The Fire in Which We Burn (Natasha x F!Reader)

Chapter 6: The League of Shadows

Warnings: injuries, blood, burns, moderate threat, guns

If there was anything that you hated more than an organised group of heroes, it was an organised group of 'villains'. You used the word lightly as this bunch of incompetents could barely rob a bank if the guards left the vault doors wide open and willingly handed over their guns.

The Legion of Shadows, as they called themselves, was made up of five members, excluding yourself. Mantra, a young woman with bright blue hair who could, on occasion, muddle the minds of those around her. She mostly succeeded in doing that by opening her mouth and talking absolute shit at them but perhaps five percent of the time it was achieved through actual telepathic ability.

Her original partner in crime Josh was a hacker from Oakland who hid his face behind a horrendous pair of 80's porn star glasses and a matching mustache. He prided himself on being able to break into any system, regardless of the security net. In his defence, Josh always delivered on his promises. Unfortunately, he had the stealth of a wrecking ball and more often than not only succeeded in gaining access by completely destroying half of the target system and alerting the owner to the less than subtle intrusion.

Alpha and Beta were identical twins with the ability to teleport, so long as their intended landing point was no more than five steps away. Beta, the only one of the pair to ever speak, also claimed to understand each and every language in the world which was, actually, quite useful. Alpha could hold their breath for almost twenty minutes and was a champion swimmer as a child but had, in their adulthood, been attacked by a school of fish and now refused to even go near a body of water.

The final member of the Legion was Chloe, although she preferred to go by the name Xi'alli. Why, you didn't know. She was, depressingly, the most normal of the group. She had a big personality and took every suggestion as a threat. Because of that, she spent most of her time barking orders and refused to amend a single detail of any plan that she made, no matter how ridiculous.

One day, one glorious day, you would kill them all. You'd lock them in a building and set it alight with them still inside. Finding a comfortable seat on a nearby hill, you intended to whip out a picnic and spend the evening warmed by the heat of the burning wreck. Until that wonderful day came, you were sadly stuck with them.

Post your escape from that five star SHIELD facility, you'd snuck onto a small boat and ended up somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Three months later and you were still trapped there, wishing oh so desperately to be back in your isolation cell. No matter how hard you prayed, the tracker that SHIELD had implanted in your arm did not bring a team to arrest you. You soon lost faith in the faulty tracker and tore it from your skin, crushing it into tiny pieces beneath your boot. It felt like a piece of your soul died that day.

You weren't entirely certain where this base was or how these idiots had ever amassed enough money to fund it - one: buying an island was expensive, even a small lump of sand and rock like this and two: the lair was surprisingly well equipped with high tech weapons and surveillance, even more shocking considering that none of them were capable of making the toaster work.

They'd threatened to kill you when you first crawled out of the boat (there had been much argument over how you should be executed and it ran for such a long time that Alpha brought you a cup of tea while the battle of words raged) but once they'd realised who you were, and recognised the value of having your skills on their team, they welcomed you into their League with open arms.

That was why, despite every instinct in your body telling you otherwise, you found yourself nodding along to Chloe's latest terrible scheme. They had to believe that you were one hundred and ten percent on board with this unavoidable disaster if you were to ever get a place on their jet and find your way back to civilisation. At this point, you were so desperate to leave the island that you had considered just swimming back to the mainland. A thousand miles of open sea was so much more preferable than having to listen to Mantra slaughter 'Call Me Maybe' for the hundredth time.