Hello all, I'm back! And super excited to post the first chapter of Not Another Apocalypse. I'm considering re-naming it (I literally just came up with the name XD), but for right now it'll work.

If you haven't read the first in the The Crossover Collection series, titled Only the Beginning, I recommend you do. It's a Doctor Who/Avengers crossover, and I've gotten a really good response to it, and it was really fun to write. However, it's not necessary to read Only the Beginning to read this (hopefully good) story. And it's not necessary to read this story in order to read The Crossover, which, for new readers, is going to be the finale to this series, and I'm always obsessing over it. If any of you are interested in knowing what that's about, see my profile. Thank you. :)

Last thing I want to mention is that we're going to say that soon after The Last Olympian happened, The Red Pyramid occured. Also, this takes place before The Lost Hero, so Percy is still present in New York. And this is also between The Red Pyramid and The Throne of Fire. And we'll say that the Kanes' trainees have not arrived yet.

Oh, one more thing. I use WordPad to write these chapters, and that program unfortunately doesn't have spell check. So I might sometimes misspell words. If you guys see any mistakes, let me know and I'll fix it ASAP.

With that out of the way, let's begin! :D

Percy Jackson was being chased by a monster.

For most people, this would involve a lot of running and screaming and calling for help. For Percy, it was mostly swinging at the creature with his sword, Riptide, and muttering Greek curses. And of course there was running, too.

The monster happened to be a she, or at least that's what Percy assumed it was. She certainly looked female, and human, except for the serpent tail that set off all of his 'monster alarms.'

"You cannot run from me, child," she hissed. "I am Lamia."

Percy had no idea what the significance of her name was, but it had to have something to do with eating kids, because that's what she'd been attempting to do before he'd interrupted her. She'd been creeping up on a little girl with blond hair in pigtails, looking ravanous, but had been cut off by none other than Percy Jackson. Who had goaded her into following him.

And now the serpent lady was chasing him in the direction of Brooklyn. And it indeed had become more of a chase than follow in the past few minutes. Percy reflected that maybe he just should have gone at her right when he'd found her rather than swinging his sword in her general direction and shouting insults at her until she ran at him. That might have been a better idea, even if there were mortals present. He had no doubt that they'd have just run away anyway, and then he wouldn't be dealing with this now.

He stopped running for a moment to slash at her. She dodged the blow and hissed at him, but didn't stop coming. And she was fast.

"Crap," he said, and then whirled around and fled with Lamia right on his heels. He knew that he probably should have just faced her right then and there, but there had been mortals coming out of shops and staring at him and the last thing he needed was casualties. Two or three mortals, like with the little girl and her parents, could get away. But if there were too many people around, then someone was bound to get hurt. Percy didn't think he'd be able to deal with that at the moment. He got out of there.

He entered Brooklyn then, and felt a sudden, gut-wrenching chill. A wrongness, a bad taste in his mouth. He actually froze in place with a hard swallow, and Lamia nearly bowled him over. Luckily, she just knocked into him a little and sent him stumbling slightly as she whooshed on past, finally skidding to a stop a few yards away.

"Demigod," she snarled, baring her teeth and looming over Percy. He noticed with a blink of surprise that she was slowly becoming more snake-like and less human. He readied his sword, just about to lop her head off-

"Ha-di!" a girl's voice exclaimed, and then Percy was coated with gold dust.

"Oh gods," he gagged, and hurriedly brushed himself off. It sure beat splattering guts, but it was still gross to have all over you, and Percy was not pleased. When he was suitably cleaned off, he readied Riptide (just in case) and stared at the girl who had apparently killed the monster.

She looked about thirteen, chewing gum and grinning at Percy as she spun a staff-like thing in one hand. Percy noticed earbuds peeping out of one of the pockets in her jacket. She looked wealthy. There was an older boy next to her, a couple of years younger than Percy, with dark skin and curly hair. He was gripping a weirdly-shaped sword thing.

"So," the girl said. "No 'thank you'?"

"Uh, thanks," Percy offered, lowering his sword. "But I could have handled it. How did you...?"

She ignored his question. "You're obviously not from the House of Life, or you'd be chasing after us by now. Right?"

The son of Posiedon was confused. "I don't think-"

The girl continued to ignore him. "You're probably not a magician at all, are you? Because the House of Life made it very clear that we were their enemies. And that," here she gestured triumphantly to Riptide, "is not a magician's weapon. So where are you from?" Percy noticed that a British accent, although slightly faded, was evident in her words.

"I came from my summer camp," he said. It's not like it wasn't the truth, anyway. He had. Although, he had left out the part where his summer camp was a demigod training site, led by the centaur Chiron. Oh well. "What about you? I mean, you're not American."

"No," the older of the two put in, "she's not. I am, though. And we live here." He motioned behind him, to the rest of Brooklyn. "You?"

Percy jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "Manhattan," he replied, and then pointed to the girl's staff. "Um. What's that?"

She frowned and then quickly hid the staff behind her. "None of your business," she snapped.

"I'm Carter, by the way," the boy beside her added, nudging her slightly and provoking a scowl. "This is my sister, Sadie."

"You're related?" Percy blurted, surprised.

Now Carter looked annoyed, and Sadie's expression had become angrier. "Unfortunately," Carter said. His sister elbowed him, and he tried to muffle a squeak of pain. Percy noted with a bit of confusion that his sword-thing had disappeared.

"Who are you, then?" Sadie demanded, crossing her arms, apparently forgetting to hide her staff in her annoyance.

"Percy Jackson."

"So, Percy Jackson, do you often play with golden swords at your camp?"

"Actually, yeah."

Sadie scoffed. "Really? I'm not buying it." She sauntered forward and pointed her staff at him with a smirk. "Tell me the truth."

"Sadie," Carter warned, and took her staff from her. She smacked him in response and stole it back. "Sorry," he told Percy.

"What is that thing?" the demigod asked, looking warily at Sadie's staff.

"You're not telling us the truth," the girl said. "Why should we tell you?"

Percy recalled her earlier words. "You were talking about magicians," he said. "Did you mean the magic-trick kind, or the children-of-Hecate kind of magician?"

Carter frowned at the last part of the question, and answered, "We're, uh, the magic-trick kind."

Somehow, Percy extremely doubted this.

Sadie caught his expression and gave Carter a glare. "You're a rubbish liar," she told him, a scowl marring her features and her accent coming through more clearly.

Percy took a deep breath before he spoke, feeling like he was about to step over the edge of a cliff with the words. "So you're...demigods?"

Both siblings turned to stare at him. "Whats?" Sadie wondered, blinking.

"That's Greek mythology," Carter filled in for her. "The children of gods." At her confused expression, he sighed and added, "Sometimes gods would get together with mortals, and a demigod would be born. Half human, half god."

"Er, yeah," Percy said, not sure what else to do. He was starting to worry that maybe Carter and Sadie weren't really demigods at all. Annabeth would flay him alive.

"That's stupid," Sadie scoffed, shooting a glare in Percy's direction. "Now I have a question for you, Percy Jackson. I thought it would be dumb to ask before, but now I'm getting suspicious. Are you a magician?"

"No!" Percy protested, capping Riptide and shoving it into his pocket as he spoke. Oh gods, he thought. "I'm a demigod! What are magicians?"

Sadie looked like she would make a smart remark as a comeback, but Carter spoke up before her, to Percy's relief. "Wait," he said to Percy, and then turned to his sister. "Remember what Amos said before? When we were first coming here? About Manhattan?"

Percy was starting to feel uncomfortable. At least now he wasn't carrying his weapon around like Sadie was. However Carter had gotten rid of his without Percy noticing, Sadie either couldn't do it, or couldn't be bothered to.

"Other gods," Sadie mused, and then they both faced Percy once again, at the same time. He could see the resemblance, now. "So, there are Greek gods, then?"

"Yeah," the demigod answered. He wasn't liking how complicated this was becoming. "You said other gods...?"

Carter was nothing but apologetic and excited as he stepped forward. "Yes, the Egyption ones. Sadie and I have the blood of the pharaohs, and we can do magic."

"Are there any other gods I should know about?" Percy asked. He felt exceedingly stupid, and sort of like Annabeth should know this type of thing. She would be furious with Chiron - Chiron had to know about it, right?

Sadie, who was not as excited as her brother but still seemed interested, said, "Not that we know of. So you really are a demigod?"

Percy almost felt proud, until the emotion was eclipsed by the gavity of the situation. "Yeah. When you say magicians, then, you mean you can do actual magic."

"Yeah," Sadie said. "My geek of a brother just said that, didn't he?"

"Sorry."

"It's fine," Carter piped in. "Here." Then he said something like, "Hequat," and shortly his sword was back in his hand and he was grinning.

Percy found himself smiling, too. "Cool," he said. "But, uh, what are we going to do? I think Chiron will want to see you."

"The Chiron?" Carter burst out, eyes boggling.

"Um, yeah."

"Oh no," Sadie muttered, "he's geeking out."

"Would you mind coming to meet him?" Percy asked, ignoring her. "I don't know what'll happen now that we've met."

Sadie groaned. "Are we talking about an apocalypse? Carter and I are dealing with one already."

"We just finished with one, too," Percy said sympathetically. Apocalypses were never fun stopping, as cool as it was on TV. "But, uh, we won't know unless you guys come to camp with me."

Carter's excitement seemed to be growing even more. "Your camp is a demigod camp?" he questioned, eyes alight.

"Yes. Can we go? Um, please, 'cause they'll be worrying about me-"

Sadie waved him off. "Okay, fine." She looked to Carter. "What about Bast?"

Her brother's excitement decreased slightly. "Oh." Then, to Percy, "Do you mind if we make a stop before we go?"

"No," Sadie sighed before Percy could reply, "I just meant that we need to watch how long we're gone. She'll freak out if she knows we've found out about this. She's a god, she'll know about demigods, right?"

Carter nodded. "I guess. So, Percy, never mind then."

Percy bobbed his head. "Alright." He glanced around and saw that despite the fact that the battle with Lamia had ended a while ago, the mortals were still gone. And Percy thought he heard sirens nearby. "Come on," he urged, beckoning the magicians - he wondered how long it would take him to get used to saying that - and starting off in the direction of camp. "It'll take a little bit, but we can make it there before dark. Probably."

"We'll need to get back home by then," Sadie told him. They hadn't started running or anything yet, but they were still walking pretty quickly. Percy picked up the pace at Sadie's comment.

"It'll be fine," Percy said, hoping. "Besides, this Bast person won't be able to detect you." He glanced at his companions. "Um, she doesn't have a detection spell or something, right?"

"It doesn't matter," Sadie declared, but they were nearly jogging now. "As long as we can come up with something believable, she won't bug us. Right?" She looked to Carter.

"Don't ask me, she's your cat," her brother muttered, a sentence Percy didn't care to decode at the moment. At least the police were behind them now. The teens weren't far enough away that they couldn't hear the officers talking loudly into their radios and wondering why they'd been called if there was nothing there, but they were getting there. As they escaped the police and headed off to Camp Half Blood, there was a recurring thought in Percy's mind. Everytime his new acquaintances spoke, or he could hear them moving behind him, it came to his mind, sending chillds through him like when he'd first stepped foot in Brooklyn.

What have I started?

Ooh. Hopefully that wasn't horrible. It's probably fine (us writers are very critical of our own work, in case you haven't noticed), but I'd like to know what you all thought. If you liked it, please let me know in the reviews. If you didn't, let me know as well and tell me why. I really appreciate constructive criticism (and I'm sure you all do, too - it makes for better stories), so if you have any of that as well, that would be awesome. If I've made some glaring mistake, it would be super if someone would let me know. Or if I've done pretty well with the whole thing.

So anyway, please review with your thoughts. And if you have any questions about this story or The Crossover or even Only the Beginning, drop me a PM and I'll try my best to respond with everything I feel like I can tell you. :)

Hopefully I'll update in a few days, but probably next week. (School's starting, though, so...ugh.) I'll try my best to get these written and posted within a week, but we'll see.

So long for now.