[center][color=6ecff6][h3]Dallas Relo[/h3][/color]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/y6XGWvg.jpg[/img]
[b][u]Location:[/u][/b] BFE, Utah
[b][u]Interacting With:[/u][/b] iTunes Library ([i]Warm Up Music - [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijk4j-r7qPA] For Use in Baseball, Sex, and Suicide Missions[/url][/i]), [color=f26522][i][b]DJTZ, the Dogs of War[/b][/i][/color] [@HereComesTheSnow], [@Onarax], [@Kaithas][/center]

It was 6:45 in the morning, and a lone pickup truck was barreling like buckshot down a hauntingly quiet Utah highway. Inside the battered, battle-ready vehicle, Jonas Highwind was driving with a light, diligent touch on the gas and wrist comfortably slung over the wheel. Zaheen and Tara slept beside him. But a fourth demigod was sitting with his back propped against the bed of the truck, chin nestled comfortably on his knee as he stared listlessly ahead. He hadn't slept in fifty one hours, and thirty three of them involved the pleasant autumn sun warming him to the bones. With sleep an impossibility thanks to his power set and mental state, his thoughts had been roiling, bouncing to and fro between two fulcrums: there was a blonde haired girl somewhere in the miles ahead, waiting for him to come and save her while she languished like a dog in a pound.

[color=6ecff6][i]And if I ever live to see Olympus Academy again,[/i][/color] Dallas Relo thought, [color=6ecff6][i]I'm only buying fucking Gucci.[/i][/color]

Not that he had put much thought into what he was wearing if he [i]didn't[/i] live to see it again. Truth be told, he couldn't even remember getting in the truck. They had left Olympus Academy at dusk two nights previously, under the illusion of going out for dinner, to follow the trace that Zaheen had cobbled together on his phone call with Vivian. Dallas had spent the two hours before they'd all met up soaking in the shower, trying to remember the feeling of hot water, clean hair, and his own face in the mirror. Little things that made him grin in the morning had been painstakingly branded into his mind. Confronting your own morality type shit. [i]Memento mori.[/i]

Before the start of this week, Dallas had thought he'd never die. Even now, he still did his best to thing that way.

But if you've gotta die for someone, Vivian was...

...

[color=6ecff6][i]...as good as anyone else.[/i][/color]

Or the inverse. If you had to kill for someone...

[color=6ecff6][i]Viv DEFINITELY makes me want to kill someone.[/i][/color]

He'd have to make sure he drilled that through her head sometime. After the longest hug he'd ever given someone, after he'd filled her ear with some affectionate and sophisticated cursing, and bought her a bacon cheeseburger, Dallas would tell her that.

The truck's transmission was rattling a little, constantly cutting itself in on an aural arm's race with Dal's iPod, but at this point, if Zaheen's trace was correct, they were minutes away from Vivian at last. Close enough that even if Eva Green had waltzed up to the back of the truck in lingerie wielding a Shake Weight suggestively and asking if he could loan her a fuck, he wouldn't give one. [color=6ecff6][i]We're so close.[/i][/color] Close enough that Dallas could feel the familiar jump in his chest that started occurring whenever he was within reach of a goal. Close enough that he could trick himself into believing he could catch Viv's perfume on the morning breeze. Close enough that even the sun had started to peek out, both to give him something in his corner and to watch its son go to town. [color=6ecff6][i]We're. So. Close.[/i]
[/color]

The thought had hardly left his head before Jonas stopped the truck and turned it off - they'd been closer than even Dal's internal pep talk had believed. Over the trees, hugging the lake underneath the highway, the barest hints of a cylindrical building peeked out at the four demigods in the truck. There hadn't been a building for miles, excepting old gas stations that had probably shuttered sometime during the Space Race and old houses that were missing a wall or half a roof. This had to be it. [i]Had[/i] to be.

Which meant that there was no time to think. No time to ask questions. No time to even chew bubblegum. Just fight until he had too much blood in his eyes to see, or until he could give his sister one of those annoyingly cute pecks on the nose. Whichever came last.

Knocking on the back of the truck twice for good luck, Dallas Relo vaulted over the side of the bed and landed nimbly on his feet. He kicked up a few pebbles on the highway as he walked up to the driver's side of the door and leaned inside to talk to Jonas.

[color=6ecff6]"So, between you and Tara," [/color]he asked (flinching as he did so; his voice was hoarse from two days of disuse) tersely,[color=6ecff6] "what are we packing, fam?"[/color]