THUMP. Crack.
Hephaestus looked up from his still-glowing helmet and steadied his hammer against the workbench. He'd heard the most peculiar sound, like wood cracking on stone; it reverberated oddly through his volcanic forge.
Sniffing in frustration, he abandoned his project and marched up the obsidian steps, quite annoyed. What on earth DARES disturb a god's work- and near midnight, no less! Grumbling, he picked his way across discarded bolts and into the night.
His eyes adjusted to the dark instantly, a perk of being a god. His pupils glowed like searchlights, swiveling on a giant axis. Rocks… rocks… rocks… wood splinters… rocks…
Wait a minute. Wood splinters?!
He raced down the rocky slope, not even bothering to don his rocket boots. What in the world?
Picking up the remains of the wood, he sniffed. A peculiar scent- human, no doubt- but it reeked of the sea god. Now THAT was interesting. Had Poseidon broken his Oath?
"Waah!" a loud, infantile voice shrieked, startling the god.
"Who's there?" he shouted in what he hoped to be a menacing voice.
He turned in the direction of the voice. Collapsed against the rocks lay a child, clearly bleeding, with a small package buried in her arms. Hephaestus gasped and made his way to the infant, scarcely believing his eyes. "What… what happened?"
The baby cried even louder. Of course. It was foolish to expect an answer.
He gingerly took the parcel and ripped it open. A small, parched letter lay within; with a trembling hand, he forced it open. Words, shakily written words were printed toughly onto the sheet in what looked like human blood.
To whomever it may concern,
Please, dear sir or madam, take care of my only child. [Indecipherable text] done all that I can do.
And that was all. He ripped apart the badly written paper, his eyes burning. Who in their right mind would leave a child on his doorstep!? He stood there for quite a while, staring disbelieving at the note.
"Waah!"
The sharp voice snapped him out of his reverie. He turned slowly to the small boy in the crib.
A warm, comfortable feeling wormed its way through his heart- it was something akin to amusement, an emotion he hadn't felt in millenia.
An internal conflict raged. Should he keep the child, or send him away? The first option seemed to be the right one; his conscience would never allow him to abandon a child to fend for himself. As much as he hated to admit it, there was still a part of him that longed for family, longed for the company of non-bigots.
Sighing, he grabbed the crib and roughly made his way back across the rocks.
Eleven years later…
Sparks flew in waves from the sparkling piece of metal, hitting the walls and dissipating off of the bronze sheets. The small figure tore off his mask and glanced proudly at his project.
The metal formed a nice, circular shape, caving in at parts and protruding at others. Two long arms extended outwards, forming an easily detachable set.
In other words, a breastplate of Celestial bronze armor.
Only with a few modifications.
He'd been working on this for years on end; and now it was finally time to install it. With a careful hand, he lowered a large, robotic mass onto the top of the plate. A moment of silence. And then-
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The engine saddled itself into the plate, forming a large mold. Gears whirred and hummed as the entire piece came to life, glowing an eerie light.
The figure smiled.
"How goes the work, Percy?"
"Great, Uncle Heph!"
A grizzled man made his way down the stairs, a blowtorch in hand. He glanced approvingly at the piece of armor. "That's very good. I couldn't have done better." he said, quite gruffly.
Percy beamed. The boy was only 11 years old, but it was clear he had an eye for inventing. Perhaps it was the blessing of Hephaestus, or natural, inherent skill, but he'd soon grown into the premier marketer for quality pieces (second to Hephaestus, of course).
Uncle was, really, out of courtesy. Hephaestus had been more like a father than anything else; but he'd insisted on the formality.
"As much as I'd like to call you my own, you, dear boy, are clearly a demigod." he explained. "As such, one day, another god will claim you."
Percy had pouted at this, his cute little face scrunched up into a quizzical look. "Let them try. You'll always be my true father."
Hephaestus had smiled at this.
And now here they were, several months later, designing battle armor for, finally, Percy himself. He'd insisted on creating it when he'd 'matured', but Hephaestus had deemed it a necessity early on.
"After all, who knows when a monster will attack you?" he'd reasoned. BUZZ. CRACK.
Percy watched happily as the rest of his suit welded itself together. He'd based the piece largely off of Iron Man (it was one of his favorite movies), but he'd removed the red and yellow for a more subtle darkened silver.
After all, flashy wouldn't do any good in a real fight.
In all truth, the Iron Man suit could do with some improvement; he'd added a nuclear energy cell, celestial bronze guns, and had swapped the famous copper alloy for a stronger, celestial bronze one.
Uncle and nephew watched in veritable glee as the final piece welded itself together. "Can.. can I take it on a test flight?"
Hephaestus gave him a quizzical look. "Alright… if you are SURE you nailed bolt #504 in correctly…"
Percy rolled his eyes. It had been nearly 2 years since the 'Collapsed Tower' incident, and his uncle was still shoving it down his throat.
"Of course, uncle Heph."
"We don't want a repeat of the Collapsed Tower incident, now do we? If I remember correctly, you nailed it at a 45 degree angle. The entire building collapsed, did it not?"
Percy glared at his uncle, which elicited a rare laugh from the god. "Alright, you can go."
"Yay!"
With a childlike pounce, he wrapped himself in the thin metals of the suit. Unlike the Iron Man suit, this suit was extremely thin and extremely durable thanks to Celestial bronze. It also had coolers, and a snack fridge lodged like a backpack behind- Percy's own invention.
He entered the enclave and willed himself to fly-
And absolutely nothing happened.
"Haha!"
Percy glared at Hephaestus, who had dissolved into a fit of laughter. "I don't understand. The suit has a nuclear battery, self-charging! How in the world-"
He was silenced by a grizzled hand.
"Percy. What is rule number 1 of aviation?"
"Turn the plane on."
A knowing light entered his eyes; he face palmed. "Suit. Initiate."
The program had been coded specifically to his voice; any foreign entity would be ejected violently out the front. Ah, ejector pads. The world doesn't have enough of them.
Grinning, he willed himself to fly.
And this time it worked.
The lightweight suit raised itself easily from the floor. He'd, at first, been planning to design it like the Iron Man suit in that he wanted to install rocket boosters in the feet. It turned out that such a suit would be extremely difficult to control. It was Hephaestus who first suggested using Greek Fire- a more stable substance- for movement.
"I'll be back in an hour, Uncle!" Percy shouted.
"I'll hold you to it!"
And then the suit raced off down the corridor, rammed through a desk, and bolted out of the giant double doors and into the sunlight.
Flying was, by far, one of the most exhilarating things he'd ever done. But it wasn't like he didn't have some experience. He'd flown a glider before- but at a much lower altitude. He soared up to meet the clouds and felt the g-force rippling his cheeks. There was something strangely unsettling about the height. He was heading up, higher and higher…
Into Zeus's domain a nasty voice in his head whispered. He dismissed the thought. Why would Zeus have any reason to hurt him?
Streaming along through the top of the clouds, he made his way to the shoreline. Hephaestus forge was smack dab in the middle of nowhere, in the sea of deadly nothingness known as the Atlantic Ocean.
Making his way across the ocean was a huge pain; as such, he didn't have much experience interacting with actual people- not that he wanted to. He was quite comfortable with his machines and his uncle.
A roar of thunder shook him from his reverie. Looking up, he saw dark, grey clouds gathering quickly over the sky.
Strange. The weather forecast predicted clear skies.
He paid it no mind. The suit was completely waterproof; and if lightning did strike him, a special Celestial bronze lightning rod would deliver the energy to his battery- a little trick he learned from watching the Avengers. Funny how much TV can teach you.
The stark silver suit raced across the sky, urging its motors to even greater speeds. Within mere minutes, Percy had decided to take the vehicle up to the sound barrier- around 700 mph.
He'd have liked to make it across to land before the storm caught up with him. The tricky thing about rain is, without a suit, you get wet.
He urged his motors to even greater speeds. The top speed was a shocking 2,000 mph; that was as fast as he could go without experiencing an intense amount of motion sickness.
The suit was now at 1500 mph- supersonic levels. The Statue of Liberty crested the horizon, barely visible now over the waves. Excellent. He almost arrived.
He streaked in the vague direction of Long Island; he'd always been curious about the place. Something about it gave off a radiation that was off the scales- it was almost as if 3 gods, or 1800 demigods gathered there every day.
The storm clouds had truly thickened now; thunder boomed in the distance. Percy wondered idly what gave Zeus cause to be so angry. He'd only seen one storm of this size before, and that had been years ago.
Frowning, he dipped his flight down several hundred meters into the neutral, safe boundary. He didn't want to be caught in a firefight.
He tilted the suit sideways, reversed direction, and sped off back to the volcanic forge.