To Be the Hero || Book 1 ▪️On Hold ▪️

Chapter 12: A Pink Poodle reads it's own wanted poster

"What? I can't—"

"Look, do you want her turning more innocent people into statues?" She pointed to a pair of statue lovers, a man and a woman with their arms around each other, turned to stone by the monster.

Annie looked at me and I pushed the gazing ball into her arms. "A polished shield would be better." She studied the sphere critically. "The convexity will cause some distortion. The reflection's size should be off by a factor of—"

"Would you speak English?," I nearly laughed out loud but then remembered that we were in the middle of a life and death situation.

"I am!" She tossed him the glass ball. "Just look at her in the glass. Never look at her directly."
"Hey, guys!" Grover yelled somewhere above us. "I think she's unconscious!"

"Roooaaarrr!" "Maybe not," Grover corrected. He went in for another pass with the tree branch.

"Hurry," Annabeth told the raven haired boy. "Grover's got a great nose, but he'll eventually crash." Percy took out the pen and uncapped it. The bronze blade of Riptide elongated in his hand. With sword in one hand, and the sphere and the other, he trudged towards the snake lady. 

Grover was coming in for another turn at bat, but this time he flew a little too low. Medusa grabbed the stick and pulled him off course. He tumbled through the air and crashed into the arms of a stone grizzly bear with a painful "Ummphh!," Ouch, I remember a time when a kid in my class once broke an arm from falling off the monkey bars.

Medusa was about to lunge at him when Percy *cough* idiot*cough* yelled, "Hey!"
He advanced on her, which looked as if it weren't easy (which it probably wasn't) holding a sword and a glass ball. If she charged, He'd have a hard time defending himself.

But she let him approach—twenty feet, ten feet. I could see the reflection of her face now. Surely it wasn't really that ugly... Right? But I was wrong. The green swirls of the gazing ball must be distorting it, making it look worse than it already was.

"You wouldn't harm an old woman, Percy," she crooned. "I know you wouldn't."
I hesitated, fascinated by the face I saw reflected in the glass—the eyes that seemed to burn straight through the green tint, making my arms go weak.

From the cement grizzly, Grover moaned, "Percy, don't listen to her!"
Medusa cackled. "Too late." She lunged at the son of Poseidon with her talons. And I covered my eyes. A hiss like wind rushing out of a cavern—the sound of a monster disintegrating.

"Oh, yuck," Grover said. His eyes were still tightly closed, but I guess he could hear the thing gurgling and steaming. "Mega-yuck." Annabeth placed one end of the monster's black veil in my hand and the other end in hers. We came up next to him with our eyes fixed on the dark sky. She said, "Don't move."

Very, very carefully, without looking down, we knelt and draped the monster's head in black cloth, then picked it up. It was still dripping green juice (I could smell the disgusting smell of monster slime and I swore to wash my hands immediately afterwards because theres no way on Gaea's earth that that could be sanitary.

"Are you okay?" Annie asked him, her voice trembling.

"Yeah," Percy decided, though I felt like he was close to throwing up his double cheeseburger. "Why didn't ... why didn't the head evaporate?"

"Once you sever it, it becomes a spoil of war," she said. "Same as your minotaur horn. But don't unwrap the head. It can still petrify you."

Grover moaned as he climbed down from the grizzly statue. He had a big welt on his forehead. His green rasta cap hung from one of his little goat horns, and his fake feet had been knocked off his hooves. The magic sneakers were flying aimlessly around his head.