caughtinanetwork

I've always considered genius to be one of the most powerful abilities a person can have. A flamethrower isn't useful without a mind behind it.

[ Annabeth grins at that. Not that Stein can see. ]

You have a very good point. My role tends to be the brains of the outfit, at any rate. Demigodliness comes with its own set of disabilities though.

What disabilities would those be?

Dyslexia, for one. Our brains are hard-wired for ancient Greek, hence why I'm talking to you rather than texting. Another shows up as Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder although it's really our natural battle reflexes making it hard for us to concentrate and learn in traditional academic ways.

If I remember correctly, the coral automatically translates spoken and written languages into something everyone can understand. It might help with your mental confusion.

[And the likelihood that ADHD actually exists as a diagnosis in Stein's world is pretty slim.]

Interesting - I didn't know it had that ability. I've just been avoiding text out of habit.

[ Annabeth's ADHD is pretty mild anyway. ] What else can the coral do?

The coral does just about everything, if you believe what they tell us. Healing, sustaining the bubble, even bringing all of us here. It's worshiped as a god.

[ Annabeth's eyebrows knit together. ]

Is it sentient at all?

Not that I've seen, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were.

Guess I'll have to check this coral out in person.

How long have you been here, out of interest?

About four months. Not long compared to others, but long enough to get used to living here.

[ Annabeth can't believe that even very intelligent people are still stuck here after so long. It chips away at her resolve to escape, but she won't give up. ]

Wow. Me, only three weeks. Do they always have... experiments like this telling the truth thing?

Fairly often. Sometimes they're less invasive, and sometimes they're worse.

There's not much we can do right now. We're just lab rats at the moment.

Great. What other kinds of things have they done?

They can do just about everything you can imagine. Remove and grant abilities, change your species, let everyone else read your mind...

...Wonderful. Sounds like the gods back home. Except they don't always do things en masse like they do here.

[ If anyone is ever granted access to Annabeth's mind, she's staying locked in a room for a week. ]

Oh? What sorts of things do the gods in your world do?

Similar stuff to what's on your list. Except it's usually to demigods like myself, since we can actually see them. It ranges from the petty to the dire. I had the unfortunate experience of pissing off Hera the goddess of cows, amongst other things. For a year after that I had to watch where I walked in case a cow pat sprang up on the sidewalk in front of me.

Hera also hatched a fantastic plan in order to bring the Roman and Greek camps together. She swapped their two most powerful demigods and removed all their memories without warning. She also placed made-up memories into certain people to make it seem like they'd been there all along.

Since the Greek half of this duo also happened to be my boyfriend I was pretty damn annoyed for eight months there while we looked for him.

Then there's all the usual stuff of turning people into dolphins if they accidentally hit on a god's sore spot. Or even if they just happen to be bored.

That's disturbing. I couldn't imagine living in a world like that.

A demigod's life is never dull, that's for sure. Not that we have a life expectancy past our teen years.

Your godly parents don't do much to protect you? [Not that the children he teaches have much of a longer life expectancy.]

Protect us? No, they throw us into the very situations that get us killed, under the guise of the title 'hero'. Basically they sire us, barely bother to claim us as children, then have us do their dirty work while they're otherwise engaged.

I'm not as bitter about it as I sound. I'm kind of used to it I guess.

On the other hand, we are able to pray to them or offer tributes and they'll help us out from time to time in ways that a normal mortal wouldn't receive. But it doesn't change the fact that we wouldn't need the help in the first place if it weren't for them.

Like throwing a lab rat a piece of fruit. [An attempt to gain their children's trust and hope the demigods ignore the problems their parents force on them.]

You got it. I mean, they obviously like humans in some way or another, since many of the gods have plenty of children, and have done for millennia now. But I guess their fascination waxes and wanes with who they're in love with most at the time.

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