CHAPTER 11 – I RIDE THE MASTER BOLT EXPRESS

A/N: Sorry for the nasty cliffy at the end of the last chapter. From now on I'll probably include scenes from a 3rd person point of view, but not including Percy. And don't expect too much humour from now on – it's time for war, and everything will be that little bit darker.

Thanks for the reviews!

It's strange, dying.

Trust me. Not only is it quite painful, with the occasional rapid flashback of my short, puny life, but equally the oddest of sensations.

Sure, I've had my fair share of odd sensations. Try poisonous pit scorpion bites, supporting the weight of the heavens on the shoulders, or maybe even falling out of an aeroplane window.

Whatever happened, it would all be over soon.

"Percy!" Annabeth shrieked from above, leaning hysterically out of the plane window. "Percy!"

"Percccy, Percccy!" Typhon cackled, mimicking Annabeth's screams cruelly. "Oh Annabel, your darling Perssseusss ssseemsss to have taken a ssslight fall!"

He strutted up and down the aisle of the plane, past passengers crouching in pure terror in their seats. Every so often, he let a snake loose to horrify another passenger. Children were crying, adults were moaning – a few were dead, poisoned by the excruciating bite of the serpents.

"You monster," Thalia whispered, trying to bite back tears. Instead, she only produced a bleeding lip.

"Look!" Typhon laughed, a thousand serpents hissing simultaneously. "Ten out of ten for observation to Pinecone Faccce back there!"

Thalia remembered how Percy had called her that, in the middle of a spat. Now that same hero was tumbling through the stratosphere.

"Don't call me that," she hissed through ground teeth.

"What'sss that, my pinecone-faccced little half-blood?" Typhon cackled.

"Don't call me that, Spitwad Face!"

Typhon turned on one heel to face Thalia, whose face was now flushed with anger at the monster's persistent name-calling.

"You know how to get yourssself killed, I'll give you that," he snarled, snapping his fingers.

Thalia felt an invisible hand grab her neck, then throw her down the aisle, before the upended trolley blocked her path. Typhon advanced on her, a thousand snakes' heads egging him on.

"Wait, Lord Typhon!" a voice called.

Typhon whirled around to see Arachne, who had steadily, and uncomfortably, risen to her feet – or rather her eight spider's legs packed tightly into a pair of fake legs.

"Lady Arachne," the monster seethed. "I wondered when I would lay eyesss on you… It hasss been too long, hasss it not?"

"Far too long, Lord Typhon," the spider-woman snapped, advancing. "And over time…allegiances have shifted."

"You cannot pretend that you ssside with the inevitable losers!" her opponent snarled. "Did you not see your ssso-called only-hope-and-sssaviour plummet to hisss death just a minute ago?"

"Percy isn't dead!" Thalia called out, nursing a head injury sustained from colliding with the food trolley. "He isn't. He can't be."

"Sssilly girl," Typhon snapped, disregarding her.

Thalia crouched, lips moving in silent prayer.

Lord Zeus, she whispered, father, hear my prayer. Perseus Jackson – Percy – is the only one who can save all of us from the Titan Lord. At the moment he is about to die in your domain. Please help him – save him and protect him. If you have ever loved me, as I love him, please rescue him from death for me. He is the only one who can save us. Hear me father – take this.

Checking to make sure Typhon was not watching, she removed her bracelet from her wrist and hurled it headlong through the window. The same window through which her hero had tumbled minutes before.

Accept this offering, father. I will not need it anymore. Only for the one I love.

And sure enough, a tiny bolt of lightning shot down from the sky, caught the bracelet and dissolved into a fine shower of ash and dust. Lord Zeus had heard her words, and now all that could be done was to wait.

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Percy's point of view

Inevitable death seemed to be taking quite a while for me. We must have been travelling at a very high altitude for me to be falling this long.

I could slowly make out the ground below me. The countryside spread out below me was like a patchwork quilt of fields joined together by thin strips of hedgerows.

Thunder and lightning rumbled overhead. It was doing that a lot more now. Quite annoying, sure, but nice and dramatic. I wondered whether Zeus was thinking about doing something about my impending catastrophe (another long word – I'll outdo myself one day) or sitting down and watching with an XXXXXL bucket of popcorn.

As this thought came and left, I was surrounded suddenly by a dazzling white light in a flash of lightning. I had stopped falling, and was now standing up in mid-air. My science professor would have an apoplectic fit if he could have seen me then.

In fact, just about anybody would have had an apoplectic fit if they could have seen me then.

Beneath my feet was a long cylinder, sparkling with electrical energy.

I gasped.

Zeus' master bolt.

Technically, standing on top of this as I was doing should have fried me to a Mexican crisp, but hey, I wasn't complaining about serious breaches in the laws of physics.

The bolt began to slowly descend through the atmosphere (slowly for a bolt of lightning, immensely fast for a pubescent half-blood). Just as we were about to impact on a large herd of cows (none of whom looked remotely amoosed (whoops, pun)), the bolt swerved and began to speed along the countryside, around one hundred metres above the ground.

Eventually it braked swiftly, hovering just above a large metallic building in the middle of a heath. A nearby sign read:

HAETHORW ARPIROT

"Hawthorn Apricot?" I struggled.

The master bolt crackled, rolling hypothetical eyes, before disappearing from beneath my sneakers and hurtling off back to Zeus' throne room for an exclusive luxury spa treatment and pampering session.

Maybe not then, but it was a nice thought while it lasted.

A security guard appeared on the roof, brandishing a Walkman, taking large threatening strides from one side to another.

"What are you doing up here, Sonny Jim?" he asked. His cockney British accent (you know My Fair Lady, every Christmas vacation – mom always watches it) came as a culture shock to me, being used to America for the first fourteen and a half years of my life.

"I…dunno. I…got lost."

The guard rolled his eyes, and I could hear him mutter under his breath and behind that walrus of a moustache:

"Americans – all off their heads."

Ooh. Below the belt or what?

"C'mon," the guard announced, grabbing my arm. "We'll take you down to reception and see if anybody wants to claim you."

"So I'm like – lost property?"

"Kid, I don't get paid to stand around here all day, y'know," he sighed, "so please be quiet and let me lead you on."

Great. Obnoxious and patronising too.

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And now all of Lord Typhon's thousand snake heads were flirting with Lady Arachne at once.

"Charmed, I'm sure," she snapped, "but I'm not on your side anymore, my Lord. Those days are over. And besides…what would your wife Lady Echidna say?"

"Ssshe'sss too busssy pampering that blasssted Chimera child of hersss," Typhon grumbled. "Ever sssince that explosssion at the Ssst Louis Arch, it'sss never really been the sssame."

"Well, poor sweet little blood-sucking monster," Arachne yawned. "Now, if you've finished your serpentine sweet talk, would you care to crawl into a gutter and die?"

"Feisssty, eh?" Typhon hissed, unaware of Thalia taking an aim at him with her electric spear. "I like a little ssspice in my women…"

"Is this curry hot enough for you then?" Thalia yelled, ramming her spear up his backside.

"AARGH!" Typhon yelled, as the electricity sparked and frazzled his rear end spectacularly. Yanking the spear from the back of his trousers, he hurled it back at Thalia, who avoided it by the skin of her teeth. Angered, he leapt over the seats, grabbed a fairly startled Annabeth by the waist and backed into the cockpit.

"Congratulationsss, half-bloodsss," he hissed. "You may have won thisss little ssspat, but the war isss not over! Asss they sssay in Franccce – au revoir!"

And with that, he burst into a shower of gold light, and Annabeth disappeared with him.

A/N: I know I'm cruel with these constant cliffies! I've recently devolved into cliffie-mania, after reading most of the multi-chapter fics here on Read and review, my excccellent readersss (as Typhon might say)!

NEXT TIME… on The Chaos Code!

Chapter 12 – I Conclude That All Airports Are Murderous

Heathrow Airport, legendary for its badness, has just been taken to a whole new level with some monstrous visitors…

A quest to save Annabeth begins…

Kronos' destructive time powers are finally saying HI!

AIRPORTS! MONSTERS! QUESTS! ROMANCES! AND DESTRUCTIVE POWERS IN THE ARRIVALS LOUNGE!

Only next time on…THE CHAOS CODE!