Percy Jackson

Percy really didn't know what was going on. It seemed the whole world was starting to go to shit after Annabeth died. The weather was always really bad, he hadn't seen it sunny at all in the past few weeks, the best weather he saw was overcast. It had gotten so bad that an entire category five hurricane appeared and was on its way to New York when all of a sudden, it just disappeared. Percy knew the gods were involved somehow.

Mr. D still hadn't returned from Olympus. Chiron had dropped by to tell Percy that he was going to go to Olympus himself to find out what had happened to the camp director. Usually, camp was never left unattended but this time, it was. Technically Percy and Jason were in charge of camp for now, they had offered Nico a chance to help run camp, but the son of Hades opted to help his boyfriend in the infirmary.

Percy glanced over from his bed to Annabeth's laptop which was sitting on his desk. It had been there since he got it from Malcolm. He had been planning to look through it earlier but stopped because he felt it would be a bit too painful to see Annabeth's face again. It would just open up his wounds again and he knew he'd weep.

"I should probably just get it over with." He said to himself.

Percy climbed out of his bed and made his way to his desk and sat down. He opened the laptop, a blue sticky note falling out. He reached down and picked it up.

It read, "Seaweed Brain :)"

Tears welled up in Percy's eyes. He hadn't expected a note addressed to him to come with the laptop, she must've wrote it if he tried to snoop through her laptop. His hands shook as he carefully folded the note and put it in his wallet. He turned back to the computer and sighed. He pushed the blue glowing power button.

The laptop whirled to life, a light airy sound coming from it. The screen flickered on, revealing Annabeth and him, smiling widely at the camera with the backshot being Camp Half-Blood. Percy smiled sadly at the picture, she took that selfie with him on their one-month anniversary.

He pressed the enter button and stared at the login screen. He remembered she had told him her password as a sort of trust thing. He never used it, but he still remembered it just in case. He was about to type it in when he heard someone knock at his door. He stopped and closed the laptop before getting the door.

When he opened the door, he was surprised to see Jason standing there.

"Yo, Percy." He said.

"Jason," Percy replied, "What's up?"

"Not much, listen, do you have any Coke? I checked my cabin's mini fridge but I'm all out." Jason asked.

"Uh, I don't think so. All of mine got confiscated in the last cabin inspection."

Jason cursed, "I don't know who to ask then. Nico only drinks Sprite and the Stolls are going to rip me off, I know they will."

"Just get some from the camp kitchen." Percy suggested.

"It doesn't taste the same, man. It always tastes better straight out of the can."

Percy knew exactly what he was talking about. To him, nothing could beat Coke in a can, only Coke in a glass bottle could compete yet this wasn't the fifties, they really didn't have those anymore. He never understood that since they were better for the environment than plastic bottles but who knows.

"Well, I can drive you to Walmart and get some." Percy said.

"That'd be awesome." Jason beamed.

After getting changed, Percy went to Chiron's office which was currently empty, grabbed the keys, and went to the camp van which was parked in a clearing near the road. Jason followed the whole time, a huge grin on his face.

Percy was really one of the only people at camp that had a driver's license. Jason didn't have one due to him being at Camp Jupiter pretty much all the time. Clarisse had a license but she drove like rules didn't exist. Percy found it weird that he of all the people at camp had a license, even Annabeth didn't have one.

Percy climbed into the driver's seat and waited for Jason, who climbed in the passenger seat.

"Alright, let's get to it." Percy said as he put the keys in the ignition and turned it.

The van rumbled for a moment before a loud squealing nose emitted from the engine. Percy raised an eyebrow before trying to start the van again. This time, nothing happened. There was no nose or shaking, it was as if the van had no power. The dashboard didn't even light up like it would normally.

"What's wrong with this thing?" Jason asked.

"I have no idea." Percy said while unbuckling his seatbelt, "I'm going to check it out." He opened his door and walked to the front of the van to pop the hood. He hoped the Stolls hadn't pranked the van or something.

When Percy popped the hood, he was immediately confused. Everything looked fine. There wasn't any smoke so nothing was burnt up. He knew a little about cars, his mom had him fix hers a few times, he reckoned the problem was somewhere deeper. That meant they needed someone who knew everything about mechanics.

"Hey, Jason!" Percy called.

"Yeah?"

"Go get Leo for me, yeah?"

"Alright." Jason said before getting out of the van and running towards cabin nine.

Percy sighed, if Leo couldn't fix the van, then they'd have to take their horses. He really didn't want to since the weather had been acting up too much recently. He didn't trust Zeus enough to not strike him out of the sky. Even if Jason was with him, Zeus might not be thinking clearly with his temper flaring up as evidenced by the constant storming over the past few weeks.

Five minutes later, Leo came walking up with Jason behind him. Leo was wearing his signature toolbelt, a slightly charred camp shirt, and jeans which were currently dripping with oil. His hair was sticking up in all sorts of different directions that it made him look only a little insane.

"So, Jason told me that you guys are having car trouble?" He said with a smirk.

"Yeah, I don't know what's wrong with this thing." Percy said.

"Let me take a look." Leo said, leaning over the engine bay and peering inside. He took out a flashlight and started examining every little nook and cranny.

After a few minutes of rummaging around the engine bay, Leo pushed a wire and all of a sudden, the engine roared to life. Percy and Jason gaped while Leo closed the hood and smiled, "Loose wire from what it looked like. I don't get how it got loose though."

Percy felt like a idiot for not knowing that, he hated the fact that he probably just bothered Leo from working on a important project.

"Sorry for bothering you for that." Jason said, looking just as embarrassed as Percy.

"It's fine. A lot of mechanical stuff keeps messing up for some reason. Like yesterday, we tried to make a blender from some leftover scraps and the thing just exploded. Even some of the things that worked just fine started breaking. I hope we aren't cursed again."

Percy recalled a few odd incidents around camp. He recalled the Hephaestus campers test driving a Harley around camp before he went missing, last week he had seen that same Harley fall apart for no reason. Then there was the fact that some of the weapons made by cabin nine were just bending or breaking, which was not normal for Celestial Bronze.

It wasn't just their cabin that was facing misfortune either. For a brief bit, the Ares cabin found themselves breaking more traps and gadgets than usual. Even their own traps were just failing to work. Then there was the Demeter cabin, whose plants started wilting or randomly sprouting. Percy definitely didn't appreciate a increase in Poison Ivy coming from their cabin.

"Well, I got some things to fix, get me a root beer while you guys are out." Leo said.

Percy and Jason climbed into the van and started to drive off. If only they knew car troubles would be only the beginning.

Ω

When Percy and Jason got to the store, they were almost appalled by the chaos that was currently engulfing everywhere they looked. Self-checkouts were either sputtering sparks or beeping loudly. Customers were shouting at each other, some even going as far as to fight or ram their shopping carts into other customers. The workers seemed to be possessed by the same mania that was driving the other customers.

"What is going on?" Jason asked with awe.

"I don't even know. Let's just get the soda and leave." Percy said. This was more than he was used to. New York was always a strange interesting place but even this was too weird. The few times he saw something this bad happen was on either black Friday or during the frenzy of Christmas shopping.

Percy and Jason passed the produce section, which looked horrible. Certain fruits and vegetables were out of stock while others were overflowing. Prices had either been slashed down to only cents per fruit or double-digit dollar prices.

"Ma'am, I understand you want fresh apples but we just don't have any. There's been a bad harvest." A manager explained to a grumpy old woman.

"Since when did we have shortages?!" She shrieked.

Percy cast a confused look over at Jason before jumping back as two guys started fighting right in front of them. Chips were knocked over and drinks were spilled all over the floor.

"Gods, what is going on?!" Jason asked loudly.

Percy didn't answer, he just wanted to get the soda before a customer decided to fight him. He took off towards the soda aisle and was horrified to find the entire aisle almost barren. Entire shelves were empty with large out of stock signs taped to them.

"There's no way." Jason said reading a sign," They're even out of Coke Zero!"

Percy walked over to one of the signs and read it.

The sign read, "Attention customers, due to a shortage of food dye, plastic bottles, and ingredients, we are currently facing a shortage for soft drinks. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused."

"Do you think it has anything to do with Chiron going to Olympus?" Jason asked.

"It might." Percy said. He knew something was going on and it had to do with the gods, he just wasn't sure what.

If Annabeth were still alive, she'd be able to tell him what was happening. Usually she caught onto these type of things faster than he did.

There it was again. Annabeth. No matter how hard Percy tried, he couldn't help but think about her. He'd find himself always asking what Annabeth would do, what she would think, if she would call him a Seaweed Brain for not figuring out something so simple yet so complex.

"You okay, man?" Jason asked.

"Huh?" He asked.

"You were zoning out for a bit." Jason told him.

"Yeah, I was just…thinking." Percy said, a painful grimace on his face.

"You were thinking about Annabeth again, weren't you?"

Percy nodded sadly.

Jason sighed and pulled him into a hug, "It's alright, man. It's okay to miss her, plenty of us do too."

Percy relaxed for a few seconds before pulling away, "Sorry about that."

"It's cool. We don't even need to get soda, we can just get some water and get out." Jason said, pointing to the rows of water bottles.

"Alright." Percy said.

After both demigods grabbed a water bottle each, they made their way to the check out. The situation inside the Walmart was even worse than when they first entered. By now, NYPD had entered the building and attempting to control a small crowd that were gathered around two guys beating each other with fruits. Workers ran around attempting to break up fights or help customers. A pile of broken shopping carts crowded a walk way.

"Hey, you two, come here!" A fat guy with a receding hairline came towards Percy and Jason.

"Man, let's just scan our shit and go, I don't feel like dealing with this today." Percy said, scanning the two water bottles and paying before running out of the store with Jason.

"Dude, what is happening?!" Jason shouted as he climbed into the van.

Cars had crashed into stores and other cars. A entire riot had formed around a nearby sporting goods store. A police helicopter hovered overhead, its spotlight flickering on and off.

"I don't know!" Percy said, "We're leaving now!"

A/N: I know by now plenty of you are probably wondering where the Chaos parts start coming in, well, like i said before, this is sort of a Chaos story just without Chaos the primordial, but it does use some elements from the Chaos stories. You've most likely seen one such instance in this story, mainly the part where Percy loses Annabeth. I know most stories have her cheat with the OC but i opted for a more realistic route and just had her killed off by a monster. It just didn't make sense for her to randomly cheat out of nowhere with a new camper who she just met. Anyways, now that this chapter is out, the story is going to start heating up. If i had to guess, this story will probably span around 20 to 40 chapters.