Chapter 26 - Going International

1st POV Jessica

Lounging on the bed in another of New Yorks rundown motels I silently closed the book I had been reading, signaling the end of the pile I had gathered a few days ago. I hadn't been able to get electricity working in this motel, so I'd raided a bookstore nearby run as a cover for child traffickers.

The amount of crime that runs rampant throughout this city is disgusting. I used to blame the authorities for never rescuing me from Kilgrave. For never even making an attempt to deal with him. But after spending these last few months entrenched in the underground criminal part of New York I understand why they couldn't help me. The police force is understaffed, under trained, underfunded, so on and so forth.

Even if they had twice as many officers they'd still be completely outnumbered not to mention out gunned by the criminals in this city. After first realizing how deep their empire truly ran, I had started to sympathize slightly with Reaper. I wasn't an idiot so even without him showing me the evidence I could piece together enough to know that his 'innocent' victims weren't innocent at all.

But Reapers method is too extreme. The people of this city quake in fear of shadows and darkness, always looking over their shoulders, terrified to see his blank mask staring back at them from their mirrors. Reaper is cleansing this city of that I have no doubt, but his careless, aggressive nature is crippling this city at its foundations.

Everyone is ignoring it, living under the false hope that Reaper will never run out of criminals to hunt but deep down they know the truth. And it won't be long, as it is I'm not moved around or given missions nearly as much as before and the smell of blood doesn't hang as heavily on his clothes as it used to. Soon Reaper will run out of criminals and I'm just as terrified to find out what that means as everyone else.

{Swoosh} The familiar sound of Reapers teleportation steals my attention away from my thoughts and I soon find myself unconsciously standing up at attention.

"Jessica, I have your next target. There's a small gang of mutants who have taken over 3 apartment buildings on Pearl Street you know what to do."

I gave a silent nod of acknowledgement at the order and began to gather my equipment, if it could even be called that. I now had a mismatched set of body armor taken from numerous criminals, none of which were my size. The armor was clunky, irritating as hell and had huge gaps from the size inconsistency. But it was better than nothing and it saved me from a few close calls back when I first confronted mutants.

Slimy fuckers. I don't hate all mutants or anything like that hell I'm pretty sure I'm one of them. But it's annoying how inconsistent their powers are. Like one can have the power to change his nail color but then the other can casually eat space. What the fuck kind of power distribution is that?

Also, their powers can get annoyingly specific. I ran into a mutant part of a gang that only did heists every full moon cause one of their members could do a dance that gathered the spirits of the moon into the other members making their bodies untraceable. What kind of weird shit did they get up to for a power like that to manifest?

Finished equipping my armor I turned back around. "Any further information?"

It had taken me a month to realize that Reaper wouldn't give me all the information he had on the job unless I asked for the extra details. At that point I was convinced that he enjoyed torturing me with stupid rules like that.

"No." Huh. That's new, he always has something to report on. I've learned that every mutant group tends to be a bunch of people with weak/minor mutations surrounding one with a much stronger mutation. Normally he'll give me the suspected ability of the leader so that I can prepare ahead of time.

I had asked him once why he did that after all his talk about doing things on my own and he said, "I'm protecting an asset that tends to act without using its mental capabilities."

That asshole to this day I get annoyed beyond belief whenever I think about it. I guess there's no one noteworthy amongst this group. I mean it's not shocking all the ones with good powers used them as leverage to get out of the city. Reaper has made it clear that there's nothing stronger than him in this city.

Double checking to make sure I'm properly strapped I make my way to the window before putting on a mask and flying onto the nearest roof. I use the mask to hide my identity, but flying is a rare power and I still have hope to free myself so I'm not gonna do anything that would make it obvious I was an accomplice.

1st POV Makenzie

Watching Jessica depart I spent a minute lingering in the hotel room. I had made a point not to get attached to her knowing I'd have to free her from me eventually. Reaper has accomplished the goal I set for him. For a criminal empire to be maintained the people at the bottom of the totem pole are just as necessary as those at the top.

Daredevil, Spiderman and most of the other street level heroes don't spend much time focusing on these bottom level thugs instead focusing on the ringleaders. I've decided to do the opposite and so with Reaper's rein about to come to an end there are no criminals left in New York. Oh, sure there are still corrupt politicians and wealthy drug lords, but they don't have manpower anymore.

There's no one to pay to threaten a political rival, no one to guard the docks or sell the product. Instead of cutting the top of the tree I've uprooted the entire system. I've always found it silly how heroes will fight around the world to stop threats when their home cities aren't even devoid of danger.

How are you supposed to protect the world if there's an attempt to destroy your own city every other weekend. Now for their businesses to continue all the powerful criminals with their roots in this city have no choice but to migrate elsewhere.

I've already seen all the signs with how closely I monitor all their accounts, I'd be surprised if any of them remained in this city come tomorrow. And with that I'll have the perfect grounds to progress my plans further. All that's left is to fake my death and then I'll step up to the global stage.

The world needs to unite, there are too many apocalypses to prepare for, for my time to be wasted on foolish countries funding mad men in fear of being conquered. I'm still deciding where I should start first but I'm leaning towards Russia. One of the countries with the deepest infestations of HYDRA and there's also the Red Room that I need to make sure is shut down.

Not to mention the half dozen frozen Super Soldiers frozen in Siberia. No way I'm letting that bunch of lunatics see the light of day ever again. Hm, I'll probably dig Captain America out of the ice while I'm at it. I've already gotten a rough area of where he's located from SHIELD archives. Fury never gave up looking for Steve.

But for now, I should head over to meet with the SHIELD agents and head to the warehouse I and Reaper prepared for this showdown. God just thinking about it makes me nervous, I have dozens of back up plans should his fake death fail but I'm still worried about what could happen. If he really dies, I'm not sure what will happen.

Will the statue break also. Will I lose my Reaper transformation completely? Will there be some kind of cooldown before I can resummon him? Will I simply receive a "New" Reaper in his place.

Hah. Deep breaths, I've been preparing for this since day one. As long as I stick to the plan everything will be fine. SHIELD is too small of a threat to do anything that could change my plans. I just need to stay focused.

Stepping into the shadows of the room I allowed the darkness around me to take hold before it dragged me into its depths only to spit me out elsewhere. Shadow travel is an interesting ability and one I still don't fully understand. My general thoughts on it are that in general the chemicals making up Reapers' body thrive in darkness.

Shadow travel utilizes this information to stimulate the chemicals to rapidly spread in areas of darkness. Reaper then uses his control of the chemicals to have them hope to other nearby shadows. This start up process is the reason his teleportation isn't instant like Symmetra's because it isn't really teleporting.

The next part is what confuses me. Somehow the small clump of chemicals is able to stimulate the rest of my body from such a great distance thus funneling my whole body through the same process at insane speeds. Hence why it looks like I'm reforming whenever I finish teleporting.

Stepping out onto the roof of the SHIELD building I transform into Solider before deactivating my loop program on SHIELDS cameras. I had visited Jessica pretty late in the evening so most of the agents should be trying to get an early rest to prepare for tomorrow. Key word being most as one particular nuisance I didn't feel like dealing with arrived next to me on the roof a few minutes after I had sat down.

"You should be resting agent Romanov. Even for someone of your particular skillset this will not be an easy fight." I knew it was pointless to try and get her to leave me alone, but I had to try. I like any other hot-blooded male find it exceedingly difficult to deal with attractive females. And attractive has a completely different meaning in universes like this compared to mine.

7's in this world easily passes as 10's in mine. So, seeing a 10 is like looking at a Goddess. And this particular red-headed Goddess was very aware of just how attractive she is, making her even harder to deal with.

"Oh, come on, don't be like that. I might not be a Super Solider but I'm still a trained agent. I can still perform perfectly fine even if I miss a few hours of sleep. I'm more interested in getting to know more about you. After all I've learned not to trust my back to just anybody." That got a laugh out of me. Not at the sexual undertone she spoke with when mentioning missing hours of sleep but the implication that she would at any point be fighting anywhere but behind me.

"There seems to be some kind of misunderstanding Agent Romanov, I will be the one entrusting my back to all of you not the other way around. None of you are capable of keeping up with Reaper. If you tried to get in front of me, you'd only be dooming yourself to an early death." I watched as a frown crept onto her face at the implication that she wouldn't be able to match Reaper.

This wasn't the mentally mature Natasha who had long become immune to verbal comments after spending time as Tony Stark's secretary. This Natasha was still very much the prideful Black Widow Clint had helped rescue from the Red Room. Not pride in her work but pride in her abilities.

I can understand where she's coming from. I haven't been able to find any digital records of it but from what I know there's a chance that she's been active for a lot longer than the MCU showed after all that time its only logical she would have confidence even after facing other Super powered opponents. Still, I better nip that in the bud now. Wouldn't want her trying to do something stupid during the fight.

"I understand that you are very skilled, but Reaper is unlike any opponent you have ever faced. The serum we were injected with not only gave us Superhuman physical parameters but also mental parameters. Each of us could easily be compared to your world's top scientists in IQ but by the time we took the serum we had long committed ourselves to serve our country on the front lines."

She still didn't seem convinced, and I was actually beginning to worry a little that she would do something stupid, so I decided that I'd reveal a little more information than I really needed to.

"And this isn't his first time dealing with a Widow." I could almost see Natashas thoughts grind to a halt at that information registered in her head.

"I'm sure Coulson has already shared my background with you. And it's to no one's surprise that no matter the planet there will always be those seeking to weaponize Men's desire for women. Reaper spent many years working and training with the deadliest Widow our planet had ever seen. So, trust me when I say you aren't a match for him."

Silently I watched her trying to see if I was able to convince her how dangerous involving herself could be and I realized a breath I hadn't realized I was holding when resignation began to appear on her face. I could understand her feelings perfectly well.

That reluctance to accept that all you have to offer won't be able to help. But it's fine she'll realize how stupid it is to jump to such a conclusion based on one conversation soon enough. For now, I should probably get some sleep for tomorrow. After all, I'm the only one who's going to actually be fighting.