Tesseract Child

Guarding Giants

Because every 5 year old thinks superhero is a fun game and because grownups can't really help it. Protecting children from both physical and psychological trauma is a biological imperative.

Thor once released, stormed to the door raised back his fist.

"Wait!" Robin piped up.

Thor looked back at the little boy in disbelief, "You freed us. Is this not where we do our part?"

"Well, that's going to make a lot of noise. Have you tried it yet, to see if it's even locked?" Robin padded quickly and silently up to the door. He pressed an ear to it then reached up and tried the knob. The door was open. He silently shushed the two big warriors then peaked outside.

Captain America rubbed a hand over his eyes in embarrassment; then nodded for Thor to follow after the child.

"Psst, Robin, it's the other way," the Captain corrected in sotto voce.

Robin looked back at the smaller of the two warriors with guileless questioning eyes. "The generator is to the left. Look up. There are more terminated power lines on the far side. The generator was, like, um right beside the portal machine or were you, you know, looking to retrieve gear?" Robin was bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet with the effort it took to stay mostly silent. They were in unsecured territory he had to shut up. He didn't want to shut up. If they could just start moving, moving would be just as good as talking.

Thor looked at the Captain with an eyebrow raised. With the Avengers, everyone had agreed the Captain was the leader.

Captain America sighed in defeat and went the way Robin had originally indicated. Robin kept running a few steps ahead then looking back quietly and bouncing on the balls of his feet waiting for the two soldiers to catch up. All of a sudden in a flash Robin darted around the corner. The bed sheet fluttered to the ground behind him. There were two heavy thuds. Captain America and Thor ran round the corner recognizing the sounds of combat.

Robin sat on the ground with his head in his hands, butt naked, beside two fully grown armed soldiers, both of whom were sprawled out unconscious. "N..Nn..Not whelming. Ouchy, ouchy..." He was rocking slightly holding his head.

Thor picked up the bed sheet and passed it back to the child.

"Thank you," Robin chirped quietly still holding his head. Once he'd tied his bed sheet back round himself, he passed Thor a security card from one of the guards. Robin tried to stand and fell back down shaking.

Captain America picked up Robin in one arm hoping for the bouncy little chatterbox to look a little less broken. "What happened? You went around the corner without us. We didn't see. Are you alright? Are you going to throw up on me?"

"Can I ask you a question?" spoke Robin softly resting his head on the patriotic soldier's shoulder.

"You can always ask. You may not get the answer you were hoping for, but you can always ask," replied the Captain, carrying the child away from the soldiers.  Thor took over guarding and scouting.

"Can you guys fight and defend yourselves? I mean, don't get me wrong, you look ripped and all but it's not always the same thing. You see, the problem is, I'm not sure I can do that again," Robin admitted weakly, gesturing back to the K.O.'d guards. "My head won't tolerate it. Even before I kicked the first guy in the head, the rotation on my handspring had me feeling like I was gonna black out and I don't have enough mass anymore to take them out with punches so I had to spin kick the second guard and there's two of everything now. They didn't even lay a finger on me and I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to stay conscious. I'll keep trying to protect you but I honestly think any more hand to hand combat might kill me. So,... can you fight? I mean really fight... not like, W.W.E.(World Wrestling Entertainment) cause you do kind of look a little like professional wrestlers. I was working on the hypothesis that you could fight based on the efforts they took to restrain you. But, like Batman says, a hypothesis used as a final conclusion is reckless and likely to lead to failure so, can you fight or are you civilians that I need to protect?"