They'd had their eyes on her for a while now.

Not for any terrible reason or anything, but because she always seemed to be around. Sure, they were all fairly certain that she was simply passing by every time that they bumped into her. But there was simply something about her that commanded their undivided attention. Even if they didn't quite know what it was.

The first time that any of them had met her was about a month after they had formed the Avengers and were attending one of Tony's gala's. Some fund raiser for orphans or something that Tony felt was a worthy enough cause for them all to put some face time in for.

It was late in the evening and the party had been in full swing when Nat had first seen her. Standing in one of the doors across the room in a leather jacket, a cream colored shirt and jeans.

Compared to everyone wearing suits and formal dresses, diamonds and gold- she was so unbelievably plain. So much so that several people that also happened to see her, sneered at her. Still...she didn't seem the least bit bothered by anyone's attitude nor by the fact that security and Tony were called to 'take out the trash'.

Happy and Tony walked over to her and cornered her over by the buffet table and after a few exchanged words, and seeing her pull a large roll of crisp thousand dollar bills from her jacket pocket and hand it to Tony. He walked away shaking his head after telling Happy that she could stay.

Once that was taken care of he returned to where he had been before with the wad of cash in his hands, carefully counting it out and frowned a little more each time the number of bills went up. By the time he had returned to Pepper's side, he slapped the bills down on the bar counter and looked at her with a slightly confused and troubled expression as she asked, "Who is she?"

He lifted his dark eyes to her face and simply said, "Someone who decided that crashing the party would be worth it if she could donate to the cause." Pepper cast a glance towards the person in question for a moment and caught the young woman's eye just long enough for her to smile at her and then quickly look away as she heard Tony say, "This has to be close to fifty thousand dollars. How the hell did a girl her age manage to scrape together this much money?"

"You don't think that she stole it do you?" Pepper asked worriedly. As Steve, Nat, and Clint wandered over to see what was going on.

"And come to an Avenger's sponsored party?" Tony asked in an incredulous tone. "That would be incredibly stupid of her. Especially since it would get her caught."

"Is she going to cause any trouble?" Steve asked as he stared at the pile of money and then glanced across the room where the young woman had been joined by another young lady in a red knee length cocktail dress.

The two were chatting like old friends, laughing and carrying on until the smaller woman decided that she wanted to dance and grabbed the taller one's hand and dragged her out onto the dance floor as Tony muttered out an affirmative. Cause, yeah. The woman was totally trouble.

Nat and Pepper both tapped Tony at the exact moment to get his attention and then pointed to the pair. Tony turned just in time for the two to waltz by them as if they had done so a million times before.

They looked...oddly good together.

The tall, strawberry blond slightly towering over the shorter, dark haired woman. Hell, even their clothing seemed to compliment each other. Despite the fact that the blond was dressed in semi male clothing, and the petite woman was dressed in formal wear.

The two made another pass by them, both gliding expertly like professional dances. Their movement lacking any awkwardness for two people that had just run into each other and likely didn't know one another any, would have.

The dance ended and another, faster one began as the two women started to remove themselves from the dance floor someone else- a tall blond man with his hair slicked back- Kisuke something or another. An inventor of some sort from Japan, Tony realized, grabbed the strawberry blond and started to drag her around the dance floor.

The startled woman took it with about as much grace as could be expected for someone who had been grabbed so suddenly and only managed to step on the grinning man's toes, twice. Before she seemed to get her bearings a little bit and the two danced as well as the woman had with her previous dance partner.

They certainly put on one hell of a show. Everyone's attention were on them. Causing quite a few people to have their feet stepped on and several couples to even trip a little bit.

By the time the dance ended, Kisuke bowed to the woman and then politely led her over to the bar and quickly ordered three drinks as the young woman's previous dance partner came over to sit and join them.

"This is certainly a surprise," Kisuke said happily as Rukia grabbed the stool next to Ichigo's and settled herself down in it and laid her dinner plate, and small red clutch on the bar. "None of us really expected to hear from you, much less see you again once you left Japan. How have you been?"

Ichigo shrugged her shoulders a little bit and muttered a polite, "Same old, same old. I got a job as a musician and a part time job as a novelist."

"Sounds...more like Orihime's thing than yours."

"I know," Ichigo said with a small chuckle. "I thought I'd wind up in a fight club or being a mercenary myself."

"That would have been more you're speed." Kisuke laughed as Rukia reached out and absently pushed her dinner plate towards her friend. Indicating that she wanted her to try and eat.

"You're thinner than I remember. Have you been taking care of yourself?"

"I'm fine Rukia. I have some trouble holding food down sometimes, and need medicine for it. That's all."

"Are the old injuries finally-" Ruika started to ask if some of Ichigo's old stomach wounds were finally catching up to her, but one look from her friend indicated that she didn't want to talk about it. So she fell silent.

The three of them sat there for several uncomfortable moments before Ichigo reached over and picked up an orange cranberry and white chocolate chip cookie off of her plate and took a bite of it.

"Damn, that's good."

"I know right! Doesn't it sort of remind you of some of Orihime's?"

They all laughed as they recalled some of the weird food combo's that they're friend used to come up with before she married. Some of the stuff that Orihime had made was classified as poison and unfit for human consumption.

"What are they talking about?" Nat asked Clint, causing everyone to look at the man.

"Someone named Orihime."

"What were they talking about before?"

"Oh, the uh...strawberry blond looks thinner to the young lady in red. Miss...uhhh…"

"For fuck's sake Barton, call her berry or something!" Tony growled at him.

"Okay, Miss Berry- god that sounds terrible-" Clint muttered before continuing on. "She apparently has some issues with holding food down sometimes. Her friend in red asked if it had something to do with her old injuries-" Everyone stayed quiet for a heartbeat upon hearing this as he then said, "She said that she has medicine that she takes for it. And then she picked up a cookie and said, 'damn that's good'."

"Ohhh."

"Has anyone said her name?"

"No, but her friend in the red dress is named Rukia."

"Rukia?" Tony echoed as he searched his memory for a moment before muttering, "Oh, the Kuchiki family heiress. Shit! How do they even know each other? That woman was never introduced to anyone outside of immediate family and very, very close friends until a year or so ago."

"Well...maybe that's who the mystery woman is." Pepper said.

"Which one?"

Nat shrugged her shoulders and then told him that he should go over and introduce himself since he was the host of the gala. It's not like it would look suspicious. So Tony stood up and straightened his suit out and held a hand out to Nat and waited patiently for her to take his hand before walking over to introduce himself.