Hello, been busy.
For anyone who has continued to follow me, I appreciate it more than you can imagine. And I hope that this hiatus hasn't been too much. Both real life and participation in the PJOBigBang writing on tumblr got me busy with other things, but will update my other stories soon.
In the meantime, I'm reposting the story I posted on tumblr. Though there I posted it as "Waiting On Blue Skies". Anyway, enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own "Percy Jackson the Olympians".
Prologue
When it started mortals were desperate to explain away all of the disasters and disappearances rationally, like proving the tragedies were ordinary facts of life would undo all the turmoil. Mostly they were too afraid to admit the world was ending.
No, that wasn't true at all. There were enough doomsday preppers and conspiracy theorists in North America alone to have a sizable consensus that the world was over-do for a little Apocalypse. People like the sanctimonious religious fanatics who believed that gay people were bringing on the end of days, or far-right racists who were itching for the inevitable race war, or the insanely liberal commune grassroots who believed that government was cooking up super-AIDS distributed in teeth-whitener to wipe out minorities.
Yes plenty of people expected, hoped for, or dreaded that the end of the world was coming soon and very soon but they wanted to have their Apocalypse. Those that made peace with the world ending, they at least wanted to have their ending. People preferred to be in control, and what better control was there than to have guessed right about the ending?
Mortals had been in control for too long, or at least thought they had been. That was a hard thing to give up. A lot of people were wrong about the end. That was one of the worst hurts, one of many. The new reign was measured in sadism after all, the new king of heaven and earth was compulsive when it came to cruel for cruelty's sake.
He was not big on patience though, and mortals with all their insistences that life was going to move on like normal? That was probably what caused some of the more spectacular displays of wanton cruelty and violence.
First was with the explosions in New York, leveling most buildings taller than the Empire State Building. News reports blamed terrorists almost immediately, but couldn't agree on Islamic radicals or anarchists or one lone wolf who was especially outgoing and well supplied. At least one station blamed South Korea, thinking of North Korea, so they held the distinction of being three kinds of wrong.
Second was the swath of destruction that cut through the American heartland up to the East Coast. Even with the reports of people seeing what looked like a volcano with fiery faces on a pair of elephantine legs thundering through, the overwhelming majority decided quite firmly that it was a freak hurricane. When it was pointed out that hurricanes needed to start over a large body of water, the story changed to freak tornado. Or the diehard hurricane fans stuck with the hurricane theory and decided it must've just been especially freaky.
Third got people a little more concerned, since it was so much harder to explain. Attacks and disasters were terrible facts of life, but teenagers in old armor with swords and spears weren't supposed to be getting into fights with the police. They certainly weren't supposed to win, handedly. One by one, sources were discredited; shaky cell phone videos are labeled hoaxes, footage from police body-cams clearly show gang violence with theatrical leanings, nothing more. 'Must be it's all for a movie' they thought, even if the tone and genre was hard to pin down from the released 'teasers'. No one took these bizarre invaders seriously, not until the national guard got involved across the country, and by then it was too late.
Fourth and most horrid so far were the rash of odd birth-defects. Most common were smallish nubs that were unmistakably the start of horns, followed closely by a mix of reptilian features. Serpentine legs, extra arms, extra eyes, not enough eyes, scales, patches of fur, rows of teeth where there should've just been newborn gums, all sorts of frightful discoloration, and massive size or sometimes even a litter of terrifyingly alien newborns were all recorded. All records had increasingly thin excuses; extreme fetal alcohol syndrome, radiation from water polluted by fracking, some written off as delusions from distraught parents. Eventually the records ceased to exist. Incidents like a giant, many-armed humanoid wailing like an infant and tearing apart an EMT. Then a clinic getting burnt to the ground by a fire that had the malicious presence of mind to block the exit doors were lumped in with other suspecting terrorist activity.
And by this time the amusement at humanity's insistent continued normalcy gave way to irritation. The Olympians were satisfied with a masquerade but the new leadership was from an older race that was even more egotistical. Nothing would satisfy them except for fearful, unmistakable, absolute worship.
Fifth and final sign? What would be labeled 'The Mist' was torn asunder and truth revealed. Monsters were real and they owned America.
Slight correction; literal monsters were real and they owned America.
When the initial shock died down, some of the world had laughed and applauded at the proof that America, the once global superpower, was revealed to be as godless and full of devils as accused. There were others who declared this a mass hysteria, a sign of corrupt capitalist failure as opposed to their own stable regimes.
More support for the so called Titans came about with the withdrawal of American foreign troops to try to bolster the outmatched National Guard. That didn't last much longer. Any bemusement or schadenfreude died when all trade did. First nothing was imported, nothing was exported, and then all communication ceased. Satellite images showed just shadow, and global trade was crippled overnight.
Then there was the unofficial sixth sign, a prolonged and unnatural darkness that crept out from across North American borders and spread to the rest of the world. But really, that was more of The Mist being brought down. The rest of the physical realm was taking cue from the Titan's example. All manner of monsters waiting in every country and continent were seizing their chances to strike at humans during this chaos, reestablish the old ways while human leadership was lost to depression and terror.
All over the world the digital technology that kept a web of connectivity failed. Various diseases thought to have died out made a comeback with mass casualties. Human children were taken and replaced with things, changelings or worse. And missing adults were sometimes found piece by piece or not at all. Neighbor turned against neighbor in panic and hunger, when the famine hit hard. Monsters reigned supreme at night and mankind was forbidden from locking doors unless they wished to be seen as offering a challenge. Cruel new gods, overlords for the Titan regime, could be seen racing across the daylight skies, since turned overcast and grey like a storm would be forever brewing. Since seizing back the heavens, they further punished mortals and mythological creatures by denying them the stars, or even so much as a clear blue sunny day. This could continue on for centuries, for Titans could hold titanic grudges.
All hail Kronos, reaffirmed King of All.