a/n: sorry if this is actually dog shit🙏🏻, haven't been feeling the vibe yk , enjoy it tho or else!
also lmk if there's any problems/issues
Jinx had been falling for five minutes.
She fell through the darkness, gripping onto the throne. She feared for her life and prayed this wouldn't kill her.
Jinx spent these five minutes cursing Khaos and praying to land upright.
She peaked down from her throne, seeing the slightest of light from the bottom. Khaos was sending her back. This was good of course, but on the other hand... Those ghosts were still there and they were still severely overwhelmed by the army of monsters.
"Piper!" Jinx heard Frank speak. His voice changed, he sounded more confident and sure of himself. "Counter those empousai! We need some chaos."
Jinx inhaled and exhaled. She was determined to help out, she owed it to them after passing out on them. She calmed her erratic heartbeat and focused. A clock tower's chime sounded faintly and Jinx knew it was working.
Jinx grinned. She was excited.
Once she landed, the battlefield was confused. Both sides paused for a minute, questioning what was happening.
Frank, slightly intimidated because she almost crushed him, snapped out of it first. "Jinx?"
"You're glowing blue!" Piper slapped a hand over her heart. "You scared the shit out of us. Where were you?"
Jinx stood on top of the throne, "long story, tell you guys later." She searched for Nico, waving at him. "Nico! Look!" She unsheathe her sword. "I got some upgrades on it."
Nico's, much to everyone's surprise, smile widened. "That's great," he laughed cheerfully.
"Jinx!" Jason shouted from across the pit. He was sweaty and tired, but relieved that a member of the team made it safely back. "How are you?"
"Better!" She cupped her hands to yell back, placing her sword between her legs. "Sorry about earlier."
He shook his head, slicing through a telkhine. "Don't worry about it."
Nico pointed at her with the staff, "nice throne, where'd you get it?"
Jinx rested her arm on it, "this thing? Khaos." She saw his confusion and waved away his worry, "I'll explain later. What's the situation?"
"Frank is praetor." Piper slapped a monster with an apple. "He's taken control of the legionnaires or whatever. They're on our side." She smiled, "We're glad you're back, space girl."
Jinx returned the smile. For once the nickname wasn't said as a backhanded compliment. The two might've had a bumpy relationship, seeing as they both wished each other declared dead in the earlier weeks. It was difficult to hate someone when going through life and death situations together.
Jinx picked up her sword and hopped off the throne. "Glad to be back."
And for once, she meant it.
Jinx di Angelo had turned a new page. She was no longer fighting alone or running away.
"Piper!" Frank nodded towards the empousai.
"Thought you'd never ask." Piper started catcalling at the female demons: "Your makeup is smeared! Your friend called you ugly! That one is making a face behind your back!" Soon the vampire ladies were too busy fighting one another to shout any commands.
The legionnaires moved forward, keeping up the pressure. They had to take the bridge before Jason got overwhelmed.
"Time to lead from the front," Frank decided. He raised his borrowed sword and called for a charge. He felt more assured that the daughter of primordial god was back and powerful.
Jinx gutted a Cyclops. He had no chance with her new upgrades. She was radiating with power. Any enemy that entered her personal bubble was turned into a slomo zombie. They were slowed down all the way to their atoms. They weren't going anywhere.
Frank was relieved to have her fighting alongside him. He hadn't felt so impressed and afraid of a demigod since Percy.
But he reminded himself that he had undergone a big change too. He wasn't falling behind anymore.
"Frank, you big ol' softy!" Jinx beamed, "look at you go!" She forced her sword to go through a telkhine and leaned her chin on the end of it. She watched as Frank sliced a Cyclops in half, then another until Frank was backing them into a corner and sending them into the pit.
"You're certainly in high spirits." He commented, feeling assured of himself and his friends. "Something happen while you were gone?" Frank grit his teeth as he cut another monster down.
"Oh nothing," Jinx fiddled with her sword, shyly. It was almost laughable, she had just finished slicing her way through a cyclops but became flustered at the thought of discussing something intimate to her. "I guess I talked with my dad?"
It came out as a question and for a second, Frank paused and gaped at her.
"Seriously?" He punched down a cyclops, staring at her in shock.
Jinx nodded, recognizing his shock and decided to have an empousa enter her time bubble. Though, she couldn't decide how to kill her.
"You want me to slow down your heart rate until it's not beating or just stab stab?"
Piper pressed her back to Jinx's, "don't ask, just do."
"If you haven't noticed, I'm an overthinker."
The empousa spat a lot of nonsense and after a minute of hearing it, Jinx decided to slice her head off.
It fell with a thud that was lost to the noise of the ongoing battle.
"Brutal." Piper shuddered against her.
Frank pushed an onslaught of telkhine down the pit, "so you're dad... What's he like?"
She cringed at the thought of him. Her foster parents were never the overbearing type. They were the 'our door is always open for anything' and they never meddled. They were understanding of her struggles.
Her father, on the other hand...
"A lot to handle."
Frank and Piper nodded. They assumed that she meant he was scary and threatening. If they ever met him, Jinx was positive that they would die from shock.
The remaining monsters on their side of the chasm tried to retreat, but the legion cut them down.
They weren't so bad after Khaos helped her out. They actually avoided her like the plague. It made sense for them to be afraid of someone like him, but to fear his lingering power was baffling.
The god wasn't even here and they still skirted away from the sword coated in his essence.
"Tetsudo formation!" Frank shouted. "Single file, advance!"
Frank was the first one across the bridge. He was afraid of the leadership switch that would come with Jinx's arrival, but she was all for him leading the dead. Instead, she followed closely behind him.
The dead followed, their shields locked on either side and over their heads, deflecting all attacks. As the last of the zombies crossed, the stone bridge crumbled into the darkness, but by then it didn't matter.
Nico kept summoning more legionnaires to join the fight. Over the history of the empire, thousands of Romans had served and died in Greece. Now they were back, answering the call of Diocletian's scepter.
Frank waded forward, destroying everything in his path.
"I will burn you!" a telkhine squeaked, desperately waving a vial of Greek fire. "I have fire!"
"Be for real." Jinx deadpanned, watching as Frank easily took him down.
As the vial dropped toward the ground, Frank kicked it over the cliff before it could explode.
An empousa raked her claws across Frank's chest, but it looked as if Frank felt nothing. He sliced the demon into dust and kept moving.
His forces swept the enemy away, breaking their every attempt to regroup. Jason and Piper fought at his side, yelling defiantly. Nico waded through the last group of Earthborn, slashing them into mounds of wet clay with his black Stygian sword. Jinx's overwhelming power scared the remaining monsters. Too afraid to fight the unknown.
It was too late for them, the battle ended quickly with no casualties on their side.
"Frank," Jason said, "you're on fire."
Jinx's eyes widened and she felt a wave of trauma hit her as she patted her hair, asking Nico if her hair was on fire.
Confusedly, he told her it wasn't but she didn't stop patting it down.
Frank looked down. A few drops of oil must have splattered on his pants, because they were starting to smolder. Frank batted at them until they stopped smoking, but he wasn't particularly worried.
Nico cleared his throat. "Uh...you also have an arrow sticking through your arm."
"I know." Frank snapped off the point of the arrow and pulled out the shaft by the tail. He felt only a warm, tugging sensation. "I'll be fine."
"What the fuck are you made of?" Jinx gasped as Piper made him eat a piece of ambrosia.
As she bandaged his wound, she said, "Frank, you were amazing. Completely terrifying, but amazing." She looked over at Jinx, flabbergasted. "Your wounds? Jinx, your wounds!"
"Huh?" She wasn't aware she had any.
Jason pointed, "they're healing? By themselves?"
Nico examined the cuts close up and leave only a trail of dried blood. "Interesting. It looks as if they're actually just going back in time to before they were made. That's cool."
Jinx patted her whole body down, feeling creeped out. She could hear the echoing chuckle of her father and it did not comfort her.
She turned around to grab the sword she had abandoned on the ground when she paused. Frozen in place, she asked, "Frank. Your legion, you told them to line up?"
Raggedly, he nodded and noticed the straggler on the edge of the corner that absentmindedly looked at the ground.
He sighed, "there's always that one soldier." Then he looked at Jinx, still as a statue. "Are you okay? You're looking a little pale."
Jinx, in a surprised voice, whispered, "the poet."