Making It Up as We Go Along

As promised, another chapter of Voidwalker to mark the end of my break period.

Now, just how long has it been since this story was updated? Well, the previous chapter has my dissenting opinion from the May of 2022 over the choice to cast Leah Jeffries as Annabeth Chase.

Which is obviously over a year ago.

Wow.

But I was busy with other fanfics, particularly the Piper fic.

Oh, yeah. For those that don't know, I wrote a fic about the missing time between Burning Maze and Tower of Nero that covers what happened to Piper to where she went from grieving over Jason to kissing Shel on the rooftop.

Didn't get that much attention, and it probably turned off whomever remained of my fanbase because of such a long absence.

Of all the people that have Followed and Fav'd this story, I truthfully don't know how many remain to read this chapter.

Time will soon tell.

Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or Dishonored

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In canon, Thalia was deathly afraid of heights, and this caused her to panic as she drove the Sun Bus. In this panicked state of mind, she nearly incinerated New England, and finally crashed the Bus into the canoe lake at Camp Half-Blood.

In this canon, Thalia was once Empress Emily Kaldwin the Wise, and that came with a large degree of experience in keeping calm and composed even while stressed and under pressure. As such, Thalia, while still irrationally afraid of heights, maintained her cool as she drove the Sun Bus and gently set it down without setting fire to half of the camp with Apollo's help in landing procedures.

"Wow!" Apollo praised his much younger half-sister. "That was some of the greatest driving I've seen in a first-timer, well, ever! If you ever want to drive the Sun Chariot again, give me a prayer and a sacrifice, and I'll see what I can do."

Thalia smiled. "Thank you, ah, Brother."

"Brother, eh? You know…we could be…more…if you would—yikes!"

A hail of magic thorns came flying up from a seat further back to blast the windshield to pieces.

"Sorry!" Percy called. "Nico wanted to see me blow a load, and I wasn't paying attention to where I was aiming!"

A collective groan sounded from the Hunters, Bianca, Thalia, and Grover all palming their faces, while Nico was completely confused as to why everyone was so negative.

He thought it was cool watching Percy blow his load.

"I see," Apollo coughed. He waved his hand and repaired his windshield. "Well, I have to be off. Sunrise for the rest of the United States is due in, oh, a few minutes. Everyone off!"

The sun god was so incensed with Percy's cockblocking that he didn't say a word to any of the Hunters, or offer to help them unload their stuff. Within two minutes, everyone was off Apollo's Sun Chariot, and the sun god was flying away to bring the morning light to the rest of the continent.

"Thanks," Thalia breathed. "He was really about to make a move on me."

"Gods are disgusting," Percy chirped. "Pedophilic incest and all that."

Nico tugged on Bianca's sleeve. "What's pedophilic mean? And what's incest?"

Bianca turned white as the snow that covered the camp ground.

"Have fun with that," Zoe said. "Hunters! To the cabin! Time to start preparing for our traditional game of the Capture the Flag, because there will be much preparing this time around."

The Hunters marched off to Cabin 8.

"What does that mean?" Percy asked.

Grover shifted. "Every time the Hunters come to camp, there's a…uh…friendly...game of CTF. They always win, from what I've been told, being a bunch of immortal warriors with decades, hundreds, and even thousands of years of combat experience, but I guess Zoe is feeling like she's going to need to put forth some extra effort into the game this time since she expects you three to play for Camp Half-Blood."

Percy looked at the girls. "Are we?"

Bianca shrugged. "I suppose. Sounds like a good opportunity to see how I match up against some powerful opponents in this world."

"I guess I'll play," Thalia shrugged. "I think I'll just do guard duty, though. I don't really feel like going on the offensive right now. Feeling kind of lethargic."

"Okay," Percy said. "I'm gonna wreck their shit."

"Hey!" Bianca shouted as she clamped her hands on either side of Nico's head. "There are little ears here!"

Percy blinked. "Um, okay."

"No kill the Hunters, Percy," Thalia stressed. "And certainly no harvesting their bones for experiments."

"Awwww!"

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Poor Chiron was having Vietnam flashbacks to the last time the Hunters were here 50 years ago, and they decided to burn down the cabins. That event created a big stink amongst the Olympians, their representative cabins being burned to the ground by Artemis's maidens, and many gods demanded Zeus punish her or her maidens or both.

Ultimately, Zeus made the Hunters rebuild the cabins and levied a temporary ban on the Hunters from entering the camp, but the ban ended five years ago.

Now Chiron was trying not to bite his nails over the fact that Hunters were back, and they looked even grumpier than last time.

"Do relax, old friend," Dionysus said nonchalantly. "I will be more active this time around."

Considering the last time he had just sat there sipping 1950s Coca-Cola that actually had cocaine in it.

"Oh, thank you," Chiron breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

"Yes, I would hate for Percy to turn any of the Hunters into a science project, and then have to watch as Poseidon got between him and Artemis."

Dionysus sipped his coke as he studied his magazine, ignoring the look Chiron was sending him.

Now the centaur was unsure of the wine dude's sincerity regarding his involvement, and was now thinking he may try to instigate something for the sake of watching divine drama play out.

Clearing his throat, Chiron addressed the gathered demigods and Hunters. "Heroes! We have honored guests with us here tonight, the Hunters of Artemis! After dinner, we will be moving on to our customary game of friendly Capture the Flag. The same rules apply to this game as our standards games. Any questions?"

Percy raised his hand. "Are there any rules about killing them?"

"If you intentionally kill a Hunter, you will lose your dessert privileges for the next seven days."

"Okay. What about maiming? Like cutting off their arms and/or legs?"

Thalia palmed her face. "Percy, we talked about this. No bone harvesting."

"I don't want their bones," he returned innocently.

"And no muscles, internal organs, or anything like that!"

"Okay," Percy said simply.

Thalia eyeballed him.

Chiron made a mental note to revise the rule about murder. There really needed to be a stricter punishment for campers that intentionally killed their fellows. Camp was supposed to be a safe haven for them to train and learn how to survive; not be even more deadly and dangerous than the rest of the world.

The Hunters didn't seem too pleased that the only thing keeping them protected from Percy harvesting their bodies for whatever witchy things he wanted to do with them was the loss of dessert.

Dinner ended soon enough, and the strategy of Camp Half-Blood was simply to let Percy handle it. They could still only have two guards around the flag at a certain distance, so the general consensus was to play pure defense.

No one knew what the Hunters had up their sleeve to counteract Percy, but there was that one Huntress, Lucy, who looked way too happy about something.

The two parties marched off to the woods, and Thalia set her hand firmly upon Percy's shoulder. "I mean it, Percy. No killing or maiming."

Percy grinned at her. "I mean, if you knew what I knew about some of them, you'd want me to kill them."

That honestly left Thalia a little rattled. She knew that Percy's heart was inhabited by his mother's spirit, just like her own mother's once did (though not literally like in Percy's case), and as such, through her link to the Void, Sally could tell Percy all about anyone he met…except for Lucy, apparently.

That Hunter honestly crept Thalia out.

Back to what Percy said, though. Just what had Sally told him about the Hunters? What skeletons sat in their closets? What crimes had they committed to where Percy, knowing she was once the Empress, knowing where her moral compass pointed, firmly believed that she would let him kill them based on their past actions?

Thalia honestly didn't want to know, because she didn't want to get wrapped up in another episode of Zeus's idea of divine judgement.

At the sound of the conch horn, Percy simply vanished and then reappeared with the Hunter's flag, prompting the conch horn to continue blowing for an extended period of time.

Thalia stared at him. "You had a Displacement marker set up before we even finished walking over here, didn't you?"

Percy happily bobbed his head up and down, then he frowned. "That Lucy one is weird."

"How so?"

"She was able to see me and talk to me while I was using Foresight."

Thalia went cold as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. "Is she also a Voidwalker?"

Percy shook his head. "No. She's just…weird."

Okay, if Percy was considering someone to be weird, then that was someone Thalia wanted no part of.

An irate Zoe came stomping through the brush within a minute. "You!" she hissed, pointing a demanding finger at Percy as she stomped up to him. "What in Gaea was that!?"

"Mummy."

Zoe balked. "Excuse me? What did you just call me?"

Percy pointed. "Mummy."

Zoe looked, and she paled considerably at the sight of the shriveled-up Oracle who was looking at her with her empty eye sockets. Zoe took a few steps away, hoping the head would stay focused on either Thalia or Percy, but it didn't. No matter where Zoe moved, the head turned to follow her, even turning all the way around in a circle without moving its body as Zoe walked around the poor woman.

With a sigh, Zoe approached the Oracle. "What was so important that you walked all the way down from the attic to the middle of the woods?"

The Oracle came to life, eyes glowing green, green mist pouring from its mouth.

Take the Voidwalkers West

The satyr's nose works best

That's all there is to it

I don't get paid enough for this continuity

The Oracle promptly shut down after that one.

"What was that about?" Percy asked.

Zoe pinched the bridge of her nose. "It means I have to take you, Thalia, Bianca, and a satyr-"

"Ooh, ooh! Me! Pick me! I'll go!"

"Take you, Thalia, Bianca, and Grover Underwood on a journey to the West because, if the dream I had during my nap earlier was anything to go by, Lady Artemis has been captured."

Everyone who heard that let out a sharp gasp.

Then there was Percy. "Darn."

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Thirty minutes later, Zoe was driving away from camp in the Delphi Strawberry Service van, Grover sitting shotgun, the girls behind him in the second row, and Percy was in the back playing with himself.

As in he'd summoned a Doppelganger was playing rock, paper, scissors, Jesus, Satan, gun, dynamite, lizard, Spock, lightning, sponge, dragon, air, water, wolf, tree, fire, and snake. Zoe had no idea that such a simple three-way game could get so massively complicated, but it was keeping him busy, so she didn't care.

The girls were trading stories, since Bianca was technically Thalia's aunt, since Thalia was Emily Kaldwin and Bianca was Beatrici Attano, Emily's paternal aunt, and Grover was that kind of guy that talked on and on and on and had no idea no one was paying attention to him.

It helped Zoe not think about how she was in an enclosed space with three of the deadliest, most powerful people on the whole planet right now. All of them being occupied with something allowed her to focus on the road all the way from Montauk to Washington DC. A typical six-hour drive with good traffic, and Zoe made it in under five hours without stopping.

Granted, everyone was hungry and needed to the bathroom after they made it to the American capital, but it wasn't like the National Mall was short on facilities. After everyone had emptied their bladders and colons and filled their stomachs, it was the supreme question of what they did next.

"Grover?" Zoe prompted. "Your nose led us here; whereto now?"

Grover sniffed the air, and pointed at the Aerospace Museum. "I smell something coming from there."

Everyone followed Grover to the plane building, Percy using Foresight to go flying through the walls, where he found Luke, some big bald guy, and a bunch of other dudes doing a thing with teeth. Now, time was stopped during the usage of Foresight, but it was established already that Luke was unaffected by that bit of magic.

Curiously, the big bald guy was.

"Hey, Luke."

"Hey, Percy. What're you doing here?"

"Looking for Artemis. Is she here?"

"No."

"Okay. Do you know where she is?"

"Yep."

"You gonna tell me?"

"Nope."

"Are you still on this Kronos kick about he'll save the world or something?"

"To be fair, it's not like the Olympians are doing anything good in the world. Supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and whatever else there is, but they're more concerned with partying, going to concerts, and fucking anything with a hole, or making a hole to fuck if there's not one already, than they are about, you know, child sex trafficking, corrupt governments, crime, poverty, pollution, and so on. The Olympians are literal tyrants and despots, my friend."

"And Kronos and the Titans are going to be better?"

"I mean, hopefully. All we know about the Titans is what the Olympians allowed to be written down about them. History is written by the victors and all that."

"So it's a faith thing? You're hoping and believing the Titans aren't actually the monsters the Olympians say they are?"

"Yeah. Like Christians are hoping and believing that Jesus really is the Messiah and that he died and rose again on the third day in order to take away the sins of the world."

"You ever wondered whether your faith is misplaced?"

"Yeah," Luke admitted. "This guy is Atlas and he's been…questionable. As have some of the other Titans I've met. I'm in too deep now, though. Oath of loyalty on the Styx."

"Oh. I'll see what I can do."

Luke looked at him. "Huh?"

"I'll see what I can do about getting you released from your oath."

"Well, uh, thanks? I guess. But even if you do that, I'm still sticking with the Titans. The Olympians have proven time and time again that they need to be done away with."

"Well, duh. Zeus tried to kill my brother and sister. I'm not letting that go. But I'm not helping the Titans."

Luke stared up at Percy. "Does this…make us allies, or something?"

Percy shrugged. "I don't know. But you're Thalia and Annabeth's friend, so I'm not going to kill you unless I really have to."

"Oh! Uh…thanks."

"You're welcome!" Percy chirped. "What's Atlas doing?"

"He trying to resurrect a group of Sparti. Immortal skeleton warriors that can only be killed by children of Hades, so unless you have a child of Hades-"

"Bianca."

"-you're going to be perfectly okay. Thalia's with you, right?"

"Yeah. Want me to say something to her?"

Luke went into heavy thought about it. "Tell her…tell her…tell her that I'm sorry, but unless she has a better idea, I need to do this."

"Okay. And you said Artemis isn't here?"

"That's correct. Just keep heading West. Zoe already knows."

Percy looked at Atlas, and he heard his Momma speak to him. "This guy is Zoe's dad?"

"Bingo."

"Cool. Thanks!"

"Don't mention it."

Percy returned to his body. "Hey, Zoe?"

"Yes, Percy?"

"Artemis isn't here."

"You cased the place with your powers?"

"Uh-huh."

Zoe sighed. "Did you find any clues as to where she might be?"

"Luke said to keep heading West because you already know where she is. Also, your dad is here."

All the color on Zoe's face vanished. "O-Oh."

Thalia lurched. "Luke? My Luke? He's here?"

"Yeah. He told me to tell you he's sorry, and unless you have a better idea, then he has to keep helping the Titans on the good faith that they will deliver on their promises of holding the Olympians accountable for their thousands of years of misdeeds."

It was quiet between the quintet until Zoe coughed into her fist.

"I honestly would not mind if Zeus faced some punishment. He has raped so many of my sisters over the millennia…"

The quintet heard weird chittering accompanied by the sound of boots. They looked and saw the Sparti, and true to Luke's word, they were skeleton warriors with translucent grey skin, wearing security guard outfits.

"Those are Sparti!" Zoe gasped. "They can only be killed by Hades, other gods, or his children!"

Percy linked the seven skeletons with Domino, and Bianca conjured a black spear with her own powers. She chunked it with expert precision from years of experience, nailed the lead Spartus in the forehead, and the seven monsters exploded into ash.

Zoe's shoulders slumped. "Well. Okay then."

Bianca looked at Zoe. "Your dad's here?"

"Which means we need to leave. Right now."

"Where would we be going?"

"California," Zoe answered. "Mt. Tamalpais. Or rather, the current home for Mt. Othrys, the place where the sky meets the earth."

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Okay, yeah, short chapter, really disappointing after more than a year, but I'm not feeling this one right now. I don't even really know where it's going, other than I'm apparently laying the groundwork for Percy to more or less, sorta kinda, overthrow Zeus for that stunt he pulled with Tea and Bell.

My personal favorite scene in this chapter was the back-and-forth between Percy and Luke.

As for what's next…I don't know.

Sea Devil still needs to be finished, but I am still not sure where that one is going either, or how to get there.

Transcendence needs to be picked up, too.

There's also Promised Year that I still have a number of fun ideas for.

Not to mention all the sequels to the stories I've already finished that I could start on, and the other two stories I've been talking about for over a year now.

The Backup Plan/RWBY crossover eight years in the making, and the Elden Ring crossover.

The RWBY crossover has been running through my head for a while now, and so has the Elden Ring one. The Convergence mod dropped somewhat recently, bringing lots of new spells and weapons, and the DLC is coming out one of these days, so that's something to think about.

Urgh, so many projects, so many I'm currently working on, and so many I want to start. No idea which direction to go in.

I'm welcome and open to suggestions.

Fav, Follow, and Review please!