Natasha counted off on her fingers. "Oh, she's everything I said, and more. Lazy—doesn't lift a finger around the house. Greedy—always stealing my food. Arrogant, in a way that I genuinely don't think anyone else on earth could tolerate. Proud. And somehow also cowardly—constantly convinced that everyone around her is out to get her." She shook her head. "Honestly, the personality is a disaster from top to bottom."
She wasn't done. "And the worst part? She's kind of an idiot. She keeps wandering into the most dangerous situations imaginable. Her actual ability doesn't match the size of the trouble she finds, but she just keeps throwing herself in anyway."
Bella scratched her head. "I don't know, I think that's a bit harsh. A lot of the time, standing still isn't an option—you can't protect the people you need to protect by staying on the sidelines. You have to take on more than you can handle. That's just how it works."
Both of them stopped walking at exactly the same moment. Shopping bags hit the pavement.
Passersby glanced over, curious, then moved on. This was central Tokyo—nothing was anyone's business but their own.
Bella's arm found Natasha's waist. Natasha's hands found her shoulders. They were very close now—close enough to see their own reflections in each other's eyes.
The street traffic flowed around them. Neither of them noticed.
The pedestrians didn't notice them either. A couple of Americans standing on a sidewalk. So what?
Their foreheads touched. Bella's voice was quiet. "As terrible as this person sounds, I'm pretty sure there are flaws you haven't even found yet. Plenty of them, I'd guess. But there have to be things worth—Natasha, would you want to—"
"OUT OF THE WAY! MOVE! Everyone get back!"
The moment shattered.
Down the block, a voice was shouting—then two gunshots cut through the noise of the street, close enough to snap them out of it. Neither Bella nor Natasha had their guard up, and neither of them registered the approaching chaos until the footsteps were almost on top of them.
They turned their heads together.
A powerfully built man came sprinting down the road—barrel-chested, thick-bearded, black trench coat flaring behind him. He was moving fast. In one hand, he dragged a young woman in a black kimono; the two of them ran flat out, in perfect, practiced urgency. Behind them, seven or eight heavily tattooed men closed the distance.
Bella and Natasha were directly in their path.
What is happening right now? Bella's brain stalled. Ignore it? Step aside? Try to salvage what they'd spent all day building toward? This was genuinely difficult.
Natasha felt equally robbed. A whole day's careful momentum, undone in seconds.
She steadied herself. Training took over where mood left off. She looked more carefully at the man.
A beat. Then recognition.
He'd served as an instructor at S.H.I.E.L.D. during part of her onboarding—led field training for her and a handful of other new recruits over the course of a month.
"Hey." Natasha said it lightly, just as he was about to pass.
He glanced over.
The bearded man was Logan—the mutant, the weapon, the man who'd fought alongside Captain America against the Nazis. Wolverine.
He clocked them in a fraction of a second—two women, half-turned toward each other—gave them one cold look, and kept running. He was past them like a gust of wind.
"Strange." Natasha watched him go, frowning. "He was warmer during training. That's not like him."
She filed it away and stepped sideways, pulling Bella with her to clear the lane.
They didn't clear it fast enough.
The tattooed men behind Logan weren't the type to care about collateral damage. They'd already fired guns on a crowded Tokyo street—a few civilians in the way weren't going to slow them down. One of them—built, bare-chested, tattoos from pecs to wrists, dark glasses, a cleaver in hand—swung directly at the two women without breaking stride.
Seriously?
Bella's temper ignited.
You already killed the moment. And now you're swinging at me?
Her eyes went cold. The air around them dropped ten degrees in an instant. She caught the man's wrist mid-swing—fingers closed and compressed, and the bones folded like wet clay. Structure, muscle, skin—all of it caving together in one ugly crunch. She was already pivoting. Right knee bent, coiled, then snapped out—a textbook side kick aimed at his chest.
"Don't—!" Natasha's warning cut through.
Tokyo. Public street. If she drove this man's spine out through his front, there would be questions she couldn't walk away from.
At the last possible moment, she rotated two degrees on her pivot foot, widened her hip angle, and pulled back maybe thirty percent of the force. The kick landed in the soft space beneath his ribs instead of center mass.
He still went down. Coughing blood, out before he hit the pavement. Even a moderated hit at her level was devastating.
Two of the nearest men stumbled to a stop, staring.
"Come on—go!" Natasha seized her arm. They moved.
"Left."
"Alley ahead."
Bella's Eagle Eye vision and Natasha's trained instincts worked in tandem. Within minutes, they were clear of the scene.
Bella dropped onto a bench and stewed in silence.
Natasha stepped a few meters away and made a call.
Whatever else this was, they needed context. The Yamaguchi-gumi was famously brazen—they operated with a casual contempt for legal consequence that Tokyo's authorities had long since stopped being shocked by. But gunfire and abduction in broad daylight, on a packed street? That pushed even their limits. The Metropolitan Police Department was going to have a lot of thoughts about this.
Natasha returned. "Looks like Yamaguchi-gumi. They're trying to grab Mariko Yashida—the Yashida family's eldest granddaughter. Word is, Ichiro Yashida's will had just gone through. He cut his son Shingen out of the inheritance entirely. Everything goes to Mariko. The analysis team thinks Shingen's behind the abduction."
Bella nodded. Not surprised.
The Yashidas, all three generations—none of them were worth the effort of a real opinion. Ichiro and Shingen: father and son, one dead, the other already doing the math. Mariko was supposed to be the gentle, noble type—delicate, above it all—but Ichiro himself had once said she took after him. That said everything.
Bella had no particular feelings about any of them.
She did, however, have a question.
A small detail had just surfaced in her mind, and it didn't sit right.