AN: We know, we know. Just read. Kill us later.

Demigods Vs Aliens

Chapter 3: Larry

If I had thought my weird day was going to get better with a warm bed and a good-night's sleep, I was severely mistaken.

The motel looked cheap from the outside and unfortunately our hotel room was no different. There was this strange smell that I couldn't quite place but I kinda hoped it wasn't coming from the bed I was going to be sleeping on… That would be nasty. Although, considering there were four of us and only two beds, I figured it probably wouldn't be my problem anyway. The odds were, with how much my current travelling party were fond of me, I would be spending the night on the floor.

The walls had been painted in a classic 'Ares Cabin' style, that is to say not very well. The red splotches looked like paint but in a place like this I guess it would be hard to say for sure. We'd all dumped our stuff in the door (or my demigod-knappers did) and had gone about making the room 'home'. Sam practically ran for the bathroom.

"I call dibs on first shower!" Sam called as he slammed the bathroom door behind him.

Six just sighed.

This whole waiting period was the perfect time for me to plan (not really though, I mean, I've never been really great at this… it's Annabeth's job.)

So, I figured my way forward was simple: I hear what they have to say and if necessary (as in, they're complete loonies) I could pull a little 'Yes this was a pen but is now a sword… Back off' on my new travelling companions and then leave them to their own devices. It was perfectly possible that there was a little case of 'confused pizza man' syndrome going on. Maybe they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe they saw me with demigod powers and their minds defaulted to 'ooh shiny! Let's kidnap it'. If they were normal mortals then I could leave anytime I wanted. Well, other than the fact that we, as in the demigods of the USA, were leaving to fight the literal Mother Earth within the next two weeks… And I was meant to be leading them…No biggy, right?

On the other hand, I'd been taken by three kids roaming around in an old pickup truck running from something like it was Hades himself. Tried that. Not. Fun. They had managed to knock me out and one of them had attempted to resist my poohy water shower. Also, if the gods had wanted me to be back at Camp Jupiter then I would have heard from them by now. Maybe this was what I was meant to do.

If that didn't scream quest, I don't know what did.

Plus, even if they weren't mortal, they seemed to think they were on my side. If I put my mind to it, I figured that I could still shake them relatively easily. At least, they weren't going to be pointing arrows at my back the moment I walked away. That had to count for something.

"Percy? Hello? Anybody in there?" Six was waving her hand vigorously in front of my face, bringing me back into the real world.

"…Sorry. What were you saying?" I tried to look innocent and not at all like I was planning to ditch them at the first opportunity.

Six sat down on the left bed and, after a moment, I copied her with the right one. She levelled her searching stare at me, "Four was just saying that we should get all our cards on the table. We'll do our very best to tell you about our position… and in return you can tell us all about how it was we found you fighting a…" Six looked confusedly at Four, "Fighting a something that- that only Four could see. What was that thing anyway?"

I shrugged and tried to look casual on the outside, while inside I frantically constructed a not-insane answer. If Six couldn't see the Hydra I had fought, then I could count the possibility of her being a demigod out. I could manipulate the mist in such a way that she might be convinced into letting me go. Before I knew it, however, my mouth was blurting out the first explanation I could think of. "It…It was my- my uncle's pet chicken."

Six looked sceptical, "Your uncle's pet chicken? The thing looked like it wanted to roast you alive."

"It's got issues with me. There was an incident with the barbecue sauce."

Six looked at me strangely, as if she didn't think pet chickens could hold grudges, "...Right... Wait, your uncle's chicken?"

I tried to look serious, "Yeah. He really doesn't like me."

"Who? The chicken - or your uncle?"

I grimaced, remembering my 'hell and back experiences' where Hades was concerned, "Both." I shivered, "Definitely both."

Four had walked over from where he'd previously been scrounging inside his bag, looking through it's contents. He looked nervous, as if something (probably with claws and fangs) was going to jump up from underneath the bed and rip him into Four-flavoured strips. He was clutching a medium sized box-thing to his chest, as if his life depended on keeping it nice and safe.

Based on the way they were all acting, maybe it did.

Now Four was glancing between me and Six, confusion clearly on his face, "Hold on, who's this uncle... How can you have family?" he stared at me searchingly, "We're the last from Lorien... Everyone else is dead."

There was a long deafening silence. All I could think was, 'these guys have issues'.

I decided to set them right, "I have a pretty big family. I've known them for ages and I -"

Six cut me off, "Percy, you must have been adopted. There's no way the people who say they're your parents are telling you the truth." She was talking kinda slowly, as if I was a small child who didn't understand what she was saying.

"My mom's not a liar." I could understand if my dad had been lying (having your parent disappear until you were twelve and then force you to find his brother's lightning bolt sort of makes you distrust a guy) but I knew mom would have told me if I was an alien. Plus, I've had enough 'big reveals' for a lifetime (or several). The 'You're a demigod' revelation was a pretty big deal.

Six must have sensed she'd crossed a line, because she frantically started to backpedal, "Oh! uh, I'm not saying that she would!" she anxiously assured, "She might not have known, that's all."

I gave her my deluxe 'I am soooo not in the mood for this' glare. Honestly, by this time, I was tired of beating around in the bush. "Guys, look, I understand that you might be in some sort of situation," Six and Four's eyes darkened and I tried to avoid looking them in the eye, "I understand, believe me, but I can't be here right now. I have to-"

"What? Why can't you be here? What's going on?"

Six was smarter than I gave her credit for. Great.

I sighed, "There are just some issues going on," My mind was racing; I had never had to lie so much in my life and that's saying something, considering I spent my school year pretending I was completely normal and didn't spend my free time sending Greek monsters back to Tartarus and running for my life. "My... extended family have been going through some... tough times, lately." I kinda wanted them to stop going after information now, so I tried to turn it on them, "What about you? Why are you running around in a pick up truck like Hades is against you?" I winced as Four seemed to catch my 'Hades' slip up, but he didn't mention it, he just kept quiet as though he was thinking about something really hard.

Six, however, was a completely different story, "Well, you already know some of it, I guess. When we were all children, our planet was attacked and everyone-" she paused and left the 'everyone died' unsaid, "Well, uh, we were saved and by 'we' I mean Four and me and... you." She looked at me nervously, as if I was going to suddenly sprout snake hair and go on a rampage at her implication. I almost did, but she hurried on, "We all had protectors, grown ups from our planet who were meant to hide us and train us eventually," Six glanced at me and I suddenly had an image of an adult Grover trying to teach me algebra or hiding me in a cave in the middle of nowhere. Speaking of responsible adults...

"Where are your 'protectors'?" I blurted out my question without thinking and Six and Four's faces became hard.

"They both died defending us." Four said quietly.

The silence that followed was awkward, "Oh... sorry."

Six suddenly looked up, "Where is your's?"

"...Uh, my protector?" I chuckled inwardly, I did have one, though he kinda did 6th grade with me, used crutches to help disguise a distinct lack of feet and his favourite weapon was a pipe that he used to play Hilary Duff's So Yesterday with... Some how I couldn't see the two 'aliens' seeing that in the right light, so twisting it a bit couldn't hurt, "There is this one guy," I shrugged, "He sort of looks after me when I get stuck in stupid situations, but he's more my friend than anything else... I don't live with him or anything," ... except at camp. I added. Silently, because I didn't think my new friends could quite handle 'camp' yet.

Six's eyes gleamed, like a dog that had spotted a bone, "Really? Can you contact him? Where is he? Did he come with you to San Francisco?"

I really should have just shut up. "I... could...uh..." Don't say it, don't say it, don't encourage them, "...Contact him, if you let me use my phon-"

Four and Six didn't let me finish. " That's not a good idea. The Mogadorians track suspicious phone activity."

Of course they do. Of course the imaginary monsters track 'suspicious activity'. That just makes sense. I mumbled my annoyance under my breath, "I'd like to see them try to track this call."

"What was that?"

"Oh, nothing. You were saying?"

Six gave me a 'are you hard of hearing?' look, "We were saying that the Mogs watch communications really carefully. It would be kinda dangerous to just ring up from a private line saying 'Hello adult friend who has been protecting me secretly my entire life. Why didn't you tell me I was an alien from Lorien? I'm just here in (insert town name here) and I'm with some of my fellow aliens. Why don't you come on over here and we can all work on defeating the Mogadorians together. It'll be fun'," Six deadpanned.

"Can we do that?"

"NO! Did you hear anything I just said?"

I shrugged, "Sounds like fun to me. Can we fight the monsters now?"

Four looked at me in annoyance, "Percy, I don't think you've been following us fully."

"No actually you dragged me here against my will. I didn't follow you anywhere."

Six jumped in before it could escalate (and it was going to escalate. Four's face annoyed me), "Look, we're all tired. How about we all just go to bed. Alright?"

Yes please.

Four grudgingly agreed and slithered sulkily over to the right bed, while Six started to settle into the bed on the left.

Gee Percy, why don't you take the bed. Really. It's the least we can do after kidnapping you. Yeah. Right.

Six got up and fetched her bag from across the room. Suddenly, a plastic black thing came hurtling toward me at the edge of my vision.

ADHD REFLEXES: Activate!

I caught the cheap sleeping bag Six had dug out from the depths of her backpack, "Thanks."

Six shrugged, "That one's mine, so don't break it. We'll get you your own when we reach a town tomorrow."

"You know, if you had picked up my bag when you kidnapped me we wouldn't have to buy me a new one." I would also have all my demigod essentials, not to mention food!

Six didn't reply. I heard Four snore determinedly. Oh well, guess it's bed time.

I crawled into Six's sleeping bag and snuggled as comfortably as you can when sleeping on the floor. I could have been wrong but just as I was dozing off, I could have sworn I heard a familiar, annoying voice.

"GUYS! Are you there? I've been calling for an hour! I NEED TOILET PAPER!...Hey!... Four...SIX!...What's his name? Uh, I can't remember... Somebody! HELP!"

I put it down to insanity and dozed off.

"I can't believe you just left me on the toilet! I was there for hours. What kind of friend does that?"

"A tired one."

"That's not very nice Four. You should be nicer to Sam, we are using his car." Six scolded Four from where she was trying desperately to shove her too-big sleeping bag into the too-small case.

"You are being nice to him. You could've just mugged him and stollen the car. You seem to like beating people up and kidnapping them."

"Percy."

Before I knew it, the four of us had set out from the door of the shabby motel room (I got stuck lugging Four's stupid box all the way back to the truck). As we passed the bored-looking clerk at the entrance I tried to send him a 'Help me I've been kidnapped by aliens and am being held against my will... Could you please contact the Greek gods of Olympus or possibly the Roman demigod camp? Thanks!' look, but I think maybe it was translated as 'the food you serve here sucks'. Oops. The clerk just rolled his eyes at me like he got that look all the time.

It didn't take long to load up the truck, especially considering we hadn't taken everything out last night, and soon we all piled in and Four started backing the pickup out of the motel parking lot. For a while the car was pretty quiet, only broken by Six pointing out the small town centre about twenty minutes away.

Six patted me on the back, saying, "There should be some sort of pay phone in town." She smiled at me, "It's probably safe for you to ring your protector from a public line. The mogs won't be able to track you."

Well, we wouldn't want that.

I was honestly a little worried about the 'ringing my protector' business, because I knew using cell phones was like writing 'Here I am, a poor innocent demigod. Monsters, please eat me!' in the sky, but did pay phones count? I didn't think there were really any hard and fast rules. Maybe I'd just have to wing it.

There was the problem that I was pretty sure that Grover, or anyone else that could help me for that matter, wouldn't have a phone at all, making 'ringing my protector' kind of impossible. What was I supposed to do when I stepped into the phone booth?

Suddenly I smiled. I had a brilliant idea.

"Ok, let's go. My Protector is probably awake by now."

The sleepy little town of Haven, Nevada, was pretty much the poster town for sleepy little towns everywhere. The town center was made up of about a block of small higldy-pigldy establishments in need of a good paint job and better fly screens. A few people milled around, some doing their shopping and running errands, others just enjoying the overwhelming heat. It was possibly the most boring place I had ever had the displeasure of visiting. They didn't even seem to have a Mc Donald's.

Yeah. It was that kind of town.

On the corner, a tiny convenience store boasted its 'fresh produce' in faded red print, on their window, that looked like it had been there longer than the store itself. Like a good citizen, Four casually pulled into the 'No Parking' zone, whistling a ditty as he strolled past the cop car up the road, as though daring the donut-eater to try fining him. The cop, seemed to stare for a moment before turning back to what must have been a very interesting snack.

I followed reluctantly after what I was quickly beginning to call the 'number buddies', figuring that since they were already kidnappers, they probably didn't mind parking illegally.

It was then, as I was following aimlessly after my felon hosts that I saw it. The most feared brand right after 'Monster Donut'.

Bargain Mart.

And sure enough, Four was heading straight for it.

Intellectually (or relatively intellectually, I mean, I'm getting a D in math), I knew that not every Bargain Mart staff member was a ruthless psychopath with a constant bad-hair-day and a small snake fetish that was Hades-bent on my painful destruction, but I couldn't help eyeing their name tags and expecting Hi, my name is DIE, DEMIGOD SCUM! to glare back at me.

Six seemed to notice my frantic head turning to search every staff member for their tag and looked at me with this infuriating smirk on her face "I see that you have a fear of corner store employees." Great. Good luck explaining this one, Perce.

I stopped looking immediately. "Well, you seem to think I'm from another planet." I tried to shrug it off, "Some aliens have never seen corner store employees before."

Six stared at me, before turning back to studiously inspect the price of tinned tuna. Behind me Sam snorted.

I had to get out of here, "Guys can we find the phone first and stock up on tuna later? I've recently been to a feast for tuna and I'm sorta sick of it."

Six looked at me like I was crazy, before replying slowly, "...Okay. There's one across the street I think."

I grinned as I remembered my ingenious plan. "Let's go then. My protector's waiting."

Larry Petersburg was having a bad day at the office. First, his girlfriend broke up with him. Then, he received a summons with the manager. His demotion from Vice President of the mail office. And then, he received this incredibly odd phone call.

Larry was sitting in his chair, legs up on the table, signing some paperwork when his phone number rang loudly, for the whole office to hear.

"LARRY! TURN DOWN THE DARNED VOLUME!" Ah, the refreshing sound of the President of the mail office causing herself another injury in the lungs.

"OK, Clara, I hear you!" And so did the rest of the office.

Larry reached across to pick up the phone. "Hello, Larry Petersburg speaking, how can I help you?"

The line was crackly and soft. Larry had to listen extremely carefully to hear the youngster's voice who replied.

"Hello adult friend who has been protecting me secretly my entire life. Why didn't you tell me I was an alien from Lorien? I'm just here in Haven, Nevada and I'm with some of my fellow aliens. Why don't you come on over here and we can all work on defeating the Mogadorians together. It'll be fun!"

Of course. How else to make Larry's day worse than to have him talk to someone straight out of a looney bin?

He was just about to snap his cell shut, and continue on his (very suckish) day, when he was stopped by the insane person on the other end of the line.

"Wait! I know you think I'm crazy and it sounds crazy too but just let me keep talking for, like, THREE more seconds. I'm trying to lie to someone."

Well, didn't that just make Larry want to trust the guy.

I smiled, "Mhmm... Okay." Six and Four were listening to my side of the conversation in ernest. "What? I'm not an alien?" I tried to look shocked, "So, these people aren't my real brethren? Okay, no! They really have kidnapped me! This is awful." I tried to hide my smirk, "Okay, well I'll see you for bingo next week, Grandpa. Bye now!"

The clank of the phone being hung up sounded like victory.

I turned back to see Sam, Six and Four's gobsmacked faces (Sam's mouth was hanging open slightly in a mimicry of a camel) and almost skipped back up the street. This time it was them following dazedly after me.

I really shouldn't be surprised that my good mood didn't last. The universe (or at least a few deities) seemed to be conspiring against my happiness.

But of all the things that could have gone wrong, of all the stuff the fates could have thrown at me, did it really have to be that?

"Hello and Welcome to Bargain Mart. How may I help you? Would you like to try a Cheese'n'Weener?"

Of course it was Stheno.

Of course it was.

AN: Hello, dear subjects! So, we actually have NO legitimate reason for not updating (other than LIFE, which so often gets in the way of our happiness) but we are sorry. We're going to try to be a bit more consistent from now on.

On another note, we, in case you don't know, are NOT from America and don't know the geography AT ALL, so errors abound. As far as we, know there is no town called "haven" in Nevada, and we don't know what Nevada's like so we improvised. So sue us, we live on the other side of the world.

Have a great day. Fight for world peace. REVIEW!

Alicloud and SalmonSandwich