Blood and Water [PJO x Code Geass]
Chapter 1
This was it—the final battle to decide the fate of gods, mortals, and Western civilization itself. The final showdown between Olympus and the Titans.
Four people in a throne room trying to gut each other with swords and a dagger.
This wasn't an ordinary swordfight, mind you, not when two of the combatants had the invulnerability of Achilles and one of them was the Titan Lord in the body of Annabeth's oldest friend.
Maybe that was why we were losing.
Kronos whirled to face Annabeth, slicing with Backbiter. She tried to catch the strike on her dagger, but exhausted as she was, she couldn't hold on. The knife flew out of her hand. She would have died if I hadn't blocked the next strike. Kronos scowled as Backbiter ground against Riptide. He hadn't expected me to close the distance in time. Snarling, he pushed me back and rained blow after blow against my defenses. I was barely matching him, but I could take them. If I could just keep him distracted long enough for the gods to defeat Typhon…
"Luke," Annabeth called from behind Kronos. I wanted to yell at her to shut up, that it wouldn't work, that Luke very clearly wasn't in charge at the moment and all she was doing was putting Kronos' attention on her, but if I wasted even a precious moment to open my mouth, I was a goner. "I understand now. You have to trust me."
Kronos responded by disengaging with me and thrusting his free hand toward my face.
I landed hard on my back and slid down the front of one of the Olympian thrones, cursing mentally. I still didn't have a way to counter his force waves. Plus, I probably cracked the finish on the chair. I'd owe Apollo an apology after this.
Pushing myself up, I launched toward Kronos as hard as my legs could push me. He was turned away, but at the last moment, his head snapped toward me, and I could feel myself slowing down as time slowed all around. Trapped in the middle of my leap, I could only watch Kronos walk leisurely up to Annabeth where she lay collapsed on her side. She had managed to retrieve her dagger, but exhausted as she was, she couldn't get up without exposing herself to immediate attack.
Kronos raised Backbiter over his head with both hands and paused, savoring the moment. He sent a sideways glance at me, showing a glint of amusement.
"Family, Luke. You promised." Annabeth let it out in almost a whisper, a whisper with so much emotion in it that I could hear it across the throne room, even through distorted time.
Backbiter fell.
And Grover stood in the way, the blade cleaving through his body as if it wasn't there.
The two halves of my friend's body fell to either side, crumbling into dust and soil. I tried to scream his name, but the pressure of time wouldn't let me move—and then I was on Kronos, smashing my fist into the side of Luke's head with a wordless scream of rage. He staggered, and I took the opening for all it was worth.
Strength flooded my invulnerable body, purging my exhaustion in a demand for vengeance. Now Kronos was the one being pushed back, gritting his teeth as he parried my relentless strikes. He was close to reaching the limits of his mortal body, I would realize later. But in that moment, nothing mattered except the next blow of my sword. My oldest friend was gone because of the monster in front of me, and Annabeth had almost died, too.
The only thought in my head was making this murderer dead.
Suddenly, the very air around us shuddered, seeming to burst with power. Kronos and I were knocked away from each other, and I almost dropped Riptide. The dome of the throne room shattered, revealing the Olympian gods in all their warlike glory. My father's chariot hovered next to Zeus's, and the monster Typhon was nowhere to be seen.
"NOOOOO!" Kronos howled, his inhuman not-quite-voice reverberating with impressive force. "You fools. You have only made your deaths more painful." He raised the hand that held Backbiter, and the sword glowed with a blinding light. "Typhon may have failed, but he was no more than a distraction. You have come too late to stop me. I will not fall here!"
Perhaps I could have stopped him if I had tried to disarm him right then. But, despite my rage, I recognized that the surest way to stop Kronos was to let the gods handle him. So I hung back, crouched in a ready stance.
The gods let loose their attacks all at once: Zeus's master bolt, Poseidon's trident, the shining arrows of Apollo and Artemis, crackling fire and death that forced me to cover my eyes. But when I opened them, Kronos still stood, his knees bent from the force, and holding a giant sickle above his head like a shield. The clothing he had worn was singed and torn away all over, but his body didn't have a scratch. Well, that wasn't entirely true. Cracks were growing all across the body that used to be Luke's, glowing golden to match his solid gold eyes.
Instinctively, I knew that Kronos would regain his full power the moment Luke's body fell apart. Our only chance to win was to kill Luke before that could happen. I still didn't know where his Achilles' spot was, but if he could weather a blow from the master bolt…what would a sword do?
Even as I hesitated, I felt cold hands press something into my left hand. I looked. Annabeth's dagger. And Annabeth herself, clasping my hand around the last symbol of her relationship with Luke. Her gray eyes met mine. "Go," she whispered.
So I did.
The downside of a large weapon like Kronos's sickle is that, no matter how strong or fast you are, or how much you can bullshit physics, you can't block a shorter weapon up close. As I dove into Kronos's reach, he reflexively swept his blade at me, but I slid feet-first, drawing sparks as the larger blade skipped off Riptide. I stomped the floor with my left foot, stabbing forward blindly with Annabeth's dagger. If I didn't know where to hit, I might as well hit anywhere.
As the fates would have it, I hit one of the golden cracks. Liquid-like, the substance inside pushed the point back, as if bleeding slowly. Ichor, huh. So aiming there was no good, either. Too fast for me to react, Kronos's right hand tightened around my throat. Panicking, I flailed with all my limbs, trying to hit him even once.
Riptide bounced off his face.
My left foot slid off his kneecap.
Annabeth's dagger fell out of my left hand.
My right foot swung into his left armpit, exposed as he held the sickle aloft.
He hurled me to the floor, his body seeming to seize up. I scrambled to my feet, dazed. Wait…was that it? Did I just hit his Achilles spot by accident? No time to think.
"Aim for the left armpit!" I screamed. "That's his Achilles spot!"
Kronos's face twisted in pain and wrath. He swung the sickle again, batting me to the floor headfirst. He had adjusted his stance to wield it with both hands, keeping his armpit out of reach. The twin archers wouldn't be able to get a clear shot, and we were almost out of time. I had to get in close, now.
At least, that was the plan until Kronos shrunk the sickle back down to Backbiter and rushed me. He had already gotten stronger than when we last fought; the first overhead blow brought me to my knees. Maybe he had thought to eliminate me in a single blow, and then turn on the gods themselves. But he made one critical error in doing so: he turned his back on the divine equivalent of mountain-busting artillery.
So when the master bolt glanced off his back and vaporized the floor under his feet, I was able to rush forward and body-check him into the resulting hole.
A hole with no bottom.
It wasn't ideal, but I would have accepted giving the Titan Lord a one-way ticket back to Tartarus. Of course, nothing is ever that convenient.
You're always the most vulnerable when you think you've won, after all.
Because if I'd thought past that last-ditch effort, I might have dodged the hand that caught my shirt and pulled me over the edge with him.
Desperately, I tumbled and kicked off his chest, ripping his hand away with most of my shirt. For a moment, it felt like I was floating, that I might make it back up to the ledge. I looked up to see Artemis stretching out a hand, and I reached for it desperately.
Then an enormous weight tightened around my ankle, dragging me out of reach. My last glimpse of the overworld was Artemis's face, tinged in concern for once. Almost ironic that it would be her.
And then Kronos and I fell.
I remember one of my science teachers telling me that it would take just over forty minutes to fall the diameter of the earth. If Tartarus went down to the center of the planet, the fall should take about twenty minutes. Or maybe it would be nine days, like that one greek poet said. Not that I read a lot of ancient Greek poetry—that's Annabeth's thing.
The point is, the fall felt a lot longer than twenty minutes, or even forty. With the tension from the immediate danger to Olympus having worn off, the only thing left was the imminent danger to my life. Kronos and I wrestled in free fall, trading blows and grappling each other. I couldn't get to the Achilles spot under his armpit, and he didn't know where mine was, so it ended up being useless. When we finally drifted far enough from each other that we couldn't reach any more, it felt like we had been falling for hours already. I was more exhausted than I'd ever been, the curse of Achilles sapping my stamina for all the fights it had carried me through that day. Had it only been that morning that we campers had set up our traps and plans and battle lines around Manhattan?
I would have passed out from the strain, but something unsettling about the bottomless pit below kept me from falling asleep. Kronos seemed tired as well; the golden glow around the cracks in Luke's body had dimmed, and his eyes were more like lumps of metal than the molten pools of the past day. The pit didn't even have edges to push off of to resume our fight, just a dense, dark mist that looked solid from far away. Maybe the pit did have walls, and I was just too far away to see them.
A smothering wave of evil intent broke me from my stupor. The dark mist had disappeared, replaced by a dim red glow all around. Something in Kronos seemed to wake. His eyes lost their dullness, becoming like suns. The golden cracks shimmered and widened, fragmenting the remains of his human vessel bit by bit.
Was this his power increasing from the proximity to Tartarus, or was he making a last effort to kill me before we splattered ourselves across the pit of no return? I didn't find out, because the next moment, we hit.
Broken glass. The floor of Tartarus was broken glass. If not for my invincible skin, I would be dead. Even with it, I felt bruised along every place where a cut should have formed. Against the pain and shock, my instincts screamed that this place would eat me alive, that I had to escape, that dying would be better than lying here.
Then something gripped my arm and started dragging me across the broken glass to some unknown destination. I was still paralyzed from exhaustion and couldn't even turn my head.
How long that lasted, I couldn't tell you. The glass went away after a while, but the sensation of horror in my whole body didn't. It got worse.
And then, I was able to move again, and I slapped desperately at my pocket for Riptide, but that iron grip latched on to my other arm and held me still. I'll never forget that sight as long as I live.
The face of Kronos, Lord of the Titans, having burned away all vestiges of his mortal vessel. Glowing golden eyes, at once piercing and empty. Like Atlas, like Hyperion, like Krios or any of the other Titans I'd seen, but everything I hated about them distilled into two blazing spheres that saw and commanded time itself.
I can't really describe it, not accurately. But his words were crystal clear.
"Percy Jackson. You have proven a greater hindrance to me than any lone god or mortal in all the span of time. You will not die and return to the domain of my upstart children. I will deal with you as your feats deserve."
His eyes flickered downward, and my gaze followed. Below me, there was…nothing.
"This is the pit of Chaos. The beginning, and the end, of the cosmos. And now, the end of you."
He let go of my arms.
And so I fell into the ultimate void, leaving nothing behind but three words of defiance.
"Great…more falling."
I never said they were good last words.
I came to my senses with a sudden gasp, half in panic and half in relief that I was still alive.
Wait. Was I alive? I felt my pocket. Riptide was still there, but that didn't help much, since I didn't know whether people got to take their stuff with them when they died. I mean, they say you can't take it with you, but all that stuff clogging up the River Styx had to have come from somewhere.
What's the next thing to try…pain, right? I twisted my arm behind my back and felt for my Achilles spot. If it was still there, then—
Yeowch. Still alive. Still invincible. Still tired like I'd run ten marathons back to back.
So I was alive, which was better than expected. My eyes chose this moment to catch up with my brain and inform me that I was, in fact, face-down in the water. Not ideal, but I'd take it. Stretching out my arms, I could feel sand beneath me, and there was a bit of a breeze playing over my perfectly dry back. Rotating in the water, I managed to stand up in the shallows of a small beach next to an immaculately groomed lawn. Glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, I ducked into the water and willed myself wet. If I had happened to wash ashore on some populated beach, the last thing I wanted was for them to come running to make sure I was okay, and then have to explain that I was perfectly dry and healthy despite having lain face-down in the water for what had probably been several hours.
I walked a few steps onto the lawn, looked around again, and, seeing absolutely no one nearby, willed myself to dry. On closer inspection, the beach lay on the edge of a small island dominated by a large, modern building, with a long bridge and power lines connecting to the mainland. It was nighttime, but the moon was out, and I could see a city in the distance. I didn't recognize the skyline, but I could be in a foreign country for all I knew. Come to think of it, how long had I been out? Depending on how time worked in Tartarus, or that Chaos place, I might have come back even years later.
I really hoped that wasn't the case. I'd already had one unnecessary funeral; two would be pushing it.
Putting that thought aside for later, I began to walk toward the tall building. Hopefully the staff would be willing to at least tell me where I was. The design looked American, but, again, I didn't know what foreign architecture looked like except for the old temples, churches, and castles Annabeth was always going on about.
With these thoughts, I took a leisurely stroll toward the large double doors at the foot of the building.
At least I would have if I hadn't been interrupted within the first ten steps.
"Hey! You there! Freeze!" English, but heavily accented. Halting, I decided to play along. For all I knew, I had washed up on a mortal military base or government headquarters, or something like that. There was no point in fighting if I didn't have to. Plus, I was still bone-tired.
"Show me your hands!" the man shouted, moving in front of me, with his partner doing the same. Both held rifles. Not a type I had seen before, but again, that wasn't saying too much.
I raised my arms slowly, and when the silent partner grabbed my arm to drag me toward the building, followed without resistance. Well, I wasn't getting shot on sight, so I could probably count on meeting with their superior officer, where I could explain myself in a heavily edited story, and maybe get a clue as to when or where I was.
I tried to keep pace with the two guards as they dragged me through the doors, and then through some cozily lit hallways, but it ended up being much more of a stumble. They really weren't holding back on the whole bad cop thing. Also, the furnishings were really nice. This looked more like a hotel than a military base.
Rounding a corner, we met two more guards in the same uniforms standing by an elevator. One of my captors, the loud one, jabbered something in a language I didn't understand. Huh…was this some East Asian country, maybe? The soldiers all looked Asian.
After a short exchange, one of the elevator guards hit the "up" button. Fighting the urge to fidget, I waited patiently. (Okay, I might have considered breaking out of the guy's grip so I could stretch a bit, but standing still is an accomplishment for me, okay?) Then, of course, came the elevator ride, which took us up to the sixtieth floor and was nothing but more torture for my ADHD, since the inside panels were all solid with no windows. Then it was back to shuffling down another hallway until we reached our destination, a larger room full of…people held at gunpoint?
I froze in the doorway, eyes darting around to take everything in. Guards at all corners of the room, dozens of unarmed civilians kneeling on the ground, all visibly distraught. Either this was a hostage situation, or I was horribly wrong. I hoped I was wrong. I'd had enough fighting for a lifetime.
"Excuse me," I said, rather casually for the situation, to one of the guards. "Do you happen to be a terrorist group holding these people hostage?"
"Quiet!" he yelled. "Get down on the floor with everyone else!" He struck me with the butt of his gun, but I didn't budge.
"Are you a terrorist group holding these people hostage?" I demanded.
"Yes!" called a voice from the group on the floor.
"Quiet, all of you! Do you want to be shot?" The guard pointed his gun in the direction of the voice.
With that cleared up, there was nothing to prevent me from punching him in the face with enough force to break his jaw. He tumbled to the floor, unconscious. Before the guard on my other side could react, I snatched his gun away, hit him over the head with it, and threw it across the room to knock a third guard's weapon out of his hands. The fourth took aim at me and fired, but I ducked under the bullet, then kicked off the floor, soaring over the hostages and hitting him with a full-body tackle. Knocking his head against the wall, I turned back to the third guard and rushed him as he scrambled to retrieve his gun. He wasn't fast enough.
With the guards disposed of, the room fell quiet as I caught my breath and listened for a response from outside. With none coming, I scanned the room again, asking, "Is everyone okay? Does anyone need medical attention?" Almost everyone was still frozen in shock, but my words snapped a few to attention.
"Nobody's injured here," called a blond-haired girl. "None of us are important hostages, anyway. The terrorists took the diplomats and Princess Euphemia somewhere else, probably the top floor."
"Please, you have to rescue Princess Euphemia!" screamed her companion, a girl in glasses and braids. "If—if anything happens to her because she covered for me, I'll…"
I raised my hands in what I hoped was a calming gesture. "Okay, top floor, save the princess, got it." I looked around the room again. "Can you all take care of yourselves if I leave?"
"We'll be fine," snapped a lady in a business suit. "If you're going, go now."
Giving a brief nod, I set off down the hall to find the stairs. The elevator would be too slow and too easy for the terrorists to block off.
Jogging at a relatively quick pace, I focused on paying attention to my surroundings. I ran into a few guards before I found the staircase, but between my bulletproof skin and the element of surprise, they didn't give me any trouble.
Taking the stairs two at a time, I finally reached the top floor. I burst through the metal door leading to the hallway, expecting to be stopped or shot at immediately, but nothing happened. Then, of course, I noticed the two bloodied corpses lying on the hall floor with conspicuous bullet wounds.
My hand instinctively dropped to my right pocket to feel the comforting grip of Riptide. Creeping forward and listening carefully, I glanced at the corpses and noticed the same military-style uniform I had seen on the terrorist guards. So there was a third party in play, as well? Cautiously making my way to the closest door, I held back a small grimace as I stepped over the bodies. With a deep breath, I thumbed Ripide's cap, twisted the door handle, and shoved it open.
Now, I've seen some pretty gruesome stuff. I've been to the underworld and seen the fields of punishment; I've seen demigods eaten alive by monsters and stabbed with almost every implement of pointy death you can imagine. Hades, I had even had a brief stint in Tartarus. But what I saw in that room was still repulsing.
Strewn across the room and its furniture was an array of yet more bodies, still holding weapons, filling the room with the coppery scent of fresh blood. One guy was impaled on his own sword. Forcing down the urge to vomit, I stepped into the room and flicked the cap off of Riptide, summoning its sword form. The heads of the two living people in the room snapped to face me. The first was a girl about my age with pink hair down to her waist. The second was a figure all in black with a domed helmet hiding his face and a cape that reminded me of those cheesy Dracula movies. His almost comical supervillain outfit should have made him look ridiculous, and yet an intimidating aura seemed to hang over him.
Which meant he was probably a monster or an upstart minor god, making Pinky the missing princess. But if he was a magical/godly being, why was he using a gun?
Of course, I lost the advantage of surprise when I stopped to think, so I didn't get to finish that thought.
Three shots rang out, and one bullet plinked off my chest, not even marking my shirt. In response, I dashed forward, knocking the gun out of the dark figure's hand and bisecting him with a backhanded slash.
He didn't disintegrate or show any sign of damage, and we stared at each other in disbelief.
"You're mortal?"
"You're bulletproof?" the figure exclaimed.
I took a step back. It seemed I had misjudged the situation. Badly. Not only was this guy mortal, I had just exposed my invulnerability to him and the princess without any new information to make up for it. Making sure to angle myself between the girl and the masked guy, I opened my mouth to ask a question, when I realized… I didn't even know enough to ask questions. 'Where are we' might be a start, but I had a feeling trying to kill the guy and then asking where we were might not go over the best.
What's more, he had been holding his gun at the hip before I barged in, which meant he probably wasn't about to shoot the girl anyway, just threaten her. At least, nobody shot handguns from the hip in any cop shows I'd ever seen.
The guy in black took advantage of my silence to snap, "Who are you?"
"I think that would be a better question for me to ask you," I shot back.
If I could see through that damned mask of his, I was sure I would see a raised eyebrow. "You're really not from around here, are you?" he said. His voice was aristocratic, to an almost intellectual level.
"And where exactly is here?" I countered. I probably wasn't helping their impression of me, but considering my intangible sword and bulletproof skin, there wasn't a lot more damage that a few stupid questions could do. I hoped.
"The Lake Kawaguchi Convention Center Hotel," he replied. His voice was slightly muffled by his helmet.
"Ah," I said, nodding. "Very helpful. I meant what country?" Given the presence of a princess, this probably wasn't America. Everybody except the terrorists looked pretty Caucasian, though. Somewhere in Europe, maybe?
"Japan," he said, after a moment's pause.
I blinked. "Then everyone is speaking English because?"
"Officially, Japan is now known as Area Eleven of the Holy Britannian Empire." The princess's voice was soft, with a slight undercurrent of tension.
I stepped aside, reminded that having a stranger at my back was not the best idea, given my Achilles spot. I looked between the two before shaking my head. "Sorry, I have no idea what that means." Britannian…like Great Britain? Was I in the past? Dangit, I should have paid more attention in world history. But then, why was everything so… modern?
The figure across from me seemed to have a sudden moment of realization. "I see. You must be very lost. I can help you, but there's only so much time before the Britannian forces begin a direct assault, either by Knightmare or by bringing down the building. My men are evacuating the hostages as we speak. Will you come with me?" He extended a hand, his cape swishing flamboyantly around the motion.
He was expecting me to say yes, and to be honest, I didn't see too much of a reason to say no. I couldn't tell if he was telling the truth about the hostages, but the only way to confirm it was to go with him, and I was pretty sure I could take him in a fight. Plus, murdering the terrorists didn't necessarily mean he was a bad guy; I'd killed people before.
And as much as I hated justifying it, I didn't exactly have a place to go if I said no. I had no idea when or where I was beyond 'Japan in general,' whether anyone I knew was still alive, or even if I could reliably contact the gods from Japan with no drachmas.
So now I was going with the guy who had just been holding a girl at gunpoint. Joy.
If I could see underneath that gods-damned mask of his, I'm sure I'd see a smirk.
"Excellent. Head down to the bottom floor and tell the men evacuating the civilians that Zero sent you, then—" An explosion cut him off, shaking the floor beneath us before I could realize I hadn't even answered his question. Looking at the masked man—Zero—and then at the princess, both reeling from the sudden disturbance, I figured neither of them were responsible.
"Shit," Zero cursed. "They're bringing the building down!" He spun to me. "Get below as quickly as possible. I'll evacuate the princess from the roof!"
I glanced to the princess, who nodded and said, "I'll be all right. Just go!"
Reluctantly, I dashed out of the room and took stock of my options. Get to the bottom floor, he said. That meant stairs or elevator. If the building was collapsing, stairs were probably out, and wouldn't be fast enough anyway. Elevator would be too slow as well, unless I jumped down the shaft…
Gods, I was never going to shake this falling thing, was I?
At least I could slide down the cable with my invulnerable hands instead of pulling a repeat of my plummet into Tartarus.
Just another day in the life of a demigod.
This is the re-edited chapter 1.
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