Natasha Romanoff paged through the relatively sparse dossier that Director Fury had just handed over. There really wasn't much to indicate that the target was extraordinary in any manner, in fact the file seemed to indicate a relatively ordinary individual. Thirty year old male, general medical practitioner who ran his own clinic in a small sleepy town a few miles south of New York City. Came to America for his degree at Stanford, graduated at an accelerated pace with honors. No criminal history in the United States, his home country of Japan or anywhere else for that matter. No wife or girlfriend of note, just a father and two sisters still living in Japan.
"This guy seems totally normal compared to the other people we're trying to recruit," she said when she finished speed-reading through the documents. "What's so special about him?"
Her boss rubbed a thumb absentmindedly against his eye patch, one of his unconscious tics when he was annoyed with something. Probably something to do with his early afternoon visit with Stark. The Invincible Iron Man always seemed to be able to get under the normally unflappable director's skin.
"He's one of the few on the list that we suspect might have powers but have no definitive proof of. There were some scattered reports of unusual happenings in his hometown in his youth, and he always seemed involved in one way or another. Normally I would focus our attention on recruiting the people we know for sure have abilities, but since this one is right on our doorstep I want you to do a preemptive check up to see if we should pursue him as a member of the Avenger's initiative or not."
Natasha raised an eyebrow. "And what exactly do we suspect him capable of?"
Fury turned and gave her a grim look. "He might be anywhere between a 1 and a 10 for all we know."
The Russian spy felt her other eyebrow reflexively join the first. The number scale was invented by Shield to roughly gauge the threat level of an individual in terms of their unusual abilities. Most normal humans were considered a 0, harmless without a weapon. A 1 might be a minor talent, something simple like being able to levitate a small object or sense whether someone was telling the truth or lying. Romanoff knew she was rated somewhere between a 3 and 4 herself, where as someone like the Hulk was put firmly in the 9-10 range. Only a handful made it near the other end of the scale, but the fact that there were those rare few wandering around unchecked in the world was enough to make those in the know rather uncomfortable. Nukes might be scary, but at least they were predictable.
"We speaking hypothetically here or you actually have a reason to slide the scale around him that much?" she asked.
Fury shrugged and collected the file which promptly vanished into a desk drawer. "Let's just say I have my reasons. And you might find him interesting too, for personal reasons."
The former KBG spy felt a moment of apprehension. "I don't do personal."
She tried very hard not to. In her line of business, personal got you killed. Natasha was very interested in staying alive and kicking.
"Well you might consider giving it a try," advised Fury with a bland look. "The one consistent thing we know for sure about this guy is that he can see ghosts."
Natasha felt a chill run down her spine. It was not something many people knew about her, but she was not exactly ordinary herself. For as long as she could remember she had been able to see the spirits of dead people. It was the reason she had been originally recruited to the KGB, not only could she speak with the dead, she could often force the truth out of them; truths they had taken to the grave with them. The redhead had hunted down and killed the handlers who knew of her unusual ability when she first left their service. Now the only people left that knew she could see and talk to ghosts were Hawkeye and Fury. It was an ability that came in handy in her line of work, but not something she wanted openly advertised.
But this was a curious thing. She had run into plenty of people who claimed they could see and speak with the dead, spiritualists, priests, voodoo witches and various other scam artists. None of them had actually been able to see them like she could.
"What makes you think he's the real deal?" she finally asked.
"Reading between the lines," Fury replied, being infuriatingly cryptic as usual. "It's your job to prove whether he's the real deal or not."
Natasha blew a stray red bang in her vision. She took the photo of the man she had been assigned to, the only thing Fury hadn't collected back into the folder. The 4x5 colored photo showed a scowling man with hard hazel eyes flecked with gold and garish orange hair of all things.
'Ichigo Kurosaki huh?' she thought. 'This will be interesting.'
AN: Yeah I know, really? Starting another story? Well I just started writing and it came to me so… =D