I know, I suck! I am starting a new story when I have others to work on! But, this plunny would not leave me alone.I will be using content of the books, but I am going to modify it to fit my story. Also, I will be adding new content and dialogue.
Fun fact: Cat urine glows under a black light. I learned that the fun way! yay for having pets! (Sarcasm mode activated)
Disclaimer: I do not own PJO and other Riordan works the onlything I own is my own ideas and characters.
...~...
Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood. I never asked my twin his opinion on being one, though. He never shared, either.
If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is:
close this book right now. Believe what ever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.
Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.
If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened. But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us.
And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
My name is Percy Jackson. My twin brother is named Elias, and this, is our story:
...~...
I should start from the beginning, which is when I first noticed that something was different with my brother and I. When people think of twins they think of two separate people, and in most cases they would be correct. Not Elias and I. We share a body. I first noticed that something was wrong with our situation when we were three (Or so Elias says) I saw other sets of twins and had met a few at preschool. I had always known that I had someone else in my body with me, but I was the only one who knew he was there. so I had asked my mother, Sally Jackson, about it the best way I could. Neither one of us really remember how I had asked Why I was the only one who shared a body with my twin, who, at that point in time had no name.
We just know that, from that point on, We were twins and mom had given him a name. Elias Skye Jackson.
...~...
We are twelve years old and, until a few months ago, we were attending Yancy Academy. Yancy is a Boarding School for troubled kids in upstate New York.
Am I a troubled kid? Yes. Is Elias? Not on your life. Between the two of us, he is the more mature and level headed one. He is usually trying to stop me from getting into trouble. I could start at any point in our short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids, one unknown relatively sane invisible student, and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.
I know—it sounds like torture, but Elias was excited. I tried to get excited too, for his sake. He was always the more studious of us and was the reason I never dropped below a C-. I know, it's kind of cheating, but, it's his grade, too. , our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had to try and be good. Elias loved Mr. Brunner. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep, thus forcing Elias to the forefront. Which could be bad.
Elias and I are nearly identical in looks, except, He needs glasses and his eyes are this opaque sea green that just absorb the light, almost. It's kind of frightening, the way his eyes look. It's like they can see everything about you, while it's almost impossible to read him. He keeps our head down when he is in control, so no one notices. He also just quietly puts on 'our reading glasses' (Which are actually his prescription glasses for his near sightedness). He rarely takes control.
I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get us in trouble. Boy, was I wrong. See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at our fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got us expelled anyway. And before that, at our fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that... Well, you get the idea. This trip, I was determined to be good.
All the way into the city, we put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting our best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich. Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria. Elias always found that hilarious, for some reason. He adored Grover and wished he could talk with him, but since mom told us not to let anyone know about Elias, he couldn't say anything to our friend.
Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me, and by extension, Elias with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.
"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled. Elias stirred from his short nap in his part of our mind, feeling my anger. I allowed him to scan my memories of the past hour.
Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."
"Listen to him, brother. She's not worth it." Elias urged me, trying to calm me by sending waves of calm through our shared headspace. Grover dodged another piece of sandwich.
"That's it." I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat. "Percy, please!" Elias begged.
"You're already on probation," Grover reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get Elias and myself into.
Mr. Brunner led the museum rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery. It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years. Elias just was happy to be learning as I let him unscramble the letters of the words that made up the fact plaques. He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting. Elias was getting annoyed as well, but everybody around us was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.
Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown. From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get us after-school detention for a month. One time, after she'd made us erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight (Elias switched with me at around 9 pm), I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at us, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."
Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art. Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"It came out louder than I meant it to. The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story. "Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?" Our face was totally red. I said, "No, sir." Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"
I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it,, as did my twin. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?" I asked/stated
"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied.
"And he did this because ..."
"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god, and—"
"God?" Elias asked me teasingly.
"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.
"I think like our teacher!" my brother snorted drily.
"Titan," I corrected myself. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"
"That's gross" Elias pointed out unhelpfully.
"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.
"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."
"You, my dear brother, just summed up years of fighting, in a few short sentences." Elias said through his laughter.
Some snickers from the group.
Behind us, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids."
"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"
"Busted," Grover muttered.
"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.
"Attractive." Elias snorted.
At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears. I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."
"Neither do I, Percy. Sorry, brother." My twin told me, unhappy that he couldn't be of help.
"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?" He asked our math teacher.
The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses. Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson." I knew that was coming. I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?" Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything. "You must learn the answer to my question." Mr. Brunner told me.
"About the Titans?" I asked.
"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."
"Oh." Elias was silent as he thought about Brunner's words
"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson." I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard. Elias enjoyed the challenge, though. I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. Elias really shone through those times as he worked double time to try and give me the correct answers. But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C— in my life without Elias helping me. No—he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly without having my twin take over, and even then, he had the same issues that I did, just les severe.
I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.
"He seems sad." Elias said softly, wishing he could say something to help.
He told me to go outside and eat my lunch. The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth , a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas. Elias was skeptical, for some reason. He had a bad feeling about the sporadic weather.
We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in. Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing. Grover and us sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere. "Detention?" Grover asked."Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius." 'Elias is closer to being a genius than I am' I thought to myself, keeping that thought away from my twin.
Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"
"Oh, Grover, never change" my brother snickered from within our mind.
We didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it. I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about our mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. Elias and I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug us and be glad to see us, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send us right back to Yancy, remind us (mainly me) that we had to try harder, even if this was our sixth school in six years and I was probably going to get us kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me. Neither would my brother.
Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table. I was about to unwrap our sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of us with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.
"Oops." She grinned at us with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos. I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears, drowning Elias' attempt to calm me. I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"
Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.
"Crap." Elias said flatly.
Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"
"—the water—"
"—like it grabbed her—"
I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that we were in trouble soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"
"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."
'That wasn't the right thing to say.' I thought to my twin.
"No kidding," Elias quipped back.
"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.
"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I pushed her."
I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.
"You are a brave boy, Grover. Thank you" Elias told him, not that he heard my brother. The sentiment was there, though.
She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.
"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.
"But—" Grover tried to speak
"You—will—stay—here." Mrs. Dodds ground out.
Grover looked at us desperately.
"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."
"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "Now."
Nancy Bobofit smirked.
I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare. It was different from Elias' 'I-will-destroy-your-soul' stare
Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.
'How'd she get there so fast?' I asked my invisible twin.
"I have no idea." He told me, mentally shrugging.
We have moments like that a lot, when our brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know we've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left us staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, ur brain misinterpreting things.
Elias I weren't so sure about that.
I went after Mrs. Dodds. Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.
I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall. 'Okay', I thought. S'he's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.' Elias snorted.
"Or try to kill you." He joked
I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section. Except for us, the gallery was empty. Elias sent me his uneasy feeling. Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.
"Even for her, that is not normal..." my twin trailed off
Even without the noise and Elias' unease, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...
"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.
I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."
She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"
"Get away with what?" my invisible brother asked me.
The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil. 'She's a teacher', I thought nervously. 'It's not like she's going to hurt us.' I tried to reassure the both of us. Elias stayed silent.
I said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."
Thunder shook the building. "We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain." Elias and I didn't know what she was talking about. All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of our dorm room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book. (Elias had been mad at me the week the report was due so he made me do it myself. He was still miffed that I didn't actually do it)
"Well?" she demanded.
"Ma'am, I don't..." I tried to say.
"Your time is up," she hissed.
Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice us to ribbons.
"WHAT IN THE ACTUAL HELL?" Elias screamed, making me wince at the volume. (I somehow heard Elias in both of our shared headspace and as an outside sound. Meaning I heard him mentally and audibly through our ears.)
Then things got even stranger.
Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand. "What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.
Mrs. Dodds lunged at us.
With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to our ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit our hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day. Mrs. Dodds spun toward us with a murderous look in her eyes. Our knees were jelly and our hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.
She snarled, "Die, honey!"
And she flew straight at us.
Absolute terror ran through our shared body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.
The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!
Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching us.
We were alone.
There was a ballpoint pen in our hand.
Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but us.
And then Elias checked out to his part of our mindscape, done.
Our hands were still trembling. Our lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.
Had we imagined the whole thing?
I went back outside.
It had started to rain.
Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."
I said, "Who?"
"Our teacher. Duh!"
I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.
She just rolled her eyes and turned away.
I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.
He said, "Who?"
But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.
"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."
Thunder boomed overhead.
I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.
I went over to him.
He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."
I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.
"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"
He stared at me blankly. "Who?"
"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."
He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"
I wished I could follow Elias into oblivion.
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That's it for chapter one! I hope you enjoyed this. Please comment and favorite~
Fan art gets people goodies! I would love to see Eli and Percy together!
TTFN!