Hey Guys!
So, I'm going to start with reviews:
Yes, there will be a Wolverine Cameo. I plan on incorporating Mutants into my story, which I mentioned a while ago. This story is the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole. Avengers, X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc... Please be patient with me. I want it to happen, but I also want it to be good when it does.
Thank you, ChandraVardhan, for giving me that little ego boost. I have never been called a 'Virtuoso' before, but I love that word.
ColdMilkLover, I laughed hard enough that milk came out of my nose. It has been years since someone caught me off guard like that. I tip my hat to you. *tips hat*
Lizaloves, Keep digging! You've gotten closer to solving my evil plans than anyone else!
Berrybluexd, So it was Daedalus at first, giving them instructions, then Percy hooked them in by speaking to them. Let it all be known I had a friend that saw it six times before the first week was out.
limegreenarcher, I know, right? Who needs things like emotions? And I actually debated who would be in the van, but Grover needs more closure and Rachel has a job to do, so yeah.
actresspdx, Thank you! Laura is such an undermined character! Clint has a family, which is just amazing in my mind, and that's kind of what this story is about. I love Clint being a goof and Bad-A, but his family life is the coolest part about him, in my opinion. Also, I figure Nick has some old contacts of some sort, and with SHEILD technically 'destroyed'. The Tower isn't so much where they train, as it is their home, which is, again, why I focus on family stuff in my story. JARVIS should be FRIDAY, I know. Call that the biggest mind fart I've ever had. Timeline... To be honest, I'm lost. I've tried writing it down, but the paper got lost. I don't know how much more of Spider-man I'll show, if any. maybe later. And mutants are in this story. When they show up, I'll be sure to give FOX their credit.
IamaGuest, Warmer...
Everyone who reviewed, Thank You! I appreciate that you all love this story so much and follow it so closely. I have fun writing it and when Summer started I immediately began writing this! And keep up the good work! You inspire the story, remember? Keep guessing, keep building theories... I do the same in my basement, with threads running between photos and such.
Someone brought to my attention that we are #2 on the PJO/Avengers crossover page when it comes to reviews... WE ARE SOOOOO CLOSE! REMEMBER THE GOAL?! 1K REVIEWS!? WE'RE ALMOST THERE! Let it be known that I'm excited!
This is also dedicated to Dagger, who threatened me with getting sniped unless I posted again this week. Let it be known, any other threat would've been ignored. But, on account I really wanted to post again, and the fact my bulletproof windows have not been reinstalled since the last attempt (I don't want to talk about it), here it is.
Disclaimer: I am not Rick or Marvel.
Rachel:
That idiot owed her an explanation. It was one of the only reasons she decided skipping her Art courses at Columbia was okay. In fact, if he could afford plane tickets for the four of them, he could swing her another semester in college, right?
It was the least that he owed her. He owed her so much more.
And so, six hours after they had been dropped off in front of JFK International Airport, Rachel found herself sitting between Grover and a large, boisterous man in business class seats. Jason and Piper sat two seats ahead, talking to one another in hushed tones and eating their complimentary bags of peanuts. Unlike Rachel, they didn't have anyone sitting beside them. Rachel scowled when the man beside her continued to speak on his stupid cell phone about how his 'Oh-so-important-meeting' couldn't wait until he was off the plane, and that they should allow him to speak with his board of directors 'without loud-mouthed stewardesses telling him what to do.'
Rachel's vow of maidenhood kept making more sense the longer that she lived with it. She suspected it could be the actual blessing itself, or maybe the Oracle just didn't like guys after centuries of maidenhood. Either way, the only guys that seemed nice enough to be around where her friends at Camp Halfblood, and the few she knew from Camp Jupiter.
Now, sitting at cruising altitude and caught between the squeamish satyr and loud business man that was starting to sound more and more like her father, Rachel was done. She stood from her seat, hardly saying an "excuse me" to the business man and the stewardess he was arguing with. Rules be darned, She took three long strides and shifted into the empty seat beside Piper. The Cherokee girl gave her a small nod of acknowledgement, but returned to her conversation with her husband.
'Finally, I can hear myself think.' She thought to herself. She sighed in relief, and when the same stewardess that had been arguing with the businessman asked if she wanted anything to drink, she gladly accepted a Ginger Ale (the stewardess even gave her a whole can). She sipped on it quietly, half-heartedly listening to the couple argue.
"We shouldn't have come. I shouldn't have let you come." Jason repeated, gripping his wife's hand tightly.
Rachel didn't need to see Piper to know the girl was rolling her eyes. "You've said that a hundred times since we walked into the terminal. You didn't 'let' me come, I'm dragging you along because it's the right thing to do." She said flatly. Rachel didn't chorus her agreement, but she knew Piper was right. She almost always was.
"He could be dangerous! We… I want him to be who he was, too. But you remember what he was like before he left. I want you as safe as you can be! And flying into Canada is not where you should be! Especially while you're pregnant!" Jason argued, looking around the plane as if expecting a monster to pop out and execute his wife.
"I still trust him. In fact, I trust him to keep us safe from whatever monster tries to attack us." Piper said evenly.
"And if he doesn't pull through?" Jason challenged.
"Then my amazing husband will kill whatever tries to eat his pregnant wife." She said, patting his upper arm lovingly.
They went on like that for some time, Jason eventually bringing it back up. It was annoyingly cute how much he cared about his wife, especially when he would put his hand on her swollen belly and interrupt himself or Piper to say "Oh! I felt him kick!" Rachel suspected that was the only real reason they weren't screaming at each other: Jason wanted her safe, and she knew it.
If only he still trusted Percy…
Okay, that wasn't totally unfair. Rachel remembered her first reaction to hearing Percy had left on a 'quest' by himself. Even more so, she remembered how he acted before he'd left:
Erratic. Angry. A shut-in. She couldn't count on her and Piper's fingers how many times they had reached out to him. How many times they had gone into his cabin to find him fiddling with Leo's sphere. His eyes were always so… Hollow. Especially after Annabeth had broken up with him. Rachel had screamed at the blonde to just go back and talk to her ex because they were best friends.
Eventually, Percy had started propping a chair under the doorknob. Chiron had to threaten to break the door down before Percy finally removed it. When that happened, anyone who entered was yelled at and turned away. Slowly, people started labeling Percy a lost cause. People stopped visiting him.
Rachel admits, with a bitter taste invading her mouth, that she was one of them.
It took two weeks. Two weeks for anyone to realize that Percy had left. Annabeth had been in tears when she'd run into the Big House, screaming desperately for someone to find him. It was… Compared to when Percy first went missing, it was three times as bad. She had been a mess.
Rachel had, of course, felt beyond guilty. She had let one of her best friends down.
And then the gods had stepped forward, and Apollo had told Rachel that she needed to tell the whole camp: Percy Jackson had tried to lead an army out of Tartarus, and the gods had been forced to destroy him.
When she had announced it, the campers had been beyond angry. Mostly at the gods, but some of them had expressed their anger at Rachel. She never told anyone about how she had returned to her cave one night to see all of her paintings smashed, and furniture upturned. She'd simply cleaned it all up, and she'd tried her best to duplicate her older paintings. It never worked.
Resentment had slowly simmered down in the camp, and a few of the newer guys- the ones that didn't even know Percy -had started accepting that he must've been a traitor. People told those kids to shut their mouths, but then doubt had set in. Finally, a counselor had sided with the idea that- if Percy had been pushed far enough by some outside force -he could become a bad guy.
Everyone blew it out of proportion. Everyone chose sides. Everyone, months later, ended up deciding to let it drop.
It had dropped, alright. Right into the laps of the four sitting on the plane to Prince Rupert, British Columbia.
"I think that he just wants to talk."
Rachel looked across the aisle for the first time, and Grover Underwood sat there, completely still. Checking behind her she saw the businessman now sat alone. Grover's hands were cupped in front of him, and his head was bowed. If Rachel didn't know any better, she might've thought he was praying. For a scraggly, semi-awkward teenager (because he still looked eighteen, though he was twice that age in human years) he looked wise beyond his years. Rachel guessed Pan had something to do with that.
"Then why not talk over the phone?" She asked, though she wanted a serious answer. Grover didn't speak for a while.
"Percy wasn't ever the kind of guy who just… gave up on anybody. And, I mean, I've never seen him leave anyone behind, but… Doesn't it seem like he would do something like this?" He said, looking over at Rachel. Normally, it wasn't abnormal to see him close to tears. Now, though? He had this… defiance in his eyes.
Rachel shrugged. "What, the cheesy phone calls and mysterious plane tickets? The Van?"
"Exactly." Grover said. "Percy is the cheesiest guy we know. And we've both been watching the News. You were in New York when it happened. You know who Theseus is."
Rachel had been suspecting for a while, it only made sense now. She chuckled lightly. "As if the wave isn't the biggest clue he could've given us, his name kinda screams 'Greek Demigod', don't you think? Yes, it's- it's Mission Impossible. But that doesn't explain why he decided to call us."
"Actually, it does." Grover said. "Percy isn't just going to walk away from his family. The gods, maybe, but us? Percy calling us, sending us to somewhere the gods can't follow- We only ever joked that he was an idiot, Rachel. We need to remember that he's outsmarted gods before." The stewardess passed by, offering Grover anything. He politely took a peanut bag and started eating the packaging when she walked away.
"Sooooo… what now? We just hope it isn't a trap and meet up with him?" Jason suddenly said. Rachel hadn't even realized that the married couple had stopped arguing to listen in on their conversation. The redhead didn't say anything, though. She'd been doing the same.
Grover gave all three of them significant looks. "Call it intuition, but if you had really thought this was a bad idea, you wouldn't have set foot on this plane. You wouldn't have trusted Percy at all." He began to shift around in his seat, finding a comfortable place. When he spoke again, he wasn't even looking at them. "So maybe you want explanations,like I do." There was a small bout of turbulence, then he spoke again. "Then I'm kicking his rear."
Rachel smirked slightly, and it only took a few minutes for Grover to start snoring. Little bleats that gave away his true legs. She decided a quick nap wouldn't hurt, and quickly fell into a deep sleep.
Jason:
Watching Piper sleep was something special.
His thoughts were sounding more and more stalkerish as the days went by. Was that marriage? Was falling in love just becoming a stalker to one specific person? And then, later on when you have kids, is it really overprotectiveness? Or was it just stalking reaching a whole new level?
Married life was weird. He'd never been married before. Jason had no idea how to act about his own marriage, let alone raising a kid. He didn't exactly have the best role models when it came to parenting, either… King of the gods: absent father. Alcoholic mother, estranged sister, a goddess that thought of him more as property, and a she wolf that would've killed him if he had shown weakness.
… But Jason liked to think that Piper was as invested into the relationship as he was. In fact, some days she proved to be more than he was. After all, if she didn't remind him some days to eat, he could go on until he dropped over starved. They would be awesome parents. They would try their bests and maybe, just maybe, they could get a better life then he ever had… No demigod problems, no life threatening quests, and no dramatic abductions from past friends.
He was… it was beyond comprehension, knowing that when he had thought of a long life with her, she had been imagining the same thing. Marriage was a step closer to their lives together, and the fact that she had a baby growing inside of her, and that it would continue to grow after it had exited said woman, they would get the chance to be parents.
It just… It just blew Jason away.
But Prince Rupert… Canada? What kind of meeting place was that? Up until the moment he had checked the tickets and then Google Mapped the location, he had had no idea the place had existed. It barely had an airport, and what really set it apart from other cities… Well, Jason assumed that if the plane was a point of no return, then Prince Rupert was simply a pit stop.
"I hope you're wrong."
Jason hadn't even noticed that Piper had woken up. One second she had been leaning against his shoulder, peacefully snoozing, and now her eyes were open, looking up at him. He always loved her eyes. They seemed to change colors every time she shifted.
"You mean about the gender? Piper, the doctor already said that we were have a boy-"
She snorted, punching his arm. It didn't hurt, but Jason pouted anyways. They had had a long debate about what the gender would be, in which Connor Stoll had started a gambling pool. Suffice to say, many had sided with Piper about their child being a girl. Jason had made a good amount of money (which Piper immediately used to buy baby clothes).
"No, you dummy." Her smile disappeared, and she started to stare outside of the window. Jason had to admit that it was beautiful. They were in the clouds at sunset, and the soft yellows and contrasting reds made the plane ride feel so… serene. "I'm worried that Percy isn't who he used to be."
Jason felt his face harden. Not out of anger or distrust or worry.
Pain. It was painful, thinking about Percy.
Jason wished he'd been a bigger help to Percy. He'd wished that he'd been able to snap some sense into his friend's thick skull. He'd wished he'd been able to bash some sense into Annabeth's thick skull when he figured out she'd been cheating on him. He'd been so angry…
Jason wouldn't blame Percy for turning bad, because if he had been in Percy's shoes, he would've probably levelled the camp. Everyone was so quick to defend Percy, saying what a good guy he was and how he was just broken. But Jason? Percy had opened up to him. Percy had displayed his own self-doubt at the bottom of the Mediterranean. He had felt completely and utterly useless.
Jason understood that feeling. Praetorship was just a title. He could argue and commission new orders all day long, but if the Senate didn't approve, he was back at square one.
He had a lot of bills that never saw the light of day. He was afraid what others might think about him. Some days, Jason wished that he had all the power. Not just over the Senate, or the Legion, or whoever- He just wanted control over himself.
Percy, lying alone in his cabin with no one to console him? When no one could console him? Jason couldn't imagine the pain of knowing he couldn't control himself. Couldn't control his thoughts, flashbacks, tears-
No, Jason didn't think Percy would turn evil.
But he knew what extremes Percy would push himself to have control again. Jason had pushed himself into a facade. He'd pretended to be the perfect Roman Soldier. He'd pretended to be something he wasn't, and if he hadn't met Piper he would've stayed that way.
Jumping into Tartarus and bringing back an army, though? It was out of character, for sure, and Jason didn't know what to believe. He wanted to trust his dad, but he wanted to trust Percy, too.
But Percy couldn't tell his side of the story. Percy Jackson was pronounced dead, his soul trapped in Tartarus. Nico had come forward weeks later, saying that he hadn't felt Percy die, and Annabeth had decided to go rogue, and then Piper and him would argue, and Frank and Hazel were already being put into office as Praetors- It was too much.
He chose to believe Percy was dead. He chose to forgive Percy for whatever trouble he might've caused, and wished his friend the best he could get in the afterlife.
Years later, and Piper wants Percy to be the same as he once was. But which 'Percy?' The lovable, troublemaking son of Poseidon? Or maybe the shell he was before he 'died?'
Jason knew exactly who they were meeting. Theseus, the Avenger. Until Jason saw the old Percy, they were meeting a covert agent that had hidden from the gods and mankind for five years. A person that single handedly stopped an invasion. No, he didn't want Piper anywhere near this guy. They didn't know this Percy.
"I am, too." He whispered, more to himself than her.
She grabbed his hand, squeezing it gently. They didn't discuss Percy often. Better they just avoid the topic, and smile sadly when they remembered their long-lost friend.
"You know I never wanted to think the worst of Percy, right?" He whispered. Most of the passengers around them were asleep or resting, and besides the whine of the engine he didn't want to cause a disturbance. "I want to believe he's good, and I want to believe the gods were lying to us, but…" His hand subconsciously slipped onto her belly. He smirked when he felt a kick, and Piper smiled dazzlingly. "I want you to be safe more. I want everybody to be safe." He admitted.
Piper gave him a melancholy smile. The expression seemed to add years to her face. "You can't save everyone, Superman."
"I can try." He challenged.
She flicked his bicep. "You can try to be a good father. I bet you'll even be great at it." She said, looking into his eyes. "But you're already a great friend. And, no matter why Percy might be trying to bring us to him, I want to guess he needs a friend."
They sat in silence for a long time, Piper's head resting on Jason's shoulder. Jason, deciding that staring at his wife would be a bit weird when she was staring back, chose the window. The sunset really was beautiful.
Until the gryphon appeared.
Jason had to make sure that there were no alcoholic beverages around his seat and that his eyes were working properly before he decided that there was a gryphon flying in formation with the plane. He took off his glasses even, wiping them off. In that time, another had joined the flock. Then another. And another…
"Trouble." Jason whispered to Piper. She immediately sat up, looking where he was.
There were at least a dozen of them. Black, panther like bodies. Hawk-like heads. One of them looked towards the plane, snapping its beak at them. They were still a good distance from the plane, but Jason's heartbeat was quickening. He thought of the major repercussions of an airplane crash. By now, Piper had woken up Rachel and Grover, and the satyr was gnawing on his own shirt.
"Those- those are big birds." He said, biting a chunk out of his sleeve.
"Do you think they'll attack the plane?" Rachel asked quietly. "Could they even do any damage?"
"I don't want to find out." Jason admitted. His hand clutched his wife's. She noticed.
"What're the odds you can summon lighting? Zap them out of the sky?" She asked.
Jason had no idea. He didn't want to risk zapping the plane, though. He liked his wife not-electrocuted. "Zeus might find us if I do. Then he will zap us out of the sky." He said.
Rachel seemed deep in thought, and her eyes were zeroed in on the birds. Suddenly she winced, clutching her head.
"What's wrong?" Grover asked, keeping her from staggering. She was pale, and looked ill.
"We don't need to worry about them. They're about to die." She suddenly said, her voice sure (if not a bit wobbly).
Jason was about to question the Oracle that hadn't been able to give prophesy since it had been taken from her (BOO), but then he heard something. Something no one else around him could. He felt a line of warmth travel down his spine. "Something just entered our airspace." He said, though he wasn't sure how he knew.
There was a streak of dark blue and black, much larger than the gryphons. Jason could only describe it as a bullet, or a blunt missile. The four of them all gawked when they saw it.
The gryphons, for their part, didn't seem to know what to make of it either. They all squawked in confusion, wondering if this was another hungry monster come to join in the feasting. Or maybe it was just a much smaller, defenseless target? Could they eat it?
The bullet suddenly split in two. It opened like and Easter egg, but it wasn't hollow. Row after row of circular openings sat inside of it. One of the gryphons went in for a closer look. Some sort of interior lights, once white, now turned red.
The gryphon was vaporized.
In fact, when the bullet started spitting out rockets like Piper would lose her lunch, Jason knew that the monsters didn't stand a chance. One by one, feathers exploded off of the birds, and their last squawks were ones of panic. They only had to watch as the threat was destroyed. Some gryphons tried to get away, turning tail to run. The small projectiles followed, and judging by their speed, the gryphons didn't make it.
When the gryphons were gone, the bullet closed itself. They watched as it veered off to do who-knows-what. No one else seemed to notice. The captain didn't make an announcement of birds being decimated by magic metal bullets, either.
"I think… I think we're being escorted." Grover commented idly.
Piper nodded beside Jason. "I'm pretty sure that was Percy."
Rachel nodded along, and Jason was left to clean his glasses again.
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