Raging Seas [pjo au] || 1

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Grover brayed mournfully. "Tin cans...a perfectly good bag of tin cans."

Kali sympathetically patted Grover's shoulder. "I had some pretty good snacks, too," she said. "We can mope about it together." She didn't mention anything about jumping into the fight instead of leaving through the bus's roof exit like Annabeth had told her to. She didn't feel like getting fussed at for wanting to protect them like Percy, so she decided to not butt into their argument. As they walked through the mushy ground, their shoes sloshing and getting even more soaked and muddy with each step, she just listened to them.

Annabeth fell into line next to Percy. "Look, I..." Her voice faltered. "I appreciate your coming back for us, okay? That was really brave. Both of you had the chance to leave and you didn't."

"We're a team, right?" said Percy.

Annabeth stayed silent for the next few steps. "It's just that if you died...aside from the fact that it would really suck for both of you, it would mean the quest was over. This may be my only chance to see the real world."

Finally the thunderstorm came to a stop. Kali pushed wet strands of hair off her face the same moment she nearly tripped over a root. Grover grabbed her elbow to help steady her, and she mumbled a thanks. A couple paces ahead, Percy and Annabeth kept up their conversation.

"You haven't left Camp Half-Blood since you were seven?"

"No...only short field trips. My dad–."

"The history professor."

"Yeah. It didn't work out for me living at home. I mean, Camp Half-Blood is my home." Annabeth began to rush her words, as if someone might interrupt or stop her from continuing. "At camp you train and train. And that's all cool and everything, but the real world is where the monsters are. That's where you learn whether or not you're any good or not."

"You're pretty good with that knife," Percy told her.

"You think so?"

"Anybody who came piggyback-ride a Fury is okay by me."

A short beat of silence, and then, "You know," Annabeth began, "maybe I should tell you... Something funny happened back on the bus..."

A shrill toot-toot-toot interrupted her. Kali flinched at the suddenness of it, and at the proximity. She nearly instinctively smacked Grover's reed pipes out of his hand from the surprise.

"Hey, my reed pipes still work!" he happily cried out. "If I could just remember a 'find path' song, we could get out of these woods!"

He puffed out a few notes. It sounded wrong, somehow. Like a pop song of some sort, though Kali couldn't be too sure. She didn't spend enough time with satyrs to really know. Instead of finding a path of any sort, Percy ran face first into a tree.

After they made sure Percy didn't need any sort of medical attention – as if they had anything to use, something which he quickly pointed out – and trying not to laugh too much at how he ran into a tree, the four of them trekked on. Grover apologized even though there was just a 50/50 shot of whether or not he made the tree appear, and Percy kindly brushed the apologies off.

"You did good back on the bus too, by the way," Percy said after a minute or two, now walking beside Kali instead of Annabeth.

Kali looked at him as well as she could in the dark. Surprised, she blurted out, "What?"