Victoria awoke to the blaring noise of Imagine Dragons beside her. It took her a few minutes to comprehend that it was, in fact, her phone ringing.
"Hello?"
There was complete silence on the other end. She sighed, sitting up on her bed while rubbing her eyes.
"Listen here," she paused to yawn. "You have woken me up, so either you start talking or—"
"—Dragă?"
The sounded vaguely familiar to her. She wracked the files in her brain for who it was, before a memory spurted to mind.
***
She was knocked off of her feet by an unknown force, but before she hit the ground, she was wrapped up in someone's arms.
"Woah—"
"—Wouldn't want you to get yourself hurt, dragă."
She looked at who caught her – a boy, who couldn't be older than 20, who had silver hair and blue eyes. She was mesmerised by them, they reminded her of the ocean.
She was brought out of her trance when she remembered what happened previously.
She slipped a small knife out of her sleeve – courtesy of Tony's new suit – and stuck it in his bicep, causing him to drop her and hiss.
"Wouldn't want you to get hurt either, Speedy."
He glared at her, before zooming off somewhere else.
***
"Is this by any chance, Pietro?"
"Ah, so you are not as dumb as most would think."
"What, a dumb brunette joke?"
"Precisely, usually it would be a blonde one – but I've always much preferred brunettes, myself."
The phone's line sounded with beeps, indicating that the speedster had hung up.
Victoria frowned, pulling the phone away from her ear to read, "Unknown Number" printed across her screen. She set the phone down, already halfway to Dream Town when the phone rang a second time.
"I swear to God, if you spurt out another joke about me, I—"
"—You'll what?"
Steve's confused voice came through and Victoria almost stopped breathing. She chuckled nervously before replying, "Nothing, wrong person, sorry. Was there something you needed?"
"Get down here, we might have something."
***
Steve handed Thor the tablet, who, in turn, handed it to Tony. Victoria wanted to see, but the playboy held it away from her.
"What's this?" Tony questioned.
"A message," Steve stated. "Ultron killed Strucker."
"Dammit," Victoria muttered, causing her father to cast a glance towards her.
"Damn," Tony let out a short, humourless laugh. "He did a Bansky at the crime scene, just for us."
"This is a smokescreen," Natasha stated. "Why send a message when you've just given a speech?"
"Strucker knew something Ultron wanted us to miss," Steve suggested.
"Yeah, I bet he—" Natasha stopped herself, checking the Avengers database for Struckers files. "Yeah, everything we had on Strucker's been erased."
"Not everything," Tony smirked, before leading the team to the filing room.
***
"Known associates," Tony started. "Baron Strucker had a lot of friends."
"Can't imagine why," Victoria scoffed.
"Well, these people are all terrible," Bruce sighed gently, looking at a file.
"Wait— I know that guy," Tony said pointing to the file. Steve sent him a questioning look. "From back in the day, he operates off the African coast – black market arms."
Steve sent the playboy a glare, causing Victoria to giggle silently. Tony sighed, before justifying his answer.
"There are conventions, alright? You meet people – I didn't sell him anything. He was talking about finding something new – a game-changer. It was all very Ahab."
Victoria glanced around, before settling on looking at the file in Thor's hands. She frowned as Thor pointed to a mark on his neck.
"This?"
"It's a tattoo— I don't think he had it," Tony said.
"No, those are tattoos," Thor pointed to his arms and his chest, then back to the mark. "This is a brand."
Bruce took the file, put it under the analyser and allowing the computer to work its magic.
"Any matches?" Victoria questioned.
"Yeah, it's a word in an African dialect meaning, 'thief' – in a much less friendly way."
"What dialect?" Steve crossed his arms.
"Wakanada?" Bruce tried before correcting himself. "Wakanda."
"But what's so special about Wakanda?"
Victoria's question went ignored as Tony turned to Steve.
"If this guy got out of Wakanda with some of their trade goods..."
"I thought your father said he got the last of it?"
"I don't follow," Bruce furrowed his eyebrows, not a clue about what they were speaking about. "What comes out of Wakanda?"
"The strongest metal on Earth."
Victoria glanced to the side where Steve's shield lay, the red, white and blue layers taunting the girl. She looked back to her father, the emotion clearly stated in her eyes.
"Where is this guy now?"
