Chapter V
The Sixth of May
The Day of the Battle of Manhattan
"I, am Perseus Jackson. I reach out to you all today to inform you of a truth which has been hidden from you for millennia." Percy was standing in the middle of a broadcasting station, behind a podium like one of those press releases. Normally, in front of him would be a crowd of reporters and journalists, but now it was only the few demigods that had survived and knew how to operate the broadcasting equipment.
The camera was at a low angle, to make him look more imposing and larger, rather than just a fit teenager. Annabeth was on his right. Bright and sparkling as she could be after hours of battle in a storm, she was to be his public right hand, the head of civil affairs, if anything about this could be called civil. If he was the emperor of this new world order, she would be the prime minister.
On his left was Nico, dark and gloomy as always. It was only exemplified by him standing a bit further back than Annabeth, in the shadows. His dark clothing and stygian iron armament created the appearance of a thuggish ghoul. He would be Percy's left hand, the one that dealt with his problems in the shadows. Neither of them would be introduced today, but Annabeth thought it was a good idea to reinforce their image even before their image was to be crafted. Subliminal messaging, more or less.
"The Olympian gods of the Greeks myths are real. They exist, and are alive in modern society. The island of Manhattan has been seized by the forces of Olympus. We wish nothing more than to save the masses from their worship of false deities, and to pave their paths to Elysium."
That was, of course, barely true. In practice, it was a cheap excuse to persuade the masses into worshiping the Olympian gods. The speech, as with all things this intellectual, was written by Annabeth as soon as she had heard their schedule would be expedited.
"There will be many of those whom will not believe me; those that will call what I say heresy. But regardless, our conquest will continue and its purpose is to bring enlightenment to all those who have lacked it for thousands of years. The storm we have around Manhattan will continue until we decide otherwise. Those who speak out against the gods will find their fortune turn against them, those who praise the gods will find their lives prosperous."
Percy was nearing the end of his short speech now. He hated the words he was saying, but there was a small part of Percy — an annoying, nagging part — that thought it wouldn't be so bad if he was in charge of the world. At the very least, there would be no war, with himself in charge of everything. He couldn't promise to fix poverty, or famine, but by uniting the world, he could still solve some problems. That was the small, evil part of him. The rest of him knew that the things he was saying had no real justification.
"Even now, my father, Poseidon, sends his Cyclops armies from Atlantis to assist in the occupation of Manhattan. To those who would resist us, you will perish, and be damned to an eternity of pain. To those who lay down your arms, you will be spared, and allowed to continue your lives as normal. Choose wisely."
And just like that, the broadcast was over. It was not the most informative speech, but there was always some power in holding the masses in the dark. It had been enough to accomplish what was needed, and that was planting the seed of doubt and worry that would later enable their conversion to the way of the Greek gods. Hell, he was pretty sure that a few thousand people would simply take him at face value and start to worship the gods, instead of casting him as some insane radical.
Of course, the vast majority of the population would need more proof. News footage of cyclopes fighting their soldiers, giant waves battling their cruisers and lightning bolts batting their planes out of the sky, Percy gambled, would convince them of the sincerity of his claims. From what Annabeth had said, there was a chance that entire nations might surrender once they were convinced of the reality of the situation. And once a few million people got on board, the Greek gods would once again be powerful enough to have complete control over global events. Hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis could be brought down upon those who do not capitulate, while those who did enjoyed prosperous weather and luck.
Shaking his head at the reality of how quickly the gods had decided to seize power, Percy moved out of the room, not even giving a second glance at the crew which had filmed him. He was not enthused about what he would have to do from this point on. Hundreds of demigods had been lost, and he was just getting into it. He figured thousands of mortals would have to die due to his occupation of surrounding burroughs before any government would voluntarily submit.
Either way, he would need to act quickly. Perhaps now that most of his army was dead, he could convince his father to let him primarily use cyclopes. He'd be damned if more demigods were lost today.
Percy watched as thousands of cyclopes marched into Manhattan from the East River. Each were scarcely armed: some had clubs, others spears, a couple even had swords, and some of the leaders even had pegasi mounts. Percy was perched on the empire state building observation balcony, watching as the cyclopes marched in vague columns in his direction.
On their way in, several cyclopes cut out the internet and phone lines, whatever lines of communications they could immediately disrupt. The island of Manhattan would need to be completely isolated from the rest of the world before their occupation could truly take place. It would unsettle the population to have their internet and phone lines taken from them, but Percy figured that being subjugated by a teenage son of a Greek god would do that anyway.
Annabeth was on the ground floor, waiting for Tyson to meet her on the ground so that she could give basic instructions on how to occupy the city to be passed on to the cyclops army. That meant that Percy was stuck with nothing to do. He had gone down and tried to help with the medical situation, but was shooed away by the still standing children of Apollo.
From what he had gathered, the situation was far from anything resembling good, but there was nothing Percy could do to help. From what he could see, there weren't many demigods left. At least, compared to his normal standards. A few dozen at most, which would be a lot for winter, and was almost all the campers he'd had during the defense of Olympus. But compared to how many they'd had when they set out…
Either way, Percy could only watch. Everything for now was in others' hands. Annabeth told him to get some rest, but he hated sitting back and doing nothing while others died under his orders. It didn't seem right that while most of his friends lay dying in the medical bay he would be sleeping.
Despite his reservations he turned and, with a nod to Nico, stepped back inside — the storm above the city at his back — where he would go down several floors and sleep as long as he could.
Running a small country of two million people was exhausting. In the few days immediately following the Cyclops occupation there was yet to be an effective system set up for administering the area. Because Percy decided it was not a good idea to allow cyclopes to decide on punishments for criminals, that responsibility now fell solely to him. Reports of criminal behavior and other such things went directly to him. He had Annabeth working overtime to set up an actual administration, but the mortals would need to calm down before any of them would be willing to actually cooperate enough to serve the new government.
To influence anyone of any value to drop their previous beliefs and serve the new government would take a considerable show of power. It would take something big to show that the Olympians were real and powerful — to convince them they were as omnipotent as in the ancient days. Even then, Percy knew in his bones many were never going to change their minds to a single show of force; it might just strengthen resistance. For some he'd have to convince them other ways, whether through Nico's intimidation or Annabeth's persuasion, he would have to turn valuable individuals to work for his government.
Percy already had a few ideas as to how to orchestrate his display of power, but first Annabeth would need to finish the structure for the administration. For now, he would spend his time manually administrating as much of a small country as he possibly could. He was certain a few thousand people were currently sitting in jail cells waiting for him to get the paperwork done, but it was hard enough doing this alone, much less without being there or talking to any party involved.
His only windfall was that Nico was dealing with all of the more rebellious incidents personally, so at least that cut his paperwork down by a pretty large amount.
After a couple hours, Percy was just about fed up with sitting at a desk without moving for so long. Before he could think up a reason to go 'supervise' what was happening in the rest of the building there was a knock on the door of his makeshift office, and a little girl entered, probably a demigod, by the looks of her one of Annabeth's younger sisters.
"Your highness, Annabeth requests your presence," she said. He dismissed her with a wave of his hand.
It was just the excuse Percy had been looking for to stretch his legs, and with any luck the news from Annabeth would be good news.
Getting up from his desk which he took from some executive likely cowering in his penthouse at the moment, he walked over to the elevator and selected Annabeth's floor, the 47th.
Arriving on the floor he walked out to find a relatively busy scene. The office environment had been refitted to their needs, and children of Athena with the help of some disgruntled mortals were rushing about, using almost exclusively paper to transfer information between one another, with the odd computer here and there being used by a mortal.
Walking over to the corner where Annabeth's office was, likely where the floor boss's office was before they'd taken over, he noticed the glances he got from those he passed. From the demigods he mostly got nods of respect and recognition, but the mortals were an entirely different story.
Most threw him looks of fear or contempt. A handful looked at him in reverence and awe. The latter were the ones that had likely actually believed his speech about the greek gods, while the former were simply cooperating with their new rulers, no matter how crazy they seemed to be.
Walking into her office with a knock on the door, he was met with Annabeth's worn out face. They hadn't exactly had much time to relax in the last several days — especially not together.
"Good, you're here." Annabeth gave a tired smile. "The last few days…"
"If you needed help, you could've called me earlier," Percy chided. "I've been bored out of my mind."
Annabeth sighed before her head drooped back down into her paperwork. "No. You have your responsibilities, I have mine. Besides, you'd distract me more than you could help. It's all details in administration structure. We both know it's not your forte."
"That's true enough." Percy stepped up and around the desk until he stood behind her shoulder. "Well then, if I am distracting, what am I here for?"
"I finally have a lot of the plans for our new military command infrastructure and court systems laid out, but I want you to look over it. One person can't think of everything. And there's another dozen issues I wanted you to be aware of."
Percy took a real look at all the notebooks and loose papers strewn across the desk. It would take hours to read through these. "Let's start with an overview for the military."
It was the topic he was most familiar with.
"We have next to no volunteers for the military, only a few officers and about a hundred enlisted. All in all, it's not even close to a functional military. Our most immediate problem is arming our forces once we convince enough people to enlist. We don't have nearly enough celestial bronze to arm any sizable force and even then, that's only auxiliary equipment. We're doing better on mortal weaponry, though. Some of the NYPD armories we were able to raid gave us quite the bounty, but we're on a ticking clock with the limited ammunition we have."
"Were we not able to raid all of the armories?"
"Some were defended to the last bullet; others had their stocks destroyed before we could loot them."
Percy swore. "The invasion will be tougher than we thought then"
"Which comes to our court systems. There are still portions of the city where anarchy or gangs still run awry. There isn't anything too threatening yet, but crime and fighting is still prevalent. We don't want to kill everyone yet but our cells are getting more full by the hour. The detention centers we have are only made for retainment, not full imprisonment and we simply can't imprison everyone either."
"That's partially on me," Percy confessed.
"The system is nearly in place but we just need judges to come back. I've sent letters informing them that they may return to their positions but only three have accepted the terms I've laid out. Perhaps you could send Nico to help out with the rest?"
"I don't think scaring our judges would work," Percy said. He contemplated the matter. "I guess I'll take this on. I'm better at talking, so when you can, send me the list of the judges who need convincing, I'd rather not go through doing the trials myself."
Annabeth nodded, before handing him a folder. "Already done. They're organized by their address so you don't have to run around the city."
Percy gave a sidelong smirk. "But I love running around the city."
"Oh, I know," Annabeth sighed. "Anyway, onto the next topic, I don't think we need to worry about power and water to be cut off from the mainland. To them, we have two million hostages. They're even sending in food supplies over the Williamsburg, so we don't have to worry about starvation, but organizing the distribution and how we will work trade is going to be our most immediate problem."
"Trade?"
"Think about it. We've put Manhattan into martial law with an army of cyclops. People aren't accepting dollars anymore."
"Right. Anarchy." Setting up a new society was difficult, as expected. He'd known going into it it'd be a chore, but this was all overwhelming. "Is that all?"
"Everything that you need to be aware of — for now anyway."
"One step at a time. Got it." Percy agreed, "Well, on the ammunition front, I'll speak to my father to see if they can begin manufacturing mortal bullets — at least until we become self-sufficient."
"You'll need to set up the base command, personnel selection, and training structure, but afterward the military should take care of itself for the most part."
Percy nodded. "If that'll be all, I need to get going then. It seems I have a lot of work to do. It was good seeing you." He leaned down to give her a kiss that she returned, before he headed back to his office to begin laying some of the foundations for this new nation.
"Hear me Manhattan!" Percy's voice boomed out from where he stood atop the Empire State Building, projected across the entire island of Manhattan through Iris. "I am Perseus, son of Poseidon, and your ruler. Many of you despise me. Many of you think me a madman. Many of you laugh in the face of the reality that the gods are real. Many of you will be tortured in the fields of punishment for all eternity. But it need not be that way for all of you. Some of you know it to be true in your hearts, that the Greek gods have finally come to reclaim their places at the top of western civilization." A crack of thunder sounded over the Hudson river.
"Through days of thunder and storms you have sat, through the days of cyclopes marching through the streets of Manhattan, and yet many of you still deny the truth that lay before your eyes, seeing what has occured as a simple trick, science experiments gone wrong, anything to justify your denial of the gods' existence. You are fools. The price you will pay will be an eternity of punishment for you and those you foolishly keep devout to your false god."
Percy softened his voice and his stance. "Trust me, I was one of you once, a boy who lived on the streets of Manhattan, who was blinded to the world of the gods. I do not want harm to come to this city any more than any of you. I love this city. That is why I will continue, that is why I must continue, because every day that I allow to pass without increasing support for the way of the gods is more damned souls passing into the underworld."
Percy could tangibly feel the increase in power and stamina as he gave his speech. Between everything that had already happened — their invasion, the cyclopes, and now the fact they were seeing his speech through magical broadcast, citizens of Manhattan en masse were being forced to accept the truth.
Annabeth had estimated that maybe one hundred thousand mortals were worshipping the gods at this rate, and that was a high estimate. Of course, Percy was feeling better than he had ever felt before by leagues, and he figured that if he ever got the chance to test out his abilities that he would be much more powerful than days prior. But that was absolutely nothing to the adrenaline coursing through his veins as tens of thousands of New Yorkers converting by the second.
He hardened his posture and voice once more. Now, to finish the speech.
"Once, I was weak. Once, I was susceptible to the whims of others. But through the gods I found strength. Join me. Join the gods in expanding salvation to others; do not deny them their justice as you had been denied it for so long." He reached a hand out to the Iris message, as if inviting them to join him personally. "Whatever your skills are, they may be put to use. If you wish to see the streets of New York live in prosperity and grace as I do, help me realize the potential of this new empire."
As the message dissolved and Percy walked away, he could almost convince himself that he was doing the right thing.
