Beginning Notes

I'm so sorry for leaving you guys this long! At least test week is over, and I have a whole week free, so I hope so update a lot. Hope. I don't have anything else planned, so yeah... Let's all hope for the best :) Anyways, OC's belong to sketchywolf, and the rest to Rick Riordan.

Maximus

Everyone is staring at him and Cassie.

'Hello? What's going on?' Maximus asks again.

There is a glowing silver moon symbol hanging above Cassie's head, and by the looks on everyone's faces, probably above his too.

'You're being claimed,' Chiron says, hesitantly. 'But, something must be wrong.'

'What? What is wrong?' Maximus asks. He wants answers, because he's scared. Scared that something bad might happen to him, or worse, to Cassie.

'Well, you see,' Annabeth starts after the glowing symbol disappears from Cassie's head. 'You two were claimed by Artemis, but...'

'But what?'

'But she... Gods, how do I explain this?'

'Didn't Artemis swear against men or something?' Cassie asks.

'Yes, Artemis swore against men, and romantic love, making her an eternal maiden,' Chiron explains.

'Why did she claim us then?' Maximus asks confused.

'I... I don't know,' Chiron says. 'But we mustn't dwell on this too long, you have a quest to start.'

'Right, the quest,' Percy says. 'C'mon gang, we gotta go. We'll find answers to that when we get back.'

'If we get back,' the other boy- Maximus believes his name is Grover- mumbles.

...

As it turned out, there was a bus that was going to take them to New Jersey. What were they supposed to do after that? Maximus had no clue, all he knew was that they were supposed to go to the Underworld and get Zeus's master bolt.

'So, uh, what's the plan?' he asks.

It's raining, and Percy, Grover and Annabeth are throwing apples at each other. He'd wanted to join in, but Cassie was eyeing Annabeth suspiciously.

'The plan?' Cassie says.

'Yeah, the plan,' Maximus repeats.

'Well, we need to get to Los Angeles to go to the Underworld apparently. So, we take this bus to New Jersey, get to LA somehow from there, find Hades, get the master bolt, and be done with this quest.'

'That's the plan?' Maximus has never heard a vaguer plan in his life.

'Well, I don't know, I guess we're supposed to make a better plan on the way, but as of now, we can't make specific plans, because we have too little information,' Cassie says.

'Okay.'

Then the bus arrives. They board it, and when they sit down, Annabeth whispers something to Percy.

Maximus looks at his sister. Cassie just shrugs.

'Di immortales,' Grover says.

'What?' Cassie asks him.

Grover nudges his head towards three old ladies sitting further at the front.

Maximus has no clue what's supposed to be so bad, but he gets bad vibes immediately.

'What?' Cassie asks again, now turning to Maximus.

'They're evil,' he says. He has no other way to put it. They're just... evil.

'Those old ladies? How can they be evil?'

'Look,' Percy points out.

Maximus sees what he means: The ladies on the isle make an X with their legs. Very subtle, but it gives a clear message to anyone who might think of them as evil. Nobody gets out.

Cassie finally gets it. 'Oh...'

'Yeah, we gotta get off this bus,' Maximus says.

Bad ladies. Evil ladies. Bad vibes. Evil. Evil. Evil. It's all he can think of. His mind is only set to how evil these ladies are.

'The windows don't open, there's no back exit, we've discussed this already. We're trapped with the Furies,' Annabeth says.

Furies. Somehow Maximus knows exactly what they are. And he had been right from the start: these three are almost the definition of evil.

'But, they can't... they won't attack us with all these witnesses?' Percy asks. 'Right?'

'I'm not sure, Percy, the mortals might not see anything through the Mist,' Annabeth explains.

'The Mist?' Maximus and Cassie asks.

'Yeah, it keeps the mortals from seeing anything they shouldn't see.'

'But surely they'd be able to see three demons murdering us. Maybe they'd only see them as old ladies, but they'd see the murder part right?' Maximus asks.

'I don't know, maybe, but-' Annabeth stops mid-sentence, for everything had gone dark. They are in a tunnel.

Maximus can feel his heart beat faster and faster, because he's scared of the dark, and he knows what will happen next:

The demons will attack, and they'd have no way out. And if the mortals wouldn't even notice anything because of the Mist...

Before he knows it, the old ladies, who had transformed into their true form, are standing around them, and Percy had disappeared.

'Where is he?' one of the Furies asks.

'He's not here,' Annabeth says.

Then suddenly, the bus swerves. The Furies are thrown to one side, and everyone starts screaming.

The bus exits the tunnel, and light enters it again, so now everyone can see the wonders of what is happening: They're slamming through all the other cars, crashing into anything that gets in the way.

Then, when they finally come to a very abrupt stop, the Furies get up again.

Just a few seconds ago, Maximus had had a little bit of hope, but it is all gone again, when the demons bare their sharp teeth at them.

'Hey!' someone at the front of the bus yells at them.

Maximus is relieved, and terrified at the same time.

Relieved because the demons were no longer focused on him, but terrified, because they were now planning on murdering Percy, and it was three against one.

Percy took out a pen and uncapped it, and it turned into a bronze sword.

The Furies hissed at him, but there was no way he could win this.

Annabeth has a knife, Percy has a sword, and Grover has a tin can (though Maximus has no clue as to how that could defeat the Furies), but he and Cassie are unarmed.

That's when he sees the broken window.

As swiftly as possible, he moves over to the window and breaks off a big, sharp piece of glass.

He notices that Cassie has picked up a long piece of metal from the ground, and is wielding it as a sword as best as she can. Where she'd gotten it, he had no idea, but they had found something just in time, because that's when the Furies attack.

Percy starts slashing at them with his sword, and Cassie and Annabeth run over to help him.

Grover hesitates for a moment, but then runs into the battle too.

Maximus isn't sure what to do. All he has is a piece of glass to protect himself.

But when he sees Cassie get hit with one of the Furies' whip lashes, he attacks immediately.

He runs at the demon, and jumps onto a chair, and from the chair onto the demon's neck.

From there he is able to stab the Fury in the eye with the piece of glass, making it screech in frustration.

It tries to throw him off, but he strangles it, trying to stay on it's neck.

When he looks around, he can see that one Fury gets turned to dust by Percy, and the other was stuck, tied in its own whip.

'Max!' he can hear Annabeth shout.

When he looks her way, he can see her holding her knife, ready to throw it. He immediately gets the message: Keep that demon still.

He pokes the Fury in the other eye with his finger. It doesn't do anything, but the Fury closes it as a reflex. Of course, the other eye still has the piece of glass in it, so now the demon isn't able to see anything until it opens its eye.

This gives Annabeth a free shot at the Fury without is being able to notice the blade flying it's way.

The knife finds a home deep in the Fury's chest, turning it to dust.

Maximus falls to the floor, but gets up immediately, grabbing Annabeth's knife, because Cassie had yelled: 'C'mon, we have to get out of here! Now!'

Even the mortals know she's right.

Everyone gets out and tries to find cover, just as the bus explodes.

End Notes

"Guys, we just exploded a bus!" Okay, sorry, had to do that. Well, that was that. And again, I'M SORRY FOR BEING AWAY FOR TWO WEEKS! I'll try to make up to it by posting a much as I can this holiday (I mean, it's only a week, but whatever, I can do loads in a week). So yeah, go check out my beta lovelylittlelion on AO3, and I'll see y'all in the next chapter. Byeee :)