Demigods Assemble (PJO/MCU)

Chapter 40

Tony

The battle was not going well. Sure, they were taking out monsters and HYDRA agents left and right, and most of the bigger threats like the drakon and the Hydra had been neutralized before they could cause much damage, but there seemed to be no end. There were less than a hundred fighters on their side, while Echidna's monsters and soldiers kept multiplying. The ground was littered with gold dust and soldiers, but more monsters replaced those that were disintegrated, and the battle was drawing out long enough for those soldiers that were only unconscious to wake up and rejoin the fight. Meanwhile, the demigods and Avengers had no other reinforcements, and they were tiring and sustaining injuries and running out of weapons. The makeshift armory and infirmary could only do so much. Even though Harley wasn't in the thick of the battle, Tony was worried about him. If the monsters and soldiers launched an attack on the Empire State Building lobby, would the guards be enough to protect them?

Tony was flying over the battle helping everyone he could, but it was impossible to be everywhere at once. There were too many monsters and soldiers, not enough heroes. Tony was finding it hard to avoid some of the monsters that leaped at him. A few times he couldn't get out of the way of a hellhound quick enough, so his suit was getting banged up.

To top it all off, their comms seemed to be malfunctioning. When Coulson spoke, he only caught: "North end—looks like—with wings and snakes—real?"

"Stark, aren't these—top of the line?" Fury grumbled.

He didn't know whether anyone would hear the entirety of what he said, but Tony said, "Whatever Echidna did to take out the power must still be running. My guess is a constant EMP device. If it is, the reason we can still talk to each other is because these are top of the line."

"Find the dev—destroy it!" Fury ordered.

Tony grumbled under his breath about being ordered around but nonetheless instructed F.R.I.D.A.Y. to scan the area for an EMP machine.

"Found it," he said when she located it. "It's on the roof of a building south of the Empire State Building. I'm on my way."

When Tony got there, he was enraged to see that the EMP device was indeed one of the ones that had been stolen from Stark Industries by HYDRA. The thing was a giant gray and black cube with a touch panel on the front for the controls, and it was humming with power. It was an old model from SI's weapons manufacturing days, but it was still effective and dangerous. Throughout the battle, F.R.I.D.A.Y. had been giving Tony readouts of the city and the damage caused by the loss of power. It wasn't good. He wanted to help, but Fury was right. It was the job of emergency services to deal with power outages. The Avengers dealt with everything else.

Tony landed on the roof and approached the device. Two thumps sounded behind him and he spun, charging up a repulsor blast, but it was just the two demigods Thalia and Leo. Leo's buddy Festus soared back to the ground to burn some monsters into a crisp.

"We thought you might need some help," Thalia said.

"You designed this, right?" Leo asked as he crouched by the device.

"Yeah," Tony said, studying the machine. "But it looks like HYDRA tampered with it."

"What does that mean?" Thalia asked.

"It's sending out a pulse every few seconds keeping the power out. That's why our comms keep cutting in and out," Tony explained. "Normally I'd be able to switch it off, but—"

"It's rigged to send out a really powerful electromagnetic pulse which will make anything electronic literally explode," Leo finished.

Once again, Tony was impressed by him. "Right."

"So what else can we do?" Thalia asked.

"The machine runs on a battery, a really big one, because if it used the city's power then it would just shut itself off too. Which means eventually it'll run out of power, but that will take too long. If we can find a way to overload the battery, that might be enough to shut it off without triggering the dead-man switch," Tony said.

"You mean like a lightning bolt?" Thalia grinned, electricity sparking from her fingers.

"Have I mentioned how much I love you?" Leo smiled. "Platonically, I mean. You're a Hunter and Jason's sister and I have a girlfriend."

Thalia rolled her eyes at him and gestured for them to get out of the way, but Tony stopped her. "Hold on, you're about to shoot a lightning bolt at that thing. It's going to explode. You don't want to be anywhere near it."

Leo summoned Festus, jumped on his back, and zoomed off into the battle while Thalia protested, "I need to see it to aim the lightning."

"Then come on."

Tony grabbed Thalia with one arm and used the other to stabilize himself as they floated a few feet away from the building, nearly a hundred feet above the battle. Thalia glanced down, turned green, and whimpered, "Gods, I hate heights."

Tony frowned. "You're the daughter of Zeus and you're afraid of heights?"

"Shut up!" she hissed.

Tony chuckled and would have said more, but Thalia took a deep breath, centered her gaze on the machine, and pointed a hand towards the sky. She dropped her hand and a second later, an electric blue zig-zag of lightning struck the machine. It exploded immediately, making Tony lurch backward with Thalia to avoid the rubble.

"Did that work? Without frying everything electric?" Thalia asked.

"Well, we're all still here, aren't we?" Tony said.

He lowered to the ground and set Thalia down, who looked very glad to be back on solid concrete. "What next, will the power come back on?" Thalia asked.

"Yes," Tony said, "but it might take a while. And the rest of the city may not have a while, they've already been without power for almost two hours."

"Can we do anything about that?"

Tony smirked. "I got a little toy I've been working on for scenarios like this." A slot in Tony's right shoulder opened and a little rocket shot straight up into the air. "It should jumpstart the city's power and any backup generators."

The rocket ascended a few hundred feet until it was almost in the lower atmosphere. Once there, it detonated, releasing a burst of blue light that billowed through the clouds over the entire city. Relief flooded through Tony's body when lights started flickering back on within the buildings, and their comms were as clear as day.

"Good job, Stark," Fury said. "Now get back to work."