Greek Times for a Future Girl

Fight or Flight?

Panic's POV

"Aria!" Hades' voice boomed as he yelled up to our teenaged coworker. "Aria, get your butt down here, you're late for work!"

Aria had been cooped up in her room ever since we got back from that gorge with the man-eating mares. Pain said that she wanted some alone time for herself, but after everything she made herself deal with after the incident in Briarius' valley, I had my fair share of doubts. And seeing that she didn't even come down for work when she was supposed to just made me worry even more. Aria never sleeps in on a workday. And I get that school was over and she had plenty of time to sleep in, but she never, ever slept in on a workday. Something was up, and it wasn't good.

Hades gave an aggravated groan as his flames started turning orange. 

"Go get her." he ordered Pain and I.

"Yes, sir." I said as Pain and I flew up to her room. 

By the time we got to her door, that worrisome feeling I had just kept growing and I just felt like something happened to Aria. Y'know, sometimes I wish I didn't act like my namesake.

"Aria?" I called out when I knocked on her closed bedroom door. "You need to wake up. You're late for work."

There was no answer, and Pain responded to it by pounding his fist on the door even louder. "Don't make us get the water bucket again."

I slapped his arm to get him to knock off the pounding, but there was still nothing else heard after that threat. Something was really wrong. So, we opened the door to try to see if she was even in her room, but the moment we opened the door, she was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the stuff she had when she first came here was gone too.

"Where is she?!" I asked as Pain and I searched the room frantically for her.

"She's not here, bro!" Pain exclaimed. "She's gone!"

Gone? But where? Why? She didn't leave a note saying where she went, she just disappeared. 

"Where could she have gone to?" I frantically asked.

"I dunno, but we gotta tell Hades!" Pain said as he flew out of the room to tell our boss.

"R-right!" I agreed and flew after him. 

Oh, Hades was not gonna be happy when we tell him that we lost Aria.

"Hades!" we shouted for our boss as we flew back into the throne room.

Hades turned and looked really irritated when he saw us come back empty clawed. "Well? Where is she?"

"She's gone!" I exclaimed in worry. "She's not in her room!"

When we told Hades that last bit, I swore I saw a worried look in his eyes, but he shook that off and gave us another order. "Go topside and find her! I'll check if she's somewhere down here."

We gave him a salute and teleported to the mortal realm to find her. I just hoped she didn't run off too far, because if anything happened to our girl and we weren't there to keep her safe, I'd never be able to forgive myself.

Two Minutes Later

Hercules' POV

Icarus and I were waiting on Cassandra at the Agora. We hoped to try to talk to Aria about the incident back in Briarius' valley and try to have her better explain her situation to us so we could understand it better, and Cassandra volunteered to go get her for us -well, I say 'volunteered', but Cassandra said it along the lines of not wanting to wait while Icarus was all over her. So, we waited for Cassandra to bring Aria to the Agora.