The Seventh Avenger

Chapter 21: Glee, Doubt and Anger

"Hey, hey, hey!" Justin called out in the large warehouse, as he and his assistant Jack weave their way through the dozens of rows of suits that Ivan was looking over now. In Jack's hand was a cage, though Justin couldn't see what was inside it, due to the large blanket that was covering it. The squawking and the tapping noises of the bird's claw against the bottom of the cage however, was enough to give away what was actually inside.

They finally found Ivan, who was kneeling beside one of the suits on the outer rows, glasses on his face as he kneeled before the drone, equipment in his hand while he was doing something to the back leg of the suit. Justin wasn't too fussed about what he was doing however: as long as Ivan was doing what he promised he was, which was making suits that would trump Tony Stark's, then Justin was happy. And would fulfill his promise to Ivan, about getting him his bird.

Well...almost.

"Special delivery!" Justin calls as he and Jack change direction and begin to walk towards a table filled with blueprints and tools on it, a couple of meters from where Ivan and the suits were. Ivan bolts to his feet, his eyes narrowed in curiosity behind the glasses as he took in the covered cage that Jack had placed on the table.

"Candy-gram!" Justin adds gleefully as Ivan makes his way over to them, cleaning his hands with a cloth that he had pulled from the back pocket of his jeans as he does so.

"I bought you something," Justin adds, using his shaky hands to reach up and grab the blanket and removing it from the cage, revealing the small, white, cockatoo that Jack had bought from an old associate a few hours earlier. "We got you the bird!" Justin lies, a huge smile on his face as a smile broke on Ivan's as he leaned forward to get a closer look at the bird in the cage. Of course, it wasn't the real bird- that would have been impossible to get, with it being back in Russia. But Justin had made a promise to Ivan, and the only way that Ivan would uphold his end of the deal was if Justin had gotten him the bird. And though it wasn't the exact bird, it would do. A white lie, he now assured himself. He probably won't even be able to tell that this bird wasn't actually his.

"We got you the bird pal!" He exclaimed now for good measure, though the second that the last word had left his mouth, Ivan straightened up and said in his accent, while frowning and looking at Justin square in the face, "This is not, my bird."

Justin felt the smile on his face slip slightly, though he tried to mask this with a small, nervous chuckle. "What do you mean? That's- that's the bird. Yeah, pulled a-a lot of strings to get this bird. This is a great bird."

"It's a beautiful bird," Jack adds, coming to his fumbling boss' aid.

"We got this bird all the way from Russia," Justin replies, fiddling with the collar of his shirt as he says this.

"Hey man- this is not, my bird!" Ivan exclaims, placing his hands on the table beside the cage as he does so.

The smile falls completely of Justin's face as Ivan calls him out on his lie. He ceases fiddling with his collar and clears his throat as he instead shoves his hands in the pockets of his pants, keeping his eyes on the cockatoo in the cage. "Well, listen. Even if it's...not the bird... I mean, this is a gorgeous bird. I mean, look, you- you don't get too attached to things alright? Learn to let go."

At his words, Ivan clenches his jaw and raises an eyebrow before he waves his arms behind Justin, exclaiming, "I want my bird, you want drones. This was how we agreed to-"

Justin however, had lost all focus on the annoyed Russian in front of him, as his eyes locked on the suits that Ivan had just waved at. Or at least, he thought they had been suits. Though when he saw that there was no helmet on the top of the one closest to them, and when he heard Ivan calling them drones, he hurried away from Jack and the Russian, his mouth dropping in horror at the sight of his suits, now turned drones, in front of him.