Percy ducked as the black form sailed over his head. It was huge, from the parts that Percy could see in the dim light of his sword. Quite frankly, he didn't want to know just how large it was. For him to find out it had to be within the range of his bronze light, and Percy didn't fancy being revived just to get eaten by a video game.

Whatever it was, it had red glowing eyes, that shined like laser beams. Percy was surprised they weren't actual laser beams. He expected it would have a bigger advantage. Percy took a step back trying to get his breathing down again. 

He raised his sword right as it howled. The sound was chilling, beyond anything he'd ever heard. The moonlight came through the trees, breaking the shadows like cracks in a mirror. Black fur looked like oil, white teeth glistened with wet slobber, and every pant held the barely restrained hunger for food. Percy could feel the horrible sensation coming off the beast in waves so powerful, he felt like he was drowning.

"Come on beastie," Percy snarled at it, "You want me? Come and get me!"

It pounced.

Percy slashed his sword to the side, feel the blade stiffen and rip at the flesh. The monster howled again falling to the side. It collapsed on a tree. The sticky metallic smell of blood wafted off it. Percy twisted his grip on his blade. The beast look up at him and growled, struggling to get up again.

The dead leaves and dirt covering the ground were splotched with scarlet puddles. Percy could feel it under his boots, slimey and staining. The monster lunged for his head, but Percy anticipated it. He crouched and let it stumbled over him and collapse against another tree. The teenager, inhaled sharply and drove his weapon into the side of the dying monster.

It sparkled and flashed gold, before breaking off into the chips of code that it was. The golden dust settled and Percy fell to his knee. Sweat dripped off his brow. There was a cut in his arm, but it had stopped bleeding a couple monsters ago. He staggered upright again checking his stats. He was fine on health, for now. At least, he was nowhere near the percentage that he'd been at just a couple hours ago.

His map read out that very little had changed. The blimps kept moving, but -Chasing- and her companions stayed where they were. He needed to know where Kronos was, but against every judgement he had he kept walking towards the suburbs.

It wasn't like he wanted help. He wasn't even sure if -Chasing- would believe he was alive. Sure, the blimps told them where each player was, but it didn't glow for friends unless you pulled up their friend account as well. His eyes flinted to her page. According to the stats he had, she was still at 92% health. Which, was Percy was willing to bet, was better than a lot of other players.

Two more blimps had entered the city from the trailer park. Percy had to guess it was one of the teams. They were racing side by side like friends. Not like shit-there's-a-crazy-killer-right-behind-me-I'm-gonna-die!

Percy took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. The urge to sleep was creeping up on him worse than the monsters that were hunting in the forest. A camera buzzed nearby, the hum that had gotten rather familiar. It seemed to be drawn to where ever there was a fight, and recorded every painstaking moment of survival. Percy resisted the urge to look at it.

The same camera had been following him around to every fight he had. He doubted anyone recognized him on it with all the shadows. He had yet to look directly at one since he'd gotten stabbed earlier.

He wasn't sure what it was, but he didn't really want anyone to know he was alive. Like what if the Titan's were watching, right now? They did have complete control of the game world. He might have been a tad bit paranoid thinking that the Titans could just whip something up and crush him with just a couple lines of code. That would be kinda anti climatic. Whoops, Riptide who was just brought to life again and swore to kill this murderer guy just died because a tree fell and crushed his bones into powdered dust.

Percy figured he'd spent so much time lying to his mother, about him having a job, about him going to that fake job, about him not entering this murder game, he couldn't make it any worse by not telling her directly he was alive. There had to be another way, but Percy wasn't going to sit there and try to figure it out while he was being hunted by a pack of giant black dogs.

He had better things to do.

Percy got up turning his back to the camera fully. He doubted the lense could pick up his Trident logo on his back in the inky darkness much less the tiny white text bounced with his every step.

Percy carefully walked towards the path that he'd been following, a dodge in an out of the tree lines, his swords bravely leading him hopefully not into the rough bark of a tree trunk. He'd done that enough tonight, too.

The trees had been getting thinner but it was taking as long as the time itself. The trip that should've only taken an hour, had stretched into a three hour and some minute journey.

"I use to enjoy the woods." Percy whispered to himself, if only to remind his ears that there was sound in the world. Then he huffed and picked up his pace. Silent as a ghost, deadly as a ninja, graceful as a-

Percy tripped over his shoes and face planted into the ground.

He groaned, looking up at his stats. He lost 2% health. "Are you kidding me?" He asked the ghostly text. Somewhere nearby the camera hummed almost like laughter.

That was just what he needed. Fighting monsters and tripping in the dark. What's next? Falling down an endless abyss with his girlfriend?

Pshh, like he'd ever have a girlfriend.

Percy had listened to enough of Grover's dreamly cloud-nine, slightly stalkerish, reports about this one girl he had his eyes on, Juniper or something. She was a track star for the school team and an important member of the Eco club. Percy had never talked to her before (shocker, right?) but when Grover saw her his eyes blurred over as if he was seeing twenty years into the future, where he was happily married to that popular girl, had two kids, a job, and Percy was distant memory of some guy he hung out with in High School.

Percy had never once seen a girl that had made him do that. He wasn't going to lie, most girls terrified him to no end, but then again talking to other people often terrified him just as much. Even online when he was Riptide, master swordsman, he found the idea of another person, someone who didn't think like him, or had the same opinions as him, scared. How could he cope with that? What if he did something that another person thought was senseless? What if he did something and he got another player virtually killed and they had to restart everything?

It seemed like forever ago, Grover had been asking him if he was ever going to join a guild, become part of a team. Percy was a solo player, that was the only thing he had ever known how to be.

If he couldn't make a team before, what chance did he have now? The stakes were unimaginably higher than just restarting. People can't restart after death.

Percy swallowed hard as his foot hit a fallen tree branch and echoed with a loud Craaaackk! through the thinning forest. His eyes darted around waiting for that monster to come flying at him from the depths of the dark Hell. Nothing moved.

To be honest, Percy would have preferred something come down on top of him screaming bloody murder, instead of the strange quiet that followed. Percy gingerly took another step. His bronze light didn't pull anything from the shadows.

The only explanation Percy could think of was that someone had already run through this part of the board and taken out the monsters. He figured it wasn't too unreasonable. He was reaching the outskirts of town, and -Chasing- and co could have taken this route to get to the town houses. Still it didn't sit right with Percy. Would it not regenerate?

"Well, don't look a gift horse in the mouth," He decided, in a voice so low he might as well have just thought it to himself. It was a lot more comforting before he remembered the Trojan War, and the gift horse that slaughtered and enslaved all the inhabitants and burned Troy to the ground.

Up ahead Percy found the trees thinning even more. He rushed the next couple of steps, finding the moonlight, becoming brighter and in bigger patched. Up ahead he found a wooden fence, marking the edges of a lawn. It took everything Percy had not to start whooping at the top of his lungs.

He made it.

Without dying, bonus points!

He wasn't sure why he felt so relieved to be in the city. At least now he knew where more living people were. He felt like he was going to go insane with just these coded monsters and himself alone. It was like a nightmare come to life.

Percy sheathed his sword, and reach to the top of the fence. It was enough over his head that he couldn't see anything. He struggled for a moment before remembering he was no longer in his avatar. He was Percy Jackson.

Percy Jackson had barely any upper body strength without adrenaline flooding his veins.

He looked around and picked out a tree nearby, hoping to every deity he could think of that there was not going to be a snake or something poisonous in it. He scrambled up the trunk remembering faintly a couple of the times his mother took him to the park when Tyson was still just a little tot. The thought sent a surge through him. He pulled himself on to the high branch.

He straddled the branch finding it stiff and not bendy or in danger of snapping under his weight. He had no doubt the Gods of the Olympus Gaming System designed this tree to allow someone to hop the fence. It was some type of happy miracle. The branch stretched the length to fence, little green leaves fluttered in a light breeze that tugged Percy's hood.

He surveyed the suburbs for a second. It looked....abandoned. The cars were parked irregularly, and rusted like they'd been there for a while. Trashcans were tipped over and old kids toys strewn about the lawns, colors faded from rain. Weeds ran rampant over the gardens and lawns and broke continued their takeover through the concrete sidewalk. Even from here, Percy could see a couple houses looked broken into, front doors hanging wide open and windows shattered. Old drapery hung brokenly from on window the white color seeming to have a strange color to it that Percy couldn't see with just the moonlight. A street light flickered.

The back of his neck prickled. He shifted his weight uneasily.

The wind blew a bit harder, and some open door slammed shut, with a sound that nearly made Percy jump out of his skin. It was silent.

Unnaturally so. Even more so than in the forest.

With shaking hands he swiped his stats for another look at the map. Keeping one eye on the city and the area around him, he noted everyone's positions carefully. The team that had entered the city was moving faster than earlier, still at a running pace, but faster, in a pattern that looked irregular. Percy couldn't help but picture them being chased by a psycho in a mardi gra mask. -Chasing- and her friends were holed up in their house. Two in the trailer park had found a trailer that they were ransacking, one more was circling the playground at the board. The Graveyard ghoul was in the same spot as earlier. Percy didn't think that blimp had moved since he'd first woken up. In the Teepee camp another group of two had made themselves chiefs. And the last two blimps that Percy could see were protecting that circle of rocks in the southern forest area.

Still the same number of fourteen players, including himself moving around the board. Percy tried to look on the bright side. He might not know where Kronos is, but he knew that no one else had died yet.

Percy let out a shaky breath, wondering if he should just stay in that tree and sleep and pretend that this is all a dream.

No.

He had past that point. There were other people here now, other lives. If he didn't kill Kronos, he wouldn't see Tyson again. He'd never hug his mother. He'd never fist bump Grover. Hell, he wouldn't even ever see Rachel and her crazy red hair and her everything-is-your-fault look.

It was Kronos or his life.

Percy scooted down the tree branch and his boots hit the top of the fence with a thunk. He didn't wait to see if anything was waiting for him. Percy jumped to the ground, letting the grass catch him.

He slowly got back up, unsheathing his sword again. The air had a different taste to it. It was almost stale. Percy stepped high over the knee length grass to the edge of the cul de sac. There was a tipped over Basketball hoop, and a Percy found the basketball a couple feet away. The color faded completely from the top side.

Percy got a sick feeling in his stomach that twisted his intestines into spaghetti noodles. His stomach growled. Percy wondered how long it would be before he would get lucky enough to find a food station. Assuming that The Titans, weren't laughing at him right now because they had taken them all out of the game.

Of course they said they hadn't changed much, just the rules. But then again these were the same sickos who placed a guy in here to slaughter all of them on TV.

He walked down the road, his boots barely making a sound but it was still too loud. He swiped his menu and changed his shoes again, back to his sneakers. He ignored the coolness to them, wondering if it was just his nerves or if they were actually still wet of his dip in the river. His cloak had dried since then, except for parts around his shoulders where not much wind could move freely.

The neighborhood looked eerie, like something that Percy had seen before in his dreams. A strange sense of deja vu came over him as he noticed an old, rusted bike laying on a lawn further in. The helmet was tossed to the side, but that's what triggered the memory.

The helmet.

The sleek new blue and silver Mongoose bike.

Percy had gotten one for Christmas years ago back when Gabe had first met his mother. It was probably still in his family's reserved shed at the Apartment building. He would be way too tall for it now, but he'd assumed he could keep it for Tyson. It must have been at least two years since Percy had even glanced at it.

And yet a similar one happened to be in the game.

If Percy wasn't already shaken up, he was now. His hands tightened nervously on his sword grip. He walked towards it, careful it make his steps as silent as possible. The street light flickered off but the moonlight was more than enough to compensate.

It wasn't just a similar bike. With a closer look, Percy realized it was his bike alright. The same scuffs on the slightly bent frame, from when Percy rode it down a staircase (no one ever said he was brightest kid ever...), twisted handlebar grips that Percy had done himself, almost ripping off the left one entirely. The chain was off for a could of loops just like the one in his shed, from some other accident that Percy couldn't hand repair it from.

It was just that. The bike and helmet. Percy nudged the protective gear over with his toe jerking his hands back ready for some bike monster to leap at him. Cold sweat broke out on his neck.

Nothing happened.

Under the helmet was a small sandwich baggie, with something in it. Like a child's keepsake. A poorly hidden treasure. Exactly the type of thing Percy would do. He knelt in the overgrown grass, praying that he didn't get some type of tick or something, and picked it up.

Immediately, his menu screen flashed open of it's own accord.

New Item Acquired!: Ambrosia

Percy had never heard of Ambrosia in his life. He was surprised to even see that he could acquire items still. He examined the baggie with curiosity. Inside it contained an amber colored square. It looked like frozen apple juice but it wasn't even close to being cold. He frowned.

Save New Item in Storage?

Percy clicked the "okay" and rubbed his jaw. It didn't even come with a description. How was he suppose to know what it was? Was it food? What if it was poison? He checked his inventory to see if it even showed any of the clues that normally came with items: a skull and crossbones for poisons ( to be used to paralyze or blind a player), a cross clergy items (like faith books to dispel demons or holy daggers), an arcane star for magical items (Like staffs), a sword for attack items (weapons with bigger attack points) or even a shield (for defense bonuses). It had none.

What the actual Hell.

Why would the game designers do this.

Percy rubbed his tired eyes, stifling a yawn. He was so tired. The grass looked peaceful enough. No one was around. Percy wondered if it would be his biggest and last mistake to just collapse next to this bike and sleep for a little while.

The silence was still cold and unnatural, but Percy didn't have to worry about it for long, as it was broken in the next second with one, ear piercing scream that every other player in the game heard.