Chapter Text
Percy
Being a demigod sucks.
…
Okay, okay, maybe not the best way to start a story. Let me try again.
Hi. My name is Percy Jackson. Son of Poseidon, Savior of Olympus, and personal punching bag of just about anyone you can think of with a scary-sounding Greek name. Over the year and a half I’ve spent in the world of myths and monsters, I’ve been accused of stealing world-ending weapons, turned into a guinea pig, and almost tricked into starting World War 3, all while constantly under attack by monsters, gods, and other half-bloods.
Let me reiterate. Being a demigod? Sucks.
You know what’s worse, though?
Middle school.
Shockingly enough, after having the fate of the world in your hands at the age of 12 it's kinda hard to go back to caring about pre-algebra. Add that to my ADHD and dyslexia (another perk of demigod life), and yeah. Not a fun time.
So, when my friend Grover dropped me an Iris Message asking for help with a routine demigod retrieval, I happily took the opportunity to potentially get out of English class.
Thing is, I know Grover. We've been best friends for over two years, and roommates for a big chunk of that time. A few Relevant Grover Underwood Tips:
One. He's a satyr. Half-man, half-goat. Comes with a few quirks. His idea of a nice afternoon snack is an aluminum can. Personally, I don’t see it, but I also don't have goat teeth, so we agree to disagree on that front.
Two. He's a big stress eater. Which, combined with tip one, leads to a lot of missing household appliances the night before Latin exams.
Three. He's been on exactly two demigod retrieval missions before. One of those ended with my friend (?) Thalia getting turned into a pine tree. The other ended with my mom getting kidnapped by the God of the Underworld and me killing the Minotaur at age twelve.
Knowing all this, when he called me using phrases like “standard retrieval mission”, “perfectly safe”, and “nothing to worry about”, I instead chose to believe the suspiciously bite-mark shaped hole in the dingy blue couch he sat on. All things considered, I gave myself about a 50% chance of dying horribly in the next few days. My normal number is closer to 95%, so I was feeling good.
All of which to say, that's how I ended up on a road trip from New York to Maine with my mom, Thalia (who is not a tree anymore. Long story.) and my friend Annabeth. Annabeth and Thalia sat together in the back seat, which was a sight I honestly still wasn't used to. Of all my friends, these two seemed like they'd get along the worst.
See, Annabeth is pretty. Like, I can imagine her as prom queen in a cheesy high school movie. That kind of pretty. From her blonde princess curls to her perfect tan (don't ask me how she keeps that in December), the word I'd use to describe her is composed. Force her to wear a full face of makeup and change her gray eyes for blue, and boom. Prom queen.
Thalia on the other hand is… Okay. I'll put it like this. If Annabeth is the prom queen, Thalia is the punk loner who crashes the party and throws eggs at everyone during the big speech. Or something. I don't really watch cheesy romance movies. It's not that she isn't pretty, it's that I feel like she'd break the laws of time and space to come punch me in the face if she heard me call her that.
No, the word I'd use for Thalia is striking. Her signature style is all-black, lots of leather, full of spikes and rips and chains and more buttons and patches than I have years on this Earth. She keeps her hair short and roughly chopped, which adds a lot to the whole ‘emo warlord’ vibe she's got going on. Normally the only pop of color in her whole ensemble is her eyes, which are a piercing, electric blue. Basically, what I'm saying is that Annabeth is aloof-model scary and Thalia is imminent-violence scary.
Now, I know the reality of these two, which is that Annabeth is a dorky Athena kid (who will still absolutely punch you in the face for calling her that) and Thalia… probably shouldn't be trusted around cartons of eggs. That bit was pretty accurate. Regardless, these two have been friends longer than I've known either of them, and I'm sure they'll keep being friends long after I'm gone. Doesn't make the picture any less interesting, though.
The car ride to Westover Hall, the boarding school that Grover was staking out, was painful. For me, that is. All the demigods in the car were content to remain silent, probably from a varying mixture of nerves and general awkwardness, but unfortunately for me my mom was more than willing to make up for the gaps in conversation. By telling every embarrassing child Percy story she could think of. For 8 hours. I gotta say, if this was her way of making English class seem comparatively appealing, she was doing a great job. I was never skipping out on class again.
We finally got to Westover Hall in the middle of a story where I apparently took a slip ‘n’ slide at 20 miles an hour. Thalia was doubled over in the back seat, her black eyeliner smudged from laughter. Annabeth was faring a bit better, but her cheeks were tinged a bit pink and her ski cap was askew, one blonde curl peeking out from underneath the fabric.
I was all too happy to interrupt this particular conversation. If I had to hear my mom talk about my bruised 6-year-old butt for exactly one more second, I was going to ask Zeus for a taste of the Master Bolt.
“Alright!” I clapped my hands together, putting extra emphasis on the second syllable. “Looks like this is our stop!”
My mom sighed. “Are you sure you have to do this? This place looks,” she gestured vaguely with her hands towards Westover, “Intimidating.”
She wasn't wrong. Through the swirling blizzard outside, Westover Hall looked like it'd be full of vampires or possessed suits of armor. The place looked like it was built to be defended under siege, with honest-to-god towers, parapets, and slit windows. The castle was made from a cold, black stone, apart from the massive set of wooden double doors that made up the main entrance. It almost felt like the building itself was conjuring the bad weather like a twisted version of the enchantment on Camp Half-Blood; I couldn't imagine such an unfriendly-looking place surrounded by May flowers and chirping birds. No, I was confident that this place existed in perpetual December. Even the landscape was eerie. Westover Hall itself sat on a snowy cliff, the rocks jagged and hostile. To one side, the cliff overlooked a dense snowy forest that seemed to stretch into the horizon. To the other was the ocean, churning the same stormy gray as Annabeth's eyes. The waves crashed into the cliffside, sending ocean spray in every direction.
I voiced my thoughts. “Yeah, Mom, we'll be fine. We have Thalia with us, we'll fit right in.” Turning to the backseat, I addressed Thalia, who was pouting over Mom's story getting interrupted. “Hey Thals, you think they got a coffin in there for you to sleep in?”
She rolled her eyes at me, but I could see the excitement sparking underneath her gaze. “Trust me, if they do, I won't be the one in it.”
“Wow, Annabeth, you're just gonna let your friend talk about you like that?”
“Fight your own battles, Seaweed Brain.”
“Are you sure you don't want me to wait here for you, honey?” My mom interjected, “I'm worried. How are you getting back to New York?”
I hoped I wasn't blushing. It was bad enough having to depend on my mom to drive me to my missions.
“No, Mom, we'll be fine. Besides, I don't think you want to make the drive back with two extra kids and a wet goat.”
She let out a small chuckle, then leaned in and gave me a peck on the forehead. “You're probably right about that,” she admitted, “but as your mother it's my job to be nervous for you.” She paused. “Did you remember to pack an extra sweater?”
“Mom.”
“Your drachma? I'm sure Chiron will want status updates!”
“Mom!”
“A change of underwear?”
“Mom!”
At this point, I wasn't sure whether to laugh or take up permanent residence in the nearest pile of snow. Probably the latter. Thankfully, before I could fully commit to the hermit lifestyle, Annabeth spoke up from the backseat.
“No need to worry, Ms. Jackson. We'll keep Percy out of trouble.”
Mom smiled, looking a bit less nervous. “Thanks, sweetie. I'm sure he's in good hands.”
Before this line of conversation could get any more embarrassing, I quickly threw open the passenger side door and darted out of the car with a quick “Timetogoguysthanksfortheridemomloveyoubye!”
I was halfway to Westover before Mom could even blink.
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Once Mom's car was fully out of sight, I stood shivering in the snow and waited for my friends to catch up. After a suspiciously long amount of time, I heard the distinctive crunch of footsteps in the snow approaching from behind.
“Percy, your mom is awesome.”
Thalia spoke from behind me, clapping my shoulder to emphasize the last word of her sentence.
“She's okay,” I acknowledged, “but I wish she'd find something else to talk about. Just be glad she didn't bring the photo album this time.”
“There's a PHOTO ALBUM?” Thalia turned to Annabeth, giving her best attempt at a pleading look. “Grover will be fine, right? This is priceless blackmail material.”
Annabeth's lips were set in a tight line, but her eyes sparkled. “Another time. He wouldn't have called us if it wasn't important.”
I felt like they were forgetting something. “Hey! Guy whose pictures you're talking about here! I feel like I should get a say in this!”
Two death stares pinned me to the snow.
“No.”
Perfectly in unison.
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The doors of Westover Hall slammed shut behind us with thudding finality. Fortunately for Thalia, the inside of the building was just as imposing as its exterior; the three of us stood inside a lofty entrance hall with vaulted ceilings, cold stone floors, and walls covered by ancient-looking weapons & flags. Doorways spidered off into the depths of the building on both sides of the hall. I couldn't help but thank the gods that I'd never had to go here. I probably would've gotten lost on my way to my first class and ended up a withered Percy skeleton in some forgotten corner of the castle. Not that that wasn't still in the cards- I was sure I'd have plenty of opportunities to end up a skeleton while we were here.
As if on cue, I felt a piercing gaze laser into me from across the hall.
Teachers.
And not just one! Two! A man and a woman, both equally strict-looking, both staring daggers at me. And were they… walking towards us? Perfect. Just what I wanted to see.
I wondered if I should invest in a shrine of Tyche. Maybe I'd accidentally trampled on one of her sacred flowers or something. I could picture it now- the goddess, glowering down at me, hands outstretched like Emperor Palpatine as she zapped me with a lifetime of inconveniently-placed teachers.
“Excuse me, children,” the stern-looking lady intoned reedily, “Are you students here? I don't believe I've seen your faces around campus.”
“No,” the lanky man next to her added, “I've certainly never seen these three before. Stowaways from the cold, perhaps, Mrs. Got-Chalk?”
I blinked. Partially from surprise- I mean, a teacher named Got Chalk? Come on- but mostly because the man seemed… off. Maybe it was his eyes, which had a bit too much steel behind them for a normal teacher. Maybe it was the way his mouth lagged slightly behind the words he spoke, like he was a dummy spoken through by an unskilled ventriloquist. Maybe it was the vitriol he spoke with, like we were three condemned criminals waiting for our execution and not slightly soggy teenagers. Whatever it was, something deep within my core was screaming at me to get away from this man.
Before I could voice my concerns, though, Thalia stepped forward confidently and snapped her fingers. A chill ran down my spine, and something in the air, in reality itself, rippled. Mrs. Got-Chalk's eyes glazed over. I took special note of the fact that the other teacher seemed unaffected by whatever Thals had just done.
“You must be mistaken, Mrs,” Thalia paused and took a deep breath, clearly suppressing a giggle, “Mrs. Got-Chalk. I'm Thalia Grace, and these two are Annabeth Chase and Percy Jackson. We're all students here; my friends and I just decided to take a quick breather from the dance. We'll head back right away.”
As Thalia finished her sentence, the world snapped back into place. Mrs. Got-Chalk's eyes regained their focus, and the creepy dude practically glowed with hatred.
“Ah, yes, of course,” Mrs. Got-Chalk murmured dreamily, “I do know you three. Make your way back to the dance, please, where you can be more properly supervised.”
Sure. Awesome. One problem. We still didn't know where the dance was, and I doubted that whatever magic Thalia just worked would hold up if we blatantly acted like we had no idea where we were going. All Grover had told us was that we'd have to blend in and observe at the school dance, but I was wishing I'd asked for a map right about now. Thankfully, though, at that moment a horned angel appeared from a hallway on our left. Grover looked antsy, his eyes darting around the entrance hall rapidly. He had a string of blue fabric dangling from the corner of his mouth. When we made eye contact, his expression melted into a relieved grin.
“Guys! You're here!” He beamed at us, jogging in our direction.
Mrs. Got-Chalk frowned. “What do you mean, Mr. Underwood? These three have been here the whole time, they're students.”
“Oh, uh….” Grover trailed off, looking a bit caught off-guard. “They're… here! In the entrance hall! I've been looking everywhere for them ever since they vanished from the gym.”
The teacher's face cleared. “Ah. Carry on then.”
The three of us trotted over to Grover. I could feel a pair of burning eyes on my back as we walked into the hallway he'd come from.
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As we walked through Westover Hall's network of halls, trusting Grover to lead us where we needed to go, I turned to Thalia. My curiosity needed to be satisfied.
“Hey Thals, what exactly did you do back there? I didn't think brainwashing was part of the Zeus Kid powerset.”
A grin flashed across her face. “Oh, nothing much,” she replied casually, “just basic Mist manipulation. Has Chiron not taught you how to do that yet?”
I took a second to process this information. “Wait. Like, Mist-Mist? Like, puts-Percy-on-the-FBI-watchlist Mist? We can control that?” And no, I added in my head, Chiron did not in fact teach me how to do that. Add another thing to the list, I guess.
Thalia's grin grew wider. “Some of us can.” Turning her hand over to theatrically examine her fingernails, she continued, “Only the smart, talented, good-looking ones, though. Not many people qualify.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don't know who you think you're talking about, Pinecone Face. You couldn't think your way out of a Chinese finger trap.”
“Aren't you the guy who accidentally went to school with a Cyclops for a semester?”
“Aren't you the girl who tried to hold a conversation with a tree?”
Thalia flushed. “It was a dryad!”
“Sure, Thals. Whatever you say.” I smiled at her magnanimously.
“Guys,” Annabeth hissed from my left, “Focus. I'm sure we're getting close to the gym by now, and we still don't know anything about these demigods we're here to help. Grover,” She addressed the satyr, who was walking ahead of the pack, “want to give us the details?”
He slowed down, falling in with the line. “Sure! The two I have my eye on are siblings, named Nico and Bianca di Angelo. I'm not sure who their godly parent is yet, but it's someone powerful.”
I quirked an eyebrow. Nico and Bianca. Where had I heard those names before? During a quest, maybe? I furrowed my eyebrows, tuning out the world around me as I combed my memories for answers.
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Flashing neon lights. The relentless whirling of countless slot machines. Arcade cabinets and card tables as far as the eye could see. I strolled leisurely through the Lotus Casino, following the signage for their Olympic-sized swimming pool. I only spotted the whirl of brown for a moment before something slammed into my left shoulder, sending me reeling. Staggering backwards, I looked for my assailant. There, in the middle of picking herself up from where she had fallen, stood a girl, a few years older than me. She was clearly out of breath, her olive-colored cheeks tinted red from exertion. Her long brown hair was partially splayed across her face.
The girl spoke with a slight Italian accent, her words rushed and breathless. “I am so sorry. Are you okay? I totally wasn't looking where I was going.”
I smiled reassuringly. “I'm completely fine, don't worry about it. You look like you took the harder hit anyways. Everything okay?”
“Um,” she hesitated for a moment, “have you seen a boy that looks like me running around in a bomber jacket? I think he's about your age.”
I pondered for a second. To be honest, I didn't really remember anyone I'd seen in here, or much of anything for that matter. “I don't think so, but if you'd like an extra pair of eyes I'm happy to help.”
The girl's shoulders visibly relaxed. “Would you? I'd really appreciate it.” She straightened, brushing the dust from her pants. “I'm Bianca, by the way. Sorry again for bumping into you.”
I held out my hand. “Percy. Nice to meet you.”
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I shook my head. There was no way, right? Surely there were multiple pairs of siblings named Nico and Bianca out there.
I was gonna have to upgrade that shrine of Tyche to a temple.
Tuning back into the conversation at hand, I caught Grover in the middle of a sentence.
“-which is why it's so odd that there haven't been any attacks. The two of them together should be like a beacon to every monster for miles, but it's been radio silence all year. It's gotten to the point where it's more suspicious than if something were to happen.”
Annabeth frowned. “That is odd. If they're really on a similar level to Percy and Thalia when you found them, and there's two at once,” she shuddered, “Monsters should be swarming this place. Unless…”
“Unless what?!” Thalia practically barked, irritation written all over her face. “Quit trying to act mysterious, Annie!”
“Unless something, or someone, is scaring them away.”
I grimaced. “Wouldn't you have to be, like, a god to pull something like that off?”
Annabeth nodded. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “A god… or a Titan.”
It took me a second to fully process her words. “You think Time Gramps is behind this?”
“It's a possibility. Either way, there's clearly more going on here than we thought. We should be careful, spend some time observing and confirm the situation before we do anything we regret.”
We nodded. Grover stopped outside of an ornate set of double doors and clapped his shaking hands together. “A-Alright guys, here we are. Let's get observing!” With a nervous laugh, he pushed the doors in with both hands and the four of us walked into the Westover gymnasium.