(F to Sheepdog)

Natasha didn’t feel much pleasure in her life, but there was a certain satisfaction that came with taking out a Hydra agent’s knees at 500 yards. She allowed a brief half-smile of satisfaction to flit across her face as the man crumpled wordlessly. And soundlessly.

Her smile faded. Normally they tended to start screaming about now. That was an oddity, which in itself was a cause for concern. She flicked a strand of red hair from her eyes, adjusting her rifle’s scope to compensate for distance. There wasn’t any other sign of movement—not that she’d truly expected such. After all, the man had been shot through a small window in a motel bathroom.

Satisfied that there wasn’t a threat lurking in ambush, she returned her rifle to its case, sliding it beneath the table she’d used as a brace. Then the agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. affixed a vacant smile to her face, sauntering from her hotel to head towards the target.

Of course, Natasha turned more than a few heads along the way. She was undeniably attractive, which helped sell the fact that she was just a tourist. After all, what sort of secret agent would be so brazen as to catch the eye of every red-blooded guy on the coast?

Nobody impeded her progress, and nobody seemed to question her easily entering a room that wasn’t hers. She let the door close behind her with a quiet click, though her eyes never once left the Hydra agent. He remained unmoving, and there wasn’t a trace of the damage her shot had done to his kneecap.

Natasha was well-trained. She reached for her communicator without a moment’s hesitation, fully ready to call in a nearby strike team for backup. Fast as she was, it wasn’t enough.

Her fallen target’s body rippled, sagging in some places and expanding in others. She cursed as a long and whiplike object snaked from within the clothing, and she attempted to hit it with a Widow’s Bite. The electrified dart missed by a millimeter, and the garrote slipped across her neck.

Something fastened with an audible click, and she grimaced. Then she felt a pinprick in her neck, and the world went dark.

 

Natasha awoke in a bedroom, one with a full-length mirror. It told her someone had gone to the effort of not only disarming her, but also dressing her in her usual leather combat attire. Perhaps most irritatingly, they’d dyed her red hair a snow white, and had restyled the front of her hair into a loose set of bangs.

She blew a huff of air up at them with a frown, checking her room for answers. It didn’t look anything like something on the beachfront. Instead, it struck her as coming from a psychologist’s mind, with too-neat arrangements and a clinical cleanliness to it all.

++I see you’ve come to your senses,++ a voice crackled to life. It was tinny, but female. There was a hint of arrogance to it, as well as an unrelentingly irritable smugness. ++I hope you don’t mind if we play a few games. First game: I spy with my little eye, something around your neck.++

Natasha looked again to her reflection. Sure enough, the lash that had bound her remained wrapped around her collar. Actually, on closer inspection, that was a rather good word for it. “Right. I see you’ve got me collared. But where’s the leash?” Natasha asked, checking the room for speakers.

++No leash,++ the voice laughed. ++Just a fun obstacle course.++

“If you want me to do tricks for you, you’ve got another thing coming,” Natasha growled. Something about the woman’s tone had her hackles raised. This stranger spoke to her like she was some sort of superior—and Black Widow was beholden to no-one.

++But it’s one of your favorites. I call it: ‘How Many Hydra Guards Can She Disable?++

The walls rose as though on smoothly oiled hinges, and Natasha found her initial suspicions were correct: she was in a facsimile of a room contained within a larger laboratory. A thought of how she’d done a very similar thing to Captain America flitted through her mind, an instant before a slight glimmer of light caught her attention.

It was subtle, and anyone save for an expert S.H.I.E.L.D. agent would have missed it. Even then, some of them would have ignored it. But they weren’t as paranoid as Natasha. She lunged towards the glimmer, hands grasping fabric. A muffled curse met her ears, and a man materialized before her.

++Oh, did I forget to mention? They’re cloaked.++

Natasha glowered, striking him in the head with a hand, hard. It was like flipping a switch, as hidden lights flared to life, blinding her and confusing her senses. She missed the glimmers of another two Hydra stealthsuits, and received a pair of bruises for her inattentiveness.

So she closed her eyes, and opened her other senses. Natasha took a deep breath in, relying on her hearing instead. She felt out the nearest foe’s presence by the soft squeak of his shoes on the ground, and she spun, lifting a leg. Her roundhouse connected with his collarbone, and there was a refreshing crack that filled the air.

Natasha’s hair heavily bounced against her cheek, and she shook her head, feeling the long locks flop at the sides of her head. For some reason, her hearing had improved, enough to hear the rustle of another Hydra stealthsuit’s fabric. This man received a knife-handed blow to the throat, and he wheezed loudly.

His breath stank like garlic and pepperoni, and Natasha crinkled her nose. She shook her head again, backing up—only to catch a new scent. It was sharp and poignant, a dash too much cologne on the fourth Hydra agent’s body.

He paid for it dearly, as she lunged at him. Her hands danced about his frame, lifting her body like a gymnast so that she could wrap her thighs around his neck. Then, with a sharp twist of her hips, she wrenched his whole body violently, sending him to the ground in a collapsed heap.

++Damn. I really wish the Red Skull would have given me more than four of them.++

Natasha opened her eyes to find that some of the color had bled from the room. Apparently that cacophony of lights had still burned into her retinas—though that didn’t keep her from seeing a familiar baton across the room.

++You might need a weapon for the next task at hand. Too bad the hallway between you and it is shrinking.++

Natasha growled under her breath. That was a challenge, and she was never one to shy from it. The woman set at a sprint, a fast enough pace to force her to sharply pant in exertion. The floor and ceiling drew ever-closer to one another as she ran, forcing her to run in a half-stoop, then to even fall to all fours.

For a moment, Natasha doubted if she’d chosen wisely. Trying to scamper like this was a bit of a challenge, and she might not make it through the course. Then something clicked, and her gait became a good deal quicker.

She leapfrogged like a sprinting dog, bolting to the end and lunging towards her baton. Unfortunately, she’d built up too much momentum, and ended up smacking face-first into the metal. Instinct drove her to clasp her teeth around its leather grip, and she fell into a rolling tumble on her hands and knees.

“Very good! You got the stick!”

It was the female voice from before, but in person. Natasha turned, finding a chubby blonde grinning back to her. The woman looked almost like a housewife, but Natasha knew that looks could be deceiving. She glowered, growling under her breath.

“Oh come on, don’t be like that. Why don’t you give me the stick?” The woman cooed.

Natasha rolled her eyes. Was the woman even aware of what she’d asked for? Well, if that’s what she wanted…

The S.H.I.E.L.D. agent dashed towards her Hydra foe—a little too quickly. Something just beneath the surface of her clothes caught on her collar, and she ended up dropping the baton at the woman’s feet with a faint whimper.

Natasha’s whole body was itchy—which made a good deal of sense to her. She could have sworn she’d complained about how tight and restrictive these leather suits could be on fur before. Back when she’d… Worn fur on a mission? Why had she requested that?

Before Natasha could ruminate more on that fact, the woman plucked the baton up with a laugh. “Good girl! I knew you could do it!”

Natasha was conflicted. On the one hand, it was always nice to be appreciated. On the other paw, it was more than a little patronizing to be treated like this. Of course she’d be able to fetch—she was very well trained, after all.

And, on the note of said training, there was a Hydra agent that needed disarming. Natasha rose to her hind paws, despite the protest of her back legs. She planted her front paws on the woman’s shoulders, feeling her digits tense slightly as they swelled.

This foe deserved no mercy, and so she received every one of the disarming face-licks that had been drilled into Natasha from birth. As expected, it was enough to warrant a laugh from her target, who stowed the baton… Away. It was out of sight, and so Natasha didn’t really care about it anymore.

“Such a good girl. Have you even noticed yet?”

Natasha didn’t know what she was talking about. What was to notice? The fact that she had the Hydra agent almost exactly where she wanted her? It would only take a simple motion, and soon this human would be dancing to Natasha’s tune.

Natasha fell backwards, rolling expertly to cushion the blow on her side. Then she rolled to her back, arching her spine and feeling the gratifying WHUMPH of her clothes bursting from a thick-furred body. The motion exposed her belly, which was precisely her intention. No human alive could resist the temptation to give a belly rub.

Sure enough, the woman dropped to her knees, cooing and stroking Natasha’s tummy with both her hands. Marks like this were all too easy, and Natasha slowly started to wag her tail. The pace picked up as her tail escaped more of its confines, until it could better express her emotion—and ensnare the Hydra woman-person’s attention.

“I might need to spell it out for you. Well, not literally. We both know you can’t even understand what V-E-T means, much less B-A-T-H.”

Natasha flushed with a momentary embarrassment. It wasn’t her fault that S.H.E… E? I? … Letters. That Letters hadn’t managed to crack Hydra’s dastardly codework. It would take a genius to figure out what this human was talking about. She pursed her dark lips in a frown, one that cutely showed off her growing muzzle.

“Here, allow me to demonstrate,” said the human, a chuckle slipping from her lips as she clicked a button on her belt. A small screen rose from the floor, depicting a woman kneeling over what looked to be a very content, very plush Old English Sheepdog.

Natasha felt a pang of envy at that. She wanted to be that sheepdog, because that sheepdog looked so happy. A small whine slipped from her throat, at the same time the screen-dog whined. She growled at it for copying her, but it growled back.

Curious, Natasha experimented snuffling her nose, letting her tongue fall from past her lips, and flopping her ears. The screen-dog did all the same motions just as well, and Natasha felt rather silly indeed. She was looking in a mirror. Of course she was—there weren’t any other pups as undeniably attractive as she was.

“Have you put two and two together yet? Lemme try another line of questioning, then: what’s your name?”

That was a rather silly question. “Bella,” she said, giving the first name that came to her mind. Ignoring the fact that her long tongue and muzzle made the name sound like “Buhhwlluhrr,” Natalla grinned at her own cleverness.

“Ooh? Bella?”

Of course the woman would believe Netalla. And why wouldn’t she? Who would ever suspect a spy being brazen enough to use their own name as their cover? Bella wagged her tail, not-so-secretly proud of her little not-so-secret.

“Well, then, Bella,” the woman spoke. “You’re becoming a dog. Or rather, by now I’d imagine that you already think of yourself as one. You might not have noticed, but boring boring boring boring boring words words BELLA boring words words GOOD GIRL boring words human sounds words boring BELLA.”

Bella couldn’t quite follow most of what those noises were, but she certainly recognized a few of them. And the woman-owner was right! Bella was a good girl! Bella leaned up, licking her master’s face and wriggling her overfluffed body.

“Words words words BELLA words words SPEAK words.”

“WOOF!” Bella knew what that meant. “WOOF RRUFFF!” She let her tongue fall dopily out from her mouth, and her chest rose and fell with each breath she took. Proud of herself for speaking, she delighted in how well-trained she was.

Bella felt all the pleasure in her life, and there was no greater satisfaction than in doing what her owner wanted!