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halothenthehorns · 4 months

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Chapter 13: I TAKE A PERMANENT VACATION

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it! This is a depressing freaking chapter to infuse the holiday with, lol.

For everyone else, I hope you enjoy your day and your life and your year and the hour you spend reading my insanity!

PJOPJOPJOPJO

Nico read the new chapter title with a sense of ill. The idea of running across Percy's ghost had come to him plenty in the darkest parts of that maze, he'd been convinced for months at a time those would be his only friends. The one who had gotten Bianca killed had himself died in his own Greek tragedy of trying to come after him and becoming lost in a place Nico was slowly conquering, but Nico would find his wandering spirit and nurse him back enough to guide him to where he needed to go.

The idea that Percy might have died in this volcanic eruption and he didn't even get a hint of knowing that disturbed him slightly less than his old creepy thoughts about how his part in this would end, so he tried to read like it was any other.

"Oh hell," Magnus yelped. "Are we finally going to get an explanation for how you wound up down here? Are you permanently sleeping with the fishes? Did someone," he cut his finger across his throat with sound and everything.

"I don't think I'm actually dead," Percy studied his still trembling hands with uncertainty though, patting absently at his shirt and pants too to make sure it was real.

"And it wouldn't explain the rest of the books?" but Jason's sounded more like stacked questions, because really none of this made to much sense given they had no answers to start with outside of a gods will.

"As far as I'm aware, you are not actually dead," Thalia managed casually enough, but she dreaded this chapter more than anyone. Calypso was not a myth she'd ever dealt with personally, and she knew all she'd be hearing while Nico read was Annabeth's desperate voice through their connection begging her to help find an answer other than the obvious. She'd been prepared to go down to Tartarus and drag his soul back to get that look out of her little sister's eyes.

I woke up feeling like I was still on fire. My skin stung. My throat felt as dry as sand.

"The fact that you still have feeling is the impressive part after being a literal comet," Will told him with a kind of critical, stern tone like he thought Percy was still tempted to try again.

"The kind that only comes around in one lifetime," Percy assured.

"Hopefully they don't name anything after it, or worse, you get some kind of crazy superpowers from it," Alex offered.

"Or worse, aliens." Magnus agreed.

"Why would there be an alien free riding on my comet?" Percy asked.

"I don't know, just seems like every sci-fi movie comes with aliens masquerading as comets," he shrugged.

"My life is weird enough without adding bad costumes and CGI," Percy sighed.

I saw blue sky and trees above me. I heard a fountain gurgling, and smelled juniper and cedar and a bunch of other sweet-scented plants. I heard waves, too, gently lapping on a rocky shore. I wondered if I was dead, but I knew better. I'd been to the Land of the Dead, and there was no blue sky.

"The fact that that is a more normal sentence than you, a child of the sea, not waking up on the beach more regularly, really says something about your life," Magnus couldn't help but inform Percy.

"Who would want to wake up with a sunburn every day?" Percy shrugged. "Plus, that sand really does get everywhere. Nah, I'm good."

Apparently only normal people, Magnus sighed as he answered himself.

I tried to sit up. My muscles felt like they were melting.

"I hear to much exercise will do that to you," Will said wisely.

"And here I thought the more obvious punchline was global warming. We must save the planet, think of the Percy," Nico snickered.

"You're all missing the obvious joke that Percy is clearly an evil green witch in disguise," Thalia chuckled.

"I was just half cooked alive like a lobster, can't I get a pass on all this?" Percy smiled knowing the answer.

"No," they all laughed.

"Stay still," a girl's voice said. "You're too weak to rise."

She laid a cool cloth across my forehead. A bronze spoon hovered over me and liquid was dribbled into my mouth. The drink soothed my throat and left a warm chocolaty aftertaste. Nectar of the gods. Then the girl's face appeared above me.

She had almond eyes and caramel-color hair braided over one shoulder.

She was...fifteen? Sixteen? It was hard to tell. She had one of those faces that just seemed timeless. She began singing, and my pain dissolved. She was working magic. I could feel her music sinking into my skin, healing and repairing my brain.

"Who?" I croaked.

"Shhh, brave one," she said. "Rest and heal. No harm will come to you here. I am Calypso."

"It's nice she came out front with her name," Magnus said. "But huh?"

"If they start by introducing themselves, they're probably going to be very powerful and more fun to defeat," Alex rubbed his hands together in excitement.

"I already feared for my life enough without that, but thanks," Percy sighed.

The next time I woke I was in a cave, but as far as caves go, I'd been in a lot worse.

"I mean, compared to the cyclops cave where Grover was being held hostage, a bear cave sounds like a vacation too," Jason nodded.

"Does the underworld count as a giant cave?" Magnus asked.

"Um, yes?" Nico admitted.

"We did not go into a cave on your last adventure, but you've been mostly underground in this one to make up for it, so I'd say you are a credible enough person to judge this," Thalia nodded sanctimoniously.

Yet in all this talk, Percy's empty hand tingled as if Annabeth had brushed against him, wanting to lock her fingers through his. She had a habit of holding his hand in places like this, but she sure wouldn't be this time, some part of him knew.

The ceiling glittered with different-color crystal formations— white and purple and green, like I was inside one of those cut geodes you see in souvenir shops. I was lying on a comfortable bed with feather pillows and cotton sheets. The cave was divided into sections by white silk curtains.

Against one wall stood a large loom and a harp. Against the other wall were shelves neatly stacked with jars of fruit preserves. Dried herbs hung from the ceiling: rosemary, thyme, and a bunch of other stuff. My mother could've named them all.

"You haven't said anything about Sally being into gardening," Nico said in surprise, though he well remembered that flower box he'd once appeared next to.

"She knows them from cooking, not much of a hobby she can keep up with in the middle of the city to grow her own," Percy said with a wistful kind of smile. He wanted that for his mom. He bet Poseidon would have granted her a whole biome of nature if she asked. Just tap on the bathroom door three times or something, and poof, a hidden world she'd love to be part of.

There was a fireplace built into the cave wall, and a pot bubbling over the flames. It smelled great, like beef stew.

I sat up, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in my head. I looked at my arms, sure that they would be hideously scarred, but they seemed fine. A little pinker than usual, but not bad. I was wearing a white cotton T-shirt and cotton drawstring pants that weren't mine. My feet were bare. In a moment of panic, I wondered what happened to Riptide, but I felt my pocket and there was my pen, right where it always reappeared.

"I'm starting to wonder if there's even a limit on what that pen won't come back from," Jason looked more than impressed while he had that critical look on his face again. "If you threw it into outer space would it still come back?"

"I don't currently have any friends with a rocket ship to test that theory, but I'll let you know," Percy shrugged, holding his pen tight to him now just in case Jason wanted to try for himself.

Not only that but the Stygian ice dog whistle was back in my pocket, too. Somehow it had followed me. And that didn't exactly reassure me.

"Yeah, me either," Alex heaved a great sigh of remorse, and he really wanted Quintus and his dog to be a good guy. "Maybe he's trying to be like Chiron, he came across as a creepy stalker at first too."

"Hopefully," Percy wouldn't turn down another cool mentor who gave him good advice and cool gifts, but he was still too suspicious to really hope it would work out.

With difficulty, I stood. The stone floor was freezing under my feet. I turned and found myself staring into a polished bronze mirror.

"Holy Poseidon," I muttered. I looked as if I'd lost twenty pounds I couldn't afford to lose. My hair was a rat's nest. It was singed at the edges like Hephaestus's beard. If I saw that face on somebody walking down a highway intersection asking for money, I would've locked the car doors.

"Percy, you don't have a car," Nico told him.

"My mom's car doors just doesn't give the same ring to it," Percy rolled his eyes, fighting the urge, and losing it to sag in his seat with remembered exhaustion. Thalia was looking like an awfully comfortable prop right now.

Magnus kept his lips tight shut about that. He never spent much time looking in a mirror for a few years now, but he was pretty sure he'd looked that bad before Hearth and Blitz found him.

I turned away from the mirror. The cave entrance was to my left. I headed toward the daylight.

The cave opened onto a green meadow. On the left was a grove of cedar trees and on the right a huge flower garden. Four fountains gurgled in the meadow, each shooting water from the pipes of stone satyrs. Straight ahead, the grass sloped down to a rocky beach. The waves of a lake lapped against the stones. I could tell it was a lake because...well, I just could. Fresh water. Not salt. The sun sparkled on the water, and the sky was pure blue. It seemed like a paradise, which immediately made me nervous. You deal with mythological stuff for a few years, you learn that paradises are usually places where you get killed.

"Are you telling me I'm most likely to die at a Pottery Barn?" Alex demanded.

"Paradise probably isn't even subjective enough to argue," Thalia agreed with a sigh. "We half-bloods can die somewhere like a dog park or a freaking mall."

"The only paradise we have is places where monsters aren't, and then we inevitably attract them to that place," Jason frowned. "What kind of paradox is that called?"

"Shit, does that make this place a utopia?" Magnus groaned.

"Well this is just getting more depressing the longer it drags on," Nico reminded, and he wasn't even the one causing it. He kept reading loudly and decided he'd blame the book, and Percy's life, rather than himself on the continued trend.

The girl with the braided caramel hair, the one who'd called herself Calypso, was standing at the beach, talking to someone. I couldn't see him very well in the shimmer from the sunlight off the water, but they appeared to be arguing.

"I really don't think it's just a joke when I say Percy attracts fights everywhere he goes, even to a tropical paradise," Will shook his head in exhaustion.

"Task failed successfully," Percy hoped. "They can keep that up while I escape I'm sure." He hadn't felt trapped though, he vividly remembered that. His feelings of this island were more dreamlike than any memory yet given back. Like that old apartment he used to live in with his mom, maybe the few short years before Gabe had come along. A home he could never go back to, but some part of him would always want to.

I tried to remember what I knew about Calypso from the old myths. I'd heard the name before, but...I couldn't remember. Was she a monster? Did she trap heroes and kill them? But if she was evil, why was I still alive?

"All excellent questions," Jason sighed.

"Percy will get answers to all of them as he's running for his life I'm sure," Alex offered, which made nobody feel better.

I walked toward her slowly because my legs were still stiff. When the grass changed to gravel, I looked down to keep my balance, and when I looked up again, the girl was alone. She wore a white sleeveless Greek dress with a low circular neckline trimmed in gold. She brushed at her eyes like she'd been crying.

"Well," she said, trying for a smile, "the sleeper finally wakes."

"If he's Sleeping Beauty, does that make Annabeth Prince Charming?" Magnus snorted.

"Percy sleeps enough to fulfill the role," Thalia chuckled with amusement, "and Annabeth would rock a horse and sword if she needed to."

"I would rather get to the monster killing me part than indulge this further," Percy groaned, or he was going to be suffering kiss of life jokes and endless Halloween costume ideas for days.

"Who were you talking to?" My voice sounded like a frog that had spent time in a microwave.

"What a noble frog, putting up with that to be such a comparison to you," there was nothing but dread in Nico's voice though as he tried not to wonder how Percy knew that.

"Science lab got weird during the dissection class, you don't want to know," Percy shivered.

"Oh...just a messenger," she said.

Will snorted softly, though he felt bad he was the only one who got the joke. Nobody else read that deep into it.

"How do you feel?"

"How long have I been out?"

"Time," Calypso mused. "Time is always difficult here. I honestly don't know, Percy."

"You know my name?"

"Not a shock anymore," Magnus grudgingly admitted. He wished it still were, but the days of Medusa creeping him out for a multitude of reasons were in the past, and that one had never even been able to rank to high considering everything else.

"You talk in your sleep."

I blushed. "Yeah. I've been...uh, told that before."

"How nobody's ever tried to smother you for that I will never know," Thalia said with her own mystified face. The few times she'd slept around Percy, they'd been out in the open taking turns keeping watch for each other, so she'd never had to actually try and fall asleep to his nonsense.

"Yes. Who is Annabeth?"

"Oh, uh.

Percy's brain fried and short circuited in his head like another volcano had gone off. He would be more surprised if steam wasn't coming out of his ears. It would take him less time to say who Annabeth wasn't...

A friend.

He exhaled in relief at how well that summed it up, glad he'd been to tired back then to even try and articulate anything else as his lips still felt more prominent on his face than they ever had before.

We were together when—wait, how did I get here? Where am I?"

Calypso reached up and ran her fingers through my mangled hair. I stepped back nervously.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I've just grown used to caring for you.

The others were oddly quiet, clearly trying to judge for themselves how much they believed her sincerity. She'd had ample opportunity to hurt Percy true, but for all they knew she was just lulling him there and keeping him from getting back to full strength until Luke showed up. She could be slowly sucking the life out of him. There was just no telling what motive could be going on or who she was arguing with until it was to late.

As to how you got here, you fell from the sky. You landed in the water, just there." She pointed across the beach. "I do not know how you survived. The water seemed to cushion your fall. As to where you are, you are in Ogygia."

She pronounced it like oh-jee-jee-ah.

"Was the second jee really necessary?" Magnus huffed. "It feels like they're just being extra."

"No noun should be more than two syllables, it's just exhausting," Percy agreed.

"Your name is three," Thalia looked at him strangely.

"And I stand by what I said," Percy nodded.

"Is that near Mount St. Helens?" I asked, because my geography is pretty terrible.

"Sure Percy, it might be if you travel back in time or something," Will chuckled.

"Maybe I'll find them constructing the Statue of Liberty next door," Percy smirked.

Calypso laughed. It was a small restrained laugh, like she found me really funny but didn't want to embarrass me. She was cute when she laughed.

Percy felt a dull sense of dread thud in his chest, but again, it wasn't vicious. He didn't feel like ripping his heart out in fear it was attacking him. Just an aching feeling, a muscle he'd long since stopped using.

He watched as six pairs of eyebrows shut up around him now with a vague amusement as well. Magnus and Alex seemed immediately suspicious and weary what kind of spell he was being put under, whether he realized it or not. Jason and Thalia looked amused, like they were thinking how best to tell Annabeth about this for maximum teasing.

Will and Nico exchanged weary looks though. Not the, 'Oh Gods, Percy's about to die kind,' but the sort where they weren't sure if they wanted to know the outcome of this. Percy didn't talk about his time out there, and while it was interesting to get some first hand lore on this place, it was coming at a pretty personal cost to Percy.

Nico read swiftly, he didn't want to linger on this.

"It isn't near anything, brave one," she said. "Ogygia is my phantom island. It exists by itself, anywhere and nowhere.

"I wonder if there are other islands out there that can do a bit of both." Alex grinned. "You really didn't explore the Sea of Monsters enough to be sure there's not an island out there that's sometimes there and sometimes not."

"If I find a haunted ghost island that only appears during high tide, I'll call you," Percy promised. Mostly so he could blame Alex for its existence.

You can heal here in safety. Never fear."

"It's not himself he's afraid for," Jason muttered.

Percy heard, and grinned at him. It was a good feeling for at least a moment, to know your friends knew you so well.

"But my friends—"

"Annabeth," she said. "And Grover and Tyson?"

"Yes!" I said. "I have to get back to them. They're in danger."

She touched my face, and I didn't back away this time. "Rest first. You are no good to your friends until you heal."

As soon as she said it, I realized how tired I was.

Magnus still shivered with distaste as he waited for the shoe to drop. That this vacation was just another Hotel, and Percy was soon going to start forgetting everything that mattered to himself except this girl who he had no choice but to fall in love with because she told him that's what he needed to do, or maybe he'd start seeing puncture marks on his neck and this was another kind of vampire, like a subspecies of Kelli.

"You're not...you're not an evil sorceress, are you?"

She smiled coyly. "Why would you think that?"

"Well, I met Circe once, and she had a pretty nice island, too. Except she liked to turn men into guinea pigs."

"A sad fact that is such a major exception," Alex sighed.

"There's no such thing as the perfect utopia," Thalia agreed.

Calypso gave me that laugh again. "I promise I will not turn you into a guinea pig."

"Or anything else?"

"I am no evil sorceress," Calypso said. "And I am not your enemy, brave one. Now rest. Your eyes are already closing."

She was right. My knees buckled, and I would've landed face-first in the gravel if Calypso hadn't caught me. Her hair smelled like cinnamon. She was very strong, or maybe I was just really weak and thin. She walked me back to a cushioned bench by the fountain and helped me lie down.

"Rest," she ordered. And I fell asleep to the sound of the fountains and the smell of cinnamon and juniper.

Percy shivered. The kind of ghost breathing on his neck feeling. Because there was no sense of danger in him. And it was creeping him out.

Where was the adrenaline? Where was the fear and worry? Where was that sense that had guided him through all his past memories of what to trust and to know when he should be about to run?

He kept wanting to watch Thalia for some kind of hint he was missing something, but she seemed as somber over there as he felt. Like a long lost friend had died.

The next time I woke it was night, but I wasn't sure if it was the same night or many nights later. I was in the bed in the cave, but I rose and wrapped a robe around myself and padded outside. The stars were brilliant—thousands of them, like you only see way out in the country. I could make out all the constellations Annabeth had taught me: Capricorn, Pegasus, Sagittarius. And there, near the southern horizon, was a new constellation: the Huntress, a tribute to a friend of ours who had died last winter.

Nico did not like himself for the distaste he had of those words... Why didn't Bianca get a whole constellation? It was Zoe's choice to go on this quest and be slated for death the moment she heard that prophecy, and his sister went in almost blind...

But Thalia was making some stupid joke at Percy about never seeming to find his own constellation and his sister probably would have been over there laughing with them without batting an eye at that passage. She probably would have smiled for her lieutenant.

"Percy, what do you see?"

I brought my eyes back to earth. However amazing the stars were, Calypso was twice as brilliant.

Percy had always wished Annabeth here from the moment he'd opened his eyes. He still did now, to know she was safe and away from volcanoes he'd exploded. He wanted to hear her explain to him already who Calypso was fully.

Most of all, he wanted to watch how she'd be reacting to this. If she was rolling her eyes at him, or jealous, or hurt, or uncaring at all.

He found himself watching Thalia, his best friend in here to figure out the same, but she seemed to be avoiding his eyes as she played with her bracelet. He didn't know what thoughts were plaguing her, and a part of him wondered if it had something to do with why Annabeth wasn't here and what she might know about that.

Or was it something simpler and she already knew the choice he felt stretching ahead of him?

I mean, I've seen the goddess of love herself, Aphrodite, and I would never say this out loud or she'd blast me to ashes, but for my money, Calypso was a lot more beautiful,

Nico winced and looked very much like someone was about to blast him to ashes just for saying that sentence. It would be just his luck to get obliterated into nothing because he'd said what Percy once thought and got away with.

There was a dramatic pause as everybody waited for it to happen, and when nothing did, Nico kept reading with an odd smile on his face like he got away with something.

because she just seemed so natural, like she wasn't trying to be beautiful and didn't even care about that. She just was.

Annabeth's like that too, Percy realized in surprise. Unlike Kelli, who was a terrifying kind of beautiful in her natural way of looking like Aphrodite actually did have a kid with Hephaestus, Annabeth always brushed her hair up into a careless ponytail and had dirt on her at any given time and didn't realize her own allure. The one time he'd seen her in a dress it had shocked him stupid. He was rather glad looking back he'd been a guina pig for that, it made it seem lesser, more like a dream than real memory of how alien perfect she'd been.

With her braided hair and white dress, she seemed to glow in the moonlight. She was holding a tiny plant in her hands. Its flowers were silver and delicate.

"I was just looking at..." I found myself staring at her face. "Uh...I forgot."

Nico heard some of them laughing around him, but it still sounded nervous, they were still waiting for her to sprout into a monster or reveal the 'gotcha' or something. Even knowing that wasn't the case, Nico and Will exchanged a tired look. The usual flippant, enjoyable energy just wasn't getting up in this chapter as they felt how confining this moment in Percy's life was. It didn't feel right to mock him when Percy looked isolated with his confusion over there.

She laughed gently. "Well, as long as you're up, you can help me plant these."

She handed me a plant, which had a clump of dirt and roots at the base.

The flowers glowed as I held them. Calypso picked up her gardening spade and directed me to the edge of the garden, where she began to dig.

"That's moonlace," Calypso explained. "It can only be planted at night."

I watched the silvery light flicker around the petals. "What does it do?"

"Do?" Calypso mused. "It doesn't really do anything, I suppose. It lives, it gives light, it provides beauty. Does it have to do anything else?"

"I suppose not," I said.

"Sounds to me like it's doing plenty," Alex agreed. Not every plant had to poison or cure something, nourish or indue. Things just existed without a purpose, which was their purpose.

She took the plant, and our hands met. Her fingers were warm. She planted the moonlace and stepped back, surveying her work. "I love my garden."

"This is a very odd evil plan," Magnus found himself scratching his head the longer this dragged on. "Is she trying to turn you vegan? Is her ultimate goal to use you as fertilizer?"

"Grover might not bother to rescue me if so," but Percy's smile was lackluster at best. He was growing less convinced by the word this was some trap at all, but this was a Greek legend, he knew that much. He was still waiting for the bad part to show up.

"It's awesome," I agreed. I mean, I wasn't exactly a gardening type, but Calypso had arbors covered with six different colors of roses, lattices filled with honeysuckle, rows of grapevines bursting with red and purple grapes that would've made Dionysus sit up and beg.

"Ah, I see," Jason theatrically clapped his forehead. "They caught the wrong demigod. This is supposed to be a trap for a child of Ceres."

"You've been eating there, haven't you?" Magnus confirmed. "Is this like an underworld situation? You're imprisoned forever because you ate from this awesome place?"

Percy pressed his lips together as that sense of longing only grew. He couldn't find in himself to play along. Imprisoned. Maybe it wasn't him who was on the permanent vacation really.

"Back home," I said, "my mom always wanted a garden."

"Why did she not plant one?"

"Well, we live in Manhattan. In an apartment."

"Manhattan? Apartment?"

"Oh, well, maybe she's not evil after all," Will chuckled. "It's common knowledge all people who are associated with big cities are evil. Clearly, having never even heard of the concept, she's immune to this. Purely innocent and good in her hide-a-way pasture."

"Aren't most horror movies out in the boons where nobody can hear them scream?" Nico asked. Quite a few kids asked if he was born out there enough to make him look up what they were getting at.

Will opened, and closed his mouth with a laugh instead of answering.

I stared at her. "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

"I fear not. I haven't left Ogygia in...a long time."

"Well, Manhattan's a big city, with not much gardening space."

Calypso frowned. "That is sad. Hermes visits from time to time. He tells me the world outside has changed greatly. I did not realize it had changed so much you cannot have gardens."

"Why haven't you left your island?"

She looked down. "It is my punishment."

"You know Percy, I'm starting to suspect your luck is bad enough to get roped into somebody else's bad luck," Jason admitted. Nothing bad had happened yet, and judging by his silence over there and nobody nearly dying, he was beginning to suspect this wasn't going to be that kind of chapter.

"As long as she doesn't take her punishment out on me," Percy's heart was doing an odd beat in his chest. A thudding, painful number that hurt to concentrate on. Calypso, her name kept swimming around his mind like a piranha that was well fed but shouldn't be ignored. There was just something about her that had nothing and everything to do with Annabeth he was missing.

"Why? What did you do?"

"A classic Percy," Thalia sighed. "A classic boy. Blunt as an arrow to the face."

"I've never used a boxing glove arrow," Percy grinned.

"I? Nothing. But I'm afraid my father did a great deal. His name is Atlas."

"How many kids did this guy have?" Magnus asked in surprise.

"That's like asking how many kids Zeus had. You're just happier not trying to count them all," Thalia sighed.

The name sent a shiver down my back. I'd met the Titan Atlas last winter, and it had not been a happy time. He'd tried to kill pretty much everyone I care about.

"I mean, that's most evil people you meet," Nico said fairly. "I don't know what happy times involves trying to kill people."

"Maybe if Calypso had been there instead of Zoe things would have gone better," Alex snorted. "Girl should have opted a jailbreak for her half sister before the quest."

"I don't think there was really time for that," Thalia reminded with a strained smile. She didn't think it inherently insensitive to laugh about Zoe's past decisions, gods knew she'd done enough of that herself, but it wasn't a topic she wanted to continue to discuss either.

"Still," I said hesitantly, "it's not fair to punish you for what your father's done. I knew another daughter of Atlas. Her name was Zoë. She was one of the bravest people I've ever met."

Calypso studied me for a long time. Her eyes were sad.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Are—are you healed yet, my brave one? Do you think you'll be ready to leave soon?"

"What? I asked. "I don't know." I moved my legs. They were still stiff. I was already getting dizzy from standing up so long.

The fact that he could stand up for any length of time and wasn't sprinting and threatening to get out of there still gnawed at something in Percy. Something about this place, this girl. He wanted to help her, to stay, and it was nothing evil or magical making him. Just Calypso was enough.

"You want me to go?"

"I..." Her voice broke. "I'll see you in the morning. Sleep well."

She ran off toward the beach. I was too confused to do anything but watch until she disappeared in the dark.

"No, that's a classic Percy," Jason couldn't comprehend how Percy hadn't interrogated this girl to know everything about what was going on by now. He was the dopiest, deadliest guy Jason had ever met, and he was quite positive of this fact not even remembering anyone outside this room.

I don't know exactly how much time passed. Like Calypso said, it was hard to keep track on the island. I knew I should be leaving. At the very least, my friends would be worried. At worst, they could be in serious danger. I didn't even know if Annabeth had made it out of the volcano. I tried to use my empathy link with Grover several times, but I couldn't make contact. I hated not knowing if they were all right.

On the other hand, I really was weak. I couldn't stay on my feet more than a few hours. Whatever I'd done in Mount St. Helens had drained me like nothing else I'd ever expected.

Nico could hardly believe the words out of his own mouth. If he hadn't already been struck repeatedly in here that Percy wasn't the guy he'd dreamed he was, this more than anything put the final nail in the coffin. Percy had the motivation to go home, he'd always done everything up to this point by his driving factor being to help others.

He just, was choosing not to this time. It wasn't even a big heroic sacrifice, he had no idea of Calypso's curse yet. He was just, hesitating, and Nico found himself fascinated what had made Percy leave. Had he been unable to put down the mantel of the hero? Had it been Annabeth?

I didn't feel like a prisoner or anything. I remembered the Lotus Hotel and Casino in Vegas, where I'd been lured into this amazing game world until I almost forgot everything I cared about. But the island of Ogygia wasn't like that at all. I thought about Annabeth, Grover, and Tyson constantly. I remembered exactly why I needed to leave. I just...couldn't.

And then there was Calypso herself.

She never talked much about herself, but that just made me want to know more. I would sit in the meadow, sipping nectar, and I would try to concentrate on the flowers or the clouds or the reflections on the lake, but I was really staring at Calypso as she worked, the way she brushed her hair over her shoulder, and the little strand that fell in her face whenever she knelt to dig in the garden. Sometimes she would hold out her hand and birds would fly out of the woods to settle on her arm—lorikeets, parrots, doves.

"You fell into a fairy tell land my friend," Magnus told him. "I bet she turns into an ogre, or a dragon or something once you decided to stay."

Magnus wasn't really kidding, but Percy laughed like he was anyways. That didn't feel like the right answer either. Nothing had felt like the right thing to do since he'd blown up that volcano.

She would tell them good morning, ask how it was going back at the nest, and they would chirp for a while, then fly off cheerfully. Calypso's eyes gleamed. She would look at me and we'd share a smile, but almost immediately she'd get that sad expression again and turn away. I didn't understand what was bothering her.

"She's using reverse psychology on you and makes you think she wants you to leave while really wanting you to stay," Alex joined in.

Percy blinked at him. Something in there finally did feel like an answer, but twisted. She was no manipulator, he knew that, felt that in his memory like his instinctive trust of Thalia.

One night we were eating dinner together at the beach. Invisible servants had set up a table with beef stew and apple cider,

"Is that all she had to eat there? Is that the secret torture?" Will frowned. "Also, where does the cow part come from?"

"She's making those special veggies that taste like beef," Nico snickered.

"Maybe Hermes delivers her yearly rations she can't grow, like toilet paper," Thalia smirked.

which may not sound all that exciting, but that's because you haven't tasted it. I hadn't even noticed the invisible servants when I first got to the island, but after a while I became aware of the beds making themselves, meals cooking on their own, clothes being washed and folded by unseen hands.

Magnus threw his hands up in exasperation. "This is officially the best vacation ever. Can I blow up a volcano too Percy?"

"Not without following the proper steps by sitting through a sex ed class, being chased by Telkehines, and nearly dying." Percy shrugged.

"Geez, I might still consider it," Magnus huffed at this luxury.

Anyway, Calypso and I were sitting at dinner, and she looked beautiful in the candlelight.

"If you mention how pretty this girl is one more time, I might have to revoke your crush on Annabeth," Jason snorted.

Percy brushed at his gray bangs, his stomach in knots. He wished he had some snippy rebuttal for that, but he was disturbingly silent.

"People can have a crush on more than one person Jason, broaden your mind," Alex finally chuckled into the awkward silence.

Thalia was studying her best friend with those electric blue eyes. She'd been really relieved to see him at the beginning, like he'd been missing for a long time. Is this where he'd been? Was she angry with him having taken to long to come back?

I was telling her about New York and Camp Half-Blood, and then I started telling her about the time Grover had eaten an apple while we were playing Hacky Sack with it. She laughed, showing off her amazing smile, and our eyes met. Then she dropped her gaze.

She was scared, Percy tried to put into words that expression, but that didn't quite fit right. She wasn't telling him something about this place, and if he could not resist one kind of torture, it was temptation.

"There it is again," I said.

"What?"

"You keep pulling away, like you're trying not to enjoy yourself."

"You probably scared her with that story Percy," Magnus rolled his eyes. "I might still have nightmares about Grover using a mega-goat bite on me if was drinking apple cider."

"I don't think she could have nightmares on that island," Percy frowned. He certainly hadn't been having any. The more he thought about it, the more he realized it was oddly similar to their current prison. Invisible servants, all the food one could eat, the company was mostly tolerable when they weren't annoying. He still missed Annabeth, his mom, Grover and everyone like a physical ache, but there was nothing stopping him from refusing to relearn his memories, hide in a room and stay here forever. The idea was just loathsome if he thought about it for more than a second.

It hadn't been there though. There had been something about Calypso, the constant rest he got. The problem with staying on vacation for to long was that it made going back seem harder than it had before.

She kept her eyes on her glass of cider. "As I told you, Percy, I have been punished. Cursed, you might say."

"How? Tell me. I want to help."

"Don't say that. Please don't say that."

"Tell me what the punishment is."

He wanted to help her, Percy finally realized the obvious. Once he found out how to help break her curse, he could leave with a clear conscience. Of course, it seemed obvious now. This place probably played exactly into one's fatal flaw. He might have just met her, but he could have been life long friends with someone like Calypso.

She covered her half-finished stew with a napkin, and immediately an invisible servant whisked the bowl away. "Percy, this island, Ogygia, is my home, my birthplace. But it is also my prison. I am under...house arrest, I guess you would call it. I will never visit this Manhattan of yours. Or anywhere else. I am alone here."

"Doesn't sound like much of a punishment," Alex muttered. He preferred being alone, all people did was disappoint and judge you.

"Maybe for one lifetime, but all of them?" Magnus frowned. He never would have made it on the streets without Hearth and Blitz. He missed the boy he used to play with who always stopped running too fast when he had to grab his inhaler. He missed being in the back of a class reading and ignoring the teacher until he had his book taken away and then begrudgingly laughing and playing a game of tic tac toe with a random kid in detention. Maybe he'd learn why they were there, maybe they'd just sit in silence together. The idea of never being allowed around another soul again sounded like a curse to him.

Alex heard all of that in his short question, and sighed as he practiced signing the alphabet to himself in random order.

"Because your father was Atlas."

She nodded. "The gods do not trust their enemies. And rightly so. I should not complain. Some of the prisons are not nearly as nice as mine."

"I guess she heard what her dad's going through," Jason said in agreement.

"It's, nice, the gods took it easy on a random kid," Will tried to say in his usual upbeat way, but he wasn't so sure how confident he was of that. He didn't actually know what crime Calypso had committed other than support and what that entailed, yet he'd heard plenty of the gods unjust punishments for lesser things.

"But that's not fair," I said. "Just because you're related doesn't mean you support him. This other daughter I knew, Zoë, Nightshade—she fought against him. She wasn't imprisoned."

"But, Percy," Calypso said gently, "I did support him in the first war. He is my father."

"Ah," Magnus said in understanding as the final piece of it all fit into place.

"One man's vacation is another man's punishment huh?" Alex said with distaste, though for Calypso or the gods nobody was sure.

"What? But the Titans are evil!"

"Are they? All of them? All the time?"

"I've yet met a good one," Magnus said in disgust.

They weren't inherently evil, Nico knew though as he toyed with the edge of the page. Iapetus the Impaler had been cleansed of his family ties and come out as Bob, an innocent who willingly helped. Luke was a child of the 'good guys' and yet he was leading the rebellion. What made good and evil was not an answer he was privy to no matter how many ghosts he talked to about it.

She pursed her lips. "Tell me, Percy. I have no wish to argue with you, but do you support the gods because they are good, or because they are your family?"

I didn't answer. She had a point. Last winter, after Annabeth and I had saved Olympus, the gods had had a debate about whether or not they should kill me. That hadn't been exactly good. But still, I felt like I supported them because Poseidon was my dad.

"And we're back to that whole corruption of infinite cosmic power business," Alex scowled.

"It's more like a few really rotten apples and some bad tempers that need work?" Will offered with a hopeful smile. He could easily understand Percy questioning such a thing, it would have made less sense if he never had. Things had been getting better since Percy demanded of the gods his reward to prevent this all happening again though, some of them had even come around a bit for a brief time before Dionysus mysteriously stopped being there.

"Perhaps I was wrong in the war," Calypso said. "And in fairness, the gods have treated me well. They visit me from time to time. They bring me word of the outside world. But they can leave. And I cannot."

"You don't have any friends?" I asked. "I mean...wouldn't anyone else live here with you? It's a nice place."

"I bet those Hesperides would, sit around and shit talk about half-bloods all day. She might like to hang out with her half sisters," Thalia sounded reluctantly sorry for her. A maiden trapped alone in this eternal place struck a particular cord in her, one strong enough for her to ask if her punishment might ever be lifted. If she asked Artemis to let her join the hunt, would that be an insult to the gods original punishment? Thalia might even consider hiding Jason away on this island once they got out of here while she figured out what had happened to him if this underwater place didn't work out long term.

A tear trickled down her cheek. "I...I promised myself I wouldn't speak of this. But—"

She was interrupted by a rumbling sound somewhere out on the lake.

Percy groaned, a painful sounding noise deep in his chest that usually meant they should all duck and hold their breath for something disastrous about to happen.

It wasn't like that this time. Percy was angry with himself, and this situation, and no one set thing. The ocean sloshed all around them like somebody shaking a jar as he shifted around to try and get comfortable in his seat with no clear ending in sight.

A glow appeared on the horizon. It got brighter and brighter, until I could see a column of fire moving across the surface of the water, coming toward us.

"Because at this point why wouldn't aliens show up," Magnus frowned.

"Why is that your first thought?" Jason looked at him like anything left could be a strange sentence in here. "It's more likely Mercury is popping in again. Maybe he decided to use a pillar of flames this time."

"Haven't you heard stories about aliens appearing as columns of light?" Magnus asked in amusement. "I know this guy on Beacon Street who swears up and down he saw them while flying in WWII, described them just like this. I bet he'll think I'm just as crazy if I tell him it was just a god passing by."

"We're all a little crazy in some ways," Alex cheerfully reminded.

I stood and reached for my sword. "What is that?"

Calypso sighed. "A visitor."

"She doesn't seem that thrilled about it?" Alex frowned, which was weird right? Shouldn't she be jumping for joy when anyone shows up if she's so lonely? She had been cut off though, about to offer Percy something, and it wasn't particularly hard to imagine what.

As the column of fire reached the beach. Calypso stood and bowed to it formally. The flames dissipated, and standing before us was a tall man in gray overalls and a metal leg brace, his beard and hair smoldering with fire.

"Lord Hephaestus," Calypso said. "This is a rare honor."

Will scratched absently at his chin as he said, "yeah, I imagine so. Like I'm trying to think of a scenario where she's ever even met him." If he so rarely visited anyone, why would he go to this random girl. Did he study her plants to make machines out of them?

"Maybe a child of Hephaestus has landed there before," Nico shrugged. She probably hadn't met every god, he doubted they were all kind and sporadic enough to visit on their own and she probably only knew of them through the random demi god kids who passed through.

Thalia kept the thought to herself she was a prisoner because of the war she'd been in to the two. It was plenty likely Calypso knew of every Olympian because she'd had her turn to try and kill them all, possibly by learning of their favorite foods and practicing poisions even. Who knew what she'd been up to back then before coming there.

The fire god grunted. "Calypso. Beautiful as always.

"If I hear how beautiful this girl is described one more time, I'm shaving her head," Alex rolled his eyes. "Aphrodite wasn't praised this much. Annabeth isn't praised this much!"

Nico lost his composure and burst out laughing hard while Percy sighed at the pair of them. They didn't get it, they hadn't seen her in person.

Would you excuse us, please, my dear? I need to have a word with our young Percy Jackson."

Percy felt immediately humbled and worried. Was this about Annabeth?!

Hephaestus sat down clumsily at the dinner table and ordered a Pepsi.

"I wonder if he ever goes to a restaurant, and they tell him they only have coke, and he just like, changes reality to make it so they only have Pepsi now," Magnus frowned.

"I thought it would be simpler, like he just breaks their machine so no soda is carbonated," Will admitted.

"You're both evil for taking it out on the soda," Percy told.

The invisible servant brought him one, opened it too suddenly, and sprayed soda all over the gods work clothes. Hephaestus roared and spat a few curses and swatted the can away.

"Stupid servants," he muttered. "Good automatons are what she needs. They never act up!"

"I do not believe him in any way, shape, or form," Thalia scoffed.

"I think he needs a tune-up in his mind," Percy agreed.

"Hephaestus," I said, "what's going on? Is Annabeth—"

"She's fine," he said. "Resourceful girl, that one. Found her way back, told me the whole story. She's worried sick, you know."

Percy made such a sigh of relief that he cleaved out a gap of air in front of him that made a terrifying noise as the water snapped back into place.

Nico kept reading over him like he heard his life about to end every other day while the others rubbed their ears.

"You haven't told her I'm okay?"

"That's not for me to say," Hephaestus said.

Magnus shivered deep in his seat. He longed to be there for her, how alone she must feel right now. Was she back in the maze by herself? Marching into Daedalus' shop ready for murder because she thought she'd lost her best friend? He had nothing to offer her but his companionship and still couldn't even give that as he sat uselessly in place.

"Everyone thinks you're dead. I had to be sure you were coming back before I started telling everyone where you were."

"Everyone, everyone?" Jason asked critically. "Like Neptune? Who exactly was asking Vulcan where you were?"

"It wouldn't surprise me if some of the gods kept an eye on his quest and knew Hephaestus was the last god he'd seen," Thalia reminded with a scowl. Like Hera, she'd probably been keeping tabs on him enough to know he'd gone missing.

"What do you mean?" I said. "Of course I'm coming back!"

Hephaestus studied me skeptically. He fished something out of his pocket—a metal disk the size of an iPod. He clicked a button and it expanded into a miniature bronze TV. On the screen was news footage of Mount St. Helens, a huge plume of fire and ash trailing into the sky.

"Still uncertain about further eruptions," the newscaster was saying. "Authorities have ordered the evacuation of almost half a million people as a precaution. Meanwhile, ash has fallen as far away as Lake Tahoe and Vancouver, and the entire Mount St. Helens area is closed to traffic within a hundred-mile radius. While no deaths have been reported, minor injuries and illnesses include—"

Hephaestus switched it off. "You caused quite an explosion."

Percy's hand leapt to his mouth like he was going to try and hold in another scream. He just looked so ashamed Thalia instinctively leaned over and hugged him. He cautiously returned it, but his hand stayed in place, the guilt in his eyes more plain than the dark water around them.

It wasn't okay, Thalia knew as she leaned back, and she didn't say as much. Percy looked as torn apart as if he wanted to evacuate his own body, that volcano might as well have erupted inside of him and then proceeded out to the lava.

I stared at the blank bronze screen. Half a million people evacuated? Injuries. Illness. What had I done?

"I-" but Percy couldn't say how sorry he was. He couldn't see the others around him, if they looked at him with fear now. All he could feel was that dormant power in him, the one he touched every other page in here it seemed. Even now he couldn't get a handle on his emotions, his capabilities. Perhaps this place wasn't a punishment at all, but a place to learn why he should be kept away from others.

He'd always been a really bad student though.

Thalia slugged him on the shoulder and said, "and this is why boys should be kept at the bottom of the ocean! I bet if you'd gone to visit the Cyclops forges too you'd have a handle on this, it's all your dad's fault really." Like she wasn't massively speaking from experience her dad had never given her any help on her chaotic powers either.

Will and Nico were muttering away about something as usual, the book held casually in Nico's hand, the kid who had once made the dead vanish without thought and nearly taken the camp with him. Alex was lounging in his seat waiting for things to keep going while Magnus and Jason just looked reserved for the worst.

They'd all been dealing with him nearly killing them since they got in here. This vast showing of his powers didn't surprise a one, it was just a part of who he was. It wasn't a great part of him, but Percy sighed and knew what Annabeth would tell him to do once she was done strangling him for making her think he was dead. All he could do was build a better foundation next time. He had to work on getting control.

"The telekhines were scattered," the god told me. "Some vaporized. Some got away, no doubt. I don't think they'll be using my forge any time soon.

"Oh look, he got what he wanted out of it," Alex scoffed.

"Not exactly a win, win, scenario," Percy muttered. Why couldn't the gods have shown up to stop the volcano from erupting and saved all those people?

For the same reason they hadn't voted to kill him he supposed. They had their own plans, own agenda, other things better to do with their infinite time than worry about him right this moment. A part of Percy still hoped he'd asked his dad to make a few anonymous donations to help... somehow. He didn't even know, he just knew his next prayer to his dad as he scrapped food off his plate would be for this.

On the other hand, neither will I. The explosion caused Typhon to stir in his sleep. We'll have to wait and see—"

"I couldn't release him, could I? I mean, I'm not that powerful!"

The god grunted. "Not that powerful, eh? Could have fooled me. You're the son of the Earthshaker, lad. You don't know your own strength."

Percy felt a horrible pressure deep in his chest at a god telling him that. He'd taken on Ares and come out the other side without a scratch.

His friends didn't see him as a god though. Thalia was nothing but sympathetic beside him. "I've hardly touched my powers since I caused this massive storm once, nearly tore a whole city apart the news later blamed on a hurricane." She admitted. "I don't often need them more than just the minimum with the Hunters. You're still coming into it Percy."

Chiron had warned him of this, way back when, but he still felt like he didn't fully grasp all he was.

That's the last thing I wanted him to say. I hadn't been in control of myself in that mountain. I'd released so much energy I'd almost vaporized myself, drained all the life out of me. Now I found out I'd nearly destroyed the Northwest U.S. and almost woken the most horrible monster ever imprisoned by the gods. Maybe I was too dangerous. Maybe it was safer for my friends to think I was dead.

Thalia fought off the urge to smack him with the greatest of restraint. "That's not for you to decide who we hang out with Percy!"

"You've said yourself what a bad influence I am," Percy said with a reluctant tease.

"You're a pain in the ass who I would never trade away for some boring kid who couldn't blow up a volcano," she huffed.

Percy was rubbing at his arm like she had tried to pummel him, and Magnus couldn't stand watching him beat himself up. Percy had been a good friend to Annabeth, and to him this whole time. It wasn't his thing to say really, but he didn't really think Hearth would begrudge him offering to Percy, "hey, listen, Hearth's told me about how strange it is to hate a part of your own body. Just because it's something you can't control in yourself doesn't make it a bad thing, just something to live around."

"Hearth's not going to blow up half a continent because he doesn't know what he's doing," Percy said sullenly, his eyes on the floor. He assumed anyways. What did he know about elves?

"I might," Nico wasn't to happy about reminding. "Thalia might. Would you want us to stay on an island?" He was very confident of the answer he got, enough he didn't feel any major emotion at still knowing who Percy was. Percy didn't want him, his answer would be the same no matter who's name he'd given.

"No," was of course his automatic response.

"Then you're not that special," Thalia happily concluded.

"How do you think I feel?" Jason agreed. "I couldn't begin to guess what I'm capable of until it erupts out of me too, gods knows what form it'll take since I can't begin to guess at my parentage."

Thalia kept her face very straight to hide her continued guilt over leaving him in the dark on that. He'd know soon enough when she figured out for herself all the answers she could give him. She was not like her father, keeping him at arms length until she was ready...

"You can blame your dad if you need someone to be accountable for this," Alex said in that calm, confident way as he absently played with a strand of green hair. The pale amber eye glittered with a secret, while the dark brown one seemed heavy and tired. "Don't let that excuse you from practicing what you have to all its might though."

Percy rubbed his fingers together, still unsure how much he could let himself agree with that. What would happen one day if he went all out, who would get caught in the crossfire next...

"What about Grover and Tyson?" I asked.

Hephaestus shook his head. "No word, I'm afraid. I suppose the labyrinth has them."

"So what am I supposed to do?"

Hephaestus winced. "Don't ever ask an old cripple for advice, lad. But I'll tell you this.

"Don't ask me for advice but here's some," Alex rolled his eyes.

"No wonder his machines always go haywire, I bet their coding is just as sporadic," Magnus agreed.

"You guys have got to stop saying that kind of stuff," Will said with a nervous laugh. "Just because a god hasn't popped in here yet to kill us doesn't mean they won't."

"Pssh, we've got Percy," Alex brushed off.

Percy blushed. He wasn't sure if Alex meant he was a bigger threat, or he would get between whatever god got annoyed with their commentary. He considered both true.

You've met my wife?"

"Aphrodite."

"That's her. She's a tricky one, lad. Be careful of love. It'll twist your brain around and leave you thinking up is down and right is wrong."

"Never have I said truer words," Nico muttered for himself. It perfectly explained why he always felt...everything he'd ever felt.

I thought about my meeting with Aphrodite, in the back of a white Cadillac in the desert last winter. She'd told me that she had taken a special interest in me, and she'd be making things hard for me in the romance department, just because she liked me.

"And I still haven't forgiven her for that," Percy scowled, now fully suspecting his time with Calypso was a part of this.

"Um, be grateful she doesn't seem to be sending random guys to Annabeth's house?" Magnus offered, but he knew how unhelpful that sounded.

Percy didn't seem to think much of it either, his mind swiveling to Luke and always worried what he was up to.

"Is this part of her plan?" I asked. "Did she land me here?"

"Possibly. Hard to say with her.

Percy made an exhausted noise. He had a headache again and he wasn't even trying to pressure himself to remember what his decision had been. He just knew what it was going to be now. If Aphrodite had put him here, he had to leave. There had never been a choice, just more manipulation by the gods he was helping to win this war. Like a dog doing its job for the reward every night of a good bed and food.

His family was more than that to him though, he instantly regretted his thought as he played with his clay beads. He was picking the winning side not because any god had told him to. His choice was clear. If Kronos won, his family wouldn't.

But if you decide to leave this place—and I don't say what's right or wrong—then I promised you an answer to your quest. I promised you the way to Daedalus. Well now, here's the thing. It has nothing to do with Ariadne's string. Not really. Sure, the string worked. That's what the Titan's army will be after. But the best way through the maze...Theseus had the princess's help. And the princess was a regular mortal. Not a drop of god blood in her. But she was clever, and she could see, lad. She could see very clearly. So what I'm saying—I think you know how to navigate the maze."

"You're going to bring your mom in there?" Magnus asked like he was nuts.

Alex smacked him on the back of the head, and he yelped in surprise before he realized, "oh shit, Rachel."

"There you go," Alex nodded.

"Wow, I've never seen someone literally smack sense into someone," Thalia snickered. "If only it worked on you," it was no guess who she redirected that at.

"Try it Tinkerbell, I will eat your storms for breakfast," Percy smirked. Thalia laughed, mostly out of relief he was trying to pull himself out of his funk.

It finally sank in. Why hadn't I seen it before? Hera had been right. The answer was there all the time.

"Who would have thought of that?" Jason demanded. "Nobody would have thought, hey the girl that can see through mist should go down into the crazy dangerous dungeon and see if she can see...oh. No wait. Yeah it sounds kind of obvious when you put it like that."

"Everything is clearer with hindsight," Will snorted. "I should start carrying a flashlight on me, just in case I ever need to shine it on something already fully lit."

"A UV light," Nico added. "That way we can put secret stamps only we'll know to find."

"Brilliant!" Will cheered.

Nico smiled and shook his head in exasperation he seemed fully jazzed about this joke...but the temptation was there to really do it. Go back into that maze and put up some secret clue or path to let a half-blood know others had been here, and they'd gotten out. So no kid would be trapped in there alone again.

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I know."

"Then you'll need to decide whether or not you're leaving."

"I..." I wanted to say yes. Of course I would. But the words stuck in my throat. I found myself looking out at the lake, and suddenly the idea of leaving seemed very hard.

Percy didn't often feel the need to kick everybody out of the room so that he could have some personal privacy, but this. This was definitely one of those moments.

Thankfully, it went without commentary. Not even judgy silence. Percy finally guessed what that reserved look on Thalia's face was. The same one she often had when she stared at her tree to long. Nobody could force him to go back, he had to want to. He could have stayed there and maybe Annabeth would have joined the Hunters after all or anything else that could have happened. He didn't though, he knew that about himself. Nobody had made Thalia take a stand on that hill, but her spirit had lingered in that tree instead of vanishing long ago, enough of her had wanted to come back the fleece could work its magic on her.

"Don't decide yet," Hephaestus advised. "Wait until daybreak. Daybreak is a good time for decisions."

"Will Daedalus even help us?" I asked. "I mean, if he gives Luke a way to navigate the Labyrinth, we're dead. I saw dreams about...Daedalus killed his nephew. He turned bitter and angry and—"

"It isn't easy being a brilliant inventor," Hephaestus rumbled. "Always alone. Always misunderstood. Easy to turn bitter, make horrible mistakes. People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can't be fixed."

Percy thought of Luke. His broken body at the bottom of that mountain, his crooked smile slashing that sword at him. He knew Hephaestus didn't mean physically fixed.

Though a cyborg would be a lot cooler to fight.

Hephaestus brushed the last drops of Pepsi off his work clothes. "Daedalus started well enough. He helped the Princess Ariadne and Theseus because he felt sorry for them. He tried to do a good deed. And everything in his life went bad because of it. Was that fair?" The god shrugged. "I don't know if Daedalus will help you, lad, but don't judge someone until you've stood at his forge and worked with his hammer, eh?"

"He gives pretty good advice for a god who doesn't want to," Jason chuckled.

"I'll—I'll try."

Percy wanted to laugh that off, pretend he'd never have a clue where Daedalus was coming from...but his dad's words from that party he hadn't died at came to mind. How Luke had once been Hermes's pride and joy and look how far he'd fallen.

Percy had spent a lot of time in here wondering at how useful the gods were, how he'd be better off without their constant interference, this of all treacheries putting such a choice in front of him just to see how he'd react.

He didn't have to try anymore to get where a good deed could make you feel punished for the rest of your life. He'd tried to stop an army of monsters from recreating Kronos's full blade and blown up a volcano with his hammer. Daedalus was not perfect, he'd done many a horrible things, but if he was stuck in some punishment now Percy would have to help get him out of, he would without hesitation. Not because they needed him for this quest, but because the gods shouldn't get to decide anybody's eternal fate.

Hephaestus stood. "Good-bye, lad. You did well, destroying the telekhines. I'll always remember you for that."

It sounded very final, that good-bye. Then he erupted into a column of flame, and the fire moved over the water, heading back to the world outside.

"I just like to imagine all of Hephaestus's goodbyes are like that," Will said as cheerfully as ever. "The gods never fully expect to see us again. They blink and it's been a hundred years and oops, that guy died of old age I think."

Percy often thought this guy was a goofball. Nobody could be that naturally happy all the time, he had to be faking it at least every other smile. Not this time though. Will had been in this world longer, he'd had siblings to stay up late laughing about this with.

I walked along the beach for several hours. When I finally came back to the meadow, it was very late, maybe four or five in the morning, but Calypso was still in her garden, tending the flowers by starlight. Her moonlace glowed silver, and the other plants responded to the magic, glowing red and yellow and blue.

"He has ordered you to return," Calypso guessed.

"She'd like that, wouldn't she," Alex sounded blunt, but not cold. "The perfect way to make you stay."

Percy laughed, even though they both knew it was no joke.

"Well, not ordered. He gave me a choice."

Her eyes met mine. "I promised I would not offer."

"Offer what?"

"For you to stay."

"Stay," I said. "Like...forever?"

"You would be immortal on this island," she said quietly. "You would never age or die. You could leave the fight to others, Percy Jackson. You could escape your prophecy."

I stared at her, stunned. "Just like that?"

She nodded. "Just like that."

"But...my friends."

Nico was still adjusting to the feeling of admiration he had for Percy from when Percy had discovered he was a child of Hades and declaring himself the prophecy child. Percy took on the role of leader and responsibility so easily and naturally in a way he shared with Thalia Nico felt nausea over just the idea of.

But it wasn't the power that propped him into the position. It was the people around him he willingly led. Percy hadn't wanted to go back to camp to be the hero, he'd gone back because of them.

No matter how messy his shadow traveling ever got or what near-death experience he might find himself in, Nico was confident he'd never wind up on this island. Calypso would never fall in love with someone like him, but even still he stared absently down at the book for a few lingering moments. It was probably silly to think if he'd even be invited to stay, what reason he'd have to go back.

He wouldn't have had one before he got thrown into this room.

Calypso rose and took my hand. Her touch sent a warm current through my body. "You asked about my curse, Percy. I did not want to tell you. The truth is the gods send me companionship from time to time. Every thousand years or so, they allow a hero to wash up on my shores, someone who needs my help. I tend to him and befriend him, but it is never random. The Fates make sure that the sort of hero they send..."

Her voice trembled, and she had to stop.

I squeezed her hand tighter. "What? What have I done to make you sad?"

"They send a person who can never stay," she whispered. "Who can never accept my offer of companionship for more than a little while. They send me a hero I can't help...just the sort of person I can't help falling in love with."

"Huh," Alex couldn't help but sound admirable. "Somebody got really creative with that curse."

"Can we not compliment someone who tormented someone else for more eons than you can name," Jason sighed for this poor girl.

"I can admire the structure of a building without wishing it would fall on someone," Alex assured.

"Besides, this is Percy here." Magnus grinned. "You can't convince me he's not going to find some way to sneak this girl out. I bet he comes back through the labyrinth connecting to this place and gives her that freedom."

"Does she deserve it though," Alex raised a challenging brow. "She's not a victimless kid here. Who knows what she did to earn a life sentence. The gods are more than capable of just putting her right back and then deciding to destroy the labyrinth to suit their needs if he does."

Magnus looked intently at Alex as he considered debating that. Atlas felt like he deserved that life sentence because of what he'd done to Annabeth and Zoe, but the cruelty of his punishment came with no end in sight. It didn't feel right for these all-powerful beings to smite out immortal punishments that lasted longer than a lifetime.

Nico kept reading, and Magnus didn't get into it right now because he was still an atheist at heart, and had a great distaste of any 'justice system'. These gods were mighty but flawed beings to him, but it was an endless debate that had no resolution they should have to have someone to be accountable to.

The night was quiet except for the gurgle of the fountains and waves lapping on the shore. It took me a long time to realize what she was saying.

"Me?" I asked.

"If you could see your face." She suppressed a smile, though her eyes were still teary. "Of course, you."

The brief laugh that echoed around the room fell on deaf ears to Percy. He felt like he was still processing her warm brown eyes and the smile on her face for the first time. She was the kind of girl he bet his mom would have wanted him to settle down with, a nice normal girl who would garden with him all day and never flee a school on fire with him. The kind of girl who wouldn't have to hide her knife from Paul Blofis and have to explain why she might be on the run from some monsters.

His mom loved Annabeth, Sally Jackson had always nurtured his creative side and had never ordered him around, but this was the girl his mom would have wanted him to pick, he was sure of it.

And he wouldn't have agreed with her.

"That's why you've been pulling away all this time?"

"I tried very hard. But I can't help it. The Fates are cruel. They sent you to me, my brave one, knowing that you would break my heart."

"But...I'm just...I mean, I'm just me."

"And what's so wrong with that Percy?" Thalia chuckled with a glint in her eyes that spelled trouble. "It seems more than enough to get you by."

Panic shot through him as he thought Thalia was talking about herself for a moment, before her eyes darted to Nico and he laughed supremely awkwardly. He had no idea if Annabeth still loved him outside of a single memory he had of her that seemed to get more wildly out of context the more this went on. Nico had apparently fallen in love with him at some point too?! He even felt like he was still missing the obvious in someone. Now Calypso...Holy Poseidon, Thalia wasn't wrong, and he felt a tiny kernel of panic if Aphrodite really had placed some kind of curse on him.

"That is enough," Calypso promised. "I told myself I would not even speak of this. I would let you go without even offering. But I can't. I suppose the Fates knew that, too. You could stay with me, Percy. I'm afraid that is the only way you could help me."

I stared at the horizon. The first red streaks of dawn were lightening the sky. I could stay here forever, disappear from the earth. I could live with Calypso, with invisible servants tending to my every need. We could grow flowers in the garden and talk to songbirds and walk on the beach under perfect blue skies. No war. No prophecy. No more taking sides.

The truth was Percy could see how easy it would be to fall for someone like Calypso. Annabeth didn't need him, she was a better hero than him in nearly every way. She would probably figure out a way to convince Luke he was being stupid and stop being evil and this prophecy nonsense would be put off for another thousand years or so.

Calypso thought he was funny. She'd been alone for a really long time and needed help. He bet she'd help him build an awesome skate park and he could sit around all day doing things he'd always wanted to, like learn to play guitar and get an unbeatable high score. It wasn't so much that he wouldn't do it.

"I can't," I told her.

He couldn't spend his time waking up every day in a garden, blissfully happy. He couldn't sit around learning to weave and cook beef stew. He could not step away from his prophecy, his friends who needed him, no matter how much Calypso did too.

She looked down sadly.

"I would never do anything to hurt you," I said, "but my friends need me. I know how to help them now. I have to get back."

She picked a flower from her garden—a sprig of silver moonlace. Its glow faded as the sunrise came up. Daybreak is a good time for decisions, Hephaestus had said. Calypso tucked the flower into my T-shirt pocket.

Nico studied the book in surprise. He'd always greatly wondered why Percy had been rooting around and dumping his canteen in that flower box when he'd shown up. It had felt like a warding off gesture to him, considering how much Nico detested plants and Percy must have somehow known this. Instead, he now understood, it was just a very, very sad reminder at the hint of white that had sprouted up.

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed me on the forehead, like a blessing.

"Then come to the beach, my hero. And we will send you on your way."

It would have been easier if she'd argued with him. If she'd begged him to stay and cursed him and the gods out for doing this to her again and thrown a fit, ripping up her precious plants.

She was so kind. She'd accepted her life was just going to be like this, and endless cycle of heartache. She accepted her inevitable defeat.

It was that part of her that he knew he would never be happy with.

The raft was a ten-foot square of logs lashed together with a pole for a mast and a simple white linen sail. It didn't look like it would be very seaworthy, or lakeworthy.

"This will take you wherever you desire," Calypso promised. "It is quite safe."

I took her hand, but she let it slip out of mine.

"Maybe I can visit you," I said.

She shook her head. "No man ever finds Ogygia twice, Percy. When you leave, I will never see you again."

Some god owed him for this. Losing his memory, being trapped in this room. Reliving each and every moment of his past as raw and painful as ever.

He didn't know how, he didn't when, but he knew he would not let this be the case. It was a gut feeling. He would see her again.

"But—"

"Go, please." Her voice broke. "The Fates are cruel, Percy. Just remember me." Then a little trace of her smile returned. "Plant a garden in Manhattan for me, will you?"

"I promise." I stepped onto the raft. Immediately it began to sail from the shore.

Alex had never been to Manhattan, but he was pretty confident they had a plant conservatory garden, and he pretended he couldn't hear Percy's ragged breath for a moment as he instead vividly imagined security chasing Percy with pitchforks and trowels for trying to plant something.

As I sailed onto the lake I realized the Fates really were cruel. They sent Calypso someone she couldn't help but love. But it worked both ways. For the rest of my life I would always be thinking about her. She would always be my biggest what if.

"One even the Fates might not know," Thalia murmured gently. Not even the Titan's had been able to outsmart them. Percy had been the child of the Prophecy. Somehow, some way, he was always going to fulfill that role.

Did that mean there were paths even they couldn't see? A tapestry even they couldn't make? A world beyond the oldest beings?

Within minutes the island of Ogygia was lost in the mist. I was sailing alone over the water toward the sunrise.

Then I told the raft what to do. I said the only place I could think of, because I needed comfort and friends.

"Camp Half-Blood," I said. "Sail me home."

Alex couldn't help but break the tension like a firecracker. "What if you asked to go back to your mom's apartment? Would you appear in the bathtub?"

Percy laughed at this guys never ending sporadicness. It was genuine, but still a little sad as he watched Nico pass the book to Will.

He had somehow been taken out of time over four times in his life already. His life, his choices kept speeding past and around him, colliding with everyone around him whether he wanted them to or not. He could never have stayed on Ogygia anymore than he would willingly stay in this room...but somehow a part of him felt so disconnected from his own future as he floated out on that raft he couldn't begin to guess what came next.

PJOPJOPJO

This was a very big revelation chapter for little kid me. One of the very first instances of showing another point of view.

Reading this chapter, making me realize that Percy was not fighting for the 'right side', but the side his family was on. It wasn't just an obvious choice for good and evil anymore, it was the obligation of family vs duty, the first story this concept was ever introduced to me, and I'll always remember Calypso for that.

I will never understand people who hate Calypso for turning into a shrew by the time Leo comes around. This girl has been dealing with her curse longer than you can conceive of a timeframe, she's earned the right to be pissed and not nice anymore. She was at peace with it for as long as she could be, until she just couldn't handle it anymore. Can you imagine if a god popped in and delivered the news that Kronos was defeated once more and all the gods were now supposed to be taking more responsibility for their kids, and maybe even let slip that she should be let out of her punishment, and they just, didn't?

I imagine it being Demeter or something, all a flutter with excitement for all these new developments and then dropping this bomb, getting distracted by Calypso's beautiful begonias, and then cheesing it leaving Calypso in an understandably bitter future with her curse.

#pjo #Percy Jackson #Thalia Grace #Jason Grace #Alex Fierro #Magnus Chase #nico di angelo #will solace #solangelo #fierrochase #percabeth

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tagthescullion · 1 year

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Il Minuetto della Ragazza

Fandom(s): Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Rating: T

Summary: Bianca di Angelo is alive. Alive and upset, confused, desperate… Camp Half Blood lost her little brother, and there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to bring him home safe.

AO3 link

Ch One - Ch Two - Ch Three - Ch Four - Ch Five - Ch Six - Ch Seven - Ch Eight - Ch Nine

Chapter Ten: The Fury

“Fury? As in, she’s furious?”

“As in Hades’ minions, Bianca,” Thalia whispered. Her hand was getting close to her bracelet.

The old woman –the Fury– turned towards them.

No, not towards them. Towards Bianca.

“Shit,” Thalia said, getting up brusquely. “Let’s go. Ludi, you have my back, keep Bianca out of sight as much as possible.”

“I can defend myself!” Bianca said.

“Not now,” Thalia snapped. “You do as I say.”

Thalia was about to run straight towards the Fury, who tilted her head as if recognising the daughter of Zeus.

“Wait!” Bianca yelled. She stepped in front of Thalia, who looked murderous.

“Bianca, Furies don’t fuck around,” she said, gritting her teeth. “Get out of my way, or I’ll–”

“She wants to talk to me,” Bianca blurted out. She wasn’t sure why she knew, but she was certain.

“Are you out of your mind?!”

“Let her,” Ludovica said. “She’s right. It wants to talk to her.”

Thalia was looking between them as if they’d gone mad.

“We’ll be a step away if anything happens,” Ludovica reassured their lieutenant. “But it won’t hurt Bianca.”

Bianca stared at the older girl. Why would she defend her? She knew the Hunters tried to stand up for each other, but Ludovica’s statement was as determined as Bianca felt.

She shook her head, she’d ask Ludovica later. Now, she had a Fury to meet.

Bianca walked towards the monster, who leaned into a cane she carried as part of her disguise.

“You’re not an easy person to find,” the Fury remarked once Bianca reached her.

It took Bianca a moment to realise the monster wasn’t talking in English. The language sounded familiar to her, Greek perhaps.

“I was…” She didn’t know how to finish that sentence. “Lost, for a while.”

The Fury nodded. “The Labyrinth is no place for children of the gods. Not even your kin.”

“My kin?”

“Your brothers and sisters have an affinity for underground places, for darkness,” the Fury studied Bianca’s face. “But Daedalus’ maze is off limits. It’s a cursed place.”

Bianca already knew the maze was a nasty, godless place, but she was curious about the first part.

“You know who my father is,” she said.

The Fury cackled. For a moment, her old lady costume faded and Bianca saw her for what she really was. Her wrinkled hands turned into leathery-skin claws and her eyes became a sickly yellow.

“You know who he is too.”

Bianca wanted to deny it. For once, she truly wanted the last tendrils of ignorance to hold in her brain.

But the clues were all there: the burning skeleton back in the quest, that feeling of knowing when a person was dying or dead, how comfortable she felt in the dark, and well… the fact that a Fury, a minion of Hades, as Thalia had said, had gone out of her way for a chat.

“Did my father send you?” She asked the Fury.

The monster smiled. A creepy grin, leaving all her dirty teeth out in the open.

“He’s… worried, you could say,” the Fury said. “About your brother.”

Bianca felt a cloud of indignation overshadow her curiosity for a moment. Really? Hades, Lord of the Dead, King of the Underworld, had sent his servant to tell Bianca he worried about Nico. After he’d done nothing to keep Nico safe when she’d disappeared?

Swallowing the bitter taste in her mouth, she asked: “Do you know where he is?”

“I know where he was,” the Fury shrugged. “But that is of no use. You’ll find answers in New York.”

We know that already, Bianca wanted to say.

“I don’t suppose my father sent any faster means of transportation than a bus, did he?” She tried not to sound angry.

“Lord Hades leaves lesser tasks such as travelling to lesser gods,” the Fury scoffed. “But if you were to find your way to Chicago on the night of the 21st of April, you might find safe passage to New York.”

Before Bianca could reply that that was the vaguest advice she’d ever received, the Fury let out a hellish high-pitched scream and disappeared in a puff of dark dust.

Bianca pressed her hands into fists so hard out of pure frustration that she feared she’d made her palms bleed.

“What in Hades was that?” She heard Thalia demand.

She coughed once. How fitting that Thalia would ask that.

“She said we’re on the right path, going to New York,” Bianca replied. “And that we should try to get to Chicago.”

Thalia frowned. “Why did a Fury give advice? Only a fool would do what those bitches want.”

Ludovica laid a hand on Thalia’s arm carefully.

“We shouldn’t be too quick to decide,” she said. “Did the Fury explain why it wanted us there?”

“She said there’d be a safe way to New York from there.” Bianca shrugged.

“I don’t like it,” Thalia insisted. “Hades is interested in us for some reason. Whatever his goals are, I will not be part of it.”

She stomped her foot and stormed off.

Ludovica surprised her by staying at her side.

“You must tell her eventually,” she said. “She’ll find out, it’s better if she hears it from you.”

“But I don’t know what the Fury meant by safe passage,” Bianca said.

Ludovica tilted her head. “I meant about why Hades sent the Fury to talk to you.”

Bianca paled. Ludovica knew? Is that why she’d been so sure the monster wouldn’t hurt Bianca?

“How—?”

But before she could ask whether Ludovica had always known, or whether she’d figured it out by lucky-guessing, Phoebe materialised beside them.

Why is Thalia upset?” She asked. She sounded rather defensive.

“This time?” Ludovica asked innocently.

Phoebe gave her a look.

“We’ve been told to stop in Chicago on our way to New York,” Ludovica said. “She’s afraid it’s a trap.”

“And is it, do you think?” Phoebe asked.

Ludovica shook her head. “I doubt it. It seemed like legitimate advice.”

“Advice by…?”

“That old lady who was lurking by the snack machine,” Ludovica replied vaguely. “She wasn’t an old lady, after all.”

“Right,” Phoebe said. “Was she a goddess? It wasn’t Artemis, she would’ve told us all.”

“It was Apollo,” Ludovica lied. She said it so nonchalantly it surprised Bianca.

“Apollo?” Phoebe raised an eyebrow. “He usually shows-off.”

“He pretended to be a homeless man in our quest,” Bianca offered. “He… he helped us a bit, but he said he couldn’t do so openly.”

Phoebe rolled her eyes. “Gods and their ridiculous rules. His sister was captured and he ‘couldn’t help’. You’d imagine Olympus would allow exceptions to save their own.”

Bianca nodded. She understood that exasperation well.

They sat down to wait.

Bianca was still uneasy. She wanted to ask Ludovica how she knew Hades was her father, but Phoebe was sitting between them, and she wasn’t ready to tell all of them just yet.

She knew Ludovica was right to say she had to tell Thalia before she found out through other people. She’d never trust Bianca again. But then, how did one tell their leader one’s father was the reason they’d lost almost a decade of their life?

The thought alone made her cringe with anger. Why? Why had he done such an awful thing? Bianca couldn’t remember him well, but she was keenly aware of a feeling of safety she felt when she thought of him. She was sure he’d been around when she and Nico had been little. How could the same entity be responsible for Thalia’s —her cousin’s— unfortunate fate?

There must have been a reason. She combed her mind for the answer, but it was one of the many memories he couldn’t reach. If she even knew at all. For all she could guess, gods had periods of savagery when they attacked relatives at random.

At last, the time to catch the bus arrived. It allowed Bianca’s wandering mind a respite.

There were few passengers other than them: a mother with a child and an old cranky man who’d given Sasha, one of the older girls, an inappropriate look which prompted Thalia to push him brusquely.

The good news was Thalia was no longer upset —nasty man aside—. She’d sat down happily, propped her feet on the top of the seat in front of hers, and donned a dark pair of sunglasses —not very useful considering the darkening sky outside—.

She looked asleep, but Bianca thought she might’ve been pretending to have some time to think.

Bianca thought she’d never be able to sleep herself, but her exhaustion beat her restless brain, and she lost consciousness the moment she slumped on her seat.

Immersed in the world of dreams she felt as if she was changing radio frequencies, unsure of where to stay. Images flashed through her mind, and bits of conversation filtered through her brain.

She felt a pull, as if something or somebody was pushing her sideways, towards a particular scene of the ones flashing in front of her eyes.

She felt her body moving faster, accelerating until the vertigo made her close her eyes.

“Make it stop!”

Her words were lost into her surroundings, but she got her wish.

With an abrupt break, Bianca fell on her knees.

#bianca di angelo #thalia grace #nico di angelo #hunters of artemis #pjo #hoo #toa #pjo hoo toa #riordanverse #pjo fic #il minuetto #mis fics #tagthescullion

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sempre-nico · 1 year

Note

[ BREAK IN ] : for our muses to break in somewhere together

“When this is over, I demand chocolate and champagne.”

“When this is over, I’ll give you a more than chocolate and champagne, amore.”

“Hmm. A car? A fancy one, maybe with big wheels that goes fast.”

He chuckled. “Blue? Or red?”

Izzy gave the lock one more delicate nudge before it popped open. She straightened, smoothing out the shimmering dress that hugged her gorgeous curves and gesturing smugly to the now open door. “After you, Mr Morrisini.”

“I believe it is ladies first, cara mio.”

She gave him a saucy wink before slipping inside and Nico followed her. He took a moment to carefully snick shut the door behind him and relock it. Somewhere down the hall, a party was in full swing and it had proven to be the perfect opportunity to sneak away to his father’s old study and dig around for any intel he could use against his cousin.

Nico glanced around, noting how little the space had changed in twenty years. For a brief moment, he was thrown backwards in time as scenes replayed in his memory.

“I used to sneak in here all the time as a kid,” he said, turning slowly to reacclimatise to the space after so long away. Everything seemed so much smaller now. “My father always threatened us with his belt if he was to ever catch us in here, but my sister Sophia and I could dare each other to hide. Once I hid in that cabinet over there-“ Nico pointed to the far corner, a small cupboard with two swords crossed above it, “-for almost four hours. They started a search because they couldn’t find me.”

“How old were you?”

“Five, maybe six.”

“Hmm,” Izzy gave him an appraising look over her shoulder, warm enough to make his skin heat. “I doubt you would fit in there now.”

“No,” Nico huffed a laugh to himself. “I wouldn’t. Did you find anything?"

"Nothing here looks useful." Izzy dragged one fingertip through the layer of dust on the desk. "I don't think anyone has been in here for years, Nicky."

"No," he sighed, looking around. "You may be right."

“So where would you hide now?” Izzy asked, leaving her investigation of the papers sitting on the desk to advance on him instead. He knew he should keep looking. He should be trying to find out anything he could of whatever future operations were on the books but all he could think about was the way she moved, the way she looked at him as she came close.

It was the same way she looked at him when she took him in her hand and got down on her knees in front of him.

“Isobel,” he said in warning, but there was little strength behind his tone. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking we’re alone. In this locked room. No one knows it's us at this party, let alone that we’re in here. Maybe we should have a little fun?”

His hands found their customary place against her hips and her breasts grazed his chest. He dragged one palm upwards, following her curves to find the swell of her breast. Even through the luxe material of her dress, it was easy to brush his thumb over her nipple and feel it peak and harden.

“I didn’t ask you to open the door to fuck you.”

“You don’t fuck me,” she said, sliding her arms around his neck. Her head tipped back, exposing the long line of her throat and sending her long blonde waves cascading down her back. The disguise was a thorough one to anyone else, but he would recognize her in any drab. “You make love to me.”

He moved to her other nipple, relishing the slight hitch in her voice. He knew if he touched her now, she would already be wet.

“Si,” he murmured, leaning in to brush his lips over her jaw. “My love. Because you are my love and you deserve to made love to.”

“Nicky,” she sighed, melting into him as he brought her closer. A small shudder rippled through her body as he ducked his head and kneaded her breasts, sucking against her dress to find her nub. “Oh. Oh, Nic-“

It took Nico barely a heartbeat to decide he wasn’t going to find anything useful in his father’s old abandoned office.

But between this woman’s beautiful dark thighs, he would find an incomparable treasure.

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hot-hellboy · 1 month

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Body on Fire - A Perjasico Fanfic (Part 6)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

"Percy, we need to talk."

Jason had been meaning to say those words the second he got a chance, and this was it. Percy momentarily glanced over in his direction before turning his gaze back on where the horizon would be if the sky hadn't been completely dark by now. The space where the ocean stopped and the sky met was nearly indistinguishable unless one were to squint very hard to see it.

"I just wanted to apologize for the other day and leaving Nico alone...and for getting a little too into it with him and snapping at you." Jason did his best to read Percy's expression, but it was difficult because he could only see one side of his face.

"Why are you saying sorry to me? If anything it's Nico you should be apologizing to." Percy answered coldly.

"I already did. He forgave me...I think? I don't know, I was just so nervous going into this whole thing—"

"Look, Grace, I'm not mad, okay? Not anymore, at least. If you and Nico are cool, then I don't want to start anything. It's a weird time for him and I don't think us feuding is going to make it any easier." Percy said and Jason breathed a sigh of relief.

"But I have been thinking," he added, and the alpha looked up again.

"—What's this going to be like when this has all blown over? I mean, his heat isn't going to last forever."

Jason hadn't even considered what their relationship with Nico would be like once this was all said and done. He had been too busy trying to be a better "temporary alpha" that he completely forgot that they would have to detach themselves from the omega one way or another. He didn't think he could do that. Jason studied Percy's face closely; his gorgeous green eyes still visible even in the dim lighting of the ship and the silver stars above. He found himself lost in staring at the other alpha beside him; thoroughly entranced by the way Percy looked when he was in deep thought. It took Jason a second to shake himself out of it before remembering what they were concerned about.

"I really don't know. Is it bad to say that I wish it wouldn't end?" He responded at last.

"No. I feel that way, too, and it's scaring me," Percy said as he turned to face Jason at last.

"I think I like him, Jason. I think I've liked him for awhile now, and this opportunity just seemed too good to be true, but—"

"—but there's always a catch. I get it." Jason finished for him, and he saw gratefulness fill Percy's eyes once he saw that Jason understood.

The alpha was surprised that feelings of jealousy were nowhere to be found. He couldn't find it in himself to throw any hate or irritation at Percy's way, even though another alpha just admitted to him to having a crush on the omega he also had feelings for. Jason wondered why.

Then it hit him.

Maybe Nico wasn't the only one he had feelings for. Perhaps some of his affection really was directed towards Percy this whole time, and finding love and lust in the little omega still in his cabin was what was able to bring all three of them together. It would certainly explain his need to prove himself to Percy, not necessarily in a competition of dominance, but just because he wanted the other alpha to be impressed with him, too. It would also explain the dissipation of his own jealousy towards Percy; it was nonexistent now because he was finally recognizing what could've been the buddings of a blooming crush that he could only hope would be reciprocated.

"I'm glad we got the chance to talk," Percy said, but Jason's mind and heart were still racing.

"M-Me too." Jason couldn't even meet the alpha's eyes anymore now that he was done disguising his "admiration" for attraction.

"Well, I think I'm going to get some shuteye. How about you?" Percy said as he stretched and began to turn to head back to the cabins.

"Percy, wait," Jason said a little more firmly than he meant to, but at least it got his attention.

"Hm?"

"I..." Jason desperately wanted to get the words out, but nothing in his vocal tract seemed to be working.

"...Nevermind. Let's go get some sleep." His chest felt tight as he passed up a perfectly good opportunity to say how he really felt, and he knew he'd just have to live with the consequences later. Percy gave him a shrug and a charming smile as they made their way belowdecks and back to Jason's cabin.

~•~

When they arrived, Nico seemed to have passed out at least a little over an hour ago, and he was curled up in a newly made nest that was big enough to fit the three of them. Jason and Percy crawled in on either side of him, and they were both careful to not disturb the little omega still snoozing in the middle of the nest. Jason got comfortable under the covers as he stared up at the cabin ceiling with his arms behind his head, and when he looked over he saw Percy doing the same. The son of Poseidon didn't seem to notice him staring, which Jason was thankful for because he was almost certain that Percy could hear his own heartbeat thrumming loudly in his chest. Now it wasn't just Nico who was giving him butterflies, and it made him feel simultaneously excited and downright nervous at the same time.

"Hey, are you still awake?" Percy asked from the other side of the bed.

"Yeah. You?"

"I'm the one who asked, silly."

"Oh. Right. I don't know why I...Whatever." Jason murmured back sheepishly.

"I know I already said this, but I'm really happy that we could sort this out today." Percy whispered.

"Me too. It's weird being mad at each other. Not that I was mad at you! I just mean that it feels gross to be...at odds." Jason mentally kicked himself. Why couldn't he just speak normally? He was able to do it before when he convinced himself he wasn't into Percy like that, so why did it have to be different now that he was finally being honest with himself?

"Don't worry, I know what you mean. But Jason?"

"Yes?"

"Can I just say I'm lucky to have you in my life? Both of you, really." Percy said as he nodded towards Nico's sleeping direction.

What the hell does that mean? Does it mean he likes me, too?

Jason couldn't afford to twist Percy's words like that. Not unless he wanted to seriously get hurt. He knew Percy could really open up when he wanted to, or maybe late night conversations made everyone at least a little delirious. Or maybe he really was reading too much into it. Percy was just being sweet, right?

"I'm...Lucky to have you in my life, too. You guys mean a lot to me." Vulnerability was seriously making him uncomfortable. Was Percy putting him on the spot because he somehow knew? Jason swallowed hard and tried not to think about that possibility. There was no way, right? Either way, this was his now or never opportunity that he thought missed earlier. He couldn't give it up—now was the time, so he decided to just go for it.

"Percy, I have some to tell y—" Jason began to say until he looked over to see Percy dozing off soundly.

He sighed. Tomorrow was another day.

The End.

#body on fire #percy x jason x nico #omegaverse #smut #hellboy #cross posted on wattpad #cross posted on ao3

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writingpaperghost · 2 years

Text

To Find Your Way Home (Chapter 8)

Chapter 8: Wrong File

After accidentally sending NIco the wrong file, Emu sets off a series of events he has Very Strong Feelings about.

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40442304/chapters/103428738

There was one thing Nico was surprised by when it came to Emu’s work at Gemn, and it was the efficiency he completed his paperwork. Maybe it was just because he was bored, but she’d expected half of it to get lost in the mess that was his desk (seriously, papers were scattered everywhere, there were at least ten different pens, and he kept his mug of whatever he was drinking at the moment right next to his computer). He was more likely to lose the paper through tripping than anything else, though.

The thing that only vaguely surprised her was the system in which he named files. Which was the say the lack of system, because Nico was pretty sure they were all keyboard smashes or “Untitled Document” numbered one through a thousand. She didn’t even think he always knew which file was which.

This day was, for the most part, like any other before it. She’d sent Emu a text, asking him to send her Kuroto’s notes as to some tweaks on Carnival he’d been making. He cheerfully responded with a “yeah give me a sec ill email it” and a thumbs up. So she gives it a few minutes and check her email, waiting and waiting until finally one from Emu comes in.

All that’s in the email is an attached file, eloquently named “bydwnd”, and a short actual message “here you go”. Given the file seemed to follow the normal nonsensical and useless file naming structure of all of Emu’s other files, she didn’t pay it much mind. When she opened it, though, she realized that this was very much the wrong file.

What she’d opened weren’t Kuroto’s notes, they were notes at all. Instead, it looked almost more like a script.

In the kingdom of Seer, there were two princes, twins. The “older” of the two, and the heir, Pollux, was quiet and serious, always studying. The “younger” of the two, Castor, was quiet as well, but he didn’t study nearly so much, always trying to drag his brother to play, to keep each other company. It was Castor’s smile that brought Pollux joy, that’s how it was for years. Castor was the sun in Pollux’s world.

When the two eighteen, they were kidnapped. Despite the valiant efforts of a ship in the royal navy, a storm rolled in as the two were being rescued, and the ship lurched to the side, sending Castor overboard. Though Pollux reached desperately for his brother, it was no use, and Castor disappeared into the inky abyss of the sea.

From that day forward, there was only one prince. He was quiet and lonely, his world dark without the sun that once lit it.

While Nico was curious about what it was that Emu had written here, nothing seemed particularly strange about it. She kept reading, though, as her curiosity got the better of her. Emu had never mentioned this.

Pollux: Though our parents forbid Castor and I from learning Magik… I remember how badly Castor wanted to learn, after he was saved from his illness all those years ago. He wanted to be just like Healer Kanata, dreamed of being a healer who could help those in need. He could never fulfill that dream… But I can. Even if I’m still forbidden from learning Magik… what father and mother don’t know won’t hurt them. That’s why, for the past six years, I’ve been sneaking out, using a spell I found in the library to disguise myself. When I practice Magik, I am not Pollux Castores, prince of Seer, I am Castor Dioscuro, a nobody.

A magic obscures Pollux and when it disappears, he is replaced with someone who barely resembles himself, looking more like his brother once did.

Castor: It’s almost nice. And I get to help people. Like this, it’s almost like my brother is fulfilling his dream.

Here was where Nico was starting to notice some unusual similarities. Then again, they always say to write what you know, and that was sort of what Emu was doing here, she thinks. Maybe the rest is just coincidence. So she keeps reading, pausing after she notices another similarity.

Healer Mari: Castor! You’re just in time. Would you care to escort this boy to Revelve? While this is usually the duty of the Adventurer’s Guild and not the Healer’s Guild… The boy, Kai, seem more trusting of healers.

Beside Healer Mari is a boy, at least, Castor thinks they are a boy. A hat is pulled over their head, letting only a few tufts of black hair fall out, and they wear terribly baggy clothes. What stands out is that the boy has a fine pink scarf wrapped around his neck, one that seemed far too nice compared to the rest of his clothes.

Kai: I’m standing right here, you know.

Healer Mari: Of course. Kai, this is Castor, he’s a promising healer studying here.

Castor: Hello? I suppose I could help you get to Revelve…

Kai: You suppose?

Castor: Er, I mean, of course I can help you! (I’m still not very good at talking to people while disguised…)

There was something strange about the description of Kai. Nico couldn’t quite figure out what. Once more, she continued to read.

Healer Mari: Oh, Castor, perfect timing! There’s someone here I’d like you to help.

Castor: There… is?

Healer Mari gestures for someone to come over. The woman who comes over isn’t dressed for travel, clearly, but holds herself with confidence. She has brown hair that turns a light blue half way down, pulled into a ponytail. For the most part, her clothing was simply black and covering, save for the blue patterning across the front and back of the shirt and reaching up the legs. The sort of clothing one would wear underneath armor.

Healer Mari: This is Suki, a knight who is traveling to Verner. Would you be willing to accompany her on her travels.

Suki: I’ve had healers travel with me before, few have been all that well suited.

Castor: Well, I can try.

Suki reminded Nico rather unsubtly of Saki. In both appearances and personality, even down to a later confessed penchant for sweets. And her role, of course. A knight, who’s armor was described vaguely resembling Brave’s, though the suit of Brave itself resembled a general knight as it were.

Suki, pointing towards a docked ship: Aha, there. We’ve found who we’re looking for.

Castor, confused: The… bandits?

Suki: No, but someone who will help us with getting to the bandits.

Upon setting foot on the ship, they’re greeted by a tired looking man. He was tall, wearing a raggedy coat and with a bright but faded shawl pulled over his shoulders. There’s a torn cap on his head, resting atop hair that was black with strange white patches.

Suki: Hello, Tora. It’s been a few months.

Tora, grumbling: Why do you always find me, Suki?

Suki, cheerfully: I have my ways.

Kai: Oh, Castor?

Castor: Ah, K-Kai! I’m glad you seem to be… doing well.

Tora: Oh, good. You know the brat. Get rid of him, for me, will you?

Kai: You really think I’d make it easy on you, old man?

Laughing, there was no doubt in Nico’s mind that Tora was clearly based on Taiga. Judging by their interactions, Nico was led to believe that Kai was at least partially based on her, but wasn’t quite sure, yet.

Castor stares at the woman who came out of the music box. Dressed in brightly colored clothes, green, yellow, and blue, even her hair was a bright pink. She looks around, confused, before her eyes fall on Castor.

Woman: You! You set me free!

Castor: Uh… what?

Woman: You broke the curse that was placed on me, trapping me in that music box… You must truly be a powerful Mage… Oh! I’m Pippa! Pippa Poppy, I’m a dancer.

Castor: Curse…? Oh, um… N-nice to meet you, Ms. Poppy-

Pippa: Pippa’s fine. Say, you wouldn’t happen to be heading towards Gem?

Castor: Oh, you must have been in there a while… it’s been years since anyone could really come or go between Seer and Gem. Rising tensions and all that.

Pippa: Ah… I see. Of course…

Castor: (She seems…. Yeah, upset. I guess that makes sense.) Do you have family there, is that why you want to go?

Pippa: Ah, yes. I’m from Gemn, you see. And I’d like to try to check on my sister and her son… Oh, uh, what year is it?

Well, if Nico had to guess, Pippa was very reminiscent of Poppy. Especially with the appearance and role, it seemed.

Man: Hey, you got some practice in dealing with those little goblins, right?

Castor: Why do you think that?

Man: Well, I saw you and those people you were with dealing with a few yesterday…

Castor: You do realize that makes you sound a bit… strange, right?

Man: Eh, maybe. Name Keito Hideyoshi, I’m something of a traveler.

Castor: I can tell. Your armor’s rather unusual.

Keito had armor that was unlike anything common in Seer or Gem, colored in a bright, if perhaps a bit dirty, yellow, made with what appeared to be some kind of scales.

Keito: Yeah, well, I guess I could use your guys’ help with those goblins.

Castor: I’ll… talk with the others.

Nico didn’t know the details of Parad’s and Kiriya’s first meeting, not exactly, but she’d heard enough about it to figure out that Castor and Keito’s meeting was pretty similar. She wondered just how much inspiration Emu had taken from things that had happened. Or why he’d decided that to make Parad the protagonist and kill himself off before the story had even begun.

There was something strange about the young man and the other man he clung to. The first had his face mostly hidden by his brown bangs and the hood of his pink, floral printed capelet. But the clothing was oddly fine for a traveler, likely, he was from the capitol of Gem, Obsidian. A noble, perhaps, traveling with the prince? Then there was the man beside him, who wore armor over his clothing, in places. He had a scowl.

Scowling Man: Go away, we’re busy.

Nervous Man: Oh, George, don’t be rude…

George: No, we have other things to be doing. Like finding your brother.

Nervous Man: Ah, oh, yes… He’ll probably worry if we take too much longer.

George: Exactly, let’s go.

If George wasn’t somehow based off of Graphite, if only in personality, then Nico wasn’t sure who was. This other man with George reminded her of Emu, at least, in terms of the nervousness.

The man distractedly discussing with the innkeeper was certainly the prince of Gem, Kouki. He had black hair, the bangs of which had been swept to the side, yet still seemed to fall into his face. He was not dressed in the slightest for travel, his cape attached to a light purple jacket, over a black button up – the royal colors of Gem.

Pippa, frowning: One of Gem’s nobles?

Castor: I… think that may be the prince.

Pippa: The- the prince?

Pippa, quietly: He’s gotten so tall…

It seemed the prince of this kingdom, Gem, was clearly based on Kuroto. Tall, black hair, a penchant for wearing black and purple. She keeps reading, as the crew continue on their adventure, Suki getting possessed by a demon and Castor unintentionally freeing her as she became a holy knight. Or something. Nico was more interested in what happened after, where Pollux returned home and finds that there’s… something wrong with Keito.

He gets kidnapped and taken to Gem, as for some reason, Keito was working for the evil king of Gem, Date. There, he finds the man who’d once been with George. The one that Kouki had previously asked them to help rescue, his younger brother Enola.

Pollux: Enola…?

Enola looked up, bruises and magical scars visible on his body beneath the thin clothing he wore. He looked terribly scared.

Enola: W-who are you? Why… why did father… bring you here? How do you know my name?

Pollux: I am Pollux, the prince of Seer. I… have heard of you, from the people of Gem who whisper of your existence, and from your brother, who worries for your safety. I do not know why I am here, though… What has happened to you? Why are you here in a cell if you are prince, where did these bruises and scars come from?

Enola: I… I don’t know. Father says I have a role to play, but whatever it is, I do not want to play it anymore. He- he said this is the only reason he took me in. Because of my- my Magik. He said – he said that the only Mages who can have affinities for Light and Dark Magik – are the ones who are twins. But I don’t understand. I do not remember my life before father found me six years ago… so then how could he know that I have a twin? Is it because he knows my Magik affinity?

Pollux: Here I- I know some healing Magik, let me heal some of these bruises, at least. You know… you remind me of my own brother.

Enola: I do?

Pollux: Yes. You look a lot like him, and there’s something about how you act…

Enola: Are the two of you… close?

Pollux: We… used to be. He meant the world to me, our entire lives we were always together unless we were forced apart. But then… he- six years ago, he, as far as we knew, died.

Enola: Oh… I’m sorry…

Pollux: Enola… It’s fine. I’ve… gotten over it, I guess.

Enola: I… I can’t imagine losing Kouki.

Pollux: I hope you never have to learn what it’s like. But… I have an… idea. About what Date might be up to.

Enola: You do?

Pollux: There have been… rumors, of sorts, about there being work of demons around here. I think, perhaps, that Date may be trying to do something with a demon. And it’s possible that he wants you- wants your Magik – to aid that.

Enola: Perhaps… because of mother’s illness? The healers say they don’t know she’s still alive – that she should have died years ago. But then why does he need you?

Pollux: I… can’t say for sure but… perhaps… you are Castor, my brother? You look like him and I- I have Light Magik, so that would give you Dark Magik, which would aid in the powers of demon. Then… Our Magik combined could be powerful enough to summon something very, very powerful.

Enola: I… I guess it isn’t impossible.

Pollux: I simply hope that someone will come for us. I do not believe we can face Date on our own.

It was easy enough for Nico to figure out the roles of Pollux and Enola now. They were Parad and Emu. And Date was, unsurprisingly, Masamune. The story continues a little farther, until the point where the rest of the heroes arrive and fight Date. Then it ends, mid thought, almost. There were a few variations on the ending, it seemed, given the variety of scenarios Emu seemed to have written down.

But all of them seemed to be ones that he didn’t like.

With a hum, Nico notes the amount of time that she’s lost to reading the script. She didn’t mind, but she should at least send Emu a text or something telling him he sent the wrong file. Then she wonders what she should do, now that she’s read through this. Of course, she should probably talk with Emu about it, because she really liked what’s in it. But first…

---

“I didn’t think Emu wrote.” Nico comments, plopping into the chair beside Kuroto’s desk.

Pausing his typing for just a moment, Kuroto answered. “Only if it’s his journal, as far as I know.” He glanced over, “Why?”

She hummed, “Emu sent me the wrong file, yesterday.”

“So?”

Rolling her eyes, she leans back in the chair, “I emailed it to you before I came over. You should read it.”

He looked up from his computer screen, “Nico, we really shouldn’t read whatever it is. If Emu didn’t mean to send it, then there’s a chance he doesn’t want other people to see it.”

“Just read it!” She huffed, “I think you’ll like it.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll read it tonight.”

“Don’t lose sleep.”

“I won’t, I won’t. Honestly, you should have more confidence in me, I’m not Emu.”

He gave her an annoyed glare, though Nico seemed unbothered. “Yeah, but you’re his brother, and I know you both share some bad habits.”

---

Though Kuroto had some feelings about reading whatever it was that Emu had accidentally sent Nico, he couldn’t lie that he was curious. So with an undeniable interest, Kuroto opens the file that Nico sent him. Right off the bat, he notices what might count as some strange formatting choices, but he knows Emu has never seen the sort of formatting that is standard with Gemn’s own script for their games. Yet regardless of that, what was in front of him was clearly a script for… something. It was hard to tell what it was intended to be for.

He'd told Nico that he wouldn’t lose sleep reading the script, and he really hadn’t intended to. But even though he was curled on his bed, he still found himself engrossed in the story, and as he reached the unsure ending, a glance at the time leaves him cringing. Nearly the time he would normally wake up in the morning.

Oops. Well, he thinks that, since he’s a Bugster who doesn’t need all that much sleep, it should be fine. His eyes hurt a little, but that was probably more from staring at a screen all night than being tired. Rubbing them, he slides out of bed and makes his way out.

In the kitchen – from which he has been banned save for the use of the sink and microwave – he finds Emu, at the stove cooking something. Graphite was, once again, curled on the couch with a book – this time, it’s a book Saki had gotten for him the other day, some fantasy book. Judging by the bags under Emu’s eyes, Kuroto wasn’t the only one who hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep last night.

“Did you sleep last night?” Kuroto asked, grabbing Emu’s attention.

Emu looks up from his pan, staring at Kuroto. “Did you?”

Suddenly very aware of his appearance, Kuroto responded, “What makes you ask that?”

The look Emu gave him told him that something or other in his appearance gave away his lack of sleep the night before. “Your hair looks terrible, and you forgot to fix your clothes, so your shirt’s all wrinkled.”

“Ah,” Kuroto intoned, startled at how easily Emu realized his lack of sleep. “Well, I got distracted.” Rolling his eyes, Emu returned his attention to the pan on the stove. “And you, Emu? Why didn’t you sleep?”

Hesitating just a little, Emu answered, “I… had a nightmare. Couldn’t go back to sleep.”

Graphite set his book to the side and called from the living room, “He wouldn’t let me try to help.”

“Because it wasn’t necessary.”

“You didn’t sleep all night,” Graphite shot back, but picked up his book again.

Emu doesn’t respond to the observation, only focusing further on cooking breakfast. With nothing else to do but sigh, Kuroto sits down at the table, rubbing at his eyes once more. Bugsters still had to sleep, they still got tired, but they didn’t need as much rest as humans did. It was why he could get away with sleeping less, why Kujo and Graphite could too. Why Asuna and Parad were better off after working during strange times than others. The only one who doesn’t really have that lower sleep requirement was Emu, because he wasn’t a normal Bugster like Kuroto or Kujo. Because Masamune didn’t let him die, so there were still parts of Emu that were terribly human.

The parts that needed sleep, that needed food. The parts that could die and possibly never come back. Those were the parts that scared Kuroto. Even with Emu better than he’d been in a while, he still feared what may one day happen. If Emu is too careless, if something happens and he falls again and then they might not be able to pull him back up again in time.

So Kuroto tried not to think too hard about it.

He puts off asking Emu about what he’d read the night before, deciding it wasn’t a good choice for breakfast conversation. Not when Kuroto wanted Emu to eat breakfast, and he was still unsure the exact reasoning Nico had wanted him to read it.

Of course, Nico didn’t give him a lick of peace once he got to work. “So?” She plants her hands on his desk and leans forward.

“So what?” Kuroto pretended not to know what she was pestering him about.

She groaned, “About what M wrote,”

Pausing his typing, Kuroto sighed. “I think that it’s… interesting. And that he’s clearly spent a lot of time on it, but it still lacks an ending.”

Nico seemed disappointed at his short answer. “That’s it?”

“What else do you want me to say?”

“Well, I want you to help me convince him to make something with it.”

It really shouldn’t surprise Kuroto that Nico would have such a desire. Still, he didn’t see much point in bothering. “If Emu wishes to do something with it, then I’ll support him, but as it is, I find it unlikely that’s the case. And remember, Nico, he didn’t mean to send that file to you.”

Again, she groaned, sounding a tad bit annoyed. “Kuroto, it could be, like, really cool!”

“We shouldn’t try to convince Emu to do anything he doesn’t want to. There’s not real point in making him uncomfortable, or worse, upsetting him.”

“Fine, fine…” Nico gets a worrisome expression on her face, regardless of her seeming acquiescence. But Kuroto doesn’t really have the time or the energy to try to keep her from doing much. Mostly the energy, not sleeping all the night before was weighing on him and his eyelids kept trying to close themselves.

Watching Nico leave, Kuroto downs his cup of coffee before standing to go get more.

---

Emu had created an amazing creation, once more. A surefire way to keep himself awake. A combination tea, coffee, and sugary and overcaffeinated energy drink, all mixed into his very large, lidded, cup – which was littered with stickers from various Gemn Corp games. Opening the lid and taking a drink, he could feel the caffeine and sugar wake him up.

Which was good, because he needed to stay up for another fourteen hours, minimum, so he could do work, see people at Gemn, say hi to Burgermon, pet Ai, play with Ai, and return to playing Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon, as he was still working to catch up on all the Pokemon games he missed. He wouldn’t be able to do all that if he fell asleep.

Thus, hyped on his questionable but effective creation, he set about with his work for the day. Which, since he’d worked on most of it earlier in the morning when he couldn’t sleep, was finished quickly. With that done, he figured he’d go start saying hi to people, maybe talk a bit, and then see Burgermon.

He’s stopped, somewhere in the building but before he really found anyone, by Nico. She has a strange expression on her face, one that reminded him of when she had an idea for something. Excited and smug, maybe, her hands in her pockets. “Hey, M!”

Pausing, he shifts Ai’s leash to his left hand. Ai scurries up to Nico and butts at her legs, demanding pets. Nico squats down and gives her the pets she desires. Emu watches. “Yeah?”

“The other day, when you sent me the wrong file, I may or may not have taken a look at what you sent,” She stands, wiping the dog hair off her hands on her skirt.

“Oh?” Emu wasn’t sure what file he’d accidentally sent, but he really doubted that it was anything interesting.

“I have to ask, though, why Pollux and Castor?”

Though he can’t see himself, Emu’s certain he paled. He stared at Nico as his mouth opened and closed, silent as he searched for words. Of course, he’d sent the worst possible file for him to send, and to Nico of all people. No one other than himself was supposed to see that – it was a part of why he’d moved it from his journal and typed it up, other than that his hand often started cramping when he was writing by hand.

How embarrassing. He’d written something with the intention of just getting his feelings and thoughts out, and Nico had ended up with it. What were the odds that she had only read a bit of it? He hoped they were pretty good, otherwise he might just die right then and there.

Finally, he finds his words, and carefully answered, “Pollux and Castor – they’re Gemini. Twins.”

She hummed, “And in the end, one of them dies, right? But the other can’t let go and they live in the stars together.”

“Castor dies, yes, but it’s not that Pollux can’t let go, not really. Because he loves Castor and he- he’s willing to sacrifice whatever he must in order to stay with him. So he gives up a part of his divinity, of his power as a demigod.” Emu clarified, “And then, they live together as stars in the sky for all eternity.”

“So then, what will happen to yours?”

“What?”

“To your Pollux and Castor – or rather, Enola? Will one die? Will they finally be together for eternity? Will they be forced to forever be apart by forces beyond their own control?” Nico went into more detail about her question.

Emu didn’t really know what to answer. The end was what he’d been struggling with and the question only made it clear that she’d read that far, thus increasing his mortification. Looking away, his free hand tugs at his sleeve. “I… I don’t know.”

Confused, she echoed his answer, “You don’t know?”

“No,” He admitted, “And it doesn’t really matter. No one was supposed to see that anyway.”

A glance at her face tells him that somehow, that was the wrong thing to say. She only looked more determine to get whatever it was she wanted. “But Emu,” Taking a step towards him, closer, she continued, “It’s… really interesting. And I think it could be really good.”

He can’t bring himself to raise his voice all that loud. Not that it mattered, the only ones in this hallway were Ai, Nico, and himself. Even a whisper would ring all too loudly. “But it wasn’t for you, or anyone else.”

“Then who was it for?”

“Me!” Head snapping up, there was a cold glare in Emu’s eyes. “I wrote it to try to deal with- with all of this!” He gestured around them.

Startled, Nico takes a step back. “All of this?”

Once more, his head falls. “Masamune, the scientists, Chronicle, everything. I just… needed a way to- to try to work through it… something I could- could control…” Even if having that much control only made him feel worse, sometimes. “But… no ending I could find… felt right. And I never wanted anyone to see it.”

The terrible, rising feeling in his chest only grows stronger when Nico laughs. Quickly, Emu does all he can to try to keep in under control, or at the very least, away from Parad or Kuroto. The last thing he needed was either of them butting in on this.

Laughter dying down, Nico responded, “Emu- Emu! You- I mean- you made all those characters after us and! And!” Her tone wasn’t hysterical or angry. It was… strangely amused. “I mean, god they were spot on, really! And I just- I just thought that it was something else but that explains so much.”

“Are you done?”

“Sorry, sorry, I don’t mean to make you feel any worse,” Her expression shifted from amused to sympathetic. “Listen, hey, I’m sorry I just read it like that. And I’ll leave you be about it if it really makes you uncomfortable. But I really think that we could do something with it, something fun, once you figure out an ending.”

“If I figure out an ending,” Emu groused, “Which I doubt.”

Staring at him for a moment, seemingly in thought, Nico hummed. As a finger tapped at her cheek, the bracelets on her wrists clacked a little, beads running into beads. Finally, she said, “Well, if you’d like, you can always ask me or Kuroto for help, I’m sure we could help you come up with something.”

“Kuroto?”

“Oh yeah, I, uh, kinda sent it to him to read too?”

Something clicks into place in Emu’s brain, and he groaned, “That’s why he didn’t sleep last night.”

An annoyed frown crossed Nico’s face, “He what? I told him not to lose sleep reading it!” She spins on her heel about to march off before she stopped herself. “Oh, yeah. What’s this story called, anyway?”

It had taken Emu a long time, but he had given it a name. “Beyond the Wind.”

The frown on Nico’s face was briefly replaced with a smile, “That’s a nice name,” The frown then returned, “Now, I need to go lecture Kuroto.”

As Nico marched off, Emu couldn’t help but laugh a little, his anxiety about the whole thing finally gone. Normally, he’d be upset with Kuroto was reading something he hadn’t meant for anyone to read, but given Nico was going to go pester him about not sleeping the night before, Emu couldn’t see much point. Kuroto was getting a punishment. Especially once Graphite swooped in after lunch and made both of them sleep.

Emu looked forward to getting some rest with his brother.

#kamen rider ex aid #kamen rider exaid #kamen rider #there is a me who can become strong #my writing #to find your way home

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gabrielkahane · 3 years

Text

Heirloom

Short form:

Heirloom (concerto for piano & chamber orchestra) premieres with Jeffrey Kahane & the Kansas City Symphony under the baton of Michael Stern, September 24-26. Tickets are here.

I’ll play a solo show at Rockwood Music Hall on Tuesday, September 28th. My dear friend and colleague, Johnny Gandelsman, will open with a solo violin set. Johnny’s on at 7pm, I’ll go on around 8pm. Tickets are $20 and are here. This will be my only NYC appearance this year!

Applications for Luna Lab with Oregon Symphony are now open! If you are a female-identifying, non-binary, or gender-nonconforming composer between the ages of 12 and 18, and live in Portland or Southeast Washington, please apply for your chance to study for a year with the incredible Nathalie Joachim!

Long form:

Several years ago, my friend Eric Jacobsen started pestering me about writing a piano concerto for my father, Jeffrey Kahane. It was an intriguing (and natural!) idea, but I kept putting it off in large part because I’ve never felt comfortable with large-scale instrumental composition. I think of myself first and foremost as a songwriter, and while I love to write for instruments in the context of vocal music, I feel almost entirely unmoored when voice & text are taken away. But Eric was persistent, and, well, here we are. Next month, the Kansas City Symphony will open its season with Heirloom, after which the piece will be heard in the coming years in performances presented by the co-commissioners who’ve rounded out the consortium: the Oregon Symphony, the Aspen Music Festival, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Eric’s Brooklyn-based group, The Knights.

Heirloom is an aural family scrapbook, exploring, in its three movements, a series of inheritances. I’m incredibly excited to witness its birth September 24-26 in Kansas City. You can find the program note I’ve written to accompany its premiere at the end of this email.

The following Tuesday, September 28th, I will play my first concert in New York City since our lives were individually and collectively turned upside down by the pandemic. Most of the evening will be devoted to a new slate of songs drawn from thirty-one composed in October of 2020, the final month of a year-long, complete internet hiatus. Johnny Gandelsman, violinist of Brooklyn Rider, opens with what promises to be a ravishing solo set. Tickets are here.

Lastly, in 2019, I took on the position of Creative Chair with the Oregon Symphony. I’m very pleased to announce that this season, we’ve begun a partnership with Luna Lab, the brainchild of composers Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid. Luna Composition Lab offers mentorship and professional training to female-identifying, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming composers between the ages of 12 and 18. We at the Oregon Symphony are incredibly grateful to partner with Luna Lab to offer one student a year-long period of mentorship with Grammy-nominated flutist, composer, and songwriter, Nathalie Joachim, who happens to be one of my all-time favorite humans, and who will be giving the world premiere of Suite from Fanm D’ayiti with the Oregon Symphony in the spring of 2022. What makes this even more amazing is that another all-time favorite human, the violinist Pekka Kuusisto, will be playing Nico Muhly’s concerto Shrink, on the same program. Oh, but we were talking about Luna Lab. If you or someone you know wants to apply, you can find more info & the application form here; you just have to submit one score & a recording (MIDI is acceptable). I will be reviewing submissions along with Nathalie. Applications are due on September 7th.

Obligatory capitalism appeal: I know it’s been a while since I’ve put out new music. It’s coming. I promise. In the meantime, may I remind you about this gorgeous limited edition vinyl record?

That’s it for now, folks. Stay safe. Try to lead with love, even when it’s hard.

All my best,

Gabriel

Heirloom program note:

Tucked away in the northernmost reaches of California sits the Bar 717 Ranch, which, each summer, is transformed into a sleep-away camp on 450 acres of wilderness, where, in 1967, two ten-year-old kids named Martha and Jeffrey met. Within a couple of years, they were playing gigs back in L.A. in folk rock bands with names like “Wilderness” and “The American Revelation.” They fell in love, broke up, fell in love again. By the time I was a child, my mom and dad had traded the guitars, flutes, and beaded jackets for careers in clinical psychology and classical music respectively. But they remained devoted listeners of folk music. Growing up, it was routine for dad to put on a Joni Mitchell record when he took a break from practicing a concerto by Mozart or Brahms. That collision of musical worlds might help to explain the creative path I’ve followed, in which songs and storytelling share the road with the Austro-German musical tradition.

That tradition comes to me through the music I heard as a child, but also through ancestry. My paternal grandmother, Hannelore, escaped Germany at the tail end of 1938, arriving in Los Angeles in early 1939 after lengthy stops in Havana and New Orleans. For her, there was an unspeakable tension between, on the one hand, her love of German music and literature, and, on the other, the horror of the Holocaust. In this piece, I ask, how does that complex set of emotions get transmitted across generations? What do we inherit, more broadly, from our forebears? And as a musician caught between two traditions, how do I bring my craft as a songwriter into the more formal setting of the concert hall?

The first movement, “Guitars in the Attic,” wrestles specifically with that last question, the challenge of bringing vernacular song into formal concert music. The two main themes begin on opposite shores: the first theme, poppy, effervescent, and direct, undergoes a series of transformations that render it increasingly unrecognizable as the movement progresses. Meanwhile, a lugubrious second tune, first introduced in disguise by the French horn and accompanied by a wayward English horn, reveals itself only in the coda to be a paraphrase of a song of mine called “Where are the Arms.” That song, in turn, with its hymn-like chord progression, owes a debt to German sacred music. A feedback loop emerges: German art music informs pop song, which then gets fed back into the piano concerto.

“My Grandmother Knew Alban Berg” picks up the thread of intergenerational memory. Grandma didn’t actually know Alban Berg, but she did babysit the children of Arnold Schoenberg, another German-Jewish émigré, who, in addition to having codified the twelve-tone system of composition, was Berg’s teacher. Why make something up when the truth is equally tantalizing? I suppose it has something to do with wanting to evoke the slipperiness of memory while getting at the ways in which cultural inheritance can occur indirectly. When, shortly after college, I began to study Berg’s Piano Sonata, his music— its marriage of lyricism and austerity; its supple, pungent harmonies; the elegiac quality that suffuses nearly every bar—felt eerily familiar to me, even though I was encountering it for the first time. Had a key to this musical language been buried deep in the recesses of my mind through some kind of ancestral magic, only to be unearthed when I sat at the piano and played those prophetic chords, which, to my mind, pointed toward the tragedy that would befall Europe half a dozen years after Berg’s death?

In this central movement, the main theme is introduced by a wounded-sounding trumpet, accompanied by a bed of chromatic harmony that wouldn’t be out of place in Berg’s musical universe. By movement’s end, time has run counterclockwise, and the same tune is heard in a nocturnal, Brahmsian mode, discomfited by interjections from the woodwinds, which inhabit a different, and perhaps less guileless, temporal plane.

To close, we have a kind of fiddle-tune rondo, an unabashed celebration of childhood innocence. In March of 2020, my family and I were marooned in Portland, Oregon, as the world was brought to its knees by the coronavirus pandemic. Separated from our belongings—and thus all of our daughter’s toys, which were back in our apartment in Brooklyn—my ever resourceful partner, Emma, fashioned a “vehicle” out of an empty diaper box, on which she majusculed the words vera’s chicken-powered transit machine. (Vera had by that point developed a strong affinity for chicken and preferred to eat it in some form thrice daily.) We would push her around the floor in her transit machine, resulting in peals of laughter and squeals of delight. In this brief finale, laughter and joy are the prevailing modes, but not without a bit of mystery. I have some idea of what I have inherited from my ancestors. What I will hand down to my daughter remains, for the time being, a wondrous unknown.

Heirloom is dedicated with love, admiration, gratitude, and awe, to my father, Jeffrey Kahane.

#jeffrey kahane #kansas city symphony #piano concerto #pekka kuusisto #nathalie joachim #oregon symphony #st. paul chamber orchestra #los angeles chamber orchestra #aspen music festival #missy mazzoli #ellen reid #rockwood music hall #johnny gandelsman #folk music #classical music #the knights #eric jacobsen

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onelastfic · 3 years

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Future AU Facts

Nenet is actually really bad at school. Between her missions for Hera, god training, and just plain lack of motivation for school, if it wasn’t for Cindy and JJ’s help she’d probably been held back multiple times. Nenet would drop out but her mom and dad say school is good for her.

Nico is a notoriously bad athlete. He just doesn’t like playing sports, though he does like sport analytics. For this reason, Dylan and Nico are known as The Baller and The Scholar.

It was actually Basteta’s idea to make Astro the kids’ godfather. While she will NEVER admit it to him, she knows that if something were to ever happen to her or Junji, he’d stop at nothing to keep their kids safe. She’s actually told her kids that if something goes wrong on Earth then they should head to Mewni for safety.

Mei actually has quite a collection of disguises and wigs. While her siblings can use magic for disguises, Mei prefers to dress up in classic thespian style. She wants to have an outfit for ANY occasion.

Learning from Stanton, Nico actually has numerous journals he’s filled about his studying of Earth magic. In particular, Nico has this one journal where he keeps the stats for all the Titans he’s met. It started out as way to record the different traits of Titans but he writes it in way similar to a rpg character sheet.

Mei’s name was actually picked out by Dai Tai. Basteta went into labor while Junji was away on guardian dragon business and Dai Tai went to the hospital with her instead. Dai Tai picked the name Mei because she thought she was such a beautiful baby girl. Mei’s been close with her Auntie D ever since.

When Nico was born, Nenet didn’t want to hold him or touch him, thinking she’d hurt him since he wasn’t a Titan. It wasn’t until Astro talked to her about what it means to be a big sibling did she actually start taking her role as a big sister seriously.

Nenet had a pretty big crush on Bruce when they were young. She considers him her first love and was devastated when he vanished. When he disappeared, it was the first and last time Dylan and Nico ever saw Nenet cry.

Nenet has two scars on her back where her wings came in. It was actually a very painful experience when she awakened her god form. She doesn’t like to talk about it.

King Ra actually wants Nenet to come live in the gods realm with the rest of the Egyptian Pantheon. He thinks that Nenet would do better being among her own kind.

JJ is actually the new head of the Supernatural Department in Vanguard League. Damien appointed him to the position and JJ was actually really anxious about accepting the post. He didn’t think he’d be cut out to lead. Luckily, he has his coordinators/hype-men, Dylan and Nico.

Junji and Nenet have season passes to Townsville stadium. It’s for when they have daddy-daughter days, which usually involves Junji taking Nenet to baseball games. Nenet is the only one who likes baseball in the family, so they always bonded over that. Junji was actually the coach of Nenet’s softball teams when she was younger.

#callyieverse #tales of mewni #next gen #oc #future au

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incomprehensiblelentils · 3 years

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@dollsome-does-tumblr does this and opened it up to anyone and I am feeling chatty today SO!

Because I co-write a lot with my lovely wife, I might answer some questions including those co-written stories, or I might not, depends on how I feel when I get there.

name:

Megan but I go by Lentils most places on the internet, Shadowcrawler over on AO3

fandoms:

at the moment: MCU, especially Agents of SHIELD and Daredevil; Terminator: Dark Fate; Halt and Catch Fire. Oh and I wrote Dollhouse fanfics a thousand years ago. Sometimes I will watch a movie/show and think “those two girls should be gay” and bang out 2k of fic about it and then never write for that fandom again. (I THOUGHT this was going to be HACF but as it turns out, no, it’s not done with me yet.)

where you post:

AO3, at Shadowcrawler. I also have a tumblr @lentils-writes where theoretically I post links to fics/advertise them in the tags, because I used to be real precious about not putting porn on this blog, but fuck it.

most popular multi-chapter fic:

Co-written, it’s definitely mallverse, which is I think the reason most writers definitely hate us because it’s very long and there are a lot of tags lmao. The problem is that every tagged character HAS shown up in a significant fashion at some point so we can’t just...untag them! It doesn’t update weekly anymore because we’re exhausted by life lmao so at least there’s that???

As for a multi-chapter fic that was just me, I don’t tend to do that so much, so actually it’s say you will, my 3-chapter Endgame fix-it where Clint dies instead of Natasha and Natasha and Laura have a past. It actually has over 1000 hits which is very exciting! I feel like it’s...niche in a way that is frustrating but understandable lol. I put a lot of my heart into it and some people really liked it, so that’s gratifying.

favorite story you’ve written so far:

Co-written, I think our SHIELD Dollhouse AU is very underrated for the amount of work we put into it. Author bias evident here because I love Dollhouse warts and all, and it’s a lot of fun translating episode plots as well as the general trajectory of the show into stuff that will work with SHIELD characters. We don’t just rewrite episodes, we really try and rework them as needed. Also it features both Skimmons and my beloved rarepair Bobbi/Kara, though of course they won’t get together until later.

Of my own stuff, I’m still really really proud of the AU where Kara Palamas didn’t die. I think that was a pretty severe misstep of the show and I think I did a good job of fixing it. (I haven’t forgotten Kara, promise!)

fic you were nervous to post:

lolololol I wrote some uh. Terminator pornography last year and. They are very porny! I had co-written a bunch of smut obviously, but that was the first time I’d posted like, PWP all by myself on purpose??? and that was TERRIFYING. Also I was very nervous to post the Engame fix-it because that was my own personal goodbye/tribute to Natasha.

how you choose your titles:

They are always either song lyrics or jokes (such as Three Lawyers and a Baby, my Daredevil Accidental Baby Acquisition fic). My WIP docs are always titled either obvious shit like “RoseJannah horse girls” or memes like “what if we belonged to a fire cult and we fucked haha just kidding unless...?” or “Morgan has two mommies.”

do you outline?:

B and I typically outline for the co-written fics, although it’s more often chapter-by-chapter outlines since that’s how we write them. On occasion we’ve fully planned multi-chapter stuff out in advance but that’s less common. Oh and the one-shots are nearly always outlined as well, just to keep ourselves organized.

When I have written planned multi-chapter fics in the past I have used outlines - particularly for the Kara one and I had to do that for the SHIELD Kill Bill AU because I was trying to follow the format of the movie. For things that are allegedly supposed to be one-shots I almost never outline, which turns out to be a terrible idea when they inevitably balloon beyond my control and become 45k like say you will. That one, I wrote out a list of scenes I thought needed to be in it and then I wrote about 75% of those scenes and then I wrote a bunch more scenes I hadn’t planned for. Don’t be like me, kids!

complete fics:

According to AO3, 89 as of right now. Uh, you do not want me to list all of them, here’s a link, I guess!

in progress:

I don’t understand what the difference is between this question and the WIP questions lmao help????

posted WIPs that I have active plans to continue at this time:

Cowritten: mallverse as I said, and its femslash smut oneshots spinoff and character flashbacks spinoff and older characters/teachers spinoff (these get updated, uh, irregularly), the first half of a Piper/Snowflake SHIELD s7 fic that we are planning on finishing the second half of soonish, SHIELD Dollhouse AU, SHIELD Teen Beach AU, SHIELD Buffy AU. You may notice a pattern!

By myself, I have: Have Your Elf a Merry Little Christmas, a Terminator Hallmark Christmas fic that I ambitiously posted the first chapter of in 2019 and then lost steam immediately (I am going to go back to it sooner or later bc I had some cute ideas for it); the SHIELD Fate of the Furious AU that has one chapter to go and which I do intend on finishing eventually; Three Lawyers and a Little Lady, the Daredevil Accidentally Baby Acquisition AU that is literally just cute kidfic and poly avocados and which I have a bunch of ideas for and just need to buckle down and finish some.

posted WIPs that I have given up on:

Lol so there’s a Dollhouse Caroline/Bennett Doctor Who AU that I wrote purely as idfic and which nobody ever cared about except me, and I think that ship has sailed! RIP darlings. I also had an ongoing Skimmons series waaaay back when where I posted oneshots that were like missing scenes or gay readings for each s1 episode, and I just feel like it would be inauthentic to even try and finish it at this point. (It does include the first ever Skimmons fic to be posted on AO3! Really truly, there’s one fic that shows up as older but it’s an ongoing fic and was updated with the tag way after I posted mine.)

exchange fics due soon/unrevealed:

I haven’t done an exchange since like 2015 lololol I am so bad at them. I am currently working on finishing up my MCU Femslash bingo card, very late, and I do have plans for almost all of the remaining squares!

WIPs that live in my fanfic folder and are incomplete and who knows when they’ll be finished:

“RoseJannah horse girls,” which has been put on hold temporarily but is literally just Rose and Jannah being gay while riding orbaks

half of a Daisy/Gwen fic from Marvel Rising because I know they’re not making any more of those but I stg those two were really gay

multiple fics about Elise Nelson-Page including: avocados Halloween with smol Elise, Aunt Elektra very reluctantly taking smol Elise shopping until she realizes smol Elise also likes weapons (she buys her a fake katana), Uncle Frank is a pushover and spoils the shit out of Elise, and baby Elise has a high fever and everyone freaks out but then she gets better and smile at them for the first time (inspired by baby me lol).

coming soon/not yet started:

“Morgan has two mommies,” yet another Endgame fix-it where Maya Hansen did not die in Iron Man 3 and she resurfaces and she and Pepper kiss and eventually she adopts Morgan

Claire and Colleen go on a nice date to get coffee/tea where Danny doesn’t interrupt them goddammit

Bobbi/Kara Warehouse 13 AU which is sort of like “For the Team” but gayer ft. grappling hook

X-Men: Evolution Tabby/Amara fluff

Cameron/Donna character study disguised as smut

Grace proposes to Dani with a ring made out of the metal from her power source and Carl officiates the wedding

Dani gets horny watching Grace eat a peach and jerks off and Grace ends up hearing her and then they fuck (I have been calling this “the peach fic” in my head but I gotta stop being delicate about it lmfao it is just porn)

B and I have plans to do a Nico/Karolina Jasper in Deadland AU but we keep forgetting

I MUST WRITE FOGGY AND KAREN SADLY FUCKING IN A CHURCH WHILE THEY MOURN MATT THIS YEAR I STG

do you accept prompts:

uhhhhhh I have on occasion written a prompt for someone before but it’s pretty rare and I have enough trouble writing the shit I come up with in my own head lol. but never say never?

upcoming story you are most excited to write:

I’ve got a bit of the Bobbi/Kara Warehouse fic written and it’s nice to go back to that world. Also I’m weirdly excited about the Cam/Donna smutty character study I mentioned above, I have a lot of what I think are good ideas for it and it’ll be fun.

tagging @unwind-myself @swiftzeldas @swashbucklery @loved-the-stars-too-fondly and, if you want to, you!

#sometimes I write things

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samotchkaficrecs · 5 years

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Heyo, I've been having some nostalgia, so do you know of any good Percy Jackson fanfictions? (If there even are any?) Thank youuuu!!!

Oui oui mon ami, i have actually been rereading a few of my favourite fics for the pjo fandom sooo your in luck!

As always fic with a ‘★’ next to is are my highly reccomended.

★ somebody’s old friend - byRosyredlipstick

The night began with wine and dinner, cake and champagne. It began with boring conversation, tense smiles, and eyes that should not have been lingering. A gathering, with known names and too-sweet comments. This was a party of politics, and everyone there knew it. This is where it began.But the night of October 23rd 1969, a date that would later go down in Chicago city history, truly started with a murder. But even before that - a scream.-The PJO Murder Mystery AU

(complete)

★ The Sandwich Thief - byboombashkas

Someone at work has started stealing Jason’s lunch every day.

And leaving stupid letters behind in its place.

(complete)

Saving Grace - bybrittneynr96

“He’s so perfect, and damn, he looks good in those tights. I wanna meet him,”

“You like him?”

“Like him? I love him! He’s perfect! Have you seen him in action? He’s like superman!”

“Well maybe you’ll get too meet him one day..”

“I hope your right.”

Or the one in which a comic book nerd who loves superheroes a little too much falls for a superhero who’s just his bro in disguise.

(ongoing)

Disney Adventures - byRayvnAshes (IronScript)

Percy Jackson and Co. manage to convince Chiron to let them go on a (well-deserved) vacation after the war, and where else would they choose to go but the Happiest Place on Earth?

(complete)

Is There Something On My Face? - bybuoyantsaturn

5 times Will has something on his face and 1 time Nico has something on his.

(complete)

★ summers of stars - byteasockschocolate

“Percy studied the constellations -– the ones Annabeth had taught him so many years ago.”-snapshots of baby percabeth + stars across the PJO series inspired from that house of hades quote

(complete)

Leo Valdez & the Inescapable Curse - byMermaidMarie

Leo has never been one to give up, whether it be on machines or on people. As far as he’s concerned, if someone says a problem can’t be fixed, they just haven’t met Leo Valdez yet. After hearing some of the worst news of his entire life, Leo decides to set off on a quest that could very well get him killed. What else is new?

Following the events of The Trials of Apollo: The Burning Maze. Major spoilers.

(ongoing)

Not Quite Famous - byjasonsmclean

The kids of celebrities are their own breed. They aren’t known for their abilities or talents, but they are well-known by association. Their pictures are coveted, their social media accounts with thousands, if not millions, of followers, and all of their friends are suddenly scrutinized as well.

When Jason Grace, son of famous actress Beryl Grace, returns to the spotlight for the first time in years, the media is desperate for any scrap of information about him. Even if it means creating rumors of a relationship with Tristan McLean’s daughter, Piper.

(ongoing)

I hope these will suffice, i tried to pick ones for different ships so not to overload on any particular one. SOOO enjoyyy

Au revoir~

#percy jackson #pjo #HoO #heroes of olympus #annabeth chase #percabeth #jason grace #leo valdez #piper mclean #jasper #jercy #solangelo #nico di angelo #will solace #hazel levesque #frank zhang #fic recs #percy jackson fic recs #pjo fic rec

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ultraericthered · 4 years

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Anime Update 23

CLANNAD After Story - Youhei Sunohara, oh how far we’ve come. I remember when I started on CLANNAD, I could barely stand this guy, both as a character and on a personal level. I’m still not sure what happened but the series ended up finding a better footing with the character and made me start to enjoy his presence and even kinda like him. Now we’re starting on what I already know will be the last major showing he’s going to get before he starts fading into the background and the series Shoos Out The Clown. Initially when I’d heard that After Story would have less Sunohara, I thought that automatically made it better than it’s predecessor. But now...I think I’m going to miss him. So I’m enjoying Sunohara’s antics while they last, and this episode gave us a lot of them to enjoy, some that legit cracked me up (like him getting punted high up into the sky by Tomoyo VERY abruptly, and his reaction to his little sister showing up on the scene before his fake girlfriend). I also really pity the guy for how Tomoya dicks him around all the time - like he hasn’t told him that Sanae is Nagisa’s mom rather than her older sister, which is going to make Sanae pretending to be Sunohara’s girlfriend beyond awkward if Mei ends up seeing through the disguise. Other things worth noting would be the random punk in Yukine’s room (how he just popped up from under the table and started thrashing Sunohara also had me cracking up) which gives some hints about Yukine’s true background, and more Girl In Illusionary World and Junk Doll at the start of the episode. OK, I’ll bite - where are you going with this?

Dragon Ball - OK, I’m glad Goku finally got wise to the misdirection and started going the right way, but good lord, that giant octopus skirmish was completely random. Was that in the manga or just invented for the anime to pad things out? I’d honestly believe either one. Krillin and Bulma’s confrontation with General Blue was great, with Blue starting to really show his comical drama queen Sissy Villain qualities (and his homosexuality, rather disconcerting enough) while also continuing to display how strong he is in combat and what a competent threat he is by refusing to fall for Bulma’s attempt to trick him into Bond Villain Stupidity. Thankfully Goku showed up when he did! Now he and Blue can fight and bring this place down!

Love Live! - Only watched episode 5 this time. We get a new “villain” other than Eli with this Nico character and oh boy, is she all kinds of ridiculous. First she thinks petty cyberbullying and hate messages directed at µ’s will be enough to shake them, then she tries to pull the “create infighting within group” trick...by stealing their food while they’re not looking, which fails miserably when inevitably she gets caught in the act. And then when she’s chased down at school later, she fails to give µ’s the slip because she crashes into an alpaca stable. Yes, really. Then we got the scene at her place...her little lecture about the “persona” an idol needs to adopt and put on was the most surreal moment in the show so far just due to how the lighting and audio quality changed as Nico’s whole demeanor changed and she did her memetic “Nico Nico Ni!” routine. It was silly yet also unsettling! I’m of two minds regarding how the whole thing got resolved - on one hand, it seems strange that “Nico has no friends” was used to garner sympathy for her and so the girls all agree to be her friends in order for Nico to accept them as members of the Idol Studies Club (which beforehand had only one member - Nico herself) and in turn join up with µ’s when considering that Nico drove all her previous friends/club members away due to being such a little shit to them, so all this does is enable her to be that way again without any self-introspection and change on her part. On the other hand, I really like Nico’s character and love what her role in the group is going to be going forward, and this was really the only option µ’s had. Plus, I liked the connection it made with how Honoka makes friends simply by treating others like they’re already a friend, even when those others might be antisocial or feeling excluded. Hanayo, Rin, and Maki are starting to grow on me too; they might lack strong characterization, but Hanayo’s huge idol nerdiness (down to knowing some really obscure details that only the most hardcore idol fan would know), Rin’s random cat girl mannerisms, and Maki’s “done with everyone else’s bullshit and has no fucks to give” attitude does help distinguish them as their own individual within the group.

My-HIME - Not all that much happened here since I already watched the action half of the episode last week. It was basically just the fallout of that action where we meet the wheelchair-bound and surprisingly young owner of the school who’s also the secret HIME mastermind, we get more shenanigans with Mikoto as she and Mai start bonding like sisters, and Haruka continues to delight with how batshit she is. And it might be a small detail, but I look forward to seeing Mai ditch that typical school uniform in favor of the sleeveless version she’s seen wearing in the OP and ED. It just suits her better.

Ace Attorney S2 - For a while I was worried that this case had been written into a corner that it couldn’t get out of - Luke Atmey’s alibi of having stolen the urn at exactly the same time someone else was committing a murder seemed too solid and even got him a whole trial going on at exactly the same time as the falsely accused’s trial. So it was relieving that Phoenix was able to not only prove that the incriminating photo of Mask Demasque was from a separate date, but also correctly guessed Atmey’s motive and got him to admit outright how he was able to do everything he did from the initial blackmail of the phantom thief all the way to the murder. The big drawback was the big conclusion came about due to another Mia Ex Machina. I groaned when that happened - this is adapting Phoenix’s third outing as a Defense Attorney and he still finds himself needing to rely on his dead mentor to point him in the right direction rather than figuring all the shit out for himself? It really undermines him as a competent attorney and makes it seem like no wonder he ends up retiring at the end of all this! The best part of this case had to be the antagonists - Luke Atmey and Godot. Whoever wrote their dialogue deserves a ton of praise; it takes mad skills to come up with all of those fitting alliterations for Atmey and all the coffee puns for Godot. And while Atmey will now be rotting in jail, Godot seems like he’s only just gotten warmed up, as warm as a nice, steamy cappuccino.

Nadja of Tomorrow - Getting to Spain and meeting the gruff, weary matador Jose was nice, but I didn’t really get the rest of this episode. It was about Nadja learning to dance the flamenco for the shows the Troupe would be putting on in Spain, but no matter how many times she went at it, both her instructor and Jose were all “you’ll never be able to dance the flamenco!” and getting on her case for daring to think she could perform this dance when every try at it turned out wrong in their eyes. Has Nadja really not mastered harder dances than this one? Maybe I’m just culturally ignorant of how seriously the flamenco is taken as an art form in Spain (and even in Japan, apparently, which might explain the writing of this particular plot), but the Serious Business attitude about getting the flamenco right just came off as relentlessly cruel to poor Nadja. And the outcome was also confusing - so just because Nadja projects her passion and desire to reach others through her flamenco, any imperfections in her form can now be given a pass? What was the point of all this?

Mobile Fighter G Gundam - A definite improvement over last week’s episode. Having Neo Russia and Neo China in the same episode is something I didn’t know I needed, but watching the characters’ very different attitudes and ways of antagonizing Domon and each other was very enjoyable. Argo and Sai Saici are as polar opposite as it gets but they clearly take one another seriously as Gundam Fighters and are both evenly matched in strength. I loved how much of what went on in the episode was a plan by the monks to get Sai Saici to overcome his PTSD and take his training more seriously which ended up being horribly thought through to the point where both monks at the same time realized what idiots they’d been when it was too late to stop the fight between Sai Saici and George - that moment just cracked me up. But of course, the true threat here turned out to be a pseudo-Dragon Gundam that belonged to the Dark Army and had doubles of itself to increase it’s firepower. Good to know Master Asia is still at work trying to seek and destroy Domon and his allies. Schwarz Bruder was also thankfully less devious in this one, and Domon’s declaration in the last scene was appropriately delivered.

AND

The Rising of the Shield Hero - I plan to only watch up to the next episode and then be done with Shield Hero as a regular thing, but thankfully this one and the next are the exceptionally GOOD episodes following the uncomfortable vibes in the first two. Naofumi and Raphtalia really have a more mutually caring relationship, complete with some really funny moments of banter at the start of the episode, but at the same time the openness of feelings is a one-way thing on Raph’s end, as Naofumi closes himself off from sentiment, refuses to share details of his past with his slave/partner, and takes for granted all the significant things she says and does for him because he views things under a lens of his own survival first and foremost. But what’s interesting is that despite this self-absorbed attitude he carries with him, when the Waves hit and a village full of innocent, defenseless people is left unprotected and many, if not all of them, could perish, Naofumi’s first instinct is to go fight to protect the village. He even wonders himself why he’s putting his neck out to save strangers, even some who might believe the rumors about him and not like him. Again, great way of showing that there’s still good in him and a person who could be salvaged from all the darkness in his mind and soul. But even better than Naofumi himself is what him acting heroically is able to inspire in others - he inspires people better than himself to find the heroic spirit within themselves and act accordingly, and inspires people even worse than himself to start reconsidering their own positions and turn towards doing the truly right thing. It kind of makes you think about how sometimes positive influence and change can come about from the choices and deeds of a less than positive individual, while those who we look to as positive examples of heroism in truth do nothing to help and benefit others or deliver any effect on a miserable status quo (the other three heroes, their parties, and the royal knights who DIDN’T stick around to help Naofumi seem far more caught up in the glamour of heroism than in the actual nature of the work.) If Shield Hero had kept this quality as a consistency, it’d have been a better series than it actually is overall.

#Anime Update

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wings-of-a-storm · 5 years

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Guys, there has been so much good discourse about Martino’s season on here! So much so that it is hard to think of anything left uncovered. Still, in these long days since the season ended, I’ve found myself swimming in thoughts when watching certain clips.

I used to be blocked from the tag this post might not even make it in (cheers Tumblr) and was never able to really offer up my own thoughts at the time, but I’ve been writing some stuff down finally. So if any of you are interested in going back down the rabbit hole with me and immersing yourself in the artistic genius that is Skam Italia, then here goes with my first (of hopefully several) deep dives.

SKAMITA DIVE NO.1

To this day, there is one clip that I both love and hate watching -- to the point of never knowing which sensation is going to win out. Naturally I must take a deeper look at it to figure out why it has such power over me.

That clip is Ammucchiate (3.5).

So many things about this clip fascinate me. Seriously. So many things. In this essay I will look at:

1A) The Couch Scene. I seriously love/hate this clip. The whole tone felt like a departure from the og (and that isn’t a bad thing, it just raises very different emotions in me). In fact, it feels like the whole point of the couch scene was changed in Skam Italia. It makes for very interesting viewing.

1B) Niccolò’s emotions. Ie. how very differently Niccolò reacts to Emma compared to what I was used to with Even. I love a character study.

2) The supreme UST going on between Niccolò and Martino.

3) How the absence of Earl Sweatshirt references both changes and doesn’t change Martino’s interaction with Emma (and infatuation with Niccolò).

TONE REVERSAL OF THE COUCH SCENE

What absolutely fascinates me is how the whole tone (and perhaps point) of the couch scene felt reversed in Italia. In og, it felt like Isak had a fairly therapeutic experience with Even on the couch, but Martino’s experience with Niccolò felt rather unpleasant. It was such an interesting divergence!

Let me explain. In og, Even’s conversation with Emma about labels was so important for Isak to hear. This new perspective on the ‘gay’ label coming from a wise older boy whom Isak admires would have helped with some of Isak’s internalised homophobia (with the added benefit of showing Isak that even if Even was actually straight and Isak had just imagined his chemistry with him, Isak could still trust Even not to judge him). All up, it felt like a pretty positive moment for Isak on that couch. The way he listened so intently to Even’s wisdom was gorgeous.

In Italia though, Niccolò ended up using the debate with Emma as a vehicle to test Martino’s sexuality -- in a way that put so much pressure on Martino and came across as almost shaming him for being in the closet. It felt like Niccolò was maybe trying to tell Martino 'I know you're not as straight as you like to appear' while testing his reaction to make sure his hunch was right. But it felt so unkind to do that to Martino in front of Emma. Was Niccolò just so pressed that Martino was giving Emma attention, he tried to force the truth from Martino? To get Martino to admit that Emma was just a smokescreen, so Nico could feel better about his chances? It was so uncomfortable to watch, whatever the reasoning…

I mean, boy can you see the differences in Isak and Martino’s faces: Isak engaged in a healthy new perspective VS Martino disconnecting in discomfort:

I really didn’t like the way Niccolò was pushing Marti and even smirking at him, but I’d be lying if I said the changes to the tone of the scene didn’t fascinate me. If I had to sum it up, I’d suggest that in Italia, it feels like the couch scene was meant to be less about helping Martino deal with his internalised homophobia and more about being one long set of UST challenges between Niccolò and Marti. Or rather, Niccolò trying to challenge Marti (pick me not Emma!) and Marti not giving into him. That, and Niccolò being unable to contain his jealousy.

Let’s start with the jealousy.

NICCOLO & HIS EMOTIONS

Subjective fact: Even is cool and collected when dealing with Emma.

Subjective fact: Niccolò is a jealous force to be reckoned with when dealing with Emma.

For a clip that ticked off all the important scenes from og, it couldn’t be more apparent how different Niccolò is to Even in this clip. In og, Even catches Emma (who is very obviously immature) falling into the danger of making generalisations and draws her into a polite debate. He remains very calm and collected through it, so it comes across as him intrinsically wanting to call her out on a troubling mindset (one that would affect Isak) and show her a different perspective. (With the bonus of proving to Isak how much cooler he is than her.)

In Italia, Niccolò heard Emma make a generalisation and just kind of pounced on her. The tone he uses and the look he gives her is of such irritability. The shift in his emotions felt so immediate; he was ready to cut her down and even got into battle position. It kind of felt like he was pouncing on her for the sake of pouncing on her -- ie. the debate he instigated became an outlet for some of the bitterness he had been harbouring towards her as his rival. In other words, their debate felt more about him than about sending Martino any secret message.

I mean that “Hm” before getting into battle position! It was such a ‘hold my gloves’ moment. I was preparing to duck for cover because he seemed so pressed! At the time I was just like: Woah, my son, I know Emma said something dumb but this is not the way to call her out on it -- you’re escalating the situation instead of having a healthy discussion! But now I think it was a really clever way to demonstrate how Niccolò handles emotions/how his BPD might amplify his emotions/how mercurial he can be.

OR - because there are too many goddamn ways to interpret someone's reactions - was Nico trying to defend Marti? He knows (or hopes) Marti is in the closet and generalisations/labels like that from Emma would give Marti a harder time. Was Nico just being: YOU KNOW NOTHING, JON SNOW to her? Less likely since Nico added his own jab at the end, but possible.

Side note: I have to confess that even though Nico being a bit of an ass makes me uncomfortable, his ‘why the hell are you still here’ look when Emma keeps talking remains one of my favourite Nico expressions of the season. It makes me laugh every time. (That, plus going all Moses/red sea on them was A+.)

But why was Nico pushing Marti so much on the couch? Oh let me analyse you, complex clip of wonder.

MARTINO AND NICCOLO: THE ‘UST’ PUSH AND PULL

It kind of feels like Niccolò’s continual challenging of Martino’s self-image and sexuality on the couch was a way for Ludo to keep upping the ante of their UST and make us anticipate whether they were going to actually do something about it. The clip is called Ammucchiate/accumulate, after all. It felt at times like Niccolò was pushing Martino, daring him to drop Emma for him: ‘I know you aren’t straight, why are you bothering with her when you can have me?’ But Martino kept pulling back and standing his ground. And that became their alternating push and pull dance all night.

Let’s rewind for the full UST experience: Niccolò arrives at the party and basically hands Maddelena over to the girl squad so he is free to go find Martino. You can see the sly dog knew exactly where Martino was (did you see how quickly his head turned not just in the exact direction but to the exact friggen degree!). Here is where interpretations can get murkier though -- from that distance and with Martino’s reflective glasses, it isn’t clear whether they actually make eye-contact (from Nico’s perspective, at least) before Martino grabs Emma and kisses her. Still, Martino suddenly launching himself at Emma wasn’t exactly subtle. It was a tad over the top, so surely Nico would have been at least a little suspicious?

It would mean that Niccolò has to decipher Martino’s actions though. Is it Martino just in the closet, trying to play the straight guy in front of everyone (this is coming off the cold reception Niccolò got in front of Martino’s friends earlier in the week, after all); is it Martino using Emma to prove to Niccolò that he isn’t some pathetic loser pining after him (but actually is); or is it Martino genuinely into Emma? Because although there had been chemistry between Nico and Martino, there might have been with Emma as well when Nico wasn’t around. Like ‘You were an option, Nico, but so was Emma and I’ve chosen her because you have a girlfriend’.

Nico would be hoping it is everything but the latter but the only way to find out would be to: A) get them to stop kissing (obviously the number one priority!) and then B) test Martino the first chance he gets.

So he goes straight to them and comes up with a line and excuse (karaoke -- but with all three!) to get them to stop kissing (because hell no!). And just in case the line isn’t enough, he enacts his fail-safe plan: physically separating them with his own body. I love that he was so thirsty for Martino (and perhaps territorial?), he also found excuses to actually touch his thigh, put his arm around him, do the eyebrow wiggle, and pat his shoulder on two separate occasions. What a pro. He does something similar in Halloween and you bet I’ll be doing another post on that because I looooove it.

The problem is Marti is standing firm on the anti-karaoke thing. And somehow this annoys Nico? You can see there was little mirth when Nico more or less accuses Marti of internalised homophobia/being in the closet (even though Nico tried to disguise it towards the end).

Did Marti’s refusal touch a nerve for Nico because he genuinely wanted to do karaoke with Marti and bond with him (and shut Emma out somehow in the process)? Did Nico panic a bit because it felt like Marti was pulling away from him instead of being up for anything like he was used to Marti being? Or was Nico just starting to feel irritable in general because of Emma’s presence and was losing his patience with the grey area between him and Marti? So he started to push Marti to get answers and didn’t stop at the in-the-closet accusations, going on to basically call Marti gay to his face. Nico seemed so smug after seeing Marti’s reaction to the ‘boring gay’ comment, like: ‘Gotcha! You are into me!’

I’m trying to figure out why Nico was pushing Martino so darn hard though. Did he think he would never stand a chance against Emma while Marti is in the closet so he needs to push Marti out of it? Or was he just being gelosa in culo because he was worried that Marti might actually have feelings for Emma and it’s easier to pick the pretty girl than the impossibile guy? So his jealousy got the better of him?

Of course, there is one other possibility. Nico might not have been annoyed-annoyed; he could have been concerned that Marti might have been rejecting a fun activity out of fear. In that case, his calling Marti out on that fear might have been him trying to help Marti be himself.

Either way though, Nico seemed to be challenging Marti on that couch to give up the pretense (and pick him).

But Niccolò’s meddling efforts are for nothing because the two of them leave him to dance together anyway. Nico lost the unspoken challenge he threw out to Marti (admit you’re not straight and drop Emma for me). I love the brutal shot of them walking away from Nico in favour of spending time without him. You really feel that sting as he sits alone on the couch. (He kind of deserved it though...)

The lost challenge means that Nico has to watch Martino and Emma make out AGAIN on the dance floor though. And he is so over it. His stare was so fierce! I can’t even tell where his jealousy at watching Martino kiss Emma ends and his ‘one day I am going to kiss you like this’ determination begins.

But Marti doesn’t stop kissing Emma despite their mutual eye-f---ing. He and Marti are having a thing but it’s a stalemate, so once again Nico is kind of losing. It’s incredible that we actually get to see the effect Martino kissing Emma has on him (which was missing in the og); how he and Maddelena actually stopped kissing because Nico was so vexed/upset/distracted. (I wonder if his insecurities were flaring up here: that maybe in the end he just isn’t good enough for Marti.)

Their mutual staring was obviously the peak of their UST/challenging-each-other game and I have come to accept that the dark lighting was a good choice to emphasise that tension/seduction. I still can’t get over Nico’s laser-beam stare or how Marti was the one to start the whole thing.

But then their lust battle is interrupted by Silvia’s Parental Crisis. And surprise surprise, Nico finds a way to get close to Martino again -- he just happens to be close by when Marti needs help carrying the garbage bags out. What a coinkydink.

So hallelujah and small mercies, it is finally just the two of them outside. Nico can try to breach that distance between them and, you know, try and bring back their flirty dynamic to deal with all the intense UST. But how to start that process? The best Nico can think of is an “Elio~” tease. That will break the ice and give Nico a chance to explain about Maddelena -- that their relationship isn’t working anymore (for him at least). But he can’t leave her... (Side note: I love how personally affronted Marti seems at that, like it should have been a done deal even though he and Nico aren’t actually together.) There is no way Nico can explain to Marti why he can’t leave Maddelena though; there is no way Marti can ever know about Nico’s BPD. The best he can do is disguise both of those truth bombs as a joke.

But the silly story/projection of his own fears ends and Nico is still stuck at square one. The distance has lessened but it’s still not where Nico needs it to be. He needs to find the courage to make a move before he loses this window of opportunity.

What could test the waters while making it obvious how Nico feels about Marti? A gentle stroke of his pinky. It’s innocent enough to explain away if things go wrong, but if it goes right, it can lead to more.

And it does go right. And Marti’s lips move into that brief pout as if he is subconsciously asking for a kiss. So finally, finally, after all that pushing and pulling all night, Nico can lean in to kiss him like he has been wanting to for so long. And Marti is smiling back at him; he wants it too. It is the best feeling.

Until reality intrudes again and they don’t get a catharsis to the UST. But it’s okay -- because at least Nico knows now that Marti is definitely into him. That will be enough for him until they can be alone again…

End challenge battle. Until Halloween.

But guuuuys, he chose a gentle pinky touch! After all the mean jabs on the couch and intense laser-beam staring on the dance floor, he goes for the sweetest, most softest thing. It stands out so much; like under all the bravado and lusty stuff, this is the precious, fragile emotion that was hiding.

I used to feel conflicted about how abrasive things felt at the party, but maybe it actually works if it helps emphasise the softness of the beautiful pinky-touching moment.

Before I leave this Ammucchiate analysis behind though, there is just one more change in the couch scene that I had thoughts on: how the lack of NAS/Earl Sweatshirt references does and doesn’t change Martino’s interaction with Emma (and infatuation with Niccolò).

ONE LAST CHANGE: MIA EARL SWEATSHIRT

In the og, my favourite part of the couch scene was actually Isak and Emma talking about NAS (yes, I liked it over the Even stuff even). I loved that it made Even present; that Even was there between them on that couch long before he physically joined them. That Even was always on Isak’s mind; that that was how much he had affected Isak. Because of course Isak had never heard of NAS before that day in Even’s bedroom, yet suddenly it was his favourite artist and how could Emma not know of his music? Isak wants to like what Even likes; it means they are connected. So even though Isak is trying to bond with Emma, it is still all about Even in the end.

I relate SO MUCH to that. I have done exactly that in my high school days. It felt like such an insightful demonstration of what being infatuated with someone can be like.

So when Marti and Emma were discussing their musical interests on the couch in Italia, I was disappointed (at first) that Marti didn’t nominate Earl Sweatshirt. I was waiting for his full blown infatuation to show, for Nico to be present without being present. But no, Marti stuck to his long-term favs (kudos to that, actually) and Emma knew who those artists were. Because she is also different to her og character and has far more in common with Marti than og Emma did. That ups the stakes for poor Nico and presents her and Marti as a potentially compatible couple.

I realised I liked that Ludo makes these small changes to make his characters different people. Sure it was a shame that I couldn’t have my ‘Nico is present without being present and that is typical infatuation’ moment, but Marti basically being on the lookout for Nico fulfilled a similar vibe and--

OH THAT’S RIGHT. Ludo was keeping it for another episode where it would actually HURT. (We can’t have nice things. What’s the fun in that? They always have to hurt!)

I’m of course referring to Marti listening to Earl Sweatshirt on his way to school in Assenze (6.1). AFTER Nico had broken up with him. AFTER he had caught Nico kissing his supposedly ex-girlfriend as if Marti meant nothing. AFTER feeling betrayed by Nico. AFTER a week of depression and self-imposed isolation.

I mean, wow. After all that, Earl Sweatshirt was Martino’s musical comfort; the artist that helped him find the nerve to get out of his house and back to school. I know Isak also used Even’s NAS to go back to school (such an iconic scene), but unlike og, we didn’t even know if Marti liked Earl Sweatshirt or bothered listening to him after Nico’s lounge-room introduction.

That is of course until we hear Marti listening to him after Nico broke his heart. And if that doesn’t pack a punch...

Like, had Marti been listening to Earl Sweatshirt all week? Had Marti actually been lying in bed, listening to Earl Sweatshirt songs because he so desperately wanted to feel connected to Nico? Because he wasn’t ready to let him go? Because he was missing him so much despite everything? And that is when he started to really connect with Earl Sweatshirt’s music to the point of using it to steel himself to go back to school?

My heart just cannot take this.

So yeh, I’m fine now that Earl Sweatshirt wasn’t referenced in Ammucchiate, but rather saved up for lethal detonation later on (I’m such a masochist, ugh).

And yes, another reason why we didn’t really need an Earl Sweatshirt reference in Ammucchiate is because technically we can claim a role reversal: that Marti was the one ever-present on Nico’s mind because he came to the party in a Marti/Marty McFly-esque outfit. I was well fed and I didn’t even know it.

So that takes me to the end of my thoughts on Ammucchiate. I didn’t mean for it to get so long, but if you’ve read this and have your own thoughts please do let me know. :)

#Skam Italia #SkamIta S2 thoughts #Nicotino #my need to overanalyse must be stopped #this is seriously long son #Skamita deep dive #martino rametta #niccolò fares

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