"Halt villain!" Hercules yelled out as he attempted to drop kick Sterns in his head, which made sense since it was such a huge target, and went through the gamma mutate like he wasn't actually there.
"I have to admit, I had thought that it would be Hulk who would attempt this first." Sterns said with a frown as he looked at the fallen form of the son of Zeus. "Though I guess statistically there had to be at least one idiot dumb enough to try like my mindless adversary."
"Big words from a guy who was too cowardly to properly greet us face to face." I said with a smile as I finally understood why I hadn't heard the man coming, a hologram. One of the oldest tricks in the super villain book and Hercules, the oldest one among us, had fallen for it easily. "How about you come here and say what you want to say directly to our faces?"
"While it is tempting to throwaway weeks of planning because of a schoolyard taunt, here's my counter offer." Sterns said with a snap of his fingers and a map materialized over his hand, with one green and one red dot on it. "The red dot is you of inferior intelligence and the green dot is my location. If you really wish to have some 'face to face' time with me, all you have to do is come here." And then the gamma mutate disappeared.
"…it's a trap."
"It's definitely a trap."
"It literally can't be anything other than a trap." We were all in agreement.
"And you guys want to spring it, am I right?" Bruce said with a dejected sigh and we all just smiled at him. It likely wasn't the smartest thing to do, but we were gonna do it anyway.
"Don't worry, I have a plan."
——————
"This is humiliating." Bruce said with a scowl as he crossed his arms while the young man that had stopped Hulk and was followed by future Betty, and wasn't that a strange thing still, flew towards their destination with the scientist in his arms.
"No need to pout. I'm not exactly enthusiastic about carrying a man like this either, a fair maiden would have been far more preferable." And his carrier was being sassy, joy. "You know that the plan is for a two prong attack, so we needed to go before them."
"I still do not see why I had to be a part of the attack." He grumbled under his breath, though not lowly enough going by the raised eyebrow on Damian's face as he looked down at him.
"You mean other than your ability to turn into a giant green rage monster that can likely rip apart any of Stern's little toys and bulldoze your way to that overgrown brain tumor?"
"I have no wish to transform unless absolutely necessary, Hulk is dangerous." He said firmly, as he had to many other since the day his curse had begun.
"...there's something that always bothered me about your transformation." Damian started, his tone thoughtful. "As far as I've seen you are the only gamma mutate who experiences such a drastic change his personality when you transform."
"The others experience changes too." 'Especially Betty' was left unsaid. It still horrified him to learn that the woman he loved, even if he didn't deserve to, would one day also be cursed with the touch of gamma mutation.
"Yeah but not really. As far as I know both Sterns and Blonsky were colossal dicks before they became gamma mutates, they just became bigger dicks." Damian said with a shake of his head. "And Betty's changes are a mix of becoming more powerful and everything she experienced in her future. It's not exactly as drastic as a meek nerd scientist turning into a giant mass of muscle that gets angry easily and smashes everything that angers him."
Bruce didn't exactly like where this conversation was going. He could admit that the young man had a point about Sterns and Blonsky, but he really didn't want to do the same for the case of Betty, and he always knew his changes during his transformation were drastic; that was the whole reason he had been trying to cure himself!
"You sure the whole Hulk thing is just a case of gamma mutation and not a case of you?"
The words hit him like a wave of cold water. He could feel veins around his neck bulging and the Other Guy trying to claw his way out as the young man carrying him said what Bruce had thought many, many, times as he ran away from Ross or fought against another member of his so called rogues gallery. A part of him that sounded far too much like Brian Banner whispering to him that everything was his fault.
"Not trying to be accusatory here, just throwing out some theories." Damian kept talking, unaware of how close he was to coming face to face with the reason that started this talk. "I once heard about enhancements sometimes enhancing more than just physique and effecting some mental aspects as well. That's why they chose some scrawny kid trying to sneak into the army to take the super soldier serum and become Captain America instead of many other muscle heads they definitely had in the army. Needing someone who was truly good inside, someone who wouldn't be corrupted by it. Maybe that's the deal with the Hulk? Gamma enhancing a part in your brain that the others didn't have."
Bruce could feel Hulk recede back into his mind, stopping the transformation, and some memories he had buried deep in his mind coming back up.
A monster, almost as big as Hulk or maybe even bigger. It was covered with orange scales all over his body, had claws that looked sharp enough to tear metals apart like butter, a long tail that had spikes going from it to up at its head. Reddish orange eyes that looked like pools of lava and a smile full of sharp fangs.
'I love you. I'll always be here for you. Just let me out.'
"Let's just move on." The rest of their flight went without words till they finally reached the location Sterns gave them, some sort of old government facility but he could see that Sterns had made some renovations and gave it some upgrades.
"Oh you're here, good." Like the hologram projector on the door that showed his ugly face. "Only two? I guess that is good enough for my start."
"What do you want Sterns?"
"What do I want? Oh Banner, I thought that would have been obvious. I want to show you that no matter what you do, no matter who you become or who you surround yourself with; you'll always be inferior to me in every way!" The gamma mutate roared. "And today I'm going to prove it with no way for you to refute. Today I'm going to show that you, the so called 'Strongest There Is' is far too weak to save those you care about!" The holographic head disappeared for a moment before another scene showed and Bruce's eyes widened at the torture chamber with one person tied to a table.
For the first time, Bruce allowed the Hulk to come out without any care for the consequences and the scientist and the monster roared together.
"Jenn!"
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