The goddess nodded her head at her introduction before turning her eyes towards Percy, glaring at him as she asked "How did they discover Celestial Bronze?" "Remember the whole Gaia/Loki thing?" Percy asked, honestly not sure since all of the godly parents seemed to suffer from short term memory, "We had to give the Avengers weapons to help us with the fight. Tony Stark kept one, without our knowledge, and uploaded its properties somewhere where Shuri was able to find them."
Athena smiled and said "Ah yes, Tony Stark, I remember that mind well." Percy stammered and said "Please tell me there isn't a Stark demigod running around." Athena smirked and replied, "No, but it was tempting. What a mind, but his cockiness was too off putting for me." Percy had all he could do not to collapse with relief as the other's watched on in silence. "I was sent down here to give you a lecture about handing over Celestial Bronze, but seeing as how it helped a girl with my name and they might have found some of Hephaestus' cast offs anyway, I'll let it slide… this time, but see that it doesn't happen again."
As she began to glow, Percy yelled "Look away!" and everyone did, when they looked back Athena was gone. "Was that really Athena? Like the Athena?!" Barry questioned. Percy rubbed the back of his head as he said "Yeah, she doesn't like me that much, but that was actually a fairly nice interaction with her. Maybe she's starting to soften towards me… Anyways, as you can see I'm not to hand over anymore Celestial Bronze so I hope you've got enough." Shuri nodded and said "Yes, there was enough to make the headphones and to add to the strap if there is ever a need before she, hopefully, out grows them or to repair them if they are damaged."
"Do you think she'll be wanting to hone her powers or is she going to be satisfied with what she's got now?" Nakia asked. "She's a bit of a spitfire, I think she will go far with her powers, though whether she'll want to start right away or not is another thing. She was just adopted after all, she might want to live with her family without worrying about such things for the time being." "Which brings us to another set of problems, doesn't it Barry." Oliver stated. "What do you mean?" asked Daisy.
"Well, Athena and her parents are from four years in the past. We might need to return them to their time in order to not cause a rift, but Sara will be better suited to answer that question." Barry explained. "Why can Sara give us this answer better then you?" T'Challa asked. "I may be able to go back into time and deal with the Speed Force with it, but Sara's crew works on correcting time anomalies, making sure that things work out right so that they can keep time flowing properly etc. They are able to do this because they never would make a big enough mark on the world to mess things up with the flow of time if they were to die while doing timeline work, etc. She could tell us if not returning Athena and her parents to their time will cause one or not, which will lead to whether she can stay here or not." Barry answered.
"Then we should ask her about this as soon as possible, I want to help Athena as best as I can, if she decides she wants it, but I can only do that if I'm near her and know her and obviously four years ago I didn't. That's quite a stretch of time to be without assistance with the device if she needs it, after all this is the first of it's kind, who knows if she will need tweaks done to them or if parts will wear out." Shuri almost continued with her rant, before Oliver held up a hand to calm her down and said "We'll get them on it, can we be patched through to them?"
T'Challa nodded and went over to a panel on the wall, typing in somethings before a holographic image filled the room, placing familiar faces around a table. "Black Panther, how are things going with Athena?" asked Fury. "You may call me by my name, I have decided to trust them." "As have I." added Hope in quickly. "Things are good, Barry and Oliver said they need to talk to Sara about something." T'Challa said. "I'm right here." Sara said from her position leaning against the wall.
"Sara, have you checked whether us taking Athena back in time or letting her stay here will cause and anomaly yet?" asked Barry. "I had Gideon start running it as soon as I heard Zoom was the one behind her getting the powers, I was hoping we wouldn't have to drop her off at a time we didn't know she would need protection. "And?" asked Oliver. "She and her parents will not affect the timeline by staying here, in fact it's almost like this was always going to happen and therefore the timeline already took it into account." Sara replied.
"Good, I will explain it to the parents once they are done visiting." said Barry. "How goes the villain round up?" asked Daisy, to which Killer Frost replied "We're double checking, but I think we've got them all and have returned them to their proper place in time." "And Zoom?" "No luck on tracing him, after you grabbed Athena, it's almost like he vanished." Cisco said, earning a frown from Barry. "Unless the Speed Force finally caught up to him, and I don't see that being the case, he will come for Athena sooner or later. It would be nice to be able to cut him off at the pass."
"You've been watching too many old Westerns again Barry." Oliver said with a smirk, before saying "If he hasn't gone back for more villains, and by the non-returning numbers that seems to be the case, what do you think he is up to?" "He was always in it to run the world, so to speak." Barry said, musing out loud, "He was keeping us occupied with those guys, but for what? It couldn't have been just Athena, she was in the past and we wouldn't have been looking for her."
"Has anything or anyone important gone missing?" asked T'Challa. "We have eyes everywhere and everyone seems to be there, whether or not everything that is important is, well that's another story." Fury replied. "Is it possible our finding Athena was part of his plan?" asked Percy, this caused everyone to pause in thought. After a moment, Barry said "I have to admit, getting both her and her parents out of there was easier than I would have expected. We definitely shouldn't underestimate him or put it past him."
"But to what end?" asked Lincoln. "Without Shuri, Athena wouldn't have control over her powers. Zoom couldn't have known Barry and any of us had never crossed paths, so he wouldn't, couldn't have brought her to Shuri for fear that Barry could have stopped him, even if it was four years ago." Thor suggested. "But how would he know Shuri would have the ability to help her? Celestial Bronze wasn't even into play until right after I joined the Avengers, which means that it and Vibranium being able to be mixed wouldn't have been a possible thought process." Percy pointed out.
"Wait, what if Zoom went into the future to see how he could help her? He might have come from a later point then his returning point where he had us go, he might have seen Athena struggle with her powers. Sara said it was almost like the timeline always made that jump, that it was set in stone essentially, which means Athena would always get help from Shuri, it might have even been a recorded fact if he went far enough into the future. What if the only timeline where she didn't make the jump is the one that Zoom was on and discovered how to help her, which in some unknown way will help him." Natasha said.
Once again, everyone was silent, before Barry and Sara looked at each other and nodded, Sara being the one to speak, "That actually sounds really reasonable. With her powers not being able to be controlled, she wouldn't have made a mark in the timeline, which means she wouldn't have been an anomaly for us to look at and fix." "And Zoom would have known that Shuri could find the components for the device at a point and time after Percy joined the group, it was just a matter of picking when." Barry added. "So basically, we've been used by the super villain. The question is, what is he planning?" asked Cisco