Chapter 9: This is the Fight of Our Lives
Percy
He gathered the remaining of the seven together, as well as Natasha, Bruce, Steve, Tony, and Clint. He hadn't invited Thor because he was so drunk lately, he was worried he might forget and accidently tell someone about the Greek Gods. They discussed the prophecy, which they put on a holographic projector.
Through times both old and new
A team must find their way to
Face either their death or salvation
And a reincarnation
Will await them if they find their way through
The disgraced must come together
Their failure will become their tether
And destruction following a betrayal from one of their own
Old enemies they will face
For a choice will end his days
The world will be preserved or razed
Tony listened intently. "A limerick. Wow. That must mean it's really bad."
"Oh, yeah." Nico agreed. "Limericks are the worst kind of prophecies, second only to a Shakespearean Sonnet. Will told me that once."
Natasha massaged her forehead. "Are prophecies always this confusing?"
"Usually more." Percy admitted. "Anyway-" He grabbed a laser pointer and aimed it at one of the lines. "I think that the two lines, the disgraced must come together/their failure will become their tether has already happened. You and Steve-" He looked at Tony. "Have made up, so that must be what that means."
The two both looked uncomfortable.
"And the line through times both old and new I thought just meant like, reminiscing on old times, but it literally means going through times both old and new, since we're travelling through time."
"Well, whatever it means, it definitely doesn't sound good." Steve said.
"Yeah." Hazel said. "That's how you tell it's a Great Prophecy."
Cap looked confused. "Do some prophecies talk about good things?"
"No."
"Then why-"
"Regardless," Clint interrupted. "I'm more interested about the following a betrayal from one of their own line. Who would do that?"
An awkward silence fell, everyone trying not to look at each other.
"We shouldn't think about prophecies too much." Hazel said, trying to lighten the mood. "They usually only make sense after the events happen. It might not literally mean a betrayal is going to happen."
"Oh, yeah." Natasha said sarcastically. "Because the word 'betrayal' means tons of different things, doesn't it?"
Silence fell again.
"So... yeah." Nico said. "We should probably get back to the Time Heist."
They all muttered agreement and left the room, the words of the prophecy still swirling in their heads.
Frank and Hazel took a detour on the way to the meeting at Frank's insistence. Nico gave them a curious look but kept walking.
In a secluded and random room in the Compound, Frank took out his lifeline stick. "Hazel, I'm worried that it's going to burn."
"What are you talking about? Of course it won't." She said, dismissing the idea.
"I don't know." He said helplessly. "I just had a nightmare last night, and it wasn't anything good. I think that there might be something coming. Something big."
"Well, yeah. We're travelling through time."
"That's not what I meant. Just in case... something happens, and-"
"Shut up." Hazel said firmly. "Nothing's going to happen. You're just having anxiety."
"Listen to me." Frank took her hand gently. "I need to tell you I love you, okay? I haven't told you enough lately. And tell Emily too, okay? If-if anything happens, which I'm sure it won't. I just had to tell you that."
Hazel was silent. "Frank, nothing's going to happen. I'm sure it's just a worried thought, so stop thinking like that. Tell Emily yourself, when you get home. When we get home. I won't let you-"
Her voice faltered, and she swallowed. "I can't lose someone else."
Frank looked at her, and they kissed.
Maybe if they had been paying more attention, they would have noticed Nebula standing near the doorway, listening to everything they had said. She turned away when they started kissing. She determinedly rubbed her eye. That thing in it would not go away.
They all gathered in a kitchen/living room, which had turned into an unofficial meeting room for the Avengers. It was funny how casual spots usually became meeting places, instead of the literal room that was called the meeting room. Sort of like how they met in the rec room at Camp Half-Blood when Romans, Titans, and Primordial Goddesses were attacking.
Holographic screens were up, showing the profiles of all six Infinity Stones. Percy winced when he suddenly pictured Annabeth sitting on the couch, dutifully taking notes and asking questions. With some effort, he took his mind to a different subject.
Percy noticed a screen that said, TIME HEIST: BRAINSTORMING PROCESS. They had apparently now adopted the weird name that Scott had made up.
They all lounged on couches or leaned back against the wall, which was what Percy did until he was called up to help Tony, Bruce, and Steve organize the planning.
"Okay, so the 'how' works. Now we have to figure out the when, and the where." Steve began, pacing around the room. Tony and Percy stood on the side of him.
"Almost all of us have had an encounter with at least one of the six Infinity Stones."
"Or subject the word 'encounter' with very well near been killed by one of the six Infinity Stones." Tony added. Jason made a noise of agreement.
"I haven't." Scott muttered. Everyone looked at him, and he looked panicked. "Well, I don't even know what the heck you're all talking about."
Percy gave Frank a severe look, who looked sheepish. "Frank, did you not brief Scott on the Infinity Stones?"
He winced. "I… forgot." It sounded more like a question than an excuse. Percy shrugged. "Well, then, Scott, you'll pick it up as we go." Scott nodded. Bruce rolled his eyes.
"Regardless, we only have enough Pym Particles for one round trip each, and these stones have been in a lot of different places throughout history."
"Our history." Tony said. "So, not a lot of convenient spots to just drop in."
"What, there's not an Infinity Stone lying around while we're all having coffee?" Percy said sarcastically.
"Of course not." Jason muttered. "Because nothing's ever easy."
"Exactly." Percy pointed his pencil at Jason.
"We'll have to pick our targets." Clint said. "Correct." Tony agreed.
"Let's start with the Aether." Steve reigned in the conversation. "Thor, what do you know?"
Hazel nearly jumped out of her chair when she noticed the lump on the chair next to her known as Thor. Judging by her reaction, she hadn't noticed he was there. He had his sunglasses on, so it was impossible to tell whether he was awake or asleep. Or maybe a-dream…
Whoops, bad Ultron joke there. Sorry.
"Is he asleep?" Natasha asked.
Rhodey shook his head. "Nah. I think he's dead."
Eventually they got him up and moving, which took some convincing and the promise of a beer afterwards.
"Umm… where to start? The Aether, first, is not a stone, someone called it a stone before. It's more of a… angry sludge thing, so someone's gonna need to amend that. Here's an interesting story though, many years ago, my grandfather had to hide the stones from the Dark Elves. Wooh, scary…" He chuckled and wiggled his fingers. Hazel stifled a yawn and Nico took a deep breath and trained his eyes away from Thor, which was what he did when he was resisting the impulse to kill someone.
"So Jane," Thor continued and he accidently made a picture of Jane Foster pop up where the Aether used to be. "Oh, there she is. That's Jane. She's… an old flame of mine."
Percy decided to join Nico on the try-not-to-kill-Thor table.
"She… she stuck her hand inside the rock this one time, and then the Aether stuck itself inside her, and then she became very, very sick. So I had to take her to Asgard, which is where I'm from, and we had to try and fix her. We were dating at the time, you see. I got to introduce her to my Mother…" On a roll, Thor's face looked excited as he told his story, but his euphoria from the beer started to dissipate as he thought about his mother.
"Who's dead. And… Jane and I aren't even dating anymore so…" Uncomfortable silence fell as Thor started to gather himself together. "These things happen though you know, nothing lasts forever." Tony started to push Thor back to his seat but he resisted.
"No, I'm not done yet. The only thing permanent in life is impermanence."
"All right, you're done." Tony rolled his eyes at everyone and tried to get Thor to sit down again. "Awesome. Eggs? Breakfast?"
"No, thank you, I would like a Bloody Mary." Thor replied with a smile.
The next few days passed in a blur. They worked as hard as they could to pinpoint the perfect moments to return to in their history. Percy and Jason met each other's eyes occasionally, and each knew the other was thinking of Annabeth and Leo respectively, and how good they'd be at this session of the "Time Heist".
At one point during one of their sessions, Nico went so far as to suggest that Percy and himself went to their Battle of Manhattan, since there were too many Avengers logically for each team and they might as well be doing something useful. They were pretty sure that Doctor Strange would be on their side, but just in case, they'd need Percy and Nico's powers to… let's say…. Forcibly negotiate their need for the Time Stone.
Percy didn't even argue. At this point, he would do anything to bring Annabeth back home.
After some debating, the Avengers agreed that this would be a logical thing to do.
Rocket the Raccoon was an entertaining addition to their ranks, and Hazel muttered under her breath to Percy that they didn't think they needed another smart mouth in the group.
They all ate together at dinner time, with Rocket pacing around on top of the table and occasionally on their food. "Quill said he stole the Power Stone from Morag." He informed them all.
"Is that a person?" Scott asked eagerly. "Morag's a planet. Quill was a person." Rocket clarified, barely containing his impatience.
"A planet? Like in Outer Space?" Scott persisted further. Rocket momentarily stopped his pacing. "Oh look, it's a little puppy, all happy and everything."
Percy disguised a snicker by choking on his blue soda and Hazel pounding him on the back.
Rocket imitated talking to a puppy. "Do you wanna go to space? You wanna go to space, puppy? I'll take you to space."
Tears streaming down Percy's face, he went back to devouring his waffles with the usual gusto.
Nebula was also an unusual addition, serious to a fault and pessimistic to say the least. Percy still liked her, however, and appreciated how much she had lost. She wanted revenge against Thanos as much as any of them, and Percy was happy to give it to her, just as long as he was able to go against whatever was left when she was done.
"Thanos found the Soul Stone on Vormir." Nebula told them later during their lunch. Natasha, holding a pen and paper, scribbled something on it.
"What is Vormir?" She asked in a business like tone.
"A dominion of death, at the very center of Celestial Existence." Percy and Nico looked at each other, trying not to display their fear.
"It's where… Thanos murdered my sister." Nebula finished. Natasha looked up from her notebook in surprise and an uncomfortable silence fell. Percy couldn't help wondering what exactly had happened to Gamora in Vormir and had a worried feeling that they would find out soon.
"Not it." Scott muttered, breaking the awkward moment. Everyone laughed nervously and quickly moved on.
Finally they had created a rough plan on where they were going to go. "All right. We have a plan." Percy told everyone. "Six stones. Four teams. One shot."
Steve took over from there.
"Five years ago, we lost. We lost friends, we lost family. We lost a part of ourselves. Today, we have a chance to take it all back. You know your teams, you know your missions. Get the stones, get them back. One round trip each. No mistakes. No do overs. Most of us are going somewhere we know. But that doesn't mean we should know what to expect. Be careful. Look out for each other. This is the fight of our lives, and we're going to win. Whatever it takes. Good luck."
They all took their places on the time machine, and Percy got a surreal shifting feeling as he realized he was going to have to visit one of the worst weeks of his life. Tony gave Steve an appraising look after his long speech and Steve gave him a sheepish smile.
"He's pretty good at that." Rocket commented.
"Right?" Scott agreed.
"All right. You heard the man." Tony said. "Stroke those keys, jolly green."
"Clever. You rhymed." Frank muttered.
"Tractors engaged." Bruce announced.
Rocket addressed Rhodey, who had his ship in miniature form. "Hey, you promise to bring that back in one piece, right?"
"All right, all right. Okay. I'll do my best." Rhodey didn't manage to hide a grin.
"That wasn't much of a promise." Rocket said. Rhodey shrugged.
Natasha grinned. "See you in a minute."
The time travel machine got in permission. They all switched on their helmets. Percy took a deep breath and felt his body disappear, or shrink, as he yet again flew through the Quantum Realm.
A/N So, following through with some of y'all's advice, I decided to have Percy go to his battle of Manhattan. Bring on whatever complaints you have, I'm ready (but I would prefer that you didn't have any). I thought it would be fun to have Percy do that, and there are other reasons that you'll see eventually.
Majority wants Natasha. What cruel people you are. (I'm kidding. I see your reasoning). But what if, hypothetically, I was doing a branch of story of this series that hypothetically needed Natasha to be in it? Natasha was such an amazing character for me, one of my absolute favorites, for so many reasons that probably wouldn't fit in this author's note. I would hate killing her, but after watching Endgame again I realized that it was a beautiful sacrifice for her and redeemed her, even though I didn't think she needed to be redeemed. However, I would so love to play with her character more in the next book that I'm doing. Thoughts? So, I'm changing my tactic.
Frank or Hazel?
For those who really want Natasha to die, I'm willing to hear your case, but please know that I'm 99.99 percent sure about not killing her.
For those of you who don't get it, think of all these stories as Avengers movies (which they are). The next story will be like a solo origin story. Check on my profile to vote on if you want that story next. Sorry for long author's note, there were a lot of things I needed to address. Also, much apologies about short chapters, they will most likely be longer as summer happens. Anyways, please review! I'm literally and figuratively (don't ask me how that works I don't know) begging you. Thanks to those who did:
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A/N (added) Again, I added some things, because the prophecy affects people. This is basically my update for the week, and I apologize for the late one. I'm working on a chapter that will be out soon, soon being five to six days. Again, I'm really sorry about the late update.
