It took exactly three point zero seconds for Fury to blow a gasket. It took Tony two seconds before he cracked a grin when he found out about what the thief had left behind for the agents to find when they discovered a possible theft.
Phil was pink. Literally pink.
Bubblegum, according to Jarvis' helpful information. He had been the one to walk into the room where the other Phase two weapons had been stored, and opened the locker...only to get liberally dosed with a spray of bubblegum pink paint that refused to properly wash out. Along with five others.
Clint had managed to hide his amusement at the situation as well, which had Tony pegging the man as a fellow prankster.
"I want to know how the hell someone walked right into a remote, relatively unused base and left with advanced alien weaponry without anyone thinking to report it!" said Fury.
"I'm more interested in where the staff went. According to reports a gust of wind blew it onto the street, but no visuals of someone picking it up," said Bruce.
Fury glared at him. He didn't need that reminder. That meant there were two pieces of highly advanced, very dangerous alien artifacts missing. Out of the Avengers, only the Hulk had gotten a good look at one of the two "good Samaritans", and there was no way to get the information of what the man looked like from him.
All he knew was that a third party had been present and helped out immensely in cutting down civilian deaths from the fight.
The shorter one had the presence of mind to blow out cameras whenever he was within even a remote view, while the taller one had avoided the main fighting and stuck to the fringes.
And the only picture they had on the taller one had been ruined when Tony fell from the sky, since he hadn't bothered to send it to another computer. The Hulk had done a lot of damage when he saved Tony's life.
All of that, combined with the headache of the attack on New York, meant that Fury was at a boiling point and wasn't ready to deal with this in a calm manner.
If he found the thieves, they'd be lucky if he even considered making them part of S.H.I.E.L.D., let alone avoid jail time.
Dean winced.
"So Mr. Carter, exactly how did you break your arm?"
"Misjudged how hard my brother was throwing the football. Hit my arm wrong," lied Dean easily. "Didn't help that I fell right into a patch of thorns right after."
He wasn't about to explain anything to a random nurse. And he had made a point of taking a shower before they came to the hospital. It would have been a bit more difficult to explain the dust and everything else he had gotten from his run to the tower to catch the staff. He hadn't even realized he had bruised a few ribs in the process.
Thankfully all the injuries he had could be explained by playing a game of football that got a bit rough with a bad landing. And since he was going to destroy the card he had since the limit was almost up, there was nothing to trace it back to him
"Well the doctor will be in soon to put a cast on the arm."
"Can I get some painkillers? I really don't want to try sleeping with a broken arm," said Dean.
"We'll see what we can do," said the nurse, not agreeing to anything.
It took little effort to use his ability to convince people of almost anything to secure some high quality pain killers. It took even less time to get the prescription filled twice over thanks to a minor clerical error that allowed for a refill.
Thanks to the fake address, it was unlikely anyone would bother to follow up. A perfectly ordinary explanation and injuries that more or less matched up to his claim. All under the radar and unlikely to attract S.H.I.E.L.D. attention, much less the Avengers. And considering he had undertaken a vendetta against cameras during the fight...
Well, it was unlikely they'd find him so easily this fast.
Dean took a few of the pills, then crashed onto his bed to sleep off the injury.
Sam was sleeping off his own bruises.
"Alright, so what the hell were you two idjits doing in New York, and why did you suddenly show up looking like you lost a fight with a particularly nasty cat?" asked Bobby two days later.
"We decided to take a short vacation, and had the bad luck of picking the city about to be attacked by an alien army," said Dean.
"Bullshit."
"Fine. We were there to loot the alien invaders and to royally piss off the so called defenders of the city. Castiel showed up because the angels were mad we were in the middle of the argument between Loki and Thor, and I told him he could shove off until the fight was almost over since we weren't leaving without helping."
"Now that I can believe. If anyone asked I'll tell them the first though," said Bobby.
"I may or may not have pissed off a one-eyed spy who runs a sorta-secret organization that could find us if they had ever bothered to get a clear look at our face," said Dean.
"You know what, I don't want to know. But if they come knocking my door down you're paying for the damages," stated Bobby flatly.
"Oh god, Dean what did you do?"
"I left a paint trap for when they open the locker I borrowed the guns from," stated Dean with a shrug. Sam looked visibly relieved. Dean could have done a lot worse.
"I hate to say this, but your past self was an ass," said Sam.
"I did try to warn you. He had no idea he was adopted, and Odin told him at the worst possible time before he was put into a coma. Then he was stuck as a king after Thor was kicked out for a while, and considering the timing he reacted badly. The last time he saw Thor, he was hanging off the bifrost and fell off the bridge after seeing his father's disappointed face. That coupled with the fact he had been rescued by an insane titan who is literally courting the Death that presides outside Earth...and...well, you saw the result?"
"Bad timing, and some really crappy luck huh? Sounds like a Winchester to me," said Sam.
Inside Dean, the part of him that was Loki looked shocked...and happy that Sam thought that way.
"Coincidentally I'm going to be hiding those guns someplace safe, and no you can't ask where. That way they can't torture it out of you."
Sam nodded, a bit stunned that they might try to torture him for the information. It was just a bit of harmless theft.
Dean grabbed the guns he stole, the walked past a few cars. Sam looked but couldn't find his brother.
"Hello Father. Back again so soon? And what happened to your arm?" said Hel pleasantly.
"Didn't take into account the fact that the staff would be falling from a tall height at terminal velocity," deadpanned Loki with a wince. "I'm just here to hide the guns I stole...coincidentally I will be telling you when I'm heading to Asgard so you can watch the fireworks of having Dean tell Odin off for having crappy aim."
Hel laughed delightedly. Now that was a show she couldn't wait to watch, if only to see the look on everyone's face when they heard Dean and his lack of self-preservation. Dean's brain to mouth filter was as bad as Thor's, only with Loki's biting tongue. Sam usually had to kick him in order to get him to shut up.
"I would hide the staff here, but even I realize it would be a bit of a stretch to hide what is obviously an Infinity Stone in your realm. Besides, it'll be easier to hide the rock in the staff than it would the staff itself."
Hel nodded. She wouldn't have allowed it even if Loki had asked. She agreed to the weapons because Loki had casually mentioned it would annoy the mortals trying to pin the theft on his mortal shell and being unable to thanks to lack of evidence.
"Here's a copy of Fury's reaction when he found out about the theft," she said, offering him an odd looking mirror.
Loki smirked...as he walked out of Helheim and turned back into Dean the second he was on Earth.
Sam got a real kick out of seeing how angry Fury was. And since the mirror would only show what Loki wanted it to, no one would realize it was enchanted. Not even Thor.
The search for the thief was quiet, but still on the minds of the Avengers. It took them a full month to finally locate even a partial picture of the two who helped out while they were busy. A lot of people had roughly the same description, but none could agree on any one feature. All they had to go on was that the tall one had dark brown hair that reached his chin, brown eyes, and was easily over six feet tall and wore old clothing. He also handled the guns like someone who shot regularly at moving targets.
The short one was harder.
He had dark brown hair like the taller one, but his eyes were a green color and he had the air of someone who had either been professionally trained...not in the military but he did have the feel of a cop, possibly the FBI. He was responsible for most of the cameras being down, as he shot at any he saw or thought were there before even coming within view.
There was a brief picture of someone in a tan overcoat with black hair facing towards the camera, but all they could find matching the description was a missing persons report for one James Novak.
The wife had been brought in and questioned, but she had no idea who the shorter man was or why her husband acted like he knew him. She was just relieved to learn he was still alive, but had no idea why he hadn't come home or for that matter, why he had left. He had just been out taking the garbage to the curb when he disappeared.
Fury was at his wits end.
To top it all off, the only lead they had to someone even remotely matching their description was in a single paper file from the FBI seeing as how all the digital ones had been completely erased.
If that wasn't bad enough these...Winchesters...were clearly labeled as deceased, along with a good chunk of police officers and two FBI agents from a nasty gas explosion in the station they were held at. They had been lucky to identify the bodies they did, and the brothers had been in the rough center of the blast.
Which meant they couldn't be the thieves.
Dean sneezed.
"You're not catching a cold are you?"
"Someone's talking about me. Again."
Sam sneezed next.
"You better not have given me your cold, jerk," said Sam annoyed. "And what's with the cheap Pokéball replica in the glove compartment?"
"Bitch. Do you really want to know or do you want to continue a...how did you say it again? A healthy dose of 'Not my problem'?"
"Dean..."
"Remember the staff I stole?"
"Yes?"
"I ditched it and removed the power source...after I dressed it up like a dick inside an Iron Man suit and had it dumped on his balcony."
"Oh god. Dean, really?" said Sam, pinching the bridge of his nose. Though his lips quirked upward.
"I'll show you his reaction later," smirked Dean. Sam's body said quite clearly he was trying not to laugh at the mere thought of Tony Stark's reaction.
"You did wipe your fingerprints off it, right?"
"I wore latex gloves the entire time, and I dipped it in cooking oil first to destroy any prints before hand. Give me some credit."
"...You're going to be pranking the Avengers, aren't you?" said Sam amused.
"I'll be alluding to the mystery thief while driving Fury up the wall because we're legally dead and I destroyed any camera that might have caught my face. I think I'll hit Black Widow next," said Dean happily.
Odds were they'd try to shoot him once they found out who was leaving all the pranks, especially when Thor realized he was Loki. But he was going to enjoy himself in the meantime.
"Just leave me pictures and keep me out of it," said Sam, his grin making it clear his thoughts on the matter. Dean smirked. He knew corrupting Sam to pranks was going to be fun.
Sam had a good laugh when he saw the look on Tony's face...and Roger's expression when he realized exactly what he was looking at. He never thought Captain America could be freaked out like that just from a prank. Talk about sheltered.
"Okay, change of plans, we're hitting the soldier boy next," said Dean with no little amount of glee after seeing Steve turn bright red before fainting from embarrassment.
If Tony hadn't been so shocked...and annoyed...he would have been laughing his ass off at his reaction.
Then again he went nuts trying to find out how the hell someone left the missing staff...and dressed it up like him...on his balcony without any evidence. To say nothing of how ballistic Fury became when he realized what it was.
