Percy Plays Dodgeball with Cannibals

Percy Plays Dodgeball with Cannibals is the eightieth chapter of The Gift of a Best Friend. It was first published on March 7th, 2019.
==Chapter==
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Chapter
 Annabeth's POV
I woke up from a nightmare.
I didn’t quite understand it, but I got the main idea: something was wrong at camp. I haven’t been at camp for a while, but the last time I was there, everything seemed fine, but now . . .
I quickly got out of bed and got dressed, putting on my orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. I grabbed my phone and sent a text to Jasmine: I’m on my way over. Get up.
It was about 6am, sunrise, so she was probably still asleep.
I grabbed my knife’s sheath with my knife in it and strapped it around my waist; grabbed my invisibility hat and put it in my back pocket; and grabbed the backpack I had packed the night before with everything I need in it, slung it over my shoulder, and exited my room where my brothers opened their doors at about the same time.
“Annabeth!” Matthew called. “You’re leaving already?”
“I know it’s early, guys, but I really have to go now,” I replied.
“Why?” Bobby asked.
“I can’t tell you. But it’s important.”
I walked into the living room, and they followed me. Rufus greeted me, and I went into the kitchen to give him his treat, probably the last one I would give him for a while.
Savanna was there. She was an early riser.
“Good morning,” she said, then noticed me fully dressed. “Are you leaving now or are you just anxious to leave? I thought you weren’t going to go until you at least ate breakfast first.”
“’Morning, and I know,” I replied. “But there’s, umm . . . something wrong.”
Savanna didn’t understand much about camp, but she understood enough not to ask me anything else and just nodded. “Ok.”
“What’s wrong?” Bobby asked.
Bobby and Matthew, on the other hand, didn’t know that I was a demigod so they didn’t know what kind of special camp I was going to. We just told them that I’ve been going to a regular camp with Jasmine on the east coast every summer since I first ran away, which wasn’t really a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either.
“Nothing you need to worry about,” I assured Bobby. “I’ve got it under control.”
“You always do,” Matthew said, which was a compliment.
I smiled. “I’m going to miss you guys. But I promise I’ll call whenever I can.”
“Your dad’s going to be sad that he missed you before you left,” Savanna said.
“I know, but I have to go now.”
“We can go jump on his bed and wake him up,” Bobby suggested.
“Yeah!” Matthew agreed.
I laughed. “No. He needs to sleep, and I need to go. But tell him when he wakes up that I promise to call him the first chance I get.”
I gave Savanna a little side hug, gave hugs to Bobby and Matthew, and petted Rufus for the last time.
I waved them all goodbye and headed out the front door.
----
I reached Jasmine’s house and knocked on the door. I would’ve rang the doorbell, but given how early it was, I didn’t want to wake up everyone else.
Fiskerton opened the door.
Usually, for anybody, seeing a 6-foot-tall gorilla-cat answer any door would be frightening, but not for me. I’ve known him long enough that if he scared me before, he doesn’t at all now, especially given all the actual scary things I’ve experienced.
“Hi, Fiskerton,” I said. “Is Jasmine awake?”
He shrugged, but he stepped aside and opened the door wider.
“Thank you.” I stepped into the house and ran up the stairs.
When I got to Jasmine’s door, I knocked on it. “Jasmine?”
She opened the door with an annoyed look on her face. She was fully dressed in her Camp Half-Blood T-shirt and jeans, but I could tell she still wasn’t since she didn’t have her dual blades strapped on.
“You’re not ready yet?” I asked.
“You know, I can be an early riser if you at least told me the night before that you wanted to get up this early, then I could’ve set my alarm instead of be startled awake by a loud music box ding,” she replied.
“You don’t need to have the volume on your phone to be up all the way. You can hear it just fine on half volume. Besides, I didn’t plan on getting up this early either. I just had a nightmare about camp, and we have to go now.”
“What? You had a dream? Why didn’t you just say so in your text? I would’ve gotten ready a lot faster.”
“I wish I did now.”
Jasmine groaned. “Whatever. Get in here and tell me about your dream.”
She grabbed my arm and pulled me into her room, closing the door behind me. Toothless came over and greeted me. I rubbed his head.
“Alright, so, what happened?” Jasmine asked as she put her dual blades in their sheaths on her back. “What’s wrong at camp?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. The dream wasn’t clear. I think it was something about Luke.”
“Oh, great. That’s something that neither of us are prepared to deal with. Especially you.”
I glared at her. “Can we just go already? The soon the better.”
“I agree. But what about Percy?”
“What about him?”
“If this is about Luke, then he’s involved, and he needs to know what’s going on if he doesn’t already.”
“I doubt he does.”
“So do I.”
“So you want to go find him and go to camp together?”
“It makes sense to.”
I sighed. “I guess you’re right. So are we just going to teleport to his apartment or . . .”
“Why don’t we make a little road trip out of it?” Jasmine suggested.
“Jasmine, we don’t have time.”
“Relax. I’m just suggesting that we fly on Toothless’s back all the way there. It’ll be fast, because you know damn well how he is one hell of a fast flyer. Right, Toothless?”
He nodded in agreement.
“Yes, I know that,” I said. “But it would be a lot faster if we teleported instead.”
“Well, too bad. I’m the one with the power and the dragon, and since you woke me up without a fair warning, we’re flying Toothless. Now let’s go. Come on, Toothless.”
She left the note that she wrote for her family on her bed for when they woke up and noticed that she was already gone, saying, There’s trouble at camp. The usual. I’ll talk to you all later. Goodbye.
How has it already become “the usual”?
Jasmine put her hair in a ponytail, grabbed her stuffed backpack, slung it on her back, and she and Toothless headed outside.
I groaned and followed her out.
----
It only took us about an hour, but I still wished we teleported.
Every once in a while, a monster would catch my scent and start following us, though luckily none of them could fly, but some of them would be determined enough to follow us for miles on foot until Jasmine got annoyed enough and either just had Toothless blast him away or she would do herself.
Finally we reached Percy’s apartment building with no monster behind us. For now.
Toothless landed us on the roof.
“Percy’s apartment is 16, right?” Jasmine asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Alright. Let’s go.” She turned herself invisible. 
I grabbed my hat out of my pocket and put it on my head, also turning invisible.
Toothless stayed on the roof while we climbed down the fire escape. It was rickety, making too much noise, so we just decided that Jasmine would hold me and fly us down to Percy’s apartment window. Jasmine put me down on the fire escape outside and she landed down next to me.
“So, what’s the plan?” she asked.
I looked inside. The window shown into what appeared to be Percy’s bedroom, because there was a bed and Percy was lying in it, asleep, until a moment later when he sat bolt upright, shivering.
“Something tells me he just had a bad dream,” Jasmine said.
I nodded in agreement.
Percy looked down at the floor, then out the window, as if he saw us.
“Can he see us?” Jasmine asked. 
“That’s not possible,” I said. “We’re invisible. I can’t even see you.”
“And if I block my powers from my eyesight at least, I wouldn’t be able to see you. So why is he looking out the window in an odd way?”
Percy turned away and looked at his closed bedroom door, as if he heard something.
“Did somebody knock on the door?” I asked.
Jasmine nodded. “Yeah. It’s his mom.”
I looked down at the floor and noticed the morning sunlight filtering in through the window was showing our shadows. That was one thing our invisibility couldn’t hide.
“He saw our shadows,” I said.
“Oh, shit,” Jasmine cursed. “Hide.”
It’s ridiculous to tell someone who’s invisible to hide, but in this case, we were technically still visible. 
I moved to the side, out of the sight of the window, and Jasmine moved to the other side.
“Wait, why are we hiding?” Jasmine asked.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “You just told me to, and for some reason, maybe instinctively, I listened to you. Anyway, you have super hearing, so what’s going on in the room?”
She listened. “Percy’s mom just told him that he’s going to be late for his last day of school, and that he should be excited because he’s almost made it.” She gasped. “He’s not going to get expelled this time?”
“He told me that no monsters have attacked him at all this year,” I said.
“Yeah, he told me that too, which is unbelievable.”
“Too unbelievable. There’s gotta be a reason.”
“And that reason is what?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Jasmine and I email Percy every once in while to let him know what’s going on, but this was the first time we’ve seen him since last summer. 
Jasmine peeked inside the window again. Her eyes widened and she quickly looked away.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Umm, we should probably move,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because he’s changing his clothes, and I really don’t want to see his underwear, or anything else for that matter.”
“Ditto. Let’s move.”
She grabbed me and we flew back to the roof. We decided to fly to the roof of a brownstone building across the street so that it would be a little easier to watch and waited there with Toothless until Percy left his apartment building.
----
We followed Percy all the way to his school, Meriwether College Prep, in downtown Manhattan.
I didn’t believe what Percy had told me about it until now, seeing it for the first time.
The students sat on beanbag chairs instead of at desks, and the teachers were wearing jeans and rock concert T-shirts.
It was definitely the kind of school I’m glad I didn’t go to, and it was definitely one that Jasmine wishes she went to, minus the rock concert T-shirts, because she doesn’t particularly like rock music.
The one thing we could agree on, though, is that we didn’t like how the teachers always seemed to look on the bright side of things, especially since the students themselves didn’t seem to be so . . . well, bright.
Like in Percy’s first class, English, we were hiding among them in the back of the room, still invisible. The whole middle school had read this book called Lord of the Flies, which I have also read, where all the kids get marooned on an island and go psycho. So for their final exam, their teachers sent them into the break yard to spend an hour with no adult supervision to see what would happen. 
“Are they idiots?” Jasmine asked, also having read the book, of course.
“I would say, yes,” I replied.
We watched from the roof so that we could see everything that happened, and what happened was a massive wedgie contest between the seventh and eighth graders, two pebble fights, and a full-tackle basketball game. One boy named Matt Sloan, who seemed to be the school’s bully, led most of those activities.
He wasn’t big or strong, but he acted like he was. He had eyes like a pit bull, and shaggy black hair, and he always dressed in expensive but sloppy clothes, like he wanted everybody to see how little he cared about his family’s money. One of his front teeth was chipped. I remember Percy telling Jasmine, who told me, that that happened from when he’d taken his daddy’s Porsche for a joyride and ran into a PLEASE SLOW DOWN FOR CHILDREN sign.
Jasmine told me that as a way to teach me not to do stupid things because that’s one of the things that could happen if you do. Like I needed to be taught that.
Anyway, Sloan was giving everybody wedgies until he made the mistake of trying it on one particular student.
He was six-foot-three like Fiskerton and built more like the Abominable Snowman. His face was kind of misshapen and brutal-looking. He wore tattered jeans, grimy size-twenty sneaker, and a plaid flannel shirt with holes in them.
He looked familiar . . .
Matt Sloan snuck up behind him and tried to give him a wedgie, and the big kid panicked. He swatted Matt a little too hard. Matt flew fifteen feet and got tangled in the little kids’ tire swing.
“You freak!” Matt yelled. “Why don’t you go back to your cardboard box!”
“Cardboard box?” Jasmine repeated. Then she gasped and grabbed my arm. “Annabeth, he’s a—”
“Cyclops,” I said through my teeth.
I remembered that last time we encountered a Cyclops, and seeing this one didn’t bring back the happy memory.
“I think I now know the reason why Percy hasn’t been attacked by monsters all year,” Jasmine said.
I nodded in agreement. “Until now, anyway.” I nodded over to half a dozen big ugly guys standing around Matt. “Those guys over there . . .”
“Laistrygonians. I don’t think they’re friends, because they should’ve eaten him up by now.”
“Not unless they haven’t been here long.”
“No.”
The Cyclops started sobbing. He sat down on the jungle gym so hard he bent the bar, and buried his head in his hands.
“Take it back, Sloan!” Percy shouted.
Matt just sneered at him. “Why do you even bother, Jackson? You might have friends if you weren’t always sticking up for that freak.”
Percy balled his fists. His face was red. “He’s not a freak. He’s just . . .”
I could tell Percy was trying to think of the right thing to say, but Matt wasn’t listening. He and his big ugly friends were too busy laughing, and yes, they were ugly.
“Just wait till PE, Jackson,” Matt called. “You are so dead.”
“He’s so dead, is he?” Jasmine said, then looked at me in a mischievous way. “What do say we do about that?”
“I say we do what you want me to say,” I replied. “Let’s make sure he’s not.”
When first period ended, their English teacher, Mr. de Milo, came outside to inspect the carnage. He pronounced that they’d understood Lord of the Flies perfectly. They all passed his course, and they should never, never grow up to be violent people. Matt Sloan nodded earnestly, then gave Percy a chip-toothed grin.
“That asshole,” Jasmine whispered.
The Cyclops was still sobbing.
“I . . . I am a freak?” he asked Percy.
“No,” Percy promised, gritting his teeth. “Matt Sloan is a freak.”
The Cyclops sniffled. “You are a good friend. Miss you next year if . . . if I can’t . . .”
His voice trembled. 
“Don’t worry, big guy,” Percy managed. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
The Cyclops gave him such a grateful look that Percy looked guilty. I don’t think he meant what he just told him.
“I don’t think he knows what he really is,” Jasmine whispered to me.
I shook my head in agreement. “I don’t think he does either.”
----
Their next exam was science. Their teacher, Mrs. Tesla, told them that they had to mix chemicals until they succeeded in making something explode.
“That shouldn’t be too hard,” Jasmine said.
I shook my head. “Not for us, no.”
The Cyclops was Percy’s lab partner. His hands were way too big for the tiny vials they were supposed to use. He accidentally knocked a tray of chemicals off the counter and made an orange mushroom cloud in the trash can.
After Mrs. Tesla evacuated the lab and called the hazardous waste removal squad, she praised the Cyclops and Percy for being natural chemists. They were the first ones who’d ever aced her exam in under thirty seconds.
“That will probably be the only exam Percy could ever ace,” I whispered to Jasmine. “Especially that quickly.”
She chuckled. “Maybe. Unless he had a good tutor.” 
She wiggled her eyes at me.
“Shut up.”
In social studies, while they were drawing latitude/longitude maps, I noticed Percy open his notebook and stared at what looked like a photo inside.
Jasmine tiptoed over to his desk to see what it was. Whatever it was, it made her eyes widen, even Toothless’s, and Jasmine got an uncontrollable smile on her face. 
That is never good.
She moved back to my side quickly while smiling at me in a way like I should already know what it was.
“It’s a picture a you standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial when you went to Washington D.C. with your dad,” she said.
My eyes widened too, and I’m pretty sure my face was red.
My dad had taken me there for spring break, and I had sent a picture of that to Percy through email after I got back. I never thought he would carry it with him when he went to school. Now I kind of wish I hadn’t sent that to him.
“Do you want me to tell you what he’s thinking right now looking at your photo?” Jasmine asked me.
“No,” I begged. “Please don’t tell me.”
“Why not? It’s sweet.”
“No, Jasmine. And stay out of his mind.”
“Fine. For now.”
Percy was about to close his notebook when Matt Sloan reached over and ripped the photo out of the rings.
“Hey!” Percy protested.
Matt checked out the picture and his eyes got wide, but not as wide as Jasmine’s was. “No way, Jackson. Who is that? She is not your—”
“Give it back!” Percy turned red, as red as I felt.
Matt handed the photo to his ugly buddies, who snickered and started ripping it up to make spit wads. They were kids who must’ve been visiting, because they were all wearing those stupid HI! MY NAME IS: tags from the admissions office. They must’ve had a weird sense of humor, too, because some of them filled in names I expect from cannibals and some just strange names like: MARROW SUCKER, SKULL EATER, and JOE BOB.
“These guys are moving here next year,” Matt bragged, like that was supposed to scare Percy. “I bet they can pay the tuition, too, unlike your retard friend.”
“He’s not retarded.” I could tell Percy really, really wanted to punch him.
“You’re such a loser, Jackson. Good thing I’m gonna put you out of your misery next period.”
“We’ll see about that,” Jasmine said silently.
His huge buddies chewed up Percy’s photo of me. I could tell Percy wanted to pulverize them, but I knew Percy was under strict orders from Chiron never to take his anger out on regular mortals, no matter how obnoxious they were. He had to save his fighting for monsters. Even though Jasmine disagrees. She believes regular mortals are just as much of assholes as monsters are. She knows and understands why we can’t tell anybody who we really are, but sometimes she wished we did.
The bell rang.
As Percy was leaving class, I whispered, “Percy!”
He looked around the locker area, but of course, he didn’t see us.
A crowd of kids rushed for the gym, carrying Percy and the Cyclopes along with them. It was time for PE. Matt Sloan had promised to kill Percy.
“Why did you do that?” Jasmine asked me out loud after the hallway emptied out.
“To get his attention,” I replied like it was obvious.
“And then you say nothing when he turned to your voice.”
“We were in a crowded hallway. It’s not like I could’ve revealed myself to him.”
“Then don’t call to him if you’re not going to say anything else! Now let’s save him from being killed.”
“By who, exactly? That guy Matt, or the Cyclops, or the Laistrygonians?”
“Both. Come on.”
----
As soon as I stepped into the gym, I stopped.
The gym looked very familiar, but I wasn’t sure why. It looked like the gym at my school, but every gym always shares the same purpose and never the same appearance. They may look similar, but there was always something different from another.
“What?” Jasmine asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But I think I’ve been here before.”
“When?”
I shook my head, mystified. “I don’t know.”
“Was Percy here with you?”
“I . . . I think so. Maybe you too, and Toothless.”
“Is it possible that you saw this in one of your visions?”
I thought about it.
Now that she mentioned it, I don’t remember this room being so clear before like it was now. And those Laistrygonians . . . I do remember having a vision about them.
“Possibly,” I admitted. “And I think I know what’s going to happen next.”
We continued to walk over to where Percy was.
Apparently, the gym uniform at Meriwether is sky blue shorts and tie-dyed T-shirts.
Their coach, Coach Nunley, was sitting at his little desk reading Sports Illustrated. Nunley was about a million years old, with bifocals and no teeth and a greasy wave of gray hair. He reminded me of the Oracle at Camp Half-Blood.
“That dude needs to retire,” Jasmine said. 
“I agree,” I said.
“Coach, can I be captain?” Matt Sloan said. 
“Eh?” Coach Nunley looked up from his magazine. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Mm-hmm.”
Matt grinned and took charge of the picking. He made Percy the other team’s captain, but it didn’t matter who he picked, because all the jocks and the popular kids moved over to Matt’s side. So did the group of Laistrygonians.
On Percy’s side, he had Tyson, Corey Bailer a computer geek, Raj Mandali a calculus whiz, and a half dozen other kids whose names I didn’t know. But with a Cyclops on his side, he should be fine—Plus, Jasmine, Toothless, and I were going to secretly help out Percy, and we’re all he needs—but the visitors on Matt’s team were almost as tall and strong-looking as the Cyclops, and there were six of them.
We put our backpacks down near the bleachers and got into position.
Matt spilled a cage full of balls in the middle of the gym.
“Scared,” the Cyclops mumbled. “Smell funny.”
Percy looked at him. “What smells funny?”
“Them.” The Cyclops pointed at the Laistrygonians. “Smell funny.”
The Laistrygonians were cracking their knuckles, eyeing them like it was slaughter time. For them, it probably is.
Matt blew the coach’s whistle and the game began. Matt’s team ran for the center line. On Percy’s side, Raj Mandali yelled something in Urdu and ran for the exit. Corey Bailer tried to crawl behind the wall mat and hide. The rest of Percy’s team did their best to cower in fear and not look like targets.
Jasmine sighed. “Useless cowards.”
“Tyson,” Percy said, talking to the Cyclops who apparently had a name. “Let’s g—”
A ball slammed into his gut. He sat down hard in the middle of the gym floor. The other team exploded into laughter.
“Ooooo,” Jasmine and I both said in unison.
“That was one of the Laistrygonians,” I said.
“I know,” Jasmine agreed. “The bigger they are, the harder they can throw.”
“Percy, duck!” Tyson the Cyclops yelled. 
He rolled as another dodgeball whistled past his ear at the speed of sound.
Whooom!
It hit the wall mat, and Corey Bailer yelped.
“Hey!” Percy yelled at Matt’s team. “You could kill somebody!”
The visitor named Joe Bob grinned at him evilly. He was a lot bigger now. Even taller than Tyson the Cyclops. His biceps bulged beneath his T-shirt. “I hope so, Perseus Jackson! I hope so!”
All around Matt, the Laistrygonians were growing in size. They grew until they were eight-foot-tall giants with wild eyes, pointy teeth, and hairy arms tattooed with snakes and hula women and Valentine hearts.
Matt dropped his ball. “Whoa! You’re not from Detroit! Who . . .”
The other kids on his team started screaming and backing toward the exit, but the giant named Marrow Sucker threw a ball with deadly accuracy. It streaked past Raj Mandali just as he was about to leave and hit the door, slamming it shut like magic. Raj and some of the other kids banged on it desperately but it wouldn’t budge.
“Let them go!” Percy yelled at the giants.
The one called Joe Bob growled at him. He had a tattoo on his biceps that said: JB luvs Babycakes. “And lose our tasty morsels? No, Son of the Sea God. We Laistrygonians aren’t just playing for your death. We want lunch!”
He waved his hand and a new batch of dodgeballs appeared on the center line—but these balls weren’t made of red rubber. They were bronze, the size of cannon balls, perforated like wiffle balls with fire bubbling out of the holes. They must’ve been searing hot, but the giants picked them up with their bare hands.
Jasmine and I glanced at each other. “Uh, oh.”
“Aww,” Jasmine groaned. “And I was really looking forward to beating his ass at dodgeball.”
“Coach!” Percy yelled.
Coach Nunley looked up sleepily, but if he saw anything abnormal about the dodgeball game, he didn’t let on. That’s the problem with mortals. A magical force called the Mist obscures the true appearance of monsters and gods from their vision, so mortals tend to see only what they can understand. Maybe the coach saw a few eighth graders pounding the younger kids. Maybe the other kids saw Matt’s thugs getting ready to toss Molotow cocktails around. At any rate, I was pretty sure nobody else, except for Percy and the Cyclops, realized we were dealing with genuine man-eating bloodthirsty monsters.
“Yeah. Mm-hmm,” Coach Nunley muttered. “Play nice.”
And he went back to his magazine.
The Laistrygonian named Skull Eater threw his ball. Percy dove aside as the fiery bronze comet sailed past his shoulder.
“Corey!” Percy screamed.
Tyson the Cyclops pulled him out from behind the exercise mat just as the ball exploded against it, blasting the mat to smoking shreds.
“Run!” Percy told his teammates. “The other exit!”
They ran for the locker room, but with another wave of Joe Bob’s hand, that door also slammed shut.
“No one leaves unless you’re out!” Joe Bob roared. “And you’re not out until we eat you!”
He launched his own fireball. Percy’s teammates scattered as it blasted a crater in the gym floor.
Another fireball came streaking toward Percy. Tyson the Cyclops pushed him out of the way, but the explosion still blew him head over heels. Percy was sprawled on the gym floor, dazed from smoke, his tie-dyed T-shirt peppered with sizzling holes. Just across the center line, two hungry giants were glaring down at him.
“Flesh!” they bellowed. “Hero flesh for lunch!” They both took aim.
“Percy needs help!” Tyson the Cyclops yelled, and he jumped in front of Percy just as they threw their balls.
“Tyson!” Percy screamed, but it was too late.
“He thinks it’ll hurt him,” I said.
“But it won’t,” Jasmine agreed.
Both balls, speeding toward him at a million miles an hour, slammed into Tyson the Cyclops, but he caught them. He sent them hurtling back toward their surprised owners, who screamed, “BAAAAAD!” as the bronze spheres exploded against their chests.
The Laistrygonians disintegrated in twin columns of flame. Monsters don’t die. They just dissipate into smoke and dust.
“My brothers!” Joe Bob the Cannibal wailed. He flexed his muscles and his Babycakes tattoo rippled. “You will pay for their destruction!”
“Tyson!” Percy said. “Look out!”
Another comet hurtled toward them. Tyson just had time to swat it aside. Percy flew straight over Coach Nunley’s head and landed in the bleachers with a huge. KA-BOOM!
“That’s gotta hurt,” Jasmine said.
Kids were running around screaming, trying to avoid the sizzling craters in the floor. Others were banging on the door, calling for help. Matt himself stood petrified in the middle of the court, watching in disbelief as balls of death flew around him.
Coach Nunley still wasn’t seeing anything. He tapped his hearing aid like the explosions were giving him interference, but he kept his eyes on his magazine.
“Victory will be ours!” roared Joe Bob the Cannibal. “We will feast on your bones!”
He hefted another ball. The other three giants followed his lead.
Even I didn’t think Tyson couldn’t deflect all those balls at once.
Jasmine quickly turned Toothless back to full-grown size and she and I both unsheathed our weapons.
But, for some reason, Percy ran toward the locker room.
“Move!” He told his teammates. “Away from the door.”
Tyson had batted two of the balls back toward their owners and blasted them to ashes.
That left two giants still standing.
A third ball hurtled straight at Percy. But instead of moving, he stayed right where he was standing.
“What is he doing?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” Jasmine said.
Percy dove aside at the last possible second as the fiery sphere demolished the locker room door, causing the flaming dodgeball to ignite in a huge WHOOOOOOOM!
“Why didn’t he just move after the second the cannon ball was throw?” Jasmine complained. “It’s not like it was a bull that could change directions if you didn’t wait to move at the last possible second before it struck you.”
“I don’t understand half the things Percy does or why he does them,” I said.
The wall blew apart. Locker doors, socks, athletic supporters, and other various nasty personal belongings rained all over the gym.
Tyson punched Skull Eater in the face. The giant crumpled. But the last giant, Joe Bob, had wisely held on to his own ball, waiting for an opportunity. He threw just as Tyson was turning to face him.
“No!” Percy yelled.
The ball caught Tyson square in the chest. He slid the length of the court and slammed into the back wall, which cracked and partially crumbled on top of him, making a hole right onto Church Street. Tyson looked dazed. The bronze ball was smoking at his feet. Tyson tried to pick it up, but he fell back, stunned, into a pile of cinder blocks.
“Well!” Joe Bob gloated. “I’m the last one standing! I’ll have enough meat to bring Babycakes a doggie bag!”
He picked up another ball and aimed it at Tyson.
“Stop!” Percy yelled. “It’s me you want!”
The Laistrygonian grinned. “You wish to die first, young hero?”
For some stupid reason, Percy charged him.
The giant laughed. “My lunch approaches.” He raised his arm to throw.
I couldn’t let that happen.
I was a lot closer to him than Percy was. I raised my blade and charged. My hat flew off my head, making me visible, but I didn’t care. Once I reached the giant, I moved behind and stabbed my knife through his back. 
The giant’s body went rigid. The ball dropped out of his hand. The monster stared down at the knife that I had just run him through with from behind.
He muttered, “Ow,” and burst into a cloud of green flame.
“Nice one, Annabeth,” Jasmine said, making herself and Toothless also visible.
Matt, who’d been standing there dumbfounded the whole time, finally came to his senses. He blinked at me, as if he dimly recognized me from Percy’s notebook picture. “That’s the girl . . . That’s the girl—”
I punched him in the nose and knocked him flat. I couldn’t help it. 
“And you,” I told him, “lay off my friend.”
Jasmine laughed. “Or we’ll make sure you do. And damn, Annabeth. Nice punch.”
The gym was in flames. Kids were still running around screaming. I heard sirens wailing and a garbled voice over the intercom. Through the glass windows of the exit doors, I could see a man wrestling with the lock, a crowd of other adults piling up behind him.
“Annabeth . . . Jasmine . . .” Percy stammered. “How did you . . . how long have you . . .”
“Pretty much all morning.” I sheathed my bronze knife. “I’ve been trying to find a good time to talk to you, but you were never alone.”
“The shadow I saw this morning—that was—” My face felt hot. “Oh my gods, you two were looking in my bedroom window?”
"Maybe . . ." Jasmine admitted, turning red.
"There's no time to explain!" I snapped, my face burning. "I just didn't want to—"
“There!” a woman screamed. The doors burst open and the adults came pouring in.
“Meet us outside,” I told Percy. “And him.” I pointed to Tyson, who was still sitting dazed against the wall. I gave him a look of distaste. “You’d better bring him.”
“What?”
“No time!” I said. “Hurry!”
I picked up my Yankees baseball cap from the floor, put it on, and instantly vanished again. Jasmine also turned her and Toothless invisible again too.
I ran to the bleachers, grabbed my backpack, and jumped through the gaping hole in the side of the building, with Jasmine and Toothless following close behind.
----
And now we have reached The Sea of Monsters. There will be some differences, but not too many. I hope you enjoy!
The first two chapters of The Tyrant's Tomb was released today, and it definitely builds excitement for the upcoming book that normally would've been released in two months from now, but, sadly, has been pushed back until September.
Please review here.
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==Character Appearances==
===Main Characters===
*Annabeth Chase
*Jasmine Saturday
*Percy Jackson
===Minor Characters===
*Bobby Chase
*Matthew Chase
*Savanna Chase
*Matt Sloan
*Tyson
===Pets===
*Rufus Chase
*Fiskerton Saturday
*Toothless
===Enemies===
*Laistrygonians
==Trivia==
Category:Chapters
Category:The Gift of a Best Friend chapters
Category:Chapters based on a chapter in the book series
Category:Chapters in Annabeth's POV