"So they just sci-fied your ears and tossed you back in the field?" Darcy asked with a curious frown, poking idly at her bubble tea.

"Well, not exactly," Clint shrugged as he folded his paper receipt into an origami frog. "I was out of the field a couple of months for the initial treatment. I was supposed to be out for four months because they had to fit me with these hearing aid looking things to recalibrate my ears but then Phil went and got himself arrested in Minneapolis and Fury didn't have anyone to send in to clean things up. So he pulled me off of medical leave and sent me and Natasha to post bail."

"How in the hell did Phil end up arrested?" she demanded.

"It happens more often than you'd think," he replied, releasing the frog so that it hopped over his spoon. "At least it was Minnesota. I've been arrested in some places where just being American is a capital offense. Phil was doing some leg work investigating some kidnappings and he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got fingered as a suspect."

"You know what I think 'Agent' Coulson?" The words were said with the most condescending sneer that Phil had ever heard, and that was saying something considering that Phil was personally acquainted with both Hawkeye and the Black Widow.

"I'm sure it's a fascinating theory," Phil replied blankly, looking up at the campus police officer looming over him with his most disaffected expression. The officer's lips pulled back in a grimace of disgust.

"I think you think that I'm stupid enough to believe your brainless story about being a federal agent," he said with a scowl. "Let me assure you, I'm not at all fooled by your fake badge and your agency no one has ever heard of and when I get to the bottom of this, you're going to wish you'd never seen me."

"I can assure you, that moment is already here," Phil replied, trying not to let his weariness with the situation bleed into his tone. He'd missed his check-in two hours back. Nick was probably scrambling backup to come look for him. The Officer hadn't introduced himself, hadn't given Phil his phone call and, as far as Phil knew, hadn't called in to verify his credentials. He probably had another three or four hours of this nonsense. Meanwhile the trail was going cold, if Phil hadn't already determined that the officer was too stupid to pull it off, he would have assumed the man was involved in the coverup.

There was a sharp rap on the door and the officer straightened, startled as he turned away. Phil stifled a groan, if he were an actual threat that would have been all the distraction he needed to snap the officer's neck.

"I've been calling for half an hour, Derringer," the woman in the doorway said, her reading glasses perched on the point of her delicately pert nose. She was petite, her brown hair carefully set in a french knot and her gray suit impeccable. Phil felt his shoulders straighten without conscious thought and then just as rapidly sag in relief as Romanov and Barton followed the woman into the room.

"I'm conducting an interrogation, Marla," the officer, Derringer replied with a mean scowl. "Who are these people?"

"Agent Romanov and Agent Barton are here because Agent Coulson went missing earlier today," The woman replied, eyeing him as Phil stood to his feet, straightening his tie.

"Oh look we found him," Clint declared, a fake cheerfulness in his expression. He'd folded his arms over his chest in a way that made his biceps bulge, straining the sleeves of his lavender t-shirt that read 'I don't wear Bows, I shoot them' in bright pink glitter. It clashed spectacularly with the pair of purple hearing receivers on his ears. It wasn't a look that screamed federal agent and apparently Derringer thought so as well, based on his look of disgust. Beside him Natasha was watching Derringer as if she were deciding how best to cook and eat him.

"Forgive me, Agent Coulson, I'm Dr. Engman," Marla Engman held out her hand to Phil with a professional smile. "I was the one who contacted your offices for assistance. I'm sorry I wasn't available to speak to you earlier."

"The Regents can't just march in here in the middle of my investigation and-" Derringer sputtered but Engman cut him off.

"The Regents can," she replied. "And we have. Four girls have gone missing Officer Derringer, under very unusual circumstances I might add. Agent Coulson is here to get to the bottom of things… before parents start turning up to withdraw their children from the university."

"Tasha freaked out when you didn't answer your text messages," Clint said, pointing at Natasha whose unblinking stare at Derringer was starting to make Phil uneasy. At the moment she didn't look like she'd ever been freaked out in her life and Derringer for once seemed to be exercising the better part of valor based on the way he was subconsciously edging away from her.

"It's nice to know my predictability has its uses," Phil replied drily as he adjusted his cufflinks.

"I'd like to discuss the situation with you and your team," Engman turned to usher them out the door.

"I don't want these people trampling though my investigation, Marla," Derringer snapped as Phil herded Hawkeye and the Black Widow out into the hall.

"I really don't care what you want, Morris," Engman replied.

"What I want to discuss," Phil said, eying Clint with a disapproving frown, "Is why my team is here in the field while they're supposed to be on leave."

"It's cool, I got a note from mom," Clint replied, giving him a thumbs up. Natasha bit back a sigh.

"Fury didn't have anyone else to send and he wouldn't let me come alone," she replied. Phil made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat, throwing a glance over his shoulder at where Engman and Derringer were still needling each other.

"I am incredibly grateful that the two of you came all the way out here to straighten this out," Phil said, running his palm down his tie.

"Oh for godsake," Clint huffed under his breath, rolling his eyes. At least he'd likely intended it to be under his breath, he was still having a hard time accurately regulating his volume.

"But the situation has been handled," Phil pressed on as if he hadn't heard. "And at this point it would probably be better if the both of you went back-"

"Fury said we weren't allowed to come back without you," Natasha interrupted. Phil shot her a glare, his jaw ticking in frustration.

"It's Minneapolis, Phil, not Juarez!" Clint was putting on his best unruffled face but by now Phil could tell that beneath that he was nearly vibrating with the excitement of being back in the field. Phil let out a huff of a sigh. Clint hadn't used his first name in a professional setting since Natasha had joined the team. If he was breaking protocol now it was to make a point.

"Do not get killed," Phil hissed at him. "Or I swear I will have you resurrected so you can handle the paperwork yourself and then I'll kill you with my own hands."

"I told you I was his favorite," Clint said, smugly. Natasha, to her credit, didn't reply.

"God, I need a drink," Phil muttered, clenching his jaw as he rubbed his eyes.

"We interviewed the roommates of all the missing girls," Clint said, leaning back in the coffee shop booth and stretching his shoulders. "Looked through all their academic records but we couldn't find anything to tie them together. Two of the girls had gone missing walking across campus, one at night and one in the early morning. One went into the library and never came out, the fourth disappeared from her dorm room with no sign of forced entry."

"My god," Darcy gave him a horrified look and he nodded in agreement.

"More or less. We were at a dead end," he continued, lining the origami frog up with the artificial sweetener dispenser he'd emptied onto the table. "So we went to the local off campus watering hole to brainstorm some fresh leads."

"Why do you keep calling the director 'mom'?" Natasha asked, taking a sip of her beer as she gave Clint a calculating look. Phil winced, glancing out over the crowded bar at the morass of customers who looked overall to be of dubiously legal drinking age.

"Long story," Clint replied evasively, fiddling with his hearing receivers.

"Background noise?" Phil asked with a frown.

"R&D says my brain'll get used to it eventually," Clint replied with a frustrated huff. "They don't want to fit me for the final version until then. These things are just damn uncomfortable. And don't say it!" He stabbed a finger in Phil's direction and Coulson's mouth snapped shut on his next words.

"Can we focus on the task at hand, please?" Natasha asked, leafing through the academic files of the victims.

"At this point I think the only thing we have is to retrace their individual steps tomorrow and see if we can't dig something up," Clint sighed, nursing his beer as he stared down at the files.

"Are… are you guys SHIELD?" Clint barely turned his head, glancing up and out of the corner of his eye at the girl hovering over their table. She was clutching a bright teal three ring binder to her chest, her eyes wide with the delight of the very young. Natasha shifted in her seat and Phil went rigid but he needn't have worried. A slow half smile curled at Natasha's lips as the girl turned to her with starry eyes. "You look like SHIELD."

"You know about SHIELD?" Natasha asked, keeping her body language loose and relaxed as Clint buried his face in his beer mug.

"I'm doing my senior thesis on SHIELD," she replied, rocking on her toes excitedly. "I'm majoring in criminal justice. Oh, Chantal, Chantal Benning. Did the administration call you in because those students went missing?"

"She's good," Natasha observed, giving Phil an amused smile. Phil didn't appear to be nearly so entertained, and Clint, who was still watching her out of the corner of his eye like a viper about to strike, couldn't say he disagreed.

"I've been tracking the evidence," Chantal said, smacking the binder down on the table between them and scrambling through the pages. "There's not much."

"There's not anything," Phil said drily.

"Well, yeah," Chantal nodded. "Is that normal for you guys? Seems like it would be normal for the agency that deals with all the really weird crap. There's nothing that ties all four victims together except Russian Literature."

"Excuse me?" Clint asked, looking up at her.

"My roommate, Molly, she's Lib Arts, I don't know what she's thinking. But anyway, she was in Russian Lit last semester with Lindsey," Chantal continued on feverishly. "Hope was in their study group, she was in the night class. And Megan was Monday, Wednesday, Friday this semester and Isabelle was Tuesday and Thursday. I've been poking around, trying to go over their regular paths to and from the dorms, look for clues, I wasn't too worried because I don't fit the profile so far, but the white girls are freaking the hell right out."

Clint blinked three times into the middle distance before reaching up and adjusting the settings on his hearing receivers again and turning to face her properly.

"Say that again?" he said slowly, deliberately as his eyes narrowed at her.

"Dude if you were a white girl you'd be freaking out too," Chantal observed.

"When he does freak out it's exactly like a white girl," Natasha nodded in agreement, her calculating expression focused like a laser on Chantal's binder.

"Russian Literature," Phil prompted, standing to his feet and pulling out his money clip, dropping several bills on the table. "Who's the professor?"

"Horne?" Chantal replied in confusion as they all stood.

"He doesn't, by chance, have a class tonight, does he?" Phil asked, helping Clint and Natasha hastily gather up their files.

"Don't think so," Chantal said, looking even more bewildered. "But Molly almost failed Russian Lit and if he still has the same office hours you might catch him."

"Romanov, call it in, I need a background on Horne," Phil ordered sharply as Clint gulped down the last of his beer. Natasha gave Chantal a pat on the shoulder before edging around her and quick marching toward the door, Phil practically on her heels as he called over his shoulder. "Barton I need to know where he's been."

"On it!" Clint replied, throwing back Phil's nearly empty beer with one hand and hoisting a pile of file folders in the other.

"Do you guys know your way around campus?" Chantal asked as Clint shrugged reaching for Natasha's drink as well.

"Go back to your dorm room," Clint said, slapping down Natasha's empty mug and sweeping Chantal's binder off the table, pressing it into her arms. "Tell your roommate and anyone else you know who's taken Russian Lit not to go out alone."

"Russian Literature?" Darcy asked skeptically.

"I hate Russian Literature," Clint said his face scrunching up in a frown, making the origami frog hop into the artificial sweetener dispenser. "Never trust anyone who likes Russian Literature."

"Dude, your best friend is Russian," she pointed out.

"And?" Clint gave her a blank look.

"So," Darcy eyed him skeptically. "Never trust anyone who likes Russian Literature?"

"We went with our usual, Natasha took point on the mark, I covered her, Phil on backup," Clint said with a shrug. "Shouldn't have been a problem, we'd done it a hundred times. I still don't really know what happened but less than a minute in he knew he'd been made and from there everything went to hell. You've seen Tasha fight."

"Occasionally, when she moves slow enough for the human eye to see her," Darcy replied, rolling her eyes sarcastically. Clint nodded in agreement.

"Right up until that moment," he said. "I hadn't."

"Coulson?" Clint's hands held his bow with a white knuckled grip as he let his eyes flick for barely a moment to where Phil was sprawled in the grass. Coulson shook his head as if throwing off water, blinking rapidly as he hauled himself to his feet. "What the hell was that?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing," Coulson rubbed at the knot forming on his head. Clint's attention had already returned to the man dangling from a nearby tree, the grappling line wrapped around one arm suspending him over the ground. He glared coldly back at them in a way that made Clint's hair stand on end.

"Bolero Arrow," Clint replied. He'd so been looking forward to saying that but the moment seemed spoiled somehow.

"We need to call in backup," Natasha said, wiping the blood from the corner of her mouth where Horne had punched her. Natasha had barely held her own against the grey haired academic and it had taken Clint more than a full two minutes to get a clear shot, the pair of them moving so fast he could barely track them. In the end, Phil's distraction had been the only thing that had kept Natasha from getting her neck snapped. Horne's eyes narrowed in contempt, seemingly unbothered by the suspension line that should have broken his clavicle when it slammed him into the tree.

"For Severus Snape here?" Clint asked, bewildered. "Yeah he rang Phil's bell pretty good and he gave you one hell of a shiner but-"

"I said I was fine," Phil insisted, though he sounded a bit bleary as he staggered up to stand between Clint and Natasha.

"Coulson, we need backup," Natasha said, her eyes never leaving Horne. Clint didn't look away from their target either but he didn't need to. He could feel the tension rolling off Natasha so thick it nearly felt like fear, her shoulders heaving with each breath.

"If you have some answers for me about the location of those missing girls, this doesn't have to go badly for you," Phil said to Horne, putting on his blandest, most professional face.

"He's not going to tell us anything," Natasha said sharply. "We need at least two backup teams here in the next hour or we can scrub this mission."

"If there were two backup teams you and I wouldn't be here," Clint pointed out, a shiver running down his spine as Horne stared at Natasha with an evil smile.

"The door to Красная Комната is once more open," He declared. Natasha didn't flinch, her expression never faltered but there was a stillness to her that Clint didn't like at all.

"Coulson?" Clint said warningly.

"Cover me, I'll cuff him," Phil answered the unspoken question, nodding carefully.

"No, kill him," Natasha said, her hand fisting in Phil's jacket, holding him back. Horne gave her a grin of fiendish delight.

"SHIELD is not in the business of-"

"Clint, shoot him," she said forcefully, cutting Phil off.

"Sir, I'm kind of thinking getting close to him is a bad idea," Clint admitted. Alarm bells were going off in his head. Whatever this was, it wasn't good.

"We are not going to lose our composure over one suspect with far more training than his appearance would imply," Phil insisted. In one swift motion Natasha drew her gun, leveling it at Horne's head. "Agent, stand down!"

"What the hell is going on here!"

"Oh shit," Clint huffed under his breath as Campus police chief Derringer stomped angrily across the quad toward them.

"Officer Derringer, we have a situation here," Phil replied smoothly, squaring his shoulders as Derringer stalked toward them. "I'm going to have to ask you to keep your distance while we take this suspect into custody."

"You're going to arrest a tenured professor for kidnapping?" Derringer demanded, his pace never slowing. "Are you deranged?!" Clint swore under his breath.

"Stay back asshole!" he ordered as Natasha drew her second pistol.

"I won't be bullied by a bunch of incompetents!" Derringer replied, fuming. "The regents will-"

"Stay back!" Clint shouted over top of him but it did no good. It all happened so fast there was no time to react. Derringer drew level with the tree, just barely within reach and Horne twisted, grasping Derringer with his legs and slamming him into the trunk, using Derringer's body as leverage to push himself up. The tie line went slack and Horne twisted free of it, landing on the ground with a roundhouse kick that caught Clint in the jaw, sending him slamming into Phil. Natasha's gun went off and Clint had one horrified moment to watch as Horne darted out of the line of fire, his hand punching Natasha full in the chest and sending her flying to land against the trunk of a nearby tree with a horrifying thud.

"Barton!" Phil barked as Clint scrambled to his feet, sweeping up his bow, his boots losing traction on the dew grass and giving Horne just enough of a lead to disappear in the tree line on the edge of campus.

"I'm on him!" Clint replied, "Get Tasha!"

"Don't get killed!" Phil snapped. Clint ran for all he was worth, apprehension twisting at his stomach as he crashed into the forest after Horne. He leaped over a fence, his feet pounding the ground in the near darkness at a pace that was blinding but not nearly fast enough to keep up with the aging academic. He should have been able to hear Horne, two months ago he probably could have tracked the man on sound alone but the noises of the forest, the wind in the trees, echoed in his still healing ears leaving him disoriented.

He ran between the darkened trees, his feet catching over bramble and branch, his harsh pants echoing in his receivers and drowning out everything but the rattle of air in his own lungs.

The shrill siren sound broke over him like a squall and he stumbled to his knees on the forest floor, clutching at his head as his skull erupted in pain. He scrabbled at his hearing receivers, struggling to pry them from his ears but the sound only swelled and the darkness closed in on him.

"Was Natasha okay?" Darcy asked, wide eyed.

"Lucky for us Benning had been tailing us," Clint said with a smirk. "Probably for her paper. She boosted Derringer's golf cart and drove Natasha and Phil to campus medical."

"Oh, I bet Derringer was pissed,"

"You have no idea. Phil and Nat got themselves patched up and headed out to look for me when I didn't answer my radio. Phil found me. Natasha found Derringer with a bunch of his stupid friends and a chip on his shoulder."

Natasha's fist connected with Derringer's nose with a crack, that sent him sprawling to the ground unconscious with the rest of his miscreant team of volunteer searchers. She rounded on the last man, thick as a tree and from the look of him nearly as smart but before she could twist away from him and level a kick to his chest he went rigid, his eyes rolling back in his head as he fell to the ground like dead wood, a tranq arrow protruding from his back.

"Tasha!" Clint raced toward her, Phil on his heels as he slipped over the dewy grass in the early morning light, his hands shaking as he reached out to gently cup her face on impulse. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and it looked as if one eye was swelling shut. "What happened?" His words were too loud, he was sure of it, but she didn't flinch, she didn't flinch from his touch either, as he took the handkerchief Phil handed him, gently dabbing at the blood on her mouth to get a better look.

"I think he's irritated we took over his case," She replied, tilting her head so that Clint could see her mouth clearly. She reached up and grasped his wrist, holding him away just enough so that he could see her lips. "What happened to your ears?"

"Sonic bomb of some kind," Phil replied. "As far as I could tell from what was left of it. I've never seen a weapon like that. If he hadn't had his ears covered by the receivers it probably would have killed him. As it is they're just shorted out."

"I've got back ups with our gear, I'll be fine," Clint insisted. He wasn't sure why he was trembling or why he was fussing over Natasha, or why she was allowing it. This whole mission was throwing him off and he turned to Phil with a desperate look. "What's going on here?"

"I don't know," Phil replied. "But I don't think that's supposed to be here." He inclined his head toward the far end of the clearing at a tumbledown utility shed half obscured in the trees.

"It wasn't on the campus map," Natasha agreed, She gave Clint's arm a firm squeeze before slipping out of his grasp, moving toward the shed with cautious steps. Phil signaled him to cover them and Coulson moved forward, his deft hands making short work of the padlock on the rusty metal door.

Natasha drew her pistol and the pair of them took aim as Phil stepped back, pulling the door open with him but there was only darkness inside.

"If it's not suspicious, what is it doing here?" Clint asked, leaning in through the doorway Natasha had just entered, Phil slipping past him to shine a light into the filthy, empty space.

"Does seem like a terrible waste of an evil lair," Phil agreed with a nod. He froze almost instantly as Natasha's boots that had been making a slow circuit of the tiny structure stepped from the plywood floor onto the tarp left haphazardly in the middle, her heel landing with a hollow ring. She stepped back cautiously and Clint drew his arrow back as Phil crouched down, whisking the tarp back to reveal a metal plate in the middle of the floor.

"Yay, trap door," Clint said with his least enthusiastic sigh. Phil grasped the handle pulling it open but the only thing it revealed was a metal ladder that disappeared into the darkness below.

"I'll go first," Natasha said, holstering her pistol.

"Agent," Phil began cautiously.

"I'll go first," she repeated firmly. "Cover me." Phil handed her the flashlight as Clint moved to position himself over the opening, watching as she skittered down the ladder.

"There's a door here," she said a moment later.

"Of course there is," Phil's shoulders slumped in resignation, he motioned Clint down, following a moment later. The bottom of the chamber was barely seven feet down, and only as big as the utility shed itself. Phil drew his gun in the cramped space, reaching out to swing open the unlocked door, still there was nothing and Natasha crept silently forward. As her foot stepped onto the metal catwalk the lights came up automatically and Clint's breath caught in his throat.

Another ten feet down at the bottom of the catwalk stairs was a wide, warehouse like room, stretching out a good fifty yards. A series of cots lined one wall, their bedding carefully folded in military fashion, a single pair of handcuffs dangling from each metal headrail. Through the middle a dozen lab benches stretched the length of the room and on the far end what looked like a makeshift hospital.

"They're not here now, but they haven't been gone long," Phil observed with a tense frown, following Natasha who had descended the steps, creeping toward the center of the room.

"How did this even get here?" Clint asked, wincing as his too loud voice reverberated around the metal walls, resonating off his skin, but Coulson pretended not to notice, his attention focused on Natasha whose fingers were flying over the keys of one of the terminals. Her breath caught in her throat, the bare sound loud like a gunshot in the cavernous room.

There was a woman on the screen, long ebony hair framing her perfect features, ruby lips parted seductively. Natasha backed up from the lab bench, her shoulder colliding with Clint's. She looked first at Phil, then at Clint before staring back at the screen, everything else about her so still she might have been a statue.

"Tasha, who is that?" Clint asked, feeling his stomach knot at the fear in her eyes.

"Marya Konn," she replied. "she's… The Black Widow."

"You told me there was no one left," Clint said breathlessly, his heart beating so fiercely he could hear it in his damaged ears. "You told me you were the last."

"I told you there were four," she said, looking up at him with wide eyes.

"What were they doing here?" Phil asked, his voice holding a hint of horror as he reached for the keyboard, clicking through files. Pictures of young women, some of them the missing girls, chemical compounds, medical files, experiments all sliding by like a morbid flipbook.

"The Red Room," Natasha replied, looking even more terrified before turning to Clint. "You can't fight her, we have to get out of here, now."

"Tasha?" he asked, worriedly as a single tear slipped down her cheek.

"That's not my name," she snapped back at him, looking desperate.

"What is your name?" Phil asked, turning to her with his most gentle expression.

"I don't know," she replied.

"Seriously?" Darcy gaped at him, the fingernail of her pinky caught between her teeth.

"I really shouldn't tell you much of this," Clint admitted, rubbing his eyes. His face scrunched up in a wince as he weighed his next words. "The Red Room did a lot more than train super spies, they did, well, experiments too."

"Like super soldiers?"

Clint shrugged, she didn't seem nearly as surprised by that as he thought she should be.

"That's why Natasha's so… Natasha?" She asked.

"We should have listened to Tasha when she said we should get out," Clint said. "But we went through the files. Marya Konn had revived the old soviet super soldier program. Horne, as it turned out, was a sleeper agent turned minion slash test dummy. By the time we realized we definitely needed backup, Konn showed up. Obviously Phil and I weren't much of a match for a super soldier and Tasha'd had two head injuries in one night so she wasn't at the top of her game either. I managed to pull Phil to safety before Konn blew the self destruct but she took off with Natasha."

"What did you do?"

"We wouldn't have done much of anything if Chantal hadn't showed up in her ripped-off golf cart. She picked us up, took us back to campus, helped us break into Horne's place. We found his stash of freaky technology and directions to their main research facility along the river."

"Am I going to get arrested for stealing a big pile of experimental weapons out of a professor's apartment?" Benning asked, a wide grin on her face as the golf cart bounced over the half obscured hiking trail in the half light of early evening. She swerved to miss a rotting log and Clint swayed where he'd perched on the back of the cart, his bow trained forward into the woods. "I mean he's obviously a scary bad guy and I do not feel at all guilty about stealing his weird guns but I'm asking because my dad is not going to bail me out, he's just not. He says that if I do something stupid enough to get arrested I can sit there till I rot because I'm just feeding the stereotype and that only hurts everybody."

"You're not worried about being arrested for stealing the campus police golf cart?" Phil asked, his tone more curious than anything as he looked up from the tracker in his hand that was guiding them toward the coordinates. Clint choked on a laugh, bobbing lightly on the balls of his feet as they hit what was either a pot hole or a opossum.

"Derringer's had his golf cart stolen like, 8 times this semester so far," Chantal replied, the wheels of the cart skidding in the loamy earth as she rounded a bend in the path. "He's never noticed. I mean, he noticed once last semester but that was because it ended up in the river and that is hard to miss." Phil shook his head, stifling a snicker.

"We're almost there," he said instead. Chantal skidded to a stop without being told, clambering out of the golf cart as Clint leaped down off of the plastic totes piled in the back, prying the nearest one open.

"So like, can I call one of you for bail?" she asked as Phil unloaded another of the plastic totes, squirreling away a plethora of strange looking side arms and hefting a massive, glowing gatling gun. "because I feel like I'm at least entitled to bail. And like an interview for my paper."

"This is as far as you go kid, Clint said, settling what looked like a rocket launcher on his shoulder and reaching into the last tote in the back of the golf cart. "But here, take this. Find a place to hide, shoot anything that moves." Chantal looked down at the acid green shotgun he dropped into her hands with bright eyes, a grin spreading over her face.

"Wow!"

"Clint" Darcy sighed, shaking her head. "Is this Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters?" He stared back at her for a long moment.

"You've seen Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters?"

"It's not that bad," she replied with a hint of defensiveness. "People get all weirded out over it because they try to stuff it in a Historical Fantasy box when really it's an Alternate Universe." A considering look furrowed his brow, his eyes shifting as he gazed blankly into the middle distance.

"Huh, okay you're right," he said finally.

"Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters?" Darcy gave him a scowl.

"Do you want to hear this story or not?" Clint demanded, glaring back at her. Darcy rolled her eyes but she didn't reply.

"Turns out we were under informed about the situation," he continued, ignoring her disapproving glare. "They had the four girls who had gone missing and better than half a dozen more, some of them off the streets, you know the kind, the ones no one will notice missing. Marya had decided that the easiest way to give her program a boost would be to drain Natasha's blood and use it to reproduce the Red Room's serum. We barely showed up in time."

Clint lobbed two grenades into the center of the converted warehouse, ducking behind a lab bench as the automated security systems fired on him. There weren't more than two dozen actual Red Room agents, counting the lab technicians but they were putting up one hell of a fight.

"This is going well," he observed, rolling onto his back and taking out one of the automated turrets. Green laser bolts, peppered the floor, slicing through some of the technicians and he chanced a glance up at Phil's position in the rafters of the warehouse.

"Just keep them in toward the center and away from Natasha and the girls," Phil replied in his com, his tone sharp. Clint rolled out from cover, drawing one of the stolen laser pistols and taking aim at Horne, the shot clipping his shoulder and sending the academic crashing into a computer bank.

"These things aren't super consistent in their trajectory," Clint said, making a dive behind a massive computer terminal.

"They're called experimental for a reason," Coulson agreed, huffing out a swear under his breath as the rain of laser fire abruptly stopped.

"Clint!" Natasha let out a shout. Somehow she already had one hand and her feet free and she kicked out, striking one of the grunts in the face before upending the lab table she'd been chained to and diving behind it. Clint followed her gaze, tracking where Marya Konn was making a dash over the equipment, scaling it in leaps and bounds up into the rafters toward Phil.

Clint took the shot, the laser blast knocking Konn's feet out from under her and sending her slamming into the ground.

"Lousy Soviet substandard construction." Coulson's voice was muttering through his hearing receivers. "It's just like the Groza. Who made this thing? Baryshev?"

Natasha vaulted up from behind the table, one chain still dangling from her wrist as Marya scrambled to her feet, taking off at a run for the door.

"Get the girls!" Natasha snapped, heading after her, her feet tearing up the floor.

"Tasha!" Clint ducked out of the path of one of the agents, letting off another round of fire just as Phil's gatling gun re-engaged, taking out the man.

"Go after her!" Phil shouted as Clint shot one of the last agents standing, the rest seemed to be scattering as well, no longer willing to risk their own necks if Konn was on the run. "I'll get the kids, don't let her get herself killed!"

Clint bolted for the door, the sounds of laser fire still echoing in his receivers as he charged out into the gathering night, hot on Natasha's trail. He bolted into the trees, following a sound that wasn't unlike an elephant moving through the underbrush. He'd grown up in the circus, he'd had prior with that. Natasha could move so silently you'd never hear her until it was too late but she was making no such effort now, rage driving her forward. He poured on every ounce of speed he could manage, the air searing his lungs with the effort. He couldn't catch them, he knew that, and if he didn't he wasn't at all sure which Black Widow was going to come out of this fight alive. He felt more than heard the whine of an electrical charge that sent the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. The sound of the shot was like a bomb going off, rattling the ground under his feet and he stumbled, swearing in panic as he staggered into the clearing ahead.

Natasha was standing only a few yards in front of him, her back to him and shoulders heaving with every breath, a body crumpled at her feet. Across the clearing Chantal Benning was sprawled in the grass where the percussive force of her gun had sent her back on her ass, skidding through the grass, the gently smoking experimental weapon still clutched in both white knuckled hands.

"I… I shot her," Chantal said, looking wide eyed. Clint shambled closer, gasping in each breath as he gave Natasha a rough pat on the back. She stood unmoving like a statue as if she couldn't make sense of what she was seeing, her own hands trembling with adrenaline, manacles still dangling from one wrist. He looked down at the body, kicking it over with his foot to find a sizable hole burned in the middle of Marya's head.

"Oh god," Chantal choked out.

"You gonna throw up kid?" Clint asked curiously. Chantal nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving Konn.

"Good," he replied, crumpling to the grass, clutching the stitch in his side. "Me too."

"Wait, wait," Darcy waved her hands at him. "Are we talking about Agent Benning director of field containment?"

"Yeah that's Chantal."

"Holy shit she is so metal!" Darcy's eyes were wide like saucers as she stared back at him. "She was in Greenwich. She just walked right up in her Alexander McQueen suit and stared at half a dark elf oozing all over a Volkswagen and said: that's going to be a bitch to get out of the upholstery."

"Yeah, she's Chuck Noris," Clint nodded in agreement as he tried to shoot the origami frog out of the palm of his hand.

"She shot the other Black Widow?"

"Oh," Clint made a face as the frog plinked off the glass of the window, hitting right in the middle of the O in 'Coffee'. "Don't tell anyone I told you that."

"Not even Benning?"

"Especially not Benning," he replied, looking pained. "You have no idea what we had to do to get her to stay on with SHIELD after the Hydra thing."

"Was one of the things promising never to bring up the fact that she threw up on her first non-mission when she was a baby badass?" Darcy asked with an evil grin.

"Among other things," he said, rubbing his face with his hands. Darcy studied him carefully for a long moment.

"Tony says you're a certified genius," she observed, her eyes narrowed.

"That's what it says on my paperwork," he nodded in reply.

"How are you so dumb?"

"It's a math thing," Clint replied with a shrug, swallowing the dregs of his coffee. "There's equations for it and everything but we don't have enough napkins for me to show you."