Storm [LAMS demigod AU]

John

TW: Vomit/Nausea mention, death mention, violence, explosions, gun mention

John's headache was getting worse.

His head had begun throbbing the second he'd left Camp Half-Blood. The farther away he got, the worse the pain became.

Now, as he sat in the back of a taxi on his way to Penn Station, his head was pounding so violently he could barely see straight.

He knew what was causing this.

It was the Voice. It was trying to get him to abandon his quest and go back to Camp.

But that just made John more determined to succeed on this quest.

The evil creature who had been torturing him and sending him nightmares and making him sick for the past few weeks was trying to make him abandon his quest. In John's opinion, that made it even more clear that he definitely was doing the right thing by forging ahead.

Rule #3 of Camp Half-Blood: If a scary demonic voice tells you to do something, don't listen to it. In fact, do the opposite of whatever it tells you so hopefully it will go away.

In all honesty, John felt kind of guilty. He'd embarked on this quest for pretty selfish reasons: to get the Voice to leave him alone. Sure, he cared about preventing Thomas and his mysterious evil minions from destroying the world too, but mostly John just wanted to sleep peacefully again.

John wasn't a particularly suspicious person. He'd never really been too keen on the idea of fate and prophecies and destiny and all of that mumbo-jumbo people read about in self-help books.

But he knew that this had happened for a reason. Out of all the other demigods, the Voice had come to John. If he was the only one being affected by it, then that was clearly a sign that he had to be the one to put an end to it.

Whatever this Voice really was or however it was connected to Thomas and his crazy revenge plot, he knew that by the end of this quest, he would send the Voice back to whatever Hell dimension it had crawled out of.

"We're here." The taxi driver said, pulling John out of his thoughts.

John paid the taxi driver and walked into the station. He made his way to the ticket window.

"I'd like to buy an Amtrak ticket please." John said. "I'm going to get off in Virginia."

The ticket lady wordlessly slid him the ticket. She looked like she'd just woken up from a nap and wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep.

John paid for the ticket and made his way to the waiting area.

After ten minutes of waiting, John boarded the train.

The Amtrak ran all the way from New York to Florida, making several stops along the way. One of those stops happened to be Virginia. John figured that taking the train was safer than traveling out in the open where monsters could easily track him down and kill him.

As John sat down, he looked around the train. There were families with children, groups of college students on their way to Miami for spring break, lovers on their way to a honeymoon, men in suits and ties on business trips. It made John kind of sad. All these mortals were enjoying a normal train ride on a normal day, completely unaware that the fate of the world currently rested on the shoulders of an unprepared teenager who wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and cry.

John took a deep breath, trying to ignore the pain in his head. He felt like someone was pounding on the inside of his skull with a jackhammer.

He thought of Rachel, who had collapsed after issuing the prophecy. Will had rushed her off to the Hecate cabin for an emergency exorcism. He hoped that she was okay. If the Voice was able to cause John so much pain, he couldn't imagine what it would do to a mortal. Would Apollo's magic be able to protect her? He hoped so.