Chapter 1
For Agent Cooper, the road was home. The vin number on his truck was the closest he had to an address. The no-tell motels he tracked his fugitives to were comfortable enough if you didn’t mind sleeping with your shoes on and constantly checking your sheets, pillows, and, if available, blankets, for bugs, stains, and/or creatures larger than bugs.
The places he stayed did not provide free WiFi. If breakfast was included it might come with a side of food poisoning. Water was a more important commodity than electricity or tv reception. So, sometimes, important events were not immediately known to Agent Cooper.
The back roads he drove on were not known for radio or cell phone reception, so he kept an ever changing supply of audiobooks and didn’t bother with the radio and checked messages on his phone when he was in range. It wasn’t a smart phone. It was the same flip phone the bureau had issued him when they’d started issuing cellphones.
He was behind on everything associated with pop culture. He could not tell you who the hot celebrity couples were at the moment. He didn’t know what was popular on t.v. or what was currently playing in the theater. He could not tell you what songs were on the top 40 for any music genre and sometimes he entirely missed what big news stories occurred within a full news cycle or two….or more than two.
This did not prevent him from doing his job, however, so he didn’t worry about it.
He probably should have worried about it, but he didn’t.
He worried about traffic sometimes and if his favorite taco truck in a particular city was still in operation, but current events didn’t usually worry him.
Until this particular moment.
He had a list of fugitives he was looking for and a couple “these are important so everyone out there in fugitive recovery should keep an eye out for them” ones, and then there was a request for assistance from the army. Apparently some scientist of theirs had some sort of midlife crisis and ran off with some research and could someone please pick him up before bad things happen.
There was a picture. Mild mannered, middle aged, floofy haired, glasses wearing, science guy.
Cooper understood about mid life crises and wanting to wander away from the world, that could nearly sum up why he absolutely refused to spend any more time than he needed to behind a desk. Really, fugitives should be required to fill out their own paperwork as a part of their punishment.
To be clear, the briefing from the military had skipped over the “oh and by the way, this is about the thing in Harlem” warning. Really, that should have been in there. It would have been a very good warning. Not that Cooper had heard much of anything about the thing that happened in Harlem, he had been staying in an abandoned no-tell that was occupied by more badgers than people at the time, he didn’t know about anything happening in Harlem.
But, he was turning a corner, looking for a particular taco truck and a fugitive from the local federal penitentiary whose mother lived near by and was approaching a milestone birthday, when he spotted a middle aged, floofy haired, twitchy scientist.
Well, Cooper was never one to miss out on being helpful when a call for assistance crossed agencies and the army had asked nicely.
He parked the truck, hopped out, checked badge, gun, handcuffs and walked over. Calm as you please. He was pretty sure he didn’t need any of these things for this catch, just a little bon ami, maybe get the guy a taco, and have a little talk about why running away from everything isn’t the best life choice.
He was sure military scientists made more money than he did and probably this guy just needed a long vacation, not to end up on a wanted list or behind bars anywhere.
“Hey, you okay, man?” Cooper approached casually, no matter how sure he was this wasn’t going to be a difficult catch, there was still a certain level of professional caution.
Bruce Banner knew he was in trouble. Well no, he wasn’t in trouble, but this guy, this guy with his jeans and his work boots and his flannel shirt and his badge and his gun was about to be in trouble and Bruce could just feel it and before he could say anything about it, he wasn’t himself exactly.
Cooper looked up. Well, this was something that was missing from that one paragraph request for assistance.
“Okay. You are definitely not okay. I get that. You hungry?” Agent Cooper wasn’t sure if he was hoping that the answer would be yes or the answer would be no, but apparently his brain had opted to stay on the originally planned script. Hopefully, giant, angry, lizard men liked Mexican food.
The Hulk, for his part, had expected fear. He had expected certain amounts of screaming, the smell of sweat and urine even, possibly being shot at, yelling, weak human nonsense. He was not expecting a lunch invitation.
“Food?” Hulk opted to verify.
“Yeah…how do you feel about burritos?” Cooper thought it best to clarify, just in case large, angry, lizard men were cannibalistic…though as Cooper wasn’t a lizard man himself, would that still be cannibalism? Was cannibalism just people eating or was that some sort of “eats it’s own” thing? And when faced with a large angry lizard man why was he trying to determine the semantics of the term cannibalism? He could look it up later if he survived this.
“Burritos.” Hulk wasn’t entirely certain what burritos were, but food would be good. He was hungry. Banner didn’t eat enough.
“Okay, let’s get some burritos.” Cooper took the large, angry, lizard man to the taco truck.
“Hey, Julio. You in there, man?” Cooper knocked on the side of the truck, which had been open when he’d passed it.
“Agent Cooper?”
“Yeah, did you close?”
“Kinda…there’s a bit of a monster out there, man!”
“Ah well, he’s with me and he’d like a burrito…though given his size, I’d increase that to maybe ten burritos?”
“He’s with you?”
“Yeah, he’s with me.”
“You want a burrito too?”
“Make it two, haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
“Man, you gotta take better care of yourself, my abuela thinks you’re gonna starve to death and then who’s going to bring in my cousins, Hector and Jose after they visit without shooting them.”
“Well, if they make it to LA, I’m sure Eppes would be good to them.”
“Man, you’re loco. A dozen burritos, coming up.”
Cooper acquired the burritos for himself and the now less angry, large, green lizard man. A bit more expensive of a lunch, but he was sure the lizard man hadn’t eaten in a while either.
They crossed the road to a park, sat and ate burritos.
The Hulk decided he liked burritos and possibly also this strange, calm, plaid-wearing man.
Cooper mentally sorted out what he was going to put in his report when he didn’t bring in this particular fugitive.
After lunch, Cooper stood up. “Well, thanks for joining me for lunch…you might want to find somewhere with fewer people, okay? Towns like this, you might scare people a bit too much. Good luck, sorting this out.” Cooper made a gesture that he hoped encompassed, “being a werelizard” without being offensive.
The hulk decided the strange, plaid-wearing man was good people, agreed with a grunt and leapt into the air determined to put as much space between himself and people, before Banner took over again.
Cooper walked into the local FBI office and sat down at an available computer to write up a contact report.
He wrote down all the specifics, where, when, who. Then he got to the troublesome part, the part he was thinking about all the way through his first and second burrito.
Reason for not bringing in the fugitive.
There are three reasons I did not bring in fugitive, Dr. Bruce Banner. The first being that I was inadequately supplied to bring in Dr. Banner, neither the government issued handcuffs nor the suspension on my truck would be adequate for bringing in Dr. Banner. The second was a lack of intel, the briefing I received failed to mention that Dr Banner’s midlife crisis might be due to his status as a werelizard. The third reason I did not bring in fugitive Dr. Bruce Banner is that said fugitive’s status as a werelizard likely means that he is an endangered species and as such does not fall under my jurisdiction as a fugitive recovery agent. If he is not an endangered species, he is likely an apex cryptid and should likely be left alone, as he doesn’t seem to be a very happy werelizard.
Other information regarding the encounter.
The werelizard did enjoy burritos. See attached photo.
The photo attachment showed Agent William Cooper and the Hulk eating burritos in the local park. It was downloaded from the instagram account Julio’s daughter had set up for the taco truck.
Bruce Banner woke up two days later in an isolated, people-free area with the taste of salsa on his lips and the vaguest memory of a guy wearing a flannel shirt.
Agent Cooper narrowly avoided having to sit down with a bureau psychologist due to the fact that everyone who read his repor had heard about what happened in Harlem and were rather impressed that Agent Cooper had the balls to sit and have Mexican food with the Hulk. Agent Cooper did not look up the particulars of the definition of cannibalism after he filed his report, he decided he didn’t really need to know.
Julio remains to this day, grateful to the Hulk and Agent Cooper, because after he posted that photo he made enough burritos to put both of his kids through college.