𝒑𝒖𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒕 || s. rogers & b. barnes

6||; 𝒅𝒐 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝒎𝒆?

"Selvig?" Thor speaks up.

"He's an astrophysicist," Banner answers.

"He's a friend."

"Loki has him under some kind of spell," Romanoff says, "along with one of ours."

"I want to know why Loki let us take him," Steve speaks up. "He's not leading an army from here."

Irina continues to pace, because pacing helps her think, and she need to think hard when it comes to Loki and his plans. She pinches her bottom lip, eyes focusing on the ground ahead of her as she goes back and forth.

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

"Have care how you speak," Thor steps up to the table. "Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days," Romanoff drawls from her seat.

"...He's adopted," mutters Thor.

"I think it's about the mechanics," says Banner. "Iridium... What do they need the iridium for?"

Irina looks up from her pacing, stopping to answer. "It's a stabilizing agent," she says, before pausing, realizing another voice had spoken with her. She turns around, meeting the surprised stare of Stark, who quickly recovers and turns to Phil, who was walking with him.

"I'm just saying, pick a weekend. I'll fly you to Portland," he mutters to the agent. "Keep love alive."

Phil walks away to the table, and Stark shoves his hands into the pockets of his pants. "It means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D." He passes by Thor, patting his bicep as he walks by. "No hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing."

"Iridium would also let the portal open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants," Irina finishes.

Stark snaps his fingers and points at her as he walks up to Fury's station. "What Girl Genius said," he says, before looking around. "Uh, raise the mizzenmast. Job the topsails," he tells to the agents below him.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents look at Stark oddly, before going back to their work. Stark points out in a random direction. "That man is playing Galaga! He thought we wouldn't notice, but we did," he says, looking around the screens in confusion. "How does Fury even see these?"

"He turns," a female agent says dryly, fixing Stark with an unimpressed look.

"Sounds exhausting," Stark mumbles, before turning to the screens and tapping away on them. "The rest of the raw materials Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. The only major component he still needs is a power source of high-energy density," he turns back to them. "Something to kick-start the Cube."

The female agent looks at him curiously. "When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" She asks.

"Last night," answers Stark honestly. "The packet, Selvig's notes, the extraction theory papers... Am I the only one who did the reading?"

"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve asks.

"He would have to heat the Cube to 120-million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier," Banner says.

Stark gives a shrug. "Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect."

"If he could do that then he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet," Irina says with a frown. "And that isn't good."