DISCLAIMER: All the characters except the OC's, belong to Rick Riordan.
Chapter 4: I get a young Padawan
The year turned hectic for Percy, once again.
His admittance into St. Marie's Academy was a great blessing to Percy. Unlike his previous schools, St. Marie's gave a much wider berth for sports and physical activities. Most schools don't even want to have an ADHD student register with them. If it's dyslexia, there would've been more leeway, but not ADHD and certainly not both.
But his performance in all the induction matches had earned him a seat at the academy, rather easily. With his enhanced physical abilities, he aced the physical tests with ease. Unlike the previous schools, instead of alienation, he was rather well-received for his talents in sports activities. Many of the sports coordinators approached him to try and induct him into their teams, but Percy doesn't have time for sports activities. He'd rather fight monsters or spend time learning grappling techniques at the studio than waste his time on games.
He soon became very much interested in the human anatomy lessons his coach would give him occasionally. Adding his fast reflexes and heightened senses, Percy quickly mastered striking and wrestling his opponents to the ground. He has to be extra careful with joint locks and chokes on opponents his size, lest he injures them severely.
Then came the mythical creatures.
He limited his night prowls to every weekend to sharpen his skills with his new sword. His agile footwork and reflexes enabled him to dodge lethal attacks and strike with a mid-ranged weapon, but there was no technique to his attacks. He just swung his sword in a blind arc, lacking flow in his patterns. Unlike his baseball bat wrapped in hideous snakeskin where he can just bash the monster until they stay down, the Celestial bronze sword was a completely different game. One wrong move and he could kiss his life goodbye. Elaine had already warned him about the deadliness of Celestial bronze to monsters as well as demigods.
With school, homework, and his physical training occupying his schedule, meeting Elaine had become few and far between. Whenever they had a chance to meet, it was mostly spent with mist training. He was now able to identify a deliberately applied mist and see through them, but manipulating the mist for his convenience was still far away.
While training his water powers and their form, he repeatedly made blunders for Elaine to let out an exasperated sigh every time.
"Percy, I told you to master one first. Two is pushing your limit." She said when he failed to hit the tree near the lake with a water spear. Percy had turned deaf to her complaint, too busy focusing on making two dagger-shaped water projectiles to stay afloat in his control. Even the barest disturbance caused him to miss his target by an enormous margin.
"B—but I was trying to attack from opposite directions. I...I only need more practice," he grumbled.
"Fine, do it again." she relented. "Don't restrict the water to follow your command. Imagine the target and let the water take its course."
He willed two water streams out of the lake and imagined them hardening around the edges till they formed his desired shape and form. Sweat coagulated on his forehead but he forged ahead. He imagined the hard edges sharpen till they compressed into dagger form and positioned them on his side, aiming at the tree straight ahead.
He lifted his arm to the height of the target and the shards shot forward like bullets. Halfway through, one of them lost its form and splashed on the tree trunk. The other one remained in the form but stuck halfway to the tree.
He growled in frustration.
Ever since he had learned that the human body consists of sixty percent water on average, his hands had itched to test out the theory to see if he could manipulate the water inside a living being. But Elaine had repeatedly warned him to never try it and Percy has the discretion and intelligence to understand a warning and avoided human test trials.
It was simple curiosity. He was a kid after all.
He has enough awareness that freshwater resists his command to a certain extent and that would certainly reduce with his control and age. But the water inside a human was not pure either. It would never come under his control. He tried his test on a stray dog, but just as he expected, nothing at all happened. He couldn't even sense anything inside the dog at all.
That made sense, at least. Poseidon was the god of Sea, not all liquids.
The water bolstered his strength but didn't make him invincible. It was a passive boon to be used strategically, not some handicap he could abuse without consequence. He'd be unstoppable otherwise.
But the roadblock made him use the moisture content in the air around a creature to trace them. That took a lot of focus and attention from him. It took his undivided attention to sense the water particles in the air around his classmates and it became even harder to sense the changes along with their movements. The continuous sensory usage drained him much faster than fighting monsters or any kind of water manipulation.
But short bursts of his sensory abilities didn't drain him as much as he expected. But there's a catch too; his senses only extended up to hundred meters around him.
He has spent most of his term reading many books in the school library and carried a journal regarding things he needs to look up or look out for. He read almost all the documents about Greek Mythology, Hellenic Greece, Mycenaean Greece, and Poseidon too, albeit grudgingly.
oOo
The first week of the second term passed relatively normal with classes and club activities. When he had been preparing to wing his last period for the day, he received a call to visit his homeroom teacher—Mrs. Thomson—in her office. He had fairly kept everything to himself at the new school and didn't cause any trouble either. He had submerged himself in activities and avoided the school bullies. So he couldn't understand the reason behind his summoning right away.
He reached the office to find his teacher talking to the school counselor, Mr. Adams. He knocked on the opened door to get their attention.
"Excuse me, Ma'am. I was asked to come here."
"Ah. Mr. Jackson, come on in." she beckoned him in and offered him a seat cheerfully. "Is everything in your class alright?" he nodded for her to continue. "We've called you here because we needed your help in a special matter."
"Special matter?" he asked cautiously.
"Mr. Jackson," she paused to look at Mr. Adams. Taking his nod as a signal, she continued, "from what we've learned from your records, you had both ADHD and dyslexia. Is that correct?" she sounded a bit apprehensive.
"Yes, Ma'am. I had trouble with those problems. I still do, but it's manageable for school activities. Counselors from my previous schools helped me overcome them."
"Can you tell us how long it took for you to gain control over this.." Mr. Adams asked, slightly intrigued at his response.
He was a tall man with distinctive features and a prominent nose. He was dressed professionally and steepled his fingers while observing him curiously. Percy took a breath to think about the answer.
"It took me nearly six months to bring it to an acceptable level; I can sit through a class now. I have been practicing this method for a while now, so I can't say about others."
The counselor exchanged a triumphant grin with his homeroom teacher.
"We need your help with the same matter, Mr. Jackson. You see, a new student has transferred to your grade this term. She also has the same difficulties you had. We were hoping you could help her overcome these problems as you once did. I was thinking to place her in your class." Mr. Adams informed him.
Percy thought it over and asked his earliest speculation.
"This new student, wouldn't happen to have both ADHD and dyslexia, right?" Once the counselor nodded his head, he continued.
"Sir, you do understand that I can only show her the methods and not guarantee that she can overcome this, right?" he called his reservations.
"We know, Mr. Jackson. but we thought that being in the company of someone who had gone through the same problems, but had overcome them would give her more motivation to do the work." it was his teacher who answered him.
"We don't need you to do it for free. If you manage to help her, I will consider it an extra credit in your report." Mr. Adams offered, confirming it with his teacher.
Percy considered their words.
There is a high possibility that this student is a demigod, considering both dyslexia and ADHD. If she is, her presence would bring more monsters to his school. Not that he couldn't handle them, but he'd rather avoid the school management and media.
Helping her might bring a little trouble to him for a period, but he could also gain a possible ally, a training partner, or a person to talk about things without hiding the facts. He was still a loner in his new school, despite his popularity in physical activities.
If nothing else, helping her would earn him extra credit. Percy was sold.
"Sir, I understand and I'd like to help too. But before that, could I meet her once? I just want to confirm if I'm the right person for this?" his request was sensible and fairly normal. He needed to be certain that she was a half-blood to gain maximum benefits.
Mr. Adams observed him for a while and nodded. "Meet me after the class, then. I'll arrange for a meeting with her." he agreed.
Percy reached Mr. Adams' office room just a few minutes after all his classes were finished. He entered the class and only saw Mr. Adams waiting there.
"Ah! Mr. Jackson, Please take a seat. Ms. McLean will be here soon." he gestured towards a chair.
"It's alright, sir."
There was a knock on the front door and a girl his age entered the office room. She appeared to have Native American descent with high cheekbones, copperish-brown skin, and long dark brown hair. She also had psychedelic eyes with multicolored iris'. What gained his attention was the restless aura radiating off her which confirmed her divine descent.
Yep, A demigod.
"Mr. Jackson, this is the student I talked to you about. Her name is Piper McLean. I hope you can help her." he introduced her.
"Of course, Sir. May I speak to her for a minute?" he asked Mr. Adams while his eyes stayed on the demigod before him.
"Yes, you may use this counselor room for your talk. I will come in fifteen minutes," he left.
As soon as Mr. Adams left them in the classroom, to let them get acquainted, the girl spoke. And her first words to him are...
"Please leave me alone. I don't want a babysitter."
oOo
For Piper McLean, her life was horrendous. She never knew her mother. Her father, the one and only Tristan McLean—a famous movie actor—didn't have enough time to spend with her. Her childhood had been spent with grandpa Tom who told her Cherokee stories and hoped she would be a great singer one day.
The servants took care of her most of the time. It was her father's secretary Jane, that looked after her necessities. it was obvious that Jane hated to look after a troublesome kid and the feeling was mutual. She had always interfered with Piper's time with her dad and sometimes even weaved lies to make her bad in front of him.
When she was five, Piper had noticed that her father paid her more attention when something troubling happened. So she started looking for troubles intentionally. Her troublemaker reputation grew along with the dad's fame, his time with her grew short because of his tight schedule. Before she knew it, the daughter-dad time became non-existent. Consequently, Jane was left with the responsibility to deal with her reputation and troubles, causing their ire for each other intense.
Add her ADHD and dyslexia to the mix, Piper's life has been hell.
Because of her troublemaking tendencies, she has been kicked out of the last three schools. She knew that getting kicked out of schools—grade schools, even—was not the way to get her dad's attention, but she couldn't help it.
How does she create trouble, you may ask? For Piper, it was easy. She stole things. Not actually stealing per se, she just convinced people to give expensive things to her without paying. She doesn't know how that happens but when she asks someone very nicely to give her something, they just did. After a while, they would remember what had happened, vehemently deny anything and everything and blame her for stealing.
How could a kid steal from grown-ups? You're a failure for a grown-up. She had wanted to scream.
Then there are those incomprehensible things she sees. Piper has seen many weird creatures around the town when she was traveling, but no one seemed to believe her. They kept saying that she was hallucinating or trying to get their attention. She's anything but an attention hog. She has to deal with her dad's fame and hated using the 'famous dad card' on other girls to get any attention.
Jane had been running out of schools to register her with, but with some recommendations, she got enrolled in St. Marie's in the second term. Her last incident which got her kicked out of the previous school mid-term involved talking to a dealer to make him give her a BWM. The dealer pressed charges for theft after realizing he had been tricked by her.
After carefully studying her report, the school management had offered to get someone to help with her 'issues'. She understood their intentions to let someone babysit her at the school. Before she could scoff and deny the proposal, Jane had already signed the papers necessary and stood up. She was informed her new babysitter had both dyslexia and ADHD too and would help her deal with them better.
Piper found it hard to believe. If her new babysitter was anything like her, he'd have a reputation as a troublemaker too. As if she needed someone with such a reputation on her back all the time.
Maybe I should ask him nicely to leave me alone. That had worked before and it might work this time too.
She arrived at the mentioned room after school hours and knocked on the door. "Come in." She heard Mr. Adams.
Piper entered the office and was surprised by her supposed-to-be-babysitter. The boy—probably her age—was tall with messy dark hair and emerald eyes and sharp features. She has heard about the guy from her classmates, talking non-stop about the mysterious Percy Jackson. He transferred to the school last term and was good at everything—academics and sports. He was lean with no baby fat for their age on his face.
"Piper McLean, meet Percy Jackson, the one who's going to help you. Mr. Jackson here had the same problems as you have. He will help you in this endeavor." he clapped his hands in glee.
While the teacher introduced them, she felt the boy's gaze on her. It was intense—Green eyes roved on her body—but surprisingly didn't make her repulsive. It was like Percy Jackson didn't care about her origins or her—lack of—good looks and was only observing her like a lab rat.
Once they were alone, she didn't miss a beat in asking him to leave her alone.
Just like everyone, the boy's—Percy's—eyes glazed over and nodded woodenly. He turned around and walked away. Just before he passed the door, he shook his head vigorously and strode back into the room. He took a seat at the table and appraised her once again.
"I've got to give it to you, that's some powerful persuasive power. Do you know about it beforehand?" he asked, eying her sharply.
"What's with everyone accusing me of something I didn't do? It wasn't me who took the things from the vendors!" she lashed out at the judgmental tone.
"Fine," he relented. "That confirms my suspicions." he declared.
Piper crossed her arms, indignant. "What? That I'm a trouble-maker and should be kicked out of this school. Look, I didn't come here for this." she stood up to leave the room.
"No. You're just like me!" he amended.
She turned on her heels, giving him a once over. "What do you mean? I'm a girl. Unless you forgot to mention something about you..." she smirked at his confusion. Percy didn't take her playful jab.
"I meant, I know about you." he declared.
"You don't know anything about me. We hardly met a few minutes ago," she complained, taking a seat before him.
"Yeah," he challenged. "You only know one of your parents," her jaw dropped, but she composed herself quickly. Anyone with detailed information about her father would know this.
"You have both ADHD and dyslexia." she rolled her eyes.
That's why I'm here, dummy!
"What does that have anything to do with this?"
"You see some supernatural phenomena that nobody else seems to notice around you." her eyes would've popped out of their sockets in astonishment this time if not for his next sentence.
"Lastly, you have this weird power that makes people do things for you. Am I right?" he concluded.
"H-how do y-you know about all this?" she stuttered. For a second, she thought this guy was stalking her, but let go quickly.
"Because I went through the same thing, not the last part though," he added hastily. "I'll explain everything to you, but not here. But know this, I'm here to help you with your problems, not to babysit you," he said plainly. Her ears turned pink at that.
"Sorry about that. When can you tell me about everything?" she hurriedly changed the topic to avoid embarrassment.
"Patience, my young Padawan. Are you free tomorrow?" he gave a one-sided smile that created a dimple on his cheek. She felt her cheeks heat up, probably embarrassed.
"Yes. And don't call me Padawan." she tried to snap back, but there was no bite to it.
"Whatever you say, my young Padawan. Come to this address tomorrow at three in the afternoon." his smirk grew into a full-blown smile. He handed her a piece of paper with an address to Central Park.
"OK"
"See you tomorrow then."
The next morning at the appointed time, Piper got down from her car and searched around for the familiar dark-haired classmate. Jane lowered the windows of the shotgun and called for her attention.
"Don't cause any troubles here. I don't have time for all that. And call the driver when you are finished." She warned her before driving away. Piper saw Percy at the lake and made her way to him.
"Hi," she thought whether it was some kind of a date, meeting a boy alone in a park. Her ears turned pink at that and she chided herself for it.
"Hey. Let us find a secluded spot to talk." he led them to the lake benches and sat down in one.
"So Piper, before I go into the nitty-gritty details, let me ask, What do you know about Greek mythology?" Piper fell into silence.
"I have some knowledge about them. My dad used to tell me about Cherokee and Greek stories. I did some research on them for one of his movies." she told him.
"Movies?" he raised a brow. Piper grimaced at her slip-up.
"Yeah, he's...um, a film actor." she lowered her head, waiting for his sudden outburst. She sneaked a peek at him when he continued as if nothing happened.
"Oh, okay. Now, don't panic and listen to everything I've to say, got it?" she nodded, grateful for his attitude. She concluded Percy was just being polite regarding her dad's fame.
"The weird creatures you see now and then, don't you think they're the same as you read in Greek mythology?" he asked in a roundabout way, but Piper got the gist of it, which made her even more bewildered.
"Are you saying that all those things are real and we're some kind of special humans that can see them?"
"Half points, my young Padawan. The truth is, you're a Half-Blood." he deadpanned.
"'Scuse you?" Piper was immediately on guard. She hated that word. She'd been called a half-blood too many times—half Cherokee, half white—and it was never a compliment. "Is that some kind of bad joke?"
"No," he denied. "You're a Demigod, Piper. Ring any bells?" he waited for a moment before forging on. "What did the Greek gods do in the ancient times when they visited the mortal world?"
"I don't understand what you're saying. Why does that even matter?" Percy rolled his eyes in annoyance at him.
"The gods used to fall in love with mortals and have children with them. The child grows up with the mortal parent and becomes a legend or dies fighting monsters. Both of us are children of gods."
"What kind of nonsense are you spouting?" she spluttered. Piper couldn't admit that this just confirmed some weird feeling she'd had for the past few years, arguments she'd had with her father about why there were no photos of her mom in the house, and why her dad would never tell her exactly how or why her mom had left them.
Percy let out an exasperated sigh. "You heard her, Elaine. I can't do this alone," he called at the lake. Piper thought someone would come out of a bush and laugh it off as a joke.
But she almost jumped out of her seat when a woman of nearly twenty years appeared out of the water, completely dry. She had the same gorgeous emerald eyes and long dark hair braided with green grass. But her clothes were made of plants and shells.
"It is true, child. You're a demigod. A child between a mortal and an Olympian god." Elaine, Piper assumed, said in a pleasant tone.
"What are you? How come you're completely dry when you stepped out of the lake." Piper choked out.
"I'm a freshwater nymph, Piper. A naiad. I live in this lake. The supernatural things you've seen are true. Your ability to charm speak is proof of that."
"...What? What charm speak?" Even though she asked this, Piper understood her life better than others. If there was one thing she sought an answer to, it was her ability to convince others.
"The power in your voice. Your ability to convince people to do your bidding, even against their conscience. This ability allows you to control other people by your words." Elaine explained everything gently.
"If you don't believe anything so far, then try to explain this." Elaine turned to Percy, who nodded and thrust his arm towards the lake.
The calm lake rippled as a stream came out of the lake and spiraled on his palm; a pocket-sized hurricane. Piper's eyes widened and her jaw dropped to the ground. Percy and Elaine wore satisfied smirks.
"That's so cool. How did you do that?" she exclaimed and stepped forward to grab his hand to see if he'd somehow rigged the entire thing.
"I'm a son of Poseidon, Lord of the Sea. Being his son allows me to tap into his domains and control water. Just like you inherited your charm speak from your mother." he said grudgingly.
"Oh. Who is my mother then?" she asked.
"Hard to say," Percy conceded. Whoever her mother was, Piper had no reason to think she'd be proud of a kleptomaniac daughter with petty problems.
"My guess is Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, she is the one of the few with charm speak ability." Elaine mused. Percy nodded.
"So the gods are really real, then? What about the monsters? Are they going to come after me like the stories?" her voice came out as a squeak.
"Err, yes. I'd say they come after you. But if you hit a monster just right, you can disintegrate them, send their essence back to Tartarus." Percy tried in a placating tone, which did nothing to calm down her nerves.
"Tartarus?"
"A huge abyss in the Underworld, where the worst monsters come from. Kind of like a bottomless pit of evil. Anyway, once monsters dissolve, it usually takes months, even years before they can re-form again" Elaine supplied.
"Why is that no one believes when I tell them about the monsters?"
"Piper," Percy said slowly. "It's the Mist."
"Missed...what?"
"M-I-S-T. It's a kind of veil separating the mortal world from the mythical world. Mortal minds—they can't process strange stuff like gods and monsters, so the Mist bends reality. It makes mortals see things in a way they can understand; like their eyes might pass Elaine as a normal teenager or this," he pointed at the water spiral atop his palm. "as a plain water bottle."
Percy then proceeded to explain the truths of the mythological world after Elaine left—disappeared under the lake. He explained the monsters seeking demigods through their aura and the necessary conditions to mask when required.
He gave her a detailed explanation of ADHD and dyslexia and the processes to handle them better. Piper finally learned the cause of her disabilities. She had been stressed about being called a lair and attention-seeker repeatedly. The fear of the unknown had made her scared to breathe at night. Now there were people like her who understood things better and she didn't feel alone anymore.
Though she was afraid of monster attacks on her, there was nothing she could do, except pray. Pray that she wouldn't get caught before she learned her way around them. She had asked Percy to teach her fighting, and develop her demigod abilities to calm her jitters, but he told her to prioritize aura concealing and gave instructions about them. He had also warned her about calling out the mythical beings.
"Why is that?" she didn't see a problem in that. What could happen by calling a monster by its name?
"By calling a mythical creature in the mortal world, you're inexplicably allowing them into this plane. In exchange to let you 'see' them clearly, you become vulnerable to their senses. A creature with malicious intent would seek you for an easy meal." he told her spookily, raising goosebumps.
He then took out two books from his bag and explained without missing a beat. She stared at him, gobsmacked. Percy looked calm and collected when talking about monsters and death and it was freaky. Perhaps this was the difference between an expert and a novice.
"The first one will help you to conceal your aura. It will help you with ADHD too. This is my journal with all my trials and errors, it'll help you a lot faster than I. That is the first important thing you need to learn. Otherwise, it's not safe for you to be out in the open. But please don't lose it. It's my hard work of the last few years and would be a pain to rewrite everything from scratch." he pointed at the paper-bound book.
"The other one is Iliad, with detailed knowledge of Greek mythology. It's in ancient Greek. I know how hard it is to read books with dyslexia, but ancient Greek comes naturally to demigods. I can't help you with dyslexia. The more you read, the better it gets." he stood up.
"I believe it's time for us to part. The stuff in these books can be pretty complicated, so don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions. Better to ask the way than go astray. See you at school." he advised.
"Ok. Thank you for helping me with this." she pulled out a flip phone to call her chauffeur. Percy stiffened up beside her and watched their surrounding warily.
"Oh, one more thing," he said. "Avoid cellphones until you mask your aura. There is something about monsters tracking us through cellphone signals. You send out a signal like 'here I am, please rearrange my face'. So, I'd rather avoid them if I were you." he warned, his sarcastic quip lost on her.
"OK," even she could hear the tremble in her voice, much less Percy. Her cellphone felt like a grenade in her hands.
oOo
The next few months in the term were hectic for Piper.
Unlike Percy, she has a good instructor to teach her stuff. So just within a month of meditation, Piper found traces of her aura and started retracting it. Though her aura was not as strong as Percy's—being a restless son of Poseidon—it took her four months to completely conceal it at will. Elaine had helped her identify key concepts within her charm speak ability. She took Piper under her wing and considered her a little sister. Having no siblings her entire life, Piper cherished her time with Percy and Elaine.
The intermittent aura concealment helped Piper keep her restlessness under control. By the end of the term, she received compliments and encouragement from students and teachers alike for losing her troublemaking tendencies. They encouraged her to continue her hard work. Though Percy too received praises from the student counseling advisor and Mrs. Thompson for helping a troubled student, he remained stoic and denied help more than introductory and gave the total credit to her determination.
Overcoming dyslexia was another matter. It couldn't be said that Piper was a slacker, but dyslexia made English words look like tangled spaghetti to her. Unlike aura-masking, she was not in hurry to perform better in class; hurrying wouldn't solve a thing either. She decided to get by in class with a 'B' wouldn't be too bad and shifted her attention to her divine ability.
Charm speak.
Elaine had became her omniscient textbook regarding the mythological world. Though Elaine can't charm speak, she had seen and heard it in action many times since ancient times and proved to be resourceful. Piper has grasped the core understanding of her ability and could actively charm mortals now. Percy too had volunteered to be her test subject to train his will and resist charming techniques on him. She also had an unwilling test subject back at home, Jane. She has made Jane do embarrassing things in public to humiliate her. but Elaine was against such actions and reprimanded her for her vindictive behavior.
"B-but she has put me through all the troubles.." she complained.
"No matter, you lass." Elaine rebuked. "You're a higher lifeform. Using your ability against a helpless mortal is unreasonable and plain wrong."
After a royal earful of do's and don'ts, Piper promised to never use her ability on mortals if there was another way.
She experienced her first monster attack on the school ground after she had succeeded in masking her aura completely. A half-snake half female monster—dracaena—passed by her school and caught sight of her. At first, Piper was deceived and mistook the monster for an elderly passing by, but the mist failed quickly with her acknowledging the creature and calling it out, drawing the snake-woman's attention. She'd have smacked herself if not for the slithering snake-woman approaching her.
Her knees trembled in trepidation, but she refused to flee like a child and stood her ground. She was at a handicap too; her charm speak is ineffective against the same gender. The snake-lady hefted her spear and slithered towards her—agonizingly slow—to stretch her nerves even further. She dodged the first attack and circled the monster.
She screamed, taunted, and boasted, all while dodging the attacks with inhuman speed she didn't recognize she was capable of.
"To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people!" she poured all her grievances to curse the snarling snake-woman. "I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQ." she added to irate the monster.
One of the first lessons Percy had taught her about self-preservation was delay; instead of running away or charging blindly.
"When faced with an absolute disadvantage with no hope at all, what you need to do is drag the time. Even if there were no reinforcements at all, you should delay the time." he had told her while teaching survival.
The longer the battle went on, the higher the probability of the change in the situation would be. If the result was determined with one move, even if there were reinforcements, it would be too late. An uncertainty in circumstance was what she needed the most.
Right now, that's what she was doing.
Percy, bless his soul, came running into the now deserted school ground hurling abuses and taunts to draw the creature to him. Though the dracaena put up a fight, he dispatched it with a bronze sword that came out of nowhere quickly. The only thing left behind as proof of the monster's existence was the heavy spear made of bronze tip and a wooden pole.
"It's yours. Your first spoil of war." he handed the spear to her after a thorough check. It was little heavy and too long for her to wield, but she was grateful for a weapon, nonetheless. She had been helpless and hopeless a while ago.
Percy reluctantly agreed to teach her self-defense when she pestered him. It was high time and she couldn't stay hidden from monsters anymore. He had considered exhaustion to keep her off training before but that wasn't feasible anymore. Though she was eager to start training, Percy had a disturbed look that dwindled her excitement.
After teaching her the method to channel her internal energy to her limbs for mobility, he issued a warning.
"Once you start channeling your energy throughout your body, your aura grows along with your acknowledgment of your heritage and the mythological world." he went on. "Consequently the monsters coming after you would increase in strength and number inevitably."
"Furthermore, you gain experience the more you fight, and the better your control over your ADHD and scent. This is a never-ending cycle." she understood the gist once he told her the key points. This is a quagmire, and once you step into it, you're in it for life, unable to extricate yourself.
She joined the same combat studio as Percy and joined under the same coach for self-defense training with her dad's permission. The possibility of a potential kidnap for ransom won him over to let her join the studio. After the induction match, the coach concluded that she was well suited for jiu-jitsu using grappling and handling armed or weaponless opponents. She studied and trained with Percy and under her coach's encouragement, decided to participate in competitions to gain experience and promote her ranking.
Regarding school matters, despite being a dyslexic, Piper managed to eke out 'B' in her grades, with ADHD slightly her control and received compliments from her teachers for her progress. Percy taught her ancient Greek in the library every day whereas he studied Latin, which was a language she thought none would use nowadays.
She was satisfied with the current turn of events which occupied her to the brim with no time to mope around the house about her problems. She stopped craving her dad's attention with troubles when she'd found two siblings in Percy and Elaine and a mother figure in Sally Jackson.
Now I just have to find a way to stop that smartass from calling me Padawan.
xXx
A/N: This pairing is full of possibilities for the future. And let's see if it could become a roadblock for PercyxAnnabeth.
