Chapter Text
As soon as the alarm went off, Rick felt an excited thrill go down the back of his spine as he and Skaar rushed off towards the Boost.
They hadn’t had a proper mission in months after the Supreme Intelligence was defeated and the Leader was taken away to a stronger SHIELD holding cell. And after that…they hadn’t really had anyone else to fight.
Emil Blonsky was still de-powered and held in SHIELD too, most of the alien species like the Kree who had hunted them now stayed away after Hulk and the rest of the Smashers were then pardoned for crimes they hadn’t really, but also kinda did, commit. Rick had even heard Titania was doing some programmes and had dragged Absorbing Man into it and the two of them were finally starting to make some changes in their lives.
Even the Smashers were moving on from all of their adventures over the years, which…Rick wasn’t sure how to feel about that, if he was completely honest. The team was all he had for years, with fighting and their lives being in danger constantly, it had brought them closer together in a way.
He’d missed this, the blare of an alarm, rushing to be boosted out of the Gamma Base with Skaar on his heels. It felt good to be back in the Smashing business.
Though, when he and Skaar slid into the elevator, the sudden rush pushing them upwards, Rick couldn’t help but wonder what exactly could have disturbed the peace that Vista Verde has gained for the past few months.
“You thinkin’ it’s a monster or a baddie today Green?” Red glanced over at Hulk, shifting his guns into their holders as he asked.
“I dunno.” Hulk sighed, “Hoping it’s just gonna be something small to deal with here.”
A loud snort was all Hulk got back in reply, which made him roll his eyes at Red as they pulled themselves into the Sandblaster, where Jen was waiting in the driver’s seat. Even if they hardly got anything easy to fight, Hulk still wished that at least once that they got a simple problem.
Normally he didn’t mind a good fight. But when it came to the town, it was different . These were people who just wanted to live a safe life and loved Hulk despite all the mistakes he made.
He couldn’t let any of them down.
“Cous’!” A shout from Jen had Hulk pulled away from his thoughts as she beeped the horn, “C’mon! Monsters ain’t gonna beat themselves up!”
Ah, right. Hulk pushed aside any more thoughts as he rushed to the Sandblaster and pulled himself in. Now wasn’t the time to think about all of that stuff, not when there was smashing to do.
But even so…some of the thoughts couldn’t help but linger as Jen sped them off into the desert sun.
"So," Red frowned as he readied a gun, "We know what we're dealin' with here?"
Jen shook her head, "Nope, not yet. Rick and Skaar are supposed to message us when they have a grasp of what's happening-"
She cut off suddenly with a yelp as something from the sky suddenly shot into the ground next to them, causing the Sandblaster to swerve to the side before pulling up to a stop as Hulk and Red pulled themselves up the top window to see what had struck the ground.
In a new crater, Rick groaned and waved a hand, "Is that the uber I ordered?"
"Rick!" Even if he was making a joke and seemed fine, Hulk still jumped out of the car and rushed over to pull the blue hulk up onto his feet. A fall from that height wouldn't have done anything to Rick, but Hulk couldn't help but check over his armour just in case before he was batted away by Rick.
"Hulk! I'm fine, really!" Jeez, first day back out on the field and already Hulk was trying to mother-hen him! Rick grumbled as he pulled away, not helped when he could hear Red snort loudly before the older man yelped - clearly being slapped by Jen back in the car.
"Ah- sorry." Sometimes it was hard to remember Rick was going to be twenty later this year. It was a big difference from the seventeen year old who first became A-Bomb.
Rick seemed soothed by the apology and nudged Hulk back before moving on and pointing towards the town. "Everyone's already following evacuation protocols and Skaar's taking care of the little issue."
He paused when "the little issue" revealed itself.
A loud screech filled the air before some sort of giant green rat suddenly stood on it’s hind legs, hitting about twenty-five feet if Hulk guessed right, before it ducked back down. A loud crashing sound and a guttural yell told him that Skaar was at least holding the rat off bay until the rest of the team reached him.
“Huh,” Red shrugged as he clicked his gun, taking the safety off, “First day back an’ already we’re killin’ a big ass rodent. Feels like old times- ‘ey! ”
Red glared at Jen, who had punched his arm with her gauntlets, “What was that for?”
“We can’t kill it Red!” Jen gestured towards the rat, frowning, “It’s just an animal-”
“That’s currently destroying the town and probably killin’ half of the people.”
“-That doesn’t
know
what it’s doing,” She carried on talking like Red hadn’t interrupted, her voice had an air of finality in it. “We can’t kill it.”
“Blah, blah!” Red scoffed. “Look, it’s nice that Walters wants to be “little miss friends to all animals”-” He put up his fingers to make quotation marks, “But at the end of the day? It’s gonna be us or the rat.”
He leaned down and pulled up a large gun, clicking it before smirking at the camera, “And I’m gonna make sure it’s the damn rat.”
She had a point, Hulk grunted and nodded. The rat wasn’t doing anything wrong as far as it knew, and he would never harm an animal that wasn’t intending on hurting anyone. Judging by it’s behaviour…Hulk supposed that the rat was just scared by all of the noise the people of Vista Verde were making.
They needed to get it out as fast as possible. A part of Hulk wished that they simply just had a big enough block of cheese to lure it away, the mental image of it made Hulk snort to himself before turning to his team.
“Red, you’re on crowd control with Rick-” Hulk pointed at him when he could see Red was about to argue, “I don’t trust you to not try and kill the rat. Me an’ Jen will keep it moving forward, and Skaar’s gonna be the one trying to get it towards the desert, got it?”
Nods came from everyone in front of him and with a satisfied grin, Hulk turned and jumped into the air, keeping a careful eye out on the town below for anyone in trouble.
Now that he was closer, Hulk could make out Skaar’s figure; The smaller hulk had been dodging bats from the beast, cracking his whip in order to startle the rat away from getting too close to him or the buildings. Around the back of the rat, Rick was trying to capture it’s tail, though it wasn’t all that successful when the animal swung in a certain way and sent Rick smacking into the ground with a hard thud.
It didn’t keep him down for long though. Already, Rick cheered and pulled himself up before rushing to get back into the fray.
The rest of the team pulled themselves together as best as they could, Jen roaring when the rat got too close to a store and Red giving a brief shot of his guns, not to kill , but to simply scare the beast away.
They kept this pattern up for the next twenty minutes, the smoothness of the team was something Hulk felt pride in. It was such a far cry from what they first started out as a few years ago. It’d taken time to get here, but they finally did.
And the humans had been doing better with the team too, no longer all fearing the Agents of SMASH when they came to save the day. All of it is better than Hulk could have ever hoped for, making him feel that same sense of belonging he usually got from being with the Avengers.
It took time to keep the rat moving, they needed to be fast enough so no more buildings in town were destroyed, but fast enough that the rat would be
gone
already and they could try and find a way to contain it.
“....I didn’t think about how we would contain the rat,” Hulk stares into the distance as he says this.
A moment later, there’s a loud bleeping noise that goes on for quite a while.
“So…” Rick shrugged and trailed off, glancing around his team before gesturing at the rat, “Is this our new pet? Do we let it roam the wilds all free?.....Do- do we eat it?”
He yelped when there was a slap to his shell and scowled up at Red. Hadn’t he just been in this situation before? Clearly Red needed to go on some sort of “don’t hurt the blue boy” seminar!
“We don’t eat it , Jones! We have food at home.”
“You know, you sound just like the one black coffee meme-”
Rick quickly ducked the second slap that was coming his way, choosing to hide behind Hulk and stick his tongue out at Red. Such an action of the utmost maturity was rewarded with an eye roll from Hulk and growl from Red.
But…that did give Hulk an idea.
“Skaar, Jen, help me form contain it. Red, call SHIELD and see if they can lend us some Pym Particles. Rick, you keep the rar from getting out of any gaps before we get the barriers.” Hulk didn’t know how well this would work. There was a chance the rat could find a way out from their DIY rat cage, but it’d have to do until SHIELD came around with some better containment.
An hour later, Hulk was more than pleased with the results. With the group effort, they had managed to slam large slides of rock down, forming a ditch that kept the rat from climbing out, more so when a good stomp cause tall pieces of rock to stand as a sort of makeshift cage for it. Rick had been a big help by curling up into a ball and creating a spikey block in the rat’s path any time it tried to slide a paw through the gaps.
By that time, a SHIELD vehicle had driven in from their nearest base to town. The sight of it still rankled Hulk a little, made him remember all those times when they had regarded him as nothing more than a mindless monster. He tolerated it since…well, they had been right in that he was dangerous, but going after his family and listing them as dangers had never sat right with Hulk.
It wasn’t fair that all of his family had to put their lives on hold just because of him.
The SHIELD car pulling to a halt was a thankful distraction. The doors popped open and as two agents slipped out, one was a white man with slicked back hair and the other was an Asian woman, a gun pulled up behind her from the car and held in a pitch black prosthetic arm as the duo started to walk up to Hulk.
The male agent let out a long whistle when he looked over and saw the rat, “Woah. You weren’t kidding, this is one big rodent.”
“Soon to be small,” His partner quipped, grinning as she slotted open the gun and made a grabby hand for a Pym shrinking vile to be passed over, “This shouldn’t hurt him aside from a sharp pinch, by the way.”
That was good. While the rat had been frustrating and dangerous, it was still just an innocent animal that didn’t know right from wrong. But…who was behind this? Immediately, Hulk’s mind went to the Leader, god knew that he’d happily hurt an animal and the memory of the time he had put a bomb into Devil Dinosaur’s stomach.
“Hey,” He called the male’s agent attention, keeping his voice low as his partner got the gun ready for firing, “The Leader’s still in custody, right?”
The agent nodded, blinking unsurely as he locked up the rest of the Pym Particles and rubbed a hand through his hair. When looking closer, Hulk could make out a long scar tracing under his hairline. “Yeah, I think so? We can check and send a report later, but I haven’t been sent any notices that SHIELD’s had any escapees lately.”
“New record then…” Red muttered next, making Jen snort quietly.
Hulk ignored them in favour of watching as the SHIELD agent aimed and fired the Pym particles at the rodent. The red dart hit it’s mark perfectly into the rat’s arm, making it shriek and flinch back wildly before the dart did it’s job in only a matter of seconds, though Hulk still flinched in sympathy. He’d been shot with a fair few darts in his time and the first sting of them never really got any easier.
Slowly, the rat began to shrink down. It’s rolling growl went higher and higher until anyone without super hearing would need to strain in order to hear it. Fearsome claws and fangs shifted back into cute little paws and tiny buck teeth now belonged to a little black rat, who squeaked and began to scurry away before Skaar lunged to catch it.
“No! Big rat can’t leave!” After all, what if he found a way to become big again? Then he’d attack again and Skaar would have to fight him! Skaar didn’t like fighting animals, it made him feel… wrong inside to hurt an animal that didn’t know why it was hurting.
At least with him, the rat would be safe from anyone else wanting to hurt him.
“Ah, good, you caught it!” The male agent shifted out a large container, opening it up and edging it towards Skaar, “We’re going to take it back to SHIELD Base in order to look it over and see what caused it to grow so much.”
Jen frowned, “SHIELD Base?” She’d never heard any agent say that before…most of the time, “base” was never used with SHIELD.
The agent blanched for a moment before he quickly smoothed it away. “I mean, headquarters, you know. “Base” is just a nickname some of us regulars use as a nickname, that sort of stuff.”
He smiled politely, though…it just made Jen frown harder.
“Yeah, I know, it's weird to be suspicious over a single word.” Jen huffed as she sat back, “But…the way he said it was weird, okay? SHIELD agents are normally way more put together than this guy was.”
“He might be new, but…why send a rookie to deal with something as big as a twenty-five foot tall rat?”
Before Jen could say anything though, Rick quickly cut in, grinning widely at the agents, “Well, just send up an update when you get it back to normal, dude. I wanna get a before and after shot to upload later.” It’d made a good behind the scenes shot now that they were starting up the newest season.
“And to give us any updates on why the rat was here,” Hulk pointedly said, huffing in amusement at Rick. His excitement was sweet, but they needed to make sure they focused on the mission here.
The female agent nodded, stepping forward to nudge her companion after Skaar slipped the rat into the container, giving his new friend a small smile and wave after stepping back.
“Of course. SHIELD will be sure to contact the Agents of SMASH in order to exchange what we know about this.” The female agent flashed a grin at the agents, the first real expression any of them had seen off of her since she arrived, “You have my word on it.”
(Later that night…)
“We haven’t heard anything back from SHIELD yet about the rat,” Hulk shrugged, sitting back on the interview chair, “I mean, it’s only been a few hours, but I figured they’d find something by now.”
He sighed and shrugged, “Guess we just have to wait a little longer for it then. It’s been nice though, being able to get back into smashing with the family.”
Heh, he’d almost been getting worried about becoming rusty. Almost .
“Either way though, a giant rat through Vista Verde isn’t how I’d like to have started all of this off, but I’m glad it’s handled easily enough. We’re gonna be helping the town repair some of the damages tomorrow and investigate the area in case the rat might have come from somewhere closer.”
Next to him, the images of the Leader as well as Abomination appeared as Hulk carried on, “No sign or sound from Captain Forehead or Blonsky and we got word that they’re still locked up, so at least we know they’re not behind any of this.”
Which was good, the last thing he wanted to deal with was those two again. One time throwing that oversized gecko off a rocket and having to constantly save that twink’s life was more than enough for him, thank you very much.
“We’ll have to see what else happens with the rat. Though between you and me? I think we’re gonna be seein’ a whole lot more coming our way.”
Hulk grinned at the camera, grinning at the fact that things were going to be fine for the first time in a while.
“Hulk out.”
(Elsewhere…)
“Idiot!” Ada hissed at her fellow agent, jabbing his side with an elbow as they walked through the white hallways. “I told you not to slip up or be too obvious, so whad’dya go and do-”
“I’m sorry , okay?” Ben scowled back. “I didn’t think She-Hulk would actually catch onto such a small slip up. You know hulks; they’re just obsessed with smashing everything.”
By now, both of them had changed out of their SHIELD outfits, back into the pure white bodysuits that every agent was required to wear. The only part of their outfits that weren’t white was the strange green swirls on their left breast pocket, resembling a DNA symbol in some warped way.
Ada sighed, “Whatever. We got the rat back like Doc requested, and they seemed to accept our story enough. ‘Sides, I doubt that they’ll actually contact the real SHIELD-”
“And you’re sure of this, Agent?”
Ada and Ben both jumped, though the duo quickly tried to keep the shock on their faces away as they turned around, saluting as Ada nodded. “Y-yes, we are, sir.”
They had to be, after all. Any failure on their part had severe consequences, ones that neither of the agents wanted to face if they valued their lives after all.
And they had seen what happens to failures in this place.
At the end of the hall, a man stepped forward to frown at the two agents. He was black with a faded cut black hair and dark brown eyes that stared carefully at the agents. In this white hallway, he was the only one with any semblance of colour within his clothing in the form of a dark green suit, medals decorated his jacket, only adding to the intimidation of his appearance along with a long and curving scar over his right eye.
The agents saluted immediately when he strolled towards them, keeping their eyes forward facing instead of lingering on his face. He passed by them silently and they had only just started to relax before tensing up again when his voice called back to them.
“Good. Because if we fail our goal of killing the Hulks’ because of one loud-mouthed agent?”
He let it hang in the air for a moment, making Ada and Ben glance at each other nervously.
“Then I can assure you that the only way you will leave Shadow Base is within a body bag. Am I understood?”
After all, they hadn't gotten this far by pure luck. It had taken months of palm greasing, favours and actions that you couldn’t take back, no matter how much you might have wanted to. If they were going to stop these monsters, do what General Ross could never do, then you had to be ruthless. He had learned this the hard way and so would these agents.
A smile came to his lips when he heard their response.
“Yes sir, General Fortean.”
“Good. Now be on your way to bring the experiment back to Dr McGowan immediately so she can study it.”
“Yes sir.”
He waited until the footsteps from them had faded before clicking his tongue and glancing down at the tablet in his palm. On the screen was the paused ending of the latest episode from that abhorrent webshow the monsters had created, like making themselves seem friendly would ever make the world forget what they had done.
Countless lives and homes lost to just one of them, yet they all had the nerve to parade the Hulk around and call him a hero. Like he deserved that title.
Well, it wouldn’t be for long if he had any say in it.
If there was one thing that General Ross had taught Reginald as his mentor all those years ago, it was that the best method of elimination was to wait calmly and then strike hard. And he planned to.
Those Agents of SMASH wouldn’t even know their end was coming for them until it was staring them straight in the eyes.
And he knew just what to send after them next.