Iris Potter
Iris Potter wasn't all that sure about what she was doing. She was running, trying to keep up with Thalia and holding Luke's hand, with Annabeth following behind them. She knew that. But she didn't understand why they were running from the police. Didn't they know about the mist? Chiron had shown her how to manipulate it the year before when she questioned him about it.
Surely Grover had mentioned it to them?
If they could stop for a minute she could make the cops believe that they were after a group of adults, not children, or something similar that would get them to stop. She had tried to explain this to Thalia and Luke, but she was younger than them, so they obviously knew better than her. Never mind that she had already been living at the camp for two years.
It was times like this that the seven-year-old regretted her choice to go with Grover. When he told her he was going to go and collect a very powerful demigod all those months ago, he had seemed so nervous. Iris couldn't just let him go all alone. So she had snuck out of the camp to join him. It was a good thing too because he was not prepared for this. Iris was glad she packed lots of spare clothes because when they found Thalia, she was with two other demigods. That wasn't the plan.
But it was ok, she had clothes she could share with Annabeth, the girl who was the same age as her, and she had extra money that she had been saving up so that they could buy food. And she had an extra set of daggers that she lent to Luke, the older boy, when he lost his sword to a Hellhound. She had made sure she was prepared for anything and it was lucky too. Except now they were running from the police, and she knew how to deal with it, yet they wouldn't let her.
Because she was "too young."
Rubbish, she thought.
She thought about just stopping. Luke would have to stop too then, and so would Annabeth who was running behind them. Thalia and Grover would figure out soon enough that we weren't following them. Maybe she would just let them keep running whilst she dealt with the police. Would serve them right.
How had they even got into this position? They were running out of food and Luke wanted them to save the leftover money so that they could travel. He had told Thalia that he would go and steal some food from one of the shops.
Iris had offered to help, she was quite good at stealing. She had some practice after a few of her past foster families refused to feed her as often or as much as they should have. So she had been stealing on and off since she was four. That was when she was first put in a bad foster home. They had- not the time to think about that.
Anyway.
Luke had turned her down and said it was better if only one person was doing the stealing. Less chance of being caught he said.
Ha, she thought.
Luke had been caught anyway, and now they were being chased by police.
Should have let me do the stealing, she thought.
And again no one listened to her when she offered her help. Maybe she would let them all keep running. It was their own fault really. But her legs were sooooo tired.
Luke pulled her around a corner before he let go of her hand so he could grab Annabeth, who was lagging behind. Iris could just about hear the two policemen behind them. The children had almost lost them. She took a chance and looked behind her to see how much space was between them when she bumped into someone and fell onto her bum. She only had a brief moment to look up at the man wearing a suit and sunglasses that she had run into before Thalia was there pulling her up. And they were running again.
She briefly looked back at the man who had a funny beard. He was calling out to them with a confused look on his face at the police chasing them. Iris later found out from Luke that the beard was called a Goatee.
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It was a few weeks later. The children had been held up in a Cyclop's den, but they had eventually made it to camp. However, due to their hold up all the monsters that had been chasing them managed to catch up. Thalia had bravely defended them and gave them enough time to get to the borders.
Iris had never felt so helpless in her entire life. She was supposed to be the daughter of a war God. She should have been the one out there defending her friends, fighting for them. Instead, she had to watch as Thalia, someone she had come to view as a sister was killed in front of them. She had wanted so badly to run to her, to help her, to fight with her, but Luke had held her back.
There was a moment of stillness. The monsters all seemed to hold their breath as the daughter of Zeus was thrown to the ground. Annabeth had screamed before a bolt of lightning had split the sky and then Thalia was changing, growing. Zeus, in her last moments, had turned Thalia into a tree, and a border had spread around the camp that kept the monsters from reaching them. Her sacrifice hadn't been in vain. Luke had dragged Iris towards the entrance of the camp, and Grover was holding a crying Annabeth.
There was a bit of a commotion after word spread of the death of the daughter of Zeus, and everyone was speaking of it. Iris had been in trouble and put on dish duty for a month because she had snuck out of camp, but she really didn't care. Thalia was dead.
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Annabeth was claimed by Athena the day after they arrived, and Luke by Hermes a week later. After that, everything seemed to go back to normal in camp. Apollo cabin continued to do the archery lessons, and her siblings in the Ares cabin continued to pick on Iris because she didn't like fighting, and the Capture The Flag games carried on. Everyone had moved on, other than Annabeth, Luke, Grover and Iris. She missed Thalia. Suffice to say, she wasn't very happy. Her mood plummeted even further when Chiron called her to the big house.
He wanted to talk to her about going to another foster home for a little while as the police had recognised her as someone who should have been in the system.
"Typically I would manipulate the mist to allow you to stay here," Chiro had said, "but because they have all your files on computers, and more than one person is involved in this, it makes it all a little more complicated."
"So what am I supposed to do?" Iris asked nervously.
Chiron sighed and rubbed his eyebrow before crossing his arms.
"I'd say the best thing to do would be to stay in one of their foster homes for a bit. Once they shift their focus to someone else then you can come back and join us in the summer. How does that sound?"
Iris shrugged and twisted the hem of her top in her hands anxiously.
"Ok."
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That was how Iris found herself running down the streets of New York two weeks later. Her new foster parents weren't too bad, it was the other kids that were giving her issues, and after what happened with that man when she was five, she tried to avoid conflict. And those kids were all looking for a fight. They had pulled her hair and stole what little things she brought with her, and they kept pushing and shoving her. She just got so mad. She didn't mean to punch Kevin. She couldn't help it, he just made her so angry.
So now here she was running away as the police tried to catch her. They wanted to bring her back to her foster family after she escaped but that wasn't happening. She would probably be moved again. They would call her dangerous and volatile.
She was weaving through the crowds, ignoring the police calling for her to stop, her backpack bouncing on her shoulder. She had almost managed to get away when someone stepped onto the sidewalk and straight into her path. She fell flat on her back with a big oomph and she heard a grunt coming from whoever she ran into. Slightly dazed, she looked up to see who she had run into.
It was him!
It was the man she ran into with Thalia and Luke. The one with the weird beard. The goatee. He was still wearing a suit and sunglasses and he was talking on a fancy-looking phone whilst he got out of a fancy-looking car being opened by a fancy-looking man.
His butler probably, She joked to herself.
"Hey I am going to have to call you back Obadiah," the man said to whoever he was calling. "Yeah I'm fine, just got to sort something, yep, bye."
The man slipped his phone into his jacket pocket before turning to Iris who was still on the floor. Which, she would like to add was counterproductive, seeing as she could just about hear the police in the noise of New York. The man reached down and pulled her up to her feet.
"You alright kid?" He asked. "Hey, you're that girl who ran into me last month, aren't you? Where are your friends?"
Iris was about to answer before she remembered that she was trying to avoid the police. So instead she twisted her arm to break out of the man's grip and took to a sprint down the street. Not a moment too soon either, as she heard the police a few steps behind her.
She could just about hear the man calling out to her above the honking of cars and the chattering of people.