Stolen - Tony Stark

25.

New York, 2016

"Welcome to the Avengers Facility," Kass told Regina when they entered the facility.  "Home sweet home." 

"I know, I've been here. When I broke in."

"Oh, yeah."

"So are you living here?"

"Yeah, for now. We were looking into getting our own place in the area but just haven't gotten around to it yet with the fallout of the team breaking up and all that drama." 

"So, how long have you and Iron Man been together?" Regina asked. 

"Good question.  No all that long actually. We've been really on and off until now.  That was my fault, I was scared of commitment."

After getting a change of clothes and finding something for Regina to wear, she headed down to the lab where Tony was closely examining the piece of adamantium with his tools. 'Cool Tools' as Kass like to call them.

Regina gave a low whistle of astonishment upon seeing the lab. 

"I know, that was my first reaction too," Kass agreed.  She turned to her boyfriend. "How's it going?"

"Interesting. I've been comparing this piece to a sample of vibranium I had, and there's some similarities between the two, but this stuff is definitely stronger."

"How much?"

"Significantly."

"Damn." Now it was Kass's turn to whistle in astonishment.  "I want to do some research on this, see what more we can find out, if anything. But I'm thinking, these are tech thieves we're dealing with, probably expert hackers, if I'm guessing from personal experience.  They could be tracking our computers and our activity."  

"What do we do then?" asked Regina.  

"You're not going to like this, oh tech genius," she told Tony.  "But we go old school."

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"Okay I'm ready to go." Regina emerged from the closet in her new outfit, which consisted of a pair of jeans, sneakers, a beanie, and a Captain America hoodie. Kass had found everything for her except for the hoodie, that was Regina's own addition. 

"Oh that's really subtle," commented Kass.

"What? I'm not the only one who loves this guy."

"I guess it'll do. Come on."

Heavily disguised - well at least on Tony's part - the trio headed to the nearest mall and right to the bookstore. 

"Don't steal anything," Kass told her sister. 

"I'm not going to, don't worry - oh, those boots are cute." Regina stopped in front of a store window.  

"Keep moving please," Kass requested, tugging the other woman along. 

When they reached the bookstore, they got right down to work on research.  They split up and each took a separate section of the store to search through: Kass took history, Regina took world, and Tony took mechanics and metalwork.

It was certainly a lot less quick than using a computer - old school indeed. 

Pretty soon, an impressive stack of history books had accumulated next to Kass. "Nope." She tossed another one onto the pile. Nothing on adamantium or anything similar.

Just when she was starting to grow intensely frustrated did she finally have some luck.  She quickly regrouped with the others, who hadn't been having any luck either, book in hand.  "Listen to this: When the Nazis invaded Greece in 1941 during World War II, they sent H.Y.D.R.A. units across the coast searching for precious metals... They believed these metals were imbued with the power of the Gods, and could be found all throughout the Mediterranean. Allied forces shut down such searches in North Africa during the end of the campaign in that area in 1943...  Well, from what Cap's told us about H.Y.D.R.A., they believed in myths and magic and all that  and were pretty obsessed with it all."

"Do you think those 'precious metals' could be what we're dealing with?" Tony asked.

"Well according to the people after us, it's a metal, and it's pretty precious," put-in Regina.  

"So it's incredibly strong and supposedly imbued with the power of the gods - I can see the appeal," remarked Kass.

"So are we going to have to go to the Mediterranean?" asked Regina.

"We were just there," cried Tony. 

"I know. But we can take your swanky private jet again." 

"Well, at least that's a start." Kass closed the book and returned it to its place on the shelf. 

"Uh oh, we've got company," Regina said as they left the store. 

Kass followed her gaze to several people standing in a close circle, looking like undercover security guards.  "Those the same people chasing us?"

"Well not sure if it's the exact same people, but they're working with them along the same lines."

"How can you be sure?"

"Cause I recognize them from dealings in the past."

"And by 'past dealings' you mean stealing from them."

"Precisely."

"We've got more," Tony whispered, nodding to a similar group further down the hall. 

  Suddenly, Regina drew in a sharp breath.

"What is it?"

"Goliath." She nodded to one of the people, a tall, muscular man wearing dark glasses. 

"Huh?"

"He worked closely with our dad-"

"I thought I told you to stop calling him that."

"-He's another big arms dealer. Those guys who were chasing us work for him. He's who I stole the adamantium from."  

"Well it must be serious if the main guy is coming to do the dirty work himself." 

"Yeah."

"They're really hell-bent on getting this adamantium." 

"F.R.I.D.A.Y., any more that you can tell?"

"Yes Boss - they've got units on all mall floors and by all of the exits."

"They came prepared." Kass sighed.  "How are we going to get out of here if the place is crawling with them?"

"I have an idea," piped-up Regina.  "But you may not like it."

"What is it? We don't exactly have a lot of options here."

"Alright, well you asked for it." Suddenly, Regina jumped back and pointed at Tony, then yelled at the top of her lungs, "OH MY GOD! IT'S TONY STARK!"

(Haha, I felt that was a good place to end the chapter ;)

I absolutely love Steve and Nat's disguised trip to the mall in Winter Soldier so I had to recreate something similar here with these characters! 

I was researching characters connected to Klaue and  read about the Masters of Evil and Goliath cause I wanted to keep it tied to the universe! I'm learning lots of cool stuff about the comics and characters with the research I'm doing for these stories. 

By the looks of things, we'll be wrapping up this story soon to tie into the end of my 'End of an Era' story.  Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed :))