While Natasha was giving instructions to the people within the fortress and the Widows outside through Dreykov's terminal, she heard a whistle. It was a very specific whistle which was clearly a signal.
Remembering the reply to that signal from her childhood, Natasha whistled back in that specific pattern.
"You seem comfortable." Yelena showed up from the main door that Natasha had left open.
"If you say so…" Nat said. Yelena walked to the dead body of her captor and the person that she hated with a fiery passion.
"So it's done?" Yelena looked at Dreykov's corpse.
"Yep." Nat nodded.
"Good fucking riddance." Yelena was glad and stomped on Dreykov's face.
"So what do we do now?" Yelena asked.
"For starters, I've called in all the Widows that he's got deployed around the globe. We'll gather them all together and hit them with the gas that removes their mind control. Then… We'll give them a choice." Nat told her.
"Choice?" Yelena asked.
"I thought about it and realized that these girls were trained as killers for their entire lives. And I'm sure that it's going to be extremely difficult for them to transition to a normal life, for some it would be practically impossible." Nat continued with a look in her eyes that Yelena both understood and related with.
"Oh… That makes sense." Yelena nodded while looking to the side.
"Yeah. It's better than them becoming contract killers for people who make them do bad things. I was thinking of doing some sort of vigilante operation where we deploy teams of Widows to sweep through cities and slowly root out the deep crime syndicates that are no more than tumors for the world." Nat shared her thoughts with Yelena.
"I want in." She said.
"I was hoping you'd say that." Natasha smiled, "I can't exactly take care of so much all alone." Nat said with a little smile.
Yelena suddenly perked up and looked at Nat with narrow eyes, "Now. We have the time, we've even completed what we set out to do. You have got to tell me." Yelena walked to Natasha and sat on Dreykov's desk, right in front of the chair that Nat was sitting on.
"What?" She acted dumb, just to fuck with her.
"Come on! Tell me." Yelena held Natasha's shoulders and shook her.
"Fine, fine. Stop…" Natasha agreed, "I'm being helped by an alien slime monster. He can take any shape and that's how I am able to instantly change my clothes." To drive the point, Natasha's combat suit morphed into a hoodie and leggings. She didn't even move from the seat and her clothes changed.
"Woah… That's so cool." Yelena practically had stars in her eyes.
"It is. He's also the person that helps me turn invisible and shoot lightning out of my fingers." Nat said bringing her fingers up and giving Yelena a demonstration by creating a bolt of lightning between her index and middle fingers.
"Can I also get one?" Yelena asked with a pleading tone. As if she was a little girl asking her big sister for a toy.
"No, I—" Natasha was just about to refuse when she heard Alex tell her, [I'm thinking of making some automated armor mechanism for the Widow system. Something to give them a basic enhancement to their strengths and also protect them from harm. Tell Yelena to touch the choker on her neck and think about activating it.]
Natasha was impressed by Alex's idea and said, "On second thought, you feel that choker on your neck?" Nat pointed to Yelena's neck.
"What choker? When did this get here?" She grabbed it and started looking for the unclasping mechanism.
[See, they're weird.] Nat said, [Won't change the fact that I like them.] Alex was adamant.
"It's not coming off without my slimy friend wanting it to. But that's not the point. Think of activating the choker while holding it." Natasha instructed Yelena.
Yelena was a little freaked out and decided to follow Natasha's words and just as she thought of activating it, the collar burst into life and started expanding, taking over Yelena's clothes and forming a black combat bodysuit with red tones. There were two baton holsters at the back, forming an X shape and the entire suit had multiple storages for guns.
"Now don't deactivate it, or else you'll be buck naked when it goes back to become a collar," Nat was amused and warned Yelena who was too surprised at the situation.
"Tell the suit that you want to hide," Nat told Yelena again. And she followed instinctively. She didn't feel any different and brought up her hand to look.
She was surprised to see that she couldn't see her hand. It was camouflaged.
"You can't shoot lightning from your fingers since it's a bit more of a complicated ability, but you have quite a bit of strength augmentation. You can stand toe-to-toe against quite a number of super soldiers with your melee prowess being boosted by the suit. You can at least beat up Alexi if nothing else. And at least kinda stand toe to toe against Steve." Nat told Yelena, much to her shock.
"Holy mother of fuck." Yelena looked at Natasha with wide eyes. This wasn't really a big deal for Alex. He'd already made a similar collar for Cindy and he just reused the capability of the collar. It had the same monitoring system installed that could send the wearer to unconsciousness in case they were deemed volatile. But Alex saw no point telling Yelena or any of the other Widows about that little tidbit.
"I know. You can also set clothing modes for this. Mode 1 will be your default combat suit and from mode 2 and ahead, you have custom clothing options, you can just input any clothing outfit that you see and tell the choker to designate it to a specific mode. It's very flexible and you can explore it by yourself later." Nat told Yelena.
"Do you also have all of this?" Yelena asked.
"That's a dumb question, I have a lot more capabilities. I have the real deal, what you have is just an automated item that Apex made for you." Nat decided to namedrop Alex in front of Yelena. They'd already discussed it and Alex thought that Apex would suit him. It painted him as a sort of apex predator or apex symbiote which he quite liked the thought of. The name was also pretty close to his actual name while also matching the ideology of the symbiote names in Marvel. Venom, Carnage, Apex, etc. all of them were suitable names for the theme that symbiote names usually follow.
"I understand." Even knowing that she had a nerfed version didn't stop Yelena's enthusiasm.
"I'm thinking of giving this to the Widows that stay too. They would be an extremely deadly force when their prowess is boosted." Natasha said to Yelena.
"That's a good idea. We would be an unstoppable force in any scenario… We could do so much good. All while living in a huge air fortress." For the first time in a long time, Yelena was looking forward to the future.
"It'll be fun." Nat smiled at her enthusiasm.
"For now, I'll gather all the Widows in the training room and you can go there to blast them with the gas," Nat told her.
"About that. I couldn't find the gas. This fortress is huge and I have no idea about what is where." Yelena told her.
"My bad, I guess. I'll guide you on the way." Nat tapped her ear, signaling to the earpiece that Yelena still has.
"All righty…" Yelena left the room.
"Take a left…" Nat started guiding her through the fortress.
At the same time, she kept making preparations and coordinating with the Widows to have them rendezvous at the fortress.
…
A few hours later, 100 free Widows were standing in front of her in her office.
'Wasn't the number of Widows that were already in the base fewer?' Alex thought as he looked at the higher number of combatants in front of Natasha, 'Whatever,' He didn't care too much about it.
"So girls. I presume that you all understand your situations?" Natasha looked at each and every girl in the room and most of them nodded in response.
"So, as I see it, you have two main choices. One is to retire, look for a way to make a real family, and move to the real world. The other is to stay and become part of the Avengers." Nat told them and took a pause to let them digest her words.
Instantly, there were murmurs from the crowd as they all started discussing.
"You all should have a basic idea about who I am. I'm Black Widow. An Avenger. What you might not know is that I'm one of you. I came out of this very Red Room. Granted, it wasn't a flying fortress back then, but you should get the point." Nat told them. These were all relatively most likely initiates, and she wasn't familiar with any of them. So she wasn't sure if they knew about her coming out of the Red Room.
The murmurs got slightly more intense and were threatening to drown out her own speech so she said, "Silence." In an authoritative tone. At the same time, Alex imbued a mental suggestion in her voice to make it more effective. Natasha wasn't a born leader like Captain America so she needed some help to become a competent authority figure.
Her voice had an instant effect as everyone quieted down. She inwardly smiled as she realized that Alex had a hand in this. She wasn't charismatic to the point of instantly silencing a crowd of competent women like the ones here.
She continued, "So today, I am extending you an offer. The ones who choose to stay will become provisional members of the Avengers who will act as a peacekeeping force for the globe. I will give you all some time to think. Meanwhile, the ones who absolutely don't want to take part in the Avengers can stand on the left side here, "Nat pointed at another spot in the room.
***
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