AN: Okay, this idea is sorta... it came to me from two idea smashing into each other. An Awakened Maki in PJO world and a Son of Hades PJO SI. I really do want to do each one independently, but this combined idea won't leave for now, so this chapter is just to get this outta the way so I focus on either.
My muse has been way overactive without a plan since I started reading the PJO books. Have I been starving her?
The One Who is Free (Percy Jackson - Maki Zenin & SI-not-MC Chapter 1)
I opened my eyes to a world of light, warmth and bliss.
No. They have been open for a while.
I've been living here for a while now.
A while?
Or was it eternity?
Or maybe a few minutes or days?
I don't understand, nor recall when I awoke here.
Wherever "here" is.
Sometime I feel this heat that comes over my head and body, but then it leaves after a while.
Fever?
I was suppose to be in battle with Sukuna. ...Right?
There was a Black Flash, some fuzziness in my head. Ieiri-sensei did... something? I was fighting again, then...
Nothing. Just a blank.
...Am I in heaven?
Should I be? I don't think I'm suppose to be here.
Well, maybe if Mai... Is Mai here? Actually, I kinda feel like she—
"Your name will be Maki."
A voice spoke and... I blinked and looked up as all my attention was solely focused on that.
I couldn't think. I couldn't remark or react to the figure holding me.
She was... I couldn't say beautiful or graceful. Those words weren't grand enough for the figure. A woman, now that I could focus.
She couldn't be human. A Cursed Spirit? The very idea struck a revulsion in me. More like the exact opposite, but I couldn't imagine what such a thing would be. I didn't have a reference for it.
Her form was too huge, too radiant. It hurt to look at a bit.
But then as if sensing that, the woman... shrunk? if it could be called that. More like became more presentable, smaller, yet didn't change her divine nature.
Divine. That's the word I was looking for. The word that seemed right in my mind.
Her gray eyes were staring at me with mirth, pride and concern.
"It seems despite it all, you're still mortal. Still a half... well, a demigod." The gray-eyed woman said with a sigh before smiling at me.
Demigod? That... seemed hilarious compared to everything I've been called in my life.
No, given my body...
The woman wasn't a giant, I realized. I was small. My body was small. Maybe my thinking she was bigger and grander before was my imagination?
Regardless, my current small body, like an infant, means... I was reborn? Reincarnated? Then this is a second life?
Yet, I don't remember being born? That's probably a good thing, but why would my mind be able to be... sapient? Comprehend things now, yet not before? Or if I am an infant, shouldn't I be older before I could comprehend things and remember past—if they really are past—lives.
I opted to just observe things for now.
Although being called a demigod is pretention. Kinda implies the woman is a god or something. Yet... I can kinda see it?
While I was deep in thought, the gray-eyed maybe-goddess was also equally in thought, if the frown on her face was any indication.
"He won't refuse you." The gray-eyed woman said, nodding to herself, before looking at me. She had this not-smile, but something like a triumphant glint in her eyes, that transferred down to her face, making it look like she was smiling. "Even if he become angry at me, your father won't refuse you." She nodded to herself.
...Well, shit. I really hoped my father isn't the same as Ogi. Surely he can't be as bad?
"What the fuck are you doing here? No. Better question, how are you here?" A gruff voice said to us upon... arriving?
Seriously it was weird. I was being moved from place to place. Lights and sounds moving around me too quickly to comprehend, or dancing in place.
I slept and woke up many times. Multiple voices talked around me. The gray-eyed woman and others.
Suddenly I found myself in a place that reminded me of home. Japanese decor, street signs, and architecture. We were in front of a ordinary two story house.
The moment the gray-eyed woman and I arrived, a man burst out of the house, fists clenched with a look like he'd ready for war.
The man upon focusing on him seemed odd to me. He looked in his prime, late 20s, early 30s. Yet everything else about him seemed old. The tone and inflection in his voice. His heard eyes, that I could have swore were glowing behind sunglasses. His stride... he had this presence to him that almost reminded me of that man, Fushiguro Toji. With a beard.
"You should take care not to speak to a god in such manner, Vincent Goodman. Anyone less merciful would have seen you struck were you stood for such tone." The divine woman said.
"Spare me the fucking sanctimonious bull crap, Athena. Like you'd care." The man, Vincent spat back without hesitation. "How are you here?" He growled, repeating his question.
So the gray-eyed woman's name is Athena? I'm not well versed in mythology outside of Japan, but I knew the basics.
The Greek Gods are at least familiar enough that I would recognize their names if I saw or heard them. I knew Athena, but I don't remember which god, well, goddess she was.
Probably war I think, or was that Arse? ...I don't think it was Arse, but something similar.
Still, the name fit the woman. Fit in this odd way, like fitting a puzzle piece in place. Like I knew for a fact that this was Athena. A odd instinct inside me telling me that.
"I have travelled far, and expended much to visit you here, rather than call a summons for you back to the States, back to Olympus." Athena spoke.
"Probably because you knew I wouldn't have answered." Vincent grunted back, giving a spiteful smirk while keeping his body tense. Ready to move, ready to fight. Looks like my senses in this new body were pretty high. Although they felt less than I remember—than in my old life.
"Do not test my patience, Vincent Goodman." Athena warned, and the air seemed charged. Like something heavy was about to fall. It made me want to run, want to scream, yet I kept myself quiet and focused. It may not do me much good as an infant, but I still refused to let this bizarre fear win.
"Or what? You're gonna smite me? Go ahead, your Owlness." His smirking expression dropped to a glare. "Do it."
The goddess closed her eyes and breathed, before opening them to show cold focus, and an aloof look.
"You're trying to make me angry. It's a foolish endeavor and one you're not putting your best efforts in." Athena said back. "I'm not going to break guest rights in this country."
"Yeah. And that must really annoy you." Vincent said back with a lazy frown, crossing his arms, less on guard, as the tension was removed by Athena.
"Not as much as you trying to ignore the obvious." Athena said, holding me up to be more visible to the man.
Vincent's shoulder sagged as his eyes lost a little of their hardness. A complicated look came to his face, like he was trying to place me in his mind, but wasn't sure. Or didn't want to accept what clues he could see.
"Who's she?" He finally said, acknowledging me.
"A gift that I came to grant to you." Athena offered me forward. And despite his attitude thus far, Vincent didn't hesitate to take me into his arm. Gently holding and supporting my head, before he'd realized his actions.
"A gift? You only do this when... What the heck are you...?" Vincent seemed lost for words when his eyes suddenly narrowed. "Whose child is this, Athena?" He demanded.
"Are you too clouded by angry to see the resemblance to your own? Are you refusing your daughter?" Athena demanded back.
Oh. Okay. Kinda saw that coming, but wasn't sure. So once again, I'm going to be living with a father that didn't want me. Great second life.
Yet Vincent held me in a protective manner. As if instinctively holding me in a way to protect me with his body. Huh, odd. I thought he'd be more repulsed by me. Or is this some fatherly instinct he doesn't realize he's doing?
"So, I'm the father. Great." He said quickly, in that sarcastic annoyed voice people use, when someone didn't giving them a straight answer. "Who is the mother?"
"...I think you know." Athena suddenly looked reluctant.
"Is she Kiku's?" He pressed.
"..." Athena looked away.
"Who's her mother, Athena?" He demanded.
Athena looked back, standing tall like the goddess she is.
"I am." She declared.
And Vincent... looked heartbroken. As if the goddess had stabbed him with her words.
"You... dare..." He gritted his teeth. "It's been 46 years, Athena! So the last remnant of her. Of your own daughter, you twisted—"
"Her flesh is of Kiku Akimura." Athena spoke. "But... it is my blood that flows through her veins." She stated. "Her birth was...complicated."
"Is that why you retrieved Kiku's body?" Vincent looked angry and disgusted as he spoke in a low tone.
"I retrieved her body to save the life still within it. To save little Maki." She looked to me as she said that. "And then I... had my avatar carry out her birth. She is... a demigod, but no mere half-blood." She explained, yet this passed over my head. "She was too unstable, I tried for so long to ensure her health and had to put her in stasis for a lot of the time. It's why I only now brought her to you, and she's still an infant."
Suddenly a familiar heat returned to me. I felt like I was being roasted from the inside out. This happened a few times before, so I was ready for it, but it never felt comfortable.
"What's wrong with her?" Vincent, well, I guess my dad said in a panic.
Huh, a father that actually cares for me. Kinda feels nice.
"She is mortal, Vincent." Athena said with sad eyes. "Yet, she is more god than man. I brought her to you, so she would at least know her father in the time she had left." Vincent looked at Athena in shock, her fierce façade completely gone, to show a man that was given crumbling hope of something he long thought gone. "The other Olympians know not of her. She does not deal with the troubles of our world. You can have a mostly peaceful life here in Japan."
Athena began to glow and float away.
"Wait!" Vincent cried out after her.
"I'm sorry, Vincent. Please look after her, and let her accumulate memories of happiness." Athena vanished.
Its only when my mother in this life had left that I let myself cry from the pain.
AN: Date in-story, 1991. Maki 1 year old.f
