As it turned out, Coulson wasn't the one who needed the warning about wasps.

Peter played in the water for a while, but it wasn't as much fun for him as it was for the other campers at the lakefront just then. He was younger than them, and while they weren't rude to him or mean, they weren't all that set on hanging out with a nine-year-old, either. Especially one that was really little for his age and (because none of them knew who his dad was) not very interesting.

He went down the slide a few times and swam a little, but he had a pool at home and the lake wasn't interesting enough to keep him there without his own set of friends to play with. He pulled himself out of the water and reached for his towel.

"Leaving so soon?" Katie asked.

He nodded, smiling up at her and then feeling a rush of cheer when Tiny came over to stick his cold nose against Peter's side, looking for attention that the boy was willing to give him.

"Yeah." He scratched Tiny's ears, almost needing to reach up to do it since the large dog was also looking for attention from Katie. "I think I'll go for a walk."

"Don't wander off."

"I'll walk around the water."

"But not in the water," she told him, catching his cheeks with her palms. "You'll be too far away for me to jump in and rescue you."

Which earned her another cheerful smile.

"I'll stay on the beach. Maybe just to the canoes and back, or something."

"That's a good plan. Have fun."

It was close enough that Phil and she could both still keep an eye on him and have him in their line of sight for the entirety of the walk.

"Okay."

He skipped off the dock with the camp dog following him at a trot. Peter waved at Phil as he and Tiny went by the group working on the brush at the edge of the beach. Coulson looked over at the dock and then he returned Peter's wave, clearly deciding that the boy wasn't running headlong into some unknown danger that needed handled that moment. He did, however, change his position so that he could watch as Peter and the large dog made their way away from the dock and down the beach.

Unseen by anyone but the temporary camp doctor, who was lounging on a fallen log that was always being used as a handy bench (as evidenced by the well worn trunk) and ostensibly reading a book while trying to catch some sun and maybe get some color, the invisible Cloak of Levitation swooped behind them, flying in dizzying patterns above the boy.

"You've got to be kidding me…" Strange muttered, softly, looking up from the book he wasn't really reading and watching as the ancient relic left with the Stark boy, clearly still obsessed with the kid.

With still no indication why.

OOOOOOOOOO

Peter didn't mind walking alone. He liked people, but he'd been pretty alone sometimes when he'd been a foster kid, so being by himself wasn't traumatizing or anything like that. He was enjoying himself, really, walking along the water and absorbing all the sensations around him. Sometimes it seemed like a lot – especially when he was around a lot of people and a lot of activity – but right now he was feeling pretty low-key. Although he did feel, sometimes, like someone was following him as he walked.

Whenever he turned around, though, no one was there. His stomach felt a little weird, but it didn't hurt, so he wasn't too worried, and really, there wasn't anyone near him, so he couldn't be in any danger, anyway. Buy it didn't keep him from looking back over his shoulder every now and then and listening to see if he could hear anything over the sound of the kids at the swimming area splashing and laughing and the kids playing in the canoes farther down the beach. Not to mention the animals that he could hear.

Then he heard a buzzing sound that caught his attention, and he looked up at a tree, noticing a lot of bees flying around a little paper-looking hive thing.

"Cool…"

Peter was mindful of the promise that he'd made to stay on the beach, but he did walk right up to the edge of the trees so he could get a better look. His sharp eyes noticed that it was more than one kind of bee that he was seeing and he wondered if they were fighting. All of the buzzing sure sounded angry to him, but he didn't know for sure. He was a genius, but he wasn't that good with nature, yet.

"Wow…"

They really were fighting, it looked like. Some of the littler bees were ganging up on the bigger ones and it was pretty gross, really. Peter stepped a little closer to get a better view and several things happened at once. His foot came down on a small hole; he could feel the depression in the sandy rocks even through his flip-flop. He looked down to see what he'd stepped on, and the sound of fabric above him caught his eye before he could process the fact that there was a hole and there were a lot of bees coming out of it. The noise wasn't attached to anything that he could see – it sounded like a flag in the wind, or something – but the hive that he'd been looking at suddenly jerked to the side as if something invisible had brushed up against it, and it fell, landing in front of Peter with a weird papery thud.

And a million bees were suddenly coming at him from above and below.

"Ahhhhhh!"

As quickly as he could, Peter took off, running back down the beach toward the safety of the others, a loud and very angry buzzing following him. He was a fair distance away but could see some people were turning in his direction. The ones who had heard his scream over the yelling of the kids playing in the water. He yelped when he felt the first sting, and then when the next until it seemed like a million little needles were stabbing him and there was no way he was going to be able to outrun them, and waving his arms wildly didn't seem to be scaring them off.

He heard someone yell at him to jump in the water, but Peter couldn't focus enough, just then, to even know which direction the water was. In mid stride the boy felt something slam into his side, knocking him off balance and making him stumble. He didn't fall, though, despite bracing himself for it. Something – he didn't see anything – grabbed his arm and pulled him completely off his feet, tossing him into the water.

OOOOOOOOOOO

"Jesus…"

Coulson was the first to react but he wasn't the only one. At Peter's first shout, the SHIELD agent's hand had reached for the well concealed sidearm that he was carrying, but there wasn't any threat that Coulson could see. He could only see the boy running toward them waving his arms like a crazy person.

He almost instinctively knew what was happening, then. They were out there dealing with wasps, after all, and it wasn't impossible that Peter had somehow managed to find a nest that they'd overlooked or just hadn't reached, yet.

"Get in the water, Peter!" he shouted, running toward the boy. Not that he could shoot all the wasps that were chasing him, of course, but the immediate (and only) plan that he could think of was to reach Peter and haul him into the lake where the water would keep the wasps from doing any more harm. "Get in the-"

Before he could finish the sentence he saw Peter lose his balance and then make a crazy lunge sideway, somehow gaining a fair bit of altitude and ending up splash landing almost 8 feet out into the water.

"What the hell…?"