And we're back! After this chapter, I think I'll go ahead and revise a few of the older ones before uploading a new one.

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   Ashley forgot how much she didn't miss the feeling of her face getting slammed into concrete.

   The teenager hadn't expected a pleasant time when Strucker informed her of the basic training course she was required to complete, but this brought pain to another level. Ashley had never realized how much she relied on the enhanced instincts that her powers supplied her with in physical combat. She had simply imagined that all reflexes were naturally like that, but she had quickly learned otherwise as she tried facing these soldiers with the power inhibitor in use. Every punch she normally would've dodged with ease was landed on her. Feigning strikes could no longer be detected as easily either, leaving her wide open for that sly kick or slash. Combat was nearly impossible with her being rendered blind in the way of senses. 

   Multiple times the girl had requested for the inhibitor to be removed, but Strucker would simply brush her off.

   "In all due time," he'd say with that confident smile of his. Then he'd go on to assure her that training without her powers was necessary for her development and that he'd have the inhibitor removed when he saw fit. However, Ashley could easily see right through his facade and realized that they wanted to remain to have the upper hand on her, therefore her powers proved to be a complication that had to be removed for the time being.

   Manipulative bastard.

   She despised the fact that she had to work with him. Ashley detested the man for no other reason than just disliking his personality, but she knew that she didn't have much of a choice. S.H.I.E.L.D. needed to be taken down. It was a malicious window pane that needed to be shattered and have each shard of glass individually locked away in somewhere where it would be long forgotten. If that didn't do the trick, then perhaps it would just need to be burned to the point where there weren't even ashes.

   Somehow, and someway, she would find a way to be that person that swung the hammer into it.

    "вставай слабая девочка! вставать!" {Get up weak girl! Get up!} The soldier spat at her. While in training, the girl had picked up on a few phrases of Russian since that was usually what the soldiers would speak. Ashley snarled at the insult and threw herself off the ground, then brought her arms in front of her in a ready position. The teenager was pretty sure that one of them had been fractured, but there wasn't much she could do about it.

    This time, Ashley didn't bother pulling her punches. If the soldier wanted to mess with her, she would show him what she's got.

    He still struck her first, but she didn't bother batting an eye at her aching jaw as she dodged his next attack and used her golden opportunity to join the game. With only one eye open, considering that the other one had just been socked and stung to no end, she concentrated all of her anger and resentment into one singular strike.

   It might've been sadistic to grin at the man writhing on the floor after she absolutely unloaded a devil of a punch precisely into his liver, but she couldn't bring herself to care in the slightest. She even went to the effort of throwing in a series of meticulously-placed kicks following his collapse. The cuts and bruises littering her skin burned a little bit less as she watched the soldier heave in pain.

   "Слезь с пола, маленькая девочка," {Get off the floor, little girl} she mocked before spitting up blood next to him. She wiped the crimson liquid dripping from her lips with the side of a tattered sleeve and sneered at him before walking out of the room.

   Ashley hadn't tried to walk away from a session before. Strict rules hadn't been laid out for her as of yet, though there had been implications that there would be punishments for failing to adhere to her training.

   Well, too bad, Ashley sourly thought to herself. I'm deciding that this session is over whether they like it or not.

   The teenager escorted herself back to her quarters and took a seat at her desk. While she did eye the new set of clothes that had been placed on her bed with temptation, she knew that she was sopping with blood, sweat, and the occasional tears. Changing could come after she was permitted to take a shower.

   For now, she would just sit. That's really all she could do. She found herself staring absentmindedly at the screen on the wall as pain from her previous lessons coursed through her body. Occasionally it would reach points where she'd have to regulate her breathing and bite her tongue in order to not scream out. Unfortunately, there was never a point where it all faded away for even a split second. Between what she assumed was a broken nose, two black eyes, a dislocated shoulder, fractured radius, and cracked ribs, her pain receptors were certainly kept on their toes.

   She was never complaining about Natasha's training again.

   "Agent Tanner," the-all-too-familiar voice of Jasper echoed out as he slowly opened her door and stepped in. "We weren't notified of your leave from your last lesson. You had us concerned. That was, until we found the trail of blood that led here."

    Ashley shrugged after looking down at the floor and seeing that she had been dripping blood. She didn't really know what else to say. Sorry? She wasn't really sorry about any of her actions. Maybe letting them sweat and think that she had disappeared would teach them a lesson about going so hard on her.

   "I have your schedule of what you are required to do now and when your next session is set for."

   Wishful thinking, am I right?

   The teenager sighed and retrieved the tablet from Jasper's hands before taking a quick glance at it. An audible breath of relief left her lips when she saw that she had been gifted with the next several hours to herself. Maybe miracles did exist after all.

   "You are free to freshen up and do as you please, Agent. We'll have a professional medic come by later, but for now, there is a first aid kit located in the cabinet in your bathroom," Jasper commented before mumbling about some meeting that he had to attend and taking his leave. It was all the same to Ashley, however. She didn't really enjoy his presence either.

   If she was being frank, the only people she tolerated were Jemma and Leopold. And, as her luck would have it, they were the only ones who she wasn't permitted to see on a daily basis. Out of the five days of training that she had suffered through after her deal with Strucker, she had seen them a whopping total of one time.

   Thankfully though, the time had finally come for that to change. Her schedule showed that after her resting period, she was arranged to meet with Fitzsimmons so Strucker could hold up his end of the deal. The schedule only promised small details, considering that the man had made the stipulation that she had to start being sent on missions for them before she was indulged in the large aspects that they knew about her and her previous life.

    Nonetheless, Ashley was thrilled. At last, she would have answers. Although, she couldn't help but feel a wave of nausea coming on as a thought circled her mind.

   At what cost?

~

   One week.

   It had been one entire, miserable, torturous week for Peter since the day Ashley was abducted. His godforsaken and wretched classes had been like hell for him as he tried to drown out his loud thoughts with academics. However, trying to focus on a simple question without his mind drifting to theories and angst was even more difficult.

    If trying to deal with his own misery wasn't enough, he was also made aware daily of others' affliction from her disappearance. Each day he walked into class, Ned, Liz, MJ, Liz's friends, and occasionally Flash would look at Peter hopefully, yet each day he would simply bow his head and give a small shake in denial. The brunet didn't have the slightest clue why they thought he would be the first to know (okay, maybe he understand where Ned was coming from since he knew that Peter was Spider-Man), but it brought him down even further every time he saw their crestfallen faces after his responses.

    Peter had grown increasingly active in his Spider-Man duties. While it was partially his way of trying to lessen the guilt of allowing a civilian to get kidnapped by Hydra, it was also an excuse to look harder for any place that Ashley might be held captive.

   Although, while he didn't want to admit it to himself, he knew better than to expect to find the girl anywhere near Queens. He had noticed the first day that she had been kidnapped that the energy that normally crackled throughout his veins whenever he was around her had completely disappeared. Wherever they had taken her, it was far from New York.

   "Did that super-secret-spy-agent-pirate-guy ever contact you?" Ned asked in a hushed tone as he slid into the desk next to Peter.

    "Not yet," Peter replied lazily with a shake of his head. "Which means they haven't gotten a lead yet. He said that they'd call me as soon as they find something."

    "Do you think that they aren't trying to find her? What if they don't think it's that important?" Ned countered pessimistically. A sharp glance from Peter was all it took for him to ditch his negative thoughts.

    "Fury wouldn't," Peter said as he toyed with his pencil. His voice grew increasingly low as he noticed the remainder of his classmates pouring into the room. "It seems like he knew Ashley before I told him about her kidnapping. He was way more concerned than I'd imagine him to be about the abduction of some random teenager."

    "Wait," Ned gasped, fully turning to Peter. "You don't think... he cares about her because she is dating him?"

    Peter's eyes flew wide as he choked on the air he had been trying to breathe. "Ned! Dude, not cool! That guy is like five times older than her!"

    "Oh," Ned mumbled as he turned bright red. Students who caught sight of how flustered Ned was gave the pair a questioning glance, but Peter disregarded them.

    "It wasn't like that," Peter continued. "It was almost like..."

    The brunet wandered off as his mind flashed back to the conversation he had with the man a painstakingly long week ago.

~

    "Tony Stark. I thought you've learned by now that I'm not your janitor."

    The billionaire strutted into the office and removed his sunglasses from his face. His dark, chocolate eyes regarded the director nonchalantly before he invited himself onto a lounge chair. Fury watched Tony in annoyance as he comfortably sprawled across the chair, yet made no move to even acknowledge the director's remark. Finally, after a solid several moments of adjusting his position, he finally looked Fury and the eye and spoke in his casual, somewhat ignorant, tone.

    "Oh, no. You've got this wrong. This isn't my mess," he paused and dramatically spun his chair to face Peter, who stood awkwardly at the door. "It's his."

    "And what business does a kid have in here?" Fury questioned as he abandoned his desk and stepped towards the nerve-wracked brunet. "Ah... now wait a minute. You're the spider-boy. What business does a spider have in here?"
   
    "Spider-Man, sir," Peter timidly corrected. "Mr. Stark..."

    "I'm gonna stop you right there," Tony scoffed, rolling his eyes at the teenager's words. "My involvement ended the second I stepped into this room. No more throwing me under the bus."
   
    Peter wanted to argue but simply shrugged off Tony's words. "I came here to talk about the kidnapping of..."

    "You're bothering me, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. about a kidnapping? Look, kid, go talk to your local police department or something. In case you haven't noticed, we deal with the enhanced and aliens, not..."

    "She's an enhanced!" Peter suddenly shouted. The second he realized what he had done, a sheepish look spread across his face and he averted his gaze from Fury. "She's crazy telekinetic and probably knows more about you than you do about yourself. She doesn't even look like a normal human! Her eyes literally glow like a lightsaber and she has white markings on her skin."

    When Peter first recognized that Fury no longer held an exasperated air about him, the teenager thought that the mention of superpowers had finally caused the director to take him seriously. However, upon further inspection, Peter realized that there was something going on far deeper than that. The man's eyes held a certain level of concern that Peter hadn't expected from a man who had been rumored to keep his calm so well. Fury's hands were even twitching slightly as he clasped them around a tablet.

    "She wouldn't happen to go by the name of Ashley Tanner, would she?"

~

    "...almost like she worked for him," Peter finally mumbled just loud enough for Ned to hear. The teenager's pencil clattered to the ground in sync with his jaw.

    "No way!" Ned half-yelled. If their classmates weren't eyeing their suspicious behavior before, they definitely were now. Peter groaned at the lack of secrecy Ned could maintain and turned his attention to the surrounding teenagers.

    "I got a new comic," Peter lied smoothly with a shrug. The class rolled their eyes and muttered about them being nerds before turning back to face their friends. As soon as he was sure that nobody was paying attention, he redirected his attention to Ned. "Dude, not cool."

    "Sorry," Ned apologized, though his eyes still sparkled with excitement. "Do you really think that Ashley is an undercover agent?! Wait, is Ashley even her real name?"

    "I don't know, man," Peter breathed. "But yeah, Ashley is definitely her name. That's what Fury called her before I even told him her name."

    "Our best friend is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.," Ned echoed to himself giddily. "Yo, we are the most lit friend group ever."

    "Obviously," a female voice interrupted them. Both boys froze in fear before turning around to face their eavesdropper. "You losers have me."

    "MJ," Peter sighed, slightly in relief and slightly in annoyance. "We thought..."

    "That you were stupid enough to let some random kid hear confidential information? Yeah, I know. You two never change," MJ remarked sarcastically.

    "How much did you hear?" Ned questioned.

    "Enough to know that Peter knows the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and that Ashley is a badass. Well, an abducted badass, but all the same. Also, the fact that Ned thinks Ashley hooks up with one-eyed old men."

    "I don't..." Ned started but trailed off when both Peter and MJ shot him looks.

    "Anyways, I've also concluded that S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't competent enough to track down a mere teenager, so it's time we take care of things ourselves," MJ continued before taking a sip of her coffee. Her words sounded so composed and indifferent, as though she felt like tracking down an enhanced that Hydra agents had captured was an everyday task.

    Peter attempted to negate her suggestion and explain why searching would be ineffective, but a suddenly confident Ned cut him off.

    "I'm down, dude. When do we start?"

Ugh i love mj