Four - The Big Suspicion

"What- you are just going to leave me here?" Loki questioned, surprisingly not being able to pull his arms from Jessica's energy-formed trap.

She smirked and replied, "If it makes you feel any better, I'm closing the floor and the trap will break eventually."

"eventually? Why must you-" but it was too late, for she was already on the other side of the door.

~🕷~ 

"...Blueberry?" the man offered.

"Oh, I'd love a blueberry," a woman said as she mischievously smiled at the men while she leaned on the doorframe. As she walked in toward the gawking Tony, Steve interjected, "Jessica, how did you escape?"

"You'll never figure that one out."

Banner joined the conversation as Jessica went to grab a blueberry, but Rogers pushed her hand away. She gave him a nasty look, and then smirked over at Bruce as he asked, "Wait... you're telling me you escaped the cage made for the other guy without setting the alarm off?"

She shrugged casually, going to grab a blueberry as Tony tipped the bag towards her and Steve tried to block it. With her other hand, she grabbed his arm and twisted it, taking a few blueberries without thanking Stark.

"You need to learn your manners, Steve," she said as her hand let go of his wrist. "So," Jessica looked over at the qualified doctor, "what's the plan? Where's the tesseract?" The three seemed surprised at her questions. "What? Loki talked my ear off. It's like he was trying to chat me up or something." She rolled her eyes at the thought of him blabbing on, thinking he's so high and mighty, but didn't he realize he was trapped? It all seemed a little suspicious to Jessica.

"Chat you up?" Stark sarcastically asked.

"You know... when someone uses chat up lines on you, but instead of them being funny it was... world domination subjected," she explained, crossing her arms at Tony.

"Oh, like a pick up line?" Dr.Banner asked, and Jessica shrugged as if to say 'I assume so.'

"Wait a minute. 'Jessica' as in 'Jessica Drew' as in 'Arachne' as in a HYDRA assassin?" Tony realized, watching as Jessica walked around analysing the screens. "Why aren't you trying to- I don't know -assassinate us?" His sarcastic smirk matched hers as she turned back to give him an answer. Steve couldn't bare looking at the two, so mirrored.

"Where's the fun in killing the fun?"

"Jessica-"

"Steve, I won't kill you. Loki was just getting annoying. I'm bored and have nothing better to do than sit around with a genius green doctor, a mad egotistical man with a suit and a million bucks, and you," she shrugged, leaning against a countertop near Banner, who was holding back a smile. The only people in the room who didn't notice who Jessica reminded them of was herself and Tony.

"and me? Whats that supposed to mean?" the soldier questioned, crossing his arms and taking a mental note on how she knew all of this information on each of the three.

"and you. A man who shouldn't even be alive, but apparently still has a purpose seventy years later."

"You're one to talk." Usually Steve wouldn't be so rude to a lady, let alone have such a long conversation with one, but something about her agitated him.

"Oh, not this again!" Tony groaned, "Get a room and fight there."

Steve was quick to change the subject onto more important matters before he thought Tony would pitch a fit about something irrelevant.

"I think Loki is trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders. We should follow them," he commanded, getting back into the role of 'Captain.'

"Followings not really my style," Tony responded while eating some blueberries.

The captain scoffed, "And you're all about style, aren't you?"

Tony put on a very convincing confused look and asked, "Of the people in this room, which one is, A, wearing a spangly outfit, and, B, not of use?"

Banner decided this was a good time to cut through the tension before fist hit face by saying, "Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you."

"What?" Jessica joined in, looking between the three, "Is this about Nick?"

Tony knowingly nodded at Jessica and then looked over at Steve, "See, even the brainwashed know!"

"Just find the cube," Steve ordered, walking out of the room.

"He seems moody," Jessica commented, ignoring being called 'brainwashed.'

"That's the guy my dad never shut up about? I'm wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice," Tony stated, touching one of the screens as Banner walked to another one. Jessica watched the two working intently, learning the techniques on using the screens herself.

Banner responded, "The guy's not wrong about Loki. He does have the jump on us." Every time Banner touched the screen, it made an artificial clicking sound that would most likely get annoying to Jessica soon.

Tony started to walk over to another screen saying, "What he's got is an Acme dynamite kit. It's gonna blow up in his face and I'm gonna be there when it does."

Banner jokingly replied, "Yeah. I'll read all about it."

"I'm sure you'll be suiting up on the battlefield, too, Dr.Banner," Jessica added.

Bruce laughed and explained, "You see, I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed. Like a nerve. It's a nightmare."

"We've all got nightmares," Jessica told him, not even remembering her own, but just having this gut feeling that there is one. She's just having a hard time finding it.

"I've got a cluster of shrapnel trying every second to crawl its way into my heart. This stops it," Tony taps on his chest and walks away from the screen, "This little circle of light, it's part of me now. Not just armor. It's a terrible privilege," he tells Banner, on the other side of the translucent screen, "But you can control it. Because I learned how."

The other man shook his head, "It's different."

"Hey," Tony became more serious, "I read all about your accident. That much gamma exposure should have killed you."

Banner processed this before asking, "So you're saying that the Hulk..." he made uncomfortable gestures and rephrased the Hulk's name, "the other guy saved my life? That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what?"

"I guess we'll find out," Stark replied, walking away.

"You may not enjoy that..." he defended.

"but, you might," Jessica added, fixing something on a screen as Banner looked worriedly over at Tony.

"What're you doing?" Stark asked, walking closer to her.

She looked up at him and answered, "Your information is wrong. The tesseract is more than an energy source. It gives extreme knowledge to the ones who manipulate its power... some say it's too much knowledge. I guess Loki isn't good for nothing after all."

"Why are you helping us?" the doctor asked, turning away from his screen.

"It's common courtesy."

"For what?" Tony suspiciously asked.

"Not killing me, I suppose."

Although neither Tony nor Banner were convinced of her reasoning, they let it slide without a word.

"So, you're telling me you won't turn me in?"

"Just don't give me a reason, Kid," Tony responded.

"You should respect your elders," she demanded, clinching her jaw.

"You sound like Steve."

~🕷~

Fury walked into the lab where Tony and Banner temporarily work, Jessica helping with the project they're working on.

"What are you doing, Mr.Stark?" Fury angrily asks, stepping further into the room.

"Uh... kind of been wondering the same thing with you," Tony sarcastically replies, eyeing the deceitful man in his all black attire.

"You're supposed to be locating the tesseract, not working with an enemy and hacking my system," Fury states, fuming and never taking his eyes off of Tony.

"We are. The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile," Banner cuts in, defending the three.

"And you'll have your cube. No muss, no fuss," Tony adds as the screen shows newly hacked files. "What is 'PHASE 2' anyways?"

Steve storms into the room, throwing a bulky HYDRA weapon onto the counter and turning to Tony, not looking at Fury out of rage.

"Planning to see if I'm loyal, Captain?" Jessica jokes as Fury turns to glare at her with his one good eye.

Steve ignores her and goes on to say, "PHASE 2 is SHEILD uses the cube to make weapons." He turns to the genius men and adds, "Sorry, the computer was moving a little too slow for me."

Nick begins to explain, "Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're..."

"I'm sorry, Nick," Tony interrupts aggressively and turns his screen around toward Fury and the Captain. "What, were you lying?"

Steve, clearly angered, turns to Fury, "I was wrong, Director. The world hasn't changed a bit." Thor and Natasha walk in. She glances over at Jessica, who is eyeing the blonde god, before looking at an angry Doctor.

"Did you know about this?" he accuses whilst gesturing to the scene.

"You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?" Natasha suggests.

Banner snarkily replies, "I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed"

"Loki's manipulating you."

"Now, that..." Jessica pointed at her, "he didn't tell me."

"What've you been doing, exactly?" Banner asked her, trying- and failing miserably -to keep calm.

"You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you."

"Yes," Banner began, "and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy. I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction."

"Because of him," Fury explains, pointing at Thor.

"Me?" Thor questioned out of surprise.

"If I'm not mistaken," Jessica defended the god for an unknown reason, "he wants to get Loki off of this planet just as much, maybe even more, than you do, Nick."

"You don't have a say in this, Jessica," he commanded, not even looking back at her, "Last year earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned"

Thor spoke, defending himself and Asgard, "My people want nothing but peace with your planet."

"Prove it! Take me to Asgard and fix my apparently brainwashed head," Jessica proclaimed, standing up from her chair and walking past Nick.

"Sit back down, Jessica," Nick commanded.

"It's Arachne until someone un-erases my memories."

Fury ignores her and turns back to Thor, "You're not the only people out there, are you? And, you're not the only threat. The worlds filling up with people who can't be matched, they can't be controlled."

"Like you controlled the cube?" Steve countered.

"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. It is a signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war," Thor explained.

"Told you it wasn't just an energy happy cube," Jessica mumbled, looking over at Tony.

"A higher form?" Steve asked, looking away from the shrugging Stark and the girl.

"You forced our hand. We had to come up with something," Fury made his excuse.

"Nuclear deterrent. 'Cause that always calms everything right down," Tony sarcastically interjected.

"Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?" Nick clapped back.

Steve spoke up and walked closer to everyone, "I'm sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck-deep-"

Tony interrupted, "Wait-wait-wait. Hold on. How is this about me?"

Captain turned to him and, in a serious tone, replied, "I'm sorry, isn't everything?"

"I thought humans were more evolved than this," Thor complained as Jessica, now standing by him, chuckled.

"Excuse me," Fury turned around, "Did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?"

Thor fired back, "You treat your champions with such mistrust." In the background, Tony bickers with the captain.

"Are you boys really that naive?" Natasha asked and then continued to explain , "SHEILD monitors potential threats."

Banner crossed his arms in disbelief, "Captain America's on threat watch?"

Natasha turned to him and responded, "We all are."

Tony angrily jokes at the captain, "Wait, you're on that list? Are you above or below angry bees?" Steve had had enough.

"Stark, so help me God, if you make one more wisecrack-"

"Threat!" Tony jokes, "Verbal threat. I feel threatened."

"Show some respect!" Steve exclaims.

"Respect what?" Tony snarkily asks.

Everyone argues as Jessica zones in on one thing: Loki's staff. It starts to glow stronger and makes an odd noise. No one else, in the midst of childish argument, seemed to notice.

"You speak of control, yet you court chaos," Thor accuses, motioning toward the chaos at hand.

"That's his M.O., isn't it?" Banner asks as Fury turns to look at him. "I mean, what are we, a team? n-no no. We're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're a time bomb."

"You need to step away," Fury strictly commands, stepping toward him.

Tony comments, "Why shouldn't the guy let off a little steam?" He then rests his hand on Steve's shoulder, who pushes his hand away and exclaims, "You know damn well why. Back off!"

Tony becomes enraged, staring straight into the eyes of the hero, Captain America. "Oh, I'm starting to want you to make me."

Steve raised his jaw. feeling that he's better than Tony, he starts to walk around him while saying, "Yeah. Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off. What are you?" He looks him dead in the eye.

Tony, panning his eyes to meet Steve's, monotonously says, "Genious, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist." At this point, everyone has stopped to watch them bicker.

"I know guys with one of that worth ten of you. I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play," at this, Tony averts his eyes, "to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you." The captain looks him up and down in disapproval.

"I think I would just cut the wire," Tony says nonchalantly, but you could see the anger in his eyes.

"Always a way out," Steve says in disbelief, "You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending you're a hero." Tony finds a way to push the captain as far as he's pushed him.

"A hero? Like you? You're a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a  bottle."

"y'know," Jessica added, "if I wasn't so cold hearted and full of pride, that would've hurt."

Steve scoffs at Tony. "Put on the suit. Let's go a few rounds." Tony was Steve's definition of a bully and he hated bullies.

Thor laughs and proclaims, "You people are so petty... and tiny." Jessica glanced at the odd man next to her, wondering about his odd behavior.

Banner comments from the side, "Yeah, this is a team..."

Fury turns to Natasha, "Agent Romanoff, would you escort Dr.Banner back to his-"

"Where?" the man harbouring the Hulk interrupts, "You rented my room."

"Hey, it's roomy in there with Loki! The only thing that would fill it up is his loud mouth," Jessica says, pointing at Banner. Thor rolls his eyes at the girl, knowing she could be like that sometimes.

"The cell was just in case-" Fury was interrupted again by Banner.

"Just in case you needed to kill me. But you can't. I know. I tried. I got low. I didn't see an end. So, I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out. So i moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good. Until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk. You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff?" he turns to her, jaw clenched and eyes angry, "you want to know how I can stay calm?"

"Dr.Banner," Steve interrupts, hoping he can calm the man down, "put down the scepter." Jessica knew she shouldn't have taken her eyes off the weapon. The computer started to beep as they all looked over and Banner set down the scepter.

"Sorry, kids," he said, walking toward the computer screen, "you don't get to see my party trick after all."

"You've located the tesseract, I assume?" Jessica asked, walking toward him.

"I could get there fastest," Tony tells the crew.

"The tesseract belongs on Asgard. No human is a match for it," Thor explains, rejecting the idea.

"What about a spider-human with energy powers?" Jessica suggests as Thor makes an uneasy nod at her, knowing that she could wield it, but not knowing to what cost.

"You're not going alone!" Steve tells Tony as he keeps walking.

"You gonna stop me?" Stark asks.

"Put on the suit and let's find out," Steve commands.

"Just let me go," Jessica demands, "I'm the most qualified after Thor."

"I'm not afraid to hit an old man," Tony claims.

"Put on the suit," Captain directs as the two get more angry and closer.

"oh, my God," Banner says as he looks away from the computer.

"What?" Jessica asks as she walks around to see the computer.

Then, before an explanation... an explosion.

~🕷~