JUPITER, ASCENDING. (pjo)

jupiter, ascending!

   WHEN SOMEONE YOU LOVE is taken from you, the world seems to shatter. Cicero has no idea what to do when her brother goes missing. Jason has been there by her side for as long as she can remember. Her first memories are of him, even. With no mother in the picture and a father who rules the Gods, Jason was always the one, reliable person she had in her life. He raised her, taught her, pushed her to do her best, always encouraging and open-minded.

But then, one night, he's gone.

   IT'S A HARD PILL TO SWALLOW, but Rory isn't given hardly enough time to digest the information overloading her brain before she feels her body hit the ground and her eyes start to roll towards the back of her skull. Her brain feels like half-set jello, too slow to process the shutting down of her limbs and the pain she should feel when her head knocks against the stones. And then, she's just...there. Where? Rory can't tell. Her eyes don't open, her body doesn't respond, Mars, it's hard to even manage a coherent thought within seconds of this entire thing happening.

   AND SO, UNBEKNOWNST TO CICERO GRACE, months pass by with her body in this state. Slowly, Rory accustoms herself to what has become her prison, her own special type of hell. The sinking darkness, void and sensory-depriving, muddling her thoughts and rendering her completely helpless. With nothing else to do as time drags by, other aspects of her brain start to come in play, groggy and unclear. Distorted memories hitting rewind and then fast-forward on a past she didn't remember; of a kind-faced older girl who was always watching with a smile under her electric blue eyes; of a woman, artfully styled platinum hair fried into spiraling curls, detached, distracted, switching between trying to chase a big-time break on film or the mysterious man she'd been blessed to encounter three times in her life. A park, green and grassy and a cloudless spring day, and then— Then, a boy not much older than what could have been four years old who looked like Jason, cerulean eyes scared and wary, skinny arms wrapped tightly around her when the girl and woman from earlier are suddenly nowhere to be seen and replaced by another, unfamiliar woman, dark hair framing her beautiful face and an unsettling aura enveloping the space around her. Whispers of a past she didn't know she had, of a family she didn't truly recognize overlap into a past she is familiar with, instead. Lupa, in all her large, red-furred glory, her sharp silver eyes and strict warnings from her teachings murmurs in the back of Rory's mind; Octavian, then a boastful, lonely boy not much older than her that came from a well-known family. Rory remembers the days where they played together, ran and explored until their knees were scraped and their grinning faces dirty, the days where Octavian still had kindness in his eyes before they'd succumbed to their dark, incessant greed; Reyna, a stoic-faced older girl who Jason has made it his life's goal to make smile. Then the black, endless void she'd accustomed herself to spirals, voices roaring all around as Rory feels like she's fallen off a skyscraper, a ringing in her ears as she thinks she hears Jason's laughter, and voices she doesn't quite recognize...

   THEN THE LIGHT APPEARED. Slow, hesitant cracks shattering the darkness of her confinement, quickly turning desperate and advancing in speed, and the cold. Abruptly, Rory's eyes fly open and she comes face to face with a tall, tanned guy she's never seen before, whose sea-green eyes are blown wide with concern. Behind him, she sees a short, dark-skinned girl, her mouth twisted into a shocked grimace, and a taller, familiar asian boy with a look of disbelief plastered on his chubby face.

   NOW, THE ONLY THING ON Cicero's mind is relatively the same as it had been before waking up in the icy plains of Alaska:

Where is Jason?

And who in the hells is Percy Jackson?