Bad Bitch ⋙ N.Romanoff

o n e

BAD BITCH
❝these were the women who knitted pain into glory❞

1. Photographic flashbacks

April 2000
They'd been given a mission.
His name was █████ ██ ███████.
They didn't ask questions, they very rarely did, for they all knew the consequences of curiosity. The information they'd been detailed about the target was minimal, less likely to be able to be tortured out of them if they were ever taken for interrogations, but each little girl was concentrated on winning. Not only were they against the clock but, to their surprise, they were up against each other. Twelve assassins; all given the same target in a desperate attempt to show where the real power lay.
Madame B was as clever as she was ruthless. She knew that, when the time came to it, the only way to receive complete obedience was to issue missions like these. Keep them on their feet, the same ones that are still pustulating and bleeding from the fourteen hours of ballet from the day previous, and let them know that the only person they would never be put up against in a mission was her. Each girl knew Madame B was powerful without ever seeing her in combat. They just knew their attempts to control would grow futile in the presence of the severe woman.
They'd been given a name, a photograph, and a time limit.
The girls were nervous. Behind stoic faces and solid muscle, their delicate tendencies were being pushed. They were in neutral ground, their very own ballet performance, and had only been given a measly five minutes to get to their target who was residing in a box stall by himself. This theatre, to be exact, was high and grand and took a minimum of five minutes to reach the stall views for any average human; let alone with the task of getting back into their positions before the five minutes was up. The Black Widows, despite contrary belief, could only go so fast whilst maintaining subtlety. They'd all been ordered, very easily, that they must complete the assassination using their knives and feign to use their long distanced weapons. So the girls were nervous. They had all done the math inside of their wickedly quick heads and was only finding every possibility just as unlikely as the previous.
Sixteen year old Natalia Romanova, however, was an exception. The moment the distance and time scale had been uttered from Madame B's harsh contours of her lips, she knew exactly how she was going to get there in time. In fact, the girl had to fight the smirk off her face as she saw the girls around her pale. The overhead beams would mean that Natalia wouldn't have to battle stairs nor did she have to waste time pushing past people. How they rest had all survived and were alive was beyond her but, from the look on their leaders face, they wouldn't be for long if they didn't show some sort of resilience to hard missions.
It was a game, a challenge even, and the six furthest from the body after his death; well, they wouldn't be seen again for a long time and after that, the punishment of dying would have been merciful.

Of course, what also made them nervous was the girl standing beside Madame B. Even Natalia was wary of her. She was tall in stature, broad shoulders lined with subtle muscles that only the trained eye could identify, and was younger than them by a few years. Her hair was gelled back into a high ponytail that seemed just as still as the owners face. The lights above them flickered ever so slightly in the dressing room. The girl was universally beautiful, it was an undeniable truth, and yet it were her eyes in which seemed to suffocate the room. They were piercing. Looking at each of them with a keen look of a simple predatory gaze. It was a gaze that had solidified onto each girl singularly before working it's way to Natalia. Despite the eyes belonging to a female younger than her, Natalia felt a sudden bolt of desire to prove that she was just as dangerous as the girl beside Madame B. It were a strange sensation, the unprovoked urge to prove herself to this stranger, and Natalia wasn't too keen to ever emote it again and yet she impulsively indulged in the need to show her power. She met the gaze with eyes just as harsh and was met with a subtle twisted smile in response. The smile was just as predatory as the gaze but seemed to also relay a sense of humour, even curiosity. The smile only seemed to spook the girl's more.
But they'd been given a mission and, after Madame B had finished speaking, they were ordered to leave. They all left with a quick pace, Natalia being the first out the door of the small dressing room, but the unknown girl stayed behind.