SEPTEMBER 12TH 2011

VIENNA

AUSTRIA

This really wasn't the way she wished to celebrate her 24th birthday. Evelyn Stanhope had grown up into a woman. It had been so many years since she had been able to celebrate her birthday in the way she would have wanted to.

She used to celebrate with her aunt Alexandra and her cousins in Russia for years. They would go wake up to have a lively breakfast first then go to the Peter and Paul Cathedral to thank the Lord for another great year and then

Her great-grandmother, Elizabeth did not trust anyone to take care of her great-granddaughter after she had gotten seriously ill in England and meanwhile that time her and her father have had a rift, she needed a home to stay and there was no one else she trusted but her family.

Alexandra Yashkina is one of the the heads of scientific research in the Russian government and was Elizabeth's daughter with her husband Aleksander Stenkhoup. Just like her father, she was a brilliant mind and worked for Russia though her grandfather was not a fan because he had left Russia after a terrible time there.

Alexandra fell in love with a fellow scientist named Peter Yashkin who used to work for Stanhope Industries but eventually got a teaching position at the University of on Quantum Physics and they had four children who were all equally interested in science.

Elizabeth thought that there was no other choice but to send Evelyn to Alexandra because she was working on ways of the mind and was working on papers and theories about it.

On that day, in 1994, Evelyn's brain was consumed by something that Tony Stark could not understand. It changed his daughter for the greater and for the worse.

Growing up, Evelyn attended a Russian schools for a while and managed to often pass the school level's expectations which guaranteed her to move to higher level education. She attended the university at the age of thirteen and graduated a year later.

Often, though she would be distracted by her powers and often used her powers for mischief but knew they could not do anything about it because Evelyn can do something about it at all times.

But when her great grandmother had a stroke she never recovered from when Evelyn was fifteen, Evelyn decided to move to England to me with her and take care of her. At her grandmother's behest though, she attended the University of York where she took a college degree on psychics.

But when she was eighteen, she was caught up with Jaime Colt.

Jaime was on a mission at the time, trying to catch a member of a syndicate gang in York when suddenly he stumbled into her and got her caught up in it.

After he managed to finish his task, he was about to erase her memory with the dissolving stick, she used her power to persuade him but she failed as he had been trained in resistance after a debacle with someone with the same power.

In the end, she told Jaime all about who he was and what he is. Jaime had never told anyone about who he was and the BIR was the only institution that knew everything about him. He tried to make her sleep with a dart but he failed after she forced it on him.

Of course, she was familiar with the agency. Her family history was tied to it thanks to her great grandmother Elizabeth's adventures of saving the world in her youth.

Evelyn thought she saw the last of Jaime Colt then but she was wrong. Elizabeth got a call from her son Mikhail with Jaime reporting everything and suddenly Evelyn was in the list of qualified recruits.

The BIR choose its agents carefully, knowing everything must be certain before they were integrated into making the country a safer place and most importantly the world safest for all peoples. The training was the harshest part, with full military training from the British army and then being shipped off to the Swiss army.

The trainings she recalled included beatings to ensure you would never say any heavily guarded secrets to the enemy, being trapped inside a simulator controlled environment which you had to escape to be prepared to escape any type of place the enemy would put you in.

Even being stuck in the coldest and hottest of places to ensure resistance to any weather.

Elizabeth was worried in putting her Evelyn in such a position like that, it was a hard thing do. A hard thing to even survive for most people. But Evelyn decided to go for it after visiting her mother's grave in New York a month before the candidates met.

When she did meet all the candidates and participate, Evelyn managed to understand why Elizabeth was preventing her from joining. One of the participants even died from the harshness.

But nevertheless, Evelyn survived with the use of her abilities and was chosen to be one of the agents of the BIR and was now a borrowed agents used by S.H.I.E.L.D and the United States government.

"In the target's range, Agent eighteen?" She heard through her earpiece as she smirked to herself, holding the long range rifle within her hands. A groan escaped his lips. "Oh wipe that smirk off your face. It makes me sick."

"Well, Agent fourty-five..seem a bit cranky? You didn't get your time to get laid?"

She heard a scoff in response from her earpiece as her smirk only turned wide. "Oh well, my bedmate seems to be invisible, seen her anywhere?"

"Shh, target spotted." She responded in a serious tone, her eye turned into the magnifying glass of her rifle. She saw three men dressed in dark colored suits as she gripped the rifle firmly.

They seem to be smoking, as she saw the smoke upon the thick air. She took a deep breath, feeling the nicotine in the air and prepares herself. Evelyn decided to close her eyes for a moment to hear what they were saying.

"How was shipping the guns to the buyers?" Asked one of the men in Belarusian, his cigar leaving his lips. "Did you kill anyone?"

"The boss didn't get the money he asked for. So...he killed them and took the guns back."

The last one chuckled, the cigar still on the corner of his lips. "Ha! Classic one."

A bunch of sick men, bastards who can never go back. She thinks to herself finally opening her eyes.

"You know, after this, we should celebrate your birthday-"

BANG!

"One." She said through the communication, the empty shell of the bullet falling over to the floor as she watched one of the men fall onto the pavement with blood spurting all over the ground.

The men seemed confused as one looked at the now deceased man. They quickly took out their guns and turned to look at the place where the fire came from.

She once more heard a heavy sigh, "You could have at least warn me that you were gonna fire, I could have prepared."

"You should have brought ear plugs then." She tells him as she prepared herself to fire once more, "You seem more excited than I am to celebrate my birthday."

"Well, karaoke would be nice." Evelyn saw the two trying to find out where it came from. Idiots, she thought. They only looked below. Too bad they actually don't care about dead Yakov. Well, they never cared for anything. "Besides, you only turn twenty four once, Ev. Once in a lifetime. Live your life to the fullest!"

"Imagine if we can drag Clint into it." She told him as she then fired another shot. "Or Natasha."

BANG!

Another idiot dead.

"I missed his hypothalamus, damn it." She muttered silently to herself.

"Clint would need to be drunk first." Was his answer in a whisper, taking a pause and then added. "Natasha would be taking pictures."

Evelyn adjusted her rifle, turning her head to the side due to the stiffness she felt. Releasing the empty shell, she placed the rifle at her eye level and focused. Taking a deep breath once more, she took a moment and then did what she had to.

"Three." She allowed her hand to release the trigger and suddenly the bullet was sent flying towards the man's heart. She felt immense freedom as she laid down her rifle and eyed the dead men.

"Bang." Standing up straightly she pressed her earpiece and said, "It's your turn to be charming, Colt."

"On it." She heard him reply and now, phase two.

Walking through the elaborate halls of the Wiener Staatsopera, Evelyn fixed her yellow velvet dress as she passed by men and women dressed in their finest for the night. They were here for an important task and one important task only - try and capture a man wanted by S.H.I.E.L.D, INTERPOL and other leading intelligence agencies in the world, a most singular Belarusian mobster by the name Antonovich Potemkov.

Having read his file, he was a hard and destructive man who did whatever it took to get what br wanted. He sold Western secrets to rebels somewhere in the Middle East, he was responsible for a fire around a village in Belarus and reduced it to ashes back in the nineties and he was linked to dark and heavily dangerous groups of resistance against the current world order, including terrorist ones. As mentioned before, he also sold illegal weapons to others and killed them if he didn't get paid.

"Position, Jaime?" She asked in a small tone, eyeing every corner of the entrance to the main hall to the opera. She already to rid of the rifle earlier to ease in mingling with everyone.

Jaime Andrew Colt was in the position he was suppose to be in, dressed in an elegant suit made from expensive blue silk. Of course, it wasn't just expensive, it was protectively made by S.H.I.E.L.D for him to make sure he didn't die on a task for the agency. The BIR agents were not easy to replace after all.

He was sitting in the small intimate party that was thrown by Potemkov's son for politicians to soften them up a bit, smiling at everyone and making pleasantries. But Colt knew more than those pleasantries are being exchanged. It could be money, power, control, weapons. Colt knew something had to go in here and decided to check it out so that Evelyn can do what she can about Antonov.

And he wasn't surprised to see many world politicians in here. The Potemkov family have a lot of stolen things to throw at everyone to make sure they were silent. This was the reason he joined the BIR in the first place. Colt was unsatisfied with the closed secrets, the things that couldn't be said and this was one of the worst ones to be hidden.

He was disgusted with the unusual greed of human kind because he never saw the point in it. Why want more when you have enough?

Death isn't going to allow you to take it with you to your grave, it's not going to be of use to you when you face the man upstairs. If there was a man upstairs. Colt isn't big on religion but he tries to be respectful on it.

Sighing to himself as he gazed upon the lively room, "Coast is clear, filled with corrupt politicians who are just pests to society. How's your position?"

"Not good." She responded as she eyed the notorious mobster as he entered into his booth. Evelyn had to run here from the ground floor knowing she had no time to waste. She had a box of her own, though it was nearer to others than it was to her target. "I'm quite far away."

"He'll be heading in here anyway." Jaime told his partner as he drank a glass of champagne, "Just be careful, it's not like our missions before. This one involves too many innocent civilians in a closed space."

"I know," She replied as she tried to read the man's mind but somehow, it seemed too far for her to hear his thoughts. She groaned. "That's what I'm worried about."

Evelyn sat upon her seat, her gaze never leaving the man. As then the music from the orchestra started to play and it was when the gaze fell upon the stage. A man emerged and started to sing.

Evelyn tried to stop the unreasonable amount of thoughts entering her head. It wasn't her own but hearing other people's secrets all at once, it's unnerving.

She had been coping with it since she was seven and she hated it. She shrugged as she held her gaze to the mobster and through the places all around them, checking at the possible exit points.

Her gaze turned to Antonovich, who was dressed in one of the finest suits she's ever seen in her life, sat down and watched intently as the lead started to act. He seemed rather distracted.

"Ev, you have got to get out of there." Evelyn suddenly felt herself hear as she touched her earpiece.

"Why? We need to capture Antonovich, Colt. Or-"

"There's three snipers there, I've just located them through the camera bugs I managed to crack jsut now, one booth higher than the booth of the Austrian Chancellor and the President himself. You have to get them out of there, there's no more time, so get them out now."

Evelyn stood up almost immediately and out of her booth, hurrying to find the theater booth they sat at. She closed her eyes and allowed her mind to take in all the information flowing upon people's heads, she might catch up the thought of either the Chancellor or the President.

Aunt Alexandra always told her to focus, to allow all the thoughts in and allow it to play in a tune in her head. Never allow it to be the burden, allow it to be the tool he would say.

"How much time do we have until they fire?" He asked her while he heard her panting from running through the hall that led to the booths.

"Two minutes tops, from the one of the sniper's thoughts. Gotta hurry, Colt! I'll put the Chancellor and the President to you!"

"Can't we flip a coin for this?"

"No time and no coin. Go and get them out!" She rushed through, stopping to remove her heels and throwing them aside. Her mind continued to progress as she walked higher through the steps. "I can't hear them, no thoughts coming in. That means they might be dead!"

Suddenly she stopped. She felt thoughts come in through her. She leaned her body through the velvet colored door and opened it, The Austrian Chancellor was stunned and shocked. He turned to see an unknown assailant in front of him.

She put her finger into her ear. "Okay, I stand corrected."

"What are you doing here?" He asked her in German as the aged President turned to look at the woman in front of them. "You aren't suppose to be here! Security-"

"Mr. Chancellor, Mr. President. Please come with me, immediately." Evelyn responded in clear understandable German, causing both politicians to be shocked.

"There is a dangerous thing that's about to happen and if we do not get you out of here now, you both will suffer."

"You are insane, there are no troubles! This is the State Opera of Vienna, no one will cause trouble especially with me around." The ignorant man said as in her private thoughts, Evelyn was rolling her eyes in annoyance. She closed her eyes and focused. Her persuasion is on.

Evelyn turned to the president and said in German. "Herr president, let us go. We need to go see your wife now."

The stunned chancellor paused silent. The Austrian President said as he stood up, "I will follow this woman now to see my wife, herr chancellor."

The chancellor's brows thickened into a flat line. "Why-"

Suddenly screaming started to erupt through the opera hall, causing Evelyn to look and voices battling through her head. Someone was just shot by someone. And then another and another. People panicked and hit the ground for cover.

"Colt, Colt!" Evelyn called through her earpiece as she took the president and the chancellor down to the ground, hidden by the box's outer design.

Jaime sat up and knew it was his partner's panicked tone. He pressed his index finger into his ear and said, "What? What's the problem?"

"The mayor's just been shot, he's dead, I don't know if he's still alive. People are panicking here! Antonov's got shooters!" She screamed through the earpiece communication as random shots were fired upon the other booths.

The exit doors were open but the crowd seemed too panicked to properly leave. Turning to the Chancellor as she said, "So, are you leaving now?"

"Yes, we need to leave." The chancellor finally says as he stood up and following Evelyn and the aged president quickly, the agent trying to lean toward them to make sure none got injured. She ran far as she could with the two politicians and stopped when she got them to the elevator.

"This is where, I leave you sir. We have a lot of things to do. My partner is agent Colt, he'll meet you out there in a few minutes!"

"What do-"

"You have to go now, sir." Evelyn repeated as she pressed the elevator button, hearing the sound of the fears within the chancellor's head. "Please, no one else has to die tonight but the man we have to hunt. Mayor is already dead."

With her persuasion helping her, the two men entered the elevator without any problem.

Pressing her fingers into her earpiece, she said, "Colt, status?"

"Coast is clear." He replied through the comm, panting harshly as he untied his bowtie from his neck.

He saw the glistening glass of champagne left by one of his adversaries on the floor, untouched and took it to with his right hand, taking a swift gulp with his bruised lip. "Nothing too harsh. Bloody bastards tried to shoot me. Let's just say they don't know what a party truly is like with a Brit."

"I got the chancellor and the president to safety, I just contacted Interpol. You have to show up to them now-"

Suddenly she was dragged to the ground by a forceful hand, it was muscular and she felt herself hurt by the blow of the fist that hit her. Evelyn blinked slowly at the pain.

"Ev?" She heard the voice of her partner through the comm that had fallen as she accepted the blow. "Ev, everything okay?"

"Sir, we've caught her." The Belarusian man said with this thick sounding Belarusian accent as he pulled the recovering Evelyn into the room, her eyes darted towards the richly dressed man upon the tall golden chair.

She had to admit, he was pretty good looking for an old Belarusian mobster. Black clothing was his taste. He wore a pair of large round glasses, he had golden locks that were blending in with the grey colored strands within it. He seemed rather like a lawyer instead. "Agent eighteen."

"Ah, I never thought I would ever see this infamous woman in my life." The man has spoken towards Evelyn as she was being gripped tightly by one of the men. She glared at the man who gripped her ever so tightly. She wondered how she would get him to suffer. "Welcome, Miss Stark. I would think you like opera yes?"

"It's Stanhope." She corrected the well dressed man, "And yes, I do like Opera. But I would prefer some Norma by Bellini."

"Oh, you didn't enjoy Stravinsky? I would have thought you would."

"I prefer Italian, though I would have thought you would since you married an Italian mobster's daughter."

The unreadable expression turned stale as he seemed intrigue with her power to read anything in his mind. "I'm right aren't I? Though now, I think you were leaning into one of your men's daughters...you sick vile man."

Filled with annoyance, the man holding Evelyn prisoner suddenly pointed a gun through the back of her head. "Go ahead, sweetheart. Shoot me. I'll be thinking of so many ways to kill you right now, it'll be disappointing if you shoot me now."

He suddenly was about to pull the trigger when she leaned behind and hit his armed arm away before taking it to in her possession, using it to climb up into his shoulders and skillfully used her thighs to twist his head with the assistance of her hands, she landed into his chest as he fell to the ground with her left hand tightly gripping his throat and the other held his gun.

"You know it's very easy to grab you and kill you? It's so disappointing on how you were illfully trained."

"Let him get up and we'll allow you to live." Said the Belarusian man with his tone grippingly harsh. Evelyn rolled her eyes at the threat as she stood up, leaving the man to choke for breath as he stood. The two other men pointed their guns at her. "I will give you a proposition."

"What kind of proposition?" She said as she threw away the gun from earlier to the corner, her eyes never leaving the man. "I would hope it should be interesting."

"Join us." He exclaimed to her as Evelyn raised a brow, "We need someone like you in our ranks, I would be happy to think that there would be someone who would be loyal to the cause such as you. Yes, I have heard you were not appreciated for your talents...most especially by your father, Tony Stark."

"You should know I haven't been talking to my father, I haven't seen him since ninety-eight." Evelyn said in retaliation with the sass she knew she had.

"I wouldn't say I'm underappreciated...in fact."

She looked up to the large ventilation upon the ceiling with a smirk as she heard the similar tone of thought she has heard for years now.

"I would like you to meet someone who appreciates me, a lot."

In the heat of the moment, Jaime Colt fell from the ventilation, two Colt made revolvers with forty-five colt cartridges firing around the room as he was still in the air, hitting the three bodyguards in the head. He was careful not to his partner, of course.

Landing on his feet, he sighed. "I'm sorry for being late, I didn't bring my other pistols."

"You are such a disappointment, you know that." Evelyn replied to him, not being stunned at all by his actions, moving towards him as she ignored the deceased bodies. "You didn't bring Evie and Jillie? You suck so much."

"I know, I know." He said as he also ignored the stunned Belarusian mobster, putting his guns back into his cowboy-like gun holder that was along with his holster. "I disappoint a lot, reason number ninety seven for why I have no love life."

"You keep a list? Woah, you loser." She smirked at him as he creatively rolled his eyes at her before she turned her attention to the mobster. "Oh, sorry about the mess. We will take care of that later, send the bill for the carpet. I imagine that's an expensive Turkish original."

"W-who is that man?" Asked the now fearful mobster as Jaime smiled at him charmingly and waved at him. "Who is that man?"

"Oh, right...sorry Jaime, they don't know you a lot." Evelyn apologized to her partner with a sigh. "You always do your work so clean, they don't know you for it."

Jaime sighed as he then took out his work phone, given to him by S.H.I.E.L.D. "It's okay, Ev. I kinda know they don't know me, clearly they like the messy agents."

"I'll introduce you!" Evelyn told her friend as she turned to the frightened mobster. "This is my partner, Jaime Andrew Colt, Agent fort five, like the Colt Cartridge, which is the only one he uses."

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Potemkov...it's rather nice to see you as frightened as your son." He smirked as the man's expression became worried.

"What did you do to my son?"

"He's not dead, Mr. Potemkov, I assure you." Jaime responded to the mobster as he typed something in the phone.

"He surrendered himself as well as the microchip that keeps all your illegal activity to us in order to keep his life...so technically we have no need for you anymore."

"Have you told Fury that we captured the assailant and have secured the microchip?"

"Yeah, I have." He responded attentively as he pressed a few buttons and smiled looking up to his friend and captive. "Just tweeting about my seven hundreth kill today, achievement achieved."

"Did he say anything else about this fool?" Evelyn asked as she took a few large linens on the couch and covered the decomposing bodies on the floor, disliking the image it showed her. "I mean, do we kill him or?"

"Nothing but he did say that we have everything in the microchip and we already have his son to tell us everything." Jaime informed his partner then grinned. "I would say we can kill him now. Looks like your birthday got more eventful, Ev!"

"Okay then. I'll do it." Evelyn volunteered as she took one of her partner's guns as Jaime eyed her, causing her to eye him back. "You took my targets, I need to shoot someone at least. And it is my birthday."

"Wait, another message from the beloved director." Jaime exclaimed, holding a finger up to his partner to halt. "He says we can shoot him and uh, that immediately we have to go back to New York, there's something important you have to do, he says."

"Another assignment?" She frowned at him, "I haven't had a break in four weeks, I have my period right now too!"

"Didn't need to know that, Ev."

Evelyn Stanhope sighed as she looked at the mobster before turning to Jaime, blinking slightly as she licked her dried lips.

"Alright. Tell him we'll leave tonight for New York and that I'll personally report about the mission."

"Okay, I'll tell him in a bit. I still have to pack-"

Suddenly she pulled the trigger and shot the mobster straight in the head, the bullet going through the glass and blowing it into pieces.

"Geez, you still had to break the glass? I'm not paying for that."

"Don't worry, I'll be paying for that." She assures her partner as she returned the gun to his utility belt.

"Call S.H.I.E.L.D's base here and tell them we need the clean up team. It's messy here, I doubt anyone's gonna rent this place if they see the blood."

"I will." He tells her as he watched her go to the exit door and said to her, "Get a shower and something to eat, you're getting a bit thinner."

"Oh shut up." She said sassily before hesitating about something before pausing and adding, "On second thought, tell Fury we'll be slightly late. I want to visit my grandmother first, in Somerset."

"Okay, geez, no need to sass me all the time, Agent Stark."

"Oh god, I hate you." She told him as she finally walked out the door and headed out before hearing the words, 'NO YOU DON'T.' from her partner's thoughts.

She sighed as she pressed the elevator button as Colt disappeared already. He took the stairs. "God, he's right, I can't hate him...that dumbass."