This is one of the nicest homes in St. Petersburg. Tonight, five godfathers of the bratva have at it.
They're in briefs...and otherwise armed similarly to the five founding Avengers. Their briefs, of course, are patterned after the Avengers they imitate. They're all drunk as skunks, on vodka. Their deluder has made sure of that.
Surprisingly, their deluder is not Loki. On the contrary, she's MUCH closer to Young Avengers H.Q. than that...if not Avengers H.Q...what's left of it, rather...
In a drunk rage, Godfather Hulk smashes. Godfather Thor hits him in the head with a hammer. He goes down. Enraged, he smashes again. He falls on a trip wire, and gets impaled, in the green diaper-clad ass, by a red-and-yellow arrow; Godfather Iron Man set this up. Godfather Hulk gets up, with an arrow in his ass, and smashes again. His foot gets caught in one of Godfather Ant-Man's ant-shaped traps. With an arrow in his ass and his foot caught in an ant robot/mouse trap, he smashes again. Godfather Wasp (who's a bit tomboyish, in contrast to his rivals) hits him with two tasers, and causes Godfather Hulk to weep like a baby, while fatiguing.
Up high, Yelena Belova only smiles down upon the macabre scene. For her, this is big. Her predecessor, Natalia Romanova, only killed one bratva godfather at a time. But tonight, Yelena's virtually beheading the whole damn bratva. After tonight, corruption in Russia will virtually be dead...if anyone can imagine that.
She stands tall on a balcony surrounding the main room of the home, and watches the bratva heads kill each other. Or rather, all they do is fight one another to a stalemate. Yelena will go down there later, of course, and do the dirtiest part of the work herself...so soon after having done the cleaner work of seducing some of them.
To some, it sounds macabre; inhumane, even. Alas, Yelena is a Black Widow, and was born to be. She is who she is. She seduces her little men, and kills them with her little tasers. And she's sure Natalia would understand, if no one else would. Hell, Natalia herself was a villainess long before she was an Avenger...let alone a non-Hydra SHIELD agent.
Somehow, Godfather Hulk gets the upper hand, and whoops the asses of Godfather Thor, Godfather Iron Man, Godfather Ant-Man, and Godfather Wasp. Once done, he stands over the havoc he's wreaked...and his gaze moves up, onto the balcony, to the innocent-looking escort who dared cajole him into this... Alas, she doesn't look so innocent now. As a matter of fact, she looks like a fucking tsar...in an age of Russia where no one no longer remembers how bad the actual Tsars were...
But then, it's been over a century, hasn't it?
Around her wrists, Yelena wears bracelets. One is made of copper, and the other of zinc. She grins, shows Godfather Hulk one of her wrists, and shoots her final blow against him down, into the center of his head. Godfather Hulk vibrates and makes helpless noises for a bit...and falls dead against the carnage.
Now, Yelena goes downstairs, and impales all of the others with her Black Widow bites, finishing the dirty work of tonight. Wearing latex gloves, she removes each and every trace of her involvement in their murders.
She scoffs down at them, and kicks them with her bare feet. "These idiots," she sneers, "were once devils among Russian evil. Sad; whoever said that the devil can't be killed was CLEARLY deluded." She starts to walk away, and hesitates. "But of course," she admits, "I might as well sympathize with them...if it was, in fact, MEPHISTO who made them think that... Fucking Satan impersonator... And I thought Elvis impersonators were strange..."
With that, she grabs her black velvet heeled sandals, and makes her way to the door. Otherwise, she's in a little black dress...as she often is while working. SO many of her male targets are conservative... Almost as many are conservative males in communists' clothing. And all of them, of course, are male.
Now, she's on the backstreets of St. Petersburg. It's a cold night...and yet, she's dressed like a slut. But then, being the Black Widow has its privileges.
A group of stray Slavic youths try to flag her down, of course. She goes through her usual charade; pretend to be shy and scared, and run. They chase her. Countless generations worth of Slavic men; and Slavic male youths are STILL chasing women like they shouldn't.
Once the path has dead ended, she turns around, and poses as her sweet feminine vulnerable self. They close in. For any other girl, this would be the end...
But again, being the Black Widow has its advantages. And they make the advantages of being the alpha of a male gang look like child's play. And as Happy Hogan would know, they're no tae-bo.
Deviously, Yelena slips out of her shoes. Now, she goes all Kill Bill on all twelve of these sorry Slavic asses. Like a fucking Russian berserker, she fights to the last man. She's almost tempted to de-ball them, after she's overcome them.
She doesn't resist. After she's clinched and killed them all, she cuts their balls off, and drops them in a jar full of pickle juice. From this fight, she's procured twenty souvenirs. Never again, will they rape a little girl. And that's what being the Black Widow is all about. (Yelena's words; not Natalia's.)
She leaves the alley. As she does, a pair of police cars pull up. Two duos of them dismount, and aim their pistols at her.
She's like a whore in the spotlight. As small as she is, she hardly fills much of it...even if she does look smoking hot in it. Yelena grins, and shows them her wrists.
From them, she shoots more of the Black Widow bites. They fly through the air, and impale the cops, electrocuting them to death. They don't stop biting until the cops' hearts have beat their last. Tonight, they fall dead near their cars. The roof lights, of course, still flash.
Next, Yelena shoots Black Widow bites through the front vents of both cars. Moments later, both cars explode. By then, Yelena's already begun walking away. Their explosions are the perfect signature of a job well-done. Besides, those four cops were still lying there, near the cars, when they exploded. Now, all four of those male cops are a bunch of well-done long pork roasts.
Hmm; if they were long BEEF, someone could make stroganoff out of them... Kraven the Huntress, perhaps... Yelena's got no idea if she cannibalized her father after he died...but she wouldn't blame her if she did. From what Yelena's heard, the original Kraven was quite sexist.
As she walks away, she passes a bum on the street. Keeping his cloak up, he begs for a few rubles.
Yelena takes a while to do it...but she happily leaves a few in the man's alms bowl; looted straight from some of her richer jobs, of course. With that, she starts to walk away...
"Thank you, Yelena."
Yelena stops on a dime, and does an about-face...in black velvet heeled sandals. She studies the bum in the cloak for a moment...until she has a hunch. "Jericho?!"
As the cloak transfigures itself into the Cloak of Levitation, the sorceror wearing it, Jericho Drumm, stands. Yelena knows him...as a fellow Young Avenger. He's just as much Stephen Strange's successor as Yelena is Natalia's. He's also Haitian...and hence, knows more about voodoo than a Loa.
"A black man in Russia," Yelena muses. "Not unheard of...but not common, either, I'm afraid."
Jericho shrugs. "JEWS live in Russia."
"What do you want? I'm working."
"That's...kind of it, actually."
Yelena sighs. "Okay, look, I know what you're going to say. I know I've been away from HQ a lot, but I can assure you that whatever it is I'm doing out here, it's VERY necessary."
Jericho scoffs. "Since when does killing cops in Russia become necessary? If you had proof that they were corrupt, that would be one thing. But did you?"
"What proof could I possibly need! They're men! They have penises! And the only man who knows how to use his penis without getting a little girl hurt is a man who doesn't exist! Seriously! You were raised in a school full of black kids! You should know that!"
During Yelena's filibuster, a Russian Orthodox priest tries to cross the street. Moments pass, before Yelena looks behind her, and realizes that he's stopped, and is casting her a revolted look.
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU STARING AT," Yelena shouts at him. "YOU IDIOT CHRISTIANS ARE PERFECTLY CAPABLE OF STOPPING BELIEVING IN YOUR LITTLE NON-EXISTENT GOD!"
The priest only shakes his head, and keeps crossing the street.
"As turbocharged as your sexism is...and your racism, too, apparently...I can't help but perceive that it's just a mask, to hide likely grief. Which would make sense, if you were in the least bit sad about Cassie's passing...or, quite possibly, Nathaniel's desertion. I realize that you two hit on each other a lot, for as long as it lasted. But of course, with you, it's hard to tell if hitting on a guy is something that comes from your heart, or...just part of your Black Widow act."
"What can I do? Nathan had charm. A lot of women like it. I do too, to some extent. And even if Nathan did control me with it, I am, by NO means, obligated to tell anyone. Least of all, you."
Jericho smiles. "You know you don't have to. I've been back and forth in time. I already know how your life ends. And hence, I know that if I don't follow up on the Young Avengers' most recent decision about what to do to you, your life will not only end sadly, but it'll end soon. And you're very young," he runs his hands through his own dreadlocks, "and very pretty. I'd hate for that to happen to you...if I can help you avoid it."
Yelena scoffs. "Well excuse me, Jacob Marley. Pardon me if you look more like BOB Marley."
"Are you SURE you didn't have a crush on Iron Lad? Sure seems like I hear a lot of him, whenever you vent like this."
"I HAVE WORK TO DO! I CAN'T LEAVE IT! IF I DO, THIS WORLD WILL BECOME THE SAME WHITE MAN-RULED, IDIOT-RULED, CRIMINAL-RULED WASTE DUMP THAT IT ALWAYS WAS BACK WHEN THE BABY BOOMBERS WERE INFANTS, AND THEIR IDIOT PARENTS MADE A DAILY HABIT OF KISSING JEHOVAH'S ASS, BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT THE RUSSIANS WERE GOING TO NUKE THEIR HOMETOWN ANY DAY!"
Jericho sighs. "I know this isn't want you want to hear, Yelena...but the team has made up its mind. You need time off. And they've sent me here to make sure you get it."
Yelena scoffs. "O sure, like the team would dare bench me. The guys are too scared to, and the girls hate my free will...if not my willpower."
Jericho studies her.
Yelena takes a moment to figure out what this means. "Wait...they HAVE benched me?! Why wasn't I there? Why wasn't I summoned...?" She sighs. "Okay, fine. I can see the logic in what you did. But seriously; forcing a teammate to take time off against their will? Are you aware that there's no such thing in the civilian world."
"In the civilian world," he reminds her, "a lot of companies you'd work for would fire you. As it is, you've already accumulated enough wrongs for you to get fired at least three times...if that's how our bylaws worked."
"And yet...you haven't fired me once?"
"We still believe in you, Yelena. We never stopped. But we'd believe in you a LOT more if you took some time off. I don't care how you spend it...just as long as you're not the same person when you get back."
"Because I killed a few cops?!"
"Those cops had families! You used to know that. Also, some of those bratva heads were new; they didn't deserve to die as much as the others did. Also, I saw you fight that gang; some of them were trying to run away when you killed them and cut their balls off."
Yelena scoffs. "Any other girl would've done the same thing, if they could've. If you don't believe me, the other girls on the team will tell you the same thing. Jenn might not... But then, Jenn's never known weakness, has she?"
"She's known needing a blood transfusion. And in the world of normal humans, that's almost a death sentence. And she thought so, too, for a few times while it lasted."
Yelena scoffs. "What, are you two like, the Young Defenders, now? Are the Young Avengers not paying you enough? Do you even accept your paychecks when they come, because you're so used to being a monk, that you automatically give all of your alms to the poor without bothering to acknowledge how pretty all of the gold coins on it look?"
"Yelena? When was the last time YOU noticed how good gold coins look? Hell, when was the last time you watched a Bulgari commercial with envy?"
Yelena says nothing.
"Yeah," Jericho says, in a softer tone. "That's what I thought. Thankfully, where I'm sending you, there'll be plenty of gold...and jewels of all kind. It won't be as you know it...but hopefully, when you come back, you'll have rediscovered your passion for such things."
"I'm angry all the time," Yelena implores. "Is that not proof that my passion is on the front lines?"
"Anger isn't passion, Yelena. It's the illusion of injustice. I know you know that. Also, for your time off, you're going to have a few...restrictions."
"What do you mean by...?"
Jericho waves his arms around, and casts a shrinking spell. Helplessly, Yelena watches, as Jericho, and everything else all around her, swells to ten thousand times bigger than before. If Yelena's helplessness act as the Black Widow was an act before, it's realer than ever, now.
"For the record," Jericho says down to her, "this part is MY idea; not the team's."
"You can't do this to me," she shouts up at him. "You're no better than the bad guys!"
Jericho waves his hand around, and opens a portal right behind her. "I know this seems a bit radical," he admits. "But you know, I am a sorcerer. And as we get better at what we do...we tend to prefer things that way."
With a banishment charm, she casts her into the portal. In it, she vanishes. Soon, Jericho closes it, leaving his beloved teammate to find her lost way of rehabilitation on her own.
Jericho sighs, and brushes off his robes. "All in a day's work," he says to himself. "As much as it sometimes pains me to do." He hesitates, and smiles. "Too bad I won't be there to witness all of the trouble she gets into...or jerk off, as she's in the depths of it..." He beams. "Wait a second! I WILL see it!"
"Hi, Brother Voodoo."
Jericho turns. A pair of Jewish whores are hitting on him. Jericho might actually admit that they both look better than Yelena...if that's even possible. They smile and flirt...as whores often do.
"Care to come with us? We'll show you a good time. For you, we charge nothing." They giggle.
Jericho smiles, and sighs. "In moments like this, I never love my job more."