Notes: Ceares made awesome art for the story. The master post is here: .
Thanks to the awesome InfiniteEight8 and Ralkana, betas extraordinaire. All mistakes that remain are mine.
Here's the way it works. This week's psychotic villain comes up with some brilliant, overcomplicated plan. Spell, potion, mad-scientist ray, freak industrial-goo accident, what have you. It's meant for the hero, of course, but psychotic villains are notoriously lousy at contingency plans, so in this particular trope, whatever-it-is inevitably lands on the plucky sidekick instead.
Because of course said Secondary Character throws him- or herself into the path of the hero's Certain Doom, taking the damage onto themselves. In a moment of breathless relief, the smoke clears and the SC is revealed to be Not Dissolved (or Vaporized, or, or, or... Whatever the Big Bad Had Planned).
The SC is now, however, a small child. Just as an example.
SC is taken back to Home Base where extensive tests, medical and scientific, as well as lots of "Awwwwww", ensue. The Analysts That Be shrug their collective shoulders and conclude that the situation will reverse itself eventually. Or not. But usually yes.
Excessive cuteness and hijinks follow, and the SC wins a special place in the hearts of all friends and coworkers. Then, in a Dramatic Climax, the SC, critically underestimated by the villain because of his or her apparent age, foils the villain's Dastardly Plot almost single-handed.
Clint knows this is how it works. He's watched TV, OK? A story has its own weight and momentum, its own set of inevitabilities; that's the nature of Narrativium (and thank you, Terry Pratchett, for putting a word to what all children know). Yes, Clint has read books, too. So not the point. The point is, there is a certain way these things should happen. The collective unconscious (yes, he's read Jung, too, give it a rest, OK?) dictates exactly how a story should run.
The point is, when the plucky sidekick or secondary character is transformed into a child? That child should be adorable, not a particularly cussedly stubborn four-year-old who most likely needs a snack, a nap, and a quick (or possibly long-ish) trip to the bathroom (not necessarily in that order) to get things sorted out.
In reality, it went much more like this:
Initial setup? Pretty much as expected. The Avengers were called out to fight Geriatric Man, or whatever this joke was calling himself. He had threatened to release his armies of minions and hold the city hostage until his (as-yet unspecified) demands were met. But, as it turned out, he had made himself an army of tortoises and turkey buzzards, and they were currently terrorizing the Upper East Side. As much as a tortoise can terrorize, anyway. Clint could not make this stuff up if he tried. Tortoises. OK, yeah, so they bit hard normally, and this crazy scientist had gotten ahold of a bunch of old ones, judging by their five-foot shells, and apparently reinforced their jaws but, still. Maybe the buzzards were supposed to compensate for the tortoises' slow pace.
They were certainly keeping Clint busy. About a zillion of of them alternately circled and dive-bombed the Avengers, who were trying to keep the tortoises from taking chunks out of buildings and the New Yorkers who were doggedly trying to catch video of the fight. The average New Yorker's sense of self-preservation was said to trump all else, but that seemed to have changed in the age of YouTube.
Clint was mostly focused on the skies and the seemingly thousands of six-foot-wingspan birds. The tortoises were aggressively biting anything in their path, but, well, tortoises. They were pretty easy to avoid. His perch was up on the top of a nearby building, as usual, and also as usual, it was way too exposed for aerial defense against these numbers. Target-rich environment? Check.
That was about the time Decrepit Dude stepped up his game and pulled out his secret weapon, which was, naturally, a ray gun. Cuz, yeah, that's how these wanna-be-super villains roll. He maybe should have spent more time in target practice instead of training tortoises, though, because his aim was awful.
And, really? Fifth Avenue did not need this. One blast of the ray gun, and there went a townhouse, one of the newly-renovated ones, too, leaving a pile of dust and a door or two behind. SHIELD had evacuated the buildings in the area; the only people left should have been the lookie-loos. The bad-guy fired again, and there went a tree in a flutter of leaves. "Aw, tree," Clint moaned. That had been one of the nice mature ones, too. The nice thing, in the middle of this whole mess, was that the "ray" didn't punch through the first thing it hit and continue on to the things beyond. It touched the tree, it destroyed the tree, but not the building behind it. Another shot, and there went a city bus abandoned in the early moments of the fight, the resultant dust eddying in the moderate breeze. Was this guy even targeting anything?
As if he'd heard Clint's thoughts, the bad guy directed the barrel of his blaster at Thor, who hovered momentarily in the clear zone above tortoises and below vultures.
"Thor! Get outta there!" Clint urged. "Everything he's hit has been at your elevation!"
Thor shoved his hammer skyward, but before he achieved more height, the old dude fired again and tagged Thor smack in the chest. Thor twitched and then shook himself.
"The merest tickle, my friend!" he responded.
"Don't get cocky, guys!" Clint warned. "Just because it only gives the demigod a thrill is no reason to let your guard down." He fired another sonic-tipped arrow at a buzzard, taking it and its ten nearest neighbors down.
"Copy that, Hawkeye," Rogers answered.
"No kidding, Arrowhead," Stark interjected. "That was no love tap that wiped out that bus."
"Arrowhead, Stark? You're slipping if that's the best you–"
"Clear the comms for required communication, Hawkeye, Iron Man," Coulson's crisp voice interrupted.
"Hey, boss," Clint called. "Evac complete?" He could see the SHIELD van at street level, just outside the perimeter.
"We think so, Hawkeye," Coulson replied. "And just in time if this guy's started disintegrating buildings."
"Copy that, sir." Clint targeted a particularly dense shoal of buzzards with a net arrow, dropping them into the middle of the street. He sighed. "Seriously? Vultures? Is this some sort of bizarre 'I'll teach you to respect 70-year-old creatures' schtick?"
Coulson sounded resigned to the inevitable continued chatter on the comms when he replied. "Barton, do you get a point for each time you ignore a direct order? Are you tallying them somewhere?"
"Sure thing, sir. I'm saving 'em up for a BMX bike — a nice purple one. And when I earn it, I'm gonna pedal it down the street with trading cards tucked in the spokes of the wheels."
"Oooh," Stark cooed, "is it the kind with the tassel-things that stream from the handlebars?"
"You'll need a basket on the front of it," Natasha snarked. She completed her improvised barricade of wrought iron tree-fences and electrified it to corral the tortoises. "A white one with huge, plastic neon daisies attached."
"Screw you guys! My bike will be awesome!" Clint defended hotly.
"What're you, four?" Stark responded, blasting a clump of vultures out of the sky.
"Whatsa matter, Stark?" Clint jibed. "Bitter because Santa Claus didn't bring you the bike you wanted for Christmas?"
"Please, Barton! Those elves of his are hacks! I engineered better vehicles as a toddler."
"I'm pretty sure last week shouldn't count, Tony," Bruce weighed in. Hulk was benched for the duration of the battle against birds and beasts. He was always a happier smashing Doombots or machines or vehicles than cute or fluffy animals. Or even vultures.
Stark's response was preempted by Coulson's voice on the comm. "People, could we stay on task, please?" Phil's tone was pinched, and Clint saw him rubbing the bridge of his nose as he surveyed the scene from the open sliding door of the logistics van. "Building-dissolving megalomaniac's army?"
"Stark, you've got a batch of tortoises heading for the perimeter at your 2 o'clock," Clint informed him. "Widow, you almost clear? This guy's firing down the street. Even he can't miss forever. Coulson, he's got a clear line of sight to the van. Pull back."
There was a click in Clint's ear as Coulson switched from the general Avengers channel to give instructions to the driver, and then a flicker of light, and then a suit jacket gently settling to the street where Coulson had been standing.
"Agent down! Assisting at the logistics vehicle!" Clint shouted even as he fired a grapple arrowhead. "I say again, agent down!" He barely heard the other Avengers' voices over the singing tone of the rappel line playing out. Behind him he heard the battle's intensity ratchet up from "lackadaisical" to "salt the earth."
"Coulson?" he called before his boots even touched the street. There was no response. "Sir?" Dreading what he would find, he approached the van at a run, clattering to a stop before a pile of Coulson's clothing.
It shifted.
Clint reached for Coulson's jacket, his terror of what he'd find underneath making the moment seem to stretch forever. The jacket moved again before he could reach it, this time falling to the side and exposing a pair of tailored wool-blend dress slacks, two perfectly polished black shoes, and a small child with enormous limpid blue eyes who was swamped in a puddle of crisp white dress shirt.
"Sir?" Clint breathed. The child shifted slightly, sleeve-draped hands pushing himself to a sitting position. "Coulson?" Clint asked again. The boy nodded, baby-fine brown hair falling further into his face. Coulson brought one of those pudgy hands up to push the unexpected hair back, and then he froze, eyes rounding, as he stared in shock at the short, dimpled fingers.
The ozone-laden breeze stirred the striped blue tie that dangled from the child's neck, reminding Clint that the battle was ongoing. If he didn't intervene, the bad guy might end up a lightning-crisped smear on the pavement, and all his intel with him. "Avengers, we may need this mad scientist alive," Clint announced. "Coulson's alive but affected by whatever this guy did. We may need his brain. Uh, attached. To a functioning mouth."
"Copy that, Hawkeye," Rogers responded.
"Alive but uncomfortable works for me," Stark added.
Clint lost track of the battle after that. He heard a sharp yell from Thor, the low-pitched whine of Iron Man's repulsors turned up to 11, and saw buzzards fall like rain from the sky, but it was all secondary. He squatted in front of mini-Coulson, forearms on his knees, blocking the line of fire from down-field. "Coulson?" he asked. "We need to get out of here, OK? Can I pick you up? Is that all right?"
Coulson nodded, and then said, "Don't forget my shoes, Barton. I like those shoes." Clint bundled Coulson up in the now-oversized, discarded clothes, snatched the shoes in his other hand, and scrambled into the van to get them both out of the direct line of fire. His gaze swept the street as he grabbed the van door to pull it closed. He saw windmilling papers and dust spiraling up from damaged buildings, but no maniacally cackling bad guy and no rampaging minions. He nodded to the driver to get them back to SHIELD.
He opened the general comm frequency again. "I've got Coulson; taking him back to medical. Meet us there?"
"Soon as we're clear, Hawkeye," Rogers answered. "Godspeed."