Shock the Monkey
"All right," Nick Fury said, inspecting his team, "can someone please tell me how the hell this happened?"
All eyes turned to Loki, who merely shrugged. "Whoops."
"Whoops? I'll 'whoops' your ass! How am I supposed to go anywhere looking like this?" Tony Stark raged. He lunged for the Trickster, but Thor stepped in front of him.
"My brother did not intentionally harm us! The spell missed its target and rebounded on us! Besides . . . he has done worse."
"Worse than this?" Clint Barton waved what should have been a hand in the air. "Worse how?"
"I don't care if it was intentional or an accident! Fix it!" Fury ordered.
"I can't," Loki muttered.
"What do you mean, you can't?"
"The spell has to wear off on its own. It will take time."
"How much time?"
"I . . . I don't know."
"Fantastic!" Tony exclaimed. "For all we know, we could be stuck like this for years! Time is nothing to an immortal!"
"I think you're making too big a deal of this," Natasha Romanoff said. "He could have given us purple tentacles or sealed all our body orifices. This is . . . kinda cute, actually."
"Oh, you don't mind. On you, it looks good. The rest of us look like Saturday morning cartoon characters!"
"Natasha's right," said Steve Rogers. "We need to step back and count our blessings that it's not any worse than it is. And it is temporary. For all we know, it could be over in a few hours."
"Or it could last a year. Or ten years. We don't know!"
"STOP TALKING, SILLY CREATURES!"
The team, as one, turned to the Hulk, who looked more annoyed than ever. "I, for one, actually think he looks better this way," said Loki, who then ducked when Hulk turned in his direction.
"If I were you," said Fury, "I'd go find some place to hide until the spell wears off, or the big ape will pound you flat."
He wasn't exaggerating.
The entire team, Loki included, had been transformed into vaguely humanoid animals.
Tony was a fox, the spell having shifted his armor to accommodate his new shape. Thor was a lion, and it suited him well. Natasha had become a leopard-woman, and Clint . . . Clint had literally become a hawk, his hands and arms replaced by six-foot wings. Steve was, for some reason unknown to any of them, a bulldog. Loki had taken on turtle-like characteristics.
And the Hulk . . . he was a giant green gorilla.
"I see no change there," Loki had said, upon first seeing the transformation, and had almost been pounded then and there, but he had ducked out of the way.
"So we have no idea," Steve was saying, "how long we'll be stuck like this?"
"Guess I'd better go buy some Kibbles and Bits," Tony quipped, but a look from Fury silenced him.
"For right now," the director said, "you should return home. Anything you need will be supplied to you. I can cover your absence for a week, maybe two. After that, we'll have to work out a plan."
"We could form a traveling circus," Tony suggested, and the others glared at him.
"We are fortunate," said Thor, "that the spell was weakened when it returned to us, or we would not retain our human minds. I would not wish to be trapped in the full body of an animal for long."
"None of us would," said Natasha. "So we just go home and . . . what? Hang out until we're human again?"
"Basically," said Fury. "And try not to kill each other."
A SHIELD-issue cargo carrier brought them back to the tower. Along the way, Hulk de-transformed from a green gorilla into a much smaller monkey with Bruce's eyes. He opened them and asked, "Where are we going?"
When he saw the fox in Tony's armor, he knew he must be dreaming. "Home. For a while."
"Did we win?"
A leopard-woman with Natasha's red hair leaned over him and said, "We did, but there were . . . complications."
"I'll say," said a bird-man, in Clint's voice. "It's all Loki's fault. Hey, Simba, where's your brother?"
This dream seemed to be getting crazier, because now there was a lion in Thor's armor. "He is in the pilot's compartment. It was not his fault!"
"The hell it wasn't!" Why was a bulldog wearing Steve's red, white, and blue suit? The A on his hood looked like it was formed out of Milk Bones. "He needs to be more careful where he's flinging his spells around!"
"Spells? What's going on? Why are you all in animal costumes?" Bruce reached up for his glasses, which of course weren't there, but . . . the hand that crossed in front of his eyes seemed . . . hairier than usual. "What's wrong with me?"
The Tony-fox snickered. "Anyone got a mirror?"
"Why? What are you not telling me?" He sat up, looked down at himself, and nearly screamed.
"Wow," said Natasha. "We shocked the monkey."
"Why am I a monkey? Why are you a cat, and Clint a bird, and . . . this is real, isn't it? This isn't some crazy dream?"
"No," said Steve. "Just life with Loki. At least he didn't do it on purpose."
Tony brought over the bag with Bruce's extra clothes. The fact that he carried it by the strap between his teeth worried the doctor-turned-monkey, but he said nothing. The clothes were way too big for his new, smaller body, but they were all he had. He sat holding up the waistband with one hand while the other scratched under his arms (he didn't care how it looked; fur was itchy, and hot), and hoped that the spell would wear off before he started craving bananas.