Iron Man and Captain America Assemble a Super Squad in New Avengers: Breakout

There was something about the redhead that caught Clint Barton’s attention. It wasn’t her wickedly pretty face or her exceptional rear view, although those were certainly worth noticing. No, it was something subtly discordant, something that made Clint think Red didn’t belong up here in the command center of the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division. 

Clint furrowed his brow. He might only have a level-six clearance, but as he observed the shapely interloper move with unhurried ease through a room bristling with S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, he didn’t see anyone else clocking her progress across the bridge. There were more than a few guys watching her, but they didn’t look like they had surveillance on their minds. Leaning back in his chair, Clint tried to figure out what it was about Red that didn’t fit. Unlike a lot of the glorified clerks in this room, he hadn’t gotten a bunch of degrees from some Ivy League institution, but what he did have was a circus brat’s skill in picking out the rubes from the roustabouts. At first glance, Red appeared to be dressed in a figure-hugging black jumpsuit identical to the ones worn by S.H.I.E.L.D. pilots and combat-trained operatives. On closer inspection, Clint noticed that her uniform had no insignia on the arm—and the weapon hanging from the holster on her slim hips didn’t have the shiny, streamlined look of something concocted by Stark Enterprises. 

So not a rube, but not a member of this particular traveling show, either. 

“Clint? You about finished with that report?” Jessica Drew glanced at him, still managing to tap away at her computer. Like him, Jessica was a field agent, but she had probably filed three reports in the time it had taken him to type his Social Security number. She was the only agent who never asked him about his criminal record, so he returned the favor by never bringing up the fact that she used to have super-powers. For Clint, being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent was a giant step up in life. For the former Spider-Woman, he figured, it was something else entirely. 

“If you’re having trouble with the spreadsheet, I can help you,” she offered. 

“Nah, I’ll figure it out.” Clint had spent his school years perfecting his acrobatic and archery skills, so there were some pretty big gaps in his education. Computers. Grammar. Spelling. Fiction written before the 1980s. As far as history went, he knew an Assyrian recurve from an English longbow, but that was about it. Clint could calculate math problems in his head, though, and he understood basic physics. That went along with making sure your arrow hit its target. 

“Just remember, we’re supposed to check in with the new special officer at 1400.” Jessica turned back to her own work. 

Clint pretended to focus on his computer screen, punching in letters at random while he watched Red out of the corner of his eye. She had slipped into an empty seat and was typing something into the computer, which instantly responded. That was interesting. She must already know the level-three passwords. Maybe he was wrong about Red. After all, it wasn’t as if she could just stroll past a security guard to get into S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. That was one of the advantages to having a base of operations that was constantly mobile and usually six miles off the ground. 

Red pulled up a schematic of the Helicarrier. Clint told himself there were all kinds of reasons an agent might do that. Maybe she was new to the job and simply trying to locate the ladies’ room. She could be a techie from engineering, looking for some faulty wiring. Yeah, and maybe she was searching for decorating tips so she could redo her living room in neo-futuristic polished glass and steel. 

Suddenly, the idea of Red being a foreign agent seemed a bit more plausible. 

Jessica leaned over. “I take it you meant to write ‘redhead’ under ‘purpose of trip’?” 

“Don’t tell me you’re anti-ginger, Jess.” 

“Don’t call me Jess, Hawkeye.” Usually, Clint would retaliate for the use of his old performing name, but he didn't have the time right now. Red was strolling toward the stairs that led down to the flight deck. All right, show time. Clint rolled his stool back from the desk and unsnapped a button on his right shoulder, making it easier to reach for the Stark-engineered bow he wore folded on his back. Clint was supposed to wear a regulation firearm like everyone else, but he knew he could snap his wrist and have the recurve primed and ready before another agent could aim and shoot a gun. 

“You going somewhere?” Jessica sounded hopeful. 

“To see a man about a dog.” Red disappeared behind two technicians, and it took Clint a couple of moments to find her again. Did she know he’d made her, or did she always walk in a zigzag pattern, just to be safe? 

“Want me to go with you?” 

“To the head? Not really.” Clint reached for the quiver he always kept propped against his desk, only to find that it wasn’t where he’d left it. 

“Uh-huh. And what are you planning to do, shoot the soap puck out of the urinal?” Jessica was holding his quiver just out of reach. 

“Only if it annoys me.” He held out his hand. 

“You know, you don’t really need to practice shooting things,” said Jessica. “You need to practice doing expense reports.” 

She must be as bored with the paperwork as I am, thought Clint. Probably why she was the closest thing he had to a friend in this place. Looking past Jessica, he widened his eyes. “What the—why is Iron Man flying around without his pants on?” 

Jessica turned, and Clint swiped his quiver just as Red reached the exit. She looked over her shoulder; for a moment, their eyes met. A jolt ran through him, the kind he used to feel before doing some trick that was liable to leave him seriously injured or worse if he screwed it up. Red smiled—her hand on the door, as if daring him to follow her—and then she was gone. 

“I can’t believe it. You’re actually leaving a week’s worth of forms in order to go hook up with that redhead.” Jessica sounded amused rather than offended. 

“Depends on your definition of hooking up.” Clint swiftly thought through the best arrowheads to bring to this party: magnetic, net, smoke, bola? Selecting the points with capture rather than killing in mind, he inserted them into the automatic loader in his quiver. 

“I thought you didn’t date co-workers.” Now Jessica did sound offended. 

“I don’t,” said Clint, breaking into a run. Around him, heads turned, and a guy in a suit said, “Agent Barton, don’t forget you agreed to talk to me about …” but Clint was out the door and charging down the stairs, so he never heard the rest of the sentence. 

Clint could hear footsteps on the stairs below him. He was so focused on estimating how far ahead his target was he nearly ran into Agent Coulson, who was carrying a stack of files. 

“Slow down there, Barton,” said Coulson, nearly dropping his papers. “You know the rules about running in the ladders.” Like a lot of paper-pushers, Coulson always used proper Naval terminology. 

“Sorry, Coulson.” Clint grabbed the staircase railing and vaulted down onto the next landing. “Kind of in a rush, here.” 

“And you’re not wearing sleeves again, Barton,” Coulson added. “We’ve talked about that.” 

“Later,” said Clint, already turning the corner. He had a sudden sense of danger, but it came a second too late, and Clint took the full force of a boot in his face. He managed to recover in time to get another kick to the stomach, this one a roundhouse. God, she was fast—already running down the stairs and nearly at the next landing. Clint flicked his wrist and his bow unfolded. 

“Hey, what’s the big hurry?” Clint called after her, nocking his arrow and aiming it. “I thought we could spend a little time on small talk before getting down to the dirty stuff.” 

“I’m not a big fan of small talk,” she called back as Clint sent a blunt arrow flying. The arrow hit the pressure point on the back of her leg, just below her knee; for a moment, Clint thought she was going to fall down the stairs. He raced toward her, but Red was already recovering with a neat little backflip. She landed on her feet, lithe as any big-top acrobat. 

“I was kind of hoping to get your number before you run off again,” said Clint, joining her on the landing. He was too close to aim an arrow now, so he held his bow loosely in his left hand, ready to use it as a blunt instrument if she went for the gun at her hip. 

Red appeared bemused. “Do you always talk this much when you’re fighting?” 

“Not just when I’m fighting, sweetheart. I find talking always adds to the— ungh.” Clint moved just in time, so Red’s knee connected with his stomach instead of more sensitive parts. He grabbed her foot and she kicked up, wrapping her other leg around his neck and bringing him down on his back, hard. “Okay, now this is definitely a second-date kind of move,” he said, maneuvering so he could jab his elbow into the back of her knee, releasing her chokehold on his neck. 

“Not so much a second-date kind of girl,” she said, straddling him and landing a solid punch to his jaw. 

"Still, don’t you think I should know your first name?” Clint leveraged his weight, reversing their positions. It seemed a shame to punch that mouth, so Clint just pinned her down, immobilizing her with his arms and legs. 

“Sorry, but I don’t think this relationship is going anywhere.” The woman flexed her wrists; underneath his palms, Clint felt her bracelets grow warm for an instant. Before he could react, a jolt of electricity sent him flying. When he came to, there was a metallic taste in his mouth and Red was gone. 

Damn it. Clint shook his head, trying to clear it, then checked his watch. He hadn’t been out of commission for more than a minute, so she couldn’t have gotten far. He just had to think through the likeliest direction to pursue. 

He was one flight of stairs down from the bridge, on the same level as flightdeck control. Clint couldn’t see his unauthorized redhead going in there: The room was windowless and small and hard to enter undetected. For a moment, Clint considered going in there to alert Deputy Director Maria Hill that they had an intruder on board, but then another thought occurred to him. The hangar bay was on this level, too, and it was a huge area filled with fighter planes, jeeps and other Army vehicles. If Red had sabotage on her mind, the hangar bay was a gremlin’s paradise. 

Clint readied his bow as he ran, heading for the open metal stairs that led to the steel walkway. Some people had a fear of heights, but Clint was always most comfortable perched where he could get a bird’s-eye view of the situation. He reached the walkway and quickly scanned as much as he could see of the room below. The hangar bay was basically a big garage, but instead of old cars and discarded toys it contained billions of dollars worth of Uncle Sam’s best fighter jets. Parked just below Clint’s booted feet, there were a couple of F/A-18 Hornets, which could fight in the air or take out targets on the ground. A little farther away, there was an F-14 Tomcat. Something about the shape of the Tomcat’s cockpit reminded Clint of the paper airplanes he used to make when the circus English tutor was droning on about the subjunctive. Clint’s namesake plane, the E-2C Hawkeye, was mainly used to relay information on the enemy’s position and activity, but its propellers made Clint think of old World War II movies. 

No sign of Red. Clint continued scanning the room, tracking with his arrow. There. He caught a flash of movement, darting between a Seahawk helicopter and an S-3B Viking. Hell, that was a subsonic jet capable of taking out a submarine. If Red started messing around in there, she could bring the whole damn Helicarrier crashing down. 

Of course, a misplaced arrow could have the same effect. Good thing I don’t miss, Clint thought, as he sent his arrow flying. It hit the deck right in front of Red and released its cartridge of tear gas. Since she’d been careful not to inflict any lasting damage on him, he was going to try to return the favor. 

But Red had rolled free and grabbed hold of the bottom of the walkway. With a kick of her legs, she brought herself up onto his level. It wouldn’t have gotten a 10 from the Olympic judges—her feet were too far apart—but it was pretty elegant, all the same. “I should warn you—it takes a lot to make me cry,” she said. 

“Tough girl, huh?” But while she had been in motion, Clint had been moving, too, manipulating the joystick on his quiver, selecting a specialized head to cap the shaft of his next arrow. Now he had the arrow nocked and ready, and the bowstring pulled taut. “This arrow contains a hypodermic with a powerful sedative. I suggest you put your hands up, unless you’re in the mood for a little nap.” 

Red’s smile was gently mocking. “If you stare a little harder at my equipment, you might notice I’m wearing body armor.” 

“I noticed. Sorry to disappoint you, but arrows go through Kevlar.” 

“It’s not Kevlar. It’s Vibranium.” Clint raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t that a little uncomfortable?” Vibranium wasn’t exactly standard issue for anyone, even a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Rare and extremely expensive, it was one of the few metals that could withstand super-powered levels of force. 

“You get used to it.” Quick as a cat, she spun and raced down the walkway away from him. A moving target might have posed a challenge for a different archer, but Clint had been shooting things on the fly since he was six. Tucking the hypodermic arrow into his waistband, he toggled the joystick on his quiver, selecting four new arrowheads. Within seconds, he had the first arrow nocked and sent it flying, followed by three more in rapid-fire succession. The arrows, made of Adamantium and equipped with powerful magnetic tips, passed through the taut fabric at Red’s wrists and ankles, pinning her against the metal bulkhead so she was standing in the shape of an “X.” 

“Well, you’ve drawn first blood,” said his opponent, indicating a thin scratch on the exposed part of her wrist where the arrow had grazed her as it went through the fabric of her jumpsuit. 

“Unintentional. I only had a millimeter or two to play with. You had the first knockout, though.” Clint pulled out the hypodermic-tipped arrow. “Before I go ahead and put you down for the count, mind telling me what you’re doing here?” 

“Testing your defenses.” 

“If you’re trying to tell me that S.H.I.E.L.D. sent you as some kind of in-house safebreaker, it won’t wash. That’s what they’ve got me for.” 

“I know. You’re the one I was testing.” 

Clint shook his head. “You knew that out of a room filled with over fifty agents, I would happen to be the one to notice you?” The woman smiled at him. 

“Absolutely … Hawkeye.” 

Clint grew still. “Who sent you?” Over the years, he had made some pretty powerful enemies, on both sides of the law. 

“I sent myself.” 

“Not buying it.” 

“It’s the truth. Before I go switching sides, I want to make sure I’m not backing a losing team.” She looked up at him, not a hint of coyness in her big, green eyes. 

“Your accent is slipping a little.” 

“I don’t have an accent.” 

“Yeah, you do. It’s not so much in the way you pronounce words as it is in the rhythm. I had a Russian guy teach me acrobatics for a while. He moved to the States when he was seven. No accent, but when he got tired, the rhythm of his speech changed.” 

“You have a good ear.” She smiled as if she were his teacher and he had just performed well on a test. That was a hell of a smile she had. Most men probably did a lot of stupid things for one of those. And she probably gutted them with a stiletto without changing her expression. 

“So what are you, G.R.U.? S.V.R.?” 

“I was spetsnaz. Emphasis on was.” 

“Special ops? You mean black ops?” 

She didn’t respond, and for the first time Clint knew she wasn’t just playing him. She was making up her mind. For a fraction of a second, there was a worried crease between her eyebrows, and then she nervously licked her lips. “Can I trust you?” 

It was the first wrong move Clint had seen her make. Clint looked down at her, letting her see his wariness, but also giving her a glimpse of how bone-tired he was of these kinds of games. It was a calculated countermove, to show her he could be brought over to her side. “I don’t know. Can I trust you?” 

Something flickered in her eyes, then: surprise. “You know what?” she said, dropping all pretense of being ill at ease. “I think perhaps you can.” 

With this one, you removed one mask only to find another, thought Clint. “Somehow, I doubt that very much.” 

“You shouldn’t. I’m not the enemy here. Do you see the red ‘X’ on my bracelet? Look what happens when I move my wrist like this.” A small needle emerged, glistening with a drop of moisture. “That’s a nerve agent. If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.” 

Clint gave an amused snort of laughter. “You got nerve, Red, I’ll give you that.” 

“And I would have thought you would be a little more original,” she replied, twisting her wrist so that the needle went back into the bracelet. “This isn’t even my real hair color.” 

“So,” said Clint, pulling the arrows out of the wall to release her arms, “what do I call you before I bring you in to be arrested, court-martialed and sent to prison?” 

She held out one small gloved hand. “My given name is Natalia Romanova, but my friends call me Natasha.” 

“Take it off.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“The bracelet. And the glove.” 

Raising her eyebrows, Natasha pulled off the bracelet, along with the black neoprene glove. She placed them carefully on the floor. “See? No concealed weapons. And now you.” 

Clint pulled off his archer’s gauntlet; after a moment’s hesitation, he shook the foreign agent’s hand. A shiver of electricity went straight down his back, but Clint disregarded it as a momentary distraction. “So what’s your next move, Nat? You going to convince me to let you go?” 

“I might,” said Natasha with a wry smile. “But somehow, I don’t think your girlfriend would agree.” She gave a nod of her head, indicating Jessica Drew, who was standing just underneath them, her weapon aimed at Natasha’s heart.