for this reckless amount of power.


"It took New Mexico to show you there are things you can't control. Sure, that makes a lot of sense. Because before New Mexico, we didn't have the Hulk, we didn't have a man with a suit of power armor, we didn't have me. There's a long list of things you don't control, some of them are in this room, and we're supposed to believe you designed this weaponry to protect against an outside threat that we've hardly even seen before." He retorted, his gaze locking on Fury.


A soft crackling noise filled the air for a moment before the room became slightly warmer. One would have to have been looking out for it to notice the temperature change, but the other issue was readily apparent; Andrew's half of the room reeked of burning.

 

[Jessy753]

Natasha raised almost not recognizable her eyebrow over the way he suddenly addressed her. She ignored his insult as she hadn't expected anything else from any of them. For them she was the enemy and by now she was used to that picture of her in someone's mind. "I had gained trust?", she asked him surprised and continued "As I see it you practically waited for something bad to justify your behavior from earlier towards me. I've simply done my job and whether or not you like my job, it's none of my business"


"Where were any of you while things happened in New Mexico?", Fury asked back and continued "Dr. Banner was hiding in India and Stark was busy with his own problems regarding his technology. And talking about you, Mr. Kirsey: You were pretty busy pretending that everything was normal and fine. If it wasn't for Romanoff, you'd still sit in your living room acting like there was no accident at all." Fury looked back at him in full authority.


Somehow she registered the change in the atmosphere between all of them and the air becoming slightly warmer. Her eyes were on both Banner and Kirsey as she expected any of them to demonstrate their "talents". "How about we all relax a little?", Natasha suddenly voiced her question in a calm and soothing voice. This was exactly what Loki wanted and they needed to act as a team whether they liked it or not. "We need to concentrate on the mission ahead instead of dwelling over what happened. We need to find Barton and get Loki out of here. He's messing with all of us", she told them.

 

[Vudukudu]

"You're all fu***** insane." Andrew muttered, his eyes flicking from Fury to Natasha. Of course they had made weapons. It made sense, after all, but that didn't make him like it any more. The idea that some shadow organization had access to weapons capable of incinerating planets was upsetting, mostly because it meant they had also probably figured out smaller tools. Tools that could be used against him.


For what may have been the first time since the accident, however, Andrew's guard slipped. He lowered one hand down beside him without even recognizing it, and in that moment, he knew it was all about to go wrong. His fingers rammed clean through the metal table top, down into a cabinet beneath it. The immediate shock of it, coupled with the noise of metal breaking, made him react even more. His shoulder twisted backward, ripping his arm clean of the wrecked table, which then slammed into the wall behind him. In seconds, the table had been wrecked and there was now a sizable dent in the bulkhead wall. Once he managed to stop himself, he shot a hard stare at Natasha. One finger extended to point at the damaged wall.


"That is why I pretend there was no accident at all. Because if I ignore it, this doesn't happen and I can pretend to be normal. And now I'm just a godda** freak again."

 

[Jessy753]

Natasha reacted fast and retrieved her gun, which she had secured on her thigh. It was more than clear that she wouldn't hesitate on shooting him than necessary as she aimed her gun at him. She looked calm back at him but there was a hint of fear in her eyes because of what she had witnessed. This was nothing her training back in the Red Room had prepared her for. This was why she preferred acting on her own and maybe working with Clint.


Working with those so called 'talents' made her realize how limited she actually was even with the skill set, which she had slowly managed to learn over the years. She knew that if it came down to it that she had no chance against things like the Hulk or Andrew's talent. So, witnessing Andrew doing what he was capable had triggered her survival instinct and hence her pointing her gun at him. Natasha knew that she would do next wasn't including pulling the trigger and therefore shooting him.


"Well, maybe it's getting time for you to accept this side of you.", she slowly said and reculantly took her gun down. Taking a almost not recognizable deep breath, she put the gun back into its holster."Every single person in this room is capable of doing at least one thing that's not seen as 'normal'", she told him and added in a more soothing voice "It also could get easier to control, if you simply accepted who you are instead of hiding it behind some kind of facade."