Marvel:PS - Chapter 3 - Getting Adopted (Patreon)

(Word Count: 2,539)

"Sir, you're going to want to see this." Maria Hill flipped a tablet around as she approached Nick Fury's desk. On the tablet displayed a street camera's security footage. Fury took the tablet and hit play. It showed a small car with luggage strapped on top being flipped by a large semi going way too fast to be in a city. However, just before impact there was what looked to be a bluish green square appeared right in front of the semi. The semi shattered the square like glass, which then disappeared, and hit the car anyway. Right at the moment of impact, a little girl around 6-7 years old with black hair and blue eyes appeared behind the cars, just on the edge of the camera's field of view. The girl ran back to the car that had just flipped to help the two adults left in the car. Obviously, the girl was the daughter of the small family.

"This incident occurred about a week ago in Easton just outside of New York. 3 people were killed by the semi, including both of the girl's parents. Multiple witnesses swear that they saw this girl appear out of nowhere. We believe she has some sort of Teleporting ability. There's also the strange Blue square that appeared in front of the truck. We believe that this also came from the girl," Maria Hill gave Fury the rundown of the situation.

"Where's the girl now?" Fury asked.

"She's being sheltered at a temporary facility awaiting a foster home."

"Romanoff's our lead agent in the New York HQ right now, have her go and get her immediately. Delete any footage that may have appeared online about this too," Fury ordered.

"What should Natasha do once she has the girl?"

Fury mulled it over. “With the girl's powers, we can't simply place her in an orphanage. Too many eyes will reach her. We may have to place her in the care of one of our agents. Whether that will be Romanoff or someone else remains to be seen. Have her brought in for testing so we can get a better reading on her powers.”

M:PS

I laid down on my bed, an arm covering my eyes. I couldn't stop reliving the crash. Everything I did wrong was repeating itself over and over in my mind.

I had tried to teleport all of us out, but my maximum weight I could bring with me wasn't enough. I used up my Regenerate on Dad who was already… Then Mom died before the cooldown finished.

I should have used Shadow Clone to be able to use Regenerate twice.

It's been a week now and I'm now stuck in the foster system. Apparently my parents were both only children and all my grandparents were dead already. This sucks. This freaking sucks. I lost my entire family twice! How does that even happen?

Wasn't this new life supposed to be a good one? I have cheats! I was supposed to be able to breeze through everything and be happy. 

I bit my lips to keep from crying again. It's not going to help anyway. 

We were going to move next to the Parkers too! I was going to be childhood friends with Peter and help him out with heroing. We could have teamed up to take down crime lord's and everything!

Now I'm stuck in a foster care facility.

"Amelia!" A voice way too sing-songy rang out from outside the door to my room. Ugh. It was Mrs. Haliway, she's way too cheerful for my current mood. I wanted to sulk! I couldn't do that when someone as cheerful as her was practically giggling with every word. But God bless her for the work she was doing with the other kids. "You have a visitor!"

A visitor? I didn't want to, but curiosity got the better of me. I went and opened the door. Mrs. Haliway stood there smiling widely at me, a tiny woman in a professional business dress, but had colorful pins and buttons added to the lapels. Beside her was Natasha Romanoff. Black Widow. This… was very unexpected. She looked just like Scarlett Johansson. She was also dressed in professional clothes, but in a blouse and slacks.

"Hello, Amelia!" Mrs. Haliway said. "Can we come inside?"

"Er, yeah. Come in." They entered. The room had a bunkbed and two desks for kids to have their own space while they were here. I didn't have a roommate, so both chairs at the desk were free. They sat on those chairs while I sat on my bed facing them. "I would offer refreshments, but I'm limited to one juice box at lunch, unfortunately."

Natasha smirked at my joke, while Haliway giggled. "That's okay, Amelia. Right! Let's get straight to business, shall we? Amelia, this is Natalie Rushman. She's a legal consultant for big companies, and she wants to adopt you!"

… What? Did SHIELD find out about me and want to recruit me this way? I sighed. Right, there must have been traffic cameras. Of course SHIELD would find out. In hindsight, I'm lucky it's Natasha and not some Hydra lacky. Still, I can't agree right off the bat. That would be weird.

"You want to adopt me? You realize that I just lost my parents a week ago, right? You think my mom is replaceable just like that?"

Natasha grimaced. "No, I would never try to replace your mother's place in your heart. It's just that I also lost my family when I was young, just like you. The same incident made it so I couldn’t have kids. So when I heard your story my heart was moved and I saw a little of myself in you. I just knew I had to adopt you. Would you like to come home with me?"

Natasha really did spin a good story. Was she alluding to her "family" of Alexei, Melina, and Yelena? Mixing a bit of truth into the lies. Did she actually see herself in me? Regardless, I knew Natahsa was a good person and trustworthy, but how long would I actually be staying with her? She was one of SHIELD's best operatives so she couldn't babysit me for long. Would I be left to their run-of-the-mill agents, and thus at Hydra's non-existent mercy?

"Alright, fine," I muttered. Life is getting complicated. "Where do we live?"

"In Queens, New York." Nice. That was an amazing coincidence. Right in the area of Spiderman. My heart skipped a beat as I thought that maybe my plans could still be possible, but now with SHIELD spy training.

"Cool."

It took another hour or so, but soon Natasha and I were already walking out of there. SHIELD must have done some streamlining in the background because I was sure adopting a kid wasn't this easy.

"We've got a bit of a drive ahead of us to get back to New York, are you going to be okay with that?" Natasha asked.

I pushed down the smidgen of fear that bubbled up and said, "yeah, I'll be fine." It would be better for me to confront this fear before it grows to something crippling.

About 30 minutes passed by in awkward silence before Natasha cleared her throat. "So, Amelia. Is there anything that you like to do?"

"I like reading. I can already read Harry Potter. I like movies, and I recently started to learn kickboxing in a kids class."

"Oh? You're pretty advanced for your age. And kickboxing? How'd you get into that?"

"I saw a cool spy movie and I wanted to be cool like them," I said, deliberately playing a little more innocent than usual and staying to get into her good side at the same time. Natasha smirked to herself at that.

"You know, I'm pretty good at fighting myself, and I know a good gym near our house. We can go together if you want."

Oh? Getting tips from Black Widow? "I'd like that."

She laughed, "looks like someone's excited!"

"So what martial arts do you know? Is it kickboxing, or something else?"

"I know a couple. Kickboxing, like you're learning, Muay Thai, Tai Chi, Jiu Jitsu, Shotokan, Capeoira, Krav Maga, Judo, Karate, Aikido, stuff like that. But I try to focus on blending different arts together, so I would say that I prefer MMA." She just listed all of those like it was nothing.

"W-whoa." No wonder she could be in the Avengers. She really knew her stuff. She was much better than Falcon anyway.

"Pretty good, right?"

"Yeah. And you’re a Business Lawyer?”

Natasha laughed. “Yeah, a pretty good one if I say so myself.”

“How’d you get into such a … demanding hobby?” I asked, though I knew it would be at least partially from the Red Room’s training.

“Well, It was a good stress relief from all the legal studies I was doing.”

“Right, well, my goal is to become super strong to protect… well, it was to protect my family, but now…" I faded off, not really knowing what to say.

"Hey, that's a great goal. I know what it's like to feel that you don't have anyone. But I'm here for you, Amelia. Eventually you'll start making new friends in Queens and then you'll have more and more people you care about to protect, I just know it." Natasha said in a gentle voice.

I scrubbed my eyes to get rid of any tears forming and cleared my throat. "Thanks."

"Anytime, Amelia."

"So… am I going to be turned over to government scientists to be a lab rat?" I asked, finally breaching a subject I've been wondering about.

"What? Why would you ask something like that?" Natasha asked, affronted.

"I'm not dumb, I was 'adopted' before I could even get placed into a foster home, you’re for sure a government agent. There's just no way an orphan is adopted that fast. Then there's the fact that I used my powers in sight of a traffic camera. That means you were sent to fetch me because of my powers. So I just want to know what will happen to me now that I'm in the government's hands. Will I be experimented on, drained of blood and organs to try and replicate my powers? Or will I be stripped of my emotions and brainwashed into a child soldier for them?" 

Natasha stared, horrified, at me.

"No! There's not going to be any experimenting on you. The most they'll do is take a few blood samples and have you do some tests to measure how powerful your abilities are! No… organ harvesting," Natasha said, giving up on hiding her mission because the girl was right to be concerned.

"Really? How can you be so sure?" I asked.

"Because I won't let any of that happen to you. I promise."

"Even if your superiors order you to step aside so they can? Or what if you're ordered to leave me with some random low-level agents so I can be dropped off the map and never heard from again? What will you do then?" Although I knew Natasha's one of the good ones, I needed to know that there won't be a time when I'm left with the grunts so Hydra can get me.

"Well first of all, kid, we're the good guys. We're not the type of organization to experiment on people like that, nevermind children. And you'll be staying by me the whole time. I won't be handing you over to anyone. I promise."

"I'll hold you to it."

"You don't have to worry about that. My job right now is to look after you. You're right that using your powers in view of a camera caught some attention, which is why I came so fast to pull you out of there. We're going to be staying together until the excitement dies down a bit. Afterwards, then we'll see about getting you to a more permanent safe house."

"I want to stay with you. I don't want to be hidden off the map."

Natasha sighed. "Kid, it's not safe."

"So train me then! I've already started learning kickboxing, teach me more! I may be a kid, but I can make up the difference with my powers!" I said. If there was a chance I can just be Black Widow's sidekick that'll be great.

"And what can you do with your powers?" Natasha asked.

Hmmm… I've used Barrier Formation and Teleport on camera so they know about those. I definitely need to keep Regenerate a secret, at least the fact that I can use it on others… Do I? No wait, that's stupid. Evil scientists will want to get their hands on me for even self-regeneration anyway. Maybe if I can heal others as well, I'd become too important for SHIELD to "lose" me. Disintegrate… I don't think I can still train it up and keep it hidden at the same time I won't be able to hide it from her. Shadow Clones on the other hand, can definitely be a hidden trump card. I can spawn them on the other side of a wall to hide them and send them off to train. Wait, wouldn't I be able to keep Disintegrate hidden that way too? Might as well try.

"You okay there, kid? You're spacing out there." Natasha asked.

"Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out how much I can trust you with." I said bluntly. She probably already knew that anyway.

She sighed. "And here I thought we had a nice moment together before."

"You're the one that started calling me 'kid' instead of my name," I said.

She grimaced. "Yeah, sorry about that, Amelia. When you called me out on being a spy, I slipped out of my 'Aunt Nat' hat and back into my 'Black Widow' hat."

"Ha! I knew you were a spy! So, what's your real name?" I asked.

"Nuh uh, girl! You have to answer my question first! Don't think you can distract me so easily." Natasha said, and I pouted.

"Fine, I can Teleport stuff. Myself or something that I touch. I can also create 2D barriers. They're pretty weak right now, they can only stand up against 600psi. But the edges can cut through almost anything anyway because it's a 2D plane. I have learned to curl the edges so I don't accidentally slice something. However, I can also shape the Barrier into any shape I want, like a bat, and move the barrier around as much as I want."

She whistled. "Those are pretty useful powers. Very versatile."

"I can also Heal people, like Regenerate lost limbs kind of healing."

"What? But then… what happened?"

I started choking up. “I tried healing my dad but he… he was already dead. I didn’t realize it at the time. I didn’t want to… but then I heard my mom move and I tried healing her but it has an hour long cooldown before I can use it again. She died before I could.”

Natasha pulled the car to a stop on the side of the road and pulled me into a hug. “I’m sorry, Amelia.”