This is my first multi-chaper storty! I'm so excited, it's also my first de-agged fic and I hope everybody likes it!

It all happened so fast that no one was quite sure what had gone wrong. One second they were in the middle of a fight with AIM and the next second they were all blinded by a flash of light.

When the brightness faded there was no trace of AIM and Steve breathed a sigh of relief. "They retreated." He said, lowering his shield and taking a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

Next to him Iron Man dropped from the sky. "Do we know what they were after?" He asked, eyes roving the warehouse's interior. They had been notified of a break in in a shipping warehouse along the river. Once they had gotten there, they had found almost a dozen AIM agents attempting to loot the place.

Steve shook his head. "No idea. Who owns this warehouse?"

Iron Man consulted JARVIS. "Hank Pym."

"Someone should tell him his place was broken into."

"I'm sure he already knows." Next to them a box was thrown into the air by Natasha as she extracted herself from underneath a pile of crates.

"What was that flash of light?" She asked, eyes narrowed.

Tony flew to a box and then contacted JARVIS again. "JARVIS, get me Hank Pym on the line." He said. There was a moment and then the doctor's face appeared on the inside of his visor.

"Tony?"

"Dr. Pym, we just stopped some AIM guys from raiding one of your warehouses down on the water. Any idea what they were after?"

The doctor shook his head. "Nothing of value. The only thing I stored there was a canister of alternate dimension Pym Particles Reed Richards gave me."

"Think that's what they wanted?"

"Could be but I don't see why unless. . ." Hank's eyes wondered off. "No one came into any contact with them, did they?"

"I don't think so. . ." Tony looked around. "Hey, where's Hawkeye?"

"Did AIM get him?" Steve asked.

"JARVIS, scan for life signatures. There should be four."

"There are four sir." JARVIS answered while Hank waited patiently on the line. "Mr. Barton is lying underneath the pile of crates to your left."

Steve hurried over to the mess of crates and began pulling them away.

"Hank, where's the canister of Pym Particles?"

"I stored it in a corner. It's mixed in with a bunch of crates and empty canisters. It's got a black band around it."

Natasha began to look for it. "This is broken." She said, holding up a glass canister with jagged crack down it's side and a black band around the middle.

Tony switched his visuals with the doctor to a projector in his arm so Hank could see. "Is that it?"

Hank's face went white. "Not good." He said. "You need to make sure no one came into contact with any of the particles."

"What do they do?"

"Reed brought them back from an alternate universe for me to study. Instead of shrinking things and removing size matter like normal Pym Particles, they remove time. I tested them on lab mice and they reduced the mice you babies. I don't know what they'll do to a human, obviously I never tested them on a person but I suspect that it'll be the same thing."

"Found him. . . Tony?" Steve's voice broke off and Tony whirled around. Captain America had managed to extract Hawkeye from the pile of crates but the Hawkeye they had found was substantially different from the one they had expected. He was smaller and he was shrinking, fast. His features were changing, his cheeks filling out, legs shortening, fingers becoming smaller.

"Don't touch him!" Hank warned. "Don't come into contact with the particles until he stops aging."

"Is there a way to stop the process?" Tony asked sharply.

Hank was flipping through papers on his end, Tony could hear the pages turn. "A volt of electricity might stop it. They're highly volatile particles with short life spans when they're not dormant in containment. Do you have any way of shocking him?"

The boy in front of them had now regressed past the point of adolescence and was working on doing away with puberty.

Without hesitation Natasha bent and delivered a powerful shock to the boy from her Widow Bites. His body jolted and spasmmed but the aging slowed and after a few seconds stopped. Tony breathed a sight of relief as the final particles died. They were now left with a child no more than five or six years old. He lay still, breathing normally, face slightly flushed.

Tony cursed. "Did it work?" Hank asked urgently.

"Yeah. He's stopped."

Steve removed his glove and felt the boy's forehead. "He has a fever." He said.

"That's normal. The mice retained elevated temperatures for twenty four hours afterward. I don't know how long his will last but it should go away. He aged much slower than the mice. I can only calculate that to be because as a human he had more years to lose."

Natasha bent curiously and then drew away. "We should take him back to the tower. Dr. Pym, is this just a physical regression or will he mentally have regressed as well?"

"I don't know. I brought in a behavior specialist with the mice who was fairly certain they regressed mentally as well so I assume it will be the same with a human. . ."

Steve scooped the boy up and Natasha picked up the clothes that had fallen away. "Do you have a way to reverse this?" He asked.

There was the frantic flipping of pages on the other end of the connection. "Not yet but I'll get right on it. I'll contact Reed Richards too and see what he knows. Oh, and you should talk to Doctor Strange too. I don't know how much help he'll be since this isn't magic and all of Hawkeye's years should still exist in the universe inside of these Pym particles but I don't know if I can reach that universe through this one or if I can access it only through the universe Reed obtained them from. . ." They could hear pages turning and computer keys clacking. Hank broke off his rambling. "Point is he's stable and should be safe for now. Just take care of him until I can find a way to fix this."

"Keep us updated." Tony said, breaking contact. With Hank gone he swore. "Damn it. Alright, lets get him back to the tower before he wakes up."

They carried the boy to the jet and it was a smooth ride back. Clint did not wake but Natasha seemed concerned about fever. "It's getting worse." She said, touching the little boy's forehead lightly.

"Hank said it'll go away in a day." Steve said, he looked down at the boy and felt a surge of apprehension. Clint was small and there was a chance he wouldn't know any of them when he awoke. He had been trying to figure out how to tell such a small child why he was with a group of strangers and why he wasn't at home but nothing good had come to mind.

Awkwardly he ran a hand through his hair. "Er, what do you know about him as a kid?"

Natasha straightened up in her seat. They were in the back of the jet together looking over the boy while Tony piloted the plane. "He hasn't talked all that much about his childhood, to be honest. . ." She said carefully. "Mostly he laughs off serious questions."

Steve sighed. "What about Shield? What do they have on him?"

She gave him a long look before deciding that it was against common interest to pretend that she hadn't read all of their files. "His parents died when he was eight. He and his brother Barney were placed in an orphanage where they stayed for six years until both boys ran away and joined the circus."

Steve looked at Clint. "So at the age he is now, his parents are probably still alive."

"Yes."

"All okay?" Tony called over the intercom.

"We're fine. He's still out." Natasha said. She began to rummage through her back pack. "Drop me off at Sears. I'm going to pick him up some clothes." She began to change quickly. Steve averted his eyes.

"Good idea." Tony called. "Take my credit card. No limit. Spend to your heart's content."

She grinned briefly as she pulled a shirt on over her head. "You sure you mean that? 'Cause Sears has a summer sale on a pair of Diamond earrings that would go great with the dress I bought last week."

"I'll amend that. Spend to your hearts content on things that won't put me out of a house."

She laughed ad threw open the hatch door. "Like that could ever happen. We're here. Swing low."

"Sweet Chariot." Tony chimed before she jumped out onto the roof of the store. Steve closed the hatch and looked back at the boy. He hadn't moved. He went and sat down.

"You okay, Cap?"

"Yeah, just a little overwhelmed."

"Hank'll fix it. He a smart man and if he's got Reed Richards working with him then nothing can stop them."

"I hope not. Did you hear what Natasha said about his parents?"

"Yeah. We'll have to be careful what we tell him."

Steve nodded and sighed. This was going to be one heck of an adventure.

Thanks for reading!

Clint wakes up next chaper!