Chapter 16 - Accessory to Murder

This probably isn't good.

If I can't turn off my blessing, then it'll stay active until I pass out from lack of energy, which would not be a good thing to happen when we are about to go and raid the home of Greek Satan. This thing has to turn off, or we'll be in for a hell of a lot of trouble pretty soon.

Virgo was incredibly smart, and never even gave a hint for how to turn them off, so I figure it should be something easy, right? If it was important or hard to do, she wouldn't have forgotten to tell me. She seemed like the smartest one there, so there's no way it'll be something that I can't figure out by myself.

The first brilliant idea I came up with, was just trying to think of the constellation again. Maybe the blessing would deactivate then.

So I think up the 8-star cup, and keep it in my mind for a couple of seconds.

Nothing.

I'm still feeling the pessimism that the blessing gives me when I use it, and now I'm starting to wonder why a cup makes me feel pessimistic. If this is what a cup can do, does that rabbit one make me hyper? I am not looking forward to that...

Thinking of all the possible ways one would deactivate something, I come to the conclusion that... It's pointless! There is no way that I can figure out how to turn off some sort of magical star blessing that I only even figured out that I had a week ago, and only learned how to use a couple of days ago! I really need a way that I can talk to the constellations without them having to call me when I fall asleep or pass out. It's just too inconvenient for me, and with the constant mention of boredom they bring up, a little company from yours truly can only do them good.

I sigh and look around the container once more, hoping to get some inspiration from my surroundings.

Then I remember that I have no surroundings, and am once again feeling depressed.

This cup is really getting on my nerves now. It's taking every fiber of my being not to just start complaining out loud about everything that's been happening. This feeling has got to go, or else I'm going to lose it.

Maybe if I "think happy thoughts" the blessing'll go away.

Happy times. Good times. Parties. Friends. My first date. Getting into college. All the happy memories I can really think of were from my previous life. Sure my family in this life sucked, but I still had fun with Perce. Right?

Hell, in this life, I've known Percy for longer than I have most of my friends in my previous life. So why doesn't he have that big of an impact?

Looking back over to the slouched figure of Perce, looking at him twirl his pen in his hands, it clicks.

He's a character.

I'm not.

I know a LOT more about Perce than he does about me, and I even know the actions that he'll take in the future. I know everything about the next four years of his life, but he just sees me as a close friend. It's kind of weird when I think about our relationship. Then again, it's even weirder that I was reincarnated into the fictional book that a guy wrote for his son.

Perce is Perce.

My name is Alex, but I'm not Alex.

Even though I have long forgotten my original name, I'm not Alex. I'm somebody who was given that name and told to live a new life in a new body. I'm a 24-year-old dude in the body of a 12-year-old, but I've lived for 36 years, remembering all of those. This must be what that kid from Tensei feels like, and I don't like it. My head is having trouble wrapping itself around the idea, so I just give up.

I turn my head back, away from Perce, and look around at the animals next to us. The three of them are an odd bunch, but that lion is the one that's troubling me.

It's constantly looking at me and seems confused when I catch its eyes.

They look dead.

The skinny albino looks like it has long given up on the hope of living this life, and I have half the mind to finish it for him. Who knows where the animals go when they die, but it's probably better than trapped in a cage next to a zebra and an antelope.

Whoops, there's that ADHD kicking in... gotta focus now...

I was trying to turn off the blessing right?

I focus on my mind once more, and my thoughts have cleared out. I've stopped feeling the strong sense of hopelessness and pessimism that was controlling my thoughts up to this point, so I'm surprised. How did that happen? Was it cause I started thinking about my old life? Perce? The lion?

I don't know what did it, but I pick up the thermos, take a little sip, and feel it get ever so lighter.

"The blessing is definitely gone," I mumble, getting Grover to ask;

"Whadya say, Alex?"

"Nothing, just wondering when we're gonna get to wherever we're going," I respond. As if the answer to my question came from the gods themselves, the truck stopped.

"Shit, they're gonna check on the animals, hide!" hisses Grover, and I poke Annabeth with my leg to get her up and moving. She opens her eyes, glares at me, and puts on her Yankees cap.

"Oh yeah..." I say, and follow Perce and Grover to the back of the container, almost tripping over a huge bag of turnips on the way over. Grover and Perce hide behind the cage with the antelope and zebra in it, while I get my good friend, the lion. The lion is now staring at me even more intently, and I can only hope it isn't hungry... what am I saying. Of course it's hungry. My 12-year-old body probably has more fat than the lion has.

I hide, and not a second too soon, as the back doors are swung open to the sight of a fat, burly trucker holding a half-eaten burger and a bucket of water. He's wearing a Raiders shirt, and I have to wonder what football is like right now. It's 2006 right now, so they should still be the Oakland Raiders, and I'm reminded of where we are.

I think, "Shouldn't we be near Las Vegas now..."

But before I can figure out our location from the shirt of some trucker, he comes in and fills up all of the water bowls for the animals, tosses the burger at the zebra, and says, "Man, if this shit didn't have as good of pay that it does, I would just spend my time here on the strip earning my real fortune..." He then looks over at the lion and continues. "You better behave the rest of this ride, big guy. We gotta get you all the way to Oregon. What they want a stupid cat for way up there is beyond me, but they're givin' 250K for you, so who cares 'bout those questions. Amirite, big guy." He then laughs and intentionally knocks over the water bowl for the lion, and now I'm angry.

Sure, the animal smuggling is probably not a good thing, and these animals are in pretty shit conditions, but this dude is getting 250K for this lion, and can't even afford to feed it!? If he wasn't getting paid much, I would just be normal angry, but he has plenty of money to spare. He could at least get a steak from Walmart or something...

Glaring, I find Makeleio in my pocket and put it into my hands. I stare at the man's backside as he starts to walk out of the trailer and wonder how much a blade right through the shoulder would hurt.

I look at the lion, and his eyes say one thing to me. Not as much as 30 teeth around his neck. I smile and realize I have a perfect crime. Sure it's "technically" murder, but I just see it as "giving nature the ability to do its job". Giving an evil smirk, I take Makeleio and stab the lock holding the lion back, much to the shock of Perce and Grover who had been muttering something about the legality of this transport system.

The door swings open, and the trucker spins around to look at the noise. I've already ducked down, as the lion leaps over me and straight at the chest of his captor.

I won't go into detail about the next 5 seconds but there are about three things you should know.

The lion was hungry. Very hungry, and it seemed like its animal instincts remained, despite how long it was trapped in this truck.

Two, there was a lot of screaming. It wasn't all from the man though. Perce was yelling. Grover seemed to be yelling and egging the lion on. I heard Annabeth scream, and about 3 seconds after the screaming started, another man joined in.

Three, I'm probably going to need new clothes. Again. Next time, I should probably step back instead of just ducking down. The once yellow hoodie that the pelt of the Nemean Lion formed is now stained red, and if I was some sort of edgy 12-year-old (which I guess I am...) then I would think it was the coolest thing ever.

I stood there crouched and watching as the lion devoured its victim, and listened to the sickening crunch of the bones in his body being broken and chewed off of. Eaten alive is not a way that I want to go...

Not wanting to wait any longer, and seeing as how my companions are frozen in shock, fear, terror, and, in the case of Grover, pure joy, I decided to open up the rest of the cages. I stab Makeleio through the locks of the antelope and the zebra and watch as they fly off, giving a hearty kick to a guy screaming near the entrance as they pass by. He must've been a part of this scheme. I personally haven't seen anything bad done from him, but if he's anything like Trucker 1 over here, he's human scum.

I shake my head and look back at the once white lion. Its albino fur is covered in dark red splotches, with torn pieces of the trucker's shirt mixed in as well. Holding in a laugh, I'm reminded of those stupid jokes everybody tells. What's black and white and red all over? An albino lion after eating a Raiders fan.

The lion has finished his meal, and the screaming had long since stopped. Yet nobody said a word. Grover looked the happiest I've ever seen him, Perce had his eyes wide open in fear, and I heard the sound of somebody puking outside. Must be Annabeth.

I stand there in silence for a bit before the lion turns around and looks at me.

Hoping I'm not the one next, I say, "Hey man, uh... I did let you go, so you wanna go chase deers or something in the wild? Probably more fun than eating–" Before I can finish, the lion puts his forelimbs back and then puts his head to the ground facing me. "Uhh... what?"

This albino killer is bowing down to me.

Maybe as thanks for releasing him, but even still I've never heard of a lion doing this to anybody, except for something like a show at the zoo.

The lion then starts to growl, and I realize it might start to attack, so I grab Makeleio but Grover says, "No, stop Alex. He's talking..."

Talking? Oh yeah, Grover can talk to these dudes with his "wilderness" powers. Power of Pan and all that jazz.

"Well, what's he saying?" I ask.

"All he said was 'thank you lord'," answers Grover, looking almost as confused as I am.

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know man, but it looks like he's waiting for you to say something," Grover responds.

"Well tell him that I said he's free to go," I say, and before Grover can translate, the lion throws his head up, growls one last time, then dashes out of the container.

"He said that he will never forget this act you've done for him."

"Well, that's weird..." I say and look back at Perce who is just standing there. "We should probably get going. We'll be in a lot of trouble if somebody shows up now..."

"Yeah, but they had it coming," says Grover, who starts to push the mute Perce out of the container.

I exit and look around for Annabeth until I see her hunched over and staring at the ground.

"Oi, Annabeth? You good?" I ask, walking over to her.

She snaps up, and her usually cloudy gray eyes are more stormy than anything, and I am put in awe for the second time over these eyes. Damn.

"How are you NOT okay after seeing that," she snarls at me.

I put my hands up in surrender, lie, and say, "I didn't see much. I looked down the whole time. I didn't even look at the aftermath. What else can I say but, 'Nature finds a way'."

Saying this I hear a noise come from Perce for the first time in forever.

A laugh.

"Of course you would be the one to steal a line from Jurassic Park," he says, chuckling.

"Hey, it's true," I respond, hoping to put the blood behind us.

"I guess, but that's still pretty messed up. What you did..." Perce says, dwindling off.

I look down at the ground and don't say anything, cause he's right. It was messed up. No matter what excuse I can come up with, the fact remains that I killed a guy. But why don't I feel anything?

No regret.

No happiness.

No fear.

The only feeling I can find within myself is satisfaction. As Grover said, the guy had it coming. I delivered it.

"I don't know Perce... it was messed up," I say, and look up to see the faces of the three other members of the quest looking at me. Grover looks confused. Annabeth still looks sick and is glaring at me, but Perce's face is the worst. His face is filled with worry, with a slight touch of fear.

He's scared of me.

Annabeth says, "We can talk about how Alex murdered a guy later. Right now, we need to get out of here. I'm pretty sure the guy that was outside saw my face, so we need to scram." She then points to the large buildings that look only a mile or two away, tops. "That's Vegas. Let's go there, get a place to stay, and figure out what to do."

Us three dudes nod, and after picking up some extra supplies from the truck (Grover took the keys and ate them), the four of us start to walk down the road towards America's Playground.

AN - Hasn't been an update in a while, and I'm sorry for that. I uhh... went to a party and got in a LOT of trouble there, so I've been pretty heavily grounded for the rest of the month. I was barely able to write this chapter after convincing my parents that writing isn't a recreational activity on the computer, lol. Anyways, you have probably noticed how there are 10 fewer chapters now, but all I did was combine a bunch of previously written chapters. This past week I've had a ton of time to think about where I want to story to be going, so I decided to combine quite a lot of the chapters to make them larger, and to keep the total chapter count down. Was probably pretty confusing for anybody that was reading this story during that time, so sorry about that. I couldn't find a way to set the story where it all updated at once, so ya'll might have even gotten a whole bunch of messages saying that my story was updated, so sorry if that happened. Anyways, thanks for reading!