Hey guys. If one of you guys read my other stories, you know that I've given up on writing until summer's break, but I just watched the Avengers movie for the first time and I LOVED it. And I found myself rushing to the computer and the next thing I know, this one chapter has been written. So…here you go, I guess.
Nick Fury was, well, furious.
And it was even more than usual. Apparently, some genius scientist had come up with the idea to make a de-aging serum, and someone, without notifying him, had given this guy the go-ahead. So, this guy—imagine the stupidity!—decided to test it out…while the Avengers were in there for a debriefing on their latest mission from an AI of their own. The scientist was crossing the meeting room, he tripped and fell, spilling the vial, and of course the contents of the serum owned properties of explosives, so it promptly blew up.
So now, Director Fury was heading into the other base's meeting room, unsure of what he would find. He hoped to god he wouldn't have to deal with a bunch of screaming babies…again.
Surprisingly enough, all of them looked ordinary enough. Tony was sitting impatiently as doctors surveyed him. "I'm fine," he insisted, pushing away the person who was trying to figure out his arc reactor. Natasha was talking to Clint, who looked slightly peeved as he sorted through his quiver, which was apparently damaged in the incident. Steve was sitting passively as another group of doctors checked him out, and Bruce was talking with some geneticists, trying to figure out what happened, while Thor was walking around the room aimlessly, Mjolnir swinging by his side, attached by a belt.
Nick sighed in relief, seeing the fairly normal scene, until one of the geneticists walked up. She was a quiet woman; he believed her name to be Patricia O'Donnell. She was sweet-looking, with rumpled blonde hair and nice, big blue eyes, which were now full of worry. "What's wrong, Ms. O'Donnell?" he asked, a little impatient. "It's Trish, and the problem is that they've…well, they've de-aged," she said, running a hand through her hair.
Nick glanced around the room again, surprised. The normalcy was almost overwhelming, he was so used to this. "I don't see anything different about any of them," he noted. Trish nodded. "We thought at first there was nothing wrong either, but Dr. Banner talked us into analyzing some hair fibers of him and the rest of the Avengers and through some advanced techniques he showed us, we determined that they're all at least three weeks younger than they should be. And some twenty minutes later, some of us returned to do further testing on the samples, and we realized it was even younger than before. Through some tracking we've discovered that the serum accelerates over time, so by the end of the week they should all be 17, and the end of next they'll all be about 6."
Nick sighed. He couldn't say he wasn't expecting something like this happening, but it was affecting the Avengers, which was very inconvenient. What would happen in those two weeks? Surely by the end of the second, they'll definitely be incapacitated. "Is there an antidote of some kind we can make?" he finally asked.
When Trish nodded, he sighed, this time in relief. "However, it won't be ready for three weeks, and we would have to check it before administering it to them." Fury groaned. Three weeks was too long for the Avengers to go MIA without the press wondering what was happening, not to mention Miss Potts, who was currently on vacation in California to see her parents, and Miss Foster, who still contacted Thor sometimes.
Then, he realized he had two perfectly capable geniuses at his disposal. "BANNER! STARK!" He yelled out, so suddenly that Trish jumped. Stark jumped off of the table, smirking at the doctors and Banner came over from his quiet discussion with the other scientists. "What's up, O great and wise one?" Tony asked, rolling his eyes at the serious look on the Director's face. "Yeah, what's wrong?" Banner asked.
"I need you two to help assist Trish and the rest of these people to come up with the antidote to you guys'…problem." Banner nodded, but Stark looked confused. "How do you expect me to help? I mean, I'm flattered and everything, but I don't actually know a lot about this kind of field." Fury gave him a look. "You literally became an expert on thermonuclear astrophysics overnight, when we alerted you about the Tesseract. I think you'll be fine. Go with Trish, here, and figure out all you can about the serum. I don't want to know how you were when you were six," Fury growled the last part, which made Tony even more amused, if possible.
"Okay, fair enough, but can I call my girlfriend first? I think she'd appreciate a heads-up so that when she comes back she won't try and kiss a six year old," he said jokingly, but there was a little bit of underlying fear in that. She'd almost skinned him alive when he forgot to call her after the battle of Manhattan (or as Tony called it 'The Epic Battle where The Stupid Horned-Dude lost to The Best Team ever Formed') and she'd said that she was thinking he was dead for the whole fifteen minutes it took for her to land. (A bit of an overreaction, in Tony's opinion, but he wasn't going to say that to Pepper's face.)
"Very well," Fury said, sighing. Every second counted, because he didn't really want to deal with pint-sized Avengers. That would be the scariest bunch of six year olds ever created.
