So this is my first story for PJO. Had this idea for a while now, not that any of you care how long I've had it.
One thing really surprises me about PJO fanfics. (More than one, but I'll not bother with a 2000word rant). Why is it people always only use the Olympians? I mean, come on, there are hundreds and thousands of Greek deities, why must one always restrict oneself to the twelve. Ten, actually, but that doesn't stop people from using the other two.
Also, I'm not US-born, or a US citizen, so forgive any geographical errors I may make. I'll try not to, but you know, it can happen.
And one last thing: the main story of this is set about 17years after Blood of Olympus. I can see the cynics thinking: "Oh, another next gen fic." Yeah, kinda, but not entirely.
And without further ado, onwards.
Obligatory Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians or Heroes of Olympus any more than Tartarus owns Percy and Annabeth.
*~B~*
Prologue: The Times Are Changing
USELESS MAGGOTS!
Tartarus' enraged voice saturated the air. Monsters cowed in fear. Many flying monsters were pointlessly sucked into his vortex of a head. The ground shook violently, a testament to his fury.
The Maeonian drakon's corpse lay in front of Bob and Damasen, acting as a makeshift barricade against most monsters. Small Bob stood beside Bob, bones cracked and tailbone missing.
The Doors of Death vanished into nonexistence as Bob lifted his finger from the button. No matter what happened to them now, at least Percy and Annabeth could go on to defeat Gaea.
Bob didn't doubt it. There was no reason for them not to be able to defeat Gaea. He was completely confident that they would find a way. After all, they always did.
WHAT ARE YOU ALL STANDING AROUND FOR? Tartarus roared again. FIND YOUR WAYS OUT! WHATEVER CRACK OR CREVICE YOU USED TO REACH THE MORTAL REALM BEFORE, he continued, moving towards Bob and Damasen, GO THROUGH THOSE AND ERADICATE THE DEMIGODS!
"Well, we've bought them time," Damasen said, positioning his lance. "What now?"
"What choice is left?" Bob replied. "We go down fighting."
Small Bob growled in agreement. A giant hand grabbed the drakon's corpse and flung it far away.
You two, Tartarus said. You two shall be awarded a special kind of suffering.
"Do your worst, Father. It won't be enough," Damasen taunted.
Oh, I will do better than my worst. I won't just merely destroy you. I will raze you to the ground over and over again, and have you regenerate the fastest in my realm. I will bring you back time and time again just to keep – AAARGH!
Small Bob evidently had tired of Tartarus' speech and decided to skip to the biting.
YOU – WILL – KNOW – AGONY!
"Let's go," Damasen said, preparing to launch into one last desperate assault. Bob – no, Iapetus the Impaler – held up his broom, spear-point jutting out. As last stands went, it wouldn't be the worst.
The little light that existed in the depths of Tartarus – the place – suddenly dimmed. The raucous chaos of monsters leaving the scene to find an exit suddenly stopped. Even Tartarus – the being – paused. Bob watched as he turned away from him and Damasen and instead faced something to their far left.
You? What are you doing out of your hole?
*~B~*
[Two weeks later]
In a house somewhere in New York, Apollo materialized, and immediately stumbled against the wall for support, not out of physical weariness, but from dread of what lay in store for him.
"Where have you been?" a woman demanded. "You don't show up much anyway, but you left completely out of the blue months ago!"
Apollo turned his head towards her. "I'm not here with good news, though," he said.
"What the hell do you mean?"
He took a long shaking breath and answered, "I can't explain. You wouldn't understand. The important thing is I have to go now, likely permanently."
"No rhymes, no bad jokes?" the woman wondered aloud. "You don't sound good. But what do you mean you can't stay? In case you're blind, I'm pregnant! A god of medicine would be very helpful to have beside me right now."
"You're mistaking me for my son," Apollo replied, smiling wryly. "And in any case, it'd be my sister you need. But I can't stay."
"Why?" she demanded.
"I… I messed up. I messed up big time, and Dad isn't particularly pleased. It might be after a few centuries of pain that he'll forgive me."
"You're a god, aren't you? You're a god, and you're worried about pissing off your father? I need you here with me now!"
Thunder rumbled in the sky. Apollo grimaced. "He's noticed my absence. I'm really sorry, Claudia. But I need you to raise my child. I need you to raise her right. She has a trying future ahead of her."
"Sorry?" Claudia interjected. "What are you talking about?"
"I can see the future. Bits and pieces, and not very well. I have an Oracle for that. And in any case, the damned Python has shut down that power for now," Apollo continued, more to himself than her. "Before that happened, I saw a tiny glimpse of what is to come. And it is not good."
"And what does our child have anything to do with that?" Claudia demanded.
Thunder sounded again, but louder. Outside the window, the skies began to grow gray.
"Our child is destined to have a particularly difficult fate in the years to come. Claudia, I need you to promise me: raise her right, so that she can become what she has the potential to be: the greatest of all my demigod children."
"'Of all my demigod children'?" she repeated, incredulous. "Apollo, you're not making any sense! There is no way you can just dump our child on me alone and just run off!"
Lightning crackled. "I have to go," Apollo said. "Please, just do this for me. I'm sorry, but I have to go."
And with that, he vanished; almost at the instant he spoke the last syllable.
"Apollo! Damn you, Apollo, you cannot just leave me like this!" Claudia shouted at empty air, angry tears rolling down her cheeks. "Come back!"
*~B~*
[Three and a half years later]
Leo Valdez could not believe his luck.
Three years ago, he had the blessed fortune to crash-land onto the home of possibly the most beautiful girl in the universe and fallen for her. And then he found out that it became mutual.
Afterwards, he accomplished the impossible twice in quick succession. He died and came back, and in the process, managed to meet the girl a second time, a feat no one in history was allowed to accomplish, and brought her back with him.
He liked to think of it as flipping the bird at destiny. Calypso would obviously disagree, saying that it may have been his fate to break her free. Leo would counter by saying that putting it that way just wasn't romantic. She would laugh, as she did every time he made that argument, and it would be just a bit more worth it.
Now he wondered whether his child had inherited his ability of being awesome. Although, in this case, awesome could debatably double for being blessed with suck.
"… Leo?" Calypso spoke up in hushed tones, staring. "Isn't that supposed to be extremely rare?"
"And extremely dangerous," Leo replied. Anger began to bubble up slowly. He marched up a basin of water he kept near his workbench (in case anything caught on fire – which happened a lot) and threw a golden drachma into it.
"O Iris, goddess of the rainbow, accept my offering. Show the godly bottle-cap maker."
When the basin failed to respond, Leo gritted his teeth. "Fine. Show me Hephaestus at Olympus."
Normally, this wouldn't have worked. Gods tended to be incredibly busy and in a lot of places at once. This time, as if sensing the urgency or hearing Leo call him a godly bottle-cap maker, his father responded.
"Hrm, well this is a surprise," Hephaestus said. "Iris said I should probably answer this one. Well, what is it you youngsters say when starting a conv–"
"Fire is supposed to be a rare ability, right?"
Hephaestus paused, slightly annoyed at being cut off. "Well, yes, but–"
"It's an ability you don't give to most of your kids because it's too dangerous right?" Leo interrupted again, his voice rising. Hephaestus narrowed what was visible of his eyes. "Now see here, it is entirely possible for you to use a civil–"
"Then how do you explain this?!" Leo half-shouted, pointing behind him. The blacksmith god looked past him, and his eyes widened. "Ah. I see."
Sitting inside a wooden cradle, Leo's three-month old daughter rocked happily, playing with the tiny fireballs her small hands were generating. The flames had very little heat, not enough to set the wood on fire, but there was no doubt they would strengthen over time.
"Hephaestus," Calypso began in a respectful tone, "Is it possible that this happened due to her being my child?"
"It's a possibility, yes," Hephaestus replied after a moment's hesitation.
Calypso winced. "So it is my fault, then."
"What are the other possibilities?" Leo demanded.
"… Simply put, that the Fates decreed it so. Regardless, it shouldn't be anything to worry about if you raise her right. And I really must go: business to attend to."
Without another word, he cut the Iris-message.
"…Calypso, I'll be right back after I beat the crap out of those old hags," Leo stated, grabbing his tool belt.
"Leo, wait! He has a point; if we look after her there should be nothing to worry about!"
"That ability destroyed my childhood!" Leo retorted. "That ability … it killed my mom."
"That ability also defeated Gaia, and brought you to me. And in doing so, it made little Espie possible," Calypso replied in a soothing voice. "You don't have to worry."
Leo sighed, and put down his tool belt. "How'd it bring me to you?"
"Well," she began, putting a finger to her lips in thought, "if you didn't have your fire, Khione wouldn't have hated you so much, and thus she wouldn't have blasted you to Ogygia and you would never have met me."
Leo chuckled at that. "So you're saying I should thank Khione for playing matchmaker?"
Calypso smiled at that. "I suppose."
Leo looked around at the surroundings of Bunker Nine. "Some place to raise a baby in," he said sarcastically. "Next thing you know, she'll have built her first toy robot at age two."
"Provided we keep her out of here before then. If she has your instinct of poking around for trouble, she'll kill herself seventeen times over in here."
"Oh, come on. Seventeen, really?"
"Fine, nineteen."
Leo smiled. "Well, my dad was right about one thing, at least. We have to raise her right. And to raise her right, we have to raise her here, at Camp Half-Blood."
*~B~*
[Nine more years later]
The hidden shelter was invisible to all without the necessary memories.
Fortunately for Mnemosyne, she did have all the necessary memories. She had all the memories. And the time was near for what only she and a select few knew to be revealed to the rest of the world. Her crime would finally have its consequences.
Despite that, she was ready to face them. Not facing them meant not revealing the lost chapter of history. And not doing so meant the inevitable doom of the mortal world.
A door seemed to open in the air in front of her, as a man hurried out. "Who are you?" he asked.
"My name is Mnemosyne. The name, at least, you should know."
The man's eyes widened. "No… why now? Of all times in the world, why now?"
"It is as the Fates have woven," she responded.
"Can it be me? Tell me that it can be me instead of my child!"
She shook her head. "I'm sorry, but it will be your child's burden to bear."
"There're already too many burdens!" the man shouted. "That stick is no laughing matter! And now you're going to add … why can't it be me instead?"
Mnemosyne had no answer for that. She continued, "Your child will need to go to the Roman camp and learn quickly. And your ancestry cannot be revealed to them straightaway. Not yet."
The man bowed his head in defeat. "Am I allowed to tell–?"
"No. Not until the time is right."
[Fifteen years since the defeat of the giants]
Jesse was seriously considering manipulating the river and pinning down that mischievous hippocampus. Every few minutes it jumped out deliberately and randomly, catching him off guard and trying to drench him.
If his father wasn't the son of Poseidon, he would've had to change his clothes nine times in the past hour.
Make that ten times.
"Geez, Uncle Tyson, keep your ride under control," Jesse grumbled.
Uncle Tyson laughed loudly. "Rainbow likes you. He just wants to play. And you're Percy's son, water shouldn't bother you."
"It shouldn't bother me if I keep up a constant guard, which gets irritating. Especially because I can't keep focusing on that alone. ADHD, remember?"
Uncle Tyson simply grinned, his single eye twinkling. Jesse didn't think there was possibly anybody else who could claim to have a Cyclops for an uncle. He'd always be the only one who could say "How cool is that?" about it.
Of course, until Espie commented that having a Titaness for a mom was cooler. At which point the naiads and dryads would complain to Chiron to stop them trying to out-annoy each other with their powers.
Today, she was off with her parents at their workshop in the city. He, of course, remembered to mention how the dryads had breathed a collective sigh of relief at that. And he'd fallen in the river for his trouble. At which point Rainbow showed up.
And the day was going so good, too.
"You enjoy annoying others, but you can't stand it yourself, hm?" Tyson asked.
"Hey, don't make me out to be a hypocrite."
"But you are."
"I never denied it."
"'Hypocrite. Noun. A person who pretends to have virtues morals or beliefs, etc., that he or she does not possess, especially a person whose actions belie stated beliefs. Also: actor, faker and phony," a new voice said.
"And here comes the dictionary,"
"I am not a dictionary. I am a harpy."
"A harpy named Harpy."
"My name is Ella, not Harpy."
"Which is Latin for 'harpy.'"
"Also Germanic for 'all'. And nice to see you too."
Jesse smirked, turning to face the new arrival. "Well, you know me, Aunt All. I'm not one for regular greetings."
Ella feigned irritation – she was very good at that – and went to sit on Tyson's shoulder. "Where is Percy?"
"Mom and Dad are in the Big House, chatting with Aunt Rachel and Grover. It's funny how Mr. D still insists on them not entering each other's cabins even though they're more than 30."
Ella laughed her odd laugh, putting one arm around Tyson's head. "Tell them we're going out for a walk. Tell Percy not to wait for Tyson at dinner."
"Uh, I'm just curious, but where do a Cyclops and a harpy eat on their date night?"
"We find places," Ella said simply.
"Riiight."
"Bye!" Tyson said, before turning to leave. And then it happened.
All the air at the camp seemed to freeze. Movement stopped. Rainbow the hippocampus went underwater and Jesse saw his silhouette swimming away rapidly and randomly, as if he didn't know which way to go.
Jesse felt as if gravity had suddenly increased, pulling at his very bones. Suddenly, it was hard to breathe.
He saw Tyson and Ella become stiller than statues. The odd feeling continued. Now, it felt like gravity was not just pulling him down, but in every direction.
He saw Tyson's eyes widen in some sort of primal fear. He turned to Jesse and opened his mouth.
Before he could utter a word, a shockwave passed over the camp. A kind of wind that pushed and pulled from all around. Jesse stumbled, and looked back at Tyson –
Just in time to see golden monster dust erupt upwards.
For a few seconds, he simply stood and stared at the spot where they were standing. Then he ran at top speed towards the Big House.
"Dad! DAD!"
*~B~*
Aaaand cut.
Firstly, no, I didn't introduce every character I would be using already.
Secondly, in case anyone is making wild guesses, I'm planning to use authentic Greco-Roman gods. Difference is: as Mnemosyne mentioned about the "lost chapter" I'm going to be making a little something up for the purposes of this story.
You can think of this chapter as both a prologue and a trailer.
Lastly, yes, four of the mains are going to be the kids of the Seven. The MAIN protagonist though, well, next chapter.
That's it for now. Read and Review please.
Punitor567 out. El Psy Congroo.