Percy's POV
Annabeth and I made it to the tower in record time, sneaking in through a mostly unused door round the back. Tony gave JARVIS permission to let us in, and directed us towards the kitchen where we found several of the Avengers were angrily bombarding him with questions and complaints.
"Why on earth have you woken us up-""-tried going out for my run but the door-""why am I even awake right now?" That last one came from a clearly exhausted and confused Pepper who appeared to be the only one in pyjamas other than Tony - everyone else, strangely enough, was wearing their combat gear.
Annabeth and I stood there for several minutes before Tony eventually spotted us, running over to shelter behind us. "It literally took us a little over ten minutes to get here. What on earth did you do to cause this in such a short space of time?" I questioned Tony, whilst Annabeth took control of the situation. "Steve was about to go out for his run when JARVIS locked the building up so when the doors wouldn't let him out, and he saw the lights in the corridor dim - I essentially put JARVIS's system into intruder mode. So he woke everyone up, assuming there was an intruder, and they all confronted me here where I was getting some breakfast. "
Annabeth seemed to have the situation under control, and at Tony's mention of breakfast my stomach rumbled. In our rush to leave my apartment we hadn't grabbed anything to eat, something I had whined about the entire way here. After a quiet moment of conversation Tony led me into the walk in pantry of my dreams that sat inconspicuously in the corner of the kitchen. I was on my third Pop-Tart when Annabeth popped her head round the door.
"Percy, we came here for a reason - and it definitely didn't involve breakfast." Although her voice was stern there was a sparkle in her eyes that betrayed her fierce tone. "Breakfast's the most important meal of the day!" I fired back, several crumbs falling out of my mouth. "And anyway I wasn't much use in there with all the serious explaining and plans and whatever else you were doing, so I thought I'd make sure I had energy for later. I promised Jason a rematch on the lava wall next time I saw him, and I'm not going to risk that without breakfast."
Annabeth shook her head at me, before gesturing me to come join her once more in the kitchen. My glance remained on the carton of Pop-Tarts for a moment longer before I grabbed two more to stash in my pockets for later. Tony walked out the pantry with me, his face showing a look of confusion. "You have a lava wall? Should I be scared on your behalf?"
"Umm... you don't need to be scared for me, but I definitely would recommend avoiding it yourself. Demigod's heal quick once we've had a little ambrosia or nectar, but a slip on that wall would severely burn a mortal. Don't worry through, nobody will make you go on it, we'll be too busy meeting with Chiron to really do much else in camp. It's a long shot that I'll even see Jason, but we've been waiting for weeks for any possible rematch. We're currently tied 4-to-4 so we've decided it's all or nothing for this tie breaker."
My words seemed to do little to reassure Tony that I'd be fine so I quickly changed the subject, bringing his attention back to the matter at hand. A couple of minutes later we came across Annabeth in a hallway talking to Piper through an Iris message. Tony stopped in amazement, theorising how it could be possible under his breath.
Before he had a chance to theorise much - beyond 'magic' - Annabeth swiped through the mist, and informed us that Piper and Argus were a few minutes away. Following her lead we jogged down the stairs to the ground floor. All the avengers were sitting on the floor quietly talking whilst they presumably waited for us. There was an awkward silence for another minute till JARVIS alerted Tony to an unauthorised vehicle on the street directly outside. The nearest screen - which was inlaid on the wall by the doors - lit up showing the familiar delphi strawberries van.
"That's them," I confirmed, starting to move towards the door. Annabeth strode along by my side, letting out a small squeal when she spotted Piper getting out of the passenger side. They had a quick hug before getting back to the matter at hand - which was to get the avengers into the van as quickly as possibly, without alerting them to what we knew. Luckily Piper's normal voice had an unintentional charmspeak effect, though to a lesser degree, and they were all in the van in minutes. The only complaining we heard was from Bruce who was surprisingly vocal about not liking being crammed in between Steve and Tony. Annabeth mouthed the word claustrophobia to me, and I inclined my head slightly, pretty sure that Bruce play off his discomfort in front of his friends.
As soon as everyone was buckled in - Argus and Piper up front, with everyone else in the back - Argus sped off and Piper turned around to speak to us. "Hi, to anyone who doesn't know who I am. I'm Piper, and I am a daughter of Aphrodite. I'm here because we believe that one of you may have come into contact with an Eidolon, and we needed to get you all to a safe place where we could check if that had happened." She took a small pause, and Annabeth and I took the opportunity to examine the Avengers shocked and confused expressions. We had chosen to sit sideways on the front row of seat so that we could watch everyone, and hopefully spot any eidolon's that managed to resist Piper's charmspeak.
"Any Eidolon's possessing people in this van, raise your hand." There was a pause as the avengers nervously joked with each other, till Clint and Pepper's hands shot straight up. At this the Eidolon's stopped attempting to hide themselves, and both of their eyes morphed into the golden colour that was all too familiar to us. "All the Eidolons in this van, swear on the River Styx that you will never possess anyone in this van ever again, and that you will ALSO not follow this van by possessing other people or machines."
Annabeth let out a quiet chuckle at that new addition since the time the eidolons followed the Argo II, Leo having referred to them since as 'the loophole lawyers'. Clint - or rather the monster possessing him uttered the words first, causing Clint to slump forward against his seat belt as he unexpectedly gained control of his body again. That was not reassuring to the other Avengers; especially Tony who seemed petrified for what would happen to Pepper.
"Don't worry, he just wasn't expecting to gain control of his body again so quickly, so his brain didn't catch him in time. He'll wake up in a second, and neither will be hurt because they're sat up, and buckled in." My words did little to reassure them, so I decided to refrain from describing the time Leo had face planted after being un-possessed. I wasn't sure if that would cheer them up, or horrify them all further. Thankfully Clint's head soon bobbed back up, his eyes back to their normal blue, which seemed to help.
Likely the reason that the Eidolon left Clint so quickly was because whatever training he had been through had strengthened his mental barriers, allowing Piper's charmspeak to take effect quicker. Or, maybe he just got possessed a lot, and the Eidolon was simply taking pity on him. Whatever the reason, the one possessing Pepper was able to hold on for slightly longer before it spat out the promise. Her body immediately slouched, held more upright by the worried Tony next to her.
She too sat up moments later, mumbling about what had just happened. Piper took the confused silence to introduce herself properly, and explain properly what had just happened. "Sorry for all the secrecy, but we didn't want to alert them before we had a chance to banish them. Promises made on the River Styx are essentially unbreakable, so you wont be seeing either of those again anytime soon. Being a child of Aphrodite I have the power of Charmspeak - so if I tell someone to do something I can make them do it - and the person I'm charming won't necessarily realise that the actions weren't of their own free will. I try not to use it too often but when it comes to monsters it can be quite useful. Now that we're sure that there's no unwelcome visitors amongst us, we can head over into Camp. Chiron will be at the Big House, and Reyna should have joined him by the time we get there."
She directed her next words towards me. "Chiron said that he's put extra beds in the Poseidon Cabin if you're planning on staying, and that if not Blackjack volunteered some friends to help bring you all back. Oh and also Jason said to tell you, and I quote, that he's going to 'kick your ass at the lava wall, and that you're going to need your water powers.' Annabeth and I have a gambling ring going at the moment on who's going to win, so don't be surprised if some campers you've barely spoken to start either hyping you up, or trying to put you down."
The only Avengers whose eyes hadn't widened in shock at the mention of a lava wall were Tony and Natasha - Tony having already heard of it whilst Natasha seemed excited about the prospect of a lava wall, whatever that may be. Annabeth spoke up, gazing out the window. "We're getting close. We need to give permission so that they can all get through the boundaries. And we still need to keep an eye out for monsters, Chiron said that they spotted a hellhound and what could be a Blemmyae whilst out on patrols this morning. You've given permission before Perce, can you do it again?"
Clearing my throat, I sat up straighter and began to speak. I could see Thalia's tree in the distance, and knew that we had only had a few minutes before we would cross into camp. It had been a long time since I had last given a mortal permission to enter the Camp, but I still remembered how.
"I Percy Jackson, Son of Poseidon, give Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner and Steve Rogers permission to enter Camp Half-Blood."
hey guys! long time no see. in the last few weeks i've has a couple of assignment deadlines, plenty of late nights worrying about/working on said deadlines, as well as having travelled about 4 hours back home from uni for christmas. I'm currently finishing this chapter at just past 11pm on christmas eve, which I think says a lot about how christmassy I am feeling this year (and most years tbh) lol. However I'm glad that I was able to get this out and hope that if you celebrate a holiday that you have/had a good one! Please forgive any typo's/glaring potholes - I do plan on looking it over in the next few days and correcting anything obvious, but the rest of it will have to wait till I go through and properly edit it.
I'm hoping to get out a few more chapters before I go back, but I'm not sure how much free time I'll have as I have a few deadlines/exams coming up when I go back in early January. If you're wondering about potential updates I do typically leave a message on my profile about whether there'll be an update that week/end so you can always check there.
As always thank you so much for all the support you're all showing on PJMTA (7.4k reads!!) I really appreciate it.
- emily <3