Natalia (the_black_widow) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-04-02 03:10:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, logan howlett (wolverine), natasha romanoff (black widow), neena thurman (domino) |
...technically this is my op
Who: Natasha, Logan, Neena and the Finches
What: A rescue and some surprises.
When: 4/2
Where: Somewhere in Siberia
Status: Complete
Rating: R for violent themes
The ceiling was white. That was the first thing Natasha noticed when she came to. The second thing was the sound of someone breathing. She turned her head; Kseniya was alive, and strapped to the neighboring bed. Straps held her down as well.
For all that her chest hurt, she was alive. Tilting her head, she could see a bandage, but the wound should have killed her. A lot of things that could kill Natasha Romanoff didn’t. Thanks to the Red Room.
Movement drew her attention to a girl. Maybe eleven or twelve, with brown eyes, dusky skin and hair. Sitting next to her was a girl about the same age, as light as the first was dark. They looked like twins.
Natasha tried to sit up. She’d probably have had a hard time of it even without the strap. But her groan brought the two girls over.
Two pairs of intelligent eyes looked down at her.
Might as well get some information. There was nothing else to do, if she couldn’t convince them to free her. “How many of you are there?”
The girls exchanged a look, and the first one said, “Ten.”
“All girls?”
“Da.”
Natasha glanced at Kseniya. “My friend?”
“Still asleep. We don’t know if she’ll make it.”
“The blonde?”
“Dead.”
That hurt more than it should have. Natasha sighed, and wondered mostly to herself, “Where are the staff. Trainers, scientists…”
They didn’t answer her and before she could ask anything more, they disappeared from her sight.
She was alive, and they were trying to patch her and Kseniya up. Obviously, Antonina had been luring Kseniya to her death, but what was the real plan for this place? Were they supposed to purge it?
Try as she might, as much as she strained, she couldn’t hear anything but the medical machines. No talking or whispering, no movement. The girls had left her alone, but there were no doctors.
For some reason, the girls were alone, and if Natasha were a betting woman she’d bet they’d liberated themselves. The Project had failed.
So a purge then, Natasha realized. Antonina and Kseniya were meant to purge this place, and then Antonina was to kill Kseniya. After that, she didn’t know what the plan could be. Restart the program, probably, with better protections so the trainees didn’t go rogue.
The bindings were somewhat looser than she’d thought at first. Once free, she zipped her suit back up, and hobbled over to Kseniya. The woman’s eyes fluttered opened, and she looked up at Natasha. “Make him pay, for our brothers and sisters. Make him pay, for these little girls.”
She took her hand, leaning down to brush her lips against Kseniya’s, “Da. They’ll pay.”
“Took me dying to get that kiss.” Kseniya laughed, then coughed blood. “You’re fucking immortal. You’re fucking legend.”
When Kseniya stilled, Natasha closed her eyes with her fingers, then unhooked a necklace from around her neck. “And then there was one.”
If the girls had freed themselves, the guards outside had probably been none the wiser. Expendable. People like that were always expendable for the mission.
Natasha found her weapons, and her beacon. Much to her irritation, it had been deactivated, if she had actually managed to activate it to begin with.
She’d trust Wolverine, or Jemma, with the other end. Shepard if she was feeling generous. But Jemma was planning her wedding, so she’d been scratched from the list.
No, if anyone was coming, it would be Logan, but she wasn’t going to count on it. She stared at the beacon again, then put it in her pouch inactive. She’d make it out of here alive, or not at all. There was clearly more going on here than met the eye, and at least part of the reason she was here was to be eliminated. Of that, she was certain now. But the trap was not what she’d expected.
The two girls had returned, joined by an older one. A chinese girl, with a shaved head and nose piercings. Natasha held her hands palm out. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help you. I was once like you. A pawn in the games of men far away in offices.”
“Everyone else left,” the Chinese girl said. She hugged herself. “They called us failures, and left.”
Natasha tilted her head. That changed the calculus, “...May I see a computer?”
She was led to a console, and sat down gingerly. The effort made her very dizzy but after a minute or two she could focus on her efforts in the system.
The girls crowded around to watch. Natasha paged through files, looked at videos, found the reports of the soldiers and scientists stationed here. All of these girls had been homeless and orphaned, taken from streets on nearly every continent. They all shared specific genetic markers, and what was most disturbing were efforts to replicate experiments from captured Hydra files.
Experiments that had led to Hydra’s super soldiers.
That seemed to be the failure. While the girls were deadly in their own right, none of the genetic modifications had taken. Well, most of them. There were files in some language she didn’t recognize, and they looked ancient. She needed copies of those.
“Congratulations, ladies, being a failure is a really good thing today.”
While the information copied, Natasha turned in the chair. Only a few girls seemed to be missing at this point, probably keeping watch. “I’m Natalia Romanova. Some people call me the Black Widow. I defected years ago, because I found a better life. I want to get you out of here, and out of this country.”
Any response was lost when the ground shook, dust falling from the ceiling above. Klaxons sounded, and Natasha cursed. “How long was I out?”
“Nearly four days.”
“Fuck.” Her beacon must not have gone off.
Two of the girls took Nat’s hands and pulled her along to what appeared to be a makeshift command center and sleeping quarters. The last of the girls were there, with monitors. Natasha studied the display, as well as diagrams of the base. “They’re just trying to scare you out. They don’t have anything that can punch through, and I think a bunker buster bomb will be their last resort.”
“So we just wait them out?”
Nat looked at the girls. She’d need their names, it would make life easier, even if knowing their names made them more real. “I saw your files. I know what you can do. I’m going to ask you to defend yourselves, but if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. So anyone who wants to volunteer, step forward.”
If she hadn’t been so badly injured, she wouldn’t even ask that much. But they were trained killers, every last one of them. If they had to kill one more time, it would be worth it to be free. Nat knew what she would have done in their place.
All ten girls stepped forward. Some of them could die, and they all knew it.
Nat reached into her pouch, and pulled out the beacon. She wanted as many of them to get out alive as possible. “Okay, little finches, I need someone to take this to a place where the signal can get out, and press the green button. We just need to hold out until help arrives.”
One of the twins grabbed it, and both took off. Nat then spread out the diagram of the base. “Here, here and here are choke points. They’ll be forced to come in slow and in low numbers. We can set traps. Smoke bombs, sleeping gas, more lethal measures as a last resort.”
While the soldiers poked fruitlessly at the base’s rocky exterior, Natasha and the girls got into position, and laid their traps.
The first group of soldiers was caught in an electrical field that sent them jerking to the ground. One of the girls led them deeper into the base. Room by room, hall by hall, choke-point by choke point, the soldiers pressed on.
Natasha lost her first little finch in the second choke point. One of the traps failed to go off, and she tried to set it off manually. A bullet spun her around against the wall, and she detonated a grenade she’d hidden in her hand.
Other than calling out orders and directions, Nat felt useless. That girl wouldn’t be the last, and she couldn’t get out there and help them. “Pull back to the last choke point.”
She turned to the three girls who’d stayed with her. The twins and baldy. The steel in their eyes was both impressive, and depressing. “Help me down there.”
If she was going to die, she wanted to die shielding them. It wasn’t really that far anyway. If that point was breached, they were already dead.
Propped up against an overturned table, Natasha counted her ammo, then leaned around to inspect the situation.
“Natalia, you’re bleeding.”
“Wound reopened,” She flashed her a smile. “I’ll be fine.”
Another girl showed her the cameras on a tablet. There were a lot more soldiers waiting to come in. They really, really wanted this situation contained. Nat licked her lips. “If they can’t recapture this facility they’ll destroy it, even if it buries their own men inside.”
“So what do we do?”
Destroying this place and its data was high on Natasha’s to do list, but she wanted to be outside when that happened. “Pray that beacon works. Because either they’ll destroy this place, or we will.”
Soldiers burst out of hiding, and Natasha tried to be as precise as she could with her ammo. She tried to ignore the sound of bullets hitting flesh, of her little finches cut down.
They were good shots, they were trained, but they weren’t soldiers, not yet.
Nat’s clip ran out and her pistols clicked empty. She reached for the tablet, which was blood streaked now. “I’m going to overload the reactor. By the time they realize what’s happening it’ll be too late.”
On the other end of one of the tunnels, Neena attached some gum to a few pieces of wire and then slammed a panel shut. It was one of many access points to the facility's intercom system, and the only way that she and Logan had to try and warn anyone alive.
She smacked an old white button with her fist, her other hand tossing a series of smoke bombs into the crowd of soldiers in front of them. "Attention, every bad guy currently here. Drop your weapons and start kissing your own asses, or face the wrath of Domino and her pal, The Wolverine."
"...technically this is my op," Logan said, adjusting the mask on his X-Force uniform. He hadn't worn it in awhile. It felt ... stiff.
”Technically, you’re old and boring and don’t know how to break into a comms system.” Neena added, cheerfully. She grinned toothily at Logan, then added over the intercom, “All of you good guys? Hang tight. The cavalry’s here, and at least one of us doesn’t know how to die.”
“Huh.” Nat perked up a little. “The beacon worked. We might actually make it out of here alive.” She took in the faces around her, and added grimly, “Well. Those of us that are left.”
It wasn’t what she’d wanted when she’d realized these girls had been here. But they’d lost three more since the first.
“How can we help them?”
Nat turned her attention to the girl who’d spoken. She’d been the first one she’d seen when waking up. “Keep them busy until they get through. Knowing those two we just need to hold out another twenty minutes.”
“And the reactor?” The girl’s twin held up the pad.
“Thirty minutes until it goes. Plenty of time.” Nat hoped.
Shaking his head at Neena, Logan popped his claws and stepped over a body. “Hope you’re lucky today. Gotta bring you back to your boyfriend in one piece.”
"He's not my boyfriend," Neena argued, rolling her eyes. She pulled out her pistols and started making her way down the hallway, not really bothering with stealth. The smoke they'd tossed down the hallway would mask some of their movements, and she had a few flashbangs if need be. "He's just... we're just seeing each other. It's not a labels thing."
A few soldiers that had been pulling up the rear fell to the floor as she fired off one shot each, barely bothering to clear her sights. "But yeah, I'm feeling lucky."
“Darlin’, that’s the definition of having a fucking boyfriend. Wait, you ain’t fucking.” Logan slashed a man into three pieces. “Same difference.”
He dodged out of the way as six soldiers opened fire on their position, and gestured at Neena as if saying ‘well?’
She glanced back at him, then down the hallway, and shrugged a shoulder. Glancing one more time, she ducked out of cover and fired off six shots, then ducked back in and glanced at him. “Are they dead? Like this entire boyfriend conversation we’re not having at all?”
“Missed one,” Logan said, then picked Neena up and threw her bodily down the corridor.
“I didn’t ask for a fastball SPECIAL!” She shouted from midair, right before landing on top of the guy who’d somehow managed to miss her lucky shot. She was straddling the guy, and she looked down at his face with a sheepish grin. “Hey there, Rusky. Nice night we’re having, huh?”
Then she reached down with her hands and snapped his neck. Sometimes you just had to conserve bullets. And she had a feeling they didn’t need to be wasting time. “Hey Logan, find us some more toys, this one’s broken. And I think we need to be in a bigger hurry. Just a hunch.”
Logan passed a status monitor and cursed vividly, “You’re right about that, Nat set this place to self-destruct.”
“Of course she did.” Neena got to her feet and shrugged her shoulder, grabbing a few extra guns off the soldier below her. “Whatever this is, it needs burying. When you can’t win, you make sure no one else can play. That’s straight out of the FSB’s playbook, how did they let you into this secret club anyway? Don’t you do the homework?”
"I like to think most of that shit is Dream shit," Logan groused through gritted teeth. His jaw ached from clenching it, and he forced himself to relax.
They turned a corner to find twenty soldiers waiting for them. Logan took six bullets, saving Neena by pure luck of being in front of her.
“Heeeey, I’m still lucky!” Neena decided, while staring them down. This one was all on her, now that Logan was taking a nice little nap on the floor. She ducked back around the corner and slid into a crouching position on the floor, making a mental map of the situation she’d scoped out. She wasn’t psychic, but if her powers worked like she thought, all she had to do was keep everyone in eyesight while she attacked.
She pulled out some ear plugs and stuck them in her ears, then launched a flash bang around the corner. Then she rolled out, pulled out her guns, and got to work. Guns went off, but they always seemed to miss her, some jammed before they could even fire. A few soldiers were just on the floor dealing with that epic case of tinnitus the grenade had given them. “Man it’s a shame Yondu isn’t here to see this,” She grunted at Logan’s body. The big guy was still recovering, and she was kind of pissed all of her showing off was in vain.
The hallway was cleared in under two minutes. She lit up a cigarette and nudged Logan’s body with her boot.
Logan saw enough, and finally climbed to his feet, “Fuck, this is just like old times.” He limped past the dead soldiers, and this time he listened, and sniffed. He held up five fingers, three times, then gestured for Neena to take the high road.
A moment later he dove out of cover, swinging low and dismembering two soldiers.
Neena leapt backwards behind him, firing off both guns at once. It really was just like old times. Awesome kickass martial arts moves, lucky shots, dead bad guys, the smell of gunpowder and blood... She was probably a little too into this, if she was honest. She switched to the automatic guns she'd lifted off the soldier and sprayed more bullets down the hallway, just in case.
The cigarette never left her mouth, and it never went out. She muttered around it as she crouched back down and quickly reloaded some clips, "We gotta be getting close, you figure? I don't need any of these bullets clipping a friendly."
If Logan was honest with himself, this was better than the mission with Shepard. That had been ... just a thing. Going through the motions. This one, this one felt right. Because it was him and someone from X-Force and Nat was at the other end. People he knew, people he trusted in his dreams.
For the first time since Alyssa had died, Logan felt a little bit like he was alive.
At least he was somewhat more alive than what remained of the Russian army here. "I think that was the last of 'em."
What happened next happened too quickly for him to react. Someone came up behind Neena, and then something dropped from a vent above them onto the man. A gunshot echoed.
Laying on the ground was a soldier, and on top of him was a blonde girl, maybe fifteen years old. Neither moved.
"Fuck..."
Not even Neena's luck had had time to warn her. The man wasn't in her line of sight, and as far as anyone was aware, that's how it worked. She had to see it coming. This... she had not seen coming.
But maybe it was to be expected. She turned and stared at the scene, taking it all in. Not having been read in on the situation, it was hard to decide how to feel in that moment. The girl had to have been a friendly, or she'd never have sacrificed her life like that. Was she the reason Natasha was here?
She glanced at the walls, the floors, the state of the girl, what she was wearing.
It all clicked into a sick place inside her head and the pistols shook in her hands. "Was he the last of them?"
"Yes." Natasha's voice came through the barricade as several other girls pushed it aside. Logan thought she looked like hell, a serious wound on her chest reopened and assorted cuts and bruises.
He hadn't expected the girls either. There were five of them. A pair of twins, one as dark as the other was light. A Chinese girl who was helping the first two hold Nat up. A pale girl with hair as black as night. The last was a ginger girl with a fading streak of white in her hair.
"The hell were they doing here?" He asked, once the scene had sunk in.
"Turning finches into hawks," Natasha murmured.
And little girls into weapons. Neena was all too familiar. She holstered the pistols in her hands, and dropped the weapons she’d taken to the ground. They weren’t worth keeping, not after all this. Her attention was still on the girl who’d died for her, and she walked over to her. Neena wasn’t much for sentiment. This many years in either place as a mercenary, a woman willing to take the hard jobs, didn’t lend itself to getting that soft. But this was about the only soft spot she really had.
Neena rolled the girl off of the soldier and laid her onto the ground, placing her hands over her chest and closing her eyelids. “Looks like this one learned to fly.”
The girls handed Nat over to Logan, and she looked sadly at Neena and the other girl. “There were ten when I came. The facility had been abandoned, they considered the program a dud. This was supposed to be a purge.”
She was silent for a moment. “I’m the last of my cohort. They were being killed, it’s why I came to Russia in the first place.” She gestured at her chest, “Sentiment nearly got me killed.”
Neena got to her feet, "They considered me a dud, too. My dream self hasn't quite figured that out yet, she doesn't remember. Blocked all of these memories right out. Who can blame her? But... fuck. Who are we if we don't let ourselves get sentimental over the important things?"
She glanced over at Nat. "Timer on the reactor breach?"
“You guys made good time. We’ve got fifteen minutes.”
“Good.” Logan hefted Natasha up, ignoring her protest. “Lets get you and your ducklings the fuck out of here.”