He wonders if it's pity that he's chosen for the quest.
Jason is the third person after Silena and Naruto to leave the meeting, rushing to his cabin. Once there he rushes around.
He grabs a few shirts and tosses them in his bag, then he hurries across the room for a roll of deodorant.
He's going for his toothpaste when his ankle snags on the feet of the statue. He topples over his father's toes and doesn't catch himself in time to stop himself from slamming down onto the floor with his ribs.
He groans a bit, allowing himself to be dramatic behind closed doors, and rolls over to his back.
Jason stares at it for a second. The statue. The statue of his father.
Maybe it's a trick of the light or just hopeless imagination but the statue looks disappointed in Jason.
Does his father know? Is his father letting Juno play with him like a doll with strings?
Jason wouldn't be the first he'd do that for.
Jason gets up, takes a breath, and slows down just a bit. He puts Ivlivs (He checked the side of the coin when he was bored and it has a name— he's super proud of that development) in his pocket, and slugs his backpack on.
He takes another look at the cabin. His father standing by gold and silver, the polished, gray stone, and the bronze eagle etched to the wall, and closes the door behind him.
He strides up the hill, past the hearth to the border without a singular look back.
"I'm not going to see the stupid oracle," Naruto is saying when he reaches them, "It's such utter bullshit. 'Fate this' and 'fate that'. Screw all that!"
The sun's rays grow colder.
"Insulting Apollo is one thing. I would advise you not to do the same for the fates," Chiron warns.
Naruto sees him and stubbornness gives way for excitement in mere seconds. "Jason!" he calls like he hasn't seen him in eons. "Finally!"
"Sorry," Jason says.
"What? Why're you sorry?" Naruto asks, looking at him weirdly. "Whatever. Let's go."
Jason notices Clarisse in the corner of his eye. When he turns he's met with a sight he'll never forget, no matter if a goddess bleaches him memories again.
Clarisse in a conversation with Chris Rodriguez from the Hermes cabin, and she's blushing— blushing madly– and stuttering. Clarisse. Stuttering.
"Clarisse!" Naruto calls.
All of that is gone in an instant. "What!?"
"We're leaving!"
"Finally!" She shouts, then tucks her hair back. "Bye, Chris."
Chris says bye back and Clarisse and Naruto start making their way down the other side of the hill, Naruto failing at teasing and Clarisse blushing while trying to stab him.
Chiron grips his arm before Jason can follow. "Usually you would have stayed at camp longer before leaving for a quest.."
"It's fine," Jason says, "Naruto says I'm too good to not have training."
"That is true," Chiron says.
Jason tries to not let that get to his head. Overconfidence gets you killed, he reminds himself.
"Naruto was telling me about you feeling 'out of place' at camp."
Jason frowns. "Naruto told you that? I didn't know you guys talked. At least without arguing."
"We're actually good friends, he and I. Simply amazing to have that child in your team in pinochle."
Jason's eyebrows raise. Okay, he thinks, He… knows that now?
"I'd like you to know that you are always welcome here. We would be honored if you ever came to see this place as home. Just look at Naruto himself."
It's… different with Naruto. Jason is Roman. Mortals weren't separated from Greeks but Romans were. They were apart for a reason. Jason knows it was for good reason.
"However," Chiron says, "I know it's not so simple. If it's any help, I think this trip will uncover where the location of your camp is."
"How can you tell?"
"A gut feeling. Dreams. Lots of things."
Jason nods. Naruto yells at him to stop being a slowpoke from somewhere in the trees.
"I should get going," Jason says.
Chiron bows his head. "Good luck!" he says.
Jason passes by the pine tree. A faint feel of nostalgia hits his lungs. Then he passes its bark, a warmth leaves his bones, and he descends to where the real monsters are.
He runs into a few dryads as he goes down. He gets a few cheers and well-wishes. Jason goes red by the ears. He keeps to the path and finds where the forest stops and the road takes over.
There Naruto is talking to this slightly asian guy that looks like a surfer about to ride the waves— especially with the sandy blonde hair and tanned skin. The catch about the guy is the eyes all around his body, blinking at different times.
They're leaning on their ride till the city; a shining jeep.
The surfer dude enters the front seat and revs up the car. Naruto and Jason tuck into the back with Clarisse.
They start cruising west towards Manhattan.
It shouldn't be surprising that with so many eyes, it's easy to avoid potholes, dips and take the best path, but Jason thought a mythological figure would struggle at least a little bit with such modern technology. Argus doesn't, not even a bit.
In an hour and thirty they're in the city. Argus parks them near this big building with a huge screen attached to it and he points to a couple buses.
Naruto jumps out like a spring and he pulls his bright orange bag out. "Thanks Argus," he says, "You're the best."
All of Argus' eyes flutter.
Clarisse gets out, and before Jason can follow, his arm is grabbed by Argus.
Jason, deciding he doesn't like this new trend, falls back into his chair. Argus doesn't say anything (because he has an eye where his mouth would be.)
Instead he just looks at Jason with meaning.
They look at each other for a second. It feels like Argus is challenging him to one of those staring contests. Jason figures that it isn't that after an embarrassing few seconds.
Whatever it is the guy is trying to tell him is lost on Jason.
Argus' eyes focus on him with intensity despite how splayed out they are, like the eyes on a peacock.
Then it hits him.
Peacocks.
Jason curses his stupidity.
Peacocks are Juno's thing. Her other sacred animal that isn't a cow.
A memory of a story injects itself into his brain— of a tale of a servant of hers having eyes around his body. She'd instructed Argus to keep Jupiter from a pretty lady.
Mercury had killed the guy and Jupiter got laid.
Hera had given peacocks eyes on their feathers to honor him. Io, the pretty lady (wasn't she a cow at some point?) gave birth to some kids and one of her descendants was Hercules.
Argus seems to understand somehow that Jason got it. Then he shakes his head, nice and slow.
Jason blinks. What… in Pluto does that mean?
Argus sighs without making a sound, and revs up the car. Jason gets out, scratching his head.
The jeep drives off and Jason joins his friends boarding the Greyhound, still utterly confused.
Naruto huddles them up as they sit down. Jason stops reading the pamphlet that announces where they're going and the route.
"This isn't gonna last long is it?"
"What isn't?" Jason asks.
"This bus trip," Clarisse responds. This is the first time he's heard her talk except to Chris the entire day.
"Why?" Jason looks outside the window. Nothing interesting is happening around.
"You're a big three kid born while big three kids are forbidden."
"Forbidden?"
"Zeus, Poseidon and Hades decided during world war two to not have kids. They even swore on the Styx," Clarisse explains.
"Why would they do that?"
Clarisse looks peeved. "Do you really want the long version or do we keep to the short version?"
"Just keep it short," Jason says because if the bus isn't going to last, he'd like to know why.
"Thank you," Clarrise says. "Because they are gods, the Styx can't kill them. So instead it goes after the offspring. Your scent is much stronger and 'cause of that, you guys get to face extra monsters. Not fair in my mind."
Jason agrees, then Naruto says, "Clarisse, it's unfair for them. Not you."
Jason nearly gets whiplash at how fast he snaps his head back. "You want to fight more monsters?"
"Duh," Clarisse says, "It's glory."
"Glory," Jason emphatically says, voice parching.
Clarisse suddenly looks very determined. "To ourselves! To our parents!" she says, like she's selling him a pitch.
Naruto cuts in, "That's why we're not on a flight. Imagine a monster attack all the way up there. It would be…"
"Chaotic," Clarisse says and she looks like she likes the idea.
Before he can reply, the hairs on his neck stand. His eyes widen. A tremble vibrates up from the earth to his teeth.
Jason tilts his head out to look at the front of the bus. He sees big, meaty flesh step in front of the bus before it thuds against the creature.
The bus lurches forward, dangerously forward, but leans back. The engine goes up in smoke.
A second.
Boom!
The front of the bus explodes.
Jason gets up immediately. Passengers are making mad dashes for the door. People are tripping over themselves and each other.
Clarisse fell over with the sudden change in momentum. Naruto pulls her up easily then winces at the damage around.
There is a hiss of the door opening. Then there is a hiss behind it.
The thing behind the door makes people part even as they rush out. Once the last passenger runs out, he gets a good look.
This monster is a humanoid snake. She's got a body covered in shimmering green scales, like emeralds. Her tail splits in two below her waist and she stands and walks on it like she has two human legs, with toes to balance her and a heel to keep her steady.
She smiles at them with her sharp teeth and glares at them with vermillion, slitted eyes. Her snake legs coil around the handholds and push her up into the bus.
A dracaena. House-sized, female versions of drakons.
She sends Jason a particularly hungry look, then opens her mouth and out comes a fountain of fire.
No one has a shield, so they scatter in different directions. Naruto leaps out above the column on fire, sets his foot on the hood of the bus, and leaps with impossible speed at the dracaena.
They tumble out of the door, rolling.
Clarisse draws her spear from its sheath on her back. "We surround her!" She shouts to Naruto. No reply. "Ready yourself," she tells Jason.
That plan is immediately thrown out the stained and blemished glass windows.
There is the loud sound of the metal of the bus being crunched. Metal scrapes and a chunk of the back of the bus is torn out.
Before Jason can blink, a big meaty hand pushes through the chairs and grabs him around the waist, before pulling him out of the bus.
Vertigo rushes through his system like electricity.
The hand belongs to this huge cyclops that towers over Jason with a spiked club in his other hand. It brings him close to its massive mouth and puffs of vomit-inducing smell come out of its mouth as it salivates over eating Jason.
Jason might have actually been gobbled up like sour candy if Clarisse hadn't chucked her spear through the cyclops hand.
It roars and lets go of Jason. He slows himself down with a swipe of his hand and a gust of wind.
Jason does a double-take when Naruto steps up to his side. "Where'd the dracaena go?"
"She ran."
"She ran?" Clarisse demands. "From a perfectly good meal?"
"I threw the pamphlet from before at her. She looked at it weirdly then disappeared." Jason looks at Naruto. "I'm being entirely serious. She smiled evilly and all— then just melted into the floor."
"Incoming!" Clarisse shouts.
The cyclops picks up a car trying to pass by, and chucks it at them like a professional baseball player.
Jason and Clarisse dodge to the side. "What are you doing, Uzumaki! Dodge!" Clarisse shouts.
"It's got passengers," Naruto says before he digs his legs and the car rams into his chest.
He puffs out his cheeks, leans back a bit, and grabs the sides of the car. It slows down, fast but not neck-breaking fast.
"Get out! Get out!"
The passengers jump out. One is hoisting the ones in the front that must have felt the force suddenly being cut. They're not moving but… well, Jason can't tell anything, he just hopes.
Naruto groans and twists his heels. What is he…?
He turns around a full rotation, and launches the car right back at the cyclops. It eats it to the face.
They all pounce.
Jason fears for their synergy. Naruto's movements are odd, entirely unpredictable even to his teammates. Clarisse might get too into the fight and forget she has teammates, before she accidentally skewers him.
Jason doesn't mesh well with them. They weren't meant to be, really. Because he's Roman. They are not.
Despite all this, Jason grabs his coin from his pocket. He flips it. Jason grabs his spear and raises it to the sky.
A lightning bolt strikes it and a rush of energy like a shot of espresso goes through his body. It lights up the spear.
He points it at the cyclops and a streak of white, burning lightning races to the cyclops' chest.
It staggers. A red mark covers its chest in a starburst.
Clarisse stomps on the ground. Tremors. Then she makes a herculean jump to the thing's arm. She wrenches out her spear, and does another jump to the cyclops' face.
Her spear, like his, lights up with electricity and bright, scorching fire. The air shifts like mirages in a desert.
She uses the hand that tries to smack her as a foothold and stabs through the cyclops eye.
A loud squelch and a splatter of blood.
Ew.
Naruto jumps to meet Clarisse falling down, and where they intersect Clarisse grabs Naruto's arm and with a loud grunt sends Naruto flying above the cyclops like a bullet.
It's so utterly efficient. Jason cannot believe they've never practiced it.
A blue inferno covers the sun. It originates from Naruto's hand. "Odama Rasengan!" he shouts and the cyclops disappears under a haze of summer sky blue.
Golden showers down on the streets of Manhattan.
Jason thinks they'll be fine.
"We got to move," Clarisse says.
Jason narrows his eyes at her. "But the civilians—" Jason is sure there is a rule against just destroying mortal property and lives then just leaving. You're supposed to— supposed to…
For a moment, a burning rage, hotter than a thousand suns, flits across Jason's chest. For a few seconds— all Jason can think about is how much he despises Juno.
Clarisse scoffs. "Get off your high horse. We're not superheroes."
Jason goes hot in the face. "But we are heroes."
"That's not what that means and you know it," Clarisse bites. "Even Naruto knew that shit wasn't gonna last."
He looks at Naruto, betrayed almost. Naruto shrugs a bit guiltily.
"If you knew, why even get on the bus at all!? This could have been avoided entirely!"
Naruto raises his hands. "I knew the bus would be a bust eventually but honestly, I thought it would get us to the apartment. Then we would ditch it."
Jason's anger fades into confusion. "What apartment?"
"Oh, yeah," Naruto says, "I was going to ask Sally for her new car."
"Sally? Sally Jackson?" Clarisse asks. "She's gonna drive us all the way to L.A?"
Percy Jackson. Gods, Jason couldn't go two feet without hearing that guy's name. And what's weirder is the guy had only been at the camp during last year's summer.
"No." Naruto does not elaborate. "Jason can you, you know, zip us over there."
"You want me to carry both of you?" Jason asks incredulously.
"Did you just call me fat?"
Clarisse sighs.
Naruto points behind them, to this huge big and black mastiff the size of a SUV. A hellhound. It snarls at them hungrily.
"We should go now," Naruto says. Jason hesitates. "Jason, we'll only cause more problems for them being here. The best way to help is to leave them alone."
Jason looks to the heavens exasperatedly then grabs Clarisse and Naruto's arms. The wind flutters below him and all three of them blast off.
The hellhound whines.
Naruto knocks at the door so quickly and hard, Jason isn't surprised that Sally Jackson takes a bit of a second to open it.
The mid-day sun beats on their shoulders. Jason could do with some lunch, a canteen of water, and a fucking nap.
Sally Jackson peeks her head out to see them. Her hair is a bit disheveled, her shoulders sag with worry. Her eyes are tired, so tired.
She brightens at the sight of them and opens the door fully.
She even smiles at Jason, which is very confusing. Sally Jackson isn't supposed to like the kid that replaced her son. She's supposed to quietly loathe him with silent and mean eyes.
"Hi, Ms. Jackson."
"Hello Naruto, Jason. And…?"
"Clarisse."
Sally's eyes sparkle. "You're the one that tried to push Percy's head in the toilet. The one he won against in capture the flag?"
Clarisse blushes red, and that might be by embarrassment or anger. "I didn't know that Jackson told his mom everything. Mama's boy"
Sally laughs good-naturedly. Naruto sends Clarisse a murderous look.
"Come in!" Sally says.
"We really can't." Naruto looks around for signs of danger. "High monster activity around."
"Oh," Sally looks disappointed. "What did you need? Some food? A ride?"
Jason is about to say food when Naruto says, "A ride. But not by you."
"What?"
He points at her second-hand Toyota. "We want to steal your car."
Jason chokes on his spit. "We're doing what?"
Sally blinks, then narrows her eyebrows. "You want to borrow my car?"
"I like to be honest, Sally. No secrets and stuff," Naruto says, "You're likely not getting the car back. With all the monsters attacking a nd stuff. It's your choice if you wanna help but we'll manage without." Naruto reaches out and pats his shoulder. "Jason here will just fly us there."
"What?"
"If you wanna, you can file that we stole it and when they can't track the car, the insurance company will have to fit the bill right?"
"They are cameras everywhere on the roads it'd be easy as fuck to see which car has been stolen," Clarisse says.
"We have the mist. We can convince anyone of anything."
"That's not— Do you even know how to use the mist?"
A long pause.
Finally Naruto responds, "No?"
Clarisse rubs at her sinuses. "You're going to get us killed." Then she scoffs. "I, of course, know how to do it."
Sally looks up at them, her lips are quirked up. Jason doesn't know how he can tell but he just knows it's the first time she's smiled in days.
"Sorry to burst your bubbles but that probably wouldn't work. For a plethora of other reasons."
Naruto purses his lips. "That's fine, Sally. Thanks anyway."
They turn around and start for the stairs.
Sally stops them. "I'm not saying no," she says. "That wouldn't be the reason I would say no anyway. Because, well, this is for Percy isn't it?"
Is Sally Jackson psychic?
"I'd just be concerned about you all. I mean, none of you have driving licenses. You could get hurt, a cop could pull you over."
Naruto points to himself. "Don't worry Sally, I'll be driving."
She does not look reassured. She puts a hand on Naruto's head. "Honey, you didn't even know what a car was a couple months ago."
Jason does not question that point because it seems like a rabbit hole they don't have the time to dive in.
Before Naruto can fight her on that, she raises a hand. "But I guess I have no choice. I don't use it much anyway; not in this city. Just come back with him, won't you?"
"We will."
Not we'll try, or we'll see what we can do, but a resounding declaration.
Sally smiles again, and she fades back into her apartment. She comes back with a set of keys jingling in her palm.
Naruto nods at her and grabs the keys, stuffing them in his pockets.
"Good luck."
Silence.
Sally breathes in, breathes out.
Another knock.
I think I'm as tired as Jason at hearing Percy this and Percy that. I mean I love the guy but get the fuck outta my story, you're supposed to be absent.