νεκρός || Annabeth Chase x Fem!OC

Vol. 2-22: Bianca is driving me nuts

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"Where you guys want to land?" Hank asked, waking Percy up from a nap.

I'd seen San Francisco before, but I hadn't been in town since the mid-eighties. Otherwise, all I'd seen were photos. For those of you that don't know, it's kind of like a smaller, cleaner Manhattan, if Manhattan had been surrounded by green hills and fog. There was a huge bay and ships, islands and sailboats, and the Golden Gate Bridge sticking up out of the fog. I felt like I should take a picture or something. Greetings from Frisco. Wish You Were Here.

Still, I never really did find San Francisco a beautiful city like most people do. In fact, I have a general dislike for massive skyscrapers and crowded places like this. I was born in a time where even the big cities were never this big and ugly and polluted. I find beauty in the more natural side of things, like a house with a path that leads down to a creek. Of course, my house was one heavy footstep away from collapsing. And my (overgrown) path didn't lead to a creek. It led to the bayou where several people in my town got mauled by alligators or drowned in the murky water.

You may not believe me, but it really was better back then.

"There," Zoe suggested. "By the Embarcadero Building."

"Good thinking," Chuck said. "Me and Hank can blend in with the pigeons."

Only I laughed.

"Kidding," he said. "Sheesh, can't statues have a sense of humor?"

"I got the joke, Chuck. I apologize for my cultureless friends."

"You're my new favorite, Creepy Girl!"

As it turned out, there wasn't much need to blend in. It was early morning and not many people were around. We freaked out a homeless guy on the ferry dock when we landed. He screamed when he saw Hank and Chuck and ran off yelling something about metal angels from Mars.

We said our good-byes to the angels, who flew off to party with their statue friends. That's when I realized I had no idea what we were going to do next.

I looked around curiously. Annabeth mentioned the possibility of moving here with her dad, trying to give him a shot at the whole "family" thing. I guess, in a way, I didn't blame her. I'd do anything to have my own family back. And her moving to San Francisco really didn't affect me. It's not like I have any sort of permanent residence anywhere. I just hoped she felt okay if she decided to come here. I'd hate for her to move and hate it.

We'd made it to the West Coast. Annabeth was somewhere close by. And, by my guess, she was very close by. But I had no idea how to find her, and I had until tomorrow to do so. I didn't even get to have prophetic demigod dreams like the others, so I couldn't clue in on anything that way. The spirits didn't know much either. For all I knew, Annabeth was already dead in a ditch somewhere, and her spirit was refusing to speak to me because she realized I'd been lying to her this whole time.

"Is she still alive?" I asked Bianca.

"I have no idea," Bianca said. "I don't even know where she is. It's so deeply shrouded in magic, and-" Her voice took on a pained edge. "-and I'm so new..."