Son of Neptune - My Version

Camp Jupiter

Hey guys! Welcome back! I hope you all have had an amazing holiday and have had fun with school. I'm so sorry for the super, super, super late post!

I don't really have much to say, so let's just get into this story!

Happy reading!

Percy's POV:

The thing about plummeting downhill at fifty miles an hour on a snack platter - if you realise it's a bad idea halfway down, it's too late.

Percy narrowly missed a tree, glanced off a boulder, and spun a three-sixty as he shot toward the highway. The stupid snack tray did not have power steering - who knew? He heard the gorgon sisters screaming and caught a glimpse of Euryale's coral-snake hair at the top of the hill, but he didn't have time to worry about it. The roof of the apartment building loomed below him like the prow of a battleship. Head-on collision in ten, nine, eight...

He managed to swivel sideways to avoid breaking his legs on impact. The snack tray skittered across the roof and sailed through the air. The platter went one way. Percy went the other.

As he fell toward the highway, a horrible scenario flashed through his mind: his body smashing against an SUV's windshield, some annoyed commuter trying to push him off with the wipers. Stupid sixteen-year-old kid falling from the sky! I'm late!

Miraculously, a gust of wind blew him to one side - just enough to miss the highway and crash into a clump of bushes. It wasn't a very soft landing, per se, but it was better than the asphalt.

Percy groaned. He wanted to lie there and pass out, but he had to keep moving.

He struggled to his feet. His hands were scratched up, but no bones seemed to be broken. He still had his backpack. Somewhere on the sled ride he'd lost his sword, but Percy knew it would eventually reappear in his pocket in pen form. That was probably the best part of its magic.

He glanced up the hill. The gorgons were hard to miss, with their colourful snake hair and their bright green Bargain Mart vests. They were picking their way down the slope. They were going slower than Percy but travelled with a lot more control. Those chicken feet must've been good for climbing. Percy figured he had maybe five minutes before they reached him - maybe less.

Next to him, a tall chain-link fence separated the highway from a neighbourhood of winding streets, eucalyptus trees and cosy houses. The fence was probably there to keep people from getting onto the highway and doing stupid things – like sledding into the fast lane on snack trays, for instance – but the chain-link was full of big holes. Percy could easily slip through into the neighbourhood. Maybe he could find a car and drive west to the ocean. He hated that he had to steal cars, but over the past few weeks, in life-and-death situations, he'd 'borrowed' several, including a Tesla and a police cruiser. He'd meant to return them, but they never seemed to last very long.

He glanced east. Just as he'd predicted, a hundred yards uphill the highway cut through the base of the cliff. Two tunnel entrances, one for each direction of traffic, stared down at him like eye sockets of a giant skull. In the middle, where the nose would have been, a cement wall jutted from the hillside, with a metal door, as if it was the entrance to a bunker.

It might have been a maintenance tunnel. That's probably what mortals thought, if they noticed the door at all. But they couldn't see through the Mist, at least most of them couldn't. Percy knew the door was more than that.

Two kids in armour flanked the entrance. Plumed Roman helmets, breastplates, scabbards, blue jeans, purple T-shirts and white trainers. They looked like they were trying to reenact a Roman battle but was missing part of the costume.  The guard on the right looked like a girl, though it was hard to tell for sure with all the armour. The one on the left was a stocky guy with a bow and quiver on his back. Both kids held long wooden staffs with iron spear tips, like oldfashioned harpoons.