[Starter for Bruce Banner]

The cars wind their way under night sky in quiet glow set by moonlit clouds. After countless secluded gravel and dirt paths almost too much for rim wheels the bootleggers reach a remote outpost in the hardscrabble rags of West Virginia, where they've made the best moonshine since the Whiskey Rebellion.

The air is chilly and the burning of coalfires from mines a mountain range away make your throat itch and eyes smarts.

"This is it, Bruce," the driver says. "The Guthrie place. Now some of these folks look kinda funny, probably from kissin' cousins and all that, but don't you DARE say a rude word, you got it? These guys make the best of the best!"

Bruce Banner scratches at the three days of stubble on his chin. "My lips are sealed," he replies. Taking the fedora from his lap, he sets it atop his head, opens the car door, and steps out into the night, shrugging his shoulders to adjust his jacket at he closed the door and standing by the car, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

As Vinny the driver steps out of the car and walks along beside Bruce.

"The boss says ya used to be a chemist or somethin? We're gonna need ya ta test this batch when we get back to the warehouse. We never had trouble with the Guthries, but a batch we got from out of state was bad. -Real- bad. We can't take chances like that y'know? Bad for business."

Bruce sniffed, wrinkling his nose at the fetid air, walking a step behind Vinny who he assumes knows where they're going. "Chemist. Yes, something like that, "Bruce says quietly. "Real bad? Real bad how? Blindness and internal hemorrhaging? Sorry, like bleeding on the inside?"

"Right. They gone blind, bleedin' out, gone bonkers...you'd think they'd have this under control by now? That's why I only drink the imported stuff."

Bruce nodded again, his head turning this way and that, looking for anything that might pose a problem. His stuck his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, his right bumping against the weight of the pistol his boss had insisted he carry. "Protection," he'd said. "And theatrics. Never know when you're gonna need to show some boob you're prepared to blip him off." Bruce had pocketed the gat, swallowing his reservations.

The pair step through the frozen mud and approach a ramshackle cabin. The porch is lit by an oil lantern on top of an old barrel. A man and a woman sit on a bench on the porch, bundled for the cold layer after layer of tattered clothing. A very long rifle...heck is that a musket from the War Between the States? stands propped next to him against the wall. The woman wears a headscarf so her face can't be seen.

Vinny clears his throat. "Pardon me! Is this the Guthrie residence?"

The man stands up, and through his thick backwoods accents you gather he's young, maybe still a teenager.

"You got that right. You folks believe in spirits, doncha?"

Vinny chuckles. "Spirits? Yeah, the cleaner the better!"

The young man leaves the musket in the lady's hands and steps down from the porch.

"You must be Vinny then. I'm Sam, and this is Paige."

The lady nods.

"Please to meet yaz," says Vinny. "And this here's Bruce."

"The rest of the kin is in the shack. They come down with somethin', so best not to go in. That's why we went back to the family business."

Bruce frowns. Have they been drinking their own 'shine? "What are their symptoms?" he asks politely. "I mean...er...what's the problem? Cold? Fever? I'm a...I used to...I worked in a hospital. Maybe I can help?"

Sam stands silent, only his icy breath showing any movement.

"We don't get doctors up here. Maybe you seen these things before. Don't rightly know."

Sam looks up at Vinny.

"We'll do this like my grandpa did it. The jugs are under the porch. Leave the envelope there. You can wait in the car if Bruce ain't done yet."

Paige stands and carries the musket barrel with her as she cautiously opens the porch door.

"If you please, Dr. Bruce?" Says Sam.

With a glance at Vinny and a nod that he hopes conveys the message of "Everything's going to be fine," Bruce takes his hands out of his pockets (carefully, so as not to upset the gun), wipes them on the outside of his threadbare but sturdy long coat, and steps inside.

"Ma'am," he adds politely to Paige, tipping the brim of his fedora as he passes her.

It's as much squalor as you've ever seen as the floorboard creaks when anyone moves. There's an old cast iron stove in the back and a some handmade wooden furniture.

There's barely room to move as there's seven more Guthries living in this shack, staring back at you with young but worn, hungry faces. As you pass one of them you wonder why he's wearing a cloak made of feathers until you see the pinions. He has WINGS.

"This here's Jake," Sam says. "His wings started growin' a couple years ago. He can't get out much for fear o'bein seen. Some night when it ain't cold out? He can fly he can see good too. Can catch anything that can git in the stew pot. Paige? You wanna show him?"

She hesitantly nods, and pulls off her head covering. She's a full-figured young lady with dirty blonde hair. When you see her face it looks like someone's ripped half the skin off to reveal a marble statue beneath.

"When Paige's skin peels off you never know what's gonna be underneath. Could be rock. Could be wood. Could be iron." He gestures towards the others, younger in age all the way to six.

"Have you ever seen anything like this, Dr. Bruce? We're trapped in this valley because of what we are. We can't show our faces at the corner store, they think we're the Devil's spawn! And what's gonna happen to my younger kin? They gonna end up like us too?"

"My God," whispers Bruce, his eyes widening. Louder, he says, "This is...this is incredible." He reaches out a hand towards young Jake, then pulls it back, remembering his manners. He takes them all in, his mind drifting to the grey-green beast living inside him. How long until his own monster comes forth once more? If it were to happen here, inside this tiny shack, with all these children present...he feels his heart rate begin to increase, and takes a deep breath, calming himself. Think of them, he commands himself.

"Were you all exposed to anything...odd?" asks Bruce. "Chemical waste? Anything unusual? Or did this just happen to you?" Banner wished he had his old laboratory. At this point, even a triage kit would be helpful. He needed blood samples, tissue.

"My Pa told us people in this here valley started gettin' sick and dyin' once Roxxon bought the old coal mines and stated diggin' again. Said they found glowin' rock. uranium. Miners started dyin' ten times as fast as th' black lung. So bad they brought their own men in metal suits to dig for 'em. They use 'em as company men too, wavin' guns and knockin' down houses. SENTINELS they call 'em. They done their damnedest to force everybody off the land, but Pa never budged an' I promised 'im we never would."

He buries his face in his hands, and his hard demeanor starts to break.

"Was he wrong, Dr. Bruce? The Indians said this land was cursed...now I'm startin' t'believe it! Have we grown up eatin' food in poison soil? Is that what done us in?"

Uranium? Well that did put a different spin on things. Bruce had heard rumors that a physicist by the name of Oppenheimer had been working with the radioactive stuff, but he'd never read or seen anything that would indicate it could cause such mutations in human beings before. Cancer, sure, he mused, thinking of his own condition. He'd often wondered how much his own exposure had contributed to his once-failing health.

"I don't believe in curses Sam," he replied gently, laying a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I believe in science. But this is too much for me to be able to figure out here and now. I'm going to need to come back, take some samples, do some research, if that's okay."

Bruce didn't like the sound of these Sentinels, nor any corporation trying to force people off their land, but he was currently in no more of a position to do anything about them than he was able to fully analyze the Guthries.

As Bruce ponders the quandry the Guthries are in, metallic hands smash through the ramshackle boards of the Guthrie house. Mechanical men break their way through the walls!

"SENTINELS!" Sam shouts as an aura of energy surrounds him. He with a blur of speed he slams into one with ring or a wrecking ball against the metal shall of a man, hurtling it back out of the house.

"Jay! Take the younguns and fly out of here! Paige! Let's show these company men what happens when you mess with the Guthries!" Dr. Bruce! You best run, Sir!"

Outside, shots ring out from as Vinnie's .45 ricohets against one of the invaders!

Atop a nearby mountain, a Colonel Fury in heavy winter clothing watches five glowing objects descend on the Guthrie house through a handheld telescope.

"Th'hell? I didn't order backup from Stark..."

His cigarette drops out of his mouth.

"Those aren't Stark's. They're knock-offs of one of his prototypes. The kind he passed off to the War Department...TRASK! That greedy bastard! Murdering innocent civilians for the bottom line?

He pauses as a Sentinel is catapulted out of the house, then watches as another unit shoots down an civilian with its built-in machine gun.

"There's more goin' on here than we thought! It'll take us ten minutes to climb down there! Captain, call HQ and..

Captain?

CAPTAIN!!! GET BACK...oh nevermind..."

Without thinking, Bruce dashes forward to put himself between the remains of the wall and the remaining Guthries. What the hell? Bruce wondered. Did Sam just explode?

Yanking the gat out of his coat, Bruce stands in the space where the wall used to be and shouts, "Jay! Go! Now!"

Nick was underestimating how far down Cap. Rogers could jump. By the time Nick noticed him missing, he was already halfway down the hill. As he jumped the last of the sheer drops along the way, the longest drop of the lot, he hopped onto his shield and used it to redirect the shock of his landing into forward momentum. He managed 40 mph at the peak and found that he could control his direction, to some extent, by leaning to the side.

Steve steered his makeshift vehicle toward the line of Sentinels and slammed his way right through the Sentinel line, a streak of red, white and blue, grabbing two of their ankles and knocking them on their mechanical butts.

"No more killing," he said, as he lifted his shield back up and offered himself as a target.

Inside the shack, one of the Sentinels reaches for Paige's head...and with a loud rip pulls back a large sheet of human skin and clothing.

Where Paige's head and right arm were, it now looks like a copy of the Sentinel's armor. Paige strikes with a right hook on the attacker's jaw with a very loud CLANG, flooring him. The armored foe smashes through the rickety floorboards.

From where the wall used to be, a young man spreads his ashen wings with two small terrified children in his arms and begins to rise on the frigid air. The four Sentinels in front are too busy firing bullets at Cap's shield to notice, but the Sentinel that just shot down Vinny in cold blood takes aim.

Sam's hurtles towards the Sentinel as his body radiates energy again and tackles him. Next, a comet shooting straight upwards flares in the Appalachian night sky with the hapless murderer trapped in Sam's field as they ascend.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:38, Wed 16 Jan 2019.

Bruce, seeing that everyone who might be in more danger than himself seems to have moved away from the immediate danger, lowers his head and begins running for the car he and the late Vinny arrived in. Whatever was going on here was not only outside his purview, but fundamentally dangerous to his continued health as well.

He gritted his teeth as he ran, feeling the adrenaline coursing through him, trying to fight the panic he feared would trigger the change and bring out the monster within.

What goes up must come down. And indeed it does as Sam finally adjusts his course. With a roar of speed Sam slams into his front yard, using the screaming dope inside the Sentinel suit as his cushion. Dirt flies everywhere as the blast wave demolishes what's left of his home and knocks the other four Sentinels off their feet.

Unfortunately for Bruce, the impact also flips the getaway car end over end and hurtles him into the woods.

Impact.

Pain shoots through Bruce's body. And anger. He hadn't wanted any of this. He only wanted to be left alone. But he had fallen in with these bootleggers and thought to maybe make a buck or two, enough to keep him flush for a little while while he sorted things out, and anyway screw Prohibition who do they think they are taking land away from poor people like Sam and DAMMIT, am I bleeding? What happened to my clothes?

The wreckage of the car shoots sideways, careening off of a tree, stripping bark and leaving a gash as it bounces into the shadows of the flames coming from the Sentinel's wrecked form. From those shadows a form steps: huge, grey, and clearly angry.

"WHERE IS GIANT CAN? I WILL SMASH!!!"

Sam climbs out of the crater, his clothing in the same shape as Bruce's. He stares up at the Hulk.

"Sweet Jesus...you're cursed...just like us..."

A voice calls out from the rubble. "S...Saaaam?"

Sam turns away from the Green Goliath. "Paige? PAIGE!!!"

He scrambles around the edge of the crater and stumbles towards the rubble of the shack, even as the Sentinels begin rising to their feet.

"There's more freaks here than they told us about! And nobody said anything about Captain America! SENTINELS, CODE RUBY! SENTINELS, CODE RUBY!"

When the gunfire stops, Captain America Stands to his feet and addresses the Sentinels. "Stand down! This is a SHIELD bust! You are not authorized to kill the suspects!"

Then he notices the giant entering the building...

"No! No smashing the cans! Stand down!"

"Negative! This is ROXXON OIL CORPORATION property and your team is TRESPASSING on sensitive....Disregard...incoming orders...disengage threats...return to base."

The ground under the Sentinel erupts with flame and smoke as they start to rise in the air like human(?) rockets.

With a roar that sounds like a dinosaur crossed with a US M1917 tank, the Hulk take a single leap through the air. Landing next to the wreckage of Vinny's car, the behemoth grabs the crumpled fender and hurls it at one of the departing Sentinels!

The solid metal fender hurls through the air and slams into one of the Sentinels, breaking one of his thrusters so he spins madly through the air in a dizzying spiral before he explodes, raining more bits of flaming metal down in the frozen valley.

With a squawk of static, Fury's voice shouts through Cap's walkie-talkie.

"Is that the same HULK from the Chicago bust? Do not engage until I get backup from General Ross! Get the Guthries to safety!"

"Far as I can tell, Colonel, it's the same guy. I haven't exactly had the chance to look him over, but I think it's safe to proceed as if he were. Either way, I have the feeling it's his move."

Whatever was going on here, it was far more serious than moonshine, but the Sentinels didn't need to know why SHIELD was really here.

All they needed to know was that Captain America was between them and their prey. Steve makes a quick survey of the vehicles, looking for one that is still large enough and intact enough to serve. "We need to get moving," he says. "Is anybody still in that car?"

Sam is doing his best to throw rubble aside while frantically searching for his sister.

Captain America can't afford to keep his eyes on that Hulk. He has to concentrate on rounding up any survivors. When he sees what Sam is doing, he runs over and lends his superior strength to Sam's efforts, while still trying to keep track of that Hulk.

"Who are we looking for," he asks?

"My sister Paige is in here somewhere!"

He pulls he picks up a cinder block and tosses it aside and finds a girl's arm.

"PAIGE!"

Hulk hears Sam shout. The name registers somewhere in his anger-fueled brain. Paige was a girl; Banner saw her; the Statue Girl. She was a child.

"Paige?" the behemoth asks in the direction of Sam and Cap. With a leap, he closes the gap and begins throwing debris aside to get her clear, heedless of who might be in the way. "Statue Girl?"

Captain America isn't nearly as strong as the Hulk, but with the two of them working together, they can dig Paige up in no time. That's the easy part. Cap hoped she wasn't too broken to be moved, but the Hulk was calling her "Statue Girl." That sounded like a good possibility.

He checked for a pulse and hoped for the best.

"Can't get a pulse from a statue..."

With only she flickering flames from destroyed Sentinels and the moon to guide him, Sam grabs an iron poker from where the cast iron stove used to be. He taps five times...the Universal Knock.

Two faint taps ring back from inside the statue.

"She's healin' back. Give her time and she'll shed out of it."

He stands and tries to brush the dirt off his coat.

"Thank you Captain America and...Doctor Bruce for helping...It looks like we gotta leave the homestead now, Paige. We'll meet Jay and the cage by the huntin' blind. Ain't nothin' left of Grandpa's shack..."

"I agree and I have orders to get you out of here," says the Captain, as he looks around again, for a vehicle that could be used. If not, he'd have to pick up the statue and start running.

The Hulk, confused and angry, picks up Sam under one arm and Paige under the other.

"No one else hurts Hulk's friends!" he growls. "Nobody gives HULK orders!"

And with a mighty leap, the behemoth is airborne!

"Now hold on there big feller! I...HEY!"

Sam looks back at Captain America in alarm as the grayish Goliath scoops him and his statue of a sister up the way his other brother picked up the youngest Guthries.

"We're supposed to meet our brother an abandoned mine to the east! That's over yonder!

He points where the outline of a mountain is dran under the waxing moon in the Appalaichan sky.

"Can we get there, Doctor Hulk? Please?

End of scene. To be continued in ROXXON Mines.