1 CH 1] WE ACCIDENTALLY VAPORIZED OUR Pre-Algebra TEACHER

Look, we didn't want to be a half-bloods.

If you're reading this because you think you might be one, our advice is: close this book right now. Believe what-ever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.

[Yeah Right! Percy, has that ever happed to us?]

[Shut up! Aqua!]

Anyway, being a half-bloods is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways. If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think its fiction, great. Read on. We envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.

But if you recognize yourself in these pages-if you feel something stirring inside-stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you.

[You must be a lotta lucky then us.]

[AQUARIUS!?]

[What?!]

Don't say we didn't warn you.

We, our name is Percy and Aqua Jackson.

We are twelve year old twins. Until a few months ago, We were a boarding students at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.

Are we a troubled kids?

Yeah. You could say that.

[Oh the irony..]

[Seriously! Aqua!?]

We could start at any point in our short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan—twenty-nine mental case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.

We know-it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.

[Hey! Quit kicking me! Aqua! You know this is true!]

But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so we had hope.

[Really! Percy? We have hope? is only awesome teacher that we ever have!]

[You're not wrong sis…]

Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He even let Aqua and I play sword fight to each other or make us team up in group to dressed as god or goddess of in stories to act. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put us to sleep.

We hoped the trip would be okay. At least, We hoped that for once that we wouldn't get in trouble again.

[I really hope so too, brother.]

Boy, we are so wrong.

See, bad things happen to us on field trips. Like at our fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, we had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. But I knew Aqua wouldn't be far behind, she literally flood the whole school at same day, got herself expelled too. Which I wanted to know how she do that but I was bit afraid of Aqua's answer.

[Well, we are Jackson twins, and we cannot be separated ever! Remember that, brother!]

[Hmm, hmm.]

And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. But at least Aqua had a lot of fun swimming with the big sharks and purposely released them into the ocean. And the time before that...Well, you get the idea.

This trip, we were determined to be good.

[Boy, we were so wrong about that. Bro..]

[Me too, sister, me too…]

All the way into the city, we put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting our best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.

I had to pull Aqua back into me because she was about to pounce at Nancy Bobofit like a rabid lion. My twin literally growling in soft way, glaring at her as she mumbling swearing colorful threats at her that would make the sailors blush.

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

[Right, he literally ran like there a fire on his furry ass! Ow! Why do you kick me, Grover? And stop laughing! Percy!]

[Cause its funny when you say it, sis!]

Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew we couldn't do anything back to her because we were already on probation. The headmaster had threatened us with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled. "I'll help too, brother!" Aqua growled gleefully, thinking about ways to hurt her.

Grover tried to calm us down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."

He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.

"That's it." We started to get up, but Grover pulled us back to our seat.

"You two are already on probation," he reminded us, "you know who'll get blamed if anything happens."

[Sadly, now we are on the wanted list at the police station—what are you guys looking at Percy and I for?]

[Um, sis, you should run.]

[Why?]

[Cause, your girlfriend looks like she's going to kill you…]

[Oh shit!]

Aqua growled and leaned onto me, with her head on my shoulder, glaring at Nancy Bobofit.

Looking back on it, we wish we'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess we were about to get ourselves into.

Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.

He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.

It blew our mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.

[It really does, bro. It really does.]

He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. We were trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around us was talking, and every time we told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give us the evil eye.

Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.

[I bet she was after seeing her ugly shit-face. OW! Why are you punching my arms for, guys? Oh, are you laughing at me, Perseus!?]

[Guys, help me!]

From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured that Aqua and I are devil spawns. She would point her crooked finger at us and say, "Now, honeys," real sweet, and we knew that we were going to get after-school detention for a month or more.

One time, after she'd made us erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, we told Grover we didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at us, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."

Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.

Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and we both turned around and said in unison, "Will you shut up?"

It came out louder than we meant it to.

The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.

"Mr. and Miss Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"

Our faces was totally red. We said in unison, "No, sir."

Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

We both looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because we actually recognized it. I looked at my twin. She nodded, knowing that we always preferred to speak in same time together because of a freakish twin bond that we both have like the horror twin girls. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?" We said in unison. The kids behind us whispers, "That's freaky, they always talk in same time." We ignored them. At least, Grover and is used to us talking in unison.

[We still do that all the time. Even when we were toddlers. Right, bro?]

[Right, sister!]

"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because..."

"Well..." We racked our brains to remember, looking at each other. "Kronos was the king god, and—"

"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.

"Titan," we corrected ourselves. "And...he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"

"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind us.

"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," We continued in unison, "and the gods won."

Some snickers from the group.

Behind us, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids'."

"And why, Mr. and Miss Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grover muttered.

"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.

[Ha! Baboon butt face!]

[That who she reminds me of, thanks sis.]

[You welcome.]

At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears. We thought about his question, we looked at each other and shrugged. "We don't know, sir." We said in unison.

"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. and Miss Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doo-fuses.

Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. and Miss Jackson."

We knew that was coming.

We told Grover to keep going. Then we turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"

Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go-intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.

"You two must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told us.

"About the Titans?" We asked in unison.

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it." He said.

"Oh." We meekly replied.

"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy and Aqua Jackson."

Aqua growled softly as she looked at me, she knows how I feel and I do know how she feels too. Must be the twin bond thing.

[You know that it's weird to hear Aqua's growl sound like a rabid dog with a truck that backfired—Ow! Sis! Why! You know that it is true!]

[GRRRRR!]

Anyway, we wanted to get angry, this guy pushed us so hard.

I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr. Brunner expected us to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that we both have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and we had never made above a C- in our life. No—he didn't expect us to be as good; he expected us to be better. And we just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.

We both mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.

[He might have, Percy.]

[Goodbye life…]

He told us to go outside and eat our lunch.

The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker then we'd ever seen over the city. We figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. We wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.

Grover, Aqua and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school-the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.

"Detention?" Grover asked.

"Fuck no." said Aqua, Grover took a scolding look at my twin for her swearing. She looked at him with little glare and shrugged in not caring way.

[OW! Why are you guys punching me for?!]

[Cause you swear a lot actually.]

I saw Aqua reached down under into her shirt, was a Calvin Klein black bra as she pulled out a small Yellow-lipped sea krait snake out. Besides the breed of the snake, instead of a yellow or bar markings, it is fully pure ocean blue colored with tint of dark green and blue hue, bright blue greek markings with a small trident mark on its forehead and a pure bright blue eyes. It quite cool snake to have this color or the markings.

I stared at her and the snake then back to my twin, back and forth. I was gobsmacked and said "You brought Leviathan here!?"

"Yea, I did! I couldn't leave him behind," Aqua exclaimed, petting Leviathan's forehead,"right, Leviathan?" Making the snake purr in response and snuggling against into her hand more. I chuckled as I move over to my twin to nuzzle Leviathan's head with my finger, he responded in purring again.

"Nah," I said to Grover's question, remembering what he asked us. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off us sometimes. I mean—Aqua and I are not a genius."

Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when we thought he was going to give us some deep philosophical comment to make us feel better, he said, "Can I have your apples?"

Aqua chucked her apple to me as she played with Leviathan more and we didn't have much of an appetite, so we let him take it.

We watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about our mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. We hadn't seen her since Christmas. We wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. Well, in Aqua's case, she will punch the driver then highjack the car to get home if she wants to but I stopped her from thinking about it…She'd hug us and be glad to see us, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send us right back to Yancy, remind us that we had to try harder, even if this was our sixth school in six years and we were probably going to be kicked out again. We wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give us.

Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.

We were about to unwrap our sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of us with her ugly friends—we guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists-and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.

"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.

My twin, Aqua literally growled with scary glare at her with Leviathan curl up on her shoulder started to hiss at her, baring his black steel fangs. She leaned into my shoulder, her hands tighten my hand in grip. Trying to calm herself down while Leviathan traveled to my shoulder.

[I tried! I really did! But sadly, I did not make it…]

[I know you tried, sis…]

I tried to stay cool, so is my sister. The school counselor had told us a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But we were so mad our mind went blank. A wave roared in our ears.

We don't remember touching her, but the next thing we knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy and Aqua pushed me!"

Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.

Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see-"

"-the water-"

"-like it grabbed her-"

We looked at each other in confusion with Leviathan climbing to the top of my head, flickering its electric blue forked tongue. We didn't know what they were talking about. All we knew was that we were in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc, etc, Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if we'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honeys—"

"We fucking know." Aqua snarked at her with her arms crossing as I jammed her with my elbow to quiet her down. Leviathan hissed softly as he nuzzled himself on my head.

"We know," I grumbled, "a month erasing workbooks."

That wasn't the right thing to say.

"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.

"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I pushed her."

We stared at him, stunned including Leviathan who was startled with squeak noise. We couldn't believe he was trying to cover for us. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.

She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.

"But-"

"You—will—stay—here." She growled.

Grover looked at us desperately.

"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."

"Don't worry about us," Aqua told him, "we will be fine as long, I'm with Percy as Percy with me." She smiled at him to assure him that we are fine.

"Honeys," Mrs. Dodds barked at us. "Now."

Nancy Bobofit smirked.

We gave her our deluxe 'I'll-kill-you-later' stare. Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at us to come on.

How'd she get there so fast?

My sister, Aqua looked at me in confusion and griped my arm tightly in worry. I assure her as I griped her hand. Leviathan quickly slithered off to my shoulder, leading down to my sister's shoulder and went into under of her shirt to hide in her bra.

I scoffed, "Really, Levi?" The snake hidden in her bra, just loudly hissed back at me. Making me jump back a little bit but in annoyance, I hissed in reply to get back at him but he replied back to me again in louder hissing in revenge back at me again. Aqua punched my shoulder to get me stop arguing to Leviathan, she looked annoyed as she poked the snake in her bra to give him a stern look.

"He does that to me too, you know!" Aqua retorted, pulling me up the stories of stairs.

"Yea, but he slithered into my pants! He—Slithered—In—My—Pants! He even hissed at you too, Aqua!" I exclaimed, "And the crazy thing is, you hissed back directly at my nuts!" I caved in my face in embarrassment.

"So?" my sister said, not understating what my huge deal is.

I sighed, we are so, so used to each other in our whole lives as Aqua asked "How does she get up there so fast?"

That is the big question…

We have moments like that a lot, when our brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing we know we've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left us staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told us this was part of the ADHD, our brain misinterpreting things.

[Ha, that was really nice way of telling that we are crazy crackheads, Percy.]

[I don't even know how are you even in relationship to start with?]

[Hey!]

We weren't sure.

We went after Mrs. Dodds.

Halfway up the steps, We glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between us and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.

We looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall. Aqua griped my arm tightly again.

Okay, I thought. She's going to make us buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop. And I knew Aqua might try to get the most ugliest one for her.

But apparently that wasn't the plan.

[Yeppers! Strike one for Percy!]

[Really, Aqua..]

We followed her deeper into the museum. When We finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for us, the gallery was empty.

Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.

Even without the noise, We would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...

"You've been giving us problems, honeys," she said.

We did the safe thing as my sister griped into my arm, making her hand latch to my hand. We said in unison, "Yes, ma'am."

She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"

The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil. We flinched.

She's a teacher, We thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt us.

My sister and I looked at each other, gulped in nervously. We said in unison, "We'll—We'll try harder, ma'am."

Thunder shook the building.

"We are not fools, Perseus and Aquarius Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."

We didn't know what she was talking about.

All we could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy we'd been selling out of our dorm room. Or that our mom told the headmaster that Aqua and I cannot be separated at all or we will unleash our wrath. So he let us stay together at all times, the dorm room and the classes too. Anyway, Or maybe they'd realized we got our essay together on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away our grade. Or worse, they were going to make us read the book.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Ma'am, we don't..." We both shutter.

"Your time is up," she hissed.

Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.

Then things got even stranger.

Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand and in his other hand is a natural hemp bracelet with alligator clip teal into it, also has a cute angry looking white bronze shark stone attached to it.

"What ho, Percy, Aqua!" he shouted, and tossed the pen and the bracelet through the air.

Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.

With a yelps, we dodged and felt talons slash the air next to our ears but not to Aqua, she whimpered a little that she had to check her right ear which it was slashed and bleeding. Then I snatched the ballpoint pen and Aqua snatched the bracelet out of the air, but when it hit our hands, it wasn't a pen or bracelet anymore. It was a sword with foreign writing engraved in to it is visible on its hilt, as it has a blue trident inscribed into the blade, near the hilt—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.

And for my sister, her bracelet, was so beautiful. It turned into a sliver colored with blue tint Guan Dao spear sword mixed with a dark blue trident inscribed into the both blades of the with braided rope in each ends at the hilt and the pole was engraved of beautiful waves and tiny sea creatures into, including a foreign writing engraved on the center of the spear.

Mrs. Dodds spun toward us with a murderous look in her eyes.

Our knees were jelly. I can see my sister holding her spear, shaking as she bravely pointed at her, ignoring the pain from her right ear. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.

She snarled, "Die, honeys!"

And she flew straight at us.

Absolute terror ran through our body. We did the only thing that came naturally: We swung the sword and spear. The metal blade hit her shoulder and the spear blade hit her other shoulder then passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!

Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching us.

We were alone.

There was a ballpoint pen in my hand and a bracelet in Aqua's hand. Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but us.

[That part scares the hell out me, Percy…]

[I thought we both we were going to die that time…]

"What the fuck…" Aqua exclaimed softly, crept forward to me to grip my arm. Still shaking, we both cuddled up tightly together even the hissing from inside Aqua's bra from being squashed between us. Not knowing what to do next.

My hands were still trembling. Our lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or some-thing.

Had we both imagined the whole thing?

I quickly looked at Aqua's right ear to see if that was imagined too. I gasped loudly, making my twin look at me in panic and said "What is it?"

I slowly pointed at her right ear, "Your ear…" I said with fear in my tone, which she quickly to touch it. I watched as her face wince, she moved her hand away from like it startles her to see her hand was covered in blood. She was freaking out and yelped, "Oh my fucking god!"

I gripped her on the shoulders to stop her from freaking out and said firmly, "Aqua! Calm down!" My twin took her time to calmed down in bit and wait for me to say next. "We need to clean the blood off your ear and we both know no-one will ever believe us…" I trail off. Aqua nodded in agreement, "Yea, it seems reasonable but at less I got a cool battle scar then." We both chuckled nervously as we huddle up together in minute or two.

We went back outside before cleaning up the blood off her right ear, leaving her ear one big thin jagged line tear and other two were exact one but smaller like the stray cat's ear that we seen in other day. I quickly moved her hair over her ear to cover it.

It had started to rain, the drops of water soaking our clothes. Our favorite weather. Aqua squealed and twirled me around in happiness that she didn't cared that we danced a little in the pouring rain which Leviathan crawl out of her bra to curl up on her shoulders, enjoying the rain too.

I had to cut our rain dance, it made Aqua whine when she realized it's over.

Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw us, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butts."

We said in unison, "Who?"

"Our teacher. Duh!"

We blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. Aqua petted Levi while she asked Nancy "what the fuck are you talking about?"

She just rolled her eyes, ignoring Aqua and turned away.

We asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was. He said, "Who?"

But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at us, so we thought he was messing with us.

"Don't fuck with us, dude!" Aqua stressed, Leviathan on her shoulder hissed in agreement.

"Not funny, man," I told him, "this is serious."

Thunder boomed overhead.

I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, read-ing his book, as if he'd never moved. We went over to him.

He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen and bracelet. Please bring your own writing utensil and accessory in the future, Mr. and Miss Jackson."

We handed Mr. Brunner his pen and the bracelet. We hadn't even realized we were still holding it.

"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"

He stared at me blankly. "Who?"

"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher." Aqua said.

He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, Aqua, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you both feeling all right?"

[It didn't keep us safe for long enough though…]

[Yep, it kept us sane at first but seeing the lacerations on my sister's right ear…I'm out.]

[Yea…]