The four years that followed Nicholas's return were a silent, meticulous campaign, a grand-scale manipulation of the American political machine.
The cosmic truths he had learned were now applied with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel, carving out a place for his new power within the halls of mortal authority.
Even as he built his empire, Nicholas lived with a constant, low-level hum of danger from the mythological world. His mother, frustratingly, kept sending their errand boys the satyrs after him.
And despite his best wards, Satyrs, those shaggy-legged enthusiastic kidnappers for Camp Half-Blood, would occasionally pick up his trail.
The Book of Probability became his primary weapon in this battle.
It couldn't make a Satyr vanish, but it could orchestrate the most frustrating series of coincidences imaginable.
A Satyr tracking his scent through Central Park would find itself caught in a sudden, chaotic protest it couldn't bypass.
Another, getting close to the Aldridge mansion, would have its reed pipes confiscated by a peculiarly vigilant beat cop for a "disturbing the peace" violation it couldn't quite explain.
One particularly persistent follower spent three days trapped in the New York City subway system after a series of "missed connections" and "sudden service changes" that felt personally tailored to its misery.
Nicholas ensured these "accidents" were never fatal, only profoundly inconvenient.
A dead Satyr could raise alarms; a flustered, delayed, and ultimately unsuccessful one was just part of the job, especially knowing their general incompetance.
He used the book to weave a tapestry of minor misfortunes around himself, a defensive perimeter of bad luck and bureaucratic nightmares for any supernatural entity that came too close without an invitation.
It was a delicate balance, letting them get just close enough to confirm his existence, but ensuring they never got close enough to deliver their pitch or, worse, attempt a forceful recruitment.
Even then Nicholas knew that this couldn't hold on forever, it was bound to lead to his mother or another God visiting him. Athena wouldn't allow for her investment to wander around freely.
Still Nicholas decided that he would have to speed up his plans to compensate.
The first step remained the construction of an unassailable academic history.
Using a potent, sustained Confusion Charm on the administration of a prestigious Manhattan private school, Nicholas inserted a four-year ghost-record of his own exemplary attendance.
This fabricated transcript was his key to enter Columbia University at fourteen alongside a sizeable donation by his father.
There, he pursued Political Science and Economics, using the Book of Probability to know the answer to every question. The silver script would reveal the exact focus of exams, the biases of professors, and the most impactful arguments to make.
He graduated summa cum laude at eighteen, his thesis on predictive geopolitical models hailed as revolutionary. He was no longer just a boy; he was a prodigy, a title he had meticulously crafted.
But a lone genius was a target. Nicholas needed a political apparatus, and he built it from the ground up, starting with his own household.
His first and most crucial project was his father, Jonathan. The Book of Probability revealed a path littered with seemingly random opportunities.
Nicholas used the book to guide Jonathan to "chance" encounters: saving a key union boss from a staged mugging, providing a "spontaneous" and brilliant solution to a logistical nightmare paralyzing the Port of New York, and delivering an increadibly accurate prediction of a minor stock market crash to a gathering of powerful donors.
Each event was a calculated nudge. Jonathan Aldridge, the obscure scholar, was rapidly transformed into a folk hero of practical intellect and uncanny foresight.
His reputation for being on the right side of every issue and having a preternatural understanding of the common man saw him propelled into politics.
With Nicholas using the book to craft his speeches, anticipate his opponents' moves, and direct campaign resources with supernatural efficiency, Jonathan won a landslide victory for Governor of New York.
He was now the head of a powerful state, a kingmaker in national politics, and his most trusted advisor was his own eighteen-year-old son.
The staff of the Aldridge mansion underwent similar transformations. Their butler, Charles, was guided through a series of improbable events: uncovering a corruption scandal that felled a long-serving Congressman and then positioning himself as the clean, reliable replacement.
With the Aldridge political machine and the book's guidance behind him, he easily won a seat in the House of Representatives.
Their driver, Henry, a sharp and disciplined man, found his path directed toward the military.
The book identified a rising star in the War Department, Colonel James McCullough, and laid out a series of events where Henry would save the Colonel's life during a botched training exercise and later provide a critical insight that prevented a procurement disaster.
The resulting patronage, combined with Henry's own competence (highlighted by the book), saw him fast-tracked to become a key military advisor within the Secretary of War's inner circle.
Nicholas quickly discovered the limitations of his new tool. The higher the position, the more "fate-resistant" an individual became.
Trying to manipulate the path of a Supreme Court Justice or the President resulted in the book's script blurring into vague generalities, the threads of probability becoming tangled and faint and thus harder to manipulate.
He theorized it was a matter of faith; the collective belief and attention of millions of people invested in these figures created a kind of protective aura, making their destinies harder to rewrite.
For anyone below that apex, however, governors, congressmen, generals, the book's guidance remained devastatingly effective.
Loyalty was insured through a combination of magic and mutual benefit. Each member of the "Aldridge Group" had undergone a minor, undetectable Compulsion Charm, nothing that would draw the attention of the God's, even if they somehow did look all they would see was the Mist manipulation available to any Demigod.
It was used, not to control them, but to instill a deep-seated, instinctive trust in Nicholas and his father.
More importantly, they were all keenly aware that their meteoric rises were inextricably linked to the Aldridge family.
Their fortunes, their power, their very identities were now tied to the network. To betray it would be to saw off the branch they were sitting on. They were loyal because it was the most logical, profitable, and safe course of action.
By the time Nicholas turned eighteen, he stood at the center of a powerful, if small, political machine. His father was the Governor of New York.
His former butler was a congressman. His former driver was an influential military advisor. He had his own credible, public reputation as an intellectual prodigy.
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