Quick request for help guys. I'm relatively new to writing Percy Jackson fanfic, or reading it either. If anybody knows any forums where I can discuss Percy Jackson things or whatever (that's still active), then I'd appreciate it if you could tell me about it! And no, I'm not talking about Roleplays. I can find those without too much difficulty if I need them. But yeah, Percy Jackson things. Thanks in advance! Also, I was supposed to post this chapter yesterday, and then about six hours ago today, but alas, I was busy the whole week. I'm sorry. So I'll try make it up to you with this chapter, and of course, the next one on Monday, as usual!

CHAPTER 6: WE HITCH A RIDE ON THE MYSTERY MOBILE

Zach would have done anything at this point for a cheeseburger. Dinner consisted of cheese and crackers, and crushed crackers at that after the Battle Royale in the bus. He'd acquired a couple of nasty gashes, and he still felt lightheaded from when the bus tipped over. He had to deal with it the old fashioned way: by practically mummifying himself, bandaging his head and the cuts around his stomach. His trench coat was also pretty shredded, so those were some bonus points. Riley didn't have to worry though. It didn't look like she was going to move her arm for a while, but a swig of nectar and an ambrosia square later and all it needed was some rest to be good as new. He didn't dare try take some himself. He wasn't up for becoming a melted people puddle and soak into the ground. If demi-gods had to be careful, then there was no way he was going to sample any with his mortal flesh. After the destruction of their last mode of transport, they were going to try and hitch a ride or keep walking until they found shelter, but with the way it was getting dark they didn't have much of a choice but to camp out in the wood. And that's where they sat down to have their meagre dinner. Rationing.

"Hey, Riley," Zach asked, "what was that weird thing you did?"

"What weird thing?"

"You know, the whole power up thing. You were glowing red, and these weird gloves popped up…."

"I was glowing?"

"What, you didn't notice?" Riley shook her head.

"I was too busy trying to smash the next thing that moved." She smiled sadistically to herself, and Zach was tempted to edge away from her slowly, but wasn't sure how she'd react to that.

"Well, the gauntlets are a bit of a long story. They're pretty much bound to me, so when my blessing activates, they appear to help me shred people."

"Your blessing? Like, some kind of gift from the gods?"

"Exactly that," Reika confirmed. "What you saw was a downgraded version of the blessing of Ares. When a child of Ares is in a pinch, and they're seriously pissed, like, 'I'll eat your babies' pissed, then Ares grants them a blessing that makes them just about invulnerable in battle. It can normally only be used in extreme circumstances, but Riley is…"

"Easily irked?"

"Yeah, that. She's always ready for a fight. Not that other Ares kids aren't, but when something makes Riley mad, she can use a weaker version of it easily. She becomes freakishly strong, and nothing short of a shotgun shell to the face will hurt her, let alone kill her."

"Sounds like fun."

"As long as you're not on the other side!" she laughed. "Most demi-gods end up getting a gift or blessing of some kind from their godly side. Ares kids are all scary fighters, and pretty big." Zach took a look at Riley. Compared to him, she was buff, but against the other Ares kids, she was a joke.

"The genes must have skipped a generation."

"You know I can hear you," she said as she shot him a menacing glare.

"So Ares kids get strong. Anything else?"

"Yeah, loads," Reika continued. "Apollo kids are natural musicians. Hephaestus's lot are genius mechanics and designers. Children of Athena are super smart, but as you've seen, they're tough as well. Goddess of war and all that."

"So what about Hermes's kids?" A sly smile appeared on her face.

"Other than a natural knack for causing trouble? Well, we're kind of tricky to explain. Hermes is the god of messengers, but he's also the god of thieves and travellers. We're normally a kind of jack of all trades. Good at all, master of none. But we're also good at getting in and out of trouble real quick."

"Literally in your case."

"Yeah, I'm kinda the weird one, even amongst them. Every now and then, a demi-god gets a rare or unusual power. This one Hephaestus kid got the power to control fire, and that hasn't been seen for centuries. Once, a Poseidon kid could make earthquakes instead of control water. I got Hermes's super speed. I can't quite control it very well though." That much, Zach could already guess. Almost immediately after their fight, she threw up on the side of the road. It wasn't a pretty sight.

"I'm guessing it's too stressful huh?"

"Yeah, pretty much. I'm still human. If I move super – fast for too long, my body starts to wear down, and it uses way too much power. And if I crash, it's really bad."

"So you use the rollerblades to limit your power. You can't move as fast on them as if you tried running normally."

"Bingo. At first I was horrible in them, but I got the hang of it pretty quick."

"After face planting at a hundred miles per hour," Riley commented, then continued before she could protest. "So how long did you say that giant ice block would last?"

"Well I enchanted it myself, so it will be there for a while, but that guy will probably melt his way out early. So about three days? This is probably our only chance to rest."

"That guy seemed really determined to get us, you in particular. Who, or what was that?"

"That looked like an ukobach, a small time pyro order demon that supposedly stokes the flames of the underworld. It's not Greek in case you were wondering, so don't feel bad about not knowing it. That wasn't its true form though. That one was probably possessing some poor guy who just so happened to be nearby at the time. Explains why he had a cigarette instead of a pan of coals. Anyway, that guy was definitely after the Megiddo Circuit. He waited until he knew where it was before attacking, and even then he was holding back a lot so that he wouldn't roast it."

"That was holding back?! I thought you said he was small fry?"

"He is, but he's still a demon. You don't mess with them." She shrugged her shoulders, and Zach was pretty sure that the friendly advice hadn't sunk in at all. "I'm serious. Don't go randomly picking fights with them, and never fight them alone."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Riley said. "Next time we meet, I'll have both of my arms working, then we'll see how cocky he feels."

"Did you even hear what I said?" Riley unrolled her sleeping bag and leaped into it, the thing completely camouflaged against the leaves. If he couldn't see her chest rising and falling, he wouldn't even know she was there.

"I got first watch," Reika said, unusually energetic considering the stressful day they'd just had. Zach was going to protest, but he could feel his muscles weighing him down. He rested his head, immediately finding an enormous rock there, but he barely even noticed as he passed out.

They hadn't planned to spend the whole morning travelling by foot, but that was just the way it went. It's not like anybody really expected their transport to get blown up as soon as it left Manhattan. That was just an occupational hazard. But when a large caravan that looked like the Mystery Mobile finally stopped by the side of the road, Zach felt that they'd finally lucked out. Even though the van clearly looked like it should have a whole family in it, there was just a single, relatively middle-aged couple. A red faced man leaned out of his window, and he was wearing this ridiculous Hawaii t-shirt.

"Are you kids lost? Heading somewhere in particular?"

"Well, we were heading towards Denver. Actually, we needed to make it to Los Angeles, important business and all."

"Los Angeles? Tell me, where are your parents?" Of course, the usual question, Zach thought to himself, but he'd already come prepared for this.

"Our parents live in Denver. We were going to meet up there and then carry on, head to Alamo and the likes. Family visits and all that. We were visiting relatives in Manhattan, but we kinda got stranded on our way back. We'd really appreciate the lift." The man didn't look too sure, but his wife seemed to be taken by it. She had silvery grey curly hair that made her head look kind of like a very shiny bush, and it kept on jiggling like it was made of jelly and not human hair.

"Oh of course you can! We always love to have company! Actually, we were heading the same way too! Come on in!" Between getting in a car with jelly head and walking the rest of the way, it wasn't much of a contest, but Zach was still a little bit wary. The last old man they'd run into had been a fire breathing demon.

The caravan was rather comfortable, considering that it was cramped and moving. There were enough chairs for everybody and a tiny table for food, plus a bunk bed, but those probably belonged to the old man and woman couple driving. What stood out were all the alien memorabilia plastered everywhere. The interior was filled with silvers and greens that made it hard to look at anything, and there were strange, gimmicky looking items everywhere, from generic looking alien posters to weird aluminium sculptures. There were even matching tin hats on the top bunk, and the air freshener at the front of the car was in the shape of a green big eyed alien's head.

"If you're heading to Nevada, you have to stop by Rachel," the old lady said. "The Lil' Al' Li' Inn has some great fries, you'll see! Or maybe you could do some reading up in Alamo. You said you were stopping there, right? There's a lot of extra-terrestrial activity going on in Nevada, especially Highway 375."

"You know, that's where I met my wife," the man said. "We were travellers, just like you, and we ended up getting abducted at the same time. Then we met. On the alien's mothership!" He said that last part softly like it was a secret, the couple looking lovingly into each other's eyes. Zach was tempted to puke, and Riley didn't look like she was faring any better, and how he kept driving without looking at the road was beyond them.

"We didn't know it at the time though," he continued. "Completely wiped our memories when we got sent back. We had to recover them through hypnosis." They didn't have much choice but to listen to the couple ramble about their experiences, or whatever they were, but Reika was out cold after having stayed up most of the night. Nobody really wanted to answer their questions when they came their way either, but they did anyway until finally the car came to a grinding halt by nightfall. The couple (who by now had introduced themselves as Roger and Maria) insisted that they could use their beds and stayed by the wheel, but nobody really wanted to touch them so they stayed in the chairs.

Riley slept like she was dead, not even so much as twitching, and Zach was trying to copy her, but their poor seating arrangements didn't exactly make life easier for them. He was just about to give up when he heard movement coming from Reika's seat. He opened his eyes just enough to see Reika getting up, gently covering Riley with the blanket they'd borrowed. She stealthily crept out of the car, closing the door gently behind her. Zach waited a few minutes, and then silently got up after her, a little too curious about where she was going.

They'd stopped by a pretty ordinary looking fast food restaurant that felt compelled to place itself in the middle of nowhere, the bright neon MEGABITE sign flashing sporadically, and only with four letters so it looked more like ME A T. The carpark was pretty barren, filled with a few eighteen wheelers and one or two smaller cars. Zach spotted Reika standing at the end of the carpark just staring up at the night sky. It was only when Zach was standing right next to her that he realised she was shorter than him without her rollerblades.

"Couldn't sleep?" he asked.

"Could you?" That answered the question. There was an awkward silence hanging in the air for a moment as Zach tried to think of something to say.

"So, uh… what are you doing anyway? You know, out here? It's kind of cold."

"Well, you should have brought a blanket if you were gonna complain about it." Zach shrugged his shoulders. Well, this is going marvellously, he thought to himself. What am I meant to say now? Lovely weather we're having, I wonder if it will be showering monsters tomorrow?

"Um… so what are you doing?" he finally asked.

"Nothing much, just drinking in the darkness. Still checking if I'm being watched. The usual."

"Watched by Hermes?" She smirked a little, but she didn't confirm the guess.

"It's been a while since I've been out of Camp Half-Blood," she said. "I've been there pretty much year round ever since I was nine."

"You've never left? Not even for quests and stuff?"

"Nope. Never. Whenever we got quests, I'd always get too scared, even if I was the perfect pick for them. I'm not strong like Riley or smart the way you are, so I figured I couldn't do them."

"Seriously? You tackled an android and dropkicked a demon. With rollerblades! I think you've got to give yourself a bit more credit than that!"

"Yeah, I'm pretty awesome, ain't I?" she conceded, but her smile was clearly false. "Still, I don't think I can really support you guys that much. I know I'm not the easiest person to live with. I'm all over the place and hectic, and my power's only really good for running away. It's gonna take a while before I figure out what I'm good at."

"I'll be as patient as I need to be until you do." The cold night air blew around them, picking up trash and empty plastic bags and dropping them a few feet away. The infinite but clouded sky, speckled with the occasional glimmer of light loomed over their heads, its immense vastness towering over the pathetic isolation of the ME A T restaurant, and as Zach joined her gaze looking up at that sky, he couldn't help but wonder whether his mom was looking up at the same sky as him. Whether even across unknown distances, they were still connected like that. And he couldn't help but wonder what Reika was wondering in her rare moment of inactivity.

He didn't know how long he would have stayed there if he hadn't sneezed. He could feel the chill creeping up on him, and Reika clearly picked up on it when he sneezed two more times in a row.

"Hey, you're going to get sick if you stay here. Come on, let's get back to the car." He agreed, hoping that there was no snot dribbling out of his nostrils, and they headed back. They'd barely taken three steps when the winds suddenly turned violent, squalls of air and gale force winds bowling them over. The few trees that were nearby were bending over backwards, creaking wood and twisting metal from signs and bits of damaged cars filling the air as they bent over and snapped, being converted to deadly projectiles. Zach looked up at the caravan, and sure enough, it was slowly twisting and caving within itself, but it wasn't being knocked over like the mini cooper to their left. But that was probably because that was the source of the wind.

Directly above it was a gigantic silver saucer, flashing lights and a multitude of beeps and whirrs coming from it. Shining from directly beneath it was a bright white light, illuminating the caravan, and like some kind of futuristic tractor beam, was pulling it up slowly. Zach was totally speechless. He looked at Reika who looked equally speechless, but no matter how hard he yelled, his voice just got snatched up by the wind. That, and a few stray insects ended up finding their way into his teeth.

A fresh gust of wind buffeted them again, knocking them into a red eighteen wheeler. The truck driver opened his door with a yell, looked up at the saucer with an awestruck expression, and then immediately had the door slam itself into his face, probably knocking him effectively unconscious. Zach couldn't even move his fingers. He just barely managed to tilt his face towards Reika, and since they were effectively glued together against the truck, hearing each other was no longer an issue.

"Aliens?! Of all the things… I'm not trained for this!"

"Aliens? Stupid, the mist! Put on your goggles!" The way his eyes were stinging, he didn't need to be compelled as he just barely managed to slide one lens over one eye. Suddenly, the scene looked very different. They were still caught in the middle of a flash hurricane, but now the saucer was a very different sight. He didn't get much of a chance to register it before his vision began to swim. He couldn't breathe and he felt bruised. It wasn't much longer before he closed his eyes, and passed out, the roar of the wind getting drowned out in the depths of his consciousness.