AN: These chapters are getting harder and harder to name. Help!
Time: A few hours later
"What were you doing so long in her room?!" Other than Thalia, Drew and Athena, every girl in the room screeched in perfect unison, making Thalia wince as they glared at her together.
Percy scratched his short hair, lightly rubbing the buzz left by his military haircut, tired to his bones. He seriously had to grow out his hair again. His bleary sea-green eyes roved the room, bored out of his mind. His mouth felt dry, and his eyes still burned, bloodshot. His throat felt sore from all the screaming he had done earlier. There were dark bags under his eyes.
He faintly noted with mild amusement that the twins and Neo were in on the 'hate Thalia' programme, throwing the powerful elder daughter of Zeus timid glares every now and then.
For her part, Thalia seemed to bask in their jealousy, throwing gloating looks and smiles at them as she sidled next to him, suggestively leaning into him and throwing flirtatious touches up his arm.
Percy's face drowned in gold, despite his tiredness.
He was NOT a morning person.
Or a night person.
Or an afternoon/evening person.
If he could, he would burrow into the sheets and snore away all day, only going out for meals and bathroom breaks. He never liked to get up, leaving the warmth of the bed. It was the hardest part of the day, regardless of which hour it was.
"He was just... comforting me," Thalia spoke suggestively, a dreamy look crossing her face as her electric blue eyes glazed over.
Artemis came to his rescue, saving Percy from blushing furiously at her implications as she jerked him towards her, throwing a harsh glare at her lieutenant. Percy almost fell over as he shifted, and turned towards Artemis with a questioning look. Artemis just turned her scathing glare on him, in response.
Hurriedly, he turned towards Thalia, but her spot had been taken by Reyna, who was burning holes into his head.
Percy raised his arms in surrender. "What is wrong with you people? I thought that you will all hate me for this... entire harem business."
"Oh, trust me, we're angry alright." Athena snapped at him.
Percy ignored her scathing comment, something which was a constant even during his time as a demigod, choosing instead to concentrate outside.
The night was quiet, but lively. The sky was dark, shining brightly with innumerable stars that dotted the heavens, forming a beautiful picture. The silent and deserted, beautiful yet wild, environment reminded Percy that his house was the only building for several hundred miles. The moon glowed in the sky, assuming a slight yellow tinge. The palm trees swayed gently in the perpetual breeze that occurred at such beaches, and the sand seemed to glow silver in the moonlight, an endless stretch of ivory. Gentle waves crashed on the shore, creating a gentle, pleasant sound, the white foam like horses that rode the crests of the waves. The moon's pale yellow reflection danced in the waters of the ocean below.
All these were on the distant beach.
Maybe there was a lot of life out there, hidden beneath the waves.
Percy scoffed, of course, there was. He would hear the insects chirping and everything had it not been for the girls chattering incessantly behind him. Who knew that the Hunters were such gossip mongers among themselves?
For once, Percy was thankful for Athena's nerdy inclinations, as the book she had her nose in, kept her from adding to the volume.
Closer to home, some nocturnal bird flitted among the trees, the only sign of life that Percy could see through the glass door. The palm trees in Percy's backyard, (and frontyard) swayed like their brothers on the beach. Sprawled out, luxurious white deck chairs dotted around the marble bound compound, in the shade of the palm trees. Percy's large swimming pool reflected the moon, too, in its dancing waters, the moon mixing in with the reflection of the house's inhabitants. Several blankets and bottles of sunscreen lotion were scattered around carelessly, a rubber float bobbing about in the swimming pool.
Unbidden, Percy's mind supplied him an image of a naked Thalia sprawled out in one of the deck chairs, her pale skin slick, and glistening with sunscreen. Her large, creamy tits jiggled with every breath she took, her skin smooth and soft, her erect, pink nipples glistening in the sunlight. Her long, toned legs were crossed over each other, hiding the forbidden fruit between her luscious thighs. Her ruby lips were parted as she snored slightly, a pair of dark sunglasses propped up on her head, silky black hair cascading down her bare shoulders.
His face burned gold at the thought, reminding him of the soul-searing kiss he had shared with the rebellious punk girl a few hours back, and their cuddling session afterwards.
Had it been completely platonic?
Percy cursed himself for thinking like that. Of course, Thalia saw him as a brother, nothing more. There was nothing between them, he reassured himself.
The kiss was a spur of the moment thing.
Percy turned towards the table, tuning out the ceaseless chatters, closing his eyes as they waited for Hestia to come back with their food.
He never knew why she insisted on doing everything by hand when they had a large fleet of those glowing spirit thingies that did everything magically on Ogygia.
She would just smile at him, telling him as if he were a child, that everything tasted better if prepared by hand.
"A single pound of love and care, added to taste." She would add cryptically.
Percy had to agree reluctantly. Hestia whipped some of the meals he had ever had, better than the nymphs at Camp Half-Blood or the ones at Olympus. Even the naiads of the kitchens of Atlantis could not compete with the hearth goddess.
Although they could whip up the most complex cuisine and five-star restaurant dishes, they could not and would not hold a candle to the simple homemade recipes prepared by the hearth goddess.
Percy's skin stung slightly in the cold air, the slight chill feeling delicious on his skin. Percy was torn between cursing and heaping blesses on whoever had decided to install the air conditioning. It was a necessary part of any house in the middle of nowhere tropical island. His bandages, magically reinforced, stayed dry miraculously throughout the angsty fit he threw, snug and tight around his wounds. His skin felt cool on the smooth wood of the table. The talking girls were but a distant buzz at this point as he lost himself to his thoughts...
The shadows lengthening...
Whispers telling him to die...
Annabeth laughing at him...
The stench of the dead in his nose, the sky burning, the earth runny and muddy with blood...
He stood in the middle of it all, a single demigod against a monster army. Roars reached his ears, sparks flying as he waited to fight his last battle. His last stand. His grip tightened on Anaklusmos, the weight of his Imperial Gold battleaxe, that he had not yet been able to name appropriately, hefty and comforting in his other hand.
The two sworn mortal enemies, met in a clash of metal and claws. The more he tried to resist, to flee, the more he fought, his body not obeying his commands. The gossiping girls were replaced with the screams of dying monsters. He felt a sword slash his chest, and screamed in pain.
"Are you okay, Percy?" He was jolted out of his nightmare, again, this time by Reyna, who was staring at him worriedly, her dark eyes shining with an unknown emotion. Her black hair, done in a braid, was thrown over her shoulder, her purple SPQR shirt snug on her toned, lithe frame. Her tanned bronze skin glistened with sweat, telling her worry for him, and her attempts to wake him up prior. Her sharp, aristocratic features and high cheekbones, just added to her beautiful visage. Despite being sweaty, Reyna carried with her a natural floral scent, that was pleasant to Percy's nasal faculties.
He examined his reflection in her dark irises.
He was sweaty, his skin slick and glistening with clear, salty fluid. From prior experience, Percy could tell that his normally copper skin was pale, and his vibrant sea-green eyes had assumed a muddy greyish colour. Whenever he had a nightmare, Annabeth would tell him that he looked like that. Lying on the floor beneath the ex-praetor, he looked stupid with his military buzz haircut.
He scoffed at himself. Despite the... situation at hand, he could not but think about how stupid he looked with a different hair cut.
With a jolt, Percy realised that he was on his back on the marble floor, and the sweaty face of the ex-Roman praetor hovered above him. A drop of sweat rolled down her sharp nose, splashing on Percy's cheek, the coolness somehow anchoring him to reality. Percy's hand immediately flew up to cup her cheek tenderly.
Yes, she was there. It was not some hallucination.
It took him some time to realise that his head was resting on Artemis' lap, the goddess frantic. Her dark auburn hair was visible as a smudge behind the darkness of his eyes, her silver eyes oddly familiar and comforting. Her pale skin seemed to glow in the faint moonlight filtering in through the glass wall, making her seem like a heavenly apparition.
Percy feared he was losing his grip on reality.
"You... you are real." He voiced his thoughts, cursing himself for stuttering.
"Yes, Jackson, we are all real. At least we like to think so. Were you thinking that we are all just some imaginary characters in a fanfiction?" Thalia scoffed at the thought. "What a thought!" She added, her voice droll and devoid of humour.
"Well, it's certainly glad to see someone is back to her usual self. But, please can you concentrate on the problem at hand?" Sydney snapped at her lieutenant.
Reyna held a glass to Percy's lips, and he thankfully drowned its contents, the cool water moistening his lips, and softening his parched throat.
It was a fresh breath of life.
Percy stared at Reyna thankfully, before lying back, letting the cool marble touch his bare, sweaty body with its relaxing touch. He felt the chill invading his bones, his skin stinging in the cold, but he did not care. His ears, his nerves felt on fire, the adrenaline frightening nightmare not receding a bit as the seconds ticked by.
He heard a soft pattering of feet, before Piper rushed in holding a black leather bag which Percy assumed she had picked up from the infirmary. When had she left?
"Here." Rose fumbled about for a bit, before she produced a slightly crushed ambrosia cube from her pocket.
Violet smirked. "Glad to know I'm surrounded by geniuses who can keep their heads calm in an emergency."
Aphrodite glared at her. "You don't know what you are talking about."
Artemis shot the love goddess down with her own vicious scathing voice as Thalia slowly fed the cube to Percy, washing it down with chilled nectar that Angela had procured. "Keep quiet, Aphrodite. We had decided on something."
The rebuked goddess withered as she was glared at by Artemis, Hestia, and Calypso.
Percy stared at them as Piper held his pulse, muttering a healing song under her breath. "What..." Percy coughed, "What are you hiding from me?"
Artemis looked like a deer caught in the headlights. "Umm... yo-you see-w-we..." She stuttered out before falling silent, her face a dark shade of gold as Aphrodite smirked victoriously at her. The moon goddess was too embarrassed and mortified at her own slip up to care to retaliate.
Hestia came to her rescue. "Percy... there is something concerning this harem, regarding the Ancient Laws. We- the immortals you know about it-"
Athena interrupted her. "I did not vote on continuing to spoon feed this man child." Before returning to her book.
And as always, she was ignored. "We will let you know about this after you get in control of your godly powers. There is a lot standing in your way, before you, and by extension, all the other girls in the room, can know about the thing we are talking about. There is more than meets the eye. You are not realising the entire truth, Percy." She spoke softly, trying not to anger or irritate the short-tempered demigod any further.
"W-what do you mean?" Percy asked, wincing as he watched Piper pull out ANOTHER syringe, filled with a clear water-like fluid. She tapped the glass clinically, and Percy watched with dread as a glistening bead of fluid appeared on the tip of the needle, rolling down the glinting steel.
"Just what I mean, Percy. You have to get a hold of your powers before you can learn about this. This... this is dangerous." She added, her eyes watering at the thought.
Percy's eyes widened as he saw the gently dispositioned hearth goddess almost on the verge of tears. An expression shared by everyone else in the room, as Hestia started sobbing quietly. She tried to stop the tears streaming down her beautiful face, rubbing her eyes with the back of her palms, but they just kept on coming.
"Hey, you okay?" Phoebe asked worriedly, sidling up to the goddess, as Atalanta took the goddess' other side, "What she means to say, is, if you can share with us what's wrong?"
Hestia just choked back a sob, not ceasing her relentless crying, shaking her head violently from side to side, sending her beautiful brown tresses flying everywhere.
Everyone had dropped whatever they were doing.
Rose and Violet were staring at her and then staring back at each other. Neo had unconsciously cuddled into Thalia, who was slack-jawed herself. Piper had halted in her tracks, the tip of her dreaded injection pressing softly into Percy's skin at his bicep. The normally bright and glowing moonlace flower in Calypso's caramel hair had wilted, despite its proximity to Artemis.
They were not the only ones. Nobody had ever seen the hearth goddess, herself a beacon of hope, ever cry. The last time she had cried was when she had been almost raped by Priapus. That day, at least one-quarter of the mortal world died, plagues and epidemics rilling through the land, killing man, beast, deity and plants alike, as the hearth of Olympus reached an all-time low.
Even Athena had dropped her book, staring at Hestia worriedly, and Drew was looking at her mother worriedly.
Somewhere in the chaos, Aphrodite had started crying, too, her perfect makeup streaked with tears as she sobbed uncontrollably, clutching her knees to her chest.
And she couldn't be blamed. Most, if not all people in the room, were crying or teary-eyed.
It was almost as if none of them had ever felt hope. Despair, death, and malice swam in the air, as the source of all that is good gave herself to the depths of depression. The already cold, yet welcoming air in the building became freezing, as all warmth fled from the building.
The very world became cold and choppy, the temperature dropping several degrees. The winds picked up, roaring as it blew and caused untold destruction, ripping and uprooting many trees. The waves of the sea rose higher than ever, crashing violently on the beach. The water itself darkened, as all fires around the world dimmed simultaneously. The moon and the stars were blocked out by clouds, the mortals experiencing worldwide blackouts, plunging the world into darkness. Boats and ships caught out in the middle of the sea, capsized, caught in violent tempests. Newborns and the extremely old, inexplicably dropped dead at the same time.
It was a momentary dystopia.
Even Olympus, Atlantis, the Underworld or Camp Half-Blood was not spared of the darkness that consumed the world, as an earthquake shook the very ground of Tartarus, sending gentle ripples into the endless, infinite Sea of Chaos, itself.
Such was the power of the firstborn of Kronos and Rhea.
In the pitch-black darkness of the dining room, where the goddess herself was situated, everyone, especially the younger ones, was thrown into absolute confusion and chaos.
In the midst of it all, Percy could feel himself losing his grasp on reality. Again.
The thin fabric of what is real and what is not, slipped between his fingers.
He was again in a dark, closed cabinet, filled with cobwebs and lined with a thick layer of dust. The urge to sneeze was too great, but he dis not give in to the temptation, suppressing the tickle in his nose through sheer willpower. He held his breath, sweat rolling down his forehead due to the heat and anticipation. The dark pupils in his unusually dull sea-green eyes were dilated in crippling fear, his normally tanned skin pale as paper. His thin, malnutritioned body, broken and crippled in many places, and unusually small and undersized for his age, fit in perfectly into the cabinet meant for toiletries.
He was not playing hide and seek with a loving step-father. He was hiding from guaranteed crippling pain, or potential death.
"Brain boy!" A drunken voice slurred, making Percy resist the urge to whimper. Despite his best efforts, a soft pathetic, whimper escaped his traitorous lips.
He winced, curling in on himself, as a heavy, and loud set of footsteps passed his cabinet, stopping for a moment, making his heart lurch and falter. He let out a soft, almost silent sigh of relief as his tormentor passed him.
"There you are!" An ugly face appeared between the panes of the cabinet, which had been thrown open, and blocking the light that Percy so craved. An ugly set of yellowing teeth displayed in an equally ugly, sinister smile of the ugly face of a walrus, which also went by the name of Smelly Gabe.
Percy screamed as he was wrenched out of the horrible dream. There was a stinging in his right arm, and he could not see anything. Nor could he breathe.
Was this another nightmare?
He struggled with all his might against the suffocating force, when suddenly, he could breathe again. He gasped, thankfully gulping in fresh breaths of air.
He looked around, and saw, indeed he was in the real world, thankfully. There were several girls holding him down so that Piper could inject him with whatever she was holding. The lights were back on, and everything was going normally, well, as normal as it could after such a large... incident.
"...temporarily anchors him to reality," Calypso finished explaining something to a worried Artemis, before turning to an equally worried, if not more so, Thalia, "And yes, these... 'fits' as you call it, will continue to happen. We can cure him permanently, but given the fractured state of his mind, it would not be advisable, for fear of causing irreparable damage."
Piper zipped up the bag, before keeping it aside carefully. Atalanta, who was sitting beside him, asked, "How at you-"
She was cut off when a teary Hestia flung herself at Percy. She hugged him tightly, almost suffocating him, patting all over his form as if yo check for injuries. When she found none, she laughed beautifully to herself, before straddling his body, pinning him down with her weight.
Hestia stared a blushing Percy dead in the eye. Her bottom lip trembled with emotion, her eyes shining with unshed tears. Her cute button nose was red and puffy, her warm brown eyes bloodshot. Her silky brunette hair was messy, but she did not seem to care. She leaned down, her warm, soft, wet ruby lips only a hair's breadth away from his, her hair framing her face and blocking out the outside world.
Percy was conscious of her warm breath in his face, her large, clothed tits pressing deliciously against his bare, bandaged chest. He prayed to all the deities above that she would not notice his stirring member, her bare, soft creamy thighs were rubbing his...
"You are never getting rid of me," Hestia spoke seriously, her eyes shining threateningly. Percy could only nod mutely, and he meant it.
Hestia leaned down, and whispered into his ear, "And you are never leaving me, my hero."
Goosebumps formed on Percy's arms and chest as he agreed with the beauty straddling him.
AN: Alright, so the introductory arc is almost complete, three more chapters left. After that, I'll be working on Percy's household for the next eight chapters, before working on his relationships with the girls and sex scenes, one by one, for the next fifty-five chapters. So long!Keep calm and CR7!! Keep calm and LM10!! (Messi)