FIVE
HOPE HAD A BAD FEELING, call it witchy intuition, about whatever Loki had planned. He wanted to unleash the hulk on the quinjet, which meant he was going to try and make Dr. Bruce Banner angry in whatever way he was planning on.
On her way to meet up with everyone else, she ran into Thor who was heading to the same place as he had been one of the few allowed to listen to the interrogation. Together, the two made their way to the lab.
Hope was thrown off when she entered the lab alongside Thor and noticed the tension already flowing through the air between the present group(Fury, Tony, Steve, Bruce, and Natasha).
Their eyes all traveled over to the two non-humans who showed up mid-argument. Hope locked eyes with Bruce and didn't look away. "Loki's plan, he wants to unleash the Hulk. He's trying to manipulate you, Dr. Banner" She informed the scientist, worried not only for the safety of everyone on board but also the man's guilt complex.
"I'm not gonna leave just because you're suddenly getting twitchy, kid" Hope was taken back by the harshness of his words. The doctor turned back to Fury. "I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction" Hope mumbled a 'wait, what?' but was ignored.
"Because of them!" Fury shouted back, pointing at both Thor and Hope who looked even more confused than before. "Us?" Thor inquired, not understanding why he and a magic-using girl would make them so terrified that they would want to create such weapons.
"Last year earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned" Fury explained his reasoning against Thor.
"My people want nothing but peace with your planet. And I am sure that Lady Hope has done nothing as intense as my brother to warrant such behavior" Thor defended the girl, earning a smile of gratitude. Thor seemed to like the girl, her magic reminded him of his mother and her strength reminded him of Lady Sif.
"But you're not the only people out there, are you? And, you're not the only threat" When Fury's gaze landed on her, Hope felt uneasy. Something set Fury off on a road of sharing secrets that were supposed to be kept not only for her protection but for the protection of the entire world.
"Twenty years ago I discovered the existence of the supernatural—" Tony scoffed loudly, Fury ignored him and continued to spill the secret. "—when I met Hope's mother" The room fell silent until Thor spoke up.
"I finally understand the source of power projecting from you, Lady Hope" Hope smiled slightly at Thor, glad she would have at least someone on her side, before looking at the rest of the Avengers group.
"My real name isn't Hope Kenner, it's Hope Mikaelson. I'm a tribrid, a mix of three different creatures. My mother was an alpha werewolf who saved Fury from a vampire" Natasha caught on to what she wasn't saying. "What are the other two parts of you?" Hope bit her lip anxiously.
"My grandmother was a thousand-year-old witch who practically invented dark magic, making me also part witch" Hope surveyed the room to test how they were all feeling, making sure it wasn't too tense before she finished her explanation.
Tony expressed a look of disbelief. Bruce's facial expression was a mix of awe and shock. Natasha remained stoic, although Hope had an inkling that she already knew. Steve looked at her with both puzzlement and sympathy. Thor's expression remained kind.
"My dad was one of the earth's original vampires along with his siblings, he was actually a hybrid of a vampire and werewolf. Making me a tribrid, all three. Although I'm not a vampire, not until I die" She finished, a bit shaky in anxiousness.
Fury nodded at the agent before speaking again, "The world's filled with people who can't be matched, they can't be controlled" Hope furrowed her eyebrows in suspicion. Did Fury only want her here to control her? To find a way to control the entire supernatural species?
"Like you controlled the cube?" Steve accused, changing the focus from the teen agent. He had met a few vampires during the war, good ones who used their blood to heal people. He didn't realize how many different types of supernatural creatures were out there, but he knew that some were good.
"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. It is the signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war" Thor's words made the group even more anxious than they had been previously.
"A higher form? As in other aliens?" Thor nodded at Hope's words. "You forced our hand. We had to come up with something" Hope couldn't help but feel disgusted with Fury's attempts to explain why he chose to do what he did.
Hope was regretting joining the agency instead of going back to her boarding school. She could be safe and sound, helping Alaric find new recruits, helping Lizzie control her outbursts, and helping Josie plan the school dance. Instead, she was dealing with things that shouldn't even exist.
"Nuclear deterrent. 'Cause that always calms everything right down" Hope nodded in agreement with Tony's snarky words. If anyone had insight about the danger of situations like that, it would be Tony who dealt with it first hand.
"Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?" A feeling of dread started to bubble inside of her, dread over whatever was about to happen. Whatever was affecting Fury was starting to affect everyone. Hope was able to fight against the unwanted feeling because of her experience with things trying to take control over her. She just had to find the source while keeping the others in control.
"I'm sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck this" Tony couldn't help but feel hurt, wondering if Steve even knew the story enough to know that it wasn't his fault(even if he still constantly blamed himself for it).
"Wait! Wait! Hold on! How is this now about me?" Tony exclaimed. "I'm sorry, isn't everything?" Hope closed her eyes as she tried to calm herself down. "I thought humans were more evolved than this" Thor mumbled to himself, although Fury heard and was upset.
"Excuse me, did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?" Fury spoke in an accusing tone. "Did you always give your champions such mistrust?" Hope continued to try and keep herself calm while trying to figure out how to block them from the power she now deemed coming from Loki's scepter while everyone argued, making her lose her concentration multiple times.
"You speak of control, yet you court chaos" Because Thor was right next to her, his words snapped her out of the focused trance she had been in.
"It's his M.O., isn't it? I mean, what are we, a team? No, no, no. We're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're...we're a time-bomb" She shot Bruce a concerned look as she started to hope that he was able to keep controlling himself through all of this.
"Bruce, let's go into the hallway and calm down" Hope offered, something she often did with newly turned werewolves that were struggling with control.
"Why shouldn't the guy let off a little steam?" Tony rested his arm around Steve as he said this, only for Steve to shove it off. "You know damn well why! Back off!" Steve snapped, the two rivals were now face-to-face.
"Oh, I'm starting to want you to make me" Tony seethed. "Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?" Steve attempted to size the man up despite being quite a bit taller. "Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist" Hope moved forward to intersect the confrontation but was stopped by Natasha, who shook her head.
"I know guys with none of that worth ten of you. Yeah, I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you" Hope tried to use her magic to calm the two down but was pushed back by a powerful force that shoved her magic back at her.
"I think I would just cut the wire" Steve smiles bitterly. "Always a way out. You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero" This triggered something inside of Tony, making him finally snap as much as Steve had been.
"A hero? Like you? You're a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle!" Hope couldn't do anything but watch. She might be an agent and a tribrid, but she's also seventeen.
"Put on the suit, let's go a few rounds" Thor's loud laughter bounced throughout the room. "You people are so petty...and tiny" He scoffed.
"Yeah, this is a team..." Fury seemed to finally snap out of whatever trance he was in and looked over at Natasha. "Agent Romanoff, would you escort Dr.Banner back to his..." Bruce cut him off. "Where? You rented my room" Bruce's frustration was turning more and more into anger.
"The cell was just in case..." Bruce interrupted the director once again. "In case you needed to kill me, but you can't! I know! I tried!" The arguments between the groups ceased as everyone went silent and looked over at Bruce with varying degrees of sympathy.
"I got low. I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out! So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk!" Bruce then looked at Natasha who wasn't even trying to hide her fear at that point.
"You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff? You wanna know how I stay calm?" It was then when Hope realized that, while moving across the room, Bruce had picked up the scepter of Loki's.
Fury and Natasha had reached for their guns while the rest were preparing themselves to act if something went wrong. "Bruce...please put down the scepter" Hope's pleas knocked the doctor back into reality. The doctor looked down at his hands and was shocked to see that he was holding the scepter.
The computer beeped, making him finally set the scepter down and run over to it. "Could this day get any worse?" Hope groaned to herself, already overwhelmed and wanting to do any simple missions instead of this.
"Sorry, kids. You don't get to see my little party trick after all" Bruce joked, although he appeared to be feeling guilty, especially when he met eye contact with Hope. "Did you locate the Tesseract?" Hope inquired.
"I can get there faster" Tony declared. "Look, all of us..." Thor cut Steve's 'righteous' monologue off before it could even start. "The Tesseract belongs on Asgard, no human is a match for it. It seems only Lady Hope would be able to accompany me to obtain it" Tony ignored Thor's explanation and turned to leave but was blocked by Steve.
"You're not going alone!" Hope made her way over to Bruce, trying to ignore the argument between Steve and Tony by helping Bruce.
"After this is all over, I can help you learn control. Vampires, werewolves, and even some witches struggle a lot. I've been helping them since I was a kid" She offered the man who smiled in gratitude. "Do you struggle with control?" He wondered while the computer was trying to finish loading.
"Sometimes, but I was taught by my aunt and my mother how to accept and restrict that part of me" The computer beeped again in a sign that it was completely loaded. Hope didn't understand what the monitor was saying, just showing coordinates, but Bruce obviously understood.
"Oh my god!" Before anything else could be said, a huge explosion threw everyone out of the room, starting Loki's plan to get them to turn against and destroy each other and lead him to have no opponents while taking over New York.