𝑨𝑪𝑻 𝑶𝑵𝑬 ━ 𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑷𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑺𝑰𝑿

𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐈𝐍 𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐒'𝐒 blood and it was known throughout the Camp, she won a lot of things and almost all of the times she was extremely competitive, even a few of the Ares Children were scared of fighting her but of course that wasn't the case with Clarisse and Cloé but Iris liked to compete with them almost every time. She loved fighting and competing with her friends which may sound weird but to them it was more of a spending time with them sort of way, plus they usually laughed after wards.

As the chariots lined up, more shiny-eyed pigeons gathered in the woods and Percy was getting more paranoid. They were screeching so loudly the campers in the stands were starting to take notice, glancing nervously at the trees, which shivered under the weight of the birds. Tantalus didn't look concerned, but he did have to speak up to be heard over the noise.

"Charioteers!" he shouted. "Attend your mark!". He waved his hand and the starting signal dropped. The chariots roared to life. Hooves thundered against the dirt. The crowd cheered and stood up from the stands.

Almost immediately there was a loud nasty 'crack!' , Percy looked back in time to see the Apollo chariot flip over. The Hermes chariot had rammed into it—maybe by mistake, maybe not. The riders were thrown free, but their panicked horses dragged the golden chariot diagonally across the track. The Hermes team, Travis and Connor Stoll, were laughing at their good luck, but not for long. The Apollo horses crashed into theirs, and the Hermes chariot flipped too, leaving a pile of broken wood and four rearing horses in the dust.

Iris and her fighter, a girl names Naomi, gasped at the sight as she tried to make room from the horses. What the fuck! she thought, what was happening? Two chariots down in the first twenty feet.

Percy turned his attention back to the front and they were making good time, pulling ahead of Ares, but Iris and Annabeth's chariot was way ahead of them. They was already making their turn around the first post, Iris's javelin girl grinning and waving at them, shouting: "See ya!"

The Hephaestus chariot was starting to gain on Percy's chariot and as he looked closer, he saw Beckendorf pressed a button, and a panel slid open on the side of his chariot.

"Sorry, Percy!" he yelled. Three sets of balls and chains shot straight toward his wheels. They would've wrecked them completely if Tyson hadn't whacked them aside with a quick swipe of his pole. He gave the Hephaestus chariot a good shove and sent them skittering sideways while they pulled ahead.

"Nice work, Tyson!" Percy yelled as he looked happily at Tyson. "Birds!" Tyson cried out.

"What?" asked Percy as he looked confused at the exclamation.

They were whipping along so fast it was hard to hear or see anything, but Tyson pointed toward the woods and Percy saw what he was worried about. The pigeons had risen from the trees. They were spiraling like a huge tornado, heading toward the track.

No big deal, Percy told himself. They're just pigeons. He tried to concentrate on the race and they made their first turn, the wheels creaking under them, the chariot threatening to tip, but they were now only ten feet behind Annabeth — Iris being a few meters forward from Annabeth. If he could just get a little closer, Tyson could use his pole....

Annabeth's fighter wasn't smiling now and he pulled a javelin from his collection and took aim at Percy. He was about to throw when they heard the screaming.

The pigeons were swarming—thousands of them dive-bombing the spectators in the stands, attacking the other chariots. Beckendorf was mobbed and his fighter tried to bat the birds away but he couldn't see anything. The chariot veered off course and plowed through the strawberry fields, the mechanical horses steaming.

In the Ares chariot, Clarisse barked an order to Cloé, who quickly threw a screen of camouflage netting over their basket. The birds swarmed around it, pecking and clawing at the fighter's hands as she tried to hold up the net, but Clarisse just gritted her teeth and kept driving. Her skeletal horses seemed immune to the distraction. The pigeons pecked uselessly at their empty eye sockets and flew through their rib cages, but the stallions kept right on running.

The spectators weren't so lucky and the birds were slashing at any bit of exposed flesh, driving everyone into a panic. Now that the birds were closer, it was clear they weren't normal pigeons. Their eyes were beady and evil-looking. Their beaks were made of bronze, and judging from the yelps of the campers, they must've been razor sharp.

"Stymphalian birds!" Annabeth yelled as she and Iris slowed down and pulled their chariots alongside Percy's. "They'll strip everyone to bones if we don't drive them away!" yelled Iris as she tried to slow down to make it easier for her to speak to the others.

"Tyson," Percy said, "we're turning around!" Tyson turned to look at Percy "Going the wrong way?" he asked.

"Always," Percy grumbled, but he steered the chariot toward the stands. Iris rode right next to Percy and Annabeth went on the other side. Annabeth shouted, "Heroes, to arms!" But Percy wasn't sure anyone could hear her over the screeching of the birds and the general chaos.

He held his reins in one hand and managed to draw Riptide as a wave of birds dived at his face, their metal beaks snapping. Percy slashed them out of the air and they exploded into dust and feathers, but there were still millions of them left. One nailed him in the back end and he almost jumped straight out of the chariot.

Iris and Annabeth weren't having much better luck, the closer they got to the stands, the thicker the cloud of birds became.
Some of the spectators were trying to fight back. The Athena campers were calling for shields and the archers from Apollo's cabin brought out their bows and arrows, ready to slay the menace, but with so many campers mixed in with the birds, it wasn't safe to shoot.

"Too many!" Percy yelled to Annabeth. "How do you get rid of them?"

Iris stabbed at a pigeon with her knife as Annabeth did the same only using her sword and said. "Hercules used noise! Brass bells! He scared them away with the most horrible sound he could—" Her eyes got wide and she looked towards Iris who understood what she meant. "Percy...Chiron's collection!"

"You think it'll work?" said Percy as Iris and and Annabeth handed their fighter the reins and leaped from their chariot into his like it was the easiest thing in the world. "To the Big House! It's our only chance!" exclaimed Percy. Iris landed nearer to Percy and grabbed his arm for support since sh was about to fall off.

Clarisse has just pulled across the finish line, completely unopposed, and seemed to notice for the first time how serious the bird problem was. When she saw them driving away, she yelled, "You're running? The fight is here, cowards!" She drew her sword and charged for the stands.

Percy urged his horses into a gallop as Iris ripped her hands away from his arm, the warmth of them leaving Percy. The chariot rumbled through the strawberry fields, across the volleyball pit, and lurched to a halt in front of the Big House. Annabeth and Percy ran inside as Iris stayed on the chariot to assess the situation at hands, tearing down the hallway to Chiron's apartment.

His boom box was still on his nightstand. So were his favorite CDs and Percy grabbed the most repulsive one he could find, Annabeth snatched the boom box, and together they ran back outside.

Down at the track, the chariots were in flames. Wounded campers ran in every direction, with birds shredding their clothes and pulling out their hair, while Tantalus chased breakfast pastries around the stands, every once in a while yelling — Iris had never had the urge to punch someone harder than right now, "Everything's under control! Not to worry!"

Annabeth and Percy had come back to the chariot as Iris pulled up to the finish line. Annabeth got the boom box ready and Percy prayed the batteries weren't dead. He pressed PLAY and started up Chiron's favorite—the All-Time Greatest Hits of Dean Martin. Suddenly the air was filled with violins and a bunch of guys moaning in Italian. It wasn't the greatest sound.

Fighting giant pigeons wasn't something that Iris thought she would have on her bucket list of things to do before she died, and dying by a pigeon wasn't something she wanted to happen. She didn't want to die because some stupid flying chickens were attacking the camp but sometimes life wasn't always on her side, but she didn't think that they would be weakened by music, not the greatest music but still music. How could they be affected by music? Iris didn't know and she didn't want to know either.

The demon pigeons went nuts as they started flying in circles, running into each other like they wanted to bash their own brains out. Then they abandoned the track altogether and flew skyward in a huge dark wave. "Now!" shouted Annabeth. "Archers!"

With clear targets, Apollo's archers had flawless aim and most of them could nock five or six arrows at once. Within minutes, the ground was littered with dead bronze-beaked pigeons, and the survivors were a distant trail of smoke on the horizon.

The camp was saved, but the wreckage wasn't pretty. Most of the chariots had been completely destroyed and almost everyone was wounded, bleeding from multiple bird pecks. Some of the younger kids from almost every cabin were screaming because the scene was shocking and scratches were littered on their body.

"Bravo!" Tantalus said, but he wasn't looking at either Iris, Percy or Annabeth. "We have our first winner!" He walked to the finish line and awarded the golden laurels for the race to a stunned- looking Clarisse. Then he turned and smiled at Percy. "And now to punish the troublemakers who disrupted this race."

𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐒 𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐓𝐓 𝐍𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐆𝐎𝐓 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐁𝐋𝐄, 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐀𝐋𝐖𝐀𝐘𝐒 𝐓𝐎𝐎 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃 or even just didn't really do anything that would make her be like Percy Jackson, who did? He would get in trouble for the weirdest and dumbest things ever. Iris didn't think that Tantalus was serious when he pointed towards Percy, Iris and Annabeth. Why would they get in trouble for saving the whole camp? They just did his job for him, that bitch, thought Iris.

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, Iris, Tyson, and Percy hadn't disturbed them with our bad chariot driving.

This was so completely unfair, Percy told Tantalus to go chase a doughnut, which didn't help his mood, Iris had scoffed at Jackson's idiocy. He sentenced them 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, Iris and Percy had to wear asbestos gloves and aprons.

Tyson didn't mind, he plunged his bare hands right in and started scrubbing, but Annabeth, Iris and Percy 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, Iris and Percy a common enemy and lots of time to talk, even as Iris had blamed Percy for getting them in trouble to which they both started arguing. After listening to Percy's dream about Grover again, they looked like they might be starting to believe Percy.

"If he's really found it," Annabeth 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'll give you a hint kelp-head. What do you get when you skin a ram?" said Iris in a confident voice as she stared blankly at Percy.

"Messy?" said Percy looking at Iris.

She sighed in disappointment. "A fleece dumbass. The coat of a ram is called a fleece. And if that ram happens to have golden wool—"

"The Golden Fleece. Are you serious?" added Percy as he stared at the Aphrodite girl, he didn't know why she was glaring at him since the beginning of their 'punishment'. She had been blaming him of course but Percy hadn't understood that.

Annabeth scraped 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," Percy said. "That old movie with the clay skeletons."

Iris rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Oh my gods, Jackson! You are so hopeless." Iris huffed out and looked at the boy in a 'are you stupid' face. "What?" Percy demanded as he turned to look at Iris directly in the eyes.

"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." said Iris as she crossed her arms and stared back at him.

"It was probably important to her." added Percy as he leaned against the wall that was next to them with one shoulder, his shoulders flexing under the pressure. Iris looked away towards Annabeth, she didn't know why but it was weird looking at the Percy now.

"The 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 bumper 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 pollution—"

"It could cure Thalia's tree." said Percy in realisation.

Annabeth nodded. "And it would totally strengthen the borders of Camp Half-Blood. But Percy, the Fleece has been missing for centuries. Tons of heroes have searched for it with no luck."

"But Grover found it," Percy said. "He went looking for Pan and he found the Fleece instead because they both radiate nature magic. It makes sense, Annabeth. We can rescue him and save the camp at the same time. It's perfect!"

Iris hesitated and looked between the two and added. "A little too perfect, don't you think? What if it's a trap?"

"What choice do we have?" Percy asked as he looked down to Iris, she wasn't short — being 5'6, but she was shorter than Percy who was 5'9. "Are you going to help me rescue Grover or not?" She glanced at Tyson, who'd lost interest in our conversation and was happily making toy boats out of cups and spoons in the lava.

"Percy," she huffed under her breath, "we'll have to fight a Cyclops. Polyphemus, the worst of the Cyclopes. And there's only one place his island could be. The Sea of Monsters."

"Where's that?" asked Percy in a dumb way. Is he joking? Thought Iris as she frowned at the boy.

She stared at him like she thought he was playing dumb. "The Sea of Monsters. The same sea Odysseus sailed through, and Jason, and Aeneas, and all the others."

"You mean the Mediterranean?" added Percy. "No. Well, yes...but no." said Annabeth chiming in on their conversation as she looked between the two who were still standing next to each other.

"Another straight answer. Thanks." huffed Percy.

"Look, Percy, the Sea of Monsters is the sea all heroes sail through on their adventures. It used to be in the Mediterranean, yes. But like everything else, it shifts locations as the West's center of power shifts." added Iris as she looked toward Annabeth.

"Like Mount Olympus being above the Empire State Building," He said. "And Hades being under Los Angeles."

"Right." said Iris and Annabeth at the same time. "But a whole sea full of monsters—how could you hide something like that? Wouldn't the mortals notice weird things happening...like, ships getting eaten and stuff ?" voiced Percy.

"Of course they notice. They don't understand, but they know something is strange about that part of the ocean. The Sea of Monsters is off the east coast of the U.S. now, just northeast of Florida. The mortals even have a name for it."

"The Bermuda Triangle?"

"Exactly." chimed Iris as she spun on her heels and turned towards Tyson. Percy was letting that sink in, not knowing his brows furrowed as he watched her."Okay...so at least we know where to look."

"It's still a huge area, Percy. Searching for one tiny island in monster-infested waters—" added Annabeth.

"Hey, I'm the son of the sea god. This is my home turf. How hard can it be?" exaggerated Percy to which Iris rolled her eyes and scoffed at him. Percy glared at Iris who just smiled sweetly at the boy.

Annabeth knit her eyebrows. "We'll have to talk to Tantalus, get approval for a quest. He'll say no."

"Not if we tell him tonight at the campfire in front of everybody. The whole camp will hear. They'll pressure him. He won't be able to refuse." claimed Percy as he glared at Iris who had long looked away.

"Maybe." A little bit of hope crept into Annabeth's voice. "We'd better get these dishes done. Hand me the lava spray gun, will you?"

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐆𝐎𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄 𝐀 𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐀𝐍𝐃 Iris wasn't going to have it if anything bad would happen, she would most likely have a tantrum. More like an angry face to everyone who tried to talked to her. That night at the campfire, Apollo's cabin led the sing-along which was Iris's favourite time. They tried to get everybody's spirits up, but it wasn't easy after that afternoon's bird attack.

They all sat around a semicircle of stone steps, singing halfheartedly and watching the bonfire blaze while the Apollo guys strummed their guitars and picked their lyres. They did all the standard camp numbers:
"Down by the Aegean,"
"I Am My Own Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandpa,"
"This Land is Minos's Land."

The bonfire was enchanted, so the louder you sang, the higher it rose, changing color and heat with the mood of the crowd. On a good night, I'd seen it twenty feet high, bright purple, and so hot the whole front row's marshmallows burst into the flames. Tonight, the fire was only five feet high, barely warm, and the flames were the color of lint.

Dionysus left early he had just been suffering through a few songs, he muttered something about how even pinochle with Chiron had been more exciting than this. Then he gave Tantalus a distasteful look and headed back toward the Big House.

When the last song was over to Iris's dismay, Tantalus said, "Well, that was lovely!"

He came forward with a toasted marshmallow on a stick and tried to pluck it off, real casual- like. But before he could touch it, the marshmallow flew off the stick. Tantalus made a wild grab, but the marshmallow committed suicide, diving into the flames. Iris giggled behind her hands that covered her mouth, how could she not?

Tantalus turned back toward the children and started smiling coldly. "Now then! Some announcements about tomorrow's schedule."

"Sir," Percy said and Iris turned to look at him in confusion, was he going to do this now? Iris turned and looked at Theo who was staring from his seat, she wasn't surprised by his confused look. What was happening?

Tantalus's eye twitched and an angry glint was seen in his eyes. "Our kitchen boy has something to say?"

Some of the Ares campers snickered alongside Clarisse, but he wasn't going to let anybody embarrass him into silence. Percy stood and looked at Iris and Annabeth and they both stood up with him.

Percy continued, "We have an idea to save the camp." Dead silence, but Percy could tell he'd gotten everybody's interest, because the campfire flared bright yellow.

"Indeed," Tantalus said blandly. "Well, if it has anything to do with chariots—"

"The Golden Fleece," He said. "We know where it is."

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❪ ៸ 𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄 ━━━━━ ! ﹆◞ ❫
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━━━━━ . . .
❪ . . . the 6th chapter for LOVE STORY everyone! ❫
❪ . . . THIS IS 3.6k which way more than I expected but I'm backkkkk ❫
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