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"ALRIGHT," BRUCE SAID, STANDING FROM HIS WORKSPACE.

Ramona looked up from where she was scribbling some equations on some scratch paper, Peter beside her, and she pushed up her glasses as she looked at her father.

"The cutoff date for registration at Midtown is sometime next week, right?" He asked.

Ramona nodded. "Yeah," Peter said.

"And you still need to take the admissions test," Bruce went on.

It was nearing the end of August now, and Ramona was essentially prepared to go back to school. She had caught up on all the material she needed to know in order to start her senior year, and now, she was just continuing to take practice SHSATs until her score was higher and her time was lower. In her spare time, she was reviewing the things she did already know— after all, the last time she was in school was over two years ago.

Despite his hesitations, Bruce couldn't deny the progress and determination Ramona had shown in the last few weeks. She had put her mind to going back to school, and so far, she had proved that she was serious about it. She had put in the work, with the help of mostly Peter, despite the fact that she wasn't sure anyone believed she could do it— hell, she barely believed she could do it. She barely believed she deserved to.

But now, Bruce was willing to take the next step. She was ready for it academically. The worst thing that could happen was that Ramona couldn't handle it quite yet, socially, and they pulled her out and started her on a homeschooling program. Best case, high school would be the first step at introducing her back into society, back into real normalcy.

"Come here, hon," Bruce said. Ramona closed her laptop, leaving Peter to his own, and she passed the Starks, who were working on some project of their own, joining her father at his computer. "Let's see what we can do to start getting you registered."

A pang of nervousness finally hit Ramona. Her dad was actually letting her go back to school. He was letting her try. This was what she wanted, but there was a sense of unattainability that had fueled her before. Now that she was so close to getting it, she started to understand the qualms her dad was having when she first mentioned it.

After a series of clicks, Bruce began to fill out a form for the school to call him about continuing registration. Name, birthday, address— things like that.

"It says here that you'll need an SHSAT score of more than 600 to get in," he said, turning to his daughter.

"That's great!" Peter piped up from across the room. "Ramona, you've been averaging at 625."

"Nice job, hon," Bruce mentioned, nudging Ramona's shoulder. He scrolled through a few more pages, before leaning back. "OK, well, it says the last chance to take the test at a testing center is tomorrow in Queens. I don't see that happening— don't worry," he said, seeing Ramona's chance at school flashing before her eyes. "I'm sure we can get a proctor to come and host a test for you before registration cuts off."

"I can do it," Anslie chimed in. Everyone in the room turned their heads to her— Ramona and Bruce, Peter, and Joey and Tony. No one said anything.

"I work at testing centers every now and then," she explained casually. "I've hosted lots of exams. I'm qualified, so, why don't I just sign off as the witness to Ramona's test here sometime this week?"

The room was quiet. This wasn't the first time something like this had happened. Anslie was constantly full of surprises— not that they were surprised that Anslie was qualified for yet another thing. The real question, at this point, was, what wasn't Anslie qualified for?

"Well, she's definitely a Banner," Joey remarked, breaking the silence and returning to her work.

Tony shook his head, following suit. "She's worse."

"Tony." Bruce scoffed, but he let it go. He couldn't deny how... interesting it was that his 20-year-old daughter just seemed to have unlimited academic experience. Kinds of academic experience that even Bruce didn't have, and that any normal scholar wouldn't have until they were at least 30. "That– that should work," he continued. "Anslie can... proctor your exam."

Ramona blinked, processing what just happened. Her dad would be calling to have her registered tomorrow, and her sister would be overseeing her test. "Thanks," she blurted, unsure of what else to say.

"You're gonna do great!" Anslie encouraged. "I'm happy to help."

Ramona gave a small smile, and she looked to Peter then— he was beaming.

***

The next day, Ramona was back in the lab. It was just her and the Starks, today, as Bruce, Anslie, and Director Fury were down the hall in a conference room, speaking with different officials to explain Ramona's situation and finish getting her registered for school.

After the conversation last night about registration and the SHSAT, Ramona had decided to get her test over with first thing this morning so she could stop freaking out about the possibility of failing, and the possibility of passing. She just wanted to stop freaking out, all the time.

"How'd your exam go, kid?" Tony asked.

"I think it went fine," Ramona replied. "Anslie said I finished in good time. My dad thinks they'll be able to tell my results after they get off the phone, in the other room, after they know everything that's going on with– with me."

"That's great," he said, nodding approvingly.

"You're gonna do amazing at Midtown," Joey said. "If you did well on the SHSAT— which I'm sure you did— it'll be a breeze."

"Daughter, please," Tony interjected. "Everyone knows high school isn't about the academics. It's about the cliques and the dances."

"OK," Joey said, laughing. "Right."

"You've already got Peter and Eris," Tony went on. "When you start school, just get as far away from them as possible, and you'll fall in with the popular crowd."

"Dad!" Joey smacked her dad's arm. "That is so mean." She stifled a laugh— he wasn't wrong. Joey and her friends had never really struck anyone as the 'high-school popular' type.

"Just giving Little Banner here the lay of the land," he defended. He smiled to himself when he saw Ramona fighting a smile herself. "What else do you like to do, kid? Your old man mentioned you used to play soccer. You can fall in with the jock athlete crowd." Joey gave her father a look.

Ramona nodded. "I did play soccer, but... I don't know if I'll go back to that," she admitted.

"You don't have to join an after-school club or sport," Joey told her. "The only thing they'll make you choose is an elective. If you don't choose, they'll just put you in a random one."

"Oh," Ramona said. "Cool." She didn't know what her options were, but to be frank, she wasn't totally against a random elective. At this point, she'd do anything.

"What are you looking forward to most?" Joey asked her, leaning forward in her seat slightly, shifting the topic from the required school stuff.

Ramona shrugged. "I don't mean this in a bad way, but... I think it'll be nice to meet people who don't know everything that happened."

Joey nodded. "Totally," she said. "A fresh start. You deserve one, after everything that you've been through."

Ramona didn't know how to reply to this— she just nodded, instead.

Bruce and Anslie came into the room a few minutes later, breaking into the mostly comfortable silence that had settled in the lab.

"How'd it go?" Tony asked.

"Ramona's all registered," Bruce said, smiling widely. "She'll be going to Midtown at the start of the term. Now, we just have to work out some other details here, while we wait for her schedule to come in. She's officially alive, though, on paper."

"How'd I do?" Ramona blurted. "On the SHSAT."

Anslie grinned, raising her brows. "689," her sister told her. 89 points above what she needed to make it in.

"Oh my gosh," Ramona breathed, a smile creeping onto her face.

Tony and Joey whooped behind her in celebration. "I knew the freaky genius was genetic," Tony remarked.

"You're gonna sail through your senior year, Banner," Joey encouraged.

***

"Acolo sus," Ramona heard in her ear. She looked up, squinting her eyes against the dark sky and the street lamps glaring in her direction. She could just barely make out the silhouette in the window, but it was there nonetheless. The window appeared to be cracked open, and there was the faint sound of music wafting out of it.

It was just past midnight, and Ramona found herself in some suburbs of New York on assignment. An extraction team for her was nearby, ready to take Ramona back to the facility upon the completion of her mission.

"Fă-i să vină la tine," she was instructed. Get them to come to you.

"How?" Ramona muttered.

"Nu fi proastă, fată," the voice hissed. "Think of something."

Ramona was numb— to all of it. She was numb to her handler calling her stupid, she was numb to the act she would put on to get her victim to come to her, she was numb to what her bosses were going to make her do to them once they were on her level. She had no choice. All she could do was do it, and get it over with. Every time.

Ramona huffed, before extending her hand and catching a rock into it out of midair, from off the rubble on the side of the road with the help of her powers. She shucked it into a sharp end, and grunted as she sliced through the palm of her left hand, green blood beginning to leak from it. In the dark, though, it didn't appear to have any abnormal hue.

She began wailing, crying for help as she knelt on the ground, holding her bloody hand by the wrist with her free hand. When she peered up to the window again, the silhouette was gone. Her plan was working.

"Hello?" A man approached her from the direction of the house. "Acesta este el," her handler confirmed.

The man was tall, and he had dark curls falling into his face. He was only in a tee shirt and some sweats, and it appeared that he had just thrown on his sandals to come outside and check on the crying girl he heard from his window. He looked so human. He had a good heart. And Ramona was going to kill him.

"Are you OK?" He asked, glancing at her. He saw her hand. "You're bleeding," he noticed, coming closer. Ramona didn't reply, she just let him come to her. "What happened?"

He knelt down to her, and he reached out as if to grab her hand and inspect her wound.

"What are you doing, Elemental?" The scratchy voice in her earpiece returned. "He is right there. Go!"

Ramona was numb. She told herself she was numb. And yet, for a second there, she couldn't help but see the humanity she was about to destroy. Why, she didn't know. She never knew how her bosses chose their victims. They never seemed evil, like they would tell her they were. Deep down, Ramona knew her bosses were the evil ones. But what could she do about that? She was their weapon.

She let the man take her injured hand, concern in both of their gazes, before she shut down her mind. She couldn't think about what she was doing, she just did it. Her hand in his, she yanked him forward, slamming him into the pavement below them.

He grunted in pain, but Ramona didn't falter. She stood and kicked him down as he tried to regain his footing. He looked up at her in terror— his eyes were wide, his face was burned from where it had hit the cement upon landing on the ground. He was shaking. "Please," he breathed, shaking his head.

Ramona looked down at him, extending her hand. The floor beneath them rumbled, and he looked away from Ramona and at the cracking road beneath them. "What—" he said, looking back up to her.

She twisted her hand into a fist, and beneath him, the ground broke. With as much power as she could muster, she flattened her hand again, pushing it towards him. The floor under him caved in, and down into the ground he went, breaking through layers of rocks and dirt until the sides crumbled around him, burying him in the dust and silt that had formed from the shattered Earth.

"Ai facut bine," Ramona's handler praised. "Extraction is being dispatched to you now."

Ramona swallowed, and when she finally tore her gaze away from the man below the rubble crater, she turned around and was met by him again— a bloody, dead, zombified version of the man she had just killed.

She gasped, stepping back.

"You killed me," the man growled, stepping toward her.

"I—" Ramona stammered.

"You killed me, Ramona," the man repeated. Ramona? How did he know her name? Her real name? "You killed me. You are a killer."

"N-No," Ramona tried again, taking another step back.

"You are a killer. You are a killer. You will never see your family again. You will never live a regular life again. If you do, everyone will hate you for being a murderer. You are a murderer."

Ramona couldn't say anything else. She opened her mouth to protest, but she couldn't. She was a killer. She had killed so many people for her bosses, that she had lost count. She would never see her family again, even though they were the reason she stayed. She would never live a normal life again. How could she? She was a killer.

She tried to scream, to get any sound to come out of her mouth, but nothing did. She was silent, against all her will. Her victim in front of her did, instead. He roared at her, and Ramona felt terror like never before. He kept cornering in on her, and she took another step back, and another, until she, too, was falling backward through the floor, landing on top of the body she had just put in the ground just minutes before.

"Nu sunt un ucigaș!" She shouted, sitting straight up in her bed. She choked out a sob as she came to her senses, her eyes adjusting to the darkness of her room. It was a dream. A nightmare. Her breathing picked up as she remembered where she was. She was safe, she was with her family, she was alive, she was free...

Nu sunt un ucigaș, she had said. I am not a killer.

But she was. She had killed those people. She had killed that man, the one in her dream. She remembered it. Sure, his corpse hadn't come after her. That was only in her dream. But she killed him. She took his life. That kind, generous man who had come to tend to a helpless girl in the middle of the night on the streets of New York. He was dead, because of her.

Ramona couldn't breathe. She didn't deserve to be here. She didn't deserve to be sleeping in this clean room, in this soft, warm bed, in this building for heroes. She was no hero. She was far from one.

Knock, knock.

Ramona's breathing halted for the shortest second, her head snapping toward her bedroom door.

Shakily, she stood up, cracking open the door. The hallway outside was dark, and to her surprise, it was Peter who was standing at her door.

"Peter?" She asked weakly. His forehead was creased in worry.

"Are you OK?" He wondered, taking in her face. It was obvious she'd been crying. "What's wrong?"

"I'm– I'm fine," she said, shuttering a breath. "I just had a bad dream. How did—"

"My– my senses," Peter explained, hurried and hushed. "The spider thing. I thought you were in danger. I'm glad you're not."

Ramona didn't know how to reply. She nodded.

"Do you... do you want to talk about it? Do you need anything?" Peter continued.

Did Ramona want to talk to one of her only friends about how she was a murderer and she was being haunted by the people she killed through her dreams? No, not exactly.

She shook her head. "No," she told him. "I'll be fine." Peter was the one to nod now, and the two of them just looked at each other. "Thanks," she whispered. "For coming to check on me."

"Of course," he answered, sighing in relief. "Of course," he repeated.

"Goodnight," Ramona whispered after a beat. She wasn't sure what time it was, but she knew she'd be going back to her bed and at least trying to rest again. God knew she needed it.

"Goodnight," Peter replied. Ramona nodded, and finally, the door closed between them.

She left her hand on the door after closing it, catching her breath some more. She closed her eyes, but quickly opened them when behind her eyelids, all she could see was the man in her dream.

She didn't want to tell Peter about the things she'd done, the people she'd killed. She didn't want to tell anyone about it. She couldn't handle thinking about it herself, and clearly, her subconscious couldn't either. She trembled back to her bed, sitting with her knees to her chest. She didn't bother telling herself she wasn't a killer. She was. The problem was living with it.

Her phone buzzed on her nightstand, and she reached over and grabbed it. A text from Peter.

Nightmares suck. Text me if you need me, OK? I'm here.

Ramona looked at the words for a few seconds, hesitating before typing out a reply.

I will. Thanks Peter.

She set down her phone and her screen dimmed.

She was a killer. Oh, god, she was a killer of innocent people. So many that she couldn't remember how many. She didn't know most of their names, but she sure as hell remembered their faces. She hadn't exactly opened up to her doctors, or anyone, about everything, but her past wasn't a secret. She recalled Tony asking her if she was the Mystery Terrakinetic from those news reports over the last few years. People knew who she was. They just didn't know who she was.

Her father and her doctors, among some other people, had tried to reassure her that it wasn't her, it was HYDRA forcing her. But it was her. It was her hands, her powers, her doing.

Her phone buzzed again, lighting up after dimming slightly— it hadn't fully turned off. It was a final reply from Peter; a gif of a moon and stars that read sweet dreams.

He would hate me, she thought. They all would.

***

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