Legends, Percy Jackson

iii. bye-bye, blondie.

chapter three
bye-bye, blondie.

     THORN RELEASED A few volleys of missiles while they were knocked down, as he noticed his new enemy. Most of his spikes zipped harmlessly over Nina, Bianca, Nico and Percy's heads, as Dr. Thorn was caught off guard, and began to shoot at the newly discovered fighters. Honestly, Nina wasn't even sure what knocked them down, at first, but then she noticed a girl, her curly blond hair blowing around wildly in the wind. Nina recognized her from earlier, when she spotted Percy's group by the entrance of the gym.

When the girl plowed into them, Nina's phone slipped out of her pocket and onto the edge of the cliff. She snatched it back before it fell into the ocean. Nina clutched it to her chest as she and the di Angelo siblings backed away slightly.

The black haired girl Nina recognized from earlier charged Dr. Thorn (where the Hell did she even come from?), a large spear in one hand and a terrifying shield in the other. Thorn growled at the sight of the shield. The girl shouted, "For Zeus!"

She jabbed at Thorn's head, but the monster snarled and batted the spear to the side like nothing. His lion paw returned, transforming from his previous human hand, and he slashed his sharp claws against the girl's shield. If not for the protection between them, she would've been sliced like sandwich bread. She still managed to roll back and land standing.

     As the helicopter approached closer, Thorn let another round of projectiles at the girl, his scorpion spikes hitting the bronze and deflecting easily, but the impact knocked the girl to the ground.

     The other boy from earlier━the one she remembered from school, Grover━stepped forward. Nina didn't remember him approaching, either. He put some sort of pipe to his lips and started playing a song. It was very frantic, and it sounded a little bit like Sea Shanties, in her opinion. Nina's eyes widened as grass somehow broke through the snow, weeds as thick as rope tangling around Dr. Thorn's legs.

     The grass strands sprang from everywhere, and Bianca nearly tripped over an oncoming weed. Nina pulled her back as the leaves carefully avoided tripping her, the plants on a mission to trap the monster.

     Dr. Thorn roared and turned into the true monstrous form he had already revealed to Nina and the di Angelos. His body slowly turned into that of a lion, growing evil claws and orange-golden fur, keeping his ghoulish human face and scorpion tail. He released poisonous spikes in all directions, to seem daunting, Nina imagined.

     "A manticore!" the blonde girl gasped in realization.

     "A fucking what?!" Nina demanded.

     "Who are you people?" Bianca asked breathlessly. "And what is that?!"

     "A manticore?" Nico gaped excitedly. "He's got three thousand attack power and plus five to sharing throws!"

     Nina, realizing he was talking about Mythomagic, closed her eyes for a moment, and sighed. "Nico, honey, now is not the time." She grabbed his and Bianca's wrists and pulled them back behind her, as Thorn shredded through Grover's weeds and turned toward Nina and the others viciously.

"Get down!" the blond girl shouted, and for the second time, she plowed into the di Angelo siblings and Nina, pushing them flat into the snow.