To Imagine Coldplay- You do need to read it! Preferably before my rewrite ^_^
To 8Ball3- I am writing a lot. I've got through about ten pens this week alone (I did lose three though :P ) I think Children of Sobek is about right for the name, thanks :D Lou's off her nut batshit kind of levels of chaos, it's so much fun XD And yes, she's kind of high. She's fine tho. Frank's blood pressure might not be. Now you've said that, the Dragon Ball Z thing, I can't unsee it either. Truth be told, some of her moves I've kind of taken inspiration from Legend of Korra *ssh*
Apollo didn't know which goodbye was the hardest. At first light, Hazel and Frank met them at the coffee shop for one final thank-you. Then there were off to rouse the legion. They intended to get right to work on repairs to the camp to take everyone's minds off the many losses before shock could set in. Watching them walk away, Apollo felt a warm certainty that the legion was about to see a new golden age.
A few minutes later, Thalia and Reyna came by with their pack of grey wolves, metal greyhounds and the rescued pegasi, One Eye and Short Ears. Both pegasi looked much better fed, their scars not so furious, their coats cleaned and trimmed and brushed to a gentle shine.
"Looking forward to monster-hunting?" Apollo asked.
"Oddly enough, yes." Reyna smiled.
"Seen Lou this morning?"
"On our way to her after you." Reyna gave him one last hug. "Thank you." She said over his shoulder. "For everything."
"Go." Apollo smiled, their impending departure saddening him as much as his sister's. "Enjoy your vacation, you've earned it."
"Vacation?" Thalia laughed. Reyna drew away from the hug and Thalia clapped her on the shoulder. "RARA, I hate to tell you this, but we've got hard work ahead! We've been tracking the Teumessian Fox across the Midwest for months now. It hasn't been going well."
"Exactly." Reyna said. "A vacation." She turned to Meg, smiling. "You keep Lester in line, OK?" She kissed the top of Meg's head. "Don't let him get a bigger ego just because he's got a nice new bow."
"You can count on me." Meg promised. Sadly, Apollo had no reason to doubt her.
When he and Meg left the café for the last time, Bombilo actually cried. Behind his gruff exterior, the two-headed barista turned out to be incredibly sentimental. He gave them a dozen scones and a bag of coffee beans and told them to get out of his sight before he started crying again. Apollo took the scones and Meg, gods help him, took the coffee.
At the camp's gates, Lavinia waited, chewing her bubblegum while she polished her new centurion badge.
"This is the earliest I've been up in years." She complained. "I'm going to hate being an officer." The sparkle in her eyes told a different story.
"You'll do great." Meg encouraged. As Lavinia bent to hug her, Apollo noticed an odd-looking rash running down her cheek and neck, unsuccessfully covered by some foundation.
"So, uh," he cleared his throat, smirking, "how's Poison Oak?" Lavinia blushed adorably.
"Apparently attracted to centurionship." Meg looked concerned.
"You're going to have to invest in some calamine lotion if you keep seeing her." Lavinia shrugged.
"No relationship is perfect. At least I know the problems up front! We'll figure it out." Apollo had no doubt she would. Lavinia smiled, hugged him and ruffled his hair. "You'd better come back and see me. And don't die. I will kick your butt with my new dancing shoes if you die."
"Understood." Apollo confirmed. She did one last soft shoe routine, gestured to them like Over to you, and then raced off to muster the Fifth Cohort for a long day of tap-dancing.
Watching her go, Apollo marvelled at everything that had gone through since first meeting Lavinia just a few days before. They had defeated two emperors and a king, put to rest the souls of a god and a Sibyl, he had seen his sister and been restored to good health. As Reyna may have said, they had added quite a bit to their 'good things' column. Now, he and Meg were embarking on what might be their last quest with good expectations and hopeful spirits… or at least a good night's sleep and some scones.
They took one final trip to New Rome. Tyson and Ella were expecting them. Jessica, Louisa and Jason were not. Louisa sat on the floor in one of the bookshop's aisles, building towers out of books around and over Jason while Jessica sat at the end of the aisle a little way away from them, legs crossed at the ankles, reading.
"Yay!" Tyson exclaimed as they came through the doorway. "Come in! We are having our great opening today!"
"Grand opening." Ella corrected, fussing over a platter of cupcakes and a bunch of balloons at the information desk. "Welcome to Cyclops Books and Prophecies and Also an Orange Cat." There was a series of thuds and Louisa whined wordlessly.
"You do not build." Jessica reminded her, not looking up from her book.
"I know." Louisa huffed. "I blame Jay. He don't sit still."
"I am currently being a better statue than Terminus." Jason remarked calmly.
"Books on shelves please, books need to go back." Ella insisted. Louisa began to tidy up, squinting around and careful to put the books back in the right place. Jason did his best to help her, but she was suddenly overcome with the urge to bonk him on the head with whatever book was in her hand. Jessica drew a ten dollar bill from her pocket and waved it above her head, still reading. "First customer." Ella said, fluttering over to take the bill and sniff it. "First customer, yes, yes. Ella likes first customer." She patted Jessica's head, which drew a wide-eyed dumbfounded look from the woman, but nothing would pull her from her book.
On top of the old-fashioned cash register, where Ella was putting their first payment, Aristophanes yawned as if nothing had changed around him. He was wearing a tiny party hat and an expression that knew demigods banned from technology would not get a picture of him.
"Customers can get prophecies too!" Tyson explained, pointing at his chest, which was covered even more densely with Sibylline Verse. "Sister didn't want one, so I said she could look at the books. You can pick up the latest books too!" He remembered, clapping eagerly.
"I recommend the nineteen-twenty-four Farmer's Almanac." Ella told them. "Would you like a copy?"
"Ah… maybe next time." Apollo half-smiled. "We were told you had a prophecy for us?"
"Yep, yep." Ella ran her finger down Tyson's ribs, scanning for the correct lines and making him squirm and giggle. "Here. Over his spleen." She read it out loud. "O, son of Zeus, the final challenge face/ The tow'r of Nero two alone ascend/ Dislodge the beast that hast usurped thy place." Apollo waited. Ella nodded. "Yep, yep, yep. That's it." She went back to her cupcakes and balloons.
"That can't be it." Apollo complained.
"Three lines?" Louisa blew a raspberry. "I'd've killed for three lines!"
"That's nice, Lou." Her mother placated.
"How come he gets three lines 'n' I don't?"
"Lines don't count with you. You always cross them. Now, shush. I'm reading."
"Here, Jay, that's you, ain't it?"
"No. I'm a son of Jupiter, not Zeus."
"Still a dick either way." Louisa stuck her fingers in her mouth and pulled a face. Jason smacked her with an atlas. Louisa booted him in the shin, Jessica snapped her fingers, and they were suddenly as good as gold.
"It makes no poetic sense." Apollo said, focusing on Meg. Louisa was clearly listening, staring at him over the atlas, which was upside down. "It's not a haiku, it's not a sonnet. It's not… oh."
"Oh, what?" Meg squinted at him.
"Oh, as in oh no."
"Ha." Louisa snorted. Jessica kicked her in the leg, turning her page.
Apollo remembered a dour young man he had met in medieval Florence. It had been a long time ago, but he never forgot someone who invented a new type of poetry.
"It's a terza rima." Meg stared at him blankly. Louisa did too, turning the atlas over and tenting it on her head. Jason began balancing another book on top. "It's a style Dante invented," Apollo explained, "in the Inferno. Three lines. The first and third lines rhyme. The middle line rhymes with the first line of the next stanza."
"I don't get it." Meg admitted.
"I hate poetry." Louisa blew another raspberry, losing her book-hat.
"I want a cupcake." Tyson announced. Louisa held her hand up, opening her mouth. Jessica- once again, without looking up- smacked her hand down.
"I'm not cleaning up any more sick."
"Can I have a cupcake please?"
"Of course you can, Jason."
"What? That ain't fair!"
"Jason doesn't throw up on my shoes."
"That was one time!"
"Nine, actually."
"That was nine times! I want cake!"
"And I want to read!"
"Face and place rhyme," Apollo pressed on, worried he'd lose his train of thought with the familial bickering, "the middle line ends with ascend. Terza rima is like an endless paper chain of stanzas, all linked together."
"But there isn't a next stanza."
"Not here." Apollo agreed. "Which means it must be somewhere out there…" He waved vaguely to the east. "We're on a scavenger hunt for more stanzas. This is just the starting point."
"Hmph." As always, Meg summarised their predicament perfectly. It was very much hmph.
"We're goin' on a bear hunt," Louisa mumble-sang, "goin' on a bear hunt, rar rar rar."
"The tower of Nero." Ella said, repositioning her balloon display. "New York, I bet. Yep."
"Concrete jungle where dreams are made of."
"If you keep singing, I'm gonna shove that atlas somewhere unpleasant." Jessica warned. Louisa quietened. Apollo had the sudden urge to hire Jessica for their trip.
The harpy was right. They would need to return to where his problems began- Manhattan, where the gleaming Triumvirate headquarters rose from downtown. After that, he would have to face the beast who usurped his place, Python. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to reach him in his lair at Delphi, much less defeat him.
"New York." Meg's jaw clenched. This would be the worst of homecomings for her, back to her self-appointed stepfather's house of horrors, where she had suffered under years of emotional abuse. Apollo wished her could spare her the pain, but he suspected she had known this day would come.
Louisa rose unsteadily, wobbling and limping over. She half-fell into Meg, picking the smaller girl up in a hug, her feet an inch or two off the floor. She said nothing, didn't need to. She understood and she seemed to adopt Meg as her little sister, judging by Tyson's grin and rush to joined the hug.
"OK." Meg eventually said, patting her new siblings on the back until they let go. Tyson had to help Louisa sit back down, Jason catching her as she fell the last few inches. Meg looked to Apollo. "How are we going to get there?"
"Oh! Oh!" Tyson flailed his hand in the air, mouth coated with cupcake frosting. "I would take a rocket ship! Nyoom!"
"Do you have a rocket ship?" Apollo asked. Tyson's expression deflated.
"No."
"I'll get you a rocket, Ty." Louisa promised. "I wanna blow up some planets."
"Yay!" Tyson beamed, clapping. "Kaboom!"
"Can I come?" Jason asked.
"No. You got cake 'n' I didn't. 'N' ya've gotta sort out all that pointy hat shit."
"Pontifex and you were part of that deal, remember?"
"No." Louisa folded her arms, turning her nose up. Jason raised an eyebrow at her. "Maybe." She corrected. "I charge commission."
Apollo looked out of the bookshop's picture windows. In the distance, the sun rose over Mount Diablo. Their journey of thousands of miles could not begin with a rocket ship, so they would have to find another way. Horses? Eagles? A self-driving car that was programmed not to fly off highway overpasses?
And, if they were fortunate enough, maybe they could at least call on their old friends at Camp Half-Blood, once they were in New York. That thought gave him courage.
"Come on, Meg." He said. "We've got a lot of miles to cover. We need to find a new ride."
And that's it! Last one!
I will be updating with Lou's Past every other day as normal, I'll be working on everything else in between, so I don't run out of things to post :P
