Partners in Crime || PJOxHP || Marauders' Era

PhDs

Jessica woke to alarm bells ringing throughout the ship. The captain's gravelly voice: "All hands on deck! Find Lady Clarisse! Where is that girl?"

Then his ghostly face appeared above Jessica. "Get up, Potter. Your friends are already above. We are approaching the entrance."

"The entrance to what?" 

He gave her a skeletal smile. "The Sea of Monsters, of course."

Jessica stuffed her few belongings that had survived the Hydra into a sailor's canvas knapsack and slung it over her shoulder. She had a sneaking suspicion that one way or another she would not be spending another night aboard the CSS Birmingham. She and Percy hurried out the room.

She was on her way upstairs when something made her freeze. A presence nearby-something familiar and unpleasant. For no particular reason, she felt like picking a fight. She wanted to punch a dead Confederate. The last time she'd felt like that kind of anger... Instead of going up, she crept to the edge of the ventilation grate and peered down into the boiler deck.

*** 

Clarisse was standing right below them, talking to an image that shimmered in the steam from the boilers-a muscular man in black leather biker clothes, with a military haircut, red-tinted sunglasses, and a knife strapped to his side.

It was their least favorite Olympian: Ares, the god of war.

"I don't want excuses, little girl!" he growled.

"Y-yes, father," Clarisse mumbled.

"You don't want to see me mad, do you?"

"No, father."

"No, father," Ares mimicked. "You're pathetic. I should've let one of my sons take this quest."

"I'll succeed!" Clarisse promised, her voice trembling. "I'll make you proud."

"You'd better," he warned. "You asked me for this quest, girl. If you let that slimeball Jackson kid steal it from you-"

"But the Oracle said-"

"I DON'T CARE WHAT IT SAID!" Ares bellowed with such force that his image shimmered. "You will succeed. And if you don't..." He raised his fist. 

Even though he was only a figure in the steam, Clarisse flinched. "Do we understand each other?" Ares growled.

The alarm bells rang again. Jessica heard voices coming toward her, officers yelling orders to ready the cannons. She and Percy crept back from the ventilation grate and made their way upstairs to join Annabeth and Tyson on the spar deck.

"What's wrong?" Annabeth asked Percy. "Another dream?"

He nodded, but didn't say anything.

*** 

Clarisse came up the stairs right after them. Jessica tried not to look at her. She grabbed a pair of binoculars from a zombie officer and peered toward the horizon. "At last. Captain, full steam ahead!"

Jessica looked in the same direction as she was, but she couldn't see much. The sky was overcast. The air was hazy and humid, like steam from an iron. If she squinted real hard, she could just make out a couple of dark fuzzy splotches in the distance. The engine groaned as they increased speed.

Tyson muttered nervously, "Too much strain on the pistons. Not meant for deep water."

Jessica wasn't sure how he knew that, but it made her nervous. After a few more minutes, the dark splotches ahead of them came into focus. To the north, a huge mass of rock rose out of the sea-an island with cliffs at least a hundred feet tall. About half a mile south of that, the other patch of darkness was a storm brewing. The sky and sea boiled together in a roaring mass.