A/N: Thanks to everyone that has so far reviewed, favourited and followed this story, you guys are the best. I'm going to start a system where you will only get a new chapter when I get a review. I want to finish this story before the 7th of December though because I'll be going away on a holiday until the 18th, so please work with me here guys.
"What happened last night?" Clint dropped into the seat next to Natasha and she tensed. Quickly she allowed herself to look at him. He was showing no signs that he remembered last night at all, especially what he'd done towards the end of the evening.
"You got drunk," Natasha told him. She decided to play it safe and completely forget what he'd done last night. After all he had been drunk and probably didn't even realise at the time that he'd been flirting with her, granted he was a hopeless flirt. "Then I had to drag you back to your room."
He wasn't the only one that was seeing after affects. Tony was probably used to being drunk but he was still slumped in a chair and wearing sunglasses. Thor was a big guy but even he looked like he was pushing his way through a headache. Steve couldn't even get drunk so he just sat there. Even Natasha had a headache but she had dealt with worse so she just ignored it. Pepper wasn't even in the room so Natasha had every reason to suspect that she would be spending the day in bed.
"Is someone flashing a light in my eye?" Clint asked her while blinking weirdly.
"No," Natasha moved to sit on the edge of the couch and looked at her partner while shaking her head.
Clint groaned and fell sideways, lying on the couch with one of his legs swung over the edge while hiding behind Natasha's back. She scoffed and rolled her eyes. Looking over her shoulder she saw that Clint had one hand over his eyes.
"This has got to be one of your best hangovers yet," she commented dryly.
"Shut up," he mumbled.
Steve looked over at her and pointed to Clint. "You might want to remove him," he told her. His voice was serious and Natasha frowned in questioning. "Director Fury's coming to talk to us," he replied to her facial expression in warning.
Natasha whacked Clint on the leg and he moaned in protest. She whacked him again but harder this time. "Fury's on his way here," she hissed at him.
Clint muttered curse words and grabbed the top of the couch. He swung a leg over it and began to use his upper body strength to lift himself up. He managed to get up there and lay on top of the couch for a second before rolling off the other side and Natasha vaguely heard a thud as he hit the ground. She went to look over the couch to see if he was ok but the lift dinged signalling a new arrival.
Director Fury walked into the room and stood in the centre where everyone could see him. He looked over every single person, analysing them carefully. "Good morning," he spoke sharply, his eye narrowing. Then his focused his line of sight onto Natasha "Where's Agent Barton?"
Before she could answer a hand appeared from behind the couch. "Here sir," Clint called out.
"Get out here now," he didn't sound happy. Clint picked himself up off the floor and moved to sit next to Natasha again. Steve went to say something but the Director shot him down. "I don't want to hear it Captain Rogers. I recall saying that in your time off you were to relax and kick your feet back," he walked around the room stopping near Clint and kicking Agent Barton's feet off the coffee table. "What I don't recall is telling you that you can sit around here and get yourselves drunk."
Clint looked down at his feet sheepishly and Natasha kept her stare straight. She wasn't intimidated so easily but kept her mouth shut and decided not to speak unless spoken to. She only hoped that the others had the sense to keep their mouths shut.
She wished for the impossible.
"Well technically you never said we couldn't get drunk," Tony shrugged.
"I already know that you are an unstable alcoholic and I really don't care because frankly you are not my responsibility," Fury shot him down. "You could spend your Friday night's dancing with sock puppets in a pink bunny suit and I still wouldn't give a damn. You two on the other hand."
He pointed to Barton and Romanoff. "I could've sent you off to South Africa to spend your time off in a smelting plant. Instead I let you cool down here in a fancy tower. Now if you jokers decide to pull something stupid like this again I will not hesitate to ship your ass off to Jamaica for some quality time together in a damn caravan where you can think about how stupid you were!"
"Sir we didn't think that we would be given a mission any time soon or that you would be paying us a visit," Natasha spoke coolly.
"Still I expect better," Fury returned to the centre of the room where they could all see him.
"If I might ask, why are you here Fury?" Dr Banner asked.
"I'm here to brief you all about a new situation that has come to the attention of SHIELD," he put a circular device at the centre of the coffee table and pressed the centre of it. It lit up blue and displayed a holographic image. The picture was grainy and clearly taken from surveillance footage, but Natasha still recognised the person displayed in the image.
It was Phoenix.
"Romanoff and Barton have already had dealings with this girl but I thought I should inform the rest of you of her existence," he tapped the hologram device twice and the picture displayed before them became a video. Phoenix glanced around before walking off towards the right of the camera. The clip only lasted a few seconds.
"She is known only by the alias of Phoenix. She might look harmless but trust me, the girl is far from it," Fury told them grimly. "She is the product of an illegal experiment conducted by a scientist known as Dr Harold Blake. It has been confirmed that this girl has the ability to control and manipulate fire, as well as being very fast, very strong and extremely intelligent. Not to mention very hostile. This in turn makes her a big threat. She has already killed two men and there is a likely chance she will kill again."
He tapped the holographic device once and it switched off. He stashed it into his pocket and stood up. "We have limited knowledge about her but what we do know has been compiled into a profile and that profile has already been uploaded onto the Stark private database so all of you can access it."
"Sir," Steve stood up and stopped the Director before he could leave. "What exactly do you want us to do about this girl?"
"Find her," he pointed his gaze at Natasha. "And when you do find her, she must be neutralised."
It wasn't hard to find a computer in Stark Tower. Within seconds of walking into one of the first science labs she saw she managed to spot a working computer. Natasha pulled up a chair and sat down, logging in and opening a browser folder. She found the secure database and typed Phoenix into the search box. It was one of the first things that jumped out at her on the screen.
She clicked open the folder and was about to beginning reading when there was a crash from behind her. She turned and saw that Clint had been playing with a microscope and had dropped it onto the ground, snapping the lens in half. She sighed and rolled her eyes.
He pointed at her. "Don't judge me, I still can't see straight."
"Whatever," she sighed and then spun back around in her chair to look at the screen once again.
"Anything interesting?" he leaned over her shoulder to get a look at the screen.
"I'm looking up Phoenix's profile," she told him. "There are some pictures lifted from security cameras as well."
Clint pulled a chair over and sat down next to her. Natasha opened the profile and both of the assassins began to read it.
It started off with the basic background information about Phoenix and detailed how she was found by Agent Barton and Romanoff, it provided a link to a separate report that detailed how she had been discovered but since Natasha was the one that had written it in the first place she didn't think it necessary to read it all over again.
Next it gave notes about what they knew about Doctor Blake and his experiments. This section was not very detailed and basically all it said was that Phoenix is the result of an experiment performed by Doctor Blake. So there was no new information there.
The next part labelled what SHIELD knew about her and what she was capable of. It described what they could guess of her physical and metal capabilities. There was an entire paragraph that documented her ability control fire, which didn't surprise Natasha.
There was also a reference to Chinese street performer with natural pyrokinetic ability. Apparently a SHIELD team had tried to save him from a group that had connections to something called Centipede. This section wasn't detailed much either so Natasha just guessed it was a quick reference.
Then right at the bottom of the page in big bold letters was a single sentence.
Incredibly High Risk Hostile: Threat level 10
"Threat level 10!" Clint repeated loudly. "That's the highest threat level assessment SHIELD has. I haven't seen a level ten on a profile since yours." He pointed at Natasha who focused her stoic stare onto the computer screen with laser focus.
"This isn't right," Natasha began to put things together. "This isn't a complete profile. There are too many missing pieces for them to be able to give her a risk assessment, let alone a level ten. They need more information than they have. It's suspicious."
"Do you think SHIELD knows more about Phoenix than they're letting on?" Clint frowned.
"Maybe," Natasha bit her lip in thought. "SHIELD works to a very strict level of secrecy. It's not surprising for them to keep things out of our reach. We're not even level 8 yet."
"It's weird when a secret has its own secrets," Clint nodded and Natasha gave him a weird look. "Remind me again what Tony put in my drink last night?"
"Alcohol, alcohol, vodka, schnapps and more alcohol," Natasha replied hotly.
Clint could tell that she was annoyed with him now so he managed to find some common sense. "So uh, what are you planning to do about Phoenix?"
"SHIELD has a lot of surveillance photos of her so I'm assuming that means they have a lot of surveillance footage," she looked over at him. "Tomorrow we need to head into SHIELD and look at this footage ourselves. We need to track her and see what she's up to."
"Why did I know you were going to say that?" Clint sighed.