Technicolor Raincoat

Chapter 1

Los Tres Amigos Calvos

If you're reading this and you own a Technicolor raincoat… KEEP READING! Don't believe whatever lie your 27, or so, parents have told you; the truth is you got your Technicolor raincoat on sale. AT A THRIFT STORE! (Authors': understand that most of the half bloods stay with their one biological human parent, thus we decided to make fun of that by saying twenty seven or so parents. Carry on now.) If you just happen to be a normal kid who doesn't own a Technicolor raincoat and is reading this, YOU NEED TO GO OUT A BUY ONE! If you can recognize yourself in these pixilated words, if you feel something stirring inside, you may just need to eat a tin can; but if you look down and you see hairy animal legs (preferably goat legs), you MIGHT be one of us… A satyr that is, but if you look down and you see sheep legs then you are a COMPLETELY different species; and once you know the truth about yourself it's only a matter of time before they (the Scandinavian goat-eaters) will hunt you down and eat your gall bladder. Don't say I didn't warn you.

My name is Grover Underwood. I'm 28 years old. Until a few months ago my skin was clear a baby's bottom. I am known to be part of the elite race of super-human beings called the satyrs. Am I a satyr? Yeah, you could say that.

I sat in my friend Percy's car; by the way he's a half blood. Percy, his mom, and I were going places to do things that were confidential… Between me and Percy… And his mom… I was beginning to doze off when Percy attempted small talk,

"Grover, what are you anyway? Half donkey?" I felt my cheeks grow hot at this comment, so I retorted,

"First of all, I am half GOAT not DONKEY, and secondly you have no right to talk he who is bald!" A few weeks ago when we were changing for Phys. Ed. Percy's hair began to fall off, and I mean half way off his head fall off, not just shoved to the side a bit fall off. I hypothesized that he was born bald and wore a wig. I myself am bald as well but I wear a Rasta cap, not a silly old wig like Percy; but anyway that's beside the point. We were sitting in the car when out of nowhere there came a bunny rabbit, a cute, smiling, happy bunny rabbit. I'm sure you've read Percy's side of the story. He over exaggerates… A lot… What had hopped in front of our path was NOT a Minotaur but a rabbit, a bunny rabbit, mind you. Percy's mom had accidentally ran it over and we began to swerve all over the place because the bunny guts had gotten into the tires of her car. Percy may have believed that he had gotten that Minotaur horn from his fight to-the-death with a REAL Minotaur, but truth be told he got it from the gift store down the block. I was the one who got the really authentic souvenirs, firstly, I put the bunny guts around my neck in a necklace sort of fashion; then, I made the bones into a crude pan flute (Authors': is that why he sucks at playing?) Lastly, I put the remainders inside of Percy the bald one's suit case, I still hadn't gotten over his donkey comment. Thank goodness we weren't rooming together… Soon after the car started running again, we replaced the bunny gut tires with new non-bunny gut tires, we began our journey to confidential places; but it seemed that we had missed some of the guts and swerved into a deciduous tree, where we all passed out. When I had awoken Percy's mother had vanished leaving Percy to freak out; together Percy and I wandered until we found civilization in the uncharted territory of Montauk. That's where we found Camp Half Blood, our safe haven; I had to drag Percy there because he had a panic attack and passed out once more, his weight caused me to keel over and faint as well.

When I woke up I was confused by my surroundings; I was in a forest, a dense, dense forest, but there was one problem. Everything in the forest was poo-brown; even the leaves of the trees. The only exception was this one shrub that I could see from the corner of my eye using my peripheral vision; it was puke-green. From out of the puke-green shrub came an equally puke-green nymph; she was absolutely gorgeous with her flowing green mullet and handlebar moustache. It was the first time I had seen real hair since I last saw Percy's mom. The nymph then continued to shove something into my mouth, it had looked like a brownie but after I began to chew I realized that it tasted like manure; quite delicioso if you ask me.

Later on that day, once I started feeling better, I began talking to the nymph about my rabbit-bone pan flute and came to the revelation that I didn't know how to play any songs on it. After I had called her "nymph" about twenty times my nymph friend decided that I should start addressing her by her real name, Juniper. Juniper said that she would teach me to play "Alejandro" by Lady Gaga if I'd let her sing along; she sounded terrible and I'm pretty sure she messed up the lyrics because instead of singing 'Alejandro' she would always say the name 'Paul' instead… After the Alejandro mistake I figured out how to play Hoe Down Throwdown by Miley Cyrus by ear, then I began to sing along… I zigzagged across the floor, shuffled in diagonal, then randomly the drum hit so I put my hands on my hips, then I took one foot and did a one eighty twist; once that was finished I tried again, this time wearing my special Technicolor Raincoat. When I had finished the elaborate dance I looked down to see that my coat was glowing…

After a few days went by I felt amazing, so amazing that I could just jump off a cliff and survive; well maybe not that but I felt good nonetheless. I nonchalantly took a seat next to Percy in the mess hall since he was feeling good too and I overheard his conversation with some bald girl about a 'quest'. I stuck to Percy like rubber to dirt from that point on, I'm still not too sure what a 'quest' is, but when Percy asked me if I wanted to accompany him and the Brittany Spears impersonator I couldn't decline.

Percy said that we ought to take a bus to "who-knows-where" since it was relatively cheap. There was silence on the bus, nothing would dare to move until I, Grover Underwood, decided that I would begin the small talk. I gingerly went up to the bald girl and asked her,

"Excuse me, have you noticed that you're bald?" She raised an eyebrow and cocked her head,

"Of course I do, it's a fashion statement," she huffed. Awkward silence once again rained through the bus when there was a thud on the roof. I looked up and saw something come through a crudely made hole, it was Mrs. Dodds, my old math teacher. I cringed as she began to light the bus on fire. Worst part about it was that it was a gasoline fire and I forgot my handy dandy fire extinguisher at home… The gas fire began to spread and soon it had engulfed the roof of the bus as well as the bottom, front, and back, soon we would all be trapped in our fiery doom. The hole with which Mrs. Dodds had emerged soon became engulfed in flames, one of which dropped onto Percy's head catching his wig on fire; he immediately threw his wig onto the ground and began to stomp on it when the bald girl ran up from behind him and dragged him off the bus screaming,

"WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR YOUR HAIR!" I grinned, my hypothesis was correct, Percy WAS bald; but now, thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Baldie, or should I say the Howie Mandel and Brittany Spears impersonators, I was stuck with the task of gathering all of the innocent bystanders and leading them off the bus in a calm and orderly fashion. I sat down for a moment so I could ponder how to do so in the most efficient manner but when I looked up again everyone, including the bus driver, was off the bus already. So I began to carefully make my way forward towards the exit and just as I was about to walk down the stairs (using the handrail for safety, I might add) the bus instantly exploded; I flew up into the air but luckily the explosion didn't faze me. I then landed on Percy who cushioned the impact of my fall… mostly; except for the fact that his bald head jammed into my chest and I was struck by a thousand leagues of pain.

I had gotten up, dusted myself off and looked to Percy and the other bald one for guidance, for all that I knew we were lost in the wild Wyoming wilderness; and yes, I did say Wyoming. Don't listen to Percy, we weren't in New Jersey, we never went to the Jersey Shore nor did we ever meet Snookie, want to know who we did meet? Okay, we met Bob Johnson, cockroach exterminator extraordinaire, living in scenic Jackson Hole, Wyoming; he guided us to the closest source of human life, but we passed it because we didn't see it and kept walking. Nevertheless we just continued to walk forward in the Wyoming wilderness under the blazing heat hoping to find a place to stay and find directions, that's when Percy drank all the water being the son of Poseidon he had to make sure not to dry out… Soon after Percy drank all the water the bald girl got heat stroke, that's when I realized that her name had eluded me, just as Juniper's did; so I began yelling the only thing I could,

"Bald girl, bald girl, are you alright?" She looked up, frustration in her storm grey eyes and she whispered,

"Annabeth," afterward she fainted and I began to panic, but Percy took initiative and said we should drag her to the closest source of human life, which just happened to be Aunty Em's Ascot Emporium. All the while I continued to ponder what 'Annabeth' could mean, what kind of cryptic message was this? All I wanted to know was what her name was…

Burnt Taco: I hope that you may enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. The first edition of Technicolor Raincoat was kind of bad... Anyways, this is the final result of chapter one! :^D

Julie-O: I wrote the first version and it was gramattically awful!