The Traitor, The Avenger, And The Killer

Overprotective Grampa

The work on the mansion progressed quickly, and within a few days, everything was already cleared and the foundations were nearly finished as well. Plenty of heroes from several different teams had come to meet up and help, so lunchtime was always interesting, especially as Annie's sister had offered her place for the youngest among them to spend the day — and Annie would bring them up to see the adults and the progress during lunch with water bottles and food for those that were working.

Chance and Charlie were of course favorites of everybody there, especially because they were the smallest but determined to keep up with both their Hale family cousins that came to help as well as Gerry and Dani. They could be seen carrying little water bottles to people, hand in hand, and making sure to watch until whoever they had brought the water to actually drank their water, as Annie had likely asked them to do.

One of their favorites was Thor, who could always be depended on for piggyback rides and other rowdy games after they delivered their little bottles, though of course, their first visits were always to Scott and Logan, in that order. Once they'd had their fill of dad snuggles, they rushed over with shouts of "Wogan!" to clamor for him to play with them, all but attaching to his legs if he wasn't fast enough to respond.

But to the surprise of several people there, they were also incredibly attached to "Ewik," who was completely and totally enamored with the two of them and gave them nothing short of his full attention every time they came to see him. Anyone who had dealt with him as Magneto couldn't help but be a bit surprised at seeing the two Summers twins cackling with pure glee as he played games with them, even letting them scoot around in the air on low-flying metal discs — though very clearly and securely strapped in so they couldn't possibly get hurt.

Erik was still playing with the little ones when, under the noise of loud squealing laughter, Steve Rogers' comm link directly to Director Fury came to life, and Steve stepped a bit away from the noise of the playing kids before he answered with a quick, "Fury?" He had half an eye on the group of heroes and family members, sure that if Fury was using the direct line, it was bad news.

"I hate to break up the party," Fury started out. "But I need all available heroes ready to fight immediately."

"I thought the Kree were retreating," Steve said with a deep frown — though he was already doing a headcount as to who was available and what they could do.

"They are," Fury said easily. "The problem is that they weren't entirely full of crap when they said the Shi'ar were planning to attack. The invasion fleet is set to arrive within the hour. I'm sorry, but we're not out of the woods on this yet."

Steve let out a long breath, and after a beat, drew himself up, clearly ready to dig in. He hadn't forgotten the Kree's claims that they were 'protecting' the Earth by invading it, but he had hoped... He looked toward the group of little kids playing with the heroes who had come to help rebuild and sighed again. "Right. I'll get everyone prepped here. We'll scramble whoever and whatever we have available." With that, he put away the comm and looked toward the others. A few people had already stopped what they were doing — those with enhanced hearing were already ready to move.

"Tony, can you take the kids somewhere?" Steve asked.

"Kurt can take 'em to the girls," Logan suggested. "Annie too. No one will bother 'em there."

"I thought they were just staying at someone's house," Tony said. "Not exactly top shelf security if it's just suburbia, right?"

"It's not suburbia," Logan said with an amused sort of expression on his face at Tony's assumption. "The only people that know where it is are there now — and Kurt, Scott, and I." He looked at their disbelieving expressions for a minute. "It's on a lake. That's all I can tell you without bringing down hell."