Days of Boom: Chapter 12

Nolan Swift

XII

Everyone Stay Calm

“I don’t think so,” I said as I took a closer look at the small print on the paper. Burning Sun actually had a pretty clever set up as I looked at the full laminated paper. It was designed to look like a menu, but important information was in place of the descriptions of the meals. It was no wonder that the waitress had mixed it into her stack of menus. “The Heart of the Olympians may be at Mount Olympus, but that isn’t what the note says. It says the Heart of Greece, which is Athens. I think you were right the first time El.”

She seemed to be a bit irritated at my remark, but shrugged it off soon enough. I was actually kind of glad to have another person on the team, even if she seemed a bit unpredictable. Jared meanwhile was looking over some of the members of Bunnies Sun we had knocked out. As it turned out, only a few had any serious injuries. While Celestial Bronze couldn’t kill a regular mortal, body armor wasn’t as durable and would break on impact with our weapons. Jared had patched up a few, most likely using some knowledge he picked up from the other Apollo campers or possible knowledge he himself had learned. As much as these guys were starting to annoy me, they were just regular mortals and I personally didn’t want any blood on my hands.

“Either way, we should head for the train,” Dan said as he looked over the scene of the room. “We should get out of here soon. The customers may start to question why their food hasn’t arrived and take a look back here.”

“A train will take too long,” Joe said with an annoyed tone. “Isn’t there some kind of faster way of getting there? Hey Nolan, can you do that portal thing again?”

I looked down at my hammer, but I could feel that it wasn’t up to the task quite yet. I kind of wished we could simply take a plane or something, but now with a child of Poseidon on the team, not to mention a lack of money to do it, that wasn’t really an option. I imagined a map of the world in my head, and going around the Adriatic Sea would indeed take a lot of time, but what about through it?

“I can’t teleport, but I have an idea. We should head South-East toward the bottom of the boot. We can take a boat to Athens from Lecce and save a lot of time,” I said as I showed Dan the path on our map. He looked it over and nodded his head in agreement.

“Wait! Does anyone else see a problem with the son of the sky god sailing over the sea?” Joe said and we all started seeing the flaw in my plan, until El spoke up.

“Oh don’t worry about it. Unlike Zeus, Poseidon is pretty easy going when it comes to that stuff,” El said and for a second, I thought I heard the sound of thunder, but it quickly passed and she continued. “I mean look at Percy and Annabeth, while Athena doesn’t like Percy dating her daughter, Poseidon really doesn’t mind that much. Plus, I don’t think he would do anything with his own kid on board.”

“Are you insulting my dad?!” Joe said in an annoyed tone and just for a second, I saw electrics sparks in his eyes that didn’t go unnoticed by the rest of us.

“Of course not,” she said and we let out a collective sigh as we were glad she didn’t get on Joe’s bad side. And then she said “All I’m saying is that he is way too uptight sometimes.”

“You are insulting him!” Joe said as he pointed his spear at her. She just kind of shrugged him off, but he persisted. “I mean you just joined the team and you’re already insulting my dad.”

“You’re almost as uptight as your dad,” El said as she just waved her spear around in her hand. I didn’t know if she meant to do it or not, but a small ball of water appeared above Joe’s head. It then started falling and landed right on his head, soaking him.

“That’s not good,” I said to myself as I watched Joe explode with anger. He shot a blast of wind, which sent her flying backward.

“Hey, it was an accident!” she yelled back before she raised her spear and water seemed to circle around her body. She then pointed her own spear forward and the water propelled forward, really getting Joe wet. The two began to charge at each other, but I didn’t care to see this anymore. I gripped my hammer and the head became covered in flames. I slammed it down on the ground and an entire thirty foot wall of fire came between the two Big Three demigods, causing them to stop in their tracks.

“That’s enough!” I yelled at them and they both looked at me a bit sheepishly, almost embarrassed. Few people had ever seen me truly angry before, as it was in complete contrast to my normal persona. However when it happened, people tended to back up. Both El and Joe were the ones to back up this time, going somewhat pail as I walked between them with my flaming hammer. “You can work out your rivalry later, but right now we don’t have the time or the energy to waste fighting each other. Now we are going to head for the train station, take it to Lecce, find a boat, and sail to Athens. Any problems?”

Both of them nodded their heads no and the group left in almost complete silence.

“Good job,” April said quietly as we walked behind everyone else. “I’m just glad I wasn’t the one that got between them. I mean they could have just turned on you ya know.”

“Did you just tell a joke?” I asked her sarcastically and she let out a small smile, but before she could answer, I told a joke of my own. “I think I could take them.”

“Sure you could,” April said as she patted me on the back. “I’ll remember that if they ever get out of hand again and I’ll send you in.”

I let out a small laugh before she patted me on the back and went ahead to lead the group. I just hung in the back, which was a lot harder than one would think because I was itching to walk faster, which for me would be a normal pace, but a jog for everyone else. We went like this for awhile until we reached the train station. Thankfully, there was a high speed train that could get us to Lecce in a matter of just a few hours (actually five and a half hours, but who’s counting?). There were so any of us that we were forced to take two different cabins, thankfully right next to each other. Also, El and Joe were placed in separate cabins to give them time to cool off. The train went so smoothly that I fell asleep soon after leaving the station.

“Wake up Puppy,” I heard, followed by the sensation of a small amount of water landing on my head. I shot up instantly and saw El laughing a bit. I ended up chasing her off the train and out of the station as she tried in vain to stay ahead of me. I found it pretty enjoyable actually, but trying to run away from the fastest hero alive wasn’t exactly a smart move.

“Will you two stop messing around?!” Dan called as everyone else started heading for the docks, hopefully to find a boat that would take us to Athens.

“Alright, I’m coming,” El said as she gave up being chased by me and we headed for the docks. It was kind of late already, and when we got to the docks the ferryman told us the last ship left about an hour ago and there would be one early tomorrow morning, around six.

“Good job Swift, now we’re stuck here until tomorrow morning,” April joked, but I just kind of brushed it off.

“Hey, we actually saved some time, even if we have to wait a few extra hours to get to Athens,” Dan said and we started setting up camp near the shore line at the top of a cliff. Something felt off about it, but I didn’t know what. My internal GPS seemed to be off somehow, as it was telling me I was standing in the sea. I brushed it off as I took the first watch, as I had gotten some sleep on the train. I walked around the camp for a few hours, with nothing exciting happening at all.

“I’ll take the next shift,” Dan said as she walked up to me. I nodded and started heading back toward the camp, until the ground started shaking for a short moment then just stopped.

“What was that?” I asked out load, to no one really.

“I didn’t do it!” I heard from one of the tents we set up and I knew instantly it was El who said it; she was the daughter of the Earth-shaker after all. Just then, the ground began to shake again and I saw two geysers of water appear on the opposite side of the cliff, shooting high into the air.

“What is going on, it feels like the entire land is breaking up!” April said over the sound of the geysers and the rumbling of the round. By now my GPS was really going crazy as it told me we were going even further into the sea, but that couldn’t have been right.

“Stay here,” I said as I ran toward the direction of the two geysers, which had stopped just a few moments earlier. I was trying to keep my balance as I could feel the ground rumbling below my feet. I looked back and saw April following me. When we finally reached the edge of the cliff, we looked down and saw something we didn’t believe, even by demigod standards.

“What…is that?” Dan said as we both looked down at a large head that poked out of the water. When I say a giant head, I don’t mean like the size of a car or something, I mean the size of a three story house. It was a three story tall head that looked somewhat like a turtle’s head.

“I think this is an Aspidochelone, a giant turtle, and I think we are on his back,” I replied in amazement.

“How do you know that?” Dan asked, still amazed at the sight.

“I watch a lot of cheesy Sci-fi movies,” I replied as we just watched the large turtle carry use out to sea, hopefully toward Athens.

Darkcloud1111 ~Fastest Hero Alive