Master Bruce — Roleplayer Guild

Pripyat, Kyiv Oblast - Ukraine

He feels the weight of age with every step. The crushing pressure on his joints as they step against the dirt, telling him to stop and rest. The immense burden of mental exhaustion, scrambling half-finished thoughts until they can't be fully formed. The itch of irritated skin, having been forced to forgo any form of bathing in the last few days. And then there's the massive leather backpack strapped to his shoulders, stiffening his body to hang closer to the Earth with copious amounts of research notes, a couple of laptops, some rolled-up paper maps and a few burner phones that he'd pilfered out of wastebins and small town gutters. His only tangible connections to the world, now. But no food or water left to sustain him, no form of ID or credit cards, not even a working watch to tell the time. And the state of his clothes, heavily tattered and worn from years of use before they wound up at local homeless shelters and used good stores, betrayed someone who hadn't seen an actual roof over his head in decades. Each displaying some faded brand or name that meant nothing to him.

This was Dr. Bruce Banner's life. A short thirty-two-year existence that had been recently marred with an affliction. Not his first, certainly, after inheriting certain unpleasantries from a hospitalized mother and a monstrous abuser of a father. But an affliction that had a primary side-effect: habitual distance from his fellow man. It was why he had found himself drawn to Pripyat, of all places - a "ghost" city, claimed to be uninhabitable when it was evacuated in 1986 following Chernobyl. It's levels of radioactivity had waned over the decades since, and some workers frequented the city in off weeks. Tourists even occasionally came to see the spectacle, but radioactive pockets and the resulting dust had made it inadvisable for anyone to stay long.

There might have been a time when that'd have bothered Dr. Banner. The exposure, the rising levels as you ventured North. He doesn't remember such a time, anymore - it might aswell have all been an interesting footnote in the back of a brochure. What he was looking for right now was irrelevant to what the city did to anyone else's health. And if he weren't so damned exhausted from his journey, Banner might have even stopped for a moment to drink in the plethora of quiet that nature and a bit of nuclear fallout had generously provided him.

No, what the Doctor needed right now was to answer a housecall.

Astonishingly, someone had reached out with an offer. Something about a potential solution to a problem within Banner's cellular structure, a problem heightened to a greater degree in recent weeks. They had claimed to have been working on something similar for years, as a potential mutant deterrent that all the world's governments would pay handsomely for if proven effective. They just hadn't been able to convince anyone to come to Ukraine to be a test subject, given the recent struggles and increasingly volatile relations. Banner almost laughed when he'd heard that. The idea of a tank or the sight of heavy ordinance scaring him away from entering the country. No, the crippling horrors of war were almost comforting compared to what he'd been living with. He'd even go as far as to say that he welcomed such an encounter.

"Hhn."

On the long road ahead and through a clearing mist, Banner came to a sudden stop. An old giant wooden sign had fallen over a chain-link fence and partially collapsed it. Three times as big as he was on his best day, the sign displayed some sort of writing that served as either instruction or warning, with a big arrow pointing to the left. Even if he hadn't started reading up on his Ukrainian only a week and a half ago, Bruce would be entirely lost as to the sign's meaning. But he was certain of something - whoever he was looking for was beyond it, and the only way forward was through the mess of splinter and warped metal. Approaching the sign slowly, Banner pushed on it with both hands. It didn't so much as budge. He leaned against it, took a deep breath and tried again with a bit more force. It remained entirely too stable. Letting his heavy backpack fall with a thud on the ground, the Doctor inwardly pushed aside a growing frustration and placed his hands on it a third time. Gritting his teeth, he placed one foot against the ground and thrust himself against it.

His heartrate spikes. His breathing shortens. As he presses on, Banner catches a glimpse of the flesh of his wrist beneath heavy sleeves. Small, unsightly veins begin to appear across his forearm. Normally a faded purple color on an average man at their worst, Bruce's expression quickly turns from resilient to horrified as he notices the color of these: a deep, unmistakable forest shade of green. The sight causes him to immediately stumble back, scared of what his own body was just threatening to do. It doesn't even register it as he falls directly on his tailbone atop the freezing concrete. The pain doesn't so much as vex him as he rolls up his sleeve and looks at the arm. The veins are still raised, still that unnatural color - but they're turning back. Gradually, they're turning back to something resembling human.

Bruce sits for a moment and catches his breath. He'd had a heart rate monitor just a few days before, bought at a street vendor with the few dollars that he could manage to scrounge up out of nothing. The device was long gone, lost in the night like so much else. Given away to time that had been stolen, missing hours of activity that he desperately wanted back - and at the same time, wanted nothing more than complete obliviousness.

"Close, Banner. Real close..."

With a heavy sigh of relief, Bruce slowly pushes himself back to his feet. The sweat beading down his brow was merely an indicator of how fortunate he was - that the worst he'll feel is winded for the next half an hour. Collecting his backpack and staring back up at the sign, still affixed on the path ahead, the Doctor simply waits a beat before turning left and continuing down the next path. If he can't go through, Banner figures to himself, he'll just walk around. Easy enough to say for a man who just nearly broke the Earth over a traffic hazard.

"Anybody here?"

The wooden door creaks open. A thick wave of frigid air strikes Banner in the face as he stands in the vacant opening of a dilapidated building. A bar, from what he can tell of the ravaged insides. The wooden furniture is all there with the requisite cobwebs and dusting, clearly having sat unused for well over a decade. For a moment, the Doctor considers turning right around and leaving. There's nothing here for anyone, let alone a desperate scientist hailing from half a world away. But he takes a closer look at everything inside and begins to reconsider. Fully stacked bar, though the glass bottles are still a little worse for wear. Plenty of hanging pictures and paintings, though they've become so warped that you could hardly be blamed for mistaking them as abstract pieces. A couple of metal statuettes, signifying sports trophies of some kind. Banner tries to think of a reason that this shouldn't be inviting, but - hell, it's the first clear sign of civilization that he can remember seeing since he crossed the border.

With a quiet shrug to no one in particular, Bruce treads past the entrance and allows the door to naturally shut behind him. Cautious in his movement, on the off chance that an owner still lives there or even the unlikelier scenario of someone hanging around to scavenge for some booze, it takes him a few moments to let himself settle into confident ease. Finally, he breaks a tension of his own making by removing his pack and swinging it hard onto the unmanned bar. Nothing makes a sound - even if there were mice or roaches, they'd have scattered well before now. Heavily sighing to himself once more, Banner takes a seat at the bar and allows his tired body to finally rest.

It's still difficult to think. How long had he been on the road now? More to the point, how long had it been since he touched foot on American soil? The details are tantalizingly close enough to be just out of reach in the recesses of his mind. He gingerly rubs the bridge of his nose and allows the aches and pains of his journey to leave him, as if they had been waiting on command. He can only remember flashes of what led him here, like a morbid dream trying to be pieced together out of fragmented edges. Five weeks ago, his problems were... tolerable. Not entirely managed, but at least they were the kind that most people dealt with. The generalized anxiety of a new assignment. The rush of adrenaline that came with playing to his strengths as a researcher. The disdain for having to meet new people, to tolerate following orders as a subordinate. The horrible, unrequited longing for...

He stops himself. The truth is, he was more shocked than anything that she had appeared again after such a long gap in his thoughts. When he left for New Mexico, they had fought rather bitterly about it. Not about the leaving itself, granted, but his rather insane request that she join him. Even now, he wouldn't be able to tell anyone what his thinking was there. She had made it clear from the beginning: once they crossed the line from psychiatrist and patient to... something else, it wasn't anything that could last. She was a married woman, and despite the lapse in judgment, the man she loved still bore a matching ring. Bruce was more like an occasional thrill that she'd foolishly allowed herself. Something that could be dropped at a moment's notice. And at the time, he agreed to let it only be that.

Then the weeks after the affair had bled into months. The visits to the hotel room she'd rented started becoming more passionate. And for the first time, they'd started to really talk. Banner had once actually laughed at the thought that if - and he was more than sure it was an if - the whole thing had been some elaborate way to coax deeper confessions out of him than in their initial psychiatry sessions, it was wildly successful. But Bruce did tell her everything he could've, damn near everything he'd hidden from even himself. And as he did, he couldn't help but enjoy memorizing the shapes of her body. Feeling the warmth of her skin on a winter's night. Watching the way her smile crept along her lips, making some sly joke at his expense if not her own. Turns out that the longer they got to know eachother, the more they realized that they were both screwed up - it just felt better to admit it when they were together.

The truth is, he'd become obsessed with her for a time. And as the path of making some kind of commitment made itself visible with the job offer in Albuquerque, she was far from ready to follow it. Maybe she'd never even really considered it in the first place. It was hard for him to know, even with the benefit of hindsight. But so much had changed in such a small amount of time that when push came to shove, Banner had never even thought about calling her. Not even to check-in. Not even to formally say goodbye, which he was so self-righteously indignant to do before he'd eventually left. Looking back on it now, all he could do was be relieved that she hadn't come. What their life could have even looked like in the face of the absolute horror that would follow.

And horror is exactly what had been waiting for him. The position in a think tank that had been promised to him was quickly turned into an active test. His expertise in radiation wasn't just theoretical anymore, despite being only a few years out from getting his Master's - it was forcibly real and very much crucial to success. And then there was the gamma bomb. The "Worldbreaker", as some had crudely dubbed it. A brilliant piece of work by a leading military technician named Sterns, the idea of the bomb was that, after enough fine-tuning, a controlled blast of gamma radiation could reverse cellular degeneration on a level most wouldn't have thought to even dream of. A cleanse of microbiomes that would jumpstart the body's natural ability to regenerate. With this type of breakthrough, it could've led to everything. Cures for every major cancerous disease as a serious advancement on available chemotherapy. Safe and effective treatment of Alzheimer's.

Of course, there was also the big one. A potential effect on cell receptors. The kind that, when compromised, would lead to certain psychotic disorders. Like the ones his mother had suffered with every day since she was a teenager. Like the ones Banner had started to suffer from himself in early adulthood. Even now, looking at his trembling hands, the good Doctor wondered how much of what he'd experienced over the last few weeks could be trusted. Had he really gone through the whole ordeal at Project Worldbreaker's unceremonious end? Was it even possible that he would be standing here if the project had actually gone as wrong as he remembered it, that rainy night in the desert?

Had he been tricked into suddenly seeing that other face in the mirror, staring back at him with nothing but hate?

"What in..."

Banner suddenly shot up from his seat upon hearing a noise. He'd been lost in thought for so long that he could tell the room had considerably darkened, bringing him closer to midnight than he'd anticipated. He wasn't sure of where his crude lodgings would be tonight, but at the moment, it didn't particularly matter: upon closer listening, he could almost swear that he'd heard someone breathing. Instinctively reaching for his bag, the Doctor retracted, realizing that he had no method of defense on his person. This was likely to be the first human contact that he'd made in weeks, and he was a stranger in a foreign land. He could have at least thought to pocket some kind of knife.

Instead, Banner quietly made his way through the public area of the bar, passing through a large cobweb and brushing off his shoulder as he moved. Whoever was there, they weren't making any attempt to flee. They also weren't making any real effort to be inviting. So either they were petrified of this man entering a place they didn't expect, or they were actively planning something. Bruce's mind raced with possibilities as he found himself in a dark, shadowy back area. About four to five poker tables sat infront of him, almost too difficult to see. Each table was scattered with cards and chips whose plastic had rotted.

Adjusting his eyes to the dark, Banner quickly realized that he hadn't imagined the breathing: someone was sitting at the table in the very back. Their features were almost impossible to make out with no working lamps, but they were tall. Wearing a wide-brimmed hat and some sort of thick jacket. Bruce froze, unable to immediately decide what to do. If the person didn't realize he was there, scaring them wasn't the best course. But the figure seemed calm. Eerily so, given the circumstances.

Clearing his throat, Banner remained standing where he was. There was no reason to limit their distance, at least not at the moment. But the figure had to know he was there, and to the Doctor's surprise, it didn't seem to phase the stranger in the slightest. At least that made one of them.

"<Ah, well... am I speaking this correctly?>"

The Doctor wasn't sure of his grasp of Ukrainian. The stranger didn't seem to react to this, either. The natural inclination in Bruce's mind was that his grasp was very poor.

"<I don't know if you can understand me.>"

The figure seemed to raise their head, slowly.

"<I am... from America. I come here... seeking someone.>"

The figure is silent for a beat. Then nods.

Banner's worries about the encounter suddenly morph into some faint hope.

"<You... can understand. That's good.>"

Then the shape of the figure's hand becomes visible. Only just, still partially obscured by the jacket, but it reveals at least some life to a frankly unsettling figure. The hand places something on the table ahead of them. Banner looks at this, curiously, trying to make out what it is. An object that's very small atop some kind of a board that now sits revealed. The Doctor inches closer to see what it is, his curiosity briefly overtaking all rational thought, until he comes close enough to accurately discern...

A chess piece. A pawn, specifically.

Bruce quickly begins to piece things together. This has to be some kind of local. An old man, more than likely, who comes to this bar in the off hours and challenges other locals and passersby to a game. Banner even starts to make out that a full set is already at play, with each piece sat on their respective sides. It stands out for its pristine condition amongst surroundings that show nothing but age and disuse. Still, Bruce politely shakes his head.

"<Oh. I... apologize. This isn't what I... that is to say, I'm looking for someone.>"

The stranger takes the pawn they laid down and taps it against the table. Wordless, with no features still to be seen in the dark. Doctor Banner tilts his gaze, feeling a general unease begin to creep up in the back of his neck. Who the hell is this? Why does it suddenly feel so foreboding to simply decline a stranger's invitation to a simple table game?

"<They work in... I'm looking for a man of science. To help me with something.>"

Once again, the stranger takes the pawn. Taps.

Banner's unease quickly gives way to impatience.

"<I'm sorry, but you'll have to find someone else. I'm not...>"

Another tap. Bruce feels his fists clasp together, tightly.

"<Listen, old man. I'm not any kind of company you want.>"

Another, more violent tap. Banner feels the veins in his neck straining.

"<Stop. I'm asking you... I'm telling you to stop.>"

The stranger pauses, still holding the pawn. Bruce takes a deep breath, quickly trying to calm himself. Afraid of checking to see what the veins would look like in the light, particularly the color of their shade. He starts to feel a pang of remorse for being so short with what is likely a harmless local. For so easily crossing over the gentleness of uncertainty into almost a blindingly quick rise in blood pressure and an irritation that could spill into something worse. Something far more dangerous than the figure even knows.

Perhaps, Banner surmises, he's looking at this all wrong. He never minded a game of chess in the past, before things got so horribly dire that even a brief moment of levity and civility could feel like the building blocks for something to escalate. Banner slowly approaches even closer, his hand resting on the chair adjacent to the stranger's. Both virtually perched in a now pitch-black area of the room, they both quietly stare at nothing except a chess board illuminated by the trickling moonlight.

"<Maybe...>"

A few more moments pass. He pulls the chair out, and slowly sits down.

All of those weeks, running. Hurrying to one hopeless location after the next.

"<Maybe I could use the break.>"

Bruce lets out a heavy sigh, quietly starting to wonder where everything went wrong.

"<Life has been hell, lately.>"

Albuquerque, New Mexico - Three Weeks After Doctor Banner's Arrival

A low rumble echoes across a military base. Ear-piercingly loud sirens have been going off for the last few minutes, too long for anyone stationed there to tell when it all began. A heavily armored military helicopter has already landed, and a fireteam has been deployed. Their orders were stressfully relayed by Colonel Glenn Talbot himself: breach the perimeter and find out just why direct combat from within the base itself had been entirely cut off. Clearly, something had happened - power had already been shutting on and off for fifteen minutes when Talbot got notice of potential seismic activity. Which wouldn't normally be worrying to him, as the area had been known for such a disturbance. But this was also one of the world's leading radioactive testing facilities, and with that volatile combination a potential reality, the mind quickly starts to wander.

That was why Bravo Team was here. Already in the weeds, as it were, Lieutenant Commander Emil Blonsky leads a squadron of six well-trained military sharpshooters onto the primary sealed entrance of the base. Men and women that he trained in Afghanistan, over a lifetime ago - all of whom he'd have gladly given his life for, given the chance. Individuals who collectively shared a history of weddings, funerals, births, and deaths. The fireteam would follow Blonsky into the fiery depths themselves if he commanded it, and he was well aware of such commitment.

Pressing the side of his sealed and armored helmet to activate the communication line, Blonsky is greeted with static that only grows louder as they approach. Given that they were all about to enter a closed-off radiation facility that had likely been compromised, the choice of attire - an advanced, state-of-the-art hazmat suit crossed with kevlar combat armor - seemed more than a little appropriate. And if it wasn't, Blonsky was going to have to convince Colonel Talbot to send a strongly worded letter to the boys over in Waynetech's Applied Sciences Division of Gotham City.

"Echo Team, this is Bravo Team. Come in, Echo Team. Repeat."

Giving his team the go-ahead maneuver, Blonsky continues to try and reach someone - anyone - inside the base who could still be alive as the forefront of his team, Sergeant Yuri, produces a set of large briefcases. Opening them, he and a fellow squad member retrieve a set of red and green override keys for the door. Nodding to eachother as they slip them into the exterior terminal, Yuri and the other soldier twists the keys in perfect synchronicity and watch as the blindingly crimson screen suddenly switches over to a brilliant emerald. A positive confirmation sound echoed through the above loudspeakers, and Blonsky turned to face the massive titanium doors leading to the underground elevator to watch them open.

"Steady as she goes. Single file, no separation. Maintain R-7 maneuver!"

"Sir, yes sir!"
"Sir, yes sir!"
"Sir, yes..."

The doors hiss with a cloud of steam, finally opening. 

What they find inside the elevator terminal is entirely unexpected. 

The walls are stained with entire gallons of blood. Entrails line the ceilings. Freshly broken human bones are scattered across the floor. Faint screams can be heard from below, with moans of agony drowning them out. Blonsky's eyes practically bolt out of his head and his squadron stops dead in their tracks. A guttural shout roars it's way across the base, echoing up through the horrifically decorated chamber containing a now visibly destroyed elevator. The metal of it seemingly ripped apart with massive hands.

"I..."

Blonsky can't find the words before the situation quickly elevates into something much, much worse. Out of the corner of the fireteam's eyes, a large creature moves alarmingly quick from within a thick blanket of steam and vaults at them. The steam dissipates, revealing not only how massive it is compared to any human height or density, but that it's skin is a deep green. They barely have time to open fire at the new target before it's smashed into them, hard. Whatever it is, as Bravo Team is about to discover... it's angry.

Very angry.
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