10. The Plunge of Death, the Fright of my Life

I could not keep up. The Arch was smoking and showed a gaping hole. The emergency teams had just gotten down the family and the guide remained atop the Ark. No trace of the woman with the chihuahua ... or of Percy.

Nothing that had happened was his fault - neither the disappearance of the master bolt, nor hatred she had caused in Zeus, nor our mishaps common to demigods.

Despite that, I knew that he had not stopped feeling guilty for a second. And I knew that I had encouraged that feeling, in myself showing that nasty antipathy. And now, it was too late, for he had surely burned, like the wall of the monument. I had killed him!

"Don't worry, Annabeth. We will find him. He probably had to get off without being noticed, or else the police are just starting to search for him up top."

I did not respond to Grover. It was useless, since I knew he was just trying to reassure me... and reassure himself. We feared the worst, and for good reason.

"Grover, I was nothing! Percy did not deserve what happened to him! It is all my fault! And I treated him like a dog ... not even that, like a towel! I promise that if we find him, I will be nicer to him, I will listen to him, I won't insult him any more..."

"Perrr-cy!"

"...I will clean his room for him, I will help him do his chores... What?!"

I jumped, startled, and I turned myself around, following the satyr's gaze.

He was there, standing, smiling.

"We can't leave you alone for five minutes!" I cried out.

More than a complaint, it was pleading - I apologized for having abandoned him, for having shut him up in that minuscule carrier. I just hoped that he would understand.

Then my rational side took back the upper hand, and I asked him for specifics on exactly what had happened. I had strong suspicions that the woman with the chihuahua was up to something, and my doubts were confirmed when I learned that she had disappeared.

Far from cameras and journalists, Percy started his tale... He tried visibly to hide his achievements and minimize his courage, but we saw that even he himself had trouble believing that he had fought Echidna, the mother of Monsters – that was evidently the identity of the chihuahua lady - and that he had lived to tell the tale.

So he had protected the family and the guide, fighting with the Chimera, until he was touched by its venom. He had thus done something that would have proved fatal to everyone other than Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon : he had jumped from the top of the Arch, through the gaping hole, to finish at the bottom of the Mississippi.

"When I entered the river, I realized that I was dry. The water didn't make me get wet. And the impact did not squash me into a Percy pancake! I was alive! Furthermore, the water healed me, but that, you knew that already, Annabeth, no?" (I nodded) "And if I touched something, it dried too, it was cool! I took a hamburger wrapper, and it dried off, and a lighter lit it on fire! It was wicked! With a flame and all..."

"Percy!" I interrupted. "Continue your story, would you?"

"Uh... Yes, sorry. As I was saying, I was dry and I could breath underwater. I thanked my father for having saved me, and I met... a woman."

"A woman, what woman?" asked Grover, echoing my thoughts.

"A messenger, she said. Sent to tell me that my father wanted me to go to Santa Monica."

"Well then!" exclaimed Grover. "We need to go to Santa Monica. You can't ignore an order from your father."

"There is something else," said Percy. "That woman... gave me a piece of advice - be wary of gifts."

"What gifts?" the satyr asked.

Percy shrugged his shoulders, ignoring the answer as much as we were.

I should have made my brain work at full steam, to know everything that that meant, but I could not... I was relieved. Percy was safe (for the moment, at any rate).

We took off in the direction of the station, knowing that Percy would soon get noticed. Once on the train, Grover murmured to me, quiet enough for Seaweed Brain not to hear him. "Annabeth, I suppose you don't want me to talk to Percy about your pretty words and promises of a little while ago?"

"What words and promises, goat boy?"

Head resting on the cold glass of the train, watching the scenery pass before me, I could not help smiling. We were, despite our disputes, a dynamic trio.

The past several chapters, I haven't received any reviews! What's up with that? The french has 136 reviews, but I have 9. Tell you what ... If I get five reviews for this chapter, I will work really hard and get another chapter to you by Friday. Okay? So review! Please!

I haven't said this in a while. I do not own PJO. I do not even have any claim on this plot - this is a translation. I go chapter by chapter and translate things to English, phrase by phrase or sentence by sentence.

This is chapter ten. There is a grand total of 18 chapters, so you can look forward to eight more in this book. Carlotaaa2 (the original author) is currently working on the second book, and is actually also ten chapters in currently. I might go on and translate that one, too, if it is finished by the time this translation is. There will probably be a gap in between, though, of course.