Chapter 12
Grover Underwood
" What are you staring at, bro?" Scott( As I'd come to know his name) seemed just as confused as Percy looked. But in all truth, we were all confused. As soon as the last ugly, stinking manticore was gone, Percy stared at Scott with look of pure astonishment, " Look, Percy, I understand he did good and all, but there's no need to stare at him like he just fought against the Titans..."
" That's not what I'm looking at...Have you noticed that it feels like it's been raining a lot more?" Percy started to feel around, but he didn't take his eyes off of Scott, "Yea, I guess..." That's when I looked at Scott and saw that he was as dry as most of Chiron's jokes! Not only that, but it wasn't raining harder, Scott was repelling all of the rain and making it seem like it's a downpour to us, " What's he doing?"
Percy shook his head, " I don't know, it's like there's a current of air moving outwards from his body, and it's pushing the water on us..." Scott looked at us like we were crazy, " Um, the last time I checked my clothes were soak-!" He looked down to justify that his clothes were wet, but they were neatly air dried. All of the water was blown out through an air channel, " I don't know what's going on!" Cleveland just stood and scratched his head, " I haven't seen this before, I can tell you that much..."
The trainees all stared in amazement at him muttering amongst themselves, " Whoa, how is he doing that!?" " Do you think we'll get cool powers like that!?" " Lucky, son of a gun!" and other comments of the like. One kid threw a rock at Scott, but it was repelled and hit the poor kid right in his sternum, " OW!"
The others helped him back up, but when he got up he had a toothy grin on his face, " Alright, I admit it, that is pretty awesome."
Okay, we had established that it was awesome...good. But we still didn't know what was going on! Was he being claimed? Was the wind just coincidentally picking up in that spot?...There are no coincidences in our line of work. We had to take this situation as being dangerous because that is usually how most situations are involved.
" Scott, can you still move?" Percy asked out loud.
" Yea, I guess, " He started to walk towards us, " Yea, I can move alright." Just then, the air current disappeared and Scott was back to being wet, " Well, I guess that's over."
My patience with this situation was growing thin, " I really don't understand...I'm the Protector of the Wild and I have no idea how that just happened." Percy just shrugged as if it was nothing, " We'll just have to what Chiron thinks about it..." He motioned for us to follow him, " We've got a place to get to don't we? Knowing Annabeth, she's probably already there complaining to the trainees about how I'm usually late for a lot of things..."
Everyone started to follow him, but that's when I came in, " How do you know where you're going!?" Percy stopped and turned back around with an embarrassed look on his face, "...Sorry, "
I took out my navigation acorns and they pointed us in the general direction of the Mississippi River: west. I pointed into an area of thick wood, " There should be an estuary or two that we can follow to get there, okay? And if all plans go correctly, we should meet up with Annabeth in Memphis, and we should be able to travel by river way close to New York. Of course, the waterways will get thinner as we head farther north towards New York so we may have to walk some in between water ways." That's when I remembered Percy's "accident" with the water earlier so I pulled Percy off to the side before we left, " Are you sure you're going to be able to handle it?"
" Handle what?"
" You know, with what happened today at the jail, do you think you'll be to get us to New York?"
Percy just rolled his eyes, " Grover, old pal, you worry too much. I'm fine; by the time we get to the Mississippi River I'll be in mint condition to get us safely near Camp Half-Blood, okay? Now let's get going, " He walked off to join the group leaving me with the unmistakable suspicion that we were going to need another mode of transportation.
There was a really awkward air in the group as we traveled in the forest. There was nothing to talk about so we just stayed silent, but it got to the point where I had to say something, " So how's the weather?" Everyone stopped and looked at me, " It's raining."
" Oh, sorry, I must have forgotten..." I didn't forget, " So what's your names, huh?"
The guy with the cowlick hair and an attitude of superiority presented the group himself, " I'm Bennett "Matthew" Stephens. The taller girl with brown hair is Jennifer "Elise" Clyde, " She gave me a polite wave and kept walking, " The guys with matching hair cuts and potatoes for brains are Zane and Kudjo Faulkner, " They stopped hitting each other and nodded. Bennett continued, " And this little angel right here is my little sister, Racquel, but I call her Rocky because she's such a trooper!" He picked her up and started to tickle her and she laughed uncontrollably.
The rain seemed to stop for a brief moment. The girl couldn't have been more than 4 or 5...It disgusted Grover to know that manticores would even have the sickness to go after little children, " Our parents were really demented to send here with me. Something about ' We're sending her with you so we won't have TWO juvenile delinquent children!' Say, you don't mind if we take a detour to Atlanta and drop my sister off there do you? Our grandparents could take much better care of us than our parents. "
" No, I don't think so. If that enchantment worked like it was supposed to then you know why we can't drop her off." He rolled his eyes, " Look, from what I saw in my dream there is no way she's a part of this. Also, watch this, " He set her down and asked her, " Hun, what did you see when you were asleep earlier?"
Her big green eyes looked at her brother, " I saw leprechauns and rainbows, Bubba! It was beautiful! The leprechauns offered me gold, but I said there has to be enough for the everyone in the family and they got mad at me..."
" Oh, I'm sorry, Rocky, come on let me give you an apple from this tree, I'm sure you're hungry!" He reached up to grab a freshly matured apple from the tree only for it to disappear right before he got it. He went to pick another one only for it to disappear also, " What's going on!?" He jumped for another and it disappeared; only this time, he felt a rush of wind zoom past his hand. He then looked towards the direction of the wind and saw that the apples were all pierced into the side of a pine tree by silver arrows.
Percy spun around, " Do you see this, Grover?!" I gulped and nodded. There was only one deity that Percy, Cleveland, and I all knew that carried silver arrows around in her pouch hunting her prey for sport...Percy shouted, " Artemis! Come out here and stop stalking us! We already know you're there!"
A white-furred wolf sprinted towards us, and Racquel freaked when she saw it, " Doggie!" It ran up to us and stopped at our feet, " Not a very wise move, Jackson, " the canine spoke, " Allowing your hunter to have knowledge of your location like that, plus, you are no longer running from me. You are very lucky that this is not a hunt and kill mission, otherwise, you'd be dead already. I'm taking my time reaching you instead of transporting myself there."
" Why are you hunting us, " Jennifer asked, " What have we done?"
" I'm sorry for the misconception, my dear. It is not what ' you have done'. It's what ' you will do'. I'm afraid Zeus doesn't like scandals, but as rules of the hunt, I must give my prey time to escape so I can make chase! So I bid you all a farewell, but not for long, I'm afraid..." The wolf turned and ran back towards the direction from where it came.
At this time, Percy and I both looked at each other and said simultaneously, "We're screwed."
A.N. This is actually an update to the original chapter that I had posted for this sequence in the story because the website made it look like one long computer code instead of a story. Plus, I didn't really like the authors note I posted on the other one either. Win /win situation. Also, I think I cringed every time I read some of this older stuff from the beginning of the story. My story telling abilities were really lacking at this point in time, but I guess with time, it got better. No one is telling me anything so I'm just going by pure instinct now.
I say I cringed because it just doesn't look like something I would write right now. In any case, I'm really trying to improve my product and I hope some of you are noticing. That is all.
So...
Kawind OUT!
