《Bird Set Free | Natasha Romanoff ✓》Chapter Twenty-Six
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After what seemed like hours, the Quinjet finally landed and everyone staggered out, only to see a large barn and farmhouse ahead of them.
"What is this place?" Thor asked.
"A safe house?" Tony replied but it was phrased more like a question.
"Let's hope," Clint replied opening the door, leading the rest of them into a living room. "Honey?" Clint called out. "I'm home."
A quite heavily pregnant woman walked around the corner, her eyes widening as she took in the seven figures that had gathered in her living room, instead of the one figure that she had initially only expected.
"Hi," Clint greeted, who Aquila assumed was his wife, awkwardly. "Company. Sorry, didn't call ahead." Clint walking forward to his wife capturing her in a kiss.
"Hey," She whispered back to Clint, clearly pleased to have him home. But considering they were the Avengers and all, Aquila was sure that it would be quite a brief homestay.
"This is an agent of some kind," Tony said, turning to the rest of the people in the room.
"Gentleman, Ross, Flappy Bird." Clint addressed the boys, Keira and Aquila. "This is Laura."
"I. . . know all your names," The woman who Clint had introduced as Laura said awkwardly, offering them a small wave in greeting.
Pounding footsteps suddenly echoed across the room, causing everyone to look up as the source entered the room.
"Ooh, incoming." Clint teased as a young boy and girl ran in.
"Dad!"
"Hi, sweetheart!" Clint said picking up the girl in one arm while he kissed the boy on the top of his head. "Hey, Buddy! How are you guys doing?"
"These, are smaller agents?" Tony commented, even after a brief but firm headshake from Aquila in an attempt to stop him.
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"Look at your face! Oh, my goodness!" Clint joked around with his kids.
"Did you bring Auntie Nat?" The little girl asked her father.
Aquila had to hide her smirk as her heart slowly melted at Natasha being called something as precious as 'Auntie Nat'.
But at the sound of the little girl's words, Natasha seemed to come back to life, the words leading her back out of her trance.
"Why don't you hug her and find out?"
"Sorry for barging in on you." Steve apologized, forever as usual polite.
"Yeah, we would've called ahead, but we were busy having no idea that you existed." Tony crossed his arms.
"Leave it be, Tony." Keira scolded, smacking his arm.
"Really, Tony?" Aquila scolded as well.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Tequila." Tony teased, using her old nickname just trying to get a reaction out of her.
"Yeah, well," Clint said wrapping an arm around Laura. "Fury helped me set this up when I joined. He kept it off S. H. I. E. L. D.'s files. I'd like to keep it that way. I figure it's a good place to lay low."
Aquila stood there with Keira and the rest of the boys, all of them feeling slightly out of place as Nat went over to greet Laura.
"How's little Natasha, huh?" Natasha asked, placing her hands on the pregnant bump.
"She's. . ." Laura trailed off, grimacing. "Nathaniel. . ."
Aquila watched as the smile fell off Natasha's face, fake anger taking its place instead as she bent down towards the bump.
"Traitor."
In the end, considering the Avengers were staying at least the night, they ended up having to double up on rooms.
But Aquila had pretty quickly left, after their room assignments which made it feel like they were on school camp. She needed to shower as it was the only thing that would get the poisonous thoughts and the hallucination she had been forced to see from her head.
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And she was right, as the hot water dripped down her back, Aquila reaching up to rub at her temples, she managed to forget the hallucination even if it was only for a few moments.
She let out a muffled yelp as she realized that she had been standing under the stream for so long, lost in her own thoughts, that the water had gone from hot to cold.
Aquila quickly turned the water off, wrapping a towel around her body, letting her wet hair drip down her back and onto the floor, she simply couldn't be bothered to do anything with it.
Aquila opened the door on to see the figure that was sat on the bed, dressed in a robe.
"I. . . .I didn't know you would be waiting." Aquila managed to stutter out, stumbling over words as she often found herself doing in Natasha's presence.
"I would've joined you, but, uh, it didn't seem like the right time," Natasha teased, a smirk dancing across her face.
Aquila could feel herself starting to get flustered, a strange feeling but only wrapped the towel around herself more firmly.
Trying to hide how flustered she was, she plastered a smirk on her face in return.
"I got the last of the hot water," Aquila said. "But you should have said something, I would have been happy to share," Aquila said with a confidence she definitely didn't feel.
"Well, I definitely should have said something then," Natasha said, stepping forward, slowly invading Aquila's personal space not that she particularly minded.
Aquila's heart fluttered as her mind ran wild with thoughts. But she knew that this particular moment would just end being yet another wasted moment like nearly every moment with Natasha was, even though Aquila potentially wanted it to be more.
Natasha watched as self-doubt washed across Aquila's face before she managed to get her feelings under control again. Natasha had been trained to read body language since a young age and despite Aquila's best attempts to hide her true emotions, Natasha only got better at reading her, the closer they had got.
"Geez, you have no clue what you are doing to me," Aquila muttered, taking all her of her willpower not to grab Nat's face and press her lips against hers.
"Well, I'm letting you run with it," Natasha said, stepping even closer if that was possible.
Their noses were brushing together and their lips weren't that far apart either.
Aquila inhaled in deeply again, refusing to let poisonous thoughts get in the way of a moment, she wanted to happen.
"Is that so?" Aquila asked.
"Yeah," Natasha replied, reaching out in the tiny space between their bodies grabbing Aquila's hands and intertwining them in her own.
Aquila could barely breathe, as Natasha's hands then rose up to reach Aquila's neck, pulling her even closer, just as their lips met, drawing a gasp from Aquila's throat.
By the time they finally broke apart, what seemed like minutes later, Aquila rested her forehead on Natasha's, letting out a shaky breath.
"You have no clue, how long I waited for that."
"Well, I guess I'll have to make sure that it was worth the wait." Natasha teased, bringing Aquila's lips to hers again.
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Edge Cases (Book 1 Complete!)
Rare classes and powerful skills are helpful. Too bad the system doesn't seem built to handle them. What even are all these errors? Our team of outcasts and adventurers will have to rely on their trust - and the bane of all stories, healthy communication - just to survive, let alone understand what the system is doing. Because they're quickly realizing that it's doing something; to people, to monsters, and maybe even to the gods themselves. And their goal isn't just to survive; it's to make things better. It's a good thing they're not doing it alone. --- Edge Cases is an attempt to take the LitRPG genre and the overpowered MCs trope and write a story where numbers aren't everything. Sometimes it takes trust, support, and just a touch of being very, very clever. Expect a mix of action, slice-of-life, friendship, and ominous worldbuilding. Updates M-W-F at 6pm EST. Cover art by Alovck of Artstation, and typesetting by jessessey right here on RoyalRoad.
8 228Dungeon Core Chat Room.
This is a slower-paced "experiment and dungeon building" web novel that tries to use the idea of peer-to-peer communication with Dungeon Cores instead of Dungeon to slave monster communication to break up the detailed dungeon building. Rank 1 description: (minimum met for system initialization...detailed description as follows) Each race was given a system by the gods to make up for their shortcomings and balance their place in this world. Humans: Abysmally bad at understanding and using magic unable to use more than the lowest of magic were given the "Skill System" magic in the form of premade skills with use, study, and mastery tied to experience. Elves: Intuitively understand magic and have long lives leading to vast knowledge and skill in their chosen fields. However, as a species, they have nearly zero sex drive and less than low fertility, so they were gifted the "World Tree System" with experience gained through the care of natural areas – gifting the chance of children to increase their numbers without dirty copulation. All “natural” or “wild” monsters are given an "Evolution system" designed around killing and consuming as many creatures as possible, slowly increasing strength and, at thresholds, allowing mutations to alter them multiple times. Dungeon cores are different. Unlike humans, they can see, manipulate and live off mana. Unlike Elves, they naturally crystallize after extended periods of time in high mana level areas. However, they cannot easily move or communicate and typically go insane without companionship. As a species other than the odd eccentric they are unimaginative. Brute forcing solutions without the drive to truly innovate. Thus they have been gifted with the "Dungeon Connection System" a magical version of the internet accessible by their peers that allows them to barter and sell: bait, traps, monsters, and knowledge, as well as entertain each other with “adventure streams” using exciting recorded battles and humorous reels of arrogant chumps biting off more than they can chew to often fatal effects. This is the casual story of a dungeon unluckily spawned far from potential adventurers forced to innovate beyond its peers to find its place in this world. Rank 2 Description: Justification. I've been on a dungeon core kick for months and while I love the genre – it's sparse with entries. Often the forced conflict gets repetitive and frantic solving of threats "power levels" the protagonist to god levels to progress the plot – taking away the nice steady progression fantasy I'm looking for. (Progression in this story is linked to how strong of monsters/traps/whatever he can create not his "level"...this is demonstrated by some of his newer monsters beating his older monsters not with discrete "this monster has 10 attack this one has 40") Additionally, the focus on 3rd parties with their drama takes away from the reason I’m reading dungeon core novels in the first place – I'm looking for magical crafting, experimentation and kingdom building – not defence from higher and higher levelled enemies looking to steal/destroy/control the MC. This novel is kind of just me writing the story I wish I could read. I like thinking about the experimentation that can be done in fantasy settings using 'mana' as an excuse to make up rules and try to keep them internally consistent. IE once I define how a rule works, I'm going to commit to keeping it – no breaking hard truths I've given when it's convenient, even if it backs me into a corner. Hopefully, that should make the story interesting to read even if it's SOL and less action-oriented. There will be problems to solve and a clear progression in strength (of created monsters and knowledge) however due to not wanting to force conflict for the sake of conflict the general theme will be closer to slice of life with few action sequences and no overarching goal so please keep that in mind when picking this up as the genre is not for everyone. Finally, I have a clear goal of what I want from this story (not an endless romp but a series of arcs and then a conclusion that's a couple of dozen medium-sized chapters long) I want to commit to finishing it or at least bringing it to a point of rest. I hate all the engaging stories that stop with a “hiatus” indefinitely so in the event I lose motivation I'll work to end this even if the ending becomes rushed/unsatisfying just to give a sense of closure. I’m planning on including several polls in terms of direction and taking feedback heavily into account if I get enough readers (but may choose to ignore it if it deviates too far from the direction I want to take this as in feedback like: “The MC needs a cartoonishly evil arch-enemy that wants to enslave him and force the mc to pump out magic items” or “the MC needs to make a body and learn teleportation then live with humans” will get shot down without consideration.)
8 258Exitium (dropped)
Year 2232 World destruction is imminent. All nation leaders and renowned scientists gather at the UN for a secret meeting, called by a doctor, declaring to have a way to perpetuate humanity... but on another planet, a very hostile one. Planet Exitium, the closest habitable planet, filled with deadly fauna and flora. This is the story about the people sent there- children, to be honest. Children with no idea where they are, what had happened to them, and what would be of their life. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is my first story ever, and I hope you all like it, I'm sorry for the horrible piece of art that is the cover, I did it myself, and have absolutely no skills in photoshop, and I'll change it later. And yes, the MC's get some pretty OP skills and weapons.... At least until they find the enemy...
8 192Dearest O'Malley
This story tells about a car's life and the way he lived in 1967. His name is O'Malley Malibu and he is a 1967 Chevrolet Malibu with a straigh six engine. He grew up with a two door Lincoln and a Chevrolet Impala and did everything with them together. Later on into the story, O'Malley is sitting up for sale in a yard of a little old lady who's husband was mean to him for a little while. He meets his new owner Gladys Kennedy who takes care of him well. She takes O'Malley to work with her and to church. But one day, a bully picks on a car for a parking space and when the bully tries to pick on O'Malley, he learns his lesson of what happens when he messes with a Chevy Malibu raised in Texas. Soon after Gladys gets too old to take care of O'Malley, she gives him to Randy and Jan, the next owners. They have O'Malley as the only car they have to drive until he met Susie, a Mercury Grand Marquis and a blue van. Then comes along Erik and Nathan, the two additions that he meets. O'Malley plays and makes Nathan smile by the time he reaches 2 years old. Leading Nathan up the road to learning, O'Malley guides his new master through a home schooling system to keep him on track. As many years went by, O'Malley soon is passed on to Nathan's care and being a planned college subject of a college sememster work of having his transmission redone. When Nathan meets his new girlfriend, Natalie, O'Malley grows a liking on her just as she is showing her photos of O'Malley that she captured on camera in 2014 and 2015. He soon finds answers for all the questions he had been always asking from finding out what happened to Impa to discovering the location of where Gonzo was to opening up to a friend back that seemed to be next to him all these years. O'Malley and his friends make videos for the internet from a pickle and white flour bath to the Elvis impersonations to honor the Elvis Presley feastival for all Elvis fans around the world. The three friends have a lot of fun together including pranking each other for kicks and laughs. Ticking back in time, O'Malley tells the audiences the memories he had back to his younger days when he and his cousins would prank each other and laugh at it now as he remembers it then. From the happy to sad stories that he experiences throughout the novel. People stop and stare at the beauty of O'Malley's sleek body all over town including taking pictures of him without his knowing. The story has yet to unwrap the secrets inside of O'Malley outside the car shows. There are hints of originality, heart, tranquility, untapped potential, undisturbed sensational zen, and undiscovered twerks that make him so amazing that people don't see nor don't pay attention to like they do in the show. O'Malley has a smooth, witty, sweet and relaxed personality. O'Malley travels down the road of memorable experiences from being in a sample teaser trailer of a movie to meeting a new love to finding another of his old friend from the 70s to meeting a life coach that would be his biggest inspiration. This is a novel that needs to be discovered for all eyes alike.
8 121Wednesday x Enid {Wenclair}
Based on the trailers
8 383Ninjago: the Daughter of the Overlord
Aria Lord is the daughter of the Overlord. She lives her life like any other citizen of Ninjago, except for being the princess of darkness. After the defeat of her father she vowed to avenge him and take over Ninjago in his place. She started teaming up with other villains, but she didn't account for getting caught. She also didn't account for falling in love with the enemy.
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