Kat was nervous. And she wasn't usually nervous, like, ever. So this was saying something. Plus, she had gone and left without her backup. Yay being impulsive, she thought.
Sally Jackson was sure to have seen the news, and Percy was sure to have told her that they were split soul twins. Kat however, was extremely nervous to see how the woman would react.
So Kat raised a fist and lightly knocked on the door.
Inside, there was a ruffling like papers moving, and feet walking toward the door. Sally Jackson opened it, and her eyes widened. Kat found herself trapped in the woman's embrace.
"Oh, my baby..." Sally whispered, tears in her eyes.
"Hi Mom." Kat said softly.
Sally loosened her hold to pull Kat inside, and lead her to the couch where they sat down. Sally's hands rested against Kat's face, and ran through her hair.
"I never thought that I'd get to meet you." Sally whispered.
"Why did you think that I wouldn't come?" Kat asked quietly.
"Because you were never born," Sally said.
~~~~~~
Percy had made them all swear on the Styx not to tell anyone without his permission, and now the squad were almost at the base.
"Ye could have probably kept it a secret for a longer time, yeah?" O'Brien asked. "So why'd ye tell us now?"
Percy looked at all of them. "Because I'm fairly certain one of you is a demigod."
Their eyes widened, but Woods was the first to respond. "Who?"
"That," Percy said, "I will tell the demigod privately, if I'm right."
A few minutes later they were going over the plan.
"Yeah, 'cause we didn't make one." Woods said.
"I want to get what intel they have. That's our mission, intel and destroy." Percy said.
"And how do you suppose we do that?" Myers asked, crossing their arms.
"I use the Mist to disguise us as HYDRA agents and we walk in. I'll be putting a lot of effort into the Mist, so we shouldn't worry. Then we gather our information, and I teleport you back here. Once you are at a safe distance, I'll get to destroying the base." Percy said.
"How are you going to destroy an entire base on your own? We don't even have any explosives." Woods scowled.
Percy laughed. "One, I won't be alone. Two, I am explosive myself."
"Who's going with ye?" O'Brien asked.
"My big puppers." Percy grinned.
"Your... Dog?" Myers blinked.
"Yup." Percy continued to grin.
Woods groaned. "He's gonna die, we're all gonna die, and I have a date on Tuesday."
"Hey!" Percy said. "Don't underestimate Maully."
"Molly?" O'Brien repeated.
"Yeah, Maully. Like Molly, except like, 'maul' instead. Maul, you know-" Percy made chomping/clawing motions with his hands.
"You named your dog with a pun?" Myers asked.
Percy grinned.
"Okay, that's... Actually kind of cool." Woods admitted.
"But still, how is your nicely named pooch going to help you wreck a HYDRA base? And I don't see her here." Myers asked.
"He-" Percy said.
"Oh, I like. Dude dog called Maully." Myers said.
"-Is my dog. You think I'd take a normal woofers into a fight?" Percy smirked.
"I really want to see this dog now." O'Brien said.
"Well, you won't miss him." Percy chuckled, thinking of Maully's huge size.
"How is he going to get here?" Woods asked.
"You're asking the guy who can teleport." Percy informed them.
"Right." Myers said.
~~~~~~
Walking into the base only required a simple fake story with the help of the Mist. The three agents were in awe of how quickly and unquestioned they made their way through. Percy left it to them when it came time to do the info download. He wasn't going any closer to those computers than he had to.
The few agents who had previously been in the room were knocked unconscious by the three while Percy made sure that the noise didn't travel beyond the walls.
"Got it." Woods said, holding up his drive before tucking it into a pocket.
"Need help." Myers chirped at their own computer. Woods was at their side in a second.
"Oh, you got the experiment files." Woods said. "Brien, you're the smart one, hurry your ass over here."
"Almost done." O'Brien replied as Woods and Myers tried not to trip over any of the coding.
"Better make it quick. Shift change crew is on the way." Percy said, noticing the approaching agents.
O'Brien shoved the drive into his pocket and slipped in front of the third computer. "I've got this, you two work on the fourth one."
Woods and Myers nodded, and the room was filled with the three of them doing the computer stuff. Percy's jaw clenched, and he stepped out of view of the door so that he could close it behind the HYDRA agents.
They filed in while the three were still working. "Who are you?" The second in the line demanded.
"The other guys got sick and had to head to the medbay; food poisoning." Woods replied, not looking up from the computer.
"What are you doing?" three asked in various tones, noticing the code on the screen in front of O'Brien.
"We've got a hacker, I have to fight them manually." O'Brien lied, not turning to look behind him.
"These servers are offline." One of the HYDRA agents said, reaching for his gun.
Myers looked up then, and saw Percy behind the six agents, and he closed the door with a foot at the same time as he reached forward and grabbed two of the agents and slammed their heads together. "Hail Hydra." Myers shrugged, confusing the agents, and shot one of the agents in the chest with a fluid motion.
In a few seconds, the other Hydra agents were down, and Woods had taken a bullet to his shoulder. "Let's get out of here." O'Brien said, stepping over an unconscious agent.
"Close your eyes." Percy said before depositing them at the jet and returning to the room they had just been in. Percy was quick to find out first hand that the gunfire had drawn attention, and that he was now the sole target of the entire base.
It took him a few tries to find a room big enough for Maully, but once he did the huge hound was eager to bust down some walls. So they went through the base, Maully barreling through walls while Percy used his earthquake powers in small bursts. Thank the Fates he'd gone and trained with his Dad on some nights.
His goal wasn't to completely demolish the base, just make it unusable and force the agents to evacuate. He didn't need a repeat of Russia. And hopefully, provoking HYDRA would lure Tarus out.
After he'd caused enough damage, Percy and Maully made it back to the quinjet. Maully stood outside the open hatch, and stuck his nose in, sniffing.
"That is one fucking huge dog." Woods said as Myers tended to his wound.
They looked up and their jaw gaped. "Holy shit."
O'Brien hesitantly stepped toward Maully, who was covered in debris and looked a shade of grey instead of black.
"Let him shake that off first." Percy said, and Maully made a snorting nose before trotting away and shaking like a wet dog. Looking his normal shade, Maully set his head down on the ramp and looked at O'Brien. "He wants you to scratch his ears." Percy said.
O'Brien's eyes lit up and the chance to pet a giant dog, and eagerly buried his fingers into the Molossus' fur. Myers looked envious from where they were fixing up Woods.
Percy noticed. "Myers, I can finish from here." Myers accepted the dismissal without hesitation, and joined O'Brien and Maully.
Woods, however, was concerned at Percy's approach. Especially since Percy just reached a hand out to his shoulder without even washing first. Woods yelped as water climbed up his arm, and hissed as it settled in his wound. His hiss turned into a sigh as the water finished pulling his muscle together and mending it closed.
"Alright, we need to get out of here." Percy said.
Maully grumbled as O'Brien and Myers begrudgingly left him.
"You won't fit in the quinjet." Percy told him.
Maully snorted, and as he pushed himself up, he shrunk. To the size of a Cane Corso. It seemed to be as small as he could get, but Percy was still surprised and impressed he could do that in first place. "When were you going to tell me you could do that?"
Maully made a noise that resembled a laugh and trotted inside, then sat between O'Brien and Myers. Percy gaped at the molossus.
Woods got the quinjet in the air at about the same time as their location was discovered by evacuees.
Over an hour later, an Iris Message formed in front of him.
"Percy!" Kat said.
"Kat, what's up?" Percy asked, and then he saw a familiar room behind her. "Hold up, are you in my room right now?"
"{Yes, I am. Get over here, like now! Mom said... Did you tell her that we're gods?}" Kat said, speaking quickly in Greek.
"{Um, no?}"
"{Did you tell her that your soul got split?}"
"{Yeah.}"
"{How'd she take it?}"
"{She was pretty calm about it. Probably in shock.}" Percy replied. "{Why?}"
"{Because she said something weird, and then that she had to tell us something.}"
"{What does she want to tell us?}"
"{How the Hades would I know?}" Kat exclaimed. "{But you better get your ass over here so she can tell us whatever it is before my brain goes kablooie.}"
"{Loki isn't with you?}"
"{No!}" Kat said, then added, "{And don't sound so surprised, we aren't attached at the hip.}"
Percy smirked. "{Be there in a minute.}" He swiped his hand through the image.
"What was that?" Myers asked immediately.
"Iris Message. I gotta go talk to my Mom and sister. I'll be back soon." Percy said, and then vapour traveled to the apartment.
Percy didn't have enough time to even say 'hi' before Kat was pushing Percy into a couch cushion and looking at their mother.
"Okay, we're both here." Kat said.
Sally took a deep breath, and then began to tell them a story from eighteen years ago.
~~~~~~
Sally had been taking walk on the beach of Montauk, when she stopped and slipped off her sandals. She walked into the water, and enjoyed the waves washing over her feet and her toes in the sand. Eventually, when the waves were calm, she closed her eyes and focused on the air and the steady back and forth of the water.
"You must have a lot of faith in the ocean to close your eyes while standing in its tide." She heard a voice beside her.
She turned to see who had managed to slip past her notice. A man with windswept black hair, sea green eyes, a natural tan from hours in the sun, slight stubble, a strong jaw and proportionate nose stood with a slight smile.
As her eyes flicked from his face to his driftwood walking stick, Sally realized it wasn't a walking stick, but a trident. She didn't know what it was about this man, but she looked back to his eyes and found herself saying a sentence she hadn't thought of. "You aren't human."
The man seemed taken aback, but smiled pleasantly. "And what makes you say that?"
"I don't know." Sally said. "But I know it's true."
The man smiled wider. "Ah. Not only clear-sighted, but true-sighted."
"True-sighted?" Sally asked.
"This might surprise you, but it might not; Magic is real." The man said. "The people who can see through a magical disguise are called clear-sighted. Such people are rare. Yet rarer, are the true-sighted: People who can not only see through the disguises, but know what something truly is."
Sally blinked.
"It is a subtle difference, though a great one." He said, "A clear sighted would see my trident, but only a true-sighted would so quickly recognize that I am not human."
"Then what are you?" Sally wondered.
"My name is Poseidon, god of the seas."
~~~~~~
"I can take you away from here." Poseidon offered.
"No," Sally said from his embrace. "This is something I have to face normally."
~~~~~~
"You are truly unique, Love."
"Besides my true-sight?"
"Yes; you've brought out both sides of me."
"Both sides?"
"Beside you, I am both Poseidon and Neptune."
~~~~~~
"I'm pregnant."
"What?" Poseidon asked softly.
~~~~~~
"He was happy enough for me, but I could tell he was worried. When he told me about the Oath, I understood." Sally said. "He continued to make sure I was alright and visit me. He took extra care to ensure he wasn't noticed."
Sally sighed. "And then the ultrasound. I've never seen a man so happy and so scared at the same time."
"Why?" Percy asked, not understanding what would make their father frightened.
"Because I wasn't pregnant with one child. There were twins."
Kat and Percy gaped, eyes wide.
"Poseidon said that it was likely one would be a child of Poseidon, and the other of Neptune." Sally said. "But not long after I found out, one of the twins was absorbed by the other. Called 'Vanishing Twin syndrome'."
Kat and Percy took a long moment of silence.
Kat turned to Percy, and incredulously exclaimed, "You ate me?"
Percy startled. "I did not eat you!"
A chocked laugh escaped Sally as she wiped her eyes with a tissue. "It took a long time for me... But eventually I realized that maybe the Fates had something greater in mind."
"What do you mean?" Percy questioned.
"Aren't two demigod children of the Big Three huge beacons for monsters? Perhaps combining the two of you together, they hoped to make you stronger- strong enough to survive- and not draw as much attention as two?" Sally said. "Then, when they split your soul, maybe they weren't splitting Percy's soul, but separating the both of yours."
"But because we were actually connected for seventeen years, we were practically identical anyway." Percy said.
Kat smacked a hand to her forehead. "Loki said that splitting a soul had never been done successfully before. It wounds the soul itself... But if the Fates split two connected souls, they would just be like... Raw? Like a skin burn or something?"
"That sounds right enough." Sally said.
"So, what, I've just had two souls this entire time?" Percy asked.
Kat elbowed him, with a joking grin. "What, like you were possessed?"
Percy's confused scowl dropped to a blank face. "Then that means I had three souls or spirits or whatever."
"Huh?" Kat blinked.
"When the eidolon possessed me." Percy clarified.
"Oh. Oh, that is freaky. I don't like it." Kat said.
"You've been possessed?" Sally asked.
"Briefly. But that's not the worst thing that's happened to me. Mild inconvenience." Percy assured her, though that didn't make his general case any better. Sally rubbed her forehead.
"So, that means I'm not Percy's clone." Kat said.
"We're just really weird twins." Percy said.
After a minute, Kat stood up. "This was... Great and all, but I need to get back."
"You can't stay longer?" Sally asked.
Kat felt what she was pretty sure was guilt. "I would, but Loki isn't here... I'll stop by another time, I promise."
And before Sally or Percy could say anything, she vapour traveled into her room at the Tower, and slid down the wall to think.
A/N
Sorry it took a while to update, I had some plot things I needed to work out.
So, what did you think of this chapter's twists?
PS: Here's where I'm curious for your opinion. My name is gonna change from Scott to Shipley. So instead of being Scotty, should I be Shippy or Shipper? My middle name's Kae(which I'm very proud of: Gramma, Mom, and I all have the same one and they're fantastic people) if that gives any weight. Kae Shipper or something, I dunno.
PPS: I got new glasses yesterday and I can finally see again, it's so weird. Kinda forgot that you could see detail that far away...