Percy Jackson x Male Reader The Sea of Monsters

I Attack Our Activities Director

Y/n's POV

The way Tantalus saw it, the Stymphalian birds had simply been minding their own business in the woods and would not have attacked if Annabeth, Tyson, Percy, and I hadn't disturbed them with our bad chariot driving.

This was so completely unfair, but there was little we could do. He sentenced us to kitchen patrol-scrubbing pots and platters all afternoon in the underground kitchen with the cleaning harpies. The harpies washed with lava instead of water, to get that extra-clean sparkle and kill ninety-nine point nine percent of all germs, so Annabeth, Percy, and I had to wear asbestos gloves and aprons.

Tyson didn't mind. He plunged his barehands right in and started scrubbing, but we had to suffer through hours of hot, dangerous work, especially since there were tons of extra plates. Tantalus had ordered a special luncheon banquet to celebrate Clarisse's chariot victory-a full course meal featuring country-fried Stymphalian death-bird.

The only good thing about our punishment was that it gave Annabeth and Percy a common enemy which got them back on speaking terms. Given that we had a lot of time to talk about what we were going to do. After Percy recounted his dream of Grover to Annabeth she slipped into her familiar pondering and puzzling look.

"If he's really found it," she murmured, "and if we could retrieve it-"

"Hold on." Percy said. "You act like this . . . whatever-it-is Grover found is the only thing in the world that could save the camp. What is it?"

I looked over at my friend. He may have been one of the best fighters ever, and one of the most compassionate people I knew but when it came to book smarts he could be a little slow. "Percy what do you get when you skin a ram?"

"Messy."

Annabeth sighed. "He means a fleece. The coat of a ram is called a fleece. And if that ram happens to have golden wool-"

"The Golden Fleece. Are you serious?"

Annabeth scrapped a plateful of death-bird bones into the lava. "Percy, remember the Gray Sisters? They said they knew the location of the thing you seek. And they mentioned Jason. Three thousand years ago, they told him how to find the Golden Fleece. You do know the story of Jason and the Argonauts?"

"Yeah," he said. "That old movie with the clay skeletons."

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Oh my gods, Percy! You are hopeless."

I scrubbed harder against a glass cup as I felt the tension between them rising.

"What?" Percy demanded.

"Just listen. The real story of the Fleece: there were these two children of Zeus, Cadmus and Europa, okay? They were about to get offered up as human sacrifices, when they prayed to Zeus to save them. So Zeus sent this magical flying ram with golden wool, which picked them up in Greece and carried them all the way to Colchis in Asia Minor. Well, actually it carried Cadmus. Europa fell off and died along the way, but that's not important."

"I mean it might have been to her." I interjected.

"Not relevant. Point is when Cadmus got to Colchis he sacrificed the golden ram to the gods and hung the Fleece in a tree in the middle of the kingdom. The Fleece brought prosperity to the land. Animals stopped getting sick. Plants grew better. Farmers had larger crops. Plagues never visited. That's why Jason wanted the Fleece. it can revitalize any land where it's placed. It cures sickness, strengthens nature, cleans up pollutions-"

"It could cure Thalia's tree."

Annabeth and I nodded. "There's no other nature magic as powerful as that piece of rams coat. We have to save Grover and get it back to camp. It's our only chance at saving Thalia."