Some day cometh. I spent, like, two days on this for some reason.

If you ever start asking why characters are suffering so much, uhhh indomitable human spirit. Nah but seriously, I just like when characters go through hell and proceed to stand right the hell back up.

I sped some shizz up, made the fight overall longer and closer to boot. I also made Grover do something big that "influences the future." The final chapter in this retread is also up around this time, it's pretty good. Does it hold up to the old one? Probably, idfk I ain't you.

Alright, let's get into it.

He stood. Not in bravery. Not in defiance.

Solely because he could do nothing else.

In front of his friends. In front of the one responsible for this mess.

It was pathetic. In that moment. He hated himself so intensely, he could die right there.

Just the god's presence felt like a jumbo jet had nested atop his head, crushing his lungs, making his brain putty. He wanted to cry, to call out for someone stronger. His mom was gone. His dad wouldn't answer him. What could the others do?

Yet, as if on cue, his mouth began to open. He hoped it'd be a punkish curse, a heroic final quote like the ones in the movies. Instead…

"Wait-"

A backfist sent Percy flying.

"That all you can think to say right now, boy? I'm disappointed." Ares cracked his knuckles, before shaking his hands in disgust. "Shoot, I got demigod on my good hand."

The attack should've ripped his head from his neck. With the typhoon of white-hot agony coursing through his flesh, he wished that it had.

"Why do I have to go through this?"

"I was a normal kid last month."

"I shouldn't even be here. It's summer."

"I could've been at Sea World with Mom, right now. We were gonna go, this week. She'd've had tickets and everything."

"Where is she, right now?"

"Why isn't she here?"

"Why is this happening to us?"

Percy slowly stood to his feet.

"(I wanna go home.)"

Tears fell down his cheeks, his face wrinkling like crushed paper as he choked back a new sob with every passing second.

"... Khh… P-Pfft…"

Ares howled. His earth-shaking cackles turned the boy's legs to jelly.

"AWW, HE'S CRYING! DID I HIT YOU TOO HARD, LITTLE DEMIGOD!? NEED MOMMY KISSIES FOR YOUR BOOBOO!?" The god wiped away his own tears as Percy's hit the ground like the prelude to a storm.

"C-come on…!"

That last statement pissed him off.

"I-I-I'm…" He could barely speak through his agonized hiccups. Yet he held up his sword.

"I'M NOT SCARED OF YOU!" He roared.

"You're shivering, kid," noted Ares, struggling to reclaim his divine bearing. Once he snatched at air, grabbing a two-meter black blade, he almost broke again at the sight of Percy's enlarged eyes. "But come on, anyways. Make momma proud. I'll send you to her, real soon."

"YOU'RE THE REASON SHE'S GONE!" The young half-blood screamed, lashing out at him in a mindless frenzy. The God of War weaved by them without effort, whistling a tune amongst the boy's feral grunts. His "parries" were more-so him twirling his sword every now-and-then to amuse himself.

"I'm getting booo~red, boy. Where's all that moxie from before? Now you're just killing my buzz."

"SHUT UP!" Percy shrieked.

"Honestly, maybe Athena's brats over there will be more've a challenge. Tart, even the satyr-"

"SHUT UP!"

"OK, that's enough disrespect, bRAT!"

"SHUT-"

Ares made a sudden move, and suddenly, there was black. Then white. Then he was somewhere else.

There was something warm. Down his chest.

And then it hit him.

A battering ram.

A sharp, fast battering ram.

"(Ow.)"

Crushing his chest.

"(Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow—)"

The pain had paralyzed him. Someone had begun to scream his name.

Oh yeah, he recognized that voice.

She sounded so worried. He must've looked so weak in front of her.

… oh. Now she was calling someone else. He couldn't focus enough to hear them, though. There was only that pain.

He began to sink.

"GOHAN!" Annabeth wailed, Grover looking on in a fear-induced trance. "GOHAN, GET UP! PLEASE!"

The half-breed was already trying. He had been, ever since Percy had gone off by himself. Now, he was finally making progress.

"DON'T LET PERCY DIE! YOU… YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WHO…" she could barely control her hysteria, at the thought of losing someone else just as she'd started caring about them.

"PLEASE, STOP HIM!" she screamed before breaking down in ugly sobs, the situation seeming more hopeless by the second.

Blood trickled down onto the ground. The thought of a shaking Percy staring down death in spite of himself, while he'd just laid there, was more painful than the searing bullet wounds across the boy's body.

"LEAVE… MY FRIENDS…"

For people like him, like Annabeth, thrust into combat before leaving elementary school, forced to mature faster than most adults… this circumstance was natural. But that boy… he really was just a kid. None of it seemed fair.

No one should've been forced to lead the life he'd been shoved into.

Plasma – a different, sparking sort – danced around him.

"ALOO—NE!"

Gohan stood, roaring upward, knees bent as his legs struggled to hold him upright. Ares turned to him in brief shock.

"Oh, look at that. Goldilocks is taggin' you out." He kicked Percy aside; the small whimper he let out in response sent Gohan into a rage, his punch careening into the God's jawline a millisecond later. Slowly, the Saiyan's fist-laden advance was ground to a halt, as Ares' raw neck strength pushed it back.

"That's it? THIS is what's got everyone runnin? scared?" Ares thwacked Gohan aside, but like a hornet, he returned with a vengeance. As if humoring the young warrior, he entered a light exchange with him, blow for blow.

"WHAT-DID HE-EVER DO-TO YOU-YOU MONSTER!?" Gohan cried, demanding an answer. "WE'RE-JUST-KIDS!"

Ares grabbed a fist and took another to the chin. "I know! Isn't it great?" He drove a fist into Gohan's gut, expelling crimson-dotted spittle. "You're old enough to swing a piece of bronze, you're ready for the battlefield! That's how it's been for eons, sport!"

Tossed away, Gohan clawed into the ground, stopping his backwards advance. "You… you're just picking on those weaker than yourself, is that it!?" He bounced back. "You're no different from any other bully!"

Ares intercepted with a headbutt, before breaking the earth with the Saiyan's body using a merciless Pankration takedown. "That's what it means to be a god, brat! ALL mortals are beneath me!" He stomped his foot down, Gohan's spittle growing redder with each one. "YOU'RE… ALL… MY… PLAYTHINGS! YOU… DO… OUR.. BIDDING…!"

The cyclops.

"... No, stop…"

The stand.

"... stop it…"

The tree.

"... GHH-"

Gritting her teeth, Annabeth grabbed her cap and rushed out, breaking Grover's trance.

"WAIT!" He bleated, grabbing at air.

"YOU DANCE AT OUR WORD! YOU FIGHT AT OUR ORDER! YOU DIE AT OUR WHIM!" The war god lifted the Saiyan by the throat, crushing his throat, slowly stripping him of his ability to channel ki. "YOU THINK YOU'RE SPECIAL JUST BECAUSE YOU GLOW, BECAUSE YOU'RE A BIT STRONGER THAN MOST!?" He slammed down Gohan and lifted him back up, slowly losing his thuggish persona in favor of his godly, arrogant nature. "LAUGHABLE!" He repeated the process. "GO ON, SCREAM! DRAW MORE POWER, FLASH YOUR HAIR ONE MORE TIME! I ORDER YOU, MORTAL!"

Gohan slowly reached down, grabbing a hold of something in his pouch. "You're… just a bully…"

Ares grimaced, punching Gohan in the kidney and getting what he wanted. The metallic thud behind him went unnoticed amidst the scream that went on for countless miles.

He was never going to return. He'd die. In this foreign space, so far from everyone he loved.

Standing for something.

Just like dad.

"THAT'S IT! OBEY! HEED MY DEMANDS, YOU ARROGANT, SUBSERVIENT MORTAL! HEED YOUR GOD'S ORD-"

He suddenly jerked forward, his grip loosened. The god looked to his side, as his own divine essence leaked from it. His infuriated glare caused a gale, and with it, cap having flown off, was revealed Annabeth, her Promise in hand with an unsure grimace painted across her face.

"Ghhk… grrRRR-"

He threw out his hand, sending her flying back. She struggled to get back up, before Ares staggered toward her, holding his side, having dropped Gohan.

"ATHENA'S SUCK-UP! DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'VE JUST DONE. WHOSE ANGER YOU'VE INCURRED WITH THAT STUNT!?"

She shivered, but her eyes were resolute. "Lord Ares… we've done everything the gods have asked! There's no reason for you to be so cruel to us! I just wanted to bring you back to your senses!"

He stared down at Annabeth, her question having been asked in earnest. Bringing his hand down, the grey-eyed girl flinched, before it landed gently on her hand.

"... heh. I must've given you one hell of a scare, huh?"

Annabeth's eyes brightened in a brief relief.

And then Ares began to squeeze.

"Don't worry, sport. You won't be worrying about anything for much longer." In the blonde half-blood's heartbroken, confused stupor, a small, pained whimpering streamed from her lungs, rising in pitch as he squeezed tighter.

"Doesn't sound bad at all, actually. Poseiden's brat gets Athena's runt killed by bringing an otherworlder along for the ride, and HE kills them both, running off with the bolt! That's a headliner!" He chuckled in satisfaction, before hissing in pain, the act of breathing becoming strenuous. "I'm coming up with this stuff on the f-fly!"

Gohan, struggling to channel any strength, could only watch as his introduction to this world was having the life squeezed from her, for no reason.

"Ann… na…"

He started tearing up, his own weakness coming back to bite him. The image of his power against Cell recurred to him, as if his own thoughts were mocking him.

"(Where… where is THAT!?)"

His welled tears began to evaporate on contact with his skin. He stood up, hobbling toward Ares.

"Stop… it…" he weakly croaked.

Without a word, he simply dangled Annabeth in front of him, as if challenging him to take her back by force.

"(WHY!? WHY DOES SOMEONE ALWAYS HAVE TO DIE…)"

Rocks began to tremble. Dust lifted.

"(... FOR ME TO DO ANYTHING!?)"

He took another step forward, as blood slowly trickled down his friend's nose.

"(WHY CAN'T… WHY CAN'T I JUST BE STRONG!?)"

"... Pan."

Gohan's eyes widened in confusion.

Ares' brow lifted.

Annabeth's eyes lit up in horror.

Percy's eyes shot open.

"Yeah, Pan."

Grover was standing right behind the war god, so delirious from fear that he'd lost it entirely.

"When you win, name them Pan. You promised, right?"

Gohan wanted to scream.

"Grover… why are…"

Ares tossed Annabeth away, Gohan catching her with a skid before his back imprinted itself into a leftover police cruiser. Setting her down, they both shot back up, racked by a preemptive grief.

"I think it's a great name, y'know? It's strong, and beautiful, and hopeful! Like your world should revolve around it!" Grover chuckled bashfully. "But, you…"

Ares approached.

"You can't hold up your end if you die here, can you? So, you…"

Ares loomed over him. Grover couldn't see him.

"You'd… better win, alright?"

"ARES, STOP IT!" Gohan pleaded, blood jumping from his bruised throat. "HE CAN'T EVEN FIGHT BACK!"

"No can do. Satyrs can't keep their mouths shut worth anything."

He wound back a fist.

"HE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG!"

"STOP! PLEASE!"

"WIN, GUYS! WIN FOR PAN!"

Grover smiled brightly. After a sickening crunch, he proceeded to fly.

Color vanished to the wind.

The universe stared at him in judgement.

Wails of Grover's name surrounded him.

Every death he'd ever witnessed, they came to him in an instant.

Once again, he just stood there.

A reoccurring moment. An infinite nightmare.

Worlds of rage formed inside him, a raw, primal fury he couldn't explain in words. But rage was useless. He'd only go on to lose someone again. How unfair.

And yet… and then…

"WIN, GUYS!"

He woke back up.

That moment had not yet come to pass.

"WIN"

The world slowed.

Was he really going to let it?

"FOR"

How dare he even entertain the thought.

"PAN!"

The nightmare broke. Undone by a divine roar.

"GRAAAAAAAAA—!"

The high heavens were pierced.

Everything, everyone around him was blasted back.

A light outshining divine chariot.

Blue sparks superseding god's bolt.

Golden flame exceeding celestial forge.

Crashing waves surpassing sea keeper's greatest work.

Shattering sky and earth.

Defying heaven's will,

Standing, once more,

A stone-faced monkey.

There was not a moment spared to reassess. What was left of the ground rippled, as a force unbelonging of this world crashed into the insurmountable god, sending him sailing through the air. As if the wind had lost its mind and gone berserk, strikes from all around smacked Ares silly, allowing not a moment to breathe, as the sound barrier broke continuously like shattering glass. He summoned a formation of shields all around him in an attempt to gain space, but his impregnable defense was battered over and over until it resembled an apple core. It's interior painted a grotesque gold, Ares watched in an emotion which he was too ashamed to admit to even know of, as the aluminum casing around him was slowly torn apart.

"Boo," Gohan growled, as he grabbed Ares by the collarbone and ripped him out of his huddle, before kicking him into a building.

"Cocky punk…" he wheezed, verging on vomit. "When I get my hands on…"

The shadow above him continued to grow. Looking up, the divine warmonger was reminded that he'd forgotten to dispel his shields.

The building he was on collapsed.

Amidst the falling rubble, concussed to Styx and back, Ares let loose an enraged war cry and formed his monstrous blade, lashing out at the nearest silhouette of a child he could see.

"SCREW THE COCKROACH ANGLE, I'LL JUST TURN YOU INTO A CORPSE!"

His sword clashed with something tough enough to withstand it, and with the smoke beginning to dissipate, he saw for himself just what that was…

"How's that happening when you can't even scratch my finger?"

Ares' scarlet eyes nearly burst from his skull in anger. The two violently fenced through the tumbling debris before the half-breed, using Ares' rage against him, spin-kicked the god in the exact same wound Athena's girl had left him, before dashing past a retaliatory slash and headshotting him with a hook, sending him through another structure and into the air, where Gohan leapt after him, volleys of ki from all angles keeping him in one flailing spot. Ares gripped his sword, before it morphed into a spear, the god swinging it and deflecting every orb of ki, endless volts of electricity flickering around it before he directed it toward his vexation. Gohan twitched a bit, electricity coursing through him, before channeling all of it into his fist and imbuing it with his own plasmatic aura. Ares could only look on in horror as a ki-reinforced bolt of electricity shot directly into the slash that Poseiden's boy had given him, the god convulsing before Gohan knocked him even further into the sky.

Lightning assailed them both as they trespassed Zeus' domain, Gohan dodging with ease and using his foe as a punching shield, and the would-be instigator held back the urge to plead forgiveness from his father before yet another meteoric blow knocked him back to the sand and his senses. A bending, death-dealing light shot into his abdomen, sending him across and through deserted buildings in a burning stream, igniting the sky as explosion after explosion sent him hurtling back and forth before being knocked down into the ground with a vertically-spun axe kick, right onto a long-since abandoned police vehicle, a tremendous eruption like those from his precious warheads exceeding the clouds.

Ichor streaming from every orifice, Ares' shaking hand pulled him upward. Once on his feet, he stumbled for a moment, ultimately falling onto his rear. He raised his head.

Staring down at him, a mortal.

No, a god. It had to be. His blurred vision had only begun to settle, and he witnessed the truth.

It was Gohan. Eyes unforgiving. Every hair on his head raised to a sharpened point.

Ares, being looked down upon by a child, tried to stand again, only to stumble around like a drunkard. Gohan cooly walked alongside him, all the while.

"Need a hand?"

"YOU… 'NSOLEN… RAT, I…" Ares pointed vindictively at one of the 12 Gohans he was currently staring down, "'M DA GAWDA WAHR, I'... 'LD SMAIT YUU WHIDA' GLAN-"

A kick smacked across his chin, sending him back down to the ground in an undignified tissy.

"Sit down."

"HOW DAH…" He pulled out a simple sword, swinging wildly at the boy's mirage. "'LL SEN' YU TA DA AWNDAWAL INNA INSTA-"

Gohan smacked it away with a heel kick, then brought his foot back and sent it crashing into Ares' temple, the god skidding through several buildings as a result.

"Obey."

Surrounded by ashes, Ares eyed the ground, so that his rage might affect something.

"I'm… gonna…"

"What will you do?" Gohan asked, now kneeling atop ruins as sparks danced around him. "Pull out another toy? Threaten me to death?"

Ares, on cue, pulled an M1911 from the earth and opened fire. Gohan caught every divine bullet, smoke sputtering out in his closed fist.

"My turn," he said. He stood up, rotating his fist sideways and feeding a round atop his thumb.

With the flicks of human thumb, A bullet hole passed Ares' head by a millimeter, and them another, and another, until the war god had been given a halo. One shot split the top of his hair, like waves being parted.

A sadistic smirk grew on the young Saiyan, appearing before Ares as if he'd teleported.

"How does it feel to be the plaything for once?"

Grimacing, Ares glared back without a word.

"You're all the same. You use your power to get what you want and look down on everyone else who isn't as special as you are, give yourselves fancy titles like 'royalty' and 'perfect' and 'god'…!" Gohan growled, crushing a spark of plasma with a balled fist. "But once you're on your knees, faced with someone stronger than YOU, all you have left is talk."

"... hn-hn-hn. Lofty speech, kid. Hate you or not, I've gotta respect your power, if nothing else. Tell you what, I'll give you a way outta this mess."

He raised a hand to Gohan.

"I'll make YOU a god. Not just a title, the real deal. 'Gohan, God of the Soul'. 'God of Martial Arts'. Tart, 'God of the Fist' has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"

Gohan stared down silently.

"Come on. People've killed for a deal like this, and you get it for free. What do you say?"

After a staredown, Gohan seemed to relent. He gave Ares a firm handshake.

"W-wha?" The war god was certainly he'd get a no, but grinned regardless. "Heh, you're greedier than I thought, dumbass!" he laughed as he began to glow. "NOW WATCH AS I-"

Gohan's grip tightened to the hand of the god's breaking point.

"... huh?"

Ares went on a round trip into the air at breakneck speeds, splitting clouds like an overgrown missile, before a hand pulled him even higher, even faster.

"KA… ME…"

They reached the mesosphere in a second's interval. That hand wound back, before in a full-power pitch, Gohan slung him back to the earth.

"HA… ME…"

Were his body not divine, he would've burned up. Instead, he drowned the surrounding area in a deep-red hue, as flames tore around him. He would've hit the ground in a great explosion,

Had Gohan not already been down there,

Blast in hands.

Ares could only stare.

"HAA—!"

Before disappearing in a mountainous beam of energy.

It left Earth, the width of the moon as it shot far past it.

Gohan sighed, lowering his hands. The god was nowhere to be seen, though he could make a guess at where he'd gone.

"It's over…"

He looked back at the mess of a scene. The boy noticed a fine-and-dandy Grover helping up a woozy Annabeth, both coated in sand.

"He's beating a god…" muttered the storm-eyed girl, "as a mortal…"

"I'd say we ALL played a pretty big role!" the satyr proudly stated. "We're almost out of the woods, now! I can't believe we're making it out of this mess alive!"

Annabeth's eyes lit up. "Oh yeah, I almost forgot."

"Huh?"

"I still have to kill you," she said, before attacking Grover with a barrage of curses and reprimands, the satyr bleating for mercy the whole way through.

Gohan smiled.

And then he noticed who was missing.

And the condition he was last seen in.

"Where… GUYS!"

"Gohan?" inquired Annabeth, mid-process of tearing off Grover's ears.

"PERCY… WHERE'D HE GO!?"

Grover, spared from death a second time, shot up alongside Annabeth. They surveyed the area.

"Shoot, he's most likely buried under sand right now! We've gotta get him to water, and fast!"

Gohan nodded, drowning out all outside sensations, closing his eyes to feel out Percy's energy signature.

He then felt something.

Something far too big to be anyone he'd ever known.

Not energy, but sheer, unrelenting pressure.

His eyes shot open.

"EVERYONE, GET-"

A meteor hit them dead-on, causing a shockwave that did away with all still-standing structures. The other two would've been lost to the sea, had the otherworlder not caught them.

"...!"

"No…!"

"... beeeh…!"

In its ground-zero, from an all-piercing light, a giant arm clad in divine garments sprouted. And then another, wielding a sword in flames.

"You want 'power,' you rodent?"

A helmet then emerged, the red orbs within burning a hole through the young half-breed's soul.

"I'LL SHOW YOU POWER!" Ares' booming voice shook the planet and sent vicious winds in all directions. Gohan shielded his two shut-eyed friends with a barrier, he being the only one present able to stare back.

"ROUND TWO BEGINS! THE PRELUDE TO THE END!"