Chapter 98: When Duct Tape fails

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Here's the next chapter! As answer to my last question. The girl was Chaos and what happened? Jack is a sword that can cut through anything and the Shield of Winter is unbreakable.

Also, in real life the two objects would phase through each other because they both are so called unstoppable forces but who likes Physics anyway?

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(Lyssa POV)

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

The answer?

I had to clean up the mess.

I stared at the crack that had appeared mid-air and was floating. Luckily Chaos had taken care of the Black hole Percy had created but the crack in reality was still there.

Chaos had been knocked out after taking care of the black hole and now I, the goddess of madness, had to get rid of the crack in reality.

The sword of Summer was supposedly able to cut through anything. The shield of winter was supposedly able to withstand everything.

Oopsie.

I paced around the crack. I had to prevent it from spreading further, as it would break reality.

Then an idea popped up, Duct Tape!

I summoned some duct tape and covered the gaping crack with it, carefully sticking it to the parts of reality that were still...real.

Eventually the 16 feet (ca. 5 m) high crack was covered with silver duct tape.

"Well, that was easy!" I said smiling.

Then Reality decided to give me the finger, the crack widened and all my hard work was undone as the tape fell useless to the ground.

The crack was now 3 feet (0.91 m) wide, allowing me to see straight through it. I poked my head through the crack to see what was on the other side.

I love surprises.

I blinked a few times. My eyes had to adjust to the difference in light.

As my eyes adjusted, I was quite disappointed with what I saw.

I had hoped to see some kind of world breaking monsters or some kind of crazy place from another pantheon.

Instead, I was staring at a wood.

The trees grew close together and were so leafy that I could get no glimpse of the sky. The light had a greenish tone to it, probably because it came through the leaves; but the fact that there was any light at all meant the sun must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm.

The forest was boring, there were no birds to drive crazy, no pesky insects. There was not even wind. The forest was dead silent.

The silence almost drove me crazy (Get it? Because I am the goddess of Madness. Oh, I had to tell mom this one.) it was so silent I could almost see the trees grow.

But there was another significant thing to this forest. It had a pool, but not just one.

There were dozens of others — a pool every few yards as far as my eyes could reach.

The pools were small, not even ten feet wide yet there were so many of them.

The trees must have been drinking water from those pools, I figured out.

I had the urge to set the trees on fire, but I knew Chaos would be very mad at me for doing that.

I pulled my head back and was back in Nivaldir.

I stared at the crack. I had to close it somehow, then a better idea popped up. Something I had seen in a movie.

I summoned a poster of Raquel Welch and made it size bigger till it was big enough to cover the entire crack.

I taped it, with special duct tape, to the edges of reality till it covered the entire crack and nothing could be seen.

I took a step back and studied the poster that hung in the air.

Now it was time for the ultimate test.

"It works!" I cried out.

I waited a few seconds, sweating nervously.

When the cracks didn't spread, I smirked.

I had done it.

I turned around and got ready to visit Percy, what was he doing anyway?

Then my stomach rumbled, Percy could wait. I had to visit a McDonalds.

...

(Percy POV)

For how long have I been running?

I had no idea; I was getting hungry and tired. If it wasn't for the fact, I was an Einherji I would've dropped dead from tiredness.

I had totally no back up. Chaos had been knocked out, Lyssa was trying to fix the hole and Rebel had been knocked out as well, and for my other friends…

I had no idea where they were, I hoped they were doing better than I did.

From somewhere behind me came an explosive YARK!

I silently cursed and jumped from the branch onto another one.

Oh, did I tell you I was in the world tree?

I didn't?

Oh, well, the blast knocked me out of Nivaldir and threw me into the world tree.

The world tree was...something else.

I actually never considered it a real tree, I thought the tree must have been a metaphor or something but no. It was an actual tree.

Of course, I had lured the branches of Yggdrasil with Medusa's help, but I still imagined it was just some kind of mist.

I was wrong.

Saying the tree was big was an understatement.

On the World Tree, every branch would hold me. The biggest ones were wider than Interstate 93. The smallest were as large as your average redwood.

As for Yggdrasil's trunk, it was so immense it just didn't compute. Each crevice in its surface seemed to lead to a different world, as if someone had wrapped tree bark around a column of television monitors glowing with a million different movies.

Beyond the tree's canopy I saw nothing but a hazy white glow. Below was no ground — just more branches crisscrossing the void. The tree had to be rooted somewhere, but I felt woozy and unbalanced – as if Yggdrasil and everything it contained, including my world, was free-floating in primordial mist – the Ginnungagap.

I had been running across the branches for hours, trying to escape the squirrel known as Ratatosk.

She had been chasing me for over an hour, trying to kill me or something.

I was immune to her bark, which apparently stunned people, but I was not faster than the squirrel. Not at all, I only managed to stay ahead of it by turning myself invisible.

Thanks to Demeter and Katie I could turn myself semi-invisible and blend into the background, the only requirements were that I had to be around plants.

But after repeating the same trick a few times Ratatosk learned to trust her nose instead of sight.

And I was fucked.

A second explosion followed, it was right behind me, I ran over the branch, away from the tree trunk and hopefully away from Ratatosk.

For some reason I was unable to use the world tree to jump from world to world, maybe because I had broken reality, or maybe because I was just having bad luck.

I found a smaller branch crossing directly under mine and jumped down, hoping to confuse Ratatosk.

Unfortunately, I jumped straight into her, literally.

The tank sized squirrel must have been running randomly around on the branch the moment I jumped down.

I forgot the basic rules of tree climbing, always check if it's safe to jump from branch to branch.

I landed on the soft pur of Ratatosk. For a moment I felt confused as I held onto Ratatosk pur, was I supposed to stay on top of him or drop myself?

Ratatosk shrieked, and I guessed she was as surprised as I was, she stirred and made weird twists and turns to throw me off.

I landed on the edge of the same branch Ratatosk was standing on. The branch was only a few feet wide, the wind swayed through the void; almost making me fall.

A dozen unclimbable twigs spread in front of me, but I would fall straight through them the moment I stepped on them.

I glanced around, trying to see where I could go, in front of me was Ratatosk, she was probably grinning, there were no branches anywhere near me, the void behind me.

Ratatosk let out a bark, which I could interpret as a smirk, then she slowly made her way towards me. Taking the time to let me know I failed.

I knew that I was powerless against Ratatosk sheer force, I had tried to sing for her, summon acorns, tried to make her explode and dozens of other things but the best thing I could hope for was for a 2-minute knock out before she was on my tail again.

I turned around and face the void underneath me, what was it named again?

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Ratatosk had frozen, dead in her tracks, and was studying.

I decided to do something stupid and prayed to whoever could help me.

Then I jumped of the branch and fell into the void.

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