Kae glanced over at the clock. Their special group was due to show up any minute to take over their meeting room. This group had booked meeting room eight every other day but Sunday for the past three weeks. By now Kae knew when to expect them, and she and her coworker had already pulled out all the necessary books and references for the group.

"So, how often do you think we'll have to break up their squabbling this time?" she asked with a grin, glancing over at her coworker.

Elaine snorted as her fingers ghosted across her Braille keyboard. She had one earbud in so she could hear the computer read text to her, but left the other out so she could hear her surroundings.

"Depends," she replied. She would have glanced at her friend if she could, and instead settled on a wry grin. "We'll have to see what it's like when they walk in. I'll bet on at least twice, though." She knew the group her friend was talking about: four men, sometimes five, sometimes five and a woman, three of whom were strong personalities. Elaine had no idea what they looked like, but she recognized all of their voices by now. "What time is it?"

"Five 'til." Kae smiled briefly. "So if he keeps up his normal habit, Mr. Rodgers will be here any minute." She knew them all fairly well by this point, and she and Elaine had sort of figured some things out on their spare time. Which was just hilarious, in her mind.

"Give him another minute or so, then," Elaine replied, pushing aside her special keyboard for the moment. She grinned a bit when she heard the sound of a motorcycle outside. "That might be him, unless he caught a ride with someone else today." Which had happened once or twice in the past. It had thrown her off, since she was used to hearing the motorcycle before hearing him and it hadn't happened that way.

"Nope, that's him." Kae grinned. "And if I'm not mistaken, there's Mr. Stark's car turning onto the street." She shook her head and adjusted herself on her chair, making sure her crutches were in easy reach.

"You mean his ridiculously expensive chariot of the gods," Elaine replied, snorting a bit. She still managed to plaster a warm smile on her face in time to hear the automatic doors slide open and two familiar sets of footsteps come in. "Mr. Rodgers, Mr. Stark, welcome back."

"Ma'am," she heard Mr. Rodgers reply. As he got closer, she could faintly smell his leather jacket. The smell wasn't as strong as it would be on new leather, but it was there. She heard a faint rustling, but couldn't tell what kind of movement it betrayed.

In fact, Steve had nodded to both Kae and Elaine. It had only taken one or two meetings for the group to realize that Elaine was blind. It had only taken one or two minutes for them to realize why Kae needed her crutches.

"Our very own librarians," Stark said in leiu of greeting, grinning briefly at them.

"Mr. Stark," Kae replied politely. "We have all your research back on the tables in a much more mannerly fashion than when you last left them."

"That wasn't me. Blame the green guy."

Kae just gave him a mild Look.

"Stark..." Steve reprimanded half-heartedly, exasperated.

"I had my minion pull a few more materials for you than what was on the list," Elaine added. "They should be in on the table as well, I thought they might be helpful."

"Thank you," Steve replied. "your 'minion'?"

"I have an intern as an underling at the moment," Elaine replied.

"I see." The concept of an 'intern' was a bit foreign to Steve, so he assumed it was a modern idea. He still hadn't quite been able to grasp them all yet.

"His namebadge even says "minion" on it," Kae said helpfully with a grin that was just this side of wicked.

Stark snorted. "I don't need minions."

"No, you have a supercomputer/AI system," Kae shot right back. "And that almost counts as your minion."

For a moment Tony Stark just looked flabbergasted, then he snorted again and headed for the meeting room. "Hurry up, Cap, before the horde descends."

Steve couldn't quite bring himself to be annoyed at the nickname as he inwardly snickered at his flabbergasted look. It was rare someone was able to do that to Tony.

"Ah, it is good to be among friends again!" a voice boomed from the door. Elaine grinned a bit and turned her head so she was 'looking' at the man who had come in. He was another of the group, and she'd noticed he had missed the last couple of meetings.

"Welcome back," she said. She heard the heavy, confident footsteps coming forward, bringing with them the faintest scent of ozone.

"I thank you for your welcome, fair maiden," Thor replied. He gave her a scrutinizing look. "Are you quite certain you're sightless?" It was a question he tended to ask at least once a week, and half the time seriously.

"I'm sure," Elaine replied. She quickly took a mental head count. There was still at least one more to arrive, if not two or three.

"I see," Thor said. With that, he turned his attention back to the others and grinned at them in greeting.

"Blondie," Stark said in greeting with a brief grin of his own. He found the god really rather amusing most of the time, especially when it came to nicknames and teasing. The god still didn't get many of the social niceties, which Tony Stark was taking full advantage of.

Kae just rolled her eyes and looked over when the last two arrived; Hawkeye and Dr. Banner. She nudged Elaine to let her know, since Hawkeye still had a bad habit of sneaking up on them.

"Ah, the bird does leave its nest once in a while," Tony said with a smirk. "Running out of feathers to decorate it with?"

Kae grabbed one of her crutches, reached across the space, and whacked Tony in the middle with her crutch, balancing against the desk. Tony let out a very undignified little cough and held his hands up in mock surrender.

Elaine could hear Dr. Banner arriving, but it took Kae's nudge to let her know about Mr. Barton. Even with her more-sensitive ears, she couldn't hear his footsteps.

"Dr. Banner," she greeted, "Mr. Barton. Welcome back."

"Sure about that?" she heard Dr. Banner mutter. Louder, he added, "Uh, thanks."

"Since we're all here," Steve broke in, "maybe we should get back to work."

"Of course. Your things are all ready, gentlemen." Kae motioned to the room, which they should all know by now. But she had noticed that sometimes they needed herding.

Stark just shot her and Elaine both a grin before sauntering to the meeting room. Because Tony Stark never did anything so ordinary as walk; oh no. He sauntered. Rolling his eyes, Barton gave the two ladies a short nod each as he followed, remembering half-way to the room that he was supposed to actually make noise so Elaine could track him too.

"I hear one two three four..." Elaine frowned for a moment, listening carefully, before nodding. "Five, okay, that's all of them." She sat back down in her chair, grinning just a bit. "I'm going to miss them when they stop reserving that room," she commented to Kae.

"We're lucky they put up with you," Steve commented to Tony as he sat down and pulled over one of the books on the table. Give him good old-fashioned book-learning any day. He'd leave the strange 'internet' research to Tony. "They must not mind how obnoxious you tend to be."

"They are well-mannered maidens," Thor commented as he leaned back in his chosen seat. "They will never be warriors, but that seems not to be a problem here."

"Shouldn't we be brushing up on this Roman stuff?" Bruce pointed out. He glanced at the others and reached for a book with carefully controlled movements.

"I know. They've been so much fun!" Kae grinned. "Not to mention, you know, we've got the Avengers hanging out in our library." She lowered her voice for that last bit.

"This Roman stuff?" Tony looked at Bruce in minor incredulity. "Here we are trying to save the world--again--and it's just "this Roman stuff" to the Green Goblin here."

"Seriously!" Elaine whispered back, grinning. The first time the group had come in, Elaine had spent the entire day wondering where she'd heard Mr. Rodgers' voice before--and she finally realized that she'd heard it when she was a child, when her grandfather had had her watch some old film reels from World War Two. And if Captain America was in the group, along side Tony Stark... Well, that could only mean one thing. Thankfully, she managed to keep her head enough to act professional until she'd gotten used to them coming around.

"I'm a scientist, not a historian," Bruce replied. "It's not exactly your area of expertise, either, Tony."

"Stark, knock it off," Steve added.

Kae just grinned and went back to her work for the moment, keeping half her attention on the meeting room. Just in case. Things were known to sometimes get a little... rowdy when the group was around.

She just hoped she wouldn't have to hit too many of them with her crutches again.

Stark grumped and grumbled things about "don't know why my father helped you" and "spoil-sport" and other such things, but he pulled over a book to start looking too.

Elaine got back to work as well, although she kept one ear open to keep track of the group. They were always fun to listen to, especially once Mr. Stark had someone bring him a triple-shot espresso.

"Don't badmouth your father, he was a good man," Steve replied automatically as he turned his focus to the book. It was kind of interesting, taken in the context of 'these people might actually exist.' He'd come to the library on his own in between these meetings, to do research of his own, and he'd started with Norse. May as well know who was on your own team, right?

Predictably, it didn't take long for Thor to get bored, and so he ended up wandering out of the room again to stretch his legs and poke around a bit.

By then Kae was back putting some books away for Elaine since the minion wasn't around to boss around, and she glanced over at Thor, putting the last book away.

"Mr. Odinsson. Anything I can help you find?" She smiled at him, resettling her crutches under her arms.

It was only a few moments after Thor left that Tony got up, stretched, and wandered back over towards the desk so he could use his phone and have someone bring him coffee. Dammit he could get Jarvis to do all this for him; why did he have to be here again? Still grumbling, he put in his order and hung up, sliding his phone back in his pocket.

"Not at all, dear lady," Thor replied, looking at Kae. "And please, my given name will suit." Hearing himself called 'Mr. Odinsson' sounded strange and vaguely unnatural.

"There's a Starbucks around the corner, Mr. Stark," Elaine commented as he wandered his way to the desk and made the phone call. "You can get your overpriced caffeine there." He was standing close enough that she could hear a faint electric humming, although she had no idea what it was coming from. It was too close to be the lights, but the only bit of electronics she could think of him carrying would be a cell phone, and those didn't hum. "Are the research materials we pulled for you what you were looking for?"

Kae nodded to show she'd heard. "Alright. Well, let me know if need anything." She shifted again and picked up a few books someone had left on shelves, scowling briefly at the one on the floor. She could get it, but that had the potential to be extremely embarrassing.

Tony snorted. "Yes, but why get it myself when I have interns scrambling to do whatever I want?" He smirked. "Yes, the materials are in general what we need. The problem is finding the specifics. I still don't understand why they won't just let have Jarvis search." He shrugged. Not really his problem, except this research crap was eating up his time. He was a genius, and he designed crap and built crap. Research was not his strong suit.

Thor could see the problem right away, and simply bent down to pick up the book. It wasn't weakness to acknowledge one's limitations. He held it out to her so she could do with it what she wanted.

"I think Mr. Rodgers is more comfortable with hard copies," Elaine commented as she reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a half-headset. It covered only one ear, and had an attached microphone. She brushed her fingers gently over her computer's tower, searching for the side-by-side sockets for the headphone and microphone jacks. Time to use her voice-command software; typing just wasn't a good idea today. "All things considered, I think he's allowed." She frowned slightly when she couldn't find the sockets for the headset jacks.

"Thank you," Kae said after a moment, taking the book. It still irked her that she couldn't do things like that, but she knew it wasn't Thor's fault. "Figured I'd be used to this by now. Oh well."

"The Captain is way too serious. He needs to lighten up, have some fun. The guy wouldn't know a joke if it bit him in the ass." Tony watched her for a few moments. "Farther back. The jack's back here." He tapped farther back on the tower, eyeing the contraption. He could definitely come up with a better way of doing that.

"Might I ask what happened?" Thor asked. It seemed like some battle-wounds he'd seen, but the girl was clearly not a warrior at all.

Elaine followed the sound of the tapping with her fingers, and eventually found the jack. As soon as she plugged it in, a program on the computer opened and began to run. The opening process proclaimed the software to be Dragon Natural Speaking.

"Thanks," she said, plugging it in. "I'd put the tower on the floor to keep it out of the way, but I need it within reach for things like this."

"Car accident," Kae said, looking at him with a shrug. "Someone drove through a red light, and my leg got crushed. I figure better that than me being braindead or something."

Tony hummed to show he'd heard, although he was already looking at the program and at the tower and then at her headset, figuring things out quickly. Yeah, he could design something better than this in a few days.