Hey guys I just wanted to share 2 playlists I listen to while I edit/write these chapters (a lot of these chapters were already prewritten by younger me). I put them in my bio plz in enjoy!
"Hey, guys!" M'gann chimed in from the front of the Bio-Ship, "We're about to land in Delphi."
Percy stood up and stretched, "Finally!"
As soon as they got off the ship they ran down the stairs to the center of Delphi's stadium. Jason, Raquel, Robin, and Kaldur were all waiting in the center where they last left them.
Percy gripped Jason's shoulder, "Glad to see you're not dead, Grace."
"It's a shame I can't say the same for you, Jackson." Jason joked.
Raquel came up to M'gann and Artemis and gave them all big hugs. "What was that for?" Artemis asked.
"We've almost died, like, five times in the last twenty-four hours." Raquel sighed.
"And how is that different from usual?" Wally questioned.
"Well," Robin started, "Have we almost been eaten by carnivorous sheep?"
M'gann furrowed her eyebrows, "I… don't think so."
"Then, that's what's different."
"I'm glad to see you are all safe and virtually unscathed," Kaldur approached his Teammates with a small smile on his face, "Now our respective quests would be completed if we knew where Apollo was."
"Did someone say my name!"
Percy wanted to act like he didn't jump a little when the sun god showed his face, but that would be a lie. "Apollo!" he said a little too loudly, "How long have you been here?"
"Long enough to know you have my key!" he held out his hands, "Let me see it!"
Percy dropped the Python's fang into Apollo's and hands and he practically squealed. The god walked to the center of the floor and stuck the fang in the keyhole. Only the tip fit but it seemed to be enough to make the floor open up, with scattered sounds of whirring and clicking the floor open up enough to fit a whole body through it.
The teens listened to Apollo's grunts and other sounds of struggle as he slid into it, Percy was about to look down the hole and see exactly what was going on when Apollo's head popped right back out. "Found it!" he exclaimed.
"The chain?" Percy asked.
"Oh yeah, that." Apollo tossed the golden necklace to Percy as he climbed out of the hole. "But more importantly, I found this!" Apollo held a small metal screw towards the sky like it was Simba in the Lion King.
"It's the final piece! The last thing I need to get out of here!"
Percy was trying really hard to care about whatever nonsense Apollo was talking about he couldn't help but be more focus on the gem he just nonchalantly threw at him. But still he tried. "What's that screw for, Lord Apollo?"
"You see this Percy?" Apollo picked up the odd looking instrument he was playing when all the teens first arrived in Delphi, "It sounded pretty awful awhile ago."
"No kidding." Wally said under his breath. Artemis gave him a pretty good kick for that.
Apollo twisted the screw into an empty spot and began to turn the crank. Suddenly the teens were engulfed with sounds of sorrow and pain, wailing to the gods for forgiveness.
"Wow." Raquel whispered.
"'Wow' is an understatement." Robin said, his eyes wide.
Apollo stood proudly, "I'm going to serenade Zeus until he gets annoyed. Then he'll be forced to bring me back to Olympus."
Jason grabbed Percy's arm, "Thanks Lord Apollo and I hope you accomplish your… your goal." He began to steer Percy towards the steps, the rest of the teens followed.
"No problem! I'm always here to help!" Apollo started cranking his instrument and the miserable music started playing again.
-(Line Break)-
"Woohoo! Mission accomplished!" Wally proceeded to high five everyone.
"Well, not quite." Robin said, though he still accepted Wally's high five. "We need the gem, then we'll be good to go."
"We should probably call Hazel, Nico, Superboy, and Zatanna and see what progress they've made." Jason took out a drachma when an IM collect call materialize in front of him.
Wally ran over to Jason, "Speak of the devil…" Jason popped a drachma into the multicolored cloud and Hazel's face appeared.
"Jason!" Hazel smiled and backed away from the "screen" revealing Nico, Conner, and Zatanna behind her.
Percy took a seat next to Jason and Wally, "You guys look like you've been put through a tornado."
"Thanks." Nico muttered as Zatanna stuck a bandaid to his cheek.
"We're all in the middle of patching ourselves up." Hazel laughed. "Well, all of us but Conner. Did you know he's practically indestructible?"
"Yes." The superheroes said in unison.
M'gann stood in front of the IM, "Did you all play nice?" Percy notice that her eyes moved towards Conner.
"Everything went pretty well." Zatanna smiled as she cleaned Nico's knuckles with an alcohol swab.
Nico winced a little, "You know this whole 'patching ourselves up' thing could be avoided if we just ate a bit of ambrosia."
Hazel turned to look at her brother, "We have to save that for what's next, Nico."
"What is next?" Kaldur asked.
Zatanna started, "So… we found the gem and-"
"You found the gem!" Raquel said, "If you did, then tell us your coordinates so we can meet up."
"There's more to it than that." Conner spoke. "Right, Hazel." He gave her a look as if to say 'get on with it.'
Hazel sighed, "There's been a complication."
"What kind of complication?" Jason asked, taking the words right out of Percy's mouth.
"We can't use the necklace."
There were several exclamations of 'what', 'why', and other confused sounds.
"Guys, wait! I've- we've got a plan, but it's a little dangerous."
"Good," Wally said, "Danger's my middle name."
"I thought it was Rudolph?"
"Please don't ruin this for me, Robin."
"Anyways," Zatanna pulled attention back towards them, "We'll send Robin the coordinates and you'll have to meet us there."
"Where, exactly, is there?" Kaldur asked.
"An underwater cave." Hazel said, holding up a thin piece of yellowed paper. On it was a few numbers that looked to be the coordinates and a phrase in ancient greek written under it.
Raquel squinted at the parchment. "How are we supposed to know what that says?"
Robin started typing at his holographic computer, "Wait a second, I can instantly translate it on-"
"'A mortal and demigod together.'" Percy interrupted.
The heroes gave him an odd look. "What? That's what it says, 'a mortal and demigod together.'"
Robin chuckled, "I didn't expect you to be a person who studies ancient greek."
"Apparently, all demigods read ancient greek." Zatanna commented.
"Or Latin." Jason added.
"Neat skill, isn't it?"
"Back to the problem at hand. The note used to say a bunch of other stuff but when we're done reading it, it all disappeared except for that phrase and the coordinates." Nico took a second to pull his arm away from Zatanna, who was wrapping it a little too much, "I'm just going to sum up what it said. Basically the Necklace holds a curse in it, the first curse that Hephaestus put on it to make Harmonia, and her descendants', life awful."
"So what now?" Wally questioned.
Nico glared at the speedster. "I was getting to that. We need to cleanse the necklace of all it's bad energy, curses, and whatever. And according to the note the only place to do it is at these coordinates. We checked and they lead to an underground cavern near the coast of southern Italy, called Grotta di Guarigione by the locals."
"The Cave of Healing." Robin repeated.
"Yup, that can't be a coincidence." Nico said.
Artemis raised her hand, "Wait, I have one question, why are we listening to a random and potentially suspicious note you found."
"Because of the dream." Percy suddenly recalled.
Hazel raised a brow, "You had the same dream?"
"Hello, Zatanna!" she thumped her forehead lightly, "Of course you had the same dream. You were in the dream!"
"Wait a minute, let's all slow down." Aqualad intervened, "Some of us are obviously out of the loop. You'll need to catch us up when we meet."
"True," Hazel folded up the note, "Once we get to the cave we can-"
"Hazel, I think it's best if we had at least 24 hours of recovery time before we go out on another crazy adventure." Nico suggested.
"...You're right," Hazel consented. She turned back towards the IM, "Everyone agreed to resting before going to Grotta di Guarigione?"
Everyone made sounds of approval and relief. Percy sighed, "There's really no rush anyway, we still have time left until the Justice League gets back."
-(Line Break)-
"We have no time left until the Justice League gets back." Wonder Woman said as she hurried the demigods into the Mission Room.
"Why what happened?" Leo laid his tools down. "It's only been like two days." He noticed all the formality was gone between Princess Diana and him. Now she was more like a cool older friend that lived next door than a terrifying force of nature.
"The mission is going really well, Batman just told me that they should be back in two days or less." she started helping Leo unpack all the tools he brought. "He wanted to talk to the Team but I told him they were out at the beach."
"That's not a complete lie," Annabeth pointed out, "I'm sure there are more than a couple of beaches in Italy and Greece."
"The lying isn't what I'm worried about, I just don't want the Team to get in trouble for this."
"If that happens, we'll take the fall for it. We can say we brainwashed you or something." Leo added.
"I hope you realize that would make the Justice League and demigods have an even more strained relationship." Reyna chided as she walked into the room with Frank. Leo couldn't help but think that strained was an understatement.
Both praetors were spending these last two days learning as much as they could about the JLA with the help of Wonder Woman.
"I can't believe all this work is for the sake of negotiation." Frank cried as he fell to the floor. "I'm so nervous I could die."
"Bad, Frank. No death." Leo said patting him lightly with a screwdriver.
"I just can't believe you guys don't know anything about the Justice League at all." Annabeth criticized. She pulled her hair up into a ponytail and reached for the screwdriver Leo was handing her.
"To my defense," Reyna began, "I've been in Camp Jupiter for a long time. And before that I was with pirates, and before that I was on an island cut off from mankind. Literally."
"Before Camp Jupiter I lived in a cabin in the Canadian wilderness. Plus they're called the Justice League of America." Frank turned over lazily, "What are you guys making anyway?"
Leo and Annabeth gave each other mischievous smiles.
"Well since you asked so nicely…" Leo pulled an odd contraption out of his belt.
The metal platform came out first and was followed by an attached dome. It was a little simplistic for the son of Hephaestus, but Leo presented it like it was his masterpiece.
"So… its a glass case."
"Not just any case, Frank." Annabeth scolded. "If-"
"So if we put something in there, for example, the Golden Fleece." Leo interjected.
"Yes the Golden Fleece, thank you Leo. If were to put it in here-"
"Its energy would be absorbed by my metal amplifier plate."
"Yes and then the-"
"Then the plate would just shoot that magical energy back out!"
"Not shoot Leo! And stop interrupting me!"
"...sorry." He just was excited for their new tool, admittedly maybe he was a little over excited. The demigod felt like he had been kind of completely useless when it came to dealing with the heroes and he really wanted to make that up and get rid of some of that restless energy of being cooped up in the Mission Room.
"Anyway," Annabeth breathed, "Leo's design for the metal platform will take in any energy the magical item radiates and basically radiate it back out in large all consuming quantities."
"Kinda like a megaphone?"
Leo stepped in front of Annabeth, "That's a good guess Frank, but it has something that a megaphone doesn't."
"Please don't keep me at the edge of my seat." Reyna rolled her eyes.
Annabeth took the contraption from Leo's hands and disconnected the dome from the metal plate, "The dome on its own is made of one of the hardest materials known to godkind."
The daughter of Athena made sure all eyes were on her when she made the seemingly glass dome reflect the light of the Mission Room. The light bounced off of the strange material making it shine a pearly, nearly translucent, white.
Diana's eyes widened. "Great Hera, is that what I think it is?"
"Yup a hundred percent Adamantine. Its monster-proof, demigod-proof, and most importantly mortal proof."
"Annabeth, how did you come upon this?"
"Let's just say that we had to pull some favors." The demigoddess smiled and handed the dome to Diana to examine further. "This is the same stuff that chained up Prometheus during his punishment, so it is strong."
Leo laughed. "We owe Percy's half brother a big one for this, he even helped us craft the dome." He had actually arranged the deal with Tyson himself and it turns out that he's had a soft spot for Hephaestus kids because Charles Beckendorf had such an impact on him.
"Interesting contraption," Reyna smirked. "I'm impressed Chase."
"Don't be so coy Reyna did you expect anything less from me."
Leo smirked, he kind of had faith now. Maybe they'll all make it out of there with only a few broken bones.
Hey so a couple of things. Turns out I really like comments, so if any of you would like to leave more comments it may or may not inspire me to write a little quicker, if you know what I'm saying.
Also this is the last concrete chapter my past self left for me so if the writing from this point gets weird or inconsistent I'm sorry but I first started writing this like 4 years ago.
*later edit: today is the one and only Percy Jackson's birthday so I had to post this before the day was over