Percy Jackson
In case you were wondering, I did not get a good night's sleep that night.
Shocking, I know.
It's almost like I'm on a quest or something.
I'd barely fallen asleep on my own when there was a bang from up on deck, which was more than enough to wake me up.
Getting up, I threw my shorts back on and grabbed the first weapon I could reach— not even thinking about Riptide being in my pocket. I opened the door to see Silena and Tyson both running up to the deck as well, though Clarisse was still down here.
Why...?
"Did a child of mine really lower defenses to a level of letting an attack in?" But I know a bastards voice when I hear one. He sighed. "I can't believe you child! I bless you with the powers of summoning the defeated and you use it for what? So you can relax and not do anything? You've been hanging around with that Aphrodite girl too much, Clarisse. You've gone soft, kid, too damn soft! If you continue like this, you're sure to fail. Even an idiot can see that."
I stopped myself in the hall. Poking my head into the room, I'm glad I ended up not knocking on the door.
Although Ares wasn't physically here (which is good for his safety, let's be honest), he was on an Iris Message with Clarisse.
And if I remember correctly, Clarisse has never gotten the chance to talk to her dad before. This would be the first time she's properly met him. Spoken with him, really.
But all he was doing was lecturing her and telling him that he's disappoin in her choices. In her choices of friends.
Telling her that she was bound to fail.
It pissed me off enough to hear it, but it pissed me off even more to see that Clarisse was struggling to keep herself together the longer he spoke.
She was crying.
"Y— yes, Father, I'm so—"
"Don't call me Father." He cut her off, which was cruel even for a god. "you've earned no such right."
"Yes... Yes, sir." She went on as I grabbed a pillow that has gotten tossed on the ground. "S— sor... Sorry, sir, I won't—"
"Speak, child! If you're blubbering and muttering, it's no wonder you can't get anything—"
I threw the pillow, narrowing missing Clarisse in order to go through the Iris Message and end the call.
"Says the half ass of a man who won't go into the tunnel of love because he's afraid of a net and a camera." I announced my arrival, hoping that story would make Clarisse feel a little less bad about what just happened with her father. "For the person having an affair with the goddess of love, he's pretty fucking awful at showing it."
As she turned towards me, something on Clarisse's face caught my attention.
There was a little red smudge on the top of her forehead, near her hairline. Which, for a split second, I was worried it was blood, but the shade of it...
Did Silena actually give Clarisse a kiss goodnight?
"Hey!" Clarisse tried to argue, but even Mr. D could've acted more caring than she did right now. "He's still... Well, I guess he doesn't want me to call him my dad or my father, but..."
"He's a bully, Clarisse," I insisted, watching her take a breath. "Don't let him convince you that he's really done stuff for you— especially if that's the first time you've spoken to him, okay? What's the uh... What's the mark on your forehead?"
"The mark..." The older demigod's voice faded as she felt right around where the red spot was. "oh uh... So you know how you said that you and Grover are a lot like me and Silena?"
I nodded my head in anticipation.
"We..." She took another breath, trying to steady herself. "We aren't f— okay, bad wording. I was stupidly nervous the entire time when I was talking to her about it, but we aren't just friends anymore."
Clarisse paused, smiling just a little bit.
"Silena's my girlfriend now. She gave me a kiss on the forehead, I guess her lipstick left a mark."
I couldn't help but smile back.
We're gonna have to get them a U-haul by the time this quest is completed.
"That's great, Clarisse, what—"
BANG!
"Oh shit, they need help," she realized very suddenly, grabbing her spear. "Come on, Mr. GPS, let's go."
Shoving my spear into it's holster, I opted to grab Riptide from my pocket and followed the daughter of my number one personal hater upstairs.
"What's going—"
"DUCK!" Annabeth, Silena, and Tyson all yelled as we opened the door and immediately noticed the most grotesque creature I've ever seen— which is saying a lot considering the fact that I've fought both leathery old ladies and a half bull man who was in a pair of tighty whiteys.
Hitting the deck and looking up at the creature once again, it was grotesque in a way that was different than the Furies or the Minotaur.
From one of it's many heads (did it really have six heads?), there were these wiggly, dangly bits of skin that just reminded me of a gross beard that had caught food in it from eating. But rather than being humanoid, it had six serpent like head and necks.
Oh, and it was almost as big as our ship.
So when it came diving down towards the ship, trying to grab one of us to have for a midnight snack, we didn't scream at all.
Not even a little bit.
"Bad hungry monster!" Tyson yelled, which... I couldn't fault him on the claim, though I didn't love how he called for the monsters attention. "Leave us alone!"
It screamed/growled something back, which only really resulted in some spit falling onto the deck.
"Here!" My weird little half brother responded, even though I'm sure he couldn't understand the thing.
Opening his bag, Tyson grabbed his last peanut butter sandwich and threw it to the monster, who uh... Didn't even care enough to try and catch it.
The sandwich fell into the ocean.
News flash readers: don't throw your lunch into the ocean. It was more enough to piss the Atlantic Ocean off, which is something I didn't even realize was possible.
Please explain this to me: how did the ocean grow teeth.
"Tyson!" I yelled out, unsure myself if it was out of annoyance or out of concern. "Go... Go check the boiler room, make sure nothing explodes on us, okay? If we're stuck here..."
The ship shuddered.
"She won't steer for me, Ms. La Rue!" The zombie manning the wheel yelled out. "If we can't subdue the big mouthed monster, we'll have to jump!"
"We— speak for yourself, you guys already died!" Clarisse responded. "Annie, do you know anything about this monster?"
"Oh, so now you guys want to hear what I have to say?"
I groaned, letting Tyson pass as I bit my tongue.
"Annabeth, there's no time for arguing right now," Silena cut between the two of them. "if we live, you guys can argue all you want afterwards, but if you know anything, it'd be good to know. That's why you're always on quests, right? You're Athena's daughter, you know stuff. Teach us."
"I'm not... Okay, whatever," Annabeth started, taking a breath as the monster in the air tried for another swipe but just got a mouthful of wood and bullet casings. "these monsters are the Charbydis and Scylla— basically the gatekeepers for the sea of monsters or the Bermuda triangle or whatever you want to call it. I don't know who set the path to go by them, but it's virtually impossible to pass them— they're where the phrase being stuck between a rock and hard place comes from. Unless we can somehow subdue one of them, and I don't know how we could do that, we might want to try and get on another route."
"Wouldn't we have to enter the triangle no matter what?" I retorted. "we're so close to where we have to go, we'll have to get in somehow. So we have to subdue them."
"Then how do you suggest we do that, Seaweed Brain?" But the nickname was back and I was worried that it would stick. "None of us have long range weapons for either of them! And none of us have any mixed metal weapons because Camp doesn't make those!"
"Mixed metal?" Clarisse asked. "What? Like Celestial Bronze with Iron or something?"
Annabeth nodded her head.
"They're extremely dangerous weapons, Chiron doesn't provide or let kids wield them at camp because of how dangerous they can be."
"Because of how dangerous..."
I saw Silena look at me, knowing I had at least one of these weapons (I had two, but still), look ar Clarisse (maybe debating if she had any as a daughter of Ares), and then back to Annabeth.
"It's a weapon." The daughter of Aphrodite figured. "It's going to be dangerous no matter what."
"She means that Chiron doesn't like them because they can hurt everyone, including mortals." Clarisse clarified for who I think might be her girlfriend now. "We have a couple in our cabin, but they're on display and they're enchanted so we can't use them— I tried to hold one of them when I was younger and got burned by the handle. Is mixed metal a weakness of these two?"
"Mixed metals is a weakness for anyone that gets hurt by it— that's the whole point of it's existence." Annabeth repeated herself. "for some reason, their skin is resistant to celestial bronze aligned— we'd need to mix it with something. Or find another pure magical metal that isn't Celestial Bronze."
As she spoke, I could feel the weight of the two small blades on my thigh, just waiting to be used.
How do I make this look like the blades aren't mine?
I can't just say I found them in the last day or so— Annabeth knows I didn't find shit on the Princess Andromeda. We were together the whole time.
What can I do?
Maybe if I grab some of the bullet casings and go downstairs, I could pretend like Tyson melted them down to—
"Look out!" Clarisse yelled as the flyer, Scylla, got a little too close to Silena.
Tackling the daughter of Aphrodite to make sure she didn't get eaten, it just left a path wide open for the monster to grab Annabeth.
"Hey!" I yelled, running towards the pair and struggling to summon water, but ultimately getting just enough to pull the monster back down near deck as I pulled out the knife (praying Annabeth was too shocked to notice anything) and slashed the grotesque rooster/snake, causing it to drop Annabeth, who promptly passed out as the monster started to disintegrate.
Another of it's remaining five heads/bodies did respond by trying to capture me, but a slash to the face helped it learn it's lesson.
Not that that solved the whole issue, though: the ocean still had a mouth that had the gravitational force of a black hole. We were currently stuck in the whirlpool of said black hole.
Sitting next to the daughter of Athena as I heard Clarisse start to bark out commands to her crew again, now knowing that Silena was okay, I closed my eyes and tried to focus.
We need to get out of here.
I need to find Grover.
Feeling the boat shift and lean to the right, I felt a tug in my gut as sails and ropes moved around on board.
"I didn't touch it!" Silena claimed almost immediately, which is how I knew, besides the sounds, that things were moving.
"Then keep not touching stuff!" Clarisse yelled back. "I don't know how... Is Percy... Keep doing whatever you're doing, Jackson! We're starting to break against—"
Feeling a hard pull on the boat, I opened my eyes in time to see us start to tip towards my left (starboard) and hear what sounded like wood getting ripped through.
Which, in a wooden boat? Isn't a sound you want to hear.
"I PROMISE WE DON'T TASTE THAT GOOD!" Silena yelled out to the monster, I think trying to use charmspeak to convince it not to eat us, but ultimately sounding too distressed to mKe it work.
Grabbing Annabeth's bag as it had been next to her limp body (she's alive, I promise. She's breathing), I rummaged through the little quest bag Hermes had given each of us within our supplies.
The multivitamins wouldn't be of much help now, though Annabeth might need one when she gets up (the bottle says they're not ambrosia, but they're powerful and healing so I'm treating it like ambrosia), and neither would any of the money we were given. But if we've truly blown a hole in our ship, which it seems like we have, then there should be one last thing to help.
"HOLD ON!" I yelled out to the others, praying this would work as I scanned the horizon to spot the nearest shore and turned around 180 degrees. "I WOULD SIT DOWN JUST IN CASE— WE'RE GOING TO GO VERY FAST."
"We're— Percy that's a jar of j—"
But as I cracked open the jam jar, Clarisse's words were cut short by the fact that she fell on her ass thanks to the sudden change in speed.
Jolting out of the whirlpool, we sped into the Sea of Monsters, waking Annabeth up in the process.
"What... Hey! My bag!" Annabeth insisted as she struggled to sit up. "What's going on? What happened?"
"Sorry, Wise Girl, I needed the jar of wind," I apologized, sliding the rest of the belongings over to her. "we uh... We're going to have to dock ASAP. We were able to throw enough metal and shit at the monster that grabbed you to get it to leave us alone, but not at the teeth monster. It ripped a hole in our mast."
"So we're just going to any old island to dock?"
And maybe it's just because she has just woken up from being knocked out or fainting, but the way she said it...
"Oh, I'm sorry," I began, motioning with my one free hand towards the great expanse of sea around us. "but do you see another option, O Wise One? Do you want to drown? Because if you couldn't figure it out, that's our ONLY OTHER OPTION!"
"I'm just asking if you know where we're going or not!" She yelled back over the wind. "I'm not saying that I have a better idea, Seaweed Brain, I just want to know more about the one you have! I don't know how long I was passed out for— it could've been minutes or hours! You don't have to yell at me. It's not going to get us to Grover any faster, right?"
Closing my eyes, I tried to steady my breathing.
"Please stop calling me that."
The request caught Annabeth off guard as she seemed to take a moment to respond.
"Stop... What? I don't know what you're talking about, Seaweed Brain, but—"
"That!" I stopped her so that way she couldn't claim ignorance again as the ship started to slow and we neared the island. "That is what I'm talking about, Annabeth! I asked you to not call me that last summer and it stopped for maybe a day and then it was like you never even heard me! So I'm asking again to please stop."
"Wh..." But she didn't seem to get it based on the fact that she was visibly confused. "Seaweed Brain? It's a nickname, Percy— because your dad is Barnacle Beard? It's not like I'm making fun of you."
But for a daughter of Athena, she's pretty dumb when it comes to this specific topic.
"It... But it feels like you are." I tried to explain to her, feeling my body force itself to slow down as Clarisse and the man steering got the boat to shore. "And as somebody who's been called dumb, stupid, or idiotic the entirety of his life, it makes it hard to believe that you actually think of me as an equal or a friend or anything that isn't a complete dumbass the more you use it. I'm sorry that I yelled— I'm stressed and I'm tired and I'm just trying to do what I think is best for everyone on the ship and for Grover and for us to the find the Fleece and it's not a good excuse but I just..."
I lost my voice, hearing them drop the anchor and hearing Tyson start to bound up the stairs.
"Want you to stop calling me that." I finished. "And if you want me to stop calling you anything, I will, okay? But I think we'd be able to get along a lot better if I felt like I could actually talk to you about important things without worrying that you'd dismiss it and call me stupid."
"Wh... You don't actually feel that way, do you?" And yet she dismissed the feelings I just told her about. "Come on, Seaweed Br— Percy."
I balled my fists, reminding myself that she at least corrected herself.
"Yes, Annabeth, I do." I insisted, sterling my expression as I tried to calm myself. Silena and Clarisse were waiting by the ladder to leave. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to go see if our boat is even fixable. Come or don't— I don't know how long it'll take."
Turning around, I tried to exhale my frustrations and went to join Clarisse and Silena down on shore— making sure I had all of my blades on me just in case any type of attacker came out way.
"It... Looks like some type of resort," Silena commented as I hopped off the ladder, looking inland. "We're not near the Bahamas, are we? I thought we went East, not South."
"We're definitely not in the Bahamas," I said, pointing to one of the road signs. "That's not English. I... Don't know what language that is, actually."
"Not French." Silena said. "Or Greek."
"It's not Spanish." Clarisse added. "Or Arabic, but... Arabic uses a different alphabet, so duh."
But that posed a question for me.
"You speak Arabic?"
The daughter of Clarisse shrugged.
"Not very well, but I'm learning it." She explained. "Camp requires you to learn at least one language so I started taking Spanish when I was little because I already knew French— my mom grew up in France, so she raised me bilingual, but Chiron said last year that since I'm conversational in Spanish I had to pick another language, so I chose Arabic. There's a lot of stuff happening in Middle East with military and stuff so... Arabic."
"That's... Weirdly cool," I said, realizing how many languages she must know. French, English, Spanish, Ancient Greek, and now Arabic. "it's also not in Portuguese."
"You know Portuguese?" Silena asked me in return.
I nodded.
"Mom's Portuguese, moved here when she was young. I went to an Immersion school this year and it was interesting but the kids kind of sucked." I informed the two of them, assessing the damage our boat took as I noticed Annabeth start to descend from the boat. "Learned the word for faggot. Sounds a lot like bitch."
"No!" The two of them both responded. "That's awful, Percy! Did you at least punch them?"
"Oh, it was worse," I promised. "They were definitely monsters, so..."
Crossing my arms, I looked at the boat again.
It was virtually unrepairable with the abilities we had with us. The hole stretched through half of the boat and there was already a lot of water inside— we'd need Beckendorf here if we had any hopes of fixing it.
"Hey, what.... Here?" A girl's voice said from behind us, causing us to turn. "Is your.... Water... Or something? Did you... Book... Here... CC's Spa?"
It wasn't until Clarisse responded to the girl that I realized the reason I wasn't hearing all of what she was saying was because she was speaking Spanish— not because I was framing in and out.
"Yes, sorry, our.... Hole... Lots of water inside. Would we.... Here for...? Also, my friends do not all speak Spanish, do you know English or Greek?"
"Oh, yes, sorry! Most people that crash here either speak Greek or Spanish, but Spanish is more common." She said, her tone changing as she spoke in English now. "Let me escort you inside— I'm sure the owner would be more than willing to help you out. My name is Hylla— I will be assisting you with anything CC insists upon. Follow me."