Hello, readers!

So, yeah, this is an idea that's been circling inside my head for a long while now. Basically, Percy wakes up and realizes he's not where he's supposed to be, and everyone he knew is not who they're supposed to be, and everything's not what it's supposed to be. Mm, I'm just going to post this first chapter for now, and see your opinions about it, and when I get enough fuel (in the form of reviews), I'm going to try continuing this story.

Please be warned that this is my first PJaTO fanfic, plus, it's also my first multi-chapter fic, so I don't know how this'll really end. I'm kind of an unpredictable updater, which means that I could post this chapter now, and then the other one a day later, or I could post this chapter now and the other one a year later. So, yeah, my updates range from one day to a year.

Another warning: Due to the setting of the story, most characters will be slightly OOC.

Oh, well, let's get optimistic now, shall we?

DISCLAIMER: *types down every PJaTO disclaimer ever written*

DISCLAIMER: I do not own those disclaimers. I merely typed them down so as to notify you that I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians/The Heroes of Olympus (and also because I'm too lazy to be creative at disclaimers right now).

Enjoy!

Chapter 1

To anyone who's unlucky enough to get hit by this plastic bottle, thus discovering the message inside it:

Hey.

Yeah, I'm really sorry if my bottle hit you on the head. There's not much here inside this weird place that I can use to relay my message. The bottle's the only thing I could find.

Anyways, you might be wondering why I'm so desperate to get this message across. I'll explain that later. Right now, please, PLEASE, bring this plastic bottle and this message to SALLY JACKSON-BLOFIS. I know you can find her; there aren't many Blofises there in Manhattan. Just please, bring this message to her, and tell her to read the pink folded napkin next to this piece of tissue paper.

By the way, under any circumstances, DON'T READ THE PINK FOLDED NAPKIN, no matter how curious you already are.

So yeah, sorry to bother you, but this is really important. Really, REALLY important. I need help right now, I mean, who wouldn't need help if you wake up inside a plain, white room with a mentally unstable man a meter away from you trying to rip off teddy bears and suddenly you realize that YOU'RE IN A FRICKIN' MENTAL HOSPITAL!?

-/-

Percy slammed down the pen, messily crossed out the last paragraph and crumpled the twentieth tissue paper he had ripped out from a roll.

Ugh, no one will believe me.

Twenty minutes had passed since he woke up and realized that he wasn't in Camp Half-Blood. He knew something was wrong the moment he opened his eyes. The walls weren't blue, like his cabin's, and although he could smell the sea from outside, it wasn't the Camp Half-Blood scent that he had been so used to.

Then he saw the scrawny teenager leaning on the other side of the room. A blond-haired, young man in a straight-jacket, with a bunch of mutilated teddy bears strewn all around him. The boy basically made him realize that he was in a mental hospital. Percy didn't bother trying to talk to the guy, because whenever he tried to get closer the man gave him a look that basically translated to "I'm gonna rip you off like these teddy bears..."

That gave Percy enough reason to back off, really quickly.

He spent the next ten minutes trying to find a way to escape, and after finding none, he spent another ten minutes looking for something to write on, because surprisingly, pen-Riptide was still tucked inside the pocket of his jeans. The only problem was that he couldn't seem to turn it back into a sword. He had tried almost two dozen times, but to no avail. It seemed that something inside the building was preventing him from using his sword. The ink wasn't even golden, just the typical black tint.

Thankfully, he spotted a roll of tissue paper from the bathroom, along with a pink napkin and a plastic bottle in the garbage can. He needed to tell Annabeth, message-in-a-bottle style. It was either those three or nothing.

One hour later and he was still trying to scribble down a message, failing every single time.

"Darnit..." he muttered to himself, ripping off another piece of tissue paper.

"Darnit"

Percy's head perked up.

Did his 'roommate' just speak?

"Darnit," the teenager muttered again. "Darnit, darnit, darnit, darnit..."

The guy was moving now, struggling against his straight-jacket.

"Gonna rip you all..." he chuckled to himself, glaring down at his mutilated teddy bears. "Rip, rip, RIP!"

Percy stood up from his seat and hastily stepped back, making the guy raise his head to look at him. Oh crap...Percy thought. He didn't know why the guy was making him jumpy and scared, but he knew better than to come closer.

He had a really, really bad feeling. It felt like he already knew what would happen if the crazy boy escaped from his bonds. The scene in front of him seemed familiar, somewhat, but he couldn't remember.

"RIP! GONNA RIP YOU ALL!" the guy was literally trying to stand up and lunge at Percy, but the chained straight-jacket was keeping him down. "RIP! RipripripripripRIPPPP! RYAAAAAA!"

Percy took one look at the straight jacket, then back at the teenager's crazed face. Then back at the straight-jacket, because it took him a few seconds to notice that it was tearing apart.

Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap...

He tightened his grip around pen-Riptide, hoping that it would eventually turn into a sword that he could use for self-defense, because somehow, he knew that the bonds couldn't hold off Mr. Teddy Bear Ripper for long. Once again, the thought seemed familiar to him, he just couldn't place his memories in the exact right position. Had he encountered something like this before?

Then it happened.

The straight-jacket tore up. Mr. Teddy Bear Ripper lunged. Percy screamed.

Percy had encountered things worse than a kid obsessed with tearing apart stuffed animals , so why was he screaming?

The guy was exactly like a feral dog, and as soon as he escaped from his bonds he immediately tackled Percy to the ground. For a scrawny kid, the guy was strong. Percy raised his legs and connected them with the boy's gut, throwing him back a few meters away. Percy took the opportunity to stand up and look for a source of water.

Despite the building being noticeably seaside, the water from that part was too far away and thus his only option was to resort to the toilet water from the bathroom. Percy focused his mind on the water and waited for the familiar tug on his gut, the one he always felt whenever he used his aquakinesis.

It never came. Instead, Percy was yet again tackled back to the ground by the crazy boy.

"RIP!" the boy screamed, teeth gnashing wildly. "I'M GONNA RIP YOU-"

"Octavian!" someone interrupted, "Get back to where you belong!"

Wait, Octavian? What the...

The boy went silent, crawling back to the corner he originally sat at and staring back at the dozens of teddy bears he had probably mangled. Two people, clad in white, immediately rushed in to bind him in a brand new straight-jacket. Percy could clearly see his features now. Scrawny, pale, blond-haired and sunken blue eyes. How was it possible? The augur had died a few months ago, accidentally blasting himself off on an Onager in an attempt to destroy Gaea. Now here he was, still mutilating teddy bears, looking as alive as he was when Percy first met him.

Was he in the Underworld? The Fields of Asphodel, maybe? It might vaguely explain why the augur was out of character, but then again, that wasn't how souls acted in the Fields of Asphodel. They were more...indifferent and emotionless, contrasting Octavian's aggression. Percy couldn't think of any possible reason why Octavian was right there in front of him.

"W-what the Hades..." was all Percy could mutter before transferring his eyes to the woman leaning on the door. She was in her 50's, with graying hair and stoic, hard eyes. Percy had almost forgotten that he was still stuck in a psychiatric hospital until he saw her. She seemed to be one of the hospital staff, probably a superior, even.

And she was looking at Percy.

"Mr. Perseus Jackson," she started, making Percy tense. Only friends, family and enemies knew his real name, and since the woman was obviously not part of the first two groups, Percy was going to go for the third option. "I'd like to talk to you about your...roommate."

She gestured for him to come over. Percy hesitated; it wouldn't be smart to get near something you suspect to be a monster.

But Percy was good at not being smart, and there was no way of escaping the room except through the open door that the woman was leaning on, so he had no other choice but to come near (warily) and play along.

"I apologize, we shouldn't have put you in the same room with Octavian," she pushed her wire-rimmed glasses back to the bridge of her nose as the two of them walked out of the room, locking the door as they left. "That young man has an...obsession with stuffed animals..."

Percy let her talk, but he was still too confused by what was happening, so her words just kind of passed through his ears and back to thin air. Right now, he was intent of figuring out why he ended up here, why his powers and his sword weren't working and why a deceased augur was currently locked up in a room, alive yet disoriented.

Or maybe he could just find a way to escape and forget that this all happened.

What if this was a dream? Percy had pinched himself when he woke up, of course, and the pain was real enough to convince him that this probably wasn't a dream. But he asked himself, over and over: What if?

"...must have mistaken you for a life-sized doll." the woman stopped. "Mr. Jackson, is something bothering you?"

What if this is some kind of trick?

"Mr. Jackson?"

What if I'm dead? No, I can't be dead.

"Mr. Jackson!"

The exclaim cut Percy off from his thoughts. "Let me ask you again, is something bothering you?"

"A lot of things, actually," Percy decided to let it slip, gripping pen-Riptide tightly by his side, "Like why I woke up in a psychiatric hospital when I'm supposed to be in my bedroom,"

The woman raised an eyebrow, "Don't you remember, Mr. Jackson? Your mother admitted you to this hospital two days ago."

Percy almost choked on his nonexistent saliva. What? Two days ago? Mom?

"Look, you must be mistaken, ma'am. I've never been to this hospital up until I woke up in that bed." Percy looked around for an exit. Something about this hospital feels very wrong. "I'm not supposed to be here."

"You've been having delusions of a 'demigod camp' since you were twelve, and you think you're half-god, specifically the son of Poseidon, with the ability to control water. You almost drowned in a swimming pool because you were convinced that you can breathe underwater. You barged inside the Empire State Building and told the receptionist to bring you to a nonexistent '600th floor'. You love talking to horses, and tried to jump off a building while riding a black horse because you thought it was a pegasus." she counted all of it off with her fingers.

What followed next was silence as Percy tried to process everything that she just said.

"You've actually got a lot of cases, Mr. Jackson, and they're all too many to mention," she continued, "But just recently, you tried to attack your mother with a pen because you thought she was a monster in disguise. That's how you ended up here. Your mother's been trying to put up with your delusions for five years, Mr. Jackson. What you did to her recently was the last straw."

That's impossible, Percy thought to himself, still in disbelief at what the woman said.

"Look, ma'am, that's impossible." Percy insisted, still looking around. "I can't even do that to my mom."

Around him seemed like a mediocre kind of chaos. It was like silence and noise were clashing all at the same time, because from somewhere in the back, smoke was billowing out of a room and someone was screaming "FLAME ON!", while on another corner, hospital patients were huddled together, just staring at each other as if one of them was going to pop anytime soon.

"But you did, Mr. Jackson." the woman cot off his thoughts, yet again. "It was actually recorded on a CCTV, if you want some proof."

"Look, this is all a mistake. I really don't belong here-"

"You belong exactly in here, Mr. Jackson. You've got the symptoms of being delusional, and denial just further strengthens the fact." she interrupted, staring straight at Percy. "What makes you think otherwise?"

"The guy who's currently mutilating teddy bears over there is supposed to be dead!" he responded almost immediately. "And that demigod camp you were talking about? It's not a delusion, it's real, and I'm mysteriously shipped off to this psychiatric hospital when I'm supposed to be there!"

He put a hand inside his jeans pocket, feeling for Riptide, which was thankfully still there. "I've been playing around this whole time, ma'am, but I know you're a monster. I still haven't figured out what kind of monster you are, but I'm sure of it. This whole hospital is probably filled with your kind, and you're all trying to kill me. I'm right, aren't I?"

The woman stared at him blankly, blinking a few times before finally speaking.

"What?" she spoke nonchalantly, then chuckled under her breath, like Percy just said a corny joke and she just laughed because he was trying so hard to sound funny. "Mr. Jackson, this is exactly why you were sent off to this hospital."

"Don't play dumb with me," Percy brought Riptide and took off the cap. Percy smiled. It seems that whatever was preventing Anaklusmos from transforming inside the room was not present here, because a second later he felt the familiar weight of his sword.

Beside him, the woman was turning into something else.

Of course she's a monster, what else could she be?

Percy raised his blade and sliced at her before she could even strike. The woman backed away as golden dust poured from her side. Definitely a monster.

It didn't take a long time for everyone to notice what Percy was doing, but he didn't care. This place was filled with monsters, and he knew he couldn't finish all of them one by one. He needed to escape, and the woman was preventing him from moving any further. She was watching him very closely, and Percy could tell that escaping from her wouldn't be easy.

Percy waited for the right time and charged, kicking her to the ground and raising his sword to strike. The blade went down and Percy was sure he had pierced through something important. The heart, maybe, or whatever a monster's alternative of a heart was.

Instead, he was face-to-face with a very terrified woman, and what was once his sword was just a pen once more. It was an inch away from the woman stomach. Her wound had disappeared along with the golden dust that poured from it.

To Percy, it was impossible. He was sure that Riptide had turned into a sword. He was sure that it didn't revert back to pen form. He was sure that the woman had transformed into a monster.

But he wasn't sure if being sure meant that what just happened wasn't his imagination.

Before he could open his mouth to speak, two of the hospital staff grabbed him in an iron grip and tackled him to the ground, away from the woman. Riptide had dropped in the process, and the struggle he exerted to grab it wasn't successful. People had huddled around him, hospital patients and the staff alike. Percy felt a weird sense of deja vu just by looking at the people. He saw familiar faces mixed in the crowd. Faces of campers and people he knew.

Why are they here?

One of the men pushed his head and collided it with the ground, while the other produced a syringe from his uniform and plunged the needle into Percy's forearm.

Percy felt sleepy, but he wanted to stay awake for a few more minutes to look closer at the crowd surrounding him. He wanted to make sure he wasn't hallucinating and that they were actually there.

He wanted...to...

So...sleepy...

blonde hair...in the crowd...

princess...curls...?

wait...

Annabeth...?

Everything went black.

So yeah, that's the first chapter! The last part kind of made me sleepy, too, because it's night right now and that's why it feels rushed to me (does it feel rushed to you?)

So, yeah, hope you enjoyed it! I had a really fun time writing the first chap, and I'm just kind of seeing where this'll lead to, so please type in what you think of it in the reviews! Criticism is very much welcome and appreciated. You can't do something right without knowing what's wrong, xD!

So, yeah (for the third time), once again I hope you liked it!

- MadnessAndMe