Chapter Text
Now that Kalego could actually understand what each human was trying to say (or, well, what they were screaming), his migraine nearly doubled in pain.
"What do you want, you monsters?" A girl with blonde hair tied in a ponytail demanded.
Kalego bristled, but suppressed his urge to summon Cerberus and slam a paw down on her. "We're hardly monsters," he replied with a level voice. "What have we done, besides land in your camp?"
The human girl blinked. "You invaded our camp? And, attacked us? And if you're not monsters, then what are you?"
"We did not invade your camp," Kalego informed her. "We fell in. We didn't attack you either; are any of you hurt?" Then the Naberius paused; he realized that 'monsters' had been used in a species-like way, not a derogatory term. Actually, they probably looked quite monster-like to the humans. "And we're not monsters, we're demons."
This made the girl pause. She started looking more confused than anything.
"Kalego-sensei!" somebody yelled. The purple-haired turned around. "What do they want?" Robin asked. The other teachers seemed curious as well, though they were afraid to ask, peering at him eagerly.
Kalego pressed his fingers to his temple. "They think we invaded their camp and they also think we're monsters. And, as you heard me, I explained to them that it is not the case."
Before they could ask questions, a boy with brown hair and sea-green eyes stood out. "Demons?" He asked. "Like...the ones formed from Nyx?"
Kalego stared in confusion. "Who's Nyx?" he growled.
Th boy eyed them carefully, then around them.
"Nyx?" the blonde-haired asked. "Aren't her demons quite dangerous?"
She raised her spear again, yelled a battlecry, and started charging towards Kalego.
"Maybe," Buer said, after staying quiet all this time. "We need another person who can understand them." He spoke loud enough so that Kalego could hear.
Kalego quickly dodged a spear jab on him. "Yes," he admitted gruffly. Quickly, he ran through the list of teachers that would help him.
His first thought was to discard Robin and Balam from the list of potential candidates. Balam was very large and would probably scare them...and Robin was Robin. No need for his probably-strange neon-green hair to go jumping all over the place.
Suzy and Buer at this point wouldn't help either. Suzy's speciality was plants, but calming down the crowd probably wasn't. Buer...Buer was healing, so if things went quickly south even then Buer would be helpless. The teacher's healing ability was phenomenal, sure, but it wouldn't improve the situation.
That left Marbas, Ipos, Ifrit, and Murmur. Marbas was...debatable. The man's forte certainly wasn't socializing. And to tell the truth, he scared Kalego a little bit sometimes, which was unusual, but...
Ifrit was the security-guard, which meant that if they needed power, he would be the first demon they would want. But again, peacemaking was not his strength, if Asomodeus's battle with him was anything to go by.
And so, it was either Ipos or Murmur. Ipos was a tactician; one with movements, not words. So maybe not him?
Murmur it was then.
"Get Murmur!" Kalego roared as he dodged another spear incoming.
-
Tsumuru just wanted to go home.
He needed a nap.
It wasn't any day that you learned mythical-beings that was deemed a fairytale were actually real, and that they camped in circle while jabbing weapons at intruders. He didn't exactly blame them for attacking their group; demons were supposed to be rumored to eat humans, so he didn't blame them truthfully, but these humans had just shown up, deemed them "monsters", and started jabbing spears at them.
"Come on," Ipos urged, ushering Tsumuru into the summoning circle in the middle. "Balam-sensei won't be able to keep up his barrier for too long - he's already been at it for thirty-minutes."
Begrudgingly, he stepped into the middle of the spell circle his friend had started to construct.
=========
Percy had battled a lot of different monsters in his time. Gorgons and manticores were only too familiar. Demons though...that somewhat of a more rare occurrence. If he remembered correctly, most of them were born from Chaos, though some from Nyx.
He'd been through Tartarus, but didn't really see any demons. They'd seen a lot of monsters. They'd seen a lot of trauma. They'd seen Nyx herself. But they hadn't seen demons.
Then, the son of Poseidon decided to ask the other two people who'd been Tartarus; Nico and Will.
While keeping an eye on the commotion (the demons had, yet again, started chanting something while walking in a circle in a rather cult-like manner), he scanned the crowd.
Chiron was looking on worriedly (as he should), Clarisse looked like she was about to explode (she probably was), the demon she was fighting looked like he was having a mega-migraine (Percy felt quite sorry for him), and onlookers either looked like they really wanted to join the fray or run away.
Slinking through the crowd, he finally found Nico, and he was with his boyfriend as well, Will. Perfect.
"'Sup?" he greeted the pair.
They both gave him a "really?" look.
"Clarisse is in the middle of an epic death battle with a demon," Nico said. "Can this not wait?" He proceeded to get smacked by his boyfriend. "Hey!"
Percy sighed. Then he lowered his voice. "You guys faced a demon going into Tartarus, right?"
The two paused, the atmosphere tensed for a moment. "Yes," Will said. "He turned out to be a son of Nyx."
"Did they, well..." Percy motioned to the chaos behind them. "Look anything like this?"
This time Nico shook his head. "We faced Epiales, and that was it, I think. He didn't exactly look human," Will shivered in the middle of it as Nico paused, "But he didn't really act anything like this. He was more or less, well, more violent and more powerful. I tried to pull bones out of the ground and he nearly strangled me. They definitely don't look that demon-ish in comparison to him."
Percy nodded with this collected information. "Alright," he said, clapping his hands and getting up.
"Uh, where are you going?" Will asked.
"To get some water," Percy yelled back. "We might need it."
===========
While the teachers in the spell circle where busily casting the translation spell on Murmur all over again...
Kalego grunted, deflected another of the blonde girl's spear stabs with a spell circle.
Finally, he couldn't take it anymore.
"Listen!" Kalego bellowed, summoning Cerberus, and having it slam a paw down on her. Extremely light for demonic standards - and seemingly for humans too - as she wriggled out, eyes wide. But Kalego slammed a paw down again, tight enough that she wouldn't escape this time.
"Let Clarisse go!" A couple other humans yelled and charged towards him.
Kalego put his head in his hands. "Oh Devi..."
-
They were done with the spell now.
"Come on, Murmur-sensei!" Robin encouraged. "You just have to prevent them from attacking us all!"
"And even if you can't, we can just eat them, yis," Suzy agreed.
"We are not eating any humans," Balam said with a strange sense of urgency on his face that was almost hilarious. "But I do agree that even if you mess up we can just fight our way out of here."
"Then why don't we?!" Tsumuru finally exclaimed. He was curled up in the corner looking like a lost kid.
Look, things weren't going too good right now. Murmur was not really the strongest fighter in existence and definitely not out of the teachers. Not that he couldn't parry, but he didn't really specialize in combat. He could land devastating kicks if he really needed to, but that really wasn't useful in this situation, to say the least.
"You'll be fine," Ifrit almost groaned, patting him on the back. "You're our Manipulation Tactics teacher!"
"I'm not?!"
"Go, Kalego is counting on you!" Robin said, eyes sparkling.
"Ugh."
Finally, Tsumuru did drag his feet out of the barrier. "Ahem," he coughed, trying to get some attention.
He did as several of the kids turned, like hyenas that had just finished their meal, to look at him.
"Please don't attack me," he said putting his hands up. "We don't want to fight."
"Then why is he," one of the kids pointed to Kalego. "Attacking Clarisse?"
"He is not attacking her," Tsumuru replied. "Clarisse was attacking him, and he got tired of parrying her attacks, so he just trapped her down so she wouldn't move.
"That means he'll let her go if she doesn't fight him again, right?" one of them demanded.
"Yes? That's what we've been doing all along? I don't know about me, but if we really had wanted to fight a few of my colleagues would've already killed at least a few of you. We don't want to though," Tsumuru clarified really quickly.
As the kids turned around and started debating in hushed voices.
At this time, Tsumuru quickly used Mood Ring on them. They were feeling angry, and they clearly wanted to fight; but that anger didn't seem to be receding for any of them. Unusual.
So the psychology teacher applied some calming magic to them. Not enough to be noticeable though, just enough to make them less heated.
The kids finished discussing and turned around. "Let Clarisse go and we'll hear you out!"
"Sure," Tsumuru said, they turned towards Kalego and pleaded him with his eyes.
Kalego stood back, letting Cerberus also stand up.
"HA! That was the wrong move you demon!" Clarisse jumped up and swiped at Cerberus, only for the spear to be flung back.
"Clarisse," a voice called from the edge. "Hear them out!"
"If they're monsters don't we need to kill them either way? They regenerated in Tartarus," the girl demanded.
The false Centaur trotted up to Clarisse. "They said they weren't monsters. They're demons."
"And probably not Nyx's or Chaos's demons either." A boy with sea-green eyes and brown hair walked up. "If they were, they'd at least attack back."
"They did?" Clarisse growled.
"We trapped you, we could've killed you during this time but we didn't," Kalego interjected.
"See? They're threatening us!"
Tsumuru put his head in his hands, then started to thread calming magic through the crowd. Very, very light magic, and probably unnoticeable. Hopefully this would allow them to cool their heads a bit.
"Hey, hey," Tsumuru said, coming over with a disarming smile. "We were promised time to allow an explanation, no? Could we...?"
"Ah yes," the false centaur said. "But not here. And not in front of all these people."
~
After Balam was given the okay to put down his barrier, he did, and all of them followed Chiron.
"So?" Marbas asked, slinking up to him. "What did he say?"
"That he would let us talk, but not there," the redhead responded.
"And why are they going with us?" The torture-arts professor's eyes shifted towards a couple teens flanking the centaur.
Murmur shrugged. "He said they were 'head counselors' or something and they needed to hear it as well."
They walked into a gigantic house that was slightly flaking. A few twists there and here, and they were at a makeshift living room with a fireplace.
"Sit, sit," the false centaur said, waving to the mess of tables and wooden chairs. "And Percy, Annabeth," he asked, addressing two teens in the room, "Could you call over the other head counselors?"
"Aren't all of them here?"
"Let's do a roll call," a boy with brown hair and tanned skin suggested.
"Alright. From the Poseidon cabin; Percy?"
"Here." He sounded at ease, like this was just lunchtime.
"Katie, Clarisse, Annabeth?"
A chorus of here's followed, Clarisse's most aggressive while she stared daggers at the teacher.
Will, Leo, Piper, Connor, and Pollux?"
"Here." In union.
"Nico, Butch, Clovis, either Laurel/Holly, and Lou?"
Same response.
"Alright! We're all here," the devi-horse said, clapping his hands. "I'm Chiron, mostly responsible for the camp. These are our head counselors, who act as the head of each cabin," he motioned to the teens. They then all went around saying their names and what cabin they were the head of. Tsumuru didn't remember much, but he did remember Percy and Annabeth among them.
They looked at each other. "I think introductions would be nice," Tsumuru said, laughing nervously. "Uhm, basically, we're all teachers at a school in the Netherworld. I'm Tsumuru Murmur; you can call me Murmur. I'm the Psychology Professor."
Kalego introduced himself next. "I'm Kalego Naberius, Guard Dog of Babyls, Kalego is fine," he grunted.
The two then stared awkwardly at each other and at the rest of the teachers behind them.
"What about them?" Chiron inquired.
"What do they want?" Buer asked at the same time.
Tsumuru swung both heads around. "Uhm. You first," he said, pointing at Chiron. "These are the rest of our teachers. Not all of them are here...but well...most of them. The problem is, only the two of us can speak to humans right now."
"Why?" Percy asked.
"We only cast the spell on me and Kalego."
"Spell?" a boy with brown hair and pale skin asked.
"Yup, a translation spell. The translation spell drains a lot of our mana - which is essentially the fuel for the spell - so really we're reluctant to cast in on anyone else."
Kalego had finished talking to Buer, probably explaining the situation.
"I guess we'll do the introductions for them," Tsumuru said. "This is March Marbas, you can call him Marbas, though I don't know if he'll understand you. "
"Can we try?" a girl with dark hair and green eyes asked.
Tsumuru shrugged. "Why not?"
"Marbas?"
Marbas's reaction was almost funny. He jolted up, horns straight, and stared at the girl. "Did she just say my name?"
"I guess you can understand names," Tsumuru said, amused. "It's probably the exact same as it sounds."
Marbas nodded, looking mildly surprised now.
"Anyway, he's the torture-arts teacher, and-"
"Did you just say torture arts?" Annabeth interrupted.
"Yeah? What's wrong with it?"
All of a sudden, he had a good amount of eyes judging him (and Marbas).
"What did you tell them?" Marbas whispered.
"That you're the torture-arts teacher? Which, you are?"
"I'm assuming you humans don't do torture?" Kalego asked the crowd dryly.
"We used to, but now it's basically a morally unspeakable act..." Chiron said slowly.
"Don't worry, nothing will happen! I'm not going to do anything!" Marbas said, smiling cheerily.
It seemed that the rest of the crowd understood them just fine without the translation spell, and they shivered.
"Well anyway," Tsumuru continued. "Robin Bars," he pointed at the bright green menace, "Familiar teacher. He'll respond to Robin."
The green teacher bounced up and down excitedly.
Kalego took over the rest of the introductions.
========
So....
Annabeth surveyed the demonic group in front of them. The red-haired girl with horns and a tail was talking (Murmur, apparently), along with a dark purple-haired with horns(?) shaped like a dog's (made even more sense, since he did say he was the guard dog of...something). The most plain-faced of all of them was apparently a torture-arts teacher. Who knew?
"I think," she whispered to her boyfriend, "Most of these demons seem to be from Ars Goetia."
"What's that?" he answered blankly.
"A book of demons," Annabeth replied dryly. "We have Marbas, Murmur, Naberius, Buer, Ipos, Balam, and Stolas."
"That doesn't seem like everyone," Percy whispered back.
"It isn't. Ifrit Djinn is a rather familiar name - it's from Islamic culture. We have Bars left, but I don't know where he could've gotten that from."
"So these aren't another pantheon of creatures?"
Annabeth shook her head. "They're from somewhere completely different."
Suddenly, Kalego's eye patches started to glow.
Both groups stopped whispering among themselves. The Camp Half-Blood group because it wasn't just every day the demons that landed in your camp's (that they had yet to explain) clothes started to glow like a freaking firefly. The Netherworld group because the Camp Half-Blood group started to stare at them.
"Is something the matter?" The red-haired asked.
"Kalego...your eye patch...it's glowing..." Leo said in wonder.
The bright green-haired(his name was Robin, Annabeth was pretty sure) was the first to process that comment (perhaps he heard "Kalego" and turned to look at him). He looked around to Kalego's face and then started to shriek something at him. Kalego responded by grabbing his face.
The blue-horned and the one with a fire on his tail exchanged a few words, while Murmur sideyed them.
While everybody was panicking and Annabeth, as well as the other counselors, looked on, a what almost seemed like a hologram formed from the eyepatch, and a 'screen' with yet another demon appeared.
This one had two large horns sticking out of either side of his head and a cheery smile. "Heyyyy," he said. "Yeah, you guys can understand me right?"
Chiron nodded slowly.
"I casted a translation spell on myself before calling you guys. Anyway, I see the situation hasn't exactly been explained, so I'll do that!" The demon then made a "yay" sign with has hand.
"Who is this?" Annabeth found herself asking.
"This," Kalego said, head in hand, "Is the source of all migraines in the school."
"He's the one who sent us here," Murmur added dryly. "He's our boss."
"So," the seemingly boss continued, "I'm Dantalion Dali, head of teachers, you can call me Dali! I run the school that our wonderful teachers come from, Bablys, in the Netherworld."
"The Netherworld," Lou Ellen said slowly.
"Yup," Dali said cheerfully. "It's a lot like your human world, actually. Anyway, I meant to send the professors somewhere close to Japan, but it seems I am nowhere close."
"Japan," Annabeth said, "Is halfway around the world from where you sent them."
One of the demons, with black hair and a long crooked nose, spoke to Dali. Dali said, "At least you guys didn't end up at the bottom of the ocean!"
"What?" Murmur whipped her head around. "You mean you could've like, teleported us into a mountain or something?"
"Yup!" Dali was now munching popcorn.
Was their boss mentally sane?
"So, I did have a way to get you guys back to the Netherworld...but I've scrapped that now. While I figure out a new way to get you guys back home, you guys are going to have to stay in the human world. Don't eat anybody, don't cause mass panic, and stay on a low profile. Good luck!"
Wait, did their boss just say "eat"?
"Wait!" Murmur shouted. "Don't go, why can you talk to us, how are you talking to us-"
"The Devi-Tags," the demon replied. "They can see and hear your every movements, but they have a privacy spell on them so don't worry about taking a shower or something!"
"Can we not take them off?" Kalego asked.
"They don't restrain your powers anymore and I made sure it doesn't feel like they're there. If you don't want them to show just use an invisibility spell or something."
One of the other demons, the tall blonde one, asked something.
"Oh I don't know," he said. "Break's for two weeks, so I guess I better figure something out by two weeks, huh?" He chuckled.
Suddenly, Annabeth felt really sympathetic for them. Dali seemed like someone who would come up with many bad ideas during the worst times possible.
"Oh yeah," he added. "I've sent Orias, Momonoki, and Shiida after you. Now, bye!"
One of the demons screamed something, which happened to be Robin.
"Shiida? I got an eye on her. And they landed in New York City - they're only a few miles away from you guys. Though, it's getting dark, and they've already settled down, so I wouldn't recommend going to look for them tonight."
All of the teachers nodded, and Dali waved goodbye before the hologram disappeared.
"Who's Shiida?" Percy asked.
"A teacher that wasn't sent with us. I think Orias knocked both of her and Momonoki off the carpet, so they didn't get teleported I guess," Murmur replied. While she didn't elaborate on what "the carpet" was, Annabeth could probably guess.
"Oh."
"So," Chiron said. "Are you all staying here for two weeks?"
"Can we?" Murmur asked.
Chiron nodded. "Provided you don't try to maim any campers, I don't see why not."
Murmur turned to Kalego. Kalego turned back to the mass of teachers. "What do you teachers think?"
After several minutes of discussion, Kalego turned back around. "We'll accept your offer," he said shortly.
"Where will they stay though?" Will asked.
"The Hermes cabin?" Nico answered.
"Ifrit," Kalego said, pointing to the fire-tailed demon, "Can sleep in the volcano I saw earlier. Robin said he's fine with just a tree."
"Volcano?" Annabeth lifted an eyebrow.
"His Clan specializes in fire - he'll be fine. He just said he'd actually prefer that."
"Robin, was it? Robin cannot sleep in a tree," Chiron interjected. "We have harpies around at night and they snatch up anybody after the curfew."
Robin did a lot of enthusiastic movements, which included sparkly eyes and eager talking.
"He said he can just shoot them down, if that's okay with you?" Murmur translated.
"We are not shooting down the cleaning harpies," Chiron said firmly. Kalego nodded and turned back to Robin. The lime-haired demon looked a little disappointed.
"Ifrit in the volcano is fine," Chiron continued. "The rest of you can sleep in the Hermes cabin - it's for travelers. Unfortunately, some of you," he glanced at the gargoyle and tall blonde in particular, "Are a little tall and I'm not sure if you'll fit in a bunk. You will have to sleep on the floor. In the next few days we can figure out what to do."
Both Murmur and Kalego turned around, explaining the situation.
"We can talk more in the morning. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood."