#annabeth: we should take a vote- | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

halothenthehorns · 1 year ago

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Chapter 7: WE MEET THE GOD WITH TWO FACES

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it! For everyone else, here is an extra chapter this week to celebrate this mundane Thursday!

PJOPJOPJOPJO

Will was whistling cheerfully to himself as he flipped to the next chapter like he wasn't about to read of the most evil place right beneath his camp. Nico had spent immeasurable hours down there feeling so alone and wishing for Percy's company and the stupid jokes he'd crack and the great, protective warrior he was to help him.

Looking back on the running, terror, broken bones and constant isolation left him unsurprised how different he was from those around him in retrospect. His first friend had been a ghost who deceived him.

It was a nice thought for a moment as Will read the chapter title, that at least as he remembered the stenches and adrenaline rushes of his own in to vivid detail to come right along with Percy, at least he'd come out with friends now.

Alex's eyes were alight at once with whom Percy was set to meet next. "If I could vote for you to kill a god, it'll be this one!"

"Alex, no," Magnus said in vain once more.

"Where's the downside?" He demanded. "Nobody would ever get stabbed in the back again, the worst of cowardly moves!"

"That's not how that works, in the slightest," Thalia sadly corrected. "Just because you killed Zeus doesn't mean lightning wouldn't flash through the sky and storms wouldn't come." Though she suspected it was happening above at just the hypothesis being put in the world.

Percy got an amused look in place as he imagined Zeus in his chair spitting out his drink and glancing around suspiciously.

"Poo," Alex huffed. It was actually a bit worrisome a two-face god was going to get one over on Percy instead, as nice as he was. He swore right then if this god resembled Quintus for one second he'd have to face facts on that answer.

We made it a hundred feet before we were hopelessly lost.

"Life goals. I can't make it down the block half the time without forgetting where I'm going some days," Jason said sardonically.

"It's a maze," Thalia rolled her eyes, "and Percy! It's a miracle he didn't get lost turning around."

"Your faith in me is instilling," but Percy's voice was nothing but accepting facts.

The tunnel looked nothing like the one Annabeth and I had stumbled into before. Now it was round like a sewer,

"If you actually run into a ninja turtle, I will take back every crack I ever said about you," Alex promised.

"Eh, depends on which one," Magnus mock agreed.

I shined a light through one of the portholes out of curiosity,

"Your soul animal is officially a cat Percy," Will chuckled.

"I still say it's seaweed," Thalia scoffed.

but I couldn't see anything. It opened into infinite darkness.

I thought I heard voices on the other side, but it may have been just the cold wind.

"Already understanding why Chris lost his mind down there," Jason muttered.

Annabeth tried her best to guide us. She had this idea that we should stick to the left wall.

"If we keep one hand on the left wall and follow it," she said, "we should be able to find our way out again by reversing course."

"Good in theory," Nico was already shaking his head though, "not an execution that can be followed." Which she already knew from her studying, mildly annoying him why she thought she was smarter than this place already.

Unfortunately, as soon as she said that, the left wall disappeared. We found ourselves in the middle of a circular chamber with eight tunnels leading out, and no idea how we'd gotten there.

Magnus made a very loud, awkward laugh that died quickly at this place literally mocking them in the face. It wasn't funny, but he wasn't screaming in terror, so this was better, right?

"Um, which way did we come in?" Grover said nervously.

"Just turn around," Annabeth said.

"If there is a brick wall behind you I will have no choice but to really laugh," Alex promised.

We each turned toward a different tunnel. It was ridiculous. None of us could decide which way led back to camp.

"Trippy, I actually like that answer better," Alex still laughed any ways.

"At least somebody does," Percy sighed.

"Left walls are mean," Tyson said.

"Tyson, still holding strong with the best lines in these," Jason applauded, and they couldn't decide how much sarcasm was in that.

"Which way now?"

Annabeth swept her flashlight beam over the archways of the eight tunnels. As far as I could tell, they were identical. "That way," she said.

"No consensus huh?" Thalia chuckled. "No voting, not even a flip of a coin?"

"Annabeth was our compass," Percy shrugged without surprise.

"I'm going to encase you in a magnet one of these days so you have to figure something out for yourself," Thalia mock threatened.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Deductive reasoning."

"So...you're guessing."

"Just come on," she said.

"See, exactly the plan I would have had. Bring the magnet on!" Percy laughed.

"Only you," Thalia shook her head at these two.

The tunnel she'd chosen narrowed quickly. The walls turned to gray cement, and the ceiling got so low that pretty soon we were hunching over. Tyson was forced to crawl.

"Poor guy," Will frowned, "I bet he was carrying all the heavy stuff too."

"If he could have smashed his way to the surface I wouldn't blame him," Percy agreed.

Grover's hyperventilating was the loudest noise in the maze. "I can't stand it anymore," he whispered. "Are we there yet?"

"Thalia, your kid wants you," Percy smirked.

"On the weekends he's still yours," Thalia rolled her eyes.

"We started this quest on a Thursday!"

"I'm taking an extended vacation," she said with an unamused air, this joke had officially gone to a level that wasn't funny as images of her mom came to mind.

"We've been down here maybe five minutes," Annabeth told him.

"It's been longer than that," Grover insisted.

"I actually believe him on that, considering it was a few minutes to you but hours last time," Will nodded.

"And time means very little down there," Nico needlessly reminded.

"And a magical satyr thing that knows the time of the day too probably," Magnus rolled his eyes.

"And why would Pan be down here? This is the opposite of the wild!"

"I bet he got lost too," Percy said in something close to sympathy.

We kept shuffling forward. Just when I was sure the tunnel would get so narrow it would squish us, it opened into a huge room. I shined my light around the walls and said, "Whoa."

"The good kind or the bad kind?" Magnus already had a pit in his stomach no matter the answer, with Percy one could easily mean the other.

"The mildly impressive kind," Percy shrugged with a small grin.

The whole room was covered in mosaic tiles. The pictures were grimy and faded, but I could still make out the colors—red, blue, green, gold. The frieze showed the Olympian gods at a feast. There was my dad, Poseidon, with his trident, holding out grapes for Dionysus to turn into wine. Zeus was partying with satyrs, and Hermes was flying through the air on his winged sandals. The pictures were beautiful, but they weren't very accurate. I'd seen the gods. Dionysus was not that handsome, and Hermes's nose wasn't that big.

"Yeah, but like," Will was shaking with suppressed laughter, "if you knew the gods were real, you wouldn't question how they wanted to be painted."

"I can't draw, I wouldn't know," Percy rolled his eyes. Even if he tried doodling stick figures, he wouldn't exactly be doing his best to care.

Jason didn't hear them, there was a low buzzing in his ears. Something about the way that was described, something he'd been absently wondering but didn't know how to put into words until this moment. That sounded Roman. Should he know this labyrinth existed? He was certain he'd never been in, but finally, at this moment, he had the tiniest bit of a guess wondering if he'd ever tried to find this place.

In the middle of the room was a three-tiered fountain. It looked like it hadn't held water in a long time.

"That was the part you said whoa too, another fountain," Alex smirked.

"Guilty, I still felt bad about mine," Percy grinned.

"What is this place?" I muttered. "It looks—"

"Roman," Annabeth said. "Those mosaics area about two thousand years old."

"It must be exhausting knowing everything," Nico huffed.

"Probably," Will said innocently. The Athena cabin was the worst about asking for help, but when he saw one to many sleepless nights on them, he was a tad guilty about slipping something into their meals and blaming it on Travis and Connor's pranks.

"But how can they be Roman?" I wasn't that great on ancient history, but I was pretty sure the Roman Empire never made it as far as Long Island.

"And you think the Greeks did?" Magnus asked in concern. The whole point of these odd books was their never ending migration here and how that mingled in.

"I didn't think they brought souvenirs from the Roman Empire that toppled them," Percy rolled his eyes while Jason looked like he was swallowing his teeth one by one in consternation.

Thalia cleared her throat sharply to keep them moving fast when she saw.

"The Labyrinth is a patchwork," Annabeth said. "I told you, it's always expanding, adding pieces. It's the only work of architecture that grows by itself."

"I wish those words to never be spoken in that order again," Magnus groaned.

"That is so cool!" Alex yelped.

"Or those," Magnus huffed, it never meant anything good in this lot.

"Like, like Daedalus really built a second layer into the earth that's as alive as this planet!"

"Man was a mad genius," Percy agreed with a kind of awesome dread as he pictured someone in a white lab coat with lightning crackling screaming about it being alive over the whole planet.

"You make it sound like it's alive."

A groaning noise echoed from the tunnel in front of us.

"Does anybody speak labyrinth?" Will asked with mildly less cheer than usual, he didn't at all like the idea of being underground. "Maybe it's trying to tell you which way to go."

"I wish we could ask the labyrinth if they prefer he or she pronouns," Alex tapped his chin in thought. "I know most people depict the earth as feminine, but that gets into a long line of stereotypical depictions of nurturing and-"

Alex was only one part taking the mickey and one part serious, so he laughed it off and shelved that for later as Will politely cleared his throat to keep going over an answer they couldn't get anyways.

"Let's not talk about it being alive," Grover whimpered. "Please?"

"All right," Annabeth said. "Forward."

"Down the hall with the bad sounds?" Tyson said. Even he looked nervous.

"Yeah," Annabeth said. "The architecture is getting older. That's a good sign. Daedalus's workshop would be in the oldest part."

"And because she said that, I'm guessing it's going to remodel itself in twenty feet to look like a stainless steel lab." Jason frowned.

"I just hope there's not a monkey in there playing on the computer, I do not want to walk into an alternate dimension by accident," Percy wasn't sure he'd have the heart to fight cute animals if they were the dominant species.

That made sense.

"I'm glad it did to you," Magnus muttered, now personally trying not to imagine Daedalus packing up a phone booth and carrying his workshop around to never be found no matter what logic was used.

But soon the maze was toying with us—we went fifty feet and the tunnel turned back to cement, with brass pipes running down the sides. The walls were spray-painted with graffiti. A neon tagger sign read MOZ RULZ.

"I'm thinking this is not Roman," I said helpfully.

"You never know, I bet some ancient Roman could have gone by the name of Moz and been way ahead of time on, um, pipework," Will snickered.

Nico couldn't really find the humor in it, Will would have to really try to make him laugh about anything to do with this place, but it was a tad amusing to see Thalia roll her eyes at someone other than Percy.

Annabeth took a deep breath, then forged ahead.

"I've found the best way is to ignore him too," Thalia mock agreed as if Annabeth were her to commiserate with.

Her cousin was, and he didn't bother to muffle a snort.

Every few feet the tunnels twisted and turned and branched off. The floor beneath us changed from cement to mud to bricks and back again. There was no sense to any of it. We stumbled into a wine cellar—a bunch of dusty bottles in wooden racks—like we were walking through somebody's basement, only there was no exit above us, just more tunnels leading on.

"Jeez, I'm getting claustrophobic just hearing about this," Alex tugged at the collar of his shirt.

"Can't exactly go outside and stretch our legs in the sun too," Magnus agreed with an uneasy twitch. This room was by no means unbearable or small, but he'd never thought he'd have to associate constant common amenities with entrapment. And that group had it even worse down there.

Alex clearly wasn't going to let that keep him down though as he bounced back and asked, "please tell me you nabbed one of those! I can't even imagine the vintage on a long-lost bottle of wine!"

"I bet it was a cellar only Dionysus uses," Percy shook his head quickly. "Do you want to find out what would happen if we disturbed one of those cobwebs?"

Alex looked very much like he was contemplating that answer, and Thalia sighed once again at what a bad influence all of these idiots were on each other.

Later the ceiling turned to wooden planks, and I could hear voices above us and the creaking of footsteps, as if we were walking under some kind of bar. It was reassuring to hear people, but then again, we couldn't get to them. We were stuck down here with no way out.

"You're telling me if Tyson really wanted to he couldn't smash a house down?" Alex scoffed.

"Not a hundred percent sure," Percy admitted, "the labyrinth might fight him, turn into something even he couldn't break and shrink on us. Do you want to make the sentient maze mad?"

Alex didn't seem as concerned at the implications of that as Percy would have hoped, but then, he really should have known better by now.

Then we found our first skeleton.

It was the first dead body Percy had ever seen, and it didn't look like those fake skeletons for a Halloween decoration. He'd been killing monsters for years now, and yet he never thought of the mess they left behind as their form of a soulless husk. He rubbed his fingers together thoughtfully, his mind flickering to his mother and her clear sight. What she saw through the dust. She probably would have shielded his eyes from this, but it made his head and stomach groan in symbiotic pain to imagine her down there.

He was dressed in white clothes, like some kind of uniform. A wooden crate of glass bottles sat next to him.

"A milkman," Annabeth said.

"Those guys actually existed?" Nico asked in surprise. "I thought that was a weird gag in cartoons."

"It was a real job," Thalia nodded.

"When the fridge was invented, they went out of business," Magnus added helpfully.

"Huh, learn something new every day," Nico said with a surprised smile.

"What?" I asked.

"They used to deliver milk."

"Yeah, I know what they are,

"Which kind of concerns me how much Annabeth thinks of you," Thalia told him with sympathy.

"She never knew with me after I told her I thought my TV just wasn't big enough to see some old cartoon character's faces," Percy shrugged.

but...that was when my mom was little, like a million years ago. What's he doing here?"

"Some people wander in by mistake," Annabeth said.

"Those poor mortals," Magnus said with sorrow. He couldn't imagine how many little kids had fallen down there and never made it out. Maybe a few horror novels of things beneath the surface of the earth had been inspired by getting a peak down there, like the Labyrinth itself had enticed a kid with a clown and red balloon.

"Some come exploring on purpose and never make it back. A long time ago, the Cretans sent people in here as human sacrifices."

"And yet sadly, we've let cretin fall off the insult radar," Alex shook his head as if taking personal responsibility for this.

"Something I hope you won't bring back with historic accuracy," Magnus muttered.

Grover gulped. "He's been down here a long time." He pointed to the skeleton's bottles, which were coated with white dust. The skeleton's fingers were clawing at the brick wall, like he had died trying to get out.

"Well I hardly thought he was casually walking around chugging milk," Jason winced in disgust for getting details.

"Only bones," Tyson said. "Don't worry, goat boy. The milkman is dead."

"The milkman doesn't bother me," Grover said.

"Dead bodies still bother me," Magnus offered in case anybody had been in doubt about this.

"I guess this is one of the side effects to falling asleep every night singing Circle of Life," Percy shrugged.

"It's the smell. Monsters. Can't you smell it?"

Tyson nodded. "Lots of monsters. But underground smells like that. Monsters and dead milk people."

"Oh, good," Grover whimpered. "I thought maybe I was wrong."

"I can't think of a good instance of being happy to be wrong about smelling something," Alex nodded. "Usually it's food and I'm entirely upset I was wrong my senses lied to me."

"You smell smoke and think your house is on fire but your mom's just a bad cook," Thalia said with a way to twisted smile for that to just be a joke.

"Point to Thalia!" Alex chuckled all the same.

"We have to get deeper into the maze," Annabeth said. "There has to be a way to the center."

"I'm guessing taking a shovel and just digging won't work?" Nico rolled his eyes at her still trying to apply logic to any of this.

"The shovel would melt eventually," Will helpfully reminded.

"We could give her a spare shovel, gosh Will, be more creative," Percy snickered.

"I'm going to dump you in a volcano head first," Thalia sighed at them.

She led us to the right, then the left, through a corridor of stainless steel like some kind of air shaft, and we arrived back in the Roman tile room with the fountain.

"Oh, so it even circles around! That's much worse than being lost forever in a maze of endless rooms!" Magnus's voice was choking up by the end as he tried not to sound hysterical.

"It had added some decoration," Percy didn't soothe him one bit with the uneasy frown he spoke with.

This time, we weren't alone.

What I noticed first were his faces. Both of them.

Nico tried his hardest to swallow the lump of jealousy and hurt in his throat. Percy hadn't been in there but a few hours and he got a visit from a god already? He'd been in there for weeks before he'd found Minos and gotten any handle on what to do. Afraid to sleep, starving, only surviving on water that bled from the walls from gods knew where as the ghosts whispered which way to go to get further down...

He told himself he should be grateful instead. He wasn't the child of the prophecy, nobody had cared what happened to him. He'd made his own way out eventually without anybody's help, not even Minos had been there every step of the way.

They jutted out from either side of his head, staring over his shoulders, so his head was much wider than it should've been, kind of like a hammerhead shark's looking straight at him, all I saw were two overlapping ears and mirror-image sideburns.

Magnus was poking the middle of his forehead to make sure his head hadn't actually fallen apart at that newly brain-melting image.

"Not going to lie, when it said god of two faces, I didn't think it was going to be literal," Alex sounded grudgingly admirable of choosing to look like that. "I was picturing, like, two totally different faces melted together. Like the Batman villain."

"I have a feeling the two would still get along," Percy already had that now familiar look on his face like they should brace themselves for him to make a life long enemy.

He was dressed like a New York City doorman: a long black overcoat, shiny shoes, and a black top-hat that somehow managed to stay on his double-wide head.

"Classy," Will said in admiration.

"Never trust a man in a top hat," Alex scoffed.

"Now there's a story I'm sure," Magnus grinned.

"Don't get me started on Abe Lincoln," he agreed with distant eyes and a scowl at the ceiling.

"Well, Annabeth?" said his left face. "Hurry up!"

"Don't mind him," said the right face. "He's terribly rude. Right this way, miss."

Annabeth's jaw dropped. "Uh...I don't..."

Tyson frowned. "That funny man has two faces."

Jason scratched awkwardly at his nose before stage whispering, "has anybody ever come up with a polite way to scold kids for doing that?"

"Um, let them be curious but make sure they're polite questions?" Thalia offered.

"I'm not putting Tyson in time out if he offends this guy," Percy rolled his eyes.

"The funny man has ears, you know!" the left face scolded. "Now come along, miss."

"No, no," the right face said. "This way, miss. Talk to me, please."

"I need to know real quick if you can sign a different conversation than you say out loud?" Percy asked Magnus.

"I suppose if you can have two conversations at once it's possible, but not typical," he shook his head.

"Yeah, good to know, I got no better answer than chopping this guy in half to shut him up," Percy scowled, already wishing to uncap his sword to stop this guy focusing solely on Annabeth.

The two-faced man regarded Annabeth as best he could out of the corners of his eyes. It was impossible to look at him straight on without focusing on one side or the other. And suddenly I realized that's what he was asking—he wanted Annabeth to choose.

Behind him were two exits, blocked by wooden doors with huge iron locks. They hadn't been there our first time through the room. The two-faced doorman held a silver key, which he kept passing from his left hand to his right hand. I wondered if this was a different room completely, but the frieze of the gods looked exactly the same.

Behind us, the doorway we'd come through had disappeared, replaced by more mosaics. We wouldn't be going back the way we came.

"The exits are closed," Annabeth said.

"Duh!" the man's left face said.

"Where do they lead?" she asked.

"One probably leads the way you wish to go," the right face said encouragingly. "The other leads to certain death."

"I—I know who you are," Annabeth said.

"Oh, you're a smart one!" The left face sneered. "But do you know which way to choose? I don't have all day."

"Why are you trying to confuse me?" Annabeth asked.

"He's, um, not," Nico looked from the book to the others in concern if he was missing something. "He's pointing out the obvious as of right now. Does Annabeth find that confusing?"

Percy gave him the very exasperated sigh of a teacher explaining the obvious. "Just because she accepted the responsibility of something didn't mean she was okay with every layer of it." He knew that feeling all to well from all this big bad prophecy talk.

Nico looked at Percy with interest for how he'd unintentionally put that. He doubted Percy knew that's how he felt about what he'd said the other night, but it was another kind of relief to hear it put into words.

The right face smiled. "You're in charge now, my dear. All the decisions are on your shoulders. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"I—"

"We know you, Annabeth," the left face said. "We know what you wrestle with every day. We know your indecision. You will have to make your choice sooner or later. And the choice may kill you."

I didn't know what they were talking about, but it sounded like it was about more than a choice between doors.

The color drained out of Annabeth's face. "No...I don't—"

"Leave her alone," I said.

"That honestly took a page more than I thought it would," Will told him.

"I'm not fool enough to think Annabeth can't handle her own fights," but Percy looked plenty agitated enough to try right then with or without her approval.

"Who are you, anyway?"

"I'm your best friend," the right face said.

"I'm your worst enemy," the left face said.

"I'm Janus," both faces said in harmony. "God of Doorways.

"There's a god of doorways now?" Magnus asked, making the sign for door just to be sure. "What, did the Greeks have to stop and ask his permission and the owner before they entered?"

"He's not Greek!" Jason shouted at the top of his lungs like somebody had finally called on his name in class. He was more jazzed than if somebody had pumped him full of ambrosia...and yet so confused they might have put a Greek puzzle book in front of him for all the sense this made. "What the heck is a Roman god doing down there?"

"He's, ah, more symbolic than literal," Thalia was still watching Jason with mild concern as she tried to go on. "Let Will finish."

Beginnings. Endings. Choices."

"I guess that makes sense," Magnus agreed, though he still knew next time he walked down the block he'd get a twitch wondering about blood sacrifices and a crazy two-faced god throwing a key around following him. Gods forbid what someone was expected to do when a tree was cut down to make a door. Were you supposed to be making nice with Pan or the god you were using the wood for in that case?!

"I'll see you soon enough, Perseus Jackson," said the right face. "But for now it's Annabeth's turn." He laughed giddily. "Such fun!"

"We complete each other like two sides of a door," Percy grumbled, not looking remotely impressed that, for once, a god had the same reaction to seeing both of them.

"Shut up!" his left face said. "This is serious. One bad choice can ruin your whole life. It can kill you and all of your friends. But no pressure, Annabeth. Choose!"

Jason had a bad feeling he'd had his own reunion with this God too, maybe not so literal and in person, but the intense feeling circling the room of nobody disagreeing with that felt personal.

With a sudden chill, I remembered the words of the prophecy: the child of Athena's final stand.

"Don't do it," I said.

"I'm afraid she has to," the right face said cheerfully.

Annabeth moistened her lips. "I—I chose—"

Before she could point to a door, a brilliant light flooded the room.

Magnus instinctively didn't like that. He worried Hearth would get hurt and freak out, the light being too bright and temporarily blinding him, and he only usually saw Blitz at night, so he might have to step up real quick with no clue how if whatever this was ever found them.

Janus raised his hands to either side of his head to cover his eyes. When the light died, a woman was standing at the fountain.

She was tall and graceful with long hair the color of chocolate, braided in plaits with gold ribbons. She wore a simple white dress, but when she moved, the fabric shimmered with colors like oil on water.

"Are we meeting Iris?" Alex asked with immediate interest. He really hoped the rainbow goddess was cool. One of them had to be, right?

The disappointed sigh Thalia gave was an answer before she even said, "not even close."

"Janus," she said, "are we causing trouble again?"

"N-no, milady!" Janus's right face stammered.

"Yes!" the left face said.

"At least now I know which face I like better," Jason said as if this had been a serious concern.

"I still don't like any part of him," Percy huffed, he'd never like anyone who had hassled Annabeth.

"Shut up!" the right face said.

"Excuse me?" the woman asked.

"Not you, milady! I was talking to myself."

"I see," the lady said. "You know very well your visit is premature. The girl's time has not yet come. So I give you a choice: leave these heroes to me, or I shall turn you into a door and break you down."

"What kind of door?" the left face asked.

Alex gave an involuntary laugh like he'd been punched. And he was so sure he'd hate this god, yet that had been the first question to come to his mind too.

"Shut up!" the right face said.

"Because French doors are nice," the left face mused. "Lots of natural light."

"Shut up!" the right face wailed. "Not you, milady! Of course I'll leave. I was just having a bit of fun. Doing my job. Offering choices."

"Causing indecision," the woman corrected. "Now be gone!"

The left face muttered, "Party pooper," then he raised his silver key, inserted it into the air, and disappeared.

"Do I have to begrudgingly thank a god now?" Percy groaned. Apollo and Artemis had proved they weren't all bad, but he wasn't getting a good feeling from this one.

It wasn't very comforting Thalia didn't answer, but her scowl only grew.

The woman turned toward us, and fear closed around my heart. Her eyes shined with power. Leave these heroes to me. That didn't sound good. For a second, I almost wished we could've taken our chances with Janus. But then the woman smiled.

There had been something in that smile that reminded him of his mother. The kind of smile she'd given Gabe when she promised him meatloaf.

"You must be hungry," she said. "Sit with me and talk."

She waved her hand, and the old Roman fountain began to flow. Jets of clear water sprayed into the air. A marble table appeared, laden with platters of sandwiches and pitchers of lemonade.

"Who...who are you?" I asked.

"I am Hera." The woman smiled. "Queen of Heaven."

"I didn't know God was married," Magnus rolled his eyes. "No, wait, is she the goddess of nuns?"

"Stop trying to mix religions, it's more of a headache then we're already hearing," Nico groaned.

"Wrong heaven," Percy snorted, knowing full well Magnus had known that, but revenge was sweet.

"She obviously uses that title because she doesn't think much of herself," Alex agreed casually, while the others all twitched uneasily once more. They'd never quite get used to these guys being so flippant about how they addressed the gods, whether they were in the room or not.

I'd seen Hera once before at a Council of the Gods, but I hadn't paid much attention to her. At the time I'd been surrounded by a bunch of other gods who were debating whether or not to kill me.

"The real question is, do you remember if she was one of those to vote yes or no?" Nico asked with all the presumption in his voice of the answer.

Percy had to really think about it for a moment, and then shrugged and gave in, "no, not really. I remember who abstained though, so she fell into a lumpy category."

"She was lumped into a-" Magnus began, but he stopped with his own exasperated sigh as he realized Percy wasn't listening and back to humming a song that sounded suspiciously like something Jesse McCartney would sing.

I didn't remember her looking so normal. Of course, gods are usually twenty feet tall when they're on Olympus, so that makes them look a lot less normal. But now, Hera looked like a regular mom.

"Plus that whole they can change their appearance at whim thing," Will shrugged, he still wasn't over his dad, the homeless god Fred.

She served us sandwiches and poured lemonade.

"Grover, dear," she said, "use your napkin. Don't eat it."

"Excuse her, I live for that multi-purpose life," Alex scoffed.

"Yes, ma'am," Grover said.

"Tyson, you're wasting away. Would you like another peanut butter sandwich?"

Tyson stifled a belch. "Yes, nice lady."

"Queen Hera," Annabeth said. "I can't believe it. What are you doing in the Labyrinth?"

Hera smiled. She flicked one finger and Annabeth's hair combed itself. All the dirt and grime disappeared from her face.

"Gods, does she tuck your pockets in too and fuss about your weight?" Will's laugh was indulgent while Thalia looked like she was sucking on a lemon. More grateful by the moment this goddess would never give her faux motherly affection any more than her bio mom had.

"I came to see you, naturally," the goddess said.

Grover and I exchanged nervous looks. Usually when the gods come looking for you, it's not out of the goodness of their hearts. It's because they want something.

"I hope Athena has a little gold star waiting for you somewhere out there," Magnus told him cheerfully. "You do deserve it for moments like this."

"Stating the obvious?" Percy snorted.

"Not saying that out loud," Thalia scoffed.

Still, that didn't keep me from chowing down on turkey-and-Swiss sandwiches and chips and lemonade. I hadn't realized how hungry I was.

"And, now I'm hungry," Will huffed.

"I can usually tell how long when we've been at this when my butts gone numb," Magnus nodded.

"Food has been mentioned pretty frequently in the last few chapters," Percy agreed as he eyed the door to the rooms.

"We might as well take a snack break before anything to horrible in this Labyrinth does show up," Thalia agreed, and there was no more argument after that as they all took five. Before Hera could announce what she was there for, before the first monster showed up, before they realized how lost they were.

Will and Nico stepped back into the room where they'd set up their card game that indeed had not been disturbed one bit. They sat carefully on the bed, as far apart as normal on that couch, and split a plate of multiple different sandwiches with fruit-loops sprinkled on top, because the power of subliminal messaging had honestly left them craving exactly that.

Nico was clearly eating with reluctance, but he also didn't protest his half of the meal while Will found a way to talk about anything other than the Labyrinth for those moments. He talked about silly songs he wrote sporadically and his favorite color being orange and that time his sister Kayla had set the stables on fire while Nico watched with ever growing fondness for just being around him.

When they settled back down now prepared for the worst, Nico took the extra goofy minute Alex used to stretch and flex around like he was about to embark on the quest himself to share one last smile with Will when he opened the book up again whistling to find his place once more.

Tyson was inhaling one peanut butter sandwich after another, and Grover was loving the lemonade, crunching the Styrofoam cup like an ice-cream cone.

"All you're missing from that meal is bananas," Magnus grinned, he'd just housed five. He'd been taking full advantage of fresh fruit without a bruise on it here.

"I didn't think—" Annabeth faltered. "Well, I didn't think you liked heroes."

Hera smiled indulgently. "Because of that little spat I had with Hercules? Honestly, I got so much bad press because of one disagreement."

"A very large disagreement that caused multiple murders and is the most popular myth for a few reasons," Thalia muttered, not exactly Hera's biggest fan herself. It was a miracle she wasn't in the same boat as Hercules...and this goddess was definitely in her top five contenders of who might take Jason away to do gods knew what with all these years before Oceanus plopped him in here.

"Didn't you try to kill him, like, a lot of times?" Annabeth asked.

Hera waved her hand dismissively. "Water under the bridge, my dear.

"Is that bridge also on fire and broken in several places?" Thalia asked wearily.

"I didn't think to ask," Percy admitted, but he also didn't doubt it. He'd have to hear it from Hercules before he believed it, and even then, he'd still suspect something was up. Those stories were Not Pleasant, and even if they'd gotten lost in translation over time and they'd heard the wrong side of them, somebody had done something to make it all infamous.

His mind flickered to Zoe, and that snack of his tried to make a comeback. His instincts were still to distrust Hera, and Zoe had made him never wish to take Hercules's side without hearing every fact about what really happened, so this felt like a war he hoped to all the gods he'd never be in the middle of.

Besides, he was one of my loving husband's children by another woman. My patience wore thin, I'll admit it. But Zeus and I have had some excellent marriage counseling sessions since then. We've aired our feelings and come to an understanding

"I'm kind of wishing in this instance they'd taken the twenty-first-century approach and gotten a divorce though," Will sighed even if he knew that would never happen. Goddess of marriage and all that, gods forbid she ever admit she was wrong and should be in a real long term loving relationship, but man would it save a lot of demigods a lot of grief.

—especially after that last little incident."

"You mean when he sired Thalia?"

"Sired?" Thalia snorted fantastically. "What am I, a horse?"

"Just be grateful you came to mind at all," Percy chuckled, "I'm sure there are other much more famous kids of Zeus I could name instead. Like me!"

"How dare you," she sniffed, pressing her hand against her heart with wide blue eyes.

I guessed, but immediately wished I hadn't. As soon as I said the name of our friend, the half-blood daughter of Zeus, Hera's eyes turned toward me frostily.

"Percy Jackson, isn't it? One of Poseidon's...children." I got the feeling she was thinking of another word besides children.

"Sires," Magnus chuckled.

"Abominations?" Alex snorted.

"Minions," Thalia smirked.

"Disasters," Jason grinned.

Percy considered for a moment before shrugging and not denying any of those.

"As I recall, I voted to let you live at the winter solstice. I hope I voted correctly."

"Which does show some proof to her claim she doesn't hate all of us on principle," Will happily agreed.

"I'm sure she's still plenty selective about it," Nico said sullenly. He doubted if he'd been up for vote any god would have voted to let him live.

Will heard that in his voice, the reluctance, the edge of fear. He wanted to protest no god would dare vote against Nico after he'd helped save Olympus, but he could hardly argue that now. He stubbornly kept reading with the knowledge that he would.

She turned back to Annabeth with a sunny smile. "At any rate, I certainly bear you no ill will, my girl.

"I'm glad she sees that," Magnus said with a hint of relief, here finally was a god none of them were going to start on bad terms for merely existing. "A virgin goddess didn't technically have kids so she has no reason to dislike them."

"Loopholes for the win," but Percy only gave a halfhearted cheer. He had a bad feeling technicalities hadn't made his life easier much longer.

I appreciate the difficulty of your quest. Especially when you have troublemakers like Janus to deal with."

Annabeth lowered her gaze. "Why was he here? He was driving me crazy."

"Trying to," Hera agreed.

"Isn't Dionysus the god of the crazy people?" Magnus asked with a quiver of unease. "Does he have a deal with Janus to add to his list?" He clearly hadn't grasped from Jason's ever increasing gasping there was a significant difference at all, they wouldn't be making deals like that about anything.

"Just because he can turn people crazy doesn't mean he's responsible for all of them," but Will didn't sound so sure. Mr. D was supposed to be out here keeping an eye on these minor gods, and it seemed strange it hadn't been him to pop in and intervene...but would he even know this god existed? He knew the myths where his dad accepted the sun from Helios, the existence of other gods wasn't too world shattering in that regards, but not exactly at the same time like this was so casually being shown.

Alex, Magnus, and Jason sat right there though. So plainly Not Greek even before Rachel had confirmed it. A Roman god casually popping up wasn't the wildest thing he'd heard over the past few days.

"You must understand, the minor gods like Janus have always been frustrated by the small parts they play in the universe. Some, I fear, have little love for Olympus, and could easily be swayed to support the rise of my father."

"Your father?" I said. "Oh, right."

I'd forgotten that Kronos was Hera's dad, too, along with being the father to Zeus, Poseidon, and all the eldest Olympians. I guess that made Kronos my grandfather, but that thought was so weird I put it out of my mind.

"And I wish it would stop coming back!" Percy groaned, looking likely to rip his ear off if people didn't quit trying to name every branch of his family tree!

"We must watch the minor gods," Hera said. "Janus. Hecate. Morpheus. They give lip service to Olympus, and yet—"

"That's where Dionysus went," I remembered. "He was checking on the minor gods."

"Indeed." Hera stared at the fading mosaics of the Olympians.

"I will never get over the sheer audacity of you interrupting them," Will admitted.

"And yet here I sit, audaciting away," Percy shrugged. Magnus looked in physical pain that's not how that word worked.

"You see, in times of trouble, even gods can lose faith. They start putting their trust in the wrong things. They stop looking at the big picture and start being selfish. But I'm the goddess of marriage, you see. I'm used to perseverance. You have to rise above the squabbling and chaos, and keep believing. You have to always keep your goals in mind."

"What are your goals?" Annabeth asked.

"The perfect question at this time," Jason nodded without surprise.

"It's like she should be leading this quest or something," Percy nodded very seriously in agreement.

She smiled. "To keep my family, the Olympians, together, of course.

"Sounds like, the right answer," Alex said suspiciously, but then, he seemed automatically suspicious of everything.

At the moment, the best way I can do that is by helping you. Zeus does not allow me to interfere much, I am afraid. But once every century or so, for a quest I care deeply about, he allows me to grant a wish."

"A wish?"

"If you don't say world peace I'm going to have to revoke my friendship card with you," Magnus said. "That's like, The obvious answer!" He pulled out an imaginary card from his pocket and waved it around threateningly.

"Um, I'm pretty sure it has to be a wish she could do?" Percy said with a nervous smile like he thought he was serious. "I don't think the gods can actually do that without taking away free will, or something."

"Hmph, passable," Magnus agreed, stuffing the imaginary card back in his pocket.

"Besides, it would be Annabeth to ask," Alex reminded him in exasperation. "I have high hopes she'll come up with something good." His tone was almost threatening, like Annabeth better live up to those expectations. They weren't sure what would happen if she didn't.

"Before you ask it, let me give you some advice, which I can do for free.

"The day we can't give free advice is the day I lose faith in everything," Will said with an awkward smile.

"I'll make a mental list of how not to start the apocalypse," Nico grinned.

I know you seek Daedalus. His Labyrinth is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.

"Well that's, the opposite of encouraging," Magnus frowned.

"I'm sure it wouldn't help if she cheered and promised she wouldn't be any real help," Percy huffed.

But if you want to know his fate, I would visit my son Hephaestus at his forge. Daedalus was a great inventor, a mortal after Hephaestus's heart. There has never been a mortal Hephaestus admired more. If anyone would have kept up with Daedalus and could tell you his fate, it is Hephaestus."

Magnus blushed neon red as an awkward question came to mind.

Alex had no such reserves as she spat out an imaginary drink and shouted, "Wait, did Hephaestus and Daedalus do it? Or does she mean Daedalus is a child of Hephaestus? Or both?"

"A male god can have a child with a male mortal in the same way as Athena has brain children," Thalia agreed, grateful her answer surprised Magnus enough his gray eyes looked likely to never stop blinking at the implication. Alex was still staring at her for the other part of that question, weirdly as unphased by the answer as he was by everything that went on in here, but gratefully didn't pursue Thalia for more except for a strange smile.

"But how do we get there?" Annabeth asked. "That's my wish. I want a way to navigate the Labyrinth."

Alex and Jason both groaned at Annabeth.

"She did something I'd tell you was to impulsive," Jason huffed. "She could have asked a lot more questions!"

"And she should have been a lot more specific! Like asking for that string thing in her hand!" Alex huffed.

Percy didn't much like them criticizing her when she wasn't here, and he was still far more worried about Janus trying to terrify her than whatever Hera had done to let himself be distracted arguing with them.

"Cut her some slack guys, she's stressed up to her ears and won't always make the most rational decision every moment," Thalia did anyways with plenty of robustness.

Hera looked disappointed.

"Because she should have asked for world peace," Alex muttered under his breath to agree with Magnus, which he at least snickered in surprise over.

"So be it. You wish for something, however, that you have already been given."

"Oh come on," all seven of them yelped in surprise at that. In what world had that answer been laid out?! Now this goddess was just messing with them and calling it help!

"I don't understand."

"The means is already within your grasp." She looked at me. "Percy knows the answer."

"I do?" Percy managed to say at the same time as the book.

"He does?" The others all asked dubiously.

"You wouldn't hold out on that kind of information on Annabeth though," Magnus scoffed at once. "Let alone heard it and not, um, mentally, reported it?" Why was it suddenly so weird to describe what they were listening to?

"Glad you don't all think I'm keeping a hidden secret copy up here," Percy said with only a touch of relief as he tapped his temple. He kind of wished someone would call him an idiot again and get to the answer faster. Even Thalia looked dubious though why Hera thought he'd already been given the answer. The only link she could draw was their brief conversation that Rachel could see through the mist last winter, and even then, Percy yet had knowledge that was Ariadne's true ability, so she called bull on Hera's 'help' too.

"But that's not fair," Annabeth said. "You're not telling me what it is!"

"There is nothing stopping her from just, saying it! Make it clear as freaking day down there," Will agreed, looking personally hurt Hera seemed to be going out of her way to make this difficult after she'd just offered endless help.

Nico's touch of jealousy vanished at least. Turns out even if a god had cared enough to try helping him out of there, it probably wouldn't have done him any more good.

Hera shook her head. "Getting something and having the wits to use it...those are two different things. I'm sure your mother Athena would agree."

"Oh great, so the best advice we got out of this is be cryptic, thanks," Jason groaned with his hand pressed against his stomach like he was going to be sick.

He was sick. Of these Greek gods never making any sense. Why would Juno act like she'd done anything of value right now?!

The room rumbled like distant thunder. Hera stood. "That would be my cue. Zeus grows impatient. Think on what I have said, Annabeth. Seek out Hephaestus. You will have to pass through the ranch, I imagine.

Alex's mind flashed back to that Triple G Ranch that had been mentioned that apparently supplied scorpions Quintus had seemed so fond of. He didn't really believe in coincidences.

But keep going.

Nico's heart quivered at that possibility. If Percy had never shown up, gods knew what could have happened. Maybe he would have murdered Daedalus, who knew what Geryon would have done to him.

But then, why had Percy shown up there? This seemed like actual useful advice he couldn't imagine them ignoring for any reason.

And use all the means at your disposal, however common they may seem."

"Is a toothbrush going to come in handy on this quest?" Percy grouched. "Is she saying we should start tossing our extra pair of socks around to get results!"

"Not exactly advice I thought a motherly goddess would give," Magnus agreed with his disdain. He'd hoped a godly symbolic representation of marriage would have been a little more, loving. Aphrodite hadn't fit the right bill either. How was it possible none of these gods seemed more maternal with all the kids and family they had running around?

She pointed toward the two doors and they melted away, revealing twin corridors, open and dark. "One last thing, Annabeth. I have postponed your day of choice, I have not prevented it. Soon, as Janus said, you will have to make a decision. Farewell!"

She waved a hand and turned into white smoke.

Percy scowled and fought the urge to kick his chair in frustration. He'd probably kick it through the wall and cause all of his friend's death. That thought was the only thing restraining him, but he still cussed a few choice words he knew Hera would at least want to escape from.

So did the food, just as Tyson chomped down on a sandwich that turned to mist in his mouth.

"Now that was just rude," Alex looked ready to go and personally make him another sandwich just to make up for that.

"I bet you guys are under Detroit or something, can't have anything there unless it's nailed down," Thalia said in something of a mild mannered tone just because she didn't like seeing everybody stressed out and scowling under her care.

Percy gave her a begrudging laugh and a reluctant smile. "At least I didn't come away from this one with another immortal enemy?"

"There's the bright side!" Will agreed cheerfully.

The fountain trickled to a stop. The mosaic walls dimmed and turned grungy and faded again. The room was no longer any place you'd want to have a picnic.

Annabeth stamped her foot. "What sort of help was that? 'Here, have a sandwich. Make a wish. Oops, I can't help you!' Poof!"

"Poof," Tyson agreed sadly, looking at his empty plate.

"Sounds like you made a wish with a genie," Magnus frowned.

"And it was just one wish! You guys need a contract or a lawyer or something next time you run into one of them," Jason agreed.

"Now if she'd offered us three wishes, I bet at least you'd stop complaining," Percy laughed at him.

"I'm withholding judgment," Jason shrugged.

"Well," Grover sighed, "she said Percy knows the answer. That's something."

They all looked at me.

"But I don't," I said. "I don't know what she was talking about."

Annabeth sighed. "All right. Then we'll just keep going."

"Which way?" I asked. I really wanted to ask what Hera had meant about the choice Annabeth needed to make. But then Grove and Tyson both tensed. They stood up together like they'd rehearsed it. "Left," they both said.

Alex looked very torn now if he wanted to go down the right side just to get a peak of what had made Grover and Tyson agree on something. Magnus gripped his hands together, trying not to imagine Alex's hand in his as they ran for their life.

Annabeth frowned. "How can you be sure?"

"Because something is coming from the right," Grover said.

"Something big," Tyson agreed. "In a hurry."

"Left is sounding pretty good," I decided. Together we plunged into the dark corridor.

"Finished," Will said in a sing-song voice like they weren't about to start running for their life. Good for him, he knew they were all alive.

Jason exchanged an uneasy look with Thalia and Percy before he could get up and get the book. There really weren't enough breaks in the world from this to cover how much time they felt like they needed to process before the next awful thing leapt out of the shadows.

#pjo #reading the books #Percy Jackson #Thalia Grace #Jason Grace #alex fierro #Magnus Chase #nico di angelo #percabeth #fierrochase #solangelo #will solace #battle of the labyrinth #HDYSG

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digitallovergirl · 8 months ago

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　　DOG-SITTING + YOU

⭐. . . dog sitter! Percy Jackson x child! reader

in which: Percy needs money so he starts dog sitting, you kinda just came with the package.

authors note: idk what's with me and coming up with ideas randomly but I was looking at the poll and didn't know if I should do Percy, Jason, or Leo. So I just chose Mr. sassy. don't blame me, blame the poll 🤷 also! this fic is platonic. i'm not some werido whose shipping Percy with a kid, be fr <3 (also, if you like this one, here's part two)

warnings: Percy being (slightly) responsible, small injury, and a bunch of wholesome energy.

Becoming a pet sitter was not on Percy's bucketlist.

Look, what had happened was: Percy needed a way to make money so he could take Annabeth out on a date. Now, in consideration, Percy could have asked Sally for some money, but he was, in his words, a big kid now. And being a big kid meant not (always) relying on your very awesome mom for everything.

But that almost meant Percy would have to do one thing: figure out what he was going to do. And that's when the idea of becoming a dog sitting showed up.

You see, the place where Percy and his mom lived didn't usually get new neighbors. But when out of nowhere, they get a new neighbor down the hall with one of the cutest puppies Percy has ever seen, he knew he had to arrange something. He knew from listening (aka eavesdropping) on Sally and the other person who lived there, that they were pretty busy. Meaning that sometimes, they would have to stay at work overtime to get stuff done.

Was it a little selfish to be thinking like that? maybe. But if you also think about it, if he watched their dog for them, they wouldn't have to worry about anything happening while they were gone. It was a win-win situation for both of them.

Now, the second thing he had to do: figure out how to ask—

Sally may or may not have heard Percy talking to Annabeth about his idea, so she did it for him. Can we give Sally Jackson a vote for the best mother award again? thank you.

So there Percy was, sitting in his neighbors apartment and playing with their dog. Thanks to his very awesome mom. "I have this in the bag!" Percy said in-between giggles. "quite literally, nothing could go wrong—"

"Who are you?" A voice said out of nowhere. There stood you, in light pajamas and a brown rabbit stuffed animal in your hand. You looked confused (and slightly afraid.) "And why are you playing with my puppy?" You tilted your head to the side.

"Uhm. they didn't tell me they had a kid," he mumbled the last part under his breath. "Your parents hired me to watch you dog. And you, I guess?" he said hesitantly.

"Hm...If that's true.." you walked over to your fridge. Whenever your parents had somebody over, they would leave a little note telling you about it. A yellow sticky was placed right there with the words:

Hey, [your name.] I don't know when you'll see this but if you see some random teenage boy playing with the dog, do not worry! your'e mom hired somebody to watch the dog, so he'll be there. I'm pretty sure his name is Peter. Or.. something like that. If he starts acting weird, call me. Not your mom.

Love, Your dad.

"Is your name Peter?" you turned your head to ask.

Percy held back a laugh. "It's Percy. Where'd you get Peter from?" You walked over to the couch and sat on the ground. "The note said your name might be Peter. I don't think my dad was paying much attention to your name." You shrugged, letting your puppy rub it's body against you.

"Wait. Percy. Is that short for Perseus?"

Percy blinked. "How'd you know?"

"I'm good at guessing names. And plus, Percy isn't really a popular name by itself so shortening it would make more sense."

"Your a smart cookie, huh?" He mused, getting up from the couch and sitting down next to you.

"I guess. I wouldn't call myself a smart cookie. More like.. a smart brownie or something." You nodded. "Yeah. Or a cool blueberry pancake. Now that, sounds cool."

Percy nodded in agreement. "Definitely. It fits you better too."

"Why, thank you Mr. Percy." You did a little bow. "Anyways, wanna hear some school drama I have?"

"Oh, go ahead. It's been a hot minute since I've heard some good drama." Percy smirked, a sudden interested look onto his face.

You smirked back. "Okay, So I heard that—"

#🎀 . ° . made by zia!#I actually really liked this one #l'd also like to say the tea WAS spilled.#had Percy gasping and asking for part twos frfr #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson #percy jackson x reader #pjo x y/n #pjoverse #pjo x reader

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dontspillthefrijoles43 · 2 years ago

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Lost Hero: Bresia- prologue

Dreamscape

Word count: 757 Warnings: light angst, spoilers to HOO if you haven’t read

Summary of chapter: Weird dreams sure do tell a lot.

Likes ❤️ , reblogs 🔁 and comments 💬 are much appreciated :)

Next >>

Breisa sure she was dreaming.

Everything felt warped and hazy.

She was seeing things.

An old prairie blue house, like something retired people would rest in. A vacation house. For nice well off family.

Inside a cozy room with wood panel walls, where a poker table would be— was a ping pong table.

In front of the ping pong table were a group of people with orange t-shirts. Some of their faces were visible, some were blurred.

“Are we sure this is a good idea?” Someone with a hard edged voice spoke. Voice came from tough looking girl, who wore denim jean jacket with various heavy metal patches on them.

“We won’t know unless we try. It’s a sign. It could lead us to him.” Another girl answered, boxer braids dyed blond, her voice was shaky but determined .

“But this is Hera we’re talking about.” Sandy haired boy wearing an arch’s bow, “She usually doesn’t help heroes. She hates us. To her, we’re a wad of gum beneath her heels.”

“With all my respect to the gods, I believe Mr. Solace is speaking the truth, Annabeth.” An older man in a wheelchair hummed, stroking his beard. “This could be a trick. Or a trap.”

“Look. I am taking my chances with this. Butch is coming with me, and he’s one of our best.” She protested.

“Besides a protector is assigned there. Isn’t he watching over those three half bloods? Might as well bring them here for safety. They might know something. What if this special case is him.”

“And if it’s not?” Will blurted out, while Annabeth shot him a look. “I know you want to find him. We’re just as worried as you. But if it’s another trick or trap- something your not prepared for…we don’t want to risk it.”

Silence fell among them.

“I think we should let Annabeth go.” Some girl said, jet black wavy hair and striking emerald eyes. “I couldn’t find him with my magic. But I’ve been getting weird dreamscapes about the same time Annabeth got that ‘cule’. Something about it is important.”

“How can we know for sure?” A gurgled voice said.

“We don’t. But we have to roll the dice.” Someone remarked, they had a rainbow tattoo on their bicep.

A few murmurs broke out. Some agreed. Some disagreed. It was divided chaos.

“I suggest a vote on this.” Another girl spoke up, with a bandaid on her chin and machine grease on her face. “If we get enough votes for Annie’s plan- she goes. But if too many disagree, then we come up with a new plan.”

All of them nodded in understanding.

“All in favor of Annabeth’s argument, raise your hand.”

The girl with the red bandanna, rainbow tattoo guy, Raven haired girl, and four other people raised their hands. 9 for Annabeth.

“Those who oppose.” On the other side 9 people also raised their hands.

It was a tie.

Another argument started between the group. Except for one guy, who was snoring with his hand up.

“Alright settle down. Settle down.” The guy with the beard called. Reluctantly they quiet down. “Someone didn’t vote.”

Everyone glanced between one another. Trying to figure out who didn’t with some stink eye and empty threats.

“Will.” Annabeth called him out.

They all turned to him.

Heavy silence fell as Solace— Will and Annabeth had a tense exchange.

“This seems like a mistake. What if it is another mislead? Illusion? Something you can’t handle?” Something conflicted but serious …and sad…flashed across his face as he broke the silence.

“I get your concern. You don’t want what happened to all the others… to happen to me. And with him going missing, it was another reminder of what happened in the titan war.

But please Will. I need to find him. I am not giving up on him. I know he isn’t dead. Everything we fought for last summer can’t be for nothing. I need to know if he’s alright—”

She choked back tearfully. Some came to comfort her but she held herself together and kept the tears at bay. “Just please. I need to try.”

Something in Will’s gaze broke. He paused for a long minute.

With hesitation he finally spoke, “While I don’t think this is a great idea, I am on Annabeth’s side.”

A course murmured of doubt and some counters were said. Before the guy with the beard quiet them down again.

“It is settled. Annabeth and Butch are to travel to Navada, extract the demigods to camp. And hopefully find the whereabouts of Percy Jackson.``

The dream began to become blurred and hazed. It swirled like paint on a canvas.

Colors muted and mixed together.

Voices groaned in agony and whispered in an eerily fashion.

Someone, with a weirdly comforting voice, spoke from the noise and said

“You are apart of this

They’re going to find you

This is your destiny…mi nenita”

And then Breisa woke up.

(A/N: in honor of Leo valdez birthday, here is the first of this series. Lost hero told from a different pov)

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umbran6 · 3 years ago

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Hogwarts Houses for the Heroes of Olympus, Apollo, and Meg.

I’ve seen a lot of people do this, so I thought I should do this and explain as to why I wanted them there. Spoilers are abound through Heroes of Olympus and Trials of Apollo as I explain my reasoning.

Percy Jackson: Hufflepuff. Look, I know a lot of people place him in Gryffindor. That’s a reasonable outcome one can reach, considering his feats could be considered immensely brave. However, Percy has often participated in his quests out of a sense of loyalty towards those he loves, whether it’s his mom (The Lightning Thief), Camp Half-Blood (The Sea of Monsters), Annabeth (Both The Titan’s Curse and Battle of The Labyrinth), and in The Last Olympian, all of them. What really pins him in place is when he willingly fallis to Tartarus alongside Annabeth by the ending of The Mark of Athena, which is a remarkable yet insane feat of both love and loyalty. He also has a work ethic, which is revealed during The Tower of Nero. Rather than just go straight to New Rome and live a happy life, he went to a hellish military school just so he could graduate from there with a high school diploma. If that’s not a work ethic, I don’t know what is. Loyalty and work ethic are key Hufflepuff traits, and Percy has shown all of them.

Annabeth Chase: Slytherin. Annabeth has often shown a lot of intelligence, but also a lot of resourcefulness and cunning during her time in the series. She literally tricked both Arachne and Nyx in what were impossible situations, and her goals are extremely ambitious, with her wanting to become an architect so she could build something that could last a thousand years. She also has a lot of Ravenclaw traits, to the point she repeated Odysseus and listened to the Sirens so she could learn what she desired the most. However, that was only once, and most often she used the knowledge she was given in resourceful and cunning ways, such as during the Last Olympian where she used the statues from Daedalus as a way to defend Manhattan. Needless to say, in my opinion she is a Slytherin first and Ravenclaw second.

Jason Grace: It’s quite tricky, considering we don’t get to see any key defining traits, but I have decided to put him in Gryffindor. Jason’s shown plenty of bravery, fighting Giants and Titans during his quest, but he also has honor and chivalry, which he shows during Blood of Olympus, and later on, The Burning Maze. Specifically, in the scene where he makes a deal with Kymopoleia, promising to make shrines not only to her, but to all of the hundreds of minor gods of Greek Mythology. As we later see during The Burning Maze, Jason was completely willing to honor such a deal, working on the shrines even while he was living the closest thing to a normal life one could achieve as a demigod. And of course, we can’t ignore the fact that he was brave to fight Caligula just so his friends could escape.

Piper Mclean: Slytherin. This is because during most of the time we’ve seen her, Piper fights dirty. She doesn’t stab a monster in the dagger, but charmspeaks the monster and stabs him in the back while he’s distracted. When claiming the position as Cabin Counselor in the Aphrodite Cabin during The Lost Hero from Drew, Piper uses the rules against her to get the position, rather than straight-up fighting her at the very beginning. Furthermore, rather than fight Khione upfront during the House of Hades, she bides her time and stalls the goddess until she can find a way to win. Though she has some traits that could go along with the other Houses, Slytherin tends to stand out the best. The only way she isn’t Slytherin in terms of traits is that she lacks ambition — we never see her have a higher goal beyond the quest, or any plans for what she’s going to do after everything’s done. Overall, she’s Slytherin through her actions, not her words, ironically.

Frank Zhang: Gryffindor. This is because Frank performs a lot of actions that are by any standard, brave, and often selfless and self-sacrificial. Specifically, a lot of the sacrifices he performs throughout the series. In Son of Neptune, he was willing to be the distraction against the Laestrygonians so that Percy and Hazel could start their escape plan. He was literally willing to burn his own life force (his stick) so that Thanatos could break free despite the very large risk it posed to him. He even stood in the way of a Giant, pushing him all the way to the Canadian border. And as we learn in The Tyrant’s Tomb, he was willing to repeat his sacrifice if it meant Caligula and Commodus were killed. Frank is a Gryffindor through and through, though he does have some minor Ravenclaw traits such as his use of tactics against his opponents, way of making plans, or recalling ancient Roman history.

Hazel Levesque: Once again, this was another difficult one. Mainly because Hazel is split right down to the middle between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor. On one hand, she was so loyal to her mother that despite the fact that the lady got them into this mess, Hazel willingly sacrificed Elysium so her mom wasn’t punished. On the other hand, she was also willing to sacrifice herself so Alcyoneus couldn’t rise again despite the fact that it would lead to her and her mom’s death. Finally, I decided she deserved to go to Gryffindor, because of the fact that she willingly went towards the quest to rescue Thanatos in The Son of Neptune despite the fact that it was very likely that the god of Death would take her back to the Underworld. That takes immense amounts of bravery, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but she’s also putting herself at immense risk of being dragged down to the Underworld.

There are some Slytherin traits, such as when she made a plan to trick Sciron during the House of Hades, or the plan to trap Nike. However, Hazel’s a lot more defined by her bravery and empathy, which are more Gryffindor traits. If she had more ambition, a big goal after the quest it could be understood, but overall her Gryffindor traits are more prominent. For example, let’s compare how she got to Praetor and Octavian got to Praetor, and later on, Pontifex Maximus. Octavian often used a lot of word-twisting and dirty tactics to get his position, and only got there because Reyna left her post so she could help Jason. In comparison, the legion willingly raised her on a shield and collectively voted her into the position due to her bravery during the fight against Tarquin in The Tyrant’s Tomb.

Leo Valdez: There have been arguments over where he should go. All of them want him in one house or the other, but the most convincing ones were either having him in Slytherin, or in Ravenclaw. And I can definitely agree with both — Leo has shown immense amounts of intelligence and cunning throughout the series. He’s also intelligent in the sense that he created the Argo II, multiple weapons, the Holographic Scrolls, and even Buford.

However, after looking through his actions, I found that he leans more towards Slytherin. Although his façade of cheerfulness and humor was used to disguise trauma, he also used said humor to make himself appealing towards bullies so they didn’t beat him up. He often used his cunning to morph himself to social situations such as his façade as a jokester to look less threatening in comparison to others.

During the times we see him fight, he’s also the one to not only play it smart, but also using tactics and dirty tricks, rather than focusing on swordplay or his own fire powers. The only time we see him go ham with his pyrokinesis is when he’s fighting Khione during The Lost Hero. Furthermore, in The Mark of Athena, rather than straight-up fight the nymphs and Narcissus to get the celestial bronze he needed to make repairs, he uses himself as a distraction and has Hazel manipulate the bronze in a place where she can’t be seen, which is a plan that needs a lot of manipulation of the opposing parties.

What finally acted as the nail in the coffin for me was his plan to defeat Gaea during Blood of Olympus. It involved a lot of manipulation of both enemies and allies, and in the ended it succeeded so brilliantly that everybody got what they wanted, with none of them being aware of the plan until Frank and Hazel explained it, and they were the very few people in the know regarding Leo’s sacrifice. Developing such a plan takes immense amounts of cunning and ambition, which are both Slytherin traits. Although he may be chaotic, mischievous, and annoying, Leo is the guy you don’t realize is a Slytherin until it’s too late.

Nico di Angelo: The thing about a guy who was pretty much a loner throughout most of his time in the series is that it’s hard to tell what values he has. Ergo, we should look at his actions rather than his own words. Nico, although mainly dominated by his naïveté during his younger years, has shown himself to be extremely brave. For example, there was him openly defying his father by saving Percy from his imprisonment, and later actively convincing Hades to stop his vow of neutrality and fight alongside the Olympians in The Last Olympian. Finally, there’s his excursion to Tartarus and later his willingness to transport the Athena Parthenos during Blood of Olympus. Nico willingly went there to see if the Doors of Death were over there, and later transported the Athena Parthenos to Camp Half-Blood even if it meant he would fade into the shadows forever. All feats are insanely brave, and therefore I argue that he should go to Gryffindor.

Reyna Avila Ramirez Arellano: Hufflepuff. Most of Reyna’s actions aren’t inspired by bravery, honor, or chivalry, though from a certain point of view they are brave. Reyna often performs most of her actions out of loyalty for those she cares about, almost in a Percy-ish kind of way. Her interrogation and cold nature towards Percy in Son of Neptune? Suspicion that he would be a threat to Camp Jupiter. She metaphorically fought against Octavian’s power advances because she knew his own ambitions wouldn’t help New Rome. Willingness to cooperate with the Greeks before the Eidolons screwed up everything? She believed that it was best for New Rome. Willingness to brave the Mare Nostrum all by herself? Both her loyalty to Jason and that she believed that waging war against Camp Half-Blood was not the best for the legion. Her loyalty and ethic just make her a shoe-in for Hufflepuff.

Apollo/Lester Papadopoulos: Oh boy, he’s kind of at an in-between when it comes what house he should be in. If we were talking about him pre-Lesterfication, I would honestly say Hufflepuff, but he takes a good chunk of those traits and turned them into a darker way. He defeated Python because the snake monster had chased his mother off of Delphi. He alongside Artemis murdered Niobe’s kids because the goddess insulted Leto by saying she was better than her. When Asclepius is murdered by Zeus, he retaliates by murdering the Cyclopes who made the weapons. And finally, he punishes those who broke their vows He shows loyalty, but in a lot of darker ways that we don’t expect. He’s got Hufflepuff morals, but they’re in a darker, more warped way than we expect.

If we’re looking at him post-Lesterfication, I would still say Hufflepuff, but now he does it in a brighter way and is also more Gryffindor. He was more willing to sacrifice himself if it meant saving those he cared about, such as when he willingly tried to kill himself during The Burning Maze if it meant Caligula would stop holding his friends hostage. He was also willing to commit more honorable gestures such as bringing Jason’s body to New Rome during The Tyrant’s Tomb. He was even willing to own up to his mistakes right in front of a god who had every right to hate him if it meant Meg and Reyna could be spared. He’s still a Hufflepuff, but he’s a more idealistic and less warped version of the values he had before he became Lester.

Meg: In a way, she’s pretty much like Apollo. She’s a Hufflepuff, but in all the wrong ways at first. We see this in The Dark Prophecy when its clear that during that time, she was more loyal to Nero of all people rather than her fellow campers, to the point of accepting Nero’s gaslighting if it meant she could see the positive view of him. However, she’s also loyal to Apollo and her father, which we see in The Burning Maze because the main reason she guns for Caligula is because she often compares him to The Beast aspect of Nero, the person who killed her dad. She in the end is also willing to accept and finish her father’s legacy, planting the seeds that eventually become the Meliai. Tower of Nero is when she gains the will to stand up to Nero after support from Apollo and her friends, and is later on seen taking care of the other children Nero abused. In the end, she’s a Hufflepuff despite the fact that she may not look like it.

Now, before you guys getting up in arms about there being no Ravenclaws, in my opinion the house is a lot more knowledge-focused, whether its discovering more knowledge, but also using it in a more academic and experimental way. Considering we don’t see this attitude or its corresponding values too much during the stories that we see since they’re more save-the-world mission focused. While Slytherin does have an intelligence-centric value such as cunning, its more focused on using such intelligence to manipulate and trick others, while Ravenclaw uses such intelligence in the discovery for knowledge.

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moss-lyman · 4 years ago

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another little drabble that nobody asked for. I saw the word “clingy” and this happened.

J/D set post-series.

“Josh, will you bring me those clothes that are folded on top of the dryer?” Donna calls from their bedroom as she continues packing her suitcase. She rolls up her socks and stuffs them neatly down the sides by her t-shirts. “Josh?” He finally walks into the bedroom empty handed and she frowns. “Where are the clothes?”

“I changed my mind,” he says. “I don’t think you should go.”

She rolls her eyes and goes to get the clothes herself. “Here we go.”

“It’s two weeks, Donna! It’s too long!”

“Josh, we’ve talked about this. One of us has to go and it can’t be you, so it has to be me.”

“Why can’t I send Sam?”

“Because he's overseeing the budget that votes in three weeks and will be living on the Hill until then,” she says patiently, stuffing trousers and some blouses into the suitcase.

“What about Lou?”

“Lou is going.”

“Exactly, so why do you have to? This trip is 85% PR. That’s Lou’s job.”

“Yes, for the President.” She goes into the bathroom for her travel bag and replenishes the makeup wipes and q-tips. “But Annabeth has to stay here and the First Lady needs a staff too.”

“Why can’t you just send some deputies?”

“Because the kids are going and this is their first big trip as a couple and Helen’s already freaking out. She asked me to come, Josh, and the President told me he’ll feel better if I’m there since you can’t be. I’m going.”

He groans loudly as he flops onto his back on the bed. “Why can’t I go again?”

Donna grins and zips her suitcase before setting it on the floor by the door and climbing onto the bed to prop her elbows on his chest. “Because you’re a powerful man,” she murmurs. “And DC needs you more than the European Union.”

“Don’t you need me, too?”

“Yes I do and it’s going to be a very long 14 days without you, but we have to do it.”

He grumbles and brings his hand to rest on her back. “Easy for you to say. You get to traipse around Europe and have a working vacation. I have to stay here and deal with whatever the hell’s going on in South America.”

Donna grins and kisses the corner of his mouth as he pouts. “Poor baby.”

“You mock, but I’m genuinely distraught over this. We’ve never been apart this long. How am I gonna cope?”

Donna brings her hand up to his cheek and traces his nose as his fingers squeeze her shoulder. She feels for him, she really does. If it were reversed, she’d be pulling out the big guns and practically begging him to stay. Her two weeks are going to go a lot faster than his.

“Distance makes the heart grow fonder,” she says, her smile widening when he rolls his eyes. “I mean, imagine the welcome home sex we’re gonna have when I get back.” His eyebrows perk up at that. “Two weeks of stored up sexual frustration.” She walks her fingers up his chest. “And it’ll be Labor Day weekend. You’ll have a whole extra day to show me how much you missed me.”

He hums, but his sad demeanor doesn’t change. “You really have to go?” he asks quietly, dragging her all the way on top of him and holding her tight.

“You’re clingy,” she teases. “You know that?”

“Don’t care.”

Donna twists her arm under his to pull his shoulder so they're on their sides, Josh’s grip only tightening and making her grin, but she schools her features at his still-hopeful face. “I really have to go.”

He drops his head and sighs heavily as he snuggles into her neck. She runs her fingers through his hair as she tries to soothe him. “I’ll call you every day. It’ll only be a 5 or 6 hour difference, I can give you a wake up call.”

“And a goodnight call.”

She nods and kisses his temple. “And a goodnight call.”

“And a lunch time call.”

Donna laughs and hugs him tight. “If Lou could hear you right now…”

“I’m addicted, Donna,” he mumbles as he moves to kiss up her neck. “You’re taking away my supply. What am I gonna do for that long?”

“It’s only two weeks, honey,” she soothes. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Two weeks in Europe is not the same as two weeks in the White House. It’s like you’ll be gone for a year.”

“I know.”

She rubs her hand up and down his back as he lays against her. In about half of her past dalliances with men, she’d be the one to break things off because he got too needy, but she loves when Josh is like this. He’s usually pretty composed and they do their own thing, but he gets like this every once in a while when one of them has a work trip or he’s sick. It’s so different than when he’d whine at her before when she worked for him. It was only cute sometimes, but him hanging onto her like a koala like he is now isn't so bad.

“What time does the flight leave?”

“Wheels up at 0700.”

He rolls over on top of her and settles between her thighs. “So I have about 10 hours to convince you to stay.”

She grins and wraps her arms around his shoulders as he kisses her and she feels that warm glow spread throughout her stomach and chest. “I love you,” she murmurs. “And I’ll miss you like crazy, but don’t get your hopes up.”

“I’m gonna try anyway,” he says, his voice determined as he slips his fingers under her shirt.

She hums and slides her fingers into his hair before hitching a leg up on his waist. “Do your worst.”

#my fic #josh x donna #the west wing

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starlightshadowsworld · 1 year ago

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Pre HOO Jason just casually usurping his father for the Olympian throne.

And everyone's like oh how typical of a son of Zeus... Jupiter(?) always searching for power.

Jason's just like "you think I wanted this? We've been lodging complaints for years because you guys never visit us.

If I didn't do this the 1st cohort were gonna sacrifice Steve, and no one wants that especially not Steve.

So we held a vote, and well..." He sighs like someone who's just done with everything. "Everyone voted for me, even Octavian so you know shit is fucked.

Anyway, I'm in charge because you sir are bad at it like... terrible at it. Don't worry I'll give it back, once you sort out your... Everything."

Zeus/Jupiter is pissed as all heck but Poseidon calls a vote and shockingly everyone votes in favour of Jason.

Jason is just yay my plan is working but also... Why me?!

"Why did they vote you?" Asks Annabeth.

Jason shrugs "apparently other than Reyna who said no way, I'm the only other one who has 'common sense' and won't 'fuck things up anymore than usual.'

Apparently keeping a bunch of Romans from burning down camp every other week, makes me qualified to lead. The whole lead them into battle against Krios only made it worse."

Annabeth blinks, before nodding "no yeah, makes sense. I'm Annabeth Chase."

"Jason, Jason Grace.... Erm is she okay?" He points to Thalia who is just trying to process everything.

"Oh she's fine, just a lot to take in. She's my sister, well our sister Thalia Grace." Says Annabeth, having figured it out already.

Jason grins "no way?! Really?" He frowns "hey wait Nico told me she was a tree?" Annabeth snorts "it's a long story."

That he can agree with.

"Soo... What should we do with him?" Asks Percy pointing to the very pissed off Zeus/Jupiter who's laying in a heap on the floor.

"He's going to lose his powers. He's going to become someone that even a newly turned demigod can defeat.

He will know what it means to helpless and have no one to turn to. He will have the same immortality of that of a huntress, all the while everyone he's ever messed with hunts him for sport.

His only allies will be those who choose to aid him. He will be shunned, he will be isolated and learn what it means to be mortal."

Evetuone looks at Jason in shock, probably because it was the first time they'd seen him so serious.

Suddenly an entire legion voting this guy to be Zeus/Jupiter's replacement made a lot more sense.

"And what" spits Zeus/Jupiter, getting up to glare at his spawn. "Makes you think you can do that to me?"

Jason smiles, but it isn't kind "wouldn't you like to know, weather boy?" Before throwing something that engulfs his father in blue smoke.

When the smoke clears, the great king of Olympus now appears as a young man. He tries to pick up his masterbolt, enraged and it shocks him.

Hera is escatic, pulling Jason into a hug "you did it, I knew you had it in you." She says ruffling his hair "Lady Hera!" He pouts, trying to fix his hair.

She frowns "none of that, I have told you time and time again to call me mum." Jason mouths the words as she speaks, very clear they've had this conversation a lot.

"Sorry your majesty, Lady Hera, Queen of Olympus." Hera sighs but her gaze is fond.

"Mum?" Asks Annabeth. "I'm her champion but she'd watch over me as a baby and as a kid so she basically helped raise me." Explains Jason.

He totally knew about the bet Hera and Lupa had to see which he'd call mum first, and he totally wasn't messing with them both.

Nope, absolutely not.

"And er yeah, you guys can take him back to your camp when you want." Says Jason.

Hera lights up, a devious smile on her face. "I'll take care of that" Apollo raises a hand, a similar look on his face "I'll help."

The two vanish with the now fallen king.

Well that should be fine.

Probably.

Jason shrugged, ah well he tried.

"Soo... Who are you anyway?" Asks Percy, curious. Jason sighed, he was gonna have to put that nap on hold.

"Well it all started when my mum left me to the wolves, pun not intended."

(@star-archivist I'm not sure it this what you meant by "needing more of this", but.. Here it is 😅)

#jason grace #heroes of olympus #idk what this is #annabeth chase #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians

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depressedacadamia · 3 years ago

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How do you passive aggresively say fuck you in flower? Part II

Summary: It seems that Nico and Will just cant stop running into each other

A/N: FIRST WEEK OF EXAMS OVER, ONLY ONE WEEK TO GO!! Unfortunately, I am not able to write a lot due to tedious revision but I wrote this part 2 a while ago and thought that today would be the perfect time to release it! Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy and comment! <3 from me!

Read on AO3 Read Part I on tumblr

They were not expecting to see each other the next day at Uni. In fact, Will was so shocked, he had to pause and squint at the raven haired boy to check that he was the same as the customer 2 days ago. What was this dude doing here? This was the medical college!

Oh shit, what if he’s a new med student or a transfer student?

However, while it seemed that Will had noticed Nico, it seemed that Nico had not noticed Will; he couldn’t have been more appalled as he was ignored and he simply watched in despair as the italian jogged past him without a moment's pause. Not even a Hey, you’re the guy I made out with yesterday, right?

Will was used to having all his past hookups follow him like a sheep and sure, he hadn’t really hooked up with Nico but he was for some reason expecting some sort of reaction from him. Was he that forgettable?

He felt someone dig their elbow into his ribs and was about to shout What the fuck before he realised that Calypso was elbowing him.

“Calypso what!” He winced as he rubbed at his side, still in pain from Calypso’s pointy elbows.

“Do you think I should invite Leo to the dorm party?”

Will’s head perked up. “ Leo? Leo valdez?”

“Yes Leo Valdez, who else?” Calypso sighed.

“I thought you saw him making out with some guy at another party and then proceeded to pretend you never liked him in the first place-”

“- Which is true! I never liked Leo in the first place, he was just a friend!” Calypso desperately defended.

“Everytime someone says they’re just a friend and not they’re just my friend, you know that they’ve crushed on them.”

“Shut up.” Calypso whacked her bag over Will’s head, ignoring his shouts of protests.

Will’s hands instinctively went over his head, tucking his chin in to prevent himself from gaining any brain damage from Calypso. “ Hey, Hey! I work for you, little shit!”

“Exactly, I can fire you any second I want to!” Calypso boasted before remembering something. “ Wasn’t there a request that came in on Saturday? Something like fuck you?”

Will could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks. “ Uh, yeah, maybe. I don’t really remember.”

Calypso recognised that tone. That tone was the same tone used during the walk of shame, that tone meant things that she did not want in her shop. Turning her head only halfway, she gave Will a grimace, praying that it hadn’t happened again.

“William Andrew Solace, Please please tell me that you didn’t have sex with another client in my shop!”

“For once,” Will smirked. “ For once, I can actually say that I didn’t.”

Calypso sighed in relief, all the tension in her body simply oozing out all at once. Her shoulders dropped and the tense expression on her face was replaced by her regular small smile that she constantly wore, causing her to seem quite shy, which technically she was.

“You know, you seriously have some nerve Callie, hitting your employees like that. That could be harassment. What happened to the shy girl who could tell me the latin name for any plant out there?”

“Just because I don’t hook up with every good looking breathing thing, does not mean I’m shy.” She put her hands on her hips and took several confident steps while swaying her hips before hitting a hard chest with a thud and feeling the hard floor on her butt. Frustrated, she huffed and without even looking at the perpetrator, began to shout,

“Are you blind or stupid? Look where you’re going for fuck sake.” She ignored the offered hand and got up herself, brushing her scraped hands on her pants.

It was only when Will nudged her, not very discreetly may I add, that she noticed that it was Leo Valdez who was offering the outstretched hand and another very scary looking dude standing by Leo. However, something about him seemed familiar- from the shape of his body to his hair and in particular his jawline. She remembered seeing it somewhere.

Fuck, that was the guy Leo was making out with at that party. She realised.

Simultaneously, Will was thinking- Fuck, that was Nico di Angelo.

“Sorry Leo, Calypso,” Will turned to her, completely avoiding Nico. “ Do you have anything you’d like to say to Leo?”

Claypso gave a bitter look to Will before remebering that Leo fucking Valdez was standing infront of her and she had essentialy told him to fuck off. She had to fight the blush rising to the tip of her ears and could only manage to muster a small pipsqueak of ‘sorry’ while looking down at the floor and having her face curtained by her chestnut hair.

Unexpectedly, she felt a hand move the hair out of her face and slip and finger underneath her chin and tilt it up slightly.

“The least you could do while apologising is look at him,” Nico snarled, standing off to the side, watching as Leo brushed her hair out of the way. Leo turned his head to raise an eyebrow that meant Not cool dude before looking back at Calypso, his eyes warm and his smile generous.

“Sorry about him, he’s running low on social interaction juice. Are you okay there?”

Calypso thought she could feel herself gaping- the worst part was that her little shit of a friend Will pointed it out.

“Close your mouth Callie, you’ll get flies. It’s impolite to stare as well,” Will drawled, his eyes still glued away from Nico. Leo glanced at Calypso’s injured hands, the small scrapes and the little cuts across her palms. His frown was cute, with his eyebrows scrunching up and his eyes pooled with concern as he took her hands in his.

“Oh, Dios mio. I’m so sorry- will you forgive me if I clean these up for you?” Leo held her hands gently, as to not hurt her.

Will butted in before Calypso could respond. “Uh, no, that’s not necessary. I can help her from here!”

Nico snorted. “ Yeah, the med- student definitely knows how to clean up his cuts.”

Will growled in response, unappreciative of Nico’s sarcasm. Leo’s frown in concern only grew, the small displays of guilt visible across his face. “ Are you sure? It’s the least I could do after causing you to fall.”

“No it's fine-”

“-Will, calm down. Yes, I’ll go, but you also owe me,” Calypso confirmed. You know your worth, you know your worth, She chanted in her head.

“Well well, a person who knows what they want, of course, I am in your debt. After you.” Leo pointed to the pavement ahead as he left Will and Nico alone. Nico looked Will up and down before letting out a little snort and walking off, not before giving him a little shove with his shoulder as he walked past.

Will was officially outraged. Who the fuck did this guy think he was? First of all, he was barging into the medical college when he didn’t even attend it, then he was barging him to the floor without even apologising and then laughing about it!

Will turned around while still on the floor and yelled. “Who the fuck do you think you’re pushing dipshit?”

Will really thought he had the upper hand. He was taller, felt he was relatively stronger and his reflexes were okay. But when he saw Percy Jackson, Jason Grace, Piper Mclean, Hazel Levesque, Frank Zhang and Annabeth Chase all crowd round Nico, he felt he was the most screwed person in the world. Luckily for him, no one except a girl with brown skin and confused expression turned around.

Will recognised her as Piper Mclean- she had been voted most beautiful girl in the entire Uni. It was rumoured for a while that she and Jason were dating but ever since Will spotted Piper blushing near a new girl, he highly doubted it. Piper raised an eyebrow and Will gave a sheepish smile as he tried to get up.

Piper scurried over, giving her friends a quick wave before running over to help Will. He accepted her hand, mainly because he was terrified that she may kill him if he didn’t.

“Did Nico knock you down here?” Piper asked as Will heaved himself up. Her voice was sweet, soft and had some element that convinced Will that he could trust her; however, at the same time, he didn’t want to snitch on Nico. He gave a blatant shrug and hoped for the best.

“Don’t worry, Nico always teases people he likes. Little idiot isn’t good at showing any emotion other than being horny or being an arsehole.”

“Are you sure those are emotions?”

“I take psychology so I sure as hell hope they are,” Piper confessed, laughing a bit. Will finally realised why everybody considered Piper so beautiful- she wasn’t just a pretty person, she was a nice person. She went out of her way to help others.

“I take medicine so I’m going to hope for the best that Nico doesn’t kill me. He avoids like I’m the plague then acts like he’s planning on murdering me in my sleep.”

“Wait.” Piper paused before turning to Will with a manic grin on her face. “Are you the guy from the flower shop who made the fuck you bouquet and slept with Nico?”

“We didn’t sleep together!”

But Piper wasn’t listening, she was calling Hazel over. Will watched as a girl with gorgeous dark skin that glowed in the sunlight and a tattoo over her left hand turned her head ever so slightly. Will realised why they called her Death’s sister.

She was undoubtedly beautiful but her silent aura was terrifying, like it was driving you to death itself. Large brown eyes that invited you into the darkness and hands that looked sculpted for leading one to their doom.

“Hey Hazelnut! This is the guy who stole Nico from Leo! And he made the Fuck you bouquet that Annabeth gave Percy!”

Will could feel his heart pounding as Hazel left the group and walked slowly to Piper and Will, her expression never changing. Suddenly, when she was close enough to throw a punch, she broke out into a childish grin and started squealing.

“So you’re the one who made Percy that bouquet!” Hazel grabbed Will’s hands and started shaking them excitedly. She giggled before giving them back to him.

“What does making Percy this bouquet have to do with any of this? I only knew Nico because we made out like once and then the fucker blanked me.”

“That’s my little brother you're talking about,” Hazel warned. Will instantly felt his eyes widened in horror before apologizing profusely; he remembered what Nico had told him about his sister and how the two of them had grown up. Hazel laughed before telling him that she was only joking and that he should let loose a bit.

“Was Nico with Leo when he ignored you? Leo Valdez? About yee tall, messy brown hair and ink on his overalls?”

“Yes…” Will nodded.

“Ahhh, that explains it. Those two have a complicated history. He was probably ignoring you because he and Leo might have gotten back together. Or maybe he just didn’t want Leo to know that he made out with you. Or…” Piper let out a grin that Will had no desire to learn the true meaning of.

“Maybe he was just using Leo to make you jealous,” Piper explained, very much used to the drama herself between Nico and Leo. If it wasn’t Percy and Annabeth, Nico and Leo were almost always in an argument.

“So…” Will was deadly silent for a second while his rage began to simmer. “ Are you telling me he cheated on that Leo kid with me?”

“ I really hope not,” Hazel grimaced, looking back at her brother.

“The little fucker,” Will muttered under his breath as he pushed past the two ladies and made his way towards the remaining group. He didn’t care that he was going to run into Percy Jackson, whom he’d had an underlying grudge with for as long as he’d been going to school, he was furious.

How dare he cheat with him. What was Will, some slut who ruined relationships? Hell no. Sure, he slept around but he didn’t go around getting into relationships and creating drama. One night stands were his protocol.

“You!” Will pointed at Nico viciously, his finger almost touching Nico’s nose. The rest of the group simply watched with amusement as Piper held back Jason, whispering who exactly Will was.

“You little cheating seething whore! What the fuck dude! You just make out with whoever you buy shit from?”

“I don't remember you having much of a problem with it.” Nico shrugged, only infuriating Will that much more. He was so tempted to just punch him then and there, in front of everybody including 6 of the most intimidating people he’d ever seen.

“I don't remember you mentioning you had a boyfriend before you jumped me,” Will spat. Nico seemed a little shocked at that comment, his lips shaping into a small ‘o’ before he let a sultry smirk spread across his face in a manner that showed he was relatively proud of himself, only pissing Will off so much more.

Why was the damned bastard smirking?

“Huh, what boyfriend?” Nico turned to Annabeth. “ Hey, Annie, do I have a boyfriend?”

Annabeth looked down at her watch for dramatic effect. “As of 4 months, you have been boyfriend free,” She started and only continued when she saw the smug look on Nico’s face. “That said, that does not mean you have been booty call free for said months.”

“What do you mean!” Nico cried.

“Oh shut it Nico, everyone knows that you and Leo have been playing each other’s booty call for ages now. Just end it and go out with the florist dude,” Frank scoffed.

“Or don’t! The florist dude sounds like a real ass!” Percy cut in, desperate to not let Nico go out with his lifelong nemesis, William Andrew Solace.

“Oh look, it’s Perseus,” Will taunted. Percy felt himself going red and the entire group went quiet. Will looked around, wondering why everyone was silent.

“Oh, you guys don’t know?” Will smirked, looking directly at Percy, the knowledge on the tip of his tongue. “ That’s what everybody called Percy in middle school, after we learnt the myth of P-”

The rest of the sentence was muffled as Will felt a hand wrap itself around his mouth. He looked up and saw the sea green eyes that read Shut the fuck up . Will, feeling nostalgia from this certain situation, smirked and stuck his tongue out, licking Percy’s hands, eliciting a yelp of disgust from Percy.

“Dude! Why do you always do that! Every fucking time I’m trying to shut you up, you pull shit like this!”

“You’re telling me that wasn’t the first time you tried to ‘shut him up’?” Nico and Annabeth both asked, hostility floating in their voices. Will gave a jolly smile at Percy who groaned and wiped his hands on Will’s shirt, muttering ‘gross’ under his breath. Will shoved Percy who proceeded to make a face back.

“How do you two know each other?” Frank asked, completely confused before Hazel went up on her tiptoes and began whispering in Frank's ear while he nodded along.

Nico, sick of Will’s attention not being focused on him butted in. “ Did you come all this way to flirt with Percy or what?”

Percy and Will both gagged and shivered, the idea of liking each other being just gross.

“I’m here because you son of a bitch, used me!” Will cried, flinging his arms out.

Nico raised an eyebrow. “I did?”

“Your boyfriend, booty call, whatever you wanna call them- was right there and I was just some pawn for you-”

“-If I wasn’t talking or paying any attention to you whatsoever, how on earth would I make them jealous?”

Will didn’t respond, his mind racking for answers, excuses, insults he could fling at the raven haired boy. He noticed he wasn’t wearing his lip ring that day.

“I think you should focus on the fact that Leo and I just so happened to be at the Medical College despite our majors being nothing related and we just so, by chance, crashed into you and your friend,” Nico hinted. He was a bit tired from how oblivious this blond guy was- hadn’t he made it obvious?

Will took a while to connect a few dots, but the problem was that he only connected the exact dots that Nico did not want him to connect.

“Wait, so Leo does like Callie? Is that why you guys are here?”

Nico wanted to fucking facepalm.

Saturday

The shop bell rang. Calypso was sitting at the counter with her apprentice, Meg. They were both chatting, something to do with the variation of a certain dandelion- Will wasn’t very sure.

He was sporting a daisy chain around his wrist that Meg had forced him to wear and a pink rose had been braided into his hair after much argument with Calypso that the thorns would hurt, in which she retorted that she’d obviously clip the bloody thorns.

When the bell rang, none of the three workers really snapped their heads up. But when the bell rang, and then rang and then rang again, they slowly lifted their heads from their conversation. Will, who had been leaning his elbows on the counter to talk to the two ladies, turned his head to see 8, very unwelcome people, walk into his shop.

Nico was standing there with all 7 of hids friends- Percy, Annabeth, Frank, Hazel, Piper, Jason and Leo. All of whom were very much not welcome in any way whatsoever in this shop.

“What are you doing here?”

The friends all glanced at one another before a few sputters of laughter were spread out. Nico, who was wearing his lip ring again, walked forward and picked up a red rose, twirling the thorny flower in his two fingers, ignoring the small prick it made.

He noticed the blood trickling down his thumb and lifted the injury to his lips.

“Didn’t I tell you last time...” Nico asked, his voice teasing but also malicious, a small corner of his lips stained red. “That you’ll be seeing a lot more of us?”

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greekgeek21 · 3 years ago

Text

Percy Jackson & The Avengers: Convergence - percy takes a test (which is never a good thing)

I am not dead, so there's that.

Hi Felix and Claire!

- your author

Ω ♆ Ω

If Annabeth was being honest, she understood the Avengers concerns about Percy. He hadn't really given them a reason to trust his control yet. It WAS understandable. However, she was also Percy's girlfriend, and that meant that she was ready to fight an army to defend him. That is how she found herself in this situation.

Ω ♆ Ω

"He needs to be contained!" Nick Fury shouted.

"NO! He hasn't done anything wrong! All of his actions were in self-defense!" Annabeth countered.

As soon as the team had gotten back to the tower, they had found Director Fury waiting for them in the living room. Based on the scowl adorning his face, Steve had decided that they had to jump right into the discussion about Percy. Better to get it over with, he'd said.

"Guys..." Percy sighed.

Everyone either didn't hear him, or they were ignoring him.

"He is a threat to the city. Hell, he's a threat to the world!" Fury said.

Jason's eyes crackled with lightning, "My cousin is no threat to your world. He SAVED it!"

"Multiple times!" Leo added.

"It doesn't matter how many times he's saved the world," Fury said, "It matters if he is stable enough to be out with regular society."

He had finally stopped yelling at them, and was instead speaking in an even scarier tone: calmly. It was deadly.

"Don't talk about him like he's any worse than any of your special projects," Annabeth gave Fury the full force of her death-glare, "If this were truly about stability, you would be a hypocrite; with your 'Avengers.'"

Tony gave an indignant squake-like sound at that, but everyone ignored him.

"Guys!" Percy finally yelled, standing up from his position slouched against a wall.

"This is my life you're debating here! And I feel like that gives me a vote!"

Annabeth's features softened for the first time that night, and were replaced with guilt, "I'm sorry, Seaweed Brain."

"It's fine, Wisegirl. What is NOT fine is Director Fury making orders without even telling everyone here the full truth. He KNOWS who I am, WHAT I am. That should be reason enough as to why I'm let go," Percy said.

Steve turned to glare at Fury, "What was that?"

Fury finally seemed to be coming to the conclusion that his plan to lock up Percy would not work when he said, "I know that Perseus and his team are demigods. I know more about their world than you ever should, Captain."

"Why were we not informed?" Clint asked, finally putting in his input.

"It was need-to-know, and you did NOT need to know."

Tony snorted into his glass of whiskey, "That's bullshit and you know it."

It kept going on like this for at least another ten minutes, or that's what Percy thought anyways. His ADHD often made time a jumbled mess, so it wouldn't be a shock if he was wrong. But it did go on for some length of time, that he was sure of. It went around and around and around and around...

Pretty annoying, actually.

What finally ended it was Percy shouted, "ENOUGH! I'LL JUST SHOW HIM A DEMONSTRATION OF MY CONTROL AND WE CAN BE DONE WITH ALL THIS SKATA!"

All eyes turned to him (which kinda freaked him out just for a second) simultaneously.

"Works for me," Fury commented and promptly walked out of the room, "I'll be in the pool room when you're ready, Mr. Jackson."

Ω ♆ Ω

Percy locked everyone out of the room. He walked straight into the pool room and proceeded to close the door on Annabeth's face. It wasn't about him not trusting the Avengers and the Seven, it was more about him not needing their anxiety and frustration distracting him. He was confident in his abilities, but it still helped to be around calm things.

Fury was waiting for him by the pool in all his ominous glory.

Absently, Percy wondered how he was able to hold that scowl in place all the time. It must get tiring eventually, right?

"Mr. Jackson! Are you just going to stand there all day?" Fury spoke, startling him out of his thoughts.

"No, sir. I'm just wondering what you want me to do," he answered.

Smooth, Jackson, he thought to himself.

Fury clearly saw through him, but he ignored it. "Lift the pool water up and split it in two, then freeze one half while lowering the other into the pool."

Percy scoffed, "Are you kidding me?!"

The Director's scowl somehow got deeper, and he said, "I don't kid, Mr. Jackson."

"Would you stop acting like you're better than me? I already have issues with authority, you don't need to make them worse, SIR," Percy snarked back.

He knew that it was a risk provoking Fury, but he couldn't help it. Like he said: he has issues with authority.

It didn't even work, though. Director Fury just held his gaze with an unimpressed look on his face.

Rolling his eyes, Percy sighed, "Fine. I can try to do it."

Fury smartly took a few steps back from the water's edge as Percy prepared himself. It wasn't like he didn't think he could do it. He just knew that it would be draining and annoying. Plus, he hated how new people looked at him after they saw what he could do, even if they'd already seen a display of power. That's mainly why he likes to visit his mom as much as possible. With all the new campers they've been getting, it was becoming increasingly harder to find a peaceful time to himself.

The tug in his gut was welcomed now; letting him know that he was still human. Even if the tug was significantly lesser now, it was still a reminder that he was not some all-powerful god that some people thought him to be. He had limits.

The water did not slowly rise. It instead jumped to obey his will. A week ago, that would have terrified him, but now he knew that it was just the product of his powers growing.

With the water about ten feet above their heads, still holding the shape of the pool, he split it into two bodies.

It was much easier than it used to be.

If he was going to successfully complete the next step, he had to split his focus as well. He found solace in the fact that this part was difficult for him. He gently started lowering the right side of water while he focused on the molecules in the left side. He may act stupid sometimes, but he knew his water facts. Usually, you lower the temperature in the air enough to force the water molecules to connect, but he just compelled the molecules to connect, causing it to freeze.

In his mind, the process lasted forever, but from an outsider point of view like Nick Fury's, it took about five seconds. It was impressive.

But Fury didn't let it show on his face. He hadn't truly believed that Percy would fail his test, but it was protocol to test him. He had to be absolutely sure. It was his instinct to be skeptical.

"Good. I see that my work here is done. Don't make me have to do this again, Mr. Jackson," he gave a nod to Percy before promptly leaving the room and probably the building.

Percy wasn't sure whether to be shocked or grateful that no further discussion had to be done. Spoiler alert: he chose to be grateful.

No need to look a gift horse in the mouth. Just one look at Blackjack's pearly whites and anyone would agree.

"That's all?" Annabeth asked, walking in with the rest of the heroes.

"Yep. I guess he just wanted to make sure," Percy answered.

"How come he trusts a teenager more than he trusts us?" Tony remarked.

Natasha spoke, "Because you're on our team."

"Nice," Tony deadpanned.

"You're welcome," she gave a minuscule grin.

Jason broke in, "Can we just go get some sleep now? It's been a long couple of days."

"I'm all for sleep," Piper added.

Steve smiled at the tea

Steve smiled at the team's new additions (even if they weren't aware of their induction yet), "Yes. Go get some sleep, team."

Ω ♆ Ω

I split this chapter into 2 parts, so this kinda short. At least it's an update right? Please like, comment, follow, and reblog!

- your author

other chapters :)

#pjo #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #ao3 #the seven #fanfic #heroes of olympus #percabeth #mcu #the avengers #marvel #superhero #inkitt #webnovel #ff #wattpad

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solange-lol · 4 years ago

Text

just doing my silly little tasks

words: 3,205

AUctober day 10: murder mystery

notes: MAJOR TW // graphic description of violence and murder, major character death (its an among us au)

read on ao3

—

Nico was on a ship with nine other crewmates hurtling through space when they got the message.

IMPOSTER ALERT came over the comms. PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND EJECT MEMBERS IF NEEDED.

Which was great. Nothing scarier than being in space than being in space with an “imposter”— whatever that means— on board with them.

Nico went through the list of crewmates through his head. He talked to them all briefly while boarding, but for the most part, they trained separately and he since has been traveling the ship on his own. (To be fair, it was a big ship.)

The issue was that none of them really seemed suspicious.

Percy Jackson, the first crewmate he met, just seemed excited to be there, and just followed around Annabeth Chase for the most part. He liked being around them, but they were such good of a team that Nico can’t imagine either of them would be the imposter being as close as they are. Same with Jason Grace and Piper McLean, who were less of a perfect duo but still stayed around each other, usually accompanied by Leo Valdez as well.

Nico knew Hazel Levesque going into it since they worked together before, so he was hoping it wasn’t her. She was into witchy stuff though… Nico had met Frank Zhang through her as their mutual friend. And Reyna Ramirez-Arellano was crazy intimidating, but also the most honest person he’s ever met.

The only person he didn’t know that much about is Will Solace. He was nice enough the first time they met that he didn’t even think twice about it, but now it made Nico wonder if possibly he was just trying to gain everybody’s trust.

Nico decided to go about his tasks. They already set to turn around ever since that message, so perhaps if they could just prepare the ship for landing then everything would work out fine.

They met in the cafeteria, dividing and handing out tasks to fix the ship. Nico heads out once they do so, heading towards navigation to divert power over to the electrical. He knows for a fact that electrical not only is on the other side of the ship but also one of the darker and bigger rooms. All he can do is hope for no one to be around when he does.

Of course, that’s exactly where Will Solace was, sporting his bright yellow suit like the sun itself.

Nico considers turning around, but the last thing he wants to do is make him think that he’s the suspicious one here, so he continues onto the room.

Hearing footsteps behind him, Will turns around. Nico can see his eyes widen through the glass pane on his helmet.

“Oh god,” he takes a breath. “Please don’t kill me, I’m just trying to fix the wires.”

“It’s not me,” Nico says, then adds, “not that you would believe me just by me saying that.”

“Same. Not that you would believe me either,” Will nods, then turns back and opens the wire box. He resists the urge to lean over and check if he’s actually fixing them or just breaking them further, but Nico can only imagine that’ll just be his one-way ticket to death.

It doesn’t take long for him to divert the power, but Will finishes at the same time.

“How did you do that so quickly?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at the boy.

Will shifts. “I originally wanted to be a surgeon. I’ve got really steady hands, which turns out to work just as well with small wires as it does with human organs.”

“Right…” Nico says slowly. He doesn’t know enough about Will yet to fully believe him, but the guy probably could have killed him already if he wanted. “What other tasks were you assigned?”

Will glances up, counting on his fingers. He stops at three,

“Align engine output, a few more wires, and clean the O2 filter. You?”

Nico racks his brain, trying to remember what Percy and Annabeth assigned him. “I have to go sign into admin, prime the shields, and do some other downloads, I think.”

Will tilts his head. “Why didn’t you go to admin first?”

Nico shrugs. “I was gonna do everything from the right side of the ship to the left.”

“But you came to electrical. That’s on the left.”

“Look, I don’t know,” he sighs. “I’m just trying to keep my chill and get everything done before we all get killed.”

“Alright, di Angelo, I’ll believe you,” Will decides. “But only if you accompany me to O2.”

“Scared?” Nico asks, nudging him.

“Aren’t you?” “Like I said, trying to keep my chill.”

“A tough guy, I see,” Will says, finally nudging him back.

Nico rolls his eyes. “Let’s just head to admin.”

“Why not go left to right? I can align the engine first and then head the opposite direction?”

“Because I want to go right to left. Everyone is probably on the left side of the ship right now anyway.”

“Doesn’t that make it more dangerous?”

“Not if we’re together. Are you coming?” he asks, tired of Will’s questions. If they wanted to get off this ship alive, they were going to need to land as soon as possible.

“Yeah, yeah I’m coming,” he says, shaking his head, although Nico can just barely see him grinning through his helmet.

They head to admin together, passing by Hazel in storage, who waves a single pink-gloved hand, a fuel canister in the other.

Arriving at admin together, Nico walks over to the desk and pulls out his ID card from one of his pockets. The card reader was especially finicky, as Nico found out after multiple failed attempts.

Too fast.

Card error.

Too slow.

“Nico?” Will murmurs quietly staring at the floor. Nico’s chest tightens, hoping that he doesn’t think Nico is the imposter just because he can’t get the stupid card reader to work.

“Hold on, just give me a second.” Too fast.

“Nico...”

“I told you, I got it, just hold on!” Card error. Try again.

“Nico.”

“What?” he says finally, turning to face Will. “It’s not me, the card reader is just-”

He cuts off once he notices the body in front of them following Will’s line of sight.

The only way Nico knows it’s Jason Grace is from the lime-colored suit. Otherwise, it appears he’s been stabbed multiple times in the back. Literally in the back.

“Is he…?” Will says slowly.

Nico reaches out, nudging him with his foot. The body doesn’t move. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“I guess we gotta call a meeting or something.”

“Yeah. Probably before someone comes in here and sees us just staring at it.”

Will’s eyes widen. “Yeah… yeah.”

They leave the body in the room before calling everyone into the cafeteria where they had originally divided up tasks. Crewmates walk in, confused and concerned as they gather around the middle table.

“What’s up?” Frank asks.

“And should we wait for Jason?” Piper adds.

Nico grimaces. “That’s, um, that’s the thing actually. Jason is dead.”

Several ‘What?‘s echo around the room, followed by worried murmurs.

“We found the body in admin,” Will continues. “He was stabbed to death, judging by the wounds.

“Was there anybody nearby?” Annabeth asks.

Nico hesitates. “Hazel was in storage underneath, but she was filling fuel.”

“Well, where was everybody else?”

“I was in the reactor,” Piper says.

“And I was across in security,” Leo adds, tugging at his orange suit.

“Percy and I were in upper engine,” Annabeth defends.

“It’s true, me and Piper passed them.”

Reyna shrugs. “I was in O2. I didn’t see anyone else around, but I haven’t been it admin at all.”

“I’ve been in the cafeteria,” Frank says, nervously glancing around.

“And Nico and I were in the electrical together,” Will adds.

Piper glances at Hazel, raising her eyebrow. “So Hazel was closest?”

Her eyes widen. “Wait, what? I was just filling the fuel like you asked!”

“But Will and Nico only saw you when they passed into admin,” Annabeth says. “Unless… they did it.”

“It wasn’t us,” Will raises his arms in surrender. “I swear, I was in electrical the entire time before Nico showed up, and he had just come from nav.”

Nico glances between all of them. His eyes eventually land on Hazel. It feels impossible that she could have been the one to kill Jason, but the facts line up. There wasn’t anyone else around…

Hazel notices him staring. Her eyebrows furrow from under her helmet. “Nico, you have to know it’s not me,” she pleads with him.

He clears his throat. “Should we skip the whole ejecting thing for now? Wait for more concrete evidence.”

“There’s no skipping with a killer on the loose, Nico,” Piper crosses her arms. “All in favor of ejecting Hazel?”

Hands go up around the table as Hazel meets her fate. Leo, Percy, Annabeth, and Piper, put their hands up. Nico’s relieved to see Will’s hand still down, along with Reyna and Frank.

“It’s a tie,” Annabeth announces.

“Then we’ll wait,” Nico says. “If something happens, we can vote for her after. We just need more evidence.”

They get dismissed to go back to their tasks, but before Will and Nico can even arrive at admin together so Nico can finish signing in, another meeting is called.

“I found Leo’s body in storage when I went back to finish filling the fuel tanks,” Hazel says grimly.

“Well, who else was around? We all just went back to where we were, right?” Annabeth asks, and everybody nods.

She turns to Hazel. “So it must have been a self-report type situation to make yourself look innocent.”

“No! I swear-”

“All in favor?”

Hands go up again. This time, Reyna and Will both hesitantly put their hands up. Frank and Nico say nothing.

“Majority vote,” Piper says, then grabs Hazel’s arm.

Nico turns around when they push her out.

Once everyone is dismissed again, Nico can hear footsteps behind him as he attempts to head back to admin. He freezes, but it’s just Will catching up to him.

“Hey, you okay?” he asks, trying to grab Nico’s hand, but he pulls away.

“I don’t know, we just ejected someone who was possibly innocent out of the ship and everyone was just okay with it. I don’t know how you could expect me to be okay.”

Will sighs. “I get it. But there was a pretty good chance she was the imposter, right? Everyone else was with someone except for Reyna and Frank.”

“I guess.”

“Don’t worry, di Angelo,” Will says, stepping closer and lacing their gloved fingers together. “I’ll protect you.”

Nico raises his eyebrows, but he doesn’t pull away. It is oddly comforting to walk around with him.

He finally signs into admin, and then the two head off, doing all their tasks on the right side of the ship. So far, no signs of any dead bodies, which makes Nico wonder if maybe it was Hazel.

That is, until they’re passing through storage, heading to finish tasks on the left side of the ship, when suddenly the lights start flashing, and an automated countdown starts around them.

OXYGEN DEPLETED IN 30… 29… 28…

“Shit!” Will curses, unwinding their hands. Immediately, panic courses through Nico’s body. Imposter or not, if they can’t fix this, they’ll all be dead in a matter of minutes.

“You head to admin and put in the code from there, I’ll run to O2. Meet up in the cafeteria, okay?”

“Got it!” Will says, and they dash off in opposite directions. All thoughts of the imposter forgotten, Nico runs as fast as he can towards the O2 room. He passes Frank as he’s doing so, who’s staring at one of the downloading screens and completely ignoring the flashing lights overhead.

Huh…

He doesn’t have enough time to think about that, though. When he arrives at O2, he notices a blue figure squatting down in front of the oxygen machine.

“Are you?” he asks, and Percy turns his head, nodding.

“Yeah,” he says in a rushed breath, then gestures towards a post-it on the wall. “I’ve almost got it, I just need the code. Can you…?”

Nico grabs the post-it, reading off the code written. “267983”

Percy punches in the number code and hits enter. After a moment, the lights stop flashing, and the countdown stops.

Nico lets out the breath he was holding. “That was close.”

“Yeah,” Percy agrees, nodding. “I gotta go find Annabeth. I told her to head to admin while I would go to O2.”

“That’s the same thing I told Will.”

They head to the cafeteria together, still heavy breathing after their near-death experience. When they get there, they almost run straight into Will, who’s coming out of admin. Nico resists the urge to hug him, instead opting to just lean into his side.

Percy nods at the blonde. “Did Annabeth help you?” he asks.

Will blinks. “What do you mean?”

“In admin. I told her to go there while I went to O2.”

Nico feels Will’s body tense. “I was the only one in there…” he says. Nico sees the realization cross Percy’s face, before the boy dashes off, Nico and Will right on his heels.

It’s not long before they find Annabeth’s body, blood splattering the white suit as she lays limp just like how Jason was.

“Percy…” Nico says slowly, watching as his eyes darken.

Another meeting was called.

“Who now?” Frank asks grimly.

Percy says it so quietly that Nico almost doesn’t hear him. “Annabeth.”

“Wait, where’s Reyna?”

“Oh, I saw her in navigation,” Piper says, then backtracks. “Well, I found her in navigation. I was about to call it, but I guess Percy beat me to it.”

“Two in one go?’ Will asks nervously, pulling at his gloves.

Percy crosses his arms. “Well, it had to be either you or Frank. And I told her to head to admin, which is where you were.”

Will backed up. “Woah, woah, but I stayed in admin until O2 was fixed!:

“Right, right, it just so happens her body was right outside of admin as well.”

“But I left storage!” “Doesn’t mean you didn’t go back.” “I didn’t! I was the only one in there fixing O2!”

Nico’s head swivels back and forth, not knowing who to believe. On one hand, he’s been with Will the entire time. If Will wanted to kill him, he had multiple chances to already.

But on the other hand, Annabeth was headed there…

“Wait, no!” he interrupts, suddenly remembering what he saw on his way to O2. “I’ve been with Will this entire time! And there was someone else in storage,” he says, turning to face Frank.

Percy follows suit. “Frank?”

“When I was headed to O2, I noticed he was still downloading, even while the lights were flashing,” Nico accuses. If Piper found Reyna, Will was fixing O2 in admin, and he was with Percy, it has to be Frank, right?

“I left, like, right after you passed, I swear!” Frank defends. “I saw Annabeth headed to admin and you headed to O2, so I figured I would just finish the download and then go check if you guys needed help.”

“You saw Annabeth?” Piper asks, crossing her arms just like Percy.

Frank’s eyes widen under his helmet, realizing the corner he’s backed himself into. “Yes, I saw her, but then I left, I swear-”

“All in favor?” Nico asks.

All hands go up.

Once Frank was ejected, Will catches up with Nico again, as the two hesitantly head to the left side of the ship.

“If we just finish out tasks, we can land and get out of here,” Nico says, glancing behind him. Will nods in agreement, also silent. Whatever was between them before has now disappeared, replaced with fearful tension.

The two make their way through the tasks on the left side, aligning engine outputs and fixing the rest of the wires. Nico finishes his last task, adjusting his gloves. “That’s it, right? We should be good to land?” he asks Will, who is staring at the engine.

“Yeah, um, here’s the thing,” he says, and Nico can see his face turning red even through the glass of the helmet. “Remember that wire task I was doing in electrical when you found me? I never actually finished it…”

Nico groaned. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I’m sorry!” Will says. “You just finished yours so quick I was worried you would kill me! I wasn’t completely sure it wasn’t you until Leo died. We just have to go back and do that one last set, and then we can land.”

Nico sighs. “I mean, it’s not like we have a choice.”

They arrive at the electrical together, and he tries to ignore his pounding heart as Will opens the box, fixing the last two wires inside. The longer it took, the harder it felt like his heart was pumping until he could practically hear it.

Unless… that wasn’t his heart he was hearing.

Nico turns to the source of noise, heavy thumps coming from the vent next to where Will was working. It definitely sounded like someone was crawling through, and they were getting closer.

“Will, do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

It was too late. Just as Will turns to face him, a person in a red-clothed suit pops out of the vent and grabs his body, pulling him close.

“‘Sup, Nico?” Piper grins, then snaps Will’s neck.

DEFEAT.

Will frowns. “I don’t like this game very much,” he says as Piper’s character appears on screen, the red letters fading on screen for everybody except Piper’s phone.

“You hate this game? I always get killed first,” Jason sighs.

Piper kicks his chair playfully. “That’s ‘cuz you’re an easy target, Jas.”

“If you had just finished that one task, Will, we could have won!” Annabeth groans.

Will makes a noise of protest, and Nico just snuggles closer to his boyfriend on the couch in Percy’s living room where they had all gathered that night. He was silently proud of himself for technically surviving until the end, even if his imminent death was implied.

“Piper came out of nowhere. I swear I thought it was Hazel,” Leo shakes his head. “She kept giggling, I thought it’s because she was murdering a bunch of people.”

Hazel smiles like she can’t help it. “It’s just funny the way they run around. They don’t have arms!”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t trust Hazel when she’s not smiling,” Reyna says.

Percy shakes his head. “We should have known it was Piper. It’s always red.”

“I take offence to that statement on behalf of everyone who mains red.”

They continue bantering back and forth, and Nico feels Will’s hand land on his knee right where his jeans tear, sending electric currents through his body.

Defeat or not, there’s nothing about this moment he wouldn’t change.

Will leans down, kissing Nico on the cheek, and Nico smiles as he holds up his phone. “Anyone up for another round?”

—

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