Who the hell thought making me a Half-blood was a good idea? {ON HOLD}

Act Two-Ares the little boy, sucks.

Disclaimer: The world of Percy Jackson, its characters and settings are the copyrighted works of Rick Riordan and his publishing companies and affiliates. No profit was made from the writing of this story nor was any malice intended in any way, shape or form to the author or the actors/actresses who so brilliantly have brought them to life.This author is not responsible for underage readers. Please observe the ratings, warnings, and age of legal consent for your country.

Trigger Warning for Mental Breakdown and Vomit

The next afternoon, June 14, seven days before the solstice, our train rolled into Denver. We haven't eaten since early that morning 'cause Luke said we have to save money for our next train heading to San Francisco (That I was still trying to talk them out of!). Luke and Annabeth hadn't had a shower since we left Camp and since I had bathed in a polluted river, we didn't really think that counted.

"Let's try to contact Chiron," Annabeth said. "I want to tell him about your talk with the river spirit."

"But we can't use phones?" I questioned.

"I'm not talking about phones," she responded, and that was that.

Why does nobody ever actually answer my questions properly? I mean, I knew the answer to this one, but what if I didn't have my past-life cheat? What then?

We wandered through downtown for about half an hour, though I wasn't sure what Annabeth was looking for. The air was dry and hot, which felt weird after the humidity of St. Louis. Everywhere we turned, the Rocky Mountains seemed to be staring at me, like a tidal wave about to crash into the city.

Finally, we found an empty do-it-yourself car wash. We veered toward the stall farthest from the street, keeping our eyes open for patrol cars. Three teenagers hanging out a car-wash? One of them a Latina? Ten bucks on a cop trying to arrest me for drug dealing or some other bullshit.

"What exactly are we doing?" I asked as she took out the spray gun.

"It's seventy-five cents," Luke dug into his pockets for spare change. "Got it!"

"We could do it with a spray bottle, of course, but the connection isn't as good, and my arm gets tired of pumping," he said in a very by-the-way tone to me.

"What do you mean? What are you doing?"

He fed in the quarters and set the knob to FINE MIST. "I-M'ing."

"I have no idea what that means," I point out, "I found out I'm a demigod two weeks ago, remember?"

"Iris-messaging," Annabeth corrected. "The rainbow goddess Iris carries messages for the gods. If you know how to ask, and she's not too busy, she'll do the same for half-bloods."

"And you do this how?"

Luke pointed the nozzle in the air and water hissed out in a thick white mist. "All you gotta do is make a rainbow and pay her."

Sure enough, late afternoon light filtered through the vapour and broke into colours.

Annabeth held her palm out to me. "Drachma, please."

I dug a Drachma out of my bag and passed it to her.

She raised the coin over her head. "O goddess, accept our offering."

She threw the drachma into the rainbow. It disappeared in a golden shimmer.

"Half-Blood Hill," Annabeth requested.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then I was looking through the mist at strawberry fields with the Long Island Sound in the distance. We seemed to be on the porch of the Big House. Surprisingly, there were other people on the other side. A tall brunette wearing a black cat patterned button-up was sitting on the Big House railing, while a shorter black-haired Hispanic boy wearing a dark green jacket chatted with him.