Ghouls and Romans Pt. 3
It's been such a long time since this story has seen some attention, almost a year, actually. Sorry, and yet also not sorry, as I've been busy as of late.
I got to a stopping point in my novel for now, and so I'm going to finish this story.
No idea how, as I've completely lost my track for this one, and really had no idea where I was going with it with the New Rome arc, especially since the whole arc was supposed to be Percy (as an Aogiri member) getting some tough love, only I fixed that with the personalities Kraken and Persia (whose name is pronounced Per-SEE-uh, in case anyone was pronouncing it like the ancient empire).
So, the real reason for this near year-long hiatus is that I dug myself into a hole with no idea on how I was going to dig myself out, and, more importantly, I've really lost interest in this idea as a whole.
I honestly have no idea where I was going with it in the first place.
Root-A and :re are based on Kaneki being Haise, but with how things are in this story, there's now way Percy, Persia or Kraken would ever let that happen, and even if it did, it wouldn't last as Percy would make Haise remember everything. I thought of Percy becoming Haise, but that requires Arima causing brain damage, and there's two other personalities at work in Percy's head already, two very active personalities, and Percy would be too powerful for the Quinx Squad to handle in the first place, and there's also Eto, who wouldn't ever let that happen to Percy anyway.
So, short of some very heavy-handed deus ex machina, there's effectively no way for Tokyo Ghoul canon to happen, and with how powerful the triplets are, with Touka, Kaneki, and Eto in tow, PJO canon would just be boring.
Therefore, the only conclusion is to make my own canon, and the problem with that is that I'm not a very original person, but I came up with something, so here wo go…
Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or TG
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Previously, on Green-Eyed Ghoul…
Percy went through devastating emotional trauma which resulted in the splintering of his psyche as a coping mechanism, and his "siblings" were "born": Persia, the result of Touka's teasing and forced crossdressing, and Kraken, the result of Yomo's teaching and training.
Percy, Persia, Kraken, Kaneki, and Touka went along with a Roman entourage back to New Rome, where they were supposed to integrate and learn lessons of discipline and camaraderie.
During the trip via cruise ship, Eto stowed away, and Persia was visited by Salacia, her Roman goddess stepmother, and was instructed on how to invoke the abilities of sea creatures, primarily the clown fish's gender-swapping ability, so that Persia's body could match her female mindset.
Following this, using the ability of sea sponges and coral reefs to duplicate themselves, the triplets formed bodies entirely for themselves and effectively created three SSS-rank Ghouls.
Eto consummated her love for Percy via Persia's still-male form, and the cruise was attacked by the mytholigcal Kraken, only to be nearly effortlessly defeated by the Ghoul Kraken. The cruise landed in San Francisco, and everyone departed.
Once in New Rome, war games took place that night, in which the Ghouls collectively curb-stomped the Romans, and the next day saw combat in the New Roman coliseum, in which the Ghouls fought against an opponent and won in a series of boring fights, fights that were held to determine which cohort the Ghouls would be going into.
The Fifth Cohort was the unanimously chosen one, much to the dismay and outrage of others.
During Kraken's battle with the lycanthrope, whose design is based on the lycanthrope from an anime called Trinity Blood, he shattered the coliseum floor and discovered sabotage was afoot.
At the end of all this, Reyna arrived at the Caldecott Tunnel, indicating that the events of the Sea of Monsters have come to pass, and the canonical calendar is leading into the Titan's Curse.
Elsewhere, Sally Jackson, with the help of Shin'en Yūrei, escaped from the Underworld and ripped off the black wings of Thanatos. Currently, she is on her way north from Los Angeles in the search of her child.
She does not know about anything that happened after her orchestrated death at the hands of Kronos.
Now, for the rest of the story…
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
In the principia, praetors Damian, son of Mercury, and Vanessa, daughter of Venus, were speaking with Kraken, son of Neptune, and arguably the most powerful in all of New Rome. Outside the principia, Percy, Persia, Touka, Kaneki, and Eto were waiting for Kraken's emergence with the new girl, Reyna, while two legionaries stood guard outside the doors, barring entrance, though they both knew damn well that they'd be made into mincemeat if the Ghouls wanted to enter.
However, they didn't because A) they knew Kraken could handle himself, and B) Percy, Persia, and Touka were all picking up a familiar scent from the new girl.
It was faint, and old, but it was a scent that was nagging at their memories, trying to stir something up from a past no more than two years old.
The triplets were coming up on their fourteenth birthday, since August was just a few weeks away, after all.
Reyna was aware of the eyes on her, and she was feeling rather self-conscious about it, because she was getting a weird vibe from the owners of those eyes. She also still needed to poop, because apparently showing up with letters of recommendation was grounds for an immediate meeting with the praetors, but apparently investigations of sabotage were more important than that, and also the Romans were of the mind that if she lacked the physical strength to keep her sphincter clenched and the patience to wait for leave, then she wasn't going to be a very good legionary.
That sentiment made Reyna want to mess herself out of pure spite, but she had a standard to uphold.
That, and she could still hear her big sister's homemade potty training song ringing loud and clear in her head.
Anyway, inside the principia:
"You're sure it was sabotage?" Damian asked seriously.
Kraken crossed his arms. "Either someone screwed with the supports, or I actually have the physical strength capable of collapsing your coliseum floor. What do you want to go with?"
He may have sounded snarky and disrespectful, but he had a point. Roman engineers, especially the demigod ones, especially the children of Vulcan, were practically engineering gods in their own right, and they taught what they knew to other legionaries so that Rome had multiple assets. Their collective craft was not to be underestimated or understated.
In laymen's, if you took down one of their marvels, like the New Roman coliseum, which was a massive improvement over any coliseum that existed in ancient times, you either had some terrific power, or there was some shoddy work afoot.
And Vulcan engineers did not do shoddy work.
Damian nodded. "We'll need to launch a full investigation. Question everyone that was down there during operation, and everyone that's been down there since the last time the coliseum was used."
Vanessa nodded. "I'll start getting a list together."
"We'll help," Kraken said, volunteering his family and Eto. "Someone tried to kill me and my siblings, and I want their head."
"As you wish," Damian said. "But this is a time when I need you to obey me as your praetor, since you are an official member of the legion now, and this sabotage endangered more lives than just legionaries."
"We'll play along during the day," Kraken said, "but like I've already said: we're not under you. We can kill you and this entire place whenever we want. We'll conduct our own investigation, our way."
Damian sat up just a little straighter in his throne. "Very well, but absolutely no killing. If there are any mutilated corpses found during this investigation, we'll see if you can back that claim up."
Kraken nodded, satisfied with the compromise.
"On your way out," Vanessa said, "send in the new girl."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Kraken exited and jabbed a thumb behind him when he looked at Reyna. She gathered herself and vanished inside the principia.
"So?" Percy asked.
"There's going to be an investigation into who and how the coliseum was sabotaged," Kraken said. "And we're going to do our own investigation, our way."
"Who would want us killed, though?" Percy asked. "We just got here."
Kraken shrugged. "That's an extensive list, I'm sure. Any of the demigods that came to get us could be paranoid and want us dead before something happens, or they could've said some things and now someone wants us dead, or maybe there's an entire conspiracy going on around here to kill us, or maybe the CCG managed to infiltrate this place and is now trying to kill us, or maybe there's a Ghoul here we don't know about and they're trying to protect their territory. And lots of other possibilities besides those ones. Those are the ones that came out first."
"Then, should we leave, then?" Persia piped up. "I mean, if someone sabotaged the coliseum and made its floor collapse, something that could've gotten a lot of people killed besides us, should we get out of here because whoever did this clearly doesn't care about collateral damage so much as they do about our heads?"
"You're both missing another angle," Kaneki said, and then all eyes were on him. "Like Persia said, whoever did this doesn't care about collateral, meaning they don't care about casualties beyond their target if they happen. Since whoever did this went with a wide-range attack, we might not necessarily be the targets, but distractions from who the perpetrator's real target was. For all intents and purposes, we could've just been bystanders at the wrong place and wrong time."
Kraken kept silent on the fact that he hadn't thought of that possibility. "Then that changes things. If we're not the targets, then this isn't our problem."
"However," Touka said, "there's no way to tell right now if we're the targets or not."
Kraken nodded. "We'll still do our own thing until we have more information. If it comes out we're not the targets, then we're done. If we are, then we're going to find whoever tried to kill us, and then kill them. Simple as that."
No one, not even Percy and Persia objected to the notion of killing their killer. They hadn't been raised to be like that. Their mother had been a SS-rank Ghoul, the leader of an entire gang of Ghouls, and their Aunt Kaya and their Uncle Enji had both been Ghoul gang leaders themselves, and their Aunt Ryouko, Hinami's mother, had been Sally's lieutenant back in the day. Never mind the fact that Uncle Yomo was a stoic that taught them how to kill people alongside Sally, Kaya, and Enji, and Yoshimura, the closest thing they had to a grandfather, while always encouraging friendly relations, never discouraged killing someone that was actively trying to kill you first.
So, where us nice and kind humans are taught that killing is wrong (with an ever-expanding list of complications and exceptions), the triplets—and Ghouls in general—were taught that killing was a necessary part of their lives, and it was an endeavor to be undertaken quite often, and carried out without any kind of emotional baggage.
Reyna poked her head out the door. "Hey, the praetors want all of you guys in here."
She went back inside, and the Ghouls followed.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Reyna Ramirez-Arellano, daughter of Bellona, Goddess of War," Vanessa said. "She comes bearing very disturbing news."
"The Titan Saturn is rising again and he's recruited an army of monsters and demigods to help him wage war on Olympus. Circe's Island has been destroyed by demigods that aren't Roman."
Eto tilted her head at the daughter of the war goddess. "Shouldn't that have been reversed for order of importance?"
Reyna shrugged.
"Demigods that aren't Roman?" Percy asked with a raised brow. "What'd they look like?"
"A boy with black hair and black eyes, olive-colored skin, and a girl with blonde hair and grey eyes."
Percy's, Persia's, and Kraken's eyes instantly glazed over as their minds went to work.
"A girl with…blonde hair…" the youngest triplet said distantly.
And then, the proverbial lightbulb suddenly went off, and a torrent of memories came rushing through the triplet's heads. Touka, even though she had been there as well, wasn't so fortunate to remember her quest with her brother and Annabeth, as she wasn't strong enough to overcome the Mist that had been subtly addling her mind.
For those just a little bit lost as to what's happening, before the whole fiasco several chapters back, before the Romans were brought into the story, the gods used the Mist to block Percy and Touka's memories of the Lightning Thief quest and of Camp Half-Blood so that the secret of the two camps would be kept. That was why there was zero mention of anything Greek for the past several chapters.
Of course, with the remembering of those memories, and the lack of knowledge about why the camps were separated in the first place, came the changing of the timeline.
"That girl's name is Annabeth Chase," Percy said seriously. "She's the daughter of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war."
The praetors were instantly thrown for a loop. And then they got knocked off their asses.
"And we're not children of Neptune. We're children of Poseidon."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The praetors told everyone to wait outside until called for, and so the Ghouls were in their group, and Reyna was over there by herself, staring suspiciously.
She still needed to poop, and was starting to feel just a little desperate.
Information that was crucial to the plot, after all.
"I don't think you should've said that," Persia noted.
"Sorry," Percy said sheepishly. "I was kinda on a roll…"
"Well, personally, I think we can make the most of it," Kraken said. "Now they might kick us out and/or try to fight us, which gives us the perfect opportunity to wreck them, go back to Anteiku, and make sure the CCG doesn't try anything."
"You really don't want to be here, do you?" Persia asked.
"Here, we've got to worry about demigods, gods, monsters, humans, Titans, and probably lots of other things. In Tokyo, the only thing we've got to worry about are other Ghouls and the Doves. Less threats in Tokyo."
Persia stamped her foot in frustration with her older brother. "Why are you in survival mode all the time? Just live a little, goddamn it!"
"I am living," Kraken said tersely.
"Hey, guys," Percy tried.
Touka, Kaneki, and Eto thought it was best to keep quiet and let the siblings hash this out until it got too heated.
"We're all still alive right now because of me."
"That's not true! They only reason you and I are alive right now is because Kronos killed Mom and it hurt Percy's mind!"
"Guys-"
"Even before we were all separate, it was me keeping us alive because I'm the fighter."
"We're all fighters, and it was Uncle Yomo that taught 'you,' so really, it's Uncle Yomo that kept us alive, not you."
"Guys-"
"Uncle Yomo might have been our teacher, but like you can take a horse to water but can't make it drink, we decided to drink, and here we are, with knowledge of martial arts and hunting tactics."
"Yeah, all of us, not just you. We all know how to hunt and fight, and something else Uncle Yomo taught us, was that we only needed to apply our skills when we needed to, and right now, we don't need to! So get out of survival mode and have some fun like a normal person!"
"Gu-"
"We're not normal and we're not people. "We're demigods and Ghouls, half god and half unstoppable killing machine."
Persia and Kraken continued back and forth, with Percy periodically trying to diffuse them, and failing. Meanwhile, the weather was starting to reflect the growing tension between the three children of Poseidon, with the air getting colder, the breeze picking up, and the clouds getting darker and darker, beginning to swirl together into a storm.
Then, finally, Percy had enough and let out a frustrated shriek, popping all twelve of kagune's tentacles out, spearing Persia through in six random places, and spearing Kraken through in six random places, just in time with a thunderclap.
However, with Persia's and Kraken's anger now turned to shock, and Percy's own limited power at this point in life, there wasn't enough energy to keep the storm going, and so it diffused into just some scary clouds.
A crowd of legionaries had gathered during the argument, drawn by the shouting and who was shouting, but at the gathering storm, they began slipping away to find shelter, and when Percy's kagune popped out, the ones left collectively hit the deck on reflex, with the two guards at the principia doors having tackled Reyna in effort to protect her from getting speared on accident.
The principia doors were thrown open by Damian as he stormed out, sword drawn at all the commotion, Vanessa right behind him. What they saw confused them, as it was Percy, angry tears in his eyes, with a dozen black and green tentacles sprouting from what looked like his butt area, his triplet siblings suspended off the ground via impalement by those tentacles.
And they weren't dead. Even with all the blood dripping from them, and the internal damage they sustained, they weren't dead. They didn't even look hurt, just surprised at their brother.
"You…are both…gigantic…BUTTHOLES!" Percy roared as she literally trembled in anger.
He yanked his kagune out of his siblings, and then vanished in a blur.
Kraken and Persia both got up from the ground, intending to go find their little brother, but Kaneki stopped them in their tracks with a hard look, and an even harder voice.
"Both of you stay here and obey your praetors. Touka, Eto and I will go find Percy."
The Eyepatch Ghoul left before any kind of protest could be made, the Rabbit and the True One-Eyed Owl following, which left Kraken and Persia alone with a pair of praetors who didn't look too happy with them at the moment for starting a small thunderstorm that no doubt greatly freaked out the populace of New Rome and nearby San Francisco.
Off to the side, one of the legionaries that tackled Reyna asked her, "You okay?"
"You know how I said I had to go the bathroom when I first got here?"
"Yeah…?"
"I don't have to anymore."
"Oh, shit."
"Yep," Reyna agreed.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Percy was sitting at the base of a tree on the hill the Caldecott Tunnel was built into. Two Romans were about fifty feet below him, guarding the entrance. They didn't know he was there, and he didn't want them to.
Percy really was a sweet boy. With the cold, hard Kraken literally haven been taken out of him, the emotional resistance was gone too, leaving just Percy, only this Percy had grown up in a loving environment surrounded by his mother, big sister, aunts, uncles, and grandfather, effectively enjoying a borderline sheltered childhood the likes of which canon-Percy could only dream of.
Because of that, GEG-Percy didn't have the emotional resilience and tough exterior of his canon counterpart, not without Kraken's traits back in his mind, anyway, and so GEG-Percy was just a little bit more vulnerable to emotional stress, like watching his big sister and big brother yell and argue at each other right before him.
He also valued the concept of "face," which was why he had come all the way out here, alone and by himself, so he could have his moment by himself without having to worry about anyone happening on him to see the few tears going down his face.
Truthfully, he just really wished his mom was here.
And then the wind shifted just right, blowing a certain scent right up into Percy's nose.
He bolted to his feet, eyes wide in disbelief. The scent was coming up from the South, and was very, very fresh. Living, even. And getting closer.
Percy jumped high, grabbing the top of a tree to use as a vantage point, and he scanned the lower neighborhoods and the highway, his sharper-than-human eyes darting everywhere in his field of vision, combing dozens of square feet in the span of mere seconds, looking for something human-sized moving at great speed.
And he saw it. A streak of white barely visible, even for his eye, but he was still able to track it.
And he was off.
Whatever it was, it smelled like Mom. It moved fast like Mom. And it was wearing the white cloak Mom wore back when she was a gang leader. It was improbable, since Mom was dead, but at the same time: not.
She had been bedded by Poseidon, after all, exposed to his divine essence, and then she carried a demigod for nine months, going through all the pregnancy, all the development, all that essence inside her womb growing and shaping into a living being of incredible power. So, in a way, Sally had been just a little divine herself for the rest of her days.
There were also stories in Greek myth of heroes going into the Underworld to bring people out.
Maybe he was just desperate for it to be true, but Percy figured that his already awesome and powerful mom, bolstered by the little bit of divine power she may have received from him growing in her and from Poseidon, was strong enough to escape the Underworld on her own, and then he wanted to kick himself.
He had been to the Underworld; granted he forgot about it for reasons he didn't know, but when he remembered that fact, he hadn't immediately gone sprinting for Los Angeles with Persia, Kraken, Kaneki, Touka, and Eto right behind him to get Mom out of the Underworld.
However, it appeared that was moot point now.
However, however, if this being wasn't Percy's mom, then he was going to violently kill it for getting his hopes so high, and then he was gathering all the previously mentioned Ghouls and going through with the previously mentioned plan, come Hell or high water.
But that wasn't necessary.
They both came to a stop in some random backyard, and they stared at each other, analyzing every single detail of the other's appearance, for they were both not so stupid as to let their driving hope blind them to deception and other follies. Then, after so long of looking, her eyes watered, and she got down on a knee with her arms held out in front of her.
Something just resonated in Percy, something that rang with his soul, and he just knew that this was real. This wasn't a dream, an illusion, or some cruel trick played by his enemies. This was her. She was back.
With a cry, Percy shot forward into the open arms of his mother, and Sally hugged him so tightly to her with so much love that the world became a better place for just a little while.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
This story's back, baby! And I hope you all enjoyed it, because now I have to talk about me for a little bit.
I started this Friday, May 3, 2019, and here it is Sunday, May 5, 2019, on the day of posting. On that Friday, I was brought up to an office at the UPS hub that I worked at, and was promptly informed that I was being laid off due to budget cuts due to a new Union contract being signed that increased hourly pay rate, or that's why I think it happened.
So, me and a bunch of my Unload 2 buddies lost our jobs literally two days ago. Which means I'm looking for a job…again…for the second time…in two fucking years, which brings me to this horrible question:
I have been working on my novel, and have 72,000 words for it; I have several ideas for other novels that I haven't started yet. If I restart my Patron (P-A-T-R-E-O-N, because FF doesn't like that word), and set up a rate of like one-five dollars a month for access to segments of my novel, two or three thousand words a post, how many of you would sign up?
If not a lot and this is just a bad idea, I'll drop it and never come back to it again, but if a lot of you can afford to sign up and do so, then I need to know, because if this takes off, then the pressure to get a new job is lessened.
So…yay or nay?
But also do not forget to tell me about the chapter and what you thought of it.
Fav, Follow, and Review please!
