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A Spotty Record	By : keithcompany Category: Marvel Verse Comics > Crossovers Views: 1772 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or setting of the Marvel Universe. I make no profit from this fanfiction.

Chapter List
- 6
- 7
- 8
Wilma was one of our geekier volunteers. She had come to the agency to research her thesis, about which superheroes kids Dreamed about and for which reasons. She always wanted to explain something to me. Who boys wanted to meet, who girls wanted to meet, how they lined up by age, race, economic background, or reason they were terminal.
I had no problem letting her talk. My whole background seemed to be a chain of opinionated people intensely explaining crucial things to me.
Before this, it was people on the inside explaining how the Constitution was designed to uphold white supremacy; the goals of the international airline-toothpaste conspiracy; how to tell that Oprah ran Hydra; and the significance of signing all legal documents in print, in ALL CAPS.
The career before that, I had fond memories of clients urgently explaining why the trip to Bermuda was a business expense; why their casino winnings counted as a 'loan'; and why it was no more than an amazing coincidence that every single one of their investors had the same initials as they did.
And of course, spend time in the military, shipmates will explain all about the ways to identify venereal diseases from 30 feet away; the reason officers slept with their heads towards the bow; the tax benefits of military pay, as it wasn't a wage, tip or salary but a compensation; and the aforementioned four rules for bars in foreign ports.
Today, Wilma was fleshing out her understanding of what drove cross-gender selections: why some boys picked heroines and most girls picked heroes. "But of course, that's been changing, slowly, since the city had such an upsurge in the number of Spider-Woman adventurers. Spider-Man was always a favorite with boys and girls, that one of their own, as it were-"
The front hall got dark as a large figure filled it, blocking the light. Everyone stopped working and glanced up, waiting to see who was there. I wasn't waiting for any contacts, and they almost never came here, so it was probably not for me.
Turned out to be the Green Avenger. No, the other one. She-Hulk stomped into view, looking around the room. Marcia rose, moving to welcome the heroine. Someone tapped on the wall of Rabin's cube, but Devon had to have buzzed him already.
Wilma started whispering rapidly. "She-Hulk! She is the #2 Heroine with girls aged 11 to 14. I think something about budding breasts, and being teased about it, drives the desire to smash the living gummy-bears out of-"
"MALONE!" the woman shouted. She brushed past Marcia and stomped over to my desk. She didn't look…right. She was, I dunno, lumpy? Bulky? She's been described as having a lighter case of 'hulk' than her cousin. Had she gotten another dose or something?
At my desk, she leaned on top of it and panted for a second. "I need help."
"Can we call an ambulance?" I offered.
"I need to find Doctor Octopus." She sank down to sit on the floor. She crashed, actually, legs going limp like someone stunned. Her butt smashed a few linoleum tiles to cracked wreckage, but we didn't know that until she moved. Thing is, sitting there on the floor, it put her face pretty much on level with mine where I sat in my chair. "The Hulk blood. It's changing. Changing me. Hulk…smashing more, lawyer less. Need to…" She worked to master the specific word she wanted. "Consult. Nuclear. Physicist." From inside her jacket, she grabbed a bound book and waved it at me. "Octavius. Thesis. Gamma. Poison. Risks. Fixes. Make-better."
"Miss Walters, you're talking about treatment. This is a children's charity, for terminal cases. You wouldn't qualify." She's a lawyer, she had to know this.
"Not using FOUND. A. SHUN!" she roared. She slapped her hand on the desk for emphasis. Of course, it's a third-tier worker's desk at a charity. Turned out about as well as you'd expect. Like if Thor opened a piggy bank with his hammer. The sides collapsed, the top broke in half, and the weight of the top and all the drawers pinned my leg to my chair.
Thankfully, it pinned my left leg, the only time in my entire god-damned life I was grateful for the Wooden Monstrosity. So, though the sudden outburst scared me shitless, I was able to just sit there amid the destruction, looking at the Avenger as if I was merely disappointed. Very disappointed.
She was shocked, too. Her intellect became ascendant for a moment or two out of shame. "Oh, my gosh, I'm so very sorry. I didn't mean- No. To be honest, this is exactly the problem, I DID mean damage. I'm truly sorry, but the growing Hulk-ness… I can't control it."
I spoke quick, while she was sane. "Look, we CANNOT use the contacts I've built up to lead the forces of law to a villain."
"Yes, I see," she said. Then covered her face with her hands and sobbed. "Bruce is full-on Hulk at the moment, I don’t even know if he's on EARTH! All the gamma experts, it's like they disappeared! Makes me SO MAD!" And there went Gordon's desk. Lucky for us all, Gordon was introducing Storm to a kindergarten class that had been exposed to prehistoric malaria by Sauron.
"What I can do, though," I said quickly, "is put out the word by OTHER means. A TV-spot, some radio, a few newspaper ads. 'Avenger needs help, safe passage guaranteed,' something like that." She stared at me. Her expression was kinda hopeful, kinda suspicious. That would be the lawyer in her, wondering if I was glad-handing her to get her out of here. I glanced over her shoulder where the Director was standing. "And I'll take a leave of absence from the Foundation. Use my name in the announcement." Rabin nodded and flashed a thumbs-up. "Hell, _I'll_ make the announcement. Maybe he doesn't have to meet you. We meet somewhere, I give him your medical records, he sends a diagnosis back, Stark builds a treatment machine. You know he wants to build a treatment machine."
"With five settings," she laughed. "Me, Bruce, Leader, Abomination, and granola."
"Green granola," I said.
"Gamma green granola." We all laughed. We laughed quite a bit harder than the joke actually justified, but, you know, I had a lap full of desk. Anything makes the green woman happy, I was all for it. She stood up. "Call Tony, set it up." She scratched her chin. Sounded like using a wire brush to remove paint. "Green gamma granola garnish."
We watched the She-Hulk wander out. She was calm, her intellect firmly in control, as she played distracting word-games. "Granules of garlic-garnished green gamma granola."
When she was completely out of the building, I slid debris to the floor and stood up. "I need a leave of absence."
"You have an inordinate amount of vacation time," Rabin started to point out.
"No," Marcia told him. "He's got to be completely divorced from us." She turned to me. "I would say forward your phone to my desk but…" We looked down at the wreckage. I wasn't sure where my phone even was.
"Somewhere down there is a notebook of everything I know about our operations," I started.
----------
I was in a Scene, sitting in a shadowed booth. I don't know if this place even had a name. There was an alley between a tiny shoe repair shop and a Korean deli. At the end of that, behind a dumpster, there was a doorway that was completely unlit. After about 1 in the afternoon, the shadows of the buildings around it made the place darker than my opinion of prison wardens.
The entire front wall rolled up like a loading dock door, that was the entrance. A tarp kept out weather. Sort of. There was one single light in the bar, a spotlight pointing straight down to the matte-black floor. You found a table by feeling along in the dark. A voice would growl, 'Taken,' just once, and you moved on. There was no bar, so no Foxhole. They solved that by having the bartender in an entirely different room. Waitresses wearing night-vision goggles took your order through an armored door, came back with your drink.
I was there for about half an hour before someone in another booth got up and moved into mine. "You have an interesting phone, Mr. Malone," he said. "What can you tell me about it?"
"Nothing," I said. "And not because I'm sworn to secrecy, I just don't know shit about how it works."
"Well, it does provide the results you promised. I set my considerable mind to trying to tap my own phone during our discussions, and was stymied at every turn."
"Good to know," I said. I slid a fat folder of medical scans and… Well, I don't know shit about medical science, either. I gave him what the Avengers knew about She-Hulk's condition. "So, as I said, we're hoping you could-"
"A moment," he said. The tarp hanging over the entry rustled and someone entered. Spider-Man walked into the spotlight. There was a rustling around us at all the other tables.
The hero seemed to flinch at every sound I heard. Like they were signals of doom or danger or something. "Guys! GUYS!" he protested. "I'm not here to fight anyone!"
A steel tentacle extended from the form at the other side of our table. It stretched across the room and circled Spider-Man. "I invited him!" Octavius shouted. "Stick to the shadows, you won't even be identified!" And in a smaller voice, "Come sit with us, wall-crawler." He sat on my side of the table. Doc Oc gathered the folder and hid it somewhere within the shadows.
"I will see what I can devise. But I am unwilling to place myself at the mercy of the forces of so-called law and order for the duration the treatment will require. Thus, Spider-Man."
"Thus?" I asked.
"Though he is a nattering smartass, and a fool, he is no mere muscled adventurer. He is scientifically trained. He has understood the basics of my efforts-"
"The better," Spider-Man chortled, "to shove them up your-"
"SILENCE!" Doc Oc snapped. "Your benighted grasp of the true meaning of scientific advancements-"
"Please," I said, hand on Spidey's forearm, another stretched towards Doc Oc. "Can you guys reign it in? For Jennifer's sake?" I shrugged. "Maybe for an hour?"
"One hour," Octavius agreed in a clipped tone. Spider-Man ostentatiously checked his wrist, as if there was a watch there. But since he was twigging me, not Octavius, I didn't bitch.
"As you were saying, Doc," Spider-Man said. He even used a respectful tone.
"Yes, well, you're familiar with my designs, my science. And an analysis of your intercessions leads me to suspect your background is actually in biochemistry. I would suggest that you could take my designs, my drug requirements, and implement them into a treatment for the She-Hulk."
"That….could work," he admitted. "As long as neither one of us robs a bank to-"
"Stark is funding it," I said quickly. An hour? God, I was so naïve in my youth, all ten seconds ago. "He's already replacing everything she's breaking, so the cost is actually an investment."
"And speaking of breaking," Octavius said, "your amazing agility, reflexes, and danger-sense would make you an ideal choice to administer the treatment."
"You're going to make it an injection, aren't you?" the webhead asked. "Just to make me stick a needle into an angry woman who can make me splat like-"
"I promise you," Octavius said. "I will select the treatment for the effectiveness. Not as a means to threaten you." He barked a small laugh. "Amusing though the idea may be. But we are working under a truce, here, for Mister Malone's sake."
"It's for She-Hulk's sake," I protested.
"Yeah, ultimately," Spider-Man said. "But word on the street is that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE can trust you. So, well, here we are, NOT inventing injections, I hope and pray."
"Don't light a candle just yet," Octavius smirked. "Save your prayers for if it turns out to work most efficiently as a suppository." Silence stretched after that comment. The two dim figures stared at each other for a moment. Then suddenly they both burst out laughing.
"Can I go home?" I whined.
For everyone's comfort, I made a suggestion. Spider-Man walked with me until we were three blocks from the Scene. I called Doc Oc, who assured the other patrons that Spidey was not laying in ambush just outside the door.
We stood at the bus stop for a moment, waiting for my transport. Spider-Man seemed to be looking me over, but you can't see his eyes. Finally, he said, "Sorry the Black Cat screwed up your Dream, your photo-shoot. She's not good at cooperating."
I shook my head. "She gave that kid everything he asked for. She really came through." I made a big deal of looking around as if checking for eavesdroppers. "Plus? Rodney is much more courteous. He hasn't stolen anyone sandwich out of the fridge SINCE." The bus pulled up about then, Spidey clapped me on the shoulder and took off. I boarded, muttering, "Home, James."
I hadn't realized it was out loud until the bus driver said, "I'm afraid I must spare the horses, sir. They've had a long day."
"I'll leave it in your capable hands, then." We chuckled and I sat down.
Two seats over, a young gentleman got up and sat next to me. He leaned into me, hard enough that I could feel a gun under his jacket. "What's a guy like you doing in this part of town, man?"
Across the aisle, another commuter lowered his newspaper and lifted his fist. "Whatever the fuck he wants," he said, as his fist swelled into the shape of a spiked mace.
"I was just asking," the gentleman said, hands up to show they were empty. He moved back down the bus, got off at the next stop.
Once he was gone, Sandman nodded st me, went back to his paper.
- 6
- 7
- 8
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A Spotty Record