I Fell For My Nemesis

Without pushing Avery too much? Why would her husband care about that? He had his butt kicked by her more times than Angelo could count. He would know better than anyone what she was capable of in the suit. 

"Why does that matter?" Angelo asked, squinting at him. 

"Avery shouldn\'t be jumping around or fighting anybody right now," Christian replied stoutly. "I can do whatever she normally does in her place."

He didn\'t get it. This goody-two-shoes who was not only a lawyer but a former hero was willing to do villain work so his wife didn\'t have to? That didn\'t add up. There had to be more to it. 

Angelo rounded on Avery. "Why can\'t you do it?"

She buried her face in her hands.. "You\'re going to yell at me again. I really can\'t take any more of that right now."

A tiny prick of guilt flared up. Oops. He had yelled at her, hadn\'t he? Christian probably had earlier too if he had to guess. She did seem more emotionally fragile than usual right now. She was pretty tough most of the time. 

But what horrible thing had she done that made her think she would get yelled at further? Was it solely because she needed to take a break during this crucial juncture? And why would she need to? She knew how important getting this done now was!

Angelo realized it in a single horrible instant. Christian\'s insistence on getting this done quickly even if he had to take his wife\'s place in something he was morally against. Why he hadn\'t left her. 

"You\'re pregnant!" he exclaimed as if it was a curse. 

Both of their lack of response gave him the answer he needed. He ran his hands through his hair in agitation. Pregnant. How could she be pregnant? He knew getting into a serious relationship in their situation was a terrible idea!

"Ay, ay, ay," Angelo muttered. "I can\'t believe this! How could you do something so monumentally stupid, Avery?"

Her head snapped up at the sound of her real name. Her eyes were filled with tears but she was defensive. "It wasn\'t like I did it on purpose!" 

That wasn\'t much comfort. They had just lost their greatest asset in this mission. How were they supposed to speed things up that way, let alone continue at the pace they had already been at? 

And there was still Nolan Hunsacher being onto them tonight to contend with. How were they going to deal with any of this if Avery was out of commission? He couldn\'t even be excited about the possibility of having a niece or nephew under these circumstances. 

Angelo ran his hands down his face and moaned in Spanish. "You idiot!" 

"Yes, we\'ve already established that I\'m an idiot," Avery snapped back in English. "Do you have anything else to say?"

"Forgive me if I can\'t congratulate you for ruining all of our plans in one go! We\'ve been working on this for  and now it\'s ruined!" 

Christian sighed and put a hand on his wife\'s shoulder to comfort her. "Stop calling her an idiot. Things aren\'t hopeless. She can still come with me and show me what to do. I just don\'t want her to do anything that might cause problems for the baby. This isn\'t the end of the world."

Angelo tried to calm his raging thoughts. Was this really not going to ruin things? He trusted the suit a lot more than he trusted Mercury since Avery managed to beat him so many times. 

He did have a long career as a hero before he got stabbed though. That had to count for something…but would it be enough? 

"You won\'t be able to do this as Mercury," Angelo pointed out, not wanting to cause further argument by bringing up his concerns. 

"Mercury is retired," Christian said in a hard voice. "I already knew that. All I\'m doing here is helping my wife stop someone trying to take over the world. If she\'s Nox I can be Nox Two."

"Technically, you would be Nox Three since I\'m the second Nox," Avery spoke up with the tiniest hint of a smile on her face. 

"Eh, who needs technicalities," he replied with a wave of his hand. 

Angelo couldn\'t believe he was witnessing this conversation. He never thought he would be working with a hero. Let alone one who happened to be married to his best friend. 

He tried to think about what little he knew about Mercury. He was fast, strong, agile, and could fly. Those weren\'t bad things to have in an ally but would they be enough to replace the nearly indestructible suit Levi left behind? 

Should Avery just hand the suit off to someone else? Changing the biometrics would be a hassle and it really wouldn\'t be wise to put a novice in it during such an important time for the mission. It had taken her months to get the hang of things and even to this day she hadn\'t figured out all of the features since she hadn\'t been able to find the dumb filtration button earlier. That had kickstarted all of this. 

"I\'m going to have to rethink a lot of our plan," Angelo said with resignation. "Including how to make up for what happened tonight. If Hunsacher\'s onto us we need to know if he\'s onto us specifically or the fact that someone is out to get him and targeting certain places." 

Avery frowned. "Wouldn\'t he have come after us on a personal level if he knew who we were? My guess is that he left a trap for whoever has been causing him trouble. One of the goons who grabbed me referred to me as the Man in the Black Suit. 

"I don\'t think he would have done that if he knew who I was. You\'ve covered our tracks too well. We just…need to be more careful of potential traps lying in wait for us. I need to find that filtration button and Christian needs a gas mask and we should be good to go."

That seemed like an oversimplification to Angelo. What if Hunsacher tried more than gas next time? What if he brought in greater forces than they had the ability to combat?

He needed better tech. Was he going to have to hit the black market to find villainous weapons like flamethrowers and freeze rays? 

Leah could pay for it but he was going to have to track it down. And convince the goody-two-shoes to use it. The suit had some helpful capabilities built in but they weren\'t meant to be effective against large groups. 

"There\'s a lot more we have to do than that. If Hunsacher is already hiring more goons to protect headquarters and using weapons we aren\'t used to we\'re going to need to more firepower. Especially if you can\'t fight. I don\'t know how many people your husband is capable of fighting on his own."

"Depends on the people," Christian admitted. "But I won\'t let anyone hurt Avery. You can count on that."

Angelo could see the fire in his eyes. He meant it. He would die before he let someone hurt her on his watch. That was quite the dedication. 

Another squirm of guilt. Angelo had seriously misjudged the man. 

"I…I\'m sorry."

Christian raised an eyebrow. "For what?"

"For doubting you. You were right and I was wrong. You\'re handling this a lot better than I thought you would. You\'re still willing to have my girl\'s back and I appreciate that more than I can say," Angelo confessed. 

The words were sour in his mouth. He hated admitting he was wrong and always had. But he wasn\'t so prideful that he couldn\'t say so when it came to his attention. That didn\'t mean he had to like it. He didn\'t like anything about this mess and wished it hadn\'t happened. 

There was no going back. Avery had married a hero and was pregnant with his child. All Angelo could do at this point was accept it and try to work around it as best he could.

There was going to have to be some serious working around though. Losing their key player at a time like this would majorly set them back. 

Christian seemed genuinely surprised by the apology but satisfied nonetheless. "Thank you. I appreciate it. And so you know, after hearing what Hunsacher is up to I agree that he needs to be stopped even if I\'m not a huge fan of your methods. 

"I\'m not doing this just for Avery. I\'m doing it because it\'s the right thing to do. She explained some of it to me but could you clue me in on the rest? I\'d like to know what I\'m getting myself into."

Angelo was even more surprised than he was at that response. A hero genuinely thought they, a group of villains, was doing the right thing?!

He had misjudged him even more than he originally thought. He might not be such a goody two shoes after all.