Hey guys- i did promise something in the region of 10,000 words- I am writing this intro before i finish, but i have confidence- I'm writing everything possible, and i'm updating all of that, so here we are, as an apology for the short 2,000 words from last time, and because I love writing so much. So, many thanks go to Angel daughter of Nike (like the pen name) for the story favourite. Now, one of the most intruiging things about the information we have recived regarding the Mark of Athena, was the message Athena is said to have left Annabeth: follow the mark of athena. Avenge me. Why did she leave the message? What is the purpose of Annabeth's directed vengeance? Has Athena been captured? If so, how? She's the think tank of the gods, and since Enceladus had been defeated, she doesn't even have her giant counterpart to combat her. So how Riordan handles that will be so, so interesting, and it's just incredibly... mysterious Regardless of the fact that my view of what may happen is undoubtedly wrong, i have a crack at tackling that topic now. On one of the days I was writing this, I went to a Waterstones to pick up a copy of The Demigod Diaries, except they didn't have it- I think someone else pilfered it before me- so I was especially annoyed to miss out on something which prolongs the agony until the Mark of Athena. I'm hoping that TDD gives lots of rereading, which would be fantastic during our long wait. Review plzkthnxbai
Annabeth walked downstairs, chewing her lip. She wasn't sure that the success ratio that Will had spoken of and that she had calculated in her mind was suffiecient to ensure an attempt in the first place- had it been anyone else, she would have gone ahead and said no. But, all things considered, he was one of the seven, and so it had to be done. She brushed open the door to Jason's room and began walking up and down as she explained the predicament to Frank and Percy.
There was a short silence when she had finished. "Well, I know it sounds risky, but we've got to do it, right?" Percy said. "Not to mention the fact it'd be nice to sleep where I was sleeping in the first place, or that it'd be nice to not be attacked by him again- he's one of the seven, you know?"
"Yeah," Frank agreed, nodding his head. "I don't know what was wrong, but we've got to fix him up."
Annabeth nodded, slowly, still pacing, although slowing. "Ok. Well, you know what we have to do, you two, so just keep him under lock and key. Or, well, you know- just keep an eye on him. Don't forget to feed him once he does wake up, though, ok?"
"Yeah, don't worry, we won't forget." Percy assured her.
"Ok-"
"Annabeth," came a muffled call from outside the room.
Annabeth turned and poked her head round the door, and yelled up the stairs: "Leo? What is it?"
"Come up here!" Came the answering shout.
Grumbling, Annabeth turned again. "Don't forget, you two; food water, for yourselves as well as him."
"We know," Frank said, laughing.
Annabeth just raised an eyebrow at a grinning Percy as she ducked back out of the room and jogged back up the stairs, until she reached the cabin furthest towards the front of the deck, where Leo was hanging his curly head out of the doorway.
When he saw her, he began talking again, ducking inside as he did so. "We've got another storm coming in..." he said.
"What?" Annabeth said, walking inside the cabin. "How long ago did you see this, Leo?"
"'Bout ten seconds ago, I'd guess," he replied as he sat down in a wheeled chair that shifted backwards on those wheels.
Annabeth raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"For real this time, Annabeth. I was thinking we should take the boat down into the water- the stabilisers could handle it easily, but there isn't any need to put stress on them, even if it is tiny. Also," He added quietly, "Jason's not really fit to be doing anything up here, you know, and Percy's probably able to do something down there to keep any monsters n' stuff away from us."
Annabeth just stared at him. Being sensible? What was this? Maybe he can be sensible-
"I was thinking, you know... maybe we should have a new colour on the ship. Bright green, maybe, with orange stripes. Just a thought."
She shook her head, laughing under her breath. "Take the ship down, Leo."
She walked out, still laughing, to return downstairs, into her room, where, now, only her and Piper remained. She drew across the doors on the balcony, where the chairs and table on that single balcony were sealed to the floor. She felt the ship descending ever so slowly, down towards the ocean surface. She sat herself on the single table and one of the chairs that occupied the four-bed room. She opened Daedalus' laptop, fingers flickering across the keyboard to type in the password she had set after Daedalus himself had gifted her with it. It contained priceless information in the form of inventions, ones that had either been produced or, more usually, ones that weren't to be produced. She now used it for her own work- she had a wireless 'go anywhere' dongle, which, as the signal bar showed, was giving her internet access, although the signal hadn't been present as they'd been higher up- now, as they descended, that bar filled up, and Annabeth did some searching. She'd decided, since she was apparently the one that could lead them to the doors of death, that she obviously had to start at a location with significant historical importance. Nowhere other than the Coliseum would be appropriate, she felt.
She'd felt blood, ever so distantly, draining from her face, as Percy made it clear that she was the one who was supposed to read the signs to lead the seven to where they were supposed to go. Not just because she'd suddenly felt the leaden weight of responsibility on her shoulders, far more so than before, was because she had been reminded of a visit she'd had from a very special person. Not just her mother, but the goddess of war and wisdom, Athena.
To say it'd been a pleasant visit would be a complete and utter lie- the fact that it had been her birthday didn't seem to have saved her from a particularly uncomfortable visit.
Annabeth opened her eyes, and her hand darted towards the knife she kept underneath her pillow. She had that feeling that something else, something unnatural was in the room with he. She opened her eyes miniscule amount, intending to discover the identity of the intruder, and as she did so, she saw the hem of a dress, and heard a voice, that did not attempt to be quiet, something that she would suspect would be true in an intruder. She opened her eyes wide.
"Daughter."
"Mother!" Annabeth whispered in disbelief. "Mother, what are you doing here? Has Zeus allowed you to-"
"Zeus has not lifted his foolish restrictions," replied the tall, blonde-haired woman standing in front of Annabeth, dressed in jeans and a white blouse. Her eyes contained the wintry, contained grey fury of a tempest, and right now, those eyes were directed, full force, at Annabeth's own. And, judging from her mother's expression, she was not in the best of mods.
"I am, however under the impression that the seven demigods of the prophecy are being gathered. Greek, and Roman, to embark on a journey that needs a reader of signs to lead them to their objective. And you, my daughter, are one such demigod that can provide them with a reader."
Annabeth listened in silence, even when her mother took a moment to settle herself into a chair inside Cabin nine.
"As I leave you, Annabeth," she continued, "I will mark you as one of the readers. But I have one more thing to say regarding yourself. Or, more specifically, you and Percy Jackson."
Annabeth desperately tried to contain a hiss of fury and a sigh of depsair. Several times since she'd started going out with Percy, her mother had approached, bearing several reasons why her dating him was the least sensible choice possible. On all of those occasions, Annabeth had simply ignored her mother- not because she didn't want to listen to the arguments, which may have contained a valid point, and, knowing Athena, definitely did, but because she knew that even if she did listen, and think on them, nothing could override the fact that she adored Percy.
"Daughter, there is one thing a child of Athena can never afford to show- weakness. We may not have the brainless brawn of the offspring of Ares, or the might of Poseidon's children, or the versatility of Hermes' children- we have power and intelligence in large measure, usually the latter in far greater abundance, thankfully. A trained fighter that uses her head can be far more effective than one with knots of muscle for a brain. Weaknesses are gaps in a warrior's armour- one particular weakness that leaves a gaping area of flesh exposed is the care we may give to others. That makes them a target for others, and demigods of all people, with all your frailities and flaws, cannot afford this."
"Mother!" Annabeth cried exasperatedly, giving in.
Athena studied her for a moment, storm-grey eyes probing. "I believe, that, this once, you could do without a talking to from me. So, I shall take my leave, and leave you with a gift of sorts, and a warning- Jackson may cause more trouble than he is worth."
Annabeth cried out -as Athena vanished instantaneously, a searing, blinding pain stabbed her thigh, white-hot agony lancing up and down her leg from midway up her thigh- it felt like a day-old knife cut, rubbed in salt and slashed open again, it felt like a skinless body exposed to the touch of burning coals, it felt like her leg had been flayed with steel-tipped whips, skin scraped with iron and flayed again. She screamed, rolling backwards, her knife dropping from her hands to land with a clang against the floor as she clapped both hands to her thigh, where the pain emanated from. And then, after what seemed like hours had to have passed, yet what would actually be only seconds later, as Annabeth knew from past experience of pain, she was released from the cruel poker of pain that had jabbed at her.
She shook her haid a number of times to clear the residue of that agony from her head, and became aware of some of her cabinmates clustered around her, Malcolm most prominent at the front, his forehead creased in concern. "What happened?"
"..." Annabeth hesitated. Had Athena wanted her siblings to know of what had happened here, she would have appeared to them, as well, but she had not, apparently- she was sure the goddess' presence would be enough to rouse the others, undisguised. Athena always had a plan, she reminded herself. "A nightmare," she responded, laying her head back on her pillows, forcing her hands away from her flaming leg. As her siblings drew away, relieved that their head counsellor was all right, she turned over on her bed, determined to convince the others that everything was normal- or as normal as it could be. However, as soon as silence reigned inside the cabin, she turned aside her blankets and lifted her shorts slightly to feel gingerly around her thigh, running a finger around the sensitive area. She could feel no mark, no nothing, though it felt as if something had been branded inches deep into her skin. She turned, again, so that the soft light filtering into the cabin in the dawn illuminated, just, her thigh. There was no visible mark there, either.
Even now, Annabeth still fingered her thigh, remembering the pain her mother had put her through- though for what reason, Annabeth had yet to observe. She was sure when they reached the Coliseum, that her mother's strange gift could, and would, be explained.
Even as the absently touched her leg, she searched the web for the exact location of the Coliseum, in Rome, as well as a few other facts that she distractingly intruiging, such as regarding the architecture, its construction, protection as a site of national importance, etc, all the while detached.
The door opened suddenly, and Annabeth's hand flashed to her knife strap, thinking of a loose Jason. But rather, it was a worried Hazel that entered the room.
"Hi, Annabeth." she said, almost nervously. The two of them had certainly got on well, as far as their limited conversations had allowed. Annabeth found it satisfying that practically of them would get on well as far as it had gone- she'd almost been surprised, to her embarassment, though she hadn't let it show, to find Hazel as agreeable as she was from what she had seen, almost as if she was expecting the surly, disagreeable, ignorant Roman stereotype Jason had portrayed to them, despite knowing Jason was quite far from that, and so was Frank, for that matter; but Hazel was just as nice as Piper.
"What's up?" She asked, letting her hand drop to the side and flicking a glance at the computer before diverting her attention fully to Hazel, who wouldn't have come in here almost cutting her fingers off with her teeth with nervousness for nothing.
"It's just Piper, that's all. I'm not sure what to do exactly. She just kind of sits there, and me and her have talked quite a bit, it's just I find it really weird when she talks about Jason, you know...in that way, besides the fact she barely manages to speak. Although she's almost managed a few sentences since it happened. I want to be up there helping her, comforting and helping her get through it and everything, but I did see you go in to send one of those Iris-messages back to Camp Half-blood, so I just wanted to know if there was anything Piper should know, or anything I should do, or need to do..." she cut off, still nibbling her nails like a deranged hamster.
Annabeth almost breathed a sigh of relief, then severed it as she realised she couldn't afford to do that. Just simple worry about what to do, concern for Piper, that was all; no unexpected happenings in the middle of the crisis they were already absorbed with, pretty much.
"Well," she sighed, she could not help it, "if she's talking more since you started comforting her, then that's a definite improvement. The thing is, we know what we have to do to get Jason back to what he usually is, and Piper's involved. Well, without her we can't do it, essentially, so all that has to happen is that she gets better. She's tough. I know she can do it, it's just a matter of how long we have to wait before she well enough to do it. And we don't want her to just be 'well enough'- we want her to be healed, sound in mind as she is in body, fit enough up there so she knows what she's doing. I mean, she'll obviously do it, but it wouldn't be right, just guiding her into doing something she doesn't know anything about."
Hazel seemed relieved, grateful even. "Okay. I'll just carry on as usual, then," she smiled.
Annabeth smiled back. "We will."
Momentarily, Hazel tightened the hand that had been relaxing, her knuckles whitening slightly, her eyes tightening.
Annabeth stood instantly. "What is it, Hazel?"
"If can feel something underneath the ship, gold, incredible amounts of it. It was so faint before i hadn't even noticed it, but now we're coming down onto the ocean I guess it's coming closer...what could it be from?"
"Maybe an undersea mining rig, mortal," Annabeth suggested, though she doubted it.
Hazel saw the doubt, maybe in her voice or in her expression, but either way, the two rushed out of the room, up the stairs and were peering over the edge of the craft, wind brushing upwards, sending their hair, blonde and warm brown flying up above them.
Underneath the ship, all was quiet; even though the air impacting them and the approaching evening slightly lessened the quality of visibility, they could see not a patch of suspiciously dark or light ocean, no huge figures rising from the ocean to battle them, no colossal fins breaking the surface of the ocean. The sea's surface, from what they could see, looked utterly calm.
"I don't think..." Annabeth hesitated, taking a little more time to make sure, "That there's anything down there. If there was, it's been scared off."
The two of them relaxed in almost mirror motions. Annabeth looked to the side at Hazel, hesitating. "I hope you don't mind me asking, Hazel... but it's just Percy said something about you that-"
"It's all right, you can ask. Seeing how much Percy admires you- and that's an understatement- no harm'll come of telling you, I guess. This is a second chance for me, you could say. I died in 1941, but Nico...brought me back- oh, by the way, how did you know Nico?"
Annabeth was slightly shocked- to hear Hazel dismiss her own death out of hand and then move onto another subject so quickly was a surprise, but it wasn't, on the other hand, something you wanted to dwell on. She studied her for a second, and then replied; "We were the ones who first found him and his sister." She saw Hazel's expression change from inquisitiveness to sadness during those last words- sadness for Nico, or self-pity? "You know about his sister, though, don't you?" she finished.
"Yeah." she said quietly.
"After the Titan War... you know what that was, right?" At Hazel's slight, hesitant nod, she carried on. "Not too much, then and I'm not surprised. The gods didn't want us coming into contact, and they do the whole 'no-contact' thing pretty well," she laughed, and Hazel laughed in kind. "He drifted off a little bit. He spent way, way more time at camp than he had done before, especially seeing as he had his own cabin after the war, but he always had regular trips away, and we wouldn't see him for a while at a time."
"Yeah, that's Nico. He never really stays around some people for longer than he can help it. He knows he makes people uneasy, and he doesn't mind- that much, anyway- any more." Hazel said.
"I feel bad for him, in a way," Annabeth said. "It's not his fault that Hades or Pluto got the short straw when the big three were choosing which part of this realm they got, you know?"
Hazel laughed, looking sideways at Annabeth. "Frank says the same thing, actually."
"Really? Frank seems like a nice guy. How long have you two been an item?" Annabeth asked.
Hazel flushed, which meant she must have been blushing furiously for Annabeth to make out in the almost-complete darkness of the late evening. "Not very long, only a few days to be honest. We were on the quest with Percy, and well...just at the end of that, basically since we came back to Camp Jupiter."
Strange, Annabeth thought, that Hazel was so embarassed and cautious when it came to talk of her boyfriend, yet utterly uncaring when discussing her second life, and her first death.
"So what about you and Percy?" she asked.
Annabeht looked down at the sea surface again, coming up to meet them. "Well, I've always liked him, to be honest, but he was so...dense- he still is, a lot of the time, he never seemed capable of thinking like that, and, well, there were...complications." Annabeth didn't want to share anything about Luke- it didn't feel right. On the other hand, she felt comfortable talking to Hazel about Percy- not completely, but fairly comfortable. Plus, this was a girl's topic, really, and she wanted to understand Hazel, and eventually be friends with her. "We've been together really for months. And then, of course, because of the whole fucking 'forced exchange' thing I didn't see him for eight months." Annabeth forced down the anger she felt inside, at the 'exchange,' at Hera, and reminded herself not to twitch for her knife.
Hazel seemed to read the motion Annabeth must have hand in her hand, though, and eyed her knife, strapped to her arm. "How come you always fight with a knife?" Hazel asked. "I mean, I'm not one to talk about unusual choices, seeing as I fight with a spatha..."
Annabeth hesitated. "A friend gave it to me, a while ago. He isn't really around any more, so I keep it as a reminder." Of what Percy did for me, she added in her head.
Hazel
As Hazel said another goodbye to Annabeth and a supported Piper, who walked into their room, she decided that she really liked Annabeth. She seemed pretty easygoing, and had a sense of humour to boot, and was decidedly friendly and open. well, she reasoned, you were too, so she didn't really have any choice. She opened the door to her room, and walked in. She went past her bed, sweeping the set of clothes she was wearing- loose shorts and a shirt. As she pulled off the clothes she had been wearing the whole day, she checked the time- nine o'clock, now. Earlier than she might usually go to sleep, but she was tired enough. All the fuss- necessary fuss, she supposed- about Jason and Piper and then the fight with the storm spirits had been tiring- her godly powers had been no use at all during the fight, so she'd had to rely simply on her spatha and her sword skills to keep her alive. Frank had given her a helping paw whenever he could, yet he had been occupied a fair amount of the time. She'd come away for the most part unscathed, but a nibble on some of the godly food the Greeks had stored on the ship had washed those away. Stop thinking of them that way, she chided herself. You know all their names, Hazel. Annabeth, Percy, Piper, Le- she stopped as she came out of the bathroom, as Leo came in, looking especially tired.
He looked up and saw her, as he walked towards his bed, feet dragging. "Where's Frank?" he paused as he looked up at her, and he saw that he'd answered his own question in his head. Frank was, for this night and the next, maybe even the next, depending on Piper's condition, sleeping in another room with Percy and a restrained Jason.
Although she felt slightly awkward at spending the night in the same room as him, even though they were a bed apart, she was quite tired, tired enough that she managed to walk to her bed and climb into her blankets after a small twitch of her lips at Leo, who was looking like he was trying to swallow his tongue, not really a smile, but at least she gave the semblance of keeping her head. If anything, he seemed to get a little more nervous, looking around like he was trying to figure out how to get out of the room.
Hazel decided to deal with it as best she could, and, ignoring the flush of embarassment on her cheeks, she turned over, facing away from him, and closed her eyes. She almost thought she could hear him exhaling heavily.
She kept her eyes closed, and although she knew Leo was a litte over a metre away, and no-one else in the room with them, sleep was too attractive a prospect for her body to resist.
She opened her eyes a while later, a few hours, she thought, to the quiet sound of scratching behind her, like the sound of a pencil on a peice of paper. She turned her shoulders, enough to look over her left-hand one and see Leo, small lamp illuminating the desk he sat in front of, sitting in a chair and sketching something out on a pad of plain paper.
Although she'd thought she was exhausted, Hazel didn't have any trouble rousing herself from her slumber properly.
"Leo?" He turned quickly at his name, and relaxed, slightly when he saw she was awake. "How come you're still up?"
He shrugged. "Can't sleep. I guess i'm just too ADHD for that."
Hazel smiled. "What are you doing?" she asked. "Drawing something."
"Well...not drawing, sketching out a design for something i'm working on." He replied, still not turning back to his work.
Hazel got out of bed and walked over to where he was. As she did, he turned back to his pad of paper and continued to scratch away at it studiously. She took the chair next to him, and, resting an elbow on the table and resting the other hand on her legs, which she had out to the side of the table, pointing towards him. He shifted slightly, glancing at her but continuing to to flick the pencil across the paper.
Looking at what it was he was working away at, Hazel saw a diagram for something that looked like like a metal bracer, drawn over a sketched human hand, save for the wiring drawn into the side of the two-dimensional diagram facing them, and the arrows and labelling, forumlas to do with mechanics, electricity and the like- anything and everything Hazel couldn't get her head around. In the middle of the table was a second sheet of paper, held down by a glass paperweight she hadn't noticed before, that also held a similar sketch- except this one was a gauntlet, also 2D, with the side hollow and showing levers and hoops for fingers, she assumed.
"What are you working on?" She asked, puzzled and curious.
"Er... well, it's kind of like this set of armour i'm constructing... I haven't really told anyone else, and I know Annabeth will go nuts if she thinks I'm wasting time-"
"No, no, I won't say anything," Hazel said. Leo had a guilty grin on his face, which reminded her of someone.
"It's powered by these fuel cells that you fill with bacteria, and then the energy from the reactions they produce," he said, still writing next to the bracer, "is fed into an accelerator- it magnifies the energy, kind of like a step-up transformer, but..." he trailed off as he looked up at her. She had her eyebrows raised in a 'what the hell' expression, which was how she felt- she didn't have any idea what he was going on about.
"Yeah. Sorry, I just get carried away, I guess." He grinned, suddenly keen. "You want to come and see it? I still need to make the arms, but you can see what i've done so far."
"Oh!...yeah, ok. That'd be nice," Hazel replied, surprised at the change in tone.
"I just...need...to...ok, let's...go," he said, finishing his scribbling on the peice of paper, pulling the diagram for the gauntlet out from underneath the paperweight, folding them both, and standing up. Hazel stood, as well, and followed him out into the area which had the controls for the ship to her right, and the other two rooms across from her and to a forty-five degree angle. Leo headed for the storeroom, though, on their left, the circular spiralling open for him and her, and headed for the forge, the transparent bubble-shaped container around it withdrawing smoothly into the floor.
"I'm just going to make the arm plates first," he said, tucking the peices of paper away inside his jacket, which he took off and threw on the floor with a casual disregard.
"Yeah, that's fine," Hazel said, sitting herself down on a chair, that spun around as she sat in it. She grasped the arms for balance, not expecting the spinning.
"Yeah...sorry. I made a lot of the chairs spinning ones," said Leo with a grin. "I think it was pretty good decision. I'd hate it if I just had to sit still the whole time- I mean how boring is that, right?"
Hazel spun around in the chair a few times. "Yeah, this is better," she agreed.
Leo took a flat sheet of celestial bronze out of a chest far behind him, pressed against the walls. He inserted it into the coals with a pair of tongs, and held it there, after a while taking it out, placing it against the anvil, and beginning to pound it with a hammer he held. Hazel frowned. He hadn't held that hammer a moment ago, and he hadn't reached for one anywhere else in the room as far as she was aware. Where had he got it from? Sammy had never been huge, and Leo was the same; wiry, slim, so she wouldn't have expected him to be any good at forging- but that plainly wasn't true, as she watched. He expertly hammered the plate of metal into an almost tubular shape, narrowing slightly at the end- the forearm. Hazel watched Leo in admiration as he beat the first of two mirrored plates that would encircle a forearm perfectly- his. As he finished beating out the first one, he looked around for the tongs he had used to put the bronze into the coals in the first place, but couldn't find them. Frowning, he rummaged around inside a tool belt, and after a moment or two pulled out, vertically, another pair of tongs. Hazel frowned again. The tool belt shouldn't have had any space inside for that- but he'd pulled it out all the same. Was it magical? She'd never heard of a magic tool belt that either made items smaller or just gave you something you wanted; then again, she'd never been into that kind of thing. If she had wanted something, she would have had Arion, who had run off, leaving smoke and a host of admiring demigods and legacies behind, after the battle in the Fields of Mars. Then a thought occured to her.
"Do you want me to do..." Hazel hesitated. She had no idea what he intended to do with it, apart form the obvious fact that he was going to lift it somewhere.
Leo stopped, surprised. "Oh. Yeah, you can do stuff with jewllery and precious metals, can't you? Well, um...sure, ok. Can you put it in the water?" he gestured to a medium-sized vat of water close to the coals.
"Yeah, no problem," Hazel said. She tucked her feet up underneath her as she focused onto the sheet of bronze. She'd found it a lot easier to control precious things since her quest with Percy and Frank. She hefted it slightly, testing the weight, then shifted it through the air towards the water, past Leo, whose eyes widened as it did so, and finally plunged it into the water, where it released a loud hiss of water.
"That's so cool," Leo said, still watching the peice of metal bubbling the water furoiusly. "How do you do it? Do you just like, think, go over there, and then it goes? But what if you think the wrong thing, or maybe think about other ways to do it, or if you're, like, really mad at someone, you think, go hit him on the head, then what happens?"
Hazel found herself laughing, putting a hand over her mouth to stop herself from doing so too loudly. She didn't want to wake anybody.
Leo carried on laughing, though, and turned away from the forge. "You mind taking that out now, Hazel?" he asked.
She complied, lifting the metal from the forge and placing it on the anvil again. She got up this time after moving the bronze there, and went over to the anvil, touching the metal. It was warm, but relatively cool to to the touch. She traced the shape, and placed it on her own forearm. She was surprised at how much it weighed, the thinness of the sheet stating the contrary to what she felt. She turned to ask Leo a question.
"How are you going to be able to lift-"
She stopped after pulling her eyes away from the metal as she swivelled, because Leo had turned as well, bringing them very close together, his head, and his lips centimetres from her. Hazel thought she should probably back away, especially given that... Hazel inched her head forward by the smallest amount possible, at almost the same time that Leo did. His eyes met hers for a second. They both inched forward again, moving closer and closer, to the point where Hazel closed her eyes, and she had the sense he had as well. Then something stopped her, forcing her to pause, and she could feel his every slight intake of breath; she could almost feel his lips. Her eyes opened, and looked into his. He blinked and shut his mouth, and she fell utterly still, also closing her mouth.
"Yeah." she said, angling her head backwards, inaling heavily.
"Uhu," he agreed, walking around her.
She went back to the chair, tucking her feet underneath her again, looking at the ceiling, the forge, the fridges, the weapons, metals, anything but Leo.
He coughed, and suddenly she was looking at him, inspecting him like she was looking for some information about him she could file and tuck away for consideration at a later time. She wasn't doing that, though. "All i've got to do with the arms is to pattern the bracers, then attach them. After that, well, it should be working. You won't say anything to Annabeth, will you?" he added, almost anxiously. "I want to annoy her as much as possible, showing it to her when it's working. Well, it's working now, but it looks kinda retarded with no forearms."
"Ok, go ahead," Hazel said, smiling again, though not as much as she had before. She didn't want to encourage him.
He went to his jacket on the floor again, and withdrew something from one of the inside pockets. A keypad, shaped like a calculator, with, from what she could make out, the numbers 0-9 on it, and a glowing square light placed at the top, above the keys, that was currently red.
He typed in a long sequence of numbers, long fingers flashing rapidly across the keyboard, too fast for her to see. The light at the top of the small pad, no bigger than her hand, flashed green, and stayed green.
Hazel caught a movement from the corner of her eye, and gasped. The far wall, the furthest point in the room from the door, on her right, had just extended backwards, what she had believed to be the wall simply vanishing, the actual wall appearing two, three metres back, with a huge mechanical set of armour taking up that seperating space.
"It's just a hologram, that's all...set up some lights, really focused. The pad just turns them off. You can walk through, if you know it's there. You do, so you can, but just make sure you don't let anything slip. And, if Annabeth, or Percy, or...Frank... or Piper want come down here- especially Piper and Annabeth, try and distract them." he said, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards.
Hazel said nothing, just stared at it.
It was easily seven, seven and a half feet tall. The chest represented a typical breastplate for a Greek, Hazel supposed, muscles imposed on the armour, a circular emblem embossed on the upper chest, a circle with a hammer, bronze flames dancing without motion around it. It was completely sealed, so Hazel didn't see how you were supposed to get into it. The head was ever so slightly smaller in comparison to the chest, a Greek helmet, metal plumes arching above it, with the eyes black holes and the entire face covered with a metalworked representation of a face, laughing hysterically. She looked at Leo when she saw that, raising an eyebrow, and he laughed gleefully. The shoulders were covered with the shoulder flaps of the breastplate, and the arms weren't humanlike, in the loosest possible sense of the word, angular, only curved slightly, clearly flexible with a ball joint at the elbow, with restraints at the side to stop the arm from sliding at an impossible angle for a human. Hazel was clever enough that that much was obvious. The legs were the same, except that the lower legs were covered with Greek graves- once again, she assumed- and the feet were again angled, almost pointed, yet having several overlapping layers on the top, reminding her of a bug's carapace. The forearms didn't contain any armour, instead having a farily weak-looking few bars of bronze to mantain a structure. the hands were complete, having the angular aesthetic again.
"I've watched Iron Man so many times, I just had to try it," Leo said, staring at the set of armour, seeming as enthralled as her. "I'm going to give it a name. Him or her?"
"Her, definitely." Hazel said.
He barked a short laugh out. "All right then, i'll think on something to give her. She's going to be talking to me half the time, or more, while i'm in there, so it needs to be something good. Something that I won't get hacked off saying all the time. Something...sexy but classy. I know! Shaniqua! No, no. I tell you what, I'll think it over." He mused.
Hazel pressed her lips together tightly to keep from bursting out laughing.
"But enough of that." He yawned. "What do you think, then?"
"I think it's amazing, honestly. How long has it taken you?" Hazel shook her head.
"Only a couple of weeks. I got tons of equipment from camp- my cabin gave me all the celestial bronze I needed for it, and the wiring. I also managed to get some Imperial gold from some Vulcan dudes in exchange for celestial bronze, so i'm using it for the weapons."
"Only a couple of weeks!" Hazel said in disbelief. Well, he was a son of Vulcan. Or Hephaestus.
"Yeah." He typed the code into the pad, again too quickly for her to see, and the wall reappeared a few metres in front of where it actually was. Now Hazel actually knew it was just a matter of light, she could make out where the fake wall joined the real- no gaps, it was just a different tone of the wall- or maybe she was imagining it.
"I guess i'm just that good, huh?" He gave a crazy smile.
She smiled.
Annabeth
Annabeth blinked her eyes a few times, clearing her vision. She sat up slowly, throwing her legs out of the side of the bed. Elbows on knees, she rubbed her eyes a few times, then stood up and went over to Piper's bed. She bent down slightly and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. Piper straightaway turned over and looked at Annabeth, eyes a little red.
Annabeth sat down on the side of the bed, leaving her hand on Piper's shoulder. "Are you feeling a bit better today?" she asked.
"Yeah." Piper said, sitting up on the bed. "I'm sorry I barely said anything yesterday. I couldn't help it, but I didn't know what to do-"
"Piper." Annabeth interrupted. "It's fine. I'm so sorry about the whole thing."
Annabeth wanted to get Jason back up to full health as soon as possible, yet not rushing Piper was important, not just because she actually cared about her as a friend, but also because they didn't want to have Jason well again and one of the seven emotionally cracked like an egg. So, she decided not to tell her until she was sure that Piper was fully capable- or at least as fully capable as could be.
"Is there anything I can get you?" She asked. "I'm going up to have breakfast now."
Piper shook her head. "No thanks, Annabeth. I'll just have it up there, on my own. I just need a little breathing space."
"That's fine." Annabeth got up from the bed.
She walked up the stairs to the deck, not bothering to get changed out of what she slept in just yet. She always woke early, and she doubted anyone else had the strength to get up this early. Well, Piper was a different matter.
She walked in through the circular door, the refreshing breeze on her legs and arms fading as the door spun closed behind her. She liked this second cabin, with its relaxing atmosphere. The Argo II had enough stablisers to keep in steady in flight under any kind of weather, and that included while they were on the sea, which they had been since last night. There wasn't any chance, really, unless some kind of leviathan slammed into the side of the ship, which shouldn't be dismissed, that anything would come free, but just to be sure, the two tables and four chairs around each of them had seals, suction seals that could be activated, holding them down to the floor, rock solid, to prevent them moving for anything short of someone cutting the chair legs in half, at the flick of a switch. The fridge was built into the floor, and had adjusting shelves inside that had never needed to be used, yet. The room was surrounded at waist height almost to the ceiling by window panes. Each one, about three quarters of a metre wide, had a button underneath it, that could make the window slide down into the floor, or raise it up again. The windows could also be made watertight with a press of a button. There were a few window panes that had been removed or had never been built in; instead a thick plastic pane was in place. Two cupboards, each with two hinged doors, held food, on the left-hand side of the door, sat next to the fridge, with a sink and taps underneath them. In the far left corner, the beanbags were nestled, facing the 40-inch plasma screen fastened into the third carbon fibre pane. The tables and chairs sat in the centre, the right and the far right.
Annabeth walked over to the cupboards. From the left-hand one she pulled a bowl. From the other, she pulled a box of cereal, and from the fridge a carton of milk. it wasn't really a patch on the magical feasts they had back at Camp Half-Blood, yet Annabeth enjoyed, for some reason, having the cereal.
She sat down, after pouring herself her breakfast, and turned the tv on with the remote, sitting at the table. Watching the National Geographic channel, she was reminded of the Lotus Hotel and Casino.
All those channels, and you turn on the National Geographic?
She munched away for a minute or two, still watching, when Percy himself walked in through the circular door.
He looked surprised when he came in. "You're up early." he said.
"I'm usually up early," she replied, dryly.
He eyed her for a moment, then came towards her, smiling a little. She held back a smile, and instead, covering her mouth as she spoke, still eating as she was. "I'm still eating. Unless you want to share my breakfast, you can wait."
He stopped, the, and the smile grew. He went straight past her then, smiling and shaking his head, to the cupboard. "I couldn't sleep much, knowing Frank was up watching, so I decided to get breakfast sooner so that I can take over from him quicker. The guy didn't get enough sleep last night; it's probably best that he catches up. He sat down beside her, with another bowl. She carried on watching the TV as she heard him pouring out milk into the filled bowl.
"National Geographic? Again, with this?" she heard him ask.
"It's interesting, Percy," she insisted. She finished the last mouthful of cereal, and got up, placing her bowl into the sink. She proceeded to wash up her plate immediately- there wasn't any need to let the plates fester, and someone had to do it eventually. It was a good thing there was a general sense of goodwill among the seven, otherwise there might have been several arguments over washing up, and a large pile of that to boot.
Finishing and drying her hands, she walked over to the table, and sat down, just as Percy got up to wash his up as well. Her eyes flicked back to the TV, and she continued to watch, enthralled by the information on screen regarding a supervolcano. Then she heard Percy sit himself down, and turned her eyes from the screen to look at him.
She got up from the chair, and sat herself down in Percy's lap, facing him, legs behind the chair back. She folded her arms and rested her chin on his chest. He smiled down at her, and ran a hand along her leg, starting almost at her ankle and moving up, not too soft, not too hard, all the way to halfway up here thigh, where her shorts began. She inhaled after that, a little more heavily than usual. She brought her head up, and he his down, and their kiss ended her attempts at rational thought. She brought her arms round behind his head, pulling his lips into hers even more. She still felt his hands feeling her legs, running up and down her thighs, then up the outside of her shorts, past her thighs, and up the back of her shirt. His hands felt her back, slipping up the curve, and touching her bra strap. Annabeth was so absorbed in the kissing that she didn't notice that until her bra had been undone and his hands were sliding away from it.
Pulling herself away with a huge effort, inhaling very heavily, she placed her hands on his, with her shirt inbetween her hands and his. "Percy," she said. "Not here. Someone could just walk in!"
He smiled again and planted a small kiss on her lips. "Sorry...carried away, you know."
He never pressed her for anything, either. Always considerate. She reached behind her back, and with sense of reluctance only beaten, and barely at that, by wariness, did up her bra again.
It seemed like that may have been the best decision, as Piper walked through the door a few seconds later. Her head was down, which gave Annabeth the time to pull her hands out from the back of her shirt and swing her other, mostly exposed leg to the other side, to adopt a more casual pose.
Piper looked up and barely batted an eyelid to see Annabeth sitting on Percy's lap. Instead, she walked over to the cupboards to get some breakfast, Annabeth saw. She leaned into Percy's ear, and said, "Come downstairs into our room, quickly- there won't be anyone else there."
He gave her a small smile that threatened to break into a grin, and nodded.
Annabeth looked at Piper, though, just to check that everything physically was all right. She dragged her feet a bit, and seemed rather lacklustre in her motions, but lack of sleep was to be expected from someone in her position.
She hurried herself downstairs, walking quicky to her room. She planted herself on her bed, sitting down and pushing her hair behind her ear with her hand. She crossed her legs on her bed and waited for Percy to come through the door, trying not to let herself get too excited before he'd even entered the room- and then he did, and she practically cleared the distance between her with a single step. She pressed him back against the door with her eagerness, breath leaving him as she staggered him, almost. "Piper won't be too long," she murmmured into his ear as he kissed her neck, then her collarbone area.
"That's ok," he said back, quietly but excited as well.
They went on the bed this time, him underneath her. This time, she didn't prevent him from taking off her bra, and feeling her breasts underneath her shirt. They kissed all the while, mouths connected, until she said that she thought she had heard something, a couple of minutes later.
Truth be told, she had been getting more and more into it as they had kept at it in those minutes, and she thought she may end up doing something more serious, which she would have preferred to do when she was completely alone with Percy, so that she could do it properly and enjoy it to the fullest extent possible. He was probably feeling the same way right now, and if he didn't, he wouldn't make the slightest complaint. He was more than happy to take whatever he had, no matter for how long.
She got up off the bed, lifting her shirt up above her chest, so that he could put her bra on again for her- it wasn't that she couldn't do it, or that she was inept at putting one on, it was just that Percy putting it on made it...sexier. She couldn't think of another way to describe it, but it was true, it was sexier, especially when his hands brushed... she almost blushed, but she stamped it out. Barely. She knew he enjoyed it, as well.
They had both walked out of the door of their room, Percy behind her, when she heard a noise. he'd heard it, too, because when she looked back to ask if he'd heard it, he held himself in a lowered position, Anaklusmos in his hands. It had been a small clang, like something small dropping onto a peice of metal. it had, seemingly, come from the storeroom.
Annabeth stalked over to the stooreroom as silently as possible, then pausing on the right side of the door, until Percy came, as silently as she had done, and stopped on the left-hand side of the door.
Annabeth put her ear to the door, pressing it tightly against the metal. She could hear something inside, and it wasn't the hissing of the coals from the forge, it wasn't the fridge shifting as they went over some rough waves- it sounded like there were people talking inside.
Annabeth relaxed. "It's just someone in there, it's probably Leo mucking around with the forge," she said, straightening up.
Percy relaxed as well, putting a hand to the metal door; a square door, almost normal, this one was, compared to the revolving circles of the rest of the ship, and pushed it open. He stuck his head round the side, and almost immediately withdrew it again
He looked at her, pulling the door closed with a quiet click. "That isn't Leo. Hell, it isn't anyone we know. All I could see was three guys in there, with all the lights out. I couldn't make out what they were doing, but they were definitely doing something in there."
"What?" Annabeth hissed, dropping into a lower stance again, this time unsheating her knife from its place on her arm.
"Yeah," Percy whispered back, also dropping to a lower position again. "I could just see two of them right at the back of the room, and then the third one was searching something on the floor from what I could make out."
"What do you mean, there are three guys in there? Where the fuck did they come from?" she said.
"I was thinking along the same lines," he replied quietly, "but that's what I saw. I don't know how they got on the ship, but they're in there all right, three of them."
"All right," whispered Annabeth, trying to keep her cool. "Shit." She didn't see how these three guys could just appear in the middle of the Argo II short of jetpacking up to the ship and climbing on board- on the other hand, they were on the water, which made it more believable that they had jumped on board. More to the point, who were they? They couldn't be mortals, unless they believed that they were hijacking a cruise ship or the like, the Mist saw to that. They could have also been hidden aboard the whole time, since...since when? And why on earth would anyone want to be sneaking around? It could be some idiots from Camp Jupiter, or even Camp Half-blood who'd been utterly desperate to come along, but Annabeth didn't think that was the case for a second.
"Okay," she whispered eventually. "Just stay here, and make sure that they don't go anywhere! Got it? I'm going to go and get Leo and Hazel up, and then we can deal with these guys."
He nodded, and hefted Riptide, the bronze casting a faint glow on the metal door.
Annabeth crept away, and walked into the other room, the one with just Hazel and Leo in. Annabeth thought of just the two of them in the room together, and had to clamp a hand over her mouth at the thought of Leo.
Leo and Hazel were fast asleep, the former spawled ungaily over his bed at an almost 45 degree angle, mouth open and hair a complete mess, his jacket was on the floor, but otherwise it appeared he had slept clothed, which, in the circumstances, was probably better. The latter was almost delicately curled up inside her blankets, facing away.
On tip toes, she went over to Leo and shook his shoulder. Twice, and then a third time. The fourth was enough to flutter an eyelid, before Annabeth had enough, and pinched his neck. HIs eyes snapped open, and she clamped a hand over his mouth to prevent the yell from being loosed. HIs hands snapped up to her single one, trying to pry it from his mouth.
"You have to shut up, Leo!" she hissed. "There's other people on board, in the storeroom."
His eyes widened at that, and he tried to speak through her hand. "mmmm mmm mmmm mmmmmm!"
"I've got no idea who they are, so that's why we need you. Percy's already waiting, so if you could get your fat ass out of that bed and come and help us, that'd be great." She whispered.
"mmm...mmmmm mmm mmmm!"
"You'd better be quiet, understand?" She whispered threateningly.
"mm mmm, mmmmm! mmm mmm mmmm mmm."
She took her hand from his mouth and gave him a warning glare, even as she turned and began creeping back towards the door, and towards the storeroom.
"Like a church mouse," came the whisper from behind. "You haven't got shit on this sneaking, check it out."
She would have punched him, except that now perhaps wasn't the best of times. The door spun open, and Percy was still keeping guard, in a weird way, outside the storeroom.
"What about Hazel?" he whispered.
"She's asleep, and she's not even dressed. He was," she gestured at Leo, "and us three are more than capable."
He nodded after a second.
Leo positioned himself directly in front of the door, and then mouthed, "On three."
Annabeth counted it off on her fingers, and on three, Percy shouldered the door open, Leo right behind him, almost eager for some reason, and Annabeth behind him.
The three figures were illuminated by the burst of morning light that flooded into the black room, utterly startled, and possibly a bit blinded. Percy had been right- two of them were right at the back, jumping away from what looked like a huge suit of armour- what the hell was that? And the other one had stood from a chest that he'd obviously been rummaging through.
Her ruminations on the why, what and how of these figures was ended as the three of them leaped at her- Leo, for some reason, ignited one of them straightaway, a stream of fire choking that figure to his knees with a gargled scream even as the flames stripped away the black clothing they wore, sending smoke up into the air.
The idiot! Annabeth thought furiously. We abviously need one of them to talk to, and we can use the other one to check if they're lying to us!
She slid past Leo, into the room entirely, to see Percy duck underneath a swipe, then come round and whack that same intruder on the back of his head with the flat of his blade, sending that one crashing to the ground. Annabeth immediately ran to that first one, and turned him over from his face-down position. His eyes were open, but glazed over, and Annabeth nodded in satisfaction, turning in time to see Percy and Leo throw the second's head into one of the chests lining the side of the storeroom. He collapsed without a sound to the floor.
Percy and Leo fistbumped. "Nice," they echoed.