THINKING OUT LOUD || Avengers

-)Twenty Four: Trust Me, Take the Cat(-

"Tony."

Steve lent through the door. Tony Stark was in his lab, frantically searching through security footage from all over the city. There was a pencil tucked behind his ear and a cold mug of coffee sitting next to the keyboard. He looked up.

"Nat found her." Steve said, jerking his chin to get the other man to follow him.

Tony visibly relaxed, hitting a few buttons to sign out of the software, but all he said as he got up to follow Steve was, "I gotta have words with FRIDAY about tightening security."

Steve glanced at him as he held open the door, "Don't you have to know how she got out to do that?"

"I'm working on  it." Tony ran a hand through his hair, "The security footage has been wiped but the blackouts follow the route she must've taken. She made it through at least three doors that should have been electronically sealed."

"So we think she can open doors?" Steve asked, "That's not a lot to go on."

"Call me when you've got something better, Captain Frisbee." Tony retorted, shouldering his way into the briefing room.

Clint, Wanda, Thor and Vision were already sat about facing a screen with Nat and Sam on it, clearly inside one of the vehicles stored on the garage level.

Tony frowned, "Did you steal one of my cars, Romanoff?"

"Stealing is one way of looking at it." Nat commented.

Tony raised his eyebrows in response, "The other being?"

"Borrowing, with optimism."

"You know, I'm disappointed in you." Tony fell into one of the chairs with an ungraceful poof, "The others, I would have expected this from, but I thought you had more respect for me than that."

"Don't sell yourself short, Stark." Natasha said, "I've never respected you."

"There's a 'short' joke going if you want to pick that one off." Clint advised his on-screen friend.

Steve sighed, clearly deciding mediating the two wasn't going to work, "Hey, Sam, are you headed back?"

"Where is Dan?" Wanda chipped in. Watson was settled on her lap, watching the whole thing through unimpressed eyes.

"Yeah, about that..." Sam pulled a face, "We may have taken a detour."

"Any particular reason you didn't invite us?" Tony asked.

Natasha's fingers tapped the wheel agitatedly, even though they we were parked, "Didn't want to spook her."

"She's not a horse." Steve said.

The assassin didn't answer, instead looking out the window to something beyond the screen's range of visibility. Vision took the opportunity to stand up, move over the monitors and start running a grid on their location.

"In her defense," Sam contributed, "Kid was freaked."

"Until you brutally murdered her?" Tony asked sarcastically, "Where is Dan now?"

Nat gave the monitor bearing their faces a long and coded look, "Visiting an old friend."

Steve raised an eyebrow, "Are we supposed to guess who that is?"

"Got it." Clint said.

He pulled a stack of post-its towards him, scratching a quick picture of a stick man with an eye patch, and holding it up for the rest of the group. Once they had all nodded their understanding, he X-ed out both eyes, drew a hula outfit and then ripped the paper up into little pieces.