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: Hi, guys. Hope you all are doing well. Unfortunately, I am going to have to take next Saturday off from updating for my mental health, hence why I am posting this earlier than usual. I pretty much had one of the worst weeks of my entire life this past week, and while I got this chapter done, I need a breather + a moment to catch up on my other WIPs that I was not able to finish. But I will be back on the 25th. No more 3 month hiatuses. :P

As always, hope you enjoy,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis


~The Finding Home Saga~

~Finding Home~

~Chapter 43: Nobody Gets The Fleece~


Polyphemus stiffened. "Who said that?"

"Nobody!" Annabeth shouted.

She got the reaction she'd been hoping for, as the monster's face turned red with rage. The blood vessels of his one milky eye, clouded over from the injury Odysseus had caused, began to noticeably expand from his anger.

"Nobody!" he yelled back. "I remember you!"

"You're too stupid to remember anybody," Annabeth taunted. "Much less Nobody."

I hoped to the gods she was already moving when she said that, because Polyphemus bellowed furiously, grabbed the nearest boulder (which happened to be his front door), and threw it to the sound of Annabeth's voice. I heard the rock smash into a thousand fragments.

For a terrible moment, there was silence. Then, Annabeth exclaimed, "You haven't learned to throw any better, either!"

Polyphemus howled. "Come here! Let me kill you, Nobody!"

"You can't kill Nobody, you stupid oath," she retorted. "I dare you to come find me!"

The Cyclops barreled down the hill towards the sound of her voice.

Now, if you're a little confused by this entire thing, let me remind you of the story of Odysseus: when he stabbed Polyphemus in the eye or around that point or something, blah blah blah, he told Polyphemus that his name was "Nobody." Thus, when Polyphemus cried out from the pain and the other cyclopes came to see what had happened to him, when he told them that Nobody had hurt him, they just thought he was especially stupid and/or that he had hurt himself and moved on. Of course, Odysseus, with his fatal flaw of hubris, had then told Polyphemus that his name was Odysseus, getting the Cyclops to curse him in our dad's name and keep him from getting home for several years, but the rest of the story can be told to you at another time if you don't already know it, and probably not by me. I'm not exactly the biggest fan of the guy. I don't hate him, but he definitely isn't one of my favorite heroes for getting all of his people killed.

Anyways, the reason why Annabeth had declared herself to be Nobody was because she thought it would distract him, and she was right. In a frenzy to find his old enemy, he forgot about resealing the cave entrance. Apparently, he wasn't even stopping to consider the fact that Annabeth's voice was female, and the original Nobody had been male, or that he'd actually known who Nobody was. Whatever. Nobody – ha – had ever claimed he was the smartest Cyclops on the block.

I dropped off my ride and patted Widget on the head in a silent apology. Then, still keeping my voice quiet out of some primordial fear, I uttered into the cave, "Silena? Clarisse?"

"Here," said Silena, as she popped up from a sheep close to mine.

Clarisse repeated the phrase, although her sheep was farther away than ours.

"Great," I said.

We searched the main room, but there was no sign of Katie. We pushed through the crowd of sheep and goats towards the back of the cave.

Even though I'd dreamed about this place, we had a hard time finding our way through the maze. We ran down corridors littered with bones, past rooms full of sheepskin rugs and life-size cement sheep that I recognized the work of Medusa. There were collections of sheep T-shirts – which at first didn't make sense to me, since Polyphemus didn't seem to be wearing them, but then I remembered that people collected things like action figures and LEGO's, and it started to make a bit more sense – as well as large tubs of lanolin cream, along with wooly coats, socks, and hats with ram's horns. Finally, we found the spinning room, where Katie was huddled in a corner, trying to cut at a chain wrapped around her ankle with a pair of safety scissors that was attached to one of the walls of the room.

She flinched at the sound of us approaching, but when she looked up, pure, unadulterated relief came upon her face. "Percy! Silena!" she gasped. "Clarisse!"

Then she stood up and began to run to us.

I immediately sprung into action. "Katie, wait," I said, rushing forwards.

I caught her just in time when the chain snagged, causing her to fall into my arms. I felt her shoulders begin to shake even before I steadied either of us.

"Oh, Percy," she sniffled, just like Silena had earlier this morning when we'd been reunited, which was eerie. Katie was not the type of person that Silena was; she was emotional, but they were...emotional in different ways, if that made sense. But after everything she'd been through, after everything she'd thought she was going to go through... "Percy, Percy, Percy..."

"I'm here," I told her, hugging her tight.

She hiccoughed. "I thought...I thought you weren't going to make it in..."

That made my throat tighten.

"I wasn't going to make you go through that," I said in response to her implication. Never. I've already been through that enough for both of us.

That made her calm down some. Still sniffling, she pulled away from me to wipe at her cheeks. "Thank you," Katie breathed. Then she gestured to the chain. "Can you get this off of me?"

I realized then what her problem was, outside of the fact you just couldn't use a set of safety scissors to break through metal: the cuff attached to her ankle was bronze-colored, so it was celestial bronze, but the chain itself was silver. The exact same shade of silver as the pendant currently hanging from my neck. Royal silver.

Sure enough, when I briefly inspected her hands, they had burn blisters on them, like Luke's hand would've if he hadn't gotten ambrosia or nectar after his display of the metal's powers.

"Step back," I warned Silena and Clarisse.

Taking out Riptide, I unsheathed it and tried to cut the chain with my sword. Like a part of me had suspected, that didn't do anything. The sword merely clanged off of the metal in a show of sparks. Regular bronze might've been much stronger than silver, but these were magical metals. They had their own distinctive properties.

"What the – ?" Clarisse began.

"It's royal silver," I informed her and Silena. Katie nodded, holding one of her hands over her mouth as she stared at me with her red-rimmed eyes, preparing herself for pain. "Only deities and children of the sea can touch it. Give me a sec. I think I know what I'm doing."

Grabbing at my pendant as I crouched down, I pondered how it felt in my hands. Warm to the touch, like it belonged to me. And, now that I thought about it, like it could bend to my will, if I wanted to.

I sucked in a breath, letting go of the pendant.

Okay, I thought. Here goes nothing.

I grasped the chain in both of my hands that was looped to Katie's cuff. It felt the same way my pendant did. Closing my eyes, I imagined what I wanted it to do: like the Cyclopes who worked in Poseidon's forges, or so the myths went, I wanted it to do my bidding. I wanted the loop that was locked onto Katie's cuff specifically to break, not melt. I wanted to do it this way because if it melted, it would only cause Katie more pain, and I didn't want that. If it broke, she wouldn't get any burns, and we could worry about getting the cuff off of her ankle later, even if "later" meant all the way back at camp.

The metal sensed my desires – I don't really know how else to explain it. I felt something nudge up against my mind, distinctively oceanic. Which, okay, I had not been expecting the metal to be sentient, but I could work with that. We communicated silently, more in emotions than actual thought. The metal did not want to be broken. It didn't want a piece of it to be missing, when it had been forged for the purpose of staying together, and royal silver was as rare as it was. If the tiny little piece I wanted was separated from the rest of the metal, the metal feared it would be that way permanently.

It won't, I tried to convince it. Your master is a son of the sea, like me. He can communicate with you too, can't he?

I received an emotion of affirmation in response.

We went back and forth a few times after that. Finally, the metal caved into my request. I felt the small piece break off, allowing me to unhook Katie from the wall. She swayed on her feet. "Thank the gods," she muttered.

But she spoke too soon.

An explosion echoed through the cave, telling us that something in the other parts of it was definitely going wrong. It was followed by a scream, of Annabeth crying out in fear.


"I got nobody!" Polyphemus gloated.

We crept to the cave entrance and saw the Cyclops grinning wickedly, holding up empty air. The monster shook his fist, and a baseball cap fluttered to the ground. There was Annabeth, holding upside down by her legs.

"Ha! You are not Nobody!" Polyphemus said. "Nasty invisible girl! I already have feisty one for wife. But you will make a good wedding feast meal for both of us!"

Annabeth struggled, but she looked dazed. She had a nasty cut on her forehead. Her eyes were glassy.

"I'll rush him," I whispered to my companions. "Katie, our ship is back around the island. You and Silena will go there. Clarisse will – "

"No!" the three girls said in unison. Silena had her dagger, Clarisse a highly collectible ram's horn spear from the Cyclops' cave. Katie had found a sheep's thigh bone, which she didn't really look happy about, but she was gripping it like a club, ready to attack.

"We need to take him together," growled Clarisse.

"Yeah," Katie said. She blinked, looking mildly surprised she'd just agreed with Clarisse about something.

"We're not leaving you, Percy," added Silena.

"Alright," I said. "Attack plan Macedonia."

They nodded. We'd all taken the same training courses at Camp Half-Blood. They knew what I was talking about. They would each sneak around on either side, with Katie joining either Clarisse or Silena since our numbers weren't exactly even for this, and attack the Cyclops from the flanks while I held his attention in the front. This probably meant that we'd all die instead of just me, but I was grateful for the help.

I hefted my sword and shouted, "Hey, Ugly!"

Polyphemus whirled towards me. "Another one? Who are you?"

I took a page out of a certain movie. "Put down my friend! I'm the one who insulted you!"

"You are Nobody?"

"Damn right I am!" I wasn't in the mood for insults, but I hoped my goading would be enough on its own. "I'm Nobody, and I'm proud of it! Now, put her down and get over here. I want to stab out your eye again!"

"Nobody!" he bellowed.

The good news: Polyphemus dropped Annabeth. The bad news: he dropped her headfirst onto the rocks, where she laid motionless like a rag doll.

The other bad news: Polyphemus barreled towards me, a thousand smelly pounds of Cyclops that I would have to fight with a very small sword in comparison.

"Take this, asshole!" Katie shouted, rushing in from the right. She threw her sheep bone, which bounced uselessly off of the monster's forehead. Clarisse ran in behind her and set her spear against the ground just in time for the Cyclops to step on it. He wailed in pain as Clarisse dove out of the way to avoid getting trampled, and then cried out again as Silena came in from the left and dug her dagger into his other leg. But the Cyclops just ignored her entirely as he plucked out the spear like a large splinter, and kept on advancing towards me.

I moved in with Riptide.

The monster made a grab for me. I rolled aside and stabbed him in the thigh.

I was hoping to see him disintegrate, but this monster was much too big and powerful. He still had Silena's dagger in his calf.

"Get Annabeth!" I yelled at Katie.

She rushed over, grabbed her invisibility cap, and picked it up while the rest of us tried to keep Polyphemus distracted.

I have to admit, Clarisse was brave. She charged the Cyclops, again and again. He pounded the ground, stomped at her, grabbed at her, but she was too quick. And as soon as she made an attack, either Silena or I or both of us followed up by stabbing the monster in the toe or the ankle or the hand, once she'd wrested her dagger from his flesh.

But we couldn't keep this up forever. Eventually, we would exhaust ourselves or the monster would get in a lucky shot. It would only take one hit to kill us.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Katie carrying Annabeth across the rope bridge. It wouldn't have been my first choice, given the man-eating sheep on the other side, but at the moment that looked much better than this side of the chasm, and it gave me an idea.

"Fall back!" I told Silena and Clarisse.

Clarisse rolled away from the Cyclops' fist as he smashed the olive tree beside her, and Silena skirted around him entirely to catch up with us.

We ran for the bridge, Polyphemus right behind us. He was cut up and hobbling from so many wounds, but all we'd done was slow him down and make him mad.

"Grind you into sheep chow!" he roared. "A thousand curses on Nobody!"

"Faster!" I told my friends.

We tore down the hill. The bridge was our only chance. Katie had just made it to the other side and was setting Annabeth down. We had to make it across, too, before the giant caught us.

"Katie!" I screamed at her. "Get Annabeth's knife!"

Her eyes widened when she saw Polyphemus right behind us, but she nodded. As Clarisse, Silena, and I scrambled across the bridge, Katie began to hack at the ropes.

The first strand went snap!

Polyphemus bounded after us, making the bridge sway wildly.

The ropes were now half cut. Clarisse, Silena, and I dove for solid ground, landing beside Katie. I made a wild slash with my sword and cut the remaining ropes.

The bridge fell away into the chasm, and the Cyclops howled...with delight, because he was standing right next to us.

"Failed!" he yelled gleefully. "Nobody failed!"

Clarisse, Silena, and Katie all tried to charge him, but he batted them away like insects.

My anger swelled. I couldn't believe I'd come this far, had my leg crushed, been separated from my friends, and all my other suffering only to fail – stopped by a big, stupid monster who'd wanted to rape one of my friends.

I couldn't allow him to win. I couldn't let him drag any of my friends back to his cave to make his "wifey," or to keep the Fleece.

I felt the tug behind my navel as strength began to surge in my body, but I quashed it down. There was a time and place for water-controlling powers, and this wasn't it.

No, I wanted to beat Polyphemus, fair and square.

I raised my sword and attacked, knowing that I was hopelessly outmatched but not caring regardless. I jabbed Polyphemus in his belly. When he doubled over I smacked him in the nose with the hilt of my sword. I slashed and kicked and bashed at every inch of his body that I could until the next thing I knew, he was sprawled on his back, dazed and groaning. I was standing above him, the tip of my sword hovering above his one eye.

"Ugh," Polyphemus moaned.

"Percy," somebody breathed. My blood was pounding too loud in my ears for me to definitively tell who. "How did you – ?"

"Please, no!" the Cyclops roared, staring up at me pitifully. His nose was bleeding, and looked shattered. Broken. A tear welled up in the corner of his half-blind eye. "M – my sheepies need me. Only trying to protect sheep!"

He sobbed loudly.

I had won. All I needed to do was one quick strike.

"Kill him!" This time, I recognized it as Clarisse as the one who was yelling. "What are you waiting for?"

"He's a Cyclops!" said Katie. "Don't trust him!"

I knew she was right.

But, at the same time...

Polyphemus was a son of Poseidon, like me. A child of our father, like Callie. I hadn't seen her once since I'd gone on this quest, and she was probably pissed at me beyond belief, but...even just the briefest of thoughts of imagining her on the other side of my blade instead of Polyphemus was enough to make my heart ache. We were all children of our father. Could I really kill him in cold blood?

"Look, I don't want to kill you," I said. I showed him the pendant hanging from my neck. "I'm a child of Poseidon like you, see? I'm also the champion of Demeter. My friends and I only want the fleece. Will you agree to let us take it?"

"No!" Clarisse shouted. "Kill him!"

Polyphemus sniffed. "My beautiful Fleece. Prize of my collection. Take it, cruel half-brother. Take it and go in peace."

"I'm going to step back slowly," I told him. "One false move..."

He nodded like he understood.

I stepped back and...

As fast as a cobra, he smacked me to the edge of the cliff.

"Foolish mortal half-brother! Μαλακός, just like the rest!" he bellowed. "Take my Fleece? Ha! I'll eat you first!"

He opened his enormous mouth, and I knew his rotten molars were going to be the last thing I ever saw.

Then something went whoosh over my head and thump!

A rock the size of a basketball sailed right into Polyphemus' mouth and attempted to go down his throat, glowing a faint green. The Cyclops choked, trying to swallow the unexpected pill. His heel slipped, the edge of the cliff crumbled, and the great Polyphemus made chicken wing motions that did nothing to help him fly as he tumbled into the chasm.

I turned.

Right behind us was Alabaster, a green bubble covering him to protect himself from the murderous sheep, the same color as his eyes and magic. "I told you...I could help," he panted.

I wish I could say that we all exclaimed with happiness to see the son of Hecate, but that wasn't what happened.

"Percy!" Katie shouted to me. She was kneeling down right next to Annabeth again.

I was worried sick by what I saw. The gash on the daughter of Athena's forehead was worse than what I'd realized. Her hairline was sticky with blood. Her skin was pale and clammy. One look at Katie's face, and I knew.

She was dying.

I fell down on to the ground on Annabeth's other side, the heat visibly leaving my cheeks. No. I didn't really care for her all that much, but I never would have wished this to happen on her. Never this.

Oh gods, how was I going to explain this to Luke?

As soon as the thought had struck me, I remembered where we were. I shook my head. "Alabaster, Silena, Clarisse," I said, not really caring which of the girls answered my plea. "The Fleece!"

Alabaster nodded grimly. With his magic and in a multitasking feat that only people with ADHD could be capable of, he created a bunch of misty green steps in the air. Clarisse, after pushing Silena to the ground to prevent her from tempting fate and the carnivorous sheep, jumped up on the first of the steps, and then another and another. They disappeared just as soon as she leapt off of them, leaving no margin for error.

When she reached the oak tree the Fleece was hanging from one of the branches of, she grabbed Fleece, her face twisting from the strain. But there was no time to waste. As the leaves of the tree immediately began to turn yellow, she darted back on steps of Alabaster conjured. At the halfway mark, she then threw the fleece towards me.

I caught the golden ram skin with a grunt. It was heavier than I'd expected – about sixty or seventy pounds of precious, golden wool. But, the color and weight of it couldn't have mattered to me less right then.

Katie helped me spread the fleece over Annabeth, covering everything but her face. I prayed silently to all the gods that I could think of, even the ones like Ares that I didn't like.

Please. Please.

The color began to return to her face. Her eyelids fluttered open. The cut on her forehead began to close. She smiled at Katie weakly. "You're...you're not married?"

Scoffing, my best friend rolled her eyes. "'Course not. You think I would marry a guy like that?"

"Mmm..."

"Annabeth," I said. "Just lay still."

Despite our protests she sat up, and I noticed the cut that had once been a gouge was almost completely healed. She looked a lot better. In fact, she shimmered with health, as if somebody had injected her with glitter.

"Guys!" Alabaster said, his tone high-pitched.

Behind him, the sheep were starting to sniff towards us. Alabaster would be fine in his bubble, but the rest of us...

"We have to go," I said. "Our ship is..." The Queen Anne's Revenge was a very long way away, on the other side of the island. The shortest route would've been across the chasm, except we'd just destroyed the only bridge. The only other possibility was through the sheep.

"Ally," Silena said. "Can you include us in your bubble? Expand it?"

He visibly gritted his teeth. "Yes," he replied. "But we're going to have to move fast. I won't be able to keep it up for long."

That meant Annabeth wasn't going to be able to run herself, most likely. Somebody was going to need to carry her.

Clarisse stepped up to the plate. "Keep the Fleece around you," she told the daughter of Athena, before she hoisted her in her arms.

"Ouch!" Annabeth cried. "I think – I think some of my ribs are broken!"

"Probably," I agreed. "Alabaster?"

He nodded.

Behind him, the sheep were beginning to amass. We were going to have to play this just right.

"On the count of three: one...two...three!"

Alabaster stopped his bubble shield just long enough for all of us to crowd around him, as the sheep began to bleat in hunger. The second we were all around him like we were a bunch of sardines, he resumed the bubble. A couple of the sheep got hit in the face by it. They made noises of anger.

"Come on, guys," I said. "Run!"

We hurried down to the beach. As soon as we hit the water, I concentrated on the Queen Anne's Revenge. I willed it to raise anchor and come to me, hoping Bianca wouldn't freak out too much about it. After a few anxious minutes, I saw the ship round the island, her standing at the furthest vantage point she easily could to catch sight of us, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun.

The sheep were following after us, jogging as much as they could, bleating in fury.

"They probably won't follow us into the water," I informed the others. "All we have to do is swim for the ship?"

"With Annabeth like this?" Clarisse hissed.

"And me," added Alabaster. As the glow vanished from his eyes, he looked like he was about ready to pass out on the spot.

"We can do it," I insisted. I was starting to feel confident again. I was back in my home turf: the sea. "Once we get to the ship, we're home free."

We almost made it, too.

We were just wading past the ravine when we heard a tremendous roar and saw Polyphemus. He was scraped up and bruised but still very much alive, his chiton in even more tatters, splashing towards us with a boulder each in hand.


Word Count: 4,094

Next Chapter Title: I Go Down With The Ship...Again