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[jflashandclash]

Blood of a Mayan

 Twenty-Seven: Ajax

Learning Nothing in Life is Free… Except Free Vouchers

 There is no good way to apologize for death threats. Sure, you could send someone flowers and a note that said I’m sorry I threatened to kill you. Dinners on me, but that didn’t feel sincere. Pax could tell that’s exactly what Axel was thinking each time he glanced at Kally. Well, except without the dinner on me part, since that would be too much like a date and would be weird for all parties.

Once Axel gained full control of himself, he looked like he needed a two year vacation to Disneyworld. His eyes looked solemn and exhausted. His face was pale and sweaty. When he stood up, his legs wobbled.

Despite his danger status being at level newborn, Kally gave him a wide berth when she went to heal Leo Valdez. Pax figured it might be awhile before the two could partake in group hugs.

“What was your sister talking about?” Kally asked while kneeling beside the son of Hephaestus. She wouldn’t make eye contact with either of them, but took one of Leo’s hands into her lap. As she sang to heal his wrists, her voice quivered.

“I don’t know, but it sounded pretty end-of-the-worldy,” Pax said. He tried to think of something else to say to her that might explain away some of their actions or maybe something cheery like, “Good thing you have nightmares about Python every night so you don’t need to worry about Axel and I showing up.” That didn’t really feel appropriate.

Red Alert: The Silver Tongued Snake has run out of words.

Axel’s eyes drifted until they fixated on Pax. Had this not been Axel, a being that was—as far as Pax was concerned—a gift from the gods of Awesome and Wow, Pax would have said Axel looked scared and confused.

“We need to get all of you back to Camp Half-Blood,” he Axel. He staggered over to the work bench with the brightly colored beach towel. He grabbed it and walked to Backbiter. The blade still lay on the ground, glistening sinisterly in the moonlight and torchlight.

Both Kally and Pax flinched when Axel wrapped up the blade.

“You’re not seriously going to keep that sword are you? I mean, you go all ‘Here’s Johnny!’ when you touch the metal,” Pax said.

Axel frowned.

That was the worst Pax had ever seen Axel struggle with the Leonis Caput. Considering Axel had even been wearing a silver onesie and still looked terrifying, that meant this was pretty serious. That was the real monstrosity there: adult onesies.

“Help me get everyone back into the van,” Axel said.

 By “help me get everyone back into the van,” Axel had really meant, “Watch me pass out in the back and do all the work for me.” After Axel collapsed halfway into the van and Pax dragged him the rest of the way inside. Pax took Hunnie out of his pocket and gently placed her on Axel’s face. Within moments, Baller hopped into the back and rushed to investigate the beach towel at Axel’s side. Experimentally, Baller bit at the material.

Pax hoped that the sword wouldn’t call some inner demon out of Baller. He really didn’t want to fight a ten foot long weasel wielding a sword and demanding beef jerky.

The next half hour was a little awkward. While Kally fixed up Leo, Pax raided the shack for leftover stew and to-go boxes. Pax even paid for the stew and wished he could write up a little citation notice for Leo about violating California Code SB-1221 from Officer Doofus. Leo wouldn’t remember who that was, but that might make it even better. Unfortunately, he figured Kally wouldn’t be in the mood to transcribe for him.

Pax swiped a few of those vouchers his mom had mentioned off the counter and walked outside to meet Kally.

She’d finished fixing up Leo and managed to drag him onto the work table beside Calypso. While Pax was inside pillaging, she must have gathered her messenger bag. Pax frowned when she saw her hand defensively on her Argonaut statue.

“I stole each of us free vouchers for Reese’s Sundays,” Pax informed her, holding up the slips of paper. “Located at Moma’s Sweets only a ten minute drive without donkey power.”

“Free vouchers are meant to be taken,” Kally said.

“Oh, well, I legally acquired them,” he said with a devilish grin. That somehow sounded more sinister and Pax would have normally been proud of it.

She didn’t crack a smile. Those green eyes were soul crushing. She tried to stand up tall and look authoritative, though Pax could see she was still shaken. “When we get back to Camp Half-Blood, you’re telling Chiron everything.”

That sounded about as smart as skydiving with a trash bag. Pax opened his mouth to protest.

Kally continued, gulping, “If you don’t, I—I will.”

That was like skydiving with one of those complimentary, airplane throw-up bags, prefilled for grossness. “Uh, eternal torment. Orkus—” Pax reminded her. His heart thumped in his ears. The little stunt with the River Styx might be back firing.

“I don’t care. What happened to Axel back there wasn’t good for him and he’s not fit to… do whatever with your dad. Obviously you really want to stop your dad, but—but maybe we should leave it to the real heroes. Maybe, if we tell Chiron, Jason Grace or Percy Jackson can do it.”

The real heroes.

Ow, my tiny bit of pride. Getting hit in the pride and the righteousness all in one day? Pax was waiting for someone to finish him off, to tell him he wasn’t cuter than a baby panda, and send him to tears. Though by nature of how pathetic and adorable he would look while crying, he might be able to disprove their claim.

A part of him screamed that Jason and Percy weren’t any better than he or Axel. He, Axel, and Alabaster had been training to and probably could have taken them out, but that tidbit of information might not help defend his case.

The rest of him realized she was right. Relief flooded over him when he thought about someone else—some real heroes—arresting their dad. Axel had always said it was a family matter, but Pax didn’t care. If Piper, or Jason, or Annabeth were on the line against the Pax family, it would mean Axel was safe, hiding with him. They wouldn’t need the stupid Golden Net or Backbiter.

“We could hold a game show to find out which hero gets the quest and a complimentary shirt—” As he spoke, he could see the rims around her eyes getting red. Yea, he couldn’t handle it if she started crying, because he would definitely start to cry too and then Ares would show up and beat them both up for being wimps and take their lunch money, or at least rob Leo’s shop since that’s where all of Pax’s lunch money had gone.

“Sorry,” he cut himself off. No jokes. No jokes, he chanted in his head to keep focused. He puffed up his cheeks and popped them. He wanted to make everything right. This might have been the best way. “I’ll tell Chiron everything. I… I swear on the—”

“Stop.” She held up a hand and took a step closer to him, eyes wide. “I—I don’t want anyone to have a River Styx curse. And I want to know that you’re going to do it because you’re going to do it, not because you’re afraid of eternal pain or whatever.”

Pax puffed up his cheeks and popped them. He realized he’d messed up a good thing with Kally, but he didn’t realize how good a thing it could have been until that response. She really was a fantastic person. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he and Axel didn’t deserve good people. “Can I quote you on a motivational poster?” he asked.

Something about the way he looked at her must have cued Kally in to the type of adoration he was feeling. She blushed, then scowled. “Shut up, I’m still mad at you.”

“Cyclopes got fangs,” he teased. Upon seeing the way she gripped her Argonaut statue, he held his hands up. “Sorry—I’m sorry. You have every right to be mad.” Don’t joke. Don’t make a joke. Keep it together man!

She sighed and motioned towards the van. “This is why I didn’t agree to date you.”

Pax glanced around at the general, torched vicinity. “Uh, because you knew I’d assist in an amazing party then bring about the reforging of a talking sword that belonged to the Grinch Who Stole Olympus? Er, tried to?” He walked alongside her, towards their friends. Pax almost reflexively grabbed her hands, but realized that would probably incite a good lesson in karma, taught with fists.

“Because I can’t trust you,” she said. Kally didn’t make eye contact, but Pax could tell it wasn’t just because she was upset. Her gaze was distant. “The forge ambushed in the lion’s maw. Not to flame or plea will force withdraw,” she quoted.

Pax winced. Couldn’t Rachel have told Kally, “That Axel dude is going to attack Leo. Attacking back or begging him to stop won’t do anything, so prepare a good pep talk.”

Kally frowned and continued. “I think Joey’s quest is one of the dominos Rachel was talking about. Things are about to get serious.”

 When they got out to the van, Euna was awake and raiding the to-go boxes. As she munched and they approached, she gave them an absent wave. She didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned that everyone was fast asleep around her.

If Pax wasn’t absolutely sure she would kick the snot out of him for it later, he’d prop a box up with a stick, put a cheeseburger under there, and see if Euna would get boxed. But, knowing Flower Girl’s power, she’d probably bring the box and stick to life and they would go Groot on him. Recycling at its most violent.

Several of the satyrs and nymphs were yawning and sitting up. Calex was up and stretching as well.

Pax wondered if everyone had happy dreams of rainbows, sunshine, and rodents. Morpheus Dust was supposed to grant happy dreams from what he remembered. From the way Calex looked relaxed and not sad over his mom and brother, he guessed Calex had a nice dream about cleaning Hazel Levesque and Frank Zhang’s house for them, then fetching coffee for Percy and Annabeth afterwards.

“Hey Calex, Euna, can you help us get everyone in the van?” Kally asked. “We need to get to Chiron as fast as possible.”

Kally might as well have sprinted up to Calex, socked him in the stomach, and shouted, “I grew a backbone Scrum Lord! And your football team sucks!”

He gave her a perplexed glance, looked back and forth between Pax and Kally, then glared at Pax. “What happened?” he slowly asked. “This perv upset you?”

Kally frowned.

Pax figured now was a fantastic time to tell the truth. “My pop is ascending tomorrow morning. No time to get a signature from Leo. I already wrote him a note.” Just not the whole truth. That would come later. He really hoped no one remembered he was illiterate, since his note was a metaphorical one in the form of coins.

“Ascending?” Euna repeated. She set her to-go box down. Pax could envision her movie trailer now: When Euna sets food aside: Stuff. Gets. SERIOUS.

Kally nodded. She joined Calex in his glare at Pax. “When we get to Chiron, Pax will explain everything—” He gave her his best charming grin of I’m a sleazebag and I’ve accepted that as a friendly term. “—but the sooner we get there, the better. Do you think we have enough time to drive back and get Percy or Annabeth out here? Or, uh, should we Iris Message?” Kally seemed to realize she was being a proper domineering heroine and tapered off to return to sidekick status.

At hearing the plan, Pax wanted to hug Kally. If it was mandated by Camp Half-Blood, they could trap Axel at Camp Half-Blood to prevent him from interfering and force him to play games, like volleyball and sneak-past-Argus. No one had beaten that game yet, but he was going to prove to the Stoll brothers that it could be done.

“We’re not going?” Euna asked. She sounded incredibly relieved.

Calex looked surprised. “Won’t your bother be—where’s Axel?”

Again, Calex always sounded so suspicious of Pax. Although the reaction proved some intelligence on Calex’s part, Pax had to feign an indignant huff—an excellent mimic of Joey’s—to pretend Calex was still ridiculous.

“Unconscious,” Pax assured. Knowing that should be enough explanation, he cheerfully stepped towards the van.

He could still hear the others as Kally and Calex walked over to Merry’s sleeping bag. “Just let me know if this dodgy prick bothers you and he’ll be in love with a Reese’s Stick right quick.” The Son of Eros tapped the pencil pouch sticking out of his jean’s pocket.

“I’d never be able to eat it!” Pax cried, terrified of the thought.

From the grin Calex gave him, that was the full intention.

“You monster,” Pax grumbled.

Kally blushed and broke eye contact with Calex. “Thank you Calex, but I’ve been able to take care of myself.”

Judging from the dull pain in his stomach from where Kally’s elbow had a romantic rendezvous with his gut, he had to agree. From both times Pax had upset her to violence… had it really been two times? Should Pax have an intervention with Kally about her friendship choices? He never would, as he’d have to recommend Kally to stay away from him, but the sentiment was there.

He expected her to be glaring at him warily, but she was staring at the van. He winced. Ajax Pax wasn’t the Pax she was afraid of.

“That offer never expires,” Calex assured her. He knelt down beside Merry, who was curled up on her side. “Will she go mental if I wake her?” He glanced to where Euna had woken up Joey. Joey didn’t seem nearly as pow! and bam! as her sister. Pax imagined that Joey only got like that when she realized they didn’t have any showers or mirrors.

Kally shook her head and covered up a laugh with her hand. It was good to see her smile, especially at the potential misery of Calex. “No, she just complains a lot in the morning.”

“Mmm, sweetie Kal, you don’t know this pain,” Merry whined from her sleeping bag. She stretched, rolled over, and stretched on the other side, reminding Pax of a slow motion weasel. “Give me five minutes of stretching and seven Tylenol. Then I’ll be ready to face the pain in my back. And that massage that Calex owes me for dragging him away from that model mania.” She peered up at him slyly from her lazy sprawl.

“How about I carry you to the van?” Calex offered instead.

“Oh honey, you won’t—” Merry yelped when Calex picked her up, bridal style. As though she feared he’d get a bad case of bodacious butterfingers, Merry clung to him. When he didn’t drop her, but continued towards the van with little more than a quick neck crack, she said, “You can carry me? But I weigh like, three Paxes!”

“Hey!” Pax resented that. “I am a tiny ball of muscle!”

Merry ignored him. Her voice carried over Calex’s shoulder as they went to join the Song sisters in the van. “Calex, we should be asexual life partners. You’re a useful sweet teddy.”

From inside, Pax could hear Joey say, “Asexual? Wouldn’t your dad have to disown you for that?”

As their Scooby Team assembled, Pax bowed slightly to Kally. “Cyclopes,” he said.

She looked at the ground and walked to the passenger door.

Pax puffed up his cheeks, popped them, and walked to the driver’s side. For Christmas, he’d have to buy Kally a coupon book full of Free Punch Pax Day and Fill in the Blank for What Stupid Thing You Want Pax to Say to ___ Hero that Can Kick His Sorry Butt.

  Pax decided—if they got pulled over for speeding, he was going to hand Calex over as a sacrifice to the American judicial system.

Axel was still passed out in the back with the Phobetor sleeping bag carefully tucked over his head. His Mist mask always fell away when he slept, so he and Pax had a careful system of assuring he was properly cocooned.[1] Calex freaked out as soon as he went near Axel. Pax wanted to assure that yes—Axel would emerge a beautiful butterfly, but he suspected that wasn’t Calex’s problem.

“What’s in the towel?” Calex demanded. “That’s it, isn’t it? One of the things screaming malice back here?”

The towel containing Backbiter was tucked tightly beside the fluffy sleeping bundle of Axel, completely unseen to the average eye.

“Calex, you suck,” Pax grumbled as he sat in the driver’s seat. He was frustrated to find the seatbelt still broken from the dart-jamming incident earlier. “First you understand Axel and I when we’re trying to have a familial conversation, then you can tell Kally and I had a spat, and now you get feelings off our evil sword. You don’t have X-ray vision too, do you? Because I’ll be quite disappointed if you ruin the surprise of which boxers I wear on special occasions.”

They had a brief argument over what to do with the sword, not once mentioning the importance of his boxers. At first, Pax was disgusted to agree with Calex about leaving it behind, but Kally pointed out that Chiron would know how to get rid of the blade properly. Joey and Euna were confused, though Euna busied herself assuring everyone was settled on the couches so they could drive. Merry remained quiet, listening, and didn’t interject until they decided to bring the sword to Camp Half-Blood.

“So, Pax,” she said as he pulled out of the parking lot. “I assume you’re going to explain why all of us adults needed a nap time at one of my parties when we talk to Chiron? No one ever yawns at one of my parties.” Her brown eyes flashed.

Maybe they should plan to have a dunking booth. Everyone would get a turn for each thing he’d screwed up so… he’d probably be better off with having Percy drown him. “Yep!” Pax puffed up his cheeks and popped them. “Come one! Come all! The Pax secrets divulged! Except my night cream routine. Joey might steal that.”

He glanced in the mirror at her. Joey rolled her eyes at him, butshe  was too deep into a to-go box for a real response.

Pax entered the coordinates off his ice cream voucher into the GPS, but didn’t engage Luke’s system. He didn’t want the donkey to tug him. Pax wanted to tear down the highway on his own to get his mind off the conversation he’d have when Axel woke up. “Axel, this is an intervention. We took your sword away and gave you an ice pop.”

Only slightly better than the convo with Chiron. Pax wanted to make sure Kally didn’t have any secrets that needed keeping. But… would Chiron accept the argument that they weren’t going to do any more evil seeming things and that it must be the start of their redemption arc?

Pax corralled the conversation towards Joey’s cheerful Winter Break plans: Greek Hell. That’s not what it actually was, but Pax liked to make it sound as horrible as possible to get everyone’s mind on a safer topic.

Ideas were pumping through the back about Joey’s quest from Hera, like how to get to Hades and how to get help from Persephone. Pax tried to contribute. He suggested they tell the Ares Cabin that the Athena Cabin said they could dig a bigger hole using their brains than their brawn, and vice versa for the other cabin, and then sit back and wait.

Kally stayed quiet. She would stare out the window at the shadows of trees and the distant, polluted glow of the town of Berkeley Hills. Then she’d jump and glance back to where Axel and the sword laid dormant. Axel never moved; he only ever slept like this when he had two nighters or when Pax darted him. Pax wanted to tease, “naww, look at him and his widdle sword.” He wanted to say a lot of things, to ramble until Kally forgot what happened and felt better, but he was getting this strange inkling that maayyyybe that wasn’t the best way to solve this.

They were leaving the park’s forest when the sign for Moma’s Sweets caught his headlights. Pax couldn’t actually read the writing, but he recognized the double scoop logo from the vouchers. Pax pulled off the side of the road into the far side of the parking lot, away from the other occupants and closer to the trees—in case Leo Valdez magically got his memory back, woke up, and was searching their van out on the road.

There was a small, single room shop just off what Kally had called out as Grizzly Peak Boulevard, which—Pax was surprised—still had its lights on. The shop was painted red, with yellow shutters, very hipster friendly. Pax knew they were near a college town and wondered if he was about to run into exactly the kind of child-adults that Michael Kahale was worried would test out fireworks during flame season.

“We’re stopping for ice cream?” Joey asked skeptically from the back. “Isn’t your dad like, ascending tomorrow? What happened to hurrying to Chiron?”

“Ice cream is clearly more important,” Pax said. He put the emergency brake down when he parked, as if Luke couldn’t tear right through that. The driver’s seat belt was in ribbons from Axel cutting at it—totally worth pranking Leo—but they’d need to get that fixed. Although Pax tended to enjoy a good bout with danger, one with the windshield was something he’d rather save for a few hundred years.

“Besides,” he continued as he hopped out of the van. “I’ve always wanted to know if I could balance or juggle seven sundaes on my own. I’ll be back.”

Before anyone could offer to come with, he jammed his hands into his pockets and stalked towards the shop. In reality, he didn’t know what kind of exchange the vouchers demanded, and he was sure he was going to end up exhausting his mortal money supply on guilt desserts for the group. And maybe he could ask the cashier how you apologized to your friends for drugging all of them and lying for months. Pleasant evening chatter.

There were only two other cars on the other side of the parking lot: a white ice cream truck and a pickup truck that looked like an extra from Mad Max. Pax found it strange that not many people would want ice cream at midnight in November, but he figured others didn’t have as good of taste.

Pax was fumbling with the vouchers while he shoved the door opened and took a step inside. He almost ran into a guest. He was about to bow grandly and apologize to the sir or lady or other when he heard the familiar click of someone cocking the hammer on a revolver.

“Hello Ajax,” a male voice cooed.

If Pax had ingested a pound of cockroaches and they all made a dash up his esophagus at the same time, he imagined this was about how it would feel. He was going to need a lot more than some sundaes to make up for this mistake. Though he couldn’t figure out what before something metal cracked across his jaw, knocking him backwards.

 Thanks for reading! :D

[1] So, I definitely cocoon when I sleep. (Mel will verify this and has conducted several studies on the process.) Is this normal? Do you guys do this? (Also, Mel—upon reading this footnote—denied that she conducted studies. She said she happened to watch my sleeping process because we roomed together for a bit XD)