Reborn
Chapter Three
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Bruce came to slowly and painfully as he always did after becoming the other guy. His muscles ached and screamed, his bones protested even the smallest of movements. He blinked open his eyes and tried to move his hands. He felt a flicker of panic when his limbs refused to move.
"Calm down Banner." Bruce followed the voice with his head and saw Sampson.
"Sampson?" He rasped, "What are you doing here?" Sampson smiled down at Bruce. Bruce took the chance to look around and saw himself strapped down with chains and cement. He felt his anger rising and tried to keep the other guy at bay and within a few moments, it worked.
"Don't worry Bruce. We're taking you to The Cube." Sampson moved away to check on Banner's vitals. "There, we can find a cure for you and others like you." Bruce's attention was taken away when another agent walked passed his container with another, much smaller cage. His eyes widened when he saw a flash of brown fur from within. His anger instantly tripled. He grunted when a sharp point of a needle pierced his neck.
"Leave her alone Sampson!" Bruce growled even as he felt himself slowly losing control. He was fading fast. He gasped when a needle pierced the skin of his neck. He moaned as the liquid was injected into his blood stream. A drug.
Sampson looked away from his vitals and towards the cage that held Banner's pet. Sampson hummed to himself as Banner lost consciousness again.
Bruce felt very strongly for this animal.
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Eevee came to when a sharp stabbing erupted from her back leg. She screeched in pain and tried to struggle against the iron bands that were holding her limbs and neck down. A voice tried to calm her but it wasn't Bruce's, for that she was sure of. Eevee chirped, meowed and struggled but she was still held tightly.
"It's okay!" The voice cut through her panic, "I won't hurt you! I promise." Eevee opened her eyes and saw a human male with brown hair and blue eyes withdrawing a needle from her leg, the barrel filled with her blood. She tried to get away but the bands held her tight.
"I have never seen anything like you before." The man murmured to himself, "And if what the agents said were true, you used powers that should be beyond you." He tapped the vile that held her blood before looking down at her. Eevee opened her mouth to summon her small star shaped balls of energy but nothing came. Eevee closed her eyes with a groan and tried to focus.
She was so tired and dizzy. It was hard to focus her thoughts. Eevee laid her head back down on the stainless steel table and closed her eyes.
She faintly noticed a hand pet her side before hands untied the straps and lifted her off the table and laid her on something cold and hard. She heard a click moments later.
"I bet Bruce will feel better with you in the room with him." The man commented. Eevee tried to open her eyes again but she couldn't. She was heavily drugged.
Screams and roars of pain and anger filled her ears as they moved. Others beat against metal well others just yelled their anger and frustration.
"Sampson." Eevee heard Bruce sigh. With Bruce's voice as a motivator, she managed to open her eyes and call out for him. She saw him hanging from the ceiling, strapped up like an animal in a bare cement room and only wearing his pants he managed to keep intact from his transformation.
"She's alright Bruce, just a little foggy from the drugs." Sampson said and laid down her cage a few feet in from Banner's cage. Bruce narrowed his eyes down at Eevee as Sampson got a syringe ready for Bruce's blood. Eevee looked okay aside from the drugs.
"You have to believe me Bruce." Sampson said as he started to draw blood from Bruce, "With the resources I have here, I will find a cure for you." Bruce shook his head.
"Leonard, don't." He protested. "I stopped trying to cure the Hulk a long time ago." Bruce followed Sampson with his eyes as the scientist packaged away his blood. "I reached out to him. There's a place in this world for the Hulk, but this isn't it." He sighed and shook his head.
Sampson looked over at his once colleague as he picked up the container that held Banner's blood. "I'm not going to give up, Bruce, even if you have." Sampson left the cell with suitcase in tow. He glanced down at Eevee's cage but left her there. The man dressed in purple from earlier in the dessert, passed Sampson on his way out.
"Let me guess." Bruce snorted as the man stopped a few meters away and stared, "You thought I'd be bigger?"
"Funny." The man said back as he crossed his arms behind his back. "The Hulk- he's a monster right? I mean, that's what they told us." He moved closer to Bruce as he spoke, "That's what everyone thinks. Military and SHIELD have been chasing him for years."
"He caused untold destruction. He's a monster" The man continued. Bruce glared down at him.
"What do you think?" He asked. The purple man glanced down before looking back up at Bruce.
"Why did the Hulk save that ship?" He asked, "He could have just escaped. I saw it. He had a way out, but he saved my crew instead... why?" Bruce was silent for a moment before asking the man.
"You're a SHIELD agent, right?"
"Yeah, So?" The man retorted, placing his hands on his hips.
"Maybe the question you should be asking is what SHIELD and the Hulkbusters want the Hulk for." Bruce said. "Open your eyes! Look around this place. Look at the monsters here. Do you really think the Cube is just a jail?"
Bruce took a deep breath. "And now they have samples of my blood- the Hulk's blood! You think they want to cure me? They don't want to cure me, they want to make more of me." The man shook his head before turning his back on Bruce and walking out.
Bruce sighed and deflated in his chains.
"Eevee?" Eevee chirped tiredly. He looked over at her small cage and felt anger, frustration and despair at the situation. He never wanted this, not for her.
"It's alright Eevee. Just go to sleep." He tried to convince his pet. He knew that she was incredibly smart for a mammal, she could understand exactly what he saw saying and the situation that they were in. "I promise I'll get you out of here." He couldn't allow them to get their hands on Eevee, to find out exactly what she was capable of.
Eevee breathed out and closed her eyes and fell asleep. Bruce kept his eyes on her cage as long as he could but he felt himself tiring even as he hung there, his shoulders aching. Even if he stayed here, Eevee would be free of this place, for that, he was sure of.
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Every six to eight hours a scientist came in and gently drugged Eevee once more, keeping her calm and sedated. Bruce fisted his hands, feeling Hulk's anger every time they pricked Eevee with a needle. He breathed through his anger and tried to stay calm. Having the other guy out at the moment wasn't a good idea.
"Well, how are we today Bruce?" Sampson asked as he walked into the cell, flipping through some papers that held the reports. "No episodes in the last 36 hours, I see." Bruce opened his eyes and glared at the man.
"This is a disaster waiting to happen, Leonard." Bruce growled. Sampson sighed and shook his head.
"I've told you again and again, Bruce." Sampson said, "We'll find a cure for the Hulk." He turned and eyed the graphs and X rays of Bruce that showed on a computer screen that they dragged into cell a few days back to monitor Bruce's vitals.
"The Cube is the most advanced gamma radiation research facility on the planet." Sampson continued. He flipped through sheets of paper on his clipboard. "The work we've done with Sterns and Blonde is-" Bruce shook his head firmly.
"You're wrong!" He argued, "SHIELD and Ross are lying to you. They don't want cures. They want to know how they can create more of me, of the Hulk, how they can control us, use us for their own purposes." Bruce took a deep breath. "Trust me. I've seen it happen before. They will twist everything you do. You wanna know what that Cube is really for? It's a gamma bomb waiting to go off." Sampson shook his head.
"You're wrong. What we do here, its for the good of man kind." Sampson protested. He took a deep breath to calm his nerves before he continued.
"Oh, and we made progress on your pet's blood as well. What did you name it again? Eevee?" Sampson asked. Bruce narrowed his eyes.
"We analyzed it's blood and its just amazing! We've never seen anything like it before." Sampson set down the sheets of paper and walked over to the small portable cage in the corner of the room. The animal was still sleeping peacefully inside, her chest still rising and falling as it breathed. He lifted the cage to peer inside.
"It's cells were outlined, charged, with a white energy that we couldn't identify." Sampson brought the cage closer to Bruce, "All it's cells had this energy and no matter what we did, they wouldn't release it. It was just fascinating." Bruce and Sampson looked towards the door as an alarm started to go off.
"What's going on?" Sampson thought out loud. He placed Eevee's cage by Bruce's feet and moved out of the cell. Bruce started to struggle in his chains.
"What Leonard! Don't go out there! Stop!" He shouted. Sampson ignored Bruce and shut the cell behind him. Bruce clenched his fists as he started to struggle. He paused when thick green smoke started to trickle in through the vents and the cell door.
"It's happening." Bruce whispered, eyes going wide. He glanced down fearfully at Eevee's cage as the gamma smoke started closer.
"Eevee!" He yelled, "Eevee wake up!" He didn't know what the gamma smoke would do to the mammal but it wouldn't be good. Eevee started to stir within the cage at Bruce's yelling, her brain felt heavy and filled with fuzz. His cell jolted as an explosion went off down the hall.
He shouted as the cement crumbled around him, large blocks falling and dislodging his chains. He heard Eevee yelp before the rocks fell over him. He collapsed on the ground on his stomach and was immediately pinned from his waist down to the ground.
"Come on." He growled, "Come on!" Bruce looked over and saw one corner of Eevee's cage dented in and completely covered in gamma smoke. Bruce tried to lift himself up and drag him away from the cement but every time he moved, more cement threatened to crush him.
He squeezed his eyes closed and tried to keep the Hulk at bay. He had no idea what was going on but the Hulk could make it worse for all of them.
Bruce looked up when the sound of footsteps staggered into what remained of his cell. "Leonard?" Bruce could just make out the man through the thick cloud of gamma smoke and dust. "Whats.. oh no." Sampson was hurt, and badly but the worst part, he was infected.
"Leonard! You got to listen to me! You have been exposed to gamma radiation." Bruce explained, "We have to get you to a hospital." Sampson fell to his knees in front of Bruce and gasped for breath.
"You were right." Sampson cried and looked at Bruce, "The prisoners, they're all free! Its a disaster."
"Listen to me Leonard." Bruce said, trying to get through to the obviously shocked man. "You have to help me because right now, the Hulk is the only answer we got if we want to get out alive." Leonard's mouth dropped open before he nodded.
He stood and grabbed one side of the cement sheet that lay over Bruce's legs and heaved. Leonard ignored the way his muscles grew and bones popped, how veins thickened. He picked up the cement slab and threw it to the side. Bruce gingerly sat up straighter, testing to see if any bones were broken. Sampson gasped and looked down at his hands. He jolted forwards as pain erupted into his body. His legs gave out on him and he fell back onto his hands and knees before Bruce, gasping for breath.
"Zzzax." Bruce growled, looking up and glared at the electrified gamma monster before him. Zzzax threw his arms up and roared. Bruce growled again and staggered to his feet.
Zzzax shot his arms down and fired a line of pure electricity at Banner. Bruce shouted and jerked, falling against a cement sheet as his body spasmed as electricity shot through his core.
Zzzax screamed in surprise and pain as a black ball of energy struck his side and sent him falling against the opposite wall. Bruce gasped as the electricity left his body. His legs gave out on him and he collapsed to his knees. He gasped for breath as he looked for Eevee, recognizing the back energy.
A much larger form then Eevee moved out of the smoke. Sharp pointed yellow fur covered this mammal from head to toe. It had the same body structure as Eevee but had no bushy but it had the the same pointed ears and brown eyes. It was about the size of an average full grown fox.
"Eevee?" Bruce gasped. The animal looked over at him and chirped and Bruce could still recognize Eevee in this animal's eyes.
"Jolteon!" She chirped. Bruce clenched his eyes closed as he tried to take in the situation but the Hulk wasn't having any of it. Bruce roared as the Hulk decided he waited long enough. He screamed in pain as his muscles erupted and grew as his anger tripled.
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Hulk stood and faced his enemy with a roar before he grabbed the monster and started hitting him with his fists.
Jolteon chirped in pain as the drugs still made her feel extremely drowsy but the pain kept her awake. She looked down at herself and then the cell and saw it in shambles as more and more green smoke drifted in. A groaning green haired man was to the left of her, holding his head in his hands. She had no idea how she did it but, her new body didn't hurt.
She looked back as Hulk roared again and finished with one more smash before the monster went still.
"Pet?" Hulk asked in confusion as he turned around. Jolteon cocked her head and meowed. He gave a small smile down at her, relieved that she was still the same as before but different. Hulk looked over at the groaning man and frowned. Hulk walked over and grabbed the man and threw him over his right shoulder before he laid his other hand down for Jolteon.
Jolteon chirped gratefully and rubbed her head against Hulk's finger. He grinned when he found out her fur, though looked sharp, wasn't.
"Follow Hulk." He ordered her before walking out of the cell. Jolteon followed at his heels.
He made it to the end of the hall before carefully, well... as careful as Hulk can be, placed the man on the ground. Jolteon sat beside the man without an order to protect him. Hulk walked over to the wall and with one roar, smashed through the wall into the outside world. Sunlight streamed in, momentarily blinding the two.
Hulk nodded to himself before turning when he heard his pet's frantic warning call. He growled when a hand grabbed his head and threw him down the hall.
"Jolt!" Jolteon warned as another gamma monster, this one looking like a sideshow freak sea world reject fell from the ceiling. Hulk turned but it was to late. He was thrown down the hallway and was quickly followed by the monster. Jolteon stayed back as Hulk and the monster exchanged blows before the Hulk was thrown further down the hallway.
Jolteon crouched down with a snarl when the monster turned it's eyes down at her. He started for her and Sampson with a growl. Jolteon growled her challenge as she felt her fur start to gather negative energy from the air around her. With a sharp chirp, she released the energy into the hand that reached out for her.
The monster fell back with a cry of pain as electricity traveled up his arm and spread through his body. He was thrown away from her as Hulk grabbed his arm and threw him.
The gamma monster instantly got back onto his feet and grabbed Hulk's arm and tossed him down the hallway before charging after him. Jolteon kept herself in between Hulk and Sampson and watched as Creel appeared behind Hulk, wrapping long winding arms around Hulk's body and imprisoning him. With a roar, Hull broke free as the other gamma monster charged, fist thrown out.
Hulk jumped and landed before Jolteon. He roared a challenge to the monsters.
"Hmm.." Sampson groaned. Jolteon turned around in concern and touched Sampson's arm with her nose. "Jolt..."
Hulk turned towards the sound, grinding his teeth in frustration. He clenched his hands together before sighing. He reached out and grabbed the columns the separated the cells. He growled and with one pull, tore the column away. Hulk stood back and watched as the ceiling collapsed on top of the gamma monsters, burying them beneath cement.
He quickly bent and grabbed Sampson, throwing him over his shoulder and grabbed Jolteon in his free hand. He turned and took the chance to get away from the Cube and to get help for Sampson, he knew exactly where to go.