[3] 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐁𝐎𝐘𝐒 ― p.jackson, l.valdez

002.

「002. sparkly pink sails」

IT WAS a wonder how kenji got back on his feet. a very 'in depth' analysis from coach hedge showed that he was apparently anaemic- but had never in his life ever taken any iron supplements. add that to the fact that the transportation spell he'd done had practically drained him- it wasn't a surprise he was still in the infirmary. cherry hadn't gotten the chance to speak to him, and quite frankly she didn't know if she wanted to. fair, she knew that kenji probably wasn't a psychotic murdered that was going to kill her again, she thought about nemesis' words. if she didn't forgive kenji- then perhaps she shouldn't talk to him?

of course, cherry didn't really get much time to actually follow that at all. you know, with the whole rock mountain gods and the horrible thing that carried on with it. of course this wasn't the first one, but cherry had been a bit preoccupied during the first two.

for the first one- cherry adams had finally realised that leo valdez had kissed her. goodness- she hadn't even realised until a boulder had nearly knocked her head clean off her shoulder with leo yelling at her. somehow hearing his voice made her mind register it properly. she couldn't even blame the sun for her red face, it was barely morning. and val had made fun off her too much that she nearly went below deck in shame.

leo was as oblivious as ever, although how cherry finally realised that- no idea. but leo had offered her suncream, wondering perhaps if she was badly sunburnt.

the second one, cherry nearly got possessed again. she'd been getting better at the whole 'no possession' thing. she'd figured it was similar to charmspeak, and with piper's charmspeak at peak potency- it was the perfect option. whenever she could, she'd have piper try put charmspeak on her so she could resist it. but even with that, with gaea's power getting stronger and stronger, with her getting more strained, it was getting harder and harder to resist the earth goddess.

but that was fine, the whole 'knocking out cherry' trick by piper worked just fine (although did give cherry a head ache and piper was madly guilty after it).

but by the third one, cherry was quite sane and face such a thing with only just a bit of a headache. she glanced at the fog, wondering how difficult it could be just to cross one dumb mountain range. and then the alarm bells sounded.

"hard to port!" nico yelled from the foremast of the flying ship.

back at the helm, leo yanked the wheel. the argo ii veered left, its aerial oars slashing through the clouds like rows of knives. hazel made the mistake of looking over the rail. a dark spherical shape hurtled towards her and cherry wondered if it was perhaps an asteroid coming towards them. then she yelped and hit the deck, dragging down a dazed val down with her.

the huge rock passed so close overheard it blew her hair out of her face. the foremast collapsed with a crack, the sail suddenly tearing along with nico. all of them crashing to the deck.

hazel ran over to him, yelling, "nico!"

"i'm fine," nico muttered, "the sails are broken."

"barb only made one of them," fretted cherry.

the clouds parted just long enough to reveal the top of the mountain below them: a spearhead of black rock jutting from mossy green slopes. standing at the summit was a mountain god – one of the numina montanum, jason had called them. or ourae, in greek. whatever you called them, they were nasty. like the others they had faced, this one wore a simple white tunic over skin as rough and dark as basalt.