Work Text:
Luke has mixed feelings about the recent turn his life has taken. After he killed the Crooked One heroically, dying in the process, his father, the god of thieves, stole his soul and smuggled it to his temple in another reality.
Gods have favorites, and Luke, if anything, has always been his father's favorite, so of course the god wouldn't miss the chance to steal his kid back from the evil claws of his grandfather and prevent his chthonic uncle from claiming him.
Apparently, the multiverse he's currently in has a massive wall around it made of the bodies of dead gods, and his father found a hole in said terrifying wall.
Now no one and nothing from his home universe should be able to touch him, not that they supposedly would. According to his father, Percy asked that the demigods the Crooked One misled be pardoned, and so Luke has spent the last year recovering in the Sun God's temple on Olympus, after his father called in a favor from his brother, the god of healing.
Being possessed by a titan did a number on his soul, and it took time for it to heal, along with adjusting to the new body his father made for him from his essence and the blood of one of his favorite mortals.
The new body is weird, and somehow the scars of his old body have carried over, so it took some adjusting to.
The good news, if it can be called that, is that he, due to being the son of the god of thieves, had subconsciously stolen some of the Crooked One’s essence and now has some power over time; along with demi-gods being stronger and faster in this dimension, he had a lot to adapt to.
After a year of healing, convalescence, and establishing an odd relationship with the local version of the god of travelers, his father, in all his wisdom, decided to dump Luke into a mortal city supposedly in desperate need of a hero.
Strolling through the city of Gotham in the state of New Jersey with the relaxed confidence of a demi-god who waged war against the gods and then proceeded to get off scot-free, the son of the god of trickery takes in the dumpster fire that is this city.
The land the city has been built upon has several dozen curses laid upon it and completely lacks She of the Grain’s essence or influence.
The Bright One has forsaken the city, and thus the sky is covered by a thick unnatural smog, blotting out the light of day.
The buildings and infrastructure appear to be in a state of collapse and disrepair that would make the Lame One spit in disgust.
Yes, if any city needed a hero, it would be this one. Unfortunately, Luke doesn't really want to play hero; he wants to relax and enjoy a luxury vacation.
Waging a war against the gods is exhausting, and he hasn't had a proper break in years. Now, first things first, to properly live a life of relaxed luxurious debauchery, he needs funds, and luckily for him, he is the son of the God of commerce, wealth, and more importantly, thieves.
Making his way into the Iceberg Lounge, Luke arranges a meeting with the man known as the Penguin, then offers the Crime Lord a few of the golden drachmas he stole while staying on Olympus to put him in touch with a high-quality fixer.
The fixer, for their part, takes the rest of Luke’s stolen drachmas to make him an airtight identity.
By the time his paperwork is out of the way, night has fallen, and Luke leaves the fixer and lets his instincts guide him, leading him to a bank. With a lazy flick of his hand, the cameras and silent alarms turn off before he twirls his fingers, causing the side door to unlock, allowing him free access to the bank.
There are entire industries in this city built around money laundering for the endless amount of stolen cash, to say nothing of the global smuggling rings for artifacts that run through the docks. That is to say, Luke will have no difficulty selling anything at all nor laundering any amount of cash he may find.
That fixer the Penguin introduced him to is truly a gift; it was he who introduced Luke to the vast criminal-industrial complex that allows Gotham to maintain its place as the crime capital of the world.
Half an hour after entering the bank, Luke Castellan has an account with the Gotham bank to go with his new identity.
Luke’s new bank account is filled with money that used to sit in stagnant accounts belonging to the dead who lacked next of kin. While the bank was happy to let such funds sit and accrue interest indefinitely, Luke had a better use for it.
Creating a card for himself and clearing all evidence that he was ever there was simple enough, and Luke strode out of the bank one of the richest men in Gotham.
By the time the sun had risen and set again, Luke was lounging in a luxury penthouse apartment sipping some of the most expensive wine he's ever tasted.
It isn't long before Luke is bored out of his mind. Sitting in luxury while downing expensive alcohol just isn't for demigods. His ADHD demands he go out and do something.
This was how Luke found himself an exciting new career.
Selina Kyle stares at the empty place where the crown she was going to steal used to sit.
Someone stole her loot; someone stole Catwoman’s loot; someone had the gall and talent to beat the world’s best thief to the loot.
It's been a month, and in that time, every job she was hired for ended the same way: someone had beaten her to the loot. This had to be deliberate.
There is a new thief in Gotham, and they are targeting her; what's worse, everyone thinks she stole these things.
Her new… Rival? Yes, her new Rival has gone on a stealing spree, and everyone thinks she is the culprit.
What has the world come to when every act of thievery is attributed to her and not the real culprit?
Deciding to take this no longer, Selina decides to go on vacation, maybe visit London and admire the crown jewels.
Her rival is following her.
No matter where she goes, everything she can think to steal is already stolen. Was she cursed again? Did the great Catwoman accidentally steal another cursed artifact?!
Luke has always been fast, and his reflexes were inhuman, but since coming to this new world, he has become even faster. He can now touch the sound barrier and even withstand breaking it thanks to his increased durability.
As for his newfound ability to bend time, accelerating his own personal time flow, well, Luke can now keep pace with the Flash family who rule Central City.
He has never felt so much like his father than when zipping from city to city. The unfettered freedom is like nothing else. Free to travel as he pleases, free to think whatever he'd like without punishment or fear of reprisal from the Crooked One, free just to live.
Truly, life is wonderful.
In other news, Luke found the woman whose genetic material his father used to help create his new body: one Selina Kyle, one of the costumed lunatics who call this reality home.
His new Mother? Sister? Kinswoman? Miss Kyle dresses in a skintight latex cat costume that would be a better fit for a private club or bedroom and moonlights as the so-called Catwoman, the world's best thief.
Luke doesn't question his father's taste; the woman is a startlingly good thief, and the gods are, if nothing else, attracted to those who exemplify their domains.
So Luke may have been hazing his not-mother just a bit by stealing everything of value around her, and judging by the tick in her jaw, he thinks he might be succeeding a bit too much.
It's not his fault. A madman was threatening a child hostage and Luke just… reacted.
The Joker, as the people call him, the green-haired, white-skinned psychopath, apparently has a kill count in the thousands, and the so-called heroes of the city just arrest him and leave him to the local asylum that apparently forgets to lock its doors.
So Luke might have grabbed his keychain Greek helmet, activated the size-changing enchantment, and slipped on the face-concealing Corinthian Helmet that his father gave him for anonymous heroics, moved at super speed, cut off the clown's arm that held the gun at the child before decapitating the monster.
The fewer child murderers there are in the world, the better.
After making sure there were no complications, Luke silently dedicated the kill to the protector of youth, ignored the bat-dude, and left.
It wasn't a week later that the so-called Scarecrow decided to gas an orphanage and subsequently met Luke's sword as well.
Luke Castellan, or as the people are calling him, the Helmed Speedster, is now Gotham's favorite vigilante. Apparently, a lot of the people were unhappy with the terrorists constantly gassing the city and were now celebrating him as a hero.
If his father planned this situation, then Luke would begrudgingly admit it worked. Throw Luke ‘wage war against the gods for child support’ Castellan into a city with legitimate child killers, and that city will soon run out of child killers.
Now he's a hero, a very popular one too.
Gotham City is not a nice place; it is, in fact, quite famously the crime capital of the world. There are no end to the number of hitmen, drug dealers, pickpockets, burglars, and other such criminals, and if Luke were to behead them all, the city's population would collapse very quickly.
So Luke has been limiting himself to those who would harm children. Drug dealers outside of schools disappear in a flash and end up in two pieces inside the bay. Anyone who would touch a child with intent loses their manhood and hands and is left to bleed out while the child is whisked away to safety.
Gotham loves the Helmed Speedster; he doesn't harm the desperate pickpockets trying to make a living, the goons who want food on their families' tables, or desperate prostitutes.
He doesn't play cops and robbers with all the many rogues, cause untold property damage in dramatic fights, or let hostages or threats stop him.
The Helmed Speedster just targets child abusers, and child abusers alone.
In other news, it turns out attempting to defend the rights and inherent worth of such people is a very difficult platform to stand on.
Bruce Wayne, for all his money, could not drum up a thimble full of outrage for these supposed citizens.
When the Flash appeared, no doubt due to Batman's urging to deal with what the man probably saw as a rogue and unhinged speedster, Luke responded by freezing the man in time before vacating the area.
The Flash, as it turns out, is not immune to temporal locks and cannot outrun being frozen in time. Sure, the Flash can think and act faster than light, but outrunning temporal stasis is apparently not within his capabilities.
Selina Kyle was lounging in her favorite booth in her favorite diner when a young man with a noticeable resemblance to her, exuding charisma and a devil-may-care confidence, strolled through the door and toward her before lazily sitting across from her.
“Hey, so this might sound awkward, but my father, the Thief that he is, liked your whole Catwoman thing so he stole some of your blood and used it along with his own essence to make me a new body.”
Selina Kyle has been around a while, did the whole rogue thing, and has seen some shit, but this… What the hell?
“A clone… err test tube baby aged up and then a consciousness transfer?”
She asks. In retrospect, it's not the most absurd thing she's heard; she has, after all, heard about some of the super kids being resurrected millennia after they died, then time-traveling back to their era, or about how Jason was allegedly resurrected because an alternate-dimension Superman punched reality really hard.
So yes, test-tube baby aged up and then a consciousness transfer is within the realm of possibilities for some of the capes, but her? Who wants their kid to be part Catwoman?!
Is this a kink thing? She knows her costume gets her a lot of attention, but seriously?
As Selina Kyle’s mind spirals, the young man- her son? Brother? Looks on with amusement before ordering himself a coffee.
“So naturally I decided to see what the fuss was about so I might have stolen a few things to mess with you.”
The young man says casually, causing Selina to freeze before she lunges over the table in an attempt to strangle the brat.
Luke skillfully disarms Wondergirl with a move Chiron showed him years ago.
“You are overreliant on your strength and not nearly as skilled as you should be.”
He tells the native demigod. Cassandra Sandsmark is a half-blood daughter of the sky-king, and as such, someone he feels the need to look out for.
Apparently, the inherent strength of this dimension's demigods means that they have grown overreliant on their inborn gifts and neglect skill.
So Luke has taken to ambushing the girl in her heroing outfit to spar with her and force her to improve. Luke knows that bigger and stronger opponents can be taken down by skill, and he genuinely doesn't want anything bad to happen to this girl.
Luke feels no need to do the same for Wonder Woman; she is immortal, highly trained by a people of supernatural warriors, and a devoted servant of the gods. Cassandra, however, is young, not nearly trained enough, and is going out to fight monsters.
Luke found out about her while gathering information on notable people, and every member of the Justice League has a Wikipedia page devoted to them, including everything they have ever said in their interviews.
It was from such Wikipedia pages that he learned that Wonder Woman, publicly known as Diana Prince, Ambassador of Themyscira, is a daughter of the sky-king who fought in World War II and helped found the Justice League. From there it was just a matter of jumping to relevant articles to learn of Wonder Girl Diana’s sister and heroic apprentice,
As in his world, this one also had children of the gods fighting in the world war; however, here it was public knowledge, and the eldest gods did not swear off having children afterward. The gods just don’t have children as frequently, and Luke is attributing this to how much more powerful local demigods are.
After learning about Cassandra, Luke donned the helmet his father gave him and has taken to ambushing the girl for quick spars, where he critiques her form, making sure to disappear before Wonder Woman shows up.
Diana has had over a century to hone her skills in constant battles and fully come into her powers, while being a generation closer to Chaos than he is, and Luke is not fool enough to think he can beat the woman in a fight.
Jason loves this new rogue not only because he killed the Joker. No, he loves the new rogue because finally, finally, someone gets it—someone who sees children in danger and decides to protect them. Someone adult with the will and power to enact real change is doing something to protect the children of this city.
While Batman will let people kill and harm children without any reprisal before throwing them in Arkham, this new guy just beheads the bastards faster than they can react before saving whatever hostages they think will protect them faster than any of the contingencies they have can trigger.
Luke is enjoying his new life. Sure, he misses Annabeth, Thalia, his many siblings, and the kids he had to look after, but they are better off without him. From what his father has told him, Percy has leveraged his goodwill to get the camp expanded and force the gods to claim all of their children.
Annabeth is a hero and is rebuilding Olympus, making her architectural dreams come true.
Thalia is immortal and will stay forever young, healthy, and whole.
Those who joined him in his war against the gods will get Elysium along with all those who died defending Olympus.
While he regrets the temporary suffering he caused, Luke can’t bring himself to regret his actions, knowing the result; he just hopes the campers will take this opportunity to expand the camp further and make it into a proper city.
Camp half-blood was never really a place for adults, and few of the children returned after venturing to the mortal world for school and mortal family, presumably being lost to monster ambushes.
Hopefully, the Camp will be turned into a proper home and city, and the kids won't feel the need to return to the mortal world.