"Memories. They are easily tampered with. Sometimes we ourselves don't remember things correctly. But when you don't know much and have the bare minimum, is it better to know everything? Or is it better to trust in others who know you?" The Watcher asked as he looked down upon the universe. "Is it better to trust other people's view of yourself, or better to remember everything? Even the darkest moments of your history?"
At the landing strip on the other side of the city, a wealthy couple just landed their plane and exited. They were carrying with them this expensive piece of art, just begging for someone to steal it.
Sorry for them, that's exactly what someone was planning to do today.
Leonard Snart, now fitted with a giant winter coat and gloves, walked up with a new weapon. This weapon was old, at least WWII old. An old device that was used to try and take down the hero at the time Captain America. It turned out to have its uses against the shield of his, but not much against the man that wields it.
But put it up against another superhero, one that requires sticky surfaces and not slippery ones, then someone might stand a chance at a round two. Snart raised the gun into the air and blasted a giant mist of ice to the ceiling. The action caused everyone in the room to duck and hide from the man.
"Someone better call 911!" Snart called out to the public, knowing this was bound to get Spider-Man's attention.
At the fundraiser, Natalia and Peter were getting ready to head home after a long night. It had been three hours, and Natalia was reaching her limit of how long she can be away from Clinton.
"I'm just happy to see you again, Natalia." Christina McGee tells Natalia as she got ready to go. "We should meet up again, and you should bring Clinton. I miss that little guy."
"So does she," Peter said as he helped Natalia get the coat on. "Which is why we need to go."
"Go, be with your family. Look forward to seeing the wedding." Christina tells the two as they made their way out the door.
When they did, however, that's when Peter got the alert and saw Snart was back. "Oh, god. Snart. He got some weapon and is now attacking downtown."
"Then what are you waiting for?" Natalia asked him, wondering why he was still there. "Go. I'll get home and relieve Cisco of his duty."
"And so, you could get to him first if he screwed up?" Peter asked, knowing her better than that.
"You know me so well," Natalia said as she leaned in and pecked his lips.
"I'll see you when I get home," Peter promised as he ran down the street and ripped open his suit.
Once he was in his suit, he took off swinging towards the trouble, leaving Natalia to take their car home herself. Natalia walked over to their car, which was parked a block away, and hit the keys to unlock it.
But as she unlocked it, she heard a sudden cry for help. "HELP! Help mmmm!"
Natalia turned to the alley down the alley near her car, wondering what was wrong. "Hello?" She called out as she started to make her way down the alleyway. As she kept going, the only thought in her mind was, 'This is stupid.' 'What am I doing?' 'I should call the police.'
And what she came across while in the alley, it was something that she should have expected. There were five men, two of them holding back a young girl who had her mouth covered. All of them were holding knives, and it seems as if her clothes had been ripped from running, tripping, or the knives they were carrying.
"Well, two for the price of one, and this one is even more attractive than the first." One of them commented as he looked over at Natalia.
"Gross." Natalia snarled.
Disgusted by his comment, Natalia scoffed at him and leaned down. Ripping a part of her leg to give herself some room to move, she had no idea what she was doing. She should be running.
Before any of them could notice what was happening, Natalia ripped off her necklace. She spun her necklace around, then used it to smack one of them in the face. That one action alone seemed to have somehow taken down the first guy.
Natalia was shocked at her action and how quickly she took him down. "What?" She asked as she looked at her necklace and palm. "How did I...?"
"Get her!" One of the other four called out.
Finding some lost energy within her that Natalia didn't even know she had, she kneed one of the other ones in the chest. One of the others came up behind her to try and take her from behind, but that only ended with her kicking him in the face and grabbing his pocket knife off the ground. Taking advantage of it, she threw it towards the last of them, hitting him in the head with the softer end.
When Natalia looked over the five of them, it was like she snapped back to realize what she had done. And even she was impressed with herself. There was no way that this was all her.
Realizing someone needed her, she walked over to the girl and helped her stand up. "You okay?"
"Y-yes. Thank you." She said as she looked over the five men herself. "How did you do this?"
"I have no idea," Natalia confessed as she looked around. "I'll call the police; you should get out of here."
"Are you sure?" She asked Natalia.
The first man that she hit started to get up, and she picked the knife back up from the unconscious man. Tossing it towards him, the knife was embedded into his palm, and in the wall.
"AAAIIIIIIEEE!" The man screamed in pain.
The girl ran off while Natalia looked around at the five of them and just smirked. "Guess it was more like five for the price of one, huh?" She then cracked her knuckles, not sure where this came from, but was enjoying it. "You guys wanna go another round, or should we call it a night?"
She then heard a gun cocking behind her and dodged it when the gun went off. The bullet only grazed her hair as it passed her. She then grabbed his hand holding the gun, twisting it, and causing him to drop it.
Seeing she finally took down the last of them, she sighed and took out her phone. "Hello? 911?"
Snart on the other hand was having a blast with his new toy. The moment the police showed up, they came out without any idea of what to expect.
"Snart! Freeze!" One of the officers, Yuriko Watanabe, called out to him.
"I have a better idea, how about you freeze?" Snart asks as he then blasted off a beam of ice that embedded her and her partner.
"Okay, even I have to admit when a criminal uses a solid burn," Peter commented as he shot a web to pull the gun out of his hands.
But that didn't work well as he only ended up sending a beam of ice to the ceiling, creating giant icicles. But he was able to send him in and kick Snart back, sending him into the wall.
"But right now, Snart, I have somewhere to be. So how about you put the new toy down?" Peter asked, shooting several webs to stop the gun.
"Sorry. I have been given a mission. And I plan on accomplishing it." Snart promises as he shot the gun, watching as the webbing was frozen off.
"Oh, god," Peter said in shock as he leaped out of the way of another beam of ice. Taking a few backflips and web shots, he made it behind the police car. When he landed there, he found Yuri was there. "What's up?"
"Where the heck did he get that weapon?" Yuri asks as she watched Snart blast them with ice. "There's no way he made that on his own."
"How did he escape his cell?" Peter asked her.
"Some green-haired woman broke him out," Yuri informed him. "Got any ideas of how to stop him?"
"Get the gun, it ends." Peter felt it was as simple as that. But as he raised his head, a beam of ice came at him, causing him to duck to dodge it. "Easier than it sounds!"
"Okay, then we break it down," Yuri said as she tried to find an opening to shoot back. "The gun looks to be some sort of relic, which means old."
"And means it doesn't run on any power supply we've seen," Peter added on. "So taser-webs will either fix or make the situation worse."
"Wait." Yuri started to put something together as every five seconds, the two heard a faint warning signal from the cold gun. "Does that sound like an alarm?"
"The gun must use too much power that it ironically overheats." Peter started to put together a plan. "So, if I can keep his finger on the trigger, it'll overheat the gun and cause it to destroy itself."
"You make it sound so easy," Yuri commented.
"Yeah, the hard part is the work." Peter agreed with a sigh as he got back up. "Okay, let's do this."
Natalia made it home with their car and planned to get ready for bed since Peter wasn't going to be coming back anytime soon. Most nights she would be getting ready for bed when Peter finally makes it back. Some nights it would be with bruises that needed time to heal, or sometimes he'd just come home exhausted.
But as Natalia was making her way out of the car and closing the door, she noticed a few things that were off to her. She looked down at Clinton's toys, his rocking horse on the ground was kicked over.
Not knocked. Kicked.
How she was able to tell this, she had no idea. But she just had this gut feeling that something wasn't right. But just like back in the alley, she wasn't scared. She actually felt focused. Her mind was sharp. She walked up to the door and pushed it open to see the lights were off. The television was still on, with some show playing. When she kept looking around the room, she found there was a small puddle of blood on the floor near the couch.
Part of her started to scream. Starting to panic. But it was quickly silenced by another part of her brain that was keeping her calm. A part of her that was saying that she knew exactly what to do. Telling her to strike down whoever did this.
She then felt what was a cold chill telling her that there was someone there with her. She felt the knife that the man carrying coming toward her as if she had a sixth sense about what was coming.
A man came up to her with a knife and was going to stab her in the back. But before he could even see what was happening, Natalia tossed her coat on him, blinding the attacker to give her the advantage. Throwing the man against the wall, she found several other men in her house as she ran at the second man.
He goes to attack Natalia as she leaped over him, grabbing him by the neck and slamming his head against the glass coffee table. That causes the table to crack due to the weight and takes him down. Then there was one man left in the back room who pulled out a gun to shoot her with. That was when she grabbed one of the knives from the kitchen and tossed it across the room.
The knife was thrown across the room and embedded into the hand that was holding the gun. He cried out in pain, shaking Natalia out of her mindset.
That was when she noticed exactly what she had done.
Gasping, she looked around and saw all of the damage she had done. Taking down three men at once. Throwing a kitchen knife across the house.
Then she heard something on the radio that sounded like Russian. But then to her shock, she was able to even understand what she was hearing.
"Is she dead? Did you kill her?!"
Before he even had the chance to respond, Natalia elbowed him in the face. As if her body suddenly became automatic, she sneaked into the air vents to take her homemade bomb out.
Placing it in the back of her dress, she took the gun and made her way into the bedroom. Once she made it inside her room, she found Cisco was tied up and had a muffle. Racing towards her friend, she ripped the muffle off of him and tossed it.
"Cisco, what happened?" Natalia asked him.
"These...I'm not sure." Cisco admitted. "I mean, some weird gas canister flew in through the window, and the next thing I know, I'm here."
"Where's Clinton?" Natalia asks.
Just then, the house phone inside the room was going off and scared them both. Natalia walked over and quickly answered the phone to see who was calling.
"Who is this?" Natalia asks.
"Now I'm hurt, Romanoff," Ophelia said on the other end. "Do you not remember the time we spent together?"
"Where is my son?" Natalia asked her.
"If you want to see your son again...meet me at the warehouse district."
Natalia was about to respond to that when the phone line went dead. She quickly made her way over and drew a pocket knife to cut Cisco out of his binds.
"I'm going to the warehouse district," Natalia tells Cisco as she undid his legs. "Call the cops and Peter."
"Where are you going?" Cisco asked as Natalia marched off, picking up a gun from one of the men.
"I'm going to get my son back," Natalia answered as she cocked the gun, no idea where she learned to do that.
She was learning a lot about herself and she had no idea how she could do these things. She was not going to let some strange girl come and take her son. She was going to tear down the entire warehouse district to get her son back.
Peter was swinging around the area whilst he was leaping and dodging the blasts from the cold gun. He was still unsure where he got the gun, but that wasn't the most important thing right now.
"Come on, Spider-Man, no more quips?" Snart asked as he blasted another beam of ice.
"My mouth gets stuck the more I'm in the cold," Peter admitted as he shot out a web and attached it to his gun before yanking it. "But that'll warm things up!"
"No, it won't," Snart said as he activated something on his wrist. His gun was then pulled and dragged back into his hands. "Like I said."
"What?" Peter was shocked as he quickly ducked behind a barricade. "Okay, that's not how I expected that to end."
Then as he was trying to come up with a new plan, his phone went off and he activated it in his mask. "Pete?"
"Cisco, I'm kinda in the middle of something." Peter was sorry to tell him.
"What, this is something you'll want to make some time for." Cisco was sorry he had to tell him.
"What's wrong?" Peter asked as Snart came up and he quickly ducked out of the way, shooting blasts of webbing at Snart.
"It's Clinton."
Snart shot ahead of Peter as he slipped on the ice. Quickly getting up, he shot a web and dragged himself as he shot web to blind Snart. He groaned in anger as he reached to rip off the webbing from his face.
"What about him?" Peter wonders, getting up and shooting a web at Snart's hand to keep him on the trigger.
As the cold gun was constantly firing, the gun started to go into overload and exploded. He screamed as the gun went off in his hands and held onto it as Yuri and the cops came over to take him down.
"He's missing." Cisco finally told Peter.
"What?!" Peter asked in shock, quickly running away and swinging away.
When Natalia arrived at the location, she found that it was just on the outskirts of the city. An old and abandoned airfield with no planes around, giving her thought that something was wrong.
"We've been waiting for you." Someone said, but it wasn't the woman from the phone.
Natalia quickly ran and hid against the wall. "I just want my son."
"She said you would come for him." The man almost sounded like he was mocking her for it. "The great powerful Black Widow. I never took you for a mother."
"Black What?" Natalia asked in confusion. "I'm not whoever you people think I am!"
"Oh, we know exactly who you are, Romanoff!" He promises and cocks his gun. "And this is where it all ends!"
Natalia then saw an opening as he came out and shot him in the shoulder. It wasn't to kill him; it was just to get him out of her way. He screamed in pain as Natalia marched past, grabbing him by the collar and slamming him into the wall.
"Where is my son!?" Natalia asked him.
"Third floor!" He finally gave in. "You'll find him there! The only closed door!"
Natalia then pushed him aside and made her way up the stairwell.
Peter made it back to his place where he found the police and Cisco. He had just explained what had happened to him, and Peter was more worried about what happened to Natalia and his son.
"...And when she showed up, it was like watching some Rush Hour, Jackie Chan, ninja moves," Cisco explained it best that he could.
"Natalia?" Peter asked in confusion. "She did this?"
"She took them down like it was nothing," Cisco informed him.
"Your fiancé taking up any self-defense classes or anything?" Eddie Thawne asks Peter.
"Not that I can think of." Peter never recalled her taking classes to fight. "For as long as I've known her, she was never interested in fighting. Hates guns. Couldn't hurt a fly."
"Maybe the threat of her kid set her off," Cisco replied, getting them to look toward him. "You know, like a mom lifting a car to save their baby?"
"No, this..." Peter looked at the bodies being dragged out of his place. "This is something else."
"Where is she now?" Eddie asks them.
Making her way up the stairway, Natalia kicked in the door of the third floor that ended up hitting someone on the other end. Opening the door before smashing the man with the door a second time, sending him into the wall.
Marching her way through the hall, one came at her with an axe when she shot him in the leg. He cried as Natalia walked over and kneed him in the face while using his axe and threw it at another one aiming a gun at her.
Marching to the back of the hallway, she kicked open the door, seeing a bunch of diapers, and bottles, but there was no sign of her son. Looking around, she saw there was a card on the blankets.
It was a recent picture that was taken from her home, with a note written on the back:
"We'll be waiting for you when you come home, Natasha"
Natalia dropped to her knees and started to break down at the thought of her son being kidnapped. Sirens were then heard and she knew that Cisco did as she asked and called the cops.
Natalia sat there as the police finished their questions and Peter walked over to her and sat down to hold her. The two of them couldn't believe they let this happen. Their pride and joy were taken from them and are now being held somewhere because of his parents.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't save him." Peter was sorry to say.
"It wasn't your fault," Natalia assured him, knowing this was apparently her fault. "Apparently it was mine."
"Just remember that I'm here," Peter said as he pulled her close. "Whatever you need, let me know."
"There is something," Natalia said as she looked Peter in the eye. "I need a suit."