Loyalty, Family, and Sassiness: [Fury's Stresses 5] Fury is unfortunate enough to have to mediate confrontations between demigod and Avenger. Why did he ever sign up for this job?

"Nicky! I think your—" Stark cut himself off, quirking an eyebrow at the black-haired man and the blonde woman, both having been chatting easily with the Director before Stark had barged in. "Who are you? I think I would have remembered you if I had met you before. Especially with the balls to have any kind of ease with the Director of Spy of Spies, over here."

Jackson waited a moment, as if expecting Stark to keep going. Fury knew that Stark could have very well kept going. Then the demigod said, "You're right, we haven't met before. My name is Percy Jackson, this is my wife, Annabeth."

Stark's eyes flickered between the two of them, knitting his eyebrows together. "Are you spies, too? Is that your cover? Because you're awfully young—what, sixteen?—"

"Nineteen," Jackson said dryly.

"—to be married, let alone be beaten up like your supposed wife has been—"

"Been saving the world since the ripe old age of eleven," Jackson said, a smile edging on his face, voice even drier.

"—and running missions. Tsk, tsk, Nicky, you've been running child soldiers—"

"Fury didn't even know we existed until three months ago, Mr. Stark," the blonde said.

"Well, the Norse version, he did," Jackson countered.

"That doesn't count," she argued. "Thor's an alien demigod with a lot less protection."

That actually got Stark to stutter to a stop. "—and then there's—wait, what? Less protection? The 'Norse version'?"

Fury sighed the long-suffering sigh of a parent with multiple toddlers on sugar. "Stark. Shut up, sit down. That infiltration that I mentioned a while back?"

Jackson waved cheekily. "We're the third party."

Stark looked between the couple, then back to Fury. "These two account for almost a third of SHIELDRA? And half of SHIELD? Please tell me that there are more than four people in SHIELD. You, Agent, and these two?"

Jackson's shoulders began to shake with laughter, before it finally became audible guffaws into his wife's shoulder several seconds later. Chase-Jackson was grinning a bit, as well.

"Mr. Stark," Jackson gasped out, grinning from ear-to-ear. "I take orders so badly that Fury—let alone Coulson—would sooner try to drown me than give me anything stronger than a suggestion."

"That's impossible, Percy," Chase-Jackson said chidingly.

"I know, that's why I said it," Jackson said, beginning to grin again.

Stark looked like he had a million and one questions, and didn't know which to spit out first.

"We're demigods, Mr. Stark," Chase-Jackson said kindly. "As in, Greek-myth demigods, with Hercules and Perseus and Orion."

Jackson said something in another language that sounded foul. Chase-Jackson elbowed him sharply. "Percy!" she hissed.

"What? It's not like they understand Ancient Greek," he argued. "Hell, it's a dead language to the rest of the world. And besides, Orion is a—"

Chase-Jackson gave a full-body twitch that unfortunately landed an elbow into his solar plexus. Jackson cut himself off with a wheeze. "I'm so sorry," she said sweetly. "You know how rebirth twitches are. I'm certain that you were going to say something G-rated, weren't you, Seaweed Brain?"

Stark swallowed a laugh. Fury felt vaguely amused.

"Yeah, of course. He's just a jerk," Jackson wheezed slightly, somehow managing to get the point across without ever saying an actual oath filled with harsh swear words.

Fury didn't know if Stark would resort to biting his lip to keep his laughter in or not.

"I have questions," Stark announced.

The couple both looked at him, hands frozen from where they had risen to either poke the other or try to make a point.

"How does that work, with the possible DNA differences between gods and humans? Where are the Greek gods? Are they still on Mount Olympus? Isn't that inconvenient? Or can they teleport at will? Who are your parents? If you're married, and since the gods are all related to each other in some really creepy way, isn't that technically incest?"

Chase-Jackson held up her hand to get Stark to stop with the questions, raising her voice over Stark's questions. "If you give me more than half a second, Mr. Stark, I might be able to answer!"

Fury sat forward—some of the questions that Stark had asked, though scientific, he hadn't thought to ask.

"In the order of your questions: gods don't have DNA, technically, so any DNA sample you get from us will only register twenty-three chromosomes, though if you put the same sample into a mass spectrometer, completely uncalibrated, you could theoretically see the other half."

Stark looked absolutely dumbfounded. Chase-Jackson continued, a smile inching across her face.

"The Greek gods, as you know them, have pretty much integrated themselves into the modern world, but a main crossroads for all the gods is the peak of Mount Olympus of old, which sits at the sixth hundredth floor of the Empire State Building."

"But there's no such—"

Chase-Jackson continued without ever giving quarter to Stark: "The gods follow the heart of civilization. It was Greece at one time, Rome at another, the Spaniards in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, Great Britain during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and the first decade of the twentieth century, and America ever since the end of the First World War."

"What about the seventeenth century? And the time between the first decade and the end of the First World War?" Stark interrupted.

She shrugged. "World powers do not secede their place in history so easily. I imagine the crossover was chaotic, and Mount Olympus was technically nowhere during the period of time, though I don't actually know."

Damnit, Fury was supposed to be used to this, but nonetheless, he felt a headache begin to manifest.

Chase-Jackson continued. "Yes, the gods can teleport at will, and no, you won't see it. Or rather, if you do see it, you'll disintegrate into ashes and your soul will go immediately to Hades. Therefore, if you see a random person beginning to glow, I suggest you close your eyes. Dying like that is painful."

"You don't have that experience," Jackson said, looking at her.

"No, but Jason has, and he told Piper to get her to stop asking him if she gave him brain damage."

"What? How would that have—"

"I don't know," Chase-Jackson said, shrugging. "To either question. But it did get her to stop fussing. Well, at least until we got onto the Argo II."

Jackson sighed and let his head fall onto her collarbone. "Our friends don't make any sense."

"Nope," Chase-Jackson agreed. "Anyway. Percy here is a son of Poseidon, who is the god of the seas. I am a daughter of Athena—"

"Isn't she—" Stark gulped loudly and shut his mouth at the rather impressive glare Chase-Jackson was levelling at him. Then she turned her glare onto her snickering husband.

"I won't say anything! I said I wouldn't, didn't I?!" Jackson said, grinning.

"You did say," she agreed. "But sometimes, Seaweed Brain, that doesn't always work to keep your mouth shut." She turned back to Stark. "The circumstances of my birth are complicated enough to comprehend amongst those of us—" she glared at Jackson for good measure "—used to Bizarre and Magic, let alone to someone vested in science."

"Got it," Stark said solemnly. "Something that will make absolutely no sense to the science-invested, and will bend my mind into undoable knots."

"And as for the last," Jackson said, smiling wryly. "You're right that I'm technically married to my second cousin, once-removed. But there's the whole gods-don't-technically-have-DNA schist."

Stark did a double take. "Schist?"

"It's an inside joke," Chase-Jackson said. "One of our friends has a gift for seeking out precious metals, and there was a large chunk of schist that ended up saving her life."

Stark shook his head minutely. "How large are we talking?"

Chase-Jackson looked at her husband questioningly. He chewed on his lip. "Um…well, the Chex-Mex Cupids only came up to my knees—"

"What?" Fury asked incredulously.

"Don't ask," Chase-Jackson said immediately.

"—and when Frank and I finally found Hazel, she was standing a solid two or three feet taller than me. So probably three feet tall? Four feet tall? About the same in diameter. She was pretty well situated, sword out and everything."

Stark was still stuck on Chex-Mex Cupids, only half-listening to the rest. "That must have been a small fortune, but Chex-Mex Cupids?"

"Didn't I just tell you to not ask?"

"I know, but that kind of description—"

"They're spirits of grain, called karpoi," Chase-Jackson said impatiently. "They look like tiny, chubby men in diapers, only they're the same color as their plant, such as wheat, barley—"

"And they have the brains of a decapitated chicken," Jackson muttered.

"Well, yes," Chase-Jackson admitted. "They're normally quite harmless in comparison to most things that want to take over the world—"

Stark barked out a laugh, and Fury rubbed his temples. "You two, out. I've had my max of demigod shenanigans today. Go weird out Stark and whale on Rogers."

"Oh! Nicky!" Stark said, turning to Fury. "I wanted to tell you where I found the phone that this fellow was using."

Fury glanced at Jackson, who looked like he was biting back a laugh. "Why did it take you this long, Stark?"

"Because I thought someone had re-routed the signal," Stark admitted. "I kept trying to break through firewalls."

"I'm not that technically advanced, Stark," Jackson said dryly.

"Where was it?" Fury sighed.

Stark looked at a silently-laughing Jackson. "In Hong Kong. You know, I looked for plane tickets. Even ships. Not once was there any hint of someone who might possibly have ties to SHIELD."

Jackson was now howling with laughter.

His wife sighed, a smile tugging at her lips. "Stark, we have gods that owe us favors. Getting to the other side of the world in half an hour and back isn't very difficult." She easily lifted herself up from her husband's lap and back into her wheelchair, undoing the brake.

"Why is she in a wheelchair? Why are you in a wheelchair? You don't look like someone who would stand being in one for any…"

Stark's voice trailed off as the three went out of earshot without a glance in Fury's direction.

Although, he did almost flinch when Chase-Jackson's voice echoed down the hallway with: "STARK! I died and came back to life whilst pregnant! That's hard even—"

Fury rubbed his temples and wondered if he ever would actually get used to demigods.

No, no you won't get used to it. Ever. XD

In other news, please thank kookiepup12 on AO3 for finishing the title for me. I couldn't come up with anything. :/ I'll post the next piece of this next Friday.

Toodles!

Ruby