├ Somewhere in Russia ┤

With a hard smack and a grunt of pain, Natasha sat tied up in a chair. She knew this job would be easy, she's done it many times before. All she had to do was play along and she'd everything she needed. He spoke in russian, an easy language to understand seeing as how it's her native tongue. "I know how you wanted this evening. Believe me this is better." She replied to him.

One of the men that worked for Luchkov leaned her chair back above the pit behind her as Luchkov spoke. "Does he think we have to go through him to move our cargo?"

" I thought General Solohob is incharge of the export business." Natasha said as the man placed her on the ground again. Feinting to be oblivious was the only way to get him to give her all she needed, again really easy. What wasn't really easy though was the pit behind her. One wrong move and she could go falling who knows how many floors down. Luchkov, at a slow pace, moved to her. "Solohob. A bagman, a front. Your out dated information betrays you." He smirks at her, one that he believes that he has the upperhand. "The famous Black Widow is just another pretty face."

"You think I'm pretty?" She quips at him which wasn't a good thing to do since a thug grabbed her face examining her. With his thumb and forefinger, he puts pressure on her cheeks, opening her jaw. Luchkov waltzed over to a table that held different tools, used for torture. "Tell Lermentov we don't need him tomove the tanks. Tell him he is out.Well..." He picks up a pair of pliers. "...You may have to write it."

He walks to her with the pliers but is stopped by one of the thugs phone ringing. He looks curiously at the caller, not knowing who it was. Answering the phone about to speak before getting cut off. "It's for her."

"You listen carefully-"Luchkov says intimidatingly but get cut off by the american agent on the phone. "You're at 1- 14 Silensky Plaza, 3rd floor. We have an F-22 exactly eight miles out. Put the woman on the phone or I will blow up the block before you can make the lobby." He takes the phone off his ear and looks scaredly at the phone before handing it to her

"We need you to come in." Agent coulson tells Natasha. She glares furiously at the ground, "Are you kidding? I'm working."

"This takes precedence."

"I'm in the middle of an interrogation, and this moron is giving me everything." Luchkov looked to his thugs asking if he was. Natasha glares at him to shut up.

"Barton's been compromised." She stops. Worry fills her mind for her best friend, and hopefully not Percy since he was with him at SHIELD. Natasha loves Percy as if he was her son, though she can't have any children, Percy is her child. Biological or not. "Percy got hurt, badly."

"Let me put you on hold." She looks at Luchkov to take the phone and when he does she slams her foot in his junk and head butts him, knowing that he'll stay down while she deals with the thugs. She stands up and, with the chair still tied to him, kicks at the first thug who swung at his fist.

After a few minutes of fighting and Coulson politely waiting for Natasha to return to the phone, Natasha wraps a chain around Luchkov's foot and lets him dangle over the pit. The backup broken and bloodied─and unconscious─ are scattered across the floor, with Natasha as the victor. Grabbing her shoes and the phone that was feel to the ground she continued their conversation. "Where's Barton now?"

"Don't know," Agent coulson answers.

"What about Percy?"

"Alive and in the med bay, he got hurt pretty badly. But luckily he was with the director, so nothing too bad happened to him. We'll brief you on everything when you get back, and we need you to get the big guy."

Natasha sighs. Stark is a stubborn man, but with the right persuasion, he'd join. "Coulson, you know Stark trusts me as far as he can throw me."

"I'll handle Stark; you get the big guy." She stops dead in her tracks, shocked. Working in SHIELD lets her know about almost everything, so she knows about Dr. Banner. She was told─and researched on her own─about the experiment with the gamma radiation, she knows that he can turn into the hulk. Yet, she never imagined that she would actually meet him. Whispering to herself in russian, she speaks. "My god."

╞ Calcutta, India ╡

Though he's a doctor, Bruce wasn't a medical doctor. He has a PhD in Nuclear physics, not general medicine or any of the sort, but here in this cramped and claustrophobic city─he was the best they had to a real doctor. Being a doctor here is a stressful experience, even if it tends to make him mad from time to time. Sometimes people would argue with him for being too stubborn to take the recommended medicine, or they wouldn't pay him for his services. The only reason he was here was because it helped him focus on not being the other guy.

Right now there was a bad epidemic, high fevers and rough, scratchy coughs plagged the people. He was currently helping a family whose daughters have caught the virus. As Bruce was washing his hands, in the mirror of the sink he was a young girl. Most likely nine or ten years old. The mother of the children stopped her from going any higher then the sixth step down. "Who are you? Get out!" She tried to shoo the little girl away. "Can't you see that there is sickness in here?"

Bruce dries his hands and takes his way to the girl as she speaks. "Are you the doctor? I need adoctor. My father." She looks to the people on the bed. "My father's not waking up! He has a fever and he's moaning but his eyes won't open."

"Like them?" Bruce kneels before her and points to the sick children. Holding out the money in her hand, she nods. "Please."

The little girl leads Bruce to the edge of the city. Musty, barely able to keep themselves up houses decorate the dirt plane . Of course there were street lamps and cell towers, though they most likely wouldn't be as fast or bright as the ones in the city. The girl runs to a somewhat small house, hole-filled curtains act as a makeshift door, quickly stopping the child before she runs into a car, and proceeds on his way. She runs into the house and through the window in the back room. Among watching her leave, Bruce says aloud to himself. "Should have got paid upfront, Banner."

"You know, for a man that's supposed to be avoiding stress," A woman says behind a curtain. Moving it out of the way, Natasha stands there. A small smirk decorating her face. "You picked a hell of a place to settle."

"Avoiding stress isn't the secret." He replies.

"Then what is it? Yoga?" Natasha jokes. Bruce puts his bag down on the ground where he stood, a bit suspicious of why he was brought here. "Just you and me."

"And you brought me to the edge of the city." Bruce walks to the window and looks oput, trying to see if there was any agents out there waiting. "Smart. I-uh-I assume the whole place is surrounded."

Natasha takes off the thin scarf she wrapped around herself. "Just you and me."

"And your actress buddy? Is she a spy too, are they starting that young?"

"I did."

"Who are you?"

"Natasha Romanoff."

"Are you here to kill me, Ms. Romanoff? 'Cause that's not going to be good for anyone."

"No, of course not. I'm here on behalf of Shield."

He looks at the ground a little mad. He moves to a heavily dense area to escape the radars of Shield. He wants nothing to do with whatever they want him for, but he'll listen to what she has to say for now. "Shield. How'd they find me?" He wonders.

"We've never lost you doctor." Natasha says truthfully. She's helped Shield keep others away from him─under orders from Fury─and knows that he probably doesn't believe her. ". We've kept our distance, even helped keep some other interested parties off your scent."

"Why?"

"Nick Fury seems to trust you. But we need you to come in."

"What if I say no?"

Natasha smiles at him, "Then I'll persuade you."

"And what if─the other guy says no?"

"You've been more than a year without an incident. I don't think you want to break that streak." She moves away as he pushes at an old creaky baby cradle. With one slightly push, the object creaks. A safety hazard, something he definitely wouldn't put a child in. "Well, I don't every time get what I want."

She pulls out a small phone. Typing away and scrolling though important files, Natasha pulls up a photo of the tesseract. "We're facing a global catastrophe." Bruce,leaning against a wooden beam, smiles to himself. "Those I actively try to avoid."

"This is the tesseract." Natasha, phone still in hand, sits at a table. A calm expression on her face as she slides the phone across the table so Bruce can take it. "It has the potential energy to wipe out the planet."

Bruce takes the phone off the table to examine the data on the phone. He gets his trusty, dusty, glasses from his jacket and reads the notes of the picture on the screen. The notes for it were written as if a child did it, they proved to be helpful. They described the powers during certain experiments, the real-life dimensions, and the fun fact that it could be used to make popcorn in a microwave. "And what does Fury want me to do with it? Swallow it?"

"He wants you to find it." Natasha says crossing her legs. "It's been taken. One of our scientist found out that it emits a Gamma signature that's too weak for us to trace. No one knows Gamma radiation like you do. If there was, that's where I'd be."

"So Fury isn't after the monster?"

"Not that he's told me."

"And he tells you everything?"

"Talk to Fury, he needs you on this." Natasha says but immediately after she speaks Bruce retorts. "Needs me in a cage?"

"No one is going to put you in a─"Natasha get cut off by Bruce. He slams his hands on the table, and she pulls out a gun. Bullet ready to be fired held in the hands of a woman who was a bit frightened by the sudden outburst of anger. She understands why he would think that, but even though he apologizes, she's still a bit cautious. "Why don't we do this the easy way where you don't use that─and the other guy doesn't make a mess? Okay? Natasha?"

Lowering the gun, she speaks into the com in her ear. "Stand down."

"Just you and me?" Bruce repeats her words, knowing that they weren't.

╠ A gym in New York, somewhere ╣

As Steve punched the bag of sand in front of him, memories from the past replay in his head and follow him everywhere like a ghost. A shadow. Always there and haunting him, teasing Steve of what he could've done. But reality punches him in the face of what he did. How he could've saved Bucky, he could've stretched his body just a bit farther to get to him. How he could've hit the tesseract as best as he could when he was flying the plane, but he didn't. And now these thoughts, thoughts that if he could stop he would, encourage him to hit harder. Faster. Stronger.

One hit too hard sends the punching-bag flying. A large rip spewed all the sand that was inside far from Steve because of the punch that was given to it. He takes a bit to catch his breath before getting another bag. Hanging it on the hook where the previous one hung from, he began again. "Having trouble sleeping?"

Steve turns around to see the all to familiar man, clad in black and the signature eyepatch over his left eye. Continuing to punch the bag, he says, "Been asleep for seventy years, sir. I think I've had my fill."

"Then you should be celebrating. Getting out seeing the world."

"When I went under, the world was at war. When I woke up─ they say we won, but they didn't say what we lost." Steve walks away from the punching bag, his hands unwrapping the protective wrap. He stops at a bag, clothes and work out equipment scattered the benches around him, but his was the only one there.

Fury steps closer to the sweaty and somewhat out of breath man. His expression never changing, "We've made some mistakes along the way. Some of them, more recently."

"Are you here with another mission?"

"I am."

"Trying to get me back into the world?"

"Trying to save it." He hands Steve a folder. The picture of the cube that stopped his life was paper clipped inside. That damned cube that killed so many lives. Steve couldn't help but speak what was told to him all those years ago about hat same cube, "Hydra's secret weapon."

"Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you. He thought what we think─" Fury began. "That the tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy."

"And someone stole it from you?"

"A guy named Loki─he's not from around here," Fury admitted looking at the still sweaty guy in front of him. "There's a lot of things that we would need to fill you in on, if you want to do it. The world has gotten stranger than you already know."

"At this point, I don't think anything surprises me anymore." Steve gets up and grabs his duffle bag. His equipment packed and ready to go, so in one hand he hold the bag and while walking out he bends down to grab a punching bag from the neatly laid out row of them.

"Ten bucks says you're wrong." Fury calls out when steve is almost to the exit. "There's a debriefing packet in your apartment. Is there anything about the tesseract we ought to know now?"

"Yeah," Steven responds. "You should've left it in the ocean."

╪ Off the coast of New York city in the ocean ╪

The cold murky water didn't bother Tony as he worked. Light, but strong, iron coated his body in his suit as to protect him from the germs and creatures that live down under. He began working. Cutting out a piece of the pipe that held power wires before placing his own invention on it. Satisfied with his work, He shot out of the ocean and flew through the city, "Good on this end, the rest is up to you."

Pepper's voice rang through the helmet. "You disconnected the transmission lines? Are we off the grid?"

"Stark Tower's bout to become a beacon for self sustaining clean energy," He speaks as he flies through the streets of Manhattan. He looks at the video of Pepper on his helmet screen, "Assuming the arc reactor takes over and works." Tony─ still flying through the streets─ tells Pepper to 'light her up', letting the lights turn on from bottom to top. The lights of the building remind him of the huge tree he and Percy decorate during christmas. "How does it look?"

"Like christmas, but with more...me" Tony says smugly looking at the video of Pepper.

"We've got to go wider on the publicawareness campaign. You need to do some press." Pepper speaks. Shuffling some lose paper around her into a neat stack. "I'm in DC tomorrow. I'm working on the zoning for the next three buildings."

"Pepper, you're killing the moment. Remember, enjoy the moment."

"Then get in here and I will."

As he stepped on the pad, the circle of parts began to swarm him with every step. One robotic arm taking off one piece, another taking off one, each doing so effectively and smoothly. Of course that's what happens when you're a billionaire genius. As he walked, the ai system─Jarvis─ told him that a certain agent from Shield was on the phone. He honestly didn't want to speak to the man, he would probably be telling him about what percy did yadda-yadda-yadda.

"You have reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark," Tony said to the phone whose contact read Phil Coulson. "Please leave a message."

"It's urgent."

"Then leave it urgently." The elevator opened and out stepped Phil. Dressed in his signature black suit, clean and proper. "Security breach!" Tony yelled, though the command didn't follow through.

Pepper stood up and greeted the man, hanging him her glass and taking the high-tech computer. Turning to Tony, she gave him the computer and took his glass. Looking exasperated he told Phil that consultation hours were over. When he retorted that it wasn't a consultation, Pepper asked if it had something to do with the Avengers. Looking at her skeptical, Phil smirked at her. "The Avengers Initiative was scrapped, I thought, and I didn't even qualify."

"I didn't know that either." Pepper smiled to the agent.

Tony opened the laptop and unlocked it. Tapping buttons to get to his destination in the program. "What is all this stuff?" Pepper peered over his shoulder. He enlarged the screen to show profiles. Five men and one woman he already knew as Natasha Romanov. One was a huge green man, the size the first floor of a house. In the video he radiated anger as he broke and crushed things with his fists. The profile said Bruce Banner and his alter-ego was named the Hulk. Another profile had pictures from the military drafts. The name read Steve Rodgers, a small blonde man who weighted as heavy as a eighth-grader. There was another blonde man named Thor, a god of Thunder as the profile description wrote. He crashed somewhere down south by the border and battled a machine sent from his world. And last, but not least, someone named Clint Barton. Another SHIELD agent that passed the test that Tony was still salty about not passing.

"I'm taking the jet to DC tonight," Pepper says.

"Tomorrow."

"You have homework. A lot of homework."

"What if I didn't?"

"If you didn't? Do you mean when you finished? Well, um, then-" She leans in and whispers in Tony's ear. He nods a bit. "Square deal. Fly safe." She kisses him and walks to Phil to continue their conversation. It's when they leave that he sees the video of the tesseract. It showed a room where the scientists were working in. At a desk, closest to the tesseract, he saw a small boy with jet black hair. He sat at the desk with a bowl of popcorn as watching the monitor when the tesseract ignited. And in a flash, a man appeared. A fight broke out and the video cut and opened to two people running down hallways trying to evade the collapsing building. He figured that the man leading the way was Nick Fury, the infamous director of SHIELD. Behind him, arm outstretched and grabbing on to Nick's arm was the same black-haired boy. But Tony knew who it was. It was Percy.

He saw his nephew dirtied and bruised, his shirt ripped in some places and him limping as he ran down the halls. When they left the building they got on a helicopter only for it to be shot down by the same man in green. His nerves were on over time, a bit of sweat glistened on his head as he watched them tumble out with Percy being shield by Fury. But when they stopped rolling, Percy lay unmoving in Fury's arms.

It was at that moment Tony decided it was time to play superhero again.

        A/N
   !    PLEASE READ- ABOUT UPDATES   !
I'm sorry updates are few and far between, but I am a very busy high school junior, be a little be lenient when I haven't updated. Also, if you haven't noticed, all the chapters in the Avengers Arc (the few that are published) are waaay over 1000 words. When I update, I like to make it count, so this 3000+ word chapter is my way of making it up to you by not updating much.

Again I am very sorry about not updating often, I plan to get the next chapter up either next week or the following week, it'll give me time to finish it and start the one after.

             ~Kitty