"Whatcha got Hardison?"
"Justin Hammer, CEO of Hammer Industries. There's no easy way to put this. This guy, is a douche bag."
"Hardison."
"Well, he is. Money laundring, stealing plans, I mean you name it, this guy's done it. Anything to get his hands on an Iron Man suit. Ha! As if Stark would ever let him-"
"Dammit Hardison!"
"What, man?"
"Stay focused!"
"Alright! Sheesh! Damn Elliot, take a chill pill or something!"
"You want me to take a chill pill? Oh I'll take a chill pill alright-"
"Ooohhhh Elliot's threatening Hardison ooohhhhh!"
"Hey! Guys! Parker, come on, stop 'ooohhing'. It's distracting. Elliot, leave him alone. Hardison, stop getting distracted. Continue."
"I've hacked into the feed of his cameras, and he's taking all of that dirty money and putting it towards making these suits, which don't work, as our client found out."
Hardison played a clip of Hammer trying out one of his suits, which was working for a second, then the top half twisted around, nearly killing the test pilot inside, who was their client. Hammer could be heard cussing up a storm in the background, but doing nothing to help the injured pilot.
"All he cares about is getting a seat on the pentagon, and dragging Tony's name through the mud with him. I bet he'd be willing to do anything to take Stark down. These are some snippets of surveillance clips from when they've met, and it was not pretty."
Hardison scrolled through some parts of videos, showing the utter dislike between Stark and Hammer. Suddenly, Sophie sat up, and pointed towards the screen.
"Stop! Hardison! Stop the video!"
"What? Why? What do you see?"
"There! The red head! In the crowd!"
"Her? She's just some random person-"
"No, it's her, I know it is!"
"Nate, what is she talking about?"
"Elliot. Elliot look. Is that not who I think it is?"
Elliot leaned in, and a shadow crossed his face.
"No, it can't be."
"Will someone please tell me who this chick is because she is disrupting my briefing!"
"Hardison, shut up!"
"You telling me to shut up, man, I'll smack you, I will- ahh! Don't hit me don't hit me don't hit me don't hit me-"
"Parker, don't you come near me with that taser, I mean it-"
Nate sat, studying the situation, while Sophie leaned into him.
"Nate, we've gotta back out from this one. It's no good if she's in play."
"Okay, alright. Stop it, all of you. Hardison, put the book down, he's not going to punch you. Elliot don't punch Hardison. Parker, put the taser away."
Parker climbed off the table, grumpily sliding the taser back into her pocket. Elliot lowered his fists, and sat down. Hardison threw the book at him, then he stood up straight back into position, ready to charge Hardison.
"Hey, look man, sorry, it was an accident, it slipped."
Elliot growled at him, but sat back down. Parker leaned in to him.
"He did it on purpose."
"Yeah, thanks for the input, Parker. Now be quiet."
"Are we done now? Okay. Sophie, explain."
"Her, that girl, that's Natalia Alianovna Romanova. She's the Red Room's Black Widow."
"Who?" Nate asked as Parker gasped.
"You've never heard of the Red Room?"
Nate shook his head. So did Parker.
"They take orphan girls, brainwash them, and turn them into perfect assassins. Natalia here is their best."
"Was," Elliot chimed in. "She died. Four or five years ago. In Budapest. I was there, I watched it go down."
"She's faked her death before-"
"Yeah, but it was real this time. Some rouge S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Clint Barton took her out."
Sophie turned back to the stilled video frame. "But it looks just like her."
"Statistics say that everyone has at least two people in the world that look like them, Sophie."
The team sat in silence as they looked at the screen.
"I can run a facial recognition for you-"
"No, that wouldn't help. She had so many aliases. Or she could be just a normal person. We wouldn't know." Sophie scrunched her eyebrows together. "I still don't like the vibe. I think we should sit this one out and see what happens."
Nate sighed, and shook his head. The team looked over at him, their eyes alit, waiting for him to make the call.
"He's got a Steranko security system, but his firewall is crap. I could hack it-"
"He's got a lot of guards man, and after that boxing job we just did-"
"Can I taser people please that's all I want-"
"Fine! We'll sit on this for a while. Besides, I heard rumour that S.H.I.E.L.D. was snooping around, and I do not want to deal with them."
"Alright, fine. It's your call. On to the next one then."
As Hardison pulled up another client, Nate leaned over to Sophie.
"Is the great Sophie Devereaux scared of an ity bity assassin?"
Sophie kicked him, causing Nate to wince slightly.
"If you knew who she was, you'd be scared too."
"Hey! You two whisperers over there! Yeah, hi! Can we get back to me now? Okay, here we go..."