Hey guys! Thanks for all the reviews! I'm just going to do small crush Pothena. This is the second to last one in the Lightning Thief. Um, its kinda really long, so I'm super proud!

Disclaimer: I don't own PJO

Athena and Poseidon still looked embarrassed and disgruntled when the laughter died down.

"Alright, who wants to read next?" Apollo declared. Hephaestus raised his hand, and the book was transferred to him.

"Is it still in my POV?" Percy asked, crossing his fingers.

"Looks like it," Hephaestus said, looking sympathetic.

"Schist!" Percy exclaimed. He and Hazel looked at each other and cracked up. Hephaestus took that as a cue to read.

Oh, how I love the Tunnel Ride of Looooovvee

"Is that…" Hephaestus looked at Annabeth.

"Yup." She answered. Everyone just looked confused. "You'll find out later."

The sun was sinking behind the mountains by the time we found the water park. Judging from the sign, it once had been called WATERLAND, but now some of the letters were smashed out, so it read WAT R A D.

Ares looked very pleased. "HA, that's when I sent you guys to get my shield."

"Yeah, that wasn't fun," Percy murmured, wrapping his arms around Annabeth.

The main gate was padlocked and topped with barbed wire. Inside, huge dry waterslides and tubes and pipes curled everywhere, leading to empty pools. Old tickets and advertisements fluttered around the asphalt. With night coming on, the place looked sad and creepy.

"If Ares brings his girlfriend here for a date," I said, staring up at the barbed wire, "I'd hate to see what she looks like."

"Excuse me?" Aphrodite popped out of her daydream. "Is that an insult to my beauty?"

"No, he just was clueless, and still is," Annabeth covered.

Percy," Annabeth warned. "Be more respectful."

"Why? I thought you hated Ares."

"He's still a god. And his girlfriend is very temperamental."

"You don't want to insult her looks," Grover added.

"Who is she? Echidna?"

"Okay, did you just think I was that butt-ugly monster? I am beautiful, hell, I can even look like Annabeth!" Aphrodite changed until she was a splitting image of the girl sitting next to Percy. She tossed her curly blonde over her shoulder and huffed. Percy relaxed form the position of surrender he was in.

"No, Aphrodite," Grover said, a little dreamily. "Goddess of love."

"I thought she was married to somebody," I said. "Hephaestus."

"Yeah," Hephaestus glared at Ares.

What's your point?" he asked.

"Oh." I suddenly felt the need to change the subject. "So how do we get in?"

"Maia!" Grover's shoes sprouted wings.

He flew over the fence, did an unintended somersault in midair, then stumbled to a landing on the opposite side. He dusted off his jeans, as if he'd planned the whole thing. "You guys coming?"

"Oh Grover, I would have loved to see that!" Thalia laughed.

Annabeth and I had to climb the old-fashioned way, holding down the barbed wire for each other as we crawled over the top.

The shadows grew long as we walked through the park, checking out the attractions. There was Ankle Biter Island, Head Over Wedgie, and Dude, Where's My Swimsuit?

"Oh my gods, who named those! Those are totally….AWESOME!" Leo screeched.

No monsters came to get us. Nothing made the slightest noise.

We found a souvenir shop that had been left open. Merchandise still lined the shelves: snow globes, pencils, postcards, and racks of-

"Clothes," Annabeth said. "Fresh clothes."

"Yeah," I said. "But you can't just-"

"Watch me."

She snatched an entire row of stuff of the racks and disappeared into the changing room. A few minutes later she came out in Waterland flower-print shorts, a big red Waterland T-shirt, and commemorative Waterland surf shoes.

"Ewwww, surf shoes are weird." Piper said. Annabeth gave her a light-hearted glare.

"Well, it was all I had!"

A Waterland backpack was slung over her shoulder, obviously stuffed with more goodies.

"What the heck." Grover shrugged. Soon, all three of us were decked out like walking advertisements for the defunct theme park.

We continued searching for the Tunnel of Love. I got the feeling that the whole park was holding its breath. "So Ares and Aphrodite," I said, to keep my mind off the growing dark, "they have a thing going?"

"Seriously, you hadn't figured it out? I honestly don't understand how you are the savior of Olympus sometimes." Nico said in amazement.

"That's old gossip, Percy," Annabeth told me. "Three-thousand-year-old gossip."

"What about Aphrodite's husband?"

"Well, you know," she said. "Hephaestus. The blacksmith. He was crippled when he was a baby, thrown off Mount Olympus by Zeus. So he isn't exactly handsome. Clever with his hands, and all, but Aphrodite isn't into brains and talent, you know?"

"She likes bikers."

"Yeah, I'm tougher than you punk," Ares sneered.

"Did you forget that I beat you?" Percy retaliated, standing up.

"Seaweed Brain!" Annabeth pulled him down while Aphrodite cooed.

"Whatever."

"Hephaestus knows?"

"Oh sure," Annabeth said. "He caught them together once. I mean, literally caught them, in a golden net, and invited all the gods to come and laugh at them. Hephaestus is always trying to embarrass them. That's why they meet in out-of-the-way places, like …"

She stopped, looking straight ahead. "Like that."

In front of us was an empty pool that would've been awesome for skateboarding.

"You skateboard? Me too!" Jason said looking surprised.

"Awesome! We should go after all this is over!" Percy yelled. The two boys started chatting.

"Sorry to interrupt to your guys' bromance, but we really should read," Thalia butted in.

It was at least fifty yards across and shaped like a bowl.

Around the rim, a dozen bronze statues of Cupid stood guard with wings spread and bows ready to fire. On the opposite side from us, a tunnel opened up, probably where the water flowed into when the pool was full. The sign above it read, THRILL RIDE O' LOVE: THIS IS NOT YOUR PARENTS' TUNNEL OF LOVE!

Grover crept toward the edge. "Guys, look."

Marooned at the bottom of the pool was a pink-and-white two-seater boat with a canopy over the top and little hearts painted all over it. In the left seat, glinting in the fading light, was Ares's shield, a polished circle of bronze.

"This is too easy," I said. "So we just walk down there and get it?"

Annabeth ran her fingers along the base of the nearest Cupid statue.

"There's a Greek letter carved here," she said. "Eta. I wonder …"

"Oh….." Leo said. "What kind? Video?" He directed the last question towards his dad. Hephaestus nodded, looking kinda sheepish.

"Grover," I said, "you smell any monsters?"

He sniffed the wind. "Nothing."

"Nothing-like, in-the-Arch-and-you-didn't-smell-Echidna nothing, or really nothing?"

"Oooo, low blow," Hermes said. Percy blushed.

Grover looked hurt. "I told you, that was underground."

"Okay, I'm sorry." I took a deep breath. "I'm going down there."

"I'll go with you." Grover didn't sound too enthusiastic, but I got the feeling he was trying to make up for what had happened in St. Louis.

"No," I told him. "I want you to stay up top with the flying shoes. You're the Red Baron, a flying ace, remember? I'll be counting on you for backup, in case something goes wrong."

Grover puffed up his chest a little. "Sure. But what could go wrong?"

"I don't know. Just a feeling. Annabeth, come with me-"

"You did not just do that," Thalia was doubled over, hysterically laughing.

Aphrodite squealed something things about Percy always loving Annabeth, and other love gibberish. The said couple just blushed.

"Are you kidding?" She looked at me as if I'd just dropped from the moon. Her cheeks were bright red.

"What's the problem now?" I demanded.

"Me, go with you to the … the 'Thrill Ride of Love'? How embarrassing is that? What if somebody saw me?"

"Nobodies there?" Frank asked confusedly.

"Who's going to see you?"

"Only about all of Olympus," Hephaestus whispered.

But my face was burning now, too. Leave it to a girl to make everything complicated. "Fine," I told her. "I'll do it myself." But when I started down the side of the pool, she followed me, muttering about how boys always messed things up.

"Words of wisdom," Artemis nodded.

We reached the boat. The shield was propped on one seat, and next to it was a lady's silk scarf. I tried to imagine Ares and Aphrodite here, a couple of gods meeting in a junked-out amusement-park ride. Why? Then I noticed something I hadn't seen from up top: mirrors all the way around the rim of the pool, facing this spot. We could see ourselves no matter which direction we looked. That must be it. While Ares and Aphrodite were smooching with each other they could look at their favorite people: themselves.

"I am amazing," the said gods mentioned at the same time.

I picked up the scarf. It shimmered pink, and the perfume was indescribable-rose, or mountain laurel. Something good. I smiled, a little dreamy, and was about to rub the scarf against my cheek when Annabeth ripped it out of my hand and stuffed it in her pocket. "Oh, no you don't. Stay away from that love magic."

"Jealous much?" Nico teased. Annabeth looked down and whispered something around the lines of maybe, but nobody really heard.

"What?"

"Just get the shield, Seaweed Brain, and let's get out of here."

The moment I touched the shield, I knew we were in trouble. My hand broke through something that had been connecting it to the dashboard. A cobweb, I thought, but then I looked at a strand of it on my palm and saw it was some kind of metal filament, so fine it was almost invisible. A trip wire.

"Oh," the whole room sighed as they figured ought what was going on.\

"Wait," Annabeth said.

"Too late."

"Kelp Head, duh!" Thalia just shook her head. Annabeth kissed him(again)

"There's another Greek letter on the side of the boat, another Eta. This is a trap."

Noise erupted all around us, of a million gears grinding, as if the whole pool were turning into one giant machine.

Grover yelled, "Guys!"

Up on the rim, the Cupid statues were drawing their bows into firing position. Before I could suggest taking cover, they shot, but not at us. They fired at each other, across the rim of the pool. Silky cables trailed from the arrows, arcing over the pool and anchoring where they landed to form a huge golden asterisk. Then smaller metallic threads started weaving together magically between the main strands, making a net.

Athena and Poseidon turned to Ares. "Did you seriously send my daughter into a trap?" You can guess who said that.

"Um, yes?" Ares obviously had no idea what was going on, as always.

"We have to get out," I said.

"Duh!" Annabeth said.

I grabbed the shield and we ran, but going up the slope of the pool was not as easy as going down.

"Come on!" Grover shouted.

He was trying to hold open a section of the net for us, but wherever he touched it, the golden threads started to wrap around his hands.

The Cupids' heads popped open. Out came video cameras. Spotlights rose up all around the pool, blinding us with illumination, and a loudspeaker voice boomed: "Live to Olympus in one minute … Fifty-nine seconds, fifty-eight …"

"Oh my gods, you guys are being broadcasted to Olympus, on the Tunnel Ride of Love, together!" Jason just shook his head. "Honestly, I've never met people with such bad luck."

"Hephaestus!" Annabeth screamed. "I'm so stupid.' Eta is H.' He made this trap to catch his wife with Ares. Now we're going to be broadcast live to Olympus and look like absolute fools!"

We'd almost made it to the rim when the row of mirrors opened like hatches and thousands of tiny metallic … things poured out.

Annabeth screamed.

It was an army of wind-up creepy-crawlies: bronze-gear bodies, spindly legs, little pincer mouths, all scuttling toward us in a wave of clacking, whirring metal.

"Spiders!" Annabeth said. "Sp-sp-aaaah!"

Both Athena and Annabeth shivered. Percy pulled Annabeth closer to him and whispered sweet things to her.

I'd never seen her like this before. She fell backward in terror and almost got overwhelmed by the spider robots before I pulled her up and dragged her back toward the boat.

"Thank goodness for Percy," Athena suddenly blurted. Everyone looked at her, and got all defensive. "What? He saved Annabeth so many times!"

"Miracles do happen," Percy told Annabeth, both of them with looks of surprise etched onto their faces.

The things were coming out from all around the rim now, millions of them, flooding toward the center of the pool, completely surrounding us. I told myself they probably weren't programmed to kill, just corral us and bite us and make us look stupid. Then again, this was a trap meant for gods. And we weren't gods.

"Really, I hadn't noticed!" Dionysus's sarcastic voice floated over the top of his magazine.

Annabeth and I climbed into the boat. I started kicking away the spiders as they swarmed aboard. I yelled at Annabeth to help me, but she was too paralyzed to do much more than scream.

"Thirty, twenty-nine," called the loudspeaker.

The spiders started spitting out strands of metal thread, trying to tie us down. The strands were easy enough to break at first, but there were so many of them, and the spiders just kept coming. I kicked one away from Annabeth's leg and its pincers took a chunk out of my new surf shoe.

"Good, get rid of those ugly things," Piper shuddered.

Grover hovered above the pool in his flying sneakers, trying to pull the net loose, but it wouldn't budge.

Think, I told myself. Think.

The Tunnel of Love entrance was under the net. We could use it as an exit, except that it was blocked by a million robot spiders.

"Fifteen, fourteen," the loudspeaker called.

Water, I thought. Where does the ride's water come from?

Then I saw them: huge water pipes behind the mirrors, where the spiders had come from. And up above the net, next to one of the Cupids, a glass-windowed booth that must be the controller's station.

"Grover!" I yelled. "Get into that booth! Find the 'on' switch!"

"Good idea, but knowing you, it isn't going to work." Frank shook his head.

"But-"

"Do it!" It was a crazy hope, but it was our only chance. The spiders were all over the prow of the boat now. Annabeth was screaming her head off. I had to get us out of there.

Grover was in the controller's booth now, slamming away at the buttons.

"Five, four-"

Grover looked up at me hopelessly, raising his hands. He was letting me know that he'd pushed every button, but still nothing was happening.

I closed my eyes and thought about waves, rushing water, the Mississippi River. I felt a familiar tug in my gut. I tried to imagine that I was dragging the ocean all the way to Denver.

"Could you do that?" Leo asked, his ADHD piping up.

"Shut up!" the room yelled, for it was getting suspenseful.

"Two, one, zero!"

Water exploded out of the pipes. It roared into the pool, sweeping away the spiders. I pulled Annabeth into the seat next to me and fastened her seat belt just as the tidal wave slammed into our boat, over the top, whisking the spiders away and dousing us completely, but not capsizing us. The boat turned, lifted in the flood, and spun in circles around the whirlpool.

The water was full of short-circuiting spiders, some of them smashing against the pool's concrete wall with such force they burst.

Spotlights glared down at us. The Cupid-cams were rolling, live to Olympus.

A few people gasped, but most were to engrossed in the story.

But I could only concentrate on controlling the boat. I willed it to ride the current, to keep away from the wall. Maybe it was my imagination, but the boat seemed to respond. At least, it didn't break into a million pieces. We spun around one last time, the water level now almost high enough to shred us against the metal net. Then the boat's nose turned toward the tunnel and we rocketed through into the darkness.

Annabeth and I held tight, both of us screaming as the boat shot curls and hugged corners and took forty-five-degree plunges past pictures of Romeo and Juliet and a bunch of other Valentine's Day stuff.

"Were you holding tight to each other?" Aphrodite said slyly.

"I honestly don't remember, I was so scared of the spiders." Annabeth answered, her facing turning red.

"I was concentrating on the water," Percy chimed in.

Then we were out of the tunnel, the night air whistling through our hair as the boat barreled straight toward the exit.

If the ride had been in working order, we would've sailed off a ramp between the golden Gates of Love and splashed down safely in the exit pool.

"The Golden Gates of Love?" Thalia and Artemis both gagged.

But there was a problem. The Gates of Love were chained. Two boats that had been washed out of the tunnel before us were now piled against the barricade-one submerged, the other cracked in half.

"Unfasten your seat belt," I yelled to Annabeth.

"Are you crazy?"

"Unless you want to get smashed to death." I strapped Ares's shield to my arm. "We're going to have to jump for it." My idea was simple and insane. As the boat struck, we would use its force like a springboard to jump the gate. I'd heard of people surviving car crashes that way, getting thrown thirty or forty feet away from an accident. With luck, we would land in the pool.

Annabeth seemed to understand. She gripped my hand as the gates got closer.

"On my mark," I said.

"No! On my mark!"

"Yeah, Percy's ideas normally fail," Grover said.

"Guys, this is my best friend! My life is sad." Percy pouted, causing Annabeth to laugh and kiss him again.

"What?"

"Simple physics!" she yelled. "Force times the trajectory angle-"

"Fine.'" I shouted. "On your mark!"

She hesitated … hesitated … then yelled, "Now!"

Crack!

Annabeth was right.

If we'd jumped when I thought we should've, we would've crashed into the gates. She got us maximum lift.

Unfortunately, that was a little more than we needed. Our boat smashed into the pileup and we were thrown into the air, straight over the gates, over the pool, and down toward solid asphalt.

Something grabbed me from behind.

Annabeth yelled, "Ouch!"

Grover!

Everyone gave the goat man a standing round of applause. He bowed, grinning.

In midair, he had grabbed me by the shirt, and Annabeth by the arm, and was trying to pull us out of a crash landing, but Annabeth and I had all the momentum.

"You're too heavy!" Grover said. "We're going down!"

"Yeah Percy, lose a few!" Thalia screamed from the other end of the couch.

"I'm perfectly fit, thank you!" Percy yelled back.

We spiraled toward the ground, Grover doing his best to slow the fall.

We smashed into a photo-board, Grover's head going straight into the hole where tourists would put their faces, pretending to be Noo-Noo the Friendly Whale. Annabeth and I tumbled to the ground, banged up but alive. Ares's shield was still on my arm.

"Oh good," Ares sighed. "What? I forgot!" was his answer to al the stares he received.

Once we caught our breath, Annabeth and I got Grover out of the photo-board and thanked him for saving our lives. I looked back at the Thrill Ride of Love. The water was subsiding. Our boat had been smashed to pieces against the gates.

A hundred yards away, at the entrance pool, the Cupids were still filming. The statues had swiveled so that their cameras were trained straight on us, the spotlights in our faces.

"Show's over!" I yelled. "Thank you! Good night!"

"Only Percy would say that," Hazel shook her head, once again impressed by her friend.

The Cupids turned back to their original positions. The lights shut off. The park went quiet and dark again, except for the gentle trickle of water into the Thrill Ride of Love's exit pool. I wondered if Olympus had gone to a commercial break, or if our ratings had been any good.

I hated being teased. I hated being tricked. And I had plenty of experience handling bullies who liked to do that stuff to me. I hefted the shield on my arm and turned to my friends. "We need to have a little talk with Ares."

"I meant to ask you, did you save that video?" Annabeth directed to Hephaestus. He nodded, and the next fifteen minutes were devoted to laughing at the video on The Tunnel of Love.

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