The Angelos Chronicles: The Otherworldy adventures

Chapter nine- San Francisco

It took hours to get to California, which was anticipated, but still a painful experience. I slept for about thirty minutes before a gust of cold wind hit me awake, and concluded it would be best not to sleep any longer because of the back-breaking pain the odd position caused me. The rest of the time was spent being either bored out of my mind or playing tic-tac-toe with myself on my hand with an ink pen, the plastic type that you find on the floor of your school but never buy. My nurse gave it to me one day about a year ago (Time flys) and I never had a chance to give it back, or maybe I just didn't care enough to walk up there, either way, I was halfway across the world from that school, so it didn't really matter all that much. But soon the pen ran out of ink and my arm ran out of room to draw on, so I took a long sigh and threw the pen out into open waters in front of me, Padds shot a quick blast and it disintegrated into ash below us. I fell backwards onto Padds' back and looked up at the blank sky, it was a nice, glowy blue, and the sun was nearing the mountains, ready to go down in a couple of hours. I had money, yes, and I definitely had enough to get a hotel for the night, but they wouldn't let me in without a parent, even if I did make up some sob story about being an orphan and just needing a place to lie down for the night. I sat back up, not knowing what to do, what would I do? If I slept in a street I'd probably be drugged or kidnapped, and at this point, I'm not sure if being kidnapped is actually that bad of an idea, my gods I must be going insane. So a hotel is out of the draw, sleeping on the streets is also out, and breaking in could get me dead or in jail, and I'd rather not be running out of some random person's house in the middle of the night with a gunshot wound to the head because they thought I was a burglar. Maybe in an alleyway, no, that'll get me drugged faster than just lying on the road. Dumpster? No, that's too far even for me. It was hopeless. And I had already run out of ideas, the sewer was too gross, and I'd probably get rat diseases, the rooftop of some random building was sure to have security cameras, and I doubted there would be a way in. But that was my only option at this point, or atleast, the only option I would even consider. I sighed loudly, hopeless at this point. Padds turned his head and flapped an ear in my face. "Huh?" I said, startled at the sudden contact. Padds nodded his head forward and I looked up, And there, loud and clear, right in front of me, was the city of san francisco, right where I planned to land... Totally. The only reason I had suspicion it was San francisco was because of the large cargo ship with San Francisco Cargo co. Painted on the side in large, peeling orange letters."Bring us down, Padds, closer to the water, we can't let anyone see us." He did a small nod and swiftly glided down to the water, close enough that I could touch the cold, salty, steel colored water. I shrunk down closer to his scaly body so that it would be harder to see me, we didn't make a sound, and the workers stocking the cargo didn't notice even if we did, still talking about whatever they wanted to discuss while lifting the heavy boxes. We swiftly turned the corners of the boats, and stayed out of sight from the people on the shore and the people on the boats. We dove under the water without warning and emerged under the wooden dock. How we were going to get out I had no clue, that was until I saw the drainage sewer pipe. It was big enough to fit me and Padds, all I had to do was open it. I grabbed my bag and hastily took out the silver knife Artemis left on my bed for me, It was a surprise, I'll admit, and I'm sure mama wouldn't have wanted me to have it, but I took it on the trip, hoping it would serve some use to me. I unscrewed the hatch with the sharp tip of the blade and it opened up nicely. The water flooded inside the pipe, but It didn't go far before it stopped at a turnway. Me and pads held out breath and I hoped to god that nothing's... remains stuck onto me, but nonetheless, I pushed away all my dignity and swam through the pipe, with Padds following close behind. Why he had stayed with me all this way I had no idea, but it was nice to have some company, even if said company couldn't speak. We reached a manhole soon enough. After many turns and loops in the moist sewer, it was disgusting, but if I wanted to see Noah again I was going to deal with it. I almost laughed at the irony, when I first went to the Land of the Lost I was so focused on coming home that I didn't think for even a minute what it would be like if Noah wasn't there, I grew surprisingly attached to him in my time there, and now he was gone. I shook the thoughts from my head, I had to stay focused. I peeked out of the manhole cover and saw that it was in an alleyway between two large buildings that were so close to each other that the exposed pipes touched in some places. I pushed the cover off me and climbed out, Padds hadn't come out behind me. "Padds?" I heard the sound of a shot about to be fired, but before I could even scream for him to stop, a blast of fire hit the ground and blew it up into smithereens with a loud blast. My eyes widened in shock as Padds flew out of the ground, I knew people would be coming by any minute to see what was going on so I tackled Padds behind the building and started running, Padds must've caught on because he ran too. We stopped in a larger alleyway and jumped the broken-down wooden fence. Behind the fence was a line of buildings, all with no alleyway exits, but a small gap of space where I saw a folding ladder attached to the building over a large dumpster. How commedical. I thought, I walked over towards it and grabbed onto the ledge of the green dumpster, then I lept over and caught onto the ladder with just one hand. What I failed to realize before I did this stunt, was the fact that this was one of those slidy ladders and so as soon as I grabbed onto it the ladder slid out from behind and dropped me straight into the garbage. Now it really was commedical, or atleast, Padds thought it was, because he did his stupid little gurgling laugh again. I climbed out with red cheeks, "Not a singular word." He just did a cheeky side smile and flapped his wings, I facepalmed, he could fly, and I just fell into dumpster for nothing. But because I was a stubborn person, I took the ladder anyway, while he flew up to meet me. The rooftop was nice, especially the view of the sunset, it overlooked the beach, if you could even call it that. I set down my bag and plopped onto the concrete, laying my head down on the backpack. Padds circled the floor, and layed down in a circle. I smiled as I watched him, and directed my view back to the sunset. It really was beautiful, but still not like the one at the Land of the Lost, nothing could ever replace that sunset, I thought, while falling asleep. Nothing could ever replace that sunset, because I shared it with Noah.