Loki was not pleased, but accepted it as part of his approved punishment. Having to help clean up the mess he created by hand with no magic was a small price to pay to avoid Odin's idea of punishment.
Since he would likely be lynched if he went out in his actual appearance, Amy had him shift his features a bit to match her own. If asked, he was her 'older brother' and was currently being grounded because he had been an ass during the invasion and was being made to do community service as part of his punishment.
Which...wasn't that far off but left a few key details out. He was not oblivious to the fact that the group known as "SHIELD" had agents watching his every move and that he was on strict probation at the moment.
Amy was right there with them, and since no one expected an almost eleven year old girl to do hard manual labor, she had been delegated to helping with the food and drinks being given to all the volunteers.
Tony had given her a card that had money preloaded on it, so she could buy some proper clothes and other essential items. It was more than most ten years olds were entrusted with, but Tony had a skewed idea of money considering how he was raised.
He was very, very surprised when instead of buying some fancy new outfits or toys, she instead went to the nearest grocery store with a bemused Loki and bought several large carts full of food and other supplies to start an impromptu soup kitchen while Loki was helping clean up the mess he made.
Amy felt it said volumes of the human spirit that rather than argue about a ten year old feeding random strangers, people gathered around her to help with the cooking and pass out the meals to those deeply affected by the invasion.
"Why do you lower yourself to feeding those beneath you?" said Loki confused. He was taking a mandatory break.
Amy gave him a sad smile, knowing it was part of his upbringing that he believed that.
"I've found that the 'richer' you are in monetary or other wealth, the 'poorer' you are in integrity and actual human decency. Very rarely do people with money bother to share that with those who have less in any meaningful ways, but it's not that uncommon for those who are down on their luck to share what little they have to make the world brighter."
Amy remembered when she was about five when a homeless woman had shared what little she had to eat with her because her dad had used his medical knowledge to help out her children for free. They had so little, but she had shared it without demanding anything in return. Her dad had gotten better at taking care of them, but she had noticed that rich people often needed a desperate reality check, rather than some fancy toy.
In between helping with clean-up, Loki was also forced to undergo mandatory therapy sessions.
So long as they weren't forced to actually acknowledge his existence right away, most of the newly dubbed Avengers were fine with ignoring his presence.
"Why is there a cat in my lab?" said Tony bewildered.
Bruce turned to look, snorted and said nothing.
"Did you bring the cat into my lab?" demanded Tony.
"No, but I did warn you," he said.
Tony tried to shoo the large orange tabby off his equipment. The feline, in the imperious manner of cats everywhere, shot him an unimpressed look and did not move.
Steve made the mistake of walking in.
"Cap, great timing. Get this cat out of here!"
"I...what?" said Steve.
"Amy has a habit of feeding stray cats," clarified Bruce. "Especially if we're in an area for longer than a few weeks. She must have gotten him from a shelter or something."
When Tony left the labs, it was to find a second cat on the lap of a bewildered Loki.
Bruce snorted again at the sight.
"She talked you into visiting a shelter and walked out with cats, didn't she?" said Bruce.
"She said something about a 'therapy animal', took me to a building overflowing with animals then proceeded to organize an impromptu adoption event for all the animals, then insisted that this...creature...would be good for me and wouldn't take no for an answer," said Loki.
"Sounds about right," said Bruce, nodding.
Tony wasn't the only one staring at him.
"She does this often?" said Steve slowly.
"More often than you think. I made the mistake of telling her the story of 'three stone soup' and she took it to heart," said Bruce. "She's always volunteering for shelters and the like whenever we visit the bigger cities."
Amy had grown up with very little, mostly because Bruce couldn't exactly set up roots and earn living normally. He did the best he could, but she sometimes had to go without.
There was a reason Pepper had basically tossed out Amy's current wardrobe and insisted on getting her an entirely new one.
"Where is Amy anyway?" asked Steve.
"She's taking some tests to see what her education level is like, since she's been living on the road most of her life," said Tony.
Bruce was firm that if they were staying at the tower, Amy would have to go to an actual school. He wanted her to have as normal a childhood as he could give her, even if circumstances had prevented that until recently.
To that end she was being given several tests to determine her education level and see where she would be placed.
Amy came back mostly annoyed.
"How did you do, spitfire?" asked Tony.
"Education wise, I'm almost at a high school senior level," she replied.
"But?" asked Bruce.
"Social and emotionally, I'm barely at a middle school level," she replied tartly. She was not pleased at the therapist's comment that she would do better being placed as a freshman in high school as opposed to the college level classes she could easily take.
Bruce was not surprised in the least. Amy rarely had a chance to spend time around people her own age.
Amy was still fuming, as she barely tolerated children. To be fair, she had to mature fairly quickly due to circumstances beyond her control.
Tony shared a look with Bruce. They let the girl go to her room to cool off.
"Methinks the spitfire needs a day off," said Tony.
"When was the last time you spent the day with just her?" asked Pepper seriously.
Bruce winced.
"I think about three months? The last time we had a proper day off, it was to go fishing and it was an utter disaster."
"She doesn't like to fish?" guessed Steve.
"Actually it's because some idiot government official saw two 'outsiders' and apparently thought we were 'easy prey' for a scam he was running," admitted Bruce. "Amy ripped him a new one but it was such a hassle that we ended up leaving the area early."
"What about amusement parks?" asked Pepper.
"Anything but Disney," said Bruce immediately. "She took one look at the Disney movies and while she enjoys them, she prefers the original fairy tales over the cleaned up version...especially after she learned about the age disparity between Snow White and Prince Charming."
"...Do I want to know?" asked Steve. He was a Disney fan after all.
"In the original fairy tale, Snow White is fourteen to the Prince's thirty, and there were three attempts to kill her by her step mother," said Bruce. He enjoyed the little debates he had with Amy, and this was one topic she had fun with. "Also, in the original fairy tale the prince never woke her up with a kiss... a servant got annoyed at having to carry around a casket and either slapped the girl or dropped it, causing the poisoned apple to fall out and her to wake up."
Steve looked utterly appalled, for good reason.
"Wait...casket?" said Tony, staring at him.
"The prince straight up went to the dwarves, paid for what he thought was a corpse and had his servants carry it around until the apple came out," said Bruce. Their expressions (including Loki's) were hilarious.
"This is a story you read to your children?" said Loki incredulous.
"Oh it gets better," said Amy, having heard the conversation. "When the step mother, who was still queen, was given an invitation to the wedding she had no idea it was her step-daughter getting hitched. The second she showed up, they forced her to wear red hot shoes fresh from a forge and dance until she died."
Steve looked pale. Tony looked fascinated and Loki was bewildered.
"Humans are strange," said Loki.
"Oh we are soooo having a Disney marathon, if only to hear the original variants after," said Tony with glee.
"Do not get me started on the Disney's version of Hercules," said Amy. "That story is so inaccurate it's comical."
Loki looked at her.
"Do I want to know?"
"Let me put it this way...they made Hera his mother and portrayed Zeus as a 'loving family man' instead of the serial rapist that he is," said Amy flatly.
Loki had an incredulous look on his face.
"You must be joking. Zeus is as far from a 'loving father' as he is from being sober," he said flatly.
"I wish I were," said Amy. "I honestly felt more empathy for Hades than I did for the main character."
Loki was utterly baffled at the Disney movies, especially Heracles which he found rather ridiculous.
On the plus side, it accidentally caused the Avengers to bond over movies...or at least roasting them for a good twenty minutes before starting the next one. It was hard to remember to hate Loki when his acerbic wit caused more than a few of them to choke on popcorn from laughing.
Amy didn't know what was more fun... roasting the movies or watching Loki get into a one-sided argument with his new cat that he inevitably lost over it stealing his pizza slice.
Amy was wide eyed when they took off the blindfold and saw where they were. Tony had insisted on taking her out when he discovered her birthday was in less than a week, and he wanted her to have a proper experience.
Since Loki was still too well known in America, he decided to take them over the pond to England instead.
He had mostly put on a pair of sunglasses he charmed with a spell to deter people from looking too closely at his face, and since Natasha and Clint would be going as well, they could act as his parole officers.
His hair was also the same shade as Amy's, mostly out of solidarity.
"Where are we?" asked Amy.
"Thorpe Park. Happy birthday spitfire," said Tony cheerfully.
Amy had never really celebrated her birthday properly before...this would be an interesting experience for everyone.
Especially since they ended up running into the most unlikely trio Bruce had been hoping to avoid since they were so close to Surrey.
In a more secluded area of the park...
Petunia stared down her American cousin. She had taken one look at Amy and had known immediately the girl was her sister's daughter.
Bruce silently held out the letter he had kept safe all these years. Petunia skimmed through it briefly before she scowled.
"Damn wizards. First they took my sister, and they expected me to raise her daughter?"
"From what we were told, the wards he mentioned knew you weren't blood related so they dumped her on me," explained Bruce. "Not that I'm complaining much."
"I hope you're not expecting me to take her in. Vernon hated James and he never would have tolerated a witch in the house," said Petunia.
Bruce shook his head.
"I wouldn't give up my daughter for anything, I just thought you had a right to know what they tried to pull."
Petunia knew how stubborn wizards could be. Which was why the first thing she did once they returned home was convince Vernon to take the long overdue promotion he kept putting off because he didn't want their son to grow up around 'uncouth foreigners'.
With the amount of money he'd be making, they could still send Dudley to Smeltings and hopefully spend as little time as possible outside of England.