Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: You know you're doing something right when even you get angry when writing the chapter. :P

As always, hope y'all enjoy, and until next week,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis


~The Finding Home Saga~

~Finding Home~

~Chapter 14: I Meet The God Of Assholes~


Two days later, on June 13th – aka, eight days before the solstice – our train rolled into Denver. None of us had eaten anything since the night before somewhere in Kansas, because Katie's dream about something bad waiting for us in the Colorado capital had set all of our nerves on edge. None of us had taken a shower ever since we'd left Aunty Em's, either, which might not have sucked, except none of us had deodorant to put on, much less perfume.

"We should try to contact Chiron," Katie said after we had gotten off of the train. "Just to let him know that we've gotten this far somewhat safely."

"How?" I asked. "I mean, we can't use phones, right?"

"She's not talking about phones, Percy," Silena replied cryptically, but didn't elaborate any further on that.

Neither of them did.

Instead, we wandered through the downtown of Denver for about half an hour, looking for something that neither Katie or Silena would tell me what it was. The air was dry and hot, which felt weird after the humidity of Camp Half-Blood, seeing how close it was to the Long Island Sound. And everywhere we turned, the Rocky Mountains were looming over us, like a snow-topped tidal wave about to crash into the city.

Finally, we found an empty do-it-yourself car wash, which seemed to be what my two friends were looking for. We veered towards the stall farthest from the street, keeping our eyes open for patrol cars. Gods knew how we looked, after all, as three teenagers hanging out in a car wash with no car. It was bound to be suspicious.

"What exactly are we doing?" I asked, just as Katie took out the spray gun.

"You'll see," she answered, still evasive, as she fished for change in one of shorts' pockets. Despite having raided Aunty Em's and the closed-down gas station next to her place, we admittedly didn't have much cash left after paying the truck driver we'd hitchhiked with and paying to eat in the dining cart of the Amtrak train. Funny how cash could be spent so quickly like that. "Ha! I've got just enough money to pay for it."

With that, she stuffed all three of her quarters into the machine, before she set the knob to FINE MIST. Next to her, Silena grabbed a drachma from out of her pocket, which she threw into the mist once the late afternoon light filtered through it and broke into the different colors of the rainbow. "O' goddess Iris," she said as the drachma flew from her fingertips, "accept our offering."

The drachma went through the mist and into the rainbow, where it promptly disappeared with a golden shimmer.

"Half-Blood Hill, please," Silena requested.

For a moment, nothing happened. But then, an image began to form in the rainbow and the mist – an image of strawberry fields with the Long Island Sound in the distance. We seemed to be on the porch of the Big House, which was pretty fucking amazing, because it seemed that whatever this was, it was like that Instant Messaging video chat thing. Only, you know, ten times better.

I wasn't able to think about that for very long, though. Because standing with his back to us at the railing was a very familiar, sandy-haired guy in shorts and an orange tank top. He was holding a bronze sword and seemed to be staring intently at something down in the meadow.

It had only been three days since I'd last seen him, but somehow, those three days also felt like an eternity.

"Luke!" I called.

Instantly, he turned, eyes wide. I could swear he was standing three feet in front of me through a screen of mist, except I could only see the part of him that appeared in the rainbow.

...But that was enough for me. Just being able to see his face caused what felt like a tsunami of relief to crash over him.

And the same seemingly could be said for him, as his face broke out into a grin and his cheeks flushed ever-so-slightly. "Percy!" he exclaimed. "Thank the gods! Are you guys okay?"

"We're fine," Silena interjected before I could say anything at all. I resisted the urge to glare at her. "Where's Chiron?"

The brightness of Luke's smile dimmed slightly. "He's down at the cabins. We're...having some issues with the campers right now. Listen, is everything cool with you guys? Is Katie alright?"

"I'm right here," Katie said. She held the nozzle out to one side and stepped into Luke's line of vision. "What kind of issues?"

Just then, a big Lincoln Continental pulled into the car wash with its stereo turned up to what had to be the maximum volume. As the car slid into the next stall, the bass from the subwoofers vibrated so much, it shook both my chest and the pavement.

"Chiron had to – what's that noise?" Luke yelled.

Silena winked at me. "I'll go take care of it," she shouted, with a look that told me just exactly what she was going to do, both with the car and with me and Luke. "Katie, come on!"

"What?" Katie said, looking at her bewilderingly, before comprehension dawned on her face, along with a wicked grin. "Oh, okay! We'll be right back, Percy!"

Katie handed me the spray gun, and then she and Silena walked out of our stall and over to the other one.

I quickly readjusted the hose so I could keep the rainbow going and still see Luke.

"Chiron had to break up a fight," Luke told me over the music. "Things are pretty tense here, Percy. Word leaked out about the Zeus-Hades-Poseidon standoff. We're still not sure how, but that doesn't matter, because the campers are starting to take sides. So far, Aphrodite, Ares, Apollo, and most of my cabin are siding with Poseidon – " I could tell by the way he said it that it wasn't the cabins siding with Poseidon that he had a fault with, but rather the fighting " – while Athena, Hephaestus, and Dionysus are backing Zeus."

In the next stall, I heard Silena using her charmspeak on the driver of the car over the sound of his music, before the volume of it decreased drastically.

"So, what's your status?" Luke asked me after that. "Chiron will be sorry he missed you."

"I'm not," I blurted out, unable to stop myself. My cheeks quickly heated up once I did.

Luke laughed.

I told him pretty much everything. It felt so good to see him, to feel like I was back at camp and at his side, even if only for a few minutes, that I didn't realize how long I had talked until the beeper went off on the spray machine, and I realized I only had one more minute before the water shut off.

"I'm sorry I'm not there," Luke said. "I miss you. Really, I do."

"You miss me?" I asked, stunned.

He grinned cheekily. "You're like a barnacle, Percy. Quick to stick and incredibly hard to get rid of."

Amazingly, my blush worsened. "Yeah, yeah," I muttered. Then, with a louder voice, added, "I miss you, too. I can't wait until all of this is over."

"Me, either," he agreed. "Hey, listen, are you wearing the flying shoes? I'll feel better if I know they've done you some good."

"Oh...uh, yeah!" I said. They'd definitely done me some good, alright, if you count blowing up on the bus in my place as "good." "Yeah, they've come in handy."

In the stall next to us, the music suddenly stopped completely. A man screamed in terror, car doors slammed, and the Lincoln abruptly peeled out of the car wash.

"You better go see what that was," Luke said, just as the water shut off and the mist started to evaporate.

I didn't want to, though. I wanted to stay here and keep talking to him or, better yet, just go back to camp and be near him again. It was kind of crazy, how I'd gone from not trusting him to desperately wanting to be by his side in such a short amount of time. I knew it.

And Luke seemed to as well, because then he was saying with a voice that steadily got fainter, "Hey, I know you can do this, Percy. And once you do it, you can come back and we can – "

The mist evaporated, making both him and his voice vanish into nothing. And I was alone, in a wet, empty, car wash stall.

Katie and Silena came around the corner, both of them laughing, but they stopped when they saw my face. "Percy?" Silena asked soothingly. "What happened? What did Luke say?"

"Not much," I lied, not wanting to tell them about the absolute shit storm we'd left the camp in. "Come on. Let's go find some dinner."

About half an hour later, we were sitting at a booth in a gleaming chrome diner. All around us, families were eating burgers and drinking malts and sodas.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity to my empty stomach, the waitress came over. With a raised eyebrow, she asked, "Well?"

"We, um, want to order dinner, ma'am," I said.

She snorted. "Of course you do. Why else would you be here? What I wanna know is if you kids have the money to pay for it."

Katie, Silena, and I all shared a look.

"We, um," I said again, trying to come up with a sob story for the waitress, not sure of what else to do, when suddenly, ithappened.

And by it, I mean the thing that Katie had been warned about – because what else would I mean? Especially when it was a huge motorcycle about the size of a baby elephant pulling up to the diner, with a rumble that shook the whole building.

At that moment, all conversation in the diner stopped. The motorcycle's headlight glared red through the windows, casting a reddish tint on everything inside. Its gas tank had flames painted on it, and a shotgun holster was riveted to either side, complete with shotguns. The seat was leather, but not like any leather I had ever seen before.

...In fact, now that I got to thinking about it, the leather almost looked like Caucasian human skin. Gross.

The guy on the bike was the type of guy who would make even pro-wrestlers run screaming for their mamas. He was dressed in a red muscle shirt with black jeans and a black leather duster, with a hunting knife strapped to his thigh. He wore red wraparound shades, and he had the cruelest, most brutal face I'd ever seen, in a way that may have been handsome if it just wasn't so utterly not my type. He had an oily black crew cut and thin, faded scars all over his body, as if he had been in multiple bar fights ever since he was a kid.

And the weird thing was, I was pretty sure that I'd seen him before, because he was familiar in a way I just couldn't place.

As he walked into the diner, a hot, dry wind blew through the place, like the guy was literally smoldering with fire. All the people rose, as if he was the Queen of England, and they didn't sit down again until the biker waved his hand dismissively. Then, they all went back to their conversations, as if nothing unusual had just happened. At the same time, our waitress blinked, like somebody had just pressed the rewind button on her brain. Then, she asked us, "You kids have the money to pay for it?"

"It's on me," the biker suddenly said in a smooth, but deep voice as he walked towards us, before he proceeded to slide into our booth, which was way too small for him and made him crowd Katie against the window.

"Ow!" she exclaimed.

The biker smirked at her. "Sorry, doll face," he said, then turned to look at the waitress, who was still gaping at him. "Why are you still here, lady?"

He pointed at her, causing her to stiffen. She turned as if she'd been spun around, and marched stiffly back towards the kitchen, looking as if she'd had a broom taped to her spine.

After she left, the biker turned to look at me. I couldn't see his eyes behind the red shades, but bad feelings started to boil inside my stomach – anger, resentment, bitterness. Suddenly, I wanted to hit a wall. Or, perhaps even better, pick a fight with somebody.

Who did this guy think he was?

"So," the biker said with a wicked grin. "You're old Seaweed's kid, huh?"

I couldn't help but glare at him in response. He reminded me a lot of Gabe, and not in a semi-good way like Mr. D. I didn't think he was a creep, but he did feel like the kind of guy who would rather punch a kid than talk to them, and I wanted to punch him in the face back at the very thought.

But I didn't. Instead, I said, "Yeah. What's it to you?"

Next to me, Silena shifted uncomfortably. "Percy," she said warningly, and sounded like she wanted to say something else, too, but the biker raised his hand, and immediately it caused her to stop talking.

"It's alright," he said. "A little attitude's what I like to see – it means you haven't been ground down by the life yet. It's good. Healthy, even. As long as you remember who's the boss. And you know I'm the boss right now, right, little cousin?"

In that instant, I knew why this guy looked so familiar. He had the same vicious sneer as some of the kids at Camp Half-Blood – specifically the ones from Cabin Five.

"You're Clarisse's dad, aren't you?" I asked. "Ares, god of war."

Ares grinned and took off his shades, revealing his eyes...or lack thereof, more like it. Because instead of eyes, there was only fire, as his empty sockets glowed with miniature nuclear explosions of pure, vicious red. "That's right, punk. I heard you broke my Clarisse's spear."

"She was asking for it."

He shrugged. "Probably. That's cool. I don't like getting into my kids' fights, you know? Wouldn't be fair – especially when she seems to like you so much. No, the reason why I'm here, cousin, is because I got a little proposition for you."

Just then, the waitress came back with heaping trays of food: cheeseburgers, fries, onion rings, and chocolate shakes.

Ares handed her a few gold drachmas once she'd gotten all of the plates on the table. She looked nervously at the coins. "Sir, these aren't..."

He pulled out his huge knife and started to clean his fingernails. "There a problem, sweetheart?"

She stared at him for one long, hard moment, before she swallowed deeply, took the coins, and left.

"You can't just do that," I hissed at Ares through gritted teeth, once the waitress was outside of listening range. "You can't – "

"Can't what? Defend myself?" he retorted with a laugh. "It's one of my constitutional rights, according to this country. It's one of the best things that your civilization came up with – after the entire city of Sparta, of course. Can't beat that. But, I'm getting off-topic here. We should be talking about my proposition. Or, more like the favor I need you to do for me, really."

I grimaced. "What kind of favor could I possibly do for a god?"

He gave another shrug. "Something that a god doesn't have time to do himself. It's nothing much, really. I left my shield at an abandoned water park here in town. I was going on a little...date with one of my girlfriends, you see. We were interrupted. I left my shield behind. I want you to fetch it for me."

"And why should I do this for you?" I asked, as I tried (and failed) to keep my cool. It wasn't fair, after all, that a god could just come in and stop my life- and world-saving quest like this, even if I knew that life wasn't fair in general. "What's in it for me?"

Ares leaned forward, and the fire in his eye sockets began to glow a little hotter. "You realize, cousin," he said, voice dangerously low. "I could turn you into a prairie dog right now and run you over with my Harley 'cause of your attitude? I don't really feel like doing it, but I could. Just like how I could, theoretically, turn both of your little girlfriends here into bitches – oh, wait! I forgot! Old Seaweed's boys aren't really the non-pansy type of material."

I clenched my hands into fists, but didn't say anything. Which was good, because Ares sneered down at me viciously before saying, "A god is giving you an opportunity to prove yourself, Percy Jackson. Are you going to waste it and prove yourself a coward like my father and old Death think you are, or are you willing to rise above their expectations and prove yourself to be better?"

Again, I wanted to punch this guy, god or not, so fucking badly, but somehow, I knew that was what he was waiting for. Ares was goading me on, I realized, and what was worse, his power was only increasing my anger. Feeding into it, pushing it. He'd love it if I attacked him.

I didn't want to give him the satisfaction.

"Fine," I snapped after a moment. "We'll do it."

Ares grinned. "Great," he said. "Just so you know, the water park is a mile west on Delancy. You can't miss it. Look for the Tunnel of Love ride. And, while you're there, I'll arrange some...transportation for you. It'll take you the rest of your way out west, don't worry. And it'll be free of charge.

"Just remember one thing, punk," he added as he put his shades back on. "You're lucky you met me, and not some other Olympian like Athena or your dear Arty. They're not as forgiving of rudeness as I am, you being Arty's sibling or not. I'll meet you back here when you're done. Don't disappoint me."

And with that, he was gone.

"Oh, that's not good," Katie groaned after a moment. "Ares sought you out, Percy. That's not good."

I didn't say anything in response. Instead, I stared out through the window, at the spot where the god of assholes' motorcycle had been.

Next to me, Silena shifted again. "It...might not be as bad as it could be," she said softly.

At that, both Katie and I turned to look at her. "What do you mean?" I couldn't help but asked.

Silena grinned. "Think about it," she said. "He said 'look for the Tunnel of Love ride.' Love, Percy! As in Aphrodite! Whatever made him freak out about this ride, I'm sure my mom had something to do with it – which means that we've got a fair shot at getting Ares' shield, no problem!"


Word Count: 3,215

Next Chapter Title: We Ride The Tunnel Of Love