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Red Room and Graduation Ceremony (From 0:00 to 0:45)
Red Room from childhood (Assume Natasha as a young girl in place of the blond girl)
Natasha's discussion with Bruce
Hammertech fight
Winter Soldier fight

The word 'disadvantage' is just an excuse for those who fail to justify their failure, that's something that Natasha has believed for a very long time.

Her cause now is for the good of the Complex. That's what she tells herself every time she has to do something less-than-kosher, or whenever the guilt of not letting the Boys know what she's up to gets a little too heavy. Telling them, particularly Steve, will only put them in danger, and now that he and Tony are so close letting Tony in on her secret is more dangerous than she'd like. Bucky is certainly a no-go, not because she doesn't trust him but because she would never demand he have to lie to his best friend if the situation ever arose. Things like that are important. She knows that now.

So, for now, it's just her, and that's fine. Free Enterprise is aware of her presence, Natasha managed to slip herself in as a mule to replace the two idiots she had arrested weeks ago, not that anyone else in the Secret Society she's surrounded herself with knows that. She's managed to float beneath the radar while keeping her eyes and ears open, and why is that? Because she's small, and nobody who looks at her would possibly consider her as a threat. Maybe when she ends up sending half of them to lock up they'll talk about how unfair it was, that she had a hidden set of skills they weren't aware of. That they were at a disadvantage.

No such thing.

It took a while - longer than she'd like to admit - for Natasha to finally find out exactly where the Boss is hiding, and she's not talking about her local Capo. She's been searching for the head, the true kingpin of Free Enterprise, and when she found him that's when she had to start coming up with a plan. Taking down an organized crime ring from the inside out isn't something that can be done overnight, and one wrong move can easily lead to death with a group like this. The collapse of the fighting ring, though... that was just pure luck.

The warehouse that she's navigating to is completely off the grid, a smart place to hide the head of a Secret Society if there ever was one. There's only one guard at the door, a rookie mistake to an uneducated eye but smart, in Natasha's opinion. She watches him from around the corner of another building, studying his pattern of walking as she breaks down everything she can gather from seeing him there; not security. This is the head of Free Enterprise that she's trying to get to, his security is inside, probably dozens of men with weapons from a clearance she hasn't even heard of, which makes the one guy outside an alarm. He's simply there to make sure the guys inside know when something is on it's way. She can knock him out when his back is turned, perhaps use the element of surprise to her advantage when she walks in, but in a situation like this that's not helpful. Not when everyone inside is better armed than she is. Sometimes you have to fight your way in, and other times it takes finesse. Lucky for Natasha, she knows how to handle both.

It goes about as well as it can; she starts to approach the man with a bubbly smile that would probably make anyone who actually knows her wince, and a little wave which prompts him to raise his weapon and point the barrel of his blaster square between her eyes. He's grabbing her by the shoulder and dragging her into the warehouse before she can even say that she wants to see Boss, and Natasha doesn't have to act when he tosses her onto the ground on the center of a large room, causing her to wince when her knee collides with the floor.

"Found this one outside." The thugs voice is higher than she had expected.

"Then get out there and see if she brought any friends." That one is lower. Natasha tries to look up but she's being grabbed beneath the arms and dragged to her feet by four more hands; it all went so fast that she couldn't get a decent headcount of the room. Maybe she'll call that a disadvantage in the future if this goes south.

There's only one important person in the room, though, and that's the man sitting before her in a chair that looks like it belongs in a different world. Leather, plush, wingback... to think something like that is a luxury, here. He looks younger than she had expected, perhaps ten years older than her, and he's remarkably average looking when it comes to everything but his eyes. Maybe it's the way that he's looking at her but Natasha can feel that stare down to her core, and for a split second she almost forgets to hide her shock. She knows him; not intimately, but he was definitely one of the men betting on her at the gala. She recognizes that stare, and that sets her on edge. Was he trying to scout her, or was he just interested in a dance? Her uncertainty isn't an act anymore.

"Gentlemen, where are your manners? We have a Special lady in our presence." He smiles at his own pun. "Put her down. You," he snaps his fingers at the man holding her right shoulder, "get her a seat."

They move immediately, letting go of her to back away, and Natasha makes a show of rubbing one of her shoulders before she feels a chair push against the back of her knees.

"Sit."

When she doesn't immediately move on his command a large hand lands on her shoulder and pushes her down in the chair until her legs buckle; another show, another wince. Her fear is real, and it only helps her sell the performance she knows she needs to put on.

"I just wanted to see you in person, I wanted to bring you something-" she moves to reach into a pocket when she hears at least four blasters powering on, causing her to freeze in place with eyes wide like a deer caught in headlights. She looks back at the Boss, milking that fearful uncertainty, and she wets her lips nervously before she continues. "It's just a plasticred disk, I swear."

He eyes her closely, as if trying to see through her, but after a few moments he gestures for the men around her to lower their weapons before he puts his hand out.

She takes her cue, reaching into her pocket and pulling out the disk to place in his palm. "Everything is on there," she begins quickly, adding a breathy rush for effect. "Everything that we lost when the fighting ring went down, all of the credits that were taken, it's all there. It took me a while to get it, but it's untraceable, I swear. I checked it myself-"

"Because you know how to identify a bugged plasticred?"

"I know how to access the financial record system to see that they still think they have that money."

It's a bluff but she holds eye contact, and the seconds feel like hours as they tick by before he gives a satisfied facial shrug and hands the disk off to a man to his right. "I didn't ask you to retrieve our losses-"

"I know. I wanted to."

"You wanted to."

"Because they took it from us." There's silence in the room and Natasha looks around nervously; an excuse to finally get a headcount. Fourteen, and that's only what she can see. "That's - that's what we're working against, right? The Computer taking anything else from us? It's already making it hard enough for us to move product, we're just going to let it take everything we earned? Waste all of that effort?"

He's staring at her again, eyes holding the same intensity, and Natasha nervously chews the corner of her lip as she waits for him to respond. "I had top men working on getting those credits back into our pocket and you managed to do it in a matter of days. What makes you so capable?"

She shrugs, and the words come out on a false waver. "Maybe they're just incapable." She gets a snort of laughter somewhere in the room that's immediately halted from, what sounds like, an elbow to the gut. Tough crowd.

Her response catches his attention though, and he finally looks away from her to glance at the man at his right, the one holding the disk. "Why's it taking Borg so long when we have a mule walking in here with a plasticard holding almost six digits?"

"We don't know that the money is on there, Boss-"

"Don't talk to me like I'm a fucking idiot!" The last words come out so explosively that Natasha actually startles in her seat, fingers curling around the metal edge. "You think that she came in here with a fake disk? We could kill her on the spot, you think I didn't consider that it's fake? It's obviously not a fake, she found us. If she was tryin' to do anything don't you think she would have just reported our location, you moron? What was taking him so long?"

"He's only been at it for - for a couple of days, he was getting close-"

"I want him in here. I want him in here now." A beat. "NOW!" Natasha's head is down but she can hear the shuffle of at least four men hurrying out of the building, and when the silence takes over she looks back up at the man before her with hesitance. He's smiling at her again. "It's so hard to get good help these days, isn't that what they say?" He leans back, crossing his legs widely to let an ankle rest on his knee, and he lets his fingers press together in a steeple before him as his eyes close. "He better have a good excuse."

The man to his right, who's now looking much less confident than he was when Natasha first arrived, seems unsure of himself before he speaks again. "Getting that deep into the Complex is hard, Boss. Especially with Rogers running around playing boyscout, everybody knows he's Computer's guard dog, getting past him is impossible."

Calmer, now. "Isn't our friend #27 in the medical ward?"

"He's already awake, our contact saw him just this morning..."

His voice is starting to waver again with impatience. "Then knock him out again, why do I have to spell everything out for you?"

For the first time the underling looks at his Boss as if he's insane. "...You want us 'ta put a hit out on Goals?"

Natasha would laugh if the context wasn't so terrifying. She speaks before he can answer, barreling forward before anyone can shut her up. "You can't. They'd catch you before you even breathed in his direction, the amount of security they've got on Do Right is almost as intense as Teela, it's impossible to get that close to him. The person who shot him is already being interrogated and it's just going to get worse now... You need someone who's already on the inside to be able to do this sort of thing for you." Without hesitation, "I can do it."

The Boss is looking at her as if he had forgotten that she was even there, lips slightly parted over his arched fingers, and the room is quiet again as he seems to size her up. He can either decide that she's too dangerous, or he can mistaken her for a simple opportunist, a 5'3" woman who just happens to be in the right place at the right time. He can assume that she's exactly what she looks like, and then he can call that a disadvantage down the line. She chances a smile. "I like to consider myself a lady of opportunity. Not a mule." Seconds tick by.

And he smiles back.

Natasha’s superior is a shithead wrapped up in a YELLOW jumpsuit.

The way that he talks to her is nothing less than condescending, and although Natasha has a particular skill for keeping herself cool in undercover situations, this is a little different. She has no cards up her sleeve here, no friends in high places that she can utilize without risking their safety or reputation, and it takes more effort than she’ll admit to not punch him in his stupid smirking face. It’s barely 08:45 when she arrives for duty and he immediately sends her off to ‘make herself useful’, and when Natasha asks him exactly how he expects her to do that he replies with, “I don’t know, sweetheart, why don’t you go dismantle a secret society or something? Go on.” The look that she gives him is one that would make men back home wet themselves but he’s too busy laughing at himself while some prick in ORANGE giggles along with him. If she broke either of their legs she’d probably get some sort of warning, so instead Natasha turns on her heel and leaves. She has her mission, whether they think her able to accomplish it or not.

It doesn’t take her long. Natasha knows how these systems work; she’s infiltrated some of the deepest Black Market societies ever constructed. Although they vary in levels of abhorrence, they all have one thing in common, and it’s that they all operate in plain sight. She just has to look for the hidden flow, the people who look like they’re walking with the fear of being watched set deep in their eyes and body language, and by 10:12 Natasha is in an area of the Complex where she has strange men approaching her on the street in an attempt to sell her something she doesn’t need.

The real struggle is a moral one, because Natasha isn’t comfortable labeling someone as a traitor if they’re just trying to make a living for themselves. She moves in the crowd, eyes scanning across throngs of people and into run down buildings before she hears it; voices, angry and menacing beneath the static sound of city. She stops walking suddenly, ignoring the man behind her who collides with her shoulder from the unexpected halt, and Natasha’s gaze moves in the direction of the sound to see a narrow alley to her right. She moves deftly until her back is pressed against one of the buildings and she glances around the corner, listening close.

It’s three men, two of them advancing on the third. He’s older, perhaps in his sixties, and obviously frightened, his hands trembling as he holds them up in a weak plead for space as they back him against the alleyway wall. She can’t hear everything, but the words ‘owe’ and ‘respect’ get thrown around a lot. The older gentleman says something so quickly she can barely make out anything, but she catches the last part clearly. “Please, don’t.” That’s enough for her.

She’s suddenly running, blaster still strapped firmly to her hip. She doesn’t want to have to use it unless it’s completely necessary, and she can already tell that it won’t be by how one of the younger men look back and freeze in shock to see her advancing so quickly. She reaches him before he can even reach for the weapon at his side and with one solid swing she hits him in the head, knocking him back with enough force that he crashes into the alley wall and crumples to the ground. Her elbow comes back effortlessly to bash the second man on the jaw, and when he doesn’t immediately go down Natasha turns to face him so she can swing again for his temple, knocking him out cold. The elderly man is on the ground, and she’s unsure if it’s due to the fact that she’s frightened him or if he actually got knocked over in the altercation. Either way, she feels bad.

He winces when she approaches but Natasha gently takes him by the shoulder and elbow anyway, guiding him to his feet with a tender hand. After reassuring him that she’s only there to help he confesses that the two men are agents of the Free Enterprise, and he owes them a substantial debt after making a deal with them to get proper medication. He thanks her profusely, although Natasha suddenly feels as if she hasn’t done much at all – he still owes the money. They’ll just send more thugs after him, that’s how these systems work. She can’t do any more now, though, and even if she can, the victimized old man is too afraid to stick around, disappearing back into the crowd after thanking her once more. Natasha is left there to stare down at the two unconscious men with a sigh – Why did there have to be two? Transporting one is going to be hard enough.

She has to disappear deeper into the complex alleyways to avoid the crowd, dragging two grown men across the ground with her until she finally finds herself in a different sector of the city that she’s not afraid to call a Pick Up Transport to. By the time it shows up one of the men is slowly starting to wake, and Natasha knocks him out with the butt of her blaster before letting the bots take over to toss both assholes into the back of the Transport. Natasha herself walks her way back to headquarters to fill out her report, reaching it by 12:00, and when she sees Shithead In YELLOW she taps him on the shoulder until he turns to face her.

“I have this for you.” She hands him the report, hand calmly falling to her side when he snatches it from her with a sigh. He reads it with a look of distaste that slowly fades into a sort of bewilderment, and then he reads it again before looking at her doubtfully. “This says that you’ve apprehended two Free Enterprise agents.”

She nods.

“By yourself?” When she doesn’t add anything he scoffs. “That’s impossible.”

“That’s what my mission was, sir.” She’s getting daring, using that sort of tone, but Natasha’s delicate eyebrow raises in question as her head gives a small tilt to the side before he can state as much. “My superior wouldn’t give me an impossible mission, that’s setting the system up for failure and Friend Computer isn’t much of a fan of failure, isn’t that right? Sir.”

The way she sees that flicker of tension in his jaw satisfies Natasha so much that she actually smiles.

PLAYER: Paley
AGED 18+? Yas
RESERVED? Indeed. I was even a pain in the ass about it.
IN-GAME CHARACTERS: I was invited by the wonderful Rianne

NAME: Natasha Romanoff
CANON: MCU
CANON POINT: Post CACW
ARRIVAL TYPE: Rescued, although she will claim involuntary by those who ask.
IC USERNAME: missromanova
HISTORY: Here!
PERSONALITY: It's difficult to explain exactly who Natasha Romanoff is because, in the end, Natasha Romanoff doesn't even know the answer to that question. When she was a very young girl she was recruited into the Black Widow program, forced to train in the Red Room during her most developmental years, and beyond the physical combat and mental steeling there were two things that were ingrained in her; she never fails, and she is only a shadow. Natasha believed that for years and, admittedly, still believes it in her lowest moments, causing her to doubt her abilities when it comes to being a person, and not an assassin.

Her training in the Red Room shaped her into the woman that she is, a violent and lethal weapon capable of taking down threats that hold more strength than she. She's agile and fast, manipulative and sly, but all of the traits she's managed to 'gain' had never truly been gains at all, instead being masks she's learned to perfect over the many years she spent being other people. This has caused a bit of a crisis for Natasha when it comes to being herself, because in the end, Natasha doesn't know who 'herself' is. After being liberated from the Red Room by her close friend and teammate Clint Barton, it took Natasha a while to recover from the fact that she had been all but brainwashed into thinking that she was less than human, and she switched sides to instead fight for S.H.I.E.L.D who, at the time, she thought was a force for good. In reality, Natasha traded in on mask for another; she was still committing espionage and killing people, she just thought they were the Bad Guys. The real Bad Guys, not the ones that the Soviets had put a red mark on.

To find out S.H.I.E.L.D was nothing more than a cover for H.Y.D.R.A shook Natasha to her core, although she refused to let it show on the surface. Perhaps she could make an excuse for becoming the Black Widow, having been absconded at such a young age and forced into battle without knowing what her true options were, but to willingly trust S.H.I.E.L.D after she thought she had switched sides was a serious blow to her self certainty that she still hasn't fully recovered from. She questioned whether or not she was capable of telling the difference between good and bad at all, but she found comfort in her friends, a precious rarity for someone who had lived her life. She saw men like Clint and Steve as good, truly good, and truly good men wouldn't see good in her unless it was there. Natasha held onto that, and found comfort in the fact that, although she couldn't trust her own moral compass, she could trust theirs. Her loyalty to her friends is unwavering because of this, as they define her, and the person who she wants to be instead of the person she afraid she really is.

Throughout her life, Natasha never made a decision that was truly her own, having been following orders for as long as she could possibly remember. When she was asked to sign the Sokovia Accords, Natasha did so out of both a sense of obligation to protect innocent lives and a desire to keep the team together. The Avengers was the first place that Natasha didn't have to wonder if she did good, she knew she did, and preserving that was all she truly cared for. It didn't work out that way, however, and although Natasha worked hard to try and bring her teammates together, she failed in the end, something that she alone takes the blame for. After making the call to save Steve and Barnes, Natasha went into hiding, effectively putting herself away to keep herself from doing any more damage to the world if left unchecked.

So what does that mean about Natasha as a person? She's slow to trust, and yet is willing to give those viewed as suspicious the benefit of the doubt, because Natasha knows better than anything the struggle that is redemption. She has a dry and witty humor that's used around those she finds comfort in, while simultaneously harboring the ability to terrify the unfortunate souls who stand in her way. Her loyalty knows no bounds when she finds someone that she truly cares for, and yet she's switched hands so many times she doesn't even know who she answers to anymore. Natasha Romanoff is a walking, talking contradiction, and all that can be truly said about her is that her actions are birthed in good intention.
INVENTORY: Nothing but the clothes on her back. Natasha has been in hiding so she's been traveling light, to say the least.
CHANGES: Not necessary. She's terrifying, but she's all squishy human.

ONE: First.
TWO: Second. (This link leads to the same place, but there are several different starters and two separate threads. I just wanted to make sure to link from the starter instead of the first comment.)
THREE: Third.

Name: Paley
OOC Journal: baneofpaley
Preferred Contact: Email, Plurk, or here.


Character Name: Natasha Romanoff
Fandom: MCU
Canon Point: Post Civil War
Canon Wiki/Source: Here.
Contact Method: An Also Human approached Natasha in her safe house in the form of a kind, Russian speaking woman. The accent was broken and the words were slightly jumbled, but between the conversation and the images that the Also Human managed to show her in her own mind, Natasha got a good enough idea of what was being asked of her. She asked for a day to think about it, and when they returned, she agreed.

Character History: It's difficult to explain exactly who Natasha Romanoff is because, in the end, Natasha Romanoff doesn't even know the answer to that question. When she was a very young girl she was recruited into the Black Widow program, forced to train in the Red Room during her most developmental years, and beyond the physical combat and mental steeling there were two things that were ingrained in her; she never fails, and she is only a shadow. Natasha believed that for years and, admittedly, still believes it in her lowest moments, causing her to doubt her abilities when it comes to being a person, and not an assassin.

Her training in the Red Room shaped her into the woman that she is, a violent and lethal weapon capable of taking down threats that hold more strength than she. She's agile and fast, manipulative and sly, but all of the traits she's managed to 'gain' had never been truly gains at all, instead being masks she's learned to perfect over the many years she spent being other people. This has caused a bit of a crisis for Natasha when it comes to being herself, because in the end, Natasha doesn't know who 'herself' is. After being liberated from the Red Room by her close friend and teammate Clint Barton, it took Natasha a while to recover from the fact that she had been all but brainwashed into thinking that she was less than human, and she switched sides to instead fight for S.H.I.E.L.D who, at the time, she thought was a force for good. In reality, Natasha traded in on mask for another; she was still committing espionage and killing people, she just thought they were the Bad Guys. The real Bad Guys, not the ones that the Soviets had pointed out.

To find out S.H.I.E.L.D was nothing more than a cover for H.Y.D.R.A shook Natasha to her core, although she refused to let it show on the surface. Perhaps she could make an excuse for becoming the Black Widow, having been absconded at such a young age and forced into battle without knowing what her true options were, but to willingly trust S.H.I.E.L.D after she thought she had switched sides was a serious blow to her self certainty. She questioned whether or not she was capable of telling the difference between good and bad at all, but she found comfort in her friends, a precious rarity for someone who had lived her life. She saw men like Clint and Steve as good, truly good, and truly good men wouldn't see good in her unless it was there. Natasha held onto that, and found comfort in the fact that, although she couldn't trust her own moral compass, she could trust theirs. Her loyalty to her friends is unwavering because of this, as they define her, and the person who she wants to be instead of the person she afraid she really is.

Throughout her life, Natasha never made a decision that was truly her own, having been following orders for as long as she could possibly remember. When she was asked to sign the Sokovia Accords, Natasha did so out of both a sense of obligation to protect innocent lives and a desire to keep the team together. The Avengers was the first place that Natasha didn't have to wonder if she did good, she knew she did, and preserving that was all she truly cared for. It didn't work out that way, however, and although Natasha worked hard to try and bring her teammates together, she failed in the end, something that she alone takes the blame for. After making the call to save Steve and Barnes, Natasha went into hiding, effectively putting herself away to keep herself from doing any more damage to the world if left unchecked.

Abilities/Special Powers: Master spy, master martial artist, master acrobat, master assassin, multilingual, intellectually gifted and capable of processing multiple streams of information at once, master interrogator, master hacker. She can also dance. She makes a mean margarita. I don't know if that last one is true.

Prose/Action Bracket Sample: (From old comm)
Aliens, killer robots, werewolves, gods, goddesses... fuck it, that she could handle. That, Natasha could take head on, but people being here back from the dead? How far could that go? And if people from her world could just show up, what did that mean? Clint? Steve, Tony, Wanda? God forbid, Bruce? That wasn't why she came here, she came here to get away and now Natasha felt like the possibility of having everything follow her was hanging over her head like an anchor waiting to be dropped. And it was the exact opposite of what she was trying to find in this place.

Despite her twisting and turning, Natasha slept through the night and she woke up early before the sun. Natasha stripped out of the clothes that she found, her catsuit still slightly damp but wrapped around her like a makeshift towel, and Natasha followed the barely worn path to the rest of the camp before heading to what looked like the largest hut and sticking her head in to see what she could find. Exactly what she was looking for, apparently - there were the extra clothes that someone had mentioned. She tossed her catsuit onto the hut, draping it against the roof to let it dry there for when the sun came up with the legs hanging low enough for her to pull it down, and she walked into the shelter naked to dig through the clothes and see what sizes she could find. It didn't take her too long, and although the shirt wasn't really her style she decided that she could deal, pulling it on after finding a bra that didn't fit terribly and a pair of shorts. And then she saw the building materials. What the hell, why not? It wasn't like she was going to be able to sleep. Besides, with her head running in circles; Natasha needed something to do with her hands.

She wasn't an architect by any means, but she knew survival. She had been all around the world, had seen safe houses that varied from castles to literal wooden sheds in the middle of a forest, and Natasha had no intention of letting her lack of home building limit her on what she could and couldn't do. It wasn't that complicated anyway; ground support, floor, walls, roof. And there seemed to be no roofing materials so, naturally, she would just use more wood. That was what it was there for, right? She started at roughly 5AM although she didn't know it, and she had been working for hours without noticing the passing time. She was sweating, her shoulder was sore from carrying large pieces of lumber back and forth to the site she decided to set up, but the basic shed-like shelter was coming along nicely, and most of all, her head was clear. That was her goal.

She didn't notice that the sun had come up so long ago until someone was standing behind her, blocking her light and thus her clear view of the nail she was trying to hammer in to keep the third wall was building flat on the ground together. She huffed a sigh of annoyance, her head turning with her long red hair pulled up in a tie she had found, stray strands falling into her green eyes. "Do you mind?" She asked blindly in annoyance around the nail she had in her mouth. "A whole island, you need to stand right behind me?"

Network Sample: For those of you who have been asking, I decided that I was going to make some basic blueprints of home and shelter layouts for us to be able to choose from. I'm halfway done with the island map, and it might be good for you all to know that there's actually a natural hot spring further toward the center of the island. Usually it's too warm to enjoy it, but I think that we could find some use for it as a natural source of heat if we ever need that.

So, there. I've been helpful. It's only taken me a couple of weeks.