νεκρός || Annabeth Chase x Fem!OC

Vol. 4-18: Mr. D gives me a heart-to-heart (i hate it)

TEMPEST

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I was laying on the ground with Annabeth until I wasn't.

I was suddenly standing in a long dingy bar with black walls, neon signs, and a bunch of partying adults. A banner across the bar read HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BOBBY EARL. Country music played on the speakers. Big guys in jeans and work shirts crowded the bar. Waitresses carried trays of drinks and shouted at each other. It was pretty much exactly the kind of place where you conceive a baby in the bathroom with a one-night-stand, or the kind of place where you buy really bad heroin.

I was stuck in the very back of the room, next to the bathrooms (which didn't smell so great) and a couple of antique arcade games.

"Oh good, you're here," said the man at the Pac-Man machine. "I'll have a Diet Coke."

He was a pudgy guy in a leopard-skin Hawaiian shirt, purple shorts, red running shoes, and black socks, which didn't exactly make him blend in with the crowd. His nose was bright red. A bandage was wrapped around his curly black hair like he was recovering from a concussion.

"Oh. Mr. D? What are you doing here?" I looked around. "Where is here?"

"Somewhere in lovely rural America." He raised an eyebrow at me. "Though, rural meant something different to you."

I pulled a stool up and sat next to the Pac-Man machine so I could face Mr. D. "Were you surprised to find out?"

"Surprised I didn't notice it, not surprised you're dead," he told me. "You have very low self-preservation skills, you're odd, you're a suicide risk-"

"Wait, I didn't kill myself!"

"You would have," he mumbled.

"Um, no."

He glared at me. "Don't tell lies."

I scrunched my face. "Okay, fine. But, I would've at least waited until Cosette was all better and my family could care for themselves without my help. At the very least, I should've been, like, twenty. So, why are you here instead of fighting Typhon?"

"Well, he swatted me out of the sky."

"Oh, lovely."

"Your concern is touching. I crash-landed. Very painfully. In fact, part of me is still buried under a hundred feet of rubble in an abandoned coal mine. It will be several more hours before I have enough strength to mend. But in the meantime, part of my consciousness is here."

"At a bar, playing Pac-Man."

"Party time," Dionysus said. "Surely you've heard of it. Wherever there is a party, my presence is invoked. Because of this, I can exist in many different places at once. The only problem was finding a party. I don't know if you're aware how serious things are outside your safe little bubble of New York-"

"People are dying, Dionysus."

"-but believe me, the mortals out here in the heartland are panicking. Typhon has terrified them. Very few are throwing parties. Apparently Bobby Earl and his friends, bless them, are a little slow. They haven't yet figured out that the world is ending."