2
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Re-meeting With Friends
The exact same morning that day, I was already leaving for my errand running.
Well, I couldn't really leave without permission this time like I had done with Zaak last time, for some reason.
When Zaak and I had gone down to the outside, no one even looked at us walking, but now, each step I took I felt like I was being watched. Not by one or two, but many, many people. The whole orphanage seemed to be looking right at me like I was an antelope in the middle of a street in Manhattan.
Everything felt so weird at that point that I couldn't even eat because I felt awkward with so many people looking at me.
I tried not thinking about it, but even when I was asking for permission to have a summer camp with the director, his assistant kept analysing me like a hunter with their prey, she seemed to be looking right at my bones instead of my actual body.
Only when I left the building that I felt better, like a rest after a heavy workout. No one was looking at me, or even minding that I was on their way, they just passed by me and didn't even complain.
When I was about to head towards the bus to get me into Manhattan, I stopped and picked up a picture from my pocket–my friend, Annabeth on vacation in Washington, D.C. She was wearing jeans and a denim jacket over her orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. Her blond hair was pulled back in a bandanna. She was standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial with her arms crossed, looking extremely pleased with herself, like she’d personally designed the place. See, Annabeth wants to be an architect when she grows up, so she’s always visiting famous monuments and stuff. She’s weird that way. She’d e-mailed me the picture after spring break, and I had found an “illegal way” in Hive's standards to print it, and every once in a while I’d look at it just to remind myself she was real and Camp Half-Blood hadn’t just been my imagination.
Me and Annabeth set to find a place into Manhattan to get a bus together for Long Island ... Alright, I confess, she most likely ordered me to do it than made an agre-ement on it.
We chose Manhattan so we could see Percy and get him if he's free already and done with his school year.
When I got to our meeting point, Annabeth still wasn't there. That was completely weird for her, like, utterly and madly out of her usual style. She's always on point, no matter for what.
Unless I hold her up by messing up something with a kid from another cabin, then she often starts scol-ding me like she doesn't care what she has to do, or where she has to be.
I felt like I was being stood up, but I knew Annabeth would be here on time if she could be. If she wasn't there yet, she's super busy, that's normal.
That's what I tried telling myself. Spoiler alert, did not work.
I went looking around to see if she, by some weird incident, got lost, or she was being chased by a monster that was trying to kill her.
I couldn't find her in a whole 15 minutes, she was nowhere to be found. If I was worried 20 minutes ago, I was beyond lost at this point. What had happened to her?
My last resort was ... well–
Just the moment I thought about it, I slammed my fist into my palm and at the exact same time, a wall behind me simply opened with a loud CRACKK.
"Oh, sh–" I muttered to myself and looked back at it.
I could see the large hole on the wall made from a big circular object, like a ball at a hundred miles per second passed right through it. I could see the air still shaking from the thing that raced by, and I could see the exact same thing, passing right by my cheek and leaving a sensation of heat and a small scratch on my face.
"What the heck was that?" I asked to no one.
Nobody around seemed to mind what had happened, so I figured this was a either normal occasion, or a monster was doing it, so the people saw something they wanted to see. Mist works like that, covering all of the world and making humans get a different view from Greek monsters trying to attack us Half-Bloods.
I gazed by the hole in the wall, just to find that on the other side were dozens of kids running for their lives as craters of fires crackled on a school gym room.
In the middle of the camp, I found Percy and a tall, dirty, and dumb-looking boy.
The kids were all wearing tie dyed t-shirts and blue gym shorts, but what I found the most impressive was that, there were six giants with tattoos–eight-foot-tall giants with wild eyes, pointy teeth, and hairy arms tattooed with snakes and hula women and Valentine hearts. And also, the kid next to Percy smelled weird, really weird.
I hurried to jump over the hole and enter the gym. I could never pass as an student here, I was wearing a bright orange t-shirt, and written in large black letters CAMP HALF-BLOOD with a Pegasus flying under it as the center of the shirt, and I didn't have gym shorts, I had black jeans.
"Let them go!" Percy shouted.
One of the giants growled at him, his name tag said Joe Bob. He had a tattoo on his biceps that said: JB luvs Babycakes. "And lose our tasty morsels? No, Son of the Sea God. We Laistrygonians aren’t just playing for your death. We want lunch!"
He waved his hand and a new batch of dodgeballs appeared on the center line–but these balls weren’t made of red rubber. They were bronze, the size of cannon balls, perforated like wiffle balls with fire bubbling out the holes. They must’ve been searing hot, but the giants picked them up with their bare hands.
"Coach!" Percy yelled.
The coach only lifted his head for a moment and looked at the kids. He probably didn't see anything too different from a normal class playing dodgeball because he only hummed.
"Yeah. Mm-hmm," Coach muttered. "Play nice."
And he went back to his magazine.
The giant named Skull Eater threw his ball. Percy dove aside as the fiery bronze comet sailed past his shoulder.
"Corey!" he yelled.
I looked over to the ball and its destination. I quickly pushed the kid from behind an exercise mat right before the mat exploded into a million pieces.
"Hey," I greeted weakly to the scared boy.
The boy didn't answer me, he just cowered behind my arm so that the balls wouldn't hit him.
"You're welcome," I said.
"Run!" Percy told the kids on his side. "The other exit!"
They ran for the locker room, but with another wave of Joe Bob’s hand, that door also slammed shut like the other door on the opposite side.
"No one leaves unless you’re out!" Joe Bob roared. "And you’re not out until we eat you!"
He launched his own fireball. The kids scattered as it blasted a crater in the gym floor.
One of the giants started sniffing the air, at one point giving such a big inhale his nose shook, then his eyes lit up and dilated. He glared straight at me.
"I do not like this ..." I muttered.
"Son on the Moon Goddess," he growled, his lips trembling with the sound.
"Y- Yeah, that's me," I giggled nervously.
"You're dead meat," he warned.
The giant threw a cannonball at me, and my body shivered under the force he threw it.
Dead. I was so dead.
But before I could've been hit, from my right hand forged a black sword. The blade blocked off the ball and divided it into two halves, that both fell down behind me after losing their momentum.
Corey, the boy who was still shaking under my left arm was as scared as an ant on a hurricane. He kept his eyes closed and tried not to go anywhere but behind me.
"You need to hide. Go," I ordered him.
Corey hesitated, but he eventually stumbled back and went to the other kids accumulated together.
Another giant threw a cannonball at Percy, the huge kid by his side had just enough time to push Percy out of the way. But Percy still had holes with smoke in his shirt and he was dazed, like his head was spinning.
Just across the center line, two hungry giants were glaring down at Percy.
"Flesh!" the giants bellowed. "Hero flesh for lunch!" They both took aim.
"Percy needs help!" the tall kid yelled, and he jumped in front of Percy just as they threw their balls.
"Tyson!" Percy screamed, but it was too late.
Both balls slammed into him . . . but he still held the fire in his hands like nothing fazed him.
He sent them hurtling back toward their surprised owners, who screa-med, "BAAAAAD!" as the bronze spheres exploded against their chests.
The giants disintegrated in twin columns of flame–a sure sign they were monsters, all right. Monsters don’t die. They just dissipate into smoke and dust, which saves heroes a lot of trouble cleaning up after a fight.
"My brothers!" Joe Bob the Cannibal wailed. He flexed his muscles and his Babycakes tattoo rippled. "You will pay for their destruction!"
"Tyson!" Percy tried calling. "Look out!"
Tyson slapped the ball that was thrown towards him and sent it through the Coach's hair and into the bleachers, making it go KA-BLAM.
I carefully walked by the fire burning on the ground and made my way towards Percy and Tyson, the six-feet-tall kid.
"Percy!" I called. "What the hell is going on here?"
Percy glared at me. "It's not my fault that there's monsters trying to kill me. If I had a say in this, I would've graduated seventh grade without any of these."
"Why is everytime that bad things happen, you're always around?" I asked with an angry tone. "And why am I always dragged in?!"
"It ain't my fault!" Percy countered.
"Shut up, Jackson!"
"Victory will be ours!" roared Joe Bob the Cannibal. "We will feast on your bones!"
Before I could even say anything else, Joe Bob threw a ball at us, the other three giants remaining followed on his advances.
Percy suddenly ran out and in the direction of the kids banging on the locker room's door.
"Move!" he told his teammates. "Away from the door."
In a matter of seconds, a huge explosion made one of the giants implode and become a layer of fire into the air from the ball it threw at Tyson, which Tyson only threw back.
While the giant by his side was distracted by his death, I fired an arrow through his skull and turned him into ashes.
Just as I saw the fire from the two giants get down, my black sword came back into action and made the bow turn into small sparks of glitter and come back to my wrist as a pendant on my wristbands.
A third ball was swung into Percy's direction. Percy waited, and just as the ball was about to hit him, he dove to the side and the ball crashed into the locker room.
The room was so full of bad things that every dirty sock, or personal item inside it flew around and was evaporated by the explosion.
Just as Percy blew the locker room, I raised my sword and appeared behind one of the giants and impaled his back, turning him into a huge pile of dust.
Tyson has enough time to clap his hands but not to notice that Joe Bob threw cannonball that was flying to his chest, and hitting him on the middle of his stomach.
Tyson flew back for 11 feet back, skiing through the whole gym, and hitting the wall behind him. The wall opened a hole heading to Church Street. But despite such a hard hit, he only looked dazed. The bronze ball was smoking at his feet.
Tyson tried to pick it up, but he fell back, stunned, into a pile of cinder blocks.
"Well!" Joe Bob gloated. "I’m the last one standing! I’ll have enough meat to bring Babycakes a doggie bag!"
He picked up another ball and aimed it at Tyson.
"Hey, smelly!" I called out to the giant. Joe Bob looked back at me. "You forgot the last piece!"
The giant grinned. "You wish to die first, young hero?"
"Guess what, I still have a trick up my sleeve."
I simply vanished from sight, Joe Bob looked at where I was with wide eyes until I returned right behind him, raised above the ground.
I slashed my sword into an horizontal arc and sliced off his head clean off his shoulders. He soon combusted and I fell to the ground triumphantly.
On my feet were a pair of burnt jeans with a ballpoint pen rolling out from its pocket. I picked it up and threw it towards Percy. "This yours?"
From right beside me an angry but relieved huff came to my ears.
Standing in the smoke was my friend Annabeth. Her face was grimy and scratched. She had a ragged backpack slung over her shoulder, her baseball cap tucked in her pocket, a bronze knife in her hand, and a wild look in her storm-gray eyes, like she’d just been chased a thousand miles by ghosts.
"Hey," she grunted.
The gym was in flames. Kids were still running around screaming. I heard sirens wailing and a garbled voice over the intercom. Through the glass windows of the exit doors, I could see a man wrestling with the lock, a crowd of teachers piling up behind him.
"Hey?! What the hell do you mean “Hey”?!" I shouted. "I've been worried about you! You weren't where you said you'd be. You just disappeared! I thought you were dead!"
"I–"
"Next time, at least send me an Iris Message!"
"Sorry," she whispered.
"You better be!"
"Three!" a woman screamed as she burst through the door.
"Meet me outside," Annabeth told me. "And him." She pointed to Tyson, who was still sitting dazed against the wall. Annabeth gave him a look of distaste that I didn’t quite understand. "You’d better bring him. And Percy."
"What?"
"No time!" she said. "Hurry!"
She put on her Yankees baseball cap, which was a magic gift from her mom, and instantly vanished.
"Shit," I cursed under my breath. "Come on, Percy!"
Percy snapped his head back and then up to me, and ran out the hole in the wall.
I grabbed Tyson from the wall and dipped the party out, jumping the hole in the wall and coming with Percy.
"Why'd you bring Tyson?" Percy asked.
"Just come on, already."
»»————> Shit Post <————««
Y/N: Life is like a game of chess
Y/N: I don't know how to play chess
^
Perseus Jackson; The son of a beautiful, intelligent, selfless and flawless god who's nothing but amazing parent to him.
And Poseidon.