/ thálassa | pjo \

/ chapter ten | we get some help \

edited.

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 One second, we were airborne, and the next second, we were shooting at what felt like the speed of light across the ocean's surface.

At some point during the fall or after it, Percy had opened the thermos Hermes had given him. The magical item had released a blast of air so intense I was sure we all looked like cartoon characters from Looney Tunes, our skin following after our bodies after a moment of disconnect.

I had barely enough time to lock myself into the raft as we raced far, far away from the cruise ship.

During our escape, we also tried to call Chiron with an Iris-Message and the sea spray that was kicked up by our lifeboat. The connection was poor, but we at least needed someone to know what had happened to the Princess Andromeda. We figured Chiron would probably be a better and more reliable person to call–even though he was currently not even a staff member at Camp.

But when Chiron's face appeared and the strobe light flashed in my eyes while rock music hit my ears–I was more than a little confused.

I guess that's what happens when you get sacked from your job of a couple millennia; you go party.

We told him about us sneaking away from Camp, Luke, and Kronos's remains in the gold casket...well, we tried to tell him, but I'm not entirely sure how much he actually heard, though. I didn't even have time to ask or explain what Luke had said about me–not really wanting to anyway.

"Percy!" Chiron shouted over the screaming and whooping behind him, "You have to watch out for—"

His voice vanished in the noise behind him.

I looked at Percy, frowning, "Did you catch what he said?"

"Uhhh..." He shook his head before yelling at our mento, "What?"

"Curse my relatives!" Chiron ducked to avoid being hit with a plate in the head. "Annabeth, you shouldn't have let Percy and Sally leave Camp! But if you do get the Fleece—"

"Yeah, baby!" I heard someone yell behind the centaur. "Woohoooooo!"

My eyes widened as the boat vibrated under us, and the music from the other side of the message was cranked up.

"—Miami," Chiron shouted again, his voice finally coming through. "I'll try to keep watch—"

Our screen exploded with a splash of water.

I wiped the salty liquid from my face and willed it to turn into the shape of a frowny face in midair, "Well...that went well..."

†††

We reached Virginia Beach after Percy and I discovered we had some weird mapping power with oceans and distances. Percy was genuinely shocked; meanwhile, I just sighed–not loving one more connection like that to Poseidon. But I ignored the brewing feeling and discovered that we and the Princess Andromeda had traveled five hundred and thirty nautical miles in a night/mid-morning.

If you're confused as to why I am mentioning this, it is because, technically, a cruise ship should probably not be able to get that far in one night. Which meant there was something powering that ship or something.

On top of that information, we discovered Percy and I could tell you exactly where we were in the positioning of the ocean, too.

It was weird, but a valuable skill that I had a feeling would come in handy later. And it really helped with finding the little demigod safehouse in the Chesapeake Bay we were crawling into.