Daughter of the Shield

Chapter 11

"We need to go after her!"

"And how do you suppose we do that?" Wanda demanded as she spun around. Pietro took a step back. "She is with the Avengers. Protected by the best security known to man. The best idea is to wait for them to come to us, they're bound to find us sometime."

"But- "

"Pietro, no one understands better than I what she means to you, but right now, there is nothing we can do."

"I hope she's okay," Pietro muttered shaking his head.

"She is, they wouldn't hurt her, I promise. Now come on, let's find out who wants to meet us" Wanda motioned to the abandoned church before them.

Jo looked up from her computer when Barton and Steve walked in.

"What's that?"

"A message. Ultron killed Strucker" Thor passed the iPad to Tony as Steve spoke.

"And he did a Banksy at the crime scene, just for us."

"This is a smoke screen, why send a message when you've just made a speech?" Jo asked.

"Strucker knew something that Ultron wanted us to miss"

"Yeah, I bet he..." Natasha fell silent as her computer beeped. "Yep, everything we have on Strucker has been erased."

"Not everything" Everyone looked at Jo in confusion as she walked out of the room.

Thor tossed aside the lid to a box filled with files.

"Baron Strucker had a lot of friends" Steve muttered as he looked through his box.

"Well, these people are all horrible"

"Wait, I know that guy" Tony pointed towards the file Bruce had who handed it over. "From back in the day. He operates off the African coast. Black market arms."

Steve gave Tony a suspicious look who rolled his eyes.

"There are conventions, alright? You meet people. I didn't sell him anything." Tony looked over the papers again. "He was talking about something new. A game-changer. It was all very, Ahab."

"This?"

"Uh, that's a tattoo, I don't think he had it."

"No, those are tattoos, this is a brand" Thor pointed to the pictures as he explained.

Bruce used one of his computer programs to search for the meaning of the symbol. There was a ding a few minutes later. "Oh yeah, it's a word in African dialect meaning "thief", in a much less friendly way."

"What dialect?"

"Wakanda."

"If this guy got out of Wakanda with some of their trade goods..."

"I thought your father said he got the last of it" Jo stated, she and Tony were looking at each other while everyone else looked confused.

"I don't follow. What comes out of Wakanda?"

"The strongest metal on Earth" Steve answered looking at his shield. "Where is this guy now?"

Men shouted orders and others groaned from the aches of labor. The sound of metal grinding and machines hard at worked filled the air.

"Don't tell me your men swindled you. I sent you six short-range heat seekers and got a boat full of rusty parts. Now, you will make it right, or the next missile I send you will come much faster" Klaw pressed a button on his phone, ending the call and. "Now, minister, where were we?"