The turquoise blue of the water is unnatural, but it doesn't really bother Calypso anymore. She often wonders if this place is even real, if she's just living a dream and in a few hours she'll wake up lying on the floor between ratty old sheets in a ratty old house in her home country of Greece, but she never does and she thanks the gods every day for that.
The sea is relatively calm today, but the slight swell of the waves is inevitable, and she closes her eyes and smiles and just listens to the creaking sounds of the wood beneath her feet and lets the slight movement of her old, trusty ship rock her gently. The morning breeze whips through her hair, and she smiles wider at the thought of another day's hunting, of adding more and always more to the collection of gold and gems and spices and silks in the her ship's hold.
'Ogygia', her name is, and she was her father's before her and her grandfather's before that, and her great-grandfather even before that, and so on and so forth. Calypso loves her dear ship with all her heart, and would rather die than live a life confined to dry land.
A sudden shout from the top of the mast draws her attention away from her thoughts.
"All eyes starboard," yells her lookout, Piper. Her head whips right, and a wicked grin spreads across her face when she spots what Piper's seeing. It's a large Spanish galleon, sailing only a few hundred meters to their right.
Calypso silently thanks the gods she decided years ago to stop flying a flag, after missing more than a few promising opportunities when a sudden gust of wind blew the skull and bones at the top of the mast into plain sight.
This ship, however, is obviously completely unsuspecting.
Calypso starts running towards her cabin, yelling a quick order of "straight towards them!" to Percy as she goes. She quickly grabs her knives before running back our on deck, joining her small crew. Percy is as tense as bowstring, gripping the hilt of his sword so tight his knuckles whiten. Piper is nervously tossing her knife from hand to hand while Reyna fiddles with the odd leather band tied to the hilt of her golden dagger. Grover is obviously terrified, even though his orders are clear - stay on board the ship and keep it near the galleon while the rest of the crew attack - but Calypso understands (mostly). Grover's the cook, and the only knives he likes to use are the ones he chops his vegetables with.
Luke won't stop running his hands through his messy blond hair, and Calypso wants to tell him to stop but she doesn't because they all have their pre-battle nervous tics. Nico and Hazel are gripping each other's hands tightly, Hazel's long broadsword dwarfing her, almost grazing the floor, while the dark metal of the curved sword strapped to Nico's back reflects the blazing light of the sun.
They're all nervous, even Calypso, though she knows very well they could easily take on a group of seasoned fighters twice their size and number.
"You know the drill," Calypso mutters just loud enough for the others to hear her. "Capture the important looking ones, the good fighters, the ones in rich clothes with bags of gold at their belt. Kill the rest. Dead men tell no tales."
Soon enough, the other ship's crew realize how close the Ogygia is getting, so close Calypso can read the ship's name. The Argo II. She snorts disdainfully. It's so pretentious.
The alarm is sounded on the galleon, and for a moment she doesn't understand why they're not setting off their cannons until she suddenly she does. They have no gunpowder. A rather stupid mistake. The rich merchants think pirates only dwell in the Caribbean, and sail the Mediterranean fearlessly. So fearlessly they don't even have gunpowder for their cannons. Unbelievable; but it makes things a lot easier for the crew of the Ogygia.
Calypso grabs a grappling hook and swings it around a few times before launching it at the Argo II. The hook gets tangles in the rigging of the larger ship, which is a rather unsafe way to board, but Calypso shrugs and jumps anyway, the wind rushing around her ears as hooks and ropes from her other crew members fly overhead.
Soon, she's made it onto the Argo II, and is greeted by a crew of about twenty. While she draws her knives, she has just enough time to scour the faces in front of her for anyone particularly interesting. There's a tall, muscular man at the front of the group with short blond hair, a handsome face marred only by a scar above his lip and bright blue eyes. The girl standing next to him looks quite similar, with the same tall and muscular build, electric blue eyes and attractive features, but her hair is black instead of blond.
Standing next to the siblings is a tall, curvy girl with blond curls and fierce grey eyes, while on their other side stands an even taller, even more muscular Asian man with dark eyes and a slightly babyish face.
Just before her blade clashes with the blond girl's and her crew appears over the side of the boat, she spots another person up in the rigging. His build is much slighter than that of the four on deck, and from her position she can spot dark curls, tanned skin and an impish face with a cheeky grin.
And then she's lost in the blur of the fight and all clear thoughts disappear from her mind.
All she can register is the clash of metal against metal, the jarring vibrations climbing up her arm, the feeling of her blade slicing through soft flesh and warm blood soaking her hands and face.
It's sick, and it's not something she should relish in but she can't help it, and after all, it's the price of survival.
The battle only seems to last a few seconds to Calypso, but she knows in the back of her mind it was more like half an hour. Some went down easily, but some put up a decent fight.
It's all over and done with now, though, and Luke, Percy and Nico are heading down into the ship's hold to look for anything valuable while Piper, Reyna and Hazel tie up the prisoners.
She's glad to see her crew was smart enough to spare the valuable looking ones, and a ghost of a smile floats across her lips. She's proud of them.
It takes them another half an hour to get themselves, their loot, and the prisoners back to the Ogygia safely, but it's worth it. The ship's hold was stuffed with precious jewellery, fine fabrics and rare spices. Calypso can barely imagine the amount of money they'll get from all this, but she can see in her mind's eye brings a genuine, gleeful smile to her face.
They tie the prisoners to the mast and begin waking them up one by one, with cold seawater and a few hard slaps to the face. Eventually they all come to, all of them with matching scowls on their face except the short, Spanish looking one, who's obviously trying to hide a cheeky grin.
Calypso should want it gone, but she finds it kind of cute, in a way.
Eventually, with a few kind words and many threats, they get the prisoners to reveal their names. The blue-eyed siblings call themselves Jason and Thalia, while the pretty blonde girl says her name is Annabeth. The Hispanic boy calls himself Leo, while the Asian man's name is, apparently, Frank, but Calypso's learned not trust bitter, captive merchants a long time ago, from experience.
For some odd reason, though, she's inclined to trust these five, so she thoroughly rids them of all their weapons and has Nico and Hazel show them around the ship. They don't look quite so grumpy when they reach the dinner table that evening, so she assumes it did them good.
Unfortunately, dinner time on a pirate ship is also business talk time, so she invites the prisoners to sit, and slowly chews and swallows a piece of bread before beginning to speak.
"Alright, first things first: who's the captain? Or rather, who was the captain."
She expects one of the siblings to raise their hand, but to her complete surprise, it's the short Hispanic boy who waves at her with that ever present cheeky grin.
She raises an eyebrow at him, but other than that, she shows no sign of her shock. Her crew, however, aren't so good at hiding their emotions, and they break out into surprised whispers behind her until she raises a hand. Their sudden silence is rather satisfying, to be honest.
"Very well. You two," she says, pointing at Jason and Frank, "will be helping Percy and Luke sort out the loot down in the hold. Have fun with that. And you two," she points at the two girls, "will be helping Grover out with cleaning the ship. That's for tomorrow, of course. For now, you can all head back to your bunks. Except you," she adds, pointing at Leo, the captain. "You will be heading back to my cabin with me. We need to talk."
There's a few moments of silence while the information sinks in, and when everyone seems to have understood, Calypso claps her hands together and stands up.
"Very well! Off we go, then!"
It takes at least half an hour to get everyone safely into bed, and by the time it's all over and done with, Calypso craves nothing more than to collapse on her bed and sleep the rest of her life away; but unfortunately, there is still business to attend to.
Her cabin is exactly as one would imagine a typical pirate cabin: walls covered in various trophies and weapons, a large wooden desk in the centre of the room with a map rolled out on it, along with an ink pot and a feather, and various other little souvenirs. A large, padded chair sits behind the desk, and opposite it is a smaller, wooden chair. In the corner of the room, there's a small bunk and a chest where Calypso keeps her things, along with a few pictures, portraits and various junk on the walls. The room feels like a rather intimate place that Calypso feels quite uncomfortable letting a stranger into.
Leo looks completely unfazed though, and he immediately saunters over to the less comfortable looking chair and slumps over in it. At least he knows his place.
Calypso slowly but assuredly walks over to the other side of the desk and sinks down into her own chair, resting her elbows on the desk and fixing her eyes on Leo.
A staring contest ensues, and Leo ends up losing when he finally opens his mouth, but he doesn't seem too bothered about it.
"Look", he says, that permanent ghost of a smile still on his face; "I have nothing against pirates. Nor me, nor any of my crew, are going to try and harm you and your crew in any way - not that we'd be capable of doing so, I suppose. I must admit I'm slightly bitter about losing my ship - I built that with my own hands, you know - but I mean, it could be worse," he shrugs. "We could all be dead, for example. Anyway, my point is, I'm not against working with you, but I have a few - not rules, it would be rather impetuous of me to demand those in my captive state - but requests.
"Firstly, I would very much appreciate it if we could stop on land every so often - at least for a shower and a decent meal. Secondly, you and your crew will harm neither me or any of my crew. Thirdly, if we're gonna help you, we want at least 20 percent of the gain. It's fair, I'm sure you'll concede."
It doesn't take long for Calypso to decide. There's something in Leo's eyes that makes her want to trust him, and so she does, extending a hand out for him to shake.
He does so with smile on his face, and she feels like this might be the start of something pretty great.
-fin-
okayyy, so first off i apologize for this being total shit, i'm already a day late and it's the last fic for this competition (i think) so yeah, i wanted to get it done.
secondly, thanks for reading, and please review! even if you thought it was crap.