"Aliens exist, I'm a demigod who heals fast, and I am a girl who has the Blessing of Nyx. I can do this." Sunny took a deep, centering breath. She was just trying to eat. Her hunger had finally gotten the best of her.
Jayla hadn't been back since she was called for an emergency - an emergency outside the base, and Sunny had been given Jayla's authorization, meaning she could literally go anywhere around the base.
Sunny opened the mess door, noting that it was pretty empty. A white-haired girl reading a book reached for her glass of water, but it iced over.
She licked the ice.
Sunny kept walking.
"Hello, fellow demigod," the girl said as Sunny passed. Sunny stopped and looked at her. She was met with piercing blue eyes, eyes the color of ice. And a colder temperature than ice, too. "I offer you a seat here, if you can warm my drink up. I often forget I freeze what I touch."
Sunny imagined the warmth of the sun in her palms, and held her cupped hand near the glass of water.
The water melted, the glass warping. Sunny stopped the warmth, and the demigod nodded.
"I offer you a seat once you have your food. Then we can be awkward together."
Sunny chuckled. "Thank you. I didn't catch you name?"
"I am Elsa."
Sunny smiled. "I love that name."
Some of the ice left Elsa's eyes.
~:~
Barricade hit something. The human hadn't died! The squishy would pay.
Well, it's not like Megatron cared about one squishy. The damnable Bumblebee had saved the squishy and he hadn't even been there.
Barricade crushed a metal pipe.
He would find a way to destroy the Autobots, and his glory would be restored. He would destroy Bumblebee first.
~:~
Jayla stared at Barricade, shaking her head in thought. Then she crawled over to Will.
"This isn't going to work."
"Can't you melt him into a puddle?" Will whined quietly.
"The amount of heat I can pull off right now is low, seeing as this was an 'emergency' and I had so much paperwork, okay? Gathering heat to melt a giant alien robot would require days of standing in a fire. Now, we don't have days. This guy's close to finding our base, and I really don't want to have to tell General Morshower we messed up again. Do you?"
By his face, Jayla could see that no, Will did not quite want that to happen. General Morshower may have agreed to keep them from having a liaison for now, but... If they messed up as severely as they had been, they would all be demoted.
For now, they just had to keep tabs on Barricade and report to Morshower to make sure that he didn't.
(Destroying another city was a no-no. A huge no-no.)
"What about the demigod that he tried to run over?"
Jayla shrugged. "She's your sister, Will."
"Bumblebee picked her up." Will went back to looking through his binoculars. "Think we could pop over to the nearest fast food place? I'm hungry."
"No. We're not allowed."
"Such a buzzkill."
"No, I'm trying not to get us brutally torn apart by a Decepticon."
~:~
Sunny grabbed a book.
"Who are you?"
Sunny turned to see an teenager standing there, frowning at her.
"Er. I was rescued by Jayla Lennox? Sunny Archen."
"Ah. I'm her half-brother, Sam. Jayla around?" Sam asked in a hopeful voice.
Sunny shook her head. "I think she was called for an emergency. Your godly parent is Hephaestus?"
Sam shook his head with a small chuckle. "No, ah, I'm mortal. You're a demigod?"
"Yeah." Sunny sat down.
"Hey, Sam. Who's the chick?"
"Oh! Mikaela, I've just met Sunny... So have you! Sunny Archen, this is Mikaela Bane."
Sunny waved at Mikaela, eyes trailing over her skimpy clothing. Not judging, just wondering why a lot of girls Sunny knew (including some of Nyx's children) liked skimpy clothing. Greek dresses looked best on humans, in Sunny's opinion.
(Sunny sometimes forgot she was human. A human who had seemed to live for a long time in a Pit of supposed evil. Tartarus had his moments, yes, but he was a cool uncle if you were nice and burned offerings in his name.)
"I like your clothes," Sunny said after a long moment of silence. "I'm sorry, I suck at talking to other human beings."
"You're talking as though you haven't spoken to humans recently," laughed Sam nervously.
"I am not sociable," Sunny said after a moment. "Not to mortals. To other demigods, I know what to say." This has got to be the most awkward moment in the history of time, Sunny thought to herself despairingly. Or maybe not.
She tapped her book, smiling tightly for a moment.
"Well... We're going to go," smiled Mikaela. "Hope you have a good day!"
Sunny smiled again. "Yeah, I will. I will tell Jayla you came by!"
Elsa walked in after they left, holding a soaked book.
"I hope Jayla doesn't kill me for soaking her favorite book. I suck at holding in my power when I am bored."
"Do you get bored easily around here?" Sunny asked, finding it far easier to talk to Elsa, like it had been easy to talk to Perseus Jackson and Annabeth Chase while they were trying to get to the Doors of Death.
"Very easily," Elsa nodded. "It's mostly paperwork, the bane of every demigod under Jayla. We help when we want to, but sometimes it's a punishment for something. Like icing over twelve books."
Sunny nodded. "I like books. Lady Nyx loved to read. Most of her books were in Ancient Greek. Ancient Greek was hard to learn when you are not naturally equipped to read it."
Elsa nodded again. "I see. And your powers?"
Sunny disliked being known for her powers. The last time she'd used them in front of mortals - for the safety of a mortal, a mortal had screamed upon reappearing and fled, calling her a demon.
Her mother had tugged her into the house, telling her that it wasn't exactly natural to have suck prowess over the sun, being able to disappear from a shadowy spot and reappearing in the light. The mortals were scared of powers, Elizabeth Archen had explained. They fear what they could not try to understand.
But if they knew the existence of demigods now, what - why? - didn't the mortals accept the demigods?
"I have heard you have been in Tartarus for the last few years," Elsa said, snapping Sunny out of her thoughts. "There is something you should know."
Elsa began talking.