Chapter Text
13-year-old Peter was not having a good day.
First of all, some older kids from the nearby school threatened him for his pocket money on his way to school. His biology diorama got squashed underneath the janitor's wheelie dumpster. He was almost run over by the baseball team and tripped face-first into a wall. Then a guy in an orange t-shirt stole the Iron Man action figure he'd found, narrowly escaping through an alleyway.
But none of that compared to what happened in his English lesson today.
The teacher’s pet Sarah was busy talking about the book Wonder to the class, one of Peter’s favourite books, but he ignored her. Instead, he continued having a staring contest with The Owl, silently screaming at it to go away.
The Owl appeared around a month ago. It used to only show up once or twice a week for a minute before flying away. Sometimes it would whistle hoot quietly, gentle like a lullaby. Other times it would rattle its beak against his bedroom window and wake him up when his alarm didn’t work (helpful, but annoying, Peter thought).
He first saw it when he and Uncle Ben were out in Central Park. It hooted, did a quick loop around them when Ben wasn’t looking, and flew off.
It wasn’t even a native owl species in New York -according to The Complete Book of North American Owls Paperback by James Duncan ( how on Earth did he remember that? )- which Peter found odd.
One time, when he was nibbling on a fresh hotdog, The Owl decided that Peter’s shoulder was a good place to land. This was when Peter realised that it wasn’t an ordinary weird owl with an obession with skinny pre-teen brunet boys, because a) it was the size of a capybara, b) it had shiny silver feathers and a bronze beak, and c) it liked hotdogs. A lot.
For some reason, no one else could see the bird of prey constantly gliding from store sign to store sign as he walked through the busy streets of Queens, following as if hunting him down. Peter found that even more odd. This was strange enough, but for the past couple of days, The Owl had followed Peter non-stop, 24/7, sometimes even inside buildings. Always watching, spying on him, swooping at creepy guys that got too close. It was like an annoying, over-protective, weird parent that couldn’t speak English, but knew exactly what you were feeling, and always stole your lunch.
As Sarah continued her speech and flipped through her notes, the door burst open, revealing a super big one-eyed man.
His one eye darted around the room as kids screamed in shock. He wore ripped, tight but raggy clothes and his hands were the size of watermelons. His back was so curved it would make a chiropractor cry, but it somehow managed to brush the ceiling.
The man roared.
“Aah! A Hydra agent!” a girl yelped.
It was clearly a roaring one-eyed man, but okay.
“Screw you! We’re never joining you,” yelled Flash. “The Avengers are way cooler than you!”
“Yeah, you Hydra-Nazis suck,” booed another kid, despite shaking harder than a washing machine.
Well, maybe it was really a Hydra agent and his imagination was going a little crazy today.
“Where sea-boy hiding?!” the man boomed, silencing the class in confusion and terror.
There was a quiet whistling from behind the one-eyed man, causing Peter to gasp when he recognised its source. It was The Owl, its eyes even wider than usual, wings flapping wildly. Peter's sudden movement led the man’s gaze to land on him.
“Sea-boy?” The man’s single eye narrowed. “No, you not sea-boy.”
“Hoot!” The Owl loudly called.
The one-eyed man sniffed the air, still staring at him. “You smell like half-blood.”
Peter’s brain halted in recognition of those words, despite never hearing that phrase before. He didn’t know why, but every part of him screamed at him to run and follow The Owl.
He weaved through the desks and ducked under the one-eyed man's legs, instincts far stronger than when the jocks were on the opposite dodgeball team. He lept through the broken doorframe. Vaulting over a bunch of trash cans thrown in his direction, he dashed after The Owl as the one-eyed man chased him down the corridor.
A near-smash echoed right next to his head and he flinched, almost stopping.
Another near-smash sent Peter slamming into the lockers. The throbbing in his temple was too real to be a dream, so okay, maybe he wasn’t going crazy.
He kept running.
The one-eyed man bellowed “Temmee-cot!”, or something- Peter couldn’t tell because his ears were ringing from all the noise. He dived onto the tiles and slid out of the man’s grasp.
The Owl hooted with urgency, beckoning with its head to Peter to turn down a different corridor.
“Demigod! Want demigod blood!” the one-eyed man yelled again.
Demigod?
To quote the vine, what the fuck is up, Kyle?
Peter started scrambling to his feet again. He darted sideways through the doors and out onto the street. His ears were no longer ringing, but he could hear his blood pumping loudly in them, threatening to explode.
Peter’s lungs heaved as he stumbled around a corner, barely dodging the man’s strike.
His ribs screamed in pain, straining against his binder, making him let out a sharp cry of pain. This was the one day he shouldn’t have worn it. Maybe he could have chosen his sports crop instead.
Dammit, Aunt May was always right.
“Where sea-boy?!”
Kyle (he decided to call the one-eyed man that) reached out to slam Peter into a kid-sized pancake, but a blur of orange and blue came towards him.
Peter was tackled to the ground at the last second.
Whoever landed on top of him had very soft black hair that smelled like seawater. “Sorry, kid,” the person said, pulling them both back up.
Peter adjusted his glasses. His saviour was a high school guy in a pair of teal board shorts ( who goes surfing in the middle of New York? ) and a dark blue hoodie. He was (humanly) tall with tanned skin and a slim but muscular build. His battle-hardened expression on his face was disrupted by the tiny glint of mischief in his sea-green eyes.
Kyle growled in recognition. “Sea-boy.”
He charged, but the guy in the blue hoodie jerked them both away from the one-eyed man.
Peter’s glasses flew off his face and his vision suddenly blurred. Kyle’s fist smashed down onto the spot where Peter and the guy were a second ago.
“Yup, that’s me,” the guy grabbed a nearby trash can.
Kyle lifted his hand, showing the crushed pair of red spectacles. Peter assumed they were shattered in hundreds of tiny pieces, but he couldn’t tell through the blurriness of his vision.
The guy hurled the piece of metal with such speed that Peter could feel the wind rush past his face. “I prefer ‘son of Poseidon’, though.”
Poseidon?
The can hit Kyle with the force of a speeding truck, but the one-eyed man only stumbled back a bit. The guy quickly slipped something shiny into Peter’s pocket, probably a knife. “Get behind me, kid. Use that to defend yourself.”
Kyle stomped his foot, sending rumbling down the street.
“Maybe I should say ‘Bearer of the Achilles curse’ because that sounds cool.”
Okay, was this guy some really crazy Greek Mythology nerd?
“Or ‘Wielder of Anaklusmos ’; sound familiar?” The guy in the blue hoodie reached into his pocket and drew out a pen- wait no, a sword?!- and charged towards Kyle.
The one-eyed man tried to punch him, but he dodged, rolling to the side without even slowing down, and flipped over the man’s head. Kyle narrowed his eye and roared, throwing himself towards the teenager.
The guy in the blue hoodie simply swept his sword across Kyle’s arm, making the man howl.
Bad idea to do that when he has a sword, Peter noted.
The guy slashed.
Kyle hissed.
He lunged.
Kyle groaned.
The guy stabbed Kyle in the gut. Hard.
Kyle shrieked in agony and dropped onto his knees.
“Stay in here! A satyr’s gonna get you to safety soon,” the guy promised, shoving Peter out of the way and back into the building.
“What’s a satyr?” Peter asked, but the door slammed shut, leaving him alone in the hallway.
Or maybe not so alone.
“Woah, you took out that Hydra agent!” a voice piped up from behind him, making Peter freeze.