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Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I don't own Scooby Doo, either. The 'Gang' owns him.
"Um, okay then," was the first thing that came out of my mouth. Yes, I know, stupid. But hey, I wasn't expecting to be at Aunty Em's. Again.
"Oh my gods!" Grover screeched from the back. I remembered from last time that Grover got pretty freaked out when we were here. He had reason to be; I recalled his Uncle Ferdinand with a shiver. Ferdy had gone looking for Pan, the god of the wild. Unfortunately, he never made it. Instead, he became a garden statue.
"Um, guys, tell me I'm hallucinating. Please tell me I'm hallucinating," Annabeth kept saying over and over.
"Uh, Annabeth, unless you're seeing the Eiffel Tower, you're not hallucinating."
"Oh good then, we're at The Sphinx in Egypt. Shut up, Percy! I was asking a rhetorical question. Gods! I know that we're at Aunty Em's. Sometimes you annoy the crap out of me," she snapped.
"Jeez, Annabeth, you really have mood swings," I commented. It looked like she was going to impale me with her knife, but Grover interrupted.
"Will you guys ever stop this nonsense?" No. "Does it ever occur to you that she may sense us here and kill us?!"
"No way, Grover! What tipped you off?" Annabeth was apparently going to beat Medusa to the punch and kill Grover herself. He started quaking.
Okay, okay! Cut it! Let's go see what's up inside. Move out, gang!" I did my best Freddy impersonation. You know, Scooby Doo?
(Shaggy was my personal favorite—he ate everything!—but after I met Grover, that's who he reminded me of. But I never did like how Freddy didn't date Velma. She was awesome! Which girl can take action and be incredibly smart at the same time?)
Don't answer that.
Well, okay. I was thinking about a children's cartoon in front of a monster's lair. Odd. Anyway, we stepped out of the car warily and sneaked towards the front door of the Garden Gnome Emporium. It looked exactly the same as last time, but something was off…oh. There was a hole in the roof.
Oh, gods. Here we go again, I thought, and with that we ran into the building.
The inside looked the same as before too. Except for rust on some tables and cobwebs in the corners, that is. Medusa wasn't there, but there were recent footprints in the dust. Our footsteps echoed loudly in the almost empty building. I saw the girl holding the Easter egg basket who had seemed to stare at me last time.
"Um, guys, does anything give you the feeling that we're being watched right now?" I asked.
"Yeah…like someone's right above us…or right behind us…" Grover seriously was going to pee his pants sometime soon. I was nervous too, but I wasn't, like shivering either.
We all turned around at the same time, really slowly, like we were on a minefield.
"Guys! Keep your eyes on the ground!" hissed Annabeth. After that we were careful to keep our eyes trained on the ground. If Medusa was behind us, looking at her head on would turn us to stone.
I saw the hem of a black dress scraping on the floor first. I lifted my eyes higher…higher… the dress had a high neckline…which disappeared under a black veil.
Medusa was wearing her veil just like before.
"Well, hello, my dears. What brings you to my humble abode…again?" Her voice was like an old grandmother's, warm and kind. I felt like I should sit down and talk to her for a while, but my brain knew better. She was a monster who wanted to kill all three of us.
"As I recall, this is Perseus Jackson, Annabeth Chase, and Grover Underwood," she continued. "And we didn't have a very nice visit last time, did we?" She clucked her tongue remorsefully. "What a pity. You know, I never did get my picture. Let's take one now!" She cackled.
"Um, I don't think so," proclaimed Grover. "You killed my Uncle Ferdinand! I don't know how many other people you've killed, and we are not going to be three more! You need to be stopped!"
Medusa snarled wordlessly. She lunged after Grover. "Gang, split up!" I dove sideways and pulled out Anaklusmos. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Annabeth grab her knife and Grover brandish a long wood stick/club thing.
Grover attacked from behind, and Annabeth and I attacked from either side. Attack plan Macedonia.
Metal screeched against metal. I grabbed a gazing ball off a pedestal and turned so I could see Medusa. She had two long, sharp, and very painful black knives in hands. "Perseus Jackson, take your last breaths!" she screamed.
Last time she let me get close to her. Obviously that wouldn't be happening now. But I was better at swordplay than before, too. Still, the chances were 60-40%, in favor of Medusa.
She swung her right arm and tried to cut me in half. I raised Riptide just in time, and pushed back. She pressed forward, still not using her other arm. It went on like that for a while. Once in a while I'd see Grover whack her on the back or something. I had no idea where Annabeth was.
We were losing.
I didn't have long left. She could stab me or rake my face open or whatever at any second.
Grover thwacked the gorgon on the back. She ignored it and raised her left hand. I saw the strike coming, but I couldn't do a thing about it. I was holding off the other knife with Riptide; there was no way I could hold off this one, too. This knife would plunge clean through me.
Only it didn't. It was something like two inches from connecting when it clanged against something. But there was nothing there…nothing that we could see, that is.
Annabeth.
She had put on her cap, so we couldn't see her. Her knife was blocking the attack. Of course, Medusa didn't know that. She was confused; she dropped the knife that I was holding off. I took my chance and rolled away.
Annabeth's cap flew off, and Medusa fought with her full on. Annabeth was a strong fighter; she could hold her own for a while. I sneaked behind Medusa and raised my sword so it was horizontal to her neck.
I swung the sword, and she disappeared with a shlock!. Her head fell to the ground. The veil was a few feet away. I grabbed it and wrapped the head.
Annabeth, Grover, and I turned to face each other. "So what do we do now?" I asked tentatively.
Grover looked grossed out. "We need to destroy her head somehow, don't we?"
"Yeah," said Annabeth, "But I'm pretty sure…let's head back to the car." She took off without waiting for us.
When we caught up with her, she was staring at the screen of her Daedalus Laptop. "Um, Annabeth, what are you doing?" I asked.
"I think…I think we can bring these people back," she said. "Medusa's victims."
"What? How?" Grover sounded pretty excited.
"We need to burn her head and mix the ashes with water. Then we need to sprinkle a little on every statue."
"I don't think you guys realize this, but if we wake a grizzly bear, it'll eat us," I said sarcastically.
"So we won't wake the animals," Annabeth said.
"And we have no idea how long these people have been this way. If we wake, like, Laura Ingalls Wilder, then won't she be all 'what's going on'?" I continued.
She hesitated. "Hang on, let me read further."
Silence for the next few minutes. "I got it!" she yelled. "If they are supposed to be dead by now, then they'll just disintegrate. And if they aren't, then they'll become whatever age they should be and go wherever is best for them."
"Okay," I said. "If you're sure, then let's go."
We turned, but Grover stopped us. "Guys, its eleven o'clock now. And I'm hungry. Let's eat something, get some sleep, and then tomorrow we can do all this."
I glanced at Annabeth, and she shrugged. "That sounds okay. Come on, let's go find the snack bar."
We ran into the building and towards the back. Annabeth started looking around the kitchen.
"Annabeth, can you even cook?" I asked. She glared at me.
"I'll have you know I cook very well. In fact, I won this award thingy for cooking at my school."
"They must've had bad cooks at your school then," said Grover.
"What did you say, goat boy?" Annabeth asked.
"Annabeth, I've had your cooking before. And, no offence, it wasn't all that great," Grover answered.
"Grover, that was one time! I mean, I was seven years old and it was a campfire!"
They kept arguing like that. Neither one noticed when I walked into the kitchen and started the deep fryer. But they noticed when they smelled the burgers.
"Percy, what are you doing?" asked Annabeth.
"Cooking. Since if I waited for you two to shut up, we'd all starve," I answered.
"Yes, and if we eat your cooking, we might as well poison ourselves," Grover and Annabeth ganged up on me.
"You realize that I cook dinner for myself, like, every day, right?" Grover and Annabeth seemed pretty surprised by that one, so I continued explaining. "Back when I went to Meriwether, the teachers used to punish be by making me cook. They said that it was a 'creative outlet' for my 'anger issues'. Personally, I think it's 'cause the school cook sucked."
I finished making the food: cheeseburgers. We had soda from the soda fountain, and Grover had a few plastic trays.
"Do you guys want to check out the upstairs?" Annabeth asked.
"What upstairs?" I asked.
"The one that's upstairs, Seaweed Brain," Annabeth said slowly, like I was a two year old.
"Oh, that upstairs! I thought you were talking about the upstairs that's downstairs!" I said sarcastically.
"You guys are giving me migraines again," Grover pointed out.
"Whatever. Come on, I'm sure that there will be a bedroom or two here, let's go see," Annabeth said.
We climbed the oak stairs. Upstairs, there were five rooms. We opened the first door. It was an old closet that had an old cash register with something like a hundred dollars in it. "How come we didn't find this place the last time we were here, huh? The money would've helped us on our last quest." I complained.
"Well, it can help us on this one. Now let's check out the other rooms."
We left the closet and opened another door. This was a bathroom, with plain, cream-colored walls and a shower.
The next door was locked.
The next rooms were two bedrooms. One's walls were peach and one's walls were blue.
The last door was another bathroom. This one was tiled black and white, and it had a shower, too.
"Let's stay here tonight. I'll take the peach room; you guys take the blue room. Tomorrow we'll make a plan to really start this quest," said Annabeth and walked into her room.
Well, it was the next morning. I let Annabeth and Grover have the first showers because I would get hot water guaranteed. Ah, the joys of being a child of Poseidon.
I turned on the T.V. and was just watching this one thing on the gods. It was hilarious all the times the mortals got anything wrong. Once the guy said that Athena and Poseidon were, like, into each other. I just about died laughing.
Just then Annabeth stepped in the room. "Um, Percy?" Annabeth asked.
"Yeah?"
"What happened last night? (A/N Not that way! Pervs!) I mean, I guess there was a fight, right? But I forgot..."
It was Etgroftnig.
I told her what happened, her idea, and all. She nodded. "I'm sorry. It's just that…"
"Hey, Annabeth, we're friends, right? Anytime you forget, ask me. I don't mind."
"Seaweed Brain, I'm going to forget that you said that, too," she pointed out, but she smiled anyway.
Grover cleared his throat from behind us, and I about jumped out of my skin.
"Sorry. I wasn't interrupting something, was I?" He asked.
"No, no, you didn't interrupt anything!" I said. He said something to the affect of 'a pity, that.' I ignored him and told them I was going to make breakfast.
We had a completely healthy and nutritious breakfast of Cheese Puffs (they were great), and then we decided what to do next.
"We should save them all!" Grover said. "It's the right thing to do."
"He's right," Annabeth agreed. "But it would take too long to sprinkle water on all of them. We need to keep going with our quest.
"Uh, guys?" I raised my hand. "I can, like, spray it over everything here, remember?"
A smile broke across Grover's face. "Yeah, you can! C'mon, Annabeth, you have to agree!"
She smiled and nodded. "Okay. But we need to do this quickly."
The head was just where we left it last night—on the kitchen table. We took it outside and started a fire on the patio/walkway. In a second the flames were leaping.
"Oh gods of Olympus, we ask for you to accept this offering and help us to avenge these people who were wronged," Annabeth said.
The flames glowed a little bit brighter. We took that as a good sign and placed the head in the flames, taking care not to look at it.
There was a flash and the fire had gone, taking the head with it. The ashes were left under the wood. We scraped them into this jar thing and took it inside.
"Let's add the water," Grover suggested.
"Wait. No, I have a better idea," I said. I ran back outside, Annabeth and Grover following me. I cleared the fireplace and put the ashes in there.
I called to the ocean. The tug in my gut began, pleasant at first then painful. The fireplace filled and started to overflow.
"STOP!" I shouted. (I'm sure the other two thought I'd lost my mind.) The water cut off. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing pressure into the fireplace.
"Annabeth, Grover, come here," I said. They did as I asked, and I gripped their arms.
I added pressure to the water…more…
The pressure built up until the water inside exploded, raining all over us. The three of us remained dry, me because I was the son of Poseidon, the other two because I was touching them.
Immediately, there was a sound of cracking all around us, a sound of shattering. The sound of people coming back to life.
In another second there was a flash of grey light. I guessed that everyone had gone wherever they were supposed to be. There would be nobody left in the place except us.
I turned to face my friends. "Come on, guys. Let's grab our stuff and head to the car."
In a half hour, we were sitting in the car, same as yesterday: Me in the driver's seat, Annabeth in shotgun, Grover passed out in the back.
"So where do we head now?" I asked.
"South," she decided. "South to Maryland."
2,537 words…not counting disclaimer and author's notes…
Wow. This is the longest chapter I have ever written. I was nervous writing this chapter; this was the first action chapter I've ever written.
(I think you could tell by Percy's spazzy thoughts in the first part of the chapter.)
So please review and tell me what you thought!