[Natasha Romanoff POV]
"Are you sure about this?" She smiled at that question.
It was only twenty guards inside, she was sure she could take them without breaking a sweat.
At the signal from Steve, she flipped through the open window stealthily. She got behind a guard there who was alarmed at the ruckus Steve was causing outside. She swiped a blade through his throat and set him down softly while making her way deeper into the base.
The information Draul had given them had been pretty shabby but it was not enough to hinder her work. It took her only two days to get the required information, make a plan with Steve on which base to attack, and call their cleanup crew and delivery guy – S.H.I.E.L.D.
She had to admit that while her body hadn't gotten rusty due to the constant daily exercise, her skills had, and she was looking to rectify that.
Even Bucky had been jumpy and even took to training like a maniac even with one arm. It had to say something about the man's skill when even with his handicap, she still found it hard to defeat him after their first spar, which she won. But apart from that time, the man was like another person entire when it came to fighting.
If she had to chose who was the better between the two super soldiers, she'd chose Bucky.
Natasha hissed as someone spotted her, a slight mistake on her part but one she was quick to neutralize with a slide to his position, a kick to the crotch, followed by the snapping of the soldier's neck.
The rest part after that was her taking some files which contained shipments of gold, drugs, some exotic cars and also data of different possessions and dummy accounts of whoever owned this place.
With a two pronged attack, the hideout fell in under an hour before agents of S.H.I.E.L.D pulled up. It was weird how a year ago, she would have shook in her boots if she came face to face with S.H.I.E.L.D like this but now?
"You're late boys." She had already gotten the specifics Draul had wanted which mostly was just bank accounts and some few landed assets overseas. Stuffs like drugs, trafficking and evidence of political backroom deals were stuff she would be happy to dump on S.H.I.E.L.D's hands.
"Miss Romanoff, remind me again why you are raiding a base of an Albanian druglord?" Nick Fury came out a car and walked towards the coyly smiling Russian spy. "I thought you said you were giving up that life to… settle down if I remember correctly."
"Someone I couldn't refuse called in a favor." She said as Steve walked up to them with his black cowl still on his face.
"Captain."
"Director."
"Any idea where the cause of all this rage is?" Fury asked.
"He should still be in Africa, I think. We haven't heard from him for the last three days. Why are you asking?" Natasha said.
"There has been a reports of a bathrobe wearing man with the head of a fox mascot on flip flops, killing over 700 people in the last three days in two different countries. The power vacuum in the underworld is like nothing we've ever seen since the 1800's. And I believe a person of interest between us is responsible."
"Wow.. That's quite a kill count for just three days. I don't believe I could rake one so high, but then again his abilities are bullshit." She said with a slight frown on her face.
"670 of those people died from headshot wounds, while the remaining 30 all had shattered joints… plus headshot wounds." The Director clarified while sounding unimpressed.
"Well he could have done worse." The silence was broken by Steve's voice which was met with a bewildered gaze from Natasha.
"I don't understand…. How… how could he have done worse?"
"The Captain meant that it's only 700 people in three days. Draul once did a thousand in less than 48 hours…. That brings his kill count to over 5 thousand confirmed kills in less than a year. Although not as dangerous as he his with his abilities, Draul can prove more lethal with a gun. Oh and that reminds me, tell him he owes me fifty bucks when he calls." With that the Director walked away to direct some of his agents leaving the spy and the soldier alone.
"Let's go Nat. Our work here is done." Steve tapped the still bewildered Natasha and gestured ahead.
With that they left another ruined base.
…
[Draul St. Cross POV]
I need a private plane.
I mean, that was to be obvious when I am to be carrying a whole shipload of Vibranium and over a ton of Adamantium. And not to mention what else I might pick up in this journey.
I was not posing to be putting my spoils of Vibranium inside a S.H.I.E.L.D carriage. That was just announcing it the American parliament that, 'Look! He's holding weapons of mass destruction! We must take it from him at all cost!'. I knew that Vibranium and Adamantium gave off specific signals and I would be a fool to let that register with S.H.I.E.L.D's satellite when I haven't fully secured it.
Sure I could say another fuck you to the government, but greed sometimes made the most wisest of men foolish.
Klaue's hiding ground was going nowhere for the time being so that would get the me time to ship everything together once I procured the plane.
Some of the guys I killed had private planes but I wasn't about to use them. No need to draw too much attention to the importance of my current mission than I had already done.
One of the perks of having a lot of money was that you could easily skip through a lot of bullshit when it comes to buying shit.
It took me less than three days to get the fucking plane, the necessary papers, a trip to South Africa, nice place by the way, definitely in my top five countries to visit for vacation in Africa, two hours to fully learn how to fly the thing just in case, which included learning how to do flips, because there was no way I was buying a plane and not learning how to fly it.
So with that procured, I was set to hit up Klaue's vault.
Like I said, greed sometimes made the most wisest of men foolish.
Klaue's crew, who I think might have gotten news of their boss's disappearance tried to make off with parts of his spoil. It would have been fine it was the higher ups that only did so, but some of the underlings were emboldened by the head huncho's death and took arms against the higher ups.
No one knew how to access Klaue's Vibranium vault except for the man himself who had set the goddamned thing to blow up if the vault was tampered with.
What I arrived at was a gun fight which could be attributed to the late arrival of the news.
I wasted no time in killing all those who remained in minutes, all with a spear to their hearts or decapitated heads.
Klaue's vault from what I could feel, had some kind of explosives that was set to go off against a certain level of vibrations. It was a genius workmanship.
I sawed off the door of the vault with my laser beams, which had the incendiary device, and then dragged the entire thing away. I loaded the entire thing inside a truck and then drove to the hangar I had purchased in Cairo. Just this trip alone had taken almost two-thirds of my net worth.
I didn't think about much about it as this trip alone already has made me more than 3 billion dollars and that was not counting whatever Nat and Steve managed to dig up.
The Adamantium was in Dubai, so all I needed to do was have my newly hired pilot fly me there for a day and then back to the States the next. And that was what I did.
It was finally time to kit everyone up.
…
I went back to the States after ten days of raiding a few of the safes that I could, not gaining anything much other than some gold, diamonds, paintings. I did get a few millions in hard cash though.
Was getting rich always this easy? I mean, all I did was spend ten days abroad and now I'm returning home a billionaire. All I did was just rob some old fuckers and that's it. Why couldn't everyone just do what I did?
Oh, that's right! They would die before got their first dollar.
I immediately got to work after settling down and looking through all the earnings we made while also recounting to them everything that happened.
I had gold, diamonds, Adamantium and Vibranium – I would have to be pretty dull witted if I could come up with a cool working aesthetics for Bucky's arm.
I already had everything I needed; from the codes to the biological knowledge and finally to the main materials and some other questionable ones, like the melting chemical stuff. There was absolutely no way I wasn't taking some of that, which was everything.
I had some working theories about the Super Soldier Serum. Like everyone knows, it functions as the best base multiplier out there. What I wanted to do was tweak the multiplying factors of the Serum to 500 from the initial 100.
It wasn't just a simple times five multiplier but a time five peak human multiplier for every hallmark.
A times five base strength was something they could get from a 200% increase in serum potency and that was what they would get as a base with more rooms for improvement. After that point would be vast increase in potential.
I didn't know yet how to draft in an ability as I haven't experimented on mutants to figure that out, but that would be for later as the strength they would get from that would boost them way above the super soldier level but that serum would only work for them as it was designed to meld on with someone who already had a version of the serum.
If I were to give someone like Natasha that serum, then what would happen would either having a horrendous form of a female body builder of the likes of Ronnie Coleman or her strength would start bleeding out and she would die in a month's time as the serum wouldn't be able to properly meld with every part of her body.
Imagine the consequence of it melding with her heart and not the arteries around it. Or parts of her brain? Or strengthening her bones but not her spine?
The result would be catastrophic and that was saying the least.
I could make some sort of basic Super Soldier Serum but only Natasha would be qualified to take it. Yelena was too young for me to be completely sure about the success of it and me giving her the Serum would give her ideas.
Why were teenage girls this had to deal with?
It wasn't just me. No one in this household was comfortable with letting a girl like her out there regardless of if she could slit a man's throat and walk away fine.
There was a reason the Avengers wasn't that keen on Iron Man's decision of bringing in a young Peter Parker regardless of how easily he stopped Bucky and Falcon.
I had managed to dodge that particular conversation with her for the time being but I wouldn't be able to stall forever, not when she sees me giving the rest of the household Super Soldier Serums.
Another part I didn't understand was why Nat was making me do this. She was Yelena's sister for crying out loud, why should the total, or rather, not-so-total stranger, be the one giving the adolescent teen sister explanations on why she should be patient?
Maybe giving her the Serum wouldn't be a bad idea after all.
I shoved those thoughts to the back of my mind and concentrated on what I was doing.
The Serum only needed a slight tweak to it and that was all. All it needed was for me to tweak the energy absorption ratio of the Serum to the cells and since the two subjects in mind already had the most stable version of the Serum, it would make it easier for their body to absorb the excess amount of energy this Serum would give them and also aid in its circulation.
The first Super Soldier Serum only gave peak human physique along with rejuvenating dead or deteriorating cells and slight increase in average life expectancy. My 'Crack-em-up' Serum just multiplied that base by a few and then the potential by multitudes.
The part that gave me a lot of headaches were their suits. They still needed them. While my Serum would give them bolstered durability, I still didn't know to what extent and could only wait for them to take it before we could run those tests.
Which brought me to another point: I still haven't told them about my plans for them and the Serum. Hopefully that would take care of itself in due time.
Back to their uniforms, since I have tons of Vibranium just sitting around. I could afford to splurge quite a bit.
...
[Natasha Romanoff POV]
"Are you sure about this?" She smiled at that question.
It was only twenty guards inside, she was sure she could take them without breaking a sweat.
At the signal from Steve, she flipped through the open window stealthily. She got behind a guard there who was alarmed at the ruckus Steve was causing outside. She swiped a blade through his throat and set him down softly while making her way deeper into the base.
The information Draul had given them had been pretty shabby but it was not enough to hinder her work. It took her only two days to get the required information, make a plan with Steve on which base to attack, and call their cleanup crew and delivery guy – S.H.I.E.L.D.
She had to admit that while her body hadn't gotten rusty due to the constant daily exercise, her skills had, and she was looking to rectify that.
Even Bucky had been jumpy and even took to training like a maniac even with one arm. It had to say something about the man's skill when even with his handicap, she still found it hard to defeat him after their first spar, which she won. But apart from that time, the man was like another person entire when it came to fighting.
If she had to chose who was the better between the two super soldiers, she'd chose Bucky.
Natasha hissed as someone spotted her, a slight mistake on her part but one she was quick to neutralize with a slide to his position, a kick to the crotch, followed by the snapping of the soldier's neck.
The rest part after that was her taking some files which contained shipments of gold, drugs, some exotic cars and also data of different possessions and dummy accounts of whoever owned this place.
With a two pronged attack, the hideout fell in under an hour before agents of S.H.I.E.L.D pulled up. It was weird how a year ago, she would have shook in her boots if she came face to face with S.H.I.E.L.D like this but now?
"You're late boys." She had already gotten the specifics Draul had wanted which mostly was just bank accounts and some few landed assets overseas. Stuffs like drugs, trafficking and evidence of political backroom deals were stuff she would be happy to dump on S.H.I.E.L.D's hands.
"Miss Romanoff, remind me again why you are raiding a base of an Albanian druglord?" Nick Fury came out a car and walked towards the coyly smiling Russian spy. "I thought you said you were giving up that life to… settle down if I remember correctly."
"Someone I couldn't refuse called in a favor." She said as Steve walked up to them with his black cowl still on his face.
"Captain."
"Director."
"Any idea where the cause of all this rage is?" Fury asked.
"He should still be in Africa, I think. We haven't heard from him for the last three days. Why are you asking?" Natasha said.
"There has been a reports of a bathrobe wearing man with the head of a fox mascot on flip flops, killing over 700 people in the last three days in two different countries. The power vacuum in the underworld is like nothing we've ever seen since the 1800's. And I believe a person of interest between us is responsible."
"Wow.. That's quite a kill count for just three days. I don't believe I could rake one so high, but then again his abilities are bullshit." She said with a slight frown on her face.
"670 of those people died from headshot wounds, while the remaining 30 all had shattered joints… plus headshot wounds." The Director clarified while sounding unimpressed.
"Well he could have done worse." The silence was broken by Steve's voice which was met with a bewildered gaze from Natasha.
"I don't understand…. How… how could he have done worse?"
"The Captain meant that it's only 700 people in three days. Draul once did a thousand in less than 48 hours…. That brings his kill count to over 5 thousand confirmed kills in less than a year. Although not as dangerous as he his with his abilities, Draul can prove more lethal with a gun. Oh and that reminds me, tell him he owes me fifty bucks when he calls." With that the Director walked away to direct some of his agents leaving the spy and the soldier alone.
"Let's go Nat. Our work here is done." Steve tapped the still bewildered Natasha and gestured ahead.
With that they left another ruined base.
…
[Draul St. Cross POV]
I need a private plane.
I mean, that was to be obvious when I am to be carrying a whole shipload of Vibranium and over a ton of Adamantium. And not to mention what else I might pick up in this journey.
I was not posing to be putting my spoils of Vibranium inside a S.H.I.E.L.D carriage. That was just announcing it the American parliament that, 'Look! He's holding weapons of mass destruction! We must take it from him at all cost!'. I knew that Vibranium and Adamantium gave off specific signals and I would be a fool to let that register with S.H.I.E.L.D's satellite when I haven't fully secured it.
Sure I could say another fuck you to the government, but greed sometimes made the most wisest of men foolish.
Klaue's hiding ground was going nowhere for the time being so that would get the me time to ship everything together once I procured the plane.
Some of the guys I killed had private planes but I wasn't about to use them. No need to draw too much attention to the importance of my current mission than I had already done.
One of the perks of having a lot of money was that you could easily skip through a lot of bullshit when it comes to buying shit.
It took me less than three days to get the fucking plane, the necessary papers, a trip to South Africa, nice place by the way, definitely in my top five countries to visit for vacation in Africa, two hours to fully learn how to fly the thing just in case, which included learning how to do flips, because there was no way I was buying a plane and not learning how to fly it.
So with that procured, I was set to hit up Klaue's vault.
Like I said, greed sometimes made the most wisest of men foolish.
Klaue's crew, who I think might have gotten news of their boss's disappearance tried to make off with parts of his spoil. It would have been fine it was the higher ups that only did so, but some of the underlings were emboldened by the head huncho's death and took arms against the higher ups.
No one knew how to access Klaue's Vibranium vault except for the man himself who had set the goddamned thing to blow up if the vault was tampered with.
What I arrived at was a gun fight which could be attributed to the late arrival of the news.
I wasted no time in killing all those who remained in minutes, all with a spear to their hearts or decapitated heads.
Klaue's vault from what I could feel, had some kind of explosives that was set to go off against a certain level of vibrations. It was a genius workmanship.
I sawed off the door of the vault with my laser beams, which had the incendiary device, and then dragged the entire thing away. I loaded the entire thing inside a truck and then drove to the hangar I had purchased in Cairo. Just this trip alone had taken almost two-thirds of my net worth.
I didn't think about much about it as this trip alone already has made me more than 3 billion dollars and that was not counting whatever Nat and Steve managed to dig up.
The Adamantium was in Dubai, so all I needed to do was have my newly hired pilot fly me there for a day and then back to the States the next. And that was what I did.
It was finally time to kit everyone up.
…
I went back to the States after ten days of raiding a few of the safes that I could, not gaining anything much other than some gold, diamonds, paintings. I did get a few millions in hard cash though.
Was getting rich always this easy? I mean, all I did was spend ten days abroad and now I'm returning home a billionaire. All I did was just rob some old fuckers and that's it. Why couldn't everyone just do what I did?
Oh, that's right! They would die before got their first dollar.
I immediately got to work after settling down and looking through all the earnings we made while also recounting to them everything that happened.
I had gold, diamonds, Adamantium and Vibranium – I would have to be pretty dull witted if I could come up with a cool working aesthetics for Bucky's arm.
I already had everything I needed; from the codes to the biological knowledge and finally to the main materials and some other questionable ones, like the melting chemical stuff. There was absolutely no way I wasn't taking some of that, which was everything.
I had some working theories about the Super Soldier Serum. Like everyone knows, it functions as the best base multiplier out there. What I wanted to do was tweak the multiplying factors of the Serum to 500 from the initial 100.
It wasn't just a simple times five multiplier but a time five peak human multiplier for every hallmark.
A times five base strength was something they could get from a 200% increase in serum potency and that was what they would get as a base with more rooms for improvement. After that point would be vast increase in potential.
I didn't know yet how to draft in an ability as I haven't experimented on mutants to figure that out, but that would be for later as the strength they would get from that would boost them way above the super soldier level but that serum would only work for them as it was designed to meld on with someone who already had a version of the serum.
If I were to give someone like Natasha that serum, then what would happen would either having a horrendous form of a female body builder of the likes of Ronnie Coleman or her strength would start bleeding out and she would die in a month's time as the serum wouldn't be able to properly meld with every part of her body.
Imagine the consequence of it melding with her heart and not the arteries around it. Or parts of her brain? Or strengthening her bones but not her spine?
The result would be catastrophic and that was saying the least.
I could make some sort of basic Super Soldier Serum but only Natasha would be qualified to take it. Yelena was too young for me to be completely sure about the success of it and me giving her the Serum would give her ideas.
Why were teenage girls this had to deal with?
It wasn't just me. No one in this household was comfortable with letting a girl like her out there regardless of if she could slit a man's throat and walk away fine.
There was a reason the Avengers wasn't that keen on Iron Man's decision of bringing in a young Peter Parker regardless of how easily he stopped Bucky and Falcon.
I had managed to dodge that particular conversation with her for the time being but I wouldn't be able to stall forever, not when she sees me giving the rest of the household Super Soldier Serums.
Another part I didn't understand was why Nat was making me do this. She was Yelena's sister for crying out loud, why should the total, or rather, not-so-total stranger, be the one giving the adolescent teen sister explanations on why she should be patient?
Maybe giving her the Serum wouldn't be a bad idea after all.
I shoved those thoughts to the back of my mind and concentrated on what I was doing.
The Serum only needed a slight tweak to it and that was all. All it needed was for me to tweak the energy absorption ratio of the Serum to the cells and since the two subjects in mind already had the most stable version of the Serum, it would make it easier for their body to absorb the excess amount of energy this Serum would give them and also aid in its circulation.
The first Super Soldier Serum only gave peak human physique along with rejuvenating dead or deteriorating cells and slight increase in average life expectancy. My 'Crack-em-up' Serum just multiplied that base by a few and then the potential by multitudes.
The part that gave me a lot of headaches were their suits. They still needed them. While my Serum would give them bolstered durability, I still didn't know to what extent and could only wait for them to take it before we could run those tests.
Which brought me to another point: I still haven't told them about my plans for them and the Serum. Hopefully that would take care of itself in due time.
Back to their uniforms, since I have tons of Vibranium just sitting around. I could afford to splurge quite a bit.
...
