The Fleece Job (Olympus Drive Chronicles)

Chapter 33: The second heist Part 6

Ev

While the others distract the guards around the house, Jason and Angelica and I go after the dragon.

After the events of the other day, the dragon put the fleece on the top of a very climbable tree. That does not strictly make things better.

"I'll go up and get it," Angelica says, looking at us like she doubts we can climb trees.

"Fair," okay maybe Jason can't climb trees.

"Okay," I can climb trees, but possibly I should let her do it.

"She said it can turn into armed guards I don't know what that---oh that's what that means," Jason says, as we stand on the runway where the dragon was napping. It stands up, stretches, then turns into twelve soldiers armed with spears wearing dragon -scale armor. I feel like that's not fair, that armor looks metalish. Penny could have been here. Oh well. This is a punchable problem. A highly punchable problem.

"You go left I go--," Jason's never been in a fist fight before, good to know.

"All right, who wants to go first?" I ask, holding up my hands and snapping open the gauntlets that surround my knuckles.

A couple lurch forward.

"You've made a great choice," I jog up, prepared to meet them. The first comes at me, slow and clumsy. He's quickly flipped to the ground. The other tries to snap me up but Angelica zooms past and trips him, delivering a chop to his trachea. Ah, this is the sibling I will spiritually connect with.

I punch the one's face as another comes from behind. I flip around in time to deliver a kick to the jaw, followed by another to the shin. Angelica, meanwhile, stops Jason from being clobbered. The good thing is, Jason uses Puppy like his sum total of knowledge of fighting came from the Princess Bride and Rob Roy. Which is to say he looks like he's a really excellent fencer. If his opponents had swords and wanted to fence him that would be great. Our opponents have shields, spears, and clubs, and want to kill us.

"Get the—,"

"You get the fleece," Angelica and I tell him, in unison.

"Right good plan---shit," he gets picked up by one of them. I go to save him while Angelica stops them from getting close to me.

So let me paint the picture for you: I, with my rainbow hair, cut off Argonauts t-shirt, and jeans, am fighting about a dozen armed dragon-soldiers, with my baby sister who has a pretty pink bow in her short afro, a tied up Argonauts t-shirt, and pretty sparkly jeans I'm jealous of, as well as a very competent bow and arrow. Our brother who is wearing his Argonauts t-shirt tucked into his khakis, is carrying an ancient rusted sword that is trying to protect him. All this while a dozen nearly indestructible soldiers in gold dragon-scale armor try to kill us with spears, shields, and clubs. All of this on an airstrip on a remote, lush jungle island off the coast of California. On one end of the runway is a very climbable tree (more on that later) in which a gold fleece girl's jacket hangs on the top branch.

In the middle of this airstrip, materializes our sire. Wearing a pink polo shirt, jeans, and bright white and gold running shoes, and carrying a bag of Chipotle burritos. He observes us, very slowly. Then he sits down on the tarmac and slowly opens a burrito.

And that is how my father eats four chipotle burritos while watching his two disaster children fight off actual armed soldiers, while shouting helpful advice at the third such as:

"DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW TO CLIMB???"

and

"OKAY YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO GO UP THE TREE JASON THAT'S A PART OF CLIMBING GOING UP."

followed very closely by:

"WHERE WERE YOU RAISED?"

which was answered with:

"IN A VILLA IN EUROPE IF YOU MUST KNOW AND THERE ARE NOT PALM TREES IN EUROPE OUR TREES HAVE ACTUAL BRANCHES!" Jason, halfway up the tree, with the help and possibly hindrance of his sword Puppy which knows more about tree climbing than he does it would appear.

"OKAY, PUT ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER WE BELIEVE IN YOU!"

"YOU VERY CLEARLY DON'T BUT THAT'S FINE I BELIEVE IN ME," Jason responds, going farther up the tree albeit incrementally.

Last burrito finished, our father looks at all three of us, decides that he does not want to be involved in whatever the hell he thinks is occurring, and departs.