First chapter in 2014! Hope you enjoy!
XVI FRANK
FRANK WAS HAVING A NIGHTMARE of being trapped as a goat forever when the ship blew up.
He was on his feet in an instant, just to have the ship rock sideways 45 degrees. Frank tumbled and slid all the way to where his floor met the wall, and right when he found his balance the ship twisted the other way. He landed back on his bed, his pillow unceremonially falling on his head.
By the time he managed to stumble out into the hallway he had tripped, stumbled, and toppled over so many times it was a wonder why he didn't just get insurance for his face. Hazel, Annabeth, Jason and Leo were exiting their rooms as well, looking tired and confused.
"What's going on?" Hazel asked, holding onto her doorframe for support. It must have been one or two in the morning.
"Oh, don't worry, it's just some of my cousins who decided to visit," Leo shouted, his hands flying over his Archimedes sphere. He wore pyjama pants decorated with flaming hammers, and his arms were smoking. "Hazel, we're under attack!"
Percy and Piper bounded down the staircase, and another explosion rocked the ship. Percy completed the last few steps on his face. "There are some crazy gods out there!" he shouted, looking up at them the best he could on the floor. "They're picking up bits of their mountain and chucking them at us. How is that even possible!?"
"Numina," remembered Jason as Annabeth helped her boyfriend to his feet. "Why are we crossing the mountains anyway?"
"Dang it, guys," said Leo. He was looking at a map of Greece on his sphere. "We're going through the range by mistake. It's right in our path between here and the House of Hades, so—"
The ship pitched sideways, and they heard windows shattering. The intercom buzzed to life and Festus creaked something urgently. Piper was thrown into Jason and Hazel. Leo fell forward on his face.
The others raced upstairs. An explosion had taken five feet off the front of the ship when a large stone had rammed into a crate full of grenades. Leo was going to be fuming about that.
Frank ran over to the railing and peered down. Lots of gods were mad, but these guys definitely needed some anger management therapy sessions. One of them roared, and 'wild' was the only way to describe it. Also, these guys were a lot larger than the other numina they had encountered before. Thirty feet tall, these ones were, at least. Frank slowly shrank back behind the railing.
"What do we do?" he shouted over his shoulder.
"Get the heck out of here!" Annabeth screamed back, the wind blowing her hair in every direction.
Their mechanic staggered up the stairway to the upper deck, holding his Archimedes sphere loosely in one hand. "Yeah, yeah, here!" he muttered, setting it down on the floor. "On it!"
A large boulder the size of a trailer—or the entire campsite—sailed in the air toward them. "Hit the deck!" Jason shouted, and Frank turned away. The Argo II rocked dangerously, sending them all skidding toward the other side of the ship. Hazel screamed and would have slipped right off if she hadn't grabbed the mast.
This ship won't last much longer, Frank realized with dread.
"Leo!" Piper shrieked.
"This is stupid!" he replied, crawling back to his feet from where he had fallen. "I'm struggling to reach the helm of a two hundred foot flying boat!"
CRACK! One of the stones had managed to hit them.
And then they were falling.
Frank instinctively turned into an eagle, hovering in the air, but the Argo II was still plummeting rapidly... or the mountain was soaring upwards incredibly fast. Frank soared down and landed on the deck, digging his claws into the woodwork of the ship.
"Zhang, the backup generator!" Leo shouted. He was doing the best he could with his Archimedes sphere to slow the descent of the ship and hold on at the same time.
Frank turned back into a human and stumbled over to the other side of the deck, tripping and cursing. The mountain gods howled somewhere below.
Sorry, he thought. Today is not the day I become dinner.
He made it over to the control dash and noticed all the complicated-looking buttons and pulleys and controls. Although tempted to, he didn't start pressing all the shiny ones.
Backup generator? Okay.
Frank grabbed the control dash, and started looking for labels.
Over on the right side there was a lever labelled B.G. As Frank stumbled over to it, he desperately hoped it didn't stand for 'baby gangster' and start playing rap songs Leo had probably recorded himself.
Fortunately for the lives (and ears) of the crew, the ship levelled out instead and stayed hovering in the sky for a moment. Then it slowly crawled back to a higher altitude. The mountain gods were starting to get mad that their dinner was escaping them, but Leo managed to make it over to the helm and take control. Soon the mountains were just a monument in the distance.
Frank let out a deep breath he hadn't realized he was holding in. He relaxed.
"Well, then," Percy commented, stumbling to his feet. "I think my turn for guard-duty is finished. Who's next?"
Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that absolutely ridiculous chapter. But this happened for a reason... as you'll see in two chapters.
Please leave a review! And happy holidays! Hope the weather's nicer than it is over wherever you are, (because obviously, here in Canada, it's, like, -40 with the wind).
