. ׁ ♥ ₊         A child of Aphrodite is nothing more than a doll, a pretty face to look upon — perhaps beautiful enough to start wars, with enough luck. That was what determined their worth. Luck. How much of their mother's beauty they inherited. Shouldn't there be more to them than just their faces? Why couldn't they have the intellect or skills to become leaders? Heroes? Why must they always be preening and rotting at the side, forgotten over time as their beauty dwindles?

. ׁ ♥ ₊         You did not want to be remembered as a beauty — you wanted to be remembered as a hero. There is a storm coming, a titan who brings change to the entire world, who promises to flip the script, and you want in. But are you ready to manipulate the hearts of those you hold dearest to your heart?

— synopsis of Percy Jackson: Quest for Love

SUHANI HAD PLAYED ALMOST every single route of the Percy Jackson otome game. Even though the plot followed Percy Jackson & the Olympians almost entirely, it had just enough drama and spice to appeal to her. Something about wounded characters lead astray by their trauma, making a recovery and finding love on the way pulled at her heartstrings like no other trope could. Nintendo and Rick had taken care of everything — aging the characters up, integrating characters that showed up in Heroes of Olympus. It was a sacred artefact of a game for any hopeless romantic of a fangirl.

SHE'D EVEN UNLOCKED ALL the hidden routes. With that, she had just one final character left to romance before clearing the entire game completely. Tension filled the air, mental health was saved, life was worth living, until — it was college application time. With college essays unwritten, portfolios left to complete, stress consuming everybody's lives, and the occasional supervillain crisis, she had to put down her Nintendo Switch and take on the hurdles that came with being alive. For a few weeks, games were completely off limits.

THE DAY FINALLY CAME when she could get home and simply dissolve into her bed to start a Quest for Love marathon. And that's when she almost got electrocuted.

CHOOSE YOUR PLAYERS‎ (ง'̀-'́)ง

➤ player one
SUHANI HARSHE

➤ player two
PETER PARKER

IT WAS A FINE DAY FOR A WALK HOME...
OR SO I THOUGHT.

c‎ ‎ ‎ ‎                             ‎
      a
r                
              s
                                      h !

*  .             

✸                     

᷈ OW!

                      💫

                   ⋆ _꙳ 

Suhani wasn't into exercise. As her group's most dedicated couch potato, you'd typically never catch her walking home from school when she could just hop onto the bus. But something was calling to her that day. The warm sun rays that felt like heaven on her skin, the clouds looking like they'd been fluffed up just right by some higher being, and her city was bright and bustling. It was one of those rare days she welcomed the noise. One of those rare days she felt one with New York, just another citizen going about their way, headphones blasting on full volume, tote-bag swinging with her every little hop.

She was just a block away from home, waiting for someone else to gamble their life on the crosswalk ahead of her so she could maintain a safe, accident-free distance behind them. But what to do, their city was not kind to civilians. What, with the years of constant harassment from thugs, thieves, kidnappers, mutants, aliens, and of course, the Avengers themselves, one would think things would have calmed down after the defeat of Thanos, but no. Just as the traffic signal turned green, Suhani was was body slammed like five feet from where she was originally standing and into a lamppost.

"OW!" Her moment of happiness was destroyed in an instant. Suhani put a hand to her head, feeling disoriented. It took her a few moments to regain her senses. Her dull sense of pain managed to come back stronger with each beat her heart took to slow down. Her back was killing her, there was a scrape all the way from below her knee til her calf, the little hairs on her arms were standing up and just as she made out the figure of a girl in denim sprawled across her stomach, she was lifted up, up, and away by an invisible force.

The street erupted into chaos as cars made parabolic arcs through the air and people scattered from... visibly nothing. As the girl in the ponytail and denim jacket screamed ten feet into the air, Doctor Strange whooshed to the scene, cape fluttering in the wind. With a few hand motions, the air around the girl waved before the monster became fully visible. It was a giant octopus, one creepy eye, suckered tentacles, and it smelled like it was being toasted on a pan without butter. No, it didn't smell like sizzling barbecue. Suhani herself smelled like she'd been tossed into a grill.

Finally beginning to feel slight tingles on her skin, Suhani pondered for a moment. Had she just... gotten electrocuted?

Dr. Strange sliced the octopi's tentacles in midair, and sent his cape flying to catch the girl as she fell, and Suhani scrambled to grab her things so she could make a run for it before any octopus guts made their way onto her new button down shirt. Her tote hadn't splattered its contents onto the pavement, thankfully, and Suhani slung it over her shoulder and tried to limp out of the way.

The fight wasn't over yet, but the octopus had a new target now, and it wasn't Suhani, so she couldn't care less about what happened next, she was outta there. The direction of her apartment complex seemed to be away from the chaos, thankfully, but you never knew with these sort of things. Completely stable buildings could be crashed into and walls could be broken apart leaving nothing but you on your toilet for the world to see. ( She wasn't speaking from experience, but it had happened to other people a surprising amount of times, they had to write a whole new insurance policy about it ).

Her newly banged up leg was protesting all the way into her building and as she climbed up the stairs, but there was no way Suhani was getting into an elevator with that thing rampaging outside. Who knew when she could get stuck, or free fall, or get crushed in there. When she got to the fifth floor, the door opposite to her own creaked open, and the kind old lady, Mrs. Abernathy began her spew of greetings, "Good evening, dear, on your way back from— Oh, dear, heavens, what happened to you?"

Suhani looked down at her injury and back up at Mrs. Abernathy, "Just a little scratch." she said, not wanting to scare the poor woman, "Mrs. A, you should go back inside, it's not safe to be heading out right now."

"What, is it that darned troublemaker again, what was his name? Low, Lowes, Loweski? Lewinsky?"

"No, it's just a... Gigantic octopus this time." Suhani didn't bother correcting her, Mildred hadn't got any memory cells left to store that information in. "I'll let you know when it's okay to go out, don't worry about your groceries."

"You're such a dear. I'll just take a little nap then." she smiled, saying one last thing before shutting her door completely, "Don't forget to tell your mother not to make dinner, I'll be bringing over some lasagna for the family."

"I'll do that!" Suhani grinned. She loved that lasagna! Nothing beat her comfort food and some game time after a long day outside.

🆂🆃🅰🆁🆃 🅶🅰🅼🅴
➤ ʏᴇꜱ          ɴᴏ     

AUTHOR'S NOTE ✸꙳⋆

hii, hello! im so so excited about this omg suhani is so much fun to write already, not to mention peter parker AND percy jackson in the same universe mmmmm malewife<3. i always appreciate comments no matter how short, so please give this lots of love hehe. this takes place during multiverse of madness and is right after no way home, if you're curious about the timeline. forgive me for any errors im too excited to proofread rn, i'll fix them later if i catch any.

this one's for cheri, naava, alice, & lux for hearing me rant about it a couple times <3

thank you for reading :D

esme