SUPER SUICIDE? Screamed the headlines. Steve frowned. What?

Noticing the captain's expression, Tony looked over his shoulder. "The hell? JARVIS, get me all the information you can on suicidal supervillains."

"With or without hacking government files, sir?"

"Whoa. Why are we hacking classified information?" Clint stumbled into the kitchen, the imprint of feathers on his cheek suggesting he'd fallen asleep doing something with his arrows.

"The main goon from that Hydra spinoff that's been giving us trouble offed himself. Unless that has something to do with you and Nat coming in so late last night. And yes, JARVIS, search anything you can get access to."

"Huh? What about us? You know we can't talk about work." Natasha followed him in. "What we do is classified."

Clint shook his head. "It wasn't us. Can't tell you what we were doing, but it had nothing to do with that lot."

"Wait, what's going on?" Natasha and Bruce both asked.

"That thing the Hydra spinoff keeps sending to attack us was found dead." Steve skimmed the article. "Put a bullet in its mouth, looks like."

"That thing was able to hold a gun?" Natasha wondered aloud.

"The police report states very little except that it has been ruled a suicide." JARVIS supplied. "I have found no information except what is in the newspaper article in front of you."

They all looked at one another. "Well, one more enemy out of the way without effort on our part?"

A week later, 8 Ball jumped off an overpass. Natasha tried to sneak in in the guise of an emergency responder, but was unable to learn anything terribly helpful. It really did appear to have been 8 Ball, and he was definitely splattered on the pavement.

When Doctor Doom swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills, Bruce tried to get in on the autopsy and Clint almost got himself transferred to Siberia bothering Fury at every opportunity.

"Iron friend!" Thor had touched down on the roof just as Tony returned from checking out another potential lead that JARVIS had picked up on a police scanner. (An innocent car accident this time, no supervillains to be seen.) "It is good to be back in this realm! Tell me of the goings-on that I have missed!"

Tony didn't fight the bear hug too much, instead propelling him inside. "Let me get you a drink and catch you up on our little mystery. Supervillains have started killing themselves, and we're kind of wondering what's going on."

"Villains are killing themselves?" Thor fell into a chair.

Tony pushed a glass of whiskey at him. "Yup, popping up dead all over the place. All of them ruled suicides. Spidey and Bird Brain say they don't know anything about it, and Fury won't tell us anything."

"Is Loki...?" Thor toyed with his glass anxiously.

Tony mentally facepalmed. Sometimes it was hard to remember that a guy like Thor had a supervillain for a little brother. "He's probably fine. We haven't heard anything about him, and he doesn't seem the type to follow the crowd or fall for traps."

Thor set down his drink untouched and strode out the door. "I would have words with Director Fury."

The rest of the team could tell from the thunderstorm just how that conversation had gone.

"We must find my brother." Thor stalked into the living room, eyes as wild as the storm he had created. "Director Fury refuses to aid us, and began speaking of horses instead..."

"Something about not looking a gift horse in the mouth?" Steve bit back amusement at not being the one confused by terminology for once. "It's just a saying. He means that we should be grateful that those villains are no longer causing us problems and not question why."

"But why? ...No matter. We must find my brother." They all looked at him like he was crazy. "He may have done some things he should not have, but he is still my brother. He is in danger, and it may be that he knows something about this."

"As if he'd tell us if he did." Clint pointed out.

"He will tell me, I am sure of it." The storm intensified, somebody's patio furniture flying by the window. Nobody else argued with Thor.

"We could try." Natasha tried to placate him instead, "I'm sure Tony can come up with a way to track his magic if we can find a sample of it. Maybe he will know something."

Tony kicked her under the coffee table.

Thor brightened immediately and threw his cape at Tony. "An excellent idea! He mended my cape for me just recently!"

Tony glared at Natasha, staggering under the mass of heavy fabric. Sorry, She mouthed, Didn't think he actually had a sample.

Hello again, readers. I got perfect consensus on the poll that this was the story you wanted to see next. I'll be honest, I haven't quite decided yet where it'll go. I created the basic setup, and then lost half of what I'd written. I can't figure out how- Neither time machine nor dropbox had an older version backed up containing what was lost, and the word processor on my iPad autosaves to dropbox. My best guess is that my cat must have walked across my keyboard/trackpad sometime when I happened to have it open on my laptop and hadn't saved for a while. So point is, I've been busy trying to reproduce what I lost and haven't made the progress I hoped.