"Come on, Seaweed Brain. It's just a movie."
"An awesome, movie! Come watch it with us? Grover promised he'd come so you wouldn't be the only boy."
Annabeth and I looked at him pleadingly, but it still wasn't working. I tried again.
"Oh, come on, Percy! Everyone here knows you love football! It shouldn't be this hard to convince you to go to a football movie! It's not like we're trying to take you to a battle movie—not after what happened last summer."
All three of us half-winced at the semi-reminder of the battle last summer. It'd been several months and we were on break and at camp for the weekend. We weren't in the middle of a war, and I wanted a night where we could try to be normal teenage friends who want a night out. I wouldn't go without Annabeth, and Annabeth wouldn't go without Percy, which bring us to now.
He sighed. "Fine, I'll go see Woodlawn with you."
Annabeth and my grins probably split our faces they were so wide. "Great!" Annabeth exclaimed. "I'll go tell Grover." She hurried out before he could change his mind, probably finding Grover waiting just out of earshot.
Five hours later, we came out of the movie theater laughing and carrying on, talking about the movie.
"And that last phone call. Perfect ending, right?"
"I got goosebumps on that part and the climax on the field. Remember? That touchdown of Tony's they showed?"
"Yeah, that part was great."
We continued walking towards the bus stop to ride back to camp, chatting and laughing and not really paying much attention.
"Uh, guys?" Grover broke into our conversation. "We're being followed."
I glanced over to see Grover sniffing the air intently. "What it is?" I asked.
"I can't tell. They're too fast. They keep moving around too much to find them."
Annabeth muttered something under her breath that sounded like a curse, "Considering the Battle of Manhattan, that can only mean one thing."
My eyes widened as I caught her meaning. I activated my sword. "Anemoi Thuellai," I breathed. "Ah, crud. I hate those things."
As if my words had summoned them, two dark shapes formed from the low hanging clouds above. They bore down on us so quickly I didn't have time to react. Neither touched us, thank goodness, but I got a hefty shock.
The shock threw me several feet, but I managed to turn my landing into a tuck and roll. Standing back up, I saw Percy and Annabeth somehow holding their own against them. Grover was still laying on the pavement. I ran over to check on him, but he started to get up as I got there.
"You alright?" I asked.
"Fine," he answered shortly, focusing more on Percy. "How do we help? We need a child of lightning."
I thought a minute. "You've learned more songs on those pipes, right?" He nodded. "Do any of them have lyrics that fit the situation?"
Percy and Annabeth were taking a beating, and I didn't want to just stand there now that Grover was alright. "Keep thinking. I'm going to go help them." I ran over and jumped into battle, having absolutely no idea what I was doing.
One of them tried to electrocute me again, but I would have none of that, deflecting the electricity off my shield.
"How do we kill them?" I called over.
Percy shook his head as Annabeth answered. "Celestial bronze only works when you catch them by surprise. This could take a while."
We kept fighting it, deflecting electricity and separating as we tried to get behind one spirit or the other to kill it, but the spirits kept us on defense and it didn't look like that would change any time soon.
We'd been defending for maybe five minutes before I heard a muffled sound behind me. I glanced back, praying it wasn't another monster, to find Grover blowing into his pipes. Judging by the random notes he was playing, it sounded like he was desperately trying to remember how to play a song he thought might help.
A few long minutes later, he apparently figured it out, and a familiar, though very scattered melody filled the air. His rendition obviously needed some practice, as it took several stanzas for me to recognize the tune, but when I did, I understood why he'd chosen it.
"Grover, you're a genius!"
Annabeth took a stab at a spirit (their name is just too long. I mean, really, who wants to figure out how to pronounce Anemoi Thuellai, anyway?), but her face showed a bit of confusion. She obviously hadn't figure out the tune yet, so I half-heartedly sung a couple lyrics to go with his pipes.
Just after Annabeth recognized the song, the magic kicked in, and a huge crash of thunder echoed through the clouds, made all the louder by how low the clouds hang. A moment later, a bolt of lightning shot down from the nearest cloud and fried the spirit into vapor, nearly deafening me with its corresponding clap of thunder.
The three of us turned our attention to the remaining spirit (maybe call them the Roman name, venti? Nah, Connor's right. That makes them sound like evil espresso drinks) as Grover continued his tune. Percy and Annabeth took point while I tried to sneak behind it. Even with only one to focus on, the spirit (I got it! Nemo! I'm calling them Nemo!) was hard to kill. The darn thing simply wouldn't die.
We essentially kept it distracted until Grover got back around to the chorus again, which, let me tell you, was the longest minute and a half ever. At this point, another lightning bolt fired down from the clouds, pulverizing the remaining Nemo.
Percy, being closest to Grover at the time, quickly grabbed him before he could collapse. I dug some ambrosia out of my pack and handed to him. Soon enough, Grover was on his feet again, though he still looked pretty tired.
"That was awesome, G-man!" Percy said, excited now that the monsters were gone.
"Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't fight," Annabeth told him seriously. "That was quite the magic you worked there." She paused, then continued half-teasingly, "Two strikes so close together? Thalia would be jealous."
I decided to poke some fun at him a bit, since we can't let his head get too big. "You might want to practice a bit more though," I told him with a large grin to show him I was teasing. "Too many wrong notes in there gave it its potency."
Grover bleated in mock offense, but Percy spoke up before he could. "Yeah, G-man. Be careful. That's a dangerous weapon you have there."
Annabeth grinned a bit before cutting off our teasing. "Oh, lay off him. However bad his cover of Born to be Wild, it killed the Ane—Anemoi—"
Still grinning, I cut her off as she stumbled over the name. "Oh, just call them Nemo and be done with it. Their name's too blasted long anyways."
She looked at me in surprise, and I thought she was about to protest my shortening of their name like she did whenever Percy couldn't pronounce something, but she just laughed.
"Are you ready to head back to camp?" she asked Grover instead. He nodded, but I grunted as pain finally registered.
Annabeth, ever the big sister, immediately looked over to me, even though my grunt hadn't been that loud. "What's wrong?" she asked.
I waved her off that I was fine as I lowered myself onto the curb to figure out what I'd injured. The pain was radiating up my left leg, but the gaping hole in my shoe made my brain connect the dots to my heel.
I slowly worked off the remains of my shoe and my sock, which took a while. Once they were off, an ugly looking burn was clearly visible on the bottom of my heel.
I slowly exhaled to avoid reacting to the nasty looking wound on my foot and simply said, "Yeah, that hurts."
As I sat down, Annabeth had gotten into my bag to get nectar and ambrosia out. She turned around only after I'd commented and paled a bit. Quickly composing herself, she only said, "Yeah, I bet. When did that happen?"
I ran the battle through my mind. "It must have been the initial attack, when Grover and I got blasted back." I glanced down but quickly looking away. As long as I didn't look at it, the pain was tolerable, so I focused on Percy and Grover who were scanning the surroundings, on watch while Annabeth helped me.
She trickled a bit of nectar onto the wound to calm down the initial burst of pain I'd gotten when the adrenaline left before drizzling a bit more on a small piece of ambrosia in her hand. I watched as she made a paste out of the two, something she undoubtedly had learned from Thalia, who'd learned it from the Hunt, and placed it on my electrical burn. Instant relief.
She put on just enough paste to cover the wound before wrapping it in a bandage. By the time she finished putting the stuff away, my foot felt good enough for me to stand, so long as I didn't put too much weight on my heel.
"So, Grover," I asked as we made it to the bus stop to wait for the bus that would take us back to camp, "got any more dangerous weapons we should know about?"
So what'd you think? My eternal disclaimer is still on my profile. R&R!
Also, as of this posting, I am taking suggestions for short stories based on LoD. Did I leave a plot hole? Make a reference to something I didnt explain? Ask a question, and it might just get written. Send through review or pm :)
