LOVE THE WAY YOU LIE . . . pjo

XV.

IT'S FUNNY HOW humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their version of reality. Mia had realized this at a young age and used it to her advantage, even now.

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 Amelia Starfury, Percy Jackson, and two 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, Amelia Starfury, and their two 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. Mia had done this before. She'd mastered the art of damage control.

"All I want," Percy said, 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 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 four tickets on the next plane to New York.

Mia already had a plane though. She'd accepted the money though, and conned her way into ordering a car to bring them to the airport and a private plane to fly them to New York. All without paying a dime.

"You seem like you've done this before," Percy said.

"I have," Mia said, right after she'd put up the blocker to separate the driver from their conversation. "I've done damage control before in the middle of a scandal. I've done this all before — the sweet talking, the getting a vehicle to take me home. It's never been a plane, but me and my sister have taken an emergency flight back home. It was actually last spring break, actually."

Mia had fun on the plane, and clearly Grover and Annabeth did too, but she'd had to work to make Percy loosen up and have fun on the plane, where they were flying by themselves and could do literally anything. Eventually they landed, and the press was waiting for them outside security, but they 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 Mia, Annabeth, and Grover to get back to Half-Blood Hill and let Chiron know what had happened. They protested, but Percy had insisted, and deep down Mia knew that it was right. So they'd went, and left Percy to take a car to the Empire State Building with the money they'd gotten from sympathetic people.

* * *

They were the first heroes to return alive to Half-Blood Hill since Luke, so of course everybody treated them as if they'd won The Bachelor or something. According to camp tradition, they wore laurel wreaths to a big feast prepared in their honor, then led a procession down to the bonfire, where they got to burn the burial shrouds their cabins had made for them in their absence.