Ya'll know the drill! This isn't a new fic, but it could be
Currently just an old drafted one shot that I thought was fun and wanted to see how you guys feel about it. Needed a brief break from my other fics because my brain was cooked!
Percy Jackson lives a hard but good life. A great life.
A hero's life
Then, he dies.
...
Only, he lives again.
Blinking his green eyes open in realization, a four-year-old Percy tilts his head as his memories finally reaffirm themselves in his psyche (and a little deeper than that), and all the important bits more or less come back to him throughout a single night as he lies in his cot in his orphanage bedroom in Shinjuku, Tokyo Japan.
Huh.
Strangely, he's not so torn up about it.
There's a certain level of disconnect there, and he'll realize it eventually. He remembers his life as the son of Sally Jackson (Mom) and Poseidon the Earthshaker (Dad),
He remembers friends
Grover, Tyson, Thalia, Nico, Jason-
The names stretch on.
Annabeth.
But it's all fuzzy. When he considers them, there's no sadness, no grief, even though he knows with soul-deep certainty (literally) that he'll never see them again.
There's just... warm nostalgia, the kind you get when you reminisce over happy memories, and a serene acceptance no ordinary four-year-old should have.
But ordinary was boring, and Percy had never been ordinary, and never much wanted to be, even though it would have probably made his life a lot quieter.
Previous life, anyway.
This one was a clean slate. He's kind of curious about how it'll turn out, actually, given that he's also certain that he's not a demigod.
(There are no more gods. Not like before - this he knows)
Something in him is fundamentally different - but not quite ordinary.
Should be fun to figure out.
Then he turns over, fluffs his pillow a bit and slumps to sleep.
...
The first conscious years of his second go at life aren't half bad, if Percy does say so himself.
Not everyone would agree with him, though.
He'd spent one childhood being a problem child - ADHD and smelling like catnip to mythological monsters that stalked every nook and cranny would do that - and despite an honest effort on his part, he doesn't quite manage to escape the label this time around either.
Part of it is that growing up in an environment in Tokyo is nothing like Manhattan. There are different societal norms, different ways of life, and just different ways of functioning that diverge right from the orphanage-mandated preschool and up.
He's a tad too independent - he likes to do things on his own, mainly because he knows he's perfectly capable, but everyone around him either doesn't get or doesn't care for it and he earns a reputation as a troublemaker right from the get-go.
The fact that he's a foreigner and he looks like it both helps and doesn't - he doesn't quite fit in, people know it, he knows it, and being clearly non-native is as good an excuse as any.
The second big reason is that, contrary to his first belief, this world isn't nearly as devoid of monsters as he'd thought - and yeah, hoped.
Hah. Not even close.
They're everywhere.
Small, blobs of darkness weighing, twisted malformed creatures trailing after unsuspecting victims, or even worse abominations hiding in the shadows, in nooks and crannies where they could bide their time and wait to pounce.
Percy figures out pretty quickly that not only is he the one person in the world around him who seems to realize they exist, but that acknowledging them is just like pouring kerosene on a fire.
At the slightest hint of eye contact, the ugly things quickly go from eyesores to nuisances.
They start coming after him like they have a grudge.
Percy naturally responds to this threat to his bodily integrity in the most reasonable way he can possibly manage.
He starts punching the crap out of everything.
Seriously, it's downright cathartic.
His fists burst the monsters like balloons, and even the larger - one had been the size of a car, and he'd barely been eight- barely phased him.
As soon as he figures out the game, Percy develops quite the taste for hunting these things down and clearing them out of existence.
Probably a holdover from his demigod days, and it wasn't as if anyone was complaining. The more he eradicated the clearly malicious things, the lighter the folks in the surroundings they'd stalked and infested seemed to grow, the happier and healthier and safer.
After he made that connection, there was just no stopping him.
And hey, if he immediately started missing curfew, sneaking out and giving his caretakers continuous heart palpitations on his impromptu quests to clear the surrounding neighborhood of all things foul and grossly squishy, then needs must.
...
There's something missing, he realizes along the way.
One day, he looks down at his fists one day and acknowledges that there's an odd wrongness that overcomes him when he fights.
It almost feels like he's doing it all wrong, but for the life of him, he just can't figure it out.
Not quite yet.
...
It all comes to a head a few weeks after he turns fifteen, on a dark and lonely night.
Only, this night is different.
He's just snuck out to go out on another impromptu pest control mission when it happens.
It's as his walking past a particularly shoddy lane that he senses it, and it makes the hair on the back of his neck rise up in warning.
Monster.
Only this one was different.
Much, much stronger than the bog-standard runts he dealt with his whole life. He wasn't sure how he knew, exactly, but he could feel it in his teeth.
Powerful, dangerous and deadly.
And coming right at him.
The moment he makes that realization, something absolutely enormous bursts out of the nearest alleyway with an unholy screech.
Now, Percy's seen ugly.
But the mutated, half-humanoid and half-horse-like creature that slides to a stop before him and rounds on him with three grotesque and mismatched heads has got to be a clear winner.
It stands on four legs, its flesh is veiny and bulbous, and dark purple to boot. It's flank is long and wretchedly twisted, and there are additional limbs and eyes riddling it like they'd been sewed on. It's three maws drip streams of drool, and it smells like a skunk's ass crossed with an old gas station restroom.
Truly horrifying stuff.
"He's going to leave me!" The thing screams and advances on him, and he crouches down at the ready. "He's going to forget me!"
Before Percy can respond to that - mainly by recommending some freaking therapy in whatever afterlife he's about to send it to - a figure in black flies out the alleyway and rams into the thing with force and a strange that makes Percy's spine stiffen in instinctive recognition.
He's like me.
Percy stares at the tall, broad-shouldered man as he knocks the thing away with enough power that the impact generates a burst of air that blows back his hair, and he keeps staring in stunned surprise as he immediately notices him and pales.
"Run!" The man went to roar, and he made the deadly mistake of turning his back to the thing he'd just toppled.
It's just for a second, but the creature immediately surges to its feet, stretching out arms tipped with bone blades ready to cleave the man in two-
And Percy-
He doesn't think. He doesn't hesitate.
He just moves.
The power swells and erupts erupts in a way it never had before even as he erupts off the ground, the concrete quivering and splintering beneath his feat as he rockets forward.
Not on his watch.
The man's eyes widen, but he doesn't have a chance to move - he can't - as Percy all but soars past him and cocks back his fist to strike.
...
In any and every life, Percy Jackson is and always will be a hero at heart.
...
When his fist meets monstrous flesh, it's not just an impact.
It's an explosion.
His vision whites out, and then is, for an instant, consumed by a shower of black and red sparks, and the monster just dies.
Its body breaks apart even as it's blasted off its feet and straight up, and by the time it lands across the street, it's already half-dissolved into nothingness. The stench and presence of it fade beneath a far superior power.
It's in the aftermath of those brilliant sparks of black that he reclaims the first piece of his power.
He only notices it when his chest stops heaving and the adrenaline and power stop surging through his brain in a current that's far superior to any drug-induced high imaginable.
Absolute clarity eventually fades, and when it does, Percy realizes that he's standing in a puddle of water that hadn't been there before.
He goes still in shock.
Surely not.
But it is exactly what he thinks it is, and he knows even before his nose picks up the faint and achingly familiar scent of sea salt. Acting on instinct, he raises a hand.
At his feet, the puddle shifts, and the water rises at his command.
His soul sings, and Percy grins.
"Hell yes!"
That's about the point where he remembers that he's not alone.
...
All the while, First-grade sorcerer Masamichi Yaga stares up at the boy who'd acted to save him, still half-petrified from the sheer ocean of cursed energy wafting off him in waves so thick he fears it might drown him.
He just punched out a first grade, and did it by landing a black flash.
All in one move.
And then said boy seems to realize that he's still very much there, because he rounds on him, A half-nervous, half-wary smile on his face.
Foreign, Yaga realizes dimly as he meets that face and those sea-green eyes.
"Evening, stranger-san." The boy rubs the back of his head sheepishly, seemingly just as lost as he is. Still, there's something downright thrilled in his tone. "Wild night, eh?"
Yaga blinks.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
And then something in his mind snaps.
What in the absolute f-!
And it begins.
...
Yaga, already pre cognitively getting vibes of the sheer bullshit Percy is going to put him /vhVqzUL
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