New Hope Rewritten

Chapter IX: Useless Daughter of Poseidon

Nico

The darkness slowly enveloped us as the sea creatures turned weirder and weirder. Kairi swam next to me with a grin on her face as she felt safe and calm in her father's domain. It was contagious as I found myself mirroring her smile as I felt calm in the dark too. Eventually we hear peaceful singing in the distance. As we got closer, the singing got louder and clearer.

There we see a bunch of mermaids and mermen singing in harmony while circling around a statue that I'm pretty sure isn't any god or goddess I'm familiar with. We turn to look at Percy and Kairi that only seem to be in a dreamy state as they only turn towards the merpeople. "Something is seriously wrong." Thalia says in a low voice.

The merpeople don't stop singing but they all turn towards us with their sharp teeth glinting in the dark along with their glowing green eyes that seem to be radioactive. "Look at these two idiots! Why they look absolutely delicious and even brought along some more friends to feast on!" One said gleefully.

"Percy! Kairi! A little help here?" Jason says while getting his weapon out, unsure if it will be effective underwater. I get my own sword out and look desperately at the two children of Poseidon that haven't snapped out of their daze.

I push myself towards Kairi and pull her gaze to look at me, "Kairi? Focus!" I shout. Immediately, the girl snaps out of her daze and quickly looks around to assess the situation. She summons her trident and pokes Percy's bottom with it—effectively stopping him from his dazed state.

"Wha—oh what the heck!" Percy exclaims and brandishes Riptide in his hand. "Where are the hostages?" he demands.

"Those kids? Dunno. All we were told was that we'll get some tasty Poseidon treats if we brought them to an island near here—"

"Idiot!" one merman stops the previous one, "Don't reveal to them anything!"

Kairi waves her trident, sending a shockwave to push the merpeople farther away and knocking over the statue. "You'll pay for your actions with your life!" she shouts as the ground slowly started to shake.

Percy swam next to her and held onto her trident as well. As soon as he did, the tremor got stronger. Hazel dragged them down to the ground by controlling their armour. The onslaught of rocks and debris crushed every single one of them until none were left. I confirmed none were left and the earthquake stopped. Kairi made the trident turn back into her necklace. "Welp, back to the surface." She says.

"That was fairly quick." Percy comments.

"Almost too easy... Let's be careful from here on out." I say.

In a few minutes we all shot to the surface of the water. "I'll try looking for that island—you guys hang tight, I'll be quick." Jason says as he gets out of the water and floats above it.

"Roger that." Percy says. With a nod, he zooms away.

"There goes blonde surperman." Kairi says with a snicker.

"More like show off." Thalia rolls her eyes. She then looks at Kairi with great interest, "So, what's so special about you?"

"Huh?"

"What's so special about you? What's so unique about you?" The daughter of Zeus presses on.

Sea green orbs look down at the water as they stare at their reflection in contemplation, "I... I don't know." Kairi looks back up, "There's nothing striking about me. I suck at fighting and I'm terrible in controlling my powers. I'm not good at anything really—just at destroying things." She says with whole honesty. "I'm kind of jealous at how fast Hephaestus kids make inventions. I want to create something that could last."

Jason comes back and he confirms that there indeed is a small secluded island that seems suspicious. We all link hands as Jason quickly controls the winds to bring all of us to the island while Percy and Kairi dries us off quickly. We land on an island that seemed deserted at first but Jason explains that there was a building flickering in and out of view.

"It's shrouded with Mist." Hazel says. With a snap of her fingers, the Mist clears immediately and a building comes into sight. It looked like some sort of headquarters.

"Onwards!" Thalia says with fake enthusiasm. We all walk forwards but I notice that Kairi hung back. I get closer to her and bump my shoulder with hers,

"What's up?" I ask.

She smiles faintly at me before looking back down at her shoes, "I don't want to drag the group down. Maybe I should have listened to Hestia and stayed at Camp Half-Blood."

"You're not dragging us down." I say, "If anything, you've been helping us a lot."

"That's only because Percy is here. There wouldn't be a difference if I was here or not."

"That's not true—"

"YES IT IS!" Kairi snaps, her eyes looking straight into mine. The rest of the group turns back to look at us,

"What's going on?" Percy asks. I look at him expectantly,

"She thinks she's useless." I explain.

"Well I am!" she retorts. "I should have stayed back at camp!"

"Then go!" Thalia shouts, surprising everyone. Kairi stares at her as her own tears threaten to spill but she refuses to let them fall. "We don't need you here anyway—we're fine without you. You said so yourself that you're weak at fighting for yourself so you're better off at camp. You'll probably make us fail this quest and I don't want to put lives at stake just because a wimpy daughter of Poseidon is wallowing in her own self pity!"

That's all it took for the tears to spill.

"F-fine!" Kairi shouts back. "I'm going home!" She shouts and runs into the shore.

"Kairi!" I call out to her but she just ignores me and keeps going until she appeared to be swallowed by the sea.

"Thalia, you went too far!" Percy says with a storm swirling in his eyes.

"You dumb Kelp Head." Thalia says. "I'm trying to protect her. Kairi being with us in the first place would mean her death. She should have just trained back at camp or something." She crosses her arms, "Sure, I went a little overboard but I had to be convincing enough to make her turn around and leave."

"Let's move forward and get this quest over with." Hazel says with a sigh.

"What about Kairi?" Jason asks.

"I'm sure she'll be fine." Thalia says, yet she sounds like she's convincing herself more than telling us.

Without another word uttered, we entered the building.