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cap_ironman2011-12-20 09:43 pm
cap_ironman_fe) wrote in cap_ironman2011-12-20 09:43 pm
Happy Holidays, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cookinguptales!
And now, it is finally POSTING TIME, which I am totally stoked for. So much glorious fic and lovely art! :D Envy me, for I have peered into all the presents early and they are great. On with the first gift!
Title: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Author/Artist:marinarusalka
Universe: Marvel Adventures: Avengers
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Beta:inmyriadbits
Summary: Steve and Tony discover just how crazy the Toys-R-Us in Times Square can get at Christmas time.
Pairings/Characters: Steve/Tony
Word Count: 3600
A/N: Written for the prompt: DINOSAURS. Do Cap and Tony fight dinosaurs? Do they turn into dinosaurs? Do they adopt a dinosaur? ALL OF THE ABOVE? I don't even know. I want dinosaurs.
"Anyone ever tell you that you have a one-track mind, Tony?" Steve didn't bother to hide the amusement in his voice as he examined the contents of Tony's shopping cart: three remote-controlled cars, five remote-controlled helicopters, two spaceships with blinking lights and button-activated sound effects, and a voice-activated robot. "Not all children like high-tech toys, you know?"
"Nonsense, kids love this stuff." Tony swiped a kid-sized electric guitar from a nearby shelf. "Check this out, it comes with an amplifier." He dropped the guitar and the amp into the cart.
"Some kid's parents are going to hate you," Steve said.
It had been like this all afternoon. The toy drive had originally been Jarvis's idea -- the Avengers' butler spent two afternoons a week volunteering for a local children's charity -- but Tony had thrown himself into the project with gleeful enthusiasm. Now the Avengers were committed to hosting a holiday party for over two hundred children in the Mansion's ballroom. And Steve, apparently, was committed to trying to keep Tony in check as they made their way through all four levels of the Toys-R-Us store in Times Square.
Keeping Dr. Doom on the straight and narrow would've probably been easier.
Trying to make Tony understand that families who couldn't afford toys for their children probably couldn't afford a lot of batteries either was probably a lost cause. Rather than argue, Steve simply took charge of the shopping cart and steered it toward the less high-tech sections of the store. Baseballs and gloves, he thought. Maybe some basketballs. Dolls and stuffed animals for the younger kids.
The Toys-R-Us tended to be crowded at the best of times. Two weeks before Christmas, it was packed to capacity. The ceiling was draped with loops of silver garland and twists of green and red ribbon, and the windows sported decals of snowflakes and colorful gifts. The Ferris wheel on the lower level flashed red and green lights. The line for the ride snaked all the way outside the store and around the block, and harried-looking employees in elf and reindeer costumes were making a valiant effort to keep the waiting children entertained.
"Maybe I should put on the armor." Tony hefted the red and gold briefcase in his right hand and gave it a light shake. His voice was barely audible over the noise of the crowd and the tinkling strains of the Nutcracker Suite being piped in by the muzak system. "Then we could just fly over this mob."
"I don't think the management would appreciate that," Steve said. "Besides, isn't it nice to just go out as regular people for once? Not Iron Man, not Captain America, just two fellas doing their holiday shopping like everyone else."
"Says the guy who insisted on bringing his shield," Tony drawled.
"Force of habit." Steve shrugged. "It's not as if I'm going to use it for anything. I mean, we're in a toy store; what could possibly happen?"
That was when the twenty-foot tyrannosaurus in a sparkly blue tutu burst through the wall and stomped the Santa's Workshop display in front of the Ferris wheel.
"You had to ask, didn't you?" Tony sighed as he let the briefcase drop to the floor and toed the activation switch.
All around them, the noise level in the store increased dramatically as hundreds of holiday shoppers stampeded toward the exits, knocking over everything in their way. Teddy bears and Barbie dolls flew in all directions. The LEGO Empire State building toppled over in a burst of little plastic bricks. The T-Rex let out an ear-splitting roar and spun in a circle. Its tail hit the Ferris wheel, which began to topple.
"Iron Man!" Steve barked out.
"On it!" Iron Man's face plate slammed down just the last pieces of his boots and gauntlets clicked onto place. He flung himself from the third-floor mezzanine, activated his jet boots once he was safely away from the crowd, and swooped down to catch and right the Ferris wheel before it could fall.
Steve slung the carrying case off his shoulder and pulled his shield out. He wasn't about to throw it, not in an enclosed space packed with frightened civilians, but the sight of it was enough to get the crowd's attention focused on him. Steve pitched his voice above the surrounding din, and began directing the crowd toward the emergency exits.
Behind him, he heard the distinctive high-pitched whine of Iron Man's repulsors firing, followed by another enraged roar from the T-Rex and the disquieting sound of metal tearing apart. A moment later, Iron Man zoomed toward the top mezzanine, lugging a gondola full of screaming kids and parents in each arm. He must've detached them from the Ferris wheel in order to get them away from the dinosaur. As Steve watched, Tony set the gondolas down near an emergency stair, then flew back to grab more people.
The T-Rex was still spinning around in circles, waving its tiny forearms in the air and occasionally swaying from side to side. The saucer-sized, iridescent-blue sequins on its tutu cast ever-shifting spots of lights on the surrounding walls. Something about its movements struck Steve as odd, but he couldn't quite pinpoint what the strangeness was. It didn't seem be to be actively attacking anyone, but a creature that big didn't need to attack in order to do harm. At the very least, it was frightening a hell of a lot of people, and the wild swings of its tail were causing massive property damage.
"Can you knock it out?" He yelled at Tony.
"I'm trying!" Tony flew down to hover just above the T-Rex's head, and extended his arms to fire another blast. "What the heck..."
Instead of the white glow of repulsor rays, Iron Man's gauntlets emitted a burst of tiny pink and purple flowers. They fluttered around the T-Rex in a perfumed pastel cloud, and sank to the floor to mingle with the plastic snowflakes.
"Okay, that's not good." Iron Man tried again, and produced another floral display. "What's going on here, Cap? This is weird even by our standards."
"I have no idea," Steve admitted. "But it smells nice."
The crowd around Steve was beginning to thin as more and more people made their way out. The Ferris wheel had no riders left on it, thanks to Tony's evacuation efforts. If they could get everyone out of the building, then the lobby would actually be a good place to contain the T-Rex until they could figure out how to put it down. It would certainly be better than letting the beast get out to rampage in Times Square. Steve leaned over the railing to get a better view of the terrain, and saw that the lobby was mostly empty of people now, except for one huddled group of two adults and three children who were trapped in a corner, unable to get to an exit without the risk of being crushed by the T-Rex's wildly swinging tail.
"Iron Man!" Steve vaulted the railing and dropped two stories to the lobby floor below. He rolled on the landing, and came up on his feet right by the T-Rex's flank. "I need to get these people out of here. Can you distract this thing?"
"Right now, that's about all I can do." Tony flew in tight circles, scattering daisies and forget-me-nots as he went. "Go for it."
Steve narrowly dodged a kick from a clawed foot nearly the size of his torso, and sprinted toward the cornered group.
"Is anyone hurt?" he demanded. They all shook their heads at him. The oldest kid looked about twelve, big enough to keep up on her own. The other two -- a boy and a girl -- were small enough for the adults to carry. "We'll go on my signal," Steve told them. "Stay close to the wall, and head for the side door over there."
"Now!" Iron Man yelled, and sent an especially dense spray of flowers right at the T-Rex's eyes. Steve motioned for the others to go, and followed a moment later, keeping himself between the T-Rex and the running civilians.
They were about halfway to the door when Iron Man yelled "Heads up!" just as the T-Rex swung one leg out to the side and launched into a surprisingly graceful spin. Steve got his arm up barely in time for the three clawed toes to graze the shield instead of his head. The impact knocked him over but he managed to roll with it, sprang to his feet, and smacked the shield into the T-Rex's scaly ankle. The beast roared and staggered away from him a little, which gave everyone just enough time to make it to the exit and out into the street.
"Cap, you okay?" Iron Man sounded a little breathless.
"I'm fine," Steve said, "but you were supposed to distract it."
"Hey, let's turn your shield into a daisy, and see what an effective distraction you make. I need an actual weapon." Iron Man hovered in place for a moment, then swerved toward the Ferris wheel. He pried off a six-foot steel bar and spun around, wielding the bar as a club at the T-Rex's head.
"Noooo!" One of the children Steve just helped evacuate, a small dark-haired girl in a puffy yellow coat, wriggled out of her mother's arms and tried to run back inside the store. Steve scooped her up in one arm just before she made it through the door. "Don't let the bad robot hurt Mimi!"
"Mimi?" Steve echoed blankly.
"Bad robot?" Iron Man said in an outraged tone.
"I'm so sorry, Captain!" The girl's mother plucked at Steve's arm. "It's really not Marisol's fault. She didn't mean any harm!"
"Okay, time out." Steve set the little girl -- Marisol, apparently -- down on the ground, and did his best to compose his expression into something reassuring and authoritative rather than hopelessly confused. "Tell me what's going on here. Do you two know something about this dinosaur?"
"Her name is Mimi!" Marisol insisted, and made a break for the door again. Her mother grabbed the back of her coat and tugged her back.
"Marisol, honey, show Captain America your picture."
Only now did Steve notice that Marisol was clutching a drawing pad and a handful of crayons. Steve had no idea how this could be relevant to the situation, but past experience had taught him to recognize times when it was useful to stop and listen, even in the midst of a dinosaur attack, and this was definitely one of those times.
"Go on," he said in his most encouraging tone. "Show me."
Marisol made another unsuccessful effort to wriggle from her mother's grip. "But the bad robot--"
"Won't hurt anyone," Steve promised. "Isn't that right, Iron Man?"
"The bad robot is too busy trying not to become dinosaur chow," Iron Man huffed from behind and above him.
Marisol hesitated for a few more seconds, then opened the drawing pad and held it out for Steve to see.
Right there on the first page was a drawing of a T-Rex in a blue tutu, with "Mimi" written over its head in blocky purple letters. In the top right corner was a surprisingly well-drawn Iron Man, shooting flowers from his palms.
"She's never made anything big before," Anita's mother told him anxiously. "Just butterflies and rainbows and things. She was getting bored waiting on line for the ride. I thought it would be safe to let her doodle just a little."
Inside the store, the Ferris wheel finally toppled, crashing into the elevator bank with an explosion of noise and flying glass. The T-Rex staggered away from the wreckage and tried to rush toward the gaping hole where the front wall used to be, but Iron Man drove it back inside.
"Let me get this straight," Steve said. "Marisol draws things, and they just... appear?"
Mother and daughter nodded at him with identical wide-eyed expressions.
Well. That was new. Steve examined the drawing thoughtfully. For a tiny possibly-mutant, possibly-magical kindergartener, Marisol was a pretty good artist.
"So... the flowers are to--"
"To keep the bad robot from hurting Mimi with his death rays."
Steve really hoped Tony hadn't heard that.
"And the tutu?"
Marisol's eyeroll clearly conveyed her opinion of dimwitted adults. "Because she's a ballerina!"
"Of course she is." Suddenly, Steve realized why the T-Rex's movements had struck him as so odd earlier. All those lumbering steps and spins, the swaying tail and waving forearms -- they were keeping time with Nutcracker Suite, still audible over the store's PA system, despite the competing sounds of a stomping dinosaur and an angrily muttering Iron Man.
The dinosaur was dancing.
He looked at Marisol's mother, who was now squatting on the sidewalk with her arms wrapped around her daughter, effectively preventing her from trying to run off again.
"So, uhm, Ms..."
"Perez."
"Right. Ms Perez, is there a way to get rid of the things Marisol creates?" Surely the family didn't live in an ever-growing pile of butterflies and rainbows. Somebody would've noticed.
Ms Perez shook her head. "They usually fade away on their own, after an hour or so."
That was something of a relief. They could probably keep the T-Re-- keep Mimi confined inside the store for an hour if they really had to. Of course, there wouldn't be much left of the building by then.
"Marisol," Steve said, "do you think you try and make Mimi a little smaller?"
She blinked at him. "How?"
Good question. Maybe if there was something to provide scale...
"Draw something small next to her. Like a chair or a... a Christmas tree. And make them the same size as Mimi." There was a chance that they'd end up with a giant chair, but Steve figured it was worth the risk.
"Hey, Cap!" Iron Man yelled from inside. "Bad robot could use a hand here."
"On my way." Steve spared one last quick glance for Marisol, who was now curled over her drawing pad with her hair falling into her face, and ran back inside the store.
Iron Man was now perched precariously on the back of Mimi's neck. He'd fashioned some sort muzzle-and-harness contraption from pieces of the Ferris wheel, and was using it to steer the T-Rex back inside whenever she danced too close to one of the exits. The method was working pretty well so far, but Steve could see it was costing Iron Man a lot of effort.
"What do you need me to do?" He called out.
"Just give a good whack with your shield if it looks like it's going to get out." Tony's voice sounded a little winded, but otherwise he seemed more annoyed than distressed. "Between the two of us, I figure we can keep it in."
"Right." Steve shifted his grip on the shield and got ready to throw.
It worked great the first two times. The third time, Steve's throw caught Mimi on what appeared to be an especially sensitive spot on her nose. She shrieked and reared up, tossing her head from side to side with uncanny speed. Iron Man, who hadn't been seated very securely in the first place, got tossed off like a rag doll, arms and legs flailing in all directions. Steve didn't see him land, but he certainly heard the crash.
"Tony! Are you all right?"
"You mean aside from that giant bruise on my ego?" Tony grumbled. "Yeah, I'm fi-- whoa!?"
"What's wrong?" Steve demanded, but by the time he got the question out he could already see what was wrong. It was kind of hard to miss a twenty-foot-tall Iron Man staggering to his feet on the other side of the suddenly very crowded lobby.
"Oooookay." Iron Man looked down at himself. "Either Hank's been very careless about where he puts his Pym particles, or this day has just gotten even weirder. Which I wouldn't have thought possible."
"I think I know what happened," Steve said. "Can you handle things here while I check it out?"
"I think so." Iron Man turned to look at Mimi, who'd been startled into temporary stillness by his sudden growth spurt. "At least I'm big enough for proper dinosaur wrestling now."
"Don't wrestle her!" Steve said quickly. The lobby was already a ruin, littered with broken glass and the twisted remains of the Ferris wheel and ankle-deep in flowers. Parts of the first-floor mezzanine were sagging in an alarming fashion, suggesting that some crucial structural supports had already gone. A fight between two superstrong giants was likely to bring the whole building down. "Try dancing with her instead."
"Try what?" Even with the face plate down over Tony's face, Iron Man somehow managed to convey an expression that clearly said Captain America has gone completely nuts.
"She's trying to dance the Nutcracker Suite," Steve explained. "Just play along, okay?"
"I don't know how to ballet!" Iron Man sounded frantic.
"Just do your best," Steve told him, and ran back outside.
One look at Marisol's drawing pad confirmed his suspicions about what happened. Marisol had ignored his nice, sensible, inanimate suggestions for providing scale. Instead, she'd ripped off and discarded the corner of the page where the small, flower-strewing version of Iron Man had been, and drawn in a new, T-Rex sized version.
"It didn't work right," she informed him solemnly.
"I'll say." Steve glanced over his shoulder to where Iron Man was now attempting an awkward kind of waltz with Mimi. Clearly, having Marisol draw more stuff was not the solution to the problem. There had to be another way...
A splash of color on the sidewalk caught his eye, and he bent down to reach for it. It turned out to be an oversized advertising flyer, promising "the best Toys-R-Us Christmas ever!" One side of the flyer had a list of toys on sale, the other was mostly taken up by a big full-color photo of the Ferris wheel surrounded by foil-embossed snowflakes. Steve glanced from the flyer to Marisol's drawing, then back again.
"I think I have an idea," he said.
* * *
"You made a collage," Tony said.
Steve shrugged. "It was the right scale."
They were sitting on the sofa in the Avengers Mansion's den, drinking hot chocolate while Tony soaked his feet in a tub of some herbal-smelling concoction that Jarvis had mixed up for him. There was a crackling, pine-scented fire going in the fireplace, and Christmas carols playing on the stereo. Despite the warm coziness of the scene, Tony looked distinctly sulky.
"I had to waltz with a dinosaur for an hour, and you made a collage."
"Actually," Steve said, "Marisol made the collage. I just showed her how."
Tony glared at him. "That's not the point."
"Right," Steve said. "The point is, it worked. You shrank down to your proper size, and Mimi shrank with you. We should just count ourselves lucky that one of the onlookers had glue and scissors in his shopping bag."
Tony scowled and reached across the coffee table to snatch up the Toys-R-Us flyer, which now had cutouts of Marisol's drawings on Mimi and Iron Man pasted next to the Ferris wheel photo.
"This is so unfair," he grumbled. "I get all the physical hardship and you get to save the day with arts and crafts."
"Oh, come on." Steve clapped him on the shoulder. "Waltzing couldn't have been that much of a hardship."
"She kept stepping on my toes."
"You were wearing armored boots."
"She was a dinosaur."
He did have a point there. Steve did his best to look solemn and sympathetic, but some of his amusement must've shown through, because Tony's glare remained firmly in place.
"You're laughing at me."
"No I'm not."
"You totally are. A dinosaur crushed my toes, an adorable child called me a bad robot in public, and now my boyfriend is laughing at me. I'm canceling Christmas."
"Don't be a Scrooge." Steve leaned over and bumped his shoulder against Tony's. "Would a hot chocolate make it better? I'll put extra marshmallows in it."
"And hazelnut syrup?" Tony gave him a wobbly-chinned look that was so obviously playing for sympathy, Steve had to bite his lip to keep from laughing.
"And hazelnut syrup." He patted Tony's arm. "Sit tight, I'll be right back."
The hot chocolate put Tony in a visibly better mood. He slouched comfortably against the back of the couch and wriggled his toes in the steaming tub.
"So," he said, "what are we going to do about that Marisol kid?"
"I referred her mother to Charles Xavier," Steve said. "Marisol's too young to attend his school, but I'm sure he can arrange some private tutoring or something."
"Meaning she's not our problem anymore. Great." Tony smiled and took another sip of his chocolate. "You know," he said after a while, "I guess it wasn't so bad. I mean, compared to that time the Masters of Evil tried to blow up Rockefeller Center during the tree-lighting ceremony, or the time the Doombots attacked Times Square on New Year's Eve -- as holiday disasters go, this one was pretty mild. And we got our shopping finished. All in all, not a bad day."
"That's the spirit." Steve leaned in for a quick, chocolate-flavored kiss. "Happy holidays, Tony."
"Happy holidays."
Title: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Author/Artist:
marinarusalkaUniverse: Marvel Adventures: Avengers
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Beta:
inmyriadbitsSummary: Steve and Tony discover just how crazy the Toys-R-Us in Times Square can get at Christmas time.
Pairings/Characters: Steve/Tony
Word Count: 3600
A/N: Written for the prompt: DINOSAURS. Do Cap and Tony fight dinosaurs? Do they turn into dinosaurs? Do they adopt a dinosaur? ALL OF THE ABOVE? I don't even know. I want dinosaurs.
"Anyone ever tell you that you have a one-track mind, Tony?" Steve didn't bother to hide the amusement in his voice as he examined the contents of Tony's shopping cart: three remote-controlled cars, five remote-controlled helicopters, two spaceships with blinking lights and button-activated sound effects, and a voice-activated robot. "Not all children like high-tech toys, you know?"
"Nonsense, kids love this stuff." Tony swiped a kid-sized electric guitar from a nearby shelf. "Check this out, it comes with an amplifier." He dropped the guitar and the amp into the cart.
"Some kid's parents are going to hate you," Steve said.
It had been like this all afternoon. The toy drive had originally been Jarvis's idea -- the Avengers' butler spent two afternoons a week volunteering for a local children's charity -- but Tony had thrown himself into the project with gleeful enthusiasm. Now the Avengers were committed to hosting a holiday party for over two hundred children in the Mansion's ballroom. And Steve, apparently, was committed to trying to keep Tony in check as they made their way through all four levels of the Toys-R-Us store in Times Square.
Keeping Dr. Doom on the straight and narrow would've probably been easier.
Trying to make Tony understand that families who couldn't afford toys for their children probably couldn't afford a lot of batteries either was probably a lost cause. Rather than argue, Steve simply took charge of the shopping cart and steered it toward the less high-tech sections of the store. Baseballs and gloves, he thought. Maybe some basketballs. Dolls and stuffed animals for the younger kids.
The Toys-R-Us tended to be crowded at the best of times. Two weeks before Christmas, it was packed to capacity. The ceiling was draped with loops of silver garland and twists of green and red ribbon, and the windows sported decals of snowflakes and colorful gifts. The Ferris wheel on the lower level flashed red and green lights. The line for the ride snaked all the way outside the store and around the block, and harried-looking employees in elf and reindeer costumes were making a valiant effort to keep the waiting children entertained.
"Maybe I should put on the armor." Tony hefted the red and gold briefcase in his right hand and gave it a light shake. His voice was barely audible over the noise of the crowd and the tinkling strains of the Nutcracker Suite being piped in by the muzak system. "Then we could just fly over this mob."
"I don't think the management would appreciate that," Steve said. "Besides, isn't it nice to just go out as regular people for once? Not Iron Man, not Captain America, just two fellas doing their holiday shopping like everyone else."
"Says the guy who insisted on bringing his shield," Tony drawled.
"Force of habit." Steve shrugged. "It's not as if I'm going to use it for anything. I mean, we're in a toy store; what could possibly happen?"
That was when the twenty-foot tyrannosaurus in a sparkly blue tutu burst through the wall and stomped the Santa's Workshop display in front of the Ferris wheel.
"You had to ask, didn't you?" Tony sighed as he let the briefcase drop to the floor and toed the activation switch.
All around them, the noise level in the store increased dramatically as hundreds of holiday shoppers stampeded toward the exits, knocking over everything in their way. Teddy bears and Barbie dolls flew in all directions. The LEGO Empire State building toppled over in a burst of little plastic bricks. The T-Rex let out an ear-splitting roar and spun in a circle. Its tail hit the Ferris wheel, which began to topple.
"Iron Man!" Steve barked out.
"On it!" Iron Man's face plate slammed down just the last pieces of his boots and gauntlets clicked onto place. He flung himself from the third-floor mezzanine, activated his jet boots once he was safely away from the crowd, and swooped down to catch and right the Ferris wheel before it could fall.
Steve slung the carrying case off his shoulder and pulled his shield out. He wasn't about to throw it, not in an enclosed space packed with frightened civilians, but the sight of it was enough to get the crowd's attention focused on him. Steve pitched his voice above the surrounding din, and began directing the crowd toward the emergency exits.
Behind him, he heard the distinctive high-pitched whine of Iron Man's repulsors firing, followed by another enraged roar from the T-Rex and the disquieting sound of metal tearing apart. A moment later, Iron Man zoomed toward the top mezzanine, lugging a gondola full of screaming kids and parents in each arm. He must've detached them from the Ferris wheel in order to get them away from the dinosaur. As Steve watched, Tony set the gondolas down near an emergency stair, then flew back to grab more people.
The T-Rex was still spinning around in circles, waving its tiny forearms in the air and occasionally swaying from side to side. The saucer-sized, iridescent-blue sequins on its tutu cast ever-shifting spots of lights on the surrounding walls. Something about its movements struck Steve as odd, but he couldn't quite pinpoint what the strangeness was. It didn't seem be to be actively attacking anyone, but a creature that big didn't need to attack in order to do harm. At the very least, it was frightening a hell of a lot of people, and the wild swings of its tail were causing massive property damage.
"Can you knock it out?" He yelled at Tony.
"I'm trying!" Tony flew down to hover just above the T-Rex's head, and extended his arms to fire another blast. "What the heck..."
Instead of the white glow of repulsor rays, Iron Man's gauntlets emitted a burst of tiny pink and purple flowers. They fluttered around the T-Rex in a perfumed pastel cloud, and sank to the floor to mingle with the plastic snowflakes.
"Okay, that's not good." Iron Man tried again, and produced another floral display. "What's going on here, Cap? This is weird even by our standards."
"I have no idea," Steve admitted. "But it smells nice."
The crowd around Steve was beginning to thin as more and more people made their way out. The Ferris wheel had no riders left on it, thanks to Tony's evacuation efforts. If they could get everyone out of the building, then the lobby would actually be a good place to contain the T-Rex until they could figure out how to put it down. It would certainly be better than letting the beast get out to rampage in Times Square. Steve leaned over the railing to get a better view of the terrain, and saw that the lobby was mostly empty of people now, except for one huddled group of two adults and three children who were trapped in a corner, unable to get to an exit without the risk of being crushed by the T-Rex's wildly swinging tail.
"Iron Man!" Steve vaulted the railing and dropped two stories to the lobby floor below. He rolled on the landing, and came up on his feet right by the T-Rex's flank. "I need to get these people out of here. Can you distract this thing?"
"Right now, that's about all I can do." Tony flew in tight circles, scattering daisies and forget-me-nots as he went. "Go for it."
Steve narrowly dodged a kick from a clawed foot nearly the size of his torso, and sprinted toward the cornered group.
"Is anyone hurt?" he demanded. They all shook their heads at him. The oldest kid looked about twelve, big enough to keep up on her own. The other two -- a boy and a girl -- were small enough for the adults to carry. "We'll go on my signal," Steve told them. "Stay close to the wall, and head for the side door over there."
"Now!" Iron Man yelled, and sent an especially dense spray of flowers right at the T-Rex's eyes. Steve motioned for the others to go, and followed a moment later, keeping himself between the T-Rex and the running civilians.
They were about halfway to the door when Iron Man yelled "Heads up!" just as the T-Rex swung one leg out to the side and launched into a surprisingly graceful spin. Steve got his arm up barely in time for the three clawed toes to graze the shield instead of his head. The impact knocked him over but he managed to roll with it, sprang to his feet, and smacked the shield into the T-Rex's scaly ankle. The beast roared and staggered away from him a little, which gave everyone just enough time to make it to the exit and out into the street.
"Cap, you okay?" Iron Man sounded a little breathless.
"I'm fine," Steve said, "but you were supposed to distract it."
"Hey, let's turn your shield into a daisy, and see what an effective distraction you make. I need an actual weapon." Iron Man hovered in place for a moment, then swerved toward the Ferris wheel. He pried off a six-foot steel bar and spun around, wielding the bar as a club at the T-Rex's head.
"Noooo!" One of the children Steve just helped evacuate, a small dark-haired girl in a puffy yellow coat, wriggled out of her mother's arms and tried to run back inside the store. Steve scooped her up in one arm just before she made it through the door. "Don't let the bad robot hurt Mimi!"
"Mimi?" Steve echoed blankly.
"Bad robot?" Iron Man said in an outraged tone.
"I'm so sorry, Captain!" The girl's mother plucked at Steve's arm. "It's really not Marisol's fault. She didn't mean any harm!"
"Okay, time out." Steve set the little girl -- Marisol, apparently -- down on the ground, and did his best to compose his expression into something reassuring and authoritative rather than hopelessly confused. "Tell me what's going on here. Do you two know something about this dinosaur?"
"Her name is Mimi!" Marisol insisted, and made a break for the door again. Her mother grabbed the back of her coat and tugged her back.
"Marisol, honey, show Captain America your picture."
Only now did Steve notice that Marisol was clutching a drawing pad and a handful of crayons. Steve had no idea how this could be relevant to the situation, but past experience had taught him to recognize times when it was useful to stop and listen, even in the midst of a dinosaur attack, and this was definitely one of those times.
"Go on," he said in his most encouraging tone. "Show me."
Marisol made another unsuccessful effort to wriggle from her mother's grip. "But the bad robot--"
"Won't hurt anyone," Steve promised. "Isn't that right, Iron Man?"
"The bad robot is too busy trying not to become dinosaur chow," Iron Man huffed from behind and above him.
Marisol hesitated for a few more seconds, then opened the drawing pad and held it out for Steve to see.
Right there on the first page was a drawing of a T-Rex in a blue tutu, with "Mimi" written over its head in blocky purple letters. In the top right corner was a surprisingly well-drawn Iron Man, shooting flowers from his palms.
"She's never made anything big before," Anita's mother told him anxiously. "Just butterflies and rainbows and things. She was getting bored waiting on line for the ride. I thought it would be safe to let her doodle just a little."
Inside the store, the Ferris wheel finally toppled, crashing into the elevator bank with an explosion of noise and flying glass. The T-Rex staggered away from the wreckage and tried to rush toward the gaping hole where the front wall used to be, but Iron Man drove it back inside.
"Let me get this straight," Steve said. "Marisol draws things, and they just... appear?"
Mother and daughter nodded at him with identical wide-eyed expressions.
Well. That was new. Steve examined the drawing thoughtfully. For a tiny possibly-mutant, possibly-magical kindergartener, Marisol was a pretty good artist.
"So... the flowers are to--"
"To keep the bad robot from hurting Mimi with his death rays."
Steve really hoped Tony hadn't heard that.
"And the tutu?"
Marisol's eyeroll clearly conveyed her opinion of dimwitted adults. "Because she's a ballerina!"
"Of course she is." Suddenly, Steve realized why the T-Rex's movements had struck him as so odd earlier. All those lumbering steps and spins, the swaying tail and waving forearms -- they were keeping time with Nutcracker Suite, still audible over the store's PA system, despite the competing sounds of a stomping dinosaur and an angrily muttering Iron Man.
The dinosaur was dancing.
He looked at Marisol's mother, who was now squatting on the sidewalk with her arms wrapped around her daughter, effectively preventing her from trying to run off again.
"So, uhm, Ms..."
"Perez."
"Right. Ms Perez, is there a way to get rid of the things Marisol creates?" Surely the family didn't live in an ever-growing pile of butterflies and rainbows. Somebody would've noticed.
Ms Perez shook her head. "They usually fade away on their own, after an hour or so."
That was something of a relief. They could probably keep the T-Re-- keep Mimi confined inside the store for an hour if they really had to. Of course, there wouldn't be much left of the building by then.
"Marisol," Steve said, "do you think you try and make Mimi a little smaller?"
She blinked at him. "How?"
Good question. Maybe if there was something to provide scale...
"Draw something small next to her. Like a chair or a... a Christmas tree. And make them the same size as Mimi." There was a chance that they'd end up with a giant chair, but Steve figured it was worth the risk.
"Hey, Cap!" Iron Man yelled from inside. "Bad robot could use a hand here."
"On my way." Steve spared one last quick glance for Marisol, who was now curled over her drawing pad with her hair falling into her face, and ran back inside the store.
Iron Man was now perched precariously on the back of Mimi's neck. He'd fashioned some sort muzzle-and-harness contraption from pieces of the Ferris wheel, and was using it to steer the T-Rex back inside whenever she danced too close to one of the exits. The method was working pretty well so far, but Steve could see it was costing Iron Man a lot of effort.
"What do you need me to do?" He called out.
"Just give a good whack with your shield if it looks like it's going to get out." Tony's voice sounded a little winded, but otherwise he seemed more annoyed than distressed. "Between the two of us, I figure we can keep it in."
"Right." Steve shifted his grip on the shield and got ready to throw.
It worked great the first two times. The third time, Steve's throw caught Mimi on what appeared to be an especially sensitive spot on her nose. She shrieked and reared up, tossing her head from side to side with uncanny speed. Iron Man, who hadn't been seated very securely in the first place, got tossed off like a rag doll, arms and legs flailing in all directions. Steve didn't see him land, but he certainly heard the crash.
"Tony! Are you all right?"
"You mean aside from that giant bruise on my ego?" Tony grumbled. "Yeah, I'm fi-- whoa!?"
"What's wrong?" Steve demanded, but by the time he got the question out he could already see what was wrong. It was kind of hard to miss a twenty-foot-tall Iron Man staggering to his feet on the other side of the suddenly very crowded lobby.
"Oooookay." Iron Man looked down at himself. "Either Hank's been very careless about where he puts his Pym particles, or this day has just gotten even weirder. Which I wouldn't have thought possible."
"I think I know what happened," Steve said. "Can you handle things here while I check it out?"
"I think so." Iron Man turned to look at Mimi, who'd been startled into temporary stillness by his sudden growth spurt. "At least I'm big enough for proper dinosaur wrestling now."
"Don't wrestle her!" Steve said quickly. The lobby was already a ruin, littered with broken glass and the twisted remains of the Ferris wheel and ankle-deep in flowers. Parts of the first-floor mezzanine were sagging in an alarming fashion, suggesting that some crucial structural supports had already gone. A fight between two superstrong giants was likely to bring the whole building down. "Try dancing with her instead."
"Try what?" Even with the face plate down over Tony's face, Iron Man somehow managed to convey an expression that clearly said Captain America has gone completely nuts.
"She's trying to dance the Nutcracker Suite," Steve explained. "Just play along, okay?"
"I don't know how to ballet!" Iron Man sounded frantic.
"Just do your best," Steve told him, and ran back outside.
One look at Marisol's drawing pad confirmed his suspicions about what happened. Marisol had ignored his nice, sensible, inanimate suggestions for providing scale. Instead, she'd ripped off and discarded the corner of the page where the small, flower-strewing version of Iron Man had been, and drawn in a new, T-Rex sized version.
"It didn't work right," she informed him solemnly.
"I'll say." Steve glanced over his shoulder to where Iron Man was now attempting an awkward kind of waltz with Mimi. Clearly, having Marisol draw more stuff was not the solution to the problem. There had to be another way...
A splash of color on the sidewalk caught his eye, and he bent down to reach for it. It turned out to be an oversized advertising flyer, promising "the best Toys-R-Us Christmas ever!" One side of the flyer had a list of toys on sale, the other was mostly taken up by a big full-color photo of the Ferris wheel surrounded by foil-embossed snowflakes. Steve glanced from the flyer to Marisol's drawing, then back again.
"I think I have an idea," he said.
* * *
"You made a collage," Tony said.
Steve shrugged. "It was the right scale."
They were sitting on the sofa in the Avengers Mansion's den, drinking hot chocolate while Tony soaked his feet in a tub of some herbal-smelling concoction that Jarvis had mixed up for him. There was a crackling, pine-scented fire going in the fireplace, and Christmas carols playing on the stereo. Despite the warm coziness of the scene, Tony looked distinctly sulky.
"I had to waltz with a dinosaur for an hour, and you made a collage."
"Actually," Steve said, "Marisol made the collage. I just showed her how."
Tony glared at him. "That's not the point."
"Right," Steve said. "The point is, it worked. You shrank down to your proper size, and Mimi shrank with you. We should just count ourselves lucky that one of the onlookers had glue and scissors in his shopping bag."
Tony scowled and reached across the coffee table to snatch up the Toys-R-Us flyer, which now had cutouts of Marisol's drawings on Mimi and Iron Man pasted next to the Ferris wheel photo.
"This is so unfair," he grumbled. "I get all the physical hardship and you get to save the day with arts and crafts."
"Oh, come on." Steve clapped him on the shoulder. "Waltzing couldn't have been that much of a hardship."
"She kept stepping on my toes."
"You were wearing armored boots."
"She was a dinosaur."
He did have a point there. Steve did his best to look solemn and sympathetic, but some of his amusement must've shown through, because Tony's glare remained firmly in place.
"You're laughing at me."
"No I'm not."
"You totally are. A dinosaur crushed my toes, an adorable child called me a bad robot in public, and now my boyfriend is laughing at me. I'm canceling Christmas."
"Don't be a Scrooge." Steve leaned over and bumped his shoulder against Tony's. "Would a hot chocolate make it better? I'll put extra marshmallows in it."
"And hazelnut syrup?" Tony gave him a wobbly-chinned look that was so obviously playing for sympathy, Steve had to bite his lip to keep from laughing.
"And hazelnut syrup." He patted Tony's arm. "Sit tight, I'll be right back."
The hot chocolate put Tony in a visibly better mood. He slouched comfortably against the back of the couch and wriggled his toes in the steaming tub.
"So," he said, "what are we going to do about that Marisol kid?"
"I referred her mother to Charles Xavier," Steve said. "Marisol's too young to attend his school, but I'm sure he can arrange some private tutoring or something."
"Meaning she's not our problem anymore. Great." Tony smiled and took another sip of his chocolate. "You know," he said after a while, "I guess it wasn't so bad. I mean, compared to that time the Masters of Evil tried to blow up Rockefeller Center during the tree-lighting ceremony, or the time the Doombots attacked Times Square on New Year's Eve -- as holiday disasters go, this one was pretty mild. And we got our shopping finished. All in all, not a bad day."
"That's the spirit." Steve leaned in for a quick, chocolate-flavored kiss. "Happy holidays, Tony."
"Happy holidays."
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