The Divine form of a god, or in this case, a goddess, was a concept Percy was not new to. According to Annabeth, it was the form a god took whenever all of their divine essence was gathered into one place. So much as laying eyes on an immortal's divine form was enough to annihilate any mortal, or demigod, who was arrogant enough to do so. The son of Poseidon had to have experienced it at least twice now.
Thus, when he saw Artemis's body start to suddenly glow, he didn't need Thalia's quickly shouted out warning of "Cover your eyes!" to turn his head and, well, cover his eyes while hanging onto the tree he was standing behind. He was grateful he had decided to make that particular decision.
When Artemis revealed her divine form, the light from the resulting explosion was enough to cause spots to appear all over his field of vision, even with his eyes closed. The tree he was standing behind also doubled as a kind of a shock barrier to protect him from the force of the wind from the explosion, one that would have undoubtedly sent him flying had he not been standing behind the tree.
It would take around another several seconds until the light would finally die out. Even then, Percy made sure to wait a few more seconds before finally opening her eyes.
Percy took that as an indication that it was safe to peek his head out from behind his tree. He took that opportunity to take a look around.
Only to be greeted with very obvious signs of carnage.
Large strips of seared ground jutted out in every direction. Somewhere a short distance away, a large patch of the trees seemed to have been sliced down, fallen pine trees laying upon one another in a mismatched pile of lumber, having miraculously not piled onto any of the Hunters laying atop it, most of whom seemed to be unconscious. The ones who weren't seemed as if they were waking up after a long nap. Two of the trees nearby looked like they had been blown through.
But something very crucial was missing from the battle scene. Or rather, a few crucial things.
"Um, where did Artemis go?" he hears Grover ask from somewhere behind him.
Percy just shrugs, taking a look around.
Indeed, the Hunter goddess, as well as the Japanese redhead and his girlfriend, had completely disappeared.
The Hunters were beginning to arouse from their unconsciousness. They all seemed to freeze for a few seconds, as if attempting to recollect themselves, before then getting down to business. They rounded up the two demigods and satyr while two of them ran back to the camp, running off into the distance as if instinctively knowing in which direction it was.
"Come, we must quickly move to a different place," Percy hears Zoe, the Hunters' lieutenant, says, jabbing a finger into his shoulder to grab his attention. "If Lord Apollo comes and sees us and the forest like this, he'll-"
It was at that exact moment that a very large, very bright light suddenly flooded the sky. Percy, Thalia, Grover, Zoe, and the other Hunters immediately turned to its source.
"Avert your eyes!" Zoe exclaims, turning to the ground and covering her face. "Not until he parks!"
Not until he what? Percy thinks to himself as he follows Zoe's action.
The light floods his eyes, even through his eyelids, as it gets closer to him. The temperature in the air seemed to rise to the point where he felt as if his clothes were about to melt right off of him. Then, just as quickly as it came, it all went away. The heat, the light, everything.
Then an unusual noise reached his ears.
The sound of a pair of chirps, as if from a Maserati, rings through the air.
Percy slowly opens his eyes.
The first thing he sees is a car, glowing very brightly, parked on the ground in front of him. There was no snow at all around it, as if it had all melted off. Standing right by the driver-side door was a very handsome, very tall male, possibly no more than 17 or 18, with sandy-blonde hair and blue eyes.
Percy's hand inched towards the pen in his pocket. For a moment, he was afraid that it might've been Luke, but the figure's face was free of any scars. Plus, the smile he flashed was…too bright.
Zoe lets out a quiet huff before bowing her head slightly.
"Lord Apollo," she greets.
The man, god, just flashes a grin at her, taking off his sunglasses as he takes a moment to look around.
"Well, looks like…almost everyone is here," he says. "That's great! That means we can go as soon as those siblings get here! Which I hope they are?"
Apollo turns to Zoe, who had already lifted her head to meet the god's eyes.
"Yes, Lord Apollo, they will be here shortly," Zoe says with the most deadpan expression Percy had ever seen on the Hunter lieutenant.
"That's great!" Apollo says with a hearty laugh. "That means we have a bit of time before we must get going. So…"
The god takes a look around, humming to himself at the sight of obvious carnage all around him.
"Can anyone tell me what in Zeus's name happened here and where my sister is?"
"You're an idiot. Actually, not even that. Like, not even Shinji was half this bad."
"Yes, thank you, Archer. I think I got that the first thousand times you said that."
"Three Noble Phantasms in the span of less than an hour. Are you suicidal? Wait, don't answer that, actually. I thought you'd tone it down a bit after the War ended but you're still as impulsive as ever."
Shirou just sighs, lying flat on his back with his hands behind his head on the sand underneath him.
When the redhead woke up, it was to the familiar sight of a sky, splashed with the purple, orange, and yellow colors of dawn. Clouds hung perpetually in the sky, though they were much too thin and spread out to keep the rays of the sun from reaching the sand below. In every direction around Shirou, sand stretched on infinitely in an endless desert, complete with swords stabbed into the ground scattered everywhere for as far as the eye can see. They always reminded him of gravestones in a way.
It was definitely an unorthodox setting, that was for sure. But it was strangely calming, too.
Unfortunately, it wasn't the only thing he had woken up to.
"Hey, are you listening?"
"Yeah…totally."
"..."
The redhead turns his head to his partner, standing a short distance away.
The world he was standing in wasn't…completely perfect, per say. It held a pretty noticeable imperfection, that being the sudden shift in the appearance of the landscape to his left.
Up above, there was a large circle in the sky where the bright orange and yellows of the sky bled into a darker, muddy brown. The clouds increased in density, as did the haziness of the air, casting somewhat of an eerie gloominess over the land underneath it and the many sharp-bladed weapons stuck into the ground under it.
Sitting in the exact center of that circle was a tall, tan-skinned figure with shaggy, unruly white hair. He was dressed in a tight-fitting, black bodysuit with a red, long-sleeved overcoat over it and long, black pants. His dark steel eyes were fixated directly on the redhead a distance away.
A small portion of the Reality Marble belonged to this individual. Around 6% of it, to be exact: the estimated portion of Shirou's body that his left arm made up for.
That portion belonged to the long, almost-completely-dead Archer.
This was a consequence of the life-saving transplant that he wished to be performed. Due to the length of time that Shirou had a part of the Servant attached to him, the Archer Servant's soul began to invade his soul, which meant that his Reality Marble invaded Shirou's: six percent of it, at least. But this small deficit was enough to render his Reality Marble almost completely inaccessible to him due to the difference in his and Archer's Marbles. As Rin had put it, it wasn't a complete Reality Marble made up of two incomplete Reality Marbles, it was just two very different, incomplete Reality Marbles hosted within the same body in quantities that equaled up to one Reality Marble.
Shirou remembered nearly blanking out during that explanation, but he still got the gist of it. The only way that Shirou could project a weapon was by calling upon the portion of Archer in his soul to project it from his own Reality Marble and materialize into the real world for Shirou. It was a fairly heavy limit on his power, as having Archer's Reality Marble shrunk down to 6% of its full capacity pretty significantly weakened the strength of whatever Noble Phantasms he projected while also not doing anything to lessen the costs of actually projecting them.
That was a particular side fact that Shirou had brushed aside though. Why would he have had to? There no longer was a War he had to fight in. Nor was there going to be one. At least in a long, long while.
"That's what you get for neglecting your training," Archer says. "As Sun Tzu once said, 'in peace prepare for war, in war prepare for peace.'"
"Oh, my bad Archer, should've expected to just suddenly drop into a completely different dimension six months after the War and get attacked by a freaking goddess," Shirou snorts. "Plus, it's not like any training's gonna do me good in the first place until I somehow get rid of you. And since when did you start reading Sun Tzu? How would you have started reading Sun Tzu? I never read Sun Tzu."
"Well, I don't want you around either," Archer snorts, completely ignoring Shirou's secondary questions. "And you oughta be more grateful that I was willing to sacrifice my peaceful eternity in the afterlife just to save your sorry life."
"It was you who decided to sacrifice your peaceful eternity in the afterlife just to save my 'sorry' life," Shirou snorts back. "Anyways, what am I going to do now? Sakura's been knocked out somehow and I'm most likely dying in a tree somewhere or in custody under the goddess. How in the world did she manage to knock out Sakura? She would've had to somehow get past Saber and Berserker. Don't tell me that she was strong enough to take them both out on her own."
"Remember when you lopped off her arm earlier?" Archer asks. "And how it grew right back almost immediately? She may have been able to outperform two of the strongest Servants we've ever come face to face with, but for all we know, she had her body vaporized or otherwise completely destroyed multiple times in the process."
"Then what about when I managed to nick her with Gae Bolg? I'm sure if some missing limbs is no problem for her, a small cut like that should've disappeared almost immediately."
"Well, Gae Bolg is a spear of death. It has a history of slaying gods," Archer points out. "I'm sure that as a goddess, it must naturally be able to truly wound her. Where are we actually? It's strange because I can't feel the presence of Alaya at all. Gaia is definitely still here, but it's…dormant, I guess? The feel of this place feels weird in a dozen different ways. And that's not to mention that there are apparently gods and goddesses."
"I've been asking myself that question ever since I got here, Archer. I know about as much as you do. But by what you said earlier, does that mean Gae Bolg is capable of killing that goddess?"
"I dunno. Maybe if you bothered to preserve a bit of prana to keep Gae Bolg substantial for just a bit longer instead of just dumping it all out on not just one, but two Noble Phantasms before then, not to mention breaking both of your arms using one of them and having to use even more prana just to keep your bones intact, I'm sure we would've found out."
"It was a spur of the moment kind of decision, cut me some slack," Shirou says. "Anyways, what should we do now?"
"Well, I don't need to do anything except sit here and wait for you to call upon my Reality Marble again," Archer says with a shrug.
The redhead sighs, turning back up to the sky. For the next few seconds, he and Archer just sit in silence.
"Well, looks like you'll be waking up pretty soon," Archer notes, breaking through the comfortable silence.
"Really?" Shirou asks, raising an eyebrow. "How long has it been? There's no way I could have recovered so quickly."
"Time doesn't flow the same way in here as it does out there, remember?" Archer points out. "Plus, you've still got Avalon."
The desert landscape all around Shirou was beginning to start to dim. He sits up, watching as the world around him begins to peel away.
"Remember, Shirou, the way you are now, relying so hard on my half-baked Noble Phantasm isn't going to cut it for long," Archer says, a cryptic smile on his face. "Something's gonna have to change."
Shirou turns to look at him for a moment, then turns back up to the peeling sky.
"I'm aware, Archer," he says just as he closes his eyes and the world fades to black all around him.
When he opens them again, the first thing he sees is a familiar figure dressed in a silver parka with a small slice wound on her cheek, one that had viscous, golden liquid bleeding out of it, sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of him and staring at him intently. It takes him a moment to realize where he was, propped up against a tree in a forest somewhere. His senses were immediately put on alert the moment he realized who it was sitting in front of him.
His eyes were immediately drawn to the hunting knife strapped to her hip. He was vaguely aware of an already-awake Sakura sitting behind her, a look of concern on her face as she stared at him.
"Looks like you're finally awake," Artemis says, a cryptic smile on her face. "Perfect timing. Now, up and at'em. It's time we get back onto the road."
A/N: This chapter isn't short because the chapters are becoming shorter, I just don't have a lot to write about during these breaks between battles, which will probably be Artemis (and maybe Shirou and Sakura) vs Atlas battle a few chapters up. And wow, people did not like how weak I made Shirou and Sakura. Point taken: I'll make a bit stronger in the next battle, which will conclude with a huge power jump for both of them (one that I had already initially planned on making before as I was brainstorming how the third PJO book would play out in this AU). That's gonna make the power level consistency take a plunge but that shouldn't result in too big of a sacrifice. Anyways, next chapter will be almost entirely involving the demigods and the Hunters.
Oh btw, Artemis doesn't want Shirou and Sakura to be her servants or slaves or whatever in response to some of you guys' concerns. It's more like she wants them to be her guinea pigs. Anyways, until next time!
Unrelated A/N: The NieR Replicant OST is fire.
