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 everyone! I've got a bit of a surprise for you today: you're getting two chapters today instead of one! Was wanting to get around to doing something like this before now, but one word: college. Next chapter will be posted as soon as I post this one, so if you get here before I do, just fresh your page in a couple of minutes. ;)

Sincerely,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~The Finding Home Saga~

~Finding Home~

~Chapter 15: We Ride The Tunnel Of Love~

Okay, before you read any further, let me just say this now: whoever coined the phrase "no problem" needs to be slapped. Hard.

After our encounter with Ares at the diner, the three of us quickly left the place (although, not without finishing our meals first, 'cause we were all starving) and wandered towards the water park, using the directions that the dick-ish god had given us. By the time that we got there, the sun was already sinking below the mountains, and the water park looked as if it had been abandoned for years, if the way that the WATERLAND sign now read WAT R A D was any indicator.

The main gate was padlocked and topped with barbed wire. Inside, huge dry waterslides and tubes and pipes curled everywhere, leading to empty pools. Old tickets and advertisements were cluttered around the asphalt. With night coming on, the place looked desolate, sad, and most of all, creepy.

"What kind of girlfriend would Ares bring here?" I couldn't help but wonder out loud as I stared up at the barbed wire.

Silena shrugged. "Probably a nymph of some sort," she said. "I mean, Ares is technically married to Enyo, but I don't think they really...get along, you know? At least, not like they used to."

Vaguely, I recalled from of Annabeth's genealogy lessons that Enyo was the goddess of war and the official counterpart to Ares – hence why she was both his twin sister and wife. Where Ares was hotheaded and rash, she was cold and calculating. And where he was brute force, she was an expert in battle strategy...which made it kind of odd that they couldn't get along right now, considering they were supposed to. Destined to, even.

"Right," I said after a few moments. "What's the plan here? Climb up over the fence?"

Silena laughed and rolled her eyes, running a hand through her hair. "Percy, you spent two weeks in Cabin Eleven and the best thing you can come up with is to climb the gate? Didn't the Stolls teach you anything? Now, come on, where is – aha! There it is!"

With a flourish, she pulled a bobby pin out of her hair, before she just barely stuck her arms through the gate and somehow unlocked the padlock on the other side. Then, turning back to us, she winked and said, "Come on, Katie. Ladies first."

The shadows grew long as we walked through the park, checking out the attractions. There was Ankle Biter Island, Head Over Wedge, and Dude, Where's My Swimsuit?, among a bunch of other weird sorts of rides that made it really obvious as to just why the place went out of business.

Thankfully, no monsters came to get us while we were walking. in fact, nothing made even the slightest of noise.

About halfway through the park, we found a souvenir shop that had been left open. Merchandise still lined the shelves: snow globes, pencils, postcards, and racks of –

"Clothes!" Silena squealed. "Fresh clothes! Oh, I can't believe it!"

"Great," Katie said with a slight deadpan, but I could tell that she was also excited at the prospect of getting out of the clothes we had worn for the past three days. And I couldn't really blame her for it, because I kind of wanted to get out of my ABBA shirt, too. It was starting to stick.

Silena wasn't listening to her, though. Instead, she quickly snatched an entire row of stuff off of the racks and disappeared into one of the changing rooms. A few minutes later, she came out in Waterland flower-print shorts, a big red Waterland t-shirt, and commemorative Waterland surf shoes – all of which seemed to suit her, even if I thought that the clothing was a little tacky...must've been a child of Aphrodite perk. And she had a Waterland backpack slung over her shoulder, which was obviously stuffed with more goodies.

"Well, what do you think?" she asked. "It's not really to my tastes, but – "

"It's great, Silena," Katie interjected. "Now, just let us get changed and we'll be on our way."

Once we were all properly decked out in Waterland apparel and looking like walking advertisements for the defunct theme park, we left the shop. But hey, at least the clothes were clean, right? And we had a map of the park, too, which really came in handy when it came to finding the Tunnel of Love ride, 'cause it was actually at the end of the park, hidden in a tight little corner that none of us probably would've noticed otherwise.

When we got there, however, it turned out that the ride was nothing like I was expecting – which was saying something, because I wasn't really expecting anything at all. Still, the somehow full pool that was at least fifty yards across with at least a dozen bronze statues of baby Cupid was a little...weird, to say the least. Although, the cupids admittedly weren't as weird as the sign hanging from a tunnel opposite of us, which read: THRILL RIDE O' LOVE: THIS IS NOT YOUR PARENTS' TUNNEL OF LOVE!

Marooned in the middle of the pool was a giant, pink-and-white two-seated boat with a canopy over the top and little hearts painted all over it. In the left seat, glinting in the fading light, was Ares' shield, a polished circle of bronze.

"This is too easy," I said. "All I have to do is use my – "

"No!" Katie suddenly shouted.

Both Silena and I turned to look at her.

"What?" I asked.

Katie gave me a soft look. "Percy," she said, "I don't want to be mean or anything, but...you don't exactly have a hold on any of your powers yet. I mean, you fainted when you were fighting Medusa and you almost fainted during Capture the Flag at camp. You don't want to do that now, believe me. Not with ares. Just...just let me get the boat, okay?"

I opened my mouth to protest her, to tell her that I really had a good control over my freaky powers and they weren't as hard as they looked...but that was a lie, and not a very good one. I mean, Katie was a daughter of Demeter, so she would know better than anyone else just how hard it was to grapple our insane children-of-the-eldest-gods powers. Especially when I'd only used them two or three times, instead of the countless amount of times that she had used hers.

"...Okay," I said finally. "You can get the boat. Just...be careful, okay? I don't have a good feeling about this."

Katie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah," she said. "I'll get the boat over here in just a sec, don't worry."

And with that, she began to grow her freaky vines out of her arms.

Not really wanting to watch her move the boat with her vines, I turned to talk to Silena, but she wasn't right next to me like I'd thought she was. Rather, she was a few feet away, staring at one of the cupids, a look of confirmation and mild concern on her face. "Silena?" I asked as I walked towards her. "What is it? What are you looking?"

"There's a Greek letter carved here," she replied, and pointed at the letter that she was talking about for good measure: α. It kind of looked like the letter a, but also...different, at the same time, or so my demigod brain could notice even with all of the Ancient Greek lessons that I'd had with Annabeth slowly turning to mush in my brain. "It's the letter alpha. I'm sure of it."

I nodded in agreement. "So...what does this mean?"

She shrugged. "It confirms that my mother was up to something here, I think, but...not in the way that I thought. At least, I don't think so. Which...could be bad."

"'Could be bad?'" I quoted, frowning. "What do you mean, 'could be bad?'"

"Let's just say that Mom and Hermes didn't just get married because of their personalities, or because Mom refused to marry Hephaestus when they told her she had to, Percy," Silena told me, a serious expression forming on her beautiful face. "They also got married because of their mutual love for...pranks. And not the, 'ha ha, everyone laughs' kind, either."

"Guys!" Katie called out, causing the two of us to turn around. "I got the boat!"

Both Silena and I walked towards her and the boat, now docked against the side of the pool, hesitantly, the words that Silena had said about Aphrodite ringing in our ears – or, at least, they were in mine. As, no offense to Silena's mom or anything, but my experience with people who liked to play cruel pranks wasn't exactly...pleasant, to say the least. So I was more than just a little worried about what kind of person Aphrodite actually was, and what kind of prank she might have had up her sleeve with this ride.

As we reached the boat, I saw that the shield was propped up on one side, and next to it was a lady's silk scarf. But those weren't the only things that I saw, as I realized while staring at them that there were mirrors all of the way around the rim of the pool, seemingly facing the spot where the boat had just just been: the center. Of course, I thought with a fair amount of my usual sarcastic attitude. This is why Ares took his girlfriend here: he could spend his time feeling her up and looking at himself in the process.

Disregarding the god's shield for a moment, I reached over and picked up the scarf. It was a deep, shimmering blue, almost like the color of the Sound, and when I brought it up to my nose, it smelled like the ocean. But not just that. It kind of smelled like my mom, too. For half of a second, even, I could almost picture her standing right next to me, with a smile on her face and a glint of happiness in her eyes.

"You're right, Silena," I said, stuffing the scarf into one of my pockets. "He brought a nymph here, all right. An oceannymph."

Katie huffed. "That's great and all, Percy," she said. "But do you mind grabbing the shield so that we just go ahead and ago? While the current in this pool isn't bad, per se, the boat isn't exactly weightless, even with all of my vines."

"Oh," I said stupidly, then grinned at her sheepishly. "Right. Sorry, Katie."

Turning back to the boat, I reached down and grabbed the shield.

And that's where everything became fucked up.

You see, the moment that my hand touched the shield, it broke through something that had been connecting the shield to the dashboard. At first, I thought it was a cobweb, but then I looked at a strand of it on my palm and saw it was some kind of metal filament, so fine that it was almost invisible – a trip wire.

"Wait!" Silena cried out.

I winced. "Too late."

"There's another alpha on the side of the boat. I was right! It's a trap!"

As soon as she said the word "trap," noise erupted around all of us. It sounded like a million gears grinding, as if the pool was turning into one giant machine.

But that wasn't the least of our problems, because in the next instant, two things happened. Well, more like one thing, but the one thing caused the second thing, so I digress. The first thing that happened was that, on the rim, all of the cupids suddenly drew back their bows into a firing position, before they shot them, but not at us. No, they fired at each other, across the rim of the pool. Silky cables trailed from the arrows, arcing over the pool and anchoring where they landed to form a huge golden asterisk. Then, smaller metallic threads started weaving together magically between the main strands, making a tight net over the boat and the full pool.

In the process of all of this, one of the arrows caught onto one of Katie's vines, causing her to fall into the pool with a shriek, just before the smaller metallic strands wove themselves into a net. "Katie!" I shouted, just as she was fully submerged.

A moment later, her head popped out of the water. "Don't worry, I'm fine," she said. "Now, help me up."

I grabbed her arm and pulled her onto the boat. Looking around, I saw that all of the statues' heads had popped open, revealing video cameras inside. Pink spotlights rose up all around the pool, bathing us in a rosy glow, and a loudspeaker boomed; "Live to Olympus in one minute. Fifty-nine...fifty-eight...fifty-seven – "

"Silena!" I yelled over the loudspeaker. "Do you have any idea how to get us out of this mess?"

On the other side of the net, Silena shook her head. Her face was pale, her kaleidoscope eyes were wide, and her hand was pressed to her mouth, as if she knew what was going to come next and was dreading it with every fiber of her being.

Which, I suppose, made sense, what with her being a daughter of Aphrodite and all. But it certainly wasn't comforting, I'll tell you that. No, far from it.

The row of mirrors around the rim of the pool abruptly opened up like hatches. Dozens of metallic swans, I shit you not, instantly zoomed out, all of them honking and flapping their metallic wings like crazy as they converged on us, like something straight out of a shitty sci-fi movie. First, they only bit us, which hurt like hell, but at least wasn't as terrifying as the way that they opened their beaks and began to spit out more strands of metal thread, which they used to tie us down.

"Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me!" I shouted as Katie and I tried to escape, but it was no use. There were just so many strands and so many swans, and for every strand and swan we broke, there were a dozen more, ready to take their places.

"Nineteen...eighteen...seventeen..." the loudspeaker droned on.

Come on, I thought to myself. Katie and I were pinned to the boat now, noth of us screaming and thrashing all the while. There has to be a way out of here...think. Think.

It suddenly came to me then what to do, and I mentally had to slap myself for not thinking of it sooner. The pool was full of water and, even if it put me into exhaustion for the rest of the day, that was something I could control. I could drown out all of the swans and get rid of the wires tying me and Katie down, and hopefully the net, too. It wouldn't be hard. Just a pull from behind the navel and –

"Katie!" I screamed. "Don't breathe!"

"What?" she shouted, even though she was right next to me."

"Don't. Breathe!"

And then, we became fully submerged in water, as it crashed over us with the force of a tidal wave.

Instantly, all of the swans were pushed to one side of the pool, visibly short-circuiting from the overload of water in their systems. The strands of metal they had been spewing out from their mouths were, too, allowing Katie and I to move freely about – which was good, because while I could, apparently, breathe and see underwater, I knew that she couldn't.

What wasn't good, though, was how, despite my best efforts, I couldn't break the net that was over the top of the boat and the pool. It was resistant to the water, as if Aphrodite had expected my water powers...well, now that I was getting to thinking about it, I guessed she had, since Ares' date was an ocean nymph and all.

After a few extra seconds of trying to break the net and failing, I finally gave up and let all of the water fall back into the pool with a mighty splash! Both Katie and I resurfaced with great gasps of air, although not for the same reasons. But at least the water was rejuvenating me, because otherwise I'm pretty sure I would've passed out then and there.

With a shaky breath, I looked up as I ran a hand through my hair. The loudspeaker wasn't counting down anymore, which meant only one thing: we were live on Olympus. I turned to face one of the cameras and waved. "Hey!" I shouted. "Can we get a little help here? Please?"

Suddenly, the net over us shimmered, before it turned into a golden light and vanished. Obviously, some deity up there had listened to my demand and acquiesced. Not wanting to be rude, I hastily added, "Thank you! Show's over! Good night!"

All around us, the statues turned back to their original positions. The lights, which had turned to spotlight on us sometime during our excursion underwater, shut off. The park went quiet and dark again, save for the rather noticeable trickle of water from the Thrill Ride o' Love's pool. Mildly, I wondered if Olympus had gone on a commercial break and the cameras would be back to filming at any moment, or if the show was truly over like I had said. If the latter was true, then I also wondered if our ratings had been any good.

But most of all, I was angry – but not at Aphrodite, no. At least, not that much. I mean, I hated being teased and tricked, but her prank hadn't been meant for me. It had been meant for Ares, and instead of facing it like he should have as the fucking god of war, he'd sent me after it instead. Like a coward.

No wonder Enyo wasn't getting along with him anymore. He couldn't fucking represent his domain like he was supposed to.

"Come on," I told my friends, once Katie and I had gotten out of the pool and I'd hefted Ares' shield onto my arm. "Let's go have a little talk with Ares."

Word Count: 3,071

Next Chapter Title: We Spend Some Time Hitchhiking Pt. 2