A/N: None Japanese words spoken will be written in italics until the bolder word switch shows up. From that point afterwards, until said otherwise, anything spoken in a language other than English will be the italics.
Chuuya POV
We reached the crest of the hill, the unmistakable smell of summer strawberries greeting us as the far away sounds of metal crashing and children playing filled our ears. The bandaged teen pushed ahead a little bit, his longer legs letting him easily gain distance as he stopped next to a pine tree, Thaila's tree if I had to guess. The other teen turned, leaning against the wood and watching me as I made my way the rest of the way up what he called Half-Blood Hill. I don't know what he was looking at or waiting for, but whatever it was, the girl that Dazai fought earlier was not interested in it. The female demigod simply scoffed and brushed past the green eyed boy, continuing to the other side of the hill. When I saw where she was heading, I couldn't help the small gasp.
There were twelve cabins setup in a U shape, each with their own special design. Blond kids fired away relentlessly at targets in a large archery range not far from the full sized battle arena. The campfire burned brightly despite it being close to lunch by now. There was a large main house and a smaller lake connected to the seashore that served as a border for the camp, sparkling in the midday sun. The camp itself was nestled neatly in a clearing surrounded by woods where there wasn't hills.
Turning to Dazai, I found him still watching me, his gaze heavy with an emotion that I've never seen on the other's face before.
"I know that you told me about this place, but I didn't expect it to be this..." I heard my voice trail off, not really knowing what word to use.
We didn't have scenes like this back in Yokohama, not with the Sheep or the Port Mafia. Everything there had a dark almost classical feel to it, but here... the colors came alive in a way that I didn't know that they could. It looked like a place that someone would want to call home instead of only doing so by circumstance.
The corner of the bastard's lips twitched into what could've been a true smile in another life. "Beautiful?" He supplied, finishing my thought for me.
It wasn't really a word that I thought that the other teen would use, but it is one that seemed appropriate. Dazai let me soak in the image for another moment or two before following the girl down the other side of the smaller hill.
—-
Dazai POV
Clarisse was waiting for us at the other side of Half-Blood Hill, twirling her spear boredly as she stood there. The girl looked annoyed as the spinning got faster the longer that she waited on us.
"Finally," she all but snarled, reminding me of the way that she acted when we were twelve and she tried to dunk my head in the camp toilets. She slammed the spear down onto the ground like some kind of mage when we stopped in front of her. "I thought I was going to have to drag you down here myself."
The scary thing is that she would.
I rolled my eyes at the other demigod's antics, as unsavory as I remembered them to be.
"Where's Chiron?" I asked, glancing around the camp. Normally at this time, from what I can remember, the centaur would be instructing the archers, but he wasn't there.
The girl sighed as if the thought of the half horse creature drained any energy that she'd managed to gather during the past few minutes, drawing atten to the eyebags painting the demigod's face. Something twisted in my mind at the state that the daughter of Ares was in. It set a sense of foreboding running through my body.
"Big House," Clarisse said before leaving us for whatever commotion was happening at the Ares cabin.
Chuuya watched as the girl stomped away in a tired anger before turning to me, his eyebrow slightly raised in the way that it did when the other teen started to get impatient. He didn't really seem to like not being able to understand what was going on around him.
"Now what?" The smaller teen asked in a tone of annoyance, his hands shoved impossibly deep into his pockets as he looked around the camp.
I looked around with him, no one else seemed to have really noticed our presence just yet. I want to keep it that way for a little bit longer. Being noticed means questions, questions means explaining, and I've already done enough of that for one day, but here I was getting ready to do more.
Yay me.
"Now," I decided, turning towards the Big House, "we go meet Chiron."
The other teen seemed to be raking his memory at the name before hesitantly speaking.
"The centaur?" The other boy asked, finally landing on the term that he wanted to use.
I nodded at the older teen, privately pleased that he cared enough to listen to what I told him earlier.
That he remembered.
The shorter boy put himself back at his place by my side during our short walk to the Big House, his eyes aimlessly wandering around the camp and taking the scene in during the trek. I didn't blame him, this place really is different from that of any other place in the world.
"So," the teen started, his movements practically buzzing with a battle ready energy that will make him blend in well with all of the demigods here, "who here can we fight?"
I smiled falsely down at the smaller boy, knowing that the teen was ansty from all of the travel. "Why?" I asked, my voice all but dripping with a teasing tone, "that desperate to prove your strength, shortie?"
A faint red glow started to form around the other teen, dancing along the boy's skin like a live flame, but I only waved the annoyed redhead off.
"We're here," I told the other boy, waving vaguely at the building beside us, "pay attention, short mafioso."
The other teen reluctantly disabled his ability, but I knew he would try and get me back later for what I'd said the next time that we were alone. I just stuck my tongue out at the smaller boy and knocked on the door. The whole interaction was childish, but it was us, our dynamic that somehow still stood without the taint of secrets and lies.
There was a rustling behind the door as two muffled voices spoke to each other hurriedly, both steaming with impatience. I was close to knocking again just to cure my boredom when the door finally opened to reveal what I could only assume to be a grown up Charles Beckendorf.
The last time that I saw Beckendorf he was a tall fifteen year old that spent most of his time in the forages and was covered in soot and grime anytime that he came out of them. He wasn't scrawny, but could by no means be classified as muscular. Now the son of Hephaestus looked like someone that could make most monsters cry just at the sight of them as the eighteen year old had filled out from working relentlessly in the forages every summer for years.
There was still soot and grease on the young adult's heavily calloused hands. He looked like someone that would still be kind after the toll of the past two years. The only thing that really seemed to have changed with the older teen was the number of beads lining his neck and the much more prominent eyebags he was wearing.
"Percy?" The demigod asked breathlessly. There was shock in his voice and a wistfulness that sounded like he thought that this was nothing more than some kind of dream. We watched as Breckendorf's hand flew to one of the beads on his necklace, holding the trident there like some kind of lifeline.
"Hey, Beckendorf," I greeted, shining an impossibly innocent smile and a small wave at the tall teen like I didn't just reappear after being missing for years now, like I didn't come back a monster.
Beckendorf surged forward, his hands leaving where they'd been glued to the door frame causing both Chuuya and I to tense up where we stood. Instead of attacking, the son of Hephaestus wrapped me in a hug, pinning my arms to my side as my body locked up on instinct. I could feel the bile rising up in my throat as Chuuya shifted at my back, trying to assess the situation before he did anything rash. The other demigod gave one last squeeze before pulling back and realizing me.
I tried to muffle my wince behind a seemingly good natured laugh as the demigod looked me over. It fooled the son of Hephaestus, but not the boy standing behind me.
I could see the redhead shoot the older demigod a dark look as he stepped up next to me, grabbing my arm wordlessly as he did. The smaller teen pulled back the sleeve of my jacket, inspecting the bandages beneath it. When he saw that the wrappings were still white he just gave my arm an annoyed shove, releasing it from his grasp.
"Perce," the other demigod started, his voice laden with more concern than I'd heard in years, "your hurt."
He eyed the bandages on my arms as I pulled the sleeve down before reaching a hand up to the ones lining my face. I felt my body go still, waiting for the unwanted contact to come, knowing that it wouldn't look good if I were to stop him, but Chuuya didn't have to play by those rules.
The other teen shoved the arm out of the way before it could come too close to me, earning a confused look from the eldest in our little trio, but I just gave the Hatrack's arm a gentle squeeze.
I snapped my finger in front of the other demigod's face, drawing his attention back to me.
"Chiron," I told him, hearing my voice drop into something slightly colder than the warmth that I was trying to fake. If the older teen found my tone off he didn't say anything about it, choosing to just walk into the house, motioning for us to follow.
The Big House was just as strange as I remembered it to be, right down to the ever strange decorations belonging to the camp director, Mr. D. The main room filled with what looked to be crappy seventies decorations from a failed decade party, Diet Coke cans dotting any available space that the god could find.
The older demigod led us to the ping pong table that I've never seen actually used for ping pong, where Chiron was patiently waiting for the taller demigod to come back while pouting over a sea of plans. The centaur was in his wheelchair form, dully reminding me of when he posed as my teacher in the sixth grade.
Not bothering to look up from the plans, Chiron called out into the room, "Who was at the door?" The centaur sounded tired, looked it too from the apparent sagging in his shoulders. He was as tired as everyone else seemed to be in this camp.
Beckendorf placed himself in front of the pair of us, shielding Chuuya and I from view. "Why don't you look for yourself, sir?" The demigod asked, stepping to the side so that we could be seen.
The centaur bristled at the other demigod's words, what looked to be a rant of manners forming on the man's tongue as he looked up at the three of us, his face morphing into a look of pure shock.
"Wha-?" The creature started, seemingly unable to finish verbalizing the thought.
I wasn't too surprised by the man's reaction, Chiron is a creature from Ancient Greek myths, someone that's raised the next generation of heroes for ages. This was probably the first time that one of those students left as I did and came back years later in one piece, more or less.
I turned to the smaller teen, a blank expression coating my face as we watched the wheelchaired man struggle to know what to say. "You know," I started, speaking in a low whisper that I knew was just loud enough for the other to hear, "if I had a drachma for everytime someone gave me that look..." I trailed off, letting the implication hang there between us.
The other ability user turned to me, fully facing me as a look of annoyance plastered itself onto the other's features. The teen looked annoyed that I was joking at a time where he couldn't understand what was going on, but that didn't seem to have stopped the small twitch of the boy's lips.
"Mackerel," the other teen threw back lightly.
My eyebrow spiked up into a disbelieving look, though I don't know how well it translated with only one eyebrow being able to be seen due to the bandages.
"'Mackerel'?" I asked, the word dripping with a tone that commonly got me in trouble during my days in grade school.
"Son of Poseidon," the teen said, shrugging his shoulders lightly as he knew that I would follow his meaning easily enough. And I did from the moment that he uttered the word, I was just more confused by his choice of fish.
"Slug," I shot back, not caring that Chiron and Beckendorf were watching us, the former trying to get my attention as the pair of us spoke. "Small and slow."
The shorter teen aimed a light kick at my head, something that both of us knew wouldn't hurt if it were to land. I jumped away, letting the other teen spin gracefully as he brought his foot back down to his side. We've done things like this all the time back in the mafia, from the name calling to the intensive bickering and playful violence. The other mafiosos were over used to our antics by now and just continued on with the conversation at hand, knowing that we wouldn't be acting this way if we didn't already know all of the information that they were uselessly going over.
"Percy Jackson!" Chiron yelled out, his tone bringing me back to when I was twelve.
My body instantly stopped moving, turning to face the angered man like a scorned child waiting for the newest bout of punishment. I caught the Hatrack moving similarly, only difference was that he shot the centaur an annoyed glare normally resevered for one of my ill timed jokes about suicide.
"Hey, Chiron," I greeted the other carefully, attempting to not set the centaur off anymore than I seemed to already have. It's always easier to deal with authority figures when they're in a more subdued mindset.
The man looked like he was preparing for a long winded speech, one that he'd most likely been holding onto since I was thirteen and disappeared from his care without a word. I decided to risk it and drew my hands up, holding them in the air between us as to temporarily ward off the beginnings of a rant.
"Before you start in on me," I started, cutting off the man's thoughts before he could vocalize them, "is there some kind of translator device or spell that we can use? Chuuya here doesn't speak English," I explained, pointing at the smaller teen who was quietly watching the scene with a sense of mirth in his blue eyes at the gesture that I was making.
The mythological pair looked momentarily startled by my proclamation before Beckendorf nodded lightly in a confused manner and stood up for the seat that he had taken sometime during Chuuya and I's bickering.
"I have something that should work," the young adult decided, glancing at the centaur as if for permission, but the creature was too busy staring at Chuuya to notice.
The gifted boy just sat down in one of the many nearby chairs and stared daggers right back at the man. I knew that the small redhead would have exploded on the man right now if he thought that the centaur would understand him.
Seeming to notice the growing tension, the other demigod made his way to the door as I followed him out. We made our way across the field to the Hephaestus cabin in silence, neither of us seeming to have much to say until we got closer and the other began buzzing with an excited energy.
"Excited to show off your creation?" I asked him in a faked playful tone that I often used with Chuuya when I couldn't stand the demigod's nervous energy anymore.
The other nodded happily at my question. "Yeah," he started in a voice much too bright for my taste, "with everyone here being all but bilingual at birth, no one really has any need for a translator, so this is kinda my only chance to put it to the test."
I hummed at the other's reasoning, not really being able to find it in myself to care.
We arrived at the cabin not much longer after that, the demigod disappeared inside as I stayed out and watched the camp, trying to fall back into the rhythm of it as the other got the device. Standing there for a minute, I watched the Apollo cabin members still practicing at the archery range. A smirk tugged at my lips as an idea sprung into my mind that I stored away for later. Chibi was sure to hate it, but I know it would do well to help him in the long run of this social experiment.
Beckendorf walked out of the cabin not much later with a golden glow lighting up his face. In the man's gloved hands was a small ball of glowing gears spinning and rotating around a central light. I gave the man a somewhat puzzled look, but I could guess at what was about to happen.
"I'm guessing that this was a combined work with a claimed child of Hecta," I guessed, not really seeing how else there could be such a magical aspect to what should've been a mechanical device.
The other demigod gave me his newly minted confused look, seemingly still not used to me having the capability of being smart and using a form of deductive reasoning. I only shrugged at the other, hoping to dispel the idiotic look painting the man's face.
"Y-yeah," the other demigod stuttered out, seeming to have found some resemblance of a mental footing in the conversation again. "You just touch it while holding the image of what you want it to look like in your mind, after that, it will take the shape you imagined... in theory anyways," the man explained. "The gears," he continued, pointing to the seemingly floating objects surrounding the central ball of light, "are spelled to translate the magic. The light is there to take the shape."
He held his hands out to me, waiting with a poorly field impatience. Even knowing that, I hesitated, thinking of the angry ability user waiting for us with Chiron in the Big House. Both the boy's hat and gloves were stored away where the other couldn't use them, something that I knew made the teen feel all but naked without them. But there was a reason that those things were locked away where they were.
So I chose the next best thing.
I took the small glowing object into my bare hands, feeling the warmth cascade through my skin as I did. We silently watched as the gears seemingly melted at my touch, coloring themselves black and silver that contrasted heavily with the golden light as it slowly faded away.
Falling soundlessly, a collar almost identical to that of the one that Chuuya put into his duffel this morning landed in my hands. The only difference between the two, other than it's abilities, was a small inscription on the inside of the new one. There was a small golden engraving there that read: mine.
The older demigod shot me an odd look at my choice of shape for the translator, but chose to say nothing in the end.
Smart.
"So, how does it work," I asked curiously, twisting the object around in my hands, playing with it lightly as I checked that it would be able to properly be worn
The son of Hephaestus motioned to the piece. "You just tap it twice," the older teen started as we began the trek back to the Big House. "Anything that your friend says will be translated to English, and anything said in English will be translated to his language," the demigod explained in an excited tone that made me feel a little sick. "What language does he speak anyways?"
"Chuuya," I told the other demigod, my voice a little rougher than I thought it would, "his name is Chuuya and he speaks Japanese. We both do."
The demigod looked at me with what seemed to be an impressed look as we walked, like he was pleasantly surprised that I could do something that almost any high school freshman could.
"That must have been hard," the son of Hephaestus decides after a few long moments.
I could easily tell where the other demigod was going with this, where this whole conversation had been going from the moment that the other first opened his mouth, but I decided to play dumb, to act more like the small teen that they remembered me being.
"How so?" I questioned, throwing the choker up into the air and catching it swiftly.
The older teen took off one of the gloves that he'd been wearing, waving it around slightly like some kind of burly debutant. "Nothing," the other demigod said, shoving the glove into his pocket while taking the other off, "just you had to learn another language for the guy, must've been hard is all."
Learn another language for him?
I gave the teen a shit eating grin that would make any teacher on sight immediately reach for their detention slips if they saw it. Being underestimated in a fight was good against an enemy, but deadly with allies.
"Actually," I said, beginning to correct the other teen, "I learned Japanese when I was thirteen, over a year before Chuuya."
The other demigod made a small surprised sound as a guilty look fell over his face. I pushed ahead of the older teen, not really understanding whatever it was that he was feeling, walking faster to the Big House.
When I made my way into what this camp deemed good enough to call a war room, Chibi and Chiron were still staring at each other with enough force for flames to spark if Arahabaki were to get out of control. I shot the mythological creature a questioning look, but otherwise left the situation alone. The centaur would come to find me and express whatever concern it is that he so clearly has when he was ready, and the Hatrack can handle himself better than anyone else in this blasted camp.
"Shitty Dazai," the ability user cursed, shooting to his feet and walking over to me like some kind of lost puppy. "You could have at least said something before leaving me alone with... that," the teen growled, clearly not pleased with the situation that the other demigod and I left him in.
I waved the boy off with a dismissive noise, "Didn't want to upset the staring contest." I pointed an accusatory finger between the two, my voice much more tired than I thought it would be when I spoke. "Did you at least win, Chibi?"
The teen only scoffed, not answering the question. "What did you do anyways?" The other boy finally grumbled out, crossing his arms like a pouting child.
I smiled down at the older teen, pulling out the choker from where I'd stashed it in my coat pocket before walking in here, holding the magically made leather piece between us. The smaller boy simply sent me a confused look, glancing between the object in my hand and his duffel at the foot of his chair with a furtive glance, clearly wondering when I had time to swipe it.
"It's a translator, Slug," I offered tonelessly, watching as the other boy only raised an eyebrow, making no immediate move to grab the foreign object. "Demigod logic," I told the other in lieu of a proper explanation.
Chuuya held out his bare hand expectantly, clearly waiting for me to hand the collar over, but I just brushed the hand aside, promptly ignoring the ginger boy's glare.
Stepping up close to the smaller boy, as close as the other was this morning, I could feel the teen's eyes on me like some kind of weight. I unclasped the collar, reaching behind the other teen's neck to put on him, the silver part at the front of the boy's neck. My fingers brushed the other teen's throat lightly as I did, causing the other to shiver, but I ignored the reaction, figuring that he just didn't like being touched.
I stepped back, taking the other teen's appearance in, a small smirk tugging at the corners of my lips at the image.
Yes, this is right.
The other boy finally looked a little bit more like the short tempered teen that I knew. A small smile crept onto my face, but I forced it off just as fast as it came. My smile is a weapon, not something to be seen as pretty or soft by those around me.
The shorter teen cleared his throat lightly, forcing my mind to go back on track. "So," the other boy started, lightly gesturing to the choker lining his neck, "how does this work?"
I pointed to the collar, running a finger along the stitching there almost subconsciously as I did. "You just tap it twice to activate it and two more to deactivate it," I told the other teen, watching as his hand twitched lightly in his pocket at the words.
The other boy nodded lightly and reached up to the magically inclined creation there, but I grabbed the teen's sleeve first, earning myself a well aimed kick to the shin.
"Remember my birth name?" I asked the smaller boy, knowing that everything would go to Hades if he called me by the wrong name while we were here.
The other teen rolled his eyes in an annoyed manner at my intervention, but still answered despite that.
"Percy," the boy said as if tasting how the name sounded on his tongue. It didn't seem to agree with him.
I released the teen's sleeve, watching as the other boy's hand double tapped the choker at his neck. I waited for something to happen, but when there was no physical change I just looked at the other teen, finding him already looking at me.
"Well, Mackerel?" The small mafioso asked in a slightly accented English that seemed to agree with the boy.
"Perfect, Hatrack."
-Switch-
Beckendorf whooped, punching the air in an excited manner clearly pleased to see that his creation worked the way that it should. The centaur gave him a proud, almost fatherly smile, always the teacher it seems.
The man motioned for us to sit down with a small wave of his hand. The smaller teen returned to the seat that he'd claimed earlier, sprawling out in it. I looked around the ping pong table, considering my options and chose the one that I thought would annoy the boy the most. I sat down on the armrest of the chair that Chuuya was using, balancing my body on it and the wall behind us. The teen poked my leg lightly while Chiron sent me a pointed look, I promptly ignored both of them.
"Percy," the centaur started, his voice thick with a teacher's reperminding tone, "you did something incredibly foolish, if it wasn't for your empathy link with Grover, we would have thought that you were dead."
Empathy link, right. Even though I was in a place beyond the god's reach, if I'd had died, Grover would've felt the loss of link.
I fought back the urge to make a joke about hoping that that would've been true. Even if I hadn't, the smaller teen's glare would've effectively silenced any joke that I could've come up with anyways.
"Jumping right into it then," I said in an annoyed tone, not really used to having to censor myself around authority figures anymore. Anyone that I mouth off to in the mafia is either below me, or I knew was going to hurt me no matter what I did or said. The other teen just sighed, knowing that this was better than the alternative.
Chiron did not seem to share Chuuya's opinion.
"Percy," the centaur said sternly in a voice that made me wonder if Camp Half-Blood had installed a detention system since I've left, "be serious."
"Fine," I agreed coldly, looking at my former teacher. I dropped any facade that I'd been holding since stepping over the camp boundary causing the centaur to flinch noticeably at the look on my face. The other demigod just looked away, hiding his face in the plans, suddenly finding them much more interesting than the conversation at hand. Oddly enough though, the older ability user seemed to relax at the look. "I left when I was thirteen, what else do you want to know?"
"Why?" The man decided to ask, seeming to have gotten over his initial shock by now.
There were a lot of possibilities in that question, a lot of answers that I could've given. I could've told him about the boy hood jealousy that I felt back then, about the sorrow of watching those that I used to care for putting me into the second string. In the end I just chose what was easiest.
"You had Thaila," I told him, watching the realization don on the man's face, "I wasn't needed anymore. We would've just gotten in a fight and caused problems if I'd stayed."
I was a thirteen year old boy and my first real friends weren't even rightfully mine, I watched them being taken from me by the girl that had them first. I was thirteen and I couldn't understand what I was feeling, suddenly not being important enough to my friends for them to even notice me, so I left. But it seemed almost cheap to use that as an excuse now when I couldn't find it in myself to feel even a fraction of those twisted emotions anymore.
Chiron seemed to understand that I wasn't telling him everything, a skill that living since ancient times would give someone I suppose, so he simply nodded and moved on.
"Why are you back?"
I studied the older man's expression, not liking what I found there when I did: anxiety. The centaur was anxious of my answer.
"My birthday is in a few days," I explained, watching the older man's anxiety vastly grow. "I came back to check that Thailia took care of the prophecy already like she was supposed to."
I was hoping with what little part of me that still seemed able to do that, that she had taken care of it. That this would just turn out to be a break from the boss and everything he's done and yet to do, but the centaur and the other demigod glanced at each other in a way that said I was right to doubt the girl.
"Tell me," I ordered, subconsciously slipping into the voice I use with the subordinates that the boss had given me.
The other demigod took the fall, glancing up from his plans momentarily. "She didn't," the eldest teen said, his voice dripping with an almost fearful awkwardness.
I looked at the centaur sitting at the head of the table that was quietly observing my reaction. "Is she dead?" I asked, tone growing colder as the conver went on.
The creature flinched at the overall lack of emotion in my voice. "No," he assured, squaring any gratification that my younger self might've felt. When it seemed like the centaur wouldn't explain anymore I simply glared at him, waiting the other out. "She joined the Hunters of Artemis just before her sixteenth birthday," he explained, finally giving in. "They don't age."
I looked down at Chuuya, but I found the other ability user already looking at me. "So the war?" The teen asked, speaking for the first time to someone other than me since we left Yokohama. "The prophecy?" The teen sounded angrier than normal for some reason that I couldn't comprehend.
Chiron wouldn't look at either of us, not that we were too inclined to look at the centaur either. "Percy's responsibility," the man told us as if it was the most natural thing.
"Bandage waste, you good with this?" The other teen asked, not looking away for a moment. Despite the anger evident on the boy's face, the other's tone was soft.
I thought for a moment about the absurdity of this situation: a suicidal teen that wants nothing more than to die promising to live, only to be thrown into an impossible prophecy.
The fates really do have it out against me it seems.
"I don't really have much of a choice here, Slug," I told the smaller teen, trying to placate the boy's horribly hidden anger.
In all actuality, I don't really want to do this, to have Chuuya near it. I left this place, this world behind a long time ago, but it's my responsibility so I have to take care of it.
"We could leave," the other boy offered, ignoring the startled looks and noises from the other two men in the room. "Go home and never think of any of this again," the teen continued, his voice tinted with something close to desperation for some reason, "or find a way out of it like Thaila did."
I shook my head, already having thought through those actions over the years I've been away from camp. Though I could only predict how each scenario would go up to a certain point, none of the outcomes ever looked particularly promising or bright.
"Chu," I started, putting a hand on the other teen's wrist where the Sheep bracelet used to rest to stop the rant forming on the other's lips. In the background I could hear Beckendorf asking how many names we had for each other, but I ignored him. "If we go home, they lose and Olympus falls." I could tell that the other boy was about to protest as he always does when I say something that he doesn't like, but now wasn't anything close to the time, not when we were talking about powers that the other doesn't yet understand.
"I can feel it," I tell him, knowing that the other teen knows just how good my predictions have always tended to be. "I don't know what's going to happen to you if Kronos wins."
The older teen, he's the vessel for a god. I have no way of knowing how the power shift from the gods to the titans would affect the other boy, or even if it would at all. Though if the stories that I read on the plane ride here were any indication, the titans ruling once more wouldn't be good for anyone.
"You'd hate immortality," the teen says in a small voice, finally giving in now that I'd brought him into this as well, "it'd be like a curse to you."
I laughed lightly, surprised to find that it was almost a real one. "Gods, yes it would be," I agreed, watching as the other boy grimaced a little at the wording. "Besides," I continued, something akin to miniscule lightness worming its way into my chest, "I don't really think that the Hunters take boys into their ranks, not if the story of Orion says anything."
Turning back to the bystanders watching our interaction with a strange look in their eyes, I motioned to the plans in front of them. "Now, tell me about this latest concoction of yours."
—-
Chuuya POV
The bandage waste, the demigod punk, and the horse-man hybrid talked through the plans for over an hour, incorporating the youngest demigod into them. Apparently everyone involved had been struggling with the safety of the mission and finding a reliable escape route that wouldn't get everyone involved killed. But with Mr. Stuff Attached to the Bandages and his godly abilities in the works, they weren't as worried since the mission is a water based one.
We left the building that Dazai had called the Big House, the grease covered demigod and the centaur staying to go over the plans one last time before tomorrow, a pointless endeavor really. The younger teen led me to the army of cabins, ignoring the endless stares and whispers from all of the campers that seemed to finally have noticed us.
"What the fuck are they looking at?" I cursed.
We'd made it halfway across the field when I couldn't take the absurdity of it anymore. I felt like the new kid in some crappy teen movie, except I didn't want to meet and be hated by the random popular girl. I was more likely to kill her and that seemed like something that would be frowned upon here.
"Chibi, please~" the taller teen said in his trademark annoying tone that did nothing to help with my rising anger level, "most of them have never seen me before, the ones that have probably don't even recognize me, and you're a completely new face among the campers. People stare."
We stopped in front of a cabin that was painted blue on the outside that seemed like a fisherman and a surfer had drunkenly fought over how to decorate it... in the dark.
Perfect for a child of Poseidon.
Dazai stepped forward and opened the door with little visible hesitation, but I could see from the set of the other boy's shoulders just how bad the temptation to walk away was. Inside the cabin was a few bunk beds lined up in a eat row against the wall, though only one set really seemed to have been used in recent years, a bathroom, dresser, a mirror with some type of horn or something hanging from it, and strangely enough, a fountain in the middle of the floor with a little thing of those golden coins next to it.
The demigod just let me look around while he put our things away, not really unpacking them so much as just getting the things separated out and out of the way.
After a few minutes the teen turned to say something to me, but paused at the seemingly angry knock at the cabin door. Almost identical flickers of annoyance flashed over our faces at the sudden sound before I schooled mine back into its resetting look. I don't know any of these people, or even what they're capable of, so I knew keeping something akin to a level head at the moment would be for the best, something I think that Mori would be proud of if he were to see me attempting to do so.
The bandaged teen opened the door, a young girl's voice echoing through the room before he'd even had the chance to let go of the door handle.
"Seaweed Brain," the mystery girl started in something that could be called a wistful voice. For the second time today, someone lunged forward and hugged the younger boy, something that anyone who was paying any amount of attention could see that he didn't like. Had we been back home, both of the offending parties would have a broken bone or two at best, dead at worst if anyone had tried that.
The blonde girl, as I could now see, restricted herself form the taller teen just as quickly as she'd hugged him before pulling back a hand and slapping the boy across the face with enough force to leave a red mark.
"Two years, Percy," the girl growled in an angry tone, "that's how long you've been missing."
Dazai just walked away from the girl, going back to our bags with much less energy than he had before if that was even possible for someone that runs on little to no sleep.
"Good afternoon to you too, Annabeth," the teen greeted tiredly.
I walked slowly to the nearest bunk bed, climbing up to the top and getting comfy for the show that the pair were creating. I could help, but it's more fun to watch the bandaged teen try and deal with this in a more normal manner than he's had to act in over a year it seems.
"Where even were you?" The girl continued, moving father into the room. "After a few months, Grover could barely even feel the empathy link to know whether you were dead or not, idiot." The blonde girl followed Dazai around the cabin as he put some of his things away in the bathroom for the night.
The taller teen turned around, narrowly avoiding the angry demigod as he walked towards me, climbing up beside me on the bunk bed.
"Japan," the other boy replied flatly once he was comfortable on the bed, ignoring the way that I flicked the side of his head.
The blonde girl's gaze flicked to me as if she'd just noticed my presence, though I knew that she'd known I was in here the entire time, having taken a quick visual sweep of the room before walking in.
"Who's this?" The girl asked, swinging an accusing hand at me even though her eyes were still trained on the son of Poseidon.
I was decidedly against the daughter of Athena.
"My name is Chuuya Nakahara" I started, drawing the girl's attention fully to me for the first time since she walked in here. "You must be the one that Percy calls Wise Girl."
The girl's stony gray eyes settled firmly on me with a look that would've had the potential to be threatening in nature had I not spent that past few months working with Dazai, Mori, and the rest of the Port Mafia, along with my life before them. Even then, I'm a killer in my own right, the teen before me is just a glorified monster hunter.
"Don't call me Wise Girl," the blonde haired teen ordered.
"Fine," I agreed easily, glancing at the bandaged teen next to me to gauge his reaction to our little interaction. For all intents and purposes, he seemed to find thesis mildly amusing, hardly as concerned about the red spot blooming on his cheek as he should've been. "Wise Ass."
The girl, Annabeth, laughed dryly in a way that didn't really fit her. "Gotta say, Seaweed Brain, I like your other brother better," the girl remarked before waving a hand at me again, "this one takes too much after you."
I dared a look at the other teen, finding that he looked almost sick at the girl's wording for whatever reason. "Chase," he said, demoting the blonde girl to her last name, a fact that the other definitely seemed to have noticed, "Chuuya is not my brother, he's my partner. Treat him as such."
I heard the undertone in the other's voice, it was the same one that I've heard him use with his subordinates when they didn't listen to orders fast enough. To the daughter of Athena's merit she noticed the subtle change, something that already made her twice as perceptive as half of the new recruits that I've seen when they first joined.
Though the other boy's choice of wording was strange. Dazai doesn't normally say things like that for other people's benefit like this. It's probably just because we're the only two here that know the cruelty that the other is capable of, some sort of solidarity thing in the teen's twisted mind.
The girl stormed out of the cabin without so much as another word, the door banding shut dramatically, leaving us alone once more.
I flopped back on the bed, silently enjoying the feeling of my feet dangling off of the edge of the bunk bed. The other teen let me shift around and get comfortable before following me down, positioning himself below me as he had earlier today. I let my hand go back to his hair like before, silently twisting the locks of hair, careful to avoid the bandages there, using my other hand to prop my head up just a bit.
"How's your cheek?"
I couldn't see the other's face anymore, but I could almost feel the teen rolling his eyes. "The pain didn't even register," he told me dryly.
I hummed lightly. I guess I'd forgotten for a moment that I was laying with the boy that had been raised by the Port Mafia boss since he was fourteen, not some normal teen that would've been hurt by what the other demigod had done.
I don't know how long we laid there like that, me messing with the younger boy's hair, the other teen letting me. It was a calm that we seldom got or let ourselves have back home. At some point, my breathing evened out as the inky blackness of sleep took over.
A/N: This is not one of those fives where Annabeth is some kind of jerk through the whole thing, I love her character and I wouldn't do that. But one of the reason that I do lover here character is how you can see her trust and abandonment issues clearly written with how she always responds standoffishly to new people, and even ruder to those that threaten to take her friends away from her, like how she acted with Rachel in the Battle of the Labyrinth. So I thought that it would be more natural for her to kinda act like a jerk right now since her best friend showed up after being missing for years with someone knew that seemed to have replaced her.