Chapters14:
Was this a good idea? Probably not.
The need to hide our faces was important if we were going to ground. Hydra already knew what we looked like, but I really didn't want random civilians pointing us out to some government. And even if the perk protected me, I had no idea if it extended to Anna. So, of course, we grabbed clown masks on the way here.
Was it fucking hilarious? Absolutely.
Anna clocked a faceless Hydra mook square in the jaw, grabbed him by the vest, and spun him like a toy before hurling him into two others. Bodies flew in every direction. The Hydra grunts had already been flagging from the earlier assault, but adding two superhumans in clown masks pretty much nuked whatever hope they had left.
A few rock-sized projectiles whizzed from my hands; more Hydra mooks folded with cracked ribs and crushed chests.
Unfortunately, Marvel liked to escalate.
A twitch ran up my spine, my instinct flaring, just in time for me to sidestep as another blast of compressed wind tore through the street.
I conjured a cluster of boulders, bigger this time, and flung them at the bastard playing Air Bender. He drifted around each projectile like he was moving with the air itself.
Oh, come on. Did he have some kind of super sense? My aim wasn't that shit. The bastard—
A circular blur sliced into view. Red, white, and blue.
The shield clipped the wind-user across the shoulder.
And then the guy sprinting behind it—broad shoulders, iconic uniform, whole American-flag aesthetic—grabbed my attention even more.
Captain America.
As in the Captain America.
He lunged, trying to catch the mutant before he recovered, but the wind-guy panicked. A violent blast of gale-force pressure went off point-blank. The Captain was blown backward, skidding across the ground as a wall of dust and air ripped down the street.
I lost sight of him in the debris. What I did see was two SHIELD agents sprawled a few meters away—right as the gale shook a chunk of stone loose overhead. An already-broken building groaned, leaning.
Shit.
The air trembled as I used Thunder Breathing to cover the distance.
I grabbed both agents by their vests and hauled them clear just as the stone crashed down where their heads had been.
[Feat Achieved! Clown Heroics!]
[1 Bronze Gacha Ticket]
"You alright?" I asked.
They stared at me with blank, bewildered faces. The guy on the right even looked terrified.
Right. Clown mask plus superpowers. Not the best combo.
"Hey! Any injuries over here?"
And there he was: the Captain himself, emerging from the thinning dust, looking annoyingly heroic despite having just been wind-yeeted.
Poor clowns never catch a break.
The SHIELD agents scrambled away, and Cap made sure they got clear. Even while keeping an eye on me, his stance stayed perfectly balanced—center of gravity low, feet angled for a charge. Instinctive. Protective. I had to respect it. Guy didn't even think twice about covering his people.
Once they were out of sight, he faced me fully. Muscles taut. Ready to fight if needed.
"Hey, man, we're cool," I said, aiming for casual. I even did a little flourish with my hands. "Good guy. Like you."
"Really?" he said, skepticism dripping. "The killer clown masks are the good guys?"
"Not everyone gets a snazzy, iconic American costume," I shot back. "We can't all have form-fitting patriot tights that accentuate our ass."
"It's a uniform…" he said weakly.
"Sure it is."
His body tightened again, ignoring the quip. "My clothes aside, who are you?"
I paused. First real interaction with a future Avenger. First impressions mattered. Needed something heroic.
Needed to not fuck this up.
"Bucky's alive."
…Wait. NOT that.
"...huh."
Oh shit. Oh shit. Milk's spilled. Cat's out of the bag. Pandora's box is open. Time to double down.
"He's being mind-controlled by Hydra," I said quickly. "Hydra's still active. Arnim Zola turned himself into an AI buried under Camp Leigh. He also ordered Bucky to assassinate Howard Stark. Oh, and SHIELD is like half full of Hydra plants."
Captain America froze. Hard. Like a full system crash.
That was unfortunate timing, because the wind-mutant started to flee.
Perfect.
I switched to Blessing. Power surged through my limbs. Thunder Breathing tightened in my chest, the world vibrating.
I moved.
One second beside Cap, the next behind him. My hands slipped under his arms, hauling him upward.
To his credit, even stunned, he reacted fast. But I was faster.
"Yeet!"
I threw him with all the divine precision of someone who absolutely knew what they were doing.
Steve Rogers became a star-spangled ballistic missile.
The fleeing wind-mutant turned—too late—and took a full Captain America to the chest. They both went tumbling through a storefront in a spectacular crash.
"Bullseye!"
Totally meant for that to happen. Best first impression ever.
[Feat Achieved! Worst First Impressions!]
[1 Silver Gacha Ticket]
Fuck you, Gacha.
I turned and sprinted back toward Anna.
Natasha had been in the game a long time.
She'd been raised to be a Black Widow, molded in the Red Room, taught the secrets of murder and spycraft for as long as she could remember. Surprise was the first thing they beat out of you.
Working with SHIELD and Fury only expanded her threshold for weird. A billionaire in flying metal armor was just Tuesday. Meeting the legendary Captain America after he'd spent decades on ice barely earned an arched brow.
She'd seen things. A lot of things.
So when a well-armed paramilitary squad tried to wipe out the SHIELD outpost she was sent to investigate, her pulse didn't even bump.
Evacuate non-combatants. Neutralize scattered gunmen.
Let the Captain bulldoze everything big and stupid enough to get in his way.
It almost felt routine.
At least until the strange shit hit.
Their attackers had an enhanced—some kind of wind manipulator. New, annoying, but workable. Natasha had adapted to worse.
Then the clown masks arrived.
A pair of costumed unknowns, one girl and one guy, both enhanced, both apparently deciding today was "Help SHIELD" day. Natasha watched the girl, barely her size, grab a random gunman by the armor and toss him with casual ease. The man conjured rocks from thin air and moved faster than she'd seen even from the Captain.
None of it broke her composure.
She was Natasha Romanoff.
She handled this kind of thing before breakfast.
A faceless gunman rounded on her.
Natasha stepped into his space before he finished raising his rifle. Her hand chopped the weapon aside, the shot going harmlessly into a wall. She hooked his elbow, twisted hard, and felt the joint pop. He screamed; she didn't slow.
She drove a knee into his sternum, dropped her weight, and used his collapsing body as a springboard to vault into the next attacker. Her boot cracked into his throat, sending him sprawling. The third grabbed her from behind—amateur mistake. She snapped her head back, felt teeth crack, then hooked his leg and slammed him face-first into the pavement.
Ten seconds. Three down.
She straightened, breathing steady.
And that's when she saw it.
The male clown—mid-movement, dust swirling around him—drew something. A blade of solid, humming light flared into existence.
A lightsaber.
An actual, glowing, humming lightsaber from Star Wars, the same movie she'd watched with Clint's family…
Natasha blinked once and took a deep breath.
"…Of course," she muttered.
And moved to intercept the next threat.
She was calm. She was in control.
With the two new enhanced in play, the last pockets of resistance collapsed fast. Opposing gunfire thinned, bodies dropped, and the outpost slowly shifted from chaos to uneasy silence. Most of the remaining SHIELD personnel gave the clown-masked pair a wide berth, which Natasha didn't blame them for. Fury had sent her here to observe and assess, and this—whatever they were—definitely needed assessing.
So she walked toward them.
The two stood amid the debris, scanning for lingering threats. The girl reacted first; a dazed Hydra mook staggered behind her, and she pivoted, fist tightening, punching him center-mass.
He lifted off the ground.
Actually lifted, like a ragdoll tossed by a child.
Natasha made sure to stop an arm's length away.
"SHIELD Agent Natalie Rushman," she introduced herself. "We appreciate the help. May I get your names?"
The girl froze mid-breath, posture going stiff like she expected something else. "Uh—hi. Sorry."
Nervous. Not trained traditionally. Natasha logged that instantly.
The man, on the other hand, simply stared at her. No tension shift, no flinch. Then he spoke.
"Dreykov is still alive."
Her blood iced.
"You didn't kill him or his daughter in the bombing," he went on, tone maddeningly casual. "The Red Room's still operational. It's in a flying sky-base over Russia. Your sister is being mind-controlled by Dreykov. You should reunite with Alexei and Melina."
Natasha's mind jolted in a thousand directions.
Coincidence? A guess? A trap?
The number of people who even knew she was a Widow could be counted on two hands. The names he was using were buried under sealed files and corpses.
"How—?"
"Oh, and Hydra is still real and active," he added, talking straight through her shock. "They've infiltrated SHIELD deeply. Long-term. Some of the heads are—"
He started listing names. Names of people who should not have been on that list.
Her jaw unhinged slightly before she forced it closed. No. He had to be lying. He had to. But she needed confirmation. She was a Widow; Widows stayed calm even when the battlefield was inside their skull.
Quietly, she shifted her wrist. A subtle gesture brought her Widow's Bite online—non-lethal shock, enough to drop a normal human. Both of them were enhanced, so she wasn't sure if it would work, but if she was quick…
He kept talking, more impossible intel about a dead organization.
Then—just as she resolved to strike—
"Okay… I think that's about it! Tah-tah!"
The man threw an arm around the woman's shoulders and—
Disappeared.
Natasha's eyes scanned the courtyard frantically. They had literally vanished into thin air.
She remained calm. She absolutely remained calm.
"ARGHHH!"
Her fist slammed into the nearest stone wall. Cracks spiderwebbed outward. Dust rained down.
She was calm…