Shoutout to @miriamzahava for being the best commenter ever

"Hey Percy." Clint grinned from the entrance of the Avenger's Tower.

"Hey." I said back, slinging my magical backpack off my back and dumping it on the ground. We did an one arm hug and Clint dragged me inside, I just managed to snag my pack before the sliding doors closed.

"So, we have to do all this identification stuff because Tony is always on his nut about infiltration," Clint rolled his eyes exasperatedly. I bit my lip.

"But uh, no blood needed right?" I strained my voice for effect. "Cause I'm not that good with uh..."

"Seeing your own blood?" Clint's eyes bulged and then he began stifling his laughter. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It just that, Agent Omega, deadly assassin, power of nature, is afraid of blood."

I felt my cheeks flush anxiously, I didn't want to admit the real reason that I didn't want them to draw blood is possibly of the godly elements that might be traced in it. Apollo had warned me of that after two hikaus and a country pop song. Thank you for making my ears bleed.

"Well, it can be a pretty scary experience." Natasha said, defending me, Clint finished his guffaws and settled down. I saw a grin tugging at one side of her mouth and I knew she was making fun of me.

"Second condition." I grumbled. "No skin scanning, what stays under the clothes stays there for a reason."

"I'm not sure if that can stay a condition because now I'm sure Bruce and Tony who are watching over the cameras are definitely going to have a perked interest." She emphasised the names and turned and narrowed her eyes at the black, circular dot in the middle of the room.

"Hey! We just wanted to suss out the newbie before we saw him." I heard the voice of what I presumed to be Tony Stark, echoing around the room.

"You're so paranoid when someone comes into the team Tony."

"Excuse me Miss, let 'em all in, but since my tower-" There was a playful tone in his voice.

"Not your tower though, is it?" I interrupted, "it says Avengers on the front, not Stark, last I remember." I grinned cheerfully at the black dot. In the background, I heard a scuffle and a murmur before he came back on the intercom.

"Just finish the evaluation." Before the intercom crackled again and the message ended.

"Well." Natasha said, turning back to me. "He's seemed to have warmed up to you nicely."

"Is he always like that?" I asked curiously, pressing my hand into a gooey gell which I assumed to be handprint reading technology. I winced at the feel.

"Less paranoid. More sarcastic. More amusing and useful." Natasha ticked off.

"Savage." Clint muttered but then shut up when Natasha shot him a glare. I retrieved my hand once the gell click green and rubbed the numb feeling away.

"What else?" I sighed.

"Vocal, retinal, profile description, fighting, health, ability and mental evaluation." Clint ticked off.

"Mental?" I squeaked.

"Yeah, we have one of ours test your resistance to mind control." Natasha just shrugged like it was no big deal. I caught my breath.

"There's actually, uh, no, background checks are there? Like during the mental test?"

"I wouldn't think that Wanda would do that." Clint said to Natasha. Natasha shrugged.

"Cause, that stuff, is yeah..." I trailed off, if I painted too much of a sketchy past then Clint and Natasha might doubt Fury's decision to let me in.

"How about we get back to the stuff?" Clint asked, his fingers tapping at his sides. I nodded and Clint showed me how to do the rest of the stuff. Several times, I asked why didn't they just use the files they had at SHIELD but Natasha insisted that Tony had insisted that this was needed.

Once the basic identification was finished, Clint, accompanied by Natasha led me to a grey and dimly lit room that make my claustrophobia spike a little. I had to run, lift weights, swim a couple of miles (lol), hold onto stuff, push stuff. The kind of things you'd do in a gym. I mean, if coming to the Avengers got you a free gym membership then I should've come a little while ago. Not really.

Clint and Natasha watched from behind a glass window, occasionally, a salt and pepper-haired guy came and observed, writing things down. He could only be Bruce Banner.

After that finished, Steve Rodgers, Captain America came out and told me that we were going to test my weapons skills. We started with the bow and arrow (I could practically hear Clint and the rest of the gods laughing) and worked our way through everything else; crossbow, knives, spear, disks, scythe, sceptres, katanas, guns, rocket launcher for some reason, these weird boomerang things of some sort, a plasma gauntlet like Tony in his suit, darts, tazers, swords, more knives, staffs, axes, shields, hammers, daggers and basically everything else you could think of. List more, I dare you, they had them all.

Everyone concluded that I was better at close range, melee combat than anything else, except my gun accuracy had improved in my time with SHIELD.

Then I was to fight Captain America.

My first was YESSSSSSSSS! Then it was, Hades underwear and the Fields of Punishment in more colourful Ancient Greek and then it was finally, a challenge. A very diverse thought process in half a second.

I chose the sword and Steve had his shield. I remembered the stories I'd heard on the History channels about Captain America as the world's first superhero and grimaced to myself. An interesting fight this'd be. I looked to the glass and saw Natasha and Clint exchange money with a robot claw and Bruce. Tony wasn't present. There was also another woman there, who was grinning at the scene, she wore almost complete red and I guessed she was the Wanda, Clint and Natasha mentioned. Next to her, a white haired guy was waving a ten teasingly at Clint, beside the guy there were two, darker, men who were shaking hands and clapping backs before turning to watch, a caucasian guy joined them who had slight stubble. In the background was a man lingering in the shadows, he had shaggy hair and his eyes narrowed at me and his mouth in a thin line. I shook it off and turned to Steve.

"You could've taken me out while I was all distracted and stuff and given me a line about never turning your back on your enemy." I teased to Steve, his mouth flattened into a line like the guy in the background. Maybe they were friends?

"Rule one, fight with honour, especially for a Patriot." Steve said, I took a few lazy swipes at him with the sword, testing it's balance. Slightly off, for such a sharp blade.

"True." I said, sliding to the floor, Natasha style underneath Steve's swipe. "Or." I jabbed at Steve's legs, hoping to disable him by getting him on the ground and shieldless. "You know, we could just avoid the whole lesson cliché."

Unfortunately, he jumped and landed, standing on my blade, I slid it out and he stumbled back. "How long have you been fighting, Percy?"

"Since I was twelve." I said spinning around as the clashes between shield and sword became more frequent. "So... Ten years now?" I asked, using Steve's upwards slice with the shield to flip over him and used his off-balancedness to shove his shoulder to the ground. He hit the ground and before he got up, I whipped around to let my sword rest at his throat.

I heard a loud clap of appreciation at the window and dropped my sword, helping Steve up. "Good fight." I clapped him on the shoulder. "Slightly unfair as I had an offensive weapons and you had a defensive weapon only."

"It works better on offence at longer ranges." Steve defended, sliding the shield onto his back Captain America, style, ehehe, geddit?

"Sure." I said laughing, turning back to the bets. The white-haired guy looked thoroughly disappointed as he passed a twenty and a thirty to Clint. He looked up and saw us watching. He gave Steve a what the heck bruh annoyed shrug. Steve shrugged sheepishly back.

Clint and Natasha seemed to have gotten the best out of those bets, the rest of them looked annoyed at Steve. The sliding doors slid open and Bruce tucked his wallet away carefully. He turned towards me. "So do you want to do your mental evaluation or health first?"

My good mood instantly disappeared. "Whatever's good." Because, either way, I might die.

Percy's optimism is on point at the end of this chapter, well done bruh. To those of you who can name a weapon (without searching it up) that wasn't on that list, shoutout to you.

I was listening to 'I want to Believe, X-Files theme, UNKLE remix' which is honestly the scariest score song I have ever heard, it's got them ghostly cries that has you like, there's freaking aliens after me, I swear. But now I'm really inspired to write a scifi/alien story maybe a love story, maybe a horror, definitely an abduction. What do you think?

Some of you would've gotten the blatantly obvious pun in this chapter, but who got the quote? And one more thing, who noticed the chapter change? What are your theories on this?