In hindsight, I think I knew that everything was going to go wrong right from the start. “Have fun kids, stay out of trouble!” Neil had said. Crystal had just laughed and hugged her father, but his words had sent a cold shiver down my spine. Nothing good had ever come from words like those.

Everything started off well enough. That’s probably why I dropped my guard. Living in this strange, monster-less world was really killing my combat reflexes. How was I supposed to stay on guard twenty-four seven without the threat of hellhounds, giant cannibals, and mattress salesmen lurking around every corner?

Like sure, they have supervillains around here instead, and giant city-destroying monsters too, but it's different! It certainly doesn’t help that, well, none of the supervillains I’ve come across have been particularly…scary. I know from PHO that there are some real dangerous people around, even here in Brockton Bay, but I just haven’t met any of them yet. I knew twelve-year-olds more dangerous than the randos I beat up yesterday!

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. I ended up spending the night at the Pelhams again, though this time we all just headed to bed when we finally made it back to their place near midnight. In the morning I got up just in time to wish Neil, Sarah, and Eric a good day as they all headed out one by one. Despite three-quarters of the family being able to fly, they actually had two cars. A tiny blue compact and a large white minivan.

That left just Crystal and me and by mutual agreement we ended up having a slightly slow morning. I took advantage of their big backyard with its high privacy hedges to do some light training while Crystal sat on the back porch with a cup of tea and did homework.

After about an hour, I’d worked up a big appetite and Crystal managed to finish all the work she had due for class later today. I was once again very happy about my decision to tell the PRT I was already eighteen. On one hand, if I never went home I’d never see any of my friends or family again. On the other hand, I’d never have to go back to high school either. That didn’t make it worth it, but it certainly helped.

I’m not even a quarter of the cook my mom is, but I know my way around a kitchen. The Pelhams had a well-stocked pantry and I quickly whipped up some pancakes and scrambled eggs while Crystal fried some weird-but-tasty chicken sausages with little bits of apple in them. Everything turned out pretty well and Crystal happily ate everything on her plate so I took that as a win.

Once we were both full, I took a quick shower and then we headed out for the day. Crystal offered to fly us around, but I declined as politely as I could. Flying, unless it was on pegasus-back, did not agree with me. It wasn’t like I was going to get tired from a little walking around and I already knew Crystal was going to cheat by hovering everywhere anyway––it was what she and Eric had both done when they’d walked home from the Dallons.

We wandered around for a few hours, slowly meandering through the city. True to her word, Crystal cheerfully showed me some of her favorite places in her neighborhood and in the city beyond. She pointed out the park where and her cousins used to play as children, her favorite ice cream shop, the locations of a number of prominent cape-fights, and a lot more besides.

After some convincing I even let her fly me up to the top of one of the biggest buildings downtown from where we could see the entire city stretched out below us, the Protectorate’s retrofitted oil rig gleaming like a jewel suspended out in the bay. It was rather beautiful, though from this height the blocked-off bay and beach covered in rusting hulks looked like a dark scar.

That was nice, and I did appreciate how Crystal made sure to stick close to me and hold onto my hand in case I fell. It wasn’t really necessary, falls weren’t really something that could hurt me anymore, but I’d probably shatter some pavement or crush a car so maybe she had a point.

Once we were back on the ground Crystal didn’t seem particularly inclined to release my hand and I let her drag me to a quaint italian restaurant for lunch. The food was good and Crystal’s company made the experience even better. It was nice to just be able to sit down in a restaurant without worrying that the soft-spoken middle-aged waitress was going to turn into a snake-haired monster.

While we waited for food, Crystal helped me set up the expensive-looking smartphone the PRT had given me the day before. A trooper had shown me how to connect it to my earpiece and how to call the emergency hotline, but that was about it and I’d never had a cell phone before, much less one this fancy-looking.

Crystal seemed rather surprised by my lack of knowledge, but she was happy to help me once I explained in very general terms how monsters in my old world could track down us demigods using phone calls. I finally understood why all my old classmates were obsessed with these things––you could access PHO and the entire internet with the push of a button, plus this game with the flying machine-gun man was incredibly captivating.

We left the restaurant hand-in-hand in high spirits and headed towards a bakery that Crystal claimed had the best red bean buns in the city. I’d never had a red bean bun before, and the idea of a sweet pastry filled with beans sounded rather strange to my ears, but Crystal was literally glowing as she described them to me so I was willing to give it a shot.

We never did end up making it to that bakery. The first sign that something was wrong was the muffled sound of explosions and gunshots going off in the distance. Though they were clearly happening a ways away, the street around us quickly began to empty as people suddenly decided that they had places to be.

Crystal and I exchanged glances. Neither of us needed to say anything. This wasn’t exactly the sort of heroics I was used to, but there was no way I could just stand by while people were getting hurt.

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“I’m going to go take a look,” Crystal told me quickly. “Wait here.”

I didn’t let go of her hand as she tried to take off into the air. “Could you boost me up onto a roof before you go?”

She nodded and did just that, depositing me in the shadow of a large air conditioning unit. Then a shield of red light appeared around her and she flew off in the direction of the ongoing shooting.

I watched her go for several seconds, then took a deep breath and slapped my chest twice in rapid succession to summon my armor. Then I was off as well, bounding across the rooftop and leaping across the street to land on the roof of the neighboring building.

Less than a minute later, I was standing at the top of an apartment building, Crystal floating slightly behind me to remain out of view of the ground. Beneath us, battle raged. Twenty or so skinheads, with guns engaged with a similar number of red-and-green clad asian men, members of the Azn Bad Boys gang, who were slowly retreating down the road.

Bodies littered the ground on both sides and the automatic gunfire was almost deafening even from five stories up. However, the gangsters were not the focus of my attention. That was primarily drawn to two men. First was Hookwolf, one of the most dangerous villains in Brockton Bay. He was transformed into his changer form, a giant mass of twisting metal blades and hooks in the rough shape of a massive wolf, and was raging across the battlefield. He bulldozed straight through the gunfire and had already reduced a number of the ABB men into red paste.

Fighting him was another villain I recognized from the research I’d done over the past few days. A blur of black and gray flickered around the battlefield, his bright red demon mask a bright splash of color among the clouds of gray ash he left in his wake. Oni Lee was everywhere and nowhere all at once, expertly teleporting around Hookwolf’s charges and slowly whittling down the ranks of the Empire’s unpowered gang members.

“Jesus christ,” Crystal whispered, her eyes wide as Hookwolf plowed through yet another group of Oni Lee clones and slammed into an unlucky ABB member who’d tripped and not managed to get out of the way in time. He barely had time to scream before his entire body was torn to bloody shreds.

I turned to look at Crystal. She looked vaguely ill, one hand over her mouth as she stared unblinkingly down at the carnage. I’d seen that look before. It was easy when it was just monsters that dissolved into dust when they died. It was a lot harder when you had to watch an enemy demigod slowly bleeding out on the ground, hands desperately trying to stem the bleeding.

“Call the PRT,” I ordered firmly. “Then stay back and try to catch Oni Lee if you see a chance. I’ve got Hookwolf.”

“Huh? Oh, right. Call the PRT. I can do that,” then she suddenly gasped. “Wait no, Percy, you can’t––”, but it was too late for that. I had already stepped off the roof.

I hit the ground like a bronze meteor. Riptide plunged deep into the pavement beneath my feet and the entire street rolled and shook, knocking nearly everyone fighting off their feet. I straightened to my full height and tugged Riptide out of the ground with a flourish. “You’re all under arrest,” I declared loudly in the sudden silence. “Come quietly. Or don’t. I’m fine either way.”

Typically I would just have come in swinging. The best fight was one where your opening move was also your closing move. That tiny little baby earthquake could have been considerably larger, burying the entire street and everyone on it under a dozen feet of rubble.

However, these weren’t monsters, nor even hostile demigods. Most of the people here were just ordinary mortals, if particularly not-nice ones. Plus the locals were really touchy about that sort of thing and I really didn’t feel like getting branded a criminal.

Thus, my entrance was reduced to a little threat and some posturing. Unfortunately it didn’t seem like anyone was going to take me up on my first offer. Perhaps next time I could be just a tiny bit more energetic.

Hookwolf’s body collapsed in on itself and a moment later the giant metal wolf was replaced by a tall, shirtless man wearing a metal wolf mask. He was heavily built and had long, greasy blonde hair and a gang tattoo on each bicep.

He turned to face me, arms folded over his chest, and I met his gaze squarely. Hookwolf threw back his head and laughed. “Hah hah hah! Little baby hero thinks he’s hot shit, huh? You’re that stinking heeb that captured Rune, Victor, and Othala. Well, thanks for saving me the trouble of tracking you down. Maybe I’ll leave enough of you to bury.”

“Big words from an ugly metal dog.” I looked around, my eyes moving but my helmet giving no indication that I wasn’t simply staring back at Hookwolf. The regular gang members were all slowly getting up and backing away from the fight that was about to ensue. I could see the ABB slowly starting to withdraw, Oni Lee standing motionlessly among them with a wicked looking knife held loosely in his hand. “You’re going to need a cone by the time I’m done with you.”

Oni Lee and Hookwolf were the priority. Rank and file troops were easily replaceable, but powerful minions like them were much harder to find. I wasn’t sure how much I could really do about Lee. I was confident he couldn’t really hurt me––no amount of knives and grenades were going to so much as scuff the polish––and if he tried I could take him out easily enough, but I also wasn’t really sure how I was going to stop him from just teleporting away the moment he decided to flee.

Hookwolf on the other hand? I’d seen videos of him online. This was going to be fun and he wasn’t going anywhere. Especially since without Rune, the Empire didn’t really have a great way to move its capes around quickly. I would just need to be careful to avoid having him hurt someone else while I was taking him down.

Okay. Priority one, Hookwolf. Priority two, keep Oni Lee here until someone from the Protectorate showed up who could box him in. Priority three, keep the goons safe and contained. That seemed like a plenty good plan for me. Should be easy enough.

“And what about you,” I called out towards Oni Lee, brandishing Riptide in his general direction. “You look––”

A knife skittered off my armor, mortal steel bending in the face of divine bronze. Riptide flashed through the air and ash rained down behind me. The Oni Lee I was looking at collapsed into more ash a moment later. A moment later I noticed a new Oni lee standing in the dark shadow of a doorway on the opposite end of the street.

Yeah that was going to be annoying. I was going to focus on priority one for now then.

I twirled Riptide and pointed it directly at Hookwolf. “Down boy! Bad dog! Bad!”

Hookwolf growled and charged towards me. Between one step and the next his body rippled and suddenly it was no longer a man running towards me, but rather several tons of writhing, rippling metal.

Beneath my helmet, my lips stretched into a wide grin. Finally! Now this was shaping up to be a real fight. It had been way too long.