A/N: Hi guys! Again, I apologize if I offended anyone with how I treated Pokémon go! in the last chapter. I haven't done the reading of any reviews, so I'll do that now.
bobandsmallbob-I like it-keep up the good work!/Aw, thanks!
BlackIce8812-I love the first story you did, and this one is just as good. Keep writing man you are doing great. P.S. Love the Percy Nico pairing, very interesting./ I appreciate that! And if you want to read more PercyXNico stories, search up the author Takara Phoenix. She's an amazing author and loves to write about this pairing
weezergeek-This is probably one of the best fanfics I've read so far. I completely drained the first one in a day and half. Can't wait for more! :)/I can't wait to keep writing! Good to know you like my story!
Ms. Chenandler Bong-I loved the first part and I think I'm loving this one. You haven't dissapointed yet, although you could have done with less Pokemon Go hating, Pokemon was my childhood and this is a dream come true for me. Thanks!/Yeah, apologies again about the Pokémon thing. It's just my family doesn't like it, while I'm the one that feels indifferent. And thanks for sticking through my first story!
pizzacato-Can you go a little deeper into the dynamic between Percy annabeth nico and will because it was poorly explained to me in this? Also when are you posting again?/I go deeper into the dynamic in this chapter, at least I feel like I did; I don't know how you might feel about it. As for a posting schedule, to put it simply, I don't have one. Whenever the next chapter is done, I'll update.
Ok, that was it for reviews! Again, you guys are awesome! Please enjoy this chapter!
Three days after his meeting with Vicky back in Central Park, Percy found himself pacing impatiently back and forth in front of the throne room doors. The only sound other than the clicking of his boots on the floor was a faint sizzling sound that was emitted from the lava flowing in the cracks of the doors and walls. The two guards outside the door would periodically give him a wary look before looking straight once more.
The medallions on his jacket seemed to weigh him down with the pressure of him having to uphold the image of a general, yet he couldn't seem to stay still, his ADHD starting to get the better of him.
Percy ran a hand through his untidy hair, which he had tried and failed to slick back already, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a few notecards. It wasn't like he had a speech planned; no, the cards were of people he suspected who may have betrayed them with their barrack number and some general information. He looked over the cards once more, until the door swiveled open silently, showing Pontus and Thalassa in their thrones, awaiting him.
He entered, before bowing low in front of his master and mistress. Pontus told him to rise, but he still didn't meet the immortal's eyes, focusing on the crackling of the lava in their obsidian thrones instead.
"Speak, Perseus. You know you have permission to speak and look me in the eye now that you're a general," Pontus told him reassuringly.
"Thank you, milord," Percy said, inclining his head in a bow once more. For as disrespectful as he was to a lot of other people, he wouldn't even dream of talking back to Pontus. "Considering you let me hold this convention, you must've gotten my letter."
"We did," Thalassa said, grabbing Pontus's hand from her throne. She gave him a pearly white smile, but even so, Percy still didn't fully trust either one of them. Why should he? He still had no idea how he ended up here other than what he was told about Poseidon and Nico selling him off. But something seemed wrong with their story. Either way, he accepted it and moved on.
"Vicky has informed me that we have ten spies in our army, who are special ops for the Olympians." Percy spit out the last word like it was poison, but bit his lip and regained his composure. "And one of these spies have let it leak that I'm here."
Pontus' eyes shone with fury, sending shivers down Percy's spine. For as calm as he could be, whenever he was angry and his piercing blue eyes caught a hold of his prey…no one wanted to be within a ten-mile radius of that explosion, including many of the Titans and Thalassa themselves who were all frightened. He appeared to be crushing the armrest of his throne in one hand, while Thalassa attempted to free her own hand from her husband's vice-like grip.
"And what do you propose we do, Perseus?" Pontus asked, his voice laced with anger and frustration. Thalassa tried in vain to calm him down by rubbing circles on his back, to which he just shrugged her off.
Percy swallowed a lump in the back of his throat. If Thalassa couldn't calm down her raging husband, what was Percy supposed to do when he was only borderline liked by both the protogenoi's? Suddenly the cards in his jacket seemed to be such a ridiculous idea. There was a very likely chance that one of his assumptions would be wrong, meaning a person would be wrongly executed, and once his mistake was found out, he'd be whipped.
"Cameras," Percy said suddenly.
"Cameras?" Pontus repeated in a condescending tone. "That's the best you have to offer me? Cameras?"
"Think about it, milord. If we put microscopic cameras in the barracks, training areas, and just microphones in the bathroom, we'll be able to weed out the spies."
"That's actually not a bad idea, sweetheart," Thalassa said kindly. "We could even have young Perseus here watch the cameras, to see if anything comes up."
"No, Perseus is a general, he must be on the front lines with me and my other generals when the time is right." Pontus gave Percy a look-over, before tutting at him. "Perseus, we seem to be at a crossroads. What do you believe we should do?"
"Put the cameras in while everyone's sleeping tonight, and to make sure no one's up, have Nyx and Erebus send some heavy dreams their way. As for who is to watch the cameras, I'd be more than willing to do it, but you could always keep whomever you trust the least right under your thumb," Percy sagely said. "Of course, these are just suggestions, and I'm sure anything you two might have to offer is superior to what I have said."
"A moment," said Pontus, holding his hand up. Percy bowed and walked to the entrance of the throne room, waiting beside the doors. He was out of earshot, yet close enough to defend them should another intruder break in.
Four days ago, there had been a failed assassination attempt on Nyx's life while she and Pontus had been in a meeting. That had been the reason the alarms were blaring the day he, Kronos, and Triton were sparring, before having to leave Triton in the infirmary. One of the demigods (a daughter of Nike, he believed), had snuck into the throne room, and shot Nyx with arrows dipped in the waters of the Five Rivers of the Underworld. Even if the arrows had only been dipped with four of the five rivers, Nyx would've survived, but the power of all five was so potent it could force even the most powerful protogenoi to fade into the Void.
Thankfully, Nyx had felt the intruder, and just barely missed getting shot through the heart with the girl's arrows. Pontus raised the alarms, and within minutes, the traitor was caught and executed right then and there. Her head now adorned the walls of the throne room, along with other heads from people that were traitors, and all shared a similar, gruesome feature: their faces would be forever frozen in fear, some even in mid-scream. But the absolute worst part was the portion of the brain stem, or sometimes parts of the actual brain, would hang out from the bottom of the neck, as no one bothered to mount the heads on anything other than the wall. It would fill the room with foul air, and as tough as Percy was, he always felt squeamish when he saw pink goo puddle underneath one of the heads. Thank Chaos for the cleaning staff.
Percy was pulled out of his macabre thoughts by the sound of Pontus clearing his throat. He walked back to the center of the throne room, looking up at his master for what he was to do next.
"We will implement your plan," Pontus said professionally, even giving Percy half a smile. "As for who will watch over them all, I believe that Perses would be a suitable candidate. Never really trusted him."
"Thank you for accepting my suggestion."
Pontus waved his gratitude off. "Go reward our little mouse, and off to training with you."
"As you wish." Percy bowed again, clicked his heels together, and walked out of the throne room like the soldier he was.
He looked at the little red box with a white ribbon tied around it with mild interest. He knew Vicky would be rewarded, but with what, he had no idea nor did he care. Pontus always knew how to graciously reward his soldiers. He shoved the box into the nearest shadow, sure that Vicky would receive her gift by the end of the day. With that, he wandered down the hallways back to his room, prepared to train.
"Nico?" someone asked, knocking on his door for what seemed like the millionth time.
And he replied with the same answer he had given already. "I'm busy!"
"Nico, you've got to open the door. You've been in there for over half the day! If you're not even the least bit hungry, I will force this down your throat!"
Nico groaned in exasperation, before quickly cleaning up the mess of papers on his desk, and flinging the door open only to find Will Solace with a plate loaded up with food outside his door. He groaned again, and went to slam the door shut. Instead, Will caught the door with his free hand and came in.
"It's so dark in here," Will commented, setting the plate of food down on Nico's now cleared desk.
"How I like it," Nico grumbled, whirling around in his wheelie chair to face the son of Apollo. Even though he and Annabeth had come back from being dead, they both respected the fact that they had moved on, letting Percy and Nico be together in peace. The four were still really close knit friends, and if anything Will and Annabeth had become like another brother and sister to him.
Will pointedly ignored him by opening the curtains, letting some of the noonday sunlight filter into the dark room. The light revealed just how much of a mess his cabin really was, with his black sheets thrown across the room, his dirty clothes everywhere except the hamper, and insane conspiracy theory maps tacked into his walls with pencil markings everywhere.
"Gods, what happened in here?"
"Me. Now, thanks for the food-"
"I'm not leaving, Nico," Will said sternly, taking a seat on the trunk at the foot of Nico's bed. He brushed a torn sheet of paper off the lid, before looking up at Nico, who looked like he was trying to escape. Which, in a way, he was.
He had already slipped on his aviator jacket and was in the process of lacing up his sneakers. He froze, looking up at Will, who was looking at him as if he was a child caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar.
Nico just sighed, slumping back into his chair, before poking at the food on the plate with his fork half-heartedly. Will had taken his doctor role again, but this time with Jason, to make sure that he was eating properly and not trying to do anything too radical. Like that one time he had recklessly jumped from the roof of his cabin to the one next door, and kept doing that until he had sprained his ankle from falling off the roof of the Dionysus cabin.
"There's no way I can fully eat this," Nico said, poking at the smoked brisket on his plate.
"You can, and you will," Will reprimanded. "At least eat until you feel full, then I'll stop."
"Fine."
The next thirty minutes was of Nico taking small bites of his food while Will just sat there, perfectly content with acting as his warden until half the plate was gone. Thankfully, Will didn't fight him to eat more, instead just giving him a smile and leaving, heading back to the infirmary.
That was weird, Nico thought to himself. They always ask me how I'm doing, but not today. Oh well, it's nice to change things up.
He picked up the sheet of paper Will had discarded on the floor, and realized why Will had wanted to leave his cabin so soon. Nico never told anyone other than Bianca, Will, and Percy that he liked using art as a coping mechanism, and the paper had been one of his more morbid drawings. He had sketched an intricate picture of someone hanging themselves on one part of the paper; on another he drew how blood flows out of someone's arm with a bloodied razor blade off to the side; and he also had drawn a picture of a gun pointed at someone's head, with their finger on the trigger.
No, he hadn't ever done any of those things to himself (he was still alive, was he not? Though, he had been tempted to cut himself a couple of times), but he needed to relieve some of his pent up depression that fighting and sulking just wouldn't get rid of. So he had picked up his pencil and sketchbook, laying his feelings clearly out onto the paper. After Nico had realized what he had drawn, he had torn the page out, leaving it on his trunk where Will found it today.
Great. Just great.
Knowing Will, he was probably going to tell Jason, who in turn would tell Hazel, Frank, and Reyna, and it would all come full circle as they would try to talk him out of taking his life, even though he wanted to live.
Why could nothing ever be simple for him? Sighing, Nico picked up his pencil and one of his marked up maps, and began planning again. All he needed was one lead, and he might be able to find Percy. That would be nice. And after he found Percy, he was going to take the two of them somewhere far away from the gods (but not Alaska) where they could finally have even a semblance of peace for once.
Content with his own fantasies, Nico began marking up his map, completely unaware of the set of blue eyes spying on him through the window.
Percy rolled to the side as a blade came swinging at his head, only for his foot to be wrapped up in a tight coil, which felt like acid was corroding his skin. He hissed in pain, slashing at Nyx's whip with one hunting knife, while dual-wielding the other, blocking an incoming blow to his side from Erebus.
The whip recoiled after he cut the cord, but the burning red mark around his ankle remained, stinging like he had just stepped into a wasp's nest, then walked into a puddle of acid. Erebus feinted a blow to Percy's left, which he fell for, causing for a gash to open up on his shoulder.
"You're not focused!" the primordial of shadows complained, easily landing another blow on his leg. "Pay attention, Perseus!"
Percy hissed in pain once more, but clenched his teeth, determined to take at least one of his trainers out of the fight. He saw Erebus swing at him once more, but at the last second dived to the side, letting his blade slash air. Percy felt an incoming projectile aimed at his back, and with one blade he stopped the dagger from stabbing him, while lunging and cutting Erebus on his upper thigh.
Nyx took her husband's place, becoming a flurry of blows, which Percy just barely managed to deflect. When she overstepped on a lunge, he took his chance and kicked her planted foot out from underneath her. He cut Nyx on the stomach with one knife, while holding his other one at her throat. Just as he went to ask her if she yielded, he had to whirl around and defend himself against Erebus once more.
Instead of being completely on the defense, he ran around Erebus, making the primordial turn around, before he vapor traveled in front of him, slamming the butt of his knife into Erebus's knee, sending him sprawling to the floor. He repeated the movement for Nyx, instead getting her in the back of the leg, also sending her to the floor.
Once he noticed that neither of his opponents could get up, he breathed a sigh of relief, combing his sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes. Percy sheathed his hunting knives on his weapons belt, before pulling out some bandage wrap from the first-aid kit. He set their legs, before wrapping their knees with the thick bandages to keep their legs straight. He'd have to call Helios or Leto to help move them most likely.
"You both yield, right?" Percy asked, finishing tying the knot around Nyx's knee. He clipped the bandage with a huge bobby pin he had found, and so far it seemed to be working.
"We're not exactly fighting you right now," Erebus said dryly, to which Percy chuckled at. His ego had been bruised by losing to a demigod, so it wasn't surprising he might've been the least bit bitter.
"Just making sure you're not going to throw daggers at my back again," Percy said, looking pointedly at Nyx, to which she just smirked and shrugged.
"That's how it would be like in a real fight," Nyx told him, before trying to stand up on her own. She immediately crumpled back to the floor when she put a small portion of her weight on her bad leg.
Percy winced, and carefully helped them up onto chairs he had dragged into the middle of the training arena. He pulled out some ambrosia and handed it to his wounded trainers. He was going to need to be more careful while sparring, seeing as this was the third injury he had caused to a fellow general this week. Selene was going to have his hide.
Once they were all fixed up, Percy remembered he had his own injuries to attend to. Every step sent a jolt of pain up his leg, from where Nyx had curled her whip around his ankle. The skin there was an angry red color and bleeding profusely. He cursed, wrapping some of the thick bandage he had used on their legs around his ankle. The other injuries he had-the gashes on his shoulders and torso-could easily be healed by taking a shower.
A few minutes later, Selene graciously came to them with her brother Helios in tow. Together the both of them fully healed Erebus and Nyx's legs, while healing the rash around Percy's ankle as well.
"I might just start charging you," Selene said in a joking manner as she shut her medical kit. "Seriously, every day it's like you're sending someone new to see me. Start fighting automatons or something."
"He beats them too easily," Triton said, entering from his hidden position by the door. Even though Selene had fixed him up yesterday, an angry purple and green bruise decorated his face right below his eyes, where Percy had kicked him.
Again, Percy winced at the sight. He had been taught to not show any emotion on the battlefield, and while he wouldn't, everything he kept pent up during the fight would overwhelm him afterwards, especially the guilt. Percy learned to kill on sight without feeling an inkling of remorse, and he was rewarded for that. Something in his gut told him that something wasn't right here, that he shouldn't be here at all, with these people, yet his mind was berating him for thinking such traitorous thoughts.
What about Nico? A part of his brain asked him. He clenched his fists, mildly irritated.
No, he left me. He and Poseidon sold me off, and that's why I'm here, the other part of his brain thought.
Are you sure? If you're so confident that they sold you off, why can other soldiers keep in touch with their families but not you?
I don't want to keep in touch with the people that treated me like a slave.
He could imagine another version of himself, like a mirror image, scoffing at his thoughts. Think about this. You're only told parts of your story by the other generals. You have unanswered questions, which they'll whip you for if you ask.
Then it must not be important.
Sure…Keep doubting them. Act, but keep your distance.
It took him a while to realize that the voice in his mind no longer sounded like him, but it was more masculine and regal. Percy had no idea in the slightest who he was talking to.
What do you mean? Who are you?
All will be answered in due time, Perseus. I just need you to believe me, okay? We'll get you back, I promise.
What? You're making no sense! Hello?
But the voice was already gone, leaving Percy with more questions than answers. He ran his hand through his hair once more, not really paying attention to the conversation the immortals had become engrossed with. He hung his knives back on the weapon's wall, before leaving the arena, wanting nothing more than to take a hot shower and a nap.
His dreams haunted him. And it wasn't because he was having nightmares of Tartarus with that blonde girl that had been his companion dying someway or another. No, his dreams haunted him, because they were obviously memories of his past that for some reason he couldn't reach.
Most nights, Percy saw a boy with black hair, dark blue-black eyes, and olive skin smiling at him, pulling him close for a kiss. And his memory-self would kiss back eagerly, as if afraid he was going to lose the boy. The boy spoke words in a language Percy couldn't understand, but by the way he said them, it sounded affectionate.
Percy watched as the boy shivered violently in front of him, snow covering the field they were currently camping in. There was another figure nearby, poking a stick into the fire that had been going, but he couldn't identify the man. He wanted to hug the boy, wrap him in a huge, fluffy blanket, and give him a mug of hot chocolate to warm him up, but all he could do in the dream was watch as the boy fainted from the cold, his head hitting the log he had been sitting on.
He watched as his memory-self shook the fallen boy, begging for him to wake up. It was at this moment that Percy was never really sure if it was a memory or if he was just having a nightmare.
The boy quickly began to lose all color, and his lips took on a blue tinge. As much as Percy loved the color blue, he knew that nobody should have their core body temperature that low. The boy's breaths came out in rattling spurts, his breath forming clouds in the freezing air. The dream-Percy shouted at the man to do something about the cold, and was already beginning to wrap the boy with his jacket as to add layers.
The boy opened his eyes, and icicles had already started to form between his eyelashes. Snow covered his forehead and cheeks, yet the boy made no movement to brush the snow off. His skin was finally leeched of all color, making the already pale boy whiter than the snow he was freezing in. He actually started to turn blue.
"Hey, hold on," the dream-Percy said desperately, hugging the frozen boy to his body in hopes of warming him up. Tears had already begun to well in his eyes, and Percy knew his dream-self had already given up hope of restoring the boy. Hypothermia had the boy in its grips, and they were simply too unprepared to be of any service to the boy.
"I…I love…you," the boy said with difficulty, his breathing becoming even more sparse. His chest lowered and rose at an extremely slow rate, making Percy positive that the boy was going to die.
"I love you too," Percy had said back. The boy gave him one last smile before shutting his eyes. His chest didn't rise again. The dream Percy had moved to take his pulse, but when he started violently crying and holding the limp body like a baby in his laps, he knew that the boy was already gone.
Every time he'd wake up gasping for breath, as if he was the boy dying of hypothermia instead of the actual boy that had died. And that was what had happened tonight.
He paced back and forth in his room, constantly running his hands through his hair in a nervous habit, while trying to burn the image of the frozen boy from his mind. Whenever he shut his eyes, Percy could picture the boy as a Popsicle, the ice moving to lock him in a tomb of frozen water. The thought terrified him.
Percy drew the curtains back on his window, greeted by the blackness that was the depths of the Mariana Trench. Off in the distance he could see spurts of red and orange, and he knew it was lava building new crust, and sometimes he could even watch underwater volcano eruptions. The sight of the ocean calmed his frayed nerves slightly, but he was still on edge.
He wanted to know who the boy was, and why he cared so much about him. There, in the middle of the night, in the pitch black darkness of the ocean, Percy vowed to himself that he would find the boy if it was the last thing he did.
A/N: Please leave a review if you liked! That would be an awesome birthday present for me! See ya Sparks next time! ~RainbowSpark18 (::) (::) (::)