The sky darkened at a speed ordinary people could hardly imagine. The people sitting by the shore began packing up. Natasha stomped out the flames with her boots, then buried the AllSpark beneath dirt, leaving only a faint wisp of smoke.
"Did anyone tell you there might be bears around here?" Natasha asked casually as she kicked apart the stones piled beside the fire.
"Did anyone tell the bears that we might be around here?" Schiller said without looking back, carrying his stool. "Especially that there might be Russians around here?"
The red-haired female agent burst into wild laughter, gasping as she said, "Stop making stereotypes jokes like that. They're not funny at all."
At that moment, Ivan and Steve's intermittent conversation drifted over from ahead. "Yes, to prove I was an adult at the time, I ran into the woods and killed a bear with my bare hands..."
Natasha pursed her lips, made a face, then quickly caught up with Schiller and patted him on the shoulder. "Russia doesn't have that kind of coming-of-age ritual. When I came of age, I ate cake like Americans do."
"With the previous Black Widow's head sitting beside it, right?" Schiller showed no mercy.
"What kind of people do you think we are? Savages who eat raw meat and drink blood?" Natasha raised a brow. The light from the lakeside cabin fell across her face, making her sharp features rise and fall like mountains under the night sky.
"Stereotypes," Schiller assessed, sounding as professional as a psychologist. Then he added, "There must be a few Russians who've never killed anything, or killed anything in their dreams after getting drunk, right?"
"There must be. Go look in Moscow—maybe you'll find a few weaklings like that."
Following the light from the lakeside cabin, they arrived