Adventures of the Littlevengers!

3) Feeding Time

"Can we get some food soon please?" Bruce asked quietly as he tried to get a hold of Maria's hand.

"Yes, sure Bruce just one sec, everyone hold hands. No wandering off or you don't get food guys. Let's go!" Maria felt very self-conscious as she held Steve on one hip and Natasha on the other, while holding on to Tony's hand on one side and Clint's on the other, as Bruce walked beside he holding on to Thor and Pepper. Walking around a helicopter landing pad with seven children is embarrassing, and suspicious, in its own right, but waiting at a bus stop, to go to the nearest shopping mall, with seven small children was so much worse.

Maria watched as the woman beside her struggled to wrap a blanket around a small child in a stroller with great envy. She hated Fury for dumping all seven of them on her, but she knew that a helicarier was no place for children.

"Are they all yours?" the woman beside her asked, after giving up and tucking the blanket under the stroller.

"Oh, no. I'm minding them for," she thought for a moment.

"For a friend. Do you know does this bus go to Sunview Mall?" she asked, trying to avoid the topic of why she was minding the children until Fury instructed her on what to tell them.

"Yes, it's the second stop," the woman replied as a large double decker bus pulled up.

"Wow, it's so big!" Tony exclaimed with wide eyes and everyone else nodded in agreement.

"Sure is Tony, now wait and let the nice lady get on first," she said holding tighter on to his hand.

"But I wanna get a seat up the top," he complained.

"You can still sit up the top, we'll all sit up the top, just don't rush on," she explained as the doors opened automatically and Steve, who until now Maria had thought was asleep, gasped and whispered "magic". Maria smiled at how cute he looked and, after letting the woman with the stroller get on the bus and pay for her ticket, she pushed everyone on ahead of her.

"Bruce, help everyone upstairs," she commanded while jostling Natasha as she reached for her wallet in her pocked which, thankfully, had stayed dry.

"How much is it for one adult and, uh," she did a mental count of every one, "seven kids?"

"That'll be nine dollars," he said monotonously, and, after Maria handed him a ten, he handed her back her change and a bus ticket.

"Thank you," she replied and Steve copied her, earning a few smiles from a group of elderly women sitting near the front. Natasha had already fallen back asleep, but every so often she would murmur something unintelligibly that sounded suspiciously Russian.

Maria heard a thump from the top floor of the bus and rushed up the stairs to see Clint sprawled out in the middle of the aisle with Tony peering down at him.

"Oh god, Clint what happened? What did I tell you about not climbing everything?" she fussed after carefully placing Natasha and Steve side by side in one of the seats. Thankfully no one else was on the top floor, or she would have quite a lot of explaining to do.

"I'm sorry, I fell when the bus moved and my finger hurts," he said while almost poking her in the eye with his small finger that he had landed on when he fell.

"Oh Clint what am I going to do with you?" she asked playfully after giving his finger a once over and deciding that it was just bruised, but not broken.

"Alright, everyone sit down now, you're not allowed to run up and down the bus. Tony look you can sit right up the front and look out," she said while pointing to the window that looked out on to the road, remembering how much it had fascinated her, and by the looks of it, it had the same effect on not only Tony, but Thor, Clint and even Bruce, who had put down him instruction manual in exchange for pressing his face up against the glass in wonder.