¥- I ACCIDENTLY MESS UP MY LIFE A BIT MORE (IF POSSIBLE)
Look, I never asked to be kicked out from another school, or to be made an enemy of one of the Olympians. Especially a particular one. Well I guess if the Fates wish me to screw up my life even further, there's little an ADHD, dyslexic demigod can do...
I hit myself, positively pounding my brain to come up with an idea, wracking my brain, literally. The words the on paper looked jumbled up to look like "Wrtie a sotry baout a boy woh learns a sceret taht wlil cangeh his life." Wow, you'd think that'll be a bit easy for me to come up with an idea right, especially when gods did exist, right? But ADHD messes about with your thoughts. I was cut out for cutting open monsters with Riptide, not sitting at a school desk thinking up ideas for random stories.
Just when I was about to uncap Anaklusmos and cut the desk in half in frustration, I heard something heavy and metallic clatter to the floor, like a javelin. I sat bolt upright.
"Mr Jackson?" Mrs Ward asked my with an arched eyebrow.
I ignored the question and strained to hear anything else. There was nothing.
"Mr Jackson!" she repeated.
"Sorry ma'am," I replied distractedly. "Brainwave,"
She frowned at my tone but then went back to marking papers. Just when I was calming down, I heard a girl's voice whisper, "Percy! Meet me outside!"
I sat bolt upright again, like a lightning bolt had hit me.
"Mr Jackson, is there something wrong?" she said, her eyebrows going higher up her head.
"Mrs Ward, I really need to see the nurse," I lied, my brain going into overdrive.
She opened her mouth to contradict me but I had already cleared the classroom's doorway. I sprinted down the corrider and out the building. I came to a stop, catching my breath before saying, "Hi, Annabeth,"
A girl with blond hair and stormy grey eyes materialised next to me as she took off her Yankees cap.
"Percy," she said, ignoring my greeting (as usual), "you need to come with me now,"
"You got to be kidding me," I said when she finished. "Olympus needs our help,"
"Yep," she summarised.
"Again,"
"Yep,"
I waited for someone to pop up and yell "April Fools," but noone came.
"So let's just get this straight. Olympus needs us because telkhines have stolen Zeus' lightning bolt and are making illegal copies for an uprising."
"Sounds about right," she said.
"You know, we should write books about all our adventures. This one, why don't we call it Percy Jackson and the second Lightning Thief?" I said sarcastically.
Annabeth passed by my joke. "Hurry up, Seaweed Brain. We've got a civilisation to save."
I thanked Blackjack for taking us there before he took off and out the mouth of the volcano.
"I can't believe that they used the same base, again," I whispered as we approached a covered cart.
"Never underestimate the stupidity of monsters," she replied quietly as a telkhine studied a blueprint.
"So, who's going to question him?" I asked.
Annabeth put on her Yankees cap. "Watch and learn, Seaweed Brain,"
She turned invisible before me. I held my breath. The telkhine didn't notice anything was wrong, right up to the moment Annabeth, still unseen, held her celestial bronze knife under his throat.
"Where's the lightning bolt?" she said in her most menacing voice.
The telkhine snarled and whipped around unexpectedly, grabbing random spaces behind him, coming up with empty paws. He suddenly stiffened and dissolved into dust as Annabeth stabbed him in the back, not before letting out a blood-chilling howl.
"There goes the element of surprise," I muttered, standing up.
The air in front of me shimmered as Annabeth rematerialised. She started turning aside random bits of paper on the table. "Styx!" she cursed under her breath. "It's not here!"
There was a thunder of running paws, which if you've never heard before, pretty much sounds like thousands of dogs sprinting, the difference is, it's thousands of angry dogs sprinting, punctuated with lots of growls which encouraged me to go a lot faster.
"Hide!" Annabeth cried and put on her hat. Easy for her.
I dived under the desk just as a pack of telkhines burst through, into the room.
"Did they find our masterpiece?" one snarled. "You! The one with the Crusty Demons lunchbox! Go check!"
A smaller telkhine waddled over to the table I was hiding. I heard scraping like a drawer being opened. The illegal copy of the lightning bolt was hidden in a drawer and Annabeth, a daughter of Athena, Goddess of Wisdom and Battle, couldn't find it. Go figure.
I could only see the telkhine's flippers. I dared myself to look higher, to see their copy and it was...