Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The day started out like any other normal Saturday.

Which, considering what Percy knew now, was pretty much an ironic thing to describe what his literal newfound powers were. But anyway, the day started out like any other normal Saturday.

There wasn't a lot of things to do when you're waiting for your girlfriend to drop by your dorm room for a study session. Mortals had phones to distract themselves, gods didn't go to college, and demigods had nothing. Well, Percy had a boatload of readings he was so not looking forward to because hey, dyslexia, but his dyslexia had also kicked his ass in class earlier and it was... actually, it was pretty embarrassing.

"Did he call you out in front of everyone?" Nico asked, the lack of light from his cabin making his face look even more son of Hades-y through the IM. "I could make him regret it if he did. Wouldn't be a problem sending him to the Fields of Punishment."

Percy made a face at the casual way Nico just threatened his professor, like he was talking about the weather in Rome or something. "You've been spending way too much time in the Underworld, dude. I mean, I appreciate the sentiment, love that you're sticking up for me and all, but I really don't think sending Dr Elliot straight to Hades will help me pass my finals."

Nico shrugged, but the corners of his lips had tilted up into a smirk. "Your loss."

Percy opened his mouth to retort that Nico was definitely spending a lot of time with crazy, genocidal spirits, and does Will know, but was interrupted from his awesome comeback by a loud knock echoing around the room.

Nico's gaze flicked to the side like he'd heard the knock, too. "Probably Annabeth."

"Mm-hm." Percy couldn't stop his dumb grin at the mention of his girlfriend, not missing the way Nico's smirk widened a bit at his reaction. "Yeah, yeah, smirk all you want, Death Breath. Pretty sure I'm not the only one who acts like a dumbass when the love of my life is involved."

"Whatever." Nico rolled his eyes, but Percy saw his cheeks turn pink even with all the gloomy and darkness in the Hades cabin, so definitely guilty. "Say hi to Annabeth for me."

Percy nodded, resolving not to bring up Nico's blush problem because he so didn't want to deal with the possibility of skeletons in his dorm room in case the teasing went too far. "Sure. See you, man. Uh, please don't kill Dr Elliot or anything," he quickly added.

He should've expected Nico's response to be another eye-roll, like he couldn't believe Percy believed he would do something like murder an NYU professor in cold blood. Or just send the guy to the Underworld. "Gods, stop acting so paranoid, Perce."

Then Nico swiped his hand over the IM, effectively dissolving it.

"Little shit," Percy muttered, but he was pretty sure it came out fonder than he'd meant it to. Nico had grown on him these past few years; from an acquaintance he didn't trust all that much to someone Percy really did consider a cousin. Biting back a fond smile at the thought, he jogged towards the door, and reached for the knob. Another three knocks echoed around the room, and the door flew open.

Percy immediately felt his face light up at the sight of Annabeth. This time, he wasn't able to bite back the fond smile (or more like dumb grin 2.0) that spread across his face.

"Hey, Seaweed Brain." But Annabeth was smiling too, the smile that still made Percy swoon and think damn, he was pretty lucky to be Annabeth Chase's boyfriend. She stood on tiptoes to press a chaste kiss to his lips, then stepped inside to head over to his desk.

He was watching Annabeth place her bag at the foot of his desk when it happened.

One second, he was sitting on his bed, waiting for Annabeth to join him.

The next, he was standing behind the door, hand outstretched like he was about to reach for the knob. He stared at his hand, had a moment to wonder just what the Hades happened, and then three loud knocks were echoing around the room again (literally who was knocking? Crap, should he open the door? What in his dad's name was happening?!) and the door was pulled open.

"Hey, Seaweed Brain."

He accepted Annabeth's kiss with furrowed brows, mind going a hundred miles per second, before barely remembering to smooth back his expression into a harried smile he hoped was convincing but he's pretty sure wouldn't convince anyone let alone his genius girlfriend.

The moment Annabeth had her back turned to him as she set down her bag like what she had been doing minutes ago at the foot of his desk, Percy reached up to run a hand through his hair because seriously, what the Hades just happened?

Obviously he couldn't tell Annabeth.

Not yet, at least. He didn't want her worrying her smart and terrifying brain off into figuring out what had happened to him when there was no need to be worried.

Maybe the whole thing was just a godly prank. Or the work of a minor Greek myth bad guy character who wanted to mess with him as like, revenge. Or maybe it was a one-time result of some leftover magic from last week's run-in with Medea. Yeah, it was probably because of Medea. Also definitely a one-time thing.

Percy had mostly chose to forget about it because one-time thing. Besides, finals and Annabeth were way more important until—

Until it happened again. But almost two weeks after the first time, so it wasn't just a one-time thing. Basically, one second, Percy was about to hand over his finals paper on Scientific Writing to his professor. The next, he was back at his desk, staring at his blank test sheet.

Fuck.

"Shit." Percy shakily set down his pen as a possible reason for this whole godly prank NOT one-time thing revenge-story-mess whatever (but he knew this was the gods' fault) suddenly occurred to him. "Do I have time-control powers?"

Like being a son of a Big Three god wasn't enough, he apparently had time-control powers now.

"Where did I even get them?" Percy muttered, gingerly grabbing the apple from his tray to see if he'd be transported back to ten minutes ago where he was waiting in line at the counter.

"Get what, Jackson?" Kevin, the perpetually high green-haired dude from his Introductory Bio class last year piped up beside him.

Deciding no time-related stuff was going to happen since he'd already have been back in line at the counter if it did happen, Percy shook his head, and took a huge bite from his apple. "Nothing, man."

Maybe his powers came from Kronos? He made a face at the thought as he took another bite. Yeah, no. Hopefully not.

Because it was like a rule Percy Jackson couldn't have nice things, his life came crashing down three weeks later. It pretty much happened like this:

The Hunters had stopped by the city for Hunt-related stuff, and Thalia decided she wanted a Big Three kids reunion, which was code for, "I miss you idiots, but I'd rather die than tell you I miss you, so just meet me at the nearest burger place instead."

Percy was in, of course. Surprisingly, so was Nico. But Hazel—

"You promised you would." Nico looked like he was close to whining at the IM, even if he didn't sound like it. Thank the gods for the Mist because Percy was pretty sure Nico would be getting a lot of weird looks from people on the sidewalk if they saw him talking to thin air. "We both know you can ditch the quest for a few hours. Just don't leave me with these two."

"I heard that, di Angelo!" Thalia's face was twisted into a scowl as the burger place's glass doors slid close behind her.

Nico ignored her and returned his attention to Hazel. "Please save me."

Definitely whining.

Percy snickered under his breath when Thalia smacked Nico upside the head after handing him his burger. "Reunion's off to a pretty great start, huh, Haze?"

Hazel only laughed in response, her curly hair bouncing in the breeze. A lot of chattering could be heard in the background, probably from the tourists in the monastery. "Make sure not to let them kill each other."

"I'll try my best." Percy grinned back while accepting the burger Thalia gave with a nod of thanks. Unfortunately, Nico had also chose that moment to tap Thalia's shoulder, clearly a split-second away from asking a question (probably about his burger), and suddenly—

They were standing in line inside the burger place, pretty much the way they stood in line fifteen minutes ago when they haven't decided what burgers to get yet.

"Uh..." Percy looked at his cousins, who both stared back at him with multiple degrees of "what the fuck just happened?" expressions on their faces. "Would you kill me if I say this is my fault and I have time-control powers now?"

"What do you mean, you have time-control powers?! Where did you even get them?"

Percy opened his mouth to shoot back a heated reply to Thalia, closed it, thought about what he was gonna say, then opened his mouth again. "Okay, first off, Pinecone Face, one, yeah, exactly what I said, I have time-control powers now. Two, I have no idea where I got them, they just appeared one day, so three, if you could please be more supportive here, I'd definitely appreciate it."

Thalia gaped at him. It was actually pretty funny, the way her mouth dropped open like he just told her he wasn't actually a demigod and was just faking everything all along, before she shook her head, pressing her lips into a thin line. "Gods. Only you, Kelp Head. Only you."

Percy resisted the urge to chuck her cheeseburger into the sidewalk in front of them. Instead, he settled for glaring at his cousin with his 'Son of Poseidon, Hero of Olympus' glare that scared the hell out of a lot of monsters but only because he wasn't in the mood to be electrocuted today. "Thanks for the glowing support. You guys suck."

The corners of Thalia's lips twitched into a smirk, and somehow, Percy had a very bad suspicion he knew what she was going to say before she would actually say it thanks to knowing her for close to a decade at this point. "Oh yeah, Death Breath sucks alright—"

Nico's head snapped up from where he'd been quietly minding his own business (read: too busy with his burger, but because he wasn't making fun of Percy he was currently the Top 2 on Percy's "Favorite Cousin" list). "Is that what they teach you in the Hunt, Grace?"

Thalia visibly bristled at the question. "For Aphrodite's sake, Neeks, it was just a joke—"

"Oh my gods." Yeah, Percy took it back; Nico just got bumped to the Top 3 ranking, the number two spot would forever be reserved for Jason sometimes Percy still can't believe he was dead. "C'mon, you two, could you stop—"

He reached out to grab the front of their shirts and shove them away from each other, taking careful note not to get electrocuted by the sparks that have started to crackle in the air. Seriously, why was he the one who had to act like the most mature here when he was literally the youngest? Nico was supposed to be like eighty-something, for the love of Zeus, so he should've known better than to fire off comebacks to Thalia (especially to Thalia) no matter how cool or awesome the comebacks might be.

Unfortunately, Percy's stupid thoughts about his cousins did prove to be a pretty effective distraction, because he had noticed the swooping feeling in his gut way too late.

Eyes growing wide, he hurriedly let go, but their surroundings had already tilted to the left, which, crap, Annabeth was so going to kill him, today wasn't a good day to discover he didn't really need to hold on to other people for his time-control powers to drag them along for the ride—

Percy blinked as his surroundings took a step back. He squeezed his eyes shut at the suddenly too-bright sunlight streaming in his vision.

"What the Hades? Where are we?" That was Thalia.

"Obviously in camp, Pinecone Face." Nico. "Where else would we be?"

"Pretty sure there should be more than twelve cabins, Zombie Boy, so I think the better question here considering Percy's new powers is, 'what year are we in?'"

Percy exhaled as he opened his eyes again, trying to ignore the headache that was building somewhere behind his temple. For real, this time. "Guys, I'm serious. Could you please shut up—"

The sound of footsteps made him stiffen. He turned around, hand darting to the pocket of his jeans for Riptide—

"Don't move!"

Percy froze at the familiar voice, headache disappearing in an instant. It was replaced by the taste of bile rising in his throat because—

No. No way. No fucking way. This was—gods, this was really, really not how he wanted his afternoon (scratch that, actually just his whole life) to go. Like seriously, screw the gods, because there was no way in Hades that voice could be—

"Luke," Thalia whispered in a strangled voice. Percy didn't have the heart to shush her.

Obviously one of the campers approaching them, all decked out in a pair of faded jeans and an orange Camp Half-Blood shirt, was Luke. Who else could it be? The guy was Luke, who looked a lot like the Luke when Percy was eleven or something, down to his not-yet-gold eyes and probably the fact he hadn't run off to join Kronos yet.

"Who are you?" the girl beside Luke (gods, it was Clarisse, she looked like a baby, like an actual kid, how the Hades did Percy ever let himself get bullied again?) demanded, narrowing her eyes. "How did you get past the border?"

Percy exchanged a look with Nico to mentally communicate with him like, please say something to save our asses, but it was Thalia who replied, "What border? We came from the beach."

Luke's gaze shifted from Percy to settle on Thalia. There was a heartbeat of a moment where Percy swore his heart just straight-up stopped beating at the possibility that Luke might've recognized Thalia with how hard he squinted at her, but the moment passed, and Percy was able to breathe again. "The beach?"

Percy nodded furiously. "Yeah. We were, uh, swimming. Because we were on a camping trip. Then we decided to do some exploring...?" It sounded more like a question than an actual answer, but it looked like the gods were on their side for once because Clarisse had leaned over to Luke to mutter something to him in Ancient Greek, flicking a suspicious look at Percy, Nico, and Thalia's direction.

Percy tried to look very hard like he wasn't listening, but judging by the look on Thalia's face, he wasn't doing a pretty good job at it.

"Alright." Luke finally straightened up. If Percy was like nine years younger and fresh out of a tragedy involving his mom's death and the Minotaur, he would've been trying not to show Luke he was shaking in fear at the intimidating vibes Luke was definitely trying to send out. But since he was already older than Luke and had faced way more monsters than he can count on both hands, he only offered a sheepish smile that hopefully screamed, 'we're sorry for trespassing please don't kill us' instead of 'yeah we're not actually from this time please don't kill us'. "Let's say we believe you. What's your name?"

Luke pointed at Nico, whose own smile looked more like a grimace at this point as he replied with a curt, "Nicolas Solace."

...Percy was so going to tease him for that later.

"You?" Luke nodded at Thalia. This time, Percy didn't imagine the way his expression seemed to soften when Thalia tilted her chin to stare back at him.

"Taliyah Levesque."

Levesque. Percy nodded to himself. Good thinking, but the first name could be a little—

As if on cue, a flash of something Percy couldn't read crossed Luke's face. "Thalia?"

—too obvious. Except Thalia rolled her eyes, like people messing up her (fake) name was a thing she had to deal with on a daily basis. "Taliyah. Not Thalia."

"Hm." Luke must have interpreted her tone differently, because he seemed to be a lot more colder when he turned his attention to Percy. "What about you?"

"Um—" Percy shot Thalia and Nico a panicked look because no way in Hades was he going to give his real name. "I'm—"

"Peter," Nico cut in smoothly. "His name's Peter Johnson."

"Peter..." Luke arched a brow, like he didn't believe Nico one bit. "Johnson?

"Yep." Percy nodded, managing to find his voice again. He could see this white lie biting him back in the ass somewhere down the line, but hopefully they'd be back to their Camp Half-Blood by the time it'd happen. "My name's Peter. Peter Johnson. Uh, please don't kill us?"

Chapter Text

"We're not going to kill you. Just... come with us. It's not safe here," Luke added, probably catching sight of the (fake) alarmed look on Percy's face. "We'll show you the way back."

The (fake) alarmed look on Percy's face quickly turned into real panic because shit, Styx, Luke really did think they were mortals and it's not like they had anywhere else to go where they wouldn't end up as monster chow, so after a split-second of thinking, he did what any time-travelling demigod would do in this situation: he elbowed Nico in the ribs, pointed to a bunch of campers stepped out of the Ares cabin, and asked, as loudly as he could, "Holy Ha—hell, are those swords actually real?!"

As expected (okay not really but, you know), Luke's and Clarisse's eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

"Wha..?" Luke's strangled voice was like a dose of nectar to Percy's ears. Sure, he might've forgiven Luke for betraying them in the Titan War, but it didn't mean he couldn't torture him a little for the whole Kronos resurrection thing in the first place. "You can see them?"

Percy elbowed Nico again. Seemed like his cousin finally got the memo, because right on cue, Nico piped up with a deadpan, "Just because the swords look real doesn't mean they're real. Right, Thals?"

Thalia had also adopted a pretty convincing-as-Hades confused expression on her face. "I dunno about you, Neeks, but they look pretty real to me." Percy made a mental note to high-five her later for that.

"Hold on, lemme get this straight. You, runt." Clarisse jabbed a finger at Nico's direction. "You're saying you can see the swords?"

She didn't exactly sound like she was scared shitless by what they had said. She just sounded like, adhesive or something. ("Apprehensive, Seaweed Brain," his mental-Wise Girl voice chimed in exasperation. Percy gave a mental nod in response. Apprehensive. Yeah. Stupid long words that looked like each other.)

"You mean the swords and the cabins and the other kids with shields—" Nico broke off at the bewildered look on Luke's and Clarisse's face. If Percy wasn't so sure he wouldn't be maimed (or worse, kicked out) for laughing, he'd definitely be laughing. "Did I say something wrong?"

There was a pause where Clarisse and Luke just looked at each other like they had some mind-reading powers and could read each other's minds with a single look. It was... well, it was weird, mostly because Percy never remembered the two of them being so tight before. More proof the whole apparently-Luke-and-Clarisse-were-tight-and-nobody-had-any-idea thing was Clarisse casually dragging Luke like a foot away for a secret conversation in rapid-fire Ancient Greek, and Luke didn't even protest. At all.

"This isn't weird to you?" Nico muttered under his breath while Percy stood very still and tried not to look like he was eavesdropping again. "Were they close when you got to camp?"

"No," Percy muttered back, furrowing his brows as he caught the words "all three of them?" and "...have to tell Chiron..." from the conversation. He racked his brain from any possible instance he could've seen of Luke and Clarisse being bffs before Luke ran off to join the dark side, but sadly, his ADHD was making his life a living Hades again because he couldn't remember anything from his first year save for the traumatic scorpion incident and the stupid bathroom incident. "Uh, I don't think so? I mean, I don't remember if they were all that close. Sorry. Blame the ADHD, man."

"No, no, you're right." Thalia had moved closer to join them. Percy scooted to the side to make room for her in case she wanted to join in on the eavesdropping. "Annabeth never mentioned Luke was close with Clarisse."

Nico looked like he was ready to say something like, 'you sure 'bout that?' (something Percy was willing to bet three drachmas he had learned from Will, accent and all), but was saved from saying it by Luke, whose face was unreadable—not that Percy could've read his expressions back then, but you know, dramatics—as he trudged back to them with Clarisse right behind him. "Mierda. Act natural, don't forget the plan."

Wait, what plan? Percy wanted to squawk out (it so wasn't cool to leave him out of plans, wasn't family supposed to have each other's backs?! Nico definitely wasn't seeing the top spot on his "Favorite Cousin" list), except Luke had already reached them, so he had no choice but to hastily look like someone who hadn't been eavesdropping. Again.

Anyway, Luke definitely looked stressed-as-Hades when he reached up to run his hand across his face. Nice. Percy Jackson, Son of Poseidon - 1, Luke - 0. "Okay, change of plans."

There was a beat of silence. Nico cleared his throat, giving Percy a meaningful look. Percy blinked at him, trying to convey through eye-contact 'Death Breath, what are you talking about?' without making it look too obvious. Nico gave Percy another meaningful look—almost like he was trying to tell him something about whatever "change of plans" Luke was talking about.

Then it clicked.

Oh. Oh, that plan. Yeah, the plan. The 'don't forget the plan' thing. The one they had talked about when Jason was still alive hadn't been killed off by Percy's shitty uncle. Okay, he took it back, Nico had a shot on the list.

Straightening up, Percy glanced between Luke and Clarisse in what he hoped could pass off as outrage and panic. But like, eighty-five percent more panic. "Change of—what do you mean, change of plans?!" From the corner of his eye, he could see Thalia trying not to burst into laughter, and mentally gave her the finger. Hey, he could so pull this off. He'd pulled this off with the cops after he kicked Ares' ass, he could so pull this off now. "Seriously, just tell us if you're going to kill us or not."

Clarisse looked so offended by his statement, she stepped forward until she was right in front of him, glaring daggers and everything. Something he totally would've felt threatened by if she wasn't like an inch shorter than Nico and a literal kid. "We're not killing anybody, you punk, so can you quit it with the 'killing you' thing?"

"Uh, no offense but there's kids running around with swords and stuff. How are we supposed to know you don't kill trespassers?" Percy didn't smirk and add a 'huh?' because he wasn't an ass (and his mom would probably kill him if she found out), but he did arch a brow for good measure.

Clarisse's face twisted into a sneer. "And you're probably what, seventeen? Eighteen? But you still act annoying as hell. Look, if you won't shut up—"

"You'll kill me?" Now Percy really couldn't stop himself from smirking. "Really not helping your case here."

"Oh my gods, Aquaman, she's like thirteen. Stop beefing with a kid," Thalia hissed, grabbing his arm and pulling him away from Clarisse.

Luke cleared his throat, unfortunately interrupting whatever awesome response Percy was ready to shoot back at Thalia. "Anyway, like Clarisse said, no. We're not going to be killing anybody. But we will be taking you to someone."

Percy didn't miss the worried glance Nico traded with Thalia.

...He really hoped it wasn't Mr D.

Thank the gods the someone turned out to be Chiron, but also not thank the gods because—Chiron. Shit. Fuck. Styx. Crap. Whatever.

Percy squinted at the porch of the Big House, where Chiron in his wheelchair was talking to Travis Stoll at the pinochle table. Then he turned to looked at Luke. "Can you excuse us for a second? I gotta. Um. Where's the bathroom?"

Luke told them the directions to the bathroom. Not that they needed it, of course, but it's not like Luke knew that.

"Feeling nostalgic, Jackson?"

Percy could feel the heat creep up his cheeks as Nico snickered beside him. "Shut up, Pinecone Face."

Ignoring her stupid eyebrow waggle he knew she learned from the Hunters, he jogged away from the Big House as fast as he could, but without making it look like he was running away. He was really regretting getting high at their Big Three kids reunion (the first time after Jason's death, fuck Zeus) in California and telling Nico, Thalia, and Hazel what went down with the bathroom incident.

"Here's the gameplan," he began once they reached the familiar cinder-block building (and no, it wasn't nostalgic) and Percy had shut the door behind him after making sure there weren't any campers inside. "Remove anything that could make us look like we're, uh. Not from this time. Also, look lost. Like, way more lost than you already look."

"You mean helpless?" Thalia had perched herself on the drier parts of the sink. "Because if you asked me, we can't possibly look more lost than we did earlier."

Percy watched her reach up to remove her 'Lieutenant of Artemis' circlet and tuck it somewhere inside her jacket, which reminded him to also unclip Riptipe from the pocket of his pants, or else he'd be screwed. "Lost, helpless, yeah. Point is, we can't act too confident because the gods would know something is up, and it'd be way too dangerous to mess up the timeline. Uh," he added, at the incredulous look Thalia gave him, "messing it up even more."

"What if Chiron knows?" Nico had slid off his skull ring from his finger. "I don't think he'd actually know but." He gave a half-shrug, like he was trying to say, he'll probably be suspicious because he'd lived for millenia, so. "You know. What if he'd take one look at us and recognize us?"

"Then we tell him," Percy said simply. "If he'd recognize us."

Nico fidgeted with his ring, like he was torn whether to put it back on his finger or hide it for safe-keeping. "Can't you just zap us back to the future? Just, try or something. Dunno." He shrugged again, but a faint flush of pink had crept up his neck, like he was thinking of something else. Or someone.

Percy narrowed his eyes. He had a sneaking suspicion he knew why Nico was blushing like that. (Doesn't take a genius why, actually.) But before he could open his mouth to tease his cousin, Thalia already beat him to it.

"You really miss your boyfriend, huh, Death Breath?" A grin had spread across Thalia's face. Uh-oh. Percy knew that grin. It was a grin that screamed, get ready to be teased to death about your love life and wasn't just limited to Nico, but also extended to Percy, Annabeth, and the rest of the Seven. A drunk-off-his-ass Leo had once confided in Percy he was pretty sure Thalia was only teasing couples because she couldn't get laid, something Percy had personally thought made sense, but of course, never told Thalia directly to her face since he didn't want Annabeth to take sides when World War III happens. "Or should I say, Mr di Angelo-Solace?"

Nico turning even pinker made Percy slowly grin, too. "You know, I kinda think Airhead's got a point, dude. You definitely should've said it like that when you told Luke your fake name. Di Angelo-Solace sounds way nicer than just Solace." Hey, he'd be lying if he said teasing Nico wasn't entertaining as Hades. Besides, it's not like Nico hadn't teased him about being too mushy with Annabeth.

Nico rolled his eyes, but he wasn't fooling anyone. Especially not Percy, what with his ears now turning pink. "I'm not married."

"Yet," Percy and Thalia chorused.

"And I'll probably never be going to unless you send us back." Okay, the 'cool and unapproachable' son of Hades he might be, but Percy could tell Nico was definitely, definitely blushing.

But because he wasn't the Worst Cousin Ever (the title went to Thalia for that one time she flaked out on a Big Three kids reunion even when she was like a five minute walking distance from NYU), Percy held up his hands in mock-surrender. "Fine, fine. I'll try."

Ignoring the gazes trained on him—one expectant, one still accompanied by a blush plus a scowl, he closed his eyes. Tried to summon the weird swooping feeling in his stomach, but... nothing. He opened his eyes again.

"No?" Nico looked disappointed. Like, the kind of disappointed where he didn't look like it, but somehow, Percy still knew for a fact he was disappointed (probably because of all the time they'd spent together, so he'd picked up on his cousins' habits), Nico di Angelo-style.

But anyway. Percy shook his head, tampering down the disappointment (and maybe slight panic, but not really like a whole lot) that also flickered in his chest. "No, sorry."

"It's fine, Kelp Head." Thalia waved her hand like it didn't really matter they were stuck in the past for the meantime because of Percy's new shitty time-control powers he didn't even know how to use properly going haywire. "I mean, it's probably for the best. Personally, I wouldn't want us to get stranded in the middle of Ancient Greece or something." Which—valid. "Let's just get back. We'll talk about this later."

Murmuring his agreement, Percy let himself get dragged back to the Big House. They found Luke and Clarisse waiting at the end of the porch with Chiron, Lamer in Clarisse's hands like she brought it out to intimidate them or something.

Percy tried not to gulp when Luke gestured to them, because as much as he didn't want to remember the post-Minotaur attack moments, this was really giving him flashbacks of the first time he met Chiron as Chiron and not Mr Brunner. "Chiron, these are Peter, Nicolas, and Taliyah. They came from the beach."

"Thank you, Luke." Yeah, really giving flashbacks, right down to the pinochle, the table, and the chairs.

Fortunately, he was interrupted from more of his flashbacks by Thalia pushing past him to stand in front of Chiron. "Hi. We're really sorry for trespassing. Please don't call the cops."

Luke chuckled, like he found the whole 'please don't arrest us for trespassing' thing kinda funny. It was—not gonna lie, it was weird to hear Luke chuckle not evilly. Percy hadn't ever heard him chuckle (the kind of chuckle that wasn't bad guy-levels) after Kronos got his hands on him. "Don't worry, Chiron's not going to be calling the cops, so you could stop panicking. Anyway, we gotta go. Swordfighting practice."

Percy watched Luke and Clarisse walk away, just as a weird feeling suddenly rushed down his spine. He shivered, quickly shoving it in the back of his mind to be investigated for later (and remembered, hopefully his ADHD won't fail him) in favor of focusing on Luke and Clarisse, but they were already too far away. Mentally grumbling, Percy returned his attention to Chiron. Chiron was talking to Nico, who seemed to have been invited to sit down on one of the chairs, and was also like, staring at Nico with an unreadable look on his face.

"—don't know what we're here for, but like Thalia said, we're sorry for trespassing." Nico's apology was met with a nod from Chiron, almost like he hadn't really been thinking about them trespassing being a major offense or something. (He probably wasn't. He was probably thinking about the chances of three demigods knowing each other, not getting killed or found by satyrs in the mortal world, and just stumbling into camp via the beach not being a coincidence.)

But the way Chiron continued to stare at Nico, like he might know something but wasn't sure what? Really not something Percy wanted to spend a whole ten minutes of, so he gathered what's left of his nerves that weren't scared shitless by the possibility of Chiron might or might not knowing their real identities because immortality was weird like that, and took a deep breath. The gameplan. Remember the gameplan.

"Is this like, an ancient Greek cult or something?" At the still unreadable look on Chiron's face, Percy spread his hands as if to say, you know. "Kids with swords. Weird cabins. Buildings with Ancient Greek architecture."

The tension slowly seemed to drain from Chiron's face at that, with an amused expression replacing it. "Not quite. Tell me, Peter. How much do you know about Greek mythology?"

Cue Percy almost bursting out laughing at the sheer irony of getting asked how much did he know about Greek mythology. He didn't need to look at his cousins to know they were definitely also either trying not to laugh (Thalia) or smirk (Nico). But since they were supposed to be playing dumb, he didn't say, like a lot and instead just nudged Nico, who took it as his cue to ask as cluelessly as he could, "Like Lady Persephone from the Underworld?"

Chiron's lips pressed into a thin line, the amused expression on his face flickering into something more grave. "Names have powers. I must advise you not to use them lightly."

"Got it." Thalia nodded. "You have to forgive Nico. He's a huge Mythomagic fan. It's like a Greek mythology card game."

Percy attempted to hide his snicker with a cough as he leaned against the railings. "Huge Mythomagic fan" was definitely better than saying "literal demigod from the future who lived through two wars but please don't tell anyone, especially the gods".

"Wait." Nico raised a hand. His eyes have grown wide, like he just had confirmation all his dreams have come true. The look on his face both kinda reminded Percy of Nico's ten year-old self before the incident with Bianca (which he was not going to get into anymore, they've moved past that a long, long time ago), and how maybe dramatics really did run in the veins of Big Three kids since Nico looked a hell of a lot convincing when he gasped, "Are you saying Greek gods are real?"

"Please, di—Solace." Thalia rolled her eyes as she pulled out the other chair to sit on it. "They're not real."

Right on time, thunder boomed overhead. A wry smile quirked on the edges of Chiron's mouth. "It might be hard to believe, but have you ever had... strange and seemingly unexplainable events happen to you?"

Thalia's eyes also slowly widened, confirming the Big Three kids being dramatic and all because of daddy issues to Oscar-levels acting pipeline. "No way."

Chiron arched a brow. "Am I correct in assuming similar events did happen?"

"Yeah, to all of us." Thalia looked a little angry now, but with a touch of frustrated, like she couldn't believe they were only discovering the whole "Greek myths are real" thing. "Me, Neeks, and Per—Pete. We got chased by a weird bull-man—"

"Minotaur," Nico put in lightly.

"—Minotaur, what he said, last year. But I thought it was just like, some creepy hallucination or something."

"Because you were high," Percy couldn't help but pipe up. He saw Nico break character for a brief moment to cough, then hastily school his features back into a wide-eyed innocent fifteen year-old before Chiron could notice. "Weren't you, Thals?"

"Yeah," Thalia ground out, "because I was high." Her gaze screamed, 'Perseus Jackson, you are dead, so, so dead to me, I'm going to kill you', but Percy just grinned at her. Payback time for teasing him about the bathroom incident. Thankfully, her time with the Hunt must've definitely given Thalia a ton of newfound patience she didn't have when they got into their first showdown in the very memorable Capture the Flag game, because she didn't try to electrocute him or something. She just returned her attention to Chiron and demanded, "So, Nico's right? Greek gods are really real? Like, they're here in New York?"

Chiron smiled, like the question was something he got a lot. "What do you think?"

The moment Chiron gave his answer, another shiver slithered down the base of Percy's spine, followed by the same weird feeling he couldn't place from earlier. He ignored them again (probably the work of the gods or someone who doesn't want them in this timeline, but it's not like Percy could just magically send them back to the future) to ask, "But what does that have to do with us seeing the weird mythology stuff?"

Chiron's smile widened, the corners of his eyes crinkling slightly. "Are you familiar with demigods?"

The explanation was easy to tune out after that. Nothing Percy didn't know, but it did get pretty hard to bite back a loud curse when Nico asked if there were any children of the Big Three gods at camp, and Chiron had responded that yes, there was. As a matter of fact, one of them is currently on a quest to return something to the gods. (Though Percy was pretty sure he hadn't missed Chiron's side-eye when Nico asked him the question, but they'll worry about it later. Hopefully way later.)

Once the explanations were done, Chiron had shooed them out of the Big House on the pretense they find Luke and tell him to show them around camp, even if he was probably going to be telling Mr D all about the three... demigods... who stumbled into camp... from the beach.

It took a split-second for Percy to realize just exactly what the Hades had been so weird (aside from the sudden time-travel thing) earlier. He turned to Nico and hissed under his breath, "Dude, where's Mr D?"

Chapter Text

Nico's eyes widened at the question. "You don't think," he whispered back, and Percy had to lean forward to hear him properly, all the while casting a suspicious glance around the porch for some stray camper who might be eavesdropping on them, "he's... you know?" Nico made a vague gesture that could've meant anything.

"Dead?!" Thalia's eyebrows had flown to her hairline.

"...What?" Nico stared at her, like Thalia's suggestion was crazy and never even crossed his mind. "No? Why the Hades would you even think that?"

"Well, sorry for not getting what's going on inside that eighty-five year-old Death Breath brain of yours—"

"I think," Percy cut in loudly, since he was definitely not in the mood for another argument (gods help him), "Nico's suggesting maybe Mr D's gone or whatever. Not dead," he added, ignoring Thalia's eye-roll. "Like he was called for a meeting at Olympus. I mean, I have no idea how my powers work, but we couldn't have fucked the whole timeline over. That's just insane."

At the eyebrow raising Thalia furiously did in his direction, Percy couldn't help but backtrack because judging by everything he went through since he discovered he was a demigod, it was always—

"...Or maybe we did."

Nico gave a low whistle, which was kinda uncharacteristic of him and something Percy had expected more from Leo, but in reality was more probably Will's influence. "That's depressing."

Percy resisted the urge to groan as the reality of Nico's statement sank. "Don't remind me."

"Okay, but like I said, we'll talk about this later." Thank the gods Thalia was trapped with them in this nightmare to stop him from thinking dark thoughts like, "I hate my new powers" and "why does this always happen to me?" "After dinner. We have to find Luke first. And remember the gameplan, you two."

They found Luke at the arena, sparring with Clarisse. Percy hadn't ever remembered Clarisse being good with a sword, but he guessed she wasn't pretty bad either if she could hold her own against Luke.

When Luke spotted them, he immediately called for a break. Percy watched the other campers rush towards the drinks cooler with fondness and maybe nostalgia because college aside, it really had been a while since he'd gone to a swordfighting practice at camp.

"Clarisse, right?" Thalia's voice snapped Percy out of his daydreaming. He glanced to the side to see Clarisse stand in front of Thalia and Nico, arms crossed over her chest. Huh. He hadn't even noticed Clarisse approaching.

"Yeah. Clarisse La Rue. Ares." Clarisse looked at Thalia up and down like she was sizing her up, which would've been pretty funny if Percy didn't know Thalia could disarm the whole Ares cabin in ten seconds flat.

"Clarisse, stop messing with the newbies." Luke, now armor-free, sounded amused as he made his way towards them, reaching up to ruffle Clarisse's hair when he reached her. Again, Percy had to stop himself from doing a double-take and looking like a dumbass. "So. You three ready for the tour?"

Percy didn't miss how Luke's gaze flicked to Thalia for the briefest of seconds, before settling back to him. But of course, he didn't mention it in case Thalia decided it'd be a good time to expose their secret by electrocuting him. "Uh, ready as we'll ever be."

"This is Cabin One."

Thalia stared at the bronze doors with such bored disinterest like the cabin itself wasn't even worth her time, Percy almost wanted to applaud her for her acting skills. "Lemme guess. The Z-man?"

"She means Sky Daddy," came Nico's bored response, probably pretending not to hear Thalia's indignant squawk. "In case you didn't know."

"...Right." Luke looked uncomfortable, like he didn't know whether to laugh or set a good example by not laughing and like, scold them for making fun of the King of the Gods. "Let's proceed to the next cabin."

Percy discretely shared a smirk with Nico.

"I swear to god, Death Breath, if you call her Sky Mommy, you'll wish you were the one who got stabbed by a spirit while walking towards a cave to steal your dad's sword."

Luke glanced between Thalia and Nico. Percy, on the other hand, tried very hard not to look like he was five seconds away from cackling at the bewildered look on Luke's face. "That's... oddly specific."

Thalia gave Nico a dirty look as he stared back at her innocently again like he was a random fifteen year-old kid who could do no wrong. "Inside joke."

"And here we have Poseidon."

Percy gazed wistfully at Cabin Three. "Looks like home. Because I love the beach," he added loudly, in case Luke wouldn't get it and assumed something else entirely. Like, the "hmm that's suspicious, so you like the cabin are you sure you're not a son of Poseidon?" kind of something else entirely. "Uh, I was on the swim team."

Nico scoffed under his breath. "Get real, Perce."

"Not my fault you have thalassophobia, d—Solace."

"Big word, and I literally don't."

"Demeter." Luke nodded at the wild flowers and roses on the porch of Cabin Four. "Their mom's the goddess of harvest."

Percy tried to look interested at the tomato vines hanging on the walls. "So they're big on the gardening stuff, huh?"

"Yeah. Demeter is usually in charge of the strawberries. Kid, you coming?" Luke directed the question to Nico.

Nico made a face, probably at Luke calling him 'kid'. "I'm not really into flowers."

"Suit yourself."

"Cabin Five. Clarisse's cabin."

"Cabin Six is—"

"Athena," Percy blurted out before he could stop himself. At the surprised look Luke gave him, he quickly added, "The owl. My girlfriend's, uh. Kind of obssessed with owls, so Athena came up a lot."

"What do you know." A real grin spread across Luke's face, making him look less like the villain from Percy's Titan War-related dreams and more like the head counselor who stole toiletries for Percy and taught him how to swordfight. "Ten points to Peter."

"We have Cabin Seven as Apollo..."

"Hey, Neeks. It's your future siblings-in-law."

"Shut up, Pinecone Face."

"Artemis doesn't have kids, right?" Percy didn't miss how Thalia's fingers twitched, like she wanted to reach for her circlet.

Luke shook his head as he led them away from Cabin Eight. "No, but she has a bunch of immortal handmaidens who follow her around."

"Cabin Nine is Hephaestus. God of blacksmiths."

"Cabin Ten. Aphrodite."

"Cabin Twelve." Luke motioned to the cabin, whose roof and walls were lined with grape vines. "Dionysus."

Percy resisted the urge to ask if Luke knew where Mr D was because 1) the whole camp would definitely be suspicious and 2) no doubt there'll be a full-blown investigation by the gods and he so did not want that to happen. So instead, he just adopted a confused expression he hoped looked passable enough. "What about Cabin Eleven?"

Luke grinned again. Really, it was damning how he could look so cool and not evil when he wasn't under Kronos' evil influence. "Calm down, Johnson. We're saving the best for last."

"Cabin Eleven. Home sweet home." Luke opened the door to let them inside, but there was also like a sort of underlying bitterness to his tone, which didn't take a kid of Athena (or a couple of time-travelers from the future who'd been through a whole war because Luke had decided to go all buddy-buddy with his evil great-grandpa) to figure out why. "Our patron god's Hermes, the god of travelers, so we take in all newcomers and visitors."

Percy was hit with a weird sense of dejá vù at Luke's words, like he'd heard them somewhere before, but then he remembered Luke probably gave him a speech like this back when he was still unclaimed yet.

"...top bunk and a spot near the window." Luke jabbed his thumb at one of the tiny sleeping-bag free sections on the floor. "I'll let you decide whoever gets the bunk."

Percy gave a grateful nod, hoping it didn't look too obvious he had just zoned out. "Sure, sure. Thanks, man."

The moment Luke had stepped out of the cabin ("I gotta go back to the arena. I trust you three can handle yourselves?"), Nico turned to face Thalia. "I'll take the bunk. I'm the oldest."

But the way the corners of his lips were twitching upwards, like he was trying to bite back a smirk and failing, but didn't really seem to care—a clear contrast from the Nico during the Titan War and Giant War, back before Hazel had dragged him to the first ever Big Three kids reunion and he had a heart-to-heart talk with everyone, proved it wasn't the only reason.

Percy quickly caught on. Since he also didn't want to miss the chance to join in on the teasing as like, a messed-up reward from the mess he'd have to put up with every time Nico and Thalia argued, he had to add innocently, getting electrocuted afterwards be damned, "Thanks for doing the world a favor, Neeks. Wouldn't want someone to accidentally electrocute the whole cabin in the middle of the night when they fall off the bed."

He promptly yelped as Thalia grabbed his arm and shocked him but hey, worth it. "For real, though," Percy continued, batting Thalia's hand away to rub at his arm, "Nico gets the bunk. He's not as young as us." Pause to shoot a shit-eating grin at Nico's direction. "He needs it."

Thank the gods Nico wasn't as hot-headed as Thalia because he just rolled his eyes. (Percy definitely didn't doubt he'd be six foot underground by now if Nico did lose his temper so easily). "Whatever, Aquaman."

Turns out strolling through camp on their very own camp-tour wasn't the best thing to do when everytime they made a turn in the strawberry fields or the lake, Percy half-expected Annabeth to appear which—pretty much still didn't explain how they ended up at the beach again, but at least he could keep calm and pretend Annabeth was just busy giving Ancient Greek lessons to the newer campers.

"You think they'd realize we're gone?" Nico's gaze was fixed on the waves, but Percy just knew he was also thinking about Will.

It was Thalia who responded, after a split-second of silence, "Kind of hard for them not to. Remember what happened when Percy was kidnapped by Her Fuck-upness?"

Percy chuckled at his cousin's creative nickname for Hera. "Yeah, but it's not the same. I wasn't stuck in the past when she kidnapped me, was I?"

"You also didn't have me and Neeks, so stop worrying." Thalia had said it so matter-of-factly Percy couldn't help but agree. Fair. Not to mention he got his memory wiped and he wasn't really on the best terms with Nico at that time. "Bet you five drachmas everyone's doing all they can to find us."

"Yeah." Percy mustered a weak smile. "Hopefully."

They drifted into another couple minutes of silence. It was good until Percy couldn't take it anymore because while it was peaceful, it really wasn't really helping with his sad thoughts like "I can't believe I'm saying this since it's been literally just a day but I miss my dorm room", so he nudged Thalia's shoulder to pipe up, "Hey, Thals. You think the world will end if we get claimed by our dads?"

A thoughtful expression flickered across Thalia's face, like she was considering how to answer him. "You mean like, literal end of the world, end of Western civilization or you mean things would just go to shit?"

"The first one."

"Then you better make sure we won't have to stick around 'til we get claimed. So if I were you, I'd get to practicing my powers." Her lips twitched into a smirk as she said the last part.

Percy made a show of acting all annoyed because yeah, he got it with his stupid powers already. "Relax, Airhead. We won't get claimed." At the dubious look on Nico's face (he was probably thinking about Percy's luck when it came to these things), he added, "You too, Death Breath. Seriously, relax. We won't get claimed. At least, not today. It's just sati—spati—you know. Impossible. Because I didn't make them swear on the Styx yet."

Nico's dubious expression cleared, inwardly making Percy heave a sigh of relief. Seriously, there was no need to freak out. He'd just have to find a way to train his newfound powers as soon as possible without alerting the whole camp he had powers. Definitely a piece of cake compared to stopping his evil grandpa and even more evil great-grandma from destroying the world. Then they'd be back to the future in no time.

Percy had almost forgot how chaotic the Hermes table had been when Luke hadn't turned traitor yet. Or how young the Stoll brothers were.

"Perce. Stop staring." Thalia poked him in the ribs with her bony elbow.

"But they're so young!" Percy couldn't help but whine. Thalia probably didn't understand. Sure, he'd seen Travis at the Big House earlier, but he hadn't really got a good look at him, so he's pretty sure his current freak-out was justified. Like, Clarisse was one thing, but Percy had shared a cabin with the Stolls, for Zeus' sake. It was weird.

Unfortunately, despite all the loud noise and talking of the twenty (plus three) campers at the table, Percy would still be overheard. So really, he shouldn't have been surprised when Travis plopped himself right from across them (after getting Nico to scoot over) and offered a familiar mischievous grin. "You our new siblings?"

Percy shook his head. Mostly to stop himself from seeing the older version of Travis instead of the younger Travis in front of him. "Don't think so?"

Travis waved a dismissive hand. "It's fine, it's fine. Totally normal. Takes a long time to get claimed anyway 'cause Chiron said the gods don't always remember they have children." His grin widened like he didn't just say something sad and traumatizing and would've probably radicalized Percy to run off and revive Kronos if Percy wasn't aware of how the gods were a bunch of neglectful dicks but unfortunately, the world would still be better off with Zeus instead of the Titans. "So, you three already know each other or...? You seem close."

"Me and Peter are cousins," Thalia replied with a shrug. Percy couldn't help but ogle at her because, what? Didn't they agree to stick to the Nico-and-Thalia as best friends and Percy-as-Nico's cousin story when they came up with The Plan (the 'don't forget the plan' plan, to be clear, NOT the gameplan)? "But Nico is Pete's cousin. Like, I'm not related to him. But we really just call each other cousins."

"Huh." Travis blinked at her, like he didn't expect the explanation at all. To be fair, Percy didn't, too. He was so going to have a word with Thalia later for not sticking to the cover story. (Just because they didn't need cover stories in the Hunt didn't mean she could just make up her own even if it did make a lot more sense than what they had initially agreed on. Or she could've just warned them in advance she was gonna switch things up, no big deal.) "Okay, yeah, I see the resemblance. You three totally look alike."

"Thanks," was Nico's dry response. "We get that a lot."

Travis laughed like what Nico said was the funniest thing ever. "Yeah, you're all pretty cool. Anyway, I'm Travis, son of Hermes. The kid next to Luke—you do know Luke, right? Well, the kid next to him who's like a less hotter version of me is my brother Connor."

Nico snorted at Travis' description of Connor while Percy tried to hide a grin. Some things definitely never changed. "'Less hotter version'? Really, kid?"

Okay, it was definitely weird to call Travis a kid, but the thing is—it just slipped out of Percy's mouth, and Travis didn't seem to mind. In fact, he looked pleased, probably at having pulled out those kind of reactions from the new guys. But before he could say anything else, the wood nymphs placed the food on the table, making Travis roll his eyes to the sky and sigh dramatically.

"Don't eat anything yet. We gotta offer burnt offerings for the gods," he explained with another likely-for-show sigh as he loaded his plate with some fresh bread and strawberries. "Luke said they like the smell."

Pretending not to look too obvious he already knew about it, Percy grabbed like three slices of cheese and a cluster of grapes, and followed Travis to the center of the pavillion, Thalia and Nico right behind them.

Percy mustered a smile when it was his turn to approach the fire. What the Hades should he say?

("Don't stress yourself, Seaweed Brain," his mental-Wise Girl voice spoke up, just in time to save him from his very recent overthinking tendencies. Percy loved his mental-Wise Girl voice.)

So, with his mental-Wise Girl's advice in mind...

"Uh, hi?" Then Percy tossed the food towards the fire so he wouldn't have to think about anything else. (Like the gods discovering he was here because of his newfound powers, for example.) He didn't miss the quizzical look Thalia shot him, but Percy shook his head, making a gesture that meant, later, Pinecone Face and hoped Thalia would understand it.

The actual dinner was way better than anything Percy had from the NYU dining halls this week. It was a comforting thought from the nightmare of ending up in the past because of his stupid new powers he didn't ask for, thank you very much.

Setting down his glass of blue lemonade, Percy turned to Nico, a question about the food in Paris on one of Nico's dates with Will already on the tip of his tongue, only to freeze at the sight of a hologram of a white flower hovering on top of Nico's head.

"Dude." Percy was belatedly aware his voice had sounded kind of hushed. And panicked. (Again, the real kind of panicked.) "Dude, what the fuck?"

Nico's head snapped up. "What?"

"There's a—" Eyes still fixed on the hologram like he couldn't tear his gaze away from it, Percy reached out to grab Thalia's shoulder and gently shake her. "Thals, are you seeing this?"

"What?" Nico sounded more irritated now, but Percy could only keep shaking Thalia's shoulder to get her to stop focusing on the stupid fillet she was cutting up because this was a hundred times more important, gods damn it.

Thalia's loud huff meant she was definitely annoyed he'd interrupted her, but again, this was way more important than any fillet because seriously, what the hell was happening?! He didn't have this on his bingo card when he got his time-control powers??

"Kelp Head, what are you—" she stopped. As if in slow motion, her fork landed on the table with a loud thud, drawing the attention of the whole Hermes table. The whole table that had suddenly gone quiet, Thalia had probably been overheard by Luke who was sitting all the way on the other end of the table as she croaked out, "Oh my gods. What the hell?"

Percy had a moment to run through the (admittedly short) list in his brain of whichever god had a white flower as their symbol, but all his thoughts of which god had which symbol screeched to a halt because the whole mess had definitely noticed something was going on now and they'd also gone quiet.

And Chiron—Chiron looked surprised too, the expression on his face making the barbecue and the rest of the blue lemonade in Percy's stomach want to go back up. It's like Chiron didn't expect this at all, and he didn't even need to pound his hoof on the floor to get everyone's attention, but it didn't really matter because this was messed up.

Were the Fates playing with them or something? (Probably, considering Percy's track record. Thalia's and Nico's weren't any better either.) Still, it wasn't even twenty-four hours yet. Couldn't the gods (or the Fates or whatever) give them a break? Besides, this was just plain wrong on so many levels. Not to mention insulting, if it really was, you know, a practical joke. Nico was a son of Hades, he wasn't the son of some random minor god, he was... he was—

"Hail Nicolas Solace. Son of Persephone, goddess of springtime, Queen of the Underworld."

Chapter Text

"I think I'm gonna puke."

He wasn't joking. The barbecue really was close to making an appearance again. Because this whole 'wrong godly parent claim' thing? Shouldn't be happening.

Percy was pretty sure if Nico would get any whiter (and the last time he'd seen all the color drain from Nico's face was sometime during the Giant War) he'd pass out or something. He could vaguely hear Thalia mutter "what the fuck" over and over again like it would somehow magically erase the hologram above Nico's head.

Not to mention the stares of literally everyone in the mess hall.

"Neeks, I'm serious," Percy whispered, barely recognizing the sound of his own voice as he forced himself to sit up straighter and tried to ignore the lemonade-and-barbecue combo rearing its ugly head. "I really think I'm gonna puke."

Unfortunately, Nico didn't seem to have heard him. He just continued to stare back, eyes wide, the color practically gone from his face. The less-freaking out part of Percy didn't blame his cousin in the slightest (he blames the gods and the Fates and also his stupid new powers) because why the hell do these things keep happening to him?

Okay, maybe not to Percy personally for once, but still. Everyone was staring, even Chiron, like they've never seen someone get claimed before (definitely never saw someone get claimed by Persephone, gods help them) and nobody was clapping either—which was kind of like what happened at his own claiming, now that he thought about it.

"At least they're not kneeling?" his mental-Wise Girl voice commented thoughtfully.

Percy swallowed hard. Okay, so maybe he really was overreacting a bit. The unexpected claiming wasn't the worst thing ever yet ever. It just... well, mostly it didn't make sense, because last time Percy checked, Persephone wasn't exactly Nico's biggest fan. The bad part of Nico's claiming was, again, it started to remind Percy of the time Poseidon claimed him. You know, with the campers gawking and all.

Yeah, it was bad.

Crap, he really was gonna throw up—

"Alright, that's enough."

Percy's head snapped towards the direction of the voice. It was... Luke? Percy would've slapped himself if he wasn't too busy trying to make sense what was happening. But if he hadn't been sure this whole 'thrown back to the past and apparently the Fates found it funny to mess with Percy Jackson' thing was like a gods damned nightmare before, then Luke not acting like his evil Kronos-possessed self and instead standing up for them had definitely sealed the deal.

"Breathe, Seaweed Brain," Annabeth's super-appreciated voice made him snap out of his rapidly spiraling dark thoughts.

Because apparently Luke being a good guy was a normal thing here, Percy could only watch as he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, voice projecting around the mess hall, "C'mon, you've never seen someone get claimed before? Let the poor guy breathe, for Zeus' sake!"

That seemed to snap the rest of the tables back to reality. Okay, back to reality along with some not-so-subtle comments, like—

"I thought Lady Persephone didn't have demigod kids?"

"Obviously we all thought wrong."

"So is he gonna be staying in the Demeter cabin or...?"

"Still at the Hermes cabin, duh."

"What? Why? He's practically their nephew, that should make him an honorary member—"

"Hey, isn't he like, one of the newbies? And he gets claimed on his first day?"

"You know, he actually looks pretty hot. In a goth-emo kinda way, if you know what I mean—"

"What the hell is even happening?!" Percy whispered under his breath, gaze still fixed on the hologram above Nico's head as campers continued to shoot them furtive glances from over their shoulders. This wasn't normal. (Of course this wasn't normal. They were in the past, for the love of the gods. Percy had time-control powers he didn't have last year. Freakin' Luke out of all people was standing up for Nico.)

Dinner passed by in a mind-numbing, achingly slow way that reminded Percy of Kronos' time-control powers. Or maybe it was just Percy's own dumb time-control powers acting up. Whatever the reason was, he had ended up poking at the rest of his barbecue gloomily. It didn't look as appetizing like it did twenty minutes ago. (Thalia, and Nico didn't look like they were gonna be finishing their plates, either.) So really, it was a relief when Chiron announced the campfire was going to be postponed, and they were all free to head back to their cabins.

"Hey." Percy caught Thalia's and Nico's elbows. "Emergency meeting."

They hung back, making sure the rest of the campers were already a good ten or so feet away from them, before Percy turned his full attention to his cousins. (Thank the gods the flower hologram had disappeared. It was driving Percy nuts, just looking at it, because what does it mean, Persephone had claimed Nico??) "So, can we all start freaking out now?"

"I just don't get it." Nico looked like his face was going to get stuck that way with all the frowning he was doing, but hey, at least he wasn't freaking out. "It'd make sense if it was Thana—well, you know. But her? She turned me into a dandelion, Perce! A dandelion!"

Percy took a moment to think long and hard about the possible reasons for Persephone claiming Nico. "...I got nothing. Sorry, Neeks," he added, at the betrayed look Nico shot him, "but I really have no idea why Lady P decided to claim you. Maybe you should drop by the Underworld to ask her?"

Thalia snorted. "And get himself turned into a dandelion again? Probably for eternity, this time? Fat chance, Kelp Head."

"I was just suggesting—"

"Guys?"

It was Travis, with Connor right behind him. Their curious expressions floored Percy, mainly because he was expecting something more... Stoll-like. "You started a secret meeting without us?"

"We're not really—" Percy exchanged a look with Nico. "Um."

"Tell Luke we'll be back in like an hour." Thalia was instantly on her 'believe me or I'll shoot you with an arrow, and I'm not gonna miss' scary Lieutenant of Artemis mode. (Percy made a mental note to thank Artemis once they got back to the future for Thalia's 'believe me or I'll shoot you with an arrow, and I'm not gonna miss' scary Lieutenant of Artemis mode.) "See, we're talking about how to break this whole—" she spread her hands in the air, "Greek gods thing to our parents. With Nico's family being super Catholic and all."

"Oh." Realization dawned across Travis' face. "Got it. We'll pass the message to Luke."

The moment Travis and Connor were out of earshot, Percy heaved a sigh of relief, and turned back to Thalia and Nico. "Nice save, Pinecone Face."

"No problem. So, about—" Thalia made a gesture that could've meant anything, but Percy took to mean as, 'you know the situation we're in right now because of shitty Percy's time-control powers? Yeah, that'. "This isn't normal. Something really, really weird is going on."

Percy rolled his eyes. "Isn't that basically our whole lives?" It wasn't like he was wrong, anyway. Weird godly happenings happening in his life? Blame the gods. Or the Fates. But preferably the gods.

Nico wrung his hands, which was the sort of behavior one would've expected from like, Jason (if he was still alive) or Hazel. "It hasn't been a whole day—"

"Exactly what I was thinking?" Percy muttered to no one in particular.

"—and she suddenly claimed me? It doesn't make sense." Now Nico looked like he was close to tearing his hair out.

"You know," Percy piped up after a few seconds of silence, "I'm pretty sure it's not just me, but maybe you do need to pay your stepmom a visit, Death Breath."

"You know what it feels like to be turned into a dandelion, Aquaman?" Nico shot back without missing a beat.

Percy threw his hands up in surrender. "I'm just saying! Gods."

"For Apollo's sake, both of you calm down or I'll electrocute you." Percy immediately fell silent at the threat in Thalia's voice. His fourteen year-old self would've been pretty pissed off at the way Thalia snapped at him, but he knew better than to push her buttons this time. Nico had also definitely learnt from the last time they tried to take on Thalia, because he dropped his scowl, muttering under his breath in Italian. "Look, it's been a pretty eventful day, so I suggest we should just talk about this tomorrow. With the Mr D mystery, yeah, di Angelo, I can see you rolling your eyes at me. Quit it."

"You talk to your elders that way?" Percy joked, but it fell flat at the way Nico's shoulders sagged. Hopefully, once they get back to the cabin and went to sleep, this would all just turn out to be some weird and very bad nightmare.

When Percy opened his eyes and found Thalia snoring next to him, he was forced to admit to himself that yesterday (landed in the past due to his stupid time-control powers, Nico getting claimed by Persephone, no Annabeth) wasn't some weird and very bad nightmare.

It was real.

There was also an itching in the back of his mind that he knew was supposed to be something he should remember, but for the life of him he couldn't, but he damn well knew was the gods' fault.

Breakfast was pretty much like dinner last night. Offerings to the gods, trying to wolf down a couple buttered toast, Luke (Not-Evil Version) shooting warning glares at campers who looked at their table wrong, resulting in more whispers and not-so-subtle comments like—

"Is it just me or he realllyy doesn't look like a Persephone kid? I guess I just expected someone more... sunny-looking?"

"What the Hades does 'sunny-looking' even mean?!"

"—still never thought I'd get to see a son of Persephone—"

"Wait, I think you're right. He does look pretty hot— "

Thalia joined Luke in the glaring as best as she could while Percy gave Nico supportive looks until the tables bustled off towards their respective camp activities.

"C'mon, Pinecone Face. You're telling me you beat up a chimera, but can't finish a bowl of cereal in five minutes? The strawberries aren't gonna wait for your slowpoke ass, you know. We didn't actually know it was a monster when she beat it up, by the way," Percy added, to a wide-eyed Travis.

Thalia muttered something like she was cursing Percy as she shoved the spoonful of cereal in her mouth. A moment later, she stood up, definitely on her way to following them to the fields, but was stopped by a clearly apologetic-looking Luke. "Sorry, but we're supposed to be at the archery range. Only Nico, and Peter will be helping out the Demeter cabin in the strawberry fields. Chiron's orders."

Which was how Percy found himself silently solo-trailing behind Nico, and an eleven year-old (!!) Katie Gardner instead of the previous plan of him and Thalia pointing out the various camp architecture and pretending to know crap about them so Katie could explain it. To, you know, sell the whole 'we have no idea what we're doing here please help us' shtick they had decided to stick with, aka the gameplan.

"You already know we grow strawberries, don't you?" Katie asked, leading them across the rows of strawberries and marigolds ("Companion plants," his mental-Wise Girl voice commented, because she was a genius like that and knew random things like companion plants of strawberries) to head towards the strawberry seedlings.

Nico nodded, but Percy didn't miss the apprehension in his body language as they grew closer to the seedlings laid out across a wooden table.

"...but thanks to our cabin, and Mr D—he's the camp director—controlling the weather, we practically get strawberries all year-round. Even now." Katie broke into a grin at last word. Like she was proving her point, she reached out to brush her finger along one of the seedlings.

Since he started camp, Percy always saw the Demeter kids' powers in action, but he still couldn't help but be impressed as the seedling grew under Katie's touch, giving them strawberries (though he wasn't sure if they were ripe) in thirty seconds flat. It was like watching the "plants growing timelapse" videos in his bio class, but in real life—which, pretty cool to see, so Katie's grin was also pretty much justified.

"Now." Katie turned to Nico. "Let's see if you inherited your mom's powers."

At the look of terror in Nico's eyes, Katie quickly retracted her statement. "Okay, I didn't mean to like, pressure you or anything. Just—we can see if the strawberries would also respond to you? They usually do to my siblings, so maybe it'll work with you, too. Right, Peter?"

Percy froze, not expecting to have Katie's gaze—like, an eleven year old Katie Gardner, what the Hades—directed at him. "Um." He quickly pasted an encouraging smile on his face. "I guess?"

Katie beamed, her whole face lighting up and everything. "Great! So, Nico, if you could—"

Oh, gods. There really was no way out of this. Percy mentally prayed to whoever could hear him that this would not end in a disaster as his cousin, under Katie's expectant gaze, had no choice but to copy what she did earlier, and brushed his fingers along the leaves of the nearest seedling.

Of course, it wilted at his touch. Like, the leaves instantly turned brown and everything. Of course. Percy didn't know whether to laugh or be horrified.

"Huh." Katie's brow furrowed. "That's weird."

Again, Percy didn't know whether he should laugh or be horrified, especially when Katie returned to look at Nico, determination flashing across her eleven year old face. "Why don't we try with the marigolds?"

The terror in Nico's eyes seemed to intensify. "I don't think—"

But Katie had already scooped up a marigold straight from the ground, the bud blooming a bright orange color at her touch, and handed it to Nico. Like the strawberry, the marigold immediately wilted in Nico's grasp. Percy watched as the stem turned yellow, then brown, followed by the petals falling off, and the roots practically rotting.

There was a slight pause.

"Maybe your powers are more of the Underworld stuff instead of the plant-related stuff?" Katie suggested thoughtfully, staring at the now-wilted marigold.

Nico slowly set down what was left of the flower near the seedlings. "Yeah, maybe."

Things got worse (like they could get any worse than being thrown to the past, but you know, details) after swordfighting class. Lesson. Practice.

Nico had been whisked away by the Demeter kids because they were still curious about his apparently Underworld-related powers, which left Thalia and Percy to fend the curious looks and whispers for themselves, and the itching in the back of Percy's brain hadn't stopped itching.

"It's like there's something I should know right now, but I can't remember what exactly."

"What, you forgot to pass a term paper or something?" Thalia handed him the sandwich she'd swiped from the mess hall earlier. Percy nodded at her gratefully. "Speaking of term papers," she added, lowering her voice, "did you actually do the mind map you said you were gonna do after you finished IM'ing Annabeth?"

Percy shook his head, setting down the sandwich beside him to make himself more comfortable on the bench. "No, it's not about my term paper. It's about, you know. This." He picked up the sandwich again to gesture to the arena.

"Anyway," he said as he unwrapped the sandwich (blue grilled cheese, nice), "I still think it's the gods' fault—"

"Hey, Prissy! Got tired of getting your ass handed to you?" Clarisse called out, smirking a smirk that reminded Percy of Ares, and made him want to punch off of Clarisse's face. (But he shouldn't. Because this was like, an eleven year old or twelve year old or thirteen year old Clarisse or something. The Clarisse from his time was fair game, but this Clarisse was a kid.)

"—but I'm pretty sure Nico's mom could so beat Ares in a fight," Percy continued loudly like he didn't hear Clarisse. He tried not to arch a brow as she stopped in front of him, sizing him up like she was clearly trying to intimidate him. Like, it would've worked if he was an actual newbie and not someone who had fought in two wars and survived. Not to mention he was already an adult (kinda), while Clarisse was a literal kid.

Clarisse narrowed her eyes even further, looking at him up and down. "You know what? I think Travis was right. You do look pretty familiar. You know anyone named Percy Jackson?"

Chapter Text

Three things instantly swirled in Percy's mind at Clarisse's question. First was, "of course I know Percy Jackson because Percy Jackson is me!" and was followed by, "am I allowed to skip the question?" and lastly, "why do these kind of things always happen to me?"

Then his brain finally caught up to his mouth. "Um."

Clarisse continued to stare at him somewhat expectantly, but now with a sneer on her face.

Percy swallowed hard. Someone—definitely Thalia—kicked him in the shin, prompting him to blurt out, "No?" At the way Clarisse's brows furrowed like she didn't believe him, he added, "I mean, I'm not related to the Percy guy. Like, I literally have no idea who he is. Sorry. But for the record, I probably look familiar because—" I'm Percy Jackson, he thought wildly as he tried to rack his brain for a lie that wasn't "I was wrongfully accused of being a wanted international criminal for a while, then everyone in the news admitted the whole 'criminal thing' was bull, and I was actually a poor kidnapped kid after I kicked your dad's ass in L.A.," or something less insane that wouldn't blow their cover, before he finally settled on, "I got expelled for accidentally launching a war cannon at my school bus once, and a news channel picked up the story, so. Probably why I look familiar. Flattered you recognized me, though."

He made sure to shoot Clarisse a smirk at the last part, just to rile her up so she'd hopefully get it into her head to stop bothering him, please, he already had a lot of stuff on his plate, he didn't need to deal with an eleven year-old (or twelve or thirteen year old) taunting him when he had no clue what the Hades he even did to her. (Athena help him, was this some kind of random side-effect of getting thrown back to the past?) "Also, I just wanna know. Why'd you call me Prissy?"

Clarisse's response was instant. "'Cause you're a pathetic sissy, that's why."

"Technically, you're like Prissy 2.0. Percy's the original Prissy," Travis cut in, eyes darting between Percy and Clarisse. Behind him stood Connor, and some of the other Ares kids, all of them also staring back and forth between Clarisse and Percy.

Huh.

Percy hadn't even realized they had an audience, but whatever. Adopting his best exasperated 'are you freaking kidding me?' voice, he returned his attention to Clarrise. "Do you even know what Prissy means?"

Thalia kicked him in the shin again, but Percy ignored her. He was so getting to the bottom of this, rumors of beefing with an eleven year-old (or twelve year-old? Thirteen year-old?) be damned. Which was not actually happening, by the way. He mostly wanted to straighten up Clarisse's attitude a good few years before it happened in real-time and maybe get her to pretty please, please leave him the fuck alone, for the gods' sake. "So? Any idea what it means?"

Clarisse opened her mouth to reply, except Percy already beat her to it. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

Without waiting for whatever else reply Clarisse was going to spit out, Percy grabbed Thalia and dragged her to another part of the arena, away from Clarisse and their gossipy audience. He released Thalia's wrist to spare a glance over his shoulder. A circle of Ares and other curious Hermes kids surrounded Clarisse, who was looking like a miniature, hissy version of Ares with her splotchy red cheeks as she jabbed a finger at Percy's direction.  "If you're going to lecture me about beefing with a kid—"

"Well, turns out it's your lucky day, because I won't." Thalia grinned, but there was also a tiny hint of grimace to her grin. "We're having another emergency meeting after this. At the beach."

Percy nodded tightly as Luke swept back inside the arena. Things still weren't adding up, but at least he could pretend he had like, some medium of control over his life now, what with Clarisse basically revealing they really did land in their own timeline's past and didn't get smacked into the past of an alternate universe or something equally as dumb due to Percy's new powers. (He wasn't sure if alternate universe past timelines were a thing, but if he had magically developed a different batch of superpowers before he had even graduated, he was just going to assume alternate universe past timelines really were a thing.) "Gotcha."

Luke called for the class to continue. Despite his mind whirling with their new discovery thanks to Clarisse, plus his mental Wise Girl-voice chiding him if they were going to update the gameplan (the answer was yes, yes they were), Percy made his way over to Michael Yew, who wasn't just an archery pro in whatever version of this past they landed in (so maybe Percy's assumption they were in an alternate universe past timeline was correct?), but was also pretty awesome with a sword. And more importantly, alive and kicking.

Swordfighting was like muscle-memory at this point, but of course, Percy wasn't allowed to beat up Michael because gameplan. So, more acting it was. He tightened his grip around the random sword Luke got for him (sadly, he couldn't use Riptide since it'd probably get him sent to Olympus), then lunged to the left.

"Kick his ass, Aquaman!" Thalia called out from somewhere behind him.

"I'm trying!" Percy retorted, even if he was deliberately not trying, but it wasn't like the rest of the class could see through his act anyway. He yelped (that wasn't an act) as Michael caught his foot, and the next thing Percy knew, he was looking half at the sky, half at Michael's grinning, ten (or eleven) year old face.

"Yield?" Michael's grin had widened at the boos of the other campers around them.

Percy made a show of rolling his eyes because he was a great actor, no matter what his very unsupportive cousins (Hazel and Jason not included) said, thank you. Again, he had fooled the cops during his showdown with Ares, he could fool a bunch of campers no problem. "Not going to yield, nope."

Once sword fighting class ended and Percy got his ass kicked for the third time in a row (much to Thalia's disappointment, so Percy made a mental note to remind her the basics of the gameplan), he decided to re-enact another part of the updated gameplan that his mental Wise Girl-voice provided because, like his real genius girlfriend whom Percy was currently missing very, very much, his mental Wise Girl-voice was a genius like that.

Step one was approaching Luke. Convenient, because he was still busy taking off his armor.

"Uh. Hey, dude?"

Luke set down his breastplate to look at Percy. "Yeah?"

Percy tried to do some mental squinting instead of real suspicious squinting so Luke wouldn't get suspicious. "Who's Percy Jackson?"

Surprised flickered across Luke's face. Crap. Percy hoped Luke wouldn't call him out for the weird, out of left field question, but it seemed the question wasn't actually that weird because after a moment, the surprise slid away from Luke's face, and he replied, "You know the Big Three gods?" At Percy's nod, Luke continued, "Percy's a son of Poseidon."

"Ah." Luke slowly blinked at him, probably at his lacklustre reaction. Percy hastily put on his best "holy crap, a son of Poseidon??" expression then exclaimed, "Styx, he's a son of Poseidon?!"

"Styx?" Now Luke's eyebrows had reached his hairline.

Percy inwardly cursed himself for using the word so easily like he'd been saying it for a long, long time which, technically, he was, but it wasn't important. "Um, yeah. Heard someone say it, and we asked around..." he trailed off, letting Luke fill in the gaps for himself.

He wasn't disappointed. An impressed grin had stretched across Luke's face, and Percy should really be squinting at him because why the Hades did Luke not look like a minion stressed over his great-grandpa's bidding when he should looking like it by now? "Nice. We'll make a demigod of you yet, Johnson."

"So. How's life with the Demeter kids?"

Nico groaned, looking like he was five seconds away from face-planting on the beach. "Just take me back to our timeline."

"C'mon, dude, it can't be that bad." Percy should be supportive of him. He really should. But can anyone really blame him for biting back a smirk when Nico groaned even louder and flopped headfirst into the sand, which was way too unchacteristic of the Nico di Angelo whom Percy had known during the Giant War, but times had changed, and maybe, just maybe, there was also the possibility their time-travel nightmare was messing with Nico's head. Or whatever.

As if hearing his thoughts, Nico raised his head from the sand, cracking one eye open to shoot Percy a glare that would've made him wilt on the spot if he was the one of the strawberry plants Katie had presented from earlier. "They made me touch the dryads, Percy. The dryads. You know what they are?"

Percy bristled, all thoughts of Nico's Underworld powers vanishing from his mind as he protested, "Of course I do!"

Thalia held up a hand; Percy immediately fell silent, not really in the mood to be on the end of Thalia's shock sessions today. "Death Breath, did the dryads realize you're—"

"Probably. Dunno." Nico shrugged his shoulders, flopping back up and perching himself beside Thalia again. Percy gingerly reached over her to wipe the sand off of Nico's leather jacket. "I don't think I managed to convince them my dad's my mortal parent because they kept shooting me and Katie suspicious looks after we talked to them, and I'm pretty sure they'll be gossipping about me to the naiads. So yeah, it was that bad."

Percy squirmed under Nico's reproachful look. "I'm sorry, okay? Gods." He heaved a sigh, letting his head drop on Thalia's shoulder. "If only Annabeth was here."

A beat. Then Nico whispered, in a voice low enough Percy would've missed it if he wasn't paying attention, "I miss her, too."

Percy raised his head from Thalia's shoulder. "And Will?"

Nico cracked a small smile. "And Will."

Thalia coughed to hide her mutter of "whipped". Percy ignored her.

The three of them drifted into silence, but because Percy's brain really, really, really couldn't stand silence, he blurted out before his mouth could catch up to his brain, "Anyway, are you sure you won't pay your stepmom a visit?"

"For the love of my dad, Jackson." Thalia threw her hands in the air, narrowly missing Percy's nose by an inch. "How many times do we have to—"

"I'll go if you two decide to come with me."

Percy paused in leaning away from Thalia's wrath to gape at Nico. Cue another pause while Thalia lowered her hands, a thoughtful look crossing her face. Something in Percy's chest shivered at the look on her face; a part of him knew what was coming, but he really, really, really hoped that part would be wrong—

"Sure. When do you want to go? Tomorrow?"

Now Percy turned to gape at Thalia. "No. No way. No way, Pinecone Face. You're joking. Weren't you just..."

Thalia stared back, her irritated expression returning, which made Percy squirm again because her irritated expression could kind of look like Annabeth's irritated expression. "I'm not joking, Kelp Head. Look, the sooner we find out why Nico's step-mom decided to claim him, the closer we'll get to solving the mystery of your new powers. Besides, the likelihood of Lady P turning Nico into a dandelion when we're both there isn't really high... I think."

"You mean Percy's damn new powers?" Nico was smirking as Thalia and him turned to stare at Percy in unison like the traitors they were.

"What?" Percy wanted to pout. Or maybe threw his cousins to the sea for an impromptu swim because they were both traitors. (He missed Jason and Hazel. They were both safe and sound in the Top 1 spot for Percy's "Favorite Cousin" list, which would be unlikely to change unless Nico and Thalia suddenly magically transformed into good cousins who didn't gang up on Percy.)

"Look, I told you, I still can't—" To prove his point, Percy closed his eyes. Concentrated, but the weird feeling he associated with his even weirder time-control powers didn't so much as budged. Instead, it was just the typical tugging from his 'son of Poseidon' powers, so it didn't really surprise him when he opened his eyes and saw the water in front of them parting slightly. With a sigh, Percy let the tugging feeling disappear, and the water splashed back into the beach. "I'll get some practice tonight. Maybe."

Nico exchanged a look with Thalia that Percy so didn't want to get a read on. "What about right now?"

"I can't do it when both of you are staring at me like that. I'm serious, Neeks!" Percy whined, when Nico narrowed his eyes at him. "I'll do it later!"

Nico narrowed his eyes for a little longer, before giving up when Percy narrowed his eyes back at him because two can play at the game. Or however the saying went. "Fine. Everyone in favor of visiting my stepmother tomorrow?" Percy opened his mouth to object, but Nico just totally continued to drone on like the little shit he was, "No objections? Cool. Now that that's handled, we'll start with Luke."

Percy raised his hand, deciding not to hold it against Nico for not asking about how he felt in participating on their trip to the Underworld tomorrow since he'll just... he'll just cross the bridge when he gets to it ("Very good, Seaweed Brain," his mental Wise Girl-voice complimented in an impressed tone, and Percy inwardly preened), but instead. "Objection. Why can't we just... list everything down? Here." He dug into his pocket for Riptide, and the tissue paper (it was clean) Thalia had used for his sandwich earlier.

Thalia's brow furrowed as he handed her the stuff. "Riptide?"

"Why not?"

"I didn't even know you could use Riptide like a normal pen," Nico chimed in as he scooted closer to Thalia to stare at Riptide like it's the first time he's seeing it.

"Magic." Percy grinned, and gestured for Thalia to start writing. "So, the list?"

They made a list.

Technically, Nico made the list because Percy had canoe-racing class (that he so did not use his normal powers to cheat on, thank you. He didn't. Nope. Not even a little bit).

"Keep an eye out for Luke and any sups—spu—" Percy squinted at the tissue. A breeze picked up and ruffled his hair, making him clutch the tissue even harder as he continued to squint at it. "Dude, what the Hades is this? Your handwriting's awful."

"It's 'suspicious activity', and my handwriting's perfectly fine. You're just dyslexic," Nico replied from where he was leaning against the tree.

They ended up meeting at the very edge of the strawberry fields (where nobody could disturb them) this time because a couple of Aphrodite and Apollo kids had started to stray by the beach, and Thalia was paranoid worried their conversation would be overheard.

"No, no. Percy's right." Nico shot Thalia a wounded look when she leaned forward to peer at the tissue. "No offense, but that doesn't even look like 'suspicious activity'. You literally spelled it wrong."

"Dyslexic, remember? It looked right to me."

Thalia opened her mouth, definitely to shoot back a retort, which Percy so could not afford to happen because they had an agenda here. "Oh my gods, you two, can you please—stop." Not bothering to entertain the glares his cousins offered his way, Percy went on, deliberately raising his voice, "Okay, so we're keeping an eye out for any suspicious activities on Luke's part, got it. Next, Nico is gonna be paying Lady P a visit. With me and Thals, of course. Three, I have to practice my new powers because the sooner we get out of here, the less chances of us fucking up the future. Four, Mr D's still the camp director, Katie mentioned it earlier, but we have no idea where he currently is. And... that's it." He set down the tissue paper, and looked at his cousins. "So, are we good?"

"Just peachy," was Nico's bitchy response. He was probably just missing Will or something.

"Now, on to the real problem." Percy took a deep breath. "Confirmation: Younger-Me exists here."

Nico's snort was not the reaction he was expecting. "You think? Chiron literally mentioned it at the Big House."

"...Oh, yeah. I forgot." Percy nodded to himself. He knew there was something he was supposed to remember; he just couldn't remember what. Mystery solved then, thank the gods. Seriously, he had no idea why he even panicked with Clarisse earlier. Must be this whole damn time-travel nightmare messing with his mind.

"You done now, Perce? Because I've been thinking about this—"

"Don't hurt yourself, Neeks," Thalia commented without missing a beat. Percy leaned over to give her a high-five because hey, that was actually smooth. He'd have to remember to use it on like, Clarisse or maybe Leo someday once they were all rescued from this nightmare.

"Moving on," Nico said in a louder voice, the voice that sounded weirdly like his 'listen to me or else' voice he used on the maniac ghosts and skeletons he'd summon, "Why do you think we ended up in the past?"

"Because Percy has shitty time-control powers?"

Percy's jaw dropped as he stared at Thalia in betrayal. "How could you, Thals? I thought we had something here!"

"There has to be a reason," Nico insisted, still using his loud 'listen to me or else' voice. "The gods—"

"Or Fates," Thalia piped up.

"—or Fates don't do coincidence. There has to be a specific reason why we ended up in this time instead of like, Ancient Greece or something."

A split-second pause. Then Thalia shook her head. "Nope. Still think it's because of Kelp Head's shitty powers."

"Oh my gods, Airhead. Seriously, screw you." Percy reached over to shove her shoulder, then thought better of it when Thalia's eyes flashed. Nevermind. "I don't even think—"

"Maybe," Nico continued in his 'listen to me or else' voice, making Percy snap his mouth shut because wow, when was the last time Nico actually acted like his real age of eighty-something years old for once? Seriously, he stopped their arguments three times in like, five minutes and everything, "the gods sent us here because we gotta stop Luke from joining Kronos and starting the Titan War."

The moment the last word slipped out of his cousin's mouth, Percy traded a look with Thalia. "Well. Your theory's not stupid, Death Breath, but—"

"Percy's stupid time-travel powers theory trumps it everyday."

Percy scrambled to his feet to jab a finger at Thalia's direction. "Screw you, Grace! How about I kick your ass right now? No powers needed!"

"Oh, yeah?" Thalia had also scrambled to her feet. There was a glint in her eye Percy so didn't like, but whatever. He could do this. He could so kick her ass. "Let's see what you've got—"

"I hope we'll have Capture the Flag tomorrow," Nico interrupted loudly, interrupting Percy's mental battle plans of a one-on-one fight with Thalia that mostly consisted of tackling her to the ground and not getting killed. "So it'd be easy to sneak off into the Underworld."

Thalia scoffed at Nico's very obvious attempt to placate them into not destroying the strawberry fields. But it did the job, so. Percy made a mental note to limit his teasing of Nico in the next few days they'll be stuck here. "Please, di Angelo. It's only been like, what? Two days since we got here? Like Hades the gods will listen to us."

They had Capture the Flag the next day.

Luke announced it after Travis and Connor woke up the rest of the cabin by dumping buckets of ice-cold water on them.

Percy didn't really mind; it wasn't like the dampness did anything to him, but he did make sure not to dry himself off too much in case people got suspicious. "Seems like the gods don't hate us that much after all."

Nico shot him a dirty look from behind the still-wet bangs stuck to his forehead. He'd been one of the campers who practically shot into the air hadn't been pleased with the Stoll brothers' unexpected morning alarm. "Don't get your hopes up."

Thalia snorted. "I know we're not supposed to, Zombie Boy. But at this point, I'm just hoping we won't get turned into like, poinsettias or something if we ever meet... Lady P..."

She screeched to a sudden halt near at entrance to the dining pavilion, causing Percy to almost collide with her and probably send them both sprawling to the ground if it wasn't for his hero reflexes making him jump back at the last second.

"Geez, Pinecone Face, some kind of warning would've been nice." Straightening himself, Percy wondered just what the Hades made his cousin freeze like she was either one of Medusa's stone statues—wait, no, that was a bad joke (was it a bad joke?) or Khione's ice statues (was it also a bad joke?) while he raised his head to look for the source of Thalia's need to re-enact Medusa's and/or Khione's victims. "Seriously, I thought you were supposed to be the Lieute—fuck!" Percy choked on his spit.

Nico made a sound that sounded like a dying walrus beside him.

Persephone—Lady P, Nico's lovely stepmom whom they were planning to pay a visit later (for the love of Olympus, it was way too fucking early for this, and also? It was only three days since they got here, literally three days!!)—gave a thin-lipped smile as she rose from the Zeus table, her dark hair glistening in the sunlight. "Hello, Nico."

Chapter Text

This just confirmed that the Big Three kids had to have the worst bad luck in the world.

Because Nico? Had been stuck in a magical casino for seven decades. Hazel? Supposed to be dead. Bianca? Was actually dead. Jason? Also dead. Thalia? Got turned into a tree. Percy? Somehow developed time-travel powers he didn't even ask for, which got them stuck in this nightmare in the first place.

Not to mention Nico's step-mom was now making her way towards them, all goddess-like and looking like she meant business or something when Percy hadn't even had breakfast yet. (He'd just wanted to finish college without prophecies or quests or other weird shitty demigod stuff happening to him and Annabeth, for Zeus' sake. Is that too much to ask?!)

"Perce." Nico tugged at his sleeve, dragging Percy out of the bad thoughts his mind had wandered off to. "Help me!"

"What do you mean, help you?!" Percy hissed from the corner of his mouth as he tried to keep a straight face and not you know, panic at the obvious panic in Nico's voice. Even if now would be a very good time to panic. Or better yet, go to Olympus and demand just what the Hades was happening because remind him again why did Persephone, out of all the gods, just suddenly appear in the middle of camp when they didn't even get to have breakfast yet? As if reading his mind, Nico's tugging became frantic. So really, Percy had no choice but to face his cousin, and hiss more urgently, "Neeks, man, I love you and all, but please, for the love of gods, let go. I can't protect you if you if keep tugging on my shirt like that—"

But Nico just shook his head, the uncharacteristic panicked expression still stuck on his face. Which was only slightly weird because Percy knew for a fact that Nico had been through two wars and survived so he shouldn't be panicking too much, but also not really that weird because this was Persephone they were talking about. "Can't you use your powers to get us out of—mierda, she's here!"

Percy swallowed hard as a shadow fell over them. Mustering the smile he'd use to charm the socks off of Annabeth (gods, he missed Annabeth) when she didn't want to go for a quick make-out session because she'd rather work on a paper that wouldn't be due for like, two weeks at most, he turned to face Persephone. Up close, she looked different from the last time he got a good long look at her—her long, wavy hair more brown than black, multi-colored eyes somehow brighter instead of looking like the life had been seeped out of them, her skin not as deathly pale like the way it was when she summoned Percy, Thalia, and Nico to steal—ahem, retrieve Hades' brand new sword from Ethan Nakamura. Long story short, Persephone didn't look like Nico. At all. (Percy could only hope no one would bring it up.) "Milady."

Thalia elbowed him in the other side, hard enough to hurt, which made Percy think he must've messed things up someho—oh. Clearing his throat, he added in a louder voice, "Is that what we should be calling you, um...?"

But Persephone barely spared him a glance, her gaze going straight to Nico. Percy didn't know whether to be offended, or relieved. "A word, Nico?"

Nico seemed to unfreeze at that, fingers uncurling from Percy's sleeve as he bowed to Persephone. "Of course, Lady P." There was a brief pause, the last word echoing around the mess hall for the campers to hear. (Percy was pretty sure Thalia would've electrocuted Nico—and Percy, by default, because he did start the whole 'Lady P' thing—if it wouldn't look too suspicious. But Nico, thank the gods, had quickly realized what he'd said, because he corrected himself, "I mean, mother." Percy winced at the awkwardness emanating from his cousin. Said cousin must've sensed the awkwardness as well, since he croaked out a weak, "Uh—Mom?"

"Either of those is fine." Persephone made a beckoning gesture with her hand. "Come."

Again, Percy tried very hard to keep a straight face and not exchange a panicked look with Thalia because what. Or maybe do something drastic like seize Nico by the arms and demand, "You're not going to turn him into a magnolia, are you?" to Persephone. Because that was just... not a good idea. So he didn't do it.

Anyway, after Nico had finished stumbling to Persephone's side (cue reminder from his mental Wise Girl-voice to not grab Nico and run off because does Percy want to be turned into a chrysanthemum?), she reached out to clasp a hand on his shoulder. Percy didn't miss Nico's back go ramrod straight at the touch, like he was five seconds away from jumping out of his skin. Before anyone else in the mess hall could say another word, the temperature dropped, and a burst of shadows rushed towards Nico and Persephone, engulfing them in a circle of darkness.

"What the Hades?" somebody said out loud.

...Percy so wasn't built for this kind of whatever-the-Hades was happening. Hell, this shouldn't even be happening to him. He's supposed to be at the cafeteria right now, talking to Daniel from his General Physics class or Marianne from his Integrative Oceans class or even Kevin, not stuck in the gods damned past because of his stupid powers. He hadn't even have breakfast yet, gods dammit.

"Food first," his mental Wise Girl voice advised sagely. Percy didn't need to be told twice.

"Either of those?" Thalia all but muttered to Percy as he grabbed her arm to pull her to the Hermes table, Chiron's announcement that if everyone could 'please return to their tables and continue with breakfast' only half-registering in his ears. A bunch of the younger kids—namely Travis and Connor—continued to stare, open-mouthed, at the spot where Persephone disappeared with Nico. Percy pushed past them to head over to the farthest end of the table, where a basket of breadrolls, and a plate full of pancakes sat waiting for them. When he reached out to sieze the biggest piece of roll, Thalia hissed in his ear again, "What the hell is happening? We've been here for three days—"

"Thals, I also love you and all, but please stop asking me questions because I literally have no idea what's happening either, okay? Why don't we just—" Percy motioned to the fire with his breadroll "—first? Then maybe eat, because I'm starving."

Thalia muttered something Percy was pretty sure was an insult to his manliness in Ancient Greek, but she kept her mouth shut, grabbed two pancakes, and trailed after him.

"Cheer up, Pinecone Face." Percy nudged Thalia's shoulder after they had slunk back to the farthest end of the Hermes table, away from Connor and Travis and all the other Hermes kids who could overhear them (okay, maybe like a few inches away because the table was crowded as Hades) all the while pretending not to hear the whispers of the other campers from the other tables despite Chiron's very loud and very pointed announcement earlier. "At least we wouldn't have to go to the Underworld to visit Lady P," he added in an undertone.

Thalia tore into her barbecue with a huff. Her clothes had, thanks to the fire, began to dry up, as did her hair. Percy didn't want to admit it, but Thalia without her 'Lieutenant of Artemis' circlet didn't really... look like the Thalia he knew. (Here's to hoping they can get the Hades out of this time-travelling nightmare sooner, which looked more likely if Nico could get Persephone on their side.) "I don't need to spend a year in this camp to know that gods don't just appear out of nowhere and whisk their kids away to 'talk' to them, Kelp Head."

Percy knew the last part was said loudly in case somebody was eavesdropping in their conversation, but he still had to resist the urge to roll his eyes at Thalia's overdramaticness. Sometimes, he could swear blue eyes and lightning powers weren't the only things his cousin inherited from Zeus. "Seriously, Thals, relax. Lady P won't do anything to him. I mean, she's his mom." The lie sounded weird on his tongue, but hey, it was for the benefit of possible eavesdroppers. At Thalia's arched eyebrow, Percy continued, "It's just—instincts. Gut feeling."

It's not that he personally didn't think Nico was safe with Lady P, exactly. It's just that... well, they'd have no idea what to do if Nico got turned into a dandelion again, but that was a pretty big "if" because Persephone didn't look like she was in the mood to turn demigods into her personal flower garden.

Thalia's face softened, probably at the mention of his instincts. Because Percy's instincts were hardly ever wrong. Uh, kind of. "Guess I'll just have to take your word for it this time, huh?"

Percy nudged Thalia's shoulder again. "Never knew you could be so supportive, Airhead. I'm touched."

Thalia rolled her eyes, but Percy didn't miss the slight smile twitching on the edges of her lips. "Don't get used to it."

"Don't get used to what?" Travis piped up beside Percy, all traces of mischief back in his voice. He'd evidently already got over the whole 'did a goddess really just kidnap our cabinmate right in front of us?' thing with Nico.

"Gods of Olympus, kid, you almost scared the sh—the Styx out of me." Thalia had set down her fork to place a hand over her chest.

The familiar mischievious grin had stretched across Travis' face. Again, it looked—really, it looked weird, but not because Travis looked weird when he grinned. It's just the whole 'I can't believe half of camp is a kid I can't believe they're all kids this is so wrong' thing again, because even if Percy's been stuck in the past for like three whole days, he will never not get over seeing the faces of people he knew for years look almost like a decade younger right now. Damn his stupid new powers. "Did I really scare you?"

Thalia picked up her fork again without batting an eyelash. "Nope. It'll take a lot more than that to scare me."

Travis snorted. "Lame—"

"Wait, how are we lame?" Percy interrupted loudly.

"—but anyway, here's our cabin's schedule. Connor was s'pposed to let you read this yesterday after breakfast but he forgot." Travis whipped out a crumpled piece of paper from seemingly out of nowhere, the words Daily Activity Schedule stamped on the top, and handed it to Percy.

"Archery?" Thalia asked from over Percy's shoulder, also peering at the schedule. "Ha. Good luck, Aquaman."

So, Thalia was wrong.

It turned out she needed the luck more than Percy did, because there were—problems. Of the godly variety. Sure, Percy had his own fair share of problems when it came to archery (thank the gods Chiron had been infinitely patient with twelve year-old Percy when it came to de-snagging arrows from his tail back then, and he was still infinitely patient now), but Thalia's problem was worse. Especially with The Gameplan in action.

"Can you at least pretend to suck at it?" Percy muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Thalia to hear as he stopped beside her, his own bow clutched tightly in his hand. The rest of the campers who had archery scheduled—like five Demeter kids and practically the whole Hermes cabin—had stopped sometime between the third arrow, and were currently whispering amongst themselves while alternating staring between Thalia and her bullseye. It didn't take a son of Athena to know what exactly they were talking about.

"I'm trying! It's not me!" she hissed back, letting the arrow fly. Like it was pulled by a magnet, the arrow landed dead center of the yellow ring.

Crap. "So, it's what?" Percy tried not to let the hysterical note show in his voice. "You-know-who's you-know-what?" 'You-know-who's you-know-what' being Artemis' blessing obviously.

Thalia pressed her lips into a thin line, like she didn't want to admit he was right, but even if she didn't, it wasn't like there was any other option. "Probably."

Percy resisted the urge to throw his bow to the ground, walk away from the archery range, and drown himself in the lake. He should've realized following through with the gameplan wouldn't be as easy as he'd thought it'd be. "Dad help us."

"I swear, if those little shits tell everyone I'm a daughter of Apollo—"

"Don't electrocute them."

"No offense, Kelp Head, but that is not not how you say vlakas."

After the sixty minutes of the torture that was archery with the Demeter and Hermes kids came sixty minutes of another torture (okay, not really). This morning's Ancient Greek class was held at one end of the arena, far away from the other end to make sure they wouldn't get clobbered with flying swords from the cabins who had swordfighting class. Ancient Greek included like half of the Hephaestus cabin and the Athena cabin, which made sense because Malcolm was facilitating it instead of Annabeth. (It was still a trip for Percy to look up from his copy of Homer and see an eleven—or ten? Probably ten—year old Malcolm in front of him.)

Thalia poked his arm for the hundredth time in the past fifteen minutes that felt closer to fifteen thousand hours. "Seriously, that's really not how you say vlakas."

With a sigh, Percy set down his copy of Homer, and gave Thalia his best 'I'm actually trying to contentrate here, so please stop bothering me?? Also, I have no idea why you keep telling me this when Malcolm is right there' expression. He'd forgot how annoying Thalia could be, especially when it came to everything she'd learned in the Hunt. At this point, he's pretty sure the 'everything' included Ancient Greek considering she wouldn't shut up about the pronounciation of certain words. Sometimes, he couldn't believe Thalia was technically supposed to be twenty-something year-old. "Then how do you say it, Pinecone Face?"

"Vlakas."

"That's what I said!" Percy protested, seeing Thalia's lips twitch a little too late. "Oh, screw you, Thals."

"Do you two ever stop fighting?" Connor cut in from behind them.

"No," was Percy's immediate response, at the same time Thalia quipped, "Do you ever stop fighting with your brother?"

It took a few seconds for Connor to respond, like he was really thinking about Thalia's question. Then he gave a shrug, lips quirking into the familiar Hermes kid grin. "Not really."

Thalia spread her hands as if to say, there you go. It was apparently enough of an explanation for Connor, since he turned back to whispering with Travis and absolutely not paying attention to Malcolm at all.

"What's taking Nico so long?" Percy muttered to Thalia after fifteen more minutes of pretending he had no idea how to read Ancient Greek while Thalia snickered beside him.

"You don't think he got turned into a dandelion, do you?" Thalia muttered back.

Percy shook his head, letting his hair flop in front of his face for a moment, before he lifted a hand to push his fringe away from his eyes. "Nah. If anything, Lady P would probably turn him into a sunflower."

"Oh my gods." Thalia lightly smacked his shoulder with her own copy of Homer. "You are so not helping."

Lunch, the rest of the afternoon activities, and dinner passed by in a blur. (Thank the gods.) Percy tried not to let his worry show too much because Nico still wasn't back, and Thalia looked like she was this close to storming to the Underworld to look for Nico herself with every passing hour.

Thankfully, the Fates seemed to have heard Percy's prayers. Halfway through the meeting for Capture the Flag, Nico stumbled inside the dining pavilion.

"Shit, Neeks—" Percy was instantly on his feet, abandoning the sword he was trying to see weighed better than the sword Luke lent him during swordfighting class yesterday, and rushed towards his cousin.

Thalia scooted to the side to make room for Nico after they'd reached the Hermes table, but she didn't reach out to touch him, which was—completely understandable. Even when Nico had started to tolerate people throwing an arm around his shoulders, nudging their shoulders together, or letting their head fall against his shoulder, Percy knew his cousin wouldn't appreciate being smothered in front practically almost everyone in Camp Half-Blood, even if they didn't really know who he was. "How did it go? She didn't turn you into a flower, did she?"

"What?!" Travis and Connor squawked in unison.

"Lady Persephone does that?" Katie, who had leaned on her elbows to peer at Nico, had turned to stare at Thalia with wide eyes.

"Dunno." Thalia shrugged her shoulders. "But that's one of her powers in Mythomagic. It's a card game," she added, and Percy heaved a mental sigh of relief at Thalia's quick thinking.

"Hey, kid." Luke's voice made Percy's head snap back towards the front of the table, where he'd been explaining the temporary alliance of the cabins in Capture the Flag for Percy's and Thalia's benefits, aka he'd been acting like a good camp counselor and not the would-be bad guy who was probably already secretly following Kronos' orders. "You okay with joining us for Capture the Flag? Because if you're not up for it..."

"I'm okay." For a split-second, Nico sounded like he didn't expect Luke to be concerned about him, before he repeated, voice growing hard, the voice Percy recognized as his 'I'm the son of Hades, obey me' voice, "Yeah, I'm okay."

Luke nodded, a satisfied expression flickering across his face. "Good. Peter, Taliyah, fill him in with the rules. The three of you are on border patrol duty. Travis, Connor, stay with me. I need you and Katie along with Nyssa..."

Percy let Luke drone on about their plans, keeping half an ear out on Thalia's explanation of the rules to Nico even when Nico didn't really need it while he grabbed another Celestial bronze sword. Its leather grip couldn't match up to Riptide, but at least this one didn't feel like it would fall out of his hand. Next was a helmet, a shield, a breastplate that hopefully fit him just fine...

Then Luke was yelling something like, "Blue team, forward!" and Percy tore his attention away from the weapons to glance at his cousins.

We follow Luke? Thalia mouthed at him, her words lost over the cheers of the other cabins.

Later, Percy mouthed back. After an emergency meeting with Nico.

It was awfully convenient of Luke to assign the three of them on border patrol, but Percy would take whatever luck he could get considering his luck had been nothing but bad luck since he'd got his stupid time-travel powers.

The creek Thalia had decided they should loiter by, long after their fellow blue team campers ran past them, was coincidentally the very same creek Percy had guarded back during his first ever Capture the Flag.

"So, Zombie Boy." Thalia pushed her helmet out of her face. Percy opened his mouth to say it looked ridiculous on her, along with the breastplate that was probably three sizes too big, but decided it wasn't for the best because he still wasn't in the mood to get electrocuted tonight. "What happened with Lady P? Did you get her to be on our side or what?"

The moonlight made Nico's face look older, like he was more his eighty-plus years of age instead of his physical fifteen years. "Yeah, but. Someone told her."

"About...?" Thalia urged, dropping her voice to a whisper. Percy shuffled forward to hear Nico's reply.

Nico shook his head. "She wouldn't say what, exactly, but she knows—"

A sudden rustling on the other side of the creek made him fall silent. Without warning, a whole lot of campers—red-plumed helmets, opposite team—charged out of the darkness.

"What the Hades." It wasn't Percy's proudest moment when he'd realized what the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven... twelve... thirteen campers were brandishing.

"Punk." Clarisse stepped forward, her grip tight around Lamer. As if on cue, the kids behind her jeered. Red light crackled around them.

Nico's sharp intake of breath beside Percy only confirmed this was... actually real. Like, it wasn't just a dream or something. Like, the whole Ares cabin really was out to get them, and they all held a variant of Lamer.

Clarisse's eyes flashed from behind her helmet. "Get them!"

The campers darted towards their direction, but Percy was done. He was so done. There was just no way, in any time period, in the past, present or future or wherever, was he gonna run away from Clarisse when she should be the one who needed to learn a lesson and stop messing with him—

"Kelp Head, what the hell are you standing there for?! Run!"

Percy yelped as two hands grabbed his arms, and he found himself being dragged back by Thalia and Nico.

"Oh, c'mon! I was going to teach them a lesson not to mess with us!" he protested, wrenching his arms away from his cousins' grips to run beside them.

"Remember the gameplan!" Nico snarked back, which—okay, yeah, he had a point. No advanced use of powers, no expert sword fighting moves, no anything that could give away the fact they weren't from here, which definitely sucked, but he had a point.

They managed to get away from the Ares kids through sheer stroke of luck by hiding in the underbush on the other side of the creek, and by then all three of them unanimously agreed to ditch the swords, the shields, and the armor if they didn't want to get tired from all the running.

Percy had never really noticed how heavy the armor was, but then again, he hadn't really got the chance to get chased by practically the whole Ares cabin until tonight. Normally Clarisse only sent like half of her siblings after him, but Percy guessed he must've really pissed her off with the little stunt he pulled yesterday (which was for her own good??) because she didn't hold back with the magic items and siblings hell-bent on getting revenge.

Unfortunately, Ares must've chose the time to be a great father, since all his damn kids had somehow managed to spot them, which left Percy no choice but to run away again unless he wanted to be electrocuted by like thirteen Lamers all at once.

"This way!" Percy darted back to the creek, because if he couldn't officially use his powers, maybe he could at least get his strength back with the water.

Unfortunately, yet another Ares kid appeared in his path, and it was—in Percy's defense, it was instinctive, really. Really, it was. It was literally just instinct because he was a son of Poseidon, it was his damn powers, he was near a freaking creek, so why wouldn't it be instinctive to use them?

But anyway, the familiar tugging in his gut returned as the Ares kid thrust at him with his Lamer.

A bunch of water rose from the creek behind the Ares kid, just as two pairs of hands seized the back of Percy's shirt, and another tugging started to swirl in his gut, but it was different, unfamiliar, except not really—

"Perce—shit, Peter, don't!"

The water splashed back, the impact huge enough to dredge the Ares kid, Percy, and whom he could only assume were Thalia and Nico behind him judging by their very loud and very creative curses (Nico was swearing in Italian, but Percy just knew it was a bunch of very creative swearing his cousin wouldn't repeat anywhere near Will) in a wave of water.

The last things he thought before the unfamiliar tugging in his gut made itself known were, in no particular order, oh wow why do bad things always happen to me? and not again, then his surroundings had tilted to the left—

Suddenly, sunlight streamed into his eyes. Percy threw his hands over his face, ears registering the murmurs of a crowd around him. Then his vision adjusted, and as he slowly lowered his hand, he realized where he was:

In the dining pavilion, with Persephone and practically everyone staring at him. At them. At him and Nico and Thalia because—oh, right. Persephone.

Percy would've laughed at the mildly puzzled look on Lady P's face like she knew something weird had just happened if he wasn't currently even more soaking wet than he was when he first met her earlier this morning. Now. Or whatever.

"Nico." Just like this morning, Persephone made a beckoning gesture with her hand. "Come." Percy tried to ignore the wtf look on his cousin's face as Nico let go of the back of Percy's shirt to stumble towards Lady P, whose eyes flickered to Percy for the briefest of seconds, before settling on Thalia. "Your... godly parent would like to have a word with you."

And just like this morning, she and Nico were gone in a flash of shadows.

But her words had sent a strange chill down Percy's spine (or maybe it was just the breeze that had suddenly whipped past them), because godly parent? This didn't happen earlier? Were the Fates messing with them again?!

On second thought, the Fates were definitely messing with them again, because suddenly, floating on top of Thalia's head that so hadn't been there before five seconds ago or this morning for that matter, was a hologram of a golden bow.

"What. The fuck." Percy just knew his voice had cracked. And that the weird feeling at the base of his spine had been dejá vù.

"What?" Thalia narrowed her eyes at him, before realization visibly dawned on her face. His tone had probably helped with the process. "Are you—oh my gods. If you say it's the Z-man, I swear—"

"It's Apollo, I'm afraid." Chiron's wry smile made Percy want to give a hysterical laugh. At least someone was being normal about this whole nightmare. "Hail Taliyah Levesque. Daughter of Apollo, god of the sun, leader of the Muses, bringer of plagues, slayer of the Python."

Whispers instantly exploded around the mess hall.

"Apollo?" Thalia repeated in disgust. The air around her started to crackle, the heat drying up her wet hair and clothes (and Percy's, by proximity) in an instant. "Apollo?!"

All thoughts of hysterical laughter had disappeared from Percy's mind at the possibility of Chiron and everyone else possibly getting electrocuted and the news spreading like wildfire to Olympus. "Thals, chill!" He grabbed her arm to stop her from bringing down a whole lightning bolt in the mess hall if worse turned to worst.

Thank gods Chiron probably witnessed a thousand tantrums of demigods not getting the godly parent they wanted because he didn't look too alarmed at Thalia's outburst, but Percy just couldn't let his cousin badmouth Apollo no matter how pissed Thalia was at him (how pissed all the Big Three kids were, actually) for getting Jason killed like why did Jason have to die again?. "Maybe they just, uh, made a mistake?"

No sooner the words left his mouth did the golden bow seemed to glitch right in front of his eyes, before transforming into a single blue-green peacock feather.

Percy dropped Thalia's arm to stare at the new symbol in horror. "...What the fuck?!"

Chapter Text

Thalia was going to kill someone.

Percy just knew it. He didn't have to be a genius like Annabeth to know the way his cousin's face darkened meant she was going to kill someone. Preferably her step-mom. Or Zeus. Or Apollo.

"Thals, hey." Percy gave what he hoped didn't sound like a nervous laugh as he lifted a hand to pat Thalia's shoulder in a comforting way, mindful of the sparks of electricity that jumped from her hair, and the other campers gawking at them like they'd never seen someone getting claimed twice in the span of two minutes (or less) before. "Can we just calm down—"

"Calm down?! Calm down??" More sparks jumped from Thalia's hair. Percy quickly let his hand fall to his side again. A part of his brain wondered just how the Hades they were going to spin this side of Thalia's powers—maybe summoning electricity could be an extension of Hera's domain because she was Zeus' wife?—but he pushed the thought away to focus on calming Thalia down. "Do not tell me to calm down, Per—Peter Johnson—"

"Remember the plan!" Percy hissed desperately in a last ditch attempt to stop Thalia from storming to Olympus for real.

That, miraculously, thank the gods, made Thalia look kind of less like she was going to kill someone. Plus, the sparks kind of fizzled out into nothing, so thank the gods for that, too. (Percy missed his dorm room. He missed Annabeth. He even missed Dr Elliot, for the gods' sake. Why did his stupid new powers just had to mess with his normal college life?)

A loud cough in the loud silence made him head snap to the front of the mess hall, where Chiron stood. Percy couldn't read the look on his face, but he had a feeling Chiron was probably inwardly like, 'wtf is going on???' because hell, if Percy was in Chiron's place, he'd so be reacting the same way, immortal centaur or not. "Unfortunately, it, ah, appears there has been some sort of mistake."

"Mistake?!"

Thalia had returned to looking like she was going to kill someone and/or storm up to Olympus herself, so Percy made a grab for her arm again. "Pinecone Face, just—"

"Hail Taliyah Levesque." Chiron's voice echoed through the mess hall, louder this time. "Daughter of Hera, Queen of Olympus."

Hera (and maybe Apollo? Seriously, what the hell was going on? Wasn't Percy getting his shitty time-travel powers which resulted in them getting dumped into the past—or an alternate universe version of their past—and Nico getting claimed by Lady P punishment enough?) claiming Thalia was the worst thing to happen today, and it included the Ares kids' hate boner for him during Capture the Flag tonight. (Yesterday?)

For starters, even Travis and Conner side-eyed Thalia when Percy managed to drag her to the Hermes table. He was also pretty sure Chiron didn't know what to make of the two out of three (2/3) new half-bloods that have been claimed in the span of three days by goddesses who really had no business claiming anyone. Percy could already see the gameplan falling apart right in front of his eyes, but he pushed that thought away—he was going to deal with it later with the help of his Wise Girl-voice—to shove more barbecue in his mouth to make him feel better about the shitshow that was the current situation (stupid time-travel powers, Persephone claiming Nico, Apollo and Hera claiming Thalia, and did Percy mention stupid time-travel powers?).

"Airhead." He nudged the plate of buttered toast towards his cousin. "Hey."

But Thalia shook her head. "Not in the mood, Aquaman."

Percy wisely decided to just let her be (no point pushing Thalia's buttons if she was in a mood as bad as this one) and returned his attention to his barbecue, but not before shooting her a look that said, we'll talk about this later.

He finished his breakfast (no Stolls to give them the schedule? Weird) while pretending most of the campers weren't staring at them and whispering again, and was about to follow the rest of the cabin to the arena, but Thalia's hand around his arm stopped him.

"What?" he hissed under his breath. In response, Thalia pulled him to the side, then started to drag him away from the mess hall. "Where are we going?"

Thalia didn't reply, so Percy tugged at her arm, prompting a loud sigh from Thalia like he was the one dragging her off to Hephaestus-knows-where. "To Olympus, obviously."

"Olympus?! Are you crazy—no, don't answer that," he added, catching sight of his cousin's murderous expression. "Look, Thals, I love you and all, but you can't just storm up there and, I dunno, get into a screaming match with Her Fucked-upness even if she totally deserves it—"

"I have the right to scream at her because she claimed me, Jackson!" Thalia cut him off loudly. Percy shushed her, just in case anyone was eavesdropping and would like, end up telling Chiron about how one of the newbies hated their godly parents or something. "Also, when the Hades did you turn into such a goody-two shoes—"

Percy couldn't help but do a not-really-judgemental-but-okay-maybe-kinda-judgemental eyebrow raise at that. "Uh, I'm only a goody two shoes because you and Nico aren't acting your age? Which, I can't believe I'm reminding you, but you're both way older than me, and are supposed to be the mature, responsible adults here?"

Thalia fell silent for a long moment. "...I'm going to Olympus. I don't care if you don't wanna go with me, but I'm going to Olympus, and beating up You-Know-Her with a gods damned lightning bolt for getting me into this mess."

They were going to Olympus.

Percy didn't need to consult his mental-Wise Girl voice to realize it's a bad idea. Sneaking out when they were supposed to be acting like good campers during swordfighting class and not disrupting the timeline? Bad idea with a capital B. He couldn't stress enough how it was a bad idea.

On the moderately brighter side, at least Thalia didn't suggest they pick a fight with Persephone for kidnapping Nico again, so he was definitely giving her bonus points for this particular bad idea, even if he couldn't help but think things were going to go wrong (didn't they always?) later.

Percy so didn't miss the Gray Sisters' taxi, but it was the fastest way to Manhattan—specifically, to the Empire State Building, where the elevator to the six-hundredth floor waited for them.

"So." He shifted his gaze away from the familiar path of floating stones that led to Olympus to look at Thalia expectantly. "What's the plan? Don't get evaporated by You-Know-Her?"

Thalia nodded. A determined look that reminded Percy eerily of Jason (RIP Jason) had settled on her face. "Make sure nobody gets in the way while I deal with her."

"Got it."

Thankfully, nobody stopped them when they crossed the sky bridge and towards the streets, past the parks, the gardens, and the markets on their way to the main palace. A weird chill brush over Percy as he stared at the huge, even more familiar, gold-and-silver doors in the hall of the gods. Ignoring the weird chill with all his might, he gestured to the doors. "Do I just..."

But the rest of his words had died in his throat because Thalia had pushed past him, shoved at the doors with a huge amount of strength he had no clue she even possessed (was it also a perk of being a lieutenant of Artemis or what?) and strode inside the throne room to shout, "Why the hell did you claim me?!"

Yeah, the question was directed straight to her step-mom. Or apparently-mom here in the past or wherever they were.

Whatever Hera was right now (step-mom, goddess who claimed Thalia instead of Zeus for reasons unknown) to Thalia, her reaction definitely didn't look pleased to see her step-daughter (fake-daughter?) stomp towards her giant human form on her equally gigantic throne.

In fact, she looked five seconds away from blasting Thalia to dust, so Percy, like the good cousin he was, took it as his cue to ignore the initial request (i.e., make sure nobody gets in the way while she deals with Hera which, in hindsight, had not been a pretty good decision considering Hera was like ten feet tall) Thalia had told him, to dart inside the throne room and stop her from making one of the worst decisions of her second life so far.

Adrenaline—because of what he just did, aka run after Thalia like a dumbass—and nervousness—because it was just his bad luck like another god aside from Hera was also in the throne room—rushing through his veins, he seized the back of Thalia's shirt to get her to stop stomping to her step-mom. The air crackled with electricity the moment his fingers came into contact with her shirt, but Percy ignored it with the determination of someone who so didn't want his cousin to be turned to smithereens. "What the Hades, Pinecone Face—"

"Well, well, what do we have here? What's your name, demigod?" a voice purred, nearly making Percy jump a foot in the air.

He whirled around, and almost melted on the spot. Because staring back at him was a giant human form of Annabeth—curly-blonde hair he missed so much, storm-gray eyes he hadn't seen in like three days, and all. Grip slackening on Thalia's shirt, Percy opened his mouth to blurt out how much he missed his girlfriend, but her form flickering slightly had stopped him.

"Peter Johnson, unclaimed," he blurted out instead. A smile curled at the edges of not-Annabeth-so-probably-Aphrodite's mouth. The smile, looking so damn much like Annabeth's private smile, made his heart skip a beat. Of course, that was when Thalia pretty much figured he was distracted, and wrenched herself out of his grip with a well-placed shove like Percy wasn't trying to save her life here. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Hera's form start to glow, and swore out loud. "Shit. Thals, close your eyes—!"

As if on cue, the unfamiliar-but-had-now-grown-into-something-almost-familiar tugging in the bottom of Percy's emerged. He made a desperate grab for Thalia's sleeve just as his surroundings tilted sideways for like the second time today—

Sunlight, a few feet away from the emptying mess hall, his fingers clenched around Thalia's sleeve.

"I was fucking close, Kelp Head!"

Percy snorted (despite his heartbeat pounding in his chest) as he let go of Thalia's sleeve. "Close to getting evaporated, yeah."

But Thalia wasn't listening. "If we could get back there—"

"No." Obviously, letting go of his cousin's sleeve was a bad mistake, so Percy reached for it again. "For the love of the gods, Airhead, calm down! You're probably not even that mad at her—" another murderous look, another instance of Percy placating Thalia with a quickly-followed up, "okay, nevermind, you're definitely mad, but like, hear me out. Maybe us getting trapped in this stupid nightmare is messing with your head. Makes you want to kill her or something."

Thalia stared at him, unimpressed, but also? She didn't look like she wanted to murder him with her bare hands and a well-timed electric shock, so he'll take it as a win. "I have no idea if you hit your head on the way to Olympus, but did you forget what she did to you after the Titan War? Even if your stupid new powers aren't involved, I'd still wanna kill her."

Percy opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "Fair enough. But—let's just calm down. Because I have another theory." Which wasn't actually what he was going to say. It was just a last-ditched attempt to get Thalia to calm down, and stop her from storming Olympus twice in one day.

"About what?"

"About my time-travel powers."

Thalia narrowed her eyes into an intense glare that reminded Percy, again, of Jason (RIP Jason again). "Go on."

Judging it was safe to let go of Thalia's sleeve, Percy let go to grab her wrist instead, and drag her further away from the mess hall just in case (he wouldn't put it pass some of the other campers to eavesdrop on what the newbies—one unclaimed, one a freaking daughter of Hera (?)—were talking about) all the while urging his brain to make up the most plausible theory he could come up with on the spot to explain his shitty time-travel powers. "What if... what if the reason why we keep getting thrown back to the past is because we were making a bunch of wrong decisions when we were supposed to make the right ones?"

He offered Thalia an expected look once he'd finished with the last word, at the same time mentally giving himself a high-five for coming up with the theory in the first place without any help from his mental-Wise Girl.

"So you're saying—" A crease had formed between Thalia's brows "you're saying the two of us storming Olympus was the wrong thing to do, so your stupid powers sent us back in time so we could make the right choice?"

Percy nodded. "Exactly."

"But if we stormed the Underworld right now..." Thalia trailed off, her voice taking a contemplative edge to it. "Wipe that dumb look off your face, Kelp Head. Lady P knows something. Nico said so, remember?"

Percy gaped at her. From over her shoulder, he could see the remaining campers in the mess hall shooting not-so-subtle looks their way. Crap. ("Ignore them," his mental-Wise Girl voice advised sagely.) "But... but..."

"But?" Thalia's eyes hardened, like she was daring him to speak what was on his mind.

Percy really had no idea when he'd started acting like the moral compass whenever his cousins were involved (it probably started after Jason's death), but like he said earlier, he guessed someone had to be the responsible one right now since it was clear it wasn't going to be Thalia or Nico. "Can't we just take a break today or something?"

"Do you wanna suffer through Ancient Greek with Malcolm again?" Thalia asked, definitely copying his not-really-judgemental-but-okay-maybe-kinda-judgemental eyebrow raise.

"No," was Percy's immediate response.

"Then we're going to the Underworld."

They stared at the pile of boulders north of the Pond in Central Park, aka the Doors of Orpheus. The pile of boulders, aka the Doors of Orpheus, stared back.

Percy cleared his throat. "How's your singing?"

Thalia grimaced as she continued to stare at the boulders like her stare alone could reveal the tunnel. "You know how it is."

"Yeah, but mine's worse, so..." Percy trailed off, attempting to shrug so Thalia could deliberately get the hint.

"Are you telling me Death Breath was the one who—"

"I got Grover to play his leed pipes," he interrupted quickly, really not wanting to get into Thalia dissing their cousin's singing voice. "Look, I'll pay you ten bucks."

"You don't have ten bucks," Thalia deadpanned. She had turned her full attention to him now, arms crossed over her chest, one corner of her mouth tugged down. It made her slightly impatient expression look just slightly scarier than normal.

The sight kinda made Percy regret tagging along on her very bad plan (but thankfully, it wasn't worse than the storming Olympus one) in the first place, but also, he was used to scarier stuff (cough, storming Olympus, cough), so he could totally pretend Thalia's impatient expression wasn't bothering him in the slightest. "Two drachmas."

"Ten."

"Five."

"Fine." Thalia threw her hands in the air in exasperation. "But I swear to the gods, Jackson, if you tell anyone..." she trailed off with the ominous edge of someone who made good on the threats they delivered.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, Pinecone Face." Let it be said Percy's self-preservation instincts had practically evaporated on the spot since Thalia had shoved him inside the Gray Sisters' taxi earlier on their way to Central Park.

But anyway, it turned out Thalia's singing voice was pretty good. In fact, it was actually a hell of a lot better than Percy's own singing voice. Like last time, the boulders split open to reveal the stairs leading to the Underworld.

"You know, Thals," Percy began, shuffling forward to peer at the dark tunnel (it was also still as dark and gloomy as last time), "you could definitely make a career out of singing. If you ever get tired of the Hunt."

"Fat chance, Jackson." Thalia scoffed, but he could tell from the tone of her voice she was a bit unexpectedly pleased at the compliment. "As if I'd get tired of the Hunt."

"It was just an idea, Pinecone Face." Percy rolled his eyes, then motioned with his hand to the stairs like, after you. Thalia muttered something that might've sounded like, you can't be serious, but slipped past him, and through the boulders. Without hesitation, Percy followed after her.

Like last time, the stairs pretty much went forever. But, unlike last time, Mrs Dodds and her band of kidnapping Furies weren't waiting for Percy to kidnap him (on Nico's orders), so he managed to slip inside the palace gates with Thalia in tow, no problem.

"No offense to Nico, but this place seriously gives me the creeps," Thalia whispered, glancing over her shoulder as she let herself be herded to... somewhere hopefully near the throne room by Percy, but he wasn't really sure, because a) his memory was shit (blame the ADHD, man) and b) the palace hallways all kinda looked the same. (For some reason he wasn't going to think about but probably had something to do with his new powers, said palace hallways were empty. Like, zero skeletons with their rifles and muskets and spears.)

"Thank the gods it's not just me," Percy whispered back, resisting the urge to shudder when a hot gust of wind brushed past him. "Sure, it's kinda beautiful—you've seen the palace garden, right? But I don't think I'd survive with all the wailing—ow!" He shot Thalia a glare worthy of Percy Jackson, Son of Poseidon. "What the Hades was that for?!"

"That's the throne room, you idiot—"

"Shh!"

Without waiting for Thalia's probably offended response, Percy backtracked to the room they'd just passed, and peeked inside.

Lady P looked every bit like the Queen of the Underworld with her place on the silver throne, and Nico kneeling at her feet. Meanwhile, the skeletal throne—Hades' throne—was conveniently empty. A foreboding feeling crept up the base of Percy's spine, which he ignored because Thalia's voice was suddenly asking in an undertone somewhere near his ear, "What are they talking about?"

He scooted closer, but not too close unless he wanted to be seen, and there was no way it's going to be an option. "...I can't hear them. Why don't you shh for a minute—"

"You shh—"

"Shh!"

Ignoring Thalia again, Percy strained to hear the conversation. Something about a traitor in their midst? (Luke. It had to be Luke, hadn't it?) Plus someone telling Persephone to claim Nico, but he hadn't managed to catch the specifics, like who had told Persephone, or why there was a mystery someone who told her instead of Hades to claim Nico in the first place. (Demigod dreams were literally more convenient than this.)

Fifteen minutes later into their eavesdropping session, Percy's thoughts started to wander. The pessimistic part of him—which was like half of him, by the way—couldn't help but wonder if they were breaking a sacred time-travel rule by not just going along with the rest of the day's events (swordfighting, Ancient Greek, Capture the Flag), but then he remembered they were already breaking a lot of rules thanks to his dumb new powers, so yeah.

Screw it.

Then the sound of rustling reached his ears, making him freeze.

"You can come out now, demigods."

Wide-eyed, Percy exchanged a kinda terrified look with Thalia because he really should've expected this. It's not like his luck was the best to begin with. (Cough, newfound shitty time-travel powers, cough.) Thalia made a gesture that could've meant like, 'you think we can take her?' or 'we're going to die, aren't we?' that Percy didn't want to interpret right now because now was not the time, like Persephone had literally just discovered their hiding place, so if he didn't want to be turned into a sunflower, he was just gonna—

"Lady Persephone." His voice didn't come out as a squeak, but judging by the laugh Nico had stiffled, it had been close to that. Vaguely aware of Thalia's presence beside him, they approached Persephone, heads bowed, and kneeled at the feet of her throne.

"I assume you got the gist of the conversation?" Persephone's tone wasn't ice-cold, but it wasn't friendly, either.

"Yes, milady." Thalia's voice was hushed. Almost respectful. Definitely a far cry from the voice she'd used to scream at Hera earlier, except—

Silence had followed her statement, stretching over the throne room like a blanket.

Please don't turn us into a dandelion, please don't turn us into a dandelion, Percy chanted in his mind.

"Then you know what to expect when you help Nico find the traitor."

Percy's head snapped up, just in time to see Persephone nod towards Nico, who looked a little better than the first time Percy's new powers went haywire and landed them here. Probably because he was in the Underworld.

"Of course, Lady Persephone." That was Thalia.

Percy mentally added Persephone's request to the gameplan. Find the traitor. (It was Luke. Of course it was going to be Luke. Who else would it be?) "You can count on us, milady."

Something like the barest hints of a smile curved on the edges of Persephone's mouth. It made her look—actually, it made her look a bit like Thalia, whose smile reminded Percy of the Z-man sometimes (thank the gods it was only sometimes), but he was not going to go there, nope. "Don't disapppoint me. Good luck."

Then Persephone snapped her fingers, and the three of them were standing in the middle of the Hermes cabin, surrounded by campers in their bunks, and bedrolls, like the whole cabin was about to get ready for bed before Percy, Thalia, and Nico's unexpected appearances.

"Peter!" Travis—younger Travis—shot to his feet, stepping over a bunch of his siblings' bedrolls to amble towards them like he hadn't seen them in forever. "Where the Hades were you?"

Percy hadn't even registered the question at first. He felt dazed, but the good kind of dazed, like he'd been kissed by Annabeth, and ate five ambrosia-on-a-stick all at once. "We've, uh, where've we been? I mean—around. We've been around."

"'Around'? What d'you mean?" Travis screeched to a halt in front of them, a worried look on his face. "Everyone's been looking for you. Connor thought you've been kidnapped!"

"Kidnapped?" Thalia snorted, steadying herself by grabbing Nico's arm. Nico, to his credit, didn't stagger at the sudden force; just let Thalia hold on to his arm like a vice-grip, which was... not out of character for him nowadays, but maybe he was also feeling as dazed as Percy felt. "We only went to Central Park."

"For two days?!"

Two—? The dazeness Percy had been feeling vanished in an instant. He straightened up, not missing the way Thalia, and Nico had also straightened up. Because Travis couldn't be right. Time didn't really pass differently in the Underworld like it did in the Lotus Hotel. But—

His mind flashed back to Nico appearing after dinner, just in time for Capture the Flag. Gods, please don't tell him it's the stupid time-travel powers. If it was, Percy was going to do something really, really stupid. Like, even more stupid than almost blowing their cover by using his powers on the Ares kids during Capture the Flag.

"Alright, that's enough." Luke's voice cut through the silence like a knife, a lot like the way it did when Nico had been claimed by Persephone, but this time...

This time, there wasn't surprise or gratefulness on Percy's part. Only one thought was flashing in his mind. Traitor.

He was pretty sure his cousins had been thinking along the same lines as him, since Nico's expression had tightened, and Thalia had an unreadable look on her face. The other campers appeared to sense there was something weird going on, too, but couldn't figure out what—merely alternated staring between Luke, and the three of them.

Suddenly, it seemed it was Thalia's turn to not being able to take the silence anymore, because she broke it with a loud, "Wait, where's my bedroll?"

And just like that, the tension in the cabin evaporated. Connor was the one who came to Thalia's rescue as he also shot to his feet, and announced, "Chiron says you're gonna be bunking at Cabin Two now!"

"What?!"

"Yeah." Connor nodded enthusiastically. "But Nico's gonna be staying with us 'cause his mom doesn't have a cabin yet."

Thalia gaped at him, like she had no idea what to say to that. Percy would've laughed at the look on her face if he didn't want to be beaten to death with a lightning bolt. "You're joking."

Connor, in fact, wasn't joking. Nor were the rest of his siblings, if their nods, and agreements were anything to go by.

"Look, Pinecone Face." Nico turned to Thalia with a drawn-out sigh that made him sound more like his eighty-four or whatever year-old age. "Do you want to bunk with the Apollo kids?"

Thalia, of course, didn't respond; she just gave Nico a Lieutenant of Artemis-patented glare, which Percy guessed was answer enough. In the end, they made their way to Cabin Two with Thalia muttering what Percy just knew had to be curses about Hera the whole way.

"Just yell for us if her statue ends up attacking you or something," Percy joked, attempting to lighten the mood as he pushed the bronze doors open—

"Hello, dear sister." Blue eyes greeted them, wide smile matching the good-looking face of the eighteen-ish year old guy seated on a throne-like chair beneath Hera's ten-foot tall statue. "Or should I say... my daughter?"

Chapter Text

"You fucking son of a bi—!"

Percy stared. He was pretty sure Nico had also stopped in his tracks to gape, mouth dropping open and everything. Because Thalia—

Thalia had leapt forward to tackle Apollo—chair, hair, and all eighteen year-old-ish-slash-thousands-of-years-old of him—to the ground, the space around her crackling with electricity as she started yelling loud enough to wake up the nearest cabin. (Which, on second thought, were Cabin One, and Percy's own cabin, so nevermind. It was all good.)

Still, the thought of harpies possibly flocking to them to check out what the Hades was happening was enough motivation to yank Percy out of his staring, and scuttle forward to...

Furrowing his brows, he turned to Nico. "Should we help her?"

Nico crossed his arms over his chest, gaze trained on Thalia, who had managed to pin Apollo after bashing his head in, and was currently grabbing the front of his shirt while she yelled in his face. Like, just straight-up yelled at him. To his face. With electricity crackling around her, and Apollo staring at her with wide eyes like, wtf the Hades is happening why the Hades are you yelling at me I did not sign up for this?? "I think she can handle herself."

Right on cue, Thalia shook Apollo so hard, he gave a frightened squeak that sounded more like a mouse who found out it was going to be sent to the Fields of Punishment than anything associated with the god of the sun, really. Nico, meanwhile, took it upon himself to close the doors of the cabin, which was a very good idea, because harpies, and also not a very good idea, because yelling. It echoed, and not in a good way. Or maybe that's just Percy's brain screaming at him because according to Travis, he hasn't slept in two days.

But if he was going to be a lot more honest to himself and everyone else in this godsforsaken nightmare that was his current reality, yelling wasn't like Thalia at all. At least, the Thalia who was Artemis' lieutenant, because as far as Percy was concerned, his cousin had kinda successfully tampered her temper when she joined the Hunters.

But on the other hand, he could sort of guess where she was coming from, because the past few days since they landed in whatever this godsforsaken mess had been one gods damn nightmare after another. So, he could forgive her a little for not sticking to the gameplan, aka look as lost as possible in case the gods would know something was up. (Yelling at Apollo was the exact opposite of the gameplan.)

"...have any idea what the fuck kind of shit you put me through?!"

Apparently, Thalia bashing Apollo's head for the second time tonight was the last straw for Nico to—put an end to Apollo's suffering? "Hey, Pinecone Face, can you stop? Please? We kind of need him alive for the interrogation."

Then Nico did a sweeping motion towards Percy as if to say, care to do the honors, Perce? which Percy was only to happy to oblige.

With a clear of the throat and straightening of his shoulders to make himself look as intimidating as possible (so not his style without his Wise Girl to back him up, but desperate times called for desperate measures), and make Apollo spill everything the gods knew about this alternate past-slash-parallel reality or wherever the Hades they were, Percy shuffled forward until he was looking straight into Apollo's eyes. "Spill."

"After she gave me a split lip?!" Apollo jerked his head towards Thalia, his bottom lip definitely bleeding.

In response, Thalia shook Apollo so hard again, it sounded like his teeth had rattled. "You ruined my life, you asshole—"

"Because that's what the voice told me to do!"

"A voice? A voice?!" Thalia's voice rose for the nth time since they arrived at this messed-up version of Camp Half-Blood. "Some random voice told you and Her Fucked-upness to claim me and you actually believed it?! What the Hades is wrong with you?!"

"Her Fucked-upness?" Apollo mouthed to no one in particular.

Nico gave a half-hearted shrug like Apollo had personally asked him what about the nickname, and Percy just about stared at Nico with wide eyes because what was up with that? Weren't they on the same page about hating Apollo for having a hand in Jason's death or what is all just a fever-induced dream? As if reading his thoughts, Nico shot Percy a look that may or may have said, later, Aquaman, and added, "Thals, just—let him go, for the gods' sake."

"You're lucky the voice told me I shouldn't, no matter how annoying you three might be, smite you into oblivion." Apollo was seething after Thalia had pulled herself to her feet, but the effect was ruined by the fact he looked like he had personally lost a one-on-one fight against Aphrodite.

"You hear that, or do I need to repeat myself? ...I'll just repeat myself so you mere mortals could have another chance at hearing my wonderful voice. Anyway." Apollo cleared his throat, bouncing back into his sun god persona without hesitation. (Creepy, but whatever. It wasn't like creepiness hadn't been a part of Percy's life since the day he got told he was a demigod.) "Ahem. You're lucky the voice told me I shouldn't, no matter how annoying you three might be, smite you into oblivion."

"Of course, of course. Thank you, milord. But first—" Nico helped up Apollo's chair, letting the god sit on it again, before bowing slightly.

Percy ogled at his cousin. He knew Nico was good at sucking up to gods whose names didn't start with Z and ends with eus, but he had no idea he was that good.

On cue, the air started to crackle with electricity again. Nico shot Thalia a warning look, then paused, like he was internally wrestling with himself for siding with Thalia or buttering up to Apollo. After a split-second, he seemed to come to an agreement like, screw it, because he turned his attention back to Apollo, and offered him tight-lipped smile, ignoring Thalia's angry hisses from somewhere beside him, "Just one question. Are you... do you know us?"

"No." Apollo shook his head. He gazed at Nico, a curious look settling on his face. "But I know about you."

Silence.

"You're Persephone's "son", aren't you?" Apollo continued, steadying himself on his throne-like chair but never tearing his eyes away from Nico's face. Gods, Percy could practically hear the air quotes around the word. "I'm guessing the same thing happened to her with the voice, otherwise she wouldn't have claimed you."

Percy exchanged a look with his cousins. He could tell they were thinking what he was also thinking even if they didn't have any mind-reading powers. "Tell us more about this mystery voice."

Apollo's gaze flickered from Nico to Percy. "Long story short, it told us we gotta do the claiming or Western civilization's going to end, and I don't know about you, but I'm not taking my chances."

Another silence.

Percy got the feeling there's something else Apollo isn't telling them. Judging by Thalia's muttering, she was also on the same page. But another part of Percy, a bigger part of him, insisted to just let it be because he's been through Olympus, and the Underworld and back in like two days, somebody please give him a break.

As if reading his thoughts, Apollo got to his feet, and clapped his hands. In the blink of an eye, his godly powers did their thing, and now he looked less like a god who's been pounced on by the Nemean Lion, and more like the sun god whom Percy still hasn't forgiven for causing Jason's death, RIP Jason. "Looks like my work here is done."

Percy jolted, all thoughts of a peaceful break where he could sleep in his bedroll evaporating as he gawked at Apollo. "Done?"

"Don't worry." Apollo waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "All will be explained in due time."

This time, Percy wasn't the only one who was gawking at Apollo. Thalia was, too, except she was also shaking, but it was likely more out of anger than surprise. "Then why the hell did you even visit us?"

"Because I wanted to warn you, of course."

Thalia's scoff echoed around the cabin. "Oh great, more cryptic messages that mean jack-shit."

Apollo winked at her. Thalia's expression turned even more murderous. Percy subtly scooted a little further away in case he got caught in her rage. "You're welcome. Also, try not to die tomorrow when—"

Like he'd realized he was going to say something he shouldn't be saying, Apollo snapped his mouth shut.

"When?" Thalia prodded, taking a step closer towards him.

"Nothing!" Apollo waved his arms in a wild, 'it's nothing important, I swear!' gesture. "You'll know what to do when it happens!"

"What do you mean, we'll know what to do?!"

But Apollo was already gone.

Thalia stared at the place where Apollo had been standing a moment ago. "Asshole."

Percy slowly scooted back to approach her, and lifted a cautious hand to pat her arm in a hopefully consoling manner.

"So," Thalia started, emerging from behind the back of the giant Hera statue to plunk down between Percy, and Nico.

Once the three of them had settled inside the Hera cabin, it was easy to turn the interior into something sort of liveable with the bedrolls despite the cabin being cold as Hades, had zero windows, zero bathrooms, and zero bunk beds.

"So." It was pretty clear Nico wasn't paying a lot of attention to the conversation, his attention fixed on his ring.

Percy glanced at Nico, then to Thalia. "So... what?"

But Thalia's got this look on her face Percy so didn't appreciate (i.e., it reminded him of her 'I'm-gonna-storm-Olympus-and-beat-up-my-step-mom' face), and he dreaded hearing the next words coming out of her mouth. "New plan: we'll time-travel to the future."

Nico's head snapped up so fast, it was a miracle it hadn't actually, you know. Snapped. "What."

"Obviously, spending the past three or whatever days with you two must've screwed me up big time because I literally have no idea why I haven't thought of it before."

"Hey!" Nico sounded offended, and Percy really couldn't blame him because he was facing his own problems with Thalia's crazy—okay, even way crazier than usual—plan.

"I'm not time-travelling us to the future!" he squawked, staring at Thalia with wide eyes. "Are you crazy?! We'll probably end up in like, like—2050 or something!"

"But we'll be back in our time, wouldn't we?" Thalia crossed her arms over her chest like, I'm right and you know it, Kelp Head.

"How would I know?" Percy threw his hands in the air in protest of his cousin's even way crazier than usual plan. (Gods help him.) "I'm not risking it, Thals. I know you're probably a little... you know, with everything that's happened, but I really don't wanna risk it."

"...Fine." Thalia huffed out, all the air leaking out of her. It lasted barely a moment, and she brightened up again. "But I have another plan."

"On top of the gameplan and the don't forget about the plan-plan?" Percy really didn't want to put in another plan to their already complicated list of two plans.

"That we'll talk about tomorrow," Nico cut in, sensing it was time to break up the argument before it could escalate, and they'd have to explain why the Hera cabin caught on fire.

"But—" Thalia began, only to grow silent at Nico's pointed look.

"Tomorrow. I'll tell you everything that Lady P told me before we got interrupted by Clarisse... yesterday?" Nico scrunched up his face, looking unsure. "Yesterday or two nights ago or whatever. Point is, I'm tired. I talked to my step-mom twice thanks to Perce's time-travel powers, which was a hell of a lot more talking time than we normally do, and your step-mom's statue maybe won't kick us out, so can we please go to sleep now?"

In Percy's dream, he wasn't stuck in this weird past-wherever he was thanks to his shitty time-travel powers. In his dream, he was back in NYU, feeding Annabeth chocolate cake at Lipton, and nothing was wrong in the world.

Jason, for some reason, was also with them, looking just like the way he did on their last Big Three kids reunion before he got killed. "Why are we meeting here again?"

"Because last time I checked, the service at Upstein is shit," Percy informed him cheerfully, spearing a bit of chocolate cake with his fork and nudging Annabeth to offer it to her. In turn, Annabeth shifted her attention away from her notes to face him, accepting the cake with an absentminded but clearly grateful nod. "We could always get burgers at 7th street if you hate dessert," Percy added, glancing at Jason.

Jason made a face like he hated the burgers at 7th street, which Percy personally knew was a lie because people who wanted a decent burger always found themselves at 7th street. "Perce, you really need to wake up."

Percy raised a brow, his brain almost getting whiplash from the sudden subject change. "Dude, what?"

"Wake up," Jason repeated, and actually scooted his chair forward to grab Percy and shake him. "For the gods' sake, Aquaman, wake up—"

The next thing Percy knew, Nico's face was swimming in front of his vision. "Wha—what's wrong? We under attack?"

"I told you I'd tell you what Lady P told me, remember?"

"At like—" Percy fought not to close his eyes and drift back to sleep (guess all the time-travelling, and his trips to Olympus and the Underworld was enough to knock him out for another day), but the light drifting from the now-opened door made him rethink his decisions, "seven in the morning?"

"Yes." Nico didn't look like he was budging anytime soon.

Left without no other choice, Percy dragged himself from his bedroll, roused Thalia, and told her that Nico was explain everything about his meeting with Lady P like he'd said he would.

And he did.

How he didn't tell Persephone he's from the future, but she knows he's someone important. How he theorized the Fates must be at work since Persephone also revealed a voice had just told her to claim him unless she wanted Olympus to fall.

Once Nico was done, he turned to Thalia to poke her arm. "Airhead, what was the plan you wanted to talk to us about last night?"

With a dramatic voice, Thalia announced, "We'll spy on Luke like Lady P told us to."

Then we turn him in because he's the traitor, and maybe once we do it we'll gain Lady P's favor and she could help us get back home, were the words left unsaid, but Percy totally heard them.

Nico nodded, like he was on board with Thalia's plan. "Add it to the list."

After Percy had dug into the pockets of his pants for Riptide, and the piece of tissue where they kept the list of the important things they were supposed to be doing, and scribbled, spy on luke in his best handwriting, Nico proceeded with the most awaited question.

"Who's gonna do the spying?"

Percy looked at Thalia. Thalia looked at Nico. Nico looked back at Percy.

A minute or so of their three-way staring contest, Percy threw his hands in the air in defeat. "Fine, I'll do it," he grumbled, ignoring his traitor cousins exchange a high-five in the most unsubtle way possible.

"Nice one, Jackson." Thalia gave a pleased nod, at the same time Nico said, "Good luck."

They so weren't invited to his next birthday party.

Percy took it back.

His cousins were so going to his next birthday party, because watching Nico once again get dragged to the strawberry fields against his will by the Demeter kids was karma enough, and Thalia?

"Do you have an idea about what your powers might be?" Malcolm pushed his glasses up with his middle finger as he continued to stare expectantly at Thalia, the excitement obvious in his gray eyes.

The sun was shining. A breeze was blowing in the porch of the Big House, ruffling Percy's hair. It was a perfect day to watch his cousin try her best not to get caught out in a lie while a ten year-old Malcolm interogated her about what it was like to be the one and only 'daughter of Hera' that existed.

"I could... summon the Mist thingy? But I didn't know it was called that when we ran into the gigantic man-bull monster like two years ago."

Malcolm gave a reverent nod. "Mist manipulation. Wow. That's pretty cool."

As Thalia shifted uncomfortably, Percy relaxed in his chair, letting the breeze breeze past him, and listening to Thalia spout lie after lie for Malcolm—until a sharp jab to the ribs snapped him away from his daydream where he'd returned to the present (?) and surprised Annabeth with a kiss.

"Luke," Thalia hissed from somewhere near his ear.

Percy got the memo. He could see Luke jog away from the Big House, somewhere to the direction of the cabins. "I have to go to the bathroom."

Without waiting for Malcolm's response, Percy speed-walked away to trail after Luke, careful not to make it look to obvious he was trailing him. Unfortunately, he'd lost sight of Luke when a bunch of Apollo kids came charging out of nowhere carrying a bunch of lyres, and guitars. Fortunately, he found him again behind the Demeter cabin, talking to an IM of—

Percy's heart clenched at the sight of twelve year-old Annabeth looking like she'd been through the Underworld herself with the way her hair was matted to her head, and the bruises scattered on the side of face.

"—know someone set us up," she was saying, a distressed note to her voice that made Percy's protective Wise Girl instincts flare up. It took everything in him not to march over to Luke, and demand where the Hades he had Annabeth taken to.

"Where are you?" Luke interrupted, sounding way too concerned, Percy had to resist the urge to run him through with Riptide. It was just so Luke to fake being all-concerned for Annabeth when he was probably the one who set them up anyway.

"At Mount Tamalpais." Annabeth swallowed, reaching up to tuck a few stray strands of hair behind her ear. "Percy—they got Percy." Then an alarmed expression flickered over her face. "Luke, I have to go—" She swiped her hand over the IM, effectively dissolving it.

Heart in his throat, Percy turned tail, and jogged back to the Big House, not caring if Luke realized he was snooping in on him.

Gods. He had to tell Thalia, and Nico.

"A rundown of what we're going to be doing today. One, get through the rest of the morning—"

"And the afternoon."

"—and the afternoon without maiming anyone. Also, remember the gameplan. Two, you'll convince Luke you're not going to be sleeping at the Hermes cabin tonight because we need to discuss how to break the news to both our religious families that we're demigods. Three, we sneak out after the campfire so Nico can shadow-travel us to San Francisco. Four, we save Past-Annabeth, you, and Grover. Five, we'll go to Olympus, and convince my dad not to start a war because he needs to save that energy for his dad. Did I miss anything, Kelp Head?"

"Nope."

Percy loved the campfire. NYU was great, sure. He had his mortal friends, and it was even better because he had Annabeth with him, but the campfire sing-along with all the other campers was fun, and nostalgic.

"...claimed twice?! How the hell does that even work? What the hell does that even mean..."

"...so not fair! I've been here for like three whole years, and they've been claimed in like three days?!"

"...gone for two days, and now they're here?"

"...insanely powerful bloodline..."

It obviously wasn't as fun or nostalgic now, but Percy ignored the whispers of the other campers to focus on the flames in front of him. At least some of the Apollo kids were trying to lighten the atmosphere by leading a song about Achilles, and his broken heart.

"Why do I get a weird feeling something's gonna happen?" Percy muttered to Thalia, and Nico, whom, thank the gods, were allowed to sit with him, and the Hermes cabin. (They had filled Nico in on Luke, and the IM with Annabeth like half an hour before the campfire after the Demeter kids saw it fit to release him from the strawberry fields.)

"Don't you dare jinx us, Kelp Head," Thalia warned, but she was grinning, and it was clear the Apollo kids' infectious energy was getting to her.

Of course, because things rarely ever went right in Percy's life, a loud howl ripped through the entire amphitheater. Dejá vù crawled down his spine as a hellhound stepped inside the entrance, and let out a growl, its red eyes looking straight at him.

All the singing, and whispers instantly evaporated to a halt.

"Shit." Thalia cursed under her breath. Her fingers found Percy's arm, and she squeezed. "Percy, run."

Percy slowly, slowly stood up. That was when the hellhound leapt at him.

Chaos broke out.

Luke was yelling at people to 'calm the Hades down', but the thing was, everyone was panicking and it was kind of hard to not panic when Thalia was wrestling with the hellhound in the middle of the amphitheater because she chose to be a good cousin right now of all times, and pushed Percy out of the way, and Percy couldn't even use his real powers to save her and fuck, this was just like back when he was twelve years-old—

Adrenaline rushing through his veins, Percy threw out a hand like he could stop the hellhound from mauling Thalia. He braced himself as the familiar-unfamiliar swooping feeling in his stomach he'd attributed to his shitty new powers returned, and time just—stopped.

Like, literally. It just stopped. It wasn't even like the time-slowing thing Kronos did. Time just stopped. Or maybe it was just some things he'd stopped?

It was weird, because some of the campers were still screaming, but like a dozen campers and the hellhound had frozen like Piper had used her charmspeak to make them freeze, except Piper wasn't here so really, it was just Percy's stupid powers acting up again, and saving someone's life for the first time ever, wow.

But it wasn't the time for that line of thinking.

Thankfully, his cousins were experts in the unexpected. While the rest of the campers either gawked and/or screamed, Thalia shouted for Nico in her 'Lieutenant of Artemis' voice, and Nico had darted forward to touch the hellhound's frozen body.

Within seconds, the monster had rotted into gold dust like how the dandelion plants had rotted in Nico's grasp days ago, just in time for the swooping unfamiliar-familiar feeling in Percy's stomach returned to unfreeze the frozen-in-time campers.

For a heart-pounding second worthy of Kronos rising back to life in front of him, Percy and everyone in the amphitheater stared at each other.

Then somebody screamed. Again.

Percy's gaze instantly snapped towards the camper who screamed—one of Annabeth's siblings, who was pointing straight at him. He gave a nervous laugh. "What? Is there something on my face?" he joked, his voice awkwardly dying off into the silence. Even to his ears, it had sounded more like him going, 'di immortales, what's going on now?' than an actual joke.

To make matters worse, Percy caught Nico's eye, and he so didn't miss the way his cousin's gaze jumped from his face to something above his head, genuine fear written all over his expression. Thalia was pretty much the same, her eyes frozen on something above his head.

Fuck.

Like it wasn't bad enough, the flames had changed from orange to a freaking purple-black, and it was like the entire crowd—Clarisse, Nyssa from the Hephaestus cabin, Katie, the Stoll brothers; hell even Luke—had turned into statues—or maybe like Percy just frozen them all in time with his powers? Yeah, that was a pretty bad joke—their attention all fixed on the symbol presumedly above his head.

(Had he mentioned this was really was weirdly like the time he got claimed by Poseidon? The only exception was that now everyone was staring at him like he didn't just grow two heads, but like a hundred heads. Which was even less comforting in the slightest.)

As if waking up from a Morpheus-induced sleep spell, Chiron folded his front legs and bowed, but he looked reluctant, like he didn't want to do it, and it so didn't help Percy's sky-rocketing anxiety, by the way.

"Hail Peter Johnson," he announced in a grave voice, like he was declaring Percy's funeral. (Dejá vù again, anyone?) "Son of Amphitrite, goddess of the seas, Queen of the Sea."

"Hail Peter Johnson," Chiron repeated in a graver voice—or like, the gravest voice Percy had heard from him since Chiron was Mr. Brunner and teaching him Latin at Yancy Academy—not even a second later, and if Percy's heart wasn't half-pounding with a combination of 'wtf????' and even more '????' at the previous announcement of Amphitrite being his godly parent, then it was definitely pounding now because what the Hades was up with a repeat announcement of his (fake) name like Chiron wasn't done and in the gravest voice he had ever heard? "Son of Kronos, god of time, King of the Titans."