Through Fire and Flames

New York Docks

Natasha hated Steve and she hated Clint. And clearly, they hated her, as well. There was no other explanation for forcing her to bring Drew along for a mission that could easily have been handled by her and Clint.

It was no secret that she didn't care for Drew in the slightest. Her reason was simple. Natasha operated on a day-to-day basis knowing that she had the ability to discern even the smallest secret from any given person not named Nick Fury. People were easy to read for someone trained since childhood to read them.

There were few people she couldn't read. The aforementioned Fury, Col. James Rhodes – who was as stony-faced as a statue – Tony Stark – who she could read, but only saw exactly what he wanted her to – and Jessica Drew. There was a mystery surrounding that woman – it was part of her charm. Natasha didn't like it, pure and simple. She didn't like not being able to find even a shred of information on her outside of her heavily redact SHIELD file. She didn't like the fact that Jessica didn't share anything from her past when everyone else – including Natasha – had done so. She didn't like how even Clint – who had been her partner for three years – didn't know that much about her; but she knew plenty about him.

The gist was that Drew had secrets, and Natasha didn't appreciate her not sharing those secrets, nor did she appreciate being utterly stone-walled when she tried to dig them up herself. Drew's file was classified above Level 10. There were only two Level 10 agents in the entire organization – Fury and herself. Which meant that only Fury knew the entire story and deemed it either important or damning enough to seal it away.

That infuriated her to no end, because her own file was only classified at Level 8.

That had nothing to do with her ill will toward Drew.

One might wonder, then, why she only hated Drew and not any of the other ones she had no read on. In short, she trusted Tony and Fury. They had proven themselves to be competent enough to earn her trust. As for Rhodes, she wasn't going to have much, if any, interaction with him, so it didn't matter. For what it was worth, he had his head on straight. Besides, she at least knew something about those three – some more than others. Drew, she knew nothing.

Forty minutes passed without word from Clint. That had her worried, much more than Belova's business at the docks. They had been tailing her the entire time. Not once did she stop, look around, or bother hailing a cab to get to her destination a few minutes quicker. Belova was young, but she wasn't a novice, which meant they were walking directly into a trap.

"I don't like this," she muttered flatly. They were perched on the roof of a warehouse, staking out the seemingly abandoned warehouse Belova walked into two minutes ago. Thus far, no one had gone in or come out. What she was doing in there was a mystery, and it was raising Natasha's alarms.

"You don't like anything," Drew mumbled snidely as she scanned the building with a pair of thermal binoculars. Natasha cut her a sidelong glance, but said nothing in reply. "Anyway, there are three readings. One normal and two abnormally hot. Whatever's in there is putting out a lot of heat."

She snatched the binoculars out of her hand – while she was still looking through them – to see for herself. Sure enough, there were two hot readings, both in excess of 5000°F. That wasn't the only thing that piqued her interest; the two readings were human shaped. That was hardly out of the ordinary; there plenty of superhumans with fire based abilities.

The only Avengers available were Stark, Rogers, and Banner. Clint was busy talking to Sofen. Natasha sent him a text telling him to cut it short and meet them at the docks. They weren't going to have time to wait for him. "I'm going in. Stay here or tag along." Without waiting for an answer, she quickly climbed down the fire escape and crossed the street.

It was strange; whatever was generating those high thermal readings wasn't giving off any residual heat. Even from outside, she should have been feeling something, especially at 5000°F, but it was only as warm as the nighttime air. The only logical conclusion was that it was in fact a pair of superhumans, which meant they were about to be up a shit creek without a paddle.

Hm. She normally wasn't this impulsive. Well, she had been through worse.

A zip-line shot from the underside of her Widow's Bite bracelet and attached to the ledge at the top of the building. The line automatically retracted, letting her quickly rappel up the side. Once on the roof, she found an air vent and climbed inside.

The inside of the warehouse was full of large crates. They were covered with green tarps, so she couldn't see which company they belonged to. Her first thought was that this was some kind of smuggling job, and two Avengers tailing her meant killing two birds with one stone.

Belova was pacing back and forth between two men in simple slacks and polo shirts. One of the men had blonde hair cut high and tight, while the other had a mop of red hair. Both of them were completely unremarkable in terms of build; but if they were superhuman, they didn't need to be. A peek through the thermal binoculars confirmed that they were the two abnormally hot readings.

No residual heat meant no heat aura similar to what Human Torch emitted, so her bullets shouldn't have melted when she took her shots. She hated taking shots from ventilation shafts, but she didn't have a choice this time.

She noticed that Belova was reading something as she was pacing. Whatever it was wasn't important, because she wasn't reading. She was scanning the area without coming across as suspicious.

"Are you sure they were following you?" the redheaded man asked impatiently. "We should be getting this stuff loaded onto the truck."

She was right. It was a smuggling job. "There's a truck somewhere nearby. They're going to be loading cargo onto it soon," she reported to Drew.

=On it.=

"Yes," Belova answered simply.

"Then, where the hell are they?" the blonde man demanded. "They should have been here by now."

"Obviously, Natalia knows this is a trap, which is why she's waiting for Spider-Woman in the ventilation shaft."

Like she said, Belova was young, but she wasn't a novice. "We've been made. Move." She punched the vent cover off and lobbed a pair of flash bangs at the ground. They exploded, blinding the two men. Belova was running toward the door on the other side of the warehouse floor.

Natasha leaped from the vent shaft to the floor and gave chase. It was then that she noticed she had a small box in her hand.

"Not tonight, Natalia," Belova sneered as she tossed a smoke ball not at her, but at the door just as Drew was charging inside.

Drew fell into a coughing fit, and was thus unable to stop her from sprinting out the door.

"Damn it. Widow to Tower. Belova got away with precious cargo and we have two superhumans giving off high thermal readings. We're at the docks, need backup."

"You're gonna need a lot more than backup, bitch," one of the men snarled as they both climbed to their feet. Suddenly, their skin had grown red and the veins underneath were severely inflamed. This wasn't like any pyrokinesis or fire based power she had ever encountered.

The men sprinted toward her. With only a second to react, she dashed to her left and rolled to the floor. The redheaded man's fist punched through the metal crate behind her. The area of impact was reduced to molten slag, and the crate's contents were reduced to ash.

Needless to say, one hit and she was history.

The men sprinted after her. They were fast, faster than she was by a minimal margin. If there was only one, she would have been able to manage. There being two put her at a nearly insurmountable disadvantage. One touch and she was a pile of ash.

Her only advantage was that these two were terrible fighters. They were telegraphing their punches, badly, and that made it easier for her to dodge. She even managed to make them hit each other a few times.

She pulled out her handgun and emptied the clip into the men while they were recovering from friendly fire. The bullets that didn't immediately melt on impact blew chunks of their bodies away, but the wounds healed almost as quickly as they were made. "What the hell?"

A green spark of bio-electricity erupted from the blonde man's chest, bringing him to his knees. Drew divebombed in and kicked the redhead into one of the crates.

The floor was covered in molten footprints where their steps literally melted the floor. Dozens of crates were destroyed, their contents rendered completely useless. It had only been two minutes, but Natasha wasn't sure how much longer she could hold out before exhaustion set in. "About damn time you showed up."

"Terribly sorry. I broke a nail," she replied dryly. "Pyrokinesis, enhanced physicality, and healing. Sounds like Extremis."

Now that she mentioned it, she remembered Stark talking about perfecting the Extremis virus to heal his chest and flush it out of Pepper's system. She also remembered him saying he destroyed all remaining samples. "Tony destroyed it. How did these two slip through the cracks?"

"Don't know."

Obviously, Natasha didn't expect her to know.

The Extremis soldiers were back on their feet in record time. With hardened glares, they stalked toward the two heroines.

Unlike Aldrich Killian, these two couldn't breathe fire. That was good, as long as they kept out of reach. Not a hard task, but they couldn't keep it up forever, and neither woman was especially hardy. Certainly not enough to withstand a hit that could punch through half a foot of solid steel.

Drew went airborne and unleashed a stream of bio-electricity to attract their attention while Natasha ran for cover. "Where the hell is that backup?!"

=Incoming, Agent Romanoff,= Jarvis reported. =ETA is two minutes.=

"We may not have two minutes, but thanks Jarvis."

=How very optimistic of you, Romanoff.=

She was glad Drew wasn't taking this so seriously that she couldn't find time to quip. Regardless, she was doing a good enough job keeping them both distracted. Natasha took the moment of brief reprieve to scan the warehouse until she found what she was looking for: the lever that activated the sprinkler system. Foregoing stealth, she sprinted to the little red box and yanked down on the lever.

The fire alarm blared at the same time as the torrent of water poured down from overhead. The water combined with the Extremis soldier's intense heat created a cloud of steam. It didn't do much other than provide them with much needed cover. She slid behind a pair of crates. Moments later, Drew was right beside her.

"Those wankers are no joke," she whispered. "I'm going to try something. I don't like doing this, but no other choice and all that. Here, put this on." She handed Natasha a neon green bracelet.

She stepped out from behind the cover just as the two soldiers were barreling through the steam like two out of control mac trucks. "Alright, that's quite enough of that." To Natasha's absolute shock, they halted. They just stopped. "Now then, explain what you know about the Masters of Evil and be quick about it."

"We don't know much," the redhead answered with no hesitation. "All we were told was that we were to wait here until Black Widow led you two here, then we were to roast you."

"And your powers? Are they from the Extremis virus?"

"Yes," answered the blonde. Again, with no trepidation. Natasha was completely flummoxed.

"How? Stark destroyed it all when he and Potts blew Killian away."

"He did; but the Mandarin found and memorized the formula while working with Maya Hansen. He perfected it not too long ago and began injecting it into patients. There are hundreds more just like us."

A pair of miniature missiles sailed in from behind him and attached to their chests. The resulting explosions were small, but enough to scatter their remains across the warehouse floor. "I do apologize for my tardiness," Jarvis spoke ruefully. "Sir was quite adamant about scanning the suit one last time to ensure that it would not malfunction. I trust you both are quite unharmed?"

"Absolutely. Your timing is impeccable, as always, Jarvis. Ta." Drew turned to Natasha and flashed a small smile. "Well, that went quite nicely, don't you agree?"

"Yeah," she muttered sourly. Whatever she did had Natasha feeling completely off-kilter. She could have gotten them to answer those questions herself, given enough time to work them over. Drew did it in seconds. She just asked them and they answered. She had never seen anything like it before. She made a note to ask Clint what her deal was.

Speaking of Clint, he came sprinting into the warehouse entrance, red-faced and completely out of breath. "I...I'm here... oh god." He collapsed to the floor.

Natasha blinked once. "Did you run all the way here?" He nodded. "Idiot."