Percy Jackson - The Record of The Journey of a Mortal Who Become a God

The group of Demigods and Satyr had walked through the woods along the riverbank in New Jersey, the lights of New York City turning the sky yellow behind them.

Currently, they decided to take a break in a small clearing in the woods. Grover was trembling and swaying, and his pupils had turned into slits, filled with terror.

He murmured in a panic state.

"The mission hasn't even really started, and Three Benevolents. The three at once tried to kill us..."

His voice was shaky, and the others could easily perceive it. Well, no one could blame him, even though Ikki had easily killed the three Furies. The experience was still somewhat frightening for the Satyr, and the fact that the mission had barely begun was very concerning.

He never thought it would be this dangerous.

Percy was also in a state of shock. The explosion of the bus windows was still ringing in his ears.

While the two boys were struggling with the recent events, Ikki was leaning against a tree with his arms crossed and a hand on his chin. He was thinking about the monsters he felt nearby.

"I think we've rested enough. Let's go! The farther we get, the better..." Annabeth said, pulling him and the boys out of their thoughts. She stood up and, without saying anything else, took the lead and started walking again.

The boys exchanged glances before following her with little choice.

With that, the group quickly moved deeper into the woods.

"All our money was left back there." Percy reminded Annabeth. "Our food and our clothes. Everything..."

"Well, who knows if you hadn't decided to jump into the fight..."

"What did you want me to do? Let you get killed?"

"You didn't have to protect me, Percy. I would've been fine..." That was what bothered her; she didn't need to be protected, and she hated that feeling.

Ikki joined the discussion and spoke.

"Percy, this time I have to agree with Anne. It seems you forgot, but when I was weaker, I killed the three Furies on my own, and now that I'm countless times more powerful, I can do it much more easily. I know you had the best intentions in interfering, but you need to learn to trust us..."

Now Percy felt a little bad; it really seemed that he hadn't trusted his friends.

"Plus, you could've killed us with your genius idea along with the innocent mortals. You need to think about the consequences of your actions before you do them..."

He finished his moral lesson with a sigh. Although it wasn't a big deal—since with all his powers, he could have easily saved anyone from danger—his friend needed to learn that all actions have consequences.

And it worked; his words made Percy rethink the events he had just gone through. He apologized while explaining what was going through his mind at that moment:

"I'm sorry. I just needed a plan to save you. The moment I saw you in danger, I didn't think carefully. I just wanted to save you then and didn't really think about the consequences..."

"It's great that you realized that. Don't make the same mistake again, and everything will be fine." Ikki said, a bit sternly about it. He let out a sigh and then spoke: "As for our things being left on the bus, we still have my backpack."

"That's great!" Annabeth said, noticing that detail now.

A silence followed, and the group continued walking. They walked through the muddy lands and horrible twisted trees that had a sour smell of dirty laundry. Each of them lost in their own thoughts.

After a few hundred steps, Annabeth moved next to Percy.

"Look, I..." The voice of the Daughter of Athena faltered. "I liked that you came back to defend us, okay? That was really brave..."

"We're a team, right?" Percy pointed out, smiling.

Annabeth fell silent for a few more steps. "It's just that if you died... besides the fact that it would really suck for you, it would mean a high possibility of it being the end of the mission or Ikki could take over the quest, and this might be my only chance to see the real world..."

The storm finally ceased.

The glow of the city disappeared behind them, leaving them in total darkness. Ikki could still see as if it were day, thanks to his sharp vision, but the group was different. He took a flashlight from his backpack and turned it on before continuing to lead the group deeper into the woods.

"You haven't been out of Camp Half-Blood since you were seven?" Percy asked Annabeth; he wasn't liking the silence.

"No... just quick trips. My dad..."

"The history teacher..." Percy interrupted.

"Yeah. It didn't work out living at home. I mean, Camp Half-Blood is my home..." Annabeth began pouring out words as if she feared being interrupted. "At camp, we train, we train. And it's nice and all, but the real world is where the monsters are. It's where we find out if we're worth anything or not..."

"I think you have great skills with a knife..." Ikki said suddenly, recalling the little training sessions he had observed from the girl at Camp Half-Blood.

"You think?" The Daughter of Athena asked hopefully.

"Definitely." Ikki affirmed calmly.

Whatever the Daughter of Athena wanted to say next was interrupted by a piercing whistle, like the sound of an owl being tortured.

"Hey, my bamboo flutes still work!" Grover exclaimed in his own little satyr world. He couldn't help but lament: "If only I could remember a melody to 'find the way,' we could get out of these woods!"

He played a few notes, but the resemblance of the melody to that of Hilary Duff was still questionable.

The group of demigods continued to move deeper into the forest.

A few hours later, the group finally saw a bright light ahead: the color of a neon sign.

"Did we arrive at some house in the middle of nowhere or something?" Percy wondered, looking at the bright place ahead.

They could smell food. Fried and greasy food.

The demigods and satyr continued walking until they saw a deserted two-lane road among the trees.

On the other side was a closed gas station, a sign for a 90s movie, and an open store, which was the source of the neon light and the delicious smell.

It wasn't a fast-food restaurant as they had expected. It was one of those strange roadside curiosity shops that sells garden flamingos, wooden Indians, concrete grizzly bears, and things of that sort. The main building was a long, low warehouse surrounded by miles of statues.

The neon sign above the gate was impossible for the Demigods to read, because if there's anything worse for dyslexia than regular English, it's English in cursive letters, in red neon.

"What the hell does that say?"

Percy asked barely seeing the letters swirling in front of his eyes.

"I don't know." Annabeth said, even though she liked to read. She was also dyslexic; the camp's books were all in Greek, and her dyslexia didn't hinder her as much, but English in glaring and glowing letters was another story.

"Gnome Emporium of Aunt Em." Ikki said, reading calmly. He turned off the flashlight and put it back in his backpack.

On either side of the entrance, as an advertisement, there were two concrete garden gnomes, ugly little bearded figures, smiling and waving as if posing for a photograph.

Percy crossed the street leading the group while thinking of food. The smell coming from the shop was very appealing.

"Hey..." Grover warned.

"The lights are on inside." Annabeth said, letting hunger dominate her thoughts. "Maybe it's open..."

"Snack bar." Percy said eagerly.

"Snack bar." The Daughter of Athena agreed.

"You two are crazy." Grover said, looking aghast at the two Demigods. "This place is weird."

Ikki looked at the place calmly; he agreed with the satyr. This place was indeed strange.

The front yard was a forest of statues: cement animals, cement children, even a cement satyr playing the flutes, which sent shivers down Grover's spine.

"Baa!." Grover bleated. "Looks like my Uncle Ferdinand!"

They stopped in front of the warehouse door.

"Don't knock." Grover pleaded. "I smell monsters..."

"Your nose is congested with the Furies." Annabeth said to the Satyr. "The only smell I'm getting is hamburgers. Aren't you hungry?"

Ikki shook his head negatively; for a Daughter of Athena, Annabeth was being very stupid right now. Grover was right; there was indeed a monster inside that strange store. Now up close, he could feel it; this shop had a kind of magical protection that prevented his senses from picking up anything further away than this.

I'll have to come up with a perfect sensor technique... Since relying solely on the five senses seems a bit useless at this point...

He secretly thought in his heart and mentally noted the idea of creating a technique for that later.

"Meat!" Grover said disdainfully. "I'm a vegetarian..."

"You eat cheese enchiladas and aluminum cans." Percy reminded him.

Percy and Annabeth didn't hear, they approached the door.

"Do you believe me, right?..." the Satyr asked Ikki, who was thinking about something in a pleading tone.

"Yes, I trust your Nose. But the other two are in a trance state. Doing another stupidity..." Ikki let out a sigh and spoke sarcastically. Before continuing, "Let's just be careful. What could be worse than the Three Benefactors?..."

When the group reached the door, it creaked open, and before them stood a tall woman, of Middle Eastern descent - At least, one could assume she was from the Middle East because she wore a long black dress that concealed everything except for her hands, and her head was completely covered by a veil. Her eyes sparkled beneath a curtain of black gauze, but that was all I could distinguish. Her coffee-colored hands looked aged but well-groomed and elegant, so one could imagine she was a grandmother who had once been a beautiful lady.

Her accent also sounded vaguely Middle Eastern. She said, "Children, it's far too late for you to be alone on the street. Where are your parents?.."

"They are... um..." Annabeth began to say.

"We're orphans," Percy said, making something up on the spot.

"Orphans?." the woman said. The word sounded strange in her mouth. "But my dear ones! Surely not!..."

"We got lost from the caravan," Percy continued with his absurd story. "The caravan of our circus. The master of ceremonies told us to find him at the gas station if we got lost, but he might have forgotten, or perhaps he was referring to another gas station. Anyway, we're lost. Is that smell food?..."

"Oh, my dears," the woman said, touched by their unfortunate situation and willing to help. "You need to come in, poor children. I am Aunt Em. Please, go straight to the back of the warehouse. There's a place for meals there..."

They thanked her and entered.

Annabeth murmured to Percy, "Circus caravan?."

"There's always a strategy, right?."

"Your head is full of seaweed..."

The warehouse was filled with more statues - people in all different poses, wearing different clothes and with different expressions on their faces. Seriously, you would need to have some enormous property to display these things.

They entered, and the group barely noticed Grover's nervous whimpers, or how the eyes of the statues seemed to follow them, or the fact that Aunt Em had locked the door behind them.

They finally managed to reach the dining area at the back of the warehouse, a fast-food counter with a grill, a fridge, a pretzel warmer, and a nacho cheese dispenser. Everything you could wish for, along with some steel picnic tables in front.

"Please, have a seat," Aunt Em said.

"This is amazing," said Percy, looking around the place.

"Ma'am, we don't have any money..." Ikki said, drawing Aunt Em's attention.

She hadn't seen him very well earlier due to being behind the group and the darkness of the night, but now that she looked at him, she was stunned, more specifically, petrified. In her entire life... she had never seen anyone so beautiful; he was the very definition of perfection.

He was the center of the world. Everything else would become irrelevant in the face of his perfect appearance.

Aunt Em's heart raced, and her eyes sparkled beneath the black gauze, unable to tear her gaze away from this celestial work of art. She wanted him! Wanted him more than anything in this world! That simple desire took hold of her heart.

Ikki felt a chill run down his spine seeing the old woman's gaze; he forgot to manipulate his presence to become "normal" for other supernatural creatures. He was so used to camp half-blood that he had forgotten about this, but at least it confirmed that the woman in front of him was not normal...

Activating the [Akashic Eyes] for half a second, he saw through her normal illusion and learned what her identity was while simultaneously assessing her power level and relaxing a bit when he saw she was much weaker, although he sensed that there were things in the world that could hide the level of 'energy'. Was he being cautious? Acting presumptuously and arrogantly was merely a spectacle for others. But caution must always be hidden in the heart and doesn't need to be revealed to others; he had this mentality since his past life.

"The first may allow me to live entirely free of worries, and the last will allow me to live longer." As he understood the identity of the enemy before him and thought about it, Aunt Em struggled hard to calm her heart and her animalistic, lustful desire.

After coming out of her stupor that lasted a few breaths, during which Percy and Annabeth thought they had no chance of eating without money, and Grover in a very nervous state.

She seemingly smiled and said, "No, no, children. No money required. This is a special case, right? For such friendly orphans, it's on my account..."

"Thank you, ma'am," Annabeth said politely.

Aunt Em stiffened, as if Annabeth had done something wrong, but at the same instant, she relaxed again.

"You're welcome, Annabeth," she said. "You have such beautiful gray eyes, dear..."

With that said, the hostess disappeared into the kitchen.