Hey everybody! Sorry for the delay in this chapter, I was supposed to get it out on Friday... Luckily for you guys, that means that a) this chapter is longer than usual, though kind of random, and b) you only have to wait two days for the next one! I promise...

(Also, no Deadpool this chapter, but we do get to welcome the illustrious, amazing, NOT Toby mcStupid, Spider-Man! No moon walks allowed, and the hair meets epic-ness requirements. As does the girlfriend.)

...hehe, oh yeah... I forgot to give credit for the new cover art to my friend Grace, who my Thor is very much based on. She decided to draw the team, Adventure Time style, so I stole it.

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As the somewhat bored Avengers waited for summer so they could play with their new toy... err, recruit, they had their monotony broken in a rather epic way.

One morning, the sky over Central Park was once more home to strange occurrences. In this case, it was not a portal that hovered in the air, but rather an imposing airship in green and grey, with the flag of Latveria on the side. Landing in the park, Dr. Victor Von Doom strode out, his cloak flapping in the breeze and followed by a legion of Doom Bots. As the citizens of New York fled in terror, Doom's own ship suddenly began to play AC/DC's Thunderstruck, and Toni Stark, as the Iron (wo)Man, landed in front of him accompanied by a clap of thunder and the goddess thereof, who landed with a flash of lightning. The rest of the team followed in the Quinjet, through the windshield of which Loki could clearly be seen face palming at her sister's antics.

"Eey! Vickie, my man, are we glad to see you! Gods, it was getting boring around here. SHIELD wouldn't let us help with the last super-villain, but the Fantabulous Foursome are out of town, meaning you, my friend, get to be stress relief!" Toni's jovial tone rang out clearly, and Doom twitched as he realized that she hadn't even bothered to put her helmet on all the way. Thor's laughter as she swung her hammer lazily just pissed him off even more, but as he advanced on the duo, he was struck in the head by an arrow... tipped with a suction cup and stuck to his forehead.

"Nice accessory, Doom-Doom!" Rang out the laughing voice of Hawkeye as she stood on the Quinjet's wing, bow in hand. This, of course, only angered the dictator further, and he ordered his Doom Bots forward. Sadly, for him at least, the bots were taken out as quickly as they could advance by the now complete Avengers team. As the last of his minions died, the Latverian dictator-cum-super villain gloomily retreated back to his ship and took off, vowing to return with more force via his formerly hijacked PA system. To his chagrin, all he got in return was thumbs-ups from the team and a request for that promise in writing from Hawkeye.

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In an attempt to further alleviate the monotony, the Lokis who had been out shopping brought home the new Avengers Wii game. It was a rather unrealistic fighting game featuring the team vs the "Space Whale Invaders," a name that sent Loki into paroxysms of laughter at the idea of the Chitauri being referred to as such to their faces.

"Oh, my... The Other... I can only imagine his smug slimy face if someone referred to Thanos's glorious army as the Space Whale Invaders. I would pay to see that shit!" As Loki continued to giggle on the couch, the rest of the team put the game in the system, eager to see how they were represented in the game.

Ten minutes later, Hawkeye had joined Loki on the couch, laughing her ass off at the caricatures of her and her friends that bounced around on the screen. Everyone had chosen a character not their own, laughing at the vague and kind of manly pictures next to their names. After beginning the game itself, it became apparent that the pictures were not inaccurate to the characters. Instead, the game designers had managed to gender-swap the majority of the team, with the exception of Bryce and Claire.

The Iron Man was a somewhat genderless figure anyway, having been known by a male moniker before the revelation that Toni was in fact the operator of the suit. Thor was represented by a large, muscled male, which considering her looks from a distance and the lack of press about her was somewhat understandable, and Lopt commented that the character looked quite a bit like his brother. Claire was portrayed as a sexy assassin crossed with the new Disney princess, Merida, her curly red hair whipping in the wind as she shot arrows in improbable ways, and was available to play in team mode with the American-voiced Nate, who was probably the most accurate of the team apart from his voice actor. Bryce was similarly accurate, since the only play mode was as the Hulk, the giant green rage monster with ponytail whipping in the wind as she smashed her enemies. Captain America was technically female, but the character was larger and more obviously muscled than Stephanie, with blond hair rather than her white-streaked dark brown, the streak a result of seventy years buried in the ice.
The best character, however, was Loki's, a tall, buxom, dark-haired super-villainess who was basically the opposite of the real Loki in every way. It was the appearance of this character that had Loki still on the couch, as they discovered her right as she had emerged from her first giggle fit.

Needless to say, the game was an instant hit. The team had been suffering from cabin fever since Doom's last attempt, and promptly picked up Wii-motes, choosing any character other than their own and battling the comically fake Chitauri on screen. The game soon devolved into a contest of whose character could defeat whose in vs. mode, a massive betting pool of twinkies and pop-tarts covering the table in the break room corner. Soon, Wiivengers tournaments had become a weekly tradition, along with the Twinkie currency exchange. In fact, they had an entirely separate supply of Twinkies for betting, that was significantly larger than the amount they kept around to eat. It was in this way that the bored team passed the time, except for the Asgardians who had love lives to keep them occupied as well.

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Eventually, however, Wiivengers grew old, and it was around this time that Claire began to act up again. The Avengers began to wake up to small animals in their beds, strange colored hair, and in one memorable instance, a vengeance prank on Toni involving the thirty five pounds of birdseed that the Iron woMan had left in her car. Having painstakingly swept out her precious Audi, the Hawk had saved every seed, and Toni went down to her lab one morning to find it stuffed inside her current line of Iron Man suits. This led to an epic prank war between the two, which had almost driven their housemates insane when a distraction finally showed up.

"Ladies, you are both pretty. Now if you can cease this moronic war, the 'internship' for young Mr. Parker begins tomorrow." Bryce Banner's calm pronouncement interrupted the two, who had frozen in a statuesque pose of Toni pulling Claire's currently bright purple hair. The two separated and looked at each other with wicked grins before Claire pulled her hair down in front of her face, looking critically at the bright violet, before shrugging.

"I think I like it. Makes me more... super-hero-y!"

"It certainly makes you more purple. Now will you two behave?" replied Bryce. Receiving their eager nods, she sighed and retreated to her lab with a mutter of, "at least I tried. Not my fault if they scar him for life..."

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The next morning, Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy walked arm in arm into the business lobby of Stark Tower, ready to start their prestigious internships under Dr. Bryce Banner, one of Stark Inc's top scientists. The fact that she was also the Hulk and a member of the Avengers had been successfully hidden from the public eye, so the two high schoolers really had no idea what they were actually getting into. Their first indication of anything odd, or different from Gwen's internships at Oscorp, was the fact that they were met at the desk not by a bored receptionist, but by a shortish twenty-something in a Deadpool t-shirt, whose bulky glasses, blue jeans and converse hi-tops screamed: 'grad student!' As the two approached the desk, Darcy bounced up and greeted them each by name.

"Hey, Peter, Gwen! I'm Darcy Lewis, and I have been chosen as your tour guide to the wonderful world of.. uh... science. Right, Science! Now, if you two will follow me..." With that rather confusing introduction, Darcy turned and led the two right back towards the front doors. Halfway to the doors, Gwen gave a little shriek as a woman with curly purple hair dropped from the rafters and landed right next to them, joining the group as Darcy didn't bat an eyelash. "Hi Claire. Nice hair. Toni?"

"Yup." And the group continued walking, Peter now shielding Gwen slightly with his body. "Aww, kid, you don't have to do that!" laughed the now-named 'Claire.' "Hawks might eat spiders, but I ain't gonna hurt'cha!", which just confused the poor kids even more.

As the group left the building unmolested by security, the teens began to calm, and when they were led to a stretch limo, where their guides finally broke down in a fit of laughter.

"Sorry 'bout that, we were having fun with the suspense. Now, though, it is time for the great unveiling!" The purple haired Claire exclaimed dramatically, waving her hands for effect. "You see, young padawan, we know all about you and your secret identity, and while this summer will involve a lot of science (hard not to with Bryce and Toni around), what it really is is Super-Hero 101! I'm professor Claire Barton, slightly better known as Hawkeye, and we, my young friends, are headed to Avengers Tower!"

Darcy looked exasperated at Claire's display, making a mental note to find out who gave Claire that much caffeine, then let her out of sight. The group had voted for Darcy to go alone to pick up Peter and Gwen, so as not to scare them, but Claire had shot that plan to hell with steel-tipped explosive arrows. She made the hyperactive hawk move to the shotgun seat and spent the rest of the trip attempting to explain things to the kids.

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Meanwhile, back at the Tower, the rest of the team was gathered, waiting for the newbie, when with a sinking feeling in her gut, Bryce looked around and asked, "Where's Claire?" To her mixed luck, her question was answered before she and the rest could panic, as the purple haired archer came waltzing through the door followed by two shell-shocked teens and a face palming Darcy Lewis. At this sight, she took control, smacking Claire and leading the kids over to the couch. "Hi, I'm Dr. Bryce Banner. I don't know what Claire and Darcy have told you yet, but welcome to Avengers tower. The one getting cried on is Toni Stark." Claire looked up from her place on Toni's shoulder and stuck her tongue out at the diminutive scientist as Toni gave a wave with her free hand, "The short brunette is Stephanie Rogers" Stephanie gave a smile and a wave, essence of apple pie and fireworks wafting out of her every movement, "and the big guy is Nate Romanoff." The russian limited himself to a nod at the newcomers, as Claire bounced over to stand by him. "I believe you've met his partner Claire Barton." The purplette gave a winning smile. "On the couch are our resident Asgardians: Thor," who gave a giant wave, catching her red cape on her arm and dropping her pop-tart, "Loki," who was bent over picking up her sister's pop tart before Thor started crying, then straightened up and waved to the teens, "and finally Lopt, who is actually another Loki from a different dimension, it's kind of a long story..." Lopt looked up at the teens and smiled, then curled his arm back around his girlfriend. "Oh, yeah, the Lokis are dating, it has ceased to be weird for us. Any questions?"

"..." Peter Parker was sitting on the couch with a confused look on his face, which was nothing to his girlfriend Gwen's. The poor blonde looked completely shellshocked, an expression that slowly morphed to amazement before she shot out of her seat and bounded over to Bryce.

"Oh my god! You wrote that paper in last month's Biology Today on the complications and consequences of advanced DNA mapping and experimentation on..." The girl babbled like Toni on caffeine and Bryce happily responded in kind, forgetting what they were doing and making their way down to the bio lab.

At this uncharacteristic display of fangirlishness from his girlfriend, Peter relaxed and laughed, looking around at the team, all of whom were now seated on the other couches to give him his space. "So, the Avengers, huh."

"Yup," replied Toni. "We've all been wanting to meet you before this, but SHIELD made us wait. First to see how you would deal with the Lizard problem, then for the school year to end. Apparently having Iron Man come get you from school wasn't considered subtle enough." At this last, she had an affronted look on her face, but whether it was at the idea that she couldn't be subtle, or the idea that she needed to, was anyone's guess.

"What's SHIELD? And how would they tell you what to do?" Asked Peter. "I mean, you're superheroes. We're superheroes, I guess. What say does anyone have over you?"

"SHIELD stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division," replied Claire, now in serious agent mode. Peter did a double-take at her personality switch as the rest looked on, then continued to listen to her explanation. "SHIELD is basically this super-secret organization that takes care of things the rest of the government can't, including superheroes. Nate and I are technically SHIELD agents, though we usually act more as consultants like the rest of the team nowadays. It's technically run by this secret Council of politicians, but the only one we actually listen to is Director Fury. He's the one who collected us from all ends of the earth, galaxy actually, to fight the Loki menace. Obviously, that's not our job now, since Loki is no longer a menace-" Claire was cut off by Thor's indignant yell of:

"Loki! She stole my last Pop-Tart!"

The Hawk continued, correcting herself. "-since she's no longer a super-villain, though admittedly still a menace at times, we mostly deal with other baddies. Vickie Von Doom-Doom is the closest thing we have to a nemesis right now, or possibly Team FredPool, but I digress. SHIELD gives us oversight and legitimacy, so the government and police can't go after us like they did you for a while. We'll take care of that though. Anyway, I'm starting to feel like a villain with all this monologuing, so who wants to take over the Q&A?" By the end of her explanation, Claire had slipped back into her normal mode, somewhere between the serious Agent Barton they saw on missions and the Violet Menace of the morning.

"I've got a question," began Loki. "How much coffee did you drink this morning, if it's only now wearing off? You have the metabolism of Thor, caffeine usually doesn't do that to you."

"Did you have to make a new pot this morning?" Replied Claire. "That's cuz I had already finished the auto-brewed pot. Answer your question?" The rest of the team shuddered at the thought of Claire drinking an entire pot of coffee, black by necessity since they were out of milk, again.

"Uhuh... So this is the great Avengers? You don't seem anything like your press. Aren't you supposed to be all badass and serious and shit?"

"Yeah, see what the press and PR people tend to forget is that we aren't just awesome super-heroes, we're also people. Most of us are human people, even. We are also a group of relatively young adults living in a home together, how could you possibly expect hijinks not to ensue?" Toni was laughing as she answered the bewildered boy. "Now, Superhero 101, begin!"