Penny Ranger and the Lightning Thief

Chapter XXVII: We Discuss my Friends' Traumatic Experiences

The contents of the truck looked like the start of a bad joke. There was a cage with a zebra and an antelope and another opposite to it with an albino lion, all of them in horrible conditions. The zebra had clumps of chewing gum stuck to its mane and the antelope had a silver balloon tied to one of its horns. The lion was the only one that hadn't been messed with (for obvious reasons), but it looked scrawny and absolutely miserable with flies buzzing around its snout. To add insult to injury, the antelope and the zebra had in front of them a tray of minced meat each while the lion had a sack of turnips.

"This is kindness?! Humane zoo transport?!" Grover spat.

He was ready to go outside and bludgeon the truckers with his reed pipes, and Percy and Annabeth probably would have helped him if the engine hadn't started in that moment. Me, I was too busy staring at the animals in shock. The animals all stared back at me, the suffering they were in clear in their eyes. How could someone be this cruel?

"Penny, what's wrong?" Percy asked, noticing my shock.

I looked over at my friends.

"We have to help them." I told them.

Unsurprisingly, nobody had any objections. Percy and I dragged the food out of their cages with our swords and began distributing the turnips between the antelope and the zebra and giving the lion the minced meat.

Annabeth wanted to bust them out right there, but Percy pointed out that it wouldn't do the animals any good unless the truck had stopped and they could actually escape. Personally, I think Percy was just worried that the lion would try to eat him.

So we resorted to simply cutting the balloon off the antelope's horn with Annabeth's knife while Grover reassured the animals that we would help them out more in the morning. We also debated whether or not to try to cut the chewing gum out of the zebra's mane, but eventually decided that it was too risky.

Once we were done, we picked out a spot in the back of the truck and sat down, doing our best to ignore the heat, the smell and the flies. We sat in silence for a bit, Grover curled up on one of the feed sacks while the rest of us leaned against the wall. Annabeth pulled out the packet of Oreos from the backpack and shared some with me. In that moment, I tried to clear my head from all the crazy stuff I was going through. To ignore the gods and the monsters for just a few moments, to imagine something similar to the life of a normal kid.

"Hey, I'm sorry for what happened at the water park, guys." Annabeth apologized hesitantly, bringing me back to the real world.

I didn't mind though. I had learned from Max that Annabeth rarely apologized for anything. If she did, it was either a situation where she had no other choice, or she felt really bad. I was leaning more towards the latter, which meant she could probably use a friend right now.

"Don't worry. Happens to all of us." I told her.

"Thanks. It's just... spiders." Annabeth said, a shudder running through her.

I had imagined it would have been that. She hadn't exactly made a good effort to hide it.

"Because of the Arachne story. She got turned into a spider for challenging your mom to a weaving contest, right?" Percy guessed.

I was actually surprised that he knew that. After all, Medusa was usually the most famous of Athena's enemies. Judging by the look on her face, Annabeth was too. She quickly composed herself though.

"Arachne's children have been taking revenge on the children of Athena ever since. If there's a spider within a mile of me, it'll find me. I hate the creepy little things." she explained.
"Anyway, I owe you."