A/N: So, I read a story on another site called Phobia, recently. I liked the idea, but then I started thinking of this. My planned idea of having a seperated world of the Mortals and Demigods.

And thus this monstrosity came forward.

A thing to note, Dennis IS NOT going to be the main-character. We'll get much more into the demigods next chapter. I just wanted something to show the effects on the Mortal world and how the Demigods fit in (or, well, DON'T). This also takes place in the future.

Read and Review!

DISCLAIMER: I don't own PJO, KC, HOO, MCGA, or TOA.

There were three things that Dennis had to do that evening.

Number one: take the garbage out.

Number two: read the damn magazine.

And number three: get the paper.

It sounded simple, on his standards. Most nights were about going to a post-apocalyptic preparation/survival training meeting.

Dennis didn't know why the heck he had to do those. Sure, random people with abilities lurked throughout the planet, were quote-on-quote 'dangerous', and they could cause the apocalypse at any given time.

But that didn't mean his family had to be paranoid about it.

Every minute of every day was spent looking at schedules and managing the food supply. They stocked the cans against the boxes in a locked cabinet, not wanting the (non-existent) robbers to sneak in and take their supplies right out of their reach.

Unless you were Dennis, Phelia, or Gerald.

Then you just went to school. Such fun.

Dennis didn't know why they were still making them go to school with threats like these. He supposed it was to teach them of the dangers of the 'Exiled', but half the time, they didn't even know what that meant.

They were taught in the span of a decade that all of the powerful kids should be sent to the labs where they belonged. That no one should remain after it was all over and done. That the kids should learn this garbage, go to some kind of training camp, and boom! The kids now had the jobs that they once did.

It . . . Wasn't exactly the most pleasant thought in the world.

Anyways, so here was his basic schedule:

7-8: Eat breakfast. Usually it was some sort of strange concoction of scrambled eggs and blueberries. Yeah, no one said that Phelia could cook.

8-9: First period. Art Class. Otherwise known as the most peaceful time of the entire day.

9-10: Second period. Some kind of warrior/exercise drill about the importance of recognizing the enemy. It was usually a different topic each month. Next it would be the Obstacle Course. Thank goodness he had borrowed Mr. Harrow's schedule.

10-11: Third Period. English, or quite possibly propaganda. They just read off the textbooks for an hour. It wasn't fun in the slightest. Especially not when they had Magazine-Homework.

11-12: Fourth Period. Science. Otherwise known as how to get yelled at Part 2.

12-1: Fifth Period. Advisory. All you did was go get your lunch. (Dennis always did that, for he could not spend another minute eating Phelia's cooking.) After that, you just came back to the classroom and watched more of the news.

1-2: Math/History/Constant Guest Speaker/What-The-Hell-Are-We-Doing Class. Otherwise known as the monstrosity of Sixth Period. At least the lessons could be somewhat interesting. Like that one time they brought in Corey Bailer from the High-School to talk about computers. Or the other times when Nancy Bobofit came, speaking war-inflicted garbage that she rolled her eyes at at every opportunity she had.

2-3: Seventh. Free-Period. Dennis basically just tried to keep himself sane in the Library for a while.

3-3 ½: Dismissal. Dennis either rode in the car or just walked home.

3 ½-4: Usually that endured war-meetings and chores.

4-5: Patiently waiting for dinner. Gerald annoyed him at every opportunity.

5-6: Mom cooked some sandwiches. They never had soup, for they needed it for 'dire causes'.

6-7: Dinner time. Mom talked about her job. Dad read the paper. Phelia talked about the newest nail-trends, so they all pretended they cared. Gerald said things about Estelle Jackson-Blofis. Over. And over. And over. AGAIN. Dennis, meanwhile, attempted to find an excuse to leave the dinner table much earlier.

7-8: Mom said, "Do your homework, kids!" Gerald did boring fourth-grade addition. Phelia listened to very loud rock music instead of studying for AP History. Dennis did his eighth-grade English homework.

8-9: Unwinding time. Dennis listened to music.

9-9 ½: Lights. Out.

Next Morning: Rinse and Repeat.

Now, imagine taking all of that, and throwing out the window like a glass computer, watching it shatter like a porcelain vase.

There, now you have Dennis' Thursday afternoon.

Anyways, it all began when they left the car in the garage at 3:30 in the afternoon.

"I call shotgun on the way home tomorrow!" Gerald screeched, and Dennis wondered if he really had been spending his time with the Screech-Owls.

Phelia rolled her eyes, "Whatever. Mom, can't I—"

"No," Mom said, her eyes coldly staring at the glass windows of the car. "You know how I feel about that."

"Come on," Phelia whined, her voice quickly becoming annoyed. "It's not like I have to travel far. Look, Mom, the ride home basically consists of nothing. No gangs, no zombies. No robbers. No Exiled. I'd be fine."

Mom slammed the door entirely shut, "None of that matters. Imagine being a parent. You wouldn't want to send your kid out in a car to the house, when the apocalypse is waiting. They're—oh, Dennis? Gerald? How about the two of you go into your room, okay?"

She didn't even have to say it twice. Dennis nodded, and the two sped off into the hallway, not even taking a moment to breathe. They both knew what was going to happen next.

Immediately, Dennis slammed the door, and Gerald hid behind the bed. Only five seconds later, a scream erupted from the kitchen, a banshee's sound, frightening and screeching:

"OPHELIA PAIGE CARULE! HOW DARE YOU MAKE AN EYE-ROLL AT ME! THINK OF THEM, LURKING BEHIND THE BUILDINGS AND READY TO STRIKE! I SAW ONE ON MY WAY BACK FROM WORK TODAY! YOU CAN'T HONESTLY BELIEVE THAT YOU'RE THE PROBLEM OF THE SITUATION! THINK OF THEM, THE EXILED I'VE WARNED AGAINST, PREPARING FOR REBELLION! THIS ATTITUDE IS LUDICROUS, YOUNG LADY!"

Dennis drowned out what she said afterward, his gaze slowly switching to Gerald's. His younger brother's face was filled with shock, all of it plastered across his expression.

"You don't think—?" He asked. Dennis nodded as his response, still as dumbfounded at the situation as the nine-year old.

They sat in silence for a few moments, contemplating what had just happened and if it were real or just an illusion, fabricated by all of reality. Their eyes hardly lifted an inch from the floor.

After a few minutes, once the screaming of their mother was drowned out, Dennis reassured Gerald, "It could jut be one of the paranoid things she says, you know? Like of how all the zombies are gonna attack once October hits. There can't really be people called the Exiled, can there?"

Gerald's gaze looked up, staring him straight in the eye, "You're lying." He stated.

Dennis didn't know how to respond to that.

The silence returned for a few moments more before Gerald blurted out, "Estelle's brother is one, you know."

Dennis was bewildered by this statement, "What?"

"An Exiled," Dennis continued. "They came to her house when she was around three. She doesn't remember that much about it, but apparently the house got flooded. Her parents locked her in a room, and she heard some muffled voices.

"She said that her parents told her that it wasn't very pleasant. Something happened that day, something that you can't exactly tell someone my age. But that's just it. I want to find out what."

Dennis was confused, "Wait, what the hell does any of this have to do with the Exiled?"

"I'm getting to that," Gerald said. "You see, apparently her brother was an Exiled. He hadn't seemed like he was dangerous, not back then. He was just . . . Human."

Gerald laughed, "Of course, he wasn't actually. That'd be too easy, wouldn't it? Being human and nothing else around the world? It'd be ridiculous. The kid was there to act like a human, enjoy the home, destroy his family, and then get caught and executed. It's simple, isn't it?"

No, Dennis thought. It's not simple. It's borderline strange and I don't get society's explanation for it.

Neither of them got to say another word, as their mother barged into the room.

Her black hair was unkempt and wild, her green eyes darting between the two of their gazes. She looked as if she had been through a war, which, considering Phelia, was always an option.

"So!" She exclaimed cheerfully, which seemed unsettling to Dennis in it's context. "Who would like to help me set up the bunker?"

Saying no was not an option here.

And so they did what she asked.

There were three things that Dennis had to do after dinner.

Phelia didn't show up to dinner that evening. His mother said that she was just angry, and that she'd be over it soon and that things would go back to normal again.

Dennis didn't believe that in the slightest.

And so he spent dinner wondering about his homework, and potential ways to convince Miss Kerr (she usually taught pre-Algebra, but somehow got roped into a reading job) that the reason that he thought the homework was pointless was because of the fact that it made no sense in reality.

After he ate his broccoli, his father said, "You are excused."

It was normalcy throughout dinner to act as such. You weren't really supposed to act as casually without at least five people there. Without Phelia, there were merely four people to have a conversation.

And it wasn't all that exciting.

Once he pushed his chair inwards, Dennis rushed to fling open the door, the windy air making him feel calmer and much less unsettled than usual. His green eyes fixated among the wooden posts outside the Drearson house, the Lemonade stand unused throughout the harsher days.

He began to walk towards the stand, the directions eternally in his head, their monotone never changing even throughout the rougher days.

Right. Left. Turn left three more times. Go right once. Go straight until you reach the stand.

And so he walked the typical route, reaching the Newspaper Stand where he got his father the paper every evening since three years ago. This time, however, Daphne was nowhere to be found. In his place as the salesman was a sign:

CLOSED FOR THE EVENING. Just grab a paper and go.

Dennis frowned as he saw this, for his mother did not condone theft in the slightest. This was also quite odd, from his perspective. Daphne Willows, who always greeted you with a smile no matter your circumstance. She was quite young to be working this position; only nineteen years old.

Dennis tried not to make her absence impact him. She could just be sick, for all he knew!

And so, he grabbed the paper with the headline: OLYMPUS STRIKES AGAIN. He rolled his eyes at the title. Olympus was known as a highly respected research-facility who had to be doing something, to earn all the money they made.

But no one ever found out where the money actually came from.

He took the paper, and sped off with it. Who cared if it was stealing? Daphne wouldn't mind, anyway.

And so he ran.

Taking out the trash didn't take much effort at all.

It wasn't a very exciting story to tell.

All he did was grab the bags and put them outside for the Collector to grab it.

They lived on a much more rural area of New York. A lot of those were being formed nowadays, as nobody could risk the cities exploding at the next possible second.

That was the reason of why the neighborhood talked a lot. It was better to have more allies and cover more ground than it was to have nothing.

By this point, it was 7:30 at night, so now he had to do his English homework.

He didn't like to do the assignments with Gerald nearby, as he found his younger brother's questions to quickly become annoying. And so, he decided on a cramped closet, with a flashlight in one hand, a pencil in the other.

The magazine that they had to read for class that day was called The Exiled: Dangerous or Misunderstood?

Apparently it was supposed to be about the taking of the Exiled kids since eighteen years prior, and was supposed to provide an 'unbiased' perspective on them.

What crap.

All of them said the kid was guilty, anyway.

So, for that day, Dennis' class had to read about something on page 5 about a movie-star's daughter.

He flipped the page to the correct number, and he began to read:

The Mystery Of The McLeans

It's no surprise that the Exiled have been a diverse species over the years, their potential brimming within the surface as if they are experiments.

However, there are certain cases that still baffle scientists today, and the tale of a movie-star's daughter is one of them.

Tristan McLean (32), a Cherokee from Oklahoma was once only an ordinary man, one who was curious to discover the sight of the world around him.

No one expected him to become rich.

The man's most famous work as an actor, King Of Sparta, dominated the box-office at it's release. Critics praised the film on it's elements, believing it to be crafted spectacularly.

However, on a simple night with his daughter away from California, tragedy struck.

Piper McLean (9) was always known amongst the media as being an adorable little girl. People predicted her life, all of them wondering how the fame would affect such a young girl.

It seems to have been worse than what they could have imagined.

Piper was a character, to say the least.

"I spoke with her once," Says Gertrude Aldronus (18) of California. "At a premiere for the newest film. My friends and I were incredibly excited to meet Tristan for the first time, and meeting Piper was a pleasure as well."

Aldronus says that Piper was incredibly well-behaved when she spoke with her.

"She was a nice girl; she loved to talk, any subjects would do. Whether it came to dolls to movies to sticks, and even my education, she would always listen."

However, it seems that Piper was less stable than she appeared.

On Friday, October 14th, 2064, Piper was discovered to have been an Exiled, when she tortured her father in their own traditional home.

"There were some men," Jackson Almwood (67) says. "We didn't see them often, so we didn't exactly know how to react. They were professional for these parts, and they asked me where the McLean house was. And so I told them. They just nodded along like it made complete and total sense, said something into their communication-device, and went on their way."

It appears that when these men went into the house, Piper began to use electric shocks for her father to do something for her.

Reports of a high amount of screaming came from the site, and many claim that they never saw it coming.

"Such a sweet kid," Says Betty Prygord (23). "She was a bit lonely, but I never expected . . . ."

When officers reported to the site an hour later, both of the McLeans were gone, as were the two men. The men were later identified as being Exiled retrievers, and as Mr. McLean's romantic life still remains unknown, we can safely assume that an Exiled has caused suffering once again.

Dennis shuddered as he closed the article, attempting not to look at the picture fo a nine year old girl smiling at the camera. He frowned once he shut the book. There had to be a much larger story to this, right? It couldn't just end here.

After contemplating this fact for around fifteen minutes, Dennis got up, and prepared himself for bed. He went into his and Gerald's room, and carefully shut the door.

Gerald looked at him weirdly, his face skeptical. "Hey, how are—Um, are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost.

"I'm fine." Dennis monotoned, hardly noticing the auto-response that he had given.

He climbed into bed, and the lights turned off.

He couldn't get the nine year old out've his head.

But he knew one thing.

Things weren't going to be the same tomorrow. . .

He was right.

They weren't.

But not for the way he expected.

It was for the others who he had read about, those unfairly accused for a crime that they never committed.

Their enemies had a price to pay.

"He's dangerous. I don't know why they brought him here to begin with."

You could talk to ghosts but they made you bitter.

"You might be traveling to higher ground soon, huh?"

You could fly but you never felt safe.

"I've heard of what he's done. Trust me, a few scratches isn't the worst you could get from him."

You could become any animal you wanted but were losing your humanity.

"She's been screaming for the past fifteen days."

You could become invisible but you were falling apart.

"Shut. UP!"

You could manipulate others but rarely spoke.

"Just stay away from me!"

You could light up pathways but didn't want to burn others.

"What's this? The third time now? The kid's gotta pull his act together."

You could summon lightning but your memory's disappearing.

"You heard of Jackson? Subject 4-3-37?"

You could command water but felt it consuming you.

"It's… It's not as good as most might think."

You could create metals but killed with each one.

Many subjects were put under the test. Each were told they had a high Potential, something that a majority of society could only ever hope to grasp. The Potentials were lucky, the scientists said. They could grasp the true context of what reality had to offer, be obedient with every command.

They could be trusted with any command. Or, at least, that's what they thought.

Giving humans these powers not only isolated them, but made them even more determined. They could fight. They could succeed.

The scientists thought that liabilities would make them hesitate. Those just made them stronger.

Because no matter where they went, the ones to burn life to the ground would always be the Exiled.

A/N: Criticism is always appreciated!