At least that was what I thought before I heard a very distinct hissing sound. I looked around and I could see a comically green gas leaking from each corner of the room. I was being fucking gassed, and by aerosolized nickelodeon slime no less. I was humiliated beyond belief, but I only had about five seconds to feel that way before the lights behind my eyes turned off and I hit the floor.
I was dreaming again. For the first time since I had left earth the images that had tormented me all my life began to appear again, however this dream was strange. It started with me waking up in my bed inside of cabin three, the whole process was so realistic that I almost thought that the alien planet had been a dream. I wiped the drool from my mouth and flipped over my pillow. I felt a surge of relief enter my body, I was home. I closed my eyes trying to catch another thirty minutes of zees before I went and found Annabeth. We needed to have a long conversation, I wasn't sure how much of what had happened was real after all. Then I heard the reality shattering sound, somewhere in cabin three someone let go of some truly putrid flatulence. By somewhere I of course mean directly on my face.
"Ha Ha you sucker. Eat shit Purssy!" Someone who sounded like they were doing a bad impression of an eighties jock yelled.
I was immediately on my feet winding up to punch whoever the fuck this was in the face when I opened my eyes and saw him. He looked kind of like me, but shorter and with a pudgier face. His hair was curly unlike mine, and he had freckles. But I couldn't mistake the eyes, it was like looking in a mirror.
"Who are you, and what are you doing in my cabin?" I snarled.
He looked at me slack jawed then laughed a cruel laugh. "Did you hit your head Purssy?" He asked, doing his best once again to pronounce my name as if it were a juvenile insult based on a name for female genitalia. "This is my cabin, I mean seriously I already cucked you in that bed last night." he mentioned a stubby finger at my bed. "I mean seriously you walked in on me and Annaboobs. Then you slept in the bed crying yourself to sleep, god it was hilarious."
I couldn't take it anymore, I didn't have time for this bizarro world character. I punched him in the stomach as hard as I possibly could. He doubled over in pain and puked on the floor. That settled it, this was a dream. At least now I was lucid. I walked out of my cabin, there were bleachers set up filled with campers, most of whom were descended from Ares but there were several other parentages represented. They had their faces painted red and they were wearing clothing of the same color as if they were at some kind of sports game. They even had foam middle fingers. The sunlight hit me in the eyes and I brought my hand up to try and shield them, it must have been close to noon as the heat was absolutely sweltering. As soon as the stands saw me they started a series of raucous boos and chants.
I walked past them, I needed to find my way to the normal part of this dream or at least some more interesting characters. The Stoll twins were a few paces away from the bleachers both staring at me with their arms crossed over their chests. Travis bent down and picked up a plate covered in a heaping pile of something brown.
"Hey Purssy eat shit!" Connor said.
"Yeah, like this." Travis said before taking a spoonful off the plate and showing it in Connor's mouth.
Connor chewed for a moment then smiled showing me his feces laden teeth. I had no idea when bullying had become so avant garde but I wasn't in the mood for it. If this is what this dream was going to be like there was only one person that I wanted to see. Sure she would be some twisted version of herself whose actions made no sense, but I could at least release some of the anger and pain I had been carrying around by yelling at her. That was healthy. I made it about twenty feet before I felt something drip on my head. I looked up and it splashed in my eye.
"Ugh." I exclaimed, getting out of the way and wiping my eyes.
I heard a husky laugh that I immediately recognized as Clarisse and looked up to see her squatting on the edge of a diving board that was just hovering in the air without any supports. She had her pants around her ankles.
"How does my piss taste Purssy." She yelled down before cackling again.
I spit and started walking away as fast as I could, this was a gods damned nightmare unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I finally made my way to cabin six and I knocked as forcefully as I could. Malcolm answered and he seemed like the first normal person I had met since I got there, but that facade was quickly shattered when I actually looked at his face. He had the number six six six tattooed across his forehead and four twenty in the space below his lower lip. He smiled and I realized he had a gunmetal gray grill filled with black diamonds. He took a sip from a bottle of what I could only assume was absinthe from the color and then turned back into the cabin.
"Hey Annaboobs!" He yelled.
Why was he also calling her that? I thought?
"Your dumb ass ex Purssy is here. He looks like a three legged dog trying to catch up to the truck that just left him in a ditch." He continued yelling.
I heard some rustling from inside the cabin.
"Hey Purssy, while I got you here have you heard of 4chan?" Malcolm slurred before Annabeth appeared in the doorway.
She was wearing a tight orange tank top and tight white denim shorts. She pushed him out of the way and he fell laughing hysterically. She stepped over his body and snapped her gum placing one hand on her hip and popping out her chest. That was when I noticed it, she had gotten work done.
"What?" she asked, like she was in Mean Girls or something.
I looked at her chest, "What yourself." I said.
She looked down and smirked. "Mark paid for them." She said doing a little jump so they would bounce.
"Who the fuck is Mark!" I screamed. It felt so good to be able and stand there and yell at her, the target of my ire, my pain, my regret.
"Mark Mustachetwirlingson, duh. I mean he is your brother." She said, snapping her gum again.
"Yeah." Mark said, appearing out of thin air. "I paid for this plastic." He wrapped his arm around her shoulder grabbing a handful of the so-called plastic he had paid for.
"Everybody likes Mark more than you, Purssy." Annabeth said, snapping her gum one more time.
"Yeah." I heard Travis say off to my left.
I looked at him, he was still holding the plate full of excrement.
"No one likes you." Connor said from next to his twin before accepting another load into his mouth and happily biting down on the spoonful.
The familiar drips hit the top of my head. "Everybody hates your guts Purssy." Clarisse yelled from her floating diving board.
The stands appeared around me, booing and throwing rocks at me. Before beginning a new chant, "Mark!Mark!Mark!" they belted out in unison.
Poseidon appeared behind Mark and Annabeth, he put a hand on each of their shoulders. "I love my son Mark unlike any other son I've ever had." Poseidon said smiling the same smile he had the few times that I'd seen him proud of me.
"Even I love him more than you Percy." I heard the voice of my mother say from behind me. The world started caving in around me, there was a rushing in my ears as I turned around to face her. She looked worse than the original oracle. A rotting corpse missing half its teeth and even more of its hair, the eyes were milky white as grubs crawled in and out of her nostrils burrowing into any orifice they could find. Her head cocked at a ninety degree angle and she opened her mouth for a massive grin but all I could see was the blackness that had engulfed her throat as it rotted. The world shattered as if I was looking out over it from the inside of a broken CRT. There was static and misplaced colors as everything started spinning like some kind of kaleidoscope with a pattern based on an irrational number.
My consciousness came hurtling back to reality and I awoke with the worst start that I had ever experienced. I tried to sit up, and I was already screaming, but my chest was held down by something. As were my arms and my legs. I was strapped to a table inside of the room that I had been brought into before they put me under. Whatever they had killed had been cleaned up as of now, I could tell by the smell. The sweet smelling feces was gone, replaced by the smell of an industrial solvent and cleaner. Honestly I could have done with the former smell instead. I had never liked the smell of cleaner, it reminded me of hospitals, of death and decay. Always trying to cover things up.
I was sweating and my breathing was labored, that had to be one of the worst nightmares of my life. Echoing in my head were the twisted words of Tommy Wiseau repeating the same thing over and over again. "Oh hi mark." I shook my head trying to clear my thoughts of everything that had just happened, it had to be the gas, it was some kind of hallucinogenic or something. I pressed my chin against my chest as hard as I could, inclining my head to the maximum angle that I could reach. I could see scientists on the other side of the window watching me. They noticed that I was awake almost immediately. I hoped that would mean that we could finally talk. It didn't. They just gassed me again.
…
It went on like that for days, every time I woke up from the newest hell of gas induced nightmare I was simply put back under, over and over again. So many times that I had no sense of temporal reality. It could have been months, years even I wouldn't have been able to make heads or tails of it either way. Until finally the endless recursion ended and I awake in something of a straight jacket strapped to a chair instead of a table. There was a scientist on the other side of the glass looking directly at me as if he had been waiting for me to wake up. When I did he held up a blackboard, written on it in fluorescent green ink were several things. Only one of which I could recognize, a circle had been drawn with a line through it. This reminded me of something that Annabeth had once told me about. Apparently on one of the satellites that humanity set on a course for leaving the solar system they had put a golden record. It had like a Beatles or a Rolling Stones song on it or something, and a bunch of math stuff like a triangle with the Pythagorean theorem, a circle, a sin wave, and even a bunch of numbers defined as dots so that we could show them we knew math and stuff.
If I could get my hands on one of those boards maybe I could draw something that they would understand. But that wasn't going to happen with me strapped to a chair, I looked at him and I shook my head no. I decided that that was a good start. If I was constantly shaking my head no they would eventually figure out yes and no when I finally nodded at something. It went on like that for a few more hours, the scientist showing me things and me failing to understand them followed by me then vigorously shaking my head no. Finally one of them entered my room with what looked like a bag full of some kind of processed food. This was my opportunity, they approached me and attempted to put the nozzle on the end of the food bag in my mouth.
"No," I said, shaking my head once again.
I was pretty sure that this was the first time that they had heard me speak. I was showing them that I was capable of language, in my book that was a pretty important first step. The scientist looked shocked and afraid so I locked eyes with him, I opened my mouth beckoning him to put the food bag in it. He took a step forward and I closed it, I continued looking him in the eye.
"Yes," I said, while nodding my head.
I then opened my mouth again so that he would put the food bag in it. Basic conditioning should work to establish a simple yes and no line of communication, once we had that then we could begin to move forward. The scientist squeezed the slop into my mouth, it was unlike anything that I had ever had on earth. It was fibrous but also sugary, kind of like blended sticks of celery but flavored like oranges. It was so unfamiliar that I wanted to spit it out, but I was pretty sure that it was going to be my only food for the day and I needed to maintain sustenance. I looked out through the window at the scientist that had just fed me. He was demonstrating both a no head shake and a nod, at least I had gotten through that I was trying to communicate and there was a difference between those two things. I was ecstatic, with that foundation in place I would be able to show that one was a positive affirmation and the other was a negative.
It didn't take long for the scientists and I to begin communicating with head nods, they even linked them with the words in their language and taught them to me. They were both monosyllabic and easy to say but they just didn't feel right in my mouth. If I could ever speak this language to any extent I would do so with quite the accent. Eventually they ran out of things they could accomplish by simply having me answer yes and no to whatever visual stimuli they presented. So they started trying to teach me different words, first they started with simple objects, then they taught me some basic pronouns like me and you. Some actions like give or want, and I was able to communicate with them in very broken speech. They had released me from the chair long ago but I was still yet to get my hands on a marker or a black board.
Then one fateful day, I finally had my breakthrough, they brought in the fateful item that would get us truly moving. They brought in a marker, I immediately became very excited. I had grown so bored in the room alone that I had started to feel like I was going insane, even with the constant interaction with scientists the place still felt like solitary confinement in a purely white room with a fluorescent white light constantly beating down on me. Forgive me if I had gone a little bit stir crazy. I wanted to bounce off the walls but I was afraid that would spook them so I waited calmly for the routine where I learned a new word. The scientist told me the word and showed me the marker. Then I took action.
"Give marker me give marker me marker give me marker give me you." I said.
It was crude and broken but I couldn't contain myself and it wasn't like I had any idea how syntax worked in their language anyway. The scientist hesitated and then opened his palm reaching out his arm so that the marker was resting in his outstretched hand. I grabbed it and jumped for joy, I immediately began writing on the wall before I stopped and looked back at him. I mimed writing as if I had one of their boards in my hands. The scientist immediately rushed out of the door and came back with a board. I nodded furiously and he handed it to me before swiftly exiting the room and moving to the window on the opposite side of me. I swiftly drew a large dot on the board. I showed him the dot and held up a single finger on my hand. He seemed to understand that I was trying to talk about numbers. He grabbed a board himself after furiously jotting down some notes.
This was the moment of truth, I drew the dot again this time followed by an equals sign and the number one. I showed it to him, he seemed slightly confused so I did the same thing for two through five. I showed it to him again and it clicked in his head. He copied what I had written down but instead used their notation. It was strange looking and I was already bad at math, but we were finally getting some upper level concepts across to one another. I drew six through nine, and was about to draw ten when I realized that would make no sense. First I would have to teach him some other things before I started messing around with concepts like digits. I hadn't even shown him a zero yet. I decided addition was the next logical option. I drew two dots with a plus sign between them and then an equals sign with two dots on the other side. Then I wrote one plus one equals two. I showed it to him, setting the board in my lap so that I could mime with my hands. I held up a singular finger on each before bashing them together and holding up just my right hand with two fingers raised. he nodded his head seeming to understand what I was trying to display so I went back to the board and decided the best way to show him what a zero was was to first show him subtraction. I did using two minus one and showed him with my hands once again, he nodded furiously this time the Inutian version of a smile quickly spreading across his face. Finally I went back to the board one last time and wrote the fateful equation, one minus one equals zero.
It went on like that for several hours, eventually I was able to show them how our numbers worked including both decimals and numbers in the six digits. I showed them exponents and even wrote down as many numbers of pi as I could remember off of the top of my head, they seemed to be very intrigued by that. If only I could have remembered what e was. With it established that I was capable of doing math at least to the level of basic arithmetic they seemed to have decided that I was an intelligent being and my learning of their language suddenly became a lot more structured than just being shown objects. It was extremely difficult at first, especially because I couldn't ask any questions in English, but I began to get the hang of it after a while.
…
At first the whole process had been very exciting, but that feeling did not last. By the time a year had passed I was capable enough with their language to ask if I could be let out. I told them that I came in peace and that I meant them no harm, but all of the scientists became tight lipped as soon as I began to mention anything other than what was being expressly presented to me. I asked on and off several times over the next two years until finally one day I snapped. I had been studying under the same language tutor for the entire time and we had become rather close. On that particular day as soon as she came into my room I fixed a gaze on her that she would no wasn't normal.
"I could get out any time. I not do that, I nice. If you not let me out tomorrow. I get out on own." I said looking directly at her knowing that she would understand my message. As she had been conversing with me and that broken pattern of speech for three years now.
She did the Inutian equivalent of turning white as a sheet, her lips curled back revealing her teeth and her eyes opened as wide as they possibly could. "I will tell them. Please wait a moment." she said, shaking.
I did as I was asked, after all I had made it clear that they had until the end of the day. I was capable of surviving on this planet now and I didn't plan on staying locked up in that room for another second. It was time for me to tell them why I was here and for them to answer any questions that I asked. After only about a minute and a half the door to my cell lurched open and the head scientist whose name I had come to learn was Ulten was standing there breathing heavily.
"Right this way." He said.
"Where take me?" I asked.
"Comfortable room. To talk." He said.
"Good. I have questions." I said.
He didn't say anything after that, I was simply staring at him in the doorway. This was a show of power and I wasn't quite sure if he was going to get it. It was customary among these people for the highest ranking member in society to leave the room last. I stared at him a little while longer, his teeth chattered nervously and he kept motioning for me to go.
"You first." I said.
He stiffened and I saw realization dawn in his eyes. He had never expected me to pick up on any of their customs, and he certainly hadn't expected me to use any of them against him.
"Yes" he said before walking stiffly out of the doorway and down the hall to the left.
I followed him for only about three doors until he opened one labeled "Break Room". I laughed internally at that; there was a certain level of humor to be found in how unprepared these people were for me to do anything other than exactly what they asked of me. It was an arrogance that I was used to, on earth it came in both mortal and immortal format. As we entered the room I could see that the furniture had been hastily rearranged, most of it was pressed against the walls leaving only two chairs facing each other in the center of the room. I stared at Ulten once again expecting him to sit first. He seemed to have gotten the memo this time and quickly took a seat on the oddly shaped chair. It was honestly more like a stool than a chair, there was no back and it was shaped like an egg with the top and bottom cut off. When I sat on the top of it it compressed ever so slightly. It was comfortable if nothing else, it seemed to be made out of one solid material and the finish wasn't all that unlike leather.
"You listen." I said. After all my time waiting patiently in that cell festering away I didn't feel like dawdling.
"I ask, you answer." I said looking at him waiting for some kind of confirmation.
He nodded slowly, clearly still nervous as all get out.
I realized I wasn't sure what to ask. I had been so sure of myself, I'd whipped myself into a frenzy as soon as I decided to enact this little plan of mine. Upon its completion I felt as though in my haste I had glanced over several important details. I figured the most important place to start was with the nature of the civil war.
"You at war. Who you fight?" I asked.
The Inution inhaled sharply, their version of a scoff.
"I no repeat." I growled.
"A detestable terrorist and his brigand of ignorant peons." Ulten said quickly.
I wasn't able to grasp all the words but I knew that he hadn't said his name and he had insulted him.
"Name." I said.
"I'm not fond of saying it." he said.
"No option." I said.
"His name is S-Solosk." he stuttered.
"Why hard?" I asked.
"It's a bad name." he said still fidgeting constantly.
"Explain." I said. I needed to understand the types of people I was dealing with.
"It's a long story, hard to explain." he said, trying to dismiss it.
"I wait." I said.
He sighed clearly not wanting to explain. "In the past our people worshiped the sun as our creator. It was customary to look at the sun as it greeted us each morning and pray to it. There were those who could not pray to the sun, as they were blind and unable to see it. It was considered sacrilege by the high priests, so those who were blind were dubbed 'Solosk' or sunless in a more modern tongue. The Solosk were laid bare in the sun so that its rays could punish them, they died by the hand of the one who they had forsaken. As parents so often do, many attempted to protect their blind children. This was sacrilege as well. In these cases entire families were dubbed Solosk and left to burn in the sun. At some point the church and the government became inseparable for a time, and the designation was used as a form of control. Dissenters were targeted mercilessly, and as punishment had their eyes gouged out, sometimes under cover of darkness, but other times in broad daylight. Without their eyes they were dubbed Solosk and left to burn. Though we left this time and the word itself behind us it has returned in a new form. Our side frequently called our opponents ignorant, stupid, and blind. They have always resented us for that, and as their current leader rose to power he decided to do so under the name. Claiming his blindness, but in doing so accusing us of horrific acts of suppression and persecution. Or just throwing our words back in our face, either way that is why I would prefer not to say his name."
It was a long story and a relatively morose one. Though I had missed many of the finer details I understood the gist, it once was a slur used to persecute, then a form of oppression of speech, and now finally a defiant rallying cry. Though crass, I understood the motivation for such action; the opposing leader thought he was right, and he thought those who dismissed him were hoity toity hypocrites.
"I end war. How best way?" I asked
"What do you mean you end war? You are just one man." He said looking truly exasperated.
It was finally time to reveal my trump card. I reached out into the pipes that ran through the building. There was a sink in the room and it functioned as the perfect conduit. Water shot from the nozzle and began pooling on the floor before stopping suddenly. I willed the water to move, to ebb and flow, swirl and emote. I wiggled my fingers as it moved in an attempt to show Ulten that I was the one responsible for what was happening.
"Water listen to me." I said before halting the movement of my hand and letting the water fall to the ground and disperse.
"Kill Solosk. If you do that we can obliterate his following, he is like a god to them, they are nothing without him." He said.
It couldn't be that simple, in fact there was no way it was. If it was that easy chaos wouldn't have sent me it would have sent an assassin. This had to be a test of some sort, to see if I would give in and take the easy route. Well I would not, but the people who I would be tricking into being my benefactors couldn't know that.
"Ok. I need best sword you make." I said. It was the only thing I knew how to fight with, and using guns didn't exactly fit me. I couldn't imagine myself holding a firearm let alone shooting someone.
"We can make you a sword." Ulten said, seemingly relaxing a bit. My declaration must have sparked some hope in him that had been long since lost.
"I answer, you ask now." I said. It was the best I could do.
"Where are you from?" Ulten asked immediately. The question had been asked about a thousand times before, but much like they refused to answer any of my extraneous questions I refused to answer theirs.
"Home Earth, far away." I said.
"How did you get here. Are your people capable of intergalactic flight?" He asked.
"No, I get here by one beyond worlds." I said trying to do my best to explain the kind of being that Chaos was. Ulten looked positively gobsmacked, but he quickly composed himself.
"Who are you?" He asked finally.
I laughed, but not a genuine one. A deep hollow laugh filled with melancholy and regret. All this time and he was just now asking my name. I almost said it, "I'm Percy." but I held my tongue. Maybe I could move on from that, find a new name that wouldn't remind me of what I left behind and the way I felt about those who I had. Who was I? The thought made me laugh again, I had refused to become a pawn of Kronos even though I knew that some of what Luke believed was true, and in doing so I simply became a pawn of the gods. As an escape I had offered my services to yet another being beyond my comprehension, but I wouldn't let it happen again. I would have a constant reminder not to.
"Pawn." I said simply. "Bring sword to me."
With that our conversation was over, I stood up and left walking straight back to my chamber and lying down on my bed. All I could do now was wait. To the credit of the Inutians, they worked fast. The sword was done and being presented to me after only two days of waiting, however it was immediately obvious that they had vastly overestimated my strength. The thing was four feet long and nearly an inch and a half think while being four inches from edge to edge. There was no guard as the base of the blade was enough on its own, I was rather sad to see that the best sword they could make was simply one of steel, though I was told there was some kind of metallurgic powdering process that made the thing extremely durable. The sword itself was simple, it had a large fuller from about three inches bellow the tip all the way through the base of the blade, and it was not colored in any way. The bevels were not steep which allowed for a very menacing look that I was sure was equally if not more functional. The angle of the bevels combined with the immense weight of the weapon had to render it all but unstoppable. All that was left now was for me to figure out how to wield it. I had an idea.
"Place to train." I said to Ulten, who had of course taken it upon himself to present me with the sword.
"Of course Pawn, you can do so in the campus gardens. Though do try to avoid doing too much damage." Ulten said while wringing his hands nervously.
I didn't really care how much damage I did, but there was no point in being pointlessly belligerent. I allowed him to guide me to the gardens that he had spoken of, even going so far as to show him respect by leaving the room before he did. It was quite a ways away from where I had been staying all that time. Figured they would have me locked in the deepest darkest part of their dungeon. When I finally arrived at the garden I was once again struck by the Beauty of Inus. The plants were curated and shaped in pleasing ways, their colors forming a pleasant mosaic of colors and patterns. The green contrasted perfectly with the red dirt as did the flowers and red stained predatory apparatus of the plants themselves.
I stepped into the center of the garden and motioned with my hand for Ulten to leave, I no longer needed him and I really didn't want to be disturbed. If I was going to wield this hunk of steel I was going to need to get a lot stronger. Luckily I knew there was a demigod that was strong enough to do so, if Heracles could do it I saw no reason that I couldn't. Even if Zeus was his great grandfather and his father. I really hated thinking about that, mans must have been going through a real rough patch, or he really wanted to piss of Hera. I sat down in the center of the garden, I was going to attempt something that normally I would have considered an absolute anathema. I was going to try and meditate, not because I knew how, not because I had heard anything suggesting it was a good idea, not even because I thought it would work. Simply because I thought it would be cool if it did work. The greatest battles were within oneself, and meditation allowed true warriors to fight those battles. I felt like such a nerd even thinking about it, here I was about to fight a war on an alien planet and I was trying to unlock sage mode.
I sat in the center of the garden and began to take deep breaths, I closed my eyes and began to look inward. Trying to feel the individual parts of my body, deepening the links between my synapses and my muscles. After thirty or so minutes of what I was pretty sure amounted to no progress I stood up. I attempted to lift the sword, and to no surprise it was the same as it had been before. I was not discouraged however, I did not expect unlocking gifts equal to one of the greatest demigods who ever lived to be easy. I began doing calisthenics, I was going to need to train my body at least twice as much as my mind if I wanted this to work.
It took two months before I was able to awkwardly swing the sword without it careening into the ground. Though I was quite sure that the progress that I had made toward my goal had all been made in the physical realm. My meditation thus far had yielded no results in regards to the struggle for superhuman strength, however it did give me the opportunity to think for extended periods of time each day. I began to further ponder the meaning of my presence on Inus and how I would solve the problem, and I devised a plan that I thought had a decent amount of merit. While I trained for most of my days, I still spent some of them with a tutor continuing my struggle to learn Inus' language.
With my ability to swing the sword I finally had a breakthrough, I was able to identify a concrete example of my weakness and attack it. By doing so I was able to tailor my muscles to act in ways that they had never acted before. Eventually I was able to perfect that single strike as if I were performing it with riptide. Though I still could not swing it with any level of competence in any other direction, one domino had fallen, and soon all the rest would follow. I was able to use my mind and my meditation to extrapolate what I had instilled in the muscles that allowed my to swing my sword as I had done. With that accomplished I had become super human, my vertical leap was as least ten times my height and I feared for anyone who stood in the way of my fist.
After another two years in the facility I had accomplished my goal of unlocking strength beyond the scope of my human form. I strolled back into the cell that had once held me and punched the glass that I had stared through for three whole years. It was at least a foot thick and it shattered with ease. I was well beyond the level of the Perseus Jackson of earth by this point, Pawn was a different entity entirely. And as such his actions were unlike the ones that Percy would have taken. I approached Memhol, the vocal tutor who had been teaching me for the past five years.
"I need you to do something for me. If you don't I will obliterate this compound." I said to her stone faced. Fear worked surprisingly well as a short term negotiating tactic.
"Anything." She squeaked.
"Record what I say next." I said.
She pulled out what basically amounted to a smartphone and began filming me.
"Hello, my name is Pawn. I am an alien who was sent here to end this war. Solosk, your enemies tell me to kill you in cold blood. That will end the war they say. I do not agree that this is the only way. You fight because you believe, and though you may be wrong on some accounts on others you are most likely not. You don the name of the downtrodden, for you feel as if you have been silenced by words of scorn and presumption. I tell you I will not dismiss you outright, speak to me so we may end this war. I await you on the airfield of the Defense Lab Of Developed Biology." I said doing my best to maintain a face of amiability.
"You can't post this." Memhol said, already sinking to her knees in an attempt to beg.
"I don't repeat myself." I said, referring to my threat from earlier.
She let out a sob as she handed me the phone, I posted it using her social media. It began exploding about as soon as I hit the word go.
"Well I have an appointment to keep." I said before walking out of the door leaving the sobbing alien behind.
It didn't take me long to get to the airfield, but it did take a while before I saw anything indicating that Solosk would be coming. About two hours had passed when I saw the incoming aircraft, it was operating at a higher altitude than what I had come in on, but it still didn't look exactly like the kind of airplane I was used to. My eyes weren't near keen enough to make out any details beyond that, however when it was at about a ninety degree angle over my head I saw a dark spot separate from the airborne vehicle. It continued falling and stupidly my first thought was that it was some kind of drop pod like you see in anime and video games. But as it hurtlesd towards the surface my brain began to happen upon the much more likely option. Solosk had just dropped a bomb on me. I was so stupid, I had certainly just gotten several innocent people killed. One bomb wouldn't entirely destroy the facility though, and I would easily be able to survive it. I was naive to think that.
When the bomb collided with the earth blinding light erupted from it, my entire world turned white as my body was seared by the intense heat of the explosion. I heard a sound so loud that I could barely comprehend it and if not for the curse of Achilles I was sure my Eardrums would have been shattered. Instead they continued to reverberate in an intensely unpleasant echo as the force of the shockwave continued to permeate through them. I had always wondered what it would feel like to look upon a god's true form, and now I had a vague approximation. It probably felt like looking at a nuke from two hundred yards away as it exploded.