[Chapter 10] Annabeth: Interrogate

"A friend of yours?" Jason asks with a look of utter bewilderment on his face. I am equally as baffled, though I'm not nearly as repulsed as Frank and Nico appear to be. The sheer number of cuss words that small angry boy shot from his mouth in two seconds were probably more than either of those two had heard in their lifetimes, combined.

"Uh, yeah." John says, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. "It's a long story. Basically, Karkat is an alien who used to troll me and three of my friends over the internet when we were only thirteen. Haha oh man did we think they were full of shit then. Now look where we are!"

"Wait." I hold up a hand to freeze him. "Do you remember?"

"Its… kinda starting to come back a little, yeah."

Every pair of eyes in the room immediately turns to me. I take a seat at the center table and motion for John to do the same. He does so with only a moment of confused hesitation. He's not the sharpest tool in she shed. "So," I start off, "What do you remember about Lord English?"

"He… was a teleporting space dog that dressed like a clown had one arm and wings and could basically summon tentacles from his midsection whenever he wanted. Also I think he was a gangster."

I stare back in a stunned silence.

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"Um… what?" I say, my normally cool and calculated interrogation face dropping with the windy boy's quick and implausible response.

John's face breaks out into a huge, stupid grin. "AHAHA got you! No, that's Jack. (Jack's also evil btw.) I don't remember much about Lord English except that I got into a fist fight with him before he was actually Lord English and while he was still just a twelve year old murderer."

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"Wow I'm starting to suspect the world you come from is a lot weirder than ours." Leo says.

"Just now?" I turn to face Leo and snap sarcastically.

"No I always guessed his world was weird but I mean, that last statement was weird. It took weird to a new level. I want our bad guy to be a giant teleporting space dog/clown with wings! That's sounds so hilarious."

John laughs and shakes his head. "He was a lot worse than he sounds. Actually he is a lot worse than he sounds because I'm pretty sure he's still alive. He uh, is cancer? No that doesn't sound right… he gave our universe cancer? He is the cancer in our universe? Okay forget it. Basically, he killed my universe and the troll's universe too. But I think maybe all along Lord English might have been responsible for that? But then again, what do I know? I'm just a speculating amnesiac."

"Okayyy." I draw out my word. "Well, what else do you remember? Do you remember being switched with Percy?"

John shakes his head. "No, you see I wasn't switched with Percy. Remember when all that flashy stuff happened to the other me in the hologram? That was me being teleported to your universe. Long story short, I stuck my hand in this intangible object, and said object made me intangible. Then I started to teleport to random places in space and time for no apparent reason. So I started to do one of the random jump things when my omnipotent sister tried to teleport me somewhere else. The result of that was me being thrown into another universe and I guess the whole experience of that was too much for my mind to take so there went my memory! Yeah, that's pretty much how all that happened."

"How did you touch something that was intangible? Where do you even find something that's intangible?" Leo asks, leaning forward with his hands on the back of a chair, looking awestruck. There's a doppy grin on his face. Oh gods… I hope these two don't start hanging out I think I'd probably have a mental breakdown.

"More importantly, why did you feel the need to touch said impalpable object?" Nico speaks up for the first time. His face gives away no emotions, but his posture says he's incredibly skeptical.

John looks over at him with that same stupid grin on his face. For a moment his blue eyes glimmer with playfulness and his head hangs ever so slightly to one side in an appearance of pure unadulterated mischief. His grin widens and favors one side of his face as he opens his mouth to utter his most idiotic sentence yet: "It was a dare"

The effect is immediate. Leo breaks out into a fit of joyous laughter, Nico scrunches his brow in disapproval, Jason grins, Piper laughs, and I am left to facepalm my forehead. "Boys are idiots." I mutter, "All of them."

Jason comes over to me with a smile on his face. "Come on Annabeth, I think maybe it's okay to just relax for a minute. With all the craziness going on, we might as well let things like this make us laugh."

"Yeeeeeees" Leo agrees immediately. "Laughter is the best medicine after all."

"Colonel Sassacre would agree!" John says, a smile of triumph on his face.

"I don't know what you're talking about but yeah!" Leo pumps a fist in the air.

I rub my temples. "Oh my gods, just strike me down now." Seriously. Someone kill me before they start making friendship bracelets and talking to each other about their life problems. The last thing I need is Leo Valdez making friends with another person who is just like Leo Valdez. One Leo is enough. Two is crossing a line.

"Okay enough!" I say, my hands moving away from the side of my face to silence the group of particularly enthusiastic laughing and chitchatting that had started. "We really need to start talking about what we're going to do now. We have Gaea threatening to destroy humanity on one hand, and some alien gangster threatening to destroy the gods on another. Which villain do we fight? How do we fight them with Percy and Hazel gone? Do we try to convince the gods to fight Lord English while we defend the Earth from Gaea? We need a course of action people!"

"She's right." Frank says. "We need a plan. I don't know about you but I'd like Hazel back. And Percy. It's just not right being separated from them. Where do we start?"

"We could revisit the prophecy?" Jason says. "Both ours and the one that Rachel gave to John."

"Good idea." I say. "Alright, first off is ours. We already figured out what most of it meant, the only line that we were still unsure on was "to storm or fire the world must fall". We figured that meant either Jason or Leo were going to do something to end Gaea."

"Wait, why does that mean Jason or Leo?" John asks, having become more talkative now that he's started to regain his memory. I think I liked him better when he didn't talk. Okay – wow that was harsh. I didn't mean that I'm just stressed. Ignore my negative thoughts; I think I might have spent a little too much time in Tartarus.

"It has to mean either Jason or Leo because Jason is the son of Jupiter, who represents storm while Leo is the son of Hephaestus, who represents fire." I answer patiently, scolding myself for snapping at him in my mind.

"Oh okay." John says. "That makes sense, hey why does Hephaestus sound familiar to me? I think… I think my friend Dave's Denizen was Hephaestus."

"Um, what's a Denizen?" Leo asks, "Also, why is my dad in your universe?"

"I dunno about that second question." John says, "But a Denizen is like this weird mystical monster thing that lives on your planet and gives you special choices in its weird, strangely comprehensible yet completely unfathomable monster gibberish."

Leo stares at John, then laughs. "That was a joke, right?"

"No. As you were saying, Annabeth."

I shake my head. "Oh no, I think the ship has sailed on that conversation. We're having this one now. What other Denizens did you have?" I ask.

"Well, mine was Typhus this weird windy guy. I never met him though so I dunno what he would have to say to me. Well actually, a doomed timeline version of myself met him, but that's a long story involving a crazy alien girl who is probably completely irrelevant and will not be of any importance now or later, ever so I won't bother explaining who she is. Anyway… oh yeah! Jade's Denizen was Echidna, she met her once for some important godly life-altering business. I… hmm I don't remember what Rose's was. Something grim probably. And also dark. That's about it."

"Typhus is a disease caused by bacteria. Unless you really wanted to tell us that your Denizen is a bacterium, I think you mean Typheus, the most powerful of all the ancient Greek monsters."

"Haha oops, yeah I think I meant the second one."

"Alright, well that's actually helpful information. Typheus, in our reality at least, is a son of Gaea. He and Echidna, the Denizen of your friend Jade, are the mother and father of all monsters. I don't know about you guys, but I don't think John landing here on our planet was just a coincidence." I turn to the others. "There's something going on here that we don't understand."

"Hmmm" John 'hmm's thoughtfully. "I hadn't thought of it before, but now that you mention it I'm finding it a little weird that all of the Denizens in our universe seem to be named after things from yours. Do you think there are some time shenanigans going on? I mean like, some really BIG time shenanigans going on? Like Lord of Time/ Muse of Life big?"

"Muse of Life? Oh yeah, that's Gaea."

"Leo, keep up." Piper scolds.

I sigh, "Yes John, there are probably shenanigans going on. I'm just trying to figure out how they're relevant. Let's move on to your prophecy. So… the lord of time is coming, we've got that. The second line is "Having just been defeated by another session's knight" does this mean anything to you?"

"Well, a knight is a class in sburb, and there were multiple sessions going on at the same time. Personally, I know of only two knights. One of which is Karkat, who you just met –" Frank groans at the mention of his name "and the other one is my pal Dave. It could be either of them."

"Alright," I say, "The next line is "The son of Neptune sits imprisoned in your place". That means Percy is where you're from. The final line however, "Stay put young Heir and await the Seer's embrace" is still a little hazy. We now know that you are an Heir. But who is the Seer?"

John's face lights up immediately. "Oh of course!" He says, "They're going to send Rose to get me! It makes perfect sense!"

"Alright." I say, "So who's Rose."

"She's my friend. Her title is the Seer of Light and none of us could really figure out what she did, but I bet it's something really crazy and intellectual. She kind of reminds me of you actually, except you're tanner and taller, and a lot more straightforward and assertive. Rose is calmer and sneakier. And when I said you're more assertive I didn't mean to say Rose isn't assertive. She is, just in a different way. She's super sarcastic."

"That was more information than I needed, thank you John." I say. "So what now then? Are we supposed to sit back and wait for your friend Rose to come and rescue you? When she does come, will she bring Percy and Hazel with her? What does this mean for us?"

"Beats me" John says. At least he's honest.

Suddenly, his watch starts to beep uncontrollably for the second time today.

"Oh no." Frank says, "It better not be that Karkat guy, I don't think I could stand another conversation with that psychopath."

John laughs. "He's not as bad as he seems. As much of an ass as Karkat is, he really is a great friend and an incredible leader. I mean, I only talked to him over the course of a day three years ago, but he hasn't changed, so my opinion of him stands."

Frank blinks and says, "I'm not even going to ask."

"John just answers your watch already." I say.

"On it!" He responds, clicking a button on the side. Once again a bunch of static laces the air along with some high pitched screeching sounds. Then a light projects an image into the air, and a person becomes visible.

It's a girl with short black hair. She, like Karkat, has light gray skin. Her eyes, like Karkat's, are yellow although her irises are a color other than his red. On her shirt is another sign I don't recognize. Her lips are black, her eyes are piercing, and when she speaks, it's with a frown.

"Hello Egbert."

"Oh God dammit!" John says. "I thought the seer was going to be Rose!"

"Think again, blue raspberry robed human. Though your outfit is delicious, it does not excuse your reality changing tomfooleries and Vantas frustrating poppycock. Such nonsense should be illegal."

"…wut."

"Do not "wut" me egderp. Though you may look as if you have only the intelligence of the average eggplant, you and I both know you are no idiot."

"Whatever Terezi, what do you want? Wait a minute… are… are those your eyes?"

"Yes John, these are my eyes. We trolls also have eyes, like you humans, from which we can see things."

"You told me you were blind!" John exclaims.

"Silence windy boy! That may have been true when we last spoke, but it is no longer. And I don't really want to fucking talk about it so shut up and listen for a minute."

"Ugh! Troll girls are so friggin WEIRD! Why are you so WEIRD? Vriska turned out to be a teenage pirate murderer, that fishy girl is a sociopath, that time girl is a death obsessed corpse party nutjob and you're some kind of crazed justice lunatic. What is it with your species and CLINICALLY INSANE FEMALES? Bluuuuuuuh!"

"Do not bluh me, human Egbert. I am unfazed by your human bluhs. Though I do not argue the fact that the majority of our species have some kind of mental handicap, this is not what this conversation is about. Now you will shut up and listen to me talk you obtuse dunderfuck." The troll girl says in a strangely pointed manner of speech. I'm starting to think all these aliens are lunatics. Suddenly, I find myself with a new sympathy for John and the social struggles he must have had to go with daily. Unfortunately, that sympathy does not stretch far enough for me not to be angry at him for dragging us into this mess.

"Fine!" John snaps, "Just tell me what you wanted to tell me and get out of here!"

"Oh this will not be a short conversation, John. As a Seer, I have a certain knowledge of this kind of thing. And also, Karkat told me some stuff. Such as how you've gotten yourself trapped on a dying planet. Smooth one, John. I am here to guide you out of this gargantuan mess."

"Alright" John sighs, clearly annoyed. I didn't think I'd ever meet someone who could annoy John. He wasn't even bothered by Karkat's yelling. I wonder what happened between these two that made them so hostile towards each other. "So what's the plan?"

"Shut up, I was going to say that." Terezi says.

"Say what?"

"I said shut up! Alright, here goes." She says, cracking her knuckles like a maniac. "Okay, John, so here's the plan."

AN: I was originally planning on updating this with chapters 11 and 12 at the same time but I got too lazy and decided just to update this one by itself. Also, any tips on writing a better John? I feel like my John is lacking a certain... Egbert essence I dunno. Anyway! Next chapters soon. Comments and Criticism welcome.