Xcalibur Xc
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[Ironman] Ch: 79 [Pain is a Language]
🕑 Added 2025-04-27 10:46:36 +0000 UTC[Horizon Island – Command Deck] [4 days later]
The soft hum of servers filled the room, punctuated by the quiet clatter of keys. Screens glowed, illuminating Natasha's face. Her expression was calm and focused, and she was happy to be of help. While others were handling things outside, she was doing some hacking from the base.
Behind her, Hermes hovered silently in projection mode, sifting through thousands of live feeds, encrypted databases, and shadow accounts.
"Target 432B. Cayman Islands shell corporation. Linked to Senator Colter," Hermes intoned.
Natasha's fingers moved like blades over the holographic keyboard. Within seconds, she bypassed the firewall, cracked the secondary encryption, and exposed the ledger hidden behind six layers of dummy fronts.
"Got you, you rat," Natasha muttered.
With a few quick taps, she rerouted the funds. Washed them clean through humanitarian organizations, small startup ventures, and obscure tech firms Tony discreetly owned. Within five minutes, the black money vanished from the dirty accounts and reappeared in the coffers of Horizon Island.
Clean. Untraceable. Legal.
Hermes spoke again, voice crisp.
"Target 267X. Offshore accounts linked to former Oscorp board members. Funds: two point seven billion USD. Status: frozen by Interpol request."
Natasha smiled thinly.
"Not anymore."
She unleashed a code worm designed by Tony himself that bypassed the freeze by mimicking a diplomatic immunity protocol. The money flowed like blood down invisible veins, straight into their system.
Screen after screen flickered with confirmation.
Wire transfers completed.
Contracts voided.
Assets seized and reallocated.
On another monitor, real-time footage showed law enforcement raiding safe houses, private airfields, and penthouses. Politicians were dragged out in handcuffs. Corporate moguls wept as their empires crumbled in front of news cameras.
Some had tried to run.
Some had tried to hide.
None escaped.
The Widows hunted them down with surgical strikes. Lina's team took down an entire cartel-linked syndicate in Argentina. Melina's squad raided a secret biolab in Romania without a single shot fired. The other teams are also scattered around the world, taking down the criminals.
Natasha's voice cut through the room.
"How much have we recovered?"
Hermes processed for a heartbeat.
"Over four hundred seventy-two billion across multiple sectors. Estimated clean profit after redistribution: four hundred twenty-eight billion."
Natasha leaned back slightly, arms crossed.
She stared at the numbers flashing across the screens. Four hundred twenty-eight billion. It felt unreal. Like a mountain of weight, she could move with a few keystrokes. She didn't hesitate.
She pulled up the world map. Pinpoints flashed red where chaos had erupted after the mass arrests. Companies collapsing. Jobs lost overnight. Families stranded because their cities had depended on corrupted systems for survival.
She started there.
Eighty percent. That was the number she fixed in her mind.
She redirected entire blocks of assets toward rebuilding.
One keystroke sent hundreds of millions into emergency unemployment funds across Europe and South America.
Another opened floodgates to international medical networks, delivering vaccines and equipment to refugee camps in North Africa and Southeast Asia.
She created massive educational grants through dummy trusts, designed for war orphans, slum children, and abandoned towns. No application fees. No bureaucracy. Just opportunity.
Natasha routed funding into disaster relief programs that the world had long forgotten. Earthquake zones in Turkey. Flood recovery in Bangladesh. Drought-hit villages in central Africa, where a few hundred dollars could keep a school running for a year.
Food banks exploded overnight in cities that had once been ignored. Fresh produce, clean water, and proper shelter. Not handouts. Foundations.
Shelters sprung up in war-ravaged cities. Old-age homes were rebuilt, expanded, and staffed with proper nurses and doctors. Veterans received a huge amount of money through legal means. Entire homeless communities were moved into newly built centers with jobs, training, and dignity.
Every few seconds, another wire transfer flicked across the world.
Not hidden. Not silent.
Anonymous, but undeniable.
Wherever the money appeared, people noticed. A mother fed her starving child for the first time in weeks. A wounded soldier walked again. A refugee found a home that wasn't a tent and a number tag.
Natasha sat still as the map shifted from red to green. Tiny lights of hope blooming across the dark surface of the Earth.
For the first time in what felt like forever, her hands weren't stained with blood. They were building something.
Healing something.
Through action.
Real, visible, unstoppable action.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
And for the first time in her life, she felt it.
Not adrenaline. Not survival. Not cold duty.
Satisfaction.
A weight lifted from her shoulders that she hadn't even realized she carried.
This.
This was redemption.
Not in whispers or in hiding.
In the open.
Where it mattered.
Natasha smiled. Not the practiced, weaponized smile she'd worn for years. A real one.
She leaned back in the chair, staring at the rising green dots across the planet, and whispered to herself, voice soft, steady, sure.
"This time... we did it right."
Behind her, Hermes quietly flickered a holographic screen to life.[Shadow Legion – Global Influence Map: Status - Active][Humanitarian Index: Surge + 312%]
The world was changing.
A few minutes later...
The door slid open with a soft hiss, and Tony stepped inside.
He just walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her gently into him. His chin rested on her shoulder as he pressed a soft kiss to her cheek.
Natasha didn't flinch. She leaned into him, letting her head tilt slightly, eyes still watching the map on the screen. Green lights flickered like stars across the world.
She placed her hand over his.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Tony kissed her again, slower this time. "For what?"
"For giving me this chance," she said, voice steady but thick with emotion. "For letting me... be something more than what they made me."
He squeezed her tighter, his voice low in her ear. "I made a promise."
She turned slightly to look at him.
Tony met her eyes without hesitation.
"This," he said, gesturing to the screens, to the green blooming across the world, "this is just the beginning."
...
[Meanwhile...] [Interrogation room-1]
The lights buzzed overhead. White. Clinical. No shadows. No dark corners to hide in.
The Ten Rings assassin sat chained to a thick steel chair bolted into the ground. His wrists and ankles were bound by high-tension restraints laced with electric filaments, ready to deliver disabling shocks at a moment’s notice. His mask was gone now, revealing a brutalized face... broken nose, split lip, bruises forming dark patches under both eyes.
Across from him, Melina sat calmly on a metal stool, legs crossed, wearing a simple white tactical suit. Well, her white suit got patches of blood all over.
A small cart sat beside her. Neat rows of gleaming tools: scalpels, electrodes, bone saws, injectors, and a few other torture devices.
Melina didn’t speak immediately. She simply watched him.
The assassin stared back, breathing hard, jaw locked.
The silence stretched.
Finally, Melina picked up a slim black tablet and tapped it lightly with her nail.
"I know you're trained to resist pain," she said conversationally, almost like she was commenting on the weather. "Resist interrogation. Bite your tongue off if you have to. The whole martyrdom package."
The assassin said nothing.
Melina smiled faintly.
"But that's the old way. See..." she leaned forward slightly, setting the tablet down, "pain tolerance isn’t your shield anymore. Not when we can bypass it."
She reached for a thin, hooked probe from the tray.
"This?" she said, twirling it lightly between her fingers. "Nerve isolator. Not designed to cause pain exactly. Just... discomfort. In all the wrong places."
The assassin shifted slightly in the chair. Sweat started to bead on his forehead.
Melina moved to his side and, without ceremony, jabbed the hook into the side of his neck, precisely between two vertebrae.
There was no scream.
His body simply locked up.
His muscles spasmed violently, jerking against the restraints.
Melina watched clinically, timing it.
"That’s your vagus nerve protesting," she said mildly. "Controls your heart rate. Your digestion. Your breathing." She tilted her head, studying him. "Feels like you're drowning, doesn’t it?"
The assassin gasped for air, muscles twitching uncontrollably, saliva dripping from his mouth.
Melina pulled the hook free.
Instant relief.
He sagged in the chair, coughing violently.
"That was thirty percent power," she said, wiping the probe clean with a cloth. "Next time, it will be forty."
Still, he said nothing.
Melina smiled again. "I admire your training. Really. But it's not going to save you."
She pressed two fingers under his jaw, just enough pressure, and his body went stiff again. This time, he whimpered.
"You’re going to tell me everything you know," she said, voice calm and almost soothing. "Mandarin's base, safe houses, number of assassins, weaponry you people have, technology details, names, and everything you know about missions... ongoing and upcoming. I want everything."
The assassin clenched his jaw, shaking his head slightly.
Melina leaned down, her mouth near his ear.
"You will talk," she whispered. "Because eventually... your body will betray you. It always does."
She pulled back, reached for a syringe filled with clear fluid.
"You know what this is?" she asked.
No response.
She injected it into his neck.
"This will make your nerves ten times more sensitive," she said. "Every breath. Every twitch. Every heartbeat will feel like fire in your veins."
She stepped back, waiting.
It took less than a minute.
The assassin began to shake uncontrollably, teeth grinding so hard that flecks of blood appeared at the corners of his mouth.
Melina pulled up a second chair and sat calmly again, tablet in hand, stylus ready.
"Whenever you’re ready," she said gently. "Take your time."
Another minute passed.
Then, broken and trembling, he croaked out the first word.
"France..."
Melina's stylus moved without hesitation.
"Good," she said softly. "Now, keep going."
...
[Interrogation room 2]
The room stank of sweat, blood, and desperation.
Ross hung suspended by chains from the ceiling, arms stretched above him at painful angles. His uniform was gone. Just blood-streaked boxers now. His body was a roadmap of bruises, cuts, and burns.
Yelena stood in front of him, wiping blood off her gloves with a white towel.
She looked fresh. Relaxed. Like she was just getting started.
Ross lifted his head weakly, one eye swollen shut. His breathing was shallow, raspy.
"Four days," Yelena said, tossing the towel aside. "Four days, General. You’re tougher than I gave you credit for."
Ross tried to sneer. It came out as a pained grimace.
"You think this... will make you better... than me?"
Yelena chuckled, low and cold.
"What the fuck are you babbling on about? That wasn't the correct answer."
She pulled up a chair and straddled it backward, resting her arms on the backrest.
"You know the drill, Ross. Names. Accounts. Safehouses. Labs. Everything. You give it to me, and maybe, maybe, I'll let you live long enough to die in a real bed instead of on this floor."
Ross spat a wad of bloody saliva at her feet.
Yelena didn’t react.
She simply nodded to the wall.
From a small panel, two mechanical arms extended. Each fitted with tiny, whirring tools—microsaws, injectors, scalpels.
Ross's bloodshot eye widened just slightly.
"See, my sister’s the gentle one," Yelena said casually, nodding toward where Natasha was probably working upstairs. "Me? I’m a little more... hands-on."
She reached into a nearby drawer and pulled out a bone drill.
"Starting with your left tibia," she said. "Small hole. Won't even bleed much. But the vibration will feel like it's screaming inside your skull."
Ross struggled against the chains.
The drill whirred to life.
"I'll give you one last chance," Yelena said, voice almost kind. "Tell me everything that you kept off-records. We found the files and other records from the sub, but I'm pretty sure you got more. Where were you running to? Where was your destination? Some uncharted island? Underwater base? You got more of those failed monsters? I want everything. Oh, if you are wondering why not use the truth serum? Well, where's the fun in that?"
She cracked her knuckles with a sinister smile.
She stepped forward and pressed the spinning drill tip lightly against his shinbone.
He howled, the sound animalistic and broken.
She pulled the drill away.
"Where?"
Ross gasped, the pain cracking something inside him.
"Celestial Island... Indian Ocean..." He mumbled.
Yelena smiled.
"There we go."
She leaned in close, her voice almost tender.
"See? Was that so hard?"
Ross sagged against the chains, sobbing quietly.
Yelena smiled, "Now, shall we continue?"
"Wait!" Ross trembled in pain.
Yelena began her drilling again...
"ARGGGG!!!!"
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AN: Time to get some Adamantium. We'll see Peggy in 1 or 2 chs.
