Chapter 8
*Natasha Romanov*
Once Thor finished saying that it was an honor to meet such a fine hero, Percy bolted out of his chair, and headed out the door Bruce, Tony, and I came through. I sprinted out after him, behind me I heard yelling, questions like ‘how do you know him?’ and ‘he’s a hero?’ being asked. Percy was running, and from my specialty in interrogation, I knew that he was scared about what Thor said. I didn’t know why, but when I thought back to how his eyes widened slightly at Fury asking him about why he said ‘Gods’, what he said about going through things that would make any person insane, and how he was older and more mature because of it, it snapped into place. The Greek and Roman Gods were real, that was why Thor knew him, and it was why Percy knew so much about the Gods like he had met them himself. The reason he didn’t have good clothes and proper food made sense, he was thought dead by Gods, not an easy thing to pull off, and he wanted to stay that way, so he didn’t make himself noticeable. It was why he said that he had ticked off a lot of his relatives, most of them were evil, and wanted to take over the world. He must have been sent on perilous quests, and saving the world? That was taxing, and many people died, leaving you to fake things, like Percy mentioned. I was still confused on why he flinched when his full name was said and why he flinched at his own words earlier, but I was certain that I would find out later, because Fury wasn’t interested in locking Percy up like a common criminal. Fury wanted to recruit him to the Avengers, but Fury definitely didn’t know about the Greek and Roman Gods thing.
Percy was taking random turns, and it was clear he didn’t know where he was going, but I did, we were headed toward the labs. While running after him, I contacted Clint and told him to head to the labs via the air vents. When we reached the end of the hallway, the double doors to the lab were there and Percy’s bags were in plain sight in the middle of the floor.
“Huh, what do you know? Good luck for once.” Percy muttered to himself. He pushed open the double doors and walked in barricading the doors behind him using a metal bar, he smirked at me and waved. He turned back to his bags, and I smirked when I saw Clint there facing him.
Clint shot at his legs, but Percy stepped out of the way just in time, even though he didn’t see the arrow coming, which was impressive. Percy spun and faced Clint in a crouched position. I couldn’t tell whether it was for offence, or defense, but instead, it seemed like he was in the position to do either if need be. That showed some real training there, if I had been less trained, even I wouldn’t be able to tell what he was trying to do with the position he was in. That was beyond impressive, it took years of training and personal experience to be able to confuse someone with a position like that.
It made sense with his heritage though, they must have somewhere safe where all of the godlings go so normal people don’t find out about them and decide to murder them because they are half god. And if all the Greek and Roman myths were true, then there were probably two different camps, one for the Greeks and one for the Romans because of the rivalry and bad blood between the two since the ancient times. Also if the myths were true, then the camps also protected the godlings from the monsters that existed. It all pieced together nicely, well that part anyway, most of what has happened, I can’t fit it with what I already know.
Anyway, Percy was facing Clint, suddenly, he whipped out a…is that a pen?! It didn’t make sense, what was a pen supposed to do? I then noticed that along the side there was some kind of ancient writing…that glowed. It was a weapon. I waved at Clint, when he looked over at me, we had a silent conversation where I told him to be careful because the pen was a weapon. Clint replied with a look that said, ‘seriously? I’ll be fine, don’t get your panties in a twist Natasha’. Percy was obviously a little smug about his position, he had a small half smile and his eyes danced with excitement. Clint notched his bow and aimed at Percy.
“I don’t want to shoot you!” Clint said.
“Oh,” Percy said, quirking an eyebrow. “You didn’t say that the first time, how do I know you won’t just shoot me with a poisoned arrow again?”
“You don’t,” Clint said, “You just have to trust me on it.”
“Good thing I don’t, I don’t know you, I don’t know why you guys didn’t know I was dead, but I don’t want to be in a prison or forced to work with you because a dude that wants to kill me shows up. I just want to be left alone.” Percy replied, he took off the cap and the pen shimmered into a baseball bat and a wave of glowing mist rippled out of it. My mind went into a jumble as soon as it touched me. I was trying to convince myself that the bat didn’t appear out of nowhere. He had always had it didn’t he? No, he had just picked the bat up off the ground. My mind steeled itself and I looked again, the pen had transformed into a sword that was a shiny bronze color and it glowed. Clint’s face was confused for a few seconds, then he immediately became on guard.
“How do you have a sword?” Clint asked him.
Percy looked surprised, “You can actually see Riptide. Huh.” He said, sounding impressed. “Whatever, Thor already said my achievements, so I guess I don’t care.”
Clint looked conflicted, but fired at Percy’s legs. Percy moved lightning fast and deflected the arrow with his sword and moved to where his back was against the door and got in a defensive position. Clint seemed to steel his nerves and began to shoot at him directly. Percy blocked all of the arrows with his sword, but kept the defensive even when Clint put his bow away. When he vanished and reappeared next to his bags, my mouth dropped in surprise. He picked them up, but out from behind him, Fury gripped one of his shoulders.
“You’re even more impressive than I first thought Percy. Why don’t we go back to the conference room and have a chat.” Fury said.
“Says the guy who wanted me arrested for being a terrorist, you realize I knew you were coming toward me, right?” Percy asked calmly.
“What? How?” Fury asked incredulously, I was surprised, this was the first emotion that I had seen on Fury’s face besides anger and annoyance.
“Not important, but I will have ‘a chat’,” Percy used air quotes with his fingers. “with you, but then I’m leaving. So I’m taking my bags with me.” Percy said, shouldering his bags with ease, this impressed me, I could lift them, but barely, this kid must be strong.
“Fine, but on one condition, we have to check your duffel bag.” Fury said. Percy rolled his eyes but nodded all the same. We walked back to the conference room and we all had the same seats as last time.
Percy set his duffel bag on the table and his suitcase on the floor. He started taking things out, mostly it was pictures, some in frames, but most of the pictures were loose. The pictures showed multiple teenagers, a woman holding various blue items in many pictures, a man that looked exactly like Percy, and Percy himself with a full blown smile on his face with his arms wrapped around a blonde headed girl with gray eyes. This girl also had multiple photos of her. Percy looked better with a smile on his face, and in this picture, his eyes seemed a lot happier than now. When I looked up at Percy, his face was void of emotion, but his eyes swirled, then I noticed something I didn’t see before - he had a prominent, solid gray streak in his hair.
“What’s the gray hair from?” I asked.
He didn’t look up, but answered, “I got it trying to save my girlfriend. That’s her,” he said pointing to the blonde girl. “Her name is A-Annabeth.”
“Where is she now?” I asked without much thought.
Percy’s head hung down so his hair covered his face, “She’s dead.” He answered simply.
“Show us which ones are your Mom and Dad.” Fury ordered
“You said I had to show you what was in my bag, not explain who they are, so no.” Fury looked irked.
Then he dragged the bag to the other end of the table. “I have weapons from all of my friends that died, to remember them. Though I don’t use any of them.” He pulled out a simple bow with simple arrows that had golden arrow tips in a simple brown arrow case. All and all, the bow and arrows didn’t look that special besides the arrow heads. He took out a spear that had a simple golden handle and what looked like a tooth that was white and gleamed without a scratch on it seated at the top of it. He then pulled out a small, beautiful dagger. The blade was triangular, and glowed like Percy’s sword, the hilt was golden, and had an intricate design.
Suddenly, his face twitched, and he dropped into the same crouch that neither showed offence or defense. His eyes scanned the room, and I got the feeling that he could see beyond what any of us here could. I felt waves of power wash over me, power that came from him. He bolted to the windows, it so fast, if I hadn’t been as trained as I was, I would’ve thought he had materialized by them.
“I need to go.” He said simply.
“Why?” Fury asked furiously.
“Some of my old friends are here, they’ll be able to sense me because of reasons I’m not going to explain. I need to leave before they notice me, I prefer to be thought dead.” While talking he had bolted back to the table and started packing the weapons he had pulled out back inside, then carefully put in the framed pictures and the loose ones. He shouldered his bags, but then suddenly gasped, his eyes flashed with pain that didn’t show on his face. “Stupid arrow.” He muttered darkly at Clint, he then switched his bags to his other shoulder.
“Wait,” Clint said, Percy paused. “Explain how you do the disappear and reappear thing. Are you with Loki?”
“Who the heck is Loki?” Clint opened his mouth to explain, but Percy rolled his eyes and interrupted. “Whatever, I don’t want to know, they’re coming closer and I’m losing time. It’s a power that surfaced recently, I break down my body into water particles, then reassemble them wherever I want. I’ve practiced with it enough that it’s instantaneous, and it doesn’t wear me out. Now I’m leaving.”
“Not so fast, whether you agree willingly or not you are joining this team. That’s why I wanted the Avengers to track you down. And it was so hard to find you, you moved around a lot, disappeared off the grid, and even seemed to evade me when you were in that bus crash and in the hospital for months. It was almost like you didn’t exist! You gave a false name to everyone you met, even the doctors, and surprisingly, the name was on file with your medical records. Your files are even on S.H.I.E.L.D.! Why did you have your false name be Peter Johnson? How did you make the files?” Fury seemed very frustrated with Percy. All of our mouths dropped, he had that much trouble tracking down the kid? So that was why he wanted us to bring in Percy at all costs.
“Peter Johnson is what I was called by my director, he would continuously get everyone’s name wrong, so it just came to mind. As for the files, I went to online computer programming classes, then hacked into the online birth records. I then made it to where my birth year made sense with how old I look physically, and transferred all the medical information from my old file, leaving out all the instances I had with police, and changing the dates a bit to make sense with my birth. I then hacked into all of the hospitals that were on the file, and simply copied the information they had down for me onto a file I inserted under my false name in case a hospital I would go in calls for records from that hospital. I’m not working with you, whatever you say, you’re not going to convince me that I need to.” Percy said, ending with a venomous tone.
Our jaws dropped at what he said he had done, it was like he was some evil mastermind. I stared at him along with the others.
Tony looked at Percy like he was his idol. “You did all that with only online computer classes?” He sounded amazed. “I’m a genius and it took me three months to figure out how to first hack into S.H.I.E.L.D, now I can hack in in about one minute, but that was after multiple computer classes of all variety, many simple hackings, hackings of other government agencies, and trial and error all around. How about you, the boy that supposedly did all of that with just online computer programming classes?”
Percy hummed thoughtfully.“Well, I took a year of online computer classes, which I aced, then it took me five hours to do all of the hacking, copying, and pasting of my files for my birth certificate and medical files. Then it took me about two days to hack into all of the government agencies and put my files in there, then it took about another hour to cover my tracks and make it seem like my files were there all along. And to think I used to be such an idiot I barely made D’s in school.” He replied, I was pretty sure that everyone’s jaws dropped even more. Tony looked at him in utter, and complete shock, I think he was having a panic attack at the fact that he, the resident genius and downright smartest person in hacking I’ve ever seen, got bested by a kid that-apparently- pretty much almost failed every single class he’s ever took in school.
“Perseus, please-” Thor started.
Percy flinched visibly, and his eyes seemed to darken. “It’s Percy, get that through your thick, Asgardian skull Thor.”
Everyone gasped, but Thor didn’t seem angry or hurt in the slightest. “Why do you not like your name, Perseus? Perseus is a great name to be called. Perseus, you were named after a hero of great standing, you should be proud to have a good of a name such as Perseus.” Percy flinched every time his full name was said, his eyes getting darker, foggier, duller, as Thor spoke. The last one seemed to hit him like a punch in the gut, his eyes completely glazed over, then they rolled into the back of his head, and he fell to the floor.
I stared at the motionless body, along with everyone else.
Fury was the first to react. “I want you to get him to your lab Bruce, and put him in the containment room, strap him down, and put the same magical hold we used on Loki to keep him from teleporting off somewhere. I want you to then give him a physical exam while he’s unconscious.”
Bruce nodded reluctantly, “Will you carry him to the lab, Steve?”
“Sure,” Steve said, also looking very reluctant to do what Fury ordered. He picked up Percy easily, then Fury led the way to the lab.