Chapter 1 – It Was All Wrong

Author's Note: I don't own any of the materials created by Rick Riordan, and the following works are for entertainment purposes only.

"Something is very, VERY, wrong, Perseus." A tall, slender, caucasian man in a slim navy suit had announced quietly as he walked up behind the only other person in the narrow corridor of the would be derelict building they'd found themselves in.

Night had already fallen upon them, seemingly without mercy as the last traces of light had already left them behind before they'd decided to venture forth into what had looked like a hotel from the outside of the building, but inside it was anything but.

The man that had been called Perseus had slowly held two fingers up over his shoulder to silence the man in the suit. Perseus was crouched down, blending in with the shadows due to his extremely dark clothes of leather that hugged his body perfectly. He peered round the corner of the hallway, inspecting everything in the darkness through eyes of the brightest emerald green that people could fathom, they truly were eyes from the depths of the oceans themselves.

After a few more seconds had passed, it seemed that Perseus was somewhat happy that they weren't about to be ambushed by anything. "You need to work on the whole 'sneaking around' thing that we have to do. I appreciate that you've managed to tone down your physical appearance from a fiery Titan to that of a suave business man but I swear to all that I know; your footsteps could echo in the vacuum of space, Kronos!" Perseus complained in a vastly hushed shout that gave Kronos nothing other than a mildly childish grin.

Their lives had been intertwined in a twist of fate than not even the Fates themselves had seen approaching, and now the two of them were the only people that each other could rely on in a world that had been flipped upside down on them. The Hero of Olympus and the Titan Lord who had once sought to destroy it, now both the agents of a power beyond all comprehension, fighting against another power of equal measure that had instead turned their world around.

"If Apollo was in this building I think we'd know about it." Kronos muttered casually. He'd not been quite as invested in the 'sneaking' part of their role as Perseus was, in fact he hardly ever went along with it, far preferring to exercise his more destructive capabilities that had been gifted to him through their patron. Perseus too was given powers beyond his imagination when he and Kronos had been chosen to represent their Lady in the fight against whatever it was that had turned all of the Gods against them, and it was even fair to say that Perseus was the stronger of the two, it was just a rare case that he would ever use anything near his full power as the former Demi-god was far more reserved than the Titan Lord.

"Yeah, well it's not Apollo that I'm worried about, Kronos." Perseus answered quietly before moving from his perch at the corner of the dark hallway. Kronos followed without question, however, he was following Perseus with his hands in his pockets, looking around at the corroded hallway with a minimal interest, whereas Perseus was almost crouched and making no sound as he pushed forwards. Something that was heavily redundant when Kronos was making no attempts at hiding his presence.

The Titan Lord believed that they were the only ones in the building but Perseus believed different and the former Demi-god always seemed to have an irritating knack of being right about these kinds of things, not that anything they'd find in the building would pose much threat to either of them, especially when they were together.

"Why do you insist on still calling me Kronos? I thought we threw away the names of our past lives when we became a part of Sanctuary?" Kronos asked with mild irritation. He'd not needed much thought in deciding his only name when the two of them had awoken in a different plane of existence among others that were chosen just like they were. He'd simply opted for being named Titan, whereas Perseus was yet to find a new name. He struggled with the concept of throwing away everything about his old life, especially when they would be required to return to their world to achieve certain mission tasks that were sometimes required of them.

"Because that's your name, it's going to take me a little longer to adjust to simply calling you Titan. Plus, that's dumb, you're dumb, this is all dumb and I just want to finish this mission and get back to-"

"Someone has just arrived, no, two, four, ten, twenty-two, lots, there are lots of immortals that have just arrived." Kronos told him casually.

"Well, that's good news and bad news." Perseus admitted before standing up and locating the closest window so that he could try to gauge what was going on.

"Please do explain how that's either of those things." Kronos opted with boredom. Within the space of a few seconds, he'd managed to summon a grand golden staff, without much care for gathering any armor as he didn't believe that he'd need it.

"Well, if there's that many of them all arriving at once then it means that you were right and this place is totally empty save for us, BUT... If there's THAT many of them all arriving at once then it also means that it's Artemis and her Hunters, think that just the two of us can take all of them?" Perseus raised an eyebrow with a grin. This new life of theirs had its pros and cons, being able to exercise the rage of the seas that lived within his veins was definitely one of the pros, however, it also meant that he had to fight exceptionally tough opponents and Artemis? Well... She was Artemis.

"What a stupid question, of course we can." Kronos answered him incredulously, raising an eyebrow. A few seconds had passed before Kronos realized that he was missing part of the question, "Oh, the Goddess is with them as well? Of course she's with them, now who's being a twat? Though, that being said, I still think that we can take them all down a peg or two with relative ease." Kronos shrugged with a façade of indifference playing across his features. Perseus knew Kronos better than that after the few years that they'd spent fighting side by side.

"Fine, I'll let you handle Artemis while I take down the Hunters." Perseus answered, swiping his hands across the air in front of him, he was granted with waves of distortion that rippled around his fingers while he summoned his weapons, in one hand was Anaklusmos, his prized sword that he kept as a solid reminder of the life he'd left behind, and another sword of equal proportions to Riptide that he called Nyx. The swords were almost identical except the guard on Nyx was shaped towards the blade and the whole thing was black with a shimmer of dim light that reflected around the sharp edges of the sword.

"Ok, I take it back! You can have the Goddess, she has a special penchant of hatred for me, which is fair considering all that I've done, besides, I know for a fact that you'd rather fight the Goddess than the Hunters that you once loved as family." Kronos joined Perseus by the window, looking down to see the faintest trails of silver that were left behind from the places that the Hunters had been in the moments prior. Not even Gods and other immortals would have been able to see that but Kronos and Perseus were no longer in those categories.

"Don't kill them Kronos, you know that OUR orders are specifically non-lethal, that's why we have the powers that we have." Perseus warned him before bolting out of the empty room and back into the hallway. He'd let his almost unique power be felt by Artemis so that she would seek him out while Kronos dealt with the others. Perseus had been wondering on exactly how Kronos was going to fight all of the Hunters at once but right in the middle of his thoughts, he heard an explosion that rocked the building.

Kronos had blown away that particular side of the building in a five-meter circumference around the window he'd been standing at. After the dust and smoke had cleared, there he was standing in his impeccable suit with his golden staff in hand. The only thing that set him apart from a mortal was his smoldering red eyes that looked like perfect glass orbs of molten magma.

The Hunters were all at the foot of the hotel, glaring up at him. He let off a sigh, he hated these kinds of moments, "Let's be frank shall we? The other one has gone to the roof to extract the target, go bug him if you'd prefer." Kronos told Artemis before stepping out into the air and letting his body rocket towards the ground. At the last seconds, his body tensed and he slowed to a smooth halt just a few feet above the ground before dropping completely.

Artemis had already disappeared, leaving her Hunters behind to deal with Kronos. "Huh, didn't think she'd actually go for it, lucky me... Or unlucky Perseus? Not too sure." He muttered to himself before tearing his gaze away from the roof of the hotel. "So, who's first?" He asked completely neutrally. He hadn't managed to get through finishing his sentence before a jagged rock had firmly connected with the side of his face.

Artemis had been halfway up the building before she heard the first half of an extremely vulgar curse hurled at one of her Hunters. She was soon too far up the building to worry about the fight between Kronos and her Hunters. She'd been making such extreme progress with teaching them all new things that she was confident enough that they could at least keep the Titan pre-occupied long enough for her to deal with the real problem.

A flash of silver had struck to the side of the roof, signifying the archer's arrival. She stood in a perfect predatory stance with her bow drawn firmly towards the only other being on the roof of the grand hotel. She'd been expecting it to be some kind of weird trap but there he was, just standing there with his swords in his hands looking at her expectantly.

"What? Were you expecting some monstrously mutated-" Perseus was cut off by an arrow that whistled past his face, only an inch from taking one of his eyes out, "Oh, ok, guess we're skipping the foreplay." He smiled to himself before swiping both of his blades across the air when another arrow came shooting towards his brow. His strikes had split the arrow in two, sending both halves careening around his head. Artemis did a double take at that. She wasn't using her godly weapon and she'd heard from others that the boy they'd once known as a Saviour had become incredibly strong but she wouldn't ever have believed that he'd be capable of striking her arrows down with minimal effort.

She never once let her eyes away from his while she reluctantly put her bow away and instead pulled out two knives. "Or maybe we're not skipping the foreplay." Perseus grinned like an animal. The moon Goddess, now that was someone that Perseus had always known would give him a great fight, even when he was just a Demi-god, he'd always thought that fighting against the legendary Lady Artemis would have been an epic battle. He wasn't happy that his life had been twisted and morphed in such a way that she was genuinely seeing him as an enemy but if that WAS to be the case, then at least he could seize the opportunity that he'd been craving for years.

"It's almost a turn off when you don't say anything and just try to stab me." Perseus quipped casually, sidestepping swipes from Artemis' blades as they seemed to dance around one another's strikes, though Perseus was hardly even trying, he couldn't exactly return to Sanctuary with his head held high if he ended up killing Artemis, or, putting her out of commission at the very least, especially when himself and Kronos were given orders that specifically called for a non-lethal mission execution.

"That's actually what my ex did when you all went crazy and decided that I was number one on your to-kill list." Perseus looked bored with the fight by this point, he'd expected something more, something where he could really fight her back. He knew that if he posed a bigger threat, then Artemis would fight him harder, she'd truly go in for the kill, not just test the waters like she was clearly doing.

A single crow flew overhead, catching Perseus' attention. "Guess that's my cue, huh? Man, I hate these distraction missions." He almost yawned after back-stepping away from Artemis. The Goddess had heard what he'd mumbled under his breath.

"Yep, sorry little Goddess but we are in fact just a distraction force." Kronos announced, stepping up casually with a few tears and scuffs on his suit but otherwise fine. "Your Hunters are all unconscious yet totally unharmed, you're welcome. Perseus, let's go." Kronos seemed to be issuing an order, not that Artemis could particularly tell who was in charge between the two of them. They seemed to operate on the same level as one another. The Titan Lord gently let his staff hit the ground, forcing a large circular formation of ripples start to form from the very air itself. It swirled clockwise with purple and black vapors but beyond that Artemis could not see through it.

Within an instant Kronos had disappeared, not THROUGH the circle that he'd summoned but it seemed that after bringing it into existence, it seemed to have actively snatched the Titan Lord. Artemis' eyes darted back to her initial prey.

"Sorry Goddess, I guess this is the day that you almost caught Perseus J-" He was cut off by a gunshot that cleared the skies with its unexpected bang. His eyes stopped in complete surprise when he saw that Artemis was holding a black and silver pistol in her hands, the end of which was smoking from the velocity of the bullet. Following the trail of smoke, Perseus saw that the bullet itself had been firmly planted in the meat of his right thigh, a bit too close to his genitals for ANY comfort.

He couldn't believe it. Mostly he couldn't believe that she was using a gun, but he also couldn't believe that she'd shot him. "You shot me..." He stated in confusion, gingerly touching the wound that was already covered in a thin layer of congealed red blood, "You ACTUALLY shot me..." He muttered.

"Ow, that really fucking hurt, who uses a gun in our world?" He asked her in a tone of serenity that completely betrayed his words expressing a pain that she didn't believe he really had. He was way too calm to be feeling anything from her attack. She'd long suspected that he was something other than simply a Demi-god, past any boastings that she may have heard about, so she wanted to test that for herself if she ever came face to face with the Saviour that was now their most wanted enemy.

Artemis had even gone out of her way to owe Hephaestus favor in return for a gun that was capable of shelling out a bullet strong enough to pierce the skin of Gods. "I am so perplexed by this... And a little bit pissed off actually... Ow." Perseus muttered, looking at Artemis with eyes of complete betrayal before his body had disappeared in the same way Kronos' had, and the rift in the air had closed, leaving Artemis alone with thirty plus unconscious Hunters and a horrible gut feeling that when she returned to Olympus she was going to be in for a hell of a time.

With a heavy sigh, she returned to the edge of the hotel to see whether or not Kronos had been lying. Looking down she could see all of her Hunters all perfectly aligned with one another, their bodies while unconscious were still alive just as he'd told her. Their 'alignment' though, was crafted to spell out the word 'bitch' that was all too clear from the top of the hotel.

"That Titan will forever be an asshole. It's no surprise that he's helping the enemy, but Perseus?" Artemis mused to herself, she could feel that something wasn't right with any of it. The son of Poseidon had fought so hard to protect Olympus against Kronos so why would he so suddenly turn around and be working with the same Titan Lord that he had convincingly beaten?

"Why are they both so set on operating non-lethally? That's not how villains operate, especially Kronos." Artemis whispered, pondering what was going on.

"I've told you this once before, but there's more to this than even I can see. Try to approach the coming years with an open mind as not all will be immediately clear." Artemis heard the unmistakable voice of her twin brother as the golden archer came and sat down on the edge of the building next to her.

He'd seemed so sombre and serious in his opening statement but after no more than a few seconds he'd managed to crack into a childish grin, "Did they do that? Ha, legends." Apollo laughed at the crude alignment that Kronos had left the sleeping Hunters in. Artemis said nothing but continued to ponder Apollo's vague statement. He knew something that he wasn't letting on, however even he had his orders from Zeus to strike down the Demi-god that had betrayed Olympus.

Artemis wondered where they'd been going to and coming from, what the Hades was 'Sanctuary'? Her gaze fell upon the dim rays of the moon's light. If they were anywhere around the world then she'd be able to find them but this far into their continuous battles she'd had no luck. She really was beginning to convince herself that they weren't a part of their world anymore.

She knew that she'd end up encountering them again and next time she was going to capture Perseus and force him to explain to her exactly what was going on. The main thing that was on her mind, and the one word that she'd wanted to say to him the entire time had merely been; why?

Author's Note: Yo, what's happenin'? A new project of mine on this side account of mine, let's see how many of you like it, don't forget to review, favourite and follow, or whatever it is that you guys do. A review would be greatly appreciated though, peace out!