"You're reading the wrong chapter moron," Hermes said smirking. He counted down slowly in his head, 3-2-1... Now!

"Apollo, if you try to skip another chapter I will chain you up, gag you and throw you to Artemis's hunters as a target to practice with." Athena growled. "This is too important for you to mess up."

Apollo paled and shuddered remembering the last time Athena did that to him. It took forever to remove the arrows from his rear end. He could still feel the sting sometimes. He flipped the pages back and cleared his throat.

I'd love to tell you I had some deep revelation on my way down, that I came to terms with my own mortality, laughed in the face of death, et cetera.

"I doubt Thanatos would appreciate you laughing at him Perce," Nico said.

Thalia just sighed and whacked him upside the head. Once Nico was done rubbing his head Apollo continued.

The truth? My only thought was: Aaaaggghhhhh!

Thalia shuddered and looked at Percy like he was crazy. All but the gods and Jason looked disturbed by that thought.

"You make it sound like being in the air is a bad thing," Jason said indignantly.

"For me the air is a dangerous place without my Pegasus Blackjack," Percy retorted.

"My storm spirit is a better mount that a Pegasus," Jason said.

"Pegasi are better,"

"Storm spirits"

"Pegasi"

"Storm spirits,"

"Pegasi"

WHACK! "Owww" Percy and Jason said in unison rubbing their heads.

"Now that you boys are done fighting we can continue the story," Annabeth and Reyna said.

The river raced toward me at the speed of a truck. Wind ripped the breath from my lungs. Steeples and skyscrapers and bridges tumbled in and out of my vision.

Everyone could hear Sally's breathing get faster and harder.

And then: Flaaa-boooom!

A whiteout of bubbles. I sank through the murk, sure that I was about to end up embedded in a hundred feet of mud and lost forever.

But my impact with the water hadn't hurt.

Sally let out a huge sigh but was still worried about the poison in her sons body.

I was falling slowly now, bubbles trickling up through my fingers. I settled on the river bottom soundlessly. A catfish the size of my stepfather

Cue wrinkling the noses in disgust.

lurched away into the gloom. Clouds of silt and disgusting garbage-beer bottles, old shoes, plastic bags-swirled up all around me.

"That reminds me to start cleaning the rivers more," Poseidon said thoughtfully.

At that point, I realized a few things: first, I had not been flattened into a pancake. I had not been barbecued. I couldn't even feel the Chimera poison boiling in my veins anymore. I was alive, which was good.

"Alive is very good," Hazel said optimistically.

Second realization: I wasn't wet. I mean, I could feel the coolness of the water. I could see where the fire on my clothes had been quenched. But when I touched my own shirt, it felt perfectly dry.

"Must make it hard to take a bath," Hermes said absently.

I looked at the garbage floating by and snatched an old cigarette lighter.

No way, I thought.

"Way," Poseidon said smiling. Percy smiled back and they gave thumbs up.

I flicked the lighter. It sparked. A tiny flame appeared, right there at the bottom of the Mississippi.

"Bet I could light a fire under water." Leo said as his hair caught fire. Everyone looked at him shocked before Percy dowsed him with some pond water. The shock quickly turned to laughter when Leo spit out a drachma.

I grabbed a soggy hamburger wrapper out of the current and immediately the paper turned dry. I lit it with no problem. As soon as I let it go, the flames sputtered out. The wrapper turned back

into a slimy rag. Weird.

"Valid point," The Stolls said.

But the strangest thought occurred to me only last: I was breathing. I was underwater, and I was breathing normally.

Annabeth face palmed. "How can that be the last thing you notice? It's like if Zeus just noticed he is the King of the gods. It doesn't make sense."

"I can't help that some things come a little late to me," Percy said defensively. The Greek demigods sighed thinking about the relationship between the two.

I stood up, thigh-deep in mud. My legs felt shaky. My hands trembled. I should've been dead.

The fact that I wasn't seemed like ... well, a miracle. I imagined a woman's voice, a voice that sounded a bit like my mother: Percy, what do you say?

"It is polite to thank people when they save you." Sally said motherly. Her relief was tangible.

"Um ... thanks." Underwater, I sounded like I did on recordings, like a much older kid. "Thank you ... Father."

"Your welcome son," Poseidon grinned making the gods sigh exasperated.

"We will never finish this book like this. All the interuptions is wasting time." Artemis moaned.

"Speak for yourself Artemis. I'm just trying to sleep through all this." Came Dionysus' voice from underneath a wine magazine. He was promptly shocked awake. Zeus was trying not to laugh at his son's bewildered expression while Thalia was looking too innocent.

No response. Just the dark drift of garbage downriver, the enormous catfish gliding by, the flash of sunset on the water's surface far above, turning everything the color of butterscotch.

"Ahh, butterscotch," Frank said. He noticed the looks and replied defensively, "they remind me of my mom thank you very much." He didn't notice Nico's and the Stolls smirking behind them.

Why had Poseidon saved me? The more I thought about it, the more ashamed I felt. So I'd gotten lucky a few times before. Against a thing like the Chimera, I had never stood a chance. Those poor people in the Arch were probably toast. I couldn't protect them. I was no hero.

"You are a hero. Most probably the best yet." Annabeth whispered into Percy's ear. Percy responded with a kiss and a blush.

Maybe I should just stay down here with the catfish, join the bottom feeders.

"It IS where you belong," Ares said. It was too late for him to notice the shoe of Sally Jackson being thrown at him. Everyone laughed as it hit him in the nose causing a little Ichor to bleed out.

Fump-fump-fump. A riverboat's paddlewheel churned above me, swirling the silt around.

There, not five feet in front of me, was my sword, its gleaming bronze hilt sticking up in the mud.

I heard that woman's voice again: Percy, take the sword. Your father believes in you. This time, I knew the voice wasn't in my head. I wasn't imagining it. Her words seemed to come from everywhere, rippling through the water like dolphin sonar.

"A naiad?" Katie asked.

"No a Neried," Percy awnsered.

"Where are you?" I called aloud.

Then, through the gloom, I saw her-a woman the color of the water, a ghost in the current, floating just above the sword. She had long billowing hair, and her eyes, barely visible, were green like mine.

A lump formed in my throat. I said, "Mom?"

"Sorry son but I wish it was," Poseidon said sadly.

No, child, only a messenger, though your mother's fate is not as hopeless as you believe.

What did she mean by that? Could it be that she was taken? Athena mused silently. She looked around and noticed that no one noticed it like she did.

Go to the beach in Santa Monica.

"What?"

Go. To. The. Beach. In. Santa. Monica." Octavian said snidely. The look Percy gave him made him break out into a cold sweat.

It is your father's will. Before you descend into the Underworld, you must go to Santa Monica. Please, Percy, I cannot stay long. The river here is too foul for my presence.

"But ..." I was sure this woman was my mother, or a vision of her, anyway.

"Who-how did you-"

There was so much I wanted to ask, the words jammed up in my throat.

I cannot stay, brave one,

A silent snort from Ares who feared the fact that Sally still had one more shoe. He didn't notice one coming from Aphrodite's direction.

the woman said. She reached out, and I felt the current brush my face like a caress. You must go to Santa Monica! And, Percy, do not trust the gifts...

That made Athena perk up. Which gifts is she talking about?

Her voice faded.

"Gifts?" I asked. "What gifts? Wait!"

"That is a good question. I wonder which gifts she means," Artemis mused. Everyone but Percy Annabeth and Grover shrugged their shoulders.

She made one more attempt to speak, but the sound was gone. Her image melted away. If it was my mother, I had lost her again.

I felt like drowning myself. The only problem: I was immune to drowning.

Your father believes in you, she had said.

She'd also called me brave ... unless she was talking to the catfish.

Very well could have been, but to brave my domain boy you have to have bravery," Hades said cryptically. Nico sighed at his father for trying to seem dark and scary. In this light he just seemed funny looking, but no way in Tartarus was Nico going to say that out loud. He preffered not being a dandelion.

I waded toward Riptide and grabbed it by the hilt. The Chimera might still be up there with its snaky, fat mother, waiting to finish me off. At the very least, the mortal police would be arriving, trying to figure out who had blown a hole in the Arch. If they found me, they'd have some questions.

I capped my sword, stuck the ballpoint pen in my pocket. "Thank you, Father," I said again to the dark water.

Then I kicked up through the muck and swam for the surface.

I came ashore next to a floating McDonald's.

"That is something I haven't seen before," Apollo said.

"Open your eyes and you might be able to," Hermes said teasingly.

A block away, every emergency vehicle in St. Louis was surrounding the Arch. Police helicopters circled overhead. The crowd of onlookers reminded me of Times Square on New Year's Eve.

A little girl said, "Mama! That boy walked out of the river."

'How can kids see so easily through the mist?" Zeus sighed. He hated having to approve mind wipes multiple times a day.

"That's nice, dear," her mother said, craning her neck to watch the ambulances.

"Of course. The kid sees something and is immediately ignored by the adults. Mortals are weird." Hephaestus said as he tinkered with a miniature mechanical dragon. Leo's eyes never wavered from the metal beast.

"But he's dry!"

"That's nice, dear."

A news lady was talking for the camera: "Probably not a terrorist attack, we're told, but it's still very early in the investigation. The damage, as you can see, is very serious. We're trying to get to some of the survivors, to question them about eyewitness reports of someone falling from the Arch."

Survivors. I felt a surge of relief. Maybe the park ranger and that family made it out safely. I hoped Annabeth and Grover were okay.

"we don't know why but most of the time monsters ignore mortals." Demeter said. Athena grumbled because it was a mystery to even her.

I tried to push through the crowd to see what was going on inside the police line.

"Never return to the scene of a crime, you will be caught eventually.

"An adolescent boy," another reporter was saying. "Channel Five has learned that surveillance cameras show an adolescent boy going wild on the observation deck, somehow setting off this freak explosion. Hard to believe, John, but that's what we're hearing. Again, no confirmed fatalities ..."

"I am glad no one got hurt. It would be a shame for a mortal to get caught up in a gods and demigods affairs," Hestia said staring the three brothers down til they squirmed in their seats.

I backed away, trying to keep my head down. I had to go a long way around the police perimeter. Uniformed officers and news reporters were everywhere.

I'd almost lost hope of ever finding Annabeth and Grover when a familiar voice bleated, "Perrr-cy!"

I turned and got tackled by Grover's bear hug-or goat hug. He said, "We thought you'd gone to Hades the hard way!"

"Yes the hard way would be sooo disappointing," Dionysus grumbled. He too didn't see the shoe coming from Sally.

Annabeth stood behind him, trying to look angry, but even she seemed relieved to see me.

"Of course I was. You dying would be a bad thing," Annabeth said.

"We can't leave you alone for five minutes! What happened?"

"What a wonderfull way to show concern," Conner said sarcastically. Travis ducked in time for Annabeth to throw a rock at Conner.

"I sort of fell."

"How do you sort of fall," Piper asked no one in particular.

"Percy! Six hundred and thirty feet?"

Behind us, a cop shouted, "Gangway!" The crowd parted, and a couple of paramedics hustled out, rolling a woman on a stretcher. I recognized her immediately as the mother of the little boy who'd been on the observation deck. She was saying, "And then this huge dog, this huge fire-breathing Chihuahua-"

"That will never sound normal to me," Frank said.

"Coming from a son of Mars, I find that hard to believe," Clarisse said under her breath.

"Okay, ma'am," the paramedic said. "Just calm down. Your family is fine. The medication is starting to kick in."

"Tells the truth, instantly crazy,: Travis said sadly.

"I'm not crazy! This boy jumped out of the hole and the monster disappeared." Then she saw me. "There he is! That's the boy!"

I turned quickly and pulled Annabeth and Grover after me. We disappeared into the crowd.

"What's going on?" Annabeth demanded. "Was she talking about the Chihuahua on the elevator?"

"Nope. The one in the purse," Hermes laughed.

I told them the whole story of the Chimera, Echidna, my high-dive act, and the underwater lady's message.

"Whoa," said Grover. "We've got to get you to Santa Monica! You can't ignore a summons from your dad."

"Well you can but i would have to get even with you. Maybe seaweed in your bunk.?" Poseidon said aloud. Percy gulped hoping his dad wouldn't do that.

Before Annabeth could respond, we passed another reporter doing a news break, and I almost froze in my tracks when he said, "Percy Jackson. That's right, Dan. Channel Twelve has learned that the boy who may have caused this explosion fits the description of a young man wanted by authorities for a serious New Jersey bus accident three days ago. And the boy is believed to be traveling west. For our viewers at home, here is a photo of Percy Jackson."

"I love celebrities." Aphrodite cooed. Everyone just stared blankly at her as if she was insane.

We ducked around the news van and slipped into an alley.

"First things first," I told Grover. "We've got to get out of town!"

Somehow, we made it back to the Amtrak station without getting spotted. We got on board the train just before it pulled out for Denver. The train trundled west as darkness fell, police lights still pulsing against the St. Louis skyline behind us.

"And that's a wrap on this chapter. Who's next?" Apollo said. Frank raised his hand.

"I'll read. This is getting interesting." He said as he took the book. "A god buys us Cheesburgers."

"Yup. Very interesting." Leo said smartly. Frank just glared at him and began to read.

Well guys. I am back. I decided to continue posting this story on this website till further notice. Thanks to all of ya'll who have been supportive and patient with me. Till Next time ya'll.

Fjclay823 signing out.