O P E N S H U T

“Gee, Pops, you’re saltier than these chips- hey!” He reached for the chips but couldn’t get at them. “I thought they’d be like sour cream and onion! The bag is green, too, and everyone knows that a green chips bag means sour cream and onion. These are just hella onion.” Priapus knew he should be wary and on alert. It wasn’t exactly news that something was afoot at the Circle K. But, he couldn’t imagine anyone left as a traitor, and mostly just hoped he and his brother would get by on good karma. 

“don’t call me pops. i’m not the dad of a nuclear family from the fifties,” he muttered, easily keeping the chips out of reach as he ate a handful. they were extremely oniony, but they were chips, and he was a fan of chips. “onions are great, if you don’t respect them then you don’t deserve these chips, tough tits,” he said as he glanced at priapus. he never really suspected the man as a traitor, because of the way he was, really...but who knows, it could have been a very skilled long con. maybe priapus was secretly a mastermind. “don’t you have something to be doing anyway?”

he stared at priapus, eyebrow raised, face utterly impassive. now, honestly, soter found him a pretty low risk, in terms of disguise. priapus didn’t exactly radiate spy, or even dangerous. he pretty much gave off the frat boy flunking out on a volley ball scholarship vibe, which made soter’s job fairly easy. he never thought just be yourself would be a technique he would bestow on anyone. “...no. i don’t. you should have thought of that before you bought them,” he grumbled...but then decided that he actually did want the chips, because, well, chips, and he took the bag from him. 

she did try to hold his stare for as long as possible—which was about 0,05 seconds. her father had always taught her the importance of showing respect to any kind of authority, and although soter was not the head agent nor part of the staff, he had been an olympus agent for longer than her, and she could only imagine what kind of previous experience carried upon his shoulders. well aware that soter couldn’t lay a hand on her or harm her in any way ( excruciatingly long hours of paperwork aside ), her eyes fixed on the wall in front of her before he could threaten her, gulping hardly as she finished her snack in silence. “ i’m sorry, sir, ” she let out after she was finished, eyes still set on the wall. her tongue swept over her lip as she wondered whether or not she should break the silence. for the record, she knew she shouldn’t have, but she did anyway, unable to stop herself and her awkward timbre. “ so… einstein’s gravitational waves can be ‘seen’ now. ”

“but doesn’t a calculated lifespan include all those other factors,” ari sighed, sounding more defeated than argumentative, mumbling under his breath that bugs were innocent and it was nothing like having to face down someone like a known terrorist. with a quick succession of blinks, he watched soter and all his visible tensions, then dug his fingers into select pressure points on soter’s shoulder to try to help relieve at least some of the physical pains that came with being tense. the rest of it was a spiritual matter; ariadne could tell, and he could also tell that soter would not be welcome to being told he needed to meditate and align his chakras if he wanted to help eradicate the inner turmoils plaguing him. at least not yet. “demeter is sort of a hard person to keep track of,” ari admitted, with a little shrug of one shoulder. “he’s always very busy doing—i don’t know. stuff daedalus tells him to do.” batting his eyelashes, he added (after a pause), “but i can help, maybe.”

It’d been years since Hypnos had emerged from his hiding. Years of never seeing or speaking to anyone he knew personally and had a close bond with. His loyalty to Olympus was rooted into his blood and he was deeply trusted by Chronos himself but even with that, Hypnos needed to be alone and heal after he was faced with the most bitter betrayal. When Olympus was attacked he knew he had to return, he knew they needed him more than he needed them. He’d been ignoring the tower for some time now, very few agents were informed about Agent Hypnos’ return. He wandered the streets of London freely. He’d been pronounced missing and assumed dead for some time now, if caught by the wrong person he could easily play it off. —-  ❝ well you certainly look like you’ve seen a ghost. ❞ He asked with a bit of worry in his tone.  ❝ Are you alright? ❞

so… she hadn’t foreseen for her sudden need to talk to anyone about the terrifying mysteries of the ocean to be heard by soter. at all. in her experience, he was, quite possibly, the worst person to chat about anything that wasn’t strictly related to olympus—not that it had stopped her before, even if she wasn’t quite sure what to say now. “ yeah, well—” she tsked, hands crossing over her chest. had she not been a trained agent and, well, twenty, she would’ve stuck her tongue out, in all honesty. “ i’d like to have manish malhotra’s entire bridal collection for a wedding i most likely won’t even have, but… you can’t always get what you want. ” and yes, she sang her words to the famous rolling stones’ hit as her head wobbled, a hint of a smile approaching her lips before erasing every trace of it ever existing.

“ — OH!! biscuits. i — golly, you take out one screw and the whole thing just!! this is terrible engineering you know, if it was built right in the first place it wouldn’t have fallen apart like this. okay. no but this is perfectly okay because i can fix it. i mean, i WILL fix it. tip top shape, and no one will be any the wiser, except…well, Y O U. because you uh, you caught me. how embarrassing. i promise i belong here. i’m uh, well, it’s been an OFF day because i ran out of um, bolts, and this thing had bolts, i figured it wouldn’t mind if i BORROWED one but i guess i was wrong…”

If there was one thing Emma learned from all those years in the military, it would have to be precision. It was drilled into her mind by her commanders early on and it had stuck with her in everything she did ever since. Tonight was no different in the way she planned to execute her plot, and she expected nothing but the best out of the small group of agents that tagged along with her. The darkness of the night had finally enveloped the majority of the harbor, giving their unit an upper hand against the enemies inside the warehouse. She remained silent and well hidden in the shadows, her back was pressed firmly against the coolness of the metal shipping containers with an automatic gun in hand. “This is Agent Otohime, do you copy?” She asked steadily into the intercom, her icy gaze was focused solely on the armed guards standing a few feet away from her post. “Are you in position? The rescue mission will initiate in one minute, prepare yourself.”

for a brief moment, hera had half a mind to stare at him like he’d gone completely insane and question the antics, but she quickly realized that he was acting stranger than usual with reason. as he passed, she rummaged around in her pocket for the note he’d dropped, eyes skimming over it quickly before crumpling it up into a ball and shoving it back inside her coat. she turned on her heel in order to follow him, making a few detours along the way before she managed to catch up with him in a safe enough environment to speak somewhat freely. it took a few long strides to sidle back up to him, and she kept her head down as she talked. “what’s the sitch?” she said quietly, hint of a joke lingering in her voice.

“sitch? what is that?” his brow furrowed as he tried to place the reference, but came tragically short. he never made eye contact with her- they were in a relatively safe position, but old habits were hard to break. he kept his eyes forward as he walked, occasionally checking his phone and fidgeting with the glasses that continuously slid down his nose. “suspect, east london tunnels. we can catch him at the station and tail him. intel says he’s alone, but i don’t want to risk being caught in hot water without any back up, and...” he smiled a bit as he checked his phone, using the action to cover his smirk. “you’re the best back up i can think of.” he kept the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be on active duty yet entirely to himself, and slightly tilted his phone so she would be able to see out of the corner of her vision the man they were looking for. “arms dealer. we catch him we can cut off supplies to some of the in action terrorism groups.”

“So, you know how to make sure that secrets remain secret and I know how to use tweezers in many grotesque ways – all we can do in the offense department is you making sure that no-one finds out that I’m secretly plucking my eyebrows. – – – – No, scrap that, it was too cynical even for my capabilities. Truth be told, we won’t go anywhere near a successful strike as long as this agency isn’t back to the discipline that used to be a thing. With half of the agents running around the town like it’s their first holiday without parental supervision and a mediocre manager instead of a leader – yeah, you guessed it, we’re fucked.”

She thought she’d gotten her mind cleared from the mess of double agents once she was finally cleared from the infirmary. Clearly she was wrong. And after a somewhat uneventful day of looking through security footage from almost all of London, Athena found herself back in the training room, wielding a katana with against another individual. The only sound that was heard was of metal clashing against metal. She was definitely into her zone as she sent a kick to her sparring accomplice before noticing someone, or something hovering by the doorway.   ❝ Training room’s opened to everyone, you know. I’ll try not to stab you with an samurai sword from Feudalist Japan, ❞ she commented as she walked over to help her partner up.

“ just think about this for a second—we still don’t know what’s at the bottom of the ocean. ” and somewhere in the united states of america, her mother is tripping over the fact that she still talks with her mouth full. but the realization ( or rather, the reminder ) popped in her mind all of the sudden, and it had gained her full, undivided attention; that’s why reaching out to the nearest person to discuss became the mission she intended to accomplish. “ i have freakin’ goosebumps and my heart’s already tryin’ to get out of my chest—it’s insane to think about. but, by all means, think about it. ”

“No, but I can give you seventeen names of British gentlemen that are yet to be checked for their possible ISIS connection and five that have been confirmed to have it – because that’s what I’ve been dealing with instead of ICHOR. So, out of common logic, we still have traitors here, they’re doing their thing unnoticed and ICHOR surely knows where we are, probably also how to get inside this building and it’s reasonable to assume that they’re getting ready for another strike. And we have nothing, that’s where we are, currently.”