I'm Still Standing

he finds out rhode island isn’t actually an island and uses his powers to make it one

Hazel: *points at monsters* What are those?

Percy: Canadians

Frank: 😐

Headcanon that it’s now an inside joke with them and whenever someone asks what sort of monsters they’re facing Frank goes “New Yorkers”. Hazel has an issue with it because it makes her die of laughter right before they go into battle

And him and Percy just keep going back and forth with it and it gets so specific that eventually it’s like

Percy, seeing a gorgon: That’s super rare, it’s a ‘wishapollowasmydad’

Rachel is literally one of the richest people in the country…all she had to do was say her full name and that chauffeur in botl immediately cancelled on his client to drive her and her friends around. When you add her wealth and status to the fact that she’s very outspoken about her family’s entire business and organizes and promotes multiple protests and does performance art…like. she’s popular online. no doubt.

Piper’s dad is supposed to be like, the hottest guy in Hollywood, and even though those girls from the wilderness school didn’t recognize her, he doesn’t really strike me as the type of celebrity parent to shield her from the media or events- he wants her to enjoy and take advantage of the privilege she has. I’m sure he’s got her plastered all over his social media and takes her as his date to every red carpet premiere. When you take into account she’s a Troubled Youth™, I’m sure gossip mags and anyone who likes celebrity kids is obsessed with her. 

Annabeth, since Magnus is ‘’’’dead’’’’, is legally the sole heir to her family’s entire fortune, and technically owns the building that Blitz and Hearth are running that wonderful homeless youth shelter out of. I’m sure that will get her some media coverage. 

And then we’ve got…Percy, the kid everyone remembers blew up the St. Louis Arch and I’m SURE there are still debates about whether he was really a hostage or not years later. Frank, who’s grandmother was a wealthy business woman, who hasn’t been seen since his family’s estate mysteriously exploded. Thalia and Jason, who are literally the missing children of a disgraced Hollywood starlet. Don’t you think this could…get messy?

Like…Percy popping up on Rachel and Annabeth’s instagrams, and people who recognize him are just like ‘hey what the fuck’, and internet sleuths who have been obsessed with that case look further into it, and realize Annabeth was also involved in the mysterious kidnapping/terrorist streak, then looking further into her and realizing…apart from her and her nuclear family, everyone she’s related to has died under very mysterious circumstances? Magnus was pulled out of a river with a hole burned into his abdomen. Randolph’s wife and children drowned at sea, Randolph was thrown down a cavern or something, Magnus’ mother was mauled by wolves in her apartment in the middle of Boston…like hello? Then they realize there’s no record of Annabeth like, existing, between the ages of 7 and 12, and…does this bitch even have a birth certificate? Her father’s a notable professor and author, but there’s no mention of her mother anywhere, not even a single picture, and when pressed his life long friends said he just showed up with a baby one day, without even having ever mentioned he was seeing a woman…so this baby just? appeared? one day, with no warning, and now she’s an heiress who owns a homeless shelter in a city she doesn’t live in? what the fuck? The internet sleuths started out trying to crack the mystery of the Arch Bombing and somehow opened up a whole other can of worms.

Oh, right- the bomber! How does Percy Jackson know Rachel Elizabeth Dare?! The conspiracy theorists are worried about that- maybe it wasn’t a kidnapping, maybe the kid really was on a crime spree, and now maybe Rachel is looking to take her protests up to a new level and is looking at this criminal mastermind for help. Some weirdo who knows how to use a facial recognition program and has too much time on his hands identifies them both as being present at the Hoover Dam Riots from a few years ago- the riot that lead to the destruction of those angel statues! The sleuths are then able to pull up an article tying both of them to an explosion at their high school- but with Rachel’s father’s wealth and Percy’s stepfather being a respected teacher there, it’s no wonder charges were dropped! They then find some other weird, buried reports- Rachel stealing a helicopter and flying it into Manhattan? Rachel appearing to have deranged, mysterious ‘episodes’ in the middle of class? Wait, what the fuck- Percy’s school principal reported him as a missing person, and his mother and stepfather were uncooperative with the police investigation? Then Percy showed up 8 months later and claimed his aunt kidnapped him, but wouldn’t give the police any information past that?

So the sleuths start digging into those 8 months- there’s security camera footage showing Percy, looking haggard and homeless, stealing a cop car? around the area of that huge explosion in Rome? spotted all around Greece in the days before the bombing at the Parthenon? What the fuck? 

Then, holy shit- they find footage of him and missing teen Frank Zhang getting onto a private plane less than 20 minutes after the Zhang estate was blown up?? These conspiracy theorists aren’t even barely ready for this rabbit hole. The Zhang kid isn’t very active on social media, but combing through Percy Jackson’s pages they’re able to find a few images of him. Recent, post-estate bombing ones. Most of them appear to be goofy selfies with Percy and an unidentified girl that was also spotted on the security footage with them, but there’s one group shot that catches everyone’s eyes- because apart from featuring the weird Chase girl, what the fuck is that Tristan McLean’s daughter????

So they start combing through Piper’s pages- she’s more active than the Zhang kid, but apart from posting her mugshots with goofy captions, going on rants about meat-eaters, and posting videos of her dad being weird, she doesn’t have a lot of information. Except…one internet sleuth that joined this internet search party swears she recognizes a boy that pops up in a lot of pics on her instagram. Some more digging and they got it- it’s Leo Valdez, the kid who was accused of killing his mother! He’s got some cousins that have been trying to clear his name for years now, but they haven’t been able to find him because he keeps running from foster homes, they have a whole page dedicated to people trying to track him down! They contact the Valdez family members, and they’re elated to find out he’s alive and safe- but then it becomes a question of how does he know Piper McLean and what was he doing with her, Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase, and Frank Zhang in Greece around the time of the Parthenon bombing???

They start looking into the other two teenagers pictured with the group in Greece- they can’t find anything on the young girl, other than the Jackson kid referring to her as ‘Hazel’ in some of his posts, but the other boy…

He’s not very active online- just some aesthetic coffee shop pics, a few blurry selfies, and designs for what appears to be an architecture project at his school. But his username is ‘*disgraced*’, he’s called ‘Jay’ and ‘Jason’ in posts by his friends, he’s got blond hair, striking blue eyes, and a very specific scar on his lip…

THE TRUE CRIME COMMUNITY IS FLIPPING THEIR FUCKING SHIT. DID THEY JUST FIND BERYL GRACE’S MISSING SON AFTER 15 FUCKING YEARS?!?!?!

Sleuths completely drop the bomb plot at this fucking point, and put all their energy in finding out if this is The Jason Grace, and- they literally can’t find a record of this person before he suddenly started appearing on Piper McLean’s and Leo Valdez’ media profiles. It looks like all his social accounts were started in August of the year he would’ve turned sixteen. But he’s the right age, he looks close to the computer generated age-up pictures made for the case, and- holy shit someone found a picture on Percy Jackson’s instagram of Jason and a girl called Thalia!

People are losing their minds- this girl looks a lot younger than the 20-something Thalia should be, but Beryl Grace was known for her innocent baby-faced look, so that can explain the difference between her and the aged-up picture. Same striking blue eyes as the boy next to her, same freckle pattern splashed across her nose, same raven hair and sharp smile that made her one of Hollywood’s biggest beauties before she could even talk properly. 

She doesn’t seem to have any social media herself, but pops up in quite a few of Jackson’s and the Chase girl’s pictures. Once Beryl Grace’s old friends, who have been searching for her children for years, see the picture of the smiling siblings together, it’s nothing but tears. They’re insistent that these are absolutely the Grace siblings, and are begging the police in charge of their case to track them down. They want to know they’re safe! And the rest of the world wants answers! Where have they been for all these years!

And how are they connected to what appears to be an ongoing bombing/murder/money grabbing plot????

what is going on here?!?!?!

 All this information gets dragged up in less than a month. People are going full Pepe Silvia level crazy trying to piece everything together. Netflix has already announced a conspiracy documentary about the hunt for the truth about this band of kids and what their end goal is.

Chiron’s just sitting at Camp Halfblood watching all this shit go down like:

Annabeth’s little brothers Bobby and Matthew are going Full Feral Gen Z online to fan the flames of conspiracy, “oh yeah the first time we met Percy Jackson and Thalia Grace they stole our dad’s car and drove it off a mountain”, “one time Annie stabbed a man in front of us”, they post a tik tok of what appears to be Annabeth and Percy drenched in blood and dust cleaning off weapons??? They set an ABBA song over it??? Everyone’s losing their minds but then one day on a live stream people start asking if they know Why their sister and her friends are like this and they just dead pan, ‘oh, they’re all demigods. the ancient gods are all real and it just gets messy for their kids sometimes, Annie’s mom is Athena-” and everyone is like ah. they’re just assholes feeding us false information. (they still post tik toks like ‘put a finger down if one time your sister took you out for ice cream but then this weird man who would later hold the titan kronos in his body showed up and begged her to run away with him so he could avoid the kronos thing even though she was like 15 and he was an adult and then she pulled out a knife and told him she should slit his throat after all he’s put her through but then he called her out on her bluff but still accepted the rejection and left and then she offered to get you a second helping of ice cream if you didn’t tell your parents about that whole thing and then later the ice cream parlor was attacked by a snake woman’ lmao)

Anyway, desktop detectives keep pressuring the police and the fbi and whoever the fuck to look into this whole thing deeper and make some arrests, but they can’t, because while everything that’s been surfaced is suspicious, it’s all circumstantial. The only ones that actually have arrest records are Piper and Leo( and Leo’s was without evidence, as his cousins are still fighting to get the case reopened!), all charges on Percy and Rachel have already been dropped or overturned, there’s absolutely nothing physically connecting Annabeth and her father to their family’s deaths, Frank was never actually a suspect in his family’s fire and while the footage with Percy was suspicious it wasn’t illegal, and they still haven’t been able to physically produce the Grace Siblings or even get a phone number for either of them, so like….all that plus the occasional intervention of the Mist, even though it absolutely looks like this is a whole criminal master plot…they can’t prove it! Just taking a group picture on a boat in Greece isn’t enough to legally claim they bombed the Parthenon!

This all comes to a head when the Netflix docuseries premieres, full of the online theorists who pieced this whole puzzle together but where unable to find the last piece that would connect the whole plot and make it make sense….

Percy Jackson films a video of him and all his friends who are fingered in the docuseries watching and reacting to it. They think it’s completely hilarious. He posts the video to his youtube channel (which Sally later Murders him for) and it’s the top trending video for like…half a fucking year. 

Annabeth guards her emotional needs because, since childhood, she’s been used to her needs being ignored. She’s always had to take care of herself. But, her feelings are easy to read because she’s so passionate.

Percy, on the other hand, never really guards his emotional needs. His mom has been keen to raise him and love him and give him what he needs when he needs it. But, his feelings are harder to decipher because he has a hard time expressing them.

Annabeth knows what Percy needs (space to just breathe) but she doesn’t know how he feels (because he’s not communicating with her).

Percy knows how Annabeth feels (because she’s clearly shown him AND she wears her heart on her sleeve) but he doesn’t know what she needs (for him to talk to her about their relationship).

It’s a lot of miscommunication because Annabeth won’t talk about her needs and Percy won’t talk about his feelings. It isn’t until Annabeth can’t take that her needs aren’t being met anymore and she blows up at Percy that he realizes he has to show her how he feels. That’s when we get stuff like “don’t I get a kiss for luck.” It’s not super straightforward, but they’re fighting a war so that’s the best he could do (plus, it’s still Percy and he still can’t use his words that well). It, at least, gives Annabeth some insight to how he’s been feeling for the last year. Only then does their relationship really move from the standstill it had been at.

anon thank you for reminding me of this moment because yes, i have things to say lmao. 

what’s so interesting to me is how percy reacts to his powers in that scene. as i've said in my earlier post, percy seems to easily get the hang of his abilities. but even in the first book, he doesn’t question why he could control the toilet water or rly anything. he just went with it and didn’t hesitate. which, to be fair, isn’t unexpected at all. because come on, who doesn’t want to have hydrokinesis and use it to their advantage? 

my point is that i feel like percy has always had this instinct, that the sea is within him. why else would it be so easy to have that much control without proper training? that’s why percy just kinda shrugged when grover was like, “hey you’re making a hurricane. how the fuck are you doing that?” 

because again, it feels so natural to him. and i mean it when i say that he has the sea inside of him, because a hurricane can only be created in the ocean. not me double checking how a hurricane is created. but basically, percy would not only have to have manipulated another state of water, which is gas, but he also played around with temperatures of the lake, or whatever body of water him and hyperion were in. i'm too lazy to check sorry. for a hurricane to form, it has to come from warm, tropical waters and then mix with cool air, so like...what i'm going with this is that he’s kind of like, a personal ocean. he can just spring out whatever fucking ability the sea has to offer just. like. that. 

again, he has his father’s nature. he canonically has anger issues but is also a sweet boy—until you mess with him, that is. he is unpredictable to most, but if you really study him, you’ll know exactly what he’s going to do, and others say that he smells like salty air. the water restores him, it can heal him and protect him. in tlo, he channeled the sea when he was on the princess andromeda while fighting kronos to be able to unfreeze himself. 

it’s no wonder he doesn’t want to be controlled. it’s no wonder every time he witnesses something new about himself, he just wants more, like when he was cleaning the stables. (i've already mentioned this in my first post but) he just wants more freedom, more destruction. and he doesn’t mean for it to be that way, but it’s in his nature. that’s why i think that his name is so fitting. destroyer. like damn.

idk, but it seems to me that there’s more that’s going on than just: “he has ocean powers because of his dad” kinda take. like okay, yes...he does possess them because of poseidon, but it just feels like he literally shares a connection to the ocean. his essence, if you discount his mortality, is the ocean. 

so it’s honestly no surprise that hyperion didn’t stand a chance against him. hyperion is the titan of “heavenly light,” and like i said, percy represents the ocean. if he could create a hurricane, he is immediately blocking out the titan’s source of power. the ocean is destructive, the ocean has been feared since the beginning of time, though it has also been heavily admired. it destroys cities, has sunk millions of ships, has created the most powerful storms. and still people get mislead, underestimating it, time and time again. the ocean has more power than we could ever comprehend—again, no surprise there as to why percy has been considered one of the most, if not the most powerful demigod, if he himself is linked to the sea. and we know that water lets him manipulate it, even if poseidon himself has mentioned that the sea doesn’t like to be restrained. but if percy’s technically the sea itself, then...making anything that’s liquid do his bidding is generally a piece of cake for him. at least for some period of time.