Pt1
It is a truth universally acknowledged that being beat in boxing hurts, dammit. Steve Rogers had never felt this tired since before the serum. He was not, as it turned out, invincible. He knew this logically, Peggy had told him enough times, but it took him until today to realize it. He thought it a good idea, of course, but he was wrong. Turns out his friend was more than a regular person.
After the battle of New York, against an alien army led by another alien, of all the possible enemies he could have had, he started jogging regularly. Along his usual route, he found that another person, a young woman with flame-red hair, went along the same route every morning. After a few days, when he realized their routes coincided, he introduced himself. She had just smiled at his old manners and done the same, telling him her name was Rose, just Rose. After a few weeks, she had invited him to go get some icees at a local shop after their run. He had accepted and they had kept doing the same thing every morning.
This morning, however, when getting their icees, he had asked her how she kept up with him, how she was so athletic. It was an open secret that Steve Rogers was Captain America. She told him she had done various sports over the years, but preferred gymnastics (which Steve knew nothing about) and Boxing (which he knew plenty about). So, he decided to make use of the gym floor Stark had put into his tower (the one Fury had required all the Avengers lived in), and invite her for some light boxing, just for fun.
It had started out fun, they were chatting while throwing a punch or two here or there. Then Rose had given him a strange look and suggested they box for real, not going easy on each other. He had foolishly agreed. He saw she knew what she was doing, and right before their match, had bet her on who would win. If he won, she would come with him as a company, as a friend (because he still wasn't over Peggy) to the next major publicity event Stark demanded he go to. If she won, he would have to give her a full tour of Avengers tower. Technically he wasn't supposed to do that, but he was sure he would win.
She won. He had gone in, in his usual method, with his bulk and strength. Unlike what he had expected, she didn't fight like Romanoff. She just ducked and swerved, and he didn't land a single hit. After a few minutes, when she had kept him turning (he was exempt from serious exhaustion, but not from light dizziness), she had tapped him in certain spots, and viola, he collapsed on the floor and was unable to get back up again.
Pulling him out of the ring (which was square for some reason), she smirked at him, and it looked familiar, but he couldn't place where he remembered it from. "I win, Rogers." Whenever she pulled ahead in their races or won anything, even a mini icee Slurpee competition, she always called him by his last name. "You, Steve, owe me a full tour of everything in Avengers Tower. Pay up."
He was sure he would never admit this, but he was thankful Stark came in at that exact moment. "Capsicle, who's the lady friend?"
No, he wasn't thankful. He groaned. Rose looked him up and down. "So this is the infamous Tony Stark in the flesh."
"Yes, and I don't know who you are. So who are you and why are you in my tower?" Stark told her in his usual stuck-up manner. (A/N: I like Tony except in Civil War, but this is Capsicle's POV).
"Stark, your AI has been running a facial recognition program on me since I entered, and right about now you should be informed he didn't find anything. As for who I am, I'm Rose, I've been jogging with Steve in the mornings for a few months. He invited me for a boxing match up here, and I won both the match and the bet."
He groaned. Fury wasn't going to like a civilian, admittedly one who could beat him at boxing, but still, getting a full tour of the tower, which had gotten unofficially claimed by SHIELD. "I think I like you. What's the bet?"
"If I won I would get a full tour of every nook and cranny of the tower. So when Steve can stand back up again, I think I'd like to start with the Iron Man suit. I've always been curious what the Gold-titanium alloy man suit really looks like in real life."
"You speak science English?" Both Steve and Tony were equally surprised. Tony may have just found another human who was willing to talk science with him. Who knew it would be Capsicle who introduced her.
"No, but my friend does, and I can't help but pick up some things. She told me that if I ever met you or Banner I was supposed to ask your opinion on Dr. Pym's Quantum theory."
"Well, it makes a certain sort of sense, but without any ability to test it I can't say."
Rose felt a pistol press against the back of her head. "Not many can sneak up on me. Posdravlayu tebya Natalia Romanova." (A/N: congrats, Natalia Romanova, I'm fluent in Russian, useful for this fic. As for anyone who will say that you can't switch between languages like that, false. My whole family is English and Russian bilingual, and we regularly switch languages in the middle of a sentence to explain something better when the word is better in one language or the other, or with my mom and brother, sometimes even Spanish because they speak that too.)
The gun pressed harder against Rose's head. "Who are you and who do you work for?"
"Technically I'm currently unemployed, as for who I am, I already told Stark the same thing. Shark's AI, whatchamacallit, can you play the recording I don't doubt you have?'
"I am JARVIS, and here it is," The recording played off not only her conversation with Stark but all her conversation with Steve since after they stopped playing around in the boxing ring, with video."
"Huh, camera noted," Rose whispered under her breath. Romanoff, of course, caught it. "Romanoff, it's not nice to press guns to guests' heads," Steve told her, able to get his body above his shoulders to work again. The pistol was lowered, but don't put away.
"Well? I need more than a last name."
Rose blew on a spot on Romanoff's shoulder. "I'm Rose, and I would like to thank you for not trying to try to steal my DNA. Either way, you won't find anything."
"Judging by your accent, you're British, raised in Surrey, spent a good amount of time in London as well as northern Scotland. Your clothes suggest upper middle class, but with a chance of inherited money. Your manners speak of a family with old money, and a boarding school-style education. Judging by your reluctance to tell your last name, it means something or will give us a way to track or identify you in some way. You were not at the battle of New York, but also know more than enough about the Avengers, probably have a hardcore fan friend. However, your posture and body language when I pressed the gun to your head speak of being used to danger, either that or you think you have something over me so that I will not show, a hundred percent. You are also trained in some sort of combat since you were able to beat Rogers by pressing pressure points that disabled him, but not only that. Your body speaks of hardcore athleticism since a young age." By the end, Rose had walked away to where she had put her bag. She pulled on a top over the sports bra she had been exercising in.
"Interesting. That's quite a lot of information you have on me, Natalia Romanova. As for revealing it all to me, I appreciate it. Thank you, for your cooperation." Rose then turned around and flashed a smile. "And as for your information, my friends and acquaintances have better things to do than fan over a guy in a suit, two superspies with more red on their ledgers than General Ross, a seventy-year-old man on steroids, a blonde bimbo of an alien, and a coward who can't even face a part of himself. So no, I just like to know who I deal with. Especially government agents. I'll give you a free piece of information. I don't like SHIELD, and if they knew me, SHIELD wouldn't like me. Except for Coulson, Your little handler is an interesting person."
"Who are you and where do you get your information?"
Rose just smiled at the other redhead. "My source is an old friend of your Directors, one Carol Danvers, the human tesseract. Also, do me a favor, tell Nick Fury his old friend Goose the flerken is back on Midgard, and she would love to see who his other eye is faring if he crosses me." Rose walked up to Steve. "Hey, should I wait until Miss Red-on-her-ledger leaves, or are you going to pay up with that tour now?"
Tony whistled. "I like you, Thorn."
"Thorn?"
"Well, I have to keep up my streak of nicknames for everyone, don't I?"
"I'll take it. Better than Legolas or whatever other nicknames you have. So, tour?"
"Stark?" Steve asked, the pressure point defeat having worn off.
"Sure, why not."
"Fury…"
"Remind him of Goose, I guarantee that he'll bend over backward if I ask," Rose smirked. "At this point, I'm just surprised I'm the only one to have found Blackmail in Nickie-boy."
"Yup, I like you," Tony confirmed.
"Oh, you'll like my friend Hermione a lot better. If she doesn't fix at least half a dozen flaws with whatever technology you have in the first ten minutes, I'll show you how to break Newton's law of universal gravitation." She pulled out a thing that looked like a phone but didn't really look like one, from her pocket. "Hey, she's like a block away. She can meet us up here if whatever security you have lets her through. She texted me to tell you she was going to ask for a meeting anyways, something about a theory about properties of vibranium, and she has the materials to test it."
Tony Stark's face lit up. "Tell her to meet us on the top floor of Candyland. Now, what was this about breaking gravity?"
Rose pretended to walk upon imaginary stairs, except she stayed, floating a few inches off the floor. All three Avengers gaped. Then she shot another few feet up until she was sitting on top of the vents. Barton tumbled out, alongside a box of donuts. Rose jumped back down and landed on her feet. "Whoops. So this is the first guy in the last century to successfully pull off a bow and arrows?"
Barton brushed himself off. "Yes. And you are?"
"Currently getting a tour of the tower. But my name's Rose. And your partner back there seems to be glaring at me."
"What did you best her at?" Romanoff glared.
"Ah, proud. Natalia Romanova, if it makes you feel any better, on a cellular level, I'm not exactly human."
Her head snapped up. "Well, you're not a chitauri, we know that for sure."
"Or Kree, or Skrull, or any of the alien races Fury could have briefed you about."
"Mutant?"
"In a fashion. You could call it that. I have the same body parts as humans, just not the same biology. But no, you can't have my DNA, I would prefer not to be like the last extraterrestrial Fury got into his labs back in 1995, that Skrull never came back out again."
"Alright, I know all of this, of course, but someone tell the less mentally blessed around here what Kree, Skrull, and Flerken are?"
"Kree is a species a lot like humans except they're not, they are unable to genetically reproduce, but they take stranglers across the galaxy and inject them with a serum that gives them Kree-like biology. They look like humans except their eyes are always orange, more like sunset orange." Romanoff's and Burton's hands were to their always-present earpieces, recording the information Fury did not, in fact, have. "Some Kree used to be humans, but I don't know the statistics. Skrulls are a bit like stereotypical aliens from pop culture, green, and a bit scaly, just no antennae, but still humanoid, just barely, they can change their outward appearance and dimensions as long as it has the same mass as their own natural bodies. Enemies of the Kree, who conquered their homeland. Flerkens, I don't know where they originated from, just that one pops up on this world once in a while. The current one, last here in 1995, is my friend, well, she acts like a pet. Flerkens are sentient and have a second stomach they use for storage, although they can't keep anything there for more than a decade Each time. Gosse housed the tesseract for about a decade. They can also telepathically communicate with a few choice humans, communicating with one is very useful because they have a way of getting the information I don't know of. When they are seen, they always take the form of some cat, of any gender, although they are genderless and identify by one of their current forms. Goose, the last time she was on this planet, took the form of a male tabby cat. She is currently in the form of a nun, an elusive Wakandan subspecies of a panther that is the most dangerous predator to exist on this planet. Mostly because they have a pseudo-teleportation ability that uses shadows and darkness and can go anywhere. Here, I'll bring her in. Goose!" She called out, after the informative lecture that doubled SHIELD's files on those species. Out of the shadows prowled the largest panther aunty of them had ever seen, at three and a half feet tall, and with a mighty snarl.
It then sniffed, and upon spotted Rose, its face looked more like that of a kitten, the fearsome look gone, and leaped onto her. "Yes, my cute little flerken nundu. Now, remember that annoying off-world dissecting man whose eye you ripped to ribbons when with Carol on this world?"
A meow sounded, and Rose nodded. Surprisingly, Goose was projecting her thoughts so that everyone could hear. Of course. I didn't like him. And to think I kept his glowing cube safe for him for a decade. Why?
"Well, I have this feeling you're about to get acquainted with him."
Do I have to go back to that old form? I didn't like that striped fur everyone wanted to touch.
"But you were cute as a tabby cat!"