See End Notes
Chapter One: one
"Grover, perhaps you should take our young friend to the den and show him our orientation video," Chiron suggested.
"But…" Grover spotted the frown on Chiron's face. "Oh, right. Yes, sir." He trotted over to Nico di Angelo. He struggled to not make a face.
The kid was strong and he smelled like death.
"Orientation film?" Nico asked. "Is it G or PG? 'Cause Bianca is kinda strict—"
"It's PG13," Grover interrupted. He gestured toward the door.
"Cool!" Nico shouted, following him out of the room.
Walking toward the Big House, Grover tried to keep space between him and Nico. Each time Nico veered too close, Grover felt ice drip down his spine. It was not unlike two years ago when he took a journey down to the Underworld with Annabeth and Percy. To think, he had once been so irritated when Dr. Thorn kept him away from Nico and his sister while they were at Westover. The distance had made Grover antsy. He saw many demigods killed by monsters, but looking back on it, the separation might have been a blessing in disguise. There was no way he could have lasted from Westover Academy in Maine to Camp Half-Blood with the heebie-jeebies inspired by Nico, and possibly, his now gorgeous sister. As a keeper and protector of all demigods, Grover felt awful for thinking this. He had to be better.
"Are you scared?" Nico asked.
"Scared?"
"Yeah!" Nico pointed at his tail, flicking back and forth. "One time, someone smuggled in a cat at Westover. She was small and black. Whenever I tried to get near her, her tail would be just like yours and she'd hiss and scratch at me. It made me sad because I like animals, but animals don't like me. I've always wanted a dog. Bianca says one day, but that just means no ."
"Oh," Grover said. "Um, I'm not scared. Just hungry."
"I'm hungry too. When do we get to eat?"
"Later," Grover said. "The orientation video is long enough that it should carry us right into dinner and the campfire song."
"We have to sing? I don't know any songs. Well, I know the Justin Timberlake song, I'm bringing sexy back and them other boys don't know how to act, I think its special what's behind your back, yeah—"
"You're definitely not one of Apollo's rays of sunshine," Grover muttered to himself. "No one knows the songs when they start, but you'll learn soon enough. Don't worry."
Grover led them through the Camp. When it was winter, it always made him a little sadder. The Camp was nearly empty. Most of the campers worked hard during the summers to learn how to protect themselves and their families from monsters, then went back to their lives as soon as the school year rolled around. He saw some familiar faces like Solace, Miranda and Katie, the Stolls — it pained him to not see Annabeth among the crowd.
Nico whistled, "That's a big house."
He and Nico stood back to take in the enormity of the Big House. It was four stories high and freshly painted in baby blue and white trim. A few weeks ago, the Stoll Brothers with the help of Charlie had decorated the house with thousands of little bulb lights for the holiday. Nico scrambled up the porch. He rose on the tip of his toes and played with the silver wind chimes. Then, sat on each of the lounge chairs as if he were Goldilocks and decided none of the chairs quite fit.
"Don't!" Grover shook his head as Nico startled and backed away from the card table. He twisted his head around to see if anyone was looking. "Mr. D is very serious about his pinocle and board. If he finds out, he might curse you mad."
"I knew he was super strong!" Nico nodded at the card table with the appropriate reverence, his hands twitched as he drew them back. "I hope my Dad has cool powers like that. When will I know?"
Grover held the front door for Nico. Nico went right in. "I don't know," Grover said truthfully. "The Gods and Goddesses have a lot to do and they're forgetful. Sometimes they don't claim their kid."
Nico's face crumpled. The kid had the most cherubic face, there was some fat stubbornly clinging to his cheeks and his brown eyes were big and dark and they glittered with infectious enthusiasm. Grover's heart squeezed, he wasn't a monster. "I said, sometimes, right? They've been, um, real good lately." Grover laughed.
Crisis averted, Nico bounced back quickly as he zoomed up the wooden stairs to the right. He stopped just short three steps from the top. He leaned close to the right, his dark eyebrows rose and his lips widened in an O. "Pirates," Nico breathed as he stared at the portraits lined on the wall. "Pirates are my favorite."
Grover paused on the steps.
"Did you know the Vikings were some of the first pirates," Nico breathed. "They were the best sailors and fighters in the world. Were the Vikings half-bloods-?"
"Well, I know a few elves—"
"Was Blackbeard a half-blood? How about Anne Bonny, or François l' Ollonais, or Leif Erikson," Nico questioned growing more excited by the minute. "Dr. Thorn took us to a nickelodeon and I saw Pirates of the Caribbean! Bianca said I could be Captain Jack Sparrow for Halloween. My favorite pirate is —"
"Some half-bloods are pirates and Vikings," Grover sighed. "There's a long history. If we can get through the movie quietly, I'll show you the attic where we put all the pirate gear and everything else from the seventeenth century." Putting a gentle, but firm hand on the boy's shoulder Grover pushed through his heebie-jeebies and steered Nico toward the movie room, mentally scrolling through the list of gods and goddesses in his head. Nico might be the child of god blabbermouth. Grover wished he was back at Cabin 8 with the girls. Why couldn't he show Nico and Bianca the orientation film? He sighed again.
Nico mimed zipping his lips.
The movie room was the smallest and coziest room in the Big House. It was filled with large, expensive bean bag chairs and loveseats that had been approved by the children of Hypnos. As one of the only places with modern technology, it was regularly claimed by campers that wanted date night. Grover made a face as he played with the DVD player and Spirited Away came out. "Alrighty. It'll be up in a sec. Take a seat anywhere."
Nico plopped down in a worn blue couch. He was eaten by the fluff. "The movie's in black and white?" he said when Grover pulled up the title card. "I don't see much of those these days."
"Yeah. This thing is even older than me." Grover snorted.
It was a typical hygiene film from an era by-gone. A young, debonair man by the name of Rod Serling appeared on the screen. His smile pulled to the right just the same as Travis, Connor, and Luke. Grover dropped his eyes.
"The door has been opened to you by a key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into… Camp Half-Blood. You're a half-blood. A half-blood is someone of half-god and half-human descent. We've been around for ages from Chuck Berry to Aristotle…"
To Nico's credit, he lasted all the way through the explanation of the twelve Olympians and the eleven cabins. He started to squirm in the bean bag. Grover watched him wondering if he would choose to pee his pants or ask for the bathroom. Grover made the choice for him. "Go. It's down the hall to the left." Nico hesitated. Grover bleated, "I don't need to go with you, do I? You're a big kid."
"I'm a big kid," Nico echoed. He scurried out of the room.
For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Grover knew silence. So much had happened in a short period of time. When he started this afternoon, waving at Percy, Annabeth, and Thalia he thought this situation was going right for once. Two, powerful half-blood siblings had been found alive. It was rare. The last time that happened were the Stoll brothers with Keeper Hedge. Unlike Keeper Hedge's extraction mission, his mission had gone downhill so fast. Grover wished he had some aluminum cans to chew on.
Tapping on the couch, Grover waited for twenty minutes. Sometimes, a guy needed some privacy. Thirty minutes passed. An hour. Grover shook his head. He went to the bathroom. Predictably, he knocked on the stalls. No answer. "I'm coming in!" he warned, hoping that Nico would say something.
Grover opened the door, half-expecting to see an embarrassed ten-year-old parked on the porcelain throne with a lack of toilet paper. It happened to the best of them. Instead, he saw a stall, boy-free.
Grover was a dead satyr.
"Ok, G-man, where do you think Nico went?"
There were a lot of rooms in the Big House. Like a lot a lot. Grover considered the panic-inducing idea that Nico might be in hundreds of locations and he would have to search the hundreds of locations before they were all supposed to meet up for dinner. Most of the rooms were locked and abandoned. Nico spoke a lot, but he hadn't carried the air of mischief like the Hermes kids. Grover made a frustrated sound. He really, really wished he had some aluminum cans right now, or a bit of enchilada.
Leaving the bathroom, he poked his head into the movie room just to make sure Nico hadn't teleported himself there. He had not. "When I lose something, Annabeth always says its best to retrace my steps. Right. Retrace my steps. That's easy. We came from downstairs. Downstairs, downstairs."
Grover rushed downstairs. Stopping, he nearly tripped as he pinwheeled and stared wide-eyed at the wall. "Pirates. Nico's in the attic. Nico's definitely in the attic."
That was worth a curse.
Faster than the Nike children, Grover cleared four flights of stairs to the attic. The acid green trap door had been pulled up to reveal a yawning mouth of utter black. Grover shuddered and inhaled a lungful of air. It wasn't as bad as death — the smell of rot and the cold scent of snakes — but ice dripped down his spine the same as before.
The wooden stairs creaked under him as he climbed.
"Nico," Grover called out. "I know you're up here. We've got the last bit of the movie to watch. We can come right back…"
Grover was rarely in the attic. It was high up and it was dark and there weren't any plants. Basically, a satyr's worst nightmare. Also, there was a dead oracle in the attic. Purposefully, Grover stayed away from the lone window in the attic following a scent of death that was more subtle.
There was a bunch of junk in the attic. It had been collected over eons. A bit of everything was in there. From armor and swords to the more grimy, like old monster parts that had pickled. He shivered when he spotted one of Arachne's egg sacks just laying in the corner. Grover hoped Nico hadn't been caught up in anything like walking into the right side of the sword, or worse.
"Where are you hiding, Nico? I can't really see in here."
Grover remained still. He cupped his ears and screwed his eyes shut.
"Nothing."
A big load of nothing. The attic felt cold and there was no one alive in here other than him. Panic began anew in him, he followed Nico's scent. It was fresh and the strongest in here. Eventually, he came to a chest made of rotting wood and rusted metal. It was covered in inches of dust, but newly opened.
He peered in it and pulled out a fruit. He held the fruit. The only thing normal about it was its shape: it was shaped like an apple, but colored black and covered in a kaleidoscope of colors. The fruit's skin reminded him of the eyes of those born from Aphrodite, or pictures of the blackness of space and its millions of galaxies. The fruit had also been half-eaten.
Had Nico taken a bite? Grover chanced a whiff of the fruit — it didn't smell rotten despite its psychedelic appearance— there was not a body around, so, Nico hadn't been poisoned or hurt.
That was one positive in an otherwise sucky situation.
Grover triple-checked the attic and faced facts. Nico wasn't there.
Dinner was in full swing by the time Grover made it to the pavilion. His stomach growled when he smelled barbecue, pizza, and his favorite metal goblets dipped in cola. The offerings had been made and the cabins had already been seated. Normally, Grover relaxed under the welcoming heat of the braziers and torches.
Grover approached table twelve where most everyone that wasn't mortal sat. Mr. D was gone and Castor and Pollux sat there along with the Naiads, Satyrs, and even Chiron stood close.
"Grover," Chiron greeted warmly. "Thank you for looking after Nico. Sorry to have rushed you, there were important matters to discuss and I didn't want to overwhelm the boy."
Dipping his head, Grover nodded wordlessly. The strange fruit hung in his right hand. His eyes stung.
"Where is he?" Chiron asked.
"I don't know," Grover sniffed.
The air seemed to get colder. "I misheard you," Chiron said.
"I don't know where Nico di Angelo has gone," Grover said. "We went to the Big House to watch the movie, and, and, he said he had to go to the bathroom, I'm so stupid, I let him go—" he cried. "I followed his scent to the attic and I found, I found." He held up the fruit unable to finish his sentence.
Chiron's bushy eyebrows knit. "If he took a bite of that fruit, Mr. Underwood; Nico… "
Percy wrapped an arm around his shoulders as Bianca came forward.
"What's wrong?" Percy asked.
"Where's Nico?" Bianca asked. "He can be a handful, but he listened to you, right? If he didn't you can tell me, I'll set him straight. I don't see him. Did he have to pee? Where is he?"
Grover kept his head down. He shook his head.
"Where's my brother?" Bianca repeated. She went up to him and grabbed his shirt and jerked him forward. "Out with it, goat-boy," Bianca said. "Where's my little brother?"
"Hey!" Percy slipped into the space between him and Bianca. "Only I call him that. It's a little rich that now you decide to care for your brother when you've just abandoned him to join the world's worst girl-band."
Bianca pushed Percy aside as if she hadn't heard him. While there had been some hesitance on Grover's part to attribute Nico's eyes to the God of the Underworld, there was no mistaking it with his sister. Her dark eyes glittered like the depths of the Underworld and her face screwed fearsome. He witnessed Percy and Thalia's angry faces before; Bianca's was the worst.
"Where's Nico?" she asked calmly. Her fingers trembled.
"I don't know. He's not here."
"No." Bianca shook her head. "No. I agreed to join Lady Artemis knowing that Nico would be safe here."
The ground rumbled beneath him. The campers looked down at their feet. Bianca drew back. "He can't be gone. I promised Mammina. She said, look after Nico until she came back. I promised."
Grover couldn't stay on his feet, it sounded like a plane was falling from the sky or a train was coming out of nowhere. The ground underneath them rocked.
Bianca was the only one that stood on her feet.
"I promised," Bianca insisted. "I took care of Nico. So, he can't be gone, he can't."
"I'm sorry," Grover cried.
Bianca screamed and the temperature dropped around them until icicles clung onto the grass and tables, and the earth was torn asunder with flames and lava spewing out. Monsters that had been slain burst from the forests, demigods that had died long ago ripped from the ground and walked groggily among them. There were dead demigods with blades and weapons. Those ones started to fight, they sliced anyone that crossed their paths.
Screams filled the air.
It was a nightmare. The empathy link forged between him and Percy told Grover that Percy was as scared as him, but Percy still pushed to his feet, a glowing Riptide in his hand. Thalia appeared at Percy's side, with her spear and terrible gorgon shield. The hairs stood up on Grover, and he smelled ozone in the air. Their eyes were pinned on Bianca like she was a monster.
"Enough!" Chiron shouted as powerful as Grover had ever heard him. He stomped his front hooves hard and placed a staying hand on Bianca though it looked like it pained him to do so.
Chiron leaned down and whispered into Bianca's ear. What he said, Grover wasn't sure, but as soon as the nightmare began it ended and the skeletons dropped into piles of ash. Bianca seemingly lost her silvery glow, her arms cradled herself.
She sobbed.
"Cabin leaders, lead your campers back to your cabins," Chiron ordered firm enough that not even Clarisse or the Hunters dared to go against him. "The Dryads will make rounds and pass out dinner. Dismissed."
Naturally, the rules didn't apply to Percy and Thalia. Their weapons were lowered but they still eyed Bianca like a ticking time bomb. Grover didn't blame them.
"I have some bittersweet news," Chiron said gravely.
"Hades doesn't have to go onto Maury," Percy said, "Cause, uh— he definitely is the father of Bianca, and I'm guessing Nico too."
"Yes," Chiron said.
Grover chanced a look at Thalia. He noticed she never really stopped staring at Bianca, but this was a different stare altogether. A little kinder and sad by his measure.
"The Pact is broken." Chiron nodded. "That is information that will be re-visited, but what I have is much more pertinent and is related to young Nico's disappearance. The fruit, Grover." Chiron held one large palm out.
Gingerly, Grover placed the half eaten fruit in Chiron's hand. It held an alluring luster like the very same apple that Eris threw to start the Trojan War.
"This is a devil fruit," Chiron said.
"I've never heard of a devil fruit," Percy protested.
Thalia scowled at him. "I'm surprised you've heard of any fruit, Seaweed Brain."
"What was that, Pinecone Face?" Percy's ears flushed red.
"What's a devil fruit—" Bianca's soft voice broke the argument between Percy and Thalia. Her eyes were red-rimmed as she looked at the fruit. "— and what does it have to do with Nico?"
"A devil fruit is a strange rare food that used to be in abundance eons ago," Chiron said. "Before the Iron Age. With the Bronze and Heroic Age, these fruits gave humans strange powers that made them god-like."
"What ages? I thought we came from the sea. We were monkeys for a bit, then we were humans, and then, we broke out into little tribes and formed civilizations," Percy said. "Like, Pokemon."
Grover bleated and shook his head. Half-bloods were pretty odd. They came from the mortal world surrounded by all that mist and teachings. It was hard sometimes to have their mortal teachings coexist with their world.
"There's a place for biology and evolution, Percy," Chiron said. "I remember teaching Darwin about wildlife. Many mistake him for a child of Athena when in truth, he was a child of Demeter. It's all about interpretation. The ages you described, the history of humans versus the Bronze and Heroic Age, those ages are built out of human dreams and interpretations about what happened in eras passed. It's all ancient history passed down."
"Oh-okay," Percy said.
It had made zero sense to him. Grover shook his head.
"If memory serves correct, this particular fruit is called the Portal Portal fruit and gives the user the ability to travel between worlds and times," Chiron explained.
"Cool!" Percy said. Thalia jostled him roughly and Percy glanced wide-eyed at Bianca. "I mean—it's not cool— it's so, so uncool—sorry."
Again Bianca paid no attention to him. "If I eat that fruit, can I go where Nico went? I can bring him back."
Grover perked.
"I'm afraid not," Chiron said. "The first person who eats the devil fruit gets its power until they die. The fruit is now useless."
"Nico's in another world and I can't bring him back." Bianca shook her head.
She turned around and fled. Thalia was quick to follow after her.
Grover's tears were renewed. This was all his fault. His keeper's title and hunter license should be revoked if he couldn't look after one child within the borders of the camp. There was no hope of him finding Pan.
Once more, Percy wrapped an arm around him.
"Is Nico really gone for good?" Percy asked softly.
Chiron sighed, his hooves stomped agitatedly on the ground. "There is no way we can get to young Nico, but this fruit has imbued him with a power. There is a slim chance that Nico may come back to us when he has conquered this power and learned to use it for himself. Wherever he is, I pray to the Gods that he isn't near water."
"Why?" Percy asked.
"Devil fruit users can't swim."
End Notes:
I posted this also on my other PJO x OP story. I rage quit. frustrated with the lack of engagement I decided I was done w/ this story. but, this story helped me when i was going through a rut and i actually planned this. should post an actual update soon in the future.
nico is gaaaaaaaaayyyyy as the day is long. dont fuckin ask me about it. he likes boys. He will be kissing boys. he will think boys are hot. does this make up 98% of the story, no, but i dont need boys and/or peoples in my inbox saying 'plz dont make it slash/yaoi.' cuz if you ask me that its guaranteed to make this story like 20% gayer. k? kay.