𝐓𝐨 𝐁𝐞 𝐚 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐨 • 𝑱𝒂𝒔𝒐𝒏 𝑮𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒆

004.

[ illuminati recruitment: victim one! ]

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     Funnily enough, it hadn't been Octavian's broken nose that got her in trouble. Rather, it was the grapevines on the temple. The nose had solidified Reyna's suspicions of course, but it hadn't exactly been the smoking gun.

As punishment, Mabel was no longer allowed to participate in the war games that night. She wasn't too fussed, really. Usually, Hank just had the third cohort stand back and watch as the fifth failed, again. It was pathetic leadership, if you asked her. But there wasn't much she could do about it.

Though Reyna had never explicitly said Mabel wasn't to attend evening muster either, she took it as subtext and just decided to skip. She had neither the patience nor the grace for it tonight.

Instead, she headed into New Rome, on the lookout for a replacement for Percy's (now deceased, r.i.p) stuffed panda.

There was something . . . off about that guy. Aside from his already bizarre appearance, parentage, and off the charts power, he seemed to know way too much for a guy who was supposed to remember nothing.

The moment in the temple earlier, when Percy had reacted so viscerally to the Prophecy of Eight. Then, when he'd suggested an oracle instead of an augur. Every little comment he made was adding up to be more obscure, more chilling. Where did he come from?

More importantly, were the people from his home looking for him too?

Mabel hadn't dared voice the thought out loud, afraid that she really would stir up rumors again about Mad Mabel. She wasn't grasping at straws here either— obviously she was desperate to do anything to get Jason home. If she needed to kill a man to ensure his safe return, she had a hard time coming up with a good reason as to why she shouldn't.

But this, this wasn't absurd. Percy was gone from his home. With such great gaps in his memory— an amnesia that still hadn't been explained away, mind you— it wasn't a big stretch to assume the place he'd come from was filled with people that loved him. His desire to get his memory back could've been explained by a natural inclination to know his past. Or, he could've remembered something that he desperately wanted to get back to. Something that made his past his home.

She couldn't make too many assumptions about the guy, especially considering she'd only carried one conversation with him so far. But she figured getting to talk to him would be a good place to start. In order to want to talk to her, he needed to not hate her. Not that Mabel thought Percy disliked her— it's just that with the bone breaking incident earlier, she feared she'd been a bit off putting. Hence the panda.

It didn't take too long to obtain, actually. Well, in terms of the time it took for evening muster to occur in full, then for the games to start and end, it didn't take long. Matter of fact, she thought she was even back at the barracks before the games had officially drawn to a close.

Her master plan for getting information from Percy went as followed:

Step 1: Obtain replacement panda (accomplished!)

Step 2: Corner Percy in a way that ensures she gets to talk to him tonight, but doesn't make it look like she was waiting for him and/or stalking him. (This, she thought, would be the hardest step of them all— but she'd burn that bridge when she got to it).