Tumblr Institution for the Mentally Insane was a curious place. They specialized in hallucinations; so of course, they got all the interesting cases.
Such as the boy who believed in the Greek Gods.
(As I said; curious.)
Perseus Jackson was 17 years old.
He was admitted when he was 12, but he was always rather odd. His name, his mother explained, was for good luck, as Perseus was the only Greek hero in the myths that got a happy ending.
Perhaps that was what started it in the first place.
(By it; I mean the hallucinations, of course)
Percy had a history. And by a history, I mean a hospital history, and by hospital, I mean crazy.
Well not crazy, but things to suggest crazy. But crazy is such a crass term.
(Let's not use it for this story.)
Diagnosed with ADHD and Dyslexia at a young age, and by young I mean four.
Can you even get diagnosed with mental illnesses at that age? Well Percy did.
Apparently, the letters on the word blocks at preschool "would float around like magical fairy creatures."
(I'm not kidding)
At age five, he reported that a snake, Percy described as a "really, really, really, really, REALLY long snake" slithered into his cot for naptime.
There was no evidence to suggest any sort of snake had just appeared in a small apartment in the Upper East Side. None at all. But Percy swears that there was one.
It was dismissed as a dream, but there was a report created and filed.
(Which makes me think the doctors didn't really think it was a dream. Perhaps a sign of early onset delusions.)
It didn't help that he had a record of a delinquent.
Expelled from six schools! Delinquent doesn't even begin to cover it!
(Well, he's not really a delinquent. Just misunderstood.)
One day he was referred to the Tumblr Institution.
Why? Well because of Gabe Ugliano, of course.
(You recognize that name, don't you?)
It was all over the news. A man and his friends disappear from their homes, from the middle of a poker game, and are never seen again.
A 12 year old child was the prime suspect.
That child was Percy Jackson.
(You guessed that didn't you?)
What created his status as a suspect? Besides being his emotionally abused stepson; several days after their disappearances, Percy brought home a little project from his ceramics class
.
It was a statuette of Gabe and his friends, produced with astonishing detail.
Percy said that Medusa had frozen his stepfather and his friends to stone, and given him the statue of them.
Well that was evidence enough to suggest murder, but it then became obvious that something wasn't right with Perseus Jackson.
So after numerous psychiatrists, someone had the sense to refer him to the Tumblr Institution.
That one psychiatrist was a lady named Mrs. Dodds.
Mrs. Dodds was a highly qualified doctor; some would say she was the best in the entire state of New York.
And it was no secret she despised the Tumblr Institution.
(Well, of course she would, Tumblr was Olympus and Mrs. Dodds was one of Hades' minions.)
Mr. Brunner, one of the assistant psychiatrists, still remembers the first day he met the kid. He was quiet enough, and let his mother do the talking.
Sally Jackson was a good woman, even though she'd made some poor life choices. He'd read her file, she works at candy bar, and married the first guy she found that would support her and Percy. And didn't divorce him, because Gabe was the only thing making sure that they ate dinner every night, despite his horrible attitude.
Oh Mr. Brunner read all about Mr. Ugliano, and was not his biggest fan.
Her other large mistake was trusting a handsome stranger long enough to bear his child.
(But Percy definitely was no mistake.)
The day Percy had his interview was a very weird day. Mr. Brunner had been doubting that his delusions were even existent; probably a ploy for attention Mr. Brunner had guessed, but five minutes alone with the child had changed that.
Percy spoke of his stories and how Greek myths played such an integral part in his life, how the gods existed and were in the Empire State Building, he had a half Cyclops brother named Tyson, and his father was Poseidon.
But the biggest thing that got him admitted into the hospital was his conviction. He believed with all his heart that he was a demigod; that he was a hero, and his father was god instead of a cheap conman.
Mr. Brunner thought the kid was amazing, and if not slightly off in the head, he would be a great writer or story teller.
(He already was a great story teller.)
See, the Institution was kind of a weird place.
(Well obviously, it was a mental asylum, after all.)
Well the Institution was organized into several different wards, and Percy ended up in Mr. Brunner's ward, underneath Doctor Riordan, in the Riordan ward.
And Dr. Riordan was a pretty weird guy already, and so in his ward every single person had to wear something bright.
Apparently that was his way of making the place look happier.
(It didn't work very well, but the patients were a happy bunch.)
Oh and how Percy loved his doctors. Which wasn't unusual to be honest. Most of the doctors at the Tumblr Institution were pretty awesome.
(Or so Tumblr liked to say)
Mr. Darren, or Mr. D as he was more popularly called, was not a great person. He was the standing manager of their ward, and nobody was really his friend.
Rumor was that he had an affair with the Head of the ward, Mr. Zimmer's daughter, and as a punishment he was sent to manage the children of Riordan ward, arguably the most 'happy' ward that was in the entire institution.
It was no secret he despised the kids.
(And the kids hated him right back.)
According to Pers
eus Jackson, Mr. D was Dionysus, sent to Camp Half Blood (the Riordan Ward) on probation for chasing after a pretty nature spirit.
(I think I mentioned that he was a very creative child.)
Annabeth Chase, a volunteer during the weekends who helped out at the Riordan ward, was also a very bright girl.
She had blonde hair, pretty gray eyes, and sharp wit. And she always hung out with Percy Saturday afternoons.
And Percy loved her.
He made up all sorts of stories about her. She ran away from her home at age 7 because giant spiders attacked her, and found Luke Castellan and Thalia Grace.
Thalia Grace was the daughter of the head of the ward, Mr. Zimmer. She suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder.
(Makes sense doesn't it?)
Not the nicest girl out there in the world, but she was best friends with Luke Castellan, another patient, and Annabeth.
And later on, Percy.
They had met one day when Percy wandered into her room. It was nearing christmas and her father had sent her room a giant pine tree that had a few sad pieces of tinsel on it.
He looked at the tree, then looked at her, looked at the tree, and then looked at her, and smiled.
Just as she was about to tear his head off, he promptly turned around and walked out of the room.
(And by tear his head off, I mean it in the figurative lecture/shouting way, not in the literal bloody way. But I have no doubt that she may have literally torn off his head if he annoyed her.)
During afternoon activities, while she was savagely ripping up glittery paper, he sat next to her and started to tell her all about his delusions.
And he focused on her story.
Apparently she ran away from home, and then her father; Zeus, turned her into a pine tree and her spirit protected the ward, but then she was poisoned by Luke. And then he, Annabeth, Tyson (the kid with in room 344), and Clarisse (the girl with anger management issues in 367) went on a quest for the Golden Fleece to heal her.
And all she could say was; what the hell?
She had never ran away from home (except for that one incident in the 2nd Grade, but nobody was counting that!), her father was Mr. Zimmer, the slightly scary but mainly grumpy head, not the all powerful Zeus, Tyson wasn't a Cyclops, Luke wasn't evil, (even if he did run away without saying goodbye last month), and under no circumstances was she a tree!
(Makes sense she focused more on the tree part, rather than the part that she was half god.)
But in that second, her mouth was just wide open, staring at the boy in front of her going on about how she bravely sacrificed herself to save Luke and Annabeth from the monsters.
ANd then he started going on about how she shouldn't have saved Luke! He ran away, but he wasn't that bad of a person! And then he said that he went to go serve the Titan Kronos, whatever the hell that means.
Yeah, the kid in front of her was more insane than she was.
The thought was oddly comforting.
So she and Percy became friends, along with Annabeth, and the three of them, along with Grover, spent all their time together.
And then the next year, little Nico di Angelo was admitted into their ward. Like Percy and Thalia, he had no roommates because he was more unstable than normal.
He was odd little kid, his mother and sister had perished in a fire years back, and he had been living boarding school to boarding school.
Then one day he admitted to a friend that he saw his mother and sister, and several other famous dead people, and had conversations with them.
One week later he was being interviewed for the Tumblr Institution.
He was a hotbed for disorders. It had been determined that he had severe hallucinations and OCD, and had slight case of borderline personality disorder. He's also had a brief psychotic episode when he was about 4, after the death of his mother and sister.
Yeah, Nico di Angelo was a slightly creepy kid.
The day he arrived at the institution he flat out refused to wear the orange hospital gowns.
Even threw a little tantrum.
(It was adorable.)
And so he was allowed to wear specially made black gowns, to keep him calm. Which made him stand out a lot in the ward.
People usually left him alone, because as I said, he was an odd little kid, and he wasn't too good at making friends like most of the other kids.
In fact, he had no friends at all. He was the gloom inside the happiness, so people basically left him alone.
Then one day; Percy Jackson happened.
It was afternoon activity time, and Nico was drawing a picture of some Mythomagic characters. And then Percy Jackson just sat down and started to spin some tale about Nico in his mythological world.
(Oddly, he made friends with Nico, the same he made friends with Thalia. But, to be honest, that was how Percy made most of his friends in the Institution.)
Nico, this little ten year old kid who was a gamer nerd and slightly annoying, along with being insane, was kind of overwhelmed having a 14 year old boy, never mind that he was the most popular kid in the ward, suddenly talking to him about how Annabeth, Thalia, Grover, and himself had come to rescue Nico from his previous boarding school, along with his sister.
Annabeth was then kidnapped by a manticore and disappeared.
(In reality, she was taking a two month vacation in the Caribbean.)
And then Bianca joined the hunters of Artemis, and Bianca, Zoe;a girl with the illusion that she was a hunter that killed wild animals, Thalia, Grover, and Percy went on a quest to find Annabeth.
And then his sister was killed, but they managed to save Annabeth from the evil titan Atlas, who was in fact, Matt, Percy's least favorite volunteer.
And then he ran away and got some twisted advice from King Minos, got stuck in a giant maze, but then became the Ghost King, and escaped with Percy and Annabeth. Then they all fought against the Titan invaders.
Oh yeah, and Nico was the son of Hades, god of the dead.
(Well at least it made sense.)
So Nico and Percy were now friends, along with Thalia, Grover, and Annabeth. Zoe too, but Zoe got transferred out of their ward, and therefore died in Percy's world.
About a year later there were some changes going on in the Institution. Lots of people were transferred out. And Luke came back to give Thalia and Annabeth a visit before leaving again.
And Percy Jackson wouldn't be Percy Jackson if he didn't spin some elaborate tale about the whole event.
And this time it was a good one.
There was a war between the gods and the titans. The gods went to war against Typhon while the demigods a.k.a the patients fought against the Titans. And Percy was their commander as the child of the prophecy to kill Kronos. But then, at Olympus, also known as the Empire State Building, Luke, possessed by Kronos, destroyed Kronos by killing himself.
And all the transfer-outs were fatalities of the war.
(Percy, despite being very creative, was also slightly morbid.)
Percy wasn't around to see the new patients, because he wasn't able to handle so many friends leaving he was drafted for a 6 month extensive care project, but Mr. Brunner assured everybody that Percy Jackson was definitely coming back.
(And Percy would always want to come back. After all he loved the Riordan Ward; or as he called it; Camp Half-Blood.)
So now that there were a bunch of new patients in the ward, Dr. Riordan and Mr. Zimmer allowed patients coming in to choose between purple or orange colored hospital gowns.
Several people stayed with the traditional orange gowns like Piper McLean and Leo Valdez.
Other people like Frank Zhang and Hazel Levesque picked purple.
Piper McLean and Leo Valdez were admitted together. They became best friends in a school for disruptive children and then were transferred out to the hospital together.
Leo Valdez, a boy with slight ODD, and not very slight pyromania issues was hilarious.
And it was no surprise that after Percy came back from his 6 month extensive care issue, they became the best of friends.
(Percy still was best friends with Grover and Annabeth, but Leo was , to put it simply, awesome.)
Leo Valdez, a boy who lived from foster home to foster home after accidentally setting his mother and his home on fire, didn't have the greatest life.
When Leo was born to Esperanza Valdez and , he was a very very happy baby. He had a grandfather on his mom's side that loved him more than anything, and parents that would give up the world for him.
But then Leo's grandfather died. It was a heart attack, but it crushed him, but his parents helped him get through it. He still never forgot Grandpa Valdez.
Then Leo's father died. He was in the construction business, and while building a skyscraper, he fell. They say it was 40 stories, and he died helping someone who was also going to fall.
That probably was one of the worst things that had ever happened to Leo, but with his mom's help he got through it. They kept his memory alive by creating a machine shop, because Leo's father was a mechanic at heart.
And then when Leo was 8, his life ended.
(Not literally, or he would've never been admitted to the institution. But to an 8 year old boy, it seemed like everything was over.)
Leo was a very curious boy, and his favorite thing to play with was fire. It made sense, both his mother and father were excellent metal workers. But it's one thing to have your mom's help bending scrap metal, and it's another thing to play with matches.
Leo swears someone made him do it, that his evil babysitter Tia Callida made the fire happen, but authorities knew that Leo had set the fire himself.
Alright, so his immediate and favorite family members were dead, but the Valdez's were pretty widespread. Leo had tons of cousins. He could have his pick.
If it weren't for Aunt Rosa. Rosa Valdez was a monster of a woman. She turned her nose up at everything.
But she loved her sister, and she knew her terrible nephew was the reason for her death.
And so to her, he was the devil, ripping her dear sister away from her.
She turned the Valdez's against him.
"Leo is incorrigible."
"Little Leo Valdez is the devil's incarnate."
"Leo Valdez brings about bad luck."
And so his family refused to take him in. And then the foster homes began.
Over and over and over, Leo's had so many families.
And he's run away from almost all of them.
Some homes he set on fire, but only when the residents weren't in them.
Some people he set on fire, but he hasn't killed anyone since his mother.
Some homes he just ran and didn't look back.
And then nobody took him in. It seemed like the boy's aunt was right, Leo brought bad luck.
And he ended up at Wilderness School with Piper McLean. And for once, for the only time since he was eight, he was happy.
But children, don't forget that little Leo Valdez was insane. Pyromania is a very serious condition.
(You've probably guessed where this is going.)
One day when the entire school was on a field trip to the Grand Canyon; Leo set the school on fire.
There were no casualties, except several precious belongings were burnt and lost in the fire.
Leo Valdez was being prosecuted.
Sued for arsonism, when he insisted that no, he didn't mean to set fire to the entire school.
And then Tumblr Institution got a whiff of what was happening. And they diagnosed Leo Valdez with pyromania, and ODD, and welcomed him into their institution.
Where Percy Jackson walked up to him, somehow knowing things about him that he hadn't told anybody.
Except for the fact that he was the god Hephaestus' son. That was just weird. But Percy was funny and cool, and Leo promised not to set him on fire, and then they started terrorizing (annoying) the patients together.
And sometimes Piper McLean helped.
Piper McLean was the daughter of Tristan McLean, the movie star.
(His most famous movie was the King of Sparta, a greek based movie. And it was mainly for that fact that Percy loved making stories about her.)
Her mother was an underwear model Tristan divorced shortly after Piper was born. And Piper lived life in stardom.
She even starred in diaper commercials as a child.
(A fact that she would never ever admit, even under torture)
She was rich and famous. She had anything and everything she wanted.
(A lot of us would go so very far to be her.)
But she never wanted that. She wanted to be normal; with a normal life and normal friends, and normal family. Even normal school.
(Well it's not surprising she's certifiably insane.)
So she started to take things. Small things, but the most serious things always start small.
A candy bar from a boy who left it in his backpack while he went to go play.
An earring from a little girl who dropped it while playing.
Things like that. Then she moved on to sets.
The lead actress' hairbrush.
A plastic bronze knife prop.
Some armor from her dad's set.
And then she got caught; and her father smoothed it over. But she kept going. Because her father only seemed to talk to her when she stole something.
So she stole things; and when she wanted even more attention; she stole bigger and better things.
The car was the last straw.
A blue BMW i8.
(A really freaking cool car. Like really cool. That was one of the reasons Piper stole it.)
And then she was sent to Wilderness School, a boarding school for troubled people. And there she met Leo Valdez.
And Leo Valdez was sent to the Institute, and Piper was friendless once again.
So, naturally, she did all she could to get sent there too. She stole everything, and anything she could get her hands on.
It wasn't like before, when she stole because of her condition. She started stealing on purpose.
Finally, when she took the PE Teacher's baseball bat, they called the Institute.
And then Piper was on her way to rejoin her friend. And she made plenty of new friends. Jason, Piper, Leo, Thalia, Calypso, Hazel, Frank, Nico, Annabeth, and Percy all became the best of friends.
After Percy cornered her and made a story of her life.
On the outside she laughed at the crazy kid, but hey, she couldn't judge. And then when she became a part of this prophecy he made up, she wanted to keep hearing it.
Because even if Percy was a 16 year old crazy person, his stories made her into someone she wanted to be.
Someone who was great without her father's influence.
(Not to mention, Piper was flattered to be called the goddess' of beauty's daughter.)
So they did have a lot of fun together. They may have all been insane, but crazy people are the best company, in her opinion.
Usually they annoyed Frank. They had no argument with the guy, he and Leo were pretty tight, but Leo did have the most stuff to insult him with.
Frank Zhang was Chinese Canadian. And that alone was a landmine.
(No offense to Chinese Canadians of course.)
His mother and father died in war, when he was younger. His grandmother was his legal guardian.
(And living with her was a nightmare. An alright nightmare, but still a nightmare.)
His father died when he was extremely young. His mother was killed more recently.
She used to tell him he could be anything.
And so he imagined he was everything.
He could be a bird, he could be an ant, he could be a dragon.
And he believed it.
He believed so very hard that he could be everything.
Because it was all he had left of his mother. And grief does the weirdest things to people.
His grandmother noticed something wrong with him.
(Something more than normal.)
And he went to therapy for a year, but grief counseling did nothing for him.
And so he was given a more permanent solution.
Tumblr Institute.
And he took it, because there was nothing left in Canada for him anymore.
(Nothing without his mother.)
He loved it. Tumblr became a home for him.
He found friends, friends just as weird as him.
(Friends who didn't care about his faults, and insanity.)
Percy Jackson was definitely the craziest guy he ever met.
How on Earth, did he decide that Frank's life depended on a small piece of firewood?
(But, hey! He was crazy!)
Of course, Leo Valdez took every opportunity to make fun of him, but Frank understood that they were still friends.
(Not just friends, family.)
Well Hazel Levesque wasn't family.
Hazel was special. She wasn't like a sister to him. She was something else.
(Yup, Frank Zhang had a crush.)
Hazel Levesque was born and raised in New Orleans. She moved to Alaska, and then she moved to New York, for the Institute.
She enjoyed riding horses, and drawing. She had a best friend named Sammy, who moved away when she was 10.
Hazel was the old-fashioned sort, who didn't like technology much, and got flustered at romantic gestures.
(It was pretty adorable when she fanned herself when she saw someone making out.)
Her mother was a fortune teller, or gris-gris queen.
She made a fair amount of money selling supposed 'cursed' jewels.
(To be honest, it was weird how many people wanted cursed jewelry.)
When she was in Alaska, someone who bought a cursed jewel, actually died.
And Hazel was extremely freaked out. She started to believe the death was on her head, because she was the one who found that diamond in an interactive mining cave she liked to go to.
She got so freaked out, she started to believe that the cave, which was on the island, was holding the devil, and she was helping build it.
Her mother's insistence that she visit the cave just added more to her paranoia.
Later, when she and her mother visited the mining cave, Hazel caused an explosion that almost killed her and her mother.
She tried to justify it, saying it was to kill the devil, but her mother knew she was crazy.
After several different therapists, she was sent to New York to go to Tumblr Institute.
And after meeting Percy Jackson, she was happy she was crazy.
(Because, she wouldn't have met the people she did, if she was sane.)
Well first, she met Jason, who introduced her to the rest of his friends, including Percy and Frank. And as did everyone else, she got a Greek story like the rest of them.
Jason Grace was a volunteer. Not crazy, not at all.
He was actually just volunteering for the college credits. He was a bit late in the volunteering season, so all that was left for him was the mental hospital.
But he was glad he took the job. He found his sister, the one he was separated from, because he got adopted.
(And he found some great friends.)
He met Annabeth first, since they both volunteered there. She was smart, and level-headed, and volunteering for the same reason he was.
And they found the best people there.
Percy Jackson and him had a pretty close bromance, and Piper was simply beautiful. Hazel and Frank were great people, and Leo was like a best friend to him.
(He even declared Nico di Angelo to be his little brother.)
To Percy Jackson, he was a hero.
(Not as big of a hero as Percy though. Sorta like the Roman version of Percy.)
Jason was pretty honored to have a leading role in Percy's delusions.
And he liked his role. The Praetor of the Romans, defeater of the Titan Othrys.
Reyna Ramirez-Arellano, starred as Praetor alongside him.
She was a volunteer, like him. They practically grew up together, neighbors from a young age. So she volunteered alongside him, and was not prepared to meet the patients in the Riordan ward.
(Well no one is really prepared to meet the Riordan patients.)
She did become very good friends with Annabeth, Nico, and Frank. But she did enjoy the other patients' company as well.
They all had different shifts at the Institute, but they all met up on Saturday afternoons at the Riordan ward to just talk to their friends.
And then war happened.
(Well actually, it was a renovation. But to the batch of crazy kids, it was war.)
War against the Earth Mother, Gaea exact.
Percy would talk for hours about the small details of the fight, and the big boat they were travelling on.
Argo II, he called it. And he spoke about how they traveled to Rome, and then to Greece.
Nico was unhappy to have to go through Tartarus, so to make him feel better, Percy threw himself, and Annabeth into the pit too.
(Thalia and Grover were miffed they didn't have big parts in this particular war, but Percy refused to give them bigger roles.)
He spoke about Cupid, and Nico and Jason's meeting him. Nico just blushed and looked down, while the patients assured him his sexuality was alright.
(But Nico did protest about how he was supposed to have a crush on Percy. He had a different crush, on a different volunteer. A volunteer with a very sunny disposition.)
And then Percy with a sly smile, described how said volunteer took very good care Nico after the war.
(By the way, the volunteer's name was Will Solace. And he did like Nico di Angelo very much.)
But of course, there was more to talk about. Like how Frank took over praetorship from Jason, and how Nico, Reyna, and Hedge returned the Athena Parthenos to Greece.
(Hedge was one of the workers in the institute who was helping renovate the place. He was honored to have a place in Percy's story.)
And Percy told them about how Leo died, but came back to life, and flew off to find his girlfriend Calypso.
(Percy liked Calypso very much. Mostly because her name was in Greek mythology.)
She liked him too, but she did like Leo Valdez much more.
And Percy then announced that they lived a happy every after, and moved to New Rome to live a life.
When asked why he decided to end his Greek stories, by Dr. Riordan, he said that he wanted to live his happy ending.
And he did end up living his happy ending.
Slowly after years of therapy, the patients were able to leave, being declared sane again.
Percy was the last to leave, and Piper was the first.
After a space of five years, they were all studying and living in NYC, keeping tabs on each other, and meeting up on Saturday afternoons.
Percy's stories saved kids, and healed them. He made an entire gaggle of insane teenagers, sane again.
Dr. Riordan was impressed, honestly. A child made them mentally healthy again. It wasn't the therapy and counseling sessions they were required to attend. It was just him.
And so he compiled all of his notes on Percy Jackson's hallucinations, and decided to write them up into a book. A series of books.
It didn't take that long, and soon enough, everyone was reading Percy Jackson's story.
He called the series Percy Jackson and the Olympians. He then published another series, called Heroes of Olympus.
.
Fin
A/N: Wow, this took me a long time to write. I'm not that happy with the ending, but you can't have everything.
Based on a Tumblr post I saw once, saying that the series was based on a mental hospital patient's delusions. And the patient's name was Percy Jackson.
Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Heroes of Olympus, Tumblr, or Rick Riordan.