“I try not to think above my pay grade but if you wanna find out where Sakaar is, talk to Brand. A couple of my old classmates in the SHIELD Academy are on her payroll and working with the Guardians of the Galaxy, both of ‘em are Ex-SHIELD too.” Catching the device, Adrian looked at it before stowing it on his belt in a pouch. If he was gonna be doing a black bag op he was taking his shield but he had the good sense to have one of his genius Avengers buddies apply nanoshaders to it similar to those that the killer cyborg was fitted with so he’d make sure to paint it black. "Barnes is the unluckiest man I know, and I'm friends with Hank McCoy so that's saying something."
Upgraded status, did that mean his clearance was being upped? In any case, Steel would have to make sure to maintain his A Game especially since he had his annual performance review coming up and being a super soldier meant he had to make higher scores than he used to - it wasn't hard to do but if he wasn't genetically enhanced it'd be impossible to make the meta scores. "I'll get it done by the book, in and out. No body bags or toe tags." He wasn't even going to use SHIELD wings or wheels, Adrian would acquire Russian transportation and it'd be like they were never there.
A hot drop over the site and once they got the job done they could make for Japan or the Balkans for exfil. “Just like Rio all over again, hopefully Red Skull doesn’t skewer me again.” That was as close to a joke as he was gonna get - but seriously though that hurt like hell and it put him out of action for two months. Pushing a button on his belt, Adrian’s SHIELD uniform turned matte black and the insignia disappeared and as the shaders did their magic he grinned. “Nanoshader emitter, reverse engineered from Jetstream’s frame shaders. It changes clothing and equipment to almost any color you can imagine. Being an Avenger has some perks, I don’t get paid anywhere near enough to listen to Stark, Banner and Price talk tech otherwise.” Taking a round disc out of his pocket he handed it to Nick. “Had the eggheads make a couple spares, figured you’d put one to good use.” And with that, Adrian saluted and left the room to go call Clint.
Another day, another job. And another few blacked out lines on his file. Agent Steel’s body count was about to go up again...