Resurrected

Actually, I was glad when Tommy told me that Charlie, Leo and Percy were going on a quest for Calypso’s island. That meant I wouldn’t have to worry about going into an ‘All-CAPS Rage’ whenever I saw Percy, which had happened only once after I had woken up from my three-day coma. It had been four days since I had woken up, which meant that if I was keeping track of time correctly, this was day 11 of 31 total days I had to redeem my soul and whatnot.

“You feeling good today?” asked a voice from the Cabin 16 door. I looked up to see the face of Tommy, smiling and confident, standing on the threshold, still keeping to the Camp rules of not entering another campers’ cabin except on inspection days.

“Yeah,” I replied, taking stock of how I felt, “I think I am.” His warm smile seemed a bit odd, and it made me wonder what had happened to make him so cheery.

“That’s good,” He commented, and then, after a short pause, continued, “Alright, fine, if you must know, I have something interesting for us to do, and it requires your participation.”

“That’s more like it!” I teased, “I knew you were going to tell me sooner or later. Now, what is this thing we will be doing?”

“It’s a surprise,” Tommy snapped, looking a little deflated that he hadn’t gotten to have the pleasure of having me ask what was making him so happy. I laughed at his forcedly angry demeanor, and a small grin began to play on his lips again.

As he led me past the new wing of cabins and towards the edge of the creek, his smile began to widen, and his pace began to quicken. I tried to keep up with him, but my breaths returned to those awful gasping wheezes, and we decided to stop at the mouth of the creek.

Tommy looked great, much better than he had when we had arrived at Camp, stronger and more muscular. Not that I thought about him in that way, it’s just that he looked a lot healthier. He had on a Camp Half-Blood tank-top that one of the satyrs had given him from the camp store, a pair of ray-bans and khaki shorts, making him look like a Cali surfer dude. I was in a pair of shorts too because it was around a hundred degrees outside, but mine were dirty, my hair was unkempt from having slept so much lately, and my white cotton shirt was covered, embarrassingly, in a few dried blood stains and drool from having been in the infirmary so much lately. Also, the cloth of my eyepatch had become even more frayed, making me begin to wonder if I would need a new one soon.

I scooped up some water from the creek and poured it on my head, trying to straighten my hair. I repeated the actions multiple times, trying to clean up my shorts and shirt, and then, after dunking my hand in the creek at least six times, I realized that I had no idea why I was trying to make myself look any batter than I actually was. I had been so sick from Kronos’ torments for the past week and a half that how I had looked walking out of Cabin 16 was about how I felt: unkempt and sick, covered in my own blood-stains.

Tommy was staring through his mirrored ray-bans across the creek, and I realized he was silently trying to get me stop cleaning myself and to look across the creek. On the other side, was, no joke, an old-fashioned picnic basket and blanket, just waiting for people to open it and use it.

“No way!” I exclaimed in a mixture of surprise, incredulity, and happiness, “You made me a picnic?”

“A picnic ain’t a picnic if two people ain’t having said picnic,” Tommy said cheerfully. I raised an eyebrow at his bad southern accent, and he grinned widely.

"What I mean," Tommy explained, "is that I made us a picnic."

And with that we walked around the mouth of the creek to the picnic spot Tommy had laid out for us.

He plopped down first, patted a spot next to him and sat down, still breathing with a little difficulty. He opened up the basket, and I, expecting to find fried chicken, or barbecue, found myself presented with a lean brisket sandwich, a bottle of Gatorade, nectar, and a baggie of ambrosia squares. Next to that, thankfully, was a whole barbecue meal, dripping with sweet and spicy sauces, probably straight out of the nymph’s kitchens.

I reached for the barbecue meal but Tommy swatted my hand away.

“Ow,” I complained, “Why can’t I have the greasy, amazing food?”

“Because Chiron told me to get healthy food into you,” He replied in a final tone, “and because the greasy food is so mine.”

I laughed a little at that, and then we both started laughing, eventually digging in to our picnic lunch. Despite my complaining about the healthy food, Tommy had prepared a pretty sweet meal.

“Hey,” Tommy asked after we had finished eating, “I also brought a bow and arrow, and I was wondering…”

“Any Target?” I asked hopefully. Any Target was a training game we used to play on the Princess Andromeda, where we would pick a hittable target, and whoever could hit it first would get the other’s dessert at dinner. We usually played five or seven rounds, but Tommy only had five arrows with him, and we were both out of practice, so I thought we would only play one round.

“Yep,” Tommy replied cheerfully, “You that pine tree, about, oh, 80 yards that way?”

He pointed, and I saw the tree in question. I nodded, and he knocked the first arrow. He looked really determined, even with the tank-top and ray-bans on. But, when he released the arrow, it flew 10 feet wide of the tree. I busted out laughing, and Tommy looked down at his flip-flops, smiling embarrassedly. We took turns shooting, and Tommy eventually won by planting an arrow in the absolute center of the tree, evoking an impressed whistle from me.

“Well,” I concluded, “since we have no deserts to play for, I guess you haven’t really won anything…”

Tommy took out a huge piece of chocolate cake that I hadn’t spotted earlier, and I instantly regretted not trying that hard at Any Target. But, I laughed softly as Tommy took out a fork and started digging in. I ruffled his hair as he sat down, and plopped down next to him. He looked like a little kid with his huge slice of cake, and I realized then that he was a ful three years younger than me. We had felt so much like brothers on the Princess Andromeda, I had to remind myself that he would be my little brother, not my twin.

It felt good to relax with a friend after having gone through so much. I felt like I had been forced to have my guard up for so long, and now, with Tommy sitting next to me and the sun on my face, I felt like I could finally let that guard down. That was my mistake. I should have known that Kronos was waiting for me to let my guard down, like a flood pushing against a door, just waiting for someone to open it.

I had gotten drowsy, sitting in the warm shade, and Tommy had watched over me as I had fallen asleep. He should have never let doze off. Within the same millisecond of me losing consciousness, Kronos was upon me. In my dream, I found myself sitting in the same interrogation room, but unlike the last time, it was messy. Parts of the walls were falling apart, the light flickered on and off, and the table was rusty, not polished steel. Kronos was waiting for me with Luke, who also looked disheveled. Correction. Kronos looked disheveled, like he had been sick with the flu and had just gotten out of bed. Luke looked like he had recently gotten the Hades kicked out of him by an unknown entity.

Kronos was also steaming mad, literally. He was in human form, wearing a cheap polyester suit and clip on tie, like a stereotypical interrogator, but I could tell he was having trouble keeping himself in that form. He looked so mad that he was threatening to reveal his true divine form in front of Luke and I, which probably would be painful. His suit was also wrinkled, and his shirt had a coffee stain on it, adding to the unorganized look.

“You!” Kronos screamed at me as soon as I appeared. Unwillingly, the Titan stopped time for a second, and as he started screaming gibberish at me, and I couldn’t move to respond, he realized what he had done and un-froze time.

“You and that stupid Aphrodite girl!” He screamed at me, and I smiled at him, mocking,

“You can’t hurt me,” I said in an imitation of Kronos, still smiling.

“Don’t push your luck, Nakamura!” He shouted, which would have looked scary if he hadn’t been so unorganized and messy-looking, “I’ll throw you back in Tartarus, or worse!”

That killed my smile. “W-W-Worse?” I asked shakily.

“Yes,” Kronos smiled evilly, “there are places much worse than Tartarus, Ethan. Places so dark and old even I wouldn’t be brave enough to get you out if I threw you in there for punishment. But I don’t think I’ll need to do that yet. That stupid Aphrodite girl weakened me when she broke my grip on her, but I can recover. All I need is one of you four to fail in redeeming your souls in order to reclaim you all. But for now, I think I’ll settle with making your life a living hell.”

He smiled again, even more evilly and dark than the last one. My gaze drifted off of his eyes and towards Luke, whose condition I was just beginning to notice. He had two black eyes, which made him look like a panda, his lip was cut in three places, his nose was dripping blood and very likely broken, and he was cradling his left arm like it was shattered. Also, every time he put his right leg down, which was every five seconds, he winced in pain, creating an awful rhythm of grimaces in pain. Kronos laughed at me again, saying,

"You don't know pain yet, Nakamura, but if you even try to redeem your soul, you will. But my limited strength can't keep you for much longer in this prison, so I'm afraid I'll have to let you go. But before you do, a parting message..."

And then spoke ten words. And those ten words probably scarred me worse than any nightmare I’ve ever had.

“You think you know sickness? You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

And with that, Kronos released me from the interrogation room, and I floated up to my mortal body, which had been gripped by another fit of coughing. Again, the blood poured from my mouth as I coughed, this time more hoarse and loud than before, like a lion attempting to bark like a dog. My insides froze as my throat burned, my brain throbbing in pain and my limbs feeling lie lead weights. I collapsed on the ground, and Tommy called for help and a medic, screaming for any assistance. Then, he looked back at me, and I managed to crane my head to look into his beautiful blue eyes. He seemed to realize something, looking into my one brown eye, and rushed over to me. He picked up my head and put into his lap as he sat down, brushing the hair out of my face. I was breathing so fast, trying to get any air into my lungs as I had began to stop coughing that I hadn’t realized I was hyperventilating. I began to breathe normally as he kept running his fingers through my hair.

“It’s okay, Ethan,” He began to whisper, “Everything’s going to be fine. Just breathe, and you’ll be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”

As he held me there, I thought that he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my entire life. Then, the Apollo medics cam with a stretcher and carried me away, leaving Tommy still sitting on our now blood-stained picnic blanket. Watching him as I was carried away was probably the worst feeling I’ve ever had in my entire life.

Notes

Super long one, but it's really important to the plot. ENJOY! Also, I will try to have at least one more if not two more chapters out by the end of the day, and if I can't get the second one done by the end of today, I'll post it tomorrow morning.