Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: And as promised, here is your bonus chapter for the fic's birthday! Sorry about the lateness of it haha, but don't worry. Next update will be on Saturday, as always when I'm able to.
Hope you enjoy,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~The Finding Home Saga~
~Finding Home~
~Chapter 45: We Get A Surprise On Miami Beach~
"Percy, wake up."
Saltwater splashed at my face. Katie was shaking my shoulder.
We were just about to reach the shore of some beach that was in front of a city skyline with the sun setting behind it. I could see a beachside highway lined with palm trees, storefronts glowing with red and blue neon, and a harbor filled with sailboats and cruise ships further down from us.
"It's Miami," Annabeth said. She looked much better than she had before. Her face was still rather pale, but her gash was gone and she sounded like she was breathing without broken ribs anymore.
Everybody looked better, really. Our clothes were still a little damp, our skin still grimy, but none of us looked in danger of dying. Alabaster was tired, with deep bags under his glowing eyes from using his powers so much, but he didn't look like he was going to pass out like I had.
Still, just to make sure, I asked, "You okay, Al?"
He snorted. "Peachy. I'll be better after the rest of this quest is over."
When we got to shore, we all unloaded from the lifeboat before Alabaster magicked it out of existence. He swayed on his feet, looking ready to pass out himself, before Silena caught him. "Ally," she began.
He shook his head. "I'm fine, I'm fine," he told her. But he pressed one of his hands to his temple anyways. "Just...give me a sec."
But while we had that kind of time, it occurred to me that we didn't have that much time remaining for Thalia's tree. We'd been gone for days – and it was hard for me to remember just how many days they were, but they were probably closer to a week. Thalia's tree was probably at death's door by now; she couldn't have that much time left. Camp didn't have that much time left.
I saw Annabeth come to the same realization, her pale face becoming even paler. It seemed it'd been hard for even her and everything that Thalia had meant to her to focus on her dying tree due to us getting separated, having to face Polyphemus, and preventing Katie from becoming his bride and getting raped. "Guys," she said, after briefly swallowing. "We need a plan. Thalia, she's got to be – we need to get back the Fleece to her tonight."
Everybody turned to look at her. "What?" Clarisse exclaimed. Her face contorted from frustration – not at Annabeth, but just the situation in general. It went without saying that the daughter of Athena was right. Uncaring of how the sand would get all over her shorts or possibly even worse, she sat down on the beach. "How are we supposed to do that? We're hundreds of miles away! No money! No ride!"
"We know that, Clarisse," Annabeth snapped.
But her speaking up again just infuriated Clarisse more. "This is all your fault," she said, jerking her head at her and Bianca. "If you two hadn't decided to come along, if you hadn't decided we just had to go through the Symplegades and made the rocks crush our ship and Percy's leg – "
"Don't bring me into this!" I protested. She might not have been wrong, but this wasn't the time or place for that kind of talk.
"Both of you, calm down," Katie warned, stepping in between the two of them. Bianca fervently nodded in agreement. "There's no point in getting in a fight about that right now."
Clarisse put her head in her heads. Annabeth stomped her foot in frustration.
But, while they all did those things and Silena continued to fret over Alabaster, my mind began to whir. I remembered what the Oracle had said in her prophecy to me, Silena, and Clarisse, and how Clarisse had had to remind me of those last words on the Princess Andromeda: "You shall sail together to the sea of doom, / And despair for your life, within stone entombed. / But you shall find what you seek and make it your own. / And fail without each other, yet depart alone."
We'd done everything except that last part.
"Depart alone."
I had an idea. I couldn't guarantee it was a good one, but it was better than nothing.
I searched my pockets for money, but found nothing but a golden drachma. Everyone else gave me weird looks for it. "Percy, what are you doing?" asked Silena.
"Does anybody have any cash?" I asked.
They all shook their heads morosely. Or rather, they all did, until Bianca's expression lightened considerably. "Wait!" she exclaimed. She fished her hand into one of jean shorts' pockets. "Let me see if I still have it..."
To the amazement of all of us, she pulled out a Ziploc bag full of cash that Hermes had included in the supplies he'd given me. The supplies that we'd all assumed had been destroyed in the Symplegades. "Ha!" she cried. "It didn't get lost after all."
"Bianca, you've had that on you all this time and you didn't say anything?" I asked faintly.
She shrugged. "I picked it up as soon as I got the two of us to the surface. It wasn't that far away from us. Everything else had been gone," she said, eyeing everybody else sheepishly. Annabeth looked sad at the second reminder of what she had done, but Bianca slipped her hand into hers after she gave me the bag of money. "I just kind of forgot about it. Everything happened so fast after that..."
"It doesn't matter," I decided. "You kept it, that's what counts."
I opened up the bag, which had somehow managed through all the mayhem to remain sealed. Inside, the bills were all fives and tens. But when I counted them up, they amounted to just over three hundred dollars. "Clarisse," I said. "Come on, get up. Annabeth, give her the Fleece." Despite us being back in the mortal world, it hadn't really changed all that much from the Mist. It was still a giant sheepskin, its powers must being too great for the basic metaphorical wool that was pulled over mortals' eyes. But, maybe if – "Actually, give it to Alabaster first. Al, can you magic it into a coat?"
Alabaster gave me an unimpressed look. "I guess..." he mumbled as he held out his hands for the Fleece. Annabeth handed it over to him without question, though she looked like she had quite a few she wanted to say.
Katie's lips thinned. "Percy, what are you thinking?"
"Don't worry," I assured her. "I'm not putting myself in anymore danger." I turned back to Clarisse. "'And fail without each other, and yet depart alone.' You reminded me of that, Clarisse. There's enough money for an airplane ticket here. I can't go, obviously, because if I do I'll probably get smited."
Annabeth frowned. "That's not a word."
"And Silena isn't going to go, not as long as Alabaster's like this." He gave me a glare as he held the Fleece, preparing it and himself to cast his spell. "We're the original three members of this quest, one of us should be the ones to bring it back to camp alone, like the prophecy says. I say that person's you. You'll be able to get the Fleece back safely."
Annabeth opened her mouth, before closing it. Then she opened it again. "That's...actually a pretty fair idea."
"Of course it's fair," I retorted.
I could see Clarisse's mind working. After a moment, she nodded and stood up. "You're right," she gruffed. "Torrington?"
Alabaster was able to turn the Fleece into a red-and-gold letterman jacket – something that Clarisse would definitely wear if she went to school during the rest of the year and wasn't a year-rounder, although the color was probably too gaudy for her tastes. Clarisse slipped on the jacket when he was finished. Her eyes widened. "...Shit," she breathed, a flush coming to her cheeks. "The magic of this really is something else."
The seven of us headed over to the boardwalk on the opposite side of the harbor. There were plenty of people there, all out enjoying the nice weather and the attractions that the walk had to offer. We garnered some weird looks as we walked through the crowds, but none of us cared about that. I doubted we looked as bad as the kids did in The Lord of the Flies, at any rate.
We found the street that led into the boardwalk's parking lot. Silena used her good looks and charmspeak to hail a cab. I gave Clarisse the Ziploc bag, having put the money back inside it. She slipped it into the pocket of the Fleece-jacket. "Percy," she started.
"Don't worry about it," I said. "Just go and save Thalia."
The remaining lot of us watched her cab zoom away. "How are we going to get back?" Alabaster grumbled. Now, he didlook like he was about to pass out, as he was definitely acting like he had more energy than he did.
"I don't know," Katie said. "But right now, I could go for a shower. I smell like sheep and saltwater."
I was just about to tell her that didn't sound like a bad idea, but then –
"Don't move," a voice said from behind us. I felt the point of a sword dig into my back. A hand grabbed my shoulder roughly to turn me around.
It was Luke. Along with him were Ethan and Chris, who were holding Alabaster and Silena at sword-point and Annabeth at knife-point, respectively. Hermia Argent, the first mortal daughter of Hermes ever, was holding Bianca's arms behind her back with a smirk. But this time, there was another girl with Luke besides her. She had curly black hair, gold eyes, and dark skin, and was wearing black gloves on her hands.
"Percy, Alabaster, and the rest of the entourage," Luke said with a smirk that rippled the scar on his face. He didn't so much as look at Annabeth, and I could tell this pained her. She was glaring up at him, but there was heartbreak in her eyes as well as anger. "I'd recommend not trying to fight back. You don't want to find out what a daughter of Thanatos can do."
"Athana can kill with just a touch of her hands," Alabaster supplied anyways, ruining whatever tension Luke had been going for.
Luke scowled at him. "Well, I guess you have found out. So you have turned traitor after all, Alabaster."
He shrugged. "What can I say? I've come full circle."
"Become a full idiot, more like it," Athana scoffed. Her mother had apparently been very creative when it came to naming her.
Ethan and Alabaster looked uncomfortable with her assessment, but they didn't disagree with her.
"What do you want, Luke?" I asked. I tried to sound more angry and less resigned about this than I actually was. Bianca and Annabeth didn't know about my relationship with him, and I wasn't too keen on them becoming aware of it. But, I'm not sure if I succeeded or not.
Luke's smirk turned into a smile. He gestured towards the distance, where the harbor was, and I noticed what should've been obvious. The biggest boat in the port was the Princess Andromeda.
"Why, Percy," Luke said. "I want to extend my hospitality, of course."
Luke and his companions herded us down to the harbor and aboard the Princess Andromeda. We received no greater amount of weird looks for this than we had before, which I didn't think was really fair, but whatever. They put us on the aft deck in front of a swimming pool with sparkling fountains that sprayed into the air, tying us down into lounge chairs. A dozen of Luke's assorted goons – snake people, Laistrygonians, and demigods in battle armor – had gathered to watch us get some "hospitality."
"I can't believe you, Luke," Annabeth seethed, struggling against her ropes. That wasn't to say the rest of us weren't trying to get out of them as well, but she was being pretty terrifying about it. I had no doubt that she wanted to hand his ass to him. Katie appeared prone to wanting to do the same. "Betraying the gods? Destroying camp? Killing Thalia?"
She wanted to say more, but stopped as Luke's expression darkened. "I'm not killing Thalia," he spat at her. "The gods already did! She's dead! We watched her be killed by them! And even if she is 'alive' in there, that means Zeus prevented her from going to Elysium for dying a heroic death! Did you ever think about that?"
Annabeth became hesitant at his point, but it didn't fully deter her. "The gods didn't kill Thalia, Luke. Monsters did."
"But they were sent by the gods, weren't they?" he pointed out. "One god in particular: Hades. Now, don't speak anymore," he warned, pointing the end of his sword at her throat, "unless you want me to cut out your tongue."
He was bluffing. He would never hurt Annabeth like that, if he ever found it in himself to hurt her at all. She was his family, his little sister in all but blood.
But Annabeth didn't say anything more, keeping her mouth shut.
Luke walked along the little line they'd made with our chairs, looking at each of us with a watchful gaze. "The Fleece," he mused. "Where is it?"
He poked at Alabaster's jeans. "Nice haircut, by the way," he told Silena, walking past her.
She glowered at him. "I wouldn't have needed the haircut, if your half-sister hadn't torn out a chunk of my hair."
He laughed. "Ah, well. Occupational hazard."
He came to a stop in front of me, and his eyes were still watchful, but they also became sad. Curious. He poked at my shirt with the tip of his sword, but didn't say anything in reminder of the last time we'd met up.
When he came to the end of the line, he sighed. "Maybe you didn't hear me." His voice was dangerously calm. "Where. Is. The. Fleece?"
"Not here," Katie said. I looked over at her wildly because what the fuck was she doing, telling him that? She smirked at him. "We sent it ahead."
Luke's eyes narrowed. "You're lying. You couldn't have..." His face reddened as a horrible possibility occurred to him. "Clarisse?"
She nodded.
"You trusted...you gave..."
"Yep," she answered, popping the "p."
"Kim!" Luke shouted.
A demigod around my age stepped forward, looking nervous. It was hard for me to tell what deity she was the daughter of, but with the bandana on her head, she looked a bit like Clarisse. Maybe Ares? If not him, Enyo? All I knew for sure was that she was not a demigod who had ever come to camp. "Yes, General?"
"Get below and prepare my steed. Bring it to the deck. I need to fly to Miami Airport, fast!"
Kim looked reluctant. "General, are you sure – ?"
"Just do it!"
She didn't need to be told twice. Scrambling towards the stairs, she ran down them and disappeared. Luke, meanwhile, paced in front of the swimming pool, cursing in Ancient Greek, gripping his sword so tight his knuckles turned white.
The rest of his crew looked uneasy. They'd obviously never seen him so angry before.
Katie was looking at me now. When I turned my head to look at her, she jerked her head towards the swimming pool. She must've had some sort of idea. I followed her gaze, and saw how the fountains were spraying mist into the air, forming a rainbow in the sunset. Oh.
So that's what she wanted to do.
The golden drachma was back in my pocket. As inconspicuously as possible, I tried to reach for it.
"You didn't poison Thalia's tree because you wanted her to die. You might say she's dead, but you're not completely sure that's true," Katie said, goading him on. "You wanted us to bring you the Fleece and save you the trouble of getting it."
Luke scowled. "Of course, you idiots! And now you've ruined everything!"
"Traitor!"
At the same time Katie said that, I got the golden drachma out of my pocket and threw it at Luke as best I could. As I expected, he dodged it easily. But as I only partially-expected to happen, the coin sailed into the spray of rainbow-colored water.
I hoped that my prayer would be accepted in silence...and that Luke wouldn't hate me too much for this later. It was all his fault, but still. I thought with my entire heart: O goddess, accept our offering.
"You tricked all of us!" Katie shouted at Luke. "Even Dionysus at Camp Half-Blood!"
Behind Luke, the fountain began to shimmer, but we needed all of the attention on us. So, since I had been able to get the golden drachma out, I grabbed Riptide in its pen form and did the same. It was a miracle that I didn't skewer myself as I uncapped it, slashing the ropes off of myself. I jumped into a standing position on my lounge chair and arced my sword down on Katie's ropes, freeing her as well. Alabaster magicked his ropes off of himself. I figured he could take everything from there as Katie and I played the parts of the main distraction.
Luke sneered. "This is no time for playing heroics, you lot. Drop your puny little sword, Percy, or I'll have you killed sooner than later."
Like Annabeth, I knew he wouldn't kill me. He'd never.
"Who poisoned Thalia's tree, Luke?" Katie goaded, remembering that Chiron's job at Camp Half-Blood was on the line.
"I did, of course," he snarled. "I used elder python venom, straight from the depths of Tartarus."
"Chiron had nothing to do with it?"
"Ha! You know he would never do that. The old fool doesn't have the guts."
Alabaster had freed Silena, Bianca, and Annabeth from their bonds. They huddled behind Katie and I, under the threat of swords and monsters, but themselves getting ready to fight nonetheless.
"You call it guts?" Katie scoffed. "Betraying your friends? Endangering the whole camp?"
Luke raised his sword. "You don't understand the half of it. I was going to let you take the Fleece...once I was done with it."
...So maybe he did care about Thalia's tree, more than he cared to admit.
"You were going to heal Kronos," I said.
"Yes! The Fleece's magic would've sped his mending process up by tenfold. But you all haven't stopped us. You've only slowed us down a little."
"And so you poisoned Thalia's tree," Katie added. "You betrayed Thalia, you set me up to get caught by Polyphemus – all to help Kronos destroy the gods."
Luke gritted his teeth. "You know that! Who do you keep asking me?"
"Because I want everybody in the audience to hear you."
"What audience?"
His eyes narrowed. He looked behind him and his goons did the same. They gasped and stumbled back.
Above the pool, shimmering in the rainbow mist, was the Iris-Message version of Dionysus, Dolops, and the whole camp in the dining pavilion. They sat in stunned silence, watching us.
"Well," Dionysus remarked dryly. "This was some unexpected dinner entertainment."
"Mr. D, you heard him," I spoke. "You all heard him. The poisoning of Thalia wasn't Chiron's fault."
Mr. D sighed. "I suppose not."
"So, can you reinstate him?" piped up Annabeth.
Dolops, for all of the good activities director that he was, looked relieved at this notion. I couldn't exactly blame him. He'd been ordered to come to camp away from Mount Pelion, where he and the rest of Chiron's family usually stayed. He was probably looking forward to getting back to his usual life.
"I'll have to talk it over with the Council, but I don't see why not," he answered grumpily. He shifted in his seat. "I do suppose I miss the old horse's pinochle games. No offense, Dolops."
"I take none," Chiron's twin brother replied.
Luke bellowed with rage. He slashed his sword through the fountain and the Iris Message was dissolved, but the deed was done. He turned back around and gave us all murderous looks. "You're going to pay for that," he said.
One of his men blew a brass whistle then, and the deck doors flew open. A dozen more warriors poured out, making a circle around us, the bronze tips of their spears bristling.
Luke gave a smile. "None of you are going to leave this boat alive."
And this time...
...This time I couldn't tell if he was excluding Annabeth and I from that statement or not.
Word Count: 3,466
Next Chapter Title: The Party Ponies Invade
