Khanh, first of her name, mother of bunnies > Books: gary-stu‎ (5)

Chiron looked surprised. “I thought that would be obvious enough. The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles.”

Chiron looked surprised. “I thought that would be obvious enough. The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles.”

Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she’d gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover’s lap.
“Oops.” She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.

"Another time, Athena and Poseidon competed to be the patron god for the city of Athens. Your dad created some stupid saltwater spring for his gift. My mom created the olive tree. The people saw that her gift was better, so they named the city after her.”
“They must really like olives.”
“Oh, forget it.”
“Now, if she’d invented pizza—that I could understand.”
“I said, forget it!”

“About sixty years ago, after World War II, the Big Three agreed they wouldn’t sire any more heroes. Their children were just too powerful."

Now that I was declared a son of one of the Big Three gods who weren’t supposed to have kids, I figured it was a crime for me just to be alive.

"During the winter solstice, at the last council of the gods, Zeus and Poseidon had an argument. The usual nonsense: ‘Mother Rhea always liked you best,’ ‘Air disasters are more spectacular than sea disasters,’ et cetera."

In his pocket was a set of reed pipes his daddy goat had carved for him, even though he only knew two songs: Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 12 and Hilary Duff’s “So Yesterday,” both of which sounded pretty bad on reed pipes.

Annabeth nodded. “Your father isn’t dead, Percy. He’s one of the Olympians.”
“That’s...crazy.”
“Is it? What’s the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they’ve changed their habits in the last few millennia?”

“What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?”

“Come now, Percy. What you call ‘Western civilization.’ Do you think it’s just an abstract concept? No, it’s a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it."
"Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture. People do not forget the gods."

I didn’t know what else to do. I waved back.
“Don’t encourage them,” Annabeth warned. “Naiads are terrible flirts.”
“Naiads,” I repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. “That’s it. I want to go home now.”

“All right,” I said. “It’s better than being turned into a dolphin.”

“But a quest to . . .” Grover swallowed. “I mean, couldn’t the master bolt be in some place like Maine? Maine’s very nice this time of year.”

This is a disaster.

[Rylan] wouldn't meet my gaze, and my stomach clenched. But Damian looked straight at me, and his expression was one of confusion, even hurt.

"I almost cried again. I could no longer deny that I was falling for him---so fast and so hard it scared me. But I had feelings for Rylan, too---he was the closest friend I'd had at the palace."

“I am the infallible voice of the univer

“I am the infallible voice of the universe,” the priest says, his voice echoing as the Oracle speaks through him once again. “I have chosen my Champion. The boy is the one who can save you.”

“You’re going to have to get her to fall in love with you.”

"You are the Champion that fate has chosen to bring her to us. This quest is your destiny. The fate of the Underrealm lies on your shoulders, young Haden."

“I’m going,” I say as definitively as I can. “I want to go. This school Joe is offering is everything I’ve ever wanted. I’m going.”

...the grove’s song is calling to me.

I am always following some sound or song, trying to find the source. That time I crashed my bike on Canyon Road and ended up in the hospital in Saint George.
"No, it was a Joshua tree. It was singing at the bottom of the hill. Its song was so pretty, I wanted to find it.”

“Singing.” I know that word; I have just never heard the sound that it applies to. It has always been an abstract concept to me until now. “Is that what you call that?”

“Say you’ll come with me.” She has to say it. I advance toward her. “You have to say you’ll come.”

I need to study Daphne’s movements, just like I would with that hydra I hunted down last year for the Feast of Return. I stalked its movements for days. I knew its favorite places to go. Where it ate and slept. Where it was most vulnerable...before I made my move.

“It’s an iPhone,” he says. “And it’s the most important tool you’ll need in the mortal world.”

“However, this next feature is the most important.” He clicks on an icon that says YouTube and holds the phone up in front of me.

My online research into “how to get a girl to like me” had suggested, time and time again, that to win a human girl over, I had to be mean to her. I’d spent the bulk of class either ignoring her, contradicting her, or acting like a “bad boy,” which I gather meant showing off my muscles and leaning back in my chair after saying something sexually derogatory.

Name: Haden Lord.
Age: 16? 17?
Hair: Dark brown, almost black
Eyes: Jade green (but sometimes look like they have bright amber rings around the pupils?)
Occupation: Part-time pirate

"How do you know he wasn’t the one who was trying to hurt her in the first place?”
I shake my head in frustration. “Because I just do. And I don’t think he had anything to do with what happened to Pear, either. I was mistaken about that. He’s not evil. He’s just different.”

I realize then that her description would kind of match mine. Tall, tan, and blond. Though she is of the bleached variety and her tan probably comes from an airbrush—while mine is from living in the desert.

My normal voice isn’t high-pitched, like most of the female singers’ on the radio. I have a lower, slightly gravelly quality. Like Adele’s. But I can also sing higher if I want.

“You’re a natural blond, naturally fit— hello, all the mayonnaise on that sandwich—and most of all, you’re a natural singer. I, on the other hand, have to go to a stylist every six weeks to keep my hair color fabulous, do an hour of Pilates every morning to look this rocking, and I’ve had six different vocal coaches since I was five years old. I’ve had to work to get this voice. You just have it.”

"Don’t deny it, Daphne, you know you’re special. You’ve just got it, and people can see it. They can hear it.”

Energy pulses through my body, stronger than my heartbeat. The sunlight streaming through the canopy of the grove glints off her golden hair, and the curves of her body make my hands prickle with heat that is unlike what I normally experience before a surge of lightning. Her blue eyes, brighter than the mortal world’s sky, meet mine.

A soft breeze catches her golden hair, blowing a few stray strands about her face. I feel the sudden urge to reach out and catch one in my fingers. A strange heat tingles through my body at the thought.

“He’s crazy,” I mumble to myself as I lead Joe toward the house. “He’s daft,” Joe agrees.
“He’s insane.”
“He’s mental,” Joe says.
“I don’t even think he’s human.”
“And I can’t believe I kissed him!”

“Darrow. Come here. Come.” He grabs my shoulder and pulls me in. “Others may have failed. But you’ll be different, Darrow. I

“Darrow. Come here. Come.” He grabs my shoulder and pulls me in. “Others may have failed. But you’ll be different, Darrow. I feel it in my bones.”

"Say we make his body perfect, there’s still one problem: we cannot make him smarter. One cannot make a mouse a lion.”

I don’t know the math, but I know the pattern. I solve it and four more puzzles, then it changes once more in my hands, becoming a circle. Mickey’s eyes widen. I complete the circle’s puzzles and then toss him back the device. He stares at my hands while working his own twelve fingers.
“Impossible,” he murmurs.

Before I sleep, I drink a tonic laden with processing enhancers and speed-listen to The Colors, The Iliad, Ulysses, Metamorphosis, the Theban plays, The Draconic Labels, and restricted works like The Count of Monte Cristo, Lord of the Flies, Lady Casterly’s Penance, 1984, and The Great Gatsby. I wake knowing three thousand years of literature and legal code and history.

My name, three bars beside it now, floats nearer the Primus hand.
Cassius has risen too.
But there can be only one Primus.

People remain hungry because we’ve yet to build a fire in the castle, and hygiene is quickly forgotten when two of our girls are snatched up by Ceres horsemen as they bathe in the river just beneath our gate. The Golds are confused when even their fine pores begin clogging and they gain pimples.

The Gray soldiers prowl the cities ensuring order, ensuring obedience to the hierarchy. The Whites arbitrate their justice and push their philosophy. Pinks pleasure and serve in highColor homes. Silvers count and manipulate currency and logistics. Yellows study the medicines and sciences. Greens develop technology. Blues navigate the stars. Coppers run the bureaucracy. Every Color has a purpose. Every Color props up the Golds.

“And you may think it a waste of good Golds, but you’re an idiot if you think fifty children make a dent in our numbers. There are more than one million Golds on Mars. More than one hundred million in the Solar System. Not all get to be Peerless Scarred, though, eh?

The agony is beyond language or comprehension. I watch videos of it afterwards to distract me from the residual pain. He uses a vibroScalpel to slice the flesh of my thigh down the middle. He parts my muscle and skin with clamps to expose the bones of my legs. Then he peels off layers of the bone with a bonepeeler and paints new layers with his improved-bone recipe.
“Someone has to dot God’s i’s.”

“This is our bloodydamn planet.”
“Through sweat and toil it was made so,” he agrees.
“Then what will it take to take it back?”
“Blood.”

“Not everyone can be a wise, practical hunti man.”
“No, but they don’t have to be half-wits.”

Today’s exhibition, ending with an injured pilot and a twisted carcass of metal, hadn’t done anything to change his mind. If anything, he was more excited than ever, impatient and eager to climb in the driver’s box. He had found his passion. He wanted to fly.