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The move into the Watchtower is not very smooth because, of course, Yelena’s guinea pig escapes within the first ten minutes of settling in. Ava hears the commotion in the living area from her room, and phases through the wall out of curiosity—which startles Bucky, who jumps back. (He’ll always deny ever being spooked by her ghostly antics, but the initial look on his face always tells her the real answer.) Yelena barely spares her a glance, as she’s too busy interrogating the other three members of the team.
John and Alexei are accusing each other of the crime, pointing fingers and crying, “It was his fault!” while Bob sadly looks down at his feet and mumbles, “It was my fault.”
It turns out that Bob had tried feeding the little guy a generous chunk of his breakfast sandwich, to which it had ignored him and scurried away through the open cage door. Yelena reassures him that it’s okay, because he didn’t know that the animal would go rogue, and sticks by his side as they start the search by crawling around the room on their knees.
The rest of them pitch in: Bucky and John play rock-paper-scissors to see who gets to search through the vents—to which John loses in an unsurprising fashion of 0-3, and Ava can hear him cussing as he wriggles through the metal tunnels; Alexei takes charge of searching the kitchen, mostly because he had yet to eat his morning meal; and Ava checks the bedrooms.
The sky, visible through the large windows, changes from a cloudy morning to a blue afternoon, as Ava works her way across the rooms. Just when she’s ready to give up and start searching elsewhere, she hears something snuffling while she’s in Yelena’s room. Wait—could it be—?
Ava quietly crawls over to a squirming bundle of clothing and scoops it up. Carefully pulling back the fabric, she finds the fluffy creature happily staring up at her. Breathing a sigh of relief, she goes to find Yelena.
And she does find Yelena, along with most of the others, who are gathered below the vent in the kitchen. Alexei greets her cheerily, munching on a bagel, “Oh—Ava! You found the rat! Good, now we only have one problem to deal with.”
Yelena spins around, eyes lighting up as she spots the little bundle of joy. Gently hugging the guinea pig close, she lets out a little laugh.
Ava grins, then directs her attention up to the vents, where she’s guessing that John is still up there, considering he’s not down in the kitchen. Bob confirms her belief, “Um, so, John got stuck,” and as he’s saying that, John starts banging on the sides of the vent.
“Hey!” Bucky calls up. “Be careful! If you keep hitting that, you’re going to break the—“
John suddenly comes crashing down, bringing down chunks of metal with him. Ava, Yelena, and Bob jump back.
“Ouch,” John groans, rolling onto his back.
Alexei bursts into laughter. “Now we have no more problems to deal with! Except maybe for giant hole in vent.”
Bucky stares at the mess in dismay. “Not even a full day in, and we’ve already broken something. Good job, Walker.”
“You made me go up there!”
“Uh, no. We clearly laid out the rules that whoever lost rock-paper-scissors would go into the vents. You’re just being a sore loser.”
“Oh—fuck you.”
As they bicker, Bob sidesteps around them to make his way to the fridge. He pulls out his half-eaten sandwich, and returns to Yelena’s side, offering it to the guinea pig. To both of their delights, this time the animal doesn’t go running off, and starts nibbling. Meanwhile, Alexei starts egging on John and Bucky, for no reason other than he just likes a good fight.
Off to the side, Ava shakes her head, smiling. There’s seriously no other team of idiots she’d like to be stuck with.