New character this chapter! It should be fairly easy to guess who ;D
*Also, some kind of important stuff at the end of the chapter so take a look plzzz*

Chapter 14: "English, Please?" or "The Girl Whom Catastrophe Tails"

Percy was working the counter at the 7-11 down the road from camp when the girl broke down the door. Well, not so much "broke down", because she was shooting at a monster on the other side, but the door was broken either way, which was probably going to cost him his job.

The job was only tentative anyway, and though they needed the money, it wasn't the only reason he'd taken it.

Annabeth had long since left him to practice his sword fighting alone. He was thankful for her pointers, but there was a limit to how much absolute control his ADHD ridden-brain was willing to relinquish. He might has well have been a Percy body-suit. "New! Percy Jackson sword-fighting body suit: Jump in and Battle Monsters with Poise! Complete 100% mobility and sword-swinging action! (Sword-fighting skills not included)."

It just was nice to have some piece and quiet. Alone. Just him and his overactive brain. It was peaceful and really helped him focus. Who knew all he needed was fewer...well, distractions. It seemed like in Annabeth's presence everything else around him stopped, like she needed to be his center of focus. It was easy to forget that she wasn't always.

On the quiet mornings before the start of the day's tasks he would sometimes find that his gaze was turned intently on her, sitting calmly across the table reading, or at the kitchen counter fixing omelets for the two of them. He often wondered if she would mind it if it stayed like this forever: just the two of them at camp, cooking meals, enjoying the sun, spending weekends and holidays in the city, just as friends. Sometimes he'd even notice a flair of jealousy and protectiveness at the thought of more campers joining them, even though he knew it was the only reason he'd even been invited to stay. Camp Half-Blood was their thing, and no one else deserved to have such an amazing place.

But it was what Annabeth wanted (and technically they had been there first).

Who cared if the world ended? What world? As far as he knew, nothing of importance happened outside camp. He was fine with that. He didn't mind being with her most of the time, if he overlooked her nitpicking about the cleanliness of his cabin or where he placed his foot on the rockwall.

But after the look on Annabeth's face the other day, he didn't think it was right to think so anymore.

He'd only been superficially upset when he'd voiced his frustrations, but Annabeth seemed to take it much deeper. She just looked so hurt, but something more too. It reminded him of the last time he saw his mother, eyes drinking him in with a sad desperation as if she was afraid she'd never see him again.

He almost felt guilty when he'd turned his back to her and stormed off to his cabin.

Almost.

The last few weeks had been very stressful for him, and even though he knew Annabeth was only trying to help, he still felt like he was entitled to some alone time. He liked her and all, but sometimes her picky-ness and her obsession with everything being perfect got the better of him and drove him crazy. One time she'd even gone into his cabin and yelled at him for it being so messy. He was a teenage boy for crying out loud! Most boys' rooms were messy anyway, but even here, wasn't he entitled to one place where he could do whatever he wanted?

She'd taken him in as her friend, but a lot of the time she acted more like his mother.

So when Angela's winter break ended and her mother was still on business with no one to open shop everyday, Percy enthusiastically volunteered.

They'd needed the income, ever since Annabeth's internship flop, and although it didn't pay much, the fact that there was any money coming in seemed to calm Annabeth down a bit. She didn't get on his case about things as much, and the air around her seemed not quite as dense as it had been. Percy suspected her moodiness had less to do with him and his actions, and more to so with something else on her mind, but he could tell by the way her eyes unfocused when she wasn't talking to him that he probably should mind his own business. He thought it was best for the both of them if he was absent from the camp most of the day to give her some space.

It came with it's consequences of course. The camp was basically out in the middle of nowhere, if such a place even existed so close to the greatest city in the world, and a 7-11 down the road from it didn't do much for business. Due to the lack of customers, Percy basically sat there on his butt for 4 hours a day, doing less work than he did when he was in school. Even the customers he did get, most of the time it was families on weekend road-trips into or out of the city stopping for lunch, or a bathroom break, or even the occasional couple asking for directions. Then he'd get the occasional biker dude or college student on their way back from visiting their parents, but other than that, the job was bo-ring.

So he'd sit there behind the counter, lazily flipping through gossip magazines aimed at a female teenage audience, for lack of anything else to do, waiting for someone to make his day. Which isn't exactly the right term for what that girl had done.

Percy was just perusing an article about the Royal Family - "Will and Kate, or the Bill and Kate: how much is Miss Middleton costing England?" - when the door chime rang. When he glanced up, a girl stood before him with her back pressed against the glass door, panting, and a wild look in her shocking azure eyes.

"Get to the back," she ordered, pointing to the door at the back corner of the store labeled "Employees Only".

"E-excuse me?" She had his full attention now. Percy had definitely never seen this girl before, so she was in no position to tell him what to do.

"Now." She nervously glanced over her shoulder through the door then made eye contact with him again, sending an electric volt down the length of his spine. Her short, blue-streaked hair and leather jacket screamed "punk who's trying to rob you", but the gleaming silver circlet on her head kind of threw him off.

"Look, if you're trying to rob me," he started, raising his hands in the air, "there's really nothing-"

"I don't want to rob you, goat," she grumbled, hopping over the counter with ease and dragging him down with her.

Something about her insult didn't feel right to Percy, and he made a face. "Did - did you just call me goat?"

The girl's eyebrows scrunched together and her pupils contracted, making her shockingly blue irises flash. "You know Greek?"

"No, but I know English," he replied, sarcasm unintentionally slipping its way into his tone. The more time he spent with this girl, the more confused he got. She gave him a scrutinizing stare that sent jolts down his spine again that made him nervous, as if she were reading his mind. He started to get up because she was beginning to make him uncomfortable, and it was also a bit weird to be squatting behind the counter whispering with a complete stranger like they were 12 year old girls on a sleep over, but she yanked him down again with such strength it rattled his eyeballs.

"Don't!" She peeked over the counter with wide, warning eyes and slowly lifted a gleaming bow off her back. Percy wondered why he hadn't noticed the painfully obvious weapon before. It wasn't like it was small or plain enough to not attract attention. It was a pretty impressive bow.

Percy's ears suddenly picked up on a low sound that was gradually growing louder and sounded similar to when big 16-wheeler trucks rolled thunderously down the road, visibly shaking the whole store like an earthquake. But as the sound increased, he noticed it wasn't as smooth a shaking as trucks. It sounded more like a continuous thump, thump, thump, and he suddenly wondered why the girl had rushed into the shop out of breath.

"What's that?" he asked her, almost afraid to know the answer.

"Stay down, and don't move," she whispered in a tone that made him think it was better to listen.

Taking a viciously sharp looking arrow from her quiver (which had also miraculously materialized out of nothing), she army crawled to the end of the counter, as if scouting out favorable hiding spots, or worse. The thumping only got louder, and Percy was starting to worry. If anything happened to the store on his shift, it'd be taken out of his paycheck. She made eye contact with him again, made a motion as if telling a dog to stay, and ninja rolled her way from behind the counter.

"Wait, no! Where are you going?" he whispered harshly, "What is that thing out there?" He peeked around the corner to find the girl kneeling towards the door, her bow poised and ready to shoot.

"Hey!"

She didn't hear him.

The thumping suddenly came to a stop, and Percy heard a low muffled growl come from the direction of the front door. He risked a glance over the counter, and what he saw sent everything into overdrive. All the hairs on his body stood straight up, and his limbs automatically took up a battle stance, ready to face the thing on the other side of the glass door.

A cyclops.

Percy seemed to forget about the fact that the girl was perfectly prepared, if not more prepared than him, and more likely than not extremely experienced with her bow and arrow. Or that she was probably more capable of handling the situation. But adrenaline was already pumping through his veins, stimulating his nerves, sharpening his mind, and slowing down time.

"You should probably go hide," he advised the girl, who hadn't yet noticed him standing.

But when she did, she flipped. (Not literally.)

"What in TARTARUS are you doing?" she almost screamed. She lowered her bow and her eyes flashed angrily. "I told you to stay down!" She waved her hands around in a panic and tried to get him to listen.

"You don't understand what's going on," Percy explained. "Just go hide and let me take care of this."

He stuck his hand inside of his pocket to draw his sword-disguised-as-a-pen, but the girl seemed to recognize the object and reached out to stop him.

"No, don't, he'll only-" Too late. Riptide opened with a gleam and a slight shink. The monster immediately fixed his eye on Percy and gave a snarling roar as if he was personally offended by the thing. From what Annabeth had taught him about how monsters regenerated every so often, it was entirely possible that Riptide had taken it's life before.

That's when the girl drew a different arrow, one that was much duller than the first one she'd drawn, less barbed, bright red, and broke down the door. When the tip made contact, the explosion sent Percy's senses into tumult.

"Y...you broke the door," he muttered stupidly as he tried to regain his sense of balance. And his sense of sight. And hearing. And well, everything else. He suddenly felt the light emptiness of his fist and wondered absently where his sword had gone.

"No duh," he suddenly heard beside him. When did she get there? Wasn't she just over there trying to - hey wait. That's where his sword went. She was trying to rob him!

"Give me...my sword," he lunged towards her voice in an attempt to get it back, but his senses were still too twisted to attempt it properly. As a result, he sloppily slumped sideways into the counter, which would have been a very nasty fall if the girl hadn't leaned into him to soften his landing.

"You must have been too close. My bad." Through his desperate yet half-assed flailing, her hand made contact with his face and the world jolted right-ways again. The sense in itself almost made Percy vomit, like that time he'd had a few too many rounds on the tilta-whirl.

The girl's face came back into focus, and he suddenly got very angry. But before he could even think about opening his mouth to yell at her, she shushed him.

"He's disoriented just like you were. If we can go around him quickly and quietly, I know a safe place near here we can escape to. I'll distract him while you run -"
"The cyclops roared ferociously as if he was responding to her.

"I know you're there, Silver One, and your fishy friend too!" He took a large sniff. "Even if I can't see you, I can still smell you!" he laughed.

"Oipho."

Percy recognized the Greek this time, as it was a word that Annabeth used frequently. It wasn't something he knew the exact meaning to, but it was something bad, as Annabeth tended to use it in place of words to voice frustration, such as when she looked up from her book to find the chicken burning, or when she looked back to her book to find it sitting in the puddle of water of her spilled glass when she'd dropped in it her haste to put out the fire on the stove.

"Is there a back door?" She glanced at him hopefully. Percy recognized something in her expression: she was out of options, something he guessed didn't happen very often for her.

He nodded and pointed to the door at the back of the store, the one she'd ordered him to leave through before this whole mess started. The one on the other side of the wreckage of aisle dividers and shelves. Oh, and that big cycolps rolling on the ground, too.

"Then listen to me very carefully," she said quietly, even though the cyclops was making a pretty decent racket flailing in the cookie aisle. (Back to whispering to a stranger behind the counter...de ja vu anyone?) "In a few minutes, that cyclops will be blocking both our paths out of here. He can smell us and knows exactly where we are and that we'll probably be headed for the main door, so we'll need to move quickly. I need you to do exactly as I say."

Percy found himself nodding.

"I'll go around the counter and shoot him from the far side. I've got 7 arrows left, which will probably last all of about 15 seconds at most. That's when you'll need to make a bee-line for the door as fast as you can. I'll be right behind you. Don't look back."

This girl was certainly crazy, but Percy found himself nodding again. Maybe her pluck was something to be admired.

"Ready? Go!"

Amidst shattered glass, strewn chip bags and gum packs, and - was that fire? - Percy ran for his life. And even though there was a seven foot cyclops thumping around the store - the store he was responsible for - not four feet from him, and an extremely dangerous girl with an extremely dangerous bow hurling extremely dangerous sharpened sticks running behind him, he'd never felt better.

My, my, my, who IS this mysterious girl!? I wonder, I wonder! ;D Correct guesses get a blue chocolate-chip cookie! (ok not really)
Anyway, thanks for reading! Let me know what you think by leaving a review. I always respond! Feel free to suggest anything you'd like me to include! (Trust me: It pays off!)
Also, I'm available as a BETA reader if anyone is interested! Free advertising in my Author's Notes is included!
You can expect at least an update every month. Keep in mind I am, and my studies are important also.

Warning: As the end of my senior year approaches, I have found that senioritis really is an actual thing that is real. (Don't believe the lies.) Also, that during fourth marking period teachers really like to cover you in crap loads of work even though you've got college and extracurricular things and OTHER SUBJECTS to worry about. "Senior Thesis Project" seems to be a running theme in school nowadays, and when I'm not working on one, I'm either working on a different one, filling out mile-long health and housing forms for college, studying so that I can keep my As, applying for last-minute scholarships, or procrastinating (even now I'm supposed to be writing an English essay). And I'd like to say that I spend my procrastination time by writing, but I hardly have the time or motivation for that now. I'm just so gosh darned tired. Don't get old, guys, it stinks.

But all this complaining is for a reason. And that reason is that because of all this (and the reason below) it's more likely than not that there will not be a chapter update in a while.

UPDATE 1/16/2015: Well, it's been more than a year and half since I last updated this story. I've since moved on to other fandoms, though none that have quite inspired me to write as much as Percy Jackson has. The fandom seems to have been revamped though, as I've been getting some follows and faves recently, so there is a (small) possibility that I could pick this up again, but I don't believe my writing is quite up to par as it once was. I'll let you decide that, should I choose to continue :)

I really appreciate all of your continued interest and support! ~Shanimal