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greekgeek21 · 3 years

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Percy Jackson and the Avengers: Convergence - the avengers are humbled

Welcome back! I know it's been awhile but I hope I didn't lose too many of you. I just wanted to say thank you for all of the support I've been getting on all platforms. Honestly, I did not expect this story to take off the way it did.

Now that that's over, I'm gonna clarify something for SOME PEOPLE. I started writing this last October, which means that I have absolutely no interest in going back over already-edited work just to change a minor detail some people seem to find maddening. This chapter, I can say for certain, was written during December, so I don't always remember what happened. Okay?

This chapter is kinda just one big fluffy piece but I love it so no hate pls.

Now please remember to comment, like, follow me, and reblog!

- you author

Ω �� Ω

"Okay! Assignments...Annabeth and Piper, go with Widow, Frank with Hawkeye, Hazel and Leo with Tony, and Jason and Percy with Bruce and I. Everyone okay with that?" Steve said.

"Yep."

"Got it, Cap."

"This should be fun..."

The heroes separated into their groups and stood, waiting for more orders from Captain America.

"As I said before, this is just to further evaluate and document your abilities. It shouldn't take long. That's it, get to work," He ordered, turning and walking towards the sparring pads with Jason, Percy, and Dr. Banner.

They were back on the training floor for the evaluations, after an uneventful lunch break. Well, unless you count Frank's disgust with the attempt at proper Chinese food as eventful.

Ω ♆ Ω

Despite them being on the sparring mats, Percy and Jason would not be sparring. Even to someone who doesn't know the full extent of the sons of the Poseidon and Zeus' relationship, it's pretty obvious that they should not be allowed to fight each other. Their personalities are almost exact opposites; Carefree vs Serious.

"Just show us something we haven't seen from you before, and then we'll build from there," Bruce told the teens.

Percy and Jason looked at each other expectantly, waiting for the other to begin. Their powers were similar in the way that they could get out of hand quickly. Neither of them wanted to be the reason that the tower lost power or got flooded. Zeus knows it would be a mess to clean up.

After a whole two minutes of waiting for them to get started, Steve let out a sigh, "Oh, for God's sake! Jason, you go."

"Umm...let's see here," Jason muttered under his breath, looking around the room for inspiration, "Oh! I got it!"

He positioned himself a couple of feet away from a practice dummy and held his hands together in front of him. Taking a deep breath and imagining his goal, he let sparks fly around his hands. He let them grow for a couple of seconds before slowly starting to separate his hands. While doing this, he made sure a line of electricity was stable between his hands. He kept separating his hands until he couldn't anymore, and then he slowly released his grip on the line from his left hand. He made sure to keep feeding the lightning rod so that it held form.

Meanwhile, on the sidelines, Percy, Steve, and Bruce were all watching with equal amounts of shock. Percy had never seen or known Jason could do this, and Steve and Bruce were completely new to all of this. Then, Jason proceeded to shock them further.

He made the line of electricity into a whip. He made a lighting whip.

Percy was so proud of his friend's imagination. It was almost enough to make a grown demigod cry...

Jason readied his whip and struck the practice dummy, slicing it completely in half. Then, he turned to his group, smiling and making the lightning dissipate. It should've been illegal how easy he made it look, in Percy's opinion.

"Dude! That was awesome! I didn't know you could do that!" Percy exclaimed, slapping the son of Zeus on the back with a proud, blinding smile.

No matter what it seemed like sometimes, Percy was the big brother of the Seven.

"Yeah! That was pretty good, son," Steve said, nodding his head in appreciation, "Now we only need to get that process sped-up and it will be an amazing asset in a fight."

"This means you could do so much more with your abilities, including maybe providing infinite power, which we have been searching for for decades! You kids are truly lucky to have these powers," Bruce rattled off.

Percy whispered to Steve, "Does he get like this a lot?"

Steve nodded, "Yeah. I tend to tune-out the sciency rambling and just focus on stuff I can understand. He had Tony if he needs to bounce ideas off of someone, anyway."

"Got it," Percy said, "I guess this means I'm next?"

He had thought about this a lot during lunch, and had decided to go into the exercise with the comfort and ease he had possessed using his powers before Tartarus, and see where he got from there. Like Annabeth said, it was all in his head. He just needed to believe that he had control, and he would get it.

Simple, in theory.

"Yep. I want you to copy Jason, but with water," Steve said.

He gave more specific instructions to Percy because he felt like he needed that. He was a leader, and leaders need to notice and know what their troops need. Percy needed specifics because he was cautious with using his powers, and he wanted to know exactly what was needed of him before going in. That way there is no possibility of him losing control.

Once again, only in theory.

"Okay, Percy... you got this," Percy muttered to himself, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet and cracking his neck.

He shook his hands out once before readying himself in a slightly-more relaxed version of Jason's stance. But this time, he did not hold his hands together. Instead, he reached his hands out towards the bucket of water the Avengers had brought to the sparring mats earlier. Taking a deep breath, he felt the barely-there familiar tug in his gut before a tendril of water was rising from the bucket and reaching towards his outstretched hands. Percy willed it to wrap around his arms and hands, and then he slowly put his hands together like he had seen Jason do (he wasn't quite sure how he planned to make the whip yet, so this seemed like the best bet). Taking another deep breath, he started separating his hands, but keeping a solid tendril of water stretched between them.

He tried to move slightly faster than his cousin did, just because of the ever present, unconscious competitiveness ingrained between them.

Finally, he let go with his left hand and let the water form into a whip in his right. It kept shape, but was more flexible than the rod had been. Percy turned to the other practice dummy and whipped it twice, forming two straight slices right through the rubber.

Everyone in their group stood in shock, including Percy after he had deposited the water back in the bucket. He hadn't known he could use a whip.

Must be another natural demigod thing, he thought. Most weaponry came easy to him (except archery, of course).

It took a moment for them to recollect themselves, but Steve shook himself out of his stupor first, "That was...impressive, Percy. I didn't know you had such control over your powers."

The demigod in question shrugged modestly, "Yeah. I didn't really either, to be completely honest."

Jason surged forward and hung an arm around his friend, "Stop being so modest, Kelphead! That was amazing!"

Sure, Jason had done the same thing, but he hadn't gone through literal Hell and come back scarred forever, emotionally and physically. But mentioning that topic wasn't wise, so he stuck with just congratulating his older cousin.

"What else do you want us to do?" Percy asked Steve and Bruce, trying to move the attention off of him.

"Well...I guess just do a couple more small things with your powers and then we can be done. I think you've proved your point of not being newbies," he answered.

Percy and Jason smiled at each other once, then nodded at the Captain.

Ω ♆ Ω

"Okay, Frank, let's see what you got! Any special skills besides turning into animals?" Clint asked.

Frank shifted from foot to foot, "Well, I'm pretty good at archery, I guess. Better than my swordsmanship, anyways."

Clint smirked, "You guess? If you're going to be on this team, you need to be completely sure of your skills. So let's see what you can do."

Frank had grabbed his bow and magical quiver during lunch because he figured he would need it for something during this exercise, so he only had to sling the bow over his shoulder to be ready. The quiver was designed by Leo to never run out of celestial bronze and imperial gold arrows. The celestial bronze ones were normal, and the imperial gold were exploding. A combination of both metals would shoot out hardening foam (also designed by Leo) to stop monsters. Or in this case, people.

He set himself up on the first line on the archery range, and let the arrow fly. It hit the bullseye dead-on. Frank turned to look at Clint to find him raising his eyebrows in appreciation.

"Good. But I'm not impressed until I see you do that from a longer distance and on the move, so let's work our way up there, huh? I'm interested in seeing if we can finally have another good archer on this team," Clint said.

Frank smiled, "I've been doing this practically my whole life, so I'd hope I was pretty good by now. Plus, I've been in battle before, shooting on the move."

There was the newfound confidence that still baffled a certain son of Poseidon after a whole year. You go into the deepest parts of Hades with a shy Canadian Baby Man, and then miraculously you make it out and the kid is taller, buffer, and much more confident.

"Sounds interesting... Any war stories you care to share with the class?" Clint asked, intrigued.

Frank's happy expression steeled over, "I think I'd rather keep those to myself, thank you. Maybe another time."

Clint nodded, but you could see he wasn't going to let that go. Frank had made a mistake saying he had seen battle before. It was pretty obvious that the teens had, but he had just confirmed it, therefore furthering the Avengers' curiosity.

So, basically, he had screwed them over further and faster.

With a great sigh, Frank went aimed and shot another arrow, choosing to ignore the awkwardness that had formed between the two archers.

Ω ♆ Ω

Leo and Hazel were... unsure how to react to Tony's exercise, to say the least. They got over to their part of the room and their eyes immediately tunneled-in on the giant block of metal in the center. Nothing special about it besides the fact that it was black, and about four feet tall, and four feet wide. They weren't sure what to make of it.

Tony was beaming next to them, which was a sure sign of nothing good. It was pretty maniacal, too.

"Mr. Stark... what exactly are we doing with this?" Hazel asked.

Somehow, Stark's grin managed to widen even more before he answered with, "Oh, you know, a simple thing, really. I want to see something unique from both of you, so I brought this out of storage. I designed it years ago, not knowing what the hell I would be using it for, but it turns out my genius brain was just preparing me for this moment where I would evidently be training a bunch of teenagers... but anyway! This will mold to any specifications that I need it to, kinda like the LMDs. Just tell me what you're planning to do, and I'll program it to follow your needs."

Hazel raised her eyebrows at Tony's complete disregard for modesty. The others were not kidding when they said he was an arrogant mortal. She was even considering going all "I am your superior because of my divine blood" on him, but then she remembered that that would make her a huge hypocrite.

Leo, on the other hand, was starstruck. He was convinced that he could never come up with even half the stuff Tony invented. He was a true genius in every right. A role model of many Hephestus kids.

"So... who's going first?" Tony asked.

"I'll go!" Leo exclaimed, like an eager child vying for their father's attention.

"Great! That's the spirit! What're you gonna do?"

Leo thought about it, and then the perfect idea came to mind. It wasn't really using his usual extravagant and fiery powers, but it wasn't any less impressive. He wanted to impress Mr. Stark, and this was the way to do it.

"Make it the hardest safe to crack in the world," he answered, a, well, fire lighting up his eyes.

Tony was intrigued, that's for sure. It was pretty obvious what the kid was planning on attempting, but it would be just that: an attempt. Nobody could crack this safe. It was designed by himself personally to house some of his most secret projects for the Avengers. He was literally the only one in the world that even knew of its existence. There was no way Leo could pull off cracking that type of safe without years of preparation.

But, he still programmed the block to make itself into the safe. If anything, it would show these teens how not to underestimate Tony Stark.

"Okay, kid. Good luck," he said, and then whispered, "You're gonna need it."

Leo didn't comment on Tony's quieter remark, but he did smile wider at the prospect of a real challenge. Sure, he could come off as a little overconfident sometimes, but he really was smart and powerful when he tried. He just wasn't a serious child of Athena, he was a fun son of Hephaestus, and he would act as such.

Still, when the block turned into something he had never seen before, he took a deep breath, focused his mind on the task at hand, and got to work.

Tony was smiling wide over his shoulder, interested in seeing how far the kid could get, but little did he know, Leo had this under control. To someone who didn't know him, what he was doing would seem weird, but he was actually just listening to the machine. Yes, listening to it.

He had his ear pressed up against the safe, both hands pressed flat against it next to his head. Leo was already learning the mechanisms of it, and in no time, he would be able to tell the safe to open itself without even lifting a finger.

He was almost vibrating with excitement over how Tony would react. It was sure to be a show.

Sure enough, a little less than a minute later, there was a series of soft clicking heard before the light on the pad flashed green and the door was open.

Of course, it was empty, but Tony was still in shock. A sixteen year old kid had beaten his strongest security system besides JARVIS. It wasn't possible. There was no way that Leo had just cracked his safe.

"No. Not possible," he insisted, turning with wide eyes to stare at the demigod, who had a proud grin on his face.

"Yep, it is. I just did it. Were you not watching?" Leo said, channeling his inner-Percy for sass.

Tony so wanted to protest more, but he knew it was futile. Plus, having someone almost as smart as him around might be some fun. Bruce was always worrying whenever they worked together, and Leo gave off way different vibes.

"I was watching, still working on believing, though," Tony said, "That was some pretty cool shit there, kid. Care to tell me what it was?"

Leo said, "I just talked to the safe. It was a little harder to crack than some of the other ones I've done before, but I got through to it eventually. It was pretty strong. Good work on that design."

"Thank you... I guess," Tony said.

Tony couldn't remember telling Leo who had created the safe, but he figured he would get the same answer as before if he asked. Believing these kids' powers was a little difficult, especially when all of them defied the laws of any science. Tony was starting to think that they were Asgardians, with how they fought and everything.

"Well, let's move onto Hazel. We don't have all day," he said, turning to the daughter of Pluto, who had stayed to the side during Leo's entire turn, "What are you gonna do? It's gonna be pretty hard to follow up on that performance."

Hazel had had time to figure it out while she was waiting, so she answered right away, "I won't be needing the box for my turn. I just need you."

Tony gave her an incredulous look, "What do you need me for?"

"Just tell me a metal. Any metal in the world, and I'll bring it here," she answered.

Okay, Tony was done. There was NO WAY that was possible, and he knew it. He wasn't stupid. These kids were messing with him now.

"Seriously?! I'm not falling for that! You can't do that!" he exclaimed.

Hazel just gave him a knowing smile, "I get that a lot. But I always seem to prove those people wrong..."

Tony sighed, "Okay, sure. Let's do... Vibranium."

He kept a straight face on the outside, but on the inside he was smiling like a maniac. Vibranium could only be found in Wakanda, and they barely had any left. There was no way she could get it all the way here, even if there was any left.

Hazel nodded and closed her eyes, letting her powers search for the precious metal. She had heard of it before from some people in the Underworld. Apparently, it could only be found in a small country in Africa, so she had to widen her search.

It didn't take long to find some, but that was only because what she found was Steve's shield. She hadn't known that it was made of vibranium, and stored that knowledge away for future use. Then, she kept looking.

Soon, she found some and told a very small piece to come to her. You couldn't ask her how it reached all the way up through the tower, but she always just concluded that it was magic. It's the simplest solution.

When she opened her eyes, a content smile on her face, she looked up at Tony with expectation of a shocked outburst, only to find him looking expectantly at her. So he hadn't figured out what she had done yet, apparently.

"Look down," she instructed.

And Tony did. Only to find that a small rock of Vibranium was poking up from the floor. At first, he wasn't sure how to react, but then, he reached down to touch it, trying to make sure what he was seeing was actually true. But before he could put one finger on it, Hazel shoved him away.

"Don't pick it up! It's cursed, you idiot!" she yelled, but then her own face slacked in shock.

She hadn't meant to say that last part. It was the truth, but her powers could definitely be linked back to the gods. She was not going to be the one to let the secret slip. That was going to be Percy or Leo, if anyone.

"That's amazing," Tony breathed, openly staring in shock at the metal.

But before another second had passed, the rock popped back through the floor and was gone as quickly as it had come.

When Tony looked up at Hazel in question, all he got was a shrug in response. It wasn't safe to keep the metals lying around.

Tony physically shook the shock out of him, and said, "Alright. That was pretty impressive, I'll admit, both of you. We can be done for the day. I'm gonna go check out what some of the others are doing."

"Yeah, I'll do that too," Hazel said, turning to Leo. "What about you? What are you gonna do?"

"I think I'll try to help JARVIS find the bad guys," he responded. "I'm getting nervous just waiting for them to blow something else up."

While Tony was walking away, he yelled to Leo, "Don't break anything! Everything here costs more than everything you own!"

Leo wasn't so sure about that, considering the amount of celestial bronze he owned, but he didn't comment on it.

Ω ♆ Ω

Annabeth and Piper were hard to find an exercise for. Neither of them had very obvious superpowers (one didn't have one at all), in Natasha's opinion. She wanted to see how much the others would have to protect them if it came down to a fight of powers. Sure, she didn't have any abilities, but she had also been training how to make up for that almost her whole life.

So, if anyone could find a weakness in these two girls, it would be her, and Natasha was determined to find it.

"Okay girls, this shouldn't take too long. You're only throwing knives at moving targets. The trick is, you won't know when the targets will pop up. You'll be standing in the middle and holographic targets will form around you at random times, always speeding up. If you're as good as you say you are, you can handle this no problem," Natasha said, eyes piercing into Piper and Annabeth.

"Yeah, we got this," Annabeth shot back, standing proud. "I'll go first."

Natasha was not making it unknown that she didn't trust the demigods, and Annabeth was not going to let that continue. Only the "kids" knew what was really going on, so the adults needed to get in line with their way of doing things before somebody got killed. These people that they were hunting had already killed many people, so they knew they were capable of it. This makeshift group needed to be a well-oiled machine by the time they found the bad guys.

"Okay, just step into that square on the ground, and it'll begin. Piper and I will be stepping out of the range," Natasha said, grabbing Piper's arm and dragging her back about seven yards, "Let's begin!"

It seemingly came out of nowhere, the target. Annabeth had barely been able to grab some of the knives from the table next to her before it formed. It was an orange color, and very pixelated. As soon as she shot the arrow right through the bullseye, it exploded in a shower of orange pixels. She barely had time to let that sink in before another one popped up. They seemed to be stopping the knives, but as soon as they deformed, the weapons just dropped to the ground.

It was rapidly speeding up, but it was nothing to being overrun with monsters trying to kill you. Soon enough, the targets started moving, so she had to adjust her stance to hit them where they would be, not where they were.

It was exhilarating. She hadn't had this much of an adrenaline rush in a year!

Her five minutes of throwing seemed to end all-too-quickly. Soon, the targets stopped popping up, and Natasha was walking towards her with an almost-impressed look on her face.

"Not bad, Chase," she conceded.

"Thanks," Annabeth responded, going and helping Piper pick up the knives lying around their area.

When she got to her, her friend looked up, "That was pretty good, Annabeth. I don't know how I'm supposed to follow that, though."

Annabeth rolled her eyes, "Oh, shut up. I could've done better. And you'll do great, Pipes. I trained you, right?"

She had a light twinkle in her eyes that always came when she was joking around (and that wasn't often). Piper had been trying her very best to see it out as much as possible after Tartarus. Percy and Annabeth put on a strong front, but the Seven could all see they were still recovering, and probably would always be. Nobody just jumped right back into things after something as traumatic as that trip through Hell.

But Piper didn't let it be known how proud she was of Annabeth for making a joke; that would only stop the fun right in its tracks.

"Thanks," Piper said, picking up the last knife before replacing Annabeth in her previous spot in the square.

In her opinion, she wasn't doing as good as Annabeth, or making it look as easy, but it wasn't too difficult. She had been practicing all the time on her fighting skills, and she especially focused on daggers. Knives were balanced a bit differently, but it was the same concept. She just had to compensate for the loss of weight.

Soon enough, Piper found the flow and could slightly anticipate when the next target would pop up.

Annabeth knew Piper would be fine doing this exercise. Sure, it got the blood flowing, but it wasn't the hardest thing they had done. They had fought in actual wars.

Before Piper had known what happened, the targets stopped showing up, and the five minutes were up. She was breathing a little heavily, but a giant grin was taking up her face.

"Not bad, either," Natasha complemented, "You will probably be able to take care of yourselves in a fight."

"Probably?" Annabeth glared.

Natasha returned the glare, "Probably."

Annabeth wanted to say more, but a shout from Leo, who had just sprinted back into the room, interrupted her.

"Guys! Guys! We got a hit!" he screamed, eyes wild with excitement.

Ω ♆ Ω

Everyone but Hazel and Tony stared at Leo in confusion and concern. They didn't know that he had gone to work with JARVIS on tracking the bombers.

Tony ran up to Leo, "What? Where?"

"In Las Vegas," Leo answered.

The rest of the heroes had all formed a group around Leo. Percy and Annabeth had naturally gravitated next to each other. At Leo's answer, they clasped hands and shared a look. They knew why Las Vegas was chosen: The Lotus Hotel and Casino. Flashbacks to zebras and old games flashed through their minds.

"What would they want in Las Vegas?" Steve asked.

"Who cares?! We're going to Vegas baby!" Tony exclaimed, pumping his fist. "JARVIS? Prepare the jet."

Tony was the only one who hadn't noticed the oldest demigods' reaction towards

Las Vegas. He didn't realize how bad this could really be. The demigods didn't have the time to make sure the Avengers didn't get stuck in the casino, if that's where they were going (which it probably was).

"Um, care to share what's bothering you two?" Steve asked Percy and Annabeth.

"We've been to Vegas before. If we're going where we think we might be going, this could be bad. You need to listen to us exactly, okay? It's important," Percy answered.

Tony gave him a confused look. "What are you talking about, kid? We'll be fine. I don't need a teeanger telling me how to do what I'm best at."

Annabeth glared at the billionaire, "And what is that; what you're good at? Because I thought it was being lazy and never taking anything seriously."

"Annabeth, just let it go. We'll just have to watch him closer." Percy said, resting a hand on his girlfriend's shoulder.

With one last glare at Tony, and a warning look to the other Avengers, Annabeth stormed out of the training room, heading back up to her room to prepare without another word. Mortals were so stubborn, she thought, especially when you're trying to protect them. It's literally their birthright to protect mortals, and they never let them!

Storming into her room, Annabeth grabbed a duffle bag and started stuffing supplies into it: weapons, spare clothes, ambrosia and nectar, armor, and a couple other things. She was so distracted by her anger that she didn't see the shadows fluctuating in the corner, or the black snout poking out.

She didn't see it until it was too late.

Ω ♆ Ω

"Are you going to tell us what that was all about back there?" Jason asked Percy as the rest of the demigods were walking back to their rooms.

Percy sighed, exhausted with the day but knowing it was not even close to being over, "Las Vegas is where Annabeth, Grover and I went during our first quest together. We got stuck in the Lotus Hotel and Casino. It's the home of the Lotus-eaters. They trap you in there and you don't feel time passing. We were in there for a week without realizing it. It's dangerous, man."

Piper and Jason shared a worried look, and Piper said, "So... we need to keep a close eye on the mortals on this mission, right?"

"A very close eye," Percy nodded.

When Percy reached Annabeth's door, he decided to go check on her. "Go get your stuff. Let's meet in the living room."

"Okay, Aquaman," Leo said, dashing into his soot-stained room.

Percy wasn't sure what he was expecting to find, maybe Annabeth crying, screaming, or angrily throwing things into a bag (that's the most likely), but he was NOT prepared for nothing. Literally nothing; the room was empty. There was an open duffle on the bed, along with a couple of weapons lying around it, but no Annabeth.

He wasn't getting worried yet, though. She could just be in the bathroom. That was a viable option. He would not allow himself to freak out yet. At least not until he checked the bathroom...

... And the bathroom was empty! Now he allowed himself to freak out. He started storming around the room, tossing things around looking for a clue as to where she went, anything!

"Annabeth! Wise girl!" he called, though he knew it was fruitless.

In their lives, nothing was ever as easy as simply calling for someone and they came back. Annabeth was missing, and he had no idea how to find her.

Unless someone was stupid enough to leave a trail of shadows, that is. Looking in the corner, Percy saw that the shadows in the right corner were moving around unnaturally, a lot like what happened after they were used for shadow travel. He had spent enough time around Nico to understand what it looked like.

So this meant that someone with access to shadow traveling took her, and that wasn't a long list. It was probably a hellhound that took her! Oh, were they going to pay.

Percy could feel his powers slipping, and the walls were giving scary creaks. No matter how much he wanted to just explode, he knew that he had to take a deep breath and focus on recentering himself. He would be no help to Annabeth if he wasn't in control. Some part of his brain was telling him that maybe letting off a little steam WOULD help get his powers under control, but no, he promised Annabeth. And Percy refused to break that promise if he could.

"JARVIS!" he yelled, already rushing out the door, "Call everyone to the living room! Now!"

"Right away, sir," JARVIS responded.

Percy ended up just running to the living room, not wasting any time being careful. Annabeth was missing, and he needed to find her and get her back NOW.

His emotions were running high, so he could sense all the water and liquids around him (it was a lot), and it was becoming distracting.

When he got there, only Steve, Clint, and Natasha were waiting so far. Though Hazel and Frank walked in right after him, probably having heard him scream before JARVIS had even called everyone.

"What's going on?" Steve asked, concern filling his eyes.

Percy paced and said, "Wait until everyone else is here. Then I'll tell you."

His mind kept flashing pictures of all his and Annabeth's enemies. Years and years of fighting monsters and wars were playing on his brain. There were so many possible people, even if it probably was the current gang that they were searching for. He didn't want to let himself believe that mortals could be so messed-up that they worked with monsters, monsters that they couldn't even begin to understand. It was so far-fetched, and yet it was his life!

As these thoughts were going through his head, the rest of the team had finally made it in. They were all sporting confused and concerned glances. Natasha seemed to have figured out that one of them was missing, and that it wasn't normal for that person and Percy to be separated. Annabeth was missing.

"Percy, man. Stop pacing and tell us what's wrong," Jason laid a hand on his friend's shoulder.

Percy's eyes got a little misty as he told them, "Annabeth is missing. Taken. She's gone, and I don't know where to find her."

Hazel gasped.

Nothing was right with this. Percy without Annabeth was wrong. So wrong. They needed to be reunited soon, and quickly.

Percy started pacing again, absentmindedly twirling Riptide around his fingers. He had decided that it was best to start in Las Vegas and go from there. There was a good chance that it was the gang who had taken her, and that they were holding her there. It was his only idea.

The others had just been sharing worried looks and a few whispered thoughts before Tony suddenly jumped up, holding his phone like it might explode.

"Guys, I think I know who has her..." he said, making a few hand gestures before his phone screen was projected in front of them.

It was a picture. Of Annabeth.

She was hanging from celestial bronze chains, with a leather gag in her mouth, and shackles on her ankles. Her hair was a matted mess, and she was unconscious. Even so, Percy could see that she had a black eye, probably from struggling. She wouldn't go without a fight, that's for sure. But still, this was not the Annabeth they knew. The Annabeth they knew was a strong force to be reckoned with. This...person was not her.

Percy let out an almost animalistic growl at the sight. They were going to pay, whoever had taken her. All of them.

"It has a note," Tony said, throwing up another picture.

It said:

We are The Truth Seekers. We have your blonde bitch, and she will be dead in the next 24 hours unless you reveal yourselves. The world deserves to know! It is our right to know the monstrosities that go unseen, right beneath our noses! 24 hours, or she's dead. We're at the Lotus Hotel and Casino, another one of the hidden monstrosities in our world. Tell the truth!

Percy was going to kill them. He didn't care if they were mortals, they were going to die. They hurt Annabeth, he hurts back. Worse.

"We need to suit-up, and then we can get going and rescue her. But first, we need a plan," Steve started to speak, but before he could, the world flooded in.

Screw control, Percy thought.

He let the pipes and burst and break the windows. Standing on the very edge of the empty window seal, he let out the loudest taxi whistle the Avengers had ever heard. Waiting only a second for a black blur to show up on the horizon, Percy jumped.

Ω ♆ Ω

other chapters :)

#pjo #the avengers #mcu #avengers #percy jackson and the olympians #heroes of olympus #crossover #fanfiction #fanfic #wattpad #webnovel #inkitt #this is a big fluffy piece don't judge

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flightfoot · 4 years

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What's your favorite Rick Riordan series between Percy Jackson, The Kane Chronicles, Heroes of Olympus, Magnus Chase and Trials of Apollo? (or like, if you can't choose, what do you like about the series you've read?)

Trials of Apollo, no contest.

I liked Percy Jackson a lot, it was VERY well done. Percy was hilarious and relatable, but also just super awesome, his dynamic with Annabeth was fun to read, along with his dynamic with Grover, the quests had a lot of entertaining encounters, and it had some well-executed themes that tied in with the overall conflict nicely, mostly about how parents’ and adults’ negligence and even abuse can harm their kids, the overall effects of that, and just... generally trying to get the parents to shape up, as well as the effects of not respecting others in general, like with how the minor gods and by extension, their children, are treated by the Olympians. It comes up with Percy’s relationships with both Gabe and Poseidon, and most of the campers’ relationships with their godly parents, and that’s a MAJOR cause behind the entire conflict, and one of the major things that Percy tries to make better at the end of the last book.

Kane Chronicles... it’s been awhile since I read it. I don’t remember it having as prevalent a theme as Percy Jackson did, though there was definitely social commentary on racism, with how Carter was sometimes treated, and with how people had trouble comprehending that Carter and Sadie were full siblings, since while both are mixed, Carter’s pretty dark-skinned, while Sadie looks White. It was more of a background thing though, not a major plot point. I liked the characters and the plot fine, they were entertaining, and it was good overall - but it’s not a series I’ve felt a pressing need to reread either. Only real complaint I have about it is the romances centering around Sadie. Her and Anubis were kinda cute, but it would’ve been a lot cuter if she was older than 12-13, and he wasn’t a 4000-year-old god who looked, acted, and was treated as a 16-year-old. And then the whole thing with making it a love triangle with Walt who’s ALSO 16 and Rick’s method of “solving” the love triangle... look honestly I just would’ve been a lot more ok with the romantic shenanigans there if Sadie wasn’t a middle-schooler throughout it. Overall still good though, I’d be down for an adaptation of it, but it’s one of the few cases where I hope something IS flat-out changed to make the romances more palatable.

Heroes of Olympus is where I originally fell off of the Riordanverse. There was just so long between books and I could barely remember what happened between them, and with most of the books being like parts of the same quest (especially books 3, 4, and 5), unless you were constantly refreshing your memory of them via fandom, they were hard to follow, especially with several main characters and different character dynamics to keep track of. When I went back and read the whole set of them though, getting back into the series, it was WAY better, since I could read them as a coherent whole. I could tell he was struggling to juggle all the characters, but I thought he did a fairly decent job of it for what it was. I ended up liking all the characters - ESPECIALLY Leo, I thought he was great and relatable and funny, but I also wanted to hug him - and while the quest could drag on a bit at times, there were some interesting parts there. And Percy and Annabeth’s journey through Tartarus was GREAT.

The themes for Heroes Of Olympus overall were pretty much the same as with Percy Jackson, but with less emphasis I think. It was mostly just “the gods (mostly Zeus, really) are being crappy again, but this time we have enough support among ourselves to manage, except for when a god is technically required to defeat a Giant”. A lot more emphasis was placed on individual character arcs and circumstances, which I think was a good choice, since with so many main characters, they needed more concentrated character development in order to put them up to par with Percy and Annabeth. Plus it allowed Rick to still go into some different themes a bit, like racism with Hazel, trauma with Leo, insecurity with Frank, etc, in a way that felt natural and relevant. It helped that they were broken up into different books for their introductions, so not everything was dumped in at once.

The ending of Heroes of Olmypus... yeah the final battle with the GIants was lame as all hell, and honestly the quest ended up feeling a bit like busywork, but screw it, I did LOVE one part of the ending. The imagery of big, bad Gaia, who even Zeus is so scared of he just wants to hide away with his head in the ground, physically manifesting and being about to take everyone out, everyone losing hope... and then screaming as Festus appears and snatches her up into the sky as Leo gives a shit-eating grin and hurls fireballs at her while insulting her the whole time is just GREAT. I always giggle, and I honestly found it a lot more memorable than the Kronos fight, even if it was technically less epic. It seemed fitting for her to be taken out in such an embarrassing way, by the boy she’d personally taken the most from.

Magnus Chase... yeah that’s the only one I didn’t finish. Quick note: its been over a year since I tried it, so I’m operating off of memory here. I wanted to like it, and after reading through Heroes of Olympus (which i originally stopped reading after Mark of Athena) and Trials of Apollo, I was all hyped up for more Riordanverse... and was disappointed. The basic elements were there, and the writing itself wasn’t bad, but... well, I never really got attached to most of the characters this time, I didn’t find the quest very interesting, and... well, you see how I mentioned about the themes in the earlier reviews? I thought Rick bit off more than he could chew with Magnus Chase, at least with the first book. (I slogged through the first book, got a hundred pages into the second book to see whether Alex, who I’d heard a lot of hype about, could save it, thought Alex was only ok but not someone who saved the book, and called it quits).

So in Magnus Chase, Rick went DEEP into the social commentary on a lot of disparate subjects, trying to really tackle homelessness, child abuse (because no duh, that’s pretty much a staple, I think the only of his series that DOESN’T have major themes around that is Kane Chronicles), Islamophobia, ableism, and... I’m having trouble thinking of the exact term for it, but Blitzen was heavily looked down upon and derided for wanting to make fashionable armor and just being into fashion in general, so... I think it’s supposed to commentary on making fun of people for having interests that are generally seen as feminine? I guess? I dunno, it was definitely social commentary on SOMETHING, but I think the dwarves having their own particular culture here hurt whatever Rick was trying to say, since social commentary is very much tied to the culture it’s in, and we only have a small taste of dwarven culture, at least in the first book.

In any case, all these things are fine to do social commentary on, but when you’re trying to go in-depth and really address them, it helps if they’re more tied in with the overall conflict in the book, and if each issue has room to breathe. As it was, it kinda felt to me like the characters were being paraded from location to location to confront some different social issue. I just thought it was too much, too crammed into one book, and the overall conflict had pretty much nothing to do with that. Like, at the end of the book Rick tried to tie it together with some sort of “we’re a band of misfits” message, and... well, a message based on NOT fitting in with society, isn’t one that’s very satisfying or cohesive. And the individual issues, while there’s certainly cross-sectionality between, aren’t intrinsically linked, so... they just don’t mesh together very well. Not so many, all mashed into one book. Plus I just didn’t care for any of the gods, and the only characters I liked were Magnus and Sam. Blitz and Hearthstone... they were just sort of “there” for me.

I can see why people like Magnus Chase, and it’s not BAD by any means, but it just wasn’t for me. Maybe I’ll take another crack at it at some point, but I’m not super optimistic about it. As it was, I just ended up looking up the parts where Magnus met with Annabeth and read those.

Trials of Apollo though, I ADORE. Apollo was hilarious (along with the books in general), it had a pretty focused message about child abuse and abuse in general, along with how a privileged position can blind you from the travesties that are going on around you, or that you yourself cause, and I just thought the themes worked very well. Rick went more in-depth this time on the exact consequences of child abuse and the ways that a parent could abuse and manipulate their child, something that wasn’t covered as much in his earlier series, as those were more based around neglect. I’m a sucker for a good redemption arc, and I was really impressed with how it was kinda slipped in with Apollo. Like, he didn’t even know he NEEDED one, and the good guys weren’t especially pressing him on that point, it’s a realization he slowly came to over the course of several books. And you can clearly tell that he’s conceited and has issues, but isn’t actually malicious... and slowly the reader comes to the realization that he has hidden depths, that not even HE knew he had. It’s really interesting how he did some pretty bad things (or DIDN’T do, a lot of it has to do with inaction and just being uncaring), but he never comes off as being like, evil. He comes off as being an arrogant, narcissistic person at first, but then slowly finding out that beneath that is a lot of pain and trauma, and part of that persona he’s built up has been to deal with this. Watching him slowly change and grow and discover himself during the series, in a way he never had before... it’s just amazing to read. Also puts a nice cap on the Greco-Roman saga, in that the past two series had a heavy emphasis on how the gods didn’t care enough and had to have their hands forced a lot, and Apollo sort of acting as a stand-in for those other gods, showing that yes, they CAN change for the better - something that most of the gods, and even other immortals, didn’t think was possible, even as they did it.

Well that was super long. But yeah, I have strong feelings on the Riordanverse, and Trials of Apollo is far and away my favorite.

#ask #long post #percy jackson #heroes of olympus #kane chronicles #trials of apollo

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wereallydobevibing · 5 years

Text

Manhatten Heroes [2]

{Percy Jackson & Avengers Crossover}

Prompt - When the Second Titan War is being fought, the sudden chaos is, naturally, brought to the attention of the Avengers. They find that Percy and his sister, (Y/N) Jackson, are leading Camp Half-Blood and find themselves fighting alongside the demigods to help defend New York. Once the war is won, the Jackson siblings are taken into custody for interrogation.

@a-studying-narnian-demigod (you requested, I figured you'd want a tag!)

Part One can be found on my profile :)

"First things first—what are you?"

Percy and I sat frozen in our seats—we'd been brought into some kind of conference room and sat at a table. The rest of the Avengers sat surrounding us, and Nick Fury was currently taking the lead on this one.

I looked to Percy, and he looked to me. From our level of understanding, we knew that the Avengers weren't regular humans. They themselves had special abilities and had a god or two on their team.

"Demigods." Percy answered, sitting lazily in his seat.

"From Asgard?" Tony Stark asked in disbelief. "Thor, Loki, the Nine Realms, that kinda thing?"

"What?" Percy freaked, eyebrows furrowed. "N-No, who the Hades is Thor and Loki?"

"They're Norse gods, Percy." I said, "And, no. We aren't, in any way, consulting with them. We're Greek demigods—The son and daughter of Poseidon, to be exact."

"Wait, wait, wait," the only other woman in the room joined in—I remembered her to be Natasha. "You're telling us that the Greek gods are real, too? Zeus, Poseidon, Hades–"

"Names have power," I glared. "You don't go throwing them around like that, it's dangerous."

The room fell silent at my warning, and I hadn't realized until then that my glare had turned into a wolf stare. I hadn't meant to become so hostile, but I didn't exactly plan on fighting an angry god or two.

"But I thought Poseidon made some kind of oath not to have mortal children," Banner said. "How could you be children of Poseidon?"

"There's a smart man." Percy murmured, "He broke his oath. Twice. He fell in love with our mortal mother—the first time creating me, the second time creating (Y/N). Zeus and Hades broke their oaths as well."

"There's more of your kind?" Clint asked.

"Many." I responded. "All the Olympians have mortal children except for Hera and Artemis. Some of those children go on to live normal lives, never truly knowing what they are. The rest of us aren't so lucky."

"Lucky?" Tony said. "You're children of one of the most powerful gods in Greek mythology, and you don't consider yourselves lucky?"

"We grew up with an abusive step father, were bullied our entire lives, were forced to take on dangerous quests when we were barely twelve, and just fought a war in our mid-teens." I listed, "Our lives are dangerous. Monsters sniff us out and attempt to kill us everyday. Because of our bloodline, we have ADHD and Dyslexia—the other kids in school look at us and think we're stupid, they don't know that we just saved every single one of their lives."

The room was silent as they comprehended the dangers Percy and I had faced as kids. And I knew they felt bad for us, purely because we were kids. They didn't have to, we didn't need pity, we needed food.

"Why does your bloodline include ADHD and Dyslexia?"

"Ugh, seriously, Stark?" Natasha scolded. "That's what stuck out to you the most in what (Y/N) just said?"

"The Dyslexia is because our brains were hardwired to read Ancient Greek, not English." Percy said. "And the ADHD is our natural battle reflexes—we weren't made to sit still and learn about George Washington, we were built to fight wars."

"I'm not gonna lie, that's pretty cool." Sam said, earning a smack on the back of his head from Natasha.

"Hey!"

"Being children of the gods must mean you come with special abilities." Fury concluded, "What are they? Are they the same for everyone?"

"No," I responded. "Your abilities depend on who your godly parent is. As we've just told you, all demigods have heightened senses, I guess you could say our senses are godly. But Percy and I being the son and daughter of Poseidon means we can do things like—control water, breath underwater, talk to horses and marine animals."

"And when we absolutely need to," Percy continued. "We can cause earthquakes and hurricanes, start storms. Poseidon is the stormbringer."

They gawked at us, which was to be expected. For the most part, they were handling the news pretty well and I was thankful they weren't going crazy over it like most mortals would.

"What could, lets say, a child of Athena do?" Fury asked, hypothetically.

"They're really smart, really good at coming up with battle strategies quickly. They don't have any actual powers, but they're really smart."

Fury hummed, "Next question."

"Great," I muttered.

"That war we found you two finishing, what was that all about?"

All eyes were on us now, everyone, as always, expecting our answer. But now that they knew what and who we are, they were probably expecting it to be, like, amazing or something.

So we went on to explain everything about Luke, and how he teamed up with Kronos to destory the gods and take over the world. We told them everything leading up to the war, too—how me and Percy first found out about who we were, being accused of stealing the lightning bolt, having to navigate through the Labrynth, etc. Throughout the story, they occasionally asked questions and sat in awe as we told them everything we had to go through just to save the world: everything we've lost while we did it as well as the very few things we've gained. We even told them about Zeus' offer to make me and Percy immortal gods—which we had declined.

By the end of our explanation, some of them refused to make eye contact with me and Percy, while others looked at us with softened facial expressions. Fury was the only person with a hardened expression, but even his face had slightly softened. The room, once again, was quiet, but at this point, I knew we had earned their respect.

Clint Barton was the first to break the silence, "you kids have done real good by your father." he said. "I'm sure he's proud."

"Er, thanks," Percy shuffled awkwardly. We weren't used to being praised—things like that never happened.

"Well, it's gotten pretty late," Captain—Steve—said. I turned my head to glance out the window, finding myself being greeted by the nighttime sky. "You should stay here for tonight. As you've told us, it's dangerous for the both of you out there. I can't imagine when it gets dark."

Percy was about to excuse the offer, but I was quick to intervene. My body ached from the fight and my mind was unbelievably worn out—if a monster were to attack on our way home, I think I'd lay down and let it tear me to shreds.

"Thank you," I said, earning a look of confusion from Percy. "We appreciate it, really."

————

So here's Part 2 of Manhatten Heroes!! If you want a Part 3 just let me know!

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jflashandclash · 5 years

Text

Tales From Mount Othrys

The Versatility of a Guitar String

Warning: Depictions of Violence.

***

“Forget your family.”

Flynn’s melody murmured in my dreams like the silkiest spider threads rocking a slumberer’s hammock. “You deserve to enjoy this: the start of your new life. Let yourself forget.”

Her words cradled my mind in a tranquilizing solace. At the time, the only response I could utter was, “What other family? You’re all the family I need.”

--Memoirs of a Talking Head[1]

***

When Jack agreed to tear down the gods, he didn’t think it would involve him snorkeling in a toilet.

It did.

Jack thrashed and twisted, barely getting a gulp of air before being submerged again. His orange converses squeaked uselessly against the bathroom’s floor tiles.

The girl shoving his head into the water bowl was much stronger and larger than he, despite being several years younger. Between dunkings, her and her friends’ laughter reverberated off the walls.

This, unfortunately, wasn’t the first time someone had forced Jack to be well acquainted with the most vital part of a restroom. Last time, Ms. Daisy Blackwell, one of the prettiest girls at his church, had taken Jack behind the church after his solo at one of their concerts. She had said she wanted him to sing to her. When Tommy Higgles, her boyfriend, found out that she asked Jack to do more than sing to her, he and his friends cornered Jack in the boys’ bathroom at school.

Last time, Tommy had emptied all of Jack’s medication into the toilet bowl. “That straightening out your memory, freak!” Tom had shouted.

This time, the water was cleaner. Or, at least, it wouldn’t give him an overdose as he choked on it.

Last time, Jack had no idea it was going to happen. Ms. Blackwell had heard Jack “confused” things a lot, and that he was “confused’ about her relations with Tommy. But, afterwards, Ms. Blackwell wouldn’t acknowledge him in public, or that anything had happened between the two of them, like the other boys and girls that had taken an interest in Jack at his small high school.

This time, Luke had warned Jack that it was a Camp Half-Blood hazing ritual, one from which Luke could not spare him. Jack had to either fight off a hulking daughter of Ares or get humiliated.

Despite the warning, Jack felt himself thinking the same thing he had before: I’m going to drown.

The water seeped into his lungs during his squirming. Pressure mounted in his chest. There wasn’t enough time to cough. Panic made his heartbeat thud inside his head. His head smacked into the toilet bowl with each thrash.

The worst difference surfaced as he forced his limbs to stop fighting. Last time, Jack knew he would reach eternal salvation if he died the humiliating death of a toilet warrior. This time, as Jack willed his body to give up, he wondered, Do half-bloods even have souls?

The fingers clenching his hair pulled his head back, stretching his body in a strained arch.

He sputtered and coughed out the water.

Clarisse La Rue’s sneer loomed in his peripheral. “Had enough of a swim?”

At least there was a toilet directly in front of him, so no one would have to clean up the content of his lungs and stomach. That would be rude to any godly janitorial staff. He hacked, unable to talk for a moment.

Clarisse released him.

Jack barely missed cracking his head against the toilet bowl. Blurrily, he searched around, trying to prop himself up on the cool, slick floor.

The laughter echoed around the room. The massive girl stood.

“Why?” Jack finally choked out.

“To show you the pecking order,” Clarisse said. She and her friends got up and left the bathroom stalls.

Jack trembled. The first time he tried to get up, his legs felt like jelly. Finally, he got to his feet and stumbled to the sinks. He turned one on and dunked his head under, reminding himself that he was in control of the water rinsing him off.

The monsters on the Princess Andromeda had been way nicer on his first day. They at least ignored him or said he smelled good.

Someone shook Jack’s shoulder.

He flinched.

“Hey, we’re not really supposed to be in the girl’s bathroom.”

Jack tried to look through the water at his escort: a thirteen-year-old child of Apollo named Ryan. He had tan skin and an athletic build. Once he got Jack’s attention, he crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows.

After a few more moments of feeling the water against the back of his head and his neck, Jack shut the sink off. He let his dripping bangs plaster onto his face and soak his flannel shirt. The top was already drenched. As it turned out, toilet water: not refreshing.

“Why didn’t you help?” Jack asked. To still be there, Ryan must have stood by the entrance the whole time, watching.

Ryan’s expression was skeptical. Like everyone else who had commented on how old Jack was, Ryan seemed disappointed by what he saw. “You think I can put a dent in a child of Ares?”

Jack shrugged. “You could have run to get help.”

“No one is going to help against Clarisse.”

No wonder Luke hates Ares and his children.

Although the room felt warm with the climate control, Jack hugged himself. It took every ounce of control not to tug at his hair and to, instead, dig his fingers deep into his ribs. He promised himself he wouldn’t mess this mission up and that meant acting as normal as possible.

Mission? Quest? Had Kronos called it a quest?

This was the exact time Jack should be asking Ryan questions. Phil and Luke both said Jack was perfect for this type of quest, because he was so unassuming and genuinely curious when asking questions. Charming and harmless, as Ms. Blackwell had teased him.

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Jack asked. “Were you dunked?”

Jack tried to imagine coming in here as a young kid, before he met Flynn and knew Greek monsters were real. He would have thought this was whole place was a cruel prank or a bad dream.

“All new people get dunked,” Ryan said. He looked impatient. “You get over it.”

Jack felt like his tongue was four times too large. That didn’t seem right, but he doubted saying so would get him any points with Ryan.

Only twenty-four hours, Jack reminded himself. Twenty-four hours before Luke, Lucille, Lou Ellen, and I need to get out. You can be normal for twenty-four hours.

He hoped.

Summer solstice was a day away. From what Luke got out of a quick Iris Message and a dream vision with Kronos, some kid named Percy Jackson should be starting some massive war with the gods. Percy should have been be dragged into Tartarus with something called the Master Bolt. Then, this camp wouldn’t be safe. It would crumble into a battlefield between the gods.

“Just remember when Clarisse dunks you that she’ll be killed in the crossfire. I’ll make sure of it,” Luke had said.

Jack didn’t want Clarisse and her friends to be killed in the crossfire. He just wanted her to be less mean. Seeing her in person, the former seemed much more likely.

Ryan sighed. “Come on. Let’s see if you you’re as bad at horseback riding as you are with archery.”

Jack shuffled forward. He guessed Ryan didn’t intend to sound so critical, but no one at camp could believe Jack had survived on his own for so long, being a son of Apollo. Although Phil immediately stated that Jack had been claimed—he hadn’t, whatever ‘claiming’ meant—whispers went around that maybe he was supposed to be in the Aphrodite cabin instead.

“At least he’s good for the girls to look at. Don’t think he’ll do much in the coming war,” he had heard Lee Fletcher, his cabin counselor, muttering when Jack accidentally elbowed Chiron in the chest during their archery lesson.

Jack knew he wouldn’t have survived on his own, but Luke had him under strict orders not to mention Flynn or Luke or anything about Kronos. As for that day, they didn’t know each other, which was a real shame. Jack wanted Luke to show him Thalia’s pine tree.

The rest of the training was similar. Fortunately, his cabin mates—is that what they were called?—and Chiron were too distracted by the fights that kept breaking out between the children of Athena and Jack’s siblings. Something about Poseidon being in the right to take a stand against Zeus? Jack had only recently learned the gods and titans were real. He couldn’t keep the internal bickering straight.

Most people were too distracted and tense to pay Jack much attention for the rest of training, which was a problem. That meant he couldn’t complete his mission either. He hoped Lucille was having more luck in the Aphrodite Cabin and Lou Ellen in the… where had Luke said she’d go?

Luke’s words haunted him. “Either we turn them or we consider them sword fodder. Anyone on the Olympic side will need to die, so you’re doing them a favor if you can show them how corrupt the Olympians are.”

Flynn, Jack’s girlfriend, understood immediately. That’s why Luke had sent her on a mission to a place called New Rome. Luke said that would be too difficult for Jack to tag along.

This quest was a test for Jack, Lucille, and Lou Ellen: a way to prove they were worthy of Kronos’ next world.

Like introducing people to Jesus, Jack mused. He remembered walking through the sterile halls of Botin’s Hill Hospital, how the sick welcomed him inside to hear him sing church songs. Pity he didn’t know any about our savor, Kronos.

Jack frowned. Luke and Phil kept saying he could heal people with his song. But, the sick people didn’t always get better when he sang. Sometimes…

“Jake, right?”

Jack flinched. The Apollo cabin was setting up for the campfire. He’d zoned out, watching as the Hephaestus campers stoked the flames. Everyone else referred to the cabins by numbers, but Jack couldn’t keep those numbers straight, so he tried to catalogue everyone by the few gods he did know.

A friendly, blond nineteen-year-old stood beside him. The familiar scar made Jack grin, despite his feelings of being a failure. He shouldn’t want to talk to Luke. That would mean reporting that he’d had no luck converting any of his siblings, or even seeing if they could be converted down the road. The children of Apollo seemed to love their—his—dad wholeheartedly, though Jack hadn’t gotten any specific person’s story yet.

Luke squeezed Jack’s shoulder. “How’s your first day going? You came in at a rough time.”

Jack knew that Luke had to pretend they’d never met before, but the convincing, detached quality of Luke’s voice was demoralizing, especially with how he got his name wrong.

Jack managed to nod at him. He hadn’t realized that, when he sat down on the log, he’d pulled his knees up and was rocking.

Almost frantic, Jack straightened out his legs and stopped rocking. Normal for one day. Normal for one day. He repeated to himself. Then, he could tell Flynn that he’d done a quest, right? He could show Luke that he’d be worthwhile in his army. Besides, the campfire was all about singing. This is where Jack could shine.

Jack gave Luke a much more confident smile.

“Just keep it together, buddy,” Luke said, his grip on Jack’s shoulder becoming uncomfortable. “I’m sure the rest of your night will be a success—”

Another camper, an Athena boy, raised his voice in middle of a discussion, drowning out Luke. “—maybe because someone needs to keep order in this camp—”

“Oh, can it! You’re still pissy at Poseidon for a rivalry that you won. Get over it! There’s no reason you’d be on Zeus’ side otherwise!” one of Jack’s siblings shouted at the Athena camper.

More shouts broke out. The campfire flickered uncomfortable, dark red. The flames looked too low on the wood to still be lit.

Jack felt like something was about to go wrong, something important.

One of the Ares campers shoved the Athena kid—Malcolm? He stumbled, barely dodging around the fire. He slammed into another camper to keep his balance. And—

The movement was too fast for Jack to dodge, not that he would have thought to.

One of Jack’s siblings toppled backwards.

Pain flared in Jack’s throat, as the kid’s—Will’s?—elbow smashed into Jack’s windpipe. Will hadn’t meant to, he’d been trying to pinwheel to keep his balance—

Jack flopped backwards, clutching at his neck. He coughed. Each breath rasped painfully.

Hands gripped Jack’s shoulders. They dug into his skin, dragging him away from the campfire. Another member of his cabin went to pummel Malcolm, even though the incident hadn’t been Malcolm’s fault.

The yells were jumbled. The bodies crashed into a scuffle—they looked more like a random mob of strangers than cousins and siblings. All Jack could think was, My throat—Dear God—can I still sing?! What if they crushed it? What if they crushed my windpipe?

A more logical part of him said that his windpipe would be fine. He needed a few minutes to recover. That would be it, right? What am I without a voice? That’s my only useful trait. Would Flynn want me anymore?

He wheezed.

Whoever was dragging him pulled him up onto his feet.

The pain lessened, but the panic made Jack clutch at his neck. He tried to talk. His voice came out a squeaky rasp.

He expected Luke to be his savor, to be chastising him for over-dramatics.

The person beside him was a foot too short.

“Come on. We have throat lozenges in the cabin,” Ryan said. He released Jack and started walking back towards the housing.

Jack pointed frantically back to where the campfire had become a battle zone. The Ares and Apollo campers teamed up against Athena. A centaur already stood in the fray, pulling teenagers off each other.

“Chiron will take care of it,” Ryan said, “We plenty outnumber Cabin Six and you’ll be in the way if you stay.” This time, the irritation in Ryan’s voice was unmistakable. “You’re really not cut out for this, are you? You had plenty of time to move.”

Jack trembled. He reminded himself that Ryan, like other kids that had mocked him, was a child of God’s and that all God’s children were…

Something flipped in Jack’s head. They weren’t equal, were they? And God—the gods—didn’t love them equally. Luke said that Percy Jackson—the son of Poseidon that Luke had framed for the thievery of the Master Bolt—that kid could control water. Thalia had been able to shoot lightning. These gods, the Greek gods, didn’t treat them as equal, else Thalia wouldn’t be a pine tree.

By the time Jack got enough of his voice back to talk, they approached the golden exterior of Apollo’s empty cabin. “You seem like such a natural,” Jack said. His voice was raspy, but functional.

A tightness squeezed Jack’s stomach when he examined his little half-brother. Throughout all the training that day, Ryan had excelled.

Ryan sighed. Tension released from his shoulders as he opened the cabin door. He paused. After a moment, Ryan held the door open for Jack. “My mom told me I was a half-blood when I was very little. She knew Apollo was a god, so she set me up with archery lessons as soon as I could pull back a bow. She was a pediatrician and let me play with all of her college text books.” He shrugged. “The other campers think I’ll surpass Chiron with a bow one day, and I’m already a better healer than Will, but I had a head start.”

This is was it! What Jack was supposed to be doing all day! Getting his new cabin mates to open up: about themselves, their feelings about being demigods, their opinions of their parents. For some reason, Jack didn’t feel better about the success. The tightness in his stomach squeezed until he felt his breath going short again. He wanted Ryan to shut up.

“You knew the monsters were real,” Jack said. He hadn’t realized that would be an option. He stepped inside.

“Well, yea, we all did,” Ryan said like it was obvious. The cabin door shut behind them. No one else was around. Ryan walked past the corner stacked with instruments to the medicine cabinet. He withdrew the lozenges and handed them to Jack.

Jack frowned, examining the packaging: ambrosia coated. Even with simple things like pain killers, he always checked ingredients in case they conflicted with his medication. Jack popped one in his mouth and bit down hard.

Everyone knew that you were supposed to suck on lozenges; but, Jack wanted a sharp sensation in his mouth. Cinnamon spiked his taste buds.

Ryan gave Jack a wary look. “Listen, Jack, maybe you’d be better off at home with your mortal family,” he said. “It’s not that we don’t want you here, I just don’t know if this is the safest place for you with this war brewing. Tomorrow, Summer Solstice, this camp might be about to explode, and you’re not really trained for combat yet…”

Ryan looked genuinely concerned. “We can loan you a weapon from the armory. Since you’ve made it so long without any help, I doubt your aura is that strong or ever will be strong enough to attract monsters. It’s not that we don’t want you here—or that Dad doesn’t want you here. I mean, he claimed you. That’s a big deal. It means he loves you and all, but—”

Jack bit down harder on the lozenge, wanting to crush it. He hadn’t been claimed.

“How soon were you claimed?” Jack interrupted. The twisting in his stomach kept getting tighter. He felt like he was on the cusp of something important and that something would make all the tension disappear. It had to do with what Ryan was saying, but he wanted the kid to stop talking.

“As soon as I stepped foot into camp,” Ryan said. He rocked onto his tiptoes, like he was getting impatient to go back outside. His gaze shifted back to the door as though the eye motion could shove Jack back out.

Jack hugged himself. “Apollo… Dad. You speak really highly of him.”

Ryan glanced at the door again, then back at Jack. He sighed, rolling back onto his heels. “Yea… I—I owe Dad. He’s kinda awesome.”

These campers seemed to know so much more about him. How could you say that a Dad you’ve never met was awesome? Had Ryan met him?

At Jack’s silence, Ryan got a sad smile on his face. “I guess I can tell you about it. My mom never fell in love after him. She said it was impossible after she had a full summer with him—”

A one night stand. A one night mistake, Jack remembered his mother assuring Steve about his conception, when Steven got nervous about the guy before him. They thought Jack hadn’t come downstairs for a nighttime snack. His Mom had never held that one night stand against Jack, had she?

“—so I was raised with my cousins like they were my siblings. My older cousin, Cindy, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Mom and I prayed to Apollo every night and I sang to her every night for a week. She… she got better. Way faster than medicine by itself should have allowed—”

The package slipped from Jack’s fingers.

The individually wrapped lozenges scattered across the cabin floor.

“Wow—you okay, dude? You look like you’re about to be sick,” Ryan said. The smile vanished from his face. He knelt down, plucking some lozenges from the ground.

Jack should have apologized. He should have knelt down to help. Normal for one day, echoed in his mind. The thought couldn’t penetrate his other ones. It couldn’t stop his hands from clutching at his hair.

What would it have been like? To grow up with a family that knew what was happening to him, to know he wasn’t crazy. Not to be medicated. Or outcast. No “you’re just confused, sweetie.” No, “All children are equal in the eyes of God.”

In that instance, Jack realized something. People treated life like it was a living thing that chose to be fair or unfair. It wasn’t. It just existed. People were made unequal. They would be treated unequal. These gods, their gods, played favorites.

“Ryan…” Jack whispered, trying not to hyperventilate. “You saved your cousin with your singing. Could you kill someone with your singing?”

His vision had tunneled. All Jack could see was the smaller boy, crouched under the instrument table, gathering a lozenge from a guitar. There were spare strings on the table. When Ryan put his hand on the table for balance, he knocked them to the side.

Then, Jack couldn’t see Ryan.

Shelby was the worst. Her body was sprawled in the middle of the hallway, on top of Charger, their German Sheppard. The other bodies—those Jack could easily pretend weren’t real. But, Shelby, had face-planted in a pool of her own vomit. The bile plastered her black hair around the wooden floor like a drowned victim’s hair splayed into a water halo… She was impossible to ignore. Jack had to carefully edge his way around her and Charger’s bodies, hoping the real one would show up and tell him to stop being silly, and terrified the real one would show up since they might increase his medication.

The day after they found his family, Jack had been too scared to tell Luke and Flynn why he thought their deaths were his fault.

He had been singing in the shower. He was thinking about how angry he was at his family while he sang. Then, they were dead, just like some of the patients at the hospital died as soon as he finished singing to them.

Why could Ryan save people, his loved ones, with his voice, when Jack could kill?

The pressure in Jack’s stomach made him feel like he’d throw up. That tension was wound so tightly, Jack knew it would snap. It was about to snap. He couldn’t stop—

“I guess, in theory,” Ryan said, beginning to rise from under the table, “I’ve never heard of someone—”

There was a loud thwack.

Jack didn’t know he’d cracked Ryan’s skull into the table. Not until the second time he did it. Ryan’s hair felt silky under his fingers. The head under his hand resisted the first time. Not so much the second.

Jack’s heartbeat thudded in his head, deafening. He didn’t hear the noises Ryan made. He didn’t feel Ryan’s head slip from his hands or how Ryan kicked backwards—how Jack’s leg gave out under the kick so Jack was level with the instrument table.

He saw Ryan’s mouth move, to sing to heal or call for help. Some autopilot took over, shut him up. Shut. Him. Up. We’ll make the two of us equal. We’ll play favorites the way that gods do.

A dull ache nagged at Jack’s knee, where he’d collapsed behind his little half-brother. He fumbled for something in the room to gag Ryan. His fingers snatched up something thin, metal, and pliable.

Jack didn’t remember shoving Ryan back to the floor; he must have. The intention was to wrap the guitar cord between Ryan’s teeth. Just to soften Ryan’s screams.

Then the metal cord pinched the skin around Ryan’s neck. The small kid bucked and thrashed. Ryan’s nails dug at metal. Those fingers fumbled backwards, swatting at Jack.

None of his attempts reached Jack. Jack’s knee now pressed into the small of Ryan’s back. The guitar cord was long enough that Jack could pull it taught at such a distance that Ryan couldn’t touch him.

The way Ryan squirmed, Jack’s own screams, the pain in his bruised knee as Jack simultaneously kneed the back of Ryan’s spine while jerking Ryan’s neck backwards: it felt distant, muffled.

Until someone covered Jack’s mouth.

“Be quiet!”

The words brought Jack back into reality. So did the hands that dragged him backwards.

“Holy Hera!” another familiar voice said.

There was a clop of hooves on the wooden floor.

Until that someone removed the hands from his mouth, Jack didn’t realize what he’d been screaming over and over.

Why does Dad love you more?

Ryan wasn’t moving.

Dad couldn’t love him now.

Jack trembled. He stared at his hands. Cuts lined his palms, where he had wrapped the guitar string to anchor them. Bruising would follow. His breath tightened. That tension inside him had snapped. He didn’t have any energy left. No anger. Just a sense of queer calm.

That same autopilot took control. Guilt nagged at his consciousness the same way pain nagged at his knee.

“No,” Jack said, “No—no. I—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”

“Shut up,” Luke repeated, slapping Jack upside the head. He sounded terrified.

Jack clutched at his hair. The strands felt slick with sweat. A sob caught his throat. What was happening to him? Had he just—

“Watch it, Luke.” Someone stepped around the two of them. Phil’s furry legs blocked off Jack’s view of Ryan’s body. “Flynn isn’t going to like it if she hears you’ve been smacking around her Jackie-boy. Now, let’s see. It’s been a long time since I needed to sneak a corpse out of a cabin. You sure like to keep me young and spry, don’t you, Jak-Jak?”

Phil’s comment was light.

No answer would come from Jack’s lips, at least, not beyond a whine.

Phil turned towards Jack and knelt down. Those dark eyes glittered with something that made Jack nauseous: compassion. He put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Kid, I need you with us. We gotta move fast. Which blanket won’t be missed if we wrap Ryan in it?”

*****

My betatester was very angry at me for the deficit of hugs and happiness for Jak-Jak. Don’t worry. Part II is more lighthearted. Okay, PHiL says it’s more lighthearted, though that guy could probably say that at a wax clown museum.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned next week for the last part of this short! I hope everyone had an awesome Halloween! :D

Footnote:

[1] I’m going to write this one day.

#Tales from Mount Othrys #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #Heroes of Olympus #luke castellan #jack #TFMO #PJO #HOO #fanfiction #Ryan #Will #Phil #Chiron #Malcom #All the characters for less than a second!#clarisse #I want to dress up as character Jack for Halloween....#Lemme go grab some electric base strings...#And a Pax... I'll need a spare Pax handy....

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fyeahwonderbat · 5 years

Text

Keywords #5

Theme: Intelligence

Rating: PG / T

Word Count: 2,057 words

Bruce had no clue what was going on around him. He heard Diana ask that the goddess of witchcraft send him away and that her request was obliged. The words he wanted to say in protest felt like they evaporated in his mouth as he traveled through space and time to some foreign location.

He landed on his knees, surrounded by a crowd.

“Warriors!” a chorus of angry voices shouted as Bruce tried to recalibrate himself after such a forced teleportation.

There was the distinct shifting of armour amplified by the thousands reverberating around him, like a shockwave that was meant to knock him to his feet. All it managed to do was seize his heart with panic as he lifted his head to stare down his foes.

It shocked him more than he’d care to admit when he came face to face with an army that was made up entirely of women. Donning leather armour with ancient designs and medieval weapons in their hands, the female cavalry that threatened to skewer him with spears and swords and arrows reminded him of the costume that his so-called partner wore…

“Intruder,” roared an authoritative voice from behind the readied warrior. “Identify yourself.”

With all due respect, Bruce kept quiet while her surveyed what little terrain he could make out from the gaps in their forces. He spotted grass that was the color similar to emeralds, and trees that sway in the seabreeze. There was the sound of the ocean somewhere close but he couldn’t make out the direction it was in, meaning he had no obvious means to escape the angry women’s wrath. Carefully, monitoring them to determine whether or not he was allowed to move, he took the chance to see if he was enclosed in a circle by their army or if he was his back against a wall of some kind.

No matter which direction he cast his gaze, there were hundreds of furious glares staring right back at him.

“I won’t ask you again!” Warned the assertive voice from before.

Bruce knew that he should not press his luck any further he wanted to make it out of such a sticky situation alive, so he turned back around and replied with just as firm a tone, “Am I on the private island of the Amazons?”

Meeting their demands with a question urged the arches to pull on their drawstrings and the spear-throwers to tug their arms back. Furious, the supposed commander howled at him, “You were warned. Atta--!”

“Heads up!” Cheered a familiar, cocky, unwanted voice the second before something sharp landed in front of Bruce. The way it embedded itself into the ground was so fierce, he took a step back for fear of being associated with the soaring trident.

“Dammit,” he hissed to himself as many of the warriors turned to face the direction from which the weapon was thrown. Thinking on his feet, Bruce blurted out the only thing he could think to say in order to diffuse the arising tension. “We mean you no harm! We must speak with your queen--”

“Silence, heathen!” Demanded a woman with long brown hair, sitting on horseback and armed with nothing more than her animosity.

Bruce met her hatred with his signature indifference when a gust of wind rushed by him. “Hey Batman,” said the Flash, as chipper as ever. “Glad we got here when we did.”

Bruce had so many things he wanted to say to that, such as an inquiry about how they got to the seemingly secret island, or why he let Arthur announce their arrival like that. However, he lost his chance to when Victor landed next to him and filled in the gaps faster than the speedster. “Your magician friend really saved your ass just now.”

“You really couldn’t have picked a worse time.” Bruce said, vehemently.

Ignoring his derision, Cyborg scanned the group and whispered to him nothing more than a number, “Five thousand.”

The army was larger than he first anticipated. Unwilling to participate in a standstill any longer, Bruce kicked Aquaman’s trident down from its upright position and stood over the holes in the ground that its prongs had made. Then, he made sure that his voice carried its signature boom when combined with the distortion application in his suit as he proclaimed, “We seek an audience with Queen Hippolyta, on behalf of her daughter Diana! There are demons being made in the Underworld that threaten all of mankind, and she is down there fending them off on her own! She needs your help, now!”

The lie he told was small, but it helped to sell the emergency he was presenting to the army and their commander. As Arthur was pushed through the crowd with his hands in the air, his shirtless body offending the women greatly, Batman stood tall at the front of the haphazard Justice League in the hopes that his stoic demeanour would prove to them that his claim was legitimate and worthy of their attention.

It took longer than he would have liked - with images of Diana battling those lava rock-made demons passing through his mind at lightning speed sending him into a spiraling state of concern - but eventually, the commander spoke over the silence and the chirping cicadas to decree, “Bring them to the queen’s palace.She will know if he speaks the truth.”

Not one to bask in the feeling of relief, Bruce released an involuntary sigh when his spontaneous scheming managed to keep him alive. Considering the chaos that his involuntary teleportation caused, any turn of events that didn’t end with him being sliced in two gave him a fighting chance.

And, as a result, Diana too.

__________________________________________

The great hall of the palace was shrouded in gold, almost as if every inch of the room had been bathed in the metal. Filled to the brim with what he assumed to be Amazonian council members, none of the other women had the same presence in Bruce’s eyes as the queen herself. Hippolyta stood in front of her circular throne, appearing domineering and spiteful as she glared at the gathered members of the League.

The gathered men.

“You four are quite brave,” remarked the queen with a false tone of admiration. “Traversing the Underworld, facing off against demons while some of you are nothing more than mere mortals, staring down one of my strongest fleets and commanding them to bring you to me.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Arthur thought it was wise to chime in at that exact moment. “I’m not mortals like them.”

Hippolyta cracked a smile, Bruce noticed, but it most definitely stemmed from her righteous sense of hatred. “I know, Atlantean. You’re merely the one who threw his weapon at my warriors.”

No one in the room spoke, awaiting Arthur’s reply. Thankfully, the silence drew out over many beats, which was music to Bruce’s ears.

“Tell the queen what you told me, Bat-man.” Ordered the general from the field. Though he’s never told her his heroic moniker, he figured that it wasn’t that difficult to identify him in such a way given his costume.

“My name is Bruce Wayne. Your majesty, I didn’t mean to randomly appear on your island.” Bruce apologized in his own way.

“No? You materialized in the very spot where a raging purple fire spawned in our field.”

Bruce used her words against her, “You said it yourself - you know I’m mortal.”

Hippolyta’s eyes narrowed as she spat, “Then who sent you here?”

“Hecate.”

The mention of the goddess sent the Amazonian council into a frenzy after a collective gasp filled the space. For the first time since he met her, she reminded Bruce of Diana. When she was too distracted by his circumstances to present herself as the matriarch of the island, she had the same emotional pair of eyes as her daughter. Her shock, her cautious joy and her immediate curiosity all fought for dominance over her expression, painting a rather human depiction of the queen of the Amazons.

“What nonsense is this!?” Screamed the general.

“Menalippe!” Scolded the Queen, regaining her composure by the time she finished saying the woman’s name.

Menalippe was taken aback, but she refused to cease her inquiry. “He mentions a goddess from our history and expects us to believe him!? What, were his friends brought here by Poseidon!? Were they flown in on the back of Zeus’ eagle!? Our gods are not for you to speak of so lightly!”

Unaware of the fact that the Amazons thought of their gods as deceased, Victor raised his hand at Bruce’s side. “No, we were brought together by the magician Zatanna. She told us that Bruce needed us, and her portal brought us here.”

“Diana and I visited her—“

“Mentioning my daughter now too?” The wayHippolyta hissed at him made it easy to compare her to what he imagined Medusa would have sounded like.

If she was real.

But she wasn’t.

Bruce hoped, at the very least.

Unafraid by the growing animosity in the great hall, Bruce approached the bottom step of the staircase that led to the infuriated queen. There were whispers that also reminded him of snakes, but he persevered. “We know your daughter. She is a founding member of our team and all we want to do is to keep this world safe. She was with me while I investigated these strange stone-made creatures that were gathering… in the North, and it led us to ask a magician I know—a sorcerer who could help me locate the place where these monsters come from.”

He expected someone to interrupt him, to insult him or question his legitimacy. When no one made a sound within a millisecond after he said his last word, he decided to keep going.

“She sent us to the Underworld, and we met a woman in a cell. She said her name was Hecate. She had no idea just how long she had been trapped down there, but Diana realized that it had to be for thousands of years based on a story you told her about a battle between your gods.”

“And somehow, only you escaped?” Scoffed the general, all while the queen tried to hide her sparkling eyes by closing them tightly.

Bruce could tell that he was breaking through to Hippolyta. Her heart was drawn to his story and desperately wishing it were true. He couldn’t guess when she last saw Diana, but—

He knew when she had last seen Hecate.

He climbed a single step, much to the frustration of the Amazonian council. Menalippe even drew a dagger out of its hilt from her back and readied herself to strike. Bruce didn’t care for her threatening behaviour, not when he had a goal. Not when he knew he was so close.

“Your majesty,” he tried to coddle her before he would have to push her back into some of her deepest memories. “You didn’t know that Hecate was alive, and she didn’t know that the war with Ares ever happened. Her last happy memory is when you dressed her for her wedding to Hades. She was honoured to meet your daughter, and now they're fighting alongside each other against Hades’ demons in the Underworld.”

He knew that what he had said was a lot to digest, and it took the queen some time to fully comprehend what he was telling her. With her eyes still shut, Bruce could still make out the pride she felt given the way the corners of her mouth quivered as they fought off the desire to smile. Her expression was so telling, the typically combative Menalippe called to her with an uncharacteristic softness. “My queen?”

Bruce climbed another step and was immediately blocked by the general’s body. She leapt down to the stair right before his and leered at him. Unperturbed, he decided it was time to get to the point.

Bruce knew that the reason why Hecate sent him here was so he could ask the queen of the Amazon one thing. “So, your majesty, I have one request of you: please... take us to the gates of hell. The same one you took Hecate through all those years ago. Let us help your daughter. Let us defeat Hades.”

#wonderbatkeywords #wonderbat #wonder woman #batman #maiden writes

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therkalexander · 5 years

Text

The Good Counselor - Chapter 8

Book Three in the Hades and Persephone series. Seventy years have passed since Elysion was created, and Persephone's efforts to conceive a child with Hades have been in vain. But a secret rite on Samothrace might bend the Fates and give her all that they have dreamed of, or pave a path of untold suffering.

Chapter 8

Wind battered the west wall of the temple and guttered the torches. The winter had been a stormy one, a hard start to the season. The Thracians had worried that there hadn’t been enough sacrifices to Zeus at the Spring of Midas, The Arcadians swore that Poseidon had whipped up the seas in anger, and the Athenians worried that they hadn’t sent enough propitiations to Eleusis for Demeter.

But the summer had been kind to all. There were bountiful stores of grain— not just on Samothrace, but in every small village and great city in Hellas, Thrace, the islands and cities beyond. Orpheus stared out at the pool that dominated the center of the atrium. The oculus above and the slender clerestory windows had been sealed shut for winter, covered by tar-thatched reeds and battened down with hempen rope. It would keep the place warm for anyone seeking sanctuary. He reached the twelfth brazier and stoked it with an iron poker, the heat grown heavy beneath his woolen himation.

“Where did you hear the name Zagreus, hymnist?”

Every hair on his neck stood up. Orpheus stopped in his tracks and held his breath.

“Tell me.”

The hall was empty: the few who had sought shelter there during the day had found other places to stay for the evening. Though he was sweating in the temple’s close warmth, ice filled the pit of his stomach. He fell to his knees, his palms clammy against the stone floor, his eyes fixed on the ground. “It… i-is it you, God of Nysa?”

“After the first moon of winter, as promised,” the voice said. “Stand. There’s no need to kneel before me. It is I who come asking you for favors. Now, who gave you that god’s name?”

Orpheus swallowed. “The name…”

The visitor grew silent. He was holding his breath.

“It came in a vision. Certain herbs…” Orpheus swallowed. “I had composed a hymn to the Moirai and the residents of the lands below, the night before I came here from Eleusis. There was a ritual at the temple on the night I arrived, and all within partook of a ceremonial draught. Its ingredients had been prepared for us by a nymph-born woman who lives in the forest. This order had consumed it before, for a generation at least, but that night I saw… visions of sigils and symbols and epithets, and when I slept that night, I dreamed. I dreamed of the Mnemosyne and the waters that restore life eternal and memory to those who go to Elysion. I dreamed of a god not yet born. I saw a babe crying out, coming into the world in a flash of flame and light. I heard his name, then. And in that moment I knew that he would be the one to keep and protect Paradise itself through the ages, who would reveal its true purpose, one who could unite tribes and nations…”

There was a rustling, then the faint outlines of a very tall man with jet black hair. As he grew clearer, he lowered a polished gold helm to his side and stared down at Orpheus with eyes that had seen the rise and fall of civilizations. He spoke evenly, almost conversationally. “And in your vision the name this unborn god was given…”

“It was Zagreus. Zagreus Sabazios Eubouleus. As clear as if I were awake. And it was not only I who had that dream that night.”

“There are other mystics here?”

“I would never go so far as to call myself one.”

“If the mantle fits…”

“I merely listen. But yes, others that night heard that exact same name. Saw what I saw.”

The man— the god, rather— straightened. A faint smile teased the corner of his mouth. “Eubouleus. The Good Counselor. That epithet also belongs to another.”

“I know, my lord.”

“You know who I am, then.”

Orpheus paused. He knew it in his bones. He also knew that he risked being struck down if he was wrong. But he had trusted this god so far. Still he closed his eyes when he answered. “You are the Unseen One. The Receiver of Many.”

“You are permitted to use my name, Orpheus.”

“You’ll forgive me if I do not?”

The Unseen One nodded at him, then shifted and paced the room, glancing at the empty niches and the absence of any statuary of the gods. “I know your reasons. But in knowing why, you likewise understand why no one must learn mine nor my wife’s true identity if this is to succeed.”

“I do.”

“Have you thought on my offer?”

“It is all I have thought about these many months. Especially since time grows short.”

“What do you mean?”

“We hold these rites once every three years, on the third full moon after the first crocus blooms. This is the year.”

“I want you to know this,” Aidoneus faced him and crossed the room to stand in front of Orpheus. “If you say ‘no’ to me, there will be no repercussions for you or yours. I, Hades Aidoneus Chthonios, firstborn son of Kronos, swear it to you on the Styx. You will not have displeased me, you will not have displeased my wife, nor any other god or creature who dwells on or below the earth. And when you pass from this world and journey to mine, your choice here will have no bearing on the hereafter.”

“And what of the gods above?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “These aren’t their matters. They care nothing about this.”

“Why would you come to me— to a mortal, my lord— for something like this? We are such finite, small beings when compared to the Deathless Ones.”

“I am not an Olympian, hemitheoi , and don’t hold myself on high above your kind. Those who oversee the earth, whose lives are intertwined with the mortals and their immortal souls, cannot afford such… vanities. Your kind have a wisdom that comes from the knowledge that your lives are finite— one lifetime in which to accomplish what you can. That itself is a powerful thing. More than you, or the gods above truly realize.”

“But in Elysion we have a hope of remembering what we were,” Orpheus said, his voice growing earnest. “Of continuing on and growing and learning even after death, once we drink from the Mnemosyne.”

Aidoneus shook his head and sighed. “The words written on your scrolls, the ones you place in the mouths of the dead… are a fiction. A pleasant one, to be sure, but all who reside in my realm must drink from the Lethe. For their own sakes.”

“But…” Orpheus felt cold creep over him. The rites for the dead he’d performed for countless adherents… Were they all for nothing? “The visions I had, though, they said that you would let those who are worthy of Elysion drink from the Pool of Memory, that they—”

He shrugged. “I do not know whence those visions came to you, but rest assured… Elysion is new, but the laws that govern Chthonia remain unchanged, as they have for aeons.”

“But the memories and lives of those who are reborn—”

“And with good reason.”

The god had raised his voice. Even now, it faintly reverberated through the hall. Orpheus swallowed. His words came out thin and reedy. “I only know what I saw. As clearly as I saw the child you believe will come from this rite. If I were to say no, to say no to you , why would you let me go so easily?”

“Because it is not your decision alone. It is ananke. If a child is not meant to be made by these means, then I accept that. As does my wife.”

Orpheus let out a sigh, feeling a great weight lift from his shoulders. For all this time, he was convinced that he was being given an order by a god. “I’ll do it.”

“For the gift of a lyre?”

“No.” He paused then shook his head. “Partly. But more so because I know for certain I can trust you. And that my decision wasn’t compelled.”

Aidoneus smiled and folded his hands behind his back, then turned away from Orpheus, observing the walls of the stark temple. “My wife will be very pleased by this.”

Orpheus leaned against the column. The King of the Underworld’s voice had hitched. He was moved and didn’t want to show his emotions.

“The god revealed to you… Zagreus… that was the same name my wife and I had decided upon when we first knew we wanted to have a child of our own. We never told anyone. And this has given me reason to hope.”

He whispered. “My lord, I have hope as well, but… I can promise nothing.”

“Of course.”

“Our visions were clear, and all saw the same things come to pass. And we all saw that the Unborn One would come into this world from the womb of a mortal woman.”

“ Your visions also told you that mortals’ memories are restored in Elysion. When we dream, we see first what we know and believe. None in your order would imagine the rites being attended by gods.”

“No. Certainly not.”

“But only gods beget gods.” The Receiver of Many hesitated. “Orpheus, tell me… Eumolpus spoke of it before he passed, and you said the same this spring: that the sacrifice we’d make would be greater and unlike anything we could imagine… My wife and I have much to lose, so you can understand how that might give me pause.”

“It wouldn’t—” Orpheus shut his eyes momentarily, trying to find the right words. “It would not throw the spheres into chaos. A farmer’s crops would not wither any more than a king would lose his crown or a priest be cast out of his temple. That much I know. It would be something personal. Not a sacrifice for the Lord of the Underworld, but a sacrifice for… Aidoneus.” Orpheus shuddered involuntarily, and his gaze fell to the floor.

“You can’t be any more specific?”

“I am sorry, my lord. I cannot,” Orpheus said. “It is not known by me, nor would it present itself immediately. The sacrifice unfolds in time. It is in the hands of the Fates alone.”

#the good counselor #orpheus #eurydice #hades #persephone #rachel alexander #hades and persephone #hades x persephone #orpheus and eurydice #samothrace #zagreus #eubouleus

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cabinofimagines · 7 years

Text

Typical Movie Scene

Request: CAN YOU GUYS DO A PERCY ONE SHOT LIKE IN HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3?! WHEN TROY & GABRIELLA WERE DANCING IN THE RAIN AND ALMOST KISSING WHEN THE BELL SOUNDED? COULD YOU MAKE IT WITH THAT KIND OF SCENARIO?!

Pairing: Percy x Reader (Gender neutral I think)

Fluff | Smut | Angst

A/n: Okay but this is so good and bad at the same time? I'm just- nothing can surpass HSM -Day

Resorting to setting up camp on the roof of a nearby apartment building wasn't usually how quests went for you. The roof of a random building isn't an ideal place to set up camp, while it's better than the sewer you once had to camp out in, it's still hot as hell up there.

Percy and you were supposed to keep watch on the camp just in case the manager or anyone else comes up here and just so happens to find your cute little tent that you call home. It's happened before in the sewer camp mentioned earlier, a wastewater engineer just so happened to drop by and check on the debris build up found your home sweet home and chased you out. One of your quest mates-- Alyssa, daughter of Hecate-- was so startled by the sudden appearance of the mysterious man caused her to slip and fall in the water.

You smile at the memory of her grimacing face as she shuffled around the city smelling like shit and well... looking like shit.

Your nostalgic trip down memory lane was derailed by the sound of music coming up from the side of the building. There shouldn't be any music up this high, Percy, Zach, and yourself hadn't brought any musical devices with you. Nothing but your voices.

You stood up from your seat on the concrete floor and made your way ever so carefully to the edge of the roof, the music becoming louder and more clear the closer you got to the source. You met Percy halfway on the way there, both heading in the same direction to find the source of the wafting music the hung in the air.

You smiled in his direction, sweet but quick. The corner of his lips twitched upwards at your action, striding towards you with a spring in his step, "You hear it too, right? I'm not going crazy?" He joked, his eyes shining treacherous as he talked.

You nodded and resumed to your previous action of finding the source of the noise, edging close to the edge of the roof and leaning over the concrete lip to get just a bit closer. The music was clear now, it was a classic dance song; the waltz.

You leaned over farther, trying to figure out which part of the song they were at when strong arms wrapped around your waist and tugged you back into a firm chest, Percy's chest to be exact. His hot breath fanned over your ear as he spoke, " You almost fell, you can't just bounce back after falling from the roof of a 12 story apartment building."

You huffed and pulled away from him, turning to face the smirking son of Poseidon with crossed arms, "I was fine, you didn't have to to pull me back..." You grumbled, eyes lowering and head dipping down to your red converse clad feet as if they were the most interesting thing in the world.

Truth be told, you were fond of the slow dance. Your m/p had taught you when you were young, dancing around the living room on their toes until you were old enough to dance on your own. Some of your best memories were of dancing around with your m/p when you didn't get your slow dance at your school dances, you could always count on a dance with your m/p to cheer you up.

You sighed happily at the thought, catching Percy off guard by your sudden change of emotion. His hand came up to rest on your bicep, thumb brushing over the soft skin out of habit, with brows furrowed he asked, "Hey, what's on your mind?"

You looked up into his sea green eyes that were sprinkled with worry and curiosity. You were so lost in your nostalgic reminiscing that you didn't even notice how long you had spaced out for. You hummed at his question, "Hmm?" Swaying slightly with the music subconsciously.

"Don't tell me you're thinking of another guy," He joked with his signature lopsided grin, "And here I thought I was a decent guy for you."

You laughed and shook your head, hand coming up to your hair and absentmindedly picking at the strands while you spoke, "Nah, I was just thinking about the times where my m/p would waltz me around the living room," You took a few steps away from the edging of the roof, the music becoming fainter, "I used to stand on their toes while they waltzed me around the living room..."

Percy bit his lip, mulling over the new information you had given him. The music was coming to a close, fading from earshot. He'd noticed how much you longed to go home, only staying at the camp for your younger and inexperienced siblings that clung to you like a life line. He listened closely in order to figure out if the graceful song would repeat itself or move on to a different track.

Unfortunately, the music stopped, the sounds of a record spinning becoming more clear before following the tune and fading out.

He watched you walk away, a slight hint of sadness surrounding you while you retreated back to your station, near the roof door to watch for unexpected and unwanted visitors.

He sighed and ran a hand through his untameable ebony locks; he didn't even know to dance, let alone waltz. The music was gone but the memory it provided you with stayed with you for a good while, the happiness radiating off of you and rubbing off on the green-eyed boy who wanted nothing more to recreate one of your fondest memories with you.

Deciding that he didn't need music to create a memory for the two of you, he made his way over to your form, humming a tune in his head that kept him confident in himself. He stopped about a foot away from you, eyes gazing at your own with love and anxiety, "Please don't make fun of me." He mumbled lowly under his breath.

You cocked your head to the side, (h/c) strands falling into your eyes slightly and small smile slipping across your lips at his words, "Depends on what you're doing" You teased, standing up from your slouched position against the wall and taking a step towards the anxious boy.

"Would you teach me how to waltz?"

His question caught you off guard; the son of Poseidon wanting to learn how to dance was something you never thought you'd see. You nodded nonetheless, still confused on why and how you were going to teach him how to dance, the music wasn't even playing for gods sake.

So you decided to improvise, letting your voice sing out the instructions to him, lending him your hand as you did so, "Take my hand, take a breath," stopping as he did what you told him, the surprise and comfort on his face told you that he wasn't expecting you to sing but was comforted by it anyways, "Pull me close and take one step."

Percy stepped closer, placing his hand on the small of your back and intertwining his large hand with your small one. He smiled down at you, pulling you close enough to feel your erratic heart that slammed against your ribs just at the thought of him actually doing this for you.

"Keep your eyes, locked on mine," You serenade, lifting your free hand to cup his cheek, thumb stroking over his soft cheek, "And let the music be your guide..." You moved your hand to his arm before beginning to move him along with you, taking the lead temporarily.

You hadn't expected Percy to have such a nice voice, let alone for him to sing along with you. Looking straight into your eyes as he harmonized with you, finding the words that matched up with your own as if he were a child of Apollo, "Won't you promise me, we'll keep dancing, wherever we go next."

He seemed to have found his rhythm seeing as he spun you around suddenly, going back to waltzing almost immediately after.

You sang together, gracefully moving across the rooftop with carefree attitudes, reveling in the other's arms around the other. You spun and were picked up by Percy in his strong arms countless times before he allowed you a break from his embrace.

You grinned at the panting son of the sea, noticing how the sun was starting to set and set a bright orange fire in the waves of green that were stored away in Percy's eyes. He stepped closer once more, head dipping down to your height and brushing his soft, full lips across your own. You turned your head, lips sliding across his tenderly, savoring the sweet moment you two rarely got the chance to have.

The kiss didn't last as long as hoped since Percy had pulled away, a closed lipped smile forming across his face, his hand still extended outwards to you as his lips parted to sing your song once more.

"Take my hand, I'll take the lead," His voice rang out, surprising you even more than him tugging you back into a standing position, "And every turn will be safe with me," He smiled and spun you around into his embrace, "Don't be afraid, afraid to fall. I'll catch you through it all."

Your voices blended together as you matched up with his words, And you can't keep us apart, cause my heart is wherever you are.."

Thunder sounded in the distance, maybe Zeus wasn't too happy about your typical movie moment on the rooftop. The loud crack sent you both into shock, stopping your movements and causing you both to look upwards at the forming clouds, little droplets of rain starting to drip down from the heavens and down your brow.

A shriek left your already parted lips just as the son of the sea god gripped your hands tightly and spun you around in circles, the pouring rain now coming down like a waterfall over you two. A cheerful laugh erupted from you, dancing through the air like the melody you had previously sung together.

Your hair stuck to your face just like your clothes clung to your every curve. Percy's ebony black hair that usually stood proudly in his signature messy do was now dripping with water and streaming down his face into his equally wet clothes.

His gaze was steadily locked on your smiling (e/c) eyes, never wavering or leaving them. This moment gave you time to study Percys eyes closely; the sea green only being the top layer of what was really there.

His eyes were so calming, yet so treacherous, the two colliding antonyms somehow went hand in hand in the young demigods eyes. The vibrant green was swirled alongside a soft blue pigment, the contrast against the black of his dilated pupil stood out greatly. The little flecks of bronze sprinkled around unceremoniously and gave his already beautiful eyes a deeper look.

His eyes were getting bigger now that you think about it. Oh wait, that's because he's leaning closer to you. His lips were ghosting over your own, barely brushing against each other and his hot breath fanning over your parted lips. You were anticipating his sudden surge of confidence which would end with both mouths connected in a sweet kiss, but your kiss never got that far.

The roof door opened with a loud scraping sound before you heard the sound of Zach's voice approaching, "Man, being a child of Hermes has its perks and downfalls. I got the suspicious people on the top floor to leave us alone but someone mistook me for the mailman and gave me one of their letters, wait till you see the drama going on in this fuckers lif-"

His rambling stopped as he saw the two of you looking flustered and embarrassed, soaked in the rain and breathing hard. His brows furrowed and a smirk spreading across his pointed features. He strolled over to the two of you with the same pointed smirk, pointing between you both, "Looks like someone parents weren't home."

Percy's face tinged red at Zach's words, obviously catching what the mischevious teen was indicating. He cleared his throat suddenly, stopping any further words from the son of Hermes, "Hey! Y/n, why not go make sure the door is completely shut? I'll check if the tents rain shelter is up."

He tried to scurry off before anything else could be said but was caught by the arm, "Hey Percy," Zach mumbled with a hint of amusement, "Keep it in your pants next time."

#Percy x reader #Percy jackson x Reader #Fluff #HSM 3 #highschool musical #3 #dancing #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #Heroes of Olympus #percy jackson #percabeth #pernico

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remainingso · 7 years

Text

Dead To Me

Ship: mostly one-sided Percy/Nico (there is no kissing but there is Tension and also there will be kissing in the next part

Premise: An AU where Nico can see numbers that tell him when people will die! Also a continuation from this fic here (link opens to AO3) but you don’t have to read that one to understand this. Also Percabeth broke up sometime in here

Summary: Nico’s been avoiding Percy for months since they both clawed their way back out of Tartarus. Jason decides to stage an intervention.

[Read on AO3]

Nico barely talks to Percy for a month after the whole mess with Gaea. He tells himself it’s because there’s no time, because Percy is busy doing who knows what to help Chiron out around camp and Nico himself mostly drifts from New Rome and back these days anyways, so there’s—there’s really not enough time to sit down and talk through any of this shit anyways.

Not that Nico wants to do much talking.

He wants to—well, jury’s still out on what exactly it is he wants, but it sure as hell isn’t talking.

If he’s honest with himself (and he is, sometimes, late at night when there’s no one else around to witness it), Nico has to admit that mostly he’s just mad.

It’s a familiar enough feeling, this strange, tired rage that sinks his stomach whenever the subject of Percy Jackson arises, but Nico has spent months trying to untangle his life from Percy’s and he doesn’t appreciate all that complication reaching out to ensnare him all over again.

So it’s easier to veer away from the campfire, now, quickly sidestep the training grounds, and settle up against a tree somewhere where there’s no chance of ever running into Percy Jackson.

It’s something of a shock when Jason steps out of the trees instead.

Nico narrows his eyes. “If you’re here to drag me back to singing kumbaya with the other campers, you’re wasting your time.”

“Good thing I’m not here for that, then,” Jason says.

“Right. So you’re just here to admire the shrubbery then?”

Jason takes a step forward. The shadows fall over his face, making it look more sombre than Nico suspects he’d like it to be, but the next words that fall out of Jason’s mouth proves him wrong. “I wanted to talk to you,” Jason says. “It’s kind of important, so if you wouldn’t mind…”

The instinct to snap out something caustic and get the hell out of there claws its way up Nico’s throat, but he swallows hard. He’s been working on that, lately.

“Mind what?” he asks faintly instead.

Jason gestures behind him. “It might be easier if you come to my cabin.”

At that, Nico bursts out laughing. “Aren’t you afraid your girlfriend’s gonna find me lurking around your room at night?”

“Ha, very funny,” Jason says, then rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck. “I just thought it might be easier without the threat of someone walking in, you know. Not that this—not that it’s serious or anything, but you work so hard to keep up your mysterious son of Hades, Ghost King thing, so I figured…” He gestures behind him again, a little helplessly, and dammit Jason is one of the only people earnest enough to make Nico’s prickly shield retreat, just a little.

“Shut up, Grace,” he says, but then he pushes off the tree. “Let’s go.”

Jason beams. Nico tries not to smile in return as they make their way towards the Zeus cabin.

Of course, all bets are off when the door swings open and there, standing right in the middle of Jason’s room, is Percy fucking Jackson

If it weren’t so pathetic, Nico would’ve lunged for the door. Instead, he tenses and turns slowly to glare at Jason. “What’s going on?” he asks, almost wishing he was fighting literal monsters instead of just figurative ones.

“You two need to talk,” Jason says. “I’ll be waiting outside.”

Then the door is clicking shut, and Nico makes another slow turn, not sure where he can go. Dammit Grace, he thinks, you could at least put up some decorations in here.

At last, when there’s nowhere else to turn, Nico looks Percy dead on.

The son of Poseidon looks pretty gobsmacked, himself. There’s a small pleasure in how hesitant Percy looks, his hands curling and uncurling at his sides, lips pursed in a strained frown. Nico stays silent, wanting to make him squirm.

Slowly, the strange shifting numbers that Nico always looks for when he sees Percy appear. They shuffle, rearrange themselves like floating dust, and Nico breathes a small sigh of relief when they stay. He hasn’t had a chance to get enough of a good look at Percy since… well since everything, but the time is still the same. It’s the same time it’s always been. It hasn’t changed, even if everything else has.

Percy Jackson still dies somewhere in his 80s (Nico has never bothered to count the years to any sort of exactness). The numbers remain pretty steadfast on that one

The silence stretches between them, taut and tight. Nico doesn’t want to be the one to break it

As it happens, Percy snaps first.

“Am I… did I… do something wrong?” he asks, faltering. He starts to pace around the room, his footsteps landing heavily as his hands fidget uselessly at his sides. “Are you mad at me for something? Because I swear, whatever it is, I didn’t mean it and I’m really really sorry, but you’ve been just… weird ever since… since…”

“Since you came back from hell?”

Percy’s mouth snaps shut.

The laugh rips out of Nico’s throat too loudly, but once that’s out, everything else tumblrs along with it. “I don’t know how you can be so peachy keen and ready to get back to your normal life or whatever it is you’re doing now, but I’m not so ready to forgive you just yet, Jackson,” he snaps.

“What was I supposed to do, Nico?” It’s the pure simplicity of that that makes Nico want to never ever talk to Percy ever again. It’s like there was never any option. As soon as he was teetering over that cliffside with Annabeth on one side and everyone else on the other, Percy’s mind was made. Breaking up hasn’t changed the conviction in Percy’s voice.

Nico drags a hand through his hair. “I don’t know,” he says, because there’s no arguing with that kind of logic.

“Then why…” Percy trails off, probably because then why are you still mad at me? is a question too stupid even for him.

“I wish I wasn’t,” Nico says through gritted teeth. “But I also wish you’d taken a moment to use your goddamn brain, Percy. Maybe thought of the rest of us instead of going ahead and doing your patented stupid self sacrificing bullshit.”

At that, Percy’s temper ignites. Some part of Nico thinks, finally. He takes three steps forward, until he’s leaning over Nico, eyes raging like the sea. “I had no choice,” he growls.

“You did,” Nico counters. “You always have a choice.”

“Well maybe I did!” Percy explodes, stalking closer and closer. “But I couldn’t—I never would’ve let Annabeth fall, and just because you can just write people off as dead doesn’t mean that I can!” He slams a hand down on the doorframe, and Nico wonders if he knows how predatory he comes off, now, how dangerous, how easy it all seems.

Perhaps this is what Tartarus does to you, too. Nico feels his own simmering anger, beating like a pulse under his skin. He tilts his chin up and refuses to cringe back. “Is that what you think I wanted?”

“It sure sounds like it is,” Percy snaps.

“Well, it’s not.”

“Then what do you want? What did I mess up this time? You might as well yell at me so we can both get it over with.”

“Your numbers disappeared,” Nico finally says. He closes his eyes, pushing away the frenzy he remembers from that terrifying moment where he look at Percy and saw nothing. Nothing but the blank darkness of Tartarus. “I couldn’t see them anymore. I knew you were going to let go before you actually did, you asshole.”

Suddenly, Percy looks very tired. He doesn’t back off, but he does sag a little, and Nico is suddenly aware of how that brings his face just that much closer.

“I… I didn’t know that,” Percy says, his breath blowing across Nico’s cheek. He looks fucking shattered.

“Yeah,” Nico bites out. “Of course you didn’t.”

“So you didn’t know?”

Nico laughs again, a little breathlessly. “No,” he says. “I had no goddamn clue if you’d ever manage to drag your ass back out when I let you go.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Percy furrows his brow, and, well, this close, Nico can see the sweep of his eyelashes when he blinks in confusion and it makes him want to die a little, right now, numbers be screwed.

“I just thought…,” Percy trails off, frowning harder. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“Mostly so this didn’t happen,” Nico says, but it’s missing most of his usual barb. He wants to shrug and lean away, but Percy’s arm is still on the doorframe and there’s not much room to lean into.

Then, they’re both all too aware of how close Percy is, how edged in Nico is. It’s all a mess, really, and Nico wants nothing more than to melt into the shadows, if there were any lurking around.

Percy swallows, hard, the line of his throat tight as his Adam’s apple bobs. He works his jaw as if he wants to say something, and Nico is desperately certain that he doesn’t want to hear it. It would be easy enough for Nico to tilt his face up, now, grab Percy and—and what?

(And, see, Nico doesn’t really know what went down with him and Annabeth, and he doesn’t really want to know in particular, but it’s impossible not to think about that now.)

So he blurts, “They’re back now, though. I can see your numbers again,” and winces because that was absolutely not the right thing to say.

Instantly, Percy jerks back, the numbers flickering by his face following. “Don’t tell me!” he shouts.

“What?”

“I mean. That’s good. I’m glad. I don’t want to, er, worry you,” Percy says awkwardly, back peddling so back Nico’s head spins. “Just—don’t tell me what they say?”

Nico snorts. “You die tomorrow, Jackson. Better go get your will straightened out.”

“Just for that, I’m not leaving you anything,” Percy says, finally not panicking anymore. He settles, standing a comfortable distance away from Nico, and Nico hates himself a little bit for wanting him to come back a little closer.

“Like I ever wanted anything of yours, Jackson,” Nico says, then has to laugh at himself.

Percy looks at him with this funny little tilt to his head, as if he’s trying to figure Nico out. There’s nothing hostile about him anymore, a far cry from the instant stormy rage earlier, but the thread of tension is still taut between them. Nico wonders if it’ll ever go away.

“I am sorry,” Percy finally says.

“For what?” Nico asks, not wanting to let him off the hook this easy.

“For everything, I guess,” Percy mutters. “For not really getting it. I gotta be honest, I don’t think I ever will get what it’s like to be you.”

“Well, halle-fucking-lujah for that.”

“I still am sorry, though,” Percy says, and it’s so damn sincere that Nico feels the tension bunching up his shoulders ease up a little. “You were right. I wasn’t thinking of much then, and I guess… it’s something I have to work on, okay?”

“I guess I could’ve told you about the numbers earlier.”

Percy grins again, wide and relieved. “Damn right you could’ve, di Angelo.”

“Just don’t—don’t do that again,” Nico manages. “I don’t like. Not knowing.”

“Oh gods forbid the terrifying son of Hades deal with death like a normal person.”

Nico snorts and doesn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he eases himself off the door and grabs the handle.

“Are you going to stop ignoring me now?” Percy calls when he’s halfway out the door.

A smile works its way onto Nico’s face before he can help it. The last thread of tension loosens, uncurls, and Nico feels like he can finally breathe after months of suffocating. “Maybe if you’re lucky,” he calls back, then he slams the door behind him and walks away in the shadows. Before he leaves, he makes sure to flip Jason off.

#pjo #heroes of olympus #nico di angelo #percy jackson #jason grace #pjo fic #WOW IT'S BEEN SO LONG SINCE I WROTE PJO FIC #anyways #this verse is angst central tbh #em writes

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vegas-glitz · 4 years

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Uranian Astrology March 2009 Forecast

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Be expecting March, 2009 to be eventful as you'll see from the forecast down below.

Just before we start out, I've involved an rationalization of some terms that could possibly be practical for individuals of you who are new to Uranian Astrology.

The initial expression is Anticia, which is the crux of the Uranian method of astrology, and describes equilibrium and symmetry.

For case in point, a world is on the Anticia of another world when the midpoint between the two is levels of cardinals, or else recognised as the Aries or cardinal axis. This suggests that the energies of the two planets concerned will be played out in general public, and consists of the masses. In particular given that degree Aries relates to the entire world axis. In March this will take place regularly.

I will also be utilizing more of the transneptunian planets that this technique of astrology is recognised for such as:

Cupido: Family, marriage, teams and group, society as a social team, art and artist colony. The destructive side is clannishness and exclusivity.

Hades: Secrets, matters that can be terrible, vile or evil. We all know this can be contained in secrets and techniques. Hades also has to do with the three important professions: medicine, particularly surgeons astrology and prostitution (not essentially in that get). I, for just one, believe we ought to include things like legal practic es as a Hades manifestation. Attorneys steps are often far more legal than the exercise of their purchasers. Hades also has to do with poverty and neediness. Our newspapers and news broadcasts are working really hard to make us conscious that no just one is immune to the outcome of Hades.

Zeus: Fireplace, machinery, rockets explosives. Electric power to rise above, successful performances, resourceful energies. Objective oriented. Fearless and unbiased. Unfavorable aspect is misdirected or out of handle power like rage. Overconfidence and egotism. Procreation relatively that generation.

Kronos: Ruler, chief, father, learn, king, nobility. Authority, judge, DA head health practitioner, the boss gentleman / female. Head of condition, law enforcement. Independence and mastery. Kronos is everyone who is seemed up to and held in high esteem.

Apollon: A mix of Jupiter and Gemini, and translated into mass communications and / or excellent achievements. It also has to do with much and distant sites. It is commerce, trade and science. A powerful Apollon just one can get away with murder. Excellent powers of intellect, and multiplicity. Destructive, overconfidence, overlooked aspects, not viewing the trees from the forest.

Admetos: Begging and finish of lifestyle. It is the womb and the tomb. Closed in areas like closets, boxes and coffins. It is cycles blended with shut in areas washing machines arrive to brain. It signifies fences that enclose a room. Most Uranian astrologers have a robust Admetos, because we use dials that flip and use concentrate and deep focus. Moreover raw products, landfills, actual estate and sturdiness.

Vulcanus: This transneptunian represents great energy, impressive force, and volcanic eruption. It is vitality and good recuperative powers. Omnipotence, ability vegetation and storms. Violent and out of management energies is Vulcanus's destructive side.

Poseidon: Stands for enlightenment, spiritual and mental knowledge. This transeptunian world represents illumination. You will uncover that inventors have a outstanding Poseidon. Religious leaders, psychics, spiritualists, mediums, and prophets have a sturdy Poseidon. It is also discovered in charts of people who are in the highlight like performers and film actors.

Now on to the forecast for March - which starts with Kronos, Pluto + Hades = Aries. The public will be manufactured a lot more mindful of the underhanded dealings and misconduct of heads of monetary organizations. If you assume you have listened to it all assume once again, specifically soon after March 6th when Venus goes retrograde.

Correct in advance of the Venus retrograde the inventory marketplace will appear to be on the rebound due to Su = + Jupiter = Venus, times of economical obtain. This will come about on March 4th, 5th and 6th. Having said that,...be mindful, Mercury and Mars are dancing with Neptune and it is all illusionary.

Lots of highend dining places will be on the verge of closing. This is also a day to be watchful while touring. If you should journey by auto have your mechanic check out the liquids and h2o hose right before you get on the highway.

On March 8th and 9th, the Sunlight will be opposite Saturn. This facet occurs proper immediately after Venus goes retrograde. These could be two depressing and worrisome days.

At the very same time, on March 9th, Saturn will be 22 ½ degrees from Mars, as observed on the 90 degree dial, indicating aggravation as far more jobs are shed. It's lousy fiscal information as PL / ME + VE / NE = Sunlight, SA.

The complete moon on March 10th falls midpoint Saturn and Uranus, if you can obtain a rock to cover below I propose you do so. Don't ignore to choose your hard hat when you depart the household that working day.

On the 12th the Sunlight will be conjunct Uranus and 22 ½ levels to Venus. That will be a day of monetary nervousness and insecurity.

On March 15th, Mars will be 22 ½ levels to Uranus, and a main accident or explosion is probable. I would adhere near to dwelling and make certain my boiler was effectively serviced. Up coming arrives March 16th the Sunshine = Aries / Uranus, unexpected sudden occasions might take place in the entire world. Whatever happens that day will not be fantastic for the globe fiscally. This is since Venus will be on the anticia of Saturn, which means Venus + Saturn = Aries.

On the March 17th, Mercury will also be part of the equation as it moves to 15 degrees preset, slipping on the cardinal axis and midpoint Saturn and Venus, acquiring everyon e in an uproar.

And, on the 19th Venus + Mercury / Saturn = Aries, economical negative information, in other text the stock marketplace must be closing downward. On Friday the 20th Venus + Uranus = Sunshine + Pluto, the day will close with monetary information reports continuing to be unstable.

Among the 16th and the 26th Saturn will be opposed to Cupido, loved ones or partnership disharmony or probable brake ups owing to economic challenges. Far more downsizing and more small household company's will not survive.

On the 22nd, if you have to go shopping, be pretty mindful as to what you acquire. You could feel you are receiving a bargain but rather be taken for a journey. Venus will be 135 to Neptune as Sun is 135 to Jupiter. Sunlight Jupiter is commonly a blessed working day, but because on the exact day Venus is in challenging part to Neptune, advert it is, in its place, a day that is monetarily deceptive.

The new moon on March 26th could carry a reprieve in the inventory market place and carry some good information as Jupiter semi squares Pluto, and Venus / New Moon + Uranus = Aries / Mercury, bringing transform for the better in the economic news.

I foresee the monetary information on the 27th to be superior as effectively, but do not be fooled into thinking that the recession is more than. It is much from over.

March 28th and 29th can deliver unstable climate situations in numerous components of the earth, as Sunshine, Mercury + Uranus = Aries. Winds and air currents on those two days w unwell be unstable so I do not advise air travel thanks to this instability.

On the 30th and 31st, we could listen to bad information about a sudden event. Sun, Mercury + Saturn, Uranus = Aries, and Sunlight, Mercury will be semi sq. Neptune, and the news should have to do with flooding. This bad information or sudden function has almost nothing to do with the financial industry. The money news should really be good due to the fact Venus + Pluto = Jupiter.

Now, could you wake me up as before long as March is above!

Resource by Arlene Nimark

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