May 14, 2014

Yesterday had been exciting. First, because… Jen. Just, Jen. Holy damn, Jen was amazing.

Second, because Bruce walked in on me and her making out. That was bad enough. But Jen had also ripped my shirt off and had pulled me down on top of her as she lay back on the floor… Not a good look.

Did you know an angry Bruce is fast as hell? Not an angry Hulk, an angry Bruce. He’d rushed after me through the halls for a full three minutes yelling at me.

That was all sorts of stressful.

------

Yesterday

“Bruce, come on man!” I shouted as I leaped over a table in the recreation room. My shirt had been ripped off, so I was running around topless while I dodged at random.

“You were making out with my cousin!” Bruce tossed a random potted plant, one that had to weigh at least 10 pounds, at my head. I ducked it, letting it explode on the floor behind me.

“Dude, you really think I kissed her without permission?!” I yelped the last part because I had to sidestep a sudden plate that came at me with what felt like super-speed.

“You were on top of her!”

Bruce grabbed some kind of steel sculpture off a table. I booked it toward the door we’d entered through. He threw it at me.

A feminine green hand snatched the sculpture out of the air before I could get brained. Jen had entered the room. Her hair was still mussed up and her shirt was still off, leaving her in just a bra. She looked amused and angry all at once. Amangry? Anused?

“...Brucey,” Jen took the sculpture in her hands. As Bruce and I watched, she began to squeeze. “I think we should have a talk,” under the immense pressure, the sculpture began to compress. It was fascinating. Seriously, look up a video of metal under a hydraulic press sometime. The steel structure basically gave up without a sound and started to fold in an almost artistic way, slowly compressing, her fingers leaving small divots in the metal.

“I love you, Bruce, and I love that you’re so protective of me,” with a couple of twists, she crunched the thing into a ball, then tossed it behind her. “But I was dating people even before I got the superpowers. I took down a mob boss! You have no right to get mad at any of my dates.”

“I know, but-” Bruce began to say.

“Bruce,” Jen stopped him. Then she gestured at me. “You realize he isn’t exactly a 'bad boy'.”

They both looked at me. I tried to channel as much nerd energy as possible and waved hesitantly.

“Plus, you aren’t even the slightest bit green,” Jen pointed out.

“Only cause the Other Guy keeps giggling,” Bruce grumbled. Then he sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry Jen, I just…” he trailed off and walked up to me. I kept still as he placed a hand gently on my shoulder. I sighed in relief when he didn’t go green and turn my shoulder to dust. I mean, I knew he wouldn’t, but it was still nerve-wracking after Bruce “Smash” Banner had chased me through the tower. “Sorry… Ah, damn it!”

Jen and I blinked in surprise. “What, what happened now?” I asked.

Bruce looked up towards where I knew one of the tower cameras were hidden. “Tony absolutely has footage of what just happened.”

We all stared at each other. Jen and I were still shirtless, Bruce had just chased me through the halls, and Tony was the world’s best at editing footage to be as embarrassing as possible without actual embarrassing things in it already.

“Jarvis, X!” I shouted, running for the door.

“Mr. Stark is attempting to save the footage and post it to Facebook,” X responded over the speakers.

“He has added Korean pop as background music. I believe he’s also ‘cackling’,” Jarvis added helpfully.

“TONY!” Bruce roared, Jen laughing behind us as we ran for Tony’s office.

------

Present

Yeah, we were too late to stop him from posting it. Thankfully we kept him from adding anything other than the music, and X and Jarvis deleted everything after.

I still don’t know how in the hell Tony managed to post it before two AI managed to stop him but I guess he was just that damn good. Dick. I'm gonna use Jury Rigg to get even later.

Still… Worth it. Worth it, even for all the pranks in the world.

Anyways, today I’d flown out in my Astrodactyl form to meet with Fitz in the base Tony had made into our new Research and Development center. We’d been working together on and off with Tony and Shuri on a bunch of different stuff. Simmons worked there as well, but I didn’t work with her as often since Jury Rigg and Upgrade, my current ‘genius’ forms, were more specialized toward technology.

I walked into Fitz’s ‘Idea Room’. And yes, that was the official title of the room. Fitz was messing with a hologram that took up most of the space in the center. Like a lot of the rooms, it was set up to project the interactive holograms Tony made use of. I had gained a lot of familiarity with it as well.

Fitz was currently working with a dark blue life-sized car, one of the standard ones SHIELD used. You know, the evil black SUV’s all governments used. He was digging around the engine with the hood tossed aside so it was floating about a foot off the floor.

“Hey dude,” I said as he was working on the engine. “What you working on?”

“Hmm?” Fitz looked up at me, blinking owlishly. “Oh, hello Mahmoud! ...Were we supposed to meet?”

I grinned. “Yeah, we were. You playing absent-minded professor again, dude?”

He scowled, though I didn’t feel any real heat behind it. “No, dude. I just… got distracted by science.”

“You know that’s exactly what an absent-minded-”

“Yes, yes, I know,” he sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his right hand while waving at the holographic car with his left. “I’ve just been working on this since we got back. I was repairing Lola, and I got to thinking about the MDX and Fury’s SUV, and the Catom tech.”

I looked over the hologram. It looked like a car. I had been trying to learn as much as I could from the geniuses around me, so I could at least figure out when something was odd. Okay. SUV, like Fury’s. Yeah, I could see the parts connected to the flight system from the engine. I imagine it had the turret as well. “So you want to make a car?”

“Sort of,” he scratched the back of his neck. “The standard model MDX’s have been fitted with flight systems based on the same ones from Lola’s era of technology, but they aren’t a replacement for a true combat vehicle. I was thinking of what I could do to change that. Simmons and I have been working on a new type of fighter jet, and I figured this could be a good prototype before we started on that.”

“So you’re making…” I said as gently as I could. I liked Fitz. Fitz was insanely cool in my opinion. But he also went on tangents that only Simmons could track, so you had to bring him back to earth every once in a while.

“A transforming car,” he said, as though that wasn’t an awesome pair of words when put side-by-side. “One that can change to fit a different role whenever we want.”

“Doesn’t Lola technically do that?” I asked while ‘opening’ the holographic cars door to poke at the center console, raising up the turret that rested between the driver and passenger seat.

“She can, but she isn’t designed for prolonged combat,” Fitz explained as he watched me turn the turret gun to point at a nearby wall. “I wanted to make something that could.”

“That would be pretty awesome, to be honest,” I noted. “You want some help?”

“A little,” Fitz said with a shrug. “Not for now, but I’ll need it when I have to do some redesigns. It’s more planning stages… I’m hoping to gift it to Coulson. The first one, I mean. Since I had to transfer,” he said slowly.

Oh right. Fitz and Simmons had left Coulson’s team recently. Which… I didn’t have super-strong feelings on, other than knowing Fitz-Simmons seemed okay with it.

“Well hell, if it’s for Coulson, I’m down. I like Coulson. Even if I sometimes forget he has a first name.”

Fitz chuckled.

“Maybe we should redesign that Russian plane, too, make up for the Bus getting tossed across the Russian countryside. Seriously dude, half the stuff on the plane ended up in the trees. I’m pretty sure most of it was-”

“You know, you don’t have to,” he stopped me, holding a finger up while closing his eyes.

“Just… please stop.”

“Sorry.”

“It hurts too much.”

“You uh… want to talk about it?”

“No, I’ll just,” he took a deep and shuddering breath. “I’ll work through it.”

“So, then we’ll redesign the plane?”

He nodded. I could almost see that big brain sparking to life. “Yes, I think… well, besides the various amenities, there are upgrades I could do for the engines, the security system, maybe add in some weapons. If we use the prototypes we’ve been making for your spaceship? Would that be okay?”

“For the Defiant?” I thought about that. While we were still a few weeks from actually building my spaceship, we’d already started on some of the beginning stages.

Shuri had been a big part of that. I’m pretty sure it was a big hit to Tony’s ego to see that Wakanda had made propulsion systems for aircraft more advanced than he’d even thought of decades before. If so, it had been quickly buried under sheer scientific curiosity followed by coming with improvements to the Wakandan design's efficiency that made Shuri and Fitz’s jaws drop.

Anyway, the point was that we had some devices ready to go already. Prototype big guns, something that could turn base ingredients into different foods, and an EMP shielded battery backup, among our attempts to make an alloy of Vibranium and other materials.

“Nothing Wakandan based,” I said slowly as I thought. “But the Jury-Rigged tech is fair game. Probably better to ask Tony and Shuri about the rest.”

“Fair enough,” Fitz nodded so fast his head became a blur, then stopped. “This should work unless we have to replace the plane again.”

“Eh, bridge to cross later,” I joked.

He nodded again, looking more cheery. Then he seemed to realize something. “Oh, by the way! I have to introduce you to two of our new coworkers!”

He moved toward the door. I followed curiously. “New coworkers?”

“Yes!” my Scottish friend said brightly. “They’ll be replacing Simmons and me on the Bus. They’re brilliant! Absolute genius! Honestly, if BRIDGE wasn’t around, I don’t know where they’d be working, but I’m glad they’re here.”

“You sure have a high opinion of them,” I noted. I tried to think of Marvel scientists. I drew a blank on any that weren’t supervillains or already known to me besides Reed Richards or Sue Storm… wait, why hadn’t I looked those two up-

“They deserve it,” he said, interrupting my chain of thought. I put a pin in it. “Here, they’ve been setting up a lab while we were in Russia.”

We entered the room. Immediately I was reminded of Simmons and Fitz’s workspaces. Half-Engineering parts everywhere, half-biological formulas and organic material held in tubes inside fridges along the back wall.

Inside, an older man wearing glasses was arguing with someone digging in a section in the back.

“Dr. Kusuma, you really must be more logical than this,” he said in a very sophisticated tone. “We are sharing our work now, so-”

“Buzz off,” a feminine voice said.

He sputtered in shock at the rude comment. The man was pudgy, wearing a lab coat over a warm looking wool sweater and khakis. He had thick brown hair and when he looked over at us his eyes were-oh shit, it was Alfred Molina.

Who had played a character in the Raimi Spider-Man movies… as the villain. The best villain, some would say, out of all the Trilogy.

“Dr. Octavius!” Fitz said excitedly, confirming my suspicions.

“Ah, Dr. Fitz!” Otto turned around to face us completely, giving me a curious look before smiling warmly. “It is good to see you. Who is this young man?”

I kept my face as neutral as I could when Fitz turned to look at me, trying to hide my internal screaming fit.

Come on, come on, think logically, Mahmoud. Otto usually turns evil. Doesn’t mean he has just yet. In fact, he’s usually an okay guy before something happens to mess with his brain. Mostly. I had to keep my cool. If I went Diamondhead and punched him through a wall just to stop something that might not happen, all sorts of bad would follow. Damn it, why’d I forget to look him up?! Now I had to check in on every other Spidey villain, just to make sure a 12-year-old Peter wouldn’t have to fight them. Oh, and check in on Anna Maria Marconi, aka one of the newest ‘best’ girls of the Marvel Universe.

“This is Mahmoud Schahed,” Fitz introduced me with a wide grin. “Mahmoud, this is Doctor Octavius!”

“Yes/Yeah, I’ve heard of him,” Doctor Octavius and I said at the same time as we reached to politely shake hands. We gave each other surprised looks and spoke again in unison. “You have?”

Thankfully I’d gotten used to people being confused when I recognized them by name. “Well, of course, I have, you’re one of the world’s most well-known scientists. You’re an absolute legend.”

“That’s what I said!” Fitz sounded almost giddy.

“O-Oh. Well, thank you so much. I’m n-not sure what to say,” it was really weird seeing Alfred Molina’s face, one I had seen a million times as a little kid, give me and Fitz a warm smile, seemingly honest to god touched. Spider-Man 2 was one of my favorite movies. This Otto in front of me reminded me of the one at the beginning of the movie. You know, before he lost his wife and the robot tentacles started talking to him. Yay, more things on my plate to manage.

“And I suppose you’ve made a name for yourself as well!” Otto (I didn’t have the heart to think of him as ‘Doc Ock’) chuckled. “The superhero Dial. I must say, that little device of yours caused quite a stir in the scientific community,” he said with a gesture toward the Omnitrix.

I looked down at it. Oh right. I didn’t have a secret identity… Maybe I should look into what exactly the rest of the world thought of Dial at some point.

Just then, the person in the other room spoke up. “Is that Fitz?”

“Yes, it is!” Otto yelled behind himself. Then he leaned forward. “Listen, she’s not self-conscious about her appearance, but it is a shock if you aren’t prepared for it.”

“Just remember, you’ve seen stranger,” Fitz hissed.

The woman in the other room stepped in.

I immediately felt a ‘fuck’ from the depths of my heart try to erupt from my throat.

She was short, wearing a lab coat over a pink tank-top and torn up jeans, a pair of flip-flops on her feet.

Also, her skin was green. I was used to that. She had scales, sharp claws on her fingers and toes, a fin on the top of her head instead of hair, and a tail trailing behind her. She gave me a look like I was going to scream. I was, but most likely not for the reasons she thought.

“Hi,” I waved with a sigh. “I’m Mahmoud. You?”

She seemed surprised at my underreaction. “Uh, hi. Melati Kusuma.”

AKA, Komodo in the comics.

“Nice to meet you,” I said with no real emotion behind it.

“Actually, we already met,” she walked up to join us, the steps giving me time to regain my glowingly positive attitude. “I was at the Graveyard.”

“Really?” I asked blinking. Then I looked down at the Omnitrix. Oh no. The Omnitrix had ended up ‘fixing’ everyone in the Graveyard. Which had worked out great for most, but what if she’d-

“Oh, no,” Komodo seemed to realize where my train of thought was going. “I actually did this to myself afterward.”

“I, really?” I cocked my head to the side. “Well, at least you look cool.”

She seemed to positively glow at that.

“Cool?” Otto scoffed. “More ‘irresponsible’.”

Melati scowled. “Oh please, I knew the risks, and I knew I’d still get what I wanted.”

“You took a chance on unnecessary mutations when a year or so of research-” Otto began to say.

“Yeah, because another year without legs vs a life with scales is such a tough choice,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“And what if-”

“I can’t believe you-”

They suddenly began to argue at high speed, surprising the hell out of me. “Uh…”

“The research that you did has promise, but not if you take all these risks!”

“Oh what about you, mister ‘plug-robots-into-your-brain’!?”

“Cybernetic research has made incredible strides!” Otto argued.

“Nobody wants robot arms!”

“They’re even better than the real thing!”

For some weird reason though… Otto still seemed warm. I don’t know, maybe it was the little glimmer in his eye, but I got the sense he liked Melati. There was a fondness in the arguing if that made sense?

Still, as Fitz and I looked between them like spectators at a tennis match, I resolved to add them to the list.

The list was too damn long at this point.

Also, gonna need to look into Peter Parker again, just to make sure the kid was all right. Starting to feel creepy about it...

------

Clint Barton/Hawkeye

It had been a while since the Avengers had a meeting on their own. No SHIELD/BRIDGE members, no big group of newbies, no bad guys. Just them.

Well, and Sam and Rhodey, but Sam lead one of the teams and Rhodey probably should have been an Avenger from the start, so they didn’t count. Bucky would have come as well but he was currently training with Ruby on Natasha and Steve’s behalf.

Clint leaned against a wall in the back of the room. They were all inside the rec floor, the same place he’d fought a food fight in oh so long ago. Steve sat at the head of a round table with the Avengers logo embossed on it.

Clint wasn’t sure how Steve’s spot was the head of a round table (wasn’t the point of them being round that there was no head of the table?) but it was. Starting from his left sat Natasha, Bruce, Thor, Rhodey, Tony, Sam, and right back to Steve.

“Clint, you sure you don’t want to sit?” Steve asked politely.

“Nah, I’m good,” Clint said. “I like a good view.”

“Barton, I’m more than just a fresh piece of ass to stare at,” Tony joked.

“Oh please, like your’s is the ass I’d be staring at,” Clint chuckled.

Tony blinked. “Wait, whose would…”

Clint looked at Steve. So did everyone else.

Steve coughed uncomfortably, Natasha and Sam grinning at him. “Okay. We have work to do guys.”

“Right, enough about Cap’s glutes,” Tony said, sounding just slightly offended.

Captain America rolled his eyes. “Okay. Let’s discuss what's been happening for the past few months.”

Everyone hesitated. Clint hid a smile. Yeah, there had been… a lot. Seriously, a stupidly huge amount. Clint had a lot of trouble keeping things in perspective these days. SHIELD becoming BRIDGE, HYDRA, Rio, Graveyard survivors, Winter Guard… Really hard to be the guy with the bow and arrow. Used to be that being effective with a bow and arrow in a world of modern weapons was all he needed to feel special. Now he was getting jokes online about being the ‘useless Avenger’.

Real easy comment to make from behind a screen.

“...Let’s start with the most recent one,” Steve said at last.

“Ugh,” Tony and Thor said in unison.

“Yes, I know your opinions on the Winter Guard,” Steve said with the patience of a saint.

“That Crimson Dynamo is a hack,” Tony said.

“And Chernobog is a raging psychopath that once raised a wolf specifically so that it would only eat the eyeballs of depressed widowers,” Thor added.

Clint, personally, had to hold back a sigh at that. Thor was bad enough with all his claims of being a god and being over a thousand years old. There was the fight against the aliens a little after that and the forming of the Avengers, finding out from Cap about HYDRA infiltrating SHIELD and a kid who could turn into aliens. Then, in Rio, Clint had ended up shooting arrows into literal demonic monsters, knights from 1600’s Germany, and a troll. And now, they had someone claiming to be a Russian witch switching from a team that had a ‘dark god’ on it.

Yeah, he was feeling way in over his head. Hard to feel useful as an Avenger with all the aliens and superpowers running around, at least not without seriously upgrading the Hawkeye armor and gear.

While he mused on this, Steve was talking. “-so we now know that Russia is getting themselves ready for the eventuality they may need to kill us. Which means-”

“That I start figuring out how to hack the hack’s armor so that I can make her hit herself over and over again,” Tony said.

“That I raise an army of warriors and kill the Dark Lord Chernobog as his lands burn and his armies scream in pain,” Thor said.

Steve sighed.

“It means we should take in as much information as we can and prepare,” Clint said helpfully.

“Thanks, Clint,” Steve said. The team leader looked around. “Now, I’m hopeful that it won’t be necessary, but I can’t ignore the idea that other governments might be making their own countermeasures. I’d rather focus on the real bad guys. But we can’t leave the idea that we aren’t just dealing with HYDRA. World governments are preparing counters for us. What do we do about that?”

“...” Rhodey rubbed his eyes, looking like he was having a moment of crisis. “Are we seriously worried about the possibility of our own governments coming after us?”

“Are you not?” Natasha said calmly. “I hate to break it to you but governments killing their own people happens all the time.”

Rhodey opened his mouth to say something, maybe a rebuttal. Then his mouth snapped closed. He let out a little sad sigh and closed his eyes. “I’m not doubting the idea. I’m not naive. I’m just saying that I’d rather hope that, as long as we keep staying on the straight and narrow, as long as we focus on the mission, the smart ones will see that we aren’t something to be afraid of.”

“We aren’t under the control of any nation,” Tony said. “That’s going to be enough for some people. I mean, I’m as American as anyone who isn’t currently wearing the flag,” Steve smiled at that. “But I know a few senators who don’t like the fact that I didn’t put every soldier in a suit the second I made the Iron Man armor,” Tony spoke fast, as though he was trying to get ahead of anyone. “Now granted, I love the idea of good soldiers getting armored up. But more suits out in the world means more assholes who can get them or reverse engineer them.”

“You don’t have to justify it to us, Tony,” Rhodey said in the voice of a man who had heard an argument multiple times. “In the end, you guys are right. We need to prepare for the eventuality we might end up fighting… I mean, what do we even call them? Government heroes? Sponsored heroes?”

“Well, if all goes well, magic girl is going to stick around,” Tony said. “By the way, is she for real Thor? You said Wanda wasn’t really magic, right?”

Thor frowned thoughtfully. “...Maybe. I would have to speak with her directly, but the footage I have seen of the lass does resemble spells I once saw my… my mother practice. I can try and contact my father again, maybe see if this is really magic or not.”

“Well, great, gives me time to prove it for myself,” Tony said. “Ask if I can run some tests on her powers, see what makes them tick.”

“If you wanted to do that, you shouldn’t have started off with such a bad first impression,” Natasha noted.

Clint smirked. “So you did the Harry Potter thing?”

“Yeah, of course I did,” Tony rolled his eyes. “She’s a magical witch, I’d have to be insane not to do the joke.”

“What is… Harry Potter?” Thor asked curiously.

Tony’s eyes lit up. But before he could say anything, Steve interrupted. “As long as we have some knowledge on this, I’m happy. I do remember some old legends when I was in the war. Maybe worth looking into,” he said with some disquiet in his voice. “We also have to talk about team make-ups. I think we should be ready for smaller groups.”

Sam leaned forward, drawing the attention of the others. “I’ve been speaking with Maria about it,” Clint hid another smile at the familiar way he said Maria Hill’s name. “We both agree that making smaller team units to deal with more threats is a good idea. We don’t want to spread ourselves too thin, of course, but it makes sense to cover as much ground as we can. Plus, some of us can fulfill multiple roles, and we can all start working with BRIDGE guys to fill in any gaps.”

“Is that really a good idea?” Rhodey asked. “I mean, we were just talking about people gunning for us, should we be splitting up like a bunch of morons in a horror movie? Because it usually doesn’t end well for you and me, Sam.”

Sam chuckled but quickly became serious again. “There are a lot more bad guys than there are heroes right now. We have quality, sure, but we need to start covering more ground. Besides, we can’t start grouping up just because we’re scared. After all, we’re saving people. That’s the real goal we have to focus on.”

Rhodey nodded slowly. “...Then we have to plan it out. Make sure we can account for everything. What sort of teams were you thinking?”

“Dial once told me, ‘One Riot, One Avenger’,” Sam said. “Said he heard it somewhere. I’m not saying we do anything like that since I’m not that confident. But groups of three to five would be good.”

“As long as I don’t get teamed up with a newbie,” Tony said with a shrug. “What about X? He says he wants in on the Avengers.”

Steve crossed his arms thoughtfully. “I personally don’t mind the idea. X has always acted in our best interests. He’s a good person.”

“For someone born out of the mind of a Nazi and an alien mad-engineer,” Tony said wryly.

“You don’t want him on the team?” Natasha asked.

“I do,” Tony sighed. “But you know we get enough flack for having Point Break on the team.”

Thor frowned. “Truly?”

“You didn’t notice that Norse religion has been on the rise since you showed up?” Clint asked.

“I did not,” Thor frowned, looking as though he didn’t know what to think of that.

Meanwhile, Steve rested back in his seat. “We have something else. Last night, in Hell’s Kitchen, there was an attack. A group of assailants attacked a van carrying Hammertech weaponry, stealing some of it and firing RPGs in the middle of the street, destroying several buildings and killing four people, injuring many others,” Steve said seriously.

“What the fuck?” Clint asked, feeling shocked. “Some lunatic used RPG’s in the middle of New York City?”

“Yes,” Steve said grimly. “Apparently, BRIDGE is investigating, since two Enhanced were reported to have driven the gang off.”

“Do they need our aid?” Thor asked. He had a dark look on his face.

“Not yet, but they’ll let us know,” Steve said. “There’s also the question of the van. Hammertech says the weapons had been stolen weeks ago, and they have no idea how they got to New York.”

“Figures that even after he got arrested, Justin Hammer is still causing problems,” Tony said. “Hey, you still have that party popper he gave you?” he asked Rhodey.

Rhodey rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, that never gets old.”

“We’ll let BRIDGE take that on,” Steve said. “But I was hoping we could keep an eye on New York. I know that we have a responsibility to the whole world, but New York is our headquarters. We can’t let people get hurt here… four people are dead,” his eyes were hard. Clint felt his own match Steve’s. “I want to make sure whoever did it doesn’t get away with it.”

Bruce suddenly spoke. Clint realized he’d been quiet the whole time. Not surprising, since Bruce wasn’t the sort to just interrupt a meeting, but it was noticeable. “I also wanted to talk about something. Thor, you said you might have to go back home soon?”

They all looked over at Thor, who nodded. “Yes. My father will want to hear about all the things that have happened on Midgard. Ulik’s return and disappearance are worrying, as is Chernobog joining a Midgardian team. I also wish to take Dial. I’ve been speaking with Heimdall. He worries about the implications of Sandrass.”

“Dial’s Asgardian form?” Natasha asked.

“Indeed,” Thor said gravely. “Heimdall is worried about it. And that worries me.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Bruce said, waving his hands with each ‘wait’. “What do you mean? Isn’t it just a new alien form? Why would it be a problem? I mean, you didn’t seem to mind when he got Ulik’s DNA.”

“Ulik is not a god,” Thor looked around. “I try not to make a big deal about it. But I am thousands of years old. I have the power to destroy cities and raze continents, given enough time,” his voice seemed to deepen. Clint felt his heart clench just a bit. “That sort of power, it doesn’t simply ‘appear’. It can’t be replicated. Asgardians of my strength are few and far between, with Sif and the Warriors Three being among the only ones from my generation. And yet, this Omnitrix has made another. I must discover if that will cause problems down the road.”

“Sam,” Steve asked, as though every word Thor had just said wasn’t testing his world view the way it was for Clint. “You okay with that?”

“Sure,” Sam leaned back in his seat and rubbed his chin. “We do need to reach out to Asgard anyway. Maria has been talking about making treaties with other planets. Might as well start with the one we have the best relationship with.”

“She wants to make treaties,” Bruce said thoughtfully. “Well, that would be a good reason to bring an ambassador along. Thor?”

“I’m sure I can accommodate at least one person,” Thor rubbed his chin. “I’ll have to ask my father first. If he disagrees, then Dial will have to suffice as Earth’s ambassador.”

“That’s a terrifying prospect,” Clint mumbled to himself.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess,” Bruce sighed. “Oh, in the meantime, we got confirmation that the Graveyard survivors that are joining BRIDGE have been approved. They’re starting training next week. A few have been interested in joining the Avengers.”

“I saw,” Steve smiled. “I’m more than willing to give them the chance. We should get some files and decide as a group?”

When no one seemed to mind the idea, Steve smiled a little wider. “Great! Anything else we should cover?”

Clint watched in silence as the next topic was brought up, thinking quietly to himself about how crazy his life had become.