Cleaning Up Percy Jackson's Multitude of Messes

I ~ Chrys

I stood stock still, staring at a road sign in front of me. LEWISTON, MAINE Pop. 36,592 the sign said, referring to the brightly lit city in front of me. I took a deep breath, fingering at my amber necklace that hugged my throat. I looked down to the slip of paper in my hand with the name of the demigod I was to bring back with me to Camp Half Blood. My nerves got to me as I stared at the slip of paper and a few daisies popped up through the asphalt around me. I ignored the flowers and began my trek down the road and towards Lewiston's only high school. 

*  *  *

It's your average town with good looking neighborhoods and beautiful parks where I could see other nymphs hanging out in their home trees and they waved at me as I passed. I waved back and continued on my journey, stepping over the dandelions that popped up through the cracks in the sidewalk as I went. The houses soon gave way to grocery stores with mothers pushing their baby ridden strollers and little mom and pop restaurants leaving you with a sense of happiness and security. Now where did Chiron say the school was?

  "Hey, missy! What are you doing out of school?" Well there goes security. 

  A stout man with a thin mustache in a black uniform comes up to me with a deep frown on his face that makes the wrinkles in his forehead stand out like a freshly plowed field.

  "I'm sorry?" I ask the man, whom I realised was a police officer when I noticed his over polished badge on his chest, "What's the problem?"

  "The problem, missy, is that you're not in school right now," he said with an even deeper frown. Seeing my chance, I put my hand on my hip and put a rude look on my face.

  "Your point?" I remark sassily. By Juniper, he didn't like that. The pudgy officer grabbed me by the arm, mumbling to himself about "disrespectful generation" and dragged me towards what I understand to be the Hades of the teenage world.

*  *  *   

It didn't take us long to reach the high school and even less time to meet Mr. Kringly a.k.a. Lewiston High's vice principal. He was a tall, wiry man with thinning hair and a comb over, like it would actually hide his cue ball head. The officer pulled me along towards the stick-bug man and they got into a deep conversation about me and how I was not in school.

  While Rocky and Bullwinkle talked about what a horrible child I am, I found myself staring intently at the vice principal's shining scalp. It is very distracting and I found it very hard to look away even when the bell rang and students flooded the hallways to get to their next class. I finally shook out of my daze when a feeling hit my gut like a sledgehammer. Chiron and the satyrs at camp told me about this feeling: it only comes along when there is a demigod near by and judging by how powerfully it hit me, this demigod was strong.

  "Just give her to me and I will figure out what is going on," Cue Ball tells The Moustache and leads me towards a room labeled: COUNSELOR'S OFFICE. I try to fight him as I thrust my head up above the crowds of students to try and pinpoint the source of that gut feeling. But, Cue Ball pulled me into the office before I even had a chance. He plopped me down in front of a kind looking woman and simply said, "Played hookie," and walked out the door. As he left, I turned towards whom I suppose was the counselor of the school and tried to look as innocent as possible. That was until I noticed the pot of dead flowers on her desk corner. They were brown and lifeless and my heart reached out for them. Man, I want to cry.

  "What's wrong, dear? You look very upset," I looked up from the wilted and falling apart lilies to the woman in front of me. Once I looked her full in the face, I noticed something off. She's about your average height and weight for a woman of her age but her smile seemed too wide and her eyes slightly bugged out from their sockets.

  "Nothing, ma'am," I said, remembering the proper etiquette for when speaking to an adult human. She looked like she was about to protest when there was a knock at her door. I turned towards the noise and that feeling hit me in my gut all over again. 

  Standing at the door was a tall dark skinned boy of about fifteen and dark eyes with long black hair that went down just past his shoulders, and let me say, he was freaking hot. He had a look on his face that showed that he had already been in this office and seemed to be weary of something. He looked to me and spoke a simple greeting of hey with a clearly amused smile on his face. That's when I realized that I am gaping at him with my jaw hanging and slammed it shut with an audible click.  

  "Have a seat, Santiago," the counselor said and motioned towards the seat next to me. My eyes followed him as he walked to his seat and sat his backpack at his feet. He looked towards the pot of dead lilies and told the counselor that she ought to take better care of her plants and I was immediately depressed again. 

  "Never mind the flowers," the counselor replies with a sneer on her face. "Want to discuss what happened in Horticulture?" The boy automatically sinks further into his chair with a look of embarrassment. I felt sorry for Santiago and found myself butting into the conversation.

  "You have a Horticulture class? That's really cool. I love plants," I said sincerely. It was kind of hard not to love plants and their green, at-home feeling.

  "Can it, nymph," the counselor snaps, which made me freeze in my seat. She looked to Santiago with a look of pure malice. "What power you have," she said, her eyes pushing ever farther out of her head. "The power of two gods. What I could do with that power," a forked tongue passed between her lips as she brought it up to lick her protruding eyeball. Gross.

  "Great gods of Olympus," I cursed in Ancient Greek and stood up, plunging my fingers into the soil of the dead flower pot. Almost immediately, the deceased flowers turned green and shot towards the transforming woman whose eyes are starting to turn red, her skin secreting transparent green mucus. My impromptu lily vines wrapped around her fleshy body and bound her now forming tentacles in a tight vice.

  My vines eventually stopped growing and the former school counselor struggled with her bindings. I grabbed for the vulnerable demigod and dragged him along as I sprinted towards the doors.

  "What's going on? What happened to Ms. James? Who are you?" the demigod child continued to bombard me with questions as I drug him by his wrist out the front doors of the school and into the parking lot. We paused a moment to catch our breaths and for me to explain.

  "That was not Ms. James. That was the Kraken: the cursed son of Hades and I pray that we never cross paths with him ever again," I huffed out as I began to dig through my bag for a weapon for the demigod.

  "Wait, wait. Hades as in the Greek god, Hades?" he said as he looked at me like I had lost my petals. Oh boy, this is going to take a while.

  "Okay, I don't have time for this. I will explain all of this later. You are going to have to trust me, Santiago." I continued to dig through my bag. Where are my seeds?

  "Diago."

  "What?" I looked up from my rummaging to the boy standing in front of me.

  "My name," he says. "It's Diago."

  "Oh," I said. "Mine's Chrys." I pulled out a dagger and tossed it to Diago. "Here's your weapon for now. Let's head out before we get eaten by a giant squid. My vines aren't going to last for long." Diago nodded and we went off sprinting down the street, a dagger in his hand and a bag of seeds in mine. 

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Yay! First installment of Cleaning Up Percy Jackson's Multitude of Messes (whoa that's a mouthful). As ya'll know this is a collaboration and my fellow writers in crime will be posting together on both our pages so as to reach as many people as possible. That way you will be able to access it through not just my profile but through my fellow writer's. o_O That was confusing to write. Eeesh. 

Anyways, please vote and comment below. We will be posting every other Saturday. We appreciate any critic and advise given. Thnx!

-WT44

P.S. Image of Chrysanthemum above.