Chapter 239: Chapter 239: A Fallen Shield

Chapter 239: A Fallen Shield

28^th September 2012, New York City

(Natasha Romanoff POV)

Natasha Romanoff was an Avenger, one of Earth’s mightiest heroes, despite her past being stained with sin and death. She was a survivor; she survived the red room, she survived being hunted down by its remnants as she escaped, and she survived an alien invasion of all things. But she was always grateful for Nick Fury and Clint Barton for helping her get her life straight and try to atone for her past by working as one of the most efficient SHIELD agents in the organization.

For the first time, she was doing some good. She had stopped being an assassin, and only killed people with worse crimes than her. She helped make the world a better place through SHIELD.

So, it was understandable that when the organization was under attack by the public, because the World Security Council decided to nuke New York. Not to mention the leaked classified documents that really shouldn’t have been accessed by the general public. Adding in Pierce’s death, and over half the organization quitting for some reason, SHIELD was on its last legs, and with the UN vote coming, things didn’t look good.

If she was honest with herself, Natasha had realized that there was something rotten with SHIELD, especially concerning the people who had quit the organization so suddenly. It wasn’t a coincidence that most of the agents joined mercenary groups or even sometimes terrorist organizations all over the world, which was very telling of the type of people that used to work alongside her. Not to mention the contractors under SHIELD’s employ who just vanished. A very concerning one was Advanced Idea Mechanics, or AIM, that just went off the grid after Pierce’s death. It was very troubling since the company was almost successful in creating a stable Super Soldier Serum that granted some sort of absurd regeneration and weird fire powers. Natasha didn’t know the specifics, but this company was very shady – it was one of the reasons Fury chose to keep an eye on it – and considering that a lot of the agents and scientists who quit SHIELD joined this company, things didn’t look good.

Still, Natasha believed in SHIELD, and in Fury’s ability to pull things together. What she didn’t expect was for him to choose to target Jasmine Sayre of all people. The former assassin was one of the few people who knew that Morgan Evanshade and Jasmine Sayre were just aliases of the Morrigan, a woman who, frankly, terrified the living hell out of her.

The woman was powerful with a capital P. She could honestly see Fury bringing in Banner before managing to bring that woman in. Sayre was just a force of nature, one that went through everyone in her way as if they were nothing. Natasha had researched some of the woman’s former identities and was horrified at some of the atrocities the woman had committed. Well, she didn’t judge, especially since historians tended to get a lot of things wrong, and that's without taking her magic into account. But, in the end, one does not get worshipped as a Goddess of Death without reason.

And Fury decided to go after her, for something as mundane as a few murders. SHIELD didn’t care about small murders, but more about terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. One of the things Fury accused her of, was killing her own alternate identity, of all things, and killing Pierce, something that she had probably done, but the problem was that he had no evidence of this.

You just couldn’t beat Sayre in a straight fight. It just wouldn’t happen; she was too powerful and could go all biblical on Fury’s ass. His only hope was using the public, where the woman would just disappear and take another identity. Sayre was too connected, probably had many contingencies. So, when Fury asked Natasha and the Avengers to help him arrest her, she had to refuse. The director of SHIELD might be stubborn with this, but she wasn’t going to destroy her own team by fighting someone so far out of their league, for ambiguous reasons.

When she had told her teammates about Fury’s offer, the scoffed at the thought of going after the Morrigan, someone even Thor was terrified of. The assassin tried to warn her former boss, she really did. But the man was too stubborn about this, seeing only the positives of the encounter. It was obvious that Fury only wanted a win for the public, an enemy to rally against and to prove that SHIELD wasn’t just talk, that it was needed, but he chose the wrong person to do it against, which resulted in the fiasco she woke up to today.

Right now, she was sitting down on the sofa, in the Avengers tower, next to Clint. They watched a leaked video to what happened the day before. Fury had tried to go after Sayre, and it ended miserably. Barton had woken up before her and watched the video before she did. He had a somber look on his face, so Natasha had to ask, “So, I understand that things didn’t go well?”

“Not really.” Clint responded, dryly.

“How bad is it?”

“Pretty bad, they got the footage from Fury’s own camera that he wanted to use to entrap her. She must have known all about it and played the civilian card.”

Huh, that was surprisingly restrained from the woman who was attributed to five genocides over the course of history. Natasha sighed in relief, “So, how many people died in this mess?”

The archer snorted, “Not a single one. Sayre was obviously planning for the public to know about it so she restrained herself a lot. After this, I don’t see a way for SHIELD to come back, especially now that even Fury’s reputation is in tatters, which was the only reason SHIELD hadn’t been dissolved in the first place.”

Seriously? It was that bad? Natasha just nodded and pressed play to watch the video. She slowly watched as Fury kept accusing the woman without a shred of evidence, obviously expecting her to just admit her crimes on camera, and Sayre avoiding the trap, rather easily, by pretending to be a civilian. Natasha winced as she heard Fury admit that he was going to forge some evidence just to arrest her. That was just something no one should say when they know that there are cameras around.

She watched as her former boss tried to arrest the woman, who just took him out with a pepper spray can and a taser. She even took out Sabretooth and Taskmaster in the same manner. The worst thing was the sniper rifle, probably Bullseye, some sociopathic nutjob that Fury hired to act as their marksman. He was supposed to be Clint’s replacement should something happen to the archer. Still, shooting someone in public, especially someone who wasn’t using lethal force, was a very bad idea in the long run.

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Still the woman ended up being cornered by Cyclops, a mutant from Xavier’s former group that they had recruited after the telepath died. He hated Sayre and Wanda Maximoff with a passion, blaming them for the death of his mentor and father figure. His biggest issue is that he never finds any fault in anything that he does. He’s always the hero, the good guy, and that usually clouds his judgement slightly, but considering how he was when he first arrived, and the amount of psychological issues he had – apparently, he was brainwashed or something after his parents died – his current behavior is a very remarkable improvement. If anything, the man was efficient, if a little ruthless.

Sayre was then rescued by Spider-Man of all people, a rogue vigilante, that’s slightly childish, probably because of his age. The young hero mostly kept to smalltime crime, dealing with muggers and gangbangers mostly, so it was surprising that he chose to involve himself in the situation, saving Sayre, and fighting Cyclops, Electro, and a newly arrived Rhino. The spider themed hero was surprisingly very resourceful and was able to easily take out all three of them, showing the entire world that he was a force to be reckoned with.

All in all, Sayre escaped without even using a shred of powers on anyone, and Spider-Man was being celebrated as the protector of human rights or something. And SHIELD not only looked to be corrupt and unreasonable, but also incompetent, since a seemingly untrained woman was able to take out both the director and two enhanced agents, using only a taser and pepper spray. Sayre, who had probably leaked the video by hacking into Fury’s cameras, had won a decisive victory.

In a way, this was worse, a lot worse than her just killing SHIELD agents left and right. She would have provided a common threat to unite against, someone to hate at all costs. Instead, she played the part of an innocent civilian who ran away, afraid of being unlawfully detained, or kidnapped. SHIELD wasn’t getting out of this mess, and with the vote being so close and this fiasco being in people’s minds, things weren’t looking good for the peacekeeping organization.

Natasha looked at her partner who had a grim look on his face, “This is bad, really bad.”

He nodded, “You did warn him…”

“Yes, but not against something like this. I warned him that he was going against a very powerful mutant, or goddess, or whatever the hell she is. I’m relieved that she didn’t go too far against him, but for Fury, this outcome was the worst thing that could have happened. I never expected Sayre to be this subtle. She’s always depicted as a weapon of mass destruction, not some devious plotter.”

The archer shrugged, “You know what they say, the best plotters are the ones no one knows about. Historians probably never even knew that she was involved in most of the things. It’s scary in a way, to see that this woman probably shaped the future we see today. I wonder how different things would be if she wasn’t involved. Would we be better, or worse off? I don’t know.”

Natasha was a bit miffed at how casual Clint was towards this mess, “Clint, SHIELD is over. You don’t think that’s more important than your little what if questions. The past is the past, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

He shrugged, “We both know that Fury didn’t expect to survive this. He planned on martyring himself against Sayre to get SHIELD to survive. He would have never involved himself in the operation otherwise. He wanted Sayre to kill him and get the world to be outraged on his behalf and use SHIELD to hunt the woman down. It was why he was actively antagonizing her in the first place. If Fury’s that desperate, then SHIELD was already done before yesterday happened. This is just the final nail in the coffin. I’m glad that Fury’s alive; he’s a good friend, but SHIELD was finished the moment they ordered a nuke to be launched at New York.”

The former assassin deflated. Clint had a point. It’s not like she didn’t know that SHIELD was a lost cause, but it was sad seeing someone she had faith in, fail this miserably, “Yeah, I get it. At least Fury made it out unharmed.”

Clint snorted, “I swear that man could survive the apocalypse or something.”

The former assassin burst into laughter. That was something she could see happening. Still, Natasha was thankful that the man who offered her the opportunity to do some good, was still alive. It might be a little selfish considering that his entire life’s work was in ruins, but Natasha genuinely liked the guy, a lot.

Maybe she could convince Tony to hire him and Hill as intelligence managers for the Avengers when they start taking more missions? The billionaire genius might not like them very much, but he did respect them, and he would probably get a kick out of ordering them around as their boss.

Natasha didn’t know what the future held, but if she learned one thing from this debacle, it was the fact that Jasmine Sayre was vicious, and that she would aim where it hurt the most, if someone annoyed her enough. She hoped that she would not be going against that woman anytime soon. That would probably not end well for her or her team. Thankfully, the woman was still cordial with them for now and Natasha hoped that things would stay that way.

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