"Carol is crazy. Carol is a paranoid bitch. Carol is going to get us robbed."
Percy muttered under her breath, as she crossed over onto the other side of the street. She walked swiftly down the block, and along the route that was all too familiar to her at this point. Carol Shane was a crazy old lady who happened to be her landlord. The woman was 70, possibly even 80 years old, and showed no signs of old age except for in her physical body. She had a sharp mind and even sharper tongue but was convinced that checks and electronic methods of payment were being 'monitored by the government'. That, coupled with her general paranoia, led to her insisting that every tenant pay their rent in cash.
Which was why Percy was currently weaving her way through the streets of Bludhaven, trying to get to her bank before it closed. In her crisis, she had forgotten to go earlier in the day. She looked up to the sky and cursed. The sun was setting, and it would be dark soon. As much as she liked Bludhaven, she also agreed that the city was not at its kindest at night. It was much safer compared to Gotham, but that didn't mean encountering some shady character was unlikely. And with her luck, she probably would.
Honestly, Percy mused, as she crossed another street, it was a wonder Carol was still alive. If even one of her tenants accidentally blabbed to the wrong person about her collecting cash payments, someone was sure to try to break in and steal it. Knowing that she housed that much cash on the first of every month was dangerous information. A more prudent person would have moved out long ago but unfortunately, Percy liked to test her fate as often as possible.
Prudent...she didn't even know she knew that word.
She was brought out of her thoughts once she was standing in front of a large brick building with four imposing concrete columns shot up and supported the architrave, where the words Bludhaven Capital Bank were carved into stone.
Although the architecture on the outside was grand, the Bludhaven Capital Bank was fairly small, especially compared to its more well-known rival, Bludhaven City Trust. Percy had chosen it specifically for that reason. Old habits she'd picked up from her childhood and teenage years always had her consciously or subconsciously flying under the radar.
By now, it was completely dark, and Percy sighed, reconciling herself to the fact that the walk home might not be as pleasant. She pushed through the heavy doors and entered. The inside of the bank matched the striking but gloomy exterior. The ceilings weren't as high as expected, but they were decorated with vivid patterns and the crown molding was just as, if not more, intricate. All the tellers sat behind a glass casing on one side of the room, with small circular holes cut in each booth to allow for easier communication with the customers. The opposite side of the room had a long table attached to the wall, with little boxes holding writing utensils and deposit slips. The center of the large room was divided by retractable belts to allow for customers to line up efficiently.
Percy quickly surveyed the room out of habit as she entered and took note of its inhabitants. Today, all but two of the teller booths had been cleared out, and there were hardly any other people inside, which was appropriate for a bank that was meant to close in about 20 minutes. There were three men, one filling out a deposit slip, another in a discussion with one of the tellers, and the third towards the side, arguing heatedly over the phone. A woman was also at the long table, hovering over the slips. Percy noticed her trying to fill one out while her daughter, who was maybe 3 or 4 years old, tugged on her pant leg and whined in boredom.
Since nobody seemed to be approaching the second open booth anytime soon, Percy took it upon herself to wait at the front of the line, so the teller, an older woman with thick but graying hair, could call her over. The teller noticed her presence and waved, and Percy took the signal to approach the glass.
"What can I do for you?" the woman asked, glancing at the clock in anticipation of going home soon. She had forgone the usual greeting and welcome, not that Percy minded.
"I'd like to withdraw some cash, $1700 in 10s," Percy had been here enough times to know how to streamline the process. She slipped the teller her ID without being prompted and took the time to read the teller's name tag, Janet.
"All 10s?" Janet raised an eyebrow at her and managed to look both bored and exasperated at the same time. Percy's face turned sheepish as she shrugged and apologized.
It's not her fault that Carol preferred smaller bills, so that 'the government couldn't track her', or something along those lines. Honestly, Percy thought the government was a pile of minotaur dung. The lack of response or follow-ups to her cross-country adventure to retrieve the lightning bolt, or any of the other quests she had been on, only cemented that belief in her mind. The mist hid all the mythological aspects but that didn't change the fact that the entirety of New York City's population lost multiple hours of their life and the government simply chalked it up to 'freak power surges' and 'something in the water'.
Janet said nothing in response to her apology but a moment later asked her to recite her account number, which Percy did. Janet left her chair and returned a few minutes later with a hefty envelope which she set down next to her keyboard. Percy waited, knowing that it would take a few more minutes to confirm the withdrawal electronically.
While she did, she found herself shifting on her feet and flitting her eyes over the room. The woman at the table had momentarily abandoned her slip to attend to her child. She had crouched down and was holding her daughter's hands while she spoke to her softly. Percy smiled to herself, the gesture reminding her so very much of Sally. I haven't visited in a while, maybe I should, Percy thought to herself before realizing that she had just quit her job and, not wanting to deal with her mother's reaction to that just yet, mentally postponed her visit to a later date.
The second man was still talking to the teller, two booths down from her. The first and third had gotten in line, having, respectively, finished filling out the slip and speaking on the phone. Percy hoped there was enough time before closing for the tellers to help them both. It would be a shame if they had to come again another day.
Percy heard the bank's door opening and furrowed her brow. As she turned around, the back of her mind was already wondering who would be coming inside only 10 minutes before the listed closing time. When she did see who had made such a poorly thought-out decision, she briefly closed her eyes in frustration and annoyance.
Four men in black clothing, black ski masks, and large dark grey guns slung around their shoulders by straps had shuffled in one by one and were now spread out in a horizontal line. The second one down the line stepped forward, breaking the pattern, and hefted his gun up to point it in Percy's general direction, while the others stayed in place and followed suit, making sure to cover all the people in the room.
"Everybody listen up! This is a robbery. I want the tellers to stand up and put their arms in the air," the main one ordered in a gruff but loud voice.
Fuckkkkk.
The same robber who had spoken before trained his eyes on Percy, gesturing to her and the man a few feet behind her. "You two, step away from the glass and put your hands where I can see them."
No really, why me? Percy thought to herself but did as she was told.
She was beyond annoyed. She just wanted to pay her rent and then maybe go back home and watch Finding Nemo for the one millionth time while she tried to not think about the fact that she spent four whole years of her life getting a degree that she no longer wants to put to use. Actually, maybe The Little Mermaid is a better idea, her being able to relate to the whole 'girl trying to find her place in the world' and what not. The last time she had watched that movie with Triton, she had enjoyed seeing his face turn different shades of purple as he digested the uptight portrayal of himself, but that meant she wasn't able to give her full attention to the masterpiece of a film. Maybe...
Percy pinched herself. Focus! You're in the middle of a robbery, seaweed brain.
Now why did her inner voice sound like Annabeth. Whatever, another problem for another time.
When she zoned back in, the main robber was at Janet's booth, ordering her to empty the till. He spotted the beige envelope next to her keyboard and ordered her to hand it over, which the woman did, her hands shaking. The man peered inside and made a noise of approval.
"Hey! That's my rent!" Percy blurted out before snapping her mouth shut. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She had even taken a large step forward, which was why the two of the other three robbers had immediately repositioned their guns to point at her. She carefully stepped back to her original spot.
"Shut up," the main robber growled, stuffing her envelope in one of the bags they had brought with them. "New plan, you five," he gestured towards Percy, the three men, the woman, and her daughter, "against that table." Did the child not count?
Two of the robbers closed in on the five of them and cornered them into the large table.
"Phones," the leader barked, and the same two robbers came and collected each of their phones. The man who had been arguing on his earlier, hesitated and it was yanked forcibly out of his hand. When it was the woman's turn, she gave hers willingly and quickly, clutching her daughter's hand even tighter.
Across the room, where the leader and the fourth robber had their guns trained on the two open booths, Percy noticed one of the tellers, not Janet, discreetly press something under the table.
Percy relaxed just a little, knowing the cops would be here soon and they just had to stay safe and stall until then. Perhaps if everyone was looking at her, she could have misted them into thinking they had everything and leaving, but with the way the robbers were spread out across the room, she didn't want to take the chance that it wasn't successful. Plus, they still had her rent.
Percy was aware that she was fidgeting. The leader and robber 4 (in her head, she'd taken to calling the two at the teller by those names, and the two guarding her and the civilians, robber 2 and robber 3) had been taking too long to gather everything they needed. Robber 4 had taken the male teller towards the back of the bank, no doubt to try to get him to open the safe. She didn't dare try to reach into her pocket for riptide, so she had taken a pen off the table behind her and was twirling it in her fingers. One of the men near her side eyed her but she ignored him.
"Excuse me," a quiet but steady voice spoke up near her and Percy immediately whipped around to face the source. The mother from before had lifted her head slightly, though she still wasn't looking any of the robbers in the eye. "My daughter, she needs to use the bathroom, could we..."
The woman trailed off, not knowing exactly what to propose. Percy's heart sank, there's no way this would go well. Best case scenario, the robber allowed them to go with an escort, but Percy did not at all feel comfortable letting the robber go with them alone. And worst case...
"Shut up bitch!" Robber 2 bit out, his voice a little higher and younger than the leader's. He brought the gun closer to her face.
"Please, sir, she really needs to go," the mother pleaded, looking desperate.
The leader spared a glance behind him to see what the commotion was, but he must've deemed the situation unimportant, because he quickly went back to harassing Janet. Robber 2 on the other hand, was not having it. He stepped forward, grabbing the woman by the hair, and yanked, hard.
She screamed as she was forced down to her knees. In the process, she had dropped her daughter's hand, not wanting to drag her down as well. Percy clenched her fists in anger but admired how she was thinking about her child even while in pain.
Percy forced herself not to react. He's just gonna scare her, he's not gonna do anything more. They have to leave soon anyways if they don't want to get caught.
But clearly, he was dumber than Percy gave him credit for.
"I fucking told you to shut up," he snarled at her, tightening his grip on her hair and making her whimper a little. The woman kept her mouth shut this time, and Percy watched with attentive eyes as the robber slowly started to let go.
Unfortunately, before he could, the woman's daughter naively came forward.
"Don't talk about my momma like that!" she shouted at him. Her thin brown hair was pulled back into two short pigtails, and they shook with her fury. She reared her arm back and Percy caught a glimpse of what she had clenched in her fist. When in Hades had she gotten a paperweight?
"You little—" the robber started, but before he could finish or before the girl could carry out her plan, Percy quickly stepped forward to do damage control. No doubt, the man would hurt the child if she threw the object at him. Percy stepped directly in front of the child, snatching the weight from her hand, and slipping it into her pocket. Reaching behind her with her right hand, she gently nudged the daughter towards her mother, and the woman, bless her, grabbed tight to her child.
"There's seriously no need for that," Percy started, her hands up in an 'I surrender' position again, "She's just a kid."
She just needed to direct robber 2's attention, and fury, towards her, so Percy did what Percy did best: opened her mouth.
"But also if you gotta go then you gotta go. Isn't ignoring your bladder, like, bad for your health or something?"
That earned her a few incredulous stares from the people around her, including robber 3, but Percy kept going. It was easy to just keep talking smack, and she'd been doing it since she was little, so she knew what to say to confuse people into forgetting their anger. As she continued to blabber about the dangers of not relieving yourself, she was actually glancing around the room again, looking for signs of the police arriving. She probably could have grabbed the gun from one of them and taken him out, but there was nothing stopping the others from shooting the civilians. She had noticed that at least two of them had a crazed look in their eyes and knew that underestimating their greed could be a deadly mistake.
"I swear they teach you that in, like, the second grade. Did you not go to school? I mean, I've gotten kicked out of 7, but I still know that. How—"
Robber 2's body language changed suddenly, causing her attention to jerk back to him just in time for her to watch his fist swing out from the side. Percy tensed in preparation and let it collide with the side of her face, her head turning slightly to absorb the impact a little better.
Ouchy.
There was definitely some force behind it, but the pain was, at most, a slight sting. When her mouth opened slightly, there was another small stab of pain. Touching two fingers to her lips revealed a dab of blood.
The mother and child had gasped, and the men had shifted uncomfortably but had made no move to intervene even though she noticed that at least one of them had quite a bit of muscle under his standard office attire. How heroic, Percy snorted to herself.
Robber 2's face was slightly flushed under the ski mask, but he seemed disappointed that the blow had not incited a reaction from her. "That'll teach—"
The leader interrupted them, "Enough messing around! We have everything. Let's get out of here."
Robber 4 had returned from the back with the male teller, and the four black duffel bags they had brought with them looked much fuller than before.
Fuck, Percy thought, which one of those did he put my money in?
Suddenly, a clang was heard in the corner of the room, the sound of something metal hitting the bank's porcelain floor tiles. Everyone froze and looked towards the source of the sound and the leader swore violently.
"Get out!" he shouted, but it was too late.
The object emitted a hissing sound, and, in a matter of seconds, a thick grey fog had diffused across the floor and several feet upwards. Percy could barely make out anything, except for the vague patterns of the ceiling. Knowing her back had been facing the wall, she stepped behind her until she could feel the long table at her lower back. At the very least, she knew where she stood and that anything that might happen, would happen in front of her.
She heard a few noises, grunts of pain and blows being exchanged, but no gunshots. She heard the sound of the bodies hitting the floor and started to understand who had come to help them. It was yet another waiting game. Gods she was so sick of standing around doing nothing when she knew she could. She hated feeling so helpless. But before she could dwell on that feeling, she heard the little girl from before let out a soft cry.
Pinpointing the source of the cry, Percy stepped towards it and was able to see robber 2 holding onto the child by the arm, most definitely bruising her. He was turning violently around, trying to find their unknown attacker and Percy knew he would try to use the girl as leverage. The mother was nowhere to be seen and she deduced that they must've gotten separated by the smoke.
The tears on the child's face spurred Percy into action. She launched herself forward, letting the momentum of her bodyweight topple the robber onto the ground as he grunted in pain and surprise. The child fell to the ground as well, but at a safe distance, and Percy snatched the gun from around his body and kicked it under the table, away from the action.
"How dare you?" she snarled into his face. She picked his upper body off the ground by his jacket, and tore off his ski mask, wanting to see the face of the man who harassed them. Still holding onto his clothing, and while he was still frozen in surprise, she punched him across the face. He howled in pain from the incredible strength of Percy's anger-fueled hit. She felt an unexpected surge of pride knowing that she had probably fractured at least a few of his facial bones. She slammed his head back into the ground, letting go of the grip on his jacket and making him groan in pain again.
Satisfied by the level of incapacitation, she quickly moved over to the girl, who had taken to crawling underneath the table to get away from the fight, her arms wrapped around her little body as she shook. By now the smoke was starting to clear and it was obvious the danger had passed.
"Hey sweetie," she reached an arm out to the girl, speaking as gently as possible, "Everything's okay now, you can open your eyes."
The child followed Percy's instruction and looked at her, also glancing over to where robber 2's body lay on the ground. He was unmoving, but Percy knew he was still alive. The mother, who had caught sight of her daughter through the thinning smoke, rushed over.
"Oh, thank god, Minnie, you're okay!" Although Percy had managed to calm down her daughter, Minnie's mom was able to coax her out from her hiding spot. "Thank you so so much," she spoke to Percy, the gratefulness visible in her eyes. They shone with unshed tears, as she pulled her daughter in for a tight hug.
Up close, the woman looked nothing like her own mother, but the fierce protectiveness was exactly the same as Sally's. Percy just smiled, and opened her mouth to reply, but the sound of footsteps coming towards her had her head turning again.
From her place crouched down on the ground, Nightwing, Bludhaven's resident vigilante slash hero, seemed impressively tall. He was barely out of breath, and the only indication that he had even been in a fight was the way his messy black hair hung over the edges of his domino mask.
Despite living in the city for a year, Percy had never seen Nightwing before. When she wasn't at work, she spent her time at home or, more accurately, at camp, and thus she had never had any reason to run into him. She had never actually met any of the superheroes in person, save for Diana, but even then, never as Wonder Woman. All the articles and news footage of Nightwing, in Percy's opinion, didn't do him justice. It was something about his aura, confident and assured, that just drew her in. The remnants of his fight, aka the other three robbers, also lay unmoving on the ground behind him. Another day, Percy would have analyzed his stance and body language, but she was still buzzing from the adrenaline of fighting someone genuinely malicious for the first time in months. As combative as Clarisse was, spars with her didn't really count.
"Are you okay, ma'am?" he asked softly, tilting his head slightly, and the gesture definitely did not remind Percy of a young puppy. His voice, although altered by some technology, still conveyed his concern.
"Uh yeah...." Percy confirmed with a furrowed brow. She was confused why he was asking her when it was Minnie and her mother behind her that were attacked. But the movement of her mouth agitated her split lip and she realized that she was the one with visible injuries.
Nightwing gazed at robber 2 on the ground a few feet from them and retreated his head a little bit, almost like he was confused and then looked back at her. He opened his mouth but before he could say anything, like comment on the way she disposed of him, the sound of sirens finally filled the air.
Nightwing finally seemed to move into action, grabbing robber 2's gun from the ground in one sweeping motion and adding it to the 3 he had collected from the other robbers. The bank doors opened as the police filed in, the drawn pistols in their hands lowering as they realized the threat had passed. When Percy looked back, Nightwing, along with the guns, was already gone, the only evidence of his intervention being the incapacitated criminals.
The next few minutes were a blur. The other civilians were either being placated by the officers or demanding to go home, while the officers themselves were trying to get statements. Someone came to get hers and she described her experience as best as she could, careful to not sound too indifferent in order to not arouse suspicion.
Initially she had felt frustrated at her own lack of action, but the fighting had somehow brought her a little peace. She looked at her hands, her right fist tinged pink from when she had punched robber 2, and smiled to herself. She really did miss the fighting; it wasn't even a question anymore of whether she was just bored of her oceanography job. She genuinely enjoyed her moment of heroism, no matter how brief. That's just who she was, she realized. A combination of Sally's parenting and of her life of fighting to save her friends had permanently changed her. It didn't matter that there were no more prophecies, no more big bad titans or giants to fight. She would never be able to live the normal mortal life. Then she thought about her cousin Diana, and about Nightwing, and realized that that might not be such a bad thing.
She ran a hand through her wavy hair and huffed out a laugh. Annabeth really did have all the answers.
Another police officer, with swept back dark hair, came towards her, and let her know that she was free to leave. Percy's brain acknowledged the statement and she nodded in response, but she was really looking off to the side, deep in thought. If she had paid attention, she would have seen the concern in his blue eyes, but she instead gathered herself and strode away, through the doors and out into the street.
As she walked back home, the wind chilly and blowing in her hair, she felt a little giddy. She was really gonna do it, she was gonna become a superhero.
Suddenly, she froze in the middle of the sidewalk, and her mouth dropped open in horror.
Holy Hera, my rent!
A.N. So! Chapter 2: Percy meets Nightwing for the first time and finally makes the decision to become a hero. Stay tuned for next Friday, when you'll finally get some perspective from Dick's side of things.
Let me know if you enjoyed this one!