hela arrives quietly in san francisco, no one aware that her father is one of starfleet’s greats, nor that she blackmailed him into writing her recommendation to the academy. she quickly made a name for herself as she rose to the top of her class, then was assigned her first choice post immediately after graduating from the command track. her first year in starfleet was uneventful, but she was placed under investigation for violation of the prime directive midway through her second year. while the investigation was inconclusive, her commanding officers thought it best to assign her to a teaching post at the academy as a ‘cooling off’ period.
though thor uses ‘frigguson’ on his application in an attempt to get into the academy on his own merit, everybody knows that he’s odin borson’s child the moment he sets foot on campus. a starfleet medical student, he only meets hela because she’s teaching a mandatory survival strategies class. after a rocky semester (including a punch thrown at hela’s favorite bar, though certainly not by thor), thor enrolls in the tactical analysis class hela is teaching over summer leave. she is utterly bewildered by this, since it is her understanding that she and thor hate each other.
it’s the second class, much smaller than the first, that finally bring the siblings together. they’re arguing in hela’s office about a failing grade she gave him when thor starts laughing. after a stunned second, hela joins in. it’s not long after this that hela, inspired by too much tequila, informs thor of their shared parentage. he, in turn, informs her that he figured that out the first day of class, why the hell did she think he was trying so hard to befriend her, thank you very much?
nero attacks vulcan in thor’s fourth year at the academy, and he and hela are both assigned to the enterprise. as a result, they escape nero’s massacre with their lives. watching vulcan perish unprotected, and later learning of nero’s reasoning, hela begins to sour against the fedaration. thor’s relentless optimism and faith in their mission is, however, enough to counterbalance her, and hela remains on the enterprise.