"Okay. Let me go over the list again. I am bored, famished, starved, sleepy, starved, headache-y, cold –"
"Blame yourself for not wearing socks."
"Have a bunch of cramps, numb in my –"
"Don't want to hear it."
"Okay then. Moving on. My left foot has pins and needles in it, my arm feels dead, and . . . Hm. I've run out." Connor yawned and stretched, flopping down on the rocks so that Travis's stomach served as his pillow. The other Stoll brother only snored in response. "Oh, and I'm tired."
"I think you missed one," Katie muttered. "You've contracted diarrhea of the mouth."
Rachel rolled her eyes, shifting her legs. She was wide awake thanks to her catnap earlier. Two agonizing hours had passed, during which the demigods' general schedule was argue, then attempt to release energy by moving around (it had stopped when nearly everyone ended up on the ground), and then sleep. They were now in what she deemed Twitchy Mode, where they sat and fiddled with whatever they could find.
She was pretty sure they'd go into Argue Mode soon enough.
She heard Percy's sword scratching against the rock on one side of her, and Annabeth's knife on the other. The two of them had started a sparring session earlier, but had finished it quickly when they'd accidentally sent their blades through Rachel's legs, thankfully without any damage.
Squinting, she could see Leo fiddling with nuts and bolts and pipe cleaners, Piper alternately tracing patterns on the rock with her fingers and playing with the braids in her hair, and Nico recreating that fable with the turtle and the rabbit with skeletons.
"OH MY GODS."
Rachel ducked Annabeth's sneaker as her friend leapt up with her knife in hand, nearly falling off the boulders. Instantly, every other demigod that was awake was up as well, the ones who had weapons with them getting them out. The ones who didn't picked any random heavy object around them that was fit for throwing. Rachel's hand went to her back pocket, where she kept a very handy little bronze pocketknife.
Percy edged past her quickly and bent over so that his head was level with Annabeth's sneaker, trying to see what she was so worked up about. "What am I supposed to be looking at here?"
Annabeth was still frozen with her foot raised, staring at a spot at the edge of the rock. "Sp – spi – IT'S MOVING."
Rachel leaned forward precariously to look at what Annabeth's knife was pointing to, and promptly froze. Because "it" was a spider about the size of Bobblehead Apollo's head, with spindly legs and eight beady eyes that looked at her. And twitched.
And the next thing she knew she was stumbling backwards, nearly losing her balance with a shriek building up in her throat. Piper's arm shot out to keep her from face-planting into the grass, which looked like a long way down.
"Get it get it get it!" Annabeth seemed to have found her voice. A constipated look was starting to form on Percy's face from her vice-like grip on his arm.
"What?" Leo scrambled up from his spot, eager to get into the commotion. His eyebrows raised when he spotted the spider, and he raised his hands, grinning. "I got this, peeps. Flame on!" A tiny blast of fire shot from his finger and hit the spider. Rachel swore she could see it spasming as it fell away from the rock.
Percy coughed and waved away the acrid stench of burning spider. "Man, you could've burned my face," he scolded.
"No problem," Leo grinned.
Annabeth slowly sat back down on the rock with a shudder. "Ew."
"Ew is right," Rachel agreed. "I don't think I'll ever eat barbecue again."
"How long has it been?" Piper burst out, throwing her hands up.
Leo dodged to the side. "Whoa, beauty queen, watch the nails."
"My nails are nothing. You should take a look at Drew's. I think she cuts them every other year." Piper examined her nails just to be sure, nodding in satisfaction. Rachel held her own hand up to the light, but they were perfect ovals, like usual. Being the Dare heiress had its minor advantages.
"They're manicured, though," Leo said thoughtfully.
Connor inspected his nails. "They're also sharp. Remember how she threatened us after that golden mango business? Travis?" He glanced down, only just noticing that his brother was snoring away. "Wake up, man!"
"Huh?" came the groggy reply. Travis raised his head and looked around, and started rolling over to his other side – and kept rolling as gravity took it upon itself to give them all a painful fate. Nico, Leo, and Piper provided a temporary roadblock, until first Leo was pushed off, dragging Piper down with him. Poor Nico didn't stand a chance against Travis on his own.
CRUNCH.
"Ooh," Rachel leaned forward, careful to brace herself with her hands. Next to her, Annabeth winced at the scene below them. "That's some pileup down there." She, Rachel and Percy made no move toward the jumble of people. Connor just snickered, while Katie shook her head defeatedly.
"Ah man, you crushed the rabbit!" Nico complained, untangling himself from the pile of groaning limbs. He inspected the gritty dust on his black clothes that used to be the lead role in the Tortoise and the Hare: Return from the Dead.
"Yeah? The turtle crushed my spine," Leo moaned. He pointed a finger at Rachel. "Yo, Rach – you foresee any chance of my spine keeping its normal shape?"
"I say fifty-fifty," she replied mildly, more interested in the patterns the people rolling around in the grass left behind. Maybe that would be her new masterpiece, so creatively named 'Grass'. "Go ask Will. I mold clay, not skeletons."
Leo clambered to his feet, stretching with some ominous cracks. "You want me to be electrocuted Leo on a spear?" he asked disbelievingly. He turned to Nico, clearly mouthing 'loony'. Nico smirked and raised his eyebrows at Rachel.
"You know what else I foresee?" she added loudly. "You, jumping off a high place yelling 'Flame on!'"
Piper shrugged and gave Leo a charming smile in response to his look. "It could happen."
"Could not," Leo pouted, crossing his arms.
Connor looked down in interest. "Dude, that would be so cool! Haven't you ever jumped off high places before? And on fire, too – you could so go 'Burn!' on Percy." A tiny ball of water hit him in the face at that statement, soaking him from the waist up. "What the heck, man?" he sputtered, shaking his head like a wet dog. Everyone leaned away from him.
"You asked for it," Percy said, grinning good-naturedly.
"Oh, yeah?" Leo challenged, dusting off his hands. "Watch this!" A ball of flame burst to life in his mouth, and he took aim like he was going to throw a baseball.
Travis jumped up in front of Connor with his hands up in surrender. "Don't barbecue my bro, man!"
"As much as I hate to say this, don't barbecue my boyfriend," Katie put in. Leo stuck out his tongue at her, but quickly pulled it back in and extinguished his fire when the grass started growing and wrapping around his ankles.
"Fine, fine," he muttered, then brightened. "Hey, Perce, power fight? My fire against your water?"
"Bring it."
Twelve seconds later, Leo looked like he'd been squashed by a water balloon the size of a canoe, and Percy looked like he'd been through the kitchens with the lava spray guns on full blast. On either side of the clearing were a patch of muddy grass and a circle of ashy dirt.
Rachel coughed, waving the smoke away as Percy clambered back onto the rock next to her. "I can't believe you guys actually did that."
"I can." Annabeth poked her boyfriend with her knife. "Your shirt's been barbecued."
"What do you want me to do about it?" Percy asked, wiggling his eyebrows.
"To stay away from me, so mine doesn't end up the same way." To prove her point, Annabeth ran a finger down the front of his shirt and held it up to show the ashiness on it. Percy stuck out his tongue.
"Hey, guys, since we're gonna be stuck here for a while more," Piper began, "How about we entertain ourselves with something that won't KILL EACH OTHER?"
And they were back in Argue Mode.
Rachel blew out a long breath. "Well, what do you guys do for fun?"
"Fiddle."
"Steal."
"And sleep."
"Oh, yeah. And kiss my awesome girlfriend senseless."
"Actually, I seem to remember it being the other way around. Watch the flowers."
"Read and design."
"Skateboard. Hang out underwater, sometimes." Percy looked around at the faces turned to him. "What?"
"So that's where the two of you go," Connor crowed, pointing at him and Annabeth. "Ew. Never mind. I don't want to know what you guys have been up to. Actually, I'm never going to the lake again." Percy facepalmed, though Rachel could see that both his and Annabeth's ears were bright red.
"Surf," Piper continued. Everyone turned to look at her.
"Piper, you surf?" Rachel asked.
Piper tipped her head from side to side in a 'sort of' manner. "More like wipe out every time I get on the curls, but yeah, I surf. Spend time with my dad, and all."
Attention shifted to Nico, who was the only one that hadn't spoken yet. He glanced around in the sudden expecting silence. "I laugh at other people's misfortunes," he said, still looking at the pieces of bone, which were now both wet and scorched.
"Alrighty then," Rachel said at last, breaking the silence that had followed Nico's statement. "Since we can't exactly do much of that in a twenty by twenty foot space that's mostly rock . . ."
"What about those party games you mentioned the other day?" Annabeth interrupted. "It's not like we have anything better to do."
"Does this look like a party to you?" Connor asked, waving his hands around wildly to indicate what he was saying. He did have a point, Rachel noticed, since most of the expressions screamed 'Seriously? Get me out of here without ending up skewered by the Ares cabin!'
"No," Nico deadpanned from his corner.
Rachel frowned, turning back to Annabeth. "You really want to play Twister on a pile of boulders?" She shrugged. "Fine by me."
"We don't have a mat," Leo pointed out. "And I don't want dirt in my face, because I bet somebody's gonna be kicked off in the first five seconds." He glared pointedly at the Stolls, who made faces back at him.
"All the better." Travis rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
Annabeth rolled her eyes as Katie cuffed him over the head. "No, I was talking about Truth or Dare. Can't be any worse than monsters. Probably."
"That could be dangerous," Katie said, a grin spreading over her face. "And an excellent way to beat these two up. I'm all for it!" Travis and Connor immediately scrambled across the rock to seat themselves in front of Percy's feet, as he was pretty much neutral in the whole situation.
Rachel considered propping her feet up on one of their heads (they looked the same from the back, so she couldn't tell which was which), because her legs were getting cramped from sitting on one position for so long, but decided against it. Since she was neutral as well, there wouldn't be anything stopping them from booby-trapping her cave to resemble a glorified minefield.
It still felt weird calling her home a cave.
"It's still a better idea than lobbing water bombs and fireballs at each other!" Piper's voice reached an octave usually deemed not possible to reach, even during exasperated shrilling.
Leo clapped his hands to his ears. "Geez, beauty queen. First the nails and now the eardrums? You're on a roll today."
"Shut it, Valdez."
"Okay, okay, okay." Percy sliced his hand through the air to cut the conversation short. "Truth or Dare?" he confirmed with Annabeth. "Okay. All for it?"
Pretty much all the hands went up – Katie, with a wicked grin, herself, Annabeth, most likely from boredom, Piper, who looked relieved, Leo, and the Stolls, who were probably out for any blackmail information they could get. Even Nico gave an optimistic shrug.
Percy pointed at each hand in turn, counting up the total even though there was no need. He pointed to himself with a satisfied nod, earning a snort from Annabeth. "Truth or Dare it is. Who wants to go first?"
"I will," Piper volunteered unexpectedly, cutting off a couple of others who also had their mouths open. "Leo?"
"Dare!" He fist pumped the air.
"Dare you to climb to the top of the boulders – over there where Rachel's sitting – and jump off yelling 'Flame on!'"
I'll get to the game next chapter, but I still have to sort out some ground rules and whatnot. For those of you who don't know how wonderful I am about updating, that means it could be anywhere from tomorrow to next week to next year. So you shouldn't get your hopes up, lest I squash them mercilessly like I would squash cockroaches and grasshoppers.
So I guess that means your hopes are cockroaches and grasshoppers?
Yeah... maybe that's not the best analogy... Anyway, reviewers get a flaming Leo in the color of their choice.
