First Person: Zytaveon
How could they even consider not helping Nico? It made my blood boil. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew they had their reasons, I knew they weren't saying we shouldn't help Nico, just that we should be cautious of the giants' trap, but when it came to Nico, there wasn't anything to discuss. My brother had gone through more things than any kid should, even a demigod. Sure, Nico's struggled in fitting in with the good guys, but that doesn't make him a bad guy. He's an outcast, and he's felt all alone ever since Bianca died. He went through so much trying to bring her back, and when he finally accepts that she's dead, she chooses rebirth so that he can't even see her in the Underworld.
Demigods are always outcasts, we don't fit in with mortals, but we children of Hades (and Pluto) are outcasts of outcasts. We're different, we don't fit in even with demigods, and Nico suffered that curse more than any of us. We don't fear the shadows, we use them, and maybe that doesn't make us any better than monsters, we accept that, but that's no reason to let Nico just die. He's not going and attacking the camps, is he? He's not trading information on either camp's weakness, is he? If they're gonna question his loyalties, then fine. I'll go find him myself.
"Veon! Don't go doing something stupid!"
"Like what?!" I shouted, before disappearing into the shadows. Take me to my brother. I knew the jar he was in, I knew it was somewhere in Rome. That had to be enough, right? Nico told me about times he'd accidentally shadow travelled to China while he was learning the power (personally, I just ran into a lot of walls), so that meant I had to be able to go across the planet with shadow travel, right? Then again, he had said that he'd learned back when he was in the Labyrinth, where a few steps could get you half way across the U.S.
Naturally, I didn't consider this until after I'd let the shadows take me, so I ended up getting spit out at a random location: an alleyway between some buildings. Gathering my bearings, I looked out to find I was in some town. Unsure of my actual location, I walked around aimlessly. As I did, I began to realize that I was most likely not going to make it to Nico with shadow travel alone. The others weren't saying we weren't going for Nico, they'd have to be heartless if that was the case. They were just addressing any concerns. Nico was no threat to them, even if he could come off a little scary. They'd understand. And if they didn't, I would refuse to tell them anything about what Nico and I found on the Doors of Death. Not until we got Nico back.
I was able to calm down a bit, but I was hungry from the trip and decided to stop at the nearest restaurant for a second breakfast. I got some pizza and sat at a window booth, staring out at the half-busy street outside. I wondered what I was supposed to do when I got back to the ship. I needed to actually find out where I'd accidentally gone, for one. According to a sign, I was in Clarksville, but I could barely remember where Broomfield was in Colorado, and I'd lived there all my life. How was I supposed to know where Clarksville was in the world? Oh well. Pizza.
I finished a couple slices before I saw something out of the corner of my eye. If not for my life of being attacked by anything and everything, no matter how harmless, I might not have noticed it or even cared. I would have dismissed it as a trick of the light, or maybe figured I was imagining things. Yet as I stared out the window, I definitely saw something blur across the street. On the sidewalk, something streaked in front of a candy store and disappeared into the alley between it and the neighboring building. I blinked and tried to think what it could be when it moved past the next building and into the next alley. It looked like it came straight out of The Flash, with it being a streak the size of a human moving at blurring speeds.
I paid for my brunch and then quickly hurried across the street to the alley. Maybe it was Zy coming after me. She could move pretty quickly in a similar manner, but that brought up the question of why she was hiding between buildings. I had clearly noticed whatever this was, and there was no way Zy would be so secretive yet obvious. She'd have come and confronted me directly. Why lead me to an alley? I drew my Stygian sword and summoned my shield, preparing for a trap as best I could. Why I still walked forward even though I knew it was a trap and there was nothing to gain? Call it curiosity. Plus, I needed somewhere to vent my anger. Gaea had taken my brother, and if I couldn't get him back right now, maybe I could let off some steam.
The alley wasn't interesting. It was pretty much empty besides some stray trash on the ground and a couple garbage bags. Still, I knew it couldn't be harmless. Whatever streak I'd seen had come in here but hadn't come back out, and I could see a dead end about thirty feet down. I walked in slowly, looking around at everything that I passed. By the time I made it to the end of the alley, I had found nothing. I knew I couldn't relax though. Now came the challenge of getting back out now that I was in. It would be easy to block off the path that I came from or jump me the moment I turned around.
Surely enough, the second I turned, I was met with a hard punch to the face by an attacker too fast to see. The force behind the attack was extremely powerful, most likely from the speed it was delivered, and I stumbled back, my head pounding. When I tried to look again, I was punched in the chest and sent back into the wall behind me. My attacker was moving as fast as they could around the alley to prevent me from seeing what they were, but it was making sure I couldn't get past it, and that it had the speed ready to knock me again should I get up.
Concentrating (which was hard with a pounding headache), I melted into the shadows and came out at the edge of the alley. I didn't exactly want to draw attention to myself, but I didn't have time to ponder some excuse before I was grabbed and thrown back hard into the ground between the two buildings. I should've expected that one, but my shadow travelling wasn't working at full capacity with my head so jacked up. I could only reach places I could currently see with my own eyes, and even that took more concentration than usual. I couldn't shadow travel much farther than this alley, and my attacker would make sure I couldn't escape fast enough, or even get help before he dragged me back in.
Slipping an emergency square of ambrosia into my mouth, I tried to come up with a plan. I didn't have any more ambrosia on me since this wasn't a planned excursion, so I had to be quick. I needed a way to slow this thing down or restrain it, but how do you catch something moving faster than you can blink? I went through a list of things I could do. Shadow travel was out; I wouldn't be able to turn it to dust without touching it, and it would make sure that any contact was short or I was getting attacked; there were no zombies to summon here; no gems, and maybe I could control a manhole cover that was in the alley, but there's no way I'd be able to hit this thing if it was moving so fast. Looks like I was gonna have to use my tar power. Maybe I could capture the thing in a sticky vat of tar.
I put my hand to the ground and then willed the ground in the center of the alley to start turning to tar. It was an odd sensation, but I knew that it was possible. I could summon the Kako anywhere I wanted, and turn any surface to tar if I tried hard enough. Any tar could be used as a kind of portal for both me and the Kako that worked for me. Maybe this was a gift from Gaea, the one who'd ordered my brother to be imprisoned, but I would make sure I used it for good. Surely enough, the ground began to darken and then, when the thing ran over it, I had the Kako inside grab it and drag it down. The Kako wasn't fast, but it was sticky, and it caught the speeding blur with ease, wrapping the tar around it so that it couldn't escape and pulling it in.
The blur was now revealed to be a boy, in his early teens, maybe thirteen or fourteen. He had a mop of black hair that barely covered his eyes, wearing a red hoodie, jeans, running shoes, and a white T-shirt. He was shouting in protest and panic as my Kako dragged his waist deep into the vat of tar and continued pulling him down. He tried to grip the ground, but it was slick and smooth and the now that the Kako had got a grip on him, it was impossible for him to escape. He was pulled down until the tar was at his chest before I told the Kako to stop and merely hold him there so I could question him.
"Let me go! I won't let you hurt Onesan, evil bastard!" He shouted in another language. I could now see his face. He looked mostly Caucasian, except he had brown almond shaped eyes of an Asian. I think he was speaking Japanese. He said something about "Onesan." For some reason that didn't translate, so he must've been using it as a title or name. Onesan meant elder sister, I believe.
"Who is your sister?" I asked.
"Onesan won't be manipulated! You evil monsters won't everhurt her again! Let her go! You hear me?! Let her go!" He was struggling around in the tar now, less to escape and more to vent his anger and emphasize his point. Whoever his sister was, she must've been manipulated or kidnapped in some way by someone.
"Who?"
"You know who!"
"Look, believe me or not, but I don't know who you're talking about, kid. I don't know who you are, and I don't know who your older sister is."
"Rei Grigora-Chikara!" (Pronounced "Ray" in case anyone needed to know)
"Grigora-Chikara? What's your name, kid?"
"Kaze! Kaze Grigora-Chikara! And I'm nota kid! Now where is Onesan, bastard?! I know you've captured her!"
I remembered clearly what Zy had told me. "What's his name? Kaze. Kaze Grigora. Or Chikara, since he considered himself my brother. Or Grigora-Chikara, since we're all about the hyphen." This couldn't be her brother, could it? I mean, Zy was pretty clear that she knew he had died. Maybe he escaped when Death was imprisoned. I had no idea who this Rei was, yet there was no way Zy could have some kind of sister, right? She could very well be hiding things from me, but when it came to her family, she mentioned her brother a lot, and never any other person who'd gotten as close as he had. Clearly this kid, Kaze, cared deeply for his older sister and was willing to tear down the skies if it would save her, and if he really was Zy's little brother, then it matched up. Those two had some unbreakable bond, one that most people would be jealous of.
I'd gotten Zy to open up about her little brother, and I knew she missed him deeply after parting with Kaze's tragic death. I don't know if dad was just being lazy, turning a blind eye, or if my theory about being given another life means you're out of Hades' reach until you die again was right, but people like Gwen and Kaze were staying alive even though they shouldn't have when Death was released. I did know that if this really was the real Kaze Grigora, he'd want to see his sister, and his sister would want to see him. I sat crossed legged at the edge of the vat.
"Zy is on the Argo II. I'll take you to her if you promise not to cause more trouble." He shook his head firmly, as though I was asking him to sell his soul to the devil.
"No. Who is Zy?"
"Zy is your sister's new name. She took it as a cover when she came to the United States. If I release you and take you to see her, can you at least promise not to attack me? I want you to see her too." He looked at me suspiciously.
"Why?"
"Because I know it'd make her happy." He studied me, probably guessing if I was lying.
"No traps?"
"Traps?"
"Mother told me Onesan was going being tricked. She was forced into something long ago. I won't let that happen to Onesan again."
"Look, clearly you care for your sister a lot. I promise you, she's fine. She can take care of herself. I care for her too, and I want her to be happy. She talks about her little brother, how much she misses you and all the things you used to do together. She says you'd call her "lightning fingers" and she would always respond "don't call me that or I'll show you-"
"-what lightning fingers can really do…" At this point, he'd stopped fighting the tar and was resting his arms on it like it was just a desk. He stared down at the tar in thought, lacing his fingers and spinning his thumbs frantically, a sign of an ADHD demigod. He'd probably be tapping his foot, but they were currently trapped about four and a half feet in tar. "She would always be humming to herself and she'd spin-"
"-her mother's ring on her right middle finger." He nodded.
"How do you know her?"
"We were friends in high school. We met about half way through the first year."
"School? Onesan doesn't go to school. Onesan said school would kill us worse than any orphanage."
"She says the goddess was the main reason she went." He suddenly tensed and looked up to me, a panic surging through him.
"Goddess?! What goddess?"
"I don't know her real name. She says to just call her Zyanya. It's just a fake name, though."
"Do you work for that goddess?"
"What? No. I'm her friend, sure. She didn't like me at first, but she's warmed up to me, and now allows me to date her host." He blinked.
"You're…withOnesan?" I tensed.
"Uh…maybe?" He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow with a scowl.
"Really?" He asked, deadpan, clearly not asking for clarification. I tried to push down my nervousness. I've been doing this for years in the drama department and choir, going in front of hundreds of people at a time, including very strict judges that hated on your every action. This was a thirteen-year-old kid who was currently trapped in a vat of tar. I could do this.
"Yes…"
"Brilliant. Such a well thought out response. You've been doing improvisation for like a decade and that's the best you got?"
"Shut up, voice in my head."
"Yep," Kaze said nodding. "Is Onesan…how is she?"
"She's doing fine, but she'd be better if you were with her. I can take you to her if you promise not to sucker-punch me again." He put his hand to his chin and rested his elbow on his other hand, tilting his head slightly in thought just like Zy always did.
"Hm…deal."
"Promise on the River Styx?" For some reason, I got a bad vibe from this kid. I felt like he wasn't evil or anything, just that he'd be a real pain in the ass, like…well, like that annoying little brother that causes trouble for you at every turn.
"Promise…" He muttered unhappily. I was still reluctant, but seeing as he'd promised on the Styx, I let the tar release him, pushing him up and out before the ground beneath him solidified into concrete under his feet once more. He tapped the ground cautiously, looking at it in awe.
"So do you know where we are?" He shook his head.
"I can't read American."
"Well then let's see if we can find out. On the way, tell me more about you. Your sister's cautious in her wording about you, and she doesn't bring the topic up a lot because of the circumstances surrounding your death." He nodded and we walked out of the alley and down the street.
"We met in an orphanage for "special kids." Really, most of the kids there were just demigods or some pretty talented mortals. There were locks on windows, a really mean woman in charge, cameras monitoring our every move. We were basically on lockdown. Onesan was the only one who nearly escaped if it wasn't for me intervening. She hacked the electronic lock on one of the windows within a day when other new kids took around a week to figure out how to escape. I wanted her to take me with her. She knew how to survive, and I couldn't make it on my own. I was tired of that place, I'm sure everyone there was. But she said she couldn't because I'd just burden her. So I set off the window alarm and got her in trouble. She played it off like she didn't know the windows weren't allowed to be opened, but after that, I kept her from ever escaping again, not until she promised she'd take me with her."
I bought some ice cream for each of us at an ice cream shop. Kaze took it happily, wolfing it down within a few seconds, blurring into speed for a moment and then throwing the bowl and spoon away. I smiled when he asked for more, saying that his speed resulted in an appetite. I gave him mine and said we could stop for lunch, and I could pay for anything he wanted. We went to a diner, and I ordered some food along with Kaze so that he could have mine too. Of course, I had to order all of his food too since he couldn't read the menu and he couldn't speak proper English.
"So it sounds like you two didn't get along at first," I said while we waited for our food. Kaze swung his feet and tapped the table, his head moving like he was humming a song to himself. Yeah, he was major ADHD.
"Yeah. Eventually, she gave up escaping, being stubborn and not giving in to my demand. So we were at a standstill. You see, I was the one who the mean woman liked most since I could always get away with trouble and made her think I was obedient, even though I definitely wasn't. Since I got Onesan in trouble so often, I was put as her…chaperone. I was always the one ordered to look after her and stay with her at all times. We shared a bunk bed, and so we got really close whether we liked it or not. One night, she caught me writing stuff in my journal in the middle of the night." He pulled out a journal from his jacket, though how it fit in there without my noticing it was beyond me. He opened it and flipped through the pages to show me a bunch of Japanese symbols, but unlike what I'd seen on TV or online and such, these symbols were all over the place and not in lines or organized in any way on the page.
"She showed me that she wrote in a journal like that too," He continued. "She had a lot of different symbols in hers, the majority of which I didn't understand. Her Japanese was a bit rusty, and so I offered to help teach her. Turns out, she was pretty good at poetry and writing, and I liked her work. She said she liked mine too, and for that one night, it was like we'd never been enemies. After that, we only grew closer. I was obligated to stay with her at all times, so when we'd be allowed outside in the courtyard to play, we'd have competitions to see who had more stamina, who could do the most awesome maneuvers, and sometimes just wrote things together. In the process of trading stories, she told me she was a child of a goddess and a half-blood. I told her I was a child of Hermes, and she explained that she was my cousin. One day, I called her "sister" and…well, she called me "brother." After that, it stuck."
"She says she met you when she was about nine and you were three years younger than her. You must've been a seriously scary six-year-old." He smiled and nodded proudly. When our food came he began wolfing it down. I hoped the Mist was covering him speeding to a blur as he ate, because the food was disappearing rapidly. If his speed physics worked like the Flash, then he must've had a really fast metabolism. He ate enough for three before saying he was stuffed and that we should go see Zy. He looked ready to bounce off the walls and clearly he was on a sugar-high. Or just a food-high in general. Once I paid, I found we were in Tennessee, a good deal north of Atlanta. That was at least a five-hour drive, and that was if we had a car. I was filled up with food, but Kaze had beat me good in that alley, so shadow travelling was still a bit shaky. I couldn't promise that I'd make it back to the Argo II, and I couldn't guarantee I wouldn't pass out upon arrival.
"So how do we get to Onesan?" Kaze asked, practically skipping down the street beside me.
"Do you have any nectar or ambrosia on you? My head's still pounding from your beating earlier so I don't think I'll be able to instantly get us there." He put his arms in his thinking position again.
"Umm…what are those things?"
"You've never had the food of the gods?"
"I don't know. Have I?" He dug through the inner pockets of his jacket. He pulled out a small vial with some green liquid in it, but I shook my head. He pulled out a brownie, but I shook my head again. "I don't have any more food," He said, popping the brownie into his mouth. "I usually eat anything I come across."
"Then all we can do is hope that you sister comes and finds us." He slumped dramatically.
"But I don't like waiting~! I need to do something!"
"Can you carry my weight?" He thought about it. I was at least a foot taller than this kid and twice his size in weight, so I expected him to say no.
"Probably."
"What?"
"Hermes is the god of many things, including athletics. He once threw a house on this nymph when she refused to come to Zeus and Hera's wedding, making her into the first turtle. I'm physically stronger than I look."
"Well, how fast could you run with my weight on you?"
"Maybe not supersonic, but pretty fast."
"Well, the crew is somewhere in Atlanta, about 300 miles south-east."
"Three-minute trip tops."
"Three? But…that means you'd be travelling 100 miles in a minute, around 6,000 miles per hour! That is wayfaster than the speed of sound! Which is 767 miles per hour, by the way." He shrugged.
"Okay, so maybe that's an exaggeration."
"Maybe?"
"Maybe! I can travel at the speed of light if I push it!"
"Seriously?"
"Yes!" I sighed.
"Okay, but how fast can you get us to the Argo II?"
"Hm…how much would that distance be on the metric system?"
"300 miles? Uh…about 483 kilometers maybe?" He pulled a large phone out of his pocket. His hoodie couldn't have hidden something in his pocket so seamlessly. It looked like there was nothing in his pockets, and you wouldn't have guessed that his jacket even had pockets. This, along with his journal, couldn't possibly have fit in there. He muttered a few things as he played with the touch screen. After a moment, he sighed.
"Okay, so maybe if I were alone I could make it in maybe ten minutes, but with your weight added on…thirty minutes if it was a straight shot and no landscape problems." I thought for a moment.
"Wait, you can run over twice the speed of sound when you're on your own?" He shrugged.
"Under circumstances."
"What's your actual average speed?" He looked to the side.
"Depending on how much I've had to eat and sleep at the time?"
"Like when you were fighting me in the alley."
"Hm…a little under the speed of sound. 300 meters per second? That's uh…" He tapped his phone again. "671 miles per hour. Give or take. And that's when I'm being lazy. If you want to account for friction and wind resistance, be my guest, but I got the power from the gods so you'll have to ask them how things work. Anyway, I have the ability to run at the speed of light if I push it, but I've never actually done it before. If I did, I'd have probably circled the planet enough times to cut through the crust. The point is, I'm fast. If you want to time the trip, go ahead. Know that being in speed-mode makes time around us go by a lot faster - slower, I guess, depending on the perspective - so a minute to us could be an hour to the rest of the world depending on my speed."
"You're pretty smart, kid."
"Don't call me "kid." And yeah, I know a bit about my speed. Everything else…well, let's just say I have to use the internet a lot. Overall, just know that I could carry you to this "Ara-go-e-tu"if I know where I'm going."
"Zytaveon?" I looked behind me to find Zy walking up. "Hey, there you are. I tracked you to your last shadow travel, but you weren't there. Took me ages to find you. Look, about your brother, you understand that Jason and Leo weren't saying we're going to abandon Nico, right? You had a real point. No one deserves to die like that, even if they were our sworn enemy."
"I know. I cooled down a while ago. I know they're good people." She looked at me in confusion, raising an eyebrow.
"What's up with the Japanese? It's not like we're making a drug deal or anything. You can speak about things in public." I realized my mistake and concentrated on English again.
"Sorry. I was just talking to - Oh! Right, look who I found!" I moved to the side so she could see Kaze standing behind me, who was staring at her in awe. Zy froze and stared at him with the same shock, and for a moment there was just silence. Kaze was the one to finally break it.
"Onesan?"
