MASTER OF TIME

Installment One: Percy Jackson and the Olympians,
The Lightning Thief

by Tannin & Tele

Disclaimer: All rights belong to J.K. Rowling and Rick Riordan, voiding that of original content and characters.

CHAPTER THREE: THE FURIES ARE SEVERELY INEFFICIENT AT THEIR JOB

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Late Spring, 2006

As Mrs. Dodds suddenly sprouted a set of leathery wings, my thought process consisted of mostly incoherent screams and a slew of curse words that would make a nun blush. Mrs. Dodds definitely wasn't human, that much was for sure. Her fang-like teeth were crooked and yellow, her skin wrinkled like a plucked chicken and her talons razor-sharp. Her claws glinted in the skylight, and I decided a tactical retreat was in order.

She lunged at me and I ducked, slipping past her.

"Need a little help?" came a smooth British accent from the arched doorway of the exhibit. The boy, with his blazing emerald eyes stepped out of the shadows. He looked strangely at peace in the archaic, renaissance-esque architecture, his alabaster skin glowing ethereally as he entered the light.

I would have appreciated the sight more if he wasn't currently blocking the only path to the door.

"Ah!" Mrs. Dodds cackled, as she caught sight of the boy. "Another demigod, conspiring against my master?"

The boy scoffed lightly, crossing his arms. "I am your Master, you bitch."

Mrs. Dodds looked dangerously affronted, and I couldn't believe his nerve.

"Run!" I screamed, glancing backwards as Mrs. Dodds swooped towards us, screeching like a bat. I careened past the boy and, in a last second decision, snatched up his thin arm. I yanked him along with me, ignoring his sounds of protest. "We need to get out of here!" I told him as I heard a crash from the Greek exhibit. Fortunately for us, it seemed Mrs. Dodds was a little out of practice with her flying skills.

Her crash bought us a few seconds of time, and I steered us towards where I thought an exit lay. We stumbled past an old Egyptian sarcophagus and immediately hit a dead end. Frantic, I spun us in a circle, looking for another way out that didn't involve smacking right into the path of my homicidal math teacher. "We're lost!" I gasped, clutching my side. "She's going to kill us!"

"Wait, wait! I have an idea," the boy said, patting his pockets suddenly. Shedding his outer jacket, he pulled out a ballpoint pen from his uniform pocket. "I knew breaking into Brunner's office last trimester would pay off," he mumbled distractedly to himself.

"That was you?!" I asked in disbelieve. He ignored my astonishment and passed the pen over, carefully setting it into my open palm.

"Take this to defend yourself," he told me seriously. "It's a very powerful weapon."

I eyed the pen warily, flinching as another screech came from the hall. I stared at him like he had grown another head. "This is a pen," I told him, panic rising in my chest. "This is a pen!"

The boy ignored me as he brought forth a black beanie from his back pocket, opening it and reaching a small hand inside. With a sharp pull, a golden sword hilt decorated with glimmering rubies was revealed and I nearly dropped the pen in surprise as he leveled out the three-foot silver blade.

"Wha-" I gaped, gormless.

"Not everything is as it seems," the boy told me with an amused smirk, just as Mrs. Dodds caught our scent, screaming in victory. "Now, quickly!" he urged. I stared at him blankly, as if he was speaking another language.

He rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Merlin, what do you do with a pen? Just click it!"

I did as told and watched before my eyes as a bronze sword erupted into my hand. It fit surprisingly well in my grasp and a sensation of rightness traveled up my arm. "...Holy shit." I said, turning the sword and watching as the blade glinted dangerously in the light.

"Yes," the boy agreed.

Suddenly, Mrs. Dodds came diving into the room before promptly smacking a wing against the sarcophagus. She jolted clumsily to the side and my companion snickered loudly into his hand. "Clumsy chit," he muttered, before raising his voice.

"Fly much?" he taunted, and Mrs. Dodds eyes flashed red as she straightened herself. She flew at us with a scream and absolute terror ran through my body. I dropped my sword in fear while the boy- with his blazing eyes and aura of darkness- lifted his weapon. With a wry smile aimed at the raving beast, he lurched forward and killed her with a single jerk of his arm.

I kneeled over abruptly and began to loose my lunch.

Later

"This is all your fault, you know," I mumbled darkly under my breath, shifting uncomfortably against the small body beside my own.

"So you've said," Harry said idly, flipping through his book with an amused gleam in his eyes. After I had screamed at him for a full minute and a half (once I had gotten over my nausea), I had asked for his name so I could damn it to hell. I was a bit surprised at the commoness of his name, although Harry Potter was anything but common.

Now, as I turned to face my 'bus buddy', I glared down at him with a firmly set jaw. "You know, if you hadn't taunted her-" I began again, voice accusatory.

"-she would have still attacked you," Harry finished sharply, slamming his book shut. "Regardless of whether I 'taunted' her or not. You know, Percy, you could at least act a bit grateful; I saved your arse, and you repay me by shooting out these accusations-"

"But I didn't need saving," I protested, crossing my arms indignantly. "If you weren't in the way, I could have gotten away without you killing her-"

Harry snorted. "Doubtful," he said, his tone dripping with contempt. "You would have died without help. She was a beast, and you, a wiry twelve year-old boy-" (To which I replied, "But you're younger than me!") "-with a vast unlucky streak, would be nothing more to her than an afternoon snack. But, thanks to my bloody great timing, you aren't. And if you had any tact, you'd be thanking me instead of complaining about how I managed it."

Pursing my lips at the overly patronizing lilt to his voice, I leaned my pounding head against the cool window, grumbling under my breath.

I closed my eyes and tried not to remember the way Harry's sword had sliced through Mrs. Dodds' front and jutted out between her winged shoulder blades. It had killed her instantly. Black sludge- 'monster blood', Harry had explained- had erupted from her torso before Mrs. Dodds disintegrated with a spine-chilling scream. As I had barfed in the corner, Harry had retrieved the pen...sword...thing from besides me, and managed to somehow clean up the mess Mrs. Dodds had made. I tried to remember how he had fixed the broken artifacts and slashed walls, but every time I tried to recall the details, the memory seemed to slither from my metaphorical grasp.

And I wasn't the only one with missing memories. Everyone, void Harry and myself, was acting as though Mrs. Dodds had never even existed; and it was scaring the shit out of me! Even Harry had seemed surprised at our classmate's overwhelming ignorance.

All the more, a new chaperone, Mrs. Kerr, had appeared out of thin air, and my best friend, Grover was acting startlingly suspicious.

At first, Grover had mother-henned me as I hobbled out of the museum while Harry had lagged a few steps back, as if attempting to hide behind me. Harry had slipped on a seamless mask of nonchalance as I attempted to explain our skirmish with the algebra teacher to my distressed friend, and coughed rudely as I...may have...embellished the story a little bit. Only a little.

Grover, in response, had garishly fumbled over his words as he tried to tell me that, apparently, Mrs. Dodds didn't exist- which I knew was bullshit. Upset by his obvious deception, I turned to find Mr. Brunner by his tree, only to find that our Latin teacher had...disappeared.

As I looked, I missed the subtle twitch of Harry's hand. Not two minutes later did Mr. Brunner return from the building, his hair slightly ruffled and a wheel on his wheelchair angled the wrong way. All of my questions were halted as I saw him calmly speaking with the new chaperone, acting as though nothing overly peculiar had occurred in the past hour.

With everyone else acting strange, I probably would have thought myself crazy if not for Harry's constant (albeit annoying) presence.

It was a big change from the past year where I wasn't even sure he existed to have him acting as though we were the best of friends. It was kind of creepy, to be honest, but Harry served as a harsh reminder that I wasn't insane.

Grover, on the other hand, was avoiding Harry and I like the Bubonic Plague. My best friend was currently hiding at the front of the bus, sitting stiffly next to a muscular boy with a curly black 'fro.

Grover continued to take furtive glances towards us, a fact that neither I nor Harry missed. Grover made his distrust for Harry very clear when I had tried to introduce the two, only to have Grover stare at the green-eyed boy with fearful eyes before slowly retreating with a 'Percy, can I speak to you...alone, please?' To summarize, our conversation wasn't very pleasant.

I found it very uncharacteristic of Grover to judge Harry's presence so quickly, but truth be told...I didn't much trust Harry, either.

I was suspicious, incredibly suspicious of who Harry was, where he came from, and what his motives were for helping me. There was, also, the problem of his magic sword, which he refused to explain to me.

"It's magic," he had merely shrugged, which didn't answer much.

I don't know when, exactly, we had crossed the barrier between friends and strangers (emphasis on strange), but by the time I noticed that I'd stopped being irritated with his presence and began anticipating our unsystematic encounters later into the school year, it was too late for me to back out.

Our interactions in the following days were mostly awkward, but I couldn't really find it in myself to get rid of him. He was the only person other than myself at Yancy who knew that something strange was going on and was willing to actually talk about it. Grover and Mr. Brunner were having secret rendezvous (Harry offered up some rather vomit-inducing theories to explain them), Mrs. Kerr was incredibly strange to be around (I was just waiting for her to change into some hybrid-monster-person-thing and attack me), while Nancy, the victim of the peculiar water-grabbing, was still a little bitch.

Harry, though, was a single beam of light in the darkness.

Was I grateful for his help, back at the museum? Well, yes, but I'm too stubborn to admit that.

Was I incredibly annoyed by his inscrutable and bizarre attitude? Absolutely.

But was I insane to kind of like Harry, despite all this?

...I wasn't entirely sure.

AN: Getting these published is so not fun with my computer. Any changes with format have to be done on FFnet itself. Ugh.