All right guys! Um….sorry about the late update. Exams were all last week and had to study. _

But other than that, we're really getting into the action now!

Now, we left off when all the Avengers and Half Bloods met each other. This is a continuation of that.

Percy

I walked beside Annabeth through the woods. It was strange, walking around so many people when it had just been the two of us for the longest time.

But the one person that really bothered me was Thor. He was the god of thunder from Norse mythology. It was bad enough with Zeus from Greek mythology. But now, along comes Thor.

I already knew I wasn't going to get along with him. I saw the look he gave me when I introduced myself. But for now, I had no choice but to deal with the guy.

I didn't know what to think about the other Avengers though. They seemed like an odd bunch. Of course, I didn't trust them in the slightest. Only Banner. And that was because he had trusted Annabeth and I with his secret.

But then again, we had no choice. None at all. Aside from everything else, I knew that the Avengers were powerful. They would be an incredible asset for us to defeat Loki and Luke.

But...my stomach was churning at the thought of facing Luke once more. To be honest, I had barely defeated him the first time. If it hadn't been for him giving himself up, I was sure that I would've died.

And for all I knew, Luke wasn't even possessed by Kronos anymore. Maybe we had a chance to revert him back to out side. I knew for sure that Annabeth would try, but I was doubting our chances. He was evil long before he was taken over by Kronos.

And to add to all of that, every step I took, I was being weighed down by the tiny box that my dad had given me. I dreaded to open it. I knew it was bad news. If I didn't have to, I would never open it. I truly didn't want to pay the price for whatever it was that I needed from the thing.

But that was exactly what scared me. What if I had no choice? What if Annabeth was dying and the only way to save her was by opening the box? Would I be able to do that?

Of course I would.

I couldn't tell her yet though. I couldn't tell anyone. I knew she had the right to know, but I couldn't bring myself to talk about it. Every time I thought I had an opportunity, I would back out of it. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I sighed. It seemed like we all had stopped caring about things like water, food everything. We had become consumed in facing the enemy. And this was truly it.

"The feeling's getting stronger." I heard Thalia say from the front of our troop.

"It's like we're getting closer." Banner added.

I honestly had no idea what feeling Thalia was talking about. And I tried very hard not to feel jealous because of that. So what if she could feel something that I couldn't? It wasn't like it was that big of a deal.

"Good. That's good…" The captain muttered.

As soon as he had introduced himself, I knew what Bruce had been talking about. The serum had made him more powerful. The captain looked more powerful. And Bruce got the short end of that stick. Instead of becoming a better, more powerful person, he became a person concealing a horrible monster.

All in all, it sucked.

And we continued to walk.

It was dreary and boring. My feet were starting to hurt from all the walking. I wanted to ask if we could sit down for a while, but I didn't want to sound weak. No one else was complaining.

So I was glad when Tony Stark said it before I did.

He wasn't wearing his suit anymore. He carried it in his hands in what looked like a suitcase. And it looked heavy. It was no wonder he was the first person to get tired.

"Guys, you think we could sit down for a while? We've been at this for hours!"

Captain America turned around and frowned at Stark before he said, "Fine."

I could tell there was some bad history between the two of them. I could literally feel the tension.

We all sat down on branches or logs on the sides of the trail. I could see relief on many of the people's faces. Annabeth and I sat on a log opposite from everyone else. We sat together, holding hands and no one spoke. We were all too tired to. We just sat in silence.

It wasn't long before I couldn't stand not doing anything except sitting because of my horrible ADHD.

I got up abruptly and started pacing the trail. The Avengers shot me weird looks, but I ignored them. I had to do something. I couldn't stand just sitting even when my legs were killing me.

I paced back and forth, twiddling with my pen along the way. Twirling it around in my fingers, uncapping it, anything to make the restlessness go away.

But not long into my pacing, I starting feeling something strange. The ground underneath me had started to rumble. My eyes widened as I saw hair like cracks appear beneath my feet. The cracks didn't extend all the way to where the others were sitting at. They stopped when they were only a few feet away from me.

I only realized too late what was happening. I didn't have the sense to run.

The cracks beneath my feet slowly grew to fissures as the ground started to break around me.

"Percy!" I heard Annabeth cry.

A loud rumbling grew to surround me. The others had already noticed what was happening and were running towards me, but it was already too late. The ground beneath me gave away and I was falling. Falling into the ground.

"No!"

I flailed my arms, trying to look for a foot or hand hold, but I caught nothing. A scream escaped my lips and I could barely see anything. Everything was whizzing past me. The wind whistled in my ears and my hair was being whipped around in my face.

My sword slipped from my hand and tumbled down all the way to the bottom. It was a while before it touched the ground. I could hear a distant clink a while later.

That meant that there was still a long way to go.

20 seconds into the fall and my instincts took over. I tried to summon water to hold me up and stop my descent to the bottom. I gritted my teeth and clenched my hands into fists to summon whatever water was nearby. My gut clenched with the stress as only a small stream of water flowed down to meet me from the surface. It wasn't enough to stop my fall.

I finally relaxed myself as I stopped trying to survive. I came to terms that I was going to fall to my doom.

Just as I closed my eyes, I felt someone touch me.

Wait what?

I opened my eyes and was met with Thalia's frantic face.

"What the-"

She grabbed me and I stopped descending with a violent jerk.

"Agh!" I heard Thalia cry out.

"Thalia?" I asked, breathlessly and totally amazed.

"Yeah." She said with another grunt.

"How-" I started to say, but she cut me off.

"Not now!"

I could clearly see that she was having trouble in lifting both her weight and mine. I saw her strain against it. We ascended in slow jerks and I know that if Thalia lost even a bit of her concentration, we would tumble all the way down to the bottom.

I had to help her.

"Thalia, if you bring us closer to the surface, I can help."

I saw her nod slightly as we started rising just a bit faster.

With just a few metres away from the surface, I closed my eyes and concentrated on summoning the water I had tried and failed to summon before.

I felt the tug in my gut and I concentrated just a bit harder. I felt sweat run down my brow as I saw a steady stream of water come down to meet us from above.

"Yes!" I cried out as it came down to transport the two of us so Thalia wouldn't have to do as much work. My muscles clenched and strained as the water beneath us began to rise.

We held on to each other until we were both on solid ground.

I collapsed on to the floor along with Thalia, breathing heavily. The Avengers and Half Bloods crowded around us. Annabeth walked up to me and gave me a hug as I stood up.

"Oh Percy…" She breathed into my ear. A smile crept up my face as I held on to her.

Finally, we broke apart. I held out a hand to a very frightened looking Thalia. She accepted it, but only with a frown as she pulled herself up.

"Nice going." I muttered towards her.

"Yeah you too." She said back.

"Okay, hold up just a second. I'm lost. So you two weren't kidding when you said you had powers?" Stark stated incredulously.

"Nope we weren't." Thalia said, as calmly as she could.

"Okay, so you can fly," he pointed at Thalia. "And you can control water." He pointed at me. "Am I right?"

"Yep." I popped the p.

"And Nico can control the dead, while Annabeth is like super smart." Thalia added.

The Avengers had looks of subtle disbelief on their faces.

"See, we got our powers naturally while you guys are the opposite." I said with a smirk.

"Have care how you speak." Thor stepped towards me with his deadly hammer raised. "I too have been born like this!" He boomed.

I took a step back against my will but I masked it with a fake air of arrogance. "Yeah? Well-" But I was cut off.

"Stop it guys. We need to focus on the task at hand!" Annabeth exclaimed.

I frowned but stepped down. Then there was silence.

Banner finally broke the silence by saying, "So…anyone want to talk about what just happened?"

"Someone...is trying to stop us." Natasha Romanoff said in a deadly tone.

"Yeah. Someone, or something is trying to stop us from getting to the centre. Somethings going to happen there and whatever it is, it's going to be big." Added Clint.

I agreed silently while Annabeth voiced a concern, "And our enemies are heading that way too."

"Yeah and we have to get there first." Clarrise pointed out.

And on that happy note, we started walking again with Banner and Thalia in the lead.

We would only find out later just how big the showdown would be.

It was two hours later when we stopped.

I bumbled into the person in front of me, which happened to be Stark. He almost dropped his armor on his foot and he turned around to glare at me. I shrugged with indifference toward him.

He turned back to face the front and shouted, "Why did we stop?"

"Because we're already here." I hear Banner's quiet voice which was surprisingly load enough for the rest of us to hear.

"What?" Steve Rogers asked, sounding surprised.

"Didn't you hear me? We're here."

Thor's voice was loud in the quiet of the forest. "But there is nothing here!"

"It's in front of us. After this patch of trees is a really big clearing." Thalia stated "And that's the centre."

"Well let's go then!" Nico exclaimed.

We started forward and for a minute, I was swallowed by trees. The next, I came out into a large clearing that was almost the size of 2 football fields. Our group spread out on one side of the clearing, keeping an eye out for our enemies.

"Well….this is it." Rachel said, fear filling her voice.

Grover bleated.

"Guys look." Stark pointed at the other side of the clearing.

I glanced at the trees on the other side. There was shuffling and moving from within them. A few seconds later, two men came out from the trees. One of them was definitely Luke. The other I didn't recognize, but I was sure it was Loki, the brother of Thor.

I felt Annabeth tense beside me as she saw Luke. I squeezed her shoulder to give her a bit of comfort. I didn't think it worked.

For a minute or two, both the groups stood, staring each other down like how they would in one of those cheesy wild west movies.

It was Thor who broke the stare down. "Have at thee!" he shouted as he launched himself at the two men.

The rest of us ran behind him and charged.

And there you have it. Hopefully I'll be updating quicker now that exams are done and I don't have to go to school anymore! XD

-Detective DG