The corridors of the Helicarrier were a warzone. Sirens howled. Smoke curled from ruptured bulkheads. Every corner seemed to spit mercenaries—agents turned by mind control or loyalists Barton had slipped past Fury's defenses.
Natasha Romanoff moved like a shadow through the chaos, her pistols flashing, each shot precise and economical. She didn't waste a single motion. Logan, by contrast, was a storm—tearing through doors, shredding metal, claws sparking against walls as he cut a path straight through SHIELD's security detail.
"Remind me why we're running toward the guy with the bow?" Logan growled, his voice rough with smoke and irritation.
"Because if Barton takes out another engine," Natasha shot back, vaulting over a fallen console, "this ship stops flying. And we stop breathing."
Logan bared his teeth in something that wasn't quite a smile. "Fine by me, but I still don't understand how a guy with a bow is more dangerous than the fighter jets buzzing around outside."
They rounded a corner and nearly collided with a trio of agents. Natasha flipped low, sweeping one off his feet while Logan slammed the other two against the wall hard enough to dent the steel.
They were out cold and up for a rough time once they woke up, but at least they were alive, which was more than could be said for many others.
Not everyone had the strength or the skill needed to eliminate the introducers nonlethally.
Then the lights above flickered.
"Watch out!"
The warning came too late. The arrow hissed past Logan's shoulder, embedding itself in the bulkhead where Natasha had been a heartbeat earlier. The warhead glowed—an explosive charge primed to detonate.
Natasha rolled into cover just as the arrow blew, the corridor erupting in smoke and flame.
Logan growled angrily. He took the worst of the explosion, and while it was hardly enough to take him down, it still hurt like hell.
"Alright, those arrows are annoying!" He grunted as he looked towards where the arrow had come from, only to see the glints of a dozen gun barrels, causing him to duck for cover before the corridor lit up by gunfire.
Natasha also quickly took cover, though she knew that it wouldn't work for long, not with Barton on the other side. Clint wasn't stupid; he would take advantage of them being stationary to blow the cover up.
"We can't remain here," she shouted to Logan, hoping he could use his mutant powers to overturn the situation, because Natasha didn't want to throw around explosives, not while inside a flying ship that was already struggling to stay in the air.
Logan's claws snapped free with a metallic snikt. "Good thing I don't need cover."
Before Natasha could stop him, he hurled himself forward through the hail of gunfire. Bullets sank into his flesh, and he gritted his teeth as they hit his metallic bones. It hurt for sure, but in the end, it wouldn't kill him, and he was no stranger to pain.
He ploughed into the squad of hostile mercenaries like a wrecking ball, claws flashing, not to kill but to break weapons, drop soldiers, and scatter them so Natasha had an opening.
Through the smoke, another arrow shrieked out, trailing cable. Logan tried to slash it, but it wrapped around his arm and yanked him hard, almost causing him to lose his footing, and gave the enemies surrounding him a chance to retaliate.
They didn't shoot; in fact, they gave up on their weapons entirely and instead thought to just restrain his movements.
Still, his actions did cause the gunfire to stop; it did cause a distraction.
Natasha used the distraction. She rolled low, kicked a rifle out of a soldier's hands, and in a blur of motion was up on the catwalk. Barton stood above them, bow already drawn, eyes glowing that sick unnatural blue.
"Clint," she called, breath sharp, "it's me."
No answer. He loosed another arrow—this one detonating in a burst of concussive force that nearly threw her off the catwalk.
She gritted her teeth. Alright, enough talking, let's take him down and have the twins help him. Just wait for me, Clint. I will save you.
Logan roared, wrenching the cable taut until it snapped, forcing Clint to dodge as the pully it was attached to was ripped from the wall behind him.
Natasha took full advantage of that to close the distance, knowing full well that Clint was by far the most dangerous at a distance.
Logan threw himself back into the fight, throwing the mercenaries off of him and beginning a brutal melee where he kept his claws away to not kill anyone who might be here against their will.
Natasha closed the last few yards with the silent efficiency of a predator. Barton's face was blank, eyes a cold, unnatural blue; his fingers worked the bow with impossible calm. The calm only made him all the more dangerous, as there was no hesitation in his actions.
He didn't doubt, didn't question, didn't know the meaning of fear; he just acted as ordered. He would bring this aircraft carrier down, with himself inside it, all without hesitation.
She reached him a heartbeat before he could loose another special arrow. Her hand shot out, catching his bow arm. He moved like a machine—no surprise, no flinch—so she twisted, spun, and used his own inertia to flip him. He came down on her shoulder, knife flashing.
She met the blade with her forearm, her widow's bite sparking as his blade damaged the equipment, but at least it blocked the knife. Still, the sparking from her armguard did send a little shock into him.
Not enough to knock him out as she had hoped, but enough to give her a chance to retaliate.
She used the shock to drive her leg between his, sweeping. He rolled, came up, and they were close enough now that there was nowhere for an arrow to be effective: all the fight was hand-to-hand, raw and ugly.
Not that Clint let melee combat be his weakness, he was highly trained, he used his knife with precision, his movements left no openings, he was deadly and determined.
Sadly for him, he was up against Natasha, and she knew him, knew him well. Including all his tendencies, his rhythm from years of working with him, and right now, he was relying fully on his training and muscle memory.
Acting like a robot, which meant he didn't switch up his style at all.
She baited him with a feint, let him overcommit, then slammed her elbow into his sternum. He grunted; the blue in his eyes flickered.
Below them, Logan snarled as another group of mind-controlled agents came at him. He ripped weapon from weapon, snapped rifles like twigs, and the corridor became a blur of fists and kicks. Despite being stronger and more skilled, Logan was outnumbered, forcing him to take quite a beating.
On the catwalk, Natasha forced Barton onto his back with a crushing knee. He struck the deck hard; pain shuddered through him, and for one glorious half-second his pupils constricted to normal.
Yet he quickly flipped around, his eyes returning to blue as he kicked at her, using the movement to get back on his feet as he turned, moving into a spinning kick. Forcing Natasha to dodge low.
Barton pressed his advantage, following with a downward slash of his knife. Natasha parried with her forearm, sparks hissing as steel screeched against her damaged Widow's Bite. She grimaced at the jolt but used the momentum, twisting his wrist until the blade nearly slipped from his grip.
He didn't falter. He never did. Instead, Clint surged forward, shoulder-checking her against the railing. Her breath exploded out of her lungs, but she locked her arm around his neck, pulling him down with her weight. They tumbled across the metal grating, each strike blocked, each counter sharper than the last.
"Come on, Clint," she hissed between gritted teeth, sweat and smoke stinging her eyes. "You know me. You know me."
He responded with silence and a vicious knee to her ribs. She rolled with it, gasping, but caught his ankle on the next swing and yanked. He hit the deck again—but this time rolled immediately, coming up with a bow already in hand. From this close, he didn't need range—just a heartbeat.
Natasha lunged. The arrow fired point-blank, grazing her shoulder as it whined past and detonated in the wall. The shockwave nearly sent them both off the catwalk, but Natasha recovered faster, spinning behind him and slamming her forearm against his throat.
For a heartbeat, his struggles stilled. The blue glow in his eyes dimmed, pupils fighting to surface. "Nat—" he rasped.
Then it returned, hard and cold. He rammed his head back into hers, splitting her lip, and drove an elbow into her ribs. Pain lanced through her, but she held on, knowing that letting go meant another arrow—another dead engine.
Below, Logan tore through another wave, his shirt shredded, blood dripping from countless wounds all over his body. Trying to hold back, while fighting people that wanted nothing more than to kill him wasn't easy, nor was it pretty. "Any time now, Red!" he barked, ducking a rifle butt to the face before hurling the attacker over the railing.
"Working on it!" Natasha spat blood and drove her knee into Clint's thigh. He barely flinched. His knife came up again, but she caught his wrist, twisting until joints cracked. The blade clattered away, but Clint shifted immediately, striking with a sharp elbow to her temple.
They broke apart, circling, both breathing hard. Natasha's chest heaved; Clint's expression was glassy and inhuman, but his stance was flawless. They moved at the same time, colliding again in a blur of strikes—knife-hand blocks, grapples, counters.
Every move she made, he had an answer for. Every strike he threw, she anticipated by half a breath.
Natasha didn't have the luxury of finesse; she had to make a choice and make it count.
She feinted low, baiting Clint's balance, then sprang—her shoulder driving into his sternum as her other hand snatched for his face. He tried to throw her, but she hooked an arm around his neck, leverage and grit doing what bullets and blades couldn't. The Widow's Bite fizzed at her wrist, the shock a dull roar through her bones, and she sent that jolt through him.
She wanted to knock him out cold without hurting him too badly. For a beat, he went limp—just enough for her to slam him onto his back. Her knee pinned his chest, her strangled hand controlling his knife arm. Clint's breath came ragged; the blue in his irises flared and then, mercifully, thinned to normal. He coughed, pupils contracting to human black.
"Nat?" he croaked, voice raw. The man under the control was coming back in pieces—aware, scared, disoriented. He fumbled for words as if they were stones. "Trap—don't—get—" He groped for meaning, eyes wide with the sudden clarity of someone who'd been woken from a dream into a nightmare.
Before Natasha could ask him for it, she heard it, a loud, brutal roar filled with anger. It almost shook the already unstable ship. "Shit! Logan! They are after the Hulk!" she screamed.
"Oh yeah, you think?" Logan grunted and stopped holding back as much, quickly knocking everyone down, though this time with broken bones, and many of them.
(End of chapter)
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