Among other things in the HIGHLY CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET manila envelope that SHIELD had hand-delivered to her was a form about lab partners.

In order to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and cross-campus unity, students are required to complete projects, including but not limited to, procedural studies, statistical analysis, field experiments, and/or original research, with those working in other fields related to but not the same as their area of study or year. To facilitate this endeavor, we request new members complete the following document and return it with related forms via secure lines of communication.

Followed by two pages of multiple-choice questions, and another full page of short-answer questions to be answered on a separate sheet of paper. Simmons had promptly filled it out, waited for the reply, filed it away, and forgotten to bring it with her to her first lab hour. While everyone else was scanning faces or randomly calling names, she circled from table-okay, it's more elaborate than a table, she didn't even know some of the gadgets on it, but that wasn't her first priority at the time-to table, hoping someone will call her name.

Five minutes later, the background noise is beginning to change from "hey, over here," to "PhD in what?"

Ten minutes after that, some groups are debating string theory.

She should have gone to the leader right away, but they never covered how to address the professors-Agent? Professor? Doctor-and she doesn't want to be rude, although the voice in her head (sounding rather like her mum) reminded her that 'being not-confused trumps being rude'. She heard something that might be her name; when she took a step backwards toward it, she tripped over someone else's foot and nearly fell.

"Oh, that's my fault, I'm sorry, really I am, let me help you..." The other person's words all ran together, an apology with a Scottish accent. "I'm Leopald Fitz, but most people call me Fitz, Leo was my dad and..."

She regained her footing. "Jemma Simmons. Are you still looking for your partner?"

Well, not exactly, he'd brought the forms with him and everything, but his flatmate spilled on it, and all he can read is the first name, Jean-oh, Jemma, Jemma, I bet it was Jemma, that makes sense-you haven't found your lab team yet, have you? Well, it must be you, then, or at least it can be you for now, and we can make sure later. And I'm engineering, by the way.