Authors note: I cannot express how sorry I am that I haven't updated this story in SOOOOOOOO long, I'm really trying my hardest to keep writing it I promise! LONG LIVE PERCABETH!
Enchanted
Annabeth's P.O.V
Ch. 9 Smoke Bombs and Lightning Storms
In the morning, the windows in the Athena cabin let in just enough sunlight to wake me up even without an alarm. This morning I sit up feeling oddly refreshed, it must be the nectar from last night. Some of my siblings are already up but not many, so I quickly role out of bed and get ready for breakfast. By the time I'm dressed in my new swim suit and an oversized camp t-shirt the rest of my cabin is awake, all laying on their bunks reading while waiting for the horn to sound. I call for everyone to line up at the door with me in front (since I've been here the longest) and only a couple seconds later the breakfast horn sounds and we are out the door making our way to the hall.
During breakfast a food fight breaks out and no one stops it, I wonder what other rules can be broken this week.
After the food fight calms down and everyone has finished eating, we all begin to make our way to the lake which everyone seems excited about. Along the way two sets of hands grab my arms and redirect me to the big house, for a second I think I should try to struggle away but then I see that the hands belong to Percy and Leo with Jason walking alongside them as well so I know they couldn't mean any harm.
"What's going on?" I ask as they release my arms.
"Chiron wanted to see us," Jason answers.
"Why? Do you know?" I ask even though I can already see that none of the boys has a clue.
"He probably wants to give us awards for being awesome." Leo helpfully puts in.
As we come up to the front of the Big House I say "It probably isn't that kind of 'meet me after breakfast'."
"Seems like a quest to me." Percy says.
"That's what I was thinking." Jason agrees.
Were on the porch and I almost reach for the door but I hesitate, I hear arguing on the other side. The four of us lean in to try to hear what it is about.
"Unimportant." That's Mr. D's voice.
"The safety of my campers is very important." This one belongs to Chiron.
"We aren't that desperate." Mr. D says in reply.
"I am, and you should be too." Chiron seems to be trying to convince Mr.D of something but I can't tell how well it's working.
"Tell the campers not to endanger themselves." Mr.D as stubborn as ever.
"It's not that simple, they endanger themselves by waking up in the morning and you know that. A month without neither ambrosia nor nectar could mean the death of someone." I don't really want to hear what Dionysus has to say about that although I think I know what he would say anyway so I open the door and say "You wanted to see us?"
Chiron moves his attention away from Dionysus and politely addresses me, "Yes dear," he pauses glancing back at Mr.D, "We have a pressing matter to discuss."
Mr.D leaves the room but not before letting out a frustrated huff and making sure we know that he is fuming. I just hope he doesn't take it out on the satyrs.
"As you may already know, we have completely run out of ambrosia and nectar in this camp." Chiron waits but no one says anything.
He continues, "We have an order placed that should arrive in a month, however I would rather not wait that long and my brethren have a boat off the coast of North Carolina that should have a sizeable supply."
"The party ponies?" Leo asks somewhat dubiously but I can tell that he is still excited.
"Yes," Chiron replies, "and I would like it if you four would go get it for me."
"I thought only three demigods could go on the same quest?" Jason asks.
"I have noticed that around camp you three boys have a way of getting stuff done, that is creative, and time efficient and that's what I need right now." Chiron explains.
"What about Annabeth?" Jason inquires.
"She has the sensibility to keep you guys from getting hurt while you do so." He says smiling as if what he just said was funny. "Plus this isn't a traditional quest."
"So basically she is going to baby sit us while we run errands like my Tia Calida." Leo says. Jason elbows him in the ribs.
"Think of her as you will but be nice to her, you will be better off having her as an ally rather than an enemy." Chiron replies ignoring the whining coming from Leo complaining about his ribs hurting. "One more thing, I need you back before break ends."
"Eight days." I say.
"Try to make it back in seven, so you can at least enjoy the last day of your spring break." Chiron says apologetically, "We've packed for you but you should probably change."
We are out the door before he says anything else.
"It's kind of a bummer that we don't really get a spring break." Leo says as we walk to the cabins.
"I think a quest is way better than anything we could have done with camp activities." Jason replies cheerfully.
I might have to agree with him.
I change quickly into denim shorts and a camp shirt that actually fits then run up the hill to meet the others under Thalia's tree. Chiron hands us each a black backpack while explaining what is inside.
"Each one has some mortal money, a pouch of drachmas, and a change of clothes, trail mix, juice boxes, a water bottle, a sleeping bag and a flashlight with extra batteries. There is no ambrosia or nectar of course but in Annabeth's bag there is a mortal first aid kit with painkillers and bandages and such." He pauses before adding, "I don't need to warn you that my brethren are slightly crazy right?" We all laugh and he bids us fair well.
Araugus gives us a lift into the city where we decide to take a bus as far as we can. Leo and Jason sit on a seat together and Percy and I sit across the aisle from them. I spend most of the ride staring out the window thinking to myself, 'how am I supposed to keep three demigod boys safe and un-harmed as possible all by myself for the next week?' The first answer that comes to mind is to just do all the dirty work myself but I know that Chiron doesn't want me to get hurt either.
I come back to reality where the only sound other than traffic is a quiet conversation between Percy and Jason when the bus comes to a stop to let a few teenage boys to get on the bus. The boys have the 'cool guy' look with graphic t-shirts and baseball hats, nothing unusual until they pass us bringing a vigorous gust of wind with them. Too strong to be a draft from the open windows which raises my suspicion and as soon as they choose the seats right behind us I know something is up.
As soon as the bus is moving again I try to casually tell Percy we need to leave when the bus lurches around a sharp corner and I end up putting my hand on his leg to avoid flying across the aisle.
"Storm spirits," I whisper to him, "We have to get off, now."
He glances down at my hand and says "We just got on the highway; there won't be another stop for a while."
Blushing slightly, I take my hand away and say "We'll have to make it stop then." Then across the aisle I say "Hey Jason! Switch places with me, I want to sit next to Leo."
"What are you doing?" Percy asks but he moves his legs to let me get out.
"I'm stopping the bus of course." I smile at him before switching places with Jason. As soon as my butt hits the seat the whole bench starts bouncing up and down as if we were on some sort of roller coaster ride and I notice that the same is happening to Percy and Jason.
"Leo," I whisper to him but the movement of our seat makes it sound like lEEEEEoo "Can you build a smoke bomb?"
"Why?" He asks even though he already sounds like he's willing to do it.
"The guys behind us are Venti and they want us dead so we need to get off the bus." I explain quickly.
"Consider it done." He agrees in the same quiet voice with a grin on his face, and then begins pulling things out of his tool belt.
"Can I have some gum?" I ask in a normal volume to make it seem like were having a normal conversation. Leo pulls out a pack of mint gum without a second of hesitation and hands it to me, an accumulation of pieces are already taking shape in his hands. I take a piece for myself and hand it to Jason with a look that I hope says 'act casual'.
The bouncing of our seats gets more and more violent and I half expect them to be shaken from their bolts in the floor. How is it that none of the mortals notice this? All I can do is hope that Leo is almost done. I look at his hands which haven't slowed down through the disturbance and when he stops he hands me what looks like a grenade.
"Just pull the pin." And before he even finishes his sentence our chair is thrown into the one in front of us and I nearly lose my grip on the mechanism. I pull the pin and I am completely sprawled out on the floor with Leo beside me. Immediately artificial smoke comes pouring out of Leo's contraption which finally brings a reaction from the mortal passengers. Frightened screams fill the bus and with only a grunt from the driver, he calmly pulls over to the side of the road. With the same calmness the driver opens the door and passengers stumble out, apparently this happens to him a lot.
As the passengers file out of the bus their noise reduces to only coughing and nervous murmurs. And once they are fully evacuated they all take to pestering the poor bus driver, asking him what happened. I pick myself up off the ground, snatch my bag and high-tail it out of there with the boys on my heels and the Venti behind them. As we push our way through the crowd I notice the wind has picked up clearing the smoke and also our pursuers are not having any trouble passing through the crowd, they have turned into their full Ventus form.
"We can hide there," Percy points to a shed just off the side of the road.
"Dude, we can't hide from the wind." Leo says but we run toward it anyway.
"At least it will give us some time to make a plan." I say as we round the corner of the shed in our poor hiding spot.
"So what do we do?" Percy asks. He and Leo look at me but Jason speaks first,
"We have to fight fire with fire."
"Two problems with that," Leo makes a time-out sign with his hands, "One, they're wind spirits not fire spirits. And two, I'm the only one with fire powers and there's no way I'm attacking them by myself."
"That's not what I-" Jason stops when he sees the trees bowing from the wind.
"I see what you're thinking," I reassure him, "But there are more than two problems with it." I frown at him trying to change his mind. "If it doesn't go as planned I can't-"
"Don't worry, I got this." Jason interrupts as he stands and uses the wind to get onto the roof of the shed.
"Famous last words," Percy mutters.
"What does he plan on doing?" Leo asks.
I look at him nervously and say, "Lightning, he's going to strike them with lightning."
"He'll be fine, he's done it before." Leo says positively.
"That isn't a guarantee he can do it again." I say as I throw my dagger and backpack to the ground. "I wouldn't be touching any metal if I were you."
Leo drops hit tool belt and Percy throws his pen ridiculously far away I tell him that he's just going to have to go find it later but he says "Don't worry about it," and smiles at my confusion. Soon I can feel the electricity in the air. A light flashes from the other side of the shed and my ears pop from the change in air pressure. But a second later we see Jason trotting around the corner with his hair standing on end.
"Consider them shot-down. Let's go." He says with a smirk on his face.
"You enjoyed that way too much." Leo jokes as we walk back to the highway to discover that the bus is gone.
The next ten minutes are spent hurling our bags to the other side of the road and watching each other one-by-one sprint across the street while dodging semi-trucks. Leo really freaked one guy out by bursting into flames when he barely avoided a collision with the truck, by the time he was fully across the street Percy, Jason and I were rolling on the ground laughing.
"Why did we have to cross the street anyways?" He asks seeming a little embarrassed about his spontaneous combustion.
"We'll have better cover in the woods on this side." I tell him as we start walking. "And we'll be able to find a safe place to sleep once the sun sets."
I hear him mumble something about how we don't need cover when it's dark out, so I say, "It will do us good the next time you catch on fire."
Percy and Jason start jokingly pushing Leo around. We walk until dusk has completely passed and a little bit longer by the moon light before settling on a place to camp for the night. We sit under some large trees snacking on trail mix when Percy asks if we're going to try to get on another bus.
"Even if we wanted to, we would have to walk the length of the highway plus some to get to another bus stop." I say and for some reason I notice that Percy has eaten all the blue m&m's out of the little trail mix bag. He pops the last one in his mouth without noticing the quizzical look I'm giving him.
"I guess we wouldn't be very successful hitch-hikers either." He says.
"We'll have to play it by ear," Jason offers, "Make our plans as we go."
"As long as those plans don't consist of the words 'don't worry, I got this'" I say which makes everyone laugh, even Jason.
"It worked fine." Jason says defending himself even though he's still laughing.
Before I can reply, Leo chooses this time to be Leo and says "But Sparky we just don't want you exploding every time the baddies show up."
This remark brings even more laughter and I can't stop until my cheeks hurt.
"We should make sure someone is on watch while the rest of us sleep. I'll go first, then Leo, then Annabeth, then Percy. We'll each go for a couple hours, does that sound alright?" Jason says all back to business once we have stopped laughing. We agree with his plan and Jason leans against the trunk of a tree while Leo, Percy and I curl up to get some rest. It is a relatively quiet night, I guess all the animals have gone to sleep before us, and there seem to be no cars on the highway now.
In other words, it didn't take long to fall asleep.