INITIATIVE ...as in, taking it!
Initiative is a wargaming concept that has been included in so many roleplaying games over the years that it has become a hoary legendary aspect to gaming that is accepted as automatically important. Initiative simply put determines who goes first in a combat round or a situation where timing is critical for some reason.
However in FASERIP this is not the case.
Combat in FASERIP (FASERIP RPG page 27) does not use Initiative. The person or group who throws the first punch starts a fight.
All well and good but what about the situation where both sides intend to attack or take a hostile or critically important action at the same time? Who wins the speed battle?
Simple Initiative: highest Agility goes first. Then everyone else in order of highest Agility to lowest. Individual points of Agility and not just Rank absolutely count to determine this, as do any "bonuses to Initiative" such as applicable Powers, Talents or specializations.
Abstract Initiative: to simulate that people might be distracted, preoccupied or unready, the highest Karma goes first then next highest Karma score and so on.
Wargame Nerd Initiative: a 1d10 is rolled for each character intending to use an action. Highest roll goes first, in the event of a tie in the roll another roll of 1d10 is used and so on. Bonuses may apply to the roll such as high Agility, danger sense type powers, and so on.
Something allied to "Initiative" is the definition of an action. It's pretty clear from the FASERIP rules what an action might be. However another excellent way of looking at it from the 4C version of FASERIP is that an action is anything that would fit in a single panel of a comic book, allowing for the impact of powers on that.
DODGING (FASERIP RPG at page 34) does not require an Initiative roll under normal FASERIP and usually shouldn't in a situation where people are asking to use Initiative of some kind either.