A/N Io non aquisto.
Book of the Update: Deeper by Gordon and Williams
P.S. Sorry this took so long; first week of school and all. I had three essays due after being back only 4 days….I've been a bit busy.
Plus, I had to re-read MOA, because I couldn't remember what happened specifically, so that took some time too.
I've decided this story will be a rewrite of MOA, like most of you asked for, but not completely identical; that would just feel like cheating. A lot of the dialogue still comes from Rick Riordan, so this story is like maybe 1/3 mine, 2/3 Rick's.
Chapter 1
I'm not sure if anyone really cares or needs to know how I ended up drooling over Leo Valdez along with a sea of nymphs and an angry long-dead demigod, but Leo says that it's good storytelling that I tell every detail. I think he just wants me to tell everyone that he was cool, at least for a little while. Alright, he's sticking his tongue out at me, very immaturely, if I may add, so I better get on with the story.
It was right after that really awkward first group meeting on board the Argo II. Leo, Hazel, and I were getting supplies for Leo to repair the ship with (by the way, riding Arion, Hazel's magic horse, was, to borrow one of Leo's favorite words, epic.) when we had an unfortunate encounter with a minor goddess by the name of Nemesis.
She was sitting on a boulder in basically the middle of nowhere, with a black-and-chrome motorcycle with some pretty weird wheels parked nearby. The woman herself has curly black hair and was too skinny to be healthy. She matched her bike, decked out all in leather and looking like a mash-up between Michael Jackson and Hell's Angels. She was pulling little balls out of a big sack and breaking them open –oysters maybe?
I looked at Leo and he seemed a bit wary as well, but Hazel forged ahead before I could stop her. As we got closer, I noticed details, like the whip attached to the woman's belt, and the skeleton on her jacket. The balls turned out not to be oysters, but fortune cookies. Hundreds and hundreds of fortune cookies. She kept cracking them open and reading the fortunes, either tossing the cookie into a basket or onto the ground after she read the slip of paper.
"What are you doing?" Leo asked and I almost smacked him. The woman was obviously a goddess, she deserved respect. I knelt to the ground and pulled him with me, Hazel already following my lead.
"Forgive him," I said solemnly with my head bowed. The woman made a snarling noise that was almost a laugh.
"Aunt Rosa?" Leo asked and I looked up at him. He had followed me to his knees, but was now looking at the goddess in confusion.
"Leo," I hissed, but the goddess didn't seem to mind his idiocy.
"Is that what you see? Interesting," she commented, looking at Leo as a dog would look at raw meat. I inched a bit closer to him, like I could protect him better from a few centimeters difference. The goddess turned to me. "And you, my dear?"
I looked at her for the first time, and recoiled when I saw a face that I knew well, though it was a bit different. The woman bore Blackbeard's face, but the features were a bit more feminine and the beard gone. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. "I see a goddess, ma'am."
She laughed a mirthless laugh and turned to Hazel. "Ah. Hazel Levesque. What do you see?"
"You— you look like Mrs. Leer. My third grade teacher. I hated you."
I expected her to just kill us right then for Hazel and Leo's disrespectfulness, but the woman cackled. "Excellent. You resented her, eh? She judged you unfairly?"
"You— she taped my hands to the desk for misbehaving," Hazel said. "She called my mother a witch. She blamed me for everything I didn't do and— No. She has to be dead. Who are you?"
"Oh, Leo knows," the woman said. "How do you feel about Aunt Rosa, mijo?"
Leo was thinking for a while, and I could almost see the gears working in his mind. He looked back up at the unknown goddess, anger burning in his eyes, and I swear I thought I saw his hands spark.
"Nemesis," he said. "You're the goddess of revenge."
"You see?" The goddess smiled at Hazel and me. "He recognizes me." She motioned for us to stand with her finger and I rose to my feet, trying to stand tall and yet still be respectful before Nemesis.
Nemesis cracked another cookie and made a disgusted face. "You will have great fortune when you least expect it," she read. "That's exactly the sort of nonsense I hate. Someone opens a cookie, and suddenly they have a prophecy that they'll be rich! I blame that tramp Tyche. Always dispensing good luck to people who don't deserve it!"
Leo glanced at me then looked at the mound of broken cookies. "Uh… you know those aren't real prophecies, right? They're just stuffed in the cookies at some factory—"
"Don't try to excuse it!" Nemesis snapped. "It's just like Tyche to get people's hopes up. No, no. I must counter her." Nemesis flicked a finger over the slip of paper, and the letters changed to red. "You will die painfully when you most expect it. There! Much better."
"That's horrible!" I said before I could stop myself. "You'd let someone read that in their fortune cookie, and it would come true?"
Nemesis sneered and I had to hold back a shudder. It was creepy seeing Blackbeard's face on this woman's body. She looked at Hazel.
"My dear Hazel, haven't you ever wished horrible things on Mrs. Leer for the way she treated you?"
"That doesn't mean I'd want them to come true!"
"Bah." The goddess resealed the cookie and tossed it in her basket. "Tyche would be Fortuna for you, I suppose, being Roman. Like the others, she's in a horrible way right now. Me? I'm not affected. I am called Nemesis in both Greek and Roman. I do not change, because revenge is universal."
"If I may ask," I ventured cautiously, trying to disguise my anger and repulsion. "What are you doing here? What do you want?"
She opened another cookie and muttered something about lucky numbers before she answered my question. "The gods are in terrible shape. It always happens when a civil war is brewing between you Romans and Greeks. The Olympians are torn between their two natures, called on by both sides. They become quite schizophrenic, I'm afraid. Splitting headaches. Disorientation."
"But we're not at war," Leo insisted and I winced.
"Um, Leo…" Hazel pointed out what I was thinking. "Except for the fact that you recently blew up large sections of New Rome."
"Not on purpose!" he cried, his hand up in the air. I pushed them down gently.
"We know that, Leo, but the rest of my people don't. they'll be pursuing us in retaliation."
Nemesis cackled. "Leo, listen to the girl. War is coming. Gaea has seen to it, with your help. And can you guess whom the gods blame for their predicament?"
Leo's face fell and he looked down at his shoes. I could tell what he was thinking, but it wasn't true.
"Juno," I said. "If war breaks out, the gods will blame Juno for bringing the two sides together." I was looking right at Leo as I spoke, and when he looked up, I saw in his eyes that he got my meaning: it's not your fault.
"So why are you here?" he asked.
"Why, to offer my help!" Nemesis smiled wickedly.
I glanced at Hazel. She looked like she'd just been offered a free snake.
"Your help," Leo said.
"Of course!" said the goddess. "I enjoy tearing down the proud and powerful, and there are none who deserve tearing down like Gaea and her giants. Still, I must warn you that I will not suffer undeserved success. Good luck is a sham. The wheel of fortune is a Ponzi scheme. True success requires sacrifice."
Sacrifice? I didn't like the sound of that. Neither did Hazel, apparently.
"Sacrifice?" her voice was tight. "I lost my mother. I died and came back. Now my brother is missing. Isn't that enough sacrifice for you?"
"Right now," Leo said in a carefully controlled voice, "all I want is Celestial bronze."
"Oh, that's easy," Nemesis said. "It's just over the rise. You'll find it with the sweethearts."
"Wait," Hazel said. "What sweethearts?"
Nemesis popped a cookie in her mouth and swallowed it, fortune and all. "You'll see. Perhaps they will teach you a lesson, Hazel Levesque. Most heroes cannot escape their nature, even when given a second chance at life." She smiled. "And speaking of your brother Nico, you don't have much time. Let's see… it's June twenty-fifth? Yes, after today, six more days. Then he dies, along with the entire city of Rome."
Hazel's eyes widened. "How… what—?"
"And as for you, child of fire." She turned to Leo. "Your worst hardships are yet to come. You will always be the outsider, the seventh wheel. You will not find a place among your brethren. Soon you will face a problem you cannot solve, though I could help you… for a price."
His face was hard and I smelled smoke, looking down just in time to see him shove a burning hand into his pocket. "I like to solve my own problems."
I was still a bit preoccupied with the fact that Leo's freaking hand was on fire, but I vaguely remember Nemesis giving him a fortune cookie and disappearing in a cloud of black smoke.
We walked, we talked, we got sentimental, Hazel told us how she died, Leo told us about his magic flame powers, yada, yada, yada. To cut to the chase, we met Echo, from the myth, that nymph who has to repeat everything anyone says because she fell in love with a guy who fell in love with himself. Leo seemed to feel pretty bad for her, but I'd seen worse. The story of Echo had never been one of my favorites – it was her own fault, after all; she fell for the stupid guy in the beginning. The story actually reminded me a bit of myself and Jason last year, but Juno had stolen him away and thankfully gotten me outta that trap. Now it was all Piper.
Anyway, we – Echo included – went down to where the Celestial bronze was, but couldn't get it because Narcicuss was too busy using it as a mirror. Then, we decided to let Leo come up with a plan, and we all know how well that works.
So that's how I ended up following around Leo with Echo at my side, shouting his praise and feeling his muscles (which were pretty impressive for a guy who can't pick up a sword, let me tell you).
The crowd of nymphs scattered in surprise. Leo shooed them away as if they were bothering him. "No autographs, girls. I know you want some Leo time, but I'm way too cool. You better just hang around that ugly dweeb Narcissus. He's lame!"
"Lame!" Echo said with enthusiasm.
The nymphs muttered angrily.
"What are you talking about?" one demanded.
"You're lame," said another.
his own reflection. "You know how ugly Narcissus is?" Leo asked the crowd. "He's so ugly, when he was born his mama thought he was a backward centaur— with a horse butt for a face."
Some of the nymphs gasped. Narcissus frowned, as though he was vaguely aware of a gnat buzzing around his head.
"You know why his bow has cobwebs?" Leo continued. "He uses it to hunt for dates, but he can't find one!"
One of the nymphs laughed. The others quickly elbowed her into silence.
Narcissus turned and scowled at Leo. "Who are you?"
"I'm the Super-sized McShizzle, man!" Leo said. "I'm Leo Valdez, bad boy supreme. And the ladies love a bad boy."
"We love a bad boy!" I squealed, planting a kiss on Leo's cheek that he grinned widely at.
Leo took out a pen and autographed the arm of one of the nymphs. "Narcissus is a loser! He's so weak, he can't bench-press a Kleenex. He's so lame, when you look up lame on Wikipedia, it's got a picture of Narcissus— only the picture's so ugly, no one ever checks it out."
Narcissus knit his handsome eyebrows. His face was turning from bronze to salmon pink. For the moment, he'd totally forgotten about the pond, and I could see the sheet of bronze sinking into the sand.
"What are you talking about?" Narcissus demanded. "I am amazing. Everyone knows this."
"Amazing at pure suck," Leo said. "If I was as suck as you, I'd drown myself. Oh wait, you already did that."
Another nymph giggled. Then another. Narcissus growled, which did make him look a little less handsome. Meanwhile Leo beamed and wiggled his eyebrows over his goggles and spread his hands, gesturing for applause. "That's right!" he said. "Team Leo for the win!"
"Team Leo for the win!" Echo shouted. She'd wriggled into the mob of nymphs, and because she was so hard to see, the nymphs apparently thought the voice came from one of their own.
"Oh my god, I am so awesome!" Leo bellowed.
"So awesome!" Echo yelled back.
"He is funny," a nymph ventured. "And cute, in a scrawny way," another said.
"Scrawny?" Leo asked. "Baby, I invented scrawny. Scrawny is the new sizzling hot. And I GOT the scrawny. Narcissus? He's such a loser even the Underworld didn't want him. He couldn't get the ghost girls to date him."
"Eww," said a nymph.
"Eww!" Echo agreed.
"Stop!" Narcissus got to his feet. "This is not right! This person is obviously not awesome, so he must be…" He struggled for the right words. It had probably been a long time since he'd talked about anything other than himself. "He must be tricking us." Apparently Narcissus wasn't completely stupid. Realization dawned on his face. He turned back to the pond. "The bronze mirror is gone! My reflection! Give me back to me!"
"Team Leo!" one of the nymphs squeaked. But the others returned their attention to Narcissus.
"I'm the beautiful one!" Narcissus insisted. "He's stolen my mirror, and I'm going to leave unless we get it back!"
The girls gasped. One pointed. "There!"
Hazel was at the top of the crater, running away as fast as she could while lugging a large sheet of bronze.
"Get it back!" cried a nymph.
Probably against her will, Echo muttered, "Get it back."
"Yes!" Narcissus unslung his bow and grabbed an arrow from his dusty quiver. "The first one who gets that bronze, I will like you almost as much as I like me. I might even kiss you, right after I kiss my reflection!" If I wasn't too busy being run over by a bunch of crazed nymphs, I would have rolled my eyes. "And get those demigods!" Narcissus spat unattractively, pointing at us.
Leo grabbed my hand and led me through the nymphs, as he could see over them, and I couldn't. Once again, I mentally cursed the gods for making me short.
We quickly caught up with Hazel and helped her carry the huge sheet of bronze back up the hill and prepared to fight the horde or nymphs trying to kill us, but luckily, Arion got there just in time.
I felt bad leaving Echo, but it was her own decision and we didn't have much of a choice. I tried to remember her face, but it was already fading by the time I looked away.
A/N Okey dokey, there you go! Suggestions? Comments? Concerns? Reviews in general?