DoorMan (MCU SI)

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #101

Extremis Lab, Red Hearth[April 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

"How goes the research, resident Mad Scientists?" He jested with the science duo as he entered the lab, having done so after months. The layout had clearly changed, and as expected, someone from Kamar Taj had done the job and delivered supplies on time.

Food, Water and medical supplies were paid for in advance, up to a year, and all someone had to do was take them from a secure drop site in China and deposit them in the Red Hearth, wherein it would automatically be sorted by the ward systems and deposited to their respective places.

He owed someone big time in Kamar Taj. Portal bearing apprentices were rare, so they might just ask for a premium, but that was nothing in comparison to Banner and the others not getting food and water to live.

In the frozen floor, wards made specifically for long term stasis, food and water enough to feed a dozen people for upto a year was stored ahead of time but it was supposed to be opened only during an emergency and he had made alternate arrangements early on, just in the case of such a situation wherein he might have found himself indisposed.

"Well enough, I suppose. Slow going, is what I would call it," Bruce replied, taking a look over at him. "I hope you're well?"

He smiled at the man, "Oh, absolutely. I can now create upto 5 arms and have superhuman reflexes with all of them. So, yeah, I am fine. So, what do you have for me?"

Bruce then showed him the various variants of Extremis developed, with similar modes of treatment for different rejection rates. There was direct injection, there was vapour treatment, there was small doses of direct injection and more, with varying effects and varying time periods.

"Hmm," He began going through the notes that Bruce had created, the detailed ones he could somewhat understand. "I don't think any of these treatments are viable, Dr.Banner. Plus, as you can see, I am not in a hurry. Also, how confident are you that injecting me with Extremis will regrow my arms, but what if the other parts of my body, the ones that are heavily enhanced, don't end up rejecting those arms? My immune system might consider them as foreign bodies and I don't want to know what the reaction of my immune system will be."

Bruce began cleaning his glasses, his nervous tick, "Yes, you are correct, which is why we have been doing periodic scans of your arms so that we can create a–"

"What?" He whirled around, the mention of his arms bringing his attention to the man.

"W-what?"

"The arms? You still have my arms? I thought they were disposed of?"

"No? I was not told to do any of that. We have been keeping a close watch on the hands and their biological processes for the past two months. As a direct result of that, we have been able to better understand how your genetic factors allow you to carry energy within your body with ease."

He looked at the man before uttering, "Show me."

Bruce nodded and exited the lab, all of them following behind him, going to the small vault room he had created for both of them, just in case they had an experiment that was explosive. It was just common sense to take care of your MAD SCIENTISTS, otherwise one of them might die and the other, horribly disfigured, might spend the rest of their lives hunting you down and succeed.

No, thank you. 

"In the beginning, I just wanted to get some samples because your arms were conducting energy unlike anything I have ever seen before. It outright accepted any energy provided to it and in some rare cases, entered a state of total energy absorption, where it absorbed light as well. We decided to run hundreds of other tests on it and through that, Maya," Bruce gestured to Maya who looked somewhat sheepish at the pointing out, "-has increased the efficiency of the weaponised version of Extremis by 20%, whilst reducing the rate of rejection by 10%."

Bruce's words had a hint of reproach in them, which was understandable because Maya's progress meant that she had never stopped working on the super soldier version of Extremis, something that Bruce was expressly against.

"Keeping that aside," He interrupted before Bruce could say anything else, "What else did you find? And we will talk about Extremis later on."

Bruce nodded before continuing, "They don't decompose, not even a little. Even now, the level of activity is the same as months before. I will need more time to make accurate observations but I believe they will stay the same, for years. The DNA is corrupted beyond belief and yet, it has markers that were present in your DNA before this happened."

"So, that tells us what?"

And so on, they went. Bruce had a lot to talk about, and he had a lot to talk to Maya. SO, he ended up spending just shy of 4 hours in the lab, just taking progress updates. Once that was done, he moved onto the next task at hand.

The doors opened with a hiss, one of the lower levels, revealing the suspended form of a man with an elongated green head and completely green skin, in the middle of a tube full of bio fluid, something that provided nutrition to the man.

"Magic doesn't work then?" He asked Jin'Ya who had been looking into mystical ways of stripping the Leader of his powers. He had no doubt that the Leader would turn to evil the second he was let loose, just like he did with Ross but asking Bruce to develop something to take away his mutation was not an option either so magic, it was.

Alas, it would seem that even that was not an option, "No, I have not yet found something that will do the separation to the degree that you want it to. I might be able to stop the power from flowing in, but it will always remain in his soul. The connection will remain and as long as he remembers, he can regain access to the power with less difficulty than before."

He sighed. "Well, he will be saying here until then. Hopefully, Bruce becomes stable soon enough or we will have a lot to answer for."

"You care too much about others' opinions," Jin'Ya, ever the lone wolf, commented.

He fired back, "Well, not everyone can be members of a naturally solitary species. Some of us actually have to be in packs for our mental health."

"Bah! Mental health is overrated."

He smiled and moved on, leaving the Leader in the prison, which was not ideal but the other option was way worse than what he was doing because having the Hulk's equivalent in intelligence and more specifically, long term planning was very hard to get around.

In fact, he had fears that even the scenario being played out right now was something that the Leader had thought of and made contingency plans for. Shaking his head, he headed to the portal room.

No point overthinking it now. What's done is done. Ross was stopped, erasing that horrible future of him becoming President, and the Leader was imprisoned and in safe custody, from magic as well as normal hands.

The doors opened up and he was about to step in, only to freeze mid way as he immediately asked Jin'Ya, mentally, since it was the fastest method of communication between them, "Hey, uh, Jin'Ya? Where is Stark?"

Jin'Ya paused for a moment, having clearly forgotten it before he felt a portal open up in front of him and Jin'Ya's vast psionic powers sweep through. "Oh,"

That was not a very good Oh. It did not sound good.

"He is shot, and bleeding out in the desert."

"F*ck!"

He jumped into the portal, Jin'ya following behind him as the harsh light of the desert assaulted his eyes. Jin'Ya quickly pointed the location to him as an Air Door manifested beneath his legs, as he rocketed towards Tony, whilst deliberately not hiding himself, just in case Rhodes was on his way and caught his signature.

His eyes soon found the man, trudging through sand, blood soaking through the clothes that were more rags. Tony collapsed a second before he landed on the ground as he immediately channelled neutral Chi into the man, stopping the man from immediately dying.

"Wh-who are you? Angel?" Tony's words were slurred, clearly hallucinating from blood loss as he saw the bullet wound and winced as he did not find any clear exit wound, meaning the bullet was still stuck inside.

"This is going to hurt," He tried to warn the man but Tony was already unconscious. Using his newfound skills, he conjured medical tools, small enough that they won't hurt Tony as much, and conjured with energy so he could dissipate them at a moment's notice.

The sound of Helicopter blades made him sigh as he worked on keeping Tony alive. The interference from the Army was not going to help.

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