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Kaminari Seiteki’s hike went from soul-sucking to Underworld-calling when it started to rain. Amazing blessing, that fuckass goddess.
Have you ever tried hiking up a hill a week after having a kid? While carrying said kid out of reasonable fears of deadly Sherlock fictional Indian snakes sneaking into the crib and going for murder if she left him alone for ten minutes? WELL, LET HER TELL YOU THAT IT’S NOT ADVISABLE AT ALL.
But gah, she was already pushing it by curling up to doze for seven days. If she rested any longer, her window of opportunity might finally close, the thin margin shuttering for good.
She could deal. She had dearest Grandma’s temperament. Which meant keeping your pretty face nice and cute even as your umbrella is yanked away by the storm.
Wet blond hair tangled with autumn leaves flops like limp yellow noodles with seasoning into her face. Seiteki does not grumble. She hikes on.
The sky flashes with more lightning than that third-year hero student who tried to hit on her a year back could summon. She’d been cute, nice golden eyes, sweet gimmick with that black streak through blonde, and Seiteki totally would’ve gotten her number if she’d ever thought she’d have a chance of seeing her again.
You still have time. You can still choose differently.
Seiteki’s boot catches on a mud puddle and sinks. That, of all things, is what wakes up the mildly premature light infant cocooned and strapped to her chest, prompting a screaming fit. Not the start of the stupid hike, not the bloody lightning, not the damn thunder.
She doesn’t sigh. She bites her lip hard enough to draw blood and tries her best to yank her foot free. No luck. The earth’s dead set on claiming her Jimmy Choo Noemi 45 that had taken a full day of sale hunting to acquire.
No growling. No ugly faces. Seiteki kneels, and pulls the knots free as her snot-nosed brat continues to scream. She kicks the boot off and gets back to walking as his wails pierce the air.
She can’t stop to comfort him. Not in this rain.
It’s an awful way to the top. She lists Pokemon evolutions in her head as she climbs and doesn’t crawl. Seiteki’s foot is a studded porcupine by the time she’s reached the summit, crawling with pins and needles and several infected wounds she’ll see the results of soon. But not yet.
As she arrives, the storm breaks, the sky turning remarkably clear. Almost grudgingly respectful.
Seiteki’ll take it. If there are any life lessons her kid lives long enough to learn, they’ll include sticking to your guns and being stubborn as any god.
She drops her pack on the wet grass, lightly. Can’t be mistaken for resentment. Can’t seem irritated. She needs to do this smart.
She finally untucks her child to feed him.
He’s been needing less maintenance than expected these seven days of life. She hasn’t been able to really pull rank in taking care of him since they left the hospital, but he’s never really cried, and while he needs diaper changes as consistently as any baby, he hasn’t really needed feeding much, or often. Seiteki isn’t sure if that’s normal for demigods. Maybe it is, maybe it’s a latent quirk sign, but she’ll check after surviving today.
Yay. Doctor’s appointment. Fuckin’ awesome.
Shoot, she’d need to raise her kid to not dislike doctors. That might be the biggest test of all.
He yawns, sated after just a few minutes, and Seiteki fixes her clothes as he settles back into slumber. If all goes well—WAIT NOPE, NOPE. NOT JINXING IT.
She has to gather tinder, even if it’s soaked, and clears the area around the makeshift firepit. Seiteki prepared in anticipation for rain, anyway.
It takes a few clicks before it hits her. Anticlockwise to turn the blowtorch on, right, right.
The fire roars to life swiftly, almost consuming her precious bad boy before Seiteki yanks her blowtorch free of the fire and drops it next to her backpack. It easily reaches a metre tall in an instant, then soaring to two, huffing out black smoke and crackling with heat.
She grins. Feral, crooked, before she remembers to make it conventionally pretty.
Seiteki pulls her piece de resistance from her pack. Wrapped in her backup windbreaker is a bottle of red wine that’d cost a hefty dollar due to fermenting for a few solid decades. Uncapping the bottle is easy—she’d brought a backup knife for that—and then she speaks aloud.
“I give this drink to the gods.”
She holds in her mournful sigh as she begins to pour.
The wine doesn’t sizzle, evaporating into the ashes the moment it strikes the flames. Seiteki continues, “I offer this drink to Zeus, the great king, and Hera, his wife. I offer this to my grandmother—”
“Little girl, do you have anything for me to drink? I am very, very thirsty.”
Seiteki caps the bottle as she turns to the totally-unsuspicious old woman hanging by the edge of the forest where the treeline peters out as the summit strikes. The sun is rising, casting the last warm rays of summer glow over her dark cloak covering a threadbare kimono. She pulls her hood back slightly, revealing a face aged and wrinkled, sagging, but no less beautiful with experience.
Pity the gods wouldn’t see it that way.
“Of course.”
She doesn’t offer water. That would be stupid. Seiteki holds out the half-full bottle of wine, and the old woman steps from the forest cover with creaking joints.
Her throat bobs as she drinks, sighs, and wipes at the back of her mouth, wine dribbling from her lips. She’s drunk a full quarter of the bottle. Seiteki holds her tongue. She doesn’t ask for it back before the old woman offers it back.
“What brings you here so early today?” The old woman asks, clasping fragile hands together.
Seiteki can’t afford a misstep. One wrong move and the burden on her back is done for.
But wouldn’t that free you?
“I came here to ask for protection, and peace, for my son. Grandmother.”
The old woman’s face hardens.
Fuck. She was—
“Wrong, child.”
Faster than Seiteki can comprehend, she’s smacked aside, face first. Her face howls with pain, bursting from every pore, so naturally she clamps down on her tongue to avoid bitter screaming. She blinks, and red dribbles down onto the grass.
Hera’s hand is extended, nails as long as one of the Furies’ and blood dripping from three out of five claws. The grass around her is dusted with strands of blonde hair she hadn’t noticed had been cut, dyed red. Seiteki distantly lifts a hand to her face. The skin feels split under her touch, gorged, torn open and dying the autumn leaves redder. She knows she shouldn’t try to dig it open, but for an ADHD moment she’s tempted to anyway.
“There. Now that face that seduced my husband is gone.”
She throws her hood back fully with all the dramatic actress fanfare she can summon, hair floating in the air like bad CGI as her pretty wrinkles fade away, and her face resculpts itself. Golden light shimmers over her like a Winx fairy transformation, turning her kimono into a belted silky chiton and sweet golden jewellery Seiteki could get at discounts.
Her face is cold and gorgeous, with an insane smoky eye. Exactly her type. The sort Seiteki would’ve asked was lesbian if she, y’know, wasn’t out to kill her.
“So give me a reason, any reason, to spare your life.”
Ah, the fallacy of having to at least pretend to be merciful. Seiteki tugs, on that little ball of golden light connected to her tongue, and drops to kneel against the grass even as it, ow, digs into her skin.
“I have always paid my respects to the gods. I would never cross you, my lady.”
She can feel Hera’s conflicted frown. After all, she’d done everything right. Seiteki had shown her resilience with the climb despite Hera’s storm. Seiteki had started a fire and offered the gods good drink. Seiteki had not excluded Hera from that good drink and so far she’d done it all while keeping her face pretty. Her only misstep was using the wrong title.
“You will not lay with my husband further?”
Seiteki won’t scream. Not at the unfairness of this all, how she’d just been the unlucky one knocked up when she couldn’t resist, a single night of pain and suffering and a lifetime of running, running, running in store for her now.
Maybe someone else would have been brave enough to protest, to lay out the facts, to speak against unfairness with solid will.
She’s a survivor, and that means that’s something she won’t do.
“I will not.”
Her heart pounds in her ears, and not for fun crush reasons. Seiteki holds her breath. The world seems to still.
“Fine. You can live.”
Seiteki doesn’t sag or collapse. Not yet, not yet. The but…
She’s thrown aside again, ragdolled into a tree judging by the hard oof she hits. Seiteki’s head spins as the world does backflips. As she crawls groggily up, she wonders why her chest is the lightest it’s been in seven days.
Her blood runs cold.
Hera, now six feet tall, makes her son look all the smaller as she holds him aloft in the carrier torn from Seiteki. He blinks his eyes open and howls.
“NO!”
She didn’t know she could sound that tortured.
Hera sneers as she lifts one of her long, red nails, still painted finely in Seiteki’s blood. “All I’m doing is relieving you of a burden.”
Her body freezes. She can’t move.
After all, that’s what he is.
“Please.”
Seiteki taps into the well of honey within her, and coats it in her every word, tasting the electricity in the air and on her tongue and in the goddess’ mind because all she needs is to believe and perceive and if she thinks it will work then it will.
“Not Denki.”
Hera’s nail pauses at his throat.
The goddess stares at Denki’s wailing, puckered face. Her expression slowly changes from hate to slow sympathy. Her thumb runs over the curl of blond hair on his head, as he blinks sky blue eyes open.
Please, please, please.
Her face breaks back into rage.
“YOU DARE?!”
Seiteki screams as she’s thrown back into the tree with an invisible force. The branches swipe and slash at her face, at the open wounds, tearing into them with a fire that sets them alight with pain.
[Name: Kaminari Seiteki]
[Quirk: Electron. This power allows her to control the electrons within someone’s brain. Due to her grandmother, this has also been fused with the power of Charmspeak, allowing Seiteki to make suggestions and change minds.]
“You insolent little girl. I was going to spare you, but now I’ll make sure you suffer painfully once this bastard is dead.” The nail is drawn across Denki’s throat.
You did everything perfectly until you threw it all away.
“That’s quite enough, Hera, dear.”
The words drip with more honey, more power, than Seiteki will ever be able to conjure.
“I can’t stand to see my great-grandson perish.”
A young woman steps out from the trees. Her white chiton is simple and unaccessorized, her wavy blonde hair as long as Seiteki’s had been a minute and a half ago, in an elegant Princess Belle-style updo. Her gray eyes glitter like steel. Her face is dusted lightly with a small coat of asymmetrical freckles, and she lacks any accessories save the golden, diamond-studded hairpin pierced through her bun.
She could’ve passed for Seiteki’s older twin.
“And besides, you can’t kill him. Not while the prophecy stands.”
“He’s been too careless. This is his third child in violation! There are plenty of candidates for him to use for the Great Prophecy, so the death of this one is of no concern.” Blood drips from Denki’s throat—precious amounts that no child can afford to waste.
“The second you claimed as yours, yes? Then this one will be mine.”
Aphrodite’s eyes glow golden as she speaks, the air heavy with the weight of the will of the Fates.
“Denki Kaminari, I grant you my blessing. From henceforth, you shall carry my will and act as my Champion, and should I need you for any task, you shall answer.”
Denki’s eyes turn solid gold, a liquid, electric colour too sharp and bright to be human. The blood at his neck hisses and fades, the wound shuttering in a golden burst to leave only a thin, white scar at his throat.
Hera sucks in a breath as Seiteki, finally, finally, sighs in relief. “His eyes—”
“You understand now, don’t you? What he is meant for. What his destiny will be.” Aphrodite’s eyes glimmer with humour, as though she’s just told an enlightening funny joke and Seiteki’s son hasn’t almost died.
Hera’s face turns bright red as she hisses like a teakettle with anger. Seiteki tenses, waiting for her to blow, but she curls her nails into Denki’s carrier and hurls him at Aphrodite. She catches him wordlessly as Seiteki covers her eyes, though she can feel Hera’s true form burn her retinas and turn the blood on her face even warmer.
“Denki!” She springs for him the moment Hera’s gone.
Aphrodite holds him out the same way she might hold a trash bag, but Seiteki doesn’t take it personally. She clutches him tight, and runs her own thumb along the fragile hollow of his throat. Up close, the scar will be difficult to make out, but easy to raise questions. She’ll need to hide it—makeup or a choker.
“What prophecy does he qualify for, now that he has received your blessing? What blessing did you even grant him?”
Aphrodite giggles, and as the sound washes over Seiteki, she feels her face begin to reknit, healing, tingling as the goddess even deigns to dull the pain for her. Three, jagged lines appear on Aphrodite’s face, too light against pale skin to blend in, giving her the look of someone who’s been mauled by a massive hellhound.
“It’s…small. Most will underestimate it. Simply put, the more he is loved, the more power he will be able to use, and the more appealing he will appear to others. Fairly literal, and I’ve taken inspiration from modern movies. His journey will be such fun to watch!”
“Thanks, Grandmother.” Only answer one question, but the fact that she answered any is a miracle. Seiteki doesn’t mean to say it dryly, but Aphrodite isn’t one to take it to heart either way. She clutches Denki close to her chest and tests her luck further, “Will the goddess of marriage stop threatening him because he’s destined to act as part of a prophecy?”
“Yes and no. Specifically, now, she won’t make any direct threats, but as you’re aware, that does not mean she will not attempt to kill him indirectly. There are very few places he'll be able to stay at for long, even without her subtly pushing enemies his way.”
“No camp. Not yet.” Seiteki’s shorn hair ghosts against her face as a gust of autumn wind frosted with leaves dances through the clearing, and Aphrodite’s hairpin flits out from her bun, causing her own hairstyle to unfurl. It’s a gorgeously, deceptively simple thing; etched of real gold with a diamond studded in. It flits into her own hair as Aphrodite trims the irregularly shorn strands and creates a cute half-updo Seiteki feels up.
“Are you sure? You’d be free.”
Seiteki stares down at her son.
“He didn’t heal fully because I don’t love him.”
The words hang in the silence for a moment before Aphrodite’s laugh, like church bells chiming, shatters it. “Ah, I forgot. You’re only, hmm, eighteen? It’s the tendency of those to fish for affirmation when they already have it, no? You know what you said wasn’t true. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have healed at all.”
“I don’t like him. I care for him, but…” Seiteki’s voice trails off, waiting for Aphrodite to pick up where she left off. She doesn’t.
“I-I should love him on sight, right? That’s how this is meant to go.” Seiteki mutters, face heating like the toaster she blew up a month back.
“Well, I do suppose teenagers still need assurance. Whether you can love him in the future isn’t what matters, honestly. It’s whether or not you’re able to raise him. Can you say for certain, Seiteki Kaminari, that for the next thirteen years, you’re willing to stop being the center of your world because he will be?”
Seiteki swallows as she stares down at her baby, at the thing that grew in her body for eight months and twenty days. Denki is cute, as far as infants go, but adorableness won’t tide her through alone.
Can you decide to not put yourself first?
Can you take responsibility to make sure he lives to adulthood?
And what comes after? Can you manage it then?
He’ll die without you.
“Can you enchant this—” Seiteki reaches up to tap the hairpin— “with some Mist? You said your blessing is strengthened the more he is loved, right?”
“Correct.”
“Then I’ll need a pretty face for what I need to do.”
Aphrodite tilts her head, one gray eye glowing golden, before she laughs and claps her hands together. “That’s brilliant!”
“So it works?”
She smiles, far prettier than Seiteki will ever manage. “This—” she taps the hairpin— “was already enchanted. Specifically, just say Diòs huiós and it will take you to Half-Blood Hill—from anywhere in the world.”
Her hand runs over Seiteki’s face, and as Seiteki closes her eyes, she can believe it’s grandmotherly from a millennia-old goddess who’s been a grandmother a thousand times over. “I’ll glamour your face with some Mist, but it will not last forever. Any more injury will shatter it.”
“Thank you. For everything.” Seiteki will be the one to survive these next years, but Aphrodite has given her all she’ll need to do so.
“Seeing what you make yourself will be entertaining for these decades to come.” Aphrodite’s eyes glaze off into the distance, possibly picturing the destiny Seiteki will choose, the path she must take, if she wants to run and run and keep running with her son to stay alive.
“I’ll make sure the world remembers me.”