The next time Annabeth went to the beach was a little over a week later. The group had decided on killing some hours at the arcade a few blocks from the beach, playing the classics such as Pac-Man and some of those newer racing games. Luke was especially eager to try out this racing game that had four-player mode capabilities, meaning that no one would have to play in brackets as they always had done before. The quartet walked down the sidewalk in a single file line, with Luke in the lead, Thalia happily trotting behind him, Grover oddly galloping on his crutches and Annabeth taking up the rear. The young blond reached up for her cap as a sudden burst of wind sliced through the teenagers.
"They weren't kidding about that storm," Grover shouted above the sudden increase in noise. All eyes focused on him as they slowed their pace and listened. "The weatherman said that there's going to be really harsh winds for the next few hours and really dangerous waves at the shoreline." Annabeth blinked as a few raindrops suddenly started falling on them. "We'll be lucky if all of main street isn't flooded by tomorrow morning," he finished.
Annabeth narrowed her eyes. If main street was flooded, that meant that not a soul was going to be able to pass through there for days. That meant no afternoons out and about and no trips to the library to pick up or return books. A terrible crime, if you asked her. The blond lifted her head to see everyone staring at the beach beside them. Her fingers gripped the brim of her cap with determination as she stared at the open water.
Waves five feet high and capped with white foam were racing for the shoreline and slamming into them with all their might, as if they were trying to destroy the very beach itself. The grey sky overhead churned and moaned as it released entire ocean's worth of water on the heads of anyone it could touch. The wind howled and screamed with all of its might, enraged to the point of a vicious screaming match with nothing at all. Grey eyes narrowed as she looked out at the water. The saltwater was luminous shade of green; it was beautiful in a striking, terrifying way. It caught her eye and held it tight, refusing to let her attention drift away.
"Annabeth," someone shouted beside her. The blond jolted in place to find Luke giving her a worried look. "You okay," he asked a bit gentler. Thalia was giving her a very concerned look, while Grover watched them all with a mirror of Thalia's own expression. "You were staring off into space."
"Yeah," she muttered. "I'm just fine." Her lack of enthusiasm wasn't fooling anyone, though. She turned her eyes back to the water and frowned at the vicious waves that were ravaging the sand and hurling an assortment of marine plants on dry land. "The beach looks terrible like this. It's like it's tearing itself apart."
"That's probably why they closed it for today." Luke shrugged as he watched another pillar of water crash into the beach. "They said that it's far too dangerous for anyone to hang out in this weather." His eyes lifted to the grey skies, narrowing in an effort to shield themselves from the spears of water that were falling down. He eventually shook his head and sighed, closing his eyes in defeat. "We should probably head back home. I wouldn't want to get stuck out here when things get worse." Grover and Thalia nodded and voiced their agreement, realizing that the storm wasn't the best weather for leaving the house.
Annabeth was just about to agree when she saw something move out in the water. Grey eyes snapped back to the monstrous waves to see a flash of black pop out of the water before sinking back under the surface. Her chest tightened as she abruptly remembered the boy who had helped her rescue the beached dolphin a week ago. She felt her heart sink into her stomach as she suddenly had a ridiculous idea. Was that the boy she saw that day? She tried to shake the idea away, but it kept popping back into her mind. He had seemed so at home in the water, as if he could stay in it all day. Besides, he claimed he was friends with that dolphin. Would he have been dumb enough to come down to the beach and check on the creature?
The flash of black returned again, this time lingering long enough to actually take the shape of someone's head. Her breath caught in her throat as she remembered how he had grabbed her pocket knife blade-first and cut his palm right open. Oh, he was dumb enough alright. With a great sigh, the blond turned towards her friends with a smile. She could not believe that she was going to be so stupid. "Hey Luke," Annabeth began, "Could you hang on to my hat for me?" The boy gave her a baffled look before slowly nodding his head.
"Yeah, I could hang on to your hat for you," he trailed off. "Why in the world would you want me to, though? I thought you didn't like it when other people carried your stuff."
Annabeth shoved her favorite baseball cap into his hands before giving her shoes a bitter smile. "Because I'm going to do something stupid." She then ran off down the entrance of the beach, ignoring how her friends shouted at her and tried to call her back up to the sidewalk. She ducked under multiple rolls of caution tape before reached the boardwalk. The floorboards creaked and moaned as she scurried by, leaving thick clouds of upturned sand as she ran. The wind seemed to be louder and she got closer, the force of it slamming into her chest and pushing her away. Still she only stopped when she was at the shoreline, the rain slamming into her clothes and stealing the warmth from her skin. The air smelled of salt and metal all at once and she scrunched up her nose to push the scent away. As the water slammed into her shins, she took a deep breath and jumped in the water.
Her body was shoved away for a few heart-wrenching moments before she could open her eyes under the water. The salt was once again piercing her eyes and threatening her to leave the water. Instead, she tried to find the boy she knew that she saw. He had to be out here; she would not accept seeing things and making a fool out of herself by entering dangerous waters. Her eyes caught a flash of black and green and she squinted to bring it into focus. Her breath rushed out her nose at the mere sight of what she found. Her chest screaming and shouting in pain from this, Annabeth forced her head to the surface. She gulped the wet air before forcing herself back under. She focused again on what she saw and her heart sank in her chest.
The boy was there under the water, thrashing and struggling against something that was holding him in place. Only, the thing wasn't tangled up around his legs or feet. Instead, the shark net that surrounded the useable area of the ocean water was coiled around a long, emerald green tail. Not feet, not his legs, but a tail like a dolphin. Annabeth rose back to surface to breathe again, letting the waves lift her up and try to slam her back down under the water. Oh, of course she saw something that made no sense at all again. First the boy miraculously loses a cut on his palm, then she sees him thrashing around with a tail instead of legs. Just perfect. For a fraction of a second, she thought about turning around and going back up to the sidewalk. There was no way this was real, after all. There was no way that the boy had a tail like a fish.
Then her eyes caught something in the green water. Her heart stopped as she watched a cloud of blood drift up to the surface, stringing out across the surface like a spider's web. If he didn't bleed when he cut himself on her knife, he was certainly bleeding now. The girl knew very well that in storms like this, sharks tended to stray closer towards the shore than they would otherwise. Worst yet, they would instinctively come swimming from miles away at the slightest hint of blood in the water. Annabeth couldn't just leave him there. With another deep breath, she ducked back under the water and struggled closer to the boy.
By now, his thrashing had slowed down, as if he was slowly giving up. Her heart slammed against her chest at the sight. As she got closer, the blond could see that the netting was burrowing into his skin—or scales, to be more precise—and drawing blood that rose up in thick clouds to the skin of the ocean. His arms were pulling at the white threads desperately, even as it dug into his fingers and threatened him with even more wounds. He seemed to stop moving for a moment as she swam beside him. His black hair shot up as looked up from his tail. Green eyes looked at her with shock, confusion and something that passed too quickly for Annabeth to pinpoint. The girl motioned for him to stay where he was—as if he had a choice—and then took another gulp of hair from the surface. She dipped back down to find him weakly struggling against the net, trying to get away from its grasp. The blond scrunched up her eyes to try and protect them from the salt before slowly reaching down into her pocket and pulling out her knife.
The result was instantaneous. The boy's head shot up to stare at her and his eyes flashed with raw fear. He started thrashing even worse than before, even trying to maneuver his tail to ram into her. His efforts were fruitless and after a few moments he gave up entirely. Instead his deep green eyes looked at her with forfeit shimmering in their depths, as if he was too tired to move any more. Annabeth could feel that horrible pressure come back to her chest and she lifted herself back up to the fresh air in frustration. She could never hold her breath that long to begin with and the harsh currents weren't exactly helping her case. The girl angrily entered the muted world under the surface and moved a bit closer to the boy, showing him her knife again. He just shut his eyes and dipped his chin.
Annabeth carefully moved the blade towards the netting and tried to locate some sort of opening or space she could stick the sharp edge in without injuring him. She eventually found a space that he had torn wider than the others and set to work in cutting the thin strands with her knife. The blade's tip easily sliced the weakened thread. She turned her grey eyes back to the boy as they began to burn. She had been under the water for some time now and the salt was digging into her skin and itching as if she had stuck her open eyes in a box of sand. She forced herself to get another batch of air for her lungs before returning to work. Her fingers cautiously forced an opening for the knife to work with without hurting him, leaving her fingers screeching out in pain from the lack of circulation.
The black-haired boy slowly lifted his head as she continued to work. From the corners of her eyes she watched him give her a curious expression before suddenly having an epiphany and hurrying to help pull the net in a way that would give her room to cut him free. She worked diligently, cutting square by square as she fought to get him out of the net. The rough waves above her head seemed to slow after a few minutes and the terrible downpour faded away into a very light sprinkle. She cut the last square with a grunt of focus, releasing a few bubbles from her nose. Her head shot up immediately to try and escape from the burning pain in her nose. She took eager gulps of air before looking down at the water's surface. A few seconds later, the boy popped his head back above the water.
The boy stared at the blond for a few moments, his eyes shimmering with thankfulness. His hands gripped the cut net with a renewed determination. The faced each other before he opened his mouth slightly, as if he was going to say something. He stopped himself almost immediately though, and his lips slammed shut without a sound. Instead he smiled at her and floated a bit towards her before turning around swimming away in a flash, leaving a trail of white foam where he had been. Annabeth stared after him in numb confusion as her brain tried to comprehend what just happened.
She had rushed out into the ocean a storm on a whim to see if that boy was somewhere in the water. She ended up finding him trapped in the beach's shark net before realizing that he had a tail instead of legs and that he was indeed wrapped in it as the dolphin had been the last time they had met. She had then risked her safety to try and free him with his pocket knife, even when her eyes felt like they were going to bleed and she was going to drown from staying under so long. Either she was going crazy or she was really going crazy.
"Annabeth," Luke screamed behind her. The blond turned around to find him swimming towards her with crazed eyes of panic. He stopped beside her before starting to try and redirect her back to the shore. "Are you insane," he snapped. "You just ran out into the ocean during a storm for no reason! You could have drowned out here!"
"I'm sorry," she muttered as she gently pushed herself back to the sand, her hand slipping her pocket knife back into her jeans. "I thought I saw some—"
"Coming out here just to rescue a dolphin," he huffed, interrupting her completely. "You've lost it! You're not even the strongest swimmer out of all of us!" Annabeth looked at him in confusion as he scowled at the water. "You scared us half to death," he continued as the girl wondered where in the world he had gotten dolphin from drowning boy with a tail. "You're so lucky that the storm died down while you were out there! Even I couldn't swim against that current! I don't even know how you got out that far in those waves." Despite his excited shouting, it was obvious that he was worried sick over what just happened.
The two touched the shore to be swarmed by Grover and Thalia, the two spouting worried question after worried question as Annabeth just hugged her drenched body and tried to keep her mind from freaking out. She had just seen a boy with a tail who was trapped in a shark net. She had just saved a boy with a tail who was trapped in a shark net. Somewhere in the confusion, Thalia removed her beloved black jacket from her shoulders and wrapped it around the blond's own instead. The girl was too focused in her own thoughts to care for the moment. She was too bewildered by what had just happened out there.
As the rain died away completely and the grey clouds slowly started to evaporate from the air, the group wandered back up to the sidewalk. "Please, don't ever do that again," Luke finally sighed as his fear started to ebb away. "Next time you think you see something out in the ocean during a storm," he explained as he pulled Annabeth's cap out of his bag and pulled it back over her head, "Tell us. We'll call that marine rescue center in the city and they can come and check it out."
"Remember," Grover said in a shaky voice, "If you see someone drowning you row a boat, throw something for them to hang on to but you never under any circumstances swim out to them. They could drown you with them, Annabeth."
"Grover," Luke grumbled as he glared at the returning patches of blue in the sky. "That's for when people are drowning. She saw a dolphin out there and went to get it. Dolphins cannot get in boats or hold onto floatation devices."
Grover just muttered something about everyone understanding the general idea of what he was saying while Annabeth slowly regained her breath. Her chest eased as she pulled Thalia's jacket around her a bit tighter. Grover had a point. She should have remembered that whole thing about never entering the water in an emergency. The schools have only been teaching them a rhyme to go with that rule ever since they were like, seven years old. Still in the heat of the moment she threw reason out the window and rushed in as if she was a headstrong idiot with something to prove. She ran in there like she had seaweed for brains. She smiled weakly at the thought. More things that broke the many rules of the universe aside, she was at least happy that the boy had gotten out alright. He probably had quite a few cuts from the netting, but he escaped with his tail intact.
The teenagers decided that while Annabeth's decision was very stupid and someone should probably know that she was out in five foot tall waves in a desperate attempt to free a trapped dolphin—she still wasn't sure how they saw a dolphin out there, but then again she saw feet and legs on that boy last time she was at this very beach—they should not speak a single sound of this to any of their parents. It was quickly realized that if they spoke of this, they would either be grounded for the rest of their lives and the lives of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren or they would be banned from ever seeing each other again. Probably a mixture of both to be perfectly honest. The kids instead decided to dry off at a fast food joint near the arcade, get a bite to eat and then head over to the building filled with video games to avoid suspicion. Annabeth just went along with the plan and ignored how they somehow managed to mix up the most important fact of her whole unadvised misadventure as her body slowly stopped feeling numb and heavy and started feeling painful and heavy.
She swore right then and there that she was never going to go back to the ocean ever again.
Author's Note: Hey there! Looks like Annabeth has a really good knack at finding very strange things that make little to no sense. After staying away for a whole week, she still manages to run into the strange boy with black hair and green eyes. Just who is this mysterious boy with a tail? (It's kinda obvious it's Percy, but Annabeth doesn't know that, does she? ;D) Will things start to make sense at this little beach, or will this be the summer of no answers and ten-thousand questions?
I'd also like to thank all of you for the warm reception of this story! Seeing you guys interested in this really makes me happy! Many thanks to those of you who left me a review; it's very encouraging to hear what you have to say about this story!
Stick around to catch the conclusion in the next chapter!