Happy tenth chapter! Thank you all for staying with me and my slow updates! It's exam week, too! #PrayforKatie

Chapter 10

Leo

Leo wasn't exactly sure what went wrong.

Maybe it was the fact that he couldn't sleep without having nightmares, or that he was sick of eating Tofu tacos, or maybe it was that he was just tired of floating through the Mediterranean and desperately wanted a change of scenery.

Whatever it was, it contributed to the fact that when he felt an explosion below him as he paced the deck, he panicked.

It was July. Leo should've known to be ready for anything. It had only been a matter of time before something bad was bound to happen. After all, they'd had, what, twelve hours of peacefulness? That was way too much time for their lives to not be threatened. The monsters must've been on vacation.

But when the ship rumbled like a giant earthquake beneath, Leo literally tripped over his own feet, cursed like a redneck truck driver, and hit his head on the corner of the doorway, causing him to cuss even more. Good think Frank wasn't near him; he probably would've had a coronary.

Leo vowed to have two things done if he happened to survive this apocalypse in a few days. First he'd get a really fancy tattoo on his bicep (or at least what he liked to call his bicep) that said Team Leo. It'd be really nostalgic.

Then he'd get a tattoo on the inside of his hand that said Expect the Unexpected, Idiota! Then maybe he'd start doing that.

They'd already had the schizophrenic Papa Percy arrive that morning and nearly kill them all. That was not the way Leo liked to start off his mornings. And before that he'd fallen asleep on the ship's alarm button. That wasn't a good way to make everyone have a powwow on the main deck, he learned very quickly.

And before that, he'd been having his usual nightmare about Calypso.

He literally couldn't get that girl out of his mind. The thought of her all alone on Ogygia was like a flaming hammer to the heart. He wanted to be there for her, but he knew he needed to be with his crewmates. He was one of the Seven of Prophecy, but he was also just a fifteen year old guy that liked the average two and a half millennia old nature nymph.

I swear on the River Styx.

He'd sworn he'd come back to her. Leo just didn't know how to and when yet, but slowly and surely he would come up with a plan.

Wiping off the blood from where his nose had hit the wood, Leo rushed to the center of the ship. Frank and Hazel were making their way towards him, tripping and leaning on one another. Frank may've had a steroid spurt, but he still wasn't graceful.

"What's going on?" Hazel demanded, gripping Leo's arm with a strength of a pro wrestler.

"You're asking me like I know!"

"You're the captain. You're supposed to know these kinds of things!"

"Well, your boyfriend is the praetor. Why don't you ask him?"

"That's not relevant to this situation and you know it," Hazel threw back, glaring at him.

"Calm down!" Frank yelled, his voice carrying authority that was completely uncommon for him. "We need to figure out what's going on and arguing will not solve anything." Now Frank was being the voice of reason. Great.

The alarms had gone off by now, alerting everyone who didn't already know. Jason and Piper joined them about two seconds later, panting. "What's going on?" Jason said, looking around. He had his gladius in hand like he was ready to fight some monsters.

"Everyone quit looking at me! I don't know!"

"Did something attack the ship?" Piper asked.

"How should I know? I haven't been swimming." Leo walked towards Festus at the front of the ship, who, thanks to Piper, was alive and currently randomly blowing fire into the air, a sign that even the mechanical dragon was freaked out.

Festus stopped blowing fire long enough to relay a message to Leo. After a series of clicks and groans, followed by a little bit of oil dripping out of its open mouth, Leo was able to translate, "Multiple things have attacked the ship from below the surface. We need Percy to deal with this one."

"I'll man the ballista and keep an eye out for anything close to the surface," Hazel said, running off.

"I guess I'll fly around and see—" Jason began, but was cut off by Festus, who started squeaking again.

Once the message was relayed, Leo could literally feel the blood draining out of his face. He gulped. "The ship is sinking. The ship is sinking. The SHIP is SINKING!" He kept repeating it over and over again, because this was not god at all. They didn't need this. They were in the middle of the ocean and Leo didn't know how to do underwater repairs.

He doubted there were any friendly sea creatures in the Mare Nostrum willing to help either.

Leo knew how to keep a crew calm.

Everyone was freaking out now. Jason had taken off, flying low around the ship, keeping an eye out for whatever was attacking them. Hazel was rotating the ballista around, ready to fire at anything. Leo turned just in time to see Frank take a giant leap off of the side of the ship, probably to change into something and swim around to the bottom of the ship.

"LEO!" Piper was yelling, shaking him violently.

"What?"

"Percy and Annabeth aren't up here! Percy went downstairs to check on Annabeth! Remember?"

How could he have forgotten? Annabeth had never come up with them and Percy had gone below deck to check up on her. Now the ship was sinking, and Leo needed to stay up there. They should've been up there by now, with the alarm going off and the ship slowly sinking to its doom.

If they were down there, hopefully they were alright. Percy could use his control over water to help them, maybe.

Leo was not about to let his ship be the 21st century Titanic.

Just as he began to make his way towards the control room, Piper following behind, Frank flopped onto the deck as a Great White Shark. He moved around uselessly for a second before turning back into an actual person.

"Nereides!" he gasped, struggling to his feet. "Evil, satanic Nereides. They're everywhere." Leo noticed that he had cuts all over his body, bleeding into puddles at his feet. Hazel ran over and tried to help him while Piper went off and took her position.

"The bay doors," Frank went on to say, "are opened. They aren't even attached to the ship anymore. Water is rushing into the ship and it's sinking. I don't know what we're supposed to do. Percy and Annabeth still aren't up here, and I didn't see them at all down there. I don't know where they are."

"I can't get a good angle on them," Jason yelled from over the water. "There are Nereides, I think!"

"We've already established that!"

Thunder clouds rolled in, and Leo's ears popped from the pressure change. Lightning struck down in the water, right next to the ship. Everyone apart from Jason screamed, and Leo was surprised that they all hadn't been burned into bacon strips.

"Bro, how about some warning next time?" Leo asked. He didn't hear Jason's answer.

Out of the blue, the ship lurched sharply to the side. Not only was it sinking—rapidly now, as Leo could actually feel rather than just see the difference—but it was moving in the opposite direction that they were headed. And it was moving fast.

"What's going on?" Piper yelled over the alarm.

Jason was flying next to the ship, struggling to keep up. Leo was at a loss for words. He hadn't made the ship do anything. Maybe Percy was doing something, sensing danger where they were? They were still sinking but they were moving too, which wasn't good at all. Hazel's face had turned green and she was leaning over the edge of the ship.

Leo ran into the control room. He couldn't believe his eyes. The ship wasn't moving at all, like he had assumed, but the wind gauge said that the wind was blowing at eighty miles an hour. Before all of this had started, there hadn't been any wind. The wind was coming from how fast they were moving, and that wasn't good at all.

He ran back out and looked over the ship. The currents were indeed propelling them through the water. Waves were rising twenty or thirty feet in the air and then pushing them around.

"I'm going to go look for Annabeth and Percy," Piper said and she went off below deck.

Leo couldn't even see any of the Nereides in the waters. Maybe they were all gone now.

But this wasn't good. As he went back into the control room and looked at their coordinates, they were going completely off course. They were heading straight towards the mainland, the place that they didn't want to be at all, because that meant Gaea and an army of Giants and monsters was waiting for them.

But if the ship didn't manage to sink in the middle of the water, they would need to dock to try and make repairs. They could try and start flying, he realized, but that probably would have disastrous effects too.

He wasn't sure if he should be scared or grateful that they were moving through the water so fast.

When Piper returned, she was soaked up to her waist. "Percy and Annabeth are gone," she said, her shoulders shaking up and down. She looked helpless.

No way he had heard her right. Maybe he was having a nightmare again. Maybe this was one of Gaea's mind tricks.

"They can't be gone!" Hazel cried. "They were down below ship!"

"They aren't there anymore. I have no idea where they are, and I don't think that this is Percy who is controlling this ship."

This couldn't be possible. They'd only just gotten Percy and Annabeth back on the ship. Neither of them were in any condition to be swimming around in the middle of the ocean, fighting off monsters. It didn't matter that Percy was a son of Poseidon and was at home in the water. It didn't matter that Annabeth was the daughter of Athena and a perfect planner. They could not be stuck in the middle of the sea.

And they had no idea who or what was controlling the ship.

"We have to turn around and go get them," Jason said urgently. He looked like he was getting ready to go take off looking for them.

"The ships controls are malfunctioning. There's no way I can stop this, and the ship is sinking as it is. We need to dock, even if it means getting on Gaea's home turf." Leo hated telling them that. He hated delivering bad news. Emotion welled up inside of him. This. Wasn't. Right.

Everyone was wide eyed and Leo felt nauseous. They couldn't save Percy or Annabeth right now. They could only hope that they were alright as the Argo II sped away towards the Greek mainland.

Leo won this time around. I hope you all enjoyed my tenth chapter. Reviews and ideas are forever loved!

-BBH