- 3 years later -
Percy
As the future CEO of his dad's company, Percy is feeling anxious as shit. With all the business managing class pouring on him, he felt like drowning. And his father's daily nagging isn't helping the situation. The only problem is, he is an expert at swimming, like a fish in the water.
The weekly training at Chiron's place turn into some gathering meeting through these years, Chiron and Zoë were planning on picking a leader or something; they said it's going to be Thalia, Bianca or him. As good as the position sounds, Percy knew he doesn't belong to the leader ship. Hell, even Jason would do better.
Sure, he is an expert at reading the situation and stuff, along with making decision in the middle of chaos. Hard to say if they are good ones or bad though. Zoë had them train with these things, she would think of some super complicate crisis, with a timer counting down in front of them, the pressure is certain.
One time, the problem was: your legs was shot by bullet so it can't function, you and your team need to leave the building which is about to explode, as a leader, what would you do? He remembered others say something similar to let the team leave so you wouldn't slow them down. Instead, he said get the explosion expert in the team to disable the bomb. And they ended up learn things about bomb and explosions after that. But he had to give Zoë credit, she really knows what she is doing.
"We have two things to discuss today." Chiron announced as they all settle themselves around the dining table. "The first one is the leader."
Percy felt his heart beating rapidly in his chest, threatening to jump out his body. Chiron's lips opened and said out the name, the scene looks like a slow-motion movie, and his let out a long sigh when he heard the name didn't come out with a 'p' sound.
"Thalia, my dear. Would you like to take your place in this group as a leader?"
"I would be honored." Percy can tell the excitement in her voice as Thalia manage to not start squeaking. "I won't fail on you."
"Very well. Now, let's move on to the second part, Zoë?" Chiron gave her a warm smile then mention Zoë to stand forward.
"Um, okay. How do I put this? I have a thought, just a brief idea on how we should sort this out in the future." Percy noticed Zoë looked extra nervous beside him, knowing her for years, this is the first time he saw her so unsure. Calypso is also sitting with them, is she part of the whole thing this time? She usually trained with them; Zoë wants her to have the fighting skills to protect herself. But when they need to say something about the Golden Age, Zoë always told Cal to stay in her room.
"So, your dads are all billionaires with a company or empire needed to be inherit." All of them nod as Zoë starts to speak. "The reason of the Golden Age to hate them is because their rivalry on business issues." She said in a 'this is the truth' way, but hey, her father is Atlas, so what she said about them must be right. She told us about her parents one time when they decided to sleep over. Percy can see she has been keeping this in her mind for a long time and it starts eating her alive, she acted closer and more care free with them after the not-so-small reveal.
"So if we want to outdo them, we need to win them in all aspect."
"That's where you guys come in. For starters, takeover the company and that will be Percy, Nico and Jason, Thalia told me she wants to open a bar, and Hazel is going to own some mines, am I right? In the end, we're going to have Percy controls the harbor and ship transport, Jason with the airport and all the things in the air while Nico with trading and finance."
"Are you saying?" Jason murmured and looks like something clicked in his mind while Percy still couldn't figure what Zoë is implying.
"We can own the game. We can control the world by having loads of source and connections, and they don't know what hit them. While your guys," She gestured at each of us, "become the game designer, the new gods of the world."
All of them hung their mouths open at the whole plan of them being the owner of the world, except Calypso, who looks a little confused at why she is sitting at here. Percy sunk in his chair, running the whole thing in his mind. The longer the idea sat in his head, the more practical it seems, but there are still some parts are missing. Before he could ask, Nico helped him state out the question.
"The boys' job is checked, how 'bout the girls?" Nico asked.
"Wait, before we keep on discussing, you are all fine with plan?" Zoë made a double check. "Just remind you, there is no turning back once we start. And that was just a small part, there's more later."
"Seems like we pretty much don't have a choice." Percy said, meaning the boys, "What about you lads?"
"I'm in." Thalia said. Bianca and Hazel both gave a firm nod.
"For Thalia's bar we can use it as a temporary meeting spot and this a good place to collect info. I say temporary because we are building a new place, that's for later." Zoë pulled out a paper and started to write down our names with the position and stuff we are in charge of.
"Hazel can be our treasurer, managing all our money for the group while Nico is controlling the money aside from the group. Know the differences?" Then Zoë made a little lecture about all kinds of way we can earn money for the group in the future, these are the money Hazel will be managing. Nico, being the CEO of his father's bank, could know a lot of inside information and we can use it to control company and other people.
Just say Zoë can be pretty scary if she wants to.
"Bianca can be our main undercover person."
"I'm fine with that." Bianca murmured beside Percy.
"How about the building part? And I think only having CEOs in this group is not enough for the whole 'control the game' thing." Percy asked Zoë.
"About that, I list out a few, hear me out then we'll see what we need." Zoë rushed to her room and came back with another pile of paper. She pulled on of them out before showing them.
"First of all, the people we recruit must have some connections with your fathers and their empire, we can't trust people out there. Either that or someone who have huge hatred with the Golden Age. So, a personal architect, because we need to build some secret room and passage. A lawyer because having a legal dispute is something that will happen sooner or later. An engineer, a building weapons and explosion kind not typing computer kind, I can deal with the computer part. Also, we need someone in the military, being a general can know a lot of stuff about the government. A mole in the congress to affect the policy, but this one is not so necessary. Press, for spreading news. Oh, and a private doctor, we don't want to fill the paper every time we run into hospital with bullet in our body."
"That's really a lot." Nico said. Everyone starts to process what Zoë just said.
"Zo," Cal speaks up, "what is my role in this?"
"Safe house, the bar is too public and the cabin isn't strong enough, the new building might get attack. So, being an excellent cook like you, you can open a little restaurant and we will have a safe house build under it.
"But aren't we taking over the company until like 25 or something?" Jason asked.
"And that's why now the perfect time to start. We can have our mansion build, more time to find the person for the position and spent time to bond with them. No one likes to hand their lives to a complete stranger. Most of you will be ridiculously famous after years later, but people out there, they don't know you knew each other, and we are going to keep it that way."
"But how do we find the right person who want?" Nico asked?
"We two can work on that with our amazing computer skills, and I believe we all happen to know the person we need more or less." Zoë replied.
"So it's basically a secret inner circle of our own?" Percy said.
"That's a way to say it." Zoë shrugged.
"And it sounds not cool." Bianca whined.
"Did you just freaking pouted?" Nico said with a gag.
"Yes, she did." Hazel sighed.
"Just think of a name?" Percy suggested.
"Argo." This is the first speak since Zoë starts sharing her ideas with them. "It's the name we adults call for your little training. You can reuse it if you guys think it's good."
"All in favor of the name Argo for our little circle, raise your hand." Thalia asked before all six arms which belongs to different person shot up to the sky.
"Argo that's it."
"Honey, how's training today?" The sound of his mother calling him came from the kitchen. The smell of freshly baked cookies filled the house, Percy quickly put his things in his room and ran to welcome his very first love, blue cookies.
"As always, can I eat the cookies?"
"Let's enjoy in the living room." His mother smiled at his son and carried a plate full of blue cookies to the low table in front of their couch. Though his father is rich, they still live in an apartment, because Mom claimed she wants her child to have a normal live. And being a whipped husband his father is, they ended up living in a not-so-big apartment in the city.
Truly said, Percy liked the place. He's been to the Di Angelo's before; sure, it's a huge, luxurious mansion, but the place just doesn't have the warm vibe they had in this apartment.
Perks of being a secret rich kid, you get to know both sides of the world. The simple and true in the normal one, while twisted and fake in the high society. Living in the first one, you can feel the fresh air, there's no who want whose money or anything like that, you can hear the sincereness in their words. Being in the second one, all they think of is money and prefect, drug addiction and bastards popping out from time to time are not strangers in their circle.
Sometimes Percy thinks he lets his parents down, not big but in small things. Like he is not the top kids in school, or he hasn't mastered all the things about business. His father often sighed at him after his man report him about his son's process in those classes. He really wants to be good; he just needs time.
Seems like the only thing he is good at is swimming and boxing.
"Is there anything you want to tell me?" His mother asked him, snapping him out of thought.
"Nothing big. Everything is just as always."
"As always doesn't mean it's fine." His mother really is a wise woman.
"Well, I'm just anxious lately. About the company and stuff."
"I really need to tell your father to take easy on you."
"Please don't." He begged. "I want to let him feel proud…" His mother let out a chuckle and smoothed his hair with her hands while he reached out for cookies.
"Honey, he really is proud of you, he just sucks at showing."
"Really?" Then why does he always give cold shoulder whenever he comes home after work?
"Um hm, want to watch movie?" She picked up the remote control and handed it to him.
"Never say no to movies."
Turned out, they spend the whole night cooping on the couch, watching the mission impossible series.
"Yield! Yield!" Bianca shouted as she gave up struggling under his arms which is pressing on her throat.
"There you go, ten to zero." Thalia announced beside the ring.
"Seriously? There's no need to speak out loud!" Bianca groaned.
"We have a sour loser here." Percy snickered which earned him a laugh from Thalia.
"Are you two declaring war?" Bianca's eyes form into a thin line. "Zoë!" She yelled, not moving her eyes away from them.
That's when they know they're in trouble.
"What's going on?" Zoë looked at them in amusement and walk towards them.
"Back me up here, they are bullying me." They all know Zoë shared a soft spot for Bianca and now she is taking advantage for it. Percy and Thalia exchanged a glance.
"Want me to help you beat them up?" The older girl cooed her and spoke. That sentence sent shivers down his spine.
"Yes, please." The smile on Bianca's face is so big; he won't be surprise if her face cracked open the next moment.
"How about you two come up at the same time?" Zoë turned around and suggested them. "We can also work on your team work." They huffed.
Their shitty teamwork during combat isn't some news to all of them. Their agreement on every other thing seems to fall out when it comes to hand to hand combat. They are like oil and water, wanting them to cooperate in this thing is impossible. The chance of dinosaur living on the earth again is higher than that.
"Just give yourselves the last shot." Both of them stared at her in dead eyes. "Thalia, you are going to be, no, you are a leader now. If you want it work, better make it work now." Sometimes it's just not the best idea to protest what Zoë tell you to do.
Thalia takes a look at Jason who is standing no far from them, talking to Nico. Then she sighed and gave in. "Fine, one last chance."
"I'll give you guys ice-cream if you beat me." They snapped their heads up and show her their puppy eyes. "Now, go on your position." She chuckled at their behavior before telling them to stand by.
Percy went on the right side as Thalia stood at the left. Here's the thing, if you fight as a pair, you need to charge in turns and have one person do the main attack, the another one as sneak attack. The reason why the two of them don't match is because they are both the aggressive one, wanting to take the lead.
But this time, Percy had this voice in his head, telling him it will be different. So, he turned his head to Thalia, who is looking straight at him after Zoë told her to make it work.
They shared a look. He seems to know what she is implying, let's hope he didn't get the wrong idea.
As the sound of the high pitch whistle rang in his ear, Percy launched at Zoë
Of course, she dodged his fist. After that, Percy used all of the things he learned from Zoë and Chiron these years. That earned Zoë a few good punches and side kick from him, but that's not enough. Who is he kidding? This is Zoë they are fighting against; they have years of gap in the field and age.
Suddenly, he realized there is more than one person in this ring with him. He isn't along. He quickly steadied himself after getting a right hook on his jaw, which is either broken or bruised now. Thalia is now doing the major attack on Zoë. Percy cleared his thoughts and mentally thanked Thalia for taking the damage.
Then they started to roll on the ground like cat fighting with yarn. From the grunts and groans coming out from Thalia, he knew she isn't taking it well. Zoë is now straddling her and Thalia's arms is forming a cross hovering her face, defend the deadly attack.
So he took the chance and pulled Zoë off Thalia then tackle her on the floor. Zoë looked up at him in surprised for five fully seconds before surrender with hands up and smile. Thalia stood up with wobbling legs, brushing the loosen string of her hair with her fingers. They now looked like two high school bitches who just finished a hallway fight by pulling each other's hair, which they probably really did that.
Zoë suddenly pulled him in a hug after he helped her up to her feet. His height has grown during these years, so Zoë is now shorter than him. But he still feels small with her arms around him. She is this big sister figure he couldn't have. She patted on his shoulder after losing her arms and turned to do the same to Thalia.
"Well done. Let's go in and eat ice-cream."
For the first time in these days, Percy can breathe.
- Zoë will forever have a soft spot for Bianca!