Chapter 2: Tales of the Past
Apologies for anything cliche here.
Percy cackled as he turned the TV to the classic Tom and Jerry show. He took off his red and black suit and had on plain black jogging pants. His torso was scarred with numerous wounds, ranging from knife cuts to burns from grenade explosions. All the while, his eyes turned to something that sat on top of the TV:
his old Camp Half Blood bead necklace.
His smiling face turned into that of a dark, cold stare as he watched the old necklace sit on the TV, as it did nothing but remind him of his past.
Flashback
Young Perseus Jackson felt like hell as he laid down on his bed, staring at the ceiling in crippling depression. First, Poseidon reveals he has a son in the Lotus Casino, said son swoops in and claims to be a "hero", and nearly everyone he knew turned their backs on him. It happened so fast Percy didn't bother getting the details.
'What did I do to deserve this?' he thought to himself. He closed his eyes and...felt someone nudge his shoulder.
"Hey, wake up. No time for that now." the familiar voice of Thalia Grace told him, making Percy groan and sit right up.
"Thalia, you leaving the Hunters to hang with Jason and Piper won't solve this whole thing I'm in now." he replied.
"Look on the bright side of things, Perce." Thalia said to him. "That little seaspawn brat may have some of your so called friends, but you've got Annabeth."
"Hmm. Yeah, you're right."
Percy got up from the bed and walked out, his belief in himself restored.
It all crashed down the moment he walked to the beach.
He saw his Annabeth, kissing another boy, a skinnier, mud brown haired boy...his own half brother.
"Theseus...I like you so much more than Percy." he heard Annabeth mutter. "He served his purpose to me: to get me at the top."
"Well, he has always been weaker than me. Everyone loves me."
"Annabeth..." Percy whispered to himself, tears forming in his eyes. "...why?"
He didn't hesitate to run away from the scene before anyone noticed him. No, he didn't just run from the beach, he ran from camp. Percy ran all the way up to the roadway. He let the tears fall down from his eyes and his cheeks as he sprinted towards the direction of the city, but he felt something hit him in the back of the neck, knocking him out.
"Hey!" a female voice broke him from his thoughts. Percy groaned and turned to the door to reveal a tall, well built woman with tan skin, charcoal black eyes, long brown hair, and rosy lips. She wore a standard NYPD uniform.
"Lady Nemesis. What do you want now?" he asked.
"Sorry. More letters from Lady Amphitrite to you." she replied, making Percy a little agitated.
"For fuck's sake, tell her I'm not going to send her any message unless I'm interested." he snarled at the minor goddess before him.
Nemesis sighed, placing a large pizza box on the coffee table in front of Percy's sofa, various light blue papers taped on it. "Fine. By the way, have you come into contact with my son yet?"
Percy scoffed. "Director Fury wouldn't. I'm too dangerous for him to fight."
"But, please, Percy. If you do end up meeting him, try not to kill him just because he sent the Avengers after you."
"Psh. I won't. I've got the Aryan Brotherhood and the Dogs of Hell to worry about."
"Hmph. By the way, nice ride. Yamaha VMAX, I presume?"
Nemesis finally flashed away from the apartment, leaving Percy alone to reminisce about his past a little more.
Young Percy's life went from bad to worse...in a way. One minute, he ran from the heartbreak, and the next, he was in some strange cell in some secret forest base in a snowy forest.
"Oh look. Another trainee like us." he heard the voice of a male whose accent he found a little unfamiliar.
"Quiet, Pietro. He's just waking up." another voice, female of the same accent, replied.
He groaned as he slowly stood up, noticing he was wearing a plain white jumpsuit. Percy turned to the source of the voices.
It was two people: one lean, athletic young man almost around Percy's age, probably a little older, with fair skin, messy bleached blonde hair, black eyes, and scruffy facial hair. The other was an attractive young woman who appeared to be just as old as the man, with fair skin, long brown hair, and brown eyes. They also wore white jumpsuits like Percy.
"I'm...I'm sorry." Percy said sheepishly. "Where am I?"
"Oh. You're American." the man, Pietro, snorted. "Well, you're in eastern Europe, Sokovia to be specific.
The son of Poseidon's eyes widened. "I'm in eastern Europe? Last thing I remembered, I was on a road outside of Manhattan."
"Sounds like you had a nice nap." Pietro replied. "What's your name, American boy?"
"P...Perseus Jackson. Friends call me Percy, at least when I had friends." Percy muttered.
"Hmph. I'm Pietro Maximoff. This is my twin sister, Wanda." the Sokovian man introduced himself, gesturing towards his red headed twin sister.
"So...why are we here anyway?"
"I don't really know." Wanda spoke. Percy's heart fluttered a little. "Something about...experimentation."
Percy winced. He knew damn well he wasn't going to like this.
He didn't. The men in dark uniforms strapped him, Pietro, and Wanda one by one into some kind of machine rigged to a strange, glowing sceptre. The twins made it out perfectly fine with strange superpowers: Pietro had superspeed and Wanda had red psionic energy manipulation. Percy? Not so much.
Some dumbass spilled coffee onto the machine, causing it to spark and shake. Percy shook on the machine in pain as Pietro and Wanda couldn't do anything but watch him transform. As the HYDRA agents turned off the machine and pulled Percy away, he felt a lot stronger, like he could fight all of them and get out if he wanted to. However, he felt a little scarred on his face. He's put back in the cell with Pietro and Wanda, who looked absolutely frightened.
"What? Is there something on my face?" Percy asked them, confused.
"Umm..." Pietro started. "I honestly don't know how to explain without hurting you...but you may want to check a mirror."
Percy looked at the glass wall of the cell and he saw his reflection, horrifying him. His face was severely disfigured on the right side, like he had been pushed face first into a fireplace.
All he could do was scream in terror.
Later on that night, he, Pietro, and Wanda were asleep in separate beds. Like all demigods, Percy had a dream, a really bad dream.
He dreamed he was back in Camp Half Blood. He noticed everyone was at the campfire...including THEM and...Poseidon? He was saying something. More importantly, he actually looked generally happy for someone who lost his son. The sea god announced,
"It has come to my attention that my son, Perseus Jackson, has disappeared. So...I officially disown him!"
"Wait, WHAT?!" Percy yelled out, not that anyone could hear him.
"And my other son, Theseus Burns...is now my new favorite son, for he is a better hero than Perseus!"
The entire crowd of campers, well most of them, cheered as Percy saw Annabeth strut over to the other seaspawn and make a tongue breakfast with him.
"NO! NOOOO! AFTER EVERYTHING I'VE DONE FOR YOU ALL!" Percy screamed out as he felt himself twitching in sleep. He felt a pair of warm hands touch the sides of his face as he woke up to the sound of Wanda Maximoff's scream of agony. Percy shot off the bed as he turned around to see Wanda on the floor with her brother trying to help her up.
"Wanda. Are you okay?" Pietro asked.
"I saw...heartbreak..." she breathed. "betrayal...abandonment...wounds of a sad past."
Back in the present, Percy hid his motorcycle in his appartment by hauling it to the living room with little effort, locking the door, and walking to his bedroom, which consisted of nothing but one hanging ceiling light, a small bed, a drawer next to that, and bright wooden cabinet in the corner. He threw his weapons and Deadpool outfit in the closet.
"Alrighty, now for some pizza!" he said as he opened the pizza box and throwing the papers, Amphitrite's letters, on the floor.
As he ate his pizza, lying on the drawer next to the bed was a lead bullet.
The next day...
Captain America took the liberty of taking the Maximoff siblings, Scott, Bucky, and Sam out for a training exercise at an abandoned fort in New Jersey. The military guys took the liberty at teaching Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Ant Man some hand to hand combat. While that was happening, Tony travelled to Korea to repair some of Dr Helen Cho's medical team's equipment.
However, one Pietro Maximoff appeared to be feeling strange. The encounter with Deadpool yesterday kept his focus away from what was going on right now.
"Hmm? Hey, Pietro, you okay?" he heard the Winter Soldier ask.
"I'm fine." He hastily replied. In the background, Steve just did a judo throw on Scott.
"Is this about being unable to catch Deadpool?"
"Nah, he sounded familiar...like someone Wanda and I used to know."
"Pietro..." Wanda breathed, pausing her sparring session with Sam. "it can't be Percy."
"Who's that?" Scott asked, groaning from the judo throw.
"A fellow test subject like us." Pietro began to explain. "When we were experimented on, I got superhuman speed, Wanda got psionic powers, and Percy...his power is that he's a lot stronger than any other soldier, possibly stronger than Captain Rogers, physically and mentally. It came with a cost: his face was disfigured after some asshat spilled his drink into the machine we got our powers from."
"Definitely fits our mystery man's description. You guys think he's Deadpool?" Sam asked them.
"No." Wanda said firmly. "He's been dead for half a year. HYDRA killed him because they couldn't control him."
The Scarlet Witch sniffed back tears of regret at that memory.
"What happened?" Steve asked, pausing the group's training session.
Flashback
The day after Percy's nightmare, HYDRA operatives, including one Wolfgang von Strucker, forced the trio to test their powers on three training dummies. Pietro first punched one dummy at nearly inhuman speeds, sending it flying through the snow, then Wanda used telekinesis to rip the second dummy in half.
Percy...he just stood there, face full of tears.
Annoyed, Strucker had his men escort Pietro and Wanda back to their cell.
Moments after being put back in their cell, they heard the sounds of men struggling, followed by a single gunshot...and silence. Strucker and his men returned back to the base...without Percy. Pietro called them out,
"What did you do to him?!"
Strucker turned to the twins, saying, "He cannot be controlled, unlike you two. So, we put him down."
The twins were left in stunned silence as Strucker walked away, Wanda leaning against the wall and sitting down on the floor and letting the tears fall. She cried for the friend she and Pietro lost as the latter sat next to her and tried to comfort her.
Back in the present, Wanda felt tears form in her eyes again as she tried to wipe them away.
"Strucker killed him." Steve concluded.
"Yes." Pietro said sadly. "That was the last time we ever saw him."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
