CHARACTER INFO

[innovational]

NOTES ON HOW I PLAY BETTY: Primarily I draw Betty's personality and history solely from The Incredible Hulk movie, deleted scenes, and supplemental materials (including the Fury's Big Week comics, information garnered from Avengers extras) I do pick up a few minor items from comics canon, Betty's past relationship with her father, her mother's name, the fact that she went to boarding school, but considering that Betty from page to big screen became a very different character, I try to keep the differences in mind when playing.

Character History: Elizabeth Ross was born the only child of the legendary General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross and his wife Karen Lee Ross. Being a child of a career military man, Betty was raised in a relatively strict setting, tempered by the softness of her mother. When her mother died when Betty was 13, she was sent to boarding school, General Ross not having the time or emotional capacity to deal with his teenage daughter and their shared grief. It was there that she developed her affinity for science.

Her education led her to Harvard University, where she pursued both her undergrad and post-grad education in biology, focusing on cellular and biochemical studies with a minor focus in physics. Probably not the most typical combination of fields, but she was never a typical person. She got her PhD, and eventually became an accredited professor for Culver University in Virginia.

It was at Harvard that Betty met Bruce Banner, who ultimately would change her life. She was likely drawn to him because he kept to himself, like she had initially, and she wanted to draw him out of his shell. It turned out they had a lot of similar ideas for advancing humanity, and learning about the world they live in. It was over research and family pain they bonded, and fell in love, though Betty's father never approved of the "weak" Banner.

All the same, they became research partners, and started up a government-funded project at Culver University, one that Betty's father was also interested in. The idea of being able to strengthen the human body, make it resistant to disease and condition it for heavy wear-and-tear was fascinating to Betty, and the Gamma Pulse project was a step in that direction.

After countless trials and a great deal of money, her father and his higher-ups were getting impatient with their work. Bruce determined that they'd cracked it enough that it was ready to be tested, but Betty had her reservations, that they hadn't fully learned what needed to be discerned from the numbers and cellular tests. It was probably one of the biggest things they argued about, and even when Bruce set it up, even deciding to use himself as the first subject, she was unhappy, and her discontent proved to be well-placed.

Something went wrong, and instead of simply enhancing Bruce's physical state and immune system, the Gamma Pulse threw him into complete overdrive, transforming him into a hulking green creature that destroyed everything in its path. Betty was severely injured in the incident, and spent time in the hospital recuperating from her injuries. By the time she got out, Bruce was long gone, and her father had a warrant out for his arrest, which he refused to discuss with her.

Betty got into the labs before their data could be wiped or seized, and she backed up everything she and Bruce had worked on, hoping that some day they'd be able to sit down and work through what had went wrong.

From there she went on working at Culver, doing smaller, safer projects. Mostly teaching and overseeing student research, but also her own things. Work was her safe zone, and she was practically lost in it, because when she wasn't, she was looking for Bruce, silently dealing with the heartache she felt over losing him. The only sign of him she ever received was the bulb of an exotic and technically extinct orchid, which she cared for, cultivating bacteria for the soil and creating an environment for the flower to exist where it shouldn't. The love she poured into caring for that flower was directly equivalent to the size of the hole in her heart Bruce had left.

Eventually she and colleague Dr. Leonard Samson started dating. She was finally maybe starting to think she could move beyond Bruce, let him go, when he reappeared in her life.

He had come back for the data they'd built together, and she gave it to him, but things didn't go smoothly. Leonard had called General Ross when Bruce showed up, worried for Betty's safety with a fugitive. After the resulting battle in which Bruce transformed into the Hulk and protected Betty from a helicopter crashing down on the two of them, the Hulk fled the University, carrying Betty with him. She awoke in a mountainside with Bruce still changed, and she did her best to soothe the beast, eventually falling asleep with it by her side. When she awoke, Bruce was himself again, and after some time recovering in a hotel, they set out to New York City, to find the scientist Samuel Sterns who Bruce had been exchanging emails and chatting with about his condition for quite some time.

Sterns' cure for Bruce was radical, but it seemed to work, at least initially. Unfortunately, Betty's father had discovered where they were headed due to an email that Bruce sent with their data attached to Sterns a few days earlier. Bruce was sedated and taken into custody, and the two of them were put into a helicopter headed for a military bunker somewhere. That was until Emil Blonsky, one of her father's men whom he had treated with an offshoot of the Super Soldier-Hulk serums, persuaded Sterns to use his research to turn him into a Hulk. The resulting Abomination was out of control, and started ripping up Harlem.

Bruce, insisting that the creature was their doing, jumped from the helicopter to confront it, despite not knowing if he'd change or not. Helpless, Betty watched from the air, though was relieved when the Hulk emerged from the rubble to face the creature.

The creatures' battle took down the helicopter that Betty was in, but she and her father survived the crash and climbed from the destroyed craft, in time for her to scream at the Hulk not to kill the Abomination. As disgusting as it was that this had come from their research, Bruce had inadvertently taken enough lives and injured enough people as the Hulk, she wouldn't let him kill Blonsky. The Hulk let Blonsky live, and kicked the creature to the feet of General Ross, before regarding Betty.

She tearfully told him it was okay, trying to calm him, but another helicopter's search light snapped on, surprising the Hulk and prompting him to flee, leaving Betty behind once again.

She decided to remain in New York, not wanting to let Bruce ago for a second time, she would try to find him again. With Sterns taken into custody by S.H.I.E.L.D. the Empire State University was suddenly down a cellular biologist, so she took his job, while sifting through what research wasn't lost, and trying to figure out where Bruce may have run to. Her first clue came when Culver University forwarded a letter with her mother's pendant that she and Bruce had sold to pay for a truck to get them to New York.

She tracked it back to British Columbia, but he'd moved on by the time she found where he'd been staying. Most clues after that became dead-ends or false leads, until the big event that shook New York shortly after the activation of the new Stark Tower.

It was pretty hard for her to miss the news coverage that showed the Hulk fighting a giant flying worm monster.

However, not wanting to scare him off again, she just keeps working, waiting to see if he makes the choice on his own to come to her.