Betty Ross walks into the gamma bomb test as the only gentle voice in a bunker full of blustering men. She is the daughter of General "Thunderbolt" Ross. Yet, while the General barks at Bruce Banner to hurry his weapon along, Betty defends him: "Don't be so unfair," she tells her father. "I'm sure he knows what he's doing." Ross dismisses her with "It's man talk," and Betty simply turns to Banner with a kind word, waving off her dad's temper as a nickname he feels bound to live up to. From the start, she is the one person who looks at Bruce and sees someone worth trusting.
When the test goes sideways and whispers of a monster trail Banner to his cottage, Betty comes to him worried, but steady. She offers her help. Later, at her father's house, she tries to reason the fear away, murmuring "There is no Hulk" nearly the very instant the Hulk's hand closes around her. The Gorgon's arrival is what spares her. The villain draggs the monster off, leaving Betty trembling in the General's arms. She has no idea that the man she cannot get out of her head and the creature that seized her are one and the same.
