A/N: zzzzzzzzz…. (wakes up) hu-WHAT? Hm, oh, right… another chapter, here for you, ….zzzzzzz…..

Percy

As Percy groggily woke up, he heard a voice. He also felt a cool-feeling hand pressed on his forehead.

"Hey, are you here with me, or not?" When Percy finally had his eyes opened to his maximum, he saw that the voice belonged to a girl- in particular, the one that had saved him.

The girl's skin was really pale, and she had dark green eyes, not at all unlike Percy's. Her brown hair was let down, and it reached below her shoulders to their mid-arm sections. She was wearing a wrinkled shirt to some band that Percy didn't know, and was also wearing jean shorts. Her face showed relief as he woke up.

"Oh good, I thought that you died on me for a second," she said before sitting in an armchair adjacent to the couch that Percy was sitting on. He took the time to look around the room he was in, and it didn't look like it belonged in a farm house at all.

It looked a lot more like the inside of a really expensive mansion. The tiled floors shined, and the walls were a light beige color. The room itself, while large, was a bit cluttered with things that the girl presumably owned. For example, in one section of the room, there was flat-screen hanging on the wall, and there was a hallway that led to another part of the house.

At this point, Percy realized that his pain was almost completely gone, and he tried to get up.

"Hey, that probably isn't a very good-" was all the girl got to say, as when Percy tried to get up, the pain came back with a vengeance, so much in fact, that he almost cried out. Instead, he grimaced, and sat back down.

"Would you mind telling me why I STILL hurt every time I move?" growled Percy, as he felt very frustrated at the fact that he was confined to one seat.

"I only have enough medical supplies to mend SOME of the pain," replied the girl in an almost nonchalant way, "You've only been out for half an hour, and my dad took the car to go….someplace, and so we're stuck here for the time being."

Percy tried to glare at the girl, but his attempt to rise had used up whatever energy he had accumulated. "What do you mean? I walked here straight from the…..city….."

Several things happened at once after he said this: the girl sharply shifted her eyes back to Percy, the half-blood remembered everything that had happened, and he then punched the wall so hard that the plaster gave way, leaving a fist sized hole in the wall.

At this, the girl exclaimed "What the hell do you think you're doing!?" Percy looked to his side and saw the results of his outburst, and he almost turned sheepish, saying quietly, "Sorry, it's just that-"

"Nevermind that, I can just pay to fix it, what I want to know is how you're the only confirmed survivor from the attack. The whole city is devastated, and yet you survived. How?" she interrupted leaning in, curious for information, like a certain someone. "Not only that, but I'd also like to know whatever that was that I killed out there?"

Percy sat there in silence for a bit before replying, "You ask a lot of questions. And, seeing as how you've just seen a lot of things that make anyone normal go crazy, I have to ask: Are both of your parents still alive?"

He could see that the girl was visibly taken back by what he had just asked. She answered slowly "Yeah, both of my parents are alive. Divorced, but still alive."

The son of Poseidon tried to knit his eyebrows together in thought, but found it as painful as the head throbbing, and so he just continued with "You're probably able to see through the Mist."

Now it was her turn to knit her eyebrows together in confusion. "Well, yes, you can see through any mist by just walking through it."

Percy sighed exasperatedly before rummaging through his pocket for Riptide, and he soon found it, pulled out the cap, and the sword with the tragic history sprang up, three feet high. "You shouldn't be able to touch this," he explained, "Much less use it. I found out a long time ago, though, that there are some special mortal people who can see through this thing called the Mist, which is SUPPOSED to hide your kind's eyes from things like that monster you killed."
"You throw the word "mortal" around like you yourself aren't….." trailed off the girl as she saw the look Percy was giving her. "So you mean to tell me, that you're not human?" she continued, eyes growing a bit wider with shock.

"Well, half-human is the technical term," the demigod replied, trying to ease the mortal in on the whole gods thing. After he finished explaining everything Greek mythology-related (or at least as much as he knew), and the event that had happened a night earlier, the girl suddenly reached behind the chair she was sitting on, and took out a somewhat short one-edged sword, which Percy was able to recognize as the one that had pierced the Laestrygonian.

To Percy, it looked like one of those samurai swords that he saw the heroes use in those old cheesy movies he used to watch as a kid; however, it looked a bit different: it was shorter, the side that was usually curved was straight, and the entire thing looked like it was about twice as heavy than it was supposed to be.

The girl ran her fingers across the flat part of the blade, probably reminiscing about something from her past. Her eyes looked quite thoughtful to Percy, but in a different way than how Annabeth's usually looked. While Annabeth's eyes were thoughtful, they always seemed to be strategizing about something, trying to figure out the best way around whatever obstacle that was in her path. This girl's eyes instead seemed to be thinking about ways to go THROUGH the obstacle, not around it, ways to survive the things in the obstacle.

"My grandfather used to always tell me that there were….things in this world that were simply beyond our understanding," she said, her eyes now looking up to Percy. "I always did believe that, but I didn't think that I'd actually be able to….encounter one of them."

There was another brief moment of silence before the half-blood said "My name's Percy. What's yours?"

"Ember."

Percy couldn't help but grin a little. "Cool name," he said.

Suddenly, the pain seemed to slash right across his whole body, and this time, he simply collapsed forward, off of the couch.

Just before he hit the ground, though, a pair of arms caught him, before they became too weak to hold his weight, and then Ember too collapsed.

"Whoa, wait a minute, I've got you," she said somewhat soothingly, though it still didn't help the fact that Percy's entire body was in unbearable pain. Percy's head had unwillingly buried itself in the side of Ember's neck, but when he tried to get it out, the tendons in his own neck seemed to just not want to lift his own head.

Her hair did smell nice, though. She must've showered recently-

Percy caught himself in his own thoughts. Yeah, way to go, Percy, he thought to himself as he combined his own strength with Ember's to get him back up, you just had a seriously creepy thought. Way to-freaking-go.

Finally, he was up and back on the couch, with the mortal girl seemingly towering over him. He realized that she was feeling through his hair.

"Uh, what exactly are you- OW!" was all that Percy managed to say, because one of Ember's hands suddenly touched one part of his head (the rear part of his skull) and the pain escalated quickly before going back down.

Finally, the brunette backed away and sat back onto the armchair, but her expression didn't make Percy feel any better about his situation.

"God," she whispered, "You should be dead!"

"Gee, thanks for the support," Percy grumbled a bit.

"No, you don't get it!" she continued, moving her hands around a bit wildly, "The entire back of your skull…it's just fractured! There's a line of nothing drawing a big circle around it! The only reason why it hasn't fallen off and made your brain spill out is because your skin is holding it back!"

Alright, NOW Percy was worried.

"Wait a minute…" Percy said, remembering his godly lineage (even though he hated them now for what they did and didn't do), and quickly asked, "Ember, please tell me you've got water in this place?"

After about a minute, she came running back with a glass full of it. "Why, what's it going to do?"

You'll see," Percy replied, as he then drank down the water.

A couple seconds passed before he realized that nothing had happened.

The water hadn't healed him, it hadn't done anything! "What the…. I don't understand….." Percy said aloud to himself.

Before either of them could say anything else, the demigod suddenly slumped his head and became unconscious.

Ember

"Oh no," Ember quickly said as she pressed two fingers to Percy's neck, and felt that his pulse was slowing down. It appeared that the brain wasn't able to handle anymore of the stress that Percy had put on it, and it was shutting down.

Thoughts quickly ran across the inside of Ember's head as she tried to figure out what to do. If something wasn't done fast, Percy would certainly die, which was something that Ember definitely didn't want to happen.

As she racked her own brain to think of possibilities, a new thought had sprang up; that new technology her father's company had wanted to test out, but couldn't find any people who wanted to test it out… that could save a person's life, as even if Percy's head was able to be put back together, it still would've been too long. Percy would be alive, but his brain would be dead.

Quickly, she whipped out her cellphone and called her father's phone number, and impatiently waited for him to pick up. Finally, a gruff voice came on the line and said, "Look, sweetie, I wish I had the time right now, but I'm at a business meeting and-"

"Look, dad, I have someone DYING here," Ember quickly rushed out, "and I think your prototype thing could save him. Just please, you've gotta come now!"

There was an unbearable moment of silence before her father replied "Alright, we're on our way."

A/N: Well, I'm back to being somewhat awake, and I want to say this: I heard about the whole thing in Boston, and I just want to say that even though it means nothing, my apologies towards all of the injured and the family members of the dead are extremely sincere: I'm sorry about what happened, and I hope they catch whoever did it, even though that will probably never satisfy anyone. Anyway, what did you people think about this chapter? In case you weren't aware, this will be a PercyxOC story, so if you don't like those, than I don't know what to tell ya. Did you guys think the introduction of it was a bit forced? Please, just let me know what you thought of the chapters! Come on…..the review button is RIGHT. THERE. All you need to do is tell me if it was good or not, and if it was bad, tell me what was bad about it so I may do better. That's all.