Chapter Text
The entire day had been a disaster.
And that was before Loki had shown up.
“While I appreciate your enthusiasm, Captain, I’m afraid I cannot afford to allow you to continue getting underfoot.” Loki clucked as Steve raised his shield defensively. “That’s not going to be of much help to you in a moment.”
And then Steve was surrounded by a sickly green light and he felt almost as though his veins were filled with soda, popping and fizzing and sloshing around.
When the light finally dissipated, Steve’s perspective was a lot closer to the ground, his shield was on the pavement next to him and a lot larger than he was used to, and Loki was looking way too pleased with himself.
“Well aren’t you just adorable?” Loki crowed.
Steve glanced down to see…paws. He had paws. And fur. When he tried to speak, all that came out was a bark.
He was a dog. A very small, very fluffy dog.
“Well, now that you’ve been taken care of, I really should get back to work.”
And with that, Loki disappeared in another flash of light, leaving Steve in the alleyway next to his shield. What had happened to his uniform, he had no idea, but his comm was lying on the ground in front of him, useless.
Steve was alone in the alley for only a few moments, long enough to get the hang of walking with four legs and to establish that he could fit inside of his own shield, but couldn’t move it on his own.
He was startled when a brunette woman suddenly came skirting around the corner, skidding slightly.
“I just wanted to try a cronut!” she cried. “I just wanted to leave the tower and get a delicious baked good, but nooooo.” She shook a fist at the sky and shouted, “You will regret the day you came between me and my cronut, Loki! This I swear on the power of my taser and Thor’s thighs.”
Steve perked up as he recognized her voice. It was one of the lab assistants–the one that had come to the tower with Jane Foster. He knew her name had something do with Pride and Prejudice because she had made a joke about her and Jane being an odd pairing…Darcy! Her name was Darcy.
She turned around at the sound of his barking, already heading further into the alley with a concerned expression on her face. “Hey, puppy!” she cooed as she crouched down to look at him. “Are we friends or foes?” she asked as she held out her hand for him to sniff.
And Steve understood that if he was actually a dog that she was going about things the right way, but he wasn’t about to sniff a lady’s hand and give Loki the satisfaction. So he sat down in the middle of his shield, tail wagging in spite of himself, and gave a single small yip.
She shrugged. “I’ll just take that as a yes.” She reached out to scratch around his neck, which Steve had to admit felt really good, before sighing. “No collar. But you don’t look like a stray…” She put sure hands around his middle and hoisted him up, tucking him securely under one arm in a way that only reinforced how tiny Steve suddenly was.
She stopped short and stared down at his shield. “That does not look like the trashcan lid I was hoping for,” she muttered as she grabbed one of the arm straps on the inside of the shield and flipped it over, the iconic design leaving no question as to what it was.
She glanced between Steve and the shield a few times and then bent over to pick up his comm where it had fallen, blowing on it quickly to clean it off before sticking it in her ear.
“Yo, Avengers, I believe Steve may have been turned into a dog. A very cute dog, but also very small. Would someone like to pick up his shield from my location or should I just take all of Cap’s accoutrements back to the tower with me?… It’s Darcy, Tin Man, your lab assistant. And if you don’t cool it with the vague threats I will put laxatives in your coffee when you least expect it.”
After a pause, during which she must have received some kind of instructions from the team, Darcy crouched back down, setting Steve back on the pavement. She plopped her messenger bag down next to him, rearranging her notebooks and wallet to create a flat surface on the bottom before reaching over to pick him up again.
When Steve realized what she was planning to do, he started struggling in her hands. Why couldn’t he just walk? Why did he have to get carted around in a purse like some kind of helpless pomeranian?
Darcy set him back down and rolled her eyes. “Dude. I realize you find this unpleasant, but there are leash laws in New York and also flying alien crow things and I do not need to worry about one of them snatching up Cap on the way back to the tower. I have to carry you and your giant frisbee and the shield isn’t going to fit in my bag. So stop being difficult and get in.”