Piper and Jisdu

Like I said, slower updates due to college.

And more Elden Ring. I picked it back up and am experimenting with a magic build as opposed to my usual melee character.

Now, to address something funny:

As many of you may recall, I've been foraying into the Percy Jackson subreddit. Recently, a Guest asked the question of why I haven't been posting anything on the subreddit recently, and that's because I've been perma-banned. It's an involved story.

December 21, 2022, I left my computer open to go get laundry out of the dryer. I came back a few minutes later to find an email from the mods saying that I'd been temporarily banned for 90 days. Confused, I emailed them about this, and they came back with three reasons:

I'd made a NSFW comment on a post

I made a joke about Reyna being on her period

And I had been uncivil towards other users, calling someone a narcissistic jerk

I investigated these reasons, and presented my findings.

The comment was not made by me, but my sister while I was gone from the room doing laundry. She was very giggly and proud about this, using my computer behind my back, but she went slack-jawed when I told her she got me banned. The period joke was on me; I made a post questioning whether Jason and Reyna had killed any demigods during their attack on Mt. Othrys like many believe Percy did during the Battle of Manhattan, leading someone to comment that Reyna had probably been "painting the ground red," and I quoted that with my own line of "Insert favorite period joke here." The jerk comment, however, was taken completely out of context by the mods. I found what they were talking about, and my comment was the last in a string of other comments that they removed, and mine was asking the previous person as to whether they were calling me a narcissistic jerk, not me calling someone a jerk.

Three reasons, the first being a forgivably false accusation, the second being understandable, and the third taken out of context by the mods themselves. I sent this back, asking if the ban could be lessened to 30 days in accordance with 2/3 reasons being false, but they decided to keep the 90-day ban instead.

Okay, fine.

Only a few minutes later, though, my sister came to me and proudly announced that she made her own account and went after the mods for being "jerks and assholes" to me, and I had a heart attack. I jumped back on the subreddit and found her very colorful post that explained all that I just did, why I was being temp-banned, how I went back to the mods with evidence, and how they doubled down, and I made her delete her post and apologized to the mods on her behalf.

That's when I got the email saying I had been permanently banned from the subreddit.

I emailed the mods again, and then reddit permanently suspended my account as a whole.

You'd think that would've been the end of it, but strangely enough, it hasn't. The main moderator on the subreddit is u/pretty-in-pink. If you look through the Reviews for this story, and if you look through the Reviews for Voidwalker, you will see Reviews from a user calling themselves "prettyinpnink," spelled that way, yes, and if you look at their profile, you will see this person claims to be the moderator herself. Also, there is a Guest calling themselves "Rcamphalfblood," the subreddit name, here in the Reviews.

All three of these Reviews are threats against me.

Now, this is the internet, and I do appreciate that this could be some very confused individual who thinks they are standing on some kind of moral high ground because they don't like what I write, but whatever the case is, whether this is someone claiming to be the mod(s), or is actually the mod(s) her(them)selves…I find this to be completely hilarious!

Please, whoever you are, keep making empty, baseless threats against me. You're really showing me, I tell ya what. Quaking in my boots over here.

But seriously.

If you're an imposter, get a life. You're not impressing anyone; you're just being a nuisance.

If you're actually one of the mods, or someone from the mod team speaking on behalf of the mods, stay in your lane. This is fanfiction. You have no power here.

In either case, your opinion has been noted and disregarded.

Alright, that sums up everything between me and the subreddit. Mods made three claims against me to justify a 90-day ban, I investigated, found two of their three reasons were false, they upheld the 90-day ban, my sister fired back at them, I got suspended, and now there's some toothless puppy barking at me from the Reviews.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Percy Jackson fandom.

Anyway, as for this story, I'm ramping it up. I have now decided exactly where I'm going with it, and how I'm going to do it, and the only thing left is to do it. I'm thinking five, maybe six, more chapters, and then we're done, and it's time to return to my other stories.

I'm sure many of you will be happy with that, so please bear with me!

Disclaimer: I don't own PJO

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From that Monday, the nineth of May, Piper's life became like a Saturday morning cartoon.

You had Piper, the teenager with attitude, given great powers so she could fight an evil entity and save the world, with Jisdu, an old, wise master to teach her how to use her powers. You had Billy and Shel, the two best friends with one of them doubling as the potential love interest. You had Tsula, the family member who knew about Piper's secret life.

Then you had the great juggling act between secret life, family life, social life, and personal life.

Piper still had to go to school, that was federal law. She still had homework, the odd project, and tests to study for. She couldn't have Jisdu alter everyone's memories to make them think she had been at school the whole time while she was actually out training, because then she'd be lost on school material and whatever social interactions took place. With that huge swath of the day cut out, Piper had to split her time between her best friends, her cousin, and her training with Jisdu.

The rest of the week, that was easy. After school, she went to Shel's house for a few hours, and then Billy took her home before it got dark. Since Dad wouldn't be done with his nightguard job until next Monday, the 16th, Piper had the whole evening and into the night to train with Jisdu.

Her training bore terrific fruit.

From the general plant/animal spirits, Piper had several blessings. For one, she could now communicate with all of nature just like satyrs could. She could now speak Plant, and could understand all the animals as if they were speaking English, and they could understand her the same way. Two, she could mimic animal abilities, like augmenting her senses to be able to hear, see, and smell better, along with some other niche things like a snake's ability to sense heat. Three, Piper could partially, and also fully, transform into animals. She had made bear claws sprout from her fingertips, then turned her whole hands into bear paws, and then she'd turned her whole self into a bear. She'd also produced snake fangs with actual venom glands, made deer antlers sprout from her temples, and there was that one time Jisdu tricked her into producing a certain anatomical appendage that belonged to a stallion.

Piper's scream echoed through the woods in such a way that several flocks of birds went soaring to the heavens.

And Jisdu had to run for his life as Piper chased after him in retribution for his prank.

However, Piper didn't like fully transforming into animals for almost the same reason she didn't like using lightning. Those powers belonged to someone else, lightning to Jason, and the shapeshifting to Frank. Piper felt like she was stealing from the boys, especially Frank, because shapeshifting was Frank's signature ability. She felt like she was robbing him of something that made him special.

Jisdu assured her this was not the case, and pointed out the limitations behind Piper's shapeshifting.

"You can only become an animal that has a corresponding spirit," the rabbit explained, "meaning only the animal spirits that were known to the tribes. You cannot become a lion, tiger, panther, leopard, elephant, or even a horse, because horses were brought over from Europe. Your range is not as diverse as Frank's."

It was still weird to Piper how Jisdu knew the names, histories, powers, and current occupations of her friends, including the fact that New Rome had successfully repelled the emperors, though it came at the great cost of hundreds of people. In the conversation that revelation had been delivered, Piper could tell that Jisdu had more to say, but kept it to himself.

And he made it very clear that it wasn't important, he wasn't going to talk about it, and they needed to focus on Piper honing her powers.

"I guess," Piper somewhat conceded to Jisdu's point, but she still didn't feel right about total transfiguration.

Beyond animal powers, Piper also had gifts related to specific spirits, such as the aforementioned Thunderers.

From them, Piper could obviously summon lightning, but she could also generate her own lightning, proven when Jisdu brought to her an old cellphone that had been dead for ages, and she brought it to life. Piper could also control the wind to make herself fly, conjure storms of her own, and generate thunderclaps by shouting, snapping her fingers, clapping, stomping her foot, or any bodily action that generated sound.

Jisdu thought it had been absolutely hilarious when he managed to trick Piper into generating a thunderclap that rattled the trees at the same time she tried to release a quiet fart.

She didn't chase him down and try to skin him alive for that one, but she had certainly been rather cross with the rabbit.

As stated, though, Piper didn't like using her Thunderer powers for obvious reasons. Still hurt, even after she overcame her nightmare, and it still felt like theft.

Amongst the more specific spirits were the Tlanuwa, Yunwi Tsunsdi, Nunnehi, and the Stoneclads.

The Tlanuwa were huge birds of prey, depicted as eagles or falcons, that had impenetrable metal feathers. The blessing Piper received from them was that she could generate her own…suit of armor, basically. That was the best way Piper could describe it. Her skin would tingle, and silvery metal stuff would slide out of every pore and encase her in form-fitting armor with a feather pattern, with her whole head being protected by a bird-of-prey-esque helmet with glowing, front-facing eye sockets, and large, metallic wings sprouted between her shoulder blades, with talons on her fingers and toes. While armored, Piper's speed, strength, and durability increased tenfold and then some, and she was obviously able to fly, and even shoot metal feathers from her wings, arms, and legs. The drawback was that maintaining her armor was very taxing, and when she was armored, she couldn't access any of her other powers.

The Yunwi Tsunsdi were, essentially, the Cherokee version of leprechauns. They were short people, no taller than a grown man's knee, making their name of "Little People" appropriate, stayed away from populated areas, were generally benevolent but easily offended and quick to get even, had a soft spot for kids, could turn invisible, and had other, more general, magical powers. Which they typically used for pranks or the aforementioned retribution. Using their blessings, Piper thankfully did not become a midget, but she could turn herself invisible. However, she did struggle with performing magic. She could make rocks levitate as if using the Force, but she couldn't turn the rocks to gold, and it was hard for her to cast an illusion on the rocks to make them look like gold.

That was just a general example, of course. There were other things Piper could and couldn't do.

The Nunnehi, Ones Who Lived Anywhere, or the more contemporary English translation, the Immortals, were of the same vein as the Little People, but they were human-sized. They lived away from humans, but were quite friendly and benevolent, able to turn invisible as well. They were skilled and powerful warriors, and also clairvoyant, often coming to the Cherokee to warn them of war, weather, or other calamity. Jisdu said that the Immortals came to the Cherokee before the Indian Removal Act, opening a mountain paradise to all who wanted to enter, but they closed it off to those who refused and had never opened it since. The Cherokee that didn't enter the mountain were forced to walk the Trail of Tears, and all of their descendants walked the earth today. Piper's blessings from the Immortals were enhanced battle prowess, more invisibility, and the same clairvoyance, only it happened situationally and she could only see so far. Jisdu said that was the price the Nunnehi levied on lending their power, because they didn't want further catastrophe to befall mankind if someone abused knowledge of the future, like Biff Tannen from Back to the Future.

The Stoneclads—well, as far as the Cherokee went, Stoneclad, singular—was a bit of an awkward one for Piper. The Cherokee story of the singular Stoneclad went that he was a cannibal witch that preyed on hunters. His skin was covered in rock plates, giving him great physical prowess, and his weakness, which is what made things awkward for Piper, was menstruating women. What happened way back when, and with every other Stoneclad the Cherokee encountered since, was that the one Stoneclad descended upon a village and the medicine man found seven menstruating women, and as the Stoneclad came upon them one by one, he got weaker and weaker, throwing up his own blood, until he got to the seventh and collapsed entirely. The people buried him under logs, set him on fire, and he started talking about cures for sickness and singing songs for hunting.

Jisdu said that other Stoneclads did not need to encounter seven women on their periods in order to be so weakened; one was usually enough to get the job done.

What this all meant for Piper was that her blessing from the Stoneclads was their rock armor, but it came with the drawback of being extremely hungry afterwards, and exclusively for meat. Also, Jisdu informed her (very stiffly, by the way, and Piper couldn't tell if it was because he was trying not to laugh or if he felt as awkward as she did) that because of the Stoneclads' method of defeat, she would not be able to use their powers when she was on her period. The meat part already meant that Piper wouldn't ever be using their powers in the first place, but the part where she couldn't use them at all while on her period was just a whole extra set of nails to that coffin.

"Wh-Why did they even off their help?" Piper asked, utterly bewildered, slightly disgusted, and a bit self-conscious about the Stoneclads and the price of their blessing.

Jisdu shrugged. "They're cannibals. If Incognito kills 99% of all mankind, there goes their food."

"Okay, that makes sense, but still. Yuck."

"The part where they eat people, or the part where you can't use their powers while menstruating?"

"Both!"

Hands down, one of the weirdest and awkwardest conversations of Piper's life, being told she had the power of rock-armored cannibals, but she couldn't use them while on her period, and the drawback of using them was a craving for meat.

Of course, her training wasn't just her honing her new powers, but also meaningful conversation with her mentor.

"Why is this so easy for me?" Piper asked, and then she elaborated. "Like, all these powers—I can do them with almost no effort. I'm just now using them for the very first time, but it feels natural, like I've been doing it all my life. And I hardly feel tired. Only the Tlanuwa armor really drains me. So…why? Why am I having such an easy time mastering powers I'm only just now using with so little effort?"

"Because you are naturally powerful and talented," Jisdu answered shortly. "Piper, you are unprecedented. I have never marked a warrior as powerful as you, and the only ones that I could mark that would be more powerful are demigods such as Percy, Nico, Thalia, and Hazel. The reason you are so little drained is because your pool of energy is vast. Compound your—what's a good term used in fiction to describe a person's energy? Chakra? Reiatsu? Ki? Chi? Nen? Mana? Midichlorians?"

"Uh…" Piper was drawing a blank as well, trying to figure out a good name for a demigod's internal divine energy reserve, while also bewildered that her Cherokee spirit teacher was well-versed in pop culture. "Essence?"

"Eh, good enough," Jisdu decided. "Compound your huge amount of essence—you know what? No. That's not good enough. That sounds weird. I've got the perfect name for it, and I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier. Cosmo. Your energy, and the energy of demigods, shall be referred to as Cosmo."

"Uh…what?"

"You've never heard of Saint Seiya?"

"Can't say I have."

Jisdu sighed in genuine disappointment. "Okay, more homework: in addition to reading all the Eragon books, you must now go watch Saint Seiya."

"What even is that?"

"Oh, nothing too special. It's only the greatest Japanese contribution to Greek culture ever created."

"…okay," Piper nodded. "So, my…Cosmo?"

"Right, your Cosmo. You've got a ton of it, and you have a natural affinity for the spiritual things. To put it in analogous terms, all the previous warriors I've marked have had a natural spiritual connection the width of a sidewalk, and we had to work on expanding it. You have a natural connection the width of a three-lane interstate."

Piper was stunned. "Oh. Cool."

"It's quite sad, actually," Jisdu said. "Many say they believe in the supernatural, in higher beings and whatnot. But when they are presented with actual proof of their beliefs, it's like their whole worldview has been shattered, making you wonder whether they really believed or not. Many of your predecessor's minds were closed off more than what they claimed, and I had to pry them open and get them to actually accept what was going on. You shatter this mold, however, because you have been exposed to the supernatural for over a year now. I believe this December will mark two years of your feet being wet, yes?"

Piper shifted. "Yeah. Two years…wow."

"Yeah," Jisdu agreed distantly. "Amazing how fast time goes by, isn't it?"

Piper could only imagine what that felt like for a being that had been here for thousands of years. "Yeah. Amazing."

This time last year, Piper, Annabeth, Leo, and Jason were gearing up to fly the Argo II across the country.

"Anyway," Jisdu shook his head. "You're very open to the supernatural. None of this is a surprise to you. You believe it, and you embrace it. You're not subconsciously fighting yourself, trying to mix rational thought with otherwise irrational phenomena. You're not trying to compartmentalize things and fit them into boxes based in religious or scientific understanding. You're taking the Cherokee legends at the same face-value that you take the Greco/Roman myths. Compound your high amounts of Cosmo with your acceptance of the supernatural, and you have the answer as to why you're able to master these brand-new abilities so rapidly with so little effort."

Piper nodded, accepting this explanation.

She also did confirm the reason behind Jisdu's presence at One Fire Field the day of the bear attack.

"Oh, yeah, I was there for Tsula," Jisdu admitted without an ounce of hesitance. "I had no idea you even existed, but when I saw you I was like, Nope. She's the one."

Piper blinked. "I see. Um, how did you not know I existed? You know about the Titans, Giants, Gaea, and the emperors, but you didn't know about me?"

"I knew that there were demigods handling it, so I didn't look into it. I was, and still am, focused on Incognito. It wasn't after I saw you, realized what you were, that I did my homework on the Heroes of Olympus."

"But you didn't know about me, even with who my dad is?"

Jisdu snorted. "I didn't even know Tristan McLean was Cherokee, or that he had a daughter. He did a good job covering his tribal identity, and he did a better job keeping you out of the spotlight…though I understand you did a great job of that yourself back in the day."

Piper cringed as memories of her shoplifting came to surface, culminating in her stealing the BMW. Yeah, not her greatest moments, committing theft to get her dad's attention. Her personal shame was quickly replaced by sadness for her dad, that he had guarded his Native heritage so well that a major spirit of the tribe didn't know he was a member of the tribe. As for her, Dad kept her away from Hollywood to keep her way from getting roped into being a child actor for some Disney or Nickelodeon show, and to protect her from the pedophiles that prowled the sets in suits, and he had also been understandably ashamed of her due to her thievery.

Piper didn't, and also couldn't, fault her father for not boasting about her to the world.

She'd slightly followed Suri Cruise, Tom Cruise's daughter, she'd heard about the kids of the royal family, George, Charlotte, and Louis, and she'd heard about the kids of other celebrities and famous people, and she only felt sympathy for them. They were almost constantly followed by paparazzi. Piper had been lucky to escape the cameras back in California thanks to her anonymity.

"Yeah," Piper agreed. "I did."

"What's the story behind that?" Jisdu asked.

Apparently, of all the homework he had conducted, he hadn't dug that deep. Piper was okay with that, and she didn't have a problem in talking about her own past.

"Attention," she answered simply. "I used to have Dad all to myself before he got his big acting break, and then he was always gone. Never at home, never around, never there when I wanted or needed him, and like a spoiled little girl with no idea what was going on, I acted out. I stole things, sometimes without even meaning to because my charmspeak was subconsciously kicking in. Today, though, I know Dad wasn't pushing me away just so he could make more money—he was keeping me safe from how crazy Hollywood is. Child actors, paparazzi, pedophiles, etc."

"Dad of the year," Jisdu said. "Does he know?"

Piper knew what her mentor was asking. "No. He can't handle it. He was captured by the Giants at the start of the Giant War to be used as leverage against me, and he was forced to see. He nearly lost his mind. Mom gave me a potion to wipe his memories, and he's been okay."

"Did that hurt?"

"It did," Piper sighed. "He called me a hero. He didn't see me as a problem child anymore, but as someone worth more than a headache. But he would've gone insane if he kept those memories. It's okay, though. Thanks to circumstances, he and I have really started bonding. Next Monday is his last night at the guard shack, and he'll be home for the evenings now. I'm looking forward to having dinner with him again."

"Nice to see you working out your daddy issues."

Piper flipped the rabbit off while rolling her eyes.

Of the conversations of a personal nature, the two also talked about Piper's sexuality, tribal identity, and the insecurities she felt regarding her powers, what she was supposed to do with them, and the future in general.

"I looked up two-spirits," Piper informed her mentor.

"Congratulations. Did you also read the Eragon books like I told you to?"

"Not yet, no."

Jisdu sighed. "What a world, what a world. Does what you found out satisfy your question about whether or not the spirits will back you despite you being a lesbian?"

"Potential lesbian," Piper stressed. "I'm still in process about that."

"Whatever."

Piper frowned a little at Jisdu's clear distaste in talking about her personal sexuality problems. "But, yeah. What I read made me feel better. Two-spirits have been around forever, and they were accepted by the tribes. I figure the spirits would have the same view, but you're making me doubt that. What's up about that, Jisdu? Why is it that every time I bring up my sexuality, you get annoyed and change the subject?"

Jisdu stared at her, and then he wrinkled his nose. "Very well, then. We'll dive into the realm of uncomfortable conversation for a bit. The reason I get annoyed whenever you want to talk about your preference in genitals is because we have very real, very pressing matters that need our attention, and your bisexual confusion is not one of them."

Piper stared at the rabbit spirit, not at all happy with that statement.

"Honestly," Jisdu continued, "I see it as an ironic grand metaphor for the world in general right now. Piper, we are the brink of a supernatural world war. Incognito's got an army that poses a very serious threat to the tribe, the country as a whole, and the planet. We are talking about genocide. The end of life as you know it. No more high school for you and Leo, no more college for Percy and Annabeth, no more Camp Jupiter for Frank, Hazel, and the other Roman scions, no more Camp Half-Blood for Nico and the Greek scions, no more Hunters of Artemis, no more anything. Our communication with the outside is basically cutoff, and we have no reinforcements. We are the last line of defense between humanity and a tidal wave of death and destruction. That is our top priority right now, not your sexual confusion. That priority is so big that your confusion doesn't even have room to be on the list, and it honestly bothers me that you find the time to place so much importance upon it given everything else going on."

"Sorry for being a person with thoughts, opinions, and personal struggles," Piper huffed, crossing her arms.

"That's the thing, though, Piper: this shouldn't be a struggle for you. You either like boys, girls, both, neither, or whatever there is in between and beyond. You've dated a boy, and to my knowledge, you enjoyed it quite a bit until you didn't, and now you're seemingly freaking out over whether you might like girls, too, or maybe you never liked boys in the first place. I can tell you from the perspective of a spirit that's been hopping around for thousands of years, your sexuality is not important. It wasn't important to the tribes back in the day, and it's not important now. You either like girls, or you don't. No reason to get this broken up about it.

"The reason this is all a metaphor for the world is that there are very serious issues in the world today, no? Climate change resulting in worse natural disasters, for example. What's the cause? Is it all because of humans and their massive CO2 output? Does the weather naturally change like this, and the change is accelerated by humans? And what of pollution? Factories dumping their waste into the rivers, toxic trash seeping through landfills and into the groundwater, acid rain, smog, etc. Nuclear war, perhaps? Those crazy North Koreans and evil Russians. Not to mention all the upheaval going on here at home, eh? Untrustworthy government, greedy and corrupt corporations, unfair taxes, misused federal spending, inflation—the list goes on. Not to mention all the drugs, guns, and humans being trafficked across the world on a daily basis."

As Jisdu continued speaking, Piper's discomfort kept growing. She couldn't tell if he was just bringing her own buried thoughts out of her, or if he was convincing her of his point, but she was honestly starting to think like he did. Compared to all that was going on, was her sexual quandary really important? Jisdu was also hitting Piper's other insecurities, those being whether or not her friends had really done a good thing for the planet and the people that lived on it when they stopped the Titans and Gaea, and stood up to the emperors.

Piper also found it rather odd that an ancient Cherokee spirit was so involved with modern issues. In her experience with old beings, they typically didn't care about any of the goings-on of mortals.

"And with all these very pressing concerns in the world," Jisdu continued, bringing Piper back to earth, "somehow you humans find the time to get extremely heated over what a person does with their genitals. Honestly, what is it with you humans and what you do with your penises and vaginas? Why is that of any importance in the global scheme of things?"

"U-Uh…" Piper failed to find words.

"Me, personally, in general, I don't give a shit. One dude wants to put his dick in another's dude's shithole, or one dude wants another dude's dick in his shithole—that's gross to me. Now, one girl wants to lick another girl's pussy, that's entirely different. But at the end of the day, ultimately, it doesn't matter one way or the other."

Piper turned scarlet. "Y-You had better not get any ideas-"

"Spare me," Jisdu rolled his solid black eyes. "You're my student and my last hope at stopping Incognito. I have no interest in your sexual activities, if you hadn't already figured that out. As I was saying, in general, what one person does with another person in their bedroom is not something I care about, because there's this thing I have called priorities, and it is my firm opinion that the priorities of humanity, and you, are grossly misaligned. You've got world leaders playing games with their citizens' lives, and those citizens are more worried about what to do with their plumbing than seeing those leaders publicly executed. So, yes, Piper, I do get very annoyed whenever you bring up your personal preference regarding dicks or pussies, because we have much more important things one our plate right now, and then I show my hypocrisy by wasting all this time talking about my grievances with humanity when we have more pressing things on our plate right now!"

Jisdu's voice had been rising and rising, until he eventually finished with a thunderous shout that made Piper's ears hurt.

Supreme silence reigned between them for a long time, Piper utterly shocked to her core. Jisdu's vulgarity didn't bother her as much you might think, since she was a public high school student, after all, and such crass language was commonplace. That being said, it was still weird to hear an old being like Jisdu curse like that, but so much more jarring to have the rabbit spirit bear his heart to Piper, especially with such passion.

She was honestly at a complete loss right now. She wanted to say something contrary, that all struggles were important, that the social struggles of gay people weren't any more or less important than what Jisdu listed, but she wasn't sure of her own stance anymore. He had gotten into her head, and Piper was struggling to equate her teenage sexuality struggle with the struggles of another teenage girl who had been kidnapped from her family and was being trafficked across the world to be raped by one group of people after another. When Piper compared her and this hypothetical girl, maybe it was her conscience, but there seemed to be a little voice telling her to suck it up.

And Piper honestly didn't like that feeling. Was it her human pride, or her godly pride? She didn't know, and though it made her feel yucky on the inside, she didn't like how Jisdu had seemingly convinced her that her personal struggles were trivial. She wanted to be important, dammit! She wanted to be considered valid, her struggles to be considered valid, and she wanted the attention she felt she deserved!

Piper started to feel angry. It was irrational anger, because she was angry at Jisdu because he didn't think like she did. She considered her personal identity struggles to be very important, and he didn't. He didn't just not consider them important, but meaningless. Meaningless in the face of other problems, and Piper didn't like that.

But then her thoughts betrayed her further.

Piper's mind's eye was suddenly looking at the past. She was back on the Argo II, the ship racing across Greece to Epirus, Percy and Annabeth stuck in Tartarus, Gaea rising, the Giants waiting, and Jason and Nico had gotten back from their encounter with Eros. Nico had been forced to admit he was gay by the horrible god, and he was nothing but a gravity well of misery and self-loathing, his internalized homophobia surrounding him like the atmosphere of Earth. Nico's all-consuming struggle was his sexuality, but at the same time…

Percy and Annabeth were stuck in Tartarus, and the crew had to be in the House of Hades in time to pull them out. And there was the Giant War as a whole to tackle.

Those two things had been the chiefest priorities at the time, not Nico's personal problems. Those things had to take the back seat for the real issues at hand. Now, this stream of consciousness seemed to be leading down into Jisdu's ideology, but it was with an epiphany that Piper's stream continued.

Yes, Gaea was a much bigger problem than Nico's sexual struggle, but Nico's sexual struggle was still a problem. A major one for him, Jason, Reyna, and Hedge, and it was tackled with great ferocity when the time was right. They just needed to clear the plate a little bit first.

Jisdu was not anti-gay. He was anti-misaligned-priorities, and he considered Incognito and all the other things he had listed during his tirade as higher priorities than the human sexuality conflict. And you know what? He was right. Piper, then and there, considered Jisdu to be right. Mankind wasn't going to be able to struggle and find themselves—Piper wasn't going to be able to struggle and find herself—if there was no more planet.

If Incognito wiped out most of humanity.

If humanity destroyed itself in nuclear fire or unchecked industry.

Jisdu wasn't saying that Piper's struggles were completely immaterial, but they were on the list. There were just a few other things on that list that needed to be addressed first, or else all the other problems on the list would never be addressed.

Thinking like that, Piper's anger melted and was replaced with resolve.

She was going to take down Incognito, she was going to clear her plate, and then she was going to tackle everything else.

"I see a light behind those eyes," Jisdu said, once again bringing Piper back to Earth. "What have you concluded?"

"That you're a bit of a jerk," Piper chirped.

"Agreed."

"But you're a jerk with a point. There are a lot of very important, very serious things going on in the world, and if we don't fix those, we're never going to get around to the other things. I need to kill Incognito. That's priority number one. After that, then we can start talking about other things, like my preference in genitals."

Jisdu snorted. "Don't held your breath on that one, kid. I really don't care about who you do in the sack."

Piper smirked a little.

The rabbit looked at the night sky, all the stars twinkling above. "Piper, in all this time, have you never wondered just why I'm doing this? Why have I gone to such great lengths to put a stop to Incognito, why haven't I joined the other spirits, why do I fight for humanity?"

Piper shifted a little. "Well, no. I kind of just assumed it was because you're one of the good spirits. One of the good guys, I mean."

Jisdu snorted. "I don't know about one of the good guys, but…thousands of years ago, when mankind started posing a threat to the spirits-"

"The spirits convened," Piper said, blurting the story before she could stop herself. "The animals and insects all devised ways to fight back against humans, even wanting to kill us all, but the plants had a different idea. They wanted to help humans, and that's why animals have claws, teeth, antlers, etc., and the bugs have fangs, snakes venom, but from the plants we got medicine."

"Very good," Jisdu said, not caring about being interrupted. "I was on the side of the plants."

Piper's eyed widened a little bit at that revelation.

"Yes, I was quite passionate back then about the good of mankind. I insisted to the other spirits that yes, mankind was going to stumble, fall, and often times lose their way to evil and corruption, but we were supposed to help them before they fell. We the spirits had a duty to help mankind because we were to live in harmony with you. Be there to help when we were needed, and yes, be there to punish when a crime could not be forgiven. I told the spirits that we could not give up on mankind, but that we had to fight evil alongside them.

"For the longest time, my ideals were the ruling ones. There were problems, of course, but we worked through them together. One tribe would come in and kick everyone's ass, and then another tribe would come in and kick the other tribe's ass; there was rape and murder all over the place—widespread evil—but I persisted. We had to fight against that stuff, not give in. Then things got a lot harder once Columbus got lost and ended up in Cuba. With the arrival of Europe, things got a lot harder—and spare me the evil white man rhetoric. The Spaniards and Blacks weren't doing the Natives any favors either, and they still aren't today.

"Anyway, with Europe bringing their guns, cannons, diseases, and religions, my stance on helping mankind was suddenly on sandy ground instead of a rock. Still, I didn't give up hope. Not all of mankind was evil, and it was still the duty of the spirits to discern the evil from the good, and help the good while denouncing the evil. But the centuries wore on, and now here we are. Piper, the spirits have been beaten down and worn out."

Piper swallowed, or at least she tried to swallow. There was a lump in her throat, and her vision was getting misty as water welled up in her eyes.

Jisdu sounded tired. "Mankind has shown great evil these past couple of decades. They commit great violence against each other in the name of whatever contrived reason they can justify, and sometimes they don't even need a reason, they just do evil shit. Greed, lust, gluttony, apathy, and pride have battered the world. At one point, the majority of spirits held onto the hope that there were lights in the dark, but now…the majority of that majority understand those lights to be the lights of machines tearing through the forests, the lights of huge, pollution-belching cities, the lights of housing developments and apartment complexes, and the lights of cars driving on roads. They've given up, and they want to put an end to it. Incognito has them convinced the way to do that is genocide."

"I-I had no idea," Piper choked, almost on the verge of sobbing as Jisdu told her the plight of the spirits. It was heartbreaking to her to hear that the beings that once so strongly believed in the good of humanity had since given up and demanded blood.

"It has been very hard," Jisdu said. "Time and time again I've wondered if I'm doing the right thing, if what I'm doing is worth it, if I shouldn't just stand aside and let Incognito have his way that way I can have a seat at the table of those still alive. It's almost like humanity is determined to destroy itself, so why should I delay the inevitable? Why shouldn't I let you all go by way of the dodo? So many times these doubts have mine creep in…"

"J-Jisdu…" Piper barely whispered, her cheeks wet with tears.

"But I haven't given up," Jisdu said, the fatigue gone from his voice, now replaced with steely resolve. "I refuse to give up on all of you. I refuse to let you all go. I have hopped across these lands for centuries, and I know what humans are capable of. Great evil, yes, but also great love, kindness, and compassion. I still fight for that side of humanity, and I have chosen you to help me. Piper, I need you to do more than just kill Incognito…I need you to help me convince the spirits that hope is not lost."

Piper's answer was immediate. "I will."

She thought of Leo living his new life in Indianapolis with Calypso, Emmie, Jo, Georgina, and the rest of the Waystation. She thought of Percy and Annabeth about to be done with high school, ready to begin their new life in New Rome. She thought of Clarisse in college already, and she thought of Percy's baby sister, the tiny Estelle. She thought of the tidal wave of hopelessness that had drowned the spirits, and she resolved to reach down into those depths and pull them up, pull them back into the light.

"That makes me very glad, Piper," Jisdu said.

Of course, that was the resolve then, but things changed with the passage of time.

As stated far above, Piper did ask Jisdu about her Cherokee identity, and she luckily did not get the priorities lecture.

"Growing up," Piper started, "I was kind of like my dad. I was embarrassed to be a Cherokee because the other kids made fun of me. I remember back in second grade, they thought it was hilarious that I was Cherokee and my name was Piper, and there's a plane out there called the Piper Cherokee. But I got over it. I embraced my heritage, even making it publicly known by braiding feathers in my hair. I knew a ton of legends, stories, and practices, and thought I was a bonified Cherokee Indian, but then…I found out I was a Greek demigod, my mother is a Greek goddess, and I started wondering if I was really a Cherokee. My Aunt Tanya doesn't think so, because she thinks Dad, ah, made me with a white woman, and I dated a white boy, Jason. She even taught my cousin Tsula to think of me like that, though I didn't find out about that until after I moved back here. However, now Tsula thinks of me as a full-blooded Cherokee because I was chosen by you, Jisdu the rabbit spirit, to battle Incognito on behalf of the spirits. I was hoping you could help me a little."

"You mean despite all that's going on, you're still unsure of your tribal heritage?" Jisdu asked, somehow managing to cock his bunny eyebrow.

"Mm-hm," Piper answered simply.

Jisdu composed himself. "Very well, then. Let's examine things."

Piper decided to get comfy on a log as her mentor began to lecture.

"Speaking from the most objective of lenses, yes. You are indeed a Cherokee."

Piper blinked. "Huh?"

Jisdu snorted. "The Greek gods are not comprised of DNA. They do not pass on any genetic material when fathering or mothering a child, which does raise the interesting question of why aren't demigods simply perfect clones of their mortal parents-"

"I know, right!?" Piper blurted.

"-but I digress. Because Aphrodite seemingly has no bearing on your genetic code, that means all of your blood comes from your father, meaning the blood of his mother flows through as well, technically in an equal measure. Therefore, because your blood is exactly the same as your father's, ignoring how you're somehow a female, because he is a Cherokee because of his mother, so too are you. Does this satisfy your identity struggle? Do you now believe yourself a full-blooded Cherokee without any doubt, now that a major spirit has broken it down and presented you his logic as to why you are such?"

Piper's mouth set into a thin line. That really should have done the trick. She found zero fault in Jisdu's logic, in that if none of her blood came from Aphrodite, then all of it came from Dad, which meant that, intrinsically, her blood was a copy of his own, which meant she was a full-blooded Cherokee through her grandmother. But it wasn't enough.

Maybe it was Piper's own stubbornness, that Jisdu's answer was just too damn easy, too quick of a solution to months of internal struggle, but she wasn't satisfied. She still didn't feel like she'd found her answer to who she was as a Cherokee even though, like Jisdu had said and Tsula had accepted, she had been chosen to fight on behalf of the tribe.

And all the other tribes and the world in general, but that was beside the point.

Jisdu sighed, able to tell that Piper was still unsure. "Alright, we'll dig a little deeper. If blood isn't enough to make you a Cherokee, then what does? You said it yourself: you know the tribe's legends, stories, and customs; you know the history of the tribe; you have made great leaps and bounds in the tribal language; but all of this can be replicated, however. Anyone can study Cherokee folklore, and anyone can look up the history of the tribe on Wikipedia. The language is publicly available, and anyone can study it. Essentially, anyone who wants to can become more well-versed in all things Cherokee then a lot of Cherokee. So, then, does having encyclopedic knowledge of the tribe make one a Cherokee? Does having encyclopedic knowledge of any culture or ethnic group make someone a member of said peoples?"

Jisdu fell silent as Piper thought of her answer.

"I…I don't know?" she said. "Like, I mean…I guess? But…I think, with that logic…things could get really messy, really fast."

"Correct, they would," Jisdu said. "Already, the boundaries are challenged, are they not? What makes a boy? What makes a girl? What makes someone white? Or black? Or yellow? Or…red? Biologically speaking, these answers are simple: a penis makes someone a boy, a vagina makes someone a girl, and a certain level of melanin in tandem with facial features, bone structure, and family history determine a person's ethnicity. But that's not the case anymore, is it? Or at least, that case is being challenged. These days, people with penises can be girls and people with vaginas can be boys. People who are white insist they are black, and people who are black insist they are white. So, then, where does the line get drawn? At what point is it agreed that this person is this, and that is irrefutable?"

Piper shifted on her log, suddenly very uncomfortable with where this conversation had taken a turn. "I-I don't know. I've…never encountered any of that…I think."

"If a person wants to be Cherokee, what is to stop them from doing so and being officially recognized as such? Who has the authority and the right to tell this person they are not a Cherokee, they are delusional, and they are insulting the tribe by insisting they are a member when they are not? Who has the authority and the right to tell a girl she is a boy because she has a penis, and she needs to use the boys' restroom?"

"I-Isn't that a false equivalency?" Piper stuttered.

"No," Jisdu said. "It is the same: you have a person insisting they are something, despite clear anatomical, physical, and historical evidence they are clearly not what they claim to be. In a world that is pushing so strongly for everyone to accept people as they feel they truly are, if a person feels like they are a different gender despite their genitals, or they feel like they are a different race despite their skin, or they feel like they are a Cherokee, who is to stop them and insist otherwise? So, then, again, if having the blood of a Cherokee isn't enough to make one a Cherokee, or having doctorate-levels of knowledge about all things Cherokee isn't enough to make to make one a Cherokee, and having both together still isn't enough, then what is?"

Piper had no answer, and so remained silent, trying not to squirm under Jisdu's piercing stare.

Those beady black rabbit eyes could be very unnerving.

"Piper, I officially recognize you as a true member of the Cherokee tribe. You were born here in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the home of the tribe for almost two-hundred years now. You father is Cherokee, and your mother being a Greek goddess is a special case in which ample grounds for exemption is allowed, and a valid technicality to this is that with no blood from your divine mother, all of your blood comes from your father, meaning you are literally as much a Cherokee as he is. You are extremely well-versed in the stories, history, customs, and language of the tribe. If my words are not enough to convince you of your membership, then I can't help you anymore. I'm out of ideas past this point. If you're still struggling with your identity, then you're on your own and will be figuring that out for yourself."

Call it that teenage stubbornness, but Piper nodded in acceptance of these terms, instead of accepting Jisdu's affirmation of her tribal status. She still didn't feel like she'd found her place yet.

The last major thing the two discussed was Piper's insecurity surrounding the question of whether or not her friends had really made the world a better place when they won the Giant War. Kind of a redundant question, really, given all they'd already talked about, but still.

Jisdu snorted when Piper presented her query. "Objectively speaking, no. You and your friends actually made things worse."

Piper cringed, already knowing she wasn't going to like what she was about to hear, mainly because she'd already told herself these things.

Jisdu elaborated. "The world as we know it has been on a downward spiral for decades. No need to list any specific examples, we both already know what they are. That being said, if Kronos had defeated the Olympians, or if Gaea had defeated the Olympians, or if the emperors defeat Apollo and gain control of the oracles—these situations would certainly not be ideal or preferable to what we have now."

"Definitely not," Piper agreed.

"However, if any of these situations had come to pass, then the problems in the world we do have on our plate would be cleared, no?"

"True, but we'd have a ton of other problems."

"But we wouldn't have these problems. We wouldn't have human trafficking, shady politicians, gang violence, social strife, etc."

"Also true," Piper conceded.

"So, when one problem ends, another begins. You plug one hole in the ship, and then you find out there's another hole. Yours and your friend's specific situation, you did a great job making sure there was still going to be a world for people to live on, but then none of you have addressed the multitude of other problems. You have…retired…I guess you could say, but I say you have retired too early. All of you are young, not even in your primes yet, and your questions tell me you are aware of things and don't like where they're heading, but none of you are doing anything about this. It raises the honest question of whether you and your friends really do care about being heroes and making the world a better place if you're not doing anything to make the world a better place."

Piper stood there, pondering her answer.

It was a valid question: did she and her friends really care about making a positive impact in their communities, and the world at large? Just what were the responsibilities they had as teenagers with superpowers? The comic books said they were to use their powers for higher purposes, and they had, fighting the forces of evil, but where did it end? There were plenty of evil humans in the world—were they beneath the Heroes of Olympus? Were human bag guys not worth their time and energy?

If the answer was yes, then what did that say about them as heroes, that they apparently didn't care about the little guy?

If the answer was no, then why hadn't they remained banded together, Piper, Jason, Hazel, Frank, Annabeth, and Percy (Leo still being presumed dead at the end of the Giant War), and taken on the aforementioned issues in the same spirit of the Justice League, Avengers, X-Men, Teen Titans, Power Rangers, and so on?

As Piper self-reflected, she started leaning towards the conclusion that no, her and her friends weren't heroes in the same sense as Superman, Captain America, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, and so on. Those heroes wanted to spend their lives saving the day. They wanted to dedicate their every waking moment to making the world a better place. Piper and her friends? In the name of sheer, brutal honesty, they were not like the comic book heroes.

They didn't want to tackle crime. They didn't want to tackle the corporations or expose the corrupt politicians. They didn't want to come up with alternative fuel solutions and power sources in order to tackle pollution. They didn't want to tackle the humanitarian crises in Haiti, Syria, Ukraine, and everywhere else. In one respect, they wanted to bury their heads in the sand and pretend none of that was happening.

They all wanted to live their own lives the way they wanted to live them.

Annabeth wanted to be an architect. Leo wanted to start his own garage. Percy wanted to do…something…with his life. Piper wasn't sure about what Hazel and Frank wanted to do with their futures, but she was certain it didn't involve being in the legion, and it didn't involve crimefighting. Jason had been gearing up to be pontifex maximus, dedicating his life to bringing honor to the gods, and he had also idly talked about getting his Ph. D. in Physics and being a professor. As for Piper herself, she wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life anymore.

At one point, she'd been rich and it didn't matter. She had been pursuing a Business endorsement as something like a joke, that maybe she'd take over Mellie's job and be her dad's new assistant or something. Then everything had fallen apart and Piper didn't know anymore.

Like with a lot of things, Piper was in process regarding her future.

Bottom line across the board: none of the Heroes of Olympus had expressed any desire to go above and beyond to be like a comic book superhero. They saved the world from the Titans and/or Giants, and they wanted to move on from the mythological world and build a life of their own that didn't involve having to save the day over and over again.

And here was the big question: was that a bad thing?

Was it a bad thing that the Heroes, for the most part, wanted to retire from the hero life and try to be like normal teenagers, navigating high school, getting a job, going through driver's ed, graduating, maybe go to college, and so on and so forth—was it a bad thing that they would want such a life while there was still so much evil and injustice in the world? Piper and her friends had done a great job defeating the monsters of myth, no one could argue that.

But what were they supposed to do about the monsters among men?

Again: was it a bad thing that the Heroes of Olympus, after risking their lives time and time again, wanted to retire from the hero life and lead a "normal" teenage life while there was still great evil in the world, evil they had the power to fight?

Piper didn't have an ans—

No.

She did have an answer, and the answer was yes.

Maybe it was because she had watched those superhero movies and cartoons when she was little, maybe it was just the law of the universe, but she could feel it. Piper could feel the weight of the responsibility of her powers on her, the responsibility to use her powers to forge a better tomorrow, but this weight was counterbalanced by her own personal desires.

Her selfishness, you might say.

Piper just wanted to live, dammit. She wanted to figure out her sexuality so she could decide whether she wanted to start dating Shel or not. She wanted to figure out what she wanted to do with herself, that way she had a direction in life, instead of just going through the motions in high school. Did she want to spend her days traveling the world, fighting injustice wherever she found it? Did she want to take on the corporations and Congress and hold them accountable for their greed and shady dealings? Did she want to bust drug rings and rescue human trafficking victims?

Well…

It wasn't that Piper didn't, ah, not want to do those things. It wasn't like she was okay with drug dealers, kidnappers, rapists, corrupt politicians, crooked businesses, etc., but…uh…

It was the same old, same old:

Duty and responsibility versus the desire to live her life the way she wanted to do it.

Back to Jisdu's question, Piper finally said, "I don't know."

"You don't know," Jisdu echoed flatly.

"None of us wanted this life," Piper started. "We didn't want powers, or the responsibility of having to save the world, or having supernatural battle reflexes that give us hypercognition that doctors diagnose as ADHD because we can't sit still in class for very long, or brains hardwired for Ancient Greek that make it hard to read English and so we get diagnosed with dyslexia or dyspraxia. We just wanted stable lives with both of our parents, normal bodies that didn't give us learning disabilities, and just a nice, steady, stable life. But that's not what we got, and all of us have had to struggle with finding that balance. How much of a hero do we have to be, versus how much of a teenager do we get to be."

"I'd say you're putting too much weight into the teenager side of things," Jisdu said.

"Maybe," Piper said, neither outright agreeing or disagreeing, nor arguing. "I honestly don't know if I can truthfully say I care about the world and all the people in it. I care about my dad, and my demigod friends, and my demigod brothers and sisters. But…every single person on this planet? No, I don't think I do. In fact, there are some people I can think of right now that if they died, the only thing I'd feel is disappointed because I wasn't the one that killed them."

"Understandable and valid," Jisdu said. "I concur with your sentiment of my only disappointment about someone's death being that it wasn't me that killed them, and I also have my short list of people that I genuinely care about, but as I told you before: I will not give up on humanity as a whole, and I firmly believe neither should you, nor your friends."

"But what do we do?" Piper asked, not desperately as if she felt beaten down and badgered, but actually in challenge, putting her opinionated teacher on the spot. "How do we go about fighting all the bad guys without making things worse? This isn't the movies or the comics; this is real life. If we make a bunch of costumes for ourselves and start beating up alley thugs, we could end up creating more problems than we solve."

"True," Jisdu agreed, "but that is not an excuse to abstain from action. It is, instead, a reminder to think before you act."

"I still don't know," Piper said. "I want to live my own life, you know?"

Jisdu sighed despondently. "Piper, not once have I ever said you needed to devote your every waking moment to fighting evil. Yeah, you have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness or however it goes, meaning you have the right to choose how you live…but with this freedom comes the responsibility to use it accordingly. Live how you want, but do not forsake those you can help with your powers out of selfishness."

"…after I kill Incognito," Piper started, but Jisdu snorted.

"After you kill him—I love that confidence. Continue."

"After I kill Incognito, what'll happen to my spirit powers? Will you take them away, or will I get to keep them."

Jisdu remained silent as he pondered this. "That remains to be seen," decided the rabbit spirit. "What would you do with these powers?"

"I'd be in process over what to do with them," Piper answered truthfully, "but I would do something with them. You've got me convinced that my friends and I need to do more, but just rushing into things could do more harm than good. It's like Achilles said to Connor in my game, In your haste to save the world, take care you don't destroy it."

Jisdu nodded. "We shall see."

Of course, that was Piper's resolve then and there at that moment, but things changed with the passage of time.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

This chapter is not actually finished, but after 10k+ words and it being almost a month since the last update, I have decided to end it here. In addition to college meaning slower updates, another thing meaning slower updates is humongous chapters like these.

Tons and tons of meat in this chapter, though.

Piper's new powers from the spirits, and the heavy conversations between her and Jisdu about sexuality and responsibility.

About the spirits, that's operating more on the rule of cool than anything. Remember: this story is not your one-stop-shop for all things Cherokee. The Cherokee elements present are here for the sake of addressing Piper's identity crisis established in Maze, and to keep true to the formula of the Riordanverse, in that the characters face inner struggles while battling the forces of evil.

As for the heavy conversations: would a Cherokee spirit really say stuff like that? I don't know, never met one before, but it's certainly fresh and original compared to today's media, and definitely makes for more interesting conversation.

Speaking of conversation, and I've asked this before, but, is that a bad thing?

The current post-Trials choices of the Heroes of Olympus to seemingly retire from the hero life to pursue personal pursuits while there are still so many things going on in their world that they could solve, and what does it mean for them as heroes if they decide to abstain from addressing those problems? Because, if they care, why aren't they doing anything about them?

Of course, asking this of fictional characters is inherently pointless, so the real guy we need to be asking this of is Riordan.

But anyway.

For anyone curious, at the top of this chapter I mentioned starting a new playthrough of Elden Ring as a mage. Well, Margitt and Godrick went down quickly, but then Rennala got me because of her huge magic resistance, but dual-wielding twin-swords with blood affinity took care of that. Morgott and the Fire Giant also weren't any trouble, but I got stuck on Maliketh for longer than I care to admit. Godfrey took two tries, the first seeing him with only a pixel of his health bar left, and then I got to Radagon and the Elden Beast.

Radagon wasn't too much trouble with Lusat's staff and Comet, but Elden Beast was, so I had my twin-swords in my other slots ready to go, and it was easy past that point.

Now I'm ready for Hogwarts Legacy!

In April, when the game releases for Xbox One because it got Delayed. Unless I wanna shit the money for a Series X so I can still use my discs. Probably not, though. Two more months means all the guides and tutorials will be out, so if I ever get stuck, I've got plenty of ways to get unstuck.

Fav, Follow, and Review please!