I stretched my body out like a cat, flexing the graceful black appendages that protruded from my back. The world seemed quiet from my home there outside the touch of humanity, in a wildlife preserve that SHIELD owned under the radar, just for me. Despite the secluded home I could feel the hustle and bustle of human society in the edge of my consciousness. And I still got information on what was going on through SHIELD since, technically, I was one of their Agents.

Stretching out on a rock outside my cave of a home, I soaked in the sun. In a moment of contentment, I looked down into the river to view myself. My hair was long and pitch black with purple highlights, sweeping over my right eye. My eyes had violet around the pupil and slowly faded out to blue and lined in black. My cheekbones were high and sharp in an almost unnatural way and my lips were seemingly too big, even though they were both natural for me. My ears were pointed at the top slightly, like one of the elves. I was tall and thin but muscular too. I had a six pack and pale skin despite all the sun. My fingernails and toenails were long, black, and sharp as daggers but retractable to a typical human length and sharpness. I had fangs for canines but they were retractable and they usually stayed retracted so they looked just a little longer and sharper then normal. I was in nothing but a bra, panties, and the necklace with the unnatural silver gem stone that I always wore no matter what. The strangest thing about my appearance was the giant black dragon wings on my back with a thin membrane of glistening silver on the underside and a spine jutting from the very top of each wing and from the ends of the support bones.

I lay without moving for a long time before I heard the cell phone in my home going off with my unnaturally sharp hearing. I pulled myself to my feet and jogged into the cave, where there was a large log cabin hidden in its darkness. I pulled the door open and picked up the phone, while glaring at the questionable generator.

I glanced at the caller id, rolled my eyes, and answered with one word, my voice tinged with an odd accent not idiginous to Earth "Coulson?"

"We need you to come in," he replied, his voice tight and clipped.

I instantly knew something was very, very wrong "What happened?"

"You will be briefed."

"Tell me now."

"Vivian," Coulson said, his voice sounding more strained. I knew then it was worse than I suspected since he always used my last name. "Barton's been compromised."

I stilled "Have you contacted Natasha?"

"She's on her way to Calcutta. We're activating the Avengers initiative. I'm heading to New York."

I swept into my bedroom, my wings flexing unconciously due to my stress "I'll be in New York in twenty minutes. Meet you outside Stark towers." With that, I hung up.

I grabbed the bag I always kept packed for instances such as this, my sword, and quickly put my clothes on. Then I ran outside the house and cave, spread my wings and took off into the sky.

. . .

I landed in the most forested area of Central Park to prevent anyone from seeing me and put my trench coat on to cover my wings, then placed gloves over my hands and sunglasses over my eyes. I walked out of the forest and jogged all the way to Stark towers, darting around people. It was dark by now and I probably looked weird running in the dark with sunglasses, but I could see perfectly fine and picked Coulson out of the crowd easily.

Just as we got in the elevator to head up to Stark's private floor, I heard the sound of Ironman's suit coming in for the landing. Then the doors closed and I could only hear the mechanical whirr of the elevator.

I glanced over at Coulson and saw he was on the phone and calling someone, I suspect Stark. I heard him speaking to someone but the voice I could hear was not completely human so I guessed it was Stark's AI… JARVIS, I believed it was called.

"Mr. Stark, we need to talk," Coulson said formally.

"You have reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark," Came the narcissistic voice on the other end. "Please leave a message."

The elevator dinged as Coulson said "This is urgent."

And the doors slid open just as Stark said "Then leave it urgently." At that moment we all caught sight of each other. Tony was kneeling on the ground around wine on a coffee table with Pepper Potts. "Security breach," He pointed to his girlfriend. "It's on you."

"Mr. Stark," Coulson said blandly.

"Phil!" Pepper Potts said, getting up to walk over, holding a glass of wine. "Come in."

Softly, I heard Stark say "Phil?"

Coulson walked into the room and I followed, earning funny looks from the two former occupants of the room "We can't stay."

"His first name is 'Agent.'"

I snorted at Stark, earning more funny looks.

"Come on in." Potts said happily. "We're celebrating."

"Which is why he can't stay," Stark said through his teeth.

I stuck my hand out to quickly shake hands with Potts "Agent Vivian Blackthorn."

She took my hand, shook it, and then dropped it while giving it a surprised look. I knew that look; she felt its unusual heat, a side effect of my fire magic. "Pepper Potts and this," she stopped looking at my hand and gestured to Stark "Is Tony Stark."

I nodded to him but, when he extended his hand to me with his famous playboy grin, I ignored it.

"We need you to look this over," I said, taking the SHIELD issue touch pad that Coulson had given me earlier and trying to hand it to him. "As soon as possible."

He stared at the pad "I don't like being handed things."

"That's fine because I love to be handed things. So, let's trade." Pepper said, taking the pad from my hands and handed me her wine glass. Then she turned, gave Stark the pad and took his wine glass, then took a drink from it with a small "Thank you."

"Official consulting hours are one through five every other Thursday." Stark said.

"This isn't a consultation." Coulson replied still blandly.

"Is this about the Avengers?" Pepper asked curiously, now getting her own share of funny looks from the two of us. "Which I know nothing about."

Stark huffed and started to walk away "The Avengers Initiative was scrapped, I thought. And I didn't even qualify."

"I didn't know that either."

I glanced over at Coulson and saw he was smiling at Stark.

"Apparently I'm volatile, self-obsessed, don't play well with others."

"That I did know."

"This isn't about personality profiles anymore." Coulson interrupted the entertaining banter.

"Whatever." Stark had stopped at the desk by the window and gestured to his girlfriend "Ms. Potts, got a second?"

Pepper made a face at us "Half a mo."

I turned to Coulson "I'm volatile, slightly self-obsessed, and don't play well with others. Emphasis on the volatile. I qualified."

He raised an eyebrow at me but a smile played at his lips "But you are not Tony Stark."

I opened my mouth, paused with a thoughtful expression, and said "True."

We looked over in time to see Stark swipe his hands over the screen of the touch pad and projections pop up all around the desk of the profiles of each of the possible Avengers as well as the problem. Noise filled the room.

I noticed they were talking but focused instead on the projections. After a moment Pepper walked over to join us.

"So, any chance you're driving by LaGuardia?" She asked.

We turned to go into the elevator as Coulson said "I can drop you."

"Fantastic. I want to hear about the cellist. Is that still a thing?"

"She moved back to Portland."

"What? Boo!"

I spent the entire elevator ride and walk to Coulson's car, Lola, listening to the two talk before abruptly stopping a little ways away from his car in the abandoned lot. Pepper and Coulson stopped as well and turned back to look at me.

"I'll meet you on the Helecarrier." I said to Coulson then turned to Pepper. "You are about to see something really cool. Don't tell Tony." When she nodded I took off my sunglasses, stepped back, took off my trench coat, stuffing it in my bag, and allowed my wings to unfurl. Then I ran away from them and jumped into the air.

Faintly I heard Pepper say "Whoa." Coulson chuckled.

A/N First edit on this story. If you've read it before, you wont need to reread the whole story because nothing major will be changing. There will be more significant edits once Loki shows up but for the most part its staying the same.