*Quick note: I don't generally leave little notes like this on my stories, but I felt it was necessary in this case. This story was a scene dropped from my long fic The Joy of Battle:Historical Espionage Action for several reasons: 1.) t didn't fit where I wrote it in the story; 2.) it was incredibly violent compared to what I was writing before; and 3.) the style is not really the same as The Joy of Battle. You can read it as its own story, but it makes more sense as a side story to my other fic.

Black Powder

(a Joy of Battle side story)

Something metallic – a knife, a lock-pick, maybe a hairpin – clicked repeatedly in the lock on Pyro's room. Joy heard a creak as the door opened; she sat up in the lumpy bed the Soviet Philosophers had provided for the night. Boot-clad feet plodded down the hallway, passed her door, then returned. A bag rustled, and something flat skidded under the door, stopping halfway to Joy's bed. Simple black powder explosive. A long fuse ran across the floor and under the door where Pyro had just lit a match. Joy dropped soundlessly to the floor and tore the fuse from Pyro's improvised little packet. A moment later, she heard him stand and continue to the front door. Joy heard another creak and click as Pyro left into the October night.

"Boss!" a deep voice whispered from the hallway. Joy's door swung open, and Pain knelt to lift the burning fuse into his bare hand. He closed his palm around it and smiled at Joy. "You really want to keep this kid?"

"He's older than you. Which way did he go?"

"Left."

She jumped to her feet, already dressed, and threw a fur coat over her shoulders. "Let's go."

After the frigid cold of Norilsk, Moscow felt almost warm as Joy and Pain followed Pyro through the city. After a few minutes with no explosion from the flat where Special Operations Team Zero was staying, Pyro turned to look down the empty street. Pain had barely had time to duck into a doorway. Pyro turned away again, this time at a run. His long brown coat swept behind him around the corner of a brick building, and he was gone.

"Son of a bitch!" Joy said as she and Pain reached the corner and saw no sign of Pyro.

"You're the one who sprung him from prison, boss."

"And you didn't stop him from leaving, Pain."

"You said –"

"Just…," Joy whispered, "stop arguing. We have to find him before the police do."

"Why? They arrest him. He gets shot. He's not our –"

An explosion followed by the crash of glass hitting the pavement interrupted Pain. A third floor window across the street had blown out, and smoke rolled through the hole.

"Stay here, Pain," Joy said. "He might try the window. I'll go in to get him."

Families in their nightclothes already packed the dark entryway with more hurrying down the stairs. Joy pushed through the crowd, using some of the little Russian she knew. "Izvenitsya. Excuse me."

A petite woman on the stairs plucked at Joy's sleeve and began speaking in Russian in a low, fervent voice.

"Nyet," Joy said. "Ah… I –"

She spied Pyro a few steps above, collar upturned to hide his unshaven face. His dark eyes found Joy, and he squeezed along the opposite railing. Shoving a little girl in a blue gown into her mother, Joy dove for Pyro and caught him by the shoulder. He lurched, trying to break free, but Joy took his wrist in her other hand and forced him over the railing.

"You are here? What the hell, suka?" he growled.

"Take me up to the room. Show me what you did."

"That is nothing you should know."

She pushed him into the crowed, up a few steps. "I know a lot of things I shouldn't know. Go."

He led her, reluctantly and slower than she would have liked, up another flight to a door very like all the rest in the hallway except that this one had smoke pouring from under it.

"Open the door," Joy said.

"You shouldn't go in. It's dangerous."

"And half an hour ago, you tried to kill me."

"The powder bomb? It was not to kill you, blind you, maybe…"

Joy kicked the door, and it collapsed into the room. A table was silhouetted against the flames, and a figure in a chair slumped over it. Joy pushed Pyro into the smoke and approached the table. Flames licked up the legs on one side and threatened to engulf the chair. The figure had been a woman, rather large and wearing a yellow apron over her plum-colored dress. Her head, neck, most of her shoulders and chest were now a blackened, bloody cavity. The blast that had killed her left a sooty shadow on the table.

Joy was no stranger to scenes like this, but even she struggled to speak. "You, what, put the bomb in her mouth?"

"It was a homemade firework, same as the one I used for you," Pyro said coolly. His eyes were averted, gazing longingly at the doorway.

The flames had reached the woman's chair. The skin on her bare legs bubbled, hair singeing in orange bursts.

"Why?" Joy asked. "Why in the hell did you break into some woman's flat in the dead of night and blow her face off?"

The smoke made it difficult to speak. They would need to leave soon or risk filling their lungs with it.

Pyro stared at Joy, flames reflecting in his eyes. "She killed my sister, so she can go to hell, and so can you."

His eyes moved past her, to the table half-consumed by the fire. The woman's closed hand had burned dark brown.

"Shit!" Pyro shouted. He threw all of his weight into Joy, knocking her through the doorway, and landed on top of her in the hall as another explosion shook the building.

"When I freed you," Joy said as they joined the last stragglers on the stairs, "it wasn't for you to waste the rest of your life on revenge. People get caught in the crossfire."

They were passing the second floor landing where a woman bent low over a tiny child laying on the steps. The last occupants of the building brushed past, one trodding on the outstretched hand of the trampled child.

"Harness that anger and let it serve you in battle," Joy said, "Fury."