Percy's POV

I didn't like monsters. Especially when I was surrounded by them.

I stood up and my hand went to my pocket reflexively

"Relax, they're waiting for the whale." Vanessa snorted with an attitude.

"You look like you about to go bungee jumping," Alex muttered under her breath.

Wait. Is Alex a hero today?

Yeah, she was her.

Wait 'she was her'-

Never mind.

"Come on slow-pokes! We have a whale to catch." Vanessa's voice called out, I blinked. She was at the gate that looked like a whirlpool.

"That's a whirlpool. I'm not going in there." Carter crossed his arms and declared.

"Okay." Vanessa shrugged and stepped inside, she swirled around inside it and was inevitably sucked into it.

"I'll go first since I can breathe underwater," I suggested, with no argument from the team. I walked up to the whirlpool, the sound of ships and ocean waves crashing against a sandy beach pounded into my eardrums. I was sucked into the whirlpool, I kept swirling around in a circle. I could feel my clothes getting wet with the salty ocean water. The water was waist-high. Now it was up to my forehead.

I got sucked into the whirlpool. Plunging into the depths of Zeus knows what.

I don't know what, a voice thundered inside my head.

I was inside a hamster bubble.

"Percy!" Vanessa's voice came out, I turned around to face her. She was smiling, sitting cross-legged on what looked like a chair.

"Over here!" She patted the chair next to her, I half floated/hamster ball ran to her. The ball popped for a second, I prepared myself to fall. But I didn't fall, in fact, I was standing upright normally. I casually strode up to Vanessa.

She had the looks of a Greek goddess.

If only you knew! The same male voice cackled inside my head.

Shut up, Zeus!

And he did Shut up.

Sadie was the last one to come into the whirlpool. The rest of them came after I gave them the clear symbol. Sadie stumbled out of the horizontal whirlpool and fell on her chair.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Rakasha's and Demons, Gods and Goddesses. I'm your whale, Albert." A voice announced.

A whale named Albert, it is not the weirdest thing I'd heard of.

The ride was a weird one, according to Vanessa, we were inside a whale. The whirlpool was connected to a whale's filtration feed system. These types of Whales were called skimmers. They swim with their mouths wide open, taking in gallons of water.

"Does that mean that they need to pee a lot?" Leo interrupted Vanessa.

"No, Leonidas Valdez. The water is pushed out thanks to the baleen plates-" Vanessa sighed and tried to explain.

"Balloon plates?" I wondered out loud, interrupting Vanessa.

"Bah-leen Plates." Annabeth corrected my pronunciation.

"A whale's baleen plate is made of keratin. The same stuff that makes our hair." Carter chipped in.

"It's like a comb." Annabeth agreed.

"It filters out the food for the whale while the whale exhales the water." Vanessa started once more.

"Humpback whales, on the other hand, use a bubble feeding technique." Carter got into the mood of spitting out whale facts.

"They exhale a large amount of air, creating bubbles on the bottom of a school of fish," Tori recalled.

"Wait... fish go to school?" Achilles asked. Tori shot a pointed glare at her boyfriend and Vanessa laughed.

"No. It's a word for a large amount of fish. So the bubbles startle the fish and they swim in the opposite direction. Which, naturally, is the surface. The whale would then rush upward with its mouth open. Getting a mouthful of fish." Tori clarified. Leo mimicked taking notes.

"Go on professors. I want to get an A-plus on the Whale Eating Habits That We Don't Need To Know Test." Leo gestured for them to continue eagerly.

"The point is, we're taking a Humpback Albert to Varuna's palace." Vanessa finished.

"Varuna?" Annabeth frowned obviously wondering who it was.

Please don't be a demon.

"God of the oceans." Ana supplied smoothly.

"Ah." Annabeth nodded.

"Please fasten your kelp." An announcement echoed through the little water bubble.

"I hate this part." I heard Vanessa mutter. She grabbed something out of her seat before I could ask what.

Chaos broke out.

The bubble lurched forward, with us in it. The whale burped kicking us out of its intestines.

Yikes, sounds disgusting when I said that. It basically puked us out.

We rocketed out, the whale waved its flipper at us. The screams died out, then it kicked us with its tail-fin pushing the bubble into mayhem once again. The bubble rolled and bounced to a stop. Annabeth was seated, clutching onto Vanessa. Who was rock-still. Jason was face-first on the bubble's clean floor. Piper was on top of him. With Leo hanging onto the both of them. Everyone was sprawled about.

Vanessa, whistling stood up.

"I suggest you hold your breath." She advised.

"Why-" Jason started to ask, but the bubble popped. Water flooded in. Everyone's cheeks puffed up like puffer-fish. Vanessa snapped her fingers.

"I... I can breathe." Magnus clutched his throat with shock.

"Hurry up! I don't want to keep Gauri waiting." Vanessa chided and hurried up the coral stairs. The palace looked like something out of the Little Mermaid.

Gauri turned out to be a goddess.

"Shakti!" The woman squealed and rushed over and hugged Vanessa.

"Ah, did you bring demigods for us to kill?" Gauri fixed her eyes on us.