Marvel Reborn: Gems Of Infinite Potential

Betty and Bruce had been talking for about twenty minutes before the spy drones I had monitoring the area let me know that several teams of MP's were on their way to secure the house. It seems that someone had grown a brain and decided that maybe it was a good idea to secure Ross's home as part of the investigation into his assassination.

Well, time to get to work. I stepped back into reality and said, "Sorry to interrupt, Bruce, but a number of MP's are about five minutes out. They are coming to secure the house as part of the investigation into the General's assassination, and I really doubt you want to be here when they get here."

Betty yelped at my appearance, whipped her head back around to look at Bruce as she mumbled, "So it was true," turned back to me and said, "Who are you?"

I retracted my mask, gave a slight bow, and said, "Octavian Raith, Miss Ross, my condolences on your loss. I do wish that we had more time to talk, but unless we want the military to know that the Hulk was here, and the neighborhood wrecked, it's best if we leave." I then made the appropriate hand gesture and a business card appeared in my hand, apparently out of thin air, and in reality only returned to normal size from where it had been stored inside one of my glove's nanite cells, until the pre-programmed hand gesture triggered its growth. "My card, I should be able to have something set up for secure communications between you and Bruce within the next day or so. Give me a call when you are ready." I turned to Bruce as I opened a portal and said "Bruce?"

The infant god gave a frustrated sigh, gave Betty a leg curling kiss goodbye, and then followed me through the portal to the facility I had set up for him on Mars.

He glanced around at the gleaming lab equipment, tens of millions of dollars worth of beyond state of the art machinery, and said, "Where are we?"

I turned to face him. "Your lab, if you take my offer. Physically? A mile below the peak of Albor Tholus on Mars."

"Bullshit. You can't just wave your hand and create a flaming portal to another planet. Even light would take longer to get here than we did," Bruce flatly said.

"Not bullshit, magic. But if you want to be precise, I used a link between my soul and a temporal anomaly to open a pico-scale wormhole back to the very moment of the Big Bang, when every single location in the cosmos was identically located, identified which bits would be this exact location at this exact point in time, anchored another pico wormhole to them, and then used those pico wormholes to locate macro-scale wormholes at both locations. The whole process was powered by the Big Bang, and so took very little energy from me to catalyze," I said as I explained the basic mechanics of how sling rings worked to him.

"If you prefer, you could call it very advanced science as I am, after all, simply exploiting rules of physics that you weren't aware even existed. But magic is the best explanation, given current scientific knowledge on Earth." I continued before he could comment.

Bruce pulled a hand over his face, sighed, and said, "Fine, whatever, magic. I still think you are delusional, but you can do something that I can't explain, and if you want to call it magic, then that's on you."

I gave him a flat look and said, "Bruce, you turn into a ten-foot-tall green rage monster that out masses you by an order of magnitude. Said rage monster has physical capabilities that none of the matter in the surrounding environment when he comes out to play, could explain using any known materials science. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Just the most famous equation in physics, and one that is fully accurate, so where are you getting enough energy to vaporize a continent with every time you Hulk out? And how are you turning that energy into matter ex nihilo with nothing but your n.a.k.e.d body? You are one of the smartest humans to have ever existed, you have seven doctorates in relevant fields, are you really going to sit here and tell me that you have any explanation for the Hulk that is even theoretically viable under your current scientific models?"

Bruce rocked back on his heels before going fully to the floor, leaning against the wall. He quietly said, "No, I don't. I guess I just didn't want to consciously accept it. I was so fixated on fixing this, on curing myself, that I just ignored evidence that I couldn't explain and seemed to destroy any hope of fixing it. I'm not sure whether I should thank you or not for destroying that hope."

I glanced down at him for a long moment before extending a hand. "I can't offer you a cure, Bruce, but I can offer you what you really want: control. I can teach you how to master yourself, how to control yourself, and give you the knowledge and training you need to no longer fear yourself. I can offer you the resources you need to understand the physical realities of your changes. I can offer you the knowledge and skills you will need to understand the metaphysical realities of your new existence. But it's up to you, Bruce; are you willing to hope, or will you flinch away in fear?"

After three long, tense, minutes of me standing there, hand extended, and him doing nothing but stare at it, he took it and let me pull him to his feet.

"Welcome aboard Bruce."