• Published 22nd Aug 2015
  • 14,088 Views, 1,970 Comments

A Beautiful New Age - JDPrime22



As it is said, true peace can only be granted through countless innocent lives. In hindsight, the ponies were never that different from humans. Ultron’s plan is not over, and soon his strings will be severed for the last time.

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Chapter 18-What Are You Doing?

Ding! Ding!

“Oh, Miss Romanoff! We’re over here, darling!” Rarity sang. Pinkie, who was currently chugging down her tall glass of chocolate milk, shot her colorful eyes over to the lone standing human by the entrance of Sugarcube Corner. She nearly dropped her glass, waving her pink hooves hysterically.

We’re over here, Naty!” Pinkie screamed, her milk mustache stretching as far as her smile. She earned pretty much the attention of nearly all the occupants of the morning breakfast.

Eyes shifted from pancakes, coffee mugs, morning newspapers, and muffins to the five and half foot figure of slender beauty. The sight was nothing new to the early bird citizens of Ponyville, the humans having arrived and remaining in the town for a couple of days, but the woman still received a few curious glances, rising suspicions, and worried whispers.

Natasha Romanoff did her best to ignore the eyes and calmly approached the two mares.

“Morning, Pinkie. Rarity, always a pleasure,” Natasha quipped, reaching forward and pulling out the small chair. As she sat herself down, both Pinkie and Rarity gave appreciative smiles, the pink pony sliding a glass of milk her way.

Natasha nodded with a gracious grin, lifting up the glass and taking a small drink. Rarity leaned forward, tapping her hooves together.

“We’re so glad you could make it for breakfast this morning, Miss Romanoff,” Rarity began, her voice falling silent once the human raised a hand.

She set the glass down, licking her lips. “You don’t have to be so formal, Rarity. We’re friends. Just call me Natasha.”

Rarity laughed accordingly. “Of course, dearie! Well…Natasha…” it felt so strange to the unicorn, but she kept at it, “Pinkie and I would like to send our gratitude towards you for accepting our…ahem…‘private’ invitation.”

Having fully ignored the continued stares from the fellow patrons, Romanoff leaned forward, elbows placed on the table. “Yeah, about that,” she began curiously, voice riddled with wonder. “Why not invite everybody else? My team, your friends? I mean, it’s not like I favor them over you two or anything. I’m just…curious is all.”

“That makes three of us...” Pinkie sang happily, squirming in her seat.

Natasha looked her way, orange hair bouncing as she did so. “Excuse me?”

It was at that moment did Pinkie take a drastic change. From being the bubbly and happy-go-lucky pony that Natasha had come to know, the pink mare sitting to her right field of vision leaned forward, eyelashes fluttering as she gave off one of her more…seductive smiles.

With that growing smile, Pinkie said in a low, thickened tone, “We’re just curious is all, Naty. You know…you giving Bruce those…looks.”

Her tongue flicked across her two front teeth as she said that last word. It wasn’t hard to catch the hints—they were heavily laid as it was—and Natasha just gave off a humorless chuckle, eyes falling to study her gloved fists.

“You saw that, didn’t you?” she asked, voice surprisingly dull, yet she tried to hide it with a half-smile.

Rarity didn’t seem to catch on. Instead, she nearly shot out of her chair, squealing in delight and tapping her hooves together furiously. “So it’s true?! You and Doctor Banner! Oh, it’s simply adorable!” she gushed, suddenly losing some adrenaline. “And…well…terrifying… Or should I say...exciting to have a crush on such a…a…”

“Monster.”

Natasha kept her gaze steady on the table, flickering up only once to stare at both Rarity’s and Pinkie’s surprised looks.

Rarity bit lip, eyes shooting off in any direction except where Natasha was sitting. She lifted up her hoof, mouth opening to come up with a better wording of it, but ultimately failing and coming up with nothing less than what Bruce Banner truly was. A monster.

Well, on the inside. On the outside, that’s what Rarity believed Natasha saw out of him. Not the beast, not the mad scientist that helped create a doomsday weapon, but a man. A man who doesn’t want to fight, to hurt others. A man who only wants to help. And that monster inside of him just does not seem to help anyone, especially Natasha.

That part still confused the unicorn.

While Rarity’s thoughts were consumed by Natasha’s strange feelings, Pinkie was already up and about. Appearing next to Romanoff’s left side, she draped her foreleg across the woman’s shoulders.

Sighing in a dream-like state, Pinkie exclaimed while simultaneously poking Natasha’s chest, “Don’t you worry your widowy little head, Naty! With some help from the Love Pony,” she pointed to herself, “I’ll get you a date with Brucie in no time whatso—!”

Surprisingly enough, Pinkie’s rambling ended short. It ended when Natasha reached over and pried Pinkie’s foreleg off and away from her shoulder, pushing it back to bend as it appropriately should. Noticing the look of confusing etched in the pony’s features, Natasha tried to smile. And failed at doing just that.

Despite her false expressions, the woman said, “Thanks, but…no thanks. What Bruce and I have we’re… It’s complicated.”

That pretty much summed up her relationship with the man.

She was Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, the flirtatious, cold killer she was trained to become. Years at the academy trained her to accomplish such tasks as quickly and calculated as possible. No matter what got in the way…no matter who got in the way, the mission came first, and she lived on that principle for nearly her entire life.

Ever since they…

Made her…empty.

After all, there was no place in the world for her.

But with Bruce…she didn’t know. The memories of the fall were pretty much useless to her. Natasha had blacked out the moment the vortex sucked her inside, and the next thing she knew she was resting on a comfortable couch being soothed by her old friend Barton…and with his unusual guest. Despite the darkness she saw throughout the terrible fall of Novi Grad, Romanoff felt something. Thor hadn’t saved her as he explained earlier, and Stark was busy hanging out with the ponies with his first impressions. No sign of Vision, either.

Which meant…it was him. Bruce…

He saved her.

She tried to get to him, to appear closer than ever before after her…questionable actions back at Novi Grad. But every time she tried to move close, he backed away…like he was afraid of something. Afraid of her. She prayed that wasn’t the case, but as time moved on, leaving her in its tracks, Natasha didn’t see a change out of him.

Not one thing. And she didn’t even know why.

What they had was complicated.

“You need not to worry, my dear!” Rarity exclaimed, snapping Natasha out of her own thoughts. With a flick of her hoof and a smile adorned on her face, Rarity said, “All of those so-called ‘complications’ will be whisked away with what I have in store for you!”

Noticing Rarity’s excited grin, Natasha couldn’t help but sneak a smile or two to herself, asking, “Well, what is it?”

Rarity nearly leaped from the table…again, screaming, “Why your dress, of course!”

The entirety of the morning crew shot several irritated glares towards the rambunctious unicorn’s way. A stallion had ripped his newspaper in two from the sudden outburst, slamming the shredded paper on the table and growling at the white mare.

Rarity paid no heed to the death glares she received. She was lost in her own little world, hooves resting beneath her chin as she sighed dreamily. “Oh, I can simply see it now! The two of you, hoof-in-er…eh…hand-in-hand, walking under the night sky at the Grand Galloping Gala. And then, the distance between you two close, and you share a wonderfully romantic, marvelous ki-!”

As quickly as one of her bullets fired in the midst of approaching enemy targets, Natasha reared forward and practically slammed her gloved palm across Rarity’s muzzle, instantly silencing the unicorn whether she wanted to be silenced or not. Her eyes bugged nearly out of her skull, accusing stares shifted towards the woman sitting across from her. How she managed to reach that distance was far beyond Rarity.

“Okay, I get it! Just…please try and be a little quieter. We seem to be attracting a little too much attention,” Natasha pointed out, head shifting to the rest of the bakery. Both Pinkie and Rarity followed her actions, finally noting down the angry stares from the rest of the occupants.

“But…Rarity, do tell me one thing…”

With the palm still clasped around her muzzle, Rarity slowly turned back to face Miss Romanoff, her expression a tad worried, if not wondering.

She asked, “With what you might have so far… Will the dress be a little too…much?”

She dropped her hand, sliding it back over to her as she plopped right back into her seat. As she slid back, Rarity was already trying to come up with a quick explanation, sweat beginning to build against her will.

Rarity bit her lower lip, vision draping across Natasha’s figure, more importantly…the suit she wore. Her black, skintight suit was dotted with cuts and tears, showing a bit of bruised or recovering skin underneath. A belt hung at her hips, carrying several different weapons, something Rarity found little to no interest to, but it certainly wasn’t fashionable. To top it all off, it was filthy. Dried scum and blood sprinkled across her body. It was terribly unfitting for a woman of her looks, something Rarity could not have.

“Well…um...well, you see…uh…” Rarity stammered, a red hue burning her cheeks.

“It’s too much, isn’t it?”

All that Rarity could manage was a nervous grin, one that managed to excel past even what Natasha thought was possible for a pony to achieve. Still, Rarity tried to explain, something Romanoff wasn’t really excited for.

“Well, one could say that I have a particular taste,” she said with a forced chuckle. “But, I don’t seem to have the appropriate measurements just yet. In fact, if it would be no bother to you or the rest of the Avengers, I think it would be a splendid idea if you all came by to the boutique a little later this morning to get fitted in. You could even offer your own ideas to the dress I have so far…maybe?”

She mentally begged that Natasha agreed. It was an excellent idea, certainly, but it was also something that actually needed to transpire. She had no measurements, no idea on how tall or wide each human…or Asgardian appeared to be. Hay, Rarity hadn’t even made a basic design! All she had were sketches. Sketches that might prove to be fruitless if she didn’t have the right measurements.

So, she begged. Mentally. She had standards, after all.

Thank Celestia above, Natasha sighed and nodded.

“That sounds fine, Rarity,” she mumbled, earning a well-earned breath of relief from the unicorn sitting across from her.

“Oh, thank you, darling!” Rarity exhaled, her hoof resting over her heart. “You have no idea how much easier this makes things. Don’t fret, my dear. The Gala is still several hours away, so we will have plenty of time to get the dress fitted and fixed just for your particular interests!”

“And maybe catch the eye of a certain doctor, eh? Eh?” Pinkie interjected, leaning towards Natasha and bumping her shoulder playfully. Pinkie proceeded to fall without the weight of the Widow sitting where she leaned, her body hitting the floor with a surprised “Oof!” coming from the mare.

Natasha stood up abruptly, eyeing Rarity with eyes almost as calm as the morning hues bursting through the windows. But Rarity could see passed that. She could see the other expressions mixed within the forced calm. Uncertainty, perhaps? Worry?

Fear?

She couldn’t tell. Miss Romanoff hid it quite well.

With a polite bow, Natasha said, “Thank you for inviting me for breakfast.”

And then she spun around and made her escape, leaving behind two mares with more questions than answers and a bakery staring at the slender alien’s backside. Pinkie looked back up to the table. She didn’t even finish half of her milk.

She pushed the door aside, finally taking in a much-needed breath away from all the bystanders. Away from all the eyes that stared at her, accused her silently. Broke her down and beat her to the ground. But none of it was as terrible as the feeling she felt inside. In her heart. And how the fire and dark collided with one another.

She stared at the rising sun, the alien star, and found its warmth…cold.

What are you doing, Romanoff?

Author's Note:

Got a bit of a slow chapter here developing relationships and what not. Sorry for the wait, I'll hopefully get the next chapter out quicker. I also just recently bought Fallout 4 for Black Friday so...you know...goodbye social life. :facehoof:

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