Daughter Of the Beast *Wolverine/Avengers*

Chapter 12- In Which A Lab is Used

Dr. Banner gave me a small smile as I walked over to him. "I guess I'm with you then." 

        "Yup. Let's go to the lab. I can show you the training schedule. You won't be with me everyday, just... two out of five? I think." He opened the door to the lab. 

        'Hello Dr. Banner. How are you today?' I jumped as a voice echoed throughout the room. 

        "Don't worry, that's just Lydia. She's an AI that, um helps me." The bright steel tables were laden with glass containers filled with colored liquids. "Ohkay Ruari. We have some rules for the lab. Always wear aprons. Never leave a Bunsen burner unattended, lit without supervision, or have running gas without supervision. Make sure to follow experimental procedures very carefully. Uhh. There are the aprons. Tony may possibly.. have had Pepper buy these." 

        The aprons he pulled out were just weird. They had little kittens and rainbows all over them. Dr. Banner already had one that had unicorns and M&Ms on it. "Like I said. Pepper bought these." 

        "They're really bad." 

        "I'm hoping to burn them up in a freak acid accident sometime." 

        "Cool." Honestly, the things were just dreadful. 

        "Are you alright with us running some tests on you today? We already have the necessary human experimentation forms." 

        "What kind of tests?" 

        "Mostly with the things." He wiggled his hands. 

        Um.. yes the things. "My claws?" 

        "Yeah those. Would you mind getting a few things for me?" 

        I shook my head. He gave me a list of items with a smile and showed me where to look. Rubber dissection mats. Dissection trays. Acetone. Diluted Hydrochloric acid. Copper wire, with cover and without cover. Citric acid. 

        There were many other items on the list, including things like iodine, which I used to treat wounds and cuts, and stuff that was completely strange to me. I lined everything up on the counter in front of Dr. Banner. "Here you go." 

        "Thank you! Now, just sit here on this stool. Lydia, can you get those forms please?" He muttered to the AI.

        'Of course Dr. Banner.' A blue screen opened up in front of the two of us, showing long complicated documents. 

        "Just type here." He placed a blinking vertical line in an empty space. A board of letters came up. I quickly spotted the letters I needed for my name and put them in carefully. When I was done, they disappeared. I smiled. That was easy. 

        "Now we can begin testing. First we're going to test how tough your claws are. The acid will test the strength some, but we'll also do tests according to the Mohs scale." 

        He took a dropper and filled it with some kind of acid, as I extended my claws over the white (read: tan) tray. He adjusted the pair of goggles he was wearing and squeezed the dropper gently. A drop of acid just rolled off my claws and hissed on the bottom of the tray. 

        "Ohkay.. let's try something stronger." We went through the process repeatedly. Nothing worked. 

        Dr. Banner wiped his forehead. "Nothing works on these claws." 

        "What if we mixed acids?" His eyes widened.

        "No! We never do that! Some acids can create very dangerous fluids that can cause harmful vapors." He put lids on various bottles. I walked over to a sink and turned it on, washing off my claws. 

         I wondered how the others were doing. Cavendish didn't really seem like she knew much about anything. Everett was... just shy. And Gerard could win multiple prizes for his excitement over meeting real superheroes. I went back to the table and eased myself onto the stool again. 

        My fists hurt from extending my claws so long. I twiddled my fingers back and forth. 

        "What are the next tests?" I said curiously. 

        "We're going to do the Mohs tests, along with some other scratch tests. The Mohs scale measures how hard a rock, or mineral is." He held up various rocks to explain the whole scale. "And diamond is the hardest." He ran his hand through his hair before selecting the softest rock, talc. 

        "Well your claws are harder than talc! Congratulations." We laughed. Talc was basically powder that kind of lumped together. Progressing up the scale, we came to a pinkish orange rock with white streaks in it. 

        "Is that feldspar?" 

        "Yeah. How'd you know? You're not, you know, stupid, but still-" I held up a hand to stop his outburst. 

        "A lot of the locals make jewelry out of it." The slim veins of white glittered under the harsh laboratory lights and the soft pink-orange glowed. Needless to say, the stone didn't scratch my claws. We worked all the way up to diamond. 

        "If this diamond doesn't scratch your claws, I'll go propose to Natasha." Dr. Banner said with a sigh. 

        Shhhhhck. 

        He took a deep breath. "Ah.. I'm going to be proposing then." 

        I laughed. 

        "So my claws are harder than diamonds?" 

        "Yes. Which means they can cut through just about anything if they have enough force behind them." 

        "COOL!" 

        "Pretty cool agreed. Also, your bones appear to have some of the same material woven in with the bone strands. This makes your bones harder, but also lighter and more flexible. We don't have the full details of your records, we still need to get those." 

        "From who? Why wouldn't SHIELD have them?" My eyebrows crawled together and I got down from the stool. 

        "Um. Professor Xavier actually. In New York. He's the head of a different superhero team, the X-Men. Your dad was part of that team actually." 

        "Is he still?" 

        Dr. Banner shrugged. "I don't know. We request that information when we ask for the file transfer, if you want." 

        I nodded. I was still mad at my dad. But I wanted to clear things up and figure out why he left me in Africa and left Mum on her own too. 

        "If he's in New York can we go see him?" 

        "I'm sorry, you'll have to ask Fury." 

        "But as a mission or something maybe?" 

        "Maybe."