A.N.: So thank you guys so much for reading and reviewing! We're up to 160 followers, so I'm hoping to hit 200 soon! So if you're just starting to read this for the first time, be a doll for me why dontcha? Anyways, I'm bored, sitting around in my house, so why not update for my amazing readers who definitely deserve this. I got a really sweet review last time I updated from BroSisStories telling me that the latest update made her day, which was really nice of her. Stuff like that… Makes me happy! Shame I can't hug all of you through the screen or something… I saw the Sea of Monsters and although it wasn't flawless, and there were a few things I would've liked to correct, it was definitely a step in the right direction after the major screw up of a first movie, which is something I can deal with. Anyways… Enjoy!
Disclaimer: umm, if I'm writing on a fanfiction site, I'm pretty positive that makes me not Rick Riordan qualified, right?
Fourteen: Jason PoV
Look, I love my girlfriend. She's amazing. She can shred anyone with Katropis, charmspeak the guy at Burger King into giving you free fries and shakes, and she's practically the nicest person I know.
But after she basically engineered the makeover prank, I was kind of mad.
Not mad exactly. More grieving over my damaged man ego. Seriously, was it necessary to add blue feathery fake eyelashes?
I don't think so.
Time on the prank war was ticking. There were four days left, and the last prank won automatically. We needed to come up with something genius.
After we spent the whole day getting the make-up off, (I swear, I'm never going to go inside the Aphrodite Cabin again, regardless of the fact that Piper was head counselor), we got together in the RV while the girls decided to go out for a day. We'd reached St. Louis, and tomorrow we had plans to visit the museum there. At first, everyone wanted to visit the famous St. Louis Arch, but Annabeth and Percy vetoed that immediately. Something about their first question and a very angry Echidna with a pet chimera. None of us protested much.
"Worst experience of my whole freaking life," Connor moaned.
"I just want to forget that," Percy agreed, collapsing into his bunk, clearly relieved to be make-up free.
"How did they even do that?" Travis wondered, shuddering.
"Don't even try to answer that question. I don't want to know," Butch held up a hand pointedly.
"So, what are we going to do now? We need to pull off something amazing before they have a chance to double whammy us," Nico pointed out, rubbing his hands together.
"Something they won't expect," Frank said firmly. "It would be awesome if we could take them by surprise. Stay away from cliché pranks. No syrup and feather crap."
"Wait… what if we faked a monster attack at the museum?" I suggested, standing up. "We could have Frank turn into something big—a drakon or something. Just to freak them out. We can suggest a race through the museum tomorrow, boys against girls. But then we can just follow them, Frank shape shifts… and we catch their reaction when he shifts back on film. It'll be great."
"But that's a lot of risks. We can rely on the Mist to shield Frank, but what if stuff gets damaged? We could find ourselves in trouble with the mortal police. And we've stayed clean so far..." Percy commented. "I mean, it's a great prank. They'll never expect something that realistic. But I've had more than my share of being on wanted posters on the backs on milk cartons."
"It'll only be a minute or two. Nothing big. And Frank can just… not wreck anything," Travis shrugged.
"Being a huge monster and not causing chaos is hard," Frank cut in, clearly miffed that the majority of the prank's success relied on him.
"I'm sure you can manage," Leo shrugged. "I'm all in. I can manage the tech stuff. And the great thing is, this won't cost that much. Which is nice, so we don't need to waste time on buying supplies."
"So we're all in agreement here?" Percy asked.
"Hell yeah," Connor crowed, placing his hand in. We followed suit.
"One…two…three…PRANK!" we all shouted.
"Okay then," Leo said, rubbing his hands together. "Let's get started."
The next day, we got up reasonably early (which, for a group of unsupervised teenagers travelling across the country, was around nine thirty) hit Starbucks for breakfast and then we were off.
We parked the RV in a designated spot in a parking garage for large vehicles and unloaded. It was a pretty nice day out, and I could tell it would stay that way. Being a son of Jupiter, I can sense stuff like that. The sky was big and blue above the silvery skyscrapers, and in the distance, the St. Louis Arch. Percy and Annabeth both glanced at it and Percy leaned in and muttered something in Annabeth's ear that sounded like 'Echidna.' Which struck me as kind of strange, because that was a type of anteater, but I decided not to comment.
Piper and I were holding hands while walking, and she was looking especially innocent, which made me a little bit suspicious. I mean, the last time she'd kissed me was right before the drag queen stunt. But the voice in my head told my logical conscience to shut the hell up.
"See that?" she asked in a low voice, looking ahead. I glanced forwards. It was just some of our friends; Percy and Annabeth walking together all coupley-like, the Stolls teasing Katie, and Leo and Reyna talking.
"What?" I felt sort of stupid that I didn't get what she was implying.
She sighed and shook her head. "Oh, Sparky. That. As in. Leo-and-Reyna flirting." I looked at my best friend and co-praetor again. It didn't look like they were flirting, but then again, I was a guy. This wasn't really my area of expertise.
Piper continued talking when I didn't say anything. "You can't tell? They're good for each other. I mean, come on. I'm not exactly the stereotypical Aphrodite girl, but even I think it's cute. They both have sort of secretive pasts and hide it behind their image. Leo's the jokester, and Reyna's the perfectionist." She sighed again, sounding an awful lot like Cassie reading a chick novel. It sort of scared me. I mean, my girlfriend was not usually like this.
"Really?" I pressed. I wasn't skeptical, just curious. When you thought about it, the two of them would make a great couple. They balanced each other out perfectly. Leo was wild and uncontrolled and acted without thinking while Reyna was careful and a planner. Plus, Reyna Vivaldi needed some laughs. And if anyone could get her to crack a smile, it was Leo.
Now, I know what you're thinking. It's most likely something along the lines of: Well, it's your fault in the first place, Jason. You're the one who got displaced by Juno and forgot all about her, even though she was almost your girlfriend! And to top it off, you have a new girlfriend!
Don't get me wrong, I feel guilty about it, even though I know I really didn't do anything wrong, and none of it was intentional. We hadn't been dating in the first place, but I could remember sort of having a crush on her. But it was obvious that she had liked me a lot more than just a little crush. And I loved Piper, which made it worse, because I felt bad about being with my girlfriend that I had genuine feelings for, and who liked me back.
Plus, Leo really needed to stop lusting after evil snow goddesses and sworn maidens.
"Yes, really, Jason," Piper said, rolling her eyes teasingly. "You're so blind sometimes."
"But you still love me right?" I replied, grinning. She laughed a little before standing up on tip-toe and kissing my cheek. Her lips were soft, and I could smell her strawberry lip gloss.
Careful, I reminded myself. You're about to prank her and scare the crap out of her. I didn't want to get distracted. And as much as I would hate to admit it, I had a feeling that when she'd made out with me when we went out to dinner last time, it had been to take my mind of the prank war, which was completely unfair. I mean, female powers of seduction were an unfair advantage.
Although, they would probably argue otherwise.
"We're here!" Travis called as we came to a stop in front of a huge building. It was big and white, with Greco-Roman columns and a wide expanse of white cobbled courtyard and steps in front of it.
I glanced over at Frank, who was chatting with Hazel and Nico about something. He met my eyes briefly and gave a slight nod, signaling that he was ready.
We trooped inside, passing through the metal detectors clean (although I wasn't quite sure how, since I was positive each one of us had a Celestial bronze or Imperial gold weapon concealed on our bodies. Must be that godly metal isn't part of the mortal world or something to do with the Mist). Admission was free, so we didn't have to spend a huge amount of cash just to get inside. That would've put a dent in our travel budget. Not that we really had one since the gods were funding it, but whatever.
There was a huge billboard and table featuring countless flyers and worksheets full of information about the museum's history and the artwork it held. Annabeth grabbed a few and shuffled through them. Her eyes lit up when she saw a worksheet full of factual questions.
"How about some competition?" she suggested, and I couldn't help but notice how barely suppressed evil grins were threatening all of the guys' innocent faces, including mine. This was exactly what we'd been hoping for.
"Couple on couple?" Hazel added, giving Frank a nudge.
Never mind. That was not what we'd been hoping for. You couldn't simultaneously prank every girl while they were in different groups throughout the museum.
"How about guys on girls?" Leo stepped in. "In the name of the final days for our prank war. Whoever completes all the questions on the worksheet first wins. When we finish, we meet back here in the lobby. Let's aim for…. Two hours?"
I watched, crossing my fingers mentally as the girls debated it.
"It's on," Annabeth decided, smirking.
"Get ready to get beat," Piper warned me, before walking over to huddle with the other girls of the group. It was a good thing we weren't actually competing, because I had a feeling Annabeth probably already knew half the answers on the sheet.
"This is going to be cake," Connor Stoll said as we grouped together in a fake game plan huddle. We already had a plan, and it was way different than any strategy to cover the whole museum in two hours.
"What kind of cake?" Clovis yawned sleepily, threatening to collapse. Butch and Will Solace both groaned and heaved him up.
"Nothing," Butch muttered.
"Okay, so we wait for them to decide what way they're going and pretend to split off into another art wing before doubling back and following them," Leo said, glancing at each of our faces for approval. We nodded in agreement before straightening up and glancing over at the girls, who looked to be in deep conversation.
Shame it was all going to be for nothing.
"Ready?" Percy asked them.
"We were born ready, Jackson," Clarisse scoffed.
Leo glanced down at his watch. "Five…four…three…two…one… GO!"
As expected, the girls burst into action, and we did our best to fake it. They went straight for the big hall that lead the gods-know-where and we pretended to take a right before silently doubling back as the footsteps faded.
Percy put a finger to his lips, sending a pointed glare at the Stoll brothers. I didn't blame him. For all the pranks those two managed to pull, they definitely weren't the stealthiest guys on the block.
I could barely keep the grin off my face. Leo had pulled out the camera, and the footage was already rolling to save the time of pressing the record button when the prank was pulled. We hurried after them, our feet silent on the cool, reflective marble floors of the museum.
I could hear their voices up ahead.
"They have no idea what they're getting into," Lou Ellen remarked. "You can tell they think they're going to win."
"When we have Princess on our team? Please," Clarisse agreed. Frank stepped forwards and silently morphed into a mouse before skittering behind a statue of some Chinese emperor. We were in some Ancient Chinese/Mongolian art section, from the looks of it. The whole place was colored with reds and golds and Chinese characters. Colorful Chinese New Year's dragons hung from the ceiling, suspended by thick cables. If I hadn't been intent on pranking the group of girls at the center of the room, I would've stopped to admire how cool it actually looked. We waited for the cue from Frank; a wave from his fake Fury arm.
"That was easy," Annabeth announced, and the sound of folding paper reached out ears. "Now we need to head to the African Arts wing. I'm not quite sure about this one sculpture—"
She was cut off and three things happened at once: Frank-the-temporary-Fury waved and we peeked around the corner as he screeched. The girls drew their weapons and backed up. A fury was never a good thing. Everything was just as planned.
The third thing, however, was not planned. And it made me long for Frank-the-fury to be the real threat.
From the ceiling, two huge spotlights appeared, glaring down with a harsh yellow light, and a low hiss reached my ears. The dragons suspended above us shifted to reveal a massive, wingless dragon with claws that looked a lot like razor blades.
A drakon.
"Shit," Percy cursed, and just as the monster leapt towards the floor, we burst into action.
Good cliff hanger, huh? Sorry it took me a little time to update, I revived Mr. Fix-It, and I posted the short companion story that will explain what happened to Connor before What to Expect When You're Expecting: Demigod Edition, called Hell on Heels. It's from Lou Ellen's perspective, and will be about two or three chapters. And I start freshman year on Friday (I know, I don't want summer to end! It went so freaking fast!) so I might not be able to update all the time like I have been lately, so try not to get too frustrated with me. So anyways, please review, and I thank you all for reading, it means a lot! Love you all!
Xoxo-NotsoSugarQueen