Daddy's Angry Girl
I am pleasantly surprised by the higher thinking going on in the Reviews. For the most part. Some were kinda…meh.
Some good arguments going one way and the other in favor of Emily and Percy. Let's see how it turns out, shall we?
Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or Dishonored
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What was going through their minds right now, you might be wondering?
Well, Emily's feelings of pity and sympathy for Percy, the fact that he existed based on a lie, that his whole life's purpose had been built on a lie, that everything he had done in his life up until being brought to this world was done in a lie—her feelings for him regarding these matters were pushed down in favor of sentiments of revenge and justice. Lie or not, he had still killed people. Dozens of people, the Empress of the Isles included.
In the name of all those people and their families, he had to face judgement. And lie or not, he had still chosen to kill so many. He had gone out of his way to kill, testing his powers and skills in the most brutal way possible. He could've just as easily snuck passed everyone, keeping to the shadows, and only struck at his targets, like Corvo and Emily had done.
For the most part.
But no. He had intentionally gone on a full-frontal assault, slaughtering everyone that he came across. Emily would not forgive that. His deliberate actions erased any possibility for clemency or leniency in her sentencing. If Percy had indeed pursued a route that involved less blood, Emily probably would have pardoned him, her feelings of pity and sympathy for him stronger in the wake of so many gallons of blood still pumping through living bodies.
So, where Emily did feel a little bit sorry for Percy, his actions left her feeling not so sorry that she wasn't going to carry out his death sentence.
As for Percy….He was angry. He was angry that his Momma had been lied to. He was angry that his whole existence had been dictated by a madwoman, just another crazy lady. There was no more gray area in Percy's mind regarding Delilah: Emily's oath on the Styx confirmed it for him. The truth was Delilah was just insane.
Sally was silent in his head, but she could feel her turmoil. They were bound in spirit through the Void. She wanted to cry out and call Emily a liar, scream at her son to take her head, but like with Percy, the oath on the Styx had done her in. As far as Sally went, through the Void, she could feel the truth in Emily's words more than Percy could ever do.
Emily spoke the truth.
Delilah was just insane.
It was a horrible tragedy.
Twicefold to Percy's anger was this bitch before him, the original Kaldwin lady that that his own mother had tried to kill decades ago. Who was she now, exactly, with her spikey hair and leather jacket and ripped jeans? She was no empress, not anymore, and so she literally had no authority in this world to do shit. It was a bit of a semantic, but it was good enough for Percy to be angry about it.
Her and her high horse. He was going to knock her off it and show her that being an empress in world or another didn't mean a thing at all.
Thricefold to Percy's anger was this: Emily was interrupting dinner. It may seem silly and trivial compared to these other things, but the former empress was interrupting Percy's first real sit-at-the-table dinner with his new family. It was the first day of school, they made it through without killing anybody or being attacked by mortals or monsters, and from what Percy gathered, that cause to celebrate.
Making dinner together and baking brownies.
And Emily was interrupting that.
In summary: Emily was gunning for Percy due to the many counts of murder he committed outweighing sympathy points for being raised on a lie, and Percy was gunning for Emily to A) save his own life since she was literally trying to kill him, B) because her hypocrisy and arrogance, her sentiments that she was still the empress and therefore was performing some kind of duty, annoyed him, and C) she was crashing what was a momentous event to Percy, that being his first real dinner with his family.
There was a tricky part to this battle: they couldn't cut loose.
They were in a residential neighborhood, the houses up and down the street occupied with parents coming home from work after picking their children up from school and daycare. Percy nor Emily had any inclination in going on a full-power rampage through the setting, destroying houses and potentially killing innocents. Both of them were even inclined to go the extra mile and not even damage the cars.
Partly because neither wanted to cause unwarranted damage, but mostly because they wanted to remain anonymous and discreet. They didn't want the police to come roaring down the road. They didn't want the situation to escalate and start involving a lot of annoyances.
Percy was honestly looking to neutralize Emily in five seconds or less, and she was looking to kill him in about the same amount of time. Emily had actually been hoping to simply slit Percy's throat while he slept, using one of her powers to slip into the house, kill him, and then slip out. But Percy had made her.
And instead of killing her from behind with an assassination technique, he'd called her out in the name of information.
Speaking of Emily's powers, she had:
Far Reach
Mesmerize
Doppelganger
Domino
Shadow Walk
And just recently she was given Windblast and Lightning Blast.
Far Reach was her movement power. She essentially became Spiderman when she used it, since the power manifested as a tendril of the Void launching from her hand to either pull herself places, or pull things to her. A little niche trick to it was a sub-ability called Decelerate, which stopped time whenever Emily was aiming the power. So, while she was sitting somewhere, or even midfall or midjump, she aimed her Far Reach and time stopped around her. She even stopped moving, giving her an ample window to aim and pull herself out of situations. In her years using it, she had improved Far Reach beyond just a pulling tendril, creating sub-abilities to it. Those were:
Piercing Lance
Multiple Lances
Redirective Lance.
Simply put, the Piercing Lance was Far Reach but able to blast through a person's body, even through walls and floors and ceilings. Multiple Lances fired multiple tendrils that did the same thing, and all of this was made extremely versatile with Redirective Lance, which allowed Emily to control the direction of her tendrils according to her will.
Mesmerize was kind of boring, but it had its uses. The power worked by summoning a "Void entity," a polyhedral thing that had a glowing eye to it that hypnotized people in range, making them walk over to itself and just stand there, allowing for the user to slip past a group unnoticed. Originally, Emily had only been able to summon one entity, and it could only mesmerize five people at the most, but through her years, she'd managed to improve the power to where she could summon a max of three entities, enthrall a max of eight people per entity, and she could even trigger the entities to explode or just make them kill the enthralled.
Doppelganger and Domino were already explained since Percy had them as well, only where Percy was able to summon twelve Doppelgangers and link twelve people with Domino, Emily had only ever managed to summon four Doppelgangers and link seven people.
Shadow Walk was a whole lot of fun. Using the power turned Emily into a vaguely humanoid thing of smoke. She had a body with a head and torso, and her arms and legs became long and spindly and clawed. In this form, she was very difficult to see, especially at night and in actual shadows, and she moved faster, was totally silent, could defy gravity—scaling walls and walking along ceilings—could fit herself into tiny places like air vents, could interact with things, like opening doors and windows, and of course, killing people or knocking them out.
Like her other powers, Emily had improved this one as well. She increased the duration of the ability, her speed while in its shadowy, smokey form, and like how Percy could use certain powers while using Foresight, Emily got it to where she could also use certain powers while in her shadow-like state. While using Shadow Walk, Emily could summon Mesmerize entities and link people with Domino, but despite how much she tried, she could not summon Doppelgangers while in Shadow Walk. She couldn't even get the Doppelgangers she summoned to use Shadow Walk.
It was this power that the empress was going to use to climb the chimney of the Gates house, slip inside and go down the chute into the living room, then creep through the house until she found where Percy was sleeping, and kill him.
And Windblast and Lightning Blast were self-explanatory, and kind of redundant if you stop and think about it, since she was the daughter of Zeus now, and could control wind and lightning on her own.
Right now, Percy and Emily were staring each other down, Percy on the roof of the adjacent house to the Gates residence, Emily standing next to the car. They were playing a game of mental chess, going over their powers and combos, anticipating counterattacks and counter-counterattacks.
In the name of preventing collateral damage, they were both determining the best course of action to take down the other in the shortest way. The hitch was that Emily didn't know all that Percy could do, and Percy didn't know all that Emily could do. They were factoring unknowns into their equations, and it was beginning to turn into a huge calculative mess in their heads.
Then they heard the front door open, and there came the voice of Tea.
"Percy? Are you okay?"
What happened was nothing short of incredible. It took Tea two seconds and less than four tenths of a second to ask her question, and two tenths after she finished, there was bolt of light from the sky that knocked her flat on her back. It was during this miniscule increment that so many things happened between Percy and Emily.
Percy used Displacement and got right in front of her. Emily thrust her spear without missing a microsecond, aiming for his right eye. Percy narrowly dodged to his left, but Emily swung her arm. Percy then used Swap with a nail he had dropped when he first used Displacement. He dodged Emily's attack by effectively teleporting from right next to her back to the roof. Then he Swapped again, Swapping with another nail he had dropped when he first appeared before Emily. With her arm swung all the way to the right, and him on her left, it looked like his win.
But the open palm of Emily's left hand was pointed at him. A Piercing Lance fired from her skin, the dark tendril shooting at Percy at almost 200mph. Since he wasn't even three feet away, it was extremely impressive that he managed to not get skewered through the torso. He did this by transposing with one of his Doppelgangers. Summoned earlier up on the roof of the Gates house when Emily had been walking around the corner of the house. She hadn't seen it.
But she'd anticipated it. That's why her spear was in her right hand. That's why she'd stabbed for the right eye, knowing he'd dodge to his left—her right—and now her spear was pointed where Percy was standing atop the roof. But Emily never got the chance to discharge a lightning bolt. It had nothing to do with the destroyed Doppelganger releasing its baffling smoke upon death, but the fact that all the way at the beginning, Percy had summoned a little Blood Briar underneath the car.
Emily the Wise was largely unfamiliar with the Blood Briars of the Brigmore Coven since she'd only so much experience with them. She'd encountered Blood Briars only twice, the first time being when she went after Breanna Ashworth at the Royal Conservatory in Karnaca, the Conservatory having turned into the witch's new roost and fortified with the Void-based trees, and the second time was when Emily returned to Dunwall Tower to take back her throne, only the Tower had been overrun by witches and was also teeming with more of the trees.
She avoided them, writing them off as something to not get close to. After she got her throne back, she did some research based on the journals and notes the witches left, and learned some things about Blood Briars, but with Delilah sealed away, anyone who shared her power through Arcane Bond lost their power, and so Blood Briars went extinct. Technically, anyway.
However, even if Emily knew everything there was to know about Blood Briars, that wouldn't have helped her here. The little one Percy had summoned under the car was less tree and more weed. Its vines lashed out and grabbed Emily's ankles, and that's when Percy struck. It was less than a third of a second, just that tiny, brief, momentary moment in which Emily was shocked and distracted by the sudden pressure around her ankles, but it was enough.
Percy had dropped a nail when he first used Displacement to kick things off, then he used Swap on that nail to avoid Emily's swinging spear. He had dropped another nail when he first appeared, and used Swap with it to get back to Emily's left, where she'd fired her Piercing Lance and he dodged it using transpose with his Doppelganger. Then he used Blood Briar to distract the empress.
And that first nail he Swapped with, the one that had been on the adjacent roof, it was still falling through the air by Emily's leg. Percy Swapped with that nail one more time, and with Emily focused on her ankles, she was too late in reacting to Percy.
He drove his tonfas forward, the blades aiming for her lower abdomen, aiming to go right through the muscles and intestines and through her vertebrae. As he promised, he was going to break her spine, or rather, slice it apart.
Emily felt the cold bite of the blades as they started to pierce through her jacket and shirt, and then everything erupted in light.
That whole exchange with the Swapping and the Displacing and the clutch reactions—all in a little over two seconds. All in the time it took a fourteen-year-old girl to ask a four-word question.
Tea scrambled back to her feet and raced around the corner of the front porch. Percy was gone.
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And back on Olympus.
In a little over 24 hours, he'd been on the mountain home of the gods twice. That was more than most people in their lifetime. Percy noted how he wasn't skewering Emily anymore, how she was actually 20 feet away from him, and that Zeus and Poseidon were on their thrones. Poseidon looked smug while Zeus was managing to pout and glower at the same time.
"You!" Emily roared at Zeus.
All her Thalia-based memories and feelings regarding the king of the sky were racing across the forefront of her mind, and all of her wisdom went flying out the window in the face of teenage hormones.
"You left me and my brother for dead—and he actually died—and then you turned me into a fucking tree!"
"I did that to save you," Zeus glowered. "If you had died, your soul would have gone to the clutches of Hades, and-"
"And what about Jason!? His soul is in the clutches of Hades!"
"Yes, it is, but Hades was not actively seeking Jason's life like he was yours. Jason is safe in Elysium," Zeus retorted.
Emily seemed to lose a lot of fire at the assurance her brother was enjoying a peaceful afterlife in the Greek heaven.
"That's fantastic," Percy spoke up. "Can I get back to breaking her spine, now? We're in the middle of getting dinner started."
Poseidon coughed into his fist, knowing his son wasn't going to like this. "Ah, that would be why you were brought here. We felt Thalia's—"
"Emily. My name is now Emily."
"…right. We felt Emily's return and watched her as she tracked you down. We also watched the fight, hoping you wouldn't actually fight, and when it became clear that you were going to kill her, we intervened."
Percy and Emily could tell that by "we" Poseidon really meant Zeus.
The dagger-like stare was also a big giveaway.
Zeus crossed his arms like, Do you really expect me to just sit here and let my newly returned daughter die?
"Cool. We can finish up here if that's what you want," Percy shrugged, apparently not at all opposed to fighting his cousin to the death before his father and uncle.
"Uh, no. We're actually gathered here right now to prevent anymore fighting to the death between you two. And also to get to the bottom of why you're fighting to the death in the first place. It's literally your first time meeting each other."
Emily frowned as she was basically put in a situation where she was being treated like a child that had gotten into a fight with her sibling and now her parents were separating them and making them talk it out. She was the empress, dammit!
"Well, that's a fun story," Percy said. "The short version is that I was lied to, broke some laws in the other world, and she was the empress of that world—or the only civilized part of the world, anyway-" everyone ignored Zeus's excited gasp that his daughter was an empress –"and so she's trying to kill me because of the laws I broke."
"You killed my granddaughter and butchered dozens of innocent people and caused massive amounts of civil, economic, and social destruction," Emily hissed.
"Like I said, I was lied to. Things would've been a whole lot different if I had known the truth beforehand. I probably wouldn't exist if Momma had known the truth, too."
"Would've been better for the world," Emily muttered.
Percy glared at her.
"Timeout," Zeus intoned. "I'm going to need someone to explain things to me starting from the very beginning. What is going on here?"
And so Poseidon explained in greater detail how he'd managed to wander into the Void during the American Revolution and found himself in the other world, met Sally, had a great time and loved her, and Percy picked up with how he was made, why he was made, who his mother was, who Delilah was, to which Emily chimed in with some stuff about Delilah, and then she explained how the Outsider had taken her before limbo set in and she lived the life of Empress Emily Kaldwin, and then Percy and Emily went back forth about their lives and the history of their world, who the Kaldwins were, how long they all lived, all culminating in Percy's rampage through Karnaca, his assassination of Emily's granddaughter, and Emily had been shown these things out of time.
Zeus blinked once after everything was spoken. And he did not make things complicated in his passing of judgement.
"Percy is pardoned of the crimes he committed in a totally separate dimension."
Emily squawked. "What?"
"And you will not make any attempts on his life. Ever."
"What!?"
"And Percy is forbidden from making any attempts on your life as well."
"Whatever," the arcane assassin shrugged, not really caring anymore since it was all for nothing anyway.
"Pardoned?" Emily demanded. "He murdered my citizens and killed my granddaughter! I have a duty and responsibility to me people as the empress-"
Zeus pounded the armrest of his throne, creating a booming clap of thunder that instantly shut Emily up.
He stared down his nose at his daughter. "You are empress no more. Who you were in that world is no more. Who Percy was in that world is no more. No longer are you Emily Lela Drexel Kaldwin, Empress of the Isles. Now you are Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus. Likewise, he is no longer Perseus Breanna Copperspoon, the Butcher of Karnaca and killer of the empress. Now he is Perseus Jackson, son of Poseidon. Both of you are children of this house, and I will not tolerate any more infighting."
Emily bristled at this, electric blue eyes flashing with defiance. "I am no daughter of yours. I am the empress-"
"Not. Any. More." Zeus ground out, stressing each syllable. "You are now a denizen of this world, and you will adapt to it accordingly, or else you are in for much pain and suffering. This is my only warning to you, daughter. I saved you from death once, I cannot do it again." Zeus' own electric blue eyes flashed. "What I can do is make it clear that I am the Master of the house, and that means I have active and valid duties and responsibilities to those live under my roof."
Zeus' eyes softened just a sliver. "Put your past behind you, Thalia. Welcome back."
The king of the sky dispersed in a cloud.
Poseidon looked at his niece. "Do not be stupid, Emily the Wise. Hi, Percy!"
"Hi, Daddy!"
Emily almost fell over.
Poseidon snapped his fingers and the demigods were taken over by a bright light.
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They appeared in the driveway of the Gates home.
Percy leveled a hard stare at his cousin. "Don't think I didn't notice how Zeus only told you not to come after me. If you come after my brother or my sister, I will flatten you."
He turned on his heel and headed for the front door.
"Hey!" Emily barked.
Percy turned his head and looked at her from the corner of his eye. "What?"
Emily squared her shoulders. "What are we now?"
Percy fully turned around for this one. "Right now, we're nothing. I don't care for you. I was raised to kill you and your family, and that was all out of a delusional lie. So, I guess I'm sorry for killing half of Karnaca and your granddaughter who was named after your mother—weirdo. I'm going to calm my siblings down because they're probably freaking out. You can go step in front of a train for all I care. Or you can go have an existential crisis and figure out who you are and what you're going to do with yourself. Just as long as involves not fucking with me and my family in any way, I guess we're fine."
"We're fine," Emily echoed.
An existential crisis was a pretty good way to describe what she was going through right now.
Percy didn't pick up on the girl's confused state, and so he nodded along. "Good. See you later, or something. Whatever."
He turned around and headed for the door, leaving Emily just standing there in the driveway, lost, confused, still a little angry over everything, and totally without any direction or purpose. Effectively, she was stranded on an island that was just a mound of sand that hadn't been washed away yet.
But you could always count on ADHD to get the ball rolling in any direction.
"Can I have dinner with you and your family?" Emily blurted before even thinking about it.
Percy stopped mid-step. Then he shrugged without turning around. "Sure, but if your face so much as twitches in a way I think is threatening, I won't hold back like I did earlier."
Emily pushed down the snarky comment that rose at the back of her throat. In forcing that comment down, she swallowed heavily. This was not right in the slightest.
Percy opened the door, and the smell of cooking meat wafted strongly up his nose. At the sound of the door opening, three heads popped into view from around the wall where the kitchen was.
"PERCY!"
Tea and Bell came sprinting to him, and he caught them both in a hug as he withstood the force of their impact with his magical body.
"Hey, guys. This is Thalia. She's that daughter of Zeus. The Fleece brought her back to life and she came all the way here to say thank you. Also she's kind of lost right now, and she's going to have dinner with us tonight."
Tea and Bell shared a look before nodding in acceptance of this.
Wendy shot a look at her purse where her wallet was at, mentally telling the object to stop crying about yet another mouth to feed.
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That was fun. And I'm proud to say that this whole chapter took me about seven hours to write. I kept getting distracted by having random thoughts cross my brain, and I had to investigate these thoughts.
The reason Emily is still alive is because so many people suggested that she remain alive and become a friend of Percy's. I like this idea. It also leads to the idea of the potential pairing, whether or not there's going to be one.
I have already dropped a seed for Percabeth and one for Pereyna, but could this end up being Perlia?
I mean, I am going to say no off the top of my head because Thalia in this story has the mind of a 63-year-old empress who used to be married and had a son with her husband. I think Thalia would be comparing Percy too much with Wyman and couldn't shake the notion that she's essentially an elderly woman dating a little boy.
That's my take on it, anyway.
Also, be on the lookout for something big coming to Chaos War very soon.
The next chapter will more or less be a filler chapter, exploring how Emily adjusts, and how Percy deals with his siblings' bullies and his own bullies. Then it's back to the real stuff with the kicking off of the Titan's Curse.
Haven't thought about whether Bianca and/or Nico will be Voidwalkers. I want to say no because Luke and Thalia already are, and that makes three in this world, including Percy. Having Nico and Bianca also be Marked seems like overkill. Doesn't mean they won't show up Marked, or won't become Marked sometime down the line, though.
I really don't have this story planned out in a meaningful way. I'm just making this up as I go along.
Fav, Follow, and Review please!