Chapter 16: Zeus is Ungrateful

Hey, I'm back! There's a very, very important authors note at the end, please read.

Jason POV

After we've all cleaned up and (mostly healed) Piper, Diana, Tom and I head to the lobby where we've arranged to meet. We're the first ones there so we sit down, and Piper starts braiding Di's hair. Braiding is a nervous habit she has, she even tried to braid my hair once! I wonder what she's nervous about?

'Maybe she's worried about Hazel,' I think. 'Or she's afraid that more monsters will target the kids. Honestly, I don't bl- '

"Dad?" Tom pipes up, startling me out of my thoughts. "That woman looks funny."

Almost as if it's rehearsed, the 'woman' turns to face us, a malicious grin on her face. Sure, she's pretty, I'll give her that, but for an Empousa she's not very smart. They usually attack in groups. I feel Tom tense next to me, and Diana let out a small growl.

"I've got this," Piper and Di say at the same time.

"Diana, stay here," Piper tells her.
Di raises her eyebrows. "Really, Mum? I'm 14, and after what I've just been through, I think I can handle myself."

Piper opens her mouth to say something, but I interrupt. "Go for it, Di," I say. "She's literally ten steps away," I say to Piper when she protests. "If anything happens, you can easily intervene."

She agrees reluctantly, and Di is off with a thumbs up and a grin.

We watch as she talks to the 'woman,' both pretending they don't know what the other is. Suddenly, the Empousa strikes out, but Di is ready, and cuts off her hand with a knife borrowed from Annabeth (she insisted the kids all needed to be armed, just in case, and Di left her own knife at home). The Empousa shrieks, alerting the staff members, but Thalia comes downstairs just in time, and sees what is happening. Quick as lightning (no pun intended), she weaves a veil of mist thick enough for the mortals to forget what they just heard, or in some cases, saw. While the Empousa is distracted by the mist surrounding them, and the pain in her arm, Di summons the wind and hovers right over the Empousa's head. When she looks up again Di dives down cuts her head clean off. The Empousa dissolves into the ever so familiar golden dust. Di turns to us with an 'I told you so' grin. I turn to my left and Piper looks proud, yet slightly annoyed. On my right, Tom is looking at his sister in awe, although I know he'll blatantly deny it if I mention it later.

"Nice one, Di!" I say a little too loudly, causing a few stares from other guests. She swells with pride as Luke, Zoë, Percy and Annabeth come down the stairs, seemingly in the middle of an argument.

"Seaweed Brain- "Annabeth says before noticing the small pile of golden dust a few feet from Diana, and the knife she still hasn't put away. "What was it?" she asks.

"An Empousa. Just one which is odd," Piper says. "But Di took care of it, no problems."

Annabeth shoots her a grin, then her game face takes over. "That means either there are too many of us in the same spot for a long period of time or- "

"Or out concealment scent isn't working," Leo juts in from the top of the stairs. He's looking from the dust, to Di, to Annabeth and then back to the dust again, so he must've figured out what happened.

"Exactly. But I think it's the first option, since Empousa nearly always hunt in a pack, she must've been a stray. Di, did you get a name?" Annabeth asks, almost as if she's dreading the answer, like she knows of a stray Empousa.

"Rubi, I think," Diana replies, and Annabeth's gaze softens.

"Must've just been a stray who picked up a whiff of us. We've been here a long time, and there are lots of us, no matter how much scent concealer we put on, something's going to find us," I add.

"What's going on?" asks Reyna, who's late as always. Ever since she left the senate, where it was crucial to be on time, she's relaxed to the extent that she's always late, as if she's rebelling in her own way. We explain the attack to her, and she looks at Di with as much pride as if she were her own daughter.

"We'd better get out of here as quickly as possible then," Reyna says.

"Our flight's at quarter past two, that's in about an hour and a half," Annabeth says, "but by the time we get to the airport, we'll only have to wait about forty minutes."

"You know, we could just shadow travel- "Nico begins, but is cut off by a chorus of 'no' from everyone, even the kids!

"Well, I could...erm...ask Poseidon if..." Percy trails off as Annabeth and myself give him a 'really?' look.

"We don't have to fly," Thalia says, looking at us with her best 'please give me pity' look. "I mean, couldn't we just, um..."

"Walk?" I say sarcastically.

She glares at me, but she knows as well as I do, that flying is our best- and only- option.
"I'm going, with or without the rest of you," Frank interrupts our silent sibling glare-off, as he walks straight in between us, towards the lobby doors. Sammy and Emily follow him, as do Calypso, Leo, and Reyna. The rest of us eventually fall into line behind him, Percy, Nico and Thalia staring sulkily at the rest of us. As we wait outside the lobby, Annabeth calls several taxis', and we scramble into them, those of us not afraid of flying, and even occasionally those who are, cracking jokes and re telling stories.

As we get closer to the airport, Nico, Percy, Thalia and Luke gradually go silent and pale. By the time we get to our gate, Percy and Nico are just about shaking. It amuses me, a bit, to see three of the strongest demigods I know so afraid of something I find so simple. I mean, really, they've got nothing to be afraid of. I'm about to point this out, but Annabeth beats me to it.

"Percy, Jason and Thalia are on this flight, there is no way Zeus is going to strike the plane down," she says.

"Yeah, Papa," Bianca chimes in.

"And Luke," I add, noticing the lack of color in his usually tanned face, "unlike these two idiots, you've never done anything to make Zeus angry."

"I know," he says, in a small voice, "it's just that I've never been in an airplane before. It's a huge, heavy metal object suspended in mid-air. If anything was to go wrong, whether or not it is affected by Zeus, we'll go plummeting to our deaths."

"Not. Helping." Thalia says though gritted teeth, and I notice Zoë also loose a bit of colour from her face.

"Nothing is going to happen, relax," Piper says, putting a smidge of charm speak into her last word. "No one here has done anything to piss Zeus off, and the chance of anything non-godly happening to the plane is highly, highly unlikely. Even if it were to happen, there are two children and two grandchildren of Zeus on the flight, so he'll probably make sure we land softly or something like that."
As she finishes, I notice a mortal looking at us a little strangely, and I look at her an wave. She turns around, squirming, and we all laugh.

Forty minutes later, although Piper's speech and the clueless mortal lightened the mood considerably, Nico is still arguing with us about getting on the plane, and Percy looks like he is about to chime in on Nico's side.

"Nico, Zeus' children are on this flight, there's no chance in Hades he's going to strike it down," Annabeth argues rationally.

"He'll probably save everyone but me," Nico says. "The guy hates me!"

"Me t- "Percy starts, but he stops when Annabeth, Piper and Reyna glare at him. "I mean, Nico, it'll be fine."

After putting up a good fight, Nico eventually gives in, and reluctantly climbs into the airplane.

Percy POV

I walk into the plane behind Annabeth, holding tightly to Zoë's hand, and I notice Annabeth saying something 'comforting' to Luke. I get that she's trying to help, and we both love her for it, but she doesn't know what it's like. I know I sound like an emotional teenage girl, but it's true. Zeus and Athena have almost always got along, so she's basically got nothing to be afraid of. Zeus has always hated me (even though I returned his lightning bolt, rescued his daughter and saved Olympus...twice. Ungrateful asshole.) so I've never felt safe with me feet off the ground. Having Jason and Thals on the flight helps a bit, but Zeus is so powerful he could just manipulate the winds so save everyone but me (oh, and Nico, Zeus hates him even more than he hates me).

The plane is just a small one, with the seats split into two sides of three. I look at my ticket and sit down towards the front of the plane, in a window seat. Great. Luke sits next to Diana, and right across the aisle from her is the rest of her family. We agreed that having someone his own age to talk to would help Luke stop thinking about the fact that we were in a huge metal object suspended gods know how many feet above the ground and from the fact that we could plummet to our deaths at any moment... (they didn't seem to think I need distracting.)

Annabeth and Zoë take their seats behind us with Reyna in the aisle, and the rest of our group spread out through the airplane. As the usual announcements come on over the loudspeaker, Annabeth leans forwards and asks me if I'm okay. I'm seriously tempted to sing 'I'm not okay' by My Chemical Romance (Thalia loves that song) but then I think better, and just nod. She squeezes my hand, then turns back to her conversation with Reyna, something about the best strategy for a sneak attack.

During the entire 2 hour and 25 minutes it takes to fly to JFK, I can't stop shaking. I try to engage in Luke and Di's conversations as much as possible, but all I can think about is how I'm in Zeus' realm, and that my loving uncle could strike me down at any moment. The air hostess sees my distress and tries to comfort me, and so do Annabeth and Zoë, but it's useless. When we finally touch down, if I wasn't already seated I would collapse from relief. I jump up when the seat belt sign is turned off, and hurry Luke and Di out into the aisle. Lucky we're towards the front or I would be bowling people over to get out of this flying death machine. Annabeth laughs at me, and I turn around to stick my tongue out at her (mature, I know), when I see Nico, who is so pale his skin is practically translucent. He is gripping Bianca's hand so tightly I think it might fall off, but she's too sweet to say anything. He locks eyes with me, and I grin at him and motion to his daughter. He must suddenly realize he's hurting her, because he abruptly let's go.

"Thanks Papá," I hear her giggle, before I turn back to thank the air hostess who was so nice to me. She waves it off, and tells me it happens all the time.

As we reach the arrivals section, we're about to go to the baggage return when Emily pushes past me from behind, soon to be followed by Sammy, and then, to my surprise, Frank. I watch them go, and realize they're running towards Hazel, Will and...my mom and Paul! I'm about to send Zoë and Luke over to them, because Mom had been sick with worry, when I notice they've already gone. Mom is holding Zoë tightly, while she kisses a reluctant Luke on the forehead, and Paul is patiently waiting for his turn. Will is hugging both Nico and Bi, and Hazel has her arms around the twins, while Frank sneaks up behind her and smothers all three of them.

"And you!" I hear Mom say to me, when she sees us approaching. "You didn't even let me know you were leaving! You could've been anywhere!"

"Sorry Mom," I say, only half faking the ashamed look on my face. She shakes her head, then embraces Annabeth and me in a bone-crunching hug that she knows is always welcome.

After hearing the story once again about how the little kids escaped, the four older kids tell us their theory on Bianca's new found power.

"Just because you guys adopted her from a mortal orphanage, doesn't necessarily mean she's mortal," Luke says to Nico and Will later that same day. We all decide to stay together for a little while longer, so we're all eating lunch at Nico and Will's house.

"Her mortal parent might not have even know she was a demigod," Emily continues calmly.

After not much discussion, we agree it is the most likely situation, and so we head to camp to consult Chiron. We pack up the cars and kids and make our way there, but, as it turns out, there's no need to ask Chiron, because as soon as Bianca steps into the camp, Hecate's torch flares above her head. Chiron, who had come out to greet us, looks on with mild amusement, while the rest of us look at each other, baffled.

"Is it coincidence?" Nico says, thinking out loud. Chiron shakes his head.

"Hecate has always been watching Bianca. When she heard you two were looking to adopt, she had Bianca put in just the right orphanage at just the right time, and, well, here we are now."

IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!

This is the end of this story (for now). I'm honestly not enjoying writing it, and I have other things I want to write, but I always feel guilty when I'm not writing this. I'm marking it as complete, but if I ever get inspiration to write a little one shot about the kids, I will probably just post it on the end of this one. I have some more idea's for things I want to write though so keep an eye out for those (I even have an original idea that I'm thinking of, so check out my wattpad under laurenandherbooks to see that). Thanks so, so, so much for reading this crappy lil story of mine,

-LolzBolz02