❦𝓕𝓪𝓿𝓸𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓮 𝓒𝓻𝓲𝓶𝓮❦ - 𝓟𝓮𝓻𝓬𝔂 𝓙𝓪𝓬𝓴𝓼𝓸𝓷

𝐼𝐼. 𝒞𝒶𝓃𝒶𝒹𝒾𝒶𝓃𝓈 𝐵𝓁𝑜𝓌 𝒰𝓅 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒢𝓎𝓂

𝒵𝑜𝑒 dreaded PE. She'd never done it before and she didn't even actually have to participate in it but the prospect of watching thirteen year-olds try and work out or throw red rubber balls at each other was not appealing in the slightest.

Still, Zoe watched as kids started coming out of the locker room in sky blue shorts and tie-dyed T-shirts. Percy and Tyson were the last two to enter the gym.

The Coach was sitting at his little desk reading Sports Illustrated. He looked about a million years old, with bifocals and no teeth and a greasy wave of gray hair.

Matt Sloan said, "Coach, can I be captain?"

"Eh?" Coach looked up from his magazine. "Yeah," he mumbled. "Mm-hmm."

Sloan grinned and took charge of the picking. He made Percy the other team's captain, but it didn't matter who he picked, because all the jocks and the popular kids moved over to Sloan's side. So did the big group of visitors.

On Percy's side was Tyson and a bunch of other kids Zoe didn't know the name of. Matt Sloan spilled a cage full of balls in the middle of the gym.

"Scared," Tyson mumbled. "Smell funny."

Percy looked at him. "What smells funny?"

"Them." Tyson pointed at Sloan's new friends. "Smell funny."

The visitors were cracking their knuckles, eyeing Percy's team like it was slaughter time. Sloan blew the coach's whistle and the game began. Sloan's team ran for the center line. On Percy's side, one kid yelled something in Urdu and ran for the exit. another tried to crawl behind the wall mat and hide. The rest of his team did their best to cower in fear and not look like targets.

"Tyson," Percy said. "Let's g—"

A ball slammed into the son of Poseidon's gut. He sat down hard in the middle of the gym floor. The other team exploded in laughter.

Percy looked dazed and unfocused as Tyson yelled, "Percy, duck!"

He rolled as another dodgeball whistled past his ear at the speed of sound.

Whooom!

It hit the wall mat, and the kid behind it yelped.

"Hey!" Percy yelled at Sloan's team. "You could kill somebody!"

The visitor named Joe Bob grinned at Percy evilly. Somehow, he looked a lot bigger now... even taller than Tyson. His biceps bulged beneath his T-shirt. "I hope so, Perseus Jackson! I hope so!"

Hearing Percy's full name, Zoe sprang into action. She took her dagger from her hair where it rested in clip form, feeling it transform into her weapon. The daughter of Aphrodite gripped the hilt, waiting for a chance to jump in and help.

All around Matt Sloan, the visitors were growing in size. They were no longer kids. They were eight-foot-tall giants with wild eyes, pointy teeth, and hairy arms tattooed with snakes and hula women and Valentine hearts.

Laistrygonians

Matt Sloan dropped his ball. "Whoa! You're not from Detroit! Who..."

The other kids on his team started screaming and backing toward the exit, but the giant named Marrow Sucker threw a ball with deadly accuracy. It streaked past the bi-lingual kid just as he was about to leave and hit the door, slamming it shut like magic. Some of the other kids banged on it desperately but it wouldn't budge.

"Let them go!" Percy yelled at the giants.

The one called Joe Bob growled at him. He had a tattoo on his biceps that said: JB luvs Babycakes. "And lose our tasty morsels? No, Son of the Sea God. We Laistrygonians aren't just playing for your death. We want lunch!"