Chapter III:
Yelena would have liked to say her life was relatively normal, but that could not have been any further from the actual truth.
Flying through the somber abyss that was space, she decided to take a moment to herself, switching the Quinjet's navigation to autopilot before reclining back in her seat.
Rarely was she ever given the chance to just… rest, relax, breathe for once. From the moment she was reunited with Natasha, her life became a constant stream of nonstop action, always fighting, always on the run, always doing something detrimental to her health.
Not like she did not want this style of living, no, she loved this, in literal ways she was born for this. But sometimes, especially now, knowing that the fate of her world now rested on her shoulders, she found it hard to cope with it all.
Almost becoming a habit at this point, she patted her side pocket, checking to make sure that the Reality Stone was still safely stored inside. A shame that her favorite combat vest was mutilated by the Dark Elves, she rather liked it. Perhaps she could convince Natasha to buy her a new one when she returned.
And she would return. Yelena had no other choice than to succeed in this mission; failure was not an option, not when the lives of everyone she loved were at stake. Staring into the never-ending blankness in front of her, she swallowed the fear she felt. It left an acerbic aftertaste on her tongue, like bile.
A light alarm sounded from the pilot's console, shaking her briefly from her state of introspection to inform her of potential space debris coming from up ahead. After confirming the ship's request to reroute their course, she relaxed back into the seat and closed her eyes.
Despite the hard-faced persona she may exhibit, Yelena liked to spend whatever free time she had meditating. It was another way for her to unwind, to temporarily forget about the battles that were sure to come.
Inhale. One… two… three… Exhale.
Inhale. One… two… three… Exhale.
Inha—
"What are you doing?" An unwelcome voice asked, yanking her from her peace and quiet by the neck.
"What?" Yelena carped as she opened her eyes.
For a fleeting (and wonderful) second, she forgot that she was actually not alone, and that she was blessed to become acquainted with the rather strange individual, harbinger of male stupidity, sitting next to her.
She found Percy blinking blankly.
"The breathing thing," he said simply.
"What about it?" Yelena retorted.
Percy continued to blink blankly, "Uhh…"
It seemed to Yelena that the effects of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster had not left him just yet.
"Are you going to start acting normal again?" She quipped as she straightened back up into her seat.
"Sorry." He murmured back hoarsely, yakking up whatever was left of the bizarre throw up from earlier.
Yelena gave him a rare comforting look, and sighed, "Not totally your fault, I had a gut feeling that they spiked their food and drinks so that people never leave."
Percy's face contorted out of the corner of her eye, as he wiped whatever was left of the colorful junk off his face. "Huh? What do you mean?"
"Everybody there had this weird glaze in their eyes," she explained, waving her hands in incoherent fashion over her own, "didn't want to say it out loud."
They both frowned at the thought. Yelena, specifically, was more than disturbed, as she had dealt with her fair share of mind control in the past. Albeit, this one's intentions were seemingly to only sell as many drinks as possible.
"How come it didn't affect you?" Percy asked.
"Remember what I told you about me being experimented on as a kid?"
Percy nodded his head, presumably harkening back to the conversation they shared while fighting off the Dark Elves, a battle they won by the skin of their scrotums.
"Well, they gave me this serum to rid toxins from my body." Yelena patted the spot over her thigh where the needle had been placed, and smiled at the slightly queasy look that crossed his harrowed face.
"Does it do anything else?" He questioned.
"I can read minds." Yelena lied, deciding to have a little fun at his expense.
Percy's eyebrows raised slightly. "Oh really? What am I thinking about right now?"
Yelena paused for a moment, closing her eyes for added dramatical effect. Also throwing in some stringent Russian words, it might have seemed that she was conjuring up some bullshit magic, which was exactly what she was going for.
"Nothing, probably," she concluded lightly, once done muttering her incantations. "I can't imagine anything goes on in that smooth brain of yours."
"Har har har," fought Percy back, doing his best to mimic her accent, doing so horribly.
Yelena could not stop herself from joining in on his laughter.
For the little time they had shared so far, she herself was honestly surprised at how easily it was to converse with him. Given, it was not like there was much competition; there was no other choice, really. Still, it was quite pleasing in an unusual sense, and it was not every day that she found somebody that could also laugh at almost being killed.
"Mind control, huh?" Percy said once they were done letting loose, steering the conversation back on track. "Sorry about that, I didn't realize."
Yelena shook her head.
"That's kind of the point of it, you ape. And again, not your fault," she assured, "I should've gotten us out sooner, but at least we got an actual ship now."
While she finangled with the steering settings, she saw Percy take three winks to gander around the futuristic cockpit of the Quinjet. It truly was a remarkable piece of machinery, packed to the brim with technology that was far beyond the likeness of even state-of-the-art.
"I thought you were on your period," he decided to say out of nowhere, no holds barred.
"What?"
Yelena turned to look at him, more than ready to smack him back to where he came.
"Earlier," Percy made a bit more clear, giving her a smile that made the bags underneath her eyes twitch. "When you were doing that breathing thing."
"We never did talk about my lack of a uterus, did we?" Yelena groused.
"No, no we didn't."
"You've never heard of a hysterectomy?" Yelena decided it was her turn to make Percy feel pain.
"Hysterwhatnow?"
An evil smile appeared on Yelena's face, anticipating the gore she was about to describe.
"Hysterectomy," she repeated. "It's when a doctor goes inside of you, and kind of just rips out all of your reproductive organs."
Using her hands to demonstrate, she simulated the unwilling splicing of her organs for him to see.
"What's that got to do with your period?" Percy asked, unaffected by her crude demonstration.
"I don't get a period, dipshit."
Percy scratched the back of his head as he managed an, "Oh."
Yelena sighed in displeasure at his lack of response, and switched her attention back to the console, finally finding a steering calibration to her liking.
"Whatever, time to make yourself useful." She complained as she punched in the coordinates for Morag. "You can breathe underwater, right?"
-Ω-
Yes, yes he could.
Percy let out a low whistle as the oceanic planet came into view in front of them, a perfect sphere of dark blue that was only interrupted by a single speck of brown near the equator. According to the Quinjet's computers, this brown speck was once a very popular vacation destination, thanks to its pleasant climate, sandy beaches, and stunning nighttime views. In fact, the entire planet apparently used to be frolicking with life.
"Morag flooded." Yelena said bluntly as she triangulated their approach. "Long time ago, that island down there is all that's left."
"When did that happen?" He asked as he inched closer to the cockpit glass.
His brain still felt like mush, and his intestines were still wrenched as if a brick were lodged in between. Other than that, he felt perfectly fine.
"No idea, won't have any idea until I know what place in time we are." She answered with a short grunt.
"Then how do you know if the Power Stone is even here?"
"Because it was here before."
"Right," Percy muttered as he scratched his head. " I forgot that you're from the future."
"Mhm," Yelena affirmed as she seemed to toggle with something. "In my time, Morag is actually dry now, but that doesn't matter."
Percy looked out the window again, his eyes studying the reflective surface. "What if we're in the future though? Like… your future?"
Yelena froze for only a split second.
"We aren't."
"You sure?"
Yelena gave no further response.
"So you know exactly where it is?" He asked. "The Power Stone?"
"No, but the ship does." She said as she tapped one final button on her screen.
A light humming noise sounded around the cockpit, before a feminine voice began to speak,
"Target structure found. Analyzing path. Warning: intense undersea currents detected in the area. Suggestion: proceed with caution."
"Woah, this thing has artificial intelligence?" Percy exclaimed.
"Her name's Friday, she comes with every Quinjet," Yelena bobbed her head fondly, "she's saved my life more than I can count."
A rare grin split Yelena's face as she sat back, allowing Friday to descend towards the submerged structure.
Percy watched with avid glee, until the ship stopped just above the surprisingly calm waters. And without waiting for any further instruction, he popped open the side door and jumped right in.
The water here felt warmer than Earth's, less viscous and almost airy in composition. Like a dolphin, he divebombed and soared upwards, allowing himself a view of Yelena's miffed face when he broke the surface.
"I hate you, so annoying." Was what he thought Yelena was saying to him, but luckily he could not hear her through the cockpit glass.
Percy mouthed to her his classic, "I know," before resubmerging himself.
Feeling around, he did not need a computer to tell him where the Stone was. Power like that, radiated outwards like a detonating explosion in the water. And in this case, it was emanating directly below them, somewhere deep down.
Percy looked behind, checking to make sure that Yelena was good to follow, before zooming off, commanding the currents to carry him towards the target. The deeper he went, the heavier the water became, making him almost shiver at its coolness.
Soon enough, what resembled the GreatValue version of Atlantis appeared along the ocean floor, tucked inside the crook of one of the many trenches. For a moment he floated there, taking his time to admire the barnacle-encrusted temple. He found it strange and almost hilarious that despite being presumably millions of light-years away from each other, the architectural design was not so different from that of Earth's.
"You done plugging your arsehole?"
Percy flipped and burst out in laughter at the sight of Yelena. She was donning a pressure suit and helmet, making her appear like a severely disgruntled seal. He could have given her her own air bubble, but he guessed that she wanted to maneuver on her own.
"Not quite," he quipped back. "Could use a little help?"
"Rather not." She grunted, her remark coming out an octave higher through her respirator. "Come on, let's finish this before I rip you a new one."
Percy shot her a pout. "You know, you didn't need to leave the ship."
"I'm not letting you go in there by yourself. There's probably something guarding it!"
"You've watched way too many action movies, princess."
Yelena, expectedly, responded with the time-honored one-finger salute, to which he just grinned.
Together, they entered through the gaps in the columns, leaving the Quinjet behind as they sank further into the depths of the ruins. But rather quickly, they came across a door blocking the path. Purple light streamed out from the cracks, and Percy could feel the waves of energy crashing over him.
"Well?" Yelena said.
"Well what?" Percy said in return.
Yelena pointed to his jean pocket. "You gonna bust us in or what?"
"Right." Reckoned Percy as he took Riptide out.
Three sword slashes later, they were looking at what they came for. Percy stared googly-eyed at the floating orb, which hovered behind layers of what appeared to be protective shielding. It did not take a genius to know that touching them would be a bad idea.
"Move aside." Yelena grumbled as she kicked her way over to the stone.
He watched as she pulled out a small triangle device and laid it next to the orb's display. Again, she gave a cautious look to their surroundings.
"Relax, nobody else is here." Percy bothered to say. "I can sense when there's other things in the water."
"Worried more about you than anything, quite frankly."
"Nice to know where your priorities are at."
He chanced an abashed look, which she fittingly ignored.
Making sure that her device was in place, she took a few steps back before activating it, and both watched as the stone was sucked through each plasma barrier, before landing solidly on the center of the device.
Yelena stared skeptically at it for a moment, then carefully unlatched it from the display.
Percy crossed his arms. "See look, easy-peasy. What did I tel—"
He was cut off by the feeling of an earthquake vibrating from a distance. The hair stood up on the back of Percy's neck as Yelena turned to him.
"Percy…"
Again, another vibration, a tremor. The water surrounding them bounced up and down, and side to side.
The cheery demeanor left Percy as he redrew Riptide, a third tremor coming quickly afterwards. Followed by a fourth. There was no mistaking the sound of footfalls against the ocean floor. The sound of something truly massive. Something sinister. Something evil. Clouded were his senses, yet he knew it was approaching. Why could he not sense it? Where was—
A massive crash rattled the ceiling above them, and Percy barely had time to form a cover before the entire structure shattered. Strings of curses left Yelena's mouth as literal tonnes of stone bounced inches away from their heads.
Just when the dust cleared, massive armored legs slammed onto the floor before them, extending far up towards the surface. If Percy were to recall the souls that wished death upon him, he would be naming names all day, but none were nearly as fucked as what was in front of them now.
It was a creation worthy of the Lord of the Dead. The thing stood a good sixty-feet in height, with its legions of crab-like legs protruding out from the body of a sea serpent. But not to be outdone by its green-scaled human torso, complete with two massive claws for hands, and a raging bull's head the size of your average 18-wheeler sitting on top of it all.
"I don't believe what I'm seeing." Yelena said, her neck craning upwards at the behemoth.
"Me neither." Percy agreed in awe.
Yelena opened her mouth to reply, but whatever she was going to say, Percy never got the chance to hear it. The left claw of the monster descended from the heavens, nearly flattening them both as it detonated against the ground beneath.
"We need to get back to the ship!" Yelena yelled as she started kicking, her legs spinning but going nowhere fast.
Realizing, Percy commanded the currents around Yelena, and sent her racing in the direction of the Quinjet, Power Stone in tow.
"I'll keep it distracted!" He shouted.
The monster clearly did not like hearing that, and wasted no time in launching another volley of attacks, its sweeping claws appearing from nowhere at times, almost pulverizing Percy. For its size, the fucker was unnecessarily nimble.
"Gods…" he muttered as a claw nearly took his head off. "Who the hell birthed you?"
Its bull head could only roar wildly in response.
Hurriedly, Percy racked his memories of his past encounters for ideas. While it had a bull's head, he doubted his minotaur strategy would work. Neither would summoning a hurricane like he had done with Hyperion, the thing seemed more than comfortable in the stormy water. But its shell… that could—
Another close slam interrupted his thoughts, causing Percy to backflip twice through the water. Then another slam, and another. It was only with the sudden roar of engines coming to life, that the monster finally paused.
Seizing the opportunity with an aptly timed twist, Percy propelled himself underneath the crab-lizard-bull amalgamation, and thrust Riptide deep into its shell… only for nothing to happen. The monster barely even flinched at the sensation of Celestial Bronze piercing its skin.
The Quinjet appeared not a second later to pour lead into the monster's armored scales, Yelena at the helm. Sadly just like the sword, the bullets seemed to do nothing at all, bouncing off harmlessly into the abyss. Even worse was that Yelena's presence was starting to make his fight more difficult, with the monster's moves becoming increasingly erratic and unpredictable as she zipped around like an annoying fly.
Percy chewed the sides of his cheeks in frustration, wishing that he could somehow telepathically communicate with Yelena to coordinate their attack.
"What?" A familiar voice snarked in his head.
Percy, for the first time in his life, choked on water.
"Yelena?"
"Oh my god."
Percy dodged another claw swing, and tried to lock eyes with Yelena through the cockpit as she slingshotted around them. "You can hear me!?"
Unfortunately for Yelena, the monster was now pining for her, both claws and legs determined on smashing the jet to smithereens.
"A little help!" She bit back.
Still quite not understanding, Percy suspended his disbelief to disrupt the water around the monster's legs, stalling it just long enough for Yelena to maneuver the ship safely away for another pass.
"What is this thing's problem?" She complained. "Can't you tell sea shit to go away?"
"That's only if they want to listen, think our friend here is past that point."
Yelena sighed an agonized sigh, "Why does nothing ever go right for me?"
"You and I both are not so different," He said lightheartedly. "And hey, at least it doesn't spew acid."
Suddenly, nasty green tendrils began unfurling themselves from the bull's mouth in sickly swaths, causing the surrounding water to scream in agony.
Frustrated, Percy groaned out loud. "Oh you gotta be kidding me."
The acid quickly proved to be more of a nuisance to Percy than him to the monster. Every time he came near contact with the dense goo, it felt as if he were being laden with a million sandbags, forcing him to keep a distance away from the monster, who was very much still intent on turning Yelena to sludge.
"You got a plan?" Yelena yelled into his ear.
"Just get out of here," Percy answered. "I think I can outrun this thing, we already got the stone!"
While he could not physically see Yelena, he could feel her irritation.
"I'm not going to just leave you!"
"Just go! I'll follow!"
Percy grunted from exertion as he took another risky jab with Riptide, the sword only glancing off a portion of the monster's backside.
"Percy…"
"Go!" Percy ordered.
The Quinjet's engines acknowledged his command, illuminating the near-pitch-black atmosphere as they sent Yelena soaring up towards the surface. But much to Percy's surprise, the monster continued to follow it, instead of rearing its attention back to him.
"It's still following me!" He heard Yelena say.
"You don't gotta tell me that, I can see!" Percy said as he gave chase, channeling the rebellious water with his closed fist.
Again, the monster showed off his incredible speed as they ascended into a warmer arena, leaving him little time to think about what to do next. But Yelena was almost to the surface, and there was no chance the monster could fly.
The rays of Morag's sun now shone clearly visible above them, giving him something more than hope as the Quinjet rocketed out of the ocean. But it was like the Gods were listening to his every thought, eager to pull one more prank on their favorite demigod tool, as a pair of equally green and scaly wings sprouted from the monster's backside.
In the blink of an eye, the monster somehow got ahead of Yelena, its massive gaping jaw forcing her to break hard and head straight back down towards the water.
She then cursed in Russian with such raw vulgarity that it made Percy feel a little tingle below his waistline.
"Not even Dreykov was this much of an asshole." Yelena grumbled as she squeezed the trigger, lighting up the underbelly of the monster for the umpteenth time.
"No idea who that is, but I agree!"
With the three of them now resubmerged, Percy tried for a different tactic. Redirecting all of his concentration, a slow-building vortex began to build right below the monster's flailing legs. The bull head, still spewing acid, remained oblivious as it desperately tried to get a piece of either of them.
"Thank the Gods this shit doesn't have three heads." Percy tried for a joke. "That'd would've made things so much worse."
Expectedly, warranted by their current streak of luck, the monster magically sprouted a second and third bull head from its neck, making it appear just like Percy's old friend Cerberus.
"Because what's better than one head?" He imagined Zeus joking to the Fates. "Three!"
"Will you just shut up already!" Yelena all but screamed.
Percy frowned, choosing to block off his partner's voice while he analyzed the movements of now three pairs of dangerously hungry eyes. To beat a monster, you have to think like the monster. And if he were to think like how most monsters thought, he would not be going after Yelena and the Quinjet for no reason…
"It wants the Power Stone!" He exclaimed as soon as he reached his conclusion.
Again, he could feel Yelena's potent combo of emotions attack him through his brainwaves. "No shit dipshit! Was that not obvious?!"
"Well…not really," Percy shrugged uselessly as he re-engaged, twirling Riptide around in arcs that would have decimated any normal critter.
While the sword would forever remain his weapon of choice, it was doing just short of nothing. What he desperately needed was something stronger.
"Yelena! Drop the Power Stone!"
"Huh!?"
"Yelena, just eject the Power Stone out of the ship! Trust me!"
"What, why would I do—"
Yelena's response was cut short, thanks to the monster finally clipping a piece of the ship's rear wing, abruptly sending her spinning further downwards.
Predictably, the monster moved to pursue, blasting through the whirlpool that Percy was generating with ease as it looked to finish her off. Percy, for all he was worth, ran it down in a desperate attempt to sandwich himself between.
Compared to the bull heads, he was no bigger than a booger. But hey, nobody ever said that a booger could not be lethal.
"Hey there." Percy said with a cynical grin to the monster. "Mind if you stop?"
The bulls, surprisingly, put a pause to their attack, visibly appalled that Percy chose just to simply float there.
"You're going to kill us all." Yelena griped as she regained control of the Quinjet, piloting it in line with him.
"Maybe. Probably." Percy looked at Yelena, "I need the stone."
"No," her eyes shone dangerously through the cockpit windows. "You'll die if you do anything with it."
Percy gestured at the literal spawn of the devil seething in front of them. "Unless you got any better ideas?"
The monster answered instead, emitting a roar with ferocity so tenuous that it nearly knocked them into the next star system. What came and happened next, the demigod would struggle to remember the following day.
As if it were a scene plucked from an action flick, the orb ejected itself from the ship's hold in slow motion. The metal was pulsating with unbridled rage, casting doubt briefly through Percy's mind, before he turned around.
"Hey buddy!" He called out to the monster. "Thanks for waiting!"
Snot and acid spewed out of the bulls' nostrils, both its claws snapped enticingly, eager to strike.
"Catch this!"
With his best major league slugger impression, Percy bit his lip, shot a quick prayer, and swung at the stone with all his might.
The shock of Celestial Bronze against the orb's immortal metal nearly shattered every bone in his demigod body; the atoms that comprised him simultaneously separating and smashing together. His eyelids managed to stay open long enough to watch the orb enter the left nostril of the middle bull. And the shriek that followed was unlike anything he ever heard before.
There was a blinding flash of purple light, followed by an even brighter flash of burning red, the two colors fighting for dominance, enveloping the water with feelings of pure numbness.
Then, a deafening silence.
-Ω-
"You're kidding me," was the first thing he heard.
Percy groaned as he regained his bearings. Expecting to find a heaping carcass of bull heads and crab legs, he instead saw… nothing of the sort. He was still floating dead in the water—no, he was standing dry on land. Percy took a step, and then another step backwards when he realized that he was now standing in the middle of a gaping crater.
The water that had been around them, was now gone, evaporated, leaving the two of them and the ship sitting pretty on the bottom of a smoothened bowl miles wide. Nothing remained of the temple they were just in. Yelena looked to be about as disoriented as he was, although she managed to stumble her way out of the ship to meet him at his side. And in the case of the monster…
"Jesus." He heard Yelena utter.
"What?" Percy mumbled gutturally.
Eventually, his eyes met hers, leading him to the impossibly ordinary orange and white pile of fur lying only an arm's length away.
Percy's jaw dropped. "Is that a…"
"...cat." Yelena finished.
For what was probably a couple seconds, but what felt like eternity, they stared at the sleeping feline. Despite the cat's sudden appearance however, it came second to the realization that they thankfully could no longer read each other's minds.
"Is that… the monster?" Percy dared to ask.
"I'm not sure." Yelena answered.
Percy had never seen the Russian so stunned.
"Maybe it was just in the water?" He suggested, lowering his voice as to not wake it up.
"Then how the hell did it survive?" She countered.
Percy scrunched his chin. "How the hell did we survive?"
Yelena blew a strand from her hair. "With the amount of crazy shit that's happened since I met you, I shouldn't be surprised anymore."
"I guess we won though," he observed. "You still got the stones?"
From her pockets, Yelena produced both stones. Across the Power Stone's orb was a wicked line that coincidentally looked to be the same width as Riptide's blade. As for the Reality Stone, it never looked better.
However, turning the attention back to the more important matter at hand, Percy was stumped. His brain hopelessly tried to comprehend the cat still lying in front of them, reasoning that there was simply no way it was the same gigaton monster they had just been fighting.
Slowly, throwing caution to the wind, they approached it, only for the crunch of basalt underneath their shoes to awaken the sleeping beast.
With drowsiness, the cat came to life, dazedly tilting its neck up towards them like they were nothing out of the ordinary.
Yelena smartly paused her step, while he not-so-smartly took another.
"Percy, wait it might—"
Ignoring her, Percy carefully laid his hand on the cat's underbelly, giving it a gentle rub that elicited soft purrs from its mouth, and a sigh of relief from Yelena.
"Well, it's a dude." He said, checking to make sure.
"Wow, really important stuff, Percy."
"Hey relax, we can't be misgendering things in this day and age."
The cat stared up at them with a rather odd look in its eyes, before proceeding to lick its paws as if there were nothing amiss.
"What are we going to do with it? Him?" Percy asked.
Yelena gave her head a swivel, taking in the barren landscape. "Well we can't just leave him here, no?"
"So we'll take him? I'm not so sure about that."
Despite its friendliness, and all the other bonkers things that he recently encountered, there was something a hundred percent not right about the cat. He knew that there was no way it was anything ordinary. The laws of probability deemed it so.
Yelena nodded her head. "At least we can agree on something today."
Percy bent down to pet the orange feline again, noticing a tiny collar that appeared around the scruff of its neck.
"Moby?" He said, reading the single word off the tag.
The cat's head tilted at the mention of the name, purring in his direction.
Percy turned and smiled. "I think Moby likes me."
Yelena snorted. "Whatever."
Tapping his thighs, the cat jumped onto his lap, allowing Percy to continually pet it as they ultimately entered the Quinjet as a trio. Though once onboard, Moby quickly leapt from his arms to investigate the new surroundings.
Easing his way into the co-pilot seat, Percy and Yelena shared a brief look.
"You weren't too bad down there." She admitted.
Percy smiled. "You did alright too, I guess. Alright at getting chased around."
The ex-assassin turned savior of the world sighed. "You are such an—"
"Wonderful person." He finished with some extra pizzazz.
Yelena rolled her eyes, which only made him smile at the challenge that she was.
"Well, you got a taste of my mind, whatchu think?" He questioned.
"What I think?" Yelena said, twisting his direction with her sultry, unnervingly intense expression plastered on her face. "What I think is that you're going to get us killed one of these days."
Percy puffed his chest out playfully. "You've said that like, a bajillion times today already, and look, we're sitting right here, alive!"
"I said, one of these days, you idiot." Yelena looked away out of disgust.
"Whatever, potato, potato."
Yelena exhaled, then began punching in the coordinates for their next destination.
"So… where're we going?" He asked.
"Knowhere."
"Haha, nowhere, very funny."
Percy patiently waited for her to answer for real.
"I'm serious," Yelena calmly insisted. "We're going to Knowhere."
"Right, and where exactly is nowhere?" Percy bit.
"Knowhere is nowhere."
"Wow, you wish you could be as funny as me, Belova."
"First of all, Jackson, I'd never wish to be anything like you. Second, it's not a joke. We're going to Knowhere."
"Okay okay, I believe you," Percy raised his hands. "Just as much as I believe that the Party Ponies take Sundays off."
"I… don't know who those people are." Yelena said indifferently. "Nor do I care, so please don't explain."
Percy gave Yelena a decent rubbernecking, before turning to the cat, who was chilling on the seat behind.
"You know where nowhere is?" He asked Moby.
In response, the cat began a vile hurling movement, startling Percy with his aggressive hacking, before producing the nastiest hairball the demigod had ever seen.
"Great."
Author's Note:
Something something I'm uploading this at 1 AM so I might have to reread tomorrow morning and make sure that this somewhat makes logical sense something something.
