Suddenly the mood seemed to shift. Elias sat up a little straighter, now giving Bo his full attention.
"Hey," he said gently to Bo, trying not to draw more attention to his cries or sad thoughts since he figured that was the last thing he needed. "I'm sorry that happened. That... well, this all sucks. You wished he was here, and he wished you were here too, so you know what?"
He got up on his feet and stood up, feeling tall but only because Bo was sitting down.
"Let's go find him, then. It can't be that hard, right? We can check all the prisons if we have to."
Kazimir looked back at Maggie, swiveling in his seat, narrowing his eyes at them. "It's not like I tote him around with me everywhere."
--xxx--
Bo rubbed his eyes dry with his hands, and looked up at Elias. He appreciated Elias's sudden determination, but it wasn't like finding his dad would get his dad out of prison. He sniffed again.
"Elias--" was all he got to saying before his grandma came walking in with a big tray full of chocolate chip cookies. The first thing she said was:
"I didn't make these."
Then she set them on the coffee table in front of Bo and Elias. She stood up straight and looked from Bo to Elias. She looked like she was about to say something, but decided not to, and she turned around and left without another word.
Bo stared at the cookies for a moment before sighing.
"I don't think that will change anything," he said quietly. "But... thank you for telling me what happened."
At that moment, the room started to get a little misty. Fog slowly started seeping into the room, like it was coming out of the crevices of the home.
Maggie rolled their eyes. "Look at you. That orange isn't a fashion statement, and I doubt your son is all that proud to know his pops is wearing it. Once there's a family to get back to, especially when you've got a kid, you have to scrub the death business from your life and become someone those people back home deserve to be proud of. You don't get to gamble at the high stakes that we do when you actually have something worthwhile that doesn't belong to you on the line, like, say, your son's father. It's disgusting that you think you can risk your son's right to have a decent father in his life for a career as seriously dull as ours."
Kazimir felt heat rising in his chest with each passing sentence that came out of Maggie's mouth. She was a hitman? That didn't mean she understood.
"You don't know anything about me. Or my family," he growled. "And don't pretend like you do."
But something about what she said cut through him, and though he had a defense, he didn't know if it would be good enough, or justified. In his heart, he knew Maggie was right. He just wished he knew how to get out of it. For Bo.
He wasn't about to explain to Maggie how his father kept pulling the strings, no matter how many times Kazimir tried to break them.
After the last few words left his mouth, a steamy mist started creeping into the cell through the metal bars. First, slowly, and then all at once.
At the same time, the room in his family's mansion, where Bo sat with Elias and Annabeth filled with mist.
Annabeth only had time to give Bo a comforting smile before the mist swept into the room, shrouding everything from view. She raised her eyebrow questioningly at Elias before the mist enveloped him too.
She could only see white. Finally, the mist faded, but the room had been replaced by darkness.
For a few panicked seconds, Annabeth thought she had gone blind. But, as her eyes adjusted, she saw the outline of two buildings and the moon above them.
So, it was only night. Annabeth chuckled lightly at her silliness and looked around. Elias was a few feet to her left, and in the distance, she noticed three familiar figures.
A smile bloomed across her face, and she grabbed Elias's hand. "Look, there they are!" she told him.
Annabeth pulled him into a run then let go, and she ran up to her friends. "Hades, Maggie, Kaz! You're all okay! Oh my goodness, we were so worried about you! We saw Bo, Kaz, and he's okay!"
She would let Elias explain what had happened, settling on exploring their surroundings.
They were in the middle of a large field, standing in front of a farmhouse and barn. Why they were there, she had no idea, but they would find out soon enough, she guessed.
Annabeth looked back at the others, finally noticing their outfit changes.
They, and she, were wearing black hunting clothes with leather fingerless gloves and leather boots. Annabeth's hair was tied up in a braid, while Maggie's was in a ponytail. Each person had a variety of weapons clipped to their belts.
Silver knives, salt, stakes, and guns. Annabeth reached inside the pocket of her vest and felt iron bullets.
Something akin to dread rose in her throat.
There is always something left to love. - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Kazimir was relieved when the prison faded away. He wanted to forget any of that ever happened, but he knew he couldn't. His usual attitude was dampened, and he didn't know how long it would take him to feel normal... or if he ever would. Not until he actually got home again. Not until he saw Bo again. Safe.
As the new scene came into view, Kazimir found himself a lot of black and a lot of leather. Different weapons were strapped at his sides, and while in some ways, it was an oddly comforting thing, this wasn't exactly his usual attire. Nor his usual choice of weaponry, apart from maybe the knives and guns. But why did he have a vial of salt...?
He looked up when he heard Annabeth. She was pulling Elias towards them, and he was relieved that the two of them were okay. He smiled until he heard her last sentence.
We saw Bo, Kaz, and he's okay!
They saw... Bo?
His smile faded. Yes, he was glad to hear that Bo was okay, but also... well he had no idea what that meant. Was it really Bo? Or just a dream version of him?
Kazimir didn't have the smarts to figure that one out.
"Where exactly were you guys?" Kazimir asked, looking from Annabeth to Elias.
It was happening again. The mist engulfed them all before Elias even had a chance to respond, and suddenly he was in a new place and new time with new clothes again. It was a shame that the mist always seemed to come at inconvenient times... well, except for his. It felt like he was in his world for a whole two minutes and nothing happened. Nothing except, well, what the others claimed to happen, which was more than enough information than Elias wanted to hear.
Elias barely had time to check out his spiffy new costume before Annabeth grabbed his hand and yanked him somewhere else. This was beginning to be a pattern now, but somehow, he was used to this.
When they came to a stop, he pulled away and smiled as he looked up at Kaz and Hades. Not so much Maggie because they still kind of freaked him out.
"We were with Bo!" he exclaimed. It felt nice to be looked upon for information. "Where were you? ... Oh, well."
He didn't give them any time to interject.
"We were in this giant house. Like, it looked like it was made for giants, and it was in front of the ocean, and then a lady opened the door, and then Bo peeked out. We didn't know he was Bo, at first, but he looked just like Kaz, but smaller. But still taller. Because he was..."
He lifted his hand up in the air.
"... This tall? Anyways, Annabeth explained the whole situation, and then Bo's grandma appeared—I think her name was Vesna or something like that—and she invited us in, and we sat on fancy white couches. Bo missed Kaz a lot, and he thought that he just up and left him, but we told him that was false, and then he wished he got to see him. That was all that happened, really. And now we're here."
The mist consumed them again, and Maggie was left dreading the new costume change. That's what they were, really. Costumes. So everyone could play the roles assigned to them in the nightmares that mist, or whoever was controlling this, designed for each of them in turn.
This one was probably Annabeth's.
A farmhouse, a field, clothes and weapons like some kind of monster hunting show.
Maggie felt ill.
Ignoring the others in favor of looking around, they quickly let their hair out of the ponytail. So Annabeth was a rural monster hunter, as far as Maggie could guess. Vampires, demons, likely ghosts and other things that went bump in the night. Judging by the weapons they'd all been equipt with, she killed them.
The conversation with Maggie and Kaz had escalated before he could step in. Not longer after that, the prison faded into mist - and was replaced with a scene that was both unfamiliar and familiar. This vision felt much more like his own life than Elias and Kaz's. He liked the familiar sight of a field. The buildings nearby were in a different style than he was used to, but even those didn't seem entirely as foreign as the places they had just been in.
He glanced down.
His clothes were...different. Different than they had been with Kaz, but of a similar quality. He hesitantly reached a hand down and lifted up the jacket. Even though the style was strange, it wasn't...bad. He kind of liked.
He put the jacket back down.
As Elias recounted what had happened to Kaz, Hades took stock of what he had on him now. The knives, salt and stakes were all familiar, though he wasn't entirely sure what the salt and stakes were for. What confused him even more was the last thing attached to his waist: a strange, metallic object that had to be some kind of weapon. He lifted it out, studying it and trying to figure out what exactly it did. It was too intricate to be something that was just thrown, but he couldn't see where the weapon part of it was.
Annabeth dragged her eyes up to Kaz's face and smiled weakly.
"Ah, I'm sure you've all guessed that the mist has chosen to torture me next," she said. Gesturing to their location, she continued, "I'm not exactly sure where we are, but I think we're somewhere in the Midwest."
Annabeth pointed at the weapon Hades was inspecting. "That's called a gun. It's not loaded now, but it's very dangerous and deadly. You use this to load it." She showed him one of her bullets. "Iron is too brittle to make a good projectile, but these guns were specially made to accommodate them."
She returned the bullet to her pocket, chuckling weakly. "Well, I'm a monster hunter."
Annabeth made small jazz hands.
She opened her mouth to explain more, but the door to the house burst open, and a woman and two small girls ran out.
"Oh thank God," she cried, tears running down her face. The trio swarmed around the group. The children latched onto Annabeth, hugging her waist tightly. The woman, presumably their mother, grasped her arms, shaking her. Annabeth was beginning to feel very overwhelmed.
"Thank God!" said the woman again. "You've come to help us. Please help us!"
There is always something left to love. - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Kazimir watched as the kid and woman ran out, and he had a feeling he understood the general situation. These people must've asked for monster hunters to come to solve a monster problem. Otherwise, they wouldn't seem this relieved and desperate.
But if their past misty experiences were anything to go by, this probably wasn't going to end well... Kazimir didn't know if there was anything they could do about that. But hell if he wasn't going to try.
"Where's the problem?" Kazimir asked the woman. "We'll do our best to take care of it."
He didn't know the first thing about "monster hunting," but he at least knew how to shoot a gun.
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