Perseus Jackson was not what anyone could viably call a "dumb kid." He was certainly young, and his mistakes were many in number, but he was far from dumb. He was simply troubled, as anyone would be if they shared the issues that were wrought from his particular circumstances.

He was only four years old but his wit and talent were quite obvious. Despite the doctors informing his guardians of his dyslexia and ADHD, it was clear that Percy was making an effort to improve, despite all the bad things. When he was born, complications during the birthing process had resulted in the death of his mother, the late Sally Jackson. With nowhere to go, a man had approached and claimed to be the boy's father.

Percy had been handed over to the clearly grief-stricken man and had disappeared from the New York Hospital to begin his new life. The Father, who clearly possessed the dominant gene pool as Percy looked exactly like him, could not take him in. In his family, such an act had been forbidden and while the father had already broken his oath by siring Percy Jackson, he couldn't make his situation any worse.

But that did not mean that he didn't want his son to be well taken care of and safe. If enemies of his family ever caught a whiff of Percy, they would be on him in an instant. He needed to mask his tracks and cover Percy's scent...and he knew exactly the correct place to do it. A city that was so covered in the stench of others misdeeds and blood that never would Percy be discovered unless they were right on top of him, looking directly at him.

Gotham City. Of course, The Father had investigated which location would be the most suitable to raise the child. He didn't want to stick the child in a cleanly, open area, nor did he want the child stuck in a house with unpleasant caretakers. After digging about, he discovered an orphanage that seemed most suitable. Children for Percy to grow up with, decent staff, and a lack of monsters running nearby. Perfect.

With a teary eye, the father had left the child on the doorstep and waited for the caretakers to discover the child. After doing so, Percy was brought inside. The father had disappeared, nowhere to be seen, no longer able to involve himself in his son's affairs if not for watching from afar. This is where things slowly began to go downhill for our protagonist. Gotham was a hard city, a corrupt city. And in this corrupt state, good people fell, replaced by bad people.

Such was the case for the orphanage caretaker. Framed and fired, the once casual and lenient caretaker had been replaced by one whom Percy found a distinct inability to get along with in any sense. He demanded order, obedience, quiet, and the now 2-year-old infant was not a fan of his demeanor. It was his parent's blood that made him so rowdy, giving him the need to be free, to run wild.

Percy's distress called forth his particular bloodline on several occasions. When he was in deep distress, pipelines would burst in the house. Faucets would run with no one turning them on. Water would seep everywhere and make quite the unbearable mess. Percy had been naturally dubbed as "Abnormal" and the staff considered the possibility of him possessing a Meta-Gene.

Tests at the Doctor's Office did declare that he was in great shape for his age, and declared that he had the potential to be a strong young man one day, it did not confirm anything about any particular Meta-Gene. And so, Percy was taken back to the orphanage to continue to grow up suffering. His treatment at the facility got worse. As kinder staff were replaced with worse, cheaper employees, Percy naturally fell into a routine. Fed last, changed last, played with little, and ridiculed much.

That is until Percy learned proper speech and gained the ability to vocalize his complaints, run often, and become an even greater nuisance. The staff rapidly were pushed over the edge, annoyed and frustrated by his endeavors. Running bathwater and raising water bills, disobedient, a messy eater. These are all things Percy was known for being. His neglect grew into emotional abuse, and from that, things were physical.

When yelling at the child had proved a failure, some staff members would regularly hit him when he stepped out of line. This seemed to work for a while, sending the child into a quiet state as he processed what was happening. But as the years went by, Percy only grew more and more resentful of the people he was being raised by.

Several attempts to hand Percy over to various couples resulted in failure. Percy had either said something or done something during the process that inevitably resulted in Percy being returned. More and more was Percy's self-esteem wore down. Unlike most kids, he felt as though something was wrong with him. Why? Why was there anything wrong with him? What had he done?

So he threw himself into learning what made him different from the other little boys and girls. Despite dyslexia, he tried his very hardest to overcome it and gain some basic conclusions. Eventually, he settled for pictures over words, and thus looking at comic books became a frequent activity he enjoyed partaking in. In the pictures, the normal kids were shown partaking in activities that he also enjoyed doing.

So why did everyone treat him differently? Repeated attempts at questioning only got him a swift strike across the face. This tactic of hitting him to silence him would only so much as prolong Percy's condition, however. With no one to care for him, the now four-year-old slowly grew to hate those who would leer down upon him and hit him. Those who would yell at him, and make him take the blame for what he never did.

It was a quiet night when it happened. Percy had gone to school that morning with all the other kids, of course, being required to sit up front and alone for everyone to leer at from their seats. Percy said nothing at the whispers and jabs, though they did make him red in the face and certainly lit his fire. The jabs were somewhat of a beginning for the straw that broke the camel's back.

When at school, Percy threw himself into his favorite Superhero story. The Preschool didn't have much but it did house a few issues of Batman, Superman, and his favorite, Wonder Woman. Something about the series of the Ancient Greek Princess battling monsters and villains felt enrapturing to him. Like he was immersing himself in familiar environments.

Of course, this was Pre-School, and a young boy immersing himself in stories about a Princess earned the teasing and unwanted attention of bigger kids than he.

"Enjoying your little girl stories, Water Boy?" a seedy child jabbed, smirking down at Percy while he and his cronies stood over him. Percy looked up at him distastefully and flipped the page in the comic he had read a thousand times, "What's wrong Waterboy? Too scared to say anything back?"

Percy was quiet for a moment before he finally shot back.

"At least I can read, stupid…" Percy muttered.

Percy and the boy had been sent home for fighting. Percy had effortlessly come out on top, surprisingly, breaking the kid's nose in the process. The car ride home had not been an easy one. Everything felt tense and scary. This particular staff member was quite large and intimidating to a small child. So when they had arrived, Percy had been violently dragged out of the car and thrown inside, scraping his elbow and getting bruises from how hard he had had his arm gripped.

"You goddamn ungrateful little…" the man had said, kicking Percy down when he attempted to stand and shoving him into his room, to the child's scream of pain and worry, "AND DON'T LET ME HEAR YOU UNTIL I LEAVE!"

Minutes passed as Percy hugged himself into the corner of the room, sniffling quietly as the pain racked over the affected areas. He was so...angry. Scared. Scared and angry. He wanted to run away, he wanted the man to hurt for what he did. His emotions grew even more heated, and once again in response, the pipes in nearly every corner of the house burst. The sink exploded, the toilets flooded, the showers spat water.

The man growled, getting a faceful of water. He snarled, and let out an angry yell, stepping over the gross landscape and making his way up the stairs to deal with the brat responsible.

"BOY! I SWEAR TO GOD I'M GONNA GUT YOU LIKE THE LITTLE BASTARD YOU ARE!" he shouted, bursting open the door to the common rooms to find…

That little Percy Jackson had disappeared. Gone was he, out the window, a lone child into the streets of Gotham City where he would more than likely perish to some thug or criminal, or maybe the supposed "Batman" would get him. The thought pleased the man, and he turned around to deal with what he thought was important.

Percy however, was dashing wildly through the cold rainy back-alleys of Gotham, looking for a place to leave and escape. If he could get away, he would be safe from everyone. No one would ever hurt him again, and he could finally just be alone. It was better this way. It was better for everyone.

His little four-year-old legs carried him far. The day was in winter. It wasn't a harshly cold day, noting the rain, but it was still frigid in temperature. Percy managed to get himself cut up several times from slipping on ice and such. The child was exhausted by nightfall, finding himself in a back alley completely alone. Reading comics could never have prepared him to read street signs. And now, in this massive city, he found himself completely lost.

The child shivered in the cold and stumbled in the dark. Where could he go where he could be safe? Where could he be alone? He was already quite exhausted, despite his seemingly endless energy supply, but the raindrops kept him going oddly enough. The dark alley felt jagged, smelled of garbage, and Percy couldn't see much of anything. The cold bit at him once again. He ducked up against a wall and frowned further.

He collected himself for a moment, before the creaking of a door and the sudden light from such a place caught him entirely off guard, and scared him. A woman emerged from a doorway carrying a large trash bag. She was likely a waitress, and not the most spectacular one at that. She held the door open with a stopper and went over to a trash bin, throwing the bag in with minor difficulty.

She was oblivious to Percy's mind perceiving a well-lit, warm area that was free for him to enter. The child dashed in, footsteps as quiet as a cat, and the child hid under the nearest thing he could possibly hide and be out of sight from others… A dinner trolley, covered in a sheet. Percy took some quiet breaths, getting accustomed to the warmth that finally permeated his cold body. However, just before he peered out to see exactly where he was, the cart moved. The child lurched forward, and nearly fell off, poor dear, as the trolley began its course into the restaurant.

From the bleach white and infamously clean abode of the kitchen, into the bright blue arctic themed area that was the dining hall. This place served only the highest of society, and yet ironically, the lowest of Gotham's scum. Crime Lords, Mob Bosses, Insane Arkham Patients, the works. Tonight it held only a handful of criminals, but they were all very very dangerous regardless.

On the balcony, eating a somewhat quiet meal with a few of his henchmen was the former DA of Gotham himself. In his classy two-color suit, the psychopathic crime boss called Harvey Dent, aka Two-Face, took his sweet time finishing his meal. On the ground floor, a few yards away from Percy's location, two enthusiastic men in strange attire laughed and ate their meals with haste. One possessed a green pin-suit and bowler hat, both riddled with various question marks to accentuate. Edward Nygma, The Riddler, was enjoying life outside of villainous plotting in the name of overcoming Batman.

Next to him was a greasy, dirty looking individual who wore old-world British formal wear over a green undershirt. His hair was scraggly and long, hanging all the way down to his shoulders. The top of his head was covered by a faded beige top hat, with a bow wrapped around the base. A few cards of various different number covered it. This was Jervis Tech, better known to Gotham as The Mad Hatter.

Last but not least, we had perhaps one of the most beautiful women to ever grace Gotham City's disgusting premises. She wore a skintight green party dress that ran down to the middle of her thigh, with black see-through stockings that ran up beneath it. Her skin was a healthy glow, her hands, perfectly manicured and coated with a nice bright orange nail polish. Her face was full, yet angular, perfectly shaped. A beauty mark dotted her face to the left of her mouth, and her hair was a deep fiery red. It waved down her neck and was pulled over one shoulder, adding to her full beauty.

Pamela Lillian Isley was simply stunning. The same could be said for her current persona, better known to the public as Poison Ivy. She was the living embodiment of deceiving looks. On her outside, she could have any man or woman she wanted with just a wink of her eye. On the inside, she could kill that man or woman if she felt like doing so. The waiter who currently pushed the cart over to her table felt as such.

Ivy had been quiet for a month now. With winter in season, her precious children were sleeping, save for the ones she kept awake in her home, which she had so nicely been bestowed with after the unfortunate demise of a wealthy businessman… So for now, with Harley having fled back to Joker yet again, she had little to do, aside from plan. But honestly, a girl as beautiful as her had far better things to do than simply wait and plan for four months. So she decided to have a night on the town. Perhaps this evening, fun would find her.

Her first stop had been The Iceberg Lounge, where she currently sat.

"Miss Isley," the waiter said, "there is no rush of course, but I'll leave the check for you. Is there anything you may require?"

Ivy looked up at the man and batted her eyes. Paying for such an overpriced meal...how silly. Surely she could avoid wasting her money.

"Oh...a check?" she asked quietly, but her words carried a playful seductive tone, "Can't we make a deal?"

The waiter blinked and shook. He was unaware of the pheromones Ivy had released into the air through her skin. It was invisible, almost undetectable. It corrupted the guard almost instantly, making his eyes take a glazed over look. Ivy's smile grew.

"Of course, miss Isley…" he said, monotone and quiet, "Have a wonderful evening."

Ivy sipped her water, and happily responded, "Why thank you, sir~."

Ivy had only used a few pheromones, she didn't want every male in the restaurant doing her bidding. But she had used enough to cover a very close proximity, and she had unknowingly affected not one, but two people. Percy, from his hidden perch, had been looking through the cloth out at the beautiful woman when the pheromones had been emitted. Like the smell of pie drifting off of a freshly baked batch, it entered the waiter's nose. But, Percy had only received a small amount.

It wasn't enough to place him under a spell but it was enough to make him feel...drawn to her. Like a moth to a flame. Percy felt weird. The lady was the most beautiful person he'd ever seen ever. Hands down. She looked nice, she talked nice, so...she must be nice, right? Oh, but, they would probably get mad at him if he came out from underneath the blanket now. He should try to follow her somehow so he wouldn't get in trouble!

At this point, Percy had entirely forgotten about being alone. Ivy's pheromones tended to do that to people, as you can see. He was still young. Deep down he still desired affection, nurturing, praise. And Ivy's pheromones lead him to believe that she would provide that for him, somehow.

Yes, Percy wasn't dumb… but he was certainly not a strategist or a reader of people.

Ivy, completely unbeknownst to her, was subtly followed out of the restaurant. Her seat near the front near the door and the lack of customers at this point in the evening allowed for Percy to subtly follow Ivy out the door. He was very very good at sneaking, he had to do it a lot at the orphanage to get food.

Percy hid next to the door as Ivy left the restaurant and approached a cab. Stumped for a moment, the child looked for a way he could sneak in, keep up following! For a moment, however, it seemed that there was nothing he could really do, aside from exposing himself-

"Would you mind telling me why you're so intent on following me, little boy?" her voice called, permeating the cold night. Percy froze and looked up at the much much taller woman. Ivy's arms were crossed, and she looked down at him questioningly. Percy instantly grew red in the face and shrunk away. Ivy didn't miss a beat, "Come now, if you're brave enough to follow me but not brave enough to explain your actions…"

Ivy sized him up quickly. Small, very small, her visual analysis gave his age an estimate of three years old, probably only up to her knee in height. Long, messy black hair, and oddly enough the same translucent green eyes that she had. She was taken aback a little bit. She looked down at the child, now standing over him and awaited a reply. A second passed, and then his small voice responded back quickly.

"I...um...you, just looked really nice and I didn't know where to go…" Percy responded earnestly, "The people at the orphanage hated me, and, and I hated them...so I ran away…"

Ivy listened closely, then waited for him to keep going. Percy gulped, looked up for a split second, but then looked down and kept going, "I've b-been outside running for a long time and I got lost...I sneaked in and then I hid, and then they rolled me outside...and that's when I saw you-"

"Enough." Ivy said, "I've heard enough."

Percy shut up immediately. Here, Pamela had a decision to make, and a strange one at that. The last time she had ever dealt with a child had been during the dreaded earthquake several years ago. She had found a group of orphans, taking refuge in Robinson Park, alone and scared. What else could have done? Killed them, treated them as any man or woman who crossed her path? She wasn't that terrible of a monster. She only dealt with those who truly deserved death.

The way he spoke was weak and childish. He had difficulty pronouncing some words, he had a muttering problem, and he couldn't stop blushing. His clothes were soaked, dirty. Clearly, they were hand-me-downs. If he was an orphan in Gotham she could only have the baseline assumption that he was born to deadbeat parents or guardian. That or the child's parents had been murdered before his eyes like most unfortunate children in this city.

She made up her mind.

Ivy bent her knees and squatted down next to the child. Beneath her usual misandry and harsh exterior...she did enjoy the presence of children and didn't enjoy directly harming them or being too rude to them. Maybe it was her old life where her parents essentially ignored her… Ivy shook her head, that was far too long ago to worry or care about now.

"Now child...you said you were from an orphanage," she said slowly, reaching her gloved hand out to take his arm. Percy shied away and looked up at her pleadingly.

"No… please, don't take me back, I don't want to go back," Percy begged, tears brimming in his eyes, "I did something bad and I can't-"

"Shhh…" Ivy commanded quietly, gesturing for him to calm down, "I'm no stranger to doing bad things. I won't take you back there...but I do want you to take a ride with me."

Percy looked at her with some slight mistrust.

"A ride…?"

Ivy flashed a smile, nodding. Percy's worries started to melt away.

Here he was, being helped out by a beautiful lady who wanted to listen to him, to help him, and take him on a ride in a cool car! Percy felt obligated to do so. The child nodded and held his arms out. Ivy's smile widened, and she reached out to pick him up, lifting the very very light child off of the ground and placing him on her hip. She laughed a little bit when Percy had instinctively wrapped his arms around her neck to hold on.

"What's your name, flower?" Pamela asked, stepping over to her ride. She turned her head to look at him and smiled, making the little one blush even more.

"My name is Percy and I'm four years old…" he replied quietly, his response is what was taught to him in Pre School. Ivy laughed lightheartedly. She reached down and opened the car door, turning to look at him.

"I'm Pamela. Pleased to meet you~."