CHAPTER THREE

Some people were just immune to the fear of death. There were heroes that felt that what they were doing was worth the risk, indestructible beings that honestly didn't have to worry about it, and individuals that simply wanted to die. Bruce Banner fell in the last two categories--he hoped he'd be able to achieve the first one, someday. In his case, he was terrified of something that was much worse than death, which was peaceful and didn't physically hurt anyone else. Eternal blackness paled in comparison to the green rage he felt smoldering within him.

With a flock of missiles rushing to greet them, Bruce had told the cops to move, quickly. But he hadn't budged an inch. No, he had bigger things to worry about. Running would have meant giving in to his adrenaline and admitting that things were getting out of control, creating an opening for the Hulk to awaken. That kind of chaos-inspired psychological momentum was just as potent as anger, in terms of triggering his darker half. But standing still gave him a fifty-fifty shot--if one of the missiles hit him, the transformation would take place, if not, he'd be okay. This all passed through his mind in the span of maybe two seconds. And then the missiles impacted with the ground, doing their best earthquake impression and creating lethal clouds that looked like the kind of air volcanoes breathed. Both Bruce and the two cops were sent sailing.

He woke up ten minutes later, facedown in the dirt. After spitting some out, he managed to roll over and assess the situation: his clothes were intact, so he hadn't become the Hulk. The cops were nowhere in sight. Eric (or the being formerly known as Eric, anyway) was also absent, and the equipment he'd gathered had been destroyed by one of the missiles. There were bonfires at random intervals. Bruce couldn't help but notice an audio tableau that consisted of gunfire, explosions, screams, helicopters, horns, jet-engines, and sirens, but the dust-and-smoke mixture still prevented him from seeing anything beyond their urban wilderness. He wasn't on fire, so the missile hadn't hit him directly…he'd most likely been knocked off his feet by the force of the blasts. It hurt, but not as much as having your skeletal structure distorted into the shape of a creature much larger than yourself, so he rolled to his side and pushed himself up.

Unfortunately, he was right where he'd left off--in a situation that he hadn't yet come up with a solution for. Force was out the window, since the authorities weren't equipped to take down Eric, and it wasn't like Bruce could make him get on a table so he could study him and figure out how to bring back the old Eric. Trying to reason with him didn't seem promising, either. Bruce had some theories about what Eric had done to his mind, and he'd never been much of a debater, anyway. No, Bruce had always been an individualist, the kind that didn't care if anyone agreed with him…he'd never seen the appeal in trying to win over people to his viewpoint. Outside of presenting scientific facts and an interpretation of those facts, he had no idea how to convince someone that he was right. There were probably a lot of good reasons to hang around humanity, but Bruce wasn't the best person to ask about that, since he tried to avoid them as much as he could.

And then there was the Hulk. Bruce thought about what would happen if he ended up being unable to fight off the transformation. If Eric triggered him, for some reason…could the Hulk defeat Eric? Probably. Would he make the situation infinitely more unpredictable and explosive? Absolutely. Maybe the Hulk would kill him. Maybe he'd just beat him up and then take off, leaving him in the hands of a military-industrial complex that loved to genetically stripmine superhumans for "national security" reasons, robbing Bruce of a chance to cure him. (If Eric were captured, Bruce would never be able to get near him, again.) And if the military triggered him…maybe the Hulk would suggest to Eric that they team up and take them on together. So, it was up to Bruce--and if force and reasoning weren't options, he'd have to outsmart him, somehow.

Bruce walked over to the remains of the technology cache--just as he'd feared, the vast majority of Eric's equipment had been destroyed. Some of the new tech that the grid had gathered was still intact, but not what Eric had used to change himself. The easiest way to undo a scientific procedure? Just modify what was used to do it. But now, that wasn't a possibility. Still, what was his goal, here? If changing him back wasn't immediately plausible (no equipment, an unwilling patient), he'd have to settle for getting him to stay in this dimension. From there, maybe they could find a way to escape, and get to a place where Bruce would have the resources to figure out more about Eric's condition. Maybe Paula could convince him not to leave. Making all that work seemed unlikely, but he couldn't think of a better route.

A nearby scream cut through the air. After running through the likelihoods of various scenarios, Bruce grabbed some of the more advanced medical supplies that had ended up in the pile of tech, and ventured off in the direction the scream had come from. He made his way around fires and giant basement-holes in the ground. After going about two blocks, he found the source: the black cop from earlier. He was flat on his back, coughing and semiconscious. The skin of one shoulder had been forcefully torn, revealing shrapnel that was drenched in throbbing, oozing crimson. Scorch-marks were on the front of his shirt. The missile had "missed him"--the fire it had started was a good ten feet away--but the shrapnel and explosion hadn't. His partner, the Hispanic woman, was just now realizing that their patrol car (and the first-aid kit in its trunk) had gone up in smoke. She looked understandably panicked. Upon seeing Bruce, she drew her gun.

"GET AWAY FROM HIM, FREAK!!"

Without looking at her (he was inspecting the injury), he said, "You can react emotionally, or you can help me save your partner's life."

After she'd lowered her gun and stepped aside, Bruce knelt down by him, laid out what he'd brought from the pile, and checked his vitals. With a flat tone of voice, he asked her to cradle his head in her hands and keep it tilted up. He then took the prototypical med-tech (some of it was of Eric's design, some was from an R&D lab) and went to work. First, he injected a safe dosage of painkillers. After removing the shrapnel and cleaning out the wound, he simultaneously numbed and sterilized it with a device that kind of looked like a taser. Bruce sprinkled a chemical powder that would eat up any nitro-residue that the missile had left behind…then, he mixed together a concoction that would cleanse his lungs of the smoke he'd inhaled. The cop drank it. He was given an oxygen-mask. After bandaging his shoulder, Bruce checked him for other injuries, with his eyes and hands and with some kind of scanner.

Her hands had started shaking just a few moments after Bruce started doing all this, because they had company. Clayface touched down about a hundred feet away. He had a massive device of some kind floating behind him, which landed right after he did. He glanced at the pile of destroyed technology, telekinetically reconstructed what he needed, and drew it to him. He was assembling something. SHIELD armored vehicles emerged from the barrier of dust, surrounding them and taking up positions at the far edges of the ruined neighborhood. She could hear their weapons powering up. Bruce also noticed this, but he just told her to keep her hands steady, continuing to work as if nothing unusual was happening.

She shook her head absently. "We're gonna die…"

"One problem at a time."

"It just--it isn't fair. He has a girlfriend."

"He'll live. You both will. You'd be amazed at how good we can be at surviving, whether we want to or not."

She gave him a weird look. Then, she settled in and waited to be caught in the crossfire…but nothing happened. "Why are they hesitating?"

"Because of me--they don't want to trigger the Hulk. So, we have a little time to work with."

"How much time?"

"Enough." Bruce stood up, covering him with a thermal blanket in the process. He quickly checked on how far along Eric was with his portal. "Now, it's your turn. Are you hurt anywhere?"

"My stomach kinda hurts--I think I fell on an edge or something, after the missiles hit."

"Take off your shirt."

"Um…"

"Give me your radio and take off your shirt. Modesty and medicine are mutually-exclusive."

"All those SHIELD guys are watching, I don't--"

"So you'd rather risk internal bleeding than let someone see you in a bra." She reluctantly untucked and unbuttoned her shirt, handing him her walkie-talkie. Though she was known as the precinct flirt, that was more of an exaggerated in-joke than anything…letting some crazy superhuman she'd just met see her in her (purple) bra wasn't her usual style.

"Just looks like a bruise." He jabbed at it in that annoying, painful way that doctors do, and then scanned it. "Nothing broken, no bleeding--you're all clear." Bruce considered saying something about how people have a strange tendency to get hung up over social niceties in life-or-death situations, but, he held his tongue. He once again checked on Eric, who was continuing to construct the portal. Eric had just created a blob of plasma out of thin air, it would act as a power-source…he encased it in the ion-chamber and hooked the chamber up to the rest of what he'd built.

As she pulled her shirt back on, she asked, "Why do you want my walkie?"

"Here's why." He clicked it on and waited a few seconds. Then, into it, "I'm assuming that someone from SHIELD is monitoring this frequency. I'd like to talk with you."

"This is Assistant Commander Gravis, Dr. Banner."

"Two things: first, you need to get these cops out of here. One is seriously injured. Second, I'm assuming that you're thinking about shooting, and I wouldn't recommend it. If the ion-chamber is ruptured, you could take out the entire city--and if you screw up the containment field after he turns it on, the portal could spread. It'd be the Kang-Moscow incident all over again."

"If you agree to surrender to us, we'll absolutely consider that."

"I'm not surrendering."

There was silence; he assumed they were having a little confab. Then, "Do you know anything about the explosions?"

"Which explosions?"

"Didn't you hear 'em?"

"I heard a lot of explosions, but I assumed they were coming from either your people or him."

"Some of 'em weren't us, and we aren't sure if they were Clayface, either."

"…'Clayface'?"

"So you have no idea."

"Are you coming to get these cops or not?"

"Hang on."

The female cop got his attention. "Is it safe for him, with all this dust in the air? Could it have gotten into his wound?"

"The bandages should keep it out. And one of the devices I used was to--"

The handheld radio crackled. "Dr. Banner, we're gonna pick up those cops."

"Go right ahead."

"That's it for us," Bruce told her. Without asking, he unclipped the radio's power-unit from her belt and took the whole thing with him, walking off towards Clayface. By the time she realized that she hadn't thanked him or even asked if he was okay (he looked pretty pale and sickly), he was out of earshot. Bruce couldn't help but notice that the SHIELD divisions seemed a little thinner than usual…he'd seen them surround people (including himself) before, and they usually brought a lot more to the party.

The radio spoke to him once again: "What are--Dr. Banner, we'd really appreciate it if you'd stay away from Clayface…"

"I know." He kept going. Though he'd already given them two good reasons not to attack, he wanted to add a third--if they hadn't wanted to risk triggering the Hulk when he was a hundred feet away, surely, they wouldn't do it if he was standing right next to Eric.

A quick look over his shoulder verified that they were retrieving the cops. (They'd ventured out with a jeep and a stretcher.) As he neared the work-in-progress portal device, it got disproportionately bigger--new technology was appearing out of nowhere, floating over to it, reconfiguring, and hooking up, while Eric just hovered and watched. The intricate framework was now the size of a small building, with a huge, triangular screen front and center. Metal grille stairs led up to it. Clayface actually took notice of Bruce, as he got close.

After looking it over, Bruce said, "So, since you have a lot of different pieces of equipment--which don't all run on the same kind of power--you reconfigured the ion-chamber to contain your power-source and act as a universal adapter. Nice."

Clayface once again grew a mouth to say, "Thank you."

"What's it running on?"

"I have some plasma. I can generate that, now."

"Interesting."

"Getting what I needed, one piece at a time, was taking too long. So I decided to teleport it in."

Bruce noticed the corporate logos on the new additions; the nearest places that produced some of them were hundreds of miles away--so his senses covered a lot of ground. "It's good that you put the plasma in the ion-chamber…if it became unstable, that kind of power could take out everyone in the city. But the chamber would muffle the blast. I'm glad that you thought ab--"

"What's an 'everyone'? I just didn't want it to blow up and damage the rest of the equipment. I'd waste valuable seconds putting it back together. I want to leave as soon as possible."

"…I see." SHIELD could start attacking any second, Bruce knew he had to hurry up and figure something out, but he was also working to keep the Hulk in. The more tension there was in the air, the easier it was for the transformation to occur. Nodding his head toward the armored convoy, "I think they want to talk to you."

"Who?"

"SHIELD."

"What's a--"

"The humans."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"They can do whatever they want. I don't really care, I haven't thought about them in quite a while."

"I still think we should wait for your sister to get here."

"I still don't know what you're talking about."

Bruce started to try a new approach when a second round of explosions went off--they were far away, blowing out skyscraper windows and detonating cars. To his ears, they sounded like bombs. The sound had made everyone jump: Bruce had initially thought it was SHIELD firing, and SHIELD had initially thought it was Clayface attacking. One jittery rookie was startled so much that his arm jerked, his vehicle's turret swerved, and he accidentally strafed the portal with force-grenades.

"HOLD YOUR FIRE!!"

One of them hit Bruce right in the chest. He went down and curled into a fetal position, shaking. Every single SHIELD agent held their breath.

In a voice that was Bruce Banner's, at least for the moment, he chanted, "Focus. Focus. Focus. Don't change. Don't change…"

Clayface automatically repaired the portion of the portal that had been damaged. He then gave a very ambiguous look to SHIELD, as if they'd finally done something to be worthy of his attention--or perhaps his wrath.

Still on the ground, Bruce whispered, "Don't--don't hurt them. Just keep working on your portal. You don't care about them, remember?"

Upon first seeing Bruce, Clayface's powerful senses had picked up on his experiences and personality. He knew that they both struggled with the genetically-unimpressive creatures that populated this planet; that they both just wanted to be left alone. "They hurt you. We're the same, and they hurt you."

"It doesn't matter."

As Clayface considered whether or not this so-called "humanity" deserved to exist, some of SHIELD's vehicles were forced to leave the scene, as they were needed to help deal with the fallout of these new blasts. Those that remained kept their sights set on Clayface. The portal's triangular screen began to have power directed to it, glowing a wavering black. Having used their third and final distraction, AIM discreetly targeted the rear of SHIELD's forces, preparing to strike. And Bruce couldn't do anything but struggle with himself.