Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson.
A/N: I'm sorry about not updating in a while and to make up for that I present to you: this chapter that I should have finished a long time ago but am posting now so I made it longer in the hope that you'll forgive me. Yay.
The Disgraced Hero
Chapter Ten – Amazingly Awkward Awakening and an Adamant Albinos (Awesome Alliteration)
It had been a rough couple of months in Tartarus for Percy, with his newly gained powers rebelling against their new host and Chaos beating on him every chance he got. It really seemed that the Creator didn't grasp the concept of Percy not being gazillions of years old and knowing all the fighting moves. Or maybe he was just a sadist.
Percy walked on, over a never-ending desert where no single life form could be seen, which, in itself, was a bit strange. Especially since Percy's senses were telling him that something was really wrong. Maybe he should listen and just flash away. But maybe he was still getting used to his powers and misunderstood being in the hostile environment of Tartarus as a constant danger.
Percy sighed, being a Titan was a new experience, to say the least. His clothes had, at first, been a little small but they somehow molded to fit him. Probably thanks to Aphrodite's charm-thing.
When he thought about it, the events in the throne room were kind of ironic, really. He had been blessed by a few gods but then he'd gotten new powers which made the god-gotten ones pretty moot. The only things that he wouldn't have gotten by killing Hyperion and Kronos and becoming a Titan were Apollo's disease power and Aphrodite's help with his clothes. And to think that Aphrodite had worried over her lack of usefulness.
The young Titan's feet kept on moving even as he himself remained stuck in his thoughts, head bowed down and eyes glued to the not-so-exciting, sandy ground. He was so deeply immersed that he didn't notice the huge cliff, the only one of its kind in a radius of multiple miles, until he literally bumped into it, head first.
He was violently startled out of his musings as his head met the hard surface and let out a small exclamation of pain. Percy reached up to rub his head when he heard muffled laughter not far away from him. Immediately, Percy cast out his senses like Chaos had taught him in the least painful lesson yet but didn't sense a single lifeform. Was he going insane already?
He was just about to shake it off as a mishearing when a gigantic portal appeared, right in the middle of the cliff. He barely had any time to comprehend what he was seeing as a ridiculous amount of monsters surged out of the portal, which had likely been put there by Tartarus himself. Percy cursed. Just because the Primordial couldn't kill Percy himself didn't mean he couldn't enlist someone else to do it for him. A lot of someone elses.
Percy thrust out his hand and the first hundred monsters or so slowed to a crawl making it easy for him to slice them to pieces with his scythe. The ones behind kept their pace but once they reached the area of slowed time they slowed too. Soon enough, though, the pure number of monsters overwhelmed Percy's untrained time powers. He started retreating as the monsters' movements sped up.
Percy let the scythe disappear and summoned a giant torrent of water from his hands, which he manipulated to drown and crush the monsters while earthquakes ravaged their ranks. Still the monsters kept coming with no sign of relief of any kind for Percy. Because that power was one he hadn't trained extensively either, the water stopped flowing from his palms after a short while and so Percy had to make do with manipulating the water he had already sent out.
The earthquakes eventually stopped too and then the water was absorbed into the ground. Percy decided that he really hated everything about Tartarus. Even though he had probably killed over a thousand monsters, they just kept coming. Percy shot an intense blast of fire that disintegrated a couple dozen monsters and left him completely winded. He couldn't even think about trying Apollo's power.
The young Titan pulled out Riptide and called his scythe to him, which he turned into a sword. He held one deadly weapon in each hand and charged the never ending hordes of monsters. Percy slashed at all the monsters that he got close to and left them in dust form on the disgusting ground of Tartarus.
He was too tired to think of defending himself and thus received many, many wounds of his own. After a short, but valiant effort, Percy Jackson, the son of Poseidon, hero of Olympus, Praetor of the twelfth legion and, more recently, Titan of time and harvest was down on the ground at the mercy of the very monsters he had slain so many of.
Percy let out a whimper when he felt a sword penetrate his stomach and again when he felt claws tear through his skin and then again when a large clawed foot slammed on him, pushing him to the ground and ripping him open. His golden ichor sprayed through the air, further fueling the monsters' lust for his pain, as it pooled on the ground beneath him. For what felt like an eternity, Percy Jackson was subject to every kind of pain he could imagine and even more, never being allowed to fall into the wonderful embrace of death.
Suddenly Percy screamed, his golden eyes snapped open and an explosion tore through everything.
Percy's eyes opened and he tried to sit up, both of those failing as a) he had a headache and the light was too fucking bright! b) there was something (someone?) on top of him and c) everything was spinning and he was about to lose the contents of his stomach. Percy laid back and gave it his all, still only just managing to swallow the bile crawling up his throat.
When he was finally able to open his eyes, Percy was very surprised, to say the least. His arms were tightly wound around a woman's body and her head was on his chest. His eyes followed the soft, brown hair to the face and were greeted by a pair of wide, flaming ones staring into his. At that moment, Percy was immensely glad that he hadn't puked.
"Good morning," Hestia practically squeaked.
"Hi," Percy rasped, his throat dry. There was a silence for a few seconds before Percy cleared his throat. "What, uh, what am I doing here? And, uh, what are . . . you doing here?"
"You fell asleep downstairs and I couldn't flash you up here since, you know, you're immortal too, so I carried you here," she told him. Percy nodded, kind of embarrassed by the fact that he had to be carried by her. Then he realized she hadn't really answered him.
"But, um, why are you here, you know, with me?" he questioned. Hestia's cheeks flamed and she hid her face in his chest before realizing what she was doing and lifted her head again.
"I, uh, I brought you here and, uh, you pulled me down with you," she said. Percy's eyes widened and he finally noticed the way he clung to her like a child to a teddy bear.
"Oh, wow, I, uh, sorry," he stuttered, trying to form a coherent sentence as he removed his arms from around the virgin goddess, all the while blushing as madly as said goddess. He tried to roll away from her and she fell from on top of him down onto the bed, where he then proceeded to fall to the floor and pull the covers and Hestia with him.
He slammed down onto the wooden floor, causing his headache to reach new levels and then to make matters even worse, Hestia fell on top of him again, their heads smacking together. Percy squeezed his eyes shut, he'd felt ridiculous amounts of pain in his life but that was his first hangover and he was not loving it.
"Are you okay?" Hestia asked from on top of him, bringing him back to the present.
"Yeah, 'm fine," Percy forced out. Suddenly he felt a pair of soft, small hands touch his forehead and a comforting warmth started emanating from them. He sighed in contentment as all his pain melted away.
"No, you're not," Hestia stated, sounding annoyed. Percy supposed she didn't like people being in pain, even when it was their own fault. He vaguely remembered her saying something like that to him a hundred and something years ago.
"Am now," he told her. "This is great, thank you."
"No problem," she said. "But I'm only getting you out of this hangover, the next one you'll have to deal with on your own."
"That's great, I agree," Percy sighed, the comfort from Hestia feeling so wonderful that he'd have agreed to donate a kidney if she asked. Her hands then disappeared from his head and the amazing feeling with them. Percy made a small whining noise like a dog, causing Hestia to chuckle lightly.
She then realized that she was effectively straddling Percy, with their faces way too close for propriety. Hestia shot up quicker than Percy's still clearing mind could process and was out the door before he could even realize that she had moved at all.
"What the . . .?" Percy questioned the air around him. Well, at least she fixed the hangover before she bolted . . . for whatever reason that was. With his head cleared, dizziness abated and, best of all, his need to introduce the liquor he'd drunk the night before to the world again completely gone, he could work on standing up, which he did. Slowly.
Percy walked out of the bedroom and down the hallway into the second floor bathroom, he so needed a hot shower. Once in the bathroom Percy let the water start flowing before he unbuttoned his shirt and threw it on the floor. His shoes, socks, pants and boxers went the same way.
The young – in comparison to other of his kind – Titan stepped into the shower and couldn't contain his moan of satisfaction. The hot water cascaded down his body and left him feeling like a whole new person. No matter what his domains were, he would always be most at home in the water.
Percy spent the next fifty seven minutes and nineteen seconds in the shower, furiously scrubbing himself. He had over a century in hell to clean off, after all. He'd given himself showers in Tartarus with his own powers but he never felt like he was ever really clean, like there was always a part of the pit clinging to his skin.
After the vigorous self-cleaning, Percy turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, drying himself off with barely a thought. He looked down onto the floor and decided not to wear Aphrodite's clubbing clothes, rather summoning himself something new.
He snapped his fingers and a pair of gray sweatpants appeared. He got dressed in them and tied the string before turning to the mirror and running his hands through his hair.
"Really, Aphrodite?" he muttered to himself. "I get the need for a little trim but I don't think it's been this short since I was ten." Percy thought about changing it himself for a few seconds but decided to give Aphrodite the benefit of the doubt, beauty was one of her domains after all. He conjured up a black t-shirt for himself and slipped it on, along with a pair of socks and shoes before walking out of the bathroom in search of the goddess whose house he'd broken into the night before.
Well, broken into wasn't completely true, he just walked in. Hestia was way too trusting, or maybe she knew that no one would do anything to her as long as she stayed on Olympus. Whatever the reason, drunk Percy was very grateful.
Guided by his stomach, Percy walked into the kitchen first, hoping to find Hestia there and hopefully some food too. As good as he was with his powers, Hestia's food was better than anything he could conjure up, which left him extremely disappointed when he found the kitchen empty with neither Hestia nor any food in sight.
Sighing, Percy closed his eyes and put his fingers on his temples, focusing intently. He could literally feel the time stream around him and if he would just be able to reach a little bit further . . .
Percy's eyes snapped open to a different sight than they'd closed to. Things were relatively the same but there was a golden tint to everything. Suddenly Hestia ran into the kitchen, her face a darker color than the rest. It seemed to be a fiery red . . . embarrassment maybe? She started whipping up a full meal – a feast fit for royalty, really.
Most people might wonder what she was doing but Percy knew that she cooked to calm down on the rare occasions she got worked up over something or to settle her nerves over something she was worried about, the latter being the more frequent reason.
As good as Hestia was in the kitchen, Percy didn't feel like watching her work. Cooking shows had never been something he enjoyed. Percy fast forwarded the scene until she was done. Hestia then tasted her food and sighed in satisfaction.
She ate a little bit before she shot up from her chair, snapping her fingers and making the food all disappear. Hestia then disappeared with a golden flash. Only a few seconds later, Percy saw himself walk into the kitchen and knew that he wouldn't find anything else out from this.
Percy opened his eyes and sighed in irritation. Great, she teleported away. How was he going to find her? If he could just get an idea of where she would go then maybe he could hunt her down, for the lack of a better wording.
She wouldn't go to any of the Olympians that voted against Percy, he knew that at least, so that left Poseidon, Hades, Hermes, Aphrodite and the archer twins. It could, of course, be that she'd gone to either camp or maybe even to a completely different place he hadn't thought of. Well, he had to start somewhere, didn't he?
Percy disappeared from Hestia's kitchen and appeared again in his father's underwater palace. In the throne room sat the king of the seas along with his wife and 'legitimate' son. The sea god looked to be somewhere between worried about something and irritated, not that Percy could blame him for the latter, as a family of Atlanteans tried to explain to him why they shouldn't have to share a garden with their savage neighbors.
The Titan remained silent as he leaned on a column to the side of the room and waited for their audience with the royal family to be over. Thankfully, it didn't take long for Poseidon to take notice of his son and end the meeting respectfully.
The queen and crown prince of Atlantis looked confused until they saw Poseidon stand up and walk fast towards Percy. Their faces displayed a strange mix of shock, fear and anger, making Percy unable to resist sending a small smirk in their direction.
"Percy, where did you go?" his father asked when he was within speaking distance. "We went out and looked for you but you were nowhere to be found."
"Yeah, sorry about that, dad," Percy apologized. He felt a little bad for leaving his friends but he didn't want to think about it at that moment. "Have you seen Hestia at all? Since yesterday, I mean."
"No, I don't believe I have," Poseidon answered with furrowed brows. "But then, she's always been easy to miss." Percy snorted.
"That's an understatement." The father and son remained silent for a few more seconds until the other two occupants of the room decided to remind the two of their presence.
"Perseus," his father's wife said curtly, looking at him like he was a stain on the ground, albeit a stain that might jump up and dirty her dress, while Triton just looked on silently.
"Amphitrite. Triton," Percy greeted with a nod.
"That's Lady Amphitrite and Lord Triton to you, demigod," Triton said, sounding so pompous and full of himself that Percy almost tried to see if a minor sea god could drown.
"Then it's Lord Perseus, minor god," Percy spat at his half-brother. He was so not in the mood for his arrogant shit.
"How dare you –" Triton started, stepping forward but was stopped by Poseidon.
"Triton, don't embarrass yourself," the god of the seas quietly told his eldest son. "This is not a fight you can win." Triton looked at his father with disbelief clearly written on his entire face.
"Father, clearly you do not favor your mortal son so blatantly that you would assist him against me?"
"No, Triton, I do not," Poseidon reassured his son. "But Perseus is not a mortal anymore."
"What?" both Triton and Amphitrite exclaimed.
"Amphitrite, Triton," Poseidon started. "Meet my youngest son, the Titan of time, harvest and destruction." By that point both of their jaws were closer to the ground than their anatomy should have allowed and Percy rolled his eyes. He'd been a Titan for a long time – in his opinion – and the novelty of seeing people's shock when they heard was quickly wearing off.
"Yeah, hi," Percy said, waving lazily at them before turning to his dad. "So, I'll just go and keep looking for Hestia then, please tell me if you find her."
"Of course," Poseidon told Percy before the latter disappeared, with the last thing he saw from the council room being both the wife and eldest son of the king rounding on him and starting to ask questions.
Percy next appeared just outside of Hades's palace, he figured that he shouldn't just go in uninvited like with his father's place. Although, the palace did seem strangely empty. It had never been a place filled with life but there should have been something around there. In fact, when Percy started thinking about it, there didn't seem to be anything going on aside from the fields of Asphodel and Punishment along with Elysium. Not a single spirit or creature was walking about.
"What is going on here?" Percy asked himself. Maybe Hades wanted a little privacy all of a sudden? He really was the type to not want anyone around, but that meant that he'd have to send all the servants away and that didn't seem likely to ever happen.
Well, Percy supposed, only one way to find out. He walked up to the huge doors and knocked on them a few times, the sound reverberating around the Underworld. After full minute, in which nothing at all happened, Percy knocked again. This time he only had to wait a few seconds until the doors were pushed open. In them stood an angry looking son of Hades, dressed in a stylish, black suit.
"Father told you to stay away for today! Is it too hard to follow that simple –" Nico cut himself off as he finally caught sight of the man standing in front of him, his jaw dropping and his eyes widening comically. "Oh, my gods," he managed to whisper after gathering a slight amount of his wit. Percy waved awkwardly.
"Hi, Nico," he said. "Been a long time."
Nico could hardly even think straight. They had all been told that Percy was in Tartarus a year before but there he was, standing in the Underworld. Did that mean he was dead? No, stupid Nico, of course he wasn't dead, then he wouldn't be able to be where he was and knock on the door and be so . . . solid-looking.
"Nico," was heard from inside. "Who is it?" Percy's eyes were the ones widening when he heard the voice. He definitely recognized that girl.
"Is that who I think it is?" he asked the son of Hades who had yet to shake himself from his stupor. Percy pushed the doors open wider and walked past Nico just as the latter physically snapped to attention like a rubber band.
Percy walked on into the throne room which was just straight ahead from the entrance and saw a table in the middle of the large room. On it was everything one needed for a quality date and on either side was a chair. One was empty – the one where Nico previously sat, Percy guessed – and in the other sat someone Percy knew very well.
"You clean up nicely, Clarisse," Percy stated. And it was true, the girl he'd known to only wear practical clothes and never do her hair or wear make-up sat there in a beautiful black dress, with her previously stringy hair well-combed and make-up done to perfection. She was way prettier than Percy would ever have guessed.
Clarisse stood up slowly, with her eyes as wide as Nico's had just been. "Oh, my gods," she uttered.
"Yeah, that's what he thought too," Percy said, pointing at Nico with his thumb.
"How are you . . . ?" Clarisse couldn't even finish her sentence.
"'Oh, hey, Percy. Welcome back from Tartarus. Nice to see you're not dead.' Those are all acceptable. I'd even settle for 'dude what's up with the eyes?'" Percy said, trying to get them out of their funk. It seemed to work because both of them visibly shook themselves and their eyes snapped towards his, instead of staring into the blue thinking about whatever. They still didn't seem to be able to speak, though, and Percy sighed.
"Nico, where's your dad? And have you seen Hestia? Oh, and how long has this been going on?" Percy asked as he gestured between the two, changing the subject after becoming bored with the shocked silence. Nico blinked.
"What?" he asked dumbly. Fortunately for Percy, Clarisse was able to turn her brain back on.
"Lord Hades didn't say where he was going and Lady Hestia hasn't been here in a while. And, uh, this is the second date," she informed Percy, going slightly red at the end.
"Second date and you bring her to the palace of the Underworld?" Percy questioned Nico. "I can think of more romantic places, you know. I suppose it's a sweet enough gesture, though, clearing everyone out and everything. Also, weren't you gay?"
"I like it," Clarisse stated, obviously eager to defend her . . . boyfriend? Were they 'official' yet? Didn't really matter to Percy, he'd just refer to them as boyfriend and girlfriend anyway. "And it's called being bisexual, most gods are so it makes sense for some of the kids to inherit that too."
"I guess so," Percy said, shrugging. "Well, if neither Hades nor Hestia are here then I'll say goodbye for now." He was about to flash out when Nico finally got out of his coma.
"Wait!" he called. "You can't just leave!" Percy's brows furrowed.
"I can't?" he asked, hating to be told what to do.
"No, I mean, yes, you can, but please don't," Nico mended. "How are you here? Why do you need to find dad and Lady Hestia? And . . . what is up with the eyes?" Percy stayed silent for a bit but decided to give them something.
"I was called back by the gods," he told them. "They finally realized that they made a mistake. First time for everything, I guess."
"They did?" Nico asked, to which Percy nodded.
"But what about the other stuff?" Clarisse questioned, not letting him get away with not answering them fully.
"I'll tell you guys later, you're on a date after all. See you later," Percy said.
"Thanks and, uh," Clarisse shuffled her feet a little before rushing forward and giving Percy a tight hug. "Welcome back, Prissy," she whispered in his ear. Percy chuckled as they let go of each other.
"See you guys later," he said, waving goodbye. Then he disappeared into thin air, leaving the son of Hades and daughter of Ares to continue their date.
Percy was so surprised that he almost had to squeeze his eyes shut when he appeared back on Olympus as the immense light originating from Apollo's golden palace. Only his powers over light let him keep his eyes open. Why would Apollo make it so bright? It served no purpose that Percy could see.
No one who was determined enough would let the light discourage them from breaking in – not that anyone would dare break into a god's palace – and it only annoyed everyone else. Maybe Apollo just wanted people to know which palace was his, although a big sign would also have done that well enough.
The Titan sighed and knocked on the door. When no one had come to open it after two minutes and fourteen seconds, Percy aimed a finger at the door, exploding the lock, and walked in. The palace was not nearly as bright on the inside as it was on the outside, Percy noted.
Well, he took back what he had thought about nobody daring to break in as he himself was technically breaking in right at that moment.
"Apollo!" Percy yelled into the huge palace but received no answer. He walked on and called out twice more but he still received as many answers as the Minotaur had brain cells. "I know that part of him is out on his chariot and a part of him is probably ruining a mortal woman's future but I thought he'd have at least one Apollo lazing on the couch," he mused to himself.
When he was about to turn around and leave, Percy spotted something that caught his attention. A huge map was spread over one wall and it seemed to be almost . . . alive. There were some markers all around it that moved around and it took Percy embarrassingly long to realize that they represented people and animals.
"This is some serious Harry Potter shit, right here," Percy muttered to himself.
Bear, deer, badger, Artemis, Thalia, and a lot of other animals and hunters were marked on the map. So Apollo was keeping tabs on his sister, likely without her knowing. This was good information that could be good blackmail material one day, should Percy ever need something from the sun god.
Skimming over the map once more, Percy almost missed a marker, one much fainter than the others. It was next to a fire, in the middle of the hunters' camp and was marked 'Hestia'. So that's where she went. If not for Apollo being an over-protective-older-but-still-younger-brother Percy might never have found her, with him never being able to locate Artemis's hunt without asking either Apollo, the one Percy couldn't find, or Zeus, who hated Percy. So yay to Apollo.
Percy allowed himself a small, victorious smile before flashing away to the place where he was most likely to get hurt. Or at least, where someone was most likely to try and hurt him. Skilled as they were, Artemis's hunters were not good enough to get a hit on someone who could, among other things, slow them down to the speed of a snail.
Just as expected, the hunters had their bows trained on him the second he appeared and a couple of them even shot at him. Those arrows were dealt with easily enough, just a thought from Percy and they were ash on the ground.
"There's always so much hostility from you," Percy said nonchalantly as he walked forward, closer to the small goddess who was sitting at the hearth. "I just came here to find a friend."
"No, you didn't!" one hunter yelled. "You don't have any friends here!" Percy turned to look at her and saw that the hunter was a remarkably tall girl, looking maybe sixteen at most and seemed to be very angry. The most attention grabbing thing about her were her skin and hair, both chalk-white, and red eyes.
Percy tilted his head to the side slightly as he studied her. She was well-built and obviously knew how to handle the bow in her hand. She also had one of the biggest knives Percy had ever seen hanging in a sheath on her waist. Seriously, that thing was almost the size of a small sword.
By this time, all the other hunters had relaxed their bows and were watching the 'stand-off' between their sister-in-arms and Percy, especially the black-haired girl with electric blue eyes. She was watching Percy really intently, like she wanted to punch him but also pat him and scratch him behind the ears because he was so adorable.
The albino hunter apparently noticed that her adversary's attention was moving away from her so she rudely shot an arrow at him. Didn't Artemis teach them how unsportsmanlike that was?
Percy just swiped his hand through the air and the arrow exploded, tiny little mushroom cloud and all, causing the hunters to string their bows back and get ready to try and turn Percy into a titanic porcupine, albeit one with the sharp ends pointed inwards.
"Wait, everyone, put your weapons down!" their lieutenant ordered, her eyes wide and filled with panic and confusion. Percy looked back at her and silently evaluated his old friend. She didn't really do anything to him before he went down but she did ignore him . . . Percy gave her a small smirk before turning his back on her and walking away.
"Percy! Is that really you?" Thalia called, starting to run after him.
"Far as I know, yes," Percy answered without looking at her. Thalia caught up to him and was about to grab his shoulder when she tripped on a root sticking up from the ground that she could have sworn hadn't been there before. Percy kept walking and sat down by the fire, next to Hestia who seemed to be studiously ignoring him.
"Hi," he said to her. "You, uh, left kind of abruptly."
"I'm sorry," Hestia apologized to the air. "I was hungry and wanted to see if Artemis had hunted something good recently, she lets me eat with her and her hunters if I want to."
"Oh, I understand," Percy stated, feeling hurt that she'd lie to him. Why was she doing that? Did she not want him to know that she cooked for herself? Did she maybe think that he'd be offended that she'd eaten and not left anything for him? Yeah, that was probably the reason. She was way too nice to lie about something unless she wanted to avoid hurting someone.
Thalia caught up to Percy again and refused to give up on speaking with him, relentlessly obnoxious as she was.
"Percy," she tried. "Hey, Percy. Talk to me. Why won't you talk to me, you stupid piece of kelp-headed demigod –" The words died in her mouth as Percy abruptly stood up and turned towards her as an immense wall of force pushed her – and the other hunters – back and eventually to her knees.
"Everyone keeps making the same mistake, again and again," Percy stated in a deathly calm voice. "You call me a demigod when in reality I haven't been one for a long, long time."
"But they don't know that, do they, Perseus?" Hestia questioned from behind him. Percy turned to her and felt a pain in his stomach seeing the disappointed look on her five year old face. He sighed and squeezed his eyes shut for a few moments before taking a deep, calming breath and recomposing himself.
"I suppose n –" Percy paused, tilting his head to the side. "Oh, hey, Artemis is back." He drew back his power, causing the hunters to let out a huge breath of relief, almost as one. Percy snapped his fingers to stop time and turned into a red fox. Then he walked calmly towards Hestia and curled up by the fire as he let time start flowing again.
The hunters' faces were priceless when they saw that Percy had just disappeared into thin air. If he weren't a fox, he'd have had to try his hardest not to laugh at them.
Hestia also had to look around for a bit until she noticed the fox sitting by her side whereupon she jumped slightly, having forgotten that particular gift in the midst of all the other revelations about Percy's powers. Seeing her reactions, Percy gave her as good a grin as he could, being a fox that was easier said than done.
Shortly thereafter, a still twenty one year old looking Artemis came walking into the camp. Her face was set somewhere between neutral and scowling and her eyes held a determined light.
"Get ready, hunters," she said. "A horde of monsters is coming our way." The hunters immediately stopped thinking on the issue of the missing Percy and got battle ready instead.
Hestia's young face seemed to age thousands of years as she thought about all of the hunters that could possibly die in the coming struggle. Percy, however, perked up. The idea of a fight was immensely appealing to him, especially since the one against Ares was such a disappointment.
While the hunters all ignored the red fox sitting by Hestia's side, the child goddess herself looked at him expectantly. He tilted his head in question and she sighed.
"Are you going to help them?" she asked. The snarl-grin combo that appeared on fox Percy's face was answer enough for her and she decided to stay to heal injured hunters and a little bit to see if Percy was as powerful as he had seemed.
The hunters were all in position, bowstrings taut and arrows ready to fire. They waited, unconsciously holding their breath in anticipation. All of a sudden, a hunter noticed something out of the ordinary.
"Up there!" she yelled, drawing everyone's attention to the small object flying towards them. Artemis wasted no time in firing her arrow at it and striking true, as tended to happen with her.
A large explosion of Greek fire lit up the slowly darkening afternoon just as the monsters attacked.
As one they burst out of the trees surrounding the camp, monsters of all shapes and sizes. There were hellhounds, dracaenae, cyclopes, horned centaurs, telkhines, and many more. All of them wanted to taste hunter's blood.
The hunters fought like a well-oiled machine, they had each other's back and all were extremely skilled. The first wave of monsters hadn't been able to even get near them when they were dropped to the ground via an arrow or two – occasionally there were more – and turned to dust, dispersing in the wind.
The monsters were barely able to get any traction but soon their superior numbers gave them the upper hand. It seemed that for every monster a hunter killed, two more took its place, cliché as it sounded. Artemis, of course, was as deadly as she was beautiful, firing arrows at speeds unimaginable to anyone other than someone who held the domain of time.
Percy watched the battle intently, hardly missing out on any single move and it was probably this attention to detail which allowed him to intervene in an otherwise deadly moment.
A hunter had been reaching into her quiver for an arrow when she was hit by an almost invisible projectile. She fell to the ground, yelling out in pain and compromising the focus of two hunters near her. They, too, were hit and fell down.
The other hunters were too busy trying to stay alive to help the wounded of their number do the same but Percy Jackson was not. He abandoned his disguise as a fox in favor of his own body. Y'know, opposable thumbs and all that stuff. Very useful when fighting with a sword for example.
Percy snapped his fingers – also impossible without opposable thumbs – and everyone in the vicinity slowed to a crawl. Their perception of time was still the same but their bodies felt like they were moving through syrup. Percy knew the panic running through their minds, he'd had that power used against him a few times before.
He could see the fear slowly appearing in everyone's eyes as they struggled to understand what was happening and it almost made him happy. He walked calmly among the people, his golden eyes blazing as he reveled in the power he held.
Suddenly he stopped, blinking his eyes in confusion. What was he doing? He wasn't acting like himself, that's for sure. He looked around upon the horrified faces of both ally and enemy but he couldn't snap out of his power-filled reverie until his eyes landed on the small Hestia, looking into his eyes with confusion and . . . fear.
She was afraid of him. Not the horde of monsters trying to kill them all, but him.
Percy stood, staring into Hestia's flaming eyes for twenty one seconds until his hold on time slipped and everyone's movements returned to normal speed. After three and a half seconds of confusion, everyone returned to the battle. Everyone except for Percy and Hestia, who continued staring into each other's eyes.
Hestia's eyes still held a remainder of that fear Percy had seen but it was mostly covered by a layer of apprehension and disappointment, something that caused Percy's insides to churn. Seeing those emotions as plainly as he did on the face of the gentle and sweet Hestia and to know that he was the reason for it hurt Percy deeply.
There was so much wrong with him and he didn't know what to do. All he seemed to be able to do was disappoint people and make things worse, like always. Even when he was a child, Percy had made things much too difficult for his mother and he knew that his father and the other gods didn't approve of his constant impertinence.
In Tartarus, Percy had felt that he was constantly disappointing Chaos and ever since he'd gotten out of the pit, nothing good had happened; he'd kicked Ares's butt (funny but ultimately unnecessary) and then had a breakdown, leading to his getting very drunk and trapping Hestia – a virgin goddess, no less – in a bed with him overnight.
Percy closed his eyes, grabbing at his hair and screaming in frustration. Every single living thing stopped moving and a fraction of a second later, the monsters all started glowing from the inside before they exploded in a spectacular show of golden dust and miscellaneous colors of blood spraying in all directions.
For two point eight seconds no one even dared breathe, let alone move or talk. The first one to gather their wits was the explosive demigod daughter of Zeus, but even her demeanor was subdued after the incredible events they all just witnessed.
"What . . . what was that?" she asked, almost as speechless as everyone else.
"I don't . . . Percy?" Artemis asked, surprised to see the former demigod in her all-female camp. Percy looked at her and then at all the astonished faces around him. He didn't know what to do, so he just did the easiest thing – he ran away.
Well, actually he teleported but whatever.
Percy appeared on a sidewalk in a quiet town and fell down on one knee, his eyes shut tightly and his hands fisting his hair so hard it hurt. What was wrong with him? After sixteen seconds he was able to stand up and, once realizing exactly where he'd unconsciously teleported, immediately set out to look for a single house. Since he'd only been there once before – and that one time was over a century before – it took him a little while to actually find it.
He walked to the front door and raised his hand to knock when he suddenly paused. He'd been gone so long and he'd changed so much, what if he couldn't even be the man she remembered him to be? What if she couldn't love the person he'd become?
No, that's stupid, Percy, he chastised himself. She'd love him no matter what, right?
Percy stood for a few more seconds with his arm raised and ready to knock, thinking hard on the matter. What was the right thing to do? She'd probably gotten over his disappearance already and it might just make things worse to walk back into her life being as unstable as he'd been since coming back from the pit. Would she even recognize him?
Come on, Percy, man up. Of course she'll recognize you and of course she'll love seeing you, he tried convincing himself but doubting his every thought all the same. Ah, screw it.
He knocked on the door three times, each knock noticeably weaker than the last.
Percy heard a faint "just a minute!" coming from inside the house and his insides twisted violently as he recognized the voice he'd wanted to hear for so, so long. Thirty eight seconds later the door opened and a kind-looking woman stood there with a warm smile on her face, the kind of smile that only she could produce.
Her brown hair had started greying lightly and her blue eyes, although widening immensely as she looked at him, were as bright as ever. She had accumulated a couple of new wrinkles over the one year Percy had been gone and she was wearing clothes that seemed more expensive that anything she and Percy could have afforded only a few years prior – in her time, that is – but she still smelled of candy and chocolate chip cookies and something that was just so undeniably her.
"Percy," she whispered, her hand tentatively reaching out to touch his shoulder but stopping short a few inches away. Percy smiled at her with tears forming in his eyes.
"Hi, mom."
A/N: Really, I am sorry about this but since school started again my previously ridiculous levels of laziness and procrastination have reached new heights and that, unfortunately, extends to this too. Seriously, I think that one of my ancestors probably got weird with a sloth.
Anyway, I hope that all these different characters meeting Percy makes up for this. The next chapter will obviously have Percy and Sally reuniting and stuff like that but we might just see some of the characters glimpsed here. Also, the albino hunter is awesome and she'll most likely appear more often. Case in point: She's an albino hunter. She has anger issues. She has a huge knife and she's not afraid to use it. Really.
Okay, everybody ready? It's time for a small announcement.
Some of you wanted Percy x Hestia x Artemis but I don't think that'd work out for anybody, at least not me. Sorry to those who wanted that but I doubt I'll ever do a multi pairing.
Announcement over.
Please do follow, favorite and/or review. It makes all the difference in the world to me. When I saw that I'd gotten 150 reviews I decided to put everything I had into finishing faster, that number is awesome and I hope that we'll reach 200 in no time 'cause that's an even more awesome number (of course, 250 is an even more awesome number than 200 but I think that 100 reviews for one chapter is asking too much. Or is it?).
'Till next time,
-Manimal