2

This is Oregon City. Somewhere inside its limits sits the most recently known residence of the now-fatherless Allan family.

Liz walks a country road in her bare feet. Her skin is dark. Her hair is dark. Her smile is sweet. Her cleavage is tempting. Her downblouse is even more tempting...

As she walks, she holds hands with Lowell, her new beau. She's adapting to Oregon life a lot faster than she thought she would. She thought she'd spend most of the time missing Peter, but... Oregon sure knows how to grow its boys.

Lowell often talks about his friends...who trend towards white supremacy. He and his friends have a wager going on. They think that Napoleon III is going to send France to war against the German countries. As for Lowell, he's betting that France will attack the German states, but that Germany will win the war if there is one.

Liz fixes his hair, and asks him what he's betting. Here, Lowell shows her his dog collar/torc. There's a silver medallion on it, with a wolf's head design. To Liz, it looks very...Norse Gothic.

She asks if that's Fenris Wolf. Lowell isn't sure; his grandmother passed it down to him.

They pass an old man, attending to his garden. Lowell smiles, and waves at him. He waves back. Liz and her beau wander past...but don't go far.

The old gardener wears a pendant around his neck. It looks exactly the same as the one that the host at the Queens pizzeria once wore...

Lowell stops, sighs, and looks around. It's getting late. He seems happy. That's good; Liz is too.

He tells her that he's hid something out here. He tells her to wait while he fetches it. She agrees. He runs off the path, and vanishes into the local undergrowth.

Liz waits. The sun gets lower. In the distance, wolves howl. Liz sure hopes Lowell gets back soon.

Just below the old gardener's garden, there's a sand pit. The gardener sometimes uses this sand to loosen the soil before he plants something in it.

As the gardener works, the sand becomes animated. It rises, collects, and takes the shape of a nubile girl.

In her sandy form, she settles. She turns in place, and sets her now-hollow eye sockets on the gardener nearby. The sockets narrow. She raises her left arm, and shape-shifts it into a mace.

With the sand, she grows to the height of a pole. She leans over the gardener. He still hasn't seen her. She takes a heavy breath, and raises her mace/arm...

Liz looks around. She sees the scary sand-person leaning high over the gardener. She screams. Sandgirl appears to blink her eye sockets, and look around...

The gardener finally looks up from his work. He rolls over, grabs his trowel, and points it at the sandy behemoth above.

A gunshot rings through the night. The gardener cries out in pain.

A girl closes in on the gardener, aiming a lever-action rifle at him. She reloads, and shoots him again. And again. And again. She empties the rifle at him. By the time she gets to him, he's a corpse.

She takes the medallion off his corpse, and pockets it. "I could've told you you couldn't hide forever," she tells the old man's corpse, "if only you would've stayed at home long enough to listen to us."

"We have bigger problems," Sandgirl warns the Huntress. "The girl: she's seen this."

Huntress turns her head. Her and Liz's eyes meet. Liz gasps, and runs. In a hurry, Huntress reloads her rifle.

Liz runs. She calls out Lowell's name as she does...but he doesn't react.

Sandgirl dumps herself on the dirt road. Huntress leaps onto her. Like a surfer riding a wave, Huntress rides a wave of sand as it speeds down the dirt road. They chase Liz.

Liz is only as fast as a human...if not slightly slower. Sandgirl doesn't take long to catch up with her. She follows her, but keeps her distance. Above, Huntress aims her rifle, and goes for the kill...

A mounted cop approaches. He blows his whistle.

Sandgirl stops. Huntress lowers her rifle. Sandgirl shifts her weight to the other side of her body, and flees down the other end of the dirt road. She deepens her sand around Huntress, and secures her ride.

"We can't leave her," Huntress warns.

"If the West Coast Avengers catch us," Sandgirl says, improvising lips while speeding down the road, "we'll both get left."

Back at the scene, Lowell returns, with a bighorn ram's skull. Its horns are big.

He looks around. The words "I'm back" barely escape his lips...when he sees the mounted cops, and Liz's traumatic appearance...and begins to suspect that he missed an opportunity to protect his new girlfriend.

The cops question Liz. She describes Sandgirl and Huntress to them. An ambulance arrives, via coach, and hauls the gardener's corpse away. Someone out there really enjoys killing old men who wear a particular medallion...

Back at the Allan residence, Liz is put straight to bed. Her mother attends to her. She'll be petrified for quite some time after.

But at least she'll look hotter than Mrs. Norris, Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, and Nearly Headless Nick in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets...

Lowell tries to visit her several times during the night. Mrs. Allan sends him away each time.

In the middle of the night, someone knocks on the Allans' front door. Yawning, Mrs. Allan rises, and answers it.

Two minutes later, Mrs. Allan wakes her daughter. She's not asleep.

The Allans' parlor is soon the host of four visitors. The other two are secret agents from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. The man is Lance Hunter. The woman is his partner, Kate Bishop.

Agent Bishop's left a bow and quiver by the Allans' front door. And the quiver's stocked.

Agent Hunter explains that SHIELD might know who tried to attack Liz. And as a result, SHIELD is offering Liz Allan witness protection.

On the upside, Liz will get to keep her first name. On the downside, SHIELD can't guarantee they'll catch Liz's attackers...as they already suspect that they're not working alone.