Summary: story detailing Perry and Diana's first meeting
Stories That Must Be Read Before Reading This One-Shot: none really

...

The forest was a lot larger than I remembered. As I sprinted full-pelt through the trees, I once again realised that both my hands were hanging by my side. Cursing myself for forgetting, I put my left hand back on the large, bloody claw marks on my right bicep.

Focus, Di. You need to get out of here alive, and if you forget about your injury too many times, you're going to bleed out.

The roar behind me made me increase my speed to almost breaking point. Hurdling roots and sidestepping logs, I was nearly to the end of the forest.

Come on…

My speciality was illusion but unfortunately I still had not learned to manipulate the Mist. I could become invisible from demigods, mortals, and normal earth animals, but not gods or monsters. And the monster behind me was REALLY annoyed with me.

Please don't vaporise me for this, Gaia.

With a quick wave of my hand, I topple a tree, slide under the trunk before it hits, and carry on running, knowing that this tree was not going to be enough to keep the monster occupied for long. In fact, I might have even supplied it with ammo.

Sure enough, I hear a mighty crack and the noise of air whistling. I turn my head and nearly have a heart attack as I see the heavy brown missile come flying towards me. I quickly turn it to ice and stop dead. It flies just over my head and shatters into a million pieces. I hurriedly resume running, dodging all the bigger and sharper pieces.

I feel thankful now that this morning I put on the soft, flexible white leggings, rather than the pair of jeans I nearly wore. Jeans would have been hard to run in. I'm also glad I chose to wear a t-shirt instead of a long-sleeved top; if I had, I would have had to rip the sleeves off to get to my injury, and that would have wasted time.

I once learned about this thing in school; I can't remember what it was called, but it happens when you're running consistently for a long time. You no longer feel tired, and you feel like you can go on forever. It was something to do with "equilibrium"?

Anyway, that's what I had achieved. My limbs were sore but manageably so. My breathing was slowing but I was saving oxygen. I felt like I could run to the moon and back.

Then I felt the ground shake and rumble. Off balance, I tumbled over and hit a tree. Adding a sore back and a twisted leg to my list of injuries, I stood up and quickly hid behind the tree as the dragon stormed into the clearing. I held my breath.

Please, Mother, don't let the dragon find me. If you're watching me, or if you care about me in any way, let me escape this one.

That was when my mother granted me a new power.

Before this moment, I had only inherited two of my mother's powers: mystiokinesis (power of magic) and illusion. Well, I also had the power of prophecy, but to do with betting, like in casinos. I could always predict what number or card was going to be next. I could have made my fortune in casinos, but up until now I had no need for lots of money.

But now I felt as if my desperate need to be somewhere else had triggered something inside me. I reached out my hand and out of it came this black and purple material. It noiselessly spiralled into a circle right in front of me. Black and purple electricity danced around the outside of it, and inside there was black.

I had just created a portal from my own hands.

But I had no time to delve deeper than that. I had no time to wonder where and when this portal would take me. The last thing I heard as I jumped through the portal was the roar of the dragon.

…

I wish I could say my first portal jump was graceful but it wasn't.

I landed on my head.

That stunned me quite a lot. I lay where I hit, lying on my back. I knew I had to try and cover my injury on my arm but my head hurt too much to move. My sore leg and back were…well…sore, but I just breathed in and out.

To anger the monster that much, I had cut both its wings off, which was why it had only been able to run after me. That was over six hours ago. I had been running and dodging that monster ever since. I had been running in that forest for almost an hour straight. It had tracked me down, hunted me. No wonder; I had cut off its wings. In return, it had swallowed my sword. It didn't matter about the sword, though. It had no value to me. I had been given it by Camp Half-Blood just before I had left forever. I felt sorry that I had left Chiron without saying goodbye, but I hadn't wanted to make a scene.

All of a sudden, I saw something looking down at me. To my hazy eyes, it looked like a teal duck in a fedora. It looked concerned as it said, "Are you okay?"

"Talking duck?" I slurred.

The thing grinned. "I'm a platypus. The name's Perry."

"Diana Fay," I said.

Perry caught sight of the injury on my arm. "Did you get ravaged by a lion?"

"Dragon, actually."

"Did you say-?"

"Yeah, you heard me."

I sat up and held my arm. "Where are we?"

"Danville, USA," replied Perry, looking both confused and concerned at the same time. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"My leg feelings like it's a daisy being picked really slowly," I replied. "Danville…is that near Long Island?"

"Um, no. Not really."

"Thank goodness. That's where most of the monsters live. Please don't go "monsters?!" because it's really annoying when you repeat everything I say," I added, as Perry opened his beak.

He shrugged. "If I take you inside, will you explain everything?"

"Inside where?"

"Well, you kind of are on my front yard."

I looked around. Behind me was a house, a suburban house, in the middle of a street. "Sorry."

"Just come in. I'm sure my host family won't mind."

I tried to put weight on my foot but it didn't work and I had to sit down again. "I can't stand," I told Perry.

The platypus thought for a second. Then he said, "Stay there, I'll get someone to help you."

He ran inside and came back within a minute, with two boys behind him. They were about thirteen years old, and one of them had a triangular head.

"What happened to you?" the red-haired one asked. "Are you okay?"

"I can't walk," I told them. "I need help."

"Okay."

The two boys each put one of my arms over their shoulders, but as the green-haired boy moves my right arm, I snatched it away. Then he caught sight of my injury and said in a British accent, "Ah, Phin? You're going to have to carry her yourself."

"Why?" asked "Phin", just before he too spotted my injury. "Ah. That's why."

He lifted me up. As I put weight on my foot, pain shot up my leg and I inhaled sharply. Together, the two boys helped me inside and lay me down on the sofa in the living room. The green-haired boy began bandaging my arm up while the other boy went to make me some tea. Perry sat on my lap like a house pet.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Ferb Fletcher," replied the boy. "And my stepbrother's Phineas Flynn."

"I'm Diana Fay," I said.

Phineas came back in with a cup of tea, which he placed on the table next to me, within my reach.

"So how old are you?" Phineas asked.

"I'm twenty-eight."

Phineas and Ferb looked at me, clearly startled. "What? But you look eighteen!" protested Phineas.

"What…?" It took several moments for me to realise what he was talking about. "Ah."

I let the illusion drop. Phineas, Ferb, and Perry both actually jumped back as my true age was shown.

"How…?" muttered Perry.

"You know all those Greek gods and monsters and heroes?"

They all nodded.

"Well, at least in my universe, they all really exist."

There was a stunned silence following this. Then: "Okay," said Phineas.

"Okay?" I repeated. "You're all okay with Greek gods existing?"

"Trust me, that's not the weirdest thing we've ever heard," Ferb said dryly.

"Anyway, these gods sometimes have kids with mortals, creating half-gods called demigods. My mother is the Greek goddess Hecate, goddess of magic."

"That's awesome!" Phineas grinned.

"Then did you inherit some of your mom's powers?" asked Ferb. "That's generally how things work, isn't it?"

"Yes. I inherited the power of illusion, which was how I was able to look eighteen instead of twenty-eight; I can predict the future but only in casinos; I have minor control over magic; and now I can apparently create portals to other universes."

"So you come from another universe?" asked Perry.

I nodded. "That's right. In my universe, a dragon attacked me so I cut its wings off."

All three of them grimaced. "That's not very nice," Phineas commented.

"What you have to know about Greek monsters is that they're all, well, just that. Monsters. Very, very few are even civil, let alone friendly. It's kill or be killed, and I chose to kill. Though of course I tried not to actually kill. I don't like killing."

"Sorry. Carry on."

"Anyway, that just made him mad and he chased me through a forest for ages. My mum gave me a new powers and I opened a portal and came through to here."

"Perry?" called a female voice suddenly. "Where are you?"

"In the living room!" Perry shouted back. "Wait, I'll come to you. There's something I have to tell you."

He leapt off the couch and disappeared.

"I'm guessing your injury was the dragon?" Ferb said.

"Yes, it was. That's why I asked you how far from Long Island Danville is, but if I'm in a different universe…chances are the Greek gods won't exist here. I can live peacefully here."

"You're going to stay?" asked Phineas.

I nodded. "I need to rest up. I will go back for a visit but I think it's safer if I live here."

Perry came back into the living room, holding the paw of a purple platypus. "This is my mate, Priya."

"Hi." I smiled. "I'm Diana Fay. Has Perry explained my situation?"

Priya nodded. "He has. I just want you to know that even though I don't really know you, if you need anything, you can ask me."

"Thank you, Priya."

"No worries."

And that was the beginning of my life in Danville of another universe, away from the gods and monsters and prophecies and strife of being the daughter of Hecate.