Chapter 1: unwanted visitor
"Why are you all at my tower?" Tony was standing with an empty glass in his hand, staring oddly into his lift, which held Steve, Natasha, and Clint, all but Clint looked dishevelled. Not surprising taking it was 1 in the morning. The four stood in awkward silence.
"You called us, there was an emergency" broke Natasha, who had regained composure but looked ready to punch Tony.
"No, I woke up 10 minutes ago and was going to put this empty glass in the bar"
"Yeah, we picked up on that" commented Clint, not bothering to look at Tony as he walked out the lift without waiting for invitation, instantly memorizing everything in the room. "So why did only us three get a call, from your number, yelling about some indistinguishable nonsense then 'emergency help', that's what's important."
"Actually I got a message too" Bruce entered, dressed in green pyjama bottoms and a baggy grey t shirt, he was rubbing his eyes while holding out his phone for them to read, 'meet by lift- Tony' it read.
Tony reached out and grabbed the phone, quickly analysing the text.
"Do any of you still have your phone" he said looking back to the tree who had now all exited the lift, Natasha held out her phone the voice message on screen.
Tony talked while he worked, "You both got the messages at different times, Bruce only got one when I was talking to you by the lift, you got one earlier, meaning someone's watching us. I've got to figure out who really sent these", he plugged the phones into his main computer system and brought the images up infront of him. "Jarvis, track where the sound on the voice message comes from and who sent the messages"
"The sound is from one of your parties at the old house, and I sent the messages", all turned with confusion at the computers voice.
"Wait, you sent the messages?" demanded Tony. "Why?"
"Sir, my systems have been hacked, I closed the security system, I was unable to inform you sir, I messaged your friends the best way I could to get them to come, all but Bruce sir, the hacker did that themselves"
"Meaning they…" started Steve
"Are in this room yes, took you long enough to work that one out, not like I was sitting on the bar or anything" an accented young female voice rang out across the room from the direction of the bar.
The two ex-assassins were already pointing their guns at the intruder by her 2nd word, the soldier was in a fighting stance by her 4th, the inventor and the scientist only focused on the dark outline of the intruder when she had stated her position. Tony tried to place the girls' accent, eastern European?
"Who are you?" asked Natasha, well, more of a command.
The girl gave a small laugh and jumped off the counter she had been sitting on, stepping into the light illuminating the main space, she was tall, about 5'8, and had olive skin. Definitely a teenager, although she walked like Natasha, powerful and fully aware of it. He couldn't see any more of her feature as she had a black hoodie covering her hair and was still too far to see any distinct facial features, like eye colour. All her clothing was black, but not in a gothic, more for stealth. She was wearing a fully zipped up hoodie, leggings, combat boots, and a single glove covering her left hand. She stopped about 2m away from the group staring at her, pulled a packet of gum out her pocket, offered them at the group, shrugged at the group when none accepted, put the packet back in her pocket after removing a stick for herself, then just stood there, chewing.
Clint spoke up to break the silence, "I'm guessing you're here as a friend", he said while putting away his gun, he preferred a bow but guns were easier to carry. Natasha and Steve followed his example and adopted less hostile positions.
"More of an ally, if you don't mind." She answered, sending the room back into silence.
Steve went for a formal approach with the supposed ally. "I'm Steve, but you already know that, so, what's your name?"
"Any personal information about me I will tell in due course, until then call me Volchitsa."
"Shewolf" translated Natasha. "Why that?"
"It was my working name, my partner was Volk, and it fitted how we were trained and other personal attributes."
Information of her past, Clint realised by saying partner she had hinted at assassin, not lover. Russian assassins? If she was, Nat hadn't recognized her, and the accent didn't fit, the accent sounded Romanian, but not completely. He also was confused by the age, the girl looked 17 at the most, and even by assassin standards, most of whom were 20's to 30's, that was young.
"How old are you?" Tony, blunt as ever.
"Formalities over, now what I need your assistance with." The girl completely ignored Tony.
She walked over to Tony's laptop that lay open and plugged in a USB stick. Instantly documents opened on the screen, she brought up the information on the hologram system Tony had in place. Then zoomed in on one file in particular, an image of two scientists standing side by side laughing together appeared on screen, one was tall and thin while the other short and plump, the difference was laughable.
"This is Dr. Wolff, he was a hydra scientist in war times, and after but not openly. Here he's pictured next to Dr. Zola, a man that Steve and Natasha will be familiar with, Steve here especially."
They turned to Steve, who was practically ridged in his stance, back straight, arms folded, and chin up.
"Zola was a Hydra scientist working closely with red skull, and was working on a way to replicate the serum that I was injected with when I met him as well as designing weapons for hydra, after the war he went into other areas of science and was one of the founders of the new hydra" stated Steve, hatred filling his voice, "he experimented on captured soldiers."
"Complete jerk, but I can guarantee Wolff was equal, if not worse. Originally he was just a Nazi scientist, working on how to make the 'perfect German', but after some particular discoveries he was booted up to Hydra. He would experiment on victims of the camps, when he moved to hydra though he got much more availability of victims, if twins or triplets arrived, they were immediately sent to him, provided they were under 18 originally, but then they had to be between 3-18, the babies were hard to work on and always died much quicker than others. He was best buddies with Zola, although Zola preferred adults. They shared all their discoveries, all the different drugs, serums, technology, they were bad enough on their own, but together… worse than all the fallen." Volchitsa stated, her tone was neutral betraying no emotion, but Clint was observant to say the least, and had noticed a slight shake in her exposed hand on certain words, 'twins', 'babies', 'drugs', 'serums', 'technology'.
"So what? This guy still alive or something? He'd have to be at least 95 or something" asked Bruce who had remained silent till this moment.
Bruce liked Volchitsa, she was cold, rude, and not very trustworthy (although that didn't stop him trusting her), but radiated intelligence, was obviously on their side, and seemed familiar somehow, although he had very mixed feeling about that.
"No, he died in 2000, but he started a branch of hydra which is still operational."
"Wait, there are other branches of hydra then the one from shield?" This time it was Steve's turn to do the questioning.
"Yes, and they make the one you know of look like a group of school kids. They never got discovered, so never got shut down. Where do you think they kept James while Zola was rebuilding the main body of Hydra? In a fridge?"
Steve froze, Bucky. The rest of the group caught on quickly, they had known Bucky's real name was James Buchanan Barnes, but had never heard him referred to that way. They watched Steve closely, Steve had only known that his friend was alive for about a year, and had been searching for leads and clues into his past and current position, but apart from some cold war assassinations that were confirmed as his and the files Natasha had obtained from some old links in Russia, nothing was definite. He was no closer than he had been when they fought on that helicarrier. All had been very secret, how this girl knew about Bucky, information that he hadn't known, he had no idea.
"How…" he began.
"Yes, I know about tin man, I'm surprised you haven't found him yet, he's not exactly hiding. On a bit of a killing spree actually." Volchitsa stared pityingly at him before slipping back into an 'everyone but me is an idiot' tone. "Well, not that you'd know, I mean killing off a bunch of Hydra leaders doesn't really hit the news, lots of them are already considered dead. There was one that made the news, but that was made to look like a suicide so you probably didn't make the connection."
"We get it, you know stuff, get back to your point." Clint jumped in, they were getting off track and, yes Bucky was important, he was important to Steve so important to everyone, but she was here to make a point, not help find Bucky.
"Ok, back on point" Volchitsa turned back to the document "His granddaughter has just taken over after the death of her father, she's 24, fluent in 20 languages, trained in fighting, street fighting, not that whole 'follow certain moves and formations crap', ultimately she is deadly as fuck. And we're going to kill her and shut down this entire branch, which will be difficult taking they're the most secretive and dangerous."
"Why now? Why not earlier, or later for that fact? You know too much to have stumbled upon this by chance recently, you've admitted they are secretive, and you wouldn't just have gone on a whim deciding to tell us randomly." Stark asked the question they were all thinking, as well as implying something else.
The girl laughed and smiled at Tony, not the reaction he had expected.
"Research into these files I'm leaving you, I'll be back at the next full moon, if you could have the demi-god here by then I would be most grateful. See you soon, don't be a let-down." Volchitsa turned and ran onto the balcony of the tower, then without missing a beat dived off.
Steve, Tony, and Bruce ran after, but she had disappeared. Nat and Clint hadn't bothered, already predicting what had happened. Tony and the others walked back in, joining the assassins in staring at the documents still filling the area as a hologram.
"So, slumber party?" Tony stared at the surrounding faces, all disapproved but stayed at what Tony insisted on calling 'the super-slumber'.
It gave Pepper a surprise when she walked in on a room full of the Avengers snoring at 9am. Nat and Clint perched together on the top of the wall cupboards in the bar, scrunched and deadly silent in their sleep. Steve was sprawled on the sofa, drawl dripping onto a pillow as he snored. Bruce had been sensible and got his bedding out the spare room, crashing on the chair, curled and comfortable with a proper pillow and duvet. Tony lay where he had finally passed out, on top of his laptop, Pepper knew if he hadn't already been running off coffee for the last three days he would have made it, but there he was, snoring, drooling on his work. Gently she walked over and lifted him up, placing him on the floor with a pillow from the sofa (sleeping Steve was not pleased) under his head before going and grabbing a blankets for them. None but the assassins stirred as she covered them, she struggled to get to them, standing on a surface to reach them, their eyes had jumped open simply at her being within a meter but instantly closed as they recognised her. Pepper looked at what the world called 'earth's mightiest heroes', in reality, they acted like babies half the time. Sighing she went to go get breakfast from the tower cafeteria, home cooked food was off the tables when Tony had his friends (who were lovely, but made a mess, and slept everywhere but where they should) round.