kind of Marvel Noir AU
There was hardly anyone here. A ghost town, empty farmhouses dotting what should have been idyllic French countryside with overgrown or bleak and dead fields, bone-picked animal corpses on the horizon and an overall sense of stillness. Stark's party tried to stop in town, meaning to purchase cautionary supplies, but businesses were boarded up and shelves emptied. The people they did meet spoke French with queer accents, and, already on edge, they quickly realized to keep conversations short, and insist they were just passing through. Like to the man at the post office, manning the telegraph and looking steely eyed, insisting there was no grocery open at this time of day, of course, and most supplies went to Paris anyway, and to move along quickly. It was Jarvis that muttered, "Nazi bastards know we're here, anyway," after spitting at one's feet and driving them out of sight, toward the forest and their destination.
"There's definitely something here, then," Tony had to smile at Pepper, who at least appeared busy writing notes as they were thrown around the back of the rumbling truck. They had followed rumours of the Nazis hiding all manner of occult secrets across the continent, none as strong as in France where they traveled freely, but they had yet to come up with anything particularly remarkable, at least nothing they could get close enough to. This was an auspicious beginning.
He wasn't smiling anymore when they all stood at the edge of the flooded quarry, the trees and overgrown road at their backs, brow furrowed thoughtfully. The bones of an old extraction building peaked out of the water, just concrete now with crumbling, empty windows, and the water was so cold it chilled the air around them. "They can't be using submersibles. You would see it," Tony muttered to no one in particular, casting a glance around for tracks indicating heavy vehicle transport. "Maybe it's not in the quarry." Rhodes had a map with him that he contemplated, shaking his head slowly. There wasn't really much else around that abandoned town. It was settled to empty this pit, then basically subsisted on cattle herding. Where else could a secret be hidden?