| his plans |
❝ s m o o t h i e s ❞
"How desperate are you, that you call on such lost creatures to defend you?"
Celeste sits next to Natasha in the bridge area, sipping on her second smoothie of the hour. Both women are still in their suits, not yet having been able to find the time to change out of them.
The latest recruit, who's name she learned to be Thor, paces the room as Steve and Bruce stand nearby. It's silent between everyone as they all listen intently to the conversation playing out between Loki and Nick over the monitor on the glass table.
Loki stands in a large, cylindrical glass cage, a smirk on his face as he speaks, despite being detained.
"How desperate am I?" Nick asks incredulously, stepping closer to the glass. "You threaten my world with war, you steal a force you can’t hope to control, you talk about peace and you kill ’cause it’s fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."
"Ooh. It burns you to have come so close, to have the Tesseract, to have power- unlimited power, and for what?" The god taunts. "A warm light for all mankind to share? And then to be reminded what real power is."
Nick grins. "Well, let me know if 'real power' wants a magazine or something."
"He really grows on you," Bruce jokes as the monitors shut off. "Doesn't he?"
"Loki's gonna drag this out," Steve comments. "So, Thor, what's his play?"
"He has an army called the Chitauri. They’re not of Asgard nor any world known," Thor informs them. "He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth, in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."
"An army?" Steve raises an eyebrow. "From outer space?"
"So, he's building a portal," Bruce deduces. "That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."
"Selvig?" Thor asks.
"He's an astrophysicist."
"He's a friend."
"Loki has them under some kind of spell," Natasha states. "Along with one of ours."
"I wanna know why Loki let us take him," Steve adds. "He’s not leading an army from here."
"I don’t think we should be focusing on Loki," Bruce says. "That guy’s brain is a bag full of cats, you can small crazy on him."
"Have care how you speak," Thor interjects, his tone threatening. "Loki is beyond reason but he is of Asgard, and he is my brother."
"He killed eighty people in two days," Natasha remarks offhandedly.
Thor offers an apologetic shrug. "He’s adopted?"
"I'm adopted too, but if I killed eighty people, I'd be a hazard to society," Celeste says. "What makes Loki so special?"
"I think it’s about the mechanics," Bruce continues, staying on the science behind it all. "Iridium, what do they need the Iridium for?"
"It's a stabilizing agent. Means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D." Tony joins the conversation as he and Phil enter the room. Patting Thor on the back as he walks by, he comes to a stop at the control panel at the front of the room. "No hard feelings, point break, you got a mean swing."
Thor merely gives him an odd look.
"Also, means the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants," he continues before directing his attention to one of the S.H.I.E.L.D personnel sitting behind one of the monitors. "Ah, raise the mizzen mast, ship the topsails." The personnel also looks at him strangely before returning back to what's on his screen. "That man is playing Galaga! Thought we wouldn’t notice, but we did." Standing now at the command area of the ship, Tony covers one eye. "How does Fury even see these?"
"He turns!" Agent Maria Hill snaps.
"Sounds exhausting," Tony huffs, starting to mess with the screens. "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 of high energy density. Something to kick start the Cube."
Celeste finishes her smoothie and tosses the empty plastic container into the nearby trash can. "I hate to interrupt your rant, but since you seem to know everything, can you please tell me where to find a decent smoothie place?"
Tony spins on his heel, fixing her with an unamused look.
How can she possibly be thinking about smoothies at a time like this?
"Listen, Tony. You try telaporting three times and getting electrocuted within the span of thirty minutes."
"Fair enough," he concedes.
"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Maria questions.
"Last night," he answers nonchalantly. "The packet, Selvig’s notes, the extraction theory papers- am I the only one who did the reading?"
"I'm pretty sure he's the only one that can actually understand the reading," Celeste jokes, earning a quiet laugh from Natasha.
"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve asks.
"He’d have to heat the Cube to a hundred and twenty million kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier," Bruce states.
"My God, now there's two of them."
"Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the Quantum Tunneling effect," Tony counters.
"Well, if he could do that he could achieve heavy-ion fusion at any reactor on the planet."
"Finally. Someone who speaks English."
Steve glances around at the others, his eyebrows furrowed together in confusion. "Is that what just happened?"
It’s good to meet you, Doctor Banner," Tony says, shaking Bruce's hand. "Your work on anti-electronic collisions is unparalleled. And I’m a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."
"Thanks?"
"Doctor Banner is only here to track the Cube," Nick says as he enters the bridge area, his tone leaving no room for argument. "I was hoping you might join him."
"I’d start with that stick of his," Steve agrees. "It may be magical but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon."
"What's HYDRA?" Celeste whispers, not wanting everyone to know how out of the loop she is.
"A terrorist organization," Natasha whispers back. "They started out as Nazis back when Cap was first around."
"I don’t know about that, but it is powered by the Cube," Fury remarks. "And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."
"Monkeys?" Thor pipes up. "I do not understand-"
"I do!" Steve interrupts, growing excited. Everyone grows silent, their eyes falling on the super soldier. "I- I understood that reference."
"Shall we play, Doctor?" Tony asks.
"This way, sir."
Bruce and Tony walk off, and Celeste looks around, a frown falling upon her face.
"He never answered my smoothie question."
"Miss Wilson," Phil calls out to her from the entryway. She spins in her seat, offering the agent a kind smile. "They're ready for you in the labs.
"Awesome!" She rejoices, jumping to her feet. Natasha shoots her a questioning look, to which she explains. "I told Coulson earlier that I'd like to get some blood work done, to find out more about my genetics and powers."
"While you do that, I think I'm going to pay our guest a little visit," she admits, walking with her to the doors. "Good luck."
"I think I should be saying that to you."
"Nah, all it takes is skill."
Celeste merely nods, unsure as to whether or not she should doubt her newfound friend's confidence.
She had never really put much thought towards her biological parents, but Phil's questions from the other day had made her curious. She wanted to know more - not necessarily about her parents, but about how her powers came to be.
Following Phil, he leads her down the hallway and to a lab with large glass doors. On the other side of the hall, she can see Tony and Bruce through identical doors, studying holographic screens. As she steps into the sterile lab, a scientist is quick to greet them.
"Right this way, Miss Wilson," he promplty instructs, all but snatching her from Phil's side and pushing her into a white chair. "I'm Doctor Scott. Do you have any questions before we start?"
"How long will it take?" She asks. "To have any results, I mean."
"Anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks," he answers honestly, holding up a sterilized needle. "It really depends on how quickly we can find a genetic match."
Celeste nods quietly, removing the glove from her left hand and rolling up her suit's sleeve as far as she could manage.
"I'm going to extract two vials of your blood. We learned the hard way that it's better to have too much than not enough," Dr. Scott continues, earning a chuckle from Phil. Celeste glances between them, not understanding what the joke is supposed to be. "Are you ready?"
"As I'll ever be."
The woman turns her head, wanting to look anywhere but at the blood flowing from her arm as he inserts the needle. She could defy gravity and perform stunts over a hundred feet above the ground, but the second blood is involved, her stomach couldn't handle itself.
Glancing around, she briefly makes eye contact with Tony through the sliding glass doors. His curious mind is quick to dismiss his work and walk away from his lab, dragging a confused Bruce with him.
"We really should be working on-"
"I think it's time for a break," Tony dismisses Bruce's concerns with a wave of his hand as they walk towards Celeste. "We earned it, we've been working hard."
"For barely ten minutes!"
"Minor details." He shrugs his shoulders. "Now, what's going on here?"
"DNA results, hopefully," Celeste admits, watching as the billionaire's eyes instantly light up.
If blood tests are on the table, we could-
"Don't be getting any ideas," Phil warns, as if reading his mind as well. "We've got enough on our hands."
"But-"
"No."
"Just hear me-"
"No!"
"No one let's me have my fun," Tony grumbles.
"What were you two doing?" Celeste asks Bruce, still attempting to keep her thoughts distracted.
"I was just telling Banner here about the stress free environments at Stark Tower," Tony says for him as he promplty zaps Bruce in the side.
"Ow!"
"Hey!" Steve barks, joining the group.
"Nothing?" Tony questions Bruce.
"Are you nuts?"
"Jury's out!" He retorts, turning his attention back to Bruce. "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?"
Celeste stiffles a giggle at the bickering men, both being a better distraction than she had originally hoped for.
"Is everything a joke to you?"
"Funny things are."
"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny," Steve argues. "No offense, Doc."
"No, it's alright," Bruce reassures him. "I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things."
"You're tip-toeing, big man," Tony adds. "You need to strut."
"And you need to focus on the problem, Mister Stark."
"And you're done," Dr. Scott says, removing the needle and securing the second vial of blood. "Be sure to drink plenty of juice."
"Shh," she warns in a whisper. "I want to see how this plays out first."
She sits back in the chair, watching the trio as though their a reality show. Dr. Scott shares a look with Phil, who just shrugs and follows behind him as they take her blood to a different room.
"You think I'm not?" Tony scoffs. "Why did Fury call us in? Why now, why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."
"You think Fury's hiding something?" Steve raises a skeptical brow.
"He's a spy, Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets." He retorts, gesturing towards Bruce. "It's bugging him too, isn't it?"
"Uh, um-" Bruce stutters, not enjoying being put in the spotlight. "I just wanna finish my work here and-"
"Doctor?" Steve cuts him off.
"A warm light for all mankind," he quotes Loki. "Loki's jab at Fury about the Cube."
"I heard it."
"Well, I think that was meant for you." Bruce gestures to Tony, who offers him a blueberry as he pulls a package of them from his pocket. "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news."
"The Stark Tower? That big, ugly,-" Steve stops himself as Tony gives him an agitated look. "Building in New York?"
"It's powered by an arc reactor, self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for, what, a year?"
"It's just the prototype," Tony brags. "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now, that's what he's getting at."
"So, why didn’t SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project?" Bruce furthers his thought process. "What are they even doing in the energy business in the first place?"
"I should probably look into that as soon as my decryption program finishes breaking into all of SHIELD’s secure files."
"I’m sorry did you say-"
"JARVIS has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours I’ll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide. Blueberry?"
"I want in on this!" Celeste states excitedly.
Bruce jumps, having forgotten she was there. Steve gives her a disapproving glance as Tony high-fives her.
"See? Here's someone who knows how to have fun.
"Yet you’re confused about why they didn’t want you around," Steve huffs.
"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome."
"I think Loki’s trying to wind us
up. This is a man who means to
start a war and if we don’t stay
focused, he’ll succeed. We have
orders, we should follow them."
"Following’s not really my style."
"And you’re all about style, aren’t you?"
"Out of the people in this room,
which one is A. wearing a spangly outfit and B. not of use?"
"Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?" Bruce interjects.
"Just find the Cube," Steve sighs, ending the conversation as he storms out.
"That's the guy my dad never shut up about?" Tony wonders aloud as he and Bruce walk back to their lab. "Wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice."
Celeste frowns as she finds herself alone in the lab, unsure of what to do with herself. Pushing herself to her feet, she immediately has to come to a halt, an overwhelming sensation of dizziness washing over her.
Clutching a nearby counter, she reaches for one of the juice pouches Dr. Scott left out for her. The doors open yet again, this time revealing Natasha and Thor.
"Come on, we need to keep all eyes on Banner," she says, locked into her professional mode. "That's Loki's play."
Too busy drinking her juice to say anything, Celeste quickly follows them into the other lab, where tensions are rising at an alarming rate. Nick, Steve, Bruce, and Tony all turn to face them.
"Did you know about this?" Bruce asks Natasha.
"You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?" She questions in return.
Bruce chuckles. "I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed."
"Loki’s manipulating you."
"And you’ve been doing what exactly?"
"You didn’t come here because I bat my eyelashes at you."
"Yes, and I’m not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy. I’d like to know why SHIELD is
using the Tesseract to build
weapons of mass destruction."
"Because of him," Nick answers, pointing at Thor.
"Me?" Thor asks, poking his own chest.
"Last year earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, out-gunned."
"My people want nothing but peace with your planet," Thor defends himself.
"But you’re not the only people out there, are you? And, you’re not the only threat. The world’s filling up with people who can’t be matched, they can’t be controlled."
"Like you controlled the cube!" Steve snaps.
"Your work with the Tesseract is
what drew Loki to it, and his
allies," Thor argues. "It is the signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war."
"A higher form?!" Steve's voice raises an octave.
"You forced our hand! We had to come up with some-"
"Nuclear deterrent!" Tony cuts Nick off. "’Cause that always calms everything right down."
"Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?" Nick retorts.
"I’m sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck deep-" Steve starts, only to be cut off.
"Wait-Wait! Hold on! How is this now about me?"
"I’m sorry, isn’t everything?"
"I thought humans were more evolved than this," Thor comments.
Everyone begins to chime in with their own opinions, continuously cutting each other off.
Celeste finds herself no longer listening as she clasps her hands over her ears, everyone's thoughts practically screaming inside her head as they continue to grow more hostile towards one another.
Nobody notices, still too busy shouting. She staggers backwards, her back hitting a counter as she attempts to soothe the raging war of thoughts in her own mind.
"It’s his MO, isn’t it?" Bruce is asking as Celeste focuses on her breathing. "I mean, what
are we, a team? No, no, no. We’re a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We’re- we’re a time bomb."
"You need to step away," Nick orders.
"Why shouldn’t the guy let off a
little steam?" Tony questions.
"You know damn well why!" Steve yells, not helping her head in the slightest. "Back off!"
"Oh, I’m starting to want you to
make me."
"Yeah, big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?"
"Genius, billionaire, playboy,
philanthropist."
"I know guys with none of that worth ten of you. I’ve seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you."
"I think I would just cut the wire."
"Always a way out. You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero."
"A hero, like you? You’re a
laboratory experiment, Rogers.
Everything special about you came out of a bottle."
"Put on the suit, let’s go a few
rounds." Steve smirks.
Thor laughs. "You people are so petty, and tiny."
"Yeah, this is a team," Bruce snarks.
Agent Romanoff, would you escort Dr. Banner back to his-"
"WHERE?" He yells. "YOU RENTED MY ROOM!"
"The cell was just-"
"IN CASE YOU NEEDED TO KILL ME. BUT YOU CAN’T, I KNOW, I TRIED!"
He stops and everyone is staring at him. Celeste nearly collapses in relief as everything dies down, finally able to hear her own thoughts as the group forgets their arguments and focus on Bruce.
"I got low. I didn’t see an end so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out. So I moved
on, I focused on helping other
people. I was good until you
dragged me back into this freak
show and put everyone here at risk," Bruce explains. "You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff? You wanna know how I stay calm?"
"Doctor Banner," Steve behind calmly. "Put down the scepter."
Bruce glances down, surprised to see the scepter in his hands. Celeste furrows her eyebrows together, not having seen him lift it in the first place.
One of the monitors beep as he puts it back down, showing a picture of the Tesseract. Bruce moves across the room, putting distance between him and the scepter, as well as studying the monitor.
"Got it!" Nick declares.
"Sorry, kids," Bruce jokes darkly. "You don't get to see my party trick after all."
"Located the Tesseract?" Thor asks.
"I can get there faster," Tony states.
"Look, all of us-"
"The Tesseract belongs on Asgard," Thor says. "No human is a match for it."
Tony turns to leave but Steve holds him back.
"You're not going alone!"
Tony smacks his hand away. "You gonna stop me?"
"Put on the suit. Let's find out."
"I'm not afraid to hit an old man."
"Put on the suit."
"Could you please lower your hostility?" Celeste requests. "It's giving me one hell of a headache."
An explosion hits the side of helicarrier, throwing everybody. Celeste cries out as she's thrown into the hallway, the busted countertop landing on top of her.
"Son of a bitch!"