Here's to WhenDayMeetsDark for being my 300th reviewer! WOOHOO! Hey, I updated quick, right? Well I'm going away in like 20 minutes, so it was either update now or in like three weeks, considering I have a ton of homework and school starts again on Monday. I chose now.
Disclaimer: Yeah… I really don't own Detroit, PJO and any of its characters, and.. yeah. But I do own Hailey, Riley, Jill, and Isabella? Haha. Yay for me!
That's when things got confusing.
"Jill! I can't believe we found you already! We were all so worried!" Hailey went on and on, as the blonde under her struggled against Hailey's grip (and weight) to get free.
"Get," she thrashed around, "off of me!" Her feet kicked, searching for some way to escape. As Jill said this, a smaller blonde rushed over, smacking Hailey's back repeatedly.
"Get off of her!" she shouted, frantically trying to help.
"Ow, ow!" she cried, "Enough! I surrender!" Hailey stopped blabbing long enough to roll off of her friend, smiling in the process as she rubbed her back.
Jill had stood up, with the help of who I had assumed was her little sister, the other missing camper. Standing next to each other, they looked like they could be twins – that is if you don't pay attention to the fact they had at least a five year age difference and one was a foot shorter than the other.
Confused mumbles of bystanders echoed through the air.
"What's going on?"
"Who are the kids?"
"How much does a cheeseburger meal cost?"
Someone nudged my side. Turning, I saw Jeffrey who looked slightly confused. "Is she always this… enthusiastic? And who are the blondes?"
I blinked. Now that his mom had given us a ride to the city, I no longer needed to be nice, or even decently polite to him. If I really wanted to, I could push him down a manhole right now and only feel slightly bad. Instead, I decided to just be rude. "Go away."
He reacted as if I had just slapped him. Stepping back, his lips soundlessly started form words, making the appearance that he was imitating a fish.
"Wha-?"
"Did I mumble? Go. Away." I waved my hand, shooing him off, and he dejectedly sank back into the now dispersing crowd. Since there was no fight, there was no reason for the bystanders to stick around. They all slowly returned to their phone calls, search to find a taxi, and journey back to their job.
I turned my attention back to the girls, as Riley came up next to me. "So… that's Jill?"
That's Jill?
Confused as to what he meant, I looked at him. "What do you mean, 'that's Jill?'. Of course that's Jill! You act like you've never seen her before."
He remained silent.
"Wait, you've never even seen her?" he shook his head, "And you still came on this quest to save her life?"
He looked sheepish. "Well, it wasn't just her…"
"So you came for her little sister?" I asked, slightly sarcastically.
He blushed, "Wha-? No! I came for all the other campers that were paralyzed! Duh…"
I smirked. "Are you sure you didn't just come here for Haileyyyy?" I had said it in complete sarcasm, and yet his ears quickly became red.
He looked nervous as his cheeks flushed with color. "N-no! I don't even like Hailey, gods!"
I laughed, enjoying his awkwardness. "You totally do! I bet the only reason you came on this quest was because she came!"
"Not true!" he shouted back defensively.
"Yes true!"
"What's true, or not true?" came a sudden voice. All three girls were staring at us, causing Riley's face to quickly resemble a tomato.
"Hailey? Nico? And…" Jill stared at Riley, most likely cursing herself for not remembering his name. "Uh…"
I spoke up. "Riley, son of Demeter."
She smiled gratefully, and then went back to her statement.
"What are you doing here?"
"Saving your sorry butt!" shouted out Hailey, before tackling her into another hug.
"You came here to save me?" asked Jill, as if she couldn't believe it herself.
"Well, Nico came here to save you." She smiled at me, and I gave an awkward little wave, immediately yelling at myself afterwards. Hailey continued her story. "I just tagged along for the ride. Not because I like you or you're my best friend or anything, but I heard Michigan had really good potato chips and I couldn't miss out on that!" Hailey gave a toothy smile.
"Well, you didn't have to do that. I was just on my way home with Isabella now." Jill slightly stuck up her chin, too independent to admit she was in need of rescuing.
"No, you were just arguing with a store owner." I argued.
She waved her hand. "Eh, just a minor setback, Mr. di Angelo."
Hailey raised her hand, as if she was in school waiting to answer a question. "On that topic, may I ask why you needed a new shirt?"
"Well, I didn't, but poor Isabella here got hers ripped up in a little hellhound encounter yesterday. Nasty little buggers are gonna cost us twenty bucks for a stupid shirt!" Jill must've seen her younger sister's embarrassed face, for she added "Not that that's your fault, Bella."
Looking at her sister's shirt, I realized it was in fact nearly shredded. A logo on the front had become unrecognizable, especially because of the large amount of duct tape holding the shirt together, most likely the doing of Jill.
The older daughter of Athena turned back to me. "So! It's very nice that you all came to 'rescue' my sister and I, but now that we're safe you can shadow-travel us back to camp so someone can explain to us how we ended up in Detroit when we were just on Long Island."
Riley frowned. "Hate to break it to you, but your little adventure isn't over. The quest wasn't just to save you,"
Hailey added in "Jeez, don't flatter yourself, Jill!"
Riley, ignoring her outburst, continued, "-we have to save all the other campers too."
Both girls became much more alert. "What do you mean? What happened to the other campers? Are they missing too?"
"No… they're paralyzed, like you were." Explained Hailey, suddenly taking on a much softer tone, as if she were talking to a scared child.
Jill looked clueless, which was a rare expression for a daughter of Athena. "What do you mean?" she asked, "We weren't paralyzed…"
"Yes you were; we saw you ourselves. It was the harpies, remember?"
They turned their attention to me. "No, I remember the harpies, but I was fine after that. I went back to my cabin and then suddenly I was in Detroit with my little sister."
"Well sometime in between then, you had both became paralyzed along with ten other campers."
"…Oh. Well, how did we end up here?" Jill asked.
"We were hoping you knew." I answered. Unfortunately for me, it seemed she didn't like that answer. Just a second after the words left my mouth, a hand had come and smacked the back of my head.
Ignoring my cry of pain, Jill began to speak. "Why on earth would you think we knew? Are we psychic? Oh, next thing you know we'll be seeing the future! Predicting lottery numbers! Communicating with the dead, perhaps?"
Rubbing my head, I added in, "Communicating with the dead is sorta my thing, if you don't mind…"
"Shut up!" she yelled, but her lips has a hint of a smile playing on them.
"That's stupid." Added in Isabella, and I realized the first time she talked was to call me unintelligent. "That's scientifically impossible. You can't communicate with the dead." She gave me a superior look.
"Yes I can!" I told her.
"So, you're telling me you just summon dead people and," she waved her arms, "WA-LA! Magically, spirits rise?"
I know she was being sarcastic, but she had hit in spot on. "Yep… that's pretty much how it goes."
"Nu-uh!" Standing on her tippy-toes, she looked up at me, a determined look on her face.
"Uh-huh!" I yelled back.
"Nu-"
Hailey interrupted our bickering. "Are you two serious right now? This really isn't the time for this…"
The young girl crossed her arms, turned around, and stuck her chin up. "Hmph!"
"Now that the fifteen year old and my younger sister have stopped arguing over communicating with the dead of all things, don't you think we should, oh, I don't know, start looking for the cure and trying to figure out how we were woken up and magically transported to Michigan?"
It was silent besides the constant sounds of a busy city. Jill rolled her eyes.
"Fine! Someone tell me what the prophecy was." She ordered. I stepped forward, reciting it.
"It was:
Wisdom shall be found in the Wolverine State,
Since a mother saved her daughters' fates.
The heroes will find the missing and the cure,
But only death can open the door."
With each line, she nodded her head, most likely memorizing it as I spoke. "Alright, the first line was simple. The Wolverine State, aka Michigan, was where you found the daughters of Athena, or wisdom. I don't quite understand the second line, though."
"Maybe it was Hera that saved you? The mother?" Riley suggested.
"But Hera's not in any way, shape, or form our mother!" argued Isabella. When she's not silent, she's arguing with somebody.
"What about your stepmother?" I asked Jill.
"The archeologist? She's in Egypt, researching the pyramids. Plus, there's no way she would be able to save us. She's about as powerful as a rubber duck." She laughed at her own joke. "And Isabella's dad was never remarried."
Hailey asked, "Well, what about Athena?"
"Athena?"
I nodded. "Yeah; the only two missing campers were the children of Athena. It seems to fit."
"I don't know… Athena has never expressed any sign of interest in the two of us. Besides claiming us, she has never made any form of contact with us, or any of our siblings. That is, besides Annabeth of course." said Jill, somewhat resentfully.
"Hey! Are you kids just gonna stand in the middle of the sidewalk for the rest of the day, or are you gonna move and actually let some people though?" shouted a man angrily, pushing me out of his way.
"We should get a hotel room or something." suggested Hailey. "Standing out here as an open target will do us absolutely no good."
Agreeing to do so, we walked for about an hour or so before coming across a hotel we could actually afford without completely wiping out our money supply. Alas, we could only afford one room with two beds, so the majority of us would be unfortunately sleeping on the floor.
Therefore, the second we stepped into the room, we were all pushing each other out of the way in order to get dibs on a bed.
"Mine!"
"No, it's mine!" Argued Riley and I. Each of us had a hold on either side of a pillow, and we quickly began fighting over it, nearly ripping it in the process.
"Hey! Hey!" yelled Hailey, "Everybody step away from the beds! There's an easy way to settle this!"
At her word, Riley took a large step back from the bed, which just convinced me more that he was secretly madly in love with her. Grudgingly, I followed his example.
Hailey smiled at her work. "Good! Now, girls get the beds, boys get to sleep on the floor!" and with that, Jill and Isabella jumped on one bed while Hailey claimed the other.
"Hey!" I complained. I considered pushing one of them off of the bed, but decided against it, considering it would probably lead to me sporting a trendy black eye by the end of the day.
"What? Fair is fair." nonchalantly stated Jill. "If a ship is sinking, girls get off first. If a door is held open, girls walk through first. If there are only two beds and yet five kids, girls get first dibs!"
"That's definitely not fair."
"Oh? And why is that?" challenged Hailey.
I threw my hands up, exasperated. "Because! The male gender is just as important as the female! We should get the beds! Look at all guys have done! Scientific discoveries, mathematics, settling America-"
"I'll have you know, since men were failing horribly in their quest to settle in America, England was forced to send women. And once we arrived, it was like BAM! Instant success." The daughter of Athena smiled, as if it were her that had come to America and help settle.
"I'll have you know, it's rude to interrupt. Anyways, men invented the car, the plane, the boat, must I go on?" I really hoped she said no, because I couldn't think of anything else men had invented. Maybe if I had actually gone to school, I would be losing this argument.
"Without men, there wouldn't be any of those things!" piped in Riley.
"Without women there wouldn't be life!" exclaimed Hailey.
"Without men there wouldn't be life either!" I argued.
"Touché." said Jill. "But," she flopped down on the bed, "You guys still have to sleep on the floor."
Finally admitting defeat, Riley and I made ourselves comfortable on the floor. I was thankful that this hotel room didn't have piles of dead bugs and dust wherever you looked, but the floor wasn't much more comfy. I envied the girls, sitting under down comforters.
"So, what about the third line?" she twirled her hair. "The heroes will find the missing and the cure."
"Well that's clear, we found the missing and we'll find the cure."
"And the last line? But only death can open the door."
"Duh. It means, like always, I'm going to be the savior in the end; finding the cure, saving all the campers, having girls throw themselves at me, you know. The usual."
That was the third time I was slapped that day.