Annabeth stared at Anna in horrified fascination. The huntress had both hands wrapped around a burger the size of her head, and she was devouring it as if she had been starving over the last few days.
Glancing over at Thalia, Annabeth saw the same horrified fascination on her face. Thalia had her brow furrowed, glancing up and down, as if wondering as to where Anna actually fit all that food.
"Man," Anna groaned, tearing yet another chunk off from the burger with her teeth, "This is why I love America. Nowhere else could you find fatty and greasy food in this quantity."
"How do you stay in shape?" Thalia asked wondrously, still staring at Anna's meal as if she couldn't decide whether to be impressed or concerned. She was picking away at her own, significantly smaller meal, and Annabeth truly envied her ability to eat in the face of the Hungarian girl's voracious appetite.
Anna laughed. "Oh no. I don't get to eat like this every day. This is a rare occasion."
She lowered what was left of the burger, speaking in a hushed tone. "Look, Zoe will have my ass if she knew I ate this, okay? Don't tell her. She'd view it as an insult to the animal. And, obviously, as an insult to my physical form as well."
Annabeth couldn't help herself. She laughed loudly. "Are you saying Zoe puts all you huntresses on a strict diet? What are you, models?"
Anna's lips curved, as she somehow finished off the burger that was larger than both her and Thalia's meals combined. Annabeth had barely finished off half of her salad.
"Nah. Models starve themselves. We don't. Sure, Zoe watches what we eat to ensure we eat the right food, but it's mostly to ensure we eat enough food. You'd be surprised how fast even just standing in the cold burns calories."
"Oh, and," Anna said briefly, glancing at Annabeth's meal. "Vegetarian diets are stupid. It is absolutely only in the modern first world where such delusions of grandeur can be fed."
"Hey!" Annabeth protested. "This is a chicken salad!"
Anna leaned over. "Oh." She rubbed the back of her head with a thankfully clean hand. "Sorry."
Thalia rolled her eyes, finishing off her smaller burger. "Any other insights, missus dietitian?"
Anna flushed, raising both hands in exasperation. "Oh my gods, you think I'm bad? You should hear some of the other girls in the hunt."
Thalia leaned over to Annabeth, mock-whispering. "And they wonder why I don't join."
Annabeth laughed again. It was probably the most she'd laughed in ages within the span of a single conversation. She hadn't laughed like this since Luke had disappeared.
The old wound twinged, but for the first time, as she shared a meal with the unlikely combination of a foreign huntress and a daughter of Zeus, it didn't immediately kill her mood.
Anna stood up from the table, the cheap aluminum chair of the mall food court skidding across linoleum behind her. "I'm going to go grab Zoe something to eat. I'll be right back."
Thalia waved lazily. "Good luck. Hope she's not too picky an eater."
Anna barked a laugh. "Oh, you have no idea."
With that, the huntress walked off. "Oh man." Thalia suddenly said, grinning as if she'd thought something funny. Annabeth looked at her with the long-suffering expression of a person who was well versed with their friend's antics.
"What?"
Thalia started giggling. "I wonder what Zoe would think about those slabs of deli ham. Those chunks of pure processed meat."
"Thalia, no." Annabeth said, grinning despite herself.
"No," Thalia struggled to get the words out between her laughter, her shoulders shaking. Her fist hit the table. "You don't understand Annabeth, we must show Zoe the meat obelisk."
"Meat obelisk?" Annabeth echoed, beginning to laugh as well. "Really Thalia?"
Tears were now streaming down her cheeks as Thalia wiped at her eyes, still laughing. "After this quest, we're taking a trip to a deli. You're bringing the camera."
Annabeth nodded, humouring her. "Whatever you say, Thalia."
They had just started to simmer down when Anna returned with a bag of food. She frowned, looking between them. "What's so funny?"
This set the two off again.
Between bouts of laughter, Annabeth managed to tell Anna what they found so funny. Anna laughed as well. A hand was splayed across her face as she regarded the two of them.
"Oh my gods, that's brilliant." Anna gasped out.
Thalia preened.
Just as they'd finally begun to truly calm down, the distinctive sound of silver fire detonating rang out outside.
The three instantly stood up. Anna opened her mouth to speak, but whatever she was attempting to say was drowned out by another outside arrow impact, and the collision of a van into the wall.
The van detonated as it impacted, the wave of concussive force sweeping the food court. Tables and chairs were bowled over, an invisible wave of destruction cascading towards them.
Thalia yelled, her black denim jacket billowing out behind her as she stood defiant in the face of it. She brought her hands together, air warping and twisting within her palms. She ground her feet into the floor, anchoring herself as she released the built up energy, outstretching her hands violently. A wave of overpressure blasted out from around them as the daughter of Zeus enforced her will upon the air, overpressure rumbling away from the trio.
"I'm getting real sick of exploding vans." Thalia growled, her spear exploding out her can of mace. Her shield followed, appearing in her opposite hand.
Before anybody could congratulate Thalia on no-selling an explosion, Anna shouted in alarm. She kicked over the table they'd been sitting at and wrapped an arm around both Thalia and Annabeth, tugging both demigoddesses to the floor behind the makeshift barricade.
Gunfire echoed through the food court in the face of Anna's desperate actions. Thalia cursed, lightning beginning to flicker around her hands.
"Thanks." Thalia yelled over the pandemonium, barely audible.
Anna merely patted her shoulder in acknowledgement, too busy with attempting to peek over the table to respond. She flinched away as a round hit particularly close to her face, spalling from the cheap steel cutting through her hair.
"I can't get an angle." Anna finally yelled out. "We're pinned!"
Thalia shouted in frustration from the opposite side of the table. She outstretched her hand, lightning erupting out of the open palm. She grinned in triumph as one of the strange gray skeletal gunmen went down, only to pale moments later as the gunman picked itself back up.
"What the hell are they!" Lightning roared once more, azure light flashing throughout the ruined food court as Thalia began to let more bolts fly. "Fall already!"
Annabeth frantically patted at her legs, searching for something, anything that could help. Her fingers struck a heavy metallic weight at her hip, and she remembered.
Slowly, reverently, Annabeth drew the large revolver. It glinted in the mall lighting, almost as if the weathered revolver was winking at her.
Her hands moved in something akin to autopilot, manipulating the revolver as if she'd had years worth of experience with the firearm. She flicked her wrist, letting the rotating chamber expose itself, nodding to herself as brass glinted. She closed the revolver, cocked the hammer, and exhaled out.
Instinct took over. Annabeth was an experienced demigoddess, a daughter of Athena. Her battle instincts were second tier to none. She followed them without question.
Even so, in the back of her mind, as time slowed down, she wondered why she was pointing the revolver in seemingly the opposite direction, at a heavy metal support pillar.
She pulled the trigger, and the recoil sent her arm up. She winced as the loud report tore at her ears.
There was an awful screeching sound as the .476 Eley round bounced off the pillar, rebounded, and soared over Annabeth's head to embed itself between the eyes of an attacker who'd advanced far too close for comfort.
Anna laughed incredulously. "Annabeth, that was brilliant! Can you do that again?"
Annabeth stared, dumbfounded at the revolver in her hands. She could name dozens of reasons why that shouldn't have worked, why that was impossible. How what she had done was a violation of the laws of physics.
She took a breath in. The smoking revolver in her hands reeked of cordite and gun oil. Adrenaline thundered through her. She found she didn't particularly care about those reasons right now.
"Yeah." Annabeth breathed. She cocked the hammer of the revolver back. Her grey eyes glinted in the chaos of the firefight. "Yeah, I can do that again."
Time began to slow down once more around Annabeth, her divine mind processing the data around it at supernatural speeds.
She began to stand up, unheeding of Anna and Thalia's shouted warnings, or her own feelings of terror.
A bullet tore through the air by her head and her ears rang with its passing. She levelled her own pistol in return, sighting her attackers for the first time.
They were strange, skeletal beings, dessicated gray skin stretched over thin bones. They were clad in worn military fatigues, wielding assault rifles.
Annabeth grinned in the face of them. To her, they were moving as if through molasses.
"My turn." She muttered.
She brought her revolver to bear, and opened fire, choosing targets almost at her leisure.
She emptied her revolver in seconds, ducking back behind the table. She reached into her pocket, pulling out more rounds, loading the revolver with easy, familiar movements.
This was her power, she realized. Ares might be the god of war, but Athena was the goddess of battle. It was a minute, conceptual difference, but it was an important one. Annabeth did not have the brutality or the sheer power that a child of Ares might have. But she had skill and intelligence. She fought smart, she fought fast, and she fought hard.
"I didn't know you could shoot!" Thalia grinned at her.
"Daughters of Athena never cease to amaze me." Anna shook her head.
The huntress had her fists clenched, small throwing knives of silver fire jutting out between her fingers.
"I got bad news though!" Anna said, watching one of their attackers pick themselves back up, despite missing a massive chunk of their head due to a bullet from Annabeth. "Even that doesn't seem to be taking!"
"I noticed." Thalia ground out. " All hitting them in the head seems to do is slow them down, but not much else."
Anna outstretched both her hands, blindly throwing the throwing knives she had been grasping. She was aiming for quantity at this point, unable to properly aim.
"What are they anyway?" Anna asked. "I know quite a few undead monsters, but none that are both intelligent enough to fire a weapon and this hard to kill!"
Something clicked in Annabeth's mind. She remembered an old legend, about a sorcereress on an island and a hero who'd betrayed her.
"Spartoi." Annabeth yelled abruptly. "They're spartoi!"
Anna hissed. "That… certainly complicates things." She glanced around. "We need to move! At this rate they'll surround us!"
"Where?" Thalia shouted.
The daughter of Zeus looked up, before her eyes widened. She outstretched her hands, barely managing to redirect a rocket propelled grenade from striking them.
"What the- they have RPGs!" Thalia yelled.
Annabeth continued shooting and reloading. She moved in a blur. Her mind was aching, and her body was throbbing in pain. Her vision was bleary, as she pushed her newfound power to it's absolute limits.
All of the speed in the world would not erase a fact Annabeth was becoming increasingly aware of. They were trapped, encircled by unkillable mercenaries.
Then the roof, and the several floors above them, all detonated at once. Debris and molten steel hurled into the room, colliding with the spartoi.
On an intellectual level, Annabeth had known that Zoe was a millenia old huntress. She knew that she'd served in the hunt for thousands of years. She'd knew that she was incredibly skilled, and incredibly powerful, the right hand of the goddess of the hunt.
And yet, on a practical level, Annabeth had never really truly understood what that meant. Not until now. Not until she witnessed Zoe falling through several floors of solid concrete, floors that she'd sundered under her own power.
She was probably the only one to witness Zoe fighting, her divine heritage allowing her to perceive the speeds the lieutenant of the hunt was fighting at.
Zoe was a whirlwind of silver fire and death. She leapt between the falling concrete fragments, letting loose arrows onto the hapless spartoi.
Anna's silver fire hadn't worked on them, hadn't been nearly potent enough to burn through whatever magical protections they had.
Zoe was a daughter of the evening, an exiled Hesperide. Her divine heritage was simple, straightforward, and monstrously powerful. She ended things. Even with the blessing of Artemis as faded as it was, Zoe's innate power was more than enough.
The spartoi burst into hellish flames and shadow, distingrating into dust.
The remnants of the several floors Zoe had just crashed through smashed into the ground, the lieutenant standing atop the rubble. She staggered through the rubble towards them, breathing harshly.
The exertion of her power had exhausted her.
"Huntress. Sound off!" Zoe barked out.
Anna stood up, from behind the barricade. "Here, ma'am!"
Zoe limped over to them. Sweat beaded her forehead and her bow dangled lloosely from her hand.
Anna sprinted forward, letting Zoe collapse into her shoulder.
"Perseus." Zoe whispered. She gripped Anna's shoulder, levering herself into a standing position, forcing herself to stay conscious. "He's fighting Atlas. He needs help."
She looked at them, onyx black eyes bright with emotion. "I had to leave him to help you. Help him in return. Please."
Before anyone could react, or respond, Zoe's head bowed, as the eldest huntress lapsed into unconsciousness.
Had some unexpected free time today, I was able to get this chapter out unusually quickly. Hope you guys enjoy.
Also, I know children of Athena have far differing powersets in canon, but I decided to change that. I guess I always kind of thought the children of Athena got shafted in canon. Everybody else gets all these cool and esoteric abilities, and meanwhile Athena's children get to be slightly smarter than the average dude. It's really not until the Heroes of Olympus series that we see any children of Athena truly wield special abilities on the level of other demigods. So I decided to change that. Athena is the goddess of battle and strategy after all. Ares starts fights. Athena finishes them.