AN: Hello, children. It's good to see you in the mundane world again . . . Anyways. I have horrible, sneaking suspicion that this is gonna run longer then twenty chapters. Oh well. I own nothing, not even the droids you're looking for.
Camp Life, Chapter Fourteen
Need For Speed/Destination Analysis
He sets his new weapon against the side of the cabin and stretches.
The wind rustles through the trees, bringing the familiar scent of pine to his nostrils. Nobody else would really be able to tell the difference between the pines at Camp Half-Blood and these pines, but these smell like home, to him.
And like monsters.
He shifts the axe from one hand to the other. It's not the perfect weapon; he had to smelt the bronze himself, and he's really no child of Hephaestus.
The first monster steps from the brush; a big thing, seemingly half bear, half human. He grins evilly, showing huge yellow teeth.
Agrius. Then where's -
He whirls, swinging the axe, and Oreius roars in pain.
"Um . . . what exactly are you guys doing?"
Percy and Annabeth look up in surprise, to see Thalia staring at them, nonplussed.
The two are sitting fully clothed in a little plastic kiddie pool the demigods have been using for taking baths. Percy had his eyes closed, while Annabeth was scribbling furiously in a notebook.
Percy and Annabeth exchange looks.
"Uh . . . nothing?" Percy says hopefully.
Thalia rolls her eyes as Annabeth groans and hides her face in her hands. Percy maybe almost as good a fighter as her (Almost. He's close.), but Thalia knows he's hopeless at lying.
"Yeah, okay, fish-boy. What are you really doing? I thought your stomach was all healed and everything."
"It is!" says Percy brightly. "We were just, uh . . . soaking! A bit! What are you doing?"
Thalia glares at him. "Knock it off. What are you to doing?"
Percy considers this. "Um . . . making out?"
The daughter of Zeus groans. "Idiots!"
"Idiots!" Lou-Ellen Hannity cackles, swerving past an RV. "Fear my wrath!"
"I'm pretty afraid," Gardner Peck volunteers glumly.
"Ten bucks says she gets arrested in the next hour," says Castor.
Malcolm chews his Laffy Taffy thoughtfully, then nods. "I'll take that. She's going a hundred and twenty, I don't see any police cruisers catching her."
"Why are you guys so calm about this?!" shrieks Miranda.
"I'm past the point of terror," mutters Gardner.
"I don't want to go to jail!"
Lou-Ellen side-swipes a little Toyota and accelerates. "No worries, Randy! If we go to the slammer, you can be my bedwarmer!" She roars with maniacal laughter again.
"Did she just ask me out?"
"Maybe?"
"Look, Randy," Castor says patiently, "We aren't going to jail. My dad will get us out. Probably."
"How comforting," Gardner mutters. "I want my desk back."
The tell-tale sounds of a police siren resonate from behind the van.
"Yes!" Lou-Ellen says, pumping her fist. "Bring it!"
Jesse leans back in the black chair decorated with skulls and examines the black ceiling decorated with skulls.
"Nico," he says, "I'm sorry, but-"
"Pretty gloomy, right?" Nico shrugs. "My dad decorated."
Jesse looks around the room in some amusement. the whole Underworld seems so, so normal. Like the World Above, but with a bit more orderliness. And more skulls.
"So Steven's gonna be okay?" asks Amanda, sitting near him on a black couch with a skull pattern (Cattle skulls, this time, to shake it up a bit).
"Yeah. Drew's with him now . . . He's a bit grump, but, well . . ."
"What did that to him?" asks Lily Mérida, shivering slightly.
Nico makes a face. "Khione. The goddess of snow. She's working for Gaea."
"Wonderful," Laurel mutters dryly, twirling a long dark tresse of hair in her fingers.
Nico sighs. "Yeah . . .I just wish Drew and Silena would work out their freaking issues. It's awful in there. And Rust- I get the singularly annoying feeling that Silena was secretly in Echelon or something, because he won't talk to her either."
"Stupid demigods and their secret societies," says Jacob, and they all laugh.
"When can we see Steven?" asks Danny, absentmindedly playing with the safety on her rifle. Jesse hopes she isn't turning into the miniature Camp Armorer that he thinks she is, but it's probably a lost cause.
"Right now, if you want," says Nico, shrugging. "Assuming he and Drew aren't taking advantage of their privacy."
"I wouldn't doubt it," says Laurel, winking, and they all laugh.
He stares at the wooden table in front of him, unsure what to say. Or do. Or think.
"We need leaders, my son, "says Chiron gently. "This war coming- we have enough fighters. We need someone to lead them, to guide them, to make the right decisions."
He doesn't want to be a leader.
He wants to be a fighter.
But he knows that Chiron is right. He knows this will be hard. Chiron always said things about sacrifice, and what it meant., but now he thinks he might have a taste of it. A little taste.
"Okay," he says.
Steven is staring at his ruined hand when Nico strolls in.
"They all gone?" the son of Hades asks, ignoring the the hastily disguised look of frustration on Rust's face.
"Went to get food," says Steven. "You have food down here?"
Nico sniggers. "Cereal."
The Camp Armorer decides not to ask.
"You alright?" asks Nico, after an awkward pause.
Steven gives him an incredulous look.
Nico sighs. "Come on. I know you don't need that bed anymore. I want you to meet someone."
Reyna throws another javelin at the target, and scores another bulls-eye.
She swears at it. It's so boring here. At least back in Camp Jupiter there was paperwork and senate meetings and things. Here, everyone of the Romans are to scared to talk to her, the Greeks ignore her, and her fellow Praetors are to busy with their freaking girlfriends. The only ones remotely friendly are Leo (for all the wrong reasons) and the Hunters of Artemis, who are weird and hate boys.
The point is, she wants to go home.
She throws another javelin, imagining it's Piper McLean's face on the target-
Bulls-Eye. She almost wants to cry.
Gathering up her swordbelt and her pack, she trudges towards the Argo II, figuring she can probably stow all her stuff in her tiny cabin and get down to the bathtubs before anyone else can claim them.
But she only gets about halfway there when she comes across something odd.
She likes Annabeth; really, she does; but she thinks it's a little excessive to be hitting her boyfriend with a baseball bat. A bit over-the-top. Whatever Percy has done, it probably didn't merit this- although, now that she thinks on it, you never know with Percy.
But the odd thing is, Percy doesn't seem to mind at all- he's wincing, yes, but encouraging her.
Reyna has never had a boyfriend, and she can't really claim to have much experiance with . . . relations . . . but she's pretty sure they don't involve beatings with blunt objects.
Do they?
Castor, Miranda, Gardner, and a fuming Malcolm watch with dread. as the police officer makes his way toward the van. Lou-Ellen has a slight smile on her face, but seems otherwise indifferent to the situation.
"That's so screwed up," says Malcolm, crushing the peanuts he'd held in his hand. "She heard me make that bet."
"Sucks for you," says Castor brightly. "Are we gonna have to beat up the police officer? I don't really want to do that."
"Nose go's," shouts Miranda, and touches her nose. Castor and Malcolm quickly emulate her.
"Gard has to do it," says Castor gleefully.
"You are all too immature to speak to me."
"Shut up, you guys," Lou-Ellen calls back from the drivers seat. The police officer taps on the window, which she promptly lowers.
"Good afternoon, Ma'am," he says, giving her a suspicious look. "I'm going to need your -"
The daughter of Hecate waves a hand in front of his face. "These are not the droids you are looking for," she intones in a deep voice that definitley isn't hers.
The officer blinks, completely hypnotised. "These are not the droids I'm looking for."
"I can go about my business."
"You can go about you business."
"Move along."
"Move along now, kids."
"That new earring I got on Sunday is pretty awesome."
"That new earring you got on Sunday is pretty awesome."
The policeman walks away unsteadily.
Lou-Ellen starts the engine and pulls back into traffic.
There is silence for a few moments.
"And you called us nerds? You did the voice and everything!" says Castor finally.
"Shut up, everyone has seen Star Wars. Even the Martians. Did you know Apollo has a T-shirt that says, 'Don't mess with my Wookeez'? It's totally mainstream now."
More silence.
"You know, if you wanted to know how your earring looked, you could have just asked."
Lou-Ellen grins and veers maniacally across several lanes. "Shut up."
Steven follows Nico out of Hades' palace, across the Feilds of Asphodel, and to the gates of Elysium.
"Even I can't actually go in," says Nico, tapping on the door of the guardhouse, "But let's see . . ."
The door opens and a portly guy in a rent-a-cop security uniform pokes his head out. "Yes? Oh, it's you, Nico. Who do you want?"
"Hey, Bob. can you see if Leo has a minute?" Nico asks.
The guard nods amiably and reaches for a telephone on his cluttered desk.
"Valdez died?" Steven asks blankly.
Nico chuckles. "No, no. Different Leo."
They wait for a moment, then Bob pokes his head back out and geives Nico a thumbs up. "He'll be along in a minute."
It's more like five, but finally a cheerful young man wearing a red silk robe and a funny hat meanders into the gate house, grinning at Nico.
"Nico! Il mio amico! E' bello vedere di nuovo! Chi è il tuo compagno?"
"Hey, man," says Nico, smiling. "This is Steven Rust. He needs a hand."
"Thats not funny." Steven mutters.
"Ah! Il mio nome è Leonardo! E tu hai bisogno una mano! Permettetemi di assistervi!" The man says, holding his hand out. Steven shakes it.
"Dude," he says out of the corner of his mouth, "I have no idea what he just said. I can do Spanish, and some Southern Paiute and Ancient Greek, but not . . . whatever that was."
"He said he's happy to help you. I'm afraid he died in the early 1500's, English wasn't a big thing back then. And he's been to busy to learn since."
"Wonderful."
"Lighten up. He's going to make you a new hand."
"What? Di Angelo, who is this guy?"
"Da Vinci."
" . . . Oh shit!"
All he has to do is sign his name.
Make the right decisions, Chiron said.
Sign his name.
Make the right decision.
He wonders, suddenly what the future might be like. A queer notion, to appear in his head like that- but a notion that's there, nonetheless.
If he signs his name, the future will be different. For mortals and for demigods.
He wonders where his tue responsibilities lie. Chiron put him here to help the demigods win their war, not try and clean up a moral plague that's been haunting the mortal Americans and Europeans for decades. Centuries.
Make the right desicion.
He signs his name.
Drew and Jesse, wandering around the Underworld aimlessly, finally come across Nico and Rust in a workshop just outside of Elysium.
The painful truth is, unless you're actually dead, there's really not that much to do in the Underworld. You can see Hades' palace, but it's reall just big and grey. Not that impressive. Maybe, Jesse thinks, he should hire Annabeth to remodel for him.
He and Drew had left the palace because she apparently had a raging hatred for the pretty-ghost-girl named Silena who had been hanging around with Nico. Jesse wondered why Nico liked her if she was apparently a traitor who got a bunch of people killed, and figured there was more to the story that Drew wasn't telling him.
But anyways, they had left the palace and wandered around, wondering where the crippled invalid and the punk band kid had ended up. Laurel had made some rather ribald jokes about them, but Jesse was pretty sure they weren't . . . doing . . . that stuff.
Actually, now that he thinks of it, they're probably getting drunk somewhere, if you can do that in the Underworld. That's what his Grandpa did after he lost his fingers to that factory conveyer belt.
But he's wrong - when they do find Rust and Nico, the Camp Armorer is strapped down in what looks like a dentists chair the son of Hades leaning against a wall and watching curiously, while a handsome European-looking guy fiddles around with a strange mechanical contraption attached to Steven's former hand.
"What are you doing?" Drew demands, hands on her hips, eyeing the guy (a doctor?) suspiciously.
Steven blinks and beams at her. "Drew! Thank Zeus you're here! Look- Leo's giving me a new hand!"
The man glances up and waves. "Saluti! Non preoccuparti, ho quasi finito!"
Jesse blinks. "What?"
Steven gives them a thumbs up with his right hand. "It's gonna shoot missiles and everything! I'll be like a living, breathing weapon! And I'll have two hands!"
Drew slowly transfers her gaze from her boyfriend to 'Leo' to Nico, who's sniggering.
"Do I need to bring Amanda over here?" she asks quietly.
Nico assumes the expression of a person viewing their impending painful demise.
"What did you give him?" Drew asks coldly.
Nico transfers his gaze to Steven, who's currently waving his right arm around aimlessly, as if conducting an invisible orchestra, and rapping to Jurassic 5's 'Gotta Understand'.
"Just a little dipenhydramine," he says.
Lou-Ellen pulls over for gas somewhere in Missouri, to the profound relief of her passengers.
What is not to the profound relief of her passengers are the six-packs of Coors Light she comes back with.
"Miss Hannity-"
"Um, did you just rob-"
"Lou!"
"How'd you do that?!"
Lou-Ellen sighs patiently. "Calm down, nimrods. I'm not going to drink and drive. I didn't steal them. I just did this."
She snaps her fingers and abruptly appears to be an older guy in his sixties.
"Whoa," says Castor.
The old man shrugs. "I've been practicing."
Steven unstraps himself from the chair by squeezing the thick restraints with his new, shiny metallic fingers. The thick ropes part like cobwebs.
He sits up and examines the addition, flexing the fingers. the hand looks just like a normal hand, except it's made of a multitude of small, shifting steel plates.
"I'm half a robot," he muses.
"Posso applicare una copertura che sembra proprio come la pelle . . ." says Da Vinci, bustling around behind the chair opening drawers.
Drew takes his new hand in hers and inspects it curiously. After a moment she grins and kisses Rust on the cheek.
"It looks terrifying. Get a glove."
Laurel, chatting with Charlie and Silena, who's avoiding Drew's gaze, show up, and soon after the rest of the group, who exclaim and congratulate Rust on his new limb.
"It's cool, right?" Rust grins maniacally. "Watch this."
He points his hand out towards an empty plain of grey doom. there's a pause, then part of the forearm flips outward and fires a rocket, which detonates somewhere in the emptiness.
"Oh, great," Amanda mutters. "Just what he needed. Weapons in his body."
Jesse shakes his head in weary amusement.
He applauds as the curtain goes down during the intermissioin.
He's so tired.
And really, he shouldn't be; the demigod war is over and the mortal one is wrapping up as he sits here. He should be- well, jumping for joy or some such, shouldn't he?
But all he wants to do is sleep.
Instead he's sitting here with Mary, watching the actors and actresses file back onto stage, a new scene beginning.
He wonders what Chiron would have him do now? What is there to do?
Make the right decisions . . .
He smiles.
A metallic click sounds from behind him, and someone screams.
She's trying to get back to her cabin, pondering her lack of experiance with the opposite sex (or sex in general), when she runs straight into Jason's big sister, and they both land in the dirt.
For a moment Reyna and Thalia glower at each other, then simultaneously look at the ground and mumble, "Sorry, Percy and Annabeth are being weird, I . . ."
They stare at each other.
"Dude," says Castor, beer in hand, gazing out the window at the moonlit Midwestern landscape, "I just want . . . I want . . . I just want a strawberry. From the fields back at Camp."
"Really?" asks Lou-Ellen, perched on the sofa's arm, "I just want to bundle little Gardner into the bedroom and-" She makes a lewd motion with her non-filled-with-beer hand.
Gardner, driving, snarls wordlessly. Miranda giggles.
Malcolm tosses another peanut into the air and catches it in his mouth. "Beer and peanuts," he says thoughtfully. "I'm pretty sure that's a rule. Somewhere."
Miranda nods agreeably, and Malcolm throws a peanut down her shirt.
Thus begins the peanut war.
"I'm sorry," Silena says from the doorframe of her room.
Drew doesn't turn.
"I don't want to hear it."
"I know."
"So go away."
"I can't. We need to talk, whether you like it or not."
Drew slams her fist against the bedframe.
"I thought you were dead. Where you couldn't reach me. I wouldn't have to deal with you, ever again. I could just get over it and forget. And I was almost there. And now . . ." She shakes her head miserably.
Silena nods quietly. "I know. It's something you get used to when you're a demigod."
The dead girl looks at her beeseechingly. "I did it for Charlie. For everybody I cared about. You know that."
"Do we?"
The girls turn, suprised. Rust stands just ouside the room.
"I thought we would lose." Silena whispers.
Rust shrugs. "So?"
Even Drew frowns a bit at that.
"What do you mean, so?" Silena demands. "What should I have done?"
Steven smiles sadly. "Exactly what you did, at the end."
Tears form at the corners of Silena's eyes. Steven glances at Drew meaningfully. She sighs, and they both step forward and wrap their arms around the daughter of Aphrodite.
After a long moment Steven steps back and bows slightly. "Agent Beauregard."
She smiles, her cheeks still wet, and leans back into her little sister's embrace.
"Agent Rust."
He grins, but before he can say anything else Beckendorf sticks his head in the door. "Lord Hades is back."
The God of the Underworld leans back into his chair and exhales softly. "If my idiot brother had actually given your intrepid leader the right information, you wouldn't have ended up here. If he had only asked-"
He stops and shakes his head. "Well, never mind. What's done is done. The British took it in the nineties, or sometime therabouts. I kept tabs on it- it's still very valuable, even by itself. I just never had time to go get it. It's in Buckingham Palace."
Steven and Nico exchange looks slowly.
"Fuck."
The Lord of the Sky stares at his Echelon Liason, a tall, dapper older man with a white pencil mustache.
"You're sure."
He nods frantically. "Yes, Lord. Our spy is in place. They only await your instructions."
Zeus smiles slowly.
Abe is pouring himself another glass of lemonade, listening to Mary mutter about how Martha Washington had told her that Susan Anthony had told her that Ms. Churchhill told her-
A knock comes from the hallway, and Abe excuses himself to get it.
At the door stands a crowd of people, astonishing him slightly. "What's all this, now?" he asks curiously. At the front of the gathering he recognizes Frederick Douglass and Good Lord is that-
"Abraham Lincoln?" asks a young man, wearing an odd sort of green tunic.
"Yes . . . " Abe answers uncertainly.
The man grins. "I'm Arthur. This is Joan, and Frederick, and the Lady on the end is called Atalanta. Can we have a moment of your time?"
To those who actually speak Italian- go on, laugh if you like. I shan't be offended.
To those not very well versed in American history- Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States. He wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and led the Union during the Civil War.
To those who review- Da Vinci will make you a new hand.
Next Time- Percy and Annabeth attempt to negotiate with Ana, but all three leaders get kidnapped by the opposing armies, while Rust and his gang head to London to continue their quest.