The Problem With Leo Valdez
Disclaimer: All characters[aside from a few OC's] belong to RR.
Leo Valdez is-unfortunately- not my creation as with the other demigod characters.
They're pretty cool, though.
Good job, Rick.
A/N: Ohmygod you guys I feel like this chapter has taken too long to write.
I promise, they'll be an update next Saturday as well (maybe).
Chapter: VIII
PIPER
Trapped
Piper didn't think things could get any worse. The ship was blowing out smoke, Festus was making clicking sounds which were probably due to his brain being hit by a tree branch, and the other demigods were still groggy from the fall.
To make matters worse, Leo, the one who had apparently caused the whole mess, still hadn't shown up yet.
As Piper bandaged up her injure friends and fed them some ambrosia (also taking some for herself, as her leg felt like it had been snapped in half then had a thousand needles shoved into it), she began to brainstorm ways how to get the heck out of wherever they had landed.
Obviously getting the Argo II back in the sky was a no-go. The thing, while repairable if they had the right resources and time, wouldn't get them ten feet off the ground, much less be able to function as an actual ship.
She could find some drachmas and call for help from Camp Half-Blood, ask for a couple chariots from the Apollo kids and borrow some pegasi, but what could would those do in Athens?
Piper furrowed her eyebrows as she cut off another piece of gauze. They were going into war. They needed a battleship.
"Piper?" Percy said, lifting his head and frowning at her. "Woah... there's two of you."
"I see three." Jason grumbled, rubbing his hands over his eyes. "Oh my gods. Guys, does anyone else feel the ground shaking?"
A few feet away, Hazel pulled herself up into a sitting position. "Well that certainly wasn't fun." She said, pulling her curly hair away from her face and wiping the blood away from her cheek. "Let's not do that again anytime soon."
"Aye aye, matey." Percy mumbled in a bad attempt at a pirate accent. He gave a tired smile, then managed a sloppy salute before dropping his hands back onto the grass.
Beside him, Annabeth punched him in the arm. "Shut up, seaweed brain."
Piper stared at the three of them in dismay. The boys were completely out of it, and Frank was barely even awake yet. At least Annabeth, Hazel, and Piper seemed to be doing okay.
"When... before I woke up," Piper recalled, trying to remember. "I heard someone calling my name. Did any of you hear something similar?"
Percy's eyes shot open wide. "I did." He said, forcing himself to sit up. "I heard something too."
Piper nodded for him to go on.
"It was a pool." Percy whispered, sounding amazed at his own words. The second he stopped talking, Piper felt her shoulders sag. The guy still didn't know what the heck he was talking about.
"Don't look at me like that." The son of Poseidon snapped, his words directed at Piper. "It was there! And it told me something. It was... uh... it was telling me I needed to go back."
Annabeth sat up as well. "I didn't hear anything, but I was reading something." She remembered, narrowing her eyes. "All of the pages had the same things written on them. It was..." She scowled and shook her head. "I can't remember."
To Piper, this was insanely weird.
In their dreams, the daughter of Aphrodite had been hearing voices in a flower field, the son of Poseidon had been listening to a pool, and the daughter of Athena had been reading.
Piper looked over at Hazel, who now seemed to be in somewhat of a trance.
"Hazel-" She began to say, but Jason's voice cut her off.
"The ground." Jason muttered, swatting at a blade of grass. "The ground!"
Great, Piper thought. My boyfriend has gone crazy.
Piper was going to tell him everything was fine, but then Annabeth and Percy began to act up as well.
"I think it's trying to eat me." Percy said bluntly, pulling his hand away from the dirt. Clumps of mud stuck to his fingers and bits of grass wrapped themselves around his arm.
Annabeth tried to do the same, but her hand wouldn't budge. "It's stuck!"
Confused, Piper looked down to see that the earth below her seemed to be dragging her down as well. She tried to move her legs, but the mud hardene around them, acting like a glue.
"I don't understand." She hissed, tugging harder.
Annabeth shot her a worried glance. "Gaea." She said. It was the only thing she needed to say.
Jason, still a little bit dazed, began muttering Latin curses as he tumbled back to the dirt floor after his attempt to stand up.
Piper's heart fell. "Oh gods no." She growled, trying to kick her feet. "Not now. Not now!"
Hazel jerked out of her trance as the grass around her hands began finding its way up her arm. She let out a scream, but her attention didn't seem to be focused on her own problems.
"Frank!" The daughter of Pluto cried. Piper looked just in time to see the Roman demigod nearly disappear in the dirt. The only part of his body left showing was a small bit of his head.
Immediately, Piper understood the other girls panic.
"Can anyone move?" The daughter of Aphrodite asked, unable to hide the worry in her voice. She didn't want to be swallowed up by the earth goddess. That would just be plain weird.
Annabeth let out a groan of frustration. "No, McLean, we can't."
"I can!" Percy perked up, a wide grin plastered on his face. "This is mud, right? Mud, water, this'll be no biggie." He said, sounding overly proud of his idea. To Piper, it seemed like nothing more than wishful thinking and desperation.
The others watched as the boy squeezed his eyes shut, but after a few seconds of silence passed it was clear that Percy's plan wasn't working.
"Gaea's controlling this, Percy." Piper said, not only trying to reassure him but herself as well. "We'll find another way out."
Suffocation didn't seem like the best way to die, but as the five of them tried to come up with idea's and Frank disappearing in the mud, Piper felt like it was the way she would go.
She looked to her side to ask Jason what they should do, but the blond had his eyes focused on the sky and was uttering something under his breath. As Piper watched him, she felt the frown already on her face deepen. What was he doing? She strained her ears to listen, but Hazel's sudden outburst strayed her concentration.
"He's gone!" Hazel exclaimed, tears forming around her eyes. "Frank. He just went under."
Piper wanted to say something that would make the girl feel better, but she didn't think that even charmspeak would be able to hold back Hazel's sobs. Besides, just looking at the sight of where Frank used to be caused a hollow pit in Piper's stomach. She doubted whatever power she had would work against her own grief.
Beside her Piper heard the sound of someone else being sucked further into the mud, but the grass and tangled itself around her so much that she could barely turn her head.
"Annabeth-" Percy began to say.
"I'm fine." Annabeth replied, seemingly through gritted teeth. "Hazel, I really need you to do one thing for all of us, is that okay?" Although the girl sounded calm and under control, Piper sensed the inner alarm that she was feeling.
Piper felt it too.
Hazel gave a shaky nod. "Okay."
"Try to find out whats underground." Annabeth said. "There has to be a room or, or a bunker or something. Is there anything?"
"I don't know." Hazel admitted, her voice quiet. "I can't tell."
Annabeth hardly got a word out before Jason let out an air snatching scream. Frightened, but more so concerned, Piper forced herself to turn so she could face him.
He wasn't there.
"Jason." Piper whispered, her eyes wide with alarm. "Gods, this can't be happening." Frank had already went under, now Jason was down there with him. If Leo still counted, that meant three of the seven demigods were gone. Four were left. What chances did they have?
No. Piper thought, forcing back the tears in her eyes. Jason and Frank are still alive.
She wanted to believe it, she really did, but what if there wasn't any air where they were? What if it was just earth, and Gaea was suffocating them?
"Oh jeez, my foot." Percy uttered, a panicked look spreading across his face. "No one freak out, but I think something just grabbed it."
"Grabbed it?" Annabeth repeated in disbelief. "Kick it away, then! Hazel, there has to be something under us."
The daughter of Pluto looked as if she was struggling against breaking down. "There's no metal and I can't sense any tunnels. I'm sorry... I can't help here."
"It's alright." Piper said reassuringly, managing a smile. "We'll-"
Annabeth cut her off.
"No, it's not, Piper!" The girl shouted, true panic sounding in her voice. "We can't get out of this and something is trying to get Percy! How is that alright? We need to know whats down there!"
For once, Piper didn't give a quick remark. Even Percy and Hazel had fallen silent, which was especially odd for the son of Poseidon.
Then, Percy disappeared underground.
Piper hadn't been aware that it was possible to feel so numb. Three of her friends were victims now, and by the looks of it Hazel would soon be the fourth. With every second that passed the mud dragged the daughter of Pluto down deeper, and now it was above her shoulders.
Annabeth cleared her throat. "I shouldn't have yelled like that." She apologized, though her eyes were stuck to where Percy had been, not where Hazel was. "Even if we don't know what it is, we can still fight whatever's down there."
All three of them sank down deeper into the mud, which now seemed to be climbing its way around their skin and making the trip quicker.
Hazel only had a few seconds left.
"...We promise." Piper chipped in, wishing she could do something to wipe the worry from her friends face. "Seriously. We'll kick some monster butt."
Hazel gave what Piper hoped was a laugh, but then the mud reached to her mouth and her eyes filled with fear again.
Then, she was gone.
Annabeth was next.
"No brilliant last minute ideas?" Piper asked, lowering her eyebrow.
The daughter of Athena shot her a glare.
"Woah, woah, relax. Like you said, we can always fight our way out."
Annabeth bit her lip. "If we die-"
"We won't."
"But if we do... who's going to save Olympus from Gaea? I know that Nico and Reyna are trying to fix the rift between the Romans and Greeks, but even if our camps unite, we're the members of the prophecy for a reason. Jason, Percy, you, me, Hazel, Frank, and Leo... we can't fail at this."
Piper rolled her eyes. "The gods can choose some other special seven to save them, then."
Annabeth frowned. "I'm not joking around, Piper." She said, and Piper felt bad for trying to get a laugh out of the situation. Annabeth was always the one who had it together, seeing her so worried about something should have told the girl to try to help calm her down.
"You already said it, Chase. We're the members of the prophecy for a reason, no way we'd fail at this. Heck, maybe we can't fail at all!" Piper said as enthusiastically as she could. "The Fates wouldn't have picked a bunch of losers to save the world and planned for them to die, right?"
"...Right."
"Good. We'll all make it out of this."
Annabeth nodded, then was pulled deeper into the mud so it came up past her mouth. Seconds passed, maybe a minute, and suddenly Annabeth drew in a large breath just as she sank enough so the mud covered her nose.
Not even ten seconds passed before she was completely under.
Alone now, Piper realized that she was absolutely terrified.
After about a minute of fearful waiting, something under the mud began tugging at her left foot and Piper felt a rush of terror. It must have been the same thing that Percy had spoken of, but the girl hadn't expected it to literally be trying to drag her downwards.
Mom, Piper thought as she strained her neck to keep her head above the ground. If you can do anything, just don't let any one of us die.
She wasn't really sure how much control the goddess of love had over life and death, but hopefully Aphrodite could pull a few strings to keep the six demigods alive. And Leo. Whatever situation the guy was in at the moment, Piper hoped it wasn't quite as terrifying as being eaten by dirt.
With one last little wish to her mother, Piper was pulled down under.
If she had known what was going to happen when she opened her eyes, maybe Piper wouldn't have been as scared as she was fifteen seconds before.
At first she had felt someone shaking her shoulder, which she automatically assumed was a monster checking if she was dead. Then she had heard someone saying her name, which reasonably she thought was a Cyclopes mimicking someones voice. And then finally, her leg began to fall asleep and her eyes snapped open from the feeling of pins and needles.
What she saw thankfully wasn't a monsters lair, but it definitely wasn't a very welcoming sight despite her friends all being well and alive.
It looked like some sort of cave, except Piper couldn't see an actual opening aside from the roof (which was literally dripping down and looked like it was about to collapse, by the way). The walls were jagged rocks, and barely any light shone through so everything looked like it was engulfed in shadows.
"Oh thank gods, you're awake." Jason said, rushing over to her side. "You hit your head pretty hard... does it hurt?"
Piper hadn't even noticed the headache, but as soon as Jason mentioned it her skull began to throb.
"Ow, yeah. Where are we?"
"No clue." Jason replied, rubbing his forehead. "Hazel's trying to find a way out, but it doesn't look like there's any exits unless we climb back up."
From the far wall, Percy snorted. "Too bad there's no good footholds, Grace."
Piper frowned. "Something grabbed my foot, though. Is there-"
"We thought it'd be better if we just brought you down instead of letting you panic." Jason answered, giving a shrug. "Frank really freaked Percy out with that idea."
"He's awake?"
Jason nodded to where the other demigod was. Sitting on the floor with his head in his hands and murmuring something in Latin, was good ol' Frank Zhang.
"Is he okay?" Piper asked, raising an eyebrow. He didn't get any ambrosia from earlier because he had been unconscious, and now he had suffered yet another fall. Piper hoped that the guy hadn't hit his head too hard.
"He'll be fine." Jason assured her, though his voice led her to believe he was doubtful. Piper cast another glance at Frank before turning her gaze back to Jason.
"What about you?"
Jason smiled. "I'm fine, too."
Piper felt as if that single moment was perfect, like it was something that only happened in movies or books. Jason's eyes, despite the darkness around them, shone their usual light blue and his smile was somehow charming even with it's imperfect little scar. Piper would have kissed him if not for the others being able to see.
And then, Annabeth's alarmed voice ripped Piper out of the perfect moment.
"The roof is sealing up!" Annabeth said, pointing upwards.
Piper scowled and looked upwards. She didn't know what she expected, but she saw exactly what Annabeth had exclaimed.
The patches where the light shone through were making their way together, making a wall of earth between the six demigods and the surface.
"Oh, gods no." Piper whispered, pushing past Jason and rushing towards the far wall. She hadn't even noticed it before, but there were holes lining the entire stone. Round little passage ways that buried into the earth, all of them beginning to pour out water.
