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Darcy sat on a counter in Dr. Banner’s lab softly drumming the heels of her super sweet, totes adorbs, red wedges against the cabinet below her. So they didn’t technically comply with SHIELD’s closed-toe shoes in the labs policy. They were damn cute with her dark wash skinny jeans. And she had never before followed the dress code, so why start now, especially when she had such awesome sauce shoes to wear. But enough about the shoes, they could only hold her attention, with their shiny niftiness, for so long. She was now, “Booooored.”
Dr. Banner looked up from his microscope at her mumbled complaint, “Why are you in here again?” He glanced around, he had the usual number of SHIELD PHD labmonkeys running around doing his bidding. Darcy typically only showed up to help out after he scared a batch off with an ‘Incident.’
Darcy pouted at him, “I’m hiding. Jane is in a crazy science place. I left her a plate of pop tarts and got the hell out of there.” She put on her best puppy dog eyes, “I can’t hang out here? With you? In the safe and sane lab?”
Bruce chuckled softly, “Safe and Sane? Really? You feel safer in here, with me and quite possibly The Other Guy, than you do in Dr. Foster’s lab?” He raised incredulous eyebrows. He did incredulous really well. He even took off his glasses and used the edge of his lab coat to clean the lenses while he looked at her like she was an unsolvable equation. His hair was really distractingly fluffy. She wanted to pet him sometimes.
Darcy shrugged, “Right now?” She squinted across the hall, through two walls of bulletproof glass, to see if Jane was still pacing and ranting like a crazy person. Yeah, she was. “Yes. Absolutely.” She would give Jane some time to come to terms with their newest set back ,in retrieving the almighty god of hotness and thunder, before she considered going back over there.
Bruce put his glasses back on and followed her gaze across the hall, “She does look a little... tense.”
“Yeah.” Darcy snorted, “Understatement of the week award goes to Doctor Bruce Banner!” She held her hands up to her face and made crowd cheering noises.
Bruce just rolled his eyes and went back to his microscope, “You can stay if you are quiet. And don’t break anything.”
Darcy put on her very best righteously indignant face, which was totally lost on the fluffy haired scientist staring into a microscope, “When have I ever broken any-”
What was going to be a truly awesome rant was cut off when all of the windows along the exterior wall of Doctor Banner’s lab exploded inwards. Darcy yelled a choice expletive and shielded her face with her arms. She was lucky, most of the inch-thick chunks of tempered glass didn’t make it as far as her perch, but she did feel something hard and sharp hit her shin.
A moment later her blind terror was interrupted by insane cackling. “What the fudgesicles?” She peeked around her forearms to see a crazy looking green guy on a... what would you call that? A hoverboard? A jet powered flying thingum...? Yeah, that thought process was getting her nowhere. She looked around and spotted Bruce curled up all fetal-like behind the counter she was still sitting on, “ Bruce?” She rolled off the counter putting it between her and the crazy and putting her closer to a possibly injured Bruce. “You ok man? You hurt?” She put a hand on Bruce’s trembling shoulder. The muscles under her fingers twitched and then started writhing. “Um...” She pulled her hand away and pushed herself back against the counter, “Bruce?” Her voice was suddenly small and strangled, like she couldn’t get enough air.
Bruce didn’t so much answer as make a weird grumbling moan type sound. She shrank back a little farther. “Uh-oh,” she had a feeling she was about to meet The Other Guy.
And she was right. A gravely bellow and some ripping clothes later and a giant green behemoth, in tattered, but still functional, thank God, trousers, stood in front of Darcy. He towered over her crouched form and growled. She couldn’t help but notice, as she stared up at him wide-eyed, that he still had totally pettable hair.
Darcy laughed nervously and waved, “Hi, uh, Hulk. It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Darcy. And I would really love you forever if you didn’t squish me.” She gave him her best please-don’t-kill me-smile. It was a very effective smile.
Hulk blew a great breath out his nose and nodded his massive head once at Darcy. “No smash.”
“Yay!” Darcy shouted in time with another crash across the lab. She ducked back down against the counter and grimaced, “You can totally smash the crazy man on the glidey-board thing though.” She hooked her thumb in the general direction of the Green Meanie.
Hulk smiled, and it was just about as creepy as a smile could possibly be. And then he was gone, leaped over counter. There was a loud Hulk roar, much more impressive in person. A very disturbing cackle, she could have totally lived without that nightmare fodder. Another loud crash, and then, nothing. It took a minute of silence for Darcy to work up the courage to peer over the edge of the counter and into the empty lab. “Huh.” She stood and looked around. The lab was absolutely trashed. Like armageddon riding a tornado trashed. Darcy climbed over debris and twisted lab benches until she ran out of floor. She stood where the windows once were and watched the Hulk, clinging to a building across the street, throw the crazy flying skateboard thing into a building. She winced, “Oh the property damage...”
She watched the carnage for a minute before a muffled groan reminded her that she and Bruce weren’t the only ones in the room when Green 'n' Crazy had attacked. She followed the sounds of pain across the lab, only vaguely thinking that maybe there was something to the closed-toe shoe rule, and found a labmonkey pinned beneath an overturned storage cabinet. “Hi.” She managed to sound moderately cheerful, which was impressive if you considered the situation. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Darcy.” The labmonkey grunted in response, rude, and attempted to shift the giant cabinet off his legs. “Right.” She added her strength to the effort, but even with the two of them straining to move it, the cabinet wasn’t budging. And then a pair of red-gloved hands attached to blue-clad arms entered her field of vision and the cabinet was tumbled to the side, and off of the helpless injured labmonkey. “Thanks!” Darcy turned and found herself face to face with an American icon, straight out of one of her college history classes. Well, not straight out of history class. The outfit had been updated a bit. It look kevlar-y. She blinked up at a pair of gorgeous blue eyes framed by a dusty blue helmet and was just a little speechless. It wasn’t everyday a girl met Captain America.
He smiled down at Darcy, “You’re welcome.” And something about him tugged at her brain. Something familiar. “Are you alright?” He sounded genuinely concerned. How sweet was this guy?
Darcy paused for a second to take inventory. Nothing hurt too bad, all limbs seemed to be intact. Though a toe on her left foot appeared to be bleeding, she still loved her now slightly scuffed patent leather wedges. She had almost been exploded. But she got to meet the Hulk and Captain America. The good seemed to outweigh the traumatic. “Huh. I think I am alright.” She nodded. “Yep, I’m good.”
The labmonkey they had unpinned was mumbling something about broken legs and Darcy remembered that there could be others buried in the wreckage. “Oh! There might be more injured people. I don’t know if anyone got out of the lab after the windows blew in, but last I noticed there were 4 people in here besides me and Bruce.”
Captain America frowned slightly, “The other 3 scientists got out. They have already been taken to medical.”
“Oh, Good.” Darcy was confused, why was he frowning? Everyone was accounted for and alive. Well, she assumed Bruce was accounted for, and she was sure he was alive. It was crazy impossible to kill the Hulk. It seemed like smiles were in order.
It was about this time, after a good 30 seconds of the two of them staring at each other, that the medics, directed by an unflappable agent Coulson, appeared and carried off the injured labmonkey. Darcy waved after him as he was carried off, “Get better!” When she turned back to Captain America there was a medic in her face and the good captain was nowhere to be found.
“Right. Ok. Bye then."
Darcy allowed herself to be lead off to the medical floor to be checkout out and patched up. The nurse frowned at her awesome choice of footwear and may have made a clucking noise or two when she cleaned and bandaged the cut on her foot, but Darcy didn’t let it get to her. She knew her shoes were awesome, if not entirely disaster appropriate.