Persephone's Imperial War
Ta-da! Behold, the next chapter of the Promised Year!
It's been so long, that the last Author's Note was from Christmas of 2022. But like I said, I was busy with the Piper fic.
Anyway, just a friendly reminder that this isn't necessarily a serious story, just a fun one for me to play with that will have a sad ending.
I've had several little ficlet ideas for this one, and I've finally decided on which one to commit to. Read on to find out!
Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or any other officially licensed material
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Coming back from the alternate dimension that was post-Imperial War, Persephone wasted no time in tackling the emperors here in her own dimension. Armed with knowledge, power, and her god-like little brother, she took out the Triumvirate in an afternoon.
Nero was the first because he was the closest. Persephone and Shin'en simply popped right into the downtown high rise that was the emperor's base, and Shin'en proceeded to annihiliate the Leontocephaline, thereby easily acquiring the fasces he protected. Shin'en destroyed the bundled axe, and Persephone confronted Nero, making the same kind of short work of him that she made of the alternate Commodus and Caligula.
She did have a little bit of fire to her, however, as she took this as her opportunity to get some payback on the alternate Nero that sucker punched her and almost raped her.
After that, it was a quick hop over to Indianapolis where Commodus was based, and Persephone made even shorter work of him than she did Nero. However, she didn't kill him, because she didn't know what killing him while his fasces was still around would do. So she hefted his broken body over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and then water-traveled the rest of the way across the continent to Sutro Tower with her brother in order to destroy the other two fasces.
Sutro still had the shipping container containing Harpocrates and the jarred essence of the Cumaean Sybil, and they were only slightly happier than they were at the beginning of April in canon, on Lester's birthday. Those few months had made them a little crankier, and seeing Lester certainly didn't help their mood.
That being said, when Persephone tore the Imperial gold chains from the container doors with nothing but her own raw strength, something even Lester couldn't do without siphoning the power from Reyna and Meg, Harpocrates was still more than angry and spiteful enough to direct his millennia of anger and frustration at Persephone, despite her good intentions. She tried to communicate with the god of silence that she was a friend, one of the good guys, here to rescue and free him, but Harpocrates wasn't having it. He was too angry.
That's when Shin'en stepped in, and when Harpocrates tried to assault the champion of Susano'o, he was utterly obliterated.
Shin'en would've been far more merciful if the god hadn't first attacked his big sister.
Persephone wasn't happy with her brother for that one, stating that she was sure she could've convinced Harpocrates to relent and understand that she was there to help. Shin'en disagreed that there were just some people that the best help they could get at the point in their lives was a swift death. Harpocrates was one of those people.
Persephone disagreed with him on that, but there was nothing that could be done about it now. Shin'en destroyed the two fasces and the fancy satellite network the emperors were using, and Persephone then decapitated Commodus.
Caligula required a bit of effort to find since his exact location was unknown thanks to his traveling fleet of luxury yachts, but it was nothing Persephone couldn't handle. As of the end of January in her world, Caligula was hastily sailing up the California coast, just now passing San Diego. Apparently, he had been enjoying the warmer weather down South, but had evidently sensed something happen, probably the destruction of Nero's fasces, and then definitely his own, and was now scrambling to the North.
Then, from Sutro Tower all the way down to San Diego, Persephone and Shin'en turned their bodies into atoms of water, and they went zooming through the atmosphere, reconstituting seconds later right behind Caligula as he stood at the helm of his flagship.
Persephone chopped his head off without a word, without him even knowing she was there. Then the twins capsized the entire fleet, sending all fifty ships straight to the bottom of the ocean. No survivors, not even the human mercenaries.
"Well," Shin'en said shortly, standing atop the surface of the water. "The bulk of the Imperial War handled in less than two hours. Satisfied?"
"No," Persephone said seriously. "Dodona is secure, and you killed Cumae, but Delphi, Trophonius, and Erythraea are still up for grabs, Python is still active, and I haven't gotten a hold of Piper and Jason yet."
Shin'en arched a brow. "Everything going on right now, and Piper and Jason are somehow on the list of priorities?"
"Yes!" Persephone insisted. "Jason's my cousin, and while Piper and I didn't really hit it off when we were on the Argo II due to our different opinions on what we should do with our powers after the Giant War, I still call her a friend."
Shin'en lowered his arched brow, and arched his other brow. "What does any of that have to do with preventing them from breaking up?"
"Because it's wrong!"
"…wut?"
Persephone released an exasperated noise, frustrated that her little brother couldn't see how Jason and Piper breaking up could throw the very fabric of the space-time continuum into utter turmoil.
"You do realize that it's very common for teenage couples to break up, right?" Shin'en asked. "They're both only sixteen. If anything, it'd be an even greater stretch of the imagination to think they would make it to marriage and beyond."
"That's true for normal teenage couples," Persephone stressed, reasoned, and conceded, "but Jason and Piper aren't normal. They went through a quest together—at least a dozen life-or-death situations where they saved each other each time, and shared a bunch of personal secrets with each other. Then they had those six months together at camp to talk things out, and share even more personal secrets, and then there was the whole freakin' Giant War! That kind of stuff changes people, binds them together through all that struggle and strife, and-"
"Does it, though?" Shin'en interrupted. "You went through the Titan War with a number of other demigods—are you best friends forever with them? You and Clarisse have known each other for years now, and you fought side by side during the Battle of Camp Half-Blood when Luke's forces invaded through the Labyrinth, and again during the Battle of Manhattan—when was the last time you spoke to her? To the point about the Giant War, when was the last time you reached out to Frank, Hazel, or Reyna? Or even Thalia, also your cousin?"
Persephone swallowed. "I've been…busy…"
"Excuses," Shin'en countered stoically. "Where there's a will, there's a way. If you had really wanted to get in touch with any of them, either just to chat or try to set up a meal together, you would have, but you never did. However, communication is a two-way street, and none of them ever reached out to you, either, so what does that say about them and their view of you?"
Persephone shifted as she stood on top of the ocean, clearly not liking what she was concluding. She ended up shaking her head to cast out the doubts. "Jason and Piper went through way too much together just for her to break up with him because of her emotional constipation. She'll be crushing Jason for no good reason, and ruining herself while she's at it."
"Are you really convinced of that?"
"I am," Persephone said firmly. "Jason loves Piper more than life itself. He'd die for her as soon as I'd die for Annabeth. Piper throwing that away would be the biggest mistake of her life, because there's not a soul on this planet that could ever compare to what Jason has done for her, and would do for her."
"Have you considered that the end of their romantic relationship may not actually destroy the world, but be the best thing for them? Just because their romance ends does not mean their friendship would."
Persephone shook her head. "You don't know Piper like I do. There's no way she could break up with Jason in a way that would ever end up with them being friends. Besides, that's such a stupid fucking thing in the first place. Hey, we went through a war together where we saved each other's lives a hundred times and shared a ton of personal secrets, and there's also the part where I'm the one who wanted to be your girlfriend so badly, but I don't care about that anymore. I'm breakup up with you. But we can still be friends! Yeah, that's bullshit to me. Like, imagine me and Annabeth breaking up, or you and Naruko."
Bringing up Naruko wasn't meant to be a low blow, but there were things going on right now that Persephone didn't know about, and she would only start to suspect only much later in this sad story. As such, she unwittingly struck one of her brother's nerves, and it showed on his face.
"Hey, you okay?" Persephone asked, seeing Shin'en's stricken expression.
He quickly schooled himself. "I'm fine. You've made your point, then. Let's go."
Persephone nodded, and she reached out with her powers, feeling the water in the air all the way up in Malibu where the main McLean mansion was at. She wanted to verify where Piper was at and what she was doing, because the Sis Code for Demigoddesses demanded that a Sis first use any magic she had available to her to first determine what a fellow Sis was doing before teleporting into her residence. It would be superbad of Persephone to just pop in on Piper when she was on the toilet taking a dump, or taking a shower, or masturbating, or any other personal/intimate act.
Luckily, Piper was currently chilling on her bed watching a movie, it appeared, and even more luckily was that Jason was there. Piper was resting her head on his buff pectoral, and Jason had his arm around her shoulder. Rather wholesome, actually.
Persephone water-traveled to the front door of the mansion, Shin'en following.
Now, did Shin'en really care one way or the other if Piper broke up with Jason? Not at all. He had zero connection to either of them, and less than zero concern for their personal problems. That being said, he did think it would be rather fucked up if Piper did break up with Jason, because she is the one who so firmly wanted to be his girlfriend in the first place, and then spent the Giant War trying to be the best girlfriend she could be, all of which culminated in Jason taking Piper to his roof and kissing her under the stars, Piper's greatest fantasy, with both of them declaring their true love for each other that had nothing to do with the gods' interference in their lives, and agreeing to move on into a new future together.
To Shin'en, that was a whole lot of wasted time, effort, and energy, and was also a textbook example of why teenage girls were nothing but trouble.
A teenage girl could fight through a major mythological war with the boy of her dreams at her side, survive said war, declare her undying love for him following all the harrowing battles they made it through together, resolve to be together forever, and then turn right around and dump that boy like yesterday's garbage.
Yes, Shin'en could appreciate his sister's own viewpoint on how awkward it would be for Piper to break up with Jason after everything they'd gone through. It was a rather depressing notion, really, that a boy could do so many things for a girl, and she could still break his heart.
But again, Shin'en had no stake or care for Jason and Piper. His true concern was handling his sister, and making sure she didn't turn what she perceived to be a bad situation into a worse one.
He materialized behind her at the McLean door. "Do be mindful of your words. Hitting them with I just came back from an alternate reality where you break up with Jason and this hurts him so bad emotionally that he underperforms in an upcoming battle, and dies horribly may not go over very well."
Instead of arguing, or retorting with sarcasm, Persephone nodded, taking her brother's advice to heart. "I will."
She rang the doorbell.
The twins felt the annoyed confusion flash through the teenagers on the other side of the mansion. Piper disengaged from Jason, left her room, walked down the hall a little, and checked a panel on the wall.
Her confused voice came through a speaker next to the doorbell. "Persephone? Is that you?"
"Yeah. Do you have time to talk?"
"I guess, yeah. Uh, did you walk here, or something?"
"Water-travel."
"Oh, right."
"Has Jason got that air-travel thing we talked about down yet?"
"Uh, he says he's been working on it, but it's easier for him to just fly."
"Can he go faster than sound yet?"
"Not yet, but he came close last week."
"That's so cool. Are you going to come up to the door, or…?"
"Nah, it's open."
The twins heard a mechanical lock snap open, and Persephone twisted the handle and pushed. "Thanks."
"No problem—wait, who's that with you?"
Shin'en only just now walked into the frame of the camera.
"Oh, this is Percy, my brother I told you about," Persephone answered.
"That's your brother!?"
The twins felt Jason clamber over to Piper to look at the screen on the wall with her.
Shin'en arched a brow. "I am. You sound surprised."
"Woah, your voice is deep—uh, I mean, yeah. Uh, nice to meet you, ah, Percy-"
"Do not call me that. Call me Shin'en."
Persephone shot him a look. "Not your name," she muttered.
"It is for everyone but a select few."
"SHEEN-en?" Piper tried.
"Correct."
"Okay, uh, Shin'en. Nice to meet you."
"Talking through microphones doesn't count as a meeting."
"R-Right. Um, I'm on my way over to you guys."
Persephone directed a frown at her brother. "Be nice."
"I am being nice."
"Be nicer."
"I'll do my best."
"Mm-hm," Persephone said, unconvinced.
The twins waited a few seconds more in the foyer of the mansion out of courtesy and respect for the home they were invited into, and shortly enough, Piper and Jason appeared at the top of the central staircase, clad in shirts and pants. They did take note of how the twins were dressed the same, wearing their ominous black cloaks with the red clouds.
"Hey, Jace! Hey, Pipes!" Persephone greeted.
"Hey, Seph!" they greeted in unison.
The three of them exchanged friendly hugs, and then Persephone gestured to her brother. "And this is my brother, Percy."
"Hello."
Persephone rolled her eyes. "Will you get over here and properly greet our cousins? They're not going to bite. It's not like it'd do anything to you if they tried."
Jason and Piper looked at her, confused as to what that meant.
It meant that Shin'en could vaporize them both with barely more than an application of will.
Shin'en just looked at Piper, the high collar of his cloak hiding his lower face. "My sister and I just got back from an alternate reality in which you break up with Jason, and this causes him so much emotional turmoil that he underperforms in an upcoming battle, and he dies in a horrible way."
Jason and Piper were utterly gobsmacked for a multitude of reasons, while Persephone was utterly scandalized.
"You just told me not to lead with that!"
"Correct. I told you not to lead with that. I didn't say anything about me not leading with that."
"It was implied!"
"Was not."
"Was too!"
"Was not."
"Was too!"
"HEY!"Piper shouted, bringing the banter to a halt. She looked panicked. "What did you just say?"
At that, Persephone told the couple about her recent adventure, how she and her brother were summoned by the god Chaos to another world to fight on behalf of the people there, which happened to be them, because the Titans, Giants, and a as-of-yet-revealed threat called the Triumvirate had all returned form Tartarus thanks to the god Tartarus expediting their regeneration, and had formed one unified army. Persephone reported her and her brother's success in defeating so many foes, and she also told Piper and Jason how the Piper of that world had eventually broken up with the alternate Jason after the Giant War, because she no longer felt like she loved Jason after things had settled down and cooled off.
Shin'en threw in a few things here and there.
After everything was reported, it was very quiet in the mansion.
Jason eventually spoke first. "Piper…? Do you…do you feel that way-"
Piper rounded on him, angry tears in her eyes. "Of course not!" she shouted, her voice cracking. "I can't believe I would ever break up with you! Everything we've been through, everything you've done for me, and me for you—I just can't imagine anyone better than you. I can't imagine being with anyone else, ever."
"Piper…" Jason breathed.
"I think the icing on the cake," Shin'en said, bringing a cigarette to his mouth and lighting it without asking if that was okay, "is that less than three months after she more or less got the other Jason killed, is that she already hooked up with someone else. A girl on top of that."
Piper's eyes almost popped out of her sockets. "A girl!?"
"Indeed. Along with no longer feeling satisfied with her relationship, the other Piper was also conflicted over her sexuality. She attempted to resolve that by replacing her Jason with a Cherokee girl back in Tahlequah."
"But I'm not gay! I've never been gay! I can't even remember having gay thoughts!"
Shin'en shrugged. "The other Piper also felt like her whole relationship was a lie forged by the gods."
"It was at first," Piper reasoned, "but after the Giant War, we loved each other all on our own!"
"So did they. The other Piper still dumped the other Jason. She also felt like Aphrodite had pressured her into staying with Jason."
"What!? Mom didn't do that! She told me to follow my heart and pursue the possibilities that I could see between me and Jason! Did the other Aphrodite say or do something different?"
"No."
"I don't understand."
Shin'en shrugged, releasing a cloud of smoke from his nose. "Neither do we."
"This is insane," Piper gasped, and she leaned against her Jason.
He held her tight. "Y-Yeah."
"I think the best part is after all the hard work my sister and I put into the whole thing, Chaos just deleted the whole dimension after that fact."
"What," Jason and Piper said in unison.
Shin'en released another cloud of smoke. "Being the supreme deity of so many things, Chaos has the power to just delete dimensions. Poof, gone, like they'd never existed, along with all the beings that were living in that dimension."
"He can just…do that?" Jason asked, clearly dazed and lightheaded.
"Yes. Scary, isn't it? That there's a god out there than can just snap his fingers and completely destroy entire realities."
Jason and Piper sank to the foot of the stairs.
"If it makes you feel any better," Shin'en said, "Chaos did kill the other Piper when he deleted the other dimension, so you could say she got her dues for breaking the other Jason's heart and getting him killed."
That was no comfort at all the reeling couple.
Persephone shifted awkwardly. "That was the reason I came here. I, uh, wanted to check in on you guys…make sure you weren't about to do something stupid to Jason…"
Piper shook her head. "I would never do that to Jason."
"So the Multiverse theory is true?" Jason asked quietly.
"In short order, yes," Shin'en answered.
"Then isn't there some dimension out there where this conversation isn't taking place?"
"Maybe so, maybe not. The Multiverse doesn't actually work in the sense that Person A decides to wear a red shirt, but then an alternate dimension is spawned into existence if Person A decided to wear a blue shirt instead. No, alternate dimensions are created only when big differences occur. For example, Thalia being a child of Poseidon, Jason a child of Neptune, Persephone being a child of Zeus, and Piper being a child of Athena."
"…woah," Jason eventually blinked.
"That is equally fascinating and horrifying to contemplate," Piper said.
Persephone nodded. "So…yeah. Sorry to just drop in unannounced, but it looks like you guys have it handled. That's great! Percy and I have a few more things to finish up, so we'll get out of your hair now."
"Hey, hold on," Piper said. "What other things? Are those Triumvirate guys a thing here in our world?"
"Not anymore," Persephone said proudly. "Percy and I found them here and killed them. Their master plan was to control Apollo's four oracles and-"
"Four?" Jason asked. "I thought there was only Delphi."
Piper shook her head. "No, there's four. Delphi is the most well-known, but there was also the Cave of Trophonius, the Sibyl of Erythraea, and the Sybil of Cumae. There's also an oracle even older than them, one that wasn't Apollo's, and it was the Grove of Dodona. It belonged to Rhea, Zeus's mom."
Jason and Seph stared at her, while Shin'en had a brow arched.
"What?" Piper demanded. "I can do research into my Greek heritage to. It's not like we have to rely on Annabeth for spur of the moment history lessons."
"Okay, fair," Persephone said. "Well, the Grove is in the backwoods of CHB, so it's safe. My brother over here managed to kill the Sybil of Cumae-" And then the twins had to explain Sutro Tower, Harpocrates, and Shin'en had to take over with the history between Apollo and Cumae "-which leaves only the Erythraean Sybil, and the Cave. I'm pretty sure the Cave is safe, because it's inside the Bluespring Caverns outside Indiana, where Commodus was. The Sybil is inside the Labyrinth somewhere, and Python is in Greece with the original Delphi. Won't be too hard."
"The Labyrinth!?" Jason balked at the same Piper released a strangled squawk of her own, "Python!?"
Persephone nodded slowly. "Yes, I just said that."
"Give us a couple minutes to get dressed, and we'll help," Jason said, standing up with Piper who nodded in agreement.
"Your help isn't needed," Shin'en said. "We can handle this just fine. We've already killed the three emperors, and we fought all the Titans and all the Giants, along with armies of monsters, and also Tartarus himself. You two stay here and enjoy each other's company. Maybe finally become adults and have sex."
Piper and Jason both turned scarlet while Persephone blanched.
"Percy Jackson!" she shouted, then she turned to the couple. "I am so sorry about him. He's usually not this-"
"Yes, I am."
"Not helping!"
"I'm not aiming to be helpful. I'm aiming to be honest. These two would only get in our way and slow us down."
"Hey-" Jason tried, but Shin'en's eyes flashed red for a second.
Jason and Piper's eyes glazed over.
Thanks to the Mist and divine side of things, Shin'en could use his Sharingan to alter the Mist in the same way the Sharingan could induce genjutsu. Mist-based genjutsu, if you will, and it worked just like normal genjutsu.
Piper and Jason quietly trudged back up the stairs to Piper's room.
Persephone crossed her arms. "Seriously?"
"Yes. Now they won't be in any danger, and you and I are free to operate as we need. Do you want to argue with me over that, or do you want to get back to work?"
Persephone huffed. "Whatever. Where in the Labyrinth is the Sybil?"
"Don't know, but I know where the main entrance to the section of the Labyrinth she's being held in is at."
"Then let's go."
Shin'en set his hand on his sister's shoulder, and water-traveled them both to said entrance.
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The entrance to the particular section of the Labyrinth affectionately referred to as the Burning Maze was located in one of the many nondescript areas of downtown LA, right in front of an abandoned parking garage. However, magic was obviously at play, and so the rolling door that would typically lead to the parking area actually led into the Maze.
Said door was guarded by half a dozen pandai disguised as street bums, and precisely thirty-six more were hiding amongst the garages higher floors. There were also a number of pandai up on the rooftops of nearby buildings, with a few more within those buildings at the windows overlooking the entrance. In total, there were sixty pandai guarding the entrance to the Burning Maze.
Shin'en and Persephone materialized right in front of the door.
The sizeable guard detail were caught completely by surprise, but even if they had seen the twins coming from a mile away, it still wouldn't have mattered. Just like in the other world, when Persephone had fought Caligula and his army of pandai, and she had simply destroyed the whole army with bloodbending, she did the same here.
All sixty pandai erupted into dust when Persephone ruptured their hearts.
Chakra threads latched onto the door to the Maze, and with a curl of his fist, Shin'en ripped the door out of the way.
Persephone blinked. "What are you, Magneto?"
"Chakra threads," Shin'en answered. He put a little more oomph into his chakra, and the typically invisible strands became visible as emerald green lengths extending from his fingertips to the discarded door. "When you spend enough time around Sasori, you learn a few things."
"Sasori…isn't he the bomb guy?"
"That's Deidara."
"If that's Deidara, then who's the guy with the threads and the faces?"
"Kakuzu."
"Oh~," Persephone said as understanding came upon her in that moment.
The twins descended into the Burning Maze in late January.
"This place feels a lot tamer compared to the last time I was here," Persephone noted.
"Wishful thinking," Shin'en said. "This place is like a psychopath released from prison on good behavior. It's not that he's reformed and a better person now, but that he's more careful in how he acts so he doesn't get locked up again. The Labyrinth is just as malicious as it's always been, but it's more subtle now. Keep your guard up."
Persephone nodded. "Okay."
They walked along the downward corridor lit by overhead lights for a bit longer before things started to literally heat up.
"Do you feel that?" Persephone asked.
"The essence of Helios," Shin'en answered. "The Titan of the Sun. Medea's supposed to be summoning him from Tartarus so she can channel him and whatever was left of Apollo's godly essence into Caligula to make him the new sun god."
"Except Apollo hasn't gotten here yet, and Caligula is dead."
"Correct."
"So she's going through all this effort for nothing."
"Not entirely. She may have already learned about the fall of the Triumvirate, and is now attempting to use Helios for her own means."
"Aren't they somehow related?"
"Yes. Medea is the niece of Circe, and Circe is the daughter of Helios."
"So he's her great-uncle?"
"Pretty much."
"We have a very weird family."
"Indeed. Many of them were certain, and some still are, that you and I were going to get married and have children together."
Persephone came to a screeching halt. "Excuse me!?"
Shin'en turned to look at her, and shrugged. "Incest is a big thing on Dad's side. They figured the trend would continue."
"But that's—but you're my—ewww!"
"Agreed."
Persephone shuddered as if a snake was slithering up her back. "I need to disinfect my brain after this. How are you not completely creeped out just by the thought of us having sex?"
"Persephone," Shin'en said shortly, "I have seen little boys and girls explode from the inside because a mutated insect stuck its ovipositor inside their rectums, and filled them full of eggs. The thought of us having sex is actually quite tame, and sometimes extremely preferable, compared to the many other sexual acts I have had the staggering displeasure of witnessing."
Persephone shifted and swallowed hard. She knew he was referring to the Blood War—the illegal sex rings of the Land of Water, who have you covered—and she wasn't happy. The most horrific time in his life, where he was exposed to things not even Hades would use for his most creative tortures in the Fields of Punishment, and Persephone was completely unable to help her little brother in any way.
"Let's go," she grumbled. "We still have a snake to take care of after this."
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When Apollo went through the Burning Maze, he had to solve a number of crossword puzzles in order to create bridges over Helios's furiously churning essence in order to make it from one chamber to another. For the twins, they only had to jump from ledge to ledge, and if one was too far for Persephone, she just water-traveled over to it.
The reason why Helios didn't attack them from below was because this was late January. When Apollo did it, it was late March. There was still a solid two months of essence missing from the twins' adventure through the Burning Maze, and Apollo's. There literally wasn't enough of Helios to attack the twins.
Soon enough, the twins found themselves in the heart of the Burning Maze, where Herophile the Erythraean Sibyl was being held captive, and also conveniently where Medea was busy dredging up Helios's essence from Tartarus.
"And she's not even paying attention," Persephone muttered.
Without any kind of second thought, she water-traveled behind the sorceress and lopped off her head with a single stroke of Riptide. Medea didn't even know what happened. With the sorceress gone, Helios's essence drained back into Tartarus without a trace, which also ended the rampaging wildfires across Southern California.
"Oh, my gods, thank you!" Herophile gushed. She gestured at the toilet bolted to her platform. "That crazy bitch kept wanting to stand over me every time I needed to use that!"
Persephone's nose wrinkled. "Gross."
She turned her attention to the Oracle, noting how her chains appeared to be made of molten metal. She raised Riptide and swung down, but Herophile cried, "Wait!"
In a great display of muscular control, Persephone stopped her arm dead but a few millimeters from the chain. "Yeah?"
"If you break them like that, they'll reform and ensnare you as well. That's the spell Medea put on them."
"But she's dead now."
"But her magic remains."
"That's not supposed to be how magic works," Persephone grumbled. "It's supposed to go that once the caster dies, any spells they cast die with them."
Herophile shrugged helplessly.
"Hery, Percy!" Persephone called to her brother, turning around only to flinch at seeing him right behind her. "Stop doing that! Anyway, how do we get these chains off? There's a spell on them."
Shin'en's right eye glowed red, and there was the sound of a distant wolf's howl accompanied by a shock of white wind that attacked the molten chains. The chains instantly lost all heat, as in all heat, every last iota of a Joule, going straight to the value of Absolute Zero, a temperature so cold that that the nucleus of the atom ceased to vibrate and the electrons stopped bouncing around. The atomic structure harmlessly broke apart and shattered to nothing, and this resulted in the chains, and the magic that altered them, crumbling away.
Before anything else could happen, Shin'en grabbed his sister and the Oracle, and water-traveled them out of the Labyrinth.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The twins more or less just dumped Herophile on the legion all the way within the Berkeley Hills, since there was no Aeithales yet since Meg hadn't returned to the cistern like in canon. Persephone gave Reyna the shortest explanation she could, promising to explain more later, and then she and her brother were once again on the move, this time traveling to the other side of the planet to Delphi.
"Who's there?" Python's incredibly deep voice rumbled through the huge cavern.
As his body shifted, the cavern shuddered even more, a hefty rain of pebbles descending from above.
"Your friendly neighborhood Spiderman," Shin'en said flatly.
Python's head swiveled around to face the demigod, and the serpent's whole body went even whiter than it usually was. "Uh-oh."
In a fantastic display of agility for his enormous size, Python drive to drive straight into a crevice in the ground that was behind his head, altering his body to do so. For his troubles, a skeletal hand colored emerald grabbed him by the tail, yanked him up, and tossed him into the air. Shin'en's Susano'o shrouded him, and formed in its hands was his ranged weapon, the Epirus Bow. An arrow formed when the hand drew back the string, and there was a shockwave that broke several stalactites and stalagmites upon release.
The chakra arrow destroyed Python upon impact.
Persephone came to stand next to her brother as his Susano'o dissipated. "Is that it? The whole Imperial War? Nero, Commodus, Caligula, Medea, and Python?"
"There's a few loose ends, like Apollo, Margaret McCaffrey, Trophonius, some other, but that's most of it, yeah."
"Hasn't even been two hours."
"That's what happens when you have power and a drive to use it."
"Yeah."
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The twins decided to go home in Manhattan first, and then go back to New Rome to square things away with Herophile. However, other things came up first.
The twins materialized in front of the apartment door, and Shin'en went rigid as a length of steel rebar.
"What? What's wrong?" Persephone demanded. She expanded her senses into the apartment, and her brow furrowed when she felt a girl on the couch that wasn't Annabeth, a girl that was having an animated conversation with Sally and Paul while dinner was cooking. "Who's-"
Shin'en barely had the decency to open the door as opposed to tearing through it. He rounded the corner to the living room, and he hoped his eyes weren't deceiving him.
Straight, flowing blonde hair.
Cobalt blue eyes that had seen many terrible things.
A slim, perfect, athletic body with healthy peach skin.
A black bra, a burnt orange kimono that was black around the shoulders, the left lapel pulled over the right, loose, comfortable pants the same shade as the kimono, and geta sandals.
She had chakra, a lot of it, and a humongous source of secondary chakra as well.
It was her.
"Naruko."
The Jinchuuriki looked at Shin'en, smiled, and gave him a peace sign. "Hey, Percy."
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And that was the entire Trials of Apollo in a single chapter.
And Naruko's here, yay!
I have no idea what I'm going to update next.
As for this one, please Fav, Follow, and Review!