Capítulo 17: They Go to a Theme Park!
The group of adolescents was very grim as they went to complete the side-quest of Ares.
The sun was sinking behind the mountains by the time they found the water park, nobody was talking very much along the way, as each of them was dreading the meeting with yet another god, one hostile to Ares to the point of the War God was unwilling to retrieve his own shield himself. Judging from the huge sign, it once had been called WATERLAND, but now some of the letters were smashed out, so it reads WATRAD instead.
The main gate was padlocked and topped with barbed wire, shark, and dangerous. Inside, huge dry waterslides and tubes and pipes curled everywhere, leading to empty pools. Old tickets and advertisements fluttered around the asphalt. With night coming on, the place looked sad and creepy.
Albert was thinking about the very specific kinda of eeriness of abandoned and ruined Amusement Parks and Circus, there was just something unique about their creepiness that even a haunted house could not replicate.
"If Ares brings his girlfriend here for a date," Percy said, staring up at the barbed wire, "I wonder about her taste in guys now more than ever... Your mom is very weird, Albert."
"Percy," Annabeth warned. "Be more respectful!"
"Why? I thought you hated Ares." Percy asked annoyed, he didn't like Ares at all.
"He's still a god!" Annabeth said, "And his girlfriend is very temperamental, no offense, Albert."
"None taken, Blondie... none taken," Albert said, silently agreeing with Percy. His mother was weird and quite dangerous.
"You don't want to insult her looks, Percy" Grover added.
"Why? What's so wrong with that anyways?"
"She is Aphrodite!" Grover said, a little dreamily.
"Goddess of Love..." Annabeth added. "And Beauty!"
"I thought she was married to somebody," Percy stated, looking at Albert with an inquisitive gaze.
"She is... in a way, I guess. She is married to Lord Hephaestus," The brown-haired awkwardly explained, this topic was a bit daunting to talk about, "Hephaestus is the God of Blacksmiths, Craftsmen, Artisans, Fire, and Volcanoes. He is known as the divine artisan and inventor, revered for his exceptional skill in metalworking and craftsmanship among the Olympians," Albert hesitated before adding darkly, "I am not sure about the nuances of Goldly Marriages, except that loyalty and fidelity that in general seems to be something most of them seemed to struggle with... judging, by mine existence and yours too."
"Mine?!" Percy asked confused.
"Your dad is very much married too..." Albert dryly explained. "In a way most of us, demigods, are products of their indiscretions... or maybe they just don't care about monogamy very much, after all, even my... stepfather... has his demigod children back at camp. This is one big messy family, Jackson. It's better not to look too close."
"I don't wanna talk about this anymore," Percy said quickly changing the subject.
I guess he didn't know he was an affair child too? Albert wondered. He didn't care too much about his status in this family, he had a family of his own and that was enough. Matter of fact, he was relieved he didn't have to deal with his mother's side directly. He felt goosebumps just imagining being introduced formally at Olympus, if he could help it, he would avoid that place even more than the Underworld.
"So how do we get in?"
"Maia!" Grover's shoes sprouted wings.
The satyr's boy flew over the fence, did an unintended somersault in midair, and then stumbled to a landing on the opposite side. He dusted off his jeans as if he'd planned the whole thing to begin with. "You guys coming?"
The demigods had to climb the old-fashioned way, holding down the barbed wire for each other as they crawled over the top. Some shadows grew long as they walked further into the park, checking out the attractions. There was something called Ankle Biter Island, Head Over Wedgie, and Dude, Where's My Swimsuit? Naming choices were very questionable in this establishment.
No monsters came to get them, which did not come as a surprise, since in a way this place could be another hidden temple. Nothing made the slightest noise. Freaky, it was what the place was. They searched for something useful around and found a souvenir shop that had been left open. Merchandise still lined the shelves: snow globes, pencils, postcards, and racks of—!
"Clothes," Annabeth said. "Fresh clothes."
"Yeah," Percy said. "But you can't just—"
"Watch me."
"I am gonna go see if I can find something too!"
The girl charged at an entire row of stuff, she went off the racks and disappeared into the changing room. A few minutes later she came out in Waterland flower-print shorts, a big red Waterland T-shirt, and commemorative Waterland surf shoes. A Waterland backpack was slung over her shoulder, obviously stuffed with more goodies. Albert showed up not very much later, winning himself an All-Black set, but this time he was wearing shorts instead of pants, but he changed socks too.
Grover crept toward the edge. "Guys, look there."
Marooned at the bottom of the pool was a pink and white two-seater boat with a canopy over the top and little hearts painted all over it. In the left seat, glinting in the fading light, was Ares's shield, a polished circle of bronze.
"This is too easy," Percy said. "So we just walk down there and get it?"
"Maybe it is hard enough for the intended target," Albert scornfully commented.
Annabeth ran her fingers along the base of the nearest Cupid statue.
"There's a Greek letter carved here," she said. "Eta. I wonder . . ."
"Grover," Percy called out, "you smell any monsters? Nothing, right?"
Grover sniffed the wind again and shook his head. "Nothing."
"Nothing—like, in-the-Arch-and-you-didn't-smell-Echidna nothing, or really nothing?" Percy asked skeptically.
Grover looked hurt. "I told you, that was different!"
"Okay, I'm sorry." Fishboy took a deep breath. "I'm going down there."
"I'll go with you." Grover didn't sound too enthusiastic, but I got the feeling he was trying to make up for what had happened in St. Louis.
"No," Percy told him. "I want you to stay up top with the flying shoes. You're the Red Baron, a flying ace, remember? I'll be counting on you for backup, in case something goes wrong."
Grover puffed up his chest a little. "Sure. But what could go wrong?"
"Never say that again, you're gonna jinx it!" Albert exclaimed.
"I don't know. Just a feeling. Annabeth, come with me—"
"Well, well..." Albert hummed amused at that.
"No! Are you kidding?" She looked at me as if I'd just dropped from the moon. Her cheeks were bright red. "I don't want you to go with you!"
"What's the problem now?" Percy demanded.
"Me, go with you to the . . . the 'Thrill Ride of Love'? How embarrassing is that? What if somebody saw me?" The girl looked mortified. "I am not going!"
"Who's going to see you?" Percy's face was burning now, too, as he glared at her. He had probably just realized what he had proposed. "Fine," He told her. "I'll do it myself."
"Hey, you go with him!" Annabeth said pointing a finger at Albert's face.
"What?" He and Percy asked in shock simultaneously.
"Why me though?" Albert quickly added.
"It's called Thrill Ride of Love, nobody here is more suited to go in that!" Annabeth argued, but there was a twisted vindictiveness on her eyes, and the fakest smile they had ever seen, "What did you say before? Ah, right... with great powers come great responsibilities? Doesn't this situation look like a great responsibility to you, Lover Boy?"
Albert was stunned. Annabeth held grudges. And now she finally put her silly little head to work on an argument and left him speechless. Still, he had his pride. Albert nodded in indifference as he agreed with her and followed after Percy, insulting Annabeth for her audacity in his head in several different languages.
They finally reached the boat. The shield was propped on one seat, and next to it was a lady's silk scarf. He tried to imagine Ares and Aphrodite here, a couple of gods meeting in a junked-out amusement park ride... how kinky. Why? Then he noticed something I hadn't seen from up top: mirrors around the rim of the pool, facing the spot. The two boys could see themselves no matter which direction they looked.
While Ares and Aphrodite were smooching with each other they could look at their favorite people: themselves. Hephaestus had a twisted sense of humor, too.
Percy picked up the scarf. It shimmered pink, and the perfume was indescribable—rose, or mountain laurel. Something good. He smiled, a little dreamy, and was about to rub the scarf against his cheek when Albert quickly ripped it out of his hand and stuffed it in his pocket with a dark look in his eyes. "Oh, no, no, no. Not on my watch you don't. Stay away from that Jackson. It's Love Magic."
"What?!" Percy asked in shock.
"I can't explain, I just feel my mother's power in this thing... It also doesn't seem to affect me, err..." Albert felt mentally tired and groaned, before saying. "Let's just get the shield, Jackson, and let's get out of here as fast as possible."
The moment Percy touched the shield, they both knew we were in trouble. His hand broke through something that had been connecting it to the dashboard. A cobweb, they thought, but then Percy looked at a strand of it on my palm and saw it was some kind of metal filament, so fine it was almost invisible. A trip wire. Thinner than any he had ever seen.
"Wait a minute!" Albert asked as he remembered something important.
"Too late."
"There's another Greek letter on the side of the boat, another Eta. This is a trap!"
Suddenly, a loud noise erupted all around them, the sound of a million gears grinding, as if the whole pool were turning into one giant machine. It was shocking.
Grover yelled behind them, "Guys!"
Up on the rim, the Cupid statues were drawing their bows into firing position. Before Albert could even suggest taking cover, they shot, but not at them. They fired at each other, across the rim of the pool. Silky cables trailed from the arrows, arcing over the pool and anchoring where they landed to form a huge golden asterisk. Then smaller metallic threads started weaving together magically between the main strands, making one huge net.
"We have to get out," Percy said.
"I know!" Albert replied, not unkindly.
Percy quickly grabbed the shield and they ran, but going up the slope of the pool was not as easy as going down.
"Come on, guys!" Grover shouted. He was clumsily trying to hold open a section of the net for us, but wherever he touched it, the golden threads started to wrap around his hands.
The Cupids' heads popped open with a sudden noise. Out came video cameras. Spotlights rose all around the pool, blinding the two boys trapped in the net with illumination, and a loudspeaker voice boomed: "Live to Olympus in one minute . . . Fifty-nine seconds, fifty-eight . . ."
"Oh no... shit!" Albert cursed out loud. "Jackson, this is definitely Lord Hephaestus's doing, he made this trap to catch his wife, my mother, with Ares. Now we're about to be broadcasted live to Olympus, for all of them to see. Don't say anything offensive, please."
They almost made it to the rim when the row of mirrors opened like hatches and thousands of tiny metallic . . . things poured out. Somewhere far away, they could hear Annabeth scream in horror. It was an army of wind-up creepy-crawlies: bronze-gear bodies, spindly legs, little pincer mouths, all scuttling toward us in a wave of clacking, whirring metal.
"Spiders?" Albert asked out loud. He did not fear spiders at all. He found them to be a bit disgusting with all the eyes and legs, but besides the mild repulsion, they were fine. Cute in a weird way too.
He'd never seen anything like this before. But then again, he had seen the worst things in the last few days alone. The things were coming out from all around the rim now, millions of them, flooding toward the center of the pool, completely surrounding the two boys. Albert and Percy were overall calm, there was no way these things were made to kill, they wouldn't harm gods, so it was unlikely that the Blacksmith God would give them an unnecessary feature. Hopefully, Albert told himself. This was a trap meant for gods and they weren't gods.
Percy and Albert climbed into the boat. The former started kicking away the spiders as they swarmed aboard. He yelled at Albert to help him, but he just shook his head. Albert had made the calculations and looked at their situation, there were too many of them. They stood no chance against those things.
"Thirty, twenty-nine," called the loudspeaker.
The spiders started spitting out strands of metal thread, trying to tie the two boys down. The strands were easy enough to break at first, but there were so many of them, and the spiders just kept coming, faster and faster, more and more. Grover hovered above the pool in his flying sneakers, trying to pull the net loose, but it wouldn't budge.
The Tunnel of Love entrance was under the net, but they were surrounded.
"Fifteen, fourteen," the loudspeaker called.
Albert felt bitter. Incredibly bitter. He should have tried to remember everything about this godforsaken place before he ever got into the boat. He had been too complacent.
Then they saw them: huge water pipes behind the mirrors, where the spiders had come from. And up above the net, next to one of the Cupids, a glass-windowed booth that must be the controller's station.
"Grover!" Percy yelled. "Get into that booth! Find the 'on' switch!"
"But—!"
"Do it!" Percy yelled. It was a crazy hope, but it was our only chance. The spiders were all over the prow of the boat now. Albert had gone quiet, shooting him a reassuring look.
Grover was in the controller's booth now, slamming away at the buttons.
"Five, four—"
Grover looked up at them hopelessly, raising his hands in defeat. He was letting me know that he'd pushed every button, but still nothing was happening. Percy closed his eyes and thought about waves, rushing water, and the Mississippi River. He felt a familiar tug in his gut. He tried to imagine that he was dragging the ocean back at Denver.
"Two, one, zero!" the voice announced.
Suddenly, water exploded out of the pipes. It roared into the pool, sweeping away the spiders in a tidal wave. Percy pulled Alebert into the seat next to him and fastened his seat belt just as the second tidal wave slammed into the boat, over the top, whisking the spiders away and dousing them completely, but not capsizing them. The boat struggled to resist but ended up turning, lifted in the flood, and spun in circles around the whirlpool.
The water was full of short-circuiting spiders, some of them smashing against the pool's concrete wall with such force they burst. Albert was truly shocked at the display of power. Spotlights glared down at them. The Cupid Cams were rolling now, live to Olympus.
Percy seemed to only concentrate on controlling the boat. He willed it to ride the current, to keep away from the wall. Maybe it was Albert's imagination imagination, but the boat seemed to respond to the boy's will. At least, it didn't break into a million pieces and they died smashed in the walls. They spun around one last time, the water level now almost high enough to shred us against the metal net. Then the boat's nose turned toward the tunnel and we rocketed through into the darkness.
Albert reached out and held tight to Percy, both of them screaming as the boat shot curls and hugged corners and took forty-five-degree plunges past pictures of Romeo and Juliet and a bunch of other Valentine's Day stuff. Then they were out of the tunnel, the night air whistling through our hair as the boat barreled straight toward the exit.
If the ride had been in working order, they would've sailed off a ramp between the golden Gates of Love and splashed down safely in the exit pool. But there was a problem. The Gates of Love were chained. Two boats that had been washed out of the tunnel before us were now piled against the barricade—one submerged, the other cracked in half.
"Unfasten your seat belt!" Percy yelled to Albert.
"Are you kidding right?" The boy asked back in shock.
"Unless you want to get smashed to death, you should do as I say!" Percy argued back as he strapped Ares's shield to his arm. "We're going to have to jump for it."
His idea was simple and insane, Albert thought. As the boat struck, they would use its force like a springboard to jump the gate. He had heard of people surviving car crashes that way in the news before, getting thrown thirty or forty feet away from an accident, casual things like that... With some luck, they would land in the pool.
Albert wasted no time as he seemed to understand what Percy meant. He gripped the other boy's hand as the gates got closer.
"On my mark," Percy said.
"Fine! On your mark!"
"Fine!" Percy shouted again with an annoyed look. "On your mark!"
Albert looked bewildered at that, what did he do now?
"Now!"
Crack!
Albert was right. If they jumped when I thought we should've, we would've crashed into the gates. Percy had great instincts and somehow got them maximum lift. He should never underestimate a child of Poseidon while he is drenched in water. Unfortunately, that was a little more than they needed. Their boat smashed into the pileup and we were thrown into the air, straight over the gates, over the pool, and down toward solid asphalt.
Something grabbed me from behind.
Albert groaned. Grover! In midair, their hero had grabbed them by the shirt, and Percy by the arm, and was trying to pull us out of a crash landing, but Alebert and Percy had all the momentum.
"You're too heavy!" Grover grumbled loudly. "We're going down!"
They spiraled toward the ground, Grover doing his best to slow the fall. As they smashed into a photo board, Grover's head went straight into the hole where tourists would put their faces, pretending to be something called Noo-Noo the Friendly Whale. The demigod boys tumbled to the ground, banged up but alive and in one piece.
Ares's shield was still on Percy's arm and Aphrodite's Scarf was still with Albert.
Once the three of them caught our breath, Annabeth came running towards them. Percy decided to get Grover out of the photo board and thanked him for saving their lives. Albert looked back at the Thrill Ride of Love. The water was finally subsiding and he could see that their boat had been smashed to pieces against the gates.
A hundred yards away, at the entrance pool, the Cupids Cams were still filming. The statues had swiveled so that their cameras were trained straight on us, the spotlights in our faces.
"Show's over!" Percy yelled angrily at them. "Thank you! Good night!"
"The show ends here, ladies and gentlemen," Albert said with a fake smile.
The Cupids as if they understood, suddenly turned back to their original positions. The lights shut off. The park went quiet and dark and still again, except for the gentle trickle of water into the Thrill Ride of Love's exit pool.
Percy wondered if Olympus had gone to a commercial break, or if their ratings had been any good. While Albert found them to be no better than perverts and stalkers, enjoying the life of poor civilian children like creeps!
Albert was a prideful creature and he hated feeling foolish or made fun of. He hated being tricked, which was ironic because he enjoyed tricking others. And I had plenty of experience handling bullies who liked to do that stuff to him and others, but it wasn't like he could punish the gods at the time. Still, maybe one day he would be capable of that.
Percy hefted the shield on his arm and turned to my friends. "We need to have a little talk with Ares."
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