ᴾʰᵒᵇᵒᵖʰᵒᵇⁱᵃ [ᴶᵃˢᵒⁿ ᴳʳᵃᶜᵉ]

ii.

Aza had just barely pulled her sword into her hands when Leo shouted, "Duck!"

She hit the deck and brought her arms over her head, dropping her sword to the floor in the process so she wouldn't accidentally swipe him or Jason or Frank, who were behind her. The explosion rattled her eardrums just as soon as she belly flopped onto the stairs, and her ears rang, her vision buzzing like static. The ship rattled angrily, and light flashed outside in the small bit of the sky she could see.

Aza groaned from the floor and tried to push herself up, but her limbs had turned to lead, chained down with invisible cement weights that even she couldn't lift. Hands patted her sides, and for a moment she thought she was the last to recover and it was Jason moving to help her, but they made no move to lift her. She felt like she was getting an airport pat-down, which she had to do too many times due to Clarisse's insistence on bringing weapons through TSA, when the hands patted down her legs. They paused at her calves, and she felt the handle of her daggers dig into her skin.

Whoever was touching her leaned closer, and she gagged when they rolled up the legs of her beige cargo pants, pulling her two bronze daggers from her plum-colored boots; her nose burned with the stench of the zoo mixed with her high school locker room (which was heavily perfumed).

She managed to roll her eyes far enough to the side to glimpse the dwarf in her peripheral vision; her gaze was out of focus and everything was tinted strangely pink. The same grotesque face that plagued their walls loomed over her, grinning mischievously. It had red fur and was dressed in green plaid pants; he picked Aza's sword off the ground and she had just enough energy to groan angrily before he danced away. She spotted another dwarf with brown fur with Leo's toolbelt dangling over his shoulder.

Aza tried to get up again, and she shakily managed to pull herself to her feet. She stumbled over Leo's body on the stairs in front of her, making a note to help him after if he needed, and pointed at the dwarf angrily, "Yu basstrds, Iiim gonnn mae yuu regre–"

She gave up speaking after she grew tired of her slurred words and slammed into the fourth crate on the deck and stumbled. She saw Jason caught in the same vicious cycle of catching himself just before he slammed into the next object, and Frank had turned into a silverback gorilla (for a moment she thought he was the dwarves leader) and was sprawled on the deck with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. The dwarf frolicked over towards the ballista, where his friend was preparing to launch. The bowler-cap dwarf jumped on the projectile like it was a surfboard, and his friend fired.

The red-furred dwarf pranced back over to Gleeson and slapped him hard across the cheek with a wide grin. He skipped over to the rail as Aza clawed at the air from several yards away, swaying on her feet as the world spun around her. The dwarf bowed to her and backflipped over the side.

"Jasssnn!" Aza yelped, her voice still slurred. The two banged against each other in their stumbles, and he waddled backwards and rubbed his forehead, "Aza."

"Piper!" Leo staggered past them and to the helm - he pulled the gag from out of her mouth as best he could with his shaky hands. She spit it out and shook it off her chin and down around her neck, "Don't waste your time on me! Go after them!"

At the mast, Gleeson yelled from behind his gag, "HHHmmmm hmmm!" Aza didn't have to be a child of Athena to understand what he meant. Leo turned to Jason and asked, "You feeling good enough to control the winds? I need a lift."

"Sure," Jason frowned, "but–"

"Good," Leo waved a dismissive hand in the air and glanced at Aza, who rolled out her neck and rubbed her eyes, hoping to make the rose tint go away, "We've got some monkey dudes to catch."