Chapter 1 - Gather
Percy
With no choice but to take his mind off of the wonderful escapade pulled off by Zeus, Percy trudged on to where Athena's Guardian, Metis, had gathered the rest of them. Standing on the stump of a tree she had felled seconds prior, the Guardians listened on to her directions.
"The first order of business right now is to take care of making sure that we all have shelter. We may be beyond divine help, but I will not have us living like savages."
Naturally, Poseidon's Guardian, Helikos, was inclined to disagree with her. "Are you serious? The first order of business is to get some fucking rest. Middle of the day or not, the whole getting banished by the Olympians is taking a toll on most of us. Or did you already forget about it, Metis? Emotionless bitch." Slighting her under his breath but just loud enough for her to hear, Helikos took his frustration out on Metis. The two were always at odds with each other after the entire Athens debacle between Poseidon and Athena.
"Shut. Up." Metis gritted her teeth and dropped her gaze, trying to calm down and not give Helikos the rise that he wanted. "I know that, dickhead. Contrary to your beliefs, I do have emotions, which is exactly why I'm pushing us to get this done in the first place. Not having a proper place to sleep or any sort of routine is only going to deteriorate our mental state and make the realization of our new circumstances worse. Now, sorry for giving you a rude awakening, but I need you to get off your damn high horse and be considerate of others right now."
Everyone was a little out of their element, but the new setting had reversed the roles between the two Guardians. Percy scrutinized Metis, seeing her in a new light as a more thoughtful person and potential leader for their group. She took in a breath, and moved on with allocating work to certain people.
"Xena, can you manage food? You can bring along Adonia and Rakia to do all of the heavy lifting." The introverted goddess responded with a nod.
"Alright. Perseus, Andel, and Ishtar, I need you three to get together the appropriate materials so we can build cabins for each of us. Who does what is up to you guys to manage. The rest of you, stay and help clear more trees out of this area. Not that it exactly matters, but you can also go ahead and pick out where you want your cabin to be. Ardalus and I will be here thinking of how the cabins are going to be structured, so once all that is done along with the scavenging, we can have a meal and get some rest." The group dispersed and Percy set off along with his team into the forest.
d-.-b
Percy fell back from exhaustion after he chopped down his last tree. That makes 120. The work was mind-numbingly boring without his divine powers, but at the very least, he hadn't drawn the short end of the stick by having to transport all the tree trunks back to the camp. Ishtar and Percy graciously left that job to Andel, who, being Hermes' Guardian, was the fastest of the bunch.
Ishtar approached his spread-eagled form and plopped down next to him. "Hey Percy, do you know what's up with Adonia?"
"You're gonna have to be a little more specific," he replied. Ishtar chuckled at that.
"Come on, Perce. You can't fool me." Percy smiled wryly. Charmspeak or not, Ishtar was quick to pick up on how others felt, and had a way of making people confide in her. She was Aphrodite's Guardian, after all.
He sighed. "It is pretty self-explanatory. She must have felt awful after her own god chose to vote and exile us, and-"
"You're right about it being self-explanatory. Aphrodite was in favor of exiling us as well, dude, so I know how it feels. I'm talking about the whole ordeal with Apollo on his chariot."
"Oh yeah, that. To be honest, I'm not so sure myself. All I heard was the word grateful, so my best guess is that Apollo was trying to spin it into some kind of hero complex? No idea how that would work out, but it's kind of expected from him." They were all surface level observations from Percy. He was wondering why she was asking him these questions—especially considering that they didn't normally spend time together on Mount Olympus—when she went ahead and answered his unspoken query.
"Well, damn. That couldn't have helped her mood out," Ishtar mused. Percy sat up. "I need a favor from you. Metis was pretty spot on when it came to ensuring that we would all have some degree of emotional welfare, and I want to make sure that every single Guardian is accounted for. You are going to have to make sure that Adonia is handling this better than how she is currently, because you may not know this, but Adonia doesn't really hang with the rest of us. Nor does she try to, weirdly enough. Can you do that?"
"Yeah, I can." Percy stood and offered her a hand.
"Thanks. Also, Metis told Andel to tell me to tell you that you need to go hunt for some extra food just in case Helikos decides to pull a repeat of that one buffet after Typhon. Okay? Okay. Byeeeee!" She managed her entire spiel without taking a breath and dashing in the direction of the camp, leaving him all by himself. Percy shook his head at her antics, and moved deeper into the trees. He wanted to test the extent of his powers at the moment, and gathering food gave him an easy excuse.
Feeling a tug at his gut, Percy closed his eyes as he felt his bones reconstruct. Fur sprouted from his skin, and after a tingle behind his eyes, he reopened them to bare his teeth into a wolfish grin. Literally. A distinctly pitch black and silver eyed wolf took his place, three feet tall on four paws and a lithe body fine-tuned to kill. He was pleased that not all of his powers were gone, or at least those that counted in the wilderness.
Breaking off into a sprint, Percy scanned the area with his greater level of visual acuity, looking for smaller prey that Rakia surely wouldn't be able to find swinging an oversized spear around. Thankfully, the woods seemed to hold scents of an abundance of wildlife and it wasn't long before Percy was on the trail of several rabbits.
Nose to the ground, Percy slowed his pace to a stalk, tracking his prey while listening closely for the scuffling sound of critters among the underbrush. Sure enough, a colony of rabbits were sifting through the grass in a small clearing, much to Percy's delight. He circled the glade. His movements were deliberate, avoiding brushing through bushes or twigs that would give away his position. Raising his head slightly, he surmised that the wind was now blowing his scent away from the rabbits; he would close in on his prey without them ever suspecting it.
He kept his body low and stalked forward gingerly until he reached the edges of the bushes that concealed him. It was then that Percy pounced. His bounds were quick and light on the grass. By the time the first rabbit had noticed what was happening, he was already clamping his powerful jaws around it's neck, taking special care to not gore the rest of the body. The rest of the critters dispersed immediately, but Percy was fast enough to drop his first catch and pursue another rabbit, this one on the fatter side and therefore both slower and tastier.
The chase was short lived as the second hare met a similar fate as the first, and Percy was soon continuing his hunt after catching the scent of deer on the wind. Taking note of where he left his dinner, he preened at the thought of catching a nice deer to cheer up the rest of the guardians.
From a distance, Percy could soon make out the body of a grown-up doe who had unluckily separated from its herd. This would prove to be a much more difficult hunt, because the deer wasn't sickly, young, or old. He had only one shot to capitalize on the deer's current state of ignorance. As luck would have it, the predator and prey had stumbled upon an area with far more shrubbery than trees.
This is an easy kill, Percy thought prematurely. He once again positioned himself downwind to the fawn, while methodically moving forward. As he neared the edge of the treeline, the deer lifted it's head and snapped towards the direction of Percy, its ears twitching. Fuck.
Percy threw caution to the wind, springing forward within the same second that the doe spun around and dashed away. His paws pounded hard on the soil, proving that his shapeshifted species was at the top of the food chain. The deer may have had a slight head start, but Percy was swifter and closed distance by nimbly maneuvering through the trees and plants until he managed to bite down on the game's back leg. This effectively disabled his prey, and Percy decided to put the animal out of its misery by crushing its jugular with his teeth.
He relished in the feeling of blood dripping from his mouth. Another successful hunt, he mused, reminiscing of similar hunts that Artemis often took him on. The unanticipated thought caused a twinge in his heart, and Percy went to retrieve the rabbits, ignoring the ugly feelings which were beginning to resurface.
d-.-b
Percy trudged back into camp, having held the unfortunate rabbits in his maw while balancing the deer corpse on his back. His enhanced hearing kicked in a little before entering the clearing, catching a dispute between guardians.
"D-don't fight, guys! Metis is going to get real upset at you!" Percy distinctly identified Deilos, the Guardian of Hades who also happened to be afraid of death, from his wailing voice alone.
An arrogant laugh rang out. "Catch us and do what? That bitch wouldn't know real combat if it punched her in the face." The second voice was undoubtedly Aniketos, one of the few Guardians who felt the need to look down on the others constantly, without fail.
Percy shifted back into a human, shortly regretting it as the rabbit blood covered his human tongue. However succulent an animal might be in his wolf form, it was far less salivation-inducing and far more vomit-inducing in his human form. He hastily spit out the souring flavor, and picked up the deer in one hand. Giving his best shotputter's impression, Percy threw the deer over a new cabin which obscured direct vision of the altercation, and chuckled when he heard Aniketos emanate a higher pitched scream than Deilos could possibly muster.
He walked around the corner, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly as he captured the sight of a Xena with tears streaming down her face, a Deilos covering his mouth stunned, and an Aniketos struggling to get out from under the corpse bearing down on him. "My bad, bro. I was just testing out how much divine strength I still had. Was I interrupting something?" Percy smirked.
Aniketos looked at him incredulously, but tactfully chose not to say anything.
"Is there a problem? Deer got your tongue?"
"No. I was just being a good guy and helping these two build cabins. I swear." Aniketos knew well that he wouldn't be able to take Percy in a fight, though he was definitely stronger than two women's Guardians and some weakling that got out about as much as the god he was supposed to represent. The timing just wasn't right for him. Taking that into consideration, he scampered off before more could be said, not really doing any favors for his accountability.
Xena began sobbing harder and simply fell into Percy's arms. Always a big brother figure, Percy took it in stride and began to comfort her, absentmindedly stroking her hair while losing himself to his thoughts. It seemed that being knocked down from the pedestal had not changed many of the conceited outcasts for the better.
