Unfairness
Ah, the glory days are certainly behind us, my old friends. An opening weekend of four Reviews, fourteen Follows, and nine Favs. The nostalgia is getting to me as I recall the openings for the other stories after Leviathan, with Reviews climbing into the 20s and 30s, Favs and Follows going even higher than that sometimes.
Such is life, though.
Thank you to everyone that’s still here, and welcome to anyone that’s only just now getting here!
The rising action continues herein, though there’s more focus on the heroes this time as they get a wonderful taste of the world they saved. Well, more so Percy and Annabeth because they decided to live in the shithole known as California, and go to college at UC Berkeley.
Disclaimer: I don’t own PJO or any other crossover
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“Sorry. No white people allowed on Saturdays.”
Riordan saying that “Percy Jackson always takes place ‘now’” is really a cursed statement. It opens the door for current relevant pop culture references, like Frank deciding to do the “Wakanda thing” back in 2019 during the final battle in the Tyrant’s Tomb, referencing Avengers: Endgame, and gives Riordan grounds to bring up relevant social situations, such as his 2020 book Un Natale Mezzosangue, which is set during the COVID pandemic of 2020, and Percy and Nico are wearing masks as they travel around Florence to find Annabeth the perfect Christmas gift (and there’s an interesting statement in the book that demigods can’t actually get sick from the virus, but they can spread it, hence the masks, begging the interesting question as to how a demigod’s immune system actually works). On the flip side of things, the PJO timeline always being concurrent to “now” also means that everything that happens in our day to day lives up to the very day you are reading this happens in Percy’s “world,” which includes this very ironic and morbidly humorous stink from UC Berkeley back in April of 2024.
The Gill Tract Community Farm, an agriculture research site launched in 2013 by the university and the public, came under fire for text messages from a manager of the farm claiming that “Saturdays are exclusively BIPOC,” with BIPOC not actually being some kind of disease but an acronym for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Now, as to whether there were actually any instances of white people being banned from the farm, or if there were guards posted about ready to tell white people off, was actually a great question, but the drama of this present fictional situation is perfect for the main idea of this scene.
Holding hands at the main entrance to the farm, Percy and Annabeth both nearly came unglued as this group of black and brown people stood almost in a wall to prevent them from simply walking in and seeing the farm for themselves.
“Excuse me?” Annabeth demanded. “What do you mean no white peopleon Saturdays? You literally can’t do that!”
“Yes, we can. You white people are the main causes of violences and discrimination today, and so we can definitely set aside one day of the week for all of us BIPOC to be free from you.”
Annabeth actually stepped forward, ready to put that claim about white people and violence into action. This event was anachronistic to the last chapter, the ending scene of which with Uberti taking place a year after Piper’s IM party with the others. This current event was in the early Fall of Percabeth’s first college semester, as freshman, and so the sting of Jason’s death, the trial, NRU being closed, and their own emotional and psychological turmoil were all still very fresh, meaning Annabeth was operating on a very short fuse.
Her tolerance for bullshit was at an all-time low, and had just been exceeded.
However, before Annabeth could do something really dumb, like turning these racists into fertilizer with her bear hands, Percy pulled her back. He glowered at the racists with the same wolf stare that he once used on the street vermin he encountered with Hazel and Frank on their quest together, the same wolf stare that made even hardened gangbangers shy away in fear. It had the same effect today, with the racists breaking out into sweats as they all stepped backwards.
“We will be taking this up with the president,” Percy vowed in a voice barely above a guttural growl.
They left the farm without looking back. When they got back to the car, Annabeth finally released her enraged scream.
Percy wasn’t about to scream, but he was definitely fuming.
Annabeth eventually ran out of breath and started panting until her breathing evened back out. “Is that what Hazel felt like back in the 40s?”
“Probably not,” Percy said logically. “She was just a kid that didn’t know who she was. We do. We know that we could’ve slaughtered those assholes. We know that we put our lives on the line for everyone in this world at least twice, meaning we fought to save those assholes, meaning our friends died to save those assholes, and now here we are.”
Annabeth chuckled mirthlessly with a sardonic smile. “Then I guess this is how Jesus feels. Died for everyone so they could have eternal life, only for just about everyone to spit in his face and use his name as a curse phrase.” She looked at Percy with a borderline crazed look in her eye. “Maybe we should drop this whole college thing and go join Piper on her crusade against the forces of evil. Go kill the bad guys and make the world a safer place by spilling an ocean of blood and stacking a mountain of corpses.”
Percy grabbed her hand in both of his. “Annabeth,” he said soothingly.
She leaned onto his shoulder and started crying.
He set his chin upon her head and maneuvered his arm around her to start rubbing her back under her bra. “It’s okay,” he whispered, “we’re okay, we’re okay.”
Annabeth cried until Percy’s shirt was drenched with her tears before her cries became sniffles, and her sniffles became hiccups, and then she was finally calm enough to speak coherently again.
“I guess we shouldn’t be surprised,” she said. “Our entire lives have been one struggle after another. One more battle. One more foe. One more quest. I guess we were stupid to think we were finally going to get a break and things were going to get better once we reached college. Naiveté, I suppose.” Annabeth pinched the bridge of her nose as she let out a long, heavy sigh. “This is going to be the rest of our lives, isn’t it? Maybe the gods and the monsters will finally leave us alone, but now we face another horror: normal life. Now we get to live in the world we saved. Now we get to deal with all the racism, the inequality, the injustice, the politics, the taxes, the crime—and just the general unfairness that’s commonplace in the ‘real’ world. Maybe we really should take a page from Piper’s book, and start figuring out ways to make the world a better place.”
Percy was once again staring a thousand yards into the distance, not at all liking the implications of this debacle, or the implications of anything Annabeth had said regarding their potential future of struggle, strife, and hardship out here in the real world, the world away from all the quests, and gods, and monsters, nor did he like the implications of what “getting involved” would look like in regards to making the world a better place. Percy could only envision something like the Punisher, where they became brutal, bloody mercenaries that, like Annabeth only halfway joked, killed a lot of people, or they became like the Justice Lords from those episodes of Justice League, forcefully taking over the planet with their powers, and then using their powers to enforce order around the globe.
Percy couldn’t help but gulp at a sudden thought that popped into his head. “We’re about to become Luke.”
Annabeth looked at him. “Huh?”
“We’re about to become like Luke,” percy clarified. “Obsessed with revenge and justice, punishing the wicked and all that, and we’re going to lose ourselves. You know, become the very thing we swore to destroy, or live long enough to become the villains instead of dying as heroes.”
Annabeth’s mouth set into a thin line. “We need to keep in touch with Piper. If she’s really going to do that crusader stuff, we need to keep her grounded.”
“Yeah,” Percy agreed.
The two sat in silence for a few minutes, thinking, contemplating their life choices, before Percy looked at Annabeth. “Wanna go to the park?”
“I would love to go to the park.”
They went to the nearby Cesar Chavez Park located on a small peninsula. They parked, got out, went down the trail a little bit while holding hands, and then jumped into the water. Holding on to each other, warm and cozy and clean despite the bay’s temperature and general filthiness thanks to Percy’s powers, all their woes and worries melted away for a short while.
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Many months later, in the middle of March, coming up on the one-year anniversary of Jason’s death, Annabeth was in one of the many student lounges of the university, alone save for one other guy whose name she didn’t know. Percy was currently in a class, much to her endless chagrin. She hated being away from her boyfriend for any extended amount of time these days.
She especially hated it right now because she really needed a shoulder to cry on.
“But why?” she demanded rhetorically to the email on the laptop in front of her. Yet another rejection letter from a do-not-reply sender telling her that the company appreciated the time she took to apply, but they were moving on with other candidates. Followed but by an “encouraging” message to keep applying within the company, and to not be discouraged.
“Why what?” the stranger asked.
Annabeth looked over at him. He looked tall, but he was sitting down. Shaggy brown hair parted in the middle, stubble along his cheeks, chin, and under his nose, lanky, hairy arms, brown eyes, wearing khaki pants, a leather belt, dress shoes, and a school polo. He looked ready to go to the office.
“Sorry,” he said. “I heard you scream at the computer and curiosity got the better of me.”
Annabeth shook her head with a sigh. “No, it’s okay. Just—I’ve been applying for summer internships since November, and here it is the middle of March, and I’m still getting rejected from everywhere I apply to, but I don’t know why. No one is telling me why. I mean, I’ve got a 4.0 GPA, I have relevant intern experience from high school back in Manhattan, and I have recommendation letters from my old boss and my professors here—just what the heck am I missing!?”
“Well, I was going to say it’s an experience thing, that you’re just a freshman in college and these people are looking for juniors and seniors, but if you already internship experience…” he trailed off, glancing at Annabeth, gauging her, and then going back to his own computer.
“What?” she said. “What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know you enough to know how you’ll react, and I’d rather not get expelled because you went and told someone that I said a thing.”
“I’m an open mind.”
The young man shrugged. “M’kay….On your screening questions, the ones where they ask you your gender, race, and ethnic background, what are you putting?”
And just like that, Annabeth knew exactly where this was going, and she appreciated why this guy was hesitant to present his theory. In short, UC Berkeley was a largely liberal college, and Annabeth had to be extremely careful in who she talked to, and what she said in general. It wasn’t that she was a hard conservative and bled Republican red—she was actually what would be considered to be a political moderate, neither expressly liberal nor expressly conservative—it was that holding any kind of counter views could be a social death sentence.
A brief example of when Annabeth had to choose her words carefully was when reparations were brought up one day in class. It was the standard rhetoric: white people needed to give black people their money because of slavery and Jim Crow and racism, etc., and Annabeth had to stop her ADHD from blurting out the standard counterarguments: slavery was 150 years ago, most of you can’t even prove where, if anywhere, in your family tree there were slaves, everyone was slighted by someone in the course of history, so, by your logic, everyone should be giving everyone reparations, black people are responsible for killing the most black people, and black people commit the most violence against black people, and so on and so forth.
This was only one example of where Annabeth had to tread carefully. There were many other instances in which she had to keep a tight lid on her tongue, lest she turn a neutral situation into a hostile one. As for Percy, whenever he encountered these situations, he wisely walked away, his chief reason being Annabeth’s secondary reason, that being he personally knew a black girl from the 1940s and he personally knew a Native Cherokee.
When the demigods had their big reunion last Fall per Piper and Leo’s Fall Breaks, the conversation did get political as Piper pushed her agenda/plan/worldview/whatever you wanted to call it one more time, mostly just trying to pick Annabeth’s brain as she searched for guidance on the harder, more sensitive problems plaguing planet Earth. As in, dealing with the likes of the cartels, gangs, human traffickers, and pedophiles was easy, but what was the best way to handle touchy political topics like illegal immigration, taxes, centralized banking, gay and transgender rights, as just a few examples.
Of course, asking for opinions on politics always led to discussions on politics, and it was a testament to the friendship of the demigods that even after a discussion like that, that they were all still good friends. Though it did help that they were all on the same page, anyway.
As someone who wanted to let the past remain in the past, Hazel was quite appalled with the notion of reparations, and also offended by the notion that black people today were so apparently incapable of providing for themselves that they were demanding white people do it for them.
Piper was quite bemused by the idea of reparations, finding it ironic that such an argument was almost always centered around black people and slavery, and never around Native Americans and the literal genocides they faced at the hands of Americans. Not to downplay slavery, of course, but to up-play the heinous things that happened to Natives, which tied back to the standard counterargument about how everyone deserved reparations.
“Even in a world full of racial bias, there’s still racial bias,” Piper had said. “Every time something about racism comes up in the news, it’s always about black people. Sometimes it’s about Hispanics. When was the last time any of you ever saw something on the news about how the Natives are mistreated? Or even Asians, for that matter? It’s always about black people.”
“Squeaky wheel?” Leo suggested.
“And the idea that Native Americans ‘lost’ so therefore they don’t have the right to say anything about anything?” Calypso added, drawing upon what rudimentary knowledge she had of US history from her remedial lessons. “They just need to be quiet and stay in their reservations, thankful that they’re even allowed to live and have a reservation?”
Piper pointed at her with an affirmative nod. “There are people that legitimately think that way, yeah.”
“Just like there are people that argue that Native Americans get a ton of handouts in the form of scholarships and tax breaks, and so they need to stop complaining,” Annabeth said with a twisted smirk as she played a little bit of devil’s advocate.
Piper nodded at that notion, too. “In short, it’s a mess. Any suggestions on how to clean it up?”
Leo snorted, mouth working up into a mean smile. “Kill everyone and start over?”
Piper snorted too, lips curling into a smirk. “We’ll keep it on the table.”
After that, there was an uncomfortable silence as everyone started swaying to Piper’s mindset. The power and responsibility thing, the “we saved the world, now we have to make it a better place” idea, which smacked straight into the “I just want to live my life and be done with this hero stuff” mentality. It was a yucky feeling, the conflicting mindsets warring against each other.
And now, back in the present, in the student lounge with this guy she’d only ever interacted with today, Annabeth was once again finding herself embroiled with racial discrimination.
“You think companies are turning me down because I’m checking off ‘white’?”
The young man looked at her. “I created a fake profile with a fake resume as a black man with a worse GPA than I actually have, and the only job experience I put on there is Popeye’s Chicken.” Annabeth couldn’t stop the derisive rush of air that left her nose. “I performed a little social experiment by applying to the same companies I applied to with my main resume, and where my white profile got rejection letters, my fake black one got the acceptance letters. ‘Congratulations! After careful consideration, our hiring team would like to schedule a phone screening with you! What’s a good day and time?’”
Annabeth was utterly appalled. “You’re kidding.”
He moved his laptop to show her his emails. He switched the tab back and forth between his main email, and the fake one he had created. Sure enough, the same companies that rejected his main profile were sending interview request emails to his fake one.
“It’s been said that money cannot buy votes just like race has no effect on hiring…except that money can buy votes,” the young man said sardonically. “Companies have to reach those diversity quotas. HR did a demographic survey and found out the white percentage is too high, and so they made the decree to give greater consideration to non-white people.” He shrugged dispassionately. “Shit’s fucked.”
“Do you know this for a fact, or are you just speculating?”
“My uncle is a hiring manager. What I told you is literally what HR told him to do, and for the sake of his job, he does just that. However, he gets his revenge on that bullshit by standing there and watching as the diversity hires break stuff and cost the company millions every year.”
Annabeth stared at him, mouth slightly agape, and then she closed her eyes and chuckled mirthlessly. “Well, damn. Heh. So what are we supposed to do?”
“Leave this shithole state,” he said seriously. “I’m only here because of my uncle. He was able to pay for everything. After I graduate this May, I’m moving back to Louisiana.”
Annabeth’s mouth set into a thin line. “I can’t do something like that. My boyfriend and I…we wanted to move out here for a reason. We’re from Manhattan.”
“An equally disgusting place.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Sure. So long as you ignore the enormous cost of living, the squatters, the general crime rate, and the gigantic influx of illegals that’s going to cost the city twelve billion dollars to handle them all, it’s absolutely a great place to live.”
Annabeth swallowed heavily. It was something she and Percy didn’t like to think about, the wellbeing of Sally, Paul, and Estelle on the other side of the continent given the observable decline of the city.
“Anyway, I need to go.” The young man shut his laptop, packed up, and bid farewell. “Have a nice day.”
“Yeah. Thanks. You too.”
Annabeth sat back down, a fresh wave of despair threatening to send her into another crying fit. Jason was dead, New Rome was still almost a ghost town, NRU was still closed and was currently being projected to still be closed in the Fall and possibly even the Spring of next year, and now this. Now she and Percy wouldn’t even be able to make a living in this city because of their skin.
They fought tooth and nail to save the world, watched as their friends died to save the world, and this was the reward the world gave them: just more pain and suffering.
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Anyone that knew Leo knew that he just wasn’t cut out for the standardized education system. His ADHD made him too hyper for the classroom, and when he did try to take meds to curb it, his immune system completely demolished the chemicals. It wasn’t as if this was some kind of bad thing, however. It was just a fact of life that there were many kids that didn’t fit within the system, and there were plenty of alternatives to public school, anyway.
As such, when Leo turned eighteen, two years after the summer of the Imperial War in which he was sixteen, being fifteen during the summer of the Giant War, he dropped out in his senior year, was able to get his GED, and went straight to work as a local mechanic. Day One was all Leo needed to establish himself as a near-godlike machine expert—because he was. Once upon a time, he merely touched a helicopter, and the influx of mechanical knowledge enabled him to sufficiently operate the machine. Also once upon a time, he designed and built a Greek trireme outfitted with plenty of techno-sorcery, and secretly built a dragon into the frame.
As a fifteen-year-old.
Leo had only gotten better with time.
His ability to simply touch a vehicle and learn everything about made him unparalleled in his field. There was no speculation, no guessing, no inferencing—Leo knew exactly what was wrong with a vehicle, and knew exactly how to fix it.
His reputation as a top-notch mechanic quickly grew thanks to so many people on social media praising his skills, and thanks to that, more and more people started bringing their business to the shop Leo worked for. Business meant money, of course, and we all know, the love of money is the root of all evil. Leo’s boss was a good man until he started seeing dollar signs, and soon Leo found himself being put on the schedule for ten, sometimes even twelve-hour shifts, six days a week, and sometimes even seven days. In short, Leo was being overworked.
It was hardly as if that was a big deal, though. You didn’t spend two years living with a daughter of Hecate and not learn how to use the Mist. One day, Leo simply marched up to his greedy boss and snapped his fingers.
Schedule fixed.
And early retirement, too.
Leo sent the greedy man on his way, using the Mist to have him tender his resignation and leave Leo in charge of the shop. No one complained, because everyone loved Leo. He showed up on time, showed out, got along with everyone, knew how to do his job, and his girlfriend not only was great eye candy, but could make some mean tamales.
Now the owner of the shop, Leo got to experience the horrors of management. He suddenly had to be responsible for other people and their mishaps, and actually had to enforce discipline in the shop—making sure people showed up, they stayed their entire shift, they didn’t break anything, they didn’t take anything—and he had to make schedules, manage schedule conflicts, keep track of PTO, find coverage on the days that too many people wanted off and there weren’t enough people available for work, and even send people home on the weird days that there wasn’t enough business and the shop wasn’t making enough money to afford the hours.
He also had to manage the finances of the building. The building needed electricity, water, and gas to heat up the water, and so all of those were billed from the city. There was also the insurance that covered the building, and the insurance that covered the equipment inside the building. The paychecks to all the workers was another expense that needed to be maintained down to the second, though luckily there was a computer for that. Of course, there were also all the taxes that were tied to owning and operating a small business within the city limits.
Then all of these bills had to be weighed against how much profit the store was making from service.
Finally, on top of managing his employees, and managing finances, Leo also had to manage customers. Just like it was different with his coworkers now that he was the boss, it was different with the customers, too. The expectations were different, being that since Leo was now in charge, everyone was going to be able to perform like Leo, and it just wasn’t the case. The mistakes made by his employees now reflected on him, and the negative reviews left by disgruntled people quickly circulated around the internet, and Leo could track a noticeable drop in revenue during the course of his management.
A classic example of when a dream became reality, and reality wasn’t as kind as you had hoped.
Leo’s dream literally went up in flames when he had to fire somebody on the grounds of time theft, and they retaliated by breaking into the shop in the middle of the night, and starting a fire that burned the place down. It took Leo three months to become manager, and four months to lose the shop.
A poetic seven.
What prevented Leo from committing suicide out of despair was A) the love and support of Calypso, B) the love and support of his official adoptive mothers, Emmie and Jo, C) the love and support of the other denizens of the Waystation, D) the support of the people of Indianapolis, whom had come to see Leo as something of a hometown hero, E) the fat insurance check, and F) the fact that Leo couldn’t bear it to face Jason in Elysium (assuming Leo achieved Elysium on account of his heroic deeds being weighed against suicide) and upon being asked, “Why are you here so soon?”, the answer not being “I died in battle defending those I loved,” but instead, “Life hit me hard and I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
Of course, while Leo was surrounded by a spectacular support group, and he did receive an insurance check for the property, the check was only so much, and only for so much. The previous owner didn’t have what was called “business interruption” insurance, and Leo didn’t even know it existed, and what that meant was that Leo didn’t get any insurance money to cover income, meaning no money to cover the equivalent in the bills, property taxes, and payroll. He had to let everyone go, and the promise of “I’ll come back when you get the shop rebuilt” only meant so much.
Another dose of salt in the wound was that the arsonist, while charged with a level four arson felony, was only sentenced by the court to three years in prison and a fine of three thousand dollars due to the arsonist’s young age of 20 and his spectacular waterworks performance in court. This asshole burned down Leo’s dream job, and only got three years in prison for it, and a fine that was barely a slap to the wrist. Of course, the recurring “three” didn’t help Leo’s emotional state, given how important that number had been in his life.
Anyway, Leo took to freelance, self-employed mechanic work, using Festus as his means of transportation and his tool box, setting up a small website and a phone number, both of which were operated by Calypso. They used the insurance to money to start rebuilding the shop, and used the money they made from Leo’s self-employed job to start saving up while the construction crew cleared the debris and rebuilt everything.
It wasn’t much, but it was the beginning of their old hope to have their very own place with their own name on it.
Leo did not tell his friends about his ordeal, desiring not to bother them with his problems, and also desiring to handle it himself.
Unfortunately, Leo and Calypso would never get the chance to own and operate their own shop.
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At the two-year mark for everyone else after the Imperial War, where Leo was now self-employed, things were okay. Percy and Annabeth were gearing up for their junior year of college at UCB, Frank and Hazel were still praetors of the legion, the legion having grown back to full strength at 250 legionaries, but they were mostly young, only eleven, twelve, or thirteen, so nowhere the impressive showing of nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one-year-olds—some even older depending on when they started their service—that it was before the Battle of San Fransisco Bay. New Rome was completely rebuilt, though the college still remained closed on account of still not having enough staff and students to open.
Sad as it was, Percy and Annabeth would never get to attend NRU. They were forever stuck at UCB for their college career.
Thalia and Reyna had talked with Artemis about getting some Hunters together, and striking out into the world to fight the evils of mankind. Artemis agreed, but she gave them the dire warning that if they wanted to pursue that course, they were going to see the most horrible things their minds couldn’t didn’t even know were possible. Artemis warned them that there was a reason that the Hunt stuck to monsters and animals, instead of going after the bad guys, and that was because the Hunters that did either ended up losing their minds and getting corrupted by the psychological trauma of the things they saw, or they gave up on mankind entirely and just wished death upon the whole species.
Thalia and Reyna took that warning to heart, and struck out with a small band of older, far more experienced Hunters, ones that had tasted the horrors of the world, and jumped out before they became too damaged. All of them were handpicked by Artemis specifically for the task at hand, of course, for the sake of the youngest girls in the Hunt.
For six months, they were going strong. Using magic to see across time and space—specifically the technique of essence projection, wherein a demigod could take control of their dreams and send their conscious into the past and future, and see all over the world in the present—and teleportation magic, the girls were all over the place, fighting evil and saving the day in that ideal fashion you expected superheroes to operate. Or at least, superheroes that were willing to kill.
Oh, yes. The older Hunters made it expressly clear that they were not Batmen. They were Punishers and Red Hoods. Not that Reyna had problems with that. She’d killed enemy demigods during the Battle of Mt. Othrys, killed pirates aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge because 300 years as a guinea pig left them starved for attention, shall we say, and they did not care that Reyna was only twelve, and Reyna had even been willing to execute legionaries when she was praetor, Bryce Lawrence being a prime example.
Reyna was no stranger to shedding blood.
Thalia, who had seen plenty of gore, needed a little bit of time to get used to killing, though it helped when the people she killed objectively deserved death. Rapists, pedophiles, and murderers being prime examples. You know, the standard filth.
It was just that the standard filth was everywhere, and did not end, and was spirit-crushingly stereotypical. The Hunters went after many sects of the cartels in the Southwest, and laid waste to probably hundreds of Hispanics. Taking on the gangs in the big cities meant putting a noticeable dent in the black population, something that was morbidly ironic given that one of the Hunters was a black girl rescued from a plantation back in 1713.
“I watched my people die in the name of freedom and equality for three centuries, and all they do with freedom today is kill each other, do drugs, start fights in schools, steal things from stores, and the men dodge responsibility by running out on the women they impregnate, and the women kill their babies before they’re even born, and they all point their finger at the white man and demand that he come and fix all their problems,” the Hunter practically snarled one night around a camp fire.
The older Hunters were unphased and nonplussed, while Thalia and Reyna were too uncomfortable to do anything but nod.
Together, they busted up drug running operations, destroyed stockpiles of guns and ammo used by cartels, gangs, and other ilk; they put an end to human trafficking operations, rescuing hundreds of women, girls, and boys, getting them to hospitals with Mist-warped memories to keep the Hunters anonymous; looking into the future, they prevented as many rapes as they could, as many school shootings as they could, and rescued as many abused kids as they could; and never, ever was it anywhere close to enough. There was always another cartel, another gang, another rape, another murder, another shooting, another supplier of guns—the never-ending war.
And that was just the violent crime stuff in the United States. Never mind the cartel activity in Mexico and further South. Never mind the upheaval in Ukraine and Israel as of the time of this story. Never mind the apparent Muslim invasion of Europe. Never mind politics and corporations and society as a whole. Never mind other injustices like the way the credit system worked, the systems of usury employed by the banks, insurance and absurd hospital bills, and the price of EpiPens.
For all the bloodshed, there was always more. A never-ending river of wasted life.
True to the word of Artemis, it weighed on Thalia and Reyna’s souls, seeing with their own eyes the depths of human depravity. The things the cartels did to people, the things rich people did to sex slaves, the things parents did to their own children—there were some nights where Thalia and Reyna really wished they had let Gaea win, because at least she would’ve wiped out all of this evil filth.
It came to pass, only ten months into their own crusade, that Thalia and Reyna had enough when they were too late to stop a madwoman from using a curling iron on her five-year-old son to melt his genitals off. Reyna literally tore the woman apart, ripping her arms and legs from their sockets with her demigod strength that was buffed from the blessing of Artemis, and then crushing the woman’s skull between her hands for good measure. The poor boy died from the injury, and Thalia didn’t so much as pray to her uncle so much as she bellowed at him from the overworld.
Hades personally arrived on the scene, rising from the twisting shadows in dramatic fashion. There was no sneer on his face, no glare nor glower at his niece shouting at him. Only pain. The face of a weary soul.
It was no wonder that Thalia was in hysterics over this particular child, given his blonde hair and lifeless blue eyes.
“I will take him to Elysium,” Hades said softly.
Thalia was so emotionally broken that she flung herself at her uncle, sobbing into his robes.
Reyna stood off to the side, her arms, chest, and face a bloody mess from her recent dismemberment operation. She looked at Hades. “Death comes for everyone regardless of everything, and death brings them all to you, and you’ve been doing this for over four-thousand years…” Reyna paused to swallow, her lower lip trembling as her eyes watered. “How-How m-many-”
“Too many,” Hades said with all the weight of a mountain range.
Reyna couldn’t take it anymore. She fell to her knees and wept, ten months of endless pain and suffering finally, officially, totally overwhelming her.
Hades extended a shadow and brought Reyna to him and Thalia, and the cold god of the Underworld just silently held them as their souls bled out, tortured and anguished by the atrocities they’d seen, atrocities that were only commonplace for the lord of the dead.
When the girls had calmed down enough to be coherent again, Hades said quietly, “I can erase your memories. Or alter them. That way you don’t have to carry them with you.”
Thalia wiped her eyes. “No. I-I need them. I-I can’t just…f-forget.”
Hades nodded and looked at Reyna.
She shook her head. “I need to keep them, too.”
Hades nodded again.
“How have you done it?” Thalia asked. “To have seen this shit for thousands of years, and still be…sane?”
“I have a wife,” Hades said. “A confidant, my shoulder to lean on, a person that I can bear my heart out to, someone who will always be there to listen—six months out of the year, anyway. And I take breaks. Small vacations from my work to get away and breathe for a moment.”
“Breaks,” Thalia mumbled. “I don’t want to ever go back and do this again.”
“I understand.”
“Does that make me a bad person? That I tried to do it, and after ten months, I don’t want to do it anymore, like, ever? I just want to spend the rest of my days being happy with the Hunters at this point.”
“Do not underestimate the good things you have done, niece,” Hades said sagely. “You have saved many lives, even if it doesn’t feel like it. You will yet save many more. Give it time, maybe a year or two, or two hundred, but do not give up.”
“O-Okay,” Thalia choked before clearing her throat. “Okay.”
Hades looked at Reyna. “Yes, sir,” she said.
The god gently picked up the mangled, naked corpse of the poor boy, but before he left, Thalia had another question for him.
“Why did you come up here? To us? Let us…you know…cry on you? You’re Hades. You don’t…do…that kind of stuff.”
“It’s late spring,” Hades answered. “Persephone is with her mother right now.”
Thalia and Reyna understood. His shoulder to lean on was gone from him. Today, he needed them as much as they needed him. Or rather, they just needed someone right then and there.
Following this incident, the girls were quick to reach out to Piper, at least to tell her that they tried, and what they did, and what it did to them, and then it became their desperate plea for Piper to give up on her crusade, or at least wait several more years and get some happy memories of life stored in her head. Piper only stared at them in silence for a time through the Iris Message, her eyes dark and sunken in, her expression neutral.
Thalia and Reyna both understood that in the ten months since their last conversation, Piper had already started. She had already seen some of the horrors of mankind through her controlled dreams, and had either fought them herself, or dispatched one of the Native American spirits that now followed her to take care of it.
“I know,” Piper said.
With those simple words, Thalia and Reyna both knew that she would not be swayed nor deterred. She already knew what she was getting into, and she was resolute, her resolve unshaken.
The two Hunters were both grieved by this.
“Just…” Reyna started, but stopped as she struggled to find the right words. “Just don’t lose yourself.”
“If you need us, call,” Thalia said. “We’ll help.”
Piper nodded. “Thank you.”
They ended the Iris Message.
Speaking of Piper, two years after the summer of the Imperial War, she was done with her senior year of high school. On her mind was what she was going to do with her life now that she was graduated, how she was going to manage that work-life balance of the crusade and friends and family. In those two years, in accordance with her words to Thalia and Reyna, she had already been quite active with her powers.
Using essence projection in the same way the Hunters did, Piper was able to look across the town, the state, and the country itself, the extent of her concern for now. With the majority of the Native spirits looking to her for leadership following her victory over Incognito, Piper had access to a veritable army of supernatural beings. For her, it was easy to see things in her dreams, and then coordinate with Jisdu to deploy the spirits across the states. Given the spirits’ negative disposition towards mankind in general, they had no problem with Piper sending them after criminal scum with lethal intent.
Of course, that meant that Piper was making herself bear witness to one horror after the other, and if it wasn’t for the support of Jisdu, her dad, her cousin Tsula, and Shel, Piper would be in the same boat as Thalia and Reyna: depressed, their hopes ruined and crushed, dabbling in misanthropy, with no hope for humanity and a desire to have nothing to do with the species. Just go off and do their own thing.
At this two-year mark, Piper hadn’t told her dad what she was doing, but Shel and Tsula knew, the former because Billy told her who Piper really was and Piper confirmed it, and the latter because Piper told her everything and Jisdu brought her into the fold during the height of the Incognito incident. Having two people in her life that knew what she was doing and had her back really helped keep her mental state in check.
Make no mistake: Piper, Thalia, and Reyna had seen some fucked up shit.
Piper’s two years in high school were a blur. Given who she was and what she did, she didn’t have the time to get involved in school stuff. No extracurriculars like cheerleading, basketball, softball, or volleyball, no after-school clubs, no school functions like plays or concerts, and the one time Piper and Shel were underneath the Friday night lights together, Piper had to go fight a rogue rattlesnake spirt that was long as a football field before it slithered onto the actual football field.
It made Piper sad, but that was the price of her chosen life. She didn’t get to experience the joys of high school that most everyone else did, like the glory of winning a state championship, or being picked for the leading role in the play, or achieving the distinction of being in the top ten percent of her class, nor did Piper do all the bad girl teenage stuff like skip school for the day, or skip in the middle of the day, or do drugs in the restroom.
Nope, Piper was basically a nobody. She mostly made B’s while pulling a few C’s and some A’s, and she kept her head down and out of the spotlight. Other than fighting rogue spirits and the odd monster that somehow found Piper in the sea of teenage hormones, the wildest thing Piper ever did in high school was make out with Shel in the library bathroom, which led to a fingering session, which luckily concluded with the final bell ringing, allowing them to legally leave campus and not have to spend the rest of the school day in wet panties.
That being said, Piper did experience at least one common joy in high school, that being losing her virginity. It was the summer of Piper’s eighteenth birthday, prior to her senior year, one year after dating Shel. Shel had asked Piper in advance if, after a year of dating and being on third base for six months by that point, she wanted to finally go all the way, with tongues and toys, and Piper had said yes. So, Shel and Piper went off camping, everyone with half a brain figuring what they were really going to do, something that took Tristan a moment to accept, the fact that his baby girl was an adult now, and could do adult things like have sex, and the sex in question being with another girl, and that was exactly what Shel and Piper did during their night out after getting their tent set up.
To put it in simple, vulgar terms: Shel railed Piper like a train with her strap.
Piper’s limp after her first time being penetrated all the way was short-lived, but her glow lasted all week.
Moving on, when graduation finally arrived, it was all but superficial for Piper. For just about everyone, graduation meant either a few months of a break before going to college, or the beginning of going full-time at whatever job they already have. There were outliers, of course, like those deadbeat kids that didn’t want to go to college nor did they have a job, and just wanted to spend their days sleeping in and playing video games, possibly smoking weed while they were at it. To that point, Piper was an outlier as well, because she hadn’t committed to college, nor did she have a job anymore.
She had quit working at the Cherokee giftshop some time ago in order to better manage her time between school, training, her girlfriend, family, and her hero work.
What Piper was facing was just how much commitment was “required” from her. She graduated. She was no longer bound by state and federal law to spend eight hours a day at school. She was free now. She could truly dedicate her life to the cause, striking out into the world to get her hands dirty instead of deploying the spirits to do it for her, or she could continue what she was doing, training, dreaming, and delegating, while going to college with Shel at Northeastern State University, pursuing a political science degree with her girlfriend to get into a career of politics.
Quite poetic, fighting for the rights of the people by day, killing to protect the people by night.
The danger Piper saw in such a career, though, was her own human nature.
“What, exactly, are the ethics of using my charmspeak against political opponents?” Piper asked Jisdu one summer night after graduation with a sideways smile.
The trickster rabbit returned that sideways smile, a gleam in his eye.
“I would say that depends exclusively on what they’re opposing you on, their reasoning for opposing you, and how much you care for the person opposing you. Now, if we want to get to the question you’re really asking, that being using your charmspeak on corrupt politicians to either make them actually do their job and uphold their oath of office, or confess their crimes and have them removed, then hell yeah, go for it. Because what’s the alternative? Stand by and let them abuse their power, getting rich on bribes and embezzlement, deliberately causing harm to the people they’re supposed to represent? Or try to acquire evidence of their crimes, and then go through the headache of due process, with lawyers, judges, juries, potential corruption and foul play, all with no guarantee of conviction in the first place, and then they still get reelected anyway, rendering all that effort null and void.”
Piper’s sideways smile got a little bigger as she appreciated the over convoluted and broken justice system currently at work in the United States. Also her personal experience with said system a few months ago when she tried to play anonymous informant for a local investigation into a triple homicide, only for the suspect—who did kill the kids, Piper confirmed that with an essence projection into the past, thus demonstrating the unstoppable detective power of essence projection—to get acquitted because the defense attorney convinced the judge that the evidence was illegally acquired and fake.
An anonymous tipper telling the police exactly where to go get all of the evidence they needed was considered questionable enough to throw the case.
So Piper went and killed the man herself. Tossed a brick through a window, flew inside his house as a bird, transformed back into a human, partially turned her hand into a bear’s claw, and obliterated the man’s lower jaw and throat with a single swipe, sending blood, chunks of skin and muscle, and teeth and bone fragments flying everywhere. Piper took her brick, put it back through the window, flew back out, then collected her brick and left. Absolutely baffled the police with that one, because where forced entry was obvious, the tool used was missing, and it was obvious no human had killed the murderer given the damage to his face.
Oh, well.
“So,” Jisdu chirped, bringing Piper back from memory lane, “my opinion on the morality and ethics behind using your charmspeak on those pesky corrupt politicians? Fuckin’ send it, girl. Be the divine force you halfway are, rendering judgement and bringing about justice.”
Piper snorted.
“Now, using charmspeak on someone just because they disagree with you politically is a bit petty, but no less funny,” Jisdu continued, getting serious. “I support the idea of using your powers on those who deserve it, those who deserve it being those who have committed acts of evil, acts of evil being the standard stuff, like senseless murder, rape, theft, infidelity, extortion, blackmail, not coming to a complete stop at the stop sign, and so on and so forth—doesn’t require that much thought, really—but I do not support the idea of using your powers against those who mildly irritate you…for the most part. Maybe like a small prank or something-”
“Jisdu.”
“Do not become the very thing we’ve sworn to destroy,” said the spirit in a grave voice despite quoting a meme.
“Do you think there’s any truth in that other movie quote? You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain.”
And in that moment, Jisdu wasn’t a trickster spirit that enjoyed pranks and jokes. He was an ancient being that had walked the face of this Earth for thousands of years, and seen a great, great many things. He looked at Piper with old eyes, heavy eyes, wise eyes.
“I’ll be with you every step of the way, my friend. I will give you counsel, advice, and anything you ask of me that is within reason. Between me and the Holy Spirit within you, you will never be without guidance.”
Piper stared at Jisdu, then she nodded. “Thank you. I think I know what I need to do now.”
“Then let’s get to it.”
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
“Dad, we need to have a talk.”
About two hours later, Tristan was left staring at the table. He sipped his cranberry juice. “It’s funny. I think…that some part of me always knew that something was up. Something was different about your mother, about you, about that Delphi Private School and that whole…backpacking across Europe thing that you did that year, and the way you’ve been behaving these past two years, like there’s always something on your mind that you feel like you can’t talk to me about….Now I know why.”
“Dad-”
“Does anyone else know?”
“I told Billy. That night he kicked me in the face and convinced me to accept Christ, I told him everything. Then he told Shel, and I confirmed it all with her. Tsula knows. She’s known the longest, actually. She was going to be Jisdu’s next recruit for the powers before he ran into me the day of the bear attack at One Fire Field. She’s got a little bit of spiritual attunement and was able to see the Asgina for what they were. She confronted me about it, and I decided to bring her in. She’s actually killed a few Asgina herself with some magic darts and her blowgun.”
Tristan nodded stiffly. “Anyone else?”
“No,” Piper said.
Tristan finished his cranberry juice. “You know how you used to say that you were in process?”
“Yeah.”
“Now I’m in process.”
“Dad-”
Tristan held up his hand. “Are you going to college, and I guess keep doing that double life thing where you go to school during the day, and fight evil during the night, and have to go running out of class because, er, monsters attack in the middle of the day?”
Piper shook her head. “No, I’m not going to do that.”
Tristan looked at his precious little one. “You’re going to go out there yourself.”
“Yeah.”
Tristan stared at her, eyes slightly wide. He went to drink some cranberry juice, but it was already all gone. He sighed. “I forbid you,” he said, though it wasn’t even close to half-hearted. Just defeated and resigned. He knew he couldn’t stop her. “You don’t have my blessing. Uh, you’re grounded for life. You don’t get to leave your room unless I say you can. Er, no cell phone, computer, video games-”
“Dad.”
Tristan stood up so fast he threw the chair backwards, and he fully engulfed Piper in his arms, holding onto her with unbridled and unrivaled intensity. Tears were spilling down his face as he shook and did his best to keep himself together.
Piper hugged him back tightly and with so much love it hurt.
Tristan’s shuddering breaths turned into chortles, and then laughs. “Oh-ho, man,” he breathed. “Oh, man.”
“What?” Piper asked, stepping away.
“Just…appreciating how wild it is being your dad. Just…the memories I have of you when you were little, the silly things, and just…here we are. My baby girl is all grown up, a superhero, a demigod, and she’s graduated high school, and she’s…she’s going out there! She’s gonna fight the bad guys! She’s gonna make the world a better place.”
Tristan released another long, shuddering breath.
“Just…wow.” He sat back down, his expression wistful, his eyes glimmering with memories. “I remember when you were three years old. You were still getting the hang of wiping by yourself. Before we left to go to the store, you sat on the potty—on that special little seat I put on the big toilet seat so you didn’t fall in.”
Piper didn’t blush in embarrassment. She remembered that little seat because it had Pocahontas on it. She remembered being beyond thrilled whenever she had to potty and got to sit on it, and hated using public toilets and the toilet at the daycare because she didn’t have her Pocahontas seat with her. She sat down at the table, listening intensely as her dad recalled those moments that were priceless to him.
“And you sat on it, and you pooped, and you insisted on wiping by yourself. You were a big girl now, and wore big girl undies, and you didn’t need Daddy’s help to wipe. So I let you, standing on the other side of the door because I wanted to start teaching you about privacy, and you used your little stool to reach the sink to wash your hands, and it was all good. Then we went to the store, and you started scratching your butt, complaining it was itchy.”
Now Piper blushed. “Oh, no.”
Tristan grinned, looking down at his clasped hands on the table. “So I took you to the family restroom and pulled your pants down, and was like, Yep, that would be why your butt’s itchy, because you had this gigantic poop mark in your underwear.”
“Dad~!” Piper whined, smiling. “Gross!”
“You’re gross!” Tristan laughed. “I asked you, So, did you wipe?, and you said, Yeah, and then I asked, How many times?, and you said, Once, and then I had to explain to you how you had to wipe multiple times until the potty paper was all clean after you wiped.”
Piper giggled. “The potty paper?”
“That’s what you used to call it, yeah. And you were just absolutely baffled by the concept that you had to wipe multiple times. And then you broke down in tears and cried into my shoulder, saying that wiping so many times was too hard and that you never wanted to poop again.”
Piper couldn’t help but laugh at her younger self. “Those were the days. The greatest difficulty in life being having to wipe after I pooped.”
Tristan snorted. “Anyway, I cleaned you up and had to change your underwear because I was not letting you wear that nasty pair anymore. Being three and still in that accident range, I always packed a bag with extra clothes just in case. Good thing on that day.”
“Well, big thanks for teaching me how to wipe my butt,” Piper said with a grin.
“A most horrific experience, to be sure.” Tristan’s eyes swam with another memory. “Then there was that day when you were seven, and went a full ten days without wetting your bed, and you came running into my room, jumping on my bed, standing over me with this huge grin on your face, lifting your nightgown up to me your pull-up. See, Daddy? I’m dry! You were officially no longer a bedwetter, and we had ice cream for breakfast.”
“I remember that day,” Piper said wistfully.
Oh, how simple times really used to be. Back when her greatest obstacle was wiping, and her biggest accomplishment was being a dry sleeper that finally didn’t need pull-ups at night anymore.
“And now here we are,” Tristan said, his smile gone and his tone heavy with finality. “My beautiful, irreplaceable daughter, the greatest thing that ever happened to me, the most precious and invaluable person in my life…my baby girl…all grown up…”
Once a toddler that needed help going potty, now a young woman ready to fight the army of darkness.
Tristan cleared his throat and stood up. “Do you need help packing? Do you even need to pack? Er, were you about to leave, like, right now, or were you going to stick around for a few days?”
“Right now,” Piper said evenly. “There’s a cartel I’ve got my eye on. I’m going to deal with them first.”
“Going to deal with a cartel,” Tristan said quietly. “Uh, well, okay, then. Uh, be careful. The door’s always open. Don’t ever think you can’t come back-”
Piper blinked. “Uh, what I was aiming for right now, just starting out or however you want to think about it, was just, like, weeklong expeditions, and then be back here for the weekend. You know, take breaks. Work-life balance and all that.”
Tristan blinked, his mood instantly brightening. “O-Oh! I thought—well, I thought this was goodbye for pretty much—well, I thought you were going to go out there, and then I wouldn’t see or hear from you for months at a time. Like this was going to be a big, 24/7 operation for you, with you traveling all over the country nonstop.”
“Gods, no!” Piper exclaimed. “I’ve kind of been doing this for two years already, and I have seen…things. I’m going out there to get my hands dirty, I’m going to need you. I’m going to need to come back to my Dad so I can rest, detox, unwind, get ready to go back out there again, and probably use you as a free therapist.”
Tristan swallowed. “I’ll always be there for you. You can stay as long as you need.”
Piper hugged him again. “I love you, Dad. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way back home. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go tell my girlfriend about how I’m going to handle my job. Come on, I want to show you something I can do.”
Piper led her dad outside. It was still nighttime, the stars out by the million, with some lightning bugs flying around here and there. In the porch light, Piper activated her Tlanuwa armor, encasing her body in the sleek, formfitting, magic metal with the feather motif and the falcon head with glowing pink eyes.
Tristan stumbled a little. “Woah!”
Piper dazzled him even further when she deployed her wings. With a flap, she took to the skies, moving so fast her eyes left streaks of light in her wake. With another flap, she was off to tell Shel goodbye for now, and then tell Tsula the same.
Given that they already knew what Piper was up to and what she was going to be doing, neither were surprised.
Shel sighed. “I figured. But you’re going to be home every weekend?”
“That’s the plan, yeah.”
“Saturday is guaranteed to be date night, then.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And sex.”
Piper blushed. “Shel!”
“Aren’t we, though? If we don’t see each other for a week.”
“I mean…probably…” Truth be told, Piper would most likely need the relief.
Shel nodded. “I’ll have everything ready. Music, candles, and I’ll get Mom to get us some alcohol.”
Piper rolled her eyes. “Horndog.”
“Yeah, but you love it.” Shel hugged her girlfriend. “I’m just glad this isn’t us breaking up.”
Piper hugged her back. “Why would this be us breaking up?”
“Breaking up as in you were going off to save the world, and you wouldn’t have the time to ever be back here hardly ever again, and so you were breaking up with me to release us, or something sappy like that, so I could go find another girlfriend and not be alone.”
“What is it with everyone thinking that me going out to fight the forces of evil involves me not coming back home for huge lengths of time?”
“To be fair, the forces of evil are all over the place, so it’s reasonable to assume you would be so dedicated to the cause that you’d be gone practically forever.”
“Hell no. I’m going to need to come back here to rest, recharge, and get ready to go again.”
“And unless something happens, I’ll be right here at home. Ready and waiting for my beautiful girlfriend to come back.”
The girls touched their foreheads, looking deep into each other’s eyes, and then they kissed. Nothing vulgar was involved in this kiss, no tongue, no reaching below the belt to grab some ass, or reaching between the legs to start rubbing some crotch. Just a kiss. Loving, passionate, and the last one for a long time.
The best laid plans, after all.
Piper departed from her girlfriend, said her goodbyes to Tsula, and took flight for the South.
All of this took place under the ever-watchful gaze of Night.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
And at over 10k words, that’s the end of this chapter, aptly named Unfairness for what Percy, Annabeth, Leo, Thalia, and Reyna went through. Piper’s gonna be feeling it bigtime next chapter.
I did the thing with the Hunters! And threw in a heavy dosage of reality. That such an undertaking is gruesome, disgusting, heart-wrenching, and soul-crushing. Thalia and Reyna gave it an honest to God shot, and they couldn’t handle it. They were overwhelmed. But, hey: they gave it a shot, so there’s that.
Next chapter is the third chapter, and what a fitting number for this lengthy prologue to end upon, and the real story to finally begin.
Fair warning, it’s basically going to be the nightmare of every Percy Jackson fan, because I will be holding nothing (well, mostly nothing) back. There will be tears next chapter.
In the meantime, please Fav, Follow, and Review!
Oh, and my novel is still available for purchase on the Kindle Store. Please give it a read. It’d mean a lot to me if you did.