Always The Prey (PART 3)

Chapter 14: Today's Just One Of Those Days

Tony Stark's POV

I knew today wasn't a good day when I woke up before 11 AM. I knew today wasn't a good morning when the coffee machine stopped working. But I especially knew that today was a particularly bad day when I started hearing shouting from the bottom floor.

One of the demigods was getting yelled at.

This started to become a daily occurrence and I soon learned that this was also something I couldn't intervene in to stop, so I nervously started to pull up the video footage of where the sound was coming from so I could at least watch.

But my heart dropped when I saw Percy.

Change To Percy's POV:

I was just walking around the hallway, bored out of my mind. I was tired and exhausted after not having good sleep for the past couple of days and my ADHD was just acting up today. Feeling all fidgety today, Annabeth just told me to go on a walk just to burn some energy.

I swear I wasn't even doing anything.

I was just walking around when this SHIELD guy came up behind me and started yelling.

"Where do you think you're going!" he shouted. "Are you trying to escape? Turn around and face me."

"Woah dude—" I started to say, laughing nervously, as I started to turn. I got a sharp blow to the shoulder with the butt of his gun, making me stumble.

"Stop talking and turn around!"

I slowly turned around to face this guy.

"Who are you? State your number!"

"001," I responded, getting slightly irritated at how much this guy was overreacting.

I lifted up my arms to scratch the back of my neck when this idiot blew up again.

"Put your hands up where I can see them!" he shouted. I quickly raised my hands, palms facing forward.

"Wait, I swear I wasn't doing anything, I—" I started to say, but was cut off when he punched me in the stomach making me double over.

What the Hades?

"Leave him alone!" I heard a voice cry out. I looked up and saw Nico, his pale cheeks flushed red, as he tried to come closer to me.

"Stay right where you are or I'll call for more reinforcements!" the SHIELD guy screamed at my younger cousin.

"Okay, I think this is all a mis—" I tried to say, trying to ease the tension.

"Get on your knees!" he screamed in my face. "You too!"

Me and Nico got on our knees real fast.

Still. What the Hades is happening? We are literally just teenage kids. Why are they treating us like we're the enemy? We haven't done anything wrong. Hades, we've protected them so many times!

Nico and I were on our knees, our hands in the air, still cuffed, and being treated like the most wanted people in the world right now. That idiot was screaming in our face, when more soldiers came. They ended up dragging us back into the common room, then getting the rest of the demigods, and forced us to stand in a straight line as they continued to scream at us.

Honestly.

You would have thought they get tired of screaming at some point.

But no.

Their throats must be magical, because whenever I'm screaming in the middle of freaking war to get freaking children up and organized to fight, my throat gets rather tired and irritated.

And yet we're apparently the most wanted people in the country right now.

Back to Tony Stark's POV

"We can't keep on letting this happen," I started to say, as I replayed the footage to the other Avengers. Bruce started to look a little green and Steve was clenching his fists so hard I thought he was going to hurt himself. "This is ridiculous. They're just kids. We have to talk to Fury."

"Fury knows about all of this and he isn't the slightest bit fazed," Natasha said. "That's where I was this morning, out for a quick meeting with him. He basically said he's okay with who the kids are being treated and that this is the best possible solution. We can't trust Fury for help and we honestly don't have the time to try and convince him. We need to think of something else."

"Is there any way you could build something Tony?" Steve asked, looking in my direction "I mean, the only way SHIELD will be alerted is if the cuffs and collar are taken off, right? Do you think you can build something so that we can get that stuff off of them without alerting the authorities. This way we can free the demigods, get more to help, and continue on with the plan for the battle?"

"That's actually really smart," Bruce said. "Honestly, us, even as the Avengers, aren't enough to fight against the monsters. I can't even imagine how these kids deal with this every day. We just got opened up to it and it's already so stressful. We need their help. And more help than just the five demigods with us now."

"I think we can work that out," I slowly started to say, starting to think and plan for ways to make such a device. We can make this work.