Harley wheezed, halting from his run to catch his breath. He clutched at his smarting side with one hand while he raised his other hand up in a Stop gesture.
Slowing to a walk were Peter and Morgan, both appearing to be breathing fine; one was enhanced while the other was 5 years old, though. It was pretty clear to Harley that he got the shortest end of the endurance stick.
"Come on!" Morgan cried, pulling at Harley's outstretched hand and making him stand up. They still had the rest of the afternoon to play before Mommy picked her up after work.
Harley shook his head. "I can't. I'm done. I'm too old to last long on a game of Tag." He staggered slowly back inside the rebuilt Avengers compound, shoulders hunched, and breathing still uneven.
Morgan and Peter followed him to the lobby where Harley deposited himself on the couch.
"Let's just play another game," said Harley.
"What game?" asked Morgan, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She wasn't tired yet and another game sounded amazing!
Harley held up a finger at her saying, "Let me and Peter brainstorm for a minute, okay?"
Morgan nodded and waited expectantly, watching Harley get up to walk over to Peter. They both turned their backs on her to exchange a few private words.
Harley shook his head at Peter and said in a low voice, "I can't do another physical game. You know I'm not an athlete." Harley was more of a mechanic, sit in a chair, fiddle with a laptop, roll under a car. That kind of stuff. "Why can't we play a card game?"
"Oh, you want to play Cards Against Humanity – Avengers Edition with a five year old?" Ned's old Cards Against Humanity was still in Peter's backpack.
"Then what do you suggest?" Harley hissed.
"Hide-and-Seek."
"We might lose her in the compound."
"Hopscotch."
"Too much jumping."
Peter's eyes widened as an idea came to him. He hit Harley with the back of his hand to get his attention. "Dude! We could go in the Game Room!"
Harley's eyes widened. "There's a game room?"
"Yeah! The Avengers play Boggle all the time. And they have video games in there, a shelf full of board games, and a bunch of bean bags to sit your lazy ass on."
Harley grinned. He'd been dying to sit down. "That's the best thing to come out of your mouth! Let's go!"
They both turned around, their identical smiles vanishing when they realized Morgan was no longer waiting for them to finish talking.
They both looked around.
"Where's Morgan?"
Peter blinked twice as if it would somehow make her appear. "She was right there!"
"You don't think she decided to play Hide-and-Seek, do you?" Harley asked. Morgan was the worst in Hide-and-Seek and by that Harley meant that she was really good at hiding. Every time they played, he ended up freaking out because he couldn't find her anywhere.
One thing was sure, though. He and Peter were going to have to go over all the floors of the compound and find her before Pepper arrived.
Harley longingly thought of the beanbags he wouldn't be sitting on anytime soon.
…
Morgan found the laboratory not long after she decided to leave Peter and Harley in the kitchen. They were taking too long in their meeting and like Daddy always said, "Why wait when you can do it yourself?"
Morgan was a kid and if there was one thing she was good at it was finding stuff to entertain herself with.
She soundlessly entered, looking around for something interesting. Then, she found someone even better.
"Uncle Bruce!"
Uncle Bruce was crouched over the table, eye on a microscope. He looked away when he heard her call, mouth breaking into a smile as she approached.
"Hey there, Tiny!" He lifted Morgan on his lap and she automatically peered into the microscope too.
"What's that?"
"Some cultured bacteria."
"Cool." Morgan didn't know what cultured was but the fuzzy looking bacteria was interesting. She turned away from the bacteria and back to her uncle.
"How are you?" he asked her.
Morgan smiled. "I'm bored."
"You're bored?" Morgan nodded proudly and Bruce had to ask, "How old are you again?"
"Five," Morgan said, fingers starting to draw lines on Uncle Bruce's weak arm, the one that got hurt in the big battle.
"You can't be bored! You have ten more years to go before you start saying sentences like, 'I'm bored.'"
"But I'm bored!" Morgan insisted with a giggle. She abandoned his arm and said, "Do you want to play a game with me?"
"What game?"
Morgan shrugged. "Peter and Harley already played Tag with me. So, we have to play something new."
Bruce thought back to a recent video he saw online. "I know this one cool game, but it's a very old game, though, I don't think people play it now. They weren't anymore when I found out about it."
Morgan leaned closer in interest. "What is it?"
"Aw, I don't know. It might be too boring for you." Bruce then looked away to hide his smirk. Not soon after, he felt Morgan's small hand on his cheek, pulling his face back to look at her.
"I want to play!"
"Okay, but it requires strength and stamina."
"I'm strong and…" Morgan frowned. "What's the other one?"
"Stamina."
"I'm stamina!"
"Are you?"
"Yeah!"
"You also need to be quick and fast," Uncle Bruce told her and Morgan's face grew determined.
"I'm quick and fast!"
"Are you a good jumper?"
Morgan nodded.
"Let me see."
She climbed down Uncle Bruce's lap and jumped as high as she could. She was a pretty good jumper. She practiced her jumping rope at home.
"You'll do."
Uncle Bruce rose and put his cultured bacteria away. Then he took Morgan's hand and gloriously said, "This game is so intense, we're gonna have to play it at the gym so that we don't hurt any of my cultured bacteria."
Morgan's jaw dropped in interest and as she walked alongside Bruce, she did not regret leaving Peter and Harley alone at all.
…
The gym was a big place, Morgan saw. There were a lot machines too and Morgan could imagine herself spending a whole day inside, bouncing on that big green ball, climbing monkey bars, and hanging on the ropes that came down from the ceiling.
Bruce lifted a bench press machine from its spot and transferred it somewhere else. He was rearranging the equipment in the gym in an attempt to make an easy enough obstacle course for Morgan. The tools and equipment were all set up in a way that would allow her to safely transfer from one to another without falling.
Bruce also placed yellow flags around to make the game more interesting. He had YouTube to thank for this idea. Hulk loved watching throwback videos, the website providing him with memes and other pop-culture references.
Bruce walked back to Morgan and explained the mechanics of the game to her.
"See those yellow flags everywhere?"
Morgan nodded.
"We have to get as many flags as we can, okay?"
"That's easy!"
Uncle Bruce laughed at her. "Oh, really? Well, there's a catch because the game we're playing is called The Floor is Lava."
Morgan looked down at the floor then back up at the grinning giant man in front of her. "The Floor is Lava? We're not in a volcano!"
"No, but we have to pretend. We can't step on the floor because it's lava and if we do…" Uncle Bruce suddenly snatched Morgan up and she shouted in surprise. "We die!" He threw her in the air and caught her.
Morgan screamed in delight.
Uncle Bruce set her back down and seriously said, "So, we have to get as many yellow flags as we can but not step on the floor, okay? You can step on the treadmill or on the benches, climb the rope, or up the monkey bars, but don't let any part of your body touch the floor, understand?"
Morgan nodded, practically vibrating in excitement. "This is so fun! Let's play! Let's play!"
"Ready? Go!"
Morgan squealed and immediately jumped on top of a nearby stool. Bruce, on the other hand, was on a treadmill and making his way to a yellow flag.
Morgan took a breath and began moving. She jumped to another stool, longer and narrower this time and she used it to reach the steps of the monkey bars.
She climbed up and crawled over the top bars, reaching for a yellow flag that Uncle Bruce had tied on one bar.
"I got one!" she cried triumphantly, waving it up to show Uncle Bruce.
"I got one too!" came Bruce's reply, a childish grin on his face.
Morgan stuffed the flag in her pocket and continued on her way to the last bar. She looked around for something to transfer to. The rope hanging from the ceiling caught her eye.
Morgan looked down. It would be quite a fall if she didn't catch the rope. She looked to Uncle Bruce who was quite near to her now, near enough for him to reach Morgan if he wanted to.
She took the risk.
She jumped.
And then she was falling.
Morgan shut her eyes tight and screamed.
Suddenly, she felt a hand roughly grab her, catching her before she hit the floor.
"I got you!"
Morgan opened her eyes. Uncle Bruce was holding on to the monkey bars with his weak hand while his good arm was around Morgan's small frame.
"You okay?" Uncle Bruce asked, drawing the girl close to him. That was a pretty close call, he thought, his heart hammering loudly in his head. Even Hulk got a little bit scared at that moment.
Morgan hugged him in relief and said, "You saved me from the lava!"
Bruce patted her back. "Don't do that again, okay? It's just a game." He refrained from adding that if anything ever happened to Morgan, Bruce was pretty sure Tony Stark would resurrect from the dead to give Bruce a piece of his mind.
"But I want to win!" cried Morgan, pushing his arm away and climbing over him to the top bars of the monkey bars.
"What are you doing?"
Morgan didn't reply and Bruce tried to follow her line of sight. She was looking up at a flag taped high on a wall.
Bruce felt Hulk give him a little nudge, the other guy did not enjoy the prospect of losing to a five-year-old.
"Oh, you found another one, did you? I'm not gonna let you!"
…
"She's in there?" Peter asked, running towards Harley who was standing right outside the gym, looking at something. "What's she doing? Working out?"
"You won't believe me," said Harley, still looking at something in the room that was out of Peter's sight.
Peter finally reached Harley and turned to look through the glass that made up the gym's walls.
"Are they seriously playing the Floor is Lava?" Peter asked. That game was like an old meme back in… Peter shook his head… it was such a long time ago.
"Like you expected something updated from the Hulk? This is the same guy who still does dabs in 2024 A.T.," stated Harley.
Peter frowned at his friend in mild confusion. "A.T.?"
"After Tony."
"Dude."
"What? I like it better than 'year of our lord and savior Tony Stark.'"
Peter shook his head. "That's not—" but he didn't get to finish because they heard Bruce's voice through the glass.
"AAAH! Peter, Harley, help us!" Bruce was shouting.
Harley and Peter looked at each other, the same idea flitting through their minds.
"What'd you say, Parker? Prepared to lose in a little throwback game of The Floor is Lava?" Harley cockily swung the door open, throwing Peter a smug look.
"You realize that I can literally stick on the ceiling, right?"
"Hey, no powers! No fair!"