Heroes of New York

THREE - SPARKY

☤ ☤ ☤ ☤

     Percy lived farther away than I'd thought. It had been more than half an hour of following him through alleys and small streets. It was like he was trying to walk through all the sketchiest parts of the city before going home.

     Even better, it had started raining, and spandex isn't great for water-resistance. Like, at all. Percy seemed fine though, he might have even stood a little taller as the rain pounded down.

     However, once lightning struck, he started to get anxious. Was he afraid of lightning?

     Percy started walking faster, bordering on a run before he reached another alley. It didn't seem to be any different from the others, but he slowed walking through it, checking behind boxes and inside trash bins.

     Finally, opening a bin at the other end of the alley, he laughed and shook his head fondly, which confused me. That is, until he spoke.

     "Wow. I knew you were trash, but this is overdoing it a little." Percy grinned widely, reaching inside the bin as if to help someone up.

     And someone did come out of the bin, grasping Percy's forearm and frowning. He was tall, about Percy's height, and had short blond hair and blue eyes. His skin was tanned and it was because of that, that the little white scar on his lip stood out.

     "Yeah, yeah, joke all you want, I'll kick your podex when I find my glasses." The guy muttered, squinting at the bottom of the trash bin.

     Percy grabbed the guy around the waist and lifted him out of the bin like it was nothing, before reaching down next to him to retrieve the item in question.

     "My hero!" Blondie exclaimed, mock-swooning as his golden frames were presented to him.

     Percy snorted. "Sure, princess, but I'm not kissing you 'til you shower."

     The more they talked, the more I began to realize this was probably the guy Percy had told me was his 'friend' (read: boyfriend, really). I think his name was Jason, but Percy mostly referred to him as 'Sparky' and 'Superman' or even 'Grace', which I assumed to be his last name.

     It was a second before the scene caught up with me. Percy had found this guy in a dumpster, seemingly without prompting from the guy, and hadn't seemed fazed when he had to pull him out. In fact, I was pretty sure Jason was bleeding and his clothes - a blue shirt with the Superman logo and light blue jeans - were torn in several places. It only further proved that Percy Jackson was weird.

     "Come on," I heard Percy tell him, "I'll patch you up at the apartment. I just replenished my supplies."

     Jason grinned and slung an arm over the other's shoulders, leaning on him as they limped in what I assumed was the direction of Percy's apartment.

     "So why are you here, anyway? I thought you were in San-Fran helping Frank with his praetorship." Percy asked as they rounded a corner.

     Praetorship? What the hell is that? Maybe I heard wrong. I was following across the rooftops, only able to hear them with my enhanced senses and even then it was hard.

     "Well, I was until, uh, Thalia and her girls ID'd a camper that'd gone MIA during the gigantomachy. They would've followed themselves, but the... animal they're tracking wasn't exactly gonna slow down for a lost kid." Jason stared hard at Percy every few words, like they all had a double meaning.

     I turned over the sentence in my head. It was just so weird and I felt like I was missing something huge, though that may have been because I didn't know who Thalia was, what a 'camper' meant in this context, or what a 'gigantomachy' could possibly be. Google would be thoroughly consulted later.

     Despite my confusion, Percy seemed to understand what the blond was saying, nodding and smirking, making gestures with the hand I couldn't see. From then on, the two teens didn't speak a word of English. I heard bits of Spanish, Italian and French (was that Chinese?), what I assumed was Greek (which I expected, Percy had said it was his first language) and Latin, and that was really weird because not only was it supposedly a dead language, but Percy didn't exactly seem the type to study up on ancient languages. Or anything, to be honest.

     I was beginning to think they'd noticed me following them, but I hadn't even made a noise and they showed no other signs of acknowledgement.

     Keeping on their trail, the two led me to an apartment complex. It wasn't a shady building, exactly, but it wasn't nice either. It was more like the owner didn't care what the residents did as long as the building stayed intact.

     Percy lives here? I thought. It was a lot farther away from my area than I'd imagined, but maybe that was because I hadn't moved after transferring to Goode (Midtown High hadn't made it that one weird summer where everyone fell asleep).

     Percy pulled Jason inside and I did my best to hear which floor the ended up on, but it seemed that I lost track of them. Which was also weird because I had pretty damn good hearing, usually able to hear through several walls. What the hell?

     Eventually, I gave up. The only other thing I could've done was check every widow for Percy and Jason, but that came to a whole other level of creep. So after taking note of the building's location, I headed out into the city, knowing that there would no doubt be crime to stop.

     It was only when I got home that I realized the storming had stopped as soon as Percy found Jason in the alleyway. 

Just letting you guys know, I am 96% sure that I have no idea where I'm going with this, so if anyone has any suggestions, go ahead and let me know.

<3 Love y'all! Thanks for reading, any comments are wonderful.