Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

How do you become a hero? Well first you need to decide what kind of hero you're talking about. The sword wielding monster slaying demigods of the ancient stories or the modern costume wearing super humans from comics and films?

For me, the answer would be both. I don't recommend either, one will get you killed in gruesome ways if you're not careful and the other will just get you killed in gruesome ways. If I had to point to the very beginning it would be around third grade, after I left the school. It wasn't really my fault, I had a habit of ending up out of school for reasons that weren't my fault. That time it was my mom who got me out of there. There had been a big fight between her and the principal about a very tall man in a trenchcoat who had been stalking me for a week, although no one believed me when I said he had one eye.

My mom, Sally Jackson, is about the nicest person to ever exist. She deserved the world. Instead she got dead parents in a plane crash, a failed diploma because of a sick uncle (apparently he was nice so she didn't mind taking care of him ), a troubled child (yours truly) and Smelly Gabe. How or why she ended up with captain gym shorts I'll never understand. That ‘man’, I'd compare him to a walrus if they weren’t as cool as they are, did nothing except gamble with the landlord and collect cheques. Apparently he managed an electronics store in Queens, when I asked Mom about it she called him a ‘middle manager’ and then told me to never call him that to his face. But, If there was one thing that ever made her smile when she talked it was dad, actual dad. He was a great man apparently and they loved each other deeply, deeply enough for me to exist so thanks dad. She always said he didn't want to leave her but had to and ended up getting lost at sea. She never outright said he had died, only got lost.

But, as much as I love mom, I'm getting off track. Everything kicked off properly after me and mom got back early from school. Gabe was doing something very uncommon and actually contributing by trying to fix our bathroom faucet. Well, I say trying to fix, he was staring at it and exercising his very small brain for the cheapest possible solution.

“Sally, have you talked to someone about how to fix the damn sink?”

She gave the standard ‘not quite meeting her eyes’ smile she always did when speaking to Gabe.

“I'm sorry dear but we can't afford that at the moment.”

“God, woman. I never said hire someone, I said to talk to your little friends at that candy shop and see if they remember what the professionals they hired said.”

I glared at him.

“Why don't you ask Eddie? He's a landlord.”

“Shut it smartass. If you think you’re so clever why don't you try fixing the damn thing?”

He moved to go grab me, anything involving Gabe and touch always ended painfully. I didn't want him to grab me, I could smell him even worse up close, I distinctly remember thinking that he needed a shower before I heard the pipes rumble and Smelly Gabe get sprayed in the face with New York tap water and whatever muck was clogging it. Gabe got very quiet before storming to his room.

“I'm getting changed!”

And slamming the door.

Mom took me back to my own room before going to the kitchen briefly and bringing a bag of the freebies she got from her job at ‘Sweet On America’. The blue candy (always blue, long story) was almost enough to distract me from the previous incident. Were I older and more jaded I would have dismissed it as a freak accident, but this was young Percy we're talking about, and young Percy very much didn't want to dismiss the idea that I'd just caused the pipes to burst. I went over to the faucet in the kitchen whilst Mom was at work and Gabe was in another apartment and focused. It took a few tries and a lot of different ideas, but eventually I managed to think of the word ‘stop’ hard enough to make the water stop in mid-air. My excitement broke the concentration, and the water flowed again, but I did it! I told the water to do something and it did the thing I said! It didn't just do the thing I said, it did something it shouldn't do. I tried again, it took less time this time. I could feel some kind of pulling sensation in my gut whenever I made the water move, that must be what caused it.

Could I tell anyone? Would they believe me? No, they’d think it was some kind of magic trick, sleight of hand, that kind of thing. I’d need a lot more practice, to make a spectacle large enough to properly convince people that this isn’t just a trick. I knew what I would do, make it a surprise, practice my weird water powers in secret. I started again the next day, I had about a week before Summer Break, mom was still at work and Gabe had moved his poker games over to the downstairs apartment. So, how to start? I could stop the water flowing from a tap from going downwards, that was a good start, maybe I could try moving more at once? I took out a bowl from one of the cabinets and filled it with water. Whenever I made the water move I remembered feeling a tug, maybe it was just like tugging a muscle. I felt the water move at my command, just a few waves and circles, nothing too big just yet. Next was the big one, lifting the water from the bowl. The internal muscle tensed, and the water started to lift, very very slowly. Why was it going so slowly? I tried focussing on it more, forcing the pull to be stronger, the bowl shook violently as the water flew upwards and across the kitchen. Note to self, don’t try to force the water too much because you’ll make a mess, and get a splitting headache. The headache lasted all day, mom was obviously very concerned. Gabe took a few minutes to yell at me for making a mess of the kitchen before returning to his usual dent on the couch. Mom gave me an ibuprofen before assuring me that making a mess whilst having a headache was not my fault, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that Gabe was actually right this time.  

Day 2 of weird water powers practice, what did I learn? Water doesn’t actually like being controlled, there’s a limit to how much I could try to do before it exploded. I supposed it made sense, if I thought of it like a muscle and then tensed my arm too much, my arm started to shake. Maybe it worked the same way? Really should have been keeping notes, no matter, practice time. Attempt 2, learning from mistakes. The same feeling of the gut pull, this time trying not to use my weird water muscles too much. It was still shaky, and the water had no real form; it just sort of floated, BUT I DID A THING! I did an actually successful thing without giving myself a headache

Day 3, how to continue? I can lift the water, I know what to avoid when lifting water. The next step should therefore be trying to shape it. I started as I always did, filling up a bowl, and trying to lift it. I tried holding it up a little longer this time, it was difficult to balance the tugging with the control. The longer I tried to sustain it the more difficult it became to maintain that level of balance. Luckily, this time, I could recognise the signs of the water breaking from my water muscle and was able to let go of it before it exploded again. The good news about weird water powers is that it makes drying up much easier. By moving the leftover puddles I could refill the bowl much easier, especially when I just made it flow in a certain direction instead of trying to lift it. That made me wonder if I was doing something wrong. I poured some water on the table and made it move around, the tugging was so light that I barely noticed it. With a little coaxing from my hands I could make the water maintain whatever shape I liked so long as it was on a flat surface. Maybe the water not liking being controlled was true, trying to force it to do something that it couldn't make made it angrier, more difficult to move. There wasn’t any reason that it couldn’t make all those shapes on a flat surface, therefore the water didn’t have as many problems. Maybe there was a way to get the water to agree to float? I wanted to keep going but Mom ended up getting back home.

“Percy, my baby boy! How are you?.”

“I’m doing science!”

She looked at the bowl of water, and looked back at me, I saw a flash of concern on her face. The same kind of face she gave after Gabe told me to not talk about him hitting me, like she had a feeling something was wrong even if I didn’t tell her, but why would me doing science with water of all things be wrong?

Day 4, something I remembered from school was how water is very good at dissolving things, things like salt and sugar. Technically I wasn’t supposed to use the sugar whilst I’m at home on my own, but this is for science, and not just any science cool magic water science. I took out the bowl and filled it with water before adding a tiny bit of salt and then tried to lift the water. It felt…easier? Why did it feel easier? Surely by making the water less water it would make it harder. Tiny bit more salt, even easier. I repeated one more time, the tugging got less and less strong. That was odd, well, only one thing to do. I needed to know if there was a limit to how much the salt helped, so I poured a bunch in. There was so much that the salt stopped dissolving and it turned into this sort of paste at the bottom. I tried to lift it again, but it didn't move. I tried very hard to lift it and had to stop just before it exploded again. So there was a limit, maybe it was like seawater? Did it work better with sea water? I refilled the bowl and added sugar this time. Nothing, no change, I added more sugar and still no change. Maybe they weren’t just magic water powers, but magic sea-water powers. But I could still lift normal tap water, so it worked with water but worked better with salty water. Good to know. I’d have to go to the sea to find out, maybe I could convince mom to convince Gabe to let us go to Montauk?

Gabe got back first, was having a bad day and did what he always did when that happened, so I burst another pipe at him. That was nice. Mom was less happy, I almost thought she had worked out it was me, but she never said it.

Day 5, the last day before the weekend and Summer starts properly. Don’t know how I’m going to practice without everyone noticing. I had no idea if we were going to Montauk yet so I had to think about how I would go to the sea to practice without anyone knowing… A problem for the future. I needed to exercise my brain and work on a theory. The water doesn’t like being moved in ways that weren’t natural, so in theory I could combine an unnatural motion with something water normally does. I took out two bowls and filled only one with water. The familiar tugging sensation made itself known as the water was lifted out of the first bowl, but instead of holding it there and trying to force it into a shape I made it flow towards the other bowl. The moment the water started moving it got noticeably easier to manipulate without making a mess. Good, another successful test, look at me doing science, why was it never this good at school? All the words and formula made my eyes burn and all of the letters looked like they floated off the page. Next test: moving water directly from the tap. I switched on the faucet to cold and let the water run, giving time to attach to it. The water constantly moving provided a new challenge, I couldn’t just wait to get a grip on it, I had to move it quickly. The first attempt was a failure, only managed to splash the floor (hooray water powers for having one good use). I tried again, it was difficult to tense the ‘muscle’ in such a strange way. It was like trying to make my arm go stiff in waves, possible but requiring a lot of attention. Ok so partial success, how can I get the water to work with me directly from the tap? It needs to be able to flow in some way. Pressure. Like what happened with Smelly Gabe. I turned the faucet on a second time and forced the water to stop, the muscle was straining massively and I could hear the pipes shaking. I turned off the tap and moved to open a window, it took far longer than normal due to me having to focus so hard on not exploding the pipes in the entire building. Instead of increasing the pulling feeling to control it, I let it go. The water shot out in a burst (also leaking out of the bottom of the tap, woops). It grew weaker and weaker as I guided the ball of water around the room, maybe a little too weak as the water lost its consistency and almost dropped to the ground had I not suddenly forced the pulling to be stronger and practically thrown the water out of the window. I'd clearly needed more practice, maybe with a source that wouldn't risk property damage. Oh who was I kidding? I was absolutely going to burst more pipes at Smelly Gabe, he definitely needed it.

I kept practicing my water powers until I heard the door open, and sighed in relief at the sound of mom's light footsteps as opposed to the heavy lumbering footfalls of Gabe. I had enough time to clear out the kitchen before she walked in and embraced me in a warm hug.

“How's my baby boy?”

“Mooooom, I'm being smushed.”

She released me from her hug, as much as I wanted to just stay there we both had other things to do.

“Guess what?”

“You brought more blueberry candies home?”

“Half credit for being correct, just not about what I was asking.”

I gave it some thought, and then gave up.

“What?”

“We're going to Montauk for a week.”

I loved Montauk, there was a little beach cabin mom would rent out almost every summer. We would make s'mores and tell eachother stories but most importantly it was an escape from Gabe. Mom loved it even more than I did, she told me every time that this was where she met dad. She finally got up and looked around, seeing the bowl again. She looked concerned. 

“Doing more science?”

“Yeah.”

“Any results?”

I should have answered yes, even if she started prying, even if I had to tell her. I felt horrible every time I had to lie to her.

“Nothing yet.”

“Percy, I don't know why you're hiding whatever this thing is from me, but you can tell me.”

How did she know? And now i felt guilty. But when would be the best time to tell her? Somewhere I could demonstrate.

“I'll tell you when we're at Montauk.”

The drive to Montauk was awkward to say the least, a lot of us not talking and having the radio turned up way too loud. The worst part was that she didn’t seem angry, just worried, like she knew something I didn’t. It took too long for us to arrive, the atmosphere was less difficult as we unpacked and unloaded. I had hoped Mom had forgotten as we started talking more again, until she finally set up the fire.

“So Percy, what’s this big secret that you couldn’t tell me?”

I hated seeing her hurt, it took a lot of effort to avoid tearing up.

“I-it-it’s not that I wanted to hide it from you, I just needed more time to make sure you would believe me.”

“Percy, look at me, I believe you. Now what is it?”

I looked out at the sea, and hoped I was right about my water powers working best with sea water, I’d never tried it at such a range and with such a large body.

“Percy, take as much time as you need.”

I breathed out, slowly, and focussed. The tugging was there, I could feel it, the largest body of water I had ever felt. Why the size didn’t cause any issues was a mystery to me. All I needed was a little bit, not the whole Atlantic ocean. Mom was silent, but I couldn’t tell what was happening because my eyes were closed trying to balance the tugging sensation. Eventually I opened my eyes and saw what she was looking at, a spinning orb of water floating in the air, I could even see a fish in it.”

“If…if it helps, it’s never worked this well before.”

She looked at me, and then back to the ball before looking back to me.

“The pipes, that was you?”

“First time I ever tried it was after the pipe burst at Gabe last week.”

She sat there and stared before moving over and crushing me in a hug.

“Percy please, promise you’ll keep this a secret.”

“Mom, what's wrong? What’s the problem?”

“I’m so sorry I can’t say.”

“Do we need to go back?”

She withdrew from the hug, still holding onto my shoulder like she was afraid I'd disappear. She took a few moments to compose herself.

“No, being close to the sea it’s… it’s the best place right now.”

I supposed that made sense, whatever unknown danger she was talking about would have a lot more difficulty getting to either of us with my ability to move the water as easily as I did for the sea. The rest of the week was still difficult, I couldn’t help but notice mom looking over her shoulder any time we got too far from the beach. When it rained she looked like she would jump out of her skin at the slightest hint at rumbling. She had always been anxious during thunderstorms, but it seemed even worse now, like she was jumping at every noise and every shadow. Considering how drafty the cabin was there was a lot of jumping. There was a benefit however, now that mom knew about everything I could spend time practicing. I could tell she didn’t like it, she didn’t tell me why, but the look on her face spoke volumes. She only seemed to relax more whenever I went near the water.

On the third day she decided to ask about my practice. I was standing about ankle deep in the sea. I didn't need to be there, the tugging felt exactly the same from the beach, but it made mom happier so it made me happier.

“So Percy, how does it work?”

How to explain it? To me it just sort of worked. Like moving my arms or legs, I had to think about it, but it just happened when I wanted it to.

“You know your arm?”

“Yes.”

“It's like that, but in my gut.”

“An arm in your gut?”

“No, there's a tugging feeling in my gut, if I try to force the feeling I can turn it on again and move the water. It's like an arm, I have to think of doing it but it just happens, it feels normal.”

“OK, I think I understand, you have an extra limb that works through a feeling in your gut that lets you move water.”

“Something like that.”

She stopped and looked like she was thinking, repeatedly starting and stopping sentences like she was wondering what she was allowed to say.

“Maybe you aren't using a limb to move the water, maybe the water is the limb.”

I hadn't thought of it like that. If the water was like an arm what I was doing was using one arm to lift the other. I tried closing my eyes again, feeling that tug, but picturing the water as the tugging arm instead of the thing tugging on it. I reopened my eyes, the sea water had formed a large wall in front of me, drawing in the water from around me and blocking the oncoming waves.

“I take it this is a good result?”

I nodded eagerly. 

“I've never controlled this much at once, I knew I was better with sea water than the water from the taps, but this is a lot.”

I ran over to hug her.

“Thanks for helping.”

I turned back to see the wall of water, still in place. The tugging hadn't lessened and now that I didn't have to balance it as much I could do things without having to concentrate on it. The next thing to do was try and manipulate it into specific shapes. That again was surprisingly easy, I knew the basics of making the water stove the way I wanted it to, the big one being to make sure that it kept flowing. But tiny me was not very smart (not that I'm much better) and in my infinite wisdom I pushed too far. My memories were a little foggy other than a hellish migraine up until we got back to the cabin. Mom put me in my sleeping bag and ended up feeding me her blue chocolate chip cookies until I finally calmed down. We both agreed that it was probably a good idea to hold off practice for the next couple of days.

I kept up my practice through the summer, whenever she could Mom would take me down to a park by the riverside so I could practice on a larger body of water. The Hudson wasn't the nicest place to be near to say the least. The tugging was incredibly difficult to manage, and what water I was able to move did so incredibly slowly. New thing to make a note of, dirty water is more difficult to move.

This routine continued until I moved to my new school for fourth grade, where I had to slow down because of school. Eventually the whole water thing became mundane, and I did let the practice slip for a while. The novelty had been lost now, and I only really used it to help with cleaning, exploding plumbing at people I didn't like and occasionally going down the river to get rid of as much muck as I could. Gabe got worse, he didn't bother leaving the apartment for his games and started leaching money from me for them. I knew he blamed me for every time he ended up covered in water, but he couldn't solidly pin it on me.  

Fourth grade itself was uneventful, standard fare of people either ignoring me or trying to bother me until enough pipes mysteriously covered them in water that they stopped. The teachers didn't like me, and I didn't like them. I couldn't stand having to sit still in all their lessons, barely able to read the material they gave to me before the words started floating. A few minor floods in the building may have been caused by this. I ended up getting kicked out just over halfway through. We were taking a behind the scenes tour of an aquarium and I leaned on the wrong button, resulting in the whole class taking a swim with one of the sharks. The shark was quite nice, and very apologetic for scaring the other humans like he did. It was only after I got off the greyhound that it finally clicked that I had just spoken to a shark, add that to the list.

It was while I was thinking about this that I heard a scream from the alleyway I was walking past that was suddenly cut off. I peered down the alley, looked like a woman was being mugged and neither of them had noticed me. Something I also noticed was a storm drain. I reached out and could feel the water inside it before ordering it to shoot upwards into the mugger's face. Both of them were very confused and alarmed, but it gave the woman an opportunity to run as I casually walked away. I thought about what I just did and finally realised: I have superpowers, I just helped someone.

What's stopping me from doing that again?

Chapter Text

I made an executive decision to start watching the Spiderman films a little bit after the ‘whoops guess I’m a superhero now’ incident.  It made sense in my small 4th grader brain: He’s a New Yorker, he has a similar lack of money, and really he’s just one guy with powers.  There were a few… glaring differences, mainly in the age department.  But still, it provided a lot of valuable notes for my future activities.

Firstly being my lack of mobility.  Peter Parker didn't have much of an issue with that with his powers being made for movement, but I wasn’t so lucky.  I needed to figure out a way of travelling around the city that wouldn’t get me caught, and let me get up to high places.  As much as I wanted to believe the police would appreciate my services, there would always be a Jameson or a Bullock who would want to bring me in, and I didn’t know anywhere near enough tricks for escaping.  An easy one is rivers, although they were very gross.  I managed to slip away from mom for long enough one day to test whether or not I could safely swim in the water without getting all of the nasty stuff on me.  It was surprisingly easy and…fun, I had to think about not wanting to get wet and dirty and well I just didn’t.  It took me about 10 minutes to figure out that: 

a. I was breathing underwater

And b. Mom was calling my name

Suffice to say that test was a resounding success even if I did have to cut it off slightly early, it was something that I would need to explore further (and maybe away from the gaze of that one otter looking thing which I could’ve sworn was watching me).  Now then, going up and down, the most difficult part.  Well, mostly going up, I once slipped in one of the home ec kitchens in my old school and the water pooled under me to soften the blow.  Not the most graceful, but every hero has to start somewhere.

At least I thought, I didn't have any real life examples except for myself and I want even a proper superhero at that point.  My first try was to use the momentum of the water to carry me upwards.  It was working until I couldn’t stop the water in time and landed flat on my face.  I also tried making my own water grappling hooks, I'd read in the library that water had a high cohesion because of something called ‘hydrogen bonding’.  Most of that went way over my head but I understood the basics, water liked to stick together, sadly that was not enough to support my weight.

Despite the injuries, I hadn't enjoyed science this much in forever.  School made it seem like such a drag, they didn't even let us explode things in chemistry which was a travesty as far as I was concerned.  But all of the science behind water, no matter how painful my dyslexia made it to read, was endlessly fun to uncover and understand because I might be able to use it.  I Just needed to avoid science talk around Mom.  She seemed very concerned about my deep (heh) interest in how water works.

Towards the end of the first phase of testing I concluded that I needed something I could control the power and direction of that could be deployed quickly and from anywhere.  It was when I was (not really) watching a documentary on Yellowstone with mom when I saw the geysers and had my genius idea, pressure.  It took a few tries to get the aim and the power right, but eventually I managed to jump up and between buildings, with only a few times where I fell off the aforementioned buildings.  

As I spent more time preparing I spent less and less time at home, same for Mom as she had to supervise me and Smelly Gabe definitely wasn't getting off his lazy ass to do it himself, which just made him more irate.  I learnt very quickly that my powers work poorly against Gabe's favourite brand of cheap beer, especially when a half empty bottle of it was flying towards my head.  But I couldn't let Gabe stop me, when I finally got my name out there and a reputation I could leverage that to get him arrested, better than what that grease ball deserved.  There was a lot of good I could do, and as much as my adhd addled brain wanted to jump right into the action I kinda needed a way to keep my identity an actual secret, which meant it was costume time.

…

As it turns out I have absolutely zero talent for sewing, or drawing.  Thinking of original ideas for the costume was turning into a chore so I did the thing I should have done from the beginning and went on the Internet.  There were a lot of good concepts that could be found on forums I wasn't old enough to be on, but none of them really matched what I wanted.  Since I'd decided on doing my hero stuff after dark I needed a costume with darker colours (dam you aquaman for your orangeness). All water based hero outfits either showed way too much of my identity or were too colourful to have an intimidation factor (definitely not because I thought the bright colours wouldn't be cool).

Eventually I found an idea from a fanart on a chat room for a manga I wasn't a big enough nerd to know about (Steel Ball Race or something like that). There were some…oddities in the design, mostly the shoes and the rainbows.  But the mask and dark blue hooded poncho definitely fit the idea I was going for, although I was going to replace the hockey mask from the original design with a ski mask and goggles.  I'd rather look like a knockoff Spiderman than a serial killer.

So, did I steal money from Smelly Gabe's poker fund for my costume?  Yes.  Did  he deserve it?  Absolutely.  It also taught me a valuable lesson in stealth, mom was suspicious over the extra bruises.  I was going to get that man thrown in prison someday and make sure that he would rot there.

It took time, but I managed to gather enough parts to build my prototype costume.  It was far from the best, but it worked.  The fire escape by my window would be the way out.  The day before I started my first night on the job I was finalising the details of my costume, too focused to notice the door to my room opening.

“Hey hun, who's that costume of?”

I almost jumped out of my seat, had I really lost track of time that badly?  I checked the clock briefly, I'd been working for hours.  Dammit, Mom probably had to deal with one of Gabe's tantrums because of me.  Maybe she'd asked for time, maybe I could take her place.  A few of the scars caused by a combination of Gabe’s smoking habit and even worse anger management than me itched at the thought of him.  No, it was my stupid mistake, and mom wasn't going to deal with it in my place.  She deserved far less of Gabe than I did.

“It's a uh, character from a manga.”

“Those are the comics from Japan, right?”  She was probably just humouring me, constantly looking back towards the kitchen, I needed to hurry up.

“Sort of, it's… What are we having for dinner?”

Nice save Percy, real smooth.

Mom probably assumed I  was embarrassed about this new interest, it wasn't the kind of thing you told people in school about if you didn't want it held over your head for the rest of the year.  I'd done more than enough for that, although my manic, violent childness had died down since I started solving my problems by breaking the plumbing.

She smiled gently.”Casserole, dear.”

“Will Gabe be there?”

“No, Gabriel is busy, but he'll be back soon.”

The implication was obvious, although he would be royally pissed that he'd missed it.  I thought about what lie I could make up to make it easier on mom as we went into the kitchen.

…

The next evening was my first night on the job.  I made my way up and looked out over the city, making sure my costume billowed in the wind whilst I posed at the edge of the roof.  It was far less dramatic than I was expecting, I probably looked like some weirdo robber to anyone on the streets.  But I was there, costume and everything.

Most of that evening was spent running across rooftops, watching alleyways and dark corners.  I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the most fun I’d had in my life.  It took around two hours to find my first proper crime to take care of.  I was sitting on the roof of a medium sized apartment complex in Harlem when I saw a beaten up old jeep pull up outside of an alleyway.  Now, I’ve never thought of myself as the smartest person, but a jeep in the middle of a city with traffic as bad as NYC was definitely setting off alarm bells.  Especially when two very ‘inconspicuously’ dressed men walked out and pulled a duffel bag full of the special powder.

I waited for the two dealers to enter the alley only to be met by two other dealers…odd.  I wasn’t able to catch most of their conversation whilst I waited for any police sting operations (I did my reading ok, and by that I mean I pirated Breaking Bad.  Great show, 9/10).  

It was only when the first set of dealers made a move to leave and I was absolutely certain no cops were going to burst out from either side of the alley that I made my move, bursting the pipes running under the sidewalk to cut off their escape on one side and jumping down to the other.  The dealers were rattled to say the least, but not so badly that they pulled their guns out.  I used the water pipes of the neighbouring buildings to interrupt their aim as two bullets whizzed past my head.

Holy shit I almost got shot.

“Who the fuck d’you think you are kid?”

Shoot first, ask questions later, I could see how it was.

“Would you believe me if I said Batman?”

Another two bullets both knocked off course by a spray of water.  It was probably going to cost whoever owned those buildings a lot of money, but I really didn’t care about hurting the wallets of a landlord, especially if they were anything like Eddie.

“Real funny kid, how about you take off the costume and forget you saw this before you get hurt.”

“Dammit, do I really sound that young?”

“Yeah, and you’re a shortstack.”

Didn’t mean to say that out.  Note to self, find a voice changer.

“Alright, alright, I can see when I'm outmatched.”

I started walking towards him with my hands in the air, he was backing up towards the rest of the goons, good.  I stopped the moment I saw he was standing under a drainage grate, pulled, and launched a heavy metal circle into his face at high speed.  It's not a war crime if I'm not in a war.    One down, and with that the rest of them pulled out their own pistols and opened fire as I ducked behind a dumpster.  I was barely able to get a glance in before one bullet got a bit too close to hitting my face.  I willed the water to pool beneath each of their feet, trapping it and building up energy before launching it, and them, towards the walls.

One of the ones that got up seemed to be smarter than the rest, realising that guns weren’t working and that they were all larger than me and charged.  I managed to splash him in the face and used that distraction to dodge out of the way as he tripped and fell headfirst into the side of my cover.  After zip-tying all of their hands and legs I took out one of the phones and dialed 911 before launching myself upwards and out of the way of the police.  I didn’t have the kind of reputation needed to talk to them directly yet and I didn’t fancy going to juvie for trying to be a good person.  

The cops were confused as to what happened.  I made a noise so that one of them looked up and made direct eye contact with me before finally fleeing.  Dramatic?  Yes.  Fun?  Also yes.  By the time I was far enough away from the scene of the crime to sit down on another rooftop I celebrated.  Baby’s first drug bust, and without any injuries beyond some light bruising.  I could work with that.

I heard a shout in the distance, it seemed like the night was starting to get underway properly.  As I made my way in the direction of the shouting and quickly disarmed and incapacitated the mugger before vanishing to the rooftops again, I thought that maybe life was starting to look up.

Chapter Text

What happens when you stay up way too far into the night whilst constantly doing strenuous activities when you aren't used to it?  If your answer was anything along the lines of being ungodly tired, you are officially more intelligent than I was the morning after.  I never wanted to learn how much your eyes hurt when looking at bright lights without enough sleep, but there I was, in my bed and in pain.  I got back at, what?  Two or three am?  Note to self, make sure to get some sleep in before going out and fighting crime.

By the end of last night I hadn’t seen any more drug deals but there were a decent amount of muggings and assorted assaults that were as easy as bursting the nearest pipe, stealing the attacker’s phone and calling 911 (I made sure to give it back obviously).  It would have been a good routine had I thought about what would happen once I ran out of adrenaline.  School was going to restart soon, new one for me as per usual, I needed a way of balancing that with my new ‘job’.  

For a change I actually considered getting kicked out deliberately early on in the year.  I always did terribly anyway and being tired all the time would only make school more painful since I couldn't really get worse grades.  But then I would disappoint mom, and I definitely didn't want to give Gabe the satisfaction of leaching off of me for his gambling addiction all year long.

Breakfast was quiet, Gabe had taken to eating on the sofa which was fine by me since I could avoid that human blobfish (maybe not blobfish, they look normal when they're at their ideal pressure, Gabe was permanent).

“Hey mom, mind if I go to the skatepark?”

Mom turned around to me.

“I don't see why not.”

There was an ugly grunt from the other room. 

“Someone you're forgetting to ask, punk?”

Mom sent me a pleading look, the same one she always did when she didn't want me to antagonise Smelly Gabe.  As much fun as sassing him sounded, I had a voice changer to find.

“My apologies, Gabriel, do I have your blessing to go to the skatepark?”  I tried.  I could almost hear his two brain cells trying to determine whether or not he cared about my sarcasm.

“Sure, gets you out of my way.  I'm having a poker game tonight, I expect you to be silent, brain boy.”

I walked over to mom and lowered my voice.

“I'll come in through the fire escape.”

“Thanks sweetie.”

…

As it turns out, it's really difficult to find a voice changer.  It took me an hour of searching through shops to finally give up, and another hour and a half to actually find the dam thing.  

I eventually settled on an old toy helmet that I found in a garage sale, it was modeled off the clone troopers from Star Wars and came with an in-built voice changer.  Ironically, finding someone to remove it from the helmet and waterproof it was easier than actually finding it, didn't ask me any questions and I didn't ask him about him having only one eye in the middle of his head.

A lot of agonising waiting and listening to Gabe's poker buddies drunkenly shouting later, they finally left and the apartment was quiet enough for me to sneak out of the window and put my costume on.

I don't think I could ever get used to the rush I got from running across the rooftops, launching myself into the air.  A little while in, I thought to check a newspaper stand, see if I'd got any attention.  I picked one up and flicked through the pages and there I was:

Masked Figure Interferes With Police

I wasn't front page news, and the editor was less than kind about my ‘dangerous and radical uprooting of the justice system’ (I checked, his name wasn't Jonah, it was Simmons) but I was there!  Me, the troubled kid who couldn't hold down a school for more than a year.  I put the paper back where I found it and returned to the rooftops.

I wasn't sure if I even wanted the media attention.  The moment I got to the front page, Mom would figure me out in seconds, plus I really didn't want to get locked up in Area 51 or somewhere like that.  As much as I wanted to continue being introspective, I heard sirens going down a nearby street which meant I was on the clock.

I dove into the Hudson and followed the sirens along the road, eventually stopping at a small bank branch.  The very loud police chatter confirmed that this was some kind of failed ATM robbery.  Police surrounded the building and nobody was on the ground floor, which meant the perps were upstairs.

Next problem: sneaking in to take down the bad guys

The obvious answer was to use the window, and I have no issues with obvious.

It was surprisingly easy to get into the building.  The robbers were panicked, keeping their guns pointed towards the stairs with one in charge of the hostages, both tied up.  Fortunately for me, there was a faucet next to the main hostage holder, so he was out for the count.  I crawled through the window and made a shushing gesture at the captives, which got the message across.

Next were the other two, both looking down the stairs, too distracted by the police's loudspeakers.  I reached for more water, feeling some in pipes right next to their heads and built up the pressure, releasing it and sending both of them flying to the ground.  One of them fired wildly in the direction of the pipe, very amusing to me until three cops ran up the stairs.

Suffice to say, it was time to abandon ship.  I heard someone shouting to ‘get back here’ from the window I escaped through so they clearly  noticed me.

A few minutes later after some swimming in the Hudson, I found my way home, removing the costume and hiding it in my cubby on the roof before re-entering the flat.  The place was quiet, which most likely meant that they were both asleep.  At least I thought they were.

I knew I messed up when mom was standing outside of my door, arms crossed, looking more angry than I'd ever seen her.

“ Perseus Jackson ”

Oh I'd definitely messed up.  Mom barely ever pulled the full name card.

“Yes.”

She pointed to the TV, on it was a report showing repeating footage of my escape via the window.  When it wasn't that, it was news anchors talking about the commissioner's statement.  At least she seemed to not hate me.

“I…plead guilty?”

She sighed and closed the door behind her, sitting on the bed and gesturing for me to sit next to her.  I expected a long lecture about recklessness, putting myself in danger.  Mom had way too much patience for me, but even that had to run out after I fucked up enough.  But no, she decided to hug me instead.

“I don't know what I'm going to do with you.”

“You're not mad?”  My voice was a lot smaller than usual.  It was bad enough when mom had to deal with Gabe because of my inability to shut my mouth, the idea of upsetting her directly hurt.

“Sometimes I'm reminded how much of your father's child you are.”

“Why?”

“He mentioned some of his other children to me once or twice.  You have a lot more in common with your siblings than I'm comfortable with.”

Oh, dad had other kids.  I didn't honestly know how to feel about that.  Mom mentioned he was a sailor, he probably had met others before her, but it still felt weird.  How similar to me were my siblings?  How similar to Mom were their parents?

“As much as a parent probably should be angry about this, well, it’s difficult.  There are certain things I can’t mention yet.  Please, just promise to keep safe”

As vague and mysterious as she was being, I trusted mom, I really wanted to at least.  So I didn’t push and let her keep her secrets.

“I will.”

She relented from the hug, no matter how much I wanted to stay there.

“Mind if I see your costume?”

“It's…uh…it’s on the roof.”  Mom gave another exasperated look which only made my embarrassment even worse.

We spent some time going over the intricacies of my suit, mom even offered to help spruce it up a bit to make it look a little less ‘cobbled together’ as she put it.  Talking was nice, it didn't make up for not going to Montauk, but it was still nice.

…

The last couple of weeks passed before fifth grade started, another new school for me once again.  This was good, because I could blame school for my hallucinations of a miniature Sphinx Of Giza attacking a very tall child(?) who happened to have one eye.  I did the standard mugging procedure: wait for them to go near a manhole and launch it in the air.  Which worked until the cover failed to knock out the knockoff sphinx which turned to look at me.

“I thought I could smell a fresher meal.”

Cannibal knockoff sphinx, my day just kept getting better and better.

“Look lady?  You are a lady, right?”

It didn’t answer.

“Anyway, I appreciate the compliment but I’d prefer not being eaten so that’s going to be a no.”

It snarled at me, which was doubly confusing because I was fairly certain that wasn’t actually a costume.

“Normally I’d make you answer a riddle, but such delicious seafood is too good to be passed up.”

“Probably for the best, I never was good at those.”

She snarled at me, and I backed further up onto my high ground, just like Obi Wan intended, and had a pool of water form at the edge of the roof.  A few seconds later, the probably-a-sphinx jumped up onto the rooftop and I sprang the trap, the water being released and launching her back into the next building.  Of course that didn’t actually do anything, because I really love my damn luck, especially as it flew into me and threw me against a nearby wall.  

Everything hurt, my eyes were fuzzy, but at least I was alive and on the ground.  Were it not for the very unharmed sphinx pacing towards me I might have considered it a success.  I tried to move but it was too sluggish, too uncoordinated.  Just as I felt the familiar tug, the cyclops (if I was going to accept a sphinx being real, I was going to accept a cyclops) that I was rescuing in the first place ran past me, grabbed the sphinx by the head and repeatedly slammed it into the wall.  Golden liquid spewed out of the mangled face which I turned around to look away from until the body started to fall apart into dust.

“Are you alright Mister Superhero?”

“...I'm sorry?”

“Mister Superhero, you have a costume and powers and you saved me.”

I grunted as I peeled myself off the floor, wobbling slightly before regaining my balance by leaning on the wall.

“I think you did most of the saving there…  don't know your name.”

“Tyson.”

“Nice to meet you, Tyson.  Say, is having one eye normal for you?”

“Yeah, I'm a cyclops.”  He seemed very enthusiastic to share that information.

I finally regained my composure enough to stand up properly, stretching to alleviate some of the aches.  My arm got broken once by Gabe, so I remembered what it felt like and knew I was very lucky that hadn't happened.

“Well then, Tyson.  I need to get going, the night is still young.  Try to stay out of trouble.”

“OK, thank you, Mister Superhero.”

As I leapt into the air, propelled by pressurised water, I considered the fact that I probably needed an actual name to go with my alter ego.

Mom was not happy about the amount of bruises I got to say the least, she was especially not happy when I told her about what I thought I saw.  She was unhappy enough to pull me into a hug and start trying not to cry into my shoulder, which ended up in me trying not to cry.  We were both a mess by the end.  Gabe gloated about it, thinking I was going around picking fights like the ‘delinquent punk’ he thought I was.  The worst part was the next day, I could barely move with the amount of bruises I had, luckily I managed to get an exception from PE, but not after a long lecture about final chances and wasting my future.

After the sphinx incident, I started noticing more and more weird stuff.  Women with snakes for legs, giant boars.  Those kinds of things.  I still kept an eye on Tyson, said hello occasionally, and things ended up settling into a new routine.  Flunking school during the day, hero stuff in the evening and then sleeping during the night.  

There was a particularly eventful night, after I had just finished packing up another drug deal when a cop managed to catch up to me before I could run away.  It was clear they were scared and under orders to not arrest me judging by the lack of guns.

“Hey, kid, stay right there.”

“Why?”

“Because my boss wants to talk, she has for weeks.  I've got a bonus riding on getting in contact with you.”

“Your boss?”

“Commissioner Wellesley.”

Oh, well I suppose I should have seen that coming.  Siobhan Wellesley was someone the media spent a lot of effort trying to get an interview with.  Still seemed a little suspect.

“Why does she want to talk to me?”

“Apparently it's classified.”

Well that was incredibly disconcerting.

He handed me a piece of paper, on it an address for a police station near 22nd.

“Tomorrow, 9pm.”

“I'll think about it.”

“Hey, kid, if you see her tell her that Michael found you, my kid's birthday is coming up.”

Dammit, now I was going to feel bad if I ignored her.  At least a kid would be getting a nice birthday gift if I got dragged off to some secretive government facility.

Eventually I made my way home and Mom could already tell that something was wrong.

“Sweetie, what happened?”

We were both eating blue candy out of a bag, something Mom always did nowadays whenever we had one of our serious conversations.

“The commissioner wants to speak to me tomorrow.”

“That's…”

“Yeah.”

We sat in silence for a few more minutes.

“Do you think I should go?”

“I think that you'll only be in more trouble if you put it off.  Who knows, maybe you'll have another adult to keep you from being too reckless.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Talk to her, but trust your instincts.”

…

I thought it was a stupid idea when I went to meet up with commissioner Wellesley.  I did a sweep of all the nearby buildings for snipers or any other government weirdness and was pleasantly surprised when I found nothing.  The roof of the precinct was very open with a single helipad (nobody was hiding underneath).  When I finally finished my checks the commissioner had arrived.  She was around 5’8 with shoulder length greying ginger hair.  As I would later learn she always wore the most stereotypical detective's trench coat I'd ever seen.

I landed on the raised section above the door, making sure to billow my costume appropriately.  She took a drag from a cigarette and looked towards me, very unimpressed.

“Are you done with your checks now?”  She spoke in one of the thickest New York drawls I'd ever heard, it was the kind of accent you'd expected to see in those old mobster movies.

“Yup, no snipers.”  I definitely didn't deliberately make my voice annoyingly chipper,  I have no idea what you're talking about.

“Jeez kid, I knew you were young but that voice changer doesn't do shit to hide it.”

“I could splash you in the face for that.”

“Hmph.  I'll cut to the chase, I take it you've noticed that you're not the only ‘weird’ thing in this city.”

“It's difficult to miss it.”

She didn't comment on that.

“There's a reason the government hasn't locked you up for testing.  They've been aware of this for a long time, sometimes even the president is in the know, but usually we're just classified as an agency that specialises in categorising and dealing with those who believe themselves to be supernatural.”

“You said we're.”

She did something that almost resembled a chuckle.

“That I did, ‘cause I'm one of them.”

“So what do you want with me?”

She took another drag from her cigarette,  sighing as she looked out over the skyline.

“It's been a long time since one of you was on our side.  Squashing you would be a waste of talent, plus we have enough budget to make you actually having your powers into nothing more than a fringe theory.  All I ask is for your cooperation.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Sure you do, you can keep on going without our resources, maybe you'll slip up and we'll have to contain you permanently.  We both come out of this better by collaborating, kid, you're smart enough to piece that together.”

Which roughly translated to:  anybody could figure out that this is a good deal to take.  But she was right, I'd rather have the shadowy government agency working with me than against me.

“What would I have to do?”

“Simple, report back to us on what you see and occasionally go after some particularly troublesome targets.  Don't worry about killing them, they can't technically die.”

Well that wasn't confusing in the slightest.  At the very least it meant Tyson wasn't technically a murderer, which was good, I liked Tyson.

While I was thinking the commissioner walked up to me and held out a phone, the kind that only ran texts, phone calls and Snake.

“If I need you, I'll call.  And yes, I'll try to avoid calling during the school day.”  She pulled out her own matching phone to demonstrate, like I didn't know how phones worked.

“Right then, I'll just get going.”

“Sure kiddo, go have fun.”

It took a little more time than usual to get back home, a couple muggings and a lot of questions on my mind.  Of all of them, two stood out the most.  I knew the monsters I fought occasionally weren't human at all, but were there any more people like me?  And how much did my new ‘friends’ in the government truly know?

Chapter Text

I was doing my standard sweep one night, Gabe was being Gabe and I needed an out.  He thought I was involved in a gang, which he could keep thinking about. I didn’t care, I had plans for him, I just needed to clear my head a little.  I'd spent a couple hours patrolling, nothing out of the ordinary really, until I ended up on 22nd.  The air tasted strangely salty, like a calm sea breeze in the growing rain.  It reminded me of Montauk, and weirdly Tyson, he lived around 22nd didn't he?  He was on the way, there was no reason for me to not check in on him.

I dropped down from the roof, my costume fluttering from the force.  Tyson was pacing, and I could see a lot of very broken trinkets, cluing me in that something was wrong.  He turned around and saw me, running up to me and crushing me in a hug.

“Mister Superhero, you're here!”

“Yep, definitely here.  Kinda need to breathe, big guy.”  I barely managed to force the sentence from my very squished lungs.  Luckily, Tyson understood and relented from his bear hug.

“I saw a goat man and a sunny child being chased by a very bad doggy, but when I tried to help them they ran away so I prayed to dad for you to come here to help and you're here and-”  

I was barely able to make out what he was trying to say through his excitement.  I think I caught that he prayed to his dad?  How exactly do you pray to…unless.  I tried to remember some stories about the cyclops, the most famous one being Polythemeus and his father was…

“Tyson, slow down, where are the people who need help and what are they being chased by?”

“Very big doggy, hellhound, they went that way.” He pointed down the road which was unusually empty considering this was New York.

“Thanks big guy, I'll tell you how it goes.”

I launched myself back onto the rooftops and ran in the direction he mentioned.  A minute or so later of looking and, sure enough, there was a goat man and a child being chased by what I could only describe as the biggest rottweiler I'd ever seen.  The street looked abandoned, some of the cars still having their doors open.  Good, meant there were only two civilians that needed protecting.  I raised my arm and concentrated on the water on the ground, forcing it to pool under the paws of the dog.  Just as it tried to run at them I yanked my arm back, forcing it off balance and sending it toppling into a small parking lot.  

I leapt off the roof and landed behind the two of them.  The kid looked only a little younger than me, maybe being a couple grades below, with short golden blonde hair that still somehow managed to be shiny in the rain, carrying an expensive looking scoped crossbow that I was fairly certain he wasn’t legally supposed to have.  The goat man on the other hand looked like an actual adult, with stubble and glasses just visible beneath the hood of his raincoat.  They both just stood there and gaped, the kid pointing at me and trying to form a sentence that sounded something like “It's you!”, just with much more stuttering.  The goat man (I think they were called Satyrs, or maybe Fauns.  I managed to read at least that much after Siobhan asked me to do ‘basic research’. Who knew running about in a costume would require so much homework?) regained composure quicker and pointed a set of reed pipes at me.

“You, stay where you are.”

“As funny as it is watching you trying to intimidate me with panpipes, we have a much larger and more dog shaped problem.”  I flicked my wrist again and heard a very angry yelp from behind me.  “The dog's going to figure out that I can't kill it soon enough, you should probably start running.”

The kid finally stopped stammering and slapped the satyr's pipes out of his hands.

“It's fine Arbor.”  He turned around to look at me directly.  “Hello, big fan canIgetyourautographafterthispleasethankyou. ”

It would've been touching if we weren't in imminent danger.  I'd never actually interacted with one of my fans even though I knew that they existed somewhere.  “As much as I appreciate the enthusiasm, now isn't the time.  If you two want to steal a car, I'm not going to stop you.”

The satyr, Arbor, got the hint and ran to the fastest looking one he could find and dragged the kid with him.  Once I knew they were in a vehicle I turned my attention to the hellhound which looked very unhappy with me.  I held out my arm towards it in a finger gun motion and willed the rain to start spinning around my hand.  When the hellhound finally regained its bearings I fired the vortex right at its face, just long enough for me to hear an engine starting up and a car driving away.

“All right Princess, that sounds like a good name, I'm who you're after now.”

Princess considered this briefly in-between sputtering and howling at the constant deluge of water flying into its mouth.  Good, the longer it was delayed the further they got away.

“So, how do you kill a Hellhound?  Really wish the commissioner gave me a guidebook on this kind of thing-” my ruminations were interrupted by Princess deciding she was done with her impromptu dog shower and charging right into my face which felt about the same as what I expected getting run over by a car felt like, broken bones included.  I was barely conscious enough to notice it running after the other two.

“No, nonononononono.  Get back over here.”

The dog was already running to catch what it thought were the easier targets.  I recovered far quicker than I expected, especially considering that I definitely felt something snap.  Guess I needed to add a healing factor to the list, most likely had to be in water knowing how my powers usually work.  As much as I wanted to consider this new development, I had a car that needed chasing.  I willed the water to gather under my feet and then swirled the rain around my arms, releasing the pressure to make my very own water jet.  Did it look stupid?  Probably.  But it worked and I was already speeding along to catch up with the hellhound and the car.

It took about a minute for me to track them down by following the trail of broken road, improbable trees and crossbow bolts.  They were driving only slightly more insanely than the average New Yorker.  I barely dodged a swipe from the hellhound as I came up alongside the open window that the kid was shooting his crossbow from.

“I thought you were distracting it!”  I could barely hear him shouting over the car and the rain.

“I was, it decided to go after the bigger meal.”

There was a middle shouting from the front of the car.  The kid turned around.

“It's the costume guy!”

I really needed to think of an actual superhero name.  No, shut up brain, not the time.

“Could you let me in?  This is taking a lot of concentration.”

He opened the door and I jumped into the car over the other person. I saw Arbor in the front seat, eyes on the road.

“Come on, we're nearly there.”  He was muttering under his breath repeatedly.

I turned around to face the kid.  “What's your name?”

“Joseph, Joseph Antonius.”

“Nice to meet you Joseph, cool crossbow.”

“Uhh, thanks.”

The car lurched as the hellhound got a good swing in.

“I have an idea, but I'll need covering fire so that I can concentrate.”

Joseph nodded and opened his window, firing another crossbow bolt towards the hellhound which yelped loudly but didn't stop.  I closed my eyes and focussed on the rainwater below the car, forcing it to flow out from under us and directly into the face of the hellhound.  Arbor yelped as the car suddenly lurched forwards.

“Was that you?” He shouted from the front seat.

“I'm removing the water from under the car to increase your traction and give a little speed boost.”  I shouted back.  Thank you Top Gear for teaching me what traction is.

The combination of the car's speed boost and Joseph’s occasional pot shots meant that we started pulling away from the hellhound.  I leaned over to the front seat.

“Arbor, how long until we get to wherever we're going?”

“A couple minutes tops, we're not going to have enough time to get out of the car.”

“Is that bad?”

“It means we're going to go flying up a hill and crash.”

It can never just be simple can it?  I turned back around.

“You might want to buckle up,  our arrival is going to involve a lot of crashing.”

There was a distinctly annoyed sound from the seat next to me.  A minute or so of continuing to very slowly pull away from the hellhound Arbor piped up.  “The pine tree on the hill, that's the boundary line, it shouldn't be able to get…past.”  His voice petered off as he thought about something.

“What's wrong?”

“I need your name or you might not be able to get through.”

And get crushed against the back of the car, wonderful.

“Are you sure?”

“Maybe, it blocks out monsters and mortals, it might not think you're either of them.”

“ Could I jump out of the car right before?”

“Do you fancy your chances with a Hellhound?”

“...touché.”

We didn't have much time as the car was just about to reach the start of the hill.

“Arbor, do you think I could make it through?”

“If I had to bet on it, I'd say yes, with a quick prayer to Tyche beforehand.”

“Well then, let's hope that we get lucky.”

I buckled in and held on as the car went careering up the side of the hill, Joseph was muttering an assortment of curses he probably shouldn't have known at his age as the car went weightless before slamming into the dirt and rolling down the hill.  I blinked and suddenly my mask was planted firmly against the side of an upside down car.  I could see the cloven hooves of Arbor running over to me as I pulled myself out through the smashed window, muscles aching as I tried to pull on the water to clear out the broken glass, oddly, there wasn't any rain.  Mom wasn't going to be happy about this story.

Once he noticed me, Arbor pulled me up and into a bear hug.

“You're alive!”

“Yep, no being crushed against magical barriers for me.”  I took a quick look around, the car was overturned in the middle of a small field, nearby was some kind of amphitheatre with a fire being tended by a girl in the middle.  There was also a noticeable lack of our travelling partner.

“I sent him to get Chiron from the Big House.”

I assumed the Big House was the building in the distance, looking like someone had taken a holiday home from Greece and dropped it in the US.  It was by far the largest thing that could be called a ‘house’.  Chiron was a bit on the nose, being named after the hero trainer.

“Any injuries?”

“Nothing serious, we got lucky.”

I wobbled on my feet slightly as my head started to ache.  Great, must have hit my head, mom really wasn't going to be happy.

“I'm going to sit down, over there.”  I gestured vaguely at the amphitheatre.

“Oh, right.  I'll need to report to the Cloven Elders anyway.”

I ambled my way over to the amphitheatre, sitting on the other side of the fire.

“Are you alright?  It's a bit late for a kid to be tending the fire, especially on your own.”

She looked up, everything about her face gave off a feeling of warmth, I could've sworn I was seeing mom's long lost relative before I got a good look.  “It is safe, I…try to make sure of it.”  She gazed at me with a very pointed and pained face, like this random stranger who looked suspiciously like my mother had somehow committed a grave atrocity.  Her voice was suitably sad to match.  “For what it is worth, Perseus, I am sorry.  The choice that was made may not have been the one I would, but I do not envy the fact that it had to be made.”

She knew my name, not just my name but my name name.  That…what…how?  That wasn't supposed to happen, I thought I was doing a good job keeping my secret identity.

“My domain is more personal than many others, your mask would need a far greater number of enchantments to hide you.”

That explained a total sum of nothing.  No, wait, she said ‘domain’.   And if what Tyson said was…

“You've worked it out, I take it?”

“I think so, so which one are you?”

“Hestia.”

“That's…hearth and home, right?”

“Those are my primary domains, yes.  It is odd for someone so new to know so much.”

“I did some reading, commissioner's orders.”

“Siobhan Wellesley.”  Her face became  contemplative.  “She holds no love for this world.” She gestured at the amphitheatre.  ”But it is out of concern for her home, valid concerns, so I do not resent her for it.”

“So, what is this place?”

“It is a safe place, a home for the children of olympus.”

“Is…is that what I am?  Is that why I was let through the barrier?”

“I cannot say, although I have my suspicions.  This place will be a home to you, but not yet, I can tell there are things you must do.”

“So, can I just leave?”

“Not unnoticed, but you will have my blessing, I would recommend traveling to the beach.”

I slowly got up, noticing the growing amount of people coming from the nearby circle of buildings.

“Thanks, could you not mention my name?”

“Your secret is safe with me.”

“Thank you, again.”

I reached out to find any water, there was no rain within the barrier which meant I would have to extend my range.  The internal muscle strained as I finally connected to the rainwater on the other side and tried to pull it into the barrier through the ground. It wouldn't go through for a few seconds before Hestia smiled and I was able to pull it under.  I made a note to myself to look up Greek traditions for thanking the gods later.  I stepped up and out of the amphitheatre and right into a crowd of kids all in very orange t-shirts and pajama pants being led by an older teen and a man riding a horse, no, scratch that.  The man wasn't riding a horse, he was the horse, because that day just seemed to love world shattering realisations.  He looked at Hestia and bowed before staring at me.

“I must thank you for helping Mister Antonius reach here safely, may I have your name?”

“No, sorry, secret identity and all that.  Really need to think of a name to go by later.”

He gave me a very appraising look, a look that felt like it was piercing right through my mask and looking into my soul.

“Would you care to follow me to the Big House?  There is much I believe we should discuss.”

I could feel the muscle straining as I continued to pool water underneath the crowd. 

“I'm afraid no can do, I've got too much work. If I run into any more people trying to make their way here, I'll give them a helping hand.”

“I think you should-”

I released the muscle right in the middle of his sentence, the water just under the ground exploding up and outwards, knocking over many of them and surprising those that didn’t fall over.  There was a lot of shouting and panic as I ran right through, gathering water around my arms and rotating it before firing it out to give me a speed boost for my mad dash to the beach.  A few of them started pursuing, archers firing some kind of specialised non lethal arrows with boxing gloves on them, good to know they didn't want me dead at least.  I changed course slightly when I noticed a nearby lake, running directly over the middle and diving to the bottom. I was having one of my genius ideas. Once enough of them gathered around the lake and I had enough pressure I launched myself in a torpedo of water out of the lake, the force was enough to get me most of the way to the beach, the rest of which I ran before I dove into the sea and swam away.

I stayed under the water a while longer, making sure that nobody tried to follow me.  I could’ve sworn I saw people there, some kind of sea spirits if I had to take a guess, they looked like they were slightly scared of me.  I didn’t really mind, it was quiet, a nice kind of quiet.  None of the problems from the surface could reach me down there, well, except for the litter but I made sure to clean that up whenever I could’.  Hudson certainly appreciated it (the river spirit), and Commissioner Wellesly appreciated it when the ‘anonymous tips’ he gave me led to a spree of takedowns of drug operations.  It had been, what, a couple weeks?  About that long since we last had our meeting and I’d had no mysterious calls on my work phone, well, other than a few requests for me to give her a rundown of what I’d been doing in the last few days.  I got the distinct impression that Mom approved of her not actively sending me on dangerous missions.  Oh God, I was going to have to tell the Commissioner about this, or would it be gods with recent events in mind?  There was no way she wasn’t aware of the whole ‘magic greek camp’ thing, that’s the kind of thing I’d expect her to know.  Speaking of… I didn’t really have any excuses to not go through a slight crisis of identity with what Hestia had said.  I mean, now that I knew they were a thing it was kind of obvious.  Absent father, strange events getting me removed from schools, the powers.  I wondered briefly if Dad was watching me now, if I could figure it out, anyone could figure out that he was some kind of sea god.

“Hey, dad, you listening?”

Nah, thought not.  If he wasn’t going to show up to deal with Gabe, if he wasn’t going to show up to give any kind of opinion on my choice of nighttime activities he wasn’t going to show up on a complete whim.  I settled on the seabed, watching the fish dart through old boats and seaweed.  Huh, I could probably make decent money diving through these wrecks and collecting treasures, it’s not like me of all people would be in any danger.  I floated on over to one absentmindedly, accidentally startling a basking shark.  I apologised profusely to them as the shark darted off into the bay.  I thought I saw a shape out of the corner of my eye, but when I checked there was nothing there.

“Perhaps father was right to not engage in the gossip.”

‘Excuse me what the actual fuck?’ Were approximately my thoughts in response to that.  I turned around to the other side of me, spinning out of the sand and upright.  There, in the water, was an actual merman.  An actual merman with two tails, but an actual merman nonetheless, one that looked and sounded distinctly unimpressed.

“I could have killed you at least three times by now.”  His lack of ‘impressed’ was becoming impressive at this point.  I gawked for a little longer, he looked oddly familiar, although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly how.

“Well, I for one am very glad you didn’t.”  He didn’t seem remotely amused at that.  “So.” At this point I was trying to find a way of re-railing this conversation.  “Gossip.”

“Yes.”

“Who exactly is gossiping about me?”

“Fish, they’re notorious for it.”

“The fish.  The fish are notorious for gossip.”  Because of course they were, what else is a fish going to do all day?

“Yes, that is what I said.  I know mortals have difficulties hearing underwater, I thought perhaps you would be different.”

“No, the water isn’t the problem.”

“Are you hard of hearing then?”

“No, just…processing information.”

He stared at me, still floating there.  Now that I could see him properly, there was a trident strapped to his back and a conch shell embroidered on his armour.

“You are not familiar with our world are you?”  He said more gently this time.

“Not as much as you are, I suspect.”

He paused, contemplating something.

“My name is Triton, what is yours?”

“Are you named after the original or are you…?”

“The original.”

“Well, I would tell you but I wouldn’t want word to get out to the fish.”

“I understand, you seek privacy.”

That was surprisingly easy.  He began to float away, but looked back one last time.

“You are strangely familiar, beneath the human stench, I expect we’ll be seeing more of each other in the future, at least if what my sister says is true.”  The water swirled around him and he vanished

I swear the gods are bound by some magical contract to act all ominous whenever they first meet me.  I sighed and swam to the surface, the water had dealt with the worst of the injuries which was good, even the usual bruises were enough to worry mom, I didn’t want to know how she would react to broken bones.

The weeks passed quickly and I fell into routine again, occasionally pointing people in the direction of the camp if they needed guidance became just another part of the job although I did try to avoid going there myself.  I wasn’t going to leave mom alone with Gabe, no matter what.  There was also a minor incident with a revolutionary war cannon and the coach my 5th grade school used for the trip, which ended up in me getting expelled.  Why they left a fully loaded canon at arms reach of a child I will never understand.  There was a lot of arguing on where I should be sent next year, and only one school accepted me: Yancy.  A private boarding school specialising in ‘troubled children’.  Only Gabe actually wanted me to get sent there, Mom and I didn’t want to get separated and I didn’t fancy managing a double life as a superpowered vigilante with a roommate, but it was the only school we could find that would actually be willing to accept my application so it was Yancy or nothing, really.

In hindsight, going to Yancy wouldn’t make much difference in the long run, because larger things were brewing and New York needed a hero more than ever, bad luck I guess that the only candidate was yours truly.

Chapter Text

Mom dropped me off at the front desk, carrying my stuff in a suitcase that she managed to borrow from one of her work friends.

“Remember, if you ever want to talk I'm just a call away.”  And then she hugged me, and I tried very hard to not cry about it.

“Yeah, love you mom.”

“Love you too.”

The lady at the front desk was waiting very patiently for us, I expect she'd probably seen this song and dance hundreds of times before.  I grabbed my suitcase and swung my rucksack over my shoulder, which was also where I was hiding my costume inside a waterproof camo bag. I managed to guilt the people from the army surplus into selling it to me.  Who knew that hardened soldiers were also vulnerable to my baby seal eyes?  That's what mom called them anyway.

“Name?”

Right, signing in to boarding school.

“Percy Jackson, actually it might be Perseus on file.”

“Jackson…Jackson…  Found you, you'll be staying in room 114 in the boys dorms.  Your assigned roommate is…”

She looked confused at the screen briefly, I thought I saw some kind of shimmering around her eyes, but then it was gone, probably a trick of the light.

“Underwood, Grover Underwood.”

“Oh, thanks, where are the boy's dorms?”

She stood up and pointed.

“Head out of that door, go down the path to the old buildings at the end, boys are on your left.”

“Thanks, again.”

Sure enough, the dorms were where she said they were.  I managed to ignore the looks of all the rich kids. They probably found it funny that I was walking around in a ratty pair of jeans and  an old hoodie instead of something like Prada or Gucci.

The building was surprisingly old and nice looking, which served as another reminder that this place was for troubled rich kids, not random schmucks like me.  There was a pretty big wooded area nearby and it was only a little while up the river from the rest of New York, all I needed was a conveniently placed hollow or log close to the waterfront and  that would be the hiding place for my costume.

I made my way up the stairs and found my way over to 114.  The room was bigger than my one at home, a lot bigger, there was a bed, wardrobe, and shelf on each side with a desk in the middle by the window.  It really wasn't that bad, what with all the horror stories I'd heard about college dorms.  I took my stuff out of my suitcase and hid the bag containing my costume under the bed.  I was about half an hour into unpacking when the door finally opened.

Grover was many things, none of which were on the list of things I expected.  He was short, vaguely scrawny and had acne with the start of a beard so I had to guess he got held back a few grades.  He was also using crutches and he stood with his knees at an awkward angle.  All in alll, he just looked like a normal person with a few lingering health issues. I doubt any of the snobs I saw would catch themselves dead wearing anything like Grover’s rasta hat.

“Heee-eeey, you must be Percy, right?”

Weird way of speaking, but I wasn't about to point that out to him.

“Yeah, you're Grover?”

“Yep, nice to meet you.” He held out his hand in greeting, which I shook.

I smiled at him.  “Dude, you have no idea how happy I am that you're chill.  I don't think I could've spent a month in the same room as one of those rich kids, let alone a year.”

He glanced behind him before lowering his voice to a pseudo whisper. “I know, right?”

I picked up my rucksack from under the bed.

“I'm gonna go have a look around while you unpack.  I'll be back in about an hour.”

“Gotcha.”

I walked out of the room and made a beeline towards the woods.  There was an annoyingly large amount of path right next to the water so that was going to be a ‘no’, I moved further back into the woods, out of view of any paths and eventually settled on hiding it in the roots of a particularly large tree, a good hiding place because I knew I would remember it.

When I got back, Grover had already unpacked and was muttering at the window. When he finally heard me coming he startled and turned around, giving me a good look at the prism he was looking at.

“You good, man?”

“Y-yeah, just adjusting my decoration.  Trying to find the best place to put it.”  The prism was projecting a rainbow which I could see on the dust in the air.  I always wanted one of those, but Gabe wouldn't be caught dead in front of his poker buddies with anything resembling a rainbow.  Actually, that sounded like all the more reason to get one.  I nodded and didn't push any further.  I sometimes talked to myself when doing things so I couldn't judge.

He scratched the beginnings of his goatee.

“Do you know what's being served in the canteen today?”

I sat on my bed and leaned back.

“I think someone said something about enchiladas?”  I blinked and barely missed Grover running out of the room, much faster than anyone using crutches probably should.

“He must really love enchiladas.”

Grover

Grover did slightly regret leaving Percy behind to go get enchiladas, leaving the person he was supposed to be protecting alone wasn't exactly recommended under most circumstances.  It probably wouldn't be that much of an issue, the place reeked of human on top of whatever Mrs Jackson was using to hide Percy.  Food at camp was nice and all, but they didn't do Mexican anywhere near as much as Grover would have liked.  Grover was glad that Percy at least seemed like a nice person, he expected the Cloven Elders to saddle him with the most obnoxious son of Ares they could find, it would definitely match his string of bad luck.  How Chiron and Annabeth had convinced old Leneus to let him protect someone with as strong a smell as Percy he'd never understand.  

Percy was fine with the fact that Grover had run off to get food, at least he said he was fine with it, something about his emotions smelled off.  Grover scolded himself internally for running off despite his cover story of needing crutches, he was out of practice.

Would it have killed them to give me some warning?

Chiron was due to arrive in about a month, to give Grover enough time to properly evaluate Percy and to give Chiron enough time to set up leadership in his absence.  It's not like he hadn't done house calls before, but it was so long ago that nobody in camp outside of the spirits and the oldest satyrs would have been there at the time.  Someone needed to manage activities while he was gone and Grover doubted Mr D would, not intending any disrespect of course, Grover would never openly show disrespect to Mr D.

Grover walked past Percy as he was finishing his own enchilada.  The entire room reeked of human.

“Hey.”

“Hey man.”

“I'm gonna head out for a bit, so I'll probably get back after you.”

Percy hummed in agreement, taking another bite from his food.  Grover couldn't sense any unhappiness at that, but the other people might have been muddling his senses.  He needed to go to the woods to clear his nose and check for monsters, definitely, he was just leaving Percy for a little while to make sure everything was safe if he needed to go for longer.

Suffice to say, going into the woods didn't do much to alleviate his mood.  The new school year had only been going for a day and the place was already filled with empty packets and cans.  Grover walked a little further off the paths, running into many rodents expressing joy at the arrival of new humans to scavenge food from.  Grover was never sure how to feel about rats, on one hand they had done what was natural and evolved to match the new ecosystem.  On the other hand, he couldn't help but feel that they had abandoned Pan entirely, and yet they were thriving.  So many species were giving up and moving on with the world, peregrines turned skyscrapers into the new trees they dove from to hunt the abundance of pigeons and doves.  Corvids, once deemed the amongst the wisest of all the birds outside of owls by the Cloven Elders were now considered persona non grata.  Cats and dogs, despite their constant bickering over ‘man's best friend’ vs ‘gods of egypt’, were united in being endlessly smug about jumping on the human bandwagon early.

Grover's ruminations were abruptly interrupted by him spotting a very badly hidden camouflage bag under the roots of a tree.  It might have been enough to fool a human, but to a satyr it was amateur work.  He gingerly walked up to it and smelled it, it had been put there recently but Grover couldn't tell who did it.  It also didn't smell like drugs, which was good, Annabeth would never let him live that down if he got kicked out for finding someone else's drugs.  He opened up the bag, muttering about humans and littering, inside it was a set of clothes, strange clothes.  Slowly he laid it against the ground, and then he finally saw the sum of the parts.  Something that he definitely needed to inform Chiron about.

Grover could count on one hand how many times he'd run that quickly.  Percy didn't get the chance to ask what was wrong as Grover ran into the room, grabbed the prism, and then left to find an empty room.

“O Iris, goddess of the rainbow, show me Chiron at Camp Half Blood”

The rainbow shimmered, Chiron was sitting at the porch talking to Luke about what his stint at Yancy will entail and what Luke's job will be while Chiron is absent.

“Chiron!”

Chiron and Luke turned round to see the IM, concern pinching Chiron's face.

“Mr Underwood, what's wrong, are you and Mr Jackson safe?”

“Yeah, we're…we're safe.”  Grover was still out of breath.

“Why are you calling?”

“They're…they're here, at Yancy.”

Luke stepped forward.

“Grover, calm down, who's there?”

“Them, from last month, I found the cloak and mask hidden in the woods.”

Chiron scowled, most campers had known about New York's resident vigilante before they'd even shown up at Camp, but after the scene they caused last month the place had been abuzz with theories especially with all the new campers since, all talking about how a mysterious cloaked figure helped them escape monsters.

“It seems I will have to head there early.  Grover, have you smelled any other demigods there?”

“No, no I haven't, too much human to tell.”  He paused, “You don’t think they could be Percy?”

“It's possible,” Chiron said, “But I don't want to make any hasty judgments based on circumstantial evidence.”  He turned to Luke.  “Mister Castellan, let the other counselors know that I'll be leaving ahead of schedule.”

“Got it, Chiron.  Should I mention ‘them’.”

“No, just say there's a monster.”

Luke nodded and ran off.

“How long until you can get here?”

Chiron thought for a few seconds.

“A week, minimum.”

Grover nodded.

“I'll just…get back to Percy.”

“If he is the owner of the cloak, he might be in more danger than we thought.”

Grover nodded again as Chiron cut off the IM.

Percy

Grover’s particular brand of weirdness was starting to unsettle me.  He was hiding something, which wasn't the issue itself; it wasn't like I didn't have things to hide as well.   But something had spooked him in the woods, which meant I had to go check it out, probably just some monster hiding out waiting for a new meal.  Grover was great, genuinely the best person I could have been assigned as my roommate, but I wasn't exactly confident in his ability to survive a monster attack, unless there were enchiladas in the direction he was supposed to be running.  Which is why I found myself sneaking out and wandering about the woods in the dark.  At the very least it would be for practice for finding my costume when I went out to patrol again.  I had a plan of taking a break for a few days to get Grover accustomed to me being up at night so he didn't ask too many questions.  I didn't like being so manipulative, but I had a secret identity to maintain.

It took longer than I would have liked to find the tree, but eventually I did manage to find it.  The bag was even in the same…shit

Someone had moved the bag, I made sure to remember where and how I'd placed it and I was absolutely certain that someone had opened it.  But who…?  Grover.  There were no monsters in the woods, I would have run into it by now, he must have found the bag, that's why he was in a rush.  But then why did he need the prism?  I was missing something, something supernatural.

Grover was still asleep by the time I got back, everything was as it should be.  I decided on the way back to play dumb, if he figured out that I had figured him out he'd only go further on the defensive.  Dammit, I liked Grover, having to be all suspicious of him wasn't something I wanted to do.

After that, my first full week at Yancy wasn't exactly noteworthy, most of my teachers were either bearable or assholes.  One in particular, Mrs Dodds, the pre algebra teacher was nothing short of a bitch and I had to try very hard not to say that to her directly.  On the upside, Grover didn't like her either, in fact he seemed terrified of her.  Grover was antsy all the time, sticking to me like glue whenever he could.  It was flattering and all, but also worrying because the more he did the more I got the feeling like I was out of the loop, a feeling I was more than familiar with working with Commissioner Wellesley.  That was until the next Wednesday rolled around, marking a week since the start of the year.  Suddenly, Grover was less anxious and wasn't as glued to me as he was previously, I really don't think he was as slick as he thought he was.

Latin was one of the few ‘wordy’ classes that I could actually stand, apparently my dyslexia only extends to English because Latin was a lot easier to read once I actually knew what each word meant.  The teacher was just sort of fine, really.  He was old and forgettable, so it wasn't like I was upset when it was announced that he had to take a leave of absence.  I just hoped it wasn't a health issue, he wasn't an asshole just very nondescript.  I wasn't upset until I saw who wheeled into the room, at which point I got the sudden urge to jump into the Hudson.  He may have been in a wheelchair, but I knew the top half of the horse man (centaur) when I saw one.

“Nice to meet you all, I am Mr Brunner and I will be your new Latin teacher.”  After which he switched on the projector and pulled out a fucking sword which he used as his lesson pointer.  Maybe there was some Greek weirdness going on, but I was going to enjoy having Brunner as my teacher while it lasted.  With that being said, I did try to avoid interacting with him directly throughout the lesson, so imagine my annoyance when he decided to keep me back after class.  Grover nudged me on the way out.

“It'll be fine Perce, I'll be waiting outside.”

“You're a lifesaver G-man.”

Mr Brunner wheeled his way over to me, I briefly wondered how he managed to fit the horse part inside a wheelchair without some blue box nonsense (my old babysitter collected DVDs of the classic run).

“Mister Jackson.”

“Uhm, yes sir?”  Great job Percy, staring's really going to convince him that you're totally normal.

“You don't need to look so concerned, you're not in trouble.”

“So, what's the point of all this then?”  Sometimes I wish that I actually had the ability to switch off the sass when talking to people that I actually like.

“I've noticed a firm disparity between certain warnings regarding your behaviour and work ethic and your actual behaviour.”  He continued, ignoring any comments I made.

“Sir, you've been here for a day.”

He looked at me, the same look he gave a month ago, like he was trying to get a read on me.

“I'm very good at my job.  I was wondering if you would consider tutoring.”

He's clearly spent way too much time away from society because that is a red flag if I've ever seen one.  Was this a stupid idea?  Probably, but I didn't want him to think that I thought something was up, keeping near him and acting normal was the best way to make sure he didn't know.

“Sure, I haven't got a problem with it.”

“Good, I'll see about scheduling.  You can head to lunch now.”

True to his word, Grover was standing outside, waiting for me.

“Glad to see you value me over enchiladas.”

“ You get excited one time .”  We both laughed at that as we continued walking.  Grover piped up again.  “So, how was Brunner?”

“Weird, he wanted to try tutoring me for Latin.”

“What's weird about that?”  Grover asked.

“That he's been here for a day and somehow has enough of a read on me and enough interest to bother.  I dunno, something seemed off, like he was testing me.”

“Huh.”  Grover suddenly grew a lot quieter.

“Hey, at least if it turns out he's a pedo, it's not like he can overpower me from that wheelchair.”

Grover definitely tried to hide his laughter at that, tried being the key term.  Eventually our conversation petered out as we reached the lunch hall.

After that, things settled into a rhythm at Yancy.  Mr Brunner was easily my favourite teacher even without his offer, he cared about what he was teaching and wasn't a complete ass.  The man had a sword, that's the kind of thing only the cool teacher does.  The tutoring sessions weren't anywhere near as bad as I thought they would be, it was more like an ancient book club, study myths in Latin and then talk about the message and opinions on what the character could have done better.  I even got to see more of his collection of ancient stuff (a lot of weapons which made me wonder how he even got them in the school).  The sword (anaklusmos or riptide) and a trident he got from Corinth (Acrocorinth in his exact words) were my favourites.  

Mrs Dodds was still a bitch, that never changed, and most of the people that attended Yancy were their own flavour of asshole.  A kleptomaniac kid called Nancy Bobofit was particularly bad and a favourite of Mrs Dodds, so you can imagine how many detentions I got because of the dynamic duo.  I tried to keep up with my side job, but the combination of Grover and Brunner made it very difficult. I showed up late to a lot of classes because I was ‘busy’ which really didn’t help my reputation.  

Winter break eventually rolled around with nothing of note happening, which obviously meant that everything had to go to shit right when I got off school.  New York suffered the worst spree of bad weather that it had seen in years.  Floods, hurricanes, snowstorms and lightning became daily events. I was on the clock most of the time in between trying to steal some time to spend with Mom away from Gabe.  Something was going on to cause this, and since nobody else was going to bother that made it my job to find out and stop it.

Chapter Text

I silently cursed whichever supernatural force was responsible for the storm that had just got a ferry to the Statue Of Liberty caught in a violent drift out of the Hudson Bay. According to Mom, the city council had been debating shutting the island for a few days. The ferry in question was just unlucky, the last one before everything got closed down during the stormy period. On the upside, most people tend to have common sense, so there weren’t anywhere near as many tourists as usual. Have to look for silver linings when higher beings were having a large enough temper tantrum to destroy half the Eastern Seaboard. I mean honestly, could they maybe have their spat in, oh I don’t know, the middle of the ocean or any of the countless miles of nothing in Canada and the Midwest?  

I stuck to beneath the waves. I'd learned that going up too high in this kind of weather is a recipe for getting struck by lightning a few days ago. I torpedoed out of the sea and onto the deck, now, how to stop this boat from getting caught in the open ocean? The pull of the ocean was there, more unstable than usual, but definitely there. I could also feel the ferry under my feet, the engine struggling to get back on course. I extended the muscle and tried to grasp the water, at the same time I extended the feeling towards the ship, grabbing hold of it. It was really weird, like I was spreading myself through the hull. I tried to create a small circle of calm around the ferry, meanwhile holding the hull and stopping the engines from overheating through sheer force of will.

It was working for a few minutes, but I could feel the muscle start to shake as it was pulled. I was spreading myself too thin, trying to do too much, unfortunately, I couldn't just let go. The amount of pressure that had built up from me forcing the water to calm would rip the boat apart. I could feel the beginnings of one of my overuse migraines building up, I just needed a little more time to get it close enough for the coast guard to move in. The engine was overheating even further, water began to cascade over the side of the ship as everything grew blurry and a piercing pain went through my head. But I kept concentrating even through that. I blinked and suddenly I was under the water, a very familiar merman looking very unimpressed at me just visible through the haze covering my eyes.

“You're an idiot.”

“Nice-” I groaned slightly, talking hurt. “Nice to see you too, Triton.”

“What in Tartarus were you thinking? Father's rage is not something a moral can hope to quell.”

I laughed weakly in response. “You know, that almost sounds like you care.”

He huffed and moved closer to me. “You were unconscious for two hours, you can't do any more of this for a week at least.”

“But-”

“No buts, we both know your parents would agree with me.”

Dammit, he had to bring Mom into this.

“What about the people, on the ferry?”

“Safe, don't pout at me, I may not be the most fond of mortals but I can agree with you that they did nothing to earn father's ire this time.”

Yeah, this time, for once I managed to keep the sass internal, well done me.

“Speaking of, why is all this going on?”

Triton sighed, suddenly looking a few decades older.

“My uncle, the lord of the skies, has had something incredibly valuable and dangerous stolen from him. He accused father, who denied the accusations.”

“And now they're fighting.” You'd think gods would have some kind of protocol to stop this sort of thing, basic security for their superweapons.

He nodded “Mother is trying her best to calm Father, as is Hera for Zeus.”

So if someone were to retrieve the item, then in theory…

“I know what you're thinking, don't.”

How the hell-?

“But if I-”

“No, you are not experienced enough and are too close to the sea to safely help.”

“Fine mom.”

Triton pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered a prayer for patience.

“Just go home, rest. Taking a few days off is better than you ending up permanently impaired.”

As much as I wanted to continue to annoy him for deciding that he was now responsible for me, he was right. I waved goodbye and emerged onto the shore, it was starting to get dark. Luckily, I recognised where I was. I went to a small park along the river, hidden there was a bag which I stored my costume in after changing. Now, instead of me going home in costume, I'd be going home with an inconspicuous rucksack.

I made my way up the fire escape and through my window after hiding the costume in the usual place on the roof, almost tripping over Gabe's trash that he liked to keep in my room. I could hear Gabe's poker buddies in the other room. I tried to sneak my way to the kitchen, where Mom was usually made to be during game nights, Gabe yelled but was too sloshed to push much more.

“Hey mom, sorry I'm late.”

She spun around.

“Perseus Achilles Jackson.”

Ah, the dreaded mom voice in its natural habitat. She had a habit of using it whenever I got back late from ‘work’.

“Care to explain why you were so late, and why your nose is that bloody.”

…so that's why I was getting so many strange looks on the way back.

“Ferry got caught in one of the storms, I was trying to guide it back.”

“And the bloody nose, did you hit your head?”

“No, I think I just overdid it.”

Mom crouched down and held my shoulders, getting a good look at my face.

“Percy, guppy, you are not going out for at least a week.”

“You sound like Tri.”

“Tri?”

Oh, oh shit I hadn't mentioned Triton to her.

“Uhh, Triton, merman I met.”

She sighed, and then made a very similar prayer for patience to what Triton did.

“Well, your friend seems like someone you should listen to.”

“But I'll be back at Yancy by that time, it's really difficult to go do superhero stuff with a roommate.”

“Uh huh, your health is more important.”

“Really, I'm fine.” I concentrated on the water in the sink, trying to lift some of it. It was working, until my vision went blurry and I almost fell over.

“You are not fine, no more powers for the week, mister.”

True to her word, powers were not allowed for the rest of the week, and I got a very disappointed look whenever I even thought about trying to use them (seriously, how did she know, was it a mom thing?). Soon enough I had moved back to Yancy, and hidden my costume in a new location where Grover hopefully wouldn't look. Brunner put on a late solstice celebration in class, which included a competition to write down the names of Greek heroes, sword vs chalk, and an announcement for a field trip to the Metropolitan Art Museum to see a Greek exhibition.

And that's how I ended up on a bus full of mental case kids on the way to central New York. It was about as bad as it sounds, me and Grover spent the entire trip having chunks of food pelted at us by Nancy. Eventually a piece of her sandwich nailed Grover in the head. I was about to go and give Nancy a piece of her own medicine when Grover grabbed my arm and pulled me back into the seat.

“Dude, it’s okay, I like peanut butter anyway.”

I gave him the most incredulous look I could muster. “You don’t have to put up with her shit, and if you want to I’m definitely not planning on it.”

“Perce, you’re on probation, remember. If something goes wrong, you'll be the one to get in trouble” He was, unfortunately, completely correct. I almost considered it worth getting a month's worth of detentions to teach Bobofit a lesson.

Another half hour later, we were led off the bus and into the museum by Mr Brunner and Mrs Dodds, dressed in her hell's angels leather jacket which really didn't go well with the cardigan underneath. I could feel her glaring at me in particular from the back of the class. I tried to ignore it and look at the art, it reminded me a lot of Mr Brunner's collection, just grander. He stopped the class at a monument with a sphinx on the top, a stele or funeral marker, he explained. While he continued his explanation I got a good look at the inscription, apparently the girl whose grave it was was very fond of archery.  

I was trying to be a diligent student (shocker, I know) but Nancy’s constant talking right behind me was getting on my nerves

“Will you shut up?”

“Mr Jackson, did you have a comment?” Brunner called from the front. Nancy snickered behind me. Apparently I was being louder than I thought.

“No, sir.”

“Then, could you tell me what the carving on the stele represents?”

I looked over at it, I recognised the image almost instantly. Looks like Mr Brunner's tutoring paid off.

“It's Kronos eating his children because he thought they would overthrow him.”

Brunner smiled and nodded. “And what happened next?”

“Uhm, Rhea hid Zeus and tricked him into eating a rock covered in mustard which caused him to throw up his children. They went to war with the Titans and the Olympians won.”

There was some gagging amongst the crowd, especially from behind me.

“Yeah, like that’s ever going to help us in real life. ‘Thank you for your job application, please tell me why Kronos ate his kids’.”

Brunner cleared his throat. “To paraphrase Miss Bobofit’s question, how does this apply to real life?”

“Busted.” Grover whispered. Brunner was the only person who ever caught Nancy saying anything wrong.

“Well-” Come on Jackson, remember the tutoring “Noticing small details, he wouldn’t have lost if he realised he’d been tricked. Or, I guess self fulfilling prophecies? He thought they would overthrow him but caused it to happen by trying to stop them.”

“Very good Mister Jackson, full credit.”

“Teacher’s pet.” Nancy muttered behind me.

“And with that.” He checked his watch. “I believe it’s time for lunch.”

I walked past Mr Brunner with Grover, he was looking mournfully at the stele like he was there when the funeral happened. Considering what I knew, it wasn’t impossible.

Me and Grover sat by the fountain, watching pigeons get lunchables thrown at them and Nancy trying to steal from an old lady, all the while Mrs Dodds being totally oblivious. All rather standard really. I was almost enjoying myself when Nancy and her cronies walked up and dumped their lunch in Grover’s lap. At that point, I was done dealing with her so I stood up despite Grover’s attempts to de-escalate.

“Fuck off, Jackson, you're too much of a teacher's pet to risk pissing off Brunner.”

I felt the pulling in my gut again, spun around Nancy so she was next to the fountain and gave a water assisted shove. She fell into the water, sputtering.

“Miss! Percy pushed me!”

Mrs Dodds appeared behind us, she had a talent for doing that whenever I specifically did something wrong.

“Now honey.”

“I know, a month erasing textbooks.” I sighed.

She glowered at me, clearly I picked the wrong thing to say. Grover looked up at her, utterly terrified.

“It was me miss, I pushed Nancy.”

“I don't think so.”

I patted his shoulder. “Don't worry about it G-man, I'll be back before you know it.”

I turned around and she was already at the top of the stairs. That happened to me a lot, gaps in my attention, but something about this felt off. As I walked behind her, I couldn't shake that something was wrong. A strange most began to form and I got a brief glimpse of leathery wings and a whip. Well, there's a reason I brought the suit.

“Miss, can I go to the bathroom?”

She looked at me, I could see her reaching for the whip through the mist. She was a monster, probably interested in me for similar reasons to Brunner. I didn't bother letting her answer as I made a mad dash for the men's restroom, I think I caught her off guard some she didn't follow for a few seconds. When I got in, I ran to the window and opened it, taking my hero costume out of my bag and suiting up while leaving the bag itself behind next to the window. It's times like these when I'm glad that the suit is easy to put on. The door to the room slammed open, I heard the clacking of claws on the linoleum, walking over to the window and making an unearthly screech before running out of the building.

Step 1. Give the demon bat lady that used to be my pre algebra teacher the slip, done.

Step 2. Make sure she doesn't hurt any other people, work in progress.

There was a sudden sound of glass shattering and screaming outside, why were the supernatural incapable of basic subtlety? I made my exit via the window and doubled back up to the roof where I could see a fully bat-ified Mrs Dodds terrorising the front plaza, tearing apart potential hiding places. She turned to look at Brunner (or Chiron) and that's when I made my dramatic entrance, forcing the pipes feeding the fountain to detonate in her face as I did a superhero landing between her and Brunner.

“Chiron, with all due respect you have a job to do. Lead the civilians out, I’ll deal with woman-bat.”

I wish I could have taken a photo of the look he gave me, a sort of ‘withering surprise’. He sighed and nodded before turning to Grover.

“Mister Underwood, find Percy, and make sure Mrs Kerr knows to gather the students at Belvedere Castle.”

“Yes sir.” Grover ran off towards the museum, I felt bad for the guy having to go on a wild goose chase. I turned around to face Mrs Dodds directly, holding out my hand in a finger gun motion and swirling the water around it.

“Alright, care to tell me why you’re attacking an art museum, or are you just a harsh critic?”

She glared and hissed at me. “You, this is not your business.”

“You’re attacking my city, I think it is.” I retorted, she tried to get up at which point I released my water gun right into her face.

“The thief cannot hide from us forever.”

Thief? Why did they think I was a thief? More importantly, what was stolen, the thing Triton mentioned probably. I apologised to him internally for what I was about to do.

“Whatever was stolen, I can help you find it.”

She stared at me, taken aback by the fact that I wasn’t trying to murder her.

“And why would I work with you?”

“I’ve seen what’s going on because of it, the changes in the weather. Look, you supernatural types have your own internal politics, I get that. But I respectfully couldn't care less, I care about keeping my people safe. So-” I held out my hand, hoping very strongly that she didn’t take the opportunity to swipe it off. “Let me help you, we both benefit from this.”

She lowered her whip, good, I was getting through to her. “What can you offer that my master does not already have?”

I thought about that for a second. “A different perspective.”

“Elaborate.”

“I have contacts, human contacts. Whatever you’ve been using to look is probably magical, right? What if the thief expected that? They might have overlooked a clue a human could use to find them. Besides, I’m an unknown, you don’t know who I am under this mask.”

“You are partially correct.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Two items have been stolen, the master bolt of Zeus and my master Hades’ helm of darkness. Lord Hades has not informed Olympus of his helm being stolen.”

“So, does that mean you’ll take me up on my offer?” I asked.

“That depends on your conditions.”

I mentally inhaled to prepare myself for the next request.

“Leave Jackson alone until it is proven whether or not he is guilty.”

Hey eyes glowed brighter briefly but dimmed back to their original ember orange.

“I can promise that, but I will not make the same guarantee for my sisters or my master.

Well, that’s certainly better than nothing.

“How should I contact you with intel?”

“Burn a piece of food in the name of Alecto, I will hear it.”

Oh god, she’s a fury, the furies are after me now? Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve all of the things that keep happening around me.  

Brunner was gone, probably looking for me, which meant it was time to pack up the costume and pretend to be terrified. I snuck back into the bathroom and became civilian Percy once again, before running out and pretending to be out of breath, luckily Grover ran into me quickly.

“Holy…shit dude. What the hell was that?”

“Perce!” He ran up and checked me over for injuries. “You're OK.”

“Yeah, I gave it the slip, made it think I went out of the window. What fucking lab did that thing escape from?”

“I don't know, we need to meet up with Mrs Kerr at Belvedere.” Now that I wasn't slightly panicking, who the hell was Mrs Kerr?

As it turned out, Mrs Kerr was a perky woman about half the age of Mrs Dodds who everyone was convinced had been our pre algebra teacher since the start of the year. All I got were strange looks when I asked about Mrs Dodds. Had I not talked to her I might have been convinced, but even then Grover’s inability to lie to save his life would have given up the jig. Whenever I asked him he would always hesitate first before saying that Mrs Dodds never existed, which meant that whatever was going on, he was in on it alongside Mr Brunner.

Eventually I gave up trying to catch Grover off guard, revealing too much might compromise my secret identity after all. Wow, I don't think my internal monologue has ever sounded more cliché. Not important, brain, focus on what you need to do next.

So, what did I know:

Someone stole both the helm of darkness and the master bolt

Poseidon is the main suspect

Hades hasn't told anyone that the helm was stolen.

Something about this seemed off, if Poseidon wanted a war why would he make himself the target of both parties? It would make more sense to frame Hades…unless that's what happened.

I wracked my brain for stories about the helm, something about invisibility. If the thief stole the helm, used that to steal the bolt knowing that Hades wouldn't tell the others then at least a few of the others would suspect Hades because how would the thief not get noticed if they weren't invisible?

Hades blames Poseidon, Poseidon blames Hades, Zeus blames Poseidon and the rest of the gods are split because they don't know that the helm went missing as well. I needed someone who I could verify this with, a professional, so I called Siobhan once I got back to the dorms.

“Water Boy.” She drawled.

“I'm sorry, Water Boy? Please tell me that's not what the media are calling me.”

“I would, but then I'd be lyin’.”

“But that's… are you enjoying this?”

“Kid, I have no idea what you're talking about.” I could hear her deadpan through the speaker. “Now why’d you call me?”

“Oh, right, I have important information regarding the recent weather events.”

I could tell through the pause that she was taking a drag from another cigarette.

“Meet me at the precinct, less chance of prying ears.”

“I-” The call ended.

“Grover, I'm uh, feeling sick. Gonna head to the nurse.” I called back into the room.

“Oh, well, get well soon.” Here's hoping Grover either bought that or thought it was because of earlier.

I ran out into the woods and put on my costume, diving into the river and making my way into New York proper. By the time I got there, Commissioner Wellesley was in the same spot from when we first met.

“I take it this is about the incident at the Met museum.”

I dropped down from the helipad and walked up next to her.

“Yeah, she was part of something bigger.”

“She?” Wellesly questioned.

“Uh, yeah, Alecto.”

She lit a cigarette and took a long drag from it.

“I was wondering how long it'd take for you to get involved with godly politics. Honestly, thought it would be sooner. So, what variety of shitshow are we dealing with?”

“Well, the Helm Of Darkness and Master Bolt being stolen.”

She leaned against the railing and sighed, looking out over New York.

“Wha-”

She held up her hand toward my face.

“No, not yet, give me a minute to process how utterly fucked we are first.” She continued looking out over the city dramatically for a few more seconds.

“Right, next steps, it’s fair to assume someone is setting up the big 3 for an all out war. We can’t rule out the King Of The Seas as a suspect, maybe he looks like the prime suspect but frankly it’d be a stupid move to make himself the prime target.”

“Right, because of the golden net.”

“Precisely, if he wanted a war he could have very easily put himself at a much more advantageous position. So, Waterboy, this is your operation, what’s the next step? Oh, and don't use the names, don't want them listening in.”

I took a double take. “Wait, aren’t you the ‘professionals’? Why aren’t you taking charge?”

She drummed her fingers against the railing, clearly thinking.

“To the gods, their word and will are the natural order. If mortals are not supposed to see through the mist, if only demigods are supposed to fight monsters, then that is simply the way. If a god wishes to punish a region because they are simply feeling bad that day, then that is the natural order. Look at Prometheus, we weren't even supposed to harness fire, let alone create weapons capable of leveling cities that burn hotter than the sun, let alone have the audacity to land men on the moon. We still have the surviving members of that mission under watch to make sure the Mistress Of The Hunt doesn't try anything. My point is that humans were never meant to reach this point, we were never meant to be able to protect ourselves from the monsters. If they knew about the Agency and especially if they knew about Blackwood” 

She laughed humorlessly at that.  

“We'd lose all of the resources and research we spent so long gathering to protect ourselves because the gods sure as hell aren't going to do it unless it's some vanity project quest they send their children on. You're a third party as far as they know, so yes, this is your operation.”

“I uh, I didn't realise you felt so strongly about it.”

She sighed and pulled out another cigarette, lighting it.

“We all have our pasts. So, what's the first step?”

“Well, I want to make sure that someone on Olympus knows about the whole picture and I want to talk to Pos- I mean the Lord Of The Seas directly.”

“Ambitious, but the best course of action right now. How are you going to contact them?”

“Well, The Sea Lord should be easy, I've met his godly son a few times and can get in contact that way.”

She put out the cigarette.

“Good, so which Olympian do you want to ask?”

“I was thinking the Sun god, he's the god of truth so if the Sea god was lying, he would know. Maybe also the goddess of wisdom, but she might be biased because of Athens and Medusa.”

Siobhan actually cracked a smile.

“Hmph, I'll make a detective out of you yet, kiddo. You want my advice for getting Mr Sunshine’s attention, burn a hyacinth as an offering.”

“Isn't that a terrible idea that's very likely to anger him?”

“Kid, do you have any better ideas for getting him to notice you immediately?”

I sighed. “Nope.”

“There is one other thing you're missing.” She mentioned.

“And what's that?”

“Gods can't take each other's symbols directly, they'd need a middle man, a demigod. Which means you'll need eyes in the Camp.”

I thought about it for a few seconds, there was one way I could get in there without raising suspicions, it would just involve leaving mom behind. As much as the idea hurt, the world was literally at stake this time, I could always find an excuse to go back once the job was done. Plus, this gives me an opportunity to hide my identity.

“The bat lady at the museum earlier, she was targeting a kid called ‘Percy Jackson’, I also saw someone I know who works at the camp there.”

“You think he's a demigod?” She asked.

“Probably, and he's already involved in the case.”

“Hmm, try to keep him out of trouble. I'll have some of my people try to solidify an alibi for him to make sure we aren't working with the thief.”

I nodded, saying more would reveal my identity.

“Well then kiddo, let's save the world.” She held out her hand for me to shake, and I returned it.

As bad as it was that humanity was at stake, I could barely contain my excitement, I was going to actually save the world, like an actual proper superhero.

Chapter Text

I’m fairly certain Grover was more than slightly concerned when I walked into the dorm with a bag smelling very strongly of hyacinths.  We were both weird in our own rights and used to it by that point, but this was a new one for me.  Unfortunately, he also had a talent for detecting when I was lying, so I had to make sure to be quick in my preparations for pissing off the god of the sun.

I eventually managed to find a conveniently abandoned warehouse (after about 5 drug deals, Breaking Bad lied to me) on the waterfront and waited for the moon to be at its height.  In theory being close to the water gave me an escape route and it being at night meant he wouldn't be busy pulling the sun.  In theory that is.

I took out the bouquet and laid it on the ground, I then lit a match and placed it amongst the flowers.

“Lord Apollo, I apologise for my impunity but I have vital information regarding the master bolt and needed a way of getting your attention.”

They lit up, far brighter and faster than they should have, I got a feeling like I did when I stood in the sun at midday in the middle of the summer, almost burning.  There was a flash of light behind me which dimmed into a gentler glow.

“You saved my son's life, that is why you are not a pile of dust.”

I turned around to face Apollo and my brain may have slightly short circuited.  You know how some myths described him as the ‘definition of male beauty'?  Yeah, I understood why, even through the scowl he was giving me with glowing gold eyes.  He looked to be in his early twenties with literally glowing blonde hair.  I regained my composure (slightly) and cleared my throat.  There were priorities, namely not staring at the person

“The helm of darkness was stolen on the same day as the bolt, the culprit probably used it to aid in the robbery itself.”

The glowing receded, the temperature went down to something much more comfortable.

“Oh?”  He looked genuinely surprised. “Why didn't Hades mention it?”

“Didn't think he'd get any help.”  I replied.

“Wait.”  He walked up to the pile of hyacinths, waved his hand to cause the flames to brighten rapidly, burning through its fuel source and leaving behind nothing more than a scorch mark.  The implication ‘I could do this to you’  was obvious.  “How do I know you aren't the culprit?”

“Because why would I try to get your attention?”

He put his hands in his pockets.  “Swear on the Styx that you didn't steal the bolt and I'll believe you.”

Swearing on the Styx was a new one, I’m fairly certain the river had something to do with oaths from Brunner’s lessons but he never mentioned a specific oath on the Styx.

“Fine, I swear on the river Styx that I am not guilty of stealing the Master Bolt or the Helm Of Darkness.”

There was the sound of thunder rumbling in the darkness.  Apollo’s glow dimmed to something a lot more comfortable as he smiled and clapped his hands together.

He grimaced at her name.  “I never liked the furies, always so dour, no sense of style.”

Right.

“You know, I think I feel a haiku coming on.”

He wasn’t actually-

“Mysterious man

Calls for aid with love's flowers

Asking for insight”

Tonight was going to be a long one.

He bowed.  “Well then, Mister…”

“Anaklusmos.” I answered, it's a cool sword with a cool name.

“The Riptide, I like it.”  His, literally, glowing smile was a vast departure from when he first showed up.  “So, Riptide.”  He rolled his r when he said my newly decided hero name.  “How did you come to find out about Uncle H's magic hat getting stolen”

“Alecto, she attacked a demigod that she suspected of being the culprit.  I ran in to stop her and we had a very educational chat.”

“You're telling the truth.  Really isn't looking good for Uncle P, not gonna lie.”

“I don't think it was him.”

“Oh?”  Apollo raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“If he wanted to depose the king, he could have gone about it in a way that didn't strip him of his allies and make himself the target of both his brothers.”

“You sure you aren't one of Athena’s kids under that mask?  So, you think it's a third party then.  The question is, who?”

“Name any immortal with a grudge against Olympus, the lord of the sea or the lord of the sky.  Hell, for all I know it could be Kronos.”

“I, uh, wouldn't mention that name if I were you.”  Apollo looked oddly nervous.  “Yes, father did chop him into very small pieces, but he is still immortal, sometimes enough of those pieces gather together to cause…issues.”

“Wait, so it actually could be him?”

“I don't think you should jump to conclusions, especially ones like that.”  He chuckled quietly.  “Well, I should be off, I'll see about letting some of the others know about your findings, it may stave off father's anger at least for a while.  Hermes is going to be so jealous that I got to meet you.”

“Oh, uh, lord Apollo, could I have your blessing as well to investigate?”

He smiled brightly again.  “Sure, why not?”  He clapped his hands and I suddenly felt warmer.  “Most gods should be able to tell that you have my personal approval if they ask.  Next time you need to call, don’t use the flowers.”

Apollo did an extravagant bow before disappearing in a flash of light, not giving me any more opportunities to ask questions.  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, the angry vengeful deity for leveraging Hycacinthus to get his attention?  Absolutely, but everything else, not on the metaphorical bingo card.  Well then, guess it was time to initiate phase 2, which meant contacting Triton.  Now that I had Apollo’s approval to look into the master bolt, it should give me an easier time convincing him to let me see his old man.

…

It was dark, and deep, deeper than I  had ever seen.  A circle of eternal nothing in the depths of a cavern.  At least, I assumed it was a cavern, the ground and ceiling looked like stone at least, but it was so large that I couldn't see the walls.  Odd, most of my dreams didn't involve mysterious pits.  I looked down, I was in costume.  Slightly less weird, at least by my standards.

“ You.”

There was a voice, something deep and angry, resonating through the pit.

“ Why can I not see you?”

Very new, very ominous.

“Hello?”  My voice echoed through the pit.

“ That mask, why can I not see past it? ”

“Because that's what masks do?”

“ Be silent!  Your interference will not go unpunished.”

So now I was dreaming about the person responsible for stealing the bolt.  Not very imaginative, a hole in the ground, there was probably some metaphor to make about the unknown and pressures of being a superhero but I was nowhere near patient enough to read through psychology textbooks.

“ Daughter.”

“No, I'm a guy.”

“ My daughter is protecting you. ”

Really brain, can't even get your mysterious villain to think of some counter quips?  Even random street thugs are better at it than this clown.

“ You will fail, Anaklusmos, the gods will fall and I shall rise again.  One unknown variable will not be enough to stop my vengeance.”

“Uh huh.  What, do you expect me to be intimidated by a figment of my imagination?”

The voice laughed, it was cruel and grated against my nerves.  “ So young, so naive.  Were it not for the protection of my incorrigible descendants I would have simply killed you in your sleep, but I will settle for this, for now.”

The dream changed, I was standing in what I could only describe as hell.  A massive field of fog and monsters and at the other end a set of elevator doors.  I looked next to me and saw someone that could have passed for my older brother, same eyes and hair except for a white streak and a lot more scars.  Feeling slowly returned to me, the dichotomy of cold air burning my skin as breathing became more and more laboured.  In the distance the voice laughed.

“-cy!”

My eyes shot open, I was still in my dorm room, Grover was holding onto my arm.

“Hey” I coughed, I could still taste the air from the dream.

“Are you good now?”

“Yeah, sorry, nightmare.”  I murmured.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, it's fine, I forgot what happened anyway.”

Grover did his ‘I know you're lying but I'm not going to mention it’ face.  I was thankful, explaining that dream was going to involve explaining a lot of other things that I'd much rather be kept on the down low.

“Are you sure?  You look like you've been sleep deprived for ages.”

That would probably be because I've been going on a wild goose chase and worrying about whether there's another Mrs Dodds in the school.

“I'm fine Grover, just a bit of stress.”

“If you're sure man.”

I rolled over and tried to sleep, I failed miserably but it's the thought that counts.  That whole experience didn't endear me to the idea, plus I needed to plan.  Standard excuse for Grover:  Attempted to do some late night studying or couldn't sleep and went for a walk.  Contacting Triton was the difficult part, I couldn't think of any ways of getting his attention other than annoying him into listening to me.  I'd have to channel all of my nonexistent annoying younger sibling energy.

The next day passed without much interest and I found myself in costume at the bottom of the bay.

“Triton.”

Nothing.

“Triiiiiiiton~”

Nothing.

“Little Mermaid says what.”

The water swirled in front of me and my favourite blue merman appeared, looking distinctly irritated by my presence.

“What do you want?”  He said, glowering.  “And why do I sense Apollo’s influence on you?”

“Sooooo, remember how you told me to not get involved in the investigation into the master bolt?”

“Distinctly.”  He said flatly.

“So I got involved and Apollo gave me his official blessing to do so.”

Triton looked like he had swallowed something sour as he processed that information.  “I can't believe I put up with you sometimes.”

“Awww, you put up with me, I'm flattered.”

“And I do it less and less with each passing moment.”

I cleared my throat.  “Look, Triton, I have information about the bolt that your father should be made aware of.  Don't give me that look, I don't think he's the culprit, but he is an important part of this whole thing.”

“And if I refuse?”

“I'll tell Apollo that you tried to impede my investigation.”

He grimaced, as though the idea of dealing with Apollo was somehow worse than dealing with me.  “Fine, I will take you to my father's court.  He is rather stressed at this time so I recommend you enact some restraint on your attempts at humour.”

“Don’t piss off ocean man, got it.”

“Please do not call him ‘Ocean Man’.”

I smirked under the mask “No promises.”

Triton rolled his eyes and held out his hand.  “If we are to reach Atlantis quickly I will need you to hold on.”

I grabbed onto his hand the sea water swirled around the two of us.  Where I was once standing in a brownish grey harbour filled with random pieces of trash to in front of a towering palace.  The pearl walls were engraved with corals and bronze palisades.  It was the grandest building I had ever seen.  The moment we appeared we were surrounded by merfolk and sea centaurs all holding weapons like tridents and spears, one with more decorated armour than the rest walked up to us.

“Your highness, who is this outsider you have brought with you?”

Triton stood (or whatever the equivalent was underwater) up straighter.  “He is Apollo’s envoy and comes bearing vital information regarding the master bolt for my father.”

The guards bowed and stepped aside, although I couldn't help but notice the suspicious looks and weapons pointed in my general direction.  The court of Poseidon was just as grandiose as the building that it resided in, carved out of corals and rocks that were probably found somewhere in the deep ocean.  The room was arranged around a circular map, with multiple different chairs all with their own unique features.  One was dark and had miniature hydrothermal vents sticking out of it, another had dolphin motifs or jellyfish with metal discs on each arm and so on and so forth.  A few of them were occupied, most notably the largest one which looked oddly like a fisherman's seat and the one next to it, glowing in a pearlescent shine.  Maybe it was supposed to be a round table, but the most important member was obvious, Poseidon.  Which meant that the woman sitting next to him was Amphirite.  Poseidon looked oddly familiar, in the same way Triton did.  They were too embroiled in their conversation to notice mine and Triton’s arrival.

“Father, I apologise for the interruption, but we have a guest.”

Poseidon's eyebrow raised as he looked at us, at which point it raised even higher as his face started to go pale.

“Husband, what is wrong?”

Poseidon cleared his throat and broke eye contact.  “Nothing, my dear.  You, hero of land, why have you sought out my court?”

I stepped forward and bowed.  “I am here under the authority of Phoebus Apollo, it is neither of our beliefs that you are responsible for the bolt being stolen, and I have intelligence that will aid in unveiling the truth.”

Poseidon looked back at me, whatever discomfort there was now hidden beneath regal professionalism.  “Then tell me this vital information.”

“The Helm of Darkness was also stolen, and likely used to acquire the bolt.”

That certainly got their attention.

“I swear upon the Styx that to my knowledge, I am telling the truth.”

Amphirite spoke up this time.  “I was wondering why my brother-in-law down under was being so silent.”

Poseidon frowned.  “And now, brother dearest is also something that needs to be considered.  I did believe him to be the thief, but now…  You have done well to bring this to my attention, hero, if you would follow me, I will reward you personally.”

Amphirite raised a questioning eyebrow, to which Poseidon held up his hand.  They whispered briefly in some ancient language I didn’t recognise before she nodded and walked over to Triton.  “Come along, Triton, we must prepare the garrison.”

Poseidon walked towards one of the exits to the main hall, looking behind at me expectantly.  I quickly followed him through an assortment of equally gaudy hallways.  I noticed servants staring and gossiping as we passed. Triton did say the stories were being passed around about my above-sea exploits.  He led us to an unassuming door at the end of one of the corridors, the room was lit up dimly with bioluminescent plants, and the centre was composed of various cushions and lounge chairs.  Poseidon closed the door and a trident symbol glowed on it.

“May I ask why we are here?”

“I use this room when I don't want to hear the outside world, it also means that the outside world can't hear inside it.”

Very ominous, worryingly ominous in fact.  He certainly didn't look to be the type to murder people in secluded rooms, he probably ordered other people to do it for him.

“You may remove the mask, Perseus.”

Excuse me, what?  My confusion was obvious on my face.  “I…uh…”

“I should thank my sister for her blessing on you, for keeping your scent hidden as your awareness grew.”

“My…scent…”

“Curse of Lamia, ancient history.”  He stated offhandedly

“Sorry, why do you know my name?”  I inquired.

“No amount of dearest Hestia's enchantments could hide my own son from me.”

On one hand, what the fuck?  On the other hand, I absolutely called it.

Chapter Text

I do love bombshells in the evening; they're very good for my health, like standing in front of my absentee father, my absentee father that is literally a deity.  Yup, it’s certainly been one of those days.  It's times like these, where I miss just going out into New York and busting some drug dealers.  But no, I had to be face to face with the man who went to the bottom of the ocean just to get the milk.

“You look surprised.”

I stared at, not entirely believing what I was seeing.

“That would be because I am surprised.”

Poseidon’s face dropped.  “I see, my apologies, I thought you were aware, considering how involved you’ve made yourself.”

“I had theories, but it’s a whole other thing to get it told to my face.  Wait, I’m related to Tyson, aren’t I?  Can’t wait for that conversation.”

“Tyson…Tyson…”  His face scrunched in concentration

“Cyclops, about yea high, very long hair, likes PB&Js.”

Well, good to know that his parenting skills aren’t reserved solely for me.

“Ah.”  He did the same look when he first saw me, pale and looking like he had a bit of a heart attack.

“Ah?”

“When did you first run into camp?”

I startled.  “You knew I went to the camp.”

Poseidon sighed.  “Fish are notorious gossips.”

Okay, when am I going to meet these mysterious gossiping fish?

“A while ago, after running into Tyson.”

I never thought I'd see a god regret their life choices, let alone the amount I'd seen happen in just one day.  I think maybe the universe is hinting at something.

“You are too good a person for your own good.  As much as I'd prefer you be safe…I couldn't be prouder.”

I wasn't sure how to react to that.  I was just me, some kid he'd never talked to.  I felt tears attempting to well up, but I managed to keep them at bay. I could get emotional when the job was done.

“Thanks…dad?  Can I call you that, or do you prefer father?  Or just Poseidon?”

He smiled gently, kind of like Mom but with thousands of years' worth of weight behind it.  “Whichever you prefer, Perseus.”

“Percy.  I, uh, I prefer Percy.”

There was a brief, awkward pause.

“Oh thank goodness for that.  For all the amazing traits your mother possesses, naming is not one of them.”

We both shared a laugh at that.

“Well, Dad.”  That was going to take a lot of getting used to.  “I should probably go, need to save the world and all that.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?”

“My best lead's camp, so I'll be going there next,”  I explained.

“Percy, you are mortal and a child; you can't keep this up.”

“Did the ‘saving the world’ part just not register?”  Oh gods, did I say that out loud?

Fortunately, he ignored that comment.  “You have time, time to prepare, plan, and yes, rest.  You need sleep, if I am correct. How much have you had in the last week?”

I mumbled something vague and noncommittal, because I knew it wasn't enough, but I didn't want to give him the satisfaction, that's what he gets for only deciding to be a dad after I show up on his doorstep.  Poseidon raised his eyebrow; the point he was making was very obvious.

“ Fine .”

“Good, now then, I do believe I mentioned a reward for your efforts.”  He held out his hand and the water swirled around it to form a trident that he then handed over to me.  The moment I grabbed hold of it, its size and weight shifted to match me perfectly.

“The metal of this trident is imbued with the essence of the sea, and as the sea is part of you it too is part of you.  So long as you have the will, and are hydrated enough, you may summon it and control it.”

Water Mjolnir, but somehow even cooler than that.  I started vibrating slightly in excitement at my new thing.  “Wow, uh, thanks.”

Poseidon sighed.  “It was supposed to be a gift for your 18th, after Anaklusmos, a weapon of a true prince of the sea.  Did Chiron give you the sword yet?”

Once again, too shocked to snark.  “It's supposed to be my sword?”

“I'll take that as a no.  You will need a weapon when you are wearing your mask, wielding Riptide as both would reveal your identity would it not?”

I nodded.

“This trident has the markings of the atlantean royal armoury, it will be recognised as a gift and a show of my approval.  Another layer to hide your identity.”

“Why would you approving of me hide who I am?”

Poseidon gazed at me straight in the eyes with the most earnest and serious look he could muster.  “Because using gifts to show that I approve of my children is totally redundant to any who know me.”

Well damn, I felt bad for internally roasting him.  Only slightly, loving absent dad is still an absent dad.

“Remember, the whole point of the trident is for you to have a weapon when wearing your mask.  It would do you well to not use one without the other.”

I gave an indignant huff.  “Wow, I had no idea.”

“I'm sorry you had to be embroiled in this, Percy, I truly am.  But at this point, you're already part of events, better to not deprive you of resources.”

“Just make sure to tell me or tell Apollo to tell me if anything happens that I should know about, and talk to Hades about all of this.”

“It's not that simple, too much contact and Zeus will begin to suspect we are conspiring against him.”  He explained.

“Just try, please.”

He sighed, “I will take your advice to heart.”

I made my way to the door before turning around.  “Uhm, dad, do dreams mean anything?  Like, with all of this weird magic stuff going on, is that something else I should know about?”

He stroked his beard in thought.  “Sometimes, it depends on how much connection to prophecy one has.”

“And how much would I have?”

“With my previous position as god of prophecy and your endorsement from Apollo, I'd say there's a high chance of a stronger than average connection.”

“Right…thanks, for hearing me out.”

“I'm always here, if you would like I can transport directly back to wherever you're staying.”

“Yeah, thanks.  Could you send me back to Yancy Academy?”

He nodded and I found myself surrounded by a vortex of water, when it dissipated I was swimming in the grey waters of the Hudson one again.  I flexed my arm experimentally, trying to pull the trident out of wherever it came from.  The water solidified into the weapon, the river made it look a lot less majestic, but I couldn't complain about a magic water trident.

As much as I had promised Poseidon to take it easy and be civilian for a while, he made the mistake of not enforcing it.  I couldn't waste time being ‘just Percy’ when civilization was at risk with a ticking clock.  What self respecting superhero would just ignore the end of the world for a bunch of classes they were failing in a school they didn't like?

I made a few more scouting trips to the camp, so long as I stayed in the water the harpies wouldn't notice me (a mistake I only made once after their claws meant I had to learn how to sew).  My grades had started slipping, and I'd started getting more snappy (I refuse to give Captain Absent the satisfaction of being right by admitting it was sleep deprivation).  The final straw for Yancy was when I called my English teacher an old sot and stormed out of the room when he decided to berate me for having problems reading Shakespeare (normal English was bad enough without having to sit through hours of Romeo and Juliet in old English).  I was brought into the principal's office and told that I wouldn't be welcome back to Yancy next year.

Honestly, good riddance.  The only part of that school that I liked was being around Grover, and Brunner was probably the best teacher I'd ever had even if I acknowledged the part where he's secretly half horse.  Besides, less summer work meant more time to save the world, all I needed to do was find a way into camp… And explain why I'm leaving mom alone again to her.  The world was at stake, I had to, and she would get it but… no, I'd deal with that when I get to that point.  I still had the rest of the school year to get through.

I woke up the night before the last day, another dream where I may or may not have been making up the culprit being mysterious.  It was raining, again, one of the two brothers was throwing another tantrum and Grover wasn't there.  I got up slowly and stretched, adjusting my eyes to the dark, grabbed my costume and went to look for him.  Chances were he was fine, but luck and me have a history.

Grover

Grover knocked on the door to Chiron's office, steeling himself to ask for the plan to be changed.  It only took a few seconds for the activities director's voice to ring out through the darkened corridor.

“Come in.”

Grover checked behind him, to make sure Percy wasn't there listening, before walking in.  Chiron looked up from his book.

“Ah, Mister Underwood.  What do I owe the pleasure of speaking to you about at this hour.”

“Percy, sir.  I'm, uh, I'm worried about Percy.”

Chiron leaned forwards.  “Aren't we all?”

“Sir, with all due respect, there was a Kindly One,  in the school!  I get what you're planning but surely neither of us noticing for a year means he isn't safe?”

“I agree.”  He said, surprising Grover.  “But what do you propose as an alternative?”

“Camp, with the summer solstice deadline-”  Grover responded immediately.

“Let it pass without him, he needs more time to matu-”

Knock

Knock

Knock

Knock

They both froze and looked towards the window.  Chiron pulled out his bow and emerged from his wheelchair, clopping slowly to the window to open the curtain and peer out of it.

“Nothing.”  He said with finality. “Just the rain.”

Knock

Knock

Knock

Knock

This time it was the window closest to Grover, he held out a shaky hand and opened the curtain.  Again, nothing, just the rain and lightning-

Grover jumped back.

“There's someone there.”

Chiron rushed to his window, staring  out of it intensely.  “If they were, they're gone now.”

There was a flash of lightning and thunder rumbled in the distance.

Knock

Knock

Knock

Knock

This time, someone was definitely there, a familiar cloaked figure standing casually in the air, holding an umbrella.  As though they were a normal person walking down a street and not standing on nothing.  Another flash of lightning, and even Chiron jumped back as they appeared directly outside the window and knocked again.  Chiron was the first to regain his composure.

“It would be impolite to leave our guest in the rain.”

Chiron opened the window and the figure climbed in, closing their umbrella in the process.  They tilted their head towards the centaur.

“Chiron.”  Grover could tell that some human trickery had gone into disguising their voice.  Chiron glared back.

“What do you want?”

The figure gave a chuckle.  “Hardly the way to treat the one responsible for saving your charge.”

“What do you want?”  He repeated.

The figure paused, straightened up and looked Chiron dead in the eyes (or as close to it considering the height difference).  “I know about the bolt, I thought it would be prudent for you to know that I have been given the blessing of both Apollo and Poseidon to investigate.

Grover had never been simultaneously impressed, surprised and concerned by someone that much since Thalia.  To get two Olympians on your side is certainly a feat.

Chiron glared at them.  “I question the wisdom of that decision.”

“Question it all you like.  Since you almost let Alecto kill Mr Jackson.”

Grover made a choking sound at one of the furies being directly named.  The figure regarded him.  “Don't worry about that, we've come to an arrangement.”

Grover somehow managed to be more lost for words than he already was as he sputtered in response.

Chiron sighed.  “Is that all?”

“No, from this point onwards until the bolt situation is resolved, the son of Poseidon will be under my protection.”

Well, there went Grover’s theory that Percy was the secret identity behind the mask.  Oh gods, they just said son of Poseidon, Percy is a son of Poseidon.  Did the fates want him to turn into a daisy early from a heart attack?  The figure held out their hand, and the water from the rain flowed into the room, building up to  form an intricately made trident.  It was the kind of weapon you'd see made in the cyclops’ forges.  “I'd ask if you had any objections, but that's Poseidon’s problem.”

“None at the moment.”  Chiron said through gritted teeth.

The figure walked over to the window to leave, turning around one last time.  “We're on the same side. Believe it or not I don't want the world to end, considering I live there.”  and then jumped out, back into the nightly rain.  Chiron sat down at his desk, wearing one of those looks that actually felt like his age matched his face.

“I had a feeling, and now I have confirmation.”

“About what, sir?”

“Mr Jackson's parentage.  They couldn't have gotten that weapon from anywhere except Atlantis, and if they stole it they wouldn’t have named the lord of the seas directly”

“So, he’s really…?”

“The prophecy child?  I won’t jump to any conclusions but currently that is the most likely scenario.  I think, Grover, that you were right.”

“About what?” He asked, the arrival of their visitor had resulted in him largely forgetting about their previous conversation.

“Mr Jackson will have to be transferred to camp, preferably tomorrow.  You are to follow him to his home and then get both him and his mother to safety, do you understand?”

“Yes sir.”  It wouldn’t be like last time, Grover would make sure of it.

Percy

So, what have I learned today?  First, Grover definitely works for camp, probably a satyr.  Second, Chiron really doesn't like me.  At least the me when I wear the mask.  I'll admit, I may have been having a little too much fun at their expense.

But only a little.

At the end of the day, it was a good idea.  Saying that I'm under my own protection makes it less suspicious when both of ‘me’ show up in quick succession, I still had to be careful though, avoiding the ‘never seen in the same room’ comparison would go a long way.  Using the rain to soak the costume and control it to make it look like I was floating was a good first step for that.

I managed to get back before Grover and sat at my desk, looking like I was trying very hard to study for Latin since it was the only subject I was remotely confident in passing.  “Hey man, where were you?”

Grover jumped at my voice.  “Oh, just talking to Brunner.  Latin, y'know?”

Even if I wasn't there and actively part of that conversation, Grover is a terrible liar.

“Sure man, I'm gonna get some sleep.”

The next morning I packed up my stuff and took the first Greyhound back into New York.  Grover was taking the same one as me, by total coincidence as he made certain to assure me.  The journey was decidedly awkward, what with both of us trying to avoid revealing too much to the other resulting in some very stilted conversations.  Eventually we managed to get a proper talk going about conservation, Grover was always very passionate about it and Mom made a point of doing charity cleanups around Montauk before Gabe happened.

We were getting into a debate over priorities when the bus sputtered to a stop, acrid smoke leaking out of the engine.  The driver stood up and walked into the aisle.  “Alright, everybody off.”

Me and Grover filed out alongside the rest of the passengers, it was a relatively small back road with nothing except some trees and a small strawberry stand manned by 3 old ladies.  Not sure what they were doing there except knitting because they certainly weren’t going to be getting much business.  They were making 2 socks, one electric blue and the other sea green with the lady in the middle holding both balls of yarn.  Grover walked over to me and his face sank, looking more terrified than he had ever been.

“Perce, please tell me they aren’t looking at you.”

“Sure, man, I won’t point out the obvious.”

“Not the time.” He hissed

The woman in the middle pulled out a pair of scissors and took them to the electric blue wool.

“No, not again” Grover muttered, now I was starting to get scared, this wasn’t just ‘normal’ Grover nerves. “Percy, we’re going back to the bus.” He stated with finality

“Grover, it’s still-”  I didn’t have the time to refute him as he dragged me back to the greyhound.  I got a glimpse of them, the middle one took the scissors and cut the first thread, I could hear it across 4 lanes of traffic.  As I reached the bus and the heat and smell hit my nose, I heard the second thread get cut.  A few seconds later, the driver pulled out a piece of mangled metal from the hood and the engine rumbled back to life.  “And we’re back!”  The rest of the passengers sat back down and the greyhound continued its way to the station.  If Grover was nervous before, then he was on the verge of a total panic attack at this point, which then set off his bladder.

I wanted to wait, I honestly did, Grover needed it.  That was until about 5 police cars sped past me with their sirens at full blast, I took out the phone that Commissioner Wellesley had given me and tuned in.  The voice was crackly but I could make out what they were saying “10-65 suspects are armed and dangerous.”  Which meant I was on the clock again.  I found a corner to change into my costume and hid the rest of my bags before making my way to the crime scene.  From what I could see, I was dealing with normal people and not monsters, so no trident.  

As great a weapon as it was, I really didn’t want to get called Aquaman more than I already did and I could handle thugs without resorting to lethal methods.  I hid in a nearby alleyway and willed the pipes to clog up until the building began to flood.  It was owned by a chain, they could afford the damages.  I snuck in through the back and used the water to disarm all of them (even the backup weapons) and then let the law do the rest of the work.  Usually I might have knocked them out myself but Grover was probably waiting for me.

I was wrong, he was not waiting for me.  So I walked home on my own, trying to think of a way to justify me spending however long it takes to hunt down the bolt in camp to Mom.

Chapter Text

I got out of the taxi outside of the dingy apartment complex which I called home and walked round the side of the building, hopping from a dumpster onto the fire escape and climbing up to my room. I say ‘my’ room, it's the room that I sleep in. When I'm not there, it's Gabe's ‘study’, where he sleeps, smokes and drinks all to stink up the place. From what I've seen the only studying that goes on there is of the kind of top shelf magazines I'm not supposed to know about.

I made my way through the unlocked window, dropping my bag first and using it to soften the landing as I crept over to the door to listen in to whatever Gabe was doing in the living room, another poker party by the sounds of it. Gabe seemed peeved, either he was losing, or he was expecting me to walk through the door so he could fish some dollars from my pocket. A little while later my bedroom door opened and mom walked through.

“Sweetie, you’ve grown again.” And then proceeded to wrap me in a hug.

“Hey mom.”

She sat on the bed next to me and pulled out a paper bag. It was what we always did on the first day of break, mom would come home with a bag of ‘free samples’ from work and we’d sit down and eat the mostly blue raspberry flavoured candies. Blue food was a whole thing for us.

“So, how was school?”

“Almost made it a full year, so that’s something.”

She chuckled and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Maybe if you weren’t so late to your classes so often…”

“I’ll have you know that I only ever do hero stuff after 5pm.” I retorted.

She smiled and ruffled my hair. “I know. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“What?”

“We're going to Montauk.”

“Really?” We hadn’t gone in the last couple of years, according to Gabe there were ‘money problems’, most of which were his own fault.

“One week, just us.” One week, just one week. Too long. I didn’t have the time, I needed to infiltrate the camp as soon as I could, and that meant not being around for Montaulk. I really should’ve done more prep work, there’d always be more chances to go. Well, assuming that I succeeded and stopped the apocalypse. No pressure.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Mom looked down at me patiently.

“It’s work stuff.” Work stuff was our code for the superhero thing, Gabe just thought it meant the summer jobs I took. “There’s…I might…I won’t be able to stay for the week.”

Mom didn’t look angry, she just pulled me closer. “What’s the problem?”

“I got involved in something big I-.” Mom ruffled my hair as I struggled for words.

“Hey, it’s fine, I know you wouldn’t skip out for no reason. How about we go to Montaulk, you explain there. It will look less suspicious than you randomly vanishing for a week.”

Best mom ever.

“Where's my bean dip?” Gabe shouted from the other room. There went my good mood.

Mom looked at me pleadingly. “Be nice to Gabriel for just a little bit longer.”

I nodded at her and walked behind her into the living room. “There's the brain boy, did you break in like the damn delinquent you are?”

“My apologies, Gabriel, I couldn't find my keys and decided it would just be easier to go in through the window since I know you always leave it unlocked.” He glared at me, two brain cells working overtime to detect my sarcasm. I saw Eddie roll his eyes behind Gabe's back. Eddie was the building superintendent and the most bearable of Gabe's friends. “Where's my bean dip?”

Mom gave a sickly sweet smile that didn't quite meet her eyes. “We were just discussing the trip.”

“You're serious about that?” He grumbled.

“Yes dear, don't worry, you'll have enough to last the week.”

The offer of food was enough to sway him slightly. “So long as you remember it's coming out of your clothes budget, and the kid promises not to leave a damn mark on my Camaro,” like the 12 year old was going to be driving, “Then yeah.”

I sighed internally. “I promise not to leave a mark on your car.”

“Vintage 1987 Camaro Z28.” He smugly corrected.

“That.”

He huffed and went back to his poker game, Mom gave me a silent look of thanks.

Packing didn't take that long, I didn't have much to pack after all. I made sure to have my costume in one of those outside pockets that never gets used, easy to grab and not likely to be noticed. Mom was putting her things in the trunk of the car as I got there, Gabe nowhere to be seen.

“Did you remember everything?” She asked.

“Yep, double checked.”

“Good, let's get on the road.”

The trip was fun, mom tuned into a nonstop 80s station and we spent the whole time singing along to cheesy pop music with lots of synth. We parked in the space next to the cabin and began our usual routine of cleaning out the cobwebs and setting up our campfire.

We sat down and mom's look turned solemn. “So, how bad is it?”

I froze, trying to think of the best way to phrase it. I decided to just rip off the band aid. “End of the world.” She silently pulled me into a side hug, we just sat there for a while.

“And…you're the only person available?"

I sighed. “The ones that can stop it are sitting on their hands and blaming each other, and Commissioner Wellesley doesn't have anyone else who can look into our best lead.”

“Does she know about ‘you’?”

“No, she thinks that I, as in cloak and mask I, recruited me as his spy.”

Mom chuckled. “You've really thought this out, haven't you?”

“Eh, without Siobhan I wouldn't have that lead, or official support from Apo-” Right, names.

Mom froze. “Where will you be going?” She asked slowly.

“It's a sort of summer camp on the Sound.”

“Summer camp.” Her voice sounded smaller than I'd ever heard. It was then that I realised that I didn't know how much she knew.

“There's a lot of…extended family involved in this, on Dad's side.” The look on her face confirmed that she knew what I was talking about. “Mom, I promise I will come back, it's only temporary. But…I'm the only option the Agency has.”

“The agency?” She asked.

“The shady government people Commissioner Wellesley works for, outside of the other, less secretive shady government people.” Mom chuckled slightly.

“Your father would be proud of you.”

“Yeah, he wouldn't shut up about it when I met him.”

Mom sighed in what I could only describe as fond exasperation. “Marshmallows?” She held up a bag.

I smiled and grabbed a couple. “Always.”

We had to cut our marshmallow roasting session short as the weather turned from a light drizzle to pouring rain. I cursed Zeus internally for ruining my nice moment with my mom as we retreated indoors and got ready for an early night.  

The both of us were woken up by a knocking in the middle of the night, mom looked out of the window. “Hurricane.” The person knocked again and I walked up to the front door and opened it to see a soaked Grover with goat legs.

“Blahahaha- What in Tartarus were you thinking, Percy?”

Mom ran over to see what was going on. “Grover?”

“Hello, Mrs Jackson.”

I looked between them in confusion. “You two know each other?"

Grover looked guiltily at me. “We…uh…we talked when I got sent to Yancy to keep an eye on you.”

“Keep an eye?” I asked incredulously.

“We don't have time, it's right behind me.”

Mom walked back to the front porch, carrying my bag. “Grover, can you drive?”

“Yeah.”

My mouth was gaping in confusion. How held back did he have to be to know how to drive? Mom handed me my bag. “I can't get through the barrier, going would only put me in danger.  I'll tell Gabriel that the car was stolen.” She explained. And her getting hurt would get rid of my cover story. Mom wrapped me up in a tight hug. “Love you, guppy.”

“Love you too, mom.” And with that I threw my bag of stuff into the back seat and got in the shotgun seat. Grover revved the engine, getting used to all of the car things that I didn't know about before setting off only slightly above the speed limit. It took a while for a conversation to start up.

“So, explanation please.”

“You know all of those myths that Chi-Brunner taught us about, they're all real and one of them is out to get you.” He explained while keeping his eyes on the road. This scenario seemed familiar, me in a speeding car on my way to camp.

“Which makes you a satyr then?”

“I'm sorry I had to lie to you Perce, it was for your own good.” I would be more upset if I wasn't as, if not more, guilty as Grover.

“So, which ancient monstrosity is trying to kill me?” My attempt to lighten the mood didn't work.

“Names have power, Perce.”

“It's already after me, what's the worst that could happen?” I retorted.

Grover groaned. “Never say that, because something bad always-” Grover didn't have time to finish his sentence as the car was struck by lightning. Maybe he had a point. Gabe's prized Camaro rolled over and flew into a ditch as the airbags deployed. I turned over to look at Grover.

“G-man, you good?”

Grover slowly peeled his face from the airbag. “Uh huh, we need to get out of here.” He took one of his goat legs and kicked the door on his side straight off. I heard a roar just as I managed to crawl out. There was another flash of lightning and I saw it, tall, muscles so muscular that they had their own muscles and the head and legs of a bull.

I was being hunted by the damn minotaur. The one and only. We only made our halfway up the hill before it charged, we dodged to opposite sides as it turned its attention to me.

“Any ideas?”

“We need to get past the barrier, I can distract it.”

“Absolutely not.”

I could just make out Grover rolling his eyes.

“Okay, idea.” I said, rolling to the side again. “This guy looks like once he starts charging he only goes forwards, so we lure him into charging away from the barrier and make a run for it.”

“Right, so who’s bait?” Grover shouted.

“I'll lure it.”

“Don't you-”

“Not up for negotiation, man!” Grover looked angrier at me than he ever had before as I ran to grab its attention and aim it away from the camp. “Hey big mac! Yeah that's right you stupid calf, come get me!” I managed to get its attention alright as it turned towards me, enraged. The minotaur charged, this time with its arms outstretched, I barely managed to dodge past before its massive nails ripped through my jacket and a chunk of my shoulder, but it had worked.

“Perce, come on!” Grover gestured towards the pine tree, standing just outside the barrier. I stood up and winced as the injury shifted, starting to run towards the barrier. I was most of the way there when I heard an enraged moo from down the hill as Captain Barnyard turned and got ready to charge. I could tell that there wasn't enough time and the only weapon I had would immediately reveal my secret identity. But was it worth dying for? No, if anyone had to find out, Grover would be my top pick.

The plan was simple, goad it into attacking and then summon the trident at just the right moment, what the plan didn't involve was my best friend running out of the barrier and tackling me to the side as it did another charge. Grover turned to apologise, a look of resolution on his face which morphed into shock as I materialised my trident out of thin air (or thin water, I guess) and stabbed it into the minotaur's stomach. I flew backwards, trident dissipating, and landed flat on my face with a nasty headache as the monster disintegrated and Grover gawked.

“Percy…you're…”

“I'll-” I coughed up a chunk of earth, “-explain later, just…please, trust me, keep it secret.”

“Right, yeah, definitely dude. Let's, uh, let's get you to a medic.” He hobbled over to me and hoisted my arm over his shoulder. “We are going to have a very long talk later.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, I know.” I bent down to pick up a jagged horn.

“Hey, spoils of war, good job.” Grover said.

We hobbled together over the boundary line and into camp proper. It was about the same as I remembered it minus the overturned car. We ended up walking past the big house and towards the semi circle of cabins.

“Hey, are we not going to go see Chiron?”

Grover's eyes widened. “How-?”

“Secret identity.”

“Right, still getting used to that. No, we're not, you're injured which needs dealing with first.”

We finally stopped at one of the fancier looking cabins, white walls with golden inlays and decorations of suns, lutes and bows adorned the outside. Grover walked up and knocked. It took a few seconds but eventually a very grumpy blonde teenager stepped through (he seemed familiar somehow).

“Grover, it's one in the morning, why- who's your friend?” He looked over to me.

“Percy Jackson, meet Lee Fletcher, Son Of Apollo.”

I almost made a sarcastic comment about how I could tell, considering I've met his dad, but I resisted. Lee looked over at me through bleary eyes. “Uh huh, Grover I don't know every camper here.”

“That's because he's new and just got attacked by the son of Pasiphae.”

Lee looked at me for a few seconds before rushing out of the door, tripping, and falling flat on his face. “Shit- It is too early for this.” He got up, dusted himself off and pointed at me. “You're coming with me to the medical building.” He then stormed off.

Grover gave me a sympathetic look. “Apollo kids don't do well waking up at any time that isn't sunrise. I've got to report to the Cloven Elders, please don't annoy Lee too much, he's normally much nicer.”

I held my hand to my chest and pretended to faint dramatically. “You wound me, Grover.” Before switching back to my normal voice. “Got it, don't piss off the white mage.”

Lee was waiting for me, looking concerned beneath the layers of sleep deprivation. “You're limping, looks like a sprained ankle. Any headaches or dizziness?”

“Uhm, a bit, it kinda passes.”

Lee bent down to look at my eyes. “Mild concussion, and I'm going to guess-” I yelped in pain as he jabbed my chest lightly. “Bruised ribs. Nothing some ambrosia and bedrest won't solve, all things considered you got off lucky.”

“Concussion, does this mean all the mythical stuff is just a hallucination and I only got attacked by a random bull?”

Lee smiled slightly. “Nope, this is real life.”

“Damn.”

The medical building looked like a combination of a modern hospital and an ancient temple. The plasticy linoleum was replaced with intricate marble carvings but retaining the beds, curtains and even cheesy motivational posters just with monsters, gods and heroes instead of cute animals. Lee walked over to one of the medical beds and pulled a bag of some square shaped food from a cupboard.

“Half now, half when you wake up and regardless of how well it heals, no strenuous activities for the next couple of days. Understood?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes doc.” I pulled out a square from the bag and ate it. It felt like I was eating a brownie, except it tasted like mom's homemade blue cookies.

“Seriously, sleep, I don't want to have to make that concussion of yours any worse.” Lee closed the curtains and walked away. I waited a few minutes and peeked out to check if he was in listening distance before pulling out my phone and dialing Commissioner Wellesley's number.

“Kid.”

“Hey, you're the police commissioner, right?”

“Who the hell are you, why do you have this number and what did you do to the person you got it from?” She demanded.

“I'm Percy, Riptide said you knew we were working together.”

I heard the faint click of a lighter. “Riptide… There are worse names out there. I'm going to have a very long conversation with the both of you about operational security.” She said. “So, good news or bad news?”

“I just got inside the camp, no leads yet so uh…” Maybe I was hammering the ‘nervous kid’ bit a little too much.

“Jackson, you just got there, I'm not expecting miracles. Just stay safe and don't get into too much trouble, trust me if I could be relying on anyone above the age of twelve I would be.”

“Right, of course.” I stammered. “Riptide told me to tell you that he's keeping an eye on me so he won't be around much…”

“Don't fret over it, if the kid wasn't the type to do his damndest to keep you safe, I wouldn't have bothered contacting him. Keep your head low and an ear to the ground, update me when you can.”

“Right, yes ma'am.”

Commissioner Wellesley snorted in amusement on the other side of the phone before cutting off the line. I hid it in an inside pocket and laid down to try and sleep. Doctor's orders after all.

Chapter Text

I woke up to the sun streaming in through a window and on a bed that was about on par with the one at the apartment (at least it was sanitary). There was some chattering from near to the entrance, voices I couldn't quite make out. I rolled over slightly, remembering Lee’s instructions and taking the rest of the food. The taste of blue chocolate chip cookies helped wake me up as I stood from the bed and peaked out. At the end of the hall was Lee in an argument with Chiron.

“He's still resting! He's lucky he isn't going to be unconscious for days, let alone survive!” That was Lee.

“Yes, Mister Fletcher, I am aware. But Mister Jackson should be acclimated as soon as possible.” I could hear Chiron's patience wearing thin. “Well, no time like the present.” I thought as I hopped off the bed and made my way over to them. Chiron noticed me first, turning around and smiling. “Percy, glad to see you aren't too injured.”

I gave him a fake once over. “Mr Brunner, is there a reason you're half horse today or is that normal for you?” I heard Lee quietly snorting.

“Ah, yes, I believe some explanations are in order. How much have you already been told?” He asked.

“Greek myths real, monsters don't actually die which is why a certain famous bull man was trying to murder me last night. And don't call anything by its name.” I explained.

“That is certainly an interpretation. Lee, where are Mr Jackson's possessions?”

Lee looked up from the medical papers he was rooting through. “Grover was looking after them.”

Chiron nodded. “I understand, well then, I shall give you the tour and then we will have to see about retrieving your things.” Chiron clopped out as I tried to stick next to him. I've seen the Macy's day parade enough times to know not to trust the rear end of a horse. As he led me out of the building, I pretended to be surprised and looked at everything to make it look like I hadn't been there already. Hestia was sitting at her hearth again, her head turning and giving me a polite nod. “On your left is the activities area, including the crafts room and forge.”

I noticed someone working on a bust with a very large sand blaster. “Those are some intensive arts and crafts.” Chiron didn't grace my quip with a response and continued walking. The outdoor activities are located here, namely the archery range, track, sports pitch and arena.”

…Nope, I definitely didn't mishear that, he said arena. Another wonderful excuse for me to demand answers from the fates. “And down that path is the pavilion, where all meals are held, and the firepit where we have nightly campfires. Finally, over there is the forest, campers are forbidden entry until they have at least one week of experience.”

Thank the gods, something normal, immediately followed by something ominous. I love it here already.

“Now then,” Chiron continued, “I shall speak to Mister Castellan about setting up a sleeping place for you in cabin 11. Mister Underwood should have your things, I believe he's usually in the strawberry fields at this time.”

I nodded and rushed towards the field. Luckily, for all the strangeness, the camp at least had good signposting. Grover, true to Chiron's word, was sitting in a field playing Hillary Duff, something even the plants seemed to object to (glad I'm not the only one). “Yo, G-man.”

Grover spun around, dropping his panpipes and liberating the poor strawberries from his unfortunate taste in music. “Percy, how are you feeling?”

I shrugged. “Less like I got run over by a bipedal bull with muscles bigger than my torso.” He shoved me on the shoulder. “I'm fine, I got fed this thing called ‘ambrosia’, tasted of chocolate chip cookies.”

Grover walked beside me. “Godly food, tastes like your favourite thing and heals you. Just…try to avoid eating too much.”

“What am I going to do, explode?” Grover gave me a flat look at my joke. “Grover, it won't blow me up if I eat too much?”

“Less exploding, more spontaneous combustion.” Because we can't just have nice things.

“Right, meant to ask, what did you do with my stuff?”

Grover picked up his panpipes and fiddled with them nervously, checking behind him to see if anyone else was listening. “I've covered them with plants. What do you want me to do about your…costume?”

I shrugged noncommittally, “Just hide it by my dad's cabin.”

Grover got another one of his ‘gods grant me patience’ looks. “Your dad?” He mumbled.

“Yeah, big bad ocean man.” Grover choked on air at that. “G-man, you good?”

“You weren't kidding when you said who your father was.” He still sounded like he was in disbelief.

“Grover, I've read the myths, lying about being his kid for some threat of vengeance is one of the worst ideas possible.” Grover's look of abject terror hadn't dropped.  

“Look, I'll hide it where you asked, just…we really need to talk about what you're doing here, Perce, somewhere secure. There's a lot of baggage that comes with your dad being your dad.” He rambled.

I sighed. “Looks like I'll have to have a word with father dearest about withholding valuable information.”

Grover was about to give me another look before Chiron appeared over the field of strawberries. “Ah, Percy, a space has been prepared for you in cabin 11.” Grover sent me a sympathetic look.

“It’s pretty crowded , you’ll see when you get there.”

The Hermes cabin looked the closest to an average summer camp cabin in the entire camp. Worn down wooden walls, a well used door, and a symbol of a staff with two snakes surrounding it adorning the front. “Mr Bru- Chiron, I’m fairly certain Hermes isn’t my dad.”

“Hermes is the god of travellers, and so welcomes all to his door, meaning this is where the unclaimed go.”

I looked at him questioningly. “Isn’t there a god of hospitality?” Chiron glanced towards the extravagant marble cabin with the lightning bolt, Zeus’ I assumed.

“The Lord Of The Skies does not wish to share his domain within this camp with those not of his blood, we are forced to adhere to his wishes.”

I rolled my eyes. “Seems a bit pompous” Thunder was heard in the distance which Chiron glanced at nervously.

“Please be careful when speaking of the gods.” Right, because the arbiters of nature were such petty children to threaten to murder you over some cheap words. I was looking forward to never having to be involved in this kind of mess again more and more. The cabin was more crowded than I could have imagined, sleeping bags covered most of the floors as the building was full to the brim with people. The moment the door opened every head turned to look at me.

“Mr Jackson arrived last night, he has yet to be claimed, try to make him feel welcome.” The moment Chiron mentioned me being unclaimed, the interest turned on its head as most people stopped caring. From the back a tall, sandy blonde teen walked over.

“Percy, right? I'm Luke, counsellor for cabin 11. We've managed to set aside a spot for you over there.” He pointed towards a sleeping bag in a corner with less assorted stuff around it than all the others.

“Thanks?”

“I have master's archery classes, if you'll excuse me.” Chiron turned and closed the door.

“Finally,” He held out a small plastic bag. “Toiletries that I stole from the camp shop. Heard your arrival was rough.”

I snorted, “That's one way of putting it.”

“Hey, don't worry about it, even if you're not a Hermes kid, you're still part of our family.  We gotta stick together, y'know?” I sat down on the sleeping bag, making sure to hide the few things I had on me at the time, god of thieves and all. Speaking of, two of the assumed siblings, twins, walked up to me.

“Lovely to meet you, I'm Connor.”

“And I'm Travis”

“We heard a rumour down the grapevine that you killed the bull of the Labyrinth.” Connor said, I made sure to keep an eye on their hands and have my hands secure next to my pockets. Both of them smirked.

“A smart one.” Travis said, somehow managing to smirk even wider. “Say, Percy, how would you like to help in a few of our operations?”

“What kind of ‘operations'?” I inquired.

“Oh, a few minor pranks, nothing serious.”

“Nothing serious at all.” The other continued. Luke was looking over now.

“Look, fellas, I appreciate the offer but I don't feel like playing the fall guy for your schemes. Maybe another time.”

They both made dramatic affairs of swooning. “Oh you wound me, Percy.” Connor exclaimed. Like walked over and grabbed both of them by the scruff of their necks.

“Not now, you two.” He said, giving me a look of apology as he dragged them away while mouthing ‘siblings’ towards me. I settled down in my corner, maybe these people weren't so bad after all, excluding the one or more with plans of ending the world, obviously.

A few hours later, a conch sounded in the distance as Luke and the rest of the cabin stood up.

“All right cabin 11, line up in order of seniority and file in.” The line lasted a total sum of a few seconds before it devolved into a gaggle of various friend groups. Travis and Connor both sidled up to me again.

“But seriously dude, did you kill the minotaur?” Connor asked.

I shrugged. “I couldn't have done it without Grover, but yeah, guess I did.”

Travis did a fist pump as Connor reluctantly handed over a few large, golden coins to his brother. “With a feat like that, I'm surprised Annabeth hasn't started stalking you yet.” Travis said.

“Annabeth?”

“Athena kid, been here as long as Luke so pretty much longer than everybody.”

“And why would she be stalking me?” I asked.

Connor piped up. “She's been a year rounder at camp for most of her life, every time someone new shows up she thinks it's the big three kids who'll be her ticket to a quest.”

Year rounders, that was a clue. That indicates there were only a certain number of campers around when the bolt was stolen, plus all of the ones that lived in New York already.

“Oh, and speak of the devil.” That was Travis, maybe. I looked in the same direction as him and saw a pair of stormy grey eyes glaring back.

“She's real pissed, good luck man.” Connor joked.

The Hermes table was already overcrowded when I got there, I barely fit on the side of the bench with the many other people. It was clear that Hermes was the busiest cabin. Soon, nymphs placed plates of food and empty goblets on the table.

“The drink fills with whatever you want, perks of Dionysus being the camp director.” Luke explained.

I looked at the goblet. “Diet coke.” It was filled up with brown liquid. Huh, I wonder…

“Blue diet coke.” The liquid turned a deep cobalt, I sipped it and sent a quick prayer to keep Mom safe, ignoring the strange looks being leveled at me. Over the course of the meal, people sectioned off portions of their food: the juiciest cut of ham, the most perfectly roasted potato, and then scraping them into the fire. I got up and stood behind Luke. Eventually Luke turned behind him to look at me being confused.

“Offerings for the gods, to ask for good fortune or to thank them. Apparently they like the smell.”

“What are we supposed to thank them for?” I asked.

Luke suddenly looked sadder and older. “If I'm honest, I don't know.” He scraped the food in and left without a second thought, unlike everyone else who stopped for a couple seconds. I looked at him walk away, and it clicked: Luke had a motivation. It wasn't enough to justify believing him to be the culprit, but it was definitely something to look into further. After Luke it was my turn, I gave half of the offering to Poseidon to tell him that the trident worked and the other to Hestia.

‘Thank you for that blessing, I think half of Olympus would know my secret identity without it. We need to talk, you've been in camp for a long time and you might have clues. Thanks again, from Percy

PS: My name with the costume on is Riptide’

There was the faint smell of saltwater, and the warmth from the fire grew around me comfortably. Judging by what happened when I met Apollo, I think they heard. I say back down and a fat middle aged man who looked like his blood ran with alcohol rather than water stood up.

“Right, yes, hello all of you insufferable children. I have announcements to make apparently. First, we have a new camper, Peter Johnson.” Chiron stood up slightly to whisper in Dionysus’ ear. “Fine, apparently his name is Percy Jackson. Next, capture the flag is tonight, as per health and safety rules no maiming, no killing, and nobody with less than a week's experience allowed blah blah blah. Now then, run along to your silly little campfire, I'm going to take a nap.” I got the strangest feeling this wasn't the worst introduction to the man that I could have had.

The entire camp made its way over to the amphitheatre, a large bonfire in the middle. I sat with the rest of the Hermes cabin as I recognised Lee and a lot of people who looked like his siblings leading the singalong, the fire growing brighter as the energy of the camp increased. I felt a familiar warmth next to me as Hestia sat down. “Thank you for your offering, Percy. It is not often that I am remembered directly.”

“Don’t worry about it, you did me a big favour.”

She smiled. “Thank you, now, I believe you are not permitted to take part in Capture The Flag yet, I doubt anybody would be paying attention to you and Grover.”

I looked confused at her. “Grover?”

“The satyr standing right behind you.”

A span around to see the G-Man himself standing there.

“I’ll leave you two to your business.”

I turned back around to thank her but she was already gone.

“So…” Grover started.

“Yeah, I know G-man. Look, I'm sorry alright, it's not personal, I've been wearing the costume for years now. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Grover laughed and sat down. “Dude, it’s cool, like really cool. I was literally spying on you for Chiron, I can’t talk.”

“Still friends?”

He nodded. “Still friends. So, care to explain why you’re here?”

I stretched. “It’s going to be a long story.”

Grover pretended to check his nonexistent watch. “Capture The Flag takes a few hours most of the time, is it that long?”

I shook my head. “Well, it all started when I was ten years old-.” Grover shoved my shoulder and laughed.

“I don’t need to know your entire origin story.”

“Fine, spoilsport. The first time I became aware of ‘this’ world was a couple years ago, I’d been doing the hero thing for a few months at that point, and I ran into a cyclops being attacked by a sphinx.”

“Cyclops?” Grover asked.

“Yeah, Tyson. Tyson’s great, also maybe my younger brother, which isn’t a conversation I’m looking forward to.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s very huggy.” Grover’s face showed me he understood what ‘very huggy’ entailed for a cyclops.

“Yeah, anyway, a little after that I ran into camp, you probably remember that.” I explained.

“Yeah, Chiron was pissed.”

“Yeah, anyway, nothing really happened until Alecto at the museum. I tricked her into thinking I’d escaped through the window and then confronted her in costume. She mentioned something being stolen, I asked, and we came to a deal.”

“Hold on,” Grover interrupted. “Why would Alecto want to find the bolt?”

“She didn’t, the helm was stolen as well.” The face Grover made at that was priceless. “After that I got in contact with dad and Mr Sunshine, they’re talking with the lord of the dead so in theory there shouldn’t be any major conflicts on that front. Hopefully.” Grover was looking at me slack jawed at this point. “Grover, you alright?”

He gulped and nodded slowly. “Yeah, just processing, kinda feel like I cheated.”

“Cheated at what?” I asked

“Bringing you here was my trial, to see if I’m worthy of becoming a seeker and going out to look for the lost god Pan. And then I hear all this and it sounds like you're making more progress with the bolt than half of Olympus combined.”

“I see, and I’m going to need you to shut up. I couldn’t have made it here without you so don’t act like that, okay.”

Grover smiled slightly. “I knew about the master bolt, but the helm as well…”

“End of the world.” I said gravely.

“So, why come to camp?” He asked.

“Gods can’t take symbols of power directly and humans can’t go to Olympus, which means the only possible culprit is a demigod, likely with a more powerful entity giving them instructions from behind the scenes.” I exposited. “Finding the culprit is the first step to finding the mastermind and stopping the war, saving mom.”

“Wait, is that why she stayed behind?” he exclaimed.

“To give me a cover story for vanishing for a week? Yep. Best mom ever.”

“Right, guess I have no choice then.” Grover looked at the fire, focussed.

“Of what?”

“Helping you, no point looking for Pan if there’s no world left to fix. Besides, you seriously didn’t think I’d let you do this all on your own, did you?”

I shrugged. “Eh, 50/50. Well, if you’re so insistent on helping me, who in the camp would have been in New York at the time of the robbery?”

Grover was deep in thought for a few seconds. “Well, there are a few regular campers that live in New York most of the time, and the year rounders, they were there in the throne room when it happened.”

I facepalmed. “There were demigods in the room and I'm the one they blame?” Grover smirked and shrugged, pulling out a tin can and chewing on it. “I can't believe my life. Doesn't matter, who are the year rounders?”

“Most of the Camp Counselors and a few others. Silena, Annabeth, Beckendorf, Lee, Katie, Clarise, Castor and Pollux, Luke-” Luke again. Now I have a possible motive and I know he was in the right place. I really hoped it wasn't Luke, he seemed nice, he helped me… no, it could have been any number of them, Luke couldn't be the only one with a motive. “- then a lot of unclaimed kids. Drew, Sherman and Malcolm as well.” Right, Grover was still talking. Annabeth was another one to look into, above all the other leads I might already have.

“So, Grover, what's the problem with my dad being my dad.” He suddenly paled.

“What do you know about the second world war, Percy?” Odd question.

“About as much as everyone else.”

“What people don't know is that the children of the big three were very heavily involved, all of the greatest generals were children of the big three, weaponizing and manipulating the war to fight their own personal battles. After the war the three brothers swore on the styx to never have half blood children again, seeing the damage they did when they got involved.” Oh, well then, that certainly complicated things. Grover looked concerned at me, noticing the look on my face.

“Well, Thunderbolt is still a paranoid asshole, but I guess I get it?”

Grover looked mournfully into the middle distance. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You alright man?”

Grover stood up. “Yeah, just thinking of a friend. Do you mind if I go?”

“It's fine, go ahead.” Grover waved and walked off. I sighed and sat back, listening to the sounds of cheering in the distance, sounded like they would be coming back soon. I stood up and made my way to the cabin to get a head start on washing. I didn't fancy dealing with that many people when I had so much to think about.

Chapter Text

The next day, after a cramped night on the floor surrounded by a lot of snoring, I scanned the noticeboard for the cabin's timetable.  Cabin 11 had a lot of variety in what they did. I suppose that made sense if they were trying to figure out who your Godly parent was, casting the widest net would be the best way forward (Gods, I'm starting to sound like Siobhan).  My second day started with the pegasus stables being run by Silena Beauregard, the Aphrodite head and year-round camper.  Good, the earlier I started, the better.

Breakfast was entertaining; I spent most of the time getting hounded by Travis and Connor for their ‘totally harmless pranks’.  An unclaimed kid named Chris tried to distract them, which ended up with him getting caught in their schemes as well.  Eventually, after much negotiating with the twins, we made our way over to the stables, the cabin splitting into smaller groups and going to different pegasi. I was distracted trying to think about how exactly they managed to fly before a person I didn't know walked into view, beaming at me.

“Hi, you're the new kid, Percy, right?”  Turns out the look wasn't just for show; she really was just that friendly, at least she sounded that way.

“Yeah, uhm, hi?”

“I'm Silena, counselor for Cabin 10.  You were looking a bit lost, don't worry, everyone's had their first day, and I know it can be a surprise seeing pegasi for the first time.”   Well, there's suspect number 3, or number 2 if I'm going in interaction order.  Doesn't matter.

“Yeah,” I ran my hand through my hair and chuckled, “It's a bit of a culture shock to say the least.”

“They're sweethearts, really.  I've got a system for new campers to help, but you can do what you want and hang out with your friends, too.”  I could see her eyes scanning the rest of the group vigilantly; it reminded me a lot of Commissioner Wellesley, always on the lookout for trouble.

“Sure, I don't see why not,”  I replied.

“Great.”  She clapped her hands together, vast amounts of assorted jewellery jangling from the impact.  From my limited fashion knowledge (I can do makeup and that's about it), all of those different colours shouldn't have worked, but they did, probably an Aphrodite thing.  “What happens is you pick a pegasus, we see if the two of you gel together, and then you start with the basics of flying.  They're smart creatures with a lot of depth and preferences; it's better for both if you get along.”

“Right.”  I nodded and scanned the stables for one with less people around them.  “That one.”  A grey and black pegasus who was being largely ignored.

“That's Heron, one of our older mares. I'll wish  you luck, but she's never been fond of novice riders.”  Silena explained.  “I'll stand here. If anything goes wrong, I'll be right next to you.”  I nodded and slowly walked over to Heron. She was probably one of the most beautiful horses I'd ever seen, way better than the ones at that horse camp I went to when I was 7.

“Hello, Heron, right?  I'm Percy. It's nice to meet you.”

“Ha, hear that all of you?  The prince decided to talk to me first.”  I jumped back slightly at the random voice in my head, Silena now looking more intently at the two of us.  Out of the corner of my eye a number of campers jumped backwards as other pegasi snorted in annoyance.

“Hello?  If you're really Heron and not a figment of my imagination, could you do something?” I thought back at her.

In response, the pegasus whinnied and bowed her head. I reached out my hand and patted her nose tentatively.  Note to self, add horse telepathy to my list of superpowers.

“Is that adequate, my Prince?”

“Very, you can drop the formalities if you want.” I thought back to her.

“If that is what you wish, it has been far too long since one of our lord's children has graced our presence.”  Right, Poseidon and horses, also being the father of the original Pegasus in the stories of Medusa.  That was really something I didn't want to think about.  People-shaped relatives I could accept, horse-shaped ones took a bit more getting used to.

“Looks like she likes you.”  I turned to see Silena's appraising look.  “Are you sure your godly parent isn't Aphrodite?”

“My mom is a mortal so I'm not sure how that would work.”

“That's never stopped mom before.”  Silena winked and laughed at my sudden blushing.

“She very explicitly said Dad so…”

“Shame, and after I put drachma on you being my sibling.”  I looked away in embarrassment.  I guess it's some kind of compliment, thinking you could be the son of the goddess of beauty, not that I really fit any of the criteria.

“I, well, I, um…thanks?”  I finally finished sputtering in surprise.  “Why did you think I could be your sibling?”  A look flashed across her face, something along the lines of sadness, but I couldn't quite catch it.

“Well, among other things, my mother was born of the sea, as were horses.  I guess I just felt a strange kind of kinship, a feeling.”  Oh, I tried not to look too disappointed.  “Would you like to saddle up?  There's still some time for flying.”  She asked, whatever she was thinking, I couldn't tell.

I nodded and went through the motions, with a few helpful hints from Heron about her preferences for tightness and saddle position.  We flew for the rest of the slot and then eventually left for Greek.

Aaaand I forgot to try to interrogate Silena, great job, me.  Well, at the very least, she didn't drop ominous hints about having problems with the gods, something she has over Luke.  I checked the timetable and Greek was being taught by Annabeth, great.

We filed in and sat down and Annabeth walked in, Annabeth who was younger than a decent portion of the people here.  I caught a glimpse of her necklace, a bunch of beads with various patterns and a college ring. It clicked after a few seconds, the beads indicated the years they'd been there, everyone else had them other than me.

“Jackson!”  Annabeth's shouting shocked me out of my train of thought.  “I asked you to read this passage of Homer.”  I took out the book as asked, The Iliad, and turned to the page.  The entire thing was in ancient Greek, which apparently I was able to read.  I went through it and even completed the analysis that was asked (asked is generous for how polite she was being).  I didn't mention that I had gone over this already in Brunner's book club (me, him, and occasionally Grover), because I found her irritated floundering at my unexplainable knowledge far funnier.  The class ended, and I was trying to think of how to talk to a child of the goddess of wisdom without giving away my secret identity, when the answer came to me instead.

“Percy.”  Annabeth was staring at me with her arms crossed.

“Yes, Annabeth?”

“You were at the museum when the kindly one attacked, right?”  How did she even know about that?  Surely Chiron would have kept it quiet.  I looked at her suspiciously and nodded in response.

“Good, there are some people who want to talk to you.  Follow me.”  And just like that, she was storming off in the direction of the cabins.  Well, I have a break period, not like anyone's going to care.  I had to jog to catch up to her, speed-walking in silence to a baby blue cabin, slightly more modern than Hermes, with a number 6 and an owl emblazoned on it.  “You can go in,”  Annabeth stated curtly.  The room was filled with bookshelves and tables with various blueprints I couldn't pretend to understand, in between bunk beds.  And at the back of the room was an honest to gods corkboard with pictures and red string all surrounding a newspaper cutting of me in my Riptide costume in the middle. It was at that moment that I realised I may have bitten off more than I could chew. 

Another person, a boy, with the same stormy grey eyes (taking a wild stab in the dark and saying that's an Athena thing), looked over.

“Is that him?”  He asked.

“Yes, Malcolm, we've got our lead.”

They sat me down in front of a table, flicking on an old desk lamp and pointing out towards me.

“Percy Jackson, you encountered the masked figure at the Metropolitan Art Museum, correct?”  Annabeth asked.

“Uhm, yes?”

It was Malcom's turn to lean over the table.  “Tell us what happened.”

“Well, I went to the art museum, pushed an asshole kid into the fountain, got forced to talk to my math teacher, who was actually a demon bat lady, ran into the bathrooms, and tricked her into thinking I left by opening the window and leaving my bag next to it, and then hid until I stopped hearing her.  I only found out about their interference after the fact.

Malcolm looked dejected, and Annabeth looked pissed.  “So you know nothing?”

“I mean, I know they were there?”  I tried to answer with as many vague technical truths as possible, knowing them they probably have some kind of magic lie detector.

“Fine.”  Annabeth snapped.  “Were they using a trident at that point?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Malcolm.”

“Already on it.”  Malcolm walked over to their corkboard and went to a section that looked sort of like a timeline, pulling out a blue string with a picture of my trident going from the museum incident to the present.  “Their next appearance after the museum had them carrying a trident, from the books, one from the Atlantean royal armoury, which means they weren't in contact with Poseidon until after the museum.”  Annabeth stood up and walked over.

“Perhaps the museum is why they got in contact.  But that would imply…”  They both looked at me, scowling.  Surely they didn't hold a grudge over competition from a few thousand years ago that their parent won?

Surely not.

“No, that's highly improbable.”

I held up my hand.  “Can I leave now?”

Annabeth looked over.  “Are you absolutely certain you know nothing?”

“Well, not nothing, but probably not enough to really help with your conspiracy board.”

Malcolm looked over.  “Don’t worry about it, Percy, your information has been invaluable.”

I slowly inched my way backwards before doing a full turn and speed walking out of the Athena cabin, and then continued speed walking very far away from it.  By the time I got to the Hermes table, it was full up, and I had to half sit right on the side of the bench.  Chris looked over at me in sympathy.

“I know that look, you got Annabeth’d didn’t you?”

I almost spat out my drink at that.  “Is Athena's children kidnapping people to look at their corkboard something that happens a lot?”

“You have no idea, every kid that got help getting here from Waterboy-” gods damn it “-ends up getting dragged to the cabin and interrogated.”  He shrugged. “You know what Athena kids are like, not knowing something is like their kryptonite.”  Chris took a swig from his goblet and looked towards the table for cabin 7; all of the people there were huddled in a circle, assorted looks of annoyance on their faces.

“Yeah, I can definitely tell.”  I quipped.

“Don’t take it personally, Annabeth’s convinced that Waterboy has something to do with some prophecy, they’ll get over it and go back to just being smug soon enough.”

In hindsight, maybe bringing the costume with me probably wasn't the best idea.  Grover had coaxed some plants to hide it in an innocuous corner behind cabin 3, but with how much attention my alter ego had managed to get, I was beginning to regret that decision.  Maybe I could sneak into the cabin and find somewhere to hide it where I knew nobody would go and Dad wouldn't mind, but I probably would have been caught by the cleaning harpies or, even worse, Annabeth.  Why don’t people write guides for this kind of thing, ok I know the answer to that, because literally nobody has actually been in this situation.  Can’t even ask Siobhan because yippee for having to maintain a secret identity.  It was fine, knowing my luck, something was going to happen that would mean I’d need to suit up.  Lunch came to an end, and we made our way out to the arena.  Everyone paired off with other people, leaving me with Luke.  Most experienced with least experienced, it made sense.  One of my cabinmates winced in sympathy at me.

“Wish you luck, Luke's the best swordsman in the last 300 years.”  Well, isn't that just reassuring?  I found a quiet spot and waited for Luke. It took him about fifteen minutes to arrive with a crate of weapons.  

“Alright Percy, pick a sword.”  I picked one up, too long, put it down.  Next sword felt off on my grip, the next one was both.  Five swords later and Luke was beginning to look concerned.  Eventually I found one that wasn't terrible, but it still felt like the weight was off in the end.  I held it out in front of me and tried very hard to look like I knew what I was doing.  Luke's training method was very practical, he'd wait for you to do something wrong and then explain what you did wrong.  This did mean that the entire training session went sorting like this: Swing, thwack, “Higher”, block, fail to block, “keep the reach further out”, a lot of repetition to that effect.  I was reminded how much I prefer using my powers and my trident, tridents are way better than swords anyway.  After enough practice for me to not be totally inept, Luke gathered the rest of the cabin.  “Right, the technique I'm about to demonstrate is difficult to pull off, but definitely not to be taken lightly, I've been on the wrong end of it a number of times.  Percy, do you mind?”  I rolled my eyes internally and maybe a little externally as well and walked up, sword in hand.  Luke went through the motions slowly, explaining each step, getting the blade of his sword against my grip and twisting.  Afterwards he flourished his blade and put it on the rack.  “We'll take a quick fifteen minute break before running drills.”  Luke walked over and comforted another one of the new campers, why is it that the worst possible person for the thief to be is the most likely?  In the middle of my thinking I saw Luke pour water on his head, and I had a devious idea.  I did the same, energy rushed back into me as my senses sharpened.  The next round of sparring went noticeably more in my favour as Luke was starting to work harder, using more complex moves.  It wasn’t going to last so I thought ‘screw it’, and went for the disarming maneuver, twisting the blade around the hilt of Luke’s and forcing him to drop it.  The entire crowd were looking at us in either bafflement or amasement.

“Sorry, beginner's luck?” I offered.  Luke looked over at me.

“What do you mean, sorry?  That was brilliant, let’s run through that again.”

The second and third time we sparred, I was thoroughly trounced. Luke looked almost disappointed as I went to sit down next to the rest of the Hermes cabin.

“Beginner’s luck, my ass,” Chris said, “You sure you’re not an Ares kid?”

I gave him my best shit eating grin before shrugging.  “Pretty sure I’m not.”

Luke walked over to where we were sitting.  “I wouldn't rule it out.”  Luke looked into the middle distance, stroking his nonexistent beard.

“Luke, you're doing your Annabeth impression again.”

Luke snorted in amusement.  “Just thinking about getting Percy a properly balanced sword, and maybe having a word with Clarise.”

Chris mouthed ‘I told you so’ at me and walked off.

Next was the forge. We filed in and were given a safety lecture from Beckendorf about how to avoid burns and the fact that most of us are probably not resistant to fire.  He was the same kind of burly that I’d noticed all nine of the Hephaestus kids were; spending all of your time in the forge would do that, I suppose.  I looked around, picked up a piece of metal, and turned one of the plastic (to avoid fires) pages of the manual on how to forge your bog standard iron dagger, the first thing that anyone learns how to make, and the supposed baseline of weapon forging.  I overheard one of the Hephaestus kids, Nyssa, I think, explaining that they didn’t have enough celestial bronze to risk first-timers botching it to someone.  Judging by how bored she sounded, this was a question that had been asked a lot.  I was terrible to say the least, my ‘dagger’ looked more like a shapely butter knife than anything else.  I was too focused on being nosy as I dropped the dagger and went to pick it up without thinking, and it wasn't actually that hot.  Beckendorf, who was running over to me, slowed down and quickly picked it up, and put it somewhere non-flammable.  He inspected it in great detail.

“I've seen worse.”  He said after a few seconds

“I doubt that.”

“The first time Travis and Connor tried forging, they insisted on working together; it ended poorly.”

I chuckled, imagining that mess.  Beckendorf continued to look over my ‘work’ before speaking again.  “I don't think you're cabin 9.  Maybe 5 or 7.  They tend to be better with burning.”  That's what he was thinking about.  I added heat resistance to my mental list of powers.  Well, I had his attention, may as well get the most out of it.

“I overheard that you were running low on celestial bronze,”  I mentioned.

Beckendorf sighed and scratched the back of his head.  “That we are, nothing that can be done about it, though.”

“Where did you get it from?”  I asked.

“Most of the time, used to be that dad would ‘accidentally’ lose a failed project or some scrap metal, and we'd end up with a quest to go grab it.  Even after that, he occasionally got permission to consecrate some pieces.  Course, no quests now, and Olympus is a lot more closed off than it used to be.”  Beckendorf looked tired as he explained what was going on.

“Really, that's…nice of him.”  Beckendorf noticed my surprise and sighed.

“You've been talking to Luke, haven't you?”  Finally, I was getting somewhere.  I shrugged in response.

“He's my cabin counsellor, I kinda have to.”

“Can't fault you for that.  Luke would say that the gods shouldn't withhold the thing we need to make weapons that can kill monsters.  Me, I think they're just part of a system a lot older and a lot bigger than them.”

Well, I could safely cross Beckendorf off the list of suspects with a motive.  He seemed genuine at the very least.

“Why does Luke have such a problem with them?”  I asked.

“Lots of things, no prophecies since his quest went bad a couple years back.  Plus, you spend enough time around unclaimed kids, you tend to get where they're coming from.  And Luke's been here the longest.”  Beckendorf walked over and patted my shoulder with a very large hand.  “He ain't wrong on all accounts, but keep an open mind is all I'm saying.”

I nodded as he walked off to reprimand Connor for trying to steal Travis’ hammer. I could see their eyes rolling from his lecture about safety from where I was standing.

The rest of the day passed without any real opportunity to talk to another one of the year-rounders, but there were a few things that I knew for certain:

1. Luke is still the most likely suspect.  He has even more motive, the skillset from his parentage, and the experience.

1. I really have to watch my step around the Athena cabin.  One wrong move and I could easily blow my cover before I can prove who it was.  I had to be especially careful with Annabeth; she was close to Luke, and if she suspected something, he'd be the second person she'd tell after the rest of her cabin.

On the upside, I could safely eliminate her from my list of suspects.  She was investigating what happened herself, and if she knew, then the rest of the cabin would be smart enough to catch on to that.

As it turned out, I wasn't paying attention to where I was going, and ended up bumping into a group of very burly, very angry-looking campers.  The leader grabbed my arm and twisted when I tried to escape.

“Well, look what we have here, the big hero.”  He sneered.

Another one of his flunkies laughed.  “Yeah, like pipsqueak over here is big three material.  Minotaur probably died of laughter.”  I bit back a laugh at that, oh if only they knew.  The leader leaned so that his face was right in front of mine.

“You see, we've got a little initiation for newbies, and you're days overdue.”  And they began dragging me over to the bathroom block.  Silently, I cursed the existence of my secret identity, stopping me from defending myself.  The rest of the gang trailed behind to block off escape.

And I was having such a good day.

Chapter Text

So, how exactly do I get out of this one?  Preferably without unveiling my secret identity to the world.  It's not like I didn't have the time, I was giving the ringleader a difficult time by going limp.  He was still dragging me, because apparently Ares's kids are freakishly strong.  I considered looking around for help but quickly realised that there wasn't anyone there, because of course there wasn't (I tried not to think about how familiar that feeling was).

The bathrooms were disgusting, you'd think the gods being, y'know, gods would be able to afford cleaning, or decent plumbing.  I could tell how bad the water was even without consciously reaching out to control it.  I managed to rummage through my pockets and, bingo, old pencil.  It had been sharpened down to the point that it was basically useless, but it was small enough for me to throw and for them to not notice.  I waited for all of them to gather, the head honcho holding my face.

“Have fun gargling with the toilet water, wimpy.”  The moment he tried to push my face down further I sprang my legs back at full force, kicking him in the shins.  He let out a yelp of pain and loosened his grip.  I threw the pencil into the toilet and ducked as close to behind it as I could get, willing the water to fly out of the pipes and into the crowd.  The effect was perfect, they were soaked with  toilet water and it didn't look like I had any supernatural intervention on remaining dry.  The leader was the first to regain composure, looking at me with the most malice I'd ever seen.  “You…little.  Oh you are so dead short stack, you hear me?  Dead!”  He began staggering towards me, that kick to the shin must have hurt more than it looked, at which point I realised that I was cornered.  I was about to go for a crotch shot  when the door slammed open again, the glowering face of Clarise appearing.

“Sherman, you ass, what the fuck did I tell you?”  She marched over to him and grabbed him by the ear.  “All of you, out!” She pointed at the rest of Sherman's gang and then at the door.  They all ran out of the room, clearly more terrified of Clarise than whatever Chiron would do.  Finally she turned to look at me, her gaze softening only slightly.  “If fucking Sherman can push you around, you're going to get killed out there.  The minotaur was just luck, build some damn muscle.”  She then turned around on her heel and stormed after her siblings.  I was about to walk out and pretend that nothing happened when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.  Thinking it was one of Sherman’s henchmen I spun around ready to clock them in the face only to find my fist being caught by Annabeth.  She looked at me for a few seconds, she wasn’t trying to hide the fact that she was thinking, before letting go.

“You’ve got good reflexes.”

“Thanks?”

“What kind of training did you have?”  Ok Percy, play it cool.

“The schoolyard.”  Annabeth raised her eyebrow incredulously, before pulling her hat out, a Yankees cap.  My confusion changed to dread as she put it on and turned invisible.  I realised just how lame my excuse was.  Annabeth took the hat off and walked over to ground zero of the cabin's impromptu shower.  After a while she sighed and put her hands in her pocket.

“Poseidon’s your father.”  She certainly didn't sound happy about that.  I just stared, totally slack jawed, wondering how exactly she came to that revelation.  “It's the missing puzzle piece: why Zeus and Poseidon are feuding, why Waterboy got a trident from the Atlantean royal armoury after saving you.  It was raining when you fought the minotaur, right?”  I nodded.  “The water in the rain must have enhanced you somehow.”

“You do know about the oath, right?  Are you sure I'm not the kid of any of the other sea gods?”  I asked tentatively.

“No, you have to be, the prophecy… Zeus broke the oath first anyway; it was only a matter of time before another of the brothers did the same.  I would have preferred Hades personally...”

"Ok, no, I'm not dealing with this.  Athens was literally thousands of years ago, and Athena won.  Have whatever opinions of Poseidon you want. I am my own person; don't drag me into it."

Annabeth looked at me. She had her thinking face on again. Eventually, she sighed.  "No, you're right.  Besides, if you are my ticket out of here, I don't want to make an enemy of you for something like that."  Well, I suppose that was better than nothing

"See, was that so hard?"  Clearly, she didn't find my sarcasm funny.  In the awkward silence and glaring, I realised something.  “Wait, Thunderstruck broke it first?”  Annabeth pretended that she didn't snicker at the name I gave Zeus.

“Yeah, Thalia Grace.”

“Where is she?”  The look on Annabeth's face told me that I had just asked the wrong question.  Annabeth walked out of the building and then gestured for me to follow.  When I caught up with her, she was looking in the direction of the hill and the tree.

“It was five years ago.  She, two other demigods, and a satyr were about to make it to the border.  They were being chased by what felt like the entire army of Hades; he'd let every monster remotely loyal to him out of the underworld to hunt her down.  She…died making sure the others made it, so her father preserved her life as the pine tree over there and created the barrier.”  She stared sadly into the middle distance for the entirety of her explanation.  I just stood there, taking it in.  Maybe the gods did care, just a little.  I turned to look at Annabeth.

“Were you one of them?  The two with Thalia, I mean.”  I asked.  My question seemed to shock her out of her stupor.

“How did you-?”

“The beads, you got here five years ago.  And…you sounded like you knew her.”

She gazed at me appraisingly.  A less hostile version of when we first properly talked.  “Maybe you're smarter than you look.”

I gave her the most offended face I could muster.  “Than I look?”  I stated incredulously.

Annabeth laughed.  “Just take the compliment, seaweed brain.”  We stood in silence for a little while longer.

“Who was the other demigod?”  I asked.

“It was Luke.”  I tried very hard not to do a double take at that, clearly I didn't do well enough because Annabeth was giving me a concerned look.  “Is something wrong?”  I shook my head, because nothing was wrong, I now had another motive for Luke to steal the bolt.  At that point, there was no point denying it, there was nobody else with anywhere near as much reason or the skills to pull it off.  I just had to be careful, Luke was well known and well liked in camp, especially with Annabeth.  If he figured out I was on to him, he could easily turn the camp against me instead.

“I'm fine, just realised that I was on my way to hang out with Grover.  Don't want to worry him, you know what he's like.”  I explained nervously.  It was technically a lie but Grover would understand.  Annabeth stopped looking as confused, and instead just nodded.

“Say hi to Grover for me.”  She called after me as I left.  I gave her a thumbs up and walked to the strawberry fields where he usually was.

Grover was surprised by me showing up, but clearly not annoyed.  “Hey Perce, you, uh, you alright there?”

I bent down to start working on the strawberries.  “If Annabeth asks, we were always going to meet up here and now.”  Grover looked confused for a few seconds before nodding.

“Right, always the plan.  So, let's say if this wasn't the plan, why would you be here?”  I chuckled before starting to help Grover with the strawberries.

“Ran into Annabeth, she may have worked out who my dad was.”  I saw Grover sigh.  “On the upside, I don't think she's caught on to the whole ‘secret identity’.”

“That's one good thing at least.”  I nodded.  We spent about half an hour in the field. I'm pretty sure I missed a cabin activity, but Luke would understand when I explained to him which should cover me...until Annabeth asked Grover, and his inability to lie got me caught.  Horray for hindsight.

“Well, I enjoyed our totally planned hangout, but I need to make a call.”

“Percy, you know monsters are attracted to phones, right?”  Grover looked slightly terrified at the idea of me using modern technology.  I made a pained noise.

“I'll mention it to Siobhan.”

“Siobhan?”

“My contact with the police.”  Grover opened his mouth to try and make a comment before giving up.

“Oh, have fun with that?”

“I'll try.”  I took off in the direction of the cabins, making sure to avoid 5 like the plague as I snuck into the Poseidon cabin through the back window, making sure to send a silent thanks to Dad for ‘forgetting’ to lock them.  I pulled out the phone and dialled Siobhan's number; the reply was almost instant.

“Which one are you?”

“Oh, uh, it's Percy.”  The other side went quiet, I could just make out Commissioner Wellesley shouting for privacy on the other end.

“Gotcha.  Have you got good news or bad news for me, kiddo?”

“Good, I think I know who the thief is.”

“Well, don't leave us in suspense.”  She said sardonically.

“I think it's the head of the Her- I mean traveller god cabin, Luke Castellan.  He has a lot of reasons to hate the gods, especially the owner of the helm. He's been at camp long enough to be experienced and has natural skills.”  Once again, the line went silent. I couldn't tell that Siobhan was thinking.  “Uhm, Miss Wellesley?”

“Just takin’ notes.  Castellan…I know I've heard that name before.  Can you give me a description?”

“Right.  Short hair, blonde, blue eyes, about six two or six three.  Tanned, pretty fit, oh and he's got a scar over one of his eyes.”

“Understood.  I'll have some people look over security footage.”

“Does that actually work?”

“If you have the clearance, luckily, I know a guy.”  And with that, the line was cut off, and I made my way out of the window.

The next day, the pavilion felt different than usual; the atmosphere was charged with a tangible tension.  I could make out cabins giving one another side eyes.  In particular, Athena and Ares.  The first were huddled in a circle planning something, and the other was celebrating rowdily with more than a few glares shot my way from Sherman and his henchmen.  I took my usual seat on the edge of the bench with Chris and the Stolls.  They seemed to be having their own spirited conversation.

“Hey guys, what's got everyone all excited?”

Chris shot me a baffled look, like I'd just asked what colour the sky is.  “It's Friday.”

I nodded, still having no idea what it being Friday meant.

Connor looked over from his shared collection of ‘totally harmless’ pranking tools.  “Right, you weren't there last time.  It's capture the flag.”  Wait, it was?  I didn't feel like I'd been at camp for a week; if anything, it only felt like half of that.  Oh gods I was actually getting attached to the place.  Well done, Mister ‘only here to find the bolt’ Jackson, doing a great job at following the plan.

“Oh yeah.  Damn, you've been here for a week.”  Chris asked.  “Lucky, I arrived the day after, so I had to wait two weeks to take part.”

“We tried to sneak him in,”  Travis commented.  “Chiron was pissed.”

We continued through the motions, I made my sacrifices to Dad and Hestia.  To call the campfire spirited would be an understatement; the flames were gleaming gold and going almost twelve feet in the air.  It seemed even better than the one at the last Capture The Flag.  By the end of the singalong, Chiron took his position on the announcement podium.

“The time has come once again!  As it stands, Ares holds the banner!”  There was raucous cheering from where the Ares cabin was sitting.  I leaned over to Chris.

“Do they normally win?”  I whispered.

“No, it's about fifty fifty between them and Athena.  Other cabins have been team heads before, but we mostly leave it to those two for a safer bet at winning.”  We didn't have much time before the camp set off towards the borders of the woods. Chiron continued to explain the rules: woods only, no maiming or killing, the creek is the boundary.  I joined the Hermes, Apollo, and Athena cabin at the blue team's tent.  Various armours, shields and weapons were nearly ordered in racks.  I looked at them all, slightly lost, realising that I may be outmatched.  I was good at fighting with my powers, and I had a knack for my trident.  But this, in a forest rather than a city, with a team rather than solo, I was out of my element.

Unfortunately, it was Luke who decided to walk over to me after noticing my confusion.  I tried to be as unawkward as possible at his presence.  I looked over at him and saw him carrying a sword and shield.  “Percy,” he called over to me, “I think I've found a sword and shield that should work for you.”  I took them and waved the sword around. It wasn’t the worst, a little top-heavy for my tastes, but other than that, it was better than most of the others I’d had to use.  The shield, on the other hand I immediately didn’t want to use; most of the fighting I'd done was reliant on movement, being able to readily have both hands free.  The shield felt heavy and unwieldy.

“Are they good?”  Luke asked; he genuinely seemed like he cared.

“Yeah, just not much of a shield person.”  Luke nodded.

“I can see about getting you a second weapon; you've got a good enough baseline for more specialised training.”  I gave a noncommittal hum, hoping Luke would go away to help someone else.  “Oh, by the way, you're on border patrol duty, Annabeth’s orders.  Just stand by the creek and try not to get stabbed.”  Border patrol sounded nice.  Quiet and out of the way, perfect for an ambush or a murder attempt.  Yay.

“Right, stand by the creek and do nothing.  Anything else?”  I hoisted the shield onto my arm, I like to think I did a decent job at not losing my balance.

“Someone's stolen Clarise's spear so watch out for that.”  I silently prayed that that wouldn't end up being my problem as Luke left to join a small squad of more experienced campers.  Our team had less cabins, but the numbers from 7 and 11 made up for it.  In a straight fight, I didn't fancy our chances.  All of the biggest and burliest kids from cabins 5 and 9 were on the other side plus I was willing to bet that 4 and 12 had some plant stuff that they would use to their advantage.  As for 10, I'd seen how vicious some of them could be, and I really wasn't planning on making that worse by underestimating them.  

The conch sounded, and everyone went to their allotted positions.  I stood at my guard past and waited for the second conch to signify the beginning of the game.  At least I was near water, Annabeth’s idea if I had to bet, I'd have to thank her later for that.  I found a comfortable looking rock and sat down on it.  This lasted all of five minutes as I heard a growling from the nearby woods, a growling which I could have sworn I heard before.  I shot up from my seat and turned around, ready to stab whatever monster thought it was a good idea to stalk me when the second conch sounded, there was rustling in the bushes and then silence, must have ran off.  I got up and got ready to stand guard.  I saw two groups dart across the creek and into enemy territory.  Just after, there was a noise in the trees in front of me, as most of the Ares cabin emerged from the underbrush, immediately moving to surround me.  I could see where this was going, stepping into the creek to get an advantage as Sherman walked in front of me.

“Sherman, buddy, glad to see you washed the toilet water out.  Now, instead of smelling of shit and BO, you just smell like BO.”  Sherman glared at my smirking face.

“Real clever, jackass, insulting the people pointing weapons at you.”  He stamped on the ground as his henchmen got closer.

“You do realise the flag isn't here?”

“Oh, we're not here for the flag, we're here to put the pipsqueak who thought he could make our cabin look stupid and get away with it.”

I shrugged, still smiling at him as I tried to think of a way out of this situation.  “Hey, not my fault you picked a fight you couldn't win.”  Sherman didn't grace me with an answer as he thrust his spear towards me, I raised my shield to block and immediately regretted it as my left arm contracted painfully and then went numb.  I tried to keep up the facade, still grinning at him.  “Guess I know who stole Clarise's spear, you never could have earned it yourself, Mister ‘let's ambush the new kid’.

“Clarise never should have ended up in charge!”  He shouted as he went for another swing, this time I expected it and was able to dodge back, however, I got too close to one of the uglies who took a wide slash up the side of my arm.  I winced, just about avoiding crying out in pain.  I really didn't want to look at it, the feeling of blood running down and dripping into the creek was bad enough.

“No maiming?”  Ugly 1 just laughed at me.

“Whoops, guess I'm losing desert privileges.”

…Chiron really needed to work on health and safety.  I wasn't going to get anywhere being surrounded.  I backed up towards one of the guys, trying to make it look like the blood loss was affecting me, the moment ugly 2 tried to take a swipe, I dropped down and used the momentum to drive a kick straight into his crotch.  If I had my phone, I would have recorded the sound of dread that he made as he fell to the ground.  With Sherman's gang in disarray, I managed to get out of their encirclement, placing myself firmly in the middle of the creek and making sure to splash the sword wound to speed up the healing.

1 and 3 tried to go after me next, but I was on my home turf.  Some power was sent to the flow to make it suddenly grow in strength when they tried to attack me, making them lose their balance.  I managed to take out 1 with a pommel to the head as she crumpled. I made sure to push her out of the way of the creek, which gave 3 the chance to nick my leg with his sword.  I tripped, just avoiding Sherman and 4's spear jabs out of sheer luck.  They were clearly panicking as to why this random new kid was winning one against five.  Another jab from Sherman glanced along my shield as he forced it to stay in contact, so I did something stupid. Instead of dropping the shield I tried to ignore the painful sensation of electricity running up my arm and caught the wooden shaft between my sword and my shield, snapping it in two.  I was on the verge of making a sassy remark when Sherman yelled before running at me and punching me in the jaw.  My head throbbed, and I tasted blood in my mouth as I staggered further away.  That was when I heard cheering from further down the creek as Luke's group leapt over, Luke carrying the enemy flag, which changed to the silver colour of Athena.  The conch shell sounded, and the Ares gang looked pissed.

“It was a damn trap!”  Sherman yelled as he threw the pieces of what I assumed to be Clarise's spear on the ground.  He turned to storm off, only to be met with Cabin 5's head looking pointedly at the broken spear on the ground and an equally pissed off looking Lee Fletcher.  I would have listened to their argument, but I was busy trying not to bleed too much. I didn't want to upset the local naiad after all.  I turned around to see Annabeth standing there, looking smug, and I finally pieced it together.

“You set me up!”

“Athena always has a plan, you were going to be fine anyway, there's a reason I had you put near the water.”  She explained, clearly oblivious to the glaring issue.

“Yeah, thanks for that, I really appreciate getting stabbed for your ‘plan’.  Couldn't even be bothered to drop a hint about the spear?”

“I didn't know Sherman was stupid enough to go after Clarise's spear, I thought it was one of ours.”

“Wow, real great consolation, according to your calculations, I was only slightly worse off than I should have been.

“I'm not admitting that this was a mistake, we won, the other team were in disarray after Sherman's group got sidetracked.”

I was about to retort with one of my witty quips when the growling from earlier came back with a vengeance as a hellhound left from the bushes and directly at me.  I heard Chiron shouting as the claws raked through my armour, a few seconds later an arrow sprouted from its neck and it disintegrated.

“A hellhound, from the fields of punishment.”  Chiron said.  “The only way for it to enter is to be summoned.”  I wasn't really listening, too busy trying to ignore how raspy my breathing had gotten and how warm my chest was.  Lee ran over and pulled out a chunk of ambrosia, I could barely hear him yelling about ‘giving space’ when he stopped and slowly stood up.

Ah, the water healing, and everyone in camp just saw it.

I quickly returned to not feeling like I was drowning in my own blood and staggered to my feet, the entire camp now staring at me with equal mixes of awe, trepidation, and fear.  Then there was Annabeth, looking smug and gesturing to Travis and Connor to hand her money over.  The air above me glowed and I stared up, the symbol of a trident above my head.  Chiron was the first to bow, shortly followed by everyone else, even if they didn’t look like they wanted to.

“Hail, Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon the Earthshaker.  Lord of seas, storms and horses.”

Chapter Text

It didn’t take very long for me to move my stuff from cabin 11 to cabin 3, since there wasn't much to move. Annabeth helped anyway, I'm pretty sure this was her idea of an apology but I wasn't going to turn down the extra pair of hands. Travis and Connor also offered but I refused. I was happy with my things not being stolen and not being tampered with. The cabin was everything I could have asked for, the low stone walls encrusted with seashells, the jellyfish themed lamps, marine biology books in Greek. It even had a salt water pool in one of the back rooms, with adjustable temperature. I'd only snuck through the window into the bathroom before so I hadn't seen the rest of it (I was very glad to realise that my dad at least cared about plumbing).

When I walked into the pool room I saw a note from dad saying ‘I made some renovations for you, look for the trident’ with a drawing of the pool and an arrow pointing downwards. Fifteen minutes of searching later, I found the trident symbol in a corner next to one of the tiles, I pressed it and the tile shifted, opening an actual secret compartment. I wondered if I could convince dad to make me my own Bat Cave under the cabin as I went to retrieve my costume from its hiding place,put it in the secret compartment and close it.

I didn't want to seem ungrateful, I really wasn't, and I planned to burn so many offerings to Dad. But it was…empty, like nobody had lived there in a very, very long time. I almost missed the hustle and bustle of the Hermes cabin, it's not like I had much for them to steal. Gods, they probably hated me. The new kid shows up, gets claimed by one of the big 3 in just over a week, and then gets a cabin all to himself. I would have to worry about that tomorrow, after sleeping. Well, at least I had a bed of my own.

“Lights out.”

That night I dreamt of the pit again, but this time I wasn't alone.

“Is it done?” The voice of Kronos (assuming this was Kronos and I wasn't well off the mark)sounded ancient, felt ancient, like whenever I heard it dust started gathering on the back of my throat.

“Yes my lord, the centaur is convinced the camp is not safe, the quest will be ordered soon.” That was Luke's voice, the grimy jackass.

“Good, it may be possible to salvage our plans from the hero's influence.” Glad to see I was successful in getting in his way.

“With all due respect, lord” Luke started, “surely I can retrieve the bolt-”

“You will do nothing of the sort, you failed me once, the boy is needed for my plans.” Kronos may not have shouted, but I could feel how much he seethed in my soul. “His demise on a favour demanded by the sitting king will spark the war again.”

“You are well named as the Crooked One, my lord” That brown nosing little- Ooh, look at me I'm Mister ‘I Hate The Gods’, I'm going to suck up to one of the worst ones. Hypocritical…

Wait, why weren't they talking anymore?

“It seems we have an uninvited guest.” Oh, they heard that. I was glad that my dream form included the costume.

“I stand by what I said.” I thought loudly, trying to get the message across.

Luke was stunned into silence, the pit heaved in air in a way that could only be described as sighing.

“Begone.” I felt my dream self being flung upwards, away from the underworld before shooting up in a cold sweat. I checked the time, it was 3 am and I really didn't feel like going back to sleep. I went into the pool room and sank to the bottom.

Luke was trying to set up a quest as a trap for me. That's why the hellhound happened, he probably summoned it. What concerned me the most, however, was that (presumably) Kronos wanted me specifically to fulfil his plans. It wasn't all bad, knowing the trap is coming means I get a better shot at avoiding it, and nobody who knows that Percy Jackson and Riptide know the same things would tell Luke, so I had some room to work. Now all I needed to do was fall for his trap just enough to get the bolt but not so much that I can't get out of it. Piece of cake.

I didn't remember falling asleep but I must have because I opened my eyes to bright light streaming into the room and loud splashing as Annabeth tried to pull me out of the pool.

“Annabeth, what the hell?”

She finally looked over at me, somehow more panicked than after the hellhound. “I-you-” She shoved me in the shoulder. “What did you think you were doing?”

“Sleeping?”

She glared at me incredulously. “Underwater.”

“I can breathe underwater.”

She paced around the room. “Right, of course, should have known.” She huffed. “You missed breakfast by the way, Lee sent me to get you.” I didn't get an opportunity to reply as she stormed out of the cabin. I tried to follow only to be intercepted by Lee.

“I leave you two alone for five minutes and you're already arguing.”

“I-” Once again I was interrupted as Lee started pushing me towards the dining pavilion.

“You got hurt, no I don't care that you heal better in water, you need food.”

“Do I get any say in this?”

“Nope, I saved you a plate, come on.”

I was (admittedly gently) pushed towards the dining pavilion and seated at the Apollo table, Lee assured me that his father wasn't going to mind, especially if it was for ‘valid medical reasons’, I still slid him an apology offering just in case.

“So, what started you two bickering this time?” Lee asked, smirking. I shrugged and finished my food.

“I was asleep… in the pool, which sounds really bad. It wasn't, I can breathe underwater.”

Lee went silent for a few moments, disbelief painted across his face. “Shit, right you're new, you wouldn't know.”

“Care to share with the class, doc?”

Lee drummed his fingers against the table, he looked like he was struggling to come up with an answer. “Demigods die, a lot, and the system hasn't been updated in the last thousand years. We're usually expected to suck it up. It's why so many people are obsessed with getting a quest and leaving. It's the best chance any of us have at ending up in Elysium, but some people…they don't see any hope of doing something heroic enough for that.”

Oh. Oh gods I'm an asshole, how did I manage to miss that?

“Percy, I know what you're thinking, stop it. It's not your fault, and Annabeth's smart enough to work that out. Just give her some space before apologising.”

“Right, yeah, sure.” He punched my shoulder.

“No, shush, go do whatever it is you have scheduled. What do you have scheduled?” I shrugged in response, squinting in an attempt to read the piece of paper Chiron gave me as an interim before I sorted out one of my own. It was in a dyslexia friendly front, but too crumpled to read easily.

“I think…hand to hand training?” Lee winced. “What, is that bad?”

“No, I'm sure Chiron tried to schedule everything there to not clash with the Ares cabin, but Clarise is the instructor so be careful, she doesn't go easy.”

I quickly summoned a goblet full of blue coffee and chugged it, ignoring Lee’s look of concern. I'm pretty sure it wasn't technically allowed, but Dionysus clearly wasn't a morning person and that sympathy was enough for him to overlook the ‘design fault’. I jumped up from the table, made a quick offering to Mr D as thanks for the coffee and bid Lee goodbye.

Now that it wasn't free time the volleyball pit had been emptied out, and a series of gym mats had been brought in. From what I could see, I was scheduled alongside the Aphrodite cabin. Honestly, it could have been worse, what with the looks that I'd been getting from 5, 6, and 11. Sure enough Clarise was there, in all her ‘I'm going to beat you up’ glory. I quickly found a seat in the corner of the stands, tastefully away from the Aphrodite cabin. I didn't want to bother them by sitting too close and didn't feel like dealing with more strange looks.

Silena took one look at me, whispered to the rest of the cabin, and got up to sit closer. “Percy, I was going to ask how you were doing earlier but Lee and Annabeth beat me to it.” Honestly I was glad she didn't, I really didn't want to be put on some kind of camp watch list over a misunderstanding.

“Yeah, sorry about that, didn't want to worry you or anything.”

“You almost died, I'm not surprised you needed a lie in.” I laughed at that.

“Grievous injury will do that to you.”

She glanced over at me, a worryingly familiar look of concern painted over her face. “Are you alright? Most people take longer to joke about stuff like that.” Well, I definitely couldn't say that I was most people.

“I'm a New Yorker, I've almost been stabbed a couple of times. But seriously, I don't think it's uh…sunk in? I’m not really sure, I’ve never had to talk to someone about it.” Mostly because if mom knew just how often I’d nearly got shot… I didn’t want her to have to deal with that.

“That's fine, just remember that not all of us are judging you because of who your dad is. If you want someone to talk to, my cabin's open.”

“Oh, thanks I guess.”

Silena looked like she was about to say something when Clarise started shouting.  “Now that you're done singing kumbaya, we've got work to do. I've finally got Chiron to include actual self defense in the curriculum. I don't give a shit that wrestling is fun, it's useless. Half the monsters you'll meet are going to be bigger, stronger, faster and have more limbs, you want to throw down with them, I hope you have some damn drachma for the ferryman. You know what monsters also have? Eyes, throats, kneecaps, wrists. Honour means nothing, because they sure as hell don't give a shit about it!”

This was reminding me a little too much of the military school Gabe sent me to.

“If you're in a life or death fight, then you go for the eyes, you break their fucking knees, you go straight for that kick to the crotch. Monsters come back, you don't, so you're going to take every gods damned chance you get to stop them from enjoying the mortal world.”

She stopped pacing and turned to face the group.

“All of you, partner up, you're practicing the forms on the papers. There needs to be a base of standard practice.” She gestured to a box before looking at me. “Newbie, with me.” Silena offered me no sympathy at that.

“Sorry.” She turned to glare at me. “About your spear, I mean.” In response she punched me straight in the stomach.

“Don't get distracted, the clever ones are going to try to guilt trip you.”

I nodded and coughed, getting into one of the stances. Well I tried, until I got a hard kick to the leg.

“You're leaving yourself open, they're supposed to be a baseline, obsessing over technique is going to get you killed.” Yeah thanks would have helped if you'd mentioned that ear-

Another punch, this time to the collarbone.

“Dead again, unless you're checking for other monsters your attention should be on the opponent.” I managed to catch a glimpse at the rest of the group who were suffering much less than I was. In fact most of them were looking at me and trying not to laugh, something that was much more difficult as I took another hit from Clarise. I gave them a look, and reached out for their waterskins (plastic bottles were banned). I smirked as I got a connection, forcing the water out and soaking the rest of the group which shut them up. I even caught Clarise smiling until she noticed that I noticed and went back to her usual scowl. “All of you got distracted, which means all of you are now dead, congratulations. Take a break, get some new water.”

The rest of the time slot went about as well as could be expected. Two hours of getting shouted at and a lot of bruises, well, that was a benefit of healing quickly. Which was why I was spending my free time laying down in the shallow part of the beach. I heard someone walking to me and leaning in the way of the sun.

“If Annabeth hadn't told me about this morning, this would look like a much worse situation.” Ah, Luke, I tried not to look too obviously unhappy.

“Yeah, I know, I'm going to apologise to her later.” Luke laughed and sat down next to me.

“I hadn't seen her so upset in ages. You're doing good for her.”

“You just said she was upset.”

“Anny isn't the best with people, and she's especially bad at first impressions, she doesn't usually get close enough to care like that.” He explained. “So, why are you looking like you don't want to be able to breathe underwater?”

I choked on the air, well, water, but that's basically the same thing for me. “Really, right after all that?”

Luke chuckled and looked into the middle distance. He had that look on his face whenever he was thinking about one of his complaints of the gods. “Humor's all a lot of us have left. Anyway, you didn't answer my question.”

“Sparring with Clarise.”

“Oof, was it the hand to hand training thing? She's been pushing for that since she ended up in charge of 5.” I nodded. “No wonder you went straight to the water."  He chuckled and threw a rock into the sea.  "When we were sword fighting, the water did way more than just refresh you didn't it?  In hindsight, I'm surprised none of us figured you out." That reminded me of something.

“Why is Clarise the counsellor for 5? She's only like a year older than me and I don't think she's been around as long as Annabeth.”

Luke sighed. “She wasn't supposed to be. The old counselor went to university two years ago, she was supposed to be replaced by a guy called Marcus, they were going to promote him as a celebration for his quest.” I don't think I've ever seen him as pissed as he looked right now. “We were supposed to go to the garden of Hersperides to retrieve one of the golden apples for my father. Me, Marcus and this Apollo kid, Wyatt.”

“What happened?”

“It went to shit, Ladon would have got me if Marcus hadn't got in the way. I still didn't make it out of that uninjured.” He tapped the scar on his face. “Anyway, when we got back and finished burning the shrouds, Clarise ended up in charge as the most senior there, I don't think she ever got over what happened.  No more quests since.”

“What happened to Wyatt?”

Luke shrugged. “Died, I assume. Last I saw, he was fighting off Atlas's daughters with a revolver. I didn't have time to check for a body.” Luke noticed my confusion. “A blessing from his father, the guns he used worked on monsters. He was Texan.” Luke scowled towards the sun, and honestly I couldn't blame him, something like that would give demigods a much better shot at survival. Before we could continue, Grover showed up.

“Luke! I uh, need to talk with Percy.” Luke nodded and got up.

“Wish you luck kid.” He got up and walked off.

“You good G-Man?”

“Y-yeah. Mister D sent me to get you, he wants to talk about your uh…”

“Execution?” I offered.

“Something like that.”

The weather looked like it was getting worse anyway, I got up and got ready for that whole mess. “Sure, I love executions, one of my favourite things to do.”

Chapter Text

I was joking when I said they were going to execute me, but the look on Chiron's face was enough to convince me otherwise. I got the strangest feeling he was mentally picking out my funeral flowers, or my shroud I guess. Mr D on the other hand looked like he couldn't care less, he was lounging in his armchair, holding a goblet and a hand of cards. He only gave me a glance before scoffing and placing his drink on the table.

“Well well, so you're who's got father dearest’s chiton in a twist. Don't expect me to give you any special favour just because you're Barnacle Beard's spawn.” The ground and sky rumbled at his comments, Chiron glowered at Mr D, I was inclined to agree with him, I'd rather not be caught in the crossfire of a smiting. I stuck far away from him, the man practically radiated alcoholism, which was probably because he was the god of alcoholics, but it was a little too Gabe for my tastes and I knew how adults who had been hitting the happy juice acted. Dionysus looked at me shuffling away from him, but didn't care and continued anyway.

“Now, if it were up to me I'd turn you into an Atlantic bottlenose, or just disintegrate you and be done with the whole mess.” He snapped his fingers and the goblet filled with a thick red liquid, thunder rumbled again, Dionysus rolled his eyes before the liquid turned to coke, or Pepsi, I couldn't tell.

“That would be against your oath to not bring harm to the campers, Mr D.” Chiron reminded him.

“Nonsense, he wouldn't feel a thing and he'd be reunited with his father… fine. I have a meeting at Olympus, three guesses as to why.” I heard him mumble under his breath about ‘fussing over demigods’, ‘not worth the hassle’, and ‘grouchy hypocrite’. “If he's still here when I get back, I'll assume you accepted my offer to become a dolphin. I'd say it's the smarter decision, but you heroes and your glory and all that nonsense.” He pulled out a small black card, it floated out of his hand and folded into itself as both it and Dionysus vanished.

“Charming.”

“Please refrain from insulting Olympians.” Chiron sighed, putting down his cards.

“So, what's this all about?” I had a hunch, but it was good to ask anyway.

“When you met the hellhound, how did you feel?” I paused at his question, thinking about it, it wasn't the first time I've almost been killed by a hellhound or almost been killed in general. But it was the closest I'd ever got.

“Honestly, terrified, that was the closest to dying I've ever been.”

“Good, that means you're of sound judgement, which will be useful should you accept your quest.” Yeah, that's about what I expected.

“Oh, I, well, you know I've only been here for less than a month?”

He sighed. “Yes, but my hand has been forced. If Lord Zeus does not have the bolt returned by you, then the rest of camp will feel his retribution.”

“Bolt?” I asked, I needed to feign ignorance. “How does the god of lightning lose one bolt? And also care that much?”

“Because it is not a simple lightning bolt. It is the master bolt, his symbol of power, the weapon used to topple Mount Etna in the Titan War, a weapon of destructive potential that dwarfs the mortal ‘Tsar Bomba’.”

“Oh. Why does he want me to retrieve it?”

“Because you stole it, or at least that's what he believes. You must understand his perspective, your father has always been one of his most outspoken critics, and he controls the cyclops forges that made the original. Were he to take the bolt, he could make an arsenal of copies.”

I know Chiron isn't stupid enough to believe that. The one time he did anything against Zeus, he was backed by most of the Council and he didn't even try to overthrow him, only force him to be a better king. And besides, Poseidon has his own kingdom to handle, even if he wanted to rule Olympus, he wouldn't go about it in a way that made him look like the villain. I looked over at the volleyball fields, the game that had been going on between some satyrs and the Apollo cabin had stopped, both sides looking up at the growing storm clouds in confusion and more than a little fear.

“Apollo had calmed the situation somewhat,” Chiron continued, “but one of Zeus's demands as proof of Poseidon’s innocence is that one of his own retrieves the bolt. Do you know about the oath?” I nodded. “Good, your…unique position has made you the unfortunate prime candidate.”

“Chiron, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but do we have any idea of where the bolt is?” Chiron looked mournful again.

“Some. Tell me, if a war breaks out, whose realm gains the greatest number of subjects? Who stands only to garner strength from the apocalypse?”

“You think the lord of the dead has the bolt.” Grover looked terrified next to me.

“Not necessarily, but he is the most likely suspect I know of. And even if he isn't, where better to hide than a realm with so many dark places that neither of the other brothers can access?”

“So you want me to go to the Underworld to find a superweapon that may or may not be there, and risk pissing off the lord of the underworld with an accusation we're not even sure is true.”

“That, unfortunately, is an apt summary.” Is it too late to go back to just running about New York? I miss not being made to go on cross-state suicide missions, good times.

“And where is the Underworld?” I asked.

“Los Angeles, obviously.” Ah yes, obviously.

“Are you sure we can't go to Maine, I hear Maine is lovely this time of year.” Grover piped up. I turned to look at him.

“Dude, I know you want to go be a searcher, I'm not going to make you come with me if you don't want to.” Grover shook his head.

“It's fine, satyrs do badly underground. No point in going looking for Pan if there's no world left. I'll go with you if you'll have me.”

“Always G-man.”

“Good.” Chiron got out of his wheelchair. I'm never going to get used to seeing all that horse leave such a small chair. “Quests are traditionally done by three people, I already have a very willing volunteer.”

Gee, I wonder who that could be. Annabeth appearing out of invisibility confirmed my suspicions. “This is my best chance to see outside the camp, and I've had seven years of training.” Well, I could certainly do worse.

“Sure, but no more of your capture the flag plans.”

She scoffed. “Yeah, no crap, I'm not taking that risk with so many unknown variables at play.” Better than nothing, I suppose.

“Good, miss Chase, you should begin preparations. Try to keep the true reasoning for the quest quiet, I want to avoid conflict as long as possible.” Annabeth nodded and put her invisibility cap on, vanishing from sight again. “Mister Jackson, it is time you meet the Oracle.”

I expected the Oracle to have a cave, or a spooky hut in the woods, with lots of wind chimes and colourful fabrics. Honestly, I would have expected them to be in the basement rather than a dusty old attic. Grover was waiting outside, and Chiron was regretting exiting his chair as he bent down slightly to avoid hitting his head.

“Remember Percy, prophecies are often spoken in riddles, the meaning is almost always double.”

I tried to keep his words in mind as I climbed into the attic. The room was full of random stuff, pieces of the lives of other demigods long past. I caught sight of a travelling trunk owned by ‘Leroy’ covered in touristy patches from mythical locations like Olympus, Geryon’s ranch and Circe's Island with dates spread throughout the 80s. A trident with the plaque ‘a gift from our undersea counterparts, 1962’, another was a revolver in a case labelled: W Cassidy, Texas quickdraw champion. It was like I had walked into New York's weirdest museum, which for New York is saying something. I eventually made my way to the back where I saw possibly the strangest exhibit of the not museum, a mummified woman on a stool, wearing a shawl that looked as ancient and crusty as she did. I may not be the smartest person out there, but there was only one thing there that could be the Oracle.

“Uhm, hello? Miss Oracle, ma'am, I'm here for a prophecy?”

The body creaked and moved, the eyes and mouth beginning to glow green. “Approach seeker and ask.” It whispered. Spooky.

I cleared my throat and muttered the courage to look at its empty eye sockets. “I…what must I do to retrieve the master bolt?”

Green smoke billowed from her mouth as the scene shifted. I jumped back as Gabe manifested right in front of me.

“You shall go west and face the god who has turned.”

You shall find what was stolen and see it safely returned.

You will be betrayed by one who calls you a friend.

And suspicions proven true by an end.”

OK, some of that made sense. Actually most of that made sense. Go west and face god who has turned, I'm willing to bet that's the third party assistance the thief got. Find what was stolen and see it safely returned, very self explanatory. Betrayed by one who calls me a friend, probably Luke, suspicions proven true backs that up. But ‘an end’, something felt very ominous about that, because that was very open to interpretation and knowing my luck, open to interpretation was one of the last things I wanted. I could tell Grover the rest of the prophecy, but I still needed to keep my cover. Chiron knows Luke and would trust him above me, it wasn't safe yet for him to know.

When I returned to the porch, Chiron was looking over a map and Grover was chewing on the playing cards. The centaur turned around quickly at my approach.

“Percy, good to see you in one piece, how was your audience with the Oracle?”

“Fine, does she normally not leave people in one piece?”

“There have been…incidents, ones where Mr D has had to get involved. What did she say?”

I recited the prophecy back to him, minus the last two lines. I knew he knew I was lying to him the moment I finished.

“Percy, do try to remember that prophecies have double meanings. They are not so much a strict set of absolutes as they are a guideline for events, knowing what is coming good or bad will give you the best chance to prepare and ensure a positive outcome.” I breathed an internal sigh of relief from him not prying further.

Annabeth came back and we spent the next hour or so drawing out our route as well as backup plans, making sure that as many stretches of the journey coincided with at least one of the Satyr supply caches dotted about the States. We eventually agreed to find our way to the Amtrak as fast as possible and use that to cross as much as we could before the inevitable monster attack. It looked like it was popular with satyrs too, judging by how many caches were near to the stations and the route.

“G-man, mind helping me with packing? You've done this before.”

Both Grover and Annabeth raised their eyebrows, but Grover managed to speak before she did. “Sure dude. Beth, can you tell Chiron where we've gone?”

“Sure.” She replied offhandedly

We both made a beeline for my cabin, I made sure to close the door behind us as Grover got a good look at my meagre belongings. “I'm going to take a wild guess and say you don't need the help.”

“What gave you that idea?” Grover snickered. “Outside of Hestia's influence, this is the only place we can safely talk. Dad already knows and even Annabeth wouldn't break into here.”

“Right, that makes sense. So what's the matter?” Grover followed me into the swimming pool as I took my costume out of its hiding place and stuffed it in my bag. “Are you sure bringing that's a good idea?” He asked.

“I have an alibi.” Grover looked at me, unconvinced. It was fine, probably… OK maybe he had a point, but it was fine. I had elements of a plan that would stop me from being attached to Riptide. “Grover, you know how I've been looking into the bolt for a while, right?”

“You think I'd forget?”

“Very funny. Just…what I say now stays between us. It can't get out too early.”

“Why, how bad is it?”

I turned to look at him and bit the bullet. “Luke's the thief.”

“But-but, I, he can't- I, but, are you sure?” And shit, Grover was panicking, I really need to get better at this kind of thing. I looked at him straight in the eyes and held onto his shoulders.

“Dude, dude, come back to me. It's just a theory, there could be any number of reasons.” It took a few minutes for Grover to calm down.

“Yeah, he…he could have been possessed or, uh, controlled.”

“Yeah, sure dude. But you can't tell anyone this.”

“But if he's possessed then surely Chiron could help?” Grover looked desperate for an excuse to stop Luke from having to be blamed.

I sighed and stepped back. “Grover, I'm sorry, but he has the motive, the experience, and the skillset to pull something like that off. Also he was there, on Olympus, when it happened. And the rest of the prophecy: Betrayed by one who calls me a friend and suspicions proven true by the end (I deliberately left out the ‘an’, Grover was already having a bad time) Maybe he's being possessed, or tricked, or anything like that. But if he isn't-” Grover opened his mouth to speak. “If he isn't, then we can't risk him finding out that we're onto him.”

I told him about my dream, omitting who I thought the voice in the pit was, I didn't need to make things worse for Grover especially with how badly he reacted already.

“So…we're walking into a trap.” He said finally.

“Yeah, but what other choice do we have? It's the only way we can get the bolt.”

“I hate every part of this, are you still sure we can't go to Maine?”

I snorted at his joke. “Nope, I'm afraid not. Regretting promising to stick with me yet?”

“Never.”

There was a lull in the conversation as we actually did what we came to the cabin to do, pack my stuff, one what few belongings I had were stuffed into a rucksack (including my costume in another bag at the bottom) Grover finally broke the silence.

“So…I don't think we can tell Annabeth about this.”

“Really, and why would that be?” I replied sarcastically. “You're right. She's the last person who'll keep this quiet.”

“I hate all of this even more now.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Grover left after that, he told me he needed to talk to one of his friends, a dryad called Juniper. I say friend, but the guy wasn't skilled in the art of emotional subtlety, they absolutely had some kind of thing going on between the two of them. Gods, this was a mess, why did it have to be Annabeth of all people. I'm not saying she was bad, she's one of the smartest people I know. I trust her. But everything from Luke to her whole cabin's obsession with my ‘work’, it was going to be difficult. I pulled out my work phone and put on the mask, making sure the voice changer was on. The ringtone sounded for a few seconds before she picked it up.

“Which one are you?” Right to business I see.

“Your favourite.”

She sipped from a probably coffee, not bothering to move the phone away.

“Kid, I hope you have good news.”

“Sorry, can't say I do.”

“Yup, about what I expected. What kind of shitshow is going on now?”

“Percy's being sent off on a quest to LA.”

I caught the sound of her lighter clicking. “Shit, kid, Cali's really bad news especially for you and him. What is that old horse thinking?”

“That the bolt's in the Underworld? Are you…good? You seem-”

“Stressed, yeah, Cali's shit. Look kid, if you head over there I can't help you. Just whatever you do, stay the hell away from San Francisco.” The Commissioner never panicked, even when she was suggesting I go out of my way to piss off Apollo, she was as dry as ever. For her to be scared, I didn't want to think about it.

“What should I look out for?”

“From the top, Mount Orthrys is over there, place is swarming with all kinds of the nastiest monsters in the states. Next is the Romans-” Many questions, none of which I expected her to answer.”- for your own sake, stay the hell away from them, and if you have to go near them contact me first to get in touch with the agent in charge of reporting on their movements.” Seems intuitive enough.

“How do I tell if they're Roman?”

“Look for purple shirts, gold weapons, and the sticks up their asses.” Everything she said about them sounded oddly personal, oh well, not my place to pry.

“You're assuming I'm going with him.”

“If you weren't the kind to keep an eye on him, I would never have bothered with you.” There was a familiar pause as she took a drag from her cigar. “I got the footage you asked for, I'm sending it over to you now to do what you need with them… Good luck kid, you're sure as hell going to need it.” The connection cut, I checked and found a notification of a message with some video files attached. I'd have to look over them later, I double checked that everything was where I needed it to be and got ready to sleep. My eyes closed to the sound of rain on the cabin roof, and thunder.