Tony holds his hands up in a time-out sign. "Wait. Wait, wait!" He looks around the room carefully with a raised eyebrow. "So you're saying you think whatever happened with Percy earlier might be the work of whichever group or organization he stumbled across when he was in the marines? The ones that we think might've eliminated his entire platoon? And you think they..." He trails off, but Bruce can guess what he was going to say.
Bruce slowly nods, grimacing a little at how it sounds. "Yes."
"And we're discussing it here... why? And why are they here?"
Steve and Clint look at each other and then Steve speaks up, "We're worried about him. We were there when he had his flashback. And the... symptoms... during and after it."
Tony's eyebrows wrinkle together in confusion. "What symptoms? No one has told me what they were yet."
He throws his hands up in the air. "You guys are crap at explaining things! You call me in here for an emergency meeting, tell me my nephew had a flashback along with strange symptoms, but no one will tell me what the symptoms even are!"
Bruce shakes his head. "That's the thing. We saw the symptoms, we all did. Well, Steve, Clint and I, but by the time we got Percy back to the med bay, they were all gone! It was like he had a bad concussion, but he was acting fine hours before, according to Clint and everyone else! I asked Jarvis if his medical records showed any recent concussions or head injuries, but that's the thing! All of his medical records from the past five years have been erased! If they were even there to begin with!"
Tony frowns. "Why would anyone go through the trouble to erase a seventeen year olds medical records?"
"We don't know." Bruce looks like he's at a loss. "This whole thing is strange. I thought about contacting shield and asking them to look into it, but we all know how shield is. I don't want your nephew involved with them."
Steve leans back in his chair. "We were all at a loss, so I went to get us lunch,"
Clint mutters something about disgusting salad and protein shakes.
Steve ignores him, "when I got back, Natasha was talking to Clint and Bruce. Natasha has an idea, but we figured we might as well bring you into it before we did anything illegal."
Tony raises his eyebrows. "The patriotic goody two shoes is going along with one of Natasha's ideas? The ones that never don't have something illegal in them?"
It's well known that Natasha's ideas usually involve doing something illegal. Usually something to do with murder and bribery. With a tad bit of seduction.
Natasha stares at Tony, unamused. "Crossdressing isn't illegal."
The boys all flush, except for Clint. He looks slightly proud.
Natasha smirks, remembering the event. It wasn't her fault the party they were infiltrating didn't allow men.
The boys did clean up nice. They didn't look too bad in their dresses, once shield's makeup experts were done with them.
Tony waves his hands in the air. "Anyway!" His face still looks strangely red, "What's the idea?"
Natasha resumes typing on her computer. "We're going to try to find the erased files. And hopefully, whoever erased them. But doing that..."
Tony grabs a chair and sits down. He hits a button on the sleek silver tale in front of him. A hologram keyboard appears in front of him. "I see. You're infiltrating that."
Steve looks horribly confused, but he nods anyway. "Uh. Yup."
Natasha smirks. "What better way to spend my evening than hacking secure government files?"
Clint looks at Natasha, a bit confused. Most teenagers, scratch that, most files aren't going to be secure. There would be no need for them to be. For Percy's file to be secure would mean he would have had to do something. He's not sure what Percy did, but if his file is encrypted...
Clint frowns. There's something Percy is hiding from them. Aside from whatever his platoon stumbled across a few months ago. And he's going to find out what.
Because yes, he does like the kid. But at the same time, he's an agent for shield. Anyone in his line of work is bound to be wary of everyone and everything.
He pulls out his phone and starts typing.
Tony blinks. "Why does my seventeen year old nephew have a secure government file?"
Natasha's eyes widen slightly and she stops typing. "Not the government." She looks at Tony. "Shield." She closes her computer. "Why does your nephew have a secure file on shield? And why is it level ten?"
Tony's eyes widen and he pulls something up on the hologram table. "Holy-"
"Language, Tony."
Tony rolls his eyes. "Even I don't have a level ten file! And I'm ironman!" Tony types something into the hologram.
While he types, Clint walks over to the table and pulls something else up on the hologram. "It took some digging, but I found this."
Clint pulls up multiple newspaper clippings and pictures. "Here's Percy running from... something. Over here," he pulls up a different image. "we have him fighting a gun wielding lunatic, someone that apparently kidnapped him and two other kids when they were twelve."
Natasha opens her computer. "Keep talking, I'll find info on the two people with him. We'll see if he kept in touch, and if we're lucky, find where they are and what they know."
Clint finds something else and then frowns. He speaks slowly, trying to figure out what's happening in the video he's watching. "In the middle of the fight between Percy and the kidnapper, the kidnapper did... something. Here's some footage from the body cam of a cop."
Clint enlarges the footage. It shows a tall, buff man wearing sunglasses and a leather bike jacket fighting with Percy. Percy manages to nick the man's ankle with something. Clint frowns. He can't figure out what Percy injured the man with. It looks like a pocket knife, but if he squints, he can see something bigger. Like a sword.
He pauses the video. "Are you guys seeing this?"
Natasha looks up. "What?"
He replays the part where Percy cuts the man's ankle.
"It's just a pocket knife."
"No, when you squint, it looks like a machete. Or a sword, or something."
Tony raises his eyebrows. "Where is a twelve year old going to get a machete?"
Natasha shakes her head. "It's probably just a mix of the water and the heat. You're looking too close and seeing the reflection in the water."
Clint stares at the video for a while. "I guess so."
He hits play.
The cop runs towards the two. His gun is out and pointing at the man. The man gets angry. He snarls and yells something at the cop. The cop yells something and takes a step forward.
The man holds his hand out towards the cop and all the police officers behind the cop and the man flies backwards.
Steve watches silently, not sure how to process this. "So that man triggered a bomb?"
Clint sighs. "... not really."
He looks at Natasha and she nods.
He rewinds the footage and enlarges on the man's hand.
"Watch carefully."
The man's hand glows and the camera flies backwards in slow motion.
Bruce folds his hands and leans on them. "So a mutant?" He pauses. "And was everyone alright?"
Clint hesitates then nods. "There were no casualties. And yes, he most likely was a mutant. But that leaves the question... what would a mutant want with Percy?"
Natasha pulls something up on the hologram. "I found their files. The kids that were with Percy when he got kidnapped. They're also level ten." Her eyes grow cold. "But they're closed out."
Bruce tilts his head. "I don't understand, closed out?"
"It means they died." Clint rubs his eyes. "Did Percy keep in contact with them?"
"From what I can find that's not classified, yes."
Clint curses.
Natasha's eyes flicker towards the floor. "And it seems one of them was more than a friend."
Clint curses again.
His face grows pale and he looks up at Bruce. Bruce's eyes are wide as they reach the same conclusion.
"You don't think..." Bruce trails off.
Clint nods. "His fiance. The name he was rapping in Morse code because he was nervous..." He turns towards Natasha. "The one that was more than a friend, was her name Annabeth?"
Natasha studies Clint for a moment. "Yes."
In unison, Clint and Bruce curse.
"This is worse than I thought." Clint mutters under his breath.
Tony bites his lip. He looks back and forth between Clint and Natasha. "How did they... how'd they die?"
Natasha sighs, frustrated. "It's classified. Which is weird, they usually only classify deaths if they were caused by a mutant or an inhuman... But even then they wouldn't be level ten."
Tony rubs his face tiredly. "Do you think you could do some research on it?"
Natasha nods. "Of course." She stands up and puts her computer under her arm. "C'mon Clint, I need your help."
Clint nods and follows her out.
Bruce stands up. "I should probably head out too. I need to make sure Percy ate dinner. Do you want to come with or do you need some time to process things...?"
Tony fiddles with something in his hands. "I think I'm going to go to the lab, I need some time to think."
Bruce nods and pats Tony on the back. "I'll bring you some dinner when I'm done."
"Thanks, Brucie."
Bruce smiles and walks out.
A/N
Hello! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
I apologize for not updating sooner, (and that it's a short update) but it's something! I've recently been sucked into the black hole of editing marvel videos.
The most recent video is the best one yet! It's about Bucky! But the stupid app I used to make it won't let me export/download it, so I can't upload it to YouTube.
I'll try again later, when is not like 1am and I don't have to wake up in six hours (▰˘◡˘▰)