𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧

chapter eighteen. ☄︎. *. ⋆

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I'VE ALWAYS BEEN a fan of the way the Mist works. I mean, mortals could literally watch the rebirth of a Titan king, and they would pass it off as just another Saturday. Honestly, I'd say mortal minds can be even more powerful than the gods sometimes.

     Still, I was baffled at how quickly the general public wrote off Percy and I's battle with Ares. They blamed the explosion (you know, me) that happened at the Santa Monica beach on a kidnapper firing a shotgun at a police car, accidentally hitting a gas main that ruptured during the earthquake.

     This crazy kidnapper (a.k.a. the god of war, Ares) was the same man who had abducted me and three other teenagers in New York and brought us cross-country on a ten-day odyssey of terror.

     Percy Jackson wasn't an international criminal after all. He'd caused a commotion on that Greyhound bus in New Jersey trying to get away from his captor (and afterward, witnesses would even swear they had seen the leather-clad man on the bus—"Why didn't I remember him before?") The crazy man had caused the explosion in the St. Louis Arch. After all, no kid could've done that. A concerned waitress in Denver had seen the man threatening his abductees outside her diner, gotten a friend to take a photo, and notified the police. Finally, brave Percy Jackson (I was beginning to hate this kid) had stolen a gun from his captor in Los Angeles and battled him shotgun-to-rifle on the beach. Police had arrived just in time. But in the spectacular explosion, five police cars had been destroyed and the captor had fled. No fatalities had occurred. Percy Jackson and his three friends were safely in police custody.

     See? Complex. I would've just tried to convince the entire country that none of that had happened.

     The reporters fed us this whole story. We just nodded and acted tearful and exhausted (which wasn't hard), and played victimized kids for the cameras.

     Percy fed the cameras some sob story about how his gross stepfather was probably so grateful that his stepson was back that he was going to give away free appliances from his home goods store. The police and reporters were so moved by his fake tears that they passed around a hat and raised money for four tickets on the next plane to New York. It wasn't our favorite idea to take to the skies, seeing as how Percy was literally Zeus's least favorite hero and he would probably like to blast us out of the sky before we could even buckle our seatbelts, but we had no other choice. We needed to get the bolt back to Olympus before the summer solstice, and the clock was ticking.

     At first, Annabeth tried to sit next to me on the plane, and, already assuming she was going to try to coax some explanation for what had happened on the beach out of me for the entire flight, I quickly threw my little butt into a seat next to Grover, who slept the entire time. The worst I got from him were a few snores.

     I don't think I spoke once from the time we left Los Angeles to when we got to the Empire State Building. I was in a state of shock. I couldn't even think straight—my mind was moving a hundred miles an hour. (On the bright side, I was too shellshocked to realize at the time that I was about 30,000 feet off the ground, so I wasn't panicked about that at all.)

When we got to Manhattan, Percy tried to be a hero and told the rest of us to go back to camp to give everyone there a run-down of what had happened. I gave him a few choice words, and he and I argued for a while, until Annabeth snapped her fingers and told us to rock-paper-scissors it out.

A few minutes later, I was riding up the elevator of the Empire State Building with Percy, listening to Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head.

After we hit floor two-hundred, Percy said, "You wanna talk about whatever that was?" and I said no, so we didn't talk about it. A small part of me appreciated Percy not pushing me into sharing. I gave him a sideways glance, thinking maybe he wasn't so bad.

Finally, the doors slid open with a ding. I stepped out of the elevator. My first thought was that I was beginning to see Annabeth's affinity for architecture; Olympus's beauty was beyond words. I can't even begin to describe it.

When I looked down, I realized I was standing on a narrow stone walkway in the middle of the air. Below me was Manhattan, from the height of an airplane. My stomach churned. I grabbed Percy's arm.

"Can we...um—" I swallowed. "Go?"

He nodded, and we made our way into Olympus. I had never been before, so it was a first for both of us. We walked lightly, as if our feet would shatter the ground beneath us and send us plummeting to our deaths on the Manhattan roads, but Olympus's grounds were stable enough to hold the gods, so I assumed we were fine.

     After hiking up a large staircase carved of a beautiful white quartz, Percy and I reached the throne room. We paused, because we hadn't planned out what we were going to do at this point. I turned to Percy.

     "You go," I told him. "Take the bolt and try to talk some sense into them. I think.. I think I need to have a talk with my father."

     Percy nodded. He wished me luck, and I requited, and then he was gone, inside the throne room to return the bolt to its true owner. I stood at the top of the staircase for a moment. It occurred to me that I had no idea where to look for my father.

     "Well, if it isn't the belle of the evening." I started and spun around to see Apollo himself, leaning against one of the pillars.

     He wasn't in his full godly form—luckily for me, seeing as I probably would've exploded upon sight of it. As I had always seen him to be, he was muscular, tanned like he had spent his entire life on a beach, and with sun-kissed hair that was around the same shade as my own. His smile was blinding, and his eyes were almost gold, but he still gave off an aura that made me want to melt into his arms and beg for validation.

     Jeez. Can you say daddy issues?

     "Father," I said, bowing my head. When I peeked up, he was still smiling, so I returned the favor and stood up straight. "I was just looking for you. I was wond—"

     "Wait." He held up his hands. "I feel a haiku coming on."

     I stifled a groan. "No, I just need t—"

     "Father and daughter/Reunited in the sky/I am an amazing dad."

     I counted on my fingers, then raised my eyebrows, holding up a seven. "That last line had too many syllables."

     Apollo tapped a finger to his chin. He hummed quietly to himself, then threw his hands in the air. "I am a good dad! That's five."

     "It's beautiful. Anyway, as I was saying... Did you do that—thing on the beach?"

     He tilted his head. "Um, what thing?"

     "Th—the light.. thing?"

     "Oh!" He shook his head, then beamed at me warmly. "I was actually going to ask you about that. I didn't do that, so it had to have been you. You're pretty powerful, you know."

     I was pretty sure I was blushing. "Thanks, I guess. So.. wait, if you didn't do that—?"

     "Is your friend in there single?"

     I raised my eyebrows. "Father—?"

     "What's his name? Percy? Percy! Right. Is he single? Asking for a friend. One of the river naiads down the stream was wondering."

     "Dad!"

     "Right." He shook his head. "Sorry. Not the point. What I meant to say was, yeah. Pretty much. That was all you, sweetheart. It was some pretty cool Photokinesis work, if you ask—"

     "Photokinesis," I repeated. The stuff I had been talking to Percy about the night after Medusa's... when I had said the odds of an Apollo kid having such an ability were super rare. I shook my head, certain that Apollo was talking madness. "Dad, think about it. There's no way. You think I—"

"—have a infrequent and outstanding gift that has only been blessed to demigods of the highest rankings?" He shrugged, inspecting his cuticles. "Yeah."

My jaw hung open, but he told me that was impolite, so I closed it. I shook my head and said, "How could that be possible?"

He sighed and gave me a look that told me he really had no clue. "It's not an everyday occurence that one of my young offspring winds up having an aptitude for one of my finer powers. I would say it's up to the Fates to decide who or what gets magical abilities such as this one, so take it up with them. Hark, child," he said, suddenly solemn, and he placed a hand upon my shoulder, "I may not know where this power of yours came from, but I do know that I truly meant the message I passed to you through Ares. You are strong, Theodosia. A brilliant fighter and a powerful demigod. Look inside yourself, and you will find more than some dingy little light-bending."

     He gave me one last smile, and I couldn't help but see a bit of myself in it. I nodded slowly. Apollo caught sight of someone over my shoulder and seemed to gather that it was his cue to leave—he squeezed my shoulder. I glanced behind me to see Percy standing there, and when I looked back to where my father had been, he was gone.

     "How much of that did you hear?" I asked Percy, without turning around again to face him.

     "Just the end. He's right, though. You're a really good fighter. You're just scared."

     I couldn't even bring myself to scowl. Hesitantly, I turned to face him. "Yeah, whatever. Thank you. How'd it go in there?"

     He spread out his hands and grinned. "Not pulverized by the gods yet, man. I'm unstoppable!" His voice was so full of genuine glee that I couldn't stop the smile from growing on my lips.

     Yeah, whatever. If there's one word to describe Percy Jackson, it's definitely unstoppable.