The Ultimate Fix-It Fic

3| C3-PO

Natasha stared at the holographic image of Fury staring at her. "You've got to be kidding me."

Fury chuckled. "I kid you not. It's Rumlow, all right." He turned to the file he sent over. "In Lagos Nigeria. Fun, right?"

Nat glared at the hologram. "When I asked for a basic mission to take the juniors on, I meant taking down a local alien-tech-using crime ring. Not..." she waved vaguely at the file. "That. That is not a basic mission."

"You want to test them, right?"

"Not like this." Natasha looked up as she heard a knock on the door. She pressed a button and minimized Fury off the main projector. "Come in," she called.

Matt came in with the help of Peter holding his files. "Thanks, Peter," the lawyer smiled in the boy's direction.

Nat pointed at the corner of her desk and Peter slid the stack of files onto the table.

He glanced at Natasha quickly. "Uh, where do I go now?"

They were in a small, old building Tony bought a month ago that used to be a post office, a sort of covert operations base. More realistically, an office where Peter could regularly train at and a rendezvous for the various missions they went on nowadays.

Natasha checked the rooms. "Uh, Tony is in lab one if you want to tinker, but I suggest finishing your homework first and studying for your English test." She looked at him sternly. "At least the homework, Pete."

"Fine." Peter trudged off with his backpack.

She looked at Matt, who was still smiling faintly. "What happened?"

The lawyer shrugged. "Same old, this week. The Secretary pushed for maximum sentence, I pushed for minimum, we didn't reach a compromise, we wasted the judge's time, etcetera." Matt tapped his cane on his knee. "I'm starting to think she doesn't have anything better to do."

Nat looked at the judge on file. "Who, Olivia Holt? She's a–" she laughed lightly– "a SHIELD asset. Or, she was. Now she's just a judge."

Matt frowned. "Wait, if she was a SHIELD asset–"

"We lost her in the beginning," Natasha said. "I'm still friends with her, which is why she's still entertaining this, but she won't make a decision in favour of me just because."

"Why doesn't the government know about her?"

"She was very deep undercover. Liv was trained specifically for the job. She actually went and got the bar exam and did everything, all of it, just for this." Nat explained.

"Huh." Matt shrugged. "You learn something new every day, I guess."

Nat nodded.

"Anyways," the lawyer stood up. "I have a thing to get to, so I better get going."

"Yes. Thank you. Stay safe." Natasha got the door for him as he left. She sat back down, nursing a small headache before turning Nick back on. "I'm back."

"Good for you." Fury pointed to his watch. "I'm gone. Hill will brief you when she comes over later." He vanished.

Natasha sighed. Her headache eventually turned into a migraine and her vision swam with dark spots.

She popped in a small pill and told herself to get over it.

-

Nat and Wanda were in a cafe the following weekend, pretending to be strangers in Lagos.

Steve was talking on comms. "Alright, what do you see?"

Natasha waited for Wanda's answers. After all, this was a class, however reluctant for her to teach it.

"Standard beat cops. Small station. Quiet street. It's a good target." Wanda took a sip of her coffee.

"There's an ATM at the south corner, which means..."

"Cameras," Pietro helpfully supplied.

"Both streets are one way," Wanda said.

"So?" Steve prompted.

"So, compromised escape routes." Wanda stirred her mug.

"Do you see that Range Rover down the street?" the captain said.

Wanda nodded. "Yeah, the red one? It's cute."

"It's also bulletproof, which means private security, which means more guns, which means more headaches for somebody. Probably us." Natasha glanced out of the shop, where the road was.

Wanda sighed. "You guys know I can move things with my mind, right?"

Nat rolled her eyes. "Looking over your shoulder needs to become second nature," she reminded the twins.

"Anybody ever tell you you're a little paranoid?" Sam butted in.

Natasha smiled to herself. "Not to my face. Why? Did you hear something?"

Steve interrupted them. "Eyes on target, folks. This is the best lead we've had on Rumlow in six months. I don't want to lose him." He sounded stern.

"If he sees us coming that won't be a problem. He kind of hates us." Sam flew overhead.

"Sam, see that garbage truck? Tag it." Steve said.

Wilson muttered something the comms couldn't catch. Then– "That truck's loaded for max weight. And the driver's armed."

"It's a battering ram," Nat realized.

"Go now," Steve ordered.

Wanda blinked. "What?"

"He's not hitting the police."

A few minutes later, Natasha heard an explosion.

"Is everything okay?" she huffed after getting kicked. She punched the kicker and got the stuff. "Payload secure, by the way."

"It's not okay," Steve muttered. " Sam... We need Fire and Rescue on the south side of the building. We gotta get up there."

Natasha ran to the scene and stared up in horror. When she finished processing a split second later, she thought, Well, this is it. Here come the Accords.

-

Peter was watching the news while eating his lunch. There apparently had been some scuffle in Nigeria that ended up in an explosion of red light.

Wait...

He switched to the story and stared at the screen, half-disbelieving. This was everything they had trained for.

Wanda had to practice funnelling gas, containing explosions, holding up people in a protective bubble. Pietro's job was to run around either tripping people or pushing people out of the way of impending doom. Vision was there to laser stuff and/or walk through their enemies.

And still... Peter listened as the news reported that fifteen people were killed in the explosion, and eleven of them Wakandans, who Natasha had taught him about in September. She encouraged him to talk to a girl from there, Shuri, who was also into science.

He wondered if she was one of the people killed.

Peter took his phone out and texted her.

She responded quickly, and Peter sat back with a small sigh of relief. It melted away as he got a call from Miss Romanoff.

"Peter, listen to me very carefully," she said. "You're in C3, right?"

"Yeah." Peter swallowed. "What's wrong?"

"Just listen. I need you to grab your stuff and get out of there. If you have time, go to the lab, save everything you need, and find the control laptop. Take it with you. When you get home, turn on the laptop and it'll prompt you to clean C3. Press 'confirm' and after the task is initialized, turn the laptop off completely. Do you understand?"

Peter nodded. "Yeah. Okay. I'll be five minutes."

"Stay safe. Be careful. Don't let someone follow you." Miss Romanoff hung up, and Peter began the cleaning out of Compound 3, the Post Office.