Everybody Wants to Rule the World...
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Jun. 11th, 2009 @ 08:42 pm
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...Except Bruce Banner. He's in this bunker surrounded by people who would blow the world to Kingdom Come to save it and then claim the credit. What he's doing is testing a gamma bomb.
Months ago his long-forgotten doctorate's paper on gamma radation was dusted off by somebody in the Pentagon and he was asked a lot of questions that really came down to one thing. Your problem in Bosnia was that everyone was a villager, rebel, or enemy, right? he remembers saying. What if in a 30 meter radius could detonate something completely harmless and have enough time to find and restrain everyone? I can probably build something like that. Would that handle your world problems?
He thought General Ross would just kick him out right there. He must have been overruled because ever since then Thunderbolt Ross has been trying to get a rise out of him since, especially after Betty asked him out. Betty. To everyone else around here she was General Ross' only child, but to him she was and always would be her own person and the only person in years that made him feel...good. Like his life had a point. Some people don't think you're a man unless you can crack their jaws. For his part, Banner didn't get angry. The old guy wasn't worth it. Nothing he could ever think of was worth it. Anger made you stupid.
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General Thaddeus E. "Thunderbolt" Ross paced the length of the room in the underground facility. He was fuming. What the hell were they thinking putting the likes of Banner in charge of this project? This was a military project. Civilians had no place in military projects.
Banner. Ross didn't like the man and to make matters worse, his daughter Betty did. Ross had to put a stop to that, but after the test. The test was more important.
Banner is taking his time calibrating things and occasionally murmuring something to a tech. He ignores the general's eyes on him. His focus is solely on the bomb.
"I think we're ready." He nods to one of his people. "Start the sequence."
Well, this had to be the easiest dare he'd ever taken. Sneak onto the army base? You'd really think the army would have better security than this. It's not like he had even really tried to sneak. Here he was, sitting in his car, radio blasting...
Total dullsville, Rick Jones thought.
He hears something on the audio inside the bunker.
...there is no other place I want to be Right here, right now watching the world wake up from history I saw the decade in, when it seemed the world could change at the blink of an eye
"Song lyrics?" He looks on the scanners and finds a late model car.
"General, something's going on!" He calls out to the technicians. "Stop the launch!"
Ivan, his main lab assistant, calls out over him. "Dr. Banner! If we do that, all this research is destroyed. It wouldn't be able to be -"
"Nothing can rebuild a human life. General, this is supposed to be non-lethal, but I can't guarantee that. If we're off even a fraction -"
Rick Jones, meanwhile, completely oblivious to the goings on, had pulled out his harmonica, playing along with the music.
$100 million in research has been sunk into this weapon the Army needed yesterday; one that they have to test on people eventually anyway held up by some little shit that's going to the stockade for 20 years anyway? Because Banner is wussing out? Oh hell no.
"Belay that." Before the egghead can object he explains it like he would to a ten year old. "It's not going to be lethal and if some little piss-ant is going to come on to this base he's -"
Bruce doesn't hear the rest of it. He's running like his father the Devil is on his heels.
For a moment, Rick Jones wondered what they were doing out here in the middle of nowhere. Especially that big thingamajig out there.
He shrugged. No figuring the establishment, man.
"Kid! Kid! Get out of here!" He yells as much as his burning lungs will let him.
Rick looked up and tossed a wave at the in-coming man. "Hey, what's the hassle,Doc?"
The countdown is going in his head. All he can manage is to half-shout/half-growl the word "bomb" as he rips the kid from the car. With the kind of strength you read about freaked out accident victims getting he starts a dead run with the teen to the recording equipment bunker.
Back at the bunker Thunderbolt is watching this impassively on the monitor as the clock ticks. 5...4... The best case scenario for him, he thinks, would be this new weapon turns out to actually be lethal or, worse, mutagenic. He imagines his little girl falling apart on him as he shares the news of Banner's death or some type of mutilation. She'll get over it, of course and find a real man this time. 3...2... The brass still gets a real weapon out of this and some non-hippie egghead can expand on it.
Just think of the possibilities.
He throws open the door and shoved the kid in, upsetting a room full of measuring equipment. The last thing he can hear in his head is a very stupid little song they sang mockingly in college. Fee, dum, dum Fee dum, dum There was a turtle by the name of Bert And Bert the turtle was very alert When danger threatened He was very alert He knew just what to do
Duck and cover...
...1...
The world explodes into green.
The mind is a strange place. Despite the roar of concussive thunder that shakes the entire army base, Dr. Bruce Banner will swear to his last breath the only sound he heard at that moment was the shout of the kid followed by a deafening scream from his own lips, morphed into something raw, primal and inhuman. He is thrown against the bunker with incredible concussive force as the world - now devoid of his perception of time - dissolves into green light and then fades into an insane gray. All the while he never stops screaming. He doesn't stop screaming for days.
The next thing he's cognizant of is that the kid is here and he's fine. It doesn't feel like anything is broken physically. They're both in the base infirmary in a quarantine unit. He can't speak and his throat feels like it was ripped out by a mammoth brute. More then anything he's exhausted and he'd want to go home if he felt like home was anywhere. He reaches for a pad of paper and writes.
You okay?
"Well, you know, other than being in more trouble than I've ever gotten to in my life, sure," Rick replied. Then paused for a moment.
"Hey! You finally came out of it! Thought you were never gonna stop."
He frowns and writes: They had you in here the whole time with me screaming?
Why does he bother to ask? It's Thunderbolt Ross. Fathers he thinks. Are overrated.
"Yeah. Something about "radiation exposure" and "not spreading it" and "blah blah blah," Rick said with a shrug. "At least they gave me ear plugs. And then I just kind of tuned it out."
"But that was... what you did was..."
He looked Banner straight in the eye. "Thanks."
He frowns. Radiation exposure was supposed to be minimal, but nothing with that test seemed completely right. He feels "off." Not sick, just agitated and if he'd be fidgeting if he wasn't so tired. "Fight or flight" feeling.
"Has there been someone here? Anyone?" He's praying for Betty, but...Is she strong enough for that?
He shook his head. "Just army guys outside the door, when they slide the food tray in."
He pointed toward something on the near-by table. "Oh, and don't try the radio. All it does it click."
Voices outside raise in argument.
"Ma'am! I'm sorry, but you can't go in here!"
"Watch me," the voice replies, and the door opens. Betty Ross pushes her way past the soldiers guarding the door.
"Bruce? Are you alright?"
It must be a sight for the kid to see. One moment, the scientist was an intense, controlled (if exhausted) man with no real emotion other then a mix of urgency and curiosity.
"Betty..." he croaks and reaches out for her arm, his whole body exuding gratitude and relief from every pore. His smile is small, but he suddenly looks almost normal.
Whoa. How's a nerd like him rate a girl like that?
Rick leaned back and sighed quietly. Wasn't like there was anybody like that waiting back for him. He wondered if he'd even been missed from the orphanage.
She brushes her hand against Bruce's cheek. "Oh, Bruce. I'm glad you're okay." She glances at Rick, to make sure he's alright too; he doesn't seem any the worse for wear. He might have endangered Bruce's life, but she understands it was an accident and doesn't want him to be hurt either. Satisfied, she turns back to her lover. "You scared the hell out of me."
"I love you, too. Takes a bit to get rid of me." He looks to Rick. "Make sure he gets out of here, alright? He's just a kid -"
"No one -" Thunderbolt announces coming into the room in a full hazmat suit. "Is getting out of here that easily!" He rips his daughter's arm away from Banner and drags her from the room. "Stop touching him, Betty! They don't know what the Gamma did to him!"
His thoughts darken and race down a kind of black hole singularity in his mind as he watches Thunderbolt leave the room with the only thing that makes his life around here bearable. He hates that man he hates this bed and this base and the sun lowering in the sky.
Banner loses sense of his own body, but Rick Jones can see what's happening.
"Doc?" Rick asked, quietly, uncertainly. "You're... what... what's going on? You... you're changing!"
He wants out NOW! Gray green skin replaces Banner's sickly white and brown eyes change to an inhuman yellow, but as extraordinary as that is his sheer mass is the true wonder. Bigger and bigger, past well-muscled, past body-builder, past Frankenstein's monster. The rage builds and he builds until the room is filled with the aura of rage and pain and it's too small to contain it.
"Hulk want OUT!" The reinforced wall of the quarantine room powers like talc.
Rick just stared open mouthed for a moment, not believing what he had just seen. Doctor Banner had turned into some kind of... Hulk and...
And...
And it was all his fault.
"Wait for me!" he cried, as he ran after Banner. "You need me!"
Rick Jones exits this life and enters another - a life filled with the sounds of gunfire, tanks, and deafening roars. It is a life which becomes a blur of rage and with oases of calm and self-loathing.
A monster is loose. Pray he is on our side.
From: | (Anonymous) |
Date: |
July 3rd, 2012 06:09 pm (UTC) |
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