In stark contrast to my expectations of the day, I couldn't help but feel disappointed that I would be getting out of school early. While most teenagers would jump with joy to hear that their last period on a Monday was a free block - for me, it meant I had to return to the orphanage and part with the first person I could call a friend since unceremoniously crash-landing into this world.

I tried to dally as much as I could, exploring and taking in the sights of the new part of the incredible city I called my home. As I walked through the bustling streets of New York, no longer occupied but the goings-on of highschool life, my thoughts drifted to the friends and family I left behind.

Like the many sleepless nights I experienced, fraught with nightmares of Tartarus and the war, it filled me with a bone-deep sense of dread. I could not help but wonder about the fate of my world. Had the gods really perished? Were Gaea and her armies defeated? Had anyone survived? With no knowledge of their plight or methods to divine it, I suspected I would forever carry the burdens of my actions.

I was reminded of a conversation I'd had with an old man at the park outside the orphanage, "I could either cry and rock myself to sleep every night or I could dig deep and find out what it took to reshuffle the cards life dealt me." I would probably have appreciated his words a lot more had he not been whacking me with his walking stick. The cantankerous, blind, old git. It was a wonder the surly codger had even heard me out as long as he did.

Say what you will about corporal punishment but his words stuck with me.

I was still a ways away from arranging my cards into a lovely and fulfilling life but at least I had been filled with the determination to find the damn things.

Before I knew it, my walk of introspection had led me to the rusty iron gates of the orphanage compound. I carefully released the bolt, trying hard to avoid the blood-chilling screech it invariably rang out. Once inside, I was greeted by one of the younger Matrons - and by that I mean she didn't have one foot in her grave.

"Percy! The Director would like a word with you," she said kindly. "You're in no trouble. It's about that part-time job you were searching for," she added to my apprehensive expression.

My eyes lit up. Finally! If things went well, I would no longer have to subsist on twenty dollars a week.

As I passed by the familiar faces of the other children in Saint Agnes' loving care I asked after Ms. Skye. Only to find out she had left for some emergency and would not return that week. I didn't know if I should feel disappointed or relieved that I would not get the chance to properly apologise for running into her that morning. Then I recalled the last cruel and unusual punishment she had enacted for misbehaviour and decided that relief was a safer bet.

"Come in," said the gravelly voice of the orphanage director moments before I could knock on her glass windowed door.

The orphanage director was, quite typically, an aged bespectacled nun. She was short and sported more wrinkles on her face than a raisin. Many would suspect her to be frail but if the orphanage's legends were to be believed - they did not survive to spread such falsehood. Her grey hair was tucked neatly under her navy blue habit and she wore robes of the same colour.

She sat behind a simple wooden desk in a similarly simply furnished room. Bibles lined the bookshelf behind her left while a cabinet of trophies and certificates filled another at her right.

"Mr. Jackson, I hope you've had a wonderful first day at school." She carried without a care for my response, "As requested, the orphanage has reached out to our various affiliations in order to find you some work. While most have denied any labour demands, there is a," she lifts a paper off her desk and gives it a quick glance, "Gymnasium down in Brooklyn looking for a janitor. Would you find that amicable?"

Despite making that a question, her tone implied I should be grateful for the work and would not really take no for an answer.

"Of course, Mother Anne."

She hummed in acknowledgement and continued, "Here is the address, feel free to arrange your timings as you feel is most comfortable." She gave me a menacing glare over her half-moon glasses as she passed the sheet to me, "But I will not have you missing Sunday Mass."

"Understood, Mother Anne," I replied whilst trying hard to hold in my excitement. Any time away from this dreary place would be welcomed with open arms.

Deciding to strike the iron while it's hot and with tacit approval from the orphanage matrons, I made my way down to Brooklyn. I had not had much experience taking the subway. Enclosed spaces with little opportunity to make an exit was a quick death for most demigods after all. Despite my otherwise amiable relationship with Hades, you could never really trust the gods to not decide to crush you when travelling in their domains. And I've been told the New York City Subway is about as hellish as they come. Luckily for my nerves, the majority of the line from Queens to Brooklyn was above ground though.

Since my inability to easily read the signs only further cemented the tourist vibes I gave out, I made sure to keep a death grip on my wallet - despite having brought my schoolbag along. While I did not really have any plans for the slush fund I hoped to amass by taking a part-time job and saving my weekly stipends, it wouldn't do to lose it all now. Many would call me crazy for keeping all my money on my person in the first place, but they clearly have never lived in an orphanage full of needy children.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I plugged my hand-me-down earphones into the hand-me-down cellphone provided by the orphanage and pulled up some tunes to get me by. The commute was a long one.

An hour of listening to old-school rock later I had decided in true American fashion what to spend the money I didn't yet have on. I was going to learn the guitar. It would be the first skill I taught myself in a long time that was not explicitly intended to save my life and I was rather excited by that prospect. Maybe I could even spend some time busking on the streets of New York over the weekend like a true deadbeat artist.

In my excitement, I nearly missed my stop. Thankfully, my earphones weren't quite good enough to drown the subway announcement out over the voice of Kurt Cobain and I slipped between the closing doors at the last second. After ensuring all the pieces of me - and my belonging - were safely clear of the train doors, I made my way out of the station and onto the grungy streets of Brooklyn.

Locating the gym would not going to be fun, I knew. It was one thing to have the address and quite another to convince a busy New Yorker to guide me to where that address would lead me. I would read the signs but that would only be marginally more headache-inducing.

Three attempted conversations and one drunken song later I was no closer to finding my destination. Having given up on the passersby, I decided to try the convenience store at the corner where a wonderful old Mexican lady was able to help me out. Or, at least, I hoped she had. I'll admit, her directions were a bit confusing since she seemingly had a story about a cousin, cousin's friend, or cousin's friend's spouse for every turn in her instructions.

I'm still uncertain whether I had somehow managed to follow her rapid-fire words or if I had landed up at the right place by pure serendipity but I was glad either way. It was growing dark already and I knew Mother Anne had called ahead to let the owner know I was coming. It wouldn't do to be tardy on my first day, even if a specific time had not been discussed.

Frankly, the best way to have a good relationship with the orphanage staff was to not be on their minds. My prospective employer calling to investigate my whereabouts was certainly not the best way to achieve that.

I hopped up the narrow stairs two at a time and entered my new place of work. The place, I noticed, was an old-school boxing gym. It had several ancient-looking machines lining the walls but the majority of the space was taken up by a boxing ring and multiple lines of boxing bags of different sizes. The floor was wooden and fairly dusty - or was it sand? And occasionally marred by scrapes and scratches of different colours.

There were not a lot of people inside and the few that were seemed to prefer the machines for their workouts. There certainly wasn't anyone in the ring itself, though I felt it odd that none of the sandbags were being used either. I had hoped to find a sense of familiarity here, having spent so long at the training fields at Camp Half-Blood, but the lack of any sparring and focus on the weight lifting left me a tad disappointed.

"It's not much, but it's home," drawled a man off from my side. Unnoticed by me, the owner, a clean-shaven, crew-cut man had exited his office. He wore a black tracksuit and sneakers and had similarly pitch-black hair.

"Mr. Jackson, I presume?"

I smiled, getting my game face on, "Please, call me Percy, sir."

He grunted, not giving much away, "You can call me Davis, Mr. Davis or just sir if you prefer. You'll be here for two hours after closing, that's 7:30 to 9:30 every weekday and 5:30 to 8:00 on Saturday."

I blinked in response.

"I've been told you won't be working on Sundays," this time it was almost a question.

I answered with an affirmative, just in case and the man simply grunted in return once again.

"Very well, I'll be paying you twelve dollars an hour."

My eyebrows disappeared into my hairline at that - that was well above minimum wage! Before I could lose myself in the excitement of recalculating all my projected earnings, he continued, "We still have about an hour to closing time, so why don't you use my office and get your homework done."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Davis, sir," I chatter excitedly.

He finally breaks his mask with a small smile, "Just one of those will do Percy."

Smiling widely in return I take my bag off my shoulder and rush towards his office, "Thank you, sir! You won't regret this!"

I could not remember the last time I was so excited while doing homework. Probably never.

----------------------------------------

My first week of school and work carried on fairly uneventfully. Thankfully, the only other Chem Lab I had was decidedly un-explosive and Peter and I had managed to dodge Flash and his goons with practised ease. Between Peter's experience with him in the past and my own monster dodging escapades, it was no wonder we found it easy.

Peter helped me do more than coast through school for the first time in my life - and occasionally, I even understood what he tried to teach me. As I learned more about him, I realised I had severely underestimated his intelligence. He never gave answers in class but from habitually peeking into his notebooks I could tell he knew literally everything. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if he could test out of school entirely if he wanted to. It was a shame he was too shy to ever try - something I did my damnedest to break him out of. He had invited me over to his place that weekend and I was incredibly excited to see what kind of mad scientist's laboratory his room might look like. Peter was a tinkerer. Something I realised when he described the first computer he ever built - at the age of nine! And I don't mean buying parts at RadioShack and assembling it like Lego either. This was a bona fide computer, with its own machine code and everything.

Meanwhile, work was mostly mindless mopping and other than surprising my boss with the ability to handle and relocate the larger sandbags, it was nothing to write home about. At least not until I met who had to be the strongest mortal in the world.

I had exited Mr Davis' cabin a little late Friday night, having given my best attempt at completing the weekend's homework in one go. Only to find someone still exercising at the gym.

In retrospect, exercise was hardly to the best way to describe his actions. Rather, it was more like he was giving the sandbags the mother of all beat-downs. Like it insulted his mother and pissed on his father's grave while it was at it. Each strike rang out like a thunder crack and it only took a few for him to tear it straight off its hook.

The man was tall. He wore a white tunic that stretched so absurdly over his muscular physique that I could almost hear it scream in agony. His blonde hair was crew-cut like Mr Davis and his eyes could bore holes into the sandbags if he hadn't been knocking them down bare-fisted. I watched him replace the torn sandbag with another and on some instinctual level I knew he was a soldier - that somehow, he knew war and pain and sacrifice.