Breakfast was two eggs, hard boiled, served with a tall glass of milk. Despite the fact that he was no longer wanted by the law, Frank found that this renegade meal was one of his favorites. Much to the horror of Tony.
Tony sat with a blank expression as he watched Frank salt the eggs wearing his black "Cereal Killer" t-shirt. One by one he peeled the shells off, salted them, and then proceeded to eat them in rapid succession. Depositing his pile of shells in the trash before drinking from his glass of milk.
"Frank…" Began Tony, I know you have the whole emo soldier boy thing going on, but we have other stuff in the fridge, nobody is going to scream at you if you eat literally anything else."
"Eggs are pure protein, milk has calcium. Everything else is a waste of time, Stark. I need to be strong so I can carry all of my guns. I don't do half measures."
"The fact that you said all of that like it was completely normal is so scary."
"Tony, do you have to insult the man while he's eating breakfast?" asked Steve as he walked in, also drinking a glass of milk.
"I do it when it's the most gas station nonsense I've ever seen. Good god, is this what you were doing before here?"
"Yeah, and what about it? Are you going to stop me from eating eggs, Tony?" said Frank.
"Is that a threat?"
Frank just kind of stared directly at Tony. Not meaning it to be a threat. But he did like the brief look of fear that splashed across his features.
"Okayyy, i'm going to make an actual breakfast, you're all welcome to have some of it, except for Travis Bickle over there, he's creeping me out."
Tony cracked a few eggs into a bowl, milk, folded the eggs, worked in a few finely sliced onions, chopped peppers, a little black pepper, and a few chunks of ham from the good, rich person deli. Within the hour, he presented everyone who wasn't Frank with a delicious ham and pepper omelet.
Carol and Steve almost looked like twins to Tony and Frank. A fact that they hadn't really noticed before they started sitting near each other. Cap². They were both weirdly muscular and off puttingly blonde. Like the smiling faces on a propaganda poster.
Frank refilled his chilled glass.
By the afternoon, Fury had returned to the Avengers tower. Dressed in a black turtleneck and a leather jacket. Frank felt that he could probably match Fury's sense of aesthetics, but further down, he knew that he couldn't.
"Afternoon, people. I hope that the rest and relaxation is treating all of you well," he said, his voice off puttingly cheerful
"We have, Nick," said Frank.
"Good. The boys in STRIKE have made a few new discoveries. The sewer monsters weren't the only ones. We have a handful of targets in Canada currently. Yukon, crazy kind of deal. A group of them ripped through a BEETLE unit like nothing."
"Where are they coming from?" asked Carol.
"It's unclear at the moment, initially, we thought they were Chitauri or Skrull, but it seems like they're something different. The scientists are still analyzing the corpses from your recent dust up."
"So, when are we due to head out?" asked Carol
"Within the next twenty-four hours, Captain. I'm going to be pairing you up with a STRIKE agent, think of him like an Avengers temp."
The next day, Tony was up in one of the lab spaces he had set up for tooling around with the suits. The latest model was to be the Mark XLII. A prehensile suit of sorts. But, he'd also made some discoveries in the trash.
At some point in the last few years, when Pepper was running Stark Industries, she had bought a fledgling robotics company. Tony had forgotten it's name and it's focus was too much on humanoid robotics. But they had developed an interesting metal alloy. It was an absurdly durable, magnetically neutral metal.
When he found it, he scrapped his ideas of the original Mark XLII suit and replaced them with the metal. He finished up the design, rejecting the red and gold color scheme for blue and pink. His Iron Legion would be outfitted in more or less the same colors, when they weren't dealing with things on the homefront, they would be maintaining the tower, occasionally acting as its sentinels.
Tony chewed on a Slim Jim as he fine tuned a legionnaire whose arm was acting up. Frank was in the lab. Taking apart and cleaning one of his many guns.
"You know, I used to make weapons, I think we could probably outfit you with some better equipment, Frank," he said.
Frank didn't look up from his work, "I'm not interested. I'd rather have something I know how to use than a Flash Gordon toy."
"Okay, Dirty Harry, have it your way," Tony rolled his eyes and began to put the armor back on the legionnaire's arm.
"I wouldn't mind being kitted up in a suit like your air force buddy," said Frank.
"The thing is, Rhodey and I know how to fly normal airplanes. Can you fly, Frank?"
"I suppose that's a learning curb I can pass," Said Frank, looking completely serious.
"Maybe later. Right now, I'm not sure I trust you with any of my tech. Rhodey, I know Rhodey. We're buds."
"I think you're afraid of being outclassed by someone using your toy, Stark."
"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response. Odds are I'll give you a war machine suit and it will have a bad skull painted on it and you'll be riding the subway with a busted up suit."
"Now's not the time for argument boys," said Carol as she entered the lab. Dressed in her Kree flight suit. "Now, do either of you know who it is Nick has set us up with?"
"Not a clue. But I trust Nick's judgment."
Nick, Steve, and a man none of the recognized entered into the room. He was in his mid thirties. Tall, fit and had a bit of a five o'clock shadow. His body was covered in black metal body armor with a white 'X' scratched into the chest. Frank appreciated the stranger's sense of aesthetics.
"Everyone, this is agent Rumlow, codename Crossbones, he'll be assisting us on this mission," Said Cap.
"Evening folks," said Crossbones.
"Evening, I like the look," said Frank.
"Thanks, I made most of this myself. It's no Iron Man suit, but it gets the job done," He smiled proudly.
"So, what do you do, Brock? Do you have some kind of weird bone based power or something?" said Tony.
"In a sense. I'm very good at breaking them," Brock displayed a pair of gauntlets on his forearms and the apparatus that rapidly moved a brick of metal up and down along a track. "And these help me do that."
"Intimidating," said Tony. "So, when do we head out?"
The Quinjet touched down just outside of a small town in the Yukon and The Avengers exited with Crossbones in tow. The snow was thick on the ground and still falling rapidly as the night set in. Carol glowed like the sun as they made their way across the frozen wasteland to find their targets.
The smell of death was heavy in the air. Something like brimstone and sulfur. Carol flew up ahead and returned looking a bit shaken.
"They decimated a whole town," she said.
The town of Faro Yukon was rendered a mess of loosely connected buildings that were in flames. They observed the mess from afar, assessing and mourning the people who used to live there.
A beam of white cut across the night sky and slammed directly into Carol. Followed by another which hit Tony like a brick wall. The thing that attacked him looked like an elf, sort of. A thin, sprite with a pair of black eyes that repeatedly slammed into him with its fists. Its body was slowly being consumed by white fur.
Carol was faced down by the creature's near identical twin. It's body was significantly more muscular and hit like it. Repeatedly trying to bludgeon her face.
She grabbed it's face with her hands and disintegrated it's pointy eared head. Frank took aim with an assault rifle and put two in the thing that was attacking Tony, causing it to hit the ground with a foul crunch.
"So, that's what we're up against. All right. Everyone stay sharp and let's keep to the ground. I don't want anyone to get taken out by any fliers."
"I thought that the tentacle monster would be the worst of them, but those were grotesque."
"Don't think about it," Said Steve. "We'll clean this up just like we did in the sewers."
