Mount Justice
August 19, 19:39 EDT
Aeliana stood just outside of the ring, to the left of M'gann, sipping at a blueberry smoothie. After becoming concerned with her sugar intake, Kaldur and M'gann had cut her off from cookies for a little while, with Aquaman's permission before. Not even the girl's best pegasus eyes, which had gotten her the uniform hanging up in her bedroom as a gift from her stepfather in the Fisherman Kingdom, had made them budge on that ban so far. She was still allowed to bake to her heart's content, but she couldn't help the evil eye she gave to Wally as she watched him munch on her precious blue chocolate chip cookies.
She was only brought back out of her glaring session when she heard Artemis say, "Kaldur's nice, don't you think? Handsome, commanding... You should totally ask him out."
"He's like a big brother to me," M'gann giggled. "But do you know who would make the cutest couple? You and Wally."
Aeli didn't miss the disgusted look Artemis had as she glanced at the speedster.
"You're so full of passion, and he's so full of... of-"
"It?" Artemis offered, causing all three girls to chuckle a bit.
"Hey, Aeli, is there a guy that you like?" the Martian questioned. "I heard you talking to a boy last night in the bathroom when I got up for some water."
Aeliana cursed herself in Ancient Greek. She really needed to be more careful about Iris-Messaging around here. She'd figured that she could tell Percy to be quiet if she heard footsteps, but she hadn't accounted for the fact that M'gann could fly. What if the redhead had chosen to poke her head in? Granted, the Mist might've made it look like she had a computer in her lap or something, but from what she'd seen, M'gann held a strong belief in magic, so it likely wouldn't be as effective. The brunette decided she had to be more careful from now on, lest she get an earful from Chiron or have Mr. D turn her into a dolphin... again.
"Hm? Oh, that was my brother, Percy. I promised him I'd call every night," she explained, having gotten good at hiding her emotions. One did not survive April Fools at Camp Half-Blood without a good poker face. "And, as for boys? I'm not really interested in dating." Much to the chagrin of the entire Aphrodite cabin.
The brunette wasn't against love, rather the opposite, actually. She fully supported Percy's relationship with Annabeth, as well as the relationships of everyone else at camp, but dating for herself was... difficult.
Simply put, she had too many trust issues to put herself out there. She believed that if there was someone out there who was meant for her, she'd find them with time. However, that didn't mean she was going to stop hanging out with Piper, or that she wouldn't let some of the other Aphrodite girls try to find a guy for her. She didn't have the heart to turn the mostly sweet girls down; especially not sweet, ten-year-old Bailey.
"You're not?" M'gann asked in surprise.
"... If the right guy comes along, I'll give it a shot. I do believe that everyone out there has their perfect partner, but, well," the girl wanted to say that Aphrodite is almost as good at holding grudges as Hades and his kids, but instead, she just said, "Fate has a funny way of doing things. Besides, Wally would die if I started making cookies for a boy other than him."
The girls began to laugh a bit at that until Red Tornado began to descend from a hole in the ceiling, in the middle of the arena before starting towards something else. However, he didn't get far, as Wally ran over immediately.
"Do you have a mission for us?" the speedster asked excitedly.
"Mission assignments are the Batman's responsibility," the robot responded accordingly.
"Well, the Batman is off with the Robin, doing the Dynamic Duo thing in Gotham, but, you're headed somewhere, right?" Wally asked eagerly, making a bunch of weird hand motions that Aeliana really didn't get. Was she really as out of touch as the other kids at camp said? "A hot date, or a mission?"
"If we can be of help," Kaldur interjected.
The robot paused, before turning and bringing up a holo-screen with an elderly looking man on it. "This is Kent Nelson, a friend. He is 106 years old."
"Guy doesn't look a day over 90," Wally whispered to Artemis.
"And he has been missing for twenty-three days," Tornado continued. "He was a charter member of the Justice Society; the precursor to your mentor's Justice League."
"Of course," Aqualad said in recognition. "Nelson was earth's Sorcerer Supreme; he was Doctor Fate."
"More like Doctor Fake," Wally muttered to Artemis, causing Aeliana to frown. "Guy knows a little advanced science and Dumbledores it up to scare the bad guys and impress the babes."
The brunette couldn't help but reach a leg over to kick the speedster in the shin.
"Kent may simply be on one of his walkabouts, but he is caretaker to the Helmet of Fate-the source of the Doctor's mystic might- and it is unwise to leave such power unguarded."
M'gann began to gush about the man, but Aeliana wasn't listening. She knew she recognized the name 'Kent Nelson', but she'd just hoped she was wrong. At one point, Aeli had struggled to block the horses' voices out of her head, so Chiron had brought in Nelson. The man had used his expertise in magic to teach her how to do so effectively. However, she couldn't very well have her new friends find out about her just yet, as she wasn't sure how they'd take it. So, as such, she took out the pouch one of her friends from the Hecate cabin had given her; little orbs that would cause her to temporarily become ill if she needed to back out of a mission for whatever reason.
Did it count as self-harm? Possibly, but Ana wasn't quite ready to be discovered, so she simply downed one of the pellets before hiding it down her shorts.
However, it was only as she was putting the pouch away that she noticed a note on the side that read: 'Results may vary; please allow up to four hours for it to take effect'.
Oh, Di Immortales.
Somebody was getting strangled the next time she visited the camp.
Salem
August 19, 20:22 EDT
"Anyone else weirded out by the fact that the coordinates Tornado gave us to find the magical Helmet of Fate... are in Salem?" Ana questioned. She'd-with much effort- read through a few of Percy's history textbooks; she knew what tended to happen to magic users in Salem back in the day. Plus, she just felt uncomfortable around here. Salem was, ironically, one of Hecate's favorite places to hang out, so most of her demigod children were from Salem and its surrounding areas. It didn't help that the place was a veritable hot spot for monster activity.
"Eh, it's a bit strange, but we're just here to make sure the Helmet's safe, right?" Wally smirked.
She had to wonder how he wasn't a child of Aphrodite, or maybe even Hermes. Either one would work with his personality.
As soon as they stepped outside, Aeliana clutched her head. A downside of her mother having been an expert in Atlantean sorcery and her father being a Greek god? She could sense magic. Not all of the time, mostly if it was in large powers or amounts, but this? This magic was enough to give her a headache; it was more magical power than she'd ever been exposed to before. She didn't count Kronos or the Titan war; those didn't count. A Titan's power was far different from magic, after all.
"So, what do you think? Micro-opto electronics combined with phase shifting?" Artemis guessed in an attempt to make Wally drop the 'I believe in magic' facade.
The redhead started to agree, but then vehemently denied it when he noticed M'gann walking closer.
"D-Definitely not," Ana argued. "I can sense magic, and... Holy Hera, this is a lot. Enough to give me a headache."
"You can sense magic?" M'gann asked in surprise.
"Not always," Aeli admitted. "It's mostly only if it's really powerful, or if it's highly concentrated. Otherwise, I just have basic Atlantean abilities combined with Hydrokinesis... Ugh, ow... Do you guys mind if I sit in the bioship for a second? To catch my bearings?"
Kaldur insisted that she do so while they talked among themselves, and the girl did just that, sighing to herself. "Oh, Styx, why me," she mumbled, holding her head. After a moment to catch her bearings, she stared at the tower outside that certainly hadn't been there before, following the others inside.
"Huh? Cozy... Wait, my headache is gone!... Maybe because we're inside the source of all that powerful magic?" the girl mumbled to herself.
"Where'd the door go?"
Nemesis just hates me, doesn't she? Aeli thought to herself. 'Goddess of divine retribution' my scales; more like the goddess of pettiness... No offense, Lady Nemesis; please don't hate me any more than you already seem to.
The girl nearly jumped out of her skin when a hologram of Kent Nelson appeared, causing Aeli's hand to shoot for her pocket. She kept her trident there, though it was in the form of a collectible Mytho-Magic coin for safety purposes.
"Welcome. You have entered with a key, but the tower doesn't recognize you. Please state your purpose and intent," the hologram said firmly.
And, of course, everything went to Hades when Wally opened his big mouth.
"We are true believers, here to find Doctor Fate," the redhead said in an exaggerated manner.
The hologram frowned at the teen, disappearing. Aeliana hurriedly flipped the coin to turn it to trident form, just in time for the floor to literally fall out from under them into a lava pit. The girl hurriedly lunged her weapon into the side of the wall but skidded a ways before actually stopping.
M'gann began to float and grabbed Wally, Artemis launched a grapple for herself and Aqualad, and Superboy did the same thing Aeli did with his hands. Thank the gods for Kryptonian strength and invulnerability.
Why did the girl feel so weak? Why was her vision blurring? Why was she sweating so much? One look down and she remembered exactly why, and why M'gann and Kaldur were also struggling.
Lava. Of course, it was lava; a high power heat source that would incapacitate her, Aqualad and M'gann long before it dealt with the others.
"Having trouble... maintaining altitude," M'gann admitted. "I'm so hot."
"Yes you are," Wally agreed.
"Wally!" Artemis and Aeli chastised.
"Hey, inches above sizzling death; I'm entitled to speak my mind!"
"My physiology, along with Aeliana and M'gann's, are susceptible to extreme heat," Kaldur said honestly. "We must climb out quickly."
M'gann breathed heavily before bopping herself on the head with her free hand. "Hello, Megan! We never truly... answered the question. Red Tornado sent us... to see if Mr. Nelson and the Helmet of Fate... were safe!"
The moment the bottom closed up, everyone dropped to the bottom, surprised by how cool it was.
Aeliana breathed heavy, simply ignoring Artemis and Wally's fighting and everyone else as she tried to calm down. She'd never truly realized that it was her Atlantean half that caused her problems with heat. She'd just figured that she was extra sensitive to it, but this just went to show how little she knew of her Atlantean physiology.
Then, she just stared as Aqualad opened a panel of the platform keeping them from the lava, only to have wind and snow rush out instead.
... My dad is the Greek god of the seas, and I still don't understand any of this!
Choosing to continue ignoring Wally and Artemis for now, Aeliana sighed and walked forward, enjoying the cold. "Gods, this feels good," she murmured softly.
"You like the cold?" M'gann asked with a smile.
Aeli just nodded. "Yeah, I do. I guess it comes with the territory of being a New Yorker; I'm so used to extremes in any season that with the exception of heat, I adapt really well to extreme weather changes."
"I can't let go!" Artemis and Wally called out as they both took hold of a cane that was floating in front of them, yelling in surprise as it lifted them into the air and then teleported them both away with a golden flash.
"Well... that happened."
~*~
"I don't understand Wally," M'gann said honestly. "It's almost like he needs to believe that the impossible can't happen."
"Wally uses his understanding of science to control what he cannot comprehend," Kaldur explained. "Acknowledging the existence of magic would be to relinquish that last vestige of control."
"To be honest, even with my strong belief in the supernatural, I can see where our resident speedster is coming from," Aeliana admitted, letting some snowflakes fall onto her open palm and slowly melt away. "When things that are beyond your control happen too many times, then you stop believing in wonderful things like miracles or magic, and you grip desperately onto something that'll give you control."
"It sounds as though you speak from experience," Kaldur said in surprise.
Aeli sighed, folding her arms behind her head. "I do. A lot of the kids at the orphanage I grew up in... they lost hope in things like magic, and gave up on the possibility that things might get better. The kids like that... they got into some real trouble, and many of them even got killed because they got involved in some bad things out of a sheer need for control. It sucks, but it's a fact of life that when bad things happen in your life, you cling to control as hard as you can."
~*~
"So, Nelson is... truly gone?" Chiron asked over the IM.
"Yeah... sacrificed himself to protect the Helmet of Fate," Ana said quietly, head hanging. "... I'm sorry, sir; I know how close the two of you were."
"It is sad... but I know that he's been missing his lovely Inza for many years now. It puts me at peace to know that once Nabu has found a new host, he'll be with her once again," the centaur said with a kindly smile. "Just promise me that you'll find a host as soon as you can; that he won't have to wait too long to see her."
The girl smiled a bit at that. "I'll do my best, sir."
Chiron nodded as she cut off the message by waving a hand through the steady stream of steam in the shower and shutting off the flashlight she'd brought in with her. She quickly got changed into a comfortable, long-hanging t-shirt before heading out, thankful that her short hair always dried off quickly.
"... I think I'm gonna finally finish up Super Mario Galaxy tonight."