A/N: Thanks for the reviews Greekgodsrox, Verteller (I explain it in this chapter), Cassy daughter of the moon (I intend for our original four to return for a few more chapters, but also for some alternate chapters with even more alternate contestants), Thrawn13, ChillTy, UtilitarianShank, FanBoyFanatic (I hope it is), NillieJackson007 (I do like Artemis Fowl. As for whether or not I ship ArtemisxHolly, well to be honest Artemis seemed more like a kid's book to me and didn't have much appeal in the romantic genre sense. I guess I could see them together, but I don't really ship anyone in the Artemis Fowl universe really), gerky (don't worry, they'll be back eventually), BrokenMockingjay, Trainer Azurite, Annabeth and Percy Jackson (I plan to do the girls once and some of the gods once at least too), dapperpines, Guest, and SilverStreaksofStardust.
"I don't get one thing," Travis said. "I got the change in the end. How come I lost?"
"The challenge was that you had to get a tip and do everything we say," Nico said. "And you didn't say everything we said."
"And secondly, how did you get Tratie- I mean, Katie, to come over here?" Travis asked.
"Tratie?" Dakota asked.
"Her name's Katie," Travis said.
"Yeah, but that's not what you said first," Grover said.
"Yes it is," Travis said unconvincingly.
"No wait- Tratie is a combination of… I know! Travis and Katie!" Nico said.
"Oh," Grover and Dakota said in unison before bursting into a fit of laughter.
"Do you seriously just mash up your two names like celebrities?" Grover asked.
"Don't change the topic! How'd you get her to be there?" Travis asked.
"Oh nothing," Dakota said as he rose to leave for his turn. "She just happened to come along while you were there."
"That's just impossible!" Travis said.
"C'mon Travis, don't put too much strain on your brain, the two of you have a shaky relationship as it is," Nico said. He then chuckled. "Dude, you just showed Katie your baby photographs. I don't think you can every come back from that. I don't think anyone can come back from that."
Dakota was sitting in the taxi, quietly humming to himself.
"Hey, when a customer comes, introduce yourself as South Dakota, only James Bond style," Grover said.
A customer didn't come though until ten minutes later- a rather anxious looking women in her early twenties.
"Are you on duty?" she asked.
"Yeah," Dakota said. "M'name's Dakota." He whipped on a pair of sunglasses and put them on. "South Dakota."
"Great, can you drive to Parfum Palace real fast?" she asked.
"Where is that?" Dakota asked. "Oh never mind, I'll just turn on the navigation."
Travis turned off the microphone. "What Dakota doesn't know is that we've hijacked his navigation system and so whatever we say gets sent through that."
"You really can't control yourself from saying that, can you?" Nico asked.
Dakota turned on the navigation system and imputed Parfum Palace onto it.
A voice from the navigation said, "Did you mean Pizza Hut?"
Dakota frowned. That voice sounded familiar… but there was no way that those guys would use the same trick twice, now would they?
"No, Parfum Palace," Dakota said and pressed the 'No' button on the screen.
"I think you mean Pizza Hut," the navigator said. Yeah, that was definitely Nico's voice.
"No, I don't want to go there," Dakota said and pressed the 'No' button on the screen again.
"Yeah, you've gained enough weight as it is," the navigator said. That was Travis. "Inputing coordinates for Parfum Palace. Recalculating… recalculating… estimated arrival time is… five hundred years. Calculate fair is fifteen cents."
"I don't have that much time," the woman said.
"Dakota, scream, 'Ain't nobody got time for dat!' and pound the dashboard," Grover said.
"Ain't nobody got time for dat!" Dakota shouted and banged the dashboard.
"Recalculating… recalculating… recalculating…" the navigator kept saying. "Estimated arrival time, twenty-five minutes. Estimated fare, forty-five dollars."
Dakota sighed as his customer got in and they went off with the navigator spewing out directions all the time.
"At the next intersection, go vertically up for five miles," the navigator said.
"You ain't driving a plane," the customer said with a laugh. "What's up with the software?"
"Tell her that it was working just fine until you decided to download some more RAM for its CPU," Travis said.
"Nah, it was working fine until I decided to download some more RAM for its CPU," Dakota said.
"Oh," the woman said.
"It looks like neither of them got the joke," Grover said.
"I didn't either," Nico said. "What's so funny about that?"
"You'd know if you hadn't been raised in the thirties," Travis said.
"I would suggest that you stop here," the navigator said.
"I don't need to stop here," Dakota said.
"There's a park nearby," the navigator said. "Please run outside for ten minutes and then maybe you'll finally lose some calories."
"Is your navigator on 'fat-shaming mode?'" the woman asked.
"Dakota, don't answer and just run outside for like ten minutes," Nico said.
Dakota didn't answer and ran out of the cab and began running around, leaving a bewildered customer.
He got back into the car later.
"You seem to be pretty much in shape," the girl said. "Why're you trying to lose weight?"
"Say that you need to lose weight because you want to join a circus troupe and you need to be able to fit into a cannon," Grover said.
"Well, yeah, see, I've always wanted to go and join a circus troupe, so I need to lose some weight to make sure that I fit into a cannon," Dakota said.
"Really?" she asked, disbelievingly.
"Yeah, see, it's basic physics, y'know,' Dakota said. "The smaller your weight, the further you go from a cannon."
"Don't they usually pick dwarves for that?" she asked.
"Tell her that the politically correct term is 'vertically challenged,'" Grover said.
"Actually, first of all, the PC term for them isn't dwarf, it's vertically challenged, or vertically impaired," Dakota said.
"Vertically challenged? Then what are scrawny people, horizontally challenged?" she asked.
"And tell her that none of the dwarfs wanted to go and audition for the sequel to The Wolf of Wall Street and the musical version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves." Nico said.
"And yeah, see the thing is that most of the dwarves are gone to audition for the sequel to The Wolf of Wall Street and the live-action musical of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," Dakota explained.
"So you've always wanted to be launched out a cannon?" the woman asked.
"Yeah, it's like you're flying… but uh, you're not really flying, you're uh, falling in style," Dakota said.
"Someone's watched too much Toy Story," Travis said.
"Uh yeah, hope you didn't mind the small delay. We'll be getting on the road soon enough," Dakota said as the cab began to head out towards their destination.
"At the next intersection, turn left," the navigator said.
Dakota squinted at the screen. "It says here that you're supposed to go right."
"Sometimes you have to go left to turn right," the navigator said.
"That doesn't make any sense," Dakota said.
"Can your navigator hear what we're saying?" the girl asked.
"No don't worry, I can't," the navigator said.
Dakota still took a right on the turn anyway and switched the navigator off so he managed to get to his destination pretty fast while the others squabbled about what they should do to him.
"Well, here you are," Dakota said. He then held up a can and asked, "Tips?"
Dakota got a whole dollar.
Result: Jason passes this round.
"I don't get it," Travis said, whining. "He didn't say what we told him to do, how come Dakota still passes?"
"That only apparently counts if it is something we say into the earpiece," Nico said while flipping through the rule book that Frank had written. "Since we never said that he has to follow what the navigator says, he's technically in the clear. It's really our fault for not telling him to follow it."
"I think Travis's just salty since he had to do all of that and he still lost," Dakota said, high-fiving Grover.
"So I guess this is my turn?" Grover asked.
"Nah, we have something special planned for you," Travis said, grinning evilly at the word 'special.' "You're going to start later on, at night…."
Several hours later, Grover was in his best human disguise at the wheel saying, "So… do you think that this is gonna scare me or something? Because just being at night isn't scary."
"Oh, you'll find out soon enough," Dakota said.
"Yeah!" Travis added.
A guy finally came up to Grover who said that he had to his house which was about forty minutes away, as the navigator (now fully working appropriately) calculated.
"Sure, we'll be right on our way," Grover said. He was actually kind of getting nervous… five minutes into this whole thing and nothing unusual had happened. Nothing at all.
"Hey, Grover, you're going to pass by a cemetery on your way real quick, so I think you should stop," Dakota said.
"Yeah, yeah, stop there, I think there's someone waiting for you," Travis said.
Grover's heart stopped for a moment- could it be Juniper?
"Why'd you stop?" the guy asked.
Outside, Nico of all people walked out from the cemetery. "Hey there, taxi. Mind if we share a ride?"
Grover had no idea what to make of this.
"Uh, where're you going?" the guy asked. "I'm headed off towards, y'know, downtown, past the bridge."
"Okay with me," Nico said. There was some dirt on his clothes, and he was talking with an odd low voice. "As long as it's you know… away from here..."
Nico got in.
"So, what were you doing in the cemetery buddy? Visiting a friend?" the guy asked.
Nico cast a long look at the cemetery. "I suppose you could say it that way. But the thing is I stayed a bit too long there… way too long…"
"Hey, Grover, turn around and tell the guy that Nico's a friend of yours and that you can trust him," Travis said.
"Uh, yeah, hey, you're Nico right?" Grover said suddenly as he turned around. "Yeah, he's one of my regular passengers. I know him."
"Oh yeah, hey, it's you," Nico said. "I know him too, this is Seymour Butts, one of the best taxi drivers around. Be happy to split the fare with ya."
Travis snickered. "Wait… the guy didn't get the joke."
"Aww," Dakota said. "How do you not see the joke? It's like lying right there in front of you!"
"Well yeah, taxis are expensive," the guy said as the car started. "By the way, you got some dirt in your hair and on your coat too."
"Yeah, I may have tripped," Nico said. "And yeah, a cab's really expensive. But the thing is I don't drive anymore. There was a car accident that I was in some time ago…"
"That sounds terrible," the guy said. "So, how long have you known Mr. Butts here?"
Travis snickered. "This is so good. Like, I mean, it's like this whole thing writes itself and we don't even need to say anything."
"Oh, he was in the accident too," Nico said before Grover could reply. "It was really bad, wasn't it Seymour? The blood everywhere… some people said that we wouldn't survive…"
"Yeah," Grover said.
"Well, it's great that both of you survived," the guy said.
"Oh yes," Nico said. "Hey, Seymour, wanna go grab a bite after all of this is done?"
"Grover, say yes but ask him what he wants to eat," Dakota said.
"Sure, whatcha wanna get?" Grover asked.
"Oh, anything," Nico said. "I'm not very picky. Just not Italian. I can't deal with spaghetti, it reminds me of worms too much. Worms… crawling around in the dirt… digging into the bodies of people who're buried…"
The guy started glancing between Grover and Nico as he was wondering what was going on.
Nico started getting nervous. "Sorry… it's just the place where we had our accident, well, it's just coming right up. It's on the bridge. I get nervous sometimes when that happens."
"Grover," Travis said. "Stop the car on the bridge and then Nico is going to shadow travel the two of you out of there. We wanna see how your customer reacts."
They approached the bridge and while on it, Grover stopped the car suddenly.
"What happened?" the guy asked.
"I… I remember now," Nico said, sounding very, very, agitated. "We were here, when we hit a car head on… and then I was on the ground…"
"Turn off the lights!" Dakota said.
Grover turned the lights in the car off before removing the keys so that they were all in total darkness except for the lights on the bridge.
"What's happening?" the guy asked, sounding afraid.
There was no one near him though as he glanced around since Nico and Grover were back at HQ.
"This is so not fair," Grover said. "This means I essentially lose no matter what happens! You took me away from the cab!"
"Yeah, well, do you really think that he's gonna give you a tip?" Travis asked. "Even if we do take you back?"
"Oh, look, he's getting out of the car and looks like he saw a ghost," Dakota said.
"This still doesn't make sense, this challenge is literally impossible to do like this," Grover said.
"Y'know what, okay, if the guy is so scared he leaves his wallet or something behind, we'll count it as a tip," Nico said. "And then you win."
The guy looked terrified and was looking around frantically.
"Man, we should start our own show," Travis said. "Where we do nothing but go around scaring people like this! It'd be totally rad! It'd be cooler than what these guys are doing."
The guy didn't leave his wallet behind though as he ran away from the cab, and he didn't drop any change either, so that meant that Grover lost.
Result: Percy gets a negative point.
A/N: And so everyone has a negative point except Jason putting him in the lead for now. As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this change of characters.
Sadly, I have some bad news, namely that we'll be on hiatus for a month or so. Life gets in the way.
Anyway, next chapter will have our lovable old foursome.