The Sage of the Mind

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The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 108[May 2012]

Germany

–Natasha Romanoff–

"Romanoff, you are under arrest for conspiring with known criminals and possibly, aliens to try and harm SHIELD's interests," She rolled her eyes as the STRIKE team finally turned on her, the moment they were all safe and sound, with the barely controlled emergency landing.

Probably someone higher up lost their patience with her and was not willing to take any more risks with her, probably discovering her attempts to contact Coulson.

"Get on with it, Rumlow," She drawled, half relaxed, even as her mind connected the dots and her heart sank as she realised that she had no feasible way of getting out of the encirclement, not alive anyway. She was not a supersoldier and she also did not have any armour on her, so it would seem that her run with SHIELD had come to an end. 

Well, at least she could go down taking Rumlow with her. He seemed to be the favourite attack dog of the shady part of the higher ups of SHIELD. It was no wonder that Fury barely used the STRIKE team, preferring to send in a small team of his trusted agents to deal with critical missions.

The thought of Clint brought yet another pang to her chest but now was not the time for that. First, she had to save her own ass and then she could go around the world, searching for him and then smack some sense in him. What would she say to Laura?

Well, dying here was much better than that.

Oh, well.

"Oh, please," Rumlow scoffed as he walked towards her, his gun pointed straight at her head, "We all know you are the last one left who was in Fury's inner circle. Coulson is MIA, declared a defector, Hill is sent on administrative leave, Barton is mind controlled, allegedly, and there's you, purposefully crash landing a Quinjet so that you could let Loki, a very dangerous criminal, escape SHIELD's custody,"

She hummed at that. So that was their game. That was how they were going to spin it, the death of the legendary Black Widow, due to treason. 

How Ironic.

Rumlow, in the process of delivering his monologue, had come close enough that she could probably make it if she lunged for his gun but she was also aware of the seven other guns that were probably just itching to perforate her body.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

She was just about to fuck it and try to atleast kill one or two of them but then everyone in the clearing stopped as they heard something, a slight whining noise. 

She stopped for a moment to think and then relaxed as she smiled, recognising both the jet noise as well as the whining noise. If she was not wrong, then in 3,2,1…

"There we go," She muttered as two repulsors were blasted just a few inches to her left and right. She flinched minutely but then immediately lunged towards the nearest person, in the midst of the dust and dirt raised by the attack, which was Rumlow. She took hold of his gun and didn't even hesitate as she dumped two in his forehead.

His look of shock was hilarious as she turned around and clocked two others before Tony crashed on the ground and disarmed everyone. He then looked at the three dead bodies surrounding her. She was expecting some judgement but not much since Tony was not some saint but she didn't expect the voice that came out of the suit.

"Agent Romanoff, sir has tasked me with retrieving the sceptre but I saw your predicament and couldn't help but intervene," Yeah, that was Jarvis.

"Yeah, alright," She sighed and then sat her ass down. This was all so very stressful for her. Despite having more close shaves with death than her age, this one was particularly nerve wracking because she finally realised something that she should have realised ages ago.

SHIELD was not the good guys, at least not in its entirety. She knew that on some level but since the top commander was someone good like Fury, she was alright with that and somehow managed to turn a blind eye to all the darkness within SHIELD but now that Fury was gone, she could see the overwhelmingly darkness within SHIELD that was barely being held back by Fury.

She could also see the sheer delight in Rumlow's eyes when it became clear that she was going to be arrested. And for a woman of her beauty, that was more than enough clues as to what was going through RUmlow's head.

So, she popped a bullet in his head. And then the others were just acceptable collateral damage since she could see that all of the STRIKE team members who were surrounding her were quite trigger happy, and she could also see two other STRIKE team members, dead, shot in the chest and head. Probably by these asshole traitors.

"Please stay here, there are no threats nearby. I will be back momentarily," Jarvis said before the suit flew off, and she collapsed on the ground, looking at the moon, trusting Jarvis and his sensors to know if any threat actually remained nearby.

From the direction Jarvis was going, he was probably going to the crash landed helicopter to recover the sceptre.

Ah, this was going to suck so much.

Not the defection part. She had done that before and she could do it again, no big deal. She already had a couple of identities ready and multiple escape routes of the country ready. She could have and probably should have taken that option when Clint was mind controlled but she thought that staying with SHIELD would give her the best chances of finding and bringing Clint back.

What a fool she was.

Now? Now she was going to have to go to Stark, and he was the worst. Good Lord, she was going to have to listen to him, at least until she finally reached Manhattan and got amnesty under the infamous Invisible Man.

God, she hoped Coulson reached somewhere safe, if not Manhattan, the safest city on the planet. She knew for a fact that not even SHIELD and the despicable higher ups would not dare move against the city and the city's protector, not if they wanted their positions of power to remain.

All because of the power of one man. The man's powers might be limited to a small city, in the grand scheme of things but the sheer utility the man provides in the same city meant that the world's elites resided there. There were even talks of the President making sure that Manhattan remained untouched by the higher politics, all because of the sheer economic output of that city. They had not seen such numbers in the last 30 or so years, so high was the money being poured into the city, and consequently, into the Country's coffers.

It was honestly mind boggling, the powers he wielded and she only cursed at their luck that Loki landed somewhere remote and not in Manhattan. From what she had seen, the fucker would have been identified, subdued, and ready for Thor to take home whenever he came to Manhattan as well.

It was their bad luck that they now had to deal with the biggest threat to humanity in recent times, without the support of their greatest powers.

She did not have to wait long as the familiar thumping noise brought her attention to the empty suit, now holding onto the sceptre.

"Please, keep that away from me," She warned Jarvis as he came closer. JArvis paused and then the suit's hand broke apart from the main body and floated to one side as he came closer and offered a small harness to her. 

That was…..new.

"Mr.Stark has ordered me to escort you to the Stark Jet, Agent Romanoff," Jarvis helpfully supplied as she got the harness tied around her, and then clipped onto the suit's back.

She rolled her eyes at that. Leave it to someone like Stark who would name a phenomenal, probably several generations ahead Jet, StarkJet.

Eccentric Billionaire, her perfectly sculpted ass. He was just a narcissist.

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