Andrew doesn't answer Tony's question. He stops walking and stands still and he waves a hand at them to do the same. He pulls the gun out from his waistband and he looks around. The world is very quiet. So quiet Tony can hear his own heart beating hard against his flashlight and his breath rasping through his lungs. So quiet he can hear the soft footfalls of Bruce as he creeps closer to Tony. It's not quiet enough to hear Natalia as she does the same, or maybe she steps in Bruce's footsteps. Either way, they are both close enough to hold his hands, except Natalia is holding her knife instead and Bruce is clutching his hands together.

Then Bruce isn't moving and no one is moving and the world is silent and frozen. There is no sound or movement. Not birds. Not even insects zing by. Not even the wind through the leaves.

When the creature does appear, it crashes through the silent stillness with all the grace of a Tyrannosaur. Except it isn't. It isn't even a dinosaur.

"Eee!" Andrew makes a high noise and fires his gun, and Natalia makes no noise but throws something, not her knife, and Tony doesn't know when she picked up a rock but now one bangs hard against the metal monstrosity that had charged through the jungle straight for them. Bruce grabs Tony's hand, and he squeezes hard, hard enough to hurt, and Tony thinks maybe Bruce is going to be big Bruce again, but he isn't. He just holds Tony's hand.

It's so different being in the jungle that it takes Tony a moment to recognize the giant robot from before. The one that was shooting at people with its guns.

"Sorry!" Andrew says to the robot, "I didn't mean to, please don't shoot me!" And he drops the gun on the ground. Natalia darts forward and picks it up, tucking her knife away in one smooth move. Then she darts back to Tony and Bruce again without turning, and she grabs towards them and catches Tony's arm and slides down to his hand and she squeezes it lightly and then tugs. She wants them to run away. She probably wants to use Andrew as robot bait. Tony thinks maybe that's not fair, but he also thinks maybe Andrew stole Clint's gun and he thinks maybe the robot is cool or maybe it's scary and maybe it's safer to follow Natalia.

She is tugging them towards a tangle of plants that go up over their heads where maybe they can hide and Tony follows and he still has Bruce's hand so Bruce follows too while Andrew stands still and puts his hands up on his head.

They are almost to the leaves and poised to start running hard when the robot does something amazing. It opens up and spits out a person.

Natalia tugs at Tony's hand anyway, but Tony is so surprised and interested that he stops to stare and he wonders how the robot works and if the man inside is a robot man too or a man man, and how the robot moved so quickly and without making noise until the very end.

"Tony!" the man calls out, and he knows his name! "Bruce, Natasha!" And he knows Bruce's name, but he gets Natalia's wrong. "I'm with Coulson. Mr. Phil. I'm with Mr. Phil. And Thor. We're the good guys!"

"I'm a good guy, too," Andrew says, "I was helping, ask the kids! Please don't shoot me!"

The not-robot man looks Andrew up and down, then walks past him towards Tony and his friends. Natalia is still tugging on Tony's hand, like she thinks they should run away, and then the man is very close, and she lets go of his hand and she slides around until she's standing in front of Tony and Bruce and holding up the gun.

The man stops moving towards them and holds his hands out away from his sides.

"It's okay," he says. "You're safe now. I promise."

And then a second monstrosity crashes into the clearing with all the grace of a giant robot. Except it isn't a giant robot. It's a tyrannosaurus rex. And Clint and Steve are riding on its head.

"Eee!" Andrew makes that loud noise again but Tony can't see what he does because the not-robot man has spun about and moved in the way between Tony and Andrew and the dinosaur. He can still see the dinosaur because it's very big. Steve is sitting on its head and Clint is clinging to Steve's middle and both of them have strange expressions like maybe they're scared but also maybe they're happy. Tony isn't good at expressions, but he knows if he were riding on a T rex, he'd be scared and happy. Down on the ground where the dinosaur can eat him, it's mostly just scary but also a tiny bit exciting.

The not-robot man says some words that Tony sometimes hears his daddy say and that Mr. Jarvis tells him he can never ever repeat. Tony is afraid that the dinosaur is going to eat Andrew because Andrew is closest, but the next noise they hear is more like metal than bones crunching and when Tony peeks around the man he sees the dinosaur is trying to eat the robot. It moves its head about a lot to do it, but somehow Steve keeps on, and Clint is holding Steve so they don't fall and aren't eaten.

The robot has closed itself up after it spat out the man, but it doesn't seem to know how to fight a dinosaur by itself because it just makes loud metal noises from between the dinosaur's jaws and it doesn't try to shoot it with one of its guns.

"Aw man!" says the not-robot man, and then the dinosaur drops the robot and turns its head about to look at them.

"Run!" shouts Steve, "We can't steer it!"

Tony doesn't see what the not-robot man is doing or what Andrew is doing because both Natalia and Bruce have his hands and they are running into the tall leaves and Tony goes with them because he doesn't want Steve and Clint's new dinosaur to eat any of them.

Natalia tugs them in a sort of zigzag away from the dinosaur, darting one direction and then changing to go another. Tony thinks they should find a tree like last time, but there are no easy trees he can see right close by. He can't see the trees very well anyway because the leafy tangle they're going through is higher than his head so he looks up and mostly sees more leaves. Then Bruce trips and the tug on Tony's hand trips him too, and Natalia doesn't fall but she stops running and they all stay very still and quiet, except for hard breathing. The air is so dense and heavy that Tony has to pull it in hard and it still doesn't quite seem like enough. Somehow he hadn't noticed it when they were running from the dinosaur but now breathing is hard, like the air is getting trapped against his flashlight instead of going into his lungs and the feeling like there is no air is almost scarier than the feeling that they are about to be eaten.

The air is so loud inside his lungs that Tony thinks the dinosaur will hear him breathing and come and eat all of them and it will be Tony's fault because he was too loud, but he can't hold his breath and being afraid just makes him breathe faster and louder until he starts coughing as his lungs try to make the air work the way it used to.

Tony really, really wants to go home.

There is something loud crashing after them, and Tony can hear Steve and Clint's voices.

"Don't eat our friends!" Clint shouts. "Bad dinosaur!"

"Tree!" shouts Steve's voice, and then, "Look out, mister!"

BAROOM!

A noise like a roar rips through the air, like a crash, like thunder.

"Worry not!" a voice booms in the silence that follows, "I shall bring low this monster that threatens you!"

"Don't hurt it!" shouts Clint's voice.

"Kill it!" shouts Andrew's voice, so the dinosaur hasn't eaten him yet.

There is an explosion of light that rips through the air with a crack that seems to tear at Tony's ears, the noises impossibly close and loud, and there are crashes, and he can just see an entire tree toppling away from between the leaves and there are more crashes slamming against his ears and jolting the ground.

And then all is silent again.

"You killed it!" Clint's voice is strange, like Tony's ears are trying to remember how to hear and sounds are far away and close by somehow at the same time. Clint sounds sad, but he isn't eaten or flattened by a tree. Tony stumbles to his feet and tries to walk towards Clint because he wants them to all be together again, but his legs feel shaky and his breathing is still so heavy and when he stands up his brain goes fuzzy and lights flash in front of his eyes and then he's lying on the floor and he feels like he lost a moment in time, like something happened between standing up and lying down but the memory of it is scooped away.

"Tony?" Natalia whispers.

"Tony?" says Bruce, but his voice is louder because he grew big and green at some point between when Tony tried to stand up and lay down, and big Bruce isn't good at being quiet. Big Bruce, it turns out, is able to pick Tony up just as easily as Steve. Tony isn't sure he wants to be picked up like he's a baby, but his brain is still a bit fuzzy and his heart is feeling jumpy and the air is still too thick, so thick it seems to get caught inside his chest somewhere, and it's too hard to tell Bruce to put him down or to tell him that he can walk himself.

Big Bruce walks funny, because usually he likes to walk with his hands too, but his hands have Tony in them so he's being very careful and going towards where Clint's voice came from.

They leave the green leaves behind and Natalia darts in front of them with the gun, but Bruce is holding Tony at an angle that still lets him see. The dinosaur is lying over a tree. Clint and Tony aren't on its head anymore; they're sitting up in a high branch where maybe they jumped from the dinosaurs head before it fell over. The dinosaur is still making noises, so maybe it isn't dead, but Clint is crying because he's sad. Steve just looks unhappy. Not-Robot man and Andrew are standing beneath the tree. A third man has come too, but he's holding something that makes him float because he's up in the air by Steve and Clint and he's trying to tell them to let him carry them down, but Clint keeps crying 'You killed it!' and they don't let go of the branch.

"Thor!" says Tony, because the flying man is Thor, and maybe the not-robot man told the truth, and Mr. Phil came to find them, and now they are found and they won't be kidnapped anymore and they can all go home.

Everyone turns to look towards them, and the not-robot man's eyes go very big like he's surprised or maybe scared.

"Tony?" he says, and he moves towards them, but stops when Natalia brings the gun up again.

"Oh for…Natasha, do not shoot me. I'm a good guy."

Then Thor comes back to the ground holding Steve and Clint, except they squirm free as soon as they are on the ground and Steve takes Tony out of Bruce's arms, and that is ridiculous because now he's being carried like a baby by a second person, but talking is too hard for him to complain.

"Mr. Thor!" Steve says, and he darts back around Natalia towards Thor. "Tony needs medicine."

"I will take him to a healer directly," says Thor, and now a new person is holding Tony and Tony makes a whining noise because he isn't a baby and he isn't sick. He just has a flashlight that is catching his air and pushing back on his heart, and maybe that's a little scary, but the flashlight was a gift and the not-angel lady would not have given him a gift that would hurt him and Tony doesn't want to go away from all his friends even if his chest hurts and the air hurts and his brain is dizzy.

Then Thor does whatever he did before and they are flying and that is the most awesome thing ever. It'd be even better if the world wasn't spinning too fast to see it properly. It feels almost more like dream flying than real flying because his brain has gone fuzzy and dizzy and sleepy.

It's like he was super wide awake when he was looking around for dinosaurs and then running from a dinosaur, and now that he doesn't need to be super wide awake, his eyes want to rest and take a nap. Except if he takes a nap now, he'll miss flying, and he wants to feel every moment of it because flying is awesome. And his brain is still full of questions. He wants to know what happened to Clint and Steve, and how Andrew got Clint's gun, and what it is like to ride on a tyrannosaur's head, and whether Thor killed Clint's dinosaur or not, and where is Mr. Phil, and why are dinosaurs real, and how does Thor fly, and is everyone safe?

These questions swoop about his head like his body is swooping over trees, and he blinks his eyes and blinks them to make them stay open, and then he has a really very long blink, and he thinks he's still flying because he can feel the world swooping, but he also seems to be sitting somehow and someone wants him to breathe in a funny smelling medicine, and he coughs and it hurts, and his eyes want to sleep and also to cry a bit, and there are wires going on his chest and he doesn't even remember taking his shirt off but he can see his flashlight as bright as ever.

"That's it, Tony, cough," says a soothing voice, and Tony leans his head back to try and see who is holding him and rubbing at his back because that sounds like Mr. Phil! It is Mr. Phil, and a doctor is there to and when he looks, it's Dr. Shaw!

Tony tries to say their names and smile, but he coughs instead and he doesn't like coughing and he doesn't like the plastic on his face, and he thinks maybe it's to hold the air inside him because the air was too thick before, except it isn't so thick now and his lungs breathe the air in and out just like they always had and are only a little bit rumbly in his chest.

Dr. Shaw brings a blanket over and speaks in a low voice to Mr. Phil, and maybe Tony's ears hear them talking but his brain isn't listening anymore so everything is low voices and hissing and humming machines and a soothing hand on his back and he blinks an extra-long blink and falls asleep.

Then the yellow suit man is chasing him with a ruler, only he's grown as big as a tyrannosaur and Clint is riding on his head and shouting, "Run, Tony, I can't steer him!" and Tony runs and runs and then Mistress is in front of him and she has Natalia's knife and she wants to hurt his friends and says "You were bad Tony, and I'm going to cut out their hearts," and she wants to cut out his flashlight with the knife and he squeezes his eyes shut tight and his heart goes bang bang bang against his flashlight and a machine is making beeping noises like an alarm clock, and then a voice is in his ear and no one is running after him and he's in a bed and Mr. Phil is next to him and it was all just a dream and now he's awake.

He breathes, and the air is there, but he breathes all stuttery anyway while his heart bangs in his chest and his hands fly to check to make sure that the monster kidnapper hadn't cut it out after all. It's still there beneath a light blue shirt, solid and real, and Mr. Phil is real and so, it turns out, are Steve and Clint and Bruce and Natalia. They're all in the room with him, sprawled on a sort of pillow fort.

"They are okay?" Tony whispers to Mr. Phil, because they are sleeping and sleep time is a time for whispers.

"Everyone is okay," says Mr. Phil. "Even Andrew."

"Is Andrew a good guy or a bad guy?" Tony asks. "He was helping us fight the kidnappers, but then he had Clint's gun, and he wanted us to go back."

"It seems you all had quite the adventure," says Mr. Phil. "Clint says he remembers dropping the gun when they ran away from some, as he said, 'scary wolf dinosaurs'. Andrew must have picked it up and then gone back to get you."

"How did they get a tyrannosaur? Did Thor kill it? Did the scary wolf dinosaurs bite them?"

Maybe Tony is forgetting to whisper because Clint rolls over and mumbles something but he doesn't sit up or open his eyes so he's still sleeping.

"No one was bitten," whispers Mr. Phil. "The gun stunned one of the dinosaurs. It must have confused them. Steve and Clint tried to climb a tree, but it wasn't a very good climbing tree. When the tyrannosaur came, they were right at biting height. So Steve jumped onto the only safe place he could see where the teeth couldn't reach them, and that's how Steve and Clint became dinosaur riders. They couldn't figure out how to get off without getting eaten. Then they ran into you. Do you remember the rest?"

"I remember," Tony tells him, frowning because he has a very good memory and it's funny for Mr. Phil to ask. Still, he likes how Mr. Phil answers all his questions. Some grownups don't like to answer because they think he's too little to hear some things. Mr. Phil is a good answerer. He even remembers Tony's last question before Tony thinks to ask it again.

"Thor struck the dinosaur with lightning. Against all odds, I hear it was still alive when it was last seen. We haven't kept in touch. We're on our way home. It will be a while yet. We were in Antarctica."

Tony frowns, because that doesn't sound true. Antarctica is the part of the globe that's all white because it's all snow and ice. Still, Mr. Phil doesn't tell lies, and so maybe it's the globe that's lying, and Antarctica is really a jungle that has dinosaurs.

"Are you hungry, Tony?" asks Mr. Phil, and Tony realizes his tummy is very empty and that his last lunchtime was forever before, two whole sleeps before, and he nods his head hard to show how very hungry his is.

Mr. Phil picks him up, which Tony allows even though he isn't a baby because he has Mr. Phil again and this is like hugging and feels safe and good. They go through the room into another room, and the world is still a bit swoopy and Tony thinks they are inside a moving place, like a boat or a plan or a train. It's funny to fall asleep in one place and wake up somewhere else.

Mr. Phil puts him in a chair and brings him soup and crackers and Tony pretends it's a lake and the crackers are really evil kidnappers and he pushes them in the lake and they all drown and then a giant dinosaur comes and slurps up the lake and he's the dinosaur. Mr. Phil sits by him and doesn't say anything when Tony makes 'no, don't push me in the lake' noises or 'roar' noises and he reads his tablet.

Tony is just finishing and his tummy is warm and happy when there are loud voices in the other room and they are his friends' voices and they sound scared and unhappy and that makes Tony feel scared and unhappy, like maybe someone is hurt after all, or the kidnappers snuck someone away.

Then the voices are louder and Clint and Steve and Natalia and Bruce all push into the room.

"Shorty!" says Clint, "You're awake!" And Tony still doesn't like that name, but he's happy to see all his friends awake and not hurt so he smiles anyway.

"Dr. Shaw said you had to sleep a lot," says Steve, "because you ran around a lot and got sick and we aren't supposed to be loud or wake you up, but then you were disappeared and we thought you were stolen!"

"I'm sorry we scared you," says Mr. Phil, "I was trying to let you sleep."

The little room is a lot more crowded with everyone, but it's a good sort of crowded, and Mr. Phil brings more soup and crackers and some sandwiches and juice and it's like a little party. The not-robot man joins them and his name is Colonel Rhodey, or Just Rhodey and he's in the air force and he is a robot pilot and he has the coolest job ever and one day Tony is going to build a robot that flies and blows up kidnappers except maybe it will be more colors because Tony likes bright happy colors, like yellow and red and purple and orange. And Thor joins them too, and Dr. Shaw, and Tony asks about Andrew but it seems Andrew has a special room just for him so he can't join the party.

Then Ms. Pepper talks to them on a TV and she smiles and cries when she sees them and Tony comes up as close as he can to the screen so he can tell her about how he was a monster fighter and he crawled in a vent and stopped a countdown clock and saw dinosaurs and flew. He doesn't want to talk about the super scary parts somehow, like the mean yellow suit man and the forever timeout or how Mistress wanted to hit him and his friends, so he talks about the more exciting scary parts.

Ms. Pepper tells him he was very brave, and so does Mr. Phil, and all at once Tony knows for real and certain that he is escaped from the monsters and that he got away from the kidnappers and he is safe and his friends are safe and everyone is safe, and together and perfect. They are the monster fighters, and they won.

And there is a flash of light.

The End.

Author's Note: Yes, I am ending the story there. Interpret the ending as you will. Perhaps the flash of light is from Thor being too exuberant and starting a storm and they have a bit of turbulence but nothing worse and the children remain children and age naturally because the 'gift' was a true reset and the only way to reach their proper ages is through growing up again, and they have the most awesome childhoods this time around with loving, caring adults who guide and cherish them and encourage their talents and let them find for themselves what they want to do with their lives (ignore the part where Clint left behind a family; he probably doesn't have on in this AU, and pretend that suddenly removing several strong super heroes from the world won't have any bad consequences such as in the event of an invasion. Probably some other heroes stepped up to the plate and the little Monster Fighters maybe found a way to sneak into the action and contribute in their own small way).

Or perhaps the 'gift' bestowed has been fully received and now everyone is their proper ages again, but perhaps having gained something from their time as children. They remember all that happened along with their real childhoods and it has brought them all closer, like a family, and healed something inside them they didn't even know needed healing.

Or perhaps through some bizarre twist, the adults appeared but the children remained and there are two sets running about.

Or perhaps they aged, but only by a little bit, because it's the sort of gift that keeps on giving. Or only some of them aged up and some stayed the same.

Maybe the light means everything, or nothing, or something inbetween. You decide.