Gacha God: Contractually Obligated Tragic Backstory (ch. 20) (Patreon)

"Well, that was particularly humiliating," Natasha Romanoff remarked, a frown in her voice as she looked at the massive pillar that had ripped through the asphalt, preventing them from giving chase to Audacity’s associate. It has been nothing more than dumb luck that she and Clint were already in Rome -- they were searching for records relating to… well, in any case, Natasha had jumped at the chance to capture someone that had connections to Audacity. He had been laying low for a few weeks, and then he appeared in Malta, of all places.

"Yeah, you can say that again. Shield’s got some serious egg on their face with this one," Clint agreed, dusting himself off. That was an understatement and a half. The downed Bus, which was just put back in commission, was going to draw international attention. Mostly because countries didn't like spy planes as a general rule, but especially when they crash land near a highway. The chase across Rome was going to be publicized to hell and back… the property damage was glaring but not too severe.

Despite how disastrous the mission was, it would have been fine if they managed to accomplish any of their objectives. Dr. Hall? Gone. The new agent Skye? Also gone. The Gravitonium? Nowhere to be seen. The suspect? Currently hightailing it out of Italy.

"The director is not going to be happy," Natasha sighed, glancing back at where their vehicle was currently on its side. "At least we learned something," she remarked, ignoring the looks from citizens that were recording the whole thing.

Agent Ward -- a member of Coulson's new team -- shot her a dumbfounded look, not taking the loss well at all. "What exactly did we learn here?"

"We made some assumptions about his items. The roller skates, the yoyo… but I don't think this can be explained by tech," Natasha voiced. She hesitated to use the dreaded M word that was guaranteed to drive Tony and Bruce up the walls, but they needed a really, really, really good explanation as to how these massive pillars sprung up from nothing. The car was odd -- the delayed reaction and the complete non damage to the incoming vehicle was weird. Very weird.

Natasha's gaze flickered to Agent May -- another member of Coulson's team. Natasha had worked with May a handful of times. She was good. As a spy, her acting skills could use some work, but there were precious few people that she would trust more to have her back during a fight. She was hiding some injuries, but the fact that they were there at all told Natasha that the suspect had more than just tricks up his sleeve.

It was then that Natasha's earpiece crackled to life, "Ward, May -- we have a lead on Skye. Drop what you're doing, and get on top of that. We're rescuing our kidnapee. Widow and Hawkeye -- I've brought a ride. It's just going to be a tight squeeze for all three of us." It was good to hear Coulson again.

Project T.A.H.I.T.I had been a success, even if his memories had to be wiped of the procedure. His recovery time was good… and if there was any doubt that he was the same old Coulson, it was blown away when she saw him riding on a sky blue vespa with a sidecar. He looked awfully pleased with himself, despite how utterly ridiculous it looked.

"Dibs on the side car," Clint decided, running up when Coulson came to a screeching halt. Natasha fought the urge to roll her eyes and only barely winced as she threw a leg over the back of the vespa, wrapping her arms around Coulson's midriff.

Coulson looked to May and Ward, "Ftitz-Simmons managed to track the Gravitonium signature to a building, but they lost it. Seems that they put it in something thicker than two garbage bags. It's a lead. The priority is Skye, understood?" Most agents world criticize him for not prioritizing the Gravitonium, but Natasha wasn't most agents. Coulson cared. It's why most of Shields' upper membership trusted him.

"Understood. We'll bring her home," Ward said, giving a mock salute. "Punch this guy for me, would you?"

"After I punch him for the Bus," Coulson promised before the drive off, leaving the two agents behind to continue after the suspect. "Natasha, Clint -- good seeing you again. Thanks for your help. Things seem to have gotten a little… complicated."

"We noticed," Clint replied, all too pleased with himself in the side car. The pillars still stood tall, forcing them to drive between them, and give chase down the highway out. "You don't seem too worried about this guy, though."

"He's dangerous and unpredictable, but he isn't malicious. He had a number of opportunities to kill -- he could have ripped through the center of the Bus -- but he didn't take them. He beat Ward and May, and while he didn't shy away from a fight, he didn't kill them either," Coulson explained. "He's an asshole teenager with a smart mouth, though. I expect he's going to resist until we drag him in kicking and screaming. We just don't need to worry about him crushing us under one of those totems."

A fair assumption considering the little she had seen. "Do we have a bead on him?" Natasha asked as they quickly left Rome behind them.

"Of sorts. A car was reported to have crashed and exploded a few miles up the road," Coulson said, sounding like he didn't think it was a coincidence. "We have satellite imaging, so we can find him. We just have to get on his tail before he gets too far away." Natasha nodded, holding on as Coulson sped up to weave around a car.

It wasn't long after that they saw the tell tale signs of traffic, more people gawking at the burnt out wreckage while a police officer urged people back. Natasha knew burnt out cars well. She did grow up in Russia, after all. Because of that, she knew there were no bodies in the car. Meaning that no one was in it when it blew up. Which, was a question in itself. She glanced at Clint, who offered a small shrug. So, it wasn't engine damage.

With no bodies in the car, they continued onward.

"Take the odd road," Clint instructed, pointing at a tree. They didn't call him Hawkeye for no reason. As Coulson did, she looked at the arrow that looked like it was recently carved into the trunk of a tree, guiding them down the path. The ride started getting bumpier, but sure enough, some distance away, Clint spotted another arrow. Natasha's mind raced -- this was high levels of coordination. On paper, it might sound easy to stick to the escape route, but in the middle of a chaotic city? When you were being chased? It was next to impossible to stick to the intended path.

They all saw him at the same time when they rounded onto a dirt path, seeing where it ended -- a small cabin that was situated overlooking a river, on top of a cliff side.

He looked young, Natasha decided, seeing him sit on the front porch with a kite cigarette dangling from two fingers. How haggard he looked certainly made him seem younger -- his suit was torn up and filthy, dried blood and dirt smudged his face, and his hair was an untamable mess. He didn't look at all shocked to see the three of them pulling up, simply taking a drag and making the embers of the cigarette flow a cherry red. "Nice ride," He remarked, sounding faintly amused.

"Give up on running?" Coulson asked, pointedly not taking out his gun even though she leveled a pistol at him -- a few bullets in the legs would stop him if he tried anything. Or a few arrows.

"Didn't seem like much of a point. Ride got totaled, in case you didn't notice," he remarked, blowing smoke out of his nose. "You Shield bastards are persistent -- I'll give you that much. Is it because I made fun of your stupid name? Because I meant it." He wasn't afraid, Natasha noticed. There was no fear in his eyes, or in his posture. Which told Natasha that he was so extensively trained that he could hide such things or he simply wasn't afraid at all. Both had their own implications.

"I suppose we can add that to the list of things we need to discuss," Coulson said amicably. "Chief among them is your association with Audacity. How were you recruited into his… organization? Gang?" Coulson started the interrogation in a friendly tone, all smiles. Natasha was curious. This was their first solid lead on Audacity and, based on what she saw, the teenager before her fit the physical requirements to be one of the men in Audacity masks that attacked the Russian Mafia.

"How about you tell me how you ended up joining Shield?" He shot back, cocking an eyebrow at the obvious play. It wasn't a surprise that he wasn't giving a straight answer. As Coulson said, he was an asshole teenager. He wouldn't give them anything unless he felt like he got one over them.

Natasha tilted her head, glancing at Clint, who had similar thoughts going through his head. "I got scouted. Was going to go to the Olympics for archery, but being a spy sounded cooler," he admitted with a small shrug.

"I joined when Clint was sent to kill me, but decided not to," Natasha said, the words curated to generate curiosity. Predictably, he cocked an eyebrow.

"That sounds like a story," he remarked. He bit the bait.

As a spy, her past was something that was personal to her. The more people knew about her, as a general rule, the worse she was at her job. However, she wasn't at all above using her past as a weapon. Especially when it cost her nothing to use it. "I was raised in Soviet Russia as part of a program for child spies. They trained me extensively since birth -- how to lie, how to steal, how to kill… but, when the Soviet Union fell, I escaped my handler and started selling my talents to the highest bidder. I caused a lot of problems for a lot of people. Enough so that I had a kill order out on me, but Clint decided I could be saved. Even if I didn't think I could… or think I wanted to be."

"Aw, shucks," Clint said, breaking the tension. Sometimes all it took to change the trajectory of your life was the kindness of a stranger. If there was any justice in the world, then Clint would have killed her. Then again, if there was any justice in the world, she never would have become a Widow in the first place.

"Appealing to my sense of empathy while also subtly floating the idea that I can escape my masters. Not bad. Solid eight out of ten points," the young man decided, calling her out on what she was doing. "But, if you're trying to swap 'whose childhood sucked more,' I'm pretty sure I'm going to have you beat. The two point deduction was for not knowing your audience."

That caught her attention and she saw an avenue to gain information. "I was tortured and my womb was removed because periods were seen as an unnecessary complication," Natasha stated, her voice blunt. Clint winced ever so slightly, knowing that the latter was a sore point for her. Which made it perfect to use as bait -- this kid, whoever he was, wasn't a normal run-of-the-mill child. He reminded Natasha of a shark and she was throwing blood in the water.

"That sucks," he acknowledged. He said the words without pity, not like how most did. "We're seriously doing this then?"

Natasha smirked, "Unless you don't think you measure up." A mild provocation. He was combative, she decided when she saw him narrow his eyes at her. Or, perhaps, he was competitive.

"Alright, you asked," He decided, a slight smile on his face. It was sharp enough to cut. "My first memory came when I was about… four or five years old. I was being led into a room and placed on one of those therapist beds, my Dad was with me. And then… I went to sleep. Then, I woke up," he said, his smile growing even as his gaze hardened. "I lived my life. Had a pretty okay childhood. Nothing I can really complain about, I guess. Things only started getting interesting when I turned eighteen. I met a girl. Fell in love -- I mean, Love with a capital L. Disney wished it could tell a love story like that."

Natasha narrowed her eyes, a knot of tension starting to form between her shoulder blades. This…

"We ended up getting married. White sandy beaches, said our 'I dos' and moved to the Big Apple. There, I got a job as a reporter. My wife got a job as a home decorator or something. Had a nice apartment with a good view. Everything was perfect. So damn perfect that you'd think it was impossible for life to get any better. But, you'd be wrong because it could -- knocked my wife up and nine months later, we had a daughter," he continued, and everything quickly wasn't adding up. For starters, he couldn't be older than eighteen.

Still, Natasha listened in silence. "Years passed in a blur, it seemed, but in the kind of way that's only obvious when you look back, you know? Like, damn, it's been a decade already. Our little girl started to grow up -- the usual stuff. We gave her a good childhood, but she found drama anyway. Found a good boyfriend that she ended up getting married to -- highschool sweethearts. My wife and I settled in, living the good life. Made enough that we could retire early at like forty something. Life… life was perfect. Serene. Everything just seemed to work out."

A sinister chuckle escaped him and his smile didn't reach his eyes. "That's when it started happening. Little things at first -- I would see a black cat round a corner, then see the same cat walk around it again. Colors seemed to wash out in the corners of my eyes, but pop back into focus when I looked at them. I ignored it then. Figured it was just my mind playing tricks on me. But then the big stuff started happening. Conversations that I knew I’d had before would replay. Memories started getting scrambled. People claimed things that I knew happened didn't and they talked about things I had no idea about. I thought I was losing my mind. Honestly, I wish I had been."

He sighed, releasing a cloud of smoke. "But it's a tough pill to swallow that you're crazy, so you look for alternatives. I went through a bunch of them before I found the answer in a book about magic. A spell that perfectly reflected what I was going through. You see, what I was experiencing was called the degradation factor. It's a real bitch in general because it's some finicky stuff, magic. Doesn't matter how powerful the spell is, eventually, the wear and tear is going to build up. It's just a matter of how long it takes. And what I was experiencing had all of the hallmarks of an illusion spell degrading."

"Fuck," Clint swore.

"Yeah, pretty much," he agreed. "I didn't believe it at first, but I tapped out all other options. The degradation was getting worse, to the point I couldn't not notice it anymore. So, I had a choice. I could close my eyes to it. I could live out my life with my family, living a happy life," there was a wistfulness in his voice. "It would be a lie, but those go down easier than a bitter truth. Or… or, I could open my eyes and swallow that bitter pill."

Natasha's hands clenched into fists, her lips thinning. She knew what she was about to hear.

"It takes a real shock to the system to wake yourself up from an illusionary world. You ever see that episode of House when he's in a delusion and he had to kill that guy to wake himself up? It was a lot like that -- went out, bought a gun… hurt like hell to kill my wife and daughter, but I did it all the same…" another sigh escaped him before he flicked away the butt of the cigarette. "And then I woke up, back in my five year old self with about forty years worth of memories in my noggin. Let me tell you -- that's a system shock. Freaked the fuck out, but my Dad was there. He told me he was proud of me -- I was the first one to break out of the illusionary world and it was then that he gave me a bit of advice to live by. To believe in myself and my actions, regardless of what the world says."

It wasn't often that Natasha was left speechless, but this was certainly one of them. That wasn't cruel. That was monstrous.

"For what purpose?" Coulson asked after a brief silence.

"It was the first of many lessons and punishments that me and my siblings went through. All to create something -- someone -- for a mission, I guess you could call it. The fulfillment of a prophecy. He had us compete against each other, of the thousand of us, he only had room for one by his side-" he continued, but Natasha heard a loud gunshot far off in the distance. Instantly, she went to protect Coulson, but he wasn't the target.

The teenager was.

His head jerked to the side, blood and brains, blasting out the side of his head before his body slumped over. Natasha's gaze snapped in the direction of the shot, but she saw nothing. Nor did she hear another shot despite the fact that they were all in the open. Turning her attention back to the dead teenager, her stomach clenched when she saw him fading away until he vanished entirely.

Leaving behind only a bloodstain and a cigarette butt behind.

…

"Today was a good day," I decided, tucking my Time-Turner back underneath my shirt after sending it through airport security. The sniper that I used was back in the Cave of Wonders. I got away scott free and tweaked the nose of Shield yet again. It was pretty simple to set up too -- just had to pick a spot that had a good shot and kill Past Me in front of them. It was a bit sloppy, admittedly, but I couldn't do anything about them having my face. So, I had to give them a reason to not look for me.

Watching me die before their very eyes seemed like a pretty good reason to not come looking.

Which left me free to continue up through France to my ultimate destination, and now I had just cleared security to board the plane.

"Everything seems clear on our end," Ned remarked through a phone in my ear. "Well, sorta. They're hot on the trail of the Rising Tide member -- I think they're going to catch them. But, Dr. Hall is already on his way to New York with the Gravitonium. He's clear." Ned updated me, sounding distracted by a lot of work based on all the clickety clacking I was hearing from his keyboard. "I'm covering my bases and scrapping any trace of contact, so I should be good too. All that's left is for you to get back."

Like I said, not a bad day.

"How is Quinn reacting?" I asked, waking along, thankful that there was English underneath the French directions.

"Uh… I would use the word upset. Or murderously furious. It's, ah… well, it's probably a good thing you're out of Malta. I think we should keep an eye on him because there's no way he's going to leave this alone. He might not come after you -- because you 'died', but he definitely is going to come for Dr. Hall and the Gravitonium," Ned decided and I shrugged my shoulders. That sounded entertaining.

"I'll leave that to you. Just let me know if his ass needs kicking," I said. Quinn was going to be making moves. He wanted the Gravitonium for… something. I forget. But, I'm guessing it was something dastardly and nefarious. Something that he wouldn't leave be. Well, too bad. I'm going to be using all the Gravitonium for myself.

"Will do. Oh, and Mr. Stark sent a message -- he has a working prototype for the eye machine. So, you can do the transplant when you get back. If you still want to. I wouldn't," Ned admitted, and I could hear a theatrical shiver in his voice. Sweet! Upgraded ATs and I could go pop in my Sharingan? Could this day get any better?

Almost in response to my thoughts, my phone buzzed. I checked who it was, "Well, I'm about to get on the plane. I'll talk to you in a bit, Ned. Oh, and I'm absolutely going to transplant my eyes when I get back, so warm the machine up. See ya'," I told him, waiting until he said bye to end the call and pick up who was on hold. "MJ. What's up?"

"So… Italy, huh? It looks exciting," Mary Jane said coyly.

I guess the videos must have gotten around. Which was something of an issue for me. Shield might not be looking for me, but they would notice if other people kept pointing me out. "It was. I'll tell you about it when I get back stateside."

"What were you doing in Italy in the first place? I totally would have come with you if I knew -- I always wanted to do a tour of Europe," she sighed, and her tone told me she was just chatting rather than calling for a specific reason. All the same, I filed that away for later use if there was ever an opportunity.

"I was just picking up some things. The entire thing was a short-notice trip, so I didn't think to invite anyone. My bad," I offered.

"There's always next time, I suppose…" Mary Jane trailed off, her tone teasing. "So, you'll be back by tomorrow, right? I'd get in a lot of trouble if the seat I reserved went empty…" she continued -- and to be completely honest, I had completely forgotten about the play. Pretty sure the ticket was in the Cave of Wonders somewhere.

"Course," I agreed, figuring that I might have to fiddle with the timeline a bit. No big deal there. "I'll be there. I promise."

I heard Mary Jane let out a small breath of relief, "I saved the best seat in the house for you, so you had better." She said, a giggle in her voice.

I opened my mouth to respond, only for the flight attendant to announce boarding. "My flights boarding. I'll talk to you in a bit, okay?" I told her, earning a second goodbye before ending the call.

All that was left was a fourteen hour flight.