Chapter 305

With New York’s crisis resolved, the Avengers arranged to have a meal together. There was nothing strange about that. Superheroes were people too—they had to eat. You couldn’t keep starving them; what if they turned into zombies one day?

However, New York had been thrown into chaos after the Chitauri invasion. They could only gather at a small barbecue joint that hadn’t been wrecked by the battle. After that fight, everyone was exhausted, and no one felt like talking much. The meal was therefore quite gloomy, until…

"Where did my two barbecue burgers go?" Tony stared all over the table. He clearly remembered setting the two burgers there just moments ago. How had they vanished in the blink of an eye?

Then he looked toward Banner, who was eating silently nearby. Banner was the most suspicious one here. After all, there was another guy inside him, and judging by that guy’s size, his appetite probably wasn’t small.

"Dottie~" Carter shot a cold glance at Dottie, who had lowered her head without saying a word. "Stop messing with my grandnephew. Take out those two burgers."

Dottie frowned, looking thoroughly unwilling, but she still pulled two burgers from somewhere on her person and set them on the table. Even so, she complained, "Little Pei, why am I always the first one you suspect?"

"Hmph! As if I don’t know you." Carter snorted, then told everyone, "Back when we lived in the same apartment building, the kind with an all-you-can-eat buffet, she could hide an entire chicken in her clothes and take it home after every lunch."

"You’re no fun at all." Dottie pouted in displeasure. "That was ages ago, yet you still have to bring it up."

As soon as she said that, Tony bent down and scrutinized her with his thief-like eyes. Even Captain America casually let his gaze wander. Forget the chicken—that was all in the past. The important thing was that she was wearing a skin-tight outfit right now. Where had she hidden those two burgers?

Slap! With a crisp smack, Dottie backhanded Stark across the face.

Tony was sent reeling to the side. His face twitched twice before he muttered to himself, "What a powerful backhand."

Carter remained expressionless, but what she said carried quite a bit of information. "Your father said the same thing back then."

Tony’s face darkened. He knew exactly what his old man had been like in his youth. In short… well, pretty much like Tony was now. Did that mean this woman was one of his many stepmothers?

Slap! Just as Tony was wrestling with that thought, Dottie swung another backhand. This time, it landed squarely on Captain America’s face.

Now everyone’s looks toward Captain America changed immediately. Thor even laughed out loud. You looked so righteous—don’t tell me you were like that back then too…

It was nothing! Really, there was nothing! Captain America looked both innocent and baffled. He had never even met this woman before.

"Hmph! You heartless bastard." Dottie snorted coldly, and that only made everyone’s looks at Captain America even stranger.

But the scene everyone had been expecting—a woman condemning the man who had seduced and abandoned her—never happened. Instead, Dottie stood up, walked over, wrapped an arm around Carter’s head, and said to Captain America, "You left for more than sixty years. You made my Little Pei wait so bitterly."

Oh~ So that was what it was. Realizing they wouldn’t get the show they had hoped for, everyone turned their heads away. But Tony, who had rather high emotional intelligence, glanced at Dottie. Could this woman be not one of his stepmothers, but his future aunt-in-law?!

"By the way… where did Evenson go?" Natasha, who had been stuffing her face, suddenly looked up and glanced around. She had only just realized that after completing the summoning ritual and bringing Tony back, Evenson had quietly slipped away.

"The boss said he was tired." Sarah sat beside Natasha and affectionately used a napkin to wipe burger crumbs from the corner of Natasha’s mouth. "So he went back early to rest."

"I think he was in a hurry to go check whether his crappy shop had collapsed." Hawkeye said without raising his head.

But Hawkeye had wronged Evenson this time. Evenson hadn’t gone home at all. As for resting… that was more or less accurate. It could probably count as resting.

He was currently sitting in the main hall of Void’s Legacy nightclub. New York had suffered a major disaster this time, so even though entertainment venues like nightclubs had not been damaged, no one was in the mood to come here. The place was quiet. Only Evenson was there, along with the Eredar Twins sitting opposite him in their true forms, since there were no outsiders around.

Evenson actually didn’t want to come here at all. Some of the things he had said earlier now gave him chills whenever he thought back on them. He wanted to hide from the twins, not deliver himself to their door. Unfortunately, the two female demons gave him no chance to hide. They simply summoned him here.

"You look a little nervous." The Eredar Twins were smiling pleasantly, but Evenson found them terrifying no matter how he looked at them.

"I’m not nervous. Not nervous at all." Evenson forced a smile as he reached for the glass of red wine before him.

"If you’re not nervous, why are you sweating so much?" Aurelles tilted her head and smiled.

"Sweat?" Evenson touched his hair, which was nearly drenched, then put on a suddenly enlightened expression. "Oh~ The city’s power is out, isn’t it? The air conditioning doesn’t work, so it feels a little stuffy. Right, it’s from the heat."

"So it’s from the heat~" Saloras’s eyes curved into crescents as she dragged out the words. "Then why are your hands shaking?"

"Huh?" Evenson brought the wine to his lips with hands trembling as though he had Parkinson’s disease. "It’s nothing. The battle was too intense earlier, so I’m a little weak. I’ll be fine after a while."

"Heh heh…" Aurelles sneered as she watched Evenson pour the wine into his mouth. His trembling hands even spilled some onto his clothes. Then she suddenly coughed hard. "Cough, cough!"

"Pfft!" Evenson had just swallowed half a mouthful of wine when the sound startled him, making him spray it straight across the table.

"Giggle, giggle, giggle…" Seeing Evenson’s miserable state, Saloras let out a clear, bell-like laugh. "All right, we’re done teasing you."

Then her expression turned serious. "In any case, we’re very pleased with your performance this time."

Aurelles said, "This world is destined to belong to us, and this time, you successfully saved our property from thieves."

Saloras said, "So we can more or less officially begin the next stage of the plan."

"Of course." Evenson wiped his mouth clean and secretly breathed a sigh of relief. There was nothing to fear once they got down to business. "The gate to the new world has opened. Next, we need to muddy the waters so we can fish in them. But it would be better if someone else did the muddying."

"Do you have a target?" Aurelles asked.

Evenson thought of that Nuclear Bomb. "I suppose I do."

There will be another chapter shortly.