The kid avengers

The Museum

"We're going to the museum" Maria announced over the noise of breakfast.
There was spilled scrambled egg over the table, Bruce was covered in spilled orange juice, Thor had dropped a waffle on the floor which Baxter had quickly grabbed and ran off with, and Clint had tomato sauce all over his face.
Clint and Natasha still sat on one chair and ate from one plate; no matter how many times the adults had tried to get them to eat on their own. Pepper often wondered how it was comfortable, but they were happy so she didn't mind too much.

"Oh cool! They have dinosaurs there!" Tony announced loudly.

"Those are the great beasts you showed me in your book?" Thor asked, receiving an excited nod from Tony.

"I've never been to a museum before" Natasha said, receiving surprised looks from Steve and Tony, but Clint chimed in with "Neither have I". Natasha looked gratefully over at him as the other two boys attention shifted to him.

When Bruce started to wave his arms in the air excitedly and Pepper was splattered with beans; she decided breakfast was over! She really needed to go and get changed; Maria had offered to take all the kids to the museum for the day, allowing Pepper to go into the office for the first time in three months, and allowing Phil an opportunity to catch up on some of the paperwork Fury had been sending him. Of all three of the adults Maria had had the most time away from the kids, and the most time at work; Pepper had had the least.

After breakfast, and a change of clothes for most of them, Maria and the six kids headed out; leaving a worried Pepper and a relieved Phil at the tower.

Maria found that keeping hold of six children in a busy museum was much harder than she'd first thought; but she soon learnt that keeping hold of Natasha stopped her disappearing, and kept Clint close by too. Tony was the other major flight risk, so she kept hold of him with her other hand; leaving Bruce with Steve or Thor who were much less likely to vanish.

They spent the morning in the Heilbrunn Cosmic Pathway and the Hall of Planet Earth; Thor helpfully pointing out several blank spots and the planets that should be featured there. Thor and Tony had a bit of an argument over various things so Maria quickly moved them on to the North American Mammals and the Hall of Biodiversity which was enjoyed much more by Steve, Natasha and Clint.

They had lunch in the cafe, and watched a documentary on penguins in the IMAX, they spent rather a long time in The Birds of The World exhibition as Clint insisted on reading all the information provided.
Then they went to see the dinosaurs on the fourth floor; this was everybody's favourite exhibit and they spent the rest of the afternoon here. It was smaller and less crowded up there, and Maria felt a bit more comfortable letting the children explore more freely. Bruce had fallen asleep in his stroller earlier in the afternoon and was quietly snoozing.

Maria caught Steve not looking at the exhibits; but instead watching a young girl who had curly dark hair and rosy red cheeks, he blushed profusely when Maria nudged him.

"Go say hi" Maria advised him.

"I can't do that! I wouldn't know what to say..." He admitted, stammering slightly over the words and wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans.

"Ask her about the exhibit, it's easy in a place like this" she winked at him and nudged him forward.

'Nothing ever changes' she thought with a smile, 'he's now a twelve year old and i'm still giving him dating advice!'

Maria watched as he shyly approached her, stood next to her but said nothing; instead the young girl turned to him, smiled, complimented his Captain America tshirt and asked him if he'd like to look at the next dinosaur with her. He nodded, lost for words and trailed after her. Maria would have laughed if she hadn't noticed the empty stroller...
She soon had the four other kids looking frantically for Bruce; he couldn't have gone far surely.

Steve joined the search when his new friend (Lauren) had gone home, and soon the security guards too were helping. Clint and Natasha had gone missing during the fuss and Maria was worrying more about what Pepper would say than Fury... If the didn't find them soon Maria would be responsible for losing half the Avengers.

The security guards found Bruce a short while later; asleep on the floor of the research library.
An hour later they found Clint and Natasha who'd accidentally locked themselves in one of the supply closets while they'd searching for Bruce.
Now Maria realised why Pepper really disliked taking them out alone, still, it could have been worse; they hadn't broken anything today.
Maria decided it was definitely time to leave when the word 'yet' creeped into her mind.