Deciphering Jake: Pt. 2
We hit 1.3k in the Favs and Follows last chapter. Awesome work, ladies and gentlemen!
Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or AC
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Lou Ellen was alone in her private forest cabin, lying on her bed, Kira the Husky puppy curled up on her chest, while she absentmindedly twirled a finger through the animal's fur.
The witch girl was staring up at the ceiling, enchanted to show the brilliant night sky….The same night sky that Virgil and Claudia, Jake and Kassandra, and Cheyenne and Zoё had spent many an intimate moment under. Well, Jake and Kassandra only had one night, but they had gone all the way. The other two couples, while also having had sex, had their fair share of simple, romantic nights.
Lou Ellen and Percy Jackson? Not so much.
To be fair, they really hadn't had that much time to date with how busy they'd been; their relationship started in the middle of the Lightning Thief quest, and before they could do anything else, Percy was kidnapped and Lou shuddered as she remembered what she had been told, and then after that they had gone straight to Rapid City where the remnants of the Brotherhood were at, and Percy had more or less completely dedicated himself to the cause.
Training, training, teaching, mentoring, teaching, teaching, training, mentoring, studying the Bible, and more teaching were basically all that Percy did. He never took Lou out for a date, bought her dinner, or anything.
Granted, they did share a bed for all those months, so that was a pretty big thing by anyone's standard, but they hadn't done anything bigger than spoon. No touching, no playing, nothing frisky. Hell, there hadn't even been a time in which Lou had woken up to a boner poking her butt.
The most sexual thing that had happened between them was when she woke up to a diaper that had not been used as necessarily intended, in that it kept the sheets clear of blood.
That wasn't even sexual in the first place, so that should tell you all you need to know about Lou Ellen and Percy's more intimate relationship.
Still, she really couldn't do any kind of complaining. Her boyfriend was strictly adherent to a religion that strictly prohibited any kind of sex or sexual acts between any people that weren't married, and the marriage in question had to be between a man and a woman.
At least, that's what she understood. Lou Ellen actually hadn't done any kind of Bible study beyond conversations here and there with Percy.
But anyway.
Besides the religious aspect—and she wasn't sure if this was state law or federal law—but she wasn't allowed by law to even have any kind of sexual encounter with anybody, boy, girl, or otherwise until she was like, 17 or something. Since she was only 14, she had three more years to go until she was legally allowed by the government to do anything frisky with Percy.
She did and didn't understand that, because yeah, young teens weren't exactly ready for the miracle of childbirth or the mission of childrearing, but at the same time: how in the hell was the government going to stop kids from getting it on, when they couldn't even stop the illegal sex trade?
Answer: they couldn't.
The only real barrier to underage sex was morality, principles, and ethics, things to be taught and instilled by the parents, which, somewhere up the line, came from religion. So, in essence, what prevented underage sex and pregnancy was adherence to God's Word.
God, the ultimate cockblock.
Lou had an ADHD moment and wondered what the female equivalent of cockblocking was, and summoned one of her books off the shelves. The book's title read Urban Dictionary: Voice Command Edition.
Lou opened it up and asked, "What's the female equivalent of cockblocking?"
The answer came fading onto the page in Ancient Greek so that she could read it.
Clam jam.
She snickered to herself and sent the book back to the shelf, Kira titling her head to the side in confusion over what had just happened. Lou Ellen patted the puppy's head and conjured up a dog treat, and Kira devoured it with gusto. The witch settled back onto her bed and returned to her ruminations.
Effectively, she was jealous, and was feeling left out.
It was completely and totally unfair of her, she was just a kid after all, where Percy was effectively a grown man, one that had been married, and had children of his own, two of which are now alive and probably on their way to California by now, and was the leader of a global shadow organization of professional killers that performed their art in the name of freedom and free will.
Percy had responsibilities and commitments elsewhere that were a lot more important than a fourteen-year-old bedwetter.
Lou Ellen frowned as she thought of herself like that, as a teenage bedwetter. When she took that and matched it up against a teenage non-bedwetter who was the reincarnation of the brother of one of the most iconic Assassins in history, was the reincarnation of one of the most iconic Assassins in history that also doubled as a devoted husband and dedicated father, and was the reincarnation of the Grandfather of America, along with an extensive list of accomplishments and titles therein, Lou Ellen really felt inadequate for her boyfriend.
She flopped backwards onto her pillow with a huff. "Urg, being a teenage girl going through puberty sucks."
Kira let out a short yip.
"Oh? And what would you know, O Wise Puppy?"
"Yip, yip!"
"Well, you see, that might work for dogs, but it's a little different with human girls."
"Yip."
"You watch your mouth, young lady," Lou Ellen threatened. "I can still spank you."
Kira covered her face with a paw and lowered her tail with a whine, before adopting a happy pant accompanied with a wag. Lou Ellen reached out and gave her dog an affectionate head rub and scratched behind her ears, eliciting a thumping back foot on the witch's stomach.
Lou stopped her ministrations with a sigh, and Kira got comfy on her chest.
"Yip!"
"Hey, it's puberty. Sexual thoughts and desires are a given. It's only natural that I want to have sex with Percy at this point in my life."
"Well, is it that you actually love Percy, or is that you're just infatuated with him? You said it yourself, you're a girl going through puberty, and you've got sex on the brain. Are you sure you're attracted to Percy for Percy, or is it his body and power that's drawing you to him? Demigoddesses are instinctually attracted to powerful half-bloods, after all."
Lou Ellen frowned at the questions presented by her dog, and as she pondered on the answers, she was really starting to feel confused, and like a bad person.
She wanted to say she loved Percy, but the rational part of her said that she was way too young to know what love was, and she that she was a hormonally driven teen machine. But she had also shared a bed with him for nine months, and he had been there the exact moment she had woken up and gone to change out of her wet diaper, only to discover her period had happened during the night.
Percy had taken complete control of the situation, appointing Rachel, the oldest female Assassin present at the Rabid City bureau, to help Lou with what she needed, and then proceeded to take literally everyone else at the Farm out for a hike, giving Lou Ellen all the privacy she needed to handle her newfound situation.
Percy had also brought her completely into his fold, teaching her the Creed and the Word, placing trust in her, and confidence. He had helped her come to grips with her bedwetting, helping her accept it and realize that it was only a tiny, tiny price to pay in the face of her outstanding magical power.
Percy had shown her compassion, kindness, and love the likes of which Lou Ellen had never seen or received before, certainly not from her mother, nor from peers—fellow campers, fellow freaks in a sense, even avoided her—and not even her own dad.
He had made some great strides in the past two years, and Lou Ellen could definitely say she was much closer to him now, but her childhood had been kind of an awkward one since Dad didn't have a clue as to how to raise a baby girl that could levitate her alphabet blocks and draw sigils in piles of baby powder.
Granted, there probably wasn't anything that could adequately prepare a new dad for that kind of excitement, so leeway had to be permitted.
The more and more Lou Ellen kept thinking about her time with Percy, the more her admiration, adoration, and love of him kept growing. The witch was coming to realize how much his opinion of her mattered, and she also realized how much Percy needed her. With all these memories of past lives and things lost banging around in his head, she was a constant that he needed, a rock to ground himself with, a shoulder to lean on, because she knew these past lives.
She knew about Faris, Virgil, Jake, Cheyenne, Peter, and while she knew about the Sixth Life, she knew nothing beyond how it took place during WWI. Because of this knowledge, she was someone Percy could confide in.
On the roll that her mind was on, with the confidence mounting, Lou Ellen came to the conclusion that with all that Percy had done for her, everything that he had shown her, taught her, and shared with her—for gods' sake, he had come completely clean with her about every detail regarding Nero—it was her duty and responsibility to be there for him during all the trials to come with his Past Lives.
If love was there, it would certainly bloom in full, and if not, if the gods or God had someone else for the both of them, then Lou Ellen would make damn sure she was Percy's best friend.
However, she still wanted some closure as to what they were to each other at this point in their lives, and a pressure at her backside made a question to determine this status popped into her head, conveniently enough at the same time the proximity spells around her cabin went off, telling her that Percy was approaching.
Lou Ellen ran to the bathroom to take care of business, and after she was done, she threw open the door just as Percy raised his hand to knock.
The demigod blinked. "Hello, there."
"Hi," Lou chirped. "If I was fully incontinent, would you change my diapers?"
And this where Percy having the experience of several grown men was a tremendous help to the situation, because instead of staring at her like a set of eyes had grown into existence upon her cheeks, he picked up on what she was truly asking not even a second after the last syllable stopped vibrating through the air.
"Lou Ellen Williams. I know that me being a lot of different people with a lot of different personal connections makes it seem like your place in my life is a complicated one, but it isn't. You are a girl that I romantically love, and you've helped me in ways that I think no else presently on this earth could, and for that I'm immeasurably grateful."
Lou Ellen's heart practically soared all the way up to the moon.
"That being said," her heart lurched in its flight, "yes, I would change your diapers if I had to."
Lou's heart went right back up.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Even though it was summer, it would still look strange for a couple of kids to waltz into the Library of Congress asking for books on American history, so it was Percy, not Lou Ellen, in a training exercise on Mist manipulation, that disguised them both as young adults in their early 20s.
To anyone asking, they were doing research for a school assignment.
In no time at all, Percy and Lou Ellen were sitting at their own little table, a respectably sized tome between them that was simply titled America: Her Summarized History. Lou Ellen put her hand on the book, and Percy did as well. The witch began chanting softly, and at the end of her incantation, she and Percy seized as every page in the book was downloaded into their brains.
Who needs to spend hours reading when you can just use magic to upload the whole text into your head, page by page?
"I really hate being right sometimes," Percy muttered as what he just read settled into place.
The country had been off to a tremendously rocky start, with the Whiskey Rebellion taking place barely seven years after the end of the Revolution, George having to come in with the army to bring back order. Then, once George decided to retire from the presidency, the nation fell.
At least, as far as Jake's views on it went.
The Federalists and Anti-Federalists came about with conflicting views on the Constitution and how it should be handled. At least with them, a compromise was found in the Bill of Rights which established the separation of powers between the states and the federal government.
Which, of course, was eventually shat all over.
Per Jake's view, as soon as a government as large as the one that governs an entire nation has disagreements on anything, the nation was ruined. The divisive thoughts bred animosity between the two parties, and the losing side would become bitter, the winner being smug, which would further serve to create division. The conflicting and clashing views spelled doom as far as Jake was concerned, and could one not say it showed?
Hell, even George said that political parties were going to be the death of the country, and that became so strongly evident during the mid-1800s.
From what Percy had just uploaded into his brain from Lou's magic, the Civil War and the following Reconstruction were the absolute most polarizing events in the nation's history, with animosity from those times carrying strong to the present day.
The Trail of Tears was something Jake had predicted long ago, and so Percy didn't dwell on that time at all, and instead focused his energies on the Civil War and its facets.
Jake had been against slavery, but he also recognized that freeing the slaves that were currently in servitude, and those that were being brought over, was not going to be good for them. The slaves didn't know the land, the people, the customs, the language, or about any other livelihood beyond farming. Making them free without first arming them with knowledge of the country they now resided in would've been like tossing a fish onto land and watching it flop around to see if it would somehow develop lungs.
Percy, through Jake, was also appreciating a morbid sense of irony in regards to the Civil War: the colonies go to war because their parent government is screwing them over, and they're heroes. The South goes to war because their parent government is screwing them over, and they're villains.
Percy was also left rubbing his temples at all the fire going on that fanned the flames that led to the eruption of the war.
The Tariff of 1828 forcing South Carolina to divert the money it made from its cotton to other states and Northern industries; the Vesey Plot, in which Denmark Vesey, a slave, was discovered planning a violent revolt and he and his followers were executed; Nat Turner's actual revolt, killing 60 white people, which got himself and over a hundred other blacks killed; South Carolina's Ordinance of Nullification; the innumerous abolitionist movements demanding Congress end slavery there and now, also encouraging slaves throughout the South to either escape or revolt; and so many elections and demands, and laws, and movements that one could spend their whole life studying every facet of the Civil War and still not cover it all.
From Jake's point of view, he was right. He had once told Connor that the country might last a hundred years before it collapsed, and it lasted almost 90. 1775 was when the colonies became a nation, and 1860 was when everything finally came to a head. South Carolina invoked its Constitutional right to secession in the face of more Northern antagonism, and the legendary event finally came to pass.
Percy's views of America evaporated then, because as far as he cared, that was it. The country died, everything he worked for was ruined, and the idea the Founding Fathers had was finally trampled upon.
After the Civil War, it was just a downhill slope.
Lincoln was assassinated which led to the severity of Reconstruction; about 50 years later the country entered into one of the top wars in all of history, and 20 years after that the country's economy—and the world's—plummeted, which led to FDR signing into action several emergency powers and offices through his First and Second New Deal, which, for the times, were good things that got the nation going in the right direction, but after those times ended, the new powers and stations the federal government assumed should have been ceded and ended.
Instead, the government kept these powers, and by proxy, kept the dependency of the people squarely upon them, ensuring the strong, centralized federal institution that was so feared during the country's founding.
With that new authority, they've run wild, especially the Supreme Court. With their station as "interpreters" of the Constitution, they've taken the words therein and twisted them around to fit their agenda, especially the 14th Amendment, whose sole purpose was to protect freed blacks from Southern intents to deny them citizenship rights. That's the only thing the 14th Amendment is for.
Instead, the Supreme Court took the 14th Amendment and applied to whatever they wanted. The short version is that the states had laws in place, and suits eventually went all the way up the ladder and the 14th Amendment was ass-raped in application. Never mind the fact how the Supreme Court has been abusing its station by listening to cases that have nothing to do with the Constitution.
Hamilton's Federalist Papers state that the Supreme Court can only hear cases about laws "expressly contained" in the Constitution. The laws in question in Lawrence v. Texas, Griswold v. Connecticut, Loving v. Virginia, Plyler v. Doe—just to name a few—had nothing to do with the Constitution, and yet all, and more, were brought under the not-at-all broad umbrella of the 14th Amendment, which applied purely to the rights of freed slaves.
While on the subject of the Constitution, the Jake in Percy was shaking his head and cursing a blue streak to the moon.
The 1st Amendment was bullshit, inviting far too much trouble and turmoil.
The 2nd was absolutely necessary, more now than ever before with all the power and authority the federal government has assumed, especially with the big push nowadays for gun reforms.
The 3rd seemed asinine, since the soldiers of the Union were deployed all over Europe and Asia.
The 4th was bullshit, restricting the actions of law enforcement to having to wait for warrants, giving suspects time to clear out and hide things, while also providing for incriminating and crucial evidence to the convictions of criminals to be thrown out.
The 5th was meh, but the eminent domain thing was bullshit.
The 6th was good.
The 7th was good.
The 8th was bullshit. Due to its restrictions, criminals had nothing to fear from the law. A life-sentence is prison? Ooh, scary.
The 9th and 10th Amendments were crucial to the separation of power between state and federal, which meant they were both wholly ignored.
The 11th was wonky, protecting states from lawsuits filed by non-residents on the in-question state, but the second part of the amendment, protecting the states from lawsuits filed by foreigners, really begged the question of how any illegal immigrants were winning court cases.
The 12th was good because now it brought with it at least a small bit of unity in the Oval Office.
The 13th Amendment was good, but the cost to get there was arguably too high.
The 14th was good, but as previously stated, was being taken way out of context.
The 15th was good, if not a little morbidly humorous to Jake.
The 16th was deplorable because it dealt with money.
The 17th was a direct cause for the state of Union today, because it enabled Senators to be popularly elected by the people, which, on paper, was what America was about, but what it really did was open the door for the politicians to lie to our faces and fill our ears with bullshit so we reelect them.
The 18th had been retarded and moronic, giving rise to a wave of organized crime and corruption that had yet to sort itself out, and never would.
The 19th was bullshit based on Jake's view, because things got muddy enough with just men casting votes, but women added a whole new stain to it all; it also provided the politicians a bigger base for lies.
The 20th was meh, just dealing with term dates.
The 21st was good because it got rid of the 18th.
The 22nd was ratified in direct opposition of FDR, which made Jake happy because that bastard was arguably the root cause for the out-of-whack power balance in the present Union.
The 23rd was bullshit, granting DC a place in the Electoral College which did nothing besides add more fuel to the dumpster fire.
The 24th was purely indicative of how much the Civil War had fucked the country.
The 25th was meh, talking about presidential succession and the VP office being vacant.
The 26th was meh, just establishing the 18-year-old voting age.
The 27th was total bullshit, dealing with Congressional salary. The fact that it took over 200 years to ratify was a pretty good indicator of just stupid it really was.
So that was Jake's, and by proxy's, Percy's, thoughts on the Constitutional Amendments, and the state of the government today. Faris and Virgil's opinions were revolving entirely around the religious aspects.
Jake had been, by modern definition, agnostic. He had been raised Christian, but hadn't really bought into the faith for no higher reason than he just didn't. Of course, his higher knowledge of the existence of the Greco-Roman and Egyptian deities didn't help steer him in any one direction, and so he was on the fence with the religious aspects of the country.
The other two lives were utterly horrified.
The "separation of church and state" idea that came to light from Thomas Jefferson's 1802 letter to a Connecticut Baptist church did not compute with Faris and Virgil. "Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD," straight from the Book of Psalms, and the 13th chapter of Romans teaches that government is a God-ordained institution, so for all these in America that are happening—things that hopefully do not need in-depth explanation for readers of such a story as this—things sanctioned by the government, it reminded Faris and Virgil of all the times Israel turned towards idols and away from God…
And had their asses yanked from their bodies.
Now, if not for Jake, Faris and Virgil wouldn't have a care for America, but the pirate's investment and hope for the country was tying into the latter two's religious, and making a big conflict in Percy.
He wanted to wash his hands of what the nation had become, while at the same wanting to kickstart the official Fourth Great Awakening to get it going back in the right direction, and this warring of wants was driving a spike through his head.
And then a soft, warm hand was holding his.
"Percy," Lou Ellen said calmly.
He looked at her, slightly unfocused.
"I've got a pretty good idea of what's going on in there since I know you. You want to just walk away and move on, but you also want to put everything back together. It's the human and the Christian in you. There's something else in there, Percy, something you probably forgot after 80 years of not being one. Percy, you're an Assassin."
A bell went off in Percy's head at the word, and with that chime came clarity.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The politics, religion, the controversy, the complications, all the back and forth arguing and internal warfare just vanished as Lou Ellen's reminder of who he was.
After 80 years, he supposed he had forgotten.
He fought for the freedom of mankind to make their own choices in all things they did. He fought against subjugation, restriction, tyranny, and institutions of men that would deny other men their rights. That pursuit went beyond everything else baring his family.
He worked in the dark to serve the light.
He was an Assassin.
"Lou Ellen," Percy said. "Thank you."
The witch beamed. "Happy to help!"
"Let's go. We have a shadow organization of professional killers to check up on."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Yeah, it took ten days to get to the 2k mark, and then not even two hours to get to here. These past two chapters were more of a beating than what I thought they were going to be, but we're through it now.
Catching up with the Assassins next chapter and we're heading to Greece for a story-changing event.
Also, because I have no doubt I won't have the chapter out by this Thursday, the 24th, you all get to tell me happy birthday five days in advance.
Yep, birthday's this Thursday, and party's the following weekend, so it might actually be a while before the next chapter, and considering how lackluster I feel this one is, it's the next chapter I shall consider my birthday present to y'all, especially since it's the chapter before the Prelude to the Fourth Life chapter.
Fav, Follow, and Review!