What happens if you leave Rhodey and Mahad alone for too long?
Ah, the novel of being just a 'side character'.
You can get away with so much shit, since people don't look too closely at you most of the time.
And if your best friend is a magnet for the spotlights, even better.
Now enter one James Rhodes and one Mahado Sekhem.
These two fit this description rather nicely. Both capable men with best friends, which draw a lot more spotlight than they do.
But neither really bothered correcting that fact.
To be absolute fair, Mahado, Mahad for most, has just reentered the land of the living, after who knows, how long in his tomb. Attention is the last thing he wants. Especially, if he still has to learn how to write in English.
Friday is trying to help the magician as much as she could, translating stuff for him, occasionally giving a pop quiz about English grammar and words and giving regular updates on relevant new and all. The translation stuff was requested by Tony, but the news coverage update was requested by Mahad.
And Rhodes, or Rhodey for friends, for his part is content being a side character in the story of Anthony Edward Stark. It is much less bothersome and a lot more useful when it comes to helping his best friend.
And now put these two people in a room, with a common goal of making a certain group of people miserable. For a relatively understandable reason, mind you.
“Rogers has been a headache again, I assume?” Mahad asked, as soon as Rhodey plopped himself unceremonially on the couch next to the brunette. It appears that the good captain was a nuisance for a little while already.
“You are right in that one. I need some drink.” Rhodey complained, and was a little less startled when a cloudy beverage akin to beer manifested itself into an empty glass on the table in front of the pair. The reaction was better than what happened the first time Mahad summoned something to drink from nothing.
“Might not be as strong as the stuff we had back then, but it should be sufficient, I hope?” The magician inquired, still scribbling away at the odd papyrus scroll he had been carrying around ever since Kaiba alongside the Ishtar clan extracted his long dead backside out of the tomb he was locked in.
“Thanks. Btw, Friday?”
“Yes, colonel?” The AI answered in an instant. Ever since she was reinstalled into the rebuild Avengers compound, she was always responding to everyone, save for the so—called 'Rogue avengers.'
“Can you lock this room and make it soundproof for, like, half an hour? Mahad here might want to write in peace and I need some quiet.”
“Request acknowledged. I transmitted the request to Major Carol Danvers.”
“Thanks. Also, make sure Tony eats something, make Dum-E whack him if you have to.” Rhodey answered Friday, with Mahad next to him looking mildly amused, which shifted to mildly irritated when he made a writing mistake on his scroll.
“Affirmative, DUM-E would be happy to do it, in fact.” Mahad made a mental note to ask Tony later if it were possible for the magician to see the server core of Friday, just to check if the AI developed a soul somewhere along the line of being created. Normally, to his very poor knowledge of technology of any kind, machines and programs shouldn't be able to sound amused.
So after that was done, the two men sat in silence, the sounds of Mahad's reed pen scraping on the papyrus scroll was the only thing heard. He keeps that ancient tool somewhere only he knows, Stephen answered magic, Tony went for a pocket, Rhodey guessed magic and Carol made a bet on a pocket. Rhodey and Stephen won that particular bet.
“So, how has learning English going for you?” Rhodey broke the comfortable silence after he drank a little from the fairly strong beer Mahad conjured. It was a watered down version of the ancient stuff, not in taste, mind you.
“Going alright. I have trouble making sense of the difference between the p, q, b, and d.” The ancient, eh, poltergeist (?), answered, grimacing as he dipped his reed pen into the ink he got as a gift from Stephen. What was so special about this ink? Well, apparently it has faint magical properties, which makes inscribing spells much easier.
And the ancient's troubles with the Latin letters were justified. He had never written with these letters, and these pesky little characters do look quite similar.
“Understandable, must be the equivalent of someone from Europe or North America looking at something like the whole lot of Asian letter characters.” Rhodey nodded as he responded.
So the comfortable silence returned. It was something Rhodey came to appreciate about Mahad, the magician was chill to be around, nice, polite, not overly pushy and quite a good listener. But he isn't someone you really want to try to make angry, granted, he is quite hard to truly anger. And somehow, Rogers had managed it the first time the super soldier met the ancient magician and his proteges.
Well, comes with assuming a trio of young looking unknown people meant he could sway more people on his side. Just his luck, he just had to get a trio of ancient, borderline poltergeist, and reincarnation. All of them were quite unimpressed with the blonde super soldier, to the point that said blonde got agitated when he got dismissed by all three of them. Well, he was ignored by Mahad because the magician had turned off his translator since he was talking in Egyptian with his two siblings and did not need to hear English right now. Mana and Atem however, understood the things Rogers spoke just fine, and the two collectively decided it was bullshit.
Even without understanding English, even Mahad picked up on the irritated atmosphere radiating from his younger siblings. And when for whatever reason, Rogers made a threatening step towards Mana and Atem, and reached for Atem, a switch flipped in the magician's head and the overprotective older sibling was active. And this entire encounter ended with Rogers pinned to the nearest wall with some very bright glowing swords and a very ticked off Mahad. Who was quite angry at what the blonde had been spouting once the magician actually turned his translator back on.
Back to the current scenario, that's what Rhodey liked about Mahad. And Mahad liked Rhodey because he did not tolerate idiocy, was upright, honorable, not a saint and never claimed to be, had a sense of duty and was calm and patient.
The glass of beer was almost gone by now, and Rhodey was probably a little tipsy (despite Mahad's efforts to lower the alcohol content, the thing still clocks in at about 6%), Mahad broke the comfortable silence again.
“So, the Rogues made problems again? Rogers can be obnoxious and a lil too happy to go and get physical, but surely it wasn't too bad today?”
“Oh, don't get me started! Romanoff can't seem to get the hint and quit trying to hack herself through to Tony to spin her webs again! And Rogers is even worse, his so obnoxious insistence on things he really has no business getting involved in!” Rhodey began what would be a fairly lengthy rant. And none of the two men inside the room really took note of Friday rerouting the compound's other inhabitants from this small common room, one of many, to give the two a little more peace time. Who knew that Rhodey needed a borderline poltergeist as a listener to his troubles.
And Mahad for his part, just listened, nodded at appropriate times and threw in his own commentary sometimes, with Rhodey not remarking on the occasional grammar issue or mispronunciation he caught.
And this went on for just short of 2 hours. During that rant, Mahado got a rather glorious idea.
The Rogue Avengers were a headache and the constant source of stress for a lot of people, namely their resident tech genius. While he was often at the compound for multiple reasons, he still lives in his Stark Tower, but the times Tony here, the Team Cap constantly harasses him. And quite frankly, it was irritating to anyone who sees Tony as a friend. It even irked Seto Kaiba, who was notorious for not liking many people at all.
So why not go and have some fun while keeping them occupied and from trying to harass Tony.
Once the idea was brought up, Rhodey pounced on it.
To anyone not knowing these two at all, they might not have expected these two seemingly upright and strict men to be two for petty pranks.
For those who knew the two, however, it really wasn't too odd.
Mahad for one, might have seemed like a goody shoes magician, neat and proper scribe and strict but patient teacher. But oh boy, Atem and Mana knew how often their pseudo older brother was an accomplice to their pranks. And even sometimes when their brother did make some mischief, he was rarely ever blamed for anything. Nor was he caught more than once by the same person.
He was just rarely ever suspected as a perpetrator, never. It was usually Mana who was the prime suspect.
It did not matter that her teacher had a little more time to do stuff that wasn't considered proper for a man of his status than her, and he sure did. Even if it might be a little more subtle.
And Rhodey, welp, he is typically seen as the exasperated colonel best friend who constantly reigns Tony's eccentricities into order. What was only seen by those considered close friends was that Rhodey was just as much of a menace than Tony is. Just a different brand of menace. Then again, technically seen, all of Tony's closer friends or acquaintances are their own brand of menace chaos.
Which also applies to Yugi and his gang and Atem and his crew, I might add.
So a few smaller plans were made, just to get started before the level get cranked up. The Rogue Avengers are in for a bad week.
Had Friday had a physical body, she would have gotten popcorn. This was the best show she had ever seen.
Mahad was really the one more subtle about this whole 'revenge' plan, while colonel Rhodey was a lot more aggressive? Nah, let's say direct.
A small spell here, another jinx there, causing some havoc inside the east wing with a little help of shadow ghoul, making some electronics malfunction and so on. That was the route Mahad went.
And Rhodey was a little more, eh, direct. Making sure Friday closes doors in the Rogue's faces, sabotaging some of the weights he knew Rogers will try to use (no one else wants to use that thing), fiddling with the widows bites from Romanoff to make them backfire and give her a slight shock, put sand and all other sorts into the Ant-Man suit so it would itch all over, getting slime dunked on Wilson after he walked through a door. The classic bucket trap, and Mana took the blame for it, having picked up on what her brother and the good colonel were doing. Just to make sure their cover stayed intact.
And others soon joined in, Matt Mudrock 'accidentally' making Barton trip on his cane, playing the innocent blind lawyer part perfectly, Atem, Yugi and Mana making a trio to hide as much stuff from the Rogues they could find in random ass spots, even the Kaiba brothers went along with it and planted a virus into a bunch of stuff in the east wing, which was the Rogue's wing where they and only they lived.
It was glorious.