From her position in the back, the van was quiet. All Annabeth could hear was the soft rumble of the engine and the occasional rumble when the van struck uneven portions of the road.
She turned, looking out the window at the passing skyline. Her hand idly stroked the underside of her right arm. The cool metal of her dagger grounded her.
"Hey," Thalia murmured, "you okay? You're remarkably quiet."
Annabeth pursed her lips, looking away from the window and towards her friend, into her concerned eyes. She bit her lip.
"Do you feel out of place?" She asked
Thalia blinked. "Hm?"
"Here, in the quest." Annabeth elaborated. She frowned, looking towards the front of the van, where the remaining members of their quest sat. "We've got two hunters who have been at this longer than the time we've been alive, combined, and a guy that regularly does wetwork for the gods. And we're just…"
"Just us?" Thalia asked. Her lips quirked. "So what?"
The daughter of Zeus waved a hand. "We're demigods, working with those stronger and longer lived than us is just a facet of the job." Her eyes crinkled with concern.
"What's the real problem Annabeth?" Thalia asked softly, leaning towards her drape an arm around her.
"I guess I just feel weak." Annabeth swallowed. "At Westove. That manticore nearly killed me, and I survived only due to a fluke of circumstance."
Her fists clenched. "I volunteered myself because I wanted to prove to myself that I'm not afraid. But I still am."
A dry voice broke into their conversation. Anna was learning over the backseat, her chin resting on her forearms. "Oh no, you're afraid." Green eyes rolled. "The horror."
Thalia bristled beside her. "Hey-"
Anna steamrolled ahead, ignoring Thalia's attempted interruption, gazing into Annabeth's eyes. "You think that just because we've been doing this longer we're not afraid?"
Annabeth shrugged half-heartedly.
The huntress leaned in. "Let me tell you a secret."
Annabeth learned in, interested despite herself. "What?"
"I'm absolutely terrified every time I fight." Anna said. "Don't look at me like that, it's true!" Anna waved a hand. "I'm even more terrified right now. Without Artemis' full blessing, I'm weaker than I have been in a long time."
Anna continued, smiling at Annabeth. "But courage isn't the absence of fear. It's doing what needs to be done in spite of it."
"I never thought I'd say this." Thalia said, drawing the attention of both girls, "but Annabeth, the huntress is right."
"It's alright to be scared."
Annabeth was scared right now. It didn't feel alright.
The burnt out husk of their van was upended somewhere on the street behind her. The wheels were still spinning in spite of the rubber on them being reduced to molten slag.
She had managed to get clear of the brunt of the explosion. She was lying on her back on the rough asphalt. Pain lanced through her stomach, and she looked down.
A jagged piece of metal stuck out from her stomach.
Oh. She was decently sure that wasn't good. Perhaps she hasn't been as clear as she'd thought.
A hand extended to her. Percy was in front of her. He wasn't even looking at her, his gaze was directed elsewhere. An automatic rifle rested in his other arm. A Stoner 63, her power helpfully identified.
He was saying something. Annabeth just stared at him, unhearing. He began firing upwards. She could barely hear the gunfire, let alone his voice, over the ringing in her ears and the throbbing in her gut.
Something screeched in the air. It sounded awful, like a knife being dragged along a brick wall.
He extended his hand further, more urgently this time. She grasped onto it, still somewhat numb to it all still. Percy swung her up and around, and suddenly she was staring down at the road. His shoulder was digging into her chest.
The world was bouncing up and down. It took a moment for Annabeth to realize that Percy was running.
The air shrieked, loud enough for Annabeth to hear it, and Percy twisted to the side. Her vision spun.
Annabeth watched, wide eyed, as a feather crossed by them. Time seemed to slow down as it soared past her face. The feather was a vivid green and blue. Precious metals and gemstones gleamed darkly from it as the projectile sank into the asphalt with frightening ease.
Percy kept sprinting, Annabeth balanced on his shoulders like a sandbag. She looked up, and managed to catch a hint of crimson scales writhing in the sky.
A woman was running towards them, a bow as tall as her held up in front of her. In her darkening vision, the bow seemed to glow. Zoe.
Silver fire roared.
Percy grunted, kneeling down in an alleyway. Delicately, he lowered the daughter of Athena off of his shoulders, resting her on the ground.
Immediately, Anna and Thalia were there, in front of them. Annabeth's skin was pale. Her shirt was red, the metal still protruding from her stomach.
"Can you heal her?" Thalia asked, her voice breaking. She was staring at Annabeth, clenching one of her hands tightly.
Anna nodded, too focused to respond verbally. Verdant light flared, as a serpent wound it's way around her shoulders. She reached out, grasping one of Thalia's hands and pulling it towards the metal shard impaling Annabeth.
"On my signal, pull." Anna said curtly, focusing her power.
"What?!" Thalia spluttered.
"I can't heal her with that still in her stomach." Anna glanced at her. "Pull!"
Thalia grimaced, and yanked. Anna immediately rested her hands on the wound, closing her eyes.
Percy leaned back on his haunches, relaxing minutely, confident in Anna's skills. He turned to regard the elder huntress standing beside him.
"Did you kill it?"
Zoe looked down, her hand tightening around her longbow, still held loosely at her side. "No." She shook her head. "Perhaps if Artemis' blessing was at full power I might've been able to…" She trailed off, still looking down angrily at her boots.
"What was that?" Thalia rasped, looking up at them with bloodshot eyes. "It nearly killed Annabeth. We were barely a few miles out from camp, and it nearly killed Annabeth!" Thalia's hands rested loosely on her lap. Her voice rose in volume with each word. "It blew up the van!"
Percy glanced at Zoe. Zoe nodded. Percy sighed. He looked back at an impatient, angry Thalia.
"A complication." Percy finally said. "This quest just got a whole lot harder."
"No shit" Thalia scoffed. Electricity flickered in her eyes as she glared at him. "Don't give half-assed answers. My friend nearly died. Would've died, if Anna wasn't here. What. Was. That."
"A mesoamerican monster. A servant of Quetzalcoatl." Zoe whispered.
"A feathered serpent." Percy muttered.
Anna stiffened. Thalia frowned. "The mesoamerican pantheons exist?"
Percy nodded. "I've found that most pantheons exist, to some degree or another."
Thalia slowly nodded, processing this. "Why would it be here?"
Zoe and Percy exchanged another glance.
"Most likely the mesoamericans are supporting the titans."
"Why would they do that?!" Thalia hissed.
"Most divine conflicts parallel mortal ones." Percy stated.
"So?" Thalia asked
"The conquistadors." Zoe said softly, still staring down at her bow.
"The Cuban missile crisis." Anna mumbled, her eyes still closed as she pumped energy into Annabeth, healing her wound.
"We have a rough history with them, you could say." Percy bitterly explained.
Thalia reached into her pocket, grasping a mace canister. It grounded her. She looked up at Zoe and Percy.
"Will it be back?" She asked.
"Most likely." Percy stated.
"Where do we go? That thing is just going to snipe us as soon as we poke our heads up again."
"I made some calls the other day. One of my safe houses is now near here. Barely a block away." Percy said. "It has weapons capable of killing it."
He reached into a pocket, pulling out a field notebook. He tore out a page, beginning to scribble out a brief map. "We just need to make it from here," He circled a point on the map, "to here," He circled another point.
"Will it be safe there?"
"The safehouses are not undefended." Percy turned away from Thalia, to Anna. "Is she healed?"
Annabeth coughed, opening her eyes.
A/N. Sorry for the long leave of absence. Life's busy. Anyway, so confession time. I was recently reading the Percy Jackson wiki, refreshing myself. Apparently Zoe's mother was Pleione. And she was a full blooded Hesperide.
...How? The hesperides, according to Greek mythology, were birthed by Hesperia. Its literally in their name. Hesperide is derived directly from Hesperia. I mean sure, there are many different versions of the mythos, there's another where the hesperides were born from Nyx and Erebus. Daughters of the evening and all that. But also, like, there's no version of the myth where they were mothered by Pleione. I genuinely have no idea where the fuck Rick pulled that from. Closest I could find was a variant of the myth where the hesperides were born from Phorcys and Ceto, primordial sea gods. But I mean, if you were to use that version of the myth, Zoe would make Artemis look like a fly on the wall in terms of power, she'd be a full blooded primordial god herself. Would make the story rather boring, methinks.
I mean, maybe I'm being too focused on the mythos. It's Rick's playground, he can do what he wants.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the two chapter update. Thanks for all the reviews. Sorry for not responding to them, I have been reading them. You guys are awesome. I'll respond to some of them now.
Trismite, thanks! The best answer to your question regarding his age, I guess, is 'its complicated'. He's not quite 16, but also 16? Basically when the gods constructed him, they basically made it so he was permanently 'turning 16', so that he could effectively always be the candidate for the prophecy.
CommanderDuck15, you're absolutely right. I've found that when I make historical ancedotes, I often go down wild rabbit holes. Case in point, when I was writing chapter 7, I went down a massive rabbit hole reading about the soviet force composition. Was trying to determine whether the mechanized soviet infantry would've primarily had T54/55 tanks, or BTR-152 APCs. Then I went through another rabbit hole trying to figure out if a single shot from a Carl Gustav could realistically disable a T54/55 in such a dramatic fashion. The answer? Depending on where it it. The Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle, as of 1956, would've most likely still been the M1 Swedish model, meaning that it would be using a solid-steel penetrator, which was rapidly approaching obsolescence at that time. Still, from a rooftop angle, it still could penetrate quite easily, but detonating the tank? Maybe if it somehow cooked off the ammo, which given the poor ammo storage utilized by the T54/55 tanks, admittedly more likely than other tanks.
...in the end I gave up on this train of thought and simply went fuck it, I'll use the armoured car. Amoured car should go boom much more easily. haha
Also, regarding geology and geopraphy, I do try to incorporate it where I can, but its rather hard. Truth is, geology and geography, in practice, are boring as hell, especially in the field. You can spend weeks staring at a singular outcrop and running it through tests. Case in point, Sudbury Breccia. Fascinating geologic history, but unbelievably boring to actually do the work behind publishing said history. My professor once said that all geologists are closet alcoholics, and I'm inclined to believe him.
OURcade, maybe? Percy might regain a body of flesh and blood. Eventually. Under very specific circumstances. Possibly. Not giving anything away. I have a rough roadmap I'm following for this story, but nothing truly concrete.