there is a fight scene included

By the grace of the gods, the group managed to pass the sirens without an issue. It seemed like the mortals had finally accepted that it was in their best interest to listen to the Seven. So, as soon as Percy warned everyone to fill their ears with wax, they filled their ears with wax. Of course there were a few complaints, but that was expected. Nobody was perfect (no matter what Narcissus insists).

From there on out, the nerves were building. Percy had informed the team that their next stop would be Polyphemus' island, and everybody, mortal and demigod alike, knew what that place was. It was where the most infamous cyclops lived, but most importantly, it was where Annabeth was being held, if Percy's father was to be trusted.

Since it would still be another two hours or so, according to the sea expert, until they reached the island, the group decided to try resting. Some tried to nap, while others sharpened their weapons or hung out on the deck. It was futile, but they were trying to prepare themselves for a situation that they had never before encountered, not even Percy.

It was safe to say that everyone was scared shitless.

Ω ♆ Ω

Leo had decided to go downstairs and tinker with some stuff from his belt as a distraction from their impending doom. It was working too! He was in his own little world that only machines could enter. That is, until Tony Stark walked up to him.

"Whatcha doing, kid?" he asked, peering over Leo's shoulder to catch a glimpse at the boy's creation.

"I'm making a mini automaton to help us find Annabeth when we get to the island," was the answer.

Taking a closer look, Tony started to see it. It was a very small machine, but if you looked closely, it was clear that it was made of metal. The automaton was about the size of a quarter, and looked like a celestial bronze spider. Leo was currently adding the last two legs to it when Tony walked up.

When Leo looked up, he held up his creation with a proud smile. "This baby can be our spy. It's eyes are tiny cameras, and it's made almost completely of celestial bronze. We can send this in, and then know where Annabeth is before we storm the place."

Tony nodded, "Yeah... Pretty good idea, kid."

And ok, so Leo was freaking out a little bit on the inside because one of his idols had just complimented his work. But on the outside, he just smiled a little wider.

"You haven't even seen the best part. You've gotta see it after I turn it on. I added stealth-mode so nobody should even be able to know it's there," Leo said, grabbing the spider and flipping it over to press a button.

As soon as he had, the spider flipped itself over in his hand and started crawling up his arm. Tony was a little creeped out, but it was blocked by the fascination for this new kind of science the demigods had. The spider should have to be controlled by a human, but it was moving like it was almost...thinking on its own. There was no way it had an AI, but that was the only solution his mortal brain could come up with.

"Is it an AI?" he asked.

"Nope. It's a greek automaton. They don't need AIs. I programmed it to listen to a few simple commands when needed, but if we don't order it around, it'll just stick around me waiting for orders. Pretty cool, right?"

"Awesome," Tony whispered, in awe of how smart this seventeen year old kid was.

"Thanks. I think I finished it just in time because I heard Percy calling us back upstairs," Leo said. Before he had even finished he was walking towards the deck, not a care in the world for the metal spider crawling around on him.

"Oh, I'm definitely becoming friends with this kid," Tony muttered to himself before following Leo.

Ω ♆ Ω

"Did you get it done, Leo?" Percy asked as soon as he had seen him.

"Yep. Here it is." Leo held up the automaton-spider.

Percy smirked. "Oh, Annabeth's gonna love that."

Leo shrugged, acting clueless. "I have no idea what you're talking about. The spider was just the first thing I could come up with."

"Sure it was," Piper snorted.

Leo fake-gasped. "Beauty Queen! How could you ever think I would lie?! I would never!"

Clint whispered to Natasha, "The kids clearly have a strong bond that only comes from fighting for their lives with each other."

Frank turned to them, surprising the spies that he had heard them, "No shit, Sherlock."

Before anything else could be said, Percy reclaimed the entire group's attention. "If you look to the right, you can see Polyphemus' island. We're going to dock on the south side of the island because that is the only way to get on without climbing a cliff and facing carnivorous sheep. Hazel should be able to disguise the ship until we invade the base, so don't worry about being seen. Leo will send in his spider to check things out and then we'll follow after we know where Annabeth is. Everybody got that?"

At the noises of affirmation, Percy nodded. "Good. Suit up if you're not already."

Of course, Tony had to break the calm solemnity by saying, "Cap, I thought that was your line?"

Everybody collectively rolled their eyes.

Ω ♆ Ω

After they docked, Leo released his spider with specific orders to find Annabeth Chase while staying hidden. That was working until Polyphemus' stupid super-senses could smell the celestial bronze. Leo hadn't known that a blind cyclops would be able to smell metal, but you learn something new everyday, right?

The spider lasted all of five minutes in the cave before Polyphemus smelled it and crushed it under his giant smelly foot. Percy had thought that the cyclops would take longer to reform, but when had he ever been that lucky? Something that completely baffled him was how the mortals got him to not eat them. The dude had been pretty desperate for food the last time Percy had run into him, so how had the weird boss guy gotten him to hold off?

The only thing he could think of for them to feed him would be...nope! He's not going there right now.

The last thing the spider had transmitted to the group was a picture of a mortal holding a gun to Annabeth's head while she was gagged and chained. It made his blood boil.

"I'm going to kill them," He growled, starting to get off the boat and storm the place.

Jason stepped in front of him before he could, "Easy, Perce. You don't know what you're walking into. They want you to go in half-cocked, so we can't give them that. You know Annabeth can handle herself, so just take a breath and we'll figure out a plan."

Percy took a shaky breath, but it did nothing to cool his anger.

"Jace, if you don't step out of my way in the next two seconds, I will be forced to move you, and trust me, you don't want me to do that."

The son of Jupiter stood his ground, "I'm not moving. I know you Percy. Hurting me would go against your fatal flaw. I'm your best friend; your family. I know you would never intentionally hurt me."

Jason glanced over at the rest of the group, who hadn't dared to move if it upset Percy even more. The guy was a ticking time bomb, and they needed to defuse it before it went off and destroyed any chance of getting Annabeth back safely.

Percy almost looked in pain as he spoke his next words, "Jason, I love you. You're my cousin, but Annabeth is my everything. I will hurt you to get to her."

Jason sighed, expecting that answer. "Then at least let us come with you on your suicide mission. I'm not letting you die without me."

"Fine, but hurry up. I'm leaving now," and Percy shoved past Jason and started the trek up to Polyphemus' cave.

Jason turned to the others, who were all staring after Percy with shocked expressions. "Well you heard him! Move your asses!"

That seemed to startle them awake. Everyone but Bruce started moving.

Ω ♆ Ω

By the time the team had been able to catch up to Percy's fast pace, he had already reached the nearest entrance to the cave. It was a dark, narrow path that had walls of rock on either side reaching up for hundreds of feet.

"This is the part in the horror movies where I start screaming at the tv to not go in there and they still go in there," Piper whispered.

They were all just staring at the darkness, and it was getting awkward. For someone who was so hasty to get to Annabeth, Percy was sure taking a long time to get there.

"Are we gonna go in or..." Tony said.

Percy sighed. "Yeah. We're going in. Just don't separate from the group."

He led the way into the cave with Steve right behind him. Percy appreciated having someone else who could take some of the responsibility off his shoulders. Almost his entire time in the godly world, he had been expected to be the leader because of his father, and he had stepped up, but that doesn't mean it didn't weigh on him. Annabeth was the only one who had been able to help him with the stress, and without her, he was losing it. He had already been barely hanging onto his control over his powers, but now without her, what he was doing could barely be called control. It was more like holding back a rampaging bull with a string.

Ten minutes later, they found themselves hiding behind the wall that led to the room where the gang was waiting. Just as the spider had shown them, Annabeth was kneeling under the gang leader's feet while he held a gun to her head.

She looked murderous, so at least something was still normal in the world.

Steve poked his head around and gave a quick scan of the room before turning back to them, "Ok so we've got at least ten humans, with five monsters. One of the monsters is as tall as a building so I think he's the largest threat. Tony, Clint, Nat, and I will deal with the humans if you guys handle the monsters. The main priority is getting Annabeth to safety. Percy, that's your job."

Saying that last bit was just to clarify for everyone else, though they looked like they didn't need to hear it. Percy had a determined look on his face, one that said he wasn't going to allow anyone else to have his assignment.

"You got it, boss," Tony remarked. "Do you just want to storm in there?"

Before he could get an answer, Percy charged into the room, leaving his friends entirely unshocked, but the Avengers were looking a little mad.

"Don't worry, plans aren't really his thing. Even if we do make them, they never go our way. It's better to go with the flow when fighting with Percy," Hazel reassured, and then turned to follow her godly cousin. The rest of the Seven followed, leaving the Avengers to just stare at each other in confusion.

"I like their style," Tony said before flying into the room.

Natasha sighed. "I'm really starting to regret meeting these kids."

Clint smirked at her before leaving, closely followed by Steve and the Black Widow herself. For all three of them, everything about this mission was against their nature, but there wasn't much they could do about it. They were in unknown territory with a group of newly-allied teens and no backup. It was a shitshow before they had even left.

Ω ♆ Ω

Frank was fighting a dracaena, and it was making it super annoying. The thing would not stop talking about grocery stores. It was quite distracting when trying to kill it.

"Seriously! Can you believe how nobody can see how bad those chains are?!" it exclaimed.

Frank sighed, ready for it to be over. Whenever he would try to stab it, it would just slither away right at the last second, all the while continuing to complain.

He decided to use his shapeshifting abilities to catch the thing off-guard. In reality, he could probably deal with it in seconds, but when he really used his inner son of Mars, it drained him. He needed to save his strength if he was going to fight Polyphemus.

Speaking of, so far, the cyclops had stayed out of the fighting. He was just sitting on his throne made of rock, picking at his teeth with what Frank really hoped wasn't a human bone.

Frank changed into a squirrel for a second, climbing up onto the back of the dracaena with the animal's speed and before the monster could react, he changed back into a human and stabbed it through the back with his spear.

"Huh. I guess you can shut up," he remarked as the monster turned into dust.

After, Frank turned to help Hazel take down an empousa. She had already defeated four before that, so it was a pretty easy fight. He had been keeping an eye on her throughout his fight. Sure, he trusted she could take care of herself, but it was also his job to watch her back.

"Thanks," Hazel told him with a quick peck on the cheek after they finished.

Believe it or not, that kiss on the cheek was a major improvement. It had been a real adjustment for Hazel to learn how couples expressed affection nowadays, and it had taken even longer to start showing it herself. It helped that Frank preferred words over touch, too.

"No problem."

Ω ♆ Ω

"Get some, térata!" Leo screamed, running up to the manticore and sending giant, continuous blasts of fire at it.

He had heard of Dr. Thorn from Nico, Percy, and Annabeth before, and had somehow retained the knowledge that it was extremely durable on the outside. That meant that he had to think smart in order to beat it.

So far, Leo was distracting it and holding it off with his fire while he thought of a plan. However, he could only hold it off for so long. He would eventually tire out.

Come on, Leo, THINK!

Then it hit him.

It was so simple! He had been told the story of how the Nemean lion was defeated at Camp. Now usually, he would totally ignore any schooling he was given, but the stuff they were taught at Camp was much more interesting than algebra. So yeah, he remembered some stuff.

So, he decided that his best shot at beating Dr. Thorn was landing a large enough hit inside of him. That meant he had to figure out a way to get him to open his mouth. That wasn't really the hard part, though. The hard part was figuring out how to not die when he had to get closer to the monster.

"Estoy jodido..." he muttered before taking a step forward, never once stopping his assault on the beast.

The Manticore didn't seem to be moving back from the intensity, but rather reveling in the fact that he hadn't gained one burn from the fight. He was just waiting out Leo.

That was not a fun revelation for the son of Hephaestus to have.

And that was when the thorns started attacking him. He should've been expecting it, really. The guy had a tail of poisonous thorns and he hadn't used it yet? Something should've registered in his mind. But that was past-Leo's mistake. Present-Leo had to deal with the super tall, scary, poisonous, and royally pissed-off greek monster in front of him.

Dr. Thorn let out a war cry and swung his tail around, releasing a line of spikes at Leo, who managed to just barely duck out of the way. He was not keen on becoming swiss cheese!

"Ok. It's time to end this." Leo sighed in annoyance, jumping back up and charging.

He swung his battle hammer up and lit it on fire, deciding that he might as well stick with the common theme of stupid ideas. He managed to keep dodging attacks all the way up until he was within ten feet of the manticore. Then, he threw his weapon at the monster, praying to Apollo for good aim. He had fixed the sun chariot plenty of times, so the god had to owe him at least one favor.

Once again, Leo's stupid demigod luck kicked in and the hammer somehow embedded itself in the monster's mouth, which had been opened in a prideful roar. Honestly, the son of Hephaestus didn't know HOW he did it, just that it worked.

With the distraction of having a flaming hammer in his mouth, Dr. Thorn didn't see Leo running up with his arms raised and prepared to fire. By the time he did, it was too late because long blasts of fire were flying straight towards his open mouth.

The monster was able to mutter a silent curse before he disintegrated into dust, once again sent to Tartarus.

"Take that, bitch."

Ω ♆ Ω

Piper was absolutely sure the Fates were laughing at her. They had to be. There was no way that she just happened to be stuck with the two empousa. It didn't help that Jason was struggling to not drool over the girls. She just had to keep chanting in her head that the monsters were using their charm powers on him, and he was not actually attracted to the disgusting things.

After the two monsters tried to both swipe at her at the same time, she growled and shouted, "Jason! Get your head in the game and come help me!"

He had been blinking and shaking his head for the past two minutes and it was getting quite frustrating to have these donkey-cyborg-vampires ganging up on her with no back-up. Once this was over, she was going to make Jason work to get back in her good graces.

With just a little bit of her charmspeak added into her order, Jason was finally able to break free from the empousai's spell. He quickly willed his gladius to be a javelin and launched it through one of the monsters, which made it explode into a shower of golden dust. A traitorous part of Piper's brain insisted on calling that move hot, but she was able to school her expression back into a scowl before her boyfriend could notice.

The other empousa let out a shriek and said, "You MONSTERS! That was my sister! I'll make you pay for that!"

They only had a second to appreciate the irony before she launched herself at them with even more fervor than before, fueled by the rage of losing her "sister."

Jason couldn't help but notice how she was wearing a cheerleading costume. It was very ripped and destroyed, but it was clearly a cheerleading uniform. And as he was deflecting her claws, the ADHD part of his brain realized that the logo on the uniform was for Goode High School, Percy's old school. He almost wanted to laugh when he remembered the story of Kelli, an empousa acting as a cheerleader during Percy's freshman orientation. Percy had always said the monster had a nasty habit of coming back quickly, but Jason had just thought it was an exaggeration. But no, he and Piper were really fighting Kelli, one of Percy's recurring monsters.

It would be hilarious later, truly. But for now, he had to actually kill the thing.

Kelli had backed off when she realized that attacking out of rage wasn't going to work against two experienced demigods, and that also gave Jason and Piper a chance to make a plan themselves.

"Got any ideas?" he asked Piper.

She grinned with a terrifying amount of murderous glee. "I thought you'd never ask."

And then she told him her plan, which was essentially just using him as bait while she got to do all the killing. The prideful Roman part of him wanted to insist on him killing it, but he managed to reign that in when he saw the look on Piper's face. She was not asking, she was telling. Who was he to say no, especially after he hadn't been able to fully resist the empousai's charm?

A scary thought told him he was turning into Percy. He brushed that off for later nightmares.

"Come get me, bloodsucker!" He shouted, raising his arms up in a taunting manner. If he was acting like Percy, might as well go all the way right?

With yet another shriek, Kelli stormed at Jason, completely disregarding the daughter of Aphrodite that was stepping back and preparing to literally stab the monster in the back with her dagger.

Sometimes Jason wonders how a creature could be so stupid. Their plan was so obvious!

It went off without a hitch, technically. Piper let the empousa get a little too close for comfort before she killed it, but he trusted her to get the job done and she came through. Kelli had been prepped and ready to bite into his neck right before she exploded into dust.

It was one Hades of a trust exercise, that's for sure.

"Please don't let it get that close next time, Pipes," he breathed out while he put away Juno's Gladius.

Piper gave him a quick peck on the lips, "Not a chance, Superman."

Ω ♆ Ω

Considering the circumstances, the Avengers weren't doing half-bad. They were actually fairing pretty well. They knew how to deal with humans, so their job wasn't that hard. The only difficulty was that there were four of them and ten of the bad guys. They were sorely outnumbered.

Currently, Steve was fighting two at once, with a third opponent already knocked out a few feet away. He was blocking one with his shield while punching the other in the face. He then switched roles, instead kicking the first attacker and driving his shield into the gut of the second. The one he gutted gasped and fell to the ground, and was knocked unconscious was a simple hit to the temple. While he was distracted with taking down his partner, the still-conscious bad guy recovered from the kick and was able to land a hit to the back of Steve's head. Clearly, the fighter had been prepared to have achieved some form of disorientation from the Captain, but all he got was a pissed-off Avenger.

"That tickled."

It took less than five seconds for Steve to take him down after that.

Natasha also started with three adversaries. Key word being 'started.' It had taken barely any time to take down the first two. And all she had to do for the third was a scissor kick and hold until he passed out. She had just finished doing that when a call from Clint got her attention.

"Nat!" he shouted.

She turned on instinct and threw a throwing knife at the person running up behind her straight into their chest. They stopped with shocked features before falling to the ground in a heap, dead weight pushing the knife even further in and no doubt killing them faster.

"Getting rusty, Clint?" she teased, throwing a look over at her friend.

"No," he defended. "I'm just making sure you're not getting rusty!"

The archer hadn't realised one of his two attackers had sneaked off to go after the "bigger threat." He would never let Nat know he thought she was the bigger threat, though. That would be fueling an ego he knew was somewhere deep down in her.

Tony had been given two people to fight as well, and he was doing pretty well. He had the obvious advantage of being in the air, so all the gang members he was fighting could do was try to shoot at him with their guns, and his armor was designed to withstand a nuclear bomb. Bullets weren't gonna do much damage.

"Guys, seriously, we should just talk this out. We both KNOW I'm going to be knocking you both out in five seconds, so why don't you surrender instead? It'll be so much easier for the both of us!" he said, raising his hands and readying his repulsors.

As expected, the bad guys didn't show any sign of slowing down their useless attack on him. With a roll of his eyes and an obnoxious sigh, Iron Man shot them both in the chest, knocking them out cold.

"That felt too easy. Did that feel too easy to you?" He asked the other Avengers as they gathered back together.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Tony," Natasha said, "That fight was too good to be true."

Now that the truth had been revealed to them, the Avengers could blame what happened next on the Fates.

Ω ♆ Ω