Pride comes before a fall.
Summary: water is usually a good conductor of lightning – but when a certain son of poseidon is hit by a few thousand volts of lightning the question is, will he survive?
Percy whump!
Chapter one.
Percy hated flying in planes. To him, unless you were less than two hundred feet from the ground and preferably on a pegasus, then it completely and unequivocally sucked – I mean, lord zeus had personally promised to blast him out of the sky the next time he dared entered his domain. But this was an emergency and seeing as the god's themeselves were under threat, percy and the other campers on board with him fercently hoped that the lord of the skies would be far too occuppied to deal with a minor thing like a hoard of banned demigods flying across his domain.
It had not been easy trying to get past all that airport security, when you were a demigod you tended to travel light, and that meant that all their weapons had to go in their hand luggage, a fact that chiron had had to work very hard to conceal with the mist,as riptide kept setting off the alarm, despite it only appearing to be pen.
After they had finally got through with their things, they proceded to the departure gate and were soon boarded with their things put in the overhead locker.
They had a very rough landing for what appeared to be a very calm day, what with the plane doing a couple of bounces before settling on the ground and the in cabin lights flickering for a few moments, and they hoped it was a coincidence and not the result of lord zeus, as that would mean that the god was in fact aware of what they had done and would probably have to listen to him raging later on, he thought with display.
He tried to shove that thought away and focus more on the task ahead, which was to help out in the efforts to keep the monsters which were trying to cross manhattan bridge at bay.
They arrived at the makeshift battle ground around midday, and annabeth, went into typical strategist mode, courtesy of being a child of athena.
"Right, percy, you are the only one blackjack will answer to you, and don't try to say that he's not here because I know that you smuggled him here, and due to the fact that he only answers to you means that I want you to fly up there and observe the battle to see where the rest of our forces are. Thaila, I want you to to go with him, ride behind him if you have to, I want to see if electrocution has any effect on them, use your knife to direct it. nico, see what your dead warriors can do, but join in the fighting as well as you can. Every else do the same. Unless you are fairly confident that you can use your powers without draining your energy too much, don't use them. Now go to!" and with that, she beckoned to the rest of the warriors, turned on her heel and jogged over to where all the action was happening.
That left me and thaila.
"well kelp head, are you gonna call this mule of yours or not?"
I wondered breifly what was up with her attitude, and then I remembered, the daughter of the lord of the skies was scared of heights.
" yeah I will – but thaila?"
"yeah?"
"don't call him that or I will have him take us up really high and do a couple of loop the loops with no saddle."
Thaila snorted.
"bring it on" she said, but despite her bravado, I could see the fear in her eyes and decided that I had made my point well enough and didn't need to push the issue farther.
I called out to blackjack in my head, one of the benefits of being a child of poseidon that i a absloutley love.
" yo boss – you ready to kick some butt?"
"you betcha! – come on thals!"
with the two of us all mounted up, we took off and flew up over manhattan bridge. It looked even more impressive from up here, but we needed to do something quickly if we wee going to stop the monsters from crossing it in time. they were gaining the advantage, and were pressing it more and more by pushing their forces foward more and more.
"Thaila, you see those monsters over there? Okay good. You think you could take some out from this distance?"
"duh!" she said rolling her eyes.
"blackjack – think you could take us a little closer?"
"sure thing boss!"
he swooped down, making thaila pale, but she carried on with grim determination, striking down dracanae and hellhounds left, right and centre.
After half an hour of repeated strikes, and percy muttering into the communications system that the hephaestus cabin had set up, percy said
"uhh Thaila?"
"shut up percy – cant't you see I'm busy – the giants have found a way to return the bolts of lightning, and I wouldn't fancy our chances if the lightning hit the horse."
She said all this as retallient bolts of lightning shot past their ears, ruffling their hair with the force of their passing. She paused just in time to parry another one as it had been about to hit her midsection.
The air positively crackled with the electric energy all around them. All you could hear was the din from the battle, far away as it was and the fizzing and popping of the lightning. "but Thaila look"
she looked around after sending another volley of static bolts down to the monsters. "what" she snapped.
She lookeed to where percy was pointing. A dark cloud was forming over the raging heat of the battle.
"that doesn't look good! Better head for the ground" said blackjack, and the other two agreed right away. They did that and just as the swivelled back round in the opposite direction to continue exchanging deadly electric missiles, a particularly large bolt of lightning hit Percy square in the chest.
There was a sizzling sound and all the hair on percys body stood up. He stiffened for a moment and then his eyes rolled back into his head and he began to slide quickly off the saddle.
Finally realizing what was about to happen she lunged for him, but was too late. His body fell from the sky, and Blackjack couldn't do anything to save him because he was already too far down, they'd never make it in time, and not only that, he would only dislodge thaila as well and then that would be two heroes that would be lost.
No you musn't think like that! He thought fiercly to himself. The boss'll survive. He always does. Thaila was staring after percy as he fell with wide eyes, Shaking in fear and with her earlier words echoing in her ears, she said "right Blackjack. Get down there right now and see if we can find where he fell." Blackjack complied swooping down beneath where that big cloud had been settling. They hadn't realized how far up they had got, and Thaila shivered as they neared the ground. One thing they hadn't taken into account though, was the fact that they were dirctly above the bridge, and on one of the support beams, about a hundred feet off the ground was percy, one of his feet missing a trainer and dangling over the side. Luckily, most of percy's body seemed to have landed on the girder so there was no imminent danger of him falling off. The wind whistled all around them, making percy's hair ruffle. He looked strangely peaceful, although he did look like a corpe, which thaila hoped was not the case.
she began talking into the communicator.
"Travis?"
"yeah i gotcha – What's up?"
"we got a situation. Send over chiron, and as many apollo medics as what you can lay hands on. Get piper and see if she can procure an ambulance."
"why what's up?"
"percy's down."
She heard him use several expletives that she hadn't known existed in greek and then he said
"what happened?"
"long story. I'll explain later."
As they headed down to meet the team of medics, there were two things on thaila's mind.
who's gonna tell percy's other freinds – especially annabeth? And
how the hell are we gonna get him down from there?
AN: oohh a cliffy, i wonder what happens next?
Please read and reveiw – it's so easy and it would relly make my day as i've only just started on fanfic. Next chappie up soon. kxx