SAFE || percy jackson

0.9

'Elise. Elise. Elise.' was all he thought.

The sun was touching the hills when Percy got back to the stables. They were tearing into huge animal carcasses when Percy got back. He couldn't tell what kind of animal, and he really didn't want to know.

'Seafood!' one thought when he saw Percy. 'Come in! We're still hungry!'

What was he supposed to do? He couldn't use the river because of the naiad. And the fact that this place had been under water a million years ago didn't exactly help him now. Percy looked at the little calcified seashell in his palm, then at the huge mountain of dung. Frustrated, Percy threw the shell into the poop. He was about to leave until he heard a noise. 

PFFFFFFT!

Like a balloon with a leak. Percy looked down where he had thrown the shell in frustration. A tiny spout of water was shooting out of the muck.

"No way," Percy muttered.

Hesitantly, he stepped toward the fence.

"Get bigger," commanded Percy.

SPOOOOOOOSH!

Water shot three feet into the air and kept bubbling. It was impossible, but there it was. A couple of horses came over to check it out. One put his mouth to the spring and recoiled.

'Yuck!' he said. 'Salty!'

It was seawater in the middle of a Texas ranch. Percy scooped up another handful of dirt and picked out the shell fossils. He had no idea what he was doing, but kept doing it. He kept throwing shells in the manure. Everywhere a shell hit, a saltwater spring erupted.

'Stop!' The horses cried. 'Meat is good! Baths are bad!'

Then Percy noticed the water wasn't running out of the stables or flowing downhill like water normally would. It simply bubbled around each spring and sank into the ground, taking the dung with it. The horse poop dissolved in the saltwater, leaving regular old wet dirt.

"More!" Percy authorized.

There was a tugging sensation in his gut, and the waterspouts exploded like the world's largest carwash. While the salt water shot twenty feet into the air, the horses went crazy, running back and forth as the geysers sprayed them from all directions. All the manure began to dissolve. The tugging sensation became more intense for Percy, painful even, but there was something exhilarating about seeing all that salt water.

'Stop, lord!' a horse begged. 'Stop, please!'

Water was sloshing everywhere now. The horses were drenched, and some were panicking and slipping in the mud. The poop was completely gone, tons of it just dissolved into the earth, and the water was now starting to pool, trickling out of the stable, making a hundred little streams down toward the river.

"Stop," Percy told the water. Nothing happened. The pain in his gut was building.

"Stop!" Percy concentrated all his might on shutting off the force of the sea. Suddenly, the geysers shut down. He collapsed to my knees, exhausted. In front of him was a shiny clean horse stable, a field of wet salty mud, and fifty horses that had been scoured so thoroughly their coats gleamed. Even the horses' teeth were cleaned.

'We won't eat you!' the horses wailed. 'Please, lord! no more salty baths!'

"On one condition," Percy said. "You only eat the food your handlers give you from now on. Not people. Or I'll be back with more seashells!"

As Percy ran to the Ranch, he smelled barbecue before he reached the house, and that made him madder than ever, because he really loves barbecue. The deck was set up for a party. Streamers and balloons decorated the railing. Geryon was flipping burgers on a huge barbecue cooker made from an oil drum. Eurytion lounged at a picnic table, picking his fingernails with a knife. The two-headed dog sniffed the ribs and burgers that were frying on the grill. Finally, he saw his friends: Tyson, Grover, Annabeth, and Nico all tossed in a corner with their ankles and wrists roped together and their mouths gagged.

"Let them go!" Percy yelled furiously, still out of breath from running up the steps."I cleaned the stables!"

Geryon turned. He wore an apron on each chest, with one word on each, so together they spelled out: KISS—THE—CHEF.

"Did you, now? How'd you manage it?"

Percy was pretty impatient, but he told him. He nodded appreciatively.

"Very ingenious. It would've been better if you'd poisoned that pesky naiad, but no matter."

"Let my friends go," Percy warned. "We had a deal."

"Ah, I've been thinking about that. The problem is, if I let them go, I don't get paid."

"You promised!"

Geryon made a tsk-tsk noise. "But did you make me swear on the River Styx? No you didn't. So it's not binding. When you're conducting business, sonny, you should always get a binding oath."

Percy drew his sword. Orthus growled. One head leaned down next to Grover's ear and bared its fangs.

"Eurytion," Geryon said, "the boy is starting to annoy me. Kill him." Eurytion studied the green eyed boy.

"Kill him yourself," Eurytion said.

Geryon raised his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me," Eurytion grumbled. "You keep sending me out to do your dirty work. You pick fights for no good reason, and I'm getting tired of dying for you. You want to fight the kid, do it yourself."

It was the most un-Areslike thing Percy had ever heard son of Ares say. Geryon threw down his spatula.

"You dare defy me? I should fire you right now!"

"And who'd take care of your cattle? Orthus, heel." The dog immediately stopped growling at Grover and came to sit by the cowherd's feet.

"Fine!" Geryon snarled. "I'll deal with you later, after the boy is dead!" He picked up two carving knives and threw them at Percy.

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