Ōkō Katachi

Well, it seems that people hate me, if all the reviews saying I'm a monster are anything to go by, but hey. Not every story I write is going to be all sunshine and rainbows, there's got to be some dark stuff here and there too. Keeps things interesting, you know?

On a side note, we had my birthday party on Sunday, almost a week after my actual birthday, but that was the day we got the entire family over. Didn't do much, just cooked all of the dove my father and cousin and I shot down in September, wrapped them in bacon with a jalapeno in the middle, and seasoned them with Cajun black and mesquite. They were good, really, really good.

Then I opened presents. Presents consisting of birthday cards with large sums of money inside, and heartwarming messages written within. Made over two-hundred bucks. It was a good day.

Back on the subject of this story, who's ready for carnage, tears, blood, dead people, and an event in the PJO fandom that has either never happened, or has happened in only a few other fics?! We also hit 200 reviews in just nine chapters. Go readers!

Disclaimer: I don't own PJO

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The chakra churning around the thing that Percy had become died away, and enough of Mt. Tamalpais had been cleared away that the remaining Greeks off to the far side could accurately see what had just happened. Percy's new form struck fear into all, even the Titan Atlas.

The creature stood at fifteen feet, which meant it only came up to the Susano'o's knee caps, but the power the creature exuded made the giant chakra avatar seem smaller than a termite. The creature's lower half was covered by a black robe of sorts, more like a wrapping of cloth than anything else. Upwards from the waist, there were no muscles, there was no skin, no organs, no nerves…nothing except bones. Spine, ribs, arms, skull, and a set of bones connecting to the shoulder blades that sprouted out behind and then splintered into another set bones. The entire structure was similar to that of a bat's wing bones. However, it was the skull that drew the most attention, for it was not a human skull.

Whatever kind of skull it was could not be found on this earth, or any planet for that matter, but only in something the likes of Satan or other demons could conjure. The large eye sockets were slanted and narrow, with light smoke rising from them, and the hollow nostrils. The jaw was elongated, much like a dog's, and molar-like teeth lined the outside of the jaw. At the end of the snout, large canines pointed upwards from the bottom jaw.

The bones were not bleached, nor were they black, or covered in a sheen of blood. Instead, they looked like the flesh that was once covering the them had just been burned off, and the entire structure reeked of burning, rotting meat.

The creature growled, a sound more intense than diesel engine. Its jaws slowly split apart, strings of blood-like saliva connecting the teeth. The strings looked to be bowing inwards, as if the creature was sucking in air despite having no visible lungs. Then the creature roared at a decibel strong enough to make those within miles cover their ears, blowing the blood-strings out of its gaping maw.

The creature reached behind itself, and ripped off its right wing with a thunderous crack. It held the bones in its hands, and then the tainted ivory began to burn, with embers spreading out from the gnarled hands to cover the length of the wing. After the traveling embers had ran the length of the wing, the creature was holding a new weapon in its hands. A scythe.

The weapon was proportionate to the creature's massive size, with a straight shaft of pure black metal. The butt of the scythe was a blunt edge in the same shape of a human coccyx bone, only much bigger. For the blade, the skull of a bird took the top, with the entire thing seamlessly flowing into a very sharp looking blade for a beak. Smoke curled from the eyes and nostrils of the beak, which was also made of the same black metal as the shaft.

The creature whirled around to face the petrified son of Susano'o, who reacted to the overwhelming danger by howling and charging forward. At this point in time, he didn't care about his soiled underwear, only obeying his fight or flight response in the way a doubly-powerful demigod would. By attacking first.

Due to consuming the soul of his cousin, Tyler's left eye had changed into that of Sasuke's Mangekyou, a sign of his new Amaterasu and Inferno Style capabilities. However, because of the adrenaline and fear taking a joyride throughout his body, Tyler was not even consciously aware of these changes, being far more focused on the primal instinct of survival. The creature would not be so easily defeated, however…or even challenged.

A Shinto demigod using the power of the Ōkō Katachi could rip apart any Kage like tissue paper, and could challenge a beast like the Nine-Tails, and possibly win. But the terrified Tyler was not the Nine-Tails.

Madara's Susano'o tried stomping on the creature, only for said monster to swing its scythe with a single skeletal arm, obliterating the chakra leg, causing the giant to come crashing down. Panic gripped Tyler, and he quickly reformed the missing leg, and attempted to stand, only for the creature to spin its scythe, catching it in a two-handed grip, and slash widely.

A pressurized arc of wind caught the Susano'o, and dragged it across the mountainside in a semicircle, crushing trees and rocks with ease. The giant crashed into a cliff with a bang, causing the entire mound of granite to shake and rumble. Dust erupted upon impact, obscuring the Susano'o. A problem rendered void when the creature leapt through the air, revealing nothing but darkness beneath its robe, and slammed down on the Susano'o, the impact wave blowing away the dirt and dust, while also cracking the chakra exterior.

The creature reared its left fist back, and punched a hole right through the chest cavity, right above where Tyler screamed like a bitch. Bony finger unclenched, and scooped the screaming boy up, bringing him close to the maw of the creature. In desperation, Tyler called on his lightning powers, summoning a torrent of atmospheric volts down upon the creature holding him.

In response, the creature raised the scythe in its right hand above its demonic skull, the shaft parallel to the ground, and began to spin it with chakra alone, much like a Rasengan. The scythe spun at such a high level, that it quickly became nothing more than a black disk, before it began to spin fast enough to fade in and out of existence, and just in time to block the lightning storm. The scythe acted as a shield, easily deflecting every bolt.

Tyler's control soon ran out, and the lightning ceased its bombardment. The creature stopped spinning its scythe, catching it mid-spin. The shockwave that carried out due to the sudden stop in such monstrous momentum cratered the ground. The creature snarled as it 'stared' at Tyler, the boy trembling in the large, skeletal hand.

Then the creature bit Tyler in half at the waist, chewed, swallowed, then popped the rest of Susano'o's son into its large maw, grinding up the lower body as well before swallowing again. Because the creature was skeletal, if one was watching, they would have had the extreme displeasure of watching chewed-up human remains slide out from the back of the creature's mouth, down through the ribcage, and into the black robe covering the lower half of the creature.

The skull, ribs, and spine were now painted red with blood, with the snout dripping small bits of crimson.

The remaining Greeks, that being Annabeth, Thalia, Grover, Luke, Artemis, and Atlas watched the proceedings in stunned horror. Down below, yet quickly ascending, the monster army felt the bloody aura, sensed the carnage, and smelled the guts. And they knew fear.

The creature suddenly whipped around to lock gazes with Atlas, and the Titan raised his javelin up just in time to clash with the shaft of the creature's scythe. The Titan's feet dug trenches into the stone ground as he was pushed backwards. Then, with a guttural cry, the creature threw its arms out, causing the much smaller Atlas to go crashing through columns before slamming into what will at one point be a wall. The entire thing crumbled when Atlas fell to the ground in a heap.

The half-bloods scrambled out of the way of the creature as it seemingly glided over the ground. It paused briefly, looking at the corpses of Bianca, Zoё, and Moon-Moon. The smoke coming from the creature's eyes, nose, and scythe seemed to lessen, while twin trails of blood fell from the eyes and down the snout. Atlas stirred, and the creature's skull snapped back to the Titan.

The smoke increased, and the blood trails evaporated.

Atlas suddenly popped up, glowing with energy. Whatever he was about to do was rendered useless when the creature was in front of him, towering over him, and backhanded him away. Atlas skid across the stone with a screeching sound, a trail of dust following him. The Titan popped back up again, and was cracked upside the head with a scythe shaft that sent him skidding further away.

Atlas was on his feet, and was just able to summon his power to increase his strength before he was on the receiving end of another blow. His body shined, before there was a blinding eruption. When the light faded, the once-well-dressed man that was the Titan of Strength and Endurance was gone, and in his place was…just a fifteen-foot tall version of the same guy dressed in a copper-colored toga…and nothing else.

Oh, and he had a bigger javelin. That was important to know.

The creature was instantly in his face, but Atlas was stronger now, faster, more alert and aware of what was happening, and almost managed to get his javelin up in time to block the bony fist coming for his face. The Titan's domain of endurance saved his skull from caving in, but did not defy the laws of momentum, and Atlas subsequently went flying.

Then he disappeared in a flash of copper energy, and flashed behind the creature, javelin raised to pierce. Atlas succeeded in his intention, running cleanly through a space in the ribcage through where the heart was supposed to be, and that was the problem. The creature was made of bones, with nothing within that could be damaged. Atlas had just basically run his spear through empty air.

His end.

What could have been a glorious battle was over because of a lack of information regarding the opponent. The creature whipped around, jerking the javelin out of the Titan's hands, and swiped its bony hand across the flesh, splitting it apart like tissue paper. Atlas screamed loudly at having his chest almost split apart like a piñata.

The creature's left hand snapped out, grabbing and outstretching Atlas' right. The scythe came down, and golden ichor sprayed the earth. The Titan screamed at seeing the stump of what is right arm had been reduced to. The creature roared, and smacked Atlas across the face with his own severed limb. Zoë's father went to the ground…and howled when his massive bald head was grabbed to the hand of an oversized skeleton, and began to burn because of the bones.

The creature brought Atlas close to the side of its skull, and spoke. Spoke in the voice of 2016 people. Spoke in fluent Japanese.

"Anata ga kurushimu koto ni narimasu. Anata wa nenshō shimasu. Anata wa, anata no tsumi no tame ni kizutsukerudeshou."

Atlas whimpered at the fear that ripped apart his body. Before he could do anything, the creature reared back, and slammed him face first into a jagged column of black marble, then again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again and again and again and againandagainandagainandagainandagainandagainandagianandagain-!

CRACK

The column finally gave way with one final slam, the creature shoving Atlas right through the marble. The Titan didn't have much of a face left, but what he did have was covered in ichor and completely unrecognizable as anything even remotely resembling humanoid. Still, Atlas was not dead, nor was he unconscious, but his body had gone numb to the burning of his flesh.

The creature sought to rectify the latter observation.

Its grip tightened on Atlas' skull, a cracking sound resonating from the area of the bony fingers, smoke curling from where the digits met skin. It raised its arm, bringing Atlas up with it as if he was no more than a loaf of bread. The creature stabbed the butt of its scythe into the stone, and used its now-free hand to stab right through Atlas' lower abdomen, right through his spine. With its right hand firmly in place, and its left hand tightly gripping the skull, the creature ripped up.

Atlas' entire spinal column was torn out along with his head, the vertebrae dripping with golden blood. Still unsatisfied with its work, the creature crushed the skull in its hands like a grape, and the then set to work on ripping apart the corpse into the smallest pieces it could possibly tear the corpse into.

The Greeks watched the entire event in just stunned, silent horror.

Within seconds, all that was left of Atlas was a massive bloody pile, large lumps of flesh, some bones, and bits of viscera here and there. The creature's hands and snout had been painted gold, and its ribs had bits of guts hanging about from when the creature had eaten the Titan. Then the first monsters of the approaching army eclipsed the hill.

The creature took note of this, ripped its black scythe out of the ground, smoke almost billowing from its eyes and nostrils, and charged the monsters with a deafening war cry coming straight from the bowels of hell. The army didn't even know what hit them. All they saw was a massive skeletal demon with a robe, a scythe, and a single, bony bat wing.

The creature swiped left and right at a dizzying pace, bisecting, vivisecting, and eviscerating anything and everything in its path. Monsters were sliced apart, and instead of exploding into dust, their bloody corpses were left strewn about the ground along with their insides. The smell was terrible.

The creature continued its bloody path straight for the Princess Andromeda, carving up the monsters like a roast turkey. A cyclops raised his broadsword; the blade was shattered and his body sliced in half. Two empusae came from the sides; their heads were removed in a single slash. A group of cyclops charged; the black scythe spun, acting like a meat grinder on steroids. Hellhounds tested their luck, using their pack mentality to swarm from behind and the sides; the creature's roar was enough to make them shoot off into the night. One beast got lucky, and scored a hit with its sword; the blade shattered against the creature's bones. The beast had its head removed via skeletal hand.

The creature casually tossed the severed cranium into its mouth, and chewed it up like a single piece of popcorn.

Soon, after tearing down the mountain and leaving a sickening trail behind it, the thing that was once Percy Jackson reached the cruise ship that housed the majority of Kronos' army of demons. Too bad most of them were still inside, the ones on the mountain only being a small contingent. The creature let its scythe down, and stabbed its bony fingers into the side of the ship.

With a mighty scream, and no small amount of chakra, the creature lifted the ship clear out of the water, held it above its head for a time, before it hurled the cruise ship across the Pacific. The Princess Andromeda crashed back into the ocean with a monstrous splash, and a jarring impact.

An impact powerful enough to damage the hull.

The creature was silent, except for the low growl escaping from it. Then, without warning or pretense, the creature reared back and roared. The sound waves created by this beast were of enough power to create waves in the water, cause trees to bow, and make the Romans that were less than 50 miles away form ranks and prepare for battle.

The creature finished its roar for some unknown triumph, lowering its head and picking up its black scythe. It promptly spun around, and blurred up the side of the mountain, back to the ruins of Othrys, back to where the goddess was still trapped.

The Greeks had assembled the dead, what was left of them, moving Bianca, Zoё, Clair and Moon-Moon to rest next to each other. Luke was missing. Thalia, Annabeth, and Grover were assembled around the kneeling Artemis, debating on how to free Artemis without someone having to take the weight of the sky, or causing the death everything within 350 miles, or 100 hundred leagues.

The arrival of the creature startled the survivors, all of them reaching for weapons while Artemis just grimaced, pain and fear shining in her eyes.

Their defensive stances were all for not, however, for the Ōkō Katachi had served its purpose, and fulfilled the constraints of its summoning. The creature disappeared, its bones drying out and fading into dust, its scythe burning away into embers, and its robe falling away into shadow. Now it would lie dormant within its master, waiting for the day of its next summon.

When the robe disappeared, young Percy was revealed to be standing there, a look on his face that spoke volumes of how many emotions he was feeling all at once. Distraught, angry, and lost. He looked so, so lost. The Greeks just watched him warily, the things the boy just did extremely fresh on their minds. If he was still that volatile, then anything they did was really pointless.

Instead, Percy just stumbled over to the bodies. Tears pricked his eyes when he saw the state of the people he had actually formed an attachment to. Zoё, Clair, Bianca, and his wolf, Moon-Moon…what was left of them, anyway. Nightshade had a gaping hole in her face where her eye was supposed to be; Clair had been torn apart, the only thing keeping her together being her head and nether regions; Bianca was missing half of her face in a way much worse than Harvey Dent; and Moon-Moon, like Zoё, had a gaping hole in his body where his heart used to be located.

Then an impossible cold settled over the whole of the mountain. Frost creeped up and around the area, vegetation shriveled up and died, and breathing turned to steam in the air. Percy, despite being clad in a sleeveless vest, was not cold. How could the brother of Death be affected by his presence?

The space between Percy and the bodies, and the Greeks clouded, mist rising up in an obscuring pillar. The cold intensified to a level that had Grover, Annabeth, and Thalia literally huddled together for warmth. As for Artemis, who had met Thanatos before on several unfavorable circumstances (dead Hunters), she could safely say she recognized the presence of the Reaper. However, the aura she was feeling right now was too cold, too eldritch, too powerful for the son of Nyx.

The pillar of mist fell back to the ground, revealing the creature that had appeared. Percy's purple eyes stared glossily at Shinigami. The Shinto God of Death stared impassively at Percy.

"Why are you here, Shinigami?"

The white-robed figure reached up and took the tanto out of his mouth. "Father offers you a deal, Little Brother."

Percy just raised a brow, seemingly dead to the world.

"Father will return the souls of the deceased back to their bodies, only if you harvest over three million souls in less than ten seconds."

Percy's eyes widened at the revelation, but he immediately caught on to several things wrong with the 'deal.' "How does Father have Zoё and Bianca's souls? How does he have my wolf's? And what good does returning their souls to their bodies, without repairing the bodies first? They'd just be stuck in a corpse for all eternity."

If Shinigami was impressed or surprised by his sibling's inquiries, he did not show it. "Father instructed me to intercept the souls of all before they could reach their respective afterlives, and you hold Clair's and Tyler's within you. Currently, the Greeks and the hound are in limbo. If you accept the deal, and fulfill the constraint, then Father has given me permission to repair the cadavers."

"How do I know that neither of you are lying?"

"Perseus. Father has sworn on his status as a god to fulfill this bargain, and I swear on my status as a god that everything I say is true."

Percy's whole world started to look brighter all of a sudden. He didn't know about the Greeks, but for a Shinto god to swear on his or her status, they meant business. For a deity to break that kind of oath, the consequences would be to have their immortal soul destroyed, their domains split up, and their power shared among the other deities. Jashin was not one for his own destruction, no matter how insane he was, and he was not stupid enough to think he could fight the likes of Kami. To summarize, everyone that was currently dead would be resurrected if Percy killed over three million people in less than ten seconds, and their bodies would be repaired to functioning condition. There was just a tiny problem with this deal.

"How do you suppose I harvest over three million souls in under ten seconds?"

Shinigami became slightly transparent, revealing Artemis struggling to hold up the sky.

Percy nodded at the implication. "Hey, if I kill those three and get their souls, can you still revive them?"

Shinigami cocked his head to the side, looking up at the sky as if he was listening to something. Then he nodded. "Yes."

"Swear on your status as a god?"

"Yes."

"Out-fucking-standing." Shinigami disappeared completely, and the Greeks were left very pale at what they had just heard. Percy pointed his palms at the trio, and while all three were mid-sentence in screaming, the boy's skin was ripped apart by the bones underneath. The next three deaths were instant. Percy giggled at the feeling of souls being added to his collection.

Now, since the stipulation was over three million in ten seconds, Percy did not trust his father to start the clock only at his son's signal, so the demigod did not waste time in bolting forward at Jonin-level speed, knocking Artemis out from underneath the sky while also moving at speed too fast to succumb to the Titan's Curse.

Without a bearer to hold it up, the sky came crashing down.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Probably twenty-ish minutes later

Well, a decent portion of California had just been flattened. Not destroyed, blown up, or reduced to rubble. Just…flattened. Like a pancake. Except for Camp Jupiter. Terminus and Lupa's magic had been enough to save the Romans from being squashed like bugs. The earth was still curved though, and the camp was far enough away that the curvature of the planet made it impossible to see.

So score one point to secrecy.

Jashin had indeed fulfilled his end of the deal, considering that well over three million souls had been presented to him due to the flattening of 350 miles of terrain, along with the deaths of every single living thing within that radius. Except for Percy, Artemis, and the Romans.

Speaking of the Moon Goddess, the only reason that she wasn't trying to ring the little psycho's neck was because her Lieutenant, cousin, and half-sister were alive and breathing. Currently. And they were gazing around the flattened landscape with wide-eyed looks. They had yet to be informed of what Percy had just done to bring them back to life.

"What…happened here?" Bianca asked. One second, she was getting cracked across the face with Titanic force while on a mountain. The next she was waking up in the middle of a flat field standing on something really hard…flattened mountain.

Moon-Moon licked Percy's face repeatedly, which made his response rather warbled. "Dad…offered…me… the chance…to resurrect…all of you…dammit, Moon-Moon! Cut it out for a fucking second! So anyway, Dad offered me the chance to bring you all back to the land of the living if I could kill over three million people in ten seconds. So I knocked Artemis out from underneath the sky while moving fast enough to not get caught in the fucking curse, and boom. Over three million dead people, and all of you get another chance at life. Win-win!"

Annabeth wobbled a bit as the fact that her father, step-mother, and younger twin half-brothers were all dead—you know what? Fuck them; fuck her dad, fuck her step-mom, fuck those little shits the twins. They didn't want her back then, they certainly didn't want her now, and the daughter of Athena was just fine with that. The biggest thing she was sad about, was that their deaths had been instant.

Whew. She was spending too much time around Percy. Perhaps that chakra stuff of his had some sort of psychological radiation?

However, not everyone was so…accepting of Percy's actions. Mainly Thalia. She stormed up to Percy, ignoring the warning gaze from Clair, and the snarling wolf. She grabbed the psycho by the collar of his vest, bringing him close to her face. "What the hell!? First you go all berserk and slaughter an army and turn Atlas into mincemeat, then you kill me, and then you kill three million people. What the hell is wrong with you!?"

Percy winced at the spit being sprayed in his face, but then he got cute in his own twisted way. He just grinned like a loon. "Lots of things! Like how much I won't care if I split open your abdomen and watch your guts spill out!"

Then Thalia registered the sharp object poking her. Percy's scalpel, primed and ready for surgery. She dropped the psycho, her face pale.

Grover, while disturbed at how casually Percy could talk about genocide, was, on a very deep, dark level, glad that so many humans had been taken out so swiftly. Maybe now the wild could start to retake some of the planet. Bianca, while not really caring about nature, didn't care at all, really, about so many dead people. She was a daughter of Hades; death was in her blood. Was she supposed to feel sorrow for all the shattered families just now? She didn't think so. Zoё was a bit of both. With so many mortals dead, nature might have to chance to regrow, and the Huntress was over three thousand years of age; she was desensitized to death on a very morbid level, even her own 'sisters' dying barely warranted more than a heavy sigh. Clair was Clair. If she had been offered the same deal by Amaterasu, then she would've happily burned the entire continent to get Percy and Zoё back.

Moon-Moon was a wolf. He only cared being with Master.

The clouds above cleared out, and the shining full-moon brought everyone back to the present. Artemis seemingly ignored the flattened landscape that went on for miles, and raised her fingers to her lips, giving a good whistle worthy of someone hailing a cab in New York. Out of the shining moon, a sleigh being pulled by reindeer(?) came flying down, and came to a stop next to the quest.

Percy 'oohed' at the silver beasts. Zoё and Bianca bopped him on the head in tandem. "Ow! What the fuck!?"

"No killing the reindeer," the girls said at the same time. Then they hit the psycho on the head again. "And watch your language!"

Percy stuck his tongue out.

Artemis climbed into her sleigh. "This is going to be on hell of a council meeting…I'm sorry you can't come with me this way, but transportation will arrive shortly for all of you to Olympus. All of you," she emphasized with narrowed eyes at Percy Clair. The Moon Goddess expected rebuttal, instead she got matching grins of mischief.

Well shit.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Yep, everyone died, and came back to life. Kind of removes the whole impact, doesn't it? But hey, now you can all rejoice that no one's dead.

So just how many fics have the sky come down? Well now there's at least one. If you live within 350 miles of Mt. Tamalpais, sorry that you're dead.

I originally intended for this arc to only be 10 chapters long, but it looks like it's going to be twelve. Next chapter will be the Winter Solstice meeting, which will be mostly talking and humor. What'd you think of this chapter though? The Ōkō Katachi, the thing with Atlas, the Princess Andromeda being thrown, the fact that Jashin might have a bit of a heart after all, and Percy's a boy again…so yeah.

Fav, Follow, and Review!

And Happy Halloween!