Stark Tower, New York-
The main room of the building was stunning, it had a view across the entire city. Valkyrie sat down on one of the many sofas in the room and was soon bombarded by a stream of questions by, Toby?
Slowly the other four drifted in, the two blonds and the red-head looking annoyed. They sat down on the sofa opposite her, with the darker man sitting to her left. The tension in the room was palpable and Valkyrie wanted nothing more than to shadow-walk away, but hiding her powers would make them think she was weak, and she could use that to her advantage.
The annoying man, Sterk?, was still asking her questions. Valkyrie decided to intervene before she ended up setting his hair on fire.
"I think it's mine turn for a question," she said forcefully, "Who are you, and where am I?"
"Where are my manners?" exclaimed, Stank? "The doctor is Bruce Banner," the dark-haired man inclined his head.
"The two over there are our resident assassins, the scary one is Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow, and her slightly less scary counterpart is Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye," The two assassins only glared harder, though Clint looked a little less intense than earlier.
"The one who hit you with his 'Patriotic Boomerang'" Stork? giggled. "Is Steve Rogers or Captain America."
"And I am Tony Stark, Ironman, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist." Ah, Tony Stark, that was his name."You are currently in Stark Tower, or Avengers tower, in New York,"
"Avengers?" Valkyrie evidently wore a confused look on her face, as Tony began to explain.
"We're Earth's Mightiest Heroes, we stopped the alien a couple of weeks ago," so that explained the scaffolding. "And I had to fly a nuke through a portal!"
Tony said it with pride, but Valkyrie noticed the shadow that crossed his eyes as he said it, possible PTSD?
"You don't seem surprised by aliens," Tony said.
"I've dealt with more surprising things than that," Valkyrie instantly realised her mistake, as all eyes were on her again.
"Uhm… we had an invasion of, uhm… small pieces of shadow," It wasn't entirely a lie, Remnants looked like bits of shadow.
The two spies noticed her hesitation and glared harder.
"I bet our invasion was worse!" Tony exclaimed, Valkyrie raised an eyebrow, if only they knew.
"Capsical, turn on the TV, I want to show Valkyrie our invasion," Rogers picked up some sort of hologram and pressed a button.
"-e have breaking news, in New York three murders have been committed in the last twenty-four hours, Police have not yet identified a cause of death. Over to my correspondent at the scene of the first crime."
Rogers went to change the channel, but Tony stopped him.
"Thank you, Julie, as you can see behind me is a warehouse, one left untouched by the invasion. At ten am this morning, a murder was committed, and the body was found a hour later. The victim has not yet been identified. All three murders were done in different ways, but all had one similar trait. At every crime scene 'Darquesse' was written on the wall in the victim's blood. Police are asking-"
Valkyrie heard no more, even here she wasn't free of Darquesse.
Wow, we haven't even been here for an hour and I'm already getting people killed in my name.
Go away.
No.
Yes.
No. Think about it Val we weren't even here at ten, that means this was planned, it means someone is going to set me free.
That isn't going to happen.
You keep telling yourself that.
"Oh, shut up," Valkyrie realised she had said that aloud and blushed bright red. Everyone was looking at her like she was mad.
Only a matter of time… whispered Darquesse