"So you actually asked Heidi out?" Stefan asked Cody, looking impressed. "That took some balls."
"Nah," Cody shrugged dismissively. "She's still a person too. I figured nobody else would ask her out and didn't want her left out. Plus, she's freaking hot."
"Wow, you're going to ruin your reputation as a heartless rebel if you're not careful," Stefan warned him with a smirk.
"I never claimed to be heartless," Cody declared airily. "Just a rebel."
"If nothing else, you'll have the best dancer at the school, I'd wager," Stefan noted with an appraising look at Cody. "Do you know how to dance?"
"As it just so happens, I'm a pretty good dancer," Cody replied modestly, buffing one of his many rings on his tattered jacket. "My older sister always made me practice with her when I was younger."
"You're just full of surprises, my friend," Stefan told him with a searching look. "Apparently, appearances really are deceiving."
"Why do you think I chose this persona?" Cody asked archly. "The element of surprise is half of the battle."
"And who, exactly, are you trying to surprise?" Stefan asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Can you keep a secret?" Cody asked, looking around discreetly.
"Not really," Stefan replied with a smirk.
"Fine, neither can I," Cody sighed. "It's more of a challenge than anything else. It's easy enough to breeze through school when you dress and act the part of the properly institutionalized schoolboy. Perhaps it's my towering IQ, but that just seems really boring to me. I've decided to stack the deck against myself and see if I can still come out on top."
"You're such a modest 'schoolboy' too," Stefan chuckled, miming quotes as he said 'schoolboy'.
"Just honest," Cody shrugged nonchalantly. "Any jackass can play the false modesty game, but what's the point? It's just another form of, at best, mild deception, and at worst, a symptom of chronic self-rejection. People should accept their talents with pride, just as they should own up to their shortcomings."
"I need to get my notepad out and start writing some of this stuff down," Stefan said with a grin. "Someday there will be a book of quotes with your name in it."
"Maybe," Cody nodded agreeably. He walked over and sat down behind the drum set. "Fancy a song or two, since we're here?"
Stefan grinned and walked over to the piano. The two of them spent the next hour playing some of Heidi's compositions. It was getting dark when they finally left the school to get ready for the evening.
As they walked into the parking lot, an ultra-low hum suddenly filled the air. Cody stopped and looked around warily as his stomach lurched queasily. A moment later, the ground shifted beneath his feet, and he staggered.
"What the hell is that?" Stefan asked in shock. "An earthquake?"
"The earth is definitely quaking," Cody said nervously. "But I don't think it's a natural earthquake."
The low hum increased in intensity and the ground bucked hard enough to knock the two of them off of their feet. Car alarms blared and windows shattered as birds rocketed up into the evening air. The sky above them began lightening as a tinted green glow emanated across the heavens.
As suddenly as the hum began, it vanished, and the earth stopped shaking.
"Let's go see Heidi," Cody said shakily as he stood back up. "If anyone knows what the hell is going on, she will."
Stefan nodded in agreement as he slowly stood up as well. The two of them got into Cody's 1980 Toyota hatchback and drove toward Heidi's house, accompanied by loud bangs from his car. He had forgotten to put more hydraulic fluid in his clutch reservoir, so he had to pop the shifter into gear based on rpm's. This resulted in a lot of grinding when he wasn't paying attention.
"Doesn't your clutch work?" Stefan asked curiously as they made a rolling stop past an intersection.
"I have a leak in one of the lines," Cody replied as he popped it into third gear without any grinding. "I forgot to refill the reservoir with fluid this morning."
Stefan nodded, grinning slightly. Cody knew Stefan was from an affluent family in Germany and had probably never driven in an old beater car before. When he had first met Stefan, the German exchange student had only spoken a few phrases in English. Then Heidi had done something to him, and a few days later he was speaking fluent English, slang and all. He still had a pronounced accent, and Cody had taken to calling him The Stefanator.
When they pulled onto the street Heidi lived on, there were already two military issue Humvees parked in front of her house. Cody parked behind them and turned the car off but didn't get out.
"Looks like someone else beat us to her," Stefan noted warily as they watched another Humvee arrive across the street.
"Well, I'm her date, so it shouldn't be too weird for me to show up, right?" Cody asked with a confident grin that belied the uncertainty in his eyes.
"Whatever you say, hotrod," Stefan answered doubtfully.
Cody got out of the car and walked up to the Rockwell's front door, followed by a much slower Stefanator. He rang the doorbell and waited anxiously.
Mrs. Rockwell answered the door, looking slightly flustered. "Cody, isn't it? And Stefan? Come on in."
"Good evening, Mrs. Rockwell," Cody said pleasantly. "How are you?"
"Just fine, Cody," Mrs. Rockwell answered, though it was obvious that was not true. Her eyes were filled with anxiety as she led them into the dining room.
As they passed the front room, Cody saw several officers with enough chest candy to make another candy land game standing around a fully powered Heidi. She spared a quick glance at them as she continued speaking to the officers.
"Let me reiterate that there is nothing to worry about yet," Heidi told them, her voice filled with supreme confidence. "There will be many more earthquakes before they wake up. They are just getting restless right now."
"Where are they?" Colonel Clegg asked quietly. "Can we plan for where the earthquakes will be the most severe before they awaken?"
"Follow the hums and booms," Heidi replied cryptically. "It's similar to what you might think of as a heartbeat. Track the locations in the world where unexplained booms and humming noises occur. That is where the Titans sleep."
"I thought that was just locals getting excited about unintended sonic booms," another officer Cody didn't recognize said.
"Some of them might be," Heidi admitted. "But if they happen consistently in a specific location, it is probably more than an inadvertent sonic boom."
As soon as Heidi said the word 'Titan' it was like a floodgate of memories opened in Cody's mind. He suddenly remembered their first full orchestral performance in Miss Devons' classroom, along with the visions of Titan's destroying a super-civilization. He could tell by the stunned expression on Stefan's face that he had also experienced full recall.
"Look what the cat dragged in," Aria drawled as she and Autumn walked into the dining room.
Cody chuckled as Stefan stared slack jawed at Autumn. She looked like she was trying to redefine the term for insanely beautiful. Cody casually slapped the bottom of Stefan's chin.
"Close your mouth before you start drooling," Cody told him with another chuckle.
Stefan snapped out of his daze and color flooded his cheeks. "You look amazing," he told Autumn in a voice close to worship.
Autumn blushed at the reaction but smiled radiantly. "Thank you, Stefan. Though I must say, you two look the same as you did when we left you."
"We haven't been home yet," Cody informed her, growing serious. "We wanted to know what was going on."
"There was an earthquake," Autumn said with a shrug, though her eyes made it clear that she knew there was much more to it than a simple shifting of fault zones.
"Did you two know about the Titans?" Cody asked, narrowing his eyes.
Aria and Autumn shared a startled look before looking back at him.
"You remember?" Aria asked in surprise.
"I do now," Cody nodded, studying the two of them keenly. "Though I suspect you two never forgot."
Autumn took a deep breath that made The Stefanator stop breathing for a moment as she shared another look with Aria. "Well, I suppose there's no point in lying about."
Before Cody could continue questioning the two of them, Stefan's cell phone rang. He snapped out of his latest daze and answered, speaking in German. His eyebrows rose as he listened to whoever was speaking with rapt attention. When he ended the call, he looked at the rest of them with a thoughtful expression.
"That was my brother," Stefan said, playing with his phone. He beckoned them closer as he pulled up the YouTube app. "He just sent me a link to something that was recorded by several people in Denmark. He's been working there for the last two years and knows the people in the video."
They all gathered around Stefan's phone and watched the video. It was a low resolution video, but there was no mistaking what happened. A young girl, perhaps four years old, had wandered away from her mother into the road. A large semi slammed on its brakes, but it was obvious it wouldn't be able to miss the young girl at such close range. There was a sudden blur of movement, and suddenly the semi flipped over into the air and came crashing down almost a hundred feet down the road. Where the small girl had been standing, another teenage girl could be seen crouching with the young girl held protectively in her arms.
The YouTube video had over a hundred thousand views already, though it had only been posted a few hours ago. There were links in the header to other videos showing the same thing from a few other cameras that had caught the anomaly.
"Who the hell was that?" Aria asked in amazement.
"According to my brother, it was just a regular girl that everyone in the local community knows," Stefan said slowly. "He said she started acting strangely about a month ago."
"Heidi," Aria called out, interrupting the impromptu military meeting in the front room. "I think you better come see this."
Heidi came into the dining room, followed by several curious officers. She was in full god mode as she took Stefan's phone and played the video.
When the video finished, Heidi whispered, "Athena, you made it."
"Did you just say Athena?" Stefan asked uncertainly.
Heidi's eyes were filled with elation as she looked back at Stefan. "Did I?" She handed his phone back and walked down the hall. "Come along ladies, we have a dance to get ready for."
"She said Athena, right?" Stefan asked Cody with a stunned expression.
"That's what I heard," one of the officer's replied in a voice that sounded just as stunned.
Colonel Rockwell shared a meaningful look with Colonel Clegg. Colonel Clegg nodded, and the group of military officers left the house.
Cody let out an explosive breath. "This is getting really weird."