Persephone's Might: Pt. 2

Yay! More than three Reviews! Ten this time.

And here's some irony for you: The evening I posted the general announcement on 06/05/2022, I also beat Elden Ring. Which is why this is here.

I went with the Ranni ending because I went through the effort of doing her quest, so why not? Now I'm just grinding my way to being lvl. 350, that way I get my stats to where I want them in preparation for NG+. Apparently, that's going to cost over 116,000,000 runes, and following the 5mil runes per hour video, that's roughly 24 hours.

Anyway, we're finally here, the chapter that shows what happens when a child of Poseidon wants to be a demigod, as opposed to endeavoring to leave the life behind to go be a human.

Disclaimer: I don't own PJO, Naruto, or any other media herein

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Persephone remembered quite well what happened between her and her brother when they were thirteen.

Everyone had just come back from that world, after the Chunin Exam fiasco in which Percy, Naruko, and Sasuke had nearly wiped out the Land of Fire. Because of his shattered mental state and overwhelming power, Zeus had decreed that Percy was public enemy number one, and was to be killed on sight if he ever managed to show up. Everyone was totally on board with this idea, all of them terrified of Percy's strength, and so Persephone was left by herself to defend her little brother.

She became ostracized at camp, and started heading down a dark path. She became irritable, angry, short-tempered, and violent. Clarisse had once opened her mouth, and Persephone nearly beat her to death for it. She had also picked fights with Bianca when she became aware that Nico was crushing on Percy, and she had butted heads with Thalia on plenty of occasions before she joined the Hunters.

Perhaps the most extreme thing Persephone had done during her walk in the shadows was use her powers to rupture Smelly Gabe's heart. Despicable as he was, Persephone had still taken his life. She'd murdered him.

It seemed like she was destined to become as cold as her little brother, but then she'd a dream of him. Percy had told her to get her head out of her butt and straighten herself out; she wasn't meant to walk in the darkness like he did. She needed to stay in the light, not for herself, but for him.

Percy needed her to stay in the light.

Needed her to be his light.

He was the cold, crushing, quiet depths of the northern oceans, unwelcoming, uninviting, hostile. Persephone was the warm, sunny, soft-sanded beaches of the tropic islands, where the water was pleasant and clear. Persephone was the light that Percy looked up to from the bottom of the sea. If she became dark, there went her light, and Percy would be lost in the darkness.

For him, she needed stay focused.

She couldn't let herself slip back into the vengeance-driven mindset she once had.

That didn't mean she couldn't express her fury or her wrath, however.

Persephone couldn't believe that in this world, Piper had broken up with Jason. She just could not fathom why Piper would ever do such a thing, not after she had fought so hard to be with him and prove to him that their feelings for each other were real and genuine, and not just fakes and falsities created by Hera, and especially not after Jason accepted those feelings and went to great lengths to be the best boyfriend he could be to Piper.

And Jason was dead. Persephone couldn't believe that either. Whoever this Caligula person was, he had to be packing some serious power if he killed someone like Jason, someone who could fight on par with Persephone. It wasn't a statement of arrogance on her part, but a just recognition of how powerful she was in her own right.

However, as far as Persephone saw it, Jason's death was on the hands of this world's Percy. Since she couldn't at all compare him to her own little brother, Persephone's mind likened this world's Percy as her counterpart, and because of that, she couldn't fathom his behavior anymore than she could Piper's. Yes, she understood the sentiment of not wanting this life, but she couldn't understand running from it.

Because they had powers, they had responsibilities, and because of these responsibilities, they were required to go above and beyond when evil once again arose. Since evil took more forms than just Titans and Giants and gods and monsters of myth, it was Persephone's firm opinion that demigods were to use their powers to constantly be on the offensive.

If they wouldn't, then who would?

Persephone was burning with anger at Piper and this world's Percy, and she burned with a desire for justice in Jason's name—her own justice, her own hand at work against the foe that felled him—and she burned with the same anger that she felt for the Seven of her world, and how they also refused to stand up and take larger roles in the world, instead choosing to forsake their powers in the name of their personal pursuits.

Amidst all this roiling anger was also a sense of hope.

In a way, this whole experience was like looking into the future. These emperors were in her world, Piper was poised to break up with Jason in her world—but she could stop it. Now that she knew what was coming, Persephone could act against it, but she needed to be done with this first and foremost.

Anger, hope, and a sense of urgency were what Persephone brought with her when she arrived in Washington DC after water travelling from Olympus in Manhattan, a trip that took exactly 1.2 seconds.

Just to put into perspective how incredible that was: the distance between the Empire State Building and the National Mall was about 230 miles. Convert 1.2 seconds into hours to get 0.0003333, and divide 230 by that number, and you get approximately 690,000 miles per hour. That's roughly 900 times the speed of sound.

Water travel was no joke.

Now, the sum total of the monster army was not here. When Persephone had said earlier that "they were amassing in DC," she meant that she felt the majority of the bad guys were gathering here. The majority as in, through the hydrosphere surrounding the planet, Persephone had felt battalions at Camp Half-Blood, New Rome, Indianapolis, and Tahlequah.

All the powers her little brother in regards to their father, she also had. Only she had them better for no other reason than she was the firstborn twin. It was one of those divine magic things you didn't think too hard about.

Perhaps the biggest reason Persephone had pushed herself so hard in learning just what she could and could not do was the same reason she needed to stay away from the darkness: for her little brother. She couldn't be the big sister he needed to lean on if she was holding him back by being a weak hindrance.

The army was gathered before the Washington Monument, Porphyrion delivering a speech with Polybotes, Enceladus, Otis and Ephialtes, Orion, and the Titans Koios, Krios, and Hyperion were present.

Persephone took her time walking around from the backside of the Monument. She rolled up the loose, baggy sleeves of her Akatsuki cloak, leaving them comfortably bunched above her elbows. She adjusted the buttons on the front, leaving the cloak open from her solar plexus down so that only half of the red cloud was still together, while the rest up the buttons going up were together, leaving the high collar to obscure most of her lower face.

Persephone's heart was beating steadily in her chest, not an ounce of nervousness to her. In the sky, the clouds were starting to come together, getting darker and darker as they filled with water, blocking out the summer sun with a wall of greyish black. It started getting more humid than it already was as the vapor in the air started multiplying.

"It seems we have a visitor amongst us!" Porphyrion shouted. "Mother Gaea warned us that Chaos had decided to interfere with our rightful conquest! Come out, then, Champion of Chaos! Come out so that we may do battle!"

Persephone hadn't even rounded the side of the monument yet. She was remembering her brother's words, not to hit them until he'd neutralized the Doors of Death, that way they wouldn't just reform and be a nuisance. She wasn't sure how he'd tell her the Doors were down, but she was certain she'd know it when she knew it.

Up on Olympus…

Chaos tilted his head to the side. "How is Shin'en doing, anyway?"

"You have the remote," Erebus said.

"Oh. You're right."

Chaos held up the remote and pushed a button. The viewing bubble shifted to show a polar bear walking across the tundra.

"Huh?" Chaos blinked.

Then they heard Sir David Attenborough's voice. "The polar bear-"

Chaos clicked another button, and the viewing instantly changed to some anime depicting a blonde-haired "girl" sharing ice cream with a man, while a Japanese song played.

"Koi wo shoyou, yo kisu suru mae ni~."

Chaos screamed. "Ahhhhh! It's Will and Nico!"

"I believe that's Pico," Erebus said.

"It's pedophilia!" Chaos asserted, slamming the remote. "Ah, there we go. Found the right channel."

Down in Tartarus

There were actually several entrances to Tartarus all over the world. Yes, the main one was in the Underworld, but the one underneath that Roman parking lot was not alone. It wasn't hard for Shin'en to locate one in Manhattan and take it straight down to ground level. Only, instead of dropping in at some random point, he crash-landed hard right in front of the Doors of Death, which were once again chained down.

"You'd think Hades and Thanatos would've taken some better precautions against this from happening a second time," Shin'en muttered to himself.

With a twitch of his wrist, a five-foot long black rod shot into his hand from the confines of his long sleeve. Without breaking stride, Shin'en walked right up to the Doors, drew his sword, revealing a blade four feet long, an inch wide, an edge thin as paper, and polished as a mirror. He slashed it once and cut right through the chains, and the Door itself.

Destroying it.

There was no grand explosion of energy or great rumbling of anything. Instead, the elevator just shut down, going dark and quiet as the diagonally cut top half slid to the ground.

Shin'en pressed his finger between his eyebrows. 'Persephone? Can you hear me?'

'Woah! Are we talking telepathically? Is this twin telepathy? We can do that? Have you always known we can do this? Why are we only just now trying to-'

'Focus,' Shin'en interrupted. 'Focus.'

'Right. Sorry.'

'The Doors have been destroyed. Kill them all.'

'Got it. What about you?'

'I'll be fine. ETA is two minutes.' That's when Shin'en felt the presence of the pit. 'Correction. Make it seven minutes.'

'Tartarus woke up?'

'Yeah.'

'Kick his butt.'

'Will do. Shin'en out.'

'I hate it when you call yourself that.'

'Shin'en. Out.'

Shin'en cut the connection before his sister could fire something back. He addressed the growing blob of purplish-black miasma. "What's the matter? Couldn't handle a couple of little kids escaping you, so you committed all this energy into going after them? Bit much, isn't it?"

The miasma solidified into a monstrous being. It took the shape of a man, standing 50-feet tall, and rippling with muscular, purple skin. He wore a fabrication of the traditional Greek armor, with the greaves, the breastplate, the pteruges, the vambraces, and the plumed helmet with the dick-shaped visor. It was all black with gold trimmings.

Dark vortexes swirled in the helmet's eyes.

Tartarus didn't bother saying a word to Shin'en. He just held out his hand and conjured an absolute monster of a mace. It was deceptively simple, just a handle and a shaft that ended with a spiked ball, and the funny thing was, it really was that simple. Tartarus had created for himself what amounted to being a really big hammer. No special powers or abilities.

That was because he was plenty powerful enough. He didn't need to split his energy into creating a fancy weapon.

Shin'en's lips quirked up. He raised his sword, and slashed it deep through the ground at his feet. Tartarus recoiled, clutching his chest.

"Felt that one, didn't you, big boy?" Shin'en taunted.

He slashed again, slicing a deep cut through the fleshy ground—the flesh that was Tartarus's physical heart, as described in the book.

The manifestation of the pit groaned and clutched his chest even tighter. He glowered down at Shin'en and swung his mace, striking what was effectively his own body—yet without damaging himself—releasing a shockwave that ripped through the terrain, obliterating all the monsters for a thousand feet.

Shin'en landed on an outcropping, eyes closed. Blood leaked out from under his right eye, before it shot open to reveal the glowing red pattern of his Eternal Mangekyou. "Kura Okami."

With a distance howl, the white wind erupted from Shin'en and surrounded Tartarus, freezing every atom of his physical manifestation solid. Absolute Zero. Shin'en cut off the chakra, and the icy body of the Primordial cracked and shattered to billions of sparkling pieces that soon dispersed.

That's when dozens of miasma blobs started rising from the ground, all solidifying into 50-foot pit gods with various weapons.

Shin'en blew a displeased snort of air from his nose. "There's always something else."

He readied himself for battle.

Back with Persephone

The elder sister huffed a little at being dismissed by her junior like that. Little brat.

However, she did get focused.

Recalling Batman Begins, theatricality, becoming more than just a man (rather, girl, in this case) in the mind of your opponent, and because she knew in the core of her being that should these monsters ever rise again, that the heroes here would never be able to defeat them, Persephone decided to go over the top and blast a fearful hole so deep and wide in their memories that they would never again leave the pit.

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When the apparent champion decided to reveal herself, there was, at first, silence, then loud laughter from the army and assorted "big guns." For one, she was cosplaying, wearing a ridiculous anime outfit, a cloak, and it was mostly left open at the front to reveal her orange t-shirt, blue athletic shorts, muscular legs, and sneakers. Second, she was trying way too hard, descending from above on a disc of water with her arms crossed over her chest. Three, she had the dumbest expression on her face. Well, from what was seen of her face, given that collar hiding her mouth and most of her nose. Those sea-green eyes of hers were staring at them all with utter contempt.

"A sea-spawn?" Polybotes laughed, sniffing the air. "Chaos sends just a lowly child of Poseidon against us?"

Porphyrion reached over and jabbed at the littlest Giant. "Careful, Orion. It's a girl."

Orion's mechanical eyes glowed scarlet with fury while his face turned gold with embarrassment. "I'm going to kill you," he said to his brother, "and then I am going to kill Reyna."

The champion tilted her head to the side. "Bold of you to assume you'll leave here alive."

Porphyrion barked a short laugh. "You don't even have a god here to aid you, and that's just us! You also have our Titan brethren, along with no less than ten thousand monsters here behind me!"

At their recognition, the army roared, howled, screamed, shook their weapons, and stamped upon the ground.

The champion seemed to smirk. "I don't need a god to kill any of you. I suppose I'll be nice and give you all a chance to run away and turn from your evil lifestyle."

Everyone brandished weapons.

"Your choice," the champion shrugged. "But you're gonna have a bad time…"

She raised a finger from her bicep, and the ground shook with terrible fury. Around the perimeter of the whole National Mall, from behind the Lincoln Memorial, down Constitutional and Independence Avenues, to behind the Capitol Reflecting Pool, huge walls of ice erupted from the ground, reaching high as the Washington Monument, sealing the army in, while also causing millions in infrastructure damage.

It was at that moment, that the enemy began to have inklings of ideas that maybe there was a reason that Chaos had chosen this girl to fight them.

The Titans and Giants attacked first, turning around to unleash weapons and energy at where the champion was floating, only to see she wasn't there anymore, and their attacks struck the Washington Monument, obliterating a section of it, sending almost half of the structure done atop their own heads. None of them bothered dodging, instead resorting to displays of power that destroyed any rubble that came close.

Hyperion suddenly croaked, and those around looked and were shocked to see the champion there, having driven a familiar bronze sword through his chest from in front of him. She twisted the blade and violently yanked it up, cleaving Hyperion's skull in half.

"RIPTIDE!?" Polybotes bellowed. "Who are you!?"

As Hyperion's body crumbled to golden dust around her, the champion answered, "Persephone Jackson. Daughter of Poseidon."

Before anyone could fully process that, Persephone was once again gone from sight. There was the sound of metal crunching through bone, but the only thing anyone saw was Krios crumbling to dust, and then Koios soon followed, a streak of bronze light going through his neck. Persephone was standing behind him, cloak fluttering into place around her legs with her arm held away from her, Riptide softly glowing as golden ichor dripped from the blade.

Just like that, Persephone had felled three Titans in less than ten seconds, and only that long because she took the time to speak.

She crossed her arms, and suddenly the Giants were yanked from their feet towards her, blasted by gale-force winds, and when they were pulled close enough by the vortex, Persephone thrust her arms away and the Giants were blasted away faster than what they were pulled. From the rubble of the Washington Monument, Persephone sent them hurtling all the way to the walls she made.

"I'll deal with you in a minute," she muttered to herself.

Persephone looked at the army before her, their morale shaky after she took down the entire senior brass in a couple of moves. She looked up at the storm she'd conjured, and held Riptide up to the dark clouds. Lightning flashed back and forth, and when Persephone brought her sword down, the lightning came with it.

Dozens of bolts smashed the earth, leaving smoldering scorch marks and dozens of crumbling monsters all over the place. It was a bigger display than anything Thalia or Jason had ever pulled off, and Persephone almost looked bored.

Thunder shook the city to the foundations and then some, and in seconds of the electric downpour, Persephone and wiped out over half of the ten thousand monsters Porphyrion had bragged about. The only reason she didn't destroy the rest of them was because she wanted to work a different angle.

Persephone started towards the army at a sedate pace, and then little platforms of water formed under her feet and acted like ascending stairs. She made sure to keep the platforms small, unseeable, that was it looked like she was walking on nothing at all. However, that wasn't the true scariest part. No, the scariest part was the innumerous swords of ice that started forming in the space around her.

Hundreds of icy swords formed from the moisture in the air, all coalesced, frozen, and levitated purely by Persephone's will. First hundreds, then thousands, reaching high as the storm above and wider than some eyes could see.

Persephone stood above the whole army, staring down her nose at them all with her original contemptuous expression. Framed around her were more ice swords than there were living monsters, each blade pointed down at the horde, and framed behind that was the black sky.

Persephone had achieved her original goal with her little display.

No longer was she a girl in the minds of these monsters.

Now she was a wrathful goddess unlike any they had ever seen before.

And as it happened, this mindset was not unique to the monsters.

Up on Olympus

Percy stared wide-eyed as his female counterpart took on a whole army after killing three Titans and knocking back six Giants.

"Can you do that?" Annabeth asked Percy, dazedly. "That teleport thing? And the stuff with the ice?"

"I…I've never tried with ice, except for that time on Hubbard's Glacier, but I wasn't really trying to manipulate the ice. That was just me hitting it really hard. I don't have a clue as to how she's moving like that."

"Water travel," Chaos answered. "Child of Poseidon equivalent to shadow travel. Persephone can enter any body of water and teleport through it to any other body of water. She can get cozy in a bathtub and get inside a highly secure military facility through the toilet bowl. She's refined the technique to such a fine degree, however, that she just needs the micro droplets in the air. That's how she's moving so fast. The ice thing is similar, in that she's pulling on the water vapor."

Percy looked rather stricken at this, because, in their own words, he could be doing things like this himself if he had trained and practiced, instead of putting the demigod life behind him. "I…didn't even know that was possible…"

"Damn shame, too," Chaos chirped. "Imagine how the Prophecy of Seven would've gone if you just teleported the Argo II through the oceans straight to Rome, and then straight to Athens after climbing out of my son. Even better, imagine if you had just teleported from Camp Half-Blood straight to the lake in New Rome, gave them a sit-rep, set up a communication network of you just traveling from one body of water to another, and then were there to stop Caligula's fleet."

A Roman crossed her arms and glowered at Percy. "Yeah. Imagine that."

Percy swallowed heavily. She'd lost her little brothers in the attack last year. A single pandai had butchered both the boys, one fourteen and the other twelve, his second year and first year in the legion respectively.

She wasn't the only Roman levelling a hard look at Percy as they bore witness to Persephone's power.

According to the words spoken by Persephone herself, Shin'en, and even Chaos, the supreme god of them all, what Persephone was doing, Percy could also do if he applied himself, but because he didn't apply himself, because he wanted nothing to do with demigod life, he couldn't do any of these things. He held himself back and intentionally limited his power.

The reason behind those hard looks was because if this was his full potential, then he should've reached it through training, and then used this power during the Imperial War. He should've come to aid the Romans during the battle, giving it his all like he'd done during the Giant War, but he didn't. He chose the personal pursuit of his diploma (and Annabeth's ass), instead of choosing duty, honor, sacrifice, and responsibility, invaluable traits of the Roman legionaries.

The death toll had been massive that day, when the emperors attacked. From the 180 living members of the legion, and the two to three thousand or so citizens of New Rome, the survivors of the battle could fit comfortably in the Senate Building. What was left of it, anyway.

Over two thousand people had died that night. Died in a battle where the invading army had come from the sea in an amphibious assault.

From the sea.

And what had Percy been doing when the Romans were fighting for their lives? He had been studying for a math test in the comfort of his bedroom with Annabeth helping him with Algebra II.

Truly, a worthy and noble cause compared to getting involved with the war.

Back with Persephone

With an application of will, Persephone unleashed her swords. They shot from the sky at terminal velocity, Persephone having to expend additional power in keeping them frozen, keeping them from melting due to air friction. Her barrage ripped the army apart, piercing right through all armor and hides.

Hydras were turned into pin cushions.

Some of the cyclopes raised their shield in an attempt to defend themselves, and their shields might as well have been trashcan lids going up against armor-piercing rounds.

Hellhounds scrambled and were cut up.

Some monsters flinched when they should've scurried, and some scurried when they should've flinched.

When Persephone was done, of the five thousand that remained after her lightning barrage, only a few hundred yet lived after her ice barrage. All of that ice instantly became water that went shooting towards Persephone, because racing up behind her was a wave of fire that came from Enceladus.

The Giants had gotten back on their feet.

Persephone's water met Enceladus's fire, causing a huge eruption of steam to envelope the courtyard of the mall. Polybotes instantly used his poison power to turn all of this steam into poison, turning it all a noxious, foul-smelling purple.

"Orion, do you see her?" Porphyrion asked.

Orion's mechanical eyes changed color as he cycled through vision modes. He didn't see her anywhere in the poison, and so he looked up. What he saw made his eyes widen.

"Incoming!"

And boy did something come in.

The Giants felt more than saw what was coming for them, since Polybotes' poison obscured the sky from view, and so they were left running like headless chickens. It felt like an angry god was slamming a hammer down all over the place the impacts were so heavy and numerous.

Porphyrion eventually took a stance and swung his fist when he felt one of those somethings coming at him, and the shockwave from the impact was great enough to dispel the cloud of poison, revealing what Persephone had been dropping on them, and also shatter said object to pieces.

It was more ice.

Porphyrion swallowed hard at the sight around him. The courtyard of the National Mall was littered with chunks…well, not really chunks, as they were certainly bigger than mere chunks, so…littered with…small meteors…of ice.

Jagged spheroids of ice the size of houses dotted the courtyard, sitting in craters amongst huge piles of golden dust.

Porphyrion correctly concluded that Persephone had overhauled that ice power of hers, making these icy meteors, and then she just dropped them one by one when no one could see what she was up to. The Giant King noted there were no more monsters. In mere minutes, this champion of Chaos had wiped out an army of over ten thousand.

Porphyrion's younger brothers came to stand beside him amidst the destruction.

"This is unbelievable," Otis breathed.

"No mere demigod is this powerful," Ephialtes said next.

"Silence, both of you," Porphyrion snapped. "We are the Giants, the mightiest sons of the Earth Mother. It doesn't matter how powerful this girl is. With no god to help her, she can do nothing to us. We will overwhelm her, and destroy her."

The Giants nodded.

"Where is she, Orion?" Porphyrion asked.

Before the shortest Giant could answer, a disembodied voice echoed over the quiet battlefield.

"One…two…three…four…"

"What the-?" Polybotes started. "Where is that coming from?"

"…five…six…seven…eight…nine…"

"I can't pinpoint the source!" Orion growled.

"…and it is ten. Sway! Sway, to and fro, sway!"

"Alright," Persephone muttered.

The Giant turned to her, seeing her standing atop one of her meteors. A Large pocket watch was in her hand, one with the design of a crow caressing the body of the watch with its wings, its head resting atop the watch. At her voice, the analogue face peeled back to reveal a large, blue eye. The eye glowed brightly, and Persephone tossed the watch in the air, where it rapidly spun in place before Persephone snagged it and thrust it in front of her.

A glowing blue seal appeared before her, and then she moved through it. As she came out the other side, her form was covered head to toe in black, stream-lined, ninja-esque armor. Her cloak vanished and a helmet covered her head. When the seal finished moving, Persephone new armor glowed red-hot with steam, but the glow quickly faded.

In her hand, the magic watch she had brandished had become part of the sheath to a katana, a chain wrapping around the hilt to prevent it from being drawn. Persephone brandished the weapon in front of her, angling the hilt so that it obscured the left side of her helmet, before she tossed the sword in the air. It came down and landed perfectly across her back, where a claw-shaped clasp locked around the watch built into the sheath, securing the sword.

The chain around the hilt glowed and shattered, and Persephone drew the katan with a flourish, the blade spinning so fast around her it was a streak of baleful light that released a high-pitched whine as it cut through the air.

"Attack!" Persephone said, voice altered by her helmet.

Her armor glowed, flashed, and then the next thing Otis knew, he was being cut in half from crotch to crown. Ephialtes faired no better being next to his brother, as Persephone slashed his legs off, and he fell, she followed up with another slash that took his head. The bodies of the twins did not repair themselves. Instead, they crumbled to golden dust just like they were supposed to if felled by the combined efforts of a god and demigod.

"What black magic is this!?" Porphyrion shouted.

Persephone's armored form vanished and appeared upside down in the air next to the Giant King's head. She spun and decapitated him without answering his question.

His body erupted into dust.

Persephone landed and rested her sword across her shoulder. "Who's next?"

The remaining three turned around and bolted. Fear reigned in their beings, showing the true cowardice behind the Giant. When their invulnerability was taken from them, leaving them open to death from just a god or demigod, they fled. After seeing what Persephone could do by herself, and seeing her put on that black armor with those glowing, glacial blue eyes of her helmet, which somehow enabled her to kill them without a god, the Giants wanted no part of this anymore.

"Sorry about this Reyna," Persephone said to herself. "It took everything you had to kill Orion, and here I am making it look easy…"

And easy it did look.

Persephone's armor glowed and flashed. She shot past Orion, cutting him in half with a spray of golden blood. Enceladus and Polybotes met the same fate as Porphyrion, in that Persephone appeared by their heads in turn, and sliced them off.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it, as the phrase went.

And just like that, Persephone, a lone demigod, had wiped out a force of ten thousand monsters, three Titans, and six Giants.

Without pausing even for a second to bask in this great accomplishment, Persephone zeroed in on the largest congregation of bad guys, that being New Rome, and she wasted no time in executing her water travel technique.

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That's it for this one, because there's probably another 10k+ to go.

Shin'en is fighting Tartarus by himself, but he'll be fine. Got something fun planned for that in the coming chapters.

How about Persephone, yeah?

Her water travel speed is 690,000 miles per hour, making her very lethal in close quarters.

Her Stormbringer powers are on point, as she arrived in DC on a sunny summer day, and blackened the sky with storm clouds.

She used hydrogenesis when she duplicated the moisture in the air.

She demonstrated greater affinity with lightning than Jason and Thalia when she struck the battlefield, and greater power with wind when she knocked back all the Giants.

Her control over water is leagues beyond canon Percy, as she turned the groundwater into huge walls of ice, brought together water to use as platforms to essentially fly on, and could use the mere vapor to create swords and meteors.

Now, before you say 'There's no way Percy could do all of that!' stop and muse for a moment: couldn't he, though?

Poseidon is the god of the sea, why can Percy control fresh water? Whoever would've guessed that Percy could just create water around himself when he blew up a volcano? Who could've guessed that Percy was super heat resistant, when he was doused in lava by the telekhines? Who could've guessed Percy would actually manifest Stormbringer powers when he made his own hurricane when he fought Hyperion?

Even better, how is Reyna able to empower others with her own energy? That's not listed anywhere in Bellona's domains.

How can Nico actually travel through shadows, when shadows aren't listed as being in the domain of Hades?

Demeter is the goddess of the harvest and of agriculture, and Meg can teleport through interconnected roots as shown in the Dark Prophecy.

Hell, children of Aphrodite/Venus can speak French purely because French is universally considered to be the 'language of love.'

The point is, demigod powers follow a very loose criteria that basically boils down to: if it makes a little bit of sense that they can do it, then they can do it.

In Percy's case, his 'I never wanted to be a half-blood' mentality guides him and holds him back. Never is he shown actually training in the use of his powers. He just wills it, and it happens, but he's never shown to have explored just what he can do and what his limits are, simply because he doesn't want to.

But not Persephone. As I've stated, she is not like canon Percy. She loves being a demigod. She has embraced this lifestyle, and she has trained and explored her powers, pushing her to heights that are indeed very probable for Percy if Riordan ever decided to pull Percy's head out of his ass and get his ass in gear, in the sense that he stops running from who he is as a demigod and accepts his heritage.

Because that's effectively what Percy is doing these days. He's running from his heritage as the son of Poseidon, and shirking the responsibilities he has to (at the very least) other demigods.

Persephone is moving in to CHB so she can be a teacher of future generations; Percy is going to college, and he doesn't even know what degree to pursue.

Anyway.

That armor Persephone put on is the Uzumaki Power Armor, otherwise known as the Karas Armor, given to her by Shin'en. Remember: the armor Persephone has is the same armor her alternate self had in her possession, the alternate that fought Shin'en during the opening chapters of Blood War.

Because it comes from the realm of the Shinto gods, it bypasses the Inter Pantheonic Laws as set forth in Son of Jashin, meaning when Persephone wears it, she bypasses the divine stipulation that demands a god and demigod work together to kill a Giant, meaning she can kill Giants all by herself.

More ass-kicking chapter!

Fav, Follow, and Review please! Let's keep aiming for the double digits!