00083. Side Story 003: Kids being kids.

Ava looked around at her friends sitting with her at lunch as she said, "It'll work, me and Skye went for an hour last night and no one noticed us being gone."

Natasha cautiously glanced around the cafeteria for a moment before she asked in a low voice, "But don't we have to pay for stuff? We have no money."

Yelena glanced at her sister as she said, "We could just pick pocket a few people when we get there."

Skye shook her head and held up a bracelet as she said, "This is a VIP bracelet, if you have one they don't charge you anything and you can skip the lines. Ava found where they were kept and took some for us to use along with entry tickets."

"I'm not sure it's a good idea, what if we get caught? Maybe we should just ask Ezekiel to let us go. I am pretty sure he would say yes."

Laura nodded as she said, "Cessily is right, we should ask Ezekiel first."

Hope shook her head as she said, "I don't think we should. If he says no, we won't be able to sneak out afterwards."

"Cap likes to say, 'It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission."

Natasha smiled at her sister as she said, "He is talking about when you are doing the right thing. I am pretty sure this isn't what he was talking about."

"Feels right to me." Yelena smiled back as she winked.

Cessily frowned as she asked, "Fine, we'll do it. But what about me? I'll attract a lot of attention with how I look."

Laura patted her arm as she said, "You'll be fine and if anyone makes a big deal, I'll beat the shit out of them."

Natasha smiled as she said, "If you do that we'll definitely attract attention. What you can do is wear a long sleeve shirt, some gloves and pants. Then if we find you a wig, glasses and a hat to wear, almost no one will be able to see what you look like."

Cessily thought about it for a few moments before she asked, "My normal hair wouldn't work?"

Natasha shook her head as she said, "It looks like it's dyed and would draw more attention to you. The key to blending in is to look as average as possible. If we dress you up and keep you near the middle of the group no one will notice."

"Where will we get a wig from?"

Yelena almost jumped out of her seat as she excitedly said, "In one of the store rooms! I found a case full of them when I was looking around for some throwing knives."

"Settle down, we wanna keep this a secret, remember? Also what kinda storage room has throwing knives and wigs?" Erik asked as he looked over at Yelena.

Yelena looked a little embarrassed and settled back into her seat as she said, "It's from the red room, my mother wanted to save most of the training supplies."

Natasha nodded as she said, "So with that we should be fine. But are you sure people won't notice us missing from the base? What if someone comes looking for us and we aren't here?"

Ava glanced around the room at the other kids eating as she said, "Maybe we can have some kids cover for us while we are gone?"

"That could work, but then the other girls would want to join us next time."

Skye nodded as she said, "We could do it in groups, the first group is us. Next group would be whoever we get to cover for us."

Natasha frowned slightly as she said, "I'm pretty sure all the girls will find out, that will be a lot of people to take."

Ava shrugged as she said, "It'll be fine, it will just take a while for everyone to go. Maybe three or four trips."

"So what's the plan? When are we going to do this?" Grant said as he smiled at his younger brother who practically bounced in his seat from excitement.

Ava glanced around the table at all of her friends as she said, "Saturday after lunch since we will have the rest of the day free and no one will notice if we miss dinner."

All of them nodded in agreement and then started to prepare over the next few days anything they might need. Over the next few days Natasha was right and all of the girls from the red room found out about the plan. All of them agreed to cover for the people in the first group, which expanded into almost forty people.

The plan was to take three separate groups over the next three weeks. The girls decided who would go in each group by who was doing the best on the wall test. While the two girls who were currently in the lead for courting Grant and Erik were allowed to join the first group, so they could hang out with their crush.

On Saturday as lunch was ending people started to pair off and everyone made last minute checks before they would meet Ava who was phased inside the portal room. She would quickly portal groups of three to five out of the base and after half an hour everyone in the first group was gone.

Ava arrived through a portal with the last group which included Skye, Cessily, Laura, Natasha, Yelena, and Hope. The place that they portaled into was a spot a few blocks away from their destination, that currently wasn't in use. Skye handed out the wristbands and tickets to everyone. Then the group of forty kids and teenagers moved out in small groups every few minutes.

Ava's group was the last one but as they walked up to the entrance all of them were excited. The sign above the entrance said 'Welcome to the most magical place on earth!'

Ava looked at her friends and they all shared a smile before they moved to the entrance of the park. It didn't take them long at all to get inside and explore the place. Before they knew it almost six hours had passed by and all the groups met back up where they started. Ava then slowly portaled everyone back to the base and everyone hid what they brought back inside of their rooms.

After a few days passed and no one got in trouble, Ava planned out the next trip for the next group. The following Saturday another group of forty kids snuck out of the base with Ava's help and spent time at the theme park. When nothing happened that following week, Ava helped the last group sneak out to the park.

Once that first round of trips was over, Ava and the others started to plan another trip to another park. It took them a couple weeks to find a park, scope it out and then find ways they could get free stuff. But once they were all set, the first group of forty went on a Saturday afternoon.

While Ava and her friends were running around exploring the new theme park. Someone who was a user of Theo's social media platform managed to capture a few images of Cessily and her friends and uploaded them to the platform. One of Theo's clones was alerted from his built-in monitoring app and did a double take. Then he checked the base's cameras and saw when all of the kids snuck out of the base earlier in the day.

He then went back and saw that they had done it before and it wasn't just one group. Every single kid in the base had snuck out at least once in the past two months or so, since Ava learned to make portals. As he was going through the footage, he even saw Ava sneak out of the base a few times with only a handful of people with her.

Ezekiel let out a long sigh and dropped his head on his desk, he knew Fury and probably a few other people were going to be pissed at this oversight. Shisui, who was seated close by reading a book, looked over at the computer screen for a few moments before he burst out laughing. Which made Ezekiel let out a groan of frustration.

Shisui shook his head as he said, "I told you something like this might happen."

"Fury's been nagging me about base security and why don't we have an operations room. Or a monitoring station with a twenty four hour crew rotation. Now he'll force the issue and I can't even say no because of this." Ezekiel banged his head against the desk in frustration as he finished.

Shisui stood up as he placed his book down, then he walked over and patted Ezekiel's shoulder as he said, "You can sulk later, we have some work to do."

Ezekiel glanced up as he said, "You do it, I don't wanna deal with this."

Shisui smirked as he said, "No can do, you're the one who act's for the boss man."

It took over a minute for Ezekiel to sit up and start typing on his computer. After a few moments boxes started to open up from different people. He glanced at them all for a moment before he said, "We have an issue that needs attention, please meet me in the meeting room in half an hour."

No one asked questions and each window closed afterwards. Ezekiel let out a sigh as he stood up. He glanced at Shisui as he said, "Are you sure?"

Shisui was back in his chair and shook his head as he said, "And let you miss all the fun?"

"Fine, but you're gonna have some work to do yourself. Since all of the kids seem to be in on it, I want you to verify how we didn't catch on for over a month."

Shisui let out a sigh as he said, "But I was just getting to the good part."

Ezekiel shook his head and walked towards the door. He was the first to arrive in the meeting room and quietly waited for everyone to show up. Mostly it was everyone who looked after the kids, so Jarvis, Steve, Peggy, Hank, Bill, Tao, Mikhail, Sarah, Alexai, Melina, Bucky and Fury.

Once everyone arrived, Ezekiel didn't say anything and just typed on his computer pulling up the security footage. As the footage started Ezekiel said, "This happened earlier today."

Everyone watched as the kids started to leave with the help of Ava. Bill was the first to speak as he asked, "Are they still gone?"

Ezekiel nodded as Fury glanced at Tao and he asked, "I thought she didn't have a personal sling ring?"

Tao shook her head and frowned as she said, "She doesn't, but we have a few that are locked up in the base. She must have used her ability to take one."

Bill glanced over to Ezekiel as he asked, "Where did they go? The island? And why didn't you let us know sooner? "

Fury nodded in agreement before he turned to glare at Ezekiel as he said, "Even though it's just some of the kids, this is a security issue that will need to be fixed. One that we shouldn't have had in the first place."

Ezekiel glanced at Fury before he turned to look at Bill as he said, "I didn't know because I never thought to monitor the kids. As for where they went, it's a theme park."

After he finished Ezekiel pulled up the photos that alerted him to the missing kids. It was a couple of pictures of the main group of kids with the focus on Cessily. From just a glance you would never be able to tell that she was different from any normal girl, unless you stared at her for a little bit.

Everyone was silent before Alexei laughed and then said, "My daughters do good work, you can hardly notice Cessily is different."

The door opened as Shisui walked in and Melina nodded in agreement as Fury asked, "So who are we sending to bring them back?"

Shisui took a seat at the table as he said, "No one, they will be coming back in half an hour. At least that's in line with when they went last few times."

Everyone turned to look at Shisui, before a few like Fury turned to glare at Ezekiel, who dropped his head on the table. Shisui smirked as he said, "Oh, looks like you didn't tell them about the other times it happened."

Ezekiel let out a sigh as he lifted his head up and said, "I hadn't gotten to it yet."

Ezekiel started to type on his computer and pulled up different footage of groups of kids leaving the base over the past month. As he did, Fury looked around at everyone as he asked, "How the hell did this happen and no one noticed at all?"

Shisui smiled as he said, "Easy, all of the kids left in the base covered for the others. I just went around and checked, they would point me to one place. I would go there and someone would say they left a little while ago and weren't sure where they went. It works as a pretty good cover if you don't use the base's intercom system or check the cameras."

Steve nodded as he said, "Happened to me a couple of times over the past month when I went to chat with some of the kids. I didn't think about it much at the time, since it wasn't important. But looking back on it now it makes sense."

Peggy glanced at everyone before she asked, "Alright so what are we going to do now that we know?"

Ezekiel shrugged as he said, "No clue, besides make sure they can't sneak out again."

Steve shook his head as he said, "They will need to be disciplined for their actions. I think extra cleaning duty and more PT since they seem to have so much energy."

Melina nodded in agreement as she said, "I'm proud of the kids for pulling this off, but we need to make sure they know we are displeased with their actions."

Ezekiel was typing away on his computer as he said, "I am already fixing the issue with the cameras and monitoring system. I should have it finished in an hour or two. But I think we have an issue."

Fury glanced at Ezekiel as he asked, "What is it now?"

"Well this was the second time they went out, and it's only the first group of kids. The other two groups still haven't gone to this new park."

Everyone turned to look at Ezekiel as he shrugged and he said, "If we are going to punish them, we might as well let the other kids go out to the park. Then it's even for everyone. All of them get to go out twice and they get the same punishment."

Fury frowned as he said, "So we let this go on for another couple weeks?"

"No, we'll confront all of the kids today. Then tomorrow we let the next two groups go with a few chaperone's for the same amount of time. After that we start their punishment duties."

Tao nodded as she said, "I don't find an issue with that, I can send Wong and Kaecilius to help shuttle them over and watch the kids while they're gone."

Mikhail smiled as he said, "I would like to go also, I've never been to a theme park before."

Alexei nodded as he said, "I wouldn't mind going with the whole family."

Steve glanced at Peggy as he said, "I wouldn't mind going out either."

Fury had started to frown as more people chimed in before he finally said, "You know we are supposed to be hidden right?"

Fury pointed at Steve as he said, "You are considered dead, same goes for you Mikhail."

Fury then pointed at Alexei as he said, "You are an escaped convict."

Fury then pointed to the photo of Cessily as he said, "It just takes one photo getting out and the right people seeing it to ask questions we don't need."

The room went quiet for a while before Tao said, "I could ask Agatha to make a transformation potion. It changes how a person looks for a day. Tastes terrible, but it will work so everyone can go out."

Ezekiel smiled as he asked. "So we are in agreement then? We let the rest of the kids go out tomorrow with some chaperones?"

Everyone nodded in agreement, even Fury. Afterwards they decided to collect all of the kids in the base now and have Tao meet Ava and the other kids in the portal room. As the room cleared out Ezekiel looked over to Fury as he said, "You took this a lot better than I thought you would."

Fury had a smile that wasn't a smile as he said, "Oh I am pissed. The fact that you left such a big oversight in the base's security is unforgivable."

"Till I am satisfied, you and I will be doing a full audit of every base's security measures and going over everything to find any other potential weaknesses you might have forgotten." Ezekiel dropped his head onto the desk causing a loud thud.

Fury shook his head slightly as he said, "As for the kids, I'm impressed. They pulled off something that even trained agents would have a hard time doing."

Ezekiel looked up as Fury let out a small chuckle and said, "I guess kids will always be kids. Very well trained and dangerous kids, but still kids nonetheless."