RABBIT HEART || MARVEL (1)

TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE INTERROGATION

AFTER MEDITATING FOR HALF AN HOUR, MAGGIE MADE HER WAY TOWARDS THE LAB.

The lab Bruce and Tony were working in together was on the path to Loki's cell. Loki's scepter was on a mantle behind Tony and Bruce, who were scanning it. The second Maggie entered the lab, Tony poked Bruce with a miniature electrical rod. Maggie immediately slapped Tony's arm, protecting Bruce while he yelled ow.

"Tony!" Maggie said.

"Easy there, Elphaba, it was just a test," Tony said as his ward scolded him. He then looked closely at Banner, "nothing?"

"Hey, are you nuts?" Steve asked, entering the lab.

"You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?" Tony asked, making Maggie roll her eyes.

"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve asked.

Maggie watched the scene play out between the billionaire and the soldier. Things were always tense between the two because Steve and Maggie worked with Tony's father.

"Funny things are," Tony answered.

"Threatening the safety safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny. No offense, doctor," Steve said.

Maggie agreed with Steve, nodding as proof. She had seen Bruce turn green before in videos and it wasn't good.

"No, it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things," Bruce replied, showing no hard feelings.

"You're tip-toeing, but man. You need to strut," Tony encouraged.

"And you need to focus on the problem at hand, Mr Stark," Steve fired back.

"You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."

"You think Fury's hiding something?" Maggie asked, looking at Tony.

"He's a spy, Mags, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets," Tony answered, then pointed at Bruce. "It's bugging him too, isn't it?"

"Uh...I just wanna finish my work here and..." Bruce trailed off, making Maggie and Steve concerned.

"Doctor?" Steve asked.

"A warm light for all mankind, Loki's jab at Fury about the cube."

"I heard it."

"Well, I think it was meant for you. Even Barton didn't post that all over the news," Bruce said while pointing at Tony.

"The Stark Tower? That big ugly-" Steve trailed off as Tony gave him a look. It almost made Maggie snicker. " -building in New York?"

"It's powered by Stark Reactors, self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for what, a year?" Bruce asked.

"That's just a prototype. I'm kind of the only name in clear energy right now," Tony said.

"So why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?" Bruce asked.

"I should probably look into that once my description programmer finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files," Tony said.

"What?" Maggie asked, her eyes widening a bit.

"I'm sorry, did you say-"

"Jarvis has been running it since I got the bridge," Tony said, cutting Steve off. "In a few hours, we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide. Blueberry? " he asked, holding out a bag of blueberries. Maggie immediately dunk her hand in.