Shattered

Gods

Mars?

Percy remembered Chiron mentioning a Mars or something back when he was in the sixth grade at Yancy.

Mars... Wasn't there a planet named Mars?

The planet was named after a god wasn't it?

Roman.

Would that mean that the Roman Gods were real too?

He was firmly under the belief that it was only the Greek deities who were still alive and kicking. The flame of the West and all that.

Did that mean there were still other mythologies which still existed?

Now that he thought of it, there wouldn't be any reason why there couldn't be other gods.

The god's obscured eyes before him were still trained on the son of Poseidon, "Oh right. You probably don't recognize me in this form. Hold on, kid. One moment."

The god before him - Mars - began to in his place stood a huge, muscular man with vicious sneer. He was clad in black jeans, combat boots, a black leather duster, and a red muscle shirt under a bulletproof vest. He also had a large hunting knife strapped to his thigh. He wore a necklace made from a heavy padlock and thick chain. He had red-tinted wraparound sunglasses to cover his eye sockets. His features were handsome, but in a cruel and brutal way, with knife-scarred cheeks and an "oily" black crew cut.

Percy could recognize the man in an instant.

"Ares." The snarl in his voice was not muffled in the least.

Percy's grip on Riptide tightened, his teeth clenched, his form not relaxing until the god reverted to his Roman counterpart.

Then something clicked.

If Mars was in the same body as Ares… Then were the other Greek gods also hiding their roman forms within themselves? How would that have worked?

From what he could remember, the gods of Rome were more disciplined, militaristic, and warlike compared to their Greek counterparts. Did that mean that the gods had multiple personalities? An image of a council of extremely powerful dozen of schizophrenic deities brought no comfort to the Greek demigod.

His question was rather promptly answered by Artemis' form shimmering, but what came out could still very much be described as being the same Artemis.

The being before him could be described as as an extremely beautiful goddess, being tall and well-built, with shoulder-length raven-black hair but what completely gave away her identity was the striking silver-gray eyes that could easily intimidate when she was angry.

"Diana."

Mars' gruff, masculine voice permeated through the humid air. Now that Percy knew the identity of the guttural voice, he could make out the vague similarities it had to the infinitely gruffer voice of the Greek war god.

"What are you doing here in that form, do you not remember that my hunters are of purely Greek blood," the Roman goddess glanced towards Rachel, "Or mortal."

Mars grunted, "No time. Emergency ."

The war god turned towards Percy, the son of Poseidon couldn't fathom why he wasn't getting angry at the god. Usually, just being in the mere presence of the war god would end up striking a nerve with Percy, but now Percy just felt a calm indifference towards to god of war.

"You. Kid."

Percy bristled at Mars' attention.

"I need you to do a small favor for me."