A/N: I don't own the rights to any of the Percy Jackson series or it's characters. That right goes to Rick Riordan. I also don't own the rights to Animorph including it's title.

I am, however, the person who posted 'The Tales of...' series.

This is not a crossover of the Percy Jackson series with the book/tv series Animorph, despite what you might think from the title. I just thought it be a proper name for the ability to turn into animals since that's why the tv/book series 'Animorph' was called that in the first place.

If you haven't read this yet, read:

Animorph Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

A Reunion of the Worse Kind

Between my shapeshifting powers and Annabeth's cap of invisibility, either one of us could have scouted ahead undercover, but unfortunately Tyson don't have that luxary. Still, we decided to stay together, as long as I can keep Tyson quiet.

He actually managed that really well, even though he kept nervously chewing on his huge fingernails. We stopped at our cabin long enough to gather our stuff. We figured whatever happened, we would not be staying another night aboard the zombie cruise ship, even if thy did have a million-dollar bingo. I made sure Riptide was in my pocket and the vitamins and thermos from Hermes were at the top of my bag. I didn't want Tyson to carry everything, but he insisted, and Annabeth told me not to worry about it. Tyson could carry three full duffel bags over his shoulder as easily as I could carry a backpack.

We sneaked through the corridors, following the ship's YOU ARE HERE signs toward the admiralty suite. Annabeth scouted ahead invisibly. We hid whenever someone passed by, but most of the people we saw were just glassy-eyed zombie passengers.

As we came up the stairs to deck thirteen, where the admiralty suite was supposed to be, Annabeth hissed, "Hide!" and shoved Tyson into a supply closet.

"Stay in there until I give you the signal," I whispered to Tyson. I shapeshifted into my Gecko form and climb up to the edge of the wall. Annabeth put on her cap of invisibility and turned invisible.

A couple of guys passed, each wearing Greek armor. One of which looked familiar: a Hispanic teenage boy with black hair and brown eyes.

"You see that Aethiopian drakon in the cargo hold?" the other guy asked.

The hispanic guy laughed. "Yeah, it's awesome. I hear they got two more coming. They keep arriving at this rate, oh, man—no contest."

They walked down the corridor and disappeared around the corner.

I crawled back to floor level before shifting back to human form. I opened the door and signal Tyson to come out.

"That was Chris Rodriguez!" Annabeth took off her cap and turned visible. "You remember—from Cabin Eleven."

Now that she mention it, I do recall Chris from the summer before. He was one of those undetermined campers despite having the sharp features and twinkled eyes of Hermes' kids, and was crammed into Hermes cabin. I was even shock when I found out he was one of the undetermined. Now that I thought about it, I realized I hadn't seen Chris at camp this summer. "What's another half-blood doing here?"

Annabeth shook her head, clearly troubled.

We kept going down the corridor. I didn't need maps anymore to know I was getting close to Luke. I sensed something cold and unpleasant—the presence of evil.

"Percy," Annabeth stopped suddenly. "Look."

She stood in front of a glass wall looking down into the multistory canyon that ran through the middle of the ship. At the bottom was the Promenade—a mall full of shops—but that's not what had caught Annabeth attention.

A group of monsters had assembled in front of the candy store: a dozen Laistrygonian giants like the ones who'd attacked me with dodge balls, two hellhounds, and a few even stranger creatures—humanoid females with twin serpent legs instead of legs.

"Scythian Dracaenae," Annabeth whispered. "Dragon women."

The monsters made a semicircle around a young guy in Greek armor who was hacking on a straw dummy. A lump formed in my throat when I realized the dummy was wearing an orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. As we watched, the guy in armor stabbed the dummy through its belly and ripped upward. Straw flew everywhere. The monsters cheered and howled.

Annabeth stepped away from the window. Her face was ashen.

"Come on," I told her, trying to sound braver than I felt. "The sooner we find Luke the better."

At the end of the hallway were double oak doors that looked like they must lead somewhere important. When we were thirty feet away, Tyson stopped. "Voices inside."

"You can hear that far?" I asked.

Tyson closed his eye like he was concentrating hard. Then his voice changed, becoming a husky approximation of Luke's. "—the prophecy ourselves. The fool won't know which way to turn."

Before I could react, Tyson's voice changed again, becoming deeper and gruffer, like the other guy we'd heard talking to Luke outside the cafeteria. "You really think the old horseman is gone for good?"

Tyson laughed Luke's laugh. "They can't trust him. Not with the skeleton in his closet. The poisoning of the tree was the final straw."

Annabeth shivered. "Stop that, Tyson! How do you do that? It's creepy."

Tyson opened his eye and looked puzzled. "Just listening."

"Keep going," I said. "What else are they saying?"

Tyson closed his eye again.

He hissed in the gruff man's voice: "Quiet!" Then Luke's voice, whispering: "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Tyson said in the gruff voice. "Right outside."

Too late, I realized what was happening.

I just had time to say, "Run!" when the doors of the stateroom burst open and there was Luke, flanked by two hairy giants armed with javelins, their bronze tips aimed right at our chests.

"Well," Luke said with a crooked smile. "If it isn't my two favorite cousins. Come right in."

…

The stateroom was beautiful, and it was horrible.

The beautiful part: Huge windows curved along the back wall, looking out over the stern of the ship. Green sea and blue sky stretched all the way to the horizon. A Persian rug covered the floor. Two plush sofas occupied the middle of the room, with a canopied bed in one corner and a mahogany dining table in the other. The table was loaded with food—pizza boxes, bottles of soda, and a stack of ham sandwiches on a silver platter.

The horrible part: On a velvet dais at the back of the room lay a ten-foot-long golden casket. A sarcophagus, engraved with Ancient Greek scenes of cities in flames and heroes dying grisly deaths. Despite the sunlight streaming through the windows, the casket made the room feel cold.

"Well," Luke said, spreading his arms proudly. "A little nicer than Cabin Eleven, huh?"

He'd changed since the last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.

He still had the scar under his eye—a jagged white line from his battle with a dragon. And propped against the sofa was his magical sword, Backbitter, glinting strangely with its half-steel, half-Celestial bronze blade that could kill both mortals and monsters.

"Sit," he told us. He waved his hand three dining chairs scooted themselves into the center of the room.

None of us sat.

Luke's large friends were still pointing their javelins at us. They looked like twins, but they weren't human. They stood about eight feet tall, for one thing, and wore only blue jeans, probably because their enormous chests were already shag-carpeted with thick brown fur. They had claws for fingernails, feet like paws. Their noses were snoutlike, and their teeth were all pointed canines. If anything, they probably look like I do when I changed into a bear, but stop sometime in the transformation to keep them standing upright.

"Where are my manners?" Luke said smoothly. "These are my assistants, Agrius and Oreius. Perhaps you've heard of them."

I said nothing despite the javelins pointed at me, but they're the least of my problem. I'd imagine meeting Luke again many times since he'd tried to kill me last summer. I'd pictured myself boldly standing up to him, challenging him to a duel. But I thought I would have more sword training practice than a few days after an entire school year of no practice.

"You don't know Agrius and Oreius' story?" Luke asked. "Their mother… well, it's sad, really. Aphrodite ordered the young woman to fall in love. She refused and ran to Artemis for help. Artemis let her become one of her maiden huntresses, but Aphrodite got her revenge. She bewitched the young woman into falling in love with a bear. When Artemis found out, she abandoned the girl in disgust. Typical of the gods, wouldn't you say? They fight with one another and the poor humans get caught in the middle. The girl's twin sons here, Agrius and Oreius, have no love for Olympus. They like half-bloods well enough, though…"

"For lunch," Agrius growled. His gruff voice was the one I'd heard talking with Luke earlier.

"Hehe! Hehe!" His brother Oreius laughed, licking his fur-lined lips. He kept laughing like he was having an asthmatic fit until Luke and Agrius both stared at him.

"Shut up, you idiot!" Agrius growled. "Go punish yourself!"

Oreius whimpered. He trudged over to the corner of the room, slumped onto a stool, and banged his forehead against the dining table, making the silver plates rattle.

Luke acted like this was perfectly normal behavior. He had made himself comfortable on the sofa and propped his feet up on the coffee table. "Well, Percy, we let you survive another year. I hope you appreciate it. How's your mom? How's school?"

"You poisoned Thalia's tree."

Luke sighed. "Right to the point, eh? Okay, sure I poisoned the tree. So what?"

"How could you?" Annabeth sounded so angry I thought she'd explode. "Thalia saved your life! Our lives! How could you dishonor her—"

"I didn't dishonor her!" Luke snapped. "The gods dishonored her, Annabeth! If Thalia were alive, she'd be on my side."

"Liar!"

"If you knew what was coming, you'd understand—"

"I understand you want to destroy the camp!" she yelled. "You're a monster!"

Luke shook his head. "The gods have blinded you. Can't you imagine a world without them, Annabeth? What good is that ancient history you study? Three thousand years of baggage! The West is rotten to the core. It has to be destroyed. Join me! We can start the world anew. We could use your intelligence, Annabeth."

"Because you have none of your own!"

His eyes narrowed. "I know you, Annabeth. You deserve better than tagging along on some hopeless quest to save the camp. Half-Blood Hill will overrun by monsters within the month. The heroes who survive will have no choice but to join us or be hunted to extinction. You really want to be on a losing team… with company like this?" Luke pointed at Tyson.

"Hey!" I said.

"Traveling with a Cyclops," Luke chided. "Talk about dishonoring Thalia's memory! I'ms surprised at you, Annabeth. You of all people—"

"Stop it!" she shouted.

I didn't know what Luke was talking about, but Annabeth buried her head in her hands like she was about to cry."

"Leave her alone," I said. "And whatever grudges she has against cyclopes, Tyson has nothing to do with it."

Luke laughed. "Oh, yeah, I heard. Your father claimed him."

I must have looked surprised, because Luke smiled. "Yes, Percy, I know all about that. All about your plan to find the Fleece. What were those coordinates, again… 30, 31, 75, 12? You still have friends at camp who keep me posted."

"You mean spies." I growled.

He shrugged. "How many insults from your father can you stand, Percy? You think he's grateful to you? You think Poseidon cares for you any more than he cares for this monster?"

Tyson clenched his fists and made a rumbling sound down in his throat. I matched him with a deep throat angry growl of my own.

Luke just chuckled. "The gods are so using you, Percy. Do you have any idea what's in store for you if you reach your sixteenth birthday? Has Chiron even told you the prophecy?"

"I know what I need to know," I managed. "Like, who my enemies are."

"Then you're a fool."

Tyson smashed the nearest dining chair to splinters. "Percy is not a fool!"

"Tyson!" I barked before he started charging. "Not now."

Tyson was still making his growling noise, but he backed down—for now, which is just the way I want him to be. I still have to deliver Hermes' message.

"Luke," I cut in. "Listen to me. Your father sent us."

His face turned the color of pepperoni. "Don't—ever—mention him."

"He told us to take this boat. I thought it was just for a ride, but he sent us here to find you. He told me he won't give up on you, no matter how angry you are."

"Angry?" Luke roared. "Give up on me? He abandoned me, Percy! I want Olympus destroyed! Every throne crushed to rubble! You tell Hermes it's going to happen, too. Each time a half-blood join us, the Olympians grow weaker and we grow stronger. He grows stronger." Luke pointed to the gold sarcophagus.

That's when it hit me: what might be inside the sarcophagus. When it did, I swore the temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees. "Whoa, you don't mean—"

"He is re-forming," Luke said. "Little by little, we're calling his life force out of the pit. With every recruit who pledges our cause, another small piece appears—"

"That's disgusting!" Annabeth said.

Luke sneered at her. "Your mother was born from Zeus' split skull, Annabeth. I wouldn't talk. Soon there will be enough of the titan lord so that we can make him whole again. We will piece together a new body or him, a work worthy of the forges of Hephaestus."

"You're insane," Annabeth said.

"Join us and you'll be rewarded. We have powerful friends, sponsors rich enough to buy this cruise ship and much more. Percy, your mother will never have to work again. You can buy her a mansion. You can have power, fame—whatever you want. Annabeth, you can realize your dream of being an architect. You can build a monument to last a thousand years. A temple to the lords of the next age!"

"Go to Tartarus!" she said.

Luke sighed. "A shame."

He picked up something that looked lie a TV remote and pressed a red button. Within seconds the door of the stateroom opened and two uniformed crew members came in, armed with nightsticks. They had the same glassy-eyed look as the other mortals I'd seen, but I had a feeling this wouldn't make them any less dangerous in a fight.

"Ah, good, security," Luke said, "I'm afraid we have some stowaways."

"Yes, sir," they said dreamily.

Luke turned to Oreius who was still punishing himself. "It's time to feed the Aethiopian Drakon. Take these fools below and show them how it's done."

Oreius grinned stupidly. "Hehe! Hehe!"

"Let me go, too," Agrius grumbled. "My brother is a worthless idiot."

"No," Luke said. He glanced back at the golden casket, as if something were troubling him. "Agrius, stay here. We have important matters to discuss."

"But—"

"Oreius, don't fail me. Stay in the hold to make sure the drakon is properly fed."

Oreius prodded us with his javelin and herded us out of the stateroom, followed by the two human security guards.

…

We were walking down the corridor with Orieus' javelin poking me in the back as we exited the corridor amidships and walked across an open deck lined with lifeboats. Now or never, I thought as I hope Tyson can take on Oreius.

"Tyson, hut-hut!" I whispered using a tackle signal I created for Tyson whenever we had to play football in Meriwether—which was normally when Sloan tried to take us down with the football team.

Tyson turned and tackled Oreius thirty feet backward into the swimming pool, right into the middle of the zombie tourist family.

"Ah!" the kids yelled in unison. "We are not having a blast in the pool!"

One of the security guards drew his night stick, but Annabeth knocked the wind out of him with a well-placed kick.

I drop to the floor as my legs fuse together and my hands fuse to my sides as I turned into a full-grown Anaconda. The other guard try to run or the nearest alarm box, but he tripped over my elongated body as I started curling myself around him and constricting him. The guard tried to struggle but I just squeeze tighter until he finally pass out from the lack of oxygen and possibly pain.

I detangled myself from him and shapeshifted into human form.

"Let's get to the lifeboats before they wake up," I said.

Annabeth nodded.

We ran for the nearest one and got the cover off. Although the family ran off in fright, no alarms were set, but that didn't slow us down. We finally got the lifeboat hanging over the side of the ship, high above water. We got in, but we had no idea how to lower it.

"We don't have time for this," I said taking out riptide and uncapping it. I cut the ropes and we free fell toward the ocean.

Interesting Animal Facts: The green Anaconda holds the record of largest non-extinct species of snakes to ever at 550 pounds at average of 20 to 30 ft. However longest snake ever recorded is the long extinct Titanaboa believe to grow up to 42 ft long and reach the weight of 2500 lbs. but the weight of both species comes from pure muscles. And although they are muscles, they are also fast.

Fair warning, I had Percy be nice to that guard compare to what a constrictor would do if it wraps itself around you. But fortunately that's rare in the wild and domesticated homes. That being said, rare doesn't mean it won't happen, so always be careful around them.