I'm backkk.

You aren't expecting me quite so soon, are you?

...Actually, I wasn't expecting me quite so soon, so we're at an understanding.

As requested, the next installment of the Orion goes to therapy series!

This one had references to Avatar: the Last Airbender and crosses over with Kane Chronicles. So that's fun.

Enjoy and leave a review!

Orion was going to kill Childe.

Childe, for his part, seemed to be either oblivious to this sentiment, or he didn't care, because he hadn't done anything for the past twenty minutes except pointing and laughing his head off.

Orion willed his mechanical eyes to start glowing. Perhaps Childe would get the message if Orion started doing his best impression of laser eyes. Granted, it couldn't smite anything, because Hephaestus had been a killjoy like that, but surely Childe will cease his inane laughter?

In response, Childe took out his phone and started snapping pictures. "Your face," he chortled.

Twenty minutes and counting. Orion's eyes died down, because it seemed to be having the opposite effect of what he intended. Childe's laughter didn't die down with it.

Orion bristled, "If you're quite finished-"

"One sec," Childe held up a hand weakly as his other hand fiddled with his cell phone. "Gotta upload this to my story."

If Orion still could, his hands would be wrapped around his throat.

Orion settled for huffing and doing his best to look dignified. A difficult task, when his entire body had been buried under a mountain of cheese.

Orion wasn't even sure how it happened.

Up until he met the trio of elementary school kids, his day had been going pretty well. He woke up in the middle of the park (renting a mortal home seemed like an unnecessary expense when he was barely making ends meet with therapy, and filled with too much paperwork when a regular park bench would do-he figured that he had about a year before anyone figured out that the address he was filling out for all his forms pointed to a park), pulled the tarp away from his face (it had been raining the previous day), and congratulated himself on not dying of hypothermia.

It was truly the small things in life that matter.

He even got his breakfast at a local coffee shop, which he considered a special treat. His therapist had been carefully blank-faced when he casually brought up the pigeon he killed for food that day, made a note in her notebook, and delicately suggested that he get his food from a store like everybody else.

"Why?" he had asked. "Pigeons are perfectly serviceable as food."

His therapist had taken a deep breath, and proceeded to give a 15 minute powerpoint presentation about why pigeons are, in fact, not perfectly serviceable as food.

Orion had agreed, mostly because he was impressed and a little scared that she managed to pull together such a presentation on such short notice, and partially because she had made some good points between the bullet points, graphics, and empathetic gesturing.

"No more shooting down pigeons, got it," he had given a reassuring smile, the one he usually gave when he needed to disarm people.

"Or consuming other forms of wild flora and fauna," she had said, noting the specific wording and not falling for it for a second. Damn, he shouldn't have told her about the time he ate a dandelion.

Orion had been going to ask if she had a PowerPoint presentation on every single form of those, too, but her eyes had taken on a challenging light. Don't. Freaking. Try me.

He had decided not to push it.

This change in diet caused some resentment, as he suddenly had to add food expenses to his budget. He muttered, "Oh, no wild berries, can't have that! Oh no, I can't have this if it's grown in the wild!" and generally made whoever's taking his order incredibly miserable.

Childe, whom he had met a couple of times since their first meeting and someone Orion could tentatively call a friend, had taken to calling him a "Karen" under his breath, which judging from context wasn't a good thing. His boss at the archery range looked about three seconds away from smacking him upside the head, but didn't want to risk a lawsuit.

In a last-ditch effort to get him to stop, Childe pulled him aside, shook him by the shoulders (he was balancing precariously on a tall stool so he could see eye level with him), and said, "I'll pay for your food. Just stop your gods-forsaken crusade against...whatever this is."

Orion had agreed, only because free food was on the table and he'd be an idiot to turn that down. He continued his crusade though. Silently. Because he was petty like that.

Then he walked into a McDonald's two days later, discovered the Dollar Menu, and promptly sold his non-existent soul to corporate consumerism.

So if anything, he supposed he deserved his upcoming comeuppance.

Nao'hai, newly eight, former resident of the 241st Nome, current resident of the 50th Nome, was having a good day.

An Appa plushie. She made a squealing sound that she barely bothered to suppress as she walked from school with her friends, Tonia and Teucer. And in a few hours, it was going to be hers. Childe-gege was the best.

At some point since leaving Shanghai, Nao'hai had stumbled upon an episode of Avatar: the Last Airbender and had made an observation: "Ooh, an Asian!"

Not exactly profound, but it had been several months since she had seen anything resembling Asian culture on TV, so she was grasping at straws at that point.

At some point later, she successfully applied the principle of transitivity (her moms would be proud) and had come to a even more startling revelation:

One, people in the show can bend elements.

Two, she was a magician.

Three, elemental magic can bend elements.

Conclusion: she could bend elements.

Yeah, she was going to become the next Avatar. Or at least a waterbender like Katara. Katara was cool. The world won't know what hit them.

Nao'hai's gonna load Appa with so much animation magic. The plushie's gonna come to life and then they're all gonna ride it, just like in the show!

Nao'hai walked with a bounce in her step, and if her two friends noticed her slightly defying gravity as she jumped a little too high to be physically possible, they didn't comment.

It was good airbending practice, anyway.

It was such that she almost missed the giant man walking into the alleyway.

Almost.

"Did you see that?" she gestured to the alleyway the giant man had disappeared into.

"See what?" asked Teucer, "and why are we whispering?"

"Shh!" Nao'hai wasn't actually sure, but she had seen people in spy movies do it all the time, and spies are cool. "There's a giant man who went into the alleyway. I think he's sussicious," Nao'hai absolutely butchered that last word, but she was confident her message got through.

"What do you think, Tonia?" Teucer asked his sister, who's two entire years older than them and therefore had authority.

Tonia frowned. The last time Nao'hai had found someone "suspicious," they had been chased through the city by seven angry trees. It was the most fun they had in months. "We have a few hours before the adults get worried," she decided. "Let's go."

The hair on Orion's neck had been standing on end for the past twenty minutes now. He was being watched.

The kids in question watching him were crowded behind a vending machine, trying to be clever and stealthy in a way that was neither clever nor stealthy. Orion resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He wondered if they were spying on behalf of Artemis, though he quickly dismissed the thought. The Hunters were a little bit more competent than that, and they probably wouldn't have brought a boy with them.

Orion leaned back in his chair and made a big show of stretching and getting up. He wasn't usually in favor of beating up kids, especially that young, but he figured that he'd be in trouble if he let them stay there.

"So you know this man?" Nao'hai asked.

Teucer nodded. "I was with Childe here last time. He came and talked to us."

"Was he a good man?"

Teucer frowned and nodded.

"Come on," Tonia muttered, "I missed out on that? Stupid art lessons."

"You do fencing, Tonia," Nao'hai pointed out.

"That's not the point."

Nao'hai shrugged. She had been thinking up ways to firebend without a staff, for purely hypothetical purposes, of course. Then she thought a little too hard and set the table on fire. A few seconds of panicked flapping later, the fire was out and the table had gained a new burn mark. Nao'hai looked at her newfound abilities in awe.

She was a natural.

At present, the giant man stretched and made to walk outside a back door.

"Let's go say hi to him!" Nao'hai said excitedly, running out of her hiding place and going off after him.

"Nao'hai, wait-"

She was already out the door.

This is actually part 1 of the chapter I wrote. At some point, I realized it was getting way too long and had to cut it in half.

Fun fact: the OC Nao'hai is taken from the movie Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, whose original Chinese title was Nezha Nao Hai. It roughly translates to "Picking a fight and pissing off an ocean," which...was pretty much exactly what happens in the movie. Chinese mythology is fun. Anyway, I guess it kind of fits considering the mythology surrounding Orion.

Tonia and Teucer were characters from Genshin Impact.

Once again, vote for what you want to see next!

A. Orion in therapy

B. Aradia in Medieval Tuscany

C. Iphigenia

D. AI

E. Suggest your own prompt!

I look forward to your responses!

Also, leave a review!