"So," said Rhodey, when the two of them had found a secure spot in the outside corridor, "how long have you and King T'Chaka been bosom buddies, Cap?"

Steve glanced up at a dial clock on the wall above. "About half an hour, I'd say," he said. "It's the weirdest thing, really. I was just standing in the hallway, talking to the delegate from São Tomé and Príncipe about that enhanced-persons concern of Bucky's – not using his name, of course, just saying that I'd heard from someone else who was treated with Erskine's serum. And T'Chaka was in the background, talking in Wakandan to someone on a fancy earpiece; I didn't think he was paying attention to us, but I guess he must have been, because he came up to me as His Excellency was walking away and started asking me a whole bunch of questions about Erskine."

"About Erskine?" Rhodey repeated, furrowing his brow in puzzlement. "Why?"

Steve shrugged. "No idea. Maybe one of those old German ambassadors on the barges was related to him; I started to suspect that after a while, from things T'Chaka was asking. Anyway, I answered him as well as I could – he seemed particularly interested in what Erskine said about Schmidt, and how the serum hadn't worked properly on him because of his pride and bloodlust – and then, eventually, he fell silent, stood thinking for a moment, and then out of nowhere asked me what my own views were on the Accords."

"Uh-huh," said Rhodey. "So you told him…"

"Just what Natasha's theory was," said Steve, "and what my reasons were for agreeing with her. And T'Chaka asked if I would be willing to share this with the Assembly – I swear, apart from the accent, he sounded exactly like my old third-grade teacher talking about someone's chewing gum – and I said I'd be glad to, and the rest you know."

He shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe the whole thing with Kravenoff had just left him ready to believe something was up – but that doesn't explain why he started with the whole Erskine thing. I can't believe he was just making conversation, can you?"

Rhodey shook his head, remembering how T'Chaka had introduced Steve not long before. One who could not be as he is if his heart were not honest and upright… did T'Chaka know something about Super-Soldier Serum that the rest of the world didn't? He had a wild momentary vision of a prototype bottle sitting somewhere in a Wakandan treasure-chamber, half-empty from all the doses that great warriors had taken from it…

He shook his head firmly. Get a grip, Rhodes, he told himself. This is Wakanda you're talking about, not Narnia.

"Well, I hope the two of you are happy with the mess you've created, anyway," he said aloud. "I mean, let's say we're right, and there really is a sinister conspiracy at the back of the Accords. How do you think those guys are going to feel about Wakanda jumping ship like that?"

"Oh, there's definitely going to be trouble," said Steve. "We've known that since we first heard T'Chaka and Kravenoff going at it. For Doom, losing Wakanda means his whole Plan A goes down in flames; he'll be lucky to get half the Assembly now, let alone the two-thirds he needs. The question is, what's Plan B going to be like? Because I've got to assume he has one."

"You sure?" said Rhodey, mentally substituting X for Doom to keep the question from grating on him too badly. "Maybe he'll just shrug it off and go on to something else. If he was just taking advantage of an opportunity that presented itself…"

"He wasn't, though," said Steve. "Remember, we're saying he set up the whole thing in Lagos ahead of time: giving Rumlow his plan, bribing the police to stay out of it, all that. Nobody sticks his neck out that way unless he's really committed to getting his payoff."

Rhodey made a face. "Okay, fair point," he said. "So we're assuming a guy who'll stop at nothing to replace the U.N. with a new world empire of his own, but has to look like a good guy while he's doing it." He thought for a moment. "I guess what he does, then, is find a new way to strike at the U.N.'s weak spot – get everyone all outraged about the five-country veto, not because it's keeping a bunch of loose-cannon superheroes from being reined in, but for some other reason that might not even have anything to do with the Avengers. It probably won't happen right away, but it's something we'll want to keep our eyes peeled for over the next year or so."

Steve nodded. "Makes sense," he said. "And the Accords themselves? You think he just walks away and lets them crash and burn?"

"Has to, doesn't he?" said Rhodey. "Like you said, there's no way they get two-thirds of the Assembly now – and even if they did, a French veto couldn't be the kind of shock he was counting on, in this new climate. In fact, he probably wants them to fail now," he added thoughtfully. "If they go to the Security Council and get vetoed, he can say goodbye to any chance of people being shocked and outraged by that rule later on."

"Mm," said Steve. "So, as far as this meeting goes, there's nothing left for us to do."

"Pretty much," said Rhodey. "Just sit back and enjoy the ride, Captain America." And he gave Steve a brotherly slap on the arm, which Steve smiled at and returned. (Gently, of course, so as not to splinter his colleague's humerus.)

So, in due time, the two of them made their way back into the Assembly chamber, where the delegate from Turkey was already busily engaged in damage control. He evidently hadn't been talking very long, since the first words of his that Rhodey caught, as he and Steve sat down, were, "…very well to cast aspersions, if one is afraid to argue the case on its merits. But is Captain Rogers prepared to say what the malevolent intentions actually are that lie hidden in the Accords? It would seem not, or he would have done so when he was at this podium. To be sure," he added, as murmurs of dissent began to swell from the Assembly, "I do not discount the Wakandan sovereign's assurance of forthcoming corroboration; I only say that 'You must vote this way now, and later we will give you the reason why' is a very easy argument to make." (Which sounded to Rhodey as though he was discounting T'Chaka's assurance – but maybe there was some fine distinction there that only a trained diplomat could perceive.)

"For her part, Turkey remains unconvinced. The Avengers may say, if they like, that they can be arrested and tried like any other civilian, and therefore the Accords are unnecessary; we say that this is folly. Where is the policeman who would dare arrest the Hulk? These are not mere men and women, and to treat them so is absurd. It would be irresponsible on the part of the world not to have procedures in place…"

At this juncture, Steve, who had been staring abstractedly off into space since he took his seat, suddenly leaned down and jotted something on the notepad the U.N. had provided him; then he tore off the top sheet and passed it to Rhodey, who, glancing down at it, found that it read, What abt. D's rival int. org.? Avs.' next job t.c.o.?

It took Rhodey a few seconds to decode this; once he had, though, he conceded there was some sense to it. Yes, Doom – X – probably did have a rival international organization set up, at least in embryo, to step in and claim the U.N.'s mantle once the latter had been delegitimized; yes, taking care of it should probably be the next item on the Avengers' agenda. So he took up his own pencil, and wrote underneath Steve's scrawl, Sure. How?

He passed this back to Steve, who glanced at it and almost immediately started writing another line underneath Rhodey's. When he had finished this and passed it back, Rhodey found that it read, Try EU? Eur. D's turf acc. Nat ("layic V"). Cd. mean use as core?

Rhodey's first response, upon deciphering this, was to think how exquisitely typical it was that Steve Rogers shouldn't know how to spell "laic". His second was to feel a twinge of alarm. Of course, on the supposition that Doom was X, it was quite reasonable to suppose that he meant to pervert the European Union into a nucleus for his designs of world conquest; there was no reason, in the abstract, why the same process that had made Brussels into the de-facto capital of a pan-European state couldn't be extended across the whole globe. (Not that plenty of former colonial countries wouldn't resist, in the ordinary course of things – which would explain the point of this whole back-door, lesser-evil, Wakanda-as-patsy approach…) But, apart from Rhodey's own firm conviction that Doom wasn't X (yes, it was still firm, dammit), there was the basic objection that he wrote out as line 4: No go. Avs. vs. EU = war.

Steve seemed to see the force of this; anyway, he spent more time choosing his abbreviated words this time around – enough, at least, for Rhodey's attention to drift back to the podium. There seemed to have been a change of speakers while the two of them had been corresponding; the delegate from Mauritania was now up, and was responding with some heat to the Turkish delegate's not-mere-men-and-women remark. What, he demanded, did the gentleman from Turkey mean to insinuate that the Avengers were, that the laws should treat them so differently from men and women? Were they gods, perhaps? (Said with all the scornful irony with which one Muslim might be expected to suggest this position in another.) Were they jinni, or angels? (Not much less arch.) Because, really, Mauritania was unaware of anything else that those who were not men could be – except for beasts, of course. And surely it was not Turkey's position that Captain America and his group of world-rescuing warriors were mere brute beasts to be restrained by force. So the only conclusion left…

The sheet found itself atop Rhodey's desk again. Not vs., Steve had written. Strat. 3-fold: 1, assess D's supp. Bruss. – 2, build up opp. force within EU – 3, use latt. cont. form. Not cert., but best-case scen. shd. be goal.

Now that was the kind of talk Rhodey liked to hear (or, in this case, read). If there was anything that made him feel ambivalent about being an Avenger, it was the way their missions always seemed to degenerate into grandiose slug-fests; sure, it was a rush at the time, but it always left a bad taste in his mouth afterwards. If Cap's goal was to preemptively avoid that – to neutralize Doo… X by means of quiet persuasion and the creation of alternate climates of opinion, rather than by throwing energy blasts around – then Rhodey was on board all the way, no questions asked. Or, rather, no questions except one, which he scrawled almost eagerly on the sheet: Details? Who does what?

And this question, for the next ten minutes or so, exercised the two men to the near-total exclusion of all else. They barely noticed the Accords debate as it proceeded steadily in front of them – which was rather a pity, as there were parts of it that were quite thought-provoking. When the Mauritanian delegate had finished saying his piece, his place was taken by the delegate from Thailand, who remarked thoughtfully that the previous addresses both seemed to him – if their authors would forgive him – to have been somewhat off the real point. Granted that the Avengers were men and women, or the equivalents thereof before the law, still the question remained whether the powers they wielded were truly compatible with traditional ideas of law enforcement, or whether some more novel measure wasn't necessary to ensure that a rogue Hulk or Vision didn't someday succeed in vaporizing a whole city's police department and laughing at the impotence of the law to call him to account. This, to his mind, was the real purpose behind the Sokovia Accords, and the reason why his country still supported them despite Wakanda and Captain America's concerns. –And, after this, the delegate from Switzerland got up, and said with equally cultivated judiciousness that he sympathized with the previous speaker's concerns, but regarded the Sokovia Accords as an overly simplistic solution to the problem thus identified. It was not the Avengers, as such, that threatened traditional law enforcement with obsolescence; it was a number of recent social and technological developments, not directly related in themselves, that did so, some of which (not all) were represented by some (not all) of the Avengers' members. The recent interest of Asgard in Earth, with all that had resulted therefrom; the developments made by Tony Stark and Stark Industries in weapons technology over the past decade; certain breakthroughs in performance enhancement that stemmed, ultimately, from Abraham Erskine's work decades before – and also, the Swiss delegate begged to remind his colleagues, such wholly random phenomena as the Convergence of the Realms: these, if anything, were what had made it impossible for Earth's governments to continue as they had done hitherto. Each required a distinct, specific, and carefully considered response, both from the United Nations and from each member state; focusing on the Avengers, or on so-called "enhanced persons" generally, could be nothing but an evasion of the true responsibility. It all made for a stimulating discourse on issues at once topical and perpetually relevant, such as the parliamentary assemblies of Earth witness far less often than they ought.

But Steve and Rhodey missed it all – nor, it must be said, was the object of their own discourse much less significant. In those ten minutes or so, something very like a re-conception of the Avengers was drawn up between the two of them; the loosely defined band of Earth's mightiest heroes was converted, at least on paper, into a precisely tooled weapon for preventing the EU's conversion into a tool of world conquest. Nat, with her geopolitical expertise, would naturally take the strategic lead, possibly aided by Fury and Clint if they were available; Tony's associates within the NATO chain of command, along with Rhodey's less exalted connections, could provide useful starting points for an in-depth investigation; Wanda, as an EU citizen, was free to move about the Continent openly and without hassle, which would likely prove invaluable down the line. The Vision's role was more of a question mark; his powers of infiltration had the potential to come in very handy, but only if his conspicuousness as a one-of-a-kind entity could somehow be glossed over. That part would likely have to be played by ear – assuming, that was, that the Vision would be on board with the project at all, or even still regarded himself as an Avenger. (Given his recent unexplained will-o'-the-wisp act, neither Steve nor Rhodey felt wholly confident in assuming this – though what could have happened to alienate him from the team was likewise a mystery.) Anyway, with or without him, the role of each major team member in the overall effort seemed pretty clear.

Each, that was, save one. And you? Rhodey wrote. What do you do?

He passed it to Steve, who sighed and scrawled a lengthy reply. We'll see, it proved to read. This new Eur. not rly. my turf – I'd prob. mostly just be i.t.w. Maybe Sam & I can prvd. dstrc. some point.

It surprised Rhodey how much it depressed him to read this. Not just because Steve was underselling himself (though he did think he was; however postmodern and sophisticated Europe got, he didn't believe that the hero of the Howling Advance would ever cease to have clout there), but because he suddenly had a picture of a world where Captain America really was just in the way, and good only for providing distractions alongside a wing-suited ex-paratrooper. It wasn't a world, he thought, in which he much wanted to live.

To distract his mind from such thoughts, he slid the paper to one side and readdressed himself to the Accords debate. The Swiss delegate had descended the podium, and the final speaker on the pro-Accords side was now mounting thereto – and this, Rhodey was in no way surprised to find, was Kravenoff of Latveria. With a cat-like grace surprising in so large a man, he leapt up the steps and strode across the stage, self-assured as a lion; reaching the podium, he grasped it fiercely in both hands, and fixed the General Assembly of the United Nations with a gaze that Rhodey could see glittering even from the observers' row.

"Peoples of the world," he said, his normally rasping voice curiously soft and silky, "if it pleases you, I would like to recur to a remark that my colleague from Mauritania made, when he stood here not long ago. He suggested, as I recall, that we who support the Sokovia Accords regard the Avengers not as men to be appealed to, but as wild beasts to be restrained; deeming this unreasonable, he concluded that the Accords themselves are unreasonable as well.

"Now, my colleague from Thailand has, to my mind, quite fully summarized the case against this conclusion, and I will not attempt to go again over ground that has been so excellently covered already. But I would ask my fellow delegates to consider: is the premise attributed to our side really so unsound? Do none of us, when we contemplate these fierce and powerful figures sweeping down upon our cities to war and destroy, have the sense of beholding mighty birds and beasts of prey, to whom our laws and borders mean no more than gates to a rhinoceros or walls to an eagle? Do none of us secretly wish for some bold and mighty man to dispose of them, as villagers in old India might wish for a tiger-slayer? I think many of us do, and those not the least wise.

"For man himself is a beast by nature – the fiercest, most treacherous beast of all. Laws may tame him for a time, but only as a wolf is cowed by the report of a rifle – that is, by the brute reverence for that which is stronger than he. Clothe him with superhuman power, remove the impetus to fear the judges and armies of civilization, and the beast within him will awaken once again, all the more savage for its long captivity. Then woe to those who have sought to restrain him, for he will surely avenge himself upon them; he will rend their cities with his bare hands, and howl in triumph amid the ruins…"

He continued in this vein for some time, and Rhodey, stock-still and slack-jawed, listened to it with a kind of horrified fascination. What was the man doing? Surely, he didn't expect to persuade anyone to vote for the Accords by painting Captain America as some kind of latent Conan the Barbarian, did he? If anything, this sort of thing would encourage others to vote against the Accords…

…which, as Rhodey had himself noted, was just what X would want at this stage…

…what, indeed, X's U.N. representative, if he had one, would likely have been ordered during that recess to guarantee…

A peculiar kind of cold horror, which only those can know who have personally watched their idols fall, squeezed at Rhodey's heart. Oh, God, he thought. It's true. Nat, Steve, Wanda… they were right all along. Victor Von Doom is an evil mastermind bent on world domination.

No sooner had he made this mental admission than he felt a hot shame at not having made it sooner. Really, he had known the moment he had seen Kravenoff emerge from the window recess; his dismissals of Wakandan backwardness had, he now plainly saw, been nothing but a flimsy wall thrown up between himself and a truth he hadn't wished to face. But there was no avoiding it now; there was only one explanation for Kravenoff's current behavior, and that one meant that the man Rhodey had revered for decades as the embodiment of the liberal ideal was actually a scheming megalomaniac whose tools were deceit and treachery.

As he reeled beneath this blow, Kravenoff's peroration continued, growing more feverishly eloquent with every clause. Whether he had believed in its thesis himself to begin with, or whether it had merely been the first way he thought of to undermine the Accords by arguing in favor of them, Rhodey didn't know, but it was plain that he was coming to believe it more and more deeply the longer he spoke. (Which was in character with what Rhodey knew of Kravenoff; he had often heard that the man was a notorious self-dramatizer – hence his famous nickname – and a sucker for stark, romantic visions with a flavor of Spenglerian pessimism about them.) It was lucky that the U.N. set a limit on the length of speeches; if he remained in this attitude too much longer, Rhodey wouldn't put it past him to snap and start planning a superhero big-game hunt of his own.

"Shall the world permit such creatures to roam unfettered?" Kravenoff demanded, the podium quivering slightly as he struck it with his fist. "Shall our women and children live out their days in dread of their bestial fury? No, I say! Let this Assembly adopt the resolution before it, and then we shall see how much their vaunted might avails against the determination of true men to…"

Thwiiipppp!

Without warning, a thin jet of white streaked through the air toward the podium, and suddenly Kravenoff's entire lower jaw was wrapped in some pasty substance, sealing his mouth shut. As he struggled, a new voice was heard – a boyish, feisty tenor with a pronounced Queens accent. "Okay, pal," it said. "Thanks for playing and all, but I think you've made your point."

Everyone looked wildly left and right to see the speaker; Steve was one of the few who thought to look up. He nudged Rhodey and pointed, and the latter raised his eyes to see a slender figure in a red knit bodysuit dangling from the ceiling, suspended from what looked bizarrely like a giant cobweb.

"Now," said this prodigy, lowering himself slowly toward the Assembly as he spoke, "how about letting your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man say a few words, huh?"