Shadowbreath: The New Avenger

Chapter 18

Edit 02/02

One week earlier

"But you know, the suit can take the weight, right? So I take the tank, fly it right up to the General's palace, drop it at his feet. I'm like, Boom, you looking for this?" Alex snorted and Gatorade came out of her nose, earning another round of laughter from the Avengers.

Colonel James Rhodes, War Machine (or Iron Patriot), looked more than pleased at their amusement and pointed happily at Alex. "I like this one, she laughs at my jokes." He narrowed his eyes at Stark. "Unlike someone over here."

Stark clutched his chest in fake disbelief, "Honeybear, I always laugh at your jokes. At least your funny ones. Come to think of it, do you ever have funny stories? Nope, no, I can't seem to recall-"

He was cut off by Rhodes slapping Stark across the back of his head before giving him a fond smile.

"So...I take it you've known each other a while?" Alex asked while trying to clean up the spilled Gatorade. Rhodes was only in town for the night and had asked to have dinner with Natasha, Stark, and Peter so that he could meet Alex before they set out for their mission.

Rhodes clapped Stark on the shoulder and nodded. "Since our college days. Tones was a fifteen year old shit who thought he was better than everyone else-"

"Which I was!" Stark somehow managed to stick out his tongue and look dignified doing it.

"-and I helped keep him from getting his ass handed to him on multiple occasions."

Stark shrugged, "People fear intelligence."

Rhodes rolled his eyes, "People don't like it when someone verbally rips apart the engineering thesis that they had spent the past four years of their life completing in a span of five minutes. In front of the entire review board."

"That was one time! And if Mowler didn't want his work dissected then he shouldn't have done such a shit job with his dissertation."

Natasha made eye contact with Alex from across the table and gave her a little smirk. "Boys."

Stark waved his hands, as if mentally pushing that conversation aside and leaning forward towards Alex. "Alright, alright, enough stories from Colonel Boring, let's get down to real business, shall we?"

His gaze sparkled with excitement and Alex knew it was time to finally start talking about the whereabouts of the Arc Reactor. She squirmed in her seat as four sets of eyes watched her with intensity. "Okay, what do you want to know?"

Not surprisingly, it was Natasha who asked the first question. "Which of the Five Families have you been living with for the past ten years?"

Alex worried at her bottom lip before answering. "The Genovese Family."

Stark let out an impressed whistle and leaned back in his chair. "By far the biggest and baddest mafia family in town. So they are the ones who have been stealing alien tech?"

She nodded, fiddling with her straw. "Yes. When my father took over as capo di tutti capi, he moved our business back into weapons manufacturing, just with a little more kick."

"Back into?" Peter asked with a furrowed brow.

"Yeah, apparently before Iron Man, the Five Families were knee deep into the buying and selling of illegal weapons. Mainly SI weapons. I think my father has always wanted to return to the old ways, he's just been waiting for the right opportunity."

Rhodes snuck a worried glance at Stark, who looked to be in his own little world thinking about the mob having their hands on his weapons. "Okay, so what's their endgame here? When do we need to storm the castle, so to speak?"