Title: Power Switch

Disclaim: I don't own anything. I wouldn't write fanfiction if I did, let me tell yah.

Summary: ... the title should be sufficient.

Note: This is a response to the power switch challenge by Legion 22 on the forum ;)

Also, this is part one of two or three parts.

Enjoy.


The day started off just as any other day did in the Avengers Mansion- loud noises and shattering glass.

"BARTON! WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT TOUCHING MY COFFEE MUG!" Tony shouted angrily.

Hawkeye ran laughing from the room.


Hank sat at the table, looking through his microscope carefully, taking down notes on what he saw. Jan walked into the room, and leaned against the table to Hank's right.

"Are you seriously going to have lunch with the Fantastic Four in your lab coat, Hank?" she asked, exasperated.

"Shoot! That's today, isn't it!" he exclaimed, jumping up from his chair, accidentally knocked several beakers to the ground in the process, "Ah crap."

"Come on Hank, you can clean that up later," Jan said, pulling on Hank's sleeve, "right now, you need to get changed. They're gonna be here any second!"

"Okay, okay…"


A half hour later, all the Avengers gathered in the dining room of the mansion. Sue Storm, Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, and Johnny Storm had arrived for dinner.

They sat along the long wooden table with the high-backed chairs in an order that somewhat resembled this: Steve across from Thor who sat next to Janet who sat next to Hank who sat next to Tony who sat next to Reed who sat next to Ben (who took the space of three people) who sat across from Hulk (who took up the space of four people, taking up all the rest of the space down the table) who sat next to Hawkeye who sat next to Sue (who sat across from Reed) who sat next to Johnny who sat next to T'Challa who, in turn, sat next to Steve.

Hulk glared at Ben, mumbling something like, 'Hulk's strongest there is…' and Hawkeye would occasionally pat his shoulder saying, ''Course you are, Jade Jaws. No one's saying any different.'

When the turkey was served, everyone got their fair share, and were munching on it happily until, "Jeez, Ben, where do you put all that? I'd expect you to be a lot heavier, judging by your eating habits, fatso!" Johnny just had to say it. Sue and Ben turned to him, exasperated and annoyed.

And Ben threw a leg bone at Johnny. And Johnny 'fired up'. And Sue knocked them both back into place with her invisible force field. "Can you not behave for once!" Sue screeched at Johnny. Until now, the grinning audience of the Avengers h ad gone unnoticed by the three.

And the room went silent. Until Hawkeye burst out laughing, banging the table. "Man, you guys are better than cable!"

"Hawkeye," Cap said warningly, eyeing him down the table.

"Fine, fine," Hawkeye said, putting his hands up in surrender, still grinning.

"You know what, Johnny? Why don't we switch," Sue said, standing up out of her chair. Johnny shrugged, following suit. They sat and switched their plates around, and Reed massaged the bridge of his nose.

For the rest of dinner, most of everything was drowned out by Clint and Johnny snickering about random crap they whispered to each other, to much displeasure of the rest of the group.

As they were all saying their farewells, Johnny shook hands with Clint, and the Fantastic Four left.


The next day, Clint moseyed on over to the Breakfast table, pouring himself some Pops cereal and scratching his stomach. He wore nothing but boxers and a white tank top.

Wasp walked into the room, squeaked when she saw him, then continued on as usual. She walked by him, accidentally bumping his shoulder in the mean time.

Twenty minutes (and three bowls of cereal) later, Hulk sauntered into the room too, sitting down, with three boxes of cereal, next to Hawkeye.

They sat eating for ten more minutes before the alarm sounded, sending the two shooting toward the door.

Somehow, Hawkeye changed and made his way down to the War Room quick enough. Tony stood there, suspiciously not in his suit, trying to explain to them all how it was just a false alarm.

"Tony! You interrupted our breakfast!" Clint whined.

"I'm sooooorrrryyy!" Tony said sarcastically, looking away from Clint and to Steve.

"Whatever. Let's go eat our way through the fridge, big guy," he said, patting Hulk on the arm as he turned to go back to the kitchen.

But then, he wasn't turning. In fact, he was falling, onto his knees, as he watched his hand grow grotesque and green before his very eyes. He felt like he was growing bigger, and suddenly, he was a very Clint-like version of the Hulk, kneeling before the rest of the Avengers. For some reason, he felt very angry, but, as usual, he was able to keep that (mostly) under control.

The Avengers stood there, wide-eyed, looking between the scrawny Bruce Banner and monstrous Clint Barton. They blinked.

"What… just happened…?" Bruce asked, blinking down at his own hand, his eyes then darting to Clint.

"I have no idea…" Tony responded, staring slack jawed at the new Hulk, "you should touch him. It seems like he… caught the Hulk bug from you."

Clint/Hulk looked up, and looked slightly/extremely (depends on how you look at it, seeing as this is Clint we're talking about) angry, but that all faded away when Bruce touched his shoulder, sending the green-ness back into Bruce.

Clint blinked, still kneeling on the floor, "What… the hell… just happened…?" he breathed, his eyes now very large.

"Umm… let me get back to you on that one," Tony said, eyes still wide, cocking his head to the side.

"It looks like, somehow, Clint absorbed Hulk's power by touching him…" Ant-Man suggested.

"Well, yes, thank you Captain Obvious," Tony quipped, earning himself a glare from Hank.

No one came near Clint for the rest of the day.


Hank found him and informed him that he needed a sample of his blood that afternoon.

They silently made their way to the lab, where Hank had Clint sit on the table. He pulled out a large needle, and went about sterilizing it. Clint gulped audibly as Hank squirted water through it. Hank paused, and looked at Clint questioningly. He looked really tense, inching away from Hank and staring at the needle with large blue eyes.

"What's up?" Hank asked, setting the needle aside for a moment.

Clint looked at his feet, and mumbled something.

"Excuse me? I didn't quite catch that." Clint looked up.

"I said, I'm afriduvnidls," he said, getting quiet again at the end.

"What?"

"I'm afraid of needles, okay?" he said, suddenly loud.

"What? But- but you're Hawkeye!" Hank said, astounded.

"Yeah, I'm Hawkeye, the World's Greatest Marksman, not Daredevil, Man Without Fear," he said, kicking his legs slightly, like a scared little kid at the doctor's office.

"Well, uh, I need the sample, you know."

"I know…" Clint said, squeezing his eyes shut. Hank couldn't help but smile at the childish measures Clint seems to need just to have a sample taken.

"Here, just hold my hand. You can squeeze it as hard as you want," Hank offered, giving the man his hand. Clint didn't even need to open his eyes to grab the hand.

He held it lightly at first, as Hank cleaned a patch of his arm. He grabbed the needle and pressed the tip of it on the skin, and Clint's eyes squeezed shut harder. Clint's grip hardened. Hank pushed against and broke the skin, and it felt like his hand was being crushed.

"It's okay, Clint." He pulled the handle of it back, withdrawing blood and turning the clear part of the needle red. He was losing circulation in his hand.

"I'm done, Clint. You can let go."

Clint peaked his eyes open, and relaxed when he saw the needle lying on the tray next to him.

"I'll analyze this tonight and have the results, hopefully, by tomorrow. Thanks Clint."

Clint hopped off the table and walked out of the lab quickly.


The next day, Clint had completely forgotten about the events from the day before, and didn't watch his step near close enough as he trudged towards breakfast. He bumped into Steve, and suddenly, standing before him was a scrawny little guy, standing barely five foot. The two of them stood staring at each other, stunned, before Clint realized that he was about a foot taller than usual. The events from yesterday flooded back.

"Oh, sorry Cap," he apologized sheepishly, clapping Steve on the shoulder and watching in awe as Steve re-transformed into the Steve he knew right before his eyes. He kept walking towards the kitchen without another word, leaving Steve shocked and motionless in the middle of the hall. He was too tired for verbalizing anyway.

He poured himself a bowl of cereal and ate it slowly, lethargically. His wrists, for some reason, were killing him. They were sore, and they itched every time he moved them. It was the weirdest sensation of his life. He dropped the spoon in his bowl and started itching his wrist.

Suddenly, a yellow light blurred in front of his eyes, bewildering him for a second. He thought about it again, willed it to happen again, and sure enough, a yellow beam shot from his wrist.

Then, before he could stop it, he was shrinking, and wings sprouted from his back.

Dear Lord, what the hell is going on? He was an effing fairy. He tried to get himself to turn back, but it seemed that whatever made him shrink, didn't want to grow back to normal size yet.

His… wings… were twitching quietly, keeping him from falling and crashing and burning on the ground, which seemed a lot farther down than it was a moment ago. He maneuvered to sit on the edge of the table, his now giant bowl of cereal casting a little shade for him.

This sucks.

He heard the whoosh of the door opening, and peeked over the top of the bowl to find Hank looking around the kitchen.

"Clint?" he called, looking toward the other doors. He caught sight of the bowl, completely overlooked Clint, and muttered something like, "Well, I see he's been here recently…"

"I'm right here, Hank. I think I somehow switched with Jan, or something." He stood up and lifted himself an inch or two above the bowl, trying to blatantly ignore the look of utter shock in Hank's eyes.

"Also, I kinda had a run-in with Cap. Like, literally run-in. I know everyone always say that Steve was really sickly and small before the serum, but that seriously does nothing for the shock of seeing him change from old-Steve to new-Steve right before your eyes. Seriously, it was weird."

"I see. Well, if you want to come to the lab, I can explain to you what's going on. Do you think you can get back to normal size again?"

"Um, I don't think so… Can we just get Jan so I can return these to her?" he said, motioning to the wings sticking out of his shoulder blades.

Which reminded him, how the heck was his shirt still intact with this things? How did Jan deal with this every time she shrinks?

"Yeah, I think that would be good. Come on." And with that, Hank turned around and headed to his lab, leaving Clint to try to figure out how to go forward with these new attachments of his.

He found Hank hunched over a microscope, Jan sitting with her legs over the side of a table, like Clint had been the day before. Jan simply tapped him on the arm, causing him to regain his normal size, and strut out of the lab, not even saying a word.

"So Clint, what appears to have happened to you is that a residual vestige of cosmic radiation that Johnny Storm had picked up from an alien 'visitor' a couple months back has been transferred to you. It caused your molecular structure to become instable, and highly influenced by anything you touch, thus replicating it after the other structure. Storm had similar symptoms with him when it first attached to him, but he and the Fantastic Four have since been able to contain it. Richards has stated that he has a formula for ensuring that it no longer effects the cellular systems in its' host, thus becoming quite dormant. Unfortunately, Richards and the Fantastic Four are currently in Latveria, and we will not have access to this formula for at least two days. Until then, we will just have to be careful." Clint huffed.

"Well, that's no fun."

"So, you say that you absorbed the effects of the Super Serum from Steve when you touched him? This is very intriguing," he tapped the eraser of his pencil against a table, emitting an echoing, hollow sound. "The serum isn't exactly a 'power', but then again, neither is Jan's," he thought aloud to himself.

"Okay, great. What'll I do for the next two days? I can still go on missions, can't I?"

"I'm afraid you're going to have to refrain. We don't want any accidents, right?"

Clint sighed theatrically.