for the querencia forum, war games, a light character [percy] acting dark

535, by google docs

Percy doesn't know when The Shift happened, but it did. If he had to narrow it down to a window of time, he'd say that it was in Tartarus, but he's not sure when.

The others have noticed it.

Percy can tell, they treat him with tentativeness like they're scared to talk to him, to see the Percy that emerged on the other side of Tartarus.

The first thing Percy noticed that changed in himself was his eyes.

He must've looked into mirrors hundreds, thousands, of times in his life, but his eyes have changed.

He knew what they looked like before: a nice, welcoming green. A shiny emerald.

Now, they're darker, tainted. They've shifted to a jade shade. They look hardened as if they've seen things that damaged them.

They have.

He finds that he's also changed internally.

He doesn't care as much.

He doesn't have a second thought about killing monsters.

He never had second thoughts before, really, but he now kills them, with no mercy.

He's discovered something far more terrifying than the poison of Achlys he controlled in Tartarus, and he knows that if Annabeth knew she would break up with him. Or kill him. Or both.

Blood, in both monsters and humans, is liquid. He can control it, make it burst out of bodies, stop its flow to the heart, stop the heart to pump at all, squeeze all of the blood in somebody's heart until it explodes.

He figures it out by accident, at first, while fighting a monster that invaded the Argo II.

He doesn't like it, at first, he's terrified, but at the same time, it feels good. It feels oddly good to make this monster, the relative of everything that has ever hurt him, feel pain.

So he starts to summon monsters whenever he's on guard on the Argo by himself.

Maybe this newfound 'talent' of his could be useful in future, in battle, but he needs to practice in order to be able to use it at a moments notice.

It takes a couple of weeks for him to stop cringing when he does it.

It takes a few more weeks for him to relish in doing it.

He still doesn't tell Annabeth, but he uses it in front of everybody else. Leo's the first to find out about Percy's 'talent', when Percy's guarding and Leo's sailing, working on some minor repairs.

Leo doesn't say anything to Percy, but Percy can tell, by the way Leo's mouth hangs open, that he knows exactly what Percy does.

Jason and Piper both know, also, after he makes a monster that stalks them explode, blood going everywhere.

Piper tells him to stop, charmspeak in her voice, and he almost doesn't do anything when they encounter the next monster, but then he thinks—why should Piper tell him what to do? He can kill monsters anyway he wants. Nobody can tell him how to fight.

Frank find out next, and Percy can swear that Frank, child of Mars, Predator of the Twelfth Legion, shrinks away from him.

It makes Percy falter for a moment, seeing Frank get scared, but then he realises that he doesn't care.

It feels good.