A/N: It's been a minute, hasn't it? I am really sorry for not being more stable in regards to updates, especially in the light of the pandemic, but school and other things have filled most of my days for a long time. I hope 2021 will be the year where I will return to write more. Thank you so much to you who have stuck around, and welcome to the MCU family to those who have just started to follow this story. I have a whole lot planned for my MCU fanfic universe - I hope I will be able to share it with you all.

Happy New Year to you all - May 2021 be the year where we get rid of this horrid pandemic. Stay strong x C

Typhoon: The First Avengers

Chapter Nine: First Impressions

"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." - Henry Ford

October 1941 - Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, United States of America

Clark Walker would be lying if he said that he was not nervous, despite his stoic demeanor, as he marched down the promenade towards the office building that served as his company's headquarters. Being called into your CO's office as an NCO was not entirely unheard of but being pulled aside and told to miss an exercise on the USS Arizona because the CO wanted to see you, any Marine would start wringing their hands anxiously, thinking long and hard of where they might have screwed up. However, he showed no tell-tale signs, but rather kept his face stoic and resolute, snapping to attention whenever he passed someone with a higher rank than him.

He was well-liked and admired by his fellow officers as well as by his men for everything he stood for and for how good a marine he was, but his social skills could be improved considerably. Clark himself knew that he was not exactly what you would call a social butterfly, but he had not needed it so far in his life, so why should he begin now? He was a hard-working young man from Staten Island in New York, whose father had drilled into him from an early age that hard work was the only way forward in life. And Clark had lived by that principle for as long as he could remember. And he had no intention of straying from that principle, no matter what. The twenty-four-year-old took a deep breath in before he walked around the last corner of the block that would lead him to headquarters. Clark kept his cool as he approached one of the secretaries who immediately directed him towards his CO's door, before she hurried off to file the papers in her hand - probably intelligence that was needed somewhere else.

The first thing the young sergeant noticed was the talking. His CO was not alone. He did not recognize the other male voice, so it was not anyone in or around the base. Clark straightened in his posture, took another breath before he gave the door three light, but resolute raps with his knuckles.

"Enter." Clark heard his CO greet him.

With no hesitation, Clark pushed the handle down and entered the room. Immediately, he looked up to see his CO stand up behind his desk, with the unfamiliar man sitting in a chair with his back turned towards Clark, who immediately snapped to attention as he met his CO's eye, "Sir."

His CO acknowledged his greeting, "Sergeant Walker, take a seat please."

Clark sent the CO a nod as he went to sit down next to the man who up until now had had his back turned towards him.

"Sergeant," his CO started as Clark found himself seated, motioning to the man beside him, "This is Colonel Phillips of the Strategic Scientific Reserve, an elite division in the Army. Colonel, this is Sergeant Walker."

Clark now noticed that while his CO was lean and tall, Colonel Phillips was smaller and visibly a bit plumper. However, as Clark looked over at the man to acknowledge his rank, he noticed that the facial expression Colonel Phillips wore was one that demanded respect.

He sent the Colonel a firm nod and saluted the rank, "Colonel."

"Sergeant Walker," Colonel Phillips acknowledged, "I've heard a lot of good things about you."

"I'm glad to hear that, sir." Clark replied kindly.

"I've called you in here, Sergeant, because Colonel Phillips has made a request about you." Clark's CO then said, causing Clark to look questionably at the Colonel. What did an Army Colonel want with an officer in the Navy?

At this, Colonel Phillips stood up and took a couple of steps away from the table before he turned to face Clark again. It was only then that Clark realized that the Colonel was holding a brown folder in his hand.

"To be truthful, Sergeant, I've had my eye on you for a while," Colonel Phillips spoke, his gaze steadily held by Clark. "The way you handle your men, and your close-combat skills are especially appealing and wanted for an assignment within the SSR."

"I'm flattered, sir. Thank you." Clark replied.

"Don't be too flattered or thank me as of now, Sergeant. This assignment is top confidential. No one, not even your CO can look inside this folder." Colonel Phillips said briskly, with a no-nonsense attitude.

Clark frowned and looked towards his CO, who sent him a nod, before sending Colonel Phillips a nod as well, "I'll let you use my office, Chester."

Colonel Phillips nodded gratefully at Clark's CO who left the office, but not before he had given Clark a light clap on the shoulder.

For a few seconds, after the CO had closed the door behind him, silence ensued before Clark frankly asked Colonel Phillips, "I don't really have a choice but to accept the assignment do I, sir?"

Colonel Phillips' eyes shone with interest and mirth. "I like the attitude, kid. No, you do not."

Phillips placed the brown folder down on the table, gently sliding it towards Clark, who stopped the folder from gliding past him in a gentle manner. Now he could see that at the front of the folder, 'CONFIDENTIAL' was written with red, bold letters. Almost gingerly, he picked up the folder, feeling the subtle weight of it in his hands before he slowly opened it.

The more information Clark read, the less he believed what he was actually reading. It was absurd, it was unheard of, and he honestly did not know what to think. He was about to voice his thoughts and to ask if Colonel Phillips was pulling a prank on him. Yet his gaze kept going back to the first page, a chart with all sorts of information on a girl named Grace Thomas, a timid and shy girl if Clark were to judge from the picture attached to the paper. The realization that a girl was his mission was strange enough in itself, but it was her date of birth that kept turning him back to the first page.

"Colonel…" Clark stated quietly, "It says here that the date of birth is June 6, 1929. The year surely have to be a typing error?"

Colonel Phillips cocked an eyebrow at the Sergeant's statement, "There is nothing wrong with the file, Sergeant. You will find no typing errors of any sort in that file."

Clark's eyes narrowed towards Colonel Phillips, an indescribable anger rising within his being, for reasons he did not quite understand the full extent of, but he knew that having a girl this young around an army base was not normal, no matter how different the girl was from the rest of them. He looked back down at the date of birth once more, before his gaze returned to Colonel Phillips. Clark looked at the superior officer with disbelief and disdain, and despite the anger and turmoil that were running through him on the inside, he kept his voice calm, yet slightly deadpanned.

"Do you mean to tell me that my assignment is twelve years old?"

~T: The First Avengers~

October, 1941 - Camp McCoy Army Base, Wisconsin, United States of America

Clark was roused from his sleep in his private quarters in the newly established army base, Camp McCoy in Wisconsin, by the sound of the bugle being played. It was 6 am, and his first official day as the mentor of Grace Thomas, a twelve-year-old girl who was part human, part mutant injected with a premature super soldier serum. No, he had not been smoking any of the funny stuff.

Looking back at his reaction a week ago, Clark counted his lucky stars that Colonel Phillips had not court-martialed his ass. Besides for that, Clark was later rather puzzled with himself by the fact that the one thing he had reacted to, and under normal circumstances would have been court-martialed over, was the girl's age and not everything else that was (briefly) mentioned in the folder. It said that she was a human girl, who had been injected with her mother's mutant blood and a premature version of a Super Soldier Serum, for goodness sakes! The SSR had it all figured out - if he ever did mention his assignment to anyone, they would think he was out of his mind. They even had a cover story about him being assigned to the SSR to train some elite assets to cover his absence from his post in the Navy - which was not far from the truth; there was just one asset; a twelve-year-old girl who was nearly as strong and fast as a physically fit, adult male, who on top of that could control the wind. Just listing these things made Clark think for a split second that he was living in a really weird dream.

He had met the girl a couple of days later, in a remote park in Staten Island. And looking back at his behavior and attitude, he could understand how he had not made the best first impression towards the girl, either. It was not because he had been particularly rude (yes, he had), but he was still fuming at Colonel Phillips and the SSR for having a child living and growing up in an army base, exploiting her to the benefit of their own agenda, which he had now become a part of. Clark was to teach her everything he knew about fighting; with weapons, close combat, you name it. She was special, they said. However, what Clark saw was a girl with a good physique, granted, but he could see how scared she was, how fragile she was. Those eyes had already seen a lot of horrible things, but that didn't mean that she should be exposed to any more. But when Clark had asked Agent Carter, a British liaison agent who had rescued the girl and a German scientist from the Nazi organization, HYDRA, she had not been willing to go much into detail, getting a distant and sad look in her eyes. They had spent the day; the girl, Agent Carter and Clark walking around, Agent Carter nearly desperate in the end trying to find some sort of common ground between her two companions for them to bond over. Clark ended up pitying her, so he offered the fact that he was actually from Staten Island, which he noticed that the girl reacted to. Nothing major, just a quick raised brow and a little light in her eyes, but she did not say a word.

Clark did not like that he was going to teach Grace Thomas everything he knew about fighting. She should be a kid, grow up and then face the world. However, he was there now and there was no way back. Although he did not agree with the SSR on this matter, he accepted that he had been chosen to do this assignment, because they thought that he was the best. And he was going to show them that they were right. But first, he needed to find common ground with the girl.

~T: The First Avengers~

One thing Clark quickly learned about Grace was that he had to be patient. Not in the way that she could not do what he tried to teach her - no, every single move he had been teaching her to do for the past few hours she had done with ease, when Clark could get her to do them. She was wary of him, and he quickly learned to school his features to not being stoic, because that would completely make her freeze and close-up whatever progress he had made with her. She accepted him taking a hold of her to correct her when he had clearly gesticulated that he was going to do it, and she also slowly accepted when he gave her orders. He had purposely chosen to start their time together off with teaching Grace close combat without any weapons, just themselves and what their bodies could do to help defend themselves. She had made mistakes and had already received a couple of soft hits when she had forgotten to step aside or parry with her arm, but she had not flinched nearly half as much when he neared her for the past hour than she had since they started. Clark had to admit that she was a natural - or the serum made her a natural, he did not know. She was pretty fluent in her movements, almost like a dance. Clark would dare to almost call it rather adorable if it had not been because those moves nearly sent him into the dirt a couple of times when she hit him straight in the chest or face.

The talking part was still a work-in-progress.

Here, if the time and place had allowed jokes, Clark would argue that the SSR had done a mismatch within pairing Grace off with him. Surprisingly, it was now Clark that did most of the talking, most of the time commands, between the two of them. And he was not quite used to that as he had friends in the Navy that could talk your ears off if they wished.

After she had sent him flying into the dirt a couple of times, and he had whacked her a couple of times on the head for mistiming a block during their attack-block exercise, Clark stopped Grace from advancing by putting up a hand, "We'll take a fifteen-minute break. Get some water and some fruit."

Grace's head tilted slightly as she listened to his instructions, and to make clear that she had understood, she nodded clearly and walked towards a shadow-filled area underneath some trees where they had placed their things at the backside of the camp, furthest away from the troops' barracks as they could. The SSR did not want too many people snooping around during Clark's training with Grace.

Clark watched the girl as she walked off to get out of the sun underneath the trees. She was a peculiar, but pretty little thing. Her brown-hair was tied up in a braid but had become a bit tousled after the work-out. It had provoked him endlessly when she hadn't broken into a sweat after the first hour, but now he could spot a couple of places around her neck where her hair seemed a bit darker in color. He had noticed two things, when he had been giving her instructions: Firstly, she would be looking at him intensely whenever he gave her an instruction or corrected her, like she was listening intently and wanted to make sure that she didn't miss any part of his instruction. And secondly, looking into her green-blue orbs, he could sense only partially what she must have been through and experienced. Her eyes held such confusion, sadness, and wisdom. She had seen many things no girl her age should have ever seen, and it invoked a spontaneous protectiveness over her inside Clark. It was not something he could pinpoint and place as to why he felt that way; he had no siblings or others in his life that had ever been like a sibling to him really. He still didn't like the idea of being here to train her when his men and friends were still on serving on the USS Arizona, the possibility of them being called out to sea being very likely with the light tension there had been between the American Navy and the Japanese fleet for a decade, after the Japanese began expanding their fleet and territory. There hadn't been any official orders, but the men felt something was luring, and Clark wasn't there. And he didn't like it because she was a little girl, who had no business whatsoever on an army base. Clark let out a reluctant sigh as he glanced in Grace's direction once more. She was sitting down in the shade underneath the trees, eagerly drinking some water and eating the fruit they had brought with them.

Clark watched her for another minute or two before he called, "Grace."

Resolutely, Grace's attention snapped to focus on Clark.

When Clark saw that he had Grace's full attention, he gesticulated with his head for her to approach him, "Eat and drink up. Let's get back to work."

As Grace took a last bit of fruit and water before she timidly approached him, Clark made up his mind. He was here now, and he was not going to let Grace or the SSR down. He accepted the odd protectiveness he felt towards her. He was not going to teach her how to become a killing-machine like her captors likely would have - he was going to teach her how to stay alive and live.