Bruce Banner, now working for SHIELD,
is at a remote base in Montana. Iron Man arrives unannounced and Tony
Stark confronts Director Maria Hill about her apparently insane
decision to hire the exceedingly dangerous Banner. Pausing briefly to
examine one of Bruce's new inventions, Tony enters Banner's lab to
find him laughing over a pun in an abstruse formula and joins him in
his amusement. Bruce explains the new situation and Tony volunteers
to escort him on his next project (since no one else would accompany
Bruce Banner in an enclosed plane)....
In the Himalayas, Bruce plants a rod
called a gamma-fracker in the site of an untapped natural gas
deposit. The experiment over, Tony continues to tinker with Bruce's
device until the latter explains the real reason for bringing Tony
out there: it's because he is fed up with Tony's constant
condescension and he want to have it out...now. The armored Hulk
battles the armored Iron Man on the snowy mountain until the
gamma-fracker overloads and explodes—though Hulk is sane enough to
protect Shellhead from the blast....
Later Bruce and Tony recuperate at a
mountain monastery and Bruce explains why he doesn't want to be
another Tony Stark: Tony is an engineer, he can only build forwards;
Bruce is a scientist, he can build backwards and create a whole new
science. Intimidated, Tony leaves the room to remind himself he is
still rich. Then a call comes in from Maria Hill: Banner is urgently
needed back in Montana....