Chapter 2:
The training ground was unrecognizable.
Massive craters pockmarked the earth like the surface of the moon. The remaining half of the archway was now a pile of rubble. The air was thick with dust and the metallic tang of ichor. Percy watched from behind what was left of a column, his mind reeling. He'd seen a lot. He'd fought a Titan. He'd seen Ares in a duel. But he had never, ever seen anything like this.
The fight had started the moment Hercules charged.
The son of Zeus covered thirty feet in a single stride, his massive fist aimed at Nick's head with enough force to turn stone to powder. Nick didn't flinch. He simply tilted his head to the side, the punch whistling past his ear so close it should have grazed skin. But it didn't. It was like he'd known exactly where it would be before Hercules even threw it.
Hercules followed with a left hook, then a right, then a knee aimed at Nick's ribs. Each attack missed by a hair's breadth. Nick moved like water flowing around rocks, his body swaying and bending in ways that shouldn't have been possible. His eyes were half-lidded, calm, focused on something beyond the immediate moment.
"You're fast," Hercules growled, spinning into a kick that would have shattered Nick's spine. Nick leaned back, the heel passing inches from his nose. "But running won't save you."
"Who's running?" Nick asked, and then he moved.
In a blink, he was inside Hercules' guard. His fist, coated in that impossible black hardness, drove into Hercules' stomach. The impact sounded like a thunderclap. Hercules' eyes bulged, air exploding from his lungs. Before he could react, Nick's leg swept his feet out from under him, and he crashed onto his back, cracking the stone beneath him.
Hercules roared, swinging wildly from the ground. Nick stepped on his wrist, pinning it with a casual foot, and drove a heel into his face. Cartilage crunched. Blood sprayed across the stones. Hercules' head snapped to the side, but he grabbed Nick's ankle and hurled him into a standing column.
The column exploded.
Percy flinched, expecting to see Nick broken among the rubble. Instead, Nick kicked off a falling chunk of marble and launched himself back at Hercules, laughing. Actual laughter, bright and unrestrained, like this was the most fun he'd had in years.
Hercules met him mid-air, and they crashed together with a shockwave that sent debris flying in all directions.
---
The next exchange was something out of a nightmare.
Hercules, enraged by the bloody nose Nick had given him, fought with renewed fury. He grabbed a massive block of stone—twice the size of a person—and hurled it like a discus. Nick didn't dodge. He planted his feet, drew back his fist, and punched.
The stone didn't just break. It *exploded* into gravel, the fragments raining down around him like hail. Through the dust, Nick appeared, his fist still blackened, his grin wide and bloodied. He'd caught a piece of debris across the cheek, and a gash there bled freely down his jaw. He didn't seem to notice.
He launched himself forward with a kick that parted the air, sending a blade of compressed wind screaming toward Hercules. The Tempest Kick caught the son of Zeus across the chest, carving a shallow but bloody line through his skin. Hercules looked down at the wound, then back at Nick, and for the first time, there was something other than rage in his eyes.
Confusion. And beneath that, the faintest flicker of fear.
"You're not a god," Hercules said, his voice low. "What *are* you?"
Nick tilted his head, blood dripping from his chin. "Just a guy who wanted to see if the stories were true."
He vanished. Soru. Hercules spun, looking for him, and found nothing. Then Nick was above him, dropping like a meteor, both feet aimed at the top of Hercules' skull. Hercules threw his arms up to block, but the impact drove him to his knees, the stone beneath him spider-webbing with cracks.
Nick didn't let up. He rained blows down on Hercules from every direction—kicks from the left, punches from the right, a brutal knee to the ribs that Percy distinctly heard crack. He moved so fast he left afterimages, a whirlwind of violence that Hercules could only barely track. Each strike landed with the force of a battering ram. Each blow drew blood, or broke bone, or both.
Hercules caught one punch. Just one. His massive hand closed around Nick's fist, and he grinned through bloody teeth. "Got you."
He squeezed. The pressure should have pulverized Nick's hand. But Nick's fist remained black, unyielding. Hercules squeezed harder, veins bulging in his forehead, and Nick just looked at him with those calm, half-lidded eyes.
"That all you got?" Nick asked.
Then he drove his other fist into Hercules' elbow. The joint bent the wrong way with a sickening crunch. Hercules screamed, his grip loosening, and Nick pulled free. He didn't step back. He stepped *in*, driving his forehead into Hercules' face. Another crunch. More blood.
Hercules stumbled back, clutching his broken arm, his face a mask of pain and disbelief. The son of Zeus, the strongest demigod in history, was being systematically taken apart by a kid in a straw hat.
Nick gave him a moment to breathe. He stood there, chest heaving, blood dripping from his various cuts, and waited. He wanted Hercules to get back up. He wanted more.
Hercules obliged.
With a roar that shook the very foundations of the training ground, he summoned the storm. The sky, which had been clear moments ago, darkened with unnatural speed. Clouds boiled overhead, and lightning crackled. Zeus's domain answered his son's call. A bolt struck Nick, and Percy shouted, throwing up a hand against the blinding light.
When his vision cleared, Nick was still standing.
Smoke rose from his body. His clothes were singed, his skin reddened in places. But he was standing. And he was grinning.
"Now *that*," Nick said, his voice rough, "is more like it."
Hercules didn't give him time to recover. He grabbed the largest chunk of marble he could find—a piece of the collapsed archway the size of a small building—and hurled it with all his divine strength. It flew at Nick like a meteor, fast enough to create its own shockwave.
Nick took a deep breath.
And when he exhaled, the world turned to water.
It erupted from his lungs like a dam breaking, a torrent of swirling, spinning liquid that formed itself into a coiled serpent. The Water Dragon roared—actually *roared*, a sound of rushing currents and crushing depths—and met the marble projectile head-on. But it didn't just block it. The dragon's maw closed around the stone, and the water, spinning at impossible speeds, *drilled through it*. Marble turned to gravel turned to dust in seconds, and the dragon reformed, unimpeded, and slammed into Hercules' chest.
The impact pinned him against the remaining wall. The water pressed with the weight of the ocean, crushing him against the stone, forcing the air from his lungs. Hercules' ribs cracked audibly. He gasped, choked, struggled. The water dragon held him there, a living prison of pressure and force.
Hercules fought. Of course he fought. He was Hercules. He braced his feet against the wall and pushed, his muscles bulging, his divine heritage screaming defiance. The water dragon began to flicker, to destabilize. He was actually winning, actually pushing back against the impossible pressure.
And that's when Percy felt it.
It wasn't a physical force. It was a pressure on his very soul. His knees buckled. His vision swam. It felt like the entire weight of the sky was pressing down on him, demanding absolute submission. He gasped for air, his demigod instincts screaming at him to run, to hide, to do anything but be in the presence of whatever was happening.
It was coming from Nick.
Nick's eyes were wide, not with fear, but with a kind of rapturous, battle-induced ecstasy. He wasn't just fighting anymore. He was *living*. A black and red energy, like liquid lightning, began to crackle around his body, writhing and snapping like living things. The pressure intensified. It wasn't just forcing submission; it was actively tearing at the will of everything around it. The stones on the ground began to crack. The very air seemed to scream. Percy pressed himself against the column, his hands over his ears, though the sound wasn't one he could block out.
This was something beyond willpower. This was his very existence imposing itself on reality.
Hercules felt it too. His eyes widened, the first true fear he'd shown all fight crossing his features. "What—what is this?!"
Nick didn't answer. He couldn't. He was too far gone, too deep in the moment. The black and red lightning arced from his body, crawling up his arms, wrapping around the Water Dragon. The dragon changed. Its clear blue form was now shot through with veins of black and red, crackling with that impossible energy. It pulsed with Nick's will.
With a final, explosive roar that drowned out the storm, Nick thrust his hand forward. The dragon surged, and the attack, now coated in that overwhelming presence, exploded against Hercules with the force of a bomb.
The wall behind Hercules disintegrated. The dragon punched through him—not literally, but the force of it drove through his body and into the stone beyond, pulverizing it. Hercules' scream was cut short as the air was driven from his lungs. His body went rigid, then limp.
The water dissipated, falling to the ground in a sudden, anticlimactic splash.
Hercules slumped against what was left of the ruined wall, unconscious. His arm hung at a broken angle. His face was a mask of blood—broken nose, split lip, a gash above his eye that poured ichor down his cheek. His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths. Cracks spiderwebbed across his skin where the force of the blow had struck, thin lines of gold seeping through. The legendary labors were over.
Nick stood in the center of the destruction, chest heaving, his entire body trembling with exhaustion. Blood ran from his nose. His knuckles were shredded, the skin torn away to reveal raw meat beneath. A dozen cuts and bruises covered his body, and one of his ribs screamed with every breath—definitely cracked, maybe broken. His straw hat lay on the ground a few feet away, somehow intact.
But his face. His face held a look of pure, unadulterated joy.
The crackling black lightning faded, and the soul-crushing pressure vanished with it. Percy gasped, sucking in air, finally able to move. His legs were weak. His hands shook. He'd faced monsters and gods, but he had never felt anything like that pressure, that pure, overwhelming *presence*.
Nick looked at his own hands, at the shredded knuckles and the blood, then at the fallen form of the son of Zeus. A slow, wide grin spread across his face, cracking the dried blood on his lips. It was the same carefree grin from before, but now it was touched with a profound satisfaction, the look of someone who had just done exactly what they'd set out to do.
He turned, finally acknowledging Percy for the first time since the fight began. He spotted his hat on the ground, picked it up, and placed it back on his head, adjusting it carefully despite his torn knuckles.
"Hey," Nick said, his voice back to its normal, cheerful volume, though rougher now, strained from the fight. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the unconscious Hercules. "Thanks for wearing him down a bit for me. He was pretty tough." He then walked over to a nearby, miraculously untouched, chunk of wall and sat down heavily, wincing slightly as his cracked rib protested. He pulled a piece of dried meat from his pocket and took a large bite, chewing contentedly despite the blood still drying on his face.
Percy just stared, his mouth agape. The Master Bolt was momentarily forgotten. The only thought that could form in his head was a single, bewildered question.
Who in Hades was this guy?
Nick, sensing his stare, looked over and gave him a casual, two-fingered salute from his seat on the rubble, chewing loudly.
"The name's Nick," he said again, as if introducing himself at a school dance. He paused, looking at the utter devastation around them—the craters, the rubble, the unconscious son of Zeus, the pools of blood and ichor—then back at Percy with a completely serious expression.
"Say... you wouldn't know where I could find a good steak around here, would you? I'm starving."
_________FOLLOW ME ON PATERON SBandCOwriter ________