◇◇◇◇◇◇Annabeth Chase◇◇◇◇◇◇
It didn't took us long to pack, the Camp store had granted Percy one hundred dollars and twenty golden drachmas. Chiron gaved Percy, Vic and I each a canteen of nectar and a bag full of squares of ambrosia.
I'd bringed my yankees cap, a book of clasical architecture written in ancient greek of course and my celestial bronze knife hidden in my shirt sleeve.
Grover wore his fake feet and his pants to pass as human. He wore a green rasta-style cap, because when it rained his curly hair flattened and you could just see the tips of his horns. His bright orange backpack was full of scrap metal and apples to snack on. In his pocket was a set of reed pipes his daddy goat had carved for him, even though he only knew two songs: Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 12 and Hilary Duff 's "So Yesterday," both of which sounded pretty bad on reed pipes
Percy had a backpack, inside it he had clothes and the money.
Vic was wearing one of her purple hodies (she has a ton of those), some jeans and a water green bracelet on her left hand. She had packed clothes, (more purple hodies), a sketchbook,a pencil case full of colored pencils, markers and erasers and a flashlight.
We waved good-bye to the other campers, took one last look at the strawberry fields, the ocean, and
the Big House, then hiked up Half-Blood Hill to the tall pine tree that used to be my friend Thalia, daughter of Zeus, when we arrived, V was staring at the tree weirdly, maybe she just realized she and Thalia were sisters.
Chiron was waiting for us in his wheelchair. Next to him stood Argus, the security guard.
"This is Argus," Chiron told Percy. "He will drive you into the city, and, er, well, keep an eye on things."
I heard footsteps behind us.
Luke came running up the hill, carrying a pair of basketball shoes.
"Hey!" he panted. "Glad I caught you"
I felt the heat raising to my cheeks, both Avery and Jackson noticed it.
"Just wanted to say good luck," Luke told the dark haired boy. "And I thought . . . um, maybe you could use these."
He handed Percy the sneakers, which looked pretty normal. They even smelled kind of normal. Luke said, "Maia!"
White bird’s wings sprouted out of the heels, startling the son of Poseidon so much, he dropped them. The shoes flapped around on the ground until the wings folded up and disappeared.
"Awesome!" Grover said.
Luke smiled. "Those served me well when I was on my quest. Gift from Dad. Of course, I don't use
them much these days. . . ." His expression turned sad.
Just by one look at Percy's face, I could tell he didn't know what to say, but he was grateful. By one look at him, you could also notice he was blushing like hell.
"Hey, man," Percy said. "Thanks."
"Listen, Percy . . ." Luke looked uncomfortable. "A lot of hopes are riding on you. So just . . . kill
some monsters for me, okay?"
They shook hands. Luke patted Grover's head between his horns, gave a good-bye hug to me, and gave V a high-five, he seemed like he was leaving but at the last moment he ruffled her hair.
After Luke was gone, Percy told me.
"You're hyperventilating."
"Am not."
"You let him capture the flag instead of you, didn't you?"
"Oh . . . why do I want to go anywhere with you, Percy? Vic being such an idiot sometimes is enough."
"Hey, I heard that!" Said girl exclaimed.
I stomped down the other side of the hill, where a white SUV waited on the shoulder of the road. Argus followed, jingling his car keys.
Percy looked at Chiron. "I won't be able to use these, will I?"
He shook his head. "Luke meant well, Percy. But taking to the air . . . that would not be wise for you."
Percy nodded, disappointed, but then he got an idea. "Hey, Grover. You want a magic item?"
His eyes lit up. "Me?"
Pretty soon they'd laced the sneakers over his fake feet, and the world's first flying goat boy was ready for launch.
"Maia!" he shouted.
He got off the ground okay, but then fell over sideways so his backpack dragged through the grass. The winged shoes kept bucking up and down like tiny broncos.
"Practice," Chiron called after him. "You just need practice!"
"Aaaaa!" Grover went flying sideways down the hill like a possessed lawn mower, heading toward the van.
Before Percy could follow, Chiron caught his arm.
Argus drove us out of the countryside and into western Long Island. It felt weird to be on a highway again. After five years at
Half-Blood Hill, the real world seemed like a fantasy. I found myself staring at every McDonald's, every kid in the back of his parents' car, every billboard and shopping mall.
"So far so good," Percy told me. "Ten miles and not a single monster."
I gave him an irritated look. "It's bad luck to talk that way, seaweed brain."
"Remind me again-why do you hate me so much?"
"I don't hate you."
"Could've fooled me."
I folded my cap of invisibility.
"Look . . . we're just not supposed to get along, okay? Our parents are rivals."
"Why?"
I sighed. "How many reasons do you want? One time my mom caught Poseidon with his girlfriend in Athena's temple, which is hugely disrespectful." V snickered at the word hugely, I shot her a deadly glare.
"Sorry," She apologized, "go on."
"Another time," I continued, "Athena and Poseidon competed to be the patron god for the city of Athens. Your dad created some stupid saltwater spring for his gift. My mom created the olive tree. The people saw that her gift was better, so they named the city after her."
"They must really like olives." V snickered at Percy's comment.
"Oh, forget it." I stated.
"Now, if she'd invented pizza that I could understand." Percy said.
Victoire snickered again.
"I said, forget it!" I exclaimed, irritated, "And you stop doing that!"
"Me? I'm not doing anything!" Vic replied with a little smirk in her face. She loved being annoying so much.
"Stop it!"
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Traffic slowed us down in Queens. By the time we got into Manhattan it was sunset and starting to rain.
Argus dropped us at the Greyhound Station on the Upper East Side.
Percy started to look around, as if he was sad, Grover walked to him amd started talking with him.
After a while, Vic's ADHD couldn't do it anymore and she stood, as she walked she kept shaking her hands. I watched her closely, maybe that's why she loved training so much, not only because she wanted to get claimed, because it kept her moving, then she would get tired and it would be easy for her to sleep at night.
"When will it come?" She asked.
"Soon." I answered bored.
She gaved me an irritated look and kept walking, this time faster.
I looked at the city for a while, but then Vic sat next to me, when I looked at her she was clearly irritated but there was something else, her hair, face and a bit of her hodie was all wet.
"What happened to you?" I asked her.
"I didn't realize." V answered.
"You didn't realize what?"
"That it was raining, I kept walking untill there was no roof and I didn't realize it was raining untill I touched my hair." She said, opening her backpack for a towel.
"You what?" I said with a little smile.
"Oh, shut up." V said, releasing her hair to dry it with her towel.
Then the boys came, Percy frowned looking at Vic, "Dude, what happened to you?"
"The rain, Percy, the rain." The daughter of Zeus answered.
"But there's a roof. . .?" He asked, clearly confused.
"Yeah," I told them, "But she didn't realize when it ended."
"Shut up!" She exclaimed, then she threw her towell to me.
I caught it easily, I was ready to threw it, but Grover interrupted, "Uhm, Percy, can't you dry her?"
"Yeah, I could try." He answered.
After he closed his eyes, V was dry.
"Thank you, Water boy." She told Percy, who smiled a bit at the nickname.
"Your welcome, Sky girl." He said, also using a nickname.
I frowned at that scene, only Grover noticing.
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The rain kept coming down.
We got restless waiting for the bus and decided to play some Hacky Sack with one of Grover's apples. I was doing really good, so was V. We could bounce the apple off one of our knees,elbow, shoulder,whatever. Percy was. . . Decent, you could say.
The game ended when he tossed the apple toward Grover and it got too close to his mouth. In one mega goat bite, our Hacky Sack disappeared -core, stem, and all.
Grover blushed. He tried to apologize, but Vic, Percy and I were too busy cracking up.
Finally the bus came. As we stood in line to board, Grover started looking around, sniffing the air.
"What is it?" Percy asked Grover.
"I don't know," he said tensely. "Maybe it's nothing."
But there was definitely something.
Percy was relieved when we finally got on board and found seats together in the back of the bus. We
stowed our backpacks. I kept slapping my Yankees cap nervously against my thigh. Vic was looking around the bus for escape options.
As the last passengers got on, I clamped my hand onto Vic's knee, to get her attention "Guys."
"Well, now that's potencially problematic." Said girl mumbled.
An old lady had just boarded the bus. She wore a crumpled velvet dress, lace gloves, and a shapeless
orange-knit hat that shadowed her face, and she carried a big paisley purse. When she tilted her head up,
her black eyes glittered, and my heart skipped a beat. Alecto.
Percy scrunched down in his seat.
Behind her came two more old ladies: one in a green hat, one in a purple hat. Otherwise they looked
exactly like Alecto-same gnarled hands, paisley handbags, wrinkled velvet dresses. Triplet demon grandmothers.
They sat in the front row, right behind the driver. The two on the aisle crossed their legs over the
walkway, making an X. It was casual enough, but it sent a clear message: nobody leaves.
The bus pulled out of the station, and we headed through the slick streets of Manhattan.
"She didn't stay dead long," Percy said,"I thought you said they could be dispelled for a lifetime."
"I said if you're lucky," Tori said. "And we all know how lucky you're."
"All three of them," Grover whimpered. "Di immortales!"
"It's okay," I said, obviously thinking hard. "The Furies. The three worst monsters from the Underworld. No problem. No problem. We'll just slip out the windows."
"They don't open," Vic quickly answered.
"A back exit?" I suggested.
"Nope."
Even if there had been, it wouldn’t have helped. By that time, we were on Ninth Avenue, heading for the Lincoln Tunnel.
"They won't attack us with witnesses around," Percy said. "Will they?"
"Mortals don’t have good eyes," I reminded him. "Their brains can only process what they see through the Mist."
"They'll see three old ladies killing us, won't they?"
"That’s pretty sad." V mumbled.
I thought about it. "Hard to say. But we can't count on mortals for help. Maybe an emergency exit in the roof . . . ?"
"The roof, how could I forget?" Vic said.
We hit the Lincoln Tunnel,and the bus went dark except for the running lights down the aisle. It was eerily quiet without the sound of the rain.
Alecto got up. In a flat voice, as if she'd rehearsed it, she announced to the whole bus: "I need to use the rest-room."
"So do I," said the second sister.
"So do I,"said the third sister.
They all started coming down the aisle.
"I've got it," Annabeth said. "Percy, take my hat."
"What?"
"You're the one they want. Turn invisible and go up the aisle. Let them pass you. Maybe you can get
to the front and get away."
"But you guys-"
"There's an outside chance they might not notice us," Annabeth said. "You're a son of one of the
Big Three. Your smell might be overpowering."
"I can't just leave you." Percy said, "Besides, Vic is also a child of the big three."
I felt my heart sink when he said that.
"But they don't know that." Toire said.
"Don't worry about us," Grover said. "Go!"
Percy took the Yankees cap and put it on.
The old ladies kept walking, but one, Alecto stopped, she sniffted the air, then she continued.
They walked. . . They walked. . .
Then they turned to us.
The old ladies were not old ladies anymore. Their faces were still the same -I guess those couldn't get any uglier- but their bodies had shriveled into leathery brown hag bodies with bat's wings and hands and feet like gargoyle claws. Their handbags had turned into fiery whips.
The Furies surrounded Grover,Vic and I lashing their whips, hissing:
"Where is it? Where?"
The other people on the bus were screaming, cowering in their seats. They saw something, all right.
"He's not here!" I yelled. "He's gone!"
The Furies raised their whips.
I drew her bronze knife. Grover grabbed a tin can from his snack bag and prepared to throw it. Vic turned her ring into her sword.
Then everything went crazy.
And of course, I blamed it on Percy.
"Hey!" the driver yelled. ''Hey whoa!"
The bus slammed against the side of the tunnel, grinding metal,throwing
sparks a mile behind us.
We careened out of the Lincoln Tunnel and back into the rainstorm, people and monsters tossed around the bus, cars plowed aside like bowling pins. Somehow the driver found an exit. We shot off the highway, through half a dozen traffic lights, and ended up barreling down one of those New Jersey rural roads where you can't believe there's so much nothing right across the river from New York. There were woods to our left, the Hudson River to our right, and the driver seemed to be veering toward the river.
Another great idea of Percy's: He hit the emergency brake.
The bus wailed, spun a full circle on the wet asphalt, and crashed into the trees. The emergency lights came on. The door flew open. The bus driver was the first one out, the passengers yelling as they stampeded after him.
The Furies regained their balance. They lashed their whips at me while I waved my knife and yelled in Ancient Greek, telling them to back off. Grover threw tin cans. Vic drew her sword, waiting for me to tell her to attack.
Percy's greatest idea: He took off the invisible cap and yelled."Hey!"
The Furies turned, baring their yellow fangs at him. Alecto stalked up the aisle.Every time she flicked her whip, red flames danced along the barbed leather.
Her two ugly sisters hopped on top of the seats on either side of her and crawled toward Percy like huge nasty lizards.
"Perseus Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said, in an accent that was definitely from somewhere farther south than Georgia. "You have offended the gods. You shall die."
"I liked you better as a math teacher," He told her.
She growled.
Vic, Grover and I moved up behind the Furies cautiously, looking for an opening.
Percy took a ballpoint pen out of his pocket and uncapped it. The pen elongated into a shimmering
double-edged sword.
The Furies hesitated.
Mrs. Dodds had felt Percy's blade before. She obviously didn't like seeing it again.
"Submit now," she hissed. "And you will not suffer eternal torment."
"Nice try," The son of Poseidon told her.
"Percy, look out!" I cried.
Alecto lashed her whip around Percy's sword hand while Alecto on the either side lunged at him.
Percy kept fighting her, untill she tried to back off a little.
I got Alecto in a wrestler's hold and yanked her backward while Grover ripped the whip out of her hands.
"Ow!" he yelled. "Ow! Hot! Hot!"
Then the other Fury came, I thought she was gonna get me, but the Fury kept racing untill V was on her radar.
The daughter of Zeus immediately swung her sword at the Fury, then V took the towell she was using before and threw it.
Surprisingly, it worked, the Fury looked at the towell in confusion for a few seconds, seconds that Avery used to sent her back to Tartarus.
Alecto was trying to get me off her back. She kicked, clawed, hissed and bit, but I held on while Grover amd Vic got Alecto's legs tied up in her own whip. Finally we all shoved her backward into the aisle. Alecto tried to get up, but she didn't have room to flap her bat wings, so she kept falling down.
"Zeus will destroy you!" she promised. "Hades will have your soul!"
"Braccas meas vescimini!" The son of Poseidon yelled, as Vic mumbled, "We need to get out of here . . ."
It was as if the daughter of Zeus got in all her senses.
"C'mon! We need to get out." She said again, louder.
I looked at her in confusion, "Wha-"
I didn't got to finish, as thunder shook the bus. The hair rose on the back of my neck.
"Get out!"I yelled at them. "Now!"
We rushed outside and found the other passengers wandering around in a daze, arguing with the driver, or running around in circles yelling,
"We're going to die!" A Hawaiianshirted tourist with a
camera snapped Percy's photograph before hecould recap his sword.
"Our bags!" Grover realized. "We left our-"
BOOOOOM!
The windows of the bus exploded as the passengers ran for cover.
Lightning shredded a huge crater
in the roof, but an angry wail from inside told me Alecto was not yet dead.
"Run!" I said. "She's calling for reinforcements! We have to get out of here!"
We plunged into the woods as the rain poured down, the bus in flames behind us, and nothing but darkness ahead.
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So there we were, Percy, Toire, Grover and I, walking through the woods along the New Jersey riverbank, the glow of New York City making the night sky yellow behind us, and the smell of the Hudson reeking in our noses.
Grover was shivering and braying, his big goat eyes turned slit-pupiled and full of terror. "Three Kindly Ones. All three at once."
The explosion of bus windows still rang in my ears. But I kept pulling them along, saying: "Come on! The farther away we get, the better."
"All our money was back there," Jackson reminded me. "Our food and clothes. Everything."
"My purple hodies. . ." Vic saddly said.
"Well, maybe if you hadn't decided to jump into the fight-" I exclaimed.
"What did you want me to do? Let you get killed?" Percy argued.
"You didn't need to protect me, Percy. I would've been fine."
"Sliced like sandwich bread," Grover put in, "but fine."
"Shut up, goat boy," I said, earning a glare from Vic, she was Grover's protector, that's how she got into Clarisse's bad side, the daughter of Ares was making fun of Grover, V heard about it and next day, she totally humillated her.
Grover brayed mournfully. "Tin cans . . . a perfectly good bag of tin cans."
We sloshed across mushy ground, through nasty twisted trees that smelled like sour laundry.
After a few minutes, I fell into line next to Percy. "Look, I . . ." My voice faltered. "I appreciate your coming back for us, okay? That was really brave."
"We're a team, right?''
I was silent for a few more steps. “
"It's just that if you died . . . aside from the fact that it would really suck for you, it would mean the quest was over. This may be my only chance to see the real world."
The thunderstorm had finally let up. The city glow faded behind us, leaving us in almost total darkness. I couldn't see anything of Percy except a glint of his sea green eyes.
"You haven’t left Camp Half-Blood since you were seven?" He asked me.
"No...only short field trips.My dad-"
"The history professor."
"Yeah. It didn't work out for me living at home. I mean, Camp Half-Blood is my home." I was
rushing my words out now. “At camp you train and train. And that's all cool and everything, but the real world is where the monsters are. That's where you learn whether you're any good or not.''
"You're pretty good with that knife," He said.
"You think so?"
"Anybody who can piggyback-ride a Fury is okay by me."
I smiled a bit.
"You know," I said, "maybe I should tell you . . . Something funny back on the bus . . ."
Toot-toot-toot
"Hey, my reed pipes still work!" Grover cried. "If I could just remember a 'find path' song, we
could get out of these woods!"
He puffed out a few notes, but the tune still sounded suspiciously like Hilary Duff. Instead of finding a path, Percy immediately slammed into a tree and got a nice-size knot on his head.
Avery and I snickered.
"Infrared vision, didn't know that was one of Poseidon's powers, but seems like you have it, mate." Vic sarcastically said.
"Very funny." Percy said, rubbing his head.
"Don't worry, you'll get used to it." I told him.
V smirked, one, two, three. "Sure he will . . . He-"
"Stop it!"
"I didn't say anything!"
Percy looked confused, "Will I also get used to that?"
"Yeah," Grover said, poor satyr he is so done with us.
"Just like Grover has. . ." Vic said, "Grover, who has a-"
"Don't you dare!" I said, but it was to late.
". . . Spidey sense . . ."
I punched her in the arm.
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