Brazil, the Rio de Vida Favela.
Natasha wore a black off-shoulder gown that looked like an evening dress, with a mink stole draped over her shoulders, strolling through a nearly deserted corner of the slums as if nobody else existed.
She walked like she was on a runway, speaking to the air. "Sri Lanka, Sambawa, Cape Town, and now it's Rio de Vida again?"
After that, she listened carefully to the voice in her earpiece.
"Natasha, that giant has already learned solid counter-tracking methods through constant entanglements with the military. Nobody expected him to jump into the sea from Sri Lanka and swim all the way to South America before coming ashore."
"What a surprise." Natasha sneered unhappily. "Besides Brazil, I still have at least six suspected locations to search. I'm really grateful for the Intelligence Department's hard work."
After mocking them, Natasha found a small house hidden enough to use.
After paying the owner an appropriate amount of money, Natasha casually showed him the pistol strapped to the outside of her thigh.
At that, the owner gave up any thoughts of robbing her, then taking advantage of her too. He took his daughter and tried to leave.
But somehow, looking at the pitiful little girl the man was holding by the hand, Natasha seemed to see her younger self.
"Wait." She lifted a hand and stopped them.
"Let your daughter work for me. I'll give you enough money, with only one condition. Never appear in front of your daughter again. How about it?"
As she spoke, Natasha looked at the girl's face, where faint bruises lingered.
The girl froze, then lowered her head hard. Her thin chin nearly stabbed into her equally thin chest, starved by malnutrition.
"Damn Americans!" the owner roared at Natasha. "That's my daughter. Not everything can be measured with money!"
Natasha smiled with contempt, thenHere's Chapter 13 translated into natural, fluent English in a Webnovel style, keeping the original tone and details, with no em dashes.
Chapter 13: Academy of Sciences?
Brazil, the Rio Verde slums.
Natasha wore a black off-shoulder long gown that looked almost like an evening dress, a mink fur stole draped over her shoulders. She strolled through a nearly deserted corner of the slums as if no one else existed.
She walked as if on a runway, speaking to the air as she went.
"Sri Lanka, Sambawa, Cape Town, and now it's Rio Verde?"
After saying that, she listened carefully to the voice coming through her earpiece.
"Natasha, that giant has already learned very mature counter-tracking techniques through constant entanglements with the military. No one would have guessed he'd jump into the sea from Sri Lanka, swim all the way to South America, and only then come ashore!"
"What a pleasant surprise," Natasha sneered. "Besides Brazil, I still have at least six suspected locations to check. Really, I'm deeply grateful for Intelligence's hard work."
With a displeased snort, Natasha found a small house hidden enough to suit her.
After paying the owner an appropriate amount, she casually showed him the handgun strapped to the outside of her thigh.
At that point, the owner no longer had any plans to rob her and then take advantage of her. He tugged his daughter along, ready to leave.
But for some reason, when Natasha saw the pitiful little girl being led by the hand, she seemed to see her old self.
"Wait!"
She could not help raising a hand to stop them.
"Let your daughter work for me. I'll give you enough money. My only condition is that you never appear in front of your daughter again. How about it?"
As she spoke, Natasha looked at the girl's face, where there were faint bruises.
The girl froze, then lowered her head hard. Her thin chin nearly stabbed into her equally thin, malnourished chest.
"Damn Americans!" the owner roared at Natasha viciously. "That's my daughter. Not everything can be measured in money!"
Natasha laughed with contempt, then extended her other leg from beneath the gown so he could see.
Strapped deeper along that thigh were a mini submachine gun and a dagger.
A moment later, the owner grinned broadly, revealing filthy teeth, and held out his right hand, five fingers spread.
"More money."
"Deal."
Just like that, Natasha's temporary place in Brazil gained a little maid who worked hard without complaint.
Three days passed…
Natasha visited every location where the Hulk was suspected to have appeared, and S.H.I.E.L.D. finally confirmed the Hulk's true position.
It was at a settlement called Montevideo, roughly 80 km80 km from the Rio Verde slums.
He was disguised as a doctor, or rather, he was actually doing a doctor's work.
And in the near future, he would leave Montevideo and come to Rio Verde for a consultation.
So Natasha waited here.
While she waited, Natasha had a long talk with her little maid, or rather, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s current probationary agent.
More than once, Natasha felt her heart get pierced straight through by the girl's brutally real words.
"Why did you buy me? I'm not a virgin. My first time was sold by my dad to the neighbor two years ago."
"I don't know what I can do. Does crying count? I always like hiding and crying. That's what I'm best at."
"You said I'm an agent now, a probationary agent, so what do I do? Can I live like this right now? This is too happy."
Facing a girl like that, all Natasha could do was hug her, and tell her this.
"You don't need to be able to do anything, because your slightly sad expression can stop even the scariest monster."
"So you only need to be yourself."
And tonight was the night the little girl would be herself.
…
Bruce Banner had never denied his luck.
Someone like him, irradiated by gamma rays and still alive, there was only him.
But he had also never denied his misfortune.
Alive, yet forced to live in hiding.
Incredibly powerful, yet unable to restrain it.
To fight meant to lose himself.
To back down was not his choice.
His proudest achievement in life, his research into gamma rays, had become the key that unlocked this nightmare of a life.
He had built his own Pandora's box, and opened it with his own hands.
Even hatred seemed to have no target left.
Because the person he hated most had given birth to the person he loved most.
Wearing a torn shirt and a ragged jacket, stepping through filthy, damp mud, he carried a medical kit on the verge of falling apart and walked without motivation through the crowded, chaotic slums.
He had destroyed too much, too many times.
Even if it was not what he wanted, he had still brought far too much ruin.
And now, it seemed only saving people could give him any comfort.
He entered a room. A patient lay on a ragged straw mat.
A middle-aged woman, her face marked with red patches like frostbite scars.
"It's lupus."
He reached the conclusion in moments.
Yes, he was practicing medicine. He wanted to find his way back to a heart that had nearly gone numb by saving others.
But it was useless.
Because there were too many illnesses he could not cure, and too many people he could not save.
Like this woman with lupus. She was too poor, the environment was too terrible, the facilities were incomplete. All she could do was wait to die.
Bruce Banner stared at the ceiling helplessly, his beard like weeds covering his cheeks.
What else could he do?
Visit the next patient.
"Hello, I… my mom… she's sick. She threw up so many times. She hasn't eaten all day…"
A little girl's voice, with a hint of sobbing.
Banner turned toward the sound.
A child, small and thin. A slightly bloated belly showed indigestion. Yellowed skin suggested poor liver function. Lifeless eyes, hair with too much dandruff. She had been malnourished for far, far too long.
Yet she still held out a small handful of the lowest-denomination bills.
"Please… I only have this much money. Please!"
Her pleading echoed, and the nearly rotting banknotes in her hand trembled as she shook them.
She should not have been clutching that rotten money and waving it around in a place this disgusting.
She should have been holding flowers, waving in a sports meet, calling out to the boy she admired on a basketball court.
Thinking that, pity rose in Bruce's chest.
After a moment of thought, he said, "This isn't about money."
…
Yes. It really was not about money. Who could bear to take the last of this girl's money?
Bruce Banner followed her all the way to her home.
The longer he walked, the heavier his heart sank.
It was too remote. No one would like living there.
Especially sick people. Sick people in the slums preferred to lie down where there were crowds, hoping to catch the pity of some wealthy passerby and buy themselves a little more time.
But here… was it what he thought?
The girl opened the door. Inside was dark.
Bruce had barely reached the bedroom doorway when he saw that the girl who had entered ahead of him had already fled out the window like a monkey.
Banner turned back in understanding.
A woman stood there, wearing a black evening gown, a mink stole, and soft, smooth red hair. She smiled at him gently.
She smiled, and Banner smiled back.
"If you're not her mother, or even if you are, it still means the 'mother' she mentioned isn't sick, right?" Banner asked.
Natasha nodded.
Seeing her hair sway lightly, Banner let out a long breath.
"Good. Nobody's sick. That's good."
He smiled so brightly.
For some reason, that instant smile made Natasha feel intensely guilty.
But mission came first. In the end, Natasha hardened her heart.
"You don't need to be angry. We have no malicious intent. Otherwise, it wouldn't be me who came for you."
"So?" Banner sounded absent-minded.
"Just the two of us, you and me. Let's talk, okay?"
"Heh. Maybe." Banner's eyes were calm. "But don't do anything extreme. I don't want this land, already full of holes, to pay that guy's price again."
"OK." Natasha agreed readily.
Banner made a gesture like he was listening.
"This time, no one wants to capture you. I'm not from the damned U.S. military. I'm with S.H.I.E.L.D.!"
"In the past seventy years, S.H.I.E.L.D. has saved the world countless times from the shadows. What we deal with is usually disasters the real world can't handle."
"And now, we've run into trouble we can almost not handle at all. We need your strength!"
"No. You need his strength."
Banner looked displeased. He hated the power inside him. He hated, feared that monster.
Yet that monster made people "admire" him. That was not the kind of admiration he wanted.
His talent, almost no one in the world could match it. He had been one of the world's most famous top professors in radiology.
But now, that savage, ugly image was going to bury his own worth. He would never accept it.
In an instant, the veins on his neck began to turn green.
In the Avengers movie, Banner agreed to Natasha's invitation mainly because her high-sounding reason was that they needed his deep understanding of radiology to track the Tesseract Loki had taken.
That was recognition of him, not recognition of the monster.
Him.
Bruce Banner.
Not a monster.
Never.
"Fuck, damn it, Banner, calm down," Natasha snapped, anxiety showing as she forced herself to stay steady. "At least look at the information I'm giving you."
"I understand your anger, but I have to admit, what we're facing is a beast that can't be restrained."
"We need another beast to balance it. But aside from balancing it, the beast in your heart is worthless to us."
"On the contrary, your brain might help us find another way."
"I believe you. Calm down. You haven't lost control for seven months and eighteen days."
"Like you said, don't hurt this land. I'm begging you!"
Under Natasha's relentless persuasion, Banner barely reined in his emotions.
He frowned and took Natasha's phone.
A moment later, realization flashed in his eyes.
On the phone, videos played one after another.
Heisenberg falling from the sky. Heisenberg launching upward in a single leap. Heisenberg flying at terrifying speed. His heat vision, his freeze breath, and the most critical part, that one punch.
And of course, the slap that blew Kingpin's head apart.
"He's different from you." Natasha spoke quickly. "Earth is your home forever, but he's a passerby."
"Super strength, super speed, supersonic flight, his beams and his breath. He's a real monster we can't stop."
"Even if he has a body similar to ours, he's the real monster."
"And you can see it. He's arrogant, spoiled, rude, and cruel!"
As she spoke, Natasha extended her right hand toward the Hulk, a hand that looked delicate and powerless.
"We need you. Earth needs you, Banner!"
…
Elsewhere, Coulson was thrown out for the fourth time by Stark Industries' new manager, Pepper Potts.
Tony Stark's palladium poisoning was already severe. He needed S.H.I.E.L.D.'s help. Coulson had come here ready to offer a hand.
But with everything unable to be made public, Tony's arrogance meant he simply refused to see him.
Even though Tony had been forced to accept the role of S.H.I.E.L.D. consultant, it looked like he did not take S.H.I.E.L.D. or the consultant title seriously at all.
As he walked out of Stark Industries, Coulson felt suffocated with frustration.
Who on earth could drag that Iron Man out when he was hiding away to self-destruct?
…
At the same time, inside Stark's lab.
Pepper Potts barged in, furious. From far away she shouted at Tony.
"More than twelve directors have filed an impeachment against me. My proposals were clearly your decisions, but you never said a single fair word for me!"
"I know you're Iron Man, but you're not only Iron Man. You shouldn't throw all your energy into your armor. You'll miss a lot of things!"
"Like the fairy named Pepper by my side?" Tony replied lazily.
"No. An invitation from the Academy of Sciences."
"Oh?" Tony raised his head, puzzled. "Isn't Oxford's Academy of Sciences invitation next month? Which Academy is this?"
"I don't know, but it doesn't seem like a joke. The person who delivered the invitation was the Mayor of New York."
Hearing that, Tony took the invitation and glanced at it.
Only a moment later, he lifted his head with obvious interest.
"I think this is a joke. The address on the invitation is in New York, and it's the top floor of Brooklyn's Golden Tower. I've been to that hellhole."
As he spoke, Tony started laughing loudly while tidying himself up.
"But even if it's a joke, I have to go see it. What kind of genius puts an Academy of Sciences invitation address inside a nightclub?"
"So you've been there too?!" Pepper Potts instantly caught something, and in the next moment, Tony felt a chill crawl up his spine.
/-\
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