The clack of the keyboard echoes around him as he sits calmly in the soft-backed chair of the study. The steady glow from the computer screen illuminates his face, the reflection of blue light punctuating his eyes in the otherwise unhealthily dim room.
He has been waiting for this moment for a while now.
He is always waiting for this moment.
He finds himself in a perpetual state of waiting; of anticipation; of next-ness.
He opens a new internet window, pulling the page across the screen until it sits cleanly beside the new and beautifully blank document he has prepared, the word "Untitled" sitting promisingly across the gray-scaled top.
He cracks his knuckles, rolls back his shoulders, takes a few deep breaths in preparation like some Olympian.
Ha ha. Like some Olympian.
He places his fingertips back on the keys, letting his hands rest comfortably across the board, fingering the little lettered blocks in this last tiny moment of anticipation.
He is ready.
It takes only three letters for the browser to identify the website and only another few seconds for the blue header and minimalistic design to load.
He logs in, his nondescript username appearing in an appropriate shade of orange in the top-right hand corner.
Books, he clicks, moving the little mouse across the screen and double tapping as is habit. P - for Percy, of course. He scrolls down the page, finding the name of the fearless demigod, a small and very impressive 66.5K written in parentheses beside it. A small jolt of pride runs through him as he scans the rest of the page, the only other P titles coming close to that number of stories being Phantom of the Opera and Peter Pan.
Not too shabby, he thinks as he double clicks again and opens up the first of the 2,342 pages of fictions, all of which vary drastically in length, content, and style; all of which will provide nicely for his purposes.
He smiles giddily and begins to click through, nodding thoughtfully at each carefully detailed description and making a mental note of which might fit the bill best. It's like shopping for a new couch, he had decided. There are elements of all that could do the job, but there will always be some that are more comfortable than others.
Now the moment had come to find those most comfortable ideas amidst the many nuances and redundancies of the collective.
Now was the moment to decide if he wanted to throw some major plot twist at his readers or if he wanted to keep it simple until the end.
He could always cliff-hang them, after all. Again.
There was always that.
Let's see, no, I don't think I can make them go to Hogwarts. Not yet anyway. We'd have to have a chat with Jo about that one.
As a rule, he made sure to keep crossovers out of the equation. Consequently, it made his search much easier, narrowing down the candidates to only those truest to the originals. Likewise, he often found himself shying away from the rare political and governmental writing he sometimes stumbled across. There was just something about Annabeth Chase working undercover for the CIA that threw him.
He reads through countless disclaimers clarifying that GallifreyanDragonrider81 is not the originator of the PJO universe and that greendragonnogard13 is sorry for messing so much with the original timeline ( "just bear with me here, i'll clarify as i go. OH AND DON'T FORGET TO FAV/REVIEW! (; " ).
Bolded, underlined, and italicized text passes across his vision in a blur, phrases like UNCLE RICK and first Fanfiction ever catching his eye and making him pause for a moment before moving on to the next.
He loves the first-timers. There's nothing like trying your hand at something new to really get into it. And then there are the veterans, of course. Those loyal die-hard Fanfic-ers who have more than a few stories under their belt and seem to live off the life-force of their followers.
He makes an effort to read the reviews, intrigued when he sees those that praise the author for his or her on-point Rick Riordan impersonation (one claims the author must be the actual Rick and asks why he's hiding his identity from his readers) and perfect character portrayal. It's interesting when he finds such consensus as to what Leo Valdez is actually thinking and how Percy Jackson's step-father would react to learning about the whole Yeah, I'm actually a demigod thing.
Oh, so that's what happens to Leo and Calypso- I don't think I can be that cruel though…I'm not sure I have the heart…oh good. At least tears are shed by the others. It's not completely heartless.
He finds winky-faces and all-caps sentences galore, some declaring that this fanfic has been ABANDONED and some that I WILL NOT UPDATE UNTIL I GET AT LEAST 3 REVIEWS.
The fascination with 3 is real, ladies and gentlemen.
Fanart jumps across the page, digital and hand drawn images of main characters, some more relevant than others to the actual text, all amazingly consistent in their portrayal of the fictitious ( I apologize - mythical ) beings.
He jots down little notes here and there, melding ideas together and stealing a line or two from some prophecies along the way. Some are better than others he has to admit, but there is still potential for the rest. The ideas may be there though the delivery is lacking. Yes, this is what makes his job so much easier, and it guarantees his readers will get exactly what they want (and have come to expect) from him. After all, it's all of their stories - he's simply doing them the courtesy of sticking them together and making them look a little different.
He clicks through a few more, more than satisfied for now with today's idea-collection.
One last paragraph catches his attention just before he clicks out, however, and he lingers on the page a moment longer to read it through.
"Dear Rick : You are legitimately the Apple of the book world. We know you have the books written already and intentionally wait to release them to keep us hooked. Well, I'm here to tell you it's working. Love : a very overzealous demigod."
He chuckles to himself and hits the Review link at the bottom of OrangeandBlueForever3's story, happy to throw a little more fuel on the fire.
"Dear very overzealous demigod : How many books does it take to get to the center of the PJO universe? The world may never know. Love : RR."
Adding a winky-face for good measure and nodding in satisfaction, he scrolls back to the top of the page and logs out, watching the appropriately orange and nondescript username disappear as the page reloads.
All in a day's work, he thinks as he quits out of the browser and pushes back from the desk. Looking back at the list he's managed to collect, maybe his next installment will be ready way ahead of schedule, just like OrangeandBlueForever3 predicted would happen. Oh well, that's a worry for another day. First he had to figure out how cruel he would be willing to be- something about that Global Flooding idea seemed particularly interesting- but for now, SeniorScribeinOrange had enough. Wasn't it all just a waiting game, after all?
All in a day's work.