Leo gets to kick a goddesses butt, and we all love him for it- bitch went way too far and she gets what's coming to her! So that'll be fun. As for the Roman AU, the first chapter is going well- I've figured out Sally's backstory which is helpful.
Replies:
Undeath9087: Yeah, no one can blame him for hesitating for a second, and then he just got super angry so it's okay! He's not gonna let the enemy use his big sister to manipulate him! And yeah, I've started the Roman AU, not got far but I'm on the first chapter at the moment. And like I said this is just because I do have a block- to be fair I have written over 400 chapters worth of this series so it's understandable that I would struggle a bit occasionally. Something new should help kickstart my brain.
Quip Scarlet: Leo is badass and we will take no criticism!
Loki the necrogod: Thank you! I've just been struggling to figure out what she'd be able to do so I appreciate all of the suggestions and help!
Weirdhead: Thank you for the advice, and yeah, Khione fucked up lol.
The Official Clarisse: Leo just casually hallucinating his big sister like Percy hallucinated Nico's voice when she thought he was dead, both adorable and sad at the same time. Thank you for your suggestions for the powers- and for the song, I've never heard it before but you are not wrong. And just to scare you, I may have to listen to it while writing some later chapters.
Khione took a step back, clearly trying to hide her fear. "Enough of this. Hera is failing. Porphyrion is rising. Kill the demigods. Let them be our king's first meal!" she hissed the words, and Leo gave a dangerous smirk.
"Oh you are gonna burn!" and then he rushed her.
Out of the corner of his eyes Leo saw his friends starting to fight too- Jason with a plank of wood and Piper with her dagger.
Leo shook himself, pushing away that thought.
He needed to focus on Khione, as much as he wanted to help his friends he was well aware that she was currently the biggest threat- she could easily freeze them all- but Leo wouldn't let that happen.
She summoned daggers of ice, blasts of winter air, anything she could, but none of it touched him- the ice melted and evaporated, the blasts of were warmed by his fire until they felt like summer breezes.
He pulled dipped his hands into his toolbelt when monsters started trying to approach him, pulling two silver-tipped ball-peen hammers, and any monsters that came close enough got smashed aside violently.
The heat coming off of him in waves was warming the entire courtyard- stopping everything else from freezing. If he'd been in a good enough mindset he'd have noticed that when he passed Zoe's statue it started to defrost- though he did spot Jason riding a storm spirit horse and Piper fighting off the Earthborn- but he didn't have time to focus he had to deal with Khione. She was the biggest threat. His friends were keeping the other monsters away from him as best as they could, he had to make what they were doing worth it.
And Khione slowly started to realise just how hot Leo could burn and she started to back away, her expression turning panicked as she did, dodging away when Leo started moving faster, desperately trying to stay away from him- clearly she knew that he could do a lot of damage to her.
Unfortunately for Leo she wasn't slow- but he did notice that Jason and Piper were running out of enemies, that was very good for them that meant they'd be able to help him deal with Khione and kick her bitchy butt.
And eventually even Khione started running out of steam- which would have been amazing if she didn't speak up. "You're too late," she snarled. "He's awake!
And don't think you've won anything here, demigods. Hera's plan will never work. You'll be at each other's throats before you can ever stop us."
Leo set his hammers ablaze and threw them at the goddess, but she turned into snow—a white powdery image of herself. Leo's hammers slammed into the snow woman, breaking it into a steaming mound of mush.
He snarled, "Oh that cowardly little bitch! Running away like a- oh if I see her again I am gonna melt her I am-"
"Maybe tone it down a Ghostrider." Piper's voice made Leo turn his head, and she was breathing hard, but she was grinning, "That was pretty badass though."
"Speak for yourself Beauty Queen."
"You kept us all from being turned into popsicles." Jason drew their attention- he was on one of the storm spirits, looking incredibly proud, a wide smile on his lips, "And you just beat a goddess as far as I'm concerned.
"Nice horse by the way." Piper aimed that at Jason, who laughed as the horse reared on his hind legs, arcing electricity across his hooves. Clearly he was about as much of a show off as Blackjack was- and that Pegasus knew how to show off.
Then there was a cracking noise from behind them and Leo turned his head to see what it was. He watched as the melting ice on Hera's cage sloughed off in a curtain of slush, and the goddess called, "Oh, don't mind me! Just the queen of the heavens, dying over here!"
Jason dismounted and told his storm spirit horse to stay put. The three demigods jumped into the pool and ran to the spire.
As Leo got closer he swallowed hard, suddenly nervous, "Uh, is it just me or are you shorter?"
"No, you dolt! The earth is claiming me. Hurry!"
And as much as Leo despised Hera, what he saw inside the cage alarmed him. Not only was Hera sinking, the ground was rising around her like water in a tank. Liquid rock had already covered her shins. "The giant wakes!" Hera warned. "You only have seconds!" "On it," Leo said. "Piper, I need your help. Talk to the cage. "
"What?" she said.
"Talk to it. Use everything you've got. Convince Gaea to sleep. Lull her into a daze. Just slow her down, try to get the tendrils to loosen while I—"
"Right!" Piper cleared her throat and said, "Hey, Gaea. Nice night, huh? Boy, I'm tired. How about you? Ready for some sleep?"
The more she talked, the more confident she sounded, and Leo had to force himself to focus not to fall for the charmspeak- and she wasn't even aiming it at him. She was almost definitely more powerful than Drew- or she would be with practise. At the very least right now she was on the same level as her older sister.
And it was working.
The mud was rising more slowly. The tendrils seemed to soften just a little—becoming more like tree root than rock. Leo pulled a circular saw out of his tool belt, and he stared at it for a moment before groaning, "Damn it all I don't have anywhere to plug it in- a normal saw won't do the job fast enoygh."
The spirit horse jumped into the pit and whinnied at that.
"Really Tempest?" Jason asked, and Leo felt a sad smile forming on his lips despite himself.
Jason could talk to his new horse- didn't that bring back memories.
Tempest dipped his head and trotted over to Leo. "No way." Leo breathed the words- a hopeful look on his face as he stared at the horse- there was no way was there? He couldn't use the horse to power the saw could he?
But hey, it was worth a try right? He held up the plug, and a breeze whisked it into the horse's flank. Lighting sparked, connecting with the prongs of the plug, and the circular saw whirred to life.
"Sweet!" Leo grinned. "Your horse comes with AC outlets! He may be even cooler than Blackjack- only don't tell him I said that because he'll get grumpy and he won't give me rides-"
"Leo, bro, focus-"
"Right!"
Leo twisted and got to work, pressing the saw to the cage, slowly starting to cut through it- but the good news could never last as long as they'd like it to.
On the other side of the pool, the giant's spire crumbled with a sound like a tree snapping in half. Its outer sheath of tendrils exploded from the top down, raining stone and wood shards as the giant shook himself free and climbed out of the earth.
Leo blinked as he stared at it, terror flooding through him.
Porphyrion was much scarier than Enceladus.
Porphyrion was even taller, and even more ripped. He didn't radiate heat, or show any signs of breathing fire, but there was something more terrible about him—a kind of strength, even magnetism, as if the giant were so huge and dense he had his own gravitational field.
Like Enceladus, the giant king was humanoid from the waist up, clad in bronze armor, and from the waist down he had scaly dragon's legs; but his skin was the color of lima beans. His hair was green as summer leaves, braided in long locks and decorated with weapons—daggers, axes, and full-size swords, some of them bent and bloody—maybe trophies taken from demigods eons before. When the giant opened his eyes, they were blank white, like polished marble. He took a deep breath.
"Alive!" he bellowed. "Praise to Gaea!"
"Well fuck." Leo breathed out- and he could hear Jason almost whimpering. He couldn't blame him for that. Leo felt like whimpering too.
"Leo," Jason said.
"Huh?" Leo's mouth was wide open. Even Piper seemed dazed. And they could hardly be blamed for that
"You guys keep working," Jason said. "Get Hera free!"
"What are you going to do?" Piper asked. "You can't seriously—"
"Entertain a giant?" Jason said. "I've got no choice."
"No-" Leo shook his head, "Jason no you- this is insane." he pressed the saw harder into the branches of the cell, frantically pushing as hard as he could, trying to get it to work faster, "Please you'll die you're my friend I don't want you to die. I can't lose anyone else Jase." he was terrified of it.
It wasn't that Leo didn't have friend.
He had a lot of friends- Connor and Travis, Cecil, Lou Ellen, but they weren't close friends. Leo wouldn't choose to go to them if he was struggling with things.
He had Nico and Luke, Thalia, Annabeth and Rachel and Grover. He even got along with Will and Kayla- but they were different, they were family or his families partners or best friends.
But Leo had never had any friends, not in the way that Percy and Grover had been friends- or that Luke and Beckendorf were friends. Or Nico and Will and Kayla. And Calypso wasn't the same, she wasn't his friend she was his girlfriend, there was a difference, maybe it was a stupid one but it existed.
And somehow, despite only knowing Piper for one month and Jason for less than a week he found that they were the best friends he'd ever had. He trusted them, he was willing to open up to them in a way he'd never been to anyone who wasn't family before.
Maybe it was because of the quest- Percy had always said that her first quest was the thing that had most bonded her, Grover and Annabeth.
Whatever it was, Leo considered both of them to be the best friends he'd ever had and the thought of Jason dying scared the shit into him.
Then the Giant let out a roar and Jason was walking towards him- and gods but Leo could barely breathe.
"Excellent!" the giants voice boomed as Jason approached. "An appetizer! Who are you—Hermes? Ares?"
And Leo couldn't tear his eyes away.
"I'm Jason Grace," he said. "Son of Jupiter."
Porphyrion threw back his head and laughed. "Outstanding!" He looked up at the cloudy night sky. "So, Zeus, you sacrifice a son to me? The gesture is appreciated, but it will not save you. "
The sky didn't even rumble. No help from above. Jason was on his own this time- and Leo felt a rush of fury towards Zeus who acted so high and mighty but failed to do what was right almost every time.
And he watched as Jason dropped his makeshift club.
"If you knew who I was," Jason yelled up at the giant, "you'd be worried about me, not my father. I hope you enjoyed your two and a half minutes of rebirth, giant, because I'm going to send you right back to Tartarus. "
The giant's eyes narrowed. He planted one foot outside the pool and crouched to get a better look at his opponent. "So … we'll start by boasting, will we? Just like old times! Very well, demigod. I am Porphryion, king of the giants, son of Gaea. In olden times, I rose from Tatarus, the abyss of my father, to challenge the gods. To start the war, I stole Zeus's queen. " He grinned at the goddess's cage. "Hello, Hera. "
"My husband destroyed you once, monster!" Hera said. "He'll do it again!"
"But he didn't, my dear! Zeus wasn't powerful enough to kill me. He had to rely on a puny demigod to help, and even then, we almost won. This time, we will complete what we started. Gaea is waking. She has provisioned us with many fine servants. Our armies will shake the earth—and we will destroy you at the roots. "
"You wouldn't dare," Hera said, but she was weakening. There was ni denying it, her voice was shaky. Piper kept whispering to the cage, and Leo kept sawing, his gaze flicking between Hera and his friend, but the earth was still rising inside Hera's prison, covering her up to her waist.
"Oh, yes," the giant said. "The Titans sought to attack your new home in New York. Bold, but ineffective. Gaea is wiser and more patient. And we, her greatest children, are much, much stronger than Kronos. We know how to kill you Olympians once and for all. You must be dug up completely like rotten trees—your eldest roots torn out and burned. "
The giant frowned at Piper and Leo, as if he'd just noticed them working at the cage. Jason stepped forward and yelled to get back Porphyrion's attention.
"You said a demigod killed you," he shouted. "How, if we're so puny?"
"Ha! You think I would explain it to you? I was created to be Zeus's replacement, born to destroy the lord of the sky. I shall take his throne. I shall take his wife—or, if she will not have me, I will let the earth consume her life force. What you see before you, child, is only my weakened form. I will grow stronger by the hour, until I am invincible. But I am already quite capable of smashing you to a grease spot!"
He rose to his full height and held out his hand. A twenty-foot spear shot from the earth. He grasped it, then stomped the ground with his dragon's feet. The ruins shook. All around the courtyard, monsters started to regather—storm spirits, wolves, and Earthborn, all answering the giant king's call.