Eleanor honestly thought that she was in Hell. After being tired already from having her social battery drained during the party, and then having to have a small but unexpected fight, the last thing that she or any of them needed was an all-nighter of work.

A hefty portion of the night for Natasha and Eleanor had been spent on the computers trying to find any way to get any of the data back that had been stolen from them. But it had proved to be no use. The only things they had left were useless things to do with the Tower, like floorplans and electrical bills. In the background pulled up a facial recognition matching system to try and track down any high-end HYDRA operatives from the Sokovia base when it had been found that Ultron's physical 'soul' had ended up in another metal body in Sokovia.

Tony and Bruce were trying to find any way at all to regain control of Ultron, which was also failing. Maria, Rhodey, Clint and Steve were doing research into where Ultron was now and also contacting the appropriate authorities surrounding the issue of potential nuclear war.

After seeing everyone looking like they were on death's door from exhaustion as they worked all the way through to mid-morning, Steve had the grand idea of working in shifts until the evening, which was only a few hours away. Each group of two would be able to go and sleep for two hours and then relieve another pair of their duties for a quick nap.

First went Bruce and Clint, then Eleanor and Natasha, Thor and Tony, and finally Maria and Steve. Though apparently, Maria had not been napping during her designated nap time, as on the way back to the area of work she had been giving Steve some updated information on Ultron's whereabouts. Useful information, but information that came at the cost of her rest. So Eleanor would be sure to launch a cushion at her face later and tell her to sleep.

Maria's information showed that Ultron had got into the databases of robotics labs, weapons facilities, jet propulsion labs, and anything else that might aid in killing them.

Not only had he digitally entered these places, but there had been reports of metal men entering some of these facilities and clearing the places out. Clearly, Ultron was having a field day with the Iron Legion group.

There hadn't been many fatalities, only when they engages with the bots, but people from the labs had been complaining about seeing their worst fears and something that was too fast to see. This suggested that the two enhanced individuals from Sokovia, now known as the Maximoff twins, Wanda and Pietro, were now working with Ultron. Which was not good in the slightest, enhanced beings with a bot with no boundaries is a recipe for disaster.

Steve then pulled out a tablet that Maria had given to him and handed it over to the person closest to him, which happened to be Thor. "What's this?", Stark asked as he moved to stand beside Thor to get a look.

Eleanor and Natasha both turned to see what was happening, but would have to wait their turn to be able to peek at what was on the screen.

"A message. Ultron killed Strucker", Steve answered whilst Thor slammed the tablet against Stark's chest, still holding an angry grudge for the Sceptre being lost. Eleanor frowned, so far the only fatalities that were had was when someone provoked the Iron Legion, so why did Ultron go out of his way to kill Strucker? Natasha was also clearly in shock as she moved her head back and forth subtly between the side of the tablet and at Steve.

"And he did a Banksy at the crime scene, just for us". The tablet was lowered so that the two could get a look. When she could see, Eleanor felt her stomach drop. There was Strucker's body and a splat of blood on the wall near his head, but next to that was the word "PEACE" written in the man's blood.

She sighed and muttered, "Brutal". She was struggling to think why Ultron would feel the need to send that when the bot had already made it clear that 'peace in our time' was the goal.

"This is a smoke screen. Why send a message when you've just given a speech?", Nat spoke, wondering the same as Eleanor, what was Ultron's exact motives behind this. At first glance, it would seem to be a way to scare them, get under their skin, and possibly even distract them.

"Strucker knew something that Ultron wanted us to miss". Eleanor immediately looked back at her screen at Steve's idea and scanned the database to find anything to do with Strucker. They hadn't thought to search him in their file database when trying to get data back, so it was worth a shot.

"Yeah, I bet he...", Nat started looking back to her computer as well, but when Eleanor's machine began beeping she saw that the task she was about to do had already been done. "Yeah, everything we had on Strucker's been erased".

"Bloody lovely", Eleanor breathed out sarcastically, leaning back into her chair and placing her palms on the back of her head.

"Not everything", Steve started. Eleanor closed her eyes in frustration knowing where this would be going. Paper files, the good old-fashioned way! Hell seemed to not be a good enough word for Eleanor currently, wherever they were right now she thought was somehow much worse than Hell. Though that place was probably just called Earth.

Begrudgingly, the group made their way over to another room nearby. The purpose of this room was unknown to Eleanor as it was rarely used. It was well decorated and had a large table that looked quite pleasant. It would make a good meeting room. Dotted around the place were statues and posters, one was even an old Captain America poster from the 40s. Though in the corner of the room near a model of the Tower, was a group of boxes.

Those certainly didn't look like they belonged there, and was probably partly the reason why this room was never used, no one could be bothered to tidy. Though at that point in time it was useful as they didn't have to drag so many boxes out of storage as they would have needed to if the room was clean.

Everyone reluctantly picked up a box and started searching through. Steve on the other hand looked quite content doing things the old way, it was how he was used to working.

Eleanor sometimes forgot that Steve had only been in the 21st century for three years now, it was probably still weird living in a digital world for him. And he probably had a knack for finding things in paper records, it was also likely Steve who had left these boxes out in the first place as a lot seemed to have information on Strucker, conveniently.

After Eleanor had picked up a box of her own, she plonked it down next to Nat and let out a loud sigh as she tossed the lid to the side and tapped her fingers on the edge of the box. "I'd rather eat my own hand than look through all of these".

"Come on", Nat drew out with a smirk, "Don't be a drama queen and get on with it". The look on Nat's face clearly showed that she was trying to get a rise out of Eleanor, who had her own way of responding to that.

"Okay, Tasha", she calmly stated as she picked up a file on Strucker's educational background. Nat's head whipped around to face her wife and she frowned before smacking the file out of Eleanor's hands and back into the box.

She couldn't help but laugh at Eleanor's face as she blankly stared down at the now-closed file and blinked in rapid succession. Tiredness was causing a bit of a somewhat lag spike in her brain. "You okay there?", Nat questioned whilst turning her attention back onto her own box.

"Maybe", she shrugged and shoved Nat's box forward out of reach. Eleanor almost laughed at Nat trying to reach forward to grab it again, but when she saw a few of the guys on the other side of the table looking over at the noise of the box scraping she pursed her lips and tried to reach the box as well to save Natasha the embarrassment. They were the same height though so Eleanor had the same results. "Lemme just-", she placed a knee on the table and dragged it back to Nat. "There", she smiled and picked her file back up.

"Couldn't you have just walked around the side?", Tony piped up. Once again Eleanor looked ahead blankly, and Natasha looked at her expectedly with a small smile on her face.

"Yeah, I suppose I could have, man this brain lag is baaad", she shook her head as though that would help at all.

"Alright", Steve interrupted them as he dropped a box down on the table, "Known associates. Baron Strucker had a lot of friends".

"Well, these people are all horrible", Banner spoke whilst looking at his set of files.

"Wait. I know that guy". Bruce looked up at tony with confusion written across his features as he passed the file over. "From back in the day. He operates off the African coast. Black market arms".

Eleanor and Natasha were unphased at hearing this and focused their gazes on the images of the man that Tony knew that was now in Thor's hands. Apparently, someone was troubled by what Tony said though, probably Steve Eleanor thought, as he started justifying himself.

"There are conventions, alright? You meet people. I didn't sell him anything". There was a pause in conversation whilst people looked at the photos and information. Eleanor had no clue who this guy was but from a snap judgement, she could tell that 'black market dealer' suited his look.

Ulysses Klaue, a Former Member Of The Intelligence, born in the Netherlands, has Bulgarian citizenship. There were three photos on the page, one showed him walking with people who had guns in their hands, and the others were a close-up of his side profile and the back of his head. He had some tattoos that came up from his neck and onto the sides of his head like branches. Eleanor thought that it looked really cool, but once again screamed back alley profession. There also seemed to be another mark on his neck but Eleanor couldn't make out exactly what it was at the brief glance.

"He was talking about finding something new, a game-changer", Tony continued. "It was all very Ahab".

"This?", Thor pointed at the tattoos and tilted the page to get Stark to look at it.

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

"Those are tattoos, this is a brand", Thor pointed to the large mark that Eleanor had been puzzled by.

There was a collective frown that went around the room wondering what the brand meant, and who would have branded him. "I'll take a look", Bruce opened his hand for Thor to pass the file back, and he promptly went over to a computer to scan the mark.

It took a minute or so whilst everyone looked at the screen expectantly, wanting to know whether the hunch of him tying into Ultron was correct.

When "MATCH FOUND" popped up on the screen in big red letters Eleanor felt a small ounce of relief, but when she saw the time in big cream letters on the top corner of the screen that stated 5:39 pm, she had to hold in a groan of frustration. The day was nearly over, which meant almost a whole day of Ultron being out there.

"Oh, yeah. It's a word in an African dialect meaning 'thief'. In a much less friendly way", Bruce explained.

The words 'A much less friendly way' repeated in Eleanor's head, whoever did this to the guy most likely branded him with a slur or profanity then she thought to herself, with a hint of curiosity as to what it actually meant in the native tongue.

"What dialect?", Steve asked, in the same stoic tone he always had during anything mission-related. It was impressive how his voice never seemed to falter.

"Wakanada. Wa- Wakanda". There we go, Bruce got it right in the end. Wakanda was a place that outsiders rarely got into, if at all. Nat and Eleanor both looked at each other, to anyone else their expressions wouldn't show anything, but they were having a whole conversation with their eyes. Both communicating about how they had no idea how Klaue would have gotten into Wakanda.

"If this guy got out of Wakanda with some of their trade goods...", Tony turned to Steve in a more hushed voice, though the room was so quiet that everyone could hear it.

"I thought your father said he got the last of it?", Steve replied at the same volume, clearly those two knew something that the others in the room didn't.

"What are you talking about? The last of what?", Eleanor took a step towards them.

"The strongest metal on Earth", Stark replied and then looked down to Steve's shield resting against a cabinet behind them.

"Well, crap". Eleanor turned to Natasha with a slight look of defeat as she chewed on the inside of her cheek. Steve's shield was indestructible, Ultron could not get his hands on it, they had no chance if he did.

"Where is this guy now?", Steve turned everyone's attention back to Stark.

"A salvage yard on the coast of South Africa".

"Well then, what are we waiting for?", Thor boomed out as he started walking towards the exit of the room. The others all looked around at each other wondering if they were following or doing anything else beforehand.

But when Steve shrugged and shook his head before picking up his shield, they all knew that they were indeed on their way to South Africa and needed to suit up.

The two women sprinted back into their apartment block to get into their suits and get their weapons. Eleanor placed two guns in her thigh holsters and had an assortment of small knives dangling from her belt. Natasha also had guns in her holsters and had her built-in shock gloves and widow bites. Very handy.

It didn't take long before everyone had arrived in the quinjet hangar and piled into the jet, Steve had been even stricter with preparedness training than SHIELD had been, so the group was extremely quick at getting ready for an impromptu journey.

Stark assumed his position at the front whilst the others scattered themselves around. Nat and Eleanor took their usual position on a padded bench that was hidden out of the way of everything else. It would take a couple of hours to get to their destination so having the privacy was nice so that they could nap away from prying eyes.

Natasha set a timer of an hour so that they wouldn't miss the mission debrief that they would do before arriving, and leaned her shoulder into the wall next to her, then dragged Eleanor to rest on her side. The two felt immediately relaxed at the prolonged contact, and Natasha closed her eyes. At feeling Nat's tense body slowly relax, Eleanor couldn't help but let a small smile rest on her lips. If only one of them could sleep then she wanted it to be Natasha.

The younger woman, however, didn't sleep. She was exhausted but also incredibly nervous about facing Ultron and the twins, and those nerves got the better of her, keeping her body tense and awake.

Through a small window nearby Eleanor looked out onto the horizon and knew that rest was not on it.