Disclaimer: All characters belong to Rick Riordan (and I suppose the Ancient Greeks and Romans).
Clarisse La Rue, daughter of Ares.
I had been living alone with my mom for eleven years before I got out of that hellhole. Mom used to tell me how my father was this great military hero who died in Iraq when I was two years old, but she'd grow deaf when I asked why there were no mentions of pictures of him in the army logs. I just assumed that maybe he had a dishonorable discharge and left us in his humiliation.
I hated living with my mom. She was a fashion designer for Prada, and our house would be filled endlessly with models breezing in and out, commenting on her latest sketches and cooing over whatever outfits she had put together on the mannequins dotted around the place. Meanwhile, I'd be sitting in a corner, trying to go unnoticed, but I always managed to receive some reproachful glances from the models.
Mom is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen: she has blond hair in natural waves cascading down her back; bright, piercing blue eyes framed with thick lashes; fair and supple skin that never broke out; a curvy figure that complimented every article of clothing she wore; and a smile that befit the gods. And somehow she gave birth to this fucker of a daughter: an enormous girl with stringy, dirty blond hair and dirt-brown eyes.
Mom always wanted to change me. She tried fitting me in little girl dresses until I grew so big that I literally ripped them apart when she yanked them over my head. The models fondly nicknamed me "The Hulk." When that failed, Mom instead just exposed me to the feminine world: shoes, dresses, shoes, manicures, shoes, makeup, shoes, and more shoes. It got to a boiling point at which I picked up a display of heels at Macy's and flipped it over.
We weren't allowed back in there, which pissed her off, as she had a membership and got all these perks such as discounts and free samples of perfume.
After that episode, it was pretty clear that I wasn't cut out for Mom's fashion world. I tried to study harder in school, but my dyslexia and ADHD got in the way, and I ended up punching a few of my teachers. Instead, I got a gym membership and began working out. I figured if I couldn't be pretty or smart, I'd at least be strong. I hired a personal trainer who constantly pushed; pushed me to be faster, tougher, meaner, better. All my poundage solidified into muscle, and eventually I was able to bench as much as sixteen-year-olds in the gym when I was ten.
Of course, Mom hated it. She constantly complained how I wasn't "a proper woman" and a lot of other feminine bullshit that I put up with. The models would disdainfully look down at me and sniff, nodding in agreement with Mom. They'd convince her that it was "just a phase" and I would "soon wake up" and realize my "true nature."
On my eleventh birthday, Mom came into my room and sat down, something she rarely did. She usually locked herself up in her studio for days.
"Clarisse, honey." Her face was serious, so I propped my elbow on my bed and sat up. "We need to talk about your future."
"My future?" My forehead creased in confusion.
She nods, and I watch her fake eyelashes flutter along with her bobbing head. I guess she forgot to attach them properly this morning.
"Honey, you just can't go on like…this." She waves to the dumbbells in the corner and the workout schedule pinned neatly on the wall. "You need to grow up, Clarisse. I understand that this hobby of yours is well, I guess, gratifying in a way, but honey, you're entering middle school now. It has to stop."
I stared at her for a good five minutes before coming up with an incredibly intelligent answer. "What?"
She took a deep breath and was about to speak again when I waved her off. "Yeah, yeah, I heard you! But Mom, it isn't a hobby. It's what I do. I can't just stop. What else would I do?"
"Well, this sounds good." From her pocket, she produced a pamphlet for a girls' boarding school on the east coast: Clarion Ladies Academy. "Here, you'll learn to be a real woman, Clarisse."
I glared at her. "You can't do this."
She put on a sympathetic face. "Clarisse, honey, please. Your father would have wanted it."
"Stop pulling the father card!" I shouted, pointing an accusing finger at her. "You don't know what he would have wanted because he left us."
"H-He didn't leave us, Clarisse. He died an honorable death in Iraq, remember?"
"Yeah, right. Whatever." I fell back on the mattress and rolled over, facing away from Mom.
She sat there for a few moments before standing up and leaving the room, closing the door behind her. As I lay there, my thoughts were boiling. How could she be so pretentious as to send me to some stupid Ladies Academy? I resolved that if she really were to send me there, I had no choice but to leave. I gathered some clothes, money, water, and protein bars then placed them all in a knapsack. Finally I took one dumbbell for defense purposes and climbed out the window.
Now, as a half-blood, this was obviously a stupid decision to go out into the world alone. But hey, I had no idea who I was. To me, I was just a desperate eleven-year-old escaping the tirade of her mother.
I lasted a day.
It went well at first; I managed to walk a good twenty miles before resting. I really had no destination, but I watched enough movies about tough girls living life on the edge to be confident about my predicament. But then I ran into my first monsters.
They were disguised as a typical gang, a group of street thugs dressed in dirty, baggy clothes. I had run into a few of those already, so I just walked past them when I heard one of the say, "Hey, how you doin'?" He stuck out a foot and I went sprawling on the pavement.
Furious, I pulled myself up. "What the hell do you want, punk?" I demanded.
They snickered among each other. As I looked more closely at them, I realized they were different than other gangs I had passed by earlier. These kids were eight feet tall and their grins contained enormous, pointy teeth.
"Get her!" All of them suddenly lunged for me, and I leaped backward, quickly taking out the dumbbell from my knapsack. I quickly counted them. Six in total. Since they were so big, they couldn't move very fast and could only charge in a straight line. I was able to dodge their attacks fairly easily, but they knew I would soon tire. I lashed out with the dumbbell and struck one of them on the head. He crumpled to the ground and ceased to move. The other five redoubled their energy.
"You'll pay for that one, half-blood!" one of them snarled.
"Is that the best insult you can come up with, idiot?" I taunted. They looked at me in confusion, but quickly shook it off as they attacked again. I swung the dumbbell in an arc, catching all of them in their faces.
"ARGH!" They stumbled backwards as a group, shook their heads, and growled. Their eyes were wildly furious, but that was in my favor because their anger caused them to be more reckless. I quickly dispatched of four of them, and the last one, the one who tripped me, glared at me.
"Curse you, demigod," he spat.
I rolled my eyes. "Your insults are so lame; get over yourself." I lunged at him and he dodged my strike. His fist swung out and caught me in the gut, and I doubled over, momentarily out of breath. I flattened out on the ground when he tried to punch me again, then kicked out and tripped him.
"Paid you back," I grinned. When he picked himself up, cursing, I threw my dumbbell and struck him in the stomach, and he fell.
The…whatever they were, laid on the ground, all of them knocked out. But they were stirring again, and I was clean out of energy. My breath was coming in short, rapid spurts and sweat was running down my face in a steady stream. Suddenly, a ball of red fire appeared in the air; when the fire died down, a man stood there. The guy was about six and half feet tall, dressed in a red muscle shirt and black jeans and a black leather duster. He had a hunting knife strapped to his thigh. His eyes were covered by wraparound shades.
I stumbled back and fell. I mean, if you were eleven years old, had run away from home, just fought a group of weird giant things, and then witnessed a guy appear from a fireball, you'd be pretty fucking freaked out, too.
"There she is!" He looked straight at me and grinned wickedly.
The giant things were just beginning to get to their feet again, cursing and shouting. They stopped short when they saw the man, but then ran towards him, yelling. He sighed and without even looking at them, threw his hunting knife and cleanly sliced through all of them. They vaporized into dust.
"Clarisse. It's good to see you finally," he rumbled.
"Wh-Who are you?" I stammered.
"You mean you can't see the resemblance? I'm your dad."
A/N: I just finished the Percy Jackson series a few months ago and I wanted to try my hand in writing some fanfiction about it. Oh my gosh, I don't know how I feel about this story quite yet. Any sort of review would be incredibly helpful and appreciated!