Heh, a longer chapter than usual this time. A bit more action in this one. Uh, it's already late, so I'll end the A/N now and get on with the story. Maybe I'll write a bit more later. Sorry, this one may be a bit crude, because I don't have enough time to look through it properly, but I will tomorrow.
Chapter 4 : Of infiltration and egg bombs
"Okay, team!" Tony barked, marching up and down along the horizontal line of the assembled Avengers, as Janet watched from her position to the side, "Today is the day that we do a final maintenance check on the LEGO Buster, and then, we fire all weapons at once and unlock this prison door with the treacherously high doorknob. Is that clear?" A chorus of yes's answered him, all except for Steve, who had been turned into a wheezing asthmatic, sickly toothpick of a boy, who raised a hand. They weren't really prisoners; they just liked to pretend that way. And anyway, everything they wanted was in this and the adjoining rooms.
"Yes, Steve?" Tony barked.
"Um, what does tre… err… treacherous mean?" Steve asked in a quavering voice.
"It means … well…" Tony fumbled over the answer. He only knew that it was used to refer to somebody bad.
Observing this, Henry Pym raised an eyebrow, and asked Fitz, who had been stationed here along with Simmons, "What's their mental state? And their powers?"
Fitz responded in that extremely Scottish accent of his, "Well, we're not sure where they are, mentality wise, but we do know that they're stuck somewhere between adulthood and childhood. Not chronologically, like, but , for example, they've retained most of their memories, and a general sense of who they are, but since the gas devolved their minds somewhat into those of children, they simply have a lot less distinctive idea. Or maybe they just don't care. As for their powers, as you can see, Steve seems to have lost the serum. But we believe that a compound in the gas has actually forced it into storage in his muscle. Thor has kept his powers, at a lower level and we haven't dared to test the hulk."
Pym sighed, "Well, the robot's impressive. But then again, Stark made an engine at, what, eleven?" He watched Tony pick up a joystick and pop out at least 13 small dart … firing things from it's arms legs, shoulders and abdomen, to cheers from Janet and the kids. The playroom had a glass dome on top, with a balcony all around it, used for monitoring. He opened a little flap in the Plexiglas dome, and promptly got hit on the nose by a dart with a rubber bulb tip. Rubbing his nose, he looked up to see a pretty nice laser targeting system on the robot, with twenty lasers pointed at him.
"Oh, sorry Mister Pym." Called Bruce while the others laughed, Janet the hardest. Pym shook his head.
"Hey, Janet, I was about to go get some coffee. Want to come?"
Janet just waved him off dismissively, already engrossed once again in helping the kids upgrade their robot. Pym knew it had been a bad idea to bring her along. The lasers had been her idea.
They were quite cute, really. Janet mused as she brought the dart back to them.
"Thanks, Janet" Clint said happily as he re-inserted the dart into it's … thingamajig.
He then nudged Natasha and nodded towards the air vent. She quickly grabbed a little cylindrical thing and pressed one end to her ear and the other to the vent. After a few second, she squealed excitedly. Janet raised an eyebrow. The Black Widow squealing? Well, there was something you didn't see every day.
"It's Mister Furry!" Janet giggled at that. 'Mr. Furry'. She tried to imagine Fury's face at being called 'Furry'. Doubtless, his real last name would have been aroused.
Tony's head snapped up, "Oh, good! Just in time! Our robot is done, and in full working order. Clint, Natasha, you two are the away team. Go distract Mister Furry and we'll blow ourselves out of here. Got it?"
They both saluted and ran to the kitchen. They came back in a minute, hands laden with an egg in each. Janet surreptitiously looked away, at the same time discreetly sliding her funny, thin, bar-like SHIELD camera towards them across the floor. Natasha gave an egg to Clint, picked it up, started recording a video, took the egg back, and smiled at Janet, before disappearing down the vent, the outlet grill having been removed by Thor, who yelled down the vent, "I wish you a safe and successful journey, my friends! And please, if you could perhaps sneak up a few poptarts…?
"Clint's voice echoed back through the vent, "Will do, buddy!"
Janet smiled. 'Oh, this is going to be good.'
It was dark in the vent, but Clint had taken a small flashlight, which he now lit, and held between his teeth.
"Okay…" Clint's voice muffled by the flashlight, "So we turn right here and … wuahaaahhh"
The light fell from his mouth as he yelled, sliding down a decline in the vent. His flashlight quickly came sliding after him, and he blocked it with his arms.
"Clint?" Natasha's anxious voice came down to him as she knelt at the top of the slide, illuminated by the light in Clint's mouth. "I'm okay." Clint called back, "Just didn't expect it to be so close."
Natasha giggled as she gracefully slid down on her back, "Well, at least we're on the right floor now."
"I suppose… ow."
Natasha smiled at him, "Come on. Don't you want to drop eggs on Mister Furry's head?"
Clint nodded vigorously, and led the way round a corner and over to an outlet. Voices were speaking on the other side. Positioning themselves on either side of the grill, they saw 'Mister Furry's' bald head right beneath them, speaking to the scientists and some other people. "Okay" Natasha breathed, "Clint, the LEGO." Clint handed her a LEGO brick, and held the grill tight, as Natasha loosened the plastic holding it using the brick. He then silently removed the grill, and held an egg over the edge, waiting for the opportune moment to strike, as Natasha held the camera over the edge. Clint dropped the egg.
Whhooo… Splat.
The egg landed on Fury's hairless head, sending bits of yolk and white everywhere, but mostly dripping down over his face. For a moment, nobody moved. Then, the whole room, apart from Fury, burst into a helpless laugh. Clint quickly threw another egg, which hit fury with another satisfying report; everyone laughed harder. Fury looked up just in time to see the grill being replaced and two pairs of feet disappearing. He didn't say a word, just swept from the room in long strides, his face positively livid. The effect, however, was ruined somewhat by the egg running down it. Everyone else followed him, still guffawing.
The two spies quickly and silently doubled back and leapt into action. Natasha left her two eggs in the vent as she uncoiled a thin but sturdy rope from a pocket, one end of which had a strange mechanism attached to it. She quickly stuck that end into the roof of the vent and threw the other end down into the dining room which they had been using due to the readily available multiple coffee machines. The ones in the meeting room had been faulty. They quickly ran into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator door, and opened their mouths in awe at what could only be described as treat galore. Natasha immediately rushed back to the rope, and was halfway up it by the time Clint returned with two cartons of ice cream. He quickly threw one up to her. She then threw it up into the vent. The other was treated likewise.
Tony typed ferociously on his computer, manually operating the elevators, and jamming all of them, cheered on by Janet and the kids. Aaaannd… Enter!
Fury strode through the halls in his white and yellow headgear, growling furiously when all of the elevators refused to work. He immediately made for the stairs.
Ah, here they were. Clint ran back into the kitchen and threw a sixth box of poptarts up to Natasha, saying, "That's all six flavors. Okay, hang on."
"What do you think I'm doing?"
Clint smiled as he ran back to the kitchen. Cookies… Oh, bite sized tarts… Ah ha, muffins… a tin of cupcakes… oh, nice, microwave nachos, pizzas and buffalo wings… and a lot of candy and chocolate.
"And we're done" he said as he tossed up one last bar of chocolate to Natasha, then climbed up after her, "Oh, hang on." Looking out into the corridor, he saw something that made him grin.
"Nat, c'mon."
"Clint? Hang on. Where're we going?"
"Come on!"
They raced out into the corridor and their eyes lit up.
"Okay, we'll only take the toys that we cannot wait for, alright?" Natasha said, bouncing up and down.
"Everything?"
They didn't take everything from the extremely spacious bags that Jasper had brought the toys in. They just took what they could carry, taking into account their limited time, for each kid, all the while giggling at their ingenuity. A little plastic hammer with faux-runes for Thor, a smaller version of his shield for Steve, an advanced chemistry set for Tony, a small bow with an elastic bowstring for Clint, along with two dozen suction cup tipped arrows, and a Nerf gun for Natasha, who almost squealed at the many different configurations it could be reassembled into.
"Stark!" Fury had reached the playroom, barging in without so much as a 'by-your-leave', as Tony put it. He then saw Fury's peculiar fashion sentence in headgear, and promptly burst into laughter, along with the rest of the room. But Fury was in no mood for humor. He quickly scanned the room.
"Where are Barton and Romanoff?"
His eyes widened ever so slightly in realization. He pointed to two agents, "You two, out in the corridor. You two, in the room. Either of them appear, notify me. You all can disperse. Scram! I've got two half-rogue agents to deal with."
He walked, keeping as much dignity as he could, back in the direction of the kitchen.
"Uhhh, how do we get back up this thing?" Clint asked, gesturing towards the slide, considering if he was going to name it 'Barton's Bane'. Had a nice ring to it.
Natasha rolled her eyes at him, "Like this, silly!" She pulled out the 'sticky rope' as Clint had dubbed it, and stuck the sticky end to a Nerf dart using some cello tape. She loaded the gun with the gun with the new and improved dart.
"Hey, can I-"Clint was interrupted by Natasha firing at the top of the slide. Clint sighed in exasperation.
"I'm supposed to be the one with the funky firing stuff."
Natasha smiled. "Come on."
They quickly shimmied up the rope, and ran crouching over to the playroom hatch. Two agents. Steve caught Clint's eye, and shook his head ever so slightly, motioning discreetly to the agents. Clint, even at age six, knew a lot of colorful curses, which he put to good use now. Natasha tapped his shoulder, and motioned down the vent. He understood at once, and gave her one egg before running down the vent, while she used her dart assembly to zip up another one.
Fury reached the kitchen. Empty.
Reaching the vent hatch in the corridor, he used the edge of his bow to loosen the rubber holding the hatch and removed it when the agents weren't looking, then quickly threw an egg at one, satisfied at the messy result, blew them a giant raspberry, and pulled his head back into the vent. One of the agents quickly opened the door to the playroom and barked an order to an agent inside, who rushed out at once. He ran back to the playroom hatch and gave Natasha a thumbs up. She immediately opened her ceiling hatch (Which was thankfully on hinges) and launched her egg at the room's only remaining agent. It hit him right on the nose – and made him mad. But before he could make a move, two more eggs hit him from behind, courtesy of Tony, Bruce and Steve. Thor considered himself too Godly to throw eggs, and so limited himself to throwing a small LEGO hammer at him. With the agent distracted, the assassins quickly picked up the sack with the goodies, and dragged/carried it to the kitchen vent. They opened it with little difficulty while the others kept up the onslaught in the playroom. They quickly ran in, deposited the sack on the floor, next to the fridge, and began to fill it with all the rewards of their hard work and planning.
Fury threw open the playroom doors, only to be met by a cry of "FREEDOM!", a bunch of lasers trained on him, and an onslaught of plastic balls, rubber tipped darts and two little bits of custard-cookie mix. Ignoring this extra addition of food to his already cuisine covered person, he strode into the kitchen, and was met by a suction cup tipped arrow sticking itself into his eyepatch.
"BARTON!"
Janet burst into helpless giggles.
Maybe I'll continue right from here next chapter.