[right]August ████
Madripoor[/right]

Natalia is about seventy percent sure she’s never been shot by an arrow before, which is about as certain as she can ever be. It’s not unlike a bullet wound—perhaps more painful, perhaps not. It’s difficult to tell. Her veins are surging with adrenaline and dopamine, her vision red, her body moving on pure instinct. Her reflexes are what let her move and catch the arrow with a forearm. The bloodied tip points straight at her throat.

The sight of her own fragile mortality should probably disturb her.

She spares only an instant to find her would-be killer. Male, dressed like wait-staff, with a bow that looks custom-made. Nothing useful springs to mind. Sometimes she sees people and somehow knows their name, their skills, their histories and crimes—not this time.

She runs. Her blood screams as she flits through halls she memorized weeks ago. She snaps the shaft of the arrow, leaving it to plug the wound. She just needs to reach the third floor, where she has an open window and a motorbike parked below it. With leathers and a helmet, she can disappear into the crowded streets and fall back to her extraction point.

Her handler will not be pleased.

The thought makes her stumble, dread pooling in her stomach, airway closing up.

She can’t leave. She hasn’t finished the job properly. If she returns now, she will be taken back to that stainless steel room and she knows without knowing why that she does not want to go back there. Every instinct screams at the idea. She’d panic, if she could.

She’s losing time. Her assassin can’t be far behind, and he has reach. Natalia sprints harder, rounding a corner. Motorbike first—finish the job later.
[hr][right]Galveston, Texas[/right]
Smoke, pitch black, every instinct screaming [i]run[/i], thoughts blurring at the edges, familiar fog--[i]No[/i].

Natasha dropped low, reflexes taking over. Old reflexes, ones they had given her in cold grey halls and red, red rooms. Sweep the leg, elbow to the back of a head, sprint, legs swinging up around a neck, throwing her weight and snapping down to cold concrete, blood arcing across S.H.I.E.L.D. blue.

[i]Blue[/i].

Her thoughts sharpened. The world came into agonizing focus. Smoke was clearing, and they had guns, but they had trained her too well. Someone was speaking old words, familiar and tugging at old instructions, but Natasha was new and young and [i]this is my body[/i] burned in her every vein.

The tasers around her wrists were [i]very[/i] effective, taking two seperate men down in a breath. She [i]really[/i] needed to thank the (terrified) S.H.I.E.L.D. tech that had built them for her. 

Four remaining, trying to find cover and riddle her with bullet holes. Green eyes darted through the warehouse, tracing a path along boxes and machinery, to the catwalk above and--Barton. Barton and white blonde hair strafing, moving to snake legs about his throat and snap him down ([i]Наталья, shift your weight just so, dark eyes wounded, drowning and empty and screaming through a void, hand so cold against her skin and she owns her body in his lessons[/i]).

Natasha moved, darting past the screaming of bullets, launching onto a massive piece of equipment and climbing. They made her a spider. Natasha darted through steel and empty air, moving upwards, focused.

This is her body, and she won't let an empty puppet kill the only good thing in her life.