Percy Ex Machina
Chapter I:
Steve watched helplessly, his vision tainted red and blurry, as Thanos pummeled Thor mercilessly into the hard rock. The super-soldier tried to stand back up, but his body refused to respond to his commands, failing him at the worst possible time. Around them the battle raged, the screams and cries of friend and foe blending into a demonic symphony of misery. Friends he hadn't seen in years, fighting alongside him like they had never left, against an enemy they had beaten once before.
"Come on!" Steve yelled desperately to himself as he tried to push out from underneath the rubble, only to slip on his feet and let the concrete collapse on top of him again, sending another round of searing pain up his spine.
Thanos, with his back turned to Steve, now had the metallic head of Stormbreaker in his hands, and was beginning to slowly force its sharp edge into Thor's shattered chestplate. Blood was already gurgling out of the son of Odin's mouth, his voice unintelligible.
Steve's shield had been rendered useless long ago, the white star that had been with him from the beginning, was now torn in half. Something that should've been impossible. A lot of things should've been impossible. But none of that mattered anymore.
Then he saw it. His salvation. Their salvation. He reached his hand out towards Mjolnir, and channeled every remaining fiber in his body to will the godly hammer to him. His heart skipped a beat when the head twitched, just as it did all those years ago at the dinner party. But then it went still, its leather wrapped handle unwilling to move.
Thor's dark eyes drifted to Steve's, his final act before Thanos administered the final blow, plunging the axe straight to his Asgardian heart, and sending him to his brother waiting in Valhalla. Thanos immediately picked up Thor's lifeless body like a ragdoll, and let him fall to ground with a sickening crunch.
"NOOOO!" Valkyrie cried as she appeared from the growing ashes, and slashed her sword across Thanos's head, only to be swatted away like an annoying housefly.
A burning, blinding rage kickstarted Steve's system, and with a massive burst of energy he forced himself free from his concrete prison. He stumbled towards Mjolnir and clinched his hand around the handle. But it still refused to budge. It had deemed him unworthy.
Tony, with his repulsors blazing, went head-to-head with Thanos, with T'Challa just behind. But the Titan handled both of them without batting an eye, grabbing them by the necks and smashing them into an unconscious submission.
Thanos chuckled menacingly as he brandished the gauntlet, running his fingers over each individual gem. Steve leaped forward in a last ditch effort, and clasped his hands onto the gauntlet, trying to wrench it from Thanos's vice grip.
"It's over for you." Thanos laughed, looking down on Steve like he was a disobedient child. "You and your friends have my respect. But I am inevitable."
Just as the last word left Thanos's mouth, the sky above exploded. Massive thunderclouds rolled in out of nowhere, blanketing the area in a sea of suffocating darkness. From their mass, lighting bolts began to rain down in volume, evaporating the surprised Chitauri, leaving nothing but a charred mark on the coarse surface. The initial impact of the volley dislodged Steve from Thanos and sent him tumbling backwards.
The rest of the Avengers stood uneasily as a strong headwind suddenly attacked them, sucking in anything that wasn't bolted to the ground. Thanos's mouth twisted into a contemptuous sneer as he watched his war chariots and flying creatures get sucked into the unforgiving vortex, the last of his invasion army gone in a mere instant.
They were now standing alone in the eye of a hurricane, only them and Thanos. The storm's swirling walls seemed to stretch out into outer space, the temperature felt as it had dropped twenty degrees. Steve thought it was somehow Thor, back from the dead and in some way managing to conjure this cyclone. But his broken body remained still and motionless at Thanos's feet. Tony and T'Challa had regained consciousness, and were staring wide-eyed at the surrounding scene.
"I—I don't understand." Dr. Strange whispered hoarsely. "This wasn't one of the possibilities."
The expression on Thanos's face shifted, and a small, unnatural grin appeared. The self-proclaimed savior of the universe still had the infinity stones. And although the loss of his forces was indeed a setback, he could still finish what he had started.
Steve noticed the massive tidal wave, one that had suddenly formed and drained part of the nearby ocean, first before anybody else. It loomed large, casting another layer of shadows across them which caught Thanos's attention. Standing on top of the colossal water conglomerate was a glowing blue figure, who was wielding a similarly glowing trident. It was truly a godly spectacle.
T'Challa, thinking fast on his feet and being the closest to Thanos, took the opportunity to blindly rush the genocidal maniac while he was distracted. But the King of Wakanda was easily stopped in his tracks by Thanos, using the power of the reality stone to suspend all the Avengers in place, leaving T'Challa frozen in his mid-air leap. But the stone had no effect on the new challenger, whose vast wall was still churning away, waiting to be unleashed.
Thanos raised the gauntlet again, and shot a monstrous beam of crackling purple energy at the mysterious figure, that was met and countered by a ball of water that absorbed and dissipated the deadly electricity. Getting increasingly frustrated, Thanos activated both the space and time stones, but before he could unleash their power, the figure sent all the water crashing down at terminal velocity.
Steve thought for sure that him, and the rest of his comrades were dead. They couldn't move, only watch and would surely end up drowning. But the water funneled and compacted itself inwards on its way down to the earth, and hit Thanos with the force equivalent of a thousand tsunamis. The figure, who Steve now saw was distinctly a male, impaled his trident into the column, which caused it to implode into a trillion particles that evaporated into thin air. What was left was only the gauntlet, and no sign of the mad Titan.
With Thanos now gone, the reality stone relinquished its hold, and all the Avengers fell forwards as they tried to reestablish themselves.
Their savior no longer had the vibrant bluish glow to him, and upon further inspection he looked like the average teenager. He wasn't a man, he was a boy. He could've easily passed off as one of Peter's classmates at school, with his orange t-shirt and simple denim jeans. The top half of his face was hidden behind strands of black hair.
"Who the hell are you?" Tony demanded, asking the same question everybody had on their mind. Despite the boy's docile and innocent appearance, Steve was beginning to worry that he might attack them next, the gauntlet was only an arms reach away from him.
The boy shifted idly on his feet and then gave them an awkward smile. "My name is Percy Jackson."
Author's Note:
So uh, yeah. This idea hit me straight in the noggin while I was watching the NFL draft last night. Figured that it might be fun to write a bunch of one-shots that have me just airdropping Percy into climactic situations in crossover universes, and having him wreak havoc. Zero context, just stupid crack action.
Let me know how I did. Definitely will take requests. Hope you enjoyed.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.