Chapter 2: Cruelty Wins in the Movies
Two days after his panic attack, Percy packed up his clothes. He was preparing to return to New York for winter break. He'd scraped by in all his classes, even English, and was ready to forget about school for as long as he could. Hades, he'd thought he was done when he graduating high school.
There was a knock on his door. "Yeah?" He said absentmindedly.
Annabeth entered, a duffle bag on her shoulder. She was wearing a light blue t-shirt that hung off one shoulder, paired with some black joggers. She looked him over. "You might want to wear more comfortable than that for the plane, Seaweed Brain." She grinned at him.
He looked down at himself in surprise. "I'm wearing jeans?"
She raised her eyes up to the sky and sat down cross-legged next to him. "Do you think you'll be alright, on the plane?"
"I don't think Zeus will strike us out of the sky." He said, his eyes on the ground. "Poseidon told me when we first arrived here that Zeus has agreed to leave me alone. We should be fine."
"After all you've done..." She flexed her fingers. "I can't believe Zeus needs to be convinced not kill you."
"That's how the gods are." He murmured. "That's how they've always been. Annabeth, I don't know if I want to visit my mom." He added suddenly.
"Why?" She said, looking at him with those calm grey eyes.
"I don't know, I just..." He sighed quietly. "I love her, I miss her, I just want to... figure out what's going on with me before I go back."
"She would never be ashamed of you."
"I know. I just want to get away from everything, the gods, all of it."
"Where do you want to go?" She asked him. "We've already booked the flight."
His eyes strayed out the window to the ocean. "I've never seen Niagara."
When they landed, they sent an Iris-Message to his mom, telling him what they were doing. After that, they rented a car, and they were on their way. The drive would be about three hours.
Niagara was beautiful, but it was somewhat overshadowed by the way Percy's senses nearly exploded from the feedback of that much water in one place. He had gotten used to it, living near the ocean, but freshwater felt different, and it only served to remind him that he could probably stop the water from flowing if he wanted to.
He rubbed his arms, and Annabeth put a hand on his, her hair whipping into her face. Sometimes it scared him, how well she knew him. Yet she still chose him anyway.
Annabeth frowned as she looked at her boyfriend in the seat next to him. His face was strong, as usual, but his eyes looked shattered. He was barely holding on.
Tartarus had hurt them both, but she thought it had affected him most of all. The experience with Achlys, the delving into the darker nature of his powers... it scared him. And it scared her too, though she didn't want to admit it.
"Percy..." She started to say, when suddenly the trailer in front of lurched to a stop. Annabeth gasped as Percy slammed on the breaks. The world spun around her and she was lurched into the dashboard. Her hands flew in front of her, and she felt something strain in her wrists.
She winced and flexed her left wrist. She had already taken physical therapy for it.
"You okay?" Percy asked her, breathing heavily.
"Yeah... yeah, I'm fine."
"What was that?" The car in front of them still wasn't moving.
Annabeth struggled to open the door. Her left wrist twinged—the wrist she had injured while fighting Arachne.
She shivered outside of the car. She had on a sweater, but the road was filled with the snow. She brushed some off her arm. She scanned her surroundings.
The front of the car was partially crushed against a fallen tree. The gash lines where it had fallen resembled some kind of animal's claws... but what animal would purposefully cut down a tree?
She closed her eyes briefly and drew her knife. Monsters.
"Percy, it's-" She cut off when she heard a shrill scream.
Percy came running. Annabeth fell into a battle stance when she saw what was in front of them.
Some sort of animal and human cross was advancing towards a man who was struggling to rise. The screams were coming from inside of the car.
"Percy, you help him, I'll get the kid."
Percy nodded, Riptide already drawn, his eyes intense.
She approached the car. The girl had dark brown hair and a green hoodie, and looked to be about seventeen, two years younger than Annabeth was now. She looked at Annabeth with fear.
"It's okay, I'm here to get you out." She looked inside the car—flames were slowly creeping towards the exhaust tank. She swallowed and started to slash her knife through the seatbelt, when abruptly another migraine sliced through her brain.
"Percy, duck!" She yelled without thinking, her mind struck by a vision of the man-bear slicing him across the ribs.
She heard a yell of pain, and suddenly there was a hand on her arm. She turned, and a man with some heavy-duty sunglasses stood next to her. "I can take care of this." He told her.
'who is this kid?'
'is that a knife?'
'where's Storm?'
Annabeth shook her head violently. What was happening to her? She glanced at the man. "Listen, your friend's in trouble. I've got this."
Inexplicably, she trusted him. She ran to Percy. He was lying prone on the ground, trying to rise. Long slashes cut deep into his t-shirt.
Some sort of animal was approaching him, and it looked like some sick cross between human and bear. Its face twisted into a sharp grin. Annabeth wracked her brains for what kind of monster looked like this in Greek Mythology, but she came up with nothing.
She looked at the man with the sunglasses, who was helping the younger girl out of the car. A red beam came out of his glasses.
Mutants.
Too afraid to comprehend what this could all mean, she shoved all of it out of her mind.
The bear-monster approached Percy, and she dove out of the trees, barely noticing the cold snow on her arms. Adrenaline shot through her, and her mind went into overdrive.
Suddenly she saw Percy struggling to rise on the ground, a Black woman in the trees, watching—did she have white eyes? A man with shaggy dark hair who was probably dead was in the snow a few feet away from Percy.
Annabeth pushed the distractions out of her mind and stepped in front of Percy. "That's quite the hair-job you've gotten." She said conversationally, slashing her dagger like a whip. The bear-man made a noise that could be considered a laugh and started towards her. She wasn't sure where she'd gotten into the habit of antagonizing her enemies.
Well, come to think of it, she probably did know.
Abruptly, the man who had been lying in the snow came flying towards her attacker, his hands coming out with—were those claws?
She was a demigod—she lived and breathed weirdness. Still. This was... different.
The monster moved to the side and swiped him, and the other man fell on the snow. He made a growl that sounded almost as animalistic as the monster.
The bear-man could see he was outnumbered. Scott and the Black woman with a shock of white hair were staring him down, and Annabeth was more than happy to sink her dagger into its flesh. She was close range; she was almost certain that she could make this throw.
Percy's blood was sinking into the snow.
The girl hid behind Scott, her face afraid.
The bear-man snarled at them and loped off into the woods. Annabeth started after him, but the other woman laid a hand on her arm. "Don't."
Annabeth opened her mouth to tell her where she could go, when Percy moaned. She hesitated.
The woman tilted her head in a strange gesture. "I'm called Ororo, and this is Scott." She had a slight accent.
"Your friend's wounded," Ororo continued. "Scott and I know a place where we can heal him."
"Who are you people?" Annabeth asked them bluntly. "My name's Annabeth." She added grudgingly, seeing Ororo's appraising glance.
"We are mutants." The woman hesitated. "We... we come from a school for others like us." The look she gave Annabeth and Percy could only be described as measuring. Annabeth sheathed her knife and hoped the mist had done its job.
She looked at Percy's wounds. He seemed to be fading in and out of consciousness, and the nearest hospital was an hour away.
Why didn't I bring ambrosia? She wondered, though she knew that ambrosia wouldn't help fast enough.
Annabeth studied Ororo and Scott. They had just helped Annabeth and Percy release that girl from the car. Their stances didn't seem hostile. And... they had an air about them.
"Fine." She said finally. "Where is this... school?"
"This is a bad idea." Scott muttered.
Annabeth kept her eyes closed in the back of the car, supposedly asleep.
"Those two are wounded, Scott." The woman said, her voice reprimanding. "She didn't react at all when I told her we were mutants. Most humans would run in the other direction."
Scott was silent for a moment, and all they could hear was the slight hum of the engine. "Are we sure she's human?"
"If she had abilities, she would have shown them."
"Yes, but... did you see the way they acted? It was if they were battle-trained, themselves. They had a system as soon as they moved out of the car."
Annabeth shifted. She shouldn't be surprised that those two had sensed that she and Percy were different. Even mortals tended to stay away from them—some part of them could tell that the two teenagers were worlds apart from them.
But mutants... it could be dangerous. If they decided that Annabeth and Percy were a threat, who knew what could happen? The gods were peaceful towards mutants for now, but they were absurdly protective towards children who they had hurt as much as the supposed enemies had. She absentmindedly fingered her knife, that Luke had given her.
If the mutants made moves of aggression towards Annabeth and Percy, it could mean war. She didn't think that they would, but the wind could change in a heartbeat. There were some radicalists out there who thought that mutants were the next stage of evolution, and humans should be eliminated to make way for them.
But she knew she was just trying to distract herself from what happened earlier. She had known Scott's name before Ororo had told her it. Something was happening to her, and she knew that if she spent too much time thinking on it, she would know. Perhaps she already knew.
"The Professor will know what to do with them." Ororo said finally. "You should be getting sleep too, Scott."
Annabeth gave up pretense and opened her eyes. Percy's chest had been wrapped in bandages, and though the cuts didn't look deep, he had lost a lot of blood. She just hoped that they could get to this 'school' in time. He'd been through worst. So had she. Still, her pulse still raced.
She leaned over and took his hand. He stirred. Don't leave me, Percy. She thought. Please.
Annabeth's stomach was practically twisting itself into knots by the time a huge manor came into view. She couldn't help gaping at the architecture. It was clear that had been made in the early nineteenth century, maybe even the eighteenth, with those soaring turrets and stone structure.
It had vines growing all over it, but in the way that it was clear that it had been taken care of. To the east side of the manor, children played in a basketball court.
She found that some of the tension in her was melting. This reminded her of Camp. Ororo was smiling at her. "Amazing, isn't it?"
"This... this is a school?" Annabeth wondered. It certainly didn't look like one.
Ororo hesitated. "This is Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters."
"I thought you said you were mutants."
"Some of us are." Ororo looked away. It was clear that Annabeth wasn't going to get anymore answers out of her until they met this 'Professor'.
As soon as they got out of the van, Scott took charge. "We have wounded!" He called out. "John, will you get the Professor? We need to move them into the infirmary."
The blood was starting to soak through the flimsy bandages that they had made. The other man was unconscious as well, though he displayed no visible wounds.
"Now," Ororo looked at her. "Let's go meet the Professor."
A/N: I said I would update on Monday. I lied! I'm updating today. NEXT update will be on Monday.
This is your daily reminder to post a review if you have the time :D
Oh, and also the chapter titles come from The Archer by Taylor Swift.