Graveyard - Halsey
- Time skip brought to you by Annabeth falling for Percy (I'm hilarious) -
"-and then the hunters showed up, I explained to a child what a virgin was, Thorn jumped off a cliff, the helicopter turned into a bunch of birds, I became a lawyer, and they let me go," I finished explaining, catching my breath. Luke just sat there for a moment, shocked.
"So..." he began. "We don't have the two demigod siblings?"
"Correct."
"We lost a helicopter?"
"Yep."
"And the hunters are against us?"
"Right."
Luke sighed, running a hand through his hair. "You," he said. "Are very lucky that Thorn managed to survive, and brought us Annabeth as bait."
"Wait what," I said, eyebrows raised in questioning. "Then where's Annabeth?" I asked. "She's not on the ship, right?"
"No," he said. "She's holding up the sky, back in San Francisco. At least, until we make Artemis do it." I nodded in understanding. The temperature in the room suddenly dropped, but I ignored it.
"I see," I said. "So that's who we're using to free Atlas... finally, the plan isn't half baked anymore." I grabbed a butterscotch candy from the bowl on his desk.
"Krys," he said as I unwrapped the candy. "That's like your seventh candy, and that's just in this meeting. At this point, just take the whole bowl." I smiled, grabbing the bowl as the temperature in the room rose, then leveled out back at room temperature. Weird... oh well.
"Gladly," I said, hugging the bowl. "Did you really think that when I said you needed candy for your office, that I didn't basically mean 'Luke can I have candy'? Come on Luke, you know better than that. These are my favourite, of course they're gonna be my candies as soon as I see them." He sighed again.
"You give me so many grey hairs..." he said, slumping on the desk. He waved a hand towards the door. "Get out," he said tiredly.
"Ok old man," I said, walking out the door. "I'm taking my candies with me, you've fallen for my master plan. Mwahahaha I have all the candy." I shut the door behind me, laughing quietly as I made my way to my room.
- Time skip brought to you by Luke's Krys' Candy -
That night I had a really weird dream.
Five shall go west to the goddess in chains
One shall be lost in the land without rain
The bane of Olympus shows the trail
Campers and hunters combined prevail
The mission fire and war will take
A friendship bound to strengthen or break
The Titan's curse must one withstand
And one shall perish by a parent's hand
Well that was weird as shit... wonder what it means.
- Time skip brought to you be Krys ignoring cryptic dream warnings -
"So if we go all the way down the east coast, we can probably avoid the Gulf of Mexico altogether if we go between Cuba and Haiti," I suggested, looking down at the large map on the meeting table.
It was the morning after the events of Westover Hall, and I'd been woken up early to attend a meeting that had apparently been postponed until I got back. We had to plan our route to Atlas' Mountain, and unfortunately, none of the demigods there had a very good knowledge of geography. Thank you, American Public School System.
Aurelie nodded, "I agree, but we have to minimize our supply stops." Aurelie was a daughter of Notus, the south wind, as well as the only other demigod here who could be trusted to know where I was talking about. She was probably about 17, she had originally lived in Quebec before moving to Maine, but she had dark skin and honey-colored eyes that showed her Caribbean heritage. The Princess Andromeda had picked her up on the coast of Maine a couple of months back, so she was a relatively new, though useful, addition. And it totally wasn't just because she was teaching me French better than the Aphrodite kids ever had.
Zayden groaned from his spot on the couch under two blankets. "Can someone please show me what you're talking about on the map?" he asked. I sighed, the son of Deimos could be terrifying in battle, but the scariest thing about him was how little was in his head. He was 14, only a year older than me, but he acted 3 years younger. I liked to tease that he was 14 going on 5.
"Get over here and I'll show you," I said. He flopped off the couch onto the floor, quickly standing up and coming over to the table. "So," I explained. "We're here, and we're trying to get here." I pointed to the coast of Massachusetts, then to the Californian coast. "We're going to go down the coast, and pass between those two islands there." I traced my finger between Cuba and Haiti.
Aurelie aggressively put her finger down on Panama. "There's a really big canal there," she told Zayden. "We're gonna go through to the pacific, then we're gonna go straight up the coast." She looked up at me. "We need to decide where to stop," she said, handing me a couple of red push pins. I studied the map for a second.
"The latest we could probably stop next would be somewhere in North Carolina," I said. "We'd have to stop again in Florida before going to the Caribbean, but we could probably make it past Cuba before stopping again in Jamaica."
Zayden nodded. "We should stop in Panama when we go through the canal, if we want to keep the stops at consistent distances," he said. I ruffled his hair.
"I knew we kept you around for a reason," I told him playfully. We had recruited him when we had stopped in Georgia a couple of months ago, so he definitely wasn't used to the cold like we'd had on the ship for the past few days. "Glad to know the heat in the south didn't completely cook your brain."
"Hey!" he protested. "I think the snow up here's frozen yours. There ain't no way you aren't cold right now. It's like 50 degrees out." I placed a push pin into the North Carolina Coast, writing down 'Wilmington NC' as the first stop on our list.
"I think you and Jamie share half a brain cell between the two of you," I said. "And it bounces around in your head. When it hits perfectly in the corner, you experience intelligent thought." I put another pin into the map. "Where is Jamie anyway? Also, Miami or Fort Lauderdale?" I asked.
"Heads for Fort Lauderdale," Jamie said, walking into the room and flipping a drachma he had been holding. He caught it, putting it on his arm. "Fort Lauderdale it is," he decided, sitting on the edge of the map table and started flipping the coin repeatedly. "Nice of you guys to start without me."
"Don't look at me," I said. "They so rudely woke me up 20 minutes ago." I wrote down 'Fort Lauderdale FL' as the second bullet on my growing list of stops. "And we can probably stop in Morant Bay in Jamaica and Panama City on our way out of the canal." I wrote those ones down too. "Jamie, since you haven't contributed yet, do you by any chance know any coastal cities in..." I checked my map. "Guatemala."
"That would be a no," he said in his Boston accent. "I'm the son of Plutus, the god of wealth. Not Geographia, the goddess of Geography." Zayden looked at him in confusion.
"That's not a thing, right?" the southern boy asked. I shook my head. Idiots, all of them. I pulled out the phone that I had kept from my little adventure in Maine, zooming into Guatemala on maps.
"San Jose," I muttered, writing it down. I zoomed into Mexico, handing the phone to Zayden. "Find me a decently large coastal city somewhere around that little point at the entrance to the Gulf of California, s'il vous plait." He took the phone, zooming in more as I marked the other cities with red pins on the map table.
"Got one," Zayden said after a second. "How does Nuevo Vallarta sound?" I took the phone, taking a look at the city. I gave a hum of approval, marking Nuevo Vallarta down on my list and on the map.
"Not bad," I told him. "We should probably see if we can stop outside of the US as little as possible, it's just a lot harder when none of us have passports, and getting through the canal is gonna be a hassle enough. Do you think we can make it all the way to California from the other side of the Gulf before we stop again?"
Luke spoke up from his desk on the other side of the room, "It'll be a stretch, but we can probably make it to San Diego if we plan accordingly and stock up at Nuevo Vallarta." Jamie jumped, startled by the sound of Luke's voice.
"And when the hell did you get here?" Jamie asked Luke accusingly. "I swear, one of these days one of you's gonna give me a heart attack."
"Ok skater boy, we get it," I told him. "You gave me a heart attack when you walked in. I thought I'd traveled back to the 80's."
"Actually," the Boston boy started. "I'll have you know-"
"There should be planning happening," Luke reminded, not looking towards us. "You know, at the planning meeting that Krys was so rudely awakened for."
"I agree," I said. "And next time you wake me up before sunrise there better be a damned good reason or-"
"Planning," Luke reminded us from the other side of the room. I scoffed, looking back at the map and putting San Diego on there and my list.
"And from there we go to San Francisco!" I said. "Well, my work here is done! I'll see you all later!" I gave a two finger salute and started towards the door.
"Wait a minute, Krys," Luke said. "I have something I need to talk to you about. The rest of you are dismissed." I groaned.
"Why must you torture me like this?" I asked jokingly as the last of the demigods filed out the door, shutting it behind them. "Did someone clog the toilet again? Because it wasn't me!"
"No," he said, turning around. Only then did I see how tired he looked. Luke had dark circles under his eyes, and he looked at least two shades paler than the last time I had seen him outside. "I have an assignment for you," he said.
"Damn Luke," I exclaimed. "You look like shit." He chuckled.
"It comes with the paperwork." He waved a stack of papers at me. "Anyways, your assignment." I nodded expectantly. " You're aware that the hunter's are now involved, right?" I nodded again.
"Yea," I said. "But what does that have to do with anything? We'll crush both camps, whether they have the hunters or not."
"Well," Luke said. "Since we're going to use Artemis to free the general, it appears that the hunters and campers have sent out a quest to free the goddess from her chains." He paused. "I need you to stop them. Actually..." he paused. "That's unrealistic, even I couldn't stop them. But I need you to slow them down as much as possible, weaken them so that when they get to the mountain, they'll be easy to defeat." He looked up at me. "Can you do that? It's not an undercover mission this time, and I'll get you backup as soon as possible, but I just need you to get a head start on them, and you'll be taking one of our newer recruits that I think will be useful."
"Who?" I asked, confused as to why we were taking a newbie on a mission.
"Xavier Reid, son of Ares," Luke said. "He has a rather unique skill set that I think will come in handy on this particular mission."
"The 14 year old guy? We picked him up back in Virginia not even a month ago, right?" I asked. Luke nodded. "Well, what's so special about him?"
"He has quite a useful power," Luke told me. "He can create or exaggerate any disagreements or tension between two people up to a group of people, and he can make feelings of anger and frustration stronger. The more there already is, the more he can do with it. So, in a mixed group like they sent on the quest, especially with the hunters..."
"There's a lot of tension," I finished his sentence. I thought about it for a moment, before slowly nodding. "Yea," I said. "I can do that. When do we start?"