Pandemonium

Percy had ignored the rising sense of unease he had felt for the past half hour.

He had been trying desperately to gain any form of control over the new wave of poison encroaching on his body, but he couldn't.

Percy swallowed his discomfort and watched with Apollo and the Avengers as the screen on the man's head crackled to life. Rachel's face had appeared on the screen.

She looked tired and worn out. Even her hair seemed to have lost a shade or two of colour. But her eyes shone with defiance.

"I, Rachel Dare, am the member of an ancient secret society of intellectuals.

We are an extremely progressive group of individuals who are open minded towards almost all kinds of things that are often considered taboo, examples being homosexuality and incest.

Two of our most prominent members, Dr. Percy Jackson and the Music Icon Apollo, are a married couple. They are both men and are also first cousins. Their marriage was solemnised based on our society's doctrines.

In order to show solidarity and support for our group, follow our Twitter accounts and use the hashtag percyforpresident."

She too sounded robotic and lifeless. But whatever she said seemed to have shocked the life out of the rest of the room.

"You two are married."

"You're first cousins."

"How-"

Ares materialised in front of the decapitated man.

He had a glowing red spear in his hand, with a tip made of imperial gold.

"Brother." He said, smirking at Apollo.

Percy narrowed his eyes at the other god, taking a step toward him, trying his best to ignore the increasing pain inside him. "Why?"

"Oh, Perseus." He said in a sing song voice. "I wondered whether you could sense my disloyalty earlier. I wondered what you would do about it. But it appears that you decided to let it be. A little consideration for the brother-in-law?" He smirked. "Well, I assure you Jackson, you're gonna regret it."

Ares had only taken a step forward with his spear when the Avengers pounced on him as one. Percy was proud of his team. Apollo too had joined the fray.

He watched as Tony hovered on the periphery, carefully assessing the fight to see if he should intervene and to ensure that the building stays intact around them and also to make sure that they won't be caught by surprise.

Percy saw Steve's eyes widening considerably as his shield and his super strength failed to overwhelm his enemy.

Natasha kept going at Ares with her knives. They made no impact, and Ares kept trying to touch her, but it only managed to enrage her further, and she increased the strength and pace of her attacks.

Clint moved back and perched up on the rafters, aiming arrows at Ares which he dodged every time.

Bruce stayed away, trying not to get angry and bring the building down on them.

And Thor kept trying to disarm Ares and also apologized every time because he seemed sure he was breaking some thousand treaties by attacking the other god.

Ares though, didn't seem to even glance at the Avengers. Even as he fought them, his eyes were trained on Percy.

Apollo might've noticed it too, because he advanced on Ares to distract him and provide Percy with an opening to attack him.

Percy summoned Riptide and stabbed at Ares's side, only to double down with pain as he felt his body be overtaken by the poison.

Ares took that opportunity to block and stab at Percy, cutting a deep gash into his side.

Apollo tried to rush to Percy, but he wasn't fast enough. Ares had used that moment to grab Percy and flash them away.

-

Apollo skidded to a stop where Percy had been mere seconds ago.

He could only watch as Percy's eyes widened in fear when Ares flashed away with him.

Percy was in pain.

So much pain.

He could sense it.

Apollo tried hard to search for Percy's aura. To flash to him and save him. To protect him from anything and everything that ever tried to hurt him. But Kronos's time capsule prevented him from doing it.

He ignored the Avengers and ran out of the building as soon as Ares disappeared with Percy.

Shouts echoed after him, but he had only one goal in mind. He spread out all of his senses. Sent various parts of consciousness to every place imaginable.

He searched and searched and searched.

But he couldn't find Percy anywhere.

Apollo fell to his knees and screamed.

-

Nico had no idea what Kronos had planned.

He had captured some of the most powerful demigods of the generation and two others who were apparently friends with Percy. They didn't seem particularly fazed by the weird stuff happening around them, so Nico figured that they were either used to interacting with the divine or were extremely susceptible to the Mist and were seeing ordinary kidnapping stuff.

He was going with the former though, because they didn't seem particularly scared and whiny either, so they might be used to dangerous circumstances. They could also be vigilantes. Gods knew how many vigilantes Percy had befriended over the years.

If they were vigilantes, Nico was inclined to believe that the guy who looked like Annabeth was Spider-Man. He knew that the vigilante was a young man, but for a guy that looked like that to be Spiderman would be such a great irony.

Nico almost laughed out loud. Thank the gods for his kidnappers' gag magic, he thought.

Or maybe he was becoming hysterical. Is that even a thing now?

He looked up at a sudden crashing noise. One leg of Rachel's chair had given out.

Nico became hopeful for a second, but he soon noticed that the chair legs that her legs were tied to were still intact. And guards had come running in from somewhere.

The guards though, looked like mortals.

They were in standard combat gear. Nothing very fancy. Their movements indicated that they didn't have much experience with fighting, if any at all.

Nico felt insulted, to be honest.

They deserved some powerful security guards.

Either their captors were underestimating them, or were overconfident about their magic spells.

The guards who had appeared to repair Rachel's chair had left the doors to the room wide open. Nico couldn't see anything past the door. It was completely covered in ink blackness.

He could hear voices though. They were gossiping guards from what he could hear, and he smiled a little at the news he heard.

They hadn't tried to poison Percy again, it appears. Nico felt pained to hear that their first attempt had been successful, but apparently, that had been enough for them.

The guards spoke of viral videos of Percy and Apollo!?

If they finally got together, Nico would sacrifice a hundred Happy Meals to each of them.

Gods knew they needed each other. And if they haven't, he'll be convincing the rest of the senior demigods to help him carry out Operation Bazooka.

He got distracted again when Polybotes entered the room.

He found that he was able to speak again.

"Can't you even use quality furniture when you tie up people!?" Rachel asked him.

He ignored her and walked up to the guards seated behind her. They were desperately trying to fix the leg back on but weren't getting anywhere.

Polybotes waved his hand at them and the chair fixed itself. The guards startled and fell on their butts and scrambled back to their posts outside the door.

The doors banged shut behind them.

Nico just hoped that it wasn't his turn to 'speak to the world'. He had a bad feeling about the videos they had recorded of Piper and Rachel.

Revealing their team to the world? Telling them that Apollo and Percy are married?

It would be Pandemonium.

Polybotes had walked up to the fireplace again.

Nico just knew that something very very bad was about to happen.

The giant seemed to rub his hands together. When he brought them to his side, they glowed green.

He then raised his head skywards and opened his mouth wide.

And puked into the fireplace.

What an anticlimax, Nico thought.

He was about to go back to thinking about their nefarious plans when he heard the chanting.

It was in an old tongue, but he was sure it was Polybotes' voice and he was also sure that he heard the name Perseus be repeated at least thrice.

Polybotes kept vomiting into the fireplace. His vomit looked sickly green and glowed.

It probably wasn't vomit, Nico thought. It could be poison.

And if gods could split their conscience, surely the giants could too? Or maybe he just recorded the chanting part early on to play in the background while he puked?

Nico just hoped that Polybotes wasn't cursing Percy again.

As Percy Jackson's first student, he did not mean to jinx his first crush and hero.

-

Percy and Ares materialised in an enclosed arena.

Percy was kneeling on the ground in front of Ares, his side still bleeding from the cut. The poison was preventing his healing.

He swung Riptide at the war god and watched him step back, ready to attack Percy again.

But Percy's attention was caught by the inky blackness that seemed to have engulfed the arena.

As Percy stood up on unsteady feet and met Ares's blows, he noticed that he had no visibility past a few metres from where he and Ares were fighting.

But Percy sensed the presence of unfriendly auras in the darkness.

Only one of them seemed extremely powerful, while none of the others seemed to be as powerful as Percy was.

He couldn't underestimate them though, because they were six in number and he was alone and rapidly weakening from poison.

The poison felt different this time, he noticed. It felt a lot more potent than the last time.

While Percy didn't want Apollo to be caught, he almost wished that Apollo was with him then.

Even with the poison weakening him, Percy was getting the better of Ares. His moves were predictable and overconfident. Percy's reflexes did an excellent job of keeping him away while Percy thought to himself to find a way to escape.

Percy felt for the area around him in order to take stock of what he could work with to make an escape.

For a moment, Percy panicked.

He couldn't sense anything around him.

He saw four people emerge out of the darkness.

Khione, Chrysaor, Setne and Hela.

Percy almost groaned.

If only they would mind their own business for once, he thought.

The smirks on their faces, the glow of their hands and the obvious looks of triumph made it clear that they had a home turf advantage.

Ares backed up a little and joined the other four and started circling around Percy.

Percy wanted to attack them. Tear at their flesh and demand to know where his friends were, but he couldn't.

He was barely standing.

The poison had almost completely overtaken his body.

He had lost the ability to do anything more than survive for some time now.

Black spots danced around the corners of his eyes.

He could hear them laughing at him. Jeers and taunts were being spat at him.

But he couldn't register them.

The pain was blinding now. Percy wasn't sure he would last another minute.

He had started to keen over when the last man emerged.

Kronos.

In Jason's body.

Percy collapsed.

A tear rolled down his left eye.