As dawn broke Jazz and Rose made their way towards the Camp van with their supplies. Jazz kept her eyes peeled, looking this way and that as if expecting an attack before even leaving the camp's borders.
"Umm... are you alright?" Rose asked in a low voice.
"I guess" Jazz muttered back. "It's just a bit too quiet...Spits should be here making one more attempt to convince me to let her come."
"Don't you think it'd be better if she did?" Rose asked quietly. Jazz responded with a glare and Rose quickly backpedaled. "I mean you're right to be worried and all but, three is a sacred number and we really could use the extra help. Maybe…"
"No." Jazz growled and Rose let the subject drop. When they arrived at the van Rose climbed into the back, in front of the storage space where both girls tossed their bags. Jazz slid into the front seat across from Argus. The 100 eyed guard seemed nervous and that immediately set Jazz on edge.
"Argus…" Jazz said in a warning tone. Argus grinned at her with a faux innocence that fooled no one, particularly when 20 or so of his eyes flicked back towards the back of the van. This was why Argus didn't play poker. Jazz sighed, climbed out of the van and walked to the back doors. She flung them open and gave the blanket covered mass currently huddled under their supplies a sharp jab with her fingers.
"Ouch!" Alexa's voice squealed from beneath the covering.
"Seriously? Did you really think this was going to work?" Jazz asked.
"No but I was hoping…" Alexa grumbled, sliding out from under the packs and the blanket. "Traitor." She grumbled again, giving Argus a nasty look. The guard shrugged helplessly.
"Alexa…" Jazz started.
"I know...you don't want me to get hurt. I need to stay here…" she said defeatedly. "I don't got to like it, though, and I wouldn't be the annoying kinda little sister if I didn't try to tag along!"Jazz smiled slightly.
"No, I guess you wouldn't." She admitted. There was a slight pause, then Alexa grabbed hold of Jazz. She squeezed her into a tight hug.
"If you die, I'm going to go down to the underworld, find a way to bring you back, just so I can give you a good smack! You understand?" Alexa growled. Jazz simply smiled and gave Alexa a squeeze before pulling away.
"Be good. I won't be here to keep you in line for a bit!" She teased. Alexa smiled in response, but said nothing. She knew if she opened her mouth she'd start begging to go along. She'd make a fool of herself right there, and she couldn't do that. Not when Jazz expected her to be strong.
Jazz gave her one last smile, turned, and climbed back into the van. Argus and the two girls pulled away from Camp. Alexa watched them go, one hand in the air, waving silently. She stood like that for several moments until the van was out of sight then she turned and ran back to her cabin.
Resting on her work table, right where she had left it, was her Plan B. It looked like an extra large Gameboy cartridge, half of it separated to fit into the system, the rest made to dangle over the back. A set of small antennas stuck out of the cartridge, like a pair of rabbit ears, with a third set between them shaped vaguely like a spork with her maker's mark etched into its bowl.
Alexa wasted no time plugging it into her Gameboy and powering it on. The screen brightened into a garbled mess of pixels. She cursed under her breath, popped the cartridge out and blew into the connector port before setting it back in.
The gray brick of a device came to life, the spork slowly rotated, and the screen resolved itself into an 8-bit map of Long Island. Alexa grinned. It had taken her all night, but she had done it. On the Gameboy's screen several dots popped into existence, all matching the general location of an object she had placed her maker's mark on. Most were clustered there in camp, but one was traveling west towards the city. That was Jazz... or Jazz's charm bracelet at any rate.
She scooped up her backpack, stuffed full of supplies, and took off for the pegasus stables at a sprint. Only a few campers were awake, and no one attempted to stop the girl. She stepped into the stables and the familiar smell of manure filled her nose. She quickly hurried to her favorite pegasus, a brown one with a black mane and splotches of white all over her body. She often seemed gloomy to the other campers, but Alexa, never a steady rider, had loved the pegasus' calmness. The mare had been named Marshwiggle by the demigod who had helped her mother in the birth. Everyone else called her Marshy.
"Hey girl" Alexa said, gently patting the horse's muzzle. Marshy lazily chewed on a few oats, barely looking at Alexa. "You ready for a long trip? We're going to have to hurry if we're going to catch up."
"And just who are you planning on catching up with, Miss Baker?" Before Alexa could fully turn around to face the owner of the voice, vines began to encircle her. She was bound, from head to toe in grapevines, with a bundle of the plump purple things dangling from her forehead, right in front of her nose.
"Uh... hi, Mr. D. There's a perfectly good reason why I'm-"
"- stealing a pegasus, using untested technology to track your little friend, and forcing yourself into a quest you have no business on out of a diluted sense of personal responsibility and over protectiveness?" Mr. D asked casually. The way he put all of that made Alexa deflate a little.
"Yeah... that." She mumbled.
"Oh good. I was hoping there'd be a good explanation! Well Alexis, let's hear it! Why do you feel so strongly about going on Miss Jade's quest?" Mr. D asked, delicately walking over the straw covered floor towards the bound demigod. Briefly, Alexa wondered if she should break the vines... they couldn't be so thick as to fully restrain her yet, could they? After looking into the wine god's eyes and the hints of purple fire in them, she thought better of it.
"I... I don't know." Alexa said quietly, not meeting the Camp Director's gaze.
"Oh yes you do! You promised me an explanation and I want to hear it!" He paused to crack open a can of diet coke. "Come on now, girl. I have all eternity. Meanwhile the more you wait, the more trouble your friends can get in without you. So, tell me why." He punctuated his statement with a loud sip from his can.
Alexa gritted her teeth. She wanted nothing more than to rip the time wasting god's head off! She was leaving Jazz in the lurch! If she wasn't there something could... and there it was.
"Because... the last time I wasn't there for someone that meant the world to me...they died." She said, her eyes trained on the straw covered floor.
"There it is! An excellent reason! I, as Director of Camp Half-blood, hereby give you permission to go and possibly extend their short meaningless lives." Mr. D demissively waved his hand and the grapevines withered, showering the floor with raisins.
"Just...just like that?" Alexa asked.
"Did you want to jump through more hoops? I was led to believe you were in a rush." Mr. D said with a raised eyebrow.
"No. I mean I am but...why? Why are you letting me go?" Alexa asked.
"It might be because getting one more of you out of my hair is better for my poor frayed nerves, it might be because I actually heard the prophecy and understood it, it might be because you might actually get yourself killed out there, or it could just be because I find it entertaining to keep you all guessing. All or none of them could be true! Now are we going to stand here all day? I would like to get some breakfast before sunset and you have a quest to catch." Mr. D said, his eyes starting to glow as he glared at Alexa.
"R-right... ummm thank you, Mr. D." Alexa said, quickly bowing her head to him and grabbing a saddle for Marshy. She mounted up and glanced down at her Gameboy. The Jazz dot had already gotten out of Manhattan and was creeping along 95.
Alexa urged Marshy out of the stables and up into the air. In seconds they were off, tearing through the sky towards New York.
Throughout the flight, clinging to the beginner's saddle for dear life, Alexa only thought of two things. One was some variation of "I'm going to fall! I am so dead! Splat goes the Alexa!" The other, more pressing, concern was her relationship with Jazz, and in some way, her memories of Morgan.
It had all been sparked by her conversation with the wine god, and what he had forced out of her. She had, more than once, marveled at some of the similarities Morgan and Jazz had shared; they were both compassionate, they were both strong and brave, but Jazz was vocal in a way that Morgan just wasn't. If Jazz felt something, she'd let you know it, where as if Morgan had an opinion one way or the other about a topic, it behooved her to keep it to herself in their house.
Alexa's big worry, the one that Dionysus had no doubt planted in her head, was whether or not their friendship had been built on a psychological need for an older sister. Had she started seeing Jazz as a surrogate sister because she was desperate to replace Morgan? For the most part Alexa wanted to say no, but there was still that little voice in the back of her mind. Maybe she was so concerned because she viewed Jazz as a security blanket. Maybe the damage her mother had done had forced Alexa to cling to the daughter of Ares. Maybe she needed to pay more attention to her pegasus.
Over the hours where her mind had drifted, Marshy had begun to dip. Alexa only noticed when the pegasus let out a groan of protest over some little town in New Hampshire. She checked the time and grimaced... they'd been flying full tilt for almost four hours. Immediately Alexa began to feel bad for pushing the beautiful mare so hard.
She grabbed the reins and began to gently guide the pegasus downwards into a small park near a wooded area. The horse settled down in the grass, slowing to a trot and then finally coming to a stop. Marshy tossed her head and Alexa gave her neck a pat before sliding off and glancing at the Gameboy's screen. Jazz had stopped two towns over, right on the border of Maine, still moving but more slowly, as if she were on foot.
"Looks like they left the bus...dunno why." She told Marshy as the pegasus grazed. "At least now we can catch up with them, once you're ready to take off again."
She sat in silence watching the pegasus eat. She couldn't help but wonder just what had drawn Jazz's attention the way it had. Had their bus been attacked by something? Were they following a clue? Were….what was that?
A strange sound had come to Alexa's ear, one that set her teeth on edge and caused every red flag to go up at once. She stood, and turned on the spot, her right hand inches from her charm bracelet where Lightning Bolt glittered.
There it was again! Thud, scrape, scitter. Closer this time, more well defined. Marshy heard it too, her ears pinned back and her eyes wide.
There was nothing for several seconds, long enough that Alexa began to entertain the idea that she had imagined the noise. The thought was shattered in spectacular fashion when a scorpion the size of a tank burst from the treeline. The few mortals in the area scattered. Alexa, for her part, couldn't believe her rotten luck! Her first break on her first ever quest and she attracts a monster!
She removed the charm from her bracelet, the sword sprouting from the little zig zag clutched in her fist. Marshy let out a wild cry at the sight of the giant bug and bolted straight up into the sky. Alexa couldn't blame her too much.
The scorpion came, all snapping pincers, hissing mouth parts, shiny black armor and beady little black eyes. Alexa dodged out of the way of its initial strike, the stinger on the creature's tail imbedding itself into the grass. Her opponent snapped at her with one pincer and Alexa managed to block the strike, turning what would've been a grapple into a glancing blow off the flat of her sword.
Then... something curious began to happen; Alexa began to laugh. It was amazing fighting something like this. It infused her with energy that went well beyond what a sparing match could. This was different, the fact that she might actually die here got her blood pumping, got her fingers tingling, and her body moving. It was just her and the scorpion to some degree, but even if it was her focus, she felt as if the world around her never felt more real! The grass was a more vibrant green, the air sweet and tinged with millions of scents, every breath of wind and stomping footfall was music to her ears.
Grinning, practically dancing with her monsterous partner, Alexa parried another pincer strike, moved in close to the scorpion and swung the sword down. The arc of bronze death cut through the chink in the bug's armor where the left pincer met the rest of the limb. The thick claw fell to the ground, the gooey flesh inside starting to hiss and leak out as a light gray sand the second it touched the grass. The creature backed up, it's eyes glaring, it's mouth hissing like a hose that had sprung a leak.
"That's right!" Alexa crowed, pushing the attack, sparks of electricity coursing up and down her blade. "I did that, you overgrown crawdad!"
She slashed, and the scorpion blocked with it's remaining pincer. The electrical current ran over its chitinous armor but it was too weak to actually do much more than stun and sting.
"Not so helpless anymore!" Alexa had stopped paying attention to what she was saying, lost in the fight.
"You hear me? I'm not going to let anyone push me around anymore! Not you, not anyone at camp, not anyone out here, no one! Not ever again!" Alexa punctuated her statement with an attack, a hack, a slash, a thrust, each one chipping away at the armor of the arthropod.
She threw herself forward with a particularly violent thrust of her sword and pain exploded down her left side. She gasped, looking down at her left shoulder. In her excitement she had forgotten the most important and relevant part of monster anatomy; scorpions had stingers, and this one had it's stinger imbedded in her shoulder. As it pulled the hooked barb from her flesh a sickly green liquid oozed from it, mixing with the red of her blood.
She raised her sword but the familiar weight had multiplied by 100 or so. It felt like she was trying to lift a truck one handed. She couldn't even defend herself as the monster surged forward, knocking her over with it's bulk.
Her vision began to swim as the claw found her middle and began to squeeze. Her ribs cried out in agony but Alexa could only let out a weak moan. A smile crossed her face. Well...at least she went down trying to make a difference, even if it was just saving the butt of her best friend.
That thought comforted her as her mind eased back into the dark. A dark so deep she nearly missed the golden thing leaping onto the scorpion's back to swipe at its eyes. Idly, Alexa wondered what the pretty golden something was before she lost her grip on consciousness.