Some Monsters Have English Accents
Narrator POV
The demigods reached Italy in two more days, and encountered 12 more monster attacks (Annabeth counted). The metal that Leo was looking for was supposed to be somewhere on the west coastline - the front of the boot as Jason had described to Frank - and he had narrowed it down to about a kilometre of beach. On the tip of the shoe.
Not wanting to attract monsters, Hazel and Percy joined Leo in searching for the fuel, while the rest stayed on board.
"Miss Metal Detector, have you found it yet?" asked Leo for what had to be the millionth time.
Hazel gritted her teeth and managed to control her irritation for the incessant son of Hephaestus.
"Like I said two minutes ago, I don't even know what the metal is called, so locating it is going to be hard. It could be a kilometre in any direction."
She turned back to the task at hand, muttering "When was the last time you covered that much ground..."
Leo frowned when he heard her, but obediently sat back down on the rock, and put his hand on the ground. He tried to feel if there was any machinery buried in the sand; if the metal was part of a contraption. But he didn't feel a thing, and sighed.
Percy was sat on the beach, after finding an empty area among the tourists. He sat, obliviously drawing nonsensical lines in the sand and tuning out Leo's impatience.
Suddenly, Hazel gasped, hands splayed by her sides and leaning towards the sea.
She opened her eyes. "It's over there." Hazel pointed, holding the hair out of her face as the wind blew.
"I can't drag it here though. For some reason I can only sense it." She frowned.
Her finger was pointing in the direction of the sea, and Leo excitedly turned to Percy.
"Can you take me down there, Water Boy?!"
Percy turned and said, "Don't call me Water Boy." he scowled.
"Whatever." Leo waved his hand dismissively.
Percy shook his head but grumbled, "Come'n"
The two navigated through the towels and tourists, Hazel preferring to stay on land and lick an ice cream that she had bought for herself.
Leo turned around and she gave them a thumbs up, hopefully using her mist to make them look like they were having a swim and not a treasure hunt for a big lump of metal.
As soon as they were completely submerged, Percy made a bubble around Leo's head. He took a deep breath, and the two began to search for the metal.
Percy quickly found it by asking some fish if they had seen it, and they directed him to a spot. It was barren, so the two began to dig, before Percy remembered that he could just force the water at it and move all the sand quickly.
After a few minutes of this, the two found a massive piece of metal that Percy floated back to shore. It was a dark grey colour, with what looked like rusty bits, and rough to the touch.
Leo heated himself up to dry off when they reached he shore, and the three of them began to walk over the water while Percy tried to balance the large metal sheet on his head and Hazel doused them with Mist. Percy sometimes lost his focus when trying to steady the eleven foot wide sheet, and the other two often found themselves walking a foot below the water level.
"Percy!" exclaimed Hazel, finding herself knee deep in the water.
"Sorry, sorry!" he replied, and she stepped back into the surface, and he held the metal steady with his hands.
They eventually found themselves on the ship and Leo immediately dragged the metal to the engine room to convert it into fuel.
The demigods sailed another few days to England, crossing the English Channel and finding their way into London via the Thames.
Not many people noticed them, but the occasional dog began to bark at them.
.o.O.0.O.o.
Pipers POV
Piper gritted her teeth as she was shoved into a deep puddle by a telkhine.
They were currently two streets away from their destination, and were originally trying to find the address on the lamplit roads. Darkness enveloped the city in the night, and clouds hung above their heads, but it had already rained so they weren't worried about getting wet.
Or so Piper had thought.
It snarled at her and she swung Zethe's sword at it, grazing his arm and immediately changing direction to plough into its side. It dissolved into dust, and she saw Hazel give her a bright smile as she plunged her Spatha into another.
Hazel had continued to give her lessons in wielding a sword since she renounced Katoptris as her weapon, and she had proceeded to steadily improve, much to her delight.
A huge mob of telkhines had thrown themselves at the demigods, about fifty of them, their combined auras too noticeable. Percy and Annabeth kept apologising and had apologetic faces on the entire time as they knew they were the source, but we all shushed them and continued our trek to the address we had been given by Molly.
However, the two made up for it by fighting like demons and ploughing through them like butter. They worked as one, often using each other for support or anchors to launch themselves at monsters.
A fireball whizzed passed Piper and she hissed as it singed the hairs on her face. She tentatively brought her fingers up to her eyebrows and tried to feel if they were still there.
Leo ran passed her, wielding his flaming hammer and yelling, "Sorry, Beauty Queen!"
He smashed his hammer into the head of a small telkhine and it dropped, bursting into dust.
"Ha! Take that, you slimy dogs!" He screamed, and raced at a knee target.
Piper rolled her eyes and turned back to the fight. She walked out of the puddle that was slowly making her shiver, and saw Jason fighting a big telkhine which seemed to know how to handle a sword, not noticing another sneaking up behind him.
"Hey, dog-face!" she yelled.
She needed new insults.
"Over here, big ears!"
Yup, she really did.
Her dismal efforts surprisingly worked and the monster turned around, a snarl on his face. At least, she assumed it was a he.
"Ha! A daughter of Aphrodite invites me to kill her!" It gave her a toothy smile. "I shall take great pleasure in doing so."
It stalked towards her, and she readied her sword.
"Hey, Annabeth! Did you hear that?! He has an English accent!"
Percy's excited observation was so out of character as he obliterated a monster, Piper wanted to laugh, but she swallowed it and swung her sword at the monsters neck as it turned to snarl at the son of Poseidon.
It brought his sword up just in time though, and she almost snarled herself as heir swords clanged.
"You don't want to fight. You want to drop your sword, and run away."
She wove charmspeak into her words, but the telkhine simply laughed and bit out, in a guttural voice, "Your words don't... work on me, little girl."
But she heard the strain in his voice and grinned. She pulled her sword downwards, dislodging it and dodging an attack.
"Oh really?"
The monster simply snarled at her and dove again, but she sidestepped an it fell face first into the puddle.
"How do you like a taste of your own medicine." She muttered dryly. She pumped more charmspeak into her voice. "You want to run away. You don't want to fight."
The monster got to his feet and stumbled around.
"I-I want to go- I don't want to fight.." he stated uncertainly.
"Yes, don't return, and never attack us again"
The telkhine nodded obediently and ran off. A smirk played on her lips.
"Whose next?" She said, feigning excitement and spinning around.
Her smirk dropped when she saw the amount of monsters left.
"Start heading for the address!" yelled Annabeth, viciously slashing at a telkhine that was visibly backpedaling. "We'll hold them!"
Hazel and Piper turned to her and protested. Frank looked like he wanted to as well, but was currently a bear and incapable of speech. He roared in indignation instead.
"But-"
"We're fin-"
Annabeth shook her head, and yelled, "Don't worry, we'll be fine!" She punctuated her last word by sending a knife into a sneaky telkhines head before continuing to spar with the first one.
"You guys find the place, Remus said something about it being disguised! Iris message them only if you have too and can't find it!"
Percy decapitated another one, and yelled, "Go! We'll just attract more monsters!"
Even though she knew it was wrong to leave, Annabeth had a point. The two would be fine, and they needed to split from those two to avoid any more monsters.
She reluctantly started back down the road, grabbing Jason's hand and dragging him away, Frank the bear at her heels. The bear shot out his arms and grabbed Hazel, swinging her onto his back, and she let out a small squeal.
The five of them raced down the street, leaving the telkhines behind.
"Leo! Where's the paper with the address?" panted Piper as she ran, taking her hand out of Jason's so she could pump her arms.
"It's here somewhere!" he responded, digging into his toolbelt. He stumbled on a drain but procured a small slip of paper. And promptly burnt it to ashes.
"Leo!" admonished Hazel, while Piper simply glared at him.
"What the hell man? How are we going to find it now?!" exclaimed Jason as the entered the next street. Piper silently thanked the gods that they weren't in the city centre and no-one was taking a midnight stroll.
"There's at least fifteen houses here!"
"I'm sorry, that always happens when I'm nervous!" defended Leo, futilely cupping the ashes as if they would still tell him the address.
They stopped running when they reached the end of the street and they all caught their breath. Hazel, who hadn't been running, spoke up, surveying the houses.
"Didn't Annabeth say something about Iris-messaging them?"
"Only if we had to though." said Jason. "We don't want to expose ourselves."
"We've got no other option - what do your think'll happen if we knock on a mortals door and they see Frank?" countered Hazel.
Piper nodded and began to search her pockets for drachma's, but came up empty handed.
"Wait, I think I have some." said Jason, and he bright out a gold coin from his trouser pocket.
She took it from her hand, and walked over to the nearest lamp, leaning around it till she found a good angle with a rainbow.
Piper threw it into it, and said, "O, Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow. Accept my offering and show me Remus Lupin at..." She tried to remember the name of the building, but Jason supplied it for her.
"Grimmauld Place."
"-Grimmauld Place." She smiled thankfully at him.
The air shimmered and a cluttered but cosy looking kitchen was revealed. Remus sat, a chip halfway to his mouth and squashed beside Sirius, a dark haired and ginger boy.
"Hi, Remus!" said Piper merrily, and the rest of them waved, save for Frank who grunted.
He spluttered, "P-Piper! W-what- how-"
"Merlin's underpants!" yelled the ginger boy while the dark haired one simply stared with his jaw dropped.
"Oh, don't mind that. We'll explain later." she hurried. "The slip of paper with the address on it was accidentally burnt," Piper glared at Leo as he shrunk away. "-so we don't know the address anymore."
"We know the street," stated Jason, gesturing to the empty road. "But there's about fifteen houses here."
Silence came from the Iris-message, and Piper had a feeling they had interrupted dinner with some people who didn't know about them yet.
"Uh, yes..." came Remus's eloquent reply.
"The address." prompted Hazel, still sitting on Frank's back.
The eyes of the four people visible in the message widened considerably when they made our her figure on Frank in the darkness.
"Yes, its number twelve Grimmauld Place, Islington, London. It's in between number eleven and thirteen, and all you have to do is visualise the address, and it'll appear." he seemed to get over his shock.
Piper nodded. "Okay, we'll see you soon."
And she slashed through the message.
"It must be some form of mist." said Hazel, sitting back on Frank and rubbing his ear. His head was cocked and a deep rumbling sound came resonating from his throat.
"Frank, are you purring?" asked Leo, incredulously.
Frank grunted at him and Hazel smiled. "You sound like a giant cat."
Jason shook his head and frowned. "Nah, it's more like a really quiet hoover."
"Okay, changing topics," interrupted Piper, trying to interfere with the ADHD. "We need to find eleven and thirteen."
The group nodded and they began to walk down the road.
"Seven, eight, six, one hundred..." Leo counted as he squinted at the house numbers.
"Leo, you're reading it wrong. That's ten, not one hundred." corrected Hazel.
"Details, schmeetails." he waved off, and continued to incorrectly name the house numbers.
Frank stopped in front of a house, and Piper stared at the house numbers, seeing eleven and thirty one. But Frank didn't have dyslexia, so she assumed that the number was thirteen.
"We have to visualise the address." Hazel said.
Piper closed her eyes and repeated the address over and over in her head. She could hear Leo next to her chanting under his breath, "Number twelve, Grimmy something, twelve grim bricks, London.."
She smiled slightly, but continued her mantra till she heard the sound of bricks rubbing together like chalk.
Her eyes opened and widened as she saw another house begin to emerge from inside another. She saw a fish tank vibrating in the window, but an oblivious couple intently watching television behind it.
"Definitely a form of the Mist."
When the rest of the house shifted back harshly to line up with the rest, they bounded up the slightly shabby looking trail, and knocked on the door.
The door gave slightly under Piper's fist, and she tentatively pushed the door open. It revealed a warm red hallway, that looked slightly dirty and broken, and simply stared at the narrow room.
Leo shoved her into it.
The other three shuffled in behind her, while Frank made sure that no monsters were prowling the streets.
And then people came streaming out of a doorway and blinked at them.
"Hello." said Piper, thinking it a good way to start the conversation.
Frank grunted and turned back around before morphing back into Frank. The people blinked again.
"Are you a metamorphmagi?" asked a lanky ginger boy, who had an identical copy of him to his left.
Pipers mind scrambled for the definition, but Hazel came to it quicker and answered for him.
"Of the sort."
"Why don't you come in, dearies? We have a lot to talk about."
Piper smiled gratefully at Molly, and began to walk towards the doorway while everyone shuffled back in, before Annabeth's voice came swirling into her head.
Piper? Can you hear me?
"Annabeth?"
Oh thank gods! It worked, Percy.
"I didn't know you could talk in peoples heads." she stated bluntly, noticing that people were staring at her.
Neither did I. Anyway, we've found eleven and thirteen- Percy I'm very sure it's not thirty one!
Piper chuckled at Percy's assumption, having thought the same earlier.
But I don't know where twelve is.
"You have to imagine the address in your head and it'll emerge from thirteen. Just keep thinking about it." replied Piper, holding a finger up to everyone's questioning faces.
Oh thanks Piper. See you in a minute!
And then Piper felt as if a weight left her head and gripped Jason's arm as the walls spun.
"Hey, you alright?" he said concernedly.
"Yeah I'm just a little light-headed. Annabeth's telepathy is weird."
Once the dizziness faded, she found everyone staring at her.
"We have two more coming; we were held up and they were the, uh, best equipped, to deal with it."
A bushy haired girl nodded her head, and the door swung open. Percy and Annabeth stood there, panting slightly and clothes ripped, but didn't seem to have a cut on them. They walked to the doorway and jaws dropped.
The younger looking ginger boy blurted out, "Are you a Veela?"
Annabeth looked at him for a second before replying, her smooth voice cutting through the silence.
"No, but you're not far off to be honest." she admitted and Piper snorted.
"What's a Veela?" asked Percy, his rich voice sounding oddly naive.
Annabeth turned to him. "It's a woman that's supposed to be very beautiful with blonde hair and blue eyes. They can morph into harpy-like creatures when mad, and originally started in Slavic folklore."
He stated at her for a few seconds before turning back to the ginger kid.
"Yeah, damn right she's a Veela."
