Previously, in the HULK...
Bruce Banner selflessly tossed young teenager Rick Jones into a safety bunker at the site of a massive gamma bomb detonation in the Arizona Desert. Being bombarded by powerful gamma rays, Bruce Banner was left transformed into the horrific behemoth of raw power called…the Incredible HULK!
However, the powerful gamma rays have not just revealed, but aggravated a deeper, hidden condition in Bruce Banner’s psyche: Dissociative Identity Disorder. With multiple personalities to contend with - each personality less stable than the last - Bruce Banner didn’t just transform into one Incredible Hulk after the Terrible Day of the Gamma Bomb...he transformed into many.
Which Hulk emerges on any given day of course, is always open to interpretation:
The Savage Green Hulk - A savage being of unrelenting physical power with the mind and maturity of a child. An engine of mindless destruction that gets stronger and stronger with rage. This Hulk merely wants to be left alone.
The Cunning Grey Hulk – A cunning, manipulative adversary whose strength pales in comparison to the Jade Giant, yet whose devious motives are always suspect.
The Idealized Professor - A bright green Hulk with the mind of Bruce Banner, the physical power of the Green Hulk and the devious, cunning tactics of the Grey Hulk. The Professor remains the most idealized version of the Hulk in Bruce Banner’s puny eyes.
The Guilt Hulk - A lizard-like creature that represents all Bruce’s hidden, repressed guilt and shame concerning Bruce’s....tortured past.
The Devil Hulk - A chained monster at the back of his mind. Enraged at the world at large, dedicated to destroying it at all costs.
Bruce Banner selflessly tossed young teenager Rick Jones into a safety bunker at the site of a massive gamma bomb detonation in the Arizona Desert. Being bombarded by powerful gamma rays, Bruce Banner was left transformed into the horrific behemoth of raw power called…the Incredible HULK!
However, the powerful gamma rays have not just revealed, but aggravated a deeper, hidden condition in Bruce Banner’s psyche: Dissociative Identity Disorder. With multiple personalities to contend with - each personality less stable than the last - Bruce Banner didn’t just transform into one Incredible Hulk after the Terrible Day of the Gamma Bomb...he transformed into many.
Which Hulk emerges on any given day of course, is always open to interpretation:
The Savage Green Hulk - A savage being of unrelenting physical power with the mind and maturity of a child. An engine of mindless destruction that gets stronger and stronger with rage. This Hulk merely wants to be left alone.
The Cunning Grey Hulk – A cunning, manipulative adversary whose strength pales in comparison to the Jade Giant, yet whose devious motives are always suspect.
The Idealized Professor - A bright green Hulk with the mind of Bruce Banner, the physical power of the Green Hulk and the devious, cunning tactics of the Grey Hulk. The Professor remains the most idealized version of the Hulk in Bruce Banner’s puny eyes.
The Guilt Hulk - A lizard-like creature that represents all Bruce’s hidden, repressed guilt and shame concerning Bruce’s....tortured past.
The Devil Hulk - A chained monster at the back of his mind. Enraged at the world at large, dedicated to destroying it at all costs.
THE RE-CAP DEPARTMENT:
Where we last left our Emerald Giant...
Things have gotten….complicated.
Since Betty Banner’s poisoning by the vindictive Abomination, the Professor had retreated to a world within the safety of Bruce Banner’s mind, where he could at least be with the image of the woman he’d loved for so long. In the Professor’s absence, the Savage Hulk had emerged and become the dominant persona.
In lieu of the Professor, the Banner/Savage Hulk amalgam had joined up with the Avengers, saving the world with Banner’s genius and Savage Hulk’s might. Things had been good for Bruce Banner - he’d found the support of his Avengers teammates, proven himself a hero and been able to turn the Savage Hulk’s ferocity toward a decent goal - helping others.
That is, until Bruce got a letter from Mr. Blue, with proof that Betty was alive - comatose, cryogenically-preserved and captive inside a secret government installation. Mr. Blue (the current alias of the Leader) was apparently the only one who could deliver Betty – alive and well - to the lovelorn Banner.
The only caveat: Mr. Blue simply needed the Professor to steal the Extremis virus - a powerful enhancive that literally re-writes the repair centers of the body – from the files of his Avengers teammates.
In the right hands, Extremis could enhance a human being, creating the best possible version of that human being by re-writing their genetic code, thereby enhancing their genetic prowess to its fullest potential. In the wrong hands, Extremis could make a person – or more likely a number of persons - into living weapons of mass destruction.
However, unbeknownst to Banner, Mr. Blue is the current alias of The Leader – who is suffering from bizarre and extreme side effects from his own recent resurrection, and likely wants the enhancive for his own nefarious purposes.
Despite stealing the designs for Extremis from the Avengers and building an enhancile injection module in his desert hideaway, the Professor had his own plans for using the virus. Instead of giving it to Mr. Blue, the Professor intends to use Extremis to re-write Betty Banner’s genetic code, bringing her preserved (but still deceased) body back to life without having to rely on Mr. Blue’s…dubious promises. After finding the secret location of his wife’s preservation chamber and storing the Extremis enhancile in his forearm, the Professor made a bee-line straight to a decommissioned Hulkbuster base, known as the Waystation…
…however, there had already been an assault on the Waystation – a devastating one - by one of Mr. Blue’s agents. This agent – the homicidal Abomination - has left a present for the lovelorn Professor.
The remains of a woman - flayed and torn asunder - in the middle of the base. An unrecognizable corpse that could quite possibly be the Professor’s love – Betty Banner.
The Professor sits amidst the Waystation, among his wife’s remains, as the men with guns close in...
While somewhere out there, an Abomination laughs…
Where we last left our Emerald Giant...
Things have gotten….complicated.
Since Betty Banner’s poisoning by the vindictive Abomination, the Professor had retreated to a world within the safety of Bruce Banner’s mind, where he could at least be with the image of the woman he’d loved for so long. In the Professor’s absence, the Savage Hulk had emerged and become the dominant persona.
In lieu of the Professor, the Banner/Savage Hulk amalgam had joined up with the Avengers, saving the world with Banner’s genius and Savage Hulk’s might. Things had been good for Bruce Banner - he’d found the support of his Avengers teammates, proven himself a hero and been able to turn the Savage Hulk’s ferocity toward a decent goal - helping others.
That is, until Bruce got a letter from Mr. Blue, with proof that Betty was alive - comatose, cryogenically-preserved and captive inside a secret government installation. Mr. Blue (the current alias of the Leader) was apparently the only one who could deliver Betty – alive and well - to the lovelorn Banner.
The only caveat: Mr. Blue simply needed the Professor to steal the Extremis virus - a powerful enhancive that literally re-writes the repair centers of the body – from the files of his Avengers teammates.
In the right hands, Extremis could enhance a human being, creating the best possible version of that human being by re-writing their genetic code, thereby enhancing their genetic prowess to its fullest potential. In the wrong hands, Extremis could make a person – or more likely a number of persons - into living weapons of mass destruction.
However, unbeknownst to Banner, Mr. Blue is the current alias of The Leader – who is suffering from bizarre and extreme side effects from his own recent resurrection, and likely wants the enhancive for his own nefarious purposes.
Despite stealing the designs for Extremis from the Avengers and building an enhancile injection module in his desert hideaway, the Professor had his own plans for using the virus. Instead of giving it to Mr. Blue, the Professor intends to use Extremis to re-write Betty Banner’s genetic code, bringing her preserved (but still deceased) body back to life without having to rely on Mr. Blue’s…dubious promises. After finding the secret location of his wife’s preservation chamber and storing the Extremis enhancile in his forearm, the Professor made a bee-line straight to a decommissioned Hulkbuster base, known as the Waystation…
…however, there had already been an assault on the Waystation – a devastating one - by one of Mr. Blue’s agents. This agent – the homicidal Abomination - has left a present for the lovelorn Professor.
The remains of a woman - flayed and torn asunder - in the middle of the base. An unrecognizable corpse that could quite possibly be the Professor’s love – Betty Banner.
The Professor sits amidst the Waystation, among his wife’s remains, as the men with guns close in...
While somewhere out there, an Abomination laughs…
Volume 2, Issue #5 Written by Jason McDonald
“...Can Blossom into a Devil’s Paradise.”
If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
~William Shakespeare
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
~William Shakespeare
An undisclosed location along an unassuming stretch of Arizona Desert
A seemingly-decommissioned Hulkbuster base called the Waystation.
The morbid remains of a messy murder scene…
“I’m so sorry, Betty.”
The skinny, puny human in tattered purple pants named Bruce Banner knelt upon the fresh remains of a human body – torn asunder, and shredded beyond recognition. Shaking – his mind adrift in the depths of his grief - Bruce remained only dimly aware of the contingent of soldiers that were now surrounding him.
The tears flowed freely from his face as he placed his hand amongst the torn skin and pulp, knowing that he’d never see his wife beautiful face again. Never hear her laugh, never see her smile. Never trace the outline of her face – oh, how well he’d memorized every curve – as they lay in bed together. Never feel the warmth of her lips, never place a gentle kiss upon her forehead. Never hold her warm body in his arms – never, ever again.
The click-clacking of safeties being withdrawn from dozens of AK-47s and other assorted weaponry never entered his mind. The soldiers – the survivors of the Waystation rampage – stalked their prey, waiting for Bruce Banner’s other half to emerge at any moment. Tightly and tensely, they all pressed their trigger fingers against their rifles in preparation.
Who knew when they would ever again have this chance to put down the Hulk, once and for all?
Bruce Banner never felt the pinprick of the sniper’s tranquilizer needle – never acknowledged the rush of liquid that could kill an elephant with its raw power. Some impossible carfentanil derivative, no doubt.
Awash in the agony of losing his beloved wife, the blackness swept over his vision.
The blackness, the darkness…
Oh, how Bruce Banner welcomed the dark…
The soldiers slowly – carefully advanced toward the slumbering form of Bruce Banner. Their leader - the colonel – took off her gloves, feeling the unconscious Banner for a pulse.
“He’s alive, general,” the colonel said over the intercom.
She and the remaining soldiers listened intently, as further instructions came over their headsets.
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
With a simple motion, the commanding officer called a waiting team of medics to her side. They rushed on-site, carrying a gurney and some medical equipment. They hooked Banner up to an IV drip and began to strap him to the gurney. The chief medic began to fiddle around with the restraints and handcuffs that came standard with this particular type of gurney, until the colonel put her hand on his trembling shoulder.
“Don’t waste your time, son. This is the Hulk. No restraint in the world’s gonna keep him down that doesn’t have some facet of adamantium-fiber laced inside. Just get the IV feed right, and he should stay under long enough for the General to have a word with him.”
The head medic stared at the woman for a moment, acknowledging her with a nervous nod, and turned his attention to the IV drip.
The medics scooped Banner up hurriedly. As they retreated, the colonel shouted after them.
“Careful with him, boys! That’s the General’s son-in-law you got in-tow!”
The medics continued apace, as the colonel looked around toward the rest of her troops.
“Looks like we got an all-nighter of a clean-up ahead of us. Let’s get to it!”
The soldiers moved on their orders, as the commanding officer barked out duties to her troops. With a nod toward the tower, the sniper above disassembled her rifle, and came down to help with the cleanup.
As they began to clean up the wreckage of the Waystation that the Abomination had left in his wake, the frenzied colonel breathed a sigh of relief.
Good luck, Bruce. Colonel Cary St. Lawrence thought to herself sadly, before joining her team in the clean-up efforts. All my love.
* * * * *
The Waystation
Earlier that night
A present for Bruce Banner
The rage.
The all-consuming, delightfully-endearing, oh-so-comfortable rage, nestled warmly inside Emil Blonsky’s gamma-irradiated heart.
It was rage that powered Emil Blonsky – the Abomination. His rage was a warm blanket that kept the one-time Russian spy safe.
Safe from the government secrets still-buried in the one-time spy’s mind. Safe from the days and nights of unending solitude that came from his scaly, monstrous form. Safe from loss of his one, true love. Safe from the fact that he’d always been a monster – that his skin only recently reflected his despicable inner-workings.
The tiny little things at the Waystation screamed. Blonsky – the once and always Abomination – delighted in severing limbs, and torsos, and heads from those screaming, screeching little things. Delighted in watching those angry, self-assured soldiers lose faith in their guns, their ammunition, and all the alpha-male, macho toys they thought would keep them safe.
Mortar shells and metal-jacketed rounds collapsed and exploded against the Abomination’s impenetrable scaled hide. The beast could taste the gunpowder, as the desert floor was bathed with the blood of the helpless.
The alpha males of the Russian government had so much to say about the “usefulness” of espionage – in wartime, or in peacetime. About how useless ‘tiny little men’ like Sterns were in ‘getting things done right.’ About how ‘a bigger, better bomb’ was the only real solution.
A bigger, better bomb hit the scaly creature directly in the face. The Abomination hadn’t even bothered to deflect it.
He’d wanted to see the look. The look on their pathetic little faces as the smoke cleared, and all their tiny little hopes and dreams turned to so much ash. The beast laughed mightily, guffawing gleefully as he drank in the horror of the soldiers. Like the dinosaurs – they were all already dead. They just hadn’t realized it yet.
The Abomination separated their limbs, crunched their bodies, pummeled their bones and laughed with every new and interesting type of homicide. The chitinous creatures nestled themselves snug inside his skull as the Abomination gleefully dished out new and creative types of murder, all the while gently guiding him toward his target.
Metal doors, security checkpoints. Lasers, bullets, tranquilizers – the beast tore through them all. Tore and tore and tore, until he finally got to the one most important asset in the building.
Betty Banner – the Hulk’s wife.
She lay helpless in the highly-classified, nigh-impenetrable medical bay, perched somewhere strange between death and everlasting life.
Emil Blonsky smiled.
“You seduce my wife, Banner? You turn my Nadia against me?” the Russian monster laughed, reaching toward the helpless female. “So, I make a Rorschach painting out of yours…”
The Abomination reached down, stripping off the protection of her medical alcove in a shower of electrical sparks and a shrieking of shattered medical plexiglass.
The scaly creature reached down at the one thing left in the world that his nemesis loved more than life itself. Emil Blonsky had tried to kill this thing once – substituting his own poisonous, toxic blood during an otherwise life-saving blood transfusion. It should have been too much for her body – turning her in death into the same wicked abomination that Emil Blonsky was in life.
The perfect vengeance.
At least, it should have been.
The scaly monster held Betty Banner’s limp body in his arms, now freed from the life support chamber that had been keeping her immersed in that twilight moment between life and death. The chitinous creatures inside the Abomination’s mind buzzed excitedly as the beast closed his mammoth claws around the woman’s unprotected throat.
Emil Blonsky quietly admitted to himself that this method of execution lacked the same – elegance – that his previous attempt to kill her had. Nevertheless, like those alpha males had said back in his previous line of employment, sometimes brute force was a necessary evil, winning out over elegance.
In his mind’s eye, the Abomination could see it happening…his fingers closing around her neck, crushing it with a quick squish. Popping off the woman’s head with his thumb – like a pez dispenser – and seeing the bloody thing bounce across the laboratory floor. He saw himself gleefully laughing as he upended her headless corpse, emptying out whatever was left inside the body all over the laboratory. As the pieces of her – muscle, bone, organ, cartilage – rained upon the lab, the Abomination cackled madly. For he had finally removed Banner’s beloved from the world, once and for all!
So…why was Betty Banner still whole?
“The hell…?” the Abomination muttered, confused.
So he tried again. He removed her skin like a blanket and flung her opened body around the room, spilling the contents out like a spinning centrifuge would. He watched the pieces slink away and bathed in her blood.
Yet, that didn’t work either.
Betty Banner was still alive. Still immaculate. Still untouched by the fires of his resounding hate.
“What?” the Abomination howled, trying to force his unwilling muscles to move. Trying so hard to violently-separate every part of Betty Banner from every other part.
Yet, no matter what he did, he couldn’t get his body to do what he told it to do.
“What is this?” the enraged Emil snarled, as the chitinous insects in his mind buzzed excitedly once more.
Not yet, the insects hissed, not just yet…
The Abomination roared and howled with insatiable rage as the creatures pulled the beast out of the belly of the Waystation, cut viciously through dozens more helpless security guards, and leapt away from the site of the carnage, all the while forcing the beast to keep the lovely Mrs. Banner very, very safe.
The chitinous creatures – mercifully – let the enraged Emil vent his frustration on a far-less important target, of course.
Let him leave a present for Bruce Banner, amongst the swirling desert sands…
* * * * *
Deep inside the Waystation
Sometime later
A chat with the in-law
Bruce Banner woke up to the business end of an old-style M9 Beretta handgun, and a moment of panic flashed through his mind.
That is, until he saw the face of the man holding the gun.
“Ross.”
“Banner”
“Sir,” the colonel standing next to him said, “you can’t draw a firearm on an unarmed civilian!”
“I would never draw on an unarmed civilian, Colonel. What kind of monster do you think I am?” General Thunderbolt Ross growled, cocking the Beretta as he took a hard pull from his stogie, “This is just my son-in-law.”
“Hmpph,” Banner scowled, “well, hello to you too, Thaddeus.”
Ross narrowed his eyes. “I’ve told you not to call me that, Banner.”
Bruce was preparing another smart remark when he suddenly went into a panic. His brown eyes shot wide.
“Oh my God - Betty! Betty, my beautiful Betty, she…!!”
“That wasn’t my daughter, you twit!” Ross thundered, holstering his weapon.
“Yeah, you twit!” Bruce Banner’s eyes shifted to the left, and scowled at the image of Joe Fixit, smoking a stogie next to the colonel in the room, mimicking the mannerisms of Thunderbolt Ross as he did so.
Bruce glared at the image of Fixit for a beat and shut his eyes, holding the bridge of his nose and shaking his head.
“Wait, what…?” Banner stammered confused, “No…no, that’s not right. I saw her…I saw Betty, and she was…”
“”Fraid not, son. That smear of blood you were crying over upstairs, on the desert floor? That was one of mine. Leiutenant Leah Brahms.”
“Lieutenant..?” Bruce Banner stammered.
“That’s right, son. Fine woman, and skilled marksman – bless her soul. No match for the goddamned Abomination of course, but she held her own and never gave an inch. Deserved far finer than what she got, I tell you.”
Bruce Banner sighed, shaking his head. “My God…”
“God’s got nothin’ to do with this, son,” the general muttered, pushing out a puff of his cigar. “Blonsky’s gone off-the-goddamn-reservation, you might say.
“The General is correct, Bruce. In his own – ah, colorful way,” Colonel Cary St. Lawrence said, locking eyes with the handsome Bruce Banner. “Emil Blonsky knew exactly where to find Betty Banner. He came to this base with that singular objective. He was clearly enhanced with unknown biologics, and our Hulk-tailored weaponry proved ineffective in curtailing his assault upon this base. He has to be stopped – at all costs.”
Bruce Banner adjusted his glasses, gazing up at the colonel. The bruises on her face and medical gauze along her forehead told the story far better than her words ever could.
“Cary…” he said, letting out an exhausted sigh, “it’s….it’s good to see you again.”
Colonel St. Lawrence raised an eyebrow, momentarily biting her lip. Memories from the past swarmed over her before she saw the look of disapproval from her superior officer - General Thaddeus Ross. Her professional demeanor came about – like a shield – protecting her heart from any further nuisance concerning her – storied past – with the behemoth known as the Hulk.
“Of course, Banner. It’s….good to….see you as well. I’ve had several, ah….several run-ins. With your alter ego, that is. You’re looking very…you’re not an angry weapon of mass destruction at the moment, so you’ve got that going for you.”
The general eyed her suspiciously. “Is there something I should know about you and my ex-son-in-law, Ms. Lawrence?”
After hearing the remark, Colonel Cary St. Lawrence somehow stood more ramrod-straight than she’d been standing, and raised an eyebrow at the general. “Nothing outside of the normal combat experience our Hulkbusters might’ve had with the Hulk, sir!”
Thaddeus raised an eyebrow at the colonel. “That’s…very good to hear, Cary. Very good to hear…”
Colonel St. Lawrence pushed the erotic, sweaty thoughts of green hands sliding along her bare back hard and fast away from her mind.
“Anyway, to recap…Emil Blonsky – alias the Abomination – stormed this base with the express intent of stealing away the body of Mrs. Betty Banner-Ross from this location. An intent which he was supremely successful in doing.”
Banner furrowed his brow. “Wait, Emil Blonsky – the Abomination – has Betty?? We…we have to go after her!” Bruce screamed. “Right now! Right now, or else he’s going to…”
“Bruce,” Cary St. Lawrence said, gripping Bruce Banner’s forearm in an attempt to calm him down. “Bruce, the Abomination will not be harming Betty anytime soon.”
Bruce’s eyes opened wide as his skin turned pale. “How in the hell could you possibly know what Emil’s got planned? He tried to kill her once – and now that he’s got her in his clutches, there’s no telling what he could possibly…!!?”
“We have some videotape, son, that might make you reconsider Emil’s intentions towards my daughter,” Thaddeus spoke in a dark, bitterly savage tone, as he picked up a remote control and faced the room’s HD monitors.
Bruce Banner watched as the video chronicled the Abomination’s ruthless penetration of the base – dismemberment after dismemberment – until the scaly beast finally breached Betty Banner’s holding facility. Thaddeus saw an imperceptible movement in Banner that few would have noticed.
“Don’t worry, son. I felt the same way when I got this far into the video. Keep watchin’.”
Bruce Banner clenched his teeth and clenched his fingers, meticulously and methodically attempting to stay calm as he watched the Abomination stalk toward Betty’s final resting place. Watched the monster disassemble the chamber as if it were made of damp paper mache, rather than a quarter ton of thick steel and monomolecular plastic molds.
He watched the Abomination scoop out her body, and attempt to rip his wife into itty-bitty shreds. Except….
….nothing happened.
Bruce Banner gaped as he watched the Abomination – a being who was clearly capable of rending the Hulk’s nigh-invincible flesh – desperately-flailed with the body of a simple one hundred and thirteen pound woman. He watched as the Abomination tried – and quite simply failed – to pull every single part of Mrs. Betty Banner away from every other single part of Mrs. Betty Banner.
Four minutes into the attempt to kill his wife, and Bruce Banner finally figured it out.
“The Abomination…can’t kill her.”
“Bingo,” the general said, watching as the Abomination finally stopped trying to filet her after minute six. “Something is preventing the Abomination from acting on his intent to murder my daughter – at least, for the present.”
Banner scratched at the itch in his forearm.
“What are those spires sticking out of his head?” Banner questioned. “And those black veins cloistered about his body?”
“Near as we can tell, those are sympathetic life forms that respond to his every movement,” Cary St. Lawrence said, pointing out each example of them on the screen. “We’re pretty sure Emil has bonded with these parasites in order to increase his physical strength….”
“…or maybe they bonded with him,” Banner surmised as Cary St. Lawrence went on with her lengthy hypothesis on the black swarm of creatures inside of the Abomination.
“…at any rate, our findings as to the nature of these lifeforms that have merged with Emil Blonsky remain inconclusive,” the colonel remarked, “but we’ve found that he has become far, far stronger with these creatures than without them. We found this out the hard way, in fact. As you can see, the entire armament of a Hulkbuster base was insufficient to curtail his psychotic assault.”
Mr. Blue, Banner thought ominously to himself, it seems I’ve underestimated you once again.
“I’d like to see her,” he mumbled, interrupting the confident parlance of Cary St. Lawrence. “I’d like to see the area where you held my wife’s body.”
General Thunderbolt Ross blustered, “Well, now I don’t see how…”
“How what?” Banner said. “You don’t see the problem with lying to me about the final resting place for my wife’s goddamned body? Don’t see how sending me a pile of someone else’s ashes after the funeral to mourn over might upset me? Don’t see how preserving my wife’s deceased body against mine and her own wishes might be a big, fucking concern of mine??”
Cary St. Lawrence stepped between the angered Banner and the spiteful General Ross, in an attempt to ease hostilities. “Bruce, I’m sure that the general acted in the best interests of his daughter, and…”
Bruce Banner growled. His eyes glowed green as he picked Colonel St. Lawrence up by her throat and forcibly lifted her off the ground – while still fully in the body of the measly Bruce Banner. “And you, Cary. You knew. Even after everything you and I shared – you knew my wife was here, and you said nothing.”
Colonel St. Lawrence grasped at Banner’s grip, clawing desperately at his skin as his grip grew ever tighter with each passing second. “Bruce, she was already dead! What would you gain from **ggkkk!** what would…you gain…from me telling you….??”
“What would I..?” Bruce Banner stammered, incredulous at her reasoning. “I’ll tell you what I—“
“Banner, that’s enough!” Thunderbolt Ross growled, firing a pistol up into the air. Bruce Banner’s green eyes snapped toward the concussive blast of the weapon. He lingered a moment – unsure of what to do – before he finally released Colonel St. Lawrence. She collapsed into a heap on the floor, clutching her hands to her injured throat as she did so.
Banner locked his gaze of Thunderbolt Ross, as the green glow stayed ever-present in his eyes.
The general returned a steely gaze toward Banner, ignoring the drip of sweat sauntering down from the receding hairline on his forehead.
The two men locked eyes until one of them finally folded.
“I should have told you about what I did with Betty, Bruce,” the general growled. “I get that now.”
The green disappeared from Banner’s eyes, but the angry gaze did not. “You’re goddamn right you should have. At least you know that now.”
Thaddeus Ross bristled at the insult.
“Now,” Bruce Banner growled, “I want to see. The area. In which. You have been keeping. The dead body. Of my wife.”
The general glared at the imposing figure of the ninety-eight pound scientist, as the muscular Colonel St. Lawrence rubbed at the larynx that the ninety-eight pound almost crushed – one-handed.
“Colonel?” the general said. “Could you excuse Banner and I for a moment? There’s….there’s something I have to show him.
Colonel St. Lawrence’s eyes went wide, as she glanced sidelong towards Bruce Banner.
“But, sir…”
“That’s a direct order, Colonel,” Thaddeus said through clenched teeth, staring daggers into the eyes of the bewildered colonel.
“Yes, sir,” she responded with a hiss, before leaving her superior officer along with his son-in-law.
General Thaddeus Thunderbolt Ross glared at Bruce Banner.
“You know I’m going to pay for that later, right?” the general growled at Banner.
“Good,” Bruce stated, straightening his garb as he did so, “I would be sorely disappointed in the military chain of command if you didn’t.”
With a grumble and a stogie puff, General Ross led his son-in-law down the corridor, into the depths of the Waystation.
* * * * *
As deep inside The Waystation as it gets
Photogenic memory
Bruce Banner and General Thaddeus Ross walked down the corridor. Ross thundered forward at a sure and steady gait and Banner kept pace with a ponderous, contemplative – ever suspicious – poise.
Bruce Banner scratched at his forearm, wondering what it was inside that kept itching so incessantly. He stared as workers and soldiers alike pulled scrap from the floor and dragged fallen comrades away to their final resting places. Sparks shimmered and spout as repair crews worked furiously to undo the damage that the Abomination had created when he came through this hallway the first time, in his quest to relieve the deceased Betty Banner from her stasis pod.
The general glared back at his son-in-law, who was looking at the repair crews with a haughty brow.
“I know whatcher thinkin’, Banner,” Thunderbolt Ross growled, spitting Banner’s last name out as if it were an expletive.
“You do, do you?” Bruce Banner said, raising an eyebrow tauntingly. “Please enlighten me, General.”
Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross drew a heavy, steady pull from his stogie, blowing out a plume of smoke throughout the corridor without once breaking stride. “You think I should’ve put Betty in the ground. You think I should’ve committed my baby girl to the earth from which she came, rather than covertly hauling her off to a secret location like this.”
Banner growled. “Certainly would’ve saved some taxpayer dollars in revenue, I should say. Then again, transparency has not necessarily been your style over the years, has it Thaddeus?”
Thunderbolt stopped in his tracks, doing a fantastic about-face that surprised even the contemplative Banner. Stogie in-hand, Thunderbolt pointed hard at the young man, tapping him in the chest with his pointer-finger while letting out a serious growl. “You want to see the chamber – Banner – or don’t you?”
Bruce Banner gazed down at the shorter – but nonetheless imposing – figure of Thunderbolt Ross with absolute contempt. Until the more logical side of his brain got into gear, and forced his lips to clam up.
The duo spent the next six minutes in painful silence, slowly making their ways past work details and piles of rubble, toward the chamber that had housed Bruce Banner’s wife since her murder by the Abomination.
A simple optical and audio-security net later, and Bruce Banner finally stepped foot inside the chamber.
The chamber which he had studied for so many nights. The room from the photograph that Mr. Blue had sent him.
Bruce Banner stalked up and down the room, remembering each piece of equipment he’d seen in that photograph. Banner recognized every medical machine that had been used to keep his wife in stasis. He recognized every government marking on the wall, every curve of the room, every piece of equipment within view of the security camera. All of it matched up precisely with the photograph that Mr. Blue had sent.
Bruce Banner clenched his teeth, glaring in General Ross’s direction.
Yes, he surmised angrily, the government creature certainly kept my deceased wife in stasis, didn’t he? Goddamn morbid bastard. Why couldn’t you just…??
“I couldn’t…” Thunderbolt Ross’s voice had cracked as he walked towards the chamber which had once held the inert body of his daughter. “I couldn’t figure out how to bring her back to life, Bruce. I could…I could keep her autonomic functions working. Keep her breathing, keep her heart beating, keep her blood flowing…but my Betty wasn’t there. There was no mind, you see…”
“No mind,” Banner repeated, tracing his fingers across her ruined stasis chamber. The same stasis chamber that kept Betty in a permanent state of un-life, rather than allowing her to finally, mercifully die…
Bruce Banner – ever the scientist – found the locations of the hidden cameras that had been violating - ah, videotaping - her slumber since her death in Area 102 at the hands of the Abomination. (**see Incredible Hulk #467)
These had been the same camera feeds that Mr. Blue had tapped into, screen-grabbing an image of his deceased wife and sending it back to Banner at the Avengers mansion. Blackmailing the hapless Banner and guiding him into this mad crusade: Extremis for his wife. Extremis for his wife. A simple enhancile, in exchange for his forever-love…
Honestly, what would you choose?
“No mind at all, Banner,” Thunderbolt Ross bristled. If Banner hadn’t known Thunderbolt so well, for so many years, he would never realize the heartache that Thunderbolt showed. His tone, his mannerisms – to Banner, the general might as well have been weeping openly into a pillow.
“All those soldiers upstairs, all the men in-between. All the checkpoints, all the armament, all the firepower…we have enough power to knock out the damn Hulk for a fortnight, and yet….” He stammered, taking a hard drag on his stogie and releasing the smoke out through angry lungs. “Yet, we couldn’t stop that green-blooded sonuvabitch from stealing my goddamn daughter away from me…”
Bruce Banner frowned, desperately trying to control his rage.
“That freak – that homicidal monstrous freak – kidnapped my little girl.”
Banner’s eyes began to glow, even as he tried desperately to hum that quiet, relaxing, meditative tune to himself. His muscles began to glow, and bulge…
“So what the hell are you waiting for, Banner? A signed, notarized, goddamned invitation?” the general growled, gesturing toward the destruction about the room. “Go get that sonuvabitch who stole our Betty away from us!!”
Bruce Banner growled, a bright green tinge glowing from his skin. “Banner’s not here anymore, General.”
The beast growled as his pink skin bulged and quivered, and finally exploded off of his body, shredding away like snakeskin in thin, miniscule pieces. The handsome, well-muscled form of the Professor-Hulk stood in Banner’s wake, his face contorted with a primal rage. “You’re dealing with the Professor now.”
Thaddeus Ross looked upon the green goliath with a righteous kind of rage. The Professor-Hulk – capable of lifting and crushing a hundred, thousand tons of bedrock into precious diamond. The General gazed upon all this muscle and sinew without a shred of fear, and growled:
“Go get our girl, Banner.”
The Professor tore through the walls of the chamber, and leapt away to do just that.
With a grunt, the general pulled out a GPS linkup, wirelessly-connected to the GPS tracker that had been implanted in Bruce Banner’s weak hide while he was unconscious. The tracker was working and working well, showing Banner leaping from the base at a speed that was slightly slower than Mach 1.
As General Thunderbolt Ross called upon the already-run-ragged repair crews to fix the colossal hole that the Professor had just made in the Waystation, only one thought raged through the general’s angered mind.
Go get ‘im, son, he thought to himself. Go. Goddamn. Get ‘im.
* * * * *
The former mining town of Cuprum, Arizona
Just outside the Arizona Desert
Yesterday’s town census: 4,568 Residents
Today’s census: Considerably lower
Cuprum, Arizona was a former mining colony that still embraced its storied history – a slew of old-school salooneries and Gold-Rush era architecture littered the land, while its other buildings pushed forward with post-modern architecture and new world thinking.
Given time, the bustling town of Cuprum could have become one of the most historical, beautiful cities in the world, surrounded by gorgeous landscapes and people of varied histories, backgrounds, and sensibilities.
Given time, Cuprum could have been an Arizona paradise.
Instead, three hundred souls lay crushed and buried amidst the mashed remains of the mayoral house, upended from the northern end of the city two miles northwest. The once-beautiful homes among the hills had been transformed into little more than rocky, uneven pavements of disrupted concrete and dried human blood.
The buildings in the newer parts of the city had all been demolished, leaving that area of the city completely flattened, and surrounded in a cakey, endless plume of dust that would not be blown away for several hours. The town of Cuprum was protected from the southwestern winds by a beautiful lay of mountains – a bit of scenery that had attracted several thousand would-be artists of the day to a dusty, violent grave. Random areas of power generation lay in ruins, burning aflame and already spreading to the surrounding areas. For there were no more citizenry left in the ruins to call for help. No more standing fire departments, or un-smashed trucks, or un-buried equipment to put out the flames.
Splintered steel and pulverized concrete lay atop the cracked ceramic walkways dioramas that once attracted tourists and sight-seers far and wide. The remains of cars, trains, trolleys, trucks and people lay in the streets in the wake of the obscene destruction, knowingly piled together for maximum effect.
Some of the dead laid in craters, more or less of their own making. These were the ones who survived long enough to make it out of the city limits in the mass exodus…only to be chased down by the vindictive force of nature that had utterly annihilated the burgeoning city, and thrown back in the town-proper from several miles away. Remnants of cars, trains and helicopters lay smashed across the landscape as well – more would-be survivors who escaped the city limits in the wake of the initial destruction, but were later chased down, and hurled mightily back into the carnage.
The cause of the carnage – the psychotic form of the Abomination – reveled in his handiwork. Licking his scaly lips, he growled happily as the chitinous creatures inside his mind whispered to him, the black spires drilling out of his head and the black veins pouring along his muscles, filling him with strength.
He smiled as the Hulk walked towards him from the north, amidst the drifting panes of smoke and dust.
Finally, Emil thought to himself.
The Professor-Hulk stared across the plains of destruction, a sneer of disgust and abject rage playing across his handsome features.
The emerald giant glared at his grinning green adversary.
“You know, Emil…” the Professor said, gesturing darkly toward the devastation surrounding them, “…there was a time when I would have asked you why.”
The Abomination grinned wider. “I’m glad we’re past that point, Bruce.”
The jade titans circled one another, wading through the wreckage as they locked eyes with mutual hate and disgust.
“Where is she?” the Professor growled.
The scaly beast smirked. “Whoever do you mean?”
“Where. Is. She?”
“Where is who?” the scaly beast asked innocently, pretending to think for a moment. He pondered the question maliciously, pacing back and forth. The stone-serious face of the Hulk glared back at the Abomination with a gaze sharper than the steel. Sharper than the steel girders just up the block, poking out of the piles of debris that were once occupied buildings.
The Abomination’s pacing relaxed, snapping his rough fingers in a Eureka moment.
“Oh! You wouldn’t happen to mean Betsy, would you? Beatrice, maybe? Or was it Betty? I’m terrible with names.”
The Professor clenched his leathery fists, cracking his knuckles audibly while choking back a snarl from the back of his throat.
“I’m surprised you couldn’t find her at that gamma base. The…Waystation, I believe? Betty was such a small thing, really. So fragile. Probably hard to spot sometimes, with all those big, muscular types you see around those old army bases. I made it so that you could see her better, you know? Spread her body out a bit. You and I both know that seeing things on the ground can be hard, with all the leaping around that we do.”
The Professor gritted his teeth. “You and I both know that poor woman you butchered at the Waystation wasn’t my wife.”
The Abomination sighed, his sadistic smirk fading a bit. “Too true, too true. I liked your idiot persona better. It was always much easier to get him riled up.”
“That woman had a family, Emil.” The Professor said, “A husband. Children. Parents. They won’t even be able to have an open casket funeral.”
The Abomination rolled his eyes and let out a guttural guffaw. “They sure won’t. Neither will anyone in this dead city here, either.”
The Professor cracked his knuckles, as the two continued circling one other. The vultures above cawed and clattered overhead, idly plotting their next meals above the decimated wasteland where a city once stood.
“You’re going to pay for this, you know.” The Hulk stated, cracking his neck and stretching out his bulging arms. “For the soldiers at the Waystation. For that poor woman you slaughtered. For all these murdered citizens. All of it!”
“Am I now, Bruce?” the Abomination jeered, idly scooping up a twisted steel girder, plying the edge down into a crude spear with his scaly fingers while keeping his eyes on his foe.
“Yep,” the Professor said, lifting a heavy concrete chunk out of what was left of a building. He palmed the chunk with his right hand, slowing forcing his fingers through the piece of rubble until it fit his hand like a pair of brass knuckles. “You’re going to pay for all of that. Right before you tell me what you’ve done to Betty, and where you’ve taken her.”
“I’m much stronger with these devices inside me, comrade,” the beast sneered, gesturing to the blackened spires growing out of his skull, “but please. Come collect your payment. See all the good it does you.”
The Professor let out a roar that echoed wild across the plains, as the warriors charged one another.
The cement brass knuckles collided against the Abomination’s skull with the impact of an atomic bomb. The Professor roared as the Abomination’s steel spear pierced his muscled emerald hide, drawing first blood.
The battle had begun.
* * * * *
Audio Log of Mr. Blue – alias The Leader
A forgotten mineshaft hideaway, somewhere deep in the Arizona Desert
Preparations for the Inevitable…
*begin recording*
Hello.
Whoever, whatever you are…this is your Leader speaking…
If you have found this log, then my efforts have failed.
I have been moving backward…and forward…through time. Leading to the cumulative deterioration of my current vessel. I’ve…I’ve had to use the Resurrection Machine several times on this vessel, each successive resurrection producing diminished results.
I initially used my Resurrection Machine to re-build my shattered, bullet-ridden body…after the Professor used me as a human shield. (*see Incredible Hulk #400.)
Despite the Professor’s interruption of the procedure, I was re-instituted some months later with merely adequate results. I was tired, emaciated, weak, no doubt side effects of the Professor’s sabotaging my equipment while I was still inside.
Nevertheless, I was alive.
With the anonymity my apparent death gave me, I was able to accomplish many things.
Such as re-building and evolving my Humanoid army.
The error in my previous iterations of Humanoids were that they were simply too large and too mindless to get anything of consequence done, despite their ability to outwit the Savage Hulk in physical battle. The answer – as insane as it seemed – was to make them smaller.
I enhanced them with nanotechnology, built artificial intelligence engines inside them to make them capable of independent decision-making (allowing them to more efficiently fulfill my mental commands without me having to step in and always play the mother hen)…I enabled them to shift their forms to fit their functions, and programmed their new bodies with the ability to self-replicate.
As a test of their abilities, I had my new Humanoids attack and invade the minds of every living thing in the town above: Cuprum.
It was…around that time that I noticed the…imperfections. The constant, insufferable need for rest. The peeling of my skin, the molting of my body. Parts of my body and my brain randomly beginning to necrotize. For a time, I was able to program my Humanoids to…remove the damaged tissue, and replace it with other, scavenged tissue.
Alas, I was simply delaying the inevitable.
Once my deterioration was…irreversible, I programmed my Humanoids to – in the event of my death – automate my corpse and pilot it into the rebuilt Resurrection Machine. Of course, with the current iteration of my machine, there is a catch. In order to resurrect one thing, I need to remove the life-force of another.
I look upon the cache of bones sitting about me, in a pile. The forty-seven rotten skulls staring back at me clearly mean that I’ve been pulled into the machine at least forty-seven times by my loyal machines. Naturally, making a copy, of a copy, of a copy, of a copy for so long…leads to diminished quality.
I’ve been moving - back and forth – through time as well.
Is it simply the deterioration of my mind? Am I an Alzheimer’s patient - becoming so entrenched in the past, then simply snapping back to the present moment? Has my mind undergone such cataclysmic damage that I’m merely…thinking…that I’m moving back and forth through time?
Or are these temporal movements actually happening? Am I being beckoned by the ether – to return to my eternal sleep?
It hardly matters – not at this juncture.
I will either get Extremis, and finally become WHOLE...
…or you will become the next Leader.
The artificial intelligence I’ve programmed inside the device you have just activated is already colonizing your motor and neural pathways as we speak, and will overwrite your current consciousness with the saved file of my own. Fret not – your consciousness was quite likely of inferior stock as it is now.
The good news is that your otherwise pointless existence will now serve as raw material for some something far greater than yourself – something far beyond your…limited…understanding of things..
I’ll likely continue as the Leader in your body for some time, until it is no longer of any use to me.
Perhaps I’ll gamma-irradiate it at some later date, and use you as a more-permanent home for my vast, unknowable intellect.
Nevertheless, gaze upon my laboratory in awe.
It has now become your new home.
*end recording*
The Leader switched off the recording device. He tapped a few buttons and watched the dark, disturbing piece of equipment shrink down into the computer terminal, hiding itself away.
Stern turned his attention away from the computers, as his creatures carried the lifeless brunette toward the Resurrection Machine, carefully placing her inside its crystalline structure.
As they did so, he watched with bloodshot eyes as one of the citizens of Cuprum – a blond female – willfully walked into the other side of the Resurrection Machine, stricken with a blank gaze. Once the machine sealed her inside, the woman with the blank stare began to heave, falling down on all fours.
As she did so, a flurry of chitinous insects – of a much smaller variety than those inside the Abomination – began to emerge. They burrowed out of her ears, her nose, her mouth, and any other orifices available to them. Exhausted, the blonde collapsed on the floor of the massive device as the creatures eased open the seal and found their ways out into the laboratory proper, before sealing the blonde inside once more.
The woman moaned, half-aware that she was now free of the insects – the Humanoids - that had been controlling her for so long.
It wouldn’t be long before she regained her strength and composure. Before she began banging on the chamber door and begging her Leader for release. Before she screamed and hollered, asking about the fates of the other citizens of Cuprum that the Leader had smuggled away before the town’s destruction at the hands of the Abomination, minds still infected by the Humanoids that had held her will at bay for so long.
The woman’s cries for mercy, even her pleas for simple answers -- would both fall upon deaf ears.
“The pieces fall ever closer. Ever, ever closer…” Sterns rasped, his voice spilling out of his throat – a discordant, repulsive thing – across the expanse of the cavern.
Were the deceased Betty Banner alive to hear the sound, the broken thing that was once the Leader’s voice would send chills up her spine. For all the strange, bizarre things Mrs. Banner had seen in her short life, the sound of his voice would make her question a universe in which such a cruel, twisted mockery should possibly exist.
Betty Banner wasn’t yet alive to hear the sadistic sound of Sterns, but she soon would be.
“Activate the machine, my Humanoids,” the Leader rasped beneath a mustachioed grin.
Without further adieu, the Humanoids heeded their leader’s command.
* * * * *
The wreckage of Cuprum, Arizona
Just outside the Arizona Desert
The way it ends…
The Abomination stood over the Professor’s limp form, awash in the hero’s gamma-irradiated blood.
The Professor let out an exhausted groan, to which the Abomination responded with a vicious kick to the Professor’s already-bruised ribcage. The chitinous creatures hummed merrily inside Blonsky’s brain, reveling in the beast’s dark delight.
“I hope you understand why I’ve done all this, you know,” the Abomination circled the bloodied Professor, idly picking up a heavy piece of metal wreckage lying in the crater.
“W-w-wh…” the Professor choked out.
The monster crushed the metal chunk into a crude ball, laughing as he bounced it off of the Hulk’s head, like a child idly pulling the legs off a helpless spider. The Professor let out an agonized shriek of pain. Laughing heartily, the Abomination caught the heavy metal ball on the rebound.
“You took my wife away from me.” Emil growled, his demeanor turning deadly serious. “You took my Nadia away from me, and I wanted to return the favor.”
“D-didn’t…take…anything from you…” the Hulk grunted, coughing up a mucous pile of green blood. “….you drove here away…all by yourself…you sociopath…”
Emil roaring, eyes aflame with deadly rage as he bounced the two hundred pound ball of metal off of the hounded hero’s head once more, catching it again on the rebound. Blood poured freely from the large gash on the Hulk’s temple.
“He’s right, you know,” a voice quietly chimed in amid the cacophonous din of Emil’s enraged response. “We brought this on ourselves by cheating on Betty.”
“I…I would never…” the Professor choked out, addressing the apparition of Bruce Banner.
“Do you put this on me, milksop!” Joe Fixit roared, fiercely pointing at the scientist who was watching the battle before them in abject horror. “Don’t you drag me into your stupid guilt trip this time!”
“This is all my fault,” Bruce Banner mumbled, watching the Abomination grab the Professor’s limp body and toss it straight up – over a hundred feet into the air.
“The deaths at the Waystation. The murder of this entire city. Everything the Abomination has done. All of it. All of it, because I was feeling a little lonely. Terribly lonely after Betty’s death. And the one woman, who made me feel just a little less lost, a little less lonely...and she just happens to be…”
The Professor’s body climbed toward the sky – ever slower, ever slower, ever slower – until his inertia finally stopped. Barely conscious, the body of the Professor Hulk gave in to the nagging tug of gravity, and began to fall quickly back down toward the shattered town below. Yet, the war in the sky continued.
“Oh, cut the crap, Banner!” Joe Fixit growled. “You’re a human being, fer Chrissake! You thought your wife was dead, gone for good. You had a few drinks, and crawled into bed with a smokin’ hot singer who gave you some attention! Blonsky had his chance with the babe, and blew it! Not your fault – not your problem.”
The scientist watched the Professor falling faster, faster, and heaved a heavy sigh.
“Now quit yer bitchin’, grow a pair, and wreck Blonsky’s day up!”
The scientist smiled thinly – just before the Professor’s falling body slammed mightily into the wrecked earth below him, widening the already massive crater. The impact sent shockwaves into the surrounding hills and the towns around them.
The Abomination held out his hand, shielding his face from the chunks of dirt and debris rocketing out from the point of collision. As the mini-earthquake settled down, he looked at his foe and smiled wide, as the Professor’s body laid still. Emil Blonsky circled his foe, picking up his steel spear, and raising it high above his foe’s bruised head.
“This. This is where it ends, Banner,” Emil Blonsky spoke in a low, guttural growl, “After all these years, this is where it ends.”
As the Abomination’s makeshift spear rocketed down towards the Professor’s head, the Hulk – barely conscious – raised his arm to block the killing blow.
The same arm, which contained the Extremis enhancile.
The Professor screamed as the Abomination’s mighty strength slid the spear viciously through the Professor’s forearm – and into the enhancile.
With a sudden hiss, Extremis was unleashed.
NEXT: DOCTOR BANNER, I PRESUME?
A seemingly-decommissioned Hulkbuster base called the Waystation.
The morbid remains of a messy murder scene…
“I’m so sorry, Betty.”
The skinny, puny human in tattered purple pants named Bruce Banner knelt upon the fresh remains of a human body – torn asunder, and shredded beyond recognition. Shaking – his mind adrift in the depths of his grief - Bruce remained only dimly aware of the contingent of soldiers that were now surrounding him.
The tears flowed freely from his face as he placed his hand amongst the torn skin and pulp, knowing that he’d never see his wife beautiful face again. Never hear her laugh, never see her smile. Never trace the outline of her face – oh, how well he’d memorized every curve – as they lay in bed together. Never feel the warmth of her lips, never place a gentle kiss upon her forehead. Never hold her warm body in his arms – never, ever again.
The click-clacking of safeties being withdrawn from dozens of AK-47s and other assorted weaponry never entered his mind. The soldiers – the survivors of the Waystation rampage – stalked their prey, waiting for Bruce Banner’s other half to emerge at any moment. Tightly and tensely, they all pressed their trigger fingers against their rifles in preparation.
Who knew when they would ever again have this chance to put down the Hulk, once and for all?
Bruce Banner never felt the pinprick of the sniper’s tranquilizer needle – never acknowledged the rush of liquid that could kill an elephant with its raw power. Some impossible carfentanil derivative, no doubt.
Awash in the agony of losing his beloved wife, the blackness swept over his vision.
The blackness, the darkness…
Oh, how Bruce Banner welcomed the dark…
The soldiers slowly – carefully advanced toward the slumbering form of Bruce Banner. Their leader - the colonel – took off her gloves, feeling the unconscious Banner for a pulse.
“He’s alive, general,” the colonel said over the intercom.
She and the remaining soldiers listened intently, as further instructions came over their headsets.
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
With a simple motion, the commanding officer called a waiting team of medics to her side. They rushed on-site, carrying a gurney and some medical equipment. They hooked Banner up to an IV drip and began to strap him to the gurney. The chief medic began to fiddle around with the restraints and handcuffs that came standard with this particular type of gurney, until the colonel put her hand on his trembling shoulder.
“Don’t waste your time, son. This is the Hulk. No restraint in the world’s gonna keep him down that doesn’t have some facet of adamantium-fiber laced inside. Just get the IV feed right, and he should stay under long enough for the General to have a word with him.”
The head medic stared at the woman for a moment, acknowledging her with a nervous nod, and turned his attention to the IV drip.
The medics scooped Banner up hurriedly. As they retreated, the colonel shouted after them.
“Careful with him, boys! That’s the General’s son-in-law you got in-tow!”
The medics continued apace, as the colonel looked around toward the rest of her troops.
“Looks like we got an all-nighter of a clean-up ahead of us. Let’s get to it!”
The soldiers moved on their orders, as the commanding officer barked out duties to her troops. With a nod toward the tower, the sniper above disassembled her rifle, and came down to help with the cleanup.
As they began to clean up the wreckage of the Waystation that the Abomination had left in his wake, the frenzied colonel breathed a sigh of relief.
Good luck, Bruce. Colonel Cary St. Lawrence thought to herself sadly, before joining her team in the clean-up efforts. All my love.
* * * * *
The Waystation
Earlier that night
A present for Bruce Banner
The rage.
The all-consuming, delightfully-endearing, oh-so-comfortable rage, nestled warmly inside Emil Blonsky’s gamma-irradiated heart.
It was rage that powered Emil Blonsky – the Abomination. His rage was a warm blanket that kept the one-time Russian spy safe.
Safe from the government secrets still-buried in the one-time spy’s mind. Safe from the days and nights of unending solitude that came from his scaly, monstrous form. Safe from loss of his one, true love. Safe from the fact that he’d always been a monster – that his skin only recently reflected his despicable inner-workings.
The tiny little things at the Waystation screamed. Blonsky – the once and always Abomination – delighted in severing limbs, and torsos, and heads from those screaming, screeching little things. Delighted in watching those angry, self-assured soldiers lose faith in their guns, their ammunition, and all the alpha-male, macho toys they thought would keep them safe.
Mortar shells and metal-jacketed rounds collapsed and exploded against the Abomination’s impenetrable scaled hide. The beast could taste the gunpowder, as the desert floor was bathed with the blood of the helpless.
The alpha males of the Russian government had so much to say about the “usefulness” of espionage – in wartime, or in peacetime. About how useless ‘tiny little men’ like Sterns were in ‘getting things done right.’ About how ‘a bigger, better bomb’ was the only real solution.
A bigger, better bomb hit the scaly creature directly in the face. The Abomination hadn’t even bothered to deflect it.
He’d wanted to see the look. The look on their pathetic little faces as the smoke cleared, and all their tiny little hopes and dreams turned to so much ash. The beast laughed mightily, guffawing gleefully as he drank in the horror of the soldiers. Like the dinosaurs – they were all already dead. They just hadn’t realized it yet.
The Abomination separated their limbs, crunched their bodies, pummeled their bones and laughed with every new and interesting type of homicide. The chitinous creatures nestled themselves snug inside his skull as the Abomination gleefully dished out new and creative types of murder, all the while gently guiding him toward his target.
Metal doors, security checkpoints. Lasers, bullets, tranquilizers – the beast tore through them all. Tore and tore and tore, until he finally got to the one most important asset in the building.
Betty Banner – the Hulk’s wife.
She lay helpless in the highly-classified, nigh-impenetrable medical bay, perched somewhere strange between death and everlasting life.
Emil Blonsky smiled.
“You seduce my wife, Banner? You turn my Nadia against me?” the Russian monster laughed, reaching toward the helpless female. “So, I make a Rorschach painting out of yours…”
The Abomination reached down, stripping off the protection of her medical alcove in a shower of electrical sparks and a shrieking of shattered medical plexiglass.
The scaly creature reached down at the one thing left in the world that his nemesis loved more than life itself. Emil Blonsky had tried to kill this thing once – substituting his own poisonous, toxic blood during an otherwise life-saving blood transfusion. It should have been too much for her body – turning her in death into the same wicked abomination that Emil Blonsky was in life.
The perfect vengeance.
At least, it should have been.
The scaly monster held Betty Banner’s limp body in his arms, now freed from the life support chamber that had been keeping her immersed in that twilight moment between life and death. The chitinous creatures inside the Abomination’s mind buzzed excitedly as the beast closed his mammoth claws around the woman’s unprotected throat.
Emil Blonsky quietly admitted to himself that this method of execution lacked the same – elegance – that his previous attempt to kill her had. Nevertheless, like those alpha males had said back in his previous line of employment, sometimes brute force was a necessary evil, winning out over elegance.
In his mind’s eye, the Abomination could see it happening…his fingers closing around her neck, crushing it with a quick squish. Popping off the woman’s head with his thumb – like a pez dispenser – and seeing the bloody thing bounce across the laboratory floor. He saw himself gleefully laughing as he upended her headless corpse, emptying out whatever was left inside the body all over the laboratory. As the pieces of her – muscle, bone, organ, cartilage – rained upon the lab, the Abomination cackled madly. For he had finally removed Banner’s beloved from the world, once and for all!
So…why was Betty Banner still whole?
“The hell…?” the Abomination muttered, confused.
So he tried again. He removed her skin like a blanket and flung her opened body around the room, spilling the contents out like a spinning centrifuge would. He watched the pieces slink away and bathed in her blood.
Yet, that didn’t work either.
Betty Banner was still alive. Still immaculate. Still untouched by the fires of his resounding hate.
“What?” the Abomination howled, trying to force his unwilling muscles to move. Trying so hard to violently-separate every part of Betty Banner from every other part.
Yet, no matter what he did, he couldn’t get his body to do what he told it to do.
“What is this?” the enraged Emil snarled, as the chitinous insects in his mind buzzed excitedly once more.
Not yet, the insects hissed, not just yet…
The Abomination roared and howled with insatiable rage as the creatures pulled the beast out of the belly of the Waystation, cut viciously through dozens more helpless security guards, and leapt away from the site of the carnage, all the while forcing the beast to keep the lovely Mrs. Banner very, very safe.
The chitinous creatures – mercifully – let the enraged Emil vent his frustration on a far-less important target, of course.
Let him leave a present for Bruce Banner, amongst the swirling desert sands…
* * * * *
Deep inside the Waystation
Sometime later
A chat with the in-law
Bruce Banner woke up to the business end of an old-style M9 Beretta handgun, and a moment of panic flashed through his mind.
That is, until he saw the face of the man holding the gun.
“Ross.”
“Banner”
“Sir,” the colonel standing next to him said, “you can’t draw a firearm on an unarmed civilian!”
“I would never draw on an unarmed civilian, Colonel. What kind of monster do you think I am?” General Thunderbolt Ross growled, cocking the Beretta as he took a hard pull from his stogie, “This is just my son-in-law.”
“Hmpph,” Banner scowled, “well, hello to you too, Thaddeus.”
Ross narrowed his eyes. “I’ve told you not to call me that, Banner.”
Bruce was preparing another smart remark when he suddenly went into a panic. His brown eyes shot wide.
“Oh my God - Betty! Betty, my beautiful Betty, she…!!”
“That wasn’t my daughter, you twit!” Ross thundered, holstering his weapon.
“Yeah, you twit!” Bruce Banner’s eyes shifted to the left, and scowled at the image of Joe Fixit, smoking a stogie next to the colonel in the room, mimicking the mannerisms of Thunderbolt Ross as he did so.
Bruce glared at the image of Fixit for a beat and shut his eyes, holding the bridge of his nose and shaking his head.
“Wait, what…?” Banner stammered confused, “No…no, that’s not right. I saw her…I saw Betty, and she was…”
“”Fraid not, son. That smear of blood you were crying over upstairs, on the desert floor? That was one of mine. Leiutenant Leah Brahms.”
“Lieutenant..?” Bruce Banner stammered.
“That’s right, son. Fine woman, and skilled marksman – bless her soul. No match for the goddamned Abomination of course, but she held her own and never gave an inch. Deserved far finer than what she got, I tell you.”
Bruce Banner sighed, shaking his head. “My God…”
“God’s got nothin’ to do with this, son,” the general muttered, pushing out a puff of his cigar. “Blonsky’s gone off-the-goddamn-reservation, you might say.
“The General is correct, Bruce. In his own – ah, colorful way,” Colonel Cary St. Lawrence said, locking eyes with the handsome Bruce Banner. “Emil Blonsky knew exactly where to find Betty Banner. He came to this base with that singular objective. He was clearly enhanced with unknown biologics, and our Hulk-tailored weaponry proved ineffective in curtailing his assault upon this base. He has to be stopped – at all costs.”
Bruce Banner adjusted his glasses, gazing up at the colonel. The bruises on her face and medical gauze along her forehead told the story far better than her words ever could.
“Cary…” he said, letting out an exhausted sigh, “it’s….it’s good to see you again.”
Colonel St. Lawrence raised an eyebrow, momentarily biting her lip. Memories from the past swarmed over her before she saw the look of disapproval from her superior officer - General Thaddeus Ross. Her professional demeanor came about – like a shield – protecting her heart from any further nuisance concerning her – storied past – with the behemoth known as the Hulk.
“Of course, Banner. It’s….good to….see you as well. I’ve had several, ah….several run-ins. With your alter ego, that is. You’re looking very…you’re not an angry weapon of mass destruction at the moment, so you’ve got that going for you.”
The general eyed her suspiciously. “Is there something I should know about you and my ex-son-in-law, Ms. Lawrence?”
After hearing the remark, Colonel Cary St. Lawrence somehow stood more ramrod-straight than she’d been standing, and raised an eyebrow at the general. “Nothing outside of the normal combat experience our Hulkbusters might’ve had with the Hulk, sir!”
Thaddeus raised an eyebrow at the colonel. “That’s…very good to hear, Cary. Very good to hear…”
Colonel St. Lawrence pushed the erotic, sweaty thoughts of green hands sliding along her bare back hard and fast away from her mind.
“Anyway, to recap…Emil Blonsky – alias the Abomination – stormed this base with the express intent of stealing away the body of Mrs. Betty Banner-Ross from this location. An intent which he was supremely successful in doing.”
Banner furrowed his brow. “Wait, Emil Blonsky – the Abomination – has Betty?? We…we have to go after her!” Bruce screamed. “Right now! Right now, or else he’s going to…”
“Bruce,” Cary St. Lawrence said, gripping Bruce Banner’s forearm in an attempt to calm him down. “Bruce, the Abomination will not be harming Betty anytime soon.”
Bruce’s eyes opened wide as his skin turned pale. “How in the hell could you possibly know what Emil’s got planned? He tried to kill her once – and now that he’s got her in his clutches, there’s no telling what he could possibly…!!?”
“We have some videotape, son, that might make you reconsider Emil’s intentions towards my daughter,” Thaddeus spoke in a dark, bitterly savage tone, as he picked up a remote control and faced the room’s HD monitors.
Bruce Banner watched as the video chronicled the Abomination’s ruthless penetration of the base – dismemberment after dismemberment – until the scaly beast finally breached Betty Banner’s holding facility. Thaddeus saw an imperceptible movement in Banner that few would have noticed.
“Don’t worry, son. I felt the same way when I got this far into the video. Keep watchin’.”
Bruce Banner clenched his teeth and clenched his fingers, meticulously and methodically attempting to stay calm as he watched the Abomination stalk toward Betty’s final resting place. Watched the monster disassemble the chamber as if it were made of damp paper mache, rather than a quarter ton of thick steel and monomolecular plastic molds.
He watched the Abomination scoop out her body, and attempt to rip his wife into itty-bitty shreds. Except….
….nothing happened.
Bruce Banner gaped as he watched the Abomination – a being who was clearly capable of rending the Hulk’s nigh-invincible flesh – desperately-flailed with the body of a simple one hundred and thirteen pound woman. He watched as the Abomination tried – and quite simply failed – to pull every single part of Mrs. Betty Banner away from every other single part of Mrs. Betty Banner.
Four minutes into the attempt to kill his wife, and Bruce Banner finally figured it out.
“The Abomination…can’t kill her.”
“Bingo,” the general said, watching as the Abomination finally stopped trying to filet her after minute six. “Something is preventing the Abomination from acting on his intent to murder my daughter – at least, for the present.”
Banner scratched at the itch in his forearm.
“What are those spires sticking out of his head?” Banner questioned. “And those black veins cloistered about his body?”
“Near as we can tell, those are sympathetic life forms that respond to his every movement,” Cary St. Lawrence said, pointing out each example of them on the screen. “We’re pretty sure Emil has bonded with these parasites in order to increase his physical strength….”
“…or maybe they bonded with him,” Banner surmised as Cary St. Lawrence went on with her lengthy hypothesis on the black swarm of creatures inside of the Abomination.
“…at any rate, our findings as to the nature of these lifeforms that have merged with Emil Blonsky remain inconclusive,” the colonel remarked, “but we’ve found that he has become far, far stronger with these creatures than without them. We found this out the hard way, in fact. As you can see, the entire armament of a Hulkbuster base was insufficient to curtail his psychotic assault.”
Mr. Blue, Banner thought ominously to himself, it seems I’ve underestimated you once again.
“I’d like to see her,” he mumbled, interrupting the confident parlance of Cary St. Lawrence. “I’d like to see the area where you held my wife’s body.”
General Thunderbolt Ross blustered, “Well, now I don’t see how…”
“How what?” Banner said. “You don’t see the problem with lying to me about the final resting place for my wife’s goddamned body? Don’t see how sending me a pile of someone else’s ashes after the funeral to mourn over might upset me? Don’t see how preserving my wife’s deceased body against mine and her own wishes might be a big, fucking concern of mine??”
Cary St. Lawrence stepped between the angered Banner and the spiteful General Ross, in an attempt to ease hostilities. “Bruce, I’m sure that the general acted in the best interests of his daughter, and…”
Bruce Banner growled. His eyes glowed green as he picked Colonel St. Lawrence up by her throat and forcibly lifted her off the ground – while still fully in the body of the measly Bruce Banner. “And you, Cary. You knew. Even after everything you and I shared – you knew my wife was here, and you said nothing.”
Colonel St. Lawrence grasped at Banner’s grip, clawing desperately at his skin as his grip grew ever tighter with each passing second. “Bruce, she was already dead! What would you gain from **ggkkk!** what would…you gain…from me telling you….??”
“What would I..?” Bruce Banner stammered, incredulous at her reasoning. “I’ll tell you what I—“
“Banner, that’s enough!” Thunderbolt Ross growled, firing a pistol up into the air. Bruce Banner’s green eyes snapped toward the concussive blast of the weapon. He lingered a moment – unsure of what to do – before he finally released Colonel St. Lawrence. She collapsed into a heap on the floor, clutching her hands to her injured throat as she did so.
Banner locked his gaze of Thunderbolt Ross, as the green glow stayed ever-present in his eyes.
The general returned a steely gaze toward Banner, ignoring the drip of sweat sauntering down from the receding hairline on his forehead.
The two men locked eyes until one of them finally folded.
“I should have told you about what I did with Betty, Bruce,” the general growled. “I get that now.”
The green disappeared from Banner’s eyes, but the angry gaze did not. “You’re goddamn right you should have. At least you know that now.”
Thaddeus Ross bristled at the insult.
“Now,” Bruce Banner growled, “I want to see. The area. In which. You have been keeping. The dead body. Of my wife.”
The general glared at the imposing figure of the ninety-eight pound scientist, as the muscular Colonel St. Lawrence rubbed at the larynx that the ninety-eight pound almost crushed – one-handed.
“Colonel?” the general said. “Could you excuse Banner and I for a moment? There’s….there’s something I have to show him.
Colonel St. Lawrence’s eyes went wide, as she glanced sidelong towards Bruce Banner.
“But, sir…”
“That’s a direct order, Colonel,” Thaddeus said through clenched teeth, staring daggers into the eyes of the bewildered colonel.
“Yes, sir,” she responded with a hiss, before leaving her superior officer along with his son-in-law.
General Thaddeus Thunderbolt Ross glared at Bruce Banner.
“You know I’m going to pay for that later, right?” the general growled at Banner.
“Good,” Bruce stated, straightening his garb as he did so, “I would be sorely disappointed in the military chain of command if you didn’t.”
With a grumble and a stogie puff, General Ross led his son-in-law down the corridor, into the depths of the Waystation.
* * * * *
As deep inside The Waystation as it gets
Photogenic memory
Bruce Banner and General Thaddeus Ross walked down the corridor. Ross thundered forward at a sure and steady gait and Banner kept pace with a ponderous, contemplative – ever suspicious – poise.
Bruce Banner scratched at his forearm, wondering what it was inside that kept itching so incessantly. He stared as workers and soldiers alike pulled scrap from the floor and dragged fallen comrades away to their final resting places. Sparks shimmered and spout as repair crews worked furiously to undo the damage that the Abomination had created when he came through this hallway the first time, in his quest to relieve the deceased Betty Banner from her stasis pod.
The general glared back at his son-in-law, who was looking at the repair crews with a haughty brow.
“I know whatcher thinkin’, Banner,” Thunderbolt Ross growled, spitting Banner’s last name out as if it were an expletive.
“You do, do you?” Bruce Banner said, raising an eyebrow tauntingly. “Please enlighten me, General.”
Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross drew a heavy, steady pull from his stogie, blowing out a plume of smoke throughout the corridor without once breaking stride. “You think I should’ve put Betty in the ground. You think I should’ve committed my baby girl to the earth from which she came, rather than covertly hauling her off to a secret location like this.”
Banner growled. “Certainly would’ve saved some taxpayer dollars in revenue, I should say. Then again, transparency has not necessarily been your style over the years, has it Thaddeus?”
Thunderbolt stopped in his tracks, doing a fantastic about-face that surprised even the contemplative Banner. Stogie in-hand, Thunderbolt pointed hard at the young man, tapping him in the chest with his pointer-finger while letting out a serious growl. “You want to see the chamber – Banner – or don’t you?”
Bruce Banner gazed down at the shorter – but nonetheless imposing – figure of Thunderbolt Ross with absolute contempt. Until the more logical side of his brain got into gear, and forced his lips to clam up.
The duo spent the next six minutes in painful silence, slowly making their ways past work details and piles of rubble, toward the chamber that had housed Bruce Banner’s wife since her murder by the Abomination.
A simple optical and audio-security net later, and Bruce Banner finally stepped foot inside the chamber.
The chamber which he had studied for so many nights. The room from the photograph that Mr. Blue had sent him.
Bruce Banner stalked up and down the room, remembering each piece of equipment he’d seen in that photograph. Banner recognized every medical machine that had been used to keep his wife in stasis. He recognized every government marking on the wall, every curve of the room, every piece of equipment within view of the security camera. All of it matched up precisely with the photograph that Mr. Blue had sent.
Bruce Banner clenched his teeth, glaring in General Ross’s direction.
Yes, he surmised angrily, the government creature certainly kept my deceased wife in stasis, didn’t he? Goddamn morbid bastard. Why couldn’t you just…??
“I couldn’t…” Thunderbolt Ross’s voice had cracked as he walked towards the chamber which had once held the inert body of his daughter. “I couldn’t figure out how to bring her back to life, Bruce. I could…I could keep her autonomic functions working. Keep her breathing, keep her heart beating, keep her blood flowing…but my Betty wasn’t there. There was no mind, you see…”
“No mind,” Banner repeated, tracing his fingers across her ruined stasis chamber. The same stasis chamber that kept Betty in a permanent state of un-life, rather than allowing her to finally, mercifully die…
Bruce Banner – ever the scientist – found the locations of the hidden cameras that had been violating - ah, videotaping - her slumber since her death in Area 102 at the hands of the Abomination. (**see Incredible Hulk #467)
These had been the same camera feeds that Mr. Blue had tapped into, screen-grabbing an image of his deceased wife and sending it back to Banner at the Avengers mansion. Blackmailing the hapless Banner and guiding him into this mad crusade: Extremis for his wife. Extremis for his wife. A simple enhancile, in exchange for his forever-love…
Honestly, what would you choose?
“No mind at all, Banner,” Thunderbolt Ross bristled. If Banner hadn’t known Thunderbolt so well, for so many years, he would never realize the heartache that Thunderbolt showed. His tone, his mannerisms – to Banner, the general might as well have been weeping openly into a pillow.
“All those soldiers upstairs, all the men in-between. All the checkpoints, all the armament, all the firepower…we have enough power to knock out the damn Hulk for a fortnight, and yet….” He stammered, taking a hard drag on his stogie and releasing the smoke out through angry lungs. “Yet, we couldn’t stop that green-blooded sonuvabitch from stealing my goddamn daughter away from me…”
Bruce Banner frowned, desperately trying to control his rage.
“That freak – that homicidal monstrous freak – kidnapped my little girl.”
Banner’s eyes began to glow, even as he tried desperately to hum that quiet, relaxing, meditative tune to himself. His muscles began to glow, and bulge…
“So what the hell are you waiting for, Banner? A signed, notarized, goddamned invitation?” the general growled, gesturing toward the destruction about the room. “Go get that sonuvabitch who stole our Betty away from us!!”
Bruce Banner growled, a bright green tinge glowing from his skin. “Banner’s not here anymore, General.”
The beast growled as his pink skin bulged and quivered, and finally exploded off of his body, shredding away like snakeskin in thin, miniscule pieces. The handsome, well-muscled form of the Professor-Hulk stood in Banner’s wake, his face contorted with a primal rage. “You’re dealing with the Professor now.”
Thaddeus Ross looked upon the green goliath with a righteous kind of rage. The Professor-Hulk – capable of lifting and crushing a hundred, thousand tons of bedrock into precious diamond. The General gazed upon all this muscle and sinew without a shred of fear, and growled:
“Go get our girl, Banner.”
The Professor tore through the walls of the chamber, and leapt away to do just that.
With a grunt, the general pulled out a GPS linkup, wirelessly-connected to the GPS tracker that had been implanted in Bruce Banner’s weak hide while he was unconscious. The tracker was working and working well, showing Banner leaping from the base at a speed that was slightly slower than Mach 1.
As General Thunderbolt Ross called upon the already-run-ragged repair crews to fix the colossal hole that the Professor had just made in the Waystation, only one thought raged through the general’s angered mind.
Go get ‘im, son, he thought to himself. Go. Goddamn. Get ‘im.
* * * * *
The former mining town of Cuprum, Arizona
Just outside the Arizona Desert
Yesterday’s town census: 4,568 Residents
Today’s census: Considerably lower
Cuprum, Arizona was a former mining colony that still embraced its storied history – a slew of old-school salooneries and Gold-Rush era architecture littered the land, while its other buildings pushed forward with post-modern architecture and new world thinking.
Given time, the bustling town of Cuprum could have become one of the most historical, beautiful cities in the world, surrounded by gorgeous landscapes and people of varied histories, backgrounds, and sensibilities.
Given time, Cuprum could have been an Arizona paradise.
Instead, three hundred souls lay crushed and buried amidst the mashed remains of the mayoral house, upended from the northern end of the city two miles northwest. The once-beautiful homes among the hills had been transformed into little more than rocky, uneven pavements of disrupted concrete and dried human blood.
The buildings in the newer parts of the city had all been demolished, leaving that area of the city completely flattened, and surrounded in a cakey, endless plume of dust that would not be blown away for several hours. The town of Cuprum was protected from the southwestern winds by a beautiful lay of mountains – a bit of scenery that had attracted several thousand would-be artists of the day to a dusty, violent grave. Random areas of power generation lay in ruins, burning aflame and already spreading to the surrounding areas. For there were no more citizenry left in the ruins to call for help. No more standing fire departments, or un-smashed trucks, or un-buried equipment to put out the flames.
Splintered steel and pulverized concrete lay atop the cracked ceramic walkways dioramas that once attracted tourists and sight-seers far and wide. The remains of cars, trains, trolleys, trucks and people lay in the streets in the wake of the obscene destruction, knowingly piled together for maximum effect.
Some of the dead laid in craters, more or less of their own making. These were the ones who survived long enough to make it out of the city limits in the mass exodus…only to be chased down by the vindictive force of nature that had utterly annihilated the burgeoning city, and thrown back in the town-proper from several miles away. Remnants of cars, trains and helicopters lay smashed across the landscape as well – more would-be survivors who escaped the city limits in the wake of the initial destruction, but were later chased down, and hurled mightily back into the carnage.
The cause of the carnage – the psychotic form of the Abomination – reveled in his handiwork. Licking his scaly lips, he growled happily as the chitinous creatures inside his mind whispered to him, the black spires drilling out of his head and the black veins pouring along his muscles, filling him with strength.
He smiled as the Hulk walked towards him from the north, amidst the drifting panes of smoke and dust.
Finally, Emil thought to himself.
The Professor-Hulk stared across the plains of destruction, a sneer of disgust and abject rage playing across his handsome features.
The emerald giant glared at his grinning green adversary.
“You know, Emil…” the Professor said, gesturing darkly toward the devastation surrounding them, “…there was a time when I would have asked you why.”
The Abomination grinned wider. “I’m glad we’re past that point, Bruce.”
The jade titans circled one another, wading through the wreckage as they locked eyes with mutual hate and disgust.
“Where is she?” the Professor growled.
The scaly beast smirked. “Whoever do you mean?”
“Where. Is. She?”
“Where is who?” the scaly beast asked innocently, pretending to think for a moment. He pondered the question maliciously, pacing back and forth. The stone-serious face of the Hulk glared back at the Abomination with a gaze sharper than the steel. Sharper than the steel girders just up the block, poking out of the piles of debris that were once occupied buildings.
The Abomination’s pacing relaxed, snapping his rough fingers in a Eureka moment.
“Oh! You wouldn’t happen to mean Betsy, would you? Beatrice, maybe? Or was it Betty? I’m terrible with names.”
The Professor clenched his leathery fists, cracking his knuckles audibly while choking back a snarl from the back of his throat.
“I’m surprised you couldn’t find her at that gamma base. The…Waystation, I believe? Betty was such a small thing, really. So fragile. Probably hard to spot sometimes, with all those big, muscular types you see around those old army bases. I made it so that you could see her better, you know? Spread her body out a bit. You and I both know that seeing things on the ground can be hard, with all the leaping around that we do.”
The Professor gritted his teeth. “You and I both know that poor woman you butchered at the Waystation wasn’t my wife.”
The Abomination sighed, his sadistic smirk fading a bit. “Too true, too true. I liked your idiot persona better. It was always much easier to get him riled up.”
“That woman had a family, Emil.” The Professor said, “A husband. Children. Parents. They won’t even be able to have an open casket funeral.”
The Abomination rolled his eyes and let out a guttural guffaw. “They sure won’t. Neither will anyone in this dead city here, either.”
The Professor cracked his knuckles, as the two continued circling one other. The vultures above cawed and clattered overhead, idly plotting their next meals above the decimated wasteland where a city once stood.
“You’re going to pay for this, you know.” The Hulk stated, cracking his neck and stretching out his bulging arms. “For the soldiers at the Waystation. For that poor woman you slaughtered. For all these murdered citizens. All of it!”
“Am I now, Bruce?” the Abomination jeered, idly scooping up a twisted steel girder, plying the edge down into a crude spear with his scaly fingers while keeping his eyes on his foe.
“Yep,” the Professor said, lifting a heavy concrete chunk out of what was left of a building. He palmed the chunk with his right hand, slowing forcing his fingers through the piece of rubble until it fit his hand like a pair of brass knuckles. “You’re going to pay for all of that. Right before you tell me what you’ve done to Betty, and where you’ve taken her.”
“I’m much stronger with these devices inside me, comrade,” the beast sneered, gesturing to the blackened spires growing out of his skull, “but please. Come collect your payment. See all the good it does you.”
The Professor let out a roar that echoed wild across the plains, as the warriors charged one another.
The cement brass knuckles collided against the Abomination’s skull with the impact of an atomic bomb. The Professor roared as the Abomination’s steel spear pierced his muscled emerald hide, drawing first blood.
The battle had begun.
* * * * *
Audio Log of Mr. Blue – alias The Leader
A forgotten mineshaft hideaway, somewhere deep in the Arizona Desert
Preparations for the Inevitable…
*begin recording*
Hello.
Whoever, whatever you are…this is your Leader speaking…
If you have found this log, then my efforts have failed.
I have been moving backward…and forward…through time. Leading to the cumulative deterioration of my current vessel. I’ve…I’ve had to use the Resurrection Machine several times on this vessel, each successive resurrection producing diminished results.
I initially used my Resurrection Machine to re-build my shattered, bullet-ridden body…after the Professor used me as a human shield. (*see Incredible Hulk #400.)
Despite the Professor’s interruption of the procedure, I was re-instituted some months later with merely adequate results. I was tired, emaciated, weak, no doubt side effects of the Professor’s sabotaging my equipment while I was still inside.
Nevertheless, I was alive.
With the anonymity my apparent death gave me, I was able to accomplish many things.
Such as re-building and evolving my Humanoid army.
The error in my previous iterations of Humanoids were that they were simply too large and too mindless to get anything of consequence done, despite their ability to outwit the Savage Hulk in physical battle. The answer – as insane as it seemed – was to make them smaller.
I enhanced them with nanotechnology, built artificial intelligence engines inside them to make them capable of independent decision-making (allowing them to more efficiently fulfill my mental commands without me having to step in and always play the mother hen)…I enabled them to shift their forms to fit their functions, and programmed their new bodies with the ability to self-replicate.
As a test of their abilities, I had my new Humanoids attack and invade the minds of every living thing in the town above: Cuprum.
It was…around that time that I noticed the…imperfections. The constant, insufferable need for rest. The peeling of my skin, the molting of my body. Parts of my body and my brain randomly beginning to necrotize. For a time, I was able to program my Humanoids to…remove the damaged tissue, and replace it with other, scavenged tissue.
Alas, I was simply delaying the inevitable.
Once my deterioration was…irreversible, I programmed my Humanoids to – in the event of my death – automate my corpse and pilot it into the rebuilt Resurrection Machine. Of course, with the current iteration of my machine, there is a catch. In order to resurrect one thing, I need to remove the life-force of another.
I look upon the cache of bones sitting about me, in a pile. The forty-seven rotten skulls staring back at me clearly mean that I’ve been pulled into the machine at least forty-seven times by my loyal machines. Naturally, making a copy, of a copy, of a copy, of a copy for so long…leads to diminished quality.
I’ve been moving - back and forth – through time as well.
Is it simply the deterioration of my mind? Am I an Alzheimer’s patient - becoming so entrenched in the past, then simply snapping back to the present moment? Has my mind undergone such cataclysmic damage that I’m merely…thinking…that I’m moving back and forth through time?
Or are these temporal movements actually happening? Am I being beckoned by the ether – to return to my eternal sleep?
It hardly matters – not at this juncture.
I will either get Extremis, and finally become WHOLE...
…or you will become the next Leader.
The artificial intelligence I’ve programmed inside the device you have just activated is already colonizing your motor and neural pathways as we speak, and will overwrite your current consciousness with the saved file of my own. Fret not – your consciousness was quite likely of inferior stock as it is now.
The good news is that your otherwise pointless existence will now serve as raw material for some something far greater than yourself – something far beyond your…limited…understanding of things..
I’ll likely continue as the Leader in your body for some time, until it is no longer of any use to me.
Perhaps I’ll gamma-irradiate it at some later date, and use you as a more-permanent home for my vast, unknowable intellect.
Nevertheless, gaze upon my laboratory in awe.
It has now become your new home.
*end recording*
The Leader switched off the recording device. He tapped a few buttons and watched the dark, disturbing piece of equipment shrink down into the computer terminal, hiding itself away.
Stern turned his attention away from the computers, as his creatures carried the lifeless brunette toward the Resurrection Machine, carefully placing her inside its crystalline structure.
As they did so, he watched with bloodshot eyes as one of the citizens of Cuprum – a blond female – willfully walked into the other side of the Resurrection Machine, stricken with a blank gaze. Once the machine sealed her inside, the woman with the blank stare began to heave, falling down on all fours.
As she did so, a flurry of chitinous insects – of a much smaller variety than those inside the Abomination – began to emerge. They burrowed out of her ears, her nose, her mouth, and any other orifices available to them. Exhausted, the blonde collapsed on the floor of the massive device as the creatures eased open the seal and found their ways out into the laboratory proper, before sealing the blonde inside once more.
The woman moaned, half-aware that she was now free of the insects – the Humanoids - that had been controlling her for so long.
It wouldn’t be long before she regained her strength and composure. Before she began banging on the chamber door and begging her Leader for release. Before she screamed and hollered, asking about the fates of the other citizens of Cuprum that the Leader had smuggled away before the town’s destruction at the hands of the Abomination, minds still infected by the Humanoids that had held her will at bay for so long.
The woman’s cries for mercy, even her pleas for simple answers -- would both fall upon deaf ears.
“The pieces fall ever closer. Ever, ever closer…” Sterns rasped, his voice spilling out of his throat – a discordant, repulsive thing – across the expanse of the cavern.
Were the deceased Betty Banner alive to hear the sound, the broken thing that was once the Leader’s voice would send chills up her spine. For all the strange, bizarre things Mrs. Banner had seen in her short life, the sound of his voice would make her question a universe in which such a cruel, twisted mockery should possibly exist.
Betty Banner wasn’t yet alive to hear the sadistic sound of Sterns, but she soon would be.
“Activate the machine, my Humanoids,” the Leader rasped beneath a mustachioed grin.
Without further adieu, the Humanoids heeded their leader’s command.
* * * * *
The wreckage of Cuprum, Arizona
Just outside the Arizona Desert
The way it ends…
The Abomination stood over the Professor’s limp form, awash in the hero’s gamma-irradiated blood.
The Professor let out an exhausted groan, to which the Abomination responded with a vicious kick to the Professor’s already-bruised ribcage. The chitinous creatures hummed merrily inside Blonsky’s brain, reveling in the beast’s dark delight.
“I hope you understand why I’ve done all this, you know,” the Abomination circled the bloodied Professor, idly picking up a heavy piece of metal wreckage lying in the crater.
“W-w-wh…” the Professor choked out.
The monster crushed the metal chunk into a crude ball, laughing as he bounced it off of the Hulk’s head, like a child idly pulling the legs off a helpless spider. The Professor let out an agonized shriek of pain. Laughing heartily, the Abomination caught the heavy metal ball on the rebound.
“You took my wife away from me.” Emil growled, his demeanor turning deadly serious. “You took my Nadia away from me, and I wanted to return the favor.”
“D-didn’t…take…anything from you…” the Hulk grunted, coughing up a mucous pile of green blood. “….you drove here away…all by yourself…you sociopath…”
Emil roaring, eyes aflame with deadly rage as he bounced the two hundred pound ball of metal off of the hounded hero’s head once more, catching it again on the rebound. Blood poured freely from the large gash on the Hulk’s temple.
“He’s right, you know,” a voice quietly chimed in amid the cacophonous din of Emil’s enraged response. “We brought this on ourselves by cheating on Betty.”
“I…I would never…” the Professor choked out, addressing the apparition of Bruce Banner.
“Do you put this on me, milksop!” Joe Fixit roared, fiercely pointing at the scientist who was watching the battle before them in abject horror. “Don’t you drag me into your stupid guilt trip this time!”
“This is all my fault,” Bruce Banner mumbled, watching the Abomination grab the Professor’s limp body and toss it straight up – over a hundred feet into the air.
“The deaths at the Waystation. The murder of this entire city. Everything the Abomination has done. All of it. All of it, because I was feeling a little lonely. Terribly lonely after Betty’s death. And the one woman, who made me feel just a little less lost, a little less lonely...and she just happens to be…”
The Professor’s body climbed toward the sky – ever slower, ever slower, ever slower – until his inertia finally stopped. Barely conscious, the body of the Professor Hulk gave in to the nagging tug of gravity, and began to fall quickly back down toward the shattered town below. Yet, the war in the sky continued.
“Oh, cut the crap, Banner!” Joe Fixit growled. “You’re a human being, fer Chrissake! You thought your wife was dead, gone for good. You had a few drinks, and crawled into bed with a smokin’ hot singer who gave you some attention! Blonsky had his chance with the babe, and blew it! Not your fault – not your problem.”
The scientist watched the Professor falling faster, faster, and heaved a heavy sigh.
“Now quit yer bitchin’, grow a pair, and wreck Blonsky’s day up!”
The scientist smiled thinly – just before the Professor’s falling body slammed mightily into the wrecked earth below him, widening the already massive crater. The impact sent shockwaves into the surrounding hills and the towns around them.
The Abomination held out his hand, shielding his face from the chunks of dirt and debris rocketing out from the point of collision. As the mini-earthquake settled down, he looked at his foe and smiled wide, as the Professor’s body laid still. Emil Blonsky circled his foe, picking up his steel spear, and raising it high above his foe’s bruised head.
“This. This is where it ends, Banner,” Emil Blonsky spoke in a low, guttural growl, “After all these years, this is where it ends.”
As the Abomination’s makeshift spear rocketed down towards the Professor’s head, the Hulk – barely conscious – raised his arm to block the killing blow.
The same arm, which contained the Extremis enhancile.
The Professor screamed as the Abomination’s mighty strength slid the spear viciously through the Professor’s forearm – and into the enhancile.
With a sudden hiss, Extremis was unleashed.
NEXT: DOCTOR BANNER, I PRESUME?