A/N: This chapter has been rewritten now. Not many changes happened but I hope you like this one anyways.

Chapter 2: In which we settle in

"Clay… Which one of us is the older one?"

The question came quite suddenly and for a moment I didn't know how to answer to it. So I simply looked up from my newspaper that I'd pilfered from the nearby trashcan to stare at my sister who still hadn't chosen a new name. We were hidden in the shadow of a side alley and she was watching people walk by. I wasn't sure what should I answer to her question so I countered it with my own.

"Why do you ask?"

"When you are creating those identification papers for us we need our ages… but which one of us is actually older?" She looked down and slumped against the wall opposite me.

"I'm not sure… Originally you were four years older than I… then at sixteen you 'disappeared'… and I'm using that term loosely. I waited five years until following you, making me almost eighteen. I arrived to the DC World ten years before your time point. In process my body de-aged ten years. I lived those ten years to catch up with you again so I was seventeen again. We lived one year in the same pace before arriving here where you are twelve and I'm thirteen… Even without my ten extra years, I'd still be at least a year ahead of you." I shrugged, folding my paper and chucking it into the same can I'd taken it from. It flew in smoothly.

"As long as you don't call me little sis I don't mind." She sighed. "I chose my name by the way. It's Luna."

"From Luna Lovegood? Your favourite book character of all time?"

"Yeah." The now-named Luna smirked. "And it fits quite well our situation, doesn't it?"

"But we get along much better than those archer twins."

"Much."

In unison we began walking along the bustling street before us. The Mist weaved around us thanks to the Eye of Hecate and disguised our belongings that we'd found from the beach. I was glad that my tsuru was still safe and I hadn't lost any arrows.

"So…" I glanced at the low hanging clouds. It would rain any moment now. "What's the plan?"

Luna grinned at me.

"Interference without interfering."

I smirked back. "Sounds like a plan. But first we need money." I took a passing glance on the jewelry store window, not to steal anything from there but to see what I looked like now. The image wasn't too clear but I could see my hair and eye colors were similar to Luna's except that they looked like someone had upped the saturation on Photoshop. I ran a hand through my choppy locks. Great. Just great. I could just imagine myself looking like miniature Mr. Sunshine. Or Polly. I snorted at the thought of calling the 'God of Awesome' that in his face.

"We need to act quickly then, before our clothes get too ragged and we look like street urchins." Luna spoke next to me. "And I know just the thing…" She had stopped by a restaurant. In front of it was a sign that asked for a pianist. How old-fashioned. Luna turned to me with a grin. "Ready to recall our lessons, brother dearest?"

I looked inside the restaurant. It looked tidy and cozy enough and had a grand piano inside. "Why not. But I have you know that my hands are too small for anything overly complicated."

"Oh, that's nothing. We'll just play together." My sister waved my concerns away and made her way inside the restaurant.

It didn't take a lot to convince the owner to let us play. He was probably desperate. So Luna and I sat on the piano stool that was just wide enough to fit us both.

"What shall we play?"

"I play Valse Lente and you add harmony to it. I trust your new heritage will help you with that. Afterwards we'll play Moonlight Sonata together. Then Für Elise… Finlandia could be quite nice too, don't you think?"

"I remember it. It's long and hard but it'll last for the evening." And thus we began the first piece.

We got a lot of cash. Some were tips from the customers and the rest was pay from the restaurant for our performance. We even got to eat there for free. It was great. And the owner asked us to come again. Luna promised we could on weekends. Right, we were pre-teens, supposed to go to middle school. We had to keep appearances. But now we had money. We could buy food and I needed a laptop for my hacking. And with time we'd need to get a place to stay. Permanently that is.

"We need to go to library." Luna announced when we were making ourselves comfortable on the branches of the trees of Central Park. Sneaking into subway had been way too easy with the Mist helping.

"Why?" I yawned. After everything we'd learned and done today, I was dead tired.

"I need to find out more about these gemstones." From the corner of my eye I could see her looking at the Lapis Lazuli on her middle finger. "I need to find out why they brought us here. Were they originally from this dimension or just keyed here? Were they creations of the gods? Are there more like this?" She smirked then. "And if there are, I want them."

"That's Thalassa speaking, right?" I frowned. While the older female (by mentality she was in her twenties) had never actually stolen anything, she still took fancy on pretty things and definitely had the skills to commit elaborate thefts.

"Partly. But I think that if they have some special powers, they might come in handy. There are monsters out there after all." She replied. "And my middle name will be Autere by the way."

"Autere… That's… It means 'sunny haze' in Finnish, right?"

"Yeah. And during one summer camp it was the name of the character who represented our part of the camp. Oh, the good times…" Luna sighed wistfully. We walked in silence for a while until I spoke again.

"Luna… Are you upset that you are not a demigod?" I asked. I knew how much she loved those books and like with any other book series that she liked, she wanted into the story. Well, now they were in the story but majority of the original characters were demigods and now I was one too, not Luna.

"Not really. I'm quite happy to be human." She smiled.

"Why?"

"Because…" She took a deep breath and from that I knew a rant was coming. "All of those demigods are labelled one way or another. Those of minor gods are not paid any attention to. Pallas Athene's are copies of each other because they are basically created from the same thought. Majority of their actual traits to tell them apart come from their mortal parent. Then there's Ares' brats. Violent, brutal kids with severe attitude problems. Hermes' are labelled as troublemakers and thieves. And yes, it is true… Afrodite's children are just posing in front of mirror, gossiping all day pairing up their fellow campers. Hefaistos' are silent anti-social workers covered in machine oil and ash. Demeter's children spent their time with plants more than people and are generally just tree-huggers. Apollon's in the other hand are underappreciated who are stuck in the infirmary, only good with a bow and campfire entertainment. I'm not talking about Poseidon, Zeus or Dionysus because they have so few demigod children that I can't get a good sample out of them. But as you can see, as a human one can be whatever they want to. No threat or pressure of a godly parent hanging over head and no expectations to conform to stereotypes more than what normal in regards of gender, religion and race."

"When you put it like that…"

"By the way, has your dyslexia kicked in yet?" Luna interrupted me.

"…No." I had completely forgotten about it. "Maybe I don't have it since I wasn't born as demigod, just… gotten a transfer of life force. I got something out of it but not everything. I mean… I feel like I'm more attentive right now, but I'm not fidgeting around like I'd actually have an ADHD. And I guess I'll have relatively easy time to learn Greek too…" I shrugged. I was about to continue when another idea formed in my head. "You talked about being a demigod and why you are fine like you are… but how about the Hunters of Artemis? If they were to offer you a chance to join, would you?"

Luna gave me quite a dry look that said plainly: 'Are you friggin' kidding me?'

"Honestly Clay? You just had to ask. The obvious answer is no." She huffed.

"Why not?" I asked. It would be interesting to hear her opinion about this particular goddess and her followers. "Do tell big brother why you won't join the Little Sister Club." "Other than them being narrow-minded brats who discriminate to the extreme degree and by laws of nature shouldn't even exist anymore?"

"That's harsh."

"That's the truth. They hunt down men they encounter with same manner than monsters that roam this land. They see only what they've been told by Artemis who, I admit, was severely betrayed by Orion and there must've been some other factors too…" Luna trailed off to recall more information but came up with nothing as she shrugged and continued. "And I'm sure that they all have also had bad experiences with men but that doesn't give them the right to label half of the human race by couple of dozen example! Not to mention that they are physically still the age they took their oath. Majority of them look like they are our age! What sort of pre-teen girl knows what she wants to do the rest of her eternity? The world changes all the time and they should keep up with the change. Those girls are mindless drones. Yeah, skillful warriors but who isn't under a goddess' blessing and decades or even centuries of experience? The fact is that they are narrow-minded, childish, bitter and misandrist. So there is no way in hell I'd join them."

"You've given this some thought…"

"Yeah. I could come up with some good examples for them to tell. Like… imagine a family of four. Father, mother, sister and brother. Father is absent, mother is abusive drunk, sister runs away from home where her brother was the only person she cares about. The sister meets the Hunters and because of lack of knowledge she joins them. Years later the brother who has been worried to death about his sister finally finds her. He talks with her, hugs in delight when… there is an arrow in his back from the bow of another Hunter. He dies in front of his sister after finally reuniting with her. The only reason for his death was that he was of the wrong gender and touched the sister. And what happens next then? The girl either gathers up her courage and runs away from the Hunt… or then she allows to become brainwashed by the other Hunters."

"I see…" I hummed. "That's quite drastic indeed."

"Yeah… Or how about a girl living with only her father? He is the person she looks up to and who is the center of her world. And the father loves her a lot too. But how does the Hunters see it and how they'll react? They'll surely kidnap the girl just to take her away from that 'disgusting, vile male'. I wonder how many girls have met that fate…" Luna muttered and began walking along the street again. "Or how would they treat trans-genders or gender-fluid people? Or boys who are abused by women? I still remember that one Criminal Minds episode where the serial killer was abused by his grandmother because he was a result of rape and his mother died at childbirth. Well, I'm not sure about those two details but the mother was dead anyways and he had to live with his maternal grandmother… who forced him to wear dresses, locked him out of the house in rain and had to sleep in a doghouse… No wonder he because messed up in the head…"

I said nothing. I could see that Luna didn't feel like talking anymore. So I just followed her as we went to look for a place to stay for a night.

It was some sort of a miracle how we lived the next two weeks. We survived and no one tried to send us to school. No one asked awkward questions. No one called the police or truant officers for two kids staying alone at a cheap motel. Maybe it was the Mist at work. Or then people simply didn't care and saw only what they wanted to see… No, that was the Mist at work too. I wasn't sure and honestly I didn't care. But we made money during those weeks. Quite well actually. Thalassa snatched wallets left and right from people who seemed to be well enough. Luna and I performed at the restaurant long hours on weekends and earned a lot. We also managed to help around the motel so we got discount from the room we were temporarily using. And whenever possible Luna spent her time at the New York Public Library, researching and sometimes even dragging me with her.

"I found it." A heavy book was dropped on the table in front of me. A really dusty tome. Dust flew in the air from it. It was obvious that no one had read the book in a while. Maybe it had been hidden by the Mist. It seemed to be the answer to most of occurrences currently.

"Well then?" I drawled and pushed aside my books as my sister dearest plopped on the chair opposite me. She opened the tome without a legible title written on elaborate gold handwriting on the black leather cover.

"Eye of Hecate, Pandora and Lady Sky all belong to what this book calls the Godless Stones. They are said to be fragments of the powers of the gods of Greek Pantheon created when said powers were used in large quantities so little fragments got chipped off. Apparently they did know how to regulate their power… Or didn't care… But even though they are just fragments, they are immensely powerful. Thankfully regular mortals can't use those powers but…-"

"…Who said you were regular." I stated.

"Exactly." She snapped her fingers and gave finger-guns at me. "This also tells how the gods can keep track of them if they wish so… There is only one stone per god at the moment because after some time overuse of power hasn't appeared that much anymore and the control is better in all ways… And some of the stones have been destroyed at the hands of demigods because they didn't know how to use them correctly." She summarized from the book. From the constantly switching text, I concluded that the book was self-updating that was on the language that the reader deemed most comfortable. I decided not to guess which language Luna was using to read the book. Finnish as native language, English extremely well, Swedish moderately, French barely worth of mentioning, bits of Italian if the 'Polly il pappagallo ès il Pollo' comment was anything to go by, then Japanese fluently after our stay at Detective Conan's world…

"And this book even has a map to all of the locations." Her voice interrupted my train of thought. "According to it the first stone, Athena's, is right here in this library. In ornithology section…"

"Why that does not surprise me…" I muttered. The Godless Stone of the Wisdom Goddess in a library… With birds. "I guess we need to go and take a look on the owl section then." I got on my feet but Luna remained seated. "Sister? Tsukiko-neechan?"

"I was just thinking about this one sentence here…" She turned the book to face me. I leaned a bit to see the tiny text.

"One stone can be tracked soon. Two stones interfereth, Thrice them and thou aren't seen. Dividing hidest one best." It read. I wasn't sure how original it was grammar-wise but the message was conveyed.

"I don't understand what is problematic with it." I stated calmly. "I assume this tells us that while the gods can track down their own stones, when there is more of them, they interfere with the signals of each other. They can still try to find concentration of godly powers but if the stones are divided to two people then the signal practically disappears."

"Right… I hope you are right."

"But in a sense gods can't take the stones away personally just like they aren't allowed to interfere with the quests or take each other's symbols of power. They can though send creatures that will try to destroy the stones or set up quests for demigods to fetch stones for them." I explained when I noticed another passage on the book.

"Well, we are lucky then that Kheiron isn't allowing the demigods to go on quests right now. Well, have almost two years to find the stones we need." Luna took the map – it copied itself – from the book and closed the heavy tome. As soon as it was closed, the book faded away, probably back to its hiding place. "Don't worry, I already took notes on the useful stuff." She added before we headed towards the biology section of the library. It was the time for some bird watching.

A/N: Thank you for reading, please review. :)

This chapter didn't have that much references but I can explain some here too.

1. Luna Lovegood: My favourite character from Harry Potter books. This was quite obvious, yeah? ;)

2. Hacking: Clay was as Shugo brilliant and untracable hacker, he still has his skills in PJO world.

3. Piano playing: both my brother and I have been on piano lessons since we were approximately 7 years old. This applies on Clay and Luna too.

4. Lady Sky: I don't know if this was mentioned in the previous chapter but it's one gemstone from DC World. It was featured in the movie Lost Ship in the Sky.

5. Kaito: Kaito Kuroba, Canon charater from Magic Kaito. High schooler, magician and also known as the phantom thief Kaitou Kid. I made him Tsukiko's boyfriend since so many of my readers of Dream or Not want them to be together. I still haven't paired them up officially...

6. Finnish: Because this is my nationality an I've given it to these two, there will be some references. Like Luna's second name Autere and some mythology and language.

7. Autere: Old Finnish I guess. 'Aurinkousva' when it's meaning is opened up which means 'sunny haze' like I mentioned in the dialogue. (Aurinko=Sun, Usva=Mist)