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My sudden appearance shocked the people around me, who in turn changed their focus to me, as Natasha and Yelena looked at me with a vast array of emotions.
Immediately the Russian soldiers started to circle me, as Natasha aimed at me with her gun. In her eyes, I could see she was scared, terrified, not only of me but of everything around.
"Sorry girls, but this is a non-compliance rescue." I boomed, making sure everyone around heard my voice.
"Who are you?" Alexei asked, his eyes like daggers wanting to pierce my heart.
I looked at him, tilting my head slightly to the right, my eyes gleaming with fake enthusiasm. "I am a man out of this world." I chuckled.
"A man out of time, that's what you are," Alexei snarled, and as if on cue, the soldiers around started shooting at me.
However, their bullets never reached me, not because of the armor; that was just a show, made to create fear. But because my telekinetic shield stopped the projectiles from reaching me.
"Girls. Time to sleep." Ignoring the Russian soldiers and their bootleg version of Captain America, I turned around, patting Natasha on the head, who simply froze at my touch. "Sleep," I muttered, using my magic to put them to sleep.
"You bastard!" Alexei roared, springing at me.
A fruitless attack, one that I stopped by taking a step forward, shoving my hand to his throat, immobilizing him with a death grip. "Me? The bastard? You help your government force children into slavery, and you call me the bastard?"
Alexei gagged, his hands clutching the arm that pushed him down with all his might as he tried to reply. Still, my hand around his neck made the entire ordeal an impossibility.
"You are... the Baba Yaga..." I heard someone mutter in realization, and much to my shock, it was General Dreykov, who was looking at me like I was the devil himself.
"Baba Yaga?" I snorted. "I ain't no John Wick. But I can see why you make that connection." I chuckled, tossing Alexei into one of the planes like a rag doll.
"I heard about you... the man that destroyed Hydra... the demon with human skin." That was what the Russians were calling me? The Baba Yaga? Terrible name, but I suppose it's best to be feared than loved by those people.
"That's... not untrue." I nodded, opening a portal to one of the safe rooms in New York to keep both Natasha and Yelena safe and away from Emily, for now.
I didn't trust Natasha not to try and kill Emily out of fear or shock.
"I won't let you hurt them!" Alexei shouted, jumping out of the plane I had hurled him into.
Enraged by that comment, I pulled his body towards me with my telekinesis as I jumped towards him, digging my left hand into his torso, piercing him with relative ease.
"Hurt them? You did that yourself, you lied to them, you took away their lives, their freedom, you could've saved them... but you didn't, all for the sake of this accursed man? Pathetic, really." I snarled, pulling my hand out of his guts as his body collapsed to the ground with a look of shock on his face.
As I did this, the General made a run for it, trying to escape me.
Turning around, I walked away from Alexei's body as the blood from his wound started to make a pool, reaching the girls to gently levitate them into the safe room. Then, I closed the portal and turned to the general, who was now barely reaching the car.
But as he tried to open the door, I levitated the whole thing throwing it into the sea, then I started walking towards him, snapping the necks of those around me with my telekinesis as I slowly made my way towards him. "I will give you one chance and one only. Tell me everything you know about the Red Room, and I may be lenient granting you a quick death."
"Baba Yaga or not... I won't betray my country!" The General roared his hands, shaking with fear as he pulled his gun, aiming at me. Then, with a grin, he moved the gun to his head and pressed the trigger. Alas, nothing happened.
Smiling, I clapped my hands as I continued my stroll towards him. "I respect that; I really do."
Fear sipping into the little courage he had gained, he started to press the trigger of his gun over and over again, but each time, the gun did nothing but a cute little click sound.
"What is going on?" He muttered.
"Oh well, you know how it is." I chuckled, tossing a few bullets into the ground, bullets I had stolen from his gun using [Aport]. "Without those, a gun is nothing but a piece of art or paperweight."
"Impossible." He muttered, taking a step back as I neared him.
"Improbable maybe, not impossible." I smiled, putting my hands on his shoulders. "Now... let's have a one on one." I grinned. "Let's hear you sing, little bird, for I want to know all your little secrets." and so, I dragged the man to a room I would never allow Emily to see as long as I could avoid it, the room that showed how much Hydra had changed me, the room that proved a part of me was a monster, my torture room.
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[Natasha Romanoff POV]
After that armored man put us to sleep with a simple command, I woke up in a room with a single door and a TV with Yelena by my side. And a part of me wondered, was this really the escape I had been wishing for, the escape from that life, or was that man a bigger monster I needed to fear.
"You can come out if you want." I heard someone say from the other side of the door. "Alex sent you here to keep you safe, so don't worry." don't worry, that was something I didn't have the privilege of doing.
"Who are you?" I asked, glancing at Yelena.
"My name is James Buchanan, but everyone calls me Bucky." He replied, opening the door. "Now come, I made you some food."
"I'm not hungry," I muttered; the man looked strong, very strong, just like this Alex that rescued us.
"Then don't eat." He shrugged, closing the door.
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[Torture LOG - TIME = 0:01:09]
The subject woke up in my torture room with a disoriented look on his face, fear and anger being the two emotions he presented. His heartbeat was above the average levels of a man of his age, which was a good indicator for what I was about to do. Granted, the elevated pressure could also be attributed to his unhealthy lifestyle.
I think I will start him with a simple method of torture. Beating him up.
[Torture LOG - TIME = 0:35:15]
The subject has yet to reveal anything; he had a relatively strong will, most humans would've broken by now, doing anything in their power to stop the pain, but he was not, he was afraid yes, but he was keeping his mouth shut, it was almost admirable.
Changing the method of torture to amputations this method promises better results; it usually works best on men.
[Torture LOG - TIME = 4:01:09]
I have amputated the subject's arms, legs, and reproductive parts, slicing them like ham while keeping him conscious. Remarkably the subject has yet to break.
Perhaps asking Charles to read his mind would be best, but... a part of me didn't want this game to end; it was empowering. The lines between the kind dad and the monster I was forced to become blurry in this room.
Changing method of torture to boiling.
[Torture LOG - TIME = 8:41:59]
Boiling the subject for four hours whilst barely keeping him alive with my powers worked; I suppose the constant input of pain did wonders for his stability, finally breaking him down.
Pleading for his death, a quick one, he sang with detail about the Red Room operation, telling me everything I needed to know.
A quick check with my satellite map to the locations he gave me proved he was being truthful.
I even completed a quest that had started during his torture, [Find out the Red Room locations and how they operate], I even got a few levels on torture for what I did to him, a rewarding day of work.
[Log end.]
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[Alex Walker POV]
Eight hours of torture later, and I finally had the information I needed. So, I acted accordingly, visiting each base and killing the operatives in cold blood. It was easy; unlike Hydra, the Red Room had a few bases, a dozen, so killing all the soldiers and the workers made for an easy quest.
However, while eliminating the red room had been an absurdly easy task, what came next was not; for now, I had a few dozen girls, some as young two years old and others as old as seventeen.
It was a rather difficult situation, sixty-one girls, some utterly loyal to their government, others happy for what I did; it was a very delicate situation.
So, I did the only thing I could, allowing those who wanted to be enslaved, be slaves, for only those who crave freedom can truly attain it.
Which left me with, in its majority, with the youngest girls.
Fifty-one girls.
Not a bad exchange, with only ten girls leaving to serve their oppressors; as for the ones that stayed with me, well, I had to be honest, I had no idea what to do with them.
So, empty of ideas, I bought an empty orphanage in England with the help of Fury, where the girls would reside for now until they were adopted. The orphanage would be run by SHIELD and me to avoid the girls becoming SHIELD's slaves, well, not that they had much to offer, for the majority, their training hadn't even started.
Needless to say, I would pay for the whole thing and would continue to pay until all the girls were safe. Giving the girls a normal life, at least as normal as they could get on the orphanage, as to why it was on England, well, it was to avoid Russia blaming the USA for the attack I had orchestrated.
Not that they would, SHIELD was not on top of that; I had to cash a few favors to have them be in charge though, the current director was not happy with my course of action, but was happy with the results, for no Red Room meant no super spies, according to him.
"The girl wants to talk with you," Bucky said as he entered my office.
"Which one?" I asked, looking at him.
"The big one," Bucky replied, as I gave him a look that said, humanize them, give them a name. "She doesn't want to share her name."
I suppose, in a way, a name holds power. "Ok." I sighed, opening a portal to their room. "Hi."
Yelena looked at me in fear, while Natasha looked at me like she was still trying to figure out how she felt about me, though considering she still appeared like a red dot on my map, I think it's safe to say she is not my friend yet.
"Why did you do that?" Natasha asked, her eyes scanning me like a cat looking for the right moment to strike.
"Enter the room with a portal? Or saving you?" I knew very well what she was asking, she wanted to know why I had saved her, but I wanted to make small talk.
"Saving us... me." Natasha replied as Yelena clung to her tight.
"I was once like you, well... not like you." I started trying to put words to what had happened to me. "I was kidnapped by an organization much like the one you used to belong to, but unlike the Red Room, mine was arguably much worse. I managed to escape; I managed to win my freedom back. So, I suppose you can say I sympathize with you."
"What will happen to us?" Natasha asked after a moment of silence.
"You could stay here and live a normal life if that's what you want," I replied, with just the hint of a smile. "Or, you could go with your sister to my orphanage and wait to be adopted; I really don't know, the choice is yours; that's the beauty of freedom."
"What happened to Da- Alexei?" Natasha asked, her voice going soft.
"We fought," I replied, scratching the back of my head; this was a tough topic; how do you tell someone you impaled the closest thing they have to a dad.
"You killed him," Natasha muttered, which made Yelena cry.
"No... he was still alive when I left the area, and considering his constitution, he will live," I said, trying to placate the girls; I mean, I really didn't know if the guy had survived, perhaps he did, perhaps he didn't; it all came to how good was his super-soldier body.
"I don't want to be here... I want to be with mommy and daddy." Yelena cried.
How to explain to a child his mommy and daddy had sold her to slavery. "The choice is yours, Natasha; whatever it is you pick, I will support you."
"Could I really... live a normal life?" Natasha muttered, looking at me with hope, fragile hope.
"Normal is... a wide range." I sighed. "Life in this world is never truly normal, but... we can make the best of it."
Natasha sighed, "I won't ever be truly free of them. Right?"
I looked at the eleven-year-old girl and said. "We are never truly free of our demons, but know they won't ever control you again; I mean, they would have to kill me first, let's face it, very few can accomplish that, and none of them live in Russia."
"I wanna stay... for now," Natasha muttered, and just like that, her dot changed from red to yellow, aka neutral.
"Then, welcome to the family."
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