In my experience, the best way to deal with gods is to not deal with them at all. Take it from someone who’s met way too many of them. Most gods are assholes. Even my dad, one of the nicest and most personable gods I’d met, had a rather hefty reputation for being a dick when offended or minorly inconvenienced.

Unfortunately, gods tend to be a bit pushy and don’t really like taking no for an answer. When you do have to deal with a god, it is important to be wary but respectful. Gods don’t take insults lightly, and it's very hard to know what will and won’t insult a god. Sure, some things are obvious; don’t call them mean names, don’t murder people in their temples, don’t slaughter their worshipers, don’t rape their priestesses, don’t break oaths sworn in their name, don’t feed them dead babies, don’t say you’re better than them at something they do, and so on.

Others are less straightforward. Especially if you don’t know anything about the god or goddess in question, just try to keep your mouth shut and get through things. That isn’t always foolproof––some gods are offended when mortals don’t beg and grovel on sight, but if you run into one of those you’re probably fucked anyway.

Fortunately I had a bit more leeway than most mortals or even demigods. Being the Hero of Olympus had its perks. Even outside of that, unless I was dealing with a major god or goddess, between the Curse of Achilles, my demigod powers, and the slowly blooming blessing I received at the end of the war, I could probably take them if I really had to. Since I didn’t recognize this floaty, princess-looking goddess, she probably wasn’t anyone super powerful.

Still, that was no reason to get cocky. I carefully shifted my weight slightly, my left hand drifting towards where I could feel Riptide’s pen form in my back pocket. I was only a few steps away from the sea. If a fight broke out, I would leap back off the pier into the surf. I wasn’t in great shape right now, but the saltwater should give me enough of a boost that I could at least make a hasty retreat.

In any case, I hoped that wasn’t going to be necessary. I had enough enemies as it was. “Hello,” I greeted, bowing my head slightly without breaking my line of sight. “Way to make an entrance, solid ten out of ten.”

She narrowed her eyes and I had to hold back a sigh. Someday I would remember not to joke around with goddesses. None of them ever had a sense of humor.

Expecting some sort of rebuke, I was surprised when she looked around, scanning our dilapidated surroundings with practiced ease, then turned back towards me. My skin prickled and I could see suspicion in her eyes. “I thought I heard a gunshot,” she called out loudly, “Did you see anything? Is anyone hurt?”

That was not what I had been expecting at all. She sounded genuinely worried. I’d never heard a god worried about the affairs of mortals before.

“Yeah, there was a bum with a handgun. Tried to mug me.” I poked the flattened bullet with the tip of my sneaker, sending it clattering loudly across the concrete. “I don’t think it really worked out for him.”

It took a moment for her to take in what I’d said, and when she did she shot up and away from me, stopping only once she was well out of arm's reach even if I lunged. Her hands were balled up into fists and the faint smile on her face was replaced by a look of wary caution and barely-restrained violence.

“Are you a hero?” she asked sharply.

Huh? “Well, I’d like to think so, yes. That’s certainly what people keep telling me, at the very least.”

She instantly relaxed somewhat but did not fly back down towards me. “Good, that’s… that’s good. Are you new? What’s your name?”

This conversation was not going at all the way I had expected it to. I was starting to reassess my initial conclusion that this girl was a goddess, though I still wasn’t sure what else she could be. She actually looked more like one of those superheroes I sometimes saw on movie posters. What was that lady’s name, the one with a metal red white and blue bikini? Wondrous Woman? Superb Woman maybe? Something like that.

The Stoll brothers loved those things and would talk your ears off about them if you gave them a chance, but I never really had time for that. I had always been too busy trying not to die, and after the war I spent as little time at camp as I could manage.

I bit my tongue before I could blurt out something stupid and refocused on her question. It had been a while since I’d introduced myself to anyone. After the fifteenth ‘Oh yes I know who you are, Perseus Jackson’ I had mostly stopped bothering except to correct it to Percy, not Perseus.

This was somewhat refreshing. Savior of Olympus was a heavy title that could get tiresome at times. I was a little tempted to lie and give her a fake name, but that seemed needlessly complicated and likely to backfire.

“Oh right, sorry, I should have introduced myself.” I extended a hand up towards her. “Hi, I’m Percy, Percy Jackson. It's a pleasure to meet you.”

The girl’s eyes widened slightly and she drifted several inches down towards me. “No, no, I mean––not your name name, your cape name! We just met and I promise I won’t tell anyone, but you should never, ever tell anyone––Look, New Wave is different, but your identity is a big deal! So, I’m Glory Girl. What’s your name?”

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I blinked rapidly. I was somewhat confused. And worried. It had been less than a minute since this girl descended from the sky and she suddenly looked about halfway to a panic attack.

“Uh, like a… nickname you mean? I guess Ann––Annabeth used to call me seaweed brain, but that’s kinda a her thing. I’d prefer if you didn’t call me that, actually. Usually I’m just Percy, that’s already a nickname sort of. Technically I’m Perseus Jackson, but my mom only calls me that when I do something really dumb.”

I was rambling, I realized, and there was an ache in my chest from when I’d stumbled over Annabeth’s name. Pausing, I looked up towards Glory Girl (and what sort of a name was that? It really did sort of sound like something a superhero would call themselves). If anything, the floating girl looked even more freaked out than she had a moment ago.

“Um, are you… okay?” I asked slowly.

Floaty-girl took several deep breaths. “You’re new to all this, aren’t you,” she said flatly. Then, without giving me a moment to respond, continued. “I know it doesn’t feel super important right now, but your secret identity is a big deal when you’re a cape. The unwritten rules mean most people won’t use your identity against you, but a lot of villains only pretend to care about the rules. Especially with villains like Hookwolf and Lung around here, you don’t want people coming after your family.”

I was… honestly even more confused now. I spent a lot of time being very confused, but usually I had Ann––someone around to help me figure things out, plus a bunch of Greek history to fall back on in a pinch. Lung, Hookwolf, secret identities, villains… this really did sound a lot like a superhero comic.

“Look at what happened to my aunt Jess. My parents really thought we were doing something when they all unmasked, but then an Empire wannabe went and shot her out of costume. If they’re willing to do something like that to an entire family of capes, you don’t want to know what they’d do to your family if they knew who you were.”

That did sound slightly concerning. I certainly didn’t want anyone coming after mom or my stepdad, though it would be funny to see anyone trying to go after my dad to get to me. That was like stealing the Mona Lisa to prepare for baby’s first burglary.

She paused, mumbling something under her breath that I couldn’t really make out. I heard ‘what else… mum… new cape…’ but that didn’t mean much to me. Suddenly she snapped her fingers and pointed at me. “Right, the rules. This is your first time out, right? Not much of a costume, but that's not unusual. No one has explained the rules to you yet, right?”

“I… rules?”

“The unwritten rules are sort of a framework, a code of honor, for heroes and villains, though not everyone follows them very closely. No killing, no going after secret identities, respect the truce, no attacking civilians, that sort of thing. It's all pretty much common sense and if anyone breaks it, everyone else is supposed to team up and go after them. Usually.” She mumbled something very rude under her breath, then sighed. “But some villains are strong enough that they can get away with breaking them, so you have to be careful.”

Okay. I was feeling thoroughly out of the loop. There was clearly some kind of misunderstanding going on here and I was really, really sick of it. By now, I was pretty sure this girl wasn’t a goddess. That didn’t leave me any closer to figuring out what she actually was, but she neither felt, talked, nor acted like any goddess I’d ever met.

I had heard rumors that there were other things out there, more than just the Greek gods and myths. Monsters that didn’t fear celestial bronze and didn’t disappear into dust when killed. Strange people that couldn’t see through the Mist but clearly weren’t just regular mortals. When I’d asked my dad about it he had very quickly changed the subject. Chiron had simply refused to talk about it when Lacy, one of the Aphrodite girls, came to camp talking about some weird siblings that ‘smelled a bit too much like gods’. Maybe this was one of those things?

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I––” I began, only to be cut off by the loud sound of a cell phone ringing. Glory Girl reached into a pocket hidden under her skirt and dug out an expensive-looking phone.

“Hey Amy, sorry I… No, no, I heard a gunshot and… No one’s hurt, it’s alright. I ran into a new hero and… Oh shit, that’s tonight? I’ll be there in five!”

She hurriedly shoved the phone back into its pocket and looked back down towards me. “Sorry, I have to run. I need to pick up my sister from the hospital and I’m running really late. Here,” she dug into another pocket––I would have to ask her where she got a skirt like that, the Aphrodite campers would kill to get that many pockets––and pulled out a business card and a pen. She rapidly scrawled something on the back and handed it to me.

“That’s my private PHO, send me a message if you have any more questions. Say something about like, um, that nickname you gave me, or something like that so I know it's you. Us heroes have to stick together, alright? Got to go!”

And then she was gone, shooting into the sky like a comet, her short cape snapping in the wind behind her from the speed of her liftoff. I watched her go for several seconds until she vanished behind a row of warehouses, then looked down at the card she had shoved into my hand.

‘Point_Me_@_The_Sky’ it read. I had no idea what PHO was, it sounded like a website maybe, but she seemed to think I would know what it was. She seemed to think I would know a lot of things, actually. I shoved the card into my pocket. Maybe I could give it a look after I checked in with Chiron.

For the moment, I put the bizarre encounter behind me. Mrs. O’Leary was still missing and I was starting to get worried about her. She’d never taken nearly this long to find me. I knew that she was a big girl and could take care of herself––very few things were willing to mess with a hellhound the size of a bus––but that didn’t stop me from worrying. It was possible she was too injured to get to me, or perhaps she couldn’t hear me because of some sort of magic, but I didn’t like any of the possibilities that were coming to mind.

If she was injured, hopefully she knew to run back to camp. The defenses around Camp Half Blood were stronger than they’d ever been and nothing short of a full-on assault could hurt her there. With any luck, I’d find her in an hour and we could laugh this off with a game of Get the Greek.

Moving slowly to avoid inflaming my remaining injuries, I clambered down the side of the pier and then dropped heavily onto the dirty beach below. Two painful steps later, my feet were in the water and vitality rushed into my aching body. Of all the days to not be carrying any Ambrosia…