Fury was nothing if not decisive. The moment he sensed Natasha pulling away, he pivoted to cold pragmatism—trading on personal debt. "I've helped you more than a few times. You'll admit that much. Paris is complicated right now, and I need you to help me one more time."
At that, Natasha was stuck. She shot Bella a look that said: I can't exactly say no.
Bella played along, leaning into the role. "You've got an army of elite operatives. Why drag two helpless women into this? But... go ahead. If it's not too difficult, we can lend a hand."
She framed their involvement as assistance, not duty. Natasha nodded—that was exactly where she stood.
The baby was barely a month along. If it came to fighting, she worried about complications.
Fieldwork could wait. The child came first. For the baby's sake, she could rein in her appetite for danger and thrills.
Fury had been reading Natasha's expressions the entire time. When her interest failed to spark, something sank in his chest.
Truthfully, he'd spent years exploiting Natasha's thrill-seeking nature. He'd always believed it was his trump card—mention a high-stakes, adrenaline-soaked mission and this elite agent codenamed "Black Widow" would practically glow with excitement. What had changed?
The possibility of pregnancy flickered through his mind, but he could plainly see the intimacy between Bella and Natasha. Impossible, he decided, and discarded the thought. He racked his brain but couldn't land on an explanation.
Shelving the mystery, he turned to the problem at hand.
"This is a big one. I'll keep it brief." He leaned forward. "NATO formed a multinational special reaction force to handle potential large-scale crises—elite soldiers from multiple countries. Their official codename is G.I. Joe."
He'd barely started the briefing before Bella snorted with laughter.
"'G.I. Joe'? That's the best the Pentagon could come up with? Could they possibly be any lazier?"
Fury continued as though she were wallpaper. "Over the past six months, G.I. Joe has compiled an impressive combat record. But directly participating in a terrorist attack on Paris? That charge is enormous. Every country in Europe knows this unit technically falls under NATO, but its real chain of command runs straight to the US military. If the evidence points to G.I. Joe involvement in the attack, the reputational damage to the United States would be severe."
The subtext was layered thick.
America was still licking its wounds and had no desire to butt heads with an ally over something like this. France might be weaker by comparison, but it was still one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The weapons might be stowed and the horses put out to pasture, but the war potential remained. France was also a critical American ally. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon wanted a diplomatic incident. Not even a small one.
Under normal circumstances, this would be the point where agents were dispatched to silence witnesses. But G.I. Joe's ranks included soldiers from multiple nations—too many entanglements. The old playbook wouldn't work.
They'd turned to S.H.I.E.L.D. to extract the prisoners, and Fury had turned his sights on Bella and Natasha.
"I need you to get G.I. Joe's people out. After that, recover the missing Nanomite warhead. If you can't manage it, the Pentagon will have to coordinate directly with France, and at that point the situation becomes exponentially more complicated."
Fury laid out the mission objectives and consequences with clinical brevity.
Even two departments within the same company could spend days bickering over jurisdictional turf. Scale that up to nations, and the complexity was staggering.
The difficulty of the actual operation might rate a one out of ten. But let a swarm of politicians with competing interests get their hands on it, and the difficulty jumped to ten overnight.
This was precisely where operatives earned their keep. Whether it was 006, 007, Ethan Hunt, or Natasha—agents did things that were neither legal nor sanctioned. They weren't heroes. They represented the nations behind them. But having agents handle things quietly made many problems vastly simpler.
Fury trusted Natasha's abilities, and with Bella tagging along it was a two-for-one deal. He considered the matter as good as settled.
He left them with a single line—"You have two hours"—and swept out of the café.
Natasha looked at Bella. "No shopping today, it seems. The French counterterrorism bureau sounds interesting, though. Want to take a look together?"
"...Fine. Let's go." Bella glanced at the Moulin Rouge VIP tickets in her bag. Four hundred and twenty euros! What a waste.
She left thirty euros on the table and they walked out of the themed restaurant.
Extracting G.I. Joe's operatives wasn't difficult.
The French, top to bottom, had no real desire to antagonize their American patrons. If the G.I. Joe team had kept a low profile—or even just run after causing the scene—they could have slipped away. Instead, these geniuses had charged through the streets like bulls, and when the French police boxed them in, they'd tried to fight their way out.
The police had no choice but to arrest them. Letting them go publicly was impossible—they had to save face.
Now the police, the counterterrorism bureau, and the security services were all nursing headaches. Quietly disposing of the prisoners was unthinkable, but releasing them outright? The public wouldn't stand for it. We're still one of the Big Five, dammit. We can't look that soft.
S.H.I.E.L.D. threaded the needle through seven or eight layers of intermediaries—contacts of contacts of contacts—to pass word to the right people. The French took the hint. Natasha's hack was barely underway when they began fumbling their own security protocols on purpose, handing over system access with transparent eagerness.
A sealed room of bulletproof glass quietly cracked open a door. Duke, the Black soldier, a red-haired woman, and a Frenchman exchanged bewildered looks. What was happening?
Then the fire alarm blared, and understanding hit. Someone had come for them. If not now, when?
They bolted, leaving behind the two confiscated Accelerator Suits without a backward glance.
Natasha disabled security cameras along their escape route, multitasking as she murmured, "What are you going to do about him?"
Bella followed her gaze. She was looking at Storm Shadow.
G.I. Joe's people received special treatment from the French authorities. Storm Shadow clearly wasn't one of theirs.
G.I. Joe wouldn't claim him as a comrade, and his pride wouldn't let him beg. He sat alone in a separate cell.
Storm Shadow sat quietly with his eyes closed, resting. The fire alarm, the adjacent cell door swinging open, the footsteps of escaping prisoners—none of it disturbed him.
Bella hesitated.
She'd saved Storm Shadow's life once, but he'd repaid the debt by assassinating the Templar Order's Warren Vidic for her. They were square.