I have never really though abut it. How I would die. If I ever had, I'm guessing that I'd ask a few questions, sure. Where would it be? Who would I be with? When would it happen? How?
And, even though I haven't really thought to ever ask myself those questions, I already have all the answers.
At the museum.
With my math teacher.
Sometime after lunch. Not really sure what time it was.
Math teacher transforms into a hag and claws my insides out.
Yeah. It wasn't sounding too dignified for me. But, hey, at least I went in a pretty unique way, right?
Chapter Two
As the math-teacher-turned-hag readied herself for another swoop, Riker's brain caught up with him, and he realized—This is actually happening! You lucky bastard!
Because, honestly, how many teens dreamed about getting the chance to off their math teacher? And here he was! Dream come true!
"Stay still and let me kill you, half-blood scum!" The hag shrieked. Riker raised an eyebrow at her—was it even female? Did it have a gender? He shuddered—and the teen scoffed. "As if, bitch! Bastard? Ugh. Whatever!"
The hag screamed at him in rage, and Riker ducked an incoming swoop. He cheered. "Whoohoo! This is awesome!" I'm fighting a hag... Fighting a hag... Haha! He cackled.
"Percy!" A voice that Riker would have never dreamed to hear in a situation like this, ever, called out, and Riker turned. "Grover? … Mr. Brunner?" Unfortunately, the hag took his distraction to her advantage, and Riker narrowly missed getting his head lopped of. "What are you doing here?"
They didn't reply. Instead, "Catch, Mr. Jackson—" and Mr. Brunner threw something at him. Riker caught it.
"A... pen?"
The crippled teacher nodded seriously. "Take this to defend yourself. It's a powerful weapon. Guard it well. Only use it in times of severe distress."
Riker blinked, slowly. "This.. is a pen. This is a pen." Grover nodded at him.
Riker huffed. "Some help you two were... Now go away! Lemme die in peace!" He spun around and started laughing. "C'mon, grandma! Bite me!"
The hag swooped down once more, and Mr. Brunner shouted. "The pen, Mr. Jackson! Uncap it!"
It's just a freaking pen! Riker rolled his eyes, but uncapped it. His eyes widened. "And poof! Shakespeare, come alive!" He grinned, and charged the hag, burying the sword up to the hilt in her chest. "Aw, yeah!" He spun around, and frowned.
Mr. Brunner and Grover were gone.
"Oi!"
oOoOo
"Riker!" Nancy pranced over to him. He held out an arm, and she clung to it. "Oh, I hope Mrs. Kerr didn't suspend you or anything!"
Riker paused, raising an eyebrow at her. "Kerr? Who's that? I thought her name was Mrs. Dodds or something..."
Nancy and the other students laughed. "I guess her name isn't really important." But Riker frowned. He'd heard her call her "Mrs. Dodds" only that morning. Had something... happened? Well, aside from him killing his math teacher... Holy shit, he grinned. I killed my math teacher!
Was this what happened when a student brought that particular dream to life? Did the Math teacher Society or something just replace the math teacher? It must have been Mr. Brunner...
Riker looked at the teacher, fingering the pen in the pocket of his jacket. It was a nice pen... He loved it. Perhaps, if he was a better person, he'd return it—it was—had been—Mr. Brunner's hadn't it?—but he really wanted to keep it...
"Ah, Mr. Jackson." Suddenly, Mr. Brunner was in front of him. "My pen, if you would?"
Riker started; he hadn't realized he'd taken the pen out of his pocket and was now twirling it in his fingers absentmindedly. The teen stared at his expectant teacher, then slowly, as the man watched, slipped the pen back in his pocket. "What pen?"
Mr. Brunner frowned, and examined him for a few moments. And in those few moments, Riker felt as if his very soul was being scanned by those sharp, ancient looking eyes. And Riker wasn't one to be poetic, so that was saying something. The dude freaked him out—but he did give him a awesome pen... So he decided the point was balanced out.
Eventually, Mr. Brunner shook his head. "Please bring your own writing utensil next time, Mr. Jackson?" And then he wheeled himself away. Riker stared after him.
"... That was creepy..." Nancy commented, after awhile, and Riker nodded in agreement.
Mr. Brunner was really old, he'd finally realized.
Hey, maybe he had known that dead Greek girl after all.
oOoOo
"—They found him. He's in danger."
"A Kindly One! They sent a Kindly One here!"
"We will have to be very careful, these next few days. Riker remains unaffected by the Mist we used to cover "Mrs. Dodds'" disappearance.I do not know how much longer he will let it lie."
"I told you he was powerful, Chiron. I'm really glad you came down here. I wouldn't have known what to do."
"Thank you for notifying me, Grover. At times like this, it is best to have all of our aces close to us—and Mr. Jackson is most definitely an Ace in the hole."
I didn't know he played golf.
Riker was on the bus home. School was finally over, and he hadn't been expelled. He didn't want to go back there next year, though. Huh, Nancy and some other girls would be disappointed, maybe, but Riker couldn't seem to care. He was still mulling over the conversation he'd overheard between Grover, who sat next to him, bouncing nervously, and Mr. Brunner—or Chiron? Wasn't he that horse-centaur guy from mythology?
Grover was nervous. He kept fidgeting, and looking around. Riker was starting to get annoyed. He leaned back in his seat and braced one arm across the back of the bus seat. "Looking for Kindly Ones?" He drawled casually.
Grover nearly jumped out of his seat "Wha—what do you mean?"
Riker told him about his eavesdropping, and Grover sunk down in his seat. "H-How much did you hear?"
"Oh..." Riker tilted his head back and thought for a moment. "Not much... What's the summer solstice deadline for?"
Grover winced. "Percy—Riker." He corrected himself. "I was just worried for you, see? I mean, you were hallucinating about demon math teachers ..."
"Grover, man, listen." Riker held up a hand, and his demanding attitude made Grover stop to listen. "You, my stalker, are a really, really bad liar..." He tilted head head to the side. uncaring.
Grover's ears turned pink. From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer."
Grover Underwood
Keeper
Half-Blood Hill
Long Island, New York
(800)009-0009
Riker raised an eyebrow. "What's this?"
"It's my.. um, my summer address!" Grover yelped when Riker reached over to twist his ear. "Uh huh. So tell me... What the fuck is a keeper? Is this some kind of crappy romance camp? What the hell, man?"
"No," Grover groaned, flopping down in his seat. "It's just.. A house I stay at, during the summer."
Riker rolled his eyes. "Right, sure. So.. if I wanted to freeload at your mansion or something, right?"
Grover nodded hesitantly. "Or.. or if you ever needed me.."
"Why the hell would I need you?" Riker snapped, irritated. He wasn't some kid! Thouh, he kind of wanted to take the words back when he saw the hurt look in Grover's eyes. Almost. Not really. Nope...
Grover blushed. "Look, Riker, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you..." Riker looked at him oddly. He was the one who had to protect Grover back in the school.
"Riiight... Tell me, Grover; what are you protecting me from, yeah?" Riker glared. "I can take of my own damn self, you know."
There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed and slowly rolled the Greyhound over to the side of the highway. After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver popped back in, and irritated look on his face, and announced, "Everyone out." The two teens filed outside with everybody else.
"Why the hell would someone put a fruit stand in the middle of nowhere?" Riker pointed out, when they were on the stretch of country road with everyone else. Grover's eyes widened as he spotted where Riker was gesturing at. The stuff on sale looked really good—heaping boxes of blood-red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice. There were no customers, though, just three old women sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks Riker had ever seen.. The woman on the right knitted one of them. The woman on the left knitted the other. The woman in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn. All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandana, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses. The weirdest thing was they seemed to be looking right at Percy.
"Huh. Wow, now I'm really hungry." He glanced back at Grover, who stood frozen staring that the three old women, and began to make his way over to the stand. Grover snapped out of it when Riker was three feet away, and raced after him with a panicked expression. "Percy, no!"
"My name," the teen scowled "is Riker! Remember it!" He cffed the smaller ten on the back of the head. Grover winced. "S-Sorry. But no! Riker, we have to leave! Let's get back on the bus! Now!"
"Hell no!" Riker yelped. "You serious, man? It's not fixed yet, the driver ordered us the fuck off, and it smells like rotten eggs. Please." He sniffed. "Besides, what you so scared of, wimp? They're just three old ladies. Selling really good looking food. Oi," he spoke to the lady that held the basket of yarn. "What's the cost?"
The woman raised an eyebrow at him, as if wondering who the hell he was. Riker thought, perhaps, that it was because they didn't get many customers despite the good looking food—he'd felt weird when approaching them, like his body wanted to get the fuck away, but his stomach wanted to food. He listened to his stomach. Though, it felt like these ladies knew him.. It was a bit creepy.
"Fifty cents a fruit," she spoke in a raspy voice, like she'd never heard of water before in her long-looking life. "Though, you can get a handful of the cherries for the same, and the cider. We also offer fortune-telling.." She eyes him like he was eying the fruit right then, but Riker was paying attention. Grover looked about to pass out. Riker waved a hand dismissively. "Nah, I'm good. Don't like that crap, no offense. It's my future, and I'll make it whatever I want it to be. I ain't gonna have anyone tell me what's gonna happen. Prophecy shit and all that can go die in a hole. My life, y'know?" He raised an eyebrow, and held up an apricot, an apple, plum, and peach in one hand, and two bags—one of cherries, and a smaller one of walnuts—in the other. "And I'll take three cups of that cider, yeah?"
the three woman had stopped knitting sometime while he was talking, and were now staring at him. The middle one smiled. "Your life, yes. That will be $5.50. Pleasure to do bussiness. We don't get many customers, Riker Adley Jackson."
Riker stared at them for a second, surprised, then decided that it was just an old lady thing. Still, how had they known his name? "I don't see why," He mused. "This fruit looks awesome, yeah."
The lady knitting the left sock nodded, humming as she filled three bottles with cider, while the lady on the right scoped up some ice. "Yes. This fruit gives you power. We are interested that you are the only one who welcomes it like this. You can change fate—this fate," the lady in the middle hefted up the largest pair of scissors that Riker had yet to lay eyes on, and snipped a strand of the thread as he watched, interested, "you can change."
"Yeah, sure thing!" Riker waved as he pushed his purchase into Grover's trembling hands, and reached for the bottles of cider, exchanging money with the lady in the middle. These ladies wierded him out, a bit, but he liked the conversation they'd had. They weren't too bad, like some old people he'd met. The lady holding the basket handed him their card, and Riker dragged Grover away, waving cheerfully.
When they reached the other side of the road again, Riker snapped his eyes to Grover, who was white and shaking. "What, you got grandma-phobia or some shit?" He asked. "Chillax, Grover! I got food, see? You like food!"
"No, Riker, y-you don't understan—"
At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment.
The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life. The passengers cheered., and Riker pumped a fist into the air, grinning. "Whoohoo!"
"Darn right!" Yelled the driver in response, and the passengers laughed. The man slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"
There might be a truck-load of mistakes. I'm getting lazy, sorry XD
There's a poll on my profile, i would really appreciate it if you guys voted on it, thanks!
Review, please!
~Scylar X.