𝐁𝐄𝐒𝐓 | "you're the worst of my crimes. you fell hard, I thought 'good riddance.'"
In which June Grace no longer wants
to be the second choice.
OR
In whic...
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018: Father Dearest [JUNE]
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IT WAS ALWAYS funny to see the lengths the Mist could go to shield the minds of mortals. According to the L.A. news, the explosion at the Santa Monica beach had been caused when a crazy kidnapper fired a shotgun at a police car. He accidentally hit a gas main that had ruptured during the earthquake.
This crazy kidnapper (a.k.a. Ares) was the same man who had abducted Percy and five other adolescents in New York and brought them across country on a ten-day odyssey of terror.
Poor little 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 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 five friends were safely in police custody.
The reporters fed them this whole story. They just nodded and acted tearful and exhausted (which wasn't hard), and played victimized kids for the cameras.
"All I want," Percy said, choking back his tears, "is to see my loving stepfather again. Every time I saw him on TV, calling me a delinquent punk, I knew ... somehow ... we would 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." The police and reporters were so moved that they passed around the hat and raised money for six tickets on the next plane to New York.
There was no choice but to fly. June flipped on the television. She flipped through the channels, there was no way she could handle a five hour flight in silence.
When they landed, they filed off the plane but tried to keep themselves hidden. The local press was waiting for us outside security, but we managed to evade them thanks to Annabeth, who lured them away in her invisible Yankees cap, shouting, "They're over by the frozen yogurt! Come on!" then rejoined them at baggage claim.
They split up at the taxi stand. Percy told Annabeth, Aurora, Connor and Grover to get back to Half-Blood Hill and let Chiron know what had happened. They protested, and it was hard to let them go after all they'd been through, but it had to be done. It had to be him and June. If the gods didn't believe them, the others would be able to tell Chiron the truth.
