Well ain't this a mess," Fury's voice echoed out of her phone and into her ear, the tone one of mildly contained disappointment. Bobby was briefly annoyed, it wasn't like this was the typical set up that SHIELD Agents were used to dealing with. People like Blonsky didn't grow on trees, so there wasn't really anyone with the experience needed to deal with them.
"Sir, I can exp-"
"I don't blame you agent, Blonsky going off the deep end like that wasn't exactly on the itinerary."
"Still his physical prowess was far beyond what I was told Ross's project had ever reached," Agent Morse added, her voice still low. "I wouldn't mind being able to move like that in my late 40s."
Fury's sudden chuckle brought her away from the potential daydreams of Captain America feats.
"I wouldn't try it if I were you," The Director warned. "Blonsky was cleared by SHIELD before this, we were thinking of bringing him on to train students in the academy. The serum that Ross used on him… it's made him far too unstable."
"Sterns actually has some ideas about that, sir," Morse responded. "He thinks that some of the research that he's done on Banner could be used to replicate Blonsky's results without those… berserk issues."
"We're going to leave that up to the Eggheads in the labs to discuss for now," The man replied, his bland tone hiding the excitement that he truly felt for the idea. "For now, just keep the man from creating a Hulk dog, We don't need another disaster in New York City."
Suddenly the man shifted gears in the conversation, his tone taking on the far more professional quality he known for.
"What's your reading on the kid?"
That was the main reason behind letting Doyle find out about Banner and Ross's current situation after all. To see what he'd do, while at the same time putting the checks that SHIELD thought that they could use against him if he turned out to be dangerous in more than just his potential for destruction.
"Doyle's pretending that he's not bothered by being revealed. He'd prefer if the attention wasn't on him, So we don't have to worry that he's another Stark."
"But he also still published the article on Ross," Fury added. "It was pushed back to page 2, but it will ruin the man. No amount of favors is going to get him out of this hole. That's not the most casual of responses toward a man that he didn't know."
Fury left it unsaid that the page 1 story was about Doyle himself, it hadn't revealed much other than how he had woken up with these powers one day and how he was disinterested in abusing them.
"He doesn't like bullies." She responded simply before adding her own feelings on the matter. "I don't blame him, neither do I."
The two of them remained silent, there was a rush of movement coming from the streets around Bobbi, the woman staying alert all throughout the conversation for any sign of danger, just as she was trained for.
"Still his new public life will be more hectic for our would-vigilante, you think the kid's up for it?"
"I don't think he'll like it but thanks to us, his other secrets have been covered up. So he only has to worry that people know all about his powers and not… his mysterious arrival to our little neck of the woods."
"I'll notify the Council that I've gotten a candidate for the Avengers program all lined up. I had been worried after Stark, that I wouldn't be able to get a single man cleared for the duty."
"Would they even let an Alien join?" The Agent questioned, using the commonly held theory among those Agents that knew about Doyle's existence since before his true reveal to the world. The World Security Council members currently on the board weren't the most accepting of outside factors.
"Who says that I'll tell them," In response to Fury's words Morse quietly laughed. "Now, I'll be out of contact for the next few days. Something's come up that needs my personal attention. If you need any back up or further orders then contract Coulson, he's returning from New Mexico."
With that, the call ended leaving the Agent to return to her safe house where Dr. Sterns was still complaining about his current lack of a lab, something about how the young Doyle's durability had sparked a remarkable idea.
Bobbi didn't really care about any of that, she just didn't want Sterns to go out and get himself noticed by the wrong sorts. That would just be what she needs, the man to get himself picked up by some criminal organization in an attempt to create more Hulks, or at least Hulk rats, which he had apparently created briefly, after having transformed into a green monster once, they returned to their forms before dying.
Sterns was the picture of a mad scientist, so Morse was only too happy that SHIELD had gotten their hands on him before someone like Ross had. The world didn't need an army of Hulks.
(Ben Urich)
It wasn't the paper title that he had expected the day before, proclaiming that the Bulletin had a super-powered reporter working for them. Since there weren't any cases of Doyle using his powers, that could be proved to him, so the kid's secret identity remained secret.
So it wasn't a complete disaster, just a pain in the ass.
"Doris," he called out, stepping into his apartment with a light step. "Honey, I'm home."
"She ain't here, gone out to the shop!" Pat's Irish accent was on full display as Ben rounded the corner and entered the kitchen. "Not sure what Doris needed but maybe she just wanted some air?"
Mrs. Urich was the type of person that loved to take long walks out on the New York streets, the kind of person that would pop the window of a car open so she'd get the wind blowing in her hair no matter the weather, barring the worst that New York had to offer. Luckily for them, the area that they lived in was one of the calmer ones, though with the number of paparazzi hanging about in the neighborhood it was oddly even safer than before.
Not many people wanted to try mugging someone or holding up while they could get caught on some camera.
"Right," Ben sighed, picking up the kettle from one of the worktops and pouring water from the tap into it. It wasn't long before he was sitting down at the table.
The two fell into a comfortable silence until a thought crossed Ben's mind.
"So you got any plans today?" The man smirked. "Hanging out with that young… redhead friend of yours?"
Pat simply shook his head, his eyes roaming around the room as if there were other people that could be listening in on their conversation. For a second Ben actually became worried about that possibility, if the young man with the power to see through walls appeared to be worried then… wouldn't it be safe to assume that there could be?
Soon that worry disappeared as Pat leaned forward in his chair and spoke.
"Nah, I was thinking of checking on Doctor Octavius's arraignment today," Doyle responded instead, scratching his chin as he started to eat a ham sandwich.
"Expecting trouble?" Urich found himself amused at the level of threat that the young boy seemed to think that now unarmed woman still had. From what he knew about the justice system, with that woman's level of skills, Octavius wouldn't be allowed even a plastic fork.
Nevermind the materials she'd need to break out.
"Let's put it this way," The younger man waved his arm out in a circular motion in front of Ben's face as if he was describing the action of a madwoman by hand signs. "I'm not a hundred percent sure about this… but from what I know, her experiment could've ended all life on this Earth."
Ben was lucky that there was a table so close to his hand, otherwise, he'd be down one less cup. The very idea that his young friend proposed was insane… but not any more insane than a young man from another universe with extraordinary powers showing up one day and saving his life.
"How did you figure that out?" Ben's curious mind couldn't draw up the will to stop himself from asking the question.
"It's simple physics, the Bleed between universes isn't too dissimilar to the void of space," he started to explain, his hands shoving the sandwich into his mouth and devouring it within a second. "The lack of anything else means once there's a hole that connects normal space with the Bleed… well, we're a balloon and she wanted to poke a hole in it."
"So… like a black hole?"
"I think so," Doyle shrugged. "To tell the truth, her calculation and theories are more than a little bit more advanced than I can understand."
It was an admission that caused Pat to flinch slightly as if it was painful to admit or more likely, the science involved in the task was so confusing that he found it annoying. With Doyle, either one could be true.
By the time Doris came back from the store, Doyle was already out the door and off to the arraignment. Ben's mind bounced to Doyle's newfound fame at this point, wondering how the kid would grow from being forced to reveal himself to the world.
Urich was just glad that the kid wasn't going to go around in that costume he'd made.
(Dr. Olivia Octavius)
She took a deep breath, letting the musty air of the holding cell fill her nostrils. It was a wet place, Olivia could smell the mold that was growing on the ceiling, a health risk someone of her mind would've never allowed if they'd had been any choice.
"Ah, is the big bad, Doc Ock scared that her arraignment has arrived?"
Her cellmate started to tease, some small-time moron that had been caught shoplifting a few days before. With all the ruckus that New York had been going through in this past week, it wasn't surprising that there were a few Defence Lawyers ready to represent her, so Olivia had gotten to know her cellmate, Anne, very well.
A grade F moron, if there ever was one.
"So my eyes are closed and you think that I'm scared?" Olivia was annoyed, the other woman hadn't shut her mouth in hours. "Next you'll think snores are a sign that I'm in pain."
"You making fun of me, Doc?" The Scientist could hear the bed above her squeak as Anne moved to glare down at her. "Because for a woman without her special arms, you sure do talk smack!"
With that Anne leaped from the top bunk, the loud noise forcing Olivia to open her eyes and give the woman a hard stare.
"If I was making fun of you, I'd make fun of the way your left eye squints more than the right, and how you smell like eggs if they were put into a jar of mayonnaise and left out in the sun too long."
"That's it!" Anne rolled up her sleeves but stopped at the combination of the Doctor's sudden smile and her hand raising up. "Saying sorry won't stop what I'm about to do to your skinny ass!"
"Oh, no I'm not saying sorry. I'm just warning you to take a step to the left… things will be less messy if you do that."
Olivia's left hand was out in the air, pointing Anne towards a section of the cell that wasn't bathed in the sunlight of the window. The small-time criminal didn't even have the time to shrug before something crashed through said window and splattered her remains around the room.
"I did warn you," Olivia sang, getting off of her bed and walking towards the large metal cylinder that had killed the other woman. She wiped the blood from her glasses with the sleeve of her prison uniform. "But it seems that you… are just another person too stupid to recognize my brilliance."
As she came within a foot of the device, it opened up, tentacles springing out of the surface and attaching to her spine in a smooth motion. There were only the smallest flinches that formed on the woman's face as the tentacles started to snap away at the air around her.
It was only then that the station's sirens started to wail, signaling the coming guards that were running down the hall at this very second. She turned towards the device quickly, knowing that a single lucky bullet could be the end for her.
"The fools underestimated the power that my advanced science has granted me," she opened a panel, a blinking light awaited her vision, along with a series of buttons that the woman pressed so fast that one would wonder about the possible mistakes she could make.
Olivia had this backup plan in mind the moment that her tests and experiments had reached beyond the theory stage, knowing that the ignorant world would never accept the risk needed to progress. So it was good that she'd sent off the pod before her main plan had failed.
A smarter person would've known the scorch marks on the roof of her apartment couldn't have come from the experiment but thankfully for her, neither the SHIELD Agents nor the powerful alien named Doyle realized this.
It was as the guards came into view, their pistols drawn and their voices screaming at her to stand down… that the Doctor finished inputting the commands on her device. The resulting action appeared to be an explosion so big that it took out the guards and left no trace of either the cell or the deadly Doctor Octopus, only a massive hole where they once were.
But miles away, the sound of metal cracking against the pavement of rooftops could be heard ringing out. The Doc was on the loose.
Author's Note: How are things doing, I know that it's been a little while since I have updated this story but have no fear, I have not abandoned you! I was just flexing my creative muscles so I wouldn't burn out on this story.
But that's not the point, I only;y hope that the long wait for this doesn't sour since this is only a short interlude.
Next, I'd like to proclaim that the story I will be updating soon is a Game Of Daggers and Magic. Then after that, the story will be decided by a straw poll that I've already posted up;