I don't own the PJO characters

Percy returned home from Camp Half Blood at the beginning of summer of his seventeenth birthday. His mom, now attended classes at NYU during the day as well as at night. Because of his his arrival home received no loud exclamations of delight. Dropping his bag on the floor of the apartments kitchen, Percy poured a glass of water from the tap and meandered back to his old room. He discovered that his mother refrained from disassembling his blue walled room, leaving it almost exactly how he left it. Hardly trinket stood out of place even though Percy rarely stayed here. Opening the closet, the shoes Percy unintentionally left behind last year lay hastily discarded near the front. They had been his favorites. Devastation gripped Percy when he realized he'd forgotten them;however, the Aphrodite kids designed and created clothes for all the cabins so he only mourned for a short time. They wouldn't fit him anymore. Twice during the past year Percy visited the "Cobbler" as he liked to be called for the purpose of obtaining a pair of shoes that didn't pinch his feet. The room looked smaller too. The last time he'd been there, a year and a half ago, Percy had stood five foot eight; the mark on his closet doorway told him so. He was six foot now, so he kicked off his shoes and made a new mark out of sentiment.

After a short nap he awoke to a slamming door. Rubbing his eyes, Percy stumbled out of bed and into the living room. Without seeing Percy, Paul Blowfis carried two bags of groceries into the kitchen as Sally explained something that occurred at work.

"And then this woman wants to know if we sell edible arrangements too. Normally I wouldn't have minded that question but her tone of voice had me on the edge"

Percy slowly made his way to the doorway of the kitchen and leaned against the frame, arms crossed and smiling.

"Put the chicken by the stove-I tell her we don't and she starts flipping out again so this time I-" Ms Jackson turned and with a gasp saw her son standing in the doorway. "Percy!" She exclaimed. With her arms outstretched she ran over to wrap him in a hug.

"Hi mom" Percy grinned returned the hug. "Hey Paul" Mr. Blowfis grinned at Percy, waiting until Sally let go to shake his hand, as Sally remarked "You're so tall Percy!"

"You've grown quite a bit" agreed Paul, who now had to look up to meet the sixteen year old's eyes. "How tall are you kid?"

"Uhh six foot" Percy said sheepishly provoking a look of disbelief from Paul.

"You've gotta be taller than that. I'm 5'11 and you're defiantly more than an inch taller than me"

"Enough of that, why are you here Percy" his mom interrupted

"And you're not wearing shoes!" Paul pointed to his bare feet.

"Paul"

"When was the last time you were measured?"

"Let it go Paul"

"Uhhh a few months ago?" Percy guessed. Sally threw her hands in the air and returned to her chicken.

That night after catching up with Paul and Sally, Percy lay in bed recalling their initial conversation. Pauls words echoed in his head. You've gotta be taller than that he said. He quickly made a decision. Silently sliding out of bed, Percy snuck into the kitchen and pulled a measuring tape from the drawer beside the fridge. I'm his room he remade the mark on the closet doorway to ensure correctness. Then he measured how high the mark was from the floor. He read the height from the tape: six feet two inches. He measured twice more before he believed it. Paul was right, he was 6'2! Before crawling back into bed, he proudly inscribed his new height on the doorway along with the date. As he drifted off to sleep, he noticed how his feet half hung off the end of his bed.

During the next week Percy didn't see His moms boyfriend at all. The night Percy returned Paul boarded a flight to Philadelphia for a conference he got paid the big bucks to speak at. The time that she wasn't in school or at work, Sally spent with her son, who accompanied her everywhere. However because of her work and school, much of his visit he spent alone. Feeling constantly hungry Percy spent much at the time at the grocery store, employing several tricks the Hermes kids taught him. After being morally convicted, he changes his place of time spending to the ocean, where he had the creatures of the sea bring him food, or sunken dinero to buy food with.

He lay on the couch one after noon scarfing down obscene amounts of food when he first noticed how tight his pants had become. He discovered upon examining himself that he had gained a gut in the few days he had been there. In disgust he threw down the food and resolved to rid himself of his belly. However, his hunger consumed his and he broke into a store that night and gorged himself. He ate only healthy foods, nevertheless when he snapped out of his coma he found his stomach protruding out from under his t shirt in a largely unattractive way. To his even further horror, as he tried to stand, his now massive belly burst his pant's button. It wasn't fat he amassed, his stomach was simply inflated as though with air. However Air didn't fill it, food did, and Percy lumbers home he could feel the obscene amount of food inside him churn with each awkward step. The gods answered his prayer that no one was home when he arrived and he crashed onto his bed immediately falling to sleep from unreasonable exhaustion.