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“Did you steal a car?”
Annabeth looked offended, “Why would you assume that I stole this?”
“Well,” Clarisse said, getting in and moving her seat as far back as it would go. “There is no fucking way you could afford this.”
“How would you know?” She restarted the engine and flicked on the headlights. “Do you even know what kind of car this is?”
“It’s a Lexus LC Convertible ? Obviously I know that, girlie.”
“We’re both nearly twenty five, I think we’ve run out the clock on girlie .” She flicked down the headlights for a second as another car approached them from the other side of the road, before turning them back up to full beam. “I didn’t know you knew about cars though.”
“My mom’s an engineer but she used to be a mechanic,” Clarisse shrugged. “I don’t know, cars are cool. Still doesn’t explain how you can afford this. I know your family is rich but like you don’t have a job.”
“My family isn’t that rich.” She thought for a minute, “Well- I don’t know about that. But I have a job, Clarisse. It pays pretty well.”
“You’re literally still doing your Masters degree, how on earth, Olympus, and Hades can you have a job which can afford this in full time college.”
“Well,” she said, grabbing a bottle of water from the cupholder and taking a sip. “You know how I redesigned Olympus after-”
“Yes- wait. How much did you get paid for that? I thought you were just getting shafted and your payment would be the honour, or the experience .”
“Honour and experience don’t pay for my tuition.”
She stretched back her arms and rested her head against both of her hands, “Wouldn’t it be nice though, if we get paid for quests. Back in the day heroes got like… kingdoms and gold for killing like one monster. We get like… respect and glory almost all the time.”
“Which is such bullshit,” Annabeth said.
“Such bullshit. Honestly. You got a job and a few of us got like something for saving the entire fucking world. Like thanks for the Well Done, Dad, but goddamn if saving the world a couple hundred times isn’t worth at least a million dollars, what is? I want a new car at least. I was waiting for two hours before you showed up.”
“Sorry,” she tucked one of her braids behind her ear. “But to be fair to me, Chiron woke me up for this.”
“Do you think he sleeps like a horse or a human?”
She thought about it for a minute, “I mean we could always ask but if the brain is human-”
“-debatable, knowing the Party Ponies-”
“-then logically, I suppose like a human?”
“I’m not so sure. He ahem caught us a lot sneaking out at night.”
“What were you sneaking out for?”
“Do you think I can’t see your fucking eyebrows right now, Chase? We were trying to throw flashbang grenades at Cabin Eleven. Did you know he curls his tail?”
“I thought that was just a rumour. Seriously?”
“I’m serious!” Her stomach rumbled, “Sorry, do you have any snacks in here.”
“No,” she frowned. “Only some ambrosia and I don’t think burning up from the inside will stop that. I think there’s a service station up here though?”
Clarisse could see through the trees the bright lights of a station, “I hope it’s not a Monster Donut. I’ve had enough near death experiences for the month at least.”
“You don’t think you could take on a whole horde of cyclopes after two empousai tonight?”
“I do not. Also my car insurance is about to be insane considering I can hardly name them as being at fault since they’re exploded into nothing.”
“Did they have any kind of mortal identity? I think Chiron could probably help with the Mist, or you could bribe Lou Ellen or someone else from the Hecate cabin.”
It was not a Monster Donut, thank fuck. Or like, the gods of food and roadside services. Maybe that was one of Hermes’ jobs? She hardly kept up with any gods unless it was directly going to impact one of her quests or missions.
“I’m gonna fill the tank,” Annabeth jumped out of the car. She still had a jacket on despite the weather, but there was a tell-tale lump underneath which gave away her drakon-bone sword. It would probably be read as a gun by anyone who couldn’t see through the Mist, but she supposed they could just use the Mist if they got asked anything about it. She wasn’t sure about the laws around concealed carry in this state.. Clarisse’s tank was plastered to her skin both from the sweat and humidity, but she had no idea how Annabeth was managing it.
When she asked, she just said, “I’m from Virginia.”
“Yeah, but I’m from Arizona? Whatever, do you want anything?”
“Whatever the cheapest chocolate they have and a couple of energy drinks.”
“On it.”
The cashier asked if she played hockey when they saw her spear but apart from that she got the snacks without a hitch.
“I know I never actually apologised for it when we were younger,” said Clarisse, hand still scrabbling at the bottom of a bag of cheetos and coming up orange and empty. “But I’m sorry for… being such a cunt, honestly. Like for all of it. I have no excuses for most of it. It was shitty though.”
“It was shitty,” Annabeth agreed. “It’s kinda weird how it ended. You didn’t really get better but-”
“All our problems got worse so me giving a kid a swirlie was hardly the least of anyone’s issues?”
“God I wish I could go back to a time when that was the biggest issue in the world.”
“It’s never been the biggest issue in the world, though. You just didn’t know about all the others. Also you’d be going back to like… ten or eleven, and no one deserves that.”
She laughed, “Jesus no. Might do some things differently.”
Clarisse looked up at a constellation. She didn’t know its name but she recognised it as one Silena had pointed out to her almost a decade ago on a balmy night before the harpies started hunting people down for breaking curfew. “Just a few,” she said.