A/N: Yes, I'm alive and writing! It's been too long! I'm not sure when, but I got this idea to write a story about Annabeth's invisibility cap. I don't know when her birthday is and I've checked everywhere but no one knows for sure, so let's go with some time before the winter solstice, yeah? Uh…She's not worrying about the prophecy because… it's her birthday and everyone should be carefree around his or her birthday and the winter solstice hasn't happened yet… This is going to be a two-shot!
Disclaimer: I do not in any way own the PJO series or the characters.
Presents and Pranks
Chapter One: Presents
Happy Birthday, Annabeth. Use this well when you need to disappear.
I stood staring at the cap in my hands, confused. It was a Yankees cap. My mother had given me a Yankees cap for my birthday. I was from San Francisco! I didn't even like the Yankees! Why would she give me a Yankees cap?
But then I read the note over again, and it dawned on me. I stood, staring, my mouth wide open, shock etched on my face. My gray eyes were saucers and my jaw slowly kept inching closer to the floor. It wasn't often that someone could catch me extremely surprised, looking like one of those bug-eyed cartoon characters on television. But if someone stuck their head into the Athena cabin at Camp Half-Blood on the day of my twelfth birthday at two-thirty p.m., that would be the exact sight they'd see.
An invisibility cap. An invisibility cap! My mother had given me, Annabeth Chase, an invisibility cap for my birthday! Forget the fact that it was a Yankees cap; it was still an invisibility cap! A cap that, when put on, enabled the wearer to become completely invisible, plus the item he or she was holding! (Which was good since there was no element of surprise if the monster you were fighting could see a knife floating in the air, slowly creeping closer to it.)
I couldn't believe my luck. I couldn't believe that Athena would give me an invisibility cap for my birthday! And it was just when I was shamefully beginning to think that she didn't care much. Now I took all those thoughts back and buried them deep, deep into my mind. I made a mental note to tell Luke that he had been wrong, all wrong about what he had said as I stared in wonder and awe at the sacred cap in my hands.
Then I remembered that I was Annabeth Chase, and if someone-one of the Stoll brothers, for instance-saw me ogling and took a picture of me, I would never live it down. I quickly snapped my mouth shut and wiped the shocked look off my face. But inside, I was still jumping for joy. This was the best present I had ever gotten! I gave a long prayer of thanks to Athena before I looked back at the cap with a wide grin.
The cap seemed to be glowing, emitting a special shine. I turned the cap around slowly in my hands, feeling it, before I slowly raised it above my head and set it down over my blonde hair. In wonder, I walked over to the mirror in the cabin, my heart racing with excitement. I reached the mirror, stuck out my hand, and touched it. There I was, standing right in front of the mirror, touching it, but there was no reflection! There was no sign that anyone was there at all, standing in front of the mirror!
A wide grin broke across my face. Then I took off the cap and suddenly, there I was, standing in front of the mirror, my reflection grinning back at me. It really worked!
Suddenly, the door to the cabin opened and in walked one of my siblings, Shirley, saying, "Happy birthday Annabe-"
Shirley abruptly stopped talking when she saw me standing in front of the mirror, grinning idiotically.
"Um, Annabeth…" Shirley said, looking a little creeped out. "Are you okay? You're not turning into an Aphrodite girl, are you?" she asked, panicked.
This was enough to snap me out of my trance. I turned to Shirley and exclaimed with disgust, "Aphrodite girl? Gods, no! As if I would ever put that truckload of makeup onto my face." The only Aphrodite girl who wasn't that bad was Silena. The others, however…
Shirley laughed and said, "Good to know. Well, happy birthday, Annabeth! I'll let you get back to admiring your reflection in the mirror." And before I could drop my mouth in the horror of what she had said, Shirley disappeared from the doorway.
I shook my head and walked away from the offending mirror, twirling the invisibility cap around on my fingers. I looked at the cap, then placed it back onto my head. Looking down, I smiled again, seeing my body was gone.
Stop acting like such a child, Annabeth! I scolded myself. But I couldn't help it. I was like a six-year-old during Christmas who needed to try out all the new toys as soon as possible.
Glancing around the cabin excitedly, I decided to try out my cap in public. I torpedoed to the door and bounced out.
Outside, I scanned the grounds of the beautiful Camp Half-Blood. As I walked by other demigods, some turned around as if they sensed something, but most just kept going on with what they were doing, not noticing me. I strolled around the grounds, listening to snippets of conversations.
"Oh my gods, I woke up so late today! My hair was a bird's nest; I almost fainted when I saw it! My face was a mess! I spent hours fixing my hair and putting on my makeup! Do you think it looks okay?" an Aphrodite girl squealed to another Aphrodite girl. I snorted, and they turned around, looked at me, then shrugged and went back to talking.
"Hearing voices… Dreams… He's right…" Luke mumbled to himself. I wondered what he was talking about, but shrugged it off and waved to him before remembering I was invisible.
"And then we can go to the Demeter cabin and fill the pillows with dirt…" Travis Stoll said to Connor Stoll. There they were planning out another of their legendary-and annoying, even if they were funny-pranks.
Strolling around camp, I felt my gaze linger on the sword arena. I walked up to the arena and pulled out my knife. Looking down, I saw the knife was in fact invisible and smiled. Then, I started practicing, adjusting to fighting with an invisible weapon.
Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw two young demigods walk by and stop short when they saw the dummies in the sword arena getting slashed up, but no trace of anyone in front of the dummies. They looked at each other in fear, then ran away, screaming, "INVISIBLE SPIRIT!"
I stopped practicing, shook my head, and took of my cap. Knowing things would get complicated otherwise, I walked away from the sword arena, hoping no one would actually take the two demigods very seriously.
I didn't know what compelled me to, but I found myself walking over to the lake, then sitting down and staring out at the water. As I pulled my invisibility cap off my head, a sudden burst of color flashed before my eyes: shocking sea green. Just as quickly as it came, it was gone. I blinked, wondering what had happened. But the thought quickly floated away from my mind, getting stored somewhere in the back of my head. And so I put my invisibility cap back on and sat in front of the lake for a while, enjoying the small breeze and the quiet.
~Presents-Presents-Presents~
The news about my new invisibility cap spread around the camp like wildfire, no matter how much I tried to keep it a secret. Barely a day passed when I didn't hear someone say, "Annabeth! Please, can I try your invisibility cap for just one second? I'll be your best friend!" or "Come on, Annabeth! You owe me!" or "Can I at least touch it?" or "If you don't let me use it, I'll… I'll draw on you with this marker!" (Long story involving marker fights and paper towels. Let me just say that if you give one of my friends a marker, nothing good can come out of it.)
I just kept quiet, plastered a smile on my face, and shook my head as I strolled around the grounds. The whole thing would die out sooner or later, and everyone would become interested with someone else's new rare weapon or a new camper or something like that.
"Oh, Annabeth," Shirley whined as we walked to dinner. "Why can't I try it out? Please? I'm your sibling, for gods' sakes!"
"All the more reason not to," a voice answered for me.
I turned around and saw the Stoll brothers breaking free of their line and sauntering towards us, grinning from ear to ear.
"Siblings," Connor said, "are the worst to let use your stuff. Dude, I don't trust Travis with my stuff."
"And I don't trust Connor," Travis said. "But, now, friends…"
"That's entirely different," Connor said, grinning. "Friends are friends forever."
"And since we're you're friends," Travis said, copying Connor's grin, "we should be able to-"
Rolling my eyes, I cut them off. "No."
We walked on, amused, leaving behind a protesting Connor and a whining Travis.
~Presents-Presents-Presents~
One day as my siblings and I came back to the Athena cabin from lunch, I knew that something was wrong as soon as I stepped into the cabin. I felt my stomach sink and I scanned the room, my eyes finally landing on my empty bedpost. I suddenly felt very, very sick.
There was nothing wrong with the fact that the bedpost was empty, except that I had left my invisibility cap on that very spot before we left for lunch!
My jaw dropped and I rushed over to my bed, reaching out my hand and touching the bedpost. The cap. It wasn't there. It was missing! I immediately dropped on all fours and looked under my bed, next to my bed, any area within a ten-foot radius of my bed, for my missing cap.
It must be here somewhere! I thought frantically. But after crawling around the whole cabin and coming up with nothing, I knew the cap was officially lost. Styx. Styx. Styx. Styx!
Meanwhile, my siblings just noticed what I was doing, and Shirley stepped forward, again with a look in her eyes, but this time, a worried one.
"Annabeth, what's wrong?" Shirley asked. "What are you looking for?"
I put my hand to my head as I slowly stood up from the ground, sighing. I turned and looked around the cabin again as I answered miserably, "I can't find my cap."
"What?" Shocked looks traveled to my siblings' faces like a wave. Of course, my siblings had been jealous at first when they heard Athena had given me an invisibility cap for my birthday. But they were my siblings, and, having gotten over their jealousy, they knew that this was bad.
"Don't worry, we'll help you look," Olivia, another one of my sisters, said. "Where do you remember leaving it last?"
Pointing at the bedpost, I sighed and said, "Over there. I searched the whole cabin."
"I was wondering why you were crawling around like a toddler," my brother Malcolm said, smirking.
"Thanks," I replied sarcastically.
My siblings all decided to help me search for my cap and I gave a sigh of relief. Maybe someone would find the cap now and it would all be okay. Crossing my fingers, I turned back to my bed to search it again. I reached out and touched my pillow when…
THUD!
Screams.
Instinctively, I ducked down and threw my hands over my head, shielding myself from objects that were suddenly falling from the ceiling.
"Ouch!" I cried out as an object hit my arm. Books. Books were falling from the roof. (Paperback, thank goodness.) And although it didn't hurt, I couldn't help crying out a reflex reaction. And then, I felt something moving on the bed. I looked down, my eyes widening with horror, and I screamed along with the rest of my siblings, willing my face not to turn a sickly green.
It wasn't raining cats and dogs. It was raining books and spiders.
My siblings and I ducked from the objects, screaming. It was a crazy zoo in here. Risking a glance up at the ceiling, I saw that there was a big net of some sort fastened to the roof, and about one quarter of the net still held books and spiders in it.
We had to get out. "Hey! Everyone!" I shouted, my arms above my head, as I looked at my frantic siblings. "Evacuate the cabin! Now!"
My siblings took no time to obey my command, and we all ran out the door as fast as our legs could carry us. Just take my advice on this: If there's a big fire right next to you or a different extremely life-threatening situation at your school, don't calmly walk out of class like they tell you to do and patiently wait for all the students to file out of the narrow doors from the narrow halls. Seriously, RUN!
Everyone quickly ran outside, where it was sunny and definitely not raining anything. We stared silently at the falling small paperback books and creeping, crawling, creepy spiders.
After the last book fell, I turned to my frightened siblings and asked, "Is everyone okay? No one's hurt, right?" My siblings nodded.
I chewed on my lip and glanced down at the now deadly silent cabin. The only movement in the cabin was from the spiders. I shuddered, and my heart still pounded frantically, as loud as a drum.
"You all know who did this, right?" I asked.
"The Stoll brothers," my siblings chimed. They were taught well.
One last late book leapt to the ground, joining its friends, and a neon green sticky note fluttered down after it. I slowly walked into the cabin, flinching every time I came near a spider, wishing that my anti-spider bug spray wasn't at the bottom of my trunk, until I got to the sticky note. I picked it up and read it out loud.
Surprise, surprise, Athena cabin! Keep the books; we don't care. And we know you'll be begging to keep the spiders! Thanks for your help! Bet you didn't SEE that coming!
Yours sincerely,
Travis and Connor Stoll
And slowly, I understood, and slowly, I reached out my hand and smacked my forehead. "Di immortales. They took the cap." Styx.
~Presents-Presents-Presents~
We sat in our now clean cabin (we actually did keep the books, but not the spiders), mumbling to each other, ferocious looks in our eyes. It was one thing to steal my cap, another to prank my cabin, but to use my cap to prank my cabin? That. Was. Really. Serious.
"Okay, everyone," I called, raising my voice over my siblings'. "Quiet down. Obviously, we're gathered to discuss a way of payback to the Stoll brothers for the prank they did earlier this week. Did anyone come up with any ideas?"
"We could prank all the other cabins and make them think it was the Stoll brothers," Brian suggested.
It was a pretty good idea, but after considering it, I shook my head. "Let's not bring any other cabins into this," I said.
"Egg their cabin?" Andy offered.
Leave it to Andy to think of a prank like that. I shook my head. "Sorry, too unoriginal. And not very respectful to Hermes."
"What if," Emily said, "we flood their cabin with a ton of letters?"
My mouth broke into a smile as I processed the prank. Hermes was the messenger of the gods, after all, and what better way to remind the Stoll brothers than with letters?
"Oh! Or," Lucy started, "we can steal all of their things and put them in the sword arena."
Another great idea. Besides being the messenger of the gods, Hermes was also the god of thieves. Suddenly, a light bulb flashed on in my head and I found myself slowly grinning with an evil glint in my eyes.
"I have a plan."
*End chapter one. * I really hope you liked it! Constructive criticism welcome! I'll post the second part soon! Review?
And if you know me, you're probably wondering, "Where's her long author's note?" So here it is: Do you like A/N's before or after the story? I'm trying out after now. Which do you prefer?