NATASHA ROMANOFF
CODENAME: BLACK WIDOW
PARK AVENUE, MIDTOWN MANHATTAN
The green aura had been helping her fight for a good while now, and Natasha was already calculating how much of it she could leave out of her SHIELD operational report, due to the sheer absurdity of what was even happening.
It wasn’t armor, and it wasn’t a weapon.
It was a fluid, hyper-responsive extension of her own imagination.
The energy didn’t just sit on her skin; it anticipated her line of sight, mapping the half-second gaps between engagements before she even finished registering the threat.
A Chitauri soldier lunged from the smoke, its bladed staff rifle whistling toward her throat.
Natasha ducked inside its guard, driving her elbow hard into the creature’s lower jaw, a blade like extension protruding from her elbow.
The moment the bone cracked under her impact, the green aura flared.
A razor-wire filament spun out from her left wrist, catching a second alien across the throat and dragging it violently into the asphalt.
She rolled right, tracking a third target.
The aura read the shift in her weight instantly.
A solid emerald wedge materialized beneath her boot at a perfect thirty-degree angle, giving her the rigid leverage she needed to redirect her momentum into a brutal, spine-snapping sidekick that floored the creature.
She worked through the cluster with the brutal economy she brought to every engagement.
The green energy filled the natural physical gaps that being a baseline human in an alien war zone usually left wide open.
It was a strange, unsettling sensation, fighting with a partner that had no ego, no hesitation, and an uncanny understanding of her entire fighting style.
A skirmisher ambushed her from a blind spot on her right, a sleek green construct limb that looked exactly like her own extended directly from her right shoulder.
The artificial hand clamped down on the soldier’s wrist, twisting its arm backward and throwing its full weight into the line of incoming fire behind it.
Natasha didn’t waste the half-second it bought her.
She unholstered her Glock, putting two clean rounds through the throat of the beast ahead of her without breaking her stride.
She was moving toward the tower.
Ever since Tony’s frantic warning cut through the comms, she had been treating Park Avenue like an obstacle course, cutting through the vanguard with the cold efficiency of an operative running out of time.
The distance was closing, but not fast enough.
Then a streak of gold and emerald plummeted from the sky, crashing directly into the tower’s upper terrace.
Loki.
She used the aura to form a barricade, then used it as platform to get a better angle to shoot at the Chitauri fighter from above, her boots hitting the concrete as she rolled to bleed off the momentum, the comms static hissed in her ear.
“Loki is down,” Tony’s voice cut through, rough and winded in a way she didn’t like.
“The scepter is with him on the terrace. I’m going to need you guys to go shopping for it. Fury just dropped a hell of a problem on my lap, I need eyes on it right now.”
Before Steve could argue, Tony killed the transmission.
Natasha looked up, watching the gold and green engine trail of the Mark VII arc away from the building at a velocity the armor shouldn’t have been physically capable of sustaining.
He was tearing northeast.
The main lobby of Stark Tower was a ruin of shattered glass, smoking support beams, and two Chitauri foot soldiers trying to secure the perimeter.
The green aura helped her clear them in four seconds flat.
She didn’t bother waiting for the elevator.
She vaulted into the stairwell, her eyes locked on the vertical ascent.
The aura built the stairs for her.
As she sprinted upward, angled emerald platforms manifested exactly one inch beneath her descending boots, perfectly spaced for maximum stride velocity. The source of this chapter is g.com.
The moment her heel lifted, the construct dissolved.
It turned a grueling forty-story vertical climb into a high-speed sprint.
The interior of the tower passed in a blur of cracked drywall and shattered panoramic windows, the silence inside the structure broken only by the war raging outside.
She hit the thirtieth floor when the vibrations started.
It wasn’t the shockwave of a repulsor or a mortar shell.
It was a heavy, rhythmic thudding that rattled the concrete foundations of the building, vibrating right through the emerald platforms and into the soles of her boots.
Five distinct, bone-shattering impacts echoed from above, followed by a wet, heavy crunch.
Natasha didn’t slow down.
She drew her weapon and breached the doors leading to the roof.
The upper terrace was an open expanse of grey smoke, burning debris, and the sharp, metallic tang of ozone.
The first thing she noticed was the crater.
It was a jagged, asymmetric impression stamped deeply into the expensive tilework.
Loki was sprawled inside it on his back, his elaborate gold armor cracked across the chest piece.
One of his pauldrons was completely missing, and a severed horn from his helmet lay two feet to his left.
The God of Mischief was completely winded, staring blankly at the sky with a shell-shocked, vacant expression, his ribs heaving as he wheezed for air.
Four feet away, the Chitauri scepter lay on its side.
The blue gem inside the casing was pulsing erratically, flickering like a dying fluorescent bulb against the stone.
At the very edge of the terrace stood the Hulk.
The big guy was covered in a massive, glowing set of green gladiatorial plate armor, the constructs making his already massive frame look twice as imposing.
He scanned the airspace, spotted an alien skiff looping back for a strafing run, and roared.
“HULK SMASH!”
The giant leaped straight off the roof, a massive emerald warhammer in his hands as he plunged into the airspace below.
The thunderous shockwave of his landing hit the terrace three seconds later.
Natasha walked past the crater, her boots crunching on the glass.
She bent down, retrieving the scepter.
Even through her tactical gloves, she could feel a strange, agitated vibration humming through the metal handle.
“Romanoff,” Steve’s voice crackled through the earpiece, steady as a rock.
“Status report.”
“I’ve got the scepter,” Natasha said, her eyes never leaving Loki’s twitching form.
“Target is neutralized. I’m moving to shut down the portal.”
“Good work, Nat. Secure the area and—”
“Hold the phone, Romanoff. Do not touch that machine yet.”
Tony’s voice overrode the frequency, tight and dropping all the casual sarcasm he usually relied on.
“Stark, what are you talking about?” Steve demanded.
“We need that sky closed.”
“The World Security Council just crossed the line,” Tony said, his voice echoing over the roar of wind resistance.
“They think the best way to handle a localized containment issue is a twenty-megaton nuclear warhead. It’s currently en route to Midtown Manhattan.”
“Lucky for us and about eight million people I know exactly where to dump it,” Tony continued, his tone dangerously focused.
“But I need a clear window. I need Glowstick out of the portal before I get there. Somebody make the kid move. I’d do it myself, but I am currently in a very high-stakes game of chicken with a missile.”
The line clicked off.
Natasha stood on the smoking terrace, the weight of the scepter heavy in her hand.
Below her, Loki was still wheezing in his crater.
Above her, the green barrier remained absolutely rigid.
She tapped her earpiece, switching to the local shortwave.
“Green Lantern. Green Lantern, this is Black Widow. You need to drop the shield and clear the airspace. Right now.”
Nothing but white noise.
She looked at the scepter, then at the glowing green wall in the sky, calculating the precise arrival time of an inbound nuclear strike.
“Rogers,” she said, her voice dropping into a cold, flat calm.
“We have a major problem.”
“We need to get Green Lantern’s attention,” Rogers said.
“Or get him clear. Tony can’t be more than a minute out and we need that flight path open before he gets here. Ideas.”
Natasha looked up at the figure above the tower.
“Comms aren’t reaching him,” she said.
“He’s too deep in whatever he’s maintaining.”
“Physical contact,” Rogers said.
“Someone needs to get up there.”
“I’m at the tower but I’m not flying, Rogers.”
“Thor’s still working the skiff wave on the east side, I can’t pull him without—”
“I got this.” Barton’s voice came through.
Natasha’s eyes moved automatically to the rooftop she’d last tracked his position to, two blocks east, and she opened her mouth.
“Barton, what are you—”
“Hope Green Lantern doesn’t hold a grudge.” She heard the release of his bow over comms.
She tracked the arc instinctively, her eyes finding the construct arrow the moment it cleared Barton’s position, it was moving at a range that should not have been possible from that rooftop to the tower’s airspace, the hard green shaft climbing and climbing on a trajectory that shouldn’t have been possible.
She watched it cross the distance, she watched it reach the apex.
She watched the tip of it, which she now had a clear enough view to identify as a construct boxing glove approximately the size of a cantaloupe, connect with the side of Green Lantern’s head, and as it did, the light that covered Manhattan flickered for a bit, before finally disappearing, and for a moment so did the barrier before it solidified.
Natasha closed her eyes for exactly one second, then she opened the channel.
“Barton.”
“Yeah?”
“Was that a boxing glove?”
“I know hilarious right?”
“You shot him in the head.”
“Gently.”