HEAD COUNT

By Derrick Ferguson

Thunder Mountain Combat Operations Center
Colorado, United States of America

Colonel Felton Hardbottle pushed away from his desk and rubbed his tired eyes.  They felt as if they’d been slightly poked with dull pencils.  Four days he’d been looking through files on various databases and the conference table in the center of his office had stacks of hard copy files.  Some piles wobbled dangerously as if they were going to tip over any minute down and send the photos and papers flying.  And if that happened he really didn’t give a shit.  He leaned back in his chair and reached out a hand for the glass of ice water on his desk.  He badly wanted a real drink but this was a job that had to be done and he needed a clear head for it.  He’d gotten by for quite a while now insisting that he needed time to properly vette two remaining members of his team.  In actuality, Hardbottle had delayed the process as long as he could because wanted to lay low as much as possible.

Seattle was still way too much of a fresh wound and his name was still out there.  And Hardbottle wanted to distance himself as far from that debacle as humanly possible. And hiding out here at Thunder Mountain was just as good a hideout as any.  But he had a bad feeling that his string had just about run out.

The mysterious man who had offered him another chance had seemingly disappeared.  Decimus Flynn had brought Hardbottle, The Dreadknight and Bullet to Thunder Mountain and introduced him to his new handler.

Imogene Mercedes Mosley had thick wavy red hair and stood almost as tall as Hardbottle himself.  She didn’t have much style in the way she dressed but then again, she didn’t need it.  Decimus Flynn grinned at the two of them.  “You guys are going to get along fine.”  He headed for the door.  “Nice knowing you, Hardbottle.  You play nice, now.”

“Wait a minute.  Where the hell do you think you’re going?”  Hardbottle demanded.  “My deal was with you.  I don’t know her.”

“When you come right down to it, you don’t know me either, hotshot.  I’ve done my job.  I got you out of a tight spot and given you a new job.  You should be glad.”

“I am but I’m still not sure what it is I’m supposed to be doing.”

Decimus Flynn sighed.  “The Five Man Army, remember?  You pick two more members of your team and then you sit and wait.”

“Wait for what, exactly?”

Flynn pointed at Imogene Mercedes Mosley.  “For her to tell you who or what to go after.  Like I told you back in the hospital: there’s a group of people who need gunslingers to do jobs for them.  That’s you, The Dreadknight and Bullet.  Plus whoever else you manage to rope into the team.  My work here is done.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Hardbottle, you have me seriously confused with somebody who gives a shit what you like and don’t like.”  Flynn’s eyes narrowed.  “But maybe you need me to make it clear.  This is your last chance, bucko.  That lady is your boss from now on.  You give her any of your well-known bullshit and you will see me again.  But you’re not going to be happy to see me.  You understand where I’m coming from?”

Hardbottle’s voice was thick and ugly as he replied, “Yes, sir.”

“Good.  And Hardbottle?  Just a friendly word of advice.  Stop fucking around on the country’s time, okay?”

And from that day to this, Hardbottle had not seen Decimus Flynn again.  Which suited him just fine.

A firm knock on his door wrenched a groan from him.  He turned around in his seat and said, “Come on in.”

Imogene entered Hardbottle’s office.  Every time Hardbottle saw her he reflected that she would be pretty if she didn’t frown all the time.  Hardbottle had never heard her referred to by rank but he’d seen four star generals sit up straighter and pay attention when she entered a room.  And her security clearance was so ridiculously high that even Hardbottle was impressed.  But she never said who it was that she worked for or anything about her background.  Hardbottle had asked Bullet to see what he could find out and Bullet came back with a firm: “Leave it alone, man.  Trust me on this.”  And until he had met Imogene, Bullet had the highest security clearance he’d ever seen.

“You picked your final two members, Colonel?”  She seated herself at the conference table, shuffled through files and photographs.  “I’ve got a mission all lined up for you.”

“It would help if I knew exactly what the mission was, ma’am.  This way I can chose my last two team members by the abilities that would be suited to the mission.”

Imogene unwrapped a stick of Beemer’s gum and popped it into her mouth, chewed vigorously.  “Fair enough.  How do you feel about robbery?”

“As a victim?”

“Ha.  Very funny.  Do you have a problem with stealing, Colonel?”

“Not at all.  What am I stealing?”

“Five hundred million in gold.”

Hardbottle cocked his head to the side.  “Say what now?”

“There’s nothing wrong with your hearing.  I want you to steal five hundred million in gold.  It’s going to be used to finance a revolution in the Middle Eastern province of Kamasha. I don’t want that revolution to happen.”

“You’re serious.”

“Colonel Hardbottle, did you think that I was going to ask you and your team to pull off petty assassinations?  Is that what you thought this deal was going to be about?”

“What do we do with the gold after we steal it?  How do we get it out of the country?”

“Who says I want you to get it out of the country?  I don’t care what you do with it as long as you steal it and it’s not used to finance the revolution.”

“Can we keep it?”

Imogene’s frown increased.  “Are you being obtuse on purpose?  I repeat: whatever you do with the gold does not concern me in the slightest.”

“You don’t want it?”

“The organization I belong to has all the funds it needs.”

“You’re going to sit there and tell me your people have so much money they don’t need five hundred million dollars?”

“We’ve already got five hundred million.  And more.  We’re not greedy.  Take the gold if you want.  Consider it an incentive to do a good job if it helps motivate you and your team to do a good job.  Just steal it.”

Hardbottle scratched his chin.  He stood up and walked over to the conference table.  He went through the stacks of files.  He selected one, removed a picture and tossed it on the table in front of Imogene.  He continued looking, found another picture, tossed that to join the first one.  “I want these two.”

Imogene cracked her gum loudly as she looked at the pictures.  “You sure you want these two?”

“You said I could have anybody I wanted.  For this job, I want these two.”

Imogene nodded and stood up.  “I’ll have them here in forty-eight hours.  Think you can come up with a plan to heist all that gold by then?”

Hardbottle gratefully reached into his desk drawer and removed a flask.  He took a long slug of rum before answering.  “You have my word on it, ma’am”

The Rupert Pupkin Show
Los Angeles, The Unites States of America

“…and welcome back to the show, ladies and gentlemen.  My next guest has really been blowing up the talk shows on television and radio thanks to her New York Times bestselling book: BOB: Bruce Banner And I.  Let’s have a really big round of applause for Hattie DeCamp!”

The studio audience erupted into a storm of applause as Hattie came out on stage.  She looked ten years younger and twenty pounds lighter.  It was a wonder how a sudden influx of cash could do wonders for a person’s appearance.  Her hair also seemed to sparkle and she smiled, displaying her brand new set of ten thousand dollar teeth.  Rupert Pupkin gave her a loving kiss on the cheek and gestured for her to sit down on the plush guest couch.

“Hattie, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.  I gotta tell you that once I read your book I knew I had get you in that chair.”  Pupkin held up the hardcover book so that the camera could get a good shot of the cover.  “I couldn’t put the book down, really.”  Pupkin’s gushing came across as genuine but in reality he hadn’t read a book in twenty years.  The only thing he read were reviews of his show.  He had an assistant who had read the book and gave Pupkin a stack of 8 X10 cards he could refer to.

“It’s really amazing how human Bruce Banner comes across in your book.  Some of the best passages in the book are the sections where you describe the conversations you had.”

Hattie crossed her legs, allowing her dress to ride up a bit higher than actually was necessary.  “Bob is human, Rupert.  You have to remember that I had no idea that he actually was Dr. Bruce Banner until after Seattle.  Until then he was just a guy in the park who I used to see every day.”

“You go into you’re a little book that you were interrogated by the government.  Did you ever find out which branch you were interrogated by?”

“No.  I suspect that they were representatives of many different law enforcement and intelligence agencies.  To this day I’m still not sure who they were or even how long I was detained.”

“Apparently you couldn’t tell them much as you’re sitting here alive and well,” Pupkin said this with a laugh but Hattie had a flash of memory when a gun was held to her head during the interrogation while several men debated whether they should kill her or not.  Simply because she knew Bruce Banner.

And it wasn’t just the gun.  It was the drugs she had been given to make her talk.  And she suspected that she had been violated in other ways as well.

“You’ve been the target of many special interest groups who say that you’re blatantly making money from the Seattle tragedy, Hattie.  Do you think that’s what you doing?  I mean, your book has been number one on the NY Times Best Seller List for sixteen straight weeks.  You’ve been making the lecture circuit as well as appearing on talk shows.”

“Nobody ever mentions that I’ve donated 25% of my earnings from my book sales and lectures to the Seattle Disaster Relief Fund, Rupert.  I didn’t write this book to make a fortune.  I did it because there have been millions of words written about The Hulk but not so much about Bruce Banner.  I didn’t intend for my book to be an apology or a vindication of Bruce Banner.  I just wanted people to know that it’s The Hulk who’s the monster.  Not Bruce Banner.”

“Come now, Hattie…after Seattle I don’t think anybody cares much about that old back-and-forth, do they?”  Pupkin’s grin belied the seriousness of their subject.  He continued to hold the book up for the camera.  “Bruce Banner’s kinda burned all his bridges behind him, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would hope that if he turns himself in he would be treated with compassion, that’s all.”  Hattie replied.

“And how do you respond to the claims that you and Bruce Banner were romantically involved?  Is it true that you were pregnant with his child?  A child you had aborted?”

Hattie’s eyes flash wrathfully.  “Mr. Pupkin, I do believe we’ve covered this with your producer.  I will not even entertain—”

“Come on, now, Hattie, we’re all adults here, right folks?”  Pupkin looked to his audience for confirmation that they were indeed, all adults here and they gave it with their thunderous applause.  “You honestly expect us to believe that you spent all that time with Bruce Banner and never slept with him?  Especially given your background?”

The audience let out with salacious whoops, catcalls and “Woo Hoos!”

“Mr. Pupkin-“

“You can’t deny that you’ve been arrested for prostitution and possession of narcotics on more than one occasion.  I think that it’s not too much of a stretch for us to assume that you favored Banner with your…how shall I put it?  Your charms?  I—AWK!”

Rupert Pupkin was not able to continue due to Hattie having leaped right over his desk and wrapping her small hands around his throat.  The force of her leap carried them crashing to the floor and in the two minutes before she was pulled off Pupkin, Hattie DeCamp gave him a good old fashioned Brooklyn style ass-whoopin’ right there live on national television.

Western Australia

The immensity of Western Australia cannot be adequately described.  Only experienced.  It was something that The Leader had read but he thought it mere hyperbole until he saw it for himself.

He stood on the top level of his complex, built out in the far desert by the maintenance robots The Leader had stolen from Serenity Base and upgraded.  Only a half dozen robots to start with but once The Leader was through with them they not only constructed his complex in record time but built other robots as well.  The entire complex was fully automated, thanks to the technological genius of The Leader and he would have it no other way.

There was a reason he had come all the way out here to this remote land: no superhumans.  Well, at least not as many as there were in the United States.  And the Australian superhumans tended to stay near populated areas.  Way out here, there was very little chance that The Leader would be detected.

And considering what had happened in Seattle, it was probably for the best that he had left the United States. Shortly after The Hulk had gone berserk, resolutions had been passed to forbid any and all gamma radiation research.  He wondered how Dr. Leonard Samson was faring.  Probably was still giving lectures and being the media darling he always had been.  But any other gamma radiation powered being in the United States would be have a hard time of it.  The Leader sent out a mental command and in two minutes, a small flying robot brought him a steaming cup of oolong tea, three sugars.  The Leader sipped his tea and watched the purple shroud of twilight as it covered the land.

He still was not quite sure what he would do.  The hysteria over The Hulk’s attack had placed so many world governments on high alert that it was still too soon for him to implement a plan for conquering the Earth.  He could supply technology to various groups, he supposed.  There was no shortage of criminal organizations looking for high tech.  Or he could simply devote himself to research.  It might even be worth it to resume his explorations of alternate realities, find himself an Earth with no superhumans at all and take it for himself.

But then what would he do?  The conquering of Earth wasn’t the issue, was it?  It was what he would do after that.  After all, he wasn’t the original Leader.  He was a clone of Glenn Talbot and Glenn Talbot had never been a conqueror.  Despite his rank of major, Glenn Talbot had always been a follower.  Never a true leader of men.  Even cloned and given hyper intelligence by controlled gamma radiation treatments he simply wasn’t in the same class as the original Leader.  When he left Serenity Base he had made a vow to be his own man and not work for anybody else.  But what else was left for him to do?  Thunderbolt Ross had betrayed him, Bruce Banner had abandoned him and Janelle Ban had lied to him.  There was no one he could trust and nothing he could believe in.

He looked down at the gleaming fortress that had been built by the creations of his own brain and hands.  Maybe he wasn’t the original Leader but he could be The Leader.  He could be his own Leader.  The fact that he had built this fortress, raised it up proved that he was more than worthy of the intelligence he’d been given.  He just had to decide what to do with it.

The Leader continue to drink his tea as he watched night fall over the great expanse of Western Australia and he continued to think as his complex hummed and continue to work, the robots inside continued to work, directed by the subconscious thoughts of their master and powered by his will.

 Antarctica

The Kwaidan Building had been one of the most wonderful constructions of modern architecture in the world.  It had been as much art as a functional place to work in. It also had been a completely state of the art ‘smart building’ with the capability of developing its own sentience.  Behind The Kwaidan Building was another structure, a smaller gray dome with no windows. The entire smooth surface of the dome was in actually one huge network of sensors and telemetry grids.   This was what had once been known as Serenity Base.

Once hundreds of men and women had worked there but now only one woman lived there.  Janelle Ban had used the power of the buildings Gamma Core power source bonded with her own personal power to transport the building away from Seattle and bring it here.

It hadn’t been done without some cost.  Much of the building itself had been damaged and Janelle Ban lived on the top five floors to conserve power and resources.  The lower ten floors of The Kwaidan Building were completely covered in snow, driven there by the howling winds that never seemed to stop blowing snow everywhere.  Janelle Ban had been working on the building’s artificial intelligence, trying to restore it to full functionality.  The Gamma Core was up to full power but she needed to be able to link up with the building’s A.I. in order to transport it and she couldn’t do that unless the A.I. was fully restored.

And once she did that, there was the question of where she should go and what she should do.  Seattle was out of the question.  The Hulk had seen to that.  And she considered it a better than even chance that the United States government had written her off.  They might even have believed The Kwaidan Building had been destroyed and so that particular problem was buried.

But none of that mattered now.  Her plans were all that mattered and she had to figure out a way to get back to them.

Janelle Ban’s personal quarters were on the top floor.  She kept it warm, practically humid.  A side effect of her physiology was that she was sensitive to cold weather.  Which made it kind of unusual she would transport The Kwaidan Building to a cold climate.  But she had to be sure she would be in a place where absolutely nobody would find her.  She stood over a large piece of machinery, her hands working quickly and smoothly.  The Cellular Genome Processor was a vital component of the building’s A.I.  She’d been working on it for about two weeks now.  Not that Janelle minded.  She appreciated the solitude and the time to think.

The first thing to do was find The Hulk and offer him sanctuary.  Even here in this most remote of places she was able to tap into satellite communications and keep track of what was going on in the rest of the world.  And what was happening was that Bruce Banner was the most hunted man on Earth.  It was a miracle he’d evaded capture this long but then again, Bruce Banner had years of experience of being on the run.  There wasn’t another man on the planet able to hide as well as he could.

But this was another situation.  Seattle had changed everything.  And she had to make both Bruce Banner and The Hulk realize that she was their only hope.  There was nobody else who could give them what she could give them.  The situation in Seattle hadn’t turned out the way she thought it would.  Okay. But what in life was worth having that one didn’t have to struggle for?  Janelle Ban paused in her work and looked out the panoramic picture windows at the icy landscape outside.  It was both beautiful and frightening.

Much like The Hulk himself.

He was her father and she would make him understand that and make him believe it.  And then, once he had come to that understanding they would join together and they could truly work together.  Janelle Ban went back to her work.  The world had not heard the last of the daughter of The Hulk.  And if they thought that he was something to fear then they had not seen anything yet.

The Marriot Hotel, Manhattan
United States of America

Betty Ross, hearing the knock on the door of her hotel room stood up from the comfortable chair she’d been sitting and walked over to the door.  She opened it and sighed in exasperation.  “I was hoping you were Room Service.  C’mon in.”

The two women walked on in the hotel room.  “You know who we are?”  The first woman asked.  She was Asian and like her partner dressed in a plain black women’s business suit.

Betty snorted in disgust.  “You ladies must not have done your homework on me.  You really think the daughter of General Thunderbolt Ross can’t spot Military Intelligence? I made you following me from Macy’s yesterday.”

The Asian woman smiled.  “I’m McCord.  This is Bailey.  And the reason you made us is because we wanted to be made.”

Betty smiled back.  “Sure you did.  Military Intelligence sure has gotten sloppy.  My father would have strung you both up for being spotted.  C’mon in and sit down.  I’m watching a rerun of the Pupkin Show.  I’m glad somebody finally put their fist in his mouth.  I never could stand that guy.”

“We’re not here to socialize, Miss Ross.  We want to know what you’re doing here in New York.  And if it has anything to do with Bruce Banner.”

Betty seated herself, chuckling.  “You really don’t know anything about me, do you?  Bruce Banner’s the last person in the world I want to see and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to see me.”

Bailey spoke up.  “You’ve been keeping a low profile for some time now.  All of a sudden you empty out your back accounts in Pennsylvania and come to New York.  We’re just curious as to why you’ve come here.”

“Maybe I just wanted a change of scenery.  Is that against the law?”

McCord took over.  “No.  It’s not against the law.  But what is against the law is if you know where Banner is and don’t tell the proper authorities.  Is he planning on coming to New York?”

“Bruce Banner would have to be crazy to come to New York.”

“Then why did he call Matt Murdock?”

Betty’s head snapped around at this.  “Matt?  He called Matt Murdock?”

“Sure did.  Murdock hung up on him before we could get a lock on where Banner was calling from.”

“What did Matt say?”

It was Bailey who answered that; “In short he told Banner to fuck off.  That was a few days ago in New Mexico.  Banner made the mistake of calling a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent he had a relationship with.  We were able to get a lock on him this time.  But he turned into The Hulk and got away.”

“Again.”

“Yeah.  Again.”  McCord said.  She folded her arms as she continued.  “But there’s only so many places he can run.  There’s a one billion dollar bounty on his head and there’s nearly five hundred agents of various law enforcement agencies on his ass.  We’re going to get him this time, Betty.”

“And here’s some advice for free,” Bailey added.  “You want to get clean of Banner’s stink?  You throw in with us and tell us what you know.  Or if Banner gives you a call, you make a call.  To us.”

“You’re chasing the wrong fox.  I just wanted a change is all.  What have I been doing since I came to New York?  You’ve been following me so you know.  I’ve done some shopping, seen a couple movies.  Took in a Broadway show.  I was just bored where I was and wanted a change.”

“You can’t expect us to believe that Banner makes a call to Murdock here in New York and you just happen to decide to take a vacation here.”

“You said yourself that Murdock gave Bruce the brush-off.”

“That’s the oldest wheeze in the book,” Bailey sneered.  “They could have been talking in code.”

Another knock at the door prompted Betty to get up from her seat and walk back to the door.  “You’re reaching and you know it.  Desperation must be setting in.”  She opened the door to the smiling, black-haired waiter with her tray of food on a rolling cart.  He came on in, keeping his head down as he passed the two women.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to eat my dinner in peace.”

McCord and Bailey trooped out as Betty held the door open for them.  She closed it and turned to face the waiter.  “I appreciate you coming.  I know how hard it must be for you.”

The waiter reached into a pocket of his white apron and removed a pair of sunglasses which he put on.  Betty cocked her head to the side.  “Y’know, it’s amazing how just you dyeing your hair and taking off those shades make such a difference in your appearance.”

Matt Murdock grunted.  “Let’s make this fast, Betty.  It took me nearly two hours to lose the tails I had on me.  And let’s get one thing straight.  I’m not here to help Bruce Banner in any way at all.”

“So why did you come?”

“Banner’s screwed you over more than anybody else in his life.  You had more than your share of hurt in your relationship with him and The Hulk.  We may not be friends but because of what you’ve been through, you deserve at least thirty minutes of my time.”

“Then sit down and let’s eat.  I think you’re going to be very interested in what I have to say.”

Paris, France

The soft chiming of the doorbell caused Gerald Gomez to lift his head from his model building in slight puzzlement.  His wife and daughter were due home soon from ballet class but his wife would have used her key to enter the three story townhouse that had been their home for the past twenty years.

Perhaps she had stopped off to shop and needed assistance with groceries or bulky parcels.  Gomez smiled as he stood up and walked through his spacious den, rearranging his robe as he did so.  She was always stopping off to pick up something that she always insisted they absolutely needed but usually ended up gathering dust in the storage closet under the staircase.

Gomez’s slippered feet made slight whispering noises as he walked down the hallway.  The polished floor of Brazilian teak shone as if lit from within.

Gomez opened the door.  “Marta, I swear, if this is another set of pots and pans—” Upon seeing who was standing there, Gomez’s eyes opened as wide as they could possibly go and his mouth went dry as desert dust.

The man standing there was perhaps six feet tall.  Dressed in a sleeveless black bodysuit that looked to be made of leather.  Knee-high grey boots.  A thick red belt with several chunky pouches.  The man pushed back his keffiyeh style head covering and let it hang loosely around his neck like a neckerchief.

Gomez found his voice: “Javert!”

Javert replied with a straight punch to Gomez’s nose.  Gomez stumbled backwards and took a second blow to the face but recovered to block Javert’s front kick with crossed wrists.  He brought them up to block a third punch.  Gomez laid hold of Javert by the shoulders and flung him across the entrance hall into a 17th Century Zapatero mirror.  The crashing was impressively loud and Javert hit the floor along with a shower of broken glass.

Gomez brought his foot down, intending to stomp Javert’s head into paste.  Javert caught the foot and pistoned his own right into Gomez’s crotch.  Gomez yowled, bent over and caught Javert’s other booted foot right in his face.

Gomez somersaulted backwards into the foyer, tripped and went stumbling over a low couch.

Javert nimbly leaped after him only to get the couch rammed into him.  Gomez had picked up the whole thing as easily as if it were a potato chip.  Javert fell back onto the floor and rolled out of the way as Gomez brought into down on the floor.  The couch burst apart into a storm of wood slivers.

Javert twisted and flipped back onto his feet, using the momentum to execute a tornado kick that threw Gomez into a wall.  Gomez literally bounced off the wall back into Javert’s waiting hands.

Javert headbutted Gomez, whirled him around and wrapped his arms tightly around Gomez’s neck.

The room was silent save for the heavy breathing and gasping of the two men as they stomped around in a grisly dance, Javert slowly choking the life out of Gomez.

Gomez beat on Javert’s arm but he might as well have been beating on cold steel for all the effect it was having.  Javert suddenly threw them both forward and they hit the floor.  Javert adjusted himself so that all his weight was pinning Gomez down and he increased the pressure on Gomez’s neck.  Just a little more and it would shortly break-

Gomez’s body seemed to exploded into a humanoid mass of fleshy, ropy tendrils that threw Javert up into the ceiling with enough force that he left a man-shaped depression.  Javert fell back to the floor and rolled out of the way, back to his feet as Gomez rushed upon him again.

The tendrils whipped and lashed around Javert’s head and shoulders, forcing him to retreat, flipping over and over, gaining distance.  He landed on his feet, reached around to the small of his back and unsheathed a gleaming butterfly sword.  Blue sparks danced along the sharp edge as Javert described an intricate defensive pattern, blocking the tendrils as they sought to get a good grip on him.

One would think the sword would have no problem slicing through the tendrils but whatever they were, they were considerably tougher than the flesh they resembled as not so much as a nick was left on them.

From Gomez’s midsection erupted a thick mass of intertwined tendrils that slammed into Javert’s stomach.  Once again Javert hit the floor.  But he still had hold of his sword and as he rolled out of the way, he unclipped something else from his belt: a collapsible baton that he used in his left hand to fend off the whirling mass of tendrils.

A howl emerged from Gomez’s ropy body, a howl of frustrated rage.  Against a human the sight of his transformation would have been enough to have paralyzed a human with terror.  Gomez could then have killed the human easily.  But Javert had been doing this for awhile and had seen far worse.

“Gerald?  My God, what’s happened here?  GERALD!”

The tendrils pulled back from attacking Javert and reformed into Gomez’s human form.  He looked pleadingly at Javert.  “My family…they know nothing of what I am!  Please don’t hurt them!”

Javert sheathed his sword but continued to hold the baton.  “I’m here for you.  Not your family.”

“Gerald!  Gerald!  Honey, where ARE you?”

Gomez walked backwards to the door.  “Give me five minutes, please!”

Javert nodded.  “Five minutes only.”

Gomez stepped out into the entrance hall and closed the door.  Javert could clearly hear the conversation as if he were standing next to them.

“Gerald, what’s going on here?  Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Marta, just fine.  But I need you to take Rose and go upstairs to the bedroom.  Lock the door and stay in there until I come for you.”

“Why?  What’s happening here?  Have we been robbed?  Are you all right?”

“Marta, just do as I say.  I can’t explain right now.  Take Rose and go upstairs!”

“I don’t understand!  Who’s in that room?  What are you doing?  What-“

The slap was unexpectedly loud.  So loud that Javert actually flinched.

Gomez spoke again and his voice was ice cold.  “Shut your mouth and do as you’re told.  Take the child to our bedroom.  Go in the bedroom.  Lock the door.  Sit on the bed and do not get off the bed until I come for you.”

Javert heard two pairs of feet go clattering up the stairs and a door slam shut.

Gomez came back into the room.  He stood for a minutes, hands on hips, shaking his head.   “I think she was more surprised than hurt.  Twenty years of marriage and that’s the first time I’ve put a hand on her.”  Gomez sighed and dry-washed his face vigorously with both hands.  “Drink?”

Javert collapsed the baton and stowed it away in a pouch.  “Why not?”

Gomez walked over to a wall and pushed on a section of it.  A bar rotated outwards and locked into place.  Gomez gestured.  “What’s your pleasure?”

“Tequila.”

Gomez selected an unopened bottle and handed it to Javert with a shot glass.  He took a bottle of scotch for himself and the two men silently poured themselves drinks and downed the shots.  Gomez had another before speaking.

“First off, my family don’t know that I’m a mutant.  They have nothing to do with what I did in Russia.”

“I’ve already said that I’m not here for your family.  The Law does not judge the innocent.”

Gomez snorted in disgusted amusement.  “The Law.  The Meroving Tiramont still thinks we will be intimidated by that outmoded rumor he’s been trying to force on us for seventy years?”

“No.  The Meroving Tiramont still thinks you will be intimidated by me.”

Gomez poured himself another shot.  “Thenardier must be filled to bursting by now.  It’s said you’ve been the most successful Javert since the 1940’s.”

“I do my job.”

And then Javert felt the presence of another mind.  A familiar one.  This was the preferred method that The Meroving Tiramont used to communicate with his Javert.

“Return to the prison at once, Javert.”

Javert said out loud, “what about Gomez here?”

“Leave him.  I know where he is and we can always find him later.  I have a more important mission for you.  In America.”

“The Hulk?”

“The Hulk.”

“This is you lucky day, Gomez.  I leave you in peace.”

“I can only imagine what the other end of that conversation was about.  But The Hulk is not a mutant.”

“If he has transgressed The Law then he belongs in Thenardier Prison.  And I shall put him there.”  Javert tossed back another drink.  “Farewell.”

“Indeed,” Gomez said, lifting a hand.  “Because I think that if you seek to capture The Hulk and throw him in your prison then you have definitely bit off more than you can chew, Javert.”

Somewhere in Utah

The Hulk sat on top of the tallest mesa he could find.  He liked sitting on top of mesas so that he could see everything around him for miles and miles. He watched the sun going down with eyes that radiated hated.  He had always hated sunsets.  Always had and always would.  For however much time he had left to look at sunsets.  Because for every sunset that meant there would be a sunrise and it would be another day where he was hunted and hated.  Another stinking day.  If there were any wish that he could have besides being left alone, it being eternal night would be that wish.

“Big cry baby, aren’t you?”

The Hulk turned to see Bruce Banner sitting next to him.  “You ain’t here.  Not really.”

“Of course not.  I’m a projection of your subconscious manifested by your need to have somebody to blame.  And as usual, that’s me.  I’m your scapegoat.  Always have been.  Always will be.”  Bruce Banner sighed.

“And I ain’t been yours?  We both use each other, Banner.”

“But this time it was supposed to be different!  We were supposed to use each other for our mutual benefit!  You using my intelligence!  Me using your rage!”

The Hulk’s bark of laughter scattered flocks of turkey vultures eight or nine miles away.  “And that worked out just fine, didn’t it?  It got Hardbottle and that mess a’misfits of his chasin’ us all over the place.  It got a whole lotta people dead.  Ain’t nothin’ ever gonna be different for us, Banner.”

“We have to do something, Hulk.  We’ve destroyed a city and we’re being hunted by not just the American government but by all the other world governments as well.”

“I don’t see you turnin’ yourself in at the local precinct, punk.  An’ when your Defender buddies came to get you, you turned over control to me in a quick fast.”

“We have to turn ourselves in but we’ve got to do it on our terms!  Do you want to be locked up in a cage forever?”

“I am in a cage!  It’s called Bruce Banner just like you got a cage called Hulk!”

“We need leverage, Hulk.  Leverage so that we can make a deal and make sure that we’re not killed or put in a medically induced coma for the rest of our lives.”

“Ain’t no such thing.  I been tryin’ to tell you for years that we don’t need no stinkin’ leverage because there ain’t nothing I can’t destroy they send after me.  And that’s all there is to it.”  The Hulk growled.  “I ain’t takin’ no more shit from anybody, Banner.  They come after me I’m gonna level Washington to the ground and I mean it.  The only leverage we need is this.”  The Hulk held up a gigantic fist.

“Then maybe I need to stay inside the cage, Hulk.  There’s no sense in me coming back out if you’re not going to listen to me.”

“What do you mean by that?”  The Hulk snarled, looked over at where Banner had been sitting.  He was gone.  “Banner!”  The Hulk searched inside himself.  He could always feel that part of him that was Bruce Banner.  It was always there, scratching away at the surface of The Hulk’s personality, poking and prodding and sometimes yanking on it.  He could always feel Bruce Banner.

But not anymore.  It was as if Bruce Banner had simply…gone away.  But that was impossible.  Wasn’t it?

The Hulk stood up, snorted and cracked his immense knuckles.  It didn’t matter.  It never did.  He was The Hulk.  He was the strongest creature walking the Earth and that was all that mattered.  With a thrust of his massive leg muscles he was airborne, arcing up and out in a tremendous leap that would take him miles away.  For a brief second he was outlined against the rising moon.  A man-monster of extraordinary power and rage.

He continued on his way, dropping to the desert floor where he rebounded into the night air, laughing as he rejoiced in his own incredible power.  He kept on leaping and he did not even know himself where he was going.  Nor did he care.  For he was free of the voice and influence of Bruce Banner so he would go where he willed and did what he willed and heaven help any who stood in his way.