Day One
I actually like the idea of exploring the three days before the counteroffensive begins. Lots and lots of room for character development, especially for our titular heroes.
Before we begin, a note to some Guest Reviewers:
I killed off Shel after putting so much effort into Shel in my Piper story because I couldn’t think of anything productive for Shel to do in this story, it adds depth to Piper’s character herein, and it follows through with a very subtle theme I introduced in the Piper story.
Yes, it is difficult to keep track of so many cast members. I’ve got all the main characters from canon, on top of all the Percy’s from my own stories. The best way to handle this, I think, is to only focus on a few in a scene at a time. This was a struggle even Rick had when he was writing Heroes of Olympus, and even he chose the tactic of breaking them all up into groups at so many intervals.
All my iterations of Percy can bloodbend. After all, most of the human body is water. They can also control ice and vapor, and change the state of water at will. In theory, canon Percy can do all of this as well, we just haven’t seen him do it yet, and might possibly never do so.
Yes, the Seven really weren’t a big, happy family when you really stop and do a deep dive into their interactions and relationships. They were all friendly and got along great for the sake of the mission, but it was clear based on how they all went their separate ways after the Giant War that they were only so close. Now, that’s not inherently a bad thing, it just is what it is.
Though I will say that is it disappointing that they simply just split up after everything they went through together, but still.
I think that covers it for the Guests.
On to the chapter, featuring the return of an old villain or antihero depending on how you viewed him.
Disclaimer: I don’t own PJO or any other crossovers
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Maybe an hour later after Shin’en and Virgil left Jason’s room after Piper revealed that Shel had been dead for the past eighteen months, everyone else started to slowly file out until it was just Jason, Piper, Thalia, and Reyna in his room. However, the scene would not focus on them.
Percy and Annabeth found their suites on the hall listed on their keycards, though when Percy entered his own, finding it in the same style as Jason’s, cut into four quadrants by walls, a tree in the center, and the rooms all personalized for him, Annabeth was right behind him.
“I don’t want to be alone right now,” she said.
Percy didn’t question it. He didn’t even need an explanation as to why she was following him. He wouldn’t have cared in the slightest if she never went to her own suite and took up permanent residence in his. In fact, a part of him was somewhat surprised Shin’en had even bothered to arrange for him and Annabeth to have separate suites, as opposed to getting them one big one.
Well, bigger than this anyway, because this “suite” was bigger than a lot of houses, as it already was, but it was a suite clearly designed for Percy, not Percy and Annabeth.
“This place is bigger than our apartment,” Annabeth noted in a quiet voice.
An observation that sent a pang through both of them. Their apartment, their first place together after they had officially retired and started living their own lives, was objectively inferior to this place that was just handed to them. This place that was tied to the very life they had tried to leave behind.
Percy sat on his new bed, noting how it honestly the comfiest bed he had ever rested on. He swung his legs around to lean against the headboard, and Annabeth walked around to the other side to get comfy next to him. They held hands, staring blankly at the huge TV mounted on the opposite wall. They could vaguely see their reflections in the smooth, shiny black screen.
It was probably just the bad lighting, but they looked deader than when they had been shrouded in Death Mist five years ago in Tartarus.
Yes, the events of the Giant War were only five years ago, and the events of the end of the Imperial War were only four years ago, meaning that Percy and Annabeth were only 22 years old right now, not even the full prime of their lives. Yet they felt as if they were in their 70s. Old, worn out, tired; they’d seen so much, been through so much, and it was now clear to them that life—the Fates, the universe, God, whoever was really in charge of the universe—hadn’t been anywhere near done with them.
It was now clear that they had tried to run out of their own story, and they had paid the price for it. Terribly so.
“We fucked up,” Annabeth said.
“Yeah,” Percy answered.
“And now the world is gone, our parents have been captured, and the only hope we have to turn things back around is apparently a bunch of different you’s from alternate timelines.”
“…yeah…” Percy managed to say.
Annabeth’s brows knit together slightly. “If all those alternate you’s exist, does that mean that there are alternate versions of me that match up with them?”
“Based on my understanding of how multiverse stuff works, there are infinite alternate versions of you. Some better than others.”
“Some better than others?” Annabeth tried to go for some lighthearted teasing. “Why, Mr. Jackson, are you insinuating that I’m not perfect in all versions of myself?”
Percy shrugged dispassionately, still staring at his distant, hazy reflection in the TV. “I suppose there’s some alternate version of you that cheated on me with someone else. Maybe Jason, maybe Piper—in which you broke mine and Jason’s hearts-” Annabeth gawped at her boyfriend “-or some version of you that was a Titan spy the whole time, and you killed me during the Battle of Manhattan and went on to become Kronos’s consort or something. Maybe he was able to separate himself from Luke without killing him, and the two of you hooked up-”
“Okay, that’s enough. The multiverse sucks, I get it.” Now Annabeth felt incredibly dirty.
Depending on how this whole multiverse thing really did work, then Percy was absolutely correct in that there could very well be some alternate versions of her that were absolute filth. By that same token, though, there were also versions of Percy that were utterly despicable as well. It seemed a stroke of fortune that the alternate Percy’s that were here seemed to be “good” people.
Or good enough at least.
Shin’en, despite how much of heavy-handed asshole he was, had treated them with respect, after all. He had referred to them as Mr. and Ms., and it was only after they started to get on his nerves that he had started to refer to them as “young man” and “young lady.” Shin’en was well-mannered, conducted himself professionally, and carried an air of authority earned.
Virgil was also a good man, showing traits that aligned with that huge book he carried, but of course Percy and Annabeth had to wonder what had been going through his mind when in the presence of those like Nico, Will, Alex, Magnus, and Piper, given they were all LGBT in some way. Though, they had seen him talking earnestly with Piper earlier, while they were still on Olympus, so maybe he was one of the “good” Christians, one of the ones that didn’t go around telling everyone they were going to hell.
It was hard to get a read on the others as far as how they were as people. They knew Tobi was insane, Asteria and Leviathan had the air of people that wanted nothing to do with anyone outside their circle, Gunslinger and the Ghouls were just kids, but Wheels was definitely someone they were going to avoid. His whole personality screamed “I spend way too much time on iFunny.”
“To that point, though,” Percy said, “I suppose there are also alternate us’s out there that aren’t in this situation. They actually made it all the way, with good jobs, a nice house, a better world…kids…”
Annabeth shook her head. “We can’t think like that.”
“Yeah…”
Silence fell back upon them for so many seconds until Annabeth broke it.
“I suppose you’re not in the mood to have sex to try and take our minds off things?”
Percy shook his head. “No.”
Yes, by this point in their lives, so far into their relationship, they had had sex. Numerous times, even, but tying back to how they felt so old after everything they’d been through, sex simply wasn’t on their minds that often despite how they were only in their early 20s. They had been far more preoccupied with depression, that after they’d finally graduated high school and were set to begin their lives together, everything had fallen apart.
They had been taken to court by angry, bitter, grieving Romans, barred access to NRU because there weren’t enough people left alive to open the college, been on the receiving end of racist discrimination because they were White at Berkeley, and even after getting their degrees, they had only found shit jobs, Percy doing manual labor as a construction grunt, Annabeth flipping burgers and taking orders at McDonald’s.
With their lives like that, it was hard for them to ever be in the mood to have sex, even if sex promised a brief release from the stress.
Now they were here, wishing, just like Virgil had said, to go back and do it all differently this time.
“We fucked up,” Percy repeated what Annabeth had said earlier. “Come on,” he squeezed her hand and got back on his feet, “maybe we can talk Shin’en into giving us the chance to unfuck it.”
Annabeth nodded, already mentally reviewing her words, going over phrases, diction, tone, and tact, and preparing for all avenues of conversation with the man in charge.
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It seemed others had the same idea. Frank, Hazel, Leo, and Calypso were getting into the elevator at the end of the hall, and when the two groups saw each other, there was that awkward moment where the former held the door open while the latter ran down the hallway. Percy and Annabeth made it in, and the elevator was big enough to safely carry them all.
“What’re you guys up to?” Annabeth asked.
“Gonna see if we can talk Emo Percy into letting us help with the war effort,” Leo said.
“Emo Percy?” Percy blinked. “You mean Shin’en?”
“Yeah, him. I don’t like that name. ‘Sheen-en’? Way too edgy. So I started calling him Emo Percy.”
“Please don’t call him that when we’re talking to him,” Annabeth said.
“Don’t worry,” Calypso said, setting a hand on Leo’s shoulder. “I’ve got him.”
Leo rolled his eyes.
“I’m glad someone does,” Hazel said.
“Hey!”
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The elevator took them to a level of the hotel that contained one of the many doors to the Feast Hall, where they all kind of just assumed Shin’en would be, working with Wheels. Their assumption proved correct, as down in the center, at the base of the tree that occupied the Feast Hall, was Shin’en, having set up an array of computers, monitors, and equipment akin to the Batcave. He was in the middle of networking, it appeared, booting everything up and testing systems.
He was alone in the whole Feast Hall, no einherjar, no other animals, or gods, or even anyone on his team.
They should have been happy, because it just being Shin’en would have made their conversation easier without an audience, but instead they all suddenly felt on edge. Why was Shin’en by himself? Had he sent everyone away? Did he know this conversation was about to take place? Was it just a coincidence?
The group of Percy, Annabeth, Hazel, Frank, Leo, and Calypso made their way down all the stairs to get from their level down to the central area. When they made it, they heard the sound of a door opening above, and it came to pass that Jason, Piper, Thalia and Reyna had also come to join them.
And so the ten of them came to stand before Shin’en. Or rather, behind him, as his back was turned to them in the chair he was sitting in as he worked on the computers.
“Mr. Valdez, if you ever refer to me as ‘Emo Percy’ one more time, you will spend the rest of your life paralyzed from the neck down.”
Leo blanched. “U-Uh…how did you-? The elevators have bugs in them?”
“No,” Shin’en answered. “Your bodies are full of water. I am acutely attuned to water to the point that I can pick out individual water atoms. I was aware of everything you said in the elevator based on the movement of your mouth.”
They all went a little still at that one. If Shin’en could read lips from a distance without looking purely based on the movement of water in their mouths, what else did he know about their bodies based on the water that was inside them?
Hazel’s face screwed up. “Does that mean you can feel when we need to go to the bathroom?”
“Yes,” was Shin’en’s short, simple, to-the-point answer. “When your colon is stretched and you need to defecate, when your bladder is full and you need to urinate, any scar tissue you have on you, including your every movement in the shower and while you’re by yourself in bed.”
Shin’en turned around this time, showing that there was a little bit of Percy Jackson in him after all, because he had the same sideways smirk that Percy had, and the same mischievous glint in his eyes.
As uncomfortable as everyone became with the notion that Shin’en was Big Brother on steroids, Annabeth was the one to put that out of her mind first and get things back on track, though a thought occurred to her as soon as she opened her mouth to speak. “You already know why we’re here.”
“I do, and the answer is still no.”
Piper and Jason remained quiet, but the others started talking over each other as they voiced their opposition to this.
“By which you are all helping to reinforce my decision,” Shin’en said loudly and pointedly, his voice rising above them all as he rose to his feet. “I am general, here. Commander-in-chief. And I have given orders. Orders that all of you are attempting to violate. Why would I ever want to have the likes of you in my army when none of you obey me? You are unruly, undisciplined, wild. You think your experiences from the wars gives you some kind of grounds to stand on that you can contribute to the war, and this is false. Aside from Frank, Hazel, Reyna, and Thalia, you are out of shape and out of practice, and even you four don’t have what is necessary to not outright die-”
“But that’s not true anymore,” Annabeth bravely stated. “When we were all brought here, something happened to us. We all felt it. A rush of energy. You did something to us. Or you had Odin do something to us. When we were talking with Magnus and Alex, they told us how people that are brought here are made superhumans, given Odin’s blessing of strength so they can be einherjar. That’s the whole point of Jason and the special forces. Greco-Roman demigods that were given the einherjar power-up. And that’s what we’ve all got now, isn’t it? You arranged for Odin to give us the einherjar blessing, and now we’re all stronger. We do have the power to keep up in the war, and what you’re doing now is just a test of character.”
“All correct,” Shin’en freely admitted.
Everyone stared at him.
“What point is there in lying to any of you?” Shin’en asked.
Percy stepped up. “Okay, dude-”
“Dude?”
And Percy actually stopped, took a breath, and composed himself. Shin’en wasn’t some asshole god from Olympus descending from on high to ruin Percy’s day. In his own words, he was the General of the Army, the man in charge of organizing the einherjar and coming up with counteroffensive strategy. He was also the leader of a team of super powerful demigods, at least one of which could blow up the ocean. For the sake of trying to atone for his sins or something, even Persassius Jackson could reign it in and conduct himself like a man.
“Sir,” Percy tried again. “You arranged to give us the same powers that Jason and all the other demigods from Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter have. You want us to go fight for our world, or you wouldn’t have done that. I’m also going to go out on a limb and guess you know everything that we’ve talked about so far, so you know that we get it now: we screwed up in retiring. We should have been doing more. Well, we’re ready, now. We’re ready to do what we should have been doing. We’re ready to take back our world.”
Annabeth couldn’t have been prouder, and everyone rallied behind Percy’s speech, their chins up high and their backs straight.
Shin’en stared at Percy. “Do you truly appreciate that your survival in this is not guaranteed? And that if you die in this war, you won’t be going to the Underworld. You will die for real. Permanently. Is that really a risk you want to take with your mother, stepfather, and half-sister still alive and well? With Annabeth right there behind you?”
“Our survival was never guaranteed in the first place,” Percy said.
Shin’en hummed. “I require a test of that conviction. Ms. Chase, you are right in that you have the blessings of the einherjar. All of them.” Shin’en looked at Jason and winked, causing Jason to grow cold as he began to suspect something. “Would you please step forward. There is something I want to tell you.”
Now with her guard up, everyone now tense, Jason taking a few quiet steps backward, his hand grabbing Piper’s arm, gently pulling her back with him while speaking with his eyes, Annabeth did step forward until she passed Percy and was standing before Shin’en.
“Yes, sir?”
Shin’en smiled at her. “This might hurt.”
His hand erupted through the front of her chest, busting out of her back through her shirt and bra with her heart in his grasp.
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Shin’en lazily moved his arm to the side, dragging Annabeth’s body with it, and with a slight angling of his arm, her body went sliding off to hit the ground with a wet splat. Shin’en unceremoniously dropped her heart, too. It hit Annabeth in the face and bounced off onto the floor next to her head.
For a solid count of three, there was total silence and stillness.
Then a hurricane erupted around Percy as he released his loudest, angriest, most furious and anguished war cry ever. He charged, everyone sans Piper and Jason charging with him as much as they could given the howling winds and raging rain.
Shin’en just stood and poised right through the miniature storm, the only thing about him moving being the tails of his coat as they flapped in the wind. The furious Percy had his fist raised to punch Shin’en in the face harder than he had ever punched anyone before in his life, and Shin’en just reached up, caught said fist, squeezed and splintered every bone in Percy’s hand, and reached up with his other hand to grab Percy’s throat, and with another squeeze, splintered his vertebrae, causing him to lose all feeling in the rest of his body, and also collapsed his throat and windpipe.
The storm ended with a whoosh, leaving water everywhere, and Shin’en dropped Percy’s rapidly dying body like he was an empty water bottle.
Shin’en just went down the line after that.
Thalia and Reyna were the first ones to get to him, their Huntress speed stacking on top of their einherjar buff. Shin’en yanked Thalia’s spear from her hand, and then swung it so hard that the pole cleaved through both of their heads in an explosion of gore. That all happened so fast that by the time Thalia realized her weapon was no longer in her hand, she was already dead.
Shin’en grabbed her Aegis shield—it should have been a huge red flag to all of them right at the start that Shin’en didn’t flinch in the slightest at the sight of Medusa’s visage—and took a page from Captain America’s book, with a sentence from Sasori of the Red Sands. Attaching an invisible little chakra thread to Thalia’s shield, Shin’en flung it like a Frisby and then basically controlled it with his mind.
Frank and Hazel had been in third place behind the prior three, and in a testament to just how fast Shin’en could throw a shield, Frank’s newly enhanced reflexes could not save him from having his head obliterated. Then, in a testament to how great his chakra control was, Shin’en was able to twitch his finger and have the shield change trajectory just enough to where it chopped through the majority of Calypso’s neck, rendering her Nearly Headless Calypso.
Shin’en stepped between Thalia and Reyna’s bodies, which were falling in slow motion as far as his wildly enhanced perception of time went, and he ran Hazel through the chest into her heart with Thalia’s spear, walked past her to pull the spear out through her back, and then slowed himself down just enough to where things seemed to return to real time.
Thalia, Reyna, Frank, Hazel and Calypso’s corpses splattered into the ground with various amount of blood going everywhere depending on their injuries, and Leo was able to duck just in time to avoid having his head removed from his shoulders as the shield came flying back. Shin’en caught it and stood triumphant before the son of Hephaestus.
Thalia’s spear and shield were in his hands, both dripping with blood. More blood coated Shin’en’s entire right arm, the arm that held the spear aloft, from when he’d gored Annabeth. More blood was soaked into his black clothes from the mess he had made. The worst part was the calm smile that hadn’t dropped from his face the moment he’d killed Annabeth.
“What will you do now, Mr. Valdez?” Shin’en asked calmly.
Leo gulped. What was he supposed to say to that, after watching his uber powerful friends that survived countless monster attacks and defeated legendary foes get absolutely eviscerated by this guy? Leo didn’t say anything. Instead, he called upon his fire, and he erupted into a flaming pillar like the Human Torch.
Shin’en thrust Thalia’s spear through his fiery face before Leo could do literally anything else.
He interrupted Leo’s epic powerup moment.
The fire vanished in a similar whoosh to Percy’s hurricane, and just like that, in barely ten seconds, Shin’en had accomplished what no army of monsters, no Titan, no Giant, and no emperor save for one had managed to do: kill the main characters.
Shin’en dropped the weapons without a care, and with a motion of his hand, pulled all the filth and viscera from his person, leaving him just as clean as when he had been sitting in the chair earlier.
“What was the point of that?” Piper hissed.
Shin’en regarded her calmly. “They have experienced two things now: death, unceremonious deaths at that, and having to fight an overwhelmingly powerful foe. They now have an idea as to just what this war will be like for them, and now they can decide if they still want to participate, or remain in the safety and comfort of the hotel.”
“And they’re really going to…respawn?” Piper struggled for the right word to describe an einherjar coming back to life after being killed in the hotel.
“They will.” Shin’en held his hand out to his side, his fingers held together for a spearing or chopping motion. “Would you like to experience dying as well?”
“Hey-” Jason started, but Piper set her hand on his stomach.
Piper looked at her dead acquaintances, figured they were going to be completely beside themselves when they “woke up,” and would be lying if she said she wasn’t at least slightly curious as to what the experience would be like, dying and then coming back.
Piper looked at Jason and didn’t think about what she said next. “Have you died and come back?”
Jason stared at her.
Piper blushed. “Right. My bad. Have you ever died here and come back?”
“Several times, yes. It hurt, and then it was like I was sleeping, and then I woke up.”
“…m’kay,” Piper said. She turned to give Shin’en her answer, but he had already picked Thalia’s spear back up, and ran her through the chest.
Stabbing people through the heart was a very quick and effective way to kill somebody. Also relatively clean, as opposed to destroying the skull with blunt force.
Piper dropped, dead, and even though he knew better, Jason still felt a spike of anger run through him, and he rushed down to cradle his recently deceased ex.
Shin’en tilted his head to the side. “Have you told her you truly do still love her romantically?”
“Not yet,” Jason admitted. There was no point in lying to Shin’en. “I don’t know where her own heart is.”
“Most of it is currently on this spear.”
Jason looked up. “Dude—I mean, sir.”
Shin’en smirked before schooling himself. “Both of you most likely will not make it through this conflict. You will only be hurting yourself by keeping your feelings to yourself.”
Jason’s expression tightened. Even though he was dead and Armageddon was playing out, he was still somehow something of a teenager, scared to talk to a girl about how he felt about her, even though the girl in question used to be his girlfriend.
Granted, this was the same girlfriend that broke up with him, even though they had made up that night in Tahlequah following their battle with Incognito.
“Be a man, Jason,” Shin’en said before walking away back to his chair, leaving Thalia’s weapons on the ground.
The bodies of the heroes had already faded away, along with the mess they made.
Soon enough, Piper’s body was gone, and Jason went back to their floor by himself.
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Sometime later, Percy bolted upright in his new bed with a scream.
Annabeth had come back before him and was in his suite, right there next to him, along with Jason. They grabbed Percy and calmed him down from screaming his head off, but he was still breathing heavy.
“What happened!?” Percy shouted. “I saw him kill you! Is this a trick!?”
Annabeth hauled him all the way out of the bed so she could judo flip him over her shoulder again, and while he was on the ground, she set her knee on his chest. Thus, history repeated.
“Okay, I’m convinced,” Percy said.
After getting up, Jason explained to him what he had told Annabeth: that part of the einherjar blessing was to respawn in their suite if they died in the hotel.
“So anyone here can kill us anytime they want for any reason they want, and we just respawn?” Percy blinked.
“Yep,” Jason said. “It’s actually proven to be a really effective way at managing conflict. If you have beef with someone, you can literally fight to the death with zero consequences.”
Percy blinked again. “Clarisse is going to love this place.”
Jason nodded. “Silena’s already worried for her.”
Percy and Annabeth felt their hearts lurch.
“She’s here too?” Annabeth asked.
A different voice answered. “Her and a lot of others from the good ole days.”
And they would know that voice anywhere. They were both almost scared to turn around, but slowly did they, and they saw him with their own eyes after so many years. He looked a great deal better than the last time they saw him, healthier, more muscular, though he was literally dying that last time and here he was technically alive, though doing very well.
He arms were crossed, wearing jeans, steel-toed boots, the Hotel Valhalla green shirt, and the belt through his pants had a sheathed sword at his left hip. A watch was on his left wrist, and they both knew that with a tap, that watch would turn into a shield.
He didn’t look particularly happy to see them again, and they both knew why.
His dying wish had been for them to not let all of that death be for nothing, and Percy had done what he had thought was the right thing to do in that situation. Make the gods swear an oath on the Styx to be better, and he really thought that would stick, even though he existed despite a Styxian oath. Then Percy gave up. Washed his hands of it all after the Giant War, after having his spirit broken down in Tartarus when he saw the infiniteness of the monsters and Titans and Giants, and then washed his hands of it all again when the Imperial War started.
Percy almost couldn’t bear it to look him in the eyes, the hero who vanquished Kronos. His old teacher. His old friend.
Luke Castellan was an einherjar, deemed worthy enough to join the ranks of the special forces for his final sacrifice to destroy Kronos, an act that saved the lives of billions of people from the Titan King.
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Yup. I brought back Luke.
If you’ve followed enough of my stories, and maybe even read my essays on my Essays and Other Drabbles thing I have on Ao3, you will know that my personal opinion on Luke is that he was desperate revolutionary, one who had enough of the gods’ injustices, sought to bring them down so they could no longer hurt people, and Kronos took advantage of him, and turned him into a monster. Though Luke died redeemed in the end, bringing himself back through the power of love to sacrifice himself to be the one to ultimately destroy Kronos.
Like how Anakin was redeemed through his son’s love, and rose to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force. And also Boromir.
Hope you liked the chapter for Day One! Day Two will also be fun.
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