XXXV
Jason
Octavian looked at Jason. "You can either help take command, or you can join the rest of your Greek friends in the ocean."
Jason struggled to keep an impassive face as he said, "I'll join you, but on the condition that the Greeks stay onboard."
Octavian thought for a moment, his tiny brain attempting to pick up any tricks as Piper, Leo and Nico didn't move. Fortunately, they seemed to understand what Jason was getting to. He nodded slightly at them as Octavian muttered a few words to a 2nd cohort centurion. Jason saw him wearing a little purple cloak- the color of the praetor. His eyes flared in anger briefly.
Reyna looked at him helplessly as he passed.
Someone grabbed Jason roughly by the arms and began taking him towards the Argo II, which was now covered with Roman SPQR symbols and being patrolled by guards.
On the deck, Octavian looked at him in the eye viciously. "Listen here, Grace," he snarled. "You will tell your ugly friends to enter their cabin- all of them. Then we will lock the doors and set the fleet back for New Rome."
Then, he leaned in, out of earshot of the nearby guards. "Be glad I'm doing this. If the others hadn't insisted on offering you another chance, you'd be missing a head by now."
Jason tried not to shiver as he hissed back, "Don't get to confident, Octavian."
He just smirked in reply and pushed him to the mic. Jason took a deep breath. "All Greeks, please leave your stations and enter your cabins. You will be notified of the situation soon," Jason strained to say as Leo and Piper were dragged onto the deck. They didn't see him on the deck. Nico was nowhere to be seen. A guard dragged Jason into a chair and tried to tied him to it.
Jason shook him off and said, "Get off of me." In response, the guard snarled and kicked Jason's stomach. As Jason's breath left him, he was grabbed again, and this time successfully strapped down. Then the guard left.
He thought of different ways to escape as the Romans prepared the fleet to set off. Nothing came to his head. Although Octavian was a vicious character, he didn't earn the position of Centurion for nothing. Jason knew he was a very good strategist. In fact, he probably wouldn't have won the Titan War if Octavian didn't his maneuver his cohort being the monsters that were demolishing the rest.
At some point, he fell asleep.
When he woke up again, nothing much had changed, except dusk had become dawn and the fleet was in the water. Judging from the sun, they were headed west, back towards America.
The weird thing was that there were no guards assigned to him. He easily slipped past his handcuffs (one tied to tight is easy to get out of) and stood up. No alarms went off. Jason was tempted to just shout, "YODALEYAHOOOOO!" And see who would respond.
He dismissed the idea.
Instead, he decided to find a weapon first. He went down the stairs quietly, to the second level. Again, nobody was in the corridors.
He passed the cabins- they were empty. Jason went down another flight of stairs. This time, he heard the slight crackle of radio. It was coming from the engine room. Quietly, Jason tiptoed to outside the slightly open door and peaked in.
Inside was a girl in full Roman segmentata armor was holding a square box in one hand and a radio in the other. She was clearly a Roman.
The radio crackled, and Octavian's voice laced with static said, "The middle container contains the fuels and the syncopater. Put the C4 on that."
Instantly, Jason's blood went cold. They were going to try and blow up the ship. "Yes sir," the girl said and started mumbling to herself as she took out a pack of explosives out of the box and clicked a few buttons, the C4 arming and beeping. Jason tensed.
Just as the girl was about to set it onto the center container filled with all the flammable liquids, he made his move.
Jason stepped into the room and quickly crossed the distance, but not quickly enough. The Roman girl- Jason recognized her as Aria- heard his steps across the wooden floor and turned around quickly, eyes narrowing as she dropped the explosive and drew her sword.
"Jason Grace," she said in a monotone. In response, Jason reached for where he kept his sword- it was empty. He swore at himself and stepped back as Aria took a swing at him. From her movements and pose, Jason could tell she knew how to work a sword. Without his own weapon, he'd get skewered.
"Aria," Jason said and ducked down, missing a kick at her knees. "We're innocent! I can prove it!"
He stumbled back as Aria hissed, "Don't try to trick me! What do you even fight for, Jason?"
That confused him for a moment, and he barely dodged a swing at his throat, leaving a cut on his cheek.
"I fig-" He ducked. "I fight for my friends and family!" He grabbed the sword as Aria attempted to thrust at him, but she kicked his gut and made another cut on his arm.
"Really?" She said and kicked at Jason. "You don't seem to be doing a very good job of keeping New Rome safe." Jason growled in frustration, but small part of him said, What if she's right? What if what you're doing only hurts your home? He had dragged a large portion of the Legio XII far away from home, leaving Camp Jupiter vulnerable and scared. Not to mention he sort of "aided" in blowing up parts of his hometown.
No, he thought as he landed a punch on Aria's face. If I don't succeed, there will be no Camp Jupiter.
They exchanged a few more blows, and Jason got more cut up. "Aria," Jason said. "If we don't succeed, there will be no Camp Jupiter to go back go." That wouldn't convince her, but it did have the effect Jason wanted.
She hesitated momentarily, but it was enough. Jason lunged forward and jabbed Aria's face twice before grabbing the sword hilt and twisting it, making Aria let go of it.
He could've stopped there. Knocked her unconscious. But he felt an anger within him, an irrational hatred. And without thinking, he looked at Aria as she attempted to regain her senses, before Jason's mind went blank and he stabbed the sword.
He heard a gasp, followed by a cough and something soft landed on his shoulder. He let go as he felt the sword and its target stumble forward before collapsing with a loud thud on the floor. Jason looked at his hands, which were now red.
Even has he registered what he had done, he knew he had ruptured a vital organ and that it was too late.
You see, Gaea's voice hissed. You are just a worthless traitor, stained by the blood of your own.
He turned around quickly and saw Aria lying on the ground, face pale and the area that was her heart embedded by a gladius. She saw him, and looked him in the eye for one second weakly, and croaked, "Why?" Then her head rolled to her side in one last coughing fit of blood.
Jason grabbed the wall for support, nausea overcoming him. Oh no, oh no, oh no, He repeated to himself. He had just killed a fellow Roman, and one he had known well, in cold blood. What kind of a person was he?
He stepped forward and tripped over Aria's corpse, landing facefirst. When his blurred vision cleared, he saw the C4 explosive in front of him.
He'd forgotten about that. All regret disappearing, he shot up, grabbed the explosive and ran to the upper deck. The ships around him didn't notice him. He was about to throw the explosive overboard, when his mind decided to interject. What DO you fight for, Jason? He tightened his fist. Wait. How could he tighten it with the bomb in his hand? He looked back to the stairwell—he had dropped it. It lay about 5 feet in front of him.
But before he could take another step towards it, he could swear he saw Octavian's face on the ship directly in front of him smrrking evilly as he took what looked like a pen and pressed it.
The C4 beeped one last time, and exploded.
xXx
That moment when you feel weightless and helpless and confused all at the same time. Jason flew overboard and landed headfirst into the water, the explosion still echoing in the background and vibrating through his ears.
For a few moments, his vision was blurred and he unconsciously took a breath, rewarding him with a lungful of water.
Realizing Jason was underwater for the first time, he quickly figured out which way he was sinking and kicked the other way, breaking the surface and gasping and coughing for air. He rubbed the water out of his eyes and came face to wood with the Argo II, which fortunately looked intact. Until Jason looked upwards, treading water.
A huge smoke cloud billowed from the deck, and the mast and railings were completely destroyed.
Jason looked around and saw Romans on other ships shouting and pointing at the Argo, as one of the small ones turned onto interception course towards it. Realizing that they planned to ram it from the iron spike on the front, Jason quickly grabbed the ladder, which was undamaged and quickly climbed up the deck and, ignoring all the debris and smoke in the air, ran to the bow of the Argo.
He wasn't sure if his 10 second plan would work, but it wasn't like he could steer the ship. Jason took a deep breath and concentrated. Fortunately, the dark clouds above seemed to stir, if only a bit. He focused harder, and was rewarded by a brief sound of thunder.
The collision was less than a minute.
Hey, dad, Jason thought. I know you're probably schizophrenic right now, but could you PLEASE help me? Just one lightning bolt?
His head throbbed in pain, but Jupiter seemed to have heard his pleas. Another stroke of thunder, much louder this time, echoed through the air and a bolt of lightning struck the water, a mile off. 40 seconds…
Another bolt, hit closer, and Jason thought he could hear Jupiter grumbling about his terrible aim.
30 seconds.
A third lightning strike was closer yet, but it wasn't fast enough. It wasn't going to work. Jason decided to take matters into his own hands. He grabbed the nearest piece of metal he could find—part of the destroyed crow's nest—and held it upwards. It was hardly the largest and most significant conductor, but Jason was a son of the god of lightning, and he had some perks.
A lightning bolt soared down and made contact with the 2 foot long stick, making it spark and crackle. Jason, being a son of Jupiter, didn't feel a thing. He pointed it at the Roman ship, which was now less than 50 feet away and thought, fly.
The redirected lightning instantly blew a huge crater into the hull, bypassing Leo's prototype kinetic barriers effortlessly, the high concentration of photons not having much mass.
Instantly, the trireme began to list dangerously to its side, as it gained water. It was now dead in the water, and more Roman ships nearby were beginning to respond.
Before he went any further, Jason had to figure out where his friends and the Greeks were held. It wasn't like he could search every single ship in the battle group. Fortunately, he didn't have to as on a ship next to the Argo, a few Romans shouted in surprise as Leo and Piper tackled the ones guarding the door to the ground and kicked them unconscious. Leo saw him and waved, grinning his troublemaker smile.
Jailbreak time?
The others burst out from the lower deck too—all of them except Nico, who Jason figured was doing his own thing.
Then Leo's smile faded as he saw the state of the Argo. He gave Jason a look furious look that said, you better do some explaining later…
For now, they had 4 cohorts of angry Romans ready to kill them. Currently, at least 40 of them were headed for Jason, the others close by. "Screw my life," Jason muttered.
No way he was going to take out a cohort's worth of soldiers. Jason almost wished that Percy would just pop out of nowhere and cause a typhoon or something.
Instead, Jason jumped off the Argo as boarding chains attached to hit and shot up a bit in the air. Within the minute, 40 fully armed legionaries had locked down the Argo II and created an effective anti-boarding shield by stacking their huge shields next to each other. They didn't seem to realize there were several loaded ballista next to them.
Jason thought it would be wise not to fly within pila range. He didn't really wish to get impaled with 30 soft-iron spearheads. Instead, he flew to the nearby trireme, where his friends were finishing off the guards, and landed on top of a legionary effectively rendering him combat ineffective. "Hey," Jason said nonchalantly, as if they were meeting for lunch.
Leo glared daggers are Jason and pointed to the Argo II shield wall. "What. Happened. To. My. Ship." He said icily. One thing Jason had learned: Don't mess with Leo's inventions. Or any Hephaestus kid's, for that matter.
Jason took a defensive look. "Hey, be glad that was it. They were planning to blow up the entire engine room!"
"I'm going to murder them all," Leo muttered.
"So, what do we do?" Piper interjected.
Jason thought for a moment. "First, we need to find the rest of Camp Half Blood. Any ideas where they are?"
"I actually saw them on the way up walking around in the mess hall, but there were at least 30 Romans there, and it didn't look like they would budge, from the defensive position they had taken around the closed door. I looked through the sides, by the way," Piper thought out loud.
"It won't be easy to beat them," added Leo.
Jason smiled. "Where do we begin?"
xXx
"2 at the door, shields up. 5 on the left, right and back wall. The rest are dispersed through the Greeks. They don't look too worried," Piper noted.
"They probably already have a plan. Help is always good, though." Jason took his position by the door with a small Greek Fire bomb from the armory and a sword and shield.
Piper pressed herself on the other side, and down the hall, Frank and Hazel winked green, read by blast a hole in the wall. Leo did the same. He was mostly to provide support, lacking proficiency in any melee weapon.
Jason held up an open hand and closed it as Leo, Jason and Frank stuck the explosives to the wall in front of them and duck-and-covered. A few seconds later, the entire ship was rocked sideways as 3 holes blew open. The 2 guards at the door were ready, however it was clear they weren't expecting breaches in the walls themselves.
And Jason was right. The Greeks DID have a plan. The moment the charges went off, he could hear several cracks and groans of pain breaking through the door. Jason stepped inside and decked the first Roman he could find, followed up by an uppercut to the jaw and a roundhouse kick. He felt someone behind me and instinctively ducked. A gladius soared overhead.
Using the Roman's momentum, Jason tackled backwards, and the Roman's footing was kicked out and he hit the deck face first. His tormentor struck the Roman's head just for good measure.
Around the room, chaos ensued as the Romans, caught by surprise, were brought into submission.
A few minutes of struggle later, the captors were unconscious or tied up, and the captives roamed around. Frank and Hazel were handing out swords from the armory and the Romans. "Guys!" Jason shouted. He quickly gave them a rundown of the situation, and warned them to be careful. They had escaped much too easily.
Jason walked upstairs, knowing someone was waiting for him. He was right. The moment he reached the top deck, he leaned back and dodged a sword. Jason grabbed the sword and swung it, carrying the swordsman with it. He fell to the ground, and Jason stepped on his face with a sickening crunch.
Someone else tried to swing at him, but a Greek behind Jason elbowed the Roman's face and decked him—HARD. Jason felt sorry for the guy.
He was pushed forward as a bunch of other angry people pushed through, and quickly beat the crap out of the outnumbered, out-positioned and generally surprised Romans. A few unlucky ones were kicked off the ship—literally, but most surrendered or had the lights kicked out of them.
Jason estimated at least 1 and a half cohorts worth of Roman legionaries were combat ineffective by now. The element of surprise sometimes is really magic. However, now Jason faced a bigger problem. The Argo II, the most powerful ship in the navy, was still under Roman control, and that ship could easily blast every other ship to pieces.
Most likely the only reason it hadn't opened fire, being only 100 yards away, was because of the prisoners onboard. Octavian wouldn't be too popular with the Senate back home if word reached them that he sacrificed 60 quality soldiers for some Greek scum. Jason considered ramming the Argo II, but Leo would be pissed beyond measure and people might get thrown overboard.
The anti-boarding shield wall was still up, which would make it a huge pain to assault the ship either way. The Romans would probably use deadly force, which could prove a liability to the Greeks.
"Ok," Jason muttered. "Now to just take over the rest of the fleet before we get blown to Kingdom Come. No stress, no stress at all."
Suddenly, the ship lurched to the left and Jason looked to the helm and saw Leo whopping like a madman. Then Jason saw the target—too late. "BRACE!" He roared and everybody, shocked by the sudden order grabbed the nearest object (which was the mast for Jason) as the trireme rammed a nearby ship with all primary, secondary and tertiary propulsion systems at overclock. Leo had positioned the ram so it didn't split the poor target in half, but it massacred the target's right set of oars.
Everybody was thrown forward before Leo yelled, "FOR BACON!" and leaped onto the ship, bowling into 5 people. Everybody else stood confused for each other, before gaining a maniac look in their eyes and repeating the Bacon cry and charging.
Pro tip: Don't get in the way of a Greek driven by a lust of bacon. The 5 or 6 Romans on the ship were subdued in literally a second as several people bowled into each of them. Then Jason heard a horn blow, and caught sight of a lot of movement in the other ships. Seems like they're going to try and storm this ship… not very Roman… Jason thought. Although he didn't want to kill any Romans, he wasn't about to let them walk over him, either.
"Form up against the railing! Non lethal force, unless absolutely necessary!" Someone from Athena yelled, apparently sharing Jason's thoughts. The Greeks obliged, and in a few seconds, there was a phalanx running the length of the right side of the ship. A few other people in the back connected the trireme they were on to the one that they used to ram it. Very soon, 2 cohort's worth of soldiers were cramped on a single boat around 200 yards to the right of Jason's trireme. The Argo II was still far off somewhere to their left.
And true to Jason's thoughts, the trireme was headed onto intercept trajectory with the phalanx, who's young hoplites raised their shields and trimmed their line. Now, any Roman that wanted to board had to push past 3 ranks of unyielding shields, as well as archers pelting them with nonlethal arrows from the flanks. Meanwhile, they had to be careful not to fall into the ocean below. Hopefully, Jason thought, it would discourage some boarders.
"Brace!" Malcolm barked, taking his position as the hoplite commander in the front row on the very left. The phalanx tightened, and the 2 ranks behind prepared to shove their comrades in the front forward.
Jason again had to admire the cohesion of Greek phalanxes, yet they still had prowess in individual combat.
Seconds later, a storm of arrows soared towards Jason, who ducked behind a railing. They flew high up over Jason or bounced off of the Greeks' massive hoplons. Jason stood up and drew his gladius, having a quick flashback to those Lord of the Rings movies he had watched in "Camp Enrichment Activities." He could almost hear the theme playing as the 2 Polybian Cohorts neared closer… and closer… and closer… and BANG! The 2 ships rammed each other; however Leo had diverged the Greek trireme into a sharper and more dangerous angle than the Roman ones, and they took more damage. A second after that, hooks flew from the Roman ship, latching onto the hull of the Jason's trireme and legionaries secured the 2 ships.
"Ready!" Jason barked. On the other ship, he heard a centurion yell, "For the Senate! Kill those impunities! Every-" He never got to finish the sentence because at that moment, a ballista armed by an Apollo archer blasted a hole on the deck an inch to his right, sending him stumbling backwards. "One for the money!" He whooped and promptly ducked as 5 arrows soared past him before standing back up and going Leroy Jenkins on the poor, tightly clustered Romans.
"Hey!" Jason yelled at him. "Cut it down a bit, and please do not sink that ship!"
The Apollo guy looked disappointed, but nodded and drew his bow. Just as he did that, the first Romans jumped the ship, expecting to bowl into the thin line of Greeks. "Hold!" Malcolm barked as the phalanx stumbled back again from the sheer force of legionaries wearing 10 kilograms of armor smashing into them. Within moments, the battle had disintegrated into that similar to an othismos, or pushing match. However, with the Greeks in a more locked position and with archers harassing the Roman flanks, the Roman left flank began to give way to the flanking right.
At least, that's what was happening until someone shot a Greek fire arrow into the Romans. Although it wasn't lethal, the Apollo archer had modified it with a shockwave point, the force literally flattening everyone—Greek and Roman. A few unlucky of the latter fell into the water.
For a few moments, everything was silent. Then some Ares hothead, who was the first to get back up, roared, "GET 'EM!" Apparently the Romans thought it was one of them, because both sides shot up and yelled either "Senatus Populusque Romanus!" or "BACOON!" and everything disintegrated into absolute anarchy.
With the Greek's phalanx and the Roman cohort formations both broken, the fight had become a general melee, both sides equally matched, but the Romans outnumbered 120-80. 120 being the entire force from Camp Half Blood. Jason didn't know what to do. He certainly wasn't going to try and stop it—it would just result in someone shooting him. Fortunately, he didn't have too. Jason nudged the archer next to him. The Apollo guy looked at him. "Yeah?"
Suddenly, Jason felt very awkward, but he forced it down and said, "I need you to shoot fart arrows at the Romans and stop them."
The Apollo guy shrugged. "Sure," and his high-tech quiver removed the blunt arrowheads and replaced the shaft heads with fart explosives.
Jason walked away. Ok… that was awkward. Jason decided to enter the brawl, just for something to do.
He jumped down onto the center (the 2 sides were raised slightly) and electrocuted his sword, which he directed at the nearest Roman girl. The modified Direct Energy Weapon hit her square in the chest and she screamed as electricity conducted along her armor, not even to kill her, but enough to paralyze her for a few minutes. Then Jason stepped past her guiltily and engaged a Roman who had just shoved a Demeter kid aside.
The blood lusted enemy swung his sword overhead with too much force, and Jason deflected it at an angle, then dove at the guy's feet, sending him crashing to the floor. Jason kicked the guy's head, just for good measure. When another Roman chucked his pilum at Jason, he just flew up and readied a low voltage strike, but instead, a fart arrow nailed the said Roman at his feet, and the poor legionary instantly collapsed from the stink and eye tearing. Within seconds, those Romans who had not been ganged up on and beat up were downed by fart arrows, and the Greeks cheered in victory.
"Remind me to apologize to the Romans I screwed," Jason said to Leo.
"Ok," Leo replied. "Jason, you need to apologize to the Romans you screwed."
"Later, I meant later," Jason face-palmed.
"Well, how would I know that?" Leo asked smartly. Jason sighed. "Just go awa-"
Suddenly, Jason hissed something rocked the ship and everyone was thrown backwards with several screams of shock. The entire ship creaked and groaned. Jason flew backwards and nailed his head on the wooden deck. "Ow," he muttered and pushed himself to his feet, just in time to see the specialized ramming point of the Argo II smash into the trireme and begin to tear it apart down the center.
Jason picked up his sword, and with a battle cry, ran for the Argo II and jumped onto it.
I lied, it's not going to be 5000 words. But over 3500, I promise! Next chapter: Mid-Late June.
*Now this is very important* I'm not going to finish this story in time. It's that simple. I will write as much as I can, and then the day before HoH comes out, I will make one last chapter that explains what happens next. Now, there WILL be a Book 5 Fanfiction. But now I'm asking you, longer, less often chapters or shorter, more frequent chapter? The poll is on my profile.
However, for book 5, I will not have a time limit. I will be taking my time on that book, and it WILL be continued when Book 5 comes out, unless something REALLY cliffy forces me to write something else.
I'm really sorry for breaking my promise that this book would be finished, but my life has changed dramatically.
QOTC-I've got a problem for your solution.
SOTC-Hold Us by Ryan Lewis and Macklemore.
EOTC- Back to the Future