Oh… shit," Agent Barton cried from his position holding Coulson against a wall. Loki didn't see much of a problem, while he had wanted the Doctor to stay in his human form till his brother Thor arrived, letting the beast run wild around the Helicarrier wasn't going to be much of a problem.
With practiced ease, Barton threw Coulson to the ground, his hands smoothly reaching back and pulling out a glowing silver arrow. It didn't take a second for it to be shot at the green beast, wherein mid-air it exploded out in the form of foam.
Loki instantly reached out, grabbing Dr. Ross with a free hand while pointing the Scepter out towards the Hulk as the foam filled and hardened around the creature till there was nothing but his green head poking out of the white mass.
"Quick Hardening foam," Barton explained as if Loki needed to be told what this foam was. "Its made for use if the Helicarrier receives major damage, keeps the air pressure stable. It's about-"
There was a growl and it rushed forward, tearing out of the foam as if it was a cream, with a roar of;
"BETTY!"
With the seasoned experience that came with over a thousand years of fighting by Thor's side, Loki threw the woman away, sliding under a wild swing of the Hulk that nearly crushed a wall when it impacted. From his new position behind the green beast, Loki did his own swinging, only his included the blade of his Scepter slicing into the thick flesh.
If the creature bled, Loki wasn't going to see it as it turned around and punched the Norse god so fast, so hard that when he finished blinking, Loki found himself in the lower levels of the Helicarrier.
He didn't pay attention to the human agents that were scurrying out of the room, one tried to take a shoot at him with a handgun but found, like many others, that such small caliber weapons had no chance against the durability of an Asgardian body. So that Agent left.
Loki decided not to bother with them, not when the Hulk could come down here at any moment.
For some reason despite the pain that the shapeshifter could feel running through his body, it was as if Loki had taken a cold shower, the world suddenly cleared. A single thought launched itself out of his mind and from his lips;
"This… has been a horrible plan, what was I thinking?"
The Norse God didn't have long to ponder that before the Hulk came crashing down into the room, his frame being showered in metal fragments while the good doctor's monstrous form huffed. The glare he was sending towards Loki was the stuff of legends.
"Out glares even Odin," Loki mentally sighed before climbing back to his feet, kicking the scepter back to his hand as he did so. "This was going to end up like this time I challenged a dwarf to a fight after a weekend drinking with Thor."
But it was then that Loki considered the history of the man before him. It was much like many other powerful new beings in the universe, mistreated, mistrusted… but not without some innocence that could be exploited. "Perhaps this didn't need to be a violent affair between us? Dr. Banner's intellect must be somewhere in that form."
"Now, I don't see why we can't-" Loki took a single step forward before the Hulk tackled him through a wall. That with a single straight punch… showed the young god that it wasn't just the glare that matched Odin.
(Louise O'Reilly: Stark Tower)
The two were at a back alley entrance to the building, the sort of entrance that they would use to bring in supplies rather than people. It was easy to bring Murdock in, which made a certain amount of sense since all the important stuff was either on the upper or basement floors of the building. Otherwise, it was just offices or apartments/penthouses.
"What… are you wearing?" There was a brief period of time where Louise hadn't believed Pat when he had told her that Murdock was blind. The man was just too good at moving and fighting for that to be believable to her… then she saw this.
And she could totally believe that this man was blind.
"What?" The blind lawyer gestured at his body, a cheap suit was fine enough in the tower but the really odd bit of fashion was the… the bright red scarf with yellow butterflies that covered the top half of his head. Louise was pretty sure that the man had stolen it from a store or something "It's a disguise."
"Aren't disguises meant to keep attention away from you?" She muttered, but while Murdock was sure to have heard her, he seemed to have let it slide. "You look like you just stole the first scarf that you could get your hands on."
"..."
"... You didn't?"
"I was in a rush, let's see you do better?"
"Certainly could see the colors better."
"So what are we looking at?" Murdock asked, quickly changing the subject to the matter at hand.
"Besides that, they're all holed up in Stark's penthouse, no idea," Louise shrugged, taking off her suit jacket, as it would be hard to move wearing it, and made her way towards the building stairwell. It would take longer but unlike the elevator, they couldn't be stuck in a box. "Not dumb enough to go nosing around by myself without a weapon while Miss Tentacle-Date-Rape is up there."
While they made their way up the stairs, Louise started to change into a pair of tracksuit pants that she was keeping in her bag. Usually, she wouldn't be so open in the company of a relative stranger like Murdock, but the man's blindness was making that feeling a non-factor.
"How good is your hearing?" The redhead found herself asking. "Can you hear how many people there on a floor from below?"
"Depends on how thick the floors are or how loud the people above are." he started to explain. "I'd also have an issue if there's music or heavy machines but usually I can get a general reading of what's going on. But buildings like this will make it real tough, they didn't cheap out."
Louise hummed, hopping over a couple of steps to keep pace with the vigilante.
"Did you at least bring something better than a pipe?"
"Yeah," The Lawyer reached into a backpack he had carried with him, taking out two long rods with metal prongs on the top. "Here."
"Where did you get a really long taser?"
"I didn't," Murdock replied smoothly. "I know a guy that's good enough with electronics to wire up a Stun Baton. Twist it to the left for a normal person, twist it to the right if you want to give more of a jolt. I wouldn't recommend it though, could burn through police armor, what it would do to skin I can't imagine."
"Why these and not a gun or something?"
Murdock paused mid-step and waved a hand in front of his face.
"Right… blind."
They reached the place where the stairwell ended, there were more floors but those were only accessible by the penthouse itself or by the elevator in a laboratory underneath. Murdock held a palm up toward Louise, stopping her from opening the door to the penthouse.
"Stay here," he warned her. "I'm not going to held responsible if you get-"
"Cut the crap." Louise couldn't help roll her eyes. "You already gave me the taser, I'm going with you. I doubt that you're good enough to take on a half-a-dozen armed men and whatever bots the doctor has with her."
"And you are?"
"Maybe."
Murdock took in an audible breath before his hand transitioned into holding three fingers up. Louise took this as the beginning of a count down, so she went back first towards a wall.
One finger down.
Two fingers down.
Three fingers down.
They burst open the door with a mutual kick, Murdock leaping into fry and rolled onto the ground to duck beneath the initial sights of the two armed mind-controlled agents. He kicked out their legs while he rolled, using the momentum from his leap to move forward all the same time.
Before they could recover Louise was next in the room, a jab to the upper chest with the stun rod left the two agents knocked unconscious.
"That was disappointing," Louise couldn't help but comment while taking away the sidearms from the down agents. "You would expect tha-"
"Hello!" Octavius's distinctive voice echoed out of a comms unit on one of the agent's chest. "Where's that latte? I swear you mind-controlled agents are so slow, it's like being stuck in Windows Vista again! I'm sticking with bots from here on out."
Louise glanced over to Murdock with a wide grin on her face.
(Hulk Vs Loki)
It was the first time in what felt like forever, the Hulk was free. But this freedom was always with a price, fighting Puny Banner's enemies. The man had more than a few encounters over the years, but if it wasn't the angry Military Man forcing Banner to free him, then it was some random punk that was wailing into the weakling.
These were times that Hulk was forced to act, but this was one of the few times that the Hulk acted with Banner.
Betty was endangered and wherever Betty was put in danger.
Hulk would be there to save her.
The first thing that the Hulk did was break through the weak foam and punt the little green wearing man into the floor. The man escaped through it somehow, so Hulk ripped apart the floor and went after the bad man.
The bad man said some words, speaking to himself before trying to say something to Hulk. But Hulk didn't stay alive by being passive, he'd learned from other fights that puny people liked to talk a lot to distract Hulk from whatever they were trying to do. So Hulk knew what he needed to do.
He tackled the little man through a wall… or more... maybe three of them.
It could've been six… the Hulk lost count after two.
They ended up in a room with many metal birds that the humans liked to ride to get to places. They always caused Hulk to wonder about the laziness of the puny humans.
The little green man somehow got free from Hulk's hold, appearing in front of one of the birds with a flash of light. He snapped the bottom of his scepter against the ground and glowed bright blue. More little men popped out of nowhere, surrounding hulk in a mass of bodies that would cause concern in a weaker being.
For Hulk… it just confused him.
"Come closer at your own risk," the little man furthest from Hulk warned. "I've humored your attempts at combat so far, but if you continue-"
Hulk didn't find the words to be persuasive, so he ran through the other little men and kicked the speaking one in the chin hard enough to send him bouncing off the ceiling and crashing back down into one of the metal birds.
The other men disappeared suddenly as if they were balloons that had popped from the sudden change in pressure.
"Why… does that never work?" The little green man groaned as he slowly stood up. "Death by a thousand cuts it is."
But Hulk was never known to wait around for his enemies to attack him, not in the middle of a fight anyway. So he barreled forward in an attempt to level a barrage of punches at the man. But the man still had some swiftness to him.
He rolled out of the way so that Hulk's fist finished off the remains of the bird in a fiery explosion rather than crush him. The flames didn't seem to affect the little man, who twirled into a stance, a fiery blue blast launching from the tip of the man's scepter.
It splashed against Hulk's chest with enough force that the green giant was knocked back several steps. There was a smell of burnt flesh that filled Hulk's nostrils while being accompanied by a poof of smoke.
"That… hurt?" Hulk loudly proclaimed, his large green fingers poking at a wound. "Little man hurt Hulk?" His confusion erupted into a searing hot rage. "HULK BREAK LITTLE MAN!"
In a green blur of movement, Hulk picked up an intact metal bird and threw it at the little man with all the force he could muster. It bounced through the hangar, Loki ducking under it when it came towards him. It crashed into the hangar doors with enough force that they buckled under the weight and came loose.
Loki bolted towards Hulk, hitting speeds that the green giant had only seen from some vehicles. Quick reaction speed let the green giant grab for the man, but the man moved faster, sliding between Hulk's legs and leaving shallow cuts at the back of his ankles.
Hulk roared, swinging wildly behind him as he turned on a dime, only to find that Scepter was pointing right at him and already sending a long stream of blue energy into his eyes. The pain was greater than anything else that the Hulk had ever felt before.
Which meant that it was the equivalent to the pain of being punched to a normal person.
Hulk responded the same way that one would hide their eyes from sun on a bright day, his free hand gesturing out in powerful motions. They were such powerful swings that Loki needed to leap back several paces to keep himself from being bounced off a wall.
"Littleman annoys Hulk!" The giant gave up on swinging at the man, instead, he rolled up his shoulders while shutting his eyes and slamming his hands together in a massive bang. Loki found himself on his back, his head hitting against the floor with a wet and meaty whump. "Hulk smash littleman!"
Loki's eyes caught a glint of steel shining off the lights of the hangar, his hand just about reaching a large chain before the Hulk wrapped his large hand around the Norse god's leg. A single thought ran through Loki's head at this.
"Oh… no."
With a display that would impress the greatest weightlifters of the world, Hulk picked up Loki and slammed him back into the ground, swinging the littleman from the left to the right while moving towards the open hanger doors.
Hulk ignored the jingles that came with the motion, figuring that it came from the metal on the armor hitting the floor. When he finally got to the doors, he slammed the man once more against the reinforced metal, letting blood leak out from him before flinging him off the Hellicarrier with enough force that he was bound to meet the horizon.
"HULK STRONGER THAN PUNY GOD!" The Gamma-powered superhuman roared in victory, the darkened patches on his skin showcasing to the world that this was a tougher fight than he usually found himself in. "HULK STRONGE-"
It was then that Loki's plan finally came into play, the chain that he had only just barely managed to grab now wrapped around Hulk's neck. Pulling the Hulk out of the hangar with all the force that was used in throwing the Norse god out of there.
With a final roar, Hulk flew off in the same direction that he had thrown Loki, tapering off much sooner, due to his greater mass, and starting towards the ground below the Helicarrier. It was then that he caught the glint of blue flying past him in the sky.
It was the scepter, trapped in the talons of the largest bird that Hulk had ever seen. It was black and white, its wingspan a full eight feet wide. The part of him that was still Bruce Banner supplied that it was a Harpy Eagle, but to Hulk, it was just Big Meat Bird.
Hulk screamed in rage as he recognized the flash of light that came with the Littleman shapeshift. But he was too far away to notice the man hunch over and cough up enough blood to worry a human doctor.
He was too far away to notice the gleam in Loki's eyes when Agent Barton caught up with him, the gleam of panic as if he had only just realized where he was and what he was doing. But then all that panic was replaced with a stern smile.
One that promised that the Norse god was going to have fun.
(Doctor Octavius)
"There you are," She didn't even bother to turn, instead using the sensors that her new armor had to tell that the mook had finally come back into the room."Did you remember that I wanted no sugars, just milk right?"
"Yes, Ma'am," The familiar voice gave the Doctor enough concern that she turned around to face the man. It didn't sound like one of the agents that Barton had left behind, but it was still recognizable. He was scruffy, but less in an unshaven manner and more in a hurriedly dressed way someone would be when they slept in their clothes. "No sugar, just milk."
HIs voice had a lovely timbre, another marker of concern. It was far too emotive to be one of the agents that she'd been working with for the past day. The mind control appeared to have sucked any wit and personality from most people infected.
Except for Barton and Selvig, those two had become devout believers of some "Truth". It was like a cult for those two, constant talk about the "Truth" and what the Tesseract would show the world soon. It was more than annoying and Octavius hoped that this agent wasn't like those two.
"Better to focus him on a task," Doc Ock thought quickly. "Good, good, check Morse's restraints," she ordered, pointing a tentacle. "I don't want any incidents going on when I start to open the portal-" The woman paused suddenly. "-But loosen her gag again, I want to gloat some more."
"Yes, ma'am."
Looking at the man closely, Octavius couldn't help but notice the way that his eyes blankly searched around the room. It was as if the man was mimicking looking at things, but couldn't actually see them.
To test, she slowly sent out a tentacle towards him, once it reached his eye line, then she'd know what she'd know if her theory was true. But as it came, the man reacted as one normally would when they caught something moving from the corner of their eyes.
"Ma'am?" he questioned.
"Nothing, nothing, " Octavius waved her previous concern. It wouldn't matter much if the man had been blind after all, as long as he didn't fuck up. "Just get back to securing her bonds."