The Eye of Gods

by: dnrl

Chapter Five: A Certain Shade of Green

The streetlights were coming on above us as I shoveled another mouthful of fried rice into my mouth, blinking at Sudi when he raised an eyebrow at me. "Whar?" I asked. I swallowed and tried again. "What?"

He rolled his eyes. "American pig. No manners."

"Oh please, like the way you ate that pizza was any better. Plus you wiped your fingers on my shirt after."

He waved a hand, dismissing my protests. "Also, the amount of MSG in that synthetic, cheap Chinese food – it can't be good for you."

I sighed, eating another mouthful. "That's what makes it good, Sudi."

"Whatever you say, Prop." He pushed himself up off the bench, thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans. "You coming or what?"

"I'm not even finished yet," I complained, rising.

"So eat while we walk. Unless multitasking is too much for your brain to compute?" he teased, smirking.

"I am on painkillers," I reminded him. "…I thought I wasn't supposed to leave the hospital until these were out of my system. Why did we leave again, Sudi?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Gods, maybe we should have stayed in the hospital, I think your dosage was too large. Like I told you twice before this: we left because one of the nurses was a monster. She was eyeing you. You were zoned out. So I dragged your ass down the fire stairs. And now I'm feeding you, because you wouldn't shut up about your stomach and I figured, hey, the kid deserves some cheap Chinese food if he wants it." He narrowed his eyes. "Although getting bitten was kind of your fault. You shouldn't have put it in your pocket."

"…did you ever notice that it feels weird when you're wearing shoes with no socks? Like, I'm wiggling my toes, and it's all weird, because I have no socks, and I usually do have socks."

"Oh, eff em el."

"…huh?"

"That is the American saying, right? Standing for fu – "

"Yes. Yes. It is. Um. Pretty sure you shouldn't be saying that out loud. There's a preschool class like three feet to our left. Hello, small people!"

Sudi sighed and steered me away from the kids, who were staring up at me in confusion. One opened his mouth to speak, and Sudi snapped, "If your mother didn't ever teach you not to talk to strangers, I will: don't talk to strangers."

"Hey, be nice, he looks like he's about to cry," I observed. Sudi groaned and began muttering what I suspected was a prayer in Arabic. "Why are my hands tingly? And my fingers are huge, like whoa!"

He blinked at me hands. "…you're having an allergic reaction to the antibiotics. Are you serious."

"Yes."

"Not a question." He grimaced and glared at nothing in particular. I'd kind of learned that that was his thinking face. Finally, he sighed and grabbed my arm. "This way." He yanked me sideways down a small alley between buildings that led into the parallel street. "The embassy's plane is housed in a small warehouse on airport grounds that's connected to the runway. I called the pilot while you were in the emergency room. He'll meet us there in…" Here he yanked my wrist up to look at my watch. "…five minutes. Taxi! Taxi! Yes, you, you bloody retard, get the hell over here! No, no, don't – oh for the love of…"

"My tongue is tingly too!" I announced excitedly. "Is that good?"

Sudi looked at me. "You'd be surprised at how much self-control it takes to keep from killing you," he informed me in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Probably," I replied. Or tried to. It came out more like, "Pwahbahbree." Still, he seemed to understand. Or he didn't care. I wasn't quite sure which. I was more focused on the fact that the sky was turning a lovely shade of orange. "My chest hurts." Well. "Mah chess huhs."

"What?" he asked, eyebrows furrowed as he turned to me. The last look I saw on his face was one of sudden worry. Then my vision blurred and I staggered to the side. "Prop!" I felt his hands under my arms, lifting me up. "Crap – help! Please, is there a doctor? Anywhere? Somebody call an ambulance!" I heard an increasing murmur of worried voices around me before an insanely familiar voice drove through the haze.

"Yes, yes, I'm a doctor. Stand aside, here, let me see him."

Why was that voice familiar?

"Ha, my boy, you are very lucky."

"What is it?" Sudi asked. He was, at this point, a black blur against a blurry orange background that I assumed was the sky.

"Simple allergy to ibuprofen. I assume he's had an anti-inflammatory painkiller earlier today?"

"Yes, he had treatment for a snake bite. What – what is that?"

"Never fear, my boy, simply a syringe of epinephrine."

My boy.

"It's glowing gold," said Sudi, skeptic attitude clear in his voice. I felt his hand tense around my arm. "Hey, no, I don't want you to – hey!"

I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my arm for a moment, and then sensation like fire through my veins, racing up my arm and into the rest of my body. Black spots danced in from of my eyes for less than a second, and when they cleared I could see again. My tongue wasn't swollen anymore, nor were my hands tingling. An middle-aged, portly man was leaning over me and smiling happily. "There, you see? No harm done to your friend." He gave Sudi a reproachful glance. "And there was no need for harm to be done to me, either, little Egyptian."

I reached up and grabbed the doctor's arm. "I know your voice," I said. "I know it."

He blinked owlishly from behind thick-framed glasses. "Do you really?" he asked, smiling crookedly. "How odd."

And then he was gone, and Sudi and I were sitting in the back of a taxi.

Sudi's head snapped to and fro, his mouth stammering with no sound emerging. When he finally managed to get control of his vocal chords, he could only seem to produce short bursts of words – "Wha – wh – ho – I – no – bu – Prop!" he wailed, turning to me and clutching at my arm. "What just happened?!"

"I think we met a god," I managed. "I think that he's also the same man that brought me to the Egyptian embassy. They had the same eyes."

"A god," he said flatly. "A god just walked up to us, jabbed a needle into you, and teleported us into the back of a taxi."

"Yes."

"…well damn," he finished, sliding back bonelessly into his seat.

"We're in a bit over our heads here, I think," I sighed, running my hands through my hair.

"What clued you in? The existence of two mythological pantheons, the monstrous creatures trying to kill us, or the impending doom of the end of the world as it exists?" Sudi deadpanned, rolling his eyes. "We're up a creek without a boat."

"Paddle," I corrected absently. "The expression is 'up a creek without a paddle.'"

"I know what the expression is, and I know what I wanted to say. Not only are we up a creek without a paddle, we're up the creek and we don't even have a freaking boat."

I sighed and conceded the point.

"We do have a jet," I pointed out when we arrived at the hangar. It was a small thing, streamlined to smoothness, and it looked like something out of a high-tech sci-fi movie. "Are you sure this is for an ambassador? It looks like something out of…Transformers, or something."

"Positive. I flew in it to get here. It has a minibar," he grinned. He turned to the pilot, a blonde-haired man with dark brown eyes and a nose far too large for his face. "Andre! Hé, l'homme, ce qui est vers le haut?"

The man smiled. "Rien intéressant, Monsieur Massri, juste l'habituel."

"Excellent! Ainsi nous pouvons obtenir cette chose en Grèce aujourd'hui, bien?" Sudi asked.

"…what's going on?" I whispered. Sudi shushed me with a glance.

"Ah, le plus certainement. Le besoin juste de faire un puits rapide s'arrêter, et moi pouvons vous avoir là avant déjeuner demain." The pilot was smiling politely. Sudi wasn't exactly returning the expression.

"Un arrêt de mine? Vous n'avez pas mentionné un arrêt de mine." Sudi sounded concerned, frowning and folding his arms over his chest. Andre hasted to reassure him of whatever it was.

"Non, non, rien principal! Nous devons juste sélectionner quelque chose vers le haut en Allemagne pour votre mère."

Sudi's dark eyes widened slightly and his jaw tightened. I tensed. "Ma mère? Lui avez-vous dit que vous preniez le voyager en jet?"

Andre looked surprised. "Non. Elle a demandé ceci tôt ce matin avant que vous ayez appelé avec les arrangements qu'elle a pris."

Sudi smiled widely. "Merci beaucoup, André. Nous embarquerons maintenant."

"Oui, monsieur!" Andre stepped away rapidly, and Sudi shoved me towards the jet stairs.

"Go, go, go!" he hissed. We made a mad dash up the stairs and into the jet, where we collapsed onto the nice leather seats.

"What was that all about? I mean, I got the gist of some stuff, but…"

Sudi waved a hand. "The first bit was just chitchat, but then he told me that we should be in Greece before breakfast tomorrow morning, and that's including a stop off in Germany."

"Germany? Why Germany?"

"He needs to pick up something for my mother," Sudi replied, kicking the mini fridge open and grabbing a tangerine. "That was why I was worried. I lied and told him that my mother was sending me and a friend back to Egypt so that I could attend the rest of my extra tutoring. If she had told him something that contradicted that – like the fact that I'm grounded – it would've been bad."

"You're really good at lying," I told him, frowning. He laughed and then saw the look on my face.

"Oh, come on, Prop, don't be such a naïve little princess. Lying," he said, popping a tangerine slice into his mouth, "is a necessary part of life. Adults lie to children all the time, teaching children that it's okay to lie when you think that it's right, which means that, as adults, those children will lie to their children in turn. It's a vicious cycle, but that's what you have."

"My father didn't lie to me," I sighed. "There goes your theory."

"Did you have Santa Claus?" he asked me, eyebrow raised.

"Yes," I said. "Telling kids that he's real doesn't count as a lie. It's Santa."

"And you see? You're justifying the lie that was told to you by an adult – by the adult culture, actually – because you think that it's for the benefit of yourself and others. And so when you have a bouncing baby boy of your very own to cuddle and screw up, you'll lie to him about Santa, because you think it's right, because that's how you were raised." He bit into another slice. "Cycle."

I frowned at him. "You're making it very hard for me to have faith in humanity."

"Just doing my job, sir."

"You're a cynical person, aren't you?"

He snorted. "I'd say that I prefer to think of myself as a realist, but…yes, I'm probably more cynical and pessimistic than realistic. Really, I think that life's more fun this way."

"How on earth do you see that?" I asked.

"'Cause if you always think things are going to be bad and then they are you're not disappointed – and if you think things are going to be bad and they're wonderful, well. You get to have a pleasant surprise. No-lose scenario."

I sighed. "I still prefer being an optimist."

"What, you like getting let down by people every ten seconds? There are far more bad occasions than good ones."

"That depends on your point of view, doesn't it?"

"I swear, if you pull the glass-half-full stuff on me, I'm leaving."

"…why are you here, anyway?"

"Excuse me?" Sudi asked. I rushed to explain.

"Not that you're not amazing to have around and useful and smart and fun to talk to and whatnot," I stammered in the face of his abating anger. "But I'm just some random kid who showed up at your embassy talking about America and the Greek gods. Even if you are an Egyptian half blood, why believe me? Or why even come on the quest with me? Or help me out by giving me a ride on a jet? You just met me. It's not logical."

"Why thank you for your analysis, Mr. Spock." Sudi tossed the tangerine rind and picked out a bowl of cold red grapes. He popped one in his mouth before continuing. "Look. I don't exactly have the best home life, in case you missed out on that memo. My mom didn't want me, but she bargained with Thoth for a career raise. She would bear him a child if he would give her the knowledge she needed to climb the rungs of the business world. That's all I was to her – a business transaction." He brought the ibis out and toyed with the chain. "I – I've always been a problem kid, and not only with my learning disabilities. I act out, cause trouble, because the only time my mom bothers with me is when she's disciplining. It's stupid, I know – she doesn't even love me, so why should I want her to notice me?"

"I didn't say that," I said softly. He ignored me and went on.

"I break things – mostly other kids' faces when they made fun of me. I got into fights, my grades dropped lower than ever, I came home one day with a broken nose, an arm fracture, and a shin splint, and she didn't even care anymore. Hired a 'disciplinary nanny' to help me sort out my issues because she couldn't be bothered. Then I realized that I'd screwed myself over, because – why the hell am I telling you this? Anyway," he said, shaking his head as if at his own foolishness, "I came with you because life in London is hellish for me, because you're something new and exciting, and because I'm…rebelling for something that I want to rebel for. I want to act out for something, not just because I want attention." He shrugged. "I think I overthink things."

"Little bit," I joked, and the mood was broken. He threw a grape at me, I threw it back, and we progressed into a grape war. Still, I couldn't forget his words – or the utterly lost, totally abandoned look on his face when he said them.

"Did you know that one in five thousand Atlantic lobsters are born blue?" Sudi asked me about half an hour into our hour and forty-five minute trip to Germany.

"No." I ate another Twix bar. "Hmm. Did you know…did you know that after you die your hair keeps growing for about two months?"

"Yes. Yes I did." He smirked at me. "You're going to eat all the Twix. Do you not know anything?"

"School was never my strong point and I didn't really read or watch TV," I grumbled. "Plus the TV that I did watch wasn't anything that would have anything remotely factual and realistic in it."

Sudi had declared himself bored about ten minutes after we'd taken off, and had begun a spin-off of the drinking game "Have You Ever." We would each throw out random facts, and if the other person didn't know the information they had to eat a Twix bar. Sudi had eaten five. I had eaten eleven.

"But you know random facts," he pointed out logically, taking a deep pull on his Coke. "Hm, let's see. Did you know that the earliest form of contraceptive was crocodile dung, and that it was discovered in Egypt?"

"Yes!" I said, excited that I wouldn't have to eat another Twix bar. Don't get me wrong, I like Twix well enough, but eleven in quick succession is a bit much. I sighed when Sudi shot me a skeptical look. "It was on an episode of this reality show my aunt was watching last week. Shut up. Um…did you know that dentists recommend keeping a toothbrush a minimum of six feet from a toilet so that you don't get bacteria from the flush on your toothbrush?"

"Oh, ew. No, I didn't, and I was happy not knowing." He crammed a Twix down and I cackled.

"Well, I was happy not knowing that the average person eats fourteen bugs a year while they're asleep, but you didn't care about that, did you?"

"Okay, okay, fine. My turn?"

"Yeah."

"Did you know – what the hell?!"

The plane began to tip wildly, and Sudi crashed out of his seat. I clung to my armrests and managed to extend my leg to him. He grabbed it and I hauled him up, straining and struggling as he wriggled towards the seat. He pulled himself into the seat next to me and quickly began fumbling for his seatbelt. I followed his example.

"Andre!" he shouted furiously. "What the hell? Que se passe-t-il?!"

The overhead crackled to life and spouted a garbled stream of steady French in what sounded scarily like an tone of fear. "Je ne sais pas, monsieur, je suis à une perte totale. Les commandes agissent vers le haut, et je ne sais pas quoi faire! Monsieur, rien répond comme il faudrait! Il est comme si quelque chose casse mes instruments!"

"What's going on?" I cried impatiently. Sudi's face was pale.

"Something's messing with the plane's instruments, and nothing that Andre's trying is working. He says that it's like nothing he's ever seen before. You don't think that one of the gods would do this, do you?"

"One of them was helping us, why would they crash our plane?" A note of panic crept into my voice as our oxygen masks popped down from the ceiling. "Oh god – I mean gods – or Zeus – or whatever, Sudi, I don't know how to use these!" The plane lolled down and then curled back up higher than before, and I fought back nausea.

"There is a monster on the wing of the plane!" he screeched, pushing back against my seat frantically, pointing. I gaped at the bizarre combination of bird and woman hanging from the wing of our plane. Her hair was blowing back in the moonlight, huge wings stretched out behind her, gigantic talons digging great big gouges in the metal wing of the plane. "And she's not wearing a shirt. My eyes are burning, dear lord, I think I need to gouge them out."

I hit him. "She's messing the plane up!"

"No sh – "

"Figure out something!" I hissed, flapping my arms at him uselessly. "All I know how to do is close my eyes and swing at things, do something, it's your turn!"

"We're taking turns?"

"I don't know, just get the thing away!"

"What is it?"

"It's not Egyptian?"

"No! No, the Egyptians usually have animal heads and she's getting closer and is that a nipple ring?"

"Why are you looking?! Look, okay, it's a Greek bird-woman, I don't know what it's called or what it does but – "

"Harp! Harp! Greek bird women! Harps!"

"A harp is a musical instrument and oh my god she is trying to break the window."

"A harpu, then? I don't know!"

"A harpy?"

"Yes, that! That! How do I beat it?"

"I don't know! Stab it or something?"

"Helpful! The glass is cracking!"

An inhuman shake rang out, rattling the seatbelts and the three panes of hardened bullet proof glass in the windows. Sudi and I both covered our ears as the woman-bird – the harpy – struck out again and again with her taloned foot. There were deep grooves in the outermost pane of glass, and I shivered.

Sudi unbuckled and threw himself towards the cockpit, crawling the rest of the way. "If I don't come back," he said, "it's been real." He pushed himself to the side, and it was then that I realized what he was planning to do. Levers thunked, a wheel squeaked as it turned, and there was a hiss of decompression.

"No!" I cried, fumbling with my seatbelt. A sudden rush of air filled the plane. Twix and their wrappers flew everywhere, Coke cans slamming into things, paper tearing from various surfaces, my hoodie flying somewhere to the back of the jet. I heard a thump and turned to see Sudi clutching to the wing of the plane, eyes safe behind goggles, clinging to the side he was precariously dangling over. He was about ten feet from the harpy and the turbine. The monster looked thrilled to see him, rushing directly over. I yanked desperately at my seatbelt. "Come on, come on!" I got the seatbelt undone and the oxygen mask slammed into my face. I shoved it on, prayed it worked, and fought my way against the air current to the doorway.

I slammed against the wall and clutched at the door, seizing on a pair of goggles still clinging to a hook in the wall. "Sudi!" I screamed, but my voice was lost in the howl of air. He and the harpy were struggling, staggering - well, he was. She had dug in her talons and was shrieking in glee as she lunged for him. Things slowed to an infinitely slow speed. As if in slow motion, I watched Sudi's feet slide out from under him, watched him catch himself on the wing, and saw him swing, with amazing dexterity, straight into the harpy's neck, catching it dead center with his foot. The monster plummeted away, twirling in a spiral towards the earth, and Sudi collapsed on the wing.

The plane jerked for a brief moment, and then I was being pressed up against the wall as Andre leaned out of the door. He screamed something in French and threw a rope and harness to Sudi. I snatched up the rope on the ground behind him and began to pull when he did. Together, we hauled the idiotic Egyptian back onto the plane. As soon as the door closed, Andre was back in the cockpit and at the controls, rechecking everything. I dragged Sudi back to the seats and, as quickly as I could, put the oxygen mask around his mouth.

Slowly, his shallow breathing began to deepen, the bag inflating and deflating at a slower, steadier rate than before. I breathed out a sigh of relief and threw off my own mask and goggles. I removed Sudi's eyeware and found his black eyes staring, half-open, up at me.

"You're an idiot," I told him. His eyes were asking a question. "You got her," I assured him. "You won."

His body relaxed at those words, smiling beneath the mask, eyes fluttering closed. We sat like that for about half an hour, just taking deep breaths and enjoying the silence before he spoke up. His voice was hoarse and more accented than usual.

"Did you know," he rasped, "that the outer skin of a plane is only five milimeters thick? And only about seven inches are between the passengers and," he coughed, "the outside. Also, the black box is orange."

I sighed. "You sure you're okay?"

"I'm sure I'll hit you if you ask a question that stupid again."

I couldn't help but smile. "Yeah, you're sure you're okay."

"Damn straight."

We spent the remaining fifty minutes of the flight alternately sleeping, talking about monsters, and berating each other for either monumental stupidity or idiotic overprotectiveness. He really didn't seem bothered on the surface by the fact that he would've died if Andre hadn't been there to help, but I knew that he was. He was being cocky and pessimistic just like he was before, but there was a quiet change in his brashness. And me? Well.

If Andre hadn't been in the plane, he would've died. I wouldn't have been able to help him, and I would've had to stand and watch as the closest thing I had to a friend ran out of strength and oxygen, collapsed, and flew off the wing of a plane to his death. Feeling that helpless – I didn't like it when it happened before, and I wasn't any fonder of it now. I had to become stronger, better, smarter…anything that I needed to become to make sure that people that were my friends didn't get hurt.

And Sudi was my friend. I'd known him for less than a day, but there was something about him that was so like me that it hurt. Even with his pessimism and off sense of humor and stupid bouts of courage, there was something that reminded me of me in him, and that made me not so afraid to let him be my friend. I would risk my life for him – and, I realized with a jolt, he already had risked his life for me. And no matter how many times he said it was to save his own skin, he and I both knew the truth – he had held himself together enough to make a plan because I was depending on him.

When he depended on me – when he needed me when there was a monster getting ready to attack – would I be able to hold myself together?

Or would I fail my only friend?

His hand squeezed my shoulder as he sat straight up and looked at the grooves in the window. "I can see the lights in Berlin," he said. "We should be about ten minutes from landing." He shot me a grin. "Maybe we can get some German food while we're here."

I trust you, he said. You won't, he said.

I wasn't so sure.

But I'd try.

A/N

Lame ending is laaaame. But oh well. It's one o'clock in the morning and I am tired, but dammit, I'm late enough with my updates. That is because the cooking bug bit me, and I've spent the last two days baking and cooking things like homemade coconut cake, cheesecake, peach cobbler, chicken and okra gumbo, and some sort of Mexican dish that I can't remember. :D

ANYWAY. I know that this chapter is pathetic and whatnot, but hey, it was fun to write, and good exercise. Concrit appreciated, reviews appreciated, flames...appreciated, I guess. I mean, some feedback is better than none. ;)

And I wanted to mention last time, but I forgot...the chapter titles have nothing to do with the chapters. They're the song that is playing when I finish my writing. Chapter one was Come Rain or Come Shine by Judy Garland, two was I'll Believe in Anything by Wolf Parade, three was Play with Fire by Cobra Verde, four was Oil and Water by Incubus, and this one is A Certain Shade of Green, also by Incubus.

Next chapter leads to the introduction of Ada, which means that it will be longer than others, like Prop's was. When introducing new characters, I tend to kind of...go overboard. :D Hopefully will have that up in the next day or so, but weekend is family time, so no promises. Lots of time to write during the week, though, so definitely an update by Monday afternoon, at the latest. :)

Happy reading!