Pt. 3
Wooooow.
I pitch the idea of Percy Jackson game set during the Civil War in which you get to pick between a Greek or Roman character, and no one has anything to say about that. I also pitch the idea of a Backup Plan AU with Shin’en leaving the Naruto World to go back home with Persephone, and they attend Hogwarts together, and no one says anything about that?
Do any of you even read my author’s notes?!
Anyway, the story continues with the culmination of the Night Ops arc in this chapter. This will officially conclude the introduction of this story.
Disclaimer: I don’t own PJO or any of the other material herein
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Obviously, fighting water elementals in water was stupid. They either became one with the water and therefore basically untouchable, or they received such a grand power boost that they were nigh unbeatable. Thus, the question was raised as to how you fought a water elemental when in the water, and the answer was simple: remove them from the water.
Or in Asteria’s case, you removed the water.
Kraken dropped into the ocean and blanched at what he saw. ‘Bad time?’ he mentally thought at the glowing Asteria.
‘Extremely. Clear out.’
‘Hai.’
Kraken went flying out of the water, landing atop the aircraft carrier that his siblings were doing their best to demolish, tearing up the runway and fighting off the human soldiers.
“Asteria’s going nuclear!” he shouted.
Persia and Percy needed no further words. The triplets water-traveled away just in time for the ocean to flash boil.
No, that was not an exaggeration. Asteria’s didn’t channel the sun through her child from Ra as in she became a really powerful flashlight; she glowed because she became something tantamount to a star. The heat she generated from out of her aura became light because that was how luminosity and heat were related.
As such, Asteria generated so much heat, star-like heat, that the ocean did, indeed, instantly reach its boiling point for miles around. Of course, so much heat also affected the ships and submarines for miles around, many of which were either nuclear powered or carrying nuclear weapons. While they did explode, because they weren’t properly armed, the resulting explosion, while massive, was not as massive as it could have been.
Still, that didn’t mean it was at all gentle.
Asteria destroyed hundreds of ships in the blink of an eye, killing thousands of sailors from all countries. The massive crater left in the ocean from so much water basically instantly disappearing was quickly filled as the rest of the ocean poured back in, creating a reverse tsunami of sorts that caused even more destruction to the armada. Of course, with the destruction of the nuclear reactors and the premature detonation of so many nuclear missiles, much radiation was unleashed upon the waves and whatever vessels remained.
In a grand show of irony, Asteria, the daughter of Poseidon, more or less just destroyed the enemy armada with the power of fire.
As for Polybotes, Oceanus, Phorcys, and Keto, they were gone. Not as in destroyed, unfortunately, but teleported away as soon as Asteria evaporated the ocean.
Leviathan swam up to her, his skin slightly red but quickly returning to normal tan. “Be honest with me: would you have done that if this was your world, or did you do that only because we’re in a different one and we don’t care about collateral?”
‘This world, my world, a different one altogether—I would have done that in any situation. I don’t care about collateral in any circumstance.’
“Not even if your children were in the way?”
‘They would have been fine. They’re my children.’
“Of course.”
Just then, Shin’en buzzed in their ears. “Impressive lightshow. I need the two of you in Manhattan. The cacodemons are making their move. I’ve got the triplets back here on the mountain, reinforcing Gunslinger and Virgil.”
Asteria and Leviathan just nodded and teleported through the water, reconstituting atop one of the city’s many skyscrapers to survey the battlefield.
Leviathan grinned way too widely. “You know? It really is a good thing we don’t care about collateral, or else this would be a much more difficult endeavor.”
Asteria’s own smile showed perhaps too many teeth. ‘Indeed. It is relieving to be able to cut loose and not hold back.’
They both picked one of the hulking, kaiju-esque cacodemons, and attacked.
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In the throne room, with its many holographic screens showing the ongoing battles, no one missed Asteria blowing up the ocean in a dazzling display of light, nor did they miss the blips on the map that represented the enemy water deities vanishing from that section, and reappearing somewhere else. They obviously didn’t miss the computerized voice chiming in with a tone of urgency.
“Catastrophic solar energy detected. Massive nuclear activity detected. Kill tracker update: Asteria leads by over 1.7 million.”
For a few seconds, no one could think. That was the combined naval might of planet Earth. Every warship from ever country that had them had been concentrated in that general area of ocean when Asteria somehow went “solar,” which resulted in the chain reaction of all the nuclear vessels experiencing meltdown and/or explosion. From miles of ocean instantly being flash boiled, the nuclear activity, the heat, the radiation, the blinding light, and the ocean rushing back in to fill out the humongous “bowl” Asteria created, and all the damage that caused to what ships escaped the initial blast, the female alternate Percy Jackson had just racked up a body count greater than some countries.
There were people who were impressed, people who thought this was all an elaborate prank of some kind like they were being filmed for their reactions, people who were beyond horrified, and people who didn’t know what to think or feel about anything that was going on.
And of course, people who weren’t at all bothered or concerned about the situation at hand, but were dedicating their mental energies to figuring out what exactly Asteria did to where she glowed so brilliantly and the computer chimed in about solar activity. Asteria was the daughter of Poseidon from another world, so how could she have solar powers? Legacy of Apollo, perhaps?
Wheels and Shin’en knew, of course, that was why Shin’en hadn’t wasted any time in reassigning them to Manhattan to repel the cacodemons.
“Try not to hit them, hm?” Shin’en said to Wheels, who was still raining fire on the city as he unleashed cannons, missiles, and lasers at the kaiju.
“Puh-lease,” Wheels rolled his eyes behind his goggles. “The cacodemons are pretty tanky, so I’m pretty sure those two can shrug off the stuff I’m using. Now, the antimatter weapons that break molecules apart? Eh, maybe, but we’re not that desperate yet.”
Shin’en hummed.
There was a beep from Gunslinger, prompting Shin’en to hit a button to open the comm while also directing his eyes to the screen showing the gun-toting demigod currently going through hell.
“Yes, Gunslinger, what is it?”
“We’re encountering heavy resistance, had to dig in, and we’re being overrun! We need reinforcements-!”
A monster climbed into view, and Gunslinger took notice. He whipped around and opened fire, obliterating it. Another crawled up behind him, and spun around, slamming the butt of his machine gun into its head, knocking it to the ground. He jammed the barrel into his chest and fired.
Yet another monster came into view from behind, Gunslinger whipping around, flinging the machine gun into face on instinct. He pulled a pistol from his armpit holster, firing a few rounds into the monster’s face. Then numerous monsters came into view, with Gunslinger picking his machine gun up from the ground, holding it under one arm, letting loose a massive spray of bullets from both guns. Blood and body parts went flying everywhere as Gunslinger mowed down the enemy forces from left to right in a hail of blessed metal.
Wheels had his head cocked to the side, a screwed-up expression on his face. “He needs reinforcements?”
Shin’en ignored him. “The Ghouls triplets are on their way. They should be there in the next few seconds.”
Not even, as not even a full second later, the screen showing the movement of the triplets lined up with the screen showing Gunslinger.
Shin’en called up Virgil with a sideways smirk.
“Yeah?”
“Have fun wrangling the kids.”
“Oh, that won’t be a problem. There’s plenty of things here to keep them busy with.”
Virgil brought down another beam of light, destroying another temple, further increasing the bottleneck of entry points the monsters had available to storm Olympus from.
“Since Asteria eliminated the Atlantic Theater, and she and Leviathan are taking on the cacodemons, I can direct my attention to home defense,” Wheels said.
Shin’en nodded. “Approved.”
With a nod of his own, Wheels grabbed the joysticks and got to work on directing the weapon systems towards environmental controls instead of repelling the invasion below, giving Virgil and the “kids” more support.
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Funnily enough, all Tobi needed to bring down Typhon was a single drop of the giant’s ichor. With that, Tobi could do his Jashin ritual, mutilate himself, and by what was basically hoodoo magic, mutilate Typhon. Obviously, the hard part was getting at least one drop of Typhon’s blood.
The 500mph winds surrounding the Father of Monsters provided a fantastic shield.
Tobi tried fireballs which predictably didn’t work. He tried launching his bones into the tornado, which also predictably didn’t work. Brute forcing his way into the tornado with the Perfect Susano’o had already failed. Trying to psionically inflict pain on Typhon with his mind also didn’t work because Typhon had a very big, old, powerful mind, and he was able to rebuff Tobi’s mental attacks without effort.
Tobi tried tearing up the terrain to create humongous gouges and outcroppings in the ground, doing something akin to spreading sharp glass or Legos everywhere to try and shred Typhon’s feet, but the 500mph winds spinning from head to toe around the storm giant served as a fantastic sandblaster, and Typhon merely walked on smooth ground wherever he went.
Tobi tried an altered version of the terrain idea in that he tore up the earth in order to make gigantic chasms and fissures…only for Typhon to evidently just step right over them.
See, the thing was, Tobi could not actually tell how big Typhon really was. The huge tornado blocked him from view, and though his massive eyes did glow brightly even through the raging winds, Tobi was not adept enough at math to estimate how high up those lights were in order to estimate how tall Typhon was, and therefore how big his stride was. He had a rough upbringing, you could say.
Tobi couldn’t even try to use Typhon’s footprints left in his wake because, again, raging, cyclonic winds smoothed out the dirt and erased said footprints.
Tobi even tried to use the Bracken Dance technique he got from his Dead Bone Pulse kekkei genkai from his father Jashin, which was the same thing Kimimaro had, and the technique in question was the one where Kimimaro turned the battlefield into a small forest of thousands of bone spikes, first seen when he fought Gaara and Rock Lee.
And then died.
But anyway.
Tobi tried timing his Bracken Dance to cause the bones to sprout within the tornado so that they wouldn’t be sheered smooth by the winds, and he actually succeeded in this endeavor by some miracle, it was just that it turned out that Typhon had some very durable feet, and the bones harmlessly snapped against his soles.
When that happened, Tobi actually experienced a toddler-esque meltdown. He flopped onto the dirt and rolled this way and that, kicking and screaming, shredding his body as bones uncontrollably went shooting in all directions. It was all just too much for the lil’ guy. Everything he tried, and none of it worked.
It was embarrassing!
Shin’en was going to be so disappointed in him.
Yeah, sure, Tobi could probably use his Oko Katachi and force his way into the tornado, but if his Perfect Susano’o couldn’t pull it off, why would his Rampant Form? Same thing for opening his Eight Gates. Being immortal and with billions of souls to burn though in his collection to just pass on all the physical damage he sustained, Tobi could open his Eight Gates and experience far more power than Might Guy ever did, given that Might Guy was just a normal human and Tobi was a Shinto demigod.
But Tobi tried to keep the Eight Gates in his pocket for if he just really wanted something not only dead, but utterly destroyed. Like, he had to be really mad at something to open the Eight Gates. He wasn’t that mad at Typhon.
Yet.
He was getting there, though.
“Fucking stupid fucking dirt,” Tobi cursed, though he could barely hear himself over the howling winds.
And then a random stop sign came flying around in the spiraling winds to almost decapitate the unhinged boy, in that the sharp side went slicing through his head from his temples to the back of his skull. Blood squirted everywhere, but in spite of the grizzly wound, Tobi’s face lit up.
“I’ve got it!”
Sacrificing a soul, which had the effect of healing his head in a pulse of red light, Tobi proceeded to start digging into the dirt like a mole. He didn’t have Earth chakra to do the thing Kakashi did when he swam through solid rock like a fish, but he did have insane amounts of brute strength.
Tobi burrowed his way all the to Typhon’s foot, digging under the tornado. Because magic, being inside the tornado with the storm giant was like being in the eye of a hurricane: it was completely calm, aside from the earthquake-inducing footfalls.
Tobi looked up at Typhon. The Father of Monsters was humanoid, not possessing snakes for feet, or a hundred heads, or huge wings, but the form of man. He was muscular, with blackish-green skin like a crocodile with melanism, huge, pointed toe and fingernails, a featureless head with flat ears, a flat nose like Voldemort, a flat patch where his lips were supposed to be, no hair, and his eyes had no lids and his eye sockets were slanted in such a way that his luminous orbs were also slanted, making them naturally menacing.
Tobi also giggled at the sight of Typhon’s unbelievably huge cock and balls swaying back forth as the giant took step after step.
Choosing to reserve the dick jokes for later, Tobi ran up to Typhon’s foot and stabbed it with his scalpel. No reaction, though that was because at 700 meters tall, Typhon had a very thick epidermis, and Tobi’s scalpel was comparatively small, so of course the little blade didn’t come anywhere near piercing Typhon’s foot deep enough to draw blood.
So the palm of Tobi’s hand exploded in a spray of blood when his radius bone suddenly grew to be ten feet long. Tobi thrust his bone spear into Typhon’s foot, and this time it went all the way in up to the palm of his hand.
Typhon roared so loud that Tobi literally went deaf, the decibels of the winds combined with Typhon’s vocalization being enough to shatter the boy’s eardrums. Not that Tobi really cared; tinnitus sounded cool after a while. Besides, he got what he wanted.
Typhon flung his huge leg so hard that Tobi got launched from the giant’s foot and into the tornado proper, got stuck in the cyclone, spun around the giant’s body several times before getting yeeted a mile away, where he landed in such a way that he broke his neck and went flopping across the dirt a couple of times before finally stopping.
Tobi sat up with a stupid grin, his flopping to the side in a very disturbing way. His extended radius had gotten snapped off at some point, with six inches of sharp bone protruding from his palm. That was okay, though, because he had what he needed.
Tobi brought his hand to his mouth, and he licked the golden fluid from his skin. His body turned pitch black, white markings like his skeleton showing through appearing on his face, arms, torso, pelvis, and legs, though everything from the belt down was hidden by his pants.
“Let the ritual begin…” Tobi tried to say ominously, but it came out sounding more like, “Ler eh er-oo-al eh-in,” because his neck was broken and it was impeding his oratory.
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Piper only briefly wondered where Jason was at during this time of crisis. Four years ago, he had warned her that there was something huge on the way, and Shin’en, as the lawyer, had said the same thing, and now here it was. Why wasn’t Jason here, then? Why hadn’t he brought some huge army of knights in shining armor, descending from Valhalla to wage war with the forces of evil?
Well, the answer was Shin’en.
Piper only briefly wondered about Jason’s whereabouts because she figured that with the presence of the alternate Percy’s—not as mindboggling to her as one might think—Jason’s wasn’t required. Or some higher power was holding him and the einherjar of Valhalla back for some grand happening later.
Whatever the case, Piper tore through the mortal mercenaries and Germani like they were made of paper. She was too fast and too strong, and whenever the odd bullet did make contact, it harmlessly ricocheted off her Tlanuwa armor and into someone else’s face.
Long story short for Piper’s campaign, she had the easiest time with minimal difficulty.
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After the seventh cacodemon went down, four to Leviathan, three for Asteria, though she was working on her fourth, Tartarus began to simmer down.
As in he had been overflowing with rage before, and was starting to mellow back out.
Fine, then, intoned the dark lord. All units return here.
With the power of a Primordial god, he spoke directly into the minds of the monsters around the world, his Giant children and Titan nieces and nephews, and his new children the remaining cacodemons. Incredibly, there was no argument. When the portals opened back to the pit, all the forces of evil went through them without question. The forces on Olympus all did an about face and went back through the portals, and the cacodemons also went back through when the portals opened for them.
When Wheels saw that, though, he didn’t let the cacodemons go without unleashing hell into hell. Dozens of missiles and rockets, innumerous shells, and plenty of sidewinding lasers. Two more of the cacodemons went down, actually, and hundreds of thousands of monsters were blown up due to the fact that Tartarus had opened the portals in such a way that they all led to a central gathering point, which in turn led to the deaths of a number of Titans and Giants.
And also the minor wounding of Tartarus himself because Wheels’ ordinance struck his physical body that was the pit.
The dark god couldn’t close the portals fast enough.
“Why did you end the assault?” Nyx asked tersely, failing to keep her annoyance out of her voice.
Because our enemy was proving to be more skilled and powerful than originally anticipated, with a plethora of abilities not yet shown, and their leader hadn’t even joined the battle yet. Yes, I could have redirected the rest of the army to Olympus, and they would have either overwhelmed the enemy, or the enemy would have shown us powers we didn’t know that had, and wiped out the army. I have decided to err on the side of caution instead of risking more losses. Besides, we have the Duat and the Olympians, and have wiped out almost all of mankind. While I was hoping for a swift, sweeping victory, this day proved to be an excellent start to the war.
Nyx grunted. “If you say so.”
“I can say I’m entertained,” Chaos said as he decided to just pop in, causing Nyx and Tartarus to flinch and assume battle stances, only to relax upon seeing that it was their father. “And what’s a war without some objectives? Tarty, I want you to organize your forces. You are to defend Camp Half-Blood, New Rome, the Waystation, and the Brooklyn House access to the Duat, and also build prisons around the world to hold the Olympians. Your objectives will be to keep these places and the Olympians from being liberated by Shin’en’s forces, and also to plan, invade, and capture Hotel Valhalla. Shin’en’s objectives will obviously be the opposite. The winner of this war will be whoever is left standing, and I, of course, will be spicing the game up as I see fit. Ta.”
And with that, Chaos left, his son silently fuming at being called Tarty.
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“Wow, they really just gave up, didn’t they?” Wheels asked rhetorically. “And all the prep that I put into this, too.”
“Truly a travesty,” Shin’en said. He opened the comms. “Everyone rendezvous in the throne room. That battle is over for tonight.”
In mere seconds, everyone did just that. The Ghoul triplets, Gunslinger, Virgil, Tobi, Leviathan, and Asteria.
Expectant looks were directed at Shin’en, and he said, “We are waiting on one more.”
And soon enough, Piper returned, New Emperor Lafreniere slung over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The remaining Seven and the others that knew Piper had clear looks of reservation on their faces, for they had not missed the feed from the hologram showing Piper’s activities, how she had slaughtered the emperor’s forces. It wasn’t necessarily the act of killing itself, but how brutal, ruthless, and merciless Piper had been. She hadn’t ever shown that level of ferocity, not from her first battle during the Hera quest all the way through to her final confrontation with Medea in the Burning Maze.
Piper stood amongst the loose semi-circle around Shin’en.
“Well done, team,” he said. “We repelled the enemy tonight, and took a sizeable chunk from their forces. This night was not without a heavy toll, however. Wheels did a scan of the planet, and it is confirmed: where the human population of this planet used to be in excess of eight billion, it now barely totals above five million, with approximately 97% of those belonging to various militaries. We have not won this war, and I can only imagine that the road ahead will be long and difficult. In the meantime…”
Shin’en produced a tray of shot glasses that were filled clear spring water. He passed the tray around, starting with Wheels and going all the way back to himself, with Piper hesitantly taking a glass when the tray was passed to her.
Shin’en raised his glass. “Here’s to the dead.”
Everyone else raised their glass. “And to the next man to die.”
They looked expectantly at Piper, and that was when she well and truly appreciated that she was part of this now, a member of this team. She raised her glass a little higher.
“And to the next man to die.”
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Whew. Got it out just in time for Thanksgiving of ’24.
Sorry that this was short and the ending rushed, but for some weird reason, I’m actually feeling a motivation block for this story. Like, I can perfectly see how the rest of this goes with the various campaigns and coming conversations, all the way to the ending, but when I was writing this chapter it felt a beating to get through each scene.
As such, I think I’ll be putting this one the shelf for a while. Direct my energies elsewhere. Perhaps back to that demigod novel I was writing a few months ago which is basically a retelling of Percy Jackson but it’d for young adults instead of kids. Or maybe I’ll start revamping Dragon Princess in accordance with additional lore introduced in the DLC.
Speaking of novels, please check out my own original novel that is currently published on the Kindle Store under the name “Controversiae Tamen Liber: Ligulae Monitum.”
And speaking of additional, it has apparently been confirmed that Rick is teaming up with Mark Oshiro again to write a direct sequel to Sun and Star. I thought the first one sucked, but it at least gave me the cacodemons to work with. It also goes without saying that this story disregards any new canon information that will be revealed in the third Senior Year book and this new Sun and Star book, and while I do not hold any high hopes for good stories in either book, I do hope there is more info released on the current events of our favorite demigods in the new Sun and Star book.
Maybe an official story as to how Piper ended up with Shel, not that it would be anywhere near as awesome as my own iteration, of course. Maybe the beginning of the potential triple crossover that Rick teased four years ago in Tower of Nero with Chiron revealing that he was having a meeting with Mimir and Bast.
Anyway.
Happy Thanksgiving, friends! I’m thankful for the support you’ve given me these past eight years!