-Juno-
Pale toes peered out from beneath a floor length gown, softly greeting the Earth with light footsteps and gentle brushes of cream satin. Rays of sunshine broke through the tree canopy and danced leisurely in shimmering patches across the woman's dress.
Lady Juno wasn't in a hurry; this wouldn't be the first time she would have to dispose of one of her unfaithful husband's brats. Except this time, she thought to herself as she walked into the clearing, smirking down at the old, sleeping friend beneath her feet, he'd be put to use first.
In her eyes, it was all rather merciful. He would become her champion and complete a set of tasks, and if he was a good little Roman soldier, he wouldn't find them too straining either. Afterwards, he'd either be free to live his life or be dead.
She scooped up the little blond sitting on the picnic blanket and settled him on her hip. He had previously been very busy pulling at the dandelions in various stages of blooming. He looked at her curiously, and then grasped the smooth peacock stone of her necklace, shoving a large portion of it into his mouth. He bit into it, as if testing its worth. The recently acquired scar on his top lip was put into evidence.
The Queen of Olympus rolled her eyes, rather annoyed, but removed the chain from around her neck anyway. Despite the consequences, the goddess mused, looping the necklace around his neck, little Jason had been given a chance not many of his previous siblings had been given: he could live (for a while).
Juno's eyes briefly locked with the companion her little champion had been previously sitting with – a blonde woman with icy shards for eyes. Jason's mother glared enviously at the goddess and turned away, swigging her bottle of wine.
The goddess narrowed her eyes at the back of the mortal's puffed up, curly blonde hair, but refused to bother herself with the likes of a woman who had no interests in her son.
Instead she exited the clearing, with Jason still in her arms, and began walking west through the trees. As she walked deeper into the woods, the foliage began thinning and more rocks and remnants of bricks littering the ground appeared. Low growls filled the air, replacing the light hearted bird whistles, and the fur of wolves brushed against the goddess' legs as they circled her predatorily.
"Tell your wolves to back off, Lupa," Juno said, lowering Jason to the ground. "I've brought you 'fresh meat'. A demigod son of Jupiter, to be exact."
-Jason Grace-
"Name and godly lineage?"
"Gwendolyn Jones, descendent of Apollo."
"Next."
Jason watched as the strawberry blonde in front of him walked around the table, towards the veteran son of Mars administrating the tattoos. He turned back to the straight-backed army secretary and saluted.
"Name and godly lineage?"
"Jason Grace, son of Jupiter."
"Roll up your sleeve as you go, son; don't want to keep Viktor waiting," the secretary advised, scrawling a tally beside Jason's name.
"Yes, sir." the blond fumbled with his sleeve and pulled it over his elbow, revealing an ink black tattoo. The letters SPQR, standing for 'Senatus Populusque Romanus', or 'The Senate and the People of Rome', had been burned into his skin, along with an eagle – a symbol that was recognised as his father's. He had heard in passing that the eagle was not often used, but when he moved to question the people in the legion's higher military positions, they had refused to share anything they knew with him. Below the eagle were eight vertical lines.
He heard Gwen hiss through her teeth as a line was burnt into her skin, and flexed his arm. It is an honour to be recognised as a member of Legio XII Fulminata, he'd been told. And it was, so he clenched his jaw and relaxed his hand as Viktor grabbed his forearm, adding a ninth line to his barcode.
"Why can't we have bracelets, or something, to mark our dedication to Rome? That'd be far more fashionable and a lot less painful," Gwen asked jokingly, once they'd exited the Senate House. "Or even dog tags like the American military have?"
"You'd think we'd have gotten used to it by now too, what with how many times we've had to do this," Jason added, rubbing his arm; Gwen too had joined the legion at a rather young age, and had just received her seventh mark below the symbol of a lyre.
"Are you not honouring your legion, legionnaires?" a loud voice asked them as they reached the Pomerian Line.
"Of course we are, Lord Terminus," Jason vowed, saluting to the statue on the wall. "We just had our new marks added."
"Yeah, we were just discussing how the pain will eventually make us stronger, the true Roman way," Gwen added, smiling sweetly.
The Pomerian Line was a wall surrounding New Rome, broken only by the entrance to the city, the lake, and the aqueduct - the Romans' water supply system. Statues of Terminus littered the wall, protecting the private and public properties of Rome.
The god took his job very seriously, making sure that that order was constantly kept within both the city and camp. He was also more than happy to pick on the Legionnaires who passed through Pomerian's entrance on their uniforms, or the volume of their voices, or anything else that made them anything less than immaculate (in his eyes).
The god eyed them suspiciously. Eventually he said, "Carry on, soldiers."
"Er, sir?" Jason asked hesitantly.
"Yes, soldier?"
"Where have the weapons gone?" Terminus never let weapons go past the Pomerian Line and into New Rome.
"Right there," he said, but Jason and Gwen just stared blankly at the statue. "Look where I'm pointing!"
The thing about Terminus' statue was that he had no arms, and one of the very first few things Jason had learnt at Camp was never to mention this directly to the god. So instead he lifted his hand up to his eyes, squinted, and said, "Sir, the sun is hitting me directly in the face and it's really hard to see where you're pointing. Could you please just tell me instead?"
"Oh for goodness sake, Grace, it's on the wall!"
Gwen quickly skipped to the wall, grabbed their weapons from the tray, saluted Terminus, and dragged Jason away by the arm. She looked back at the god and then turned to speak into Jason's ear. "I think he knows what you did."
"I think so too, but at least I didn't pull a Bobby and ask him to point."
She rolled her eyes, smiling. "And he wonders why Terminus dislikes him so much. Speaking of Bobby, we need to go and switch places with him and Kota, so that they can have their lines added." She turned to face him, smirking. "Race you!" she shouted, already sprinting away.
Camp Jupiter was separated from the rest of the San Francisco Bay by a small service tunnel, near the Caldecott Tunnel. The human side was veiled in mist and constantly guarded by Roman soldiers, to make sure that only demigods passed through the camp borders' defences. Past the entrance were two large high-ways, where cars drove with no consideration of the speed limit, and past them were large, steep, verdant hills.
Jason was unsurprised to find Bobby and Dakota sitting just in the shade of the tunnel, barely keeping an eye out at the highway for any signs of danger.
"You realise that if any of the centurions saw you sitting down while on border duty, they'd make you run laps in full body armour until you collapsed, right?" Gwen said, walking towards the exit of the tunnel. The boys had casually discarded their weapons in favour of a small pack of cards.
Jason moved to stand behind Bobby, and casually inspected his cards. "Ask for twos," he suggested, pointing to the three cards he'd already collected.
"You're all ignoring me, aren't you?" Gwen sighed. Jason threw her an apologetic smile over his shoulder.
"Oi, Dakota?"
"Yeah?"
"Got any twos?"
"Ha, go fish. Bobby? Got any sevens?"
"Nope, go fish. Tens?"
Dakota had gone quiet. Jason watched as a sly smirk spread across his friend's cherry red lips as he looked at the card he'd just picked up. He drank from his flask (Jason was pretty sure that thing had an endless supply of Kool-Aid) and replied, "No, no tens. But, Bobby? Do you have any twos?"
Bobby gaped at him. "DAMMIT, DAKOTA!"
"Okay, that's it," Gwen said. Jason stepped back as she marched over towards the playing circle. She grabbed the cards from their hands, and started pulling Dakota up to his feet. "Viktor is going to decide he doesn't care about your new lines, and then we'll all be in trouble." She grabbed a napkin from her back pocket and threw it at Dakota. "Wipe your mouth."
Jason smiled as Dakota did so, frowning. When he pulled the white napkin away it was stained an artificial red.
However Jason's attention was suddenly caught when the figure of a girl in a dress was revealed as she reached the top of one of the hills. She didn't stop though, instead choosing to run at full speed down the green expanse. Halfway down the hill, where Jason noticed with horror that the land became steeper, she stumbled and let go of what she was holding as she moved to soften her fall. A large object sailed through the sun, and Jason had to shield his eyes momentarily as it caught the light of the sun, before it landed blade down into the thick grass.
A sword.
"DEMI-GOD ON THE HILL," he shouted urgently, grabbing the attention of the other three.
Pack of cards and disputes discarded, the Romans lurched for their weapons and stood ready as the girl picked herself up. She jumped for the fallen sword and rolled out of the way. The claws of a large, dark shape Jason had not previously seen missed her by millimetres.
"Holy Jupiter, what do we do?!" Bobby shouted, staring at the sight of the girl slashing her sword at the monster. Out of the four of them, Bobby was the newest arrival at camp Jupiter, about to get his second line.
Jason turned to his friends. Roman training taught you how to act, despite the situation. However with only two years of training, Bobby, a descendent of Mercury, was the least experienced and looked the most terrified. As he'd been born and raised in New Rome, recruited by the legion straight out school, Bobby had received no training with Lupa.
Gwen herself was also born in New Rome, also receiving no training with Lupa. However she'd joined the legion at a young age, for reasons she had yet to tell Jason. He had noticed, though, that she hardly spoke of her parents. Because she'd joined young, she looked far more mentally prepared than Bobby, albeit still queasy.
Kool-Aid-obsessed Dakota, a son of the wine god, Bacchus, had arrived at Camp Jupiter when he was ten, after training with Lupa. This, and the fact that he was a year older than Jason, meant he had dealt with a few monsters beforehand. On the downside, Dakota looked like he was about to stain the outside of the service tunnel cherry red.
As for himself, Jason knew he'd received training with Lupa, and had arrived at Camp Jupiter when he was three. He had grown up there, among the armour, shouts and clashes of swords. That's it – all he knew. Jason also felt very, very scared; to be very honest, he didn't really recall ever seeing large monsters up close.
But there was a girl about to die on a hill, and it was their job as Romans to get her over Camp borders.
"Training – remember training!" Jason shouted, trying desperately to control the shake in his voice (and the pitch it reached, because life-threatening situation or not, Bobby would remember his voice breaking). "Gwen, call for a centurion! Bobby, guard the entrance! Dakota, you and I are going to help the new arrival!" Jason didn't wait for a reply, and instead rushed across the first highway, narrowly dodging the bumpers of beeping vehicles and their squealing tires.
He paused in the middle, between the two highways, and stared at the girl, who continued desperately to fight the monster.
"Jason!" He turned and saw Dakota standing a couple of meters away from him, hands on his knees and eyes fixed on the girl. "Her right leg – she's limping. She won't make it much longer!"
The blond turned back and saw that Dakota was right. "Next opening you see, go for it!" he shouted.
Five seconds later, after a black Ferrari whipped past them, Jason set foot on the highway, sprinting for the other side. Now at the base of the hill, Jason could see what they had to deal with: a black, two-headed dog. The orthus was without doubt a stupid monster, but large, muscular and fierce. Though its movements were rather slow, if they happened to be caught Jason was sure the monster's canines could – and would – immediately rip them apart.
Jason quickly looked to the left, and saw with a sigh of relief that Dakota had made it too. "It hasn't seen us yet – I distract, you kill!" The blond said, and then moved to slash his sword across the creature's ribs, creating a gash in its side. Dark, burgundy eyes focussed on him, and the dog lunged. Jason rolled out of the way and Dakota jumped to attack. His pilum stabbed directly into the dog's side just as the girl's sword slashed across its neck, and the monster exploded into dust.
When he sat up, he found Dakota already holding his pilum again, and the girl had retreated a few paces back. She was watching them with hostile eyes, but Jason could see clear fatigue hidden in their depths. Despite having just fought the orthus, her posture was straight and guarded, and she held her chin raised. Strands of long, dark hair fell from an intricate braid, framing her face.
Up close, Jason could see that the girl's dress had once been red, contrasting nicely with her olive skin. Now it was ripped in multiple places and the bright red fabric was covered in splotches of her crimson blood, layers of dirt and monster dust.
The sword she grasped tightly in her right hand was imperial gold, like those the legion used. However as he studied the style it had been forged in, he noticed it was almost nothing like the shape his was, but more in the stereotypical style of a pirate's sword. The blade was thin and curved slightly at the end.
The longer he stared, though he was only trying to assess how hurt she was, the harsher her glare became, so when Dakota offered him a hand up, he grabbed his sword and gratefully took it.
But before they had turned back to face her, she had already sprinted across the first highway, and was now resting in the middle section as she scanned the other side. The second after her eyes landed on the mouth of the small service tunnel, during a split second pause in the traffic, she sprinted across the second one.
Jason couldn't see whether she'd made it across the second one safely or not. Next to him, Dakota took one look at the highway and took out his flask of Kool-Aid from his trouser pocket. "Did she seriously just sprint across the highway with those injuries?" he asked, and swigged his drink. "I'm no son of Apollo, but she's limping, and there's a shallow slash across her side, and she's bleeding and bruised in some places."
"Adrenaline rush, probably," Jason commented.
"Or sheer stupidity."
"Or she's fully aware that the only way to get to camp is to cross the highway, and she's sucking it up."
"Clearly trained by Lupa," Dakota added.
They paused as their own adrenaline left them, and turned to stare where the monster had just been. Jason knelt and gingerly brushed his hand through the blades of grass. Gold dust blew up into the wind.
"Damn," Jason mumbled under his breath. "We did that."
He swallowed thickly and stood up. A few more moments passed before Dakota turned around to face the blond, a silly, infectious grin plastered on his face. "You killed your first monster!" he whooped, and high fived him.
That was the effect of not-quite-but-very-almost dying.
Slowly, a large awkward smile spread across Jason's face as well, like, yeah, that was us. He turned to face the highway, still grinning. "I'll see you on the other side," he told the son of Bacchus, and set off in a dead sprint.