𝑨𝑪𝑻 𝑶𝑵𝑬 ━ 𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑷𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑺𝑰𝑿𝑻𝑬𝑬𝑵

𝐋𝐔𝐊𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐁𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐃, 𝐁𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐘 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐃 𝐎𝐑 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐄𝐍𝐕𝐘, but whatever it was Iris wanted him to stop. He really needed to stop this, Iris was done with his shit and back then she would have done anything to help him get over this but right now all she wanted to do was to slap him. But here they were with him, and Percy wasn't helping. 

   "One on one," Percy challenged Luke "What are you afraid of?"

Luke curled his lip, the soldiers who were about to kill them hesitated, waiting for his order. Iris hoped they were dumb enough to not do anything. But before he could say anything, Agrius, the bear-man, burst onto the deck leading a flying horse. 

It was a pure-black Pegasus, with wings like a giant raven. The Pegasus mare bucked and whinnied. "Sir!" Agrius called, dodging a pegasus hoof. "Your steed is ready!"

Luke kept his eyes on Percy. "I told you last summer, Percy," he said. "You can't bait me into a fight."

   "Luke please." said Iris desperately. But her words went unnoticed except for one glance from both parties. 

   "And you keep avoiding one," Percy noticed turning back. "Scared your warriors will see you get whipped?"

Luke glanced at his men. "I'll kill you quickly," he decided, and raised his weapon. Luke whistled to one of his men, who threw him around leather-and-bronze shield. He grinned at Percy wickedly, almost maniacally. 

   "Luke," Annabeth said, her face full of betrayal, "at least give him a shield."

   "Sorry, Annabeth," he said. "You bring your own equipment to this party." 

Luke lunged and almost killing Percy on the first try. His sword went under his arm, slashing through Percy's shirt and grazing his ribs. Iris took in a breath. Percy jumped back, then counterattacked with Riptide, but Luke slammed his blade away with his shield.

   "My, Percy," Luke chided. "You're out of practice." 

He came at him again with a swipe to the head. Percy went for a blow again, but Luke sidestepped easily. When Luke lunged again, Percy jumped backward into the swimming pool. Percy spun underwater, creating a funnel cloud, and blasted out of the deep end, straight at Luke's face. The force of the water knocked him down, spluttering and blinded. But he went back on his feet.

Percy attacked and sliced off the edge of his shield, but that didn't even faze him, Luke dropped to a crouch and jabbed at Percy's legs. Suddenly his thigh was on fire, his jeans were ripped above the knee. 

Percy was hurt. Iris didn't know how badly but she saw Luke hacked downward and Percy rolled behind a deck chair. He tried to stand but failed.

   "Perrrrrcy!" Grover bleated trying to fight the bear man. 

Percy rolled again as Luke's sword slashed the deck chair in half, metal pipes and all. He clawed toward the swimming pool, trying hard not to black out. Luke advanced slowly, smiling. The edge of his sword was tinged with red blood, Percy's blood.

   "One thing I want you to watch before you die, Percy." He looked at the bear-man, who was still holding Iris, Annabeth and Grover by the necks. "You can eat your dinner now, Oreius. Bon appetit."

   "He-he! He-he!" The bear-man lifted the friends and bared his teeth. Iris closed her eyes. It's not real, they won't die. It's not real, they won't die.

A red-feathered arrow sprouted from Oreius's mouth. With a surprised look on his hairy face, he crumpled to the deck. The three friends were left on the ground. Iris opened her eyes and looked around.

   "Brother!" Agrius wailed. 

He let the Pegasus's reins go slack just long enough for the black steed to kick him in the head. For a split second, Luke's guards were too stunned to do anything except watch the bear twins' bodies dissolve into smoke. 

Then Iris heard it, there was a wild chorus of war cries and hooves thundering against metal. A dozen centaurs charged out of the main stairwell.

   "Ponies!" Tyson cried with delight at the sight. 

Chiron was among the crowd, but his relatives were almost nothing like him, there were centaurs with black Arabian stallion bodies, others with gold palomino coats, others with orange-and-white spots like paint horses. 

Some wore brightly coloured T-shirts that said PARTY PONIES: SOUTH FLORIDA CHAPTER. 

Some were armed with bows, some with baseball bats, some with paintball guns. Another was bare-chested and painted entirely green and one of those baseball caps with soda-can-and-straw attachments on either side.

Iris could cry out of happiness at the sight.

They exploded onto the deck with such ferocity and colour that for a moment even Luke was stunned. Percy couldn't tell whether they had come to celebrate or attack. As Luke was raising his sword to rally his troops, a centaur shot a custom-made arrow with a leather boxing glove on the end. 

It smacked Luke in the face and sent him crashing into the swimming pool. His warriors scattered. 

   "Come get some!" yelled one of the party ponies. 

They let loose with their paintball guns. A wave of blue and yellow exploded against Luke's warriors, blinding them and splattering them from head to toe. They tried to run, only to slip and fall.

Chiron galloped toward Iris, Annabeth and Grover, neatly plucked them off the deck, and deposited them on his back. Percy tried to get up, but his wounded leg still felt horrible. Luke was crawling out of the pool.

   "Attack, you fucking idiots!" he ordered his troops. 

Somewhere down below deck, a large alarm bell thrummed. These meant that they would be swamped by Luke's reinforcements. Already, his warriors were getting over their surprise, coming at the centaurs with swords and spears drawn. 

Tyson slapped half a dozen of them aside, knocking them over the guardrail into Miami Bay but more warriors were coming up the stairs.

   "Withdraw, brethren!" Chiron said looking towards the others.

   "You won't get away with this, horse man!" Luke shouted. He raised his sword but got smacked in the face with another boxing glove arrow and sat down hard in a deck chair. 

A centaur hoisted Percy onto his back. "Dude, get your big friend!"

   "Tyson!" Percy yelled. "Come on!" 

Tyson dropped the two warriors he was about to tie into a knot and jogged after us. He jumped on the centaur's back.

   "Shit dude!" the centaur groaned, almost buckling under Tyson's weight. "Do the words 'low-carb diet' mean anything to you?" 

Luke's warriors were organizing themselves into a phalanx, but by the time they were ready to advance, the centaurs had galloped to the edge of the deck and fearlessly jumped the guardrail, as if it were a steeplechase and not ten stories above the ground. Iris once again closed her eyes, her hand in both of her friends. 

They plummeted toward the docks, but the centaurs hit the asphalt with hardly a jolt and galloped off, whooping and yelling taunts at the Princess Andromeda as they raced into the streets of downtown Miami.

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐄𝐃 𝐀𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃, 𝐇𝐎𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐄𝐎𝐏𝐋𝐄 were watching them galloping around like crazy. The speed at which the centaurs were going at made him feel lightheaded as he tried to look at his friends. Finally, after a few minutes, they found themselves in a trailer park at the edge of a lake. They were horse trailers, tricked out with televisions and mini-refrigerators and mosquito netting. Centaur Camp.

   "Dude!" said one of the centaurs as he unloaded his gear. 

   "Did you see that bear guy? He was all like: 'Whoa, I have an arrow in my mouth!'" The centaur with the googly-eyeglasses laughed. 

   "That was awesome! Head slam!" The two centaurs charged at each other full-force and knocked heads, then went staggering off in different directions with grins on their faces. 

Chiron sighed. He set Iris, Annabeth and Grover down on a picnic blanket next to Percy who immediately went closer to the three. 

   "I really wish my cousins wouldn't slam their heads together. They don't have the brain cells to spare." said Chiron.

   "Chiron," Percy said, still stunned by the fact that he was here. "You saved us." He gave them a dry smile. 

   "Well now, I couldn't very well let you die, especially since you've cleared my name." responded Chiron.

   "Chiron" whispered Iris, "How did you know where we were?" 

   "Advanced planning, my dear. I figured you would wash up near Miami if you made it out of the Sea of Monsters alive. Almost everything strange washes up near Miami."

   "Gee, thanks," Grover mumbled. 

   "No, no," Chiron said. "I didn't mean...Oh, never mind. I am glad to see you, my young satyr. The point is, I was able to eavesdrop on Percy's Iris-message and trace the signal. The goddess Iris and I have been friends for centuries. I asked her to alert me to any important communications in this area. It then took no effort to convince my cousins to ride to your aid. As you see, centaurs can travel quite fast when we wish to. Distance for us is not the same as distance for humans."

 Percy looked over to Iris as Chiron mentioned the goddess noticing that she smiled when the latter was mentioned. She was smiling at Chiron. Percy looked over at the campfire, where three party ponies were teaching Tyson to operate a paintball gun. 

   "So, what now?" Percy asked Chiron. "We just let Luke sail away? He's got Kronos aboard that ship or parts of him, anyway."

Chiron knelt, carefully folding his front legs underneath him. He opened the medicine pouch on his belt and started to treat Percy's wounds. "I'm afraid, Percy, that today has been something of a draw. We didn't have the strength of numbers to take that ship. Luke was not organized enough to pursue us. Nobody won."

   "But we got the Fleece!" Annabeth said for the first time. "Clarisse is on her way back to camp with it right now."

Chiron nodded, though he still looked uneasy. "You are all true heroes. And as soon as we get Percy fixed up, you must return to Half-Blood Hill. The centaurs shall carry you there."

   "You're coming, too?" Percy asked.

   "Oh yes, Percy. I'll be relieved to get home. My brethren here simply do not appreciate Dean Martin's music. Besides, I need to have some words with Mr. D. There's the rest of the summer to plan. So much training to do. And I want to see. . .I'm curious about the Fleece." said Chiron.

Over by the campfire, Tyson let loose with his paintball gun. A blue projectile splattered against one of the centaurs, hurling him backward into the lake. The centaur came up grinning, covered in swamp muck and blue paint, and gave Tyson two thumbs up.

   "Annabeth, Iris," Chiron said, "perhaps you and Grover would go supervise Tyson and my cousins before they, ah, teach each other too many bad habits?" Annabeth met his eyes. Some kind of understanding passed between them. She looked over at Iris who nodded also understanding.

   "Yeah okay." said Iris standing up and grabbing Grover's arm.

   "Sure, Chiron," Annabeth said. "Come on, goat boy."

   "But I don't like paintball." said Grover looking between both girls.

   "Yes, you do, you love it." said Iris as she hoisted Grover to his hooves and led him off toward the campfire. Chiron finished bandaging my leg. 

   "Percy, I had a talk with Annabeth and Iris on the way here. A talk about the prophecy." 

   "It wasn't her― their fault," Percy said, unaware of his mistake. Chiron noticed, smilling at the oblivious boy.

   "I made them tell me." His eyes flickered with irritation. "I suppose I could not expect to keep it secret forever."

   "So, am I the one in the prophecy?" asked Percy.

Chiron tucked his bandages back into his pouch. "I wish I knew, Percy. You're not yet seventeen. For now, we must simply train you as best we can, and leave the future to the Fates." 

   "That's what it meant," Percy said in realisation.

Chiron frowned. "That's what―what meant?"

   "Last summer. The omen from the Fates, when I saw them snip somebody's life string. I thought it meant I was going to die right away, but it's worse than that. It's got something to do with your prophecy. The death they foretold—it's going to happen when I'm seventeen." 

Chiron's tail whisked nervously in the grass. "My boy, you can't be sure of that. We don't even know if the prophecy is about you."

   "But there isn't any other half-blood child of the Big Three!" said Percy.

   "That we know of." interrupted Chiron.

   "And Kronos is rising. He's going to destroy Mount Olympus!" yelled out Percy.

   "He will try," Chiron agreed. "And Western Civilization along with it, if we don't stop him. But we will stop him. You will not be alone in that fight." 

   "I'm just a freaking kid, Chiron," Percy said miserably. "What good is one lousy hero against something like Kronos?" 

Chiron managed a smile. "'What good is one lousy hero'? Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain said something like that to me once, just before he single-handedly changed the course of your Civil War."

Meanwhile, Iris and Annabeth were dragging Grover towards Tyson who was still going crazy with the paintball. The party ponies were sort of partying. Tyson was having fun with centaurs, some in the lake, some on shore. 

   "Do you think he's telling him about―," asked Iris as she whispered into Annabeth's ear.

   "Yeah, I think so." answered Annie. "Do you think Clarisse is already at Camp?" 

   "Not now, but she'll probably get there soon, right?" said Iris, she then looked over at Grover who was ahead of them grumbling to himself. "Grover!"

   "Yes!" shouted Grover turning to look at her only to find her sprinting towards him. He turned as she jumped on his back, laughing. 

The satyr grumbled but held her up, "Shit, calm down flower girl."

Annabeth smiled and laughed while she jogged closer to the two.

   "Let's go now!" said Iris smiling at her friend.

On the other side, Chiron spoke to Percy. "You must try, Percy. Because whether or not you are the child of the prophecy, Krono thinks you might be. And after today, he will finally despair of turning you to his side. That is the only reason he hasn't killed you yet, you know. As soon as he's sure he can't use you, he will destroy you."

   "You talk like you know him." said Percy.

Chiron pursed his lips. "I do indeed know him."

 Percy stared at him, waiting for him to continue. "Is that why Mr. D blamed you when the tree was poisoned? Why you said some people don't actually trust you?"

   "Indeed."

   "But Chiron. . .I mean, come on now! Why would they think you'd ever betray the camp for Kronos?" said Percy.

Chiron's eyes were deep brown, full of sadness. "Percy, remember your training. Remember your study of mythology. What is my connection to the titan lord?"

Percy tried to think but nothing came to him, he wished he'd paid attention to his mythology classes or even when Iris and Grover told him a few things. "You, uh, owe Kronos a favour or something? He spared your life, or did he do some crazy shit like saving you?"

   "Percy," Chiron said, his voice impossibly soft. "The titan Kronos is my father."

𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐒𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐑 𝐍𝐄𝐗𝐓 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐏, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐄 Percy rode on Chiron's back, Iris and Annabeth were seated on another centaur while Grover went on another. Iris and Annabeth were talking for almost the whole ride there, so much so that at some point the centaur yelled at them to shut up. Which the girls only grumbled at until they arrived at camp.

When they got to camp, the centaurs were anxious to meet Dionysus, apparently, they'd heard he threw some really wild parties, but they were disappointed. The wine god was in no mood to celebrate as the whole camp gathered at the top of Half-Blood Hill. The camp had been through some shit in the last two weeks.

The arts and crafts cabin had burned to the ground from an attack by a Draco Aionius, The Big House's rooms were overflowing with wounded. The kids in the Apollo cabin, had been working overtime performing first aid on everyone. Iris learned that a lot of her friends were there and vowed to go look after them. But everybody looked weary and battered as the group crowded around Thalia's tree.

The moment Clarisse draped the Golden Fleece over the lowest bough, the moonlight seemed to brighten into almost a silvery glow, a cool oceanic breeze rustled in the branches and rippled through the green grass, all the way into the valley. Everything came into sharper focus— the golden glow of the fireflies down in the woods, the smell of the strawberry fields, the sound of the waves on the beach.

Gradually, the needles on the pine tree started turning from a brown to vibrant green. Everybody cheered and yelled out as the magic happened. It was slowly happening, the Fleece's magic was seeping into the tree, filling it with new power and expelling the poison. Chiron ordered a twenty-four/seven guard duty on the hilltop, at least until he could find an appropriate monster to protect the Fleece. 

Iris went over to the Big House after this, she stared at the battered campers in sadness, she wished they'd come back sooner. She saw Annabeth near where the Athena kids were, and passed there only to see that their newest member was there.

Theodore Baker sat there as he waited for one of the Apollo kids to come see him, his arm was bruised, and cuts littered upon it. Annabeth was sat next to one of her half-siblings, and as soon as she saw Iris walking towards them, she waved.

   "Iris!" yelled Annabeth with a smile.

Iris waved back seeing as most of the Athena Cabin looked towards her direction. They never had an issue with the Elliott girl, she always seemed happy to see them. Most of them just smiled and waved. 

   "Annie have you seen Silena?" asked the brunette.

But before the girl could answer, another voice chimed in, "I think I saw her near the Hermes kids."

Turning to her right she saw Theo. He smiled sheepishly and apologized for the interruption, but Iris smiled and said, "It's okay, thanks Theo."

   "No worries, Iris." said Theo with a smile.

Annabeth looked between the two confused, "You two have met before?"

   "Oh yeah . . . uhm . . . she came to look for you at the cabin, and I told her you were at the Arena." responded Theo.

   "Yeah, uhm. . . I have to go, but I'll see you guys later okay!" replied Iris as she quickly walked away. Annabeth smiled and turned to Theo who looked away from her. Annabeth laughed at his reaction only for him to giggled back.

In the meantime, Clarisse was carried on her cabin mates' shoulders down to the amphitheatre, where she was honoured with a laurel wreath and a lot of celebrating around the campfire. Iris cheered on for the girl as she sat next to Percy and Annabeth. Annabeth engrossed in a conversation with Chloe, one of the Ares kids whom Iris was good friends with.

Iris looked back to Percy, only to see the boy already looking at her, she chuckled and asked, "What, Jackson? Something on my face, is it chocolate, I hope not. . . my concealer would be ruined—."

Percy laughed and shook his head, "No, there's nothing on your face princess, it's just—." He stopped himself and turned as Grover came to talk to the two. Iris shrugged and looked away.

Later that night, as they were roasting s'mores and listening to the Stoll brothers tell them a ghost story about an evil king who was eaten alive by demonic breakfast pastries, Clarisse shoved Percy from behind and whispered in his ear, "Just because you were cool one time, Jackson, don't think you're off the hook with Ares. I'm still waiting for the right opportunity to pulverize you." Percy gave her a grudging smile.

   "What?" she demanded. 

   "Nothing," Percy said. "Just good to be home."

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❪ ៸ 𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄 ━━━━━ ! ﹆◞ ❫
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❪ . . . the 16th chapter for LOVE STORY everyone, we are almost done with SoM so thats amazing!!! ❫
❪ . . . This is like 3.5k which is quite good!!! ENJOY!!!! ❫
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❪ . . .PLEASE don't be a ghost reader, comment and vote, I love to reply to everyone and interact with my readers, love all of you darlings <33 ❫