Stormbreaker
Chapter I:
"If we keep one hand on the left wall and follow it," Annabeth said. "We should be able to find our way out again by reversing course."
Percy nodded his head and filed in behind Grover and Tyson, bringing up the rear of their party. There was no telling what else had made their way inside the Labyrinth since the last time they were here, and he figured that he was the best to handle whatever came at their backs. It's not like he was going to be any use in deciding which way they would go, that was Annabeth's expertise.
The dim lighting and the echoing sounds of their footsteps created a spooky atmosphere, making him feel like they were ghost-hunting in the sewers underneath the streets of New York City. It was a pretty accurate comparison if the ghost was the mastermind behind the most infamous maze of all time.
The three others had engaged themselves in a conversation of relative importance, but Percy was more focused on the strange drawings that lined the sides of the rusty walls. They looked like stick figure hieroglyphics that were crudely drawn, seemingly with haste.
He was so preoccupied with trying to understand what they were depicting that he hadn't noticed that his shoelace had become undone.
"Woah—" Percy yelped as he tripped forward and instinctively stuck his arms out to catch his fall.
He landed with a decent thump, and laid still for a second on the floor, expecting Tyson and maybe Grover to help him back up. But that's when he realized that they were no longer in front of him.
Percy quickly gathered himself and stumbled into a jog. "Annabeth!" He paused for a moment, but there was no response. "Grover! Tyson!" Still none.
His heart rate began to tick up a couple notches as he ran deeper into the maze, still keeping his left hand glued to the wall. He uncapped Riptide with his other and the celestial bronze hummed to life, casting a reluctant glow around him.
Unfortunately, the left wall promptly disappeared and Percy found himself in the middle of a vast circular chamber, with eight different tunnels leading in and out. He called out their names again but to no avail, his voice dissipating into the ancient stone.
Percy decided that maybe it was best to turn around and head back to camp, but that option was canned when he couldn't remember which way he had come through. How had they not yet noticed that he was missing?
He swept Riptide over the archways of the eight tunnels, trying to gather anything that would help him guess which way Annabeth had chosen. As far as he could tell though, they were identical.
The situation was worsening fast, every second he waited lessened his odds at finding them. They had been warned that the maze would try to confuse them, misguide them and possibly kill them. And unfortunately, so far, it was doing a pretty good job.
An unexplainable urge told him to break away from the left and pick the tunnel to his close right, and he did just that, plunging into the infinite darkness.
The tunnel went straight for a while, before it noticeably started to descend at a sharp angle. The steepening slope forced him to pocket Riptide so that he could use both of his hands for support, which wasn't exactly ideal.
He kept going like this for an unknown amount of time before the ground leveled out and changed from hard cement to loose sand.
Percy cautiously tested the new floor, and found that his sneakers only sunk an inch or so deep. He took Riptide back out, but the light didn't reveal anything new about his surroundings, the tunnel still seemed to extend out a bit longer with no visible end in sight. He sensed no nearby water either.
The terrible air quality made it feel like he was inhaling the sand particles that he was treading on, making him have to periodically stop and catch his breath.
On and on it went, getting tighter and tighter to the point that Percy was convinced that he was going to have to get on his belly and army crawl to go any further, when the tunnel finally widened into a room larger than the chamber before.
The floor was still covered entirely with sand, but the walls had changed to a light earthy color and on them were real hieroglyphics. Egyptian hieroglyphics. He hadn't paid enough attention in history class to know what they meant, but Percy guessed that the predominant inscription in the middle was one of their gods. It was a frog-headed man, who held what looked like a palm stem in each of his hands.
Percy deduced that the Labyrinth had managed to lead him inside one of the Great Pyramids, which would've been cooler if he wasn't on a time crunch that had Olympus-level implications.
Across the room was a single exit, and he started to make his way towards it without much hesitation, and that's when things figuratively and literally fell off.
As soon as Percy crossed roughly the halfway point between the two entrance ways, the sand beneath him collapsed without warning, sending him into a spiraling free fall that knocked the breath out of his lungs.
Percy closed his eyes and braced for the inevitable hard impact that would more than likely kill him. Images of his mom and his friends flashed through his mind. If this was how he died, well, he wanted them to be the last thing he thought about... But the moment never came.
His first thought was that he was already dead and this was the Underworld, but that was nullified when he opened his eyes and saw that his body wasn't translucent. He was definitely still alive.
So maybe he wasn't dead, but that didn't make his situation a lot better. He didn't have the power to fly, or control the wind that was roaring past his ears. Zeus probably wasn't taking house calls either, and would much rather watch him become a demigod pancake. And honestly, Percy couldn't really blame him.
Right as he was about to rip off his shirt to use as a makeshift parachute, the black chute that he had been falling through opened up into a sea of swirling gray clouds. The icy temperature hit him like a dump truck as he tumbled through them at terminal velocity.
The instant Percy broke the cloud cover, he caught sight of water. More specifically, a gigantic body of water. An ocean. The Fates hadn't given up on him just yet. He preemptively began to channel the crashing waves below him, creating a foaming geyser to cushion his fall.
A growing dark blob appeared just before Percy's feet hit the water, and he was falling too fast to recognize that he was headed straight for the burgeoning mouth of a surfacing whale.
-Ω-
When Percy came to his senses, he was submerged in a floating pile of decomposing fish and krill, which almost knocked him out with how bad it smelled. It was worse than your average 7-Eleven bathroom. He reached into his pocket and produced Riptide, and the blade accidentally punctured through the side of the moist wall.
An abrupt jolt knocked him off balance, sending him and the seafood slosh in every direction possible. A deep, somber moan permeated through the walls and Percy was surprised to hear a matching voice in his head.
Ouch.
Wait. He was inside a living sea creature? Upon closer inspection, the walls were indeed made of flesh, and he could feel the massive amount of water coursing around him. Going off the sheer size of the bowel he was stranded in, it had to be a whale.
Hey, Percy said tentatively back. Mind if I get out of here?
Huh? Who's talking to me? The whale grumbled.
Percy was tempted to mess with the whale by telling him—it was definitely a male—that it was his food talking. Airing on the side of caution however, Percy opted for the more diplomatic route. He wasn't sure how friendly or easygoing whales were.
My name's Percy, I accidentally ended up in your stomach. Sorry.
Percy felt the whale shift around before it responded. Just like that Jonah guy.
The name Jonah sounded familiar, but Percy wasn't sure whether the dude's story ended in a good or bad way. Can you let me swim out of you, so I can get back to the surface?
The whale stopped swimming as if to contemplate his request. Can you get rid of those pirates behind me?
Pirates? What year was he in? The 1700s? Or was the whale talking about the Somali pirates off the coast of Africa? Percy couldn't imagine why any of them would want to go whale hunting.
Sure, Percy replied. Thanks for not eati—
Percy's train of thought was interrupted by the whale, whose gross esophagus launched him forward, along with the contents of its previous meal. Whale vomit. He was a part of some whale vomit. There was no way anybody was learning about this.
Like a pressurized human circus cannon, Percy shot out the way he came in, breaking through the current and flailing wildly in the air, before landing belly first in a messy pile of fishing nets and rope.
Percy groaned as he tried to regain his bearings and get a sense of where he had landed. When he rotated his head around, he came face-to-face with a scraggly man that was missing multiple teeth, with more on the way.
"What ye 'ave 'ere?" Spit flew out from the toothless pirate and landed on Percy, who still wasn't fully aware of his surroundings yet.
"If that there ain't the prettiest fish I've e'er spied." Another gruff man said, talking through what sounded like a bundle of hay stuffed in his mouth. "What be them clothes 'e's wearing? Orange an' blue. Yer not one o' them Brits right?"
Percy blinked twice and swept his head around, and couldn't believe what he saw. He had managed to land onboard a wooden vessel—a pirate ship, probably the one the whale was referring to. It had three masts, and Percy knew intuitively that it was a hybrid galleon. Striking canvas sails were fluttering from a strong tailwind, carrying the ship at an incredibly fast pace for its make. Twenty knots to be exact.
The whole scene gave him flashbacks to the time when Annabeth, Grover and him had sailed the Sea of Monsters on the Queen Anne's Revenge. Percy was tempted to see if he could control the movement of this ship. He could feel it communicating with him already, there was a leak on the port side hull that nobody knew about.
"Be 'e blind in the ears? Why isn't 'e talkin'?" The same toothless pirate prodded Percy with the butt-end of a musket, snapping him back to reality, and he stood up. He decided against speaking for the time being.
By now he had gotten most of the crew's undivided attention, and he watched as men of every make and kind flocked to his corner of the deck. They were truly pirates; clothing, weaponry, scent and all.
"I reckon 'e's after somethin,' be it gold?" Somebody shouted from below. "Silver?"
A female, whose speech was way more sophisticated, joined the discussion. "No, it's a lass. Look at his face. He's smitten over someone back home."
Percy tried to locate the woman in the crowd, but before he could, a man who oozed the confidence and bravado of a captain appeared in front of him. He definitely wasn't the tallest, or the biggest, but it was clear that his presence commanded the attention and respect of every soul onboard. They had gone and fought their way through many battles alongside this man, and Percy knew they would do it all again in a heartbeat.
The captain's fingers playfully tapped against the hilt of his cutlass as he assessed Percy like he was fresh meat in a butcher's shop. "What's your name, lad?"
"Percy Jackson." Percy answered with confidence. If one showed even an inkling of weakness around these people, he or she was already dead, plain and simple.
The captain's face pouted, and he inched closer to Percy by a couple steps. "I've never heard of a Percy Jackson before," he drawled, "tell me Percy Jackson, how did you end up on my ship?"
"There's a whale not too far away that spat me out." Percy said with the straightest face possible. As unbelievable as it was, he was sure that the pirates had heard far more bizarre tales.
The eyes of the captain narrowed, and he looked to his crew for any confirmation. Percy could sense that many of the pirates were ready to jump on the opportunity to throw him overboard. Although, unbeknownst to them, he could breathe underwater. However, it would be for the best if he struck a friendship with them, maybe they could help him find his way back.
"I saw it happen, he's telling the truth."
Everybody turned to the source of the voice, and standing on the deck above him was the woman from earlier. She was remarkably attractive, and the way her hair was styled reminded him of Annabeth.
Percy couldn't tell whether she was bluffing or not, neither could the captain. But before their conversation could be continued, an enormous force rocked the starboard side of the ship, and from the water rose the biggest set of tentacles he had ever seen.
"The Kraken!" The toothless pirate wailed, sending what was his only remaining molar soaring into the churning waters. "It's back!"
The first thought that came to Percy's mind was a simple one. That the Kraken was one big, angry sea monster. Even though he couldn't see the head of the giant octopus, it had to be at least double the size of the ship. Upon second glance, he could see that most of the tentacles were severely burnt, and missing huge chunks of meat, which exposed it's exoskeleton.
"Get away from the rail!" A man with long, dirty blonde hair ordered immediately as the crew began scrambling to the lower decks to grab weapons and ready the cannons. "To arms!"
Percy watched as one of the pirates jumped overboard, headfirst, yelling, "We're doomed again!" Only to be caught in midair by one of the tentacles, and sucked into the depths of the water.
Like he had done a thousand times before, he reached into his pocket and uncapped Riptide. The captain made direct eye contact with Percy, gave him a curt nod, and unsheathed his own cutlass before running off to the other side of the ship.
"Will!" The woman yelled to the man with dirty blonde hair, who was busy trying to load a bullet into a musket for a younger crewmate. "I thought it was gone for good!"
"I thought so too, Elizabeth." Will finished his task and handed the musket over, before producing a knife that looked almost exactly like Annabeth's, save for the type of metal. He then turned to Percy, and noticed his celestial bronze sword. "Good, you can fight. It'll attack the starboard again, it's done it before!"
Just as Will predicted, the Kraken began to drag it's slick body up the length of the starboard hull. The sound of it's disgustingly large suckers popping was enough to send a couple more pirates jumping over out of fear. Those that remained formed a ragged ring around the center of the ship. Percy had himself positioned between Will and the captain, who had returned with a crazed look in his eyes.
"If you got any magic water tricks," the captain muttered in a sarcastic tone as the tentacles continued to rise, "now would be a good time."
It took a second for the captain's words to register completely in Percy's head, and then it hit him. He actually did have magic water tricks.
Percy reached out into the water, and was caught off guard when a massive surge of energy flooded his system. It was way different from the usual tug in his gut. It was more powerful, more potent, more ancient. He felt everything in the water, the way it moved in curved below him in a violent manner, waiting to be tamed. Suddenly, Percy had an idea.
"Captain," Percy asked. "Tell your crew to close all the cannon hatches."
Both the captain and Will stared at him like he had sprouted a second and third head. "Are you crazy?" Will barked. "They're our only chance!"
"Who be ye kiddin'!" A random pirate jeered back at Will. "Our old strategy won't work on it this time!"
Percy looked back at the captain and didn't blink. "Trust me. Close the hatches."
The Kraken was now on the verge of unleashing on them, any moment now and its tentacles would come crashing down, splicing the ship into a million pieces. The pressure from the sea was almost overwhelming Percy as it begged him to let it free. His fingertips and the surface of his skin were beginning to tingle uncontrollably.
"I know how to get rid of it." Percy tried to reaffirm while simultaneously trying not to combust. "I can control water."
The captain's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. "Aye, you mean to tell me that you're a real Stormbreaker?"
Percy winced at the sound of the splintering wooden planks around the stern, the ship wasn't going to last much longer from the applied stress. "What are those?
"Wretched, wild, mythical demons who are the son of the Sea God." The captain answered hurriedly. "Most of the time they turn out to be liars, lousy sailors with loose tongues. Although, I did manage to come across one a long time ago…"
"I'm not lying." Percy answered quickly. By now he was certain that he had somehow managed to travel back in time. And this time period was definitely before World War II, which meant that the pact that the Big Three had made to have no more kids didn't exist yet. His dad having demigod kids that wreaked havoc on passing ships wasn't out of the realm of possibility. "I promise you."
The captain gritted his teeth and then grabbed Percy by the wrist. "If I lose my ship because you lied to me boy, you're dead."
"Whatever it is you got, you must do it fast." Elizabeth said as she nervously locked arms with Will. The rest of the pirates were in a complete state of disarray, he didn't have time to warn them to hold on. He was just going to have to trust that his plan would work and that everybody would be safe.
The captain gave out the order to the crew below. "Close the hatches!" And just as the captain finished, a deafening screech penetrated their eardrums, and the head of the beast emerged from water, making most of them swallow down hard, but Percy's attention was on something entirely else.
Hey, Percy told the sea, hearkening back to the time he fought Ares, big waves.
The sea responded without hesitation, and Percy barely had enough time to make the biggest air bubble he had ever made, before a thirty-foot wall of water formed on the port side, and smashed its way over the deck towards the Kraken on the starboard side.
The brute force of the tidal wave knocked the Kraken clean off the ship, and sent it spinning away into the unknown. But Percy knew it wouldn't be long before it regained its senses. He had given it the equivalent of a slap to the face.
Will spoke first for the entire awestruck crew, who were all frozen in their respective places. "Are we… underwater?"
Sweat had already started to bead down Percy's forehead from the sheer amount of concentration it was taking to keep the bubble and the ship intact. He gave Will a simple thumbs up, hoping that pirates knew what a thumbs up meant, and left the safety of the air bubble by diving over the railing.
It was as if the sea was rejuvenated, healthier and more alive. Maybe that's where all the wild power was coming from. And right on cue, a white vortex of high density water surrounded his body without him even asking, making Percy feel like he was inside and operating a water-Transformer. He formed a fist and the vortex followed suit, mimicking his motion.
He made sure that the ship was still safely in place, before turning his attention back to the matter at hand. The only problem was, the Kraken was no longer in sight.
Percy reproduced Riptide and began to move forward in the water, keeping his eyes peeled for any sudden movements. When he looked farther down, he was surprised to find a pack of Nereids that were swimming amongst the colorful coral reefs. Some of them gave him a friendly wave, while others shot him a confused glance.
Soon, he started to pick up on strange patterns of underwater vibrations. At first, he thought it was the Kraken moving around, but then realized that he now had the ability to recognize echolocation. Using this to his advantage, he redirected the vibrations and sent his own signals outwards in all directions. The feedback he received revealed nothing out of the ordinary, nothing remotely close to the Kraken's size. The monster was gone, for now.
Percy returned to find the ship thankfully still in one piece, and he carefully allowed it to rise back up to the surface.
He decided to put on a little show for the pirates, shooting out of the water like a dolphin and making a perfect landing on the deck. He was glad to see that the toothless pirate was one of the survivors, although the poor guy had clearly seen more than enough for one day.
"I can't believe it." Will voiced in utter disbelief. "You're actu—"
Elizabeth cut off Will and covered her mouth in shock. "He's completely dry!"
Percy had forgotten that being able to keep himself dry was one of his abilities. To demonstrate for the final time that he was indeed the son of Poseidon, he willed the excess saltwater off the entire crew, drying them off.
The captain approached Percy and extended his hand. "I believe I owe you a proper introduction, Percy Jackson. I'm Captain Jack Sparrow, and this is my ship, the Black Pearl."
-Ω-
They spent the rest of the waking day making as many repairs to the ship as they could. Percy did most of the work, given that he could control every part of the ship down to the nails that held everything together. Unfortunately, the ship was still heavily damaged from the Kraken's initial impact, and he didn't have the power to produce replacement parts out of thin air.
Percy's internal marital GPS was telling him that he was back in familiar waters, the Sea of Monsters. And this was confirmed by Jack as they sat together with Will in the map room of the ship. He had used the better part of an hour trying to explain to them how he even ended up here. From a place called Camp Half-Blood, to the Labyrinth and finally the whale that spat him out. But it was Riptide's ability to become a ballpoint pen that fascinated them the most.
Will studied their position on the map intently and then asked the million-doubloon question. "How are you supposed to get back?"
Percy shrugged his shoulders helplessly. The only thing he could think of was re-entering the Labyrinth, and trying to find the pyramid room again. But the odds of either happening were slim to none.
Jack, who had been walking around in circles while repeatedly opening and closing his compass, spoke up. "There's a strait known to both sailors and pirates as the Strait of Kairos."
Percy recognized the word as Greek, it was the alternate word for time. It took him a couple of seconds to find the strait on the map. It was tucked away in between two remote islands of the Bahamas, at the other end of the Bermuda Triangle, quite the hike from their positioning on the northern side of the Caribbean.
"I've heard strange stories of unexplainable oddities showing up in the waters around there." Jack grabbed a bottle of some sort of hard alcohol and knocked it back. "Some say they might even be from… a different time."
Was Percy about to hinge his fate entirely on some old pirate tale? At this point, he didn't see any other options. "How long do you think it will take me to swim there?"
Will shook his head incredulously. "Traversing these waters alone would be suicidal, even for you. The Kraken is only a small glimpse of what the sea has in store."
"He's right, you'll need our help." Jack set the bottle down and cleaned his mouth with the back of his hand. "This wouldn't be our first dance with the beasts. It'll take us about a week to cross."
Percy thought they were joking, but no. They were dead serious. "Why would you help me?"
Jack was back to playing with his compass. "You saved the Pearl from her death, and now she'll repay the favor by helping you get back home."
"Us pirates are more honorable than those Brits, believe that." Will gave him a reassuring slap on the back. "Welcome aboard."
-Ω-
Later that night, Percy found himself on the forecastle deck of the ship with Elizabeth, who was also out to enjoy the fresh air.
"What's the year?" Percy asked as he stared out into the darkening horizon, letting the sea breeze run its course through his hair.
Elizabeth, who was standing next to him on the railing, leaned over and let the spray from the stern sprinkle over her. "1720."
Percy let out a low whistle as he twiddled with Riptide. Even though that was about the answer he was expecting, it still made his mind do mental gymnastics. Was this an alternate universe? Or was it the same universe as his? And what about his quest? Annabeth? Grover? And Tyson?
"So you're from the future," Elizabeth asked after a while, breaking his stream of consciousness. "What's it like?"
There were so many ways he could respond. His life had been quite the roller coaster up until now. Him as the focal point of a millennia old prophecy being the main perpetrator.
His silence must've spoken volumes, because Elizabeth decided to change the subject to something that was somehow even worse. "The girl I mentioned earlier, when you first landed, what's her name?"
Percy frowned his brow and let Riptide fall into the water, the pen returned to his pocket before he could exhale. "An—I don't like anybody right now." It was true. He didn't.
Elizabeth decided to leave it at that, giving him a knowing smile before retiring to her cabin. And Percy was left alone by the railing, trying to figure out why he had almost said Annabeth's name.
Author's Note:
Hello there, welcome to yet again another introductory/pilot chapter for an AU that I've been working on recently. The idea/challenge for this one was inspired by Curious Beats and lildrummerboi.
This isn't going to be that long of a fic, probably only three or four chapters. Just wanted to have some fun writing about Percy dunking on some pirates and sea monsters. Might power him up a little bit in some instances just for the hell of it.
If you enjoyed this, please drop me some constructive feedback/criticism and share it with a friend. See you all some time soon.
Disclaimer: Don't own anything.