AN: So I was just starting my update of The Last King, my PJO/ Game of Thrones story, when I started having annoying story ideas. Some of these story ideas have been annoying me for a while, so I said screw it and decided to write one of them out to see how it looks.
Looking at it now I am not sure, it could be a fun idea. I've tried the premise before, and it sort of worked there, but then I deleted the story, it was a Harry Potter one, and I fell out of love with the fandom. But then this story came to mind and I thought I would play around with it, and since I have it I thought why not publish it and see what other people think.
Now this is done though and out of the way, I am going to go back to updating my existing stories, some of which haven't had some love for a couple of months now. Hope you're all doing well and enjoy this cheeky prologue/ teaser/ whatever it'll end up being.
Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson, as if I did then I would definitely have wanted an animated tv show in the style of Legend of Korra, than a live-action show.
Edit: I've aged the characters up a little.
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Chapter One
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(With Percy)
Opening his eyes, Percy Jackson lurched forward in shock.
"What?!" Percy gasped out raggedly, his heart thundering in his chest as his sea-green eyes flicked around the room, quickly taking in his unfamiliar surroundings in shock.
He was in a shabby-looking bedroom with peeling wallpaper and a battered-looking old desk, wardrobe and dresser, each of which looked like they should have been thrown out years ago.
Pawing at his chest with one hand, Percy quickly looked down at his chest trying to inspect the horrific injury he had just been dealt only minutes previously.
There was nothing there.
No pain, no blood and no wound, and for that matter, he felt his breathing sharpen slightly, his chest was nowhere near as broad and defined as he remembered either.
Instead, it was narrow and dare he say it slightly scrawny...
His eyes widened in shock and he almost fell out of bed as he threw off his ratty covers, and tried to stand only for his kneecaps to painfully hit the floor as he almost immediately lost his balance and collapsed forward onto his hands and knees.
"What's going on?" Percy muttered only to feel himself freeze as he heard his voice. It was slightly higher than he remembered and seemed to be in the middle of breaking.
That was definitely not right, after all the last he remembered he was eighteen years old and was well on his way to becoming a man.
He certainly wasn't still going through puberty, nor did he have such a weak, weedy build.
No, instead he'd had a warrior's build, one that he had built up and developed through years of practice and training.
Clenching his noticeably unscarred hands into fists at that thought, he struggled to push himself up and onto his feet.
He needed to know what was happening.
Was he in the Fields of Punishment, and waking up alive and well in some shitty room during the tail end of puberty was some bizarre penance for his crimes in life?
No, that didn't make sense.
His childhood had sucked, but reliving it was not that horrific a punishment. On top of which as he looked around at the room and saw the posters on the walls, clothes scattered all over the floor and the small pile of comics on the desk, he could quite confidently say that none of it looked familiar.
Which of course begged the question of what in the name of all that was divine was going on?
Standing up his feet scrunching up slightly on the room's threadbare carpet, he quickly began to run through what he remembered before waking up in this unfamiliar and surprisingly mundane-looking room.
He'd been fighting in a battle in the middle of Manhattan, New York.
That much he remembered clearly.
He had been adorned in battle armour crafted by his father's personal smith in an underwater volcano at the bottom of the sea. It had been a magnificent and intricate suit crafted from adamantine.
In addition to his armour, he had also been wielding his trident. The one he had taken as a spoil of war from the greatest and hardest battle he'd ever fought.
He had been dressed for war. That much he remembered clearly. Even now he could recall the fear he had felt before that last battle, and how it had swirled about inside of him alongside his excitement, anticipation, and pride. He was his father's champion, his most powerful mortal child, and had consequently been made one of the army's foremost generals.
It had been a hefty responsibility but one he had borne with pride and honour, and one he had hopefully lived up to as from what he could remember of the ensuing battle he had given a good account of himself.
He had not only looked like a god of war but had fought like one too as he cut down enemy after enemy using both his trident and his own formidable powers over water to decimate anyone and anything that stood before him.
Or at least he had until he'd ended up being confronted by the demigod leaders of the opposing army and in a four-on-one battle had finally been brought down by an accursed dagger having been driven through a newly formed rent in his armour, and into his back.
Bringing his hand to his head and ruffling his wild, dark hair he forced his last memories of life aside and continued to look around the room before finally seeing what he was looking for beside the wardrobe, a mirror. It was partially covered by a vaguely familiar-looking, garish orange garment.
He awkwardly walked over to it his balance still a little iffy as he tried to get used to his lighter, shorter and weaker body. He gripped the offending garment and flung it off the mirror, his eyes widening as he took in his reflection.
He looked a lot younger.
Bringing a hand to his, thankfully clear-skinned, face, he quickly inspected his appearance.
He looked to be around fourteen or fifteen years old. His build was tall and lean. But it was a far cry from the powerful, broad-shouldered build he remembered having only a short time ago.
His skin though was still the same olive colour he remembered. His eyes too, retained the similar almond shape he had been born with, even if the irises of his eyes were a shade or so lighter than the darker, sea-green eyes he had been born with.
Overall, however, he looked pretty similar to how he remembered, only two or three years younger and a lot smaller. Both in terms of height and muscle mass.
Scowling - a look which in his old body would have been terrifying but which in his current form made him look merely petulant - he continued to inspect himself.
His eyes wandered down to his tartan-coloured pyjama bottoms and the baggy grey shirt he had on top, Both of which were comfortable and well-worn. But yet at the same time, like seemingly everything else, unfamiliar.
Tugging off his baggy shirt, and ignoring the sudden acrid waft of BO he got from it, he focussed on his narrow chest and on the lack of any of the scars or wounds he remembered having. Turning around and awkwardly checking his back out too, Percy also couldn't see the wound from the dagger that had done him in.
Instead, he had a different set of scars, including one on his hip that he didn't remember receiving and an odd puncture mark on his wrist that had all but faded.
Frowning, he turned so he was once again fully facing his reflection, before freezing, his eyes widening as he finally clocked onto the necklace he was wearing around his neck.
It was a type of necklace he recognised. One which had different coloured beads on it. Each of the beads had a different symbol displayed on the front.
Narrowing his eyes, he grabbed the two beads on his necklace and checked them out.
One of them had the symbol of a golden fleece on it, whilst the other had the symbol of a green trident.
What exactly the symbolism was behind these particular beads, besides the obvious, with them being the trident of Poseidon and the Golden Fleece, he didn't entirely know. What he did know however was that the Greek demigods from Camp Half Blood wore this kind of necklace and that the symbols on them, neither of which he recognised from his memory of previous necklaces he had seen, were symbolic of something big that happened the summer that they were given out.
He had seen enough of them to know that much. Usually, those necklaces had been around the necks of dead demigods or had been among the spoils that the army had taken. Never before had he ever presumed to see one around his neck.
Turning away from the mirror, he strode over to where he had thrown the balled-up orange rag. His hands were almost shaking as he flattened it out on the bed, only for his heart to sink as he saw the words displayed across the front of the shirt in big dark letters 'CAMP HALF BLOOD'.
"Well, shit," He muttered to himself, his stomach sinking a little as he tried to come to terms with what in Tartarus's name was going on.
He had fallen in battle, valiantly if he said so himself. The fight had been hard fought but he had slain two of the demigods he had been fighting and had mortally wounded a third, but even so, he had been defeated. He could willingly admit that. A dagger had been thrust through his back so accurately and so hard in fact that it had severed his spine and mulched a fair few of his organs on its way both in and out of him.
After that, he had fallen to the marbled floors of Olympus's Throneroom, his lifeblood leaking out of him and beginning to pool on the ground around him.
It had been a fittingly violent fate, for the violent life he had been born into and lived.
As he had lain on his back though unable to feel the immense strength that had once fuelled his limbs, and incapable of mustering up even the will to try and draw on his powers, he had instead gazed up at the darkening sky above.
Olympus surprisingly didn't have a beautifully painted ceiling but was instead open to the heavens and what a night it had been. From where he had been lying he had been able to see the swirls of entire galaxies, and the millions, if not billions of stars that lit up the night sky.
It had, for all the violence that had brought him here and eventually gotten him killed, also been somewhat of a peaceful, undisturbed death. In fact, the only thing that had disturbed him from what he could remember had been the weeping of the one that had killed him echoing in his ears, along with the faint gurgling of the one he had mortally wounded.
Those sounds had bothered him, and not just because they were disturbing his dying moments. But because they had made him think about how pointless it all had been. He had been raised and brought up for battle. His whole purpose in life had been to overthrow the gods and bring honour and pride to his father's name.
That was it, nothing he had done had been for himself. Instead, it had only been for his father, a man he had only met once or twice in his life, and whom he could honestly say he didn't particularly like, let alone love or respect.
Honestly speaking, at that moment as the victorious demigod that had killed him and then grieved over her fallen comrades, he couldn't help but notice that there was no one grieving over him and that there was no one who would really miss him. His father only thought of him as a useful asset. One that could easily be replaced by knocking up another woman, and then making her disappear after he was old enough to not need her. His father had killed his mother to ensure that she wouldn't 'taint' his progeny with her weakness…'. The guy had been an irredeemable cunt.
His only friends growing up had been monsters, traitorous gods and other demigods, demigods whom he knew had turned their backs on their own kind and family. They had been friends, but he was in no doubt that most of them would have stabbed him in the back the moment they needed to and could get away with it.
In the end, he had died both for nothing and with nothing.
Blinking back a single tear at that thought, he came back to himself, even as he continued to gaze solemnly down at the Camp Half Blood shirt.
What was he doing here, in this younger body and in this unfamiliar place?
Was this some kind of hell, something that would show him what things could have been like if he had had a better father, and had had friends and family, instead of power and prestige?
Brushing a hand softly through the air, he felt dozens of droplets of water settling on his hands like dew at the simple motion.
Raising his hand, he gazed sadly at his hand, even as the collected droplets began to run up his fingers and gather around each of his fingertips.
He smiled for a moment before without a second thought he turned and flicked his hand at the mirror.
Almost at once the sound of shattering glass filled the room as the mirror broke. Four, one-inch-long, spikes of ice were protruding from the backboard of the mirror, even as shards of glass continued to slide off the ruptured surface and fall to the floor in a shower of tinkling glass.
Fuck this. He thought, his mind suddenly whirling, fuck this whole thing. He had no time for this sappy bullshit. He was a general, a god of the battlefield, a literal god slayer. He wouldn't allow himself to feel sad and pathetic, such feelings were below him.
"Percy, what was that sound, did you break something?!" An unfamiliar voice suddenly called out, breaking Percy from his reverie.
Turning his head sharply in the direction of the noise, Percy had only just begun to comprehend what was going on, and that he wasn't alone when the door to the room burst open and a pretty, but harried-looking, middle-aged woman, with flyaway brown hair and laughter lines on her face entered.
A familiar-looking frown quickly spread across her face as she looked around the messy room disapprovingly, before focussing on his shirtless form, the broken mirror and the four spikes of ice that were still protruding from the mirror's remains.
"Percy…" The woman sighed, one of her hands raising to massage her temple. "How many times have I told you not to mess about with your powers in the apartment?"
"Ermm…" He began, his brow furrowing as he began to have an idea of just who this woman might be.
"No, no I don't care about your excuses. I think I can work it out myself." The woman continued, pulling her hand away from her face now as she instead gave him, a former general of the Titan army, a stern glare. "Look, Percy. I know you are a growing boy and that your body is going through... changes. I also know you might be discovering that girls exist too..."
He opened his mouth to correct her on that point, or to protest, he wasn't sure which.
Before he could though she forged on ahead. "Look I normally don't care what you do in the privacy of your own room. You can flex away in front of a mirror if that is what you want to do with your spare time. But I do have a problem with you throwing around water and breaking things."
"Look…" Percy tried to say.
"No, you look, you're in trouble mister and I'm telling you right here and now that I am not getting you another mirror for your room. If you want one, then you can buy it with your allowance. No excuses!" The woman continued, bustling past him as she instead began to grab extraneous pieces of clothing off the floor. "Now you can clean up that glass and take the bins out while you're at it. Actually, you can probably clean up this whole room while you are at it. You might be a teenager but this is my apartment and I don't want it to look like a pigsty."
"But…" Percy tried to get a word in edgeways.
"No buts, the sooner you get started the sooner you'll be done." The woman snapped back.
Glancing at her face, and recognising a few of the features, his sudden inkling was quickly cementing itself as fact.
"Now hurry up." The woman pressed on, finishing up grabbing the rest of the dirty clothing off the floor. "You're friends Thalia and Annabeth will be coming around in about an hour. So you have that long to clean up your room and put the bins out, oh and it is a long trip up to Maine and it's cold up there this time of year, so pack some warm things and some food too whilst you're at it."
"Ermm okay…" He replied uncertainly. He was the victor of a dozen battlefields and had faced down angry gods and survived. Arguing with this woman, even if she was possibly his mother, should not be rattling him as much as it was.
"You're damn right okay." His mother sniffed, a slight frown on her face as she once again looked down at the broken mirror shards. "Now get your ass into gear this room isn't going to clean itself and I certainly won't be."
"Right…" He replied vaguely, a ghost of a smile on his lips. "Whatever you say, mum…"
The woman turned to look at him at that point, her bright blue eyes suddenly boring into him. It was intense. It felt like she was somehow looking past his mortal flesh and instead at his immortal soul.
For just a moment it made him shift unconformably and made him think that he had just gone and said something very, very stupid.
"That's odd." His mother replied, her voice a bit softer as she continued looking over her pile of laundry at him. "You're voice is slightly different and you look slightly different too…"
Percy felt a sudden paralysing shot of anxiety passing through his chest. What was going on here?
Suddenly her face broke out into a slight smile. "Puberty is really kicking your ass, isn't it? I swear you are changing more and more every day." She then let out a slight laugh at that. "I'm sure soon enough you'll be fighting off the girls with a stick. That said…, I take it I don't need to give you the talk do I, after all I'm far too young to be a grandmother…"
"W-what no! I don't need any kind of talk!" He shouted instinctively his hands raising up as he tried to ward her away from him. His voice unfortunately chose that exact moment to crack slightly.
Chuckling in response, his mother patted him on the cheek fondly and turned and headed out the door. "Never change, Percy. Now hurry up, you can't stay in bed all day, you've got jobs to do, a room to clean, and then I'm driving you up to Maine with your girlfriends!"
"I don't have any girlfriends!" Percy called feebly after her.
How was this happening? He was a war hardened killer, one that struck terror into the hearts of any demigod foolish enough to stand before him. Not even the children of the Big Three; Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, had been able to face him down in single combat. Not even their chosen one could have taken him alone. No, it had taken the chosen one and three others, and even then only one of them had come out of the fight alive.
He should not be getting flustered because his mother, a woman he had only the vaguest of memories of, a woman that his father had, had 'disappeared' when he was only three, was teasing him. He shouldn't be getting this worked up, or this emotional over something as trivial as a bit of harmless teasing.
Clenching his hands into fists at that thought, he tried to ignore the surge of warmth he could feel flooding through his cold body as he heard his mother humming away through the open door of his room.
Letting out a sigh a few moments later, he gave up and instead smiled slightly.
This entire situation was insane.
He should be dead right now, and either in Elysium if his father won and gave a damn, or more likely in the Fields of Punishment if he lost, or if his father was feeling particularly vindictive about Percy failing to destroy the Olympian's Thrones and getting himself killed instead.
But obviously, that wasn't the case. Instead, he was in some kind of twisted-up, opposite world where he was a demigod and a member of Camp Half Blood.
More than that he could also remember the names of the girls that were apparently coming over. Annabeth Chase and Thalia Grace. One of them he had killed, whilst the other was the one that had killed him.
There should be no conceivable way that either of them could be described as his friends, girlfriend or otherwise.
No, the only thing he could think of now that he had had some time to dwell on things was that there were some divine hijinks going on.
This world he was in could be a real one, just one which had an alternate fate, or alternate future to the one he lived through. And considering he knew from experience that fate was both inexorable and a complete bitch, he couldn't help but think that those three craggy old women had something to do with this.
Gritting his teeth at that thought, and at the thought of being manipulated by some old crones. He couldn't quite decide whether he was happy to be alive and to potentially have another chance at life. Or whether he should be pissed that he had to do things over again and that he had been robbed of his eternal rest at the eleventh hour.
"I can't hear any cleaning going on?" Sally Jackson's voice suddenly floated through the open door.
"Alright, I'm on it!" Percy called back instinctively, a frown on his face as he looked around at the pigsty of a room.
He wasn't sure what he thought of his current situation at the moment, but what he did know, was that he would at least try to enjoy it whilst he could.
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AN: So what do you think? Is it a lame duck, not worth having time invested into it? Or is it something that could be interesting? I personally am not sure, I only really wrote it out today with only a vague idea of how I would want it to go.
That said the Percy in this story is from a pretty AU world with a different storyline and plot points and history to canon, but has now been landed in canon. This Percy will be darker and more morally grey, but won't be some evil sadist. He'll basically be a teenager who had a shit time of it growing up, and who tried to do the best with what he had, only he is now out of his element living someone else life, with no idea what to do.
People who were once friends are enemies, and enemies who he once fought and killed are friends. The divine part of him wants to say bring it on, the human side just wants to say leave me alone and let me sleep, and that's not even getting into the parental and relationship dramas that may unfold. Either way it could be fun to see what happens.
Other than that, not much left to say. Now that I have this idea written out and out of my head, I think I'll get back to updating some of my other stuff.
Have a good one.
Greed720.