Madness of the Serpent

Transition

"You've gone mad! Completely mad!" Dr. Selvig shouted with a tone more incredulous than it was accusatory. "You can't hold the Tesseract with your bare... er, hands!" he exclaimed, glancing quickly at its clawed fingers as if it did not understand clearly enough what he had intended to say. "The energy flowing through the Cube – no one can survive that!"

"You could have mentioned that before she went inside," the agent remarked in apparent irritation, glaring at the male before she approached a metallic case propped open on the graveled rooftop.

"I didn't think she would make it past the barrier! Plus, it feels like someone took a jackhammer to my brain." Romanoff's expression softened the slightest, though she still appeared somewhat annoyed as she lifted a silver tool from the case. The object was comprised of two thin, metal pieces that joined in the middle, a handheld instrument meant for some unidentifiable task.

The spirit turned away from them and slowly knelt in front of the artifact, placing it at eye-level, glowing like a cubed version of the orb within the sceptre. It dreaded what would happen when it attempted to grab the shimmering object, and the numerous possibilities for disaster flashed through its mind.

Would it be able to overload the portal now that it had a physical form? Would it be able to contain the explosion if one should occur? Would its fleshy body be able to handle the raw power of the artifact? It had always been shielded from the naked energy of the mind-jewel by the casing of the orb, but this object felt much more exposed and unbridled as evident by the sparks jumping between it and the machine.

"We can close it. Can anybody copy? We can shut the portal down," spoke Romanoff from behind, presumably in contact with her allies.

Its hands, one pale and delicate, the other dark and twisted, approached the artifact, when Romanoff shouted, "Wait!"

The spirit paused, almost unable to turn away as the lure of the artifact sent thrills of temptation through its nerves. But it managed to retract its arms as it looked over its shoulder to the red-haired agent.

"Stark... he's carrying a nuclear bomb. It's set to go off in less than a minute. And if you grab the Tesseract like that, it will kill you," Romanoff explained urgently, holding the tool she had acquired towards the edge of the invisible barrier. The protective sphere shimmered into the visible spectrum as the tips of the metal instrument sparked against its outer coating.

"My God," Dr. Selvig remarked breathlessly, slowly sitting on the graveled rooftop with an expression of pure shock on his face. "A bomb?"

"The World Council must have ordered a nuclear strike," the female agent explained, her eyes still on the spirit as she waited for it to take the tool from her hands.

"But there are millions of people here!" the doctor exclaimed. The spirit's thoughts darkened as its previous mistrust of the humans curdled to the surface. Even after Loki's pointed attempts to influence its perspective of the humans, it had never imagined they would have been capable of culling a portion of their own population in order to halt the invading forces.

"I'm well aware of that, Doctor," Romanoff answered curtly, her expression also disturbed. "Stark's going after it," the agent added, her voice oddly even as her eyes looked carefully blank. She looked down at the spirit as it carefully pulled the metal instrument through the rippling barrier. "Hold these in your hand and squeeze the Tesseract between the tongs when I say."

It gazed up at the female agent in a mixture of wonder and apprehension. The metal human was planning on eliminating the evil device of destruction? The anger in its chest quelled at the shameful realization that it had believed the humans would be apathetic and uncaring to the plight of their own people. Of course, they would do whatever they could to protect their metropolis, or what was left of it after the Chitauri had desecrated it.