Percy and Annabeth stumbled through the doors, leaning on each other for support, tripping. Arion and Frank-the-horse came running up to them. Percy seemingly effortlessly picked up Annabeth and slung her over Arion's back. Piper could see him level his gaze at the two horses. Arion, with Annabeth clinging to him, took off like a rocket. Frank's eyes went wide, and he reared, protesting whatever Percy was about to do.
"No!" Annabeth screamed, trying to detach herself from Arion, but she forgot that Arion was a god. Annabeth was firmly stuck to him. Piper looked at Leo, whose face was watching Nico's face intently. Nico's normally pale face was nearly translucent, and his eyes were wide with terror.
"Shit," he breathed. "Frank get out of there NOW!"
Percy pushed Frank towards the Argo II, and Frank whinnied, protesting, and then Percy said something that Piper didn't catch, and Frank bolted.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no," Nico chanted, his eyes filled with terror. "You aren't strong enough, Percy!"
Nico's terror was infectious. "What is he doing?!" Jason said, his own voice filled with fear.
Frank, mid-stride, changed from a horse to a full-blown drakon. He passed Hazel, who held out her hand and grasped his horns, swinging onto his neck, her golden eyes flashing with determination and fear. Gripping with her legs, she grabbed Jason and swung him up behind her. Jason grabbed Piper, and Hazel grabbed Nico. Nico grabbed onto Leo.
"What the Pluto is going on, Nico?!" Jason yelled.
"He's making a volcano," Nico said, just as an unholy scream ripped from the ground below them.
Hazel looked terrified as she squeaked, "What was that?"
Piper felt her eyes widen until they were saucers. "That was Percy."
Then the ground ripped itself apart.
Piper could just make out Percy on the rolling ground, and had to do a double-take. Battered and bruised he was, he still managed to look completely awesome with sea-green light whirling around him. Then again, just about anyone would look awesome with those background effects. He had his arms raised, his legs planted into the ground, palms facing upward, and he was looking at the sky. With another unholy scream, he grasped Riptide, the glow around him connecting to the sword, and stabbed it into the ground up to the hilt.
Hazel nearly fell off from the earthquake, and behind them, Percy's sea-green glow (awesome as it was) was dwarfed from the magma jutting from the crack that pierced the earth's crust. Then the ground this bounce-rippling thing, and then it exploded outwards, flinging Percy away from the volcano he'd just made, welding the Doors of Death shut, and covering Frank and the rest in soot and pumice.
Piper clung to Jason, yelling in his ear to be heard over the erupting volcano, "Fly over to Percy, get him back to the ship!"
Then she let go of him, and he shot upwards like he was coming out of a dive with a parachute, leaving Piper clinging to Frank as he dodged the falling burning bits. Jason, a bit of his hair smoldering, zoomed overhead, carrying a blackened, limp, body. No wonder. That probably took all of Percy's power. Let's just hope that he didn't burn himself out.
Leo snatched a bit of flaming whatever-it-was out of the air, tossing it behind him, away from Frank, his hands perfectly fine. Nico erected a shield of shadows over them as a piece of lava came sailing towards them. It bounced off, rolling around and leaving melting ground behind it. Frank leaped onto the Argo II, with Arion, Annabeth, Percy, and Jason already there.
Leo leaped off of Frank while he was still moving, running towards the controls, and yanked the Wii controller straight up. The bow of the ship tilted at a horrifying angle, and they shot into the blackened clouds. Leo swirled the controller to the right, and the Argo II swerved to the right, spinning to avoid a ball of lava. The rest of the crew screamed and clung to something sturdy, while Jason tried to keep Percy from hitting his head on something else.
Leo's brow furrowed in concentration, spinning around, ducking. The ship went into a dive as another flaming ball of lava tore through the air, spinning crazily as he avoided more debris. Leo thrust his left hand out, and the ship responded, angling sharply to the left, and Leo jerked his right hand straight up again, and the ship went back into the sooty clouds.
The ship and Leo performed some sort of crazy dance as they spun and ducked and barreled. While the rest of the crew were clinging onto the railings or doorways, Leo had nothing to help support him as he somehow stayed anchored to the deck even as they went upside down once.
Miles away from the newly-formed volcano now, Leo levelled out the ship, sinking to the deck in exhaustion. "Well that was fun," he said half-heartedly. "Who's up for round two?"
Piper groaned. "Seriously? Ice Age?" She detached herself from the boat railing. Somehow she managed to have threaded her legs and arms through the railing and was perpendicular from the deck. Piper fell to the deck with another groan. "Jeez, Leo, how did you manage to stay on the deck with nothing around to keep you rooted?"
Leo looked down at his feet. "I melted the deck. When it hardened I was stuck there like someone had superglued me there and then wrapped me in duct tape."
"Where's Percy?" Annabeth demanded, climbing down from the sail's rigging.
"Piper! Hedge!" Jason yelled. "Piper, get as much water as possible, and Hedge, get your furry podex down here!"
Annabeth was off, grabbing ropes and buckets of water, tying the buckets to the rope with amazing speed, looping it around the railing, diving overboard. She landed with a splash, and immediately started filling up the buckets with seawater. She tugged on the rope, and the buckets dipped into the sea, filling themselves up, and started back up the rope, back to Piper. Piper, as the buckets came back over the railing with seawater, set a barrel in front of them and let it fill itself up.
"Stop!" she called. She picked up the barrel with a little bit of struggle, and lugged it to the infirmary. Jason's eyebrows raised as Piper came in, pushing the barrel before her, the water inside sloshing.
"Hold him still, this is gonna hurt like Pluto," Jason said to Hedge. He picked up the barrel with a little bit less struggle than Piper, and proceeded to pour it over Percy slowly, mainly over his chest. Percy's eyes flew open and he screamed as the water touched his chest. Jason winced, but kept pouring the water over Percy, and his burns and slashes shrunk.
"Hedge, make him stop!" Percy screamed at the satyr holding him down.
"You're badly injured, cupcake, so you better suck it up, unless you'd like to deal with it the mundane way and be in pain for weeks while you try to heal!" Hedge yelled back.
Percy's body shuddered from head to toe and Jason, startled, stopped pouring the water over him. "Keep going! The water's just setting all his broken bones!" Hedge said urgently. "If you stop now I won't be able to hold him!"
A blond blur shot past Piper, decked Jason, sent Hedge flying with a perfect roundhouse kick, and was back to Percy within a second. Percy gasped and curled in on himself, sobbing quietly. "Hurts," he whispered in his fetal position. "Hurts so bad..."
"Oh you stupid Seaweed Brain," Annabeth said, her breath catching in her throat, kneeling beside Percy. "Of course it hurts. Calypso was there last time, and you were out for a week last time while she healed you with her magic."
"Oh my god, Annabeth, are you okay?" Percy asked weakly.
"I'm fine, Seaweed Brain," she said softly. "Go to sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."
Percy murmured something else that Piper only caught snatches of: "...never...regretted...back...from...Calypso's island."
Annabeth hugged him so tenderly that it almost made Piper's heart break, and ran a hand through his hair. "Go to sleep."
Percy shut his eyes, still curled up in on himself. Annabeth shot Piper a look that she knew well. Piper got the First-Aid kit and geustered for Annabeth to sit on the bed next to Percy. Piper proceeded to give Annabeth a little bit of ambrosia and nectar, and bandaged her torso and arms after disinfecting them and wiping them with triple antibiotic. Piper put huge bandaids over the cuts on Annabeth's legs, and put butterfly stitches on a gash on Annabeth's forehead.
"Thank you," she rasped. Piper helped Jason up, who was still dazed, shoved him out the doorway, and dragged Hedge out, shut the door, locked it, and slid the key under the door.
"Pipes, what—" Jason asked, shaking his head for it to clear. "What the heck hit me?"
"A ferocious, protective girlfriend of Percy Jackson," Piper said flatly. "We're not doing that again until Percy wakes up and Annabeth lets us—you and Hedge more like—back in."
Paul heard a knock on the door and went to open it, wondering who the heck was knocking at this time. Seriously, it was ten-thirty pm!
The moment he opened the door, he didn't care. He wouldn't have cared if they had come back at two am. Paul covered his mouth, tears gathering in his eyes. "Sally..." he choked out, twin tears running down. He just stood there, dumbfounded, staring at the nine demigods in front of them. "Sally!" he practically screamed, hysterical, relieved laughter breaking out of him. He hugged Percy gently, wary of re-opening any wounds. Percy's shoulders were shaking.
"Mom," Percy said, his voice cracking. Sally pushed her way through the crowd and hugged her son, sobbing into his shoulder. Paul's shoulder's were shaking and he was crying. Percy had tears running down his face, and his sea-green eyes were shut tightly. "I love you. I told you I'd come back. I promised."
Sally began to sob in relief. "C'mon in," she said, pulling away from her son and holding the door open.
Jason smiled as he tilted Percy's wheelchair back to clear the little threshold. Annabeth followed close behind, with Piper pushing her wheelchair, followed by Frank and Hazel, then Nico, and the only sort-of healthy demigod in the group, Thalia.
"I'm just here to fight off all the monsters these guys are likely to attract in the mortal world," she explained. "That, and if anyone's heart stops I can re-start it."
Paul laughed weakly. "Well thank you, Doctor Thalia."
Thalia rolled her eyes. "That's nearly exactly what my brother said."
It was not many times that Jason would be jealous of someone else. Jason actually couldn't remember a time that he'd been jealous of someone else, actually. Normally, it was the other way around. But Jason Grace was jealous of Percy Jackson. It wasn't because of his cool powers (and some were a little bit weird, admittedly), or his fighting skills.
No.
It wasn't anything special. It was something that people around the world had, but Jason had nearly never had.
Family.
A/N:
Okay, that ending sucked.
Anyway, before anyone says that this is really unlikely to happen, with all of the Seven and Nico alive, I know. Trust me, I know. I know that one of the Seven dies in HoH. I know. I know that this will probably deviate from canon when HoH comes out. But this is listed under 'AU-ish', so I'm kind of exempt from that, even though I know that many of the Seven's lives are so, so fragile.
So guess what?
Pluto keeps ignoring Hazel.
Frank's stick drops into the Mediterranean never to be seen again.
Nico eventually gets better.
Percy and Annabeth escape Tartarus with their minds mostly intact and their bodies not okay but they'll heal.
So, to quote Coach Hedge: "Suck it up, cupcake."
That sorted.
You guys have my cousins to thank for this! I mentioned me writing and they were like, "I wanna read!" (in Spanish, of course), so I translated them to Spanish and they were like, "Holy crap, write some more!" So yeah, this is kind of what's going on.
Adios!
-Winter