At a diner in Manchester, Alabama,
SHIELD Director Maria Hill enjoys a meal while she takes a call from
Agent Phil Coulson explaining how they lost track of the Hulk; to
Hill's surprise, Bruce Banner walks in and sits down at her table. He
explains he has been giving thought to his legacy and doesn't want to
be remembered only as the Hulk. Knowing that he will
always be the Hulk, Banner wants to do good in the time he has left
so he has a proposition for her: if SHIELD will provide him with a
state-of-the-art lab and support, he will make Hulk available for
their use. And so he is here, offering his help with the current
situation: SHIELD is set to raid the Mad Thinker's hideout and Banner
would like to audition for the job. They head out to the scene and
when Banner isn't looking, Hill clobbers him with a plank....
Within his lair, the Mad Thinker sits,
waiting to spring his trap on SHIELD and glorying in his superior
intellect—and then the Hulk comes through the wall. As the villain
recalculates the odds, Hulk smashes his robotic servants to junk. The
Thinker, wearing a huge armored battle suit, unleashes blasts from a
cannon based on Ultron's Quantum Molder, blasts designed to melt
adamantium. Hulk seizes the cannons and points them upward,
triggering a roof collapse and the shocked discovery by the Mad
Thinker that Hulk's strength is incalculable...and then Hulk rips his
suit apart. The building collapses into rubble, Thinker is arrested,
and Banner pulls himself from the wreckage. Hill tells him he's hired
and takes him off to sign the official paperwork....