Percy works with Tony Stark

12. Guilty Conscience

"Knock knock," I knocked on Maria's door.

"Who's there?" She asked.

"Guess who?" I said.

"Come in."

"Awe, why didn't you guess?" I asked as I entered.

"What do you want?" She asked, still ignoring my questions. I sat down and put on what I thought was my serious face.

"I ran across that organization again," I said.

"What? Where? When?" Hill asked. "We've been trying to find them and you somehow run across them?"

"I was catching bad guys with Peter and they happened to be them." I said.

"Peter? Why were you with Spiderman?" She asked confused.

I shrugged. "He wanted help."

"So what did you find?" She asked.

"They were kidnapping kids, 5 to be exact."

Maria sighed and pulled out her phone. "I need to tell Fury about this, if they are going to keep involving citizens like this, we need to step in even more urgently."

"Alright, tell me if you have updates,"  I said. I left the room, I didn't have to be there for her call to Fury, and I preferred to not. I realized I didn't have anything to do now so I decided to go visit Peter.

"Why are you here? I don't think I have another delivery until next week," Tony intercepted when I tried to enter the tower.

"Where's Peter?" I asked, peeking over his shoulder.

I saw Peter walk out and surprise covered his face as he asked, "Hey! What are you doing here?"

"When did you two get so close?" Tony asked, looking between us.

"Well remember those 5 kids I brought you? He helped me with them." Peter explained.

"You two give me so much trouble," Tony grumbled as he walked away.

"So what happened with them?" I asked about the kids.

"Oh! Tony found their parents and returned them," Peter answered.

"That's good," I said.

"So where did you run off to after?" He asked.

"Oh," I said. It probably was a little weird how I just left him there like that yesterday. "I had to report it to SHIELD."

"Hmm? Didn't you already do that though?"

"Ahh..."

"YOU DIDN'T?" Peter said shocked. "Then where did you find the information?"

"I just asked a friend to find it." I said.

"Why not just ask SHIELD?" He asked.

"Well they might have assigned someone else on it, I wanted to go out and do something." I said. "Besides, it ended up being a little more serious than I thought so I reported it in the end."

"More serious than you thought?" He asked.

"Yep, they were an organization that SHIELD has been trying to track down for a while now. I don't know how you managed to run across them."

"What organization?" Peter asked concerned. "They kidnap little kids?"

"It's fine," I dismissed. "SHIELD's taking care of it. So have you recently. I don't know if you've noticed but haven't the Avengers been taking down a lot of mutants recently?"

"Yea...," he said, not really knowing where I was going.

"That's the same organization." I explained.

"The same one?!?" He exclaimed. "Then we need to do something!" 

"Calm down, we've been trying," I said.

"What can I do?" He asked frantically. "Would they have- oh god- made those kids in- into- mu" he couldn't even finish his sentence in horror.

"You've already been helping," I sighed at his desperateness. "You found them, and keeping bad guys off the streets and helping fight those mutants is the most you can do right now," I reassured. 

But was it really? What had I even done to help? Why was I so unbothered about all of this but somehow this kid who was 3 years younger than me was so concerned for others? Maybe it was time to step up and do something good.

I sighed again. "It will be fine," I reassured him again. "I have something to do, so I have to go now," I said.

"Oh- okay," he said, calming down a little.

Once again I found myself in front of Maria's office.

"Knock knock," I said, trying to lighten the pit of guilt that settled in my stomach.

"Come in," I heard a voice sigh at the other side of the door. "Why are you back so soon? I don't have anything new." She said.

"I want to help," I declared.

"You want to what?" She asked, clearly not understanding what I meant.

"Help," I repeated.

"Then what are you doing now?" She was still confused.

"You know what I mean, send me on missions again, I can actually help," I said.

"But we actually don't have anything for you to do right now, I already told you that we haven't found a trace of them recently besides what you brought us."

"Even if I'm willing to work with the Avengers?" I asked.

"Well why didn't you lead with that? That's a different story," She said excitedly as she already started to type on her laptop.

"That was a big 360," I mumbled.

"What was that?" She asked.

"What can I do with them that I can't just do alone?" I asked.

"Just because you've more or less completed every mission doesn't mean that you will always succeed."

"Then let me do them until I can't" I negotiated.

"You wouldn't be able to anymore after that." She said, finally looking up from her laptop. "Don't you get it?"

"OHHH," you meant it like that"

"How else?" She said annoyed.

"Don't worry, I won't die that easily," I brushed off.

"And how do you know that?" She asked skeptically.

"And how do you know that I will?" I returned. "I haven't even gone all out yet," I bragged.

"Yeah, sure," She said, not believing me. "Anyways, you already agreed so I'm putting you on mutant patrol with the Avengers," she said.

"Mutant patrol? What are we, just an upgraded version of Spiderman?"

"Shut it," She said.