Chapter six, let's go!

This one ends with a little surprise, so get ready.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters (except the OC's) Percy Jackson & The Olympians, Heroes of Olympus, or Trials of Apollo. All of that belongs to Rick Riordan.

6. The Battle Of Manhattan Redux

Have you ever watched someone die?

Or several?

Well, if you haven't, I don't recommend it. Especially if it's someone you know, or care about.

It took me a while to process what happened to Sigurd. At first, my brain sugarcoated it to block out the grief and shock, telling me oh, he'll be okay and he's just out for the count, but he's not dead. He'll be back.

But slowly, reality started to sink in. Sigurd was dead. Arya, Konstantin, Viraj, James, Diego, and all of their people from the different pantheons. They were all gone.

When Sigurd and I first spoke, or even talked about what he called the Great Convergence...I never would've imagined this as the result. If I could've seen the future in that moment, I would've done my best to stop him from doing anything. He was too young, cut down before he could even experience the wonders of being an adult. Like having a kid, or being able to grow old with the people you love.

That's all taken away now. By some psycho in the middle of a ruined city, in a country where he doesn't even live, helping a pantheon that isn't even his.

It was all to help me, and I failed him. I let them all die. Just like my father.

And Ouranos only further infuriated me with his taunts, "Now that the riff raff is out of the way, I can finally focus on what matters." He waved his hand, and the lightning cages around my friends disappeared. They immediately jumped down and ran over to me.

I felt Harper's hand on my back, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." It came out strained and choked, a tight sob I didn't know I'd been holding.

Sera's lip was trembling, "S-Sigurd...he's dead..."

Without thinking, I turned to her and raised my voice, "You think I don't know that?!"

Her eyes widened at the snap, and I immediately felt guilty. I expected Malachi to reprimand me, and he did, but not as harsh as I'd expect.

"Matt, relax." He said, his eyebrows furrowed.

I sighed, "I'm sorry, Sera. It's just...they're all gone, every last one of them." My sharp expression melted into one of despair, "I...failed."

"We won't let it be in vain." Talon assured, though he didn't sound too confident. It was more to cheer me up than actually believing in what he said.

But what he said was a mile away from my ears. I could barely hear anything, due to the tunnel vision I had now, staring at Ouranos. He stood patiently, smugly, not even a single drop of sweat hanging from any crevice of his skin. He hadn't even been challenged yet, really. Even James's final blast and Viraj's self-destruction were nothing. Ouranos healed almost instantly.

"Why keep fighting?" He asked, all of a sudden. "I mean, seriously, why? You know you can't beat me. In fact, you have more of a chance of beating Zeus in his prime than me right now. That just goes to show how strong I've become. Why go through the useless motions?" He spoke quickly again, cutting whatever response might've come, "And don't give me that 'protecting humanity' shit, I want a real answer."

None of us said anything, not even me. Call it fear, or shock, or maybe just the embarrassing fact that none of us could come up with an answer to his question. Hell, right now, I was wondering that myself. Why keep fighting? He's right, we have no real chance of beating him like this. At best, we're just delaying the inevitable.

At our silence, Ouranos sneered and nodded his head. "That's what I thought." Then, with a dash, he started running toward us, his spear positioned behind him.

We all tensed up. "He's coming!" Sera shouted, and thrust her hands out, shooting defenses of ice in the shapes of walls to try and slow the Primordial, but none of them worked. He bull rushed through every one of them with ease and smacked Sera out of the way, stomping his foot on the ground to rumble the Earth and deal with us too, knocking everyone off balance.

My first instinct was to yell, "Talon, Annabeth! Stay back!"

But upon screaming it, I wanted to smack myself in the face. They couldn't keep up with the speed, especially Talon, who's literally a mortal now. By all definitions, he shouldn't even be here. They can't see Ouranos coming, so how are they going to listen to my requests?

I had to take it on myself to help them. Ouranos knew that they were the weakest of the group, and tried targeting them first. But just before his fist could squash them both into the ground, I created a dome of red aura around both my friends' heads. Ouranos's fists bounced off of it, and the impact shattered the dome, but thankfully, Talon and Annabeth remained unharmed.

I took the small chance for attack by jumping up to meet him at his level, sending a call out in the open just in case anyone was able to listen, "Attack him together!" It was a long shot, but I figured it was worth barking.

To my surprise, everyone helped me strike him. I used Viribus, Harper used the Eros sword, Percy used Riptide, Malachi used one of his lightning spears, and Amaterasu used a blade made of feiry aura. All of them were lined up beside me, slamming their weapons down at Ouranos, who quickly brought up the Heavenly Diamond spear to block all of them.

Our weapons stopped in their tracks against the spear, sending a massive shockwave into the sky that shook the atmopshere. Ouranos was basically holding all of us over his head, and our weapons were lined up, separated by less than a foot each, across the shaft of the spear.

Ouranos smirked and used the back of his fist to wipe all of my friends off his spear, raking them aside like rubbing the dust out of his weapon, a simple move that sent everybody flying, and left only me.

He pushed me down with his strength and I skidded back in the dirt, still able to keep Viribus with me. I didn't take my eyes off him.

He approached steadily with his arms out beside him, looking excited. "Just you and me, Matthias! Come on, this is what you've wanted!"

I gritted my teeth and sheathed Viribus, deciding to go with a deadlier attack. Tapping into the Bolt's aura, I unsheathed it into the cylinder of lightning I knew all too well, and held it like a javelin. Ouranos gave a different reaction than I expected upon seeing the powerful weapon. Instead of seeming worried, he actually deepened his smile, as if this was exactly what he wanted me to do.

I didn't have enough time to pull back and think about not giving in to his wants. I was really pissed off, and I could tell my emotions were getting to me. But I didn't care. Those deaths, Sigurd's death, were still etched in my mind clear as day.

Jerking my arm forward and using all of my weight, I threw the Master Bolt at Ouranos. The lightning flashed when it left my hand, and cleared about half of the distance between us, not making it all the way to him. Something had happened.

For a nanosecond, I expected it to be him deflecting the attack with his spear, or just tanking it to the body outright. Neither would surprise me. But what actually happened, very much surprised the shit out of me.

Ouranos had blocked the Master Bolt's path...with his own Master Bolt.

My eyes widened as the two Bolts struggled in mid air, hovering six feet above the ground, pushing against each other like two sumo wrestlers, surging powerful winds and radioactive energy. Boom! Boom! Boom! With each involuntary surge or push of the bolt, trying to get past the other, it made thunderous noises. The clash was epic, and the struggle was something I'd never seen before, or thought I'd ever see. Even reading the bolt's aura, I could tell it was confused, meeting one of its kind like this in combat.

Had this ever happened before? In the history of the universe? Two Master Bolts being used against one another?

I had to admit, battle aside, it looked pretty cool. Like a strobing lightshow of white and blue, with sparks and branches of lightning shooting all over the place. Ouranos and I began circling the display, in sync with each other's steps.

"Like my new weapon?!" He shouted, having to because of the thunder, "Your grandfather was ever so kind to gift it to me!"

So that's where he got it from...

The bastard stole it off of Zeus. Like a spoil of war.

By the time I put the dots together, we'd already circled back to where we began. Simultaneously, we summoned our bolts back to our hands, and charged each other.

Ouranos had to lean down to meet my hit. Once again, the bolts clashed, criss crossed like swords. I could tell Ouranos wasn't trying that hard, maybe using a medium amount of effort to hold me back, meanwhile I was putting just about everything into it. Goes to show the difference in leverage and strength.

Still though, I was furious. "First the world, and now the Master Bolt?! You just steal everything, don't you?! That's the only way you know how to get anything!"

He scoffed, snake eyes glancing down at my weapon, "Don't point fingers! You got yours from someone else too!"

With ease, he stepped forward and I went with it, stumbling backwards into another powerful blow, eaten by my bolt. Ouranos came at me with big swings, my eyes barely able to follow the movements, I could only feel the intense force behind his strikes, and my arm vibrating with pain. All the while, Ouranos just kept smiling.

"But the difference is, I can use mine effectively!" And then another one hit, knocking me on my ass. Luckily, I wasn't so dazed that I couldn't kip up into a kneeling position. But there wasn't a moment to waste, Ouranos was on me like a hyena. Taking advantage of my bad position, he tried to ram his knee into my face, but I managed to weave away from it, and immediately stand up to stab his chin with the bolt, which he evaded in similar fashion.

But unlike me, he wrapped his arm over mine and tucked it in his armpit, trapping me, and squeezing it to the point where it went numb.

I tried to hit him with the other arm, but he trapped it as well, holding me with both of my limbs extended. One tug in the right direction, and he could easily snap my bones in two, starting from the elbows.

"You'll have to do better than that," He said, "Keeping some distance might be a good start."

I had no space to use my legs, so I did the only other thing I could think of...I headbutted him in the chest.

Which had no effect. It was like bashing my head against a Heavenly Diamond wall. Ouranos laughed at the gesture, "Pathetic. Here's how it's done."

The searing pain hit me before I even realized what happened. I knew it was coming, but I didn't see it. His forehead hit me in the nose instead of the head, and there was a loud, gut-wrenching sound. A crack.

Right when my nose broke, he let go of my arms, allowing me to wander around with my eyes all watery, the nerves in my face jangled. I couldn't see a thing, just blurry colors.

As fast as I could manage with my current situation, I sheathed the bolt and switched it out with Viribus, touching the wooden club to my nose. Instantly, the water in my eyes dried up, and my nose's swelling reversed. When my vision cleared, I saw Ouranos's fist coming straight at me.

But Harper saved me at the last minute, by jumping on Ouranos's back and choking him with the Eros sword, riding him like a bull. With Ouranos temporarily distracted, Malachi and Amaterasu came beside me and I got the memo.

"Together, Matt!" Malachi said.

The three of us hit him in the gut at the same time, costing our fists with our auras. Which finally seemed to do something. Ouranos doubled over, exposing his shoulder.

"Do it Harper!" I shouted, "Now!"

If we were strangers, she'd have no idea what I'm talking about. Which is fair. How are you supposed to do 'it' when I didn't even say what 'it' was? But all she had to do was follow my eyes as they flickered to her knife, still sheathed in the waist strap.

Harper got the memo. She yanked the shard of Heavenly Diamond out of the strap and stabbed it in his shoulder, putting it in as hard and far as she could.

Ouranos winced and straightened his posture from the shock of the blow. When Harper tried for a second stab, he swiped at the three of us to knock us away, and grabbed Harper with the same hand, easily prying her off his back and tossing her in the air like a ball.

She flipped in the air a few times and landed swiftly next to us, unphased and still wielding the knife.

Ouranos took his finger and dabbed at the knew gash in his shoulder. When he brought it back, he looked at the small glob of gold on his fingertips.

"I'm sure you already know this, having fought my brother...but you'll need more than that fragment to do any real damage." For emphasis, he spun his spear, "Good thing I have the only one that can."

In a twisted way...he was actually right. I remembered how we fought Tartarus down in his domain, and how the knife did little permanent damage, no matter how many times we stabbed him with it. It's like Zeus said, the Primordials have a certain amount of resistance to chaotic energy, seeing as they were born from it.

So our only real chance, was to somehow get ahold of that spear.

Yeah, fat chance. He's got that thing on lockdown.

As if on cue, Ouranos threw his spear at me, just like I threw my bolt at him earlier. I only saw the glint of the blue in the sunlight before it was knocked off path and out of the air by a foreign force. Malachi. Once he slowed down, it was made clear that he punched the side of the spear to keep it from hitting me.

It clanged on the ground and stopped. Jumping at the chance, I pointed at it, "Grab it! Someone grab it!"

Percy made a dive for it, but fell short and slid with nothing in his grip. Ouranos must've realized that we'd wised up to what we'd have to do, and summoned it back to him with telekinesis.

From there, we tried another gang assault, but again, that had little effect. Even facing him all at once wasn't turning out in our favor. Absorbing the Adam Tree just made him so much stronger, that even with our combined effort, we weren't doing much.

At one point, I noticed Talon and Annabeth trying to join the fray. Talon with the sword he'd taken from the camp's armory, and Annabeth with her own Drakon sword. My eyes widened at their attempt, and I left the circle attacking Ouranos momentarily to tackle them. And when I say tackle them, I mean gently. As gently as possible to take someone to the ground, that is.

Once we stopped, both of them looked at me like I was crazy, Talon saying, "The hell'd you do that for?!"

"You guys need to stay back!" I said, "Especially you, Talon! You're a mortal now! Even being near Heavenly Diamond is enough to kill you!"

"Well we can't just stand by and do nothing!" Annabeth protested, "We can't watch you guys get beaten to a pulp!"

I started to argue. But inwardly, I knew that none of us really belonged here, not just Talon and Annabeth. Not to call Annabeth weak, because I'm sure if she kept up her training, she probably could've tapped into her own aura like Percy did. It's just a matter of staying involved and up to speed. But even those of us that busted our ass to gain a smidge of power are paling in comparison to Ouranos.

Before I knew it, the next crazy thing was happening. I felt an aura appear next to me, and looked over to see Malachi on one knee, directly beside me, his hair plastered to his face.

"Malachi?"

"Matt, there's no time. Listen for a moment." He was rushing to get his words out, and I could see why. In front of us, Ouranos had broken free of an ice straight jacket Sera was trying to trap him in, and had her pinned to the ground, his entire hand covering her torso, while he fought off Amaterasu with his other hand alone.

"What is it?"

"I need you to blast me with a Red Beam Cannon."

I reared my head back, "What?!"

"The Curse of Achilles, remember? One of its special abilities is being able to deflect attacks like a mirror. If I can use your power, and you use your own Cannon...we might have a chance at disarming my father." He looked at me, "That's your end goal, right? To get the spear? It's the only chance we have of wounding him."

I was shocked at how well he was able to pick up on what I was thinking. Even though I really shouldn't be. I've said it before, but Malachi has excellent combat intelligence. He was probably thinking of using the spear against Ouranos from the very start.

With no time to mull it over, I nodded. "Alright, get into position."

Malachi stepped back a few paces, and clenched his fists, "Alright, go ahead."

I trusted his judgement in that the cannon wouldn't hurt him. The cool thing about the Mark of Achilles, is that like the famous hero, once you attain it, you're nigh invulnerable, except for one small spot of your choosing. I guessed Malachi's wasn't on the front of his body, judging by how he's letting me blast him with a cannon.

Quickly, I summoned all of my energy to the point of my hands, the Earth's, the solar system's, you know the drill. With all of the aura condensing together, it formed a big, bright red ball of energy in my palms, powerful enough to blow the universe to kingdom come. That...or give Malachi a hell of a blast of his own.

With the push of my hands, I launched it at him. A red pillar engulfed Malachi and my vision, leaving nothing else to be viewed. As the blast ran over my friend, I sensed his aura just to make sure he was okay, or that the blast hadn't accidentally caught his soft spot and burned him. The coast was clear, he was still alive, to my relief.

Once the boiling point reached a satisfactory amount, I stopped the cannon, leaving Malachi unharmed, and a lot more powerful. He had absorbed the blast, now he just needed to launch it in Ouranos's direction.

I rinsed and repeated, summoning my own blast, of equal intensity. Opening my mouth wide, I did my best to make my voice heard, "Everyone, get out of the way!"

Thankfully, they heard me, and jumped like fleas from the dog that was Ouranos, who had just now noticed what we were doing. His eyes widened.

I glanced at Malachi and we nodded at each other, "Do it!"

BOOM!

The sound of dual nuclear explosions rang out as we launched our twin Red Beam Cannons. It was awesome, and in a sad way, it reminded me of my father, seeing another blast similar to my own next to me. I knew it wasn't, but I still felt nostalgic nether the less. He was the one that taught me this move in the first place.

Still, as awesome as it was, visually, it wasn't doing much power wise. Ouranos used one hand to form lightning, and met our blasts in the middle, holding them back without much worry.

We struggled, and as Ouranos started to push back with his powerful electricity, my body strained more and more.

"I'm putting more energy in!" I screamed, "Hold it, Malachi!"

"Go!" He responded, giving me the okay. I hoped he wasn't just saying that, because if he wasn't able to hold onto his blast, it could overpower him, and he'd lose control. Meaning, if the cannon gets free, it blows the planet up within a second.

But as I stole more energy from surrounding life, Malachi was able to hold himself up, and keep the growing blast in his palms. I was surprised, and impressed honestly. It seemed Malachi's willpower was really starting to come out in this fight, as I knew it would.

The outpour of energy made Ouranos work, and he quickly lost his one handed bullshit, opting to fight against us with both. And once Amaterasu joined in with her own blast of orange aura, Ouranos was actually pushed back, skidding on his heels.

I heard him shout, and put more energy into his own lightning. It was a real battle now, not as one sided as before. We actually had a chance at winning this little struggle. Maybe Malachi was right. If this worked, and Ouranos managed to get dazed, we could yank the spear out of his grasp and land a clean blow, that would at least weaken him to the point where we could actually fight him.

The hope we felt before arriving had returned...

But the universe wasn't going to last much longer with the way we were getting on. The Earth was shaking, the air was bending around us, and there was only so Amaterasu and I could do with our telekinesis to keep the stray shockwaves and surges at bay. Eventually, the dam broke, and several rifts formed around us, leading to other dimensions, similar in how I create them to summon power, only these were alive. Unlike with me, these were random picks, not dormant, and very much containing life.

Knowing that, I immediately got worried.

Ouranos pulled his arms to him and jerked them, shooting them out beside him. When he did that, he pulled his own blast, and ours with the movement, sending them into the portals, disposing of them.

"NO!"

I watched on, and felt with my aura sensing, in horror at how each dimension was destroyed almost instantly, all life within it dead, burned away without a trace. They had no idea what even hit them.

Just like that, billions- no, trillions of lives lost.

The portals began closing up automatically, now that there were no dimensions to harbor from. Everything got very quiet, and Ouranos was breathing a bit harder, but he still had that shit eating smirk on his face. He didn't give a crap about any of those lost lives, or what he'd done just to save his own ass.

I was seething as I stepped towards him, "You son of a bitch...do you have any idea of what you've done?!"

In a flash, he was on me, his hand gripped around my throat and lifting me in the air. I choked, desperately grasping for breath as I looked into his cold eyes, showing no mercy.

"I'm surviving, Matthias." He said, "That's what I'm doing."

I couldn't even gargle a response, Ouranos had thrown me in the air. I felt myself shooting towards something pinging in my aura sense...it was another rift, one that hadn't been affected by Ouranos's blast deflection.

The last thing I wanted was to be separated from my friends in some alternate universe, so I coated my hands with aura and grabbed the outside of the rift, holding on for dear life as the natural force within the bridge world tried to suck me in.

Harper, when she saw me, screamed, "Matt!"

She ran over and grabbed my arm, trying to pull me back in. Soon joined by the others, but the pull of what felt like gravity was too strong. There wasn't a chance that I was getting back in.

But then I started putting the dots together. The bridge world...doesn't have gravity. In fact, every other time I've been in it, it actually felt quite weightless.

It was Ouranos using his telekinesis to pull me in from behind.

"Hang on!" Harper said, doing her best to pull me up. Everyone had formed a chain behind her, like they do in the movies, thinking that if they pull each other, it'll somehow help me. That might work, but when you have Ouranos pulling on you with his mind in the opposite direction, it doesn't.

"Guys, it's no use! He's pulling on me with telekinesis!"

Before they could even process what I'd said, Ouranos came rushing behind them, "And you're all going with him!"

He aimed to punch us all into oblivion, but at the last second, a big, brown figure came flying out of nowhere and slammed itself into Ouranos.

Kyros. He was trying to help me.

Kyros, get out of here! He'll kill you!

I won't leave you, young master! He said, with more determination than I'd ever heard from him.

Sadly, Ouranos wasn't phased by it. It was like having a fly land on your arm. One shake is all it takes. And that's what Ouranos did. He grabbed Kyros by a wing and threw him off, hard into the distance.

"Kyros!"

With his arm, Ouranos smacked into whoever was at the back, Percy, I think, and knocked us all forward, into the bridge world between dimensions.

We all went flying and flailing through the open space, a kaleidoscope of colors on all sides, rifts and portals littered throughout the background. Ouranos was perfectly calm, squeezing his way through the portal and into the bridge world, having us right where he wanted.

This had taken an even worse turn than before, somehow. Now, we're not even getting beaten up in our home turf, and with Ouranos in the way, I don't see us being able to make it back to our normal world without getting through him. Good luck on that.

For now, we'd need to find somewhere to hide, at least, until we can get our bearings.

As we passed the countless number of rifts, I felt their energies to see if they were familiar to the ones that I visited when fighting Hendricks, or the ones with Zane. But none of them felt remotely similar, in fact, most of them had nothing to do with myself, or my friends. They were universes in which we didn't exist. Weird.

However, ten seconds later, I did feel one. One that I had actually been hoping for, deep down. It was the best option we had.

"Guys!" I shouted, hoping they could make sense of me, "Go to that portal right there!" I pointed at it, directly behind me, to my left.

"What do you want us to do?!" Percy asked.

"Enter it!" I said, "Fly in! We need to hide somewhere!"

They seemed hesitant, but I didn't waste time in insisting on the matter. They went in, or they didn't. I just really hoped they did, because we're gonna all be dead in ten seconds if not.

I tried to get Ouranos to focus on me. "Hey!"

He wasn't looking anywhere else anyway. He sneered and flew over to me, while I continued praying that my friends were on the move, because the distraction I was about to pull was really going to piss him off.

I had just enough speed and reflex to dodge Ouranos's spear stab coming straight for my face. I flew out of the way and came up behind him, just above his shoulders. Placing my aura in a claw shape against my fingertips, I circled my arms around Ouranos's head and jabbed the pointed ends into his eyes.

That did some damage. Ouranos immediately swatted me away wildly with his backhand and howled in pain, grabbing at his eyes with his hands, unable to see.

Though it was only meant as a distraction, I still felt good about that. "Choke on that one for a minute, bastard." Then, I kicked him as hard as I could in the midsection, knocking him back in the bridge world hundreds of feet while his guard was down.

I high tailed it to the portal, and noticed that my friends had gone through. A wave of relief washed over me, not just for that, but because I knew that we'd be safe for the next few minutes. With the blinding trick I pulled, Ouranos should be dazed for that long, giving us some time to come up with another plan, and catch our breaths. Not to mention...we could even take refuge in a certain someone's house. A guy in this universe that I know pretty well, actually.

My older counterpart. Old Man Matt.

(000)

Old Matt is back! That's right, I just had to throw him in one last time, and for the final battle no less. I'm really excited to write his interactions with the gang and the Ouranos of the main timeline.

Things are heating up!

Anyway, that's all I've got right now, but stay tuned, because the final battle isn't over yet.

Until Next Time.