Dinner with Friends ¦ Kate x Yelena

Chapter 9: Fighting with Friends

Yelena and Kate are scootched close underneath their table. 'So, this may be my fault,' Yelena whispers.

'Of course, it is.'

'I may have gone a liiiiitle crazy trying to find a new job.'

'I don't suppose you're talking about a regular underpaid office job or a nice internship?'

Yelena chuckles. 'Freelance bounty hunter. I may have offended someone from the Russian mob. They did not like that.'

Kate isn't mad that Yelena was trying to do something with her life. If anything, she probably would have done the same thing. Or, at least something similar. Messing with Russians hasn't been high on her list since the entire Ronin situation. Rather, she is mad that this all has to happen now. And she's more than mad that they're being held hostage when she has no access to her bow.

'I need my bow,' she whispers to Yelena.

'QUIET!' One of the hostage-takers yells. 'And blonde girl, you better show yourself!' Yelena doesn't seem fazed, rolling her eyes, mouthing so annoying.

'You realize I can fight, right? I can take these people in under a minute probably. And so can you!' She nods at Kate. 'Well, maybe not in under a minute. But you could beat them if you tried. No bow, just bare fists.'

Kate thinks back to her fistfight with Yelena. It's true that she wasn't at all bad but she knows that if they had any intent to actually kill each other that day, she wouldn't still be here. Her whole thing is bow and arrow: being able to shoot as if it's the easiest thing in the world because to her, it is that easy.

Yelena doesn't wait for a reply from her friend. 'Stay hidden. It's me they're looking for so I'll go show 'em.' And off she goes, surprising the first guy with a kick to the head. Another person tries to fend her off but fails and gets slammed into the wall.

For a second there, Kate isn't too worried and even feels hopeful. But hope hasn't been too kind to her lately and she can't ignore the tight knot in her stomach. And it so happens that she's right not to trust Yelena's overconfidence in this fight because in the corner of the café, a woman speaks to a phone, and soon after, backup starts to arrive. Yelena does not beat them in under a minute and the longer her fight goes on, the more anxious Kate gets.

I have to do something. Now.

Think, Kate, think, she urges herself. Then it hits her: she has trick arrows on her. Just a couple of them in case you need them, Clint had explained during her stay at his house. She assumed it was useful advice, even if she just used it to snap off a nock to open a door somewhere rather than actually having to use it to fight enemies.

Now despite this relief, she still had two problems: she still didn't have a bow, and the arrows she did carry were overall pretty tame since carrying explosive ones in her bag could easily turn into a whole shitshow.

The first problem is tough but not impossible. She just has to figure out how to build a makeshift bow in a really short time.

Since everyone, hostages and hostage-takers alike, is distracted by Yelena, Kate sneaks behind the counter. She hastily looks around, trying to recall her first "bow" which was a makeshift project with a whole bunch of kitchen items. The tricky part of making it is that she only had to make one of them in her entire life because her mother had soon bought her the real deal.

Snooping through some of the drawers, she finds some rubber bands. No better luck could have been bestowed upon her than this. Except, you know, having the Russians leave rather than her actually having to fight them. That would have made things a lot easier. But fighting is in her blood, she just needs the right tools to manage.