Disclaimer: Do you really think that if I was Rick Riordan and I owned PJO that I would be here?

Annabeth's POV

Piper and I sat on our bunks on the Argo II, both our eyes brimming with tears, but somehow, so shocked, tired and sad we couldn't find the energy to actually bring ourselves to cry. Thalia was at the Demeter (Ceres, whatever) cabin getting us some chocolate cheesecake. You see, a super long time ago, like as soon as I joined the group with Thalia and Luke, Thals and I had a sort of unspoken agreement that we would never eat chocolate cheesecake unless one of us got dumped.

Then Piper came to camp and she and I got so close so fast and Thals loved her as a sister almost immediately as well. We had to let her in on the tradition. It's kind of like our unofficial pack of eternal sisterhood.

And when we showed up at the Roman camp, well lets just say the three of us were already about as PMS as you can get without actually PMS-ing, and had been the whole journey to the Roman camp. Me and Piper both had pretty obvious reasons why- I didn't know if Percy would remember me or not, and he might have another girlfriend by now, and for Piper, well Jason had already told her he couldn't remember either way about being in a relationship when he disappeared. But Piper was no idiot and knew that meant 'I might have another girlfriend at the Roman camp and you know she'll remember me.'

Thalia's reason was completely the opposite of obvious- you wouldn't know it unless you were her closest friends as me and Piper are. And what we knew for that no body else did, not even Lady Artemis, was that for the past 4 months, Thalia and Nico had secretly been a couple. Now she knew about a lot of times he had gone on dates in the past because he was just starting to get dates when they started doing their whole secret couple thing and he needed to keep going on dates or people would start getting suspicious.

Anyways we'd traveled for about a month and before we left Nico shadow-traveled with Jason to the Roman camp to scout ahead, then visit his dad because it was so close. He shadow traveled Jason back not two hours later, then left again and hadn't come back.

Back to the present. When we got to the Roman camp, everyone came off the ship to go introduce ourselves, but in the front was Jason and Piper to his left, me to Piper's left, and Leo to his right, Thalia to Leo's right because she was Jason's sister and all. We walked into the camp and were attacked. Just the 5 of us had entered and so just the 5 of us were attacked for the moment. A strategy invented by a child of Athena if I ever saw one: they obviously knew those of us inside the borders would defend ourselves. But by not venturing outside the borders they gave the rest of us a choice that would give them some insight to whether or not we were a threat.

Of course everyone had strict orders that they were to stand down unless acting in self defense and that they were not to intentionally provoke anyone. For this crucial stage, we had Clarisse up front. She being the head counselor of the war god's cabin knew how crucial it was that we combine our strength for the war against Gaia and how damaging even one camper attacking could be to that effort. She understood perfectly well that anyone who attacked would have to be taken down at all costs, even if it meant a serious injury.

Of course her job was made easier by her skill at crowd control, which mostly stemmed from the fact that the newbies were all terrified of her and even many of those not scared of her could not best her in battle. She mainly had to watch out for the rest of her siblings. For that task she took a deep breath, and did something that would have been stupid coming from anyone other than her. She took one step inside the border. I'm sure she could see just as I did the tension that gathered in the stances of the Roman warriors who thought we hadn't noticed them as they prepared to attack in earnest. I'm sure she could sense just as easily as I could that weight was being shifted to back feet and leaned backwards to add to forward momentum when they moved.

And then she did the single most stupid and brave thing I had ever seen (well except Silena Beauregard pretending to be Clarisse and taking on a drakon). She turned around. Only then did she draw her weapons. And I knew the look on her face said that she meant business and that if you tried to get past her she would kill you if she had to.

Luckily no one tried to. I heard a couple Apollo campers dropping their weapons to run to the border to assist anyone who may need it.

A younger daughter of Poseidon (actually Neptune because this was the Roman camp) was fighting Leo. It looked like they were evenly matched because she was younger and not as strong but looked like she'd had plenty of practice with more basic moves and controlling small amounts of water. Leo was newer but was a natural fighter, having always fought his way through existence, plus he was a fire user so….

Thals was up against a boy who looked similar to Clarisse and her siblings. I'm guessing he was a son of Mars (Ares Roman aspect) but whoever his godly parent was, he was holding his own in that he wasn't dead yet, but Thalia looked like she got the much better end of things. She looked to have a minor cut on her arm and a slightly deeper gash on her other shoulder, but even as a huntress, and the Lieutenant of Artemis, for close rage combat she still used her spear and Aegis. I had to smirk a little because he seemed to be trying not to show weakness but was getting drained for it and now seemed to be flinching a bit each time Thalia brought Aegis up to meet and deflect his sword.

Piper was up against a girl who looked as if she was at ease with this and had been fighting her whole life but Piper gritted her teeth and darted in with Katoptris. Which surprised me because I knew full well that she'd only had time to learn defensive Roman tactics. And by that I mean she'd learned how to block Roman attacks.

But she was performing with a passable blend of Roman offense and Greek offense and defense. Hmm. Have to ask about that later.

Anyways I really didn't have time to focus on any of this (I wasn't focusing, I was just observing) because I was fronted with a little raven haired fury of my own. She came flying at me sword at the ready before I even had my knife out.

But that didn't matter because I was wearing the boots of a hunter (no not hunter/huntress of Artemis, just a hunter like think Katniss Everdeen's boots) and that's where my knife was (down my boot for those of you who are slow, so I just stomped my foot on the ground a little bit and the dagger came flying up out of my boot and into my waiting hand. Nightmare, my new nickname for little miss wetback over here, had about half a millisecond to laugh before I punched a button on my watch and my video shield spiraled to life, not even half way open before I attacked.

And then things went like this:

Lunge, recover and strike at shield shoulder simultaneously.

Counter, attack, lunge, cut, roll.

Deflect sword point at lunge, jump above sword at cut, flip over the top of her, land in front as Nightmare recovers from roll.

Etc. So on and so forth it went. This girl was a machine but I thought her fighting style was like a Roman Clarisse. All fight no strategy. And she was already distracted by my video shield, and her ease and efficiency at Roman legion training was all but worthless because I had made a point of being skilled in Roman legion training. So skilled in fact, that I would switch back and forth between the two without realizing it (something I was only made aware of after sparring with Jason- excuse me for being a daughter of Athena, all I see is that this move would work and then that opens up a hole for this, etc. Not Greek vs. Roman).

And as this was happening I started letting out every bit of rage of the girlfriend who's boyfriend got stolen from her and dumped on the other side of the country with no memory.

And here's where the whole chocolate cheesecake issue comes in. I was winning, and I had only just realized that I had a pretty deep cut my shoulder that was gonna sting like Hades to get treated. And we had everything under control. We were all winning or evenly matched pro Greek, because we knew very well that we would probably be killed if we were bested.

That was before Nico shadow-traveled into the middle of the Greeks and happened to be right next to a girl who was crazy obsessed with him. An Aphrodite girl named Barret. And what did she do? Out of all the things in the world she could have done she kissed him, full on the mouth. It was almost funny to see him: his classic but perfect dear-in-the-headlights look, the pure shock in his eyes as he nearly crossed them to look down at the girl who'd suctioned herself to his face. His whole body frozen and stiff. He could do nothing but stare and I could tell he was letting his jaw drop out pure shock and idiocy.

Then his hands went to her hips in an effort to remove this deadweight from his mouth. And that's when Thalia circled around and saw him. Her fury was indescribable, and the only thing you could her over the thunder was her screech of, "ENOUGH!"

Then the poor Mars boy who she was fighting happened to be the closest living organism to her and she fried him nearly to a crisp. He was going to be in the infirmary for at least a week maybe a month.

Most people have stopped fighting at this point. Just Jason and I are left fighting our opponents. Come to think of it, I never got a look at who Jason was matched up against. I continue fighting but my focus isn't really of Nightmare anymore as I quickly disarm her and launch myself towards Jason and his raven haired, green eyed opponent.

Jason is on the ground and the gods only know why anyone would ever have enough kelp in their head to turn their back on their opponent, but at the moment Jason's sword was pointed at the small of Seaweed Brains back and all I could do was put myself between his back and the blade.

The knife pierced my skin at my hip and it burned so much that all I could do was struggle to prop myself up on one elbow and whisper, "Seaweed Brain," before a brunette ball of frills and lace runs over and squeals as she jumps into my Seaweed Brain's arms and plants her lips firmly on his.

I threw my knife as hard as I could and it lodged into her calf. I was already struggling to my feet to retrieve my knife when I hear two more screams. One is Piper screaming, "Witch!" at Nightmare, and the other is Nightmare who has a dagger named Katoptris speared clean through her foot, and was plainly also sucking Jason's face off right before this incident. I grab Katoptris and Piper grabs my knife for me as Thalia helps me up and they both walk back with me to the Argo II, one of my arms slung over each of their shoulders. And then there were the stares of all the Romans boring into our backs not knowing what to think of these three girls who beat their best swordsmen and are walking away. Let's not forget the rest of Camp Half Blood. We could feel their stares boring into us as well, knowing the intense pain we all feel between kinship to one another and the monumental loss of two out of three. Last and certainly least we have the parade of exes following us, drowning us with 'I can explain' s and from Percy 'I remember now' s.

And we are full circle, Piper and I sitting on our bunks in the Argo II, the rest of camp getting settled in inside Camp SPQR. And Thalia was requisitioning a huge chocolate cheesecake from the Ceres/Demeter campers for the three of us to share.

We heard pounding on the gangplank and then once on deck it sounded like three different pairs of pounding feet. They reached the door and instead of knocking, burst in, not knowing that we would actually be in here. Piper and I both flew at them inflicting no major damage, but every thing we did hurt a lot now and would hurt like Hades later. Because Percy's invulnerability didn't keep him from getting the point.

Piper and I had both screamed at Nico to leave, and as he was already turning to shadow travel and we were basically done with him because Thalia would want a turn.

Finally I faltered as I tried to lunge forward on the same side I had been knifed in the hip. I fairly tumbled into Percy's arms. I guess he remembered, and I hoped it had something to do with me taking the knife for him, because as I was lying in his arms, he looked right into my eyes and said, "It's okay Wise Girl. It's okay,"

At this, a single tear leaked out of my eye. "No, it's not Seaweed Brain. No it's not because you didn't remember."

I could see this hurt him more than being stabbed in his Achilles spot a thousand times, but he had absolutely no clue how much he meant to me before I took that knife for me. At that point I was done, and Piper used charm-speak to get both of them to leave.

Outside we heard screaming, and then thunder followed by what sounded like Nico getting set to extra crispy.

Thalia walked in with her makeup running and smeared, holding our chocolate cheesecake.

And we all sat down to eat, not bothering to worry about the rest of the camp. They could deal. They had all three of the Mr. Perfect-s.