Star City,
July 10, 19:41 PST
Percy Jackson woke to the sound of car horns and the smell of rotting lettuce. This is not Tartarus.
He blinked crusted eyes open, greeted by the soft glow of a streetlight filtering through a split trash bag. Ah. A dumpster. Typical.
"The Fates just couldn't let me go without one last fuck you," he rasped, peeling a banana peel off his shoulder. His voice sounded like gravel, but he couldn't care less.
Fresh air hit him first. Real air. There was no sulfur, none of Gabe's rancid cologne clawing his lungs. He inhaled until his ribs ached, half-expecting the burn of Phlegethon's fire. It never came.
The alley was a graveyard of moldering boxes and shattered glass. Percy stepped over a rat gnawing on a pizza crust. Tartarus had better interior design.
When he stumbled onto the sidewalk, the crowd scattered like pigeons. A woman yanked her dog's leash. A man crossed the street. A mother clapped her hands over her kid's eyes, hissing, "Don't look."
"What the Hades?" Percy muttered. He glanced down. His clothes were threadbare, singed, and caked in things he didn't want to name, hanging off him like a scarecrow's rags. But it was the shop window that froze him.
The reflection wasn't his. Hollow cheeks. Hair matted into a bird's nest. A beard even Poseidon would disown.
"Shit," he breathed. "I'm a neckbeard."
He leaned closer. The glass warped his face, pale as a ghoul's, blisters mapping his jawline, eyes sunken and too bright. Annabeth would've laughed.
A man in a suit bolted when Percy began walking. "Well," he said to the empty street. "Guess I'm the monster now."
Saltwater.
The taste prickled his tongue before he consciously sensed it. This was real salt, real ocean, not the Styx's metallic mockery. His bones hummed. West.
Percy ran.
His legs, once leaden in Tartarus' sucking muck, ate up the pavement. Clean air burned his lungs in the best way. No jagged stones tore his feet. No whispers of "failure" dogged his steps. Just the pull of the sea, alive and close.
Percy paid no mind to the aching of his ribs and the soreness that permeated his body. He felt the draw of life.
He wove through traffic, a comet of grime and matted hair. Car horns blared. Someone snapped a photo. Percy didn't care. It had been so, so long since he'd seen a wave that didn't want to drown him.
SELKIE'S WHARF – 5 MILES, a sign read.
He ran faster.
Roy Harper's finger hovered over the police scanner, static crackling like the ache in his jaw. Domestic disturbance, Third and Main. Vandalism, Eastside Park. Crazed maniac, Oldtown
Oldtown it was then.
He locked the scanner onto the his belt. "Crazed maniac." Right. Yesterday it'd been a racoon in a dumpster. The week before, a meth head convinced he was King Arthur. Truly, Star City's finest.
The bow strapped to his bike's chassis gleamed under a streetlight. It sat unused, pristine, useless. Ollie's voice slithered into his ear, that infuriating paternal drawl: "Patience, Roy. You're not ready for the big leagues."
Bullshit. He revved the engine.
Oldtown's neon smeared past. Roy's lenses tagged heat signatures, drunks, dealers, a stray cat. Then: a blur. Human? Too fast. Too feral.
He ditched the bike, grappling to a rooftop. The figure below barreled through pedestrians like a comet, matted hair flying, sneakers slapping pavement in a staccato scream.
"Move!" the man roared, not to the crowd, to himself. Desperation, not malice. Roy nocked an arrow. It wouldn't do any damage, but it would likely restrain him.
Not your circus, Harper. Not your-
The runner skidded mid-stride, head snapping toward the rooftops. Eye contact. He heard the bowstring. How is that possible?
Roy froze. The man's eyes weren't human. No addict's glassy haze. This was primal, a shark's black-pit stare. Hungry, yes, but not for drugs. What was he seeking?
Roy grappled down, landing in a crouch five feet ahead of the sprinting man. "Stop. Now."
The man skidded to a halt, chest heaving. Up close, he reeked of brine and burnt hair. But it was his eyes, dilated pupils, sea-green bleeding into black, that made Roy's finger twitch on the bowstring.
"You're blocking the road, Robin Hood," the man rasped, grinning with chapped lips. "Yelp review's gonna suck."
Roy fired a bola arrow. Something to incapacitate. The man moved, not dodging, plowing through the cables. They snapped like spider silk.
What the–?
Roy lunged, sweep-kicking low. The man didn't jump. He stepped on Roy's ankle, using him as a springboard. Pain exploded as Roy hit concrete.
Nope. Not today. Roy rolled, firing a tungsten-tipped shock arrow point-blank.
The man spun, snatching the shaft mid-air. Electricity crackled, blue veins lit up his arm, before he crushed the arrow. Shards bit into his palm.
"Fuck!" He shook his hand, blood spattering the sidewalk. "Note to self: catching arrows is stupid."
Roy scrambled back, nocking another arrow. "Last chance. Who are you?"
The man paused, shoulders tense, not with fear, but calculation. Then, absurdly, he laughed, a rusty, grating sound. "You're dressed like Robin Hood's garage sale reject. You first."
Roy's jaw tightened. "Costume's temporary. You're the one terrorizing the city."
The man glanced at his reflection in a grimy storefront. Ragged hair, sunken eyes, a beard even a lumberjack would pity. He grimaced. "Yeah, well, I didn't pick this aesthetic. Look, Arrow Guy–"
"Speedy."
The man rolled his eyes and executed a mocking bow, dirt-caked hair flopping forward.
"–Speedy, my name is Percy Jackson. Not that that means much." The name spilled out like a secret he was oddly eager to share.
"You've been scaring people, Percy Jackson."
Percy winced. "Yeah, didn't think that through. Can't imagine I look… good."
Roy eyed him. Sallow skin, blisters, hair matted with considerable grime. "That's one way to put it."
"Ouch." Percy clutched his chest in mock offense. "I'll fix the 'cryptid chic' look if you lower the Robin Hood cosplay," he nodded at the bow.
Roy sighed, lowering the weapon but not loosening his grip. "Just… stop terrifying toddlers, and we're good."
"Deal." Percy sidestepped, gaze darting west. "Now, if you'll kindly move, I'm late for a date with the Pacific."
"Not until you–"
A cane tapped the pavement; three precise clicks, like a metronome counting down a secret.
Roy turned. The old man leaning on the cane seemed carved from parchment and time, his smile serene but eyes sharp as obsidian. Kent Nelson. They'd crossed paths once, after a disaster involving a rogue Ankh and a cursed mummy. Roy's shoulder still ached in the rain.
Kent's gaze settled on Percy. The man had gone rigid, shoulders taut as bowstrings, nostrils flaring like a cornered animal. He hadn't heard the wizard approach.
"You aren't from around here, are you, son?" Kent asked, voice like worn velvet.
Percy's knuckles whitened around a pen that had suddenly appeared in his hand. "Depends," he said, too casually. "Where's 'here'?"
Kent's smile deepened. "A world where gods are stories. Where the sea misses its storms."
Percy flinched, hard, as if the words were a blade. Roy catalogued it: Fear. Recognition. Hunger.
Kent's smile never faded. "The ocean is close, but not close enough. Let me help you shorten the journey." The cane glowed faintly. "Afterward, a bath, a shave, clothes that don't smell of… despair."
"Help's a funny word," Percy hissed. "Last time someone 'helped' me, I got a one-way ticket to Hell."
Kent tilted his head. "Ah. But you're here, aren't you? Which means you crawled out. Lets see if we can keep you out."
A portal tore open beside them, revealing a crescent of untouched beach. Salt air curled into the alley, carrying the whisper of waves.
Percy's breath hitched. His hand twitched toward the portal, instinct warring with trauma, before he locked eyes with Kent. "Why?"
"Because," Kent said softly, "you smell of Tartarus, boy. That's not a stench anyone can wash away alone."
Percy's defiance cracked. For a heartbeat, Roy saw it: A kid. Scared. Exhausted.
"Fine," Percy muttered, stepping toward the light. "But if this is a trap, I'm drowning you first."
Kent chuckled. "Noted."
The portal held. The wizard turned to Roy. "Curiosity suits you better than bitterness, Speedy. Coming?"
Roy eyed Percy's retreating back. A supernatural gift. The interest of Doctor Fate. Eyes that shouldn't be that green.
"Yeah," he said, holstering his bow. "Someone's gotta stop him from traumatizing seagulls."
Plus, he thought, if he follow Percy, it could turn into something that the League- that Oli would recognize.
He stepped through into the beach, the ocean lapping at the shore in front of him, sand already gritting his boots. He'd have to clean them out later. Worth it.
Percy stood frozen at the shoreline, shoulders taut as a bowstring. The ocean stretched ahead, moonlight fracturing on its surface like a shattered mirror. He hadn't looked back since he had walked through the portal.
Where before he had seemed frantic to reach it, now that it was in front of him, he hesitated.
"What's between you and the ocean?" Roy asked, sidling closer. "Why did you need to see it so badly?" Percy's gaze stayed locked on the waves, his voice a rasp.
"I didn't need to see it… Needed to feel it."
He stepped into the water.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the waves died.
Not stilled. Died. Glass-flat, breathless, as if the sea itself had frozen over. Percy's hair lifted, salt crust sloughing off like scabs, revealing skin too pale, too smooth. The water glowed, sickly green, wrong, dragging him under.
Roy stumbled back. "What the hell are you?"
Kent's cane tapped his shin. "He's a boy. Now hush. Let the sea mourn."
The water should've been a homecoming.
It wasn't.
The water bit.
Not with cleansing fire, but with Tartarus' teeth, jagged, eternal, grinding into his bones, scalding his ankles, his knees, his wrists as he plunged deeper Salt stung his eyes, real salt, but the Pacific's embrace felt like a stranger's.
You're still here, the pit crooned to him in a chorus of voices, their laughter rippling through the undertow. You'll always be here. The water swallowed him.
Bubbles streamed from his lips, weaving chains that lashed him to the seabed. He clawed for the surface, but the ocean flooded his lungs, not with power, but silence. A god's silence.
Dampened. Discarded.
His father's absence roared louder than the tide.
The sea shuddered at his command, a single wave rising, frail and spluttering, before dissolving like ash.
Pathetic, he heard a croon. You're still our pawn. Tartarus's tendrils cinched his ribs, snapping him backward . Sunlight speared the water above, too bright, too human. He closed his eyes.
When hands hauled him ashore, they felt like Annabeth's. Maybe they were, if he kept his eyes closed.
Percy collapsed onto the sand, black brine leaking from his nostrils. His scars gleamed, too fresh, too deliberate. It was as if something had carved its name into him.
"Is he… okay?" Roy whispered, crouching after he and Kent hauled Percy onto the beach. He felt an odd surge of pity.
Kent wiped seawater from his coat. "The ocean purged what it could. The rest stays."
Roy eyed Percy's fist. A bronze sword now glinted in his grip, its blade etched with shifting runes that squirmed like worms. "What happens when the 'rest' wakes up?"
Kent's cane glinted, sunlight fracturing across its surface like a promise. "I don't know all the answers." He admitted, "But when it does," he said, nodding to Percy's scars, now edged in faint sea-green, "he'll remember he's still breathing. That's start enough."
Roy glanced at Percy's clenched hand, the sword's glow softer now, like a heartbeat. "And the rest?"
Kent turned toward the waves. "The rest is up to him."
Poseidonis,
July 10, 21:03 AST
The Trident trembled, not in Arthur's hand, but in the soul of the sea.
He rose from his throne, coral fractals crackling underfoot. The ocean's pulse, a rhythm he'd known since birth, stuttered. Fish froze mid-swim. Whales sang a dirge in the abyssal trenches. Even the kelp forests stilled, their eternal dance broken.
Mera materialized at his side, her brow furrowed. "You feel it too."
"Feel it?" Arthur stared at the Trident's glowing prongs, now dimmed to sickly green. "It's like the damn ocean blinked."
A hologram burst from the floor, mapping thermal currents. A cold spot pulsed off the California coast, leaching vitality from the waves. Arthur zoomed in. A small shape. No, wrong, a void, hungrier than any trench.
"A new Ocean Master? Some LexCorp toy?" Mera gripped her water-bearers, ready to flood the surface world.
Arthur shook his head. The Trident's song sharpened, discordant notes resolving into… recognition.
Him.
The words surfaced, in a language older than Atlantis. The son of the sea god.
"Call the League," Arthur said, striding toward the open water. Dolphins scattered ahead, their clicks frantic. "And tell Batman to dust off his Greek myth files."
Mera blinked. "Since when do you care so deeply about stories and legends?"
"Since the ocean started mourning one."
He plunged into the currents, the Trident's light flaring, not in warning, but kinship. What are you? Arthur thought, speeding toward the cause of the ocean's grief.
The cold spot faded as he neared, leaving only the echo of a laugh too reckless to belong to a god, and too weary to belong to a man.
Somewhere in the dark, seven holograms flickered; six screens, one shadowed figure in a chair.
The Brain's pixelated form crackled, his French accent clipped. "A disturbance? How vague. Even a lab rat could articulate better, Orm."
Ocean Master's screen flared, his masked face twisting. "The oceans stopped. Not calmed. Stopped. As if Poseidon himself had-"
"Spare us the mythology," Lex Luthor's screen hummed, its LexCorp logo glowing blood-red. "You failed to retrieve data. Again."
Queen Bee's laughter honeyed the silence. "Oh, don't sulk, Lex. Uncertainty is… stimulating." Her silhouette leaned forward, a predator's grace. "Imagine, a power that terrifies even Atlantis. We'll wrap it in silk and feed it lies. Then we dissect."
A fourth screen fizzed, revealing a Klarion's grin stretched too wide. "Fun-fun-fun! Let's poke it with sticks!"
"Idiocy." The Brain's cursor highlighted thermal scans. A human-shaped void leaching cold into the Pacific. "This anomaly defies entropy. It consumes. We must replicate it."
Luthor steepled his fingers. "Orm. Return to Atlantis. Pry answers from your brother's corpse if you must."
Ocean Master's fist clenched. "Arthur's no fool. He'll-"
"He'll what?" Lex's voice dropped, glacial. "You've already lost his throne. Lose this, and we'll find someone… hungrier."
The shadowed figure remained still.
Another moved, emerald light glinting off a dagger's edge. Ra's al Ghul's voice cut through the static, smooth as a scalpel. "Do not mistake desperation for control, Orm. Storms drown sailors and kings."
The shadowed figure leaned forward, Vandal Savage's silhouette sharpening. "Bring us this storm. Be cautious of the lightning that may strike around it."
The screens vanished.
Klarions's giggles continued.
Don't expect updates to be this fast in the future. I just wanted to y'all a small taste of where the story will really begin. I'm really happy with how it turned out, let me know your thoughts.