Chapter Text
“What- what am I? Where am I? What’s going on?”
The world seemed to spin around him, even when he remained steadily staring at a wall. He could feel his heartbeat like a hummingbird in his chest, but his body didn’t feel like it belonged to him.
Looking down at his hands, it was like they belonged to someone else. He didn’t recognize them. In fact, he didn’t recognize his surroundings at all, not a single familiar object staring back at him.
He tried clenching his fingers into a fist, but it was like someone else was making the movement, like the hand was a puppet on strings. Vaguely, he thought that he should’ve recognized where he was, should’ve at least recognized his own body, but it was all completely foreign to him.
A butterfly landed on a branch outside of the window, but he couldn’t even be certain it was real. Reality felt fragile, one wrong move and it would shatter into a thousand pieces like a pane of glass.
Distantly, he heard gunshots. That almost snapped him out of his reverie. Almost.
My name is Percy Jackson, he thought to himself. Even his inner voice sounded uncertain, like it didn’t know if that was true. And maybe it wasn’t. For all he knew, he was no one, and nothing. Maybe he didn’t even exist.
He heard an explosion, closer this time.
His mind went quiet, in a way he had a feeling it rarely did. He didn’t think. He moved.
Percy, or whatever his name was, saw what looked like a window. It could have been a screen, but it was showing buildings, and a sidewalk, and there was a breeze coming through it.
He did the sane thing.
He jumped.
What he learned on the way down was that jumping out a third story window will not necessarily snap you out of a dream-like state, but hitting the pavement from that high sure as hell will.
The world entered his brain hard and fast, an onslaught of colors, sounds, and feelings as Percy pulled himself out of an instinctual roll. He gripped his head in pain as everything was just too much all at once. It was dizzying.
People were running by on the street, panicked, and no one spared him a glance, or at least he didn’t think that they did. He was a little distracted by the sudden appearance of a city, and the smell of smoke.
He let out a breath and ran towards it. If there was one thing that Percy knew about himself, is that he would always run towards danger. He didn’t know much, but he did know that.
Percy ran, and ran, and ran, until he found an alleyway. It was a dead end, and in it, there was a glowing blue tiger fighting some kind of red and black… zigzag? Percy wasn’t sure what the hell it was. But what he did notice was that there were two people bleeding out on the street, and another woman who appeared injured.
Instinctively, he ran to the girl whose back was completely soaked with blood. She looked… well, she looked like she had taken a barrage of bullets to the back. Percy hovered over her, unsure of what to do. She was on death’s door.
Make her stop bleeding, his mind told him. Something else told him that he could.
He spread his hands over her back, and willed her to stop bleeding.
Percy moved to the boy, and did the same thing to him. He honestly wasn’t sure if it worked, but he wasn’t sure that it hadn’t, either.
Next, he turned his attention to the red-and-black guy. Percy cocked his head at the man, watching him attack the glowing tiger. Percy liked tigers. He decided he would be on the tiger’s side.
Luckily for Percy, and unluckily for his new friends, there were several pools of blood on the ground. Percy’s fingers twitched, and the blood moved, coming to his call.
In a moment, he had a ball of blood rotating between his fingertips. Which, gross, but also kind of cool?
“Hey. Stop!” he shouted, his voice cracking as he did so.
“What is this,” hissed the man. “Another brat from the Agency?”
Percy narrowed his eyes, and the blood that floated in front of him changed form, shifting into something sharp and icicle-shaped. He flung the blood-sicles at the man, and they struck his coat all around his body, pinning him to the wall.
The man rolled his eyes. And then he looked down. “Ha! What is this? Bl-blood? You can control blood?” he asked, his eyes wide. Suddenly he stared at Percy like he was seeing him for the first time.
“We could use you in the Port Mafia,” he said softly. “Ditch the Agency, and we’ll make it well worth your time.”
“Uh,” said Percy. “Isn’t the Mafia, like, the bad guys?”
“Good and bad are all matters of perspective- they’re relative to each person, you know. Is a corrupt politician that the Armed Detective Agency protects good? Is killing that politician bad?”
“Man, now’s not the time for a philosophical discussion. These people are bleeding out!”
The guy shrugged, fending off another attack from the tiger. “True. Come with us and we can continue our discussion.”
“Only if we save the dying people.”
The man frowned. “Not how I operate.”
“Then I don’t vibe with your operation.”
“Well, I suppose you can die, then.”
“Nah,” said Percy, and promptly used the liquids inside the man’s body to fling him against the wall. His head knocked into it and he slumped for a moment, getting up again and shaking his head as the tiger came for him again.
“Okay, that’s enough,” came a different voice, a man with a tan trench coat and bandages wrapped around his arms and neck, as he came walking into the alley. He touched the arm of the red-and-black man and the nose of the tiger, and there was a flash of light. The tiger turned into a teenage boy, and the man hissed, his power dying at his fingertips.
“Why is it always you,” he growled at the new man.
The new guy shrugged. “Just is.”
“Until we meet again, were-tiger. And you- you will join us,” the red-and-black powered guy said. And then he grabbed the blond woman from the ground and disappeared into the shadows.
“Mm. Creepy,” said Percy. “Your friends are dying. We should save them.”
“And who might you be?” asked the new guy. “I haven’t seen you around before.”
It was Percy’s turn to shrug. “I was hoping that you could tell me that.”