8. Here Comes The Cavalry!
Story Start: Meriwether College Prep
Percy and Tyson quickly ran from the gym to the wall seperating the school's property from the street. Easily vaulting over it, the moment they landed on the other side, Percy popped a drachma out of one of his storage seals and called out in Ancient Greek "Stop, Chariot of Damnation!"
Tossing the drachma to the street, the coin sank right through the asphalt and disappeared. For just a moment, nothing happened. Then, just where the coin had fallen, the asphalt darkened. It melted into a rectangular pool about the size of a parking space-bubbling red liquid like blood. Then a car erupted from the ooze.
It looked like a taxi, but only in shape. Because unlike every other taxi in New York, this one wasn't yellow. It was smoky gray, as in it was woven out of smoke, like you could walk right through it. There were words printed on the door, 'GRAY SISTERS'.
The Passenger window rolled down, and an old woman stuck her head out. She had a mop of grizzled hair covering her eyes, and she spoke in a weird mumbling way, like she'd just had a shot of Novocain. "Passage? Passage?"
"Two to Camp Half-Blood." Percy said as he opened the cab's backdoor and slid in. Sensing the negative emotion the woman and the other two women in the front had pointed at Tyson, he tacked on "Double the pay if you take him."
"Done!" The woman practically screamed eagerly and Tyson quickly slid in, closing the car door.
The interior of said car was also smoky gray, but it felt solid enough. The seat was cracked and lumpy-no different than most taxis. There was no Plexiglas screen seperating the pair of males from the front seat where the three old ladies were, all crammed into the front seat, (Singular, it looked more like something taken from a bus then what you would find in the front of a car) and all had the same appearance, stringy hair covering their eyes, bony hands, and wearing charcoal-colored sackcloth dresses.
The one driving said, "Long Island! Out-of-metro fare bonus! AND DOUBLE PAY! HA!"
She floored the accelerator and Percy and Tyson barely managed to keep their heads from slamming against the backrest of the back seat. A prerecorded voice came on over the speaker: Hi, this is Ganymede, cup-bearer to Zeus, and when I'm out buying wine for the Lord of the Skies, I always buckle up!
Tyson and Percy looked down and found a large black chain instead of a seat belt. The pair looked up at each other, shrugged, and then secured the chain around themselves. Safety first!
The cab sped around the corner of West Broadway, and the gray lady sitting in the middle screeched "Look out! Go left!"
"Well, if you'd give me the eye, Tempest, I could see that!" The driver complained.
Percy snapped his gaze to the front and asked "Why doesn't the driver have the eye?"
Percy didn't get an answer because the driver swerved to avoid an oncoming delivery truck, ran over the curb with a jaw-rattling thump and flew into the next block.
"Wasp!" The third lady said to the driver. "Give me the boy's coin! I want to bite it."
"You bit it last time, Anger!" The driver, Wasp said "It's my turn!"
"Is not!" Anger yelled.
Tempest from the middle screamed "Red light!"
"Brake!" Anger yelled.
Wasp did NOT brake. Instead, she floored the accelerator and rode up on the curb, screeching around another corner, and knocking over a newspaper box.
As the three began to bicker even more, I looked over at Tyson and said "Remind me to put a summoning point in the cabin when we get to Camp."
Tyson nodded enthusiastically, doing his best not to be sick and said "Great Idea!"
Wasp suddenly swerved hard onto Delancey Street then punched the gas AGAIN (somehow) and the taxi shot up Williamsburg Bridge at seventy miles an hour.
At that point, the 'mere' bickering had turned into an actual 'fight', the three sisters slapping each other as Anger tried to grab at Wasp's face and Wasp tried to grab at Tempest's. With their hair flying and their mouths open, screaming at each other, it became blatantly clear to the two sons of Poseidon that none of them had any teeth except for Wasp, who had one mossy yellow incisor. Instead of eyes, they just had closed, sunken eyelids, except for Anger, who had one bloodshot green eye that stared at everything hungrily, as if it couldn't get enough of anything it saw.
Finally Anger, who had the advantage of sight, managed to yank the tooth out of her sister Wasp's mouth. This made Wasp so mad she swerved toward the edge of the Williamsburg Bridge, yelling, "'Ivit back! 'Ivit back!'"
"We're going to die here aren't we?" Tyson asked morosely.
"Don't worry, we SHOULD survive the crash into the water. After that we just have to swim ashore." Naruto said chipperly even as he blatantly used chakra to stick him and his half brother to the seat. The fact that he hadn't done that before, the pair relying instead on their strength alone to not go sliding all around the back seat kind of put lie to his supposed unworried state.
Wasp suddenly whacked Anger on the back. There was a sickening pop and the eye flew out of Anger's face. Anger fumbled for it, trying to catch it, but she only managed to bat it with the back of her hand. The slimy green orb sailed over her shoulder where Percy caught it, spared a split second to glance down and confirm how he had caught it then quickly reached forward and slapped it in Wasp's right eye socket.
Wasp blinked once then her face gained a, just the slightest bit demented, grin as she said "HA, got the Eye! Thank you Chosen! By the way, planning on going fishing in that sub of yours anytime soon?"
Tyson and Percy traded a glance with each other before they looked back forward and Percy said "Not any particular plans no, why?"
"30, 31, 75, 12!" Wasp belted out like a quarterback calling a play.
She was immediately slapped at by Tempest who shouted "Be Quiet! He didn't ask first!"
"Don't care, he gave me the Eye without even thinking of holding it Hostage like the others did! That deserves a REWARD!" Wasp cackled out, taking one hand off the wheel to fend off Tempest, doing a much better job of it before now that she could properly see.
Percy huffed in amusement at that even as he closed his eyes and quickly brought up his mental world Atlas to work out where the coordinates he was given were located. Getting the answer, he let out a hum at that then opened his eyes again. Seeing that they were rapidly approaching their destination, he said "We're going to be in a rush to leave as soon as we get there, how much do I owe you ladies?"
Anger quickly rattled off a number and Percy handed the coins over after unsealing them. He then took out Riptide from his pocket, though kept it capped for a moment while Tyson unfolded his grappling gun from its pager mode. They undid the large chain around them and prepared themselves for a quick exit.
Wasp apparently decided to help them as she called out "Camp Halfblood in five, four, three, two, ONE! GIVE 'EM HADES BOYS!" The next instant, she slammed on the brakes, twisted the wheel, and the cab went into a power turn, the rear driver side door fading away and launching Tyson and Percy out of the car.
The pair easily rolled to their feet when they hit the ground fifty feet from their launch point. Neither looked back at the sound of the cab tearing back towards Greater New York. The massive army of Monsters being held off by the Demigods set on the Hill, (half of which had shields and melee weapons and the other half kneeling between them firing Sarutobi Rifles) was FAR more attention worthy.
Grinning at Tyson, Percy asked "Well, shall we?"
Tyson matched the grin and said "Let's."
The pair proceeded to run towards the back of the invading army with Tyson belting out the Calvary Charge like he was a humanoid bugle. As they slammed into a pack of hell hounds that had turned towards the sound, Naruto switched to the command frequency on his coms seal and said "Attention Defenders, Friendlies coming from the rear of enemy forces, marked out with Green Indicator Illusions, confirm designation intel received." As he spoke, he fired off a quick area wide Genjutsu which made green pillars of light surround him and Tyson and go about fifty feet into the air.
"Received, but Percy, is that a Cyclops fighting with you?!" Annabeth asked over the coms sounding a bit strained at the end.
"He's my half brother. I'll explain fully later but he's been with me since before the school year began, he's trustworthy, don't worry." Naruto said as he decapitated a Hell Hound while at the same time Tyson punched another hell hound so hard it bowled over the half a dozen Laistrygonians and an enemy Cyclops that had been in the line behind it.
"He better be Plankton Brain." Clarisse said over the line and Naruto rolled his eyes before he cut loose with his Wind Senbon jutsu, carving a canal of ichor through the massive army. That gained even more of the monsters' attention and the back half of the army turned towards him and Tyson, and thus took their attention off of the defending campers.
As Tyson finished off the last of the hellhounds, he grinned at the monsters that were now glaring at him and his half brother. Unsealing his rotary gun, Tyson spun it up, his grin growing at how some of the smarter enemy monsters now looked much more uncertain and called out "Enemy Monsters all BABIES!"
As Tyson's gun began tearing through the ranks, earning more than a few chocked gurgles over the com lines from the defenders who could spare the time to see what was happening, Naruto shook his head and said "You've been playing too much Team Fortress 2 again Tyson."
"No such thing!" Tyson shouted back with a cackle.
Naruto huffed in amusement then formed a shadow clone which promptly transformed into a Sarutobi Rifle. Naruto caught it before gravity could claim it and quickly switched the selector levers to wind and semi auto then poured his chakra into the weapon as a replacement for the bolts the weapon was made to fire. This gave him more accuracy than his wind senbon jutsu had and he fired quick but accurate bursts into the heads of any monsters that didn't survive Tyson's spray and prey method of firing. (The big guy was having a little too much fun at the moment to make sure that the monsters were actually mortally wounded and not just looking like a sieve would hold more water)
Ten minutes later, most of the army was dust in the wind due to the weapons fire taking the army apart from either side (Including sniper fire from a pair of Apollo Campers in Thalia's Tree). Most didn't mean all though, as shown by the pair of elephant sized bronze bulls that were charging towards Percy and Tyson. Oh, and apparently they breathed fire as well.
Seeing them coming, Tyson stored his rotary gun and rolled his neck causing the vertebrae to make a long series of cracking sounds. He then ran straight on to one of the bulls and pulled his arm back for a punch as he shouted "BAD BESSIE!" Then he punched the bull in the face and its entire body crumpled like an accordion as physics told the world that yes, it did still have a place in the world's mythical portions and the bull's momentum plus the force of Tyson's punch overrode the tensile strength of the bronze making up the bull's body.
Percy's method of dealing with the second bull was just as dramatic. Gesturing with his left hand, Percy condensed all of the water in the air into a giant foot and when he flicked his hand downwards the foot slammed down on the bull crumpling it just as effectively as someone stomping a soda can flat.
Letting his rifle clone dispel, Percy walked up to Tyson and clapped him on the shoulder with a grin as he said "Well, that was fun."
Tyson actually regressed to a little kid a bit as he giggled and said "Fighting monsters IS fun!"
"Percy!" Annabeth called as she and a few campers came shooting over with their flight seals. Landing, she gave Tyson a slightly guarded look then turned back to Percy and said "Thanks for the assist. The Sarutobi Rifles obviously helped to hold the line but as you saw there were a LOT of monsters out here."
Percy nodded and said "Yeah, they were obviously hoping to overwhelm the barrier with numbers." He then gestured to Tyson and said "Now then, introductions. Tyson, this is Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena. Annabeth, meet Tyson, son of Poseidon and my half brother. Dad sent me out to collect him last summer and he's been spending the last school year with me and mom."
Tyson smiled and offered his hand as he politely said "Nice to meet you Annabeth."
"Uh, same." Annabeth said, taking Tyson's hand and shaking it. She seemed pleasantly surprised at the gentle grip Tyson used before she immediately turned back to business as she said "Anyways Percy, the army of monsters that just showed up out of nowhere isn't our biggest problem right now."
"Alright, I'll bite, what's worse than that?" Percy asked with a frown.
"It's better if you see it for yourself." Annabeth said and the Campers quickly turned and flew back to the top of the hill. Percy and Tyson traded a glance before they followed, Tyson using his own flight seals while Percy just sprinted across the distance.
Reaching the top of the hill, Percy noticed how Thalia's Tree, which had always been hale and healthy was now very clearly sick. All of the needles were yellow and there was a huge pile of dead ones littering the base. Annabeth gestured to the pair and they saw in the center of the trunk, three feet from the ground, was a puncture mark the size of a bullet hole, oozing green sap.
Both Tyson and Percy hissed in a breath and Percy asked grimly "When did this happen?"
"Today, an hour before the monsters appeared in fact. The magic barrier around the camp began weakening almost immediately. Chiron sensed what was happening and immediately scrambled all fighters into a perimeter defense. It's why we weren't swimming in monsters when they appeared outside of camp."
"Yeah, gotta admit, we would have been in trouble if we were caught with our pants down." Clarisse grunted as she scowled at the hole.
Percy let out a grunt at that before shifting into Sage Mode. Inside the tree Thalia's Spirit looked absolutely miserable laying on the ground. Seeing Percy looking at her, she weakly raised a hand and waved it once before it flopped back to the ground. Exiting Sage Mode with a sharp tsk, Percy said "I'm going to put a Stasis Seal on the tree. It'll weaken the barrier some more but it'll keep the tree alive until we can figure out a way to rid it of the poison. With luck, it'll also keep the barrier from failing completely."
Annabeth nodded and said "That's probably the best we can do right now."
Percy closed the last few feet to the trunk of the tree from where he had been standing and slapped his hand on it. There was a pulse of blue that covered the entire tree before it went from being affected by the wind that was blowing to going completely still as its personal sense of time was put on lock down.
Percy nodded to himself only to look up with the rest of the defenders as one of the two Apollo children in the tree called out "Inbound Centaur coming down the road, looks like they've got Grover with them."
"The Universe just loves its dramatics, doesn't it?" Percy asked earning chuckles from most of the other defenders as they all turned to watch the Centaur come blurring down the road then up the hill, coming to an instant stop in front of the gathered Campers.
Grover immediately hopped off, face dead serious as he took in Thalia's Tree before looking down and asked grimly "What'd I miss?"
END