Saving the World and Possibly Myself

Chapter 1

Picture of Hunter above and video for what S.H.I.E.L.D.

Hunter Winchester had learned from a very young age that when people who carried themselves with a sense of authority and happened to be looking for you, you needed to get gone fast. Unfortunately for her, she's never listened to her own common sense and liked pissing authority figures off. It was her main hobby throughout her school years. Plus, the two guys that had walked into the little diner who were looking for her had already seen her and were walking her way. They were interesting characters. One was a black man, a bit taller than her, in all black and a black trench coat. But the cherry on top was the black eye patch covering his left eye. Who the hell had eye patches anymore? What was he, a freakin' pirate? The man to his left could pass for your average Joe if you weren't trained to study people like Hunter was. He was in a dark blue suit with a white shirt underneath and a striped black and blue tie. He screamed FBI or something like that, but Hunter wasn't so sure. What would Patchy the Pirate be doing with some government lackey? Although, the suited guy looked a little older and looked more like a cubicle guy than a field goon.

"Hunter Winchester?" The suit asked. I put on my best confused face.

"Ummm, no. Never heard that name before." I said. By the looks on their faces, they didn't believe me. Weird, most people didn't give me a second look. They definitely didn't catch it when I was lying. Rolling his eyes, Pirate slid into the booth across from me and Suit joined him.

"That's strange considering how much you look like this picture of Hunter Winchester." Suit retorted sliding a mugshot of me across the table. Shit, how the hell did they figure out I was even alive and then manage to find me.

"Well, they say there are seven people who look just like you across the world. Guess I'm just the unlucky fool who looks like this....Hunter Win...chestor chick," I tried to lie again, even going as far as to butcher my own last name. "And who the hell names their daughter Hunter? Anyway, what'd she do?" The men across from me shared a look.

"How do you know she did something?" Suit asked. Did Pirate speak or did he need a parrot? Holding the picture up a bit, I replied.

"It's a mugshot and you're looking for her. She had to have done something."

"Hunter," Patchy finally spoke up, "Stop pulling our damn strings. We're not here to arrest you or take you in. We have a proposition." I raised my eyebrows, intrigued but still very cautious.

"Well, Patchy, since you seem to know who I am, tell me who the hell you are," I demanded, going from (faking) being helpful and sweet to (actually) a bitch with a bad attitude who doesn't take any shit. Again, the men shared a look. This time is was more, "Finally getting somewhere" and less "Let's get on with this". Almost in sync, they pulled out ID's and slid them over to me.

"I'm Agent Coulson with S.H.I.E.L.D." Suit told me.

"Director Fury. I run S.H.I.E.L.D" Patchy told me.

"Okay. What the hell is that?" I continued my line of questions...however short it may prove to be.

"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division." Suit, or Coulson, told me as if he had memorized it and said it a hundred times a day. With how he seems to be, he probably did. I raised an eyebrow.

"Wow...I can see why you just call it S.H.I.E.L.D. And what does this S.H.I.E.L.D. want with me?"

"You see, Hunter," Pirate Fury began, "We specialize in the things most people either don't know or refuse to acknowledge exist. We understand you do much of the same." Wait, what now? "Do you know what happened in New York?" This really made me pause. I'd been in New York. I knew exactly what happened. But I needed to hear what they had to say.

"I've heard some things. Portals in the sky. Alien-like creatures. Just rumors and stories. Why?" I told the men. I noticed that many of the people in the diner had left and it was mostly just Fury, Coulson, and I left. The waitress hadn't come by in a while either.

"Because that's exactly what happened. A demigod got all pissy because he wasn't the favorite and brought an alien army to our world through a portal created by a power we had no hope of understanding, nonetheless contain. We depended on our own army of a super soldier, a man in a metal suit, another man with extreme anger issues, the pissed off demigod's brother, and two master assassins to save our asses," Fury explained.

"Okay. Now where do I come into this whole conversation."

"You are good at what you do. Saving people from things they don't know are out there. You've risked your life, you've lost a lot, but you continued to do it. Until recently. I personally believe it became too much, you reached your breaking point. But I could be wrong on that. But, we need people like you to help defend Earth. And the thing is, there are no people like you. We need you." Okay, now I was downright speechless. It took a few moments for me to finally be able to find any words.

"Uh....sorry, what? You want me? For what? To be a freaking Avenger or some spy? What exactly?"

"Possibly an Avenger in the future. We can't just throw you in the middle of it. We have what we like to call the Avengers Boot Camp. You along with a few others, working to either work alongside the current Avenger or go in place of them." I raised an eyebrow at that.

"In place?"

"They aren't invincible. Well, some of them are close to it, but they can be hurt and they can die. We nearly lost Ironman in New York. They are our first line of defense, but we need to make sure they aren't are the only line of defense." Coulson told me. I sat, thinking for a moment.

"Why me? Since you seem to know so much about me, you know I'm a high school dropout with a GED, more family issues than your average stripper, and a record longer than Patchy the Pirate's trench coat." I questioned, making both men chuckle at the stripper comment. Only Coulson chuckled at the pirate remark. I think I heard Fury mutter something along the lines of, "Never heard that one before."

"You are average," Before I could argue with Fury, he continued," Or at least, you were born that way. We don't know every single detail of your life, Winchester. but we know enough to know that somewhere along the way, you became something important. You may have been hidden in your brothers' shadows for a long time, but we noticed you. You are just as tough as your brothers, maybe even more with all you must have been through. But you keep saving people. You keep hunting things people don't know they need to fear. You weren't given special abilities or top of the line weapons and tech. You had to make do with what you had and use your brain to get you out. You became a hero- a superhero at that, without having anything super about you. That is why we want you."