ੈ｡ﾟ ･ׂׂ ✩ RED ⌇˚ɞ act i . . .
     change in perspective

· 。ﾟ *.  𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 NINE ,
───── ❛ poker face  ❜

   AS IT TURNED out, Ares was a terrible travel agent. Their grand ride west that he'd promised them was a hitchhike in the back of what Grover had called "the zoo-mobile", aka a dark and dingy trailer that housed a zebra, a lion, and an antelope-like animal that even Annabeth didn't know the name of.

The four kids were crowded in behind some mildewed sacks, trying to ignore both the undeniable stench and heat in the trailer.

The poor caged-up animals in with them proved that their owners weren't anywhere near qualified. The zebra's mane was matted with chewing gum and the antelope had a silvery balloon floated from one of its antlers, the two animals staring at the styrofoam tray of hamburger meat in front of them that was obviously supposed to be given to the lion.

Said lion was pacing back and forth as flies swarmed around it, ignoring the sack of turnips thrown at its feet instead of its proper food.

Grover angrily bleated back and forth with the animals and eventually convinced his friends to aid him in helping the animals, swapping their food and providing them with water from a stowed away jug. Annabeth cut loose the balloon from the antelope's antler after Grover successfully calmed it down, and they promised to help the animals more in the morning when their transport wasn't so bumpy and unpredictable.

Grover curled up on a sack of turnips thrown against a wall as Laurie tucked away in a corner, leaned up against a few water gallons. Annabeth opened the packet of Oreos that Ares had provided in his little gift bag and chewed on one halfheartedly. Percy stared at the ground in front of him, twisting Riptide's handle in his hands.

"Hey," the daughter of Athena spoke into the dimly lit darkness. "I'm sorry for freaking out on you guys back at the water park."

Laurie and Percy waved it off, telling her that it was alright. Wasn't like anybody died, right?

"And I'm . . . sorry for what I said back at Medusa's, Laurie." Annabeth added quietly, not looking at the girl but hoping that she was awake to hear the apology this time.

The brunette's head lifted and Annabeth could've sworn that she saw a smile, even in the dark.

" 'S fine. I'm sorry too." She shrugged. "Just . . everything's still kinda . . . different, y'know?"

Annabeth nodded silently and pursed her lips together, hugging her knees to her chest with a free arm. Percy couldn't stand the silence, and so he said,

"We're a team, right?"

"Besides, Grover's the peace-keeper and fancy flyer." He added, cracking a smile.

"I am pretty awesome, aren't I?" Grover mumbled from the corner, very much not asleep as they had thought.

The two girls laughed and it grew silent again, aside from the sound of Percy plucking an Oreo out of its package.

"Um, in the Iris message . . ." Annabeth began, passing Laurie a cookie. "Did Luke really say nothing?"

The brunette looked away as she received the cookie, taking a bite from it instead of answering the question. Reluctantly, Percy did.

"He said that you guys go way back. He also said that Grover wouldn't fail this time; nobody would turn into a pine tree." The boy told them.

The satyr let out a mournful bray as Percy tried to read his friend's expressions in the dim glow given off by his sword. Unable to do so, he could only imagine how uneasy they all must've looked based on the silence that had fallen.

"I should've told you the truth from the beginning." Grover said, voice shaky. "I thought if you knew what a failure I was, you wouldn't want me along."

"You were the one who tried to rescue Thalia, daughter of Zeus." Percy realized. Grover nodded shamefully as the boy's eyes shifted over to Annabeth.

"And the other half-bloods that Thalia befriended, the ones who got safely to camp . . ." He thought out loud. "That was you and Luke, wasn't it?"

The daughter of Athena nodded and explained her story about finding Camp Half-Blood. Grover confessed how the loss of Thalia weighed down on him every day, reminding him of his failures and how he must be the worlds most miserable satyr. As they discussed, Percy couldn't help but notice Laurie's absence in the conversation, wondering how she fit into the whole thing. Surely, she had played a part in it alongside her brother.

"You're not lame," Annabeth assured Grover. "You've got more courage than any satyr I've ever met. Name one other who would dare go to the Underworld. I bet Percy's really glad you're here right now."

The girl then delivered a kick to the boy's shin, to which he added, "Yeah. It's not luck that you found Thalia and me, Grover. You've got the biggest heart of any satyr ever. You're a natural searcher. That's why you'll be the one to find Pan."

Grover let out a sigh and Percy waited for him to respond, only to be met with a bleating snore coming from his friend.

"How does he do that?" Percy marveled as he realized the satyr had fallen asleep.

"I don't know," Annabeth said with a small chuckle. "But that was a really nice thing you told him."

"I meant it."

The son of Poseidon couldn't contain his curiosity anymore. His eyes wandered to Laurie, who was staring up at the ceiling and fiddling with a ring on her pinky finger, silent as could be.

"What about you, hotshot?" He asked, trying out a nickname he'd heard her be referred to as several times back at camp. She looked down at him and he again couldn't read any expression, but could almost picture the eyebrow quirked at him.

"What about me?" She questioned, an edge on her voice. A voice in the back of Percy's mind said maybe this was a bad idea, but a louder voice told it to shut up.

"You've been quiet this whole time. Weren't you there with them? With Luke?" He asked, not seeing the widening of Annabeth's gray eyes and the shaking of her head.

"Nope."

Percy's eyes widened in the dark, brows scrunching at the girl's response. "What?"

Shit, he thought. Maybe there was a reason she was being so quiet. What a great thing to dawn upon after he'd already asked her for her input.

"Luke ran away when he was eleven. He didn't come back to get me for almost three years, after he'd found camp. I never met Thalia. I was never running from place to place away from monsters. There was just a tap on my window one night and my brother was there, and he took me to camp. That's it." She said.

Her words were emotionless and stoic, like she had recited them many times over and over again. It was only then that Percy thought back to Laurie's bead necklace and he realized for the first time that hers had one bead less than Annabeth and Luke.

It wasn't going to happen again, though, Laurie just knew it. He promised he'd never leave her ever again. Even if they had to leave Camp Half-Blood for some reason, they would do that together too.

"I'm—" Percy began, only for her to interrupt him before he could get hardly anything out.

"Stop. Drop it." She said sternly, her voice dangerously calm and low so that Percy immediately shut up. He debated saying something anyways, an attempt to apologize for his senselessness perhaps, but Annabeth nudged his knee and shook her head, so he thought better of it.

The brunette turned her back to them, curling up in the corner in an attempt to catch some sleep, thankful for the dull illumination of Riptide that saved her from the terrors of the darkness.

After she thought that Laurie had fallen asleep, the blonde looked at Percy and told him, "Hey, don't think on it too much. You didn't do anything, she just doesn't like talking about it. To anyone. Trust me."

Percy nodded silently and that was the end of it. He and Annabeth both eventually fell asleep, and that was when the dreams started, as always.

ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ-

THE FOLLOWING MORNING was eventful, to say the least. As it turned out, the drivers of their already questionable ride west were just a couple of animal smugglers. They knew that because oh yeah, Percy can talk to zebras. No big deal.

Now, the truck had stopped moving when one of the smugglers decided to check up on the animals, though he didn't expect the troubles he'd encounter upon doing so.

The kids had all hidden from sight, either stowed away behind water jugs or turnip sacks, but unseen nonetheless. There was then a loud knock on the outside of the trailer, taking the man's attention.

"What'd you want, Eddie?" Shouted the man inside the trailer. In response, a voice that must've been Eddie called, "Maurice? What'd you say?"

"What are you banging for?"

Another triple knock hit the trailer. Outside, the man called Eddie yelled, "What bangin?"

Maurice rolled his eyes and hopped out of the trailer, circling around it and cursing at his coworker for being a big idiot. Silent as they could, the four quest-goers climbed out of their hiding spots.

"This transport business can't be legal." Annabeth remarked. She had clearly been the one banging on the trailer so that the man would leave, her invisibility hat coming in great handy for such a task.

"No kidding," Grover said. He paused and looked at the lion's cage, listening to what the animal had to say. "The lion says these guys are smugglers!"

Inside his head, the zebra spoke to Percy again.

"We've got to free them!" Grover insisted. Annabeth and Laurie nodded along with him, awaiting Percy's agreement. The boy stared at the zebra's cage for a moment, assuredly listening to it. Then, he drew Riptide out of its pen form and slashed his blade across the padlock on the cage.

The animal burst out of the cage as soon as it could. He then gave the son of Poseidon a cordial bow and faced Grover, who bleated some kind of satyr blessing to him.

Just as Maurice the smuggler poked his head back into the trailer, the zebra leapt over him and out into the street. The kids rushed to the doors as they heard screaming and shouting and car horns honking. They were met with a zebra beelining down a wide boulevard that was lined with hotels, casinos, and more neon signs than they could count. Las Vegas.

"Now would probably be a good time to get going." Laurie said as Maurice and Eddie took off after the zebra, followed by a few policeman shouting, "Hey! You need a permit for that!"

"The other animal first." Grover said. Laurie and Percy nodded and each cut a lock with their swords and the satyr gave them the same blessing he'd said over the zebra. With a frown, Laurie noticed the bent handle of her sword thanks to the chimera back at the Gateway Arch.

With a bid of good luck, the antelope and lion took off in the zebra's tracks down the boulevard, closely followed by the sound of tourist screaming and taking pictures.

"Will the animals be okay?" Percy asked Grover. "I mean, the dessert and all—"

"Don't worry, I placed a satyr's sanctuary on them." Grover assured him with a small smile.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning they'll reach the wild safely," he said. "They'll find water, food, shade, whatever they need until they find a safe place to live."

"Why couldn't you place a blessing like that on us?" Percy asked with a hollow chuckle.

"It only works on wild animals."

"So it would only work on you two." Annabeth chirped, pointing towards Laurie and Percy. The girl's jaw dropped open in mock offense and she swatted Annabeth on the arm. Percy uttered a "hey!" of protest.

"Kidding." The blonde laughed. "Come on, let's get out of this filthy truck."

Her companions agreed and they all clambered out of the vehicle and into the blazing Nevada sun. They definitely looked out of place and probably like dirt-covered miscreants, but everyone else around them was too preoccupied by the escaped zoo animals running through the streets.

They wandered for a while, passing about eighty thousand replications of monuments such as the Statue of Liberty back in New York. They weren't even totally sure what to look for, maybe just somewhere that could provide them with a little bit of shade and maybe a nice glass of water and a new plan.

Along the way, they must've taken a wrong turn without noticing because the road eventually came to a dead end and they were stuck standing in front of a tall building with the name Lotus Hotel and Casino plastered across the front of it.

From the outside, the place looked like Laurie's haven, with neon flowers decorating the front and a flowery aroma swirling around from the wide open chrome doors.

There was a charismatic doorman standing by the barren door, who smiled at the kids, "Hey, kids. You look tired. You want to come in and sit down?"

Laurie was about to decline the man's offer despite how nice it was, but Percy beat her to it and told him a polite yes. Too hot and tired to act on her skepticisms, she trailed behind the other three as they trudged into the hotel's lobby.

"Woah."

The place was every kids dream. The entire interior was a game room. Not just any old game room, but a water park around elevators, bunjee jumping, vr, game-room.
It was so big that it'd surely take days to explore even the first floor, and from the looks of it, there were about forty of those.

"Hey!" A bellhop greeted them. "Welcome to Lotus Casino, here's your room key."

Percy tried to protest, but the man— who was clad in the stylish apparel of a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops— interrupted him with a laugh.

"No, no. The bill's taken care of. No extra charges, no tips. Just go on to the top floor, room 4001. If you need anything, like extra bubbles for the hot tub or skeet targets for the shooting range or whatever, just call the front desk. Here's your LotusCash cards. They work in the restaurant and on all games and riders." The man explained to them. He then handed the kids a green plastic card each.

There was clearly some kind of mistake. This guy obviously thought they were a bunch of rich kids, not some run-of-the-mill demigods and their satyr friend.

Laurie wanted to hear what else the odd man had to say, but her attention was taken away by a knock on her shoulder.

Someone had run into her, and hard. She stumbled to her right a little from the unexpected blow, narrowing her eyes as she looked ahead of her for who had so rudely crashed into her and hadn't even bothered to try an apology.

A few paces ahead of her was a girl about her age, maybe a little older, with brunette hair that spilled out from underneath a black beret. The girl had stopped and turned around and when Laurie expected her to apologize, the girl looked at someone past her and called agitatedly, "Come on!"

Was Laurie invisible or something? This girl appeared to be looking straight through her, as if she weren't even there.

Then, the person that this mystery girl had been calling out to came running by. A younger boy with hair just like the stranger's, a toothy grin on his freckled face.   

Laurie almost screamed when he ran by.

Because he didn't just run by her, he ran through her. Not all of her, just her hand— just enough to make her think that maybe it hadn't happened at all. But it had happened.

He scurried on by to join the girl from before without even sparing Laurie a glance, and she watched with widening eyes as his small form ran through her arm, as if she were a projected image that wasn't really there.

"Laurie?"

The girl's head snapped up defensively, only to be met with Annabeth's questioning gaze. The bellhop was gone now and her friends looked all content with their little keycards, saying how they were going to head to their room via the elevator.

"You okay? Look like you've seen a ghost or something." Percy remarked, giving a lighthearted laugh.

Something like that.

"Yeah . . . fine." She nodded.

They all headed towards the massive glass elevator, stepping inside and not at all questioning why it seemed so barren.

Laurie tried to keep her poker face on, there was no reason to worry the others about something that she wasn't even entirely sure had happened. But still, a part of her knew it definitely had, and it terrified her to the core.

ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ-

     THE LOTUS CASINO was easily the greatest place on earth. Laurie could've stayed there for eternity, and she definitely would've if it weren't for Percy.

There she was, having the time of her life playing a dance dance revolution machine,( and totally killing her fourth Lady Gaga routine ) when Percy, Annabeth, and Grover ran up to her in a frenzy. Really, she'd totally forgotten all about them.

"Laurie!"

"What?" The girl grumbled without looking up, her eyes focused on the game at hand. They could talk later, right now she needed to get full stars on the level 4 dance to Bad Romance.

"Laurie!"

She rolled her eyes and this time ignored them completely. Not that she particularly knew that there was a them, considering she'd yet to look away from the screen and only heard Percy's voice.

"We don't have time for this." The boy groaned quietly to Annabeth and Grover, before marching on up to Laurie's game. Without hesitation, Percy whacked about forty-seven buttons at once.

Instead of a big red GAME OVER flashing across the screen like the boy had anticipated, the machine shut off entirely, the screen falling black and all of the lights on it going dead.

Percy looked at the girl, only to be met with that angry Laurie look that he'd grown a little too familiar with. This look was a little different though, he noticed, similar to how Annabeth had been earlier when he'd snapped her out of her casino trance, except this girl was still under the lotus curse.

"Look, we need to—"

Percy didn't even get the chance to explain or get her attention before the brunette didn't even think twice and slapped him right across the face.

The son of Poseidon's eyes flared with anger as a red splotch grew on his cheek. "What was that for?!" He seethed.

"You broke my game! What was that for?"

That answer only enraged Percy more, and Annabeth almost thought she was about to have to drag him out of there by his t-shirt collar and come back for Laurie afterwards.
Fortunately though, she found herself pleasantly surprised with how composed the boy managed to stay.

"Snap out of it! We have a quest remember? The Underworld, heading west, just got away from Ares' crazy psycho animal smuggling ride!" He exclaimed, snapping his finger in front of her face and then gesturing about wildly.

The girl stared at him for a moment and Percy could've sworn he saw her pupils dilate, as if they'd shrunk from their time in the casino. Then, she seemed to get her wits about her and a look of realization washed over her.

"Oh my gods . . ."

"Yeah." Percy remarked with a sarcastic smile. "C'mon, we're leaving. Now."

The boy yanked Laurie by her wrist like she still couldn't remember who she was and started towards the exit, Annabeth and Grover following them.

Just as escape was in sight, one of those stupid bellhops popped up right in front of them.

"Well now, are you ready for your platinum cards?" He asked, fanning out four silver and sparkly plastic cards.

"We're leaving." Percy huffed, wanting nothing more than to get as far away from this guy and this place as humanly possible.

"So soon? Such a shame." He tutted. "We just added an entire new floor full of games for platinum-card members."

He stuck out the cards and the four kids all found themselves wanting one. Grover started to reach for one but Annabeth swatted his hand down and said, "No, thanks."

They made a beeline for the door. The closer they got to it, the more and more tempting the smell of food and idea of eternal games and comfortable beds became. They could stay here for a little while and relax, sleep in actual beds and not have to worry about the gods . . .

Then, they burst through the doors of Lotus Casino and tore down the sidewalk as reality smacked them right in the face.

They would've all taken a few grateful moments to sigh in relief, but then they looked up. The weather had totally changed since they'd gone in there. Where it was once unbearably hot and sunny was now clouded over and stormy, cracks of lightning streaking across the desert sky.

Percy ran to the nearest news stand and read out the date. Then he read it again and again and about seven more times in hopes that his dyslexia was being a prick and tricking him. But it was there, plain as day in blocky, black letters: June twentieth. One day before the summer solstice, and one day before their deadline.

They'd been in Lotus Casino for five days.

ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ-

    SO MAYBE LAURIE wasn't some wise child of Athena, but she couldn't see this plan going well. And for once, it was one of Annabeth's plans, not Percy's.

They had all piled into the back of a taxi cab and Percy told the driver, "Los Angeles, please." Y'know, as if they actually had the money to pay for that kinda ride.

"That's three hundred miles, kid." The cabbie sneered, chewing on the bud of his cigar as he looked the kids up and down. "For that, you gotta pay up front."

"Do you accept casino debit cards?" Annabeth inquired, praying silently to every god there was that the answer was yes.

"Some of 'em. Same as credit cards, I gotta swipe 'em first." The driver shrugged. Annabeth pulled out her green LotusCash card and forked it over to the skeptical looking man.

"Swipe it."

He did as told, and Laurie could've sworn the man almost went into cardiac arrest. His meter machine started rattling and flashing and after a moment, a big infinite symbol popped up beside the dollar sign.

His mouth agape, eyes wide, and cigar fallen, the man peered into the back seat. "Where to in Los Angeles . . . uh— your highness."

"The Santa Monica Pier." The daughter of Athena told him, reiterating the location that Percy had told them before. "Get us there fast and you can keep the change."

Perhaps that was a bad choice of words, because the cab's speedometer looked as if it were about to explode the entire ride, never going below ninety-five the entire way through the desert.

On the ride they had plenty of time to talk, so Percy told them about his latest life-threatening dream.

He told them all about the darkness and the invisible servant and the talk of his mother from the terrifying voice that short-circuited his brain. They talked about it being Hades implementing more blackmail for the master bolt, and suggested the idea that maybe the Lord of the Underwold didn't have the bolt  after all and thought that they did.

Annabeth immediately dismissed that idea with a pale face, demanding that they dropped the topic. They did.

Laurie nervously cleared her throat as the blonde nervously bounced her knee, an attempt to redirect the conversation from Hades to something else, though the new topic wasn't all too nice either.

"So uh, while we're all sharing," the girl began nervously, debating internally on whether or not she should even share this. "Something really weird happened back at the Casino—"

"Well yeah, we were stuck in there for five days!" Grover interrupted her, baffled. "Is that a normal occurrence to you?"

"Not that part, G." She said through gritted teeth. "I mean something else."

It took some tedious moments for her to gather her wording, trying to figure out how to say what she wanted. How was one supposed to tell her friends that a kid walked straight through her without sounding insane?

"Okay so, when we first went in and you guys were talking to the bellhop guy, this girl ran into me. But she didn't acknowledge me at all. And then . ." She paused and took a deep breathe, refusing to meet anyone's eyes. "Then this kid ran to her but he— he ran through me. Like I wasn't even there or anything."

They stared at her. Laurie felt herself waver under the concerned gazes of her friends, even Percy. She couldn't tell if they just didn't know what to say or if they were considering taking a detour at the nearest insane asylum.

"I know I sound crazy, but I swear—"

"You're not crazy, Laurie."

His interruption took her so off guard that Laurie almost hit the boy for the second time that day.

"I'm not saying that I know what happened, trust me, but it's not like you to make something up. Especially not something like that. I actually don't think you could make that up even if you tried." Percy said.

The smile he sent her made the girl ignore his insults, letting them slide this one time since their topic was too important to be interrupted by another argument.

Annabeth opened her mouth to speak but snapped it back shut when the taxi rolled to a stop and the driver spoke to them. So much for not being interrupted.

They were dropped off at a beach in Santa Monica just at sunset, the world around them being painted in a swirl of warm hues. It looked just like L.A. did in all the movies with the white sand and beautifully crashing waves. Laurie wished silently that they had time to enjoy it.

The group followed Percy across the warm sand and to be edge of the surf, where the boy stopped.

"So . . . what now?" Annabeth asked.

Without a word, the son of Poseidon walked into the water.

"Um—" Laurie chirped, looking at Grover and Annabeth in a questioning manner. They both looked just as bewildered as she felt and shrugged their shoulders.

"Percy!" The brunette yelled. "What the Hades are you doing?!"

Grover smacked the girl's arm at that, as if to say "why on earth would you say that when that's the exact god we're up against?"

Percy didn't care and kept walking, the water now up to his chest. Annabeth heaved a sigh and shouted after him as well, "You know how polluted that water is? There's all kinds of toxins—"

His head went under. Ignoring all of his friends, Percy was taken by the ocean, practically vanishing in the sea-foamy swirl of blue.

It didn't take long for him to return though.

After making sure that Grover didn't have a panic attack because of Percy disappearing without a word, Laurie was more than relieved when his head of dark hair popped up in the water.

When he treaded out totally dry, Laurie immediately marched through the sand and punched him in the shoulder, demanding, "Where were you?"

Percy winced slightly as he ended up getting hit for the second time that day, absentmindedly grabbing the spot on his arm that she'd hit.

Laurie two, Percy zero.

When Grover and Annabeth joined them,( without hitting Percy, thank the gods ) the boy told them all about his conversation with a water lady, as wild as it sounded, and what she'd given him. The boy jutted out his hand and opened his palm, revealing four shiny pearls.

Annabeth grimaced. "No gift comes without a price, Percy." She said, shaking her head.

"They were free." The boy shrugged.

"Oh dear gods—" Laurie muttered under her breath with an eye roll. What an idiot.

"No." The blonde told him. "'There's no such thing as free lunch.' That's an Ancient Greek saying that translated pretty well into America. There will be a price. Just wait."

Way to kill the mood, Percy thought.

"So you're telling me that not only did these things get me punched," he began, glaring at the brunette across from him. "But that they'll also, most likely, lead to impending doom? That's nice." 

On that happy note, the four turned their backs to the sea and started towards the bus station, where they'd take a bus into West Hollywood in search of DOA Recording Studios.

____________