Hey hey hey yall, here's the new chapter. So I was browsin around, and the longest percy jackson fic I could find was like 415k words, yikes, there goes my plan to write the longest one, I reckon by the time I'm done this'll be like only 100k words? I've been editing a little bit in the first few chapters to boost it up a lil tho.
Spencerdorman: tbh mate I don't even know how much 900lbs is, I just threw in a big number, I'll go adjust it, ta, n thanks for all the reviews buddy
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Chapter 46
Frank II
A furious looking cyclops burst through the trees, and Annabeth's dagger protruded out of its eye before it could even blink.
Or was it wink?
"My eye!" screamed the cyclops, falling to his knees with a crash that shook several branches to the floor.
Annabeth strode forwards, a resolute look on her face. She had thrown her dagger so fast that all Frank had seen was a blur. He popped back into human form, stepping towards the cyclops.
"Are we in Athens?" Annabeth interrogated the cyclops, who was hitting the earth with his hand and sobbing. "Hey!"
"I don't know, I don't know-" the cyclops babbled, "I was just sent here, they wouldn't even let us go sightseeing, oh my eye, my eye!"
Frank saw Annabeth roll her eyes.
He glanced around their surroundings. If Annabeth said it was Athens, he had no choice but to believe her. He had no idea were they were. It was a dense jungle-like thicket of trees on one side. Vines dripped down the plants, curling like snakes on the dry floor. Bare streams of golden sunrise light shone in through tiny breaks in the canopy, and despite the cyclop's heavy panting, it was deathly silent, the lack of birdsong hovering in the air. Frank shifted nervously. It was like each tree was watching him.
To the other side of him, a mighty temple kind of thing stood tall, thick pillars rising in what he guessed was a rectangle shape, cracked stones resting on top with the age of a millenia. Frank gulped a little; this had to be where Gaia would rise, like Annabeth had said. And that meant he and Annabeth were here to be sacrificed.
Frank wasn't stupid; he knew Percy was more powerful than him, that there was a reason Gaia wanted his blood to raise her. But he wasn't here. He was off doing gods know what as his task to bring back Annabeth. So that meant he was the back up.
He was brought back down to earth by the howl of the cyclops.
Annabeth had yanked her dagger out, and the cyclops pitched forwards, clutching his eye and kicking his legs.
"My eye!"
"Annabeth, what do we do?" Frank asked her, ignoring the cyclops.
Annabeth put on her thinking face.
"We should go incognito." she said eventually, deep in thought. "You be a bug again or something, I'll go invisible, we scope out as much as we can, see if we can prevent Gaia's rise before they even come close to starting."
Frank nodded at her words. If there was a chance they could end this war before it got any worse, they needed to take it.
"What if one of us gets caught?" Frank asked, a little worried.
Annabeth shrugged. "Shout out a word."
"Like what?" Frank asked.
"Like..." Annabeth started, still thinking, "It's gotta be obscure in case a cyclops imitates our voices."
Frank's eyes darted to the left, where the cyclops lay, in pain but clearly listening. Annabeth caught his eye, and frowned.
Frank guessed she was thinking of a way to use a fake word as a distraction, but it looked like they came to the same conclusion, that it was better to carry on completely unnoticed, as she sank to her knees and fluidly stabbed the cyclops in the heart, pushing with all her weight to get past the thick skin.
The cyclops burst into a puff of gold, and Annabeth rose quickly, a glint in her eye.
"Okay, so- safe word." she started.
The corner of Frank's mouth twitched and Annabeth deadpanned, though he could see her mouth twitching. Frank tried to compose himself, and stood a little straighter to convince her he was listening. Annabeth was scarily similar to Reyna sometimes.
"It has to be a completely random word-" Annabeth cut herself off and a devious look spread across her face. "That's it. The word is... word."
"Word?"
"You know, like how people used to set 'password' as their password but then everyone found out about it. Like that. You get in trouble or captured, just shout 'word'."
"Okay.'' Frank said, politely bewildered, but seeing the logic in it.
"Right. We should split up. You take this area and around, I'm going to go straight into the temple. Keep an eye out for any demigods, ones they could sacrifice and anyone coming to help us."
"Got it." Frank said, and Annabeth nodded once before pulling out a Yankees cap and vanishing from sight.
Frank looked around, putting his sword back into the sheath, and wandered out of the woods, until he was on a slight drop, overlooking both the temple and the beach a little further away. Now that he was out of the woods, he could hear waves, and it sounded reassuring.
He needed to get a bird's eye view, so without hesitating he shifted forms, skin melting into feathers.
Shooting high above everything, Frank knew he would have felt awe if it weren't for the threat of impending death.
The whole place was beautiful.
Huge grey-brown mountains surrounded the little temple and beach, dry grass dusting the tops. There were various stones scattered about, warm as the sun got higher in the bright sky. The few clouds that he could see were thin and pale white. The bay itself had fine pale grains of sand, the air dancing in waves above it from the heat.
Frank soared down and dipped his falcon wing into the incredibly blue sea, trying to see any goings on beyond the startlingly white cliffs.
He couldn't see any monsters, and it was unsettling him. Shouldn't this place be crawling with monsters?
Frank landed on a rock on the beach, sharp eyes flicking around uneasily.
It was only thanks to his amazing birdlike sense of hearing that he heard it: a heavy metallic clank, coming from the temple.
He knew Annabeth was checking it out, but his area was clean, and he felt like he should investigate. He flapped his wings hard, pushing himself into the air, and arced his way over to the sandy monument.
As he flew over a corner pillar, Frank almost fell out the air, diving down to hide in a gap, catching sight of a pair of giants in the middle of the courtyard type part of the temple, open air but still surrounded by columns.
It looked like Polybotes, and some other giant, maybe Enceladus, banes of Poseidon and Athena respectively. They were wrapping dark and smoky chains around two car sized hunks of rock in the middle of the rectangle, dust being kicked up under their huge feet, deep in conversation.
"-oon." Enceladus was saying, "We need to get everyone up here by the time all the demigods arrive. Keep an eye out for the daughter of Athena Annabeth Chase. Her intellect is not too far off my own, probably surpassing that of Athena." He spat the Goddess' name with disgust.
"And Jackson?" Frank winced at the hatred in Polybotes voice at his friend. "Mother has promised that if he survives the sacrifice, he is mine to keep."
"Jackson is a loose cannon." Enceladus replied. "He is... annoyingly unpredictable, and too powerful for his own good. Kronos should have recruited him at an earlier age, he was a fool."
Polybotes clearly wasn't listening, his hands stroking the chains with a reverence that made Frank's stomach flip.
"I've decided that after we win, I am going to take him down to the very bottom of the Mariana Trench, fulfill what I promised him. I will take him prisoner, torture him under the sea. Every day the water will heal him, and every day I will bring him closer to death."
Frank narrowed his eyes, resisting the urge to attack the giant.
"I think I will just kill the Chase girl." Enceladus mused. "Too smart to stay alive. The both of them will be leading the demigods, they are the natural leaders. Take them down, the rest will follow."
Polybotes scowled, tightening the chains. "I sent my minion to look around their camp, possibly bringing back any demigods, but he hasn't come back."
"Then we have to presume he's been killed." the other titan replied.
Frank glanced to the side, his piercing eyes catching sight of a stone shifting by itself. That had to be Annabeth. The stone moved again, to the left again and again. The two giants didn't notice, still waxing poetic about what they were going to do to Percy and Annabeth in a way that made Frank's stomach flip. The stone rolled through two pillars, out of sight, and Frank hopped off his stone ledge, flapping down.
He followed the stone for a little while until it disappeared round a corner. As soon as he went round, Annabeth swam into view, biting her lip, stone in hand. Frank shifted to human.
"We won't let them." he told her, guessing at what she was worrying about.
"Like Hades they will," Annabeth nodded determinedly. "But that's not what I'm thinking about. Did you find anything around the area?"
Frank shook his head. "Nothing. Really, nothing at all."
But Annabeth just nodded like she expected it. "They said they needed to get everyone up here by the time that we all arrived. Up here. I reckon they're all underground. Hundreds of Greek buildings had underground passages for seiges or illegal transport. This isn't a temple; it's an Acropolis."
Frank looked at the ground uncomfortably. "You mean they're under us?"
Annabeth nodded. "Probably nearly every monster fresh out of Tartarus. Certainly every giant. We're going to need a God with each of us if we're to beat them. And most importantly- don't bleed."
Frank frowned a little. They'd have to wear some pretty high intensity battle armour for the final fight. Maybe Leo could work together with some Mars kids and make some skin-tight feather-light armour.
"Come down to the beach with me." she said. "We should Iris Message the others."
They took the gentle slope down towards the beach, and Annabeth fished a drachma out that had been crammed into her self-enlarged pockets. Frank shifted into a bird again, and flapped his wings in the water until a fine mist was in the air, the midday sun shining through it. As soon as a rainbow appeared, Annabeth tossed the coin in.
"O Goddess of the rainbow, show me Piper McLean in Epirus, Greece!" she called.
The image flickered, flashing three of four times, and soon Frank was staring at Piper's face.
The daughter of Aphrodite blinked.
"Annabeth!" she yelled, and the wide eyed face of a punk girl popped into view, hair black as night with startlingly blue eyes that Frank swore he'd seen before.
"Annabeth!" the girl repeated.
"Thalia? What are you doing there?" Annabeth grinned in surprise, seemingly knowing her.
"Lady Artemis finally called us in after she heard you'd been taken and Percy had vanished again." Thalia's silver circlet shifted on her head as she tried to lean in further to see them.
"Did anyone tell you that he-" Annabeth began.
"Fell into Tartarus?" Thalia replied grimly. "Yeah. Absolute kelp head, I'm gonna kick his ass when he turns up."
Frank raised his eyebrows. He had no idea who she was, but she seemed very familiar with Percy and Annabeth.
Annabeth snorted. "Me too. Anyway, we're okay, but I reckon we're in Athens. We're next to a massive Acropolis near a beach and some mountains."
Piper nodded in the background. "Everyone's packing up anyway. The attack spurred everyone into action, the tents are all being put down. I'll give Leo your description, we should come find you soon. Just hold tight."
The girl Thalia glanced at Frank as Piper vanished.
"Oh- hi." he said suddenly. "I'm Frank, son of Mars. I'm one of the Seven."
"Thalia Grace." she replied, and Frank instantly knew she'd have a strong handshake. "Lieutenant of Artemis, daughter of Zeus."
If he had to describe her, he'd have no other word to use but impressive; he could absolutely see similarities between her and Annabeth as they continued to chat and fill each other in. He noted that she put her title before her godly parenthood, and his opinion of her increased.
He glanced in the background of the Iris Message. In the grassy plain they'd set up in, he could see tents being folded up, demigods sharpening their swords on their boats, and the slightly charred Argo II hovering in the background. Well armed girls in silver jackets milled about, some helping demigods, others turning their noses up at them, especially the boys.
Piper ran back into the picture. She blew out a breath before lifting her head.
"We've got a general location, and Leo seems pretty sure that you're there, he hacked into a satellite or something. Are there any monsters there?"
Annabeth nodded. "Two giants out in the open, but Pipes... there's an army below us, in the tunnels. We're gonna try to find the opening tunnels, block as many off as we can so they can't surround us."
Thalia nodded. "Sounds good. Stay safe."
Annabeth bid them goodbye, wafting a hand through the message to cut it off.
"Right." she said, lifting her dagger. "Let's go."
The two demigods walked back along the cliff, feeling for any gaps that could conceal passages, unaware of the eyes that watched them with a malicious glint.
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Whooooo. Hey guys guess what I just got asked out on a date. WACK. I'll update you asap, we're going ice skating, I have no idea if I like him or not, especially as accidentally beat him at chess twice in a row, but hey let's give it a go.
Ugh I'm trying work out how to do part of the final battle, I've got two possible scenarios but there's no way to merge them, it's cray cray idek.
