Notes: Written for the 5 drabbles challenge at the Of Prompts and Challenges Forum.
Title: Reorganization
Prompt: Character exploration during the first chapter of MoA; Octavian
Word Count: 482
There were three things Octavian hated. They were, in ascending order of degree of hate; poetry, the colour orange and people who weren't him but were in a position of power.
(And contrary to popular opinion, teddy bears all over the world did not feature on the list. Really. Why would people not believe him about this?)
With that Jackson kid's sudden and unforeseen and completely unfair rise to power, the last category had just been doubled fifteen hours ago. He hated how the guy was a lot like Jason (who, for the record, was supposed to be dead and far, far away from his planned rise to power), except for those bits where Octavian was starting to wish he was more like Jason because Jason had never been quite so openly snide at him. Or annoying. And at least Jason had been Roman.
And that had been before the giant flying ship came out of nowhere and he had ducked into a colonnade to avoid getting deep-fried or something by the thing because seriously- there was no way that could have been friendly, whatever Jackson said.
The miraculous reappearance of Jason freaking Grace that followed right after did not help. And all right, so Jackson had said he was going to come, but it was one thing to hear him say it, and quite another to see Golden Boy in person. And It was just as bad as he remembered. The huge flying ship somehow managed to fade into the background when Jason climbed down from the thing, all golden and shining and in the coveted purple toga and looking so incredibly heroic that he felt his hands twitch for a knife and something to mutilate just for the principle of having someone protest against him.
Well, someone apart from Terminus, who screeched at everyone because he was Terminus. Terminus was kind of predictable that way. He was screaming and attacking and being all trigger-happy and generally indulging his paranoia by raging at the Greeks.
Octavian shook himself and took a deep breath. He had worked his whole life towards his goal, and he was not going to be thwarted by anybody. Calm down, look at the opportunities involved instead of sulking, and listen.
...
So. Terminus was hinting that there was some sort of history with the Minerva (Athena, he corrected himself sourly) girl. And the other two Greeks were clearly not happy with the reception they'd gotten. And Jason, for once, seemed to be at a loss, unable to mediate between his old home and his new allies.
This, Octavian decided, leaning back and allowing himself a smile (a small, grim one; nothing too obvious), might not be a bad hand after all. It depended on how well he could play the game; he just needed to be a little bit more careful this timeā¦
