James casually flipped through the materials Bucky and Azazel had brought back.
His Russian was only so-so, and he could understand just the general gist. They were mostly unimportant experiment logs and a jumble of data.
"Take them downstairs. Once they've been translated by a specialist, let Dr. Erskine and Zola pick through them at their leisure. Keep tracking Sebastian Shaw. He isn't a direct threat to us right now, but I don't like these mutant modification experiments."
Colin Pitt stood respectfully before James and nodded. Bucky stood off to one side, distracted, as if he had somewhere urgent to be.
"All right, you can all go. Colin, gather everyone tomorrow. The wedding ought to be lively."
Bucky's eyes lit up. He proposed some dubious-sounding Brooklyn wedding customs, then left the study dejectedly under James's dismissive gaze.
Downstairs, in Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter's room, Steve had just finished that day's training course for the young wolf cubs. Holding a long ebony case, he quietly approached Peggy, who was studying intelligence reports at her desk. He set the case on the table and bent to kiss her cheek.
"What's this?"
The former English rose, Agent Carter of MI6, wore a well-fitted indigo dress, her hair pinned up in a loose, voluminous style. She ran her fingers over the fine-grained case and looked at Steve curiously.
"Open it and see." Rogers smiled and winked.
Inside the black case, made of an unfamiliar material, lay two oddly shaped, dark-silver pistols on a bed of velvet. Their six-round cylinders resembled those of revolvers, but their long, thick barrel housings made them look more like the semiautomatic pistols commonly used nowadays.
The grips were inlaid with blackwood, a tropical hardwood native to Africa's primeval forests. It could grow to over ten meters tall, but