That's it. I'm finished. I am the deadest of dead meat. I see my life flash before my eyes, the life of a nobody living on the streets of New York. My name is Percy Jackson but no one really cared anyway. I watch outside my body as I ran away when I was 6 and I'm 7 now… I think. At this rate I probably won't be alive for long enough for it to matter. Going farther back in my remembrance I see years of abuse from my moms second husband, Gabe. Thats most of my memory from before I ran away, a lot of pain and dark places. Then a flash of my mom's smile before she died and the taste of blue sweets. I try to linger on those but before I could really get a good grasp on them my brain seems to catch up to the situation at hand. I don't know where I wen't wrong, what I did to deserve this but I'm currently at the end of a dead end alleyway as the most terrifying 'business man' slowly stalks towards me.

He seemed like any other rich executive of New York, business suit, shiny black shoes, gelled hair and dark shades, until I nicked his wallet from behind him. I thought I had a clean getaway until he turned around. The scariest thing about him wasn't his size or apparent strength, I've stolen from stronger looking guys and got away, but the fact that he only had ONE eye in the center of his forehead and then he smiled. His teeth were pointed as if they'd been filed and they were tinged with red. He advanced on me with something between a growl and a laugh.I ran, but I could hear his huge footsteps right behind me. I managed to make a little distance by racing through traffic but now I've run straight into a dead end ally and he's at the end of it. I cried for help to anyone who might listen in my desperation knowing that I probably wouldn't get it, but it was worth a shot.

He only laughed, "Puny little demigod! I will devour you and you can do nothing to stop me!" I really don't like my chances of survival. I don't even have a weapon. He is advancing, taking his time because he knows there is nowhere for me to run. I got into a fighting stance because heck, if I'm going to die I am going to go down fighting! He laughed again and suddenly I was off the ground looking straight into his milky red eye that was seething in hatred and twisted amusement. I tried to struggle or at least wiggle an arm out his hold to swing at him, but I was only flailing around like a headless chicken and accomplishing nothing. I stopped realizing how hopeless my situation was and waited for my fate, praying to anything that would save me. I could feel the giant's hot (and very smelly) breath, as he was about to eat me whole and alive. I closed my eyes and held my breath, bracing myself for the inevitable sharp sting of his teeth in my skin...

A sudden sense of weightlessness and and the rushing of air in my ears let me know I was airborne as I heard what sounded like a growling battle cry and the giant scream in pain and outrage. Whipping my eyes open I flailed around, trying to right myself before impact and landed on my feet, rolling my ankle and crashing into the cement wall next to me enough to make my head spin and my vision tunnel. The last thing I saw before the inky darkness of unconsciousness consumed me was a girl.

A girl with wings.

...

I am awake but I haven't opened my eyes yet but I can tell I am in a bed. This is the first time I've been in an actual bed since I ran away. Its really soft and warm. Wait. What am I doing in a bed?! I make to launch myself up but I can hear people talking and freeze,

"Yes, I've been over this a thousand times mom, he smelled like our kind!"

"Honey, why didn't you call us then? He looked like you dragged him through a dumpster and then used him to kill the cyclops you supposedly rescued him from! I couldn't even tell whether he was human or some sort of trash monster!"

"Mooooommmmm! He already looked and smelled like that when I found him!"

"Fine, why did you even help a mortal or part mortal in the first place, you know how dangerous it is for us to show our wings in daylight!?"

"...He called to me..."

Deciding to locate the source of the voices, I opened my eyes a bit. There were two girls at the foot of the slightly larger than twin sized bed I was lying in. They were having some sort of stare down. One was clearly the aforementioned mother as she was taller than the other one with slightly defined wrinkles and had some silver streaks in her hair that I could see from here. They both had brown hair and blue eyes but their features where distorted. The shorter one looked vaguely familiar so I squinted my eyes and tried to focus on them in an effort to look at them closer and the distortion vanished, leaving me questioning if I was still asleep and just having one weird dream. Their skin looked brittle and scaly at the edges where hair met forehead and on their finger tips and sides of their necks that I could see. The strangest thing of all though was their eyes. They were slitted like a snake's. I gasped refelxively and instantly slapped my self mentally as they both looked at me sharply and I shrunk back into the covers. Then the elder one's features softened. She sighed and walked around the bed to my head as I shied away from her as subtly as I could.

"What's your name honey?" I was too caught off guard to do anything but just look at her and think, 'Why on earth does my name matter when I feel like I could be eaten at any second?'

"It's okay," she said, "I'm not going to eat you." She told me, a small smile tugging at her lips.

"How...?" I bewilderingly implored.

"Your expression said it all. Now, to whom am I speaking to? I'd like to know the name of the unfortunate sap that my daughter dragged into my house."

Not really knowing what that statement meant nor wether or not to feel safer from her tone or more threatened by the words I stuttered out, "I, um... I'm Percy Jackson." I'd always kept my mom's maiden name, it just felt right. Remembering that there was someone else in the room while the older one took in my response, I turned to the younger girl,

"When I last saw you, you had wings sprouting out from your back. Where did they go?" I was genuinely curious to know just how hard my head had been hit the moment the words left my mouth. Of course she didn't have wings, that was just my stupid head pl-,"

"I pulled them into my back on another plane of reality, or the technical, and much simpler term, is I sheathed them." She looked surprised that I addressed her but had replied anyways, stopping my quickly derailing thoughts of self criticism.

Clearly I looked throughly bewildered by this response because the mom simply sighed and said, "Let me start from the beginning..."

AN: That is it for this chapter! Hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know if there is anything you want to see in the story as you go farther in. On that note, please leave reviews or even PM me, I'd love to hear your thoughts or just have a chat. Thank you and have a great day!

~ FictionGirl11

P.S. This is the rewritten version for anyone re-reading and for anyone who just started I'm going to be doing some more edits to the next few chapters, so if anything suddenly changes on you, just know its for the better.