Chapter Fifty-Four

Clato

Manoa materializes right next to me as we left Moon’s brain. Still in her ice queen get-up. Looking every bit more threatening now that she was real than she had before. Holding back a shiver and a cringe I gently step away from her. She gives me a side glance, just pausing to look at me long enough to let me know that she knew what I was doing.

“I’m not going to suddenly kill you, but if you must get away from me at least try to make it less obvious,” she says.

“It’s not that,” I say. “Well. It is that. But it’s not just that.”

“Whatever,” Manoa says, turning to look around. Her eyes land on Moon, still lying on the bed. Manoa scoffs.

But was we watch Moon’s body shimmers, and turns to a mist, merging with Manoa, who grimances. After a while the light that had plagued the room disappears. Manoa rolls her eyes at the mystified look on my face.

“You okay?” I ask.

Manoa gives me a strange look, her icy eyes biting into my soul. “Let’s just do this.”

I shrug, “Won’t have to tell me twice.”

I walk out of the room, throwing open the door so that it would slam back into her. She laughs lightly, but I could tell that it was fake and forced. Unfortunately the door does not slam into her and she catches it with her forearm before it can ram into her face.

“That was rude,” she says. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“You’ll find that I’m full of surprises and a lot more than a pretty face,” I say simply.

“Well I knew that the last one was more of an untruth. Considering,” Manoa makes a hand gesture with her finger, on the side of her face. Twirling it around and whistling quietly.

My hand reaches up and touches the side of my face, before scowling at her and walking away.

“Oh I’m so sorry!” Manoa calls after me, her voice laced with sarcasm. “Did I hit a nerve? Damn, that’s going to sure leave a scar!”

My hands fist at my sides, but instead of turning around and gauging out her  eyes like I wanted too, all I do is continue walking.

“Whoops,” Manoa mutters under her breath, walking after me. The click of her heels on the marble floor vibrating through the halls. “Guess I struck a nerve.”

I hiss quietly, too quiet for her to hear, my hand curling so tightly that my nails broke the skin, drawing blood. I breath in through my nose, trying to remain calm.

“You okay up there?” Manoa asks.

Without answer I spin around and slam my fist into her nose. She reels back, eyes wide, holding her now broken nose.

“Ouch,” She says with an eye roll. “Funny, I almost didn’t think you had it in you.”

I curl my lip back, snarling at her, “You’re so lucky that I need you to stop Caltaya. Just so you know, that’s the only thing that’s been keeping you alive.”

“Aww the only thing?” Manoa says, fake pouting. “It has nothing to do with how much you love me?”

“Can’t be about things that aren’t true,” I snap back.

“Well yeesh,” Manoa says, rolling her eyes at me. “Just trying to make a simple conversation. It’s not my fault that you’re bitter about something.”

“Oh no, I’m not bitter. I’m not bitter at all,” I say with a grin. “I just don’t like you.”

“Uh, what’s the difference?” Manoa says, with a smirk.

“Think real hard on it for a few, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” I throw a glance over my shoulder. “Then again, maybe not.”

“Is that you're really unsubtle way of calling me stupid?” Manoa asks.

“I dunno, did it work?” I ask, glaring at her.

“Not really, if I wanted to have childish insults thrown at me I would’ve went to a three year old and still have gotten a better one than that,” she says with a shrug.

“Damn, you really don’t do well playing with others do you?” I ask sarcastically.

“On the contrary,” Manoa says. “I feel like I am extremely able to ‘play well with others’, so long as they are within the same mental intelligence as me. I’m positive you can see my problem now can’t you?”

“Oh, so you wanna start playing it dirty?” I ask, turning to glare at her. “Game on girl. Game on.”

“Is it really a game if you don’t bring too much of a challenge though?” Manoa asks.

“I’m really starting to miss Moon,” I grumble under my breath.

“Aww, here I thought we were bonding,” Manoa says, pretending to pout.

۝

Derek

“You okay?” James asks, coming to sit down beside me.

“Why would you ask?” I demand, ignoring his question.

“Because you’re sitting all alone in a secluded part of a dying forest,” James says.

Clearly he didn’t understand that my question had been a rhetorical question and not something that I wanted him to answer. Idiots these days.

“Really?” I ask sarcastically. “Wow, I hadn’t noticed! Thank you soo much for clearing that up for me.”

“A’right, a’right, I can take a hint,” James says, jumping up and stepping back and holding out his hands. “I didn’t mean nothing by it. My bad. Hint hint am I right?”

“Dude,” I say, turning to look at him. “What is your deal?”

James looks at me slightly offended, he blinks and then shrugs, “I just don’t want to see anyone sad or lonely.”

I roll my eyes, “Well aren’t you such a superhero. News flash, save the world all you want. We’re all still going to be lonely.”

James shakes his head at me, “Your life must really suck for you to think that way. Me? I’m going to continue believing that the world can be saved. As well as every single one inside of it. Because if I stop believing that, everything is hopeless.”

Before I can respond some kid with bright green hair runs over, panting his head off like he had just ran a marathon.

“Attack.... Town…. Dead… Too many… creatures… Godville…. destroyed,” the kid gasps out, before kneeling over and passing out.

James leaps up, jumping over the kid that was now laying on the floor and running back towards camp. I sigh and shake my head.

“Please Derek, check the random citizen that I care so much about and make sure he’s alive!” I say sarcastically. “Yes of course! I’d love to!”

I stomp over to the boy on the ground, leaning down to check the idiots pulse. It was faint, but it was still there.

“Next time, bring a bottle of water you nincompoop!” I hiss.

Then I take off jogging towards the town, trying to catch up with James, at the same time regulating my breathing and my pace.

When I finally made it out of the woods and to the sidelines of town, I froze. Because there was absolutely nothing left.

Okay, so that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but there was fires burning down buildings and the ground. Most of the people that were left were either dead, or unconscious, but no one was left standing. Buildings were already torn apart, falling to the ground in bricks or ashes.

In the back of my mind I can imagine Mutt kneeling in front of the Hall, crying out for the death of his beloved food court.

Running away from the town was little creatures with hunched backs, crawling on all four legs. One turn backs and gives me a look, once that could be considered a smile. Except it revealed jagged teeth that were stained red.

“One left alive to tell the tale,” it says, it’s voice rough and raspy.

Kind of like you would assume an old hag sounded like giving a prophecy about the end of the world. And then the creature took off running, leaving me standing there in the middle of a wasteland, surrounded by the bodies of people that I had barely begun to know.

A crack sounds from behind me, causing me to spin around, dagger at the ready.

“Chill,” a boy says. “It’s just me.”

“And you are?” I demand.

“Name’s Jack. Jack Flow Erh. Son of Enyo,” Jack says with a little grin.

“‘Flower’?” I repeat. “Seriously?”

“No its, ugh, nevermind,” he says shaking his head and sighing.

“Why are you here?” I demand.

“Well I came cause James needed some help with the war, but it looks like I was a bit too late,” Jack says, looking around. “A lot of people fled into the woods though. I don’t really blame them.”

“And James?” I ask, desperate to be able to try and find the one person that I saw as a friend.

“He stayed to fight,” Jack says. “I don’t know where he is. Jenny says that they dragged him off towards the arena.”

“Let’s go look then,” I say quickly.

Jack shrugs, like he didn’t really care if James was found or not. Suddenly a scream pierced through the air.

“Who was that?” I ask, jerking my head towards the sound, which had come from the arena.

“My sister,” Jack says, taking off at a full on sprint.

“YOU KNOW THAT’S WHAT KILLED THE OTHER GUY!” I shout, running after him.

Getting the the arena by running proved to be more than a little difficult though, considering literally everywhere you stepped there was a dead body. But still, we tried. Eventually Jack gave up and just went on walking, since really that had been all we were doing to begin with. But now it looked like that’s what we were meaning to do.

Jack forces the doors of the arena open using a big stick that he had found on the ground. One that came from a tree that had been burned to ash right next to it. For a second I bow my head and mourn all the the tree nymphs that had been lost in the fires.

Then I figured that mourning should wait until the burials, and until we figure out if there’s going to be anymore people that died. Jack finally gets the door open, personally I counted 200 different ways that could’ve been more effective while trying to do so.

He runs in, not even stopping and attempting to check and make sure that there wasn’t anyone there waiting to kill him. I roll my eyes, realizing that this guy is going to give me the equivalent of a heart attack, just inside my brain. A brain attack one might say.

“Wait,” I start, but then give up realizing it was clear that the guy wouldn’t bother listening to me.

I walk in to the arena and stop. Because in the middle of it there was James. He was strung up by his hands, just hanging there. But that wasn’t the only thing. He was gutted his entrails hung out, some spilling over and plopping into a pile on the ground.

A girl stood in front of him, hands over her mouth, Jack’s sister. She had light brown hair, the same color as Jack’s. Jack walks over to her, slowly draping an arm around her, pulling her into a hug.

It was in that moment that I realized they had probably known James a lot better than I ever did. Speaking of, James had no feet. They were cut off, attached to the top of the poles that he was hanging by. As I was looking at it, a bird comes and

starts eating his insides off of the ground. Making ridiculous slurping noises that a bird really had no reason making.

The girl sobs louder, and Jack turns his face away, shielding his eyes from the sight of it. James groans, and I step back, apparently he wasn’t yet dead. Just dying.

I turn around and hurl, unable to take it anymore. I close my eyes and smash my hands against my ears so that I don’t have to listen to him dying. A coward move, I know, I just didn’t care.

Finally the bird flaps away, hitting some part of James’s insides against the side of my face as it flies away, only then do I open my eyes.

“I told him heroics would get him killed,” I say.

Snarky and rude, considering that he was dead and this was probably the most he was going to get for a funeral, cause there wasn’t really much left of him now that the bird had gotten its meal.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Jack’s sister demands, spinning around to face me. “You realize the guy is dead right? Now don’t get me wrong, he was an uber jerk and so annoying, but he was my friend. No matter how much I didn’t want him to be, he was.”

“Yeah,” Jack agrees. “You have to stop being disrespectful to the dead, dude.”

“Sorry, but when it comes to that,” I say, nodding in the direction of James’s body, not actually looking at it. “I think I have a little bit of wooshy wooshy, if you don’t mind me using the technical term, don’t you?”

“‘Wooshy wooshy’?” Jack repeats.

“Where did they find this guy?” his sister asks, shaking her head.

“The better question would actually be, why didn’t they leave me there,” I butt in, just to get my say in it.

“I’m going to go find Callie, fill her in,” Jack says, shaking his head. “Jessie, you stay here and see if anything inside this camp is recyclable. We may be able to salvage something from this wreckage. Take Derek here with you. He might be able to provide some sort of insight in regards to some of this… new stuff.”

“I seriously hope you’re not referring to the bodies of our dead friends,” Jessie snaps.

“Um,” Jack says. “Of course not.”

Jessie glares at him for a second longer before rolling her eyes and turning towards me.

“Let’s go Velma,” Jessie says to me. “Better go see if we can find the rest of the Scooby gang.”

“Can I be Shaggy?” I ask, walking after her.

“No,” Jessie replies.

“I think I would make a marvelous Shaggy,” I defend.

“Clearly the Scooby-Doo reference was a bad idea. Forget that I made it okay?” She says, glaring at me slightly.

“I’m not sure if I can actually do that,” I whine.

“Oh my gods, just shut up already!” Jessie exclaims. “You go that way. And I will go in the opposite direction. Got it?”

“Are you sure it’s safe to be splitting up?” I ask.

“No,” Jessie says, turning to look at me. “But it’s time to go be a hero, Derek. Are you ready for that?”

Accidentally I turn to look at James, “No. Not if that’s what I get from being one. Hell nah.”

“He believed in you, Derek. And he died fighting for something that he believed in. He died for you. For everyone in this camp. So what do you say? You finally ready to be the person he thought you were?” Jessie asks.

“You want me to prove to a dead guy whether or not I’m worthy of being a hero?” I ask. “Cause I don’t think that’s actually going to happen.”

“No,” Jessie says shaking her head. “James always knew that you were a hero. I want you to prove it to yourself. Think you can do that?”

The thing was, I never wanted to be a hero. I wanted to go to school, graduate. Get into MIT and go live my absurdly normal life. Marry. Have kids. Grow old. Die. That was my plan. This did not fit into my plan.

The whole, my mother being an ancient goddess that just so happened to piss some people off and now was dying, leaving me in charge of saving the world with a bunch of other crazy people, part I mean. So much for mundane dreams.

I know that most kids dream of being a hero. Growing up with superpowers. But that’s just what they are. Dreams. They never evolve into anything more than that. And thanks to Athena, I never even had that. I grew up my entire life believing in only science. Things that were real. Logical. Superheroes weren’t logical.

I’ve never read a comic book. I’ve never watched a movie with a superhero. And every movie I knew exactly how that ‘magic’ was being done. I never bought a backpack with the Flash on it. Or a T-Shirt with Superman’s logo. Never had a Green Lantern ring. Or an action figure of The Incredible Hulk.

That’s the kind of stuff that I’ve never bothered with before. Never had to bother with. Because I didn’t have the same kinds of dreams that normal people did. Instead of wanting to be a superhero I wanted to be a Mathlete.

“I’m sorry,” I tell Jessie. “But I never wanted to be a hero. That's just not who I am. Now who I dreamed.”

Jessie sighs, “Sometimes dreams do come true. Whether they are your dreams or not. It’s your duty to make those dreams true. For all the little boys and girls out there who still want to have hope. Who still want to believe in something. Don’t take that hope away from them. That’s the hope that they need.”

I hesitate for a second, and then I nod, “Okay.”

۝