Percy Jackson

Author's Note: I am publishing this story to test the waters for a longer book (it's actually more like a series of books) about the OC's in this two-shot. I will probably publish the books anyway but I'm curious as to how people will react to this idea. I haven't really seen anything similar to it (not trying to be cocky but it's true). Feel free to comment and suggest ideas. I feel pretty well set on some elements and am not really willing to change them. It's nothing against the audience, I'm just stubborn that way.

This story doesn't follow my books exactly but they are close. I tried not to modify the PJO or HOO series. First fanfic. This one is rated T for language, mainly but the books might be rated M for blood and gore and other jolly stuff like that.

I had just walked out from the Big House after a talk with Chiron. Apparently, he wants me to train with the camp's Strike Team. Since when did we get a Strike Team? Chiron had given me a description of the big, plywood building outside of the camp's borders which was where I was heading.

This was supposedly the summer that I decide the fate of Olympus and the world and Chiron thought that training with this Strike Team will prepare me for what is to come. He told me that these guys were the best of the best that the camp had to offer. They were all older campers and their leader is an ex-Marine. He told me that they fought using a lot different tactics than what we used during our training at camp and it would be good for me to know a few extra things.

I started to walk through the woods all by myself. Out of habit, I uncapped Riptide and watched the pen grow into a three foot bronze sword. Luckily, I didn't run into anything out of the ordinary on my trek.

I found the giant, sixty-foot square building out in the middle of the woods. I didn't know what to do when I got to the door so I knocked on it. About fifteen seconds later, the door swung open and a hand reached out from the darkness and pulled me into the room. I was thrown on the floor then then a boot was placed on my neck. Riptide skidded across the floor and my hands went around the guy's ankle. Whoever was standing on my neck could have easily weighed close to two-hundred, forty million pounds, or so it felt like it.

The lights turned on and I could tell who was suffocating me. It was a truck of a man in his early to mid twenties and wearing camouflage pants and a orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. The camouflage pattern was filled with pixels in lots of grays, dark blues and blacks. He had a hard plastic holster strapped to his right thigh. The holster was empty and the gun that used to be in it was pointed at my face. A 1911 with a black slide and silver frame with dark wood grips.

We weren't alone in the room, there was another guy in full combat gear standing near the man on my neck. He was roughly my height with buzzed black hair and gray eyes. He could have been a little older than me but he was still under the age of twenty. If he was a demigod, he could have been a son of Athena; he looked a lot like Annabeth only brunette rather than blond. His combat gear was not Greek at all, much more modern. He had a M4 of some kind in his hands and was pointing it at my chest.

On the platform in the corner of the room up in the air was somebody shorter and older than me. Wearing a similar kit to the guy with the M4 but he had a sniper rifle; semi-automatic. The guy was Asian in ethnicity but he still could have been a son of Apollo. He should have been seventeen years old.

Standing near the sniper on the platform was a girl, probably in her early twenties but could be mistaken for an eighteen year old. She was blond and tall. She had these clear blue eyes that sparkled even from across the room. There was no doubt in my mind that she was a daughter of Aphrodite. She wasn't wearing any combat gear but she was looking over the railing at me with one eyebrow raised.

"Can we help you?" asked the guy standing on my neck in a thick Cajun accent.

"You could step off my throat. That would be a good start," I replied but he still stood there for the time being. He did shift his weight though so that he wasn't totally crushing my windpipe.

"Wait. Is that Percy Jackson?" asked the guy with the M4, still aiming the rifle at my face.

"Looks like it," answered the sniper on the platform.

"Well, get off of him, Jon Luke," ordered the blond next to the sniper.

The guy standing on my neck, Jon Luke, put his foot on the ground but kept the pistol in his hand pointed at my nose.

I sat up easily on the floor, noticing the Welcome Home mat on the floor just inside the door. I didn't think I would be allowed to stand up just yet. Is this how they always treat people who walk in their front door?

"OK, look," I said, putting my hands up in surrender. "Chiron sent me here. Told me that you guys were in the Strike Team business and could show me a few things."

"We're in the ass-kicking business. And with you turning sixteen here pretty soon, that means that business is a boomin'," replied Jon Luke.

I couldn't help but chuckle a little bit. That was a good comeback.

"Chiron never told us you were coming," said the guy with the M4.

"All I'm supposed to do is train with you guys for a little while, maybe go on a mission or two. Just to see what war is really like," I tried to explain. "Perhaps learn a thing or two."

Jon Luke dropped his aim and holstered his 1911, the other guys followed his example. "On your feet."

I stood up slowly. Jon Luke walked over to my sword and kicked it back across the floor. It stopped right at my feet.

"If your going to roll with us, your gonna need that," he told me and I picked up Riptide. "The last time Chiron tried to add to our team, we ended up killing three fourths of the addition."

"The fourth left the country," said the guy with the M4 in a low voice.

"I told you, Brandon: there are lots of fish in the sea," said the sniper.

"And I told you, David, that I was fine with it," said Brandon.

"Sure," replied David sarcastically.

"So, when do we start?" I asked.

Jon Luke just smiled. "You're gonna love this."

We spent the next the two days training. A lot of it was running on the beach and throwing each other around as we practiced hand-to-hand combat. We ran carrying this big logs for a ways and occasionally blew something up. In other words, I absolutely hated it. Except exploding stuff, that was fun. I woke up sore every morning, not just from all the running but getting tossed around in the dirt. Jon Luke said it was to "toughen me up" but I wasn't buying it. I would prefer to spar with people in the sword fighting arena than run on the beach.

I figured that the Marine was Jon Luke. When I asked him if I was right, I used the term "ex-Marine" and he explained to me, very harshly, that there is no such thing as an ex-Marine; once a Marine, always a Marine. I learned that Jon Luke had a nickname: Big Luke. Probably since he was six-four and extremely buff. I also discovered the blond, Brittany, was not a part of the team at all. I wasn't sure what the history was with her but it was complicated.

They still didn't trust me with a gun but they did give me a bulletproof vest with the letters FIP on the chest and upper back. It was kind of like VIP but instead of meaning "Very Important Person" it stood for "Fairly Important Person" which didn't exactly make me feel like a part of the team. I hadn't bathed in the River Styx and gained Achilles' powers yet so the bulletproof armor would probably come in handy. I even got a call-sign: Young Buck since I was the youngest one in the room.

I wasn't really a part of the team, these guys had a bond that I didn't really have a part in. Obviously, these guys had some history that they didn't really care to share with me. It's not that they didn't respect me, I just didn't share that history. I had a team and a history of my own that I was a part of.

Tonight was my first operation with the Strike Team. We were in a meeting on the platform in the corner of the room. We stood around a table with a big map spread out over the entire thing. The Strike Team was all kitted up and their weapons hung off slings by their sides. Today, Big Luke was sporting a beat to Hades M16 as well as his 1911 on his right thigh. Normally, they would speed through this meeting in less than five minutes but since I was there, they ran through everything so I could get the gist of it. Big Luke talked relatively fast so I kind of zoned out for part of the lesson.

"That all make sense to you?" Big Luke asked me.

"Yeah," I responded. "Let's lock and load."

David and Brandon chuckled under their breath. Big Luke hung his head and shook it back and fourth, stifling a laugh himself.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," they all said in unison, trying not to bust a gut.

"Don't worry about it, Young Buck," Big Luke played it off. "Now, let's get this done."

We started walking down the stairs and eventually made our way to the trap door. I was never able to go down into it until tonight. We walked down the stairs and it looked like a version of the forges at camp, only much different. Tools were laying around and half completed projects were taking up floor space. There was a computer along one wall where Brittany was sitting in front of. This apparently, was not normal because Big Luke spoke up.

"What are you doing up so late?" he asked.

"I need to talk to you before you go," she told him and led him off to the side for a little discussion.

"Come on, we'll introduce you to KATE," Brandon told me and I followed him and David over to a gloss black 1968 Dodge Charger R/T.

"KATE, this is Percy Jackson," said David to the inanimate object.

"Who are you talking to?" I asked.

"Hello, Percy Jackson. My name is KATE," replied a monotone female voice from nowhere.

"Who said that?" I asked.

"The boat of a car sitting right in front of you," David informed me.

"Oh," I replied. "You guys have a talking car?"

"Yeah. We get a lot of cool things that the rest of camp doesn't have. For example: night vision," said Brandon, handing me a Kevlar helmet with a set of night vision goggles attached to them.

They started to pack a bunch of things in the trunk of the Charger. Both veteran Strike Team members removed their weapons, plate carriers and helmets and placed the items neatly in the trunk. I turned around to watch Big Luke and Brittany have their discussion. Brittany was standing real close to Big Luke and was hanging on the front of his tan bulletproof vest. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer into a hug as they talked quietly.

"What do you think their talking about?" I asked.

"Brittany probably doesn't want him to go but he's acting against her wishes and is going anyway because it's his job. She probably understands and is telling him to 'be safe'. As if that's possible. Big Luke is hugging her to reassure her that he will come back alive and in one piece even though he can't promise it. The hug is just so he doesn't have to say it out loud," explained Brandon. "We can usually tell how worried she is by the kind of kiss she gives him. If it's a short peck on the cheek, she has faith in him. If she kisses him like it's the last kiss she's ever going to get out of him, it means she's really worried."

"Are they dating?" I asked because the two really reminded me of Beckendorf and Silena Beauregard which wasn't necessarily a good thing.

"Not yet," they both replied in unison.

"Why does he put up with it?" I asked.

"We've had many theories. It might be that he feels something for her deep down but he can't stand losing her if something were to happen. So, leaving it at a friendship reduces the pain if either one of them were hurt or killed. Another theory is that it puts something in the back of his mind to think about so he doesn't jump in front of a bullet or something," explained David.

"That's pretty complicated," I noted.

They both nodded in response.

Brittany finished the conversation by kissing Big Luke on the lips for a second and then walked up the stairs. I guess she was a little worried, which made me worried. What did she know about these operations that I didn't?

We finally loaded up in the car and headed out for our destination.

Author's Note: So what do you think? I basically wrote this for you to get a taste of these characters and kind of get the gist of the back story a little. I will probably post more soon when I finish writing it. Thanks again for reading!