The training that was given the highest priority was Natasha's.
She was responsible for teaching me how to fight, and it was by far the hardest discipline to master. I had very little time and absolutely no foundation. Every day, I trained for almost eight hours straight. The sessions were brutal. She pushed me to my limits every single time, and at first, she did not even teach me any actual fighting techniques.
I admit, I was disappointed. I had expected her to start teaching me combat moves immediately.
Instead, she gave me ballet lessons. Until I could barely stand.
She made sure we took breaks, mixing in yoga and Pilates, explaining that while she wanted to train me as quickly as possible, overdoing it could cause long-term damage. I hated it at first. My anxiety to learn how to fight made me restless, and no matter how much I begged her, her answer was always the same.
"No."
Eventually, I remembered who Natasha Romanoff actually was. She was considered the best assassin and spy in the world. If she said this training was essential, then it was. Her film mentioned that every Widow learned ballet in the Red Room. That alone told me this was not pointless.
Once I stopped viewing ballet with prejudice, I began to understand her reasoning. I was small and physically weaker than the grown men I would eventually be fighting. If I wanted any chance at surviving, I needed flexibility, balance, speed, and precision. Ballet trained all of those things.
By the third week, she finally started teaching me how to fight.
"The original schedule had at least one month of ballet," she said calmly. "You reached my minimum requirements in two weeks. Normally, this wouldn't be enough. But you don't have the luxury of time."
My high IQ helped shorten the learning curve. Every time she demonstrated a movement or corrected my posture, I remembered every detail. The problem was my body. My brain moved faster than my muscles. It felt like my mind was screaming I know this, while my body replied I can't do it.
Still, that made improvement easier. I just had to repeat each movement over and over until it became instinctive, training my muscles to keep up. That was the real reason it was so hard.
Once combat training began, Natasha's method was ruthless. She would demonstrate a move once, let me practise it a few times while correcting me, and then suddenly attack.
"This is the fastest way to learn," she said. "Real fighting is experience."
I lost every single time.
I was covered in bruises, unable to land even a single hit. I couldn't even graze her clothes. She knocked me down again and again, attacking without hesitation. Of course, she was holding back immensely, or I would have been dead.
"Enemies won't pity your age," she told me coldly.
"And they won't hesitate. So you strike first."
As painful as it was, she was right.
Every day, I trained until I physically could not stand anymore. Every next morning, despite the pain, I gave everything I had again.
Eventually, she taught me her iconic move. With a small boost of telekinesis to compensate for my strength, I executed it perfectly. Clint volunteered to be the punching bag so I could practise taking down adult men.
When I finally succeeded, my only thought was that I was an absolute badass queen.
Normally, after training with Natasha, I had science lessons. Tony focused his teaching mostly on mechanics, engineering, and hacking. He did not follow a schedule or any formal programme. Instead, he taught me whatever idea happened to pop into his head at the moment. Once, I appeared while he was working on one of his ridiculously expensive cars, and he taught me how to hotwire a vehicle purely for the sake of it.
He also taught me how to create a phone, specifically focusing on how to build one with a secure connection that the government in the 1980s would not be able to monitor because the technology would be far ahead of its time. Tony designed a version of a smartphone adapted so I could realistically recreate it in the 1980s using mostly accessible materials. He even modified the touchscreen into something I could cheaply reproduce in my home universe. Still, I would need to create some machines back home to manufacture the touchscreen and handle other processes.
I created a 'lab' back in the Stranger Things universe, hidden in the junkyard shown in the series. I concealed the machines I built throughout the site, scattered among the piles of scrap so they would not be discovered. Every time I went there, I needed to organise the stuff inside the old bus, but it was necessary so they wouldn't be found. The location also gave me access to a huge amount of salvageable material for my projects.
For the components that needed to be brand new, I quietly disassembled machines from my house. After that, things at home started randomly stopping working, and my family had no idea why. Sorry, but it was necessary to save all your lives.
While working on the phone, we ran into a major problem. No matter how much Tony simplified the design, there were certain components I simply could not replicate in my world without drawing attention. I was not rich, and even with all the adaptations, a phone still required thousands of systems and parts. Building everything from scratch would be impossible and suspicious.
Fortunately, we discovered something by accident. I was able to take small objects with me when travelling between dimensions, as long as they were attached to me. I could not bring an entire motherboard or a finished phone, but I could carry small components. That meant I could transport the parts I could not recreate myself and assemble them in my home universe, while rebuilding the simpler components using parts from broken machines there. This way, I could create a complete phone in the Stranger Things universe with a little help, without it seeming suspicious if I claimed it was my own invention.
Using this method, I was able to create a small satellite with impressive processing power, capable of connecting phones across the world through calls and messages. At first, I worried about how I would ever launch a satellite into space without the government noticing. That was when I had what Tony later called a very stupid idea.
I tried it anyway.
I had previously built a version of this satellite in the Marvel universe for practice with Tony's blueprints. I grab to take with as an extra luggage and instead of focusing my return to my home in Earth, I focused on appearing directly in space so I could release it there. As a human without proper equipment, I had about ten seconds before losing consciousness. I nearly died doing it. It was not just because of the vacuum of space either. The main issue was dragging the satellite, which was roughly the size of a football, across dimensions. The strain was overwhelming. I almost blacked out immediately and barely managed to travel back to the Marvel universe.
By some miracle, I succeeded, but I arrived unconscious and spent three days in a hospital bed. I was told very clearly that if I ever tried something like that again, I would probably die.
That was when I truly discovered the limits of my dimensional travel, and why I could only move with small objects.
Tony absolutely lost it.
"What were you THINKING?!" he shouted the moment I woke up, pacing the room like a caged animal. "Do you have any idea how close you came to dying?!"
I groaned weakly. "I mean… yes? I calculated—"
"NO," he snapped, jabbing a finger in my direction. "You guessed. You guessed with SPACE. SPACE IS NOT A PLACE YOU GUESS IN."
"I only needed ten seconds—"
"TEN SECONDS WITHOUT A SPACESUIT," he cut in, voice rising. "Do you know what happens to a human body in vacuum? Blood boils. Lungs rupture. Consciousness gone in seconds. And you decided, 'Yeah, that sounds like a fun afternoon project.'"
I shrank a little into the bed.
"And don't even get me started on dragging a satellite through dimensions!" he continued. "A SATELLITE. You nearly tore yourself apart from the inside. Do you know how long Bruce and I argued over whether you were going to wake up or not?"
He stopped pacing and leaned over the bed, hands on his knees, eyes blazing.
"You do not get to die on my watch," he said sharply. "Not because you had a 'clever idea.' Not because you were impatient. Not because you thought you had to do everything alone."
"I was trying to help," I muttered.
"I know," he said, voice cracking just slightly before hardening again. "That's what makes it worse."
He straightened and took a breath, clearly forcing himself to calm down.
"You want to be smart? Fine. You want to be brave? Great. But you pull something like that again without telling me, and I swear I will personally invent a way to ground you across dimensions."
I blinked. "You can't ground me."
He pointed at me. "Do not challenge me. I am already emotionally compromised."
Then, more quietly, "You scared the hell out of me, kid."
Still, I am surprised he continued teaching me after that. Although he told JARVIS to supervise me at all times and became more careful in case I did something stupid in the lab and made it explode. Tony Stark, who did not care much about lab safety before, heavily enforced protocols after that. However, he continued to be a fun teacher. We still vibed together doing science and listening to AC/DC.
Bruce taught me the foundations of science so I could keep up with the more complex topics Tony threw at me. Tony had absolutely no patience for what he called "baby problems," so Bruce filled in the gaps. Bruce always emphasised chemistry, constantly reminding me how essential it was.
After Tony bragged to Bruce about how his lessons were far more interesting than the "textbook stuff" Bruce taught, Bruce did not say anything at the time. He simply, quietly, one-upped him. He taught me how to make a Molotov cocktail, how to create controlled explosions from everyday stuff, and even how to synthesise toxic and sleeping gases. That was when I finally understood what my high school teacher had meant when she said chemistry was fun.
Bruce was also my first lesson of the day. Every single morning, we spent half an hour meditating together. He had recommended it to me, saying it was useful for controlling the Hulk.
"I started meditating as an anger-management strategy," he explained. "At first, it was just about focusing on my breathing and trying not to fall asleep. Over time, I realised it helped me connect with the Hulk and calm him down, at least most of the time. It's not the same situation, but I think it could help you connect with your power too."
Little by little, I felt it working. Meditation helped me understand my abilities and access them more quickly, allowing me to react faster with my telekinesis and needing less and less time to focus before tapping into my power.
Meanwhile, Clint's and Steve's lessons alternated. One day was Clint's weapons and espionage training, and the next was Steve helping me train my powers.
Clint taught me how to use a bow and arrow. I admit that I cheated a little at first to hit a bullseye, but he noticed immediately and groaned.
"Oh no, absolutely not," he said, lowering his bow and giving me that look. "We are not doing magic aim. If you're going to miss, you're going to miss honestly."
I frowned when the next few arrows flew to the floor.
"Hey," Clint added quickly, nudging my shoulder. "That's normal. If you were perfect on day one, I'd be offended."
He also taught me how to use twin daggers, crouching to my height to hand them over.
"See? These are your friends," he said lightly. "Light, fast, and way less likely to knock you over. Swords are for people with longer legs and a dramatic flair."
When we moved on to firearms, Clint's tone shifted slightly, still casual but more careful. He showed me how to assemble and disassemble them quickly, correcting my grip with gentle taps rather than shouting.
"Okay, rule of thumb," he said. "Gun's not a toy. Ever. But if you have to use one, you use it properly."
He pointed at the target.
"This spot?" he continued. "Non-lethal if you do it right. This one?" He tapped lower. "Very much not. You don't pull the trigger unless you've already decided which outcome you can live with."
Then, softer, almost like a warning meant just for me, he added,
"I'm teaching you this so you don't have to learn it the hard way."
For all his jokes, Clint stayed close the entire time, watching carefully, ready to step in the second something went wrong.
On the other hand, the first thing Steve did was lecture me.
Tony had kindly informed him that my powers had manifested during the invasion, and that my immediate reaction had been to ride on his back straight into battle. Steve spent a full hour raising his voice at me about how dangerous that had been, not just for me but for everyone else. He talked about how I could have become a liability in the middle of a fight, how unpredictability got people killed, and a lot of other things that mostly blurred together after a while.
When he finally calmed down, he just gave me the most disappointed mum stare I had ever seen. He sighed loudly and said,
"What's done is done. But next time, you will listen to me, young lady. For now, let's start training before you do another stupidity while unprepared."
Training with Steve was… intense.
He started by making me practise levitating small weights. Only when I could control them perfectly for a long period of time did he allow me to move on to heavier ones. He was strict about precision, not power. He also taught me how to incorporate my abilities into my fighting style, how to use telekinesis to reinforce my body, making my blows stronger and my movements faster.
Another thing he taught me was how to use my powers discreetly, explaining that I needed to be able to hide them during a fight. According to him, it made things fairer given my size and, more importantly, allowed me to disarm opponents before they realised what was happening.
After every single exercise, he was there with a piece of paper or a cloth, quietly wiping the blood from my nose like the overprotective mum friend he absolutely was.
Over time, my powers started working properly again. I was nowhere near as strong as when I had first awakened, but I could now blast people back and control objects about the size of furniture at most.
After one session, Steve sat beside me and said quietly,
"After I was injected with the Super Soldier Serum, my life changed. I wasn't a normal human anymore. I wasn't the same Steve as before, and even though I volunteered, I still struggled to adjust. At first, I broke everything before I learned control. It took time."
He looked at me seriously.
"Our abilities couldn't be more different. Mine is physical, yours is psychic. But the principle is the same. Control matters more than raw power. You'll be far more dangerous with something you can master than with brute force. That way, you can keep going all day instead of burning yourself out."
This advice was something I was determined to take to heart, as it would be extremely useful when fighting against normal human beings.
Every one of them taught me something different, and together they turned panic into preparation. I was still scared, still a kid facing something far bigger than myself, but I was no longer helpless. For the first time since discovering the threats waiting for me back home, I felt ready to face them.