The Third Life: Jake's Odyssey: Pt. 1
No, I'm not dead.
No, I'm not sorry.
No, I've not forgotten you people.
Yes, I had a great Thanksgiving.
Yes, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving too.
Yes, I've been playing Odyssey. Rather fun.
I also made a mistake when I was talking about the Strait of Gibraltar. Yes, Heracles is there, and I both remembered that and forgot about that, and Jake will meet the legendary hero, but that is not the grand seen I was referring to.
So, more appropriately, who patrols about the Mediterranean in a trireme, and is a pirate…?
Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or AC
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Strait of Gibraltar
May 1716
Sailing from the West Indies to the bottom of Europe was rather uneventful. There weren't any other ships about, so there was nothing for the crew of the Running Frenchman to plunder or shoot their cannons at, and just shooting the guns was a waste of ammunition.
There was a breaching whale every now and then, and a storm they sailed through, but that was it as far as excitement went.
And the occasional on-deck duel.
Supplies had been plentiful, as Jake had seen to it that the hold was chalk-full of food and drink. The last thing he wanted was a mutiny over not enough to eat.
There was also the small problem of developing pregnancies, as since there were men and women on the Running Frenchman, and they each had their own sex drives, and there was nothing stopping them from having sex, some of the men got with the women and now babies were happening.
Granted, that was still a long time off, but pregnant women were strange creatures, even more so than their non-pregnant counterparts, and Jake and the rest of the male crew were in no small hurry to find land and get some air not being breathed by a person that demanded a chicken gizzard slathered in chocolate and cooked in vinegar.
So, when the lookout in the crow's nest over a hundred feet in the air shouted "Land! It's land you smelly motherfuckers!" there were thrown hats and cries of joy.
Jake was so happy he kissed Mr. Biggs full on the mouth…and both of had a fit of spitting afterwards.
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"So, that's Spain, and that's Africa," Jake observed. "More specifically, that's the Rock of Gibraltar and that's some random mountains."
"Yes," Mr. Biggs said.
"…eh. Not impressed. However, that's more because of that island that just appeared than anything else."
"Island? What isl—oh. That island."
"Yeah, and the guy on the island in the purple dress."
"I believe that's Hercules. Though I thought he'd be on Olympus with his wife, Hebe."
"Hercules, huh? So, if he's real, that means that the Roman gods are real, which I suppose also means the Greek gods are real, and since you're an Egyptian magician, that means the Egyptian gods are real…"
"Is there a point to all this, Cap'n?"
"Well," Jake shrugged. "All these gods that are supposedly false gods and idols are real, and the Bible says they're not real, and it just makes me wonder…is the Bible really true, then?"
"Oh, it is very true," Mr. Biggs said reverently. "Moses did indeed come to Egypt and demand his people's freedom, and he did indeed bring the power of God with him. Ramses had the ten most powerful magicians of the age duel Moses, and all ten were defeated…soundly. Remember Jake: just because more clues to the mystery of life are revealed, does not mean that what is known becomes false."
Jake nodded after a time. "Aye. So, those pillars there, with that big NON PLUS ULTRA in the sand, and Hercules…should we just keep sailing, or stop in and say hi?"
"Considering we can see the island and Hercules, and I am one-hundred percent positive that all of us combined cannot take him…we should stop in and say hi."
"Should we pray to God to give us safe passage?"
"Would you really have faith that God would give us safe passage?"
"Not really."
"Then you shouldn't pray. All hands, trim the sails and prepare to weigh anchor!"
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Hercules was not as impressive as the legends portrayed him to be, in Jake's opinion. The pirate expected a massive, hulking figure of muscle and hair, a toga, sandals, and a golden wreath around his head.
Instead, Hercules looked like a dark-haired Edward with higher regard for personal appearance and hygiene.
And there was a big club stuck in the sand.
"Ahoy," Jake greeted, Mr. Biggs next to him.
"Hi," the hero said neutrally. Hercules' bright blue eyes were flicking between the captain and the first mate. "Your soul is strange to me. Like a demigod's, yet not. And you're an Egyptian sailing into foreign lands…why?"
"We want to," Jake shrugged. "Always heard Greece had some sights, and life is too short not to go do what you want."
Hercules blinked, now assuming a confused expression. "Where did you sail from?"
"The West Indies."
"You sailed from the New World to the Ancient Lands…to sight-see?"
"Yep."
Hercules blinked a few more times, trying to comprehend the strange minds of mortals. "…okay. Well, since you're here, on my island, that means you have at least a sliver of divine affinity in you, which means that I am legally obligated to give you a quest to prove you are worthy enough to enter the Ancient Lands."
Jake's smile lessened. "And what would this quest entail?"
Like any sane individual would attest to, being sent on errands was both vexing and infuriating, and patience for such an exercise wore thin very quickly.
Hercules stroked his chin in thought. "You see that coconut there in the sand? Bring it to me."
Jake blinked, then walked over to the coconut, picked it up, and brought it to Hercules.
The god took it. "Thank you," he said, and then he broke it open, and started guzzling the milk inside.
When he was done, he belched so loudly the island shook, and Jake stopped breathing temporarily to keep the smell out of his nostrils.
"Alright," Hercules grinned. "You have proven yourself worthy to enter the Ancient Lands. Try not to die, and if you just can't help yourself, do it gloriously!"
"Right. Have a nice day."
Mr. Biggs nodded fervently, agreeing with his captain.
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As the Running Frenchman sailed away into the Mediterranean, Jake said as quietly as possible: "I think there's something wrong with that one."
"Agreed. If I had to guess, he's been on that island for years without contact with other people."
"Oof."
"Oof," Mr. Biggs said.
"Still, I feel some strange connection to Hercules, like he'll be important later on in my life…or the next." Jake's face screwed up. "I feel strange."
"It's the air of the Ancient Lands," Mr. Biggs supplied.
"Yeah, that's it. Onward to Greece, then."
"Do you have a heading, Cap'n?"
"That direction."
"Aye! That direction it is!"
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They sailed in that direction into the next morning. The night crew turned in for the day, and the day crew returned to their duties. Upon this return to their duties, they were greeted with an eerie fog.
"Mr. Biggs," Jake said.
"Yes, Cap'n?"
"It is my experience that when you enter an eerie fog like this one, especially an eerie fog in a mysterious and magical land, that typically means there's something in the fog heading right for you to attack you. What do you have to say to that notion?"
"I'd say you're onto something there, Cap'n."
"Oh, good. I'm not the only crazy one on this ship, then." Jake raised his voice to where it boomed over the whole Running Frenchman.
"ALL HANDS TO YOUR STATIONS! LOAD CANNONS, MORTARS, CHASE CANNONS AND SWIVELS! PREPARE FOR BATTLE!"
A crewman grabbed the alarm bell and began furiously ringing it. The crew exploded into action at the giving of the orders, and the deck became a bustling mess of organized chaos as everyone went about their jobs. The panels along the sides of the Running Frenchman opened, and the 60-pounders were pushed into the light, loaded and ready. Ammunition was stuffed into the mortars, and the operators crouched nearby, ready for orders. Inside the ship, the six chase cannons, the front-mounted guns, were loaded and the gunners waited with their ears peeled. The swivels were manned and awaiting command.
Then, with everyone in place, silence took hold, only broken by the sound of the Running Frenchman gliding through the waves.
Jake took tight hold of the wheel, eyes narrowed at the fog in front and to the sides, his head on a swivel as he looked for impending threats.
"Do you sense anything, Mr. Biggs?"
"Three hundred meters in front of the bow and closing fast."
"What is it?"
The old-looking man squinted, eyes glued forward. "I see a…I think that's a…is that…a trireme…?"
Jake blinked. "As in an Ancient Greek trireme?"
"Aye. I think."
"How far now?"
"About a hundred meters and getting closer."
"RAMMING SPEED!" Jake thundered.
The Running Frenchman suddenly sped forward, gaining ten knots in seconds. Out of the fog came the shape of a slim, single-masted ship, and the galleon rammed right into it, going straight into the other ship's bow. The impact was mighty, cracking several lengths of wood about the Running Frenchman, and the crew stumbled. Damage to the trireme was unknown, but the apparent crew of the trireme were humanoid dolphins.
Jake and no one else dwelled on the oddity of the situation, and all instead focused on treating the seemingly ancient ship as hostile, which it actually was. The boy pirate spun the wheel, directing his ship to port, while the trireme did the same. Grappling hooks were thrown by the much smaller boat, and Jake had none of that.
"FIRE BROADSIDE!"
Now, for those still lost, the trireme was the ship of Chrysaor, the son of Medusa and brother of Pegasus. You can google for yourself more specifics, but if you're reading this story, you should have A) read the Mark of Athena by now, and B) at least watched gameplay of AC:OD. Anyway, when it came to the Running Frenchman and Chrysaor's trireme, there was clear difference in everything.
One: the trireme had only one mast, where the Running Frenchman had three, meaning more sails and more speed.
Two: the trireme was almost a full twenty meters shorter than the galleon, meaning a massive difference in mass.
Three: width, with the Running Frenchman being ten meters wider than the trireme, which meant more storage and ammo, and also more mass.
Four: Jake's ship came up a lot higher out of the water than the trireme, since it had many more decks.
Five: the differences in firepower should be obvious.
In summary: the Running Frenchman was faster, longer, fatter, taller, and stronger than the trireme, outclassing it in everything except maneuverability, and experience. If Chrysaor had one glaring advantage in this conflict, it was centuries of pirating under his belt, along with his crew, vs the few year to maybe two decades of experience Jake's crew had, and the Golden Sword's ship could turn better.
The crew of Chrysaor was also a bunch of cursed dolphin people, ageless immortals.
The point of all that is that the information provided will be crucial in coming chapters. Now, back to the main story.
At Jake's command, over thirty cannons went off at roughly the same time, pelting the trireme below with balls of metal that weighed as much as some children, moving at roughly 150m/s. Unfortunately, the trireme was made of Celestial bronze, and while it wasn't shredded to pieces like any wooden ship would have been, it did take several dents, with many of the dolphin-like crew being crushed by the sheer weight of the cannonballs.
Because of that, the grappling lines were still secured, and the trireme started hauling itself in for close-quarters combat.
Jake gave orders to prepare, and where no one was truly concerned with their opponents being dolphin people, as Mr. Biggs had already informed everyone that weird things were present in the world, they were wondering whether their weapons would have any effect.
The enemy crew boarded and chaos ensued. Gunshots, the clanging of steel, the sounds of fists and legs on flesh. There was an impasse, however. Jake's crew had weapons of iron, and the mythological crew had weapons of magical metal, and neither was doing any harm to the other, as each respective blade was passing through opponents like they were made of air.
It was a quickly realized problem, and so the swords and guns went away, and everyone broke out into fisticuffs.
That was when it was discovered that enough blunt force trauma to the skull and enough force applied to other areas was enough to cause death and grievous injury to the dolphin men.
It should also be known that, since the Running Frenchman was roughly three times bigger than the trireme—which was a full-sized trireme straight from the Peloponnesian War—the crew was much bigger, and numbers helped big time.
It seemed that the mortal crew was going to win, their superior crew size giving them the advantage of almost three-to-one in most cases, along with Mr. Biggs' spells, until the enemy captain joined the fray.
The tide of the battle instantly turned due to the skill and strength of the Golden Sword, as he was able to handle over five mortals at once with practiced ease.
Jake was seemingly the match to the enemy captain, as he himself was able to fight off so many opponents with no outside help. Out of the corner of his eye, through the din of chaos, he saw the turmoil happening on his ship. He finished the dolphin man before him, snapping the creature's neck, and he gave his challenge.
Over the sounds of hand-to-hand battle, Jake roared, "HO THERE, KNAVE!"
Combat came to a halt, all eyes going to Jake who stood on top of the railing in front of the wheel.
"What is your name?" Jake demanded.
"I am Chrysaor, the Golden Sword, son of Medusa and Poseidon. What is your name?"
Chrysaor wore old armor, gold—all of it—and a helmet styled in the likeness of a gorgon hid his face. The immortal was tall, well-built, and what skin showed was tanned from years at sea.
"Jake Swallow. You are raiding my ship. Leave now and I won't kill you."
Chrysaor and the dolphins broke into raucous laughter.
"You?" the Golden Sword sneered. "A mortal boy thinks he can best me in single combat? Fool, extraordinary demigods have tried their hand at besting me, and all have met the same fate. You think that you, a mere mortal, can succeed where they did not?"
"Aye."
Though his expression couldn't be seen, it was clear Chrysoar was amused. "Give me one of your mortal swords, then. Let us see if you can put the bite to your bark. If you win, my crew will leave. If I win, I take you, your crew, your ship, and everything on it to with as I see fit."
"Deal."
Jake jerked his head, and a crewman tossed Chrysaor a sword. The son of Medusa caught it and twirled it around in an impressive display of skill as he got a feel for the weight. Chrysaor jerked his head, and two dolphins tossed their Celestial bronze cutlasses to Jake, who also caught them and made a show of getting used to the feel.
In canon, Percy Jackson had his ass handed to him on a bronze platter, and Chrysaor made it look easy. We're talking about one of the most powerful demigods of the age, with half a decade of sword-fighting experience, on his home turf of the sea, granted with great physical abilities by the godly power in him, and he was soundly defeated.
In this specific instance, we're talking about a mortal with the soul of a demigod, but since it was established all the way back in the filler chapter about why Assassin!Percy isn't a girl when all his genetic material is coming from his mother as gods don't have DNA, demigod abilities are physical, coming from their bodies, Jake had no higher physical abilities than what was usual for those of Assassin lineage.
That is stay, ungodly stamina, being able to run for miles at top speed without slowing, climb massive structures, from buildings, to trees, to mountains, fight through hordes of men and women without tiring, swim for miles without drowning, and do all of those things in a single day while wearing full suits of armor and decked out with half a dozen different weapons.
Suffice to say, if you took the gameplay mechanic seriously, Assassins were some pretty OP guys.
Unfortunately, the abilities of an Assassin paled in comparison to that of a demigod, whose lineage was truly divine.
All of that was an over convoluted way of saying that Jake was fucked.
The boy pirate pointed his swords forward, and Chrysaor started circling. The crews back away, creating a large area for the duel. Of course, Jake wasn't an idiot. He knew the myth of this person, and it was clear he knew what he was doing with that sword. The way Chrysaor held it, the way he moved, his body language—he was superior here, and he knew it.
He was overconfident.
And that would be his downfall.
Jake charged forward at full speed, and Chrysaor just stepped to the side with ease, smirking under his helmet.
"Olay!" the immortal added for effect.
Jake ran right to the mainmast, grabbed the hook, kicked the lever, and went shooting up. Chrysaor growled, a strange sound with that helmet on, at being duped like that.
He barked orders at his crew, "None of you is to raise a hand against the mortals until I bring Jake's corpse back down here!"
Chrysaor sheathed his sword at his belt and started climbing up the hard way, but he did it with breathtaking speed and agility, bounding up the main mast like a gazelle. Down on the deck, Jake's pirates had no such intentions of restraining themselves, and their surprise attack against the dolphins, along with their still-superior numbers, made the ensuing second round of battle a short one.
Chrysaor heard the commotion down below, looked down to investigate—while he was just one handhold away from the platform Jake was on—and he cursed.
"Bloody pirates!"
"Damn straight!"
Chrysaor's head snapped up, but by then, Jake was already well in motion. The Golden Sword's body reacted on pure instinct, and that pure instinct cost him. His arms moved to block, losing his grip entirely, and he started to fall down to the deck, roughly seventy feet below. Jake plowed into the son of Medusa, running both of his swords through the arms and the chest, piercing the lungs and the ribs, filling Chrysaor's mouth with his blood.
They smashed onto the deck, and where a fall like that would easily kill a normal man, Jake was not a normal man, and Chrysaor was not a man at all.
"You…cheated…!" the Golden Sword gurgled.
"Pirate," Jake grinned. "Like I would take you on in a fair fight. You've got more experience and skill than I do, but you can still be distracted like any other thing, and that one moment is all I need."
And then the pirate turned serious. "On your way to Hell, I want you to beg forgiveness from all my men that you killed."
Jake ripped the cutlasses out and raked both of them across Chrysaor's neck, beheading the son of Poseidon. He turned to golden powder and blew away in a warm breeze.
The deck of the Running Frenchman was littered with bodies, both mortal and otherwise.
Jake exhaled shortly. "Alright everyone, the excitement is over. Time to clean up and see what kind of goodies we can find on the trireme still attached to our hull."
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Clean up was not as teary as on might have thought, even for the women in Jake's crew. They were pirates, dying was an occupational hazard, and getting too attached to anyone was folly. However, in the face of close attachments, losing someone was met with a short "Fuck!," and a short remembering statement.
All the bodies were simply tossed overboard, as there was no point in some special burial or funeral rite. To the pirates, simply going overboard was a funeral rite. To live on the sea, it was only right to eternally rest in the sea.
On the trireme, the pirates found a fortune. Gold, silver, jewels, paintings, clothes, weapons, antiques, artifacts, and more goodies. For all the men lost this day, the rewards were well worth it.
At least, in the mind of a pirate.
Speaking of artifacts…
"Captain!" a crewwoman called.
Jake went to the woman. "Aye?"
"Here, sir."
She handed Jake a large bronze ball, one that was covered in a pattern of lines.
Jake took it. "An Apple," he muttered. "If Chrysaor's been pirating the Mediterranean for hundreds and hundreds of years, I guess it makes sense he would've plundered either a Templar or Assassin ship with a Piece of Eden on it."
"What do we do with it, sir?"
"I'm going to through it overboard and forget we ever found it."
Much of the crew had been around to overhear the conversation, and none of them disagreed. Oh sure, Jake had told them all about the struggle of the Assassins and Templars, and what the Pieces of Eden could do, and such a power terrified the pirates.
Objects that could make them do things they didn't want to do? Hell no!
Anyway, Jake did just what he said he was going to do. He stood on the deck of the Running Frenchman, and hurled the large ball as far as he could. He watched it sail and hit the water with a bloop, and then he started panicking when the water started glowing a bright gold, and getting brighter, as if about to ex-
"HIT THE DECK!"
Even in the face of finding cover, it didn't do anyone any good. A massive shockwave of temporal energy stored in the Apple of Eden washed over the Running Frenchman, making the ship shudder and creak and rock.
When everything settled, the whole crew got worried when they saw clear skies, open water, and many islands in the distance…along with a trireme bigger than Chrysaor's—though still not as big as the Running Frenchman—approaching them.
On the ship's mainsail, a big wall of canvas, was the design of a hydra.
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Like I said, I've been playing Odyssey. Whenever I start something like that, I don't stop until I'm finished. Luckily, I am almost done, and when that happens, my full attention returns to this story and trying to get through to the end of this arc.
I'm running out of steam for AC:T, as is usual for when I don't work on it for a while. I'm thinking returning to Blood War, or finishing GEG. I don't know yet.
Anyway, Odyssey has been out for two months now, and if you haven't been reading wikis, watching gameplay, or have the game already and aren't that far in yet, well poop on you. They aren't really spoilers anymore at this point, but still. Knowledge of the higher story arcs in Odyssey ahead, and Kassandra will be the misthios, and Alexios will be Deimos.
Oh, and the ship approaching the Running Frenchman is the Hydra, Sage of the Gods of the Aegean Sea.
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