Is it too early for an Age of Ultron AU? I was turning a bunch of them over in my head, and some aren’t AoU so much as Avengers AU/ Crossovers. Can’t decide which ones I like more.
(And then I got an image of the Hamada bros as the Maximoff twins and just about died of happiness. Somehow in between the doodle above emerged. I’ll post the full version sometime)
Still, I was thinking an AU in which HYDRA kidnap all of the Nerd Squad as young children, turning them into mutant superheroes that later resurface to combat the Avengers.
Tadashi and Hiro disappear after an explosion in their home. It kills their superscientist parents (they were 3 and 10, respectively). and nearly them as well. They’re assumed dead; in reality, Tadashi gets badly injured and Hiro gets off with lots of trauma to show for it. Hiro believes the HYDRA scientists when they say they operated on Tadashi to save his life. It helps that it’s mostly true. Plus, any trauma afterwards (re: waking up without most of his memories) can get attributed to the car wreck. How convenient.
They do the experiments on Hiro because he’s a genius and he’s there.
Hiro becomes a technopath. Tadashi becomes Sunfire. He can manipulate flame at will, but suffers a lot of control issues, which is why he has to wear the suit. It helps him prevent his powers from running wild. Even when he’s not in the suit, he wears the gauntlets, which suck heat in and prevent his temperature from fluctuating overmuch. Basically runescratch’s Sunfire. It’s amazing. The above art may actually be fanart for runescratch in disguise, actually. Whichever works.
Wasabi summons laser blades from his hands. Gogo is a speedster. Honey… uhh… manipulates the chemical makeup of things that she touches? That seems really overpowered. Fred can turn into a dragon-like creature to match the Hulk - he’s considered more “evolved” because he retains more of his humanity.
Also, all of them may be various form of sociopath. Probably because of their upbringing. For some reason, Tadashi never really loses his humanity. He retains a lot of his original personality, and HYDRA gives him leeway because he and Hiro are with them voluntarily. All they can remember of their childhood, after all, is the STARK label on the missiles that targeted their home. Hiro wants blood, and HYDRA can help them.
(Was the bombing staged by HYDRA? Who can say?)
When the Avengers attack a prominent HYDRA base, the Hamada brothers surface (against orders) to stop them. Just picture Hiro deactivating the Iron Man suit from the ground and sending Tony plummeting out of the sky.
“BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING, HUH??"
He’s also listening in on all of their comms, so he knows exactly what’s going on.
Of course, the Avengers have age, experience, and possibly skill with weaponry on their side. Big Hero 6 gets the jump on them, for sure, but they make a comeback. Hiro gets captured at some point. They make Tadashi and the rest see sense. In the end, after a whole lot of trouble and wrecked buildings, the Nerd Herd decide to try to pursue a normal life.
They find that normal life as far away as they can. Welcome to the Other Side of the Continent, San Fransokyo.
Alternatively, all this can happen with just the Hamada Brothers in place of the twins. Heh.
(*SCREAMING AND FLAILING AT ALL OF THE ABOVE*
Oh god, imagine if they can’t have a normal life. They try as hard as they can to just be normal in San Fransokyo - basically it’s one of the few places on the planet where Tadashi can walk around with his gauntlets and no one will look twice - and for a time they manage it. But then some sort of natural disaster happens, or there’s a crime wave, or just something, and they realize that they’re the only ones nearby who can help. So they do. Because even though they’re a wee bit broken and a wee bit messed up by what HYDRA did to them, they still feel obligated to try to be better people after the Avengers helped them see what they were doing wrong.
And thus Big Hero 6 is born. Although the media actually keeps calling them Avengers Junior, which annoys all of them. Except Fred. Fred digs it
And yes, it’s been two months, and this post is mostly spoiler free. I’ll let it pass :P)