Chapter 3: And So It Begins
A/N: *giggles* So...uh...mixed reactions on the wanted relationships in this story. Some desperate for not Harry/Percy slash, others encouraging it. Hmm I had originally planned a Harry/Percy pairing but when I need to decide you guys can vote.
Uh in answer to those questioning how no one noticed them not ageing, no one really noticed and both go them changed a lot in the 10 years and most people just thought they looked young. Neither of them were particularly close to anyone so...yeah.
Wow you guys are actually giving me useful reviews! Thanks to everyone who left one, especially those who prompted how I might find it easier to write the story.
Sorry for not updating in weeks (PenelopeDuchess I think you jinxed it XD [yes, I do have a life thank you, but I love writing stories!])...but I've been in China for weeks! And I couldn't resist putting some Chinese-y things in this chapter.
Le Diablo Blanc, it will be told later on in the story, or possibly this chapter, who exactly Harry is the Master of.
P.s: Sorry if I don't reply to each individual review, but if you leave any questions, I will answer them.
WARNINGS: Death, probably torture, pain, wars, swearing, major plot change, SPOILERS, possibly slash relationships, weapons…rated T for now.
≈Ωne Fandom Is Not Enough≈
Please note, "speech in italics" means talking in another language, in Percy's case, Chinese (Mandarin).
Percy Jackson-
It was on Percy's third mission in China that he heard about the legendary Basilisk.
Harry Potter-
And it was after Harry's first mission back in the British Isles since joining S.H.I.E.L.D that he heard of the fabled Kraken.
Percy Jackson-
What was he doing in China? Fury had been in a pissy mood. Okay maybe Percy had scared of the newbies, but no one had told him that it was their first day. Seriously though, he didn't choose to be their instructor, Fury had put it on his timetable. What did he expect Percy to do? Okay maybe he shouldn't have gone straight to the hardcore stuff, but Fury wanted him to teach. The only thing he thought Percy could teach was weapons, so what else was Percy gonna do?
Now Percy was forbidden from teaching any new teams or agents, but it was probably for the best given how bad he was at censoring the things that came out of his mouth.
It probably also didn't help that there had been a food fight in the S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters cafeteria and Percy may or may not had hit Fury in the face with a trifle.
Fury claimed that he was being sent to China to 'broaden his linguistic skills" which bullshit and pretty pointless given that Percy was already fluent in every language thanks to his Godhood. Not that Fury knew of course.
He loosened the green silk tie that hung around his throat, Fury seemed to be deliberately trying to annoy him. He massaged his sore neck, trying to get rid of the reminder of the mission that had finished not 20 minutes ago. He scowled as he walked up to the bar, Fury knew he hated doing fancy parties, trust him to sent Percy on one in straight after a particularly nasty mission (one that Percy was fairly certain that he might not have gotten out of if he hadn't teleported out of the exploding base) in another country.
He needed a drink. A strong one. "Lúzhōu Lâo Jiào please." he said to the barman, ordering the strongest drink he could see.
At the moment he was Joe Brown, a wealthy American businessman, attending the party at invitation of the host. He had no idea who the host even was, in fact, he couldn't even read the briefing papers in the jet before he had drunk some nectar.
He was here to observe an female spy who went by the name Viper. S.H.I.E.L.D had been informed that part way through a bunch of amateurs would try and crash the high profile party. He was there to watch her reaction and judge if she was a threat or not. It was such a simple mission, Percy found it hard to believe that Fury could find no one else to do it.
He really shouldn't have pissed him off.
Taking his drink and nodding at the barman, he slipped some nectar into it, so that he might actually be able to observe anything without still feeling the effects of concussion.
"Well hello there, handsome." purred a voice next to him on the bar. Percy almost groaned, was it not enough that he had to wear this stupid suit and tie, he had to pretend to flirt with people as well?
He really shouldn't have pissed him off.
"Hello yourself, gorgeous." He replied smoothly.
He sipped his drink and looked over at the owner of the voice. It was a surprisingly tall Chinese woman with a long, formfitting black dress lined with lace. Percy pretend to be eyeing her up, which he was doing only partly doing. He was also checking her body for weapons, her stance for any signs of training and her general body health to see if she even had the conditioning to be a spy.
He noticed she had a poorly concealed (by S.H.I.E.L.D standards) knife strapped to the inside of her thigh (which was where Annabeth used to permanently keep hers hidden, he recalled sadly), but other than that, she seemed far too off balanced and weak to be a spy with a reputation such as Viper.
His eyes travelled around the room, subtly searching for any other possible candidates. He tried to keep his gaze as unprofessional as possible. Percy knew that there was only one thing that always gave spies away. Not their body language - acting was easy to master. Not their voice or imperfections in language either - that was just as easy to master.
It was their eyes.
A trained spy's eyes would always move restlessly, analysing threats, judging people's stances, looking for weaknesses.
The mark of the very best spies was that they could do all of that, and yet appear to be oblivious.
The woman next to him seemed to sense that he had lost interest and scowled before attempting to flirt with the man on her other side.
Percy rolled his eyes, he hadn't been impressed anyway. He hadn't dated anyone since Annabeth. There was the fact that it was incredibly painful to be reminded of the time he once spent with her and the fact that he simply didn't have the time. In fact he had been turning offers down for so long that he wasn't sure if he could still be physically attracted to someone, let alone remember how to properly date someone should he ever say yes.
But, boy, there had been plenty of offers.
Now Percy wasn't insinuating but he knew he was rather easy on the eye. His ruggedly handsome face and hair were very appealing and it did help that he had the body of a Greek God.
But of course, Percy had immediately rejected the idea that he could change his body shape at will when he discovered that the gods had that ability. The thought had infuriated him.
Those lazy sods up on Olympus all had perfect bodies and they probably hadn't lifted a finger to get there.
All of Percy's muscles were earned through his years and years and years of training and hard work.
Percy's eyes came to rest on a suspicious looking figure, who's eyes moved restlessly and hands twitched uneasily as they bounced up and down on the balls of their feet.
They looked like a promising possibility for Viper, except for two things: the fact that they seemed to move much too obviously (no trained spy would allow their hand to stray so often to the badly hidden gun in their inside suit pocket)...and the glaringly obvious fact that he was a man.
He couldn't possibly be Viper. But then again, you never know. Percy mentally chided himself. Viper might be a cross dresser - what? Stranger things have happened.
But Percy decided to rule him out and came to the conclusion that he was one of the amateur party crashers. It made sense - that gun was in such an obvious place that he couldn't be anything less than an amateur. As the man turned, Percy also noted he had a comms earpiece in his ear. An independent bounty hunter such as Viper would be working independently - not with a team on comms.
With him catalogued into his head he carried on subtly scanning the party. His eyes came to rest on an oriental woman in a red dress holding a delicate matching fan in her hand.
Her dark brown eyes moved in exactly the way a spy's would. They moved with a little too much precision, and scanned people a little too systematically. Her dress consisted of what looked like a piece of silk wrapped tight around her torso, stopping at her waist, and a skirt that fell to just below her knees. She appeared to be toned enough to be a spy, and Percy also observed that her skirt was loose enough that it was easy for manoeuvrability.
Percy could tell that out of everyone he had analysed so far, she was the most likely person to be Viper.
But of course, the world was never that easy for him. As far as Percy could tell, she carried no weapons whatsoever. The fabric around her torso was too tight for anything to be concealed under, her dress was also sleeveless, thus meaning nothing was hidden or strapped to her arms. There was nothing strapped to her legs either, now most people would not be able to tell if someone had something concealed beneath a loose skirt, but Percy had grown up with Annabeth and had learned how to tell whether her knife was strapped to her leg through her movements.
This lady most definitely did not have anything on her legs.
Her stiletto red heels could be considered a weapon mused Percy as he tried to work out what her weapon/s were. No weapons were hidden in her hair either, it hung loose but curled down to her mid back.
No spy in their right mind would go anywhere unarmed.
The woman locked eye contact with Percy, obviously feeling his stare. Best keep up appearances Percy said to himself and winked suggestively at her after giving her a clear once over and meeting her eyes again. It was a standard party procedure, pretend to check people out to get a clear look at their body for any suspicious looking things.
The woman gave him a coquettish smile and with a flick of her hand, opened her fan and fluttered it flirtatiously at him. It was a rather beautiful fan, Percy noticed that the spokes were made of intricately engraved metal, not wood.
He smiled back at her and slowly pushed himself away from the bar, he needed to know slightly more about her. He started to saunter towards her and had made it about halfway when the party crashers turned up.
There was a loud crash and several people screamed as glass rained from the ceiling and several black clad people began to be lowered into the room through the smashed window on the roof. The man who Percy had observed earlier was running out of the room with his hand to his ear muttering into the comms unit and pulling on a balaclava.
Percy hated missions like this because he was forced to not do anything and not help anyone. He glanced over at the woman he suspected was Viper and saw that he was right as she was already moving.
She ran towards the smashed window, darting through the crowds of people running the other way. Percy moved back to the bar, sitting on it to give him a better view - several of the party goers gave him odd looks as they sprinted past.
She held up her fan and gave it a sharp flick of her hand. One of the metal spokes flew out of it and towards the men being lowered into the room. It neatly sliced through two of the ropes and she flicked her wrist twice more and two more spokes flew out, severing the rest of the lines.
They were knives! She hadn't been unarmed, she had about 10 knives concealed in her fan.
Percy looked briefly around the room, it had emptied very quickly but a few Chinese people were still stood in the room, watching in awe as she sprinted up to them. Percy rolled his eyes, how stupid were these people? "Why the fuck are you still in here? Get out whilst you still can!" he yelled at them, watching them scarper away.
He turned his eyes back to the scene. There were about 7 black clad men in the room, 5 of them had still been very high up when she cut the ropes and were lying on the floor, unmoving, probably with some broken bones. One of them stood, raising his gun at her and the other was pushing himself up from the floor.
She reached him before he fired the shot (how women could run that fast in heels still puzzled Percy) and punched the hand holding the pistol and twisted it whilst grabbing the gun from his hand. The man let out a howl of pain as she squeezed his hand. She must have punched pretty hard, maybe broken a few bones thought Percy as he watched her knock him unconscious with the barrel of the gun.
The other man had managed to stand up and began to raise his own gun at her, looking scared. She kicked her shoe forward at him, the man, not expecting that, didn't dodge in time and the heel hit him straight in the groin. Percy gave a sympathetic wince as he saw that man collapse in pain.
"Pathetic." muttered the woman as she knocked him unconscious as well. She began to bind their hands and feet and Percy recalled the man that had run out of the door.
He teleported out of the room running up the deserted corridor until he heard a man's footsteps running back up in his direction. He flattened himself along the wall in the shadows, waiting to see who it was.
Sure enough it was the man in a balaclava. This mission really was ridiculously easy yawned Percy to himself as he tripped the man over and punched him just under the jaw so that he lost consciousness. He cuffed Balaclava's hands together and walked back into the main room again, dragging Balaclava with him.
The woman looked up at him as he opened the door and levelled a gun at him. Percy held one hand up in surrender whilst showed the woman the cuffed man with the other.
"I do believe this is one of yours." Percy said, gesturing to the pile of 7 immobile and bound men.
The woman stared at Percy for a second, who carried on walking towards her, dragging the man. She then nodded turned her head sharply to look at the men, her curled black hair whipped out behind her and smacked Percy in the face.
"Ow! I swear every. Single. Time." Percy muttered, wincing. "I'm taking a wild guess here, but I suppose you're Viper, correct?"
The woman looked up sharply and narrowed her eyes. "Correct...I knew there was something up with you. So who are you?"
Percy smiled tiredly. "I'm with S.H.I.E.L.D."
Viper raised at eyebrow and stepped forwards. "S.H.I.E.L.D huh? What do they want in China?"
Percy shook his head. "This was just an observational mission. They don't want anything in particular, just scouting out the area and it's agents I'd guess."
Viper looked at him disbelievingly.
Percy shrugged, he wan't sure what else she wanted, it was the truth. He just wanted to leave and get back to base as quickly as possible so that maybe he might actually be able to sleep at some point that week.
Viper shook her head. "You are one of S.H.I.E.L.D's assassins, yes?"
Percy sighed and prepared to leave, offering her the man held in his hand. "I will not answer that...and if you know the answer to a question why do you bother asking it?"
She rolled her eyes and muttered as she took the man from Percy and placed him on the pile. "Well, I'm sorry if I can't believe that the legendary Basilisk would have any other business than to-"
That brought Percy up short. "What?! Basilisk? Who's Basilisk?"
She stopped moving as well. "You are not Basilisk?"
"No...?" said Percy, slightly confused, although his face betrayed no emotion.
She frowned. "How peculiar."
Percy was even more confused. His emotionless stare drilled into Viper and she almost took a step back.
"Basilisk is an infamous S.H.I.E.L.D assassin, a legend even. I would have thought that all of our kind would know of him." mused Viper slowly.
A very small part of Percy's patience snapped. Of course he was out of the loop. He always was. Even out of the loop that reached as far as China. "Well," he said crisply "I am not Basilisk, I am Kraken and I'll be leaving now."
She smiled mockingly, and his irritation flared. "How can you mistake me for someone who is so unknown that he is a mere myth?" He almost snapped. Then he mentally scolded himself for almost letting his mask slip.
"There is only one description of him. And you fit it."
"I...fit Basilisk's...description?" he asked slowly.
She nodded, her eyes rolling over him, focusing on certain parts of him as she spoke. "Untameable black hair. Inhumanly attractive. Deadly aura so powerful that you can almost feel his presence. A perfect emotionless mask...and hypnotic green eyes."
He almost snorted at inhumanly attractive, ironic much. He raised an eyebrow. "Hypnotic?"
She nodded, pulling her heel back on. She tilted her head and looked straight into his own green eyes. "You know what they say about those eyes?" She said almost dreamily. "They say that if you ever get close enough to Basilisk to see those eyes, you're as good as dead." she paused. "That's why there's only been one description of him."
Percy considered this information and muttered. "Well, good for me then, I look like a legend."
Harry Potter-
Harry had protested about returning to the British Isles, he really had. And he had managed to avoid it for the 15 years he had been at S.H.I.E.L.D. But he had managed to piss of Fury enough that he felt like shipping off to the place he had specifically told he didn't want to go to.
Fury didn't know much about him, well, maybe he thought he did (he didn't), but Harry had had to explain why he despised the ideal of going back to Britain. On his file it stated that both his parents had died in a gas explosion when he was one. It also said that he had been badly injured in a fire at Cambridge and moved to America shortly afterward (there had actually been a fire at Cambridge).
Harry had told Fury that when he joined S.H.I.E.L.D, he had been trying to forge a new life and that returning to Britain would only reopen old wounds. He said he wanted to avoid it especially if it was unnecessary.
But Fury changed his mind about that when Harry accidentally caused a food fight in the cafeteria. Key word being accidentally.
He didn't normally sit in the cafeteria but he hadn't had enough time that day to grab lunch that day because a mission. As he ate he had barely noticed some morons a couple of tables down had been spraying each other with water until one of them tried to lob his whole water bottle at another one of them. It missed drastically and ended up smacking Harry right in the throat.
He had gotten a tad angry, but it had hurt!
And it had also interrupted his musings on the Einstein Rosen Bridge.
He flicked one of his peas at the offending man and it nailed him right in the eye with deadly accuracy. He let out yell of pain and held his eye as he looked for the person who had flicked it.
His eyes came to rest on a sniggering sandy haired man seated on the table to the right of Harry's one, obviously concluding that he was the person that threw the pea. He smirked and chucked his apple at him, it missed and sailed towards the red haired woman sitting next to him. She caught it effortlessly and casually took a bit out of him. She looked back at the man challengingly.
His snarled, it was obvious that he was being mocked and he tried to aim a handful of carrots at her, but it fell painfully short. They landed instead on an agent on a different table with brown hair and blonde highlight. She let out a slight screech as some diced carrots hit her in the face.
She glared around the room, wiping them off and scooped up a large dollop of her own food (which happened to be mashed potato) onto her fork and flicking it back in the general direction of the table of the carrots.
It of course landed on someone it wasn't intended for and they retaliated. Everyone in the cafeteria was watching the scene with interest. Well until they started to join in as well because some pie crust hit the sandy haired man in the face and he stood up and yelled "FOOD FIGHT!".
Harry immediately ducked under the table laughing to himself as he ate the rest of his lunch. The frenzy abruptly stopped and Harry cautiously peered over the table to see why. He had to work very hard not to burst out laughing when he saw Director Fury standing by the open entrance of the cafeteria with a face full of trifle.
Fury had been pissed after he watched the CCTV he came to the conclusion that the food fight had been initiated by Harry.
So, off to Britain with him then.
He had heard that the person who threw the trifle had been shipped of to the Far East, so maybe it wasn't that bad.
He was cursing under his breath as he came back from a mission. Glaring moodily at the floor of the jet taking back to the base in Scotland, he cursed Fury.
Harry didn't like to work with a team because it mean that he couldn't use any of his other abilities to help him because otherwise the S.H.I.E.L.D agents would be questioning how he did everything. He had told Fury that he preferred solitary missions and he had agreed to only send him on them if he was a vital part of the team.
But the rules changed when Fury was pissed at you and now Harry had been chucked into a team mission in Scotland.
The jet touched down and Agent Coulson nodded in their direction as they climbed out the hatch. "Debriefing's in 20 minutes in the 5th Board room on floor 3."
Harry scowled as he made his way back to his current sleeping quarters. He climbed into the shower, ranting inside his head.
It would have been so much easier to do that mission solo. But instead Fury felt like annoying him by giving him a barely competent team. It would have been helpful if they had listened to a single thing that he said, but no, they ignored him because he wasn't actually part of their team. Now if they hadn't been there, Harry could have just teleported into the base or confunded the guards and it would have been so much easier.
But that bloody Agent Ward had decided that he was leader and ignored Harry almost completely. He cursed Agent Skye as well, she had been the one who had carrots in her face and threw the first bit of mashed potato in the food fight, Fury had obviously given her the same punishment as him. She had hacked the wrong satellite and only realised when they were already entering the base. It had taken her 4 minutes to hack the right one and in that time Agent Ward had sent them the wrong way and put one of the newbies on the mission right in the line of fire.
Only then had Agent Ward resigned to the fact that he had no idea what he was doing and the team actually started to listen to Harry. Thankfully from then on the mission ran smoothly.
He massaged his aching muscles - ugh he had been thrown against a wall after one of the explosions. Cricking his neck he stepped out of the shower and checking the time. 8 minutes till the debrief.
He made his way over to the 5th floor after absently drying and clothing himself with wandless magic.
Entering the briefing room 2 minutes before the said time, Harry slumped down into a seat tiredly. Agent Ward, Agent Skye and Agent May walked in and Ward sat next to Harry, and the girls sat opposite them.
"Agent Evans was it?" asked Agent May.
Harry nodded.
They sat in a slightly awkward silence for a while until Skye spoke. "Did you hear about Kraken's latest mission?"
"Kraken?" asken Harry, he had never heard that alias before. Well he assumed it was an alias because seriously, no one was called Kraken any more than anyone was called Basilisk.
Skye gaped at him. "You've never heard of Kraken before?"
"...no?" answered Harry slightly confused.
She shook head slowly disbelievingly. "But, you must have done! He's like a legend within S.H.I.E.L.D."
Harry shrugged awkwardly. "I don't really pay attention to the gossip within S.H.I.E.L.D, and I rarely interact with many agents due to the fact I mainly do solo missions. So...no, never heard of him... or her."
Ward spoke in his emotionless voice. "He's one of the very top S.H.I.E.L.D assassins, if not the top. He is like a deadly storm, if he enters a base with a mission, you better get out of the way quickly because there is no way of stopping him."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "You've worked with him before?"
Ward shook his head. "No but he's got a very big reputation within S.H.I.E.L.D. He's almost like a legend, no one's worked with him because he always goes solo."
Harry frowned. "Then how do you know of him?"
May smiled thinly. "You see his name on the papers. Say you're working on a big mission, at the debrief you get a paper and on it is everyone who helped that mission and how they helped. Somewhere on that paper will be a list of places that needed infiltrating, people that needed to be neutralised or obscure bases that needed exploding. The person responsible for that? Kraken. He's never at the debriefs though, you will never see him even if you are working on the same mission. He just does his bit without ever crossing paths with the rest of the team."
Harry was suitably impressed. Could he have a job like that? One where he would never have to work with a team? Sounded nice, then he could freely use his magic without having to worry about people tracking him.
Harry didn't really do big base explosions though, he was more an undercover agent as Agent Evans or just an assassin as Basilisk. He never really worked for bigger missions, he just tracked down the people Fury gave him, usually they weren't related to big missions or anything. He only killed them if Death agreed that it was their time, which so far had been everyone because they were all despicable people.
Ward nodded in confirmation. "He surfaced about 5 years ago, no one really knows his true identity but people reckon he started as a S.H.I.E.L.D agent but has been promoted up to the level were he purely uses an alias."
Harry almost raised his eyebrows. 5 years ago had been the exact time he had also been promoted up in Secret Agent. He could bet that this Kraken had been promoted at the same time as he had. "No one knows his identity?"
Skye shook her head. "No one. I reckon they don't even have his actual file on the computer anywhere so that even if anyone hacks S.H.I.E.L.D they won't be able to know his identity."
"S.H.I.E.L.D can do that?" he asked, eyes widened.
Skye nodded. "I think they do it for all their big name assassins. They probably have their actual files on paper scattered around the world buried in some thick, secure boxes or have had them burnt."
Harry wondered if his alias, Basilisk, was a big enough name that James Evans' file wasn't digital. "So his latest mission?"
The rest of the table had almost filled up and they were waiting for Agent Coulson to arrive. Skye grinned. "Kraken's latest mission was in China. He managed to carry out a mission in 2 hours that a four man team could not do in 7. And he rescued the four man team that had gotten trapped there as well."
There was a low whistle from Skye's right and a blonde Agent Simmons sat down. "Kraken's latest mission?" she asked.
Ward nodded.
"I heard tha-" she began but stopped as Agent Coulson walked in.
The debrief started and Harry started to tune out.
Percy Jackson-
Percy had collapsed in bed straight after he had got back to his quarters, but his mind was still whirling.
Basilisk.
He couldn't help wondering if his name as Kraken reached that far.
Could he become a legend that reached as far as China?
Harry Potter-
Harry lay restlessly in bed. His mind still replayed the conversation he had had before the debriefing.
Kraken.
He wondered if he would ever become as legendary as Kraken.
Did Basilisk even compare to Kraken?
Percy Jackson-
Percy suddenly felt slightly annoyed.
He had been mistaken for someone else.
Someone better that him.
He set his mouth in a line of grim determination before he fell asleep.
It was not going to happen again.
You wait Basilisk. Just you wait. Soon enough Kraken will throw you out of the limelight.
Harry Potter-
Harry couldn't help the twinge of irritation that he felt.
He had worked very hard to create Basilisk.
Why were there still bigger names than him?
He set his mouth in a line of grim determination before he fell asleep.
He was going to have to change that.
You wait Kraken. Just you wait. Soon enough Basilisk will throw you out of the limelight.
A/N: That was one hell of a chapter, took fucking ages.
Thank you for reading and please leave a review on your way out!
≈Ωne Fandom Is Not Enough≈