Their Own Agenda
By val'tanelle
Summary: Percy, Thalia, and Nico each have their own agenda, except Percy is a wizard, hunting magical creatures is bad, and Voldemort's soul won't easily be taken. Plunged in the problem of mortals and minor gods, the gods are of no help...as usual.
Author's Note: I want to emphasize this is a Big 3 story. While it starts at Percy's point of view, it will shift to Nico and Thalia occasionally like the pattern with The Lost Hero. Honestly, Thalia's such an underrated character. She was good until Nico overshadowed her in Book 4 onwards.
I'm also interested in having a beta reader for this fic. I'd like someone who has a good, strong sense of English and language. Less on the plot stuffs but grammar. Tenks. And someone familiar with American/British English? Yea.
On another note, I got sick again while writing this. Curse you, Percy! You just infected your author!
Their Own Agenda
Chapter 2: Apollo Sings A Haiku
Where they moving out the apartment or were they just robbed clean? And oh Zeus, he felt so terrible. It was like having chicken pox, flu, and a Cyclopes hammering his head at the same time.
"Mooooom!" Percy called and he was sure he sounded as pleasant as screeching tires. "Is everything okay?" Except the part where he's super sick and possibly going nuts.
"Yes, honey, why are you ask—" Sally stopped by the door that dramatically creaked very slowly. "Percy...what...where did all the furniture go?"
"Beats me," Percy answered. "Mom, got any more tissue? I can't feel my nose."
"Your nose is still attached, honey, but I can't say the same for my sanity," Sally said dryly. "Percy, what happened to your room?"
Percy shivered, pulling the covers on top of his head. "Mom, I think I'm going to die. Can you call Annabeth? And the Stoll Brothers owe me 10 dollars. Each."
Sally sighed. She better suspend her disbelief for a moment because her son wasn't talking coherently anymore.
"I hope Chiron gets here soon."
A thumbs-up poked out the blanket. "Blue cheese for breakfast!"
If that wasn't enough, wait 'till a god came knocking into your house and kidnapped you in broad daylight. To top it all of, well, it wasn't easy to explain. Neither mortal or Greek? Percy so did not see this one coming though he wasn't about to find that out for a while...
It started with Paul heading back to his fiancé's apartment with some medications for Percy. He first recommended getting Percy hospitalized since while being a demigod made you pretty powerful and gave magical powers, he was still human down to the core. But according to Sally last time Percy was in the hospital when he was nine with a broken wrist, a monster poising as a sickly old man attacked him in bed. It was a good thing such a thing as Camp Half-Blood existed or Percy and the other demigods would have nowhere else to go.
He turned to the right and stopped in the middle of traffic. His heart fell. Traffic right about the street where your fiancé and soon-to-be stepson lived does not normally equate to Greek monsters attacking your family, but Paul knew better. Percy explained that his ADHD was there to keep his sense active. So rationally, it was right to be paranoid in cases anything about Greek.
Paul parked his car at the street. He set off on foot after bringing with him the medications and a pistol just in case. He ignored the glances as he ran quite speedily over the loud ruckus of cursing drivers and honking horns.
Paul stopped by his tracks as soon as what was causing the ruckus came into view. Good news was that it wasn't monsters causing the mess. Not that he would know since he couldn't see through the Mist, the thing shrouding normal people from the truth.
It didn't make feel better though, not when he found a stray orange shirt with a familiar logo on it lying among what looked like a closet, a deck, a trashcan, and last week's pizza and other furniture. It took one sane man with knowledge of monsters and gods to connect the dots. Percy's bedroom was in the middle of the street.
Bad news (yea, that wasn't the bad news) was a duo of suspicious guys standing across the Jackson apartment murmuring to one another. Paul got a feeling they had their eyes on a particular demigod.
"Sally, Percy...!"
Paul bolted into the apartment.
There was a loud bang. Sally almost dropped Percy's breakfast when she saw Paul closing the door and marching toward her with a grave face.
"Pa-Paul, what's wrong?" Sally asked.
"Suspicious guys across the street," Paul whispered urgently and added after a pause, "and Percy's stuffs causing traffic, honey."
"Monsters?" Sally gasped. "Are you sure?"
Paul went over the window and surreptitiously opened it. Sally took a peek, frowning.
"The two guys across the street talking to each other."
"I don't see them."
Paul squeezed his head in and pointed. "There, those two. They looked like they're holding something!"
But Sally's frown didn't vanish. "The one with the fashion sense from the seventies? They're ordinary people..."
"Sally!" Paul hissed, squeezing her wrist and pulling her away. The two suspicious guys saw them.
"But they're mortals!" Sally said, shaken. She took in a heavy breath, fearing the worst. "Or are they demigods?"
"Think they're old friends of Percy?"
Sally smiled shakily. "We better get to know whether his friends are the type who'd like to get even, Paul."
Percy had a lot of friends. There was Annabeth, his best friend Grover, the demigods in Camp though that's more of a comrade thing than a friend thing...Rachel Elizabeth Dare, the new Delphi Oracle, a mortal who could see through the mist like his mother...Chiron, the activities director in Camp and...Poseidon doesn't count since he's family. Tyson's family too. Come to think of it, half the gods were kind of hostile to him. Hunters of Artemis? Nope. It would be cool to be friends with Thalia again though but she had hers in the Hunt. The Hades family? Maybe Nico but they don't really hang out.
Wow. That makes about four and a half friends.
Well, he still lived a happy life even if it were an extremely dangerous, life-threatening one.
And sometimes just plain weird. Like how the stuffs in his room magically vanished. He'd seen a Hecate kid who just came a week ago made things disappear too. Percy wondered if it's the goddess of magic screwing with his life this time.
Slowly coming to his senses, Percy weakly stood up with knees he ready to buckle. If a god had something in store for him again, he shouldn't be lying in bed. He must head to Camp and hear yet another prophecy. Maybe Hecate knew something about his sickness and would cure him if he completed her quest. Percy felt alighted with hope.
"Mom, I need to tell you something," Percy said as loud as he could as he walked to his door. He found his mother going from one room to another busily.
"Huh. Mom, what are you doing?" the demigod asked, confused. "Oh, morning Paul."
"Percy, you're up. Good," he said rather much more seriously than usual.
"Yea," Percy said slowly. His mother remained busy and was not fusing over him out of bed. "I know this is kind of a bad timing but I got to head back to Camp."
"Get changed then, Percy," Sally replied. Percy's jaw dropped.
"You're...letting me go?"
Percy then saw what Sally was packing. She was packing him biscuits, two peanut butter sandwich, cans of diet Coke, a bottle of water, and some first-aid kit.
"Oh no," Sally said, looking up from the bag. "Your clothes are all gone."
"So I'm going to Camp in my pajamas?" Percy thought. "I think Hec—I mean, one of the gods," he amended, looking at the ceiling expecting lightning, "might know why I'm sick and the furniture disappearing."
"I found them in the middle of the street," Paul said, loading up a gun. Percy didn't know if he should react to the news or the mortal weapon Paul was holding. Something was certainly not right. His parents were on high-alert as if a meteor's about to crash.
Knock. Knock.
Everyone froze and stared at the door. This was becoming more and more like a horror film like they were expecting a little ghost kid outside. Percy wasn't sure why but his step/parents were acting weird.
"Um, Mom, Paul…?"
"Percy," Paul said quietly, putting a finger on his lips urgently. Percy nodded, swallowing.
Paul signaled Sally and Percy to stay where they were as he prowled toward the door like a cop. No one said a word as the knocks echoed in the room.
The door flung open and it was like it sent a gust of the wind that made everything action-packed. Paul made an amazing jump roll to the side, pointed his gun with one knee bent down and shouted, "Freeze!" Sally ran from the kitchen to Percy's side in half a second that would have made even Hermes, the god of travel, impressed. Percy was a little bit late. He felt for his ballpoint in his pockets and uncapped it, revealing Riptide, his celestial bronze weapon.
"Yaa-" Percy was ready to charge until Riptide turned into a paintbrush. "...aaahhh?"
"Silly," a young but manly voice said, pointing to Paul's gun. "Dangerous," he said to Percy's paintbrush.
There was a tall, pale dude with a really trendy Asian mullet encasing this flawless oval-shaped head. He had small, narrowed eyes that were dark as chocolate. His eyebrows were trimmed that it was hard to believe this was his natural look. Percy found himself glaring though. The guy was wearing some trendy clothes as bright as colorful carnival clothes.
"Like it?" he asked, grinning when he noticed Percy. "Just made a visit to Japan again and decided to check on my kids in Korea. They've made me so proud. I suggested we move Olympus to China but noooo. They don't want to upset Confucius. Why Athena made that smelly old man immortal, I have no idea, but let me tell you: she has issues."
"Uh," Percy tried to say as thunder rumbled angrily outside. If the model guy weren't who he really was, he'd be blown out of the map already. Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was probably only second to Hera as the lady goddess you wouldn't want to mess with.
Percy coughed, clearing his throat. Both Paul and Sally were shaken from stupor. "Lord Apollo, what are you doing here?"
"Apollo?" Paul repeated, his gun dropping a fraction.
"What is up Jackson? Not looking too well, are you?" Apollo said, inviting himself in with a very suave gait. "Here, let me fix that." Apollo snapped and the paintbrush turned back to Riptide.
Percy capped Riptide into a ballpoint again before pocketing it. An idea struck him. "Lord Apollo-"
"Call me Apollo! Forget the formalities. We're friends, aren't we?" Apollo said, taking a seat on the couch, swinging an arm on it.
"You're the god of healing, right?" Percy asked, hoping he sounded polite and expectant.
"And plague," he intoned, looking at Percy carefully. "You're sick by mortal standards, Jackson. I can assure you no gods—directly or indirectly—did it."
"Yea but the thing is even your kids in Camp can't cure me," Percy said.
Apollo shrugged. "Healing wounds and broken bones is a piece of cake. Curing diseases is a much rarer talent among my kids like pyrokinesis and Charmspeaking in Hephaestus and Aphrodite's kids."
"Nico said I was dying," Percy blurted out. Sally and Paul gasped. "He said something about my soul, that it was fine now. And I think even Thalia could tell something was up."
Apollo's eyes twinkled enigmatically. "Where did you have a chat with them?"
"I was demigod-dreaming. I was talking to Nico in some sort of forest and Thalia in another forest. I'm sure it was a different place. Thalia said she was in England."
Apollo jumped to his feet, mystery vanishing in his face. "Well, that settles that!"
Percy knitted his eyebrows. "Settles what?"
"England's a few minutes ride. We'd better hurry," Apollo said, checking on his Titanic wristwatch.
"We're going to England?" Percy asked ridiculously.
"Sure. Unless you want to get blasted off the sky with a plane or take a ship-"
"Why are we going to England?" Percy demanded. He caught on his rudeness there but Apollo didn't seem to mind. "Shouldn't I be going back to Ca—HACHOO!"
Apollo clasped his hands together. "I was just about to drop by my sister and the girls a visit too so why don't you tag along?"
Percy was about to object despite his bout of sneeze-spasm when Apollo snapped his fingers and he disappeared.
"I gave the two guys downstairs distraction so you two better call the cops. It's not going to take them down but at least they'll run off without wiping anyone's memory." Apollo winked at Paul and Sally before pointing at the pack in the kitchen. "I'll bring this to him too. See ya! Hopefully, I'll remember to drop by again within this decade." Apollo vanished instantly.
Paul looked at Sally with a puzzled face. "Is it just me or is that god speaking in haiku?"
"He slipped a number of times, but he wasn't called the god of art for nothing," Sally said, nodding sagely. "After I call the police, do you want to have breakfast outside, Paul?"
Paul unloaded his gun. "Sure do. And I was just reading your thesis paper this morning. I think you meant the poor man in One Thousand and One Nights, not the pooman."
Author's Notes: This chapter was a pain. I have the habit of making chapter titles first before writing them down and I really, really, really feel like this chapter title should not be changed at all cost. Apollo didn't really sing anything but maybe you could take it figuratively? I've rewritten this chapter a number of times. The original one had tons of action, drama, and character progress but I didn't want to make this fanfic too serious. So I just cut to the chaste.
I'm sure I'd be able to write the next chapter with ease. We're finally heading to England and changing perspectives. It's time we get to know the Harry Potter universe with the help of...Dumbledore! We're going to take a look into the "meeting" Nico told Percy about.