Bond of Stone ~ A Loki x OC Story

Chapter 14

The next morning Rhi heads to the Avengers' floor to see where they're at with Ultron. The floor is still covered in broken glass from the previous night.

She sees, former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Maria Hill, talking with Steve and overhears them talking about the Maximoff twins.

"Who are the Maximoffs?" Rhi says as she walks up to them.

Maria hesitates but Steve nods that it's ok. "Wanda and Pietro."

"They volunteered for Strucker's experiments and were the only survivors. The results turning them into enhanced beings. With Strucker out of the picture, it looks like they've teamed up with Ultron."

"So they have, powers?"

"Yes. To put it bluntly, he's fast and she's weird...kinda like you."

"I think I have her beat on the weird scale." Rhi says while pointing at her ears.

Now that the team knew about her elf heritage, she didn't see a point in trying to hide her ears anymore.

The three of them walk over to the main area, where Hill reveals to the rest of the team that Strucker was found dead in his cell with the words "PEACE" written above him with his own blood.

Tony grabs the tablet, with the info on it, from Maria. "Damn, he did a banksy at the crime scene just for us."

Nat looks over the info. "This is a smoke screen. Why send a message when you've just given a speech."

"Strucker knew something that Ultron wanted us to miss." Steve says.

"Yeah. I bet he..." Nat tries to pull up some files on a laptop. "Yeah, everything we had on Strucker has been erased."

"Not everything." Steve says he points to some file boxes in the corner of the room.

Thor grabs the boxes of files and hands them out to the team so they can start looking through them. Rhi pitches in to help.

As they're flipping through the files, Tony grabs one of the files Bruce was looking at.

"Wait I know that guy...from back in the day. He operates off of the African coast. Black market arms." Steve gives him a look. "There are conventions, alright? You meet people. I didn't sell him anything. He was talking about finding something new, a game changer."

"What's this?" Thor says while pointing at the man's photo."

"That's a tattoo." Tony says. "I don't think he had it when we met."

"Those are tattoos...this is a brand." Thor says as he points to a different spot on the photo.

Bruce goes over to his computer and scans the image of the brand that's on the man's neck. "Oh yeah. It's a word in an African dialect meaning thief...in a much less friendly way."

"What dialect?" Steve questions.

"Wakanada...Wakanda." Bruce corrects himself.

Tony and Steve suddenly get tense.

Tony then turns to Steve and whispers, "If this guy got out of Wakanda with some of their trade goods..."