Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Episode One: I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher

It happened at dinner.

Percy was just enjoying a healthy meal while sneaking glances toward the Athena cabin where Annabeth was chatting with her brothers and sisters in between her own glances toward him.

He couldn’t help but look, see, because she looked different. Good different. Happier, maybe. Less burdened by the weight of the world on her shoulders.

It was probably because the war was finally over and they could all relax and enjoy the peace and quiet of the aftermath. Even though some of their friends were now gone forever, it still felt less tense than it did before the end of the war against Kronos.

But a small part of him kind of hoped the change in Annabeth was also from just being happy that they were finally together. It took them a while there—Percy could definitely not blame the other campers for rolling their eyes at their slow pace. He must have liked Annabeth since he was around thirteen. Maybe fourteen. Annabeth never mentioned a time, but she did try to make her feelings clear a lot better than Percy did.

They were both idiots for taking this long to realize what was going on and actually act on it, but at least now they could put this foolishness behind them and bask in the feeling of no more things holding them back. No Luke, no Rachel. No war or a prophecy that predicted the death of one of them (supposedly). Only the two of them, enjoying the rest of their summer together.

Some of Annabeth’s cheerful mood had to be because of that, right?

Their eyes met once more and Percy felt like he would have been able to stare into those gray depths for all eternity if it weren’t for the gasps of surprise from the other campers that drew his attention toward the front of the pavilion.

Mr. D was still not back from Olympus, apparently taking a short vacation from directing the camp now, so his seat was vacant. Chiron was standing next to the table as usual, though he was now blinking in surprise at the place where Mr. D was usually seated, looking rather astounded.

There, hovering in the air, was something… a little odd. It kind of looked like an Iris-message, only this one was pure black and it was huge and there was no rainbow around, so Percy didn’t understand how it could even exist there, hovering in the air like it belonged and didn’t just pop into existence a moment earlier.

“What’s going on?” someone asked.

“Is this dangerous?” another asked.

“We should stab it,” a third kid said.

“What? No!” Annabeth’s voice cut in. “No stabbing the strange message.”

Percy wasn’t sure it was a message, but he still agreed with Annabeth—they couldn’t just stab whatever this was. It looked like some sort of magic, but so far it wasn’t doing anything but hover there and Chiron was slowly relaxing, a glint in his eyes telling Percy that he knew what this thing was, yet he still didn’t understand what it was doing at camp.

“Okay,” Clarisse chimed in with an eyeroll. “What do you suggest we do then, princess?” she asked mockingly.

A frown appeared on Annabeth’s face before she turned to Chiron. “Do you know what this is? What should we do?”

“It’s… Hephaestus,” Chiron mumbled. The campers were all, obviously, confused.

“Uh…” Percy moved his eyes from the old centaur to the square of floating blackness. “We’ve met Hephaestus, Chiron. He’s not the best-looking god out there, but he’s definitely not a black blob. No offence,” he threw in the direction of the Hephaestus table. They dismissed him with waves of their hands.

Chiron shook his head and his hooves kicked the ground restlessly. “No. No, I mean it’s Hephaestus TV.”

His gaze slid over to Annabeth. She was looking back at Percy, eyes wide. They didn’t have the best experience with Hephaestus TV. When they had gone on their first quest to get Zeus’s lightning bolt, they ended up in an abandoned water park in which Hephaestus’s trap for Aphrodite and Ares activated and filmed Percy and Annabeth as they both screamed in terror and tried not to die from a bunch of mechanical spiders in a boat that crashed against locked gates.

It was definitely not one of Percy’s fondest memories. And it had to be even worse for Annabeth who had lost her mind from fear of the spiders. The gods must have had a pretty good laugh at their expense and Percy kind of wished never to hear about Hephaestus TV ever again.

Apparently the Fates liked messing with him, though.

“Hephaestus TV?” Will Solace from the Apollo cabin said. “You mean, that program the gods watch? Why is it here?”

“I don’t know,” Chiron answered. “The last time Hephaestus let the campers watch something, it was to try and see what the opinion on the last season of Hercules Busts Heads was. It didn’t go well—the show canceled afterward.”

Percy honestly couldn’t care less about the show. “So what now? We’re being test subjects again?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t know. Last time I got an early notice. Now…” Chiron tapped the pockets of his jacket like he might find something stored there. He came up empty-handed, though. “I don’t know. Oh, wait. Hold on—” He reached out and grabbed a remote from the dining table. It was painted gold with more buttons than Percy knew what to do with. “Well, that’s better.”

Clarisse glared at the screen—apparently—that chose to appear at the front of the mess hall. “So, what, we’re going to have a movie night or something? Seriously?”

“I could use a nice break. Take my mind off… everything,” a kid from the Demeter cabin said.

“We don’t know what it’s even about,” Katie Garden protested. “For all we know, this could be a documentary about the Underworld. I don’t want to watch that.”

A few of the campers turned to look at Nico who was sitting alone at the table they’d recently built for the Hades cabin. Or, well, for Nico. The boy scowled a little at the attention he was getting and he huffed and didn’t say anything.

“Can we just ignore it, though?” Percy asked.

Thunder boomed and made a few campers jump in surprise.

Percy glanced up at the clear skies over the camp and shuffled a little in his place, sending the heaven a sheepish grin. “Yeah, okay, that’s a no.” He lounged back in his seat and took a bite from his steak. “I hope this is gonna be good, at least.”

“The gods made it, right?” a guy from the Hephaestus cabin said, sounding almost defensive. Maybe because this was his dad’s thing and he didn’t want anyone to knock it down before they even tried it out. “It has to be good.”

A girl from the Ares table snorted but didn’t say anything.

“Well, I suppose…” Chiron sent another glance upward, like he was waiting for a signal from the gods. When nothing happened, the centaur shrugged and pressed a button on the remote, making the black screen… remain black, actually.

Percy’s head tilted to the side as the sound of wind came from the front, where the strange, hovering screen was. Still pitch black, but now also sounding like there was lots of wind all around it.

“Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood,” a voice said from the screen.

Apparently, it caught everyone off guard because they didn’t expect the program they were watching to speak about half-bloods. Percy saw the Stoll brothers nearly fall off their bench in surprise; Katie was gawking at the screen with wide eyes; Malcolm’s head was tilted to the side thoughtfully like the rest of his brothers and sisters.

From that table, Annabeth caught Percy’s eyes and he could tell she was trying to understand what this was about and if they could recognize the voice. Frankly, Percy was pretty sure he’s never heard it before. And by the look of complete and utter confusion, neither did Annabeth.

The sound of thunder came from the screen and lightning flashed and finally the screen wasn’t only black. Now it showed a blurry image, too. More than half the campers leaned in, trying to make sense of what they were seeing, but it was too dark and too out of focus.

“Being a half-blood is dangerous. It’s scary.” The voice continued as more lightning flashed.

“Someone’s approaching the front of the screen, right?” someone from the Hermes cabin asked. “I’m not imagining it?”

“You don’t think it’s a horror movie, right?” Lacy—daughter of Aphrodite—asked. She was barely twelve, as far as Percy was concerned, and one of her older brothers was hugging her, probably to offer some sort of comfort.

It was strange, in a way, that after fighting in a war some of these kids were still afraid of horror movies, but Percy decided not to comment. It wasn’t like war meant there was nothing worse. Annabeth still feared spiders. Grover still hated being underground. Percy himself was afraid of a lot of things. They just didn’t include whatever program it was that they were currently watching.

“Come on, guys—someone’s approaching the screen, right?” the guy from the Hermes cabin pressed.

“Nah—it’s probably just trying to be dramatic,” Lacy’s brother told her, ignoring the Hermes camper. “It’s okay.”

Waving his hand in the air, the Hermes camper glared at them all. “Am I invisible or something?” he demanded.

The Stolls shared a grin, like they were liking the idea of pranking their brother into thinking he really was invisible, but then one of the Apollo kids confirmed that someone really was getting closer to the screen and to please shut up so they could continue.

“Oh,” Percy muttered as he turned his focus back to the screen—it was frozen and by the look on Chiron’s face, this wasn’t his doing. “You think it freezes when we speak? Like in those lame fanfics?”

Some shrugged. Others looked absolutely excited at the prospect of experiencing something like this. Personally, Percy felt like he was getting punished for something because if this wasn’t interesting enough, he figured the program would freeze for everyone else until he decided to sit back down and watch it. In other words, it sucked.

The voice of the narrator kept on talking when they all quieted down again. “Most of the time it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways,” he said.

A lot of them flinched, Percy included. He thought about the campers that didn’t even make it past the Battle of the Labyrinth. About the ones that died during the Battle of Manhattan. About the ones that joined Kronos and didn’t make it out alive. This was a reminder they really didn’t need right now.

The gods were probably laughing themselves silly right about now.

“If you think you might be one of us, my advice is—turn away while you still can,” the narrator said as the figure in the background came closer and closer to the front, features still too blurry. “Because once you know what you are… they’ll sense it, too, and they’ll come for you.” The figure was now right there. Still not the sharpest image, but they could make him out, at least. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

As music swelled in the background, Percy observed the guy on the screen. He had no idea who this was or what was going on with him. He was young, obviously. Younger than Percy. Maybe he was twelve or thirteen. The screen was still mostly dark, so every time lightning flashed it helped make the image a little clearer.

His hair was some shade of brown—it was wet and curly and really hard to tell in this lighting. He was gazing into the distance, somewhere off-screen, and Percy figured there was probably something there. Nothing good, he assumed, because the guy looked kind of troubled. Maybe hurt? Scared? Angry? Upset? It was really hard to tell when he didn’t have the background for any of this.

“Does anyone recognize him?” Katie asked.

“Hmm…” Travis muttered, shaking his head. “Never seen him in my life. You, Connor?”

His brother shook his head. “Not once. I’ve no clue.”

From her place, Annabeth groaned. “Come on, guys, we’re not supposed to recognize him. It’s a show or something—he’s an actor. And this is a fabricated story. It’s not real,” she told everyone in exasperation.

Some of them awed, like it had never occurred to them before.

Then the image on the screen changed and Percy froze. He’s been feeling—no, knowing—that the gods were messing with him and watching him since he was twelve, heading toward the Underworld on a stupid quest to retrieve something he had nothing to do with. It was just this thing that kept on nagging at him since he discovered the Greek gods were real.

But this was too much! This wasn’t like knowing they were watching. It wasn’t like knowing they were recording his alarming moment back at the water park with Annabeth. It wasn’t like being sent to a magical island because the gods thought it would be entertaining to send him toward someone he would have to break the heart of like some kind of telenovela.

This was seriously messed up!

The screen turned blue—deep, dark blue like the depths of the ocean. And in the middle were golden letters that shone from light that drifted from above, claiming the title of this program:

Hephaestus TV

PERCY JACKSON

AND THE OLYMPIANS

“What the heck?” someone murmured.

“Percy, what…?”

“Wait, that guy was supposed to be Percy?”

Someone snorted. “That voice was supposed to be Percy’s?”

He wanted to bury himself somewhere. Maybe find a quiet, peaceful, isolated part of the forest, dig a hole and not let anyone find him in there. Ever. The flaw in his plan was that Mrs. O’Leary will surely sniff him out instantly and they will all know where to go to laugh at him for eternity.

This place in the woods will become famous amongst the campers and they will all go there to tell the story of how the gods embarrassed one Percy Jackson to death and the prophecy did actually talk about his death. It just took some time to come to fruition.

“Okay, now I’m intrigued,” a girl from Aphrodite said almost dreamily.

“What? No way!” Clarisse objected. “Are we seriously going to sit here and watch some cheap knock-off of Prissy’s life? As if!” She went to get up as lightning flashed and thunder rolled across the sky. “I’m not staying here!” Clarisse yelled at the sky.

“For once,” Percy pushed himself off his bench—even his food didn’t look that good anymore. “I’m with you. No way am I watching this.”

“Percy—” Chiron started.

He glared at the centaur. “It’s their way of tormenting me for refusing to take immortality and instead making them promise on the River Styx,” he told his teacher. “I’m not staying here for this… dramatic retelling of whatever they think would be most embarrassing.”

“A clip of Percy Jackson Fails?” Travis suggested.

Gesturing wildly toward the Stoll brother, Percy nodded. “Exactly! There’s no way. Absolutely no way!”

His mind absently registered the fact that Annabeth was gloomily standing up as well, looking just as annoyed and irritated as he was feeling. A swell of gratitude burned in him at the realization that she was with him on this—of course she was. They’ve done most things together. If this thing was going to be about him, the gods would surely also insert her into the story.

But then he went to take a step back and he found that he couldn’t—grape vines were wrapped around his ankles, keeping him in place so he couldn’t move. When he tried to rip them, they only tightened around him painfully. From Annabeth and Clarisse’s yelps of surprise, he figured the two girls were suffering from the same fate.

“You’ve got to be kidding me…” Percy muttered as he pulled out Riptide, uncapped it and tried to slash at the vines. The sword passed through them like they weren’t even there and instead nicked Percy’s jeans a little. “Mr. D, let us go!”

No reply other than the vines tugging at Percy’s legs until he stumbled down and found himself sitting on the bench once more. He blinked in surprise as a few campers yelped from the way Annabeth and Clarisse were being shoved back down, as well.

This was a nightmare.

Chiron cleared his throat, an apologetic look on his face. “I don’t think the gods accept, I’m afraid.”

“You don’t say…” Annabeth grumbled. “So, what, we have to sit and watch this thing until the end? No one can leave before that?”

In her place, Clarisse tried to attack the vines with her spear, her siblings joining in on the attack, seemingly not caring whether they were aiming toward the vines or their sister. Nothing worked, though. Clarisse came out of this assault with more scratches and cuts but the vines didn’t relent.

“This is torture. It’s actual torture,” Percy complained.

“Well, Hephaestus TV isn’t the most… accurate,” Chiron said with a grimace. “So you can at least expect to see more improvisation than things that you genuinely remember. That’s good at least, right?”

Apparently, the old, wise centaur has seriously given up on not watching this.

Every eye in the pavilion turned toward Percy who felt his face was burning up. This was just what he needed. A repeat of everything that’s happened to him put in front of everyone. If this revealed anything accurate that he didn’t want others to know, someone on Olympus was going to pay, and he didn’t care how hard it would be.

“Let’s get this thing over with,” he said.

Annabeth looked at him like she knew what was going through his head. She probably did. “It can’t be that bad, right?” she said with mock cheerfulness.

He wanted to claim that it could be worse, but decided to just shrug and keep quiet. The sooner this was over with, the sooner he could leave. Forever, preferably.

The screen finally unfroze as everyone took their eyes off Percy and focused on the Hephaestus program. The title started to fade as the narrator—apparently someone who was trying to be Percy, probably—chimed in again.

“My name is Percy Jackson,” the voice said.

“Jeez, I wouldn’t’ve guessed,” Percy grumbled.

A few of the other campers laughed, probably because the narrator’s voice didn’t sound like Percy’s voice.

“I’m twelve years old.”

“His voice was squeakier when he was twelve, though,” Jake Mason said.

Percy glared at him. “Dude, are you serious right now?”

“No, he’s got a point,” Annabeth said. Percy turned to look at her in betrayal. She just smiled at him innocently. “Who even is this guy?” She turned to Chiron. “Do you know where the players on Hephaestus TV come from?”

The centaur shrugged. “Nymphs, satyrs, minor gods that have nothing better to do—whoever wants to try it out, can,” he replied.

A few of the campers hummed like it was the most interesting information they’ve heard in a while. Percy wanted to slam his head against the table. Instead, he shoved another piece of steak in his mouth and chewed on it bitterly.

The black screen filled with colors again. This time it showed an empty hall—a school hall, Percy realized. Though he didn’t really recognize it. It definitely didn’t look like any of his recent schools. It could be one of his older ones, but if it was, then it must have been one of his first ones because he didn’t remember it at all.

Fake-Percy’s narration continued. “Am I a troubled kid?” he asked and Percy nearly jumped out of his skin when the other campers around him replied as one that he was, in fact, a troubled kid. Like he actually asked them.

“Wow, guys. Thanks,” he said dryly.

Annabeth winked and widened her smile at him, but somewhere in those gray eyes of hers he could still see concern—real concern—so he nodded at her and forced a smile as if to say that he was going to be okay. He wasn’t necessarily sure that was true, but it was better than letting her worry for his mental state while watching this stupid, ridiculous thing.

On the screen, a man—again, Percy had no idea who it was—appeared as he ran around the corner and down the hall.

“Yeah,” Fake-Percy continued, answering his own question. “You could say that.”

“See? You agree with yourself,” a kid from Apollo’s table said smugly.

“No—an actor agrees with himself. I never said any of it,” Percy argued.

A few campers rolled their eyes at him, like he was the one being ridiculous.

As the narrator kept on speaking, the man—probably supposed to be one of Percy’s past teachers—ran closer and closer to the camera. “Bad grades, bullies, all the normal stuff.”

“What’s going on?” Lacy asked.

It was a really good question. Percy wasn’t sure—he just sort of stared in more apprehension than curiosity as the man on-screen reached a group of kids that all gaped out a window, looking slightly up. The man ran to the window and gazed upward, as well. He looked like he was annoyed. Or maybe tired. It was hard to tell. Maybe he was scared.

“And then there’s some other stuff,” Fake-Percy kept on talking.

“What other stuff?” someone asked from the Ares cabin.

Percy shrugged. “How should I know? I’ve no idea what’s going on, either,” he said.

They watched as the scene flashed to show the man running up the stairs, still accompanied by the narrator. “Some stuff that’s… maybe not so normal.”

The man reached the top of the stairs and got out to the roof of the school, apparently. The camera showed him from the back for a moment. There was really nothing interesting to see there until the angle of the camera shifted a little and it hovered over the man’s shoulder, spotting a small figure standing on the other side of the roof, back to the man and the camera, looking up at a slightly higher rooftop.

Running forward, the man approached the boy.

“That’s me,” Fake-Percy introduced.

Percy shook his head. “That’s definitely not me,” he objected as the screen suddenly focused on the face of a young boy. It wasn’t Percy, for sure. The other campers didn’t even protest that to annoy him—they were all nodding along, apparently taken aback by the sight of someone who looked nothing like their friend.

He had brown hair—pretty light, too. His eyes were hard to see, although Percy got the feeling they were brown instead of sea-green, which irked him more than it should have. It wasn’t certain whether he was smiling or brooding as he looked up, seemingly trying to observe something.

“That’s never happened to me before,” Percy complained. “They’re making things up already.”

“Not to mention the casting,” Connor added. “I mean, they’re gods. Can’t they afford to use some kind of magic or something to make the characters look right?”

Katie shushed both of them and Percy sank lower in his seat.

“Back in second grade,” Fake-Percy continued as the campers looked back at the screen. “Why was I up there?” he asked as the man finally reached Fake-Little-Percy and steered him away from the edge and toward the door. “I saw something. At least… I could’ve sworn I saw something.”

The camera moved from the pair to the rooftop Fake-Little-Percy was staring at as a black Pegasus appeared there. Was it supposed to be Blackjack?

Pollux tilted his head to the side. “Wait, I thought you only met Blackjack later on,” he said.

“I did. This is wrong.” Percy folded his arms over his chest and glared at the screen, wishing he could just burn it. “I saw some weird stuff before, but never anything I couldn’t either explain or just ignored. Nothing like that.”

“This is so trippy…” someone from the Hermes cabin mumbled.

The scene changed again. Instead of the roof, Percy found himself staring at the back of Fake-Little-Percy as he sat in the office of what he immediately assumed was a counselor or a therapist of some kind. Percy, of course, didn’t recognize the man, but it looked like he was talking to Fake-Little-Percy and the sound was muted so they could hear the narration of his impersonator.

“When you say you saw something like that, you wind up in this guy’s office,” Fake Percy continued and Percy noticed a few grim and uncomfortable nods from some of the other campers.

Personally, he never really found himself in such a situation. He didn’t act crazy. He never told people about weird things unless it was that one incident with the Cyclops. But it made sense that others would go through something like that—telling people about their weird visions and ending up with a bunch of older men and women who thought they were psychotic.

As the man lifted a picture Fake-Little-Percy must have drawn of a flying horse and a few words Percy couldn’t read written underneath it, Fake-Percy said, “Good news, he’s saying there’s nothing to worry about. It’s all in my imagination.”

The screen showed a close-up of the skeptic expression on Fake-Little-Percy’s face as he listened to this.

Someone snorted and laughed. “Well, at least the expression is something we might find on your face,” she said and Percy rolled his eyes.

“But if it happens again,” the narration went on. “Make sure to tell someone.”

The scene switched to show Fake-Little-Percy sitting in a classroom behind two shadowed kids that were talking to each other. They were all wearing green jackets and striped, green ties. Percy didn’t even bother trying to read the words written on the symbol at the front of their jackets—words written in a circle around the drawing of some kind of tree, maybe.

Fake-Little-Percy was looking down at an open notebook before he lifted his gaze to look out the window to his right. His expression turned slightly surprised and confused.

“It happened again,” Fake-Percy said before the scene changed to show the back of Fake-Little-Percy and focus on the window, where they could all see some kind of giant creature that kind of resembled a rhino in golden armor, walking down the street, nobody reacting to it at all. “These impossible things that felt like they walked right out of the stories my mom always told me. So real one minute, and then the next…”

For a second or two the image focused on Fake-Little-Percy as he observed the monster, and then he blinked and his eyebrows crunched together before the screen switched to show a yellow truck where the rhino creature in armor used to be a moment before.

“So… this has never happened to you before?” Drew Tanaka made sure.

“Nope,” Percy leaned back in his seat and yawned a little. He pointedly ignored the unimpressed look Annabeth was sending him. “The worst I’d encountered before I was twelve was a Cyclops that stalked me in pre-school.”

Annabeth hummed and nodded. “Oh, yeah… you’ve mentioned something like that,” she said thoughtfully. “Do you think your dad might have sent him to check on you?”

“I—” He blinked a couple of times and then frowned. “Well, now I do.”

“Is this, like, what the gods assume happened to you?” Will asked. “Why else would they make all this up?”

Chiron sighed. “Rating?” he suggested, and he sounded kind of like he wished he could claim it wasn’t something the gods would actually care about, yet couldn’t.

“Come on,” Jake said weakly from the Hephaestus table. “It’s not that bad. Kind of interesting, so far, right?”

Nobody answered him. Percy wanted to tell him it was honestly awful so far, but he didn’t feel like making the guy feel bad about his dad when he was trying to protect him in front of the other campers. For all Percy knew, this could have been someone else’s fault and not Hephaestus’s. The god didn’t exactly strike Percy as the kind of god to care about what the demigods did as long as it didn’t have anything to do with him.

He had no reason to send them this program or force them to watch it. The other gods… they were higher on Percy’s list of suspects, even though his father wasn’t on the list, at all. There was no way Poseidon was behind any of this.

His attention went back to the screen just in time for it to focus on two random boys Percy has never before seen in his life. They walked past Fake-Little-Percy with trays of food—oh, this was the cafeteria, not a classroom—and sneered at him lamely.

“What a loser,” one of them said. They slowed down a little just to stare and shake their heads at the boy.

“Lovely people,” a girl from Aphrodite said with a sniff.

This time Percy didn’t say anything, though. He kind of had to admit that his school experience consisted of those jabs from people. He wasn’t an absolute freak, but a loser? Sure. He was never popular. Although he did learn pretty early on how to deal with bullies.

So far, this was probably the most accurate thing in this whole thing.

The scene turned to show Fake-Little-Percy who watched the two kids as they walked away, his eyes narrowed in annoyance and his hand holding a pencil as he seemed to draw something. The yellow (fake) truck was seen through the window, still.

“Hey, fellas,” Fake-Percy narrated again in a sarcastic, playful tone. “Wanna come hear about the imaginary stuff I see?”

Percy cringed. “This is so awkward…” he mumbled as a few campers laughed. “I don’t talk like that.”

“You didn’t say it out loud—it’s your thoughts, Percy,” Nico said, a small smirk on his face.

“Shut up, death breath,” Percy grumbled and hunched in on himself. The thing was—the sarcasm did suit him. He always thought things like that. He just never let anyone hear some of his dumber thoughts. And he came off as a sarcastic person, but some of his thoughts would have driven the point home long before his speech did.

“It’s not a thing you want to be saying. To anyone,” Fake-Percy continued. Percy could’ve told him that before he said it out loud in this… movie thing. Maybe a series? Gods, Percy hoped this wasn’t a series. “So I didn’t.”

“It’s too late now,” Percy said.

“Relax, Seaweed Brain,” Annabeth said. “We all know it’s fake. No one believes it’s authentic.”

Some of the campers hurried to nod, though the expressions on their faces kind of told a different story.

On the screen, the camera focused on the drawing of Fake-Little-Percy of the rhino monster thing. It was honestly pretty good. Better than anything Percy would have been able to do. He definitely couldn’t draw.

Whoever wrote the script of this thing probably hasn’t met Percy in person before. They should have, like, done an interview with him beforehand or something, to make sure they knew his character.

“Then something changed,” Fake-Percy said.

The page with the single drawing changed, now containing plenty of different drawings, as well. Marvelous other creatures from the Greek world, Percy was sure. And then someone slapped a card—kind of like a Pokémon card—on top of the page. There were different types of blue cubes next to the drawings and the edges of more cards nearby.

“Is that… Mythomagic?” Nico gasped.

Percy narrowed his eyes at the screen that was frozen now that some kids turned to stare at Nico. “I… I think it’s the Minotaur,” Percy said. He scrunched up his nose.

“But it’s Mythomagic!” Nico insisted. “It’s a Mythomagic card!”

“Is it? I’ve never actually heard of it until I met you, Nico.”

Jake Mason groaned. “So… another inaccurate detail, then,” he grumbled. “Great job, Dad. Not embarrassing at all.”

Thunder cracked and a few kids rolled their eyes at the antics of the gods.

“So… you’re bullied, isolated and a geek in this,” Miranda Gardiner said dryly. She looked at Percy, pointing at the screen with one finger. “How much of that is actually true?” she asked.

They all turned to look at him then, clearly wanting to know the truth, as well. “Uh…” Percy shifted uneasily, his face feeling warm. Annabeth was mouthing to him that he didn’t need to answer that. “Except for not playing Mythomagic…” He shrugged.

For a moment they were all just staring at him.

Then someone coughed. “So why does the Minotaur have no clothes? I mean, he’s in his underwear…” the guy said.

The focus shifted to him and Percy sighed in relief.

“That’s how I actually saw him the first time,” Percy said.

“Seriously?” Nico scrunched up his nose. “Well, the card shouldn’t look like that. He has armor on, usually. It’s probably, like, foreshadowing here.”

After that, they all quickly turned back to the screen, to see what has changed. Percy sighed and caught Annabeth’s gray eyes silently asking him if he was alright. He made a face and shrugged, unsure how to answer that question.

The scene on the screen changed to reveal some kind of different cafeteria. Percy was pretty sure his fake-self was older now, but he couldn’t be sure with the guy sitting with his back to the camera. In front of him, sitting there and grinning after slamming the card of the Minotaur onto the table, was a guy Percy has never met before in his life.

He wore a white shirt with a logo Percy did recognize—the one of Yancy Academy. He couldn’t read it because of his dyslexia, but it was definitely something he could recognize after a year of going to that place. The guy had black, curly hair and a set of brown, dark eyes. They were both sitting, but it looked like he was taller than Fake-Percy.

“No way…” Percy muttered as he realized who this was supposed to be.

“I met Grover,” Fake-Percy confirmed his suspicion.

Someone snorted. Then another one. A few girls giggled and laughed.

“Well, it’s a shame he’s not here to see this,” Annabeth said, clearly swallowing her laughter.

It wasn’t that the actor looked nothing like the real Grover. He was probably closer to Grover than Fake-Percy was to, well, Percy. But it was so surreal to see someone and get a name and realize they were now supposed to believe this guy on-screen was, in fact, their friend. Someone they’ve known for a couple of years now.

And that was after they got to see how different Fake-Percy was from the original one.

On-screen, Fake-Grover laughed at something and the narration continued. “We had a lot in common.”

Apparently that meant that Fake-Grover got bullied, too, because a moment after they heard that, Fake-Grover started saying something only for a backpack to slam into his face as someone walked past them.

“Hey!” a few kids protested.

“Retaliate!” Sherman Yang from the Ares cabin called.

Apparently, Fake-Percy agreed because they could see him—the older him, from the opening scene—glaring at a ginger girl that glanced back at the two of them and smirked. Fake-Percy tried to get up to do something, but Fake-Grover waved at him calmingly, silently telling him to stay put.

“If only that worked,” Annabeth muttered.

Percy was too busy staring at the screen to care. This girl—the ginger one—didn’t look like Nancy Bobofit, but he knew it was supposed to be her. It was probably the closest they could get with gods and nymphs at their disposal. She was too pretty to be the girl he remembered from Yancy.

Then his focus shifted to his actor. Now, in the light of day, he could see him more properly. His hair was light brown, bordering on almost blond in the sunlight, which was ridiculous. His eyes were a shade of blue that didn’t match Percy’s, but was still better than giving him, say, brown eyes.

“And not just because we were both at the bottom of the food chain,” the narration went on. They could all see Fake-Grover as he shook his head at Fake-Percy, again telling him to drop it.

“Okay, yeah, that did happen a lot,” Percy admitted.

“No one is surprised, Perce,” Malcolm said with a small smirk. Someone chuckled.

Fake-Percy settled back in his seat and the narration continued. “And you know what? It felt good to talk about these things with Grover. I could almost believe they were imaginary. Weird, but harmless.”

They recoiled instantly as the shot turned to focus on the Minotaur’s card. First the top of his body—the angry scowl and the muscles on his chest. Then the underwear, as if to emphasize the point that it really was strange and weird.

“We did not need to see it that up close,” Mitchell from the Aphrodite table said. He shuddered along with some of his brothers and sisters. “Ugh…”

For a moment the scene switched to show Fake-Grover and Fake-Percy laughing together at their lunch table, other kids sitting around, having their own conversations and eating their own food.

“Until that day changed, too.” It switched to a shot of a yellow, school bus driving over a bridge toward Manhattan. “Until the day one of them decided to come for me.”

The show froze as they all turned to look at Percy with wide eyes filled with anticipation. He huffed in annoyance at that and tried not to show just how anxious he was.

How would the gods show this next part? It had to be about Mrs. Dodds, right? The Fury attack at the museum. After all, it was a school trip to New York and things would change because a monster came after Percy? That was the field trip.

“What?” he asked. “You’re already watching this thing. That actor is already telling you the entire story. Do you really need me to say it to you, too?”

“It’s not the same,” Miranda protested. “You’re the only one who knows how accurate this thing is so far. We want to know whether that’s true or not.”

Percy shrugged. “Then ask me after something actually happens.”

They seemed to accept that because they turned toward the screen again. Some of them actually looked eager to watch this thing and Percy didn’t know how to feel about that. The grape vines were still tightly wrapped around him, preventing him from leaving.

Not like he could just avoid all of this, then.

Percy looked at the screen as it showed the MET museum and the stairs at the front. His eyes immediately locked onto the line of students that went up the stairs and then he noticed the man in the wheelchair overlooking them and he snorted.

It was a brief scene, but he could still tell that whoever it was playing Chiron… well, they would probably see him from up close later on. Then Percy would be able to judge his appearance a little better. But with how things were going so far with Fake-Percy, he didn’t have such high hopes.

“What you see here,” a man’s voice said as the screen showed the face of a statue of some Greek guy. “They are not fictions.” Another Greek guy. “They are not fantasies. What you see here are the truest and deepest parts of yourselves.”

As he talked—Percy was fairly certain that was the voice of Chiron’s actor—the camera moved to show the first statue again, only this time it backed up to also reveal that the guy was holding the head of a woman that looked kind of depressed. Then again, if somebody decapitated Percy, he would be grumpy, too.

“That’s Medusa,” Annabeth said. She gave Percy a look, like she wanted to know if he recognized the statue.

Well, now he assumed the one holding her head was supposedly Perseus—the first one. He was the one who’d killed her, after all, right? He kind of felt uncomfortable with how long the camera stayed on the sad face of the monster. That woman tried to petrify Percy and his friends. Now this thing looked like it was trying to make him regret killing her? As if!

The scene switched to the teacher in the wheelchair. The campers leaned forward in interest. Maybe Fake-Chiron didn’t quite look like the real one, but some of them knew he used to teach Percy and the fact that he was using a wheelchair when disguised as human was no secret. It wasn’t hard to deduce that this guy was supposed to be their immortal activities director.

He had white hair and beard and a pair of black glasses over dark eyes. It wasn’t right, of course. His hair should have been brown. The white hair made him look older than he did in real life. There was a blanket on his legs, which Percy definitely didn’t remember from his time at Yancy, but it didn’t really matter.

Chiron tilted his head to the side as he observed himself. “Well,” he said eventually. “They could have done a lot worse.” He said it like he was speaking from experience.

“You’re so lucky Chiron was your teacher, dude,” Pollux said.

A Demeter kid nodded. “Yeah! I wish my teacher was Chiron. All my teachers always think I’m going to blow up the classroom just because I can’t sit still. It’s so unfair. I bet it wasn’t like that with Chiron, huh?”

Percy shrugged, a content smile on his face as he locked eyes with his old teacher whose eyes twinkled cheerfully. “Yeah, the best teacher I’ve ever had,” Percy confirmed.

“Friends…” Fake-Chiron said. “The gods…” he told the students around him. “The monsters.” He turned his head and focused on someone off-screen. “The heroes you see here, in this room,” he continued but now he wasn’t on the screen anymore. Instead, the campers saw Fake-Percy holding a report board and smiling a little as he listened. “Are reminders of what we are capable of.”

“This is definitely foreshadowing,” Nico said. “He mentioned heroes at the exact moment the camera moved to Percy? It’s too obvious. Such a cliché.”

“What’s bad with a good cliché?” Drew asked.

“Nothing,” Christopher—another Hephaestus kid—said quickly. “Unless you overdo it. I mean, it’s hard to look at this thing and not compare it to real life, so it kind of sucks on that front. But maybe if you’re a mortal seeing this it might be, I don’t know, done well?”

Percy doubted any kind of mortal would want to watch this, when the main character was, apparently, himself, but he didn’t comment.

On the screen, Fake-Percy looked down thoughtfully as Fake-Chiron kept on talking to the class. “Now, on your worksheets, I want you to choose one of the subjects you see here, and describe it.” Fake-Chiron said and for a moment the camera showed the worksheet. Not a single one of the demigods tried to read it. Though there was some kind of picture there that Percy barely got the chance to focus on.

Fake-Percy narrowed his eyes a little at the worksheet. The next moment, the camera showed the page again—the written paragraph in it—and Percy blinked in surprise along with the others as the letters started moving on the page. Not just because of his dyslexia—this was something done in the show itself.

“Wow,” Katie said with a groan. “They put the dyslexia in here. That’s some dedication, right there.”

“So they got that right, but they made Percy play Mythomagic and meet Blackjack ahead of time? Come on!” Ellis Wakefield—an Ares kid—exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air.

Chiron chuckled from the front and shook his head. “Try not to think about it too much. Take it from me—it’s something Hephaestus TV does quite often.”

“Not just how it looks,” Fake-Chiron kept on talking, explaining the task he was giving to the class. Percy was extremely glad he didn’t get anything like that from Chiron—Mr. Brunner—back then. Fake-Percy finally seemed to have given up because he looked back at the teacher in resignation. “But how it makes you feel. Hmm? Come on.” He scattered all the children, letting them know they should start working.

“Jeez, that’s a little corny,” a girl from the Aphrodite table said. “And that’s coming from me.”

It was saying a lot when a daughter of the goddess of love was mocking feelings, Percy supposed. Maybe that was why half the campers cringed at Fake-Chiron’s instructions.

Percy groaned when on the screen, Fake-Percy remained in front of Perseus and Medusa’s statue, staring up at it. He brought his pencil toward the paper to write and then the camera changed its angle to look at his face from a closer, lower spot. A woman’s soft voice came from off-screen.

“What do you see?” the woman asked.

“Who’s that?” Chris asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Clarisse chimed in. “Prissy is hearing voices in his head.”

“Am not!” Percy objected. Then he slouched down a little as he glared at the screen heatedly. “Although I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy hears voices,” he added.

Nico and a few others snickered.

Fake-Percy lifted his eyes back to the statue and then the camera moved to look at the statue (again), showing the back of the boy’s head. A younger voice spoke then—one that Percy figured belonged to Fake-Little-Percy. So this wasn’t a voice in his head—it was some kind of memory, right?

“Perseus,” Fake-Little-Percy said. His voice made a few of the girls awe and Percy found himself extremely glad that this thing didn’t show his true young self. He didn’t want to know what kind of reactions that would have gotten from the campers.

The angle changed again and this time the museum looked like it was empty. A bright light was coming from a light bulb behind Fake-Little-Percy and a woman whose face wasn’t shown. Percy’s heart clenched at the realization that this was probably supposed to be his mother. She was wearing a brown coat over a dark, blue shirt and had a brown bag that his real mom actually did have. It was kind of freaky.

“That’s me,” Fake-Little-Percy said with a smile as he gazed up at the statue.

“He’s so adorable!” Lacy cooed.

Percy grimaced.

“Not to mention delusional,” Mark from the Ares cabin sneered. “That’s a statue of someone who’s been dead for ages. It’s definitely not him.”

“He means they have the same name,” Percy snapped at him. Eyes turned to look at him and he winced a little and focused on Annabeth—it was easier to look at her blond curls and knowing eyes. It was familiar. “That’s never happened, though, so it doesn’t really matter. I’ve never been to this museums with my mom.”

Miranda squinted her eyes at the screen. “That’s your mom?”

“I guess so,” he said with a shrug.

On the screen, the woman hummed. “That’s who you’re named after,” she told the little boy.

“Is that why you named me after him?” Fake-Little-Percy asked. He kept his eyes on the statue for a moment longer and then turned to smile eagerly at the woman next to him. Which was definitely his mother, yeah. If she was the one to name him, then it had to be her. “Because he was a hero?”

A few of the campers hummed in realization and Percy shook his head and sighed. “That’s not it,” he said. “She did it because he had a happy ending—which she wanted me to have, too. It wasn’t because of the things he’s done. She didn’t care about that.”

“So far so good, then,” Annabeth said, eyes twinkling.

He grinned back at her.

“What makes you think he was a hero?” Fake-Sally said, amusement laced in her words.

A few campers tilted their heads to the side, clearly confused by her reaction. To be fair, so was Percy.

Fake-Little-Percy gave her a look, like she was messing with him and he was aware of that. Then he glanced back at the statue. “Because he kills monsters.”

The shot switched to show them from the back, the statue looming over them, proudly holding the decapitated head of his foe. “And what makes you think that she was a monster?” Fake-Sally asked.

Percy spluttered. “If she didn’t try to kill us, maybe…” he muttered.

“Mom…” Fake-Little-Percy drawled out in exasperation.

Finally, the camera turned to show both their faces, mainly Fake-Sally’s. She actually did remind Percy of his real mom, just… not completely. Something was off. His mom always seemed… softer. Kinder. This woman looked nice. Her hair was brown, like his mom’s, and he couldn’t quite catch the color of her eyes, but he had the feeling they were close enough to the real thing. But she still looked different.

The woman looked at Fake-Little-Percy fondly. “Not everyone who looks like a hero is a hero, and not everyone who looks like a monster is a monster.” She looked back at the statue.

Percy shook his head. This was definitely not his mom. Sure, what she was saying was true, but not about this statue. Medusa was a monster. Perseus killed her for a good reason, didn’t he? Both people named Perseus. She would have turned more people into stone had they not done so.

“Well… the philosophy is right, but…” a girl from the Apollo cabin said.

Nyssa—daughter of Hephaestus—nodded. “Yeah, this is… well, it’s complicated.”

“Good thing my mom never gave me that talk,” Percy said.

“I named you after him,” continued Fake-Sally. “Because when he was a very little boy, he and his mother were placed in a wooden chest and cast into the sea by a very angry king. Alone, afraid.”

Percy blinked at the screen and then looked over at Chiron. “I’ve never heard of that,” he said.

The centaur nodded. “Acrisius cast them into sea, yes,” he said. “His mother prayed to the gods and they ended up washing ashore to the island of Seriphos. Dictys—a fisherman—took them in and raised Perseus until he reached manhood.”

Pursing his lips, Percy turned back to the show. “Well, it’s still not why I was named after him.” He shrugged. “Nice story though, I guess.”

“And at night, his mother would whisper in his ear, hold fast, Perseus,” Fake-Sally continued, now lowering her head a little as she whispered the words loudly. “Brave the storm that was meant to break us, for we are unbreakable as long as we have each other.” Fake-Little-Percy smiled and nodded at her. “And against all odds, he managed to find his way to a happy ending.”

For a second she turned back to look at the statue and then she turned to Fake-Little-Percy, opened her mouth and… the voice that came out of her lips wasn’t her own—it was Fake-Chiron’s, saying Percy’s name.

A few campers jumped in surprise and Percy himself shuddered at what it would have been like to see such a strange thing—his mom (the real one) saying his name with Chiron’s voice. Gods, that would have been confusing and alarming. Percy would have sent himself to a mental institute had that ever happened to him.

“Gods…” a girl from the Hermes cabin said. “Never do that again!”

“What if we do it?” Travis asked her.

“We can talk for each other,” Connor agreed. “It’ll be freaky.”

Clarisse glared at them, unimpressed. “It won’t work for you two, idiots,” she growled. “You sound too much alike!”

The Stoll brothers both slumped down.

The scene on the screen changed to show Fake-Percy—from the present (sort of)—holding his pencil and pressing it too tightly against his paper. The tip broke from the force.

Then the shot backed away to show more of him as he turned around, eyes wide with alarm. “Mom?”

“Gods, no!” Percy whined. “I’ve never done that!” he protested.

The other campers laughed. Some cringed. Annabeth sent him an amused smile that made his heart leap and his face sour at her delight and enjoyment. She was supposed to detest this thing, not like it or have fun! This was a nightmare for him! He couldn’t wait for the moment she appeared in this show. It was bound to be good. There was no way they captured her just right. It wouldn’t be fair if they did.

“To be fair, if a monster came to get me after this, I’d probably let it kill me,” Kayla (Apollo cabin) said.

“That’s kind of dark,” one of her brothers told her.

The girl just shrugged, as if saying it couldn’t be helped.

On screen, blurry people in the background turned to look at Fake-Percy and a voice from off-screen—young and mocking—said, “I’m right here, sweetie.”

Fake-Percy stared at something for a moment before the angle of the camera changed to show a group of girls standing nearby—one of them being the Fake-Nancy. She was looking at Fake-Percy with a fake sympathetic look as her friends smirked.

“Mommy’s here!” she continued. Kids laughed all around.

“Who’s that supposed to be?” Annabeth asked.

Percy glanced at her. She had this calm look on her face—like she was hiding something. Probably her murderous side. “That should be Nancy Bobofit. A kleptomaniac from my old school. She used to bully Grover more than me. At least, I think that’s her. She looks… different.”

Travis leaned forward, staring into Percy’s eyes. “Tell me you punched her in the face! Tell me you did it, Percy!”

He shook his head. “But I did pull her into a fountain.”

Some of the campers snickered like they could imagine such a thing. Others voiced out loud how it was hard to believe they honestly didn’t realize who his father was at first until Poseidon claimed him.

“Mr. Jackson,” the voice of a woman said. Fake-Percy turned around to see a woman with gray hair, a cold smile, leather jacket and some kind of… red scarf thingy? She was leaning against another statue, hands crossed over her chest. “You will learn to control yourself, do you understand me?”

“You didn’t even do anything!” a kid protested.

“Yeah! This is so unfair! Why did this girl not get a talk to, too?” another one added.

Percy snorted. “That’s Mrs. Dodds for you,” he said. Because if had to be Mrs. Dodds. Who else would side with Nancy on anything? Other than her weirdo friends, that is. And any other kid who didn’t like Percy too much.

Perking up, Nico stared at the screen and then at Percy. “Wait, Mrs. Dodds? You called… her that, didn’t you?”

Smiling at Nico, Percy nodded. “She was my pre-algebra teacher. I told you that. And she always hated me.”

On the screen, Fake-Percy bristled. “Me?!” he demanded and started pointing in Fake-Nancy’s direction to say more, but Fake-Mrs. Dodds just kept on talking calmly.

“Do you understand me?” she repeated.

“He can’t help it, Mrs. Dodds,” Fake-Nancy said, confirming Percy’s thoughts. “Percy’s special.”

Fake-Percy turned to look at Fake-Nancy warily.

“When does she fall in a fountain again?” Connor asked. “I can’t wait for that to happen.”

Percy shrugged. “Should be soon, I think. Unless they changed more stuff.”

“And that’s the monster, right?” Malcolm guessed. “The teacher. The freaky one.”

Annabeth looked at Percy with a grimace. Fury? she mouthed without a sound.

Percy offered her a smile and a shrug. I didn’t know, he mouthed back.

She sagged down tiredly, looking like she was already preparing herself to see the worst. Like this whole thing wasn’t already the worst.

“That’s enough,” Fake-Chiron wheeled himself toward the scene. Percy raised an eyebrow at the change from what had happened for real—in which ‘Mr. Brunner’ never really intervened. He watched wearily as Fake-Chiron stopped next to Fake-Percy as the others turned around to do whatever. “Pay them no mind.”

Fake-Percy frowned and looked down at his feet.

Admittedly, that was something Percy could see himself doing, too. Especially in a situation such as this one, where so many people were against him and a teacher came forward to try and help. Where the heck was Fake-Grover? What was he doing this entire time?

Observing Fake-Percy for a moment, Fake-Chiron’s lips tugged up in a small smile. “When you are ready to hear what the gods have in store for you, they’ll tell you,” he said and Fake-Percy looked at him with the same skeptic look Percy was currently giving the figure on the screen. “I believe in you.”

“This is so wrong…” Percy muttered.

Chiron nodded grimly. “I believe this has never happened.”

“Well, you did talk to me. You were being all cryptic and told me I have to know how ancient history is affecting my day to day life. It was a pretty weird conversation when put out of context,” Percy told his teacher with a grin. “But I like how to gods made this thing, and now they made someone say they would tell me what’s in store for me. Like that’s a thing they do.”

The other campers all grumbled in agreement. It was a ridiculous thing to note here, of course. The gods interacted with Percy quite a lot, but it wasn’t really something that happened to a lot of other demigods. Some of them have never before even seen their godly parents. Other than Dionysus, they didn’t get to see the gods at all. And Percy’s interactions with the gods tended to contain a lot of disregard from said gods and quite a bit of anger and snark from Percy.

What were the gods thinking while writing the script for this show? That they would somehow make their children forget that they weren’t, in fact, taking a more active part in their children’s lives? It was hard to forget after the war they’d just won. After Percy had to make them promise to be more present in the demigods’ lives.

“And,” Fake-Chiron continued. “I believe you’ll be needing this,” he said and, to Percy’s astonishment, pulled out of the inner-pocket of his jacket a pen. A familiar pen—a replica of Riptide, clearly. A few campers awed but all Percy could do was shake his head in exasperation as Fake-Percy grabbed the pen wordlessly, looking more than a little put-off by this. “Hang on to that. ‘Tis a mighty instrument.”

And then the Fake-Chiron wheeled himself away and Fake-Percy stared at him before eyeing the pen like he was trying to understand what kind of a prank his teacher was pulling on him.

“Wait, that’s how you got the sword?” Travis asked. “On some field trip? It doesn’t make sense—you didn’t fight with it when you showed up to camp.”

“That’s because I got it later for the fight against Mrs. Dodds and then I gave it back to Chiron.”

He sent his teacher a look—not quite pleased with what he remembered happening after that day. He was fooled into thinking he’s gone crazy when in truth he just killed a monster because he was a demigod—not hallucinating. It sucked for the rest of that school year, and the fight between his father and Zeus didn’t help.

They turned back to the screen as Fake-Percy lowered the pen and looked back up at the statue of Perseus and Medusa.

To be honest, had Chiron actually given the pen to Percy in such a way, there was a chance Percy would have gotten rid of it somehow, not thinking too much about it. Although… well… Riptide would have just returned to him, right?

The scene changed to show the outside. Fake-Grover and Fake-Percy were sitting at the edge of a fountain, pulling out their lunch as they chatted.

A few campers heard the water and leaned forward, apparently interested to see how things would play out. After all, Percy did mention Nancy getting shoved into a fountain.

“There are all sorts of schools of thought about what drives that kind of bullying,” Fake-Grover told Fake-Percy. “Childhood trauma, feelings of inadequacy…”

Percy narrowed his eyes at the screen. “It’s like this thing is trying to make me feel bad about getting back at bad people,” he said. “First Medusa, now Nancy.”

“Well, is it working?” someone asked.

“Of course not! This is so inaccurate, anyway. There’s nothing to take from it!”

“Look, I get that Nancy has issues,” Fake-Percy cut in. Meanwhile, both he and Fake-Grover picked some of each other’s food. “I’m just getting tired of her taking them out on me.”

“Oh, my gods… Grover has meat in his sandwich!” Katie gasped. “And Percy doesn’t!”

“Hence, why they switched,” an Athena kid said.

Fake-Percy continued. “I feel like… maybe it’s time to do something about it.”

“Shove her in the fountain!” the Stoll brothers called excitedly.

Percy wasn’t sure whether to smile at their antics or hide. He could almost imagine Thalia sitting there with the other Hunters, all of them giving Percy the evil eye for touching a girl.

“You can make an appointment to see Mr. Kane,” Fake-Grover suggested.

A few of the campers were taken aback by this.

“What?”

“Why would he do that? There’s nothing wrong with him.”

Percy himself rolled his eyes at the sky. The gods were definitely laughing at this entire thing. Sure, Grover never liked it when Percy got in trouble for standing up to bullies, but he also was never that much of a pushover.

“He’s really good at talking—”

Fake-Percy cut Fake-Grover off. “I was thinking more like shoving Nancy in the nearest dumpster.”

“Do it!” the Stoll brothers chanted.

Fake-Grover’s mouth opened and he stared at his friend, head tilting to the side as he was seemingly taken aback by this. “Oh,” he said. Then he seemed to realize what Fake-Percy was saying when the shot flickered for a moment to show Fake-Percy smirking. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, if there’s one thing I know about bullies, is that you should never, ever stand up to them.”

“What?” Percy blinked at the screen. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Where did they come up with this?” an Ares kid complained. “It’s like—”

“Like the gods want us to stand back and not retaliate when they do something wrong or that we don’t like or approve of?” Annabeth said. She looked at Percy. “Grover would never say something like that.”

He nodded. “This is so weird…”

On-screen, Fake-Percy looked from Fake-Grover to the ground with a troubled expression. “That doesn’t sound right…” he muttered.

A girl snorted. “I guess they did get some things right about Percy,” she laughed.

A few others joined her and Percy ducked his head and shrugged awkwardly.

Fake-Grover sighed. “Look, I know this place is hard for people like us,” he said. “But we’re not gonna be here forever. There are better places out there.”

Percy felt like walking into that scene to shake some sense into the actors and tell them to change the script because it was pretty inaccurate, to the point where it drove him insane. If they were going to broadcast his life on Hephaestus TV, couldn’t they at least make it right?

The demigods all jumped a little in surprise when Fake-Percy smiled at Fake-Grover only for the satyr to get smacked in the face with a flying piece of meat. Or was it cheese? Anyway, it was thrown in his face.

“Hey! You can’t throw food like that! Unless it’s a food fight!” Connor exclaimed.

Percy just shrugged and leaned back on his bench. “This is actually something that kind of happened.” He gestured toward the screen when some of the campers turned to him with wide, annoyed expressions.

On the screen, the shot changed to show Fake-Nancy just standing there, watching with a cruel smirk before balling an empty wrapper and turning to walk away after throwing her food at Fake-Grover’s face.

“Percy—!”

Fake-Percy scowled and got up, ignoring Fake-Grover’s protest. It sort of happened in real life, too. Well, Grover didn’t try to stop Percy like that because back then Percy didn’t really move—the water did all the work for him.

Now… now he watched as Fake-Percy walked toward Fake-Nancy and threw his hands toward her, as if to shove her backward and into the water only for the water in the fountain to move, grab her and pull her into the water before he could so much as touch her.

“Yes!” Travis and Connor cheered. A few campers laughed a little.

Percy just sort of cringed because seeing it looked… really lame. And awkward. Very, very awkward. He wasn’t even sure what it looked like when it actually happened to him because back then Percy was too busy just sort of feeling angry and being out of it. Maybe it did look that bad.

Rolling her eyes, Annabeth gestured toward the screen, where Fake-Percy was staring down at his hands, looking very confused as to what was happening. “This right there is weird—how you do things without even realizing you’re doing them,” she told him.

He just shrugged. It wasn’t his first time making something with water happen accidentally. And it wasn’t the last, either. There was the bathroom incident with Clarisse and her friends. And there was that hurricane he’d created during his fight against Hyperion.

In the show, Fake-Nancy gasped a little as she sat in the fountain, completely drenched. And then she looked around at the other people who must have noticed the commotion.

“Percy pushed me!” she yelled, spitting water out of her mouth as the fountain returned back to normal and kept on sprouting more water at her.

“Nancy, are you okay?” a girl’s voice said as the image focused on Fake-Percy’s confused expression as he stared at Fake-Nancy.

Someone else off-screen added, “He just pushed Nancy!”

“What the heck! No, he didn’t!”

“Yeah, they should get their eyes checked!”

Percy swallowed a smile. “Guys, I sort of did,” he said unapologetically.

Leaning back a little, Annabeth smirked. “Technically, it was the water that pulled her in. You didn’t actually touch her,” she said rather smugly.

He huffed at her with a wide smile. “Well, the Mist wouldn’t let them see what really happened,” he retorted. “Besides, back then I was convinced I did somehow end up pushing her. I barely even saw what happened.”

Chiron sighed. “It was… unpredictable,” he said. “I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I knew it meant you were going to be in trouble soon.”

Which, as both Percy and Chiron recalled, was true.

They all turned to look back at the screen as a strange buzzing sound came from it and Fake-Percy hesitantly reached into his pocket and pulled out the pen Fake-Chiron had given him. It was now flickering and shaking insistently, like it was trying to change or draw his attention.

“This is freaky,” Lacy murmured, huddling a little more into the brother hugging her.

“There you are,” a voice said.

A few people jumped in alarm. Lacy buried her face in her brother’s shirt, shaking a little bit.

Percy narrowed his eyes at the screen at the realization that things were taking a different turn than they did in real life.

Fake-Percy looked up with wide eyes and the shot showed people staring at the pool or running toward it—kids from Yancy, or maybe other schools, as well. Behind them, though, a head taller than the children, they could see Fake-Mrs. Dodds looking at Fake-Percy with a calm, cold smile.

“We’re not fools, Percy Jackson,” her voice said, but… her lips weren’t moving.

“This is so weird!” Pollux complained. “Monsters can’t do that, can they?”

Chiron frowned. “No, she shouldn’t be able to do it. They… changed quite a few things, I’d say.”

Nico nodded as well. “Yeah, that’s not right.”

On the screen, Fake-Mrs. Dodds started walking slowly toward the camera—where Fake-Percy was, presumably.

“Mrs. Dodds,” Fake-Percy said. “You okay?”

“It was only a matter of time before we found you,” she continued and then her leather jacket… changed.

Percy sighed as one wing passed over her face. Then another one. The shot pulled back to show her from afar—the full display of what she looked like now that she has revealed herself to be a Fury. She kept on walking forward, knocking a kid over, but no one seemed to care about it.

“A Fury?” Ellis snorted. “Come on, it’s nothing. You can deal with her. Just slash her with your sword and—”

Will rolled his eyes and cut in. “Percy doesn’t know he’s a demigod at this point. It’s not that simple.” He looked at Percy. “So, wait, did this really happen?”

Making a so-so gesture with his hand, Percy grimaced. “She led me back into the museum and then, when we were alone, she changed and tried to kill me,” he said tonelessly. Mitchell whimpered a little along with Lacy. “Hey, but Chiron threw Riptide over to me, so I was okay,” he added quickly, spreading his arms a little to show that he was unharmed and, in fact, alive.

“Yeah, but… you were untrained, confused and probably scared out of your mind,” Will pressed.

Percy nodded. “Yeah, but I normally feel that way.”

“That’s not as reassuring as you might think it is, Percy,” Annabeth groaned.

He flashed her a sheepish smile.

Meanwhile, Fake-Percy was the focus of the camera again and he started backing away in alarm, trying to get away from his demon teacher. Percy remembered that (obviously a little differently, but still)—it was horrifying.

“Where is it, half-blood?” Fake-Mrs. Dodds demanded as she followed him, stepping onto the edge of the fountain to… what, be taller than Fake-Percy? She was already taller than him, being an adult facing a child. “Where is it?”

“Where is what?” Drew asked with an exasperated eyeroll. “Seriously, monsters are so lame when they just blame us for things and then don’t explain themselves.”

“You have no idea…” Percy grimaced as Fake-Percy backtracked even more, stumbled and fell on his back as Fake-Mrs. Dodds spread her wings, flew toward him and knelt over his body, way too close for comfort.

Kayla shuddered. “Seriously, has she never heard of personal space?” she asked.

From his table, Nico shook his head. “Probably not, actually,” he said.

“Okay,” Percy said in slight annoyance at the clearly-incapable Fake-Percy. “I know I was absolutely terrified back then, but I didn’t fall down and when she got that close, I killed her with Riptide. This is seriously embarrassing to watch.”

A few campers snickered at his misery.

In the show, Fake-Mrs. Dodds looked like she was going to either stab Percy with her talons or demand some answers from him, but then they both looked down as something glowed and Percy groaned when the shot revealed something glowing gold sticking out of the Fury, starting to incinerate her.

Growling in anger and trying to get Fake-Percy, Fake-Mrs. Dodds turned into dust before she could do anything more—she was dying from Riptide and Fake-Percy didn’t even seem to fully grasp what was happening.

“This is so bad…” Percy murmured, running his fingers through his hair as he shoved more food in his mouth to try and distract himself from the scene, if only a little.

“Well, at least she’s dead, right?” a girl from the Hermes cabin said. “So that’s one problem you won’t have to deal with again.”

Annabeth snorted at that but didn’t explain her reaction when other campers turned to her questioningly. From his place, Nico gave Percy a knowing, small smirk. Percy fought the urge to remind the kid that he was the reason he even ran into Mrs. Dodds again before the war against Kronos.

He figured bringing it up now would just be uncalled for. After all, Nico didn’t know what was going to happen. He was sincerely trying to help while also getting some answers for his own questions. Honestly, he was acting like a kid, kind of, and he redeemed himself when he helped Percy escape and then convinced his father to help fight Kronos.

The scene on the screen faded to gray for a moment or two and then figures slowly fazed back—a circle of kids looking down at the camera, like they were staring at someone that’s fallen down. One of them was Fake-Grover. Percy didn’t need to see it to know that the one on the floor was Fake-Percy.

“Is he okay?” someone said.

“Is he dead?” another asked.

Clarisse snorted. “You fainted, wimp?”

Glaring at her weakly, Percy tried not to try and get up to fight all the gods responsible for this. “I did not. I thought I was hallucinating and I figured someone must have drugged my lunch, but I didn’t faint!”

She smirked at him, like she didn’t believe him for a second and Percy resisted the urge to send a torrent of water at her. Maybe juice from the goblets of the campers around the pavilion.

The shot changed to show Fake-Chiron wheeling himself toward the scene. “Give him some room, please,” he said.

Fake-Grover knelt down and helped Fake-Percy get up. “What happened?” Fake-Percy asked, looking at someone off-screen.

It showed Fake-Nancy standing there, still wet. She had a sweater on her—clearly dry—and a strange woman was rubbing her arms to try and warm her up. She was old and Percy figured that was the replacement teacher Fake-Chiron got there, using the Mist to make everyone believe she’s always been there.

“Who’s that?” Chris asked. “That woman, I mean.”

“Probably the new teacher that replaced Mrs. Dodds,” Percy said.

Annabeth glanced at him. “The Mist?”

He nodded.

“Where’s Mrs. Dodds?” Fake-Percy asked Fake-Chiron.

The shot focused on Fake-Chiron as he regarded Fake-Percy carefully, like he was sizing him up, a little uncomfortably. In the background, they could hear Fake-Nancy shouting, “I didn’t do anything to him! He pushed me!”

“Everyone, go back to your lunches!” Fake-Chiron said loudly to the other students. The students started to disperse. “It’s alright. Percy just needs a moment, that’s all.”

Fake-Percy frowned. “I don’t understand. Didn’t anyone just see that?” He looked at Fake-Chiron and then at Fake-Grover, both of whom remained silent. “Where’s Mrs. Dodds?”

“You just killed her, dude,” someone laughed.

Exchanging a look with an uncomfortable-looking Fake-Grover, Fake-Chiron turned to Fake-Percy, concern in his voice. “Percy, there’s no one here by that name,” he said.

As Fake-Percy looked toward Fake-Grover who shook his head, siding with Fake-Chiron, the campers watching this gawked at the screen like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

“Wait, tell me that didn’t actually happen,” Katie said. She looked at Chiron accusingly. “Did you really lie to him about it?”

“The one thing they got right had to be the part that made me feel like I was going insane…” Percy grumbled to himself.

The centaur at the front sighed. “I was hoping that if Percy remained oblivious to our world for just a little longer, he would be safe.” He sent Percy an apologetic glance that made the other campers gape, realizing this part in the show was actually true. “I am sorry if that made you feel…”

“Unhinged? Crazy? Mental? Absolutely out of my mind?” Percy suggested. Some of the other demigods nodded faintly, looking at each other like they could relate to the feeling. “It’s okay—Grover couldn’t really lie so I knew something was off.”

“He’s gotten better since then,” Annabeth said fondly.

“Oh, yeah. For sure,” Percy agreed easily.

“Alright, class,” Fake-Chiron kept on talking to the other students as the shot showed Fake-Percy’s baffled expression. Percy figured he must have looked just as flabbergasted back then, too. “Let’s move along. Let’s go. Finish your lunch.”

The screen turned black and an unfamiliar voice spoke up—a man, serious, kind of old, maybe. “The truth… can be so very hard to determine,” whoever it was said.

Then the screen flashed with color as a dark office was revealed—two windows being the only source of light. They revealed a man sitting behind a desk—probably the man that was supposed to be Percy’s principal. Fake-Chiron was sitting in his wheelchair to the principal’s left. Another man was sitting on a chair to his right.

Their backs to the camera, Percy recognized Fake-Grover and Fake-Percy sitting in front of the principal. Apparently, the supposed-hallucination was a big deal. Enough so that he would end up being questioned by the principal at Yancy, which… didn’t actually happen. He got in trouble for calling his teacher some name—not because he pushed Nancy in the fountain and killed his math teacher.

“But in this case, the truth seems very hard to deny,” the principal continued.

“I can’t believe I’m actually seeing this,” Percy said in astonishment. He shared a look with Chiron, not sure whether to feel amused or annoyed. “This is… way more dramatic than the way everyone just ignored that incident.”

The centaur shrugged. “Hephaestus TV tries to gain as much rating as it can get. If that means making things more dramatic, then so be it.”

On the screen, the principal kept on talking. “Mr. Jackson,” he said and the shot moved to show Fake-Percy looking at him somewhat defiantly with Fake-Grover staring at his lap, head bent down. “A number of your classmates saw you and Mr. Underwood arguing with Ms. Bobofit, yet you have offered no explanation for how she ended up in that fountain, other than, uh…” He moved a page on his desk and read from it. “’I didn’t touch Nancy’.”

Annabeth shook her head. “Which is technically true…”

“I don’t think they care about technicality when they can’t see through the Mist,” Christopher said. “I mean, they probably saw Percy pushing Nancy in the water.”

“I actually think the others saw the water grabbing her,” Percy chimed in. “At least, from what I remember. Not from this atrocity.” He waved at the screen vaguely, rolling his eyes.

“Now,” the principal went on, turning back to look at Fake-Percy. “Isn’t there anything else you’d like to say for yourself?”

With a frown—slightly confused—on Fake-Percy’s face, the boy shook his head a tiny bit. “I didn’t touch Nancy,” he insisted. Fake-Grover’s blurry face turned to look at him in the background.

“Shut up, fake-me,” Percy moaned. “This doesn’t help.”

Travis Stoll grimaced. “Well, at least you’re sticking to your version, right?” he said weakly. He looked like the scene was painful for him to watch.

With a sigh, the principal on the screen spoke again, sounding tired. “Okay… Mr. Underwood, do you have anything to add?”

For a few moments Fake-Grover seemed to contemplate what to do next as he stared up ahead, at the principal, and then he gulped. “Yes,” he said. Fake-Percy snapped his head in his direction. “I do.”

“Go on,” encouraged the principal.

Percy gawked at the screen. “No way—what did they do to Grover?” he demanded. “He never sold me out, no matter what kind of trouble I got myself into.”

“Yeah, he still does that,” Annabeth said.

“Definitely not accurate,” Clarisse grumbled, like it annoyed her that she had to watch this fake thing, but the vines were still refusing to relent. None of them could leave.

Taking in a deep breath, Fake-Grover started talking. “Percy had told me earlier in the day that he wanted to get back at Nancy for all she’d done to us.”

“Grover?” Fake-Percy leaned forward, staring at the satyr with a frown, looking absolutely betrayed.

Percy could relate—this was only a show and the guy wasn’t really him, but if any friend of his sold him out for something the way Fake-Grover was doing, he would have felt more than a little stab of betrayal.

“Shut up, Grover…” someone urged.

“Yeah, close your mouth and be quiet.”

Fake-Grover, not hearing them, kept on talking—ignoring Fake-Percy. “And he isn’t being truthful about what happened at the fountain.”

“Grover!” Fake-Percy protested.

Gods, it irked him to watch this thing now—and Percy already knew this never truly happened!

“Some friendship that is,” a Demeter kid said, looking very uncomfortable with the scene. “How are they going to continue with this line, though? I mean, you and Grover are best friends. How does that work after this?”

Shaking his head, Percy pulled his shoulders. “I have absolutely no idea.”

“Excuse me,” the principal said and Fake-Percy turned to look at him, clearly annoyed now. The man looked at Fake-Grover, though. “Are you saying you saw Mr. Jackson assault Ms. Bobofit?”

For a moment the two looked at each other and Fake-Grover looked like he was preparing himself for his reply. Fake-Percy glared at him.

“Yes,” said Fake-Grover eventually. “I did.”

The shot focused on Fake-Percy as he regarded his ‘friend’, eyes narrowed and head shaking slightly in disbelief at what he was seeing and hearing. Percy couldn’t blame him—this was painful to watch and he was already aware of how inaccurate it was.

“Well, that went well,” Drew drawled out. She looked down at her nails and scoffed. “Some friend he turned out to be.”

“Hey, Grover is a great friend!” Percy objected quickly. “This thing is just messed up! They completely ruined him! And everyone else, too, probably,” he added.

Jake hummed a little thoughtfully. “Well… they didn’t nail your appearance, but some of this guy’s expressions are pretty accurate. I mean, we’re only about ten minutes in—give it a chance.”

Glaring at him, Percy threw his hand toward the screen. “Give this a chance? They just made my best friend betray me! My mom tried to make me feel bad about killing Medusa after she tried to petrify Annabeth, Grover and I and, apparently, I think I’m crazy here. I don’t need to give it a chance—it’s already too messed up.”

“But some of this is good, right?” Nyssa chimed in. “It’s not all bad. Like… Grover kind of looks like himself? And your actor doesn’t look like you, but he’s not acting too out of character, I guess, if you ignore the parts where his backstory is different.” She shrugged. “It’s not all bad. And they’re going to have to fix your friendship with Grover later on.”

He groaned and shook his head. “Whatever. It doesn’t even matter,” he relented and avoided the understanding look Annabeth was shooting him from the Athena table. He wished she could sit next to him so he wouldn’t have to deal with this on his own. Or maybe Grover—he could have been there had he not been busy with his new job.

When they all turned back to the screen, the scene changed. It showed a shot of someone sitting on a bench—Percy assumed it was Fake-Percy—and a suitcase resting on the ground next to it. Then it switched to reveal Fake-Percy sitting and glaring at the ground, wearing a red coat. He looked extremely annoyed, which wasn’t really unpredictable.

“Wait, did you get kicked out for that?” Lacy asked.

“Oh, no. I mean, here I guess it did happen, but nobody really paid any attention to it when it actually happened. I got expelled from Yancy later that year because I insulted a teacher after getting into fights and never being able to sit through an entire class without getting thrown out to the hallway.”

Some of them nodded in understanding, able to relate to his experience. Others eyed the screen like they were trying to understand why didn’t just show the truth instead of focusing on this one incident with Fake-Nancy.

“None of this is easy,” Fake-Chiron’s voice said from off-screen.

Percy cringed. “At least it’s not in front of an entire class this time…” he muttered to himself.

The camera now showed Fake-Chiron as he wheeled himself closer to Fake-Percy’s bench. The boy wasn’t looking at him and in the background people were walking away. Next to Fake-Percy rested a bag—probably also filled with his stuff after getting kicked out of school.

Fake-Chiron continued speaking. “Not for you, not for any of us. I’m very concerned about you, Percy.”

Percy arched an eyebrow at that. “Oh, hey, this is kind of going better than what actually happened,” he commented.

Flinching a little, Chiron sighed. “Oh, yes. If I recall that day correctly, I did not make things any better.”

To be frank, Chiron had put his foot in his mouth during that entire exchange, making Percy feel even worse than he already was feeling—especially since the one talking to him was his favorite teacher. At least they changed it in this version, though, so Fake-Percy didn’t suffer through the same exchange.

“I saw what happened at the museum,” Fake-Chiron said.

Fake-Percy looked exasperated. “I didn’t touch Nancy,” he said, like it was something he’s been perfecting for a while now.

“This is getting old, pal,” Percy said.

A few of the campers snickered.

Fake-Chiron met Fake-Percy’s eyes. “I know you didn’t,” he said, which made Fake-Percy stare at him in bafflement and astonishment. “At least, I know you think you didn’t.”

“Gods…” Pollux muttered.

“Be more cryptic about it, why don’t you,” Austin grumbled. “It will certainly help make things clearer.”

Fake-Percy looked away from Fake-Chiron, his brief moment of hope extinguishing at the words. “Do you want to tell me what you think did happen?” asked Fake-Chiron. “You can tell me. I might just understand.”

Percy smiled a little. Of course Chiron would understand—he knew Percy was a half-blood. Now, if only Percy knew he was a half-blood back then…

“You wanna bet?” Fake-Percy snarked.

A few campers chuckled like it was a good joke.

Apparently, they weren’t the only ones to find this amusing because on the screen, Fake-Chiron chuckled, too. “Percy… I’ve seen a lot of young people go through this sort of thing in my time,” he said and Fake-Percy looked away again, seemingly annoyed. “But of all of them, I suspect that… you might have the most difficult journey.”

“Gods… I needed that warning,” Percy said.

“Like it would have changed anything—you still would’ve done all the crazy things you did, Seaweed Brain,” Annabeth countered with a sweet, innocent grin aimed his way. He returned it happily, not even bothering to try and deny her claim.

From another table, someone murmured, “Way to make us feel less significant…”

“Yeah,” another replied. “No kidding.”

Percy cringed and didn’t say anything about it.

“I suspect you are special,” Fake-Chiron added. Fake-Percy looked like he was done with this conversation. “So much more so than you know.”

“Just… stop,” said Fake-Percy. He got up restlessly and faced the man in the wheelchair. “Okay? I don’t need any more stories about how special I don’t realize I am. They aren’t helping.”

The thing was, Percy could relate to what this actor was saying. He remembered Chiron and his mother saying things like that to try and cheer him up, but it always ended up making him feel even worse because he didn’t understand what they were trying to tell him. He just thought they were calling him weird.

Fake-Percy glanced sideways. “This is my ride. I’m going home.”

He picked up his bag off the bench as a car rode into view, blocking the two actors from the camera’s sight. Then the shot focused on Fake-Chiron as he watched, looking a little lost as he tried to find the words to say or a way to make things better.

The scene changed to show the car driving away, the shadowed figures of the driver and Fake-Percy barely seen sitting inside.

As the scene switched to a view of New York in the middle of a storm, clouds covering the sky, Percy’s insides clenched and dread filled him. This was all… awkward and lame and kind of funny sometimes, sure, but if this thing was going to show the situation of his home life back then… with Gabe…

“Hey, Percy, are you okay?” Annabeth asked.

She wasn’t the only one staring at him worriedly—Percy kind of felt lightheaded, meaning he was probably pale, as well. He could only manage a faint nod as he prayed (he couldn’t believe he was doing this) to the gods to make sure they didn’t show how horrible Gabe was if he was a part of this program.

The last thing Percy needed right now was for his friends to all know about what a jerk Gabe used to be. How he used to hit Percy and his mom. How he could be constantly found in the apartment, sitting with his buddies, playing poker and drinking beer or smoking his stinky cigars.

Please, please, please, he prayed, hands clasped tightly together. Just keep one thing private. One thing.

He hoped he wasn’t imagining the scent of the ocean breeze all around him. He hoped it meant that his father, at least, was listening.

“Sorry,” he said, hoping his voice wasn’t going to betray him and sound like he was going to burst into tears or anything. Annabeth narrowed her eyes at him but the other campers looked only mildly concerned. “Just lost in thought for a moment.”

“Oh, okay,” Connor said and then turned toward Chris. “So about that new kiosk uptown—”

Chris stared at him, unimpressed. “I’m not helping you rob it. Again,” he refused.

Percy stared at the Hermes table in confusion. “What’s going on?”

Waving his hand dismissively, Travis shook his head. “Oh, don’t worry about it, Percy. You can focus on the less important stuff—like Hephaestus TV. We’ll settle this between ourselves. We’re all brothers, after all.”

By the expression on Chris’s face, it looked like he would rather focus on Hephaestus TV more, too, but he didn’t say anything as he rolled his eyes at the Stolls.

Turning his gaze over to Annabeth, Percy found her just shaking her head at him, apparently agreeing that he shouldn’t even ask about it anymore. Then she pointed at him discreetly. “Talk later,” she mouthed.

He thought about telling her about Gabe. Annabeth knew the man existed. She knew him from their first quest and then from some of the stories Percy had told her, but he never elaborated and she didn’t push. He kind of appreciated that, but after watching this program… this might change.

“Maybe,” he decided to say, not committing to anything, just in case.

Annabeth didn’t seem to appreciate the answer, but she didn’t push him for a better response right now.

Percy turned back to the screen and watched as it unfroze. There was a shot of a gloomy New York street, with people in coats and umbrellas and cars passing by. Then it changed to show the hallways of an apartment building, a woman in a yellow sweater walking away from the camera, back to it. In the background, they could hear the yelling that made Percy’s hands clench.

“There’s nothing wrong with the plumbing in this building,” a man’s voice said as Fake-Percy walked from around the corner, carrying his bag and suitcase and passing the lady in yellow. He didn’t look too happy about coming back home. “Maybe you should see a doctor.”

“How do you know I’m not a doctor, huh?” another voice demanded and Fake-Percy stopped walking, staring at the door the voices was coming from with a tired and resigned expression on his face.

The first voice spoke again. “Have you considered eating more fruit?”

The door of the apartment opened and the second voice came out louder, now. “Hey, I eat plenty of fruit!” he said and a man started coming out of the apartment, holding some sort of cables, maybe, and a plunger. “Have you considered eating more fruit?” the man inside the apartment yelled.

Percy groaned and rubbed the sides of his head tiredly. He ignored the looks he was getting from the other curious campers who were clearly trying to understand what was going on and why it was so important to the story. Maybe they were wondering whether it was genuinely something Percy’d had to deal with or not, although his reaction must have given that away already.

The man coming out of the apartment must have been that guy that used to play poker with Gabe, right? The superintendent… what was his name again? He was always the one least hostile toward Percy. He actually had his moments of trying to defend him. A somewhat decent guy compared to the other people Gabe associated with.

Eddie. Right, Eddie.

And the man inside the apartment…

“Ugh… just kill me now,” Percy moaned.

Thunder boomed, making a few campers jump and several of them to glare at the sky accusingly.

Percy was one of the latter group. “Oh, shut up!” he snapped at the sky.

Since lightning didn’t strike him, he figured he was allowed to be slightly annoyed right now. Gabe was here, and even though this conversation between him and Eddie was rather stupid, Percy just knew he should expect the worst already.

“Uh… that guy inside isn’t Paul, is it?” Nico asked somewhat timidly.

“No, there was someone else before him,” Annabeth said when Percy didn’t respond. “Percy hasn’t mentioned him too much, though. I don’t know what happened or…” she trailed off uncertainly.

Percy stopped massaging his head and instead held onto his goblet, his grip tightening around it as he tried not to lose his cool and make everybody’s drink explode or something.

“My mom took care of him. He was a jerk. Paul is a million times better than he was,” he said curtly.

He could tell they wanted to ask more questions, but nobody dared say another word. They all just turned to look at the screen, their bodies now tense. Percy noticed Lacy’s eyes glancing at her own goblet like the liquid inside was fascinating and he realized he was probably failing at not letting his anger show through his powers after all.

Focusing on the program again, Percy watched as Fake-Eddie closed the door of the apartment, sighed heavily and then turned around and smiled at Fake-Percy. “Oh, hello, Percy,” he said with a solemn, pitying expression.

“Hey, Eddie,” Fake-Percy said (Percy was kind of proud of himself for remembering the guy’s name correctly). He looked defeated as he glanced at the door of the apartment and then back at Fake-Eddie. “Sorry about that.”

“I’m walking out. You’re walking in. I should be apologizing to you.”

Fake-Eddie offered him a pained smile and then walked away. Fake-Percy just remained there, standing in the hallway for a moment or two, probably wishing he could just stay outside instead of coming into the apartment. A place that didn’t feel like home with Gabe around.

The campers leaned in—it was probably a subconscious thing because they were just too interested to find out what was so bad about Gabe. Annabeth kept on trying to catch Percy’s eye but he avoided her and stared at the projection of his fake life with growing apprehension.

Finally, Fake-Percy stepped toward the door and hesitantly turned the doorknob and went inside.

“Hell, hello!” the man from before said and then the scene switched to show… some guy.

Percy studied the scene before him with narrowed his eyes, finding himself leaning forward like the others, too. This guy… he didn’t quite look like Gabe. He had more hair and he wasn’t playing poker. In fact, he was by himself, sitting down in the leaving room with a can of beer at hand. His clothes were baggy and crumpled. A laptop was open in his lap, the TV showing some kind of… horse racing, maybe?

The apartment wasn’t the one Percy grew up in either. It was messy and kind of dark, but it wasn’t filled with cans of beer or with cigars or anything else Gabe might have thrown around. There were a few cans tossed around on a table next to Gabe and another one nearby, but it didn’t look as bad as what Percy remembered.

“Welcome home, genius,” Fake-Gabe said mockingly.

Percy squinted his eyes at Fake-Gabe and tilted his head slightly to the side. “He looks… kind of pathetic, not gonna lie.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” a guy from Aphrodite said with disgust. “He’s wearing a wrinkled button-down shirt and sweats!”

Not what Percy was talking about, but that was true, as well.

Fake-Percy looked like he was trying not to look straight at Fake-Gabe. “Is my mom home from work?” he asked.

“Oh, is that all you gotta say to me? Huh? After failing out of school?”

“Gods, who is this guy?” Percy blinked at the screen in confusion and shook his head. “This is not Gabe. It’s some… watered-down version of him, if he were a pathetic, lazy idiot.”

“So he wasn’t like that?” someone asked.

Percy frowned. “Oh, he was a total jerk. Always took my money to spend it on his poker games with his buddies. It was awful. He never asked me about school. He didn’t really care unless it was to make fun of me.”

He was willing to say that much. What he wasn’t going to say was that Gabe—the real one—also beat up both Percy and his mom. He didn’t want to see it on-screen and it was a relief that this guy didn’t seem to be into the idea of abusing anyone.

But it sucked that he was looking at an actor that was trying to be someone Percy hated with all his might… and he wasn’t provoking any sort of real anger—Percy mostly just felt like cringing.

At the front of the pavilion, the scene kept on going. “I didn’t fail out of school,” Fake-Percy countered.

“Your principal called and that’s what he said,” Fake-Gabe said, but he sounded so… wrong. He was annoying, sure, but it wasn’t as bad as the real Gabe. This was like a mockery coming from a six-year-old. Very pathetic. “He said you got kicked out.”

“They called Mom’s cell. You answer Mom’s cell?”

“I answer whatever’s ringing.” Fake-Gabe looked at him like he should have known that.

“Is it weird that I feel bad for this guy and not you, Percy?” Katie asked.

Percy shook his head. His expression must have been a strange one because Travis and Connor glanced at him and burst out laughing. “Honestly, I kind of feel a little bad for him, too, right now,” he said faintly. “This is… so weird. It’s so wrong…”

Fake-Gabe kept on talking on-screen. “So, what’d you get kicked out for, hmm?”

Fake-Percy looked at the ground, now less hostile. “He said I attacked a kid on a field trip.”

The camera zoomed in on Fake-Gabe’s face as he bobbed his head a couple of times and said, “Okay. Alright, if…”

Fake-Percy scrunched his eyebrows together at that, like he couldn’t believe Fake-Gabe was actually okay with the accusations.

Then again, as weird a version as this was, this actor was still trying to be Gabe Ugliano. He was probably supporting attacks on children. Well, no longer because he was gone now, but… you get the idea.

“But still,” Fake-Gabe caught himself finally. “If you’re gonna live under my roof, you gotta live by my rules.”

“Your roof? My mom is the only one employed here,” Fake-Percy said.

“Not true,” Percy countered. “Gabe worked, too. Kind of. He never went to work as far as I could tell—not sure why they bothered paying him.”

“This guy… is really pitiful,” Drew said with a sniff.

Honestly, Percy was inclined to agree with her on that.

“Excuse me?” Fake-Gabe said, not sounding too menacing or particularly annoyed. “I have a job. What does it look like I’m doing right now?”

“Losing at imaginary poker,” Fake-Percy said, pointing at the laptop.

“It’s official,” Percy covered his face with both hands. “I feel bad for him. This isn’t Gabe—it’s some lame knockoff that I can’t hate.” He shook his head from side to side. “I can’t believe they managed to ruin him, too.”

A part of him was aware of the fact that he prayed that Gabe won’t be the same as he was in real life on Hephaestus TV, but he never meant he wanted Fake-Gabe to be so lame that Percy would feel somewhat sympathetic toward him. It was so… wrong. Just wrong.

“This guy looks like his dreams have been crushed and he’s just really lost right now,” Valentina Diaz from the Aphrodite cabin said. “Makes you think about how you’d react if you don’t achieve your goals in life, too, huh?”

“That’s depressing,” Kayla muttered from the Apollo table.

Sherman sneered at Valentina. “Seriously, you couldn’t keep your mouth shut? Why did you have to make everyone feel bad with your philosophical thoughts?”

The girl cringed a little. “I was just wondering…” she muttered.

“You would think that, because you’re a child,” Fake-Gabe said on-screen and Fake-Percy looked away from him and deeper into the apartment, clearly tired of this conversation already. “And you don’t understand things like—”

“Where’s my mom?” Fake-Percy interrupted him.

“I don’t know. I don’t know where your mom is. I’m not Nostradamus,” he replied in exasperation.

A few campers eyed the screen in confusion at the comment but didn’t say anything.

Percy himself chanced a baffled glance toward Annabeth who smirked at him already, clearly knowing he wouldn’t understand the reference. He hoped the scowl he sent her in return was enough to let her know that he was kind of annoyed by her smugness at his lack of knowledge. Again.

“What are we doing, Percy?” Fake-Gabe continued. “Every time!” He stared at Fake-Percy who returned his gaze for a moment before wordlessly walking away and down the hall of the apartment. “Wow! Wow!” Fake-Gabe muttered with a sarcastic, little smile as he nodded and watched Fake-Percy’s retreat.

It was really getting annoying, how Percy felt actually bad for Fake-Gabe in this whole thing. He wasn’t a good person, but he wasn’t doing anything wrong, either. He seemed to become such a neutral character that Fake-Percy was just really sick of for no apparent reason.

Had the real Gabe been on-screen, everyone watching would have hated him with a passion. At least, the people who didn’t side with abusive jerks. He would have made the entire episode that much more disastrous, making people actually pity Fake-Percy, probably. Instead, Percy kind of felt like flicking the guy’s head for being so rude toward someone who hasn’t done anything to him.

Chapter Text

Would you read it if I continued writing this fic, but instead of writing EVERYTHING, I write only about the scenes I find interesting and funny? Because this is just too much. I cannot do the entire series when I don't even like it much, but I do like parts of it because they're incredibly ridiculous and I can just picture the book characters watching them and laughing their butts off with Percy just cringing in the corner and wishing he'd have chosen being a god just so he could make the nightmare stop already.

Anyway, would you read that?