Unexpected

XV

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

"Uh, yeah," Nina began. "About that... in the '40s, Hydra did use the Cube to create weapons. But he had no idea what it actually was."

"I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube," Fury announced. "And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys." Of course, Nina knew how. Loki had the Mind stone in his sceptre.

"Monkeys?" Thor asked, confused. "I do not understand."

"I do!" Steve said, raising his hand. "I understood that reference," he said, all proud of himself. Nina smiled at him, and Tony rolled his eyes.

"Shall we play, doctors?" Tony as Nina and Bruce as he walked out of the room.

"Lets play some," Banner told him, walking out after him. Nina sighed. She was stuck with anger-management-issues and Ego-with-a-big-e. Great. She looked over at Fury, who nodded at her.

"Do I get the lab back?" She asked Fury. Fury almost laughed. He had taken Nina out of her lab to put her in the field. She was a very good scientist, but they had others. Now, no agent was as nearly as good as her. And the team she made with Natasha and Clint made them the best agents SHIELD has known since Peggy Carter.

"For now," Fury told her. Nina gave him a look before walking out of the room. She followed the corridor that led to the lab.

Her and Banner started working on a gamma rays detection scanner on the scepter for radiation. Tony, being Tony, preferred working alone on solving as many equations as he could on one of the screens.

"The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract," Nina said to the group.

"But it's gonna take weeks to process," Banner added.

"If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops," Tony said. The three of them shared a look.

"All I packed was a tooth brush," Bruce said, defeated.

"You know, you should come by STARK TOWERS sometime," Tony said to Bruce with a smile. "Top ten floors, all R&D. You'd love it, it's candy land."

"Thanks for including me," Nina said sarcasticly.

"I would, kitten. But I have no idea who you are," Tony said. " And I feel like I know you."

"That's alright," Nina told him. "And again, I don't know you," Nina assured. She honestly had no idea why Tony would recognise her. She didn't have any memory of meeting Tony Stark.

"Yeah, well," Tony continued. "You two should come anyway."

"Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke...Harlem," Bruce admitted.

"Well, I promise a stress free environment," Tony told him. "No tension. No surprises." Just as he said that, Tony poked Bruce on the side with a miniature electrical prod. Nina took a step back, just as Steve walked in the room.

"Ow," Bruce exclaimed, placing a hand on his side.

"Nothing?" Tony asked, surprised.

"Seriously?" Nina asked him. Was he out of his mind?