A Demigod out of time
Prologue I
The Titan Lord advanced with blinding speed, but Percy was prepared.
Well, as prepared as he could be, considering he was fighting the most powerful Titan and father to the oldest gods. He barely managed to block the first swing, and then the second, before he retreated further back from his foe.
He was rather lucky that Kronos was still limited by the body he possessed.
By Luke's body.
Not that there was much left of Annabeth's old friend. Her beaten body lying motionless at the edge of his vision, too far away to see if she was just unconscious or worse, was proof to that.
Kronos' voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
"You should give up, Jackson!" he shouted. "You are too exhausted to continue fighting, barely able to lift your sword! You were outmatched from the beginning, but now? You aren't even fit enough to continue entertaining me! Give up now, and I will grant you a fast and painless death."
Percy smiled slightly, he just couldn't help himself.
Kronos was right, he was too exhausted to continue fighting. He could barely stay standing! But still, that was his great speech? That sounded more like the talk of some minor villain in some of the old comics he liked to read when he was younger. You couldn't get more cliche, even if you tried.
Honestly, he had expected something better from the Titan Lord.
"Sorry Grandpa," he said, and he could see how this title annoyed the Titan, "but as I was told several times in the past; I'm rather stubborn and don't know when enough is enough. I fear we need to end this the hard way."
Kronos waited a moment before he answered him, and when he did, he did so with a cruel smile on his face.
"Well then, so be it. At least you can die with the knowledge that it was the rightful ruler of the world who ended your life. That should give you more than enough bragging rights to impress all the souls in the Underworld, don't you think so?"
The moment he finished his sentence his body began to glow.
It started with his eyes; the once blue eyes of Luke Castellan, which had turned golden after Kronos took possession of his body, now more resembled two little suns.
It took only a few seconds before the glowing golden light spread all over his body.
Percy instantly knew what was happening. Kronos didn't need Luke's body any longer, so he wanted to dispose of it. Should he succeed and be able to transform into his true immortal form, then it would be over for real. Nothing would be able to stop him.
He needed to do something. All the pain, all the suffering, and all the death he and his friends had endured would have been for nothing if he failed now.
Percy summoned all of his will and forced himself to walk towards Kronos, ignoring the voice in the back of his head that told him how much the Titan resembled an evolving Pokemon. Not the time, brain!
The closer he came to the Titan, the more unbearable the heat of the light became. But he forced himself to continue onward, never stopping or slowing down.
It felt like hours to finally reach him, even if it couldn't have been more than a few seconds. At this point he felt like he was burning, the sensation worse than even the time he blew up Mount St. Helens.
He swung his sword.
He honestly didn't expect it to work. After all, Kronos (or was it Luke? Did it made a difference?) had bathed in the River Styx. He was invulnerable, just as he was, and he didn't know his weak spot. No, the only reason he bothered to even attack Kronos was, because he couldn't do nothing!
So imagine his surprise when his sword actually cut right through Kronos' body with ease, without ever hitting any resistance.
He would like to say that his last thoughts, before an explosion of golden light pulverized him, were about his friend; about Annabeth, Thalia, Grover and even his Mom and Paul. But, as it is so often, the truth was rather disappointing.
The last thing he actually thought about, before his sword and Kronos exploded in a golden light, was the question of what Zoë Nightshade would have to say if she found out that he had broken her sword.
It wasn't an understatement to say that Percy was confused when he first woke up.
He remembered, rather distinctly he might add, dying in an explosion of pure energy. He was also pretty sure that said energy burned his body to a pile of ashes.
For a moment he entertained the thought that he arrived in the Underworld, but he discarded this idea soon after. After all, if he were dead he wouldn't be so... comfortable. Sure, the Elysium might be, but before he could go there (if he actually deserved to be there, a silent and unwanted voice in his head added) he would need to be judged by the spirits first.
As this hadn't happened yet, he couldn't be in the Underworld. This, in turn, meant, that he was still alive.
He opened his eyes, expecting to see his cabin at camp or even his room in his mom's apartment. Instead, he saw an unknown but still somehow familiar-looking room.
Reflexes kicked in and one moment later he stood in the middle of the room, his hand already in his pocket to grasp his sword, only to find it missing.
That was definitively not something he expected, Riptide always returned to him, but he didn't have time to think more about it. First, he needed to find out where he was.
He slowly turned around, expecting a monster of even Kronos to jump out of some shadow to attack him like in some cheap horror movie, but nothing happened. As he took the room in he couldn't help but think that he knew this place. There was just something familiar about it, even if he couldn't put his finger on it.
The room was more or less empty. The right and the left half of the room had identically furniture; a wardrobe, a desk with a matching chair and a bed.
Only the half of the room where the bed he woke up in stood seemed to be in use, though. Clothes lay on the floor and the chair, open books on the desk and he could see an old backpack lying half under the bed.
Again, all of this seemed rather familiar.
There were two doors, one of which was open and seemingly lead to a bathroom. Deciding that the room seemed safe so far, he walked towards the bathroom to check it out too.
The first thing he noticed after he turned on the lights was the mirror hanging there right in front of him.
The second thing he noticed was that the face that looked back at him was several years too young to be his, while still being definitively him.
He blinked.
He would later deny that he shrieked like Annabeth when she saw a spider -because he didn't!- and nearly fell unconscious from the shock of this sight, but he couldn't deny that he was lost.
After he saw his reflection in the mirror he had somewhat of a panic attack. He checked every surface he could find to see if they showed the same image, hoping that the mirror was somehow defect.
He wouldn't have needed to bother.
Just looking down on his body was enough to see that he was much smaller than he remembered. This wasn't the body of a sixteen years old demigod who has trained for years and went through as much as he did. No, this was the body of a child.
He needed a bit more than an hour to calm down.
At this point, he also finally recognized the room he found himself in. This was his old dorm room from his middle school days in Yancy Academy. Also, if the calendar he found lying on the desk wasn't completely outdated, then it meant it was 2005.
He was no child of Athena, but he was not stupid.
He had the body of a child, presumable his eleven or twelve years old body, after waking up in his room at a school he didn't visit in four years.
There weren't that many conclusions he could come to. Sure, he may have just gone mad or something, but he preferred to exclude this possibility from his mind. There was no reason to go down this road quite yet, thank you very much.
For now, the possibility that he somehow travelled back in time, to barely a week after his enrollment ceremony in Yancy, seemed to be the most likely outcome.
Especially if you considered the fact that he 'died' because of the energy that was unleashed when Kronos' Divine Form exploded. He was the Titan Lord of Time, after all.
So, Percy wondered, what am I to do now?
Two days later he still wasn't any closer to an answer. He knew he wanted to change things, make everything better for everyone, no matter how hollow he felt when he thought about being forced to do live his life all over again. Sure, he wanted to help his friends and family, he knew his fatal flaw was loyalty, but going through the hardships of his life all over again? He couldn't say he was too enthusiastic about that.
He had tried to make plans of what to change, and how to change it, but was not really successful. He realized very fast that even small changes could have a big impact.
For example, he could confront Luke earlier and maybe even save him in the progress. That sounded nice, but ignored all the resulting consequences. Without Luke, Kronos would be forced to change his plans. Percy couldn't predict how much this would change his future plots, because he didn't know how much Luke was included in the planning process. Events may just completely change from what he remembered. And while he knew this would happen anyway, he wanted it to happen on his terms. Not on Kronos'.
Besides, he had watched enough movies an listened to enough rant of Annabeth and his mom after the finished reading their latest book to know a few things about time travel; changing too much too fast meant you lost control over the situation while changing not enough or even nothing at all meant that you were wasting the opportunity you were given.
How could he convince everyone that Luke, well-liked and respected Luke, was a traitor? Especially when he had no proof!
He really wished Annabeth were here with him. She was much better with this long-term thinking than him.
In his defence, he was rather distracted by the fact that he went to school with kids who were four years younger than him! One of these kids being Nancy Bobofit didn't help at all. He was really lucky that she didn't try to bully him yet because he didn't know how he should react to it. After all, he went through, Nancy Bobofit wasn't really worth mentioning. If he remembered correctly, then she didn't start picking on him until he befriended Grover. Even then she concentrated much more on him than on Percy. Probably because he was an easier victim.
Speaking of Grover...
"Class, please welcome Mister Grover Underwood. Because of his medical condition, he wasn't able to attend the enrollment ceremony last week, so please do your best to make him feel welcome."
Percy was happy to see Grover, he really was. After all the quests they went on together and all the fights they survived side by side, he would love nothing more than just enjoy the (comparatively) easy time they had together at school.
Especially because Grover was the only other student in his 'age group' who was actually older than twelve.
But there were two problems with that:
First, Grover was a Satyr. This meant, that he had the ability to feel the emotions of other people. How could he possibly explain the feelings of dread and anxiety he would undoubtedly feel as soon as Mrs Dodds aka Alecto became their new pre-algebra teacher?
Now, I know what you are thinking: But Percy, Grover is your best friend, isn't he? Why don't you just tell him the truth?
Well, that's rather easy to answer. It's because...
Second, Grover is a terrible liar. If he told him the truth, he could as well tell everyone else. Kronos himself would probably know before the week was over, and that would be really...bad.
So, what to do?
The only way of stopping Grover from finding out something, or at least the only way he could think of, was by not becoming too close to him this time around.
Satyrs could feel emotions, yes, but this ability had limits. He remembered that Grover once told him that it was easier to feel the emotions of people he was close to. The emotions of others were more like background noises. Also, the only reason he could feel Percy's emotions as well as he could was because he had established an Empathy Link between them.
By not being his best friends, this wouldn't be a problem.
It stung that he wouldn't be able to joke with Grover as much as he used to, and he felt like an ass every time he told Grover that he would prefer to eat on his own in the cafeteria instead of letting him join him, but it was necessary. Also, he only needed to do this until he could go to the camp. Once he arrived there he would make it up to him.
Now, that didn't mean they hadn't contact at all. They shared a room -what a 'coincident'- and if one of the teachers asked the class to pair up or form groups the usually ended up together.
Still, it wasn't quite the same. You could compare his relationship with Grover to the one most students have with this one person in their class they would talk to in school but never meet afterwards.
He doubted he would ever be used to it.
It was barely his third week after waking up in the past that he had his first demigod dream, but he wasn't really complaining. No matter how disturbing his demigod dreams tended to be, they were still better than the usual nightmares he had ever since finding out about the wording of the Great Prophecy and which became only worse since he was back in time.
He was in his dorm room, just sitting in his bed and wondering what he was doing there when three old ladies appeared in front of him. Obviously, considering his experiences with old ladies, his first reaction was to jump up and prepare to fight them to death.
...which, if you told some stranger without knowledge of the gods, probably sounded pretty weird.
"Percy Jackson," the first woman spoke up with a croaking voice, "we knew you would bring trouble wherever you went, but we didn't expect it to happen so soon. Nor did with thought it would happen to us."
"You weren't supposed to be aware so soon, neither of your heritage nor of the threats to come," the second one said, her voice sounding like the one of a young woman instead of matching her appearance.
"You brought chaos into many threads, destroying many hours of hard work," the last woman said, her voice strangely high-pitched.
He stood still, ready to bolt or fight at any sign of them attacking him when he realized he had seen them once before, many years ago when he went home after he was kicked out of Yancy Academy.
His eyes widened. "You're the Fates?" he exclaimed in disbelief.
When he had told Chiron about the three old ladies the first time around he had been just as shocked as everyone else, but not because of the entirely same reasons. If the bad sign of them cutting yarn in front of him wasn't bad enough already, Chiron also knew that the Fates usually didn't show themselves in front of others in the first place. That they did so this time had visibly disturbed him when he explained it to Percy later on.
"Indeed," the woman who had spoken first said. "I am Atropos, the Fate of Death."
"I am Lachesis, the Fate of Life," the second woman spoke up.
"And I am Clotho, the Fate of Birth," the last woman said at least.
"And you, Perseus Jackson," they said in simultaneity, "defied Fate."
"Excuse me?" he spluttered. "How exactly do you think I did that? It's hardly my fault I was thrown back in time, but-"
"We know it didn't happen because of any fault of yours," Atropos interrupted him, "but you're still here, in the past, living a different life than expected of you."
"Well," he said miffed, "my life was a whole bunch of crap anyway. Honestly, do you hate me or anything? And now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I vowed I would hit you if I ever met you in person..."
The three women seemed more amused by his rambling than everything else, which was probably for the better. The last thing he needed was for the Fates to make his life even worse.
"As it is," Lachesis spoke up again, "we found a way to limit the damage of your arrival. And no," she added when he was just about to interrupt her, "it's not by killing you or wiping your mind."
"Well, what's your great idea then?" he wanted to know, genuinely curious now.
"The Great Prophecy still applies, and too much depends on it as to just toss it away, so we changed its meaning in a way that it still applies even now," Lachesis continued, and Percy was pretty sure he didn't imagine her voice sounding smug while saying that.
Now all three of them spoke up at the same time again:
"A half-blood of the eldest gods
Shall reach sixteen against all odds
And see the world in endless sleep
The hero's soul, cursed blade shall reap
A single choice shall end his days
Olympus to preserve or raze "
"You're a half-blood of the eldest gods, you reached the age of sixteen, and the future you come from will never come to pass in exactly the same manner as before. This future that stopped to exist is a world you have memories of, a world you will dream of, and a world that stands still, forever unchanged. A world in endless sleep, nothing but a possibility that might be," Clotho explained to him.
"The next lines are a bit more tricky," Atropos continued, "but we managed them as well. Your soul, The hero's soul, was reaped by the energy emitted by Kronos. When he exploded so did his Scythe, which is his symbol of power and directly connected to him. Even your own sword, in view of its history, can be considered cursed, and it also exploded in Kronos' energy, so you were, in a way, exposed to the energy of two weapons that can be called cursed even if only one of them is technically a blade. Your soul got transported back in time, which means you're future self is dead in a way, and that is close enough to satisfy the phrasing 'The hero's soul, cursed blade shall reap'."
"'A single choice shall end his days' is much easier in comparison," Lachesis added. "You chose to fight Kronos when he was about to dispose of the body of the son of Hermes instead of lying down and accept your defeat. This choice end your days and sent you back in time. Only the last sentence, 'Olympus to preserve or raze', is left, and this is also the last part yet to happen." She looked right into his eyes with frightening intensity. "The rest is up to you."
"Wait!" he cried. "So the prophesy counts for this world and my old one? How is that even possible? Besides, I'm pretty sure some parts of this explanation don't even make sense!"
"It is possible because you serve as a link between the different timelines," Lachesis said, "and it does make sense because we say so."
He ignored how she definitively sounded very smug when she said that last part.
"There is one more thing, Perseus Jackson," Atropos said before he could open his mouth so speak up himself. "You're not allowed to speak about the future with anyone."
"What? Why?" he exclaimed. While he couldn't tell Grover yet, he had hoped to tell at least Chiron, and probably Annabeth and his mom too. Maybe even the gods, or at least a few of them.
"Your presence changed too much already, and the different choices that lay in your future will only continue making changes. All the work we put into our threads is in chaos and we were just barely able to bring order back. If other people gain knowledge of the future this effect would only get worse. We can't let this happen."
His shoulders sank. What was he supposed to do now? He might not be stupid but planning what to change and what not was a bit too much for him alone. Scratch that, it was way too much! He would never be able to keep track of all the little changes and their consequences, that would have been Annabeth's job.
He didn't want to play God.
"So there is really nobody I can talk with about this?" he asked resigned, not really expecting an answer, which meant he was all the more surprised when he actually got one.
"There might be one," Clotho said, ignoring the disapprovingly stares of her sisters, "a single person that might cross paths with you. An old friend. It will depend on your decisions though, so make sure-"
"That's enough!" Atropos interrupted her annoyed. "You told him enough, now it's up to him."
Clotho tilted her head in silent agreement while repeating 'up to him' under her breath.
"This meeting is over, young Hero," Lachesis said. "We said what he came for, you now know your purpose. You're the one with knowledge of the war to come, your decisions will form the future. Act wisely, or suffer the consequences."
His eyes widened and he took a step forward. "No, wait, I still have questions. You can't just-"
But he was too late. The Fates faded out of sight and one second later he woke up, breathing heavily. He looked around frantically, hoping against all odds that he would see one of the old ladies still standing somewhere in his room, but was disappointed. For a moment he considered if he should look for them in the bathroom or inside one of the wardrobes, but finally decided that it would be pointless.
He sighed. It seemed he would be on his own, shouldering the weight of the world once again. No pressure at all.
Fate is a bitch, he thought with a sigh, and if he sounded more tired than ever, well, no one needed to know.
He wasn't ashamed to confess that he cried a bit when he visited his mother over Christmas. Not even Gabe (and holy Zeus, he couldn't wait until he turned to stone again! If there was one thing he was definitively not changing, it was this) could ruin this moment, even if it seemed like he was trying to do just that.
This was also the moment he decided, that he would tell her the truth if the entire "My teacher turned into a monster and tried to kill me"-thing repeated itself, which was very likely. Maybe if he did that they could reach Camp Half-Blood before the Minotaur reached them and Hades kidnapped his mother.
As soon as the weather started to fall into chaos shortly after the winter solstice was over he knew that Zeus' Master Bolt has been stolen once again.
Percy wasn't surprised when they were told shortly after the solstice that they would have a new pre-algebra teacher. Honestly, he was actually relieved! At least now he only needed to wonder if his teacher was going to kill him today or not, something he was already familiar with, instead of all the apprehension he felt when he wondered when she would finally arrive. He preferred to deal with a problem he could see instead of one that was only in his head.
So yes, when finally a familiar-looking small woman, who could have been in her fifty's, appeared in their classroom, wearing her typical leather jacket and looking at him with her evil little eyes, he was relieved.
Then it really got to him that he had one of the three Furies, head tortures in the Underworld, as his teacher for the rest of the school year.
Again.
For some reason, the thought that he already survived this situation once when he wasn't even trained yet didn't calm him down at all.
Oh damn.
Not even two weeks later 'Mr. Brunner' became their new history teacher and Percy guessed that Grover had written him after recognizing that their pre-algebra teacher was actually a monster.
You know, he hadn't really thought about it, but school was so much easier this time around. Sure, he still wasn't a Straight-A Student, be he got the occasional B in addition to his usual C. A far cry from the last time he attended Yancy.
Honestly, school wasn't too important for him. He had been too busy trying to safe the Western Civilization time and time again, there was just not enough time to care about normal mortal education if you weren't a child of Athena. Not that he would ever tell that Annabeth, she would skin him alive.
But if nothing else, at least his Mom would be happy about his better grades. That alone made it worth it.
He wasn't sure how he survived Yancy the last time around. The more he thought about it, the more unbelievable it became that he actually managed to kill Alecto as an untrained kid.
The field trip was next week and he had a feeling that he would need to fight her again, no matter if he demonstrated any powers like the last time or not.
He was as prepared as he could be; since he awoke in the past he tried to do more sport, to be faster and stronger than in the original timeline.
Of course, he was still only a twelve-year-old kid, which meant his body's potential wasn't too great to begin with. Also, he was still busy with schoolwork, so he had a very limited time frame he could use for training. Especially if he wanted to keep the extent of his training a secret from Grover and Mr Brunner.
Still, he liked to think that he was at least better off than last time around, for all the good it would do him.
He had had one year time to get his act together and plan how he wanted to handle all the trouble and quests he would get himself into over the next few years. While he had still no idea about a lot of things, he had at least a rough idea about how he wanted to proceed from now.
A very rough idea was still better than no idea at all, wasn't it? And he had always been better at improvising anyway.
Well, he thought, I guess now it begins?