"Look, I've got fires to put out here, Bruce. The military doesn't just stop moving because your girlfriend isn't answering her texts. If she turns up, I'll buzz you. Until then, stay out of my hair."
General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross didn't wait for a reply. He clicked the phone shut with a sharp, metallic snap, his fingers trembling slightly—not from fear, but from the raw power coursing through his veins. He looked older, his skin etched with lines of stress, but his eyes glowed with a predatory, crimson light that hadn't been there a month ago.
Across from him, in the sterile, dimly lit corner of the new tactical command center, stood Betty Ross. She was the one who had signaled him to lie. She was the reason Bruce Banner was currently losing his mind in Chinatown.
Huang Wen had been right to worry. The previous base was nothing more than a smoking crater in Virginia, a testament to the General's obsession and the Abomination's fury. Normally, a failure of that magnitude—losing a multi-billion dollar facility and a small army of soldiers—would have resulted in a court-martial and a permanent seat in a dark cell.
But the Sherman family had been busy. They had spun the narrative, turning a disastrous loss into a "necessary sacrifice" to secure the body of the Abomination. With a monster's corpse in the morgue and a successful Gamma-enhanced General at the helm, the higher-ups decided Ross was too valuable to bench. He was their deterrent, their "Red" response to the "Green" problem. His leash was shorter, his budget was slashed, and his soldiers were replaced by a handful of tight-lipped researchers and errand boys, but he was still in the game.
"What is this, Betty?" Ross growled, tossing the phone onto a metal desk. "You and Banner have a spat? Did the big green guy forget your anniversary? Why are you hiding out in a bunker with your old man without telling him?"
Betty didn't flinch. She had grown up under the shadow of this man's discipline, but she wasn't a child anymore. "I'm not here to hide, Dad. I'm here for answers."
She stepped into the light, her face pale but determined. "Huang Wen told me. He told me everything. He said you aren't just a General anymore. He said you're like Bruce. You're a transformation."
Ross's jaw tightened. He cursed the name 'Huang Wen' under his breath—the man was a walking security leak. "That meddling martial artist needs to learn to keep his mouth shut. Fine. Yes. I'm a success story. I took the serum, I survived the radiation, and I kept my head. No second personality, no 'Hulk' yelling in the back of my brain. I'm just me, only better. Stronger. Faster."
Betty's eyes didn't fill with horror. Instead, they burned with a strange, feverish intensity. "Then I want it. Help me get it, Dad. Help me become what you are."
The room went silent. Even the hum of the cooling fans seemed to die down.
"Have you lost your mind?" Ross roared, his voice vibrating with a sub-bass frequency that rattled the glassware on the shelves. "This isn't a cosmetic surgery, Betty! It's a death sentence for ninety-nine percent of the people who try it. I'm a soldier, my body was conditioned for decades. Banner was a freak accident. You? You're a scientist. You'd be atomized before the first injection was finished. I won't do it. Not in a million years."
"Dad, listen to me—"
"No! The conversation is over. I'm calling Bruce back, and he's coming to pick you up. You're going home." Ross reached for the phone again.
Schlick.
The sound of metal sliding against leather cut through the air. Betty had pulled a combat knife from her boot—a gift from her father years ago—and held the edge directly against the soft skin of her throat.
"You have two choices," Betty said, her voice eerily calm. "You can put me in that machine and give me a chance to stand beside the man I love. Or you can use my corpse for your next autopsy. I'm not going back to being the 'damsel' who waits in a house for a monster to come home. I love Bruce. I love the Hulk. And the only way for us to survive is if I become one of you."
Ross stared at her. He realized in that moment that his security was a joke; his daughter had bypassed his skeleton crew of guards with ease. But more than that, he realized she was serious. The Ross stubbornness was a double-edged sword, and it was currently pointed at her jugular.
"Why?" Ross whispered. "Why turn yourself into a monster?"
"We aren't monsters," she replied, a single tear tracing a path down her cheek. "We're the future. And I'm tired of being left behind."
Ross looked at her for a long, agonizing minute. He saw the fire in her eyes and knew he couldn't stop her. If he sent her away, she'd find a way to do it in a garage with black-market tech and end up a puddle of radioactive sludge.
"Fine," Ross spat, his heart breaking even as his pride swelled. "But if you die, I'm going to kill Banner myself. Don't tell him you're here. If he thinks I'm hurting you, he'll level this state before the first test is done."
"He won't know," Betty promised, lowering the knife. "Not until I can look him in the eye and not be afraid of the heat coming off his skin."
One month later.
Chinatown was basking in the late afternoon sun when a sleek, silver Audi R8 screeched to a halt in front of the Wing Chun school. The door flipped open, and Tony Stark stepped out, looking like a man who had just bought the concept of happiness.
He was wearing a tailored suit that cost more than the building he was walking into. His walk was bouncy, his chest was thrust forward, and the glow of the new Arc Reactor was visible even through his expensive shirt.
"Hey, Kung Fu Panda! Guess who's back from the dead?" Tony shouted as he strolled into the gym.
Huang Wen was sitting in the corner, sipping tea while watching a group of students fail to hold their stances. He didn't even look up. "Recovered, I see. I assume the internal energy I left in your chest helped, or were you planning on thanking me for that later?"
Tony paused, his smirk faltering for a microsecond. "Yeah, yeah. Jarvis said my cell regeneration was 'anomalous.' I'm sure your magic touch helped. But look at this!" He tapped his chest. "New element. New reactor. I'm officially the smartest man on the planet again."
"Congratulations," Huang Wen said dryly. "It only took you a near-death experience and a blueprint from your father to catch up to the curve."
Tony narrowed his eyes, pulling up a chair and sitting backward on it. "That reminds me. A month ago, you told me someone had already built one of these. I've had my satellites scanning the globe. I've hacked the Pentagon, the Kremlin, and even a few suspicious hobbyist forums in Japan. Nothing. No one has a miniaturized arc reactor. You were bluffing, weren't you? Trying to get me to work faster?"
Huang Wen finally looked at him. During the past month, he had been subtly tracking the energy signatures coming from General Ross's hidden base. He knew Betty had survived the initial bombardment of Gamma and Vita-rays.
He knew she was currently in a stasis pod, her DNA rewriting itself into something powerful and crimson. He also knew Bruce was becoming a powder keg of anxiety, and he had been spending most of his energy keeping the "Green God" from exploding.
Compared to a potential She-Hulk and a grieving Banner, Tony Stark's ego was a minor annoyance.