BUSTED
Sergeant Peterson blinked in surprise and lowered his binoculars. Then he raised them to his eyes once again and took another long, careful look. He wanted to be sure before he said anything.
No, he wasn't mistaken.
Turning to his superior officer, the Sergeant cleared his throat politely and said, "Uhm, ma'am?".
It was just after midnight and he and the Lieutenant were on a midtown Manhattan rooftop. Lieutenant Tran was lying on her back and had her arms buried up to the elbows inside a complex-looking piece of equipment. It was a low-altitude radar sensor that was part of a detection web that SHIELD had established throughout New York City. The network was intended to keep an eye out for low-flying aircraft - a subject of intense interest to the U.S. military since 9-11.
Lieutenant Tran had been cursing quietly to herself in Vietnamese as she tried to debug the gizmo. The Lieutenant was raised a Catholic and she didn't normally use bad language - which was more than a bit unusual for a SHIELD officer - but this particular technical problem was proving to be a serious pain in the ass.
"What's wrong, Sergeant?" the Lieutenant asked grumpily as she got to her feet.
"You might wanna take a look at this, ma'am," said Sergeant Peterson quietly as he handed Lieutenant Tran the binoculars. They were a very advanced SHIELD-issue set that incorporated both low-light vision capability and a GPS laser-designator system.
Lieutenant Tran gave the Sergeant a sharp glance as she accepted the binoculars.
"It's the rooftop two buildings north of here," Sergeant Peterson added in a neutral tone of voice as he pointed in the indicated direction. "It looks like an apartment where the tenants have access to the roof. Someone put a few lawn chairs on the roof and... uh... well, maybe you better see for yourself."
Lieutenant Tran frowned slightly. It wasn't like the Sergeant to be hesitant about anything. Sergeant Peterson had started his military career as a U.S. Army paratrooper and Ranger. Then he eventually worked his way into SHIELD. In between Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the battles against the Chitauri and the Liberators, Sergeant Peterson had seen an awful lot of bad situations. The Lieutenant was acutely aware of the fact that Sergeant Peterson had been fighting for his life in the hills of Afghanistan back when she was just another newbie ROTC freshman at MIT. Because of that, she made a point to listening to Peterson's always polite suggestions whenever he ventured to make them.
Peering through the binoculars, Lieutenant Tran scanned the rooftop in question. Then she snorted - a very unfeminine sound. Turning to Peterson, she handed the binoculars back to him.
"Is that really who I think it is, ma'am?" Sergeant Peterson asked quietly.
"Looks like," Lieutenant Tran responded with a displeased shake of her head.
"Yes, ma'am. So, uh, how old do you figure they are?"
"Fifteen, sixteen - somewhere in that range. Do we have a loud-speaker?"
Sergeant Peterson nodded. Turning to their Air-Cavalry vehicle - they had flown it from the Triskelion to this particular rooftop - he began rummaging through one of its external equipment bays. Eventually, the Sergeant pulled out a hand-held bullhorn. Without saying anything, he handed it to the Lieutenant.
The Lieutenant nodded a curt thanks and then strode determinedly to the roof edge.
"HEY, YOU!" bellowed the Lieutenant through the bullhorn. The device was far more powerful than the ones used by the civil authorities. The Lieutenant's voice was incredibly loud.
On the far rooftop, the young couple that was intertwined together on a cheap aluminum and plastic lawn recliner froze in shock - and then began frantically looking around.
"YEAH! YOU!" roared Lieutenant Tran.
The young couple were now staring wide-eyed in the direction of the rooftop that Lieutenant Tran and Sergeant Peterson were occupying.
"PUT THE PENIS DOWN!" continued the Lieutenant.
On the far rooftop, a (very) young brunette girl gasped and immediately released the indicated member.
"GET DRESSED AND GO HOME! RIGHT NOW!" added Lieutenant Tran. By now, Peterson's eyes were closed and he was definitely having some difficulty controlling the expression on his face.
There was a sudden flurry of panicky motion from the other rooftop. A young man - a boy, actually - frantically yanked up his skin-tight blue pants and then pulled an intricate red and black mask over his head. Meanwhile, the girl was scrambling around the lawn recliner on her hands and knees as she tried to gather up her clothes.
The girl suddenly vanished - having become desolid and phased through the rooftop and into the building below. Meanwhile, the boy ran to the edge of the roof and dove off - which caused Peterson to catch his breath, even though he knew it should be safe enough. As he fell, the boy fired a thin cable of some kind from his wrist. The cable snagged the cornice of the building across the way and the boy's headlong dive towards the street suddenly arced into a graceful upward swing.
Lieutenant Tran turned her back to the other building and irritably tossed the bullhorn back to the Sergeant. Peterson expertly caught it with one hand.
"Kids..." the Lieutenant muttered to herself in a vexed tone of voice as she stalked back over to the civil-defense radar. It still needed to be fixed.
As he stowed the bullhorn, it occurred to Sergeant Peterson that the Lieutenant really wasn't that much older than the two kids she had just rousted. But he very wisely decided not to say anything about that.
By now, the Lieutenant was bending over the sensor package as she pried open a side-mounted access cover. As she worked, the Sergeant unabashedly cocked his head to one side and carefully examined the slender curve of her ass.
A plan was already mapped out in the Sergeant's mind. He'd wait until they got off duty, then offer to buy Lieutenant Tran a cup of coffee. He would have to be careful - after all, she was an officer and he was an enlisted man. But Peterson was at the age when a man started thinking about starting a family. Unfortunately, he'd never met a woman he could imagine settling down with.
Until now.