❦𝓕𝓪𝓿𝓸𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓮 𝓒𝓻𝓲𝓶𝓮❦ - 𝓟𝓮𝓻𝓬𝔂 𝓙𝓪𝓬𝓴𝓼𝓸𝓷

𝐵𝑜𝓃𝓊𝓈 𝒫𝒶𝓇𝓉 𝐼𝐼

𝒵𝑜𝑒 loved the beach. She lived in Malibu. Her dad owned a private part of the beach so she could go whenever. He preferred it when she took Pepper or Happy with her, or even Obidiha, but sometimes she needed time to herself. Even as a seven year old, her mind was always thinking and working. Zoe liked it when she could have some peace and quiet.

Like now, when her dad had been cooped up in his lab working on some super top secret project she couldn't know about. While she was sitting in the sand and watching the waves, she noticed a huge black dog a few yards away.

She had no reason to be nervous, it was just a dog. That was, until it attacked. Zoe had seen a lot of weird and horrifying things. Once, when she and her father had been looking for a new project to work on together, she saw a woman with two snake trunks for legs. She told her dad, and they left immediately.

Another time, she had been out with Pepper to get some new clothes (because her old ones were covered in grease stains that were impossible to get out) and she swore she saw a man with one eye in the middle of his head. Pepper told her she had an active imagination, and while she wasn't wrong, Zoe felt this was more than her mind making things up.

Every time she saw something weird when accompanied by her dad, they left. Immediately. So, when she saw something horrifying and her dad was the only one home, she made a... stupid decision. When the dog attacked, instead of running to her dad for help or calling Happy or Pepper, she ran down the beach. Not towards home, but away from it.

Once she got into the city, she took a few twists and turns and finally lost the dog. She thought so at least. Zoe had sat down in an alley to catch her breath when she heard the ragged breathing of the beast that was chasing her. Bolting up in fright, Zoe started to stumble backwards to the other side of the alley only to see another huge black dog blocking her path and boxing her in. With her mind blanking in terror, she was about to start screaming or trying to get someone's attention when she heard a yowl of pain from her left.

Glancing over, she saw a girl, covered in golden dust, about twelve or thirteen. She wore a leather jacket over a black t-shirt that read death to Barbie and black skinny jeans. She featured electric-blue eyes, black spiky hair, a spear, and a shield. The shield was bronze with what looked like Medusa's head on it, making Zoe shy away, terrified. The girl wielded her bronze spear expertly, using it to stab the dog in the back.

Next to the black haired girl was a younger girl (also covered with the odd golden dust) with dirty blond hair and intelligent gray eyes. You would have thought she was a born and raised Cali girl, but her eyes ruined the image. She had a bronze knife in her right hand, brandishing it and keeping on guard. She had on a plain gray tank top and running shorts.

As Zoe heard another yelp from her right, she spun again only to find a boy around 14 years old with dirty blond hair, a scowl on his face, and a mischievous look in his blue eyes. In his hand was a sword, also bronze. He was wearing what might have been a white t-shirt long ago, now covered in grime, dirt, golden dust, and blood with basketball shorts in similar conditions.

They all looked pretty beat up and tired, but still approached her cautiously, as if they were afraid of scaring Zoe off. She flinched a little when the shield got within five feet of her so they all paused.

"Hi, my name is Annabeth. What's yours?" The young blond girl, Annabeth, had spoken. Her voice was young and slightly higher pitched than what she assumed the boy and older girl's voices would sound like.

Zoe's gaze flickered from one to the next, going over all three of them before landing on Annabeth again.

"Z-Zoe," she whispered hesitantly, her voice shaky and uneven from the fear and her lack of breath from running before this.