Natasha and Clint had only been at the Asylum for an hour. They had seen enough carnage to last a lifetime, but the damage done here was far beyond that of a regular day-to-day battle alongside the Avengers. Sure, cities got destroyed- like when Loki bought an army from space to take over New York, or when Ultron decided to try and take over the world, and the country of Sokovia got destroyed in the process- an entire country.

This, however…. this was beyond the two assassins. How a single person managed to do this was utterly….

Amazing.

Desolate buildings stood tall in the night sky, some with crumbling bricks and smashed windows. As the two spies ran across the grounds, doing their best to avoid the bodies of former patients and broken glass of streetlamp lights, to the bits of flesh stuck to the fence- a severed arm Clint pointed out made Natasha want to hurl, the limb having been snared on the barbed wire as if it were a chicken on a spit. Blood splashed every available surface, some if dried into a deep brown, most of it still a bright red and dripping in the cracks.

"Are you sure this is only one person?" Clint asked as Natasha silently emptied her stomach, hair hanging in her face as she wretched. The beige began to blend with the red, creating a whirlpool of vile smells, hitting her nose as if she had just walked into a perfume store.

"That's what Fury said," Natasha answered, wiping her mouth on the back of her sleeve, "our job is to retain her and keep her safe."

"Wait, it's a woman we're after?" Clint was surprised, his eyebrows wiggling up his forehead. Natasha nodded. Glass crunched under her boots as she dragged Clint round a corner. Shadows danced on the sidewalks, blending until two shapes became one, tangled together under the lamplights.

"We gotta be careful though," Natasha warned him, "the files said that she was pretty unstable."

Gulping, he followed Natasha as she crouched against a wall, peering to look onto the next rolling lawn, the dead grass that turned from yellow to gray, stained with crimson from the litter of men and women alike. Obviously there was a very slim chance of getting out of here alive, if a single person was able to cause this much trouble. From what he had learned, the rest of this group- this "Suicide Squad," as they were called- had either disappeared or killed themselves in an attempt at actual sanity.

This one, however, was still on the run.

"So what does she look like?" Clint asked as Natasha slouched forward, ready to dart into the open space that was the yard of the asylum. Clint thought the place needed cleaning up.

Natash, on the other hand, didn't care about the area. Often she had fought in places like this- possibly dirtier, but she couldn't remember. Sometimes they were fighting in moving vehicles. Most of the time it was something like this, prowling an area until the target was found.

That didn't take long, as she jumped upon hearing the thwack of wood against brick, a steady beat lasting about five minutes. She exchanged a glance with Clint, who nodded as a voice wavered on the airwaves.

"Mr-!"

THWACK!

"-J-!"

"-doesn't-!"

THWACK!

"-like-!"

THWACK!

"-when you-!"
THWACK

"-touch-!"

THWACK!

"-his-!"

THWACK!

"-things!"

A clatter signaled the weapon had fallen to the ground, and the two agents jumped out from behind the wall to see a young woman standing a good yard away, pacing angrily as she shook her head. Twin pigtails swung in her face, and Natasha could hear the click of her shoes echo loudly on the pavement. The grass was matted underfoot as Natasha and Clint approached slowly, Natasha's hand already on the holster of her gun.

There she was. She was taller than Natasha expected (granted, she was wearing heels, but still), with skin so pale it practically glowed in the moonlight. Her hair had the same effect, a platinum blonde with one pigtail dyed blue, the other pink. Her Daisy Duke shorts had the same look, with the same color scheme, and she was wearing a tattered red and white jersey, some sort of black writing emblazoned across the chest.

"What the hell?" Clint muttered, "This the one we're looking for?"

Seemed like it. Natasha took a step, wincing as the heel of her boot scraped the pavement, becoming a deer in the headlights when she turned to face the redhead, lips slit into a wild grin, so big it looked like it would crack her head in two.

"Heh….heh…" she giggled, "Puddin,?"

Natasha raised an eyebrow, looking to Clint before slowly shaking her head.

"Puddin', is that you?" the woman asked, her voice full of hope, small and meek.

"Uh...no?" Clint dared to reply, and the woman's face immediately fell. Sluggishly, she bent over to pick up the baseball bat, the resounding bang of wood against brick starting up once more.

"Clint, who's 'Puddin''?" Natasha asked.

"Hell if I know!"

The woman suddenly screamed, swinging her baseball bat with so much force the wood snapped in half, splintering as it broke against the wall. Clnt had an arrow knocked in his bow, stretching the string until he was able to fire.

"Wait, Clint!" Natasha ordered, then pressing the bluetooth piece in her ear, "Fury, we have a situation."

The microphone crackled as a familiar voice barked at her, "Just get her detained and come back to HQ, Agent Romanoff." And with that the earpiece was silent. Natasha knew she shouldn't have expected anything more from Fury. He didn't like getting his hands dirty if he didn't have to.

"Any luck?" Clint asked. Natash shook her head, saying, "Nah. We're on our own for this one."

"Yah know, Puddin' said he'd come back," the woman said out of the blue, turning to face Natasha and Clint, "He wanted to take me out."

Natasha wasn't sure of what to do- should she answer her? Frankly, she didn't want to. It would most likely be a one-sided conversation, and they didn't have the time. The metallic scent of blood tickled her nostrils and she wrinkled her nose, trying to ward it off. Clint had lowered his arrow, but his finger was still on the string.

"My Puddin' loves me, yah know?" the woman cackled.

"Y-yeah, I'm sure he did…" Natasha's skin crawled at her tone of voice. It was shaky. Why wsa she scared though? She had dealt with a lot worse on recon missions. What was so different about this one?" The woman cocked her head at Natasha, gripping the two broken pieces tightly in her hands, heels clicking as she slowly took a step.

"Did he send you to come get me?"

"Um… yeah, yeah, he did," Clint piped up, and Natasha was thankful for the chance to breath, not realizing she had been holding it in. The woman smiled.

"Liar."

"Huh?"

"L-liar, liar…." the woman began singing, twirling slowly in place. Her pigtails swung like the blades of a helicopter. "Puddin' is in France. He told me so himself…."

"Well, we're going back to France," Clint said, calmly, curtly.

"Is that so?" the woman teased, "Well, you'll have to catch me first!"

And then they were on the run, the woman a good couple feet in front of them, cackling as she rounded a corner, imitating the sounds of a gun. Natasha was already out of breath by the time they saw her racing across the dirtied lawn, kicking the bodies strewn about, using her broken bat like double swords, stabbing and jabbing anything she could find.

"Liar! Liar!"

"Can I shoot her yet, 'Tasha?" Clint groaned, gesturing to his arrow as she smacked her bat against the barbed wire fence.

"No. Fury said Waller wanted her alive," Natasha condoned.

"Should we at least call for back up?"

"Maybe later."

They watched as the woman began jumping about, twisting her hands in her hair as if she were to tear it out. Her stockings, Natasha could see, were torn, the lamplight illuminating multiple bruises and cuts. Diamonds were drawn on her thighs, along with something written in messy cursive on her left leg.

Why this Waller person wanted her alive was beyond Natasha. According to Fury's report she wasn't in her right mind.

And that was obvious, with how she began singing, spinning and leaping around, a ballerina putting on a show at the Metropolitan. But orders were orders, and Natasha was trained to follow them. The woman had stopped moving, head crooked back to stare up at the black night sky.

"Fireworks!" she cried, pumping her fist in the air, "Puddin' sent me fireworks!"

"Fireworks?" Natasha echoed quietly, glancing at the sky. Overhead she could see a pale, bluish-white glow, but ti didn't explode like the dynamite was expected to do. She couldn't even hear the familiar whistle as it was rocketed upwards. No, this light seemed to be falling down, picking up speed and blurring into a blinding ball so bright, Natasha had to look away before they heard the crash, the sound of a body cracking bones against the cement.

"And he hits a home-run!" Tony Stark's familiar jovial cry rang across the barren lawn of the asylum, his armor suit clinking and clanking as he rocketed himself down to the ground. The woman was lying a few feet away, no doubt out cold, as a piece of her baseball bat hung limply from her fingers. Her pigtails had started to come undone, and her tattered shirt was even more so as she skidded across the cement.

"Stark! We need her alive!" Natasha hissed, crossing her arms over her chest. Flipping the mask of his helmet up, Tony flashed her his two rows of pearly whites, a beacon of light in the dark.

"She's not dead, don't worry," he quipped as Clint went to pick her up from the ground. Her head lolled backwards, revealing a solid-gold choker with the word "Puddin'" engraved on it, the blocky letters raised from the surface for a better look. Her ears were covered with gold hoops and diamond studs, and she wore a set of golden bangles on her wrists.

"Seems like this 'Puddin'' guy is loaded," Clint commented as he handed over the girl to Natasha, who held her bridal style across the lawn, careful to avoid the bodies rotting in every direction. The smell was getting really bad, the agent's head swimming by the time they made it to the awaiting helicopter.

A bright yellow light lit up the space inside the copter, and the three of them climbed into the waiting benches up against the curved wall. A doorframe separated them from the cockpit, from which Steve was flying the plane, dressed entirely in his Captain America uniform.

"Thought you were at dinner with The Wall, hon," Natasha teased.

"Date didn't go as planned, unfortunately," Steve said, flicking a switch and joining them in the back. Tony was busy trying to get most f his suit off, it had to be at least one hundred degrees when wearing something made entirely of metal. The plane cruised smoothly on autopilot, Natasha helping Clint buckle the unconscious woman into one of the seats reserved for an emergency. A parachute hung overhead, and Natasha grinned as she shoved it back in the compartment.

Metal creaked under his weight as Steve went to sit across from Natasha, eyeing the woman warily. Natasha still wasn't sure why exactly this person was so goddamned important. Or better yet- how she was able to kill all those people by herself while succeeding in getting her teammates to do the same or disappear. She watched as he twiddled his thumbs. It was a nervous habit of his, something Natasha learned he had picked up from Bucky during the war, when they were nervous about going out in the trenches or doing patrol on their grounds.

Since Bucky had disappeared, Steve had distanced himself from doing anything other than training the new recruits- James Rhodes, Sam Wilson, Wanda Maximoff and Tony's little android, The Vision. Things were going along just fine; everything went a bit downhill once Fury asked him to go see someone- Amanda Waller, better known as 'The Wall' to talk about some sort of rescue mission.

None of them knew it involved rescuing a supervillain, notorious for aiding in murders and theft, as well as the attempted murder of a certain orphaned billionaire (Bruce Wayne, in Natasha's opinion, was always a sell-out, and no amount of black clothes or fancy gadgets could change that.)

But now he was sitting in this helicopter, staring down the woman Amanda Waller wanted protected at all costs- so much so, she would team up with Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. in order to keep her safe. From what Natasha had learned of the woman, she was never a team player to begin with.

"Mrs. Waller told me her name is Dr. Quinzel," Steve broke the awkward silence, "I read in her file on the way here that she was once a psychiatrist."

Natasha pursed her lips, glancing at the woman- Dr. Quinzel. There was no way that this woman, the one she and Clint had found screaming out absolute nonsense amongst the bodies of her fellow patients at an insane asylum, was once a psychiatrist.

"Yeah, and I'm the Pope," Tony cracked, swirling a straw in a can of soda, the red metal can slick with condensation.

"No, seriously," Steve said bluntly, "The Wall said she was the Joker's psychiatrist before she got into all the stealing and murder."

Well, that explained it. Now that she was out, she seemed harmless, just a young woman who dressed erratically, sleeping in the car on the way to a convention or concert.

"Did Fury say anything else about this mission?" Natasha asked, "Like where we're supposed to send her?" Steve shook his head. Natasha's stomach dropped as the plane began its descent onto a landing pad, the blades whirring incessantly as they came to a stop.

"Let's find out," Tony retorted, helping Natasha unbuckle their priority from her seat, carrying her carefully inside Avengers headquarters.