Corsair: Short AN for whoever cares enough to be angry at me. Sorry this took so long to come out. I tried to make that deadline until it passed and then didn't care much anymore. I just had too much stuff going on. Now I believe it is time for the disclaimer. Annabeth, take it away.
Annabeth: Okay...
Thalia: Hey! I come all the way over here to do the disclaimer and then you let Annabeth do it.
Corsair: You are supposed to be unconscious right now, and I said Annabeth was doing this one.
Thalia: Fine, I'll just go back to sleep then. I wake up and go across country to get here and then you just turn me down. Talk about under appreciation.
Corsair: Anyway, Annabeth, time for the disclaimer.
Annabeth: Corsair doesn't own PJO or anything associated with it. All he owns are the plot and the Norsemen in the story. Why are they here anyway?
Corsair: I am just writing your story down. I don't know until you do.
Nico and Clarisse walked over just as I finished talking to Annabeth.
"What are you talking about Percy?" Nico asked.
I went through my dream again. Annabeth was the first to speak.
"If her mom was the god of dreams, couldn't she have been influencing your dream to see something that wasn't really happening?"
"It doesn't matter if it really happened or not. We need to find Thalia anyway." Nico said.
I quickly tuned out the argument that followed, which probably wasn't my best idea.
"What do you think Percy?" Nico asked.
"Uh?" was my brilliant response.
"What should we do?" Annabeth repeated.
"We need to find Thalia." I said.
"If it's a trap?" Annabeth asked.
"Then we fight our way out." Clarisse insisted.
"We still have to find Thalia." Nico said.
Again, I started to tune them out and willed the ship to take us towards Florida. The ship sped down the coastline and the sun set when we reached the northern tip of New Jersey. If they stopped arguing, it was after I fell asleep. I was shaken awake from my oddly dreamless sleep by Nico.
"We're in Florida, Percy."
My dad must have been helping, because the first time I made a trip down here it took two days. Everybody was gathered around our prisoner. Clarisse poured water on him. His eyes snapped open and he started coughing.
"We reached Florida already?" he asked.
"Where is she?" I asked.
"I can't remember."
That pushed me over the edge. Before I could stop myself, I slammed my knee into his stomach and then flipped him over the edge of the boat. The water pulled him under as soon as he hit it. He tried to swim back up, but when he got close the water pushed him down again. Nico and Clarisse stared on in shock.
"Percy, stop!" Annabeth cried.
She threw her body against me and knocked me to the ground. It broke my concentration enough for the kid to float to the surface. He shot out of the water and landed on the top of the boat. Clarisse went to get him. I sat down and waited for them to come back. Clarisse had to drag him to us and then slapped him back to consciousness.
"Are you ready to tell us where she is?" I asked.
"We set up base in what you call the Sea of Monsters. It is just inside the clashing rocks."
Annabeth grabbed my shoulder.
"The clashing rocks are a death trap. We have to go around them." She said.
"We would have to backtrack to Scylla and Charybdis. That would put us days out of our way after we go all the way through the sea of monsters."
She stared at me before she huffed and walked away. I willed the ship to carry us into the sea of monsters. It took a few minutes before we arrived at a small strait between two cliffs. We started to head between them until Annabeth yelled out.
"Those are the symplegades." She explained.
I urged the ship to stop.
"So what do we do?" I asked.
"Jason got through by letting a dove fly through them first and then he followed immediately after they reopened." Nico offered.
"Anybody have an idea that doesn't involve the possibility of something dying?" I asked.
"We go around." Annabeth said.
"We would have to backtrack to Scylla and Charybdis, which would waste time." I argued again.
"The planctae are the third entrance to the sea of monsters. Jason and the Argonauts encountered them when they left the sea." She explained.
"I remember the story now." Clarisse said. "They are on the other side of the sea of monsters though. We would have to go around the sea and then back through it the same as if we went to Scylla and Charybdis."
I summed up what they were saying. "So we have to go through here."
As those words came out of my mouth, the two cliffs slammed together. The sound was probably heard in Miami. We all stared at the two cliffs as they slowly backed away from each other.
"Go!" they all screamed at me as I willed the boat to speed between the cliffs.
We were halfway through when they started to slam shut again. I urged the ship to go faster and time seemed to slow down. The cliffs closed down on the back fourth of our ship, two feet from Clarisse. She stared at the void just behind her.
"Well, that was close."
"Bqllr!" The Norseman exclaimed.
"What was that?" I asked.
"You swina weren't supposed to survive."
"What did he call us?" I asked Annabeth.
"He just said this was supposed to kill us and all you can think about is that he might have called you a name?"
"It was the only part I didn't understand."
"He said swine." Nico said.
Everybody turned and stared at him.
"I learned Old Norse at school."
"άίό " The words just spewed out, I had no control over what I was saying. I think it meant "throw yourself to the crows, whore."
"We can trade curses all day, that won't help us get out of the sea of monsters with only ¾ of a ship." Annabeth reasoned.
Our ship, or what was left of it, was sinking rather quickly. I summoned a current to push us to a nearby island. Annabeth, Nico, and Clarisse walked onto the land while I stood knee deep in the ocean. Our prisoner stayed on the broken ship.
"Hey, Dad, we really need some help. We got trapped in the sea of monsters, so if you could send us a ride or something, that would be great." I said to the ocean.
I waited for something to happen. I don't know what I was expecting, some hippocampi to burst from the waves, really just for something to happen. Nothing did. We sat on the tiny strip of land for what felt like hours before I got an answer. It came in the form of what I thought were hippocampi at first, until I saw the human torso on top of the horse/fish bodies.
"Did somebody call for some studs?" one of the man/horse/fish things asked.
"What are you exactly?" I asked.
"I am Aphros and this is my brother Bythos." The other said.
"They are ichthyocentaurs, the cousins of Chiron." Annabeth said.
"We need to get back to Florida. Can you take us?" Nico asked.
"We could carry four but not all five of you." Bythos said.
"How about repairing the ship, could you do that?" Clarisse asked.
"You need a couple Cyclops to repair that." Aphros said looking at the ship.
"If only Tyson had come with us." Annabeth said.
"There is an island near here with plenty of ships. We can take you there." Aphros said.
"Four of you anyway." Bythos added.
"Our nephew will have to swim." Aphros agreed.
"I'm fine with that." I replied.
Nico and the Norseman climbed onto Aphros and Annabeth and Clarisse on Bythos. They galloped off across the water faster than I thought possible. I dove in and followed them. After a few minutes we came to another island. I caught up to them as they argued with each other.
"I think they're on this island." Aphros was saying.
"Do you see any ships? No, so they must be on that island." Bythos pointed to another island only a hundred yards away.
"They are here, I know they are." Aphros said.
"I can see the ships over there so they must be there."
"Fine we'll go over there and if the heroes die it's your fault."
They took off again and reached the other island before I started swimming again. I had arrived at the island to see Annabeth and Nico running back to the beach. They were being chased by some very angry monkeys. Annabeth later told me they were Satyros Nesios (Σατνρος Νεσιος), or island satyrs. They climbed onto the ichthyocentaurs who yelled at each other as they galloped away.
"I told you it was the other island." Aphros said.
"Let's just get out of here." Bythos replied.
We got back to the other island in no time.
"This is the island we wanted. Your pick of ships is on the other side of the island." Bythos said.
"What lives on this island?" Annabeth asked.
"A tribe of lotus-eaters." Aphros answered.
"They eat flowers?" Nico asked.
"It is a special type of lotus that only grows on their island. It supposedly tastes so good that it makes you want to stay forever." Annabeth said.
"I thought they were at the hotel in Las Vegas." I said.
"That group left the island because very few people travel through here. Apparently mortals prefer Vegas over the Bermuda Triangle." Bythos said.
"You said the ships were on the other side of the island?" Nico said.
"Yes, just past the lotus-eaters." Aphros replied.
"Then why didn't you take us there?" I asked.
"They don't like us." Bythos answered.
"Now off you go. You need to get back to heroing or whatever it is you were doing." Aphros said with a shooing motion.
They dove back into the sea without another word. We walked down the beach for a while before seeing a vast assortment of ships. There was everything from ancient triremes to modern cruise ships. I still hadn't seen a single person on the island, so we climbed into a yacht and drove off. We locked the prisoner in one of the crew rooms on the lower deck. I was piloting our ship as everybody else got some sleep. We sped through Scylla and Charybdis's strait at night, they must have been asleep, and headed back to Florida.
This chapter was small because I needed to get it up. The updates would come out faster if you sent ideas for the story line through review or PM. I have an idea of where it is going but am not sure how it will get there or when so please help me fill in those details. It would make it faster and more enjoyable for you because you get to influence my story. No author writes their story 100% by there self, they have editors and their own equivalent of betas to help out.