CHAPTER 4 – WE MEET A GODDESS ON COMMUNITY SERVICE
"Whoa," said Grover as he entered the shop, and gazed down the aisles, "this place is so cool. Just look at all those cans! Sweet aluminium cans…"
"Eww, Grover!" Thalia shouted. "You're dribbling over the chocolate!"
The shop was deserted apart from the checkout woman, a lady in her early forties with a scraped-back ponytail. She was picking at her (obviously fake) nails obsessively, and chewing on some gum. If I didn't know better, I would have thought that cows were now being employed.
She appeared to have heard my thoughts, as her icy eyes suddenly shot around and directed at me. I felt an invisible blade of frost stab through my chest. That woman gave me the heebie-jeebies.
Annabeth was looking purposefully bored, since this building had no obvious bit of interesting architecture. Grover was gnawing thoughtfully at an aluminium can, which I had never thought possible up to now. Thalia was browsing the fridges for an energy drink, before seeing a satyr in a poncho and sombrero sombrely munching on a can.
"Grover! Other people are going to buy those!"
"Tastes too good…" Grover murmured.
I wasn't listening. I was still too mad at Annabeth for being such a Hippocrates – hypercritic – it'll come to me some day. She said I hated my soon-to-be stepdad for no reason at all – but her stepmom was nice and Annabeth still pushed her away. Or maybe I thought she was nice because she made us cookies.
"Do you reckon they have enchiladas here?" Grover wondered aloud. "Or coffee? Mmm…that's what I need…I nice and strong cup of coffee…"
"Earth to Grover!" Thalia yelled as Grover crashed headfirst into a fridge of cold drinks. Grover fell over woozily, before perking up again at Thalia's shout.
"Earth?" Grover pressed his ear against the floor frantically, despite being semi-conscious. "Mother Earth is calling to me? Where? Speak, Mother Earth, speak! Tell me where Pan is!"
"She's not answering," yawned the checkout lady. "Look – the last I heard of Gaea, she was turning Daphne into a laurel tree after Apollo harassed her. And trust your friend over there, that's not a pleasant experience."
Thalia squirmed with the lingering memory.
"I expected she's retired finally." The woman deftly picked at her nails. "You'll have to leave a message on her answering machine or something."
"Mother Earth has an answering machine?" Grover said in amazement. I really felt for that guy sometimes. Being about thirty in satyr years but only having the brain of someone at least half that age must have been hard for him.
"Next time you come by a dictionary on one of your quests, ask you satyr friend here to look up the word sarcasm. It may be beneficial for him."
"Wait," I said, "you know Grover's a satyr."
"It's obvious considering his disguise is absolutely terrible," she laughed. Grover looked sorely offended, and hugged his sombrero closer to his chest.
"And you know about Mother Earth!"
"You really are quite slow, aren't you?"
"Oh my god," Annabeth spoke for the first time since we entered the shop, "you aren't her, are you?"
"Thank goodness you are not all clouded in the brain. I am Eris, the goddess of strife and discord."
"Then what's a goddess like you doing working at a gas station just outside of Manhattan?" I asked rather bluntly. It just seemed pretty crazy. I half expected to find Cronus cleaning the toilets at the next McDonalds that we came to, chronic acne and the whole package.
"The gods sent me down here to this horrible little place for just one little prank to do menial mortal tasks," Eris pronounced the last three words with quite nasty poison.
"Zeus, that has to be boring," Grover said.
"I pass the time using my only power, strife, to provoke the Alphabetti Spaghetti to fight each other. They tend to explode in people's hands and spell out rude things on their forehead. Watch out for that."
I was trying to fight a laugh, but so far the laugh was winning. Thalia shot a glare at me.
"Seaweed Brain – don't."
"Seaweed Brain?" Eris noted interestedly. "You'd be one of Poseidon's sons? I haven't seen one of them in ages."
"You sound as if you get half-bloods in here all the time," Annabeth said pointedly.
"It's strange – like they're drawn to this gas station," Eris muttered. "Like any monster's lair. Yet none of them seem to have the courtesy to show any respect to a senior goddess."
She glared at me, and that frosty dagger was in my chest once again. Once she relented, I felt the desire to laugh creeping on again. And Thalia was still on my case.
"Percy – don't. Eris," Thalia hesitated, glancing up at the goddess, "managed to start the Trojan War with just an apple."
"It's amazing what you can do with fruit," Eris declared. "Although to be more accurate, I set off a chain of events that led to the Trojan War, but the gods needed to somebody to blame for ten years of carnage, and Ares wouldn't let any of them blame Aphrodite for it."
"And you're proud of it?" Annabeth said, her face becoming as cartoon-like as Mickey Mouse on Steamboat Willie.
"Of course I'm proud of that little stunt of mine. Enough strife to go around certainly. Although that certainly did not compare to that other little stunt with the kumquat that ensured that war was actually invented. I think Ares still owes me that debt."
"Wasn't that the entrails-expelling one?" Annabeth sounded disapproving.
"Yes, quite amusing. Pity the camcorder had not yet been invented," Eris sighed.
"She's a goddess on community service!" I was beginning to utterly lose control. I sank down against the fridge, clutching my stomach.
"Let me assure you, Perseus Jackson," Eris snapped, "if the gods had not stripped me of all of my powers except strife when they banished me here, I would blast you to smithereens, sweep up the ashes and then form them into something worthwhile, like a paperweight. Or a bookend. You'd make a brilliant bookend."
You had to admit that she certainly had style.
"Guys," Grover swallowed, "don't look now but what in the name of all the gods, demigods and anyone else on the immortal scene are those?"
I gulped as creatures began to lurch out of nowhere and started to lunge towards the shop. Each was seven feet tall and made entirely from gas. And they weren't exactly coming across as friendly. Annabeth just uttered one word:
"Sheut."
I wasn't sure whether she was swearing or naming, but now wasn't the time. Even when she was your worst enemy, Annabeth was impossible to ignore.
"ZEU KAI ALLOI THEOI!" Eris cursed. "No stopping them now – they'll choke us all to death."
"So which myth are they from?" I asked Grover, because Annabeth was hardly the friendliest of people towards me at this point in time.
"None," Grover yelped. "Some monsters were deemed too terrible to be even spoken about – too terrible to even enter the myths passed on through the generations. This lot were lucky to even be given a name. The Great Stirring means that more and more creatures like this are going to be coming."
"They're easy to defeat – they're just gas," I suggested. "So we just explode them, right?"
"And I suppose you want to be doing to blowing up, right?" Thalia snapped, barricading the door with anything she could lay her hands on. Grover had to flee to avoid being used as a defense. "You'd never clear the explosion."
"All those stockades are no use," Eris intervened. "They're just gaseous life forms. They'll wisp in through the doors. Curse those gods – if I had just a scrap of power left apart from strife, I'd beat these smoky twerps with the blink of an eyelid."
"Back door!" Grove yelled, and we all lunged for wherever one was. We scrambled through the network of corridors, and bundled out through the back door and into the back yard. Gas was all through the air – the things were getting closer.
And then I had a plan. An incredibly crazy, zany plan, which was therefore totally worthy of me. Not only was it all that, but it was also incredibly stupid.
"I'm going back inside."
"What?" Even Annabeth was against it. "Seaweed Brain – you can't."
"Then I've got one word for you, Annabeth Chase," I snarled. "Just watch me."
That was actually three.
I raced back indoors, jumping over the falling cupboards. Another employee looking through the stock shouted:
"Oy you, kid! Stop! Is it you set the gas off?"
I gagged on the heavy gas, but took no notice. I finally arrived in the shop with a crash as several shelves of food went flying, and very quickly exploding. Splattered with Alphabetti Spaghetti, I set about lighting anything flammable. Candles with matchsticks, cigarette lighters, I even pulled the lighting out from the ceiling. I looked out of the window – the gas monsters were getting closer. The front ones were practically at the door.
Swearing, I sprinted back through the shop, dragging the startled-to-say-the-least assistant with me. I lunged through the fire exit just as the shop blew up Bond-style behind me.
Coughing on the smoke, I brought myself to my feet. I could hear the sirens of the fire engines blaring as they came closer. I figured we needed to leave. Quickly.
"Thanks, Seaweed Brain," Thalia said coldly. "Grover's devastated that you blew up his Lamborghini. And did you know what the spaghetti's spelling across your forehead?"
She let me look at my reflection in her bracelet/Aegis. I was not amused to find the word IDIOT spread across my forehead.
"That is just not funny," I said frankly, as the others burst out laughing silly.
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We had to walk the rest of the way to Camp Half-Blood. And the spaghetti had decided it liked it on my forehead and it decided to stay there, sunbathing.
Thalia grimaced at the sight of her pine tree on top of Half-Blood Hill as we crossed the property line. Below in the valley, Camp Half-Blood was silent. Only the gentle whisper of the wind through the leaves remained there.
"Where's everybody gone?" Annabeth frowned. Grover's eyes turned fearful.
"You don't think Luke got here and –"
"Nonsense," Eris interrupted. "Luke would have burnt this damn place to a roast potato if he had attacked. Or at least taken all of the strawberries."
Luke and Cronus sharing a picnic of freshly picked strawberries was quite a disturbing thought in my mind. A golden sarcophagus using electric tendrils to pick up strawberries was also. I still hadn't told anybody about the dream I had had last night.
"Perhaps it's one of those wind-ups," I wondered aloud. "A surprise birthday party or something?"
"As far as I know, it's not anybody's birthday," Annabeth grizzled.
"Stay where you are and hold your hands high in the air!" a familiar voice shouted. Too familiar for comfort.