Percy Jackson: Spirits
is a The Legend of Korra and Percy Jackson and the Olympians crossover by QAI521.
"Percy Jackson was prepared to die to defend Olympus, but the universe has different plans for him."
This story deviates from Percy Jackson canon when Kronos manages to resist Luke at the last second, sending him and Percy tumbling into freefall. Percy manages to slash the Titan's throat, but somehow ends up in the Spirit World at the beginning of the second season of Korra, and has to try and fight against Vaatu's forces and escape.
This Fic contains examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: In this universe, Wan needed the aid of the Great Spirits of the elements to defeat Vaatu, and even after he was imprisoned, Vaatu has been manipulating people and events for centuries, if not thousands of years, in order to engineer his escape.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Percy can't bring himself to hate monsters simply because they are monsters, formed from the negative aspects of Western civilization and born to slay demigods, just as it is in his nature to fight them. The contrast with the dark spirits Vaatu twisted and corrupted into serving him, many of them innocents, only fuels Percy's hatred of Vaatu further.
- Amputation Stops Spread: Nei's arm is eventually amputated by Percy to save her from being corrupted into a dark spirit.
- The Chessmaster: Even inside his prison, Vaatu found ways to subtly manipulate things in order to weaken Raava and set the stage for his escape.
- The Corruption: Vaatu and his dark spirits can infect other spirits with his dark energy, twisting them into dark spirits themselves. Nei is infected early on in one arm which Percy eventually amputates to stop it.
- Day of the Jackboot: Unalaq attempts to do this, bringing Northern warships to blockade Harbor City and using the Council of Elders, most of which are under his influence, to elect himself chieftain of the Southern Water Tribe.
- Dead Fic: The FF.net version has not been update since 2018 but the Spacebattles version has been updated in January 2020.
- The Dragon: Amarok to Koh, who even allows him the rare honor of being able to express his emotions in front of him without fear of Koh stealing his face. He's also the de facto leader of the dark spirits that Koh (and later Vaatu directly) sends after Percy and the other light spirit refugees.
- The Dreaded:
- Vaatu is a figure of dread and terror to the non-corrupted spirits, who will not even speak his name aloud.
- Amarok is well-known and deeply feared by the water tribes, to whom he is a force of destruction and a relentless predator that haunts the wastes and stalks and devours anyone who strays from the safety of their camps during the polar nights. Even Korra can't help but have a not-so-small part of her paralyzed with fear when she first sees him.
- Dynamic Entry: Happens at the end of chapter 13, which ends with "A crack ripped through the room as the wall beside them exploded."
- Entertainingly Wrong: After seeing Percy's abilities, Unalaq assumes at first that Percy was blessed by a powerful spirit.
- Eye Scream: Percy stabs out one of Amarok's eyes.
- Fatal Flaw:
- Percy's (that he'll prioritize saving his friends over saving the world) is mentioned again.
- The dark spirits (especially the ones unwillingly corrupted, the ones that willingly gave in like Amarok are a bit better about this) are so hopped up on negative emotions that they can't work effectively together. Percy notes at one point that if the horde of dark spirits attacking him worked together they could easily overwhelm him, but they're so angry they just try and Zerg Rush him, which means that they get in each other's way, and several times all Percy has to do is injure one before the others finish it off for him.
- For Want Of A Nail: The deviation here is Kronos managing to fight back against Luke's control of their body in the final climax.
- Have You Seen My God?: No one has seen the Great Spirit of Air, Vayu, since the Air Nomad massacre, and the Fire Great Spirit, Agni, has isolated himself from the rest of the Spirit World. The Mother of Faces is in the human world and unaware of what's going on, the Ocean Spirit is still in mourning for Tui, and the Spirit of Earth is willing to help but slow to get going. Yue is willing to help, but thanks to Unalaq her ability to actually do so is rather limited.
- God's Hands Are Tied: Yue is unable to do much to directly help with the situation in the spirit world because Unalaq turned the protections around her and the Ocean Spirit's physical bodies into a prison, though she's still doing her best despite being limited by the prison and her relative lack of skill with her new powers.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Vaatu, in this verse, is indirectly behind the Hundred Years War and the Air Nomad Genocide, Aang being stuck in the iceberg, Zhao's attack on Tui (and Wan Shi Tong's withdrawal from the human world), and maybe even Amon.
- Immortals Fear Death:
- When Percy slashes Kronos's throat, he notes that there is only fear in his eyes, not the sadistic arrogance or rage that is usually there.
- Chelamma is terrified when Percy manages to wound him in a way that he can't just reform from.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Elder Nukilik is impaled in the chest with an ice shard by Unalaq when he objects his takeover of the Southern Water Tribe.
- Insult to Rocks: After calling Amarok "dog breath", Percy feels a bit sorry for the dogs he compared Amarok against.
- Jerkass Gods: Percy is so used to the gods of his world being this that when he meets some of the more benevolent powerful spirits, like Princess Yue, he doesn't know how to react.
- Leaking Can of Evil: Vaatu has been manipulating things behind the scenes for centuries, if not millennia, in order to weaken the Avatar and try and make sure that he manages to win the next Harmonic Convergence battle, even having been behind Aang's century-long nap, despite the fact that he's been stuck in the Tree of Time and there being rituals specifically to try and counteract his influence.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Percy first hears about bending and the Avatar, he notes that it sounds like something out of a cartoon. Later, after telling Iroh and company his story, he notes that his life sounds like something out of an adventure novel.
- Legend Fades to Myth: Thanks to Vaatu's manipulations, knowledge of the Avatar's purpose of keeping him contained was slowly lost this way, along with the knowledge that he and Raava even existed in the first place, as well as the purpose of the rituals and traditions that helped keep his power contained.
- More than Mind Control: How Vaatu's influence on Korra, and presumably others, manifests, depicted in the form of colored text that basically reinforces thoughts that are already in their mind to influence them, like reinforcing the idea that Korra's previous teachers didn't believe in her when she's talking to her uncle about her lack of training in spiritual matters, and silencing Raava's attempts to reach her.
- Mouth of Sauron: At one point Vaatu possesses a small dark spirit to communicate with Amarok. The poor spirit can barely contain his power, but his presence is still easily potent enough to cow the Hungerer.
- No Honor Among Thieves: The dark spirit forces have no coordination among each other, ignoring or sacrificing their brethren to make room for themselves and attacking any of their numbers that Percy wounds to assure their own power, which bites them in the butt quite a bit.
- Painting the Medium: Vaatu's manipulations of other beings take the form of sections of their inner monologues colored red to represent thoughts that he's planting in their head. Raava's counter-influence likewise takes the form of sections of blue text in smaller print.
- The Quisling: Some dark spirits willingly joined Vaatu's side, like Chelamma and Amarok (via his master Koh). Also the corrupt members of the Council of Elders who support Unalaq's coup in the Southern Tribe, though only after he murders those that oppose him.
- Red Baron: Amarok has a few of these titles, like the Hungerer and the Devourer, earned from centuries spent terrorizing the water tribes.
- Reforged into a Minion: Many dark spirits were forcibly captured and corrupted by Vaatu's willing servants and other corrupted spirits. Thinking about this just makes Percy hate Vaatu even more.
- The Social Darwinist: Amarok firmly believes in the right of the strong to do as they wish to the weak.
- Sanity Has Advantages: As Percy notes a couple of times when fighting them; if the dark spirits were better able to work as a group they would be far more effective than they are. Amarok gave into the darkness willingly, and seems more focused, and thus more dangerous, as a result.
- Savage Wolves: Amarok, a wolf spirit who embodies the predatory urge to hunt and devour the weak. He's a servant of Koh, willingly serves Vaatu's desires after his master aligned with him, has terrorized the water tribes in the physical world for centuries, and is determined to kill Percy.
- Sealed Good in a Can: Someone, presumably Unalaq, has turned the spiritual defenses of the Oasis the Moon and Ocean spirits inhabit into a prison keeping them from doing much to actively intervene in the current situation in the Spirit World.
- Speak of the Devil:
- Just speaking of Vaatu's name can cause the spirit world to react negatively in the vicinity of the speaker.
- Nei can feel the power the names of the gods from Percy's world hold.
- Starter Villain:
- The first dark spirit Percy faces, Chelamma.
- Amarok is a major recurring antagonist while Percy is trapped in the Spirit World, being The Dragon for Koh and the leader of the dark spirits chasing Percy, but Percy manages to kill him shortly after the portal opens.
- Unwitting Pawn: Vaatu apparently manipulated Sozin into starting the War and wiping out the airbenders to eliminate their spiritual traditions and keep them from performing the rituals that kept the sky cleansed of his influence, Zhao into using Wan Shi Tong's knowledge to help kill Tui and cause the other spirit to withdraw from the human world with his library and the contained knowledge, and maybe even Amon into trying to eliminate bending so that the world would be less able to defend itself against him.
- Villain Has a Point: As Raava notes, thinking that she might appreciate him if he wasn't so stooped in darkness, Unalaq has a point about the people of the Southern Water Tribe abandoning their spiritual traditions, which were developed to help limit Vaatu's influence at the height of his power, siphoning off any energy that slipped through the cracks.
- We Have Become Complacent: Part of why Vaatu was able to outmaneuver Raava was that she became self-assured in her victory over him after he was sealed away in the Tree of Time, allowing him to slowly cause a Legend Fades to Myth situation, then engineer Aang being trapped in the iceberg, the Hundred Year War and the genocide of the Air Nomads, Tui's death, Wan Shi Tong's departure from the human world, etc., all in time for the next Harmonic Convergence.
- Wrong Context Magic:
- The ability of Percy's Celestial Bronze weapons to wound and kill spirits are completely unlike anything anyone in the Avatar world has seen before.
- Percy's Making a Splash abilities are different from waterbending in how he commands the water to do his bidding. Amarok finds it more similar to the abilities of some water-aligned spirits, making him wonder if he's a spirit that took human form, but is frustrated by how it still doesn't quite fit. Later on, Korra is flabbergasted by how easily Percy is able to take control of the water her cousins and uncles send at him, and heal himself so seemingly effortlessly — a skilled water bender would need decades of training to even attempt either feat.
- Zerg Rush: The default dark spirit horde attack strategy is basically just to cause as much chaos and destruction in a short a timespan as possible. Because they don't work together in groups very well, this works against them.
