So, yeah, I try not to curse in my stories, but hey, the story's rated T so F it (and yes, I chose not to curse right there. Point stands, I don't like to curse in my stories unless necessary). Plus, it was a good way to come up with a title for the chapter. Enjoy, review, etc.
First Person: Lucy
"HE WHAT?!" My voice echoed across the whole ship, and I'm pretty sure the whole place vibrated from the intensity of my scream, but right now, I didn't give a flying duck (that may or may not have been censored from what I actually said). They had left Zytaveon back in the tar pit when he'd fallen in and hadn't come back. I knew they had their reasons, I knew that they needed to get out of there or they would've faced the same fate, but that didn't stop the anger boiling within my chest, the panic, the terror that he may be dead. I couldn't lose another person that I'd let close to me. Everyone that I'd ever let into my heart always died…! Was I cursed? Why did they always have to be dragged into this? Punish me, for heaven's sake, but don't hurt them! Why was I still here when my family was dead and gone?
I paced the deck of the Argo II, twisting my mother's ring on right middle finger furiously with my thumb, Percy giving me a worried look ever since he'd told me about Veon. I could tell he was afraid I'd destroy the ship in my anger, and I was just barely holding back. Audrey was pacing as well, biting her thumb nail in worry. She never did that, so I could assume that this meant things were serious for her too. He couldn't be dead; we'd had to go back for him! No, I won't drag the others into this. They continue on the quest, and I'd go back to find him on my own. I was not going to let someone else slip away from me just like that.
"Don't even think about leaving on your own," Audrey said.
"Since when are you Emily?" I asked. Emily was the one who was able to mysteriously read minds and know exactly what someone was thinking. Audrey wasn't that way (at least as far as I knew).
"I'm not. I just know you really well, goddess or not." Well, what the others didn't know was that the goddess was becoming more and more dormant within me. She only comes out to speak for short periods of time when I need her input or wisdom, but she wasn't out 24/7 like she had been before. It made me slightly panicked when she couldn't tell me what to do, or left me to do haggling and talking on my own, but I knew I needed to be able to handle myself without her. I still had access to some of her knowledge and power, but not nearly as much as before.
"I need to go back," I said. "I might be able to do something if I find him. The longer we wait, the lower his chances of survival are. Yet there is a chance he's alive, and I'm going to take it."
"He got sucked into the ground, right? For all we know, Gaea has him and has taken him wherever she took his brother. If that's the case, we'll find him if we continue forward."
"I have to at least check, Audrey!"
"What's wrong?" Emily asked, walking up the stairs from below deck.
"Veon is gone! He disappeared into the ground when they were out facing tar monsters. I have to go look for him!"
"Wait, hold on. First, you need to calm down. You can't make rational decisions when you're this riled up."
"So it isn't rational to be worrying my head off for him and want to go looking for him right away?!"
"Not when you're this angry." I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that Emily was right, that I'd regret things if I didn't stop and calm down right now. I had once believed that when people told me to calm down, it only made me angrier, and that they had no right to tell me to just calm down (many counselors and psychologists were paralyzed or had "mysterious" heart attacks as the result of my fury), that I had the right to be angry and want to do something. Yet when I was left alone to calm, to think my thoughts of anger until I was tired out, I eventually found that my anger couldn't be maintained, and that I had usually been acting stupid. Still, all those stupid adults should've known to just leave me alone to calm down, not order and demand that I just sit down and relax like they know how I feel. No one knows the pain I've gone through, and no one has the right to order me around like they know me. I was pumping from adrenaline, I felt lightning sparking across my fingers. I needed to do something, and I needed to do it now.
"Zyanya, I don't have any right to order your around, I don't know what you've been through, but as your friend I can at least recommend that you please pace yourself and think things through." Emily was impossible to stay angry at. She knew the right things to say, and she just gave off that aura that made my mind ignore her even when I was in a rage. I couldn't possibly blame anything on her, I couldn't be mad at her, but in turn, I just ignored her as though she didn't exist. I heard her words, I really did, but I did what I always did when angry and figured that I was already thinking straight. I could comprehend my thoughts as well as ever. My mind wasn't clouded by rage.
"I need to go," I declared. "I need to go, right now! I need to try Emily, I need to at least go back and look!" She sighed and closed her eyes. I knew she was going to try something on me to get me to calm down, and that only made me angrier. No one should be able to just control me, to restrain me when I'm angry. Just leave me alone! But when I felt no different, I figured that either Emily wasn't strong enough to reach me, or she wasn't even trying. When she put her hand out like "go ahead," I realized it was the latter. She wasn't going to try and stop me. That's right, this was Emily. She knew better than any of those high and mighty adults who thought they had the right to order me around just because they had some kind of degree. And unlike them, she really did know me more than what those adults had read in a folder.
I turned from her and felt myself beginning to relax, but I knew it wasn't because of Emily's influence, at least, not her powers anyway. That trust that she put in me, the thought that she wasn't going to interfere and would just let me do what I wanted instead of trying to contain me and my rage…I don't know, it made me calmer. When I now thought of Veon's predicament, I no longer felt rage and the drive to go out and challenge anyone that dared harm him. I just felt sad. I felt a pit of sorrow and worry drowning me in an ocean of pain and emotion. And it wasn't only Veon. It was everyone. I'd lost too many people close to me, my mom, my dad, my little brother. Long ago, I'd once tried to have friends with other orphans or illegal kids on the run like me, but it didn't work out for them either.
It wasn't just the numbers, either, it was the way they were killed. My friends were all hunted down and caught, treated no better than wild animals that had to be either locked up or killed. My mother left me the day I was born. I couldn't even tell you if I got any physical traits from her, I can't say that I knew her laugh or smile. My father died when he went out to try and surprise me with a gift. He left one day, saying he'd be back, promising, but he didn't return. I never saw him again after that day. I was four. And my brother…what happened to him would haunt me forever. The way that I lost him, the way that I was helpless to watch him as he died…I can't lose someone else, especially not Zytaveon.
I took a deep breath and was about to summon my wing when there was a sudden spike of energy behind me. I turned to see a puddle of black bubbling liquid pooling on the deck out of nowhere. It expanded until it looked like someone had dumped a bucket of paint from above, and then it began to bulge and take on a humanoid shape.
"Kako!" Percy shouted.
"Is that some kind of curse?" Audrey asked.
"It's the tar monsters we fought back at the tar pit," He explained, drawing Riptide. My anger grew once more. This one of the things that took Veon? My fingers crackled with electricity before I shot a bolt of electricity with the force of a lightning bolt made my Zeus himself at the gloppy monster. It went flying back into a mast with a rattling force and was flattened against it from the force. It molded around the mast from its flexible state before peeling itself off and trying to reform again. I stepped forward, my fingers cracking with enough electricity to power all of North America, and pinned the monster by its neck against the mast.
"Where is Zytaveon Kanazoi?!" I demanded. "Don't think I can't understand you, now talk!"
"Here…" It said.
"What does that mean?!"
"I'm…here…" I hesitated.
"What?" The pieces of stray tar began to conglomerate into the Kako as it solidified and shaped into a more clear figure. It went from just a head, arms and torso that was dripping tar all around to a smooth, non-dripping, humanoid with four limbs, a head, and even a clear indication of boots and a jacket. The silhouette of the person was clearly a male, he was a whole head taller than me, and he was becoming clearer every second. I could see his messy hair, his distinct face, and I could even smell that certain scent through the atrocious tar stench. When all of the tar had come together and fully formed the person, he fully transformed into flesh and blood again.
"Remind me never to get on your bad side…again. And could you please release me? I now need to breathe!" I suddenly snapped out of my shock and released his neck as he sighed in relief and rubbed it, taking a few deep breaths.
"Veon!" Emily called.
"Ha-ha! Cool," Audrey muttered. "How'd you do that? How have we not known about this power before? Can you just, like, form anywhere?!" He chuckled in an annoying adorable, way only making the swirl of emotions in my chest more painful.
"I don't know, Dray. I just seemed to have appeared here after melting into the ground. Felt kinda like shadow travelling, but a little…gloppier. Is this what it feels like when you transform into water? Well, I guess it's a bit more fluid, but point still stands. I'm pretty sure if I wasn't just made out of a rubber-like substance, Zy would've just killed me from all that electricity. Someone must've missed-" He was interrupted as I punched him square in the jaw as hard as I could, trying to release this feeling in my stomach and chest. I was relieved beyond measure, so much that it hurt. He rubbed his jaw, and I'm almost positive it should've been broken from the force I had put behind my attack, if not for his new tar-like powers.
"What was that f-?" I punched him again and nearly knocked him off his feet.
"How dare you scare me like that?! I thought you were captured by Gaea! Worse, I thought you were fucking dead!"
"Whoa-ho, she just cursed," Audrey muttered. I'll admit that I don't usually let curses slip that often, even in my head, dear readers, not unless it was serious, and I'm near always able to censor myself by either changing it, changing my language, or muttering it so quietly, it's nothing more than a huff of breath. So yeah, you can see how ticked I am, and I hope you can sympathize, because I was understandably pissed off.
"Look, I'm sorry, but it's not my fault I-" I punched him again, this time in the chest, and it sent his tall frame toppling over. Luckily I aimed it the right way, or he might've gone flying off the railing of the ship from the force, but he hit the deck with a loud THUD and the others came running up battle-ready.
"What is it?" Leo asked holding up a three pound club hammer with a double-faced head the size of a baked potato - the biggest weapon his tool belt could provide him. "More monsters?" He looked around but found no immediate threat. "Uh…what's up?"
"Veon!" Annabeth called.
"Hey, you're okay," Frank added with relief in his voice. Veon grunted.
"As okay as I can be…" He said, the wind knocked out of him. I huffed and turned dramatically. I wasn't in the mood to deal with explanations and all that shit.
I headed below deck and to my cabin, snapping as music flooded the sound-proof room at full blast. The music always calmed me, no matter what type (slow or fast, loud or quiet) as long as I liked it. I took off my jacket, not thinking about if anyone came barging in and saw my arms anymore, and plopped down on my queen-sized bed, staring at the bronze beams on the ceiling. Leo and I had programmed the quarters to adjust automatically to the occupant's preferred temperature, the mattress and the pillows were stuffed with pegasus down (no pegasi were harmed in the making of these products) so they were über-comfortable, and some rooms had been made differently than the others, mainly my team's. I always kept my room pretty cool for some reason, since the combined property of having lightning god, sun god, power goddess, and Zyanya within me, kinda made me a ball of explosive energy, therefore raising my average body temperature.
My room was sound-proof, to fulfill all my Apollo music needs (because I tended to be loud when I played music, sue me) and it had a guitar that I'd enchanted to be able to play any music I wanted as long as I knew what I wanted to be played, so not just one instrument, sitting on a guitar stand. The room was enchanted so that music flowed out of the walls to make a crystal clear sound system. It had a couple windows and most things in here were electricity-proof, and I'd made it bigger on the inside, much bigger than the other cabins, because a girl needs her space, and why not abuse my ability to make my room however I like it? There was a bookcase filled to the brim with books, the bookcases nailed down with locked doors made of clear acrylic because I knew there would be turbulence on this trip and didn't want to organize my books every time we were attacked, and a second filled with journals, some empty and some filled, that I write in (cause I usually tend to write stories or draw when I'm bored).
While the others had bronze lanterns that hung from the ceiling, perforated with pinholes on the sides so at night glimmering constellations drifted across the walls, I had light coming from the room itself, with no discernible source. The room just brightened and darkened to my needs, with no light source in sight. I was the one who made Veon's, which was basically a mix of his cabin and his room in the Underworld, so he had torches with green fire, a lamp with a purple light, and it was, for the most part, dark, mostly black. Emily's had a hearth in honor of her secret mother, and it was colorful (so the exact opposite of Veon's) but otherwise, I just let her design hers to her heart's desire. I think she made hers based on her old home or something. Audrey's was pretty cool, hers having a bunch of water hovering from ceiling to floor with a bed inside. It's not a tank or anything, it's just a rectangular prism of water that glowed like a fish tank. She could jump in and out of the walls to her heart's content without it falling apart or splashing anywhere, and it caused a blue light to flow throughout her room, like an aquarium or an aurora borealis. Percy didn't get the same thing solely because he wasn't there during the construction of the Argo II. Annabeth was the one who designed his room as best she could to his preferences, so he could blame her if he didn't have an awesome waterbed.
I began playing "Silent Scream" by Anna Blue, a song that I was currently hooked on. It practically represented me.
"I'm caught up in your expectations,
"You try to make me live your dream,
"But I'm causing you so much frustration,
"And you only want the best for me.
"You're wanting me to show more interest,
"To always keep a big bright smile,
"Be that pinky little perfect princess,
"But I'm not that type of child.
"And the storm is rising inside of me,
"Dontcha feel that our worlds collide?
"It's getting harder to breathe,
"It hurts deep inside.
"Just let me be,
"Who I am,
"It's what you really need to understand.
"And I hope so hard for the pain to go away.
"And it's torturing me (torturing me),
"But I can't break free,
"So I cry and cry but just won't get it out,
"The silent scream.
"Tell me why you're putting pressure on me,
"And every day you cause me harm,
"That's the reason why I feel so lonely,
"Even though you hold me in your arms.
"Wanna put me in a box of glitter,
"But I'm just trying to get right out,
"And now you're feeling so, so bitter,
"Because I've let you down.
"And the storm is rising inside of me,
"Dontcha feel that our worlds collide?
"It's getting harder to breathe,
"It hurts deep inside.
"Just let me be,
"Who I am,
"It's what you really need to understand.
"And I hope so hard for the pain to go away.
"And it's torturing me (torturing me),
"But I can't break free,
"So I cry and cry but just won't get it out,
"The silent scream.
"Can't you see,
"How I cry for help?
"Cause you should love me,
"Just for being myself.
"I'll drown in an ocean,
"Of pain and emotion,
"If you don't,
"Save me right away.
"Just let me be,
"Who I am,
"It's what you really need to understand.
"And I hope so hard for the pain to go away.
"And it's torturing me (torturing me),
"But I can't break free,
"So I cry and cry but just won't get it out,
"The silent scream.
"My silent scream."
"Silent Scream" is an awesome song and just reading the lyrics is not enough since the music behind it is awesome too. I recommend looking it up. Though the music video doesn't describe my personal life, the lyrics themselves represent my character, and I wanted to put it in since I love it. So yeah, go take three minutes and 40 seconds of your life and listen to the song itself, it's great.
