Hey guys, it's Hoppiholla. So glad to be back :D Just...bear with me here. New story, Avengers fandom (sorry ME fans), OCs are involved, longer note at the bottom...? All will be explained!

(and yes, the cover art is mine, if you have questions about it, PM me :D)

She was not having a good day.

First off, and most pressingly, she was being chased by a large number of people with guns. That was never a good thing. Second, she was fairly certain she knew why they were chasing her, and that it had something to do with the flash drive clutched tightly in her right fist. The flash drive that currently held very sensitive files, that she had risked life and limb to get. And that meant she wouldn't be giving up any time soon, and she had the sneaking suspicion the suit-clad SHIELD agents after her wouldn't either. Third, the plan that she had carefully concocted over the past weeks had gone wrong in numerous places, which only served to piss her off. There was absolutely no reason why the security systems should have been upgraded literally an hour before she set her plans into motion, and even less cause for a sudden increase in the number of guards around the particular server she needed to access. For God's sake, they had almost doubled the amount of people-she hadn't been nearly that obvious in her recon, right?

However, obviousness aside, she really needed to get out of here. Now.

Keeping her hand clenched around the flash drive, she skidded around a corner and came face-to-face with a pair of massive steel doors. The wall to the left was covered in buttons and dials and scans that she didn't have the key to. She snarled under her breath-she hadn't originally planned on getting out this way, and she didn't have time to hack through. The shouts behind her were far away enough. She ripped the covering off of the panel, exposing the wires and circuitry. She took a deep breath, hesitated for the space of a second, and then she rammed her hand into the wiring.

Lightning arced around her fingers and raced over the mess of wires. A crackling noise filled the air, and a few moments later, the door groaned, opening a few inches, almost reluctantly. She kept her hand planted on the panel for a few moments longer, her teeth gritted as she demanded the door open. There was a loud crack, and the door rushed open. She shook her hand out, checking nervously behind her, and sighing in relief when she saw that no one was watching her. Sure, there was security footage that would show lightning coming from her hands, but they wouldn't see it for a while yet, and by then, she would be long gone.

She absolutely, positively was not going to end up in the custody of SHIELD as some kind of lab rat. Even if she had stolen their files.

Another crack sounded, and she threw herself through the door, releasing the wires and barely getting herself through before it shut with a clang. There was a sound of impact as a bullet hit the door on the other side, and she took off, sprinting down the hallway for all she was worth. She was almost out, and once she got off the compound, she could disappear. She rounded a corner, putting on an extra burst of speed as the exterior doors came into sight...

"Stop!"

She would have snorted if she wasn't so out of breath. Like that would stop her. Really, they ought to focus on, you know, doing something worthwhile. Something that might actually stop her. Actually, that was a little worrying-SHIELD wasn't stupid, and at last count, there were only four agents chasing after her. That didn't seem like nearly enough, even if she was being modest. And they hadn't caught her yet. She thought that SHIELD agents were the best of the best, and they weren't fast enough? And where was everyone else?

She had already thrown the doors open when her eyes widened in understanding. She dug her heels in to stop her trajectory, but she skidded into the parking lot anyway.

Shit.

The parking lot was bright enough that it might as well have been noon, floodlights trained directly on the doors. The doors were surrounded, agents in black suits with pistols aimed straight at her forehead. At least one helicopter hovered over the scene, guns pointed straight at her. She lifted an eyebrow at that-she was flattered that they thought they needed a helicopter to deal with her, but it would make getting out of this a whole lot harder.

"Put your hands up!"

Her chest heaved as she sighed. Innocently, she raised her hands to either side of her head. Scanning the area around her briefly, she smirked as she spotted a pipe running up the wall on her left. Perfect. She had really hoped to get out of here without showing off her...ability, but it seemed to be unavoidable now. Oh well.

Without warning, her arms lashed out to the side, palms out. Twin bolts of lightning cracked across the space, and she dropped almost instantly into a squat, one leg straight out in front of her. Pushing off, she spun in a circle, lightning following her hands like whips, lashing anyone in their path and blinding the rest. Separate bolts hit the helicopter above her, eliciting frightened yells from the pilot as it listed severely to the left. Bullets hit the space where she had been a second ago like rain, but she was already gone. She scrambled up the pipe and onto the roof of the SHIELD building, sprinting flat-out across the asphalt. She could hear shouting behind her, but she had made sure there wouldn't be any quick pursuit. She reached the edge of the roof in seconds and leaped. She hit the ground rolling, springing to her feet and fleeing as fast as she could.

Yeah. She had been a lab rat once before, she was never going back to that place again.

SHIELD could kiss her ass.

Nick Fury was going to kill someone. Just with the pure force of his rage. "Can someone explain to me why there was a successful break-in at a secure facility?"

The junior agents in front of him shuffled a bit.

"Perhaps why an unknown entity was able to acquire sensitive files with absolutely no help?"

No one answered.

"Then at least tell me why this...girl did not only successfully make complete copies of said files, but managed to escape a collection of almost thirty agents, their vehicles and a goddamned helicopter?"

There was a round of throat-clearing and looking at the floor while Director Fury fixed his one-eyed glare on those nearest him. This was inexcusable. Almost thirty agents, and one person had managed to get the jump on all of them? That he found a little hard to believe.

Fury had problems of his own to deal with. He had a super soldier he needed to introduce to the modern world, a space cube that was acting out, and the skin around his eye was itching. Whenever that happened, it usually meant very bad things were about to happen. Fury was not a superstitious man, but really, right now he would take any warning he could get.

"Sir, that wasn't a normal girl."Fury looked in annoyed surprise at the agent who now flinched and stared at the ground. She looked to be young, and this had probably been her first assignment. Usually all he got from agents he dealt with directly was 'yes sir, no sir' and zero eye contact. Especially with junior agents.

"What exactly do you mean by that, agent?" Fury requested politely. Usually when he was being polite, it wasn't a good agent winced, but stood up straight and eventually looked him in the eye.

"With all due respect, sir, a normal girl can't outrun senior SHIELD agents any more than she can throw lightning from her hands."

If Fury was surprised, he didn't show it. "I'm gonna have to ask you to explain that one, agent," he said calmly. The agent bit her lip, but opened her mouth to speak. At that precise moment, Agent Phil Coulson entered the room. The suited man was something of an unholy deity amongst the junior agents-most of them firmly believed he was an android, or some Frankenstein's creature. In the past, Fury had used that to his advantage. Coulson was a good agent, and really, that was something that was getting harder and harder to find.

Coulson nodded to the assembled agents and leaned in to Fury's ear, and the junior Fury was interrogating heaved a visible sigh of relief.

"Sir, there's something you need to see. Related to the most recent break-in."

"Could this possibly have anything to do with, what was it? Lightning? From someone's hands?" Fury said pointedly, glaring at the junior agent, who turned an interesting shade of red.

"Yes, sir," she said sheepishly, staring fixedly at the ground. To his surprise, Coulson's eyebrows merely raised. "I was informed you hadn't seen the security footage yet, but if you have, we can discuss-"

"Wait. What?" Fury asked, clashing eyebrows the only allowance to his shock. He had assumed that the agent was making it up, telling a story to cover her own ass, but this was...unprecedented.

Coulson's lips lifted in the barest hint of a smile. "You'll see." With a few flicks of his fingertips, a screen lit up on one of the walls, the lights dimming automatically. He sat down in a desk chair, but Fury's glare pinned the agents that had started to shuffle to the door where they were.

"Agent!" he called as the junior agents not-so-unobtrusively shimmied their way to the opposite end of the room to watch. The junior girl who had spoken up turned around, along with some others, but noticed him looking straight at her. She put a finger to her chest and he nodded sarcastically. She came to stand in front of him, trembling slightly, but with her feet planted firmly and her chin up. Fury decided he liked her. He ran a quick mental check over the agents assigned to the violated facility, and remembered her name.

"Agent Greene, if you could, perhaps, come over here? Since you were so eager to have me see this footage in the first place?"Greene flinched again, but inclined her head, turning to watch the screen, her entire body tense. Fury rolled his eyes internally at the stoic front, but turned his eyes as well.

Coulson's finger tapped a switch, and the screen flickered to life. It was definitely footage from a security cam-the image was black and white, but clear-nothing but the best for SHIELD-and the timestamp in the corner read 1:32:43 AM. It showed the seemingly normal doors of the SHIELD facility-everything quiet and clear, the doors innocently shut, with one extremely noticeable exception. SHIELD agents were using their armored vehicles as barricades, crouching behind them, and every single one had a weapon pointed at the doors. The helicopter was hovering silently, and Fury frowned. A 'copter of that size should have made noise.

"This particular cam doesn't have audio input, sir," Coulson offered. "It's literally the size of a crack in the wall, extremely hard to find, which may explain why it's the only camera we can still get data from."Fury raised an eyebrow, a question inherent in the gesture.

"The others were knocked out by...well, you'll just have to watch."Coulson sped up the video with a flick, and a bare two seconds passed before the action began. The glass doors suddenly slammed open on screen, and a girl skidded out.

Fury's mind automatically started cataloging everything he noticed about her-he hadn't become the Director of SHIELD for nothing. She was a little on the tall side, lean but muscular, coiled strength sitting below the surface, a lioness poised to strike. She had dark hair-since the image was black and white, he couldn't tell exactly what color-that was tied back in a low ponytail. It would appear that a section in the front had fallen out of the tie, as it cast forward when she jerked to a stop, flicking into one eye, and he could tell the texture was wavy if not curly. The girl was wearing an assortment of clothes that, while not exactly odd, were not any kind of suit or uniform-a short leather jacket with a high collar, jeans, and a v-neck shirt. The two interesting things about her clothing were on her hands and feet-thick, fingerless gloves and thick black boots that could only be described as military. The rest could easily blend in with a city crowd, nothing too extreme.

It was a calculated ensemble, designed to not be noticed. Of course, breaking into a SHIELD facility may have thrown that intent out the window. Unfortunately, from the angle this particular camera was at, there wasn't a clear view of her face, only a distorted three-quarter view from the watched, one eyebrow raised, as the scene unfolded. One of the agents' mouth moved, and she raised her hands in the air, but Fury saw, even through the screen, the alert tension in her shoulders that foretold she wasn't about to go down without a fight.

All of a sudden, her arms flashed out to the sides, and what happened next rendered even Fury speechless. Lightning did indeed explode outwards from her fingers, twisting as the girl spun, until finally light consumed the screen, individual bolts of electricity barely visible in the glare. There was a burst of static, then the footage was suddenly turned black, fluctuating to a dark grey as the camera's brightness filters tried to compensate for the sudden blinding light. When the video cleared, there was nothing but a parking lot, SHIELD agents either lying around groaning or with their hands clamped over their eyes, a helicopter desperately righting itself in the air, and absolutely no sign of the mysterious girl.

Fury was frozen for a bare second before he was moving, stalking out of the room with both Coulson and Agent Greene following him at a trot. The junior agents trailed behind awkardly, and with a snap of his fingers, Coulson had them following behind. Fury decided now was a good time for them to get some experience in tracking someone down.

"I want the best facial recognition program we've got running as soon as possible, use any frame from that video you have to get the face, just get it," he snapped. "Cross reference with every database we can get our hands on, get me mugshots, a name, date of birth, everything. I don't care what you were working on before, this is a priority." Three agents bobbed a nod and peeled off down another hallway. Fury continued to rattle off instructions at the remaining agents, until only Agents Coulson and Greene were left. Fury turned to enter his private office, slightly surprised Agent Greene was still here.

"S-sir?" she stuttered, and he whirled around.

"Yes, Agent? Make it quick, you can see we have a bit of a mission right now," he snapped. This time, she only winced a tiny bit at his tone. Hmm.

"Sir, there may be a faster way to find her." Fury raised an eyebrow and narrowed his eye at her. "Explain."

"Well, she s-stole files, right? Important ones," Agent Greene said, stuttering over her words as she cringed slightly in the full force of his glare, rushing through to skip over the fact she had reminded him of her team's blunder. Coulson, however, nodded at her to go on, and she gained confidence. "SHIELD files usually have a tag on them, for just these situations. If she did a full copy of the files, in the situation she was in, sir, she wouldn't have time to do a proper check through for tracking programs, sir. The tags may well still be intact-if we run an algorithm checking local servers for those particular signatures, we'll find them when she opens the data. Sir."

Fury considered this, but saw a flaw in her logic. "And what if she plugs into an isolated personal server?"

Agent Greene spread her hands. "Director, sir, did she look rich to you? It'll be hard enough for her to get her hands on a computer to review the data she stole, much less hide it from SHIELD. I've run intel before, sir, I know how thorough those programs are."

"And if she moves out of local range?" Fury asked sarcastically, seeing the largest hole in her plan. Greene didn't flinch at all this time, instead replying with the same dry tone.

"With all due respect, sir, I doubt she can afford transportation. And anyway, this is the last place anyone would expect a thief to hide-in the same place the theft was committed." Fury considered Greene for a second. She was smart, that was sure, maybe not a genius but she had the calculating mind of a good agent. Plus, she didn't seem to be stuck in the eternally subservient state that most junior agents acquired when he was around. His best agents followed orders, yes, but they had their own minds.

"Why'd you get this job, Agent Greene?" he asked. She blinked in surprise. "Why are you stuck guarding a facility that hasn't seen action in years instead of running intel where I need you?" He had other things he needed to take care of, of course, and he should probably just glare and attend to them, but he was actually curious.

Agent Greene was surprised by the question, but she appeared to weigh her options before deciding to tell the truth. She squared her shoulders and clasped her hands behind her back. "I refused to go on a date with my superior a few months ago. And called him out on it."

Fury almost chuckled-almost-before he was just annoyed. This kind of bullshit wasn't supposed to happen in his organization. He nodded seriously before waving a hand. "Dismissed, Agent. Good work," he added, since she seemed terrified she had said the wrong thing and was getting knocked down to typing duties. She flickered a quick salute and walked off, almost running.

Fury paused for a second before entering his office. "Get her a transfer. Something in intel, where she'll actually do well." Coulson nodded, pausing in the doorway. "First, though, I need you to go down to R&D, get them to pull every last pixel they can out of the other cameras, I don't care if they short-circuited or whatever the hell happened, I need a visual on her face. Understood?" he said, taking a heavy seat at his desk. Coulson nodded and left. "And get me transport to the Tesseract facility pronto, Selvig's been sending emails every damn half hour," Fury shouted after him. The agent waved to indicate that he heard.

Fury turned to his bank of monitors, bringing up the video with a short series of flicks from where Coulson had discreetly transferred it. He fast forwarded through, pausing it only when he found the frame he wanted-the girl had just started to drop into her spin, and her face was briefly turned towards him, a blurry image that he hoped tech would be able to clear up. Who was she?

He flicked the video away to be met with the cold grey background of all SHIELD computers. It didn't matter. He would find out.

And when he did, there would be a...conversation.

Ohohoho, did I build the suspense? Well, I promised all would be explained, so explain I shall.

This is just the start of a new fic I'm planning. Obviously, it's set in the Avengers movieverse (yeah, I jumped on the bandwagon), and equally obviously, it features some OCs. One of these original characters is going to be, yes you guessed it, a seventh Avenger. Before you start barking at me about 'mary-sues' and 'plot holes' and 'self-inserts,' please acknowledge that I started writing this for myself. I took a character who started out as, I'll admit, one of the biggest mary-sues I've ever made, and I turned her into a legitimate character. I decided to write down her story because I thought someone, somewhere would like to hear it. The fic will follow the movie plot, but I hope to get some original plot points in there. So please, tell me if you want to see more! I have several chapters written up, and I'll try my darndest to update regularly and quickly if this gets some approval. I'm on summer break right now, so that should be fairly easy. If anybody is interested in the story, I'll post a bit more explanation with the next chapter.

Also guys, I don't know if you caught my profile note or the deletion, but Divide by Zero was deleted by the admins, unfortunately. I am really sorry about that. I probably won't be putting it back up, as I didn't really have it saved anywhere but on a computer that is now completely fried. Ah well. At least I got my writing mojo back, right?

Anyway! Thanks for reading the first chapter, if you want to see more, REVIEW!