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It was an average late-summer night, the weather was pleasantly warm on the oceanfront grounds in which the group of demigods who referred to themselves as the Ravens called their home, and most of the group had decided to take the day to enjoy the warm weather and their time as friends and found family. Ajax Striker was sitting on the edge of the sea as he felt his blond hair fluttering in the breeze in time with the waves as he stared into the horizon, thinking about his time during his life, the discovery of him being the child of the ancient Titan Chronos, learning about his mortal father and half sister being murdered by a home invader two years after he’d been thrown to the streets for his identity, and later, his adoption and initiation into the warm and welcoming group of misfits and demigods who had appreciated him and his way of thinking from the first time they had ever met.
Ajax stared at the sun, watching from his working right eye as it began to set. He suddenly heard his friend, Jaymie Mulligan, calling out to him to start getting ready to leave for the group home and to get ready for the movie night everyone was planning on going to hang out for.
“Come on, Jaymie, it’s only six. Movie night doesn’t start until ten. I’m fine. I already got the snacks I'm planning on sharing, so I’ll be over there in the next three and a half hours.” Ajax said, before walking into the sea and feeling the warm saltwater hit his ankles.
“Alright, suit yourself, it’s just that Duncan’s made steak for everyone and he wanted me to get you while they’re still fresh. I’ll see you when you come back.” Jaymie replied as he walked off, the sand squeaking beneath his feet as he padded away.
Ajax continued to swim in the ocean for the next three hours while he bordered on meditation and complete calmness, feeling his abilities and partial control over time.
Out of nowhere, Ajax was pulled from his state of complete calmness by a familiar voice, Leora Talon, a daughter of Poseidon.
“Hey Leora,” Ajax smiled.
“What’s up, ‘Jax?”
“Eh, not a ton, just meditating while I'm sitting at the shoreline. I think I’m finally about to hit a breakthrough with a discovery of a new ability.” Ajax replied with mild excitement.
“Great to hear. I can sense a storm rolling in from the sea, you should probably get back to the group house shortly.” Leora said after adjusting the tricorn hat atop her head of curly brown hair and fixing a few of her coat pins. She looked like an actual pirate, though was the farthest thing from one, being a marine biologist with a very antique ship from the seventeenth century.
“Alright, I’ll heed your warnings since you’re usually right with stuff like this, so I’ll see you in a little bit. You’re coming to the monthly movie night, right?” Ajax asked, and Leora excitedly shook her head no.
“Sorry, ‘Jax, my crew and I have come across a fascinating discovery that we need to get out to investigate as soon as we possibly can. Maybe next month? Tell Duncan I’ll have his fresh seaweed in the next week or so.”
“Will do. See you when you get back from whatever expedition you’re embarking on,” Ajax replied as his friend walked off, himself doing the same after grabbing his towel from the sand.
After a fifteen minute walk, Ajax reached the place he had called home for the first year that he’d been a member of the Ravens. He walked inside to hear the bustling environment of the house he called a part of his home. Josiah Blair, a son of Asclepius, was yelling at Jaymie, the child of Eros, for being a horny little bastard, while Duncan Hayes(son of Ares) sat at the stove making four pounds of popcorn for the group of demigods to eat while watching movies all night.
“Hey, Love,” Makoto, Ajax’s boyfriend, said with a sly smile, “You’re looking nice in that,”
“Seriously? You’re just as bad as Jaymie sometimes.” Ajax huffed, feigning frustration and failing as he chuckled.
“Ajax, go get changed into your lounge clothes and get the snacks you picked up to pass out while you’re in you and Makoto’s room.” Duncan said, his heavily Australian dialect showing through. He never took his gaze from the pot of kettle corn he was making. Ajax complied, making his way through the very large and comfortable house to his bedroom, stopping as he heard a noise come from the other side.
“Hey, April,” Ajax said to the now fifteen year old demigod daughter of Zephyros whom he had not-so-legally adopted off the streets a year earlier(She had been thrown out by her mother for being too hard to control, something that came with being the daughter of a wind god, and Ajax, understanding what it felt like to be alone on the streets with no one to help out, took her in and gave her a comfortable place to stay).
“Hey, Ajax,” April replied, running her fingers through her large and pristine white feathered wings.
“Can you not preen your feathers on me and Makoto’s bed? The casings get in the sheets and we have to spend an hour vacuuming just to make it tolerable.”
“Fine. By the way, have you heard anything from Kai? I know they’re your ex and whatever, but i kind of miss seeing them around,” April said, moving her attention to braiding her long, gray-blonde hair.
“No, last I checked they were moving back in with their mom on the other side of the country.” Ajax replied. “Alright I need you to leave my room, I’m about to change and I’m sure you don’t want to see my dick,” he laughed as he walked to his closet and pulled out his favorite camo shirt, clean boxers, and washed out blue jeans from the rack and shelf. In the meantime, April left the room and Ajax heard her swindling Hikaru out of a bag of Cheetos.
Ajax changed into his clothes for the evening and, after grabbing the snacks and candy he was planning on sharing with the other Ravens for the movie night, he left the bedroom and made his way into the kitchen to get ziploc bags of the snacks ready.
Eventually, ten P.M. rolled around and it was time to pile into the living room to watch movies all night.
The first movie the group had decided to watch was The Emperor’s New Groove, because for one, it was Jaymie’s turn to pick the first movie of the night, two, he had been banned from anything over a TV 14 rating due to previous incidents of him choosing rated X movies which had sex scenes within, and three, Ajax had never seen it before.
Everyone piled into the large and spacious living room, where Adonis Pearce, a son of Thanatos, the god of death, Ajax, Duncan, and Phoenix sat on the couch, Jaymie, Makoto, and Jules sat in front of the couch, and Josiah, Darcy, Hikaru, and Polaris sat in various other lounge chairs around the room.
After the first thirty minutes of the movie passed, Josiah had to get up to head to the bathroom and take a leak, only because he had completely forgotten to do so before it started. While Josiah was in the bathroom, the smell hit. It was an indescribable and completely gut wrenching scent, horrendous enough to make Makoto gag. Jaymie looked around for the source of the smell, not realizing the origin was just behind him, and Phoenix had to leave in order to not puke right then and there.
Hikaru was already extremely sensitive to bad smells due to the son of Hypos having been in the early stages of surrogating a child for Ajax and Makoto, he immediately vomited.
“The fuck is that awful smell, and why does it smell like the rotting animals I had to deal with back home-?” Duncan asked, looking over at Ajax, his eyes growing to the size of dinner plates.
“A… Ajax-?” He asked slowly, pointing at the mess of rotting flesh that was once his left arm, “what is that-?”
It was then that Ajax looked down and saw what exactly Duncan was referring to. It was gangrenous and necrotic, taking up the majority of his left arm, starting about halfway down his bicep and ending at roughly his wrist.
Ajax then realized that Adonis still hadn’t even spoken, let alone tried helping. He also began feeling extremely nauseated and lightheaded, and Adonis slowly and quietly said that he had to go and that he was extremely sorry, running off to his, Jaymie, and Hikaru’s bedroom.
“What the hell is going on right now-?” Josiah asked as he walked back into the living room, before seeing what was happening. “Jaymie, call an ambulance, Darcy, I’m going to need your help with keeping Ajax stable. Just by looking at this, if Ajax doesn’t get help in the next few hours, he’s going to be as good as dead, or at the very least in severe sepsis worse than when he first came here.”
“Duncan, go in my room and grab my spellbook, I’m going to need it.” Darcy barked at the large Australian as he rushed over to start working his demigod abilities on Ajax.
“We are probably going to be working in shifts, and, knowing how doctors are with us being demigods, they aren’t going to believe that this happened within like- thirty minutes, so, Jules, go get the security tapes, we are going to need it in case a police report is made on any of us.” Josiah snapped, working his abilities on keeping Ajax from going into shock before paramedics could arrive.
Josiah passed out before he could reverse a lot of the spread, leaving Darcy with damage control while they waited for the ambulance to arrive and get Ajax to the emergency room.
“I’m going to want Makoto and Phoenix to come with me. Makoto for emotional support, and Phoenix, so that if I do end up dying, I have a really fast trip to the Underworld instead of waiting the equivalent of ten years to be judged by Cerberus.” Ajax said, feeling like the skin on his left shoulder and arm was being lit on fire and his heart rate increasing very rapidly.
Within the next ten and a half minutes, the ambulance arrived, where Ajax was able to get out with the help of Phoenix and Makoto. He was very quickly strapped onto the stretcher and pulled into the vehicle and stabilized, and the paramedics allowed Makoto to climb into the back with him on the way to the hospital, but couldn’t allow Phoenix to due to a lack of space on the vehicle.
“How long has his arm been like this?” the paramedic taking Ajax’s vitals asked.
“Literally less than thirty minutes.” Makoto replied.
“What is your relationship with the patient?” The EMT placing an IV into Ajax’s good arm asked, and Ajax piped up, explaining that Makoto was Ajax’s fiancé.
“You’re in good hands. As soon as the doctors know what is happening, they will do their best to keep you safe and as intact as they can safely manage.” The paramedic to Ajax’s left said as he rummaged through the locking cupboards full of medical supplies.
“I’m sorry if my tail fur causes you people any trouble, Ajax wanted me with him on the ride and I can’t say no to him,” Makoto said with sincerity, grabbing two of his three tails into his arms as he picked up any stray hair that fell off of them.
“We usually end up cleaning this thing multiple times a day, so a little fur is nothing, wait, so I wasn’t hallucinating?” one of the paramedics asked.
“No. I am a Kitsune Youkai from Japan, and I moved here about fifteen years ago, I believe.” Makoto replied, holding out his tail for Ajax or whoever wanted to touch it to be able to.
The ten minute ride went by as smoothly as an ambulance ride with a patient who has a necrotic arm can go, and soon, Ajax was brought straight into the emergency room and placed on antibiotics for the time.
Eventually, Ajax got a call from the group chat that they all had.
“Hey, what room were you put in?” Darcy asked on the other end of the call, “Josiah is back up and running and we all want to know so that we can visit.”
“I think they put us in room two oh five B,” he replied, “I can hear them all talking about the probability of me needing an amputation, so you guys might need to see me in the next twenty minutes.”
“We are already in the hospital, we will be in there shortly.” Duncan piped up from Darcy’s end, before Darcy let Ajax go.
Within the next two minutes, a large group of familiar faces were escorted into the room to visit with Ajax.
“How are you feeling?” Jaymie asked.
“Can I poke it?” Darcy questioned, and the questions soon started pouring out and smothering Ajax began getting overwhelmed by the sheer volume. Makoto sensed this and put a stop to the madness.
“Okay, okay, everyone, chill the hell out and back off a bit. My fiancé is very obviously in serious medical distress right now and he probably needs all the space he can get, both physically and emotionally.” Makoto snapped. “One question at a time. And no, Darcy, you cannot poke Ajax’s rotting arm. That’s dangerous for both parties.”
“I’m feeling okay, just very tired and woozy from the meds the doctors have me on while they figure out what they’re going to do.” Ajax replied, locating the room’s remote control for the T.V. and turning it on for some background noise while everyone chatted.
“I don’t know how much stress you two’s baby is going to be able to take. I can barely handle it myself. I just hope you come out of this situation okay,” Hikaru said, and Ajax and Makoto both nodded in agreement.
“If he doesn’t make it out, I'll get my first son to torment him from the spirit world,” Makoto joked, making light of his first son who had been killed for his fur about a century and a half earlier.
After a while of lighthearted conversation and banter among the large group of demigods, the head surgeon of the hospital came into the room to discuss the plans with them.
“Hello everyone. I am Doctor Killens, the head surgeon of this hospital. Might I ask who our patient today is?” the woman asked the group, half of which pointed at a very obvious Ajax, who was the only one laying in the bed with a half rotten arm.
“Alright, so it says here that this,” she referred to his arm by waving a hand at it, “was caused by one of your friends ‘losing control of their powers’ and accidentally touching your arm without any hand protection, which caused extreme rapid onset gangrene and necrosis,” the doctor said very confusedly, and Ajax nodded.
“Yeah, most of us here are demigods. We have proof too,” Ajax said as he reached over to his left arm and pulled off a gold ring with his right hand, before willingly transforming the small pieces of jewelry into a large scythe.
“Hey! Watch where you point that thing you shitwad!” Duncan said as he narrowly avoided being scratched by the blade. Ajax then willed the weapon to return itself to ring form and struggled to put it back on his middle finger.
“Love, why don’t you give them to me for now? You’re going to need surgery to fix the problem, so they won’t allow jewelry in the operating room,” Makoto said as he gently took Ajax’s working and stable hand in his own, and Ajax agreed.
“I grant the protection of my scythe to Himeko Makoto. I give my vow that he is safe while in possession of it.” Ajax said as he had Makoto hold out his hands while the blond placed the rings on his fingers.
“Alright, Doctor, I don’t want you to give me flowery or vague details of what is required to keep me alive. Do I need an amputation?” Ajax asked.
“Yes. From what the nurses have figured out,” the doctor said as she pulled out a marker from her coat breast pocket, “We need to amputate everything below this dotted line.” She drew a line of dots on Ajax’s arm about four inches below where his armpit began. “Because you are at least stable, we have a little time to be able to get the operating room prepared for your surgery, which should be ready to begin in the next hour. We will likely be placing you into a medically induced coma for the first week after the surgery, so that your body has time to start the healing process and it prevents you from accidentally popping any stitches or injuring the tissue further.” Doctor Killens explained.
“Looks like we get to have the next hour to be able to say our goodbyes,” Jaymie laughed.
Makoto sat on the bed next to Ajax. “I will be praying to Ōkininsushi for your safe healing,” he said.
“I’ll also be talking to my dad about making sure you get better as soon as the gods can make possible.” Josiah said with a grin.
“Praying to two medicine gods is better than one,” Duncan laughed.
“Love, please make sure you get through this, I love you and I don’t want to have to raise our coming child as a single and widowed parent.” Makoto said softly, pressing his forehead against Ajax’s.
“By the way. If I can get my friend who caused this accident to get rid of the rest of the flesh on my arm, would I be able to keep my bones?” Ajax asked.
“I don’t see why not, though there is the possibility of it still being a biohazard.” Doctor Killens replied.
“If I have to, we can bring Adonis in to have him do it here or in a special room.” Ajax said.
“That should be enough to convince the other staff.” The doctor said as she walked out of the room and allowed the demigods to wait for the time for Ajax to go in for surgery.
The hour passed with the group joking around, and Ajax was brought into the operating room and placed under the anesthesia. The surgery went smoothly, and Ajax was placed into a coma to make sure he continued to stay stable while his arm began healing from the injury and subsequent surgical amputation.
The group spent the next week waiting for the next Saturday that Ajax would be taken off of the medication which was inducing the coma. Makoto refused to leave the hospital, and everyone but Adonis visited at least once.
Ajax was slowly brought out of his coma, and eventually, could finally hear things again, seeing as the beeping noises all around him were pissing him off to no end. At some point in the day after he was pulled from the medication inducing his coma, Ajax discovered he could finally open his eyes. He darted his weary eyes around the room and saw Makoto sitting in the chair, a worried look on his face. He tried to speak, but he realized there was a breathing tube still in his throat, preventing him from doing so. Instead, he carefully reached his right hand out, feeling the IVs still in his hand and arm gently tugging on his body as he reached towards his fiancé.
Makoto looked up to see Ajax’s eyes open and his arm making an attempt to reach out to him.
“My love!” he exclaimed as he rushed out of the room to get a staff member to help Ajax get the breathing tubes removed.
The next ten minutes flew by with an unnatural speed. Ajax had his breathing tube removed from his esophagus, and he spent the next five minutes breathing on his own and working his vocal cords for the first time in a week. He was unable to speak due to unavoidable damage to his vocal cords, though the doctors assured Ajax that they would heal in the coming days or weeks.
“Should I go get your phone?” Darcy asked, and Ajax nodded. “I’ll be back then, don’t get into any trouble.” he laughed as he left the room.
“How do you feel?” Makoto asked, placing a hand on Ajax’s remaining one.
“I feel okay,” Ajax managed to whisper, “Great way to lose fifteen pounds,” he softly chuckled.
“Mr. Striker, We managed to get the okay to allow you to bring home your arm. If you can get your friend here to decay the rest of the flesh so that this is no longer a biohazard, that would be great.” Doctor Killens said as she entered the room.
“Makoto, can you call Jaymie and get him to bring Adonis?” Ajax whispered, and his partner nodded, pulling out his phone and calling their friend.
Jaymie arrived at the hospital in twenty minutes with a nervous Adonis and an excited Darcy in tow.
“I have the culprit. By the way, Darcy got your phone.” Jaymie said cheerily as he walked through the doorway into the room. Ajax noticed Adonis slowly pass through the doorway and quietly stand in the corner of the room, his hands tightly at his sides.
“Dude, lighten up!” Ajax whispered as loudly as he could. “It was a complete accident. You didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“I know, but I’m still scared of hurting you again.” Adonis replied.
“Dude, shit happens, I know how you can make it up to me,” Ajax whispered before turning to the doctor. “Can you go get my arm?” he asked and Doctor Killens left and later returned with his limb.
“If you can manage to decompose the rest of the flesh on my arm, I will completely forgive you for this situation, not that I haven’t already.” Ajax said.
After a few minutes of silence, Adonis agreed. He pulled off the drawing gloves he wore on a daily basis and made his way over to the amputated arm that sat lifeless on the cart. He carefully placed his hands on the limb and it began rotting away into nothing, the smell overwhelming everyone in the room. After a short time, the smell entirely dissipated, and all that was left were bones. Much to everyone’s shock, there was a strange gold veining which ran all over the bones in Ajax’s amputated arm and hand.
Ajax coughed “This must be proof that I came from a piece of Chronos’s body.” He spoke hoarsely, discovering he was able to use his larynx a bit.
After another four days of Ajax staying in the hospital for observation, he was finally discharged and allowed to return to the place he called home, one limb fewer than he had left with.
The next four months passed by relatively smoothly. Ajax learned how to live without his left arm, the remains of which healed very well, and Brendon, his friend who happened to be a demigod son of Hephaestus, managed to craft a magical prosthetic arm for Ajax that could not only be constantly changing the socket shape to conform to Ajax’s constantly changing stump, but also allow him to move around without any problems that came with a company-made prosthetic.