Disclaimer: I don't own The Avengers.

She's...

Special.

That's how her mother described it, when she picked up half the beach with one hand (at age nine). That's how her father described it, when she set her boyfriend's car on fire without matches or lighter fluid.

She was special. Not diseased. Not sick. Special.

Running in a hamster wheel, trying to convince the people behind the one-way glass that she'd been running for too long, Betty didn't feel special. She felt old and sweaty and tired. She glanced longingly at her handbag, stranded on a cold metal table. She wanted a cigarette.

They'd told her that any time she was too tired, she could stop running. But it was almost like a dare.

"We dare you to tell us you're too tired to run anymore." She felt her throat tighten as she poured on more speed.

"That's very good," an indiscriminate female voice told her. She shouted her thanks, and gasped for air. "Keep going. You're doing very well."

She was sure that none of the others had to do this kind of testing. They'd gotten in based upon reputation alone, while she had to bust her ass through boot-camp just to get noticed. This was the same testing they did on potential SHIELD agents, a spry SHIELD operative had explained. You get put through physical rigors, and then you're trained to make on-the-spot decisions.

What she would've given to have stayed in bed that morning.

"You can stop now, Miss Schaer, we've finished with you for now." the female voice said. She wheezed her thanks at the PA system, and promptly plonked herself onto the base of the wheel. She watched as the twentysomething female SHIELD operative came out from behind the one-way glass and handed her a bottle of water, smiling sympathetically.

"It does get easier, Miss Schaer." she said. Betty silently returned the nod, and guzzled about half of the bottle in one swig. What chugging beer will teach you...

"Betty Schaer?" An even female voice rang out from behind her. She turned slowly, achingly, feeling every tendon strain against bone. A hippy, short-haired redhead was moving toward her. She was dressed simply, in a red shirt and black trousers.

"The one and only." Betty replied. The redhead cracked a smile.

"I'm Agent Romanov. Welcome to SHIELD headquarters." Agent Romanov extended her hand for a quick shake. Betty took it warily.

"I feel like I'm in basic training," Betty said. "Did the others have to do all this?" Agent Romanov shook her head as they walked down the hall, passing busy people in SHIELD jumpsuits.

"You're something of an unknown commodity, Miss Schaer. We had to make sure you were physically and mentally stable, because the truth of the matter is, we don't know a thing about you." Betty was almost jogging to keep up with the lithe Russian, as she pushed past SHIELD operatives like they were daisies in a field.

"Well, that's good."

"Not for us, it's not."

They stopped at a chrome door at the end of a hallway filled with chrome doors. Agent Romanov nodded toward it.

"This is your stop." Betty raised an eyebrow.

"I don't get a debriefing packet or anything?" she asked. Agent Romanov shook her head.

"Go on in. Fury's expecting you." Without another word, she keyed in a number on the code key next to the door and headed briskly down the hall in the other direction. The door slid open, and with great doubt and worry, Betty walked inside.

It started when she was seven, but there were traces of it before then. Little incidents, unexplainable things. Her parents chalked it up to her brother messing about, and thought nothing of it. But when she was seven, she flooded the yard of their Brighton Beach home with water from the fire hydrant outside.

She was sitting on the front yard and playing dollies with her older brother-who indignantly flew his die-cast car through the air as though it was a superhero, and refused to touch her Barbies-when she suddenly felt as though she was about to lift off, into the air. Her blood was electricity, blue and hot, making her hands tingle.

"Devon?" she was whimpering, unused to the strangeness of it. She felt herself starting to cry.

Her little hands seemed to rise of their own accord and point expressively at the hydrant. And suddenly it was overflowing, gushing, spraying water everywhere. She was screaming for help. Her brother had run inside to fetch his mom.

Since that day, it had happened more and more often, but not just with hydrants. Flames leaped near her, but never seemed to do her harm. The earth shifted where she did-she once spent a day making hills without even meaning to. When she was happy, the wind was soft and balmy and warm, rustling the trees gently and making little waves on Coney Island Beach. When she was angry or upset or depressed, it would suddenly whip into a frenzy and send everyone hiding in their houses. She'd blown out windows in office buildings with that wind-she'd leveled sand dunes. Thanks to her, Brooklyn had seen its first and only tornado.

Then the "special" talk had come into play. She's special, her parents would explain, every time they had to pay tickets for property damage. Every time they had to separate her from the other children, because she was literally spitting fire at them. She's special, they'd say. Our special girl.

She'd hated them for it. Not in a way that could be vocalised, but in a way that still made her think that, if they'd just turned her out, she'd have come out better than she bad.

She hated them, but Fury was staring at her, and there was no more time to think about it.

"Elizabeth Ann Schaer," Fury was reading from a manilla envelope as he paced about the room. She sat in a small, black leather chair, her hands folded in her lap. "Daughter of Dr Dierdere Gowan and Dr Abram Schaer, the biologists."

"That's mom and pop." she said, giving a halfhearted laugh. Fury didn't respond.

"A scientist yourself, I see. You work at a research and development lab for...Covergirl cosmetics."

"Yes sir, I do."

"You graduated from Boston University, magna cum laude. A biology major with a speciality of neuroscience. Impressive."

"Thank you."

"And you just so happen to be able to...what was it, exactly?"

She'd never given it a name, quite. It was just something that she did; her little talent. Her little secret.

"I'm able to...use all four elements at will."

Fury examined her with his one good eye, and for a moment it felt as though she was completely translucent. Like she wasn't even there. Finally, the corners of his mouth tugged into a strange smile.

"That's very interesting, Miss Schaer. Tell me more."