𝙎𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙨 𝘿𝙤𝙣'𝙩 𝙈𝙚𝙚𝙩 𝙗𝙮 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 - 𝙋. 𝙅𝙖𝙘𝙠𝙨𝙤𝙣

Who would win? Medusa VS 12 year old

"Never thought I'd find you,
but you're here, and so I love you"

So there they were, Annabeth, Novalie, Grover, and Percy, walking through the woods on the New Jersey riverbank, the glow of New York City making the night sky yellow from behind and the smell of the Hudson reeking in their noses. Grover was shivering and braying, his big goat eyes turned slit-pupiled and full of terror.

"Three Kindly Ones. All three at once."

The explosion of bus windows still rang in Novalie's ears. But Annabeth kept pulling them along, saying:

"Come on! The further away we get, the better."

"All our money was back there," Percy reminded her. "Our food and clothes. Everything."

"Well, maybe if you hadn't decided to jump into the fight –" Novalie spoke.

"What did you want me to do? Let you get killed?"

"You didn't need to protect us, Percy. We would've been fine."

"Sliced like sandwich bread," Grover put in, "but fine."

"Shut up, goat boy," said Annabeth.

Grover brayed mournfully. "Tin cans... a perfectly good bag of tin cans."

The four sloshed across mushy ground, through nasty twisted trees that smelled like sour laundry. After a few minutes, Novalie fell into line next to Percy

"Look, I..." Her voice faltered. "I appreciate your coming back for us, okay? That was really brave."

"We're a team, right?"

She was silent for a few more steps. "It's just that if you died... aside from the fact that it would really suck for you, it would mean the quest was over. This may be my only chance to see the real world."

The thunderstorm had finally let up. The city glow faded behind, leaving them in almost total darkness. Percy could barely see Novalie.

"How long have you been at camp?" Percy asked her.

"Five years, I came.." Novalie paused "A few days after my seventh birthday."

"So, what was life before camp?"

"Uhm, basically the same, I trained and trained every day." Novalie shrugged.

"Your mom did a pretty good job training you." Percy said.

"You think so?" Novalie pulled down the cuff of her green and black sweater.

"Anybody who can successfully stab a Fury is okay by me."

Percy couldn't really see, but saw a small smile on Novalie's face.

Novalie opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by a shrill toot˜toot˜toot, like thesound of an owl being tortured.

"Hey, my reed pipes still work!" Grover cried. "If I could just remember a"find path" song, we could get out of these woods!"

He puffed out a few notes, but the tune still sounded suspiciously like Hilary Duff. Instead of finding a path, Percy immediately slammed into a tree, causing Novalie to laugh at him. After tripping and cursing and generally feeling miserable for another mile or so, they started to see light up ahead: the colors of a neon sign.

They could smell food. Fried, greasy, food. Annabeth and Percy looked excited to smell food but Grover and Novalie felt nervous. They kept walking until they saw a deserted two-lane road through the trees. On the other side was a closed-down gas station, a tattered billboard for a 1990s movie and one open business, which was the source of the neon light and the smell. It wasn't a fast-food restaurant, it was one of those roadside curio shops that sell lawn flamingos and wooden Indians and cement grizzly bears and stuff like that.