Celestial - a Percy Jackson fanfic [BOOK ONE]

Chapter twenty

The furies had swept in after I passed out, and once they found out that it was not Percy who stole the helm, they agreed to return the it back to Hades without a fight.

Everything from there seemed to come together. The mortals had created a whole story to explain all the things that had made the news surrounding Percy and the rest of us. The L.A. news reported that a crazy kidnapper (a.k.a. Ares) caused an explosion by firing a shotgun at a police car. Said kidnapper was the same man who had abducted me, Percy, and the two other adolescents from New York and brought us across the county on a ten-day odyssey of terror.

Percy wasn't an international criminal after all. Everything had been cleared up. The commotion on the Greyhound had been caused by us trying to escape the kidnapper, and the explosion in the St. Louis arch was also caused by the kidnapper. After all, how could a couple kids have caused that? The waitress in Denver who we spotted taking pictures of us used her photo as evidence - the scary leather clad man threatening four children to behave. Finally, Percy and I had stolen a gun from our captor in Los Angeles and battled him. Five cop cars had been destroyed and the captor had fled. No fatalities had occurred. Percy Jackson, Cleo Miller, Annabeth Chase, and Grover Underwood were safely in police custody.

The reporters pretty much fed us the whole story. We just nodded along, exhausted, playing victimized kids for the cameras.

"All I want," Percy acted as if he were choking back tears. "is to see my loving stepfather again. Every time I saw him on TV, calling me a delinquent punk, I knew... somehow... we could be okay. And I know he'll want to reward each and every person in this beautiful city of Los Angeles with a free major appliance from his store. Here's the phone number."

Percy was a goon.

Police and reporters were so moved that they passed around a hat and raised enough money for tickets to get us on the next plane back to New York.

I know what you're thinking. Percy can't fly, right? Since the rod is in my possession, and with my powers, everyone figured I could protect us. After all, it was my father's realm.

Takeoff was not great. There was a lot of turbulence, but I willed the air around us to move smoothly. I comforted Percy the whole way there, but he refused to unclench his hands from the armrests until we landed.

The press was waiting for us when we came out of the airport. We had to split up at the taxi stand. Annabeth and Grover had to get back to Half-Blood Hill and tell Chiron what had happened. They didn't want to, but they knew that this was something that Percy and I had to do alone.

Percy and I hopped in a taxi and headed to Manhattan.

——

Thirty minutes later, we were walking into the lobby of the Empire State Building. We were definitely in rough shape, battered and bruised. Neither of us had slept in the last 24 hours.

We went right up to the guard at the front desk and said, "Six hundredth floor."

"No such floor, kiddo," the guard said, his nose not moving from the book he was burying it in.

"I need an audience with Zeus."

He finally looked up. "Sorry?"

"You heard me."

He looked back to his book, "No appointment, no audience, kiddo. Lord Zeus doesn't see anyone unannounced."

"He'll make an exception for his daughter," I said and the guard looked up again. I unzipped the top of the backpack in my hand, revealing the metal cylinder.

His face went pale. "That isn't..."

"It is," I said, zipping it right back up. "I could take it out and use it to show you, but-"