"I can't believe I'm doing this" the redhead muttered. She was speeding down the freeway with an elated young boy in the passenger seat. His nose was pressed against the window. Surely there was some rule against letting children sit in the front. Oh well, whatever, it wasn't a long drive anyway.
"Would you stop infesting my car with your child germs?" She snapped.
Tyler reluctantly took his nose away from the window with a "hmmph". But as all 6-year-old boys were, he couldn't seem to sit still.
"Do I get to watch you pew pew today?"
"No"
"But I'm supposed to watch you work" Tyler complained,
"I'm showing you shield, that's more than enough" Natasha muttered. Why oh why did she agree to this again?
"Do I get to pew pew?"
"No"
"Hmmph"
When the Triskelion building came to view, Tyler could help but press his nose against the window again. His eyes widened in excitement.
The moment the car stopped moving, the young boy jumped out.
"Come on Natter!"
The redhead getting out of the car was too slow for him.
"Come on!" He urged again,
"I'm coming, I'm coming"
The Triskelion appeared bigger on the outside than it was in the inside, but that doesn't mean it wasn't already plenty big. The main floor was busy with agents speed-walking to and fro. In the centre of the room was a small statue of SHIELD's symbol. For a top-secret agency, subtly didn't seem to be their strong suit.
"Come on let's go somewhere with less people" Natasha urged, gently pulling the wide-eyed little boy away from the lobby.
On the way to the elevator, Natasha presented him with a lanyard.
"What's this?"
"That's to keep you from being locked in" She swiped the card at the end of the lanyard on a screen, the glass door before them immediately opened.
"Cool!" The young boy grinned; there's so much he could do with this.
They arrived at the 24th floor of the building, where Natasha's office was. Not that she was regularly there anyway – she was a field agent not administration. She sat Tyler down in the chair behind her desk.
"Just stay here and don't touch anything,"
But of course he couldn't resist.
He started with the chair – it spun, which was loads of excitement for a 6 year old. He also found a lever at the bottom of the chair that raised it up, but he couldn't find a way to lower it back down again. Oh well.
Next he busied herself with going through her drawers. By that time, Natasha was long gone having to attend to whatever SHIELD matters called for her. He found loads and loads of mission dossiers, some stamped with a big red "classified" word on the front. He opened it up, expecting it to be some exciting juicy secret but was disappointed to find pages and pages of black type words he didn't understand.
He figured it wasn't that important anyway.
He searched for crayons and ended up finding several colored pens in the top-desk drawer. There weren't many colors to choose from: black, red, and blue… but it'll have to do.
He was happily scribbling on Nat's paperwork when a sound above him caused him to jump out of his skin. His fear was quickly subsided when he heard a curse word coming from a voice he knew all too well.
"Shit!"
"Tweety?" Tyler asked, the voice was coming from the vent above Natasha's office.
"Yeah?" groaned the archer, moments later the vent cover opened up and in drops the less-than-graceful, Hawkeye, "Oh hey Tyler, what are you doing here?"
"Nat brought me here" the young boy smiled, "It's take your child to work day!"
Tyler wasn't even sure Tweety had heard anything he said. He was too busy trying to pull a stack of Styrofoam cups out of the vent shaft he had climbed in through.
"What are you doing here?" Tyler asked curiously
"I'm going to prank, Tasha"
After the first bag of cups were out he reached into the vent for the second… then the third… Tyler wondered how on earth a grown man and about a hundred Styrofoam cups manage to fit inside a vent shaft.
"Why?"
"Because she dropped a live spider on my head for payback on April fools" Clint answered with a slightly bitter tone, "You wanna help?"
"Yes!" Tyler grinned
The blonde gestured for Tyler to come forward and he willingly did. Then he found himself being lifted up towards the open vent.
"Can you reach the last bag?"
Barely, but he did. He pulled out the last bag of cups out of the vent before Clint set him back on the ground.
"Now what?"
"Now we're going to fill it with water"
Natasha had her own private bathroom in her office, which made it convenient for the two merry pranksters who took turns filling the cups halfway with water and lining them all up on the floor. It took about a half hour to fill the entire area of the floor with cups of water. There was no room to step – which left both Clint and Tyler perching on Natasha's desk.
"Nat's going to be back soon, lets scram!"
But how? The door wasn't an option. Tyler's question was quickly answered when Clint lifts him up again towards the vent shaft.
"Leave some space for me" He called as Tyler crawled in. It was surprisingly spacious. Clint was next, he hoped into the vent easily being surprisingly flexible, then he sealed the cover back over the opening. The two of them watched from the open slots of the vent cover, awaiting their victim.
They didn't wait for long. Moments later the knob on the door twisted.
"Tyler?" Natasha's voice called. She attempted to open the door only to find that it had been blocked by cups of water. As she forced the door to open further, the cups of water begin to spill. She could now see that the entirety of her office floor was covered in cups of water. She attempted to step around them with no success. Her only accomplishment was causing more water to spill onto the ground. It was like trudging through snow – only worst.
She made her way towards the center of the room. There was no Tyler but she can bet he was behind this too.
Up in the vents, Tyler and Clint were watching while attempting to suppress their laughter. Clint had taken his phone out to record the special moment. But their laughter was quickly subsided when they saw that Natasha was staring straight at them. The darkness in the vent probably hid their faces but somehow they both know their hiding spot's been busted.
Natasha's green eyes burned with fiery hell and she reached into her belt. There was an audible "gulp" from the two merry pranksters.
"Uh oh…" came Clint's hushed voice, "Go go go!"
He hurried for Tyler to crawl faster into the vent, seconds later Tyler knew why.
The sounds of gunfire erupted and echoed through the vent. Clint's voice had confirmed Natasha's suspicions and she mercilessly fired her sidearm at the vent. Surprisingly none of the shots actually harmed either of them. But it did succeed in scaring the living crap out of them – which was really what Natasha intended.
Tyler crawled infront of Clint as fast as a 6 year old could crawl – which was pretty damn fast. Considering the vent could fit a grown man, Tyler had more room than Clint had of moving.
"Which way?" Tyler asked
"Just keep going straight"
Tyler wondered how many times Tweety's been in these vents. Something tells him that the answer was a number he had not yet learned in school.
In the opposite end of the hall was the office of Director Nicholas Fury, who, at this time of day, was enjoying his afternoon coffee before the vent cover from above him fell, and following shortly after, a toddler tumbled out and into his arms, the impact causing him to spill some of his coffee.
"What in the-"
He was cut off by the entrance of his next guest – the world's greatest archer, level 7 SHIELD agents, who fell on top of his desk in a not-so-graceful fashion. Clint groaned in slight pain then rolled over to meet the director eye-to-eye.
"Oh hey Fury" the archer managed with sheepish grin
"I like your eye patch" Tyler added with an identical grin
As if on cue, the door to his office burst open and in stormed a very vengeful looking redhead.
"AH HA! GOTCHA!" Natasha entered with her gun pointed. She had a slightly maniac grin on her face. Her green eyes were still ablaze but she was less angry than she was frightening.
Tyler clutched onto the director for protection and Clint, still lying on the desk raised his arms in surrender.
"Okay I'm sorry, I-" he was cut off by a gunshot that struck his chest. But rather than a bullet that would have ended his life (for good), he was struck by one of her famous Widow Bites. His body convulsed against the electricity as he attempted to finish his apology.
Somehow Tyler knew he was next.
"Okay that's quite enough" The director spoke, having finally recovered from the shock that ruined his afternoon coffee.
He lifted the child off his lap and onto the floor and attempts to shake off the spilled coffee that stained his sleeve.
"Barton, Romanoff" he looked back and forth between the two of his "best" agents, one of which is still uncontrollably convulsing on his desk, then shifted his vision to Tyler. Then he covered his face with the palm of his hand, "I don't even want to know"
As far as finding punishments go, Natasha was quiet good at them. Fury made it perfectly clear he didn't want to be apart of whatever happened, which left her to deal with the two no-longer merry pranksters.
She had resealed the vent in her office and locked the two (little) boys inside to clean up the rest of the mess. Tyler's lanyard had been confiscated and so was Clint's SHIELD ID card. So there they were: Clint mopping up the water and Tyler discarding the empty cups.
"So how did you like your first day at SHIELD?" Clint asked as an attempt to spark some life into the young boy.
Tyler wasn't listening; in his mind he was already preparing a story to tell his classmates tomorrow. One that involved saving SHIELD and escaping from a deadly Russian spy - which wasn't entirely a lie.
