Jemma Simmons had never really been a social person. That was just one the issues she had. All of the orphanage children were younger than she was, and they were kind of weirded out by her genius, as were most of the people who came to see about adopting her. Growing up in a British orphanage where she had always been the little ponytailed geek who was constantly working on some new, huge project outside of school, where she continuously got top marks, didn't leave much spare time for friends. The day she discovered a formula that could potentially make the orphanage ratter cat jump five times higher and run five times faster, had been the proudest day of her life. When she mixed it into the catfood and it worked, she had screeched so loud, the she woke up the younguns and had to help She had never done anything like this before, but now she wanted to do more.
The closest Jemma ever really had to a friend was the runner of the orphanage, Miss Emily. When she had gotten over the initial shock of her beloved cat going from the back playing yard to the front porch in less than a second, she decided to take the talents of her young charge to good use. She found a biochemistry science fair at a local college and immediately began to pull strings to get the thirteen year old girl in it, even though she wasn't a college aged student yet. Two months later, just after Jemma's fourteenth birthday, she won a one-year scholarship to the college as well as a blue ribbon, which she immediately put on the award winning grey cat, who looked surprisingly good in blue.
Three days after the winning of the science fair, Miss Emily opened the front door to see a tall black man with an eye patch and two other men in black behind him. She nearly closed the door on them, but the black man walked into the conference room, right next to the entry door as he began to speak.
"Hello Miss Williams. You can call me Mister Nick. I'm interested in," he winced as he said the next word. "adopting this child." He held up a picture of a smiling Jemma holding her prizewinning cat and shaking a judge's hand during the contest. "I will need to be taking her with away with me immediately." He spoke with an American accent.
"I'm afraid I can't you do that sir. You would need to have complete global government clearance and identification to prove it in order to do that. And fancy dressing doesn't prove anything. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an orphanage to take care of." Emily swished her hair and headed out of the room.
"And I have a universe to save. If you look here, you'll see that I do in fact have the clearance you require. Here." Nick held out an open black wallet . In it was a picture of him on an identification card that also included his information, and that information stated that he did not only have global government clearance, but universal clearance as well. It seemed to Emily that he was pretty high up in the rankings of his US government agency, S.H.I.- he closed the wallet nearly on her nose and took it back, folded it up, and put it in his pocket.
Emily cleared her throat "I'll go fetch her then." When she reached the door of the conference room, she turned back. "You don't really want to adopt Jemma, do you?"
"It's more like taking a chance that could end up potentially saving the world someday, ma'm."
Emily nodded and walked up the the stairs to Jemma's room, parting curious little children left and right. She took a deep breath and opened the door. The girl was sprawled out on her bed, her papers strewn about her, doing homework or taking notes on possible ways to crush the growing cancer problem. Or both.
"Hi Miss Emily! I promise I won't forget my dinner duty tonight. I'll be right down after I finish up here." She scribbled down a few more words, and gathered up her papers
"Jemma, once you're done putting your papers away, you'll need to pack your bags. A nice man has come to take you away with him." Emily realized how strange that sounded. She hoped she didn't scare the girl. "It's a kind of adoption."
Jemma blinked. "An adoption? Really? Somebody wants to adopt me? Brilliant! Tell the man I'll be right down." She hurried her packing. It now had a purpose.
Less than ten minutes later, both the girls were standing in front of Mr. Nick. Nick eyed the Simmons girl with a mutter that sounded like, "Not enough muscle. Not a field agent. She'll have to stay in the labs." He sighed. "So you must be the Simmons girl who had made history."
She matched his stare. "Yes I'm Jemma."
"Good. You can call me Director Fury. This way please." He led the way out of the room to the front door. "I can tell you more about what I'm doing here once we rendezvous with our transport."
Jemma grabbed her bags from the agents who had been attempting to pick the up. "Sounds good. Are they out back? I don't see them."
Fury thought that small girl was having trouble with her bags, the way she kept shifting them. He took a bag off her shoulder. It was heavier that he thought it would be. Maybe we can make a field agent out of her yet.
He cracked one of his rare smiles at Jemma. "Yeah, somewhere around there. Let's get going."