Chapter 24

(A/N I don't own PJATO, Rick does. Honestly, I think I've encountered some kind of writing curse. Every second chapter after I finished with the backlog has been delayed, late, or something to that effect. I spent the entire night preparing the chapter, only to realise once I got onto FF it was sunday, not wednesday, and I had written the chapter for Bridger: ASWS. Bright side is, you won't have to worry about that being late.)

"Meg? Meg, are you up?" Robin's voice drifted through the door, into Meg's room. She had woken up early, and had spent her time pondering over her dream, and what she had learned. Robin was essential to whatever plan they came up with. He would have to use his fire powers to melt the chains, and escape, hopefully before Polyphemus realised what was up. So that meant he would have to survive until then. And Clarisse and Chris would both have to survive, so they could have their happy ending, which meant… Meg cut herself off from reaching the end of that thought chain. They were all getting out of this quest alive, if not unscathed. But if not, I have to be the expendable one. I have to make sure everyone else can go home, even if I can't.

"Meg? Are you even in there?" The sound of her friend's voice drew her out of her internal battle, and she pushed those thoughts away.

"Yeah. Come in." Robin entered the door, with his hand over his eyes, making Meg laugh. It's fine, Robin, I'm decent." He removed his hand and gave her a smile, before coming over and sitting on the bed.

"Are you alright? After last night and everything, I wanted to check if you were-" Meg cut him off with a wave of her hand.

"First of all, you saved my life yesterday. So thank you. Second, I'm completely fine, I just had a scare, with the burning plants and all." Robin winced in sympathy and moved closer, putting an arm around Meg's shoulder, expertly guessing what she had been thinking.

"You aren't becoming like Caligula, Meg. It was a spur of the moment plan, you had no time to think." Meg was silent for a moment, just enjoying the human contact. Definitely nothing to do with the fact it was specifically Robin.

"But still, if I hadn't got them to back off, they would have died."

"But they didn't, and neither did you, so it's fine. You've got nothing to worry about, Meg. I've got your back." He grinned and started to lift his hand up to his chest, but Meg intervened.

"If you say best friend's honour, I'm kicking you off this boat." Robin grinned wider, but lowered his hand.

"Kif tixtieq." Meg frowned, but before she could comment on the mysterious language again, a giant tremor shook the boat, toppling Meg and Robin sideways. Disoriented, it took Meg a moment to realise the position they were in, with Robin lying on top of her. Both blushing, they scrambled off the bed and stood, weapons at the ready. "What do you think that is?"

"Hades if I know, but we should probably get up on deck. Clarisse and Chris might need us." Running out of the doorway, Meg ran out into the corridor, trying her best not to fall into the walls.

"Mother of Styx, that's huge!" Meg couldn't agree more with Chris. A huge, serpentine neck rose out of the water, midnight black and blue scales covering every inch. It rose up for a good five or six stories, until the neck culminated in an ugly, reptilian head. Green eyes, piercing and cruel, looked down at the ship, tiny and insignificant next to this monster of hell. It thrashed its tail, far beneath the surface, and another tremor shook the boat. Meg stumbled backwards into Robin, who had just arrived on deck and was now gazing upwards in awe. Shaken out of her daze, Meg shouted to Clarisse, who was furiously loading a Dahlgreen with the help of some skeletons.

"We can't fight this thing, Clarisse, we need to abandon ship!" Clarisse didn't answer, only aimed and fired, pummeling the monster in the neck. It reared back a few metres, apparently stunned it's puny prey could fire back. Satisfied, Clarisse turned to Meg.

"We need to distract it, the skeletons can do that while we escape in the boats." She put a hand on the skeleton that had helped her load the cannon, and whispered something in his ear. The soldier straightened up and saluted, before going back to reloading the cannon. Clarisse grabbed Chris's arm and led the group down to the edge of the boat, where lifeboats were strapped to the armoured side of the ironclad. "Get them all down, we can distract it with multiple targets." They all nodded, and detached all the boats, clambering into the last one and rowing away. Looking back at the ship, Meg saw the monster's head come crashing down on the CSS Baltic, the ship no match for the monstrous creature. Robin was the first to break the silence.

"I would say at least we're not dead, but the last time I said that giant ants appeared." Everyone chuckled, and Meg reached over to his hand and held it in hers. Robin looked down, looked up and raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything.

For the next few hours they sat in silence, the only sound the waves beating against their hull and the oars breaking the surface. Meg was dozing off, her head resting on Robin's shoulder, when a shout from Chris made her look up.

"Land! I see land!" Everyone twisted to look in the direction he was pointing, and sure enough, a thin strip of yellow broke the blue on blue. Robin and Meg scrambled to relieve Chris and Clarisse, and for the next fifteen to twenty minutes Meg concentrated on nothing but rowing as hard as she could, to make it to the shore. Beaching, everyone got out of the boat and started trudging up the sands, to what seemed to be a beach resort in disrepair. A flash of steel behind a crumbling column caught Meg's attention.

"Did you see that?" Robin groaned.

"Not another Amphisbaena, I don't think I could fire a single shot."

"No, we ain't Amphisbaena, we be much worse!" A man stepped out form behind the column, wearing a tricorn hat and bandoliers of pistols around his waistcoat. He held a heavy cutlass in one hand, and a stick of celery in the other.

"We're pirates, lass, and you better give me one good reason not to split yer skull!"

(Dun dun dun! I think everyone knows who this is and where they are, but not saying anything until next week. I put a lot of references in this chapter, see if you can find them all. The monster that sank the Baltic is the Cetus Trojas, the monster Perseus slew to rescue Andromeda. I meant to have Clarisse explain to Meg or someone, but never happened, so here we go. Chapter after next should be getting to Polyphemus's Island, so I'll try and break my streak of late uploads. Completely unrelated, I'm running a DnD campaign with friends tomorrow, so that should be fun. Not much else to say, so until next time,

Vaya con Queso,

DamaSENDhimafriend