Demigods Assemble (PJO/MCU)

Chapter 4

Tony

"Kid, where'd you disappear to after the bridge?" Tony asked as Peter Parker swung into his lab at the Avengers facility. He was used to the teenager doing this every so often, hence the reason for a bio-lock on one of the windows in his lab that only Peter could access.

"I followed that girl Annabeth," Peter told him.

Tony frowned. The girl from the bridge? The one whose friend I wasn't able to save?

"Why? I thought you brought her to the police?" Tony wondered.

Peter nodded, taking off his mask and sliding into a rolling chair, sending it careening towards Tony's desk where he was fiddling with a holographic image of his Iron Man helmet. "I did bring her to the police, but when I turned around to get an officer, she took off. She moved fast too, even after she was caught in that blast."

"But why would you follow her? She probably just wanted to get to that kid's family." Tony sighed. "I searched the river ten times and the surrounding areas. No sign of him. I just don't understand how I could have lost him!"

Tony knew he shouldn't, but he was beating himself up over the loss. The first rule of being a superhero was that you couldn't save everyone, but he just couldn't understand what happened. One minute the kid was falling from the bridge, the next—he hit the water and vanished. Tony searched and searched for as long as he could, as far as he could, but there was no sign of him. How could that have happened?

Peter said, "I followed her because I had a weird feeling about her. And I know why you couldn't find that kid, Percy. He survived and made it back to his apartment."

Tony frowned, closing the hologram as his thoughts came screeching to a halt. "Time out. What?"

Peter nodded vigorously. "I know! Crazy, right? But it gets crazier."

"Spill."

"So I followed that Annabeth girl back to her apartment, right?" Peter began. "I stuck to the wall next to the window so I could hear what was going on, and when she got there, the other guy—Percy—was already there! I used my little drone to see what was happening."

Tony immediately accessed his files and pulled up the video feed from Peter's suit, looking for the right recording. When he located it, he put it full-screen in the middle of the room so they could both see it.

A pristine image appeared on the screen of a window fitted into a brown bricked building, Peter Parker clinging to the wall next to the window in his Spider-Man suit. The picture zoomed in on the window, revealing three people gathered in a quaint living room; one unknown older woman, the girl from the bridge, and the boy from the bridge—who was completely unharmed.

Tony watched in silence as these people talked about gods, ambrosia, a dead guy Magnus, and something called the Mist. The older woman left, the girl went to another room, and the boy started humming to a baby in his arms, and then the video cut out.

"Was that the kid from the bridge earlier?" Rhodey said, walking into Tony's lab.

"Peter followed that girl home, apparently for good reason," Tony grunted.

"He survived!" Peter announced eagerly. "He's completely unharmed, he wasn't even wet! And he made it back to that apartment before me and Annabeth."

"How is that even possible?" Rhodey asked.

Rhodey sat across from them, wincing as he lowered himself. Tony frowned. Even though he had done the best work he ever had—if he did say so himself—on Rhodey's prosthetics that allowed him to walk again, Tony knew it had to be rough. Maybe he could come up with a new design using nanotechnology . . .