re: Bard's Poor Attempt at a Combined Marvel/DC Universe (an ongoing project)

Bruce jerked around at the shout of his last name. Betty was the only one who knew he came out here, right?

“Banner! Where the hell are you?”

So much for peace and quiet, he thought as “Thunderbolt” Ross stormed around the corner of the building. The storm rolled toward him, he rose to meet it.

“What the hell are you doing out here!?! Don’t you know the Pentagon is breathing fire up the stinkhole of every person out here to get your little science experiment working on time!?!”

Bruce marshalled his courage, he was in charge now so it only made sense that he stand up for himself. “First off, general, it’s not a ‘little science experiment,’ it’s the attempt to create a gamma radiation burst within a restrictive quantum field in order to control exactly when, where and how much of that energy is released.”

“I don’t give a frog’s a-“

Bruce moved into lecture mode. “Furthermore, I’m allowed a lunch break so I take one. If the Pentagon wants to fire me over it, they can and I’ll be glad to file a lawsuit over it.”

“I don’t care about your OSHA threats, boy,” the ‘thunder’ of ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross had toned down, but it was still there.

“And you can’t afford to fire me, it’s not like there’s a ‘foremost authority on gamma radiation in the world’ hanging out on every street corner. Speaking of which, where’s Arthur?”

General Ross started to respond but then stopped. He calmed a bit more after he snorted out a breath. “The Pentagon’s moved all the spare brainpower from Project Pegasus to perform in your science fair. They’re all waiting on you to give them their orders while you sit out here by yourself staring at the hills.”

Bruce turned back to look at Betty while he corrected the general, but she was gone. Her purse, her food, not even a stray piece of paper marked that she had ever been there.

“Get your act together, ‘foremost authority,’ or I’ll have you doing nothing more high-n-mighty than scrubbing test tubes for the rest of your contract.” With that, the force of nature named General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross stormed back the way he came as Bruce watched him go.

“I’m going to sound like a broken record, but I’m sorry, again.” Betty had re-appeared at the table behind him.

“I understand. He can be a bit much to deal with.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone under him stand up to him like that.”

Bruce smiled, he couldn’t help it. “People underestimate me. I’m not twenty feet tall, I don’t have the physique of a superhero and I’m a pacifist by nature. All of that makes people believe I’m a pushover. I'm not. If I think I’m in the right, I simply stand my ground and I’ve found that not working yourself into a raging frenzy with yelling and screaming ends up putting people off-balance. No one quite knows how to take a guy having a calm backbone in a confrontation, especially those blowhards like Ross who are used to using that into browbeating people into bending over for him.”

Betty seemed speechless for a moment, then she giggled.

“What?”

“You remember the last question you asked me before we were interrupted?”

“Yeah.”

“What I’m apologizing for is the answer to that question. That ‘blowhard’ is my father. My name is Betty Ross.”

“Oh.” Bruce wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that.

“I didn’t want to tell you because one of the things I enjoyed about our lunches today and yesterday was that since you didn’t know I didn’t have to wonder if you were just being nice because of who my father is. A lot of people here know. I can see them stare and whisper out of the corner of my eye. People in the office either avoid me or are overly fake-nice when they are forced to deal with me.”

“’Fake-nice’?”

“Being nice, but not sincerely. They smile but it never goes beyond their mouth,” she did it as she spoke. Bruce was thankful she demonstrated what she meant without his having to ask. He already felt out-of-touch for not knowing about “murses” or being “fake-nice”, he didn’t want to make it any worse by revealing that he had no idea how you could determine when someone was actually being fake-nice.

They stayed a little later than they were supposed to but Bruce didn’t mind. Betty’s boss wasn’t going to come down on her for being a few minutes over on lunch and he didn’t want General Ross to think he had intimidated Bruce into getting back sooner.

The next day Betty and Bruce were both slightly, but pleasantly, surprised to find the other showing up at their private spot for lunch. After that, it became part of their daily routine and before long they started meeting outside of work as well.