Jason puts his head on the window, watching Clarisse bark instructions at Naruto with one eye and looking at the entrance of the city of angels with the other.

He shuts his eyes defiantly. Then sighs and leans up.

His body creaks because it's the first time Jason has moved in days. His legs buzz, feeling dead.

Somehow, they haven't crashed, swerved, or even scratched the car. They've been stopped quite a bit, but Clarisse is woken up, or is already awake, to snap in the guy's face.

One time, near the tail end of Utah, and coming near Vegas, Clarisse refused to stir. Naruto gave the snapping thing a shot and the only change was the guy thought Naruto's name was Maki.

Jason starts calling him that. Naruto hates it.

Jason tried it himself, and the guy backed off. Naruto and him stared at each other for a while before it had hit Jason that it was probably just because he'd practiced it before.

("Clarisse when this is all over, can you teach me how to use the mist? It's like magic, convincing lesser mortals of your evil plans."

"First lesson: It's not charmspeak— you're not convincing shit. You're just tweaking stuff like memories and sight."

"But the officers…?"

"All I'm doing is changing their sight a bit so that I look older and have a driver's license. That's it,"

"Still so cool!"

A smile. "I know.")

They decide that if the satyr meant L.A as in the county, then they were screwed from the start, and drive into the city. They debate a spot to leave the car and end up choosing to leave it in a parking garage.

"Any dice Jason?" Naruto asks as they pay for the parking spot.

"My head hurts a lot."

"Sorry," Naruto says, "But I was asking If you were getting anything back that would tell you where exactly we are looking for your camp?"

Jason thinks really hard. "It's in this county," he says after a while because even just L.A (the city) seems kind of wrong.

Jason's memories have been coming in how comets land on the earth. Explosively. Two beings are fighting over his mind and he can feel it.

Memories are trying to be stopped but that's failing and it's just splitting his mind, making migraines so painful, Jason starts smelling colors.

Parts of his brain have to also focus on allocating these memories to a time because it's random for Jason. He remembers being born, then remembers being chucked off a mountain by a wolf.

Someone please tell him how those two are correlated.

That's another another thing, Jason is getting stuff he shouldn't remember regularly. He was four or so when that wolf pushed him off and he'd literally just breathed his first breath in the former.

No person should remember such events so clearly but he guesses it comes with the amnesia territory.

Clarisse starts walking. "Where are you heading, Clarisse?" Naruto asks.

She shrugs. "I have no clue. I'm to meet up with another satyr, then he'll tell me more specifics."

"Nice," Naruto says, "We'll follow your lead then."

"No. Go look yourselves."

They follow her anyway.

Jason's eyes widen as he understands the pure genius. "I see," he says. "Because if we meet another satyr he can tell us where the sea scent is most concentrated. Naruto, that's amazing foresight!"

Naruto blushes a bit. "After my heart, aren't you?"

Honestly, Jason was about to just start looking around, sniffing the air or something and he's being completely serious about that.

Clarisse flips out a phone out of her pocket.

Jason gapes. "You've had a phone the entire journey. That's so—"

"Reckless?"

Jason nods.

"I don't care."

Clarisse dials up a number. The thing goes through a few rings before it's picked up. An annoyed, old voice plays out from the speaker.

Jason and Naruto sit on some nearby benches while Clarisse and the satyr discuss and argue in the same breath.

"I want to see the Hollywood sign," Naruto says. "Like a good look at it you know? With the sunset and everything?

Jason's head pulses.

"Foreigner," Jason says.

"Basically," Naruto responds. He stretches a bit and pops his neck. "Jason?"

"Yeah?"

"You'll come and visit right?" Naruto asks. "I know you don't feel the most welcome but the people at camp think you're cool."

"Me? Cool?"

"If you were to ask Chiron, he would say you're lovely, and that's probably the first of those he's had in a century," Naruto says.

Jason scratches the back of his neck, kind of surprised Naruto talks good about the guy. From how often they seem to fight, he figured Naruto was a little spiteful.

"Chiron doesn't count," he says.

"Doesn't matter who, they all agree. Clarisse won't admit it but she's okay with your presence and I like you. You're good company."

A girl would have blushed, Jason just shrugs. "Clarisse doesn't like me. That I'm sure of."

Naruto rolls his eyes. "You'd be surprised. Maybe you should ask."

"I don't know," Jason says. He plays with the hem of his shirt. "What about you?"

Naruto raises a brow. "What about me?"

"Do you have a home? You're not a year rounder."

Naruto plucks a leaf from the nearby tree and twirls it around his finger. "Not officially, but that's because I sometimes also stay with the Jacksons," Naruto says.

"Are they your home?"

Naruto doesn't answer for a while. When he opens his mouth, he says, "There's this place. Far as hell from here, that I want to go to. I can't, not right now, but… soon."

Jason nods, sympathetic. "But, you'd come back and visit, right?"

Naruto looks like one of those challenge contestants on TV, when the host tells them their next venture will be diving into a box of snakes, or being locked underwater till they manage to unlock it.

The look of someone who just realized what he signed into.

Jason figures he pushed a bit, on accident really, and sits quiet.

A dryad smacks Naruto in the head when he goes for another leaf, and Clarisse comes back. "Come on," she says, "It's not too far from here."

Naruto rubs his head and gets up, pulling Jason up too. He waves about in the wind, suddenly dizzy.

"Can we stop at Mount Rushmore?" Naruto asks. Him and Clarisse freeze. He sees their faces. "After we're done obviously."

Total foreigner indeed.

"Dude," Jason says. "That's in South Dakota, we passed just south of the state."

Naruto looks horrified. "What? Man, I wanted to deface it. I even packed some spray cans."

He opens his bags and Jason sees half a dozen graffiti cans stuffed in. A yellow, an orange one, a green. In fact, most of the backpack is just the spray cans.

Jason snorts. A long silence. His face falls. "You're serious?"

"Duh."

Naruto puts one up and sprays a bit into the air. Jason coughs his lungs out, and that does not help his headache.

Yes, indeed, duh.

They approach the satyr with tacos, cold-pressed juices, and a little bit less cash.

Jason cringes a bit at the dire state of the two abandoned buildings that make the walls around the alley. Old, mossy walls, and a slightly putrid smell.

His scent is even more irresistible than that of a typical demigod so this roundabout way of meeting allies is just going to be the rest of his life.

The goat-man they're meeting has got a beard half as big as his curly hair, rugged and untamed. His little goat horns pierce through the top of his baseball cap. Going with the brand, he's leaning on a spiked and rusted baseball bat.

"Any for me?" He asks.

Clarisse tosses him the aluminum foil that the food was wrapped in. His eyes shine and he gulps it down before Jason can blink.

"Thank you, demigods. You now have the protection of the strongest satyr around."

Naruto squints. "Isn't that like being the tallest dwarf?" He asks. Then raises his hands. "No offense."

In a very weird moment he feels kinship with Clarisse as they both try not to laugh.

The satyr takes all offence. "Is that a joke about how short I am?"

"No," Naruto says, "But now that you mention it—"

The satyr snaps. "Shut it, whippersnapper," he says, "The name is Gleeson Hedge and I am not the tallest dwarf. I'm the strongest satyr you'll ever see!"

He flexes his muscles.

"We don't have time for this," Clarisse says. "Where's the demigod?"

The satyr unzips his fanny pack and rummages around for a second. He brings out a few things like rosemary and a bottle that has a little bit of a cloud in it.

Then he brings out a few crumpled up pictures and hands them to Clarisse.

"You took pictures of her?" Clarisse asks.

The satyr huffs. "How else are you going to know who you're looking for?"

Before Jason can say anything, Clarisse passes over the pictures to both of them. Jason's words die and his mouth goes dry.

The girl has rich and tan skin. Her eyes are kaleidoscopic, changing color with the light and Jason never knew he'd be able to tell that from a picture.

Her hair is choppy and brown. Her face is filled with imperfections, like a pimple on her nose and a light splash of freckles, but honestly it enhances the image.

Her gaze is slightly rebellious. She's indigenous. Hazarding a guess, probably Cherokee.

Jason thinks she's beautiful.

"How'd you get these pictures? These are super close. She's even posing in this one!" Naruto asks.

"My wife is her father's assistant." For some reason Hedge looks fondly towards the bottled cloud. "Our client here is Piper McLean. Her father is Tristan McLean."

"Woah, really?" Naruto asks then turns to the both of them. "Whose that?"

Jason raises an eyebrow. "You're asking the guy with amnesia?"

"My bad."

Hedge looks at them all flatly. "Even I know Tristan McLean. I mean seriously, what are they teaching you at that camp?"

Clarisse gets defensive. "It's a Greek camp not an acting one," she says, "We don't go there to practice how to cry, we go there to train enough so we don't die."

"If it is a Greek camp you should be paying attention to Greek things," Hedge says, "He was the lead actor in Theseus."

Blank looks.

"You know Theseus? The one he and his daughter spent two months reading and re-reading Greek tales for? He got an oscar? Brought up ethics of method acting?" Gleeson tsks, disappointed. "Shame, it was a good movie. That scene with Beryl Grace. Perfect."

A sudden stop. The world freezes over.

A pound at the back of his head.

"Beryl Grace?" Clarisse asks. "I mean it's not an uncommon name."

"But the chances—" Naruto insists.

Clarisse shoots him down. "Thalia ran away from home, remember?" she says, "Who runs away from such an easy and good life? To go and struggle for food?"

Another silence.

"Thalia?" Naruto asks.

A tsunami stops at a dam, building and rising against its walls.

"Wait wait wait wait," Naruto says, "Thalia's last name is Grace!?"

Clarisse shrivels up her nose. "Who'd you think I was talking about?"

"Jason! Jason's last name is fucking Grace!"

"...Holy shit."

A burn. Wait, that's not right. What's burning?

Before he can ponder, he feels his blood run down his nose and pour down.

Naruto is on a roll. "Jason and Thalia ar–are siblings!" he declares, "And they're both children of Berly Grace! So, that means, this chick had sex with both Zeus and Jupiter!"

The dam bursts. Jason's head explodes. All his memories gush in, in that singular moment.

Burn burn burn

That's not his head. What…?

Blood flows down his nose like a faucet, then starts pouring out of his mouth.

Thalia, he remembers. Thalia.

Burn burn burn burn burn burn burn.

MOVE!

Jason finds his voice, barely. "Something's com—"

Silver light rains down. Jason can't track it with his eyes.

They all freeze. Pressure forms on his shoulders.

Jason can't move.

The scruff of his shirt gets yanked. There is the distant sound of something approaching— something that sounds like a firework.

It lands…

The alley explodes.

This is easily my shortest chapter but it was this or Piper learning about how she's a demigod, and being oh so confused. It could have been okay, it wasn't needed and this segment has gone wayyyyy longer than I thought it was going to.