If this story is anything to me, it's the most cinematic. I play a lot of music to think about the scenes I want to write for the future, in terms of fights, dialogue, and importance to story. Of all the stories, this is the one most mapped out to the end. Each and every story here has taken small turns in their plans, but even then the end goal is open to interpretation more-so than set to a specific goodbye. All except this one. This one has the most clear place to go.
The only problem with this story is the amount of build up I have to give it now, to get to where I want it to be. Magic has nowhere to go as of this point in time, Betrayed and Red are about to being the first of their two main key points to story, and Starting Point is more than I thought I was going to make it. The next chapter for this story will start with more progression, but its true colors will show in due time.
On a whole side note, I'm happy as fuck to be alive to see Westworld season 2 in three months. In the words of Arin Hanson, "Fucking finally." It's one of my only reasons to watch anything on TV.
And since that is all I have to say, I'll end it here. Enjoy so character.
J breathed calmly as he worked his hair into a bun down his neck. He kept his fingers free to bundle the strands of chocolate with little attention, serving it instead to watch the god in front of him failing to read a book. When J's hands finished, they lowered down to his lap, unfolding the sleeves of his flannel he so desperately wanted to get out of. His only problem was the god who swapped his clothes didn't bring his yukata to the god's old camp cabin.
"Sir," he tried interrupting, only for Perseus to hold a hand up in his direction and keep his focus on the book. J let his face dip into a frown. "It doesn't matter how hard you look at the thing; you're not going to decode it off of pure assumptions with only English, Latin, and Ancient Greek to translate it to. You're just wasting your time going off of nothing."
Percy made no initial response as his eyes scanned through each row and column and diagram in frustration. His nose puffed as he continued through the two pages open to him before a growl shut the book in his hand.
"There has to be a way to translate it," Percy muttered into the cover, giving the red icon a once over before tossing the book into J's hands.
"If there is, we don't know it," the samurai wielder continued for him. "And we can't share this with the Olympians, not when we don't know who this belongs to, especially when they were summoning Chaos."
Percy grunted and rotated his wrists, popping the air by his skin. "Speaking of which, are you certain that wasn't it?" The god turned his neck and looked down to the man sitting by his side. "There isn't a single other god or goddess or deity from any of the pantheons named Chaos. And if this Chaos was the Greco-Roman one we know, then we need to talk about it."
"But we both know that was not Chaos." J tilted his head back and turned his eyes up to the sea bearing down on him. "That was a whole different form of pressure, in every sense of the word. It didn't have the power of the creators, and the aura it gave was nothing like those we've met before. This could be a new god, like yourself, linked to a new mix of order." Percy growled into his knuckles.
"We're trying to avoid that, remember? The last thing we want is to create a new godly realm, especially if we don't know the others that could be a part of it."
"Then maybe our informer knows him." Percy squinted down at his companion, who returned the gesture in gusto. "They knew this was going to happen. I'd bet they knew it would be with this 'Chaos' too. Next time you meet with them, ask them."
"And if they don't know who it is?"
"At least they will when you bring it up."
The god sighed and turned his head away, back to the front, and back to the girl sleeping across the room. Percy watched as Hailey continued to sleep, and looked over at the clock to see no reason in waking her now. The girl could use another few hours of rest before needs bothered her.
"How many did we lose?" Percy questioned aloud, though it veered its course to the burning man.
"12 inside the building," the brown haired man reported. "Another eight caught outside by debris, and over 20 sustaining some form or other of a crippling injury."
"Why can't these bastards just start the war so we can bury them again?" J looked down to the book in his lap as the hiss in Percy's words curled over his shoulders.
"They won't start a war they aren't ready to win. Right now, they lack the confidence, power, and leadership to push an attack on the gods. We could have gone hunting, but that would have put us as a risk in the eyes of Olympus. We'll just have to wait it out and knock them each and every time they try to come up."
"I hate it." J looked over to the god, the man crossing his arms at his exclamation. "That there's so little we can do to stop this, other than wait for them to slip up and fall when we walk in. Why is it just one big power after the other comes in when I try to find peace?"
"Because they think you're lax enough and have lowered your guard to the point that they could move in silence without you expecting it," J answered. "They think they can move under our noses and crawl in to kill us just like that."
"They are that stupid, aren't they?"
"I can't remember the last time you were this hostile." J stood from the chair and walked around the table in the middle of Poseidon's cabin. "What has you peeved so much your godly aura wants to tear this roof down to our level? An enemy bothering your need for peace has never riled you up before."
Percy puffed his nose and glared at the floor beneath him, flexing his fingers and with it the power dripping from him. The wood around them squeaked, and J stopped beside the table and looked across it to the god in his company.
"It's not because of what they're doing, it's because of what we're doing." J raised an eyebrow to Perseus' admittance. "We've lied before. Many times. And it's gotten us out of situations when we needed to bail. But now I'm lying to get in these situations." The god looked up to the girl who kicked the covers to rest on only her legs. "We're having to lie seven times over to the gods, to my friends, to my family and to Hailey. You can't just expect me to be comfortable with holding back all of it from them—"
"I don't, but we don't have another option," J cut in sharply. "They can't all know of all of it yet, and they may never get to knowing it all. You want to find that peace and happiness away from the wars? Then we're going to have to tell a few lies just to get by without creating a few new problems."
"We made problems making these lies, J."
"And we would have made worse had we told them the truth." Percy growled out his throat, and J met it with a snarl of his own, curling his features animalistic. "I'm unhappy about some of them too, and I'm even more unhappy that we had to come to Olympus for assistance to begin with. But the fact of the matter is that we can't do this freely without convincing the others gods, and we sure as hell couldn't convince them by letting them know what the fuck we are. Had we left things be, we would have put a target on ourselves to all the pantheons watching us, and in turn we would have put a target on her." J gestured a hand out to the side, and Percy didn't need to follow to see it point at his daughter. "We did the shit we did to keep us safe, Perseus. You and I alone. And I know you want to tell her, but the less that anyone knows, the better. What she knows now is enough, and it is all she can know, do you understand?"
Sea pulled up to the fire, and the fire blew into the sea. Their eyes stayed locked on the other, twisting the air about and turning Hailey in her sleep.
"You care, and I know you care, just as much as I do," J continued. "We have no other choice up to keep quiet and move forward until we can settle this and finally hide away. Then you don't have to tell her any more lies, and if you so wish we can undo all that we did to her."
"I'm not doing that to her again." Percy lowered the angle of his head but kept his glare high. "You made me agree to it once before, and I hate every second of it that I have to live with that mistake. I'm not wiping her again, and if you so much as try to do it again, I won't hold out on you."
J wisely kept silent under the glare of his god, at the father before him. He looked into the anger and hatred the green eyes held, and did nothing to fight back against it.
"Alright then, we don't have to do that ever again," the champion complied. "And lucky you, you get to turn over the lies to some of your friends tomorrow."
"The only saving grace I'm gonna see for the next few weeks."
"Aside from the lieutenant."
Percy scoffed a smile and turned away from his partner. "That's my joke, you jackass. When she hears it, she'll hear it from me. You better keep your mouth shut, because she won't let you get away with it as easily as she'll let me."
"I'm surprised she hasn't attacked you yet for a lot of what you've done. Last you told me, Thalia isn't supposed to be one for calm over violent."
Percy chuckled and shrugged. "Yeah, well, I guess the last 10 years actually managed to make her sweet instead of trigger happy."
"What a shock."
"Fuck off."
Hailey dropped to the sandy floor below, shooting her sticks into the sand to catch her before her face could. She felt the staff swing past, batting at the ponytail that worked slower to follow the rest of her body down. She could see he hairs drop onto her shoulder out the corner of her vision, as most of it was dominated by the figure of J and his bō.
His upper body continued to turn with the staff until his head had to roll between his arms, putting his staff above him and in the position to strike it down to the girl's head. Hailey did her part in pushing off the ground with her escrima sticks, pulling them into her chest and rolling to the side and the stick blew dust around with its impact. She pressed her arms into the dirt and jumped onto her feet, throwing her arms out stiff to keep fighting.
J lifted his bō slowly, turning on the ball of his foot the whole of body to face the human a foot shorter than him. "You're getting faster," he commented. "Practice has been paying off."
Hailey gave a shaky smile at the praise. "You two don't like it when I slack, remember?"
"It's good that you do." J stomped forward and shot the top of his bō to Hailey, nearly knocking her in the nose before she batted the long stick with one of her short ones and stepped to the side to keep her nostrils in tact. J acted just as quickly, spinning with the push and swinging his staff like a bat, and holding it near the end so the staff almost met her half way. She raised both her weapons to block, and did so successfully, though had no quick defense to stop the heel jabbing into the side of her stomach.
She fell down to her knees, gasping from the sudden contact to her body, but sprung away in a cartwheel when his foot came swinging for her head. She slouched into another stance, holding her weapons in front of her, waiting for J to dash to her again. Instead, the man stood tall, feet wide and staff planted in the ground upright between himself and the teenage girl.
"But you're not on the offensive today," J broke into discussion. "You're too single minded in your focus. I thought we taught you better than that. Is something distracting you?"
Instead of responding, Hailey jumped at the staff-wielding man, swinging one stick behind herself and the other to his hand holding the bō in place. The hand she aimed for shot up, so she instead hit his staff, rotating it from the dirt. J let it go, and it rolled over his wrist and back into his hand quick enough to catch the second swing, and follow it down to her ankles. Hailey made like a staff and spun off the dirt, landing on her back with a thud and a gasp of pain.
She moved as quick as she could, but she was barely on her elbow before the staff came swinging at her head again, only to stop just short of whacking her temple.
The man and the girl stayed still in their positions, one staring up wide and the other looking down with a squint. J backed away slowly, dragging his bō through the dirt, and Hailey could see the circle he was close to finishing when he spun into that strike stopped short. With a grunt she pulled herself up, taking her weapons in hand and standing once more to fight. J kept his body down, feet spread apart but his staff down, dragging along the dirt in front of his feet, and his body leaned down to follow the line he was making.
"Do really think you can continue?"
Hailey growled as her response and and chucked an escrima stick at the older gentleman. J dropped his staff to the dirt and caught the stick before it could hit his face. He blinked, and in an instant flicked his wrist to block the strike Hailey brought down on his head. The girl pushed forward, swinging and jabbing with shouts and kihaps of power, and J pushed back, blocking and leaning and pushing away her attacks, all while keeping his face leveled on hers.
When she jabbed to his stomach, J pushed back to her, shooting his stick down into hers and rushing his shoulder into her chest. She fell back, again, slamming into the dirt with a cry. She tried to do as before and pick herself up, but was pushed back down by a body atop hers and a staff against her neck.
J sat on her chest, just enough that she couldn't slide away, holding his weapon across her neck like a knife. "Your swings have more power than when we last sparred," he commented. "Your form and fighting spirit have improved, and your idea to throw and charge was a new one for you. I'm impressed." He shot to his feet and stepped aside, holding a hand down to the teen to help her up, albeit the struggle of keeping her up.
"Still not enough to get a hit on you," she muttered out with a cough. J curled one arm under both of her and placed the other over her stomach.
"You'll get there one day. Come on, let's get you some nectar and ambrosia and get those scrapes healed." The older man looked down at Hailey's left arm, at the forearm unhidden by a sleeve and showing a few scrapes from sliding on the terrain. "Did I go too hard on you this time around?"
"No, I…I asked for this." Hailey sighed and grunted as J helped her up the steps into their home, and walked her through the halls to a room empty save for the mattress in the middle. He worked her over, sitting her down slowly and moving around the room. He reached each wall, opening their lamps and curling a hand over their candles to light them and the room around before returning to the girl.
"Are these on your arms the only wounds I gave you?" Hailey shook her head slowly, blinking and patting her legs softly.
"That sweep might have bruised me…and I think I scraped my back a bit from the falls…"
"Alright. Take off your shirt. I'll be right back." J paced out the room, heading into one adjacent to collect the medicine.
Hailey winced as she lifted her shirt from her body, peeling it off the skin and the small scrapes left from their fight. She dropped the fabric down in her lap, keeping the back of it to her to see the scratch marks left from the dirt and the sand. The grey half sleeved shirt had small cuts in it from her two falls, and she could do nothing but stare and reminisce in her memories, as little as they were. There were times she dreamed of the two who took care of her, and there were times she couldn't discern them from truth and fiction.
She couldn't tell if the dream of J, left alone in a dimly lit room, a knife in one hand and the clothes she first awoke in held by the other, and her crouched outside the door opened not even an inch, was real or fantasy.
The door behind her creaked closed, and she looked beyond her shoulder to see J walking in with a plate of the gods' medicine. He walked over and kneeled behind the girl and handed her a small plate, carrying but one chewy piece of ambrosia. "Take it slowly. I'll start with the one on your back so you can put your shirt back on." She complied with his suggestion, taking the small cube into her mouth and chewing it five seconds at a time. J, in the meantime, dipped his fingers in the saucer filled with nectar, and lifted his hand to the scrapes on her back. She gasped out as the medicine stung through her veins and had to put a hand over her mouth to keep from spilling her medicine. He traced over the wounds slowly, dripping small amounts of nectar onto them and watched as the skin stitched itself together again.
Hailey gulped down her ambrosia and shuddered at the heat that surged through her body. Her hands pulled at the fabric of her shirt, her eyes glossing over the dirt and cuts. "J?" Her voice was soft as the medicine swam in her stomach. The man in question hummed his acknowledgement and let Hailey continue. "Do you think we'll find my family?"
J's hand paused down her spine. His eyes raised from his fingers to look at the back of her neck. She didn't turn to look at him, and instead sat in his silence, unnerved. He sighed out his nose, sending shock through her body as the air brushed her shoulders. "Just because we're recruiting demigods for the fight doesn't mean we won't keep looking for you, Hailey," he responded. "We promised you we would find you your family, and we're not going back on that."
"Do you…" Hailey pulled her shirt onto her lap, folded over her knees. "Do you think they care about me, if they're out there?" Her hands curled into the shirt. "It's been a year…and no one's come up. Is…do you think they're still…out there?"
An arm snaked over her shoulders, connecting from one side of her chest to the other, and she could feel the face press into the back of her head. "I promise you your family cares about you, whether they're out there or not. We'll find you your home, we'll find you your mother and father. We'll find the truth. Perseus and I promised you that." J lifted his head higher and set it atop hers. "We'll find you home. We'll continue to search, even with our new company. You haven't become any less important."
Hailey kept her eyes down on her shirt, pressing her lips into one another and staying silent as J looked beyond her. She didn't look up to see him. She didn't look to see his eyes gloss over. She didn't look to see him spare a glance down at her. She didn't look to see him frown before he even spoke. She didn't need to. "Now put your shirt on. The scrapes on your arms still need to heal, so let's apply some medicine to them too."