There was nothing fun about being on a stakeout. There was no way of knowing how many years Natasha had spent throughout her career as a spy simply waiting for the proper moment to… whatever. One thing was certain, though. Sometime through the years, she'd decided that she didn't like it anymore. This particular evening, perched across from a movie theater where it was suspected a large portion of the Russian mafia was housed, she was finding it particularly painful. Her retirement, as short as it was, had done nothing for her patience.

It was at least a little comforting, knowing that Matt was with her, but he wasn't exactly known for his fondness for small talk. He'd sat, almost motionless, ear turned toward the theater, for what seemed like hours. Natasha, in the meantime, had occupied her time counting the windows around her, trying to estimate how many screens the theater had based on volume and average size and, her favorite game, trying to guess which movie the patrons entering the theater were going to see. Although the last one was perhaps the most fun, it was also fraught with a failure for there was no way to confirm if her guesses had been correct or not. There had been a few times when she'd just wanted to drop to the ground below, accost the strangers, and beg to see their ticket stubs.

The last hour, had been the worst, though. The theater had closed. The lights slowly winked out as the rooms were cleaned and abandoned. Black Widow watched as an older gentleman wearing coveralls exited a side door and locked it behind him.

"Okay," Matt said in his Daredevil voice. "That's the last of the staff. All the rest are Russians. The majority of them have made their way to one of the theaters. They're watching a movie."

Natasha looked over at Matt, whose face was half-hidden beneath his red mask. She saw him wince. He was trying to listen into the room, she guessed, and the volume of the movie was making it impossible, at this distance, to distinguish what was going on inside.

"Finally," Natasha said, standing and stretching her long legs. "I've always wanted to theater hop," she added as she shot her grappling hook to a building next to the theater. Dropping from the ledge, she used her wristbands motor to bring in the line, turning her outstretched legs, she arced her "fall" to land directly on the roof of the theater. As expected, Matt was right behind her.

She headed to the side of the building, looking down it. "You'll have to go down two stories," Daredevil said. "The windows on the top story are all wired."

"Noted," Widow said. She chose not to add that the alarm systems wouldn't have been a problem. The real issue was that they could easily just go around them without running the risk of tripping one at all. Activating the tips in her gloves and boots, Natasha touched the parapet. As expected, the fingertips grabbed and held fast. With practiced ease, Natasha began scaling, headfirst, down the wall. The 'suction' in her costume held a large portion of her weight, but it was still no simple task. Her long red hair fell and almost passed the window as she descended. Right, she thought. That's why I wore my hair short.

She sidled a few paces and then climbed down farther, until she reached the second story from the top. Careful eyes examined the sill for anything Matt might have missed. Once she was confident there weren't any surprises, she pulled out a sharp, short blade from her belt. With a few quick strokes, she'd successfully separated the glass from the seal surrounding it. The pane fell inwards and, as it was constructed of tempered glass, it simply fell to the floor with a thud.

Black Widow slipped inside, ducking out of the light coming from the street below and into the shadows. Matt, who'd clearly heard her enter, swung through the window, holding onto his club. Amazingly, he landed clear of the pane and was already stepping forward past Natasha as his club rewound its cord.

They had entered into an office. Judging by the size and the quality of the furniture, Natasha guessed it must have belonged to one of the higher muckity-mucks at the theater. Though she knew it was bad, she got a little thrill from breaking into his office. She hoped a pigeon relieved itself on his leather chair.

Matt led the way to the door. He paused, undoubtedly listening down the hall, then opened the office door. Natasha followed in silence. The wide hallway was lit only by the exit signs on each end, casting a red sheen over everything. Natasha trusted Matt, but she couldn't help checking all of the corners. No signs of cameras. She closed the door behind her, making sure that the it was left unlocked. The opened window would be an easy source of escape, and she didn't want to accidentally sabotage it.

Leaning in Natasha's direction, Daredevil whispered in her ear. "There," he said, pointing to a set of double-doors leading into one of the screening rooms. "There's…" he paused. "At least two dozen of them." Natasha looked at him. It was unlike Matt to be unsure. "I think," he added. Now she was really suspicious.

He moved on, and Natasha didn't second-guess him. Twenty-four men, caught by surprise while they were watching a dumb movie… The two of them would hardly break a sweat.

Matt opened the door silently and the two of them moved incredibly slowly up the ramp, hugging the wall. The movie was lit up on the screen, and the volume seemed turned up to an inordinately high level. Daredevil didn't even wait to reach the top of the ramp. Leaping over the half-wall that marked the entrance into the large room, he disappeared from Natasha's view. She dashed in, fully expecting to rush to the opposite side of the room and give Matt some cover. Instead, she skidded to a halt. Matt was bent, on his knees, clutching his ears as she'd only seen him do on one other occasion.

When that assassin had used the SHIELD-designed hockey puck to broadcast that sound and knock Matt for a loop. "Shit," she spat. The lights came up, leaving her blinking, and shedding light on, not twenty-four men caught by surprise watching a movie, but what looked like fifty heavily armed and, apparently, armored men. The black tips of the rifles leveled in Natasha's direction.

"Well, isn't this just typical," she said, smirking.

"Black Widow," a voice said to her right in her native Russian. "Traitor to Mother Russia…"

Natasha turned her head to see a truly massive man, his face largely hidden behind a large pair of sunglasses but strangely familiar, standing near the first row of seats. In his hand, as she thought, was the familiar hockey-puck sized device. How they'd gotten their hands on the blueprints was a mystery for another time.

"… This is an unexpected, but welcome, surprise. Tonight, you will die for your crimes."

The Black Widow pursed her lips. "If I had a ruble for every time I've heard those words," she said as she raised hands over her head slowly, "They would still be worth shit!"

She dropped her arms and shot the two nearest men with her "widow's bite" before they could even pull their triggers. Turning, she scanned the room with sharp eyes. Even as bullets started to rain around her, she moved gracefully, like a ballerina, spinning and waiting for her targets to present themselves. Before she'd ever been granted the name Black Widow, Natasha had learned to feel when a gun was pointed at her. Most of the guns currently trained in her direction weren't even close.

In a crowd, even as large as this one, there were always only a few men who were truly capable of killing. Most of them were content to leave the job to someone else. The secret was to find those who were actually capable of aiming.

The widow's bite claimed another victim, and another. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw Matt climb over a row of chairs, and fall out of clear vision. It wasn't much cover, but it was better than being a sitting duck. One mobster leapt in front of Natasha, gun leveled at her stomach.

She kicked, knocking the barrel towards the roof as it exploded a barrage of bullets. Stepping forward, she spun, landing a fist across his face. She heard his jaw shatter, and she stepped on his face as she ran over him, pulling the gun from his hands. With a rain of completely random fire, she put most of the men on the defensive, ducking for cover. Then she, too, turned the barrel of the gun upwards, only she was aiming for the lights. The automatic weapon shook her body as flames danced from its barrel. Soon, the room was once again thrown into darkness, only the light from the projection room, the movie, could be seen.

One of the more zealous, and stupid, mobsters leapt at Natasha, a large knife flashing. She caught his arm in midair, turning and slamming his body to the ground. Twisting his wrist, she stripped the knife from his hand and bending, slit his throat with one quick, sickening motion. Blood splattered onto the surrounding seats as she lifted the knife and flung it with deadly accuracy. It slammed into another gunman's eye socket, burying to the hilt.

Thusly she made her way, methodically and violently, up and up until she had reached the row directly under the projector. Kneeling behind the row of chairs in front of her, she aimed the rifle she had robbed from another of her victims into the darkness below. A burst of rifle fire caught her eye, she turned and fired, aiming for the unseen assailant.

Perched above the rest of the theater, she easily mowed down several more targets who either tried to shoot at her or move slowly up towards her, their movements catching her eye.

The pane of glass shattered behind her, smashed by a pistol butt, showering shards into her hair. Natasha rolled, but the gun fired, grazing her back and shoulder as she tried to duck away. She cried out in a mixture of pain and ferocity, dropping onto her freshly wounded back and raining bullets into man leaning from the small projection window. The pistol dropped from his limp hand. His body, slumped in front of the movie projector, cast the room into an even more overwhelming darkness. The Widow was on her knees in an instant, wincing at the pain suddenly cutting across her back, but scanning the room methodically for any sign of life. In this darkness, though, things got a little trickier. Suddenly, there was no way to tell friend from foe…

"Enough!" an extremely gruff voice cried. The Russian accent was thick, but there was something else strange about the man's speech. "I have your friend, Black Widow. Give up now!"

Natasha swore a long string of Russian curse words under he breath, still hiding behind the chairs, gun at the ready. Again, there was no way of telling whether the burly-sounding man was telling the truth. Well, she thought to herself, let's change that.

Ducking behind the chairs, she crawled to the projection room. With one firm push, she shoved the dead man's body out of the projection room window, flooding the room with an eerie blue light. Natasha gasped at the sight that sprang to life. Standing clearly in the aisle was a giant bear on its back legs. It was larger than any natural species. Natasha was sure of that, and its long claws gleamed in the darkness. Dangling from its right paw was Matt. He looked unconscious. Natasha didn't even want to think about the other possibility. In the bear's other paw was the hockey-puck sized device that had taken Matt out of commission to begin with.

"Face it, Natasha," the gruff voice said. It took her a second to realize that it was the bear that was speaking to her. Her eyes narrowed and her stomach sank.

"It's over," he said.