The sun had set when Steve finally decided to spark up a conversation with Doyle. Not having much else to do while they waited for the Doctors' search program to find the location of the Tesseract.
"So… alien?"
"Yup," Doyle smiled in response. It was the same kind of awkward expression that Steve himself would wear whenever he was asked about something uncomfortable. "Born and bred on a completely different planet."
"You don't really sound like one."
"Well, lots of planets have a North," he responded under his breath before quickly moving past that bit of snark to an actual answer to Steve's un-aired question. "I grew up in Ireland, moved on to America recently, had to see the world for meself."
"Ah," The super soldier nodded. "Maybe that is something that I should do?" he thought, "Staying in New York, it's like looking at everything through a funhouse mirror. Too different, but painfully familiar."
"Any reason you choose Earth in particular?" Steve asked, suddenly trying to get his mind away from the depressing time period he'd found himself in. That question got a dry almost blank laugh from the younger man.
"Look at me," Doyle threw his arms out, nearly hitting a technician that walked by, as if he was presenting something obvious. "Can't even tell I was alien till it was pointed out to you. Humans even share similar emotional needs to Kryptonians, it's as if God himself decided to make a backup. Where else would I be sent?"
"God?" Steve asked, picking out that part while slightly amused but also hoping to keep the conversation light. "You don't have some special god that your people worship?"
"I'm Irish, despite the whole Kryptonian thing," Doyle replied, equally. "So… that automatically makes me Catholic."
Steve chortled slightly at that, a bit of trivia popping up from his head.
"I've never been to Ireland," The blonde stated, leaning on a railing nearby. "Never had a reason to during the war. In fact, never had a reason at all."
"Only if you like endless rain and too many potato products," Doyle frowned. "I'm weirdly annoyed that that stereotype is true. Like, I ate mashed potatoes for dinner every weekday for about six years, can't stand it anymore," A bright smile suddenly overtook his face. "What I miss, is me Dad's stew, ain't nobody makes a stew like he could."
"That right," Steve smiled, "Maybe I could try it sometime."
"..." Awkwardly Doyle glanced away before muttering lowly. "Hard to have a dead man make a stew dude."
That seemed to end the conversation there.
(Loki)
"Thor," Loki greeted, gleeful at his brother Thor's rather heated glare. "I'd offer you a drink, but I'm afraid that the accommodations are sparse."
The thunder god took a rather deep breath, his chest expanding before he let it all out in a rather audible display. It appeared that Thor hadn't brought Mjlnor with him, which surprised the trickster God, as it was usually close by.
"Brother," Thor stated, his tone the calmest that he'd heard from the blonde since the Frost Giants broke into the Vault and ruined the man's coronation day. Thor waited for a second, crossing his arms before he decided to continue to speak; "Where did you meet with the Chitauri?"
Loki's smile became strained, his body tensing up as if he was suddenly stuck between two planes of glass. Usually, the trouble with Loki was getting him to stop talking but that wasn't the case here...
Right now? Loki wished that his mouth was stitched together.
"... You could say that I ran into them," Loki eventually revealed with a click of his teeth. "Rather painfully after being thrown into the void."
Thor blinked, his arms across to hang loosely by his side. It was an odd reaction to see, as if the blond god was only just learning this fact. Loki growled lowly, enraged at his brother Thor acting dumb.
But that only lasted a second before Thor regained his usual glare.
"Enough of your lies, brother," He snarled, his teeth grinding so visibly that Loki would've been taken back if it was so amusing to upset his brother. "Tell me who's given this army to you, who sent you on this fool's errand."
"A fool's errand?" Loki couldn't help but chuckle. "There's been worse errands that we've been sent on over the years, Thor. Do I need to remind you of that dragon terrorizing Nidavellir?"
"Yes… that was a dangerous but odd situation," Thor admitted, scratching his chin before shaking his head. "But this is far worse, we're not talking about a deadly creature here, we're not even talking about something we can tell when it will be dangerous. We're talking about messing with something that neither of us truly can grasp."
The Tesseract could be a frinkle thing, capable of as much harm as good to any society that tried to harness its vast power. Some never recovered from that mistake, it was why the All Father had tried to keep it hidden on Midgard.
Not that the humans seemed to understand the hidden part, using its power and practically broadcasting its presence across the cosmos. Loki supposed that was the issue in letting a species with such short lives hide it for you.
They tend to forget in a few centuries why they have such an item.
"Thor… " Loki spoke, before trailing off for a moment, stopping himself from revealing more than he had planned. The Trickster just couldn't wait to gloat, to rub his victory into Thor's face. "You've no idea what I grasp now."
(Bruce Banner)
"So how's studying the scepter going?" Doyle asked, coming into the room with his hands in his pockets. If there was a picture of nonchalance in the dictionary, Bruce would say it would be one of Doyle. "Not feeling anything odd?"
That got Stark's attention faster than even Betty could even start to ask what he meant by that, who seemed to have absorbed some of that psychobabble from her ex-fiance. So at times, she would go off about psychological diagnostic techniques for describing one's feelings.
Bruce was glad not to hear it.
"Should we be, Zapp?"
The nonchalance that Doyle had shattered in an instant, replaced by a sharp sneer that was covered by a roll of eyes that became a much more neutral expression. Stark didn't seem to have caught, but Bruce knew more than most about suppressed anger.
"Given what we've seen," he said, slowly walking around the table that they had set the scepter on to study, peering at it with a glare that could melt steel. "This thing can literally change a man from a stalwart defender to a deadly schemer. And Loki's locked up, he can't directly be controlling anyone according to Thor. So all those mind-controlled agents are self-directed. Brainwashed and not really Mind-controlled. That's some big mind mojo, we've got to keep on guard for it."
"Everything that we've observed so far from Loki and the scepter-" Betty cut in her, her hair done up in a pony rather than her typical style. "-seems to indicate that he needs a physical contract to brainwash someone."
"And you need wings to fly," Doyle argued. "We could be dealing with some kind of virus situation, where direct contact just speeds up the infection rate. We don't know yet, is all I'm saying."
"Fair enough," Betty shrugged.
Bruce had stayed quiet for the last while, hoping that Stark would lose interest in trying to figure out how to induce a 'Hulk' experience in him for at least as long as Doyle was in the room. While the man could appreciate what Stark was trying to say, that the Hulk could be used as a positive force, much like the Arc Reactor that the man still had stuck in his chest, but the Hulk was too wild to be controlled in high stakes situations.
Better for him to never transform again.
That was when Bruce noticed something about the data he was getting.
"I'm going to go out a limb here and say that there's something to your idea, Doyle," he spoke up excitedly. "Not entirely correct, mind you, you've watched too much TV but as an analogy, it worked decently."
"Bruce…" Betty glanced over at him, peering at him from above her glasses with an amused expression. "we're not psychic. You have to tell us what you've found."
"Sorry," he chuckled, turning that display he was looking at around so that the other three could see what he had. "See, like the Tesseract the scepter gives off Gamma radiation, just sending it out at such a low level that the carrier's alert system for this stuff isn't worried. But when I cross-referenced that to the scans that the carrier takes around people themselves.
"I'm more green than ever before," Doyle turned to Stark. "Do you think that I could become the Green Mascot, or do I need to actually get painted first?"
"Don't bother with paint, we can do that in post," Stark played along with him. before stroking his chin. "Yeah, so you think it gave us a little injection of Gamma, to loosen us up and get the mind manipulation going?"
"It's a theory," Betty shrugged. "But to be honest here, we're dealing with an entirely new field of science. Any assumptions we're making here could come back to bite us."
"What do you recommend?" Doyle asked while Stark leaned closer to the display.
"We have to bring in some more people, more varied scientists of different fields," Betty started to explain. "And from there we should have-"
"Wait a second," Stark interrupted her while a large grin spread across his face. "I'm not getting any of that Gamma."
Both Betty and Bruce quickly turned back to the data, seeing exactly what the readings were saying about Stark.
"Doyle is picking up much more of it than us," Betty glanced over to the man in question. "You should've warned us that you'd soak up radiation like this?"
"Didn't know that myself," he responded smoothly. "I don't typically throw myself into nuclear reactors."
"Good policy."
"Still, it's not normal for my people either," he admitted with a squint of his eyes, which was odd to Bruce. The man beyond physical bounds of mortal but you'd think he'd need glasses with the amount of squinting he was doing at the moment. "I can't recall anything of my biology that explains this… should've probs set up a doctor's appointment."
"With who?" Bruce asked, curious at who in the world could treat his alien biology. Something that concerned him as he pondered. While seemingly invincible to common weaponry, and Norse God's hammers and lightning, it was likely that the same couldn't be said for diseases.
Unless his people's immune system was so adaptive that Earth's diseases and viruses couldn't overcome it, no matter how foreign it was to the body.
"... why is Stark not getting Gamma-fied?" Doyle deflected, given the stakes on hand with the Tesseract and an alien army, Bruce would let him. Suddenly, the reporter twitched, he turned his head down to the left, as if he was glancing at someone several floors below them.
"It seems to be an unintended side-effect of having an Arc Reactor attached to my chest, if these readings are right," Stark mumbled. "My head seems to still get all those deadly juices," he pointed at the part of the display that his head was at with a finger. "I'm not sure how this works, it's nonsensical! The Reactor shouldn't give me protection from Radiation at all."
Doyle suddenly turned around, walked over to the display that Stark had been working on by himself, and then turned back to face the man with a raised brow. Bruce could tell from just that glance alone, that the conversation was about to change topics.
"Really man, really?" he groaned. "You couldn't have waited for me to whisper this stuff to you?"
"You knew?" Stark replied, calmly, shoving his own hands into his pockets. "This is some pretty dangerous stuff that SHIELD is messing with, even just their benign stuff, like power generation, blew up in their faces," he rolled his eyes, moving the display away from the reporter. "Never mind making weapons using the Tesseract."
That caught both Betty's and Bruce's attention hard, and the attention of Rogers as he entered the room.
"What?" Captain America exclaimed, strutting over to see the same information that both Betty and Bruce now glanced at. "I can't believe it?He told me that it wasn't going to used for this! Why would they be bothering with this, it didn't exactly work out for Hydra. We still kicked their ass."
"Maybe they watched too much Star Wars?" Doyle snarked. "Thought that once we've got those laser weapons, the world will be safe. Not that it would work like that, given beings like me and Thor exist out there. These wouldn't work any better on me than a 9mm round."
"I'm going to need to check this out myself," Rogers ignored the joke, not that he understood the reference behind it, Bruce supposed. The Captain's eyes glared at the screen. "I didn't fight a war to turn around and find that we've become Hydra."
Before Roger could take a step out of the door, a phone rang.
The ringtone? "I can see clearly now, the rain has gone…"
"Sorry," Doyle grimaced, taking his phone out of his pants pocket. "But this could be important," he held to his ear, keeping his eyes on Stark with a glare. "No eavesdropping Stark," The reporter warned.
"Yo, Double D," He spoke into the phone, his tone light with just a hint of annoyance seeping through. "What do you got for me?" There was a pause from Doyle while the person on the other end of the call spoke to him. "Really? That's where she is? How did you manage to catch her?"
"You found her at a mall… buying clothes?"
"Yes, I know that people need clothes, man! I'm just surprised that she was out in the open like that. Was she in disguise?"
"What do you mean I'm not funny? It's not a joke, I wasn't even really asking you, just asking it openly."
"No you're not on loudspeaker-" Doyle stopped for a second. "Look let's get back on the matter at hand, find where she's staying at, then call me, I'll get SHIELD after her, I'm a bit busy handling a Norse God and his massive scepter."
"No… it wasn't an innuendo."
With that Doyle hung up on the man. Bruce, who was one of the many people in the room staring at him, decided to speak up first.
"Is there a problem?" Bruce didn't really want any more issues coming to light, first, it was the Tesseract being under the control of a mad man, then it was learning that SHIELD decided to try and copy Nazi's and make weapons out of the damn thing.
He really hoped that call wasn't someone informing Doyle that the Tesseract cracked open to reveal it had been an egg for a Lovecraftian beast this whole time.
"Nothing that we should immediately worry about," Doyle explained calmly while sending a rough smirk towards Stark. "I've just won a little bet that I made with Stark over there."
Stark chuckled, with a small smile on his face, apparently taking that with good humor.
"So… you finally found out where Doc Ock has been hiding?"
(Author's Note)
Hello, long time no see again... so sorry about that. I've been struggling lately to write, mostly because I've been busy over the last few weeks and it can be hard to find time for this more thought out story. Compared to something that is more offhand, like my snippets thread.
This chapter isn't like the last few, where there'd been a lot of copy from the movie. Neither will the next chapter. Which is set during this time period exactly, so it's a meanwhile chapter. Mostly this is because I want to actually get chapters out again.
And this way I should have it out by next week or so. Then it's fine, since I plan on having another the week after that. So it shouldn't be a long wait. Next chapter we're getting a more... feminine point of view...