Ordinary (A Percy Jackson Story)

Chapter 13

Been a while huh? A super special thank you to Blurrwar on Instagram for this amazing fanart which makes me cry every time i see it because its just....so perfect. Please check them out if you have an insta!! Meanwhile, ill be here, attempting to figure out where i left off two years ago.

Sitting in a chair in front of Zoe Nightshade's desk with an Ice pack that freezing her fingers pressed against the back of her head, was not the way Bianca wanted to spend her night. She stared at mostly nothing but listened to every word that swam around the office. Luke and Zoe wrestled with more agents from more agencies that she could remember, but somehow they kept the lead in the investigation of the shooter. In the corner the TV playing a rerun of the day's activities including Bianca's kidnapping and footage of her being treated in an ambulance. She was silently glad that Camp Half Blood only turned on the TV every once in a blue moon. The last thing she need was to draw her brother after all four-- five-- of them now.

Bianca readjusted the ice pack, sinking lower in her seat as Luke and Zoe argued over the different ways the unknown and armed demigod could have breached their defense sweep. She felt useless, having spent the day knocked out and tied up. She didn't even know who the mystery demigod was, but he sure knew them.

He knew exactly what to say to get Bianca to stop struggling, even just for that second he took to knock her out. He knew what buttons to push to convince Zoe and Luke to sweep an entire building armed with just knives. He knew exactly what made the three of them tick. He also knew about Ethan.

In the nicest terms possible, Bianca wanted to kill him.

She wanted to throttle his smirk and send his soul down to her father because he refused to tell them outright what was going on. He was holding back information that they could use to find Ethan Nakamura and bring him home. The Undead Demigod told them they couldn't see the full picture, but played mind games like they weren't on a timer until Ethan's body was found verses finding him alive.

It was a rage that made her fingers prickle, and her glare intensify. The ice in her ice pack cracked in the pressure of her grip. Bianca stared at nothing but prayed to the mother of one of her best friends that when she found the undead demigod he got what was coming to him in full.

"Well why don't we just ask her!" Luke shouted finally.

Bianca blinked up at the two of them realizing that the back-and-forth that had been engaged in had come to the sudden rather explosive stop. Luke was leaning over Zoe's desk, arms locked straight and his blue eyes filled with a fire that she wasn't sure had been there before Zoe had started talking. Despite the stress and the weariness that Bianca could see had taken a toll on him, there was also a slight sense of ease that had come over him: Luke was standing here with a determined mind and a fierce expression because this is what he did. He took the problems as the world had thrown them at him and he was going to make his own solutions.

Consequences to Hades and all that.

Bianca was angry, she was scared, she was completely ordinary with no fancy magic powers to help her this time. But Luke--Luke was also angry, and scared, but he had spent so much time being all of these things, as a kid running the streets with nothing more than a supernatural ability to unlock doors, as a camper at Camp Half-Blood who's father acted jumpy when he was around and sent him on one single quest that he nearly died on, as a host of Kronos wavering between whether this was the right course of action or not. Luke was born on this feeling of danger, and he had learned to keep a level head.

It was strange that Luke and Zoe couldn't seem to get along. Bianca wondered if they knew how similar they really were. If Artemis hadn't found her all those centuries ago, Bianca had a feeling the Gods would not have been prepared for the rebellion Zoe might have raised.