Togekiss nosed her hand before hopping back over to Bruce and trilling at him, almost an admonishment. Almost.

Julie snickered. "See, even your pokemon think we're right," she said with a grin.

"In my defense, I wasn't expecting Tony to bring anyone in today," Bruce replied, holding up his hands. "If he'd warned me, there wouldn't have been any problems."

Julie rolled her eyes, unwilling to argue any further with Bruce, and instead got distracted by some diagrams on the table.

"Huh. Where'd you get all this info? Got a few poke-vets hiding around here somewhere?" She looked over the diagrams with interest. The diagrams were detailing information about the body and bodily functions of a Charizard, along with common health problems.

"Ah, just a personal project," Bruce said, going over to the table. "Blissey is helping me a bit with it."

Once Maeve's eyes stopped watering so much, she ventured a bit closer to the Meganium. She wanted to get a closer look at it.

"Interesting." Julie flipped through a few more pages, going through different pokemon. "I might have to borrow this. This is good stuff."

Meganium looked at her, blinking, before lowering his head to her level to inspect her better.

"Thanks," Bruce said. "I can see about making a copy for you; it's a useful thing to have."

Maeve blinked back before holding out a hand to it.

"Hi," she greeted.

"It certainly looks useful. Where'd you get all the information, anyway?" Julie looked over at Bruce, curious.

Meganium chirped at her and prodded at her hand with his nose before deciding she was okay. And promptly starting to poke at her more.

"I'm, uh, taking a few classes on the side," Bruce admitted, flushing a little and fidgeting with his hands a bit. "I figure I might as well, I'm already looking after the others and their pokemon anyway. I just compiled a bunch of information from some textbooks, alongside some of Blissey's input."

Maeve couldn't help but giggle a bit when she was poked and prodded in some ticklish spots.

"Hey, quit it," she said between giggles.

Julie grinned. "Hey, maybe I can borrow those books sometime?" she asked. "I only know how to deal with the pokemon that I grew up around, but it would be good to know about others, you know, just in case."

Meganium chirped again and kept poking at her with his nose, enjoying this game. Hey, he still found humans amusing most of the time.

"Sure," Bruce said. "I don't plan on getting rid of them, so as soon as I don't need them for the classes, you can borrow them."

Maeve laughed a bit more and tried to push Meganium back, although she didn't try all that hard. They were just playing, after all.

"Great. Thanks." Julie shot him a pleased grin, still going through the information in the packet.

Meganium kept poking and tickling her, though he was careful to be gentle. At least until she was out of breath. Then he pulled back a bit, clearly pleased with himself.

Once Meganium stopped, Maeve was able to catch her breath, although she was still grinning. Neither of her pokemon were quite that playful, so she always enjoyed it when she ran into pokemon who liked to play.

A week later, on her way in to the testing labs, Julie blinked when she saw Phil Coulson. Only this time he wasn't with Tony. And he was making his way over to her. Julie blinked and stopped, waiting for him.

Maeve was already in the labs, and her attention was grabbed by Kirlia, who suddenly tugged on her sleeve to get her attention.

"What is it, darling?" she asked the pokemon. Kirlia pointed to the door, and Maeve went over to see what was going on. She poked her head out the door and blinked. "Agent Coulson. What are you doing here? Last I checked, nothing important exploded or imploded or melted or anything today."

Coulson motioned for Julie to head into the room with Maeve so he could talk to both of them at the same time.

"I've noticed you both work well with Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner," he said without preamble. "On behalf of SHIELD, I'd like to offer both of you positions."

"Positions?" Julie blinked.

"Assisting us in making sure they don't get out of line, among other things."

"You're offering us jobs," Maeve said. "Babysitting jobs."

"Essentially," Coulson agreed blandly with the faintest hints of a smile. "Although I assure you that your work will be well-compensated and you will be able to continue with your current projects, if you want."

"So we keep doing our work here, but we get paid extra to keep track of Tony and Bruce." Julie eyed him curiously. "Seems like that wouldn't work out very well just one day a week."

"It probably wouldn't," Coulson admitted. "We would prefer if you were here at least four days a week. More, if possible."

"We're just part-timers, though," Maeve pointed out. "We would need to be bumped up to full-time to be here more than three days a week."

"Don't worry about that," Coulson said. "It will all be taken care of. You will be made primary employees of SHIELD and secondary employees of Stark Industries. Similar to contractors, if you will."

"And we'd need to quit our other jobs," Julie pointed out. "If we're going to be here that often."

"Your compensation from SHIELD should more than make up for that," Coulson said. "You won't have to move, don't worry."

Maeve was quiet for a moment, considering.

"Well, I like this job a hell of a lot more than I like my other one," she reasoned finally. "And if the pay is that good, I won't be sorry to leave the other job behind."

"Alright, then," Coulson said. "First thing tomorrow, I'd like to bring you both to our headquarters to get you into our systems, if that's acceptable."

"Fine with me," Maeve said with a bit of a grin.

"Sounds good to me." Julie grinned. "Where should we meet?"

"Outside this building is fine. I'll escort you from there." Coulson looked between the girls to see if they had any objection.

"Alright, outside the building first thing tomorrow," Maeve said nodding. She nudged Kirlia. "Wake me up with enough time to get here at seven?" Kirlia just nodded. She usually did that anyways.

"Excellent. I'll see you in the morning." Coulson turned and left, Gallade striding after him.

Julie blinked after him. "I guess we're going to be working for SHIELD now."

"Talk about working for the government," Maeve said. She grinned. "I wonder how well 'well-compensated' actually is?"

"We'll probably find out in about a week." Julie grinned. "I wonder if this means we'll get to meet the rest of the Avengers..."