Me: Hey guys, after a surprisingly good turnout for the first chapter and some positive feedback from the ladies and gents over at .com, I'm back with chapter 2. Now from here on out, I just want to say that whatever you might expect from my story, don't. I love to throw curveballs just to screw with people when it comes to writing :D Anyways, drop me a review after you're done and tell me what you think, like, and dislike. Enjoy it!
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Chapter 2: I Get Attacked, Grover Gets Puberty
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"Hey… Is it morning already?" Annabeth asked sleepily as she slowly woke to the tiniest beams of light drifting through the curtains of our bedroom window. It had been nearly three hours since my conversation with my dad and the time had helped me to calm down a little bit. I still wasn't reassured completely; there was something about the way he commanded me to keep quiet that didn't sit fully with me but at least I was not hyperventilating at the thought that I had had some prophetic nightmare about Zeus dying. So instead of pacing along the shore of our section of the beach endlessly, I had come back and laid back down beside her between the ebon sheets of our bed, holding her sleeping form for what felt like a perfect eternity.
"It's alright; we've still got another hour before Nico and Felice will be here to pick us up." I whispered softly, pulling the dark blue curtains of our bedroom window a little tighter to once more shroud us in soothing shadows.
Annabeth smiled as she pulled my arm around her waist. Her skin was warm in all the right ways and smooth like silk. The mere elation that coursed through my nerve endings as I held her was enough to bring me back from the doom and gloom that had overtaken me when I first awoke almost four hours earlier. I don't know how long we laid there. It had probably only been a few minutes by the time she spoke again but my mind was so far gone I couldn't bring myself to care about the time, only about the woman that lay curled up against me now. In the darkness of our bedroom her gray eyes seemed to almost shine with an otherworldly glow from deep within them. Her blonde hair fell around her elfin face and spread out like a champagne-colored halo on the black pillow beneath her head.
"Is everything okay now?" She murmured as she pulled my right arm even tighter around her waist, pulling her in just a hair closer against my body.
I closed my eyes for a moment, carefully choosing the words I wanted to say before I spoke. "Yes. Dad; he said that it was impossible for one of them to die. He reminded that even…" I paused. I was so very careful not to say Kronos' name in front of her, not out of a respect for the power of such things as it pertained to the Olympians but rather because I cared enough that it killed me every time I saw the change in her face mentioning that name caused. Even though it had been six years now the war was still such a trying subject for Annabeth entirely because it made her think about the man that had given his life to save ours. Luke had become a taboo subject to her… and I don't think that will ever change. "That even their enemies are still alive, even if they have had their physical bodies destroyed."
Annabeth did not respond but just sighed and moved her face in until our noses were less than an inch apart. After a moment laying there in that uncomfortable silence she just smiled wearily and said, "Then there's nothing to worry about, Percy. Everything's going to be alright."
"Always the wise girl." I replied with a soft chuckle.
"Of course. It's better than being a seaweed brain any day." Our little back and forth was one of my favorite things about my relationship with her. Even though we had grown up into these mature roles that we now played out, when I was with her I was still that same awkward but euphoric teenager that had kissed her in the lake at Camp Half-Blood nearly six years ago and she was still the voice of reason that had left me guessing for so long.
Without hesitation I pulled her in the last inch and kissed her tenderly, letting everything else go and enjoying one of the better minutes in my lifetime. She tasted sweet, like her lips had been brushed with a drop of honey as I kissed them with all my soul. Her breath was warm and saccharine as it mixed with mine. Instantly my body began to tingle in a way only she could make it, a way I don't think anyone else could ever understand because it was just too good to possibly put to words. I closed my eyes and slipped into the bliss of the moment.
Annabeth broke away first, her eyes opening with mine in that knowing affectionate look that only she could pull off. Her lips curled up in a smile that I knew better than my own reflection. I could only grin equally as my hands moved across the small of her back. "How long do we have until they're here?" She whispered, her breath hot on my neck.
"A little less than an hour…" I replied, my right hand drifting across her hips to trace the curves of the perfect body underneath her short white silk night gown. My fingers danced across the fabric just strongly enough to feel her body shiver and shudder fantastically beneath them.
"Then they can wait," She murmured as her hands moved to the button of the jeans I was wearing while I pulled her in again to kiss her passionately.
As if on cue, the most obnoxious car horn imaginable cut through the wondrous silence of our bedroom and ripped right through the high the two of us had been riding on since the second our lips first touched, killing the mood like it had just been zapped by Zeus' master bolt. My eyes shot open wide as both Annabeth and I instinctively clamped our hands over our ears and grimaced equally. Sitting up I immediately pulled back the curtain just wide enough to peer outside into the brightly sunlit morning and see Nico di Angelo and his Aphrodite-born girlfriend Felice Rosehaven parked on the street outside in his classic jet black convertible Lincoln Continental.
"He's early. Bastard." I muttered.
Beside me Annabeth just shook her head and chuckled lightly, rolling over so she could sit up next to me and take a peek out the window too. "You should probably go out there before he wakes up everyone on Long Island." I nodded, rolling my eyes as I climbed out of the bed and buttoned my jeans back then ran to the front door. Slipping on the pair of worn leather flip-flops lying in front of the large hardwood door with its Celestial bronze trim I just took a second to sigh in annoyance. Meanwhile, Nico's response was to honk on his loathsome car horn once more; I think just to spite me. Shaking my head I just opened door and walked out into the unbearably bright June morning.
"Morning!" Nico roared with an almost grating level of enthusiasm as he leaned back against his car. His enthusiasm had become part of his nature in the last few years. This was mainly due to two reasons. The first was because of the way that Hades had changed after the war six years ago. Once the god of the Underworld was welcomed back upon Olympus, Hades' demeanor had become in a word softer. He was less vengeful, less angry, even less manipulative than the skeleton king I had first met nearly eleven years ago now. This had rubbed off on his son, who slowly started to transform back the kid he still was at heart. The second reason though, well that one was a little more to blame. In the last few years, Apollo had taken a bit of a shine to Nico and had kind of taken him under the god of poetry's wing. Nico had responded in kind by picking up some of the… cockier qualities of Artemis' twin brother. He still wasn't half as bad as Apollo was but I didn't think anyone could be. "You guys ready or what? I wanna get going immediately!"
"Nico, I am going to kill you." I ground out, dragging my thumb across my neck while giving him the most menacing evil eye I could manage.
At that moment the door opened behind me as Annabeth rushed outside, having slipped into a thin yellow sundress that perfectly matched the color of her long hair. Her hair itself was a disheveled mess that came from our little moment just a second ago before Nico interrupted us. Meanwhile her cheeks were red with a deep blush that her frazzled cheeriness did nothing to help calm at all. Immediately she crossed the brilliant lapis lazuli and Celestial bronze pathway that Tyson had crafted for us as part of his wedding gift to run over to the two of them. "Nico, Felice! It's so good to see both of you!"
Trudging slowly I followed her over to them
"Annabeth, you look beautiful as ever." Nico said as he pushed off the car and hugged her. The girl beside him, his girlfriend Felice, stepped out of the Continental as well and followed suit with her boyfriend. Felice was one of Aphrodite's daughters and had been at the camp now since about a year after the war so this was her fifth summer. Like so many of our current residents at the camp, she was of the demigods that had been found across the country after the Olympian Oath was sworn to Styx. However, the girl – like most of the children that filled up Aphrodite's cabin – was stunning, with shimmering raven hair and azure blue eyes set within a petite heart-shaped face. Nico had taken a liking to her the moment the satyrs brought her to the camp and here they were five years down the road. "Percy, you look like death warmed over. And let me tell you I know exactly what that looks like. You ever see Aeacus, Rhadamanthus, or Minos up close? It's like looking at Joan Rivers after another fifty plastic surgeries."
My right eyebrow cocked up as he said that and I couldn't help but chuckling heartily at the simile. The kid had gotten a sense of humor in the last few years, I'll give him that. "Good to see you too, Nico. Felice, how have you been?" I replied, a little more hospitable now.
"I have been doing simply exquisitely. Lady Herrera has been expressing some interest in incorporating some of my designs in her Fall line." Being born of Aphrodite, it was no big coincidence that Nico's girlfriend sort of reminded me a bit of the late Selina Beauregard. She carried herself with a distinctive grace and careful atmosphere that spoke of her inborn tendency to focus on the beauty of everything. According to Nico, she had spent her time creating fashion designs since before she came to camp which really came as no surprise.
"The Carolina Herrera? I'm impressed Felice. You must have worked ridiculously hard on your sketches." Annabeth said incredulously. Meanwhile, I was already getting bored of this conversation. The fashion industry… blech.
"Baby, I'll be right back. I'm going to go grab our things so we can get the car packed." I hurriedly interjected, casting Nico a sideways glance as I gave Annabeth a quick peck on the cheek. His expression was all the communication I needed from him to know he wanted to come. A part of me wanted to leave him there with them as payback for ruining Annabeth's and my intimate moment a little earlier but I could not do that to another man. It was like asking for them to invoke revenge from the goddess Nemesis. So as I turned away from them to head back into the house, I just called back to the group. "Nico, I'm going to need your help inside okay?"
"Of course! What are friends for?" His response sang of sweet relief. "I trust you two can manage by yourselves for a moment? Good. Percy, wait up!" The Hades-born demigod didn't even give Annabeth or Felice a chance to respond before he took off down our pathway to catch up with me.
As soon as we were inside the house and out of earshot of our respective better halves his cheeriness dropped and a look of release just washed over his olive-skinned face. "By the gods Percy, I owe you one big man. I love Felice to death but I've heard hours upon hours about her fashion deal during the drive from L.A. over the last few days and I think if I have to listen to another minute about the advantages of using turquoise over royal blue fabric again I might just use my dagger on myself." He spoke exasperatedly, huffing his shoulders with a sigh of relief.
I turned and looked at him as we made our way through the house to the living room where both Annabeth's and my bags were packed for camp this year. "No Nico, you owe me two. You're an hour early." I muttered as I quickly unzipped mine and double checked to make sure I had everything packed like I needed.
"Your point is?" He asked with a shrug, his light brown eyes staring at me in confusion. Dressed in a pair of black biker's jeans and black leather boots with a black riding jacket he had put away his aviator's jacket for over his orange Camp Half-Blood shirt, he looked like a Halloween-themed member of the Hell's Angels which made me smirk inwardly. He still had the same messy mop of black hair and olive skin he had had since the day I first met him and his sister but now his features were much more defined and he had actually gained quite a good deal of muscle in the last two years."I figured you would like to get to camp as early as possible so we can get settled before all the campers start arriving."
"Annabeth and I were… indisposed… when you pulled up." I muttered, shooting him a sideways look.
"Oh. Oh! Oh man, I'm so sorry! I had no idea!" He backpedaled and wrung his hands together as he got what I was saying to him. "I mean… just wow. Now I just feel like a massive blocker today."
Blocker… that sounded like something he probably picked up from Apollo rather than from anyone else in his life. I wasn't naïve enough to not know what it meant but I just couldn't picture Hades or gods forbid Persephone or Demeter talking like that; it didn't suit them. The god of poetry and the sun however, well that was right up his alley. "Yeah… Your timing was just spot on today." I grumbled a little more, eliciting another apology from the young son of Hades. I couldn't help but roll my eyes though; even I saw how comical this whole thing was on a 'funny as long as it doesn't happen to you' sort of way. However, there was work to be done so I just slid Riptide into my front pocket and put Annabeth's hat in the back then picked up my bags as Nico picked up Annabeth's. "Let's just get these out to the car. As long as I'm up I might as well get moving."
"You sure it's safe to go outside yet?" He asked sarcastically. Looking back now, the timing was almost ironic.
BOOM!
The deafening boom from the blast tore through the house like the walls were made of a thousand amplifiers repeating the echoing carnage. The sheer force of it knocked me clear off my feet and sent me sprawling into the living room wall behind me while the windows shattered and rained razor-sharp shards of glass down upon me before I had a chance to cover up. Across the room Nico was thrown down to the floor, his eyes rolling back in his head as he was knocked unconscious from how hard he hit the hardwood floor. The world changed instantly for me. My vision immediately blurred, my ears rang and my brain swirled about as though someone had just unceremoniously dumped it into a blender and pressed the on button. Suddenly I felt numb and dizzy and everything around me became out of focus. I could not even feel the numerous open cuts on my face and arms from the glass that now peppered my body.
"PERSEUS!" The bestial roar was sheer torment on my ears; like someone had taken a knife to the side of my head and was poking around inside.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I needed to move. The most subliminal voice inside of me screamed at me to climb to my feet and run from the house. I had to get to Annabeth; I had to find out what the hell was going on around me.
I pushed myself to feet with every ounce of strength I could muster and ran outside as Nico lay there unconscious. I would come back for him but I needed to make sure Annabeth was safe first.
I tore through the front door like a lumbering beast just to see a sight I had never imagined I would: the sky was burning. I don't mean it like a small fire from a blown-out plane engine or something; no, the whole sky from the east to the west was all ablaze and roaring with the bright green flames that came from Greek fire. It was horrid, terrifying, hellish. I couldn't take my eyes off of it.
"PERCY!" Her scream snapped me back to reality.
My eyes ripped away from the burning sky and to Annabeth. She was kneeling in the middle of our yard with an unconscious Felice in front of her cut to shreds with a good dozen serious slices all over her body. Annabeth's face was a mixture of bewildered insanity as the world around us went to hell faster than we could process it. Her eyes were locked with mine even as she checked over Felice to try and stop the bleeding on some of her open wounds. Not even thinking, I rushed over and knelt down across from her, my hands working out of years of experience patching myself and my friends up as I made makeshift tourniquets out of my now ripped Camp Half-Blood shirt.
"What happened?!" I asked wildly as I tied one of my orange shirt bandages over a huge cut across Felice's forearm.
"I don't know! I felt the boom but didn't see a blast! When I looked up the sky was like that!" Her eyes screamed how scared she was but we had both learned over years how to hide our fears when we needed to.
"IT HAS BEEN DECIDED!" The voice roared again. I didn't know it. It wasn't one of the Gods or the Titans; not Kronos or anyone else I could think of as I quickly ran down the mental list of who would want to attack me. The list was massive, consisting of every monster I could think of as well as Poseidon knows how many other names; but none of them were capable of something this horrid, something this truly destructive! The voice came from something so out of my league I couldn't think straight! "YOUR FATE HAS BEEN SEALED!"
"Percy! Look!" Annabeth cried as her attention jerked up from the girl we were bandaging up to a spot behind me.
I whipped my head around to see the Greek fire descending from the sky in a spiraling pillar behind me. It dropped lower and lower, swirling about like a small tornado so close that I could feel the intense heat from the inferno as it stung my eyes and skin and singed my clothing. But the second it touched the ground I saw the figure inside it.
Standing in the middle of the great radiance of the flames was a man covered in armor so black I could only think it must have been Stygian Iron in its purest form. He was covered from head to toe in it but the armor was unlike any that I had seen worn by the Gods or even the Titans. It was perverted and dark, covered in many intricate carvings of skulls so warped that it seemed like I could actually see them screaming as the armor gleamed in the roaring firestorm. His helm had a slit down the middle of it and across his eyes like the way I had seen in a Spartan's helmet but I could not make out any part of him beneath the twisted raven metal. He was like a nightmare torn from some hellish fantasy that only those who went insane would see. I was horrified.
"Percy! W-We gotta go!" Annabeth's voice was a far away thing behind me right then. I couldn't think about running then, I couldn't even think about moving my legs. The only thought in my mind was that I had to stop him; that I had to defend her.
My hand moved on its own to my pocket for Riptide.
His speed was unreal.
Before I knew what had happened I crashed into the hood of the car and felt my body go limp like jelly. My eyes fluttered in and out of reality as I struggled to stay conscious long enough to see him. He had moved from the fire to throw me into the Lincoln like I was nothing more than a ragdoll and he was a juiced-up Arnold Schwarzenegger. I didn't even see his feet move; the whole thing happened in less than a split second.
"Get up! You have to get up!" Annabeth was leaning over me now, shaking my body violently as he walked across the yard now. Through the haze I could only imagine he was walking now to take his sweet time before finishing us off. He had completely ignored the unconscious Felice where I had just been kneeling and was coming for us. The man – or god or whatever he was – was an unstoppable beast. "Please! By the Gods get up!"
Her voice was so terrified but the darkness was closing in now.
(I)
My eyes were lying to me… or at least I think they were. That was the only explanation, the only way to make sense of what I was seeing as the world around me slowly slid into focus. It was all too familiar, all too much of a recognizable memory for me not to start freaking out immediately. For the second time in my life, I was slowly waking up in a deck chair on a huge porch with a grassy meadow lined by rolling green hills on the other side spread out in front of me. There was a blue and white plaid blanket spread out over my legs and a pillow behind my head but I knew there would be even before I felt it out with my hands.
"Okay Percy, you probably just took too big of a bump on the head when you hit the car… You're in camp but you must be imagining things… Yeah, that's it. All of that was just an imagination; you probably didn't even hit the car! You probably got a concussion from something else and that was just some weird fantasy your mind made up. Bad dreams, that's all it is. Any second now, Annabeth is going to come to you and everything will be just fine…" I murmured to myself to try and calm my nerves as I blinked twice to see if the surroundings would change or warp at all. I don't know why I hadn't noticed it before but at that moment I suddenly realized exactly how dry my mouth was. It felt like I had just done a face-plant into a sand dune and tasted nastier than a kiss from Mrs. O'Leary. And to top it off my jaw hurt like I had just gone twelve rounds with Briares.
Of course, that was when I noticed what was sitting on the small wicker table beside me. It was a tall glass with a green straw and a paper parasol filled with a gold drink the color of apple juice. However, I knew that that gold drink was something that would fill my insides with pleasurable warmth that would spread out through my entire body like a wildfire until even my toes curled from the tingling sensation it left behind. It was the drink of the Gods: nectar.
"... Okay, this is perfectly natural. If you were injured then of course they'd leave some nectar or ambrosia out to help you regain your strength. It's just a bloody coincidence." I thought silently. No matter how hard I fought it, a slow and terrible little idea was starting to creep inside my thoughts, something that truly scared the crap out of me to the point I had to close my eyes as I reached for the glass so I could not see my own hand. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't escape the fact that everything was too freaking similar. Everything was happening just like it had before; right down to the color of the parasol and the maraschino cherry it was stuck through inside the glass. But I had to keep calm; once I had a drink of nectar everything would right itself again.
Keeping my eyes shut tight I reached out and wrapped my fingers around the cold glass. My grip felt superbly strong like it always had since I had followed Nico's plan and bathed in the Styx. Oddly enough though, I had no control over it like I usually did. Instead, my grip just squeezed tighter and tighter on the cup until I heard the glass groan with a small cracking noise… then another… then one final one.
I couldn't hold it anymore, couldn't stop myself from looking. My eyes shot open just in time to see a hand that was mine yet wasn't mine snap through the glass like it a steel claw smashing through a small sapling. The hand that had done it was small and diminutive, more like the hand of a twelve year old kid than a twenty-one year old man. The muscles were underdeveloped and the palms were bare of the calluses that grown over ten years of fighting off blood-thirsty monsters and crazed Titan overlords.
"Careful." No. No! NO NO NO NO NO!
My eyes went wide and full of a fear I had been fighting with all my strength as I looked up to see the satyr who had just spoken that one word standing there. He was just as he had been all those years ago; the same curly brown hair, the same blue jeans and orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt holding a Converse shoe box. I felt like I was about to be sick just looking at that box in his hands; I knew precisely what was in it but more than that I knew there was no way in Olympus or Tartarus that that box was even supposed to be here. This was too impossible, too far beyond the stretch and scope of my understandable reality.
It was Grover. He looked exactly the same as he had the first day I came to Camp Half-Blood. He was a teenager again.
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Me: Okay there you go, Chapter 2 as promised. I've got some interestingly devious ideas planned for this little story so look forward to Chapter 3 here sooner or later. Anyways, drop an opinion and I'll see you all next time (or in therapy, whichever comes first). Peace :)