Slicing Up Natasha for Research

"Just now, you mentioned General Dreykov. If I remembered correctly, he was the leader of the Red Room, wasn't he?"

Before Natasha's utterly horrified eyes, Leon easily broke free of his restraints, the ropes around him snapping into several pieces and falling to the floor.

"That means you're still under the Red Room's control."

Leon stood and dusted himself off. "That's not right. At this point in time, you should be..."

Leon couldn't finish what he was about to say.

The moment he lowered his head.

Natasha actually launched an attack without hesitation—even though the person before her was strong enough to easily snap High-strength Polyethylene ropes.

Her movements were swift, like a spider hunting its prey.

It was as if the moment she attacked, her opponent had already fallen into her web, unable to escape.

Facing Leon, whose strength clearly far surpassed hers.

Natasha's attacks viciously targeted his vital points.

Using speed to overcome strength was a technique she had used countless times as a woman to defeat powerful enemies.

Her fists, elbows, and knees landed on Leon almost simultaneously. She truly pushed every part of her body to its limit.

Yet this surprise attack strategy, which had always worked, met a crushing defeat this time.

Natasha's face was filled with shock.

Leon, who looked only seventeen or eighteen, had blocked every one of her attacks with even greater speed!

And he had done it with only one hand!

After that hand casually caught her fist, she couldn't break free no matter how hard she struggled.

It was as though her fist wasn't caught in a hand, but in a cold hydraulic clamp.

Natasha's expression became uncertain.

But her extensive combat experience made her react immediately.

She pushed off the ground and leaped up, intending to plant her feet on Leon and twist her own joints apart to escape.

"Hey! Don't do that. I don't want to accidentally tear you in half because you resisted!"

To Leon, Natasha's body was barely sturdier than a sheet of paper.

If he carelessly relaxed his control over his strength during physical contact, what followed could only be described as too horrible to look at.

As he spoke, Leon wrapped Natasha in a Biological Force Field, afraid that an accident might destroy Tony's bedroom.

But Natasha knew nothing about that.

She only noticed something.

Leon, who had remained calm in the face of her storm of attacks, had actually changed expression now.

That left her puzzled.

Was he afraid she would get hurt?

Who exactly was the super agent that had infiltrated someone else's home?

Natasha couldn't make sense of it.

But the next moment, an immense force traveled up her arm.

She was instantly slammed against the wall without any ability to resist.

This time, no matter what Natasha did, she couldn't move even an inch.

She tried to escape with yoga techniques, or attempted to sacrifice an arm to save herself... several times, she sought a chance to counterattack through self-mutilation.

But before the overwhelming force behind her, all her struggles were useless, like an ant baring its fangs before a giant.

Slowly, her eyes changed, becoming sorrowful, despairing, and even relieved.

Almost uncontrollably, she raised the middle finger of her right hand and curled it toward the inside of her wrist, trying to activate a ring-shaped device there.

"What are you trying to do now?"

Suddenly, someone gripped the back of her neck. A large hand gave it a light squeeze, and she immediately lost consciousness.

"Looks like this is the only way to make our big sister Black Widow obediently quiet down for a while."

Leon supported Natasha from behind as her unconscious body naturally went limp, shifted his hold, picked her up, and pushed open the door to leave Tony's bedroom.

"Young Master Leon, I'm glad you're unharmed." JARVIS immediately expressed his concern. The electronic equipment in the bedroom had all been destroyed by Natasha, so he knew nothing about what had happened inside.

"Cut it out, JARVIS. You know it was impossible for anything to happen to me."

"Protecting your life and safety is my duty," JARVIS said. "Would you like me to call the police and hand this intruder over to them?"

"No. I think there's more to this. This intruder should be hiding some secrets, so I need to take her downstairs and study her."

Leon was genuinely curious.

Why had the Marvel story, which should have progressed along a linear path, gone wrong with Black Widow?

Could this world not be the Marvel 199999 main film universe, but a branching universe like What If...?

But that didn't seem likely either. After all, every plot-relevant character he had encountered so far looked almost exactly like their movie counterparts.

With those doubts in mind, he walked down the stairs. "Oh, right. When Tony comes back, remember to tell him to order his own takeout. I'll probably be in the lab all night."

"Understood, Young Master Leon." JARVIS thoughtfully asked, "Would you like me to turn off the laboratory's surveillance equipment for you?"

Leon's face darkened. "Leave it on. Leave all of it on! What do you think I'm going to do?"

"As you wish, sir." JARVIS's tone remained completely flat.

"Shut up. I'm just giving her an examination."

Leon carried Natasha into the laboratory, swept his right hand across the workbench to clear it, then laid her down on it.

Then he took off his coat and put on a pair of medical gloves.

His movements were somewhat clumsy, making him look like an amateur anatomist, rather like a medical student dissecting a cadaver for the first time.

But amateur or not, once he activated X-Ray Vision, he became top-tier.

"First, a full-body examination. Let's see..."

"Whoa! Her figure really is incredible! As expected of Natasha—slender shoulders, curvy hips, gorgeous... Ahem, let's look somewhere else first."

Leon considered himself someone who didn't like taking cheap advantages.

He cleared his mind and quickly entered a focused state. His gaze penetrated Natasha's skin, revealing the flesh and fascia beneath it.

"Hmm, her body seems fine. No bombs, no poison capsules... Ha, there's a tracker in her right leg!"

"And besides that, is this thing on her wrist a self-destruct device?"

Leon rubbed his chin. "So she was actually trying to use the self-destruct device to kill herself?"

"Committing suicide when a mission can't be completed—such an extreme approach obviously isn't Natasha's style."

In the movies, Natasha Romanoff would sacrifice herself to save others, and she would give up her life to protect her companions.

But when facing an enemy she couldn't defeat, she would never even consider giving up, much less suicide.

"So she was being controlled?"

He remembered the Black Widow movie he had hurriedly watched in his previous life.

Natasha's sister had been controlled through chemical means by the Red Room, the agent organization.

But that was ten years later in the timeline.

At this point, Natasha normally shouldn't even have been in the Red Room.

Leon's gaze moved to Natasha's head.

He looked through layers of blood vessels and brain tissue, examining everything carefully, but found no problem.

"Is my X-Ray Vision level too low, or is her brain not being controlled?"

When faced with a problem he couldn't understand, Leon instead became eager to try.

He quickly went to Stark Industries Park and brought back a microscope, a magnetoencephalograph, a mind-reading device, and a series of other specialized instruments.

More than a dozen enormous machines surrounded the workbench.

Leon rubbed his hands together. "Now it's time to test the results of everything I've learned these past few days."

In the days since dealing with the Ten Rings, he hadn't merely been basking in the sun.

During his spare time, he had occasionally studied some biology.

He just hadn't expected that knowledge to come in handy so quickly.

Leon first removed the bomb and tracker from Natasha's body, then began extracting cerebrospinal fluid and brain cells for research.

"Brain function normal. Neural ganglia normal. Synaptic transmission normal..."

He checked each item one by one. His hands moved so quickly over the instruments on the workbench that they even left afterimages.

For the observation stage of a cell slice, he only needed one glance to memorize the entire image and immediately reach an analytical conclusion.

Whenever he encountered an unclear technical detail, he had JARVIS search online for relevant papers.

Over the course of the research, Leon's relevant knowledge reserves improved at an astonishing rate.

He couldn't help muttering inwardly—

Thank you, Natasha Romanoff.

This great female agent had selflessly used her own brain, free of charge, to help him experiment and learn at the same time, allowing him to successfully grow into an outstanding neurologist, chemist, and brain scientist within a single hour.

What an incredibly selfless spirit of dedication to science!

"Oh! I found it!" At one point, Leon, bent over the microscope, shouted joyfully.

He dared say that even basking in the sun every day had never given him this much of a sense of accomplishment.

Nothing was more satisfying than reaching the pinnacle of a field through one's own efforts in an extremely short time and solving a difficult problem.

"Young Master Leon, what did you find?" JARVIS was an excellent straight man.

"I found the cause!" Leon said, somewhat excited.

"There's nothing wrong with Natasha's brain structure or tissue."

"But in her cellular fluid, I discovered a foreign chemical substance!"

Leon printed out a brain scan. "This chemical substance is affecting her basal ganglia, thereby affecting her consciousness!"

"If my judgment is correct, she still has self-awareness, but the drug has divided it into several parts. Some obey other people's commands, while others are her own thoughts."

"This chaotic consciousness lets her retain logical thinking while losing emotional judgment, leaving her able only to obey orders!"

"The person who developed this chemical substance is a genius, but also a demon!"

Leon cleared the table again. "Next comes creating a targeted inhibitor. Maybe once she wakes up, we'll gain an unexpected harvest!"