Title: Katarina

Rating: T

Summary: The Avengers get a new addition with an origin similar to Natasha's. "Meet Katarina!" Not an OC story.

"So did they get back? I thought I heard Clint." Bruce walks into the kitchen and pours himself orange juice. Steve nods, putting empty Pop-Tart boxes into the trash. "Only a few minutes ago. Natasha told us to meet in the living room. She has something for us."

"Does Clint know what it is?"

"He seemed just as surprised as anyone." Steve replies, getting up. Bruce follows him to the living room, where Natasha was not, and everyone else was. Tony's busy cross-examining Clint. Thor seems to be having a staring contest with the television.
"Hello, everyone!" Natasha walks into the room, greeting everyone cheerfully. "I brought back a surprise from Moscow."

"You what?" Clint says, standing up, but with a look from his partner he sits back down. Natasha calls, "Katarina, come here. Everyone wants to meet you."
They look and see nothing.

Natasha picks something off of the floor, holding it to her face. "Meet Katarina. Kat, for short."

"Uh, Natasha, I feel the need to tell you that that's a cat," Steve says gently. Kat is, in fact, a very small, all-white cat with green eyes and whiskers the size of the rest of her body. "Yes. It is a cat."

"And you named it Kat." she nods sagely. Steve tosses up his hands and Clint stifles a laugh. Tony frowns, standing up. "You brought a cat into my tower?"

"Her name is Kat."

"You brought a cat into my tower?" Natasha puts the cat down, and Bruce picks it up. It sniffs his face. "I like it." he announces, and she grins in satisfaction. He puts it down to see what it would do, and it sits.

Thor stares at it curiously. "Truly, this is a creature of wonder. Why is it so...small?" he pokes it with the handle of his hammer, making Natasha snatch Kat back up. She scratches the kitten under the chin. "I found her in Moscow, just wandering around on the streets. She reminded me of me. So I took her home."

"Really?" Clint's sort of touched by the words. Natasha has never referred to anything as a home before. She nods, touching Kat's nose before gently setting her down.
"I'm telling Pepper," Tony said, pressing a button on his phone. He's getting very put out at the fact that Steve, Clint, and Natasha are crawling around the floor like infants to play with the kitten, while Thor looks on, still trying to figure out the mystery of what a cat was.

It mewls. Natasha sits back on her heels. "I wonder what cats eat," Clint shrugs. "Fish, I guess. Or cat-food, but it's ten PM. Petco wouldn't let us in." Steve nods. "Aren't all cats supposed to like milk?"

"Unless she's lactose intolerant. I heard somewhere that most cats are lactose intolerant." Natasha muses. Clint raises one eyebrow, looking at the SHIELD spy. "When did you have time to read up about cat's eating habits?" his partner shrugs.
Steve, Bruce, Thor, Natasha and Clint decide that the most prudent solution is to take turns feeding Kat cherry and brown-sugar poptarts. Pepper comes in to see five grown adults, some of whom are geniuses sitting on the floor in a circle, with a white cat in the center and three empty pop tart boxes off to the side, with Tony sitting on the couch, arms crossed.

"Why is there a cat in the tower?"
"Natasha brought it from Moscow," Tony said. "Its name is Kat."
She stifles a laugh. "I'm not sure if we can—"

"Can we keep it?" Bruce asks the question, but Natasha holds Kat up to show Pepper how small and cute she allegedly was. Pepper looks skeptical. "Guys, you can barely keep yourselves alive! How can we take care of a cat?"

"Well, she likes poptarts." offers Thor so seriously that even Tony has to smile. A thought occurs to him. "Hey, Natasha, how'd you get Kat to come when you called?"
"I'm training her. She does what I say now." Natasha replied with a smile. Clint smacked himself on the forehead. "That cat's going to be a terror when it grows up," agrees Bruce.

Kat jumps up onto Clint. Natasha turns. "I would prefer you two not fraternize. I haven't finished training him yet."

"I thought Kat was a girl."

"She is. I was talking about Clint."