Chapter twelve: A Pink Poodle reads it's own wanted poster
Y/N POV: I ran away. Now scold my all you wish "oh Y/NN~~ your a coward! Come join the fight you whimp!," Mind you, I was trying to look for the weird looking glass ball thing so Percy (who was on the ground in view of Aunt Em's sandaled feet) could chop her head off like the original Perseus story. Wait, wait wait. I came into realization. Wasn't Hermes 'my dad' the one who supplied Perseus some stuff that helped him murder Medusa? Then that means... oh no." I stopped in my tracks. "Then that means... Medusa hates me too."
Before I could panic and run away for real, something shiny caught my attention—the gazing ball. Percy had noticed too and we locked eyes for a moment before turned back towards the shiny sphere and saw the reflection of the infamous Mrs. snakes for hair. I could see that her headdress was gone, revealing her face as a shimmering pale circle. Her hair was moving, writhing like serpents.
Aunty Em.
Aunty "M." I wonder how stupid people can get.
"The Gray-Eyed One did this to me, Percy," Medusa said, and she didn't sound anything like a monster. Annabeth's mother, the cursed Athena, turned me from a beautiful woman into this!
"Don't listen to her!" Annabeth's voice shouted, some-where in the statuary. "Run, Percy!," I added.
"Silence!" Medusa snarled. Then her voice modulated back to a comforting purr. "You see why I must destroy the grey-eyed girl Percy. She is my enemy's daughter. Your saytr friend may live but I must turn dear Y/N into a statue. Her father is the one who helped the Zeus spawn decapitate me, but you Percy, you need not suffer."
"Do you really want to help the gods?" Medusa asked. "Do you understand what awaits you on this foolish quest, Percy? What will happen if you reach the Underworld? Do not be a pawn of the Olympians, my dear. You would be better off as a statue. Less pain. Less pain."
"Percy!" Behind him, a buzzing sound could be heard and I knew it was the flying shoes that Luke got from my 'father.'
Grover yelled, "Duck!" Percy turned, and there he was in the night sky—flying in from twelve o'clock with his winged shoes fluttering—the goat boy, holding a tree branch the size of a baseball bat. Reminds me of Coach hedge, I thought as I held the gazing ball close to my chest and tried to navigate my way towards Annabeth.
"Duck!" he yelled again. "I'll get her!,"
That finally jolted Percy into waking up from his daydream. Knowing Grover, I was sure he'd miss Medusa and nail Percy instead. This motivated him and he dove to one side.Thwack! At first I figured it was the sound of Grover hitting a tree. Then Medusa roared with rage."
"You miserable satyr," she snarled. "I'll add you to my collection!," What happened to the "Your satyr friend may live?,"
"That was for Uncle Ferdinand!" Grover yelled back. Perce scrambled away and hid in the statuary while Grover swooped down for another pass. Ker-whack! Don't you love the sound affects too?
"Arrgh!" Medusa yelled, her snake-hair hissing and spitting. Right next to him, Annabeth's voice said, "Percy!," This helped me find her faster.
Percy, the clueless idiot jumped so high that he kicked knee. "Jeez! Don't do that! Oh, sorry." He noticed my busted kneecaps. Annabeth took off her Yankees cap and became visible. 'You have to cut her head off."
"What? Are you crazy? Let's get out of here." Oh look, another one of their many arguments. I forgot to bring the popcorn, dam it! (A/N: See what I did there?)
"Medusa is a menace. She's evil. I'd kill her myself, but..." Annabeth swallowed, as if she were about to make a difficult admission. "But you've got the better weapon. Besides, I'd never get close to her. She'd slice me to bits because of my mother. You—you've got a chance."
"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.
"The Red Baron," He said. "Good job, man." The goat boy managed a bashful grin. "That really was not fun, though. Well, the hitting-her-with-a-stick part, that was fun. But crashing into a concrete bear?Not fun."
"I can tell." I remarked, trying to lighten up the mood.
He snatched his shoes out of the air. Percy recapped his sword. I threw the gazing ball back into the garden. Annabeth stuffed her cap into her pocket? Together, the four of us stumbled back to the ware-house.
We found some old plastic grocery bags behind the snack counter and double-wrapped Medusa's head. We plopped it on the table where we'd eaten dinner and sat around it, too exhausted to speak.
Finally our favourite Rick Riordan verse protagonist said, "So we have Athena to thank for this monster?," Sometimes I wonder if it was actually true when Annabeth called Percy 'seaweed brain,"
She flashed him an irritated look, the same one I got when my math teacher gave me a worksheet of super complicated questions that I could not solve and instead went back to reading Rick Riordan's books. "Your dad, actually. Don't you remember? Medusa was Poseidon's girlfriend. They decided to meet in my mother's temple. That's why Athena turned her into a monster. Medusa and her two sisters who had helped her get into the temple, they became the three gorgons. That's why Medusa wanted to slice me up, but she wanted to preserve you as a nice statue. She's still sweet on your dad. You probably reminded her of him."
Percy's face was burning, turning (A/N: Hey, I made a rhyme!) the color of hot sauce. "Oh, so now it's my fault we met Medusa." He exclaimed angrily straightened. In a ugly high pitch voice sounding nothing like Percy's she recalled: "'It's just a photo, Annabeth. What's the
harm?,'"
"Forget it," He said. "You're impossible."
"You're insufferable."
"You're—"
"Hey!" Grover interrupted, making me disappointed. I really did want to see an 'Annabeth Chase VS. Percy Jackson insult battle.' "You two are giving me a migraine, and satyrs don't even GET migraines. What are we going to do with the head?" I feel like he feels exasperated.
I stared back at the thing. One little snake was hanging out of a hole in the plastic. The words printed on the side of the bag said: WE APPRECIATE YOUR BUSINESS! Though I didn't really appreciate it nor did I do any business.
After a moment of concern plating, Percy got up. "I'll be back."
"Percy," Annabeth called after him. "What are you—" He searched the back of the warehouse until he found Medusa's office. Her account book showed her six most recent sales, all shipments to the Underworld to decorate Hades and Persephone's garden.
According to one freight bill, the Underworld's billing address was DOA Recording Studios, West
Hollywood, California. He folded the bill and stuffed it in his pocket. In the cash register I found twenty dollars, a few golden drachmas, and some packing slips for Hermes
Overnight Express, each with a little leather bag attached for coins. I rummaged around the rest of the office until I found the right-size box.
He went back to the picnic table, packed up Medusa's head, and filled out a delivery slip:
The Gods
Mount Olympus
600th Floor,
Empire State Building
New York, NY
With best wishes,
PERCY JACKSON
"They're not going to like that," Grover warned. "They'll think you're impertinent."
He poured some golden drachmas in the pouch. As soon as the lid closed.there was a sound like a cash register. The package floated off the table and disappeared with a pop!
"I amimpertinent," Percy declared proudly, though I didn't see there was anything to be proud of. His sea green eyes looked at Annabeth, daring her to criticize. She didn't. She seemed resigned to the fact that he had a major talent for ticking off the gods. "Come on," She muttered, like she got in 2 answers wrong in a architecture test. "We need a new plan."
—————
Percy POV: "Well," Annabeth said, "the zombie lives."
I was trembling from the dream. I could still feel the grip of the chasm monster around my chest. "How long was I asleep?"
"Long enough for her to cook breakfast." Y/N replied and tossed me a bag of nacho-flavored corn chips from Aunty Em's snack bar. "And Grover went exploring. Look, he found a friend." Annabeth carried on the conversation.
My eyes had trouble focusing. Grover was sitting cross-legged on a blanket with something fuzzy in his lap, a dirty, unnaturally pink stuffed animal while Y/N walked over and started petting it.
No. It wasn't a stuffed animal. It was a pink poodle.
The poodle yapped at me suspiciously. Grover said, "No, he's not."
I blinked. "Are you ... talking to that thing?" The poodle growled.
"Thisthing," Grover warned. "It's our ticket west. Be nice to him." Y/N defended the dog.
"You can talk to animals?" Grover ignored the question. "Percy, meet Gladiola. Gladiola, Percy." I stared at Annabeth, figuring she'd crack up at this practical joke they were playing on me, but she looked deadly serious.
"I'm not saying hello to a pink poodle," I said. "Forget it." I sounded like a 5 year old kid who was persistent on not eating their veggies.
"Percy," Annabeth said. "I said hello to the poodle. You say hello to the poodle."
The poodle growled again and Y/N had to calm it down. To have the shortest summary possible, I said hello to the poodle.
Grover explained that he'd come across Gladiola in the woods and they'd struck up a conversation. The poodle had run away from a rich local family, who'd posted a $200 reward for his return. Gladiola didn't really want to go back to his family, but he was willing to if it meant helping Grover.
"How does Gladiola know about the reward?" I asked.
"He read the signs," Grover said. "Duh."
"Of course," I said, skeptical. "Silly me." My voice was now dripping with sarcasm.
"So we turn in Gladiola," Annabeth explained in her best strategy voice, "we get money, and we buy tickets to Los Angeles. Simple." I thought about my dream—the whispering voices of the dead, the thing in the chasm, and my mother's face, shimmering as it dissolved into gold. All that might be wait-ing for me in the West.
"Not another bus," I said warily.
"No," Annabeth agreed. She pointed downhill, toward train tracks I hadn't been able to see last night in the dark. "There's an Amtrak station half a mile that way. According to Gladiola, the west-bound train leaves at noon."
And that's it folks! The start to yet another stupid idea, followed by me jumping off a flaming historical landmark.