"Hello, hello, hello!
My name is Darko Montgomery, and you're listening to Channel Five with Darko!
First off, I think I've got some fan mail which I'll get to later, but I just had to mention—Amanda from Brooklyn, your brownies are looking downright scrumptious! You got magic hands, girl! Hit me up on the line sometime, and we can…oh, right, um, in other news, our Long Island residents can expect a beautiful June 24th morning, with a low of 84 degrees near the cooler parts of the county and a high of…"
Click!
I pushed the button to stop my stopwatch—
15:00:34.
I grabbed my pen and scribbled a few words down on my notepad as the Darko Montgomery Show continued playing on the rather old radio I'd smuggled in. The random sounds of static could be annoying sometimes, but when you're trying to smuggle electronics into a magic camp, you sort of have to take what you can get.
Plus, it made for decent enough background noise, so you'd never hear me complain too much. I took a deep breath, enjoying the ambient smell of warm apple pie tickling my nose. A satisfied sigh worked its way out of my mouth. Today's camp cooking day, I think, and the Aphrodite cabin's giving away some pies for free—I'll definitely be trying my hand (and tastebuds) on at least a few of those. Especially after the long morning I've had.
You see—I've been training.
Hard.
I kicked my feet out from under the dock, letting my body fall into the freshwater underneath. FWOOM! Bubbles raced past my face as I went shooting through the water, enjoying the feeling of tearing through the camp waters with my newfound speed.
I felt like a speedboat cutting through the waters frighteningly fast, churning the water behind me like a blender. I saw some catfish staring at me warily from a few feet underneath me. I waved, and they dispersed for some reason as I shot by them.
Wow—usually, fish are happy to see me. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, I've been training a bit more with some of my powers from Poseidon. Specifically underwater traversal and other general underwater skills, for a couple of reasons.
First off, these are some of the few powers that I'm at liberty to try, and second, being able to move at fast speeds underwater and do other general things seamlessly will definitely aid me at Atlantis. It's the more logical choice.
Don't get me wrong—I definitely want to try some of my other, more destructive powers. I feel like that's pretty natural. You would too. It's just a matter of if I can, and how I should budget the limited time I have above the ground. There's also the whole, you know, 'safety of myself and others' element I have to consider.
As luck would have it, all my more fun powers are the potentially dangerous ones, so I can't exactly just whip them out in a camp full of children. Probably the most dangerous one that I've been itching to try, by far, has been earth-shaking.
They call my old man the earthshaker, so it's pretty logical to assume that I'd have gotten a few of those powers, too, but, like I said, it's pretty inadvisable for me to try that sort of thing out right here, right now. Safety aside, Hestia also made sure to mention that any sort of big, potentially environmentally-altering things like earthquakes could get the attention of the council again, and not in a good way. And, as she loves to point out, I'm still supposedly a threat to some of them. I asked her to explain what she meant, and she explained it like this: First of all, there's no way I'd cause an earthquake in camp.
Not only did she personally threaten me with the safety of the campers, but she also pointed out that I'd cause a lot of damage that I'd be forced to pay off, one way or another. We switched over to my second course of action- trying it out in some water. There is a rather large source of it right outside of my cabin...so... Let's say I paddle myself out into the middle of the Long Island water and use my powers to cause a minor earthquake. Not even a big, fault-rupturing, earth-splitting sort of thing, but just a little rumble here and there.
Well, you see, in causing that minor earthquake, I've already disrupted the domains of a few minor gods. Technically, anyway, and Hestia made sure to tell me that most minor gods don't really have much to do, so they'd take this sort of stuff rather seriously if they were given the opportunity.
It's sort of like a horrible domino effect. Again, we're working under the assumption that I let off just a little rumble.
Kymopoleia, the goddess of violent seas and storms would probably feel something go off in her sphere of influence, as my earthquake in the middle of the water would most definitely cause the sea in my surrounding area to get choppy, at the least, even with some of the weakest earthquakes.
Glaucus, the god of sailors and fishermen might have a bone to pick with me if those choppy waters affect the people out on the water for fun or recreation. Especially on those Long Island waters commercial fishing rigs use the channel to get back from long, deepsea fishing trips.
My impromptu earthquake and subsequent tremors could really fuck up their day. But wait! It just gets worse: Britomartis, the goddess of hunting and fishing nets, is kind of pissed off now because the deep-sea currents from the ships are no longer brushing through the water and shifting the fishing nets that they're supposed to be shifting. Those fish are no longer being hunted, and those fishing nets are no longer being used.
Zeus forbid, my earthquake causes any sort of destruction or terror, too—if any of Ares' little prick kids got involved, I'd have a whole shitshow on my hands. All it takes is one of these minor deities to IM a council member, and bam, I'm back in front of twelve giant beings again. It's one thing if I'm pushed to my limits by an external threat and I have no choice but to use one of these powers, but it's a whole other situation if the only thing I have to defend myself with is saying that I did it for fun.
Or science.
Not to mention, godly intervention aside, I don't exactly know the specifics of how my powers really work, which is especially dangerous because of the real-world connection between hurricanes and earthquakes, which are basically the only two powers I haven't tested out in some odd capacity.
As for the connection between the two, well, based on what I've read and been told by some of the meteorology maniacs in the Athena cabin, so far, there isn't really a reason to believe that an earthquake can cause a hurricane.
That's a good start, and kind of a weight off of my mind, but at the same time, not really. While earthquakes may not cause hurricanes, they can still set off several other natural disasters. Earthquakes cause tsunamis, they can trigger mudslides and landslides, and if my day is really going poorly, I could accidentally cause a rumble in a fault that connects to or lies directly beneath a volcano. Which, as you guessed, can cause an eruption.
Not good.
I could be swimming back to shore, completely oblivious, as a volcano is set off somewhere in Malaysia, or something. Do they even have volcanoes there? Forget it—you get the point. Not to mention, although the inverse doesn't hold up, there are some clues suggesting that hurricanes might contribute to earthquakes. Massive changes in atmospheric pressure, for example, are widely thought to cause slow earthquakes—weak tremors that last for hours or days rather than unleashing their full power over a few moments. Still annoying, and still dangerous.
Again, I'm not particularly experienced in either of these powers. It's sort of like jumping really high to touch the rim in basketball, or running faster than you've ever gone before to win a race—I feel, somewhere deep in the back of my mind that I'm capable of these things, I just don't quite know exactly how to use them.
Even with my video game powers, I'd still need to learn those mechanics before being able to use them at will. The worst part is that they feel similar too. Powers are weird to describe, but like I tried to allude to before, they're like physical limitations that you know you can break if you try hard enough. Hurricanes and earthquakes feel similar in a sense, but not different enough for me to be able to guarantee that one won't bleed into the other if it's my first time trying them out.
I vaguely feel like I'd be able to summon a hurricane if I manipulated the moisture in the air around me in a circular motion while drawing water from the bay, but if I lost track of the water in the air and too much or too little spilled over, I'd have tremors on my hands. Do you see my predicament? It's just too dangerous, I reminded myself as I touched the sand at the bottom of the Long Island shoals, shooting back up to the surface in a churning vortex that dropped me off in the same spot I'd jumped down from.
Click!
14:53:21!
Meh.
I'm getting faster.
This skill is a bit annoying to grind, but mornings like these, where I'm not doing too much, are the best times to grind annoying skills. I yawned for a moment, my eyes catching a seagull and crab start to fight, somewhere off in the distance. Training mornings could be boring sometimes, but they're still very necessary. I'll stand by that. It's like building a house. If your foundation isn't strong, no matter how good the rest of the house is, it'll eventually crumble and fall and ruin your life. Something like that.
Before I could slip back into the water and touch the bottom of the lake again, a voice stopped me: "Percy! Percy!"
I turned my neck and saw Malcolm running toward me, his tiny sneakers squeaking against the damp wood of the dock. Ah! Malcolm. Well, you see, Annabeth's actually gone for the day with Chiron— they're taking a quick trip to the Bronx. I think they were talking about an ancient scroll popping up in a museum exhibit, or something. Full disclosure, it sounded pretty boring when they started talking about it, so I completely let myself zone out.
Of course, seeing as she's gone, I made sure to let Malcolm know he's welcome at my cabin whenever he needs it. He's got other siblings, yeah, but his other siblings can be a little focused on their own stuff. Annabeth is one of the few who isn't, and she basically acts like Malcolm's mother. They're together all day, every day, and I didn't want him to feel lonely without her.
She warned me about training, stating that Malcolm would be too shy to ask me to spend time with him since he knew I was training for Atlantis, but I assured her it would be fine- and I was right since lo and behold, he was seeking me out of his own volition!
"My…Gerald…." Malcolm was huffing, his little hands resting on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. "Gerald's missing!"
"Gerald?" I repeated, confused. I lifted myself up to my feet so I could walk over to him. "Who's Gerald?"
"Gerald is my stuffed rhinoceros!" Malcolm exclaimed loudly, seemingly offended that I didn't know that. In my defense, his room was filled with stuffed animals—he barely fit on the bunk with all of them. "And he's missing!"
"Okay, okay," I placated, placing my hand on his shoulder. I glanced down at my notepad- training could wait for a few minutes. I highly doubt that Gerald's going to be tough to find. "When I was little and lost things, my mom used to always tell me to retrace my steps. Let's retrace your steps. Where did you go today?"
"Uh…I woke up, ate, and went to finger paint, and the volleyball pit, and the Ares cabin, and the…" Malcolm launched into the busiest damn day I've ever heard. My eye was twitching by the time he was done—not that he noticed. "And then I came here! To get your help! Anna says you're a good detective."
"Kid, even if I wasn't, I'd be here to help," I sighed, picking him up. I deposited him on my head, and he grabbed my hair, which was all messy from the constant training. "Okay. Dining pavilion first?"
"Yeah! Can we go fast?" He asked excitedly, tugging my locks. "Onward!"
A small smile formed on my face as I activated my speed. I repeated, "Onward."