SAFE . . . reyna ramirez-arellano

73 - near transformations

BRIAR DIDN'T KNOW what to expect, but she wasn't expecting a giant turtle.

She was just casually having a one sided argument with Nico di Angelo, who was sitting on the rigging. They hadn't talked much in the past few days, mostly because she stuck to her group of Reyna and Leo and Jason. She'd been talking about why rose pink was better than fuchsia pink when the ship lurched forward.

Briar, who had been leaning against the railing by the control console, had completely flipped over it and was falling to the ground. Instinctively, she rolled and stood up, a little disoriented but just fine. After Detroit, she'd vowed to never break an ankle again to falling.

Then she looked up and decided that breaking an ankle was better than probably dying to . . . the thing.

The thing? A giant turtle the size of an island. Honestly, when she saw the massive dome of craggy black and brown squares, the word turtle simply did not compute, therefore it was a thing. Its shell was more like a landmass — hills of bone, shiny pearl valleys, kelp and moss forests, rivers of seawater trickling down the grooves of its carapace.

Briar heard the ship's figurehead, Festus the bronze dragon, creaking in alarm and shooting fire. It didn't help as the turtle ate half the oars.

"Gahh!" Leo yelled. "It's eating the oars!"

At that, Briar snapped out of her trance. She rushed forward and got out her cornucopia, making food fly at the turtle. She panic screamed, "Hey! HEY! Listen to me! Eat this, ya stupid turtle!" Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jason and Reyna bound up the stairs, Leo following them. Hazel and Frank were scrambling apart on the ground. Okay . . .

Leo frantically worked the ship's controls. "Oars won't retract. Get it away! Get it away!"

Up in the rigging, Nico's face was slack with shock.

"Styx — it's huge!" he yelled. "Port! Go port!"

Coach Hedge was the last one on deck. He compensated for that with enthusiasm. He bounded up the steps, waving his baseball bat, and without hesitation goat-galloped to the stern and leaped over the rail with a gleeful "Ha-HA!"

The turtle rudely ignored Briar's diverse selection of food and ate the oars. The boat shuddered, and Leo yelled, "No, no, no! Dang slimy-shelled son of a mother!"

On the ship's starboard side, another part of the monster rose from the water like a submarine.

Lares of Rome . . . was that its head?

Its gold eyes were the size of wading pools, with dark sideways slits for pupils. Its skin glistened like wet army camouflage — brown flecked with green and yellow. Its red, toothless mouth could've swallowed the Athena Parthenos in one bite.

Fuck me, Briar thought.

"Stop that!" Leo wailed.

Coach Hedge clambered around the turtle's shell, whacking at it uselessly with his baseball bat and yelling, "Take that! And that!"

Jason flew from the stern and landed on the creature's head. He stabbed his golden sword straight between its eyes, but the blade slipped sideways, as if the turtle's skin were greased steel. Frank shot arrows at the monster's eyes with no success. The turtle's filmy inner eyelids blinked with uncanny precision, deflecting each shot. Reyna attempted to do the same with her throwing knives, but the turtle blinked those away as if it'd done this before. Briar shot cantaloupes into the water, yelling, "Fetch, ya stupid turtle!" But the turtle seemed fixated on eating the Argo II.

"How did it get so close?" Hazel demanded.

Leo threw his hands up in exasperation. "Must be that shell. Guess it's invisible to sonar. It's a freaking stealth turtle!"