Chapter 10 2002, Outskirts of Richmond Virginia (Thalia is so so bored right now)
Thalia knew that going after the donut store was going to be a bad idea. But after Harry spoke to her and Luke about taking down a Hydra, some cyclops and hellhounds, and even a Chimera, it sounded like any stores nearby would be monster-free. If a minor god cleared out the monster stores, then they had to be safe. Plus they had donuts and probably actual food. There was only so long you could survive on candy and soda after all, and Harry couldn't bring them food every day. Plus they usually told him they were good for food - he and Thalia hated relying on somebody else, it never ended well. And she was going crazy, she needed something to do. And every time she and Luke argued, it was always about the same thing, how she always felt like he was the hero and she was just the sidekick. Yes he was two years older, but he did everything, and Thalia could take care of herself!
The safehouse in Richmond was great but Thalia wanted to get out and attack something, it didn't feel right just hiding away. She was a daughter of Zeus, it didn't feel right on any level to hide. While she was fine with Annie, who couldn't fight anyway, being out of danger, she hated that she couldn't go out and fight monsters, or help Luke on a supply run. [Luke doesn't want to leave Annie home alone/without a protector, and as he is the one usually doing supply runs, that role often falls to Thalia]
Around 4 p.m, when Annie was distracted by some kid books and Luke was out checking the perimeter, and wouldn't be leaving for a while, Thalia picked up an old sword, a small spear and slightly dented shield, and went hunting for a Donut store.
It took around half an hour before Thalia saw it. It was bright, flashy, and it looked completely empty, except for the donuts. Reams of donuts. Part of her, a very large part, wanted to run to the store, grab all the donuts and cushions and fabrics right there.
Thalia sometimes despised her ADHD, but sometimes, it saved her life. Part of her wanted to run to the store, but part of her was paying attention to the birds, and the trees rustling, and when the birds stopped making noise, part of her brain went into overdrive.
Why were they quiet? Did they just move away? Did something scare them to move away? Was she overreacting? Why was the store in the middle of a forest anyway?
Luckily her brain decided to focus so much on the questions that it stopped focussing on wanting to run to the store, just in time for a cyclops to wander around from a dense cluster of trees. Thalia didn't know that cyclops could be quiet.
She knew that cyclops were solitary, and stupid, and that one cyclops was easy pickings if you surprised it and didn't get too close. Just before she was about to charge the monster, angling herself around to the perfect position, she heard a crunch from one of the trees. Looking up, Thalia cursed, a Harpy had just finished snacking on a bird - Thalia wondered what sort of bird it was - and suddenly, it shrieked, spotting her in the long grass.
Without much thinking, the demigod threw herself to the side, and swiped with her old sword in the vague direction of the oncoming harpy. In an ideal world, that would've been it. This was not an ideal world.
Thalia's blind swing didn't do much, it missed the harpy by a few inches at least, but the harpy was skittish and the swinging bronze caused it to fly off to the safety of the store roof.
The cyclops turned and stumbled in the general direction that Thalia was in. But it wasn't particularly fast, and Thalia was small enough, and quiet enough, that she managed to keep in the longer grass and shrubs, and move behind some trees like the strangest game of cat-and-mouse ever. The harpy was flying around trying to look for her as well. Thalia thanked the gods that most monsters were really stupid, and started creeping toward the store. As she got closer, she fixed her eyes on the branches of the trees incase the harpy landed nearby, it was the most dangerous monster here, and she needed to deal with it quickly. The closer she got to the store, the warmer she became. It was only when she herd a shriek behind her, and went to dive behind another tree that she realised.
There were less trees as she got closer to the store, it looked like she would need to fight the harpy. Luckily for her, the harpy was scared of the celestial bronze weapons so didn't get too close on all the swooping dives. It was after the fifth dive, when Thalia realised that she would never be able to hit it with her sword, that the harpy became more adventurous and began getting closer and closer, nearly tearing Thalia's jacket at the shoulder.
Thalia had taken a spear, but in all the hiding and diving and ducking, she dropped it, somewhere between the last gnarled tree and the store clearing. She wouldv'e laughed if she didn't need to focus on diving away from the harpy.
She couldn't laugh, so she ran, eyes fixed on the ground, looking for the spear, swinging her sword wildly behind her whenever the harpy sounded too close. It worked, at least until the harpy got lucky and thalia felt a gouge of pain in her shoulder and tripped.
Bad news, her jackets left shoulder was torn and it hurt and there was blood and it hurt so much
Thalia looked at what she had tripped on to take her mind from the pain, luckily the harpy had flown off again, and she cursed everything. It was her spear.
Before she could do anything, she heard a screech again, and on instinct more than anything else, lifted the spear, prayed to anything that she could think of, and jabbed in the direction of the noise. She got a mouthful of monster dust-gunk for her troubles. She didn't know if her frantic prayer, which wasn't much more than OhGodsIDontWannaDie, counted, but she muttered a quick "Thanks" and gingerly pushed herself up, trying not to use her left arm at all. The flares of pain weren't helping much.
The daughter of Zeus slowly turned toward the store and walked towards it - finally she could grab some actual food, and maybe find something for her shoulder that hurt like Hades now, and show Luke that she could do supply runs just as much as him. And get something for the pain she was in.
Sometimes ADHD was great,randomly jumping to some little detail or thing that could be really useful in a fight. But it made focussing on any single thing really difficult. Like the fact that there was a cyclops somewhere nearby the store that she needed to ambush.
Thalia was pushing the door open before she heard a grunt, and instinctively dived out of the way, crashing through a balancing donut display., and screaming. She landed on her left shoulder and completely dropped her spear.
The thing about cyclops' is that they have garbage depth perception, but if their target is right in front of them, then depth perception doesn't matter at all. Now the massive overweight cyclops was right over her, and there was nothing at all she could do. Her mind went blank, she closed her eyes, her last view was of a massive thing leering over her and it smelt awful and she was shaking and couldn't move and so so scared.
There was a thud, a grunt, but Thalia didn't care. She could feel tears leaking from her eyes, and she didn't even want to move just incase the cyclops came any closer
Suddenly she was enveloped and she heard what was probably the most amazing thing ever.
"Thals, that was the stupidest thing you ever did."
Thalia didn't care she was crying, or in pain, or bleeding or getting snot and boogers on Luke's t-shirt. She was alive.
It took more than a few minutes for Thalia to cry herself out onto Luke, who just sat there holding her. It was the most stupid thing she could do. She should've realised that a monster-free store wouldn't stay monster-free after a week.
Eventually, when she'd cried herself out, and was suddenly super hungry, she let go of her death-grip on Luke. It was only then that she realised, she didn't just cover Luke in tears and snot, he had some of her blood on him as well.
"Oh Gods Thals, what the hell happened. I got some ambrosia but I don't know what this will actually do."
Thalia didn't hear the last part, all her brain heard was 'ambrosia' and she pitifully croaked out
" 'mbrosia gimmie now."
Snatching a tiny cube from Luke, Thalia felt some of the pain easing up. Just enough that she could stand and not feel fire shooting down her back or arm.
"Right, we need to get Harry, and you need to change but I didn't bring any clothes, Annie is still in base, so we gotta be quick here." Was rushed out of him, but Thalia just grunted, her attention now on the smell of donuts and the vending machine near the counter with coke and soda. She stumbled toward the display, ignoring all the crushed donut boxes on the floor, they were squashed or covered in her blood or monster-dust anyway. And she really really needed a drink. Smashing the buttons, she managed to send enough of a shock through the machine that all of the drinks began dropping to the bottom. Clungclunkclungclunglcunk was the only sound that she heard or cared about, so she completely missed the pop, or Luke's surprised grunt.
It was only when she grabbed a cola and turned around that she jumped back in shock.
"Hey Thalia, your shoulder isn't looking too good."
Harry was there, somehow, and he looked like he was about to say something, when Thalia felt a sharp pain across her shoulder. Harry then started pulling out a few glass vials from a pocket in his weird coat. Thalia nearly dropped her coke when she saw his entire arm go in a pocket that should have only fitted his hand. Then he pulled out a small vial with a bright red liquid in it, followed by a smaller pair with purple and green liquid in, and a bandage that he rolled up.
"Right, so, important things for you to do. First, when you get to a toilet-"
"Restroom."
"-err, yeah" Harry waved a hand in Luke's general direction. "When you get to a restroom, try, if you can, to drip this purple one." he held up a small blue vial, around the length of his thumb. "Over the wound, only a few drops, try to make sure there isn't any clothing touching it. Fair warning, it might sting a bit. Then, " he now held a slightly larger vial, this one full of green liquid, as well as the rolled up bandage, "Drip this vial on the clean bandage so that the top of the bandage turns green, and hold it to the wound, it will tingle and sting but only for a moment. Try to keep the bandage on the wound for at least a minute, longer is better. Then once you are done with that, drink this one." he held the red vial up, the liquid in this one looked much thicker. Thalia nodded. Drop the purple one on her wound, put a bit of the green one on the bandage, and drink the red one. Harry passed her the vials and bandage, and Thalia carefully shuffled over to the restroom. Before she went in, there was a gonging noise coming from Harry, she turned to look back. Luke looked just as confused, but Harry just shook his head and looked annoyed.
"Bugger. Right, I'm going to need to head back fairly soon, Luke, can you get Thalia back to your base, and use this." Harry passed him something small, Thalia couldn't see what it was. "And-" Harry cut himself off seeing that Thalia was still looking at whatever happened.
"Thalia, you need to go and get your wound sealed up, trust me, what I've given you will help a lot more than you think." Not quite glaring at her, Thalia got the message, and closed herself in the ladies restroom, and had a thought. Why the hell would a monster need a restroom?
Later when Thalia had managed to drip, hold and drink the weird medicines, her shoulder felt fine actually, she pulled her t-shirt and looked again at her ruined jacket. It was stupid, but she really liked that jacket, it cost her fifty bucks, and it was the nicest thing she owned. She groaned, they couldn't afford to spend money like that on a new jacket if there were so many monsters, and they had other priorities. Pushing the door open, Thalia headed back to the front desk, where Luke was already half way through filling up a bag full of donuts and drinks and trying to get into the cash register.
"We gotta be quick Thals, Annie's back at the base alone -"
"WHAT! You just left her there?!" Thalia screeched back at him. That was their one thing, never to leave Annie alone, ever. And Luke had broken that promise.
Before Thalia could say or do anything else, Luke put both hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye, it was a thing they did to stop the other panicking too much. But Thalia didn't care.
"No, you left her alone! We promised we wouldn;t do that!" Thalia tried to get out of Luke's grip, but couldn't.
"Thals." Luke was definitely trying to keep his voice level. "You were in danger, I guessed where you went and if I didn't leave Annie alone for less than an hour in a safehouse then you would be dead." The boy visibly stopped himself from continuing that sentence and let his arms fall to his sides.
"Besides, we have all survived days alone before, a few hours in a safehouse with no monsters and a bed will be fine." Turning around to look at the bulging backpack Harry left them, Luke breathed out. "We gotta get the food back to Annie, and I think we're gonna need to move safehouses."
Thalia would have said something, but the look on Luke's face, and the realisation that the more time she spent arguing here, the longer Annie would be left alone.
"Right." she grunted out, pulling on her ruined jacket. "I'll pack up the food, you try and grab whatever from the register."
She so wanted to argue with Luke, but Annie waiting alone was more important.
A/N: So with wizards killing/seeing the monsters - explanations will occur as the story progresses, I didn't want to info dump all that in 1 chapter; The wizards will find out how/why they can see and kill monsters just as you (the reader) will, over time and over chapters rather than an infodump all at once
