Hey, Everyone!

I am so sorry I haven't updated in forever, I had my school talent show, and then Tech Week all week before then to get everything together, and I barely had time for reading and homework...:..(

So thank you guys so SO much for being patient with me, my schedule has finally freed up (except for Wednesday...I don't know if I'll ever have my Wednesdays back...maybe next year...) and I'll be updating way more often!

Enjoy!

Chapter 10

Percy

The entire ship was in mass chaos.

Percy was almost 100 percent sure that if the ship didn't have Festus and Annabeth, they would have sunk long before now.

Unfortunately, they were now sinking.

"What do we do?!" Jason yelled over the blaring noise of the alarms, making Percy almost completely deaf.

"We need to stop the ship from sinking!" Annabeth snapped as she worked with the controls to try to get to ship to stop screaming.

"Well how do we do that?" Frank yelled over the sounds. "It's not like any of us are good with tools and metal!"

When Percy looked over at Frank, it took him a second to remember how he'd changed again. It was still getting hard for him to adjust to Franks' new look, even thought Annabeth and everyone else already had.

"Do we have any corks?" Piper suggested.

"This isn't a cartoon, Piper," Percy heard Annabeth mutter. Then she shouted, "I think metal and wood would work out better. We need a hammer and we need those materials. Someone, get below deck and get them."

"Newsflash," Jason replied, "the only tools Leo had came from his tool belt, which he took with him when he disappeared."

"I don't need to the condescending tone, Jason," Annabeth muttered again, which made Percy crack a smile.

"I'll get the metal and wood. Hazel, can you conjure up a large diamond that we can smash onto nails?" Percy shouted.

"What nails?" Piper asked.

"We'll find something," Percy promised as he began toward the stairs. "Frank, come with me!"

The two of them dashed down the stairs, where the blaring only got louder, and the flashing red lights only made it more annoying.

They sloshed toward Leo's place of preferred work; the engine room, dodging holes. Percy found a small pile of scrap metal next to one of Leo's upgrades to the engine, and he began to sort through the sheets of various metals in the centimeters of water that were layering the floor.

The first two he pulled up were starting to rust, but he was able to rescue the last eight.

"Can you find any wood that isn't warping?" Percy shouted to Frank.

"No!" Frank yelled back. "Any metal?"

"Eight sheets."

"How many holes do you think there are?"

"Four on deck, and then we dodged what, like, five on the way here?" Percy responded. "Anything you can find, use it."

"I found some plastic. Like, the thick stuff. And some monster proof glass Leo invented last month," Frank hollered.

Percy looked over his shoulder to Frank and asked, "Monster-proof glass?"

Frank shrugged. "He got really bored and really worried really often."

Percy sighed, but he doubted Frank could hear him. Percy stood, looked over at Frank and shouted, "Just bring everything. I'll see if Hazel has that diamond or not. You got any nails?"

Frank held up a small handful of orange and grey nails. "Rusty ones."

Percy jostled the metal in his arms and shouted, "Okay, let's go."

They sloshed and stumbled quickly back to the deck.

Hazel had a couple chunks of diamond at her feet, waiting for them. "Got the diamonds."

"Awesome." Percy dropped the metal and rushed to Annabeth's side.

Her face was red and her teeth were gritted in frustration. Percy left her side just as quickly as he arrived.

He dropped to his knees next to the nearest hole and Hazel brought the big piece of diamond and a sheet of metal to him. She dropped a few nails on the board and then rushed off to help Frank on the next hole.

Percy put the metal in place and grabbed a nail. He rammed it into the metal and made sure it stood up before grabbing the rock next to him.

He held it high over his head and then forced it down onto the nail head on.

He shoved it off and saw the nail had been forced down almost fully, but the nail head had been bent at an awkward angle.

Percy grabbed another nail and repeated the process on the opposite side.

He picked up the spare nail and the diamond and rushed off the find another hole. "Hazel!"

"Coming!" she shouted back.

She appeared with a board of wood next him and another couple nails and rushed off.

Percy hammered the thin wood plank quickly and took the remaining nail and looked around for the next hole. All he saw was nice looking deck interrupted by random bursts of too large sheets of metal and a couple wood planks.

Percy smiled. He looked down at the single, rusty nail in the palm of his hand and then shouted, "I'm going below deck! How many more holes do we have?"

"I don't know!" Piper yelled.

"Hazel, can you get Jason a rock so he can help?" Percy asked.

"I can try," Hazel responded.

Percy shuffled below deck and down the stairs. The water was warping the wood, making it uneven and shot pain up Percy's legs every time he took a hurried step forward, which was often.

He ignored it, however, and rushed through the layer of water, which now seemed to be an inch high, toward the nearest hole.

He dropped to his knees in front of a hole. He looked for Frank, who he saw a short distance away and hollered, "Have any extra?"

"Wood or glass?"

"Whichever you can throw faster."

Percy ended up with a piece of glass, which he had no idea how it could be anything proof. It was paper thin and he was worried if he shoved a nail through it, it would shatter.

But he had no other option, and Leo made it, which meant there was a fifty-fifty chance it would blow him up if he hit it wrong.

The placed it over the bubbling hole, which was hard to secure, put the nail in place, and slammed the rock on it quickly before the nail could shift.

He pulled the diamond away, grateful that he still had his fingers, and noticed there were not fissures or cracks, just the nail rammed into the wood floor at one end.

Hazel and Jason had blundered downstairs, and Hazel gave him another nail.

Percy hammered it on quickly, and soon enough they had patched up all the leaking holes securely.

The alarms stopped shouting and Percy sighed in relief.

He climbed up the stairs and saw Piper and Annabeth slumped against the control panel, looking relieved.

Percy walked up and hugged her. "Now all we need to do is remove all the water from below deck."

"I'll inspect everything up here," Annabeth replied. "You guys can do it."

They spent the rest of the night below deck using buckets of water to empty the deck of water. Among all the things Leo created, he never made a simple way to de-flood the ship.

"Probably because he thought we'd never need it," Jason grumbled.

"Well, we wouldn't have if he'd been here to help us fight off the furies," Hazel replied.

Jason shrugged.

"Where could he be?" Piper asked.

Percy shook his head. "I don't know."

"Should we keep looking for him?"

"I don't know," Piper repeated.

"Do we have the time?" Frank asked.

"How far could he have gone?" Jason responded simply.

"Who knows?" Percy sighed. "He could have drowned for all we know."

"Don't talk like that," Hazel snapped. "He's a demigod in the Prophecy. The gods would try to keep him alive."

Percy sighed. "You don't know the gods like I do."

"No one knows the gods like you do, Jackson, but that doesn't mean you know everything about them," Jason responded, shoveling water nonchalantly.

Percy's face twisted in a grim sneer. He wanted to shove his fist down Jason's throat, but he just clenched and unclenched his fist repeatedly until he couldn't stand the sight of him anymore and stormed upstairs, dragging all the water that was left of the floor with him.

He chucked it all overboard and as everyone followed him up, Jason muttered, "Well that would have been more helpful earlier."

"I'm sorry your ego was bruised in the fight with that fury," Percy snapped, and Jason's face turned pink, "but that doesn't mean you have to snap at everyone when things don't go exactly your way."

Annabeth grabbed Percy but the arm and said, "Back away, Percy. Let's go watch the stars."

He turned to Annabeth. The way her jaw was locked let him know she wasn't happy with Jason, but she wanted to stop the fight that may follow.

Percy wasn't entirely sure himself.

So he agreed to walk away with Annabeth and sit on the deck.

He heard whispering and muttering from everyone behind them, and he listened to them shuffled back below deck to their beds.

"He's really getting on my last nerves, Annabeth," Percy muttered, tapping his index finger on the deck floor.

"Well what can he do?" Annabeth asked. "The crew still respects and follows you, no matter what he says and does. Frank's praetor now, so Hazel doesn't have to follow him, either. It's okay. You're fine. He's just being…annoying."

Percy shook his head. "What are we going to do?"

Annabeth looked over at him, her grey eyes curious. "About what?"

"About the crew. We're falling apart, and I don't know why."

"We'll be okay, Percy. We just need to figure ourselves out. Tartarus changed us. If we can steadily get back to our old selves, we might be able to pull control over this again."

"What if we never can?"

"Can what?"

"Become our old selves."

"We never will be, Percy. We just have to control some of our new problems. Your new anger and irritability, and my…anxiety and high stress."

"And claustrophobia," Percy added, smirking.

Annabeth laughed and leaned back on her hands. "And claustrophobia."

They spent the rest of the night cuddling and watching at stars, still not capable of sleeping, which for some reason didn't bother Percy as much as it should have.

I wanted to write something exciting, and about the guys on the ship. Don't worry, we'll be back to Leo and his quest soon.

Thanks for Reading, and sorry about the sort-of filler. :/