Percy's First Summer Vacation
Didn't expect this one, huh? Expected another chapter of Sea Devil, didn't you?
Well, with college as stressful as it's been, I'm adopting a new strategy to deal with it: I'm going to write whatever the hell I feel like writing whenever the hell I feel like writing it!
Random updates, random updates everywhere!
New stories, new chapters, I might even take down Chaos War and redo it. There are some scenes that can be done better, some interactions that can be smoother, and some overall differences that would be an improvement.
Though the modern setting would still be there since it's a huge part of the story's theme and message.
Anyway, a chapter of this! Voidwalker Percy settling into the world of gods and monsters and mortals during the summer post-Sea of Monsters and pre-Titan's Curse.
Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or Dishonored
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The only times Percy ever had ice cream were when he successfully completed some task Sally had assigned him, typically a large, difficult task, like hitting six bullseyes that were behind rocks or something. In the effort to create the best assassin that she could, ice cream was seen as a rather unhealthy food and a detriment to building muscle and increasing flexibility.
All that sugar, fat, calories, etc.
Sally still relented and let her son have the frozen treat whenever he did what she told him to do, but even then it was still in moderation. A single-scoop cone, a double-scoop bowl, maybe some syrup, maybe an extra topping, and never any seconds. One serving and that was it.
So you can imagine the looks of horror on Wendy, Tea, Bell, Grover, Annabeth, and Dr. B's faces as they watched Percy inhale a mountain of blue cotton candy-flavored ice cream with little pieces of birthday cake in it. With a Diet Sprite to help with the brain freeze.
Even more horrifying because everyone else only had a double-scoop cone or a simple banana split.
"Are you even tasting any of that?" Tea asked her oldest little brother.
Percy's head popped around the other side of the mountainous mound of diabetes. He nodded eagerly with bulging cheeks. He swallowed and somehow didn't choke on all of that. "It's the best ice cream I've ever had," he said dreamily. "What's this place called again?"
"Braum's," was the six-fold answer.
"Braum's is now my favorite place," Percy said sagely. "We will return here everyday for more ice cream."
Stars lit up in Bell and Grover's eyes at the prospect of daily ice cream and daily paper cups, respectively.
Wendy felt her walt scream from her purse. Percy's order of practically all the cotton candy ice cream had not been cheap as far as Braum's went, but considering the monumental circumstances—family bonding, the curing of her children, Percy's integration into the family—Wendy hadn't cared. She would've cleared the shelves of Walmart if the kids had wanted it.
However, thoughts of money brought to Wendy's mind another big reason they were all here together. Not just to celebrate Tea and Bell no longer being terminally ill, but also to figure out what Percy was going to happen to Percy.
"So, Percy…" Wendy started.
His head popped out from the other side of Mt. Cream, mouth open to take on a scoop comparable in size to a baseball. "Yeah?"
"Have you given any thought as to what you're going to do…here? Since you can't go back to, ah, the Empire?"
"Wouldn't go back there anyway," Percy said with a shrug. "Nothing for me to do. I already did the only thing I was supposed to do there. Mom and I didn't have any real plans, anyway, just hop on a ship heading for Pandyssia and see what that place was like. As for here…I thought I was just going to live with you guys. Sounds like the best idea to me."
"Yay!" Bell cheered.
"Sounds good to me, too," Tea seconded with a smile.
Wendy's wallet let out a louder scream of despair. It wasn't like she was hurting for money, but adding another mouth, a growing teenage boy's mouth at that, was painful to the poor thing.
Dr. B's lips settled into a frown, as did Annabeth's because she had the same thoughts.
"Well…that may be more difficult than it sounds," the doctor said. "If the wrong people start seeing some unknown boy going in and out of the house, they could start asking questions. Or if they're particularly nosey, even call the police to investigate. At a glance, you can pass for Tea and Bell's cousin, but that raises the question of where your parents are at. It's summer, so we can say that they went on vacation without you, but once August comes back around, things will get extremely difficult.
"School starts back up, and if you're seen lazing about the house, the possibility of the police coming to investigate for truancy becomes very real. The other problem is that with no birth certificate or social security number, enrolling you in school will be hard without forgeries or magic."
"Uh, me and school don't really mix well," Percy said. "I'm a homeschooled assassin with magic powers, remember? I don't really play nice with the other kids. In fact, the last time I played with the other kids was when I was eight, and we played tag, and I splintered some girl's spine and had to kill all the other kids and their parents. Things got out of hand real quick."
"…that's…something to think about," Dr. B said slowly. "But, you're a big boy now. You're expected to control your strength and not go shattering the other kids' bones. Besides, since you're going to live here in this world, you're going to need to learn about it so you can function without raising suspicion. That's what assassins do, right? Learn about their target and their environment so they don't get caught?"
Percy gave her a flat look. "You really don't need to manipulate me like that. That was pretty bad, anyway."
Dr. B shrugged. "My point's still the same. Now that you're going to live here, you're going to need to be educated. Uh, how old are you, exactly?"
"I say I'm twelve. I'll be thirteen on...I don't know. Your calendar is different."
"August 18!" Tea and Bell said at the same time. "That's our birthday."
Percy nodded. "I'll be thirteen on August 18."
"Then you'll be headed into seventh grade. Middle school. Tea into the eighth grade, and Bell into the fourth grade."
The siblings did not at all look thrilled about going back to school. In fact, they both actually looked very angry about the prospect. Grover was looking at them with the utmost sympathy, and Annabeth had a frown on her face, her brow furrowed as she stared at her hands. Percy read all of this.
"I take it school is some kind of prison in this world? No one looks excited about going."
"Seven crappy hours of our lives," Bell grumbled.
"Try eight," Tea huffed. "They're going from 8:15 to 4:30 this year."
"What!?" Bell squawked.
"At least here they are," Annabeth said. "I'll be moving back to Virginia for school. It's only a little better from what I hear. Starting at 8:30 and going to 4:00. Seven-and-a-half hours compared to your eight-and-a-quarter hours. Only a 45-minute difference."
"That's basically a whole hour," Bell pouted.
"So…what's so bad about school, again?" Percy asked. "The more you guys keep talking about it makes me want to go find whoever runs school around here and have a talk with them."
Stars appeared in Bell's eyes, while everyone else paled at the thought of Percy having a chat with the Board of Education.
Of course, there was no short way of explaining to the boy from another world how the American education system worked, and the numerous flaws and problems with it. Wendy and Brittany understood more clearly than the kids, even Annabeth, about the mounting danger in this developing situation.
Percy didn't understand, and probably wouldn't care if he was able to grasp it, about the intricacies of human society here on Earth. He came from a world stooped in magic, where life was hard and the people were harder. More than that, the way he was raised—to be an assassin, a killer, not a boy, not a child—shaped his perspective like nothing else.
Laws mattered nothing to Percy. A person's station mattered nothing to Percy. If he wanted to something, like kill a person for whatever reason, he was going to do it and practically nothing would stop him. Least of all anything in this world, where magic was just a fun thing to entertain children, and certainly not a real form of power that easily subverted all electrical and mechanical systems.
The way Percy was talking, and the way this conversation was currently going, it was a very real, very likely thing that Percy was going to find the school board and either kill them all or terrify them into compliance with the comfort of his siblings.
The adults needed to be careful and diffuse this situation, pray the kids didn't say anything, and hope they could talk Percy down from going on a killing spree in the name of Bell and Tea.
Noble and touching, but ultimately one of those things Percy was going to have to learn in this new world, this new life, was that he could not kill people just because he didn't like them.
Wendy asked, "What's school like for kids in the Empire?"
Percy shrugged. "They wear a uniform, sit in their desks, listen to the teacher talk, have recess, have lunch, take tests, go home."
"And the discipline system? What happens if a kid acts out or hurts the other kids intentionally—they're a bully?"
"The teacher's got a cane. Or a belt. As for bullies…I mean, belt hurts them too."
"…I see," Wendy said, keeping her thoughts and opinions about corporal punishment in schools to herself. "What about for kids that have inherent, ah…problems? Like they can't help themselves from doing things, or their brains don't work like most of the other kids' brains do and so they need some extra help, or some more specialized help?"
"You mean if they have ADHD and dyslexia?" Percy asked.
Wendy shifted, blushing a little. "Yes. What does the Imperial education system do with kids who have ADHD and dyslexia, or any kind of condition that prevents them from learning normally?"
"Special classes with teachers trained to teach those kinds of kids. Empress Emily made that a law."
A frown tugged at Wendy's lips. Shadows had crossed the faces of the other three demigods present.
"I take it that's not what it's like here?"
Tea snorted. "They put you at the front of the class like being closer to the board makes dyslexia go away."
"They make us take these pills, Adderall or Ritalin, usually," Annabeth said. "Mortals linked ADHD to a chemical problem in our brains, so they jack us full of other chemicals to make us behave like they want us to."
"I hate Adderall," Bell said quietly. "Makes feel sleepy and yucky."
Percy's eyebrow twitched and his Diet Sprite froze solid. "What?"
Tea crossed her arms. "Yeah, the way it works around here is that if your body make you unable to behave like the normal kids, then they pump you full of medicine to make you like the normal kids, never mind the side effects. Heh, Little Timmy and Suzy can't sit still because of their bodies? Give them drugs so they're nice and obedient! Instead of, you know, maybe working with them, or helping them? Nah, drugs. Makes them easier to handle. They just sit there in the back, quiet and so zoned out they're almost drooling."
"Really," Percy said. The world in its context was meant as a question, but he had said it as an extremely unamused question. "What exactly has to happen that someone has to take either of these drugs?"
"Certain behaviors have to be tracked and monitored, and then the school more or less issues an order for the parent to take their child to a place to be officially tested for any quote learning disabilities, and then the parent has to bring the results back to the school, and then based on the results, the school more or less orders the parent to go get the medicine from the nearest pharmacy, and then it's expected that the child takes the medicine. Sometimes the courts get involved if the parent doesn't do the test or it seems like the medicine isn't being taken. An investigation could be ordered," Annabeth said.
Percy's eyes slid over to Wendy. "Have you been investigated like this before?"
"Yes. As it happens, demigod ADHD isn't like human ADHD, and so the medicine—well, medicines period—don't work on demigods like they do on normal kids. The school thought I was throwing away the pills, and so they had an investigator come over. He concluded that the pills were being taken, and that Tea and Bell were just burning through the dosages. So the court upped the dosage."
So much for handling the situation to where they kept Percy from killing people. Dr. B was feeling lightheaded at the prospect of bodies turning up, and she figured Wendy had changed her mind based on the fact that she was hurting just as much as her kids in this, and so was venting her own frustrations, using this situation as an outlet to finally speak up and talk about it.
"And if I go to school, I guess I can expect to be tested too, and have my own meds to take?"
"Most likely," Dr. B said.
"Perfect," Percy chirped. "Can't wait!"
Then he went back to devouring his ice cream.
"Percy," Wendy sighed. "They're just doing their jobs, okay? They're assholes, but it's just their job. Don't kill anybody."
"Didn't plan to."
That actually threw everyone for a loop.
"You don't plan on killing anyone?" Annabeth blinked. "Not the school board, the doctors, or the courts that make us take that stuff and try turn us into obedient robots?"
"Nope."
"Then what're you planning on doing?"
"What makes you think I'm planning anything beyond eating my ice cream and enjoying summer with my brother and sister? School will get here, I guess, and then I'll burn that bridge."
"You mean cross that bridge?"
"No."
Percy shoveled some ice cream into his mouth and ducked back behind the mountain of frozen dairy.
Five of the opposite six all shared looks with each other, while Bell was absolutely giddy in his seat.
"This is going to be awesome!"
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Since it was summer vacation, the kids all went back to Camp Half-Blood once the shock and relief of Tea and Bell being cured simmered down. Percy settled into the camp ad the freaky middle child of Poseidon with the scary magic powers.
Percy was not allowed to play in CTF games unless he was either up against the entire camp, or he was restricted to only using certain powers. Or no powers at all.
He never lost.
Dr. B temporarily moved into CHB as an honored guest. The only daughter of Asclepius, the only one, and an adult at that. There was hope after all that demigods could make past their teens and into adulthood. While she certainly helped the Apollo kids run the infirmary, her main purpose was to tutor Percy, giving him a crash course on everything he would need to be a functional middle-schooler in 2007 America.
Yes, 2007.
In case you forgot, and just to make you feel old, the story of Percy Jackson canonically starts in the year of 2005, leading into 2006 for the events of the Lightning Thief, then a year later for the events of the Sea of Monsters in the summer and then the Titan's Curse in the winter, with the Battle of the Labyrinth taking place in 2008, and Percy's birthday being in 2009 marks the Last Olympian. Then, months later, Percy is kidnapped and Jason, Piper, and Leo arrive in time for Christmas. 2010 is when the Giant War takes place, and due to timeskips, 2011 is when the Imperial War—the Trials of Apollo—takes place, ending in the summer.
So, going off the dates in the books and the given information, the world of Percy Jackson is actually stuck back in 2011, ten years from the time this chapter was written.
Take a moment to process this, and then resume reading.
On top of receiving an expedited education based on the American TEKS, Percy also learned the ins and outs of being a big brother to his little brother and being a little brother to his big sister.
For example, when an onery son of Athena shoulder-checked Bell and Percy put that guy in the infirmary for half a week, and he had to go through another week of physical therapy, that was considered to be overbearing. On the flipside, when Tea found herself in the arena getting ganged up on, her life honestly in a bit of danger considering how mean that assortment of demigods had been, and Percy had just stood there watching, that was considered to be underbearing.
It was a delicate decision matrix that eventually formed in Percy's mind. When to stick up for his siblings, and how hard to swing that stick at whoever was bothering them.
Really, Percy's mind was a fascinating thing to someone like Dr. B, who loved pediatric psychology, discerning the inner workings of a child's mind and figuring out their thought processes.
Where kids were taught to respect adults and other figures of authority, saying yes/no sir/ma'am, Percy had been taught to be weary of them, ready to strike and kill if he deemed them enough of a threat. He'd also been taught how to harvest their bodies down to the last drop of blood, strip of skin, and splinter of bone for various purposes.
Where other kids were taught to play nice with the other kids, Percy had actually been taught to avoid the other kids. He was stronger than them, faster, better, and by his own admission, had accidently killed the other kids with his superior body. He was rather antisocial when it came to anyone he didn't know, or was forced to get to know like with Annabeth during the quest. Other than her and his siblings, Percy was never even close to anyone else unless he was kicking their ass in the arena.
Where other kids were taught that stealing was wrong, Percy was taught how to not get caught stealing. More than that, he was taught that if he wanted something, it was up to him to figure out how to take it.
It was just surreal how different Percy was from every other kids his age. Not just because of obvious things like being a demigod, or being from another dimension, or having scary magic powers, but in how he thought, how he reacted to things, how he viewed things.
Case in point was when he decided he wanted to add teal streaks to his hair and paint his nails the same color, while also tying the left side of his hair into a short, colored ponytail. Even better was when he decided to wear a skirt with some leggings.
Unoriginally, Clarisse had some choice words to offer, and it was everything Dr. B could do to put the girl's teeth back into their proper places in her mouth after Percy punched her.
After that, the good doctor had to sit down with Percy and have a talk about his whims.
"Do you believe that your actions have consequences?" she asked.
They were in the Big House, occupying the front room while Chiron was out teaching and Dionysus was taking a nap in an upstairs room. Percy was sitting across from her, wearing an orange camp shirt, some ocean blue leggings, a denim skirt, his boots, and the left side of his dyed hair was pulled into a sprig of a bunch, his nails painted the same shade of teal dye.
"Mm-hm," Percy nodded.
He was not at all embarrassed by the fact he was wearing his sister's leggings—whether he'd asked to wear them or stole them was unknown to Dr. B, though she would be asking Tea later about it just to satisfy her curiosity—or self-conscious or uncomfortable or fidgeting even in the slightest. He was totally at calm and at ease.
"Do you believe that you actions can have consequences that affect others?"
"Yeah."
"Okay….Percy, I understand—well, kind of—what your upbringing was like. Sally raised you to be an assassin, and she didn't impart any specific gender ideas in you. Like, that's for girls and that's for boys, or that's what girls do and that's what boys do. She let you do whatever you wanted as long as you did whatever she wanted."
"Yep. I was there."
Dr. B's lips twitched. "You've had a lot of freedom growing up. A lot of freedom in choosing and experiencing the ramifications of your choices. I don't know what it was like in the Empire, but how you are now, nails painted, hair dyed and pulled into a sideways ponytail, wearing leggings and a skirt—we call that crossdressing here."
"It was called crossdressing back in the Empire, too. It was kinda frowned upon, unless you were an actor or something, but people there don't really like actors anyway. They say they're just overpaid liars. But it wasn't okay for boys to crossdress. It was okay for girls, though. It was weird."
Dr. B couldn't keep the amused grin off her face. "Well, it's more or less the same here. There is a double standard to boys wearing skirts and dresses as opposed to girls wearing shorts and pants. Because of that, because of what happened earlier with Clarisse, I feel like I need to tell you that things are different for you now. You're not living alone with just your mom, in just your own world between the two of you. You're living here now, with a brother and sister, and the things you do impact them.
"While largely harmless in the grand scheme of things, you going along with whatever whim you suddenly get to wear something a girl would wear can catch you the wrong attention. Case in point being Clarisse. She came over to bully you for your appearance and you broke her teeth. While we can debate whether that was appropriate or not, the bottom line is that your actions, crossdressing, resulted in consequences, Clarisse coming for you, and we'll have to wait and see what the consequences are for you punching her.
"You can get away with that here at camp, but in the mortal world, if you hit another kid like that, hard enough that they lose teeth and requires dental work, or just hit them period, you will get into major trouble. And so will Wendy. And it will reflect on Tea and Bell. I just want you to be aware of things, Percy. What clothes you wear and how you do your hair and what color you paint your nails is all up to you. But if you're going put that kind of a target on your back, a boy dressing like a girl, you're going to have to be very careful with how you deal with those that shoot at you. Okay?"
"Okay," Percy nodded.
Dr. B honestly couldn't tell if she'd gotten through to him or not. It didn't feel like he was brushing her off or had tuned her out, but he didn't really feel sincere about it, either.
"It's kind of ironic, though," Percy said.
"What is?"
"I should actually crossdress a lot more. Probably to the point that I don't even consider myself a boy at all despite my penis. Like I told you, Mom made me, carving whalebones for my skeleton, taking organs from baby girls. Mom grew up in a coven of witches that all hated men for some reason or another, and so Mom was making me a girl. Really, I should be a girl. Annabeth told me gods don't have DNA, and so whatever Daddy left Mom, his essence or whatever, shouldn't have had an XY chromosome, meaning all of my genetic material was coming from other girls and Mom. I don't actually know why I'm a boy."
Dr. B honestly kept forgetting just what kind of a witch Sally was. She wasn't the kind of witch that taught spells at Hogwarts or set Dorothy on the yellow brick road. She was the kind of witch that the Bible condemned, the kind that was burnt at the stake, the kind that Hollywood made horror movies out of. Sally had murdered baby and toddler girls and took their organs for her own Frankenstein's monster of a child.
In the name of a revenge plot, at that.
The doctor's brows furrowed. "Percy…are you…do you feel like you're a…well, do you think you're more of a girl than you are a boy? Or feel like it? It'd okay if you feel like you're in the wrong body—lots of people do—and there are ways we can help you, ah, transition into the right body. The body you feel is more appropriate for you…"
She trailed off at the bewildered stare she was receiving.
"What in the Sam Hill Jesus are you taking about?" Percy asked, employing a fun little phrase he'd learned from some boy from a place called "Texas."
Dr. B opened her mouth, ready to explain what it meant to be transgender and gender fluid, but then she shut it and smiled to herself. In so many ways, Percy was still just a little child. Not really in that he was innocent and oblivious, but that he held zero regard for what other people thought of him, or for what other people thought in general.
He lived in his own world in which he was the king.
He did what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it, how he wanted to do it, where he wanted to do it, with whom he wanted to do it with, and for whatever contrived reason he deemed worthy enough to pursue.
"Just me looking too deep into things," Dr. B said. "Just think of others, especially your brother and sister, when you make some choices, alright? The last thing you want is for something to happen to them because of something you did."
The good doctor was chiefly thinking about school and public. If Percy decided he wanted to school in a skirt, or go out in public in a dress, he'd be painting a massive target on himself, but instead of running to Tumblr to complain about the mean people in the world, he'd be kicking the asses of the mean people, which could land not just him in some serious trouble, but his siblings as well.
Brittany could see it now: Percy would be seized by some whim to wear a Disney princess-themed outfit, maybe a dress with a matching pair of leggings or something, he'd go to school in it, the bullies would come for him, and then those bullies may never be found again. Or parts of them would be found. Potentially. And then Percy would be kicked out, heat would come upon Tea and Bell and Wendy, and the situation could spiral out of control in the blink of an eye.
Of course, not just crossdressing, but anything Percy did. He was a clinically defined sociopath with behavioral issues. He was almost totally detached from humanity, and saw nothing wrong with killing people that threatened or harmed him, or those he cared about. The biggest danger to that, obviously, was the fact that he had powers and the training to use them.
Essentially, Percy was a walking WMD with a skewed perception of society and humanity.
"Got it," Percy nodded.
And he did. He understood that this wasn't his world anymore, his world of just him and his mom where he could do practically anything he wanted. The rules were different here. Now he had siblings—family—to think about. Just like his rampage through Karnaca had made getting to Dunwall that much harder, Percy recognized that his actions had unforeseen consequences.
While he thought it was stupid that anyone would pick on him for his clothes—seriously, they were just clothes; so what if they were for a boy or for a girl? Wasn't like anyone was being harmed in any way by Percy wearing a skirt because he suddenly wanted to—he understood that he was weird and weird people were attacked. Only where his usual response to anyone attacking him was lethal force, he couldn't get away with that so easily in this world.
Or could he…?
Percy left the Big House in search of bones.
His first stop was the Apollo cabin, where are all the doctors were at. He knocked politely, and one the sun god's sons, Michael, answered.
"Uh, hey, Percy," the boy answered nervously, and almost hesitantly, like he wasn't sure if he was actually talking to Percy as opposed to Tea.
"Hello! Got any bones I can have? Like, someone just died and now their bones aren't being used? Got any bones like that?"
Michael blinked. "…lemme go check real fast."
He shut the door and turned to see the pale faces of his siblings.
"Did he just ask for bones?" a girl by the very original name of Sunny asked.
"Yeah. Human bones. Ones from someone who just died."
"We are fresh out of those kinds of bones on account that no one has just died. Or is even close to dying," Will Solace answered.
"I know," Michael said. "I'm just worried about what he'll do when we tell him that. Anyone got any ideas on where some we can get some bones for this kid before he goes and gets them himself, probably from somebody's body?"
"Does he need human bones, or just some bones?" Sunny asked.
Michael turned around and opened the door. "Do you need human bones, or just any bones?"
"Well, whale bones work best, but I don't wanna kill any whales. The next best thing is human bones, but I don't wanna kill anyone for those yet. Any bones will do, they just need to be big enough to write on."
"To write on," Michael repeated.
"Mm-hm. I need to write on them. Well, carve them."
"One minute."
Michael shut the door and turned back to his siblings.
"What is he going to do with bones big enough to carve?" Will demanded.
"I don't really want to know," Michael answered honestly.
Skigh, another daughter of Apollo, said, "If he's aiming to carve them, that rules out rodents. I'd say go have fun in the woods with the monsters, but they disintegrate and go back to Tartarus before you can harvest anything."
"Not if you rip off part of their body first," Will said in a moment of realization. "Remember, Tea tore off the Minotaur's horn and kept it as a spoil of war. The horn didn't turn to dust. If Percy can find something big enough, like it has big teeth, or he can sever a limb or two, he should be fine."
Michael nodded. He turned and opened the door. "Hey, go check out the woods. There are monsters deep in there. You have to be careful, though. They turn to dust when killed, so you'll have to sever some limbs or rip out some teeth in order to use their bones."
"Sever limbs and tear out teeth before I kill them. Got it. Thanks!"
And Percy went sprinting for the woods, running so fast he appeared a blur with a trail of dust rising behind him.
"…are we bad people?" Skigh asked once Percy was long gone three seconds later. "I mean, the kid came here asking for some bones, and we told him to go hunt monster in the forest of death."
"He actually came here asking for bones of someone that had recently died. He wanted to desecrate someone's corpse for a reason we still don't know," Will pointed out.
"True, but if he does die, and Tea and Bell link it back to us, that he came here and we sent him that way, what'll that mean for us?"
"It'll probably mean we'll have the fight of our life on our hands," Michael said with a shrug.
"Yay. I love fighting to the death because we inadvertently got someone weird brother killed."
Long story short, Percy managed to find this cyclopes in the woods and he dismembered it, slicing off both arms and legs before removing the head. Miraculously, all the skin, muscle, and organic tissue turned to dust around the monster, leaving only its bones. Percy wasted no time in carving the Outsider's mark onto every individual piece that he could.
Whale bones worked the best because the animals were explicitly tied to the Void by means that weren't actually known. But, what was known was that any kind of bone would work, so long as it was big enough to have the Mark carved upon it.
When it came to carving Runes and Bone Charms, you had to have bone, obviously, and you had to no what essentially amounted to the Void's own personal alphabet. The way one came to know this alphabet was either through the texts recorded by those who studied the Void and had been Marked by the Outsider, by those that had dreams of the Void, and saw its writing. Once carved, the shapes and symbols acted and doorways for the power of the Void, and the shape of those doors dictated what the magic did.
Kind of like Sealing jutsu from Naruto, in that the patterns and shapes of all the squiggles, with an application of chakra, did things, or computer code, in which the shape of the bits told the computer what to do. With Void letters, you could mix and match them either for an intentional effect, or just experiment and hope for the best.
With the monster bones Percy had, he wasn't aiming for random powers. He carved the Outsider's mark upon every bone he could, started a fire, and tossed the bones in. They made the fire turn an unnatural shade of blue, and the smoke of which caused Percy to seize.
His mind didn't go blank, but instead entered something like an extradimensional space. It wasn't the Void necessarily, but fairly close. What Percy had done was just make a whole bunch of Runes, and then he'd sacrificed them all. Now that he'd made the appropriate sacrifices, he was channeling a whole bunch of the Void right now.
Channeling the Void in such a way that he could pick what power he wanted. And not just that, but tweak it how he wanted it.
Percy had one power in mind, and one power only: Shadow Kill.
A passive power that was rather simple. The user killed a person unaware of their killer's presence, and their body turned to ash that blew away, not even leaving marks on the ground. The more powerful version of Shadow Kill, Shadow Kill II, made anyone the user killed turn to ash upon being killed, with the previous tier not working on people killed in combat. Then, there was another version of Shadow Kill that made those killed not turn to ash, but into a swarm of deadly parasitic insects called bloodflies.
Bloodflies were believed to originate from Pandyssia, the same place the rats bearing the so-named Rat Plague came from. The insects themselves were gigantic by insect standards, being as big as some birds, and were black with glowing red abdomens. They had stingers with which to inject venom, laid eggs inside of corpses, built nests out of corpses or upon any surface, kind of like bees or wasps. The scariest thing about bloodflies was that a person who was stung could contract what was called Bloodfly Fever, and if left untreated too long, the chemicals would alter their brain chemistry, driving them towards the nearest nest, making them forget all notions of friends and family, and would devote themselves entirely to the bloodflies that stung them.
These poor people were called Nest Keepers, and they attacked anyone that came near a nest after letting out an ear-splitting screech that called every nearby bloodfly into action. Once a Keeper finally died, the bloodflies rewarded their guardian by filling him full of eggs to incubate the babies.
Percy thought it was fun to play amongst a bloodfly swarm. Their fluttering wings and little feet tickled.
Anyway, to the idea of being able to more easily kill people as needed here in this world, Percy acquired Shadow Kill, its second tier, the bloodfly supplement, and his own tweak to it. In accordance to his will, anyone he killed would be left as is, would burst into ash or bloodflies, or, in accordance with his new tweak to the power, into a puddle of saltwater.
Percy came out of his trance with a satisfied grin. He was disappointed a little, though. He'd needed to use every bone that was big enough to carve on to get these new powers. That whole skeleton had been used, not a shard left over. For whatever reason, the quality of bone mattered a lot when it came to Runes and Bone Charms, and it appeared that such things made from Greek monsters weren't very good.
They got the job done, but in the way that beer got you drunk as opposed to straight tequila.
Not very effective, and almost a waste of time, money, effort, energy, and resources, but Percy had to settle for it.
Now, you might be wondering why Percy doesn't overhaul the monster Rune thing and stock up on every power in the book. The simplest reason is that it just didn't work that way. It if that was indeed how it worked, Delilah would've become a powerhouse the likes of which no one could possibly have contended with. She would've been burning whalebones day in and day out, gaining ability after ability, upgrading them all to their max and beyond. However, the Void had a mind of its own.
It didn't let Delilah have all the powers, just like it didn't let Corvo, Emily, Daud, Vera Moray, and so many other Voidwalkers have all the powers.
Percy was honestly kind of surprised he even had access to Shadow Kill given all the other powers he already had, but he wasn't complaining. He returned to camp with a smile on his face.
Percy did many things over the summer, like summoning Doppelgangers to aid him in volleyball and basketball games, helping his siblings pull off pranks on everyone else, spending many nights watching movies and tv shows with his siblings—and many days, too, since Tea, being the oldest, was the head of Cabin 3, which gave her total authority over her cabin's scheduled activities, so if she and her little brother wanted to spend the whole day in the cabin, they did so an no one could stop them—wrestling and roughhousing with them, sparring with them with blades, fists, and power over water.
Obviously, they both knew about Percy's weird clothing habits, and neither really cared. When they'd been sick and dreaming of him, they'd seen his childhood, and were used to his weirdness.
Percy spent a lot of time in the forge, working with the Hephaestus kids. They could combine magic and metal to make weapons and armor that collapsed into personal accessories like watches, rings, belt buckles, nose studs, piercings, etc., without retaining the properties of mass, matter, and volume. In that respect, Percy was able to work his wristbow and voltaic gun into innocent enough slap bracelets.
With an application of will, they turned from their dormant form to their deadly form, and then back again.
Percy also was able to work new kinds of ammunition for his projectile weapons, like hybrid metal bolts of Celestial Bronze and steel and Greek Fire incendiary bolts. He couldn't work sleep bolts for monsters, because the required a knowledge of their physiology that he didn't have, or anyone was able to record. Monsters weren't very cooperative when it came to biological studies.
Percy also spent time at the archery range, making sure he could still shoot his weapons with top notches. He couldn't shoot a bow to save his life, just like Tea and Bell—must've been a child of Poseidon thing—but he could kick ass with his wrist weapons.
During the summer, Percy figured out how his Mom worked.
As a brief refresher, Sally wasn't able to accompany her son in person due to dimensional law stuff. However, to circumvent that, the Outsider had turned Sally into Percy's literal heart. Her body was destroyed and her spirit taken to inhabit a Heart of a Living Thing, an object of metal and meat forged by the Outsider. The god of the Void tied Sally and the Heart together, and then put the Heart inside of Percy, effectively making mother and son one entity.
In the Dishonored games, the Heart was a magic item that sat in the inventory until it was brought out. Its function was to see where Runes and Bone Charms were located throughout the level, and also provide practically useless trivia about people and places. You equipped the Heart, aimed the crosshair at someone, hit the button on your controller, and the Heart told you the secrets of that person.
The way the Heart was able to do this was because of its connection to the Void, and the fact that Void was a semi-sentient extradimensional plane. There was no past, present, or future in the Void, and the Void saw everything and everyone. Nothing was hidden from its sight, and the Heart shared this omniscient vision.
Sally was now the same way. As the Heart, she saw as the Void saw, and knew all there was to know about a person and a place.
Unlike how Corvo and Emily could whip out the Heart, holding it in their hand and using it like an object, Percy could not physically bring the Heart—his Heart—out of his body. Instead, when he wanted to, he could listen to his mother, and she could talk to him. Sally could also manifest as an ethereal blue wisp that looked vaguely like her human form.
"Mommy," Percy said sadly as he reached for the spirit.
Sally smiled, even sadder, and reached for her son. Their hands passed straight through each other.
"Baby boy."
"Am I doing good? Have I been good?"
"You're doing an outstanding job, Percy. I'm so proud of you."
Percy beamed, then he frowned in a thoughtful way. "These guys are weird."
Sally could only nod.
The secrets of the godlings that attended Camp Half-Blood were not hidden from Sally's spiritual form. Through the Void, she knew everyone here, and you could imagine for yourself the thoughts of about two hundred demigods whose ages ranged from seven to the seventeen. Some were far darker than others, some more perverted, some more depraved, etc. Despite being a witch that had butchered babies to harvest their organs to create her child, even Sally was somewhat disturbed and grossed out by what she'd come to learn about her son's new peers.
"I love you, Percy. I always will."
"I'll always love you too, Mom."
Sally's spirit form faded as it returned to Percy's chest.
He could summon that at will, and listen to her speak in his mind at will.
Dionysus and Percy got along great since Percy was essentially insane by all conventional standard and definitions. To Dionysus, Percy was just as nuts as some of his own followers, like the maenads, and like many of the people that got drunk at his parties. There was also the fact that Dionysus, when he was still a demigod, was raised as a girl to hide him from Hera, and so whenever Percy decided to incorporate some traditionally female article into his wardrobe for the day, the wine god felt a spark of nostalgia for the simpler days of his mortal youth.
June passed, then July, and then the weeks of August were ticked off one by one until the weekend of dread settled over the camp. Those that weren't year-round campers would be shipping out back to their homes across America over the course of the weekend in order to attend mortal school. Some of them did it because they wanted to make something of themselves, like how Annabeth wanted to be an architect, and some had to do it because their parents were still ignorant to the true nature of their child and thought Camp Half-Blood was a legitimate summer camp. Others went to school because their parents forced them to, either out of some crackpot idea that they could force their child to be normal, or that they could make their child into something more than sword-swinging teenager.
As for the children of Poseidon, Tea and Bell went to school because Wendy wanted them to have more opportunities available to them in life. Percy was only attending because he wanted to see what this "school" thing was like. He only ever heard bad stories about school from the demigods. Bullies picked on them because they were all weird and out of place; the teachers were all a bunch of jerks; they were always in trouble for something they didn't do, and so were in detention, suspended, undergoing in-school suspension (ISS), expelled, or were under school/court orders to attend therapy and/or counseling, remedial classes, and had to take medication for their ADHD.
Apparently, being a demigod anywhere outside of camp was totally awful.
Tea and Bell had been kicked out of every school and daycare they'd been enrolled in for some reason or another, either because of some strange supernatural happening like a cannon going off, or the catwalk over the shark tank took a sudden dip, or for some disciplinary thing like they got into a fight and hurt the other kids. Wendy had to bend over backwards finding an educational institution that would accept her kids since the Gates siblings had garnered a reputation in the Manhattan Independent School District. For this academic year, the Fall of 2007 to the Spring of 2008, Wendy had found an intermediate school that taught 4th through 8th grade, so Bell, Percy, and Tea would be able to all go to school together.
And hopefully not blow it up.
It was a public school, so they all got to ride the bus in the morning and the afternoon. The school also had a dress code that required all student to wear a single-color collared shirt—so, polos—and either khaki or navy bottoms. Boys got to wear shorts and pants, and girls also got to where shorts and pants, but they also got where skirts and jumper dresses given that the hems went down at least three inches above their knees, and they had something on underneath to hide their underwear. Shirts had to be tucked in, and belts of black or brown had to be worn. Socks had to be white or black. There was no restriction on the style of hoodies or jackets, other than there couldn't be any imagery or visible logos.
Not even the little Nike check was permitted to be shown.
Percy was extremely fond of pointing out how there were no official rules listed on the school's website about whether it was prohibited for a boy to come in wearing a skirt or dress. It was strongly implored by Wendy for him to not experiment, while Tea and Bell were totally onboard to see what would happen.
Percy's legal identity issues were solved with some magic and fake documents that identified Percy as the son of Tea and Bell's father (who was officially lost at sea, aboard some vessel that had gone missing during a storm off the Gulf Coast and hadn't been found yet), and his mother was unknown, so a whore. As far as official documents went.
Percy had been in the foster care system until running away and eventually finding his siblings, and he'd been officially adopted as Wendy's son, something he didn't like because he already had a mother that he loved very much.
The summer passed with a lot of learning, a lot of good times, a lot of good memories, but all things came to an end, and summer vacation was one of them.
After no less than a hundred pictures of her kids on their first day back to school, Wendy drove her kids to the campus and dropped them off with some goodbye hugs and kisses. She drove away and left the ids by themselves amidst the throngs of other students shuffling their way inside.
Tea gently grabbed Percy's hand. "No starting fights, and if you get into a fight, do not hit back. One of those stupid things about the way schools handle bullying is that if someone hits you, and you hit them back, then you're in as much trouble. And if you do hit back, don't kill them."
"Or just don't let them find the body," Bell supplied.
"Bellerophon!" Tea hissed in disapproval.
"Hey, just saying."
Percy hadn't told them about his Shadow Kill power. He smiled at his big sister. "Don't worry. I'll be fine."
"I know you'll be fine. It's everyone else I'm worried about. This world isn't made for kids like us."
"Nope," Percy chirped. "But maybe we can remake it for us. Come on! I wanna see what this is going to be like."
And so the three children of Poseidon went up the front steps to begin their first day of school.
Now, if you've made it this far, you're probably wondering about where a very important character is at. That special girl that was introduced at the end of the Sea of Monsters book, returned from her state of limbo by the powerful magic of the Golden Fleece. No, she was not forgotten, but for the role that she is to play here, her entrance had to be Delayed up until school began, when Percy was no longer at Camp Half-Blood.
If Thalia had awoken during the summer and she and Percy met, the camp surely would've been destroyed.
At the base of the pine tree, roots and grass gave way to reveal a teenage girl about fourteen, wearing ripped black jeans, a leather jacket, a studded black belt, and black boots, looking ready for a punk rock concert, something accentuated by her spikey black hair. Freckles dotted across her nose and cheeks, and her eyes were a striking electric blue.
Thalia Grace was back, but she wasn't herself. Or rather, just herself. Not anymore.
Years ago, when she'd been mortally wounded and could feel herself being turned into a tree, she'd met the black-eyed god called the Outsider, and where he'd explained what was happening to her, he'd extended the offer of a life apart from woodpeckers and squirrels. Thalia had accepted, and that's how she became an empress.
One that had been kidnapped after her mother's assassination. One that had been rescued by her magical assassin of a father, then trained by him in combat, stealth, and free running. One that had put all of that training to good use when her throne was usurped by her witch of an aunt, and she received the powers needed to get it back.
The people of her empire had called her many things during her reign, and when she died, one name had stuck out above all others:
Empress Emily Kaldwin the Wise.
Now the empress was back.
And the one responsible for destroying her empire, and murdering her granddaughter, was currently beginning his first day of middle school.
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Thank you, edboy4926, for the idea of Thalia being taken by the Outsider during her time as a tree to become Emily, and then go back to her body with all her memories and experiences as the empress.
Also, yeah, not a lot of action going on here, but I was just compelled to write this and it just went and went, the words coming and coming, all coming together into this almost-9k chapter.
I don't actually know if that's how school and courts work regarding ADHD meds, but it does make for some fun drama.
The next chapter is Percy functioning in a public middle school, with the ending being him and Empress Emily—back to being Thalia—coming face to face.
Fav, Follow, and Review please! Pretty, pretty please?