Well, I hope you guys like it because I have a lot planned for this story!

"Three enemies are headed your way," Sage Rivers heard a voice speak inside her earpiece, allowing herself time to prepare her chains.

She rounded the corner, immediately spotting the enemy, and lit the chains on fire. The heat radiating from the flames was not that of any normal fire. Just hovering your hand over a flame would cause injury. Thanks, Steve," she whipped the chains at the incoming soldiers, their bodies immediately caught fire and they were burned to a crisp in matter of seconds.

"Yuck," Sage plugged her nose to block the smell.

Steve came around the corner behind them, his shield in his hand. "Did you secure the package?" Sage asked, turning her head back toward the sound of footsteps. Soldiers rounded the corner, and Sage dropped her chains, choosing to fight them in hand to hand combat. The first soldier came at her, swinging his knife at her throat. Ducking, she swung her arm forward, punching him in the stomach. The man keeled over and she grabbed him by the back of the head, kneeing his stomach, then slammed his face against the wall. His body fell to the floor.

The two other soldiers approached, a pistol in one's hand and a rifle in the other's. She then ran at the one with the pistol, grabbing him by the arm and using it to aim at the other soldier. Two shots fired at the other soldier and his back fell against the wall, and he slid to the ground. She knocked the pistol out of the final soldier's hand, slamming her elbow into his face and knocking him back. Jumping into the air and grabbing onto a hydraulic pipe hanging from the ceiling, she kicked her legs toward him, her feet smashing into his face.

Steve jogged up to where she stood, looking down at the fallen enemies. A surprised expression flashed across his face for a moment before he called for extraction. "You always seem so surprised by what I can do, Rogers," Sage teased as they jogged out of the building.

"Not surprised, just..."

"Amazed? You marvel at my strength?" She teased, knowing it was only because she was still new and he hadn't expected her to be this skilled.

"Don't get ahead of yourself—and it's Steve," he corrected her for the only the fiftieth time that day. She had a habit of not calling people by their first names.

They stopped once they'd made it to the extraction point. The Quin-Jet was about a mile out.

"I'll call you that when you win the bet, Rogers."

The two had an ongoing bet on which one of them could find out Natasha's middle name first. They both had seen her file but for some reason her middle name had been redacted in the file, leaving them curious as to what it could be. Surely something embarrassing if she'd asked to have it redacted. Sage could only hope.

Steve rolled his eyes before they jumped into the cargo hold of the jet, coming face to face with their teammate, Natasha Romanoff. One of the most formidable in the agency. The only other agents to rival her strength without some sort of enhancement were Mockingbird, aka, Bobbi Morse, and Agent Melinda May. "Hey, Nat."

"You know I only allow Clint to call me that," Romanoff's response was flat. Sage winked at her, throwing her chains into a seat and plopping down into the one next to it.

"Take us back to the Triskelion," Steve ordered, setting down his shield before sitting in the seat next to it.

"Sure thing, Cap."

"Before you get to the Triskelion, can you drop me off at the Hub?" Sage hopped into the seat next to Natasha as the woman turned several switches in the cockpit.

"Yeah. Is it because you're meeting the new team?"

"Yep."

"Tell the leader I said hi."

"He'll be glad to hear it."

~

"When are you getting back to headquarters? Fury is assigning another mission," Steve asked as Sage prepared to leave the jet.

"I'll be there, is all you need to know."

"Sage, I'm your superior, I need to know."

"Blah, blah, blah," she shoved him playfully, but he didn't budge.

The man raised a brow at her and she awkwardly lifted her hand off his arm. "See you at headquarters," he turned and began walking all the way into the jet. Sage nodded back at him.

She stepped off jet, and turned around to watch them leave. Steve had stopped and turned around, standing with his legs apart and his hands folded. Sage waved at him and he saluted her. She began to walk away but the man continued to watch as the cargo hold closed.

"Do you like her?" Natasha asked, standing next to him. She had set the Jet to auto-pilot.

"What?"

"Well, you haven't dated anyone since the forties and I've been hoping you would go on a date with someone. She seems like a good choice."

"I don't have the time for that kind of stuff."

"Of course you do, and so does Sage. You should ask her out."

"Isn't that against protocol?"

"That's only if you two sleep together."

"Natasha," Steve gave her a look and she rolled her eyes.

"Oh please, you're so old school. Oh- how about that nurse that lives across the hall from you?"

~

Sage approached a group of people standing in The Hub Headquarters. The screens projected maps of the world with little red dots in the major cities. Each little dot represented where S.H.I.E.L.D had agents stationed. One of the members spotted her approaching and they whispered something to one of the older men in the group.

The man turned and he spotted her, and he smiled. She'd met him a few times before the battle of New York, when she was still in training. "I see you've got a new team, Coulson. But I bet you miss working with the Avengers."

"You know it, Sage," he outstretched his hand for a handshake but instead she pulled him into an embrace.

"Nat says hi, and I would say that Steve says hi but he doesn't know that you're— healthy." She had paused and quickly changed what she was going to say when he cleared his throat and shook his head slightly. "Yeah, he doesn't know that you're healthy."

"Nice save," he whispered, sarcasm dripping from his words. Sage sighed, giving him a glare as she turned to the agents watching the two closely.

"Sage, this is my team of highly skilled agents," he gestured to the people staring at them.

"This is Melinda May, our pilot and trained warrior; Skye, our skilled hacker; agents Fitzsimmons, Fitz is our engineer and Simmons is our Biochemist. They came straight out of the Academy. And you know Grant Ward, of course."

The tall man with dark eyes and dark hair nodded at her. "Quite the team you've got here. They seem a lot less dysfunctional than the Avengers. I've heard Steve talk about Tony and the rest of them. He speaks very highly of you, Coulson."

The older man seemed very happy to hear that. "I never got him to sign my trading cards."

"I could forge his signature."

Phil gave her a flat look. Sage was about to speak when the one named Skye walked up to her, and she seemed very excited. "Wait, so you know the Captain America, personally?"

"Yeah, we go on missions together all the time. Director Fury seems to think we have to come in a pair," Sage joked and Skye grinned.

"So is he as hot up close as he is in the pictures?"

"Skye, don't be so intrusive. And obviously he would be hotter up close because pictures— oh no, I should stop talking."

The one--Simmons--had a red face after realizing what she had said.

"It's alright, Simmons. And," Sage paused for a moment, she didn't like to think of Steve like that. "He is pretty dreamy. His muscles are quite firm."

The young woman recalled the interaction she had had with him earlier on the quin-jet.

"Wow, do you think I could meet him?" Skye asked, obviously overly excited about all this. It was quite obvious that she was a newbie.

"Okay, Skye, let's go," Melinda May interrupted. Sage waved goodbye to the team, giving Coulson another hug before turning toward Grant Ward, who had stayed behind. He told his team he would be back on The Bus shortly.

"Let's take a walk," Ward had suggested. Sage followed him into a more private part of The Hub, where they were joined by a man named John Garrett.

~

Sage's hands were shaking by the time she had exited the meeting with the two men. What she was doing was risky and she knew that if they found out they would surely kill her. A hand grabbed her shoulder and she nearly jumped, but she immediately composed herself, putting on a steely expression as she turned toward Ward.

"You seem a little off, are you okay?"

"No, I'm fine, Garrett's just a little intimidating is all," she shrugged off his hand, concealing her disgust as much as possible.

"Are you sure? You aren't having second thoughts, are you?"

"What? No," she shook her head. "I'm fine, but I have to go, Fury wants to see me for a mission."

Grant Ward nodded his head, turning around to go back to where Garrett stood, eyeing her closely. The girl waved at him, and he turned away once Ward entered the room, the door closing shut behind him.

Sage attempted to stop her hands from shaking as she pulled out a burner phone, dialing the one number that she needed and held the flip phone up to her ear. She waited for the person on the other end to answer, listening to the loud beeping noise as she left the building. The beeping stopped, and she heard the click as the other end picked up the phone. "They're going ahead with the plan."

"When?"

"One month from now."

"You better be ready."

Beeping sounded from the phone and that was when she knew the man had hung up. She broke the phone in two, tossing it into a garbage can and walking away.