A/N: Hopefully some questions are answered in this chapter but bear with me. There's still plenty more to come.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters at all nor do I own the song New Perspective by P!ATD.


~And maybe if I continue watching
I'll lose the traits that worry me~


A loud crack followed that noise along with a snapping in what Jason hoped desperately was nothing but a twig as he fell mercilessly on the ground, all his coherent thoughts gone awry. After unconsciously tapping the dirt around him in order to make sure he was now finally on solid ground after free-falling through the air like nobody's business, he stood shakily after a few moments, letting his hands go to his sides finally. He stared at his surroundings helplessly.

Trees. And trees. Vegetation, dirt, a few insects and other critters here and there, but nonetheless looked exactly like the forest he was in just moments ago. Except, he realized with a start, daytime...had he slept through the night? Had the fall been that bad that he had been completely knocked out from the impact? Staring at the sun that was now breaking through the horizon, he felt a strange sense of unfamiliarity that he couldn't shake off.

Then snapping out of his daze, he heard a throat clearing. He found himself jumping into the air for a brief moment before he rubbed down his tattered robes and pulled a small leaf from his hair and looked over at Piper, who seemed equally as run down as him. "Should've warned you about that..." she muttered sheepishly, looking down at the ground whilst one of her locks fell onto her face.

Jason raised an eyebrow. She knew that whatever happened would happen? Suddenly he felt an empty void in his gut, and he braced himself before turning back to Piper again. "I...I don't understand. How in Merlin's...how did we even...fall?" he looked to her bewilderingly, staring at her still strangely calm yet embarrassed face and ran his dirty hands through his hair in confusion. "We were on solid ground, for God's sake! That...shouldn't even be possible..."

He felt his knees wobble but he straightened himself before they gave in. He was not going to look like a lost fool in front of a girl he barely even knew, though he was a lost fool but it would take a genius to get him to admit it. Piper sighed in what he took as irritation but what was probably only frustration, though there was a fine line between them. "Alright...look, I'm...don't freak out, okay?"

Jason furrowed his blonde brows in frustration (and that he was sure of), and it was only then he realized he was pacing hastily back and forth, stepping over rich dirt and snapping twigs as he went. "Freaking out?" he asked in confusion. "I'm not freaking out. I'm not. Why would I freak out?" Then, quickly grabbing Piper's bare shoulders due to her ruined dress, he barked, "Tell me why I should be freaking out, Piper!"

"Oh...kay, you are definitely freaking out right now," she drew out, her hands lightly shaking off his death grip on her shoulders. She dusted some dirt off of his own chest, but as he was about to ask her why would she do that if his entire body was caked with filth, he realized she was only doing it because she was nervous. But probably not the type of nervous as he was in being in a completely new different circumstance, but as if she was...afraid of telling him something. He scrutinized her, hoping she would finally tell the truth as to what was behind this.

Quietly, he spoke, as to not startle her, "Tell me, Piper, how did we fall?"

He only got silence as she stared shamefully to the ground at her bare feet, refusing to meet her gaze with his. She shook off his hands once again before walking towards one of the trees, touching the bark as if she was nostalgic over it. "...What are you doing?" he asked, completely boggled by this point. She was acting so strange...more strange than she ever really was. And right then, Jason had an epiphany. What if...she was an elite criminal? What if she came from a separate kingdom and was sent to eliminate him? It only made sense, after all. He was the heir to the throne. If he wasn't the king, no one could be. Well, they could, but it would take a while for his kingdom to recover after his tragic death, leaving the kingdom into a breakout. That would've been the perfect time to -

As rapid as a snake, Piper snapped her arm behind one of the stray branches and pulled a small rectangular, black object and faced towards him with it. Immediately taking it for a weapon, he tensed before sprinting the few steps that separated them and knocked the object clean from her hands. "Hey! What was that for?!" Piper shrieked, and he instantly winced. She was definitely loud when she wanted to be, but he decided to ignore it considering she was clearly going to kill him with it.

"I knew it!" he started out, his words tracing with venom as he went on. "You were sent out to get me, weren't you? Was it that spineless lizard Octavian? Did he set you up to this?" He clenched his jaw in anger, just thinking of the smug look that bastard of a cousin must have had on if he would be seeing this right now. "The moment we get back to the castle, my father will hear about this!"

She surprised him with a confused look and a snort. "Sure, Draco Malfoy, whatever."

"Who - ? That's not the point," Jason shifted before he got thrown off track with her weird words. He really must not get distracted right now with her strange words...not when Reyna and everyone else must be worried where he was by now. Reyna...he wondered how her reaction must be once she realized he was missing. I'll be back in a few minutes, he had said. Definitely not just a few. "The point is that you have led me on purpose to a completely strange place, and I don't know how you managed to make the earth slip away beneath us, but just letting you know - "

"It's called a phone, Prince Jason."

The term of royal endearment startled him right then, but that didn't stop him from backtracking and hearing her words closely. "A what?" he asked, all thoughts about watching her pain as she suffered mercilessly in the cages of the dungeons stripped from his mind then. "What the...what is a phone?"

He stared, puzzled, as she walked towards where the rectangular object he had thrown in the lush vegetation below and picked it up to show it to him. "Great," she seemed to be speaking to herself, "you've gotten fingerprints all over the screen..." Jason didn't like being ignored. Especially when all he was now was confused. Needless to say, he smacked the 'phone', as she had blatantly called it defensively, clean from his hands once again. She snapped her head up again to look him in the eye. "Seriously? What exactly is your problem?"

He pointed a filthy finger at her, just stopping his fingernail from poking her in the nose as he did so. "You. You are my problem. But since you've already made that clear enough, what is a phone?"

Piper raised an eyebrow at him before sighing. After a few moments she answered quietly, "this...this phone is honestly the least of your worries right now."

Jason bent down and gripped the object that now had a long piercing crack along the slick side that wasn't there a moment ago. Judging by the look on her face, she was annoyed that it was cracked but she was trying to suppress it and move on to more important matters. Holding it in his hand tightly, he asked, "Well, what does it do?"

She stared at him for a while before shaking her head as if she couldn't believe him. "You...you shouldn't have followed me, sire. Really." He noted mentally that whenever she spoke words of royal endearment to him, she was either hiding something from him or was trying not to make him angry. In this case, he could somehow tell, she was doing both.

"Why not?" When she didn't answer at first, he held the 'phone' more tightly in his hands before raising it again. "If you don't tell me, I'll - "

She must have realized what he was going to threaten her with because she raised her arms up in surrender, those colorful eyes of hers widening in shock. "Okay, okay, fine! Just..." she reached over hesitantly, holding it in her hands as if it was her baby. "Just don't throw it again. You have no idea how much these things cost." He nodded smugly whilst she rolled her eyes, annoyed. He really did like making her irritated. Then, suddenly, her expression changed into one of guilt. "This...isn't exactly the same place where we were...er, a few moments ago."

So he was right; they really hadn't slept through the night. But how was any other alternative possible? Shrugging, knowing that though this information was confusing, they were finally getting somewhere so he wasn't going to interrupt. "Go on."

She shifted her weight to her other foot, biting her full lip nervously. "Well...as I was saying, the earth fell beneath us because we were falling through time...hence that it's now daytime instead of nighttime." That didn't make any sense either, but again, he wouldn't interrupt just yet. "And so...we're here...in a whole other...area. In another place, I guess I should say."

This time, he did cut in, "As in another country?"

"No..." she shook her head slowly as if she was announcing a death statement upon him. He had a very ugly feeling about this.

"As in what, Piper?" He couldn't handle the suspense. It was killing him. He still liked to believe that she was a killer herself, but judging by the way she looked so guilty despite how much she was trying to hide it, he could tell she hadn't meant to bring him with her.

"As in...another dimension. Or in your medieval terms, I should say, realm."

"Like...you believe we traveled through time?"

"No..." her frown decreased instantly. "I mean...another realm. As in a...universally different...realm."

Jason paused. Really paused. As in hands freezing in the air type of pause. As in complete and utter shock and confusion type of pause. As in disbelief pause. Naturally, he started laughing. Nervously chuckling - but it still counted as a laugh. Seeing as she looked utterly serious yet eagerly as if she expected him to believe her, he paused all over again. "...Erm...are you alright, Piper?"

She groaned loudly at his response. "I knew you wouldn't believe me..." Then she pressed a small thing that looked like a deformed button on the top of the 'phone' and the 'screen' burst with color. He jumped back, completely startled. He blinked as Piper watched in amusement at his weird struggle before he took a hesitant step forwards (he hadn't realized he walked away for a second) towards the strange object.

"Oh my..." he claimed, staring wide-eyed at the 'screen'. There was a picture there of Piper and another boy smiling with their arms wrapped around each other, with both of them making the goofy faces Piper had made to himself the day before. The picture only showed from the collarbone and up, so he couldn't really see their attire from where he watched from outside of the object, but they both looked relatively happy. "What is this sorcery...?" The boy, he noticed then, had extremely curly hair, his ears pointing in what he imagined an elf would look like, and he was sticking out his dark pink tongue. The top of the picture had strange bright white printing on it, but somehow he could read it perfectly fine though it wasn't in a language he thought he could understand. It didn't seem Latin to him. The bottom of the picture was similar. Slide to unlock, it said. He wondered what that meant.

"Slide what?" he asked, the shock of seeing something light up so brightly that his eyes burned for a second fading a little from his system. "I don't see anything to slide."

Piper chuckled lightheartedly. What was she so amused about? "Okay, I'm going to do something right now. Promise not to freak out, alright?" He nodded hastily, not even bothering to roll his eyes at her reprimand because he was just so fascinated by the object. Then, she swiped her thumb across the 'screen' and immediately, the picture shifted, shrinking out as weird boxes zoomed to replace the previous picture, and this time, there was another boy in the background of the strange boxes. The boy had green eyes and dark hair his face covered in what Jason thought to be cake. The boy was frowning, but yet, all Jason could think of was, How many boy friends does she have?

Jason stared in shock, his jaw slacking to the ground. "Oh my God...oh my God, oh my God, oh my God..." he snapped his head up since he was crouched down to look at the object better to Piper. "Is this some type of dark magic? I...I don't understand." He straightened himself, feelings of being alone, confusion, shock, anger, all filling that one empty void he had just moments ago as Piper pressed the deformed button again and the 'screen' turned black again. "Are you some type of witch? Is this where you're hiding the rest of your kind? Those two boys...are they your minions? Or are they your masters?" Then, coming to a shocking realization - though even in his heart he knew it couldn't be true. Piper and Reyna seemed way too close for that to happen - he exclaimed blatantly, "You...oh my God, you played me! You played Reyna too, I bet! This is it, isn't it?! You're fooling us, the whole kingdom! I...I - "

" - JASON! SHUT UP."

He just realized he had been pacing again, his rambling session confusing even him. He really wanted to be comforted as much as his ego wouldn't let him admit it. He needed something to anchor him and tell him this was not happening. He just...he didn't understand. Piper walked up to where he stood, and she snatched his fingers away from where they were gripped on the sides of his temple. "Do you believe me now?"

Jason shook his head - three time, four, five even. He really needed to think about this. Piper barely even gave him real proof yet to her absurd theory that they were in a different realm. It sounded so meaningless...so unintelligent for him to believe so quickly. Yet, how in Merlin's poop did he somehow start believing her? Nevertheless, he shook his head again. "No, I don't. And I highly doubt anything else you say or show me will make me believe so."

She raised a thin brown eyebrow. "Wanna bet, Your-soon-to-be Highness?" Piper then pointed to the dirt below them. "You see those patterns? Remember how they glowed just moments before we hit the ground, before we entered this realm?" He remembered alright. How could he not? The very memory of the glowing print - similar to the 'screen''s glowing but about ten times more vibrant and blinding - was still imprinted beneath his eyelids, making it hard for him to forget. As he looked down, he realized she was right. The prints were still there, but now there was a difference: it lacked the vibrant glow. Now it looked as if a three-year-old had drew the patterns.

But what if it isn't a pattern? He stepped back in a daze until he could look at the design better and not as if he was straightly above it. From in front of him, Piper smirked sadly as if she knew what it was he found out.

2015

That was what the engraving in the dirt said. Immediately, he knew it was a number. How he knew it was a number, he didn't know. How he knew the numeral was called a 'number' he didn't know. He was so used to Roman numerals that everything now confused him. It was like staring at the 'phone''s 'screen' and how the words didn't look like a language he knew, but somehow he understood. Now...now he understood why Piper spoke strange around him. It was as if her language verbally was shifted strainingly from Latin into...whatever Merlin's poop this was.

Okay...but this could also explain that Piper could be lying to him and that they were in another country instead of her absurd theory. But how come I know this language? And how come I'm speaking it with Piper right now?

His eyes grew wide as he came to a scary conclusion: How come I can't remember a single word or numeral in Latin?

Gratefully yet somehow ungratefully, Piper answered his unspoken questions as if she knew exactly how he felt. And maybe she had, he thought as he looked at her amused yet sad face. Maybe she felt bad for him because she remembered how she felt when she...wait, she'd been here before?! But again, that was clearly obvious judging how she knew so much information and brought him here in the first place.

"It's because of the shifting to a new realm," she said, her voice heavy. "You can't remember another language while in another realm because it's not your language anymore. At least, not the one you were raised in."

He blinked at her cautiously. "But how come you knew Latin even when you were in - " then he quickly clarified, "and I'm not saying this because I actually believe you, no not at all, but if it were true - ...another realm?"

"Because I studied Latin in school, so I know it pretty fluently. But...my Latin is more modern than your Latin. That's why..."

"...Why you speak so strange to me. Why I can hardly understand you half of the time," he spoke with a sense of finality; as if he just discovered the world's darkest secret. "I hope you know I still don't believe you."

"How in the holy hell do you not - ?!" Piper cut off her exclamation with another loud groan. She muttered, "Fine...I guess this is all new to you so I'll be patient...I suppose I'm going to have to show you everything."

He wasn't quite sure what she meant by everything since he was still in the middle of freaking out. Yes, he was freaking out. Not as if he would tell Piper anytime soon though he figured she already knew considering she kept sending him pitiful glances every now and then. But he was freaking out.

He heard her mumble vaguely, "Not as if you actually would have had a choice. You're going to be here for quite a while..." At those completely dreadful words, Jason snatched his arm away from her, startled because he really, very much did not want to be there for any longer than he had to be.

"No," he said firmly. "I want to go home. Now." He needed to go home. Very badly. He never thought he would ever want to see his father so badly at this point. That's precisely how desperate he was now. The kingdom, Reyna, even Octavian he would have killed for to see. Alright, maybe not have killed for. But Reyna...he could only wonder what impossible thoughts must have been running through her mind over there. He had to see her. She was the only thing that was normal in his life, and that was completely official especially now that Piper was in it.

Speaking of the witch, she threw up her hands in frustration at his reply. "Can't you see I'm trying to get you there?"

She was being sincere. He knew because of the way her eyebrows furrowed in concern, the way her lips tilted downwards slightly as if she wasn't proud of herself for putting him through this. How he knew all of this about her without actually knowing her was beyond him. But then again, he was beyond clueless at this point.

So he followed, figuring he didn't have much to lose in the first place.


A/N: More answered or more questions? I want to know what y'all think. There wasn't any Jasper in here, but I'm trying to take things slow for now. Trying. Judging by my sloppy moods, who knows what will happen between the two of them.

The more reviews I get, the faster I'll update. Thanks again for getting this far and reading through the chapter!

Till next time,

Penguin