David Rasmussen

 a.n: This is my first submission in this wiki. I was going to make an O.C., but kinda bored with making his history in the form of a narrative, so I made it into a dialogue where he's chatting with another demigod talking about their past. I hope you guys enjoy his history.  Oh, dear. I hate reading my old work. - Thoth   

History
“Who did you say your god-parent was?” John asked.

“I haven't,” David said.

John shrugged his shoulder dismissively.

“Aren't you going to tell me now?”

“You first.”

“Mine's Mars.”

“Well, you don't show it. You're not as brash as your half brothers and sisters anyway. But it explains how you managed to survive in a war zone like this.”

“Yea, I don't like it either, but I kinda feel at home here. It unnerves me though, the fact that I feel most at home while on a battlefield.”

“Hey, we can't really deny the effects of our parentage, can we?”

John nodded, “So, who's yours?”

“Ceres.”

John raised one of his eyebrows, “Ceres? I've never known that your mom's kids are able to fight as good as you.”

“Well, I'm still pretty good with farming, I guess,” David said while adjusting the position of the assault rifle on his shoulder. “But I did get to learn how to fight because of my upbringing.”

“Ahh... Yours was not a happy childhood?”

“Not as bad as some of our fellow demigods that I know of, but bad enough that I had to learn how to fight to survive.”

“My childhood was not that bad. My mom's a legacy herself, and I get to live in New Rome with her, so it was all good I guess. But no matter how good a demigod childhood is, it'd still be bad from a mortal's point of view.”

David let out a reluctant laugh, “Yea, what with the non-existent possibility of growing up with both parents – thanks to that pesky no-direct intervention rule - and the constant threat of monsters attacking us.”

John laughs a bit, but then he asked, “When did you know that Ceres is your mom?”

“It was when I came to Camp Jupiter. I was 15 then,” David said. “You?”

“Just as I said, my mom's a legacy. A third generation, but a legacy none the less, so she knew who she was dealing with when she met Mars for the first time. She told me about who my dad is since I was little, so I guess I've always known who my god parent is.”

“Lucky you,” David said.

“You said that you joined the camp at 15, that would've been... what? Six years ago?”

“Eight,” David said. “I'm 23 now.”

“That was right when I was at camp. How come I've never known you before? Which cohort did you were in?”

“The third,” David answered. “I didn't stay there long. Only two weeks or so.”

“Camp Jupiter was not to your liking?”

“It wasn't really bad, but the idea of being surrounded only with fellow demigods didn't appeal to me much. So I left.”

“Why?”

“Why, what?”

“Why did the idea of surrounded by fellow demigods not appealing to you?”

“Well, just as you said yourself, demigods' life are not exactly happy lives. Venus' kids usually got sexually abused when they were young because of their physical beauty, your half brothers and sisters usually got in to jail at a young age because of their aggressive nature, Jupiter's kids got attacked by monsters early in their lives and lost their loved ones because of it, and so on. I don't feel comfortable surrounded by those stories. I have my own story, and it's depressing enough for me. So I left.”

“Where did you go after you left the camp?”

“Back to the orphanage where I came from.”

“You were living in an orphanage?”

“Yea,” David sighed. “My father died because of an accident when I was 7.”

“Sorry...”

“It's fine. I managed.” David said. “I was lucky enough to get a good orphanage to stay with. I still need to fight against older orphans there once in a while, but the orphanage administrators were good people.”

“How did they react when you came back from camp? I assume you didn't tell them you were joining the camp when you left.”

“They scolded me, of course.” David laughed. “I ran away from there to go to the camp, what else would you expect them to react? But, as I said, they were good people. They took me in again, and I stayed there until I graduated high school.”

“And then... what?”

“Then I joined the army,” David laughed. “It seems like this Roman demigod business is too hard to get away from. Military life is just too tempting to me.”

John smiled, “Me too.”

“Well, your dad's the god of war. I think a civilian life won't suit your nature.”

“Yea...,” John sighed. “By the way, do you know how your dad met your mom?”

“Not really,” David said. “But I have a vague estimation about it.”

John stayed quiet, clearly waiting for David to elaborate. “We are talking about Ceres here, so it's quite predictable that she and my dad met for the first time at a farming related settings, right? Well, they met at a county fair. At least that was what my dad's friend told me, although he only know her as some woman, and nothing more.”

“And then what?”

“What else? Of course they had sex and made me!”

John laughed uproariously hearing that. “Damn, man, you're too straight forward in telling your own life story.”

“Well, what do you expect? That they somehow combined their thoughts and produce a baby from that combined thought, like how Minerva's kids came into being? Doy...”

John laughed again, “Oh, Minerva's kids aren't going to like what you just said about them.”

“It's more their problem then mine.” David smirked a little.

“Are you sure you're not one of my half brothers? You sure act like one.” John said while stifling his laugh.

David didn't answer with words, instead he touched the ground next to where he sat and slowly raised it. Right under his palm slowly grew a stalk of grain, and in no time at all it grew to the level of David's head while he was sitting.

“Can you or your half-siblings do that?” David asked.

“Okay, you're really your mom's kid.” John conceded. “Can you do that to all plants, or just grains?”

“Only to any farming plants really,” David said. “Grains, paddy, corn, sugar canes, and other plants like that. I heard Bacchus' kids are able to do the same thing to vine-y plants, while Vertumnus' kids can do it to fruit trees.”

“Well, from where I see it, you guys are quite lucky to have those kind of powers. At least you don't have to pack too many supplies when you're going on a journey. You just have to grow some food plants whenever you need it.” John said enviously.

David laughed a little and then asked, “How about your mom? How did she met Mars?”

“My mom's been living in New Rome all her life, and she is a beautiful woman, so it was just about when Mars would notice her. And when he did, borrowing from your technical terms, they had sex and made me.”

“What about your first monster attack? Do you remember the first time it happened?” David asked.

“I live in New Rome, remember? I never got attacked by monsters. My first fight with a monster was when I was on a mission for the camp.”

“Well, at least you were prepared, then.”

“There is no such thing as 'being prepared' for a first time fight with monsters, if you ask me.”

“At least your first fight was expected, and not surprising like mine.”

“What happened?”

“I was loitering around my orphanage to pass the time, and then this weird guy jumped at me. I was 12, so I thought he was a child molester or something, but then he spoke and his voice made me realize that that guy can not be human. His voice had this guttural feel to it, like as if it was spoken from under a deep water. And then he said that he was going to eat me. Of course at first I thought that he meant it figuratively, but then again I got the feeling that he meant the word 'eat' in a literal sense of the word.” David stopped for a moment, and shivered a little while remembering the moment of his first monster attack.

“Then what happened?” John urged.

“A senior demigod, a daughter of Apollo if I'm not mistaken, saved me. The monster turned out to be a cyclops, and that demigod just chopped the cyclops' head using her sword from behind without the cyclops evrn noticing her presence, splitting it right in the middle.” David said while moving his index finger from his forehead to his chin, demonstrating what he just said.

John cringed a little, “Apollo's kids can be very scary when they want to, can they. Just like their dad.”

“Yep, but it was effective," David said shrugging his shoulders. "Unfortunately for me, I turned my head around about a split second before the cyclops burst into sand, so I get to see how his head was split in half. It was not a sight for a 12 years old to see.”

“And then what?”

“And then the woman kind of briefed me about what just happened, about myself, about the cyclops, about the camp and New Rome. She basically gave me a crash course about 'our world', so to speak.”

“Wait.” John said. “You already knew about all this when you were 12, and yet you went to camp after you were 15? Why did it took you so long to reach the camp? Did you had trouble while you were with Lupa?”

“No, I only spend about a month and a half at Lupa's place, but I was already 15 at that time. I was that age when I get to the camp because I didn't really believe the woman – the daughter of Apollo who saved me - at first.”

“Why?”

“Well, just think about it from my point of view. I was a 12 years old orphan that was just got attacked by a weird guy, and saved by an equally weird woman, who then proceeded to tell me all this fantastic stories about Roman gods, and camps, and what ever. Would you go with that woman if you were in my position?”

John thought about it for a second before finally nodded, “You're right. It'd be crazy.”

“See?” David said.

“So, how did you survive on your own after you leave camp Jupiter?”

“Well, the training I got from Lupa was very useful in dealing with monsters.”

“But you can't just kill monsters with bare hands or with just any kind of weapon, you need a weapon made from Imperial Gold. Do you have one?”

“Well...” David smiled sneakily and raised his left hand where John saw a gold ring on David's ring finger.

“What? I asked you about weapons and you showed me that you're married? What are you trying to tell me? That your wife is a vicious woman, so vicious that you just let her do all the fighting against monsters?”

David grabbed a handful of dirt and playfully threw it at John. “No, you numnuts! I'm not married yet. And even if I were married, why would I let my wife have all the fun with the monsters?”

John laughed while patting the dirt that David threw at him off of his clothes, “Then why did you show me your ring?”

“It's a transformable sword, a Mercury's kid stole this from the camp's armory and gave it to me.”

“Why did he want to give something like that to you?”

“I had a comic book that he wanted, so we traded.”

“Those Mercury's bunch really can't stop thinking about business or stealing things.”

“Yea, I don't know how he saw the trade, but I have a feeling that I was on the winning side in that particular trade. Unless he had more impressive things on him that he stole from the armory, that is.”

“That's a big probability,” John laughed. “So, aren't you going to show that sword of yours to me?”

David just nodded once and made a fist with his left hand. He tightened his fist, and suddenly a sword sprang out of his it. “Neat, right?”

John was a bit mesmerized by the sword, “Yea...”

“This sword had protected me a lot of times. It killed two cyclops, a hell-hound, and an empousai just in the three years that I was in high school. That's not even counting the monsters that I was only able to escape from. I would've died because I didn't have a weapon to defend myself if I didn't have this sword. We kinda grew attached to each other now.” David said while tightening his grip on the sword's handle and it suddenly disappeared while a ring appeared back on his finger.

“How about after high school?”

“I joined the army, remember? Well, some monsters managed to sneak in and tried to attack me. But I'm a trained soldier now. I can deal with them quite easily. Most times it's more tricky making sure that no one was watching when I fight those monsters rather than the fighting itself.”

John smiled broadly, “Yea, I know what you mean, and I think so too.”

Suddenly they heard shootings in the distance.

“Ahh... here we go again.” John grunted while standing up, and readying his rifle.

David stood up too and said, “You know, sometimes I feel like I'd rather run up to the enemy and bludgeon them with this rifle than shooting at them. Maybe I'm more accustomed with hand to hand combat than long range fighting like this.”

“Me too,” John said while scanning their surrounding. “But if we tried to do that, the sergeant would've send us to psych ward at the military hospital because we'd look like lunatics if we did that.”

“Just listen to us, we can fight monsters without any fear, and yet we're worried about a mortal sergeant or being send to psych ward. What would our parents say?” David said while smiling.

“They would've facepalmed themselves.” John answered while smirking a little. “Now, shut up and let's get a move on. The guys need us for backup.”

David nodded and they both ran toward the sound of the shootings.